by Francesca Leader

CW: Suggestions of self-harm/family violence

Recrank
the hot water knob
four times,       five.
You’ve been hiding
too long, but
can’t stop,
picking
soaked      scabs
of blood      sap
from your back,
like a bear-scarred aspen
in your childhood woods,
thinking how you’ve
become
both trunk
& claw,
self-inflictive,
never healed,
still mostly       you,
but partly him, too—
that    bear,
downstairs,
who’s roaring at your
children again.
Who will not stop,
sweet though you       plead,
long immune to your honey.
So you stay, door locked,
in warm              water,
dig ever deeper
the claw-nails
peel &             flay,
discard raw flesh
as floating bark flakes,
dredge deeper still
through cambium
& sapwood,
to forget how long
it always             takes
for him
to tire & lumber
back to his       cave
to sleep,
fat       on the pain
of those who love
& loved him,
dreaming of
      cubhood,
as you reach the
      heartwood,
& know
you’ve harmed yourself
beyond repair.

Francesca Leader’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in One Art, Abyss & Apex, Broadkill Review, Identity Theory, The Storms, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net (2025) and Best Spiritual Literature (2025). Her debut poetry chapbook, Like Wine or Like Pain, is available from Bottlecap Press. Find her on X and IG at @moon.in.a.bucket, or on Bluesky at @mooninabucket.bsky.social.

by Jessica Lee McMillan

red balloons stilled on the carpet
afternoon light diffused with Billie Holiday’s “Summertime”,
beer and waiting for guests to arrive

ceremony in absentia

~

weeping at the bus stop
on my twentieth birthday
knowing my enthusiasm
would fray

~

IKEA pear cider
and another year knowing
you can’t feel full
from excess

~

these excuses to mark a day

how many clinking glasses do you remember
or cigarette breaks

I remember eating watermelon in the dark one night
more than any drink
or birthday cake

~

birthdays happen every day
even in clouds
shaped like babies

even endings that are beginnings,
like dropping the bottle

~

each year, read the chart for confirmation bias:
Taurus Moon
Leo Rising

extrovert with a foot in introvert’s mouth
bumbling through milestones

~

reading daily paper
death tolls
as assertions of life

there is no throughline
with so many endings

just a blue mood I sink into,
then keep going

~

ceremony in absentia

on the bus
the woman’s forearm tattoo reads
together we dance alone

Jessica Lee McMillan (she/her) is a poet and teacher with an English MA and Writing Certificate from Simon Fraser University. Read her recent poems in The Malahat Review, Crab Creek Review, pacificREVIEW, QWERTY, CV2, and ROOM Magazine. Jessica lives on the land of the Halkomelem-speaking Peoples (colonially known as New Westminster, British Columb) with her little family and large dog. Her website is jessicaleemcmillan.com and on BlueSky she’s @jessicaleemcmillan.com.

by Tina Kelley

May it have the smart scent
of fingersweat and typewriter.

May the song of yes
get stuck in your head
but only in a good way,

and may you hear the peace
of the beagle stopped barking,
the silence like a casserole.

Your muse will have the composure
and fertility of a well-mated queen bee.

If I told you that whales understand
baby squeals, would you believe?

Prayer has a hot and wet summer ahead,
so may your worries be as flimsy
as state park toilet paper.

May your Wednesday have all the calm hush
of this word: grazing
and this one: solace.

Did you know your soul is refilled
a quarter inch every time you hear
the shushing of a man raking leaves?

May your dog like you so much
he dislocates his tail upon waking,
and may trees be for you
very-much a cathedral.

Text yourself a heart.
See how good it feels.
Sending, getting.

May you end your night with a list
of gratitudes, may it grow. End your day
in dayenu. One item alone would’ve sufficed.

Tina Kelley’s Rise Wildly appeared in 2020 from CavanKerry Press, joining Abloom & Awry, Precise, and Washington State Book Award winner The Gospel of Galore. She’s reported for The New York Times, written two nonfiction books, and won 2023 and 2025 NJ State Council on the Arts Finalist awards. Tina can be found on X @tinakelley, Facebook: tina.kelley.writer, and on Instagram @tinakelleywriter.

by Samuel Day Wharton

when the crows crack against
the morning often they are chasing
a hawk from some other world
to this one       & often the magpies
in turn chase the crows
back to where they came from
(corvid after corvid after raptor)
in unending loops)
& I am thinking in the sun     I am thinking
in the sun that this murder lives in the cemetery
across the highway     across the light rail tracks
& does not sleep
except when I am sleeping &
that waking to magpies & crows &
hawks is not so bad &
how that is better than the rage building building
building into that place
we can never come back from

Samuel Day Wharton lives in California, where he makes wine & writes poems. His poetry has appeared (or will appear) in Malarkey’s The Grift v. 2, Wild Roof Review, anti-, No Tell Motel, Versal & others. You can find him online at ‪@fakeourway.bsky.social

by Michael Boccardo

Only if God is a box
he’d fill with wind. If he
is the box. If God is
full. Only if he wears
me like a lover lost
to trauma, my throat
full of buttons. Ask me
again about his eyes,
those forests lush & cruel
& how with owls he’ll
crowd my leafless
branches. Or how we’ll
dust ourselves drunk
under fists of aster, then lick
clean the constellations
that spill at the small
of our back. At night,
he’ll dream in leather,
I in myth. My sudden
storm. My arched
cathedral. Our tongues
unburdened of every
oath like the slow
scratch of crows
clotting the sky. He’d
crown me his little
hemlock, his favorite
foxglove. His kiss
would say become,
say quicksilver &
eclipse. Together
we’d turn the rivers
crude, the stones
fanged. Behind us
chaos would follow,
a wolf who’s grinned
since childhood.

Michael Boccardo’s poems have appeared in various journals including Kestrel, storySouth, The Inflectionist Review, Screen Door Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Mid-American Review, Iron Horse, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Comstock Review, Nimrod, RHINO, and Best New Poets, as well as the anthologies The Power of the Feminine I: Vol II and Poetry Goes to the Movies. He’s been a finalist for The Pushcart Prize and a finalist for the James Wright Poetry Award. He resides in High Point, NC, with two rambunctious tuxedo cats. Additional work can be found at michaelboccardo.com