by Kelly Sargent

We liked Elena with her knobby knees,
halter tops and pierced ears
who shared sticky Blow Pops
swiped from the stuffy Madrid market
on dog days when Spanish yayas
grunted stern Nos to girls who asked
to pedal trikes along the grape-vined walls
that fed rats who stayed in the shadows.

It was Carmen who most did not like
with True Grit on her coffee table,
even though her VCR was broken,
and who had punched that toughie in the gut
when he called her little sister retarded
because she could not hear
and talked with her hands.
Stay away from her,
frowning, coiffed grandmothers cautioned.

It was Elena who whistled her way in the stiff autumn air
to the start of school one year,
round-bellied like her mama’s tarnished teapot,
and offered us a packet of cherry Fun Dip to share
as she leaned into the grape vines.
Open-mouthed, we eyed her shocking middle.
She shrugged.
Too many Pop Rocks.

A significantly hearing impaired writer and artist adopted in Luxembourg, Kelly Sargent is the author of two memoirs in verse, Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion (Kelsay Books, 2022) and Echoes in My Eyes (Kelsay Books, 2024), and a short form poetry collection entitled Bookmarks (Red Moon Press, 2023). Other works have appeared in more than eighty literary journals, most recently including Rattle, Chestnut Review, Eunoia Review, and Broad River Review. Honors include: Firebird Book Award winner, The Rash Award in Poetry finalist, Eric Hoffer Award nominee, Touchstone Award for Individual Poems nominee, and two-time Best of the Net nominee. She serves as the creative nonfiction editor of The Bookends Review. Kelly is on Facebook and you can visit kellysargent.com to learn more about her.

by Shefali Banerji

I wrote my first poem as a foetus, traced a rhyme against mother’s body. It appeared on her skin, mimicking cobwebs running amok. I didn’t know her body was a stencil until I knew it to be home. The words had just begun to grow a little tall, a little wide, a little big, bigger still & I was impatient so I carved them upon clenched fists, thighs, knees, a new riverine each day bent out of shape, life, blood, form, meter, until I ran out of space. Mother taught me lullabies of her tongue & I, little fool, drove them out of memory; only to make way for silly kicks & out-of-order gods – while men of letters & flesh hung around the curb, watching the drama unfold. When I look back now at the half-drunk ellipses & expositions, I see how my spine became the sum total of every defiant line that ever could rebel against itself & run on into the next, pushed along until it no longer could find an end to its means or an anecdote, a verb, a catching of breath. I see how I allowed my ribs to heave & sigh beneath unformed breasts, weave tales of regret, draw in from the marrow a D-I-Y kit for disaster. Build it from scratch, nurture it, water it, tuck it in bed, kiss it goodnight, before the sun sets on all our tomorrows. I wrote my first poem as a foetus against mother’s body & just as it has happened every day since, I kept my heart’s voice to myself. Mistaken for a timebomb, they declared me a case of emergency, a matter of grave concern, Frankenstein’s monster within the womb, parasite-ing her way into mother’s life, for sure. Brought out their knives, their masks, their lights, knocked me open on the table and labelled me “premature”. That, my grand entrance was the last stanza of my first poem as a foetus against mother’s body. Wedged in-between the uncertainty of living and unliving, snappy gloves and wary whispers replacing the background score, birthing into existence a half-finished song.

Shefali Banerji is a poet-performer from Kolkata, India, currently based in Vienna. A PhD researcher at the University of Vienna, working on the intersections of poetry performance and theatre, Shefali has had her work published in or featured on Poetry Wales, The Bombay Review, Kitchen Table Quarterly, ORF Niederösterreich, and elsewhere.

by Chel Campbell

The familiarity of my parents’ love became unfamiliar,
materializing without warning as I watched them

transform naked cement into a space for me.
They were sculptors who made illusions of walls,

gathered frames, wires, and cotton candy insulation
to press under layers of sheetrock, tape and mud.

I shouldn’t have touched anything, but I did.
Every part was magic—half-moon knives smoothed

spackle, packed screwhead edges with eager scrapes.
In the middle of their work, they would flirt in ways

they didn’t think their child could understand, sneak
intimate touches when they thought I was distracted.

Bare outlets peeked like curious faces, light switches
were stripped of their plates. When it was finally time

to paint, they flew, made messes of constellations,
prettied the walls and each other. I orbited their spark.

Laying in the new dark room, I covered my ears
to block lovemaking’s steady rock above, my

fingertips rough with fiberglass
giving everything I touched

a sharp strangeness.

Chel Campbell (she/they) is a poet from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Her debut collection, Everything We Name is Precious, is forthcoming from Milk and Cake Press in September 2024. You can find their most recent work in Rogue Agent, SWWIM, New Delta Review, trampset, and elsewhere. Follow her on Instagram @hellochel and say hi!

by M.P. Powers

I.

In the silence between fires, a train passes. The garden opens its eyes. A woman’s voice floats on waves of air. It’s still morning out here. Still early enough for the trees to climb the sky, for the trains to run backwards, for Spring to exchange its tenor for three gold rings of the crumbling moon.

II.

The moon out here is crumbling, but last night it was an omen, silver-headed cow with God-spun eyes. Last night the moon that’s crumbling in a pillar of crimson cloud remembers. How could it forget? Even the wind remembers when the forest decomposed and the Cadillac that was my mind wrapped itself around a tree.

III.

What was I thinking? I must’ve been mad! Who mistakes an image for a thing and a graven thing for an omen makes for a standing thundercloud. An omen isn’t a thing, I tell you. A thing is right here between silent fires. Where the moon is parable and the trees all stand up naked, the flowers grow radiant with secrets.

M.P. Powers is the author of The Initiate (Anxiety Press, Fall, 2023). Recent publications include the Columbia Review, Black Stone/White Stone, Mayday Magazine, and others. His artwork can be found on Instagram @mppowers1132.