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.

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.