---

Canadian researcher Terry Trowbridge’s poems have appeared in The New Quarterly, Carousel, subTerrain, paperplates, Dalhousie Review, untethered, Nashwaak Review, Orbis, Snakeskin Poetry, American Mathematical Monthly, M58, CV2, Brittle Star, Lascaux Review, Carmina,, Progenitor, Muleskinner, Sulphur, Northridge Review, Ex-Puritan, Perceptions, Granfalloon, Literary Hatchet, Calliope, New Note, Confetti, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, and more. He is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for grant funding during the polycrisis.

I was born dead, blue
and you were there bloody—
you lost so much
time to me.

A breach in the world, I am
made of music, and emptiness, and infections
run through my scraped brown skin
like yours, yours
from the playground
from a cold womb.

You never wanted me, did you
did you, did you
did you see me when I broke free
out of the shell too early?
I couldn’t
breathe
but I loved someone.

Mother, mother,
I need your feathers, please
lay them on me now.

 

---

Sapphire Lynn Johnson is an African American writer from Chicago who is pursuing a BA in Creative Writing at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. Currently, she works as Editor-In-Chief for Broadside Literary Magazine, where she reads submissions from students and critiques them.

knew what was under skin,

muscle, cartilage: a map

back home.
 

---

Ewen Glass is a screenwriter and poet from Northern Ireland who lives with two dogs, a tortoise and a body of self-doubt; his poetry has appeared in the likes of Okay Donkey, Maudlin House, HAD, Poetry Scotland and One Art. Bluesky/X/IG: @ewenglass

The world’s most elegant funeral ad, a promise that your small, uneventful life will live beyond its bones. This hunger for forever, this lust for the invisible—it’s a desperate wish not to be dust, not to be forgotten, not to be nothing. Church is a performance where holiness is a contest of virtue in pressed dress shirts and pastel dresses. If comparison is the thief of joy, then joy’s corpse lies under the altar. They count the sinners, not the casualties. The Sunday newspaper wilts beneath their coffee cups. Oh yes how horrible, God watches over them, they murmur. They pray for the children, but their compassion never leaves the pew. Reality cannot live in thoughts and prayers; only performance does, a shimmering badge of goodness sewn to the chest. The church is a fantasy with better branding, membership free if you don’t mind losing your marrow. So I’ll take my gym membership instead, at least it offers free clean showers.


 

---

Waverly Vernon (they/them) is a writer and interdisciplinary artist from Florida currently studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Their work explores politics, religious deprogramming, and trauma, transforming personal experience into connection and dialogue. What began as a personal refuge has grown into a means of connection, inviting readers to share in these explorations. They are the author of the micro chapbook “soft-skinned”, published by Bottlecap Press. Their poetry also been published by Ark Review, WIA Magazine, Wildscape Literary Journal, Creation Magazine, and Arcana Poetry Press.

we are carving inside jokes

about tomatoes at twilight

in the backseat of my car

you’re wearing a bernie sanders sweatshirt

and the night is cold and ripe

and i feel alright and think thoughts

like life is loveable and livable

it takes 

      one evening 

                 with you

you dart your eyes 

at the street outside

your curls waterfall out

the mouths of lucky stars

i cannot believe i know you

but i am glad i do,

because

the night is ripe and it took

one evening with you 

to think 

tomatoes are funny and death is so overrated.

at the balcony of a coffee shop

the leaves sway in a reykjavik wind

and the smoke from my cigarette

blankets above your pretty eyes;

we are two people in a toor painting

and at a random 7 PM

you realise you can find

god, hope and glitter

in a friend and gospels

just begin to make sense

and the traffic slows 

and the air smells of cardamom

and you think you’re in

a quarter life baptism 

realising,

realising,

you are now on the table of people

you’d envy from another table 

you now calendar mark sundays

for soup dates 

and realise,

realise,

it takes one bambi-eyed mystical girl

in a bernie sanders sweatshirt

to understand 

that tomatoes are funny, life is loveable, livable

and death is so, so, so, overrated. 

---

Hussain Aamir is a poet who has been writing and releasing poetry, digitally and in-print for over a decade. his free-verse work explores questions of identity and contemporary takes on romance, friendship, and the self; often delivered with a sardonic, witty edge. he is the author of several poetry books, namely ‘oddball’ and ‘epic’, and plans to release his next poetry collection in the summer of 2026.

Shy boy, the framed photo on your headstone made me cry 

sweet dark-haired stranger, head bowed, eyes lowered 

your gentle smile made me wonder how your life 

was cut short at the start of young adulthood 

had you left home to study or travel with friends; did you play

in a band with mates you loved and who loved you back? 

Did you meet your sweetheart? You held me

graveside, sweet boy, 

and decades since 

your smile 

remains.

---

Janina Aza Karpinska draws on many influences and writes in a variety of styles, with poetry published in: London Reader; Magma; Ekphrastic Review; Drawn to the Light; Heron Tree; Lit Shark; Cold Signal; Epistemic Lit, Midwest Zen, and Raising the Fifth, amongst others. She lives on the south coast of England.

lashing out at vacant emissaries
slipping through my every vein
weighing down while rising up
at once, you burrow
bend, graze, break
against my empty palm

tipped forward now and
even more weighted
tipped backward now
our tethered hearts fill
and sending beats rippling
ripping through my frame
you disappear completely

bubbles brush under thighs
teeth, temporary, tooth
nip over this waist
nestle in this wrist
I need you, an anemone
nested in a womb

be idle, be still
settle as I crack
take me, leave me
a shadow beneath a wave
I’d rather be
your cortical home

---

Caridad Cole is a forest-raised writer and filmmaker. With a Pushcart Prize nomination and other literary recognitions, her work has recently appeared in The Poetry Lighthouse, Coffin Bell Journal, and An Anthology of Rural Stories by Writers of Color 2024 (EastOver Press). Say hi at caridadcole.com or @astrocari on Instagram.

Wraith, I drift now through the grasses that grow
Tall on the blood of my friends, and endow
Field-flowers with their names.

Wraith, I drift now through the grasses that grow
Tall on the blood of my friends, and endow
Field-flowers with their names.

I haunt you, dragon, but I don’t quite know
Why. At fifteen, they gave me a crossbow,
At sixteen, I was dead.

---

Hibah Shabkhez is a writer and photographer from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in Arc Poetry, Meniscus, Thimble, Harpur Palate, Frogmore Papers, Potomac Review, and a number of other literary magazines. Studying life, languages, and literature from a comparative perspective across linguistic and cultural boundaries holds a particular fascination for her.

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/HibahShabkhez 

Twitter X: @hibahshabkhez

Insta: @shabkhez_hibah

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hibahshabkhez.bsky.social.

After Jeffrey McDaniel 

Sick of the secrets that slide
under window sills,
knock on doors, the government
has outlawed eye contact.

No syrupy smile from the paper
doll waitress who leaves
the menu bruised. Flings herself
towards the man in the back
booth, numb.

The ghost of Mom’s look
twirling the phone cord.
Her candied laugh,
cherry lips.
The other line takes away
her sadness—guess
I couldn’t.

Dad no longer waits

in the driveway oiling
his tongue with rusty
music.

The last thing I remember:
long fingers of gas,
his fading Old Spice,
forehead wrinkles I ironed
with my scratchy fingers

Sometimes,
I wish someone
would see through,
empty.

---

Suhjung Kim is a poet and writer from Seoul, South Korea. Her poems have appeared in Blue Marble Review, Paper Crane Journal, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere. When she’s not writing, she enjoys reading books of all genres, listening to music, and swimming.