by Fred Pollack

In that language, a friend is the Sun,
a lover Night, a loved one Air.
There are many forests, and a horror of forests,
so Forest makes its power felt
in many of the few crimes
(which don’t seem few to them) that culture has.
For the most part, Fire goes unmentioned.

Strangers to metaphor,
plants, people, animals cluster
agreeably, for the most part, around their nouns.
An earthly missionary
would find himself a sort of stingless Bee,
forget his knowledge of what they should know,
accept a seedbag and pick up his hoe.

Of course not everything or everyone
belongs. If, late in youth or late
in life, you seem too sad
or lonely (an untranslatable word), they
call you a Pilgrim, though to no known shrine,
and consecrate you to the nameless stars,
and send you away.

Frederick Pollack, is author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure and Happiness (Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press), and three collections, A Poverty of Words (Prolific Press, 2015), Landscape with Mutant (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), and The Beautiful Losses (Better Than Starbucks Books, forthcoming 2023). Many other poems in print and online journals.

by Amorak Huey

What shapes would your tongue make
learning me? What if a single word
meant sky and kiss and stranger? If another
meant both touch and hush?
What if every word of me — every one of them —
came from your body, what then?
What would you name me?

Amorak Huey is author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-founder with Han VanderHart of River River Books, Huey teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. He is on Twitter @amorak and Instagram @amorakhuey.

by Lynne Ellis

Lynne Ellis (she / they) writes in pen. Their words appear in Poetry Northwest, Sugar House Review, The Shore, Barzakh, Pontoon Poetry, and elsewhere. Winner of the Missouri Review’s Perkoff Prize, and a nominee for the Pushcart Prize, Lynne believes every poem is a collaboration. More on Instagram @stagehandpoet. Ellis is co-editor at Papeachu Press, supporting the voices of women and nonbinary creators.

by Jeannie Prinsen

I hate winter rain, how it soaks
dirty snow heavy, sluices beneath ice
dams at the curb, how it seeps,
weighs. Get used to it, they say,
this is the future, no more
old-fashioned winters. As though
nostalgia for childhood’s red-
cheeked seasons oppresses me, not
the inexorable slide into melt,
humans glaciering slow
toward refuge, beasts foraging
in bewilderment while we choose
drowning, calling it progress, moving afloe
across a sea of our own design.

Jeannie Prinsen lives with her husband, daughter, and son in Kingston, Ontario, where she is a copy editor for a local news organization. Her writing has appeared in Barren, Relief, Dust Poetry, and elsewhere. She can be found on Twitter at @JeanniePrinsen and Instagram at @jeannieprinsen.

by Tom Snarsky

This is a treatise on the art
of wanting things you cannot have,
whether it’s because someone
else has them & won’t give them up
or because schools of fish
are becoming more and more
selective with time, the bigger pools
of applicants winnowing
slowly enough for them to get away
with certain trickeries––––
like a jut of metal near the stream
still appearing strong & straight
despite having witnessed
years & years & years of rain,
so an accidental deer-nudge
is enough to break it clean
in two and set the rust flakes loose

to brighten the mud. I end up
doing that a lot, breaking things
that aren’t mine––––the trick is
to do it like the deer does it,
not on purpose but just because
you were trying to get a drink
that, whether or not you knew
it, would put gross stuff in your blood
and turn you into a problem.
Cherry trees don’t grow here
natively, they have to be brought in
& can’t be shaded by bigger trees
or buildings. They need deep,
well-draining soil, six hours
of sunlight a day, and if you don’t care
if the fruit is sour that’s really it

Tom Snarsky (@tomsnarsky on Twitter & Instagram) is the author of Threshold, Complete Sentences, Light-Up Swan, & the forthcoming Reclaimed Water. He lives with his wife Kristi and their cats in the mountains of rural northwestern Virginia.