by Jane Zwart

for Rachel Martin

What the stranger gives is in a thousand ways less
than what our kin can give—for instance, names
and new names, nucleotides and years. And if,

between people who belong to one another, it is
not as simple as deserving, still: a lover will belly up
to a sink and wash your hair for only the asking,

but strangers you have to pay. In magnitude,
in recurrence, what we call love from these people
who are ours, it dwarves the love strangers give.

No one will carry you as long as your mother did.
No one will think your laughter quite the medal
your sons say it is. Yes, and for the handkerchief

a passer-by presses on your distress, there will be,
seven times over, your brother, his shirt front.

But there is something about the handkerchief,

something about the door held anonymously open
by someone not beholden to you at all. There is
something about trying not to be seen needing help

and being seen. And about the love that is altogether
unobliged, something. So that remembering it,
we toss out, like a ball too light to throw, the belief

that a woman—not a teacher, not a parent, followed
by a gust of winter into a grade school: she spent
her best wish on a child—was an angel, or like that.

Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University and co-edits book review for Plume. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, HAD, and Ploughshares, and her first collection of poems is coming out with Orison Books in fall 2025. You can track her down at janezwart@bsky.social or janezwart.com.

by Valeria Eden

so soon from now,
my womb will wither
and turn to ash inside me,
my beauty and worth
right alongside it.
my body, a graveyard
of missed opportunity
and my mother’s dreams.
i will be purposeless,
wandering empty-headed
and godless, like
childless women tend to do.
i have so very little time.
unfortunately, for my mother,
i will not spend this remaining time
chasing after a rich, older man
who can provide for me,
or obsessing over the wrinkles
of my smile lines, and no,
i will also not take this
tacky-cow-ring, also known
as a septum piercing,
out of my nose. instead,
i might take up bird watching.
immerse myself in the language
of warbles and trills and chirping.
i might even make a hummingbird
feeder out of a helmet and sit very still
in my backyard so that when my
uterus inevitably explodes from lack
of use, effectively killing me,
the last thing i see is the rapid blur
of bright, tiny wings; probably the
closest to an angel i will ever get.

Valeria Eden is a writer, editor, and crybaby. Her work has appeared in Variant Literature, Wasteland Review, and Eunoia Review, and is forthcoming in Arcana Poetry Press. She is the author of Tender Teeth (Jack Wild Publishing) and loves to write about the things that haunt her. She has three dogs, two therapists, one boyfriend, and her favorite color is green.

by Sarp Sozdinler

They said she was born
with salt beneath her fingernails
and a mouth full of birdsong.

They said she whispered to onions,
peeled secrets from their skins
until the kitchen was thick with prophecy.

She had the evil eye in her wallet,
a passport in five languages,
none of which she believed in.

On Mondays,
she dissolved into vapor
and reappeared in another century.

Once, she loved a man
who tried to draw a map of her body
but every time he reached her borders
they shifted, laughing.

Even the gods
sent her DMs
she left on Read.

A Turkish writer & poet, Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Masters Review, Trampset, JMWW, and Normal School, among other journals. Their work has been selected or nominated for anthologies including the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. They are currently working on their first novel in Philadelphia and Amsterdam: www.sarpsozdinler.com | @sarpsozdinler.

by Oluwaseyi Daniel Busari

They say the earth has no mouth, but it speaks in warnings.
The sky holds its breath before it cries.
The harmattan is a messenger, but we refuse to listen.

A woman buys salt at the market, and the seller smiles.
She says, “Salt is never cheap.”
She means, Be careful what you ask for.
A man buys salt and licks his fingers,
Tasting the debt before it is due.

It is easy to forget that salt is the ocean dried up,
The river without forgiveness.
It remains on the tongue like regret.
Too much, and even sweet things turn bitter.

The elders say, “Do not waste salt, it is a bad omen.”
They mean, “Do not waste what is earned with sweat.”
But a child laughs and throws a pinch into the wind,
Thinking that the wind is kind.

At night, when the sky is dark enough to hold secrets,
The old women sit outside and whisper:
“Did you hear? She married a rich man but cries at night.”
“Did you hear? He built a house but cannot sleep in it.”

They say what is sweet must cost something.
And so, I adorn my food carefully with salt.
Too much salt, and the tongue forgets what is real.

Oluwaseyi Daniel Busari is a budding Nigerian poet/essayist whose driving force is his affinity for language and its uses. He draws inspiration from Joseph-Jean Rabearivelo, Christopher Okigbo, John Donne, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Kofi Awoonor, among others. You can find him on X, Medium, and Substack as palmwyndrinkard.

by Todd Dillard

Walking home from school I heard a kitten crying in a tree,
its body braced against a switch-thin limb.
I climbed up and took off my shirt.
I had this idea I could make a net out of it,

cast it over the kitten and drag it to safety–
but as I inched across the branch I slipped
and the shirt drifted to the grass below.
I kicked off my shoes and slid out of my jeans.

I thought maybe, if I laid them across the limb,
the kitten would crawl onto a leg and I
could tug it towards me on a denim sleigh.
But the kitten leapt, raked my stomach,

and lunged down the trunk. I grabbed the branch and
let go of my pants, which crumpled beside my shirt.
That’s when I heard girls on the sidewalk
talking. Something about Ms. Nevasham’s homework.

I had barely hid against the trunk when
Penelope from my class saw my clothes and screamed.
“The Rapture! Someone’s been yanked to heaven!”
The girls argued. How could it be the Rapture

if they were still here? How could someone
with a mustard-stained t-shirt go before them?
It was one of those moments when the world turns
away, no cars hushing down side streets,

no airplanes puncturing clouds, all the dogs busy
eating, all the wolves silently mourning the new moon.
“Why are we so alone?” Penelope asked
in a voice like a train pulling away.

“Hi sorry,” I called from behind the tree.
“I’m an angel. The Rapture hasn’t happened yet.
This was just a practice run. We wanted to
make sure everything is working as intended.”

“Oh,” Penelope said. “Makes sense,” Fatima agreed.
“Is it bad that I’m happy?” Carissa asked.
But then an icy wind unfurled from the woods.
Cold rain shattered on my back, and the girls,

laughing and screaming, ran home.
For the next hour I held on–not crying–
but wishing there was something, someone
who would save me. Years later,

Pen still proclaims: “The end is near!
The angels are just working out the kinks.”
Even as the Rapture arrives, as her body
brims with light and rises above our bed,

she tells me not to worry. “I know a guy,”
she winks. “We’ll get this sorted out.”
And afterwards, like the darkness that follows
prayer, when all the stars are revealed.

Todd Dillard’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Threepenny Review, American Poetry Review, Southern Review, and elsewhere. His debut collection Ways We Vanish was a finalist for the 2021 Balcones Poetry Award, and his chapbook Ragnorak at the Father-Daughter Dance is available from Variant Literature. He lives outside Philadelphia with his wife and two kids.