by Darren C. Demaree

Belief is squishy. Spring begins before rain
can mark the path past the fallen oak that could
not survive the winter. I look for Emily

in the simplicity of each angle. I look for doubt
& I find none. I own no stone. All the night
there are chimes I hear beyond myself.

There are some things you say three times,
but there is only one place prayer can be
heard by whatever god has constructed Emily.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-five full-length poetry collections, most recently “Got There: Poems on Vanishing”, (April Gloaming Publishing, April 2026). He is the recipient of a Greater Columbus Arts Council Grant, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is currently working in the Columbus Metropolitan Library system. 

by Zachary Daniel

The man stirring his dreams into a glass of whisky
is also among them, walking out
into the mayapples, shrinking all the while.
And when he’s under their foliage, stops.
Rain pounds right through the metal roof.

Another down a trail scored by tire tracks
is up to his ankles in mud. All he can do
is laugh, lay back, and let the rain
fill his mouth like a heel-print.

A third, dozing in the cabin, wearing only
one wool sock will wake to the moon
dropping behind two cedars. His body
will empty, and some inner creature will take off
through the branches like a moth.

Zachary Daniel works as a gardener in Cave Hill Cemetery. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky. He has poems published or forthcoming at The Pierian, Eunoia Review, Palette Poetry, Verse Daily, and elsewhere on the internet.

by Nora Ray

you treasure olfaction when
your eyes stop working,
drizzle exudes the fragrance of brothy earth,
deluge smells of centipedes

i am alone on this hill: my only salvation
from the water murdering the phlox,
its petals loose and overwhelmed;
it has been raining for half my age

the ivy’s rotten, the roots, the herbs
my knees are too, disfigured joints;
i need to run, upward, skyward
to the headwaters of the rain

my mother is long gone, below;
the phlox is too, it rots in my stomach,
that dark acidic land—poor phlox,
first killed by nature, then by its child

like those grasshopers i live on,
dragonflies, roaches, and ants
there are few left: two beetles and a wasp;
i’m filled with them, i am a cannibal

my new mother is a centipede,
she covers me, her body flat and cold;
her buzzing lulls me to sleep
i am inside the egg, i am the egg

please, mother, please, bequeath me legs
more legs, more legs, more legs to run;
to run skyward, to the headwaters
so i can turn that torrent off

i wake up to a fossilized mass,
a puddle of dark, acidic land
revived grasshoppers, perforated knees;
she takes them away, her legs are strong

mine are too, all two hundred and nine,
they glide like waves, black tides
against the puddle, now it’s lake;
but there is no sky, there’s only rain

Nora Ray’s fiction appeared in MoonPark Review, Twin Bird Review, Ergot, Propagule, Seize The Press and elsewhere. Her poems appeared in Frigg and Apocalypse Confidential. She’s a poetry and fiction reader at Cosmic Daffodil. She lives in Spain. You can find her on Twitter/Bluesky: @noraraywrites.

by J.R. Solonche

Your heat is a debt that the stones pay back to the night.
You are a gardener who works without using any tools.

You turn the water into ghosts and the seeds into kings.
You are a fire that warms the world without burning the house.

Everything we see is a shadow that you have let go.
Your light is a guest who arrives without knocking.

You are a golden hammer that softens the world.
The sky is a blue page that your fire is reading.

You are a golden carpenter building the day.
You use no nails but the beams of light.

The morning is a door that your fire pushes open.
You are a clock that does not care about the time.

You turn the green leaf into a factory of life.
Your setting is your red signature on a finished work.

You are a golden lion that sleeps in the west.
Your heat is a long story that the stones are telling.

You turn the white water into a ladder of mist.
The dark is just you turning your back to the room.

You are a golden baker who never burns the bread.
Your light is a yellow ink that writes on every leaf.

You are a clock that measures everything but itself.
The night is the only thing you cannot understand.

Nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award, twice for the National Book Award and three times for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of more than 50 books of poetry and coauthor of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.

by MJ Weerts

Oak ripped the bark off
a clique of circular talkers
who learned on the last day
that a whole term of knotty
resistance to notes was not
a language issue.

MJ Weerts (he/him) teaches composition and film at LSU. He loves Thao and Kai so much.