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

[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

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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.

'made a deal / with Azrael' — poetry by Triniti Wade

Azrael’s Interlude

Churchgirl screams / made a deal / with Azrael / burned his thumb / in the back of her bible / carried his name / in the back of her throat / Put me back, she pleads / he holds her open / like a palm / her body longs / to be a fist

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Churchgirl

after jeanann verlee’s communion

I know a girl whose body is a choir. I think my own body is a chorus that I have forgotten the lyrics to. I hide between lines of pews and sing behind the thick skulls of preachers long before the first drop of blood appears. I let myself drift toward pulpits, giving heaven my hallelujah for this dog-heart. Sometimes I think my body is on fire. I think God set my body on fire in the names of Tamar and Shadrach. I met a girl whose body was a shrine. She felt like God, the way she wanted to be believed. I watched her peel her body off mine like fruit skin, grabbed my pinky and made me swear not to tell our mommas.

What happens on Earth keeps me up at night. On Sundays we talk about memories: the sacred heart covered in thorns, the body of Christ, bloody and swelled to a holy pulp, bullet wound in his abdomen. Tupac died for our sins. Screw guilt. I’m Tupac; kiss me. My blood comes in the color of ugly cherries. I ask God to make it stop. I peel through layers of cellophane, plastered to my skin with chicken grease. When it bubbles I light my body on fire.

When it bubbles I ask you to light my body on fire. I met a boy who sprouted in Gethsemane. He wanted to be the tongue and the grapefruit, too. I burned his image in the palm of my hand. I watched a moth toss itself into the flame and saw myself. I’m always digging through pomegranate seeds in search of memories that disguise themselves as wounds. I know a girl who memorized her birth. Pleading in Jethro, halos wrapped around her newborn wrists. We spent our summers licking the sunsets off each other’s eyelids. Little girls filled with too much heat. I still shiver at every meeting with Florida water, holding my breath before I pirouette. My rancid palms, these quivering fists. I let a boy tell me that my body is a crime scene. I let another stick two fingers inside — just to be sure. He tells me about the girl who tastes like prayer, begs me to repent with him. I think that my body is a notebook. I rip through its pages in search of questions that only God can answer. I ask for blank skin. My body still reeks of kerosene. Please cut the heat out of me.

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Triniti Wade (b. 1999) is a writer from Miami, Florida. Her writing explores fragments of Black girlhood, longing, and religion. Her work has been featured in anthologies by the YoungArts Foundation, Scholastic, and O, Miami. She has been recognized by both the Cave Canem Foundation and Miami Writers Institute through literary workshops. She’s currently pursuing her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at The New School.

'The birth of a body that never unraveled' — an excerpt by Hillary Leftwich

When I Come Back from the Dead

(an excerpt from Saint Dymphna's Playbook)

When I came back from the dead, I came back as a color. Brambleberry burgundy. The color of dollar store lip gloss and sour gummy bears. When I returned, no buses stopped for me at shadowed street corners. Security cameras lost me in empty aisles, where teenagers wearing each other’s clothes pocketed vapes and lube. When I came back from the dead, I found myself in old motel rooms, the dank smells of sex and bruises hiding under sheets like lost children. The janky ice machine buzzes an old, faded tune, and the whiskey dead gather in the cool smell of humid cigarettes and night sweats. When I returned, no buses stopped for a color. I found myself an old, faded tune, wearing other people’s clothes. Shadowed street corners—lost security cameras find me. When I come back from the dead, this is the place I return to again and again. The birth of a body that never unraveled.

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Hillary Leftwich is a multi-media writer and the author of Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock (Agape Editions, 2023), Aura (Future Tense Books, 2022), and Saint Dymphna’s Playbook (forthcoming from Limit Zero, 2025). She teaches creative writing, business writing, and environmental writing and storytelling at several universities, writing organizations, and nonprofits for adults, previously incarcerated and hospitalized youth, and unhoused populations. She centers her writing around themes of class struggle, the impact of disease, mental illness, ritual, and the supernatural. On the outskirts of the writing world, she teaches Tarot and Tarot writing workshops focusing on strengthening divination abilities along with writing. She is a professional Tarot reader, an Usui Reiki Master Teacher, death worker, and speaks with the dead.

Find her author services here: Alchemy Author Services & Writing Workshop

She is currently working on a series of hermit crab/collage essays and video poems investigating gun violence along with her background and experience growing up in Colorado and its history with mass shootings.

'Time's metronome blank' — poetry by Rehan Qayoom

Finale

Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
                                                                —Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol. (1843).

In the lone dark house where men are mended 
On the far side
Where things are ended 
Virgins sing wide-eyed
Come death dear, come death come,
Come lovely, lovely death come 

When you closed your eyes and disappeared
Love died
Life became hollow and meaningless
Death black
Deader than the doorknobs
Deader than the dewberries
Deader than dead

Where does it all come from?
Where does it go?
The minus the plus
The plus minus - Deader than dead

Words adrift upon the winds:
Nuages = New Age
To vast nowheres in particular
“Brouillard brouillard brouillard brouillard”

Time’s metronome blank

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Rehan Qayoom is a poet of English and Urdu, editor, translator and archivist, educated at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has featured in numerous literary publications and performed his work internationally.  He works with a wide range of archival and independent research projects and is the author of several books.

'There is no choir on the mountain' — poetry by Dawn Tefft

Joy

This is the only way I know how.

To tip my head back from the dark well

and let my watering mouth

catch stars in devotion.

My life continues to run and mill

through the night. I sluice small

moments for smaller pieces of light.

There is no choir on the mountain

whose voices will ring through the pass

shaking the snow like a woman

too long a queen. I open my throat

like a bell or a lamp and nothing

comes out; only the silence of animals

dying carries the night.

Below, in the swirl and congeal

of churches and houses plays a loss

forged by centuries. Regret

moves dim and warm over my bed.

I refuse to wait for cellos and oboes,

violins describing a heart.

Rocking on my toes and sucking

wind through my teeth, pleading

with pines to fill with last year’s life

or three perfect wood-described notes.

I stumble over the slovenly stones

in a universe that resurrects itself daily.

Reflections die out of leaves

and in phone booths, while a bird

continues to pick friends clean from

my ribs. I walk in my succulent

flesh towards the city, because it gleams

when I’m not there, whole and in love.

A fish in my chest keeps on moving.

I take whatever light breaks into my bedroom,

caught in mirror and curtains, galloping

a plain room with the horses of day.

I won’t be left here without it.

I spin on my back with the movements

of sky and open my mouth

like an orchestra bleeding.

'to anoint the robes' — poetry by Timothy Otte

45

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44

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46

after Robert Lax

'a stone portal in the woods' — RJ Equality Ingram

SHACHATH

Not lifted up by big black wings or slit down diagonally with a single stroke of the scythe / Not escorted through a stone portal in the woods with a keystone baring the resemblance of a mother’s ring adorned with five unique rhinestones / Not an old man in clean white robes reciting names from a list written in italic silver letters on a never ending scroll / Not a familiar escort / Like your sixth grade English teacher who taught you how to read novels & bullshit your way through a research paper / Or a late famous person making an end credit cameo / Or any one of your numerous grandmothers who were each beautiful for their own special reasons / Not a talking animal of any kind / No wizened owl or innocent stray dog who spends his afterlife escorting newcomers across the threshold / Not a single spirit came to me that August afternoon when I needed them to help me up as I was crushed beneath the weight of her big black cloak / If she was listening she was listening to my mother / Who held my face together & counted to ten again & again / And if she was there & I just couldn’t see her / I hope I made a good first impression.

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RJ Equality Ingram lives next to a cemetery in Portland, Oregon & works as a necromancer for Goodwill Industries of the Columbia Willamette. They have two MFAs in creative writing from Saint Mary's College of California & a BFA from Bowling Green State University. Their second poetry collection Peacock Lane is forthcoming from White Stag Publishing & their debut poetry collection The Autobiography of Nancy Drew was also published by White Stag in 2024. They are a poetry reader for Yes Yes Books & a regular contributor of the Nerd Rage: The Great Debates podcast. More work can be found in Deep Overstock, Voicemail Poems & Phoebe Journal among others. Photographs of their cats Twyla & Senator Padme Amidala as well as their little free library can be found on Instagram @RJ_Equality

'crooked castle wanting' — poetry by Lindsay D’Andrea

ley lines

our host swaggers toward us at the bus stop in kenmare / introduces himself
as r. / smiles through boyish eyes tinged with hard shadow of habit

we sit down as strangers in his kitchen among a penitent crowd of potted plants
r. tells us stories / pours whiskey / watches dark droplets dry

on our lips / takes us to a stone circle / kicks over the rickety donation box
declares monetization the worst of human crimes / orders

more whiskey for us at a bar a water for himself / leans toward me
asks why don’t i come back to kerry alone next time

departure day / return from a walk / find our dirty clothes folded clean
atop the guest room bed small pile of my underwear creased

to careful triangles / say thanks for the kindness / arrive years after this moment
r. sends a message / had a dream about me do i want to know

what kind / remember the stone bridge covered in moss crooked castle wanting
its roof nothing so far off from decay / remember some forces

can be mapped / draw each line with precision the invisible circle expands
from a ring of rocks at its center / erected at first as a kind of prayer

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Lindsay D’Andrea is an emerging writer working on her first collection of poems. Recently, her poems have been selected for publication in On the Seawall, The Baltimore Review, Ploughshares, and the North American Review, among others. She currently lives in the Philadelphia area with her family.

'earth’s marble cage' — poetry by Annah Atane

The Ache of My Father

“Following the kidnap of a relative in August 2024”

All his friends were leaving.

Not in the way his ancestors left. 

I mean, there is a soul 

held in a forest. Mouth, sealed. 

Hands tied. Helpless. 

And we keep reaching for God,

like how the lady in red snuck 

until her hands touched the smooth linen

of love

Unlike us 

who hustle light like miners beneath a tunnel.

Did you see my father in saltwater?

How he drowns with that old photograph

clutched in his hand.

Wanting to rescue all of them—

school boys, standing in memorial

shape shifting to that bone place.

We both agree there is nothing left 

except hope. But how much hope is enough 

to keep our hearts from weeping?

In-between these metaphors is a soul

and I hold a torch to say, I am still 

searching.

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Annah Atane is a Nigerian writer. Her poems have appeared in the Brittle Paper, The menniscus, The Muse journal, Valiant Scribe, Writeresque, Ric Journal and elsewhere.

'silent, Sunday morning' — poetry by Nathalie Spaans

Vanitas

You move me to the place
I feel when I forget

and become, ungathered, the motes
in your silent, Sunday morning.

There’s a fly on the saucer under the cup, feasting.
There’s a fly on the rim of your butter fleet, resting,
working.

There’s an orange peel on the kitchen table
and a glass of red.

Always your eyes, always your mouth.
Always your nails on your chest like an ape,
your shoulders tilted forward like an ape.

I wish you’d for once wear a shirt that fucking fits you,
not makes me love you.

I have given up, but not quite, not the right way.

'this strikes me as a Rorschach' — poetry by John Amen

Romance

         JW’s photo

He arrived, she arrived. Actors in an improv class, two spies waiting for code words, ex-lovers hoping the other would sing first. Charisma, unusual truncations, the usual amnesia. He reached for her hand. I see how this piece speaks to the space between people he said. I see how it speaks to the way people collapse into each other she replied. The band launched, echoey guitar chords, a singer who writhed like an injured snake. Someone blew out the lights. It might have been 1936 in Berlin, 1967 in San Francisco, 2024 in Tokyo. He considered telling her about the white roses that dropped from the sky every time they were together, how he’d filled a notebook with songs about her. She wanted to tell him that he was familiar from a previous life, that there was a tragedy buried in their subtext that neither could read. He swallowed as the first song ended. She swallowed as the second song began. He turned to speak but she’d vanished, he smelled her perfume, he studied his hand as if perhaps he’d imagined her standing next to him. When they met again, he knew they would, he’d open a valve, he’d give her his dried flowers & chord charts, a copy of his book on the history of shame, he’d find her, she’d find him, those severed lines would reconnect.

---

Loop 2

He hadn’t seen her since the Bonnard soiree, when she drank an urn of champagne, he smoked his way into a nightmare house, they woke on different boats in different dead seas. In the morning, he navigated home through a storm, his hull dragging the reef. She called a water taxi, a friend in a green uniform arrived, flew her to the city. This strikes me as a Rorschach he finally said I see a man leaping from a high dive into a pool of beer. To me it stinks of realism she replied is this supposed to be a QR code? She reeled her thoughts into her rib cage, as word bubbles swirled around him. A shadow sprawled across the gallery floor, the paintings darkened. He felt like a runner who kept jumping the starter gun. I’ll call you he said, knowing he would. Perfect she said, knowing he wouldn’t. They’d rehearsed the exit a dozen times in other lives but didn’t remember, the way she scurried out the front, lips clenched, the way he left through the back, stomping down a long, wet alley. He thought about texting her, even calling out her name, but she was already so far away.

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John Amen was the recipient of the 2021 Jack Grapes Poetry Prize and the 2024 Susan Laughter Myers Fellowship. His poems and prose have appeared recently in Rattle, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Daily, and Tupelo Quarterly, and his poetry has been translated into Spanish, French, Hungarian, Korean, and Hebrew. His new collection, Dark Souvenirs, was released by New York Quarterly Books in May 2024.

'O, to bloom, to arch open' — poetry by Karen L. George

Vernal Equinox

Time to plan what gardens, arboretums, conservatories to visit at the peak of their tulip displays. Intrigued, electrified by how they loosen, unfurl to absorb light and heat, attract pollinators; at night, on cloudy days, close to keep pollen dry, sex organs safe.

To behold how they curve fully open, reveal pistil and dark stamens, petals yellow streaked with orange, vibrant, shimmery-soft.

O, to bloom, to arch open, bask in the current, river of the divine orb.

---

The Volume of Love

I enter a house
purple with longing
roam rooms, corners
amassed with jasper
to draw out spirits

Outside, I move between woods
and lake, deep spaces

Trunk, foliage, clouds reflect
on water, soundless
felt weight of music

The flat curl of opposite shore
calls, casts me into the golden lap
of wonder, the blue-green quiet tick—
Earth’s heavenly body

~ Found poem composed/modified from words on pages 36-7 of Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr

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Karen L. George is author of the poetry collections Swim Your Way Back (2014), A Map and One Year (2018), Where Wind Tastes Like Pears (2021), Caught in the Trembling Net (2024), and the collaborative Delight Is a Field (2025). She won Slippery Elm’s 2022 Poetry Contest, and her award-winning short story collection, How We Fracture, was released by Minerva Rising Press in 2024. Her poetry appears in The Ekphrastic Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Lily Poetry Review, and Poet Lore. Her website is https://karenlgeorge.blogspot.com/.

'the sky violent' — poetry by Robert Warf

Hourglass

Held in interlaced fingers. Sand through flesh.
Into your open mouth. You, on your knees.
When I am empty, I get on mine and look
up to your fingers slowly cracking,
myself slowly opening.

---

scissored collision

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Robert Warf is from Portsmouth, Virginia and is a PhD student at Oklahoma State University. He has work in The Cincinnati Review, Post Road, 3:AM Magazine, Forever Mag, Write or Die Magazine, and Southwest Review. You can find more of his work at robertwarf.com. 

'Love is a necessary duty' — poetry by Tabitha Dial

New England Woods

I.

The woods and I listen
to each other, its ears
taller,
deeper than mine.

II.

Solstices summon form from cold emerald depths.
The woods hold court with secret songs
and consult views spread like tarot cards.
Witches track wolves and plant iris bulbs in their prints.
Bracken ferns unfurl the boldest predictions—
bent, broken: bullfrog and berry bush.

III.

Love is a necessary duty. Pick anything –
a flock of birds, a rock, a river –
yourself and someone not at all like you.

---

Tabitha Dial’s relationship with Luna Luna Magazine began as Intersectional Feminism Curator during its first incarnation. Tabitha now curates a Garden State garden. She is the Poetry Editor of Roses & Wildflowers, a winner of the Penned Literary Contest (2021), and member of Jersey City Writers. She completed a Poetry Gauntlet of 100 poems written in one year, and an MFA in Poetry from Colorado State MANY years prior. A twice published non-fiction book author, Tabitha is working with an editor on her debut poetry collection.

'the doors of the night open' — poetry by Juan Armando Rojas (translated by Paula J. Lambert)

editor’s Note

Below you will find poetry in the original Spanish by Juan Armando Rojas alongside the English translation by Paula J. Lambert. The poems are excerpted from the manuscript El camino que lleva nuestros nombres / The Path that Carries Our Names.

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Juan Armando Rojas is a Mexican-American transborder poet, essayist, and scholar. He is the author of ten poetry collections, most recently Aurora Boreal (2023), an audio- poetry album available on all major streaming platforms. His bilingual manuscript, The Path That Carries Our Names, co-translated with U.S. poet and translator Paula J. Lambert, features poems that have appeared in Mid-American Review, Plume, and Taos Poetry Journal. Rojas’ work has been translated into English, Arabic, Portuguese, and Italian, and is widely recognized for its exploration of borderland identity, language, and cultural memory. He holds a Ph.D. in Latin American Literature from the University of Arizona, completed postdoctoral studies at Amherst College (2002–2004), and served as poet-in-residence at the University of Coimbra in Portugal (2011). In addition to his creative work, Rojas has held various academic leadership roles in the United States. He currently serves as the President of the Hispanic Ohio Writers Association and is the recipient of numerous literary awards and research grants for his contributions to poetry and transnational cultural discourse.

Paula J. Lambert has published five full-length poetry collections including Terms of Venery, Revised (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2025) and six chapbooks including Sinkhole (Bottlecap Press 2025). Lambert is also a literary translator, small press publisher, and visual artist. Her work has been supported by the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Her mentorship has been recognized by PEN America. A strong supporter of the intersection of poetry and science, she lives in Columbus with her husband, Dr. Michael Perkins, a philosopher and technologist. More at www.paulajlambert.com.