by David Hanlon

Obligation: an ocean bubbling & boiling in a kettle.
I make trillions of cups of tea from it,
spend my life boiling & pouring & containing,
then slump & cancel all my plans for the following day.
Spend the evening scrolling the evening
for messages, for contact: my inbox full
of junk with no delete forever button,
the earth a period on a map of our solar system,
my heart: flat as the surface of a map, empty as outer space.

I fold it into an envelope, into the shape of
this yellow horned poppy in my garden:
the one I watch grow & grow &
grow until I taste my own tea, until I remember
that sunlight & rain are love in different forms,
until my hands rest like two seals on a shore,
their nearby ocean my cup of tea: mollified,
& in my summered chest a letter,
a message blooming.

David Hanlon is a poet from Cardiff, Wales. You can find his work in many magazines and journals, including Rust & Moth, The Lumiere Review & trampset. His first full-length collection Dawn’s Incision is available from Icefloe Press. You can follow him on twitter @davidhanlon13 & Instagram @hanlon6944.

by Puneet Dutt

“Insects in this photo are simply trying to navigate.”—After a photo by David McNew

On the drive home, my son asks
about the word, forever—

could I define it? I cast around,
like how did the housefly arrive—

the one that can’t be caught.
The one for days, smacks

abdomen against hot bulbs,
convinced of fickle suns.

Always, I scramble,
my tongue full of beans, spilled.

Has anything lived forever?
Surely pyramids in their smug

assurances come close enough—
ginkgos and horseshoe crabs,

metazoan taxons assigned
to bioluminescence. Amazing

we say, for acing a century.
Then my son offers this

apologia: Until the end of your life,
and when you’re with god.

But what of Dolania americana?
An aunt in palliative care

with a note to pull the plug—
yet, no one has the heart

—inside the bedside table,
above which fresh flowers

arrive with each new visitor.
There she sits, bearing the brunt

of time opening buds.
Our children across her eyes, dart.

We hold her hand. Like, what else
is there to do? As long as we move

the speed of light continues
to deceive us.

Dutt’s The Better Monsters was a Finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and was Shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award. Her most recent chapbook was Longlisted for the 2020 Frontier Digital Chapbook Contest, selected by Carl Phillips. Her website is puneetdutt.com and she is on Twitter @Puneet_Dutt and Instagram @puneetdutt.

by Janice Bressler

You can tie your cosmos to a sunflower stalk,
grieve an old dog not long gone,
in morning soil black and wet.

Amend the soil with peat and sweat,
grieve your mother not long gone.
You can tie your cosmos to a sunflower stalk.

Scatter seeds and cast regret,
sing your mother’s favorite song
in morning soil black and wet.

Attend the planet’s etiquette:
plant your dead and water long.
Tie your cosmos to a sunflower stalk.

Worms and mothers eat regret.
They surface in the early dawn
in morning soil black and wet.

The birdbath fills with tears and sweat.
Pink morning glories wake and yawn.
You can tie your cosmos to a sunflower stalk
in morning soil black and wet.

Janice Bressler is a lawyer and writer living in San Francisco, California. Paper Crow, Beyond Words, and Gyroscope have published her poetry and her articles have appeared in the newspapers Richmond Review, Sunset Beacon and San Francisco Bayview, among others.

by kerry rawlinson

don’t explain… just sing, my suffering darling*,

sing. sing of the smile beneath the whiskers
of the tiger once more, that lick of red
on cheetah’s sneaky

paw; that feather poking from tabby’s two-fanged
grin. prescribe music to survive
one day more

in mortal alleys where cats of the night all lay
claim, gnawing on splintered avian bones
to sustain their cravings

just as we gnaw on grief. their nine lives mock
your brief one, & the torn wedge of flesh
in their claws

reminds & remains. canary tried to warn us—
but we never heard its throttled gasps because
our ears were blocked

by bliss. I mourn, little bird, now useless, now
lifeless—I mourn… & you know felines like me
will lick & lick at the tiniest

nick. so croon it again, songbird Billie, with a
voice like acid honey, & I’ll hum along to your
taunting, fickle refrain:

“Hush now, don’t explain
You’re my joy and pain
My life’s yours love,

don’t explain…”

* Cervantes, Don Quixote.
“Don’t explain” is a song composed by Billie Holiday and Arthur Hertzog Jr.

kerry rawlinson is a mental nomad & bloody-minded optimist who gravitated from sunny Zambian skies to solid Canadian soil. She’s the recipient of several flash fiction, poetry and art awards and has been internationally published. kerry’s enthralled with the gore, music, brutality & beauty of the world, the edges of which she explores in her work. she still wanders barefoot through dislocation & belonging—and still drinks too much (tea). kerry’s website is kerryrawlinson.com and she is on Twitter and Instagram @kerryrawli.

by Joshua Zeitler

You won’t believe me, but it’s easy
to forget. Sure, digging a hole that size
is hard, but that whole business
hadn’t crossed my mind since…
Well, a lifetime’s a long line. Mine’s
weighed low. Not long after we dug, I fell in
love—same railway yard, after dark,
though we weren’t disturbed a whit
by any lumbering ghost. Strong wind,
I suppose, blowing through; yes, I see it
whipping her dress against her hips.
Those days it came on quick and vanished.
Love, sure, and the wind.
Her name was Mary, like the elephant,
and her dress a plain brown, well fit
to get dirty in, which I admit we did.
Parents waited up ‘til damn near dawn,
grounded her long enough to kill
any mischief in her eyes.
Hot, sure, but every day was hot.
I don’t remember breaking a sweat.
Used to dirty work. Wouldn’t do it again,
though, not at my age. Took six of us
a long while then, hale as we were.
Time we got done, the show was over.
Crowd thinned out like those high clouds
up there. They hadn’t let her down.
Once a thing’s done, what’s there to do?
I guess it must have been a gale that night:
when I picture her brown eyes, brown dress
flapping, that’s when I see it: the crane
listing like the whisper of a breeze
catching a weather vane.

Editor’s note: You can read more about Mary the elephant and her sad, tragic death here.

Joshua Zeitler is a queer, nonbinary writer based in rural Michigan. They received their MFA from Alma College, and their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pithead Chapel, Midway Journal, Stanchion, Syzygy, and elsewhere. They can be found on Twitter: @thejayestofzees.