by Adam Gianforcaro

Gestation and chamomile flower:
I am my mother again. Notice now

how many times one can near death.
Birth, blood loss, someone else’s sick

pushed through, pushed into.
Which is to say: open window,

wind’s open mouth, a phone call
from childhood. The water is warm

and remains so. I sink into it,
think: womb again. A breeze

from the next room, a scythe
parting the drapery. I have learned

that panic passed down is a form
of survival: the gift of hardening

despite wrinkle-soft fingers. To perceive
far past the drip-drop faucet.

There’s an empty tub when the shadow
steps in, the water scarcely rippled.

Adam Gianforcaro is the author of the poetry collection Every Living Day (Thirty West, 2023). His work can be found in The Offing, Poet Lore, Third Coast, Northwest Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Delaware.

by Kelly Erin Gray

From a distance I couldn’t make
it out, I thought they were girls,
younger maybe, but just like us,
helping each other stand, just like us.

I turn my neck like a phrase
to watch the way their pale arms
hold the moon like light, reflecting
off water even in a dirty gutter.

I’m too near sighted, too honest
in the eyes, prone to being told
life stories in ways I shouldn’t
ever know from people I never will.

But they don’t look. They never
lift their heads from where they
fall into each other, in thought,
in prayer, in the tall wet grass.

We cross over to the other side
as the needle sinks into the grooves
of their record, cycling around
what veins they have left standing.

It’s all warped over now, like I’m meant
to remember something other than what
we hear, the voice of my father when
he said you can never go back home again.

Kelly Erin Gray is a writer and instructor based in Boston. Her writing has appeared in Maudlin House, Up The Staircase Quarterly, The Shore, and The River. She can be found online @kelly_erin_.

by Tim Rich

I wanted to live quietly
in a white stone cottage
far down an unhelpful track
that twists and dips low
into old black woods so
unbidden guests will turn
back on themselves, not
getting to where the way
long after it leaves the map
swerves hard to reveal
a meadow by the reach
of a fast thick river and
nearby softly in sunlight sits
the place I’d wake each day
to make a fire, cook slowly, watch
smoke drifting from a low roof
over the in-love-with-itself torrent
lined with bright bushes sagging
under honeyberries, buckthorns
then beyond to maybe-glimpses
deer moving through poppies? yet
closer a weathered table for mending
writing, reading until the light
is right only for shrews, owls
when comes the moss tread
of the shadowless ponies who
half-ghost through to lap
from the pail I leave
by the well, while
unlit inside I wonder if
it is time to sleep
but what sleepwould I have falleninto there, andwhat dreams?

Tim Rich lives and writes in Hastings, England. Most recently, his poems have appeared in the book Dark Angels: Three Contemporary Poets (Paekakariki Press, London), at the Bloomsbury Festival, and in the 2024 Connections project with writers’ group 26 and the Barbican Centre. He has also guested on poetry podcasts such as Night Light with Tom Snarsky and Eat the Storms. Tim shares poems and lo-fi photographs on Instagram @timrichphotographs.

by Nicholas Pagano

The city slept while the air baked orange.
Florence, at midday, was 106 degrees.
I didn’t know how to be a tourist, never learned
the ease required to hold a language always
wilting. The time boiled down
to a search for benches cooled by fountain spray.
When a statue shattered, it was rebuilt
according to custom, the new shape
glowing in the alcove. No one could say why
ruin was ruin, not simply abandon,
if it meant slow wilt, an inward sag
to the cupolas, roads worn blue by wheels
a thousand years. While a crowd watched,
a pig was smoked in the square. Its grease slick
along the pietraforte. Wonder slipped to its knees
everywhere we went.

Nicholas Pagano has previously been published in Chronogram, Field Guide, The Windward Review, and elsewhere. He has work forthcoming in Wild Roof Journal. He lives and writes in New York.

by Justin Karcher

I’m stuffing my face with the best
Vietnamese food in Buffalo
when Chris tells me old kidneys
stay inside your body when you have
a transplant. He is skinnier
than the last time I saw him

and I wonder how many of us
will disappear completely
in the months to come.

After dinner, I walk by
the old KeyBank, which is now
a Trump pop-up store
and in the parking lot
shirtless methheads are hotwiring
what’s left of the sun.

Justin Karcher (Twitter: @justin_karcher, Bluesky: justinkarcher.bsky.social) is a Best of the Net- and Pushcart-nominated poet and playwright born and raised in Buffalo, NY. He is the author of several books, including Tailgating at the Gates of Hell (Ghost City Press, 2015). Recent playwriting credits include The Birth of Santa (American Repertory Theater of WNY) and The Buffalo Bills Need Our Help (Alleyway Theatre). Check out his website: justinkarcherauthor.com.