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.

by Robert Carr

Tangled in blankets, you no longer rest, are no longer
here—corpse, without itch or pinched nerve.
A broken wing hand, featherless, hangs slack from
the mattress edge. I prepare for adoration,
pull down our porcelain basin, soak goat soap in body-
warm water, squeeze a sea sponge the shape of a lung.

I pull back the Navajo pattern, stroke wooly hairs,
tuck graying sheets to the side, survey your still-
holding flesh, its length, toes snowcapped and cragged.

Eagles circle a landscape of male, no carrion crow
perched atop branching ribs. I clean your chill legs,
hope for pink blooms, a sunrise to petal, stormed
hair at your groins. Soaked shallows, veined rivers
left dry, creped thigh, the pool of a navel, cattail
marsh in a pit of raised arms where I dare to sip.

The porcelain basin clouds with false promises—
who to go first, who to follow. Kneeling at the foot
of our bed, I look beyond hanging fruit to the sink
of a belly, those mountain range ribs, distant caves.

Robert Carr is the author of Amaranth, published by Indolent Books, and two full-length collections published by 3: A Taos Press – The Unbuttoned Eye and The Heavy of Human Clouds. His poetry appears in many journals and magazines including the Greensboro Review, the Massachusetts Review and Shenandoah. Forthcoming collections include Phallus Sprouting Leaves, winner of the 2024 Rane Arroyo Chapbook Series, Seven Kitchens Press; and Blue Memento, from Lily Poetry Review Books. Additional information can be found at robertcarr.org You can find him on Facebook @robert.carr.1238 and Instagram @robertcarrpoetry.

by David Hanlon

Obligation: an ocean bubbling & boiling in a kettle.
I make trillions of cups of tea from it,
spend my life boiling & pouring & containing,
then slump & cancel all my plans for the following day.
Spend the evening scrolling the evening
for messages, for contact: my inbox full
of junk with no delete forever button,
the earth a period on a map of our solar system,
my heart: flat as the surface of a map, empty as outer space.

I fold it into an envelope, into the shape of
this yellow horned poppy in my garden:
the one I watch grow & grow &
grow until I taste my own tea, until I remember
that sunlight & rain are love in different forms,
until my hands rest like two seals on a shore,
their nearby ocean my cup of tea: mollified,
& in my summered chest a letter,
a message blooming.

David Hanlon is a poet from Cardiff, Wales. You can find his work in many magazines and journals, including Rust & Moth, The Lumiere Review & trampset. His first full-length collection Dawn’s Incision is available from Icefloe Press. You can follow him on twitter @davidhanlon13 & Instagram @hanlon6944.

by Puneet Dutt

“Insects in this photo are simply trying to navigate.”—After a photo by David McNew

On the drive home, my son asks
about the word, forever—

could I define it? I cast around,
like how did the housefly arrive—

the one that can’t be caught.
The one for days, smacks

abdomen against hot bulbs,
convinced of fickle suns.

Always, I scramble,
my tongue full of beans, spilled.

Has anything lived forever?
Surely pyramids in their smug

assurances come close enough—
ginkgos and horseshoe crabs,

metazoan taxons assigned
to bioluminescence. Amazing

we say, for acing a century.
Then my son offers this

apologia: Until the end of your life,
and when you’re with god.

But what of Dolania americana?
An aunt in palliative care

with a note to pull the plug—
yet, no one has the heart

—inside the bedside table,
above which fresh flowers

arrive with each new visitor.
There she sits, bearing the brunt

of time opening buds.
Our children across her eyes, dart.

We hold her hand. Like, what else
is there to do? As long as we move

the speed of light continues
to deceive us.

Dutt’s The Better Monsters was a Finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and was Shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award. Her most recent chapbook was Longlisted for the 2020 Frontier Digital Chapbook Contest, selected by Carl Phillips. Her website is puneetdutt.com and she is on Twitter @Puneet_Dutt and Instagram @puneetdutt.

by Janice Bressler

You can tie your cosmos to a sunflower stalk,
grieve an old dog not long gone,
in morning soil black and wet.

Amend the soil with peat and sweat,
grieve your mother not long gone.
You can tie your cosmos to a sunflower stalk.

Scatter seeds and cast regret,
sing your mother’s favorite song
in morning soil black and wet.

Attend the planet’s etiquette:
plant your dead and water long.
Tie your cosmos to a sunflower stalk.

Worms and mothers eat regret.
They surface in the early dawn
in morning soil black and wet.

The birdbath fills with tears and sweat.
Pink morning glories wake and yawn.
You can tie your cosmos to a sunflower stalk
in morning soil black and wet.

Janice Bressler is a lawyer and writer living in San Francisco, California. Paper Crow, Beyond Words, and Gyroscope have published her poetry and her articles have appeared in the newspapers Richmond Review, Sunset Beacon and San Francisco Bayview, among others.