by Catherine Rockwood

It was a time of disasters but very small ones.

Friday, and a party on elsewhere.
A bus for revelers arrived at New Hall.

I saw it from the field outside
on my way to a friend in the blowing dark.

How the bright double-decker slid smooth toward a two-story portico
sheltering the new entrance to New Hall.

How glittering freed-up glass
ran down the front of the bus.

How the edge of the portico hit the upper windshield
of the dreaming vehicle like a grandmother’s hard slap

and stopped the whole thing, stopped it cold.

A few black-tie passengers
threw themselves backward to safety.

The portico stood at one
with its huge new addition

which idled in the gear of OH SHIT
with its forehead knocked open.

And I watched as still as a rock, as safe as stone,
not knowing what appetite had begun.

Catherine Rockwood reads and edits for Reckoning Magazine. Two chapbooks of poetry, Endeavors to Obtain Perpetual Motion and And We Are Far From Shore: Poems for Our Flag Means Death, are available from the Ethel Zine Press. If interested, you can find more at catherinerockwood.com/about

by Jaci Schreckengost

I know the world is
on fire, but, please,
still remember to
lock the door. You
know I would have
checked it at least
three times.

Grab what you need,
but nothing more.
Please leave behind
all the time I wasted
waiting for this to happen.

Grab the love, your
favorite memories,
and our family photo,
all the things we
— no, it’s just you now —
you can’t live without.

Don’t forget to zip
the duffel bag.

Are you sure the door is locked?

Did you set the alarm?

Jaci Schreckengost (she/her) is a content marketing manager, writer, and editor. She has been published in Citrus Industry Magazine, GalaxyQ, the Independent Florida Alligator, it’s magazine, Pentz Zines, and others. She holds an MFA in writing from the Savannah College of Art & Design. You can find her on Instagram at @jacischreckengost.

by M.E. Walker

That was what the wild gnostics
called the orthodox bishops, with their dull rules,
those knife-sharp collars, that dried-up faith.

Me, I don’t mean it as an insult,
but simply as the cleanest description
of what’s happened to my own belief,
which neither slipped away in a rush of smoke
nor found itself cast joyfully down a mountainside
but instead, like some quiet waterway, drained
an eighth of an inch with each stunned and pained
expression I made when they asked me to defend it,
until at last the bed was parched, each conveying drop
slithered off into some prophet’s promising rock.

And yet, love, if my little river is gone,
then the treasures tossed into it
still stubbornly remain,
not just the eddies of dead fish
and the slurries of rank debris,
but a cork-stopped wine bottle here,
a parasol, dictionary, pocket watch there.

This rusty coin of intimate hope
Which still must count as currency somewhere.

M.E. Walker is a queer Jewish writer, performer, educator, and lifelong Texan. His poetry has appeared in Cathexis Northwest Press and One Art, with work forthcoming in Emerge Literary Journal. Find him on Instagram @walkertexaswriter31, or on what’s left of Twitter @texasnotranger.

by Hannah Linden

We watched ourselves, snow-clocked tidal
floes in a melting landscape. We were
crystals held together by the cold, our home
disintegrating around us. One by one

we felt ourselves dissolve, disappear
into the brine. The hardest of us
tried to hold on, hoped the sea would
carry us back to where we belonged.

Falling and rising, rising above the salt,
the memory of how much we had known
below the surface growling inside us,
all those pockets we’d kept locked, fizzing

into nothing, our rainbows melting into the blue.
And we added what we could, watered down
the salinity, brought what we could to the mix.
And for a while, we did manage to float above it.

Hannah Linden is a Northern working class writer based in Devon, UK. Her most recent awards are 1st prize in the Cafe Writers Open Poetry Competition 2021 and Highly Commended in the Wales Poetry Award 2021. The Beautiful Open Sky (V. Press) is her debut pamphlet (shortlisted for the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet 2023) . Hannah is on Twitter/X @hannahl1n.

by Malene Lotz

there’s always
something
moving
under the skin

encasement is required
to feel oneself
against

the dark
will do

soft cheek
against a nightcurtain of sorrow

once a poet couldn’t
sleep
at night
on the wooden floor
of my apartment

she leaned into the nocturnal

her imagination
held
by thin skin

she wrote about butterflies
and wings
that cover
the bellies of birds

flying is never enough

the boats

with their black-brown
steep-iron hulls

they help

rubbing against the sea
at night
in dreams
like a Turner painting

fruits on board
ripening

with a lullaby
from dusk
into dawn

Malene Lotz has been a modern ballet dancer living and teaching intuitive movement in New York. She is Danish, currently living in Denmark north of Copenhagen, and is transforming into a poet.