by Elizabeth Cantwell

I love a man who can cast something out
I love a man who allows his doubt to
hang in the air   a dark shadow over
his eyes as he tells you that everyone
feels like a fraud     Underground   assuming
the weight of the fluorescent lights on his
torso   haunted by lurking old men he
can’t save   by a black and white memory of
a self that believed     I love a grim man
who takes to the track   obsessively sad
His arms in the t-shirt a once-fighter’s
biceps   now yearning for someone against
which to flex   Oh let it be me   Father
Tell me I’m wrong about what I don’t see

Tell me I’m wrong about what I don’t see
since we both need to hear it   tell me that
you too feel the pull of desire   re-
demption   the search for invisible threads
pulling us back from our beds with a force
that could bruise someone’s spine   out of line with
the known world   your mouth slightly parted as
breath issues out   carving heat into what
had been frozen   constrained     Help me out of
this flesh   of this room   of this home we both
know can’t be lived in for long     Move me down
to the floor where the doorway might still let
deliverance in    Touch me selfishly
I need you to die   not to save the world

I need you to die not to save the world
But to save me   to have gone down beneath
my sheets   wholly absolved   knowing nothing
but what the dream kept you from seeing: this
altar   this globe   spinning into the void
Oh I’ve always liked cheekbones   but now more
than ever I need someone gaunt on the
diet of hope    I could ask for the palm
of your hand on my cheek   for the self in-
side my flesh   my own dark intruder   to
flash in your eyes as together we tried
to stop doubt from descending     I could ask
for a stairway to rise out of shadows
I love a man who can cast something out

Elizabeth Cantwell is a poet and teacher living in California. She is the author of two books of poetry, Nights I Let The Tiger Get You (Black Lawrence Press) and All The Emergency-Type Structures (Inlandia Institute). You can find her on Twitter at @eccantwell, on Instagram at @ecantwell_author, and on Bluesky at @eccantwell.bsky.social.

by Moira Walsh

7 a.m. on Hallowmas.
Alone in the hotel restaurant
I feel like a winner.

That’s one life skill I’ve learned:
eating alone, slowly,
without a phone, enjoying it.

I converse through the pane
with a flowering vine
in rain-against-petal, leaf-against-wind.

Chewing weird bread contentedly,
I start when a well-shod somebody
leans in close to me,

asking something.

Moira Walsh is the author of Earthrise (Penteract Press, 2023) and, with Wilfried Schubert, Do Try This at Home (Femme Salvé Books, 2024). You can find her on Instagram @poetbynecessity and at her desk in southern Germany, where she writes and translates for a living.

by Tommy Welty

I want to want to live in hard places,
to map the edge of the city. I want to draw

mountains in margins, illuminate
the nature and nurture of it all and then erase
all our shifting imaginary lines

no more rivers, or seas, or oceans,
no more rusting walls telling us
where we begin and they end

I want the fog to tendril at our feet
and obscure our coasts. Here
there be dragons: Children
grocery shopping alone at the Dollar Tree,

well intentioned adults looming
among the canned beans
explaining the good news of Jesus Christ

and unit prices. I want to name it all

in swirling script: Here, of all places,
I’m so glad you are here

Tommy Welty is a poet from Southern California. His poetry has appeared in The Windhover, Rock & Sling, Ekstasis Magazine, and NPR’s All Things Considered. Instagram: @tommywelty

by Rachel Trousdale

Everyone is wrong about eternity. It ebbs
and flows. Think about the distance
between the earth and the sun; then scale that
to Jupiter; to Pluto; well—that is as the distance
between the belly of a snake and the crumbling
brown dirt it slides upon in the face of the distance
between us and even Proxima Centauri. Think
about the time that has passed since we first
walked upright; since scale first
lapped scale—those heavy-skulled reptiles,
the earliest fish. Even the air
was of another substance then. All our many seas
were then one sea. Even that was only
the time it takes to pause at the stop sign
on an abandoned midnight road on a long drive
(south all night through the pine woods, past the farms,
another hour, another four hours before
you can stop to sleep) next to the time since our
hot liquid earth first started cooling.
How long have I loved you? How long
have we loved these children? How
long will anyone know these words? As long
as men can breathe or eyes can see we can keep
trying, keep pushing, keep making
our many mistakes. If I keep driving
one more hour (as the January night extends
toward that distant little January dawn) I think
you can get us home.

Rachel Trousdale is a professor of English at Framingham State University. Her work has appeared in The Yale Review, The Nation, Diagram, and a chapbook, Antiphonal Fugue for Marx Brothers, Elephant, and Slide Trombone. Her latest scholarly book is Humor, Empathy, and Community in Twentieth-Century American Poetry. She is @rvtrousdale on Twitter and Bluesky. Her website can be found at racheltrousdale.com.