by Shome Dasgupta

Green and yellow—a sparked field
where we taped four leaf clovers
together, forgetting the meaning
of living at home and pondering
magical ways to steal ice cream
from the pink and purple and blue
truck coming around the turn—
we run with our hands together.
We run with pebbles in our palms,
asking for the cheapest cardboard
cups of vanilla with chocolate syrup.

We were royalty under the sun
—under the sun we were hidden
from shadowed jaws and crumbled
teeth. A melody to bounce in our
heads when the bed covers tore,
full of holes leading to our fears.
How one Sunday, with our faces
covered in swirls of amnesia,
I looked at you when no one else
was looking, knowing that once
upon a time in the future—past
rooster’s crow and beyond wired
knotted fences, cut from our own
skin, we’ll marry the moon’s tongue.

Side by side, that tune hummed
from our breaths—through windows,
a fox darted to the pond to amuse
minnows, where we once fished
for stars after a reckoning, years
ago. Fingers clasped and puzzled:
in the bronzed straw plain, hearing
our childhood tremors sinking,
diminished—to taste sprinkles,
a past echo resting in our mouths.

Shome Dasgupta is the author of The Seagull And The Urn (HarperCollins India), and most recently, the novels The Muu-Antiques (Malarkey Books) and Tentacles Numbing (Thirty West), a prose collection, Histories Of Memories (Belle Point Press), a short story collection, Atchafalaya Darling, and a poetry collection, Iron Oxide (Assure Press). His writing has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, New Orleans Review, Jabberwock Review, American Book Review, Arkansas Review, Magma Poetry, and elsewhere. He lives in Lafayette, LA and can be found at shomedome.com and @laughingyeti.

by Stephanie Frazee

my friend says never bother
slicing a mango

eat it like a bee,
ass-deep in petals

furry with pollen
baskets bursting

she sways her hips,
fleshy, ragged pit

in a sticky hand
chin glistening with juice

glissade, renegade,
drop it like it’s hot

she dances,
resinous and sweet.

I moved away, it’s been
years since

I have seen her—
when I scrape

a blade through flesh
embracing pit,

I remember my friend
and regrets cling to me

a knife
could never

Stephanie Frazee’s writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from Evergreen Review, Door Is A Jar, Roi Faineant Press, Bayou Magazine, ONE ART, Juked, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is an assistant editor at American Short Fiction, an associate editor at Juked, and she is on Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky as @stephieosaurus. Her website is stephaniefrazee.com.

by Michael Akuchie

For years, I accepted the theory that
God’s mercy had an ending. So I
stopped soliciting for myself,
my country, and the homeless man whose
pleas for a kind act rattled the gate that
kept my mind from working itself to madness.
I carved a distance too vast for a forest to fit.
Meeting you made me remember how
to make prayer with honesty to taste.
To find Him, I did not need
to wrestle the beast of denial or
reenact the day Abraham readied Isaac
for an embrace with the knife.
I cultivated an enduring hunger to feel close.

Michael Akuchie’s poems have appeared in Poet Lore, The Rumpus, Cosmonauts Avenue, Lost Balloon, Drunk Monkeys, Ecotheo Review, Whale Road Review, and Gordon Square Review. His debut chapbook of poems, Wreck (The Hellebore Press), was published in 2021. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria. He’s on Twitter/X as @Michael_Akuchie.

by Lindsay McLeod

So
it has come to this.
The gnaw
where I find myself
getting lost on purpose
because smiling is now
frowned upon here.

Best I leave this
as I first found it
(drunk on indifference
the King of Empty Cups)

and hope that perhaps
in time she will forgive
my hesitant gratitude
because
you never can tell

one day this pain
might just be useful
but
oh dear God the cost.

Lindsay McLeod is an Australian writer who lives quietly on the coast of the great southern penal colony with (yet another ferocious Aussie animal) his adored blue heeler, Mary. His work has found homes in Firefly, Oddball, Burningword, Five2one, Mad Swirl, Drunk Monkeys, Leaves of Ink, Words Dance, Fine Flu, Literary Nest and more.

by George Taxon

In a trough,
an ingrown pyramid
scheme thrives.
A glitch?
Glib. Soluble.
In a stagnant pool of bliss.
Sapiens.
Who?
Me, trying to float,
trying to leave this rocky
ocean behind.
It’s dark down here
on this shelf,
where the deflated myths
of the past continue
to settle.
Up above,
I’m not sure if I belong,
my dreams won’t hold
water,
slapped together with rust
and artificial tears.
Damn.
Another dawn,
and I taste mildew
in my bubble
of joy.
O breathless turtle,
counsel me,
instruct me how
to crawl.
My appetites are insatiable,
my flaws gurgle in
this state-of-the-art net.
I am in the dark,
yet I see nothing
but blue.

George Taxon is a writer who has worked as an antiquarian bookseller, medical editor, and administrator. He lives just outside of Boston, Massachusetts.