by Andrew Cox

Smaller birds with longer wings my father sings in a key only the dead can master. My mother rolls her deceased eyes at him and sings it’s always the quiet ones. Somewhere between a major and minor key my dad and mom perform their duet as the soundtrack to my sleep. The methods they use to establish the key to their serenade are the tonic’s well-kept secret. I should have named you a different name my mom almost chants things would have been better. As for being in the key of the tonic my mom and dad seem compelled to drive its chariot into their masterpiece. My dad presses his lips to the mic and sings longer wings and smaller birds. We all need someone to die for.

Bio: Andrew Cox is the author of The Equation That Explains Everything, (BlazeVOX [Books] 2010), the chapbooks, This False Compare (2River View, 2020) and Fortune Cookies (2River View, 2009) and the hypertext chapbook, Company X (Word Virtual, 2000). He edits UCity Review.

by Kara Dorris

I love you like a cruise ship loves icebergs
like the coliseum embraces ruin.
I often like to play the if-you-were-dead game
& use your body towel (or the shirt you’re wearing)
to dry my hair. I love you like a stamp
on my passport. I use your razor to shave
my underworld areas & secretly watch
& rewind our tv shows so you never know.
I love you like a pair of flipflops loves the tide,
like a split pineapple, like curly hair loves
the rain. Every day I love so many someones
I’ve never met. They love me too.
I love you like a flame loves a candle holder.
You love me like a candle holder holds a flame.

Kara Dorris is the author of two poetry collections: Have Ruin, Will Travel (2019) and When the Body is a Guardrail (2020) from Finishing Line Press. She has also published five chapbooks, including the prose collection Carnival Bound [or, please unwrap me] (The Cupboard Pamphlet, 2020). Her poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, DIAGRAM, Hayden Ferry Review, RHINO, Tinderbox, Puerto del Sol, and Crazyhorse, among others literary journals, as well as the anthology Beauty is a Verb (2011). Her prose has appeared in Waxwing and the anthology The Right Way to be Crippled and Naked (2016). She has made a career of failing, of never being satisfied with her own writing. She loves ekphrastic poetry, slow country mornings, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, swimming laps, and taking naps with her husky. For more information, please visit karadorris.com.

by Kelly Gray

Within your absence
I orchestrated

great obsequies within our church
which was a field.

I pulled grief sounds from the soil
beneath my feet up through my body,

my hands lap bound and rattling
to hold the memory of you

brining me a sweetness I could eat
while my knees were safely exposed.

When my wails subsided
I spoke carefully of your life

to a room full of strangers,
as if a part of mine had not ended

when we were both alive,
quiet to the way you fed me,

a thousand funerals in the shape
of our dresses.

Kelly Gray’s writing appears or is forthcoming in Witness Magazine, Southern Humanities Review, Permafrost, Trampset, and Rust & Moth, among other places. She is the recipient of the Neutrino Prize from Passages North and the ArtSurround Cohort Grant, and she was runner-up for the Witness Literary Awards. Her collections include Instructions for an Animal Body (Moon Tide Press), and Tiger Paw, Tiger Paw, Knife, Knife (Quarter Press), MUD~ Field Notes from a Juvenile Psychiatric Institution (Bottlecap Press), and Quag Daughter (forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press). She’s thrilled to have been selected to teach with California Poets in the Schools, and is hard at work creating a curriculum based on monsters, edges and lore. You can follow her wanderings at @_west_of_west and writekgray.com.

by Scott Neuffer

November 9, 2022
2:32 a.m.
Love, they’ve taken over the school board.
I wander our Nevada home and poke the rubbery pizza
in the fridge the same way I poke the ash-gray sore
on the inside of my jaw. My doctor was right
about politics.
7:37 a.m.
Love, a magpie dipped through the morning light
without a sound. I want to follow it to a new world
where the days are long forever. Tell our children
everything will be okay.

January 2, 2023
5:40 a.m.
Love, did you hear the icicles cracking last night
like old teeth? We are in the maw of winter.
As I guided you in your car out of the garage,
I thought you’d murder me, finally.
Justice is a red-hot engine.
6:47 a.m.
Love, how can we demand anything
in this feeble daylight?
The preachers have gone to the roofs with rifles in hand.
I am here, ground floor, a bag of flesh.

February 4, 2023
4:50 a.m.
Love, it snowed again. I don’t believe in God,
but I worry God is trying to kill us –
a touch of anxiety in the way I sext.
6:19 a.m.
Love, I like the picture you sent me.
What I mean is behind the image is a flickering
dark heart. I’ve seen this heat before,
at the root of the mind. It sputters like a kiss.
As long as I last I give myself to it.
The snow will melt in long glittering drips.
What I’m trying to say is I miss you.

Scott Neuffer is a writer who lives in Nevada with his family. He’s also the founding editor of the literary journal trampset.

by Janice Northerns

Take the land in your hands
and cut along imaginary lines
drawn on a map. Cut deep enough
to fling the past over your shoulder,

a scrap you no longer want to keep.
You’ve been told measure twice, cut once,
but the cutting always comes before
the measuring of what you’ve done.

See how the outline you’ve scissored
is in the shape of a name—your father’s,
your grandfather’s—yours. Steal the deed
in your sleep and know as you register

its edges, the paper is too large
to smuggle into the light. Begin folding
it in half, once for the land your grandfather
sold to make a lake, and again for pieces

parceled to your father and his siblings.
Fold until you are left with just these few
dry acres, evaporating, but impossible
to bend into thin air. Keep creasing

this origami apology until
it is reduced to a hard white pebble.
Slip it into your left shoe. Let every
bruised step recall your ancestors’ heels

grinding into dust those who walked
this ground before locks, before keys,
before deeds. Will time to run backwards,
turning you upside down until

the pebble floats through your blood,
lodging between lungs and heart. Feel
the catch as each exhaled breath coalesces
into the persistent ghost of erasure.

Janice Northerns is the author of  Some Electric Hum, (Lamar University Literary Press, 2020), winner of the Byron Caldwell Smith Book Award from the University of Kansas, the Nelson Poetry Book Award, and  a WILLA Literary Award Finalist in Poetry. The author grew up on a farm in Texas and continues to draw inspiration for her writing from her rural upbringing. Her poetry has been widely published and recognized with a number of awards, including a Pushcart nomination. She lives in Kansas and is currently working on a hybrid collection of poetry and essays inspired by the life of Cynthia Ann Parker.