A poem in which I substitute teach at all the schools around me

by Kelli Lage

Students ask me about students in buildings
outside of their barn red bricked walls.
I say,
When we read, fireflies swarm fluorescents.
They know the glow and picture it in nameless irises.

When we write, we create strands of rivers and ink ordains hallways.
They’d never considered if water claims each palm with the same allure.

When we speak,
butterflies flood the room, squeezing through cracks,
decorating words, catching words.
Their eardrums rattle,
trying to hear rasps and ropes of voices they’ve never met.

When we listen, we catch sun songs knocking on sentient windows.
They wonder if our sun is up high enough to see all who live.

Kelli Lage is a poetry reader for Bracken Magazine and Best of the Net nominated poet. Her debut full-length poetry collection, Early Cuts, is forthcoming summer 2023 with Kelsay Books. Her poetry chapbook, I’m Glad We Did This, is forthcoming winter 2023 with Prolific Pulse Press. Lage’s work has appeared in Stanchion Zine, Maudlin House, The Lumiere Review, Welter Journal, and elsewhere. Her website is www.KelliLage.com. Kelli is on Twitter / Instagram @KelliLage  and Facebook @byKelliLage

by Mathew Yates

haven’t you seen the end times advancing?
there’s a storm on Venus, this can’t be good.

we are both so broken & so is the Moon,
to take the tide out without us in it.

have you seen your feed today? it’s so sad.
yeah, funny shit. oh, i’m almost done with this

season. just ignore what he says for now.
worry about shrinks & pills after you’re

insured. i’m sorry. i’m sorry. you
say you saw an article on how

depression is a thing with claws, you say
claws aren’t meant for the numb. haven’t you seen

the Sun unpossessing dusks & dawns?
haven’t you seen her floating off without us?

Mathew Yates (they/them) is a poet & artist from Paducah, Kentucky with roots in Mississippi & Appalachia. Their poetry & art can be found in Protean Mag, Screen Door Review, Malarkey Books, Barren Mag, & more. Matthew is on Twitter @m_yates and Etsy (www.etsy.com/shop/mathewyatesart).

by Susan Grimm

Cut the string of attention or chew it until everything
sharp is flat. Everywhere the feathers scratching

under your clothes so that only endings seem good.
Like that time at the beach when the flies were biting

only you. Who would gauze over that—the water
fletched like dragon skin or is that your own granulated

hide. Twitching your hand down the long sleeve
believing you have to be barbed. How else to deflect

uneasy tingling, minute incessant nerve cry. It’s not
Charon at the end, but your whole life a ferry boat ride.

Skiff, Styx. The wind driving down. The shale-sheet sky.

Susan Grimm has been published in Sugar House Review, The Cincinnati Review, Phoebe, and Field. Her chapbook Almost Home was published in 1997. In 2004, BkMk Press published Lake Erie Blue, a full-length collection. In 2010, she won the inaugural Copper Nickel Poetry Prize. In 2011, she won the Hayden Carruth Poetry Prize and her chapbook Roughed Up by the Sun’s Mothering Tongue was published. In 2022, she received her third Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Grant. Susan is on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/susan.grimm.5/),  Twitter (@sjgrimm), and Instagaram (grimm217).

by Abigail Raley

All you need to know is that there
are birds, somewhere, birds on the line
calving the sky in two, their talons
clutching their suspension, their highwire
kissing the moon’s lap, and at the top
of the utility pole holding them taut,
keeping aloft their still bodies, there is
a nest, a nest made of my
hair, stems from my favorite rose bush,
slivers of tinsel I ripped from my cat’s
jaws, just in the moment she could’ve
swallowed them whole, fronds of
milkweed that invaded my garden,
dried blades of grass I picked from
the lawn and discarded when, putting
them between my wet lips, they refused
to sing, but what’s most important—
and this is my favorite part—
is that, at the nest’s center, there are
eggs, blue as a spot
of turquoise dropped down into
the river, and in them, finally
there is the inside, the inside
I would candle with the butane lighter
I took from your coffee table that
first bright morning I woke next to your
small body, wrapped around me
like a quilt, your deep breath
hot on the fur of my lobe,
my flesh naked and without envy,
your fingers heavy and steady
and long on their course to my center
and when you trapped yourself
inside the husk of me,
I felt hot and sweet, as simple
as nectar, as quiet as a chick
in its shell, and as you dressed
and made yourself again a person
of the world, I felt my own creature
deep and hard and new, so when
I pulled you into me and kissed
into your abyss, you cupped the
yolk of my throat in your hand
and squeezed it gently
and never let it break.

Abigail Raley is a queer poet from Kentucky. She is currently an MFA poetry candidate at the University of Montana.

by J.D. Isip

Mourning or pretending. Just one more
hour for Miami, listening to the raucous
revelers necking and pawing their way
down to the ocean, watching the fireworks
while you slept, oblivious to it all—

A balcony at the Hard Rock, waiting on dawn,
trying not to take one last look at you, your
naked soles, calves, thighs, all those marathons
for an ass that doesn’t quit, the plane of back
blade to blade, no space for me. I can’t quit

reaching. We know the answer before we ask.
There is too much wisdom, too much damage
to be impressed by how it fell so easy, just
another idol body, to lose oneself again, and
again. There’s a relic of me in Mexico, kissing

the wind, a man, air in my hand. One in Rome
says to read him something that cleaves me
as he drives deep the chisel, the hidden tang
thrumming the handle in his hand. I wasn’t
finished praying at the altar of artifacts, pieces

of us where I left the oddments, looking for
you to call me back to bed, you to be there, for
a way to see you clumsy men, your wreckage, you
and me as intended. Excavation is a belief that
there is more to see beneath the rubble and debris.

J.D. Isip is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Pocketing Feathers (Sadie Girl Press, 2015) and Kissing the Wound (Moon Tide Press, 2023). This poem is part of a new project tentatively titled I Wasn’t Finished, which will be released by Moon Tide Press in late 2024 or early 2025. J.D. writes reviews and interviews, and acts as the microfiction editor for The Blue Mountain Review. He is a full-time English professor in Plano, Texas. J.D. is on Twitter @JDIsip and Facebook as J.D. Isip.