by Kyla Houbolt

The beetle sleeps with her cheek on the branch,
if beetles can be said to have cheeks. She looks
so comfortable there, like a Christmas tree ornament
that has found its perfect place and will
refuse to be taken from the tree when that time comes.
She plots with them, the ornaments, and an uprising
is fomenting. They take lessons in how to cling
from cicada carapaces. They have not decided
what to do when the tree is, finally, discarded.
Perhaps they have not thought that far ahead.
After all, planning can only do so much to avert
unwanted ends. The strings of lights will be unplugged,
and the glass balls and baubles shattered in the
garbage truck’s eventual maw. One more quest
for immortality, down the tubes. The beetle sleeps,
unconcerned.

Kyla Houbolt writes poems and makes gardens. Her most recent chapbook, The Ghost Of It, is available here.  She is on Bluesky. More poems and links to her other chapbooks can be found on her website.

by Zoe Reay-Ellers

And I want to send him Siken,
send him Detail of the Woods.
He speaks abrasively and often,
scared the words are going to fly
away like any good bird
at cold, any bad showerer
at scalding. I want other lonely
people to be able to smell
my lonely like a post-gym-class
teenage boy drenched in Axe
and sweat. I want to tell him
this, to let him hold my brain
briefly. Gently. Want hands
on me in a way that won’t matter
to me like it will to him,
to be pedestaled for proof
of survival– holy and golden and
unfolded under shaky fingers
like a little kid on a stool, palm-up
in front of an old fortune teller.

Zoe Reay-Ellers is the proud EIC of the best dish soap-themed mag worldwide. She owns 20 plants and is currently a junior at Cornell. Her work has appeared in a number of places, including Kissing Dynamite, HAD, and Fish Barrel Review. You can find her on twitter at @zreayellers.

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 Peach Delphine

body flowers in its own time form unfolds
as it must some for sun some for moon and moth
breeze tasting of salt Gulf never far
form is motion fluidity words slide
from wetness into air we hold hands
as if we just met body flowers in due time
silvering first you’ve carried more than you should
flatwoods mangroves palmetto no elevation
yet we have known another precipice
each of us alone and then together
a dizzy edge wind without voice

learn a word link it to the chain stout litany
pale of sharpened edges recitation maintains
internal resistance body endures what it must
words are a flow bulwark of current interior tide defying
moon or sun no deity treads in that place hand scoured
what is learned there flow momentum refuge within come to tongues
flowering when we speak of this place only the repatriated can hear
silence subsiding into tide out of endless chatter we become flame
once demanded of sky and breath we become a pause
time of eye time of hand time of body subsiding into word
buckler to hand and heart

broken as in handle less cup sanded smooth
word wedges beneath tongue body sings itself into disassociation
there is a wire pulsing in jaw something taps into that vein of heat
something speaks in my voice but it is not other not
what reveals we are always incipient with the blow
enthusiasm our defense intimate tendrilled speaking of it still
in the angular shards splintering on brittle iron
same shiver when you trace contours of my back
with your nails there is no cartography for this
or the echoing other on the tangled surface that grew
in absence thicket comes to reclaim
another scarred landscape
shade claims breeze

Peach Delphine is a queer femme poet from Tampa in la florida.

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).