By: Benjamin J. Kirby Crash helpless against the molten surface of God’s angry sun Wound the mighty starlight with a meager shadow that lands Under my feet on the summer hot sidewalk of Little Rock walking north, past the school, past the church, past the park past a store that sells fresh coffee smelling of exotic places Rebound sideways to the choking reaches of forgotten space They call it dark matter, unseen but so is air, so is oxygen This is the course of your finality,

By: Becca Alexandra Hurst Dad drives me to get cherry Pepsi. We only talk in the car. At home, I retreat, not dramatically, just in a to-do-list kind of way. You know? I stretch my legs on the dash. The sun hits just right. Sometimes I bring the fur throw from the front room, a cinema seat, a therapy couch, both. We keep our eyes ahead. No detours. Just the loop. The time it takes to finish a cherry Pepsi. Slowly. Our script’s well-rehearsed: job stuff, how my recovery is goi

By: Kelly Lynn (how it feels to have memory loss) a steel wire shivers / shakes / quakes with each little ache - beat - my heart dares to make / to break apart dices my insides / every time someone unties a memory in their mind, ready to ride down the lane while I sit - behind - roadside encases / won’t let it start - skips - / loses its grip / - trips - sputters out across the floor beneath my feet heels click caustic citrus drips down my throat to promote silence as friends

By: Bethany Jarmul The leaves flip like coins against the heart-heavy sky & frost fills the window’s reseau with toile. My mother folds her body beneath a blanket, clutching her wrinkled hands, eyes barren. In the hallway my father’s slippers whisper against the wood floor, pausing at each doorway as if to listen for a pet or playmate long-gone. A voice speaks—my voice, purpled with age. I feel the texture of the words, but can’t grasp them between my palms. A moth flits its

By: Austin Reece compare her heart to a well & his to brackish water sink down the well like a stone touch the sides of this wet cell let the rot make contact * he was never hard as rock she was never smooth as glass he was calloused fingers and cold hands she was smoke swelling from a cigarette * like braille on a broken heart he tried to decipher the signs

By: Gillian Leonard (after Marianne Moore) “There are two types of people; you are one, and I am the other. You tend to dwell and think too hard. Remember all those parties I had after your father left. He was just like you. And what about the books you read? Everything has to be dark. Like Viktor Frankl––I just didn’t get that book, the one you said totally changed your life. And the boys you bring home are just like the books. You should go to the beach and find some differ

By: Lora Kinkade this week my mother took a class on watercolor from a childhood friend who taught a strategy of layering— a feature of accrual i heard through the grapevine about her disorder how she brought fruit for them to render how the peaches bruised visibly as they painted freshly pulled from their truckloads of ethylene gas after we eat you pick at the fish’s spine as if you’ve never seen one whole— never lifted the flesh from the bone like that i fed you each a chee

By: Jess Martini An orange isn’t a lemon by some other name; it’s a seed bearing flesh passed from hand to hand across conquests. Still sweet, its juice is acidic and cleansing; its oil dilates the nostrils, uplifts the face, and brightens the heart. The orange tree is the gem of the garden, the beauty of its fruit depicted as early as the Song Dynasty. The bright orb’s birth in literature is older still, named by Qu Yuan in an ode: “the orange (桔) came and settled here.” Cam

By: Hillary Phan You think I don’t know But I can see it in your eyes When you look at me, When you smile, All I see is teeth I am bared Before you Even when I have barr- Icaded my door against you You look at me now Like i am your least favorite Cup of tea Gone cold. Fluorescent lights overhead, I was a child in a grocery store And dad, I think you have lost me Hillary Phan is a Vietnamese-American poet and high school senior in Scottsdale, Arizona. She has been featured as

By: Leslie Young Hissing rocks play Nerves like silk or poison Pulled back on themselves By breaking rage of old days. Such a cold, cold mother Whose kiss sucks away foundations, Whose earnest breath can kill. The ocean Is my home, my own, my owed rest, Love to gulls feet, agony To mine. Cold stabs, penetrates. As I go deeper my womb cramps: Promises are broken, words erased. The sky lends its color to her skin. Chameleon, We bend, find sand dollar skeletons, carapace Of crab

By: Megan Cartwright Cinematic: the casket. Slow-motion slide. Static flock of black umbrellas, patter-pitter of soil on the coffin top. The shock, a stomach’s pneumatic drop. Time is tissue-thin. Obituaries are fictions; in grief, truth is a prison. Megan Cartwright is an Australian poet and Literature teacher. Her writing has featured in Contemporary Verse 2, Island Magazine and Verandah Literary and Art Journal, among others.