by Katie Robinson

CW: Miscarriage, blood, and mourning.

Between my fingers, I rolled a small, fleshy ball like you would a pen while speculating.

Brick-red, it had layers. Should I bury it? I believe the technical term is blastocyst. At four and a half weeks, I had lost it.

Johanna. The name we’d never use and the premature premonition of her face that I dared to conjure before the guarantee of viability.

Days earlier, I smiled with a secret. Now, I bleed for weeks. A woman is no stranger to blood, but this is different as my body empties itself of that which was intended to grow new bones and flesh. I had failed; my womb becomes a void lined with broken glass.

My husband wraps me with linens in our bed, embracing through the trickling nights, a quiet funeral and purging of my naïve visions which are now all that remain.

When my grandmother heard, she said with good intentions, “‘They’ say that happens if something is wrong with it. You wouldn’t have wanted it anyway.”

But, damn it, I did—I wanted her.

Katie Robinson is an emerging writer of fiction and poetry. An English professor and M.F.A. student, she resides in coastal Virginia with her husband, two sons, and a flock of unruly hens. She is on Twitter/X @ktRobinson511.

by Elisabeth Horan

The true me is a purple skin flaw
boiling kitchen of saws and bones
beg it beg it to reconsider

Set in stone this bitch rarely
gives in to sensible pressure.
Look at the pomegranate bruises
potato eye damages

Stewed tomatoes for an ass
mangled carrot becomes a nose –
hungry boys think they want it
starving girls love to hate it

Stuck, in middle – so full and sick
this black belly of the beastial

No idea whose
tight skin is splitting,
cinching up the belt to slice
in halves… poor-pear-mistake,

Rotting Cabbage Borscht
makes sauce for older men
mountains of white cocaine,
hotel rooms she once frequented

Eats dicks, snorts their wallets
runs farfaraway
gnaws upon the ribs of newborn children
so young & underdone

You knew her. You once knew her.
Consummate it now, horridly:
eggz n semen never die like this –

Goat carcass collector asking for
some woman; she is beyond alive
digging up tired souls
in your backyard; hidden graveyard

Under children’s swings – you want some supper
you are so hungry… for parts, for meat.

Wanting to love her goes so wrong.
She does not know
who this is
who is talking.

Elisabeth Horan is a poet/momma/flower/animal from Vermont caring for all creatures…and writing her heart out. She has books at Fly on the Wall, Twist in Time, Cephalo, Broken Spine Arts, Fahmidan, and others…. Elisabeth is proud to exist as the Founding Editor at Animal Heart Press. She has two precious sons… Breathe the air. Feel the love. Let’s be kind and cherish one another. Friends pickles horses rivers cookies sleep sex, mexican food and sunsets. Elisabeth is @ehoranpoet on Twitter and Instagram & her website is ehoranpoet.net.

by Zachary Daniel

I am pulling the sled deeper
into a country I was assured
was wholly free of antecedents.

Across the border the moon has built
its palaces of light and the birds, everywhere,
turn iron and plunge from the sky.

Bees float on in the absence of any nest.
Ants rummage through wallets
fallen open in the grass.

A stream is dragging its trout
backwards through its silvery gears.
Shadows scurry under the objects that cast them.

Every farmhouse is a paper cutout
behind which a single man
can be found sleeping at his post.

Weathervanes waggle in the unknown air.
A banker’s face turns red in the struggle
to pull his vault around in a bindle.

Even the stars in this country
prove unnameable, fastening
“Be Back Soon” signs in the open air.

When the townsfolk go to bed
they unzip a seam behind an ear
and hot air escapes from their flesh.

Rocks materialize into position,
cracking their knuckles.
The soil sits there surreptitiously.

By now I have ditched the sled
to crawl on hand and knee
into the tiny department store labeled “Heaven”.

Zachary Daniel works as a gardener in Cave Hill Cemetery. He lives with his wife and cat in Louisville, Kentucky. He has poems published or forthcoming at The Pierian, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere on the internet.