By: Jonathan Davies Oily, drenched, this is how to fall as birds do – a mess of old feathers and avian noises, creaking and groaning like classical birdsong. They learn as we did, by recitation and reading aloud. It’s the fall that makes noise. Air swoosh-ing perpendicular to crook’d wings the way piano strings are bent out of shape by the hammer. Left hand and right hand in motion – contrapuntal, music crossed at the wrist. This is the kind of movement that makes heat by tou

By: MCS Thompson Small children Bleeding to death From no one coming. To help them, To shield them From high-speed bullets Savagely pulsing. No one obeying The protocol That could save them From desperately pulsing. No one overriding The flawed assessment To spare them From painfully pulsing. Whispering children Pleading for help Trusting, waiting, For rescue. No one taking the risks They had vowed to That could relieve Their agonized pulsing. Instead, preventing Their parent

By: Mayrim Vega Don’t spare me a glance. Let my face and shape blur in the crowd. Allow the memories to fade like the tattoos on your skin. My name to be a figment of imagination. Bury me in a casket with sunflowers that lay on my colorless body. Don’t visit my grave. Walk past me, the way a stranger would. Mayrim Vega is a latina woman, who currently studies at Portland Community College. She writes poetry in English and Spanish. She also enjoys writing short stories.

By: Lina Buividavičiūtė Translated from Lithuanian to English by Irma Šlekytė. I likely stepped into the world on the wrong foot. I still don’t know which foot is the right one, I still don’t know if there is a right one – what do I know what do I know what do I know – one somehow becomes a woman with a downturned mouth, with a Shar Pei face, a woman with the sparkle no longer effervescent in her eyes, with faulty inner thermometers, a lukewarm woman, with loneliness dripping

By: Michael Karpati thrashing yourself for clashing ideas; conflict stunts your growth, you see. dunce, you call yourself in pain; please, release me, you beg yourself in vain. your body is foreign to the space it inhabits, as are we all when it comes down to it; you lose your love, you live your death; cloying colors make it all worth it in the end. Michael is an aspiring author graduated from the creative writing program at York University. His work centers on anxi-ety, dep

By: Ally Campanozzi The snow flurries and ice chunks pelt against the lodge windows. Blinds half-slit, some frightened faces still yearn to see more of Weather doing its best to sound off frantic alarms and stark choruses of hysterical, relentless sirens. The low clouds and mist look like birthday streamers when you’re celebrating the mark defining climbs, treks, chair lifts heading toward tops of ancient hills. It’s far too quiet for car engine hums. Too stone cold for jogge

By: Joanne Grumet sculpted Ice Buddha melts in the Kyichu River water to water Joanne Grumet’s chapbook Garden of Eve was published in 2020 by Finishing Line Press. Her work also appears online and in print in journals and anthologies and in the archives of the Brooklyn Museum. In addition, her poetry and songs have been featured on the cable tv show “The Song” out of South Deerfield, Massachusetts.

By: Richard Widerkehr - after reading your email, You Are My High School Memory, I receive external beam radiation under a Calypso 4D Localization System I can’t tell you much about this table—a scanner shows the Calypso tech where to beam Xray slices. You won’t glow, said the nurse. Just don’t go through airport security. The margins of sunlight, of stories? Your surgical margins negative, that’s a plus. My mother said you had cat eyes, a Day-Glo green almost feral, skittish

By: Adela M. Brito Like a mockingbird you nested nearby, and there you remained for three sweet seasons. Chirping, giggling, caring. Then as winter stripped colors trauma hit you. Again. Hurt & ire resurfaced. But the source of your wounds was absent, her mind elsewhere. Between one sundown and the next, the pendulum swung and pointed at me. After all – Don’t we hurt the ones we love? Aggressions & tantrums: your coping defenses. And when the cockatoo tattled, you raged

By: Nancy Knowles wax me, oh glorious Chapstick for your nectar foments uprising your cherry scent like all the days spent in sunlight your name the balm primes every gasp every harsh no wonder the maidens love you let us hurry oh wicked candle let me smear your crushed jewels on my thirsty let me, darkened by summer and just as lovely, swivel your tube so long i have tended vineyards not my own let me, my love bathe myself. in your carmine perfume Nancy Knowle

By: Alicia Swain The weeds beneath my feet, vibrant as the basil and greens stirred gently into the savory sauce we stirred for supper to serve for friends we never knew we had. My lips vibrate, and yet, not a soul could see what such small sounds do for me and my sanity. As the birds chirp, I feel their hearts beat and move my toes to the beat — forcing a rustle like a deer closing in upon me, the sweet sound of robins communicating to companions with every tweet as a I sit,