by Leila Abeni Jackson

Seriously, though, something should be said
About how easy it is, making the space between us
Into no space. About how hard we work
For that ease. The seamless semicircles we join
Our bellies for, like (or so they say) what you’d see
If the Earth had rings: a graceless silver arching,
A backbend west. What might be taken for granted,
Then? Most likely, the same things: color, light,
Darkness, stars. There is a point at which
Cones crowd out rods and pour color into orbit,
Or in other words, we can see pigment even if
There is no light. We try to keep some mystery
Alive, but surely you know something of us now,
How we travel signal to signal to signal, how we
Head the body without bodies ourselves. And, yes,
Retinal disparity, how we turn space into no space
By convincing you there was never any there at all.

Leila Abeni Jackson is a proud DC native and a Pushcart-nominated Harvard undergraduate studying English and History of Science. Her work appears in the Harvard Advocate, Rattle, Sixteen Rivers Press, and elsewhere. She is the former poetry editor of the Harvard Advocate and her most recent work includes her senior thesis, Uncharted Song, a poetry collection which explores Blackness and the medical body through time.

by Kyla Houbolt

Jung said myth is forever the root of all human creation. This is a failure of the imagination, says Diana, as she restrings her bow. Oh my yes, agrees Venus. There was so much our Jung did not know. He served beautifully for a time, but entirely missed the era of the artificial. Diana raises an eyebrow at that. Oh, he missed a lot more than that, sister. He was caught in the web of Arachne, as are we all! But look you, up there, and over there, and just here under my hound’s large foot. The web is tearing as it must, as all things in creation do change, even the great things we think are eternal. Venus bows her gold-tressed head. You know, Diana, your hunting skills have surely improved. See our Jung down there now, an arrow through his brilliant heart, he’s fallen from his loft indeed! And I must say! There is Pan over there, reading a book! Well, I never. Here, help me lift my skirts over this sudden stream, Diana, it reeks of poison.

And so the two make their way out of what had seemed timeless. Pan looks up, watches them lift off, puts his book under an Oak, and follows along. Things had indeed gotten boring and he felt a good strong wind beginning to stir. He blows out his breath to strengthen the wind, but that has no effect. Yep, he mutters, time to move along. We’ve been Changed already. And Pan, not made of atoms at all, begins to dissolve, to morph into a cloud-like Pan shape, and then that wind he failed to call up most gently scatters his image into unrecognizable mist.

Kyla Houbolt is a poet and gardener living in North Carolina. Her first full length poetry collection, Becoming Altar, is available from Subpress Poetry. Her new collection, Mapless, coming in July 2026, from Shine Poetry. Her social media: Bluesky: @luaz.bsky.social, website: kylahoubolt.us.

by Ewen Glass

dark

is drawn from
a dried-up well,
poorly guarded,
ill regarded, yet
chucking stones
down there is a
rite of passage
for us kids.

echoes

feel hard won;
we celebrate
disappearing,
ask what if
something lives
at the bottom?
At home dark
means

blankets

to keep monsters
out, the monsters
themselves.
Two storeys up,
I use the lamp
to see forever in
a reflection: my
head is the dark.

Ewen Glass is a screenwriter and poet from Northern Ireland who lives with two dogs, a tortoise and a body of self-doubt; his poetry has appeared in the likes of Okay Donkey, Maudlin House, HAD, Poetry Scotland and One Art Poetry. Bluesky/X/Instagram: @ewenglass

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.