by Melanie Galizio Stratton

Sleep when the baby sleeps, scream when the baby screams. Cry all the time.
What, that’s not supposed to happen? Add liar to my resume.
I’m fine.

Add milkmaid to my resume. Scratch that, add cow.
You’re the milkmaid.
I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.

Where do you go when you sleep? You giggle and you whimper.
Do I smile in your dream? The corners of my face feel like plaster from all the smiling. I’m a model,
a muse.
I’m in an agony of fineness.

Do you see our big dog? He is old and will die before you can recall him.
On my phone I read you don’t see anything.
That’s probably for the best.

Add researcher to my resume. Add the sea.
When I lay my head down next to yours, the boat springs a leak and I gasp myself awake before
I can shovel you out.
You are startled. Your tiny mouth opens and I dive in.

Melanie Galizio (she/her) is an Ohio-based poet, possessed of a curious spirit and deep love of Earth. Her interests span the arts, but she has recently found inspiration in traditional folk music, aural storytelling, and mixed media creative practices. Her recent work has appeared in Cider Press Review. Find her on Instagram at @melanifluous and @melanifluous.bsky.social on Bluesky.

by Julia Wendell

My daughter sends impressions
of one cell, 30,000, then 3 million—
the size of a raindrop, bottle cap, acorn,
credit card, kumquat, peach.
Fist or potato, tennis ball or squash,
I’ve spent a lifetime
examining what’s like but isn’t,
as if a thing has more meaning
by close enough, but not quite.
How much is 37 trillion cells?
A stack of bills
68 miles high.
That’s only one trillion.
Now bigger than a baseball,
coffee mug, rutabaga, leek,
my hand, my breast,
the child of my child.

Julia Wendell’s sixth collection of poems, The Art of Falling, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2022. Another collection, Daughter Days, will be published by Unsolicited Press in 2025. She is Founding Editor of Galileo Press, lives in Aiken, South Carolina, and is a three-day event rider. She can be found as JuliaWendell.7 on Instagram and on Facebook.

by Zachary Daniel

Perfect the art
of guerrilla warfare.

Cast off in paper boats
and surf the coast of drapes.

Amass themselves
like self-assembling snowmen.

Crawl into your mouth
while you sleep.

Ply their hooks
in the tentpoles of tomcats.

Live the dream
of the Jeffersonian yeoman.

Play the Greek chorus
to our domestic affairs.

Wish for children
though all their wombs are barren.

Menace the various rodents
that wait on the threshold.

Crowd each other for warmth
when the first frost comes.

Agree that God doesn’t care much for his creation,
but does exist.

Send postcards to old friends
in indecipherable script.

Launch no missiles,
not even bottle rockets.

Lope away on chalk feet
trailing sticks and match-smoke.

Wait for lovers to arrive
on the five o’clock train of your boots.

Are moved to tears when a sunbeam
alights in their dank corner.

On the verge of sleep, see their lives
as one great contradiction.

Zachary Daniel is a librarian and poet based in Louisville, Kentucky. His poetry is inspired by the natural world, literature, and the metaphysics of the commonplace. His poetry is published or forthcoming in The Pierian.

by Chiara Di Lello

First, know that I bear you no ill will.
Of all the things that have happened to me
without my knowledge, you are one of the kindest.
You will not leave me wrecked or vengeful,
second guessing quiet moments with a feeling
like shadow hands drawstringing my throat.
You and your swallowings-yet-to-come are a reminder
that we can say we love truth only to a point
after that it’s like the Woody Allen quote: I’m not afraid
to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
Spiders, just see to it that I’m not there when you happen.
Let me enjoy my sleep and my recurring dream
where I float as if on one of your silken tethers.
When your delicate legs eight, seven, six
pass five, four, three between my lips two, one
make sure I don’t know a thing, wound up tight
in dreamlessness. When your tiny glints of eye
stare up the hollow of my esophagus like it’s Plato’s cave
as far as I’m concerned I know nothing of spiders
or secrets, no lines of insidious light beneath shut doors.
The truth is I envy you, spiders, even knowing I am your end.
I have walked out after a late, slow darkness fell
and found the night a living breathing thing
but only you will feel it grant that engulfing wish:
to take the beautiful sturdiness of your body
and swallow you whole.

Chiara Di Lello is a writer and educator. She delights in public art, public libraries, and getting improbable places by bicycle. For a city kid, she has a surprisingly strong interest in beekeeping. Find her recent poems in Variant Lit, Whale Road Review, and Across the Margin, among others. Twitter: @thetinydynamo.

by Jack B. Bedell

—after Francesca Woodman’s Eel Series, 1978

is what we can never be:
pure curve. Even in a simple
bowl, it bends itself infinitely, spirals
against itself forever, without
its lines coming to an end,
or to angles that find themselves
trapped in every part of us
no matter how gracefully
we place our bodies on
the floor surrounding it.
 

Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s work has appeared in HAD, Heavy Feather, Pidgeonholes, The Shore, Moist, Okay Donkey, EcoTheo, The Hopper, Terrain, and other journals. He has also had work included in Best Microfiction and Best Spiritual Literature. His latest collection is Against the Woods’ Dark Trunks (Mercer University Press, 2022). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.