Cover image: "Roots" by Rebecca Clark
Gallery 1
Both circular & infinite
Emily Wilkinson
Passing Place
Dusk-bound on the A835, under a skyline etched
into the far north of my heart.
Ullapool, Achnahaird, Rhue, Loch Broom,
I try to stitch myself to you
but gather only threads, breadcrumbs
to follow home. I find myself
here again, watching the ever-changing weather.
Rain moves in over waves,
tarnished grey by failing light. I struggle to read
this place, its illegible sky
bruising black, bleeding droplets into the sea,
into my mouth. Clouds shadow
lochans as they drift over the rucked land.
Rising tide tears ragged lines
of foam-scrawl across my eyes until at last,
mist whites out the tough-love
mountains, who hold me in their palm,
then send me on my way.
Emily Wilkinson is a researcher, writer and creative based in Wales, UK. Her current PhD research with Aberystwyth and Exeter universities explores therapeutic landscapes and creative practice. Emily’s poetry pamphlet Body of Water was published by Mark Time Books in 2019, and she has published poetry, text art and creative non-fiction with Unpsychology Magazine, Ink Sweat & Tears, Decorating Dissidence, Visual Verse, Earthlines Magazine and Inclusive Journalism Cymru. She is also the creator and host of the Desire Lines Podcast. Find out more at emilywilkinson.carrd.co or follow Emily on Instagram @emily.f.wilkinson and @desirelinespodcast.
Note: This poem was originally published in Body of Water, a pamphlet by the author, published by Mark Time Press.
Elizabeth Joy Levinson
Vivipary
I’ve carried memory, the failed expectations of my grandmother’s, the textures of amphibious skins I never should have touched, the taste of pink wax that we impressed with our bites before melting them down into candles we handed out for the holidays. I’ve carried every whisper, every sharp word that angled itself into my body, like the hands I never wanted but allowed inside anyway. I’ve carried their stories, the lives they led after they left. And I’ve carried eggs, unfertilized specks I shed and shed, to make room for other people’s children or to make room for new poems and poems, in a world where everyone is shouting, listen to me. They are vivipary, sprouts in a sliced fruit you won’t eat, but you will set it on the counter and tell yourself, later, you will plant it in the soil. And maybe you will.
Elizabeth Joy Levinson is a biology teacher in Chicago. Her work has been published in Whale Road Review, SWWIM, One Art, The Shore, Anti-Heroin Chic, and others. She is the author of a full-length collection, Uncomfortable Ecologies, available from Unsolicited Press, as well as two chapbooks.
Bethany Reid
I Set Aside a Book of Poems by Arthur Sze to Get a Glass of Water
On the other side of my kitchen window,
a spider’s web dangles, a crocheted doily
ripped apart. I take a glass from the cupboard
and remember a story about my mother,
how she awakened one night to find my father gone.
Not in the bed, not the bathroom. No where
in the dark house. He’s been taken, she thought,
grief and anger racketing through her.
The rapture came, and they took him
and not me. How do I convey her Pentecostal
certainty? But then she saw him,
standing naked at the kitchen sink, filling a glass
with water, handing it to her. Through the inverted mesh
of a web, Arthur Sze writes,
your fingers on the mind’s strings.
The spider, climbing the loose boughs
of her broken world, beginning again.
Bethany Reid’s fourth full-length poetry book, The Pear Tree: Elegy for a Farm, won the 2023 Sally Albiso Award from MoonPath Press. Her poems, essays, poetry reviews, and short stories have appeared in Catamaran, Crab Creek Review, Escape Into Life, Kithe, Passengers, Peregrine, Persimmon Tree, Raven Chronicles, and elsewhere. She blogs about writing and life at www.bethanyareid.com.
Rich Spang
Rich Spang was born in San Francisco, living in many places usually near water and on islands. His scientist father was an award-winning photographer and was never without a camera. Neither was Rich. Largely self-taught, Rich was trained as an architectural draftsman, has been an art show roadie for a successful painter, a musician, a Scuba Instructor in Los Angeles and Maui and also a volunteer diver for the Seattle Aquarium. Besides photography, Rich is an avid reader and obsessive gardener.
Kelsey Britton
Glacial
For years I have been running from
the glacial freeze.
It is colder than blue
Gatorade straight from the fridge.
Colder than a bitter
lump in my throat —
sometimes a yawn dislodges it
and off it goes,
a globe of pink muscle.
The mandarin swell of summer
is months away.
I have forgotten what a peony looks like,
each crescent petal blushing
under a swarm of ants.
In the meantime
I light a cigarette
and smoke half of it,
watch the fog turn to ice on the window,
a thin layer of glass
gift-wrapping the rose bush —
In the dead of winter, its thorns
still pierce the air around it.
My jacket was caught there
last evening. Like a hand
outstretched, the earth said
be with me here
a little longer.
Kelsey Britton is a botanist and hedge witch living on the Oregon Coast. She is on a life-long quest of finding the mystical in the ordinary. Her writing explores the themes of embodiment, spirituality, and queer identity. She studied writing at Interlochen Arts Academy, and her work has been featured in The Fem Literary Magazine. You can follow her Substack, The Tender Wild, at thetenderwild.substack.com.
Matt Pasca
Orange Zero
some people are unmoved by amaryllis
petals shriveling under rows of chainlink
diamonds, or swimsuit racks streaked
with rust & sawdust at the back
of sears, ears unpinned to power
lines raving with amphibious chatter
i study it all, like ultraviolet light in a lizard
cage, wondering what intestine of syllables
will uncoil me as i drive to work with venus
& a waning gibbous over violet groves
slowed by my stare then peripherally
sped into smear some people hear
a song without dislodging into bass
notes dropped like bombs in sepia
documentaries or crows flapping
like black-winged heart-beats across
staff paper sky maybe everyone is
a hangman’s hood falling to the sound
of automated bells or yak fat
mantras chanted over quivering
bowls & snowy cutouts of quantum
bones we sometimes were, like a zero
is both circular & infinite, ouroboros
eating its tail or a poem, or atoms
shared with mars in math, x is
sometimes followed by x prime
& sometimes, in a shower stall of coursing
soap & blind exfoliation, i am neither—
only husk, occupant of anything
even the steam or glass knob forged
in primal furnace, an orange
zero in the dowel-struck dark
Matt Pasca is the author of two full-length poetry collections—A Thousand Doors (2011 Pushcart nominee) and Raven Wire (2017 Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist)—and work that has appeared in more than 50 publications. As a New York State Teacher of Excellence, Pasca has taught Creative Writing, Mythology and Literature since 1997 and advised his school’s award-winning literary-art magazine, The Writers’ Block, since 2003. Pasca also works as an adjunct professor at Adelphi University and co-hosts a monthly poetry series, Friday Night Fire, with his amazing wife and fellow author Terri Muuss. Pasca was named Long Island Poet of the Year by the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association in 2022. Website: www.mattpasca.com / Instagram: @mrpasca
Logan Anthony
albatross aubade
i shout a bouquet into your hands. your eyes spin ruthlessly. green marbles in a chipped porcelain sink. smoke drops from your throat and twines around your finger. mere feet apart and standing in entirely separate worlds. i tamp down my eyelids as the hills shift underfoot. beckoning us to follow, the albatross from the sea retreats inland, for the storm has ventured onshore hours ahead of schedule. blossoming with wildflowers, your arms grow heavy. mere moments into the trek, and you fall behind. it’s true, i came from the hilltop and descended in a grass-stained, dirt-streaked torrent—i studied the faculties of water long ago. how to move across the land as if devouring with every step taken. you must learn to cross land with a hunger. leave the meandering to streams and creeks. like all of us, like an unborn tooth rooted in bone, there is a brute slumbering inside you awaiting the cleave of a wound. an aching space to fill. i invite you here beneath the gaze of the half-moon and her cohort of constellations, beneath the watch of the conifers bearing their needles through the merciless winter with gritted teeth—stain the snow. awaken the brute within. claim the power dormant in your veins. tear a path, whatever direction you desire. do not allow the weakness of a look back.
Logan Anthony is an American queer writer and transgender artist from Indiana. Anthony holds a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing & English and works as a freelance writer. Find Logan’s work in Thin Air Magazine, Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, The Madison Review, Stoneboat Literary Journal, The Write Launch, and more. You can read their work at www.thewritinglog.com and follow them on social media @the_writing_log.
Mary Catherine Harper
Mary Catherine Harper, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award winner and two-time recipient of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature’s Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, was selected as the 2019 Ohio Arts Council Poetry Resident at the Fine Arts Work Center of Cape Cod. She has two published collections: The Found Object Imagines a Life: New and Selected Poems (Cornerstone Press, 2022) and Some Gods Don’t Need Saints chapbook (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including The Comstock Review, Cold Mountain Review, Pudding Magazine, New England Review, Wild Roof Journal, MidAmerica, and The Offbeat. She co-organizes the yearly SwampFire Retreat (swampfire.org) for artists and writers of the Great Lakes region. See marycatherineharper.org for more information.
Samantha R. Sharp
Sorry I Missed You
Hands behind your back,
you drip on the porch,
fumble in your wet bag for the key
whose ridges rattle like everything else
and become nothing.
Water floods the gutters and splashes your cheeks
in the dim air,
in the glass panels,
stains a dusty kitchen towel hung
on the other side of a seal that gasps,
as your shoulder dislodges the clammy, wooden door.
Listen to a letter fall
to the cracked tile
in between your shoes.
Bend and squint, cloudy,
over this envelope,
blue ink trickling like sweat
from the script below.
Come in
and hold
this letter.
Loosen one fold,
up each stair:
no postage, no invoice,
no return address,
warm paper and hair
damp,
spreading under buzzing lamp.
The clock pounds like a fever,
but the world sends shadows
and tears.
Wet your lips;
wrap your arms around your legs.
When quiet night falls on these walls unsteady,
read this letter
for what’s not there,
humming with the rain.
Samantha R. Sharp is a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at SUNY Binghamton. Her research interests include ecopoetics, semiotics, and the avant-garde in Eastern Europe. Aside from academics, she also serves as the Poetry Editor for Midway Journal. She is currently living in Yerevan, Armenia, but her home is wherever her cats are.
Kristi Joy Rimbach
Woman Recommencing
Oh, I know all about giving up, having tried to so many times before. And the thing is, the world won’t let you. Always, there is something that eventually gets you out of bed. Maybe it’s the voice of your daughter calling “Mama,” needing you, your presence, your existence, your lips kissing the top of her warm head.
Or maybe you just need to pee and while you’re there in the bathroom, you happen to look out the window and see that the trees’ grayness has shaded to young green, telling you that life is going on whether you like it or not, whether you agree or not.
And those innocent, earnest, green buds lift your exhausted heart just a little, just enough so that maybe you take your toothbrush in your hand and clean your furred, neglected teeth, the minty freshness of the toothpaste opening the tired slits of your eyes a little wider and maybe you splash some cool water on your face—once, twice, three times—then dry it with the hand towel that you now notice smells musty, so you put it in the laundry basket and get a fresh one, and while you’re there you might as well throw a load of towels in the washer.
That’s all you need to do, put them in, add the soap and turn it on. The washing machine will do the rest, and you can go back to bed if you want, until you hear the chime signaling that the wash cycle is done. So you go back to your room, but at the last second, instead of climbing back into the bed, you make it, pulling the sheets and blankets taut and straight, placing the pillows in the arrangement you like, and you feel accomplished and a little bit put together.
Then you look down at the wrinkled nightgown you’ve been wearing for too long and you want to take it off. It isn’t suiting you anymore, the dinginess and wrinkles clashing with the clear alertness coming into your eyes, so you take it off, then turn on the water in the shower and get in. Shampoo, conditioner, body wash, you even shave your armpits, skipping your legs because you don’t want to use up all your energy too quickly, and who will see your legs anyway?
Dressed now in your black yoga pants, comfy bra, and long sleeve t-shirt, hair clean and wet hanging down your back, you look out again at the greening trees and see a bird fly across the yard to the little wooden birdhouse nailed to the barn, and something in your chest flies with it, a whoosh of breath and light and you think, Yes, I can keep going. So you step slowly in your sock-covered feet out the door and down the stairs to where your family is living their lives.
Kristi Joy Rimbach is a mostly-retired energy healer and instructor; writing is taking over her life. She writes poetry and creative nonfiction centered around the struggles and beauty of living on this planet in a human body. Her work has appeared in The Write Launch, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Plants and Poetry Journal and elsewhere. Kristi has lived in twenty-two different houses in five different states and is done moving. She now lives in a small town in northwestern Connecticut with her husband, their three kids, two dogs and a cat.
Laura Tafe
Laura Tafe is an artist and physician living in New England. She likes to cut things up and see what stories emerge when reassembled.
DeAnna Beachley
DeAnna Beachley is a bird watcher, hiker, historian, award-winning poet, and essayist. A longtime resident of the Mojave Desert and the Colorado River Basin, her poetry is often centered in the desert west and the issues facing a drought-stricken landscape. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Red Rock Review, Sandstone & Silver, Thimble, The Ekphrastic Review Challenge, Slant, Blue Earth Review, Gyroscope, LMNL SPCS, Wild Roof Journal, Willows Wept Review, Anatomy of an Essay, and Awakenings: Stories of Body and Consciousness. Her debut chapbook, The Long View, was released in June 2024 through Kelsay Books.
Willa Yonkman
Letter to Oysters
Fight back!
Dragged from depths and darkness
and arranged
clockwise with lemon at noon.
No one could scrub the sea off you.
No one could make a clean break.
No one could go home with the pad of the thumb
unpierced.
You refuse to be smooth.
You refuse to become heavy when you die.
Flower-bud clenched, bottom teeth tight:
death is the sea drying up,
death is staying inside.
Poached native names of harbors dug up
Pemaquid, Chebooktook, Quonochontaug
make the sting of crushed ice and cocktail forks personal.
Swallowing something slimy and alive
makes people want to love each other.
Tasting notes:
unpleasant
the snap of squid
medium brine
mineral finish.
Willa Yonkman is a young writer from northern Vermont. She studied poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and the University of Vermont. She currently resides in Eugene, Oregon. Find her on Substack at willasworld.substack.com.
Karen Parker
Karen Parker’s affinity for the natural world inspires her work; however, it was mid-life when she picked up a paintbrush. She has led a mobile life, living in five western states, which has broadened her horizons and sense of place. She currently lives in Sequim, Washington. Karen’s work has been shown in juried exhibitions, art festivals, and galleries throughout the country. Using watercolor as her medium, she carefully balances bold color with simple design to create a sense of calm for the viewer.
Rebecca Clark
Rebecca Clark is a Maryland artist whose quietly detailed pencil drawings reflect the sacredness of nature and the interconnectedness of all living things. Rebecca received a BA in Art History from Swarthmore College and studied painting and drawing at the Maryland Institute College of Art and at the Corcoran College of Art + Design. She has exhibited in numerous venues, both domestic and international, and her work has been featured in publications such as: Works and Conversations, Dark Mountain, Resurgence & Ecologist Magazine, Where the Leaves Fall Magazine, EarthLines, Orion Magazine, and The Learned Pig and was selected for the award-winning INDA 8, Manifest Gallery’s 2014 International Drawing Annual. Website: www.rebeccaclarkart.com / Instagram: @rebeccaclarkart
