by David Hanlon

Yes, I’m in my head all day again.
It’s cold in here—arctic, even.
Every inward road looks identical,
erased beneath unbroken ice.

That’s why I’m shaking.
Any stranger I pass
in my heavy, mud-dark duffle coat
along these color-drained streets
assumes it’s only the leaves
arguing with the wind—
not this inner frost
cracking my bones.

Later, at home, in my too-quiet room,
legs stretched out before me
like split timbers,
I register my old white socks
peeking through the holes
of navy Crocs—

each one a snowdrop,
each one a thought
that survived the freeze.

David Hanlon is a Pushcart-nominated poet based in Cardiff, Wales. His work appears in numerous magazines and journals, including Rust & Moth, Anthropocene, and Trampset. His latest collection, Dawn’s Incision, was published by Icefloe Press. You can follow him on Twitter @davidhanlon13 and Instagram @hanlon6944. 

by Jason Kahler

I wear my father’s winter coat because it fits and the driveway needs shoveling.

The zipper sticks.

Maybe that’s why I never saw him wear it, even in the worst storm, even at the end.

Spread out, opened on a table, the human body is red—yes, red of course—but also white and blue and surprisingly purple;

you can find the pieces hungriest for air by tracing the blush.

No one knows the anatomy of a finger like a nailbiter. Some ruins won’t heal.

I make my fingers bleed.

Overnight they bloom. Hot and swollen, they shine like dewy roses.

Strong teeth, vital gums. I never swallow. It must feel like half-chewed beetles. Carapace and thorax. The poke of each leg in the throat.

I lie.

I hide my hands. Red patterns inside every pair of gloves. And within Dad’s coat pocket, some change. An old envelope with math in his handwriting,

the soft edges frayed, folded paper, folded like wings, folded like feathers.

Jason Kahler is a writer, teacher, and researcher from Southeast Michigan. His work has appeared in Bayou Magazine, Seneca Review, Orbit, College English, and other publications. He’s on Bluesky at @jasonkahler3.bsky.social and sometimes posts at jasonkahler.com. 

by Jon Raimon

this quiet
we spread with rich butter
from the kitchen island

this noise
we down with dark beer
from the pantry

this coupling
we stir and stir
searching

for the one ingredient,
something with o, something with
s, something in the one cupboard

where no one looks, behind the
chia seeds and ancient oatmeal,
behind spicy pickles and

the one box of pasta
shaped like stars,
the shooting, wishing kind

the kind we need tonight
before the silences, star-
less and safe, ruin

our appetite for love

Jon Raimon teaches writing in Ithaca, NY. His work explores grief, family, resistance, and all forms of love. He is part of Spring Writes, Ithaca’s literary festival, and his work appeared in Trampoline: A Journal of Poetry, The Turning Leaf, Book of Matches, Merganser Magazine, Quasar Review, Adirondack Center for Writing, Wilderness, and will soon be featured in The Bluebird Word, Dogwood Alchemy, and Quill of the Goddess. 

by Adele Evershed

CW: Contains sexually explicit language.

In our summer
we made love outside
like the great romantic poets
Byron or Keats—those wet-dreaming rebels
my back pressed against ancient bark
a rough reminder that outside marriage
this was once thought unholy
there was a scent of something feral in the bushes
or maybe that was just you—glowing with sweat and sap
we were always a whisper away from being discovered
and I imagined that was why
I never climaxed
(although you had no such trouble)

In my winter
I know I need creature comforts
to make me come—
a warm womb of a room
lit with the old romance of candles
maybe a deep throated singer promising
to fly me to the moon
the quickness of a tongue
and the slowness of fingers
laying me down stone by stone
like a place of worship
the deep slow build
of an ache as old as Eve
until out of that liminal space
a piercing so sweetly agonizing
I forget myself and call on God
(although I no longer believe)

And maybe that’s why
I’ve always trusted winter more

Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who swapped the Valleys for the American East Coast. A Pushcart-nominated poet, her work has appeared in Poetry Wales, Comstock Review, Literary Mama, and Modern Haiku, amongst others. Her poetry includes the collection Turbulence in Small Spaces (Finishing Line Press) and a forthcoming collection, In the Belly of the Wail (Querencia Press). Her flash fiction includes the novellas-in-flash Wannabe and Schooled (Alien Buddha Press) and A History of Hand Thrown Walls (Unsolicited Press).
Find her on X @AdLibby1, Instagram @ad_libby, and BlueSky @adlibby.bsky.social.

by Alexa Fermeglia

Here is the falcon,
here is the falconer.
You are not the prey
that does not know
what’s coming next,
or the bird singing its
death song
learned though its thousand years.
You are not the sky,
its heavy bowl of blue
unblinking,
the net through which
the hot sun beats down.
You are not the hare,
who hears its heartbeat
six and eight and ten times faster
on its last run
above ground.
You are not the wind,
and for god’s sake
you are not the sun.
You are the witness,
pricking your ears
toward a cry,
your skin shivers,
silence.
You wait again to hear it.
Maybe you were mistaken,
maybe it was
something else.

Alexa Fermeglia is a poet and visual artist based in Budapest. She is the founder and organizer of the Budapest Poetry Collective, a member of the Panel Literature Association, and the co-founder of HEXA, which produced the poetry podcast, Just Below the Surface and the zine/performance project, Pieces. Her work can be found in If We’re Talking Budapest, The Inklette, and Tast. Zine. She is online mostly on Instagram @blink.t.w.i.c.e.