by T. R. Poulson

After Mary Oliver’s “Swan” and Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake”

Did you see her dance with the wild prince
in stained light, hair side-swept
on her scarred back, as immaculate satin
curved in waves to hold her like a bouquet of love
in mist or columbine, a few calla lilies cascading
to the hem? Did you hear lace
whisper to feathers near puddles where wine
mist ached in cloud-split rays?

Did you see her bend her neck in flight
to find the prince? Hooves danced droplets
like diamonds denied. The black
owl cries in angled branches. I remember knotting
ribbed ribbons tight and thinking
they were everything.

T. R. Poulson, a University of Nevada alum and proud Wolf Pack fan, supports her writing habit by delivering for UPS in Woodside, California. Her work has appeared in various publications, including Best New Poets, Gulf Coast, and Booth. She is currently seeking a publisher for her first manuscript, tentatively titled At Starvation Falls. Find her at trpoulson.com and on social media as @trpoulson.

by John Simmons

I woke in the dead of night, as often I do,
lying there in the deep duvet darkness, listening,
listening to shells telling the most dreadful stories
from far away, oceans away, borne on tides
and surging seas under a gunmetal moon,
where the heavy missiles are booming, where
pistol cracks are nothing, nothing unusual
in the rolling roiling tracks of time ticking
over till another dawn might start to break
and make us all forget this present
but, until then, close by, under the steamy
breath of unknown mammal, a howl
upon the middle-night wind, the beating
of a cloaked bird’s wing, the undercover
spy who sees everything despite the smother
of clouds above but here below the window
rattles in frame, shaking to burst free, not alone
in wishing to rock back to the wildness of
night’s inky fingers whose black blots make
marks on the bleached-out skyline of roof
tops and chimney pots that no longer function
except as eerie roosts for the murdering
murmuring crows whose yellow eyes
blink at the bleakness of the city, the owls
in pitiless pursuit, the mice hunted and haunted,
as the collective breath nestles down beneath
white sheets, the breath of those willing to be lost
in dreams and last night, last night still to my surprise
the city foxes were noisy, so excited by the kill.

John Simmons is the co-founder of two influential writing organisations – Dark Angels and 26. He lives in London, England, and is a contributor and editor for Dark Angels: Three Contemporary Poets and And So We Grow (Paekakariki Press, London). His books on writing include We, Me, Them & It, and he’s the author of three novels. His latest pamphlet Berliners was shortlisted for the Live Canon award and was launched at the 2024 Bloomsbury Festival. Instagram/Threads @simmons25248.

by Jared Beloff

Sweat fell from the digger’s brow or maybe rain from the gray sky; it was just a little water, nothing to worry about until they felt their legs pulled down into it. They grabbed their waders and continued with damp feet, each shovel heavy with mud and clay. The trees stood watch, their hands folded at their waist. Eventually, the diggers called for a third man, and they cycled in and out of the grave trying to finish, piling the slurried soil higher. The water continued to rise. Only when one of them held a small urchin up to his eyes, its bright pins pink between thumb and filthy fingers did they stop, step out and see the rocks protruding from the sides slick with flowing green. One said it reminded him of a drowned woman’s hair. One thought of his mother. The third digger knelt, his face near the surface, and only saw himself.

Based on of a Jeff Wall Photograph.

Jared Beloff is the author of Who Will Cradle Your Head (ELJ Editions, 2023) and the co-editor of Poets of Queens 2 (Poets of Queens, 2024). His work can be found at AGNI, Baltimore Review, Image Journal, Pleiades and elsewhere. He is the Editor in Chief of Porcupine Literary. He is a teacher who lives in Queens, NY with his wife and two daughters. You can find him on his website jaredbeloff.com.

by Meia Geddes

Those were the years of eyeing honey sticks
at the farmer’s market under the highway—
clover, orange, wildflower. Family friends with
a pomegranate tree—the trick is to open them
underwater—others with walnuts, apples, avocado.
Overflowing harvests given to us in the heavy seasons.
Those were the days of Asian pears when I came
to know a new kind of sweetness. Of girl cheese
sandwiches because mom didn’t correct me,
and my second cousin wondering if everyone at
Thanksgiving was a lesbian. Those were the years
of three-hour weekend trips to the land of strawberries,
all the adults asking what do you want to be when
you grow up? And why did I leave. What could be
more sure than an olallieberry pie, those ducks
beneath the orange trees, all the memories that cling
honeysuckle sweet. The ones I hold in my palms for
safekeeping. How did I leave and what did I think.
Always somewhere to go, something else to be. I knew
generations of German Shorthair Pointers, a page-
long gift list for my village of women on our trips—
postcards an essential part of the journey. Watermelon
seed spitting contests. A winding road lined with oaks,
to days spent plucking purple periwinkles to sip on.
Chewing yellow-flowered sour grass, bunches at a time.

Meia Geddes lives in Boston as a librarian, writer, and artist. A recipient of a Fulbright grant, she is the author of The Little Queen and Love Letters to the World. Her website is meiageddes.com.

by Caroline Shea

Every three days, a beast like me
dies on the track.Starving, tangle-limbed,
I’m all legand bite. Pearl-grey gleam gone dull,
I run for no otherreason but the running. Long since lure-
wise, I play at predation.Clockwork jackrabbit. Gear-blooded hare.
The aim is not capture (impossiblealways) but pursuit. Something like the gravel
of a growl in the throat. Or the snapand glide of a body leaving earth
—however briefly—for the blue-starched strip of sky.
An instinct entered into memorylong before form finished with me,
unquestioned until the years and achesaccumulate, stopper movement like mud.
Not desire, but something deeper.Bred for the chase, I’ll always look better
in motion—an object in unisonwith its use. Don’t pretend you’ve never wanted to be
useful. Or rather, to be needed.A temporary prize: eventually, we’re all
incidental. Years from now, when my joints rustinto stillness, I’ll dream of the self swallowed whole
by its action, arthritic paws twitchingin sleep’s sunless hunt. Place your bets, gentlemen.
I won’t disappoint. Or forget.The sweat-stale pens. The crowd’s rough clamor.
The thin sheen between being necessaryand being used.

Caroline Shea is the author of Lambflesh. Her work has previously appeared in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Narrative Magazine, and Rogue Agent, and was longlisted for the Fractured Magazine Novel Excerpt Prize.