by Wren Donovan

We choose where to dig
with soft brushes, careful,
string a polygon grid based on rumors.

Smoke-choked and salty, a stalker
in dark rooms, flashlight
over unconscious Eros.

Fluorescent light, stuttering
lays bare the butterfly
buried in bone and debris.

We seek fleshy red-scented certainty,
find only fossils and holes.

Wren Donovan lives in Tennessee. She studied at Millsaps College, UNC-Chapel Hill, and University of Southern Mississippi. Her poetry can be found in Orca, Poetry South, Cumberland River Review, Yellow Arrow, Ink Drinkers, Harpy Hybrid Review, and elsewhere in print and online including WrenDonovan.com.

by Darren C. Demaree

Toward dusk, together,
pulling apart the trout
we caught

at her father’s private club
only a hundred yards
from the building women are not

allowed to enter
except for Sundays, when
I suppose their gender

can be blanketed by an easy god
that can keep all of the lazy beliefs
of rich men safe, Emily

& I tasted the fish slowly, we
ignored the crackers, we left
the iced tea in the fridge,

we thought about how much
fun our children had fishing there
& before I could say all nine

problems I had with the club,
Emily spit out a bone in the sink
& uttered a rare fuck

& I, the truly profane one,
waited to see just what she meant
by that, because I use fuck

a dozen fantastic ways, but Emily
she offered no explanation
other than to dump the rest

of the fish in the trash
& leave the room a sleeve
of cheap crackers.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-two poetry collections, most recently “blue and blue and blue”, (Fernwood Press, July 2024). He is the recipient of a Greater Columbus Arts Council Grant, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and the Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently working in the Columbus Metropolitan Library system.

by Jeannie Prinsen

No church is big enough to contain
your relationship with Jesus, you said.
In that Gothic cathedral, did you belly

the arches like a superhero inflatable, the Hulk
bursting his undersized shirt? Did worshippers,
pinched by your piety, shrink to the edge

of the nave, did the bishop shoulder the sacristy
door as it strained against your devotion? No
mustard seed would do — you always claimed

a communion far more rarefied.
I believed it, me of little faith, back when
we were a thing worthy of saving.

Cracking the dome, you floated free and
staggered skyward, tethers trailing. You knew
you’d outgrow us all. I miss you, still

you get smaller and
smaller the higher
you fly.

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/X at @JeanniePrinsen and Instagram at @jeannieprinsen.

by Jen Feroze

Paul has overheard that it’s my birthday.
He brings us breakfast on the verandah,
dewy and humid. At the centre of my plate
is a passionfruit, big as a tennis ball
and split open. It’s like
looking into two dark gold ponds,
clogged with frogspawn that snaps
between the teeth.

He’s made doughy pancakes too, sticky
with berries and honey. As your fingers
make lazy circles on my thigh under the table,
Paul is calling to his sunbirds.
Pipettes of sugar syrup for the littlest ones.
His whistling polished by decades
of mornings like this.
Thin brown arms steady, chin lifted
and song carrying over the fruit trees and ferns;
hot rain and bird calls
and the electric hiss of mosquitoes.
We are so far away from our lives.

Jen Feroze is a UK poet living by the sea. Her work has appeared in journals including Magma, Under the Radar, Butcher’s Dog, Chestnut Review, Okay Donkey, One Art, Stanchion, Poetry Wales, Berlin Lit and Black Iris. She won the 2024 Poetry Business International Book and Pamphlet Competition and placed second in the 2022/2023 Magma Editors’ Prize. Jen has edited anthologies for Black Bough Poetry and The Mum Poem Press, and her pamphlet Tiny Bright Thorns was published by Nine Pens.

by Ori Fienberg

Taking turns napping counts
as a vacation under circumstance
of life and death; a bed will take us
over months of flood each night.
A good sleep is commemorated
by a special assessment, and later
come custom t shirts of our untaxed
traditions; the bottom of a drawer
is its own ark: a scented letter
more sacred than a sound investment;
we have tenements within ourselves
that testify to our crowded roots,
cousins atop cousins, and rooms
within rooms. In some circumstances
a sheet can be a wall that will never
fall, just bend with time, or fold down
to a symbol of itself. We’ve driven
demand down to a symbol of itself
stored in our wallets; we save and
redeem for fabulous prizes every
quarter, and three moons shaded
by hand or hidden in cotton will
protect a season long of longing

Ori Fienberg’s poetry will appear this year in Cimarron Review, The Dallas Review, Ploughshares, Smartish Pace, and Superstition Review, among other places. Where Babies Come From is now available from Cornerstone Press. Ori teaches poetry for Northeastern University. More writing can be found at orifienberg.com or be in touch @ArtfulHerring on Twitter.