by Chel Campbell

The familiarity of my parents’ love became unfamiliar,
materializing without warning as I watched them

transform naked cement into a space for me.
They were sculptors who made illusions of walls,

gathered frames, wires, and cotton candy insulation
to press under layers of sheetrock, tape and mud.

I shouldn’t have touched anything, but I did.
Every part was magic—half-moon knives smoothed

spackle, packed screwhead edges with eager scrapes.
In the middle of their work, they would flirt in ways

they didn’t think their child could understand, sneak
intimate touches when they thought I was distracted.

Bare outlets peeked like curious faces, light switches
were stripped of their plates. When it was finally time

to paint, they flew, made messes of constellations,
prettied the walls and each other. I orbited their spark.

Laying in the new dark room, I covered my ears
to block lovemaking’s steady rock above, my

fingertips rough with fiberglass
giving everything I touched

a sharp strangeness.

Chel Campbell (she/they) is a poet from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Her debut collection, Everything We Name is Precious, is forthcoming from Milk and Cake Press in September 2024. You can find their most recent work in Rogue Agent, SWWIM, New Delta Review, trampset, and elsewhere. Follow her on Instagram @hellochel and say hi!

by M.P. Powers

I.

In the silence between fires, a train passes. The garden opens its eyes. A woman’s voice floats on waves of air. It’s still morning out here. Still early enough for the trees to climb the sky, for the trains to run backwards, for Spring to exchange its tenor for three gold rings of the crumbling moon.

II.

The moon out here is crumbling, but last night it was an omen, silver-headed cow with God-spun eyes. Last night the moon that’s crumbling in a pillar of crimson cloud remembers. How could it forget? Even the wind remembers when the forest decomposed and the Cadillac that was my mind wrapped itself around a tree.

III.

What was I thinking? I must’ve been mad! Who mistakes an image for a thing and a graven thing for an omen makes for a standing thundercloud. An omen isn’t a thing, I tell you. A thing is right here between silent fires. Where the moon is parable and the trees all stand up naked, the flowers grow radiant with secrets.

M.P. Powers is the author of The Initiate (Anxiety Press, Fall, 2023). Recent publications include the Columbia Review, Black Stone/White Stone, Mayday Magazine, and others. His artwork can be found on Instagram @mppowers1132.

by Guérin Asante

There goes the neighborhood, the interstate,
a lip of concrete crushed by fallen limbs,
a thing not quite a star in orbit around another
every other hour, the skid of rubber wheels,
colliding metal drowned out by a thunderstorm,
strange how you always would arrive in rain,
leaves like skin on the bottom of your shoes.
This is how it continues: every room we enter
is a pass of clouds, thrown over darkened porches,
a thin gold necklace dropped in a patch of grass
taking on water, the way memory grazes just
beyond the atmosphere: next year will be
infrared, anniversaries ultraviolet with gifts.
To spite everything, we lean into its grip, knowing
all black oaks are red oaks and yet none of us
survive with our desires undermined by smoke.

Guérin Asante is a poet, essayist, photographer, visual artist, and musician based ​in Atlanta, Georgia. ​His work has appeared in ALOCASIA, Minor Literature[s], and others. He is on Twitter/X @blkchimera, ​BlueSky @blkchimera.bsky.social, and ​Instagram @blkchmra.