by Tina Kelley

May it have the smart scent
of fingersweat and typewriter.

May the song of yes
get stuck in your head
but only in a good way,

and may you hear the peace
of the beagle stopped barking,
the silence like a casserole.

Your muse will have the composure
and fertility of a well-mated queen bee.

If I told you that whales understand
baby squeals, would you believe?

Prayer has a hot and wet summer ahead,
so may your worries be as flimsy
as state park toilet paper.

May your Wednesday have all the calm hush
of this word: grazing
and this one: solace.

Did you know your soul is refilled
a quarter inch every time you hear
the shushing of a man raking leaves?

May your dog like you so much
he dislocates his tail upon waking,
and may trees be for you
very-much a cathedral.

Text yourself a heart.
See how good it feels.
Sending, getting.

May you end your night with a list
of gratitudes, may it grow. End your day
in dayenu. One item alone would’ve sufficed.

Tina Kelley’s Rise Wildly appeared in 2020 from CavanKerry Press, joining Abloom & Awry, Precise, and Washington State Book Award winner The Gospel of Galore. She’s reported for The New York Times, written two nonfiction books, and won 2023 and 2025 NJ State Council on the Arts Finalist awards. Tina can be found on X @tinakelley, Facebook: tina.kelley.writer, and on Instagram @tinakelleywriter.

by Samuel Day Wharton

when the crows crack against
the morning often they are chasing
a hawk from some other world
to this one       & often the magpies
in turn chase the crows
back to where they came from
(corvid after corvid after raptor)
in unending loops)
& I am thinking in the sun     I am thinking
in the sun that this murder lives in the cemetery
across the highway     across the light rail tracks
& does not sleep
except when I am sleeping &
that waking to magpies & crows &
hawks is not so bad &
how that is better than the rage building building
building into that place
we can never come back from

Samuel Day Wharton lives in California, where he makes wine & writes poems. His poetry has appeared (or will appear) in Malarkey’s The Grift v. 2, Wild Roof Review, anti-, No Tell Motel, Versal & others. You can find him online at ‪@fakeourway.bsky.social

by Michael Boccardo

Only if God is a box
he’d fill with wind. If he
is the box. If God is
full. Only if he wears
me like a lover lost
to trauma, my throat
full of buttons. Ask me
again about his eyes,
those forests lush & cruel
& how with owls he’ll
crowd my leafless
branches. Or how we’ll
dust ourselves drunk
under fists of aster, then lick
clean the constellations
that spill at the small
of our back. At night,
he’ll dream in leather,
I in myth. My sudden
storm. My arched
cathedral. Our tongues
unburdened of every
oath like the slow
scratch of crows
clotting the sky. He’d
crown me his little
hemlock, his favorite
foxglove. His kiss
would say become,
say quicksilver &
eclipse. Together
we’d turn the rivers
crude, the stones
fanged. Behind us
chaos would follow,
a wolf who’s grinned
since childhood.

Michael Boccardo’s poems have appeared in various journals including Kestrel, storySouth, The Inflectionist Review, Screen Door Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Mid-American Review, Iron Horse, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Comstock Review, Nimrod, RHINO, and Best New Poets, as well as the anthologies The Power of the Feminine I: Vol II and Poetry Goes to the Movies. He’s been a finalist for The Pushcart Prize and a finalist for the James Wright Poetry Award. He resides in High Point, NC, with two rambunctious tuxedo cats. Additional work can be found at michaelboccardo.com

by Krystle Eilen

i.
Oh you virgin mother, most sorrowful,
you are the last breath of every prayer,
you are a withered flower crushed underfoot,
you are tragedy’s silent witness,
with eyes wide open like a grave,
you are beauty fully borne.

ii.
Oh you faithful leaver, most ambivalent,
you are the hell from which I derive my
energy,
you are what vitally destroys,
you are quicksilver,
you are the way of partial death
from which I take the long way home.

iii.
Oh my beloved spouse, most humble,
you are a simplicity that sounds
the deepest depths,
you are a dove rising from the mud,
you are the attempt to flee a death
not sacred, but of this earth,
you are music incarnate at the cost of blood.

iv.
Oh you divine androgyne, most gone,
you are the stillness within a rushing wind,
you are holy self-remembrance,
you are the love of the insane,
you are the grief that collapses the grave.

Krystle Eilen is a poet currently attending university. Her works have been featured in Eunoia Review, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, BlazeVOX, Poetry Life and Times, ZiN Daily, and Literary Heist among others. In her free time, she enjoys reading and making art. Krystle is on Instagram @iccaruso.

by Rachel Pittman

 a golden shovel after Rita Dove’s “Demeter Mourning”

Even divine wrath has its season. I know nothing
born of winter can bear fruit in spring. My mind turns
to sticky pulp. I let each fig kiss the earth and rot. The
reek of decay clings to my dress. I sow grief to harvest gold.
I sow fury, and the grapes wilt on the vine. I offer frost to
mouths that beg for bread. No more rye and barley. No corn.

Call me goddess of wither. Mother of hunger. Nothing
stirs in this soil but worms. O, ravenous daughter, is
your husband feeding you well? I sour every sweet
fruit in your absence. I fallow and spoil. I could dig to
your door, but the dirt swells with death. You know the
cost of your wedding is winter. Child, your milk tooth
always pinched me cold. All night I practice crushing
snow in my mouth. I refuse to let warmth in.

Rachel Pittman is a Ph.D. student at Georgia State University where she teaches writing and serves as an Assistant Editor at Five Points. Her writing has appeared in Whale Road Review, Strange Horizons, and Fairy Tale Review. Instagram: @rachelerinpittman