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by Francine Witte

And we just had to show up,
young and unwritten on.

Back then, candles would light
themselves, glittering even

as wax and time dripped
silent away. Flowers

around us everywhere,
but we didn’t see them

wilting. And every night
we’d pass a gather of tulip

heads, their open mouths
singing to an applause of stars,

the sound of all of that going
quiet and quiet as hours passed

into midnight, into morning,
the future waiting there, waving.

Francine Witte is the author of eleven books of poetry and flash fiction. Her flash fiction collection RADIO WATER was published by Roadside Press in January 2024. Her poetry collection is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. She is flash fiction editor of Flash Boulevard and South Florida Poetry Journal. Visit her website at francinewitte.com.

by Isaac James Richards

Talk to birds they say
you’ve got to talk
to birds to be a poet

why? they always reply
fly headlong into glass
and drown themselves

in the chalice of a
birdbath stuck in
a feeder hole

I’d rather talk to cement
lifeless from jungle to
concrete jungle look

I know you look so
solid but deep down
you’re weak you crack

you’re porous you give
way to expanding ice
and trickling water and

stretching root and
skyward tufts of grass
you’re as vulnerable

as life as fragile
as a bird you bend
and break with

the turning universe
you are an illusion of
stability and permanence

what you really are
is proof that nothing
humans create will

ever be what humans are
one day years hence
you’ll be mossy

an overgrown place
for birds to rest
feet on soft warm stone

only poems can imbue
the lifeless with life
give wings to rocks

see that plane overhead
now concrete flies
talk to it ask it how

does it feel to be a bird
lifeless yes but airborne
and so full of humanity

because I know that a
rock’s heart beats faster
when tossed off a waterfall

I’m waiting for stones to
breathe and for flowers to
burst from cracked-open birds

Isaac James Richards is a reader for Fourth Genre, a contributing editor at Wayfare, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. His poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, Constellations, Red Ogre Review, Stoneboat, and several other venues. His most recent work is forthcoming in Oxford Magazine. In the fall, he will begin a PhD at the Pennsylvania State University. Find him online at isaacrichards.com and @isaacjamesrichards.

by Martha Silano

Today I learned Keats was only five feet tall. A compact corpse,
says Di Suess in “Romantic Poetry,” shorter than Prince,
which I so love knowing, along with the fact

a Steller’s jay might imitate the call of an osprey, line its nest
with pine needles or fur. Fur! That a Pacific geoduck
can live for over 160 years.

I interrupt my reading husband, share the news of a clam
weighing three pounds, that its neck is “baseball length,”
so to eat one you really need to dig deep,

down to armpit depth. As I lose my ability to breathe,
as walking becomes a rare treat, as I wake at 3 am
in painful positions, perplexed by my body’s

next move, I’m delighted by a drawing of a pigeon guillemot,
to learn of its bright red feet, the zing of chartreuse
hiding under Oregon grape’s bark,

the six pale gray eggs of the great blue heron, that strange,
screechy call of a bald eagle in my neighborhood.
On warm days an Anna’s hummingbird buzzes

near the chaise I rest on. Black-headed grosbeaks
that wintered in freaking Mexico sing
in a big-leaf maple

as I text my daughter what Di said: What doesn’t die?
The closest I’ve come to an answer
is poetry.

Martha Silano’s five books of poetry include Gravity Assist, Reckless Lovely, and The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, all from Saturnalia Books. A forthcoming collection, This One We Call Ours, won the 2023 Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry, and will appear in the fall of 2024 from Lynx House Press. Martha’s poems have appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Learn more about her work at marthasilano.net. Martha’s is on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Threads @marthasilano.

by Isabel Cristina Legarda

Content Warning: Animal cruelty.

My mother cannot hug me back.
I run to her, embrace her frame.
It’s not the milk I yearn for most
(that “unibreast in an upper-thoracic, sagittal position”).

I run to her, embrace her frame:
agglomerate of wood, sponge rubber, terry cloth,
that unibreast in upper-thoracic, sagittal position.
Feed me, yes, but hold me, hold me, you

agglomerate of wood, sponge rubber, terry cloth.
Protect me when the metal monster bares its fangs.
Feed me, yes, but hold me, hold me. You
do not move to save my skin, to share my plight,

protect me when the metal monster bares its fangs.
The “rape rack.” The pit beneath the pyramid.
Do not move to save my skin, to share my plight,
but seeing they can break our hearts, break us away.

The rape rack, the pit beneath the pyramid:
he wants to see how suffering will drive us mad
and, seeing they can break our hearts, break us away
all the more from our kindred. Sick, sick primates.

He wants to see how suffering will drive us bad.
The nature of love, he calls this study. Learning
all the more from our kindred, sick, sick primates
“stripped of unnecessary bulges and appendices.”

The nature of love, they call this study, learning
it’s not the milk I yearn for most.
Stripped of unnecessary bulges and appendices,
my mother cannot hug me back.

Author’s note: Psychologist Harry Harlow experimented on infant rhesus macaque monkeys in the 1950’s by separating them from their mothers and rearing them using surrogate “mother-substitutes” made of wire frames or of wood structures covered in terry cloth. Harlow’s experiments included intentional frightening of baby monkeys with a mechanical “monster,” the use of surprise attack devices attached to previously-comforting terry cloth mothers, solitary confinement for long periods, and for older monkeys, forced mating. His now-classic study of parent-child attachment, published in 1958, was entitled “The nature of love;” the description of the “unibreast” in the poem is taken directly from the study’s abstract.

Isabel Cristina Legarda was born in the Philippines and spent her early childhood there before moving to the U.S. She is currently a practicing physician in Boston. Her work has appeared in the New York Quarterly, Smartish Pace, FOLIO, The Dewdrop, The Lowestoft Chronicle, West Trestle Review, and others. Her chapbook Beyond the Galleons was published in April 2024 by Yellow Arrow Publishing. She can be found on Instagram: @poetintheOR.

by Kyla Houbolt

It’s the canyon wren that sings
outside my window now. The
owl, busy with young,
is quieter. The ground
does not shake but my feet
are not certain. Trying not
to fall makes me long a little
for the animal grace to just
lie down on the earth. The
canyon wren makes a home
in the dead scrumble of briars,
it belongs there, it likes it.
Who’s got time for slow food
or slow facts? The juggernaut
of opinion marches on.
Do I need to say ask me
anything? Do I need to say
accept no substitutes? Oh,
my boundaries, how I
love you. Inside I create
a small safety; the outer
skin is learning
what the world is
when it’s at home.

Kyla Houbolt’s chapbooks include Tuned (CCCP+Subpress), But Then I Thought (above/ground press), Surviving Death (Broken Spine) and Dawn’s Fool (re-issued by above/ground press). Most of her published pieces can be found on her Linktree.  She is on Bluesky @luaz.bsky.social. Other details can be found at kylahoubolt.us.