'come lie by me in the pasture' — poetry by Renee Kalagayan

LOVE POEM FOR LOSS

The loneliness of religion & cold medicine &
flared jeans led me to you. Jacaranda’s purple sails
marooned on the sidewalk. Goodyear skid marks you spun
in the church parking lot. Kissing you in a black Buick
the night before my grandmother’s funeral. I found you
naked in the front pew of priesthood. A sick lamb
in a congregation’s grazing. Come lie by me in the pasture
and we will graze together. We will rub our legs together
like crickets in the evening and listen to our hundred sounds.
Let our bodies be eaten up together, in the green grass
on which we lie, singing with joy. Come rest
your picked-clean bones next to mine and we will
decompose. Let me find my way back into the dust
which forms the cradle of my fragile body, and yours.

---

LOVE POEM FOR SORROW

Tonight it is you, blue fish in my bones,
thick scales cable knitting an itching
into my ribbed sides and under my arms
that no well-meaning scratch can quench.
I desire all the ugliness: your slosh-slicked spine,
sea air I kiss and spoon to my lips, shroud with my hips
in the night. I roll in your filth and my ears lap up your squelch.
Let me inhale the lonely musk. Ocean and burning flesh,
I take you into my nose. Sleep with me a while,
ginger stench. Drill your siren snore
into my ears. I long to hear your voice
in these octopus evenings, which tentacle
my body to my briny bed. Your smell is salt and rum.
Slender odor, stay with me a while. Linger.

---

Renee Kalagayan is an Asian-American writer and editor. Recent work is featured or forthcoming in, among others, Carolina Quarterly, The MacGuffin, HAD, About Place, and SoFloPoJo. She is the assistant poetry editor of South 85 Journal. Find her on social media @rkalagayanpoet.

'In this world I kept happening' — poetry by Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi

The 99th principle of growth

In this world I kept happening, I am

my softest disaster. Every orange day,

I gather letting go. My melon face holds

so much blush and blood of the people

I know and those I stopped knowing.

I am a beautiful waft of mistakes and

these pores pouring into weekends of sleep

and escaping these strange cities

that zipped here, and its freezing reality

shows carved of winter sun. I counted

my choices in a blackened field of floating

galaxies, breathing this earth awoken by tiny

rains. These telephone wires won’t unroot her

laughter imprints. All winter, I should know budding.

---

Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi is a recipient of the 2026 Hurston/Wright Foundation Scholarship. He won the 2025 Rehumanize International Contest and SEARCH Magazine’s Poetry Contest, and received commendation at the 2024 HART Prize for Human Rights. His work appears in POETRY, Oxford American, Guernica, The Slowdown, Strange Horizons, Callaloo, and elsewhere.

'the azaleas all make gruel out of me' — poetry by Anya Johanna DeNiro

Hymn #3 (Queen HRT)

The gray basilica lodges in my throat. Ma®y untie me.
Saying the words as an 8 year old to mean them.
untie me untie me.
The sky the money the azaleas all make gruel out of me.

Gold in the trough feeds the malefactor of all burdens.
The hay the hay the hay stuffed god induction in the face of the wild mare.
My god my god my god let me not strike my body down in the child.
My god my god untie me untie me.

Ma®y you would not harm your daughter lodged in your mouth.
Ma®y Ma®y you watched over me when I slept and did nothing.
The saints played euchre and I loved you and yet you did nothing.
I put on my own chains and I love you.

---

Anya Johanna DeNiro is a trans woman and writer living in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

She grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, and received a BA in English from the College of Wooster and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Virginia. Her novella City of a Thousand Feelings was published by Aqueduct Press in 2020 and was on the Honor Roll for the Otherwise Award. Her novel OKPsyche is forthcoming from Small Beer Press in September 2023. Her short fiction has appeared in many venues, including One Story, Catapult, Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Santa Monica Review, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. Her work has been a finalist for the Crawford Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Award, and longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. 

'silk and rivers' — poetry by Zavi Kang Engles

plea

in cities / i harden / so i seek / a holding space / in mountains / snow refines my distance / silent pines blink / more than words pass / into each other / pressing want into want / a new amplitude of longing / crowded by your / own hair and fingernails in this quiet land / of morning moons and bathroom suns and / in other worlds please: milk of more / kindness butter silk / more pines that weep / such batter-sweet sap / reach / for all the other ways to be you / to be full / to let your skin go / slack / between revolving doors / a lick of feeling / please: butter / silk and rivers let the skin have this / the golden the green i mean everything / including other ways of knowing / you in other worlds / please: fruit butter grass silk and rivers that run / like a riot and reach / may honey become / the global / supple chain / in other worlds please: kindness be / a mountain filling / my mouth.

to be a god however minor

and where
our lines fail
to meet
grow trees
from which
fruit fat
with seeds
drop to our feet
generously draped
as we are
by this canopy of light
the air is not
one but many
currents mingling
with secrets
invigorated
by a possibility
that can’t be
thought or felt
only flung forward
like a love
letter to the unseen
i know you too
fantasized about receiving
a message in a bottle
on an empty shore
as a child
it seemed incredible
that something so small might
survive an ocean
though each of us
did eventually

---

Zavi Kang Engles writes and walks in the city sometimes known as Los Angeles. Her writing has been published in The Rumpus, The Texas Review, HAD, and elsewhere. She is the Managing Editor of Apogee Journal. As an American Studies and Ethnicity PhD student, she researches Korean American shamanism and contemporary Asian American literature. For more, visit www.zavizavizavi.com.

'death and a mountain view' — poetry by Emily Brandt

KISS RED LIPS (OF MAN) 61

If I stay at this little motel, this woodsy resort,
let’s see how it goes with this bartender, his hot
and cold attitude. I’ll find the unclear
communication annoying,
though cunning may be more apt.
I’ll extend my little stay into, perhaps,
a party, and paper the walls
with these wishes: an unclenched hand
at death and a mountain view now.

---

READ A POEM 6 / PINING ANGER 69 / LOWER YOUR HEAD 36  

I thought reconciliation!
But: business proposition.

Still, it was really good to see you,
was different than dreaming about,
was like that momentary infatuation
that spiraled through a phone cord
that stamped envelopes full of flowers
dried and spilling out, a let down
ground down into microfiber carpet,
industrial beige, monotonous chain
of mailboxed blocks. Come back
come back. I charred a yam but the guts
were sweet. It could really be
that easy, friend.

The horizon never moves if your head
is down. Fickle love, this filial cell,
a membrane of salt and sun, then
funerary flowers and cell towers.
No matter how far we row
this call gets dropped.

---

Author’s note: The above poems are written in collaboration with La Smorfia, a Southern Italian dream interpretation system, used to connect images from one’s dreams to divinatory fortunes (some of which are included in the above poems) as well as to numbers one should play in the lottery. In these poems, the numbers connect instead to words per stanza.

---

Emily Brandt (she/they) is a poet and interdisciplinary artist, guided by ritual and somatic practices. She is the author of the poetry collection Falsehood, as well as three poetry chapbooks. Her poems appear in anthologies and journals, including Bomb, Fence, Literary Hub, The Recluse and Michigan Quarterly Review’s SomaFlights issue. She's a co-founding editor of No, Dear, curator of the LINEAGE reading series at Wendy’s Subway, and member of the video art collaborative Temp.Files. She’s of Sicilian, Polish & Ukrainian descent, and lives between Brooklyn and Speonk, on land originally stewarded and unceded by the Lenape and Shinnecock.

'the incense of my bed chamber ' — poetry by Katja Jackson

Sun

There was the incense of my bed chamber. There was the ring on my calloused hand.

I sent the dogs into the field. I followed the season into harvest. I trained with the rest in the cold.

And now that I am feared by the women taking their cups to the stream, I am but the fiery star that singes the green, abundant grass.

The small animals burrow down to hide the softness of their coats.

And my certainty wavers. Like any source of light.

---

Armature

Of her body is the blue girl, the kneeling woman, knees bruised, of terracotta and coiled wire—like the soldiers, she thinks she is of yore, she thinks she is of twenty cups, ten vases, and five lanterns, that each flicker in the dim light, cool air of the underground.

She thinks that as the blue girl, still the blue girl, she may glow red, high noon, in cavern and cavernous, fingers stiff with clay, eyes bouncing from stalactites.

The brown bat in the corner is asleep, and the girl can trace the softness of its nose in her head, and know that softness will crumble—the color will harden, and she has an invitation—wire skeleton, good pottery—that she can extend, for an eternal and fiery winter.

---

Katja Jackson is an artist from the Washington, D.C. area. She has work published or forthcoming in Trace Fossils Review, The Broadkill Review, and Twin Bird Review. Find her on Instagram @xtreewomanx. 

'bruises confettied as raspberries' — poetry Chelsea Fonden

FALLING IN LOVE WITH A LAKE, PART IV

a tap & a lick & a sip, falling in love with a lake again, the static of it, myths swirl submerged as desire & i sign postcards con desiderato & sentimentati. so many things can be true at once— lessons from nightmares, a blood play station, looking for rorschach in the lamppost spiders, bruises confettied as raspberries, a deepening, hypnotic movement, glacier-made. what springs from stillness when you allow it; what aperture ceases to falter & lets the joy whoosh in in swoops & hollers? the sweeping away of hesitations, an indenting like a typewriter’s, touching all your little silvers. they say not to swim past the light but my hips are slick & unafraid, i want the whole body of it, cerulean swallow & enter. what would your first meal be, if you could start over? any question better than ending.

---

I TUCKED BACK THE PASSION WHERE I COULD SEE IT

through bedroom eye window, aloe-slathered view of the street. i wonder if she’ll bloom, rubbing salve on my stomach— what i burnt you have already carved, mutable as i am, obedient & underhand. in this circus you spit & i say yes & we ignore anything labeled catastrophe in ugly font. we saw a whip in the gutter & you lamented, belted as we are in our desire, flexed tight. when i outgrow i see a new moon, verdigris rain kiss, a butch lean, some iridescence. i open my palm to cradle you, cactus or flower, whatever it is you have to give, whatever room.

---

GREENWOOD

in the cracks of the tombs we lick magnificent, all the memory & new twisting. her face on film as i keep herding absurdity, the gold & orange, dollopmoon, crisphope, mossypromise. the shit of known & unknown origins; how she gave me her shoes, how i cleaned her hands. is there something green in the folds of the future, purrs of lost forest & attics without endings, an overcoming like a branch in tall storm, & the quantum bottom of a rock you used to kick & kick into the mouths of wanting & the leaves fold back & there’s no longer a man in the photograph just a sparkling dash, a splat, a hint.

---

Chelsea Fonden (she/her) is a queer poet & facilitator with work featured or forthcoming in No, Dear Magazine; Yes, Poetry; Hanging Loose; and Adult Groceries. Chelsea reads poetry submissions for The Los Angeles Review and hosts the quarterly NYC reading series Tadpole, which raises money for local mutual aid. She has been awarded writing residencies by Carroll Hall Garden and Sundress Academy For The Arts. Chelsea lives in Brooklyn with all her plants and her perfect dog, Holiday.

'you were obsessed. a monster.' — poetry by Kathleen Hellen

(all beautiful boys look like women)

in glimpses mollis or erect
in boundaries of the cheeky
the penis that we come
to understand as twig
under fold
is satire of the self

---

dentata

celebrity. authenticity. the fatuism of the alter ego.
receptionists in topknots gossip.
about pop culture. you sign in at the marble counter. wonder if you’ll need a new prescription. another round. amoxicillin. another follow-up with a physician. wonder if the two who sit across from where you’re filling out the forms. together but not talking. one plump. in tee shirt. jeans. who opens up a book. the other thin and on her cellphone. are partners. you think of him not answering your calls. maybe he was right. you were obsessed. a monster. though you tried to keep your big mouth shut. pretended not to notice if he noticed other women. were you needy? devouring. lie to me. a voice as sweet as love repeats. upbeat. the sticky tune on loop exaggerates a caramel of truth. you were a vampire. starved for his attention. you would eat him up alive if he let you. you wonder if they’ll recommend extraction. if receptionists will break soon for lunch.

---

Kathleen Hellen’s debut collection Umberto’s Night won the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House. She is the author of The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, Meet Me at the Bottom, and three chapbooks. Featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, Hellen’s work has appeared in diode, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, Salamander, and elsewhere. Awards include prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review.

'Seas of her marooned organs' — poetry by Shon Mapp

Pariah

Seas of her marooned
organs, litter
archipelagos. A mistress
of lapis, of celeste–
ever foreign. Banished
siren, abandoned
orphan. She is cloistered
behind vows of mourning,
tandem ties broken
to land. Unmoored
in Aycayia’s bosom.
She subsists amongst coral,
with a surname
more concept than proof.
Stripped of identity
by her kin, she belongs
nowhere. Fauvists
understand her blues–
blurry brushstrokes
of a being, vivid inclinations
of someone whole.

---

Shon Mapp is a Bajan writer whose pieces explore lesbian intimacy, kinship, and immigrant identities. She has work published in Stanchion, HAD, Neologism, Fourteen Poems, and other indie literary magazines. You can find her on Twitter & Bluesky:@ShonMapp.

'a ghost house of Sicily' — poetry by Edvige Giunta

Ghost House

I ran barefoot for miles to reach my mother’s beach house in Manfria. Because I wept, my oxygen saturation levels dropped.

I had to climb walls.

My husband trailed behind—yet I knew I needed to fall alone.

My mother was young, and I was old.

My estranged sister was naked, no breasts. She complained loudly she had to shower before I did, but there were no doors in the bathroom and strange men came and went. I knew from their hands that they were tombaroli--but there were no graves left to rob.

Some of us wore masks. Others didn’t.

The clarity of exile filled me, and I made a ghost house of Sicily.

---

Microchimeric

My mother’s cells exist within me.

My cells lived in my mother’s body, and therefore died with her, so that she is still alive, and I am already dead.

She is typing these words, and I am buried three thousand miles away.

---

I Entertain My Ghosts

We sip chamomile tea and nibble on caramel edibles. I tell them the weight has lifted off my head and floated to the next room.

“Go, go tend to it,” I say without words.

They nod with their eyeless heads. One by one, they stand and bend to kiss me on the forehead, then vanish beyond the French doors into the room of shadows where their hands knead and knead all my sorrows.

I am their half-blind child, adept at the language of unseeing.

---

Fall

On our way to the scarred perimeter of the town of our Greek ancestors, still guarded by the undefeated lone column of the temple of Athena Lindia and that beast of the oil refinery turret, I stumbled.

A stone? A bone? The whisper of a ghost annoyed by our intrusion?

My arms flung, flailed.

The men of my family watched powerless as I twirled, pulled by strings, readied to crash.

But my green-eyed daughter of the long, loose limbs stretched one arm towards my falling body. As it pirouetted across the cracked cobblestone, she brought it to a blessed halt.

I wept at the sight of the bruise that blossomed on her brave forearm.

---

Edvige Giunta is the author of Writing with an Accent: Contemporary Italian American Women Authors and coeditor of several anthologies, including Talking to the Girls: Intimate and Political Essays on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, recipient of the 2023 Susan Koppelman Award for Best Anthology in Feminist Studies in American and Popular Culture and published in Italian by Iacobelli (Le ragazze della Triangle). She is Professor of English at Kean University. On Instagram @edigiunta; www.edvigegiunta.com.

'Are the clouds full of well-water?' — poetry by Johanna E. Hall

Salutation

after Sainte Genevieve (1887), Charles Sprague Pearch

O Attila-deflector, young bride of what’s above
the clouds, shoulders back, surveying
fields unsown while roofs wait to be thatched
and patched dresses gain more holes—
what lies beyond a life of sheep?

What cries out louder than their bleats
for your attention and clasped hands—
what lack of wind, what still, small voice
can be heard that you would stare it down,
sure and unblinking?

Or are you moments away from bowing your head,
knees a moment away from buckling,
only upright for the waiting?
Are the clouds full of well-water?
Is it about to rain?

---

Johanna E. Hall is a Pushcart-nominated poet from Charlottesville, VA whose writing generally features lesbianism, God, disability, and/or various troubled pasts. Find more at johannapoet.com or on Instagram @johannahallwrites.

'seals her-self in the confession box' — poetry by Spencer Keene

Calvary Wood

The moon has spilled its milk
on the knees of the cathedral,
soiling sleepless parishioners
in its soak of celestial nectar,

tickling their bent blue necks
like beams of linen and silk.
Alone in the carpeted grove,
its sandstone spire skewering

wayward stars like doves,
the church digests psalms
in mouthfuls of syllables,
making a meal of choired

speech and holy rhythms.
The flower girl seals her-
self in the confession box
to bloom in its lonely soil.

---

Spencer Keene (he/him) is a writer from Vancouver, BC. His poetry and short fiction have been featured in a variety of print and digital publications, including SAD Mag, The Gentian, Poetry Lighthouse, and Dumbo Press. Find more of Spencer's work at skeenewriter.com. 

'bloody with sunset' — poetry by Will Cordeiro

Divination

The windows are bloody with sunset.
Mothwing, timeshare, bone fissure:
reveled in wood-rot each rootworm
tremors the underside’s soft tissues.
Memory gropes through the past;
intuition sounds the cold fathoms
of the last days coming slowly risen.

Half-step, quartertone, a little blue
note, a fluff and a bop, hop-skip
caterwaul scat-slap cutting up sally.
Stopgap winding sheets of thunder
blown from a madcap drop-dead sax.
Spitshine, lip-service, lap dance—
we dishevel ourselves in dog tunes.

Never mind. Below the surface,
the live bait twists and squirms;
a lace of shadows goes sharking
toward it. Every meaning’s a grace,
swerving. All light is earthly darkness
that has yet to arrive. To arrive,
the face must displace some dream

with only time’s brokenness missing.
Nothing hard. A heart in your hair,
a door in your skull, a sexual mirror
buried in the wall’s withering gaze.
Late hour of regret. Ragged grimoire,
palmistry, foreign codes, birch rods,
ancient lore, the weather, embalming

fluid, spiderwebs, crystals of salt,
human sacrifice, potations, diving
bells, entrails, bone dice, horn cups,
tealeaves, shifty patterns of birds,
statues, dust, god’s anger, thorns,
placentas, a falling star burnt up,
cinders in the sieve of your throat.

---

How to Breathe

You must focus. Concentrate on the rate you take in the air. The air you more slowly expel.

*

Enter the still point at the center of this exchange. You must let your whole body participate.

*

The air is held inside you. You expand. Then exhale, and the air is gone—it’s nothing again.

*

But, of course, the air has only returned to its origin outside of you, to the ethereal beyond.

*

With each cycle of breath, you inhale the particles of matter around you then let them go.

*

You, too, are let go. You, too, are mere particles of ether. Slight matter. Vibrate and revolve.

*

Breathing in, breathing out: you feel yourself reduced to a single locus, a thrumming pulse.

*

You dissolve into the oscillations. The waves within you merge with all the waves without.

*

Each breath travels through uncentering forcefields. The body’s measureless, unfathomable.

*

No longer any you or it, there’s only the conscious universe, an endless tremoring energy.

---