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delicious new poetry
‘same spectral symphony’ — poetry by Julio César Villegas
Jan 1, 2026
‘same spectral symphony’ — poetry by Julio César Villegas
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
'I think I know why I am looking at roses' — poetry by Stephanie Victoire
Jan 1, 2026
'I think I know why I am looking at roses' — poetry by Stephanie Victoire
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
'All the trees are you' — poetry by Barbara Ungar
Jan 1, 2026
'All the trees are you' — poetry by Barbara Ungar
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
'girl straddles the axis  of ancient  and eternal' — poetry by Grace Dignazio
Jan 1, 2026
'girl straddles the axis of ancient and eternal' — poetry by Grace Dignazio
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
'Talk light with me' — poetry by Catherine Graham
Jan 1, 2026
'Talk light with me' — poetry by Catherine Graham
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
'How thy high horse hath fallen' — poetry by Madeline Blair
Jan 1, 2026
'How thy high horse hath fallen' — poetry by Madeline Blair
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
'a paradise called  Loneliness' — poetry by Adam Jon Miller
Jan 1, 2026
'a paradise called  Loneliness' — poetry by Adam Jon Miller
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
'Tell me I taste like hunger' — poetry by Jennifer Molnar
Jan 1, 2026
'Tell me I taste like hunger' — poetry by Jennifer Molnar
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
'I prayed to be released from my longing' — poetry by Michelle Reale
Jan 1, 2026
'I prayed to be released from my longing' — poetry by Michelle Reale
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
'Resurrection dance, a prelude' — poetry by V.C. Myers
Jan 1, 2026
'Resurrection dance, a prelude' — poetry by V.C. Myers
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
'It is noon and the sun is ill' — poetry by Raquel Dionísio Abrantes
Jan 1, 2026
'It is noon and the sun is ill' — poetry by Raquel Dionísio Abrantes
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
'every moon rolling fat through the night' — poetry by Zann Carter
Jan 1, 2026
'every moon rolling fat through the night' — poetry by Zann Carter
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
jan1.jpeg
Jan 1, 2026
'I have been monstrously good' — erasures by Lauren Davis
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
'The light slices the mouth' — poetry by Aakriti Kuntal
Jan 1, 2026
'The light slices the mouth' — poetry by Aakriti Kuntal
Jan 1, 2026
Jan 1, 2026
'quiet grandfathers  in dark tuxedos' — poetry by Scott Ferry
Dec 19, 2025
'quiet grandfathers in dark tuxedos' — poetry by Scott Ferry
Dec 19, 2025
Dec 19, 2025
'made a deal / with Azrael' — poetry by Triniti Wade
Dec 19, 2025
'made a deal / with Azrael' — poetry by Triniti Wade
Dec 19, 2025
Dec 19, 2025
'The birth of a body that never unraveled' — an excerpt by Hillary Leftwich
Dec 19, 2025
'The birth of a body that never unraveled' — an excerpt by Hillary Leftwich
Dec 19, 2025
Dec 19, 2025
'Time's metronome blank' — poetry by Rehan Qayoom
Dec 19, 2025
'Time's metronome blank' — poetry by Rehan Qayoom
Dec 19, 2025
Dec 19, 2025
'There is no choir on the mountain' — poetry by Dawn Tefft
Dec 19, 2025
'There is no choir on the mountain' — poetry by Dawn Tefft
Dec 19, 2025
Dec 19, 2025
'to anoint the robes' — poetry by Timothy Otte
Dec 19, 2025
'to anoint the robes' — poetry by Timothy Otte
Dec 19, 2025
Dec 19, 2025
'a stone portal in the woods' — RJ Equality Ingram
Dec 19, 2025
'a stone portal in the woods' — RJ Equality Ingram
Dec 19, 2025
Dec 19, 2025
'crooked castle wanting' — poetry by Lindsay D’Andrea
Dec 19, 2025
'crooked castle wanting' — poetry by Lindsay D’Andrea
Dec 19, 2025
Dec 19, 2025
'earth’s marble cage' — poetry by Annah Atane
Dec 19, 2025
'earth’s marble cage' — poetry by Annah Atane
Dec 19, 2025
Dec 19, 2025
'silent, Sunday morning' — poetry by Nathalie Spaans
Dec 19, 2025
'silent, Sunday morning' — poetry by Nathalie Spaans
Dec 19, 2025
Dec 19, 2025
'this strikes me as a Rorschach' — poetry by John Amen
Dec 19, 2025
'this strikes me as a Rorschach' — poetry by John Amen
Dec 19, 2025
Dec 19, 2025
'O, to bloom, to arch open' — poetry by Karen L. George
Dec 19, 2025
'O, to bloom, to arch open' — poetry by Karen L. George
Dec 19, 2025
Dec 19, 2025
'the sky violent' — poetry by Robert Warf
Dec 19, 2025
'the sky violent' — poetry by Robert Warf
Dec 19, 2025
Dec 19, 2025
'Love is a necessary duty' — poetry by Tabitha Dial
Dec 19, 2025
'Love is a necessary duty' — poetry by Tabitha Dial
Dec 19, 2025
Dec 19, 2025
'the doors of the night open' — poetry by Juan Armando Rojas (translated by Paula J. Lambert)
Nov 29, 2025
'the doors of the night open' — poetry by Juan Armando Rojas (translated by Paula J. Lambert)
Nov 29, 2025
Nov 29, 2025
'we can be forlorn women' — poetry by Stevie Belchak
Nov 29, 2025
'we can be forlorn women' — poetry by Stevie Belchak
Nov 29, 2025
Nov 29, 2025

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‘same spectral symphony’ — poetry by Julio César Villegas

January 1, 2026


CDXVI.

Clock tower frozen at 4:16 for its 28th year now. scaffolding like spiderwebs like safety nets spiraling down its structure, numerals faded like any Roman plagiarism: white flames, faces of animals in symmetrical dozen pinned along that circumference where time was discernible. public records, private testimonies on its architect, engineers, or builders still without harvest, a drought tolling every hour down to the exact millisecond, for 28 years, while both arms remain transfixed: no signs of visible rust, yet possible blueprint of involuntary crucifixion.

but ideas are not identities, nor descriptions destinies, nor feelings facts: just factual for now. ophiocordyceps unilateralis, tropical fungus hijacking the physiologies of rainforest ants, possessing them to climb up a plant’s stalk, clamp mandible to leaf vein, & wait for its final act of bastard metamorphosis: from your skull another’s forest forces, spores of your sacrifice. repeating the cycle to repeat the cycle until the cycle no longer looks strange but like stranger looking up at the clock tower frozen at 4:16 for its 28th year now wondering why the safety nets? what possession compels any citizenry, sleuth, inspector, or sadist to go searching for stairwells?

same spectral symphony: strangers, stairwells, seeking, something, skylines, silhouettes, spores. rustless arms frozen as white flames flicker as animals’ faces cycle & shift in eternal clockwork.


Tsunade

analog anachronism: anarchy of one’s birth beyond any given binary.
voices with my mother’s eyes, birthday gifts a living room w/ eggshells
until we stopped keeping count. whole numbers to fractions, irrationalities,
carving equations on apartment walls with great-grandmother’s kitchen knives,
a dropout’s dissection, attempt at everything’s theory: I am here, I am me, yet I’m not.
on the edge of the bed watching myself crouched in the corner, handfuls of chamomile,
watching myself watch my other self from the ceiling, somewhere between waveform
& witness, my fourth self standing at the doorway like when parents believe you’re asleep.
the veil’s thinned, sometimes starved: not a fast, not an abandon, but an autonomous 3rd state, counting supernovas with an unfixed gaze, watching them disappear once I re-materialize.
dots & dashes, 1’s and 0’s, derivatives & diagrams & limits of our own language’s liability:
oasis more of a mockery once factoring the sea of desert surrounding one, as is definition as definition, immutable, predictable, always starting here, and always ending there, always. punctuation, question marks hooked through my jaw, this roofless mouth, unseen puppeteers waiting for either side of the tensions to relent first. how stubborn, binary of strings & theories. disobedience civil until it can’t be. pretending the string is a kite’s doesn’t disguise its intent.
lips like eyelids both stitched, be a doll. dragonfly wings halted in admiration of orb-weavers.
on the edge of myself watching the bed, walking on ceilings in fear of another living room,
clean & spotless & lightest of steps, my soles still scrape on eggshell, pieces of crescent moons neither here nor there, yes: in this I am free. pressed tongue to diode, knuckle clenching string.


Julio César Villegas was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and raised in Essex County, New Jersey. Puerto Rico Se Levanta. https://linktr.ee/jcvillegas

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'I think I know why I am looking at roses' — poetry by Stephanie Victoire

January 1, 2026


They Make You Hungry for the Holiness

Tell me, why does the smoke of frankincense still make such a mark? Were all those bruises made on cold wood—dents in my knees, bent and fixed down—meant to keep me kept? At funerals I think I know why I am looking at roses. You said that Davinci’s opus etched onto her casket was what she would have loved and what she would have deserved and I agreed. I think I might be the sinking when it was sinking in. I asked for grace and it snagged on its way down to me. On St. Bride’s spire. A corridor at the River Thames. I love that fog the most. Some prayers are still hovering there. They are Tower Ravens with wings pinned. Grazing blue and grey. Charcoal when smudged against violet. Maybe I’m the censer, swinging back and forth by a sanctified hand.


Stephanie Victoire is an author and creative writing mentor born in London, UK, to a Mauritian-Creole family. Stephanie has published several works of fiction in literary anthologies, including: “Spiritus Mundi” (Liminal 11 Press), “Outsiders” (Three of Cups Press) and “Flamingo Land and Other Stories” (Flight Press). She has commissioned and broadcast short works with BBC Radio and published her collection of short stories, & The Other World, It Whispers (Salt Publishing), which was longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, the Saboteur Awards, and shortlisted for the DIVA Literary Awards. Stephanie currently lives in Portland, Oregon.

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'All the trees are you' — poetry by Barbara Ungar

January 1, 2026


ALL SOULS

I stay home quiet wrapped in cotton wool

holding my own hand consider the emptiness

within each atom throw my voice into the void

in a waking dream I saw your face

There was a last time we came together

without knowing

When I got there you were already cold
on the couch the cat curled beside you
nested in a ratty sweater stone deaf
he slept through the hubbub purring
We watched him dwindle away after you
& buried him in your old sweater


Get used to disappearing
as the veil thins
the dead come close
You said
My arms are always around you
but where


equinox

and it’s fall again

the dead as near
as the other side
of a fallen leaf

*

You’ve been gone eight months.
Should I fly to Rome?

How to climb the mountain of each night
the slightest question
an avalanche


*


The yard’s a wild mess like my hair

I forgot to pick the raspberries

Sweeping dead fuchsia from the porch
each day a new drift

Sound of wind

*

How can I live without my skin?

I have no off-switch

I am emptiness

but I leave a paper trail


NOBODY BARBIE

Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse.
—Epictetus

You were living a posthumous existence,
like Keats, each thing for the last time.

Where are you, except in my dreams?
You have vanished like a cloud.

Poems will be the way we talk from now on.
The moon delivers yours punctually.

Is it hard for you to stay with me, like
swimming against a rip tide?

Fearless, you slept, even in hell.

All the trees are you. I slept well
and did not dream of you.

Impermanence our theme for the year.
Most of the gold is on the ground.

Turning into the darkness, a winter coat
or blanket, we were all collectively holding

our breath. This grief is my super power.


Barbara Ungar’s sixth book, After Naming the Animals, addressing the sixth extinction, appeared in 2024 from The Word Works, which also published Immortal Medusa and Charlotte Brontë, You Ruined My Life. Prior books include Save Our Ship, which won the Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, and The Origin of the Milky Way, which won the Gival Poetry Prize. Professor emerita from The College of St Rose, she lives in Saratoga Springs, New York. www.barbaraungar.net

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'girl straddles the axis of ancient and eternal' — poetry by Grace Dignazio

January 1, 2026


Ode to Warehouse Rave in the Era of Diminishing Futures

After McKenzie Wark’s Raving

ghostly fortress

stripped

of your machinery

decrepit relic

abandoned

in the after times

let us gather

in your sepulchral womb


industrial hangar

aching

for familiar rattles

of assemblages

daybreak procession

of steel-toed boots

how they unbolted

your tinny muzzle

for stockpiling

so the forklift

could ram right through

we will not betray you


let us transform

this nothing zone

revel in the ruins

of collapsing capital

where we find ourselves

constructing

another kind of love

as the body sheds itself

in a fugue

of technic dissolution

sensing wholly

what it could become

we—

basement mucosae

stomping under the sprawl

fuse into oneness


Of Translation

girl straddles

the in-between

slippery interstice

or gap

wondering

where is loss

to be found?

I ask girl to translate

the cosmos

cross-stitch constellations

of language

and void—

what then, girl

more torturous

than silence?

limina-language

the clash

in non-meaning

apt to fall

not-together

who, then

emerges?

from blotched desire

dreamt into becoming

what of a language

with no time?

of-precarity

girl straddles the axis

of ancient

and eternal

wends toward

asymptote

that glimmering horizon

abyssal plunge

at home in the porousness

of utterance

its circuitry

how we orbit a promise

that from light

will come silence

and redaction is

a handful of tongues

how the ink slices

slight river of blood


Grace Dignazio is a Brooklyn-based writer concerned with the subversive possibilities of digital technologies as a medium for poetics. Her work engages with a lineage of writers attuned to the precariousness of identity and the entanglements of language and ecology in the shadow of a slow apocalypse. She is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at The New School, where she works as a research assistant and Poetry Editor for The Inquisitive Eater.


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'Talk light with me' — poetry by Catherine Graham

January 1, 2026


Nave Astral

after Remedios Varo

No linear perspective and spatial
depth in this pictorial plane.

To float in the unknowable
is to return to the womb.

What we fear has already
happened. Return

to consciousness. Leave
your skin to the stars.


Voice from the Night Animal


Talk light with me.

I’m here, skimming the green.

Extend my horizon

while I enter you

like a weather system.

I’m poor at multiple choice

but fighting something

releases ease within me.

It’s too late to catch threads

from felt confusion.


Catherine Graham’s poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Prize and have appeared in Best Canadian Poetry and on CBC Radio. Her eighth book, Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric, was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, Toronto Book Award, and won the Fred Kerner Book Award. Her sixth poetry collection, The Celery Forest, was named a CBC Best Book of the Year. Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We’re Dead: New and Selected is her ninth book. Two collections are forthcoming. www.catherinegraham.com @catgrahampoet

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'How thy high horse hath fallen' — poetry by Madeline Blair

January 1, 2026

Nightshade


Glossy black berry, your bitter taste,
your delirium. Figment sheen, what mirage!
Wild, parasitic root. In your terracotta pot
by the window of the kitchen, you’ve sewn
your dark seeds of doubt. Attended them greatly.
Watered them daily. Overly so. Are they not rotting?
Wouldn’t you like to know.


I’ve seen right through your bad habit.
I’ve come with scissors to cut it square out.
Behold, the archaeologist! How the dirt
has dug up. How thy high horse hath fallen.
The fields raked clean. The husbandry of it.
The sun ceased its shining, darkened mid-day
and shriveled away. Blood moon rose ill
with betrayal. The plant cannot grow,
cannot nourish, no, no.

The stalk wilts, petals droop, red glow
through torn curtains. The sorry sight
of apocalypse. Sad plant, your attendees
have abandoned. Where have they gone?
Was it worth what you lost? You cannot
connect. Spiders all spun your phantasm sincerity.
No flowers to poison tea. No matter.
No power.

What you cannot take is what’s mine.


Portrait of Christine de Pizan in The Queen’s Manuscript

In defense of the ladies we are warm enough
to keep ourselves safe & sound

We are castles we are also the moats

Pretty enough without porcelain faces
Consider Lucretia when you remember our virtue
We are whole without needing to be holy

A woman eating bread on the balcony / A woman
holding berries to the light / A woman waiting
for the night-music to rise with the anchoring
of the moon

Look at us square in the face
kitchen knives sharp beneath our palms
to holler Dinner’s ready!

We women will not be wiped out
We will etch ourselves in print by blood
{our names are write-ins for history}


Madeline Blair is a poet, editor, and award-winning filmmaker from Chicago, IL, with a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is the founder/editor-in-chief of Sabr Tooth Tiger Magazine. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Okay Donkey, Burial Magazine, Libre Lit, Ekphrasis Magazine, and more. She was once quoted in The New York Times on her passion for clean air.

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'a paradise called  Loneliness' — poetry by Adam Jon Miller

January 1, 2026


Opposite of Loneliness


Darkest Dark


Adam Jon Miller's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Louisville Review, Yalobusha Review, Chiron Review, Thimble Literary Magazine, The William & Mary Review, OxMag, BRAWL, Hood of Bone Review, Ink & Marrow, Folklore Review, shoegaze literary, Yīn Literary, and elsewhere. A selection of Adam's work has been translated into Chinese. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Adam is an Associate Poetry Editor at Thimble Literary Magazine. Visit him at www.adamjonmiller.com. Follow him @im.adam.miller.

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'Tell me I taste like hunger' — poetry by Jennifer Molnar

January 1, 2026


I need you the way venom needs a wound

to enter the body and render
the recipient stunned—to die twice

pierced by the sting of that love
letter’s savage chemistry—demanding

surrender so absolute it no longer
permits breath: ruthless and cruelly

molecular. My mouth deadly on yours.


To seduce me

Tell me what you’ll do as the world ends. Tell me I’m on your list of regrets. Exhale so I can feel your breath settle on my skin like a wayward prayer. Point out the hummingbird nest in the lilacs. Describe your first kiss, then your last. Ask me how I got this scar. Bring me a handful of spent petals you stole from a hurricane. Drink this elixir and don’t ask questions. Wake me as sunrise stains the low sky like the spirit streaming through a cathedral. Kneel and light a votive in the grotto with my name in your mouth. Snuff out the match between your fingers. Bless me with the ashes. Peel an orange before I can ask. Name each phase of the moon. Peel an orange before I know I want an orange. Convert to the religion of our existence under the clearest night sky pricked with the burned-out love letters of a trillion dying stars. Peel an orange and let me watch. Let me watch you. Ask me if I saw the moon last night. Ask me if I’m still hungry. Look at me. Tell me I taste like oranges. Tell me I taste like the moon. Tell me I’m your holy communion. Promise to haunt me. Tell me I taste like hunger. Look at me as the world ends. Say all of this reminds me of you.


Jennifer Molnar the author of the chapbook Occam's Razor, and her work has appeared in New South, Hawai'i Review, So to Speak, Best New Poets, Duende, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from George Mason University and resides in New York.

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'I prayed to be released from my longing' — poetry by Michelle Reale

January 1, 2026


The Bride Wore Headlights

I prayed to be released from my longing. Hope had no feathers. It was a scrawny bird beast that squawked and told me not to bother. But, still. All the groomsmen had their tuxedos dyed to match their moods. I stood back, waiting for the signal to toddle down the proverbial aisle, which was the way I did everything. I adjusted my headlights because my friends said that I needed to see where I was going. The harsh lights glinted off the gold lamé that every uninvited guest, all of them anxious, seemed to be wearing. Upstaging me or smiting at me, it seemed to be the same. When the groom entered, though not necessarily my groom, he kept a disrespectful distance from me. I smelled the particular tang of juniper berries wafting around his person. He carried a staff in his hand, proudly, perhaps to beat me with. I’ve endured worse. The magistrate was magisterial in his heavy velvet robes. The groom approached him and they shook hands the old familiar way that enemies sometimes do. I stood in place like a sentry. The wilted tulle of my dress hung with sad, but not bitter dejection. It was not white. I waited. The strobe of the lights shone ahead, and though I waited with a gentle thrum in my chest, no one called my name.


Michelle Reale is the author of several poetry collections , including the upcoming Let It Be Extravagant  (Bordighera Press).

She teaches poetry in Arcadia University's low residency MFA program.

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'Resurrection dance, a prelude' — poetry by V.C. Myers

January 1, 2026


A Furious Loom

Lost in a wilderness unfelt, an empty bed devours light. We sing, relinquished. I dissonance, uncharted. A cracked riverbed, this drought of trust, this heaving doubt. Dryrot, this festering bile. I'll think of you on the way down. Accusations need a scapegoat. Intentional, this nightmare. A speck of blood on the gallows. A shovel of cemetery dirt. Evidence of culpability. I stand accused. I stand. Skeletons hang on a clothesline. Resurrection dance, a prelude. A Pandora's box of possibility, boundless seas of infinity. Destruction knows not when. Cocoon this bitter end. Circling a burning field, worry not about consequence. Pain makes us beautiful. Pain makes us real. Love leaves us curled into a weeping ball in someone else's dream. A figment. Love is nothing if not nothing. In darkness, we crawl, we claw. Ever reaching for a home. Ever reaching for another. Ever reaching for the stars. Ever reaching with empty hands. Between two filthy lips. A taste of wickedness. You envy it. Such mercurial flavor before harbingers of famine arise. Doves red with innocent blood. A grasping of thorns. Crossroads. Crossbow. Crossbones. A purge. Raven wings rise from my shoulder blades, an arch of ebony feathers. Talons claw from my fingertips. I cannot fly, but burrow. Miles deep underground. The earthy smell of peat in my nostrils, a bite of bog on my tongue. Let the sun burn out above me. I need no light in the grave I've dug.


V.C. Myers is the author of Ophelia (Femme Salvé Books, 2023) and Give the Bard a Tetanus Shot (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2019). She has been an editor and reader for Sarabande Books, Barren Magazine, Ice Floe Press, and Frontier Poetry. Her work appears in ekphrastic exhibits and journals worldwide, including EPOCH, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, and Bombay Gin.

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'It is noon and the sun is ill' — poetry by Raquel Dionísio Abrantes

January 1, 2026


Lessons in Violence in the Schoolyard

I made you a braid
when a boy chewed your chosen
flower. At seven, bruised
knees were a girl’s
duty. You knew him
whose tongue — once patient
like a mother’s love —
became forked. But I made
you a rowan wreath.


(your God is dressed in indigo)

1. It is noon and the sun is ill.

I sip my coffee.

2. At the end of the road, your God is dressed in indigo.

3. I go to the brown lands to find my grandmother.

4. The robin hums perched on a witch’s head.

5. I descend to the underworld.

Hades is kind.

6. It is Thursday. You come back

as a brume. I am a haunted house.


Raquel Dionísio Abrantes is a Portuguese poet. She has a Bachelor’s Degree and a Master’s Degree in Cinema from Universidade da Beira Interior. Raquel gave a Master Class in Writing of Scripts about Narrative Structure. Her writing has been published by literary journals and magazines.

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'every moon rolling fat through the night' — poetry by Zann Carter

January 1, 2026


Paper Body


Skin once. Like once vellum was.

When my body becomes paper,
containment of self (a vaporous thing) is nearly impossible
and my place in the world becomes questionable.

Paper knees crackle and fold and tear
I can’t go anywhere

without falling apart.

I can hardly believe I still hold this teacup.
A poem on my wrist keeps the parchment hand attached.

Ink sutures.

This paper head won’t hold
the weight of consciousness,
let alone support the arc of a long thought.

Gnat-thoughts dance gibberish around my sad old eyes.

blinkblinkblink

lizard brain vellum paper skin of a calf tissue
dictionary disbound torn words paper whisper wind

gonegonegone

In the paper body I cannot even say,
“I am here.”


—after the imagined sculpture “Embodiment Simulacrum”, handmade paper, vellum, ink, cotton thread, torn, stitched, folded, 14” (from work in progress Oracular & Ekphrastic Poems: Imagined Art)


somnambulist, water, waking

i was hunger and anxiety, a production in silk,
wasps, and doomed
aspirations, sleepwalking drunk

on the rogue whiskey of men
who dissolved the sugar of me
and left

my bones on fire
inside, skin so tender
a glance gave me hives.

i wished on all first stars
and every moon rolling fat through the night
for waves to take it all

as water always will
the itch the sea the salt
the saving.


Zann Carter writes poetry and short fiction in Terre Haute, IN. and then works with fiber arts to get out of her head and back into the body. She co-hosts a monthly open reading now in its 17th year and has created workshops focused on navigating a path through grief with expressive art. Her work has been published in SageWoman, Witches & Pagans, Misfit Magazine, Dream Pop Journal,  Atlas and Alice, and  Driftwood Press and the anthology Erase the Patriarchy from University of Hell Press. Her always-under-construction website: zanncarter.com

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'I have been monstrously good' — erasures by Lauren Davis

January 1, 2026

Author’s note: These poems are erasures of the letters of Anne Sexton. I have not altered words or word order, but I have modified capitalization and punctuation of the original texts.

Source: Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1977.

March 13, 1957

Darling—

I adore you all over
the page, all over the lonely
house. Your face haunts
the still made bed.

I know the void and loss
of you. Find the sharp way—
possess me. Whatever it is,
it is like starting over.

Do you remember how
to reach the begging me
in a more delicate way?
I want to be only ghost

and witch. How fleeting
it is—doves cooing in
the pine. Spring will come.
You will come home, too.

Anne


November 2, [1948]

Dear—

I have been monstrously good.
Then the rains came.

Plenty of drinking, and I gave myself
a very nice burn. I did not sleep

at all on Friday night. Saturday night
I wore my satin dress. My heart’s desire

is that the worst is over.
Thank God for now.

Very much love,

Anne


May 8, 1963

Dear—

If I were to listen to God,
I would be tempered a bit.
That’s the whole trouble.

So far I have not succumbed.
It can be a lonely road. All these
idle thoughts, all this is wrong.

Writing a poem, each word
ripped out. The wrong
things start to happen.

A new kind of orthodoxy—
the only way—to go back
to your desk.

With my best wishes.


Lauren Davis is the author of the short story collection The Nothing (YesYes Books), the poetry collection Home Beneath the Church (Fernwood Press), the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize short-listed poetry collection When I Drowned, and three chapbooks. She holds an MFA from the Bennington College Writing Seminars. Her work has appeared in numerous literary publications and anthologies including Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Ibbetson Street, Ninth Letter and elsewhere.

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'The light slices the mouth' — poetry by Aakriti Kuntal

January 1, 2026

Murky

God elopes, deer on a fervid tail
A conch ripped, shells in my mouth
Small peanuts are plucked by the grandmother’s nails
Soundboards stocked with a sharp, fang-like dissonance
Rain slaps my face
My nose grows molecular
God, did you pinch my very tongue and scream?  
Are you standing, all lather,
in grandma’s petticoat?
Are you the rain?    
The marble floor?
My balcony is a ball of black seeds.


split

Orange wrappers. Foil of light. I fish my hand into the cool sigh of a water tank. I wish to elope into the dusk’s quartet. What roams in the blinking eye of the water trunk? The stomach moans and my mouth grows into a rectangle –-a square—an oval gesture. Memory drops from the ocean of the body and wriggles in the trough. I stare at my own face. What roams?— All thick and blurred in the light of the water. My face swims along the comb of waves. I stare at myself and wonder how true this construct is. I swish my hand, and my long face comes apart.


“,”



The light slices the mouth.
Absence fills—cold climate of the body.

Snow— porous sheet. You enter
and leave while my arms

Spin and spin. The days are growing around
my clamp ears. Whirl. Cotton mass.

These days, the skies are punctured.
Nothing grows here. I wake and wake

to the barrenness of my own naked body.
Between my fingers, the sun shreds

the dotted skin. Sleep, you too betray.
Grow around the chin and

gnaw with your new mouth. Everything wants
to claim the syllable of the body.

The pills pop and pop. There is no stopping this
withdrawal of blood.

There is no pausing this curtain of paleness.
I grow around my slime body

and fall further into a comma.


Aakriti Kuntal is a poet, writer, and visual artist from India whose work has been published in various literary journals, including Panoply, Icefloe Press, The Night Heron Barks, and The Hindu. She is the author of 'God, am I your eyelid?' from Sigilist Press, USA. She was awarded the Reuel International Prize 2017, shortlisted for the RL Poetry Award 2018, and nominated for the Best of the Net.

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'quiet grandfathers in dark tuxedos' — poetry by Scott Ferry

December 19, 2025

[when i do not write]

when i do not write
my body turns into a wordless sore

plump and burgeoning
filled with fluid and yellow sleep

the news i was supposed to report
covers the head with cruel snow

unverbed and wet–
my feet catastrophes–

my organs buried–
quiet grandfathers

in dark tuxedos


[gather my cellophane call to the harpies]

gather my cellophane call to the harpies
erase the ropes stir the poison in the mezzanine
police are laughing monks
call to the winged death
i am a seed hourglass red
i spin guns i can’t see
too many ghosts are captured here
their lips are bullets blood pills
take me to the ER i am leaking
i have forgotten to breathe


[the forgotten things are still alive under the soil]


the forgotten things are still alive under the soil i take out the bee larvae and suck the honey from each blistered head there is a buzzing inside my mouth i have done nothing but eat my own body a coral spine a fungal carotid along the chest i haven’t remembered how to swim inside myself i haven’t forgotten how to drown inside the wide dry air my eyes bees angered by the intrusion my fingers blunt sticky wombs i can’t bring the whole corpse back to the shore it is too heavy and the children have been feeding again the words which make my breathing definable are also curses medicine poison and lymph i have mixed them into a paste that the young love to lick i am a father of broken things but i nurture them by singing psalms backwards in a whorl of soap washed and slippery i am not any cleaner nor any more civilized my army is seething under our beds the forgotten things are still alive under the soil


Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as a RN in the Seattle area. His most recent books of poetry are Sapphires on the Graves (Glass Lyre, 2024), 500 Hidden Teeth (Meat For Tea, 2024), and dear tiny flowers (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2025). More can be found @ ferrypoetry.com.

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