by Amorak Huey

What shapes would your tongue make
learning me? What if a single word
meant sky and kiss and stranger? If another
meant both touch and hush?
What if every word of me — every one of them —
came from your body, what then?
What would you name me?

Amorak Huey is author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-founder with Han VanderHart of River River Books, Huey teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. He is on Twitter @amorak and Instagram @amorakhuey.

by Lynne Ellis

Lynne Ellis (she / they) writes in pen. Their words appear in Poetry Northwest, Sugar House Review, The Shore, Barzakh, Pontoon Poetry, and elsewhere. Winner of the Missouri Review’s Perkoff Prize, and a nominee for the Pushcart Prize, Lynne believes every poem is a collaboration. More on Instagram @stagehandpoet. Ellis is co-editor at Papeachu Press, supporting the voices of women and nonbinary creators.

by Jeannie Prinsen

I hate winter rain, how it soaks
dirty snow heavy, sluices beneath ice
dams at the curb, how it seeps,
weighs. Get used to it, they say,
this is the future, no more
old-fashioned winters. As though
nostalgia for childhood’s red-
cheeked seasons oppresses me, not
the inexorable slide into melt,
humans glaciering slow
toward refuge, beasts foraging
in bewilderment while we choose
drowning, calling it progress, moving afloe
across a sea of our own design.

Jeannie Prinsen lives with her husband, daughter, and son in Kingston, Ontario, where she is a copy editor for a local news organization. Her writing has appeared in Barren, Relief, Dust Poetry, and elsewhere. She can be found on Twitter at @JeanniePrinsen and Instagram at @jeannieprinsen.

by Tom Snarsky

This is a treatise on the art
of wanting things you cannot have,
whether it’s because someone
else has them & won’t give them up
or because schools of fish
are becoming more and more
selective with time, the bigger pools
of applicants winnowing
slowly enough for them to get away
with certain trickeries––––
like a jut of metal near the stream
still appearing strong & straight
despite having witnessed
years & years & years of rain,
so an accidental deer-nudge
is enough to break it clean
in two and set the rust flakes loose

to brighten the mud. I end up
doing that a lot, breaking things
that aren’t mine––––the trick is
to do it like the deer does it,
not on purpose but just because
you were trying to get a drink
that, whether or not you knew
it, would put gross stuff in your blood
and turn you into a problem.
Cherry trees don’t grow here
natively, they have to be brought in
& can’t be shaded by bigger trees
or buildings. They need deep,
well-draining soil, six hours
of sunlight a day, and if you don’t care
if the fruit is sour that’s really it

Tom Snarsky (@tomsnarsky on Twitter & Instagram) is the author of Threshold, Complete Sentences, Light-Up Swan, & the forthcoming Reclaimed Water. He lives with his wife Kristi and their cats in the mountains of rural northwestern Virginia.

by Ronda Piszk Broatch

And by that, I mean I want a day filled with it.

Nothing.

Nothing, like glass of cold water
with ice and a slice of lemon in it.

I mean the kind of nothing where all the lawn
mowers, the cars and the sea planes, the jets

that fly over my house, low
as the crow flies, drowse.

I want the nothing-to-hear of owls in flight.

The nothing of guns stuffed with rust,
the kind that refuses to shoot eight straight

hours on a Sunday from two
different directions behind the nursery

with its fountain and two barrels filled
with petunias.

The nyctinastic quiet of petunias.

I want nothing more than the sleep of stones,
the fall-planted rye grass.

A lamp
with a genie in it

asking in sign language what I want on a day filled
with semis asleep in motel parking lots,

wildflower seeds and books of poetry tucked
in their boxes for the night.

The silence of earthworms.

Maybe the kind of nothing where you know there’s something,
but you can’t see it, and it doesn’t speak in words.

Smaller than point particles.

Nothing,
like an Amazon box chewed to bits by the cat.

Nothing,

and nothing to do about it.

Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Chaos Theory for Beginners (MoonPath Press, 2023), and Lake of Fallen Constellations, (MoonPath Press). She is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant. Ronda’s journal publications include Greensboro Review, Blackbird, 2River, Sycamore Review, Missouri Review, Palette Poetry, and NPR News / KUOW’s All Things Considered. She is a graduate student working toward her MFA at Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop.