Cover image: "To See Beyond" by Erika Medina
Gallery 1
What comes next
Sofia Bagdade
Souvenir from Shelburne
After freshwater,
the tips of our ears
stay cold through
dinnertime.
Warmed butter
and water stains
through dessert.
Out past the blue
algae blooms,
gulls bathe in the
same sun we wince
at—come December,
every light-struck
snowmelt will
be reason enough
to dance. With
white net shoes I
collect flat rocks
perfect for skipping
over troubles. The
boys count rings
of water, hauling
heaviness, somewhere
M still crosses a piece
of driftwood like a
pirate plank. Here yellow
jackets swarm where
there is sweetness:
my mother pulls a
stinger from her
bottom lip, cup
crowded with
wings. In these
corners, cicadas
bleed the night
of silence, jokers
from card decks
face up and set
aside, I remember
the skeleton
key—gold, the
profile of parents
in armchairs,
conversation through
closed doors. A plea
to carry, echoed out
through swarms of
falling bees.
Sofia Bagdade is a poet from New York City. Her work appears in One Art, The Shore, and Roi Fainéant Press, among other publications. She finds joy in smooth ink, orange light, and French Bulldogs. More of her work can be found at sofiabagdade.weebly.com and on Instagram @sofiabagdade.
Daniel Skach-Mills
Dahlias
long stems
but not for long,
event flowers,
cut short, short-lived
no matter how astutely
I arrange this vase,
Blue Boy
Bohemian Spartacus
Semi-Cactus,
cannot be
coaxed, cajoled,
convinced
to perdure, persist,
prolong longevity
beyond this bag’s
Mix-with-Water
Long-life Nutrients
Use-Before-Date
My stir-n-wait petition,
supplication,
prayer,
to deter dinnerplates
from dropping,
breaking,
to keep petals’ halation
glowing nimbus-new,
knowing full well
ray and disc florets
won’t remain
round longer
than they’re
meant
to be
beauty
blooms
world
Author’s Note: dinnerplate dahlias is a descriptive term for very large dahlia blooms.
Daniel Skach-Mills’ poems have appeared in The Christian Century, Feed the Holy, Amethyst Review, Sojourners, Soul Forte, Sufi, Braided Way, The Christian Science Monitor, and Kosmos Journal. His book, The Hut Beneath the Pine: Tea Poems was a 2012 Oregon Book Award finalist. A former Trappist monk, Daniel lives in Portland, Oregon, where he served fifteen years as a docent for Lan Su Chinese Garden.
Mykki Rios
Abandon . . .
abandon is springing is spring is a spring breaking through its own ice is leaping is untied shoelaces carefree is lightness is not absorbing light is flight is never touching anything is the sky is a horizon is a halo wrapped around a wrist is a friendship bracelet from a long time ago is a palmful of well wishes is walk sign is eyes wide is green light after green light after green light is skyward is supercharged is yes is now is go
Mykki Rios is a queer genderfluid Mexican-American poet, performer, and multimedia artist. Raised in Chicago, and having lived many places across the globe, they recently returned home to the Windy City. Mykki has had works featured in issues of Welter, Meat For Tea: The Valley Review, Random Sample Review, Smoke and Mold Journal, The Normal School, Apparition Literature, Fourth River Journal, BRAWL Lit, Synkroniciti Magazine, HAD, londemere lit, Dodging the Rain, and more. They were also a finalist in Lupercalia Press’ 2022 Chapbook Series Contest. Instagram/X: @abbisynths / Bluesky: @mykkirioswrites
Em Harriett
Em Harriett is a photographer from New England who focuses on nature, color, line, texture, and their interactions. Her photography has appeared in Wild Roof Journal as well as Oyster River Pages, About Place Journal, and Camas Magazine. Website: emharriett.com
Summer J. Hart
Too Many Queens & the Cattle Go Tatty
When the clams die off, we’ll eat the lawn—
purslane, dandelion.
The meadow is a buzzing picnic spread.
Rosehip & goldthread
are old medicine.
Bumblebee in anemone.
We’ll need something
to chew between meals, pine needles or
spruce pitch.
Hey!
A little brown bat & a barred owl
are warming
themselves by the fire.
My sister’s dog gets loose & takes a chicken.
Resin fills up the heart.
Her apple tree,
girdled by mice.
Summer J. Hart is the author of two books of poetry: Boomhouse (2023, The 3rd Thing Press), which won the 2024 Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize, and What Came Down in the Smoke (forthcoming in 2026, JackLeg Press). Her creative work has been supported by Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, MacDowell, NYSCA/NYFA, and Vermont Studio Center. Her writing can be found or is forthcoming in Best Small Fictions 2023 (Alternating Current Press), Allium, Ballast, Bedfellows, Heavy Feather Review, Jet Fuel Review, The Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Northern New England Review, Tyger Quarterly, Waxwing, and elsewhere. Summer is an enrolled member of the Listuguj Mi’gmaq First Nation.
Sandra Marchetti
Walkoff
What if the need
to complete
brought me to
the side of the stove
dirty pan in hand?
I clean as I go;
this room will
sparkle when I leave,
but maybe I
walked off with
the pan in hand,
dripping, dropped
it in a softball
field and laid
in short center
heaving until what
was complete and
the hollow piece
receded? What if
I curled and
in turning toward
second coughed on
the dust rising
up from the grass?
Sandra Marchetti is the author of three full-length books of poetry, DIORAMA (Stephen F. Austin State UP, 2025), Aisle 228 (SFA UP, 2023), and Confluence (Sundress Publications, 2015), as well as four chapbooks of poetry and lyric essays. Her poetry appears in Ecotone, Poet Lore, Blackbird, Southwest Review, Subtropics, and elsewhere. Essays and stories can be found in AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, Pleiades, Mid-American Review, Barrelhouse, The Account, and other venues. She is Poetry Editor Emerita for River Styx Magazine. She identifies as a poet of chronic pain and disability.
Amy Smith
Breakfast at the Truck Stop, 6:58am
This morning, lavender-tinted clouds are like
an early bruise against a salmon sky.
The moon rises with the sun; a lemon-yellow light
stretches low over the counter.
That scent of coffee and cigarettes.
The barking geese.
I’ve watched them fly northwest in the mornings—
and southeast in the afternoons.
Do they choose a new direction?
I feel a ragged edge in the air; an unknown
route seems possible. Sometimes
a bruise is just a bruise, and the body
takes her time healing each unexpected
and ordinary blemish.
At a fork in the road
I take the path that veers left, leaving the right one
to those who know where they are going.
Amy Smith is a poet living and writing in Northern Nevada. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in several places, including Humana Obscura, Gyroscope Review, wildscape literary journal, contemporary haibun online, and Frogpond. She published her first poetry collection, Composting the Moon, in March 2022.
Kathryn Weld
The Fall (as Eve)
Ruffled by dogs and bees, goldenrod and wrens,
the garden was perfect; perfect, but not static:
windstorms arrived, and floods, kudzu and saplings,
and I started to mourn a beauty that never
would last, and brooding on this, I did realize that
lasting is illusion—but still, I could not stop
gardening, trying to save a grotto or a patch
of green and pink, hoeing and spreading compost,
hiring four young women in overalls and boots
who raved about working with plants, and though I
missed the rub of soil between her palms, I felt
lucky, I planned to reveal unseen pools and wooded
beds, to ungird them, share them with friends for solace,
as I wished to keep intact the fields where children—
my own—blew milkweed seeds away—as I, being
born of a rib, never had done myself; also, the murmur
of loved ones, how they spoke to me; and yes, I
still remembered the serpent, his dear green tongue,
flicking; and Adam, now to dust; and I kept them
close by showing girls coral bells that Abel loved, and
the bounty of stargazer lilies, and the work needed
to keep flowerbeds happy and weed-free; and some days
I glimpsed that work was not about saving the old,
but rather, raking whole new worlds into being—
and the understanding came to me like blown pollen,
like specks of earth on water, each time I tried to
return to the Garden now overrun by vines,
the dusky grape a deadly scarf for the white ash
I used to love to sit beneath when I still lived
here, in the lucid ripened green of my real home.
Kathryn Weld is the author of Afterimage (Pine Row Press 2023) and a chapbook, Waking Light (Kattywompus Press 2019). Her poetry and prose appear in journals such as The American Book Review, Cortland Review, Gyroscope Review, The Southeast Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Wild Roof Journal, and elsewhere. A mathematician as well as a poet, she is Professor Emeritus at Manhattan University. Website: kathrynweld.com
Mahmoud Elmardi
Mahmoud Elmardi is a Sudanese writer and visual artist based in Cairo whose work uniquely intersects at the crossroads of narrative prose and abstract visual art. As a recipient of multiple regional and international awards in both literature and fine arts, his creative journey delves into contemporary human and social issues, with a profound focus on marginalized communities and the psychological impacts of conflict.
Allisonn Church
Allisonn Church was born and lives in a small rural community in western Massachusetts. She earned a BA in English and Russian from Brandeis University, where she focused on British Romanticism and Russian Futurism. She has been mentored by Grant Chemidlin at PocketMFA, and she has been published in The Hopper, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Plants & Poetry Journal, and others. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks: Sunlight Leaking (Bottlecap Press), Feathered Throat (Crooked Circle Press), and Her Beloved Self (Dancing Girl Press). In addition to writing poetry, Allisonn creates mixed media hybrid artwork, often incorporating natural elements. Her grandfather taught her to paint.
Rebecca Dietrich
Cuckoo
like an egg
in another bird’s nest
i wonder
have i
fooled them all
do they sense it
something off
the uncanny twitch
of my wings
does it
unsettle them
i mimic
their chirps
their flutters
but still
it’s not enough
would they
fling me
to the forest floor
if they peered inside
my guarded thoughts
yet
i wonder
perhaps it is they
who roost
in the wrong nest
and i am
the only
true bird
Rebecca Dietrich is the author of the poetry collection Under the Stars of Turtle Island (Wayfarer Books, 2025) and the chapbook On Colonized Ground (Alien Buddha Press, 2024), a 2025 Eric Hoffer Book Award finalist. Her poem “The First Jew They’d Seen” was selected as the first runner-up for Blue Earth Review‘s 2025 Dog Days of Summer Poetry Contest. Dietrich’s work appears in Welter, Steam Ticket, Red Coyote, and elsewhere. She holds a BA in Psychology from Stockton University and is an MFA in Creative Writing candidate at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Danielle Shorr
Prize Counter
At the top we’ve got what’s most unattainable to you, the kind of thing
that costs a year’s worth of tickets to win: a king-sized stuffed animal,
a plastic gun that shoots marshmallows, a remote controlled helicopter,
the suicide note your best friend neglected to write, a lava lamp, a rubber
alien mask that glows in the dark, a blinking neon sign shaped like
an electric guitar. Then, the more probable but still sought after middle tier:
a bottle of silly string your mom would make you spray outside, a chrome-colored
soccer ball, an off-brand Barbie doll, closure from the man who slept
on a boxspring on the floor of his apartment, the opportunity to redeem yourself
for the time you crawled on your hands and knees back to him, a baseball-sized
jawbreaker only consumable by licking, a frisbee with flashing lights, a kite
shaped like a dolphin, a chance to flip off your middle school PE teacher.
There are some treasures more within your budget in a glass case covered
with fingerprints. Still good, though. Press your face to it and you can view
your options. A full-sized candy bar, a set of fuzzy pink dice, a stretchy hand
that sticks to the ceiling and will force your dad to get out the ladder to retrieve,
a thigh-sized rainbow slinky, your childhood crush providing verbal affirmation
that you indeed grew up to be hot, a set of markers scented like fruit, a package
of water balloons. There’s something to be said about the bottom tier, too.
A fistful of Tootsie rolls or fruit chews, mini erasers shaped like food, glitter
tattoos of animals, a leopard print velvet slap bracelet, a packet of Pop Rocks,
a bottle of bubbles, a full eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, no copay on
your antidepressants, 30 minutes without mental illness, a pair of socks without
holes, a thong that doesn’t feel like an extension cord in your ass, two spinning
tops, an apology from your brother, a kind poetry rejection, a tiny container
of disappearing ink. Some prizes are better in theory. Everything looks nice
sitting up high on a shelf. The giant tiger you saved up all your tickets for
isn’t actually a tiger at all. The rotating party light doesn’t include the party.
Everything needs six AA batteries and they’re all sold separately. The thing
you hoped could fix you probably won’t. No amount of reimagining can return
you to who you were before you knew. The arcade shimmers less with the lights on.
Still, a prize is a prize even if it falls apart after you bring it home. The pieces in
your hands are proof of the effort. Even if you lose again, a win is still a win. Joy, still joy.
Danielle Shorr is a professor of creative writing in Southern California. Winner of the Touchstone Literary Magazine Debut Prize in Nonfiction, a finalist for the Diana Woods Memorial Prize in Creative Non-fiction, and nominee for The Pushcart Prize 2022 & 2023 and Best of the Net 2022 & 2023, her work has appeared in Electric Literature, The Florida Review, Driftwood Press, The New Orleans Review, and others. Instagram: @danielleshorr
Zoe Culbertson
Topsy Turvy
I.
Rising up from the depths
of slumber like a whale breaching
sucking in breath I remember – I belong
here in the world of air as well
all of my long scars
turn out to be gills
I’d rather be weightless
gliding through currents
effortlessly untangling strands of seaweed
with my smooth slippery body
II.
the roots of plants are covered in fine hairs
perceiving sound and light like
sense organs
we are actually upside-down plants
walking about with our senses, hair and roots
waving around in the air, searching
perhaps in time our feet
will learn the art of photosynthesis
our soles sprout buds
toes finally coming into leaf
III.
every day we are dying as much as living
the submarine pulls
with its promise of quiet dark
so I tether to the earth and scrawl lists
afternoon sun leaking through new May woods
my son’s contented humming in the next room
the snores of my dog curled next to me
the slow blushing of dusk sky above the sea
these moments keep my lungs limber, heart in time
eyes open and rising, rising
Zoe Culbertson is an acupuncturist, meditation teacher, and poet who has published work in Action, Spectacle, Wildfire and in two chapbooks through Persephone Press (Become and The Wake), printed on a letterpress using her own handmade paper. She was fortunate to study with Mary Oliver at Bennington College and is a founding member of the Marblehead (MA) Poets Group where she lives by the sea with her family.
Bethany Cutkomp
what makes me human
the fact that i question it / that i set alarms only to snooze them / that i romanticize the moon / that i sing on my commutes / that i chase sunsets for their hues / that i crave things to make my lips pucker / that i hurt and hold grudges / that i base outcomes on luck / that i rip up grass to throw at friends / that i skip cracks in the sidewalk / that i blame myself for matters out of my control / that my joints moan at whispers of rain / that my prayers are preventative / that i assign meaning to the mundane / that i gape at constellations already seen before / that my body seeks warmth in soft fabric / that i grieve the living before they’re gone / that i dance in my socks around the kitchen / that nasty words wilt my spirit / that comfort goes abandoned for a little risk / that my thoughts liquefy under hot shower streams / that my skin yearns to taste the sea / that i hug trees and hope that they feel it / that naps hit hardest when i shouldn’t be asleep / that i fear wild beings far more terrified of me / that i try too hard / that i take too many breaks / that i escape reality through leisurely substances / that my best never feels like enough / that my sweat repulses me / that i sense a domestic future / that i’m not ready to settle / that i don’t know what comes next / that i don’t know what comes / that i don’t know what / that i don’t know / that i don’t / that i / that / /
Bethany Cutkomp is a Best of the Net-nominated writer of surreal and existential works. Her writing appears in Stanchion, trampset, Occulum, underscore_magazine, and more. She currently supports her hometown community as a library associate in St. Louis, Missouri, and co-edits Thomasonian. Find her on social media at @bdcutkomp.
Erika Medina
Erika Medina is a figurative painter and mixed media artist working in her studio set in the woods in Danby, NY. She received formal art training at the University of Maryland and the Corcoran School of Art. Her work is sold through on online venues, galleries, and regional markets, and it can be found nationally in numerous private collections. Website: erikamedinaart.com / Instagram: @ravens_alchemy
Sarah Wetzel
Sarah Wetzel is the author of the chapbook, Elegies of Herons, just released from Black Sunflowers Poetry Press. She is also the author of several poetry collections, most recently The Davids Inside David, from Terrapin Books, as well as River Electric with Light, published by Red Hen Press, and Bathsheba Transatlantic, which won the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry and was published by Anhinga Press. When not shuttling between her three geographic loves—Rome and Manhattan—Sarah is Publisher/Editor at Saturnalia Books and a PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature in the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. Website: sarahwetzel.com
Philomena Amalfitano
Watering Plants at 3 a.m.
Feel
how the clock
abandons
the sky.
A twinkling
cup of tea
mistaken
again,
for warmth.
See
how minutes
pearl and glow
and move
south.
Stop
preying me,
leaf.
Obscene.
Philomena Amalfitano is a Sicilian writer based in New York. Connect with her on Instagram @PhilomenasPalette.
