by Colby Meeks

Smeared in dabs across your lips, like cutting too-sweet
berries. Like decorative and forgotten. I don’t want to tell you
for fear of watching you be gentle and genteel with a paper
napkin. I have a handkerchief in my coat, let me clean you.
I have a craving, let me clean you. Softly. Let me be gentle
this time. Let me be the one with tender touch and fingers
poised in polite and proper arrangements. Or we can forgo
fingers and dignities and unstarched cotton altogether.

Aren’t you tired of trying? Let me taste away the mess you have
made until we have forgotten why we believed either of us
dirty to begin with. Let me taste away the mess you have made
until I am only tasting you. And we can speak only in silence:
my coat fallen to the wayside, your fingers tugging on the hem
of my sweater, my nails rounding the edges of your shirt buttons.
Moving in something like slow motion, as to say this is worth
savoring. As to say I mean every single word I am not saying.

But if you want me to, I can say everything there is worth saying.
I can call you baby or darling or lover. Everything, if you let me.
How silly to think even a mess of something not meant to stand alone
can be so beautiful. How silly to think I could be silent with you,
as though somehow restraint is more sentimental than all of this.
Our skins and fingers and lips seeking out some total coalescence
is something worth saying aloud like I want to say your name aloud
like I want to say I love you like I love you, I love you, Iloveyou.

Colby Meeks (he/him) is an Alabama poet currently pursuing a degree in English from Harvard University. His work appears in Bending Genres Journal, Lavender Bones Magazine, Eunoia Review, and The Lickety~Split. His debut chapbook, DADDY, I’M SORRY, I CANNOT WRITE AN ELEGY, is forthcoming from Penumbra Press. He can be found on Twitter @babysbbreath.

by Devon Neal

Three times a weekend it was blue jeans
that snapped shut and choked my waist.
Twice, a still-moist body out of the shower
and into button shirts with tight collars.
We were Pentecostal, so Mom took off her jeans
for a long skirt and my dirt-kneed sister
into a dress with lace. Three times a weekend,
men talking into a sweat, hiccuping
for air, clouds growing in their armpits.
Hands raised as if to feel the air;
voices moaning glory and praise him and yes.
It was almost a relief when piano keys rippled
through the PA, acoustic guitars with their rustic thrum.
I knew how to sweat; I knew how to ask questions
no one would hear. “You’ll know,” they said,
but I didn’t know. Sunday nights I’d lie in bed
and wonder. What if you can’t stop thoughts?
Sometimes when I prayed, I felt like I was pushing
rocks out of my skin. My closed eyes were knotted trees.
I could never just know; can you show me?
Was this street sign here to remind me
of scripture, glowing neon in the headlights?
Was there a message in the broken store lights,
the local business commercials on TV,
shot through with static lightning? One night,
I whispered in the dark, “If I’m saved,
let the coins on the nightstand fall tonight
and I will find them in the floor in the morning.”
I closed my eyes and waited, ready to know.

Devon Neal (he/him) is a Kentucky-based poet whose work has appeared in many publications, including HAD, Stanchion, Livina Press, The Storms, and The Bombay Lit Mag, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. He currently lives in Bardstown, KY with his wife and three children.

by Tina Kelley

Turns out there is such thing as God’s plan,
and it involves a train so fast you can’t read
the local stops. We head straight to celebrate

the anniversary of the big bang. He’s certain
it occurred in the downs northeast of Brighton
I am skeptical, but follow paths through high

bending grass, a bridle path, a bridal path?
I confide I do not believe in a gendered god,
or a capitalized one for that matter. God says,

flirtatiously, We’ll see about that. I wonder
what Jo was thinking here, texting only,
“he’s got yr #.” If we’re the consciousness

of the universe, I say, isn’t it weird how we go
straight to blessings and praise, at least in my
tradition, rather than complaining about design flaws

like mortality, patchouli, adolescence, mosquitos?
He says praise is an instinct, highly adaptive.
But what about the Book of Common Prayer’s

predilection for self-loathing, calling ourselves
miserable sinners unworthy of thy sacrifice?
That was administrative error, dang committee,

he says. I’ll risk it — tell me a secret, I say. Dads
are wasted on the young, he says. Retirement age
is when you really need a father. How should

I spend my, I start to ask. To heck with shoulds!
he says. Don’t should on yourself, he says. I am…
but he’s not great at finishing sentences. I’m so

hungry, I say, after the silence lasts. I ponder
what God will order us if he’s trying to impress.
Oysters, sangria, mangoes, dark chocolate.

And when God gets tipsy (not to kiss and tell)
he pokes delicious fun at biblical literalists,
confides that rescue dogs are the Earth’s highest

purpose, hints that the coming fire is all our fault
so don’t come whingeing to me. You’re curious
how he came across? Clean nails, excellent

pheromones, a mix of daphne odora plus
ginger ale. And the embrace at the end, sigh!
I hope he’ll call. I want to make him laugh out loud.

Tina Kelley’s Rise Wildly appeared in 2020 from CavanKerry Press, joining Abloom & Awry, Precise, and Washington State Book Award winner The Gospel of Galore. She’s reported for The New York Times, written two nonfiction books, and won a 2023 Finalist award from the NJ State Council on the Arts.

by Ranee Zaporski

The dress
hangs in tatters, a sign of past seasons

two small holes for necks
at extreme angles

without feeling
wrapping myself in this shroud of

a world, tracing your frame
in thoughts of

our shared language. Shielding one another
from the horror, the accusations of

our birth. Twisted mouths free
of connection and enduring the stares

of others. The doctors announced
they would save us. No worse fate in their minds

than our shared hearts together. Surviving
the dreams of absorbing the other. Their solitary

sickness separating us

forever.

Ranee Zaporski works as a teacher and a speech therapist in Wisconsin. She has published poetry in the Poydras Review, Pretty Owl Poetry, and elsewhere. She is on Twitter  @zaporskiR.

by Ariya Bandy

But if you could
freeze the fluids inside every
wasp from a distance, if you could

command the spiders to build
sanctuary outside of yours, if you could
hear the clicks of footsteps and low,
looming breaths behind you, block

their blade with bare hands or refill
wounds like a parasite, if you could
toy with time like a simple hand
fidget, massage

neurons in others’
minds to trade their
files with yours, would you still be
scared?

Ariya Bandy is a writer of poetry and fiction who loves to surround herself with many types of literature. Painted Winds, her debut poetry chapbook, is out from Bottlecap Press. Her work appears in Iceblink Literary Magazine, Querencia Autumn 2023, and elsewhere. She is on Instagram and X @storyofariya.