by Purbasha Roy

Early morning the joggers
passed singing hymns in
chorus. The sound of light
mysteriously creeps inside the
bird throats. The scatterings of me
get linked again to each other.

Emptiness navigates through an
abandoned spider-web. No waltz
of dew on the web in this June
morning. The nervousness about
the ephemerality of possessions.

The bonfire tattoo on my forearm
now beyond the winter layering.
The flames neither warm nor cold
in my animal body. Just enough like
a blessed trajectory running through
the morning visions baptizing me for
a nameless good karma. A breeze of joy
runs through me. I am alive and content.

Purbasha Roy is a writer from Jharkhand, India. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Iron Horse Literary Review, The Margins, Strange Horizons, Midway Journal, and Notch Review. She attained second Position in the 8th Singapore Poetry Contest and is a Best of the Net nominee. You can find Purbasha’s website at linktr.ee/Purbashawrites.

by Jane Zwart

for Rachel Martin

What the stranger gives is in a thousand ways less
than what our kin can give—for instance, names
and new names, nucleotides and years. And if,

between people who belong to one another, it is
not as simple as deserving, still: a lover will belly up
to a sink and wash your hair for only the asking,

but strangers you have to pay. In magnitude,
in recurrence, what we call love from these people
who are ours, it dwarves the love strangers give.

No one will carry you as long as your mother did.
No one will think your laughter quite the medal
your sons say it is. Yes, and for the handkerchief

a passer-by presses on your distress, there will be,
seven times over, your brother, his shirt front.

But there is something about the handkerchief,

something about the door held anonymously open
by someone not beholden to you at all. There is
something about trying not to be seen needing help

and being seen. And about the love that is altogether
unobliged, something. So that remembering it,
we toss out, like a ball too light to throw, the belief

that a woman—not a teacher, not a parent, followed
by a gust of winter into a grade school: she spent
her best wish on a child—was an angel, or like that.

Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University and co-edits book review for Plume. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, HAD, and Ploughshares, and her first collection of poems is coming out with Orison Books in fall 2025. You can track her down at janezwart@bsky.social or janezwart.com.

by Valeria Eden

so soon from now,
my womb will wither
and turn to ash inside me,
my beauty and worth
right alongside it.
my body, a graveyard
of missed opportunity
and my mother’s dreams.
i will be purposeless,
wandering empty-headed
and godless, like
childless women tend to do.
i have so very little time.
unfortunately, for my mother,
i will not spend this remaining time
chasing after a rich, older man
who can provide for me,
or obsessing over the wrinkles
of my smile lines, and no,
i will also not take this
tacky-cow-ring, also known
as a septum piercing,
out of my nose. instead,
i might take up bird watching.
immerse myself in the language
of warbles and trills and chirping.
i might even make a hummingbird
feeder out of a helmet and sit very still
in my backyard so that when my
uterus inevitably explodes from lack
of use, effectively killing me,
the last thing i see is the rapid blur
of bright, tiny wings; probably the
closest to an angel i will ever get.

Valeria Eden is a writer, editor, and crybaby. Her work has appeared in Variant Literature, Wasteland Review, and Eunoia Review, and is forthcoming in Arcana Poetry Press. She is the author of Tender Teeth (Jack Wild Publishing) and loves to write about the things that haunt her. She has three dogs, two therapists, one boyfriend, and her favorite color is green.

by Sarp Sozdinler

They said she was born
with salt beneath her fingernails
and a mouth full of birdsong.

They said she whispered to onions,
peeled secrets from their skins
until the kitchen was thick with prophecy.

She had the evil eye in her wallet,
a passport in five languages,
none of which she believed in.

On Mondays,
she dissolved into vapor
and reappeared in another century.

Once, she loved a man
who tried to draw a map of her body
but every time he reached her borders
they shifted, laughing.

Even the gods
sent her DMs
she left on Read.

A Turkish writer & poet, Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Masters Review, Trampset, JMWW, and Normal School, among other journals. Their work has been selected or nominated for anthologies including the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. They are currently working on their first novel in Philadelphia and Amsterdam: www.sarpsozdinler.com | @sarpsozdinler.

by Oluwaseyi Daniel Busari

They say the earth has no mouth, but it speaks in warnings.
The sky holds its breath before it cries.
The harmattan is a messenger, but we refuse to listen.

A woman buys salt at the market, and the seller smiles.
She says, “Salt is never cheap.”
She means, Be careful what you ask for.
A man buys salt and licks his fingers,
Tasting the debt before it is due.

It is easy to forget that salt is the ocean dried up,
The river without forgiveness.
It remains on the tongue like regret.
Too much, and even sweet things turn bitter.

The elders say, “Do not waste salt, it is a bad omen.”
They mean, “Do not waste what is earned with sweat.”
But a child laughs and throws a pinch into the wind,
Thinking that the wind is kind.

At night, when the sky is dark enough to hold secrets,
The old women sit outside and whisper:
“Did you hear? She married a rich man but cries at night.”
“Did you hear? He built a house but cannot sleep in it.”

They say what is sweet must cost something.
And so, I adorn my food carefully with salt.
Too much salt, and the tongue forgets what is real.

Oluwaseyi Daniel Busari is a budding Nigerian poet/essayist whose driving force is his affinity for language and its uses. He draws inspiration from Joseph-Jean Rabearivelo, Christopher Okigbo, John Donne, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Kofi Awoonor, among others. You can find him on X, Medium, and Substack as palmwyndrinkard.