by Kevin Grauke

for N.O.

There’s something perverse about a match, capped as it is by its own destruction.
If only I could let this be, yet another fruitless observation, but I can’t, of course,
not here, where it must be made metaphor along with dawns and depths and all darkling
things. I could say, We’re not so different, but you always knew this better than I.
Life is death’s delay, you said. And death life’s decay. Also: adolescence is senescence,
because small print ruined your eyes. I remember how much you read Millay,
who wrote of candles burning at each end, the loveliness of their short-lived light.
This was in that tiny poem “First Fig,” the name of which never made sense to me,
especially seeing how the second fig went on to speak of shining palaces built on sand.
Were you here, you’d be able to explain, no doubt, as both poet and double-end
burner of figurative wicks yourself, but here you’re not, and for so long now.
And where you might be I haven’t a clue. Have you? You might be floating
inside clouds of holy light and halos, I suppose, but if so, how you must despise it there,
considering how you gleamed like a fang the day you told me the truth about brimstone,
which the Lord rained down on Sodom’s sinners and burned in the lakes of Revelation:
It’s nothing but an old word for sulfur, the thing that makes a matchstick burn.
And so here I am, back where this all started, staring at this thick, red-headed toothpick,
thinking of you laughing down there in Hell, naming each of its licking, frolicking flames.

Kevin Grauke has published poems in such places as The Threepenny Review, Ninth Letter, Louisville Review, Minnesota Review, and Bayou. He’s the author of the short story collection Shadows of Men. Bullies & Cowards is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in 2026. He teaches at La Salle University and lives in Philadelphia.

by Carrie Chappell

I know a bed can hold more than a sleeping body.
I know a body can hold more than a sleeping girl.
Parts of me, like branches, have always been erect,
Have never slumbered. Under this plaid comforter,
I have lain aroused. I have lain a construct. I have lain myself.
After I have come, after I have come to, I come again
And come to again. I know a body comes to thoughts,
That a fallen leaf, though low to the ground, still cups a heaven.
Sometimes I think all I have ever felt originates from this place,
My body alone, supine yet watchful, piqued by the idea of a tree
Outside the window. When a woman lays herself in this bed,
She lies with her first awakening. A hand she knows stokes
The box springs, a slimmer leg fidgets inside her own,
A thought she left here holds more than her past.

Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, Carrie Chappell is the author of Loving Tallulah Bankhead and Quarantine Daybook. With Amanda Murphy, she co-translated Cassandra at point-blank range by Sandra Moussempès. Presently, she teaches English as a Foreign Language at Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM). Each spring, she curates Verse of April, of which she is the founder and editor. One of her newest ventures is writing Spiritual Material: Musings from My Second-Hand, Parisian Wardrobe, which she hosts via Substack. In 2024, she began the bilingual reading series Mnemosynes. Carrie is currently completing her doctoral work on a research-creation project on the poetic novels of Hélène Bessette.

by Natalie Eleanor Patterson

I told Hope it felt like all the cells
in my body had turned over & died.
So now they multiply: evenings I crave
red meat; mornings, egg yolk & candlewax.
Your voice through the phone presses its finger
into the soft hollow on my right hip.
Two hundred miles from you, I go sweaty
to bed, wake up rain-darkened & fertile.
The trees grow thick with distances & you say
you’re on the lookout for signs & wonders:
songbirds, damselfly, strains of old music.
September is wet & still hot. Smell of apples.
Taking you between my teeth. I see now,
why people leave their lives for this.

Natalie Eleanor Patterson is a poet, editor, and instructor with an MFA in poetry from Oregon State University. She is the author of the chapbook Plainhollow (dancing girl press, 2022) and the editor of Dream of the River (Jacar Press, 2021), and has work featured in Sinister Wisdom, CALYX, South Florida Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She is Managing Editor of Jacar Press and a PhD student in poetry. Find her at poetnatalie.com. 

by Annie Stenzel

we have almost forgotten how to know you now that you arrive at less predictable intervals and also we never know how much you will deliver and often it is ridiculously little and sometimes far too much for the ground to handle so the angle of repose is challenged beyond its mathematical formula as it was during the first of the atmospheric rivers several years ago and up the street a whole slope beneath the perched house yielded to its burden of water and surged into the street with an extraordinary weight and a noise as though Jove had hurled great hammers at the ground which is not the sound I am thinking of right now because I think the trickling of the droplets is unignorable to those who are paying attention and the heft of a drop cannot easily be measured but how songful the sound when we have heard for so long only the silence of no precipitation and yet a raindrop striking a shapely oval leaf on the hedge sounds one way and its comrade striking the clay pot on the patio makes another sound but a droplet tapping the plastic tub in which the garden tools await their task is a slightly different perhaps more insistent sound until the tempo slows and what we notice is oh no please don’t be done already dear droplets we have been counting on you for parched months to save us all with our drought-fearful souls eying the sky avidly and doing something a bit like praying only of course we do not know to whom

Annie Stenzel (she/her) is a lesbian poet who was born in Illinois, but did not stay put. Her second full-length collection, Don’t misplace the moon, was published in 2024 by Kelsay Books. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in print and online journals in the U.S. and the U.K., including Book of Matches, Does it have pockets, Gavialidae, Kestrel, Night Heron Barks, One Art, Rust + Moth, Saranac Review, SoFloPoJo, SWWIM, The Lake, Thimble, and UCity Review. A poetry editor for the online journals Right Hand Pointing and West Trestle Review, she lives on unceded Ohlone land within walking distance of the San Francisco Bay. Find her at anniestenzel.com, on Facebook as Annie Stenzel and on Instagram @anniebenannie.

by Natalie Vestin

An astronomer last year gave thanks
for filaments of gas that stitch the Milky Way
back to its dark becoming, more proof
that chaos is forestalled
simply by what trails behind.

Can gas have surface, ever be a thread? I ask
my dad, who taught me by a dark night’s fire
that all that was and is has curled
itself around the seen.

Stars are held in place
by their own gravity, he says, and liquid lies.
Its surfaces of vapor seethe in spite of all assertions
that its molecules attract.

Iodine, a solid sure, will fume
before your eyes, and you’ve seen
icicles—what’s the word?—in cold that cuts
to bone. Sublime.

Natalie Vestin (she/her) is a writer, artist, and infectious diseases researcher who lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her work has been published in Pleiades, The Normal School, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Her Instagram is @natalievestin.