by Allison Zhang

I entered with nothing but thirst.
The sand offered no room.

At the checkpoint, a man
with silver eyelids asked for my name.

I gave him three. He swallowed them whole.
Said I could earn one back by walking.

The sky wrote its riddles
in a language I almost remembered.

Birds flew—wings slicing sideways,
eyes stitched shut.

I passed a woman grinding glass
into salt. Her wrists bandaged in gold.

She asked what I came to trade.
I didn’t know what I had left.

The trees whispered
what I should not have known.

I stepped into shadow,
grew taller. Stepped out—

the world no longer fit me. The sun
doesn’t set here, only flickers.

A child held out fruit,
red seeping through her fingers.

She laughed and turned into smoke.
Not all lessons come clean.

At the river, I knelt to drink—
the water whispered a name

I hadn’t spoken in years.
It was no longer mine.

Somewhere behind me, the city folds
like a lung shot through. I don’t look back.

That’s the rule.
Keep walking. Even when

the road turns to teeth.

Allison Zhang is a poet and writer based in Los Angeles. An immigrant and bilingual speaker of English and Mandarin, she writes about inheritance, memory, and the quiet ruptures of daily life. She was a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize, and her work appears or is forthcoming in The Baltimore Review, ONE ART, Sky Island Journal, and others. Allison can be found on Instagram.

by Paula Brown

Were you in the dark?
The sun this morning found a hem of beads somewhere beneath white satin.
What was left after the smoldering: a jeweled bodice, seared tufts of desert grass.

Were you alone?
When the match was set alight torching the smooth taffeta between your fingers–
Your feet deep in sand while flames arose amid crisscrossed tracks of coyotes and rattlesnakes.

Tell me how your rage fell off a cliff and tumbled into this unlikely scene.
Tell me how betrayal is a brutal beast fit for uncommon consequence.
Even now what remains sparks a reflection of something passionate and beautiful.

You must have been a dazzling bride.

Paula Brown’s poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared in South Dakota Magazine, Adirondack Review, Whitefish Review, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Anthology Nature, and Letters I’ll Never Send Anthology among others. She and her husband live in Arizona with a pack of dachshunds that run the place. Paula is on Instagram @yesvanillabean, Bluesky @azpaula.bsky.social, and Facebook @doxzen.

by Francesca Leader

CW: Suggestions of self-harm/family violence

Recrank
the hot water knob
four times,       five.
You’ve been hiding
too long, but
can’t stop,
picking
soaked      scabs
of blood      sap
from your back,
like a bear-scarred aspen
in your childhood woods,
thinking how you’ve
become
both trunk
& claw,
self-inflictive,
never healed,
still mostly       you,
but partly him, too—
that    bear,
downstairs,
who’s roaring at your
children again.
Who will not stop,
sweet though you       plead,
long immune to your honey.
So you stay, door locked,
in warm              water,
dig ever deeper
the claw-nails
peel &             flay,
discard raw flesh
as floating bark flakes,
dredge deeper still
through cambium
& sapwood,
to forget how long
it always             takes
for him
to tire & lumber
back to his       cave
to sleep,
fat       on the pain
of those who love
& loved him,
dreaming of
      cubhood,
as you reach the
      heartwood,
& know
you’ve harmed yourself
beyond repair.

Francesca Leader’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in One Art, Abyss & Apex, Broadkill Review, Identity Theory, The Storms, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net (2025) and Best Spiritual Literature (2025). Her debut poetry chapbook, Like Wine or Like Pain, is available from Bottlecap Press. Find her on X and IG at @moon.in.a.bucket, or on Bluesky at @mooninabucket.bsky.social.

by Jessica Lee McMillan

red balloons stilled on the carpet
afternoon light diffused with Billie Holiday’s “Summertime”,
beer and waiting for guests to arrive

ceremony in absentia

~

weeping at the bus stop
on my twentieth birthday
knowing my enthusiasm
would fray

~

IKEA pear cider
and another year knowing
you can’t feel full
from excess

~

these excuses to mark a day

how many clinking glasses do you remember
or cigarette breaks

I remember eating watermelon in the dark one night
more than any drink
or birthday cake

~

birthdays happen every day
even in clouds
shaped like babies

even endings that are beginnings,
like dropping the bottle

~

each year, read the chart for confirmation bias:
Taurus Moon
Leo Rising

extrovert with a foot in introvert’s mouth
bumbling through milestones

~

reading daily paper
death tolls
as assertions of life

there is no throughline
with so many endings

just a blue mood I sink into,
then keep going

~

ceremony in absentia

on the bus
the woman’s forearm tattoo reads
together we dance alone

Jessica Lee McMillan (she/her) is a poet and teacher with an English MA and Writing Certificate from Simon Fraser University. Read her recent poems in The Malahat Review, Crab Creek Review, pacificREVIEW, QWERTY, CV2, and ROOM Magazine. Jessica lives on the land of the Halkomelem-speaking Peoples (colonially known as New Westminster, British Columb) with her little family and large dog. Her website is jessicaleemcmillan.com and on BlueSky she’s @jessicaleemcmillan.com.

by Tina Kelley

May it have the smart scent
of fingersweat and typewriter.

May the song of yes
get stuck in your head
but only in a good way,

and may you hear the peace
of the beagle stopped barking,
the silence like a casserole.

Your muse will have the composure
and fertility of a well-mated queen bee.

If I told you that whales understand
baby squeals, would you believe?

Prayer has a hot and wet summer ahead,
so may your worries be as flimsy
as state park toilet paper.

May your Wednesday have all the calm hush
of this word: grazing
and this one: solace.

Did you know your soul is refilled
a quarter inch every time you hear
the shushing of a man raking leaves?

May your dog like you so much
he dislocates his tail upon waking,
and may trees be for you
very-much a cathedral.

Text yourself a heart.
See how good it feels.
Sending, getting.

May you end your night with a list
of gratitudes, may it grow. End your day
in dayenu. One item alone would’ve sufficed.

Tina Kelley’s Rise Wildly appeared in 2020 from CavanKerry Press, joining Abloom & Awry, Precise, and Washington State Book Award winner The Gospel of Galore. She’s reported for The New York Times, written two nonfiction books, and won 2023 and 2025 NJ State Council on the Arts Finalist awards. Tina can be found on X @tinakelley, Facebook: tina.kelley.writer, and on Instagram @tinakelleywriter.