by Ava Loomar

I dreamt of a ship. A dinghy, really, slowly taking on water. There’s always a tradeoff to make it back to shore. A way to drop weight and stay buoyant. Off go the rations, oranges coasting like fishing bobbers. Off go the wine crates, the heirlooms, barnacle-ridden and pickled in brine. Until the only thing left to throw overboard is the anchor I carry cross-shoulder, like I am the vessel that needs mooring. It is, of course, useless on a sinking ship. The air is pure ozone, and I am counting the seconds between lightning and thunder, calculating how long I have to run from the consequences to my actions. I remind myself that even in death, the crab fights back, slicing the greedy fingers that seek to slurp meat from her carapace. Soon, I know the sun will rise like a bloody yolk. Soon, the fishermen will find me with their morning catch. A seamaiden of old, draped in sea silk, heaped in with the gasping mackerel. Aye, they’ll say, it’s true even fish can drown.

Ava Loomar is a 2025 Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and journalist based in Atlanta, Georgia. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Dodo Eraser, Anthropocene Poetry Journal, Alien Buddha Press, JAKE, Eunoia Review and Sky Island Journal, among others. She is currently working on her first chapbook. Find her on Twitter @AvaSLoomar, Instagram @whosava, or contact her at avaloomar.wordpress.com.

by Andrew Ray Williams

The sun found the dew
at my feet. In the ditch, a cricket
kept on as if dawn had not come.
It was still mostly dark,
and cold.
Since the egg carton held only shells,
I came out to see whether light was enough.
It was not.
Behind me, a sudden flutter.
I thought: owl, or bat,
some dark-winged thing. Then royal blue
flashed past my ear, and there he was,
on a bare bough.
Not until then did I know I was
in a wilderness
or how hungry I was—
my raven appeared as a bluebird,
and I was fed, like Elijah.

Andrew Ray Williams is a poet from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. His recent poems have appeared in Bramble, Ink in Thirds, and Trampoline. He is the author of A Weathered Ship: Poems.

by Eliza Fixler

Can sprint in the double digits
speed past the cyclists grinding upward

can puff her feathers, sun herself
on the face of your warm side in winter

can trap the heat with her wings
for later, survive the torpor of your silence.

Can feel an opening, bash in
the head of the snake, she wasn’t made

to stop and think. The tip
of its tail will hang from her beak

for hours, til her belly has room
for the rest. Still, be kind to the bird. Shear

the shade from your garden,
leave her a sunny side. Without it,

she won’t survive the chill.

Eliza is a therapist and poet currently based in Pittsburgh, PA. Previous works have been published at Chaotic Merge, GASHER, Beaver Magazine, Up The Staircase Quarterly, Querencia Press, and others. You can follow her writing at @elizafixlerpoetry on Instagram or Bluesky.

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.