by Jared Beloff

Sweat fell from the digger’s brow or maybe rain from the gray sky; it was just a little water, nothing to worry about until they felt their legs pulled down into it. They grabbed their waders and continued with damp feet, each shovel heavy with mud and clay. The trees stood watch, their hands folded at their waist. Eventually, the diggers called for a third man, and they cycled in and out of the grave trying to finish, piling the slurried soil higher. The water continued to rise. Only when one of them held a small urchin up to his eyes, its bright pins pink between thumb and filthy fingers did they stop, step out and see the rocks protruding from the sides slick with flowing green. One said it reminded him of a drowned woman’s hair. One thought of his mother. The third digger knelt, his face near the surface, and only saw himself.

Based on of a Jeff Wall Photograph.

Jared Beloff is the author of Who Will Cradle Your Head (ELJ Editions, 2023) and the co-editor of Poets of Queens 2 (Poets of Queens, 2024). His work can be found at AGNI, Baltimore Review, Image Journal, Pleiades and elsewhere. He is the Editor in Chief of Porcupine Literary. He is a teacher who lives in Queens, NY with his wife and two daughters. You can find him on his website jaredbeloff.com.

by Meia Geddes

Those were the years of eyeing honey sticks
at the farmer’s market under the highway—
clover, orange, wildflower. Family friends with
a pomegranate tree—the trick is to open them
underwater—others with walnuts, apples, avocado.
Overflowing harvests given to us in the heavy seasons.
Those were the days of Asian pears when I came
to know a new kind of sweetness. Of girl cheese
sandwiches because mom didn’t correct me,
and my second cousin wondering if everyone at
Thanksgiving was a lesbian. Those were the years
of three-hour weekend trips to the land of strawberries,
all the adults asking what do you want to be when
you grow up? And why did I leave. What could be
more sure than an olallieberry pie, those ducks
beneath the orange trees, all the memories that cling
honeysuckle sweet. The ones I hold in my palms for
safekeeping. How did I leave and what did I think.
Always somewhere to go, something else to be. I knew
generations of German Shorthair Pointers, a page-
long gift list for my village of women on our trips—
postcards an essential part of the journey. Watermelon
seed spitting contests. A winding road lined with oaks,
to days spent plucking purple periwinkles to sip on.
Chewing yellow-flowered sour grass, bunches at a time.

Meia Geddes lives in Boston as a librarian, writer, and artist. A recipient of a Fulbright grant, she is the author of The Little Queen and Love Letters to the World. Her website is meiageddes.com.

by Caroline Shea

Every three days, a beast like me
dies on the track.Starving, tangle-limbed,
I’m all legand bite. Pearl-grey gleam gone dull,
I run for no otherreason but the running. Long since lure-
wise, I play at predation.Clockwork jackrabbit. Gear-blooded hare.
The aim is not capture (impossiblealways) but pursuit. Something like the gravel
of a growl in the throat. Or the snapand glide of a body leaving earth
—however briefly—for the blue-starched strip of sky.
An instinct entered into memorylong before form finished with me,
unquestioned until the years and achesaccumulate, stopper movement like mud.
Not desire, but something deeper.Bred for the chase, I’ll always look better
in motion—an object in unisonwith its use. Don’t pretend you’ve never wanted to be
useful. Or rather, to be needed.A temporary prize: eventually, we’re all
incidental. Years from now, when my joints rustinto stillness, I’ll dream of the self swallowed whole
by its action, arthritic paws twitchingin sleep’s sunless hunt. Place your bets, gentlemen.
I won’t disappoint. Or forget.The sweat-stale pens. The crowd’s rough clamor.
The thin sheen between being necessaryand being used.

Caroline Shea is the author of Lambflesh. Her work has previously appeared in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Narrative Magazine, and Rogue Agent, and was longlisted for the Fractured Magazine Novel Excerpt Prize.

by Garth Pavell

We sat in the April afternoon
waiting for the moon’s round
ass to fit into a blue sundress.

Neighbors I had never seen,
picnicked in the courtyard;
even the mail-lady chatted.

I saw a dog with solar eclipse
glasses contemplate the black
bird pacing a branch of a tree.

Perhaps they could not
express they felt pitted
dark dig inside the day.

Suddenly the bird was not
afraid to sing; we cheered
for the little guy in the sky.

Garth Pavell’s poems can be found in the recent issues of Epiphany, Ghost City Review, Hobart and Rise Up Review. Garth worked in corporate publishing where he learned everything is negotiable. He now writes with the sun in his eyes on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Connect on Instagram: @garth_and_the_unwieldys.

by Edie Meade

Pressed on through a drift of Styrofoam pebbles on my way to the beach.
Felt like crying but didn’t; cranked the radio to live with the burn.
Live inside the burn. The sky is acid-wash, fresh-skinned before the fade.
How profound the simple things are: sea, sky, death, it’s always death with me,
sussing life’s fractions out to the lowest common denominator.
By 2050, every seabird will eat plastic. I can relate.
Sometimes I think the planet seethes at what we’ve done; we had so much time—
but I’m projecting. Microplastics barnacle my artery walls.
No one wanted this. I wish we could repay the pipers with beach. Still,
container ships, quilted like shanty towns, wash to blue in the distance
and the shells look like Lee Press-Ons lost in struggle. A gorgeous crime scene.
Come a day I can’t find the beauty in the beast, I’ll cease to exist.
For now, the sea goes on tossing in her sleep, remembering, forgetting,
hot flashes cooking silver fish in the only world they’ve ever known.

Edie Meade is a writer in Petersburg, Virginia. She has been recently published in Room Magazine, Invisible City, The Harvard Advocate, JMWW, The Normal School, and Litro. Edie is can be found on Twitter, Instagram,  and Threads. Her website is ediemeade.com.