by Ink

One thing the ancient Greeks got right
as far as invented gods go
was the muses.
Coming from nothing,
emissaries of creation
make sense –
burgeon to bursting the beginning universe
then loosen its belt
to accommodate the more
of everything
inevitable with eternity.

So it also makes sense there be a reaper,
a collector of fads and flavors
fallen out of favors,
and I imagine him a hoarder –
loudly grousing about
endlessly collecting the withered
while interring everything
behind museum-grade glass
with hospice bedside manner
and bottomless Windex bottle.

And this memorabilia mausoleum,
viewed from on high,
can only seem a river,
a taxi – elongated for each exhibit added;
new patrons, for two pennies, stare
into the abyss of obsolescence
as the ferryman points out
each in his continually growing list of favorites
and asks,
“Can you believe it”
with rhetorical, childlike wonder
every single time.

Balancing a taste for all things caffeinated with a thorough knowledge of how to waste time, Ink (he/him) sporadically stains the pages of online and print periodicals and performs at open mics of ill repute around the NY/NJ/PA area. He founded and served as Stanza Cannon EIC, an online journal for oral poetry, and has published three chapbooks: 61 Central (Finishing Line Press), The Vessel of the Now (Back Room Poetry), and Pining (Alien Buddha Press). Ink’s full-length poetry collections include Death Loves a Drinking Game (Piscataway House Publications) and Miserable with Fire. SM and contact info can be found here: linktr.ee/inkthepoet.

by Dawn Macdonald

A child’s parents know the Pope; they have an in
with Michelangelo. She swings between
the registers. She has the voice of a chandelier
in a box beneath the bed. A child’s parents know

what’s best. They’ve been to Rome. They’re readers.
A child’s voice has pitches. Her shoes
best serve to elevate. Her stature varies
with the gaze. She’s best beheld in a departure

lounge. Her shoes are loose. Her voice
glissandos unintentionally. Her gaze is fixed
upon a box. Her parents stare into
the backs of banks of chairs.

Dawn Macdonald lives in Whitehorse, Yukon where she grew up without electricity or running water. She won the 2025 Canadian First Book Prize for her poetry collection Northerny (University of Alberta Press). She goes by @yukondawnmacdonald on Instagram and @yukondawn on Bluesky.

by Sam Rasnake

If you know or see this person, please tell them: come home

One eye, oversized, heavy-lidded, as in
a Picasso—the other, a lit eye peeping
through the keyhole—one arm a cartoon,
one leg photoshopped from websites,

the other leg and arm from two Fellini
films—computers for fingers, flatscreens
for feet, with books for toes, paintings
for ears, a nose that’s a chimney—

the mouth is a cavern with rock formations,
trails, and stream—the lips an eel—the chin
a block of granite chiseled to fit—the face

an atlas, the hair a forest, the torso stolen,
the sex and hips are an unknown, the brain
a bowl of noodles, the heart is the heart

Sam Rasnake’s works have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Best Small Fictions, Best of the Web, Southern Poetry Anthology, Bending Genres Anthology, and MiPOesias Companion. He’s the author of three chapbooks and four poetry collections—most recently, Like a Thread to Follow (Cyberwit, 2023) and Fallen Leaves (Ballerini Book Press, forthcoming). Follow Sam on Bluesky @samrasnake.bsky.social.

by Kelly White Arnold

Not the ponderous pining
wife-wishful woman sodden
with seawater and waiting.

Instead,
the weaver from the penultimate
verses, capable and clever, seeking
certainty in her lover’s return,

discerning the thread’s progression
through warp and weft,
colors intertwining and
separating, unraveling,
endlessly unraveling….

wanting,
wanting,
wanting,

to be, herself, unraveled by familiar
hands, to fall beneath the branches
of the bed they built together,
to fit like nocked arrow
against bow-string pulled taut,

to fly
forward

into lover’s embrace, her
aim
true.

Kelly White Arnold (she/her) is a mom, writer, teacher, and lover of yoga. Her work has recently appeared in Petigru Review, Hellbender, and Reedy Branch Review. She lives in the North Carolina Piedmont with her two favorite humans and one unhinged cat, but she dreams of mountains beneath her feet. Her first chapbook, Decidedly Uncertain, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

by Alison Heron Hruby

this, from a Medical Linear Accelerator (LINAC)

I thought I could breathe well,
that I could draw in my ribs like an expert,
knew the fundamentals in my heart,
to exhale what I did not need.

But a basement machine was patient—
subterranean to keep
gears cold, beams aimed sharply.
Someone else’s idea of keeping life

moving,
as I first thought breath moved.

Metal, paper, thin,
and pleasant sternness,
politely saying:
your intimately held expertise,
you are now mandated to expose.

But say, (instead!) remain a secret, or, maybe
there is expertise more expansive,
it expands beyond your heaviest,
most luscious breath
(your childhood, lollipop breaths).

Those difficult music lessons, the clicking
of a metronome, a doctor needing
to direct me, open your ribs, retract.

The physicist readies a lovely, organ-sized
sphere to cover one, small part of my chest.
The machine murmurs like soil,
Only I know

where to find your heart.

Alison Heron Hruby (she/hers) is a professor of English education at Morehead State University and lives in Lexington, Kentucky. Her poetry is published in Thimble Literary Magazine, Red Tree Review, Sleet Magazine, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, and elsewhere. You can find her on Bluesky @alisonheronhruby.bsky.social and Instagram @alliehope68