editor’s note

Here we are saying goodnight to summer, in those last dregs of September, these first murmurs of October.

The high, holy season of shadow is nigh. As we find ourselves retreating & sifting through the rooms of the self, we may come up against the ghouls of night: anxiety, disquiet, seasonal mood shifts, loneliness, world-grief, self-grief, eco-grief.

This is the season for it. The juicy wildness of summer is dead. Now we sit with ourselves. Tend ourselves. We sit with one another at this table of words. We dagger the cruelty of this world with our poetry.

Lastly, we wanted to extend our deepest condolences to the family, friends, and community of the late Jennifer Martelli—our contributor in this issue (and in the past). Jennifer’s kindness, luminousness, talent, and devotion to community will be so missed.

May her words live on in this realm and in the eternal.

Riposa in pace, cara Jennifer.

editor’s note

O, what a summer it has been. A summer of resurrection. After three years, Luna Luna is back, right at this threshold season between the gushing fruits of summer and the menacing night.

I couldn’t start publishing again without being open about why and what and how, though: Over the past few years of goneness, I sincerely tinkered with the thought of bringing Luna Luna back from the underworld—but the truth was, I just wasn’t ready.

Life is tidal. Was tidal. Will be tidal again. Beautiful things (my wedding in Sicily, travels, my new book) and terrible things (the COVID landscape, I broke my back, family illness, chronic illness, a fire in our building) converged, and they all, as a bloodletting, asked things of me.

It was also just me. Burnout, malaise, a need for presence. Life.

I think literary editors ought to be able to discuss the challenges of running a literary magazine, because it’s not just reading and formatting poems. It’s a devotion. And the call comes from inside the house.

For all of us writers, it is an ongoing struggle to integrate creativity into the cacophonies of living. For me, this was certainly true, and it meant taking several years to reflect on what worked and what didn’t.

And so, as you see here, I have pared the site down and reshaped it—molded it into something new. Poetry is our key focus—a throughline from our earliest days over a decade ago.

Each month, you will see 11 poets published. Eventually, we’ll publish author interviews and poetry book reviews. But for now: One hymn. A single rose.

More so, it seems that every so often we are hit with new clamors of Poetry is dead! Snobs call for the Old Gods, critics slam the lyrical and abstract, and puffed-up institutions push the same sorts of voices.

All of this as the threat of human extinction looms, amidst a backdrop of fascism, genocide, starvation, ableism, AI theft, and soul-deadening algorithms.

And yet, we know. Good poetry glows from the margins, in the background. It takes long-exposure photographs. It reminds us of humanity. It documents and gives language to the unutterable. It is how we pray to the saints, how we dirty up our bodies, how we return to the earth. It is ecstatic and eternal, and it is alive. No think piece or institution or cynic is bigger or louder than the enduring and connective thread of language. Especially poetry. It fills the gap between what is and our yearnings.

Like many literary journals, we are here to balance the scales. We want to pour lusciousness into amphoras of blood. We want to resist the fragmentations of self by showing up whole in our beauty and transgressions. We are feasting.

Thank you for being here.

—Lisa Marie Basile

August 2025 poetry

'our gaze aqueous' — poems by Gioele Galea (translated by Abigail Ardelle Zammit)

'in dreams it’s your hands I see' — poetry by Kirun Kapur

'pulled from dark stars' — poetry by Devan Murphy

'disappear into the honeysuckle’s undying' — poetry by Marcus Myers

'a kind of devotion' — poetry by Elizabeth Sulis Kim

'light in my teeth' — poetry by Lisa Marie Oliver

'I felt like I was disappearing' — poetry by Amirah Al Wassif

'we dream up black horses' — poetry by Alyssandra Tobin

'an amalgam double-ravenous' — a poem by Mallie Holcomb

'something about becoming' — poetry by Isabelle Correa

'all these lives swell up' — poetry by Marie Nunez

Lisa Marie Basile is an author, poet, and editor based in Jersey City, NJ and NYC. She is the author of a few books of poetry, including SAINT OF (White Stag Publishing, 2025), Nympholespy (Inside the Castle, 2019, which was a finalist in the 2017 Tarpaulin Sky Book Awards selected by Bhanu Kapil), Apocryphal (Noctuary Press, 2014), and Andalucia (The Poetry Society of New York, 2012). She’s also written non-fiction, including Light Magic for Dark Times. She holds an MFA from The New School in NYC and is the founding editor of Luna Luna Magazine.

Her essays, interviews, poetry, and other works can be found in The New York Times, Catapult, Narratively, Tinderbox Poetry, Lover’s Eye Press, Tin House, Best American Poetry, Sporklet (edited by Richard Siken), Best Small Fictions (selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Robert Olen Butler), and Best American Experimental Writing 2020 (selected by Carmen Maria Machado and Joyelle McSweeney).

Read SAINT OF.

editor’s note

september’s poets (AND A BOOK REVIEW):

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August 2025 poetry