June 2025
Volume 8, Issue 3
In this issue
Poetry
Futile Poem
When I lived alone everything was futile. / Trying to get up from my futon was futile. / I kept a tall banana plant and a small reptile, / but the climate…
Poetry
Dragonfly at Delphi
Watch her there! / She falls and rises surely / within this forge of air that tries us all - / beyond us, at long last. / A god’s voice from the fissure,…
By Anita Howard
Poetry
Acropolis
He rears there from the pediment, / the horse of the moon. / One flexing leg close by / on plundered ground, its heat / the blood and fire of ages / who…
By Anita Howard
Poetry
A street that had a name
Christchurch, New Zealand / - in the residential red zone left by the quakes of 2010-11 / It’s a street that had a name / But it no longer needs one / No…
Poetry
Do I Practise Life?
Do I practise life? / Do I train for the trials yet to come / Like / the / Canada / geese / do? / Or do I just wing it? / Is it just a rolling reaction to…
Poetry
St Nicholas Chapel, Għargħur
how can I make of this vacant space / a place of rest? / it’s just a room where stone must speak / of finitude / beyond it is the summons of the sea – /…
Poetry
Pleading Guilty
I avoid you, Elsewhere! / I am not there and age can be a good excuse / for something one can’t bear – / I listen to birds chirp / protest at trees…
Fiction
Dispatch and Correspondence
Bucharest, Romania Bullets fly as vampiric menace attacks Romanian Orthodox church on the outskirts of Bucharest.
Fiction
The Karnival of Seraphic Knights
A knight must be respectful, selfless, open, devoted, and, above all, they must exude excellence.
Poetry
Sign
Graphically little separates / short from snort. / A stem. / Archaic rain; / speaking of which / do you speak / sign? / Then put your hands out, / feel…
Poetry
The Elders
… smile insouciantly, / though they sweeten the day / when you walk by and mostly / ignore their slow movements. / You catch their eyes briefly / and you…
By HR Harper
Poetry
Flower Haiku
September comes / a gypsy moth / in the sweet clematis / toadflax / glittering by the highway underpass / syringes / goldenrod and pokeberry / a door…
Poetry
Tree Haiku
at the root of the red pine the absence of mountain / sowing / the wind / Bradford pear / hurricane remnants / the weeping willow / now a Van Gogh /…
Poetry
Stalking the Garden Sunbird
In the gloss of morning’s first breath, / a sunbird blurs through the bougainvillea, / a sudden thought in flight.
Poetry
Our Torchbearers
They were humane, full of promises / When they came campaigning / Shedding crocodile tears to our plights / Of lacking this, lacking that / They promised…
Poetry
Ophelia Talketh Back
after Shakespeare and Atwood / A likely madness: the boy-king unwed, / unfeeling but in his search for his father’s / revenge.
By Illiria Osum
Poetry
French Doll
On a foggy night at the film festival, / I walk on a yellow carpet of crisping ginkgo leaves, / slipping quietly from the platform of night. / A little…
Poetry
Unfinished Exit
I keep thinking / about the time in high school / when you drew / me / a map of the city, / I still have it somewhere. / It was so easy / to get lost / in…
Poetry
Someone Call Security
This life I’ve lived is sheltered—no rope / around the neck, no gun, no burning. / No sudden knife to leave a gash / through those I love.
Poetry
Sustenance
Because tattoos are associated / with gangsters, I’m not allowed / in the public onsen / of the hotel in Hakone, only the smaller / private one—for me and…
Fiction
Be Purple
The old cop enjoyed driving Turtle Pond Parkway in the fall but not today, not with traffic bunged up and the sun sparking a glare across his windshield…
By Rory Doherty
Poetry
The Queen in the Mirror
Smash the mirror of your soul / with your hauteur; / the flawless beauty of your queen / with a metal cup. / Let the quadrants of history / shatter with…
Poetry
Abacus
Tidal flex and activation / of the ocean / pectoral: / water fingers scratching / in frictionless futility / at land’s ledge of sand. / The living magnet…
Poetry
Eager Leaders
Heed the freedom fighter that has grown / too fond of paying forward; / irony must not be given authorization / to nullify creation in its own image. /…
Poetry
Eyes Have Tired
They have tried / but they have tired. / They are broken then repaired / then repeated by the grace of / gaudy guidelines; / sealed into some elastic…
Poetry
Chaya or Kids
Afternoon Chaya on the stove, Amma wearily sits at the table, her hand within reach to / adjust the dial. / I want to be in my bedroom, listening to…
Poetry
An Extra Dose of Benadryl Never Hurt Anyone, and Other Stellar Parenting Advice
There is nothing as terrifying / and exquisite / as a brand-new baby. / Rivers of oxytocin course through my limbic system. / I feel nearly manic / with…
Poetry
Oh, to be Gwen Verdon in a Towel in a Cole Porter Show...
When I think about the Garden of Eden – / that twisted origin story of a felled Utopia / with its sinuous tangle of serpents and sin – / I do not picture…
Fiction
Spine
Torquil reached out a hand towards the bookcase, to a book on the middle shelf, and slowly ran an index finger down its spine, pausing on the embossed…
By David McVey
Poetry
Experience more than clean
experience original sinlessness, / your celebrity crush’s / tongue down your throat, / the reality of Santa — / A day no dogs would die / is tapping on…
Poetry
Lexical Firmament
Loosen the grip / lower the defence / now we enter / in the fluid paragraph / the one with no punctuation / and with metaphors without like / identified…
By Luca Angius
Poetry
Grey as a Seagull’s Wings
I’d sift the years clean / before a wave of time could / ever break me like a fragile / piece of china again, cast me / into a future grey as a seagull’s…
Poetry
Paraph
And if there an indication sprouts that life / may be anything but draining, nurture it. / Green is a tired color for growth now, let / the simple glory…
By Cody Stetzel
Poetry
mitosis
from where god is, he must have watched / the kafilas muscle across a red-bitten earth like / ants driven out by the sting of smoke in hordes. / it must…
By Rowan Tate
Poetry
Hindsight is a Cruel Mason
Wisdom / whispers: you should have, / should have, / should have known / better. / Decisions draft hallways / of yesterdays, without entrances / or exits,…
Poetry
How to Love
Look into God’s teeth—not Hollywood-white / veneers, but yellowed, jagged edges / that tear through your marrow’s softness— / and admit you’re still pink,…
Poetry
Epitaph
He slipped away from the Paidotribe’s stern gaze / And ran through green meadows, chasing winged souls— / Cicadas, ants, bees, golden beetles. / With…
