by BEE LB

find a body of water big enough to show your reflection
and too shallow to drown in. look at the water

but not yourself. remind yourself that ophelia lived only
in a book you’ve never read.

remind yourself you own no drowning gowns.
step into the water. feel the chills race

from the base of your body all the way up. do not move
until you are covered entirely in gooseflesh.

remind yourself of odette. see odile from the corner of your eye.

step further into the water. this is best performed without cover,
but if there is a chance of eyes present, wear something thin and dark.

ensure it is more than one layer. ensure it will cling to you without
weighing you down. remind yourself you are not here to drown.

if you’d like, let waltz of the white and black swans play
while you step into the water— but the sound must exist only in your mind.

the water may not reach above your knee. you may not let your body bend
beneath you. go to the water at any time, but you must stay until dawn.

if you stay through the night, you must dream only while awake.

if there is salt in the air you will feel free, but you will be too close
to the ocean. find yourself far from home.

let your body adjust to the cold. notice exactly the amount of time it takes
to become comfortable, then notice how long you can last before you begin

to ache from the wet. convince your body to last til dawn, and then
step out of the water.

stop thinking of the ballet. think instead of the width of possibility.
think of how far your two legs could take you, if you let them.

let them.

BEE LB is an array of letters, bound to impulse; a writer creating delicate connections. they have called any number of places home; currently, a single yellow wall in Michigan. they have been published in FOLIO, Roanoke Review, and Figure 1, among others. they are a poetry reader for Capsule Stories. they can be found, on occasion, @twinbrights on instagram. their portfolio can be found at twinbrights.carrd.co

by Lauren Camp

Good night, good night
from the grip of the world.

Having so long bundled into winter, and woke and slept complicit
in my indoor vault. Watched the forecast.
Then through summer’s holler,

took every one of its hot, identical hearts.
Having finally to learn the gravity of space. Having the lens
and wavelength to know night

might unfold me to the tender scheme of the planet. So much I had to want
before I could get here: the magnitude. My own

reflection and doubling. So much peering. So much waking first.
The moon is wryly waxing crescent, building a curve
to its littlest spill. All month, down and up
until it is padded with the full
flex and diameter of its off-centered softness.

Origin shows up as ink, paint, countless vessels. I want my mind
dozing on wings and secret feet. Want the noble
clamor of Milky Way as it sieves over the earth. Darkness can be

a persnickety vapor, but I’ll hang my steps
to any path that will fit me to
sky-time with its glittery wardrobe. The night I can sever my shadow, sure,

I’ll let the universe cut through me. Far-flung, all the lights
twisted silver. Perhaps I haven’t told you any secrets, but I’ve begun
to prefer to crease into the edges of constantly whole.

The hours without their effulgence. Looking off, I can skim the almighty
rain with its fancy nest to the north. Watch its long legs
engineer the horizon. The wind has arced again and certain birds
whistle their blue-calloused ballads.

Lauren Camp is the author of An Eye in Each Square (River River Books, 2023) and Worn Smooth between Devourings (NYQ Books, 2023), among other titles. She currently serves as Poet Laureate of New Mexico. Lauren can be found on Facebook (LaurenMukamalCamp), Twitter (@poetlauren) and Instagram (@laurencamp).

by Alina Stefanescu

One is born from
what has borne your
idea, or pinned you to the pretense
of its bleached shore.

Ingenuous shame—as in the leaf mistaken
for a feather, or the ambiguity
misconstrued as mystique.

The Angel of Clouds is also known
as the angel who has no other name
which is not the same as being the angel
who remains nameless.

A poem can only sustain its blissed
meta for a whist’s fist before
sound seeps out the corners.

Every image in script
wants to be endless. Wilderness
in how an hourglass
is just a yard being conquered
by its limitations.

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her partner and several intense mammals. Recent books include a creative nonfiction chapbook, Ribald (Bull City Press Inch Series, Nov. 2020) and Dor, which won the Wandering Aengus Press Prize (September, 2021). Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize (April 2018). Alina’s poems, essays, and fiction can be found in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, World Literature Today, Pleiades, Poetry, BOMB, Crab Creek Review, and others. She serves as poetry editor for several journals, reviewer and critic for others, and Co-Director of PEN America’s Birmingham Chapter. She is currently working on a novel-like creature. More online at alinastefanescuwriter.com.

by Tiffany Jimenez

It was lunchtime at work
and I was missing you.
Less than an ounce of breastmilk released
though I was swollen with what I’d thought was at least one bottle’s worth built up.
I cried a little
and compared myself to my friends
who had milk to spare
after weaning their littles off of them.
Their breasts larger-and-smaller than mine.
I cried some more when I thought about the night before:
How you kept pinching me with your fat fingers and how I’d screamed!
In the tiny privacy room,
I pinch and punch and twist and massage
hoping there’s more inside of me because I could’ve sworn there was.

Tiffany Jimenez is from Oakland, California. She earned her BA in Creative Writing from UC Santa Cruz, and her MFA from Saint Mary’s College of California. Other than being an ardent supporter of the imagination and the art of storytelling, she writes a lot, laughs a lot, startles easily, and loves potatoes. She is on Twitter @tiffunnyj and her website is tiffanyjimenez.com.

by Celeste Schueler

CW: Medical imagery.

Body overcome with labor.
Did I dream of an open wound
the night before?
Dreamt you were holding my hand
yet my hands were numb.
I could not hold them.

I did not feel my belly being cut open
down to the uterus
but the scar is under my sagging.

It was a rush, the feeling of my body being pulled
apart to birth daughters.
Flower petals being dropped to the floor and
I pull the dead leaves off the houseplant.

Dust fills the void. Dust fills me.
Will you cleanse me?
Will you still hold my hands even though
I am numb?

A damp yes leaves your lips and we
circle them in the NICU.
Babies hooked to machines like batteries
we need to power and she lays so still
under the lights. I held one eight hours later
weeping into her tiny face.
Her tiny face struggled to breathe and I felt it in
my lungs.

Her home next to my heart her home
in our hands.
These hands numb from giving and receiving.

Celeste Schueler is a poet, feminist, and mother of twins. She has her BA in English and MFA in creative writing from Mississippi University for Women. She has been published in DeSoto Magazine, Feral Journal, Spoonie Press, and in an anthology by Wingless Dreamer. Celeste Schueler taught creative writing at Western Oklahoma State College while in rural Oklahoma. A native of Mississippi, she now resides in the Pacific Northwest. Social Media — Twitter: @CelestePoetProf, Instagram: @celeste.schueler