by Ashley Cline

for example: if you stand still enough / on a forest trail in late-february

a butterfly will mistake you for nature / pass so close

that you will hear the monsoon of her wings / in distant harbors—

picture it: the way the water laps at the hull of a ship / sounds like amen

in any tongue / cut to an event horizon: the 18th century

a ship leaves port, sets sail / with it a seed balanced in ballast waters—

history of the common reed / as intricate

as any prayer

An avid introvert, full-time carbon-based life-form & aspiring himbo, Ashley Cline’s poetry has appeared here, & also there. Once, in the summer of 2019, she crowd-surfed an inflatable sword to Carly Rae Jepsen, & her best at all-you-can-eat sushi is 5 rolls in 11 minutes. She is also the author of four chapbooks of poetry. Twitter: @the_Cline. Instagram: @clineclinecline. Linktree: @ashleycline.

by Renee Emerson

CW: Infant loss, intense grief.

I still look at pictures of my baby
that died, still have her clothes
shadowboxed like Snow White.
The notes taped in her hospital
room—hold her, sing—instruct
the silence gently, tucked
in the casket blanket. I do not
think about what happened to her
body—folding in on itself in places,
expanding past borders—both
too large and too small, a dress
better suited to another. I do not
think about what happens now.
I catch the thoughts like birds
in my fists, singing stone and pebble
songs, singing goodnight, Dearheart,
goodnight, and I crush them,
feather and bone.

Renee Emerson is the author of the poetry collections Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing 2014), Threshing Floor (Jacar Press 2016), and Church Ladies (Fernwood Press 2023). She is also the author of the chapbook The Commonplace Misfortunes of Everyday Plants (Belle Point Press), and the middle grade novel Why Silas Miller Must Learn to Ride a Bike (Wintergoose Publishing 2022). She lives in the Midwest with her husband and children.

by Cynthia Moon

The reverend told your mama God knows
the pain of losing a son. But God is doing alright,
sleeping soundly. Beside your body,
I held your mother and thought of Mary
on the ground, reaching, how she couldn’t
change a single law of gravity
to save her child’s life.

Oh these fools these holy men
identifying always with God –
with God who must go to his knees
for no one, God who has
begged for nothing.

Cynthia Moon’s poetry appears in Best New Poets 2022, minnesota review, DIAGRAM, Frontier Poetry, The Florida Review, and elsewhere. She is a therapist and lives with her beloved daughter and their dog in a small town near Lake Michigan. Cynthia was previously published under her former name, Cyndie Randall.

by Vic Nogay

if you could reach inside my body
through the pupils of my eyes that open
and close to the light like windows, i would open

for you, tear down the blinds, blind
my eyes in the morning sun so you could see,
so you could climb inside, touch

my memories with your fingertips,
pull them out, set them free,
hang each one,

deftly, on the low limbs
of an oak in the summer
by the river, to bleach out in the sun.

a toad perched on a rock
by the water and a dove swimming
in the leaves of the tree will pretend

not to watch
you leaf through me
like a sacred relic.

there will be no
museum or sterile box
for these.

shade the trees with memory,
honor me with sun
light—even if i burn.

Vic Nogay is a Pushcart Prize- and Best Microfiction-nominated poet and writer whose work appears in Fractured Lit, Barren Magazine, and Lost Balloon, among others. Her micro chapbook of poems, under fire under water, was published in 2022 by tiny wren publishing. She is an Associate Poetry Editor for Identity Theory and lives in Columbus, Ohio. Find her online at vicnogay.com

by Charles Hensler

Every day you fall
from the same bridge. Each night
you swim farther upstream.

Houses and gardens in silhouette, the scent
of wood smoke rising, the water heavy
between the trees.

Was that a heron or a flag pole; a shimmering
willow or someone waving from shore?

Is it only the senescent light of stars
arriving weary, or a fragment of frozen moon?

How were you able to weather the guests
who came early, and stayed? There were too many to know—
their urgencies and trembling hands, their clarinets
that wouldn’t play.

So far upstream in the feathered dark
past the shore, the fences, the cottonwood—

is the house you find the house you knew,
the light your light in the window?

Charles Hensler lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Shore, One Hand Clapping, West Trade Review, Pidgeonholes, Parentheses, ballast, boats against the current and others.