by Amanda McLeod

Yours is a strength I could never hope to summon
A resolute silence, no words without meaning ever pass your lips

Your stone skin is cold beneath my hand; your belfrey inhabited
by bronze shapes determined to tear sound from your shadowed throat

I ache in ways and places you will never understand
As I am forced along the path in search of safety, or a cliff to fall from

This fortune teller cannot take a leap of faith
When I am faithless, my beliefs a shattered portentous mirror

The endless need for answers has too high a cost
And I feel it in my abdomen, in every neat incision

Where the skin peels back, scarlet petals blooming as the blade
exposes glossy organs, secrets taut beneath their membranes

While I slice the veil of time in search of a foothold
A place to stand where waters flow in both directions

Fear is all the things I cannot see; the darkened room,
Although familiar, hides the monstrous in its shadowed corners

Where they heave beneath grey mucoused hides, their shapes
Undefined, reaching forth to suffocate, transmute, absorb

Tall and unyielding under midnight sky, you are anathema
To nightmares; they find no solace in the planes of you

What I cannot know, cannot control, pulls at me, an undercurrent
For which I have no stomach. Guesses flow from my lips

Like dirges, funereal attempts to rest the past and solidify what lies ahead
By casting light into the void, to be swallowed

Only time is constant, and only through its passing might I find the truth
It swirls around me, slipping through my skeletal fingers

But you feel the rhythm of time in your foundations
You claim nothing, but that days will pass and you will mark them

Guilt lies weightless on your shoulders, even as it
Presses down upon me like the scream of a thousand suns

And you predict the future better than I ever could
Sounding out each hour moments before it falls

Amanda McLeod is an author and artist based in Canberra, Australia. She writes and makes art in response to the things she loves, the things that drift through her daydreams and what keeps her awake at night. She loves good coffee and being outside, and hates noise. This year she plans to read her height in books. You’ll find her on the Twitter, Bluesky, and Instagram @AmandaMWrites or at her website AmandaMcLeodWrites.com

by Jan Hassmann

Write about autumn, but
not the trees trembling.
Write about the strays born
with the first fog,
pleading why,
why, why this world?
Write about biding.

Write about autumn, but
not the leaves failing.
Write about the mold in
damp corners and the toadstools
rising from lone bodies.
Write about all life.

Write about autumn, but
not the eve glowing.
Write about the stout candles in
early-dusked windows,
ever wistfully steering.
Write about mothers.

Write about autumn, but
not the log fire burning.
Write about the moths and the grief returning,
every fucking year,
through bolted doors and latched shutters.
Write about dust.

Write about autumn, but
not the stew churning.
Write about mum still setting out
three sets of plates
and all the other things she’s forgetting.
Write about bliss.

Jan Hassmann first studied and then taught English Literature at universities far from home. He has recently returned to Europe, where he runs an amicable poetry club in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Some of his poems have gotten away, and more seem poised to do so.

by Eugenia Pozas

i’m always chronically late,
even to my own thoughts and feelings.
when i first saw my husband’s desk,
his stationery was all in order,
pen perpendicularly aligned
with the pages and its corners.
he never imagined it quite like this:
wind scattering papers and clips,
vines shattering the windows,
a blooming, green storm.
or maybe that’s why he wanted me,
fruit-scented and alive like a bonfire,
i saw in him dreams of copper,
the last rays of madness ascending,
and for weeks after i was gone
the hounds barked at nothing,
and he would sit in his quiet office,
eyes searching for me in all the hollows.
now spring has closed its mouth shut.

it’s no wonder the trees shake like candles,
no wonder he’s so rattled:
i’m coming.

Eugenia Pozas is a bilingual writer based in Monterrey, Mexico. Her first poetry collection in Spanish – Náufragos (Castaways) – was published in 2022 with 42 Líneas. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Dust Poetry Magazine, The Basilisk Tree, Kaleidotrope, Sontag Mag, and Crowstep Journal. You can find her on Instagram and X as @eugepozas.

by Jessica Coles

We cannot read the darkness. We cannot read it. It is a form of madness, albeit a common one, that we try.
– “130” Bluets, Maggie Nelson

We crouch in a corner of light,
cannot lift arms into shadow. We attempt to
read answers with contrast so high that
the bright blots out
darkness, a dance of vision:

We stared at the sun even though he said you
cannot look directly into and there’s no future to be
read in that kind of fire, but when we looked,
it held a fortune of aurora.

It predicted questions: What
is language when we look at the sky?
A flock of swallows lacing depths of blue with a new
form of divination. This pattern
of belief predicts possibility not
madness; this faith in shadow-weaving,
albeit lacking vocabulary, opens
a fresh birth of light, so
common that we don’t perceive the difference:
one transmutes the other so
that, unpredictably, our vision wavers while
we enlighten ourselves with dim incantations.

Try again. These shimmers chant psalms of darkness.

Jessica Coles (she/her) is a poet from Edmonton (Treaty 6 territory), where she lives with her family, a tuxedo cat named Miss Bennet, and a tarantula named Miss Dashwood. She takes inspiration from linguistics, music, folklore, science, and nature. Her work has appeared in Prairie Fire, Moist Poetry Journal, Full Mood Mag, atmospheric quarterly, Stone Circle Review, CV2, The Fiddlehead, Ghost City Review, and elsewhere. Her two self-published chapbooks are available through Prairie Vixen Press. Find her on Bluesky: @prairievixen.bsky.social

by T. R. Poulson

After Mary Oliver’s “Swan” and Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake”

Did you see her dance with the wild prince
in stained light, hair side-swept
on her scarred back, as immaculate satin
curved in waves to hold her like a bouquet of love
in mist or columbine, a few calla lilies cascading
to the hem? Did you hear lace
whisper to feathers near puddles where wine
mist ached in cloud-split rays?

Did you see her bend her neck in flight
to find the prince? Hooves danced droplets
like diamonds denied. The black
owl cries in angled branches. I remember knotting
ribbed ribbons tight and thinking
they were everything.

T. R. Poulson, a University of Nevada alum and proud Wolf Pack fan, supports her writing habit by delivering for UPS in Woodside, California. Her work has appeared in various publications, including Best New Poets, Gulf Coast, and Booth. She is currently seeking a publisher for her first manuscript, tentatively titled At Starvation Falls. Find her at trpoulson.com and on social media as @trpoulson.