Dignity

by Caleb Jagoda

And then, it’s summer: The air dense as cornbread 
and sweet, too, the fireflies ambling fat and lazy and gone 
as soon as you spot them, an aeon exploding with friends
and drinking, dancing and laughter, all of it rushing over you 
like the forest’s deep green, the limbs of its pine trees heavier
than your eyelids after the span of a night spent bartending, 
shrinking time – its fullness – until it snaps, and so the yellow
of dawn follows, comes knocking, brings hot coffee in cool 
morning, slippery as the sun’s greased gleam because, soon, the rain 
drifts in like it’s lost, pokes through and glazes over brightness, 
which your favorite author calls fox rain, a time, she claims, 
when wolves host wedding feasts and witches brush their knots 
of mangy hair and everything feels alien but familiar 
like those hulking blocks of ice culled from the lake
during winter but insulated in summer, in sawdust, looming, blankly,
from ice shed, cloaked darkness, with a silent sort of radiance.

​

​

​Caleb Jagoda talks in aphorisms until those closest to him demand he stop—but hey, you know what they say: Buy the ticket, take the ride. Caleb is a poet, journalist, and MFA candidate at the University of New Hampshire, where he works as managing editor for Barnstorm Journal. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blue Earth Review, The Queens Review, and Down East Magazine. He lives in Dover, New Hampshire, and is big on the internet: www.calebjagoda.com.

​

 

Circus Town

by Lou Ventura

My town has a circus in the park
that never leaves,

passing through years ago, deciding to stay
because the streets had no traffic lights
and the bars had no doors.

I especially like the bearded lady,
so unashamed – so beautiful.

She stares silently at the gawkers
and makes them cry.

​

​

​

Lou Ventura lives in Olean, NY.  His poetry and prose have appeared in several publications including The Worcester Review, English Journal, Sledgehammer, and Sein und Werden. His poetry collection, Bones So Close to Telling, is published by Foothill Publishing. 

 

 

Late Afternoon

by Bonnie Demerjian

It’s no puzzle why this time of day is what it is.
The exhalation of hours propels unwilling spirits toward a darkness
too much like the end.
All activity unwinds, an exhausted clock.
The last reluctant grains of sand cling to the glass.
The day gobbled up by insatiable time leaving only crumbs for furious ravens.
At 4 pm there is no appetite for more.
Happy hour or tea in another land may be a bridge across the quicksand
into the arms of evening’s welcome routine
where expectation and meaning are set aside like unanswered mail.
With supper, dishes, books, or screens
the end of day trickles toward bed and the hope that the nightwolves,
Held at bay by warm milk and a long novel,
will circle, curl, and, like us, find refuge on the island of sleep.

​

​

 

​Bonnie Demerjian writes from her home in the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska, a place that nourishes her writing. Her poetry has appeared in Tidal Echoes, Alaska Women Speak, and Blue Heron Review, among others. She has also written four books on the area’s human and natural history.

 

 

The Widow

by Jude Brigley

​

Annie James 1781- 1861

 

So, she must make do,

repair, carry her heart

in her own hands.

 

Buy her own ticket

and sit in her single seat,

swallow space:

 

eat up the dark.

wait her turn

hide the past,

 

while words freeze

on the window

melt and vaporise.

 

She must close the door,

wear disguise

and lose expectation

 

in the thicket of loss,

grieve for a past

that never existed

 

and weigh her hopes

on scales of silence

without eyes.

​

​

​Jude Brigley is Welsh. She has been a teacher, an editor and a performance poet. She is now writing more for the page. She has been widely published in magazines, including 'Door=Jar', 'Otherwise Engaged' and 'Blue Nib'. She was shortlisted for the Molecules Unlimited Poetry Prize in 2025. 

 

 

My Iris Holds

by Sarah Mayo

​

a midnight dance

a butterfly conjured

at dusk, foreshadows

aflutter, toads 

teasing you

​

with a lick

of their skin, 

a ballroom dress

swishing in a cell, 

a body tilting

towards the moon.

​

​​

​

​Sarah Mayo is a South Wales based poet. Her poetry appears in ‘Here: A Poetry Journal’, ‘Poem Alone’, ‘Republic Magazine’, ‘Subversion’ (Minerva Rising Press), ‘Screech’, ‘Locust Shells Journal’, the ‘High Rise Slimline’ volume (The Broken Spine) and in Spell Jar Press, Dreich and Cicada Song Press publications. Her flash fiction appears in the Wicked Shadow Press ‘Femme Fatale Flashes’ anthology. She edits the local literary art zine ‘Valleys’ Imaginings’ and she also enjoys creating art in her spare time.

 

 

Landscape

by Enno de Witt

​

Okay, first we move the stream

to its original bed, then we restore

the vastness of this embittered landscape,

walk down asbestos-paved paths along

 

grassy meadows, pools full of toads,

crows in trees, a hill somewhere, a

serrated edge of spruce, scarce resource,

a canal, rustling roads, railroads, trees

 

like church towers, barns duck for

cover, grey fields as far the eye can

see, drizzle and mist, we lay ourselves

down and reach for bread and water.

​

​​

​

​Enno de Witt’s poetry and artwork are firmly rooted in a tradition that goes all the way back to the dawn of language and to his youth on the Dutch North Sea coast. De Witt lives in the medieval city of Deventer on the banks of the river IJssel in The Netherlands. His poetry and art are published in The Netherlands, the usa, the uk, Nigeria, Canada and India.

 

 

Cheddar Man

By D.P. Gooding​

​

 

Lying in my pit in the fallout of another homebound crisis;

the wife, like Saturn, has devoured our children in a rage,

and now it seems she has finished with me as well.

Eyes leaden-weary, brain stamped down by history,

for no apparent reason my mind brings me leopards,

several of them packed together, as if waiting to get inside.

Their fur appears lifeless, flattened out like a pub carpet;

depressed and deflated, they are hunters in a vacuum,

athletic as the clay-like mammoth crushed by millennia;

suffocated for centuries, and yet apparently, somehow, survives.

 

 

​

D.P. Gooding’s poetry has been featured in One Hand Clapping, The Crank, Little Fish Magazine, and The Rusty Truck. His short fiction has been published in two anthologies by New Lit Salon Press and two volumes of The BHF Book of Horror Stories. He lives in a small village near the Cotswolds in the UK.

 

 

Crashing Through the Threshold

by Cliff Saunders

 

Open the door and step

into the shadows of sore losers.

 

Consider the lily of death

coming right at you like

 

a blank check, null and void.

Stab a fork into it and raise it

 

quickly over your head to see

if it is beginning to fracture.

 

With it, you could erase any

blessing from a parrot!

 

As winter nears, return to your

soul with a bowl of snow.

 

If you expect crying, the sun

will shine in your small bus

 

through winds that cling

to your wheels like Spanish moss.

 

What’s at the end of the rainbow?

Why, you are, of course!

​​

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​

​Cliff Saunders is the author of several poetry chapbooks, including Mapping the Asphalt Meadows (Slipstream Publications) and The Persistence of Desire (Kindred Spirit Press). His poems have appeared recently in Quadrant, The Rockford Review, Concision Poetry Journal, Bare Hill Review, and Little Leaf Literary Journal.

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​

Spin Me Round, Bee

By Nattie O'Sheggzy

​

​Let me dab your lips with kisses,

Splatter flower breath over you

Now that the faucet is turned on.

 

Love is another name for a string pattern,

A trellis that spills the waterfall,

Now that the floodgates are unhinged.

​

​​

​

​Nattie O'Sheggzy is a poet who, often accompanied by his loyal dog, Exhale, finds inspiration in the complexities of simple things. He is the author of two poetry collections: Random Imaginations and Sounds of the Wooden Gong. Nattie's work has been featured in various literary publications, including Literary Yard, Sandy River Review,  Ultramarine Review, Heroin Love Song, Agape Review, SweetSmell Journal, Smoky Quartz, Feed The Holy, and LiteZine.

 

 

My Mother Devours My Brother

By Huina Zheng

 

​       When my father stays out all night, my mother holds my brother and kisses his
forehead. Her teeth sink deep into his skin. Day after day, the dent on his forehead
grows larger.

​

       She has been devouring my brother. Bit by bit. Her kisses fall on his cheeks,
shoulders, arms, hands, stomach, thighs, and legs.

       When my father and mother argue in the living room, the sound of a teacup
crashing to the floor, followed by her crying and pleas for mercy, echoes through the
house. My brother wails, and I clutch him, covering his ears, trembling in the room.
After my father storms into their bedroom and slams the door shut, my mother
stumbles into the room. Her face swollen and red, her eyes bloodshot, her hair a
tangled mess. She engulfs my brother, burying her face in his shoulder. Her sharp
teeth gnaw at his shoulder, tearing through both flesh and bone.

      Outside, on the small path before our house, we play hopscotch with the other
children. Everyone stares at my brother’s shadow, missing half his head, half his body,
one hand, and one leg. They ask me, “Where’s the rest of his shadow?” I turn to look
at our mother, standing by the window, smiling at us with her fangs bared.

 

​

 

 

Huina Zheng, a Distinction M.A. in English Studies holder, works as a college essay coach. Her stories have been published in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, Midway Journal, and others. Her work has received nominations three times for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She resides in Guangzhou, China with her family.