by Eric Fisher Stone

…the Passenger Pigeon, passed away on September 1, 1914, in the Cincinnati Zoo. She was believed to be the last living individual of her species.

–Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

Dying, I become the sky,
whisking from the zoo
and pointing toddler fingers,
my skull hatching a sunset
once dappled with wings
of my kind abundant as grapes.

I need no heaven besides the world,
my companion’s cherry eye glowing
in my dreams. My grief keeps him alive
beyond his death, his song cooing through my brain,
his feathers’ sunflower taste pickled
in memory until sparrows
chirrup my funeral canticle.

I think the last person alive
will weep for whelks,
their feet gummed on pumice,
for squirrels’ manic hands
smaller than a human’s, yet rarer
in the universe than diamonds
or fire. Lions yawp farewells

three exhibits down and emus
like tiptoeing brooms peck goodbyes.
Nurse my warmth in the blood-syllable
of your heartbeat. You will chant
bird-rosaries, mourning the Earth
more precious than paradise
when making love is real.

Eric Fisher Stone is a poet, composition instructor, and PhD student at Oklahoma State University. His publications include three full-length collections of poetry, The Providence of Grass, from Chatter House Press, Animal Joy, from WordTech Editions, and Bear Lexicon, from Clare Songbirds Publishing House. He can be found on Facebook @EricFisherStone and Bluesky @javelinasarecute.bsky.social.

by Elizabeth Joy Levinson

What odd length of you, tibia, tarsus, the nape of you
bodies bent flat on the shore, feathers dirty, unpreened
mandible, maxilla, arrows towards nothing,
awkward in death, heavy headed,
wings slightly pulled away, you are
a leaf on the beach, you are delicate angel,
you are warning —
Once nearly gone, you returned by the hundreds,
and this may be how you’ll go again, breast to breast,
restricted blood flow in the icy water, together, you keel,
your joints swollen in pain, your lungs desperate, too tired to struggle,
the phantoms of you frighten me. Once, on a bright day in October, some years ago,
my love and I heard them calling from different corners of the city. I do not know
what other strange musics we will lose, or can afford to.

Elizabeth Joy Levinson is a biology teacher in Chicago. Her work has been published in Whale Road Review, SWWIM, One Art, The Shore, Anti-Heroin Chic, and others. She is the author of a full-length collection, Uncomfortable Ecologies, available from Unsolicited Press, as well as two chapbooks. She can be found can be found at Instagram @ejoylevinson and on the web at ejoylevinson.com.

by Josh Jacobs

On the sixth night the hospital chaplain
appeared in my dad’s room.
She wore scrubs and a metal Star of David
ready like a little pry bar in case
he wanted her to examine his soul.

My dad’s bile and other secrets
were flowing through tubes in his nose,
the lines drawn up from his head
to a container above each side of the bed
like a sketch of a family tree
with him as the favored son.

She didn’t know that God
lived downstairs from my dad growing up,
a door never to be knocked on Halloween,
the mute keyhole breathing in
his brother’s death at two, exhaling
nothing in the silent years that followed,
my dad leaving at sixteen
with a desperate confidence
clutched like a briefcase,
his soul to be found anywhere
but in that old building.

Josh Jacobs works at MIT and lives outside of Boston. He won the 2023 Common Ground Review Poetry Prize, selected by Oliver de la Paz, and was a participant in the 2024 Yetzirah Jewish Poetry Conference. His work has also appeared in Cider Press Review, Pangyrus, Right Hand Pointing, and Verklempt.

by Daniel Brennan

I hear those churched mouths singing: the good lord works, even if
he looks away. His ways, mysterious and abundant when he teaches
the night to howl, or the wind to sing. What haven’t we done for our supper?

Look at this God right here: standing so tall, tree of a man, bearing fruit under
my groaning doorframe. I invite him in, time and again. Who is this
that speaks in prayer so I don’t have to? How he comes to collect his lamb!

My own father didn’t build me wicked, or unconscionably cruel;
it’s a miracle what a boy can learn on his own when given the time.
When given the tools, the language owed, to forge ahead.

Isn’t that what being a father is all about? That or dignity,
the long-tongue flame that kept my father up late so many nights.
But Our Father, slick keeper of tongues, he reaped these fields

as he’s been known to do. He knows how to spot a wheat stalk, those
foolish enough to keen for sun, which becomes the scythe. My own father,
his less than mysterious ways. His prayers I could not ignore.

It doesn’t take much for a man to be cruel, and if you’d believe it:
I figured that out all on my own. After all, what’s a son, if not another
kind of wind grinding its teeth in song when He’s not looking?

What is a father but another kind of night stifling its howl through
vestigial pain? These lessons, see how I wear them like a favorite
suit, or a choir member’s robe. My hands always toward heaven,

even when I should know better. Lessons learned. A father climbing
his home’s front steps, forgetting why he came here at all. The Good lord
works: his serious gaze, his stone hands. Father, son. Hit, then holler.

Daniel Brennan (he/him) is a queer writer and coffee devotee from New York. Sometimes he’s in love, just as often he’s not. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize/Best of the Net, and has appeared in numerous publications, including The Penn Review, Sho Poetry Journal, and Trampset. He can be found on Twitter @DanielJBrennan_.

by Matthew E. Henry

After the 2022 dip pen and India ink creation of James Dye by the same name.

creation groans for the time
when it’s not fit outside
for man. when the cities
have been cast down
and all is unblemished
by shrine or cathedral,
chapel or mosque.
where the wild things are
free to sing the original
Language—speaking
in tongues forked and feathered,
smooth and spined,
bristled and boned.
the pined for time
when arks are burned
by creatures basking
in the endless pastures
between the firmly shuttered
windows of The Deep—
unencumbered by
the whirling spheres
within spheres, wheels
within wheels. the locust come
to blanket the sky
with giddy tidings
of gladness and great joy—
the evening of Behemoth
and Leviathan, the night
of The Dragon
and Rachav are at hand.
their rising cries echoed
by myriad others
whose ears are everywhere,
whose eyes are everywhere,
waiting—attuned—for the return
of Eden.

Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of six poetry collections, most recently said the Frog to the scorpion (Harbor Editions, 2024). He is editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, the creative nonficiton editor at Porcupine Literary, and an associate editor at Rise Up Review. MEH’s poetry and prose has appeared in Had, Massachusetts Review, Mayday, Mom Egg Review, Ploughshares, Redivider, Terrain, and The Worcester Review, among others. MEH is an educator who received his MFA yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. You can find him at MEHPoeting.com writing about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground.