by Candice Kelsey

I

Atop her stack of cascading bills and letters
like a Polly Pal paperweight or pink
and white gingham kenning its mylar cover

uncharacteristic of the middle-aged woman
gate-keeping my firedrake adolescence
this blond breaker of rings with curved bang

bowl-cut hair helmet as gleamy and round
as her ivory bracelet battle tusks from Thailand
an elephant graveyard stacked like slain

warriors pitching about the Valhalla of her
nacreous forearm and wrist this poached score
of my childhood was a cacophonous death rattle

II

Mornings brought finger snaps be quiet can’t you
see I’m on the phone and every brandish of her fist
heads will roll and the ease of her ball point

strike-through heavy and scriptorium-slow across
the pages moments after hearing the news
of the latest friend or relative no longer around

fingering A-Z tabs for names and addresses
like my godparents Peter and Mary Kunda
at 543 Prospect Avenue Scranton PA now gone

III

Into the earth and out of her cache of Ks they lay
near cousin Frances Klein and Dr. Koursh
each donning my mother’s skull and cross-outs

her casual delineation between the living
and the dead between Christmas cards and ancient
history swift as the tornado in ’79 descending

moments after I stepped from the afternoon
bus with Jane Connors when her own chimney’s
brick struck her head–I wanted to empty her

backpack and take her new supply of erasable
pens pooling like Freyja’s tears the only
hope I had against my mother’s hand in the Cs

Candice M. Kelsey [she/her] is a writer and educator living in Los Angeles and Georgia. She has been featured in SWWIM, The Laurel Review, Poet Lore, Passengers Journal, and About Place among others. Candice mentors an incarcerated writer through PEN America and reads for The Los Angeles Review. Her comfort-character is Jessica Fletcher. Please find her @Feed_Me_Poetry and candicemkelseypoet.com.

by Robert Okaji

Because I say to myself I’m going to
miss her so much, when no, I won’t miss any-
one, because I’ll be dead. I won’t be thinking.
Or feeling, or remembering. I simply
won’t be. So I’m grieving now, well in advance
(I hope), though the drugs quit on me and my knee
swells and the lead balloon in my chest expands
even as I write and eat cookies because
everything else tastes like sawdust. I miss her
so much now, even though she’s here, more present
than anyone, ever. Because I won’t be.

Robert Okaji served without distinction in the U.S. Navy, and once owned a bookstore. Sixteen months ago he was diagnosed with late stage metastatic lung cancer. Thanks to the wonders of modern science, he still lives in Indiana with his wife—poet Stephanie L. Harper, whose poems resonate with emotion and craft—stepson, and cat. His first full-length collection, Our Loveliest Bruises, will be published by 3: A Taos Press in fall 2024, and his poetry may be found in Only Poems, Big Windows Review, Verse Daily, Broadkill Review, Vox Populi, Taos Poetry Journal, wildness, and at his blog, O at the Edges.

by Natasha Moskaljov

She wears her spacesuit
when they dance in the water.
He’s strong because he can
carry both her and all her
air and earth and the callas
taking root wherever
his hands play those tunes
she heard him sing through
the speakers she slept with
at night. The promise is—
to float until gravity decides,
until the garden on her cheeks
disarms all the layers of salt
on his skin. She wants to tell him
about this peaceful war, about
the multitudes in her brain,
but she’s mute. His fingers taste
of love, of the future.

Natasha Moskaljov is a writer from Croatia. Her work appears in Typishly, Rue Scribe, Full House Literary and elsewhere. She won 1st place in Poems on the Move 2022 Competition, Channel Islands’ category. You can find her on Instagram @natashamoskaljov.

by Catherine Rockwood

It was a time of disasters but very small ones.

Friday, and a party on elsewhere.
A bus for revelers arrived at New Hall.

I saw it from the field outside
on my way to a friend in the blowing dark.

How the bright double-decker slid smooth toward a two-story portico
sheltering the new entrance to New Hall.

How glittering freed-up glass
ran down the front of the bus.

How the edge of the portico hit the upper windshield
of the dreaming vehicle like a grandmother’s hard slap

and stopped the whole thing, stopped it cold.

A few black-tie passengers
threw themselves backward to safety.

The portico stood at one
with its huge new addition

which idled in the gear of OH SHIT
with its forehead knocked open.

And I watched as still as a rock, as safe as stone,
not knowing what appetite had begun.

Catherine Rockwood reads and edits for Reckoning Magazine. Two chapbooks of poetry, Endeavors to Obtain Perpetual Motion and And We Are Far From Shore: Poems for Our Flag Means Death, are available from the Ethel Zine Press. If interested, you can find more at catherinerockwood.com/about

by Jaci Schreckengost

I know the world is
on fire, but, please,
still remember to
lock the door. You
know I would have
checked it at least
three times.

Grab what you need,
but nothing more.
Please leave behind
all the time I wasted
waiting for this to happen.

Grab the love, your
favorite memories,
and our family photo,
all the things we
— no, it’s just you now —
you can’t live without.

Don’t forget to zip
the duffel bag.

Are you sure the door is locked?

Did you set the alarm?

Jaci Schreckengost (she/her) is a content marketing manager, writer, and editor. She has been published in Citrus Industry Magazine, GalaxyQ, the Independent Florida Alligator, it’s magazine, Pentz Zines, and others. She holds an MFA in writing from the Savannah College of Art & Design. You can find her on Instagram at @jacischreckengost.