by C. C. Rayne

I have no one to hold
when I die, so I want
to hold myself,

hand in the hand of
my endless lover,
sometime child,
often sculptor.

This life has been
a possession
in that I owned it and
in that I was a body
and I often felt that
I possessed myself, naught but
a ghost, I possessed myself,

through my limbs and
between throat and hipbone
lived not a me but a myself,
and I was witness.

And younger, I felt
that death would fit best
if I was one of two skeletons,
those pictures they found
from Rome of two people,
all bone intertwined side to side.

But now, I face that I will die alone,
which is true, but not alone
for I am a body and
I am myself holding myself,
will be holding myself,
like a lover lowering down
the dear first corpse,
then carrying down their own.

C. C. Rayne (@cc_rayne) is a writer, actor, and creator from the East Coast of the USA. C. C.’s work tends to blend the magical with the mundane, and the silly with the strange. C. C’s stories can be read in such places as The Deeps, The Razor, HAD, Sublunary Review, and Demons & Death Drops: An Anthology of Queer Performance Horror. C. C.’s poetry can be read in Rough Cut Press, Soft Star Magazine, Eye to the Telescope, and moth eaten mag.

by Christopher Martin

Autumn piles up in the basket.
Light layered in silver scales, longing
for salt; sound
of a fillet knife sharpening
flat against stone.
Clouds prep white plates,
Hunter’s Moon polishes silverware
with damp breath.
Bulging eyes stare, hooked somewhere
beyond the coming and going.
I look directly into one—
it doesn’t blink.

Christopher Martin is a poet and Buddhist living by the mouth of the Tyne on the north east coast of England. His work has been featured in various publications. His debut collection, In The Likeness Of The Upper Air, is due out 2024 from The Black Cat Poetry Press. Christopher can also be found on Twitter @martintimation1 and Instagram @martintimations.

by Pat Hale

Try bread. Try water.
Try reaching further
than you think you can.

Hold your breath, close your eyes
and imagine that translucent sliver of bone,
how it arced and twisted and caught in your throat.

Imagine its movement
to a place of lesser pain.

Imagine you or someone
had paid better attention,
taken more time.

Think of how the tip of a knife
can cleanly dissect sliver from flesh,
a complete and perfect separation.

Imagine that before you started,
you or someone
had made a pile of the tiny bones,

counted them
and swept them all away,
each fragile, tenacious bone.

Pat Hale’s publications include the poetry collections, Seeing Them with My Eyes Closed, and Composition and Flight. Her work appears in Calyx, Connecticut River Review, Lily Poetry Review, Thimble Literary Magazine, and many other journals, and is anthologized in Forgotten Women, Waking Up to the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis, and elsewhere. She has been awarded CALYX’s Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize, the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, and first prize in the Al Savard Poetry Competition. She lives in Connecticut, where she serves on the board for the Riverwood Poetry Series.

by Richard Fox

Every night, I dream we are trying to dress like Dads, while
Hazel whips up a casserole & Mr B lances a carbuncle, & I can
lose myself for days reading the due date stamps on the back
page of a library book, or yacht-watching, while the shore
closes in on the water.

There is a bunting in the spear thistle, making a map from
the stars. At ten days of age, they begin looking skyward at dusk,
& marking the spilled salt that moves against the sincere void;
they migrate on cloudless nights, so while they look down,
they can consider the beyond.

Sometimes I wait on the bridge to watch the trains go by:
go gently, please—the ties that bear the rails sing. Now, bedlam
in the skies above the prairie & the flood-plain, & the autumn
you can see & feel & smell has arrived: when the moment
comes, take the last one.

Richard Fox has been a regular contributor of poetry and visual art to online and print literary journals. Swagger & Remorse, his first book of poetry, was published in 2007. He is currently working on several collections of soundscapes, which are being made available online at Bandcamp: richardfox.bandcamp.com. A poet and visual artist, he holds a BFA in Photography from Temple University, Philadelphia. A former Chicago resident, he now lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. His social media handles are — Twitter: @foxpoems and Instagram: @rfox60647.

by Annie Nazzaro

A summer night on the verge of seizure. The only story I know how to tell right now. The light shining strange and yellow on leaves that haven’t ever been this green. The same things that’ve always happened here. The wanting and the leaving, the grass bending in their wake. How a tree looks just before it topples, thrashing ahead of a crack. A paralyzing quiet, an unbearable heat. What I’ve been waiting for and what I would do anything to stop if there was anything that would stop it. The horizon line, obscured by foliage. Until the wind takes everything it’s going to take.

View the painting that inspired this poem.

Annie Nazzaro is a writer based in Chicago. When she is not writing, she can be found at home playing video games or out competing in pub trivia with friends. She is on Bluesky and Instagram and more info is at her Linktree.