by Elizabeth Loudon

Beneath a chilly bathroom floor in Kensington
the District Line dragged its down-under bodies,
shaking the smallest bones of my feet
as I smeared poison around the rim of rubber
that stoppers the muscled anemone mouth.
It was that or the slack puddle-pouches
holding the ghosts of a million drowned babies
if I wanted to ride the see-saw swing of my heart
each month from deficit to deficit, hug tight
the moon-curve back-ache whenever I ran
on empty. I never let a single calamitous angel
slip through a pin-hole rip. Later I lived
in a house better suited to an estate agent’s camera,
and over the hills came a rented plane
trailing one of those MARRY ME banners
in pink. For a moment – unmothered, unmoored –
I thought it was meant for me. Love at last,
not sex! I ran outside in my nightshirt
to wave my arms, hoping to bring down a man
before I was shot dead, but the question
evaporated into careless blue. I’m sorry
to shock you, but everything passes into
the sky, baby girl. Even love, even you.

Elizabeth Loudon is an Anglo-American poet and novelist now living in southwest England. Her poetry has appeared in journals including Trampset, Whale Road Review, Amsterdam Review, Blue Mountain Review, and Southword. Her debut novel A Stranger In Baghdad was published by AUC’s Hoopoe imprint in 2023. She can be found at elizabethloudon.com and on Bluesky or Instgram.

by Daniel Findlay

And then sighs. I was in the game at one point,
she says, but I’m lapsed. Murky birds
wing above us, unseen in the cauldron-black night.

In my dreams Albuquerque is still raining on us.
The streets push you along like an assembly line.
A muffled din like love seeps out from locked windows.
Tell me you hear it too, she doesn’t say.
When I’m awake I remember leaving.

There are only two modes of being:
deafening annihilating motion and the other one.
A priest told me once, at least I like to say
that a priest told me once, that you leave sin behind
while in transit. It’s there, waiting at either end, but
the movement is enough to shake it off for a time.
Though this probably isn’t doctrine.

Daniel Findlay is doing just fine, thanks for asking. He lives in Oregon, where he writes poems while his boss isn’t looking. He is on Twitter (@mice_and_beans) and Instagram (@dfindlay579).

by Mark Dunbar

I put my foot down
a little too hard—crows
fly up in my face,
leaves shake, branches.

I hang my picture from a tree
and watch water fill
my footsteps.

How did they get so deep?
I don’t remember climbing out.
The ants have run away.
The geese have flown.

It’s time to start the bucketing.
The light says so.
Something’s there—I can tell
by the ripples,
the small, almost imperceptible
waves over a shoal.

I search all night
for the right bucket,
meaning years,
and you can believe me,
or not—
none of them were right.

So now I use my hands
to rescue what may be
a mess of honey,
a bed of nettles,
or perhaps
the frightful face
of some old god

its bone-lit inner fire
still glowing,
who says,
you may pass.

Mark Dunbar lives outside Chicago. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rogue Agent, Corvus Review, Bicoastal Review and the Ekphrastic Review, among others. He attended Kenyon College where he was the recipient of the American Academy of Poets Award. You can fins him on Facebook (@mdunbar007) and Instagram (@mdunbar001)

by Andrew Kozma

The ocean at my door, the desert in my chest.
All of our letters pulped and ready for the compost.

Love was a question. The dark water’s the answer.
Everything in the sewers washed out to sea

returned with the tide. Dirty diapers, empty bottles,
enough nail clippings to build a snowman. A clip man. A man,

man. Disasters are easier to handle if you embrace
that the disaster was always with you, carrying your body

across the broken glass, one bloody trail of footprints.
Too much water poisons the water, flooded streets

unsafe to drink or even wade through. Is this love,
too? you ask, as I shiver uncontrollably, a fever

nodding my head. A hurricane plus a flood, a narrow breath
of non-water between. Buying groceries on a Sunday, unmasked.

Andrew Kozma’s poems appear in Rogue Agent, Redactions, and Contemporary Verse 2, while his fiction appears in Apex, ergot, and Seize the Press. His first book of poems, City of Regret, won the Zone 3 First Book Award, and his second book, Orphanotrophia, was published in 2021 by Cobalt Press.You can find him on Bluesky at @thedrellum.bsky.social and visit his website at andrewkozma.net.

by Adam Gianforcaro

Gestation and chamomile flower:
I am my mother again. Notice now

how many times one can near death.
Birth, blood loss, someone else’s sick

pushed through, pushed into.
Which is to say: open window,

wind’s open mouth, a phone call
from childhood. The water is warm

and remains so. I sink into it,
think: womb again. A breeze

from the next room, a scythe
parting the drapery. I have learned

that panic passed down is a form
of survival: the gift of hardening

despite wrinkle-soft fingers. To perceive
far past the drip-drop faucet.

There’s an empty tub when the shadow
steps in, the water scarcely rippled.

Adam Gianforcaro is the author of the poetry collection Every Living Day (Thirty West, 2023). His work can be found in The Offing, Poet Lore, Third Coast, Northwest Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Delaware.