Armillaria moves beneath the leaf mold, sending its fungal finger-threads through earth rot-rich with lignin and decay. It is a silent network, older than the tallest tree. The veins of life. No one has mapped its reach. It takes what it’s given, making a meal of all fallen things. A wet cradle for the soft collapse of everything. At the tree line, he squats, tilts his neck to trace the arc of shelf mushrooms climbing a yew’s spine: white moon-fruit purling among the sun’s spider-lines. One breaks beneath his finger, its tissue part marrow, part sponge. Was it here you buried her? Softening enough to be digested. He listens for the carbon and nitrogen moving underground, exchanged in chemical language. Pit and pulp. Every body is a soft fruit for the soil to open. Some animal impulse in him, like a larva chewing through meat, compels him to lie belly-down and stretched out, as if to let the hyphae learn his shape. He thinks about his instruments. He thinks about all the things nature has made that man cannot immitate: lignin, chitin, keratin. He thinks about skin. A beetle clicks beneath his boot. The boundary between self and soil begins to blur. He kneels among many little moons. God is nearby, mouth open, waiting.

 

---

Rowan Tate is a Romanian creative and curator of beauty. Her writing appears in the Stinging Fly, the Shore, Josephine Quarterly, and Meniscus Literary Journal, among others. She reads nonfiction nature books, the backs of shampoo bottles, and sometimes minds.

Under a sky of compassion
she wandered the streets
to erase her anger
stumbling at every corner
hoping that a miracle descends
and erases her frenzy.

There was a scent of stubbornness
in the air that kept her trying.
As she roamed through the darkness of the night
where the backstreets smelled
of forgotten love stories,
she saw the dawn’s first ray
pointing to her heart.

No corner was clear of fury
until she reached the shore
laid on the warm sand,
and watched the tide
wash away all the ocean’s rage.

---

Ramzi Albert Rihani is a Lebanese-American writer. He received the 2024 Polk Street Review first-place poetry award. His work has appeared in several publications in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Belgium, and South Africa, including ArLiJo, The Galway Review, Chronogram magazine, Fine Lines, Last Leaves Magazine, Poetry Potion, and The Silent Journey Anthology. He is a published music critic. He wrote and published a travel book, “The Other Color.” He lives in Potomac, MD.

Ragdoll

When I die,

I hope my soul

is ragdolled

by the good Lord

across the earth

of every step,

route, run

I’ve ever taken

and I hope

it writes a word

I don’t want to freak you out, but you’re loved

Flipping through the old beige address

book, your Oakland apartment stared at

me on the last page for the ‘S’ names.

The other night all your old friends

shared how much they miss you, wizard

staffs in hand. I miss you too.

We can only speculate where you’re living now,

I hope you’re not dazing like we think

you are. I hope you feel a new freedom

in this unforgiving world ever since the

beautiful twists of your brain drowned

in the psychosis we watched happen.

---

Laila Freeman is a writer from Southern California who received her MFA from Chapman University. Her poetry has been featured in Samfiftyfour Magazine, OyeDrum Magazine, Dissident Voice, and more. Freeman’s poem, “Genesis,” was among the winners of Vellichor Literary Magazine’s June 2025 poetry contest. Keep up with her latest writing endeavors on LinkedIn and Instagram @lailafreemann.

This is the mouth, filled with smoke, teeth struck on flint, tongue blistered,
words breaking into sparks that do not catch, kisses tasting of soot and sorrow.

This is the hand, carved into kindling, splinters blooming red along the lifeline,
palms trembling as if they remember fire, fingers cracked open like prayer.

This is the ribcage, bent into a prison, ghosts roosting where breath once lived,
wings rattling bone-bars, hollow percussion, an empty choir feathering the lungs.

This is the eye, waiting for fire, seeing only ash, burning inward,
replaying the blaze that never arrived, light devouring itself in secret.

This is the skin, parchment brittle, names written deep into scar and silence,
pores exhaling dust like smoke, every scar an elegy curling shut.

This is the spine, a question bent, vertebrae cracked like dry branches,
each one whispering why into the marrow, each one bowing lower under silence.

This is the heart, a matchbook struck, sulfur worn down to wound,
every spark dissolving before flame, every beat a friction that bruises itself.

This is the blood, blackened river, dragging its debris through narrow veins,
a drowned hymn humming in the marrow, a tide that refuses to rise again.

This is the lung, chimney of soot, exhalations lined with ash and ruin,
smoke curling back to the throat, breath itself returning to fire.

This is the body, brittle and waiting, stacked like wood against the dark,
its shadow already smoldering, watching, always waiting for the match.

---

Betty Stanton (she/her) is a Pushcart nominated writer who lives and works in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals and collections and has been included in various anthologies. She received her MFA from The University of Texas – El Paso and holds a doctorate in Educational Leadership.  She is currently on the editorial board of Ivo Review. @fadingbetty.bsky.social

You died like a rumor—
too quiet to stop anything.
Left me holding your half-built faith in both hands
like it was mine to finish. You gave up first—
couldn’t stand one more second watching us fuck it all up.

What a small, cruel thing we did to you—
turning your patience into a weapon,
letting you rot inside your own decency.

Did you pray?
Did you pray to a god
only for someone else to do the staying for you?

Inside your silence,
a second silence.
Inside that, me.

Let the world choke on its pious cowardice.
I’m not noble. I’m not forgiving.
And you’re not here to hear it.

---

Shae is a queer, autistic goblin fascinated by speculative futures, the grotesque—why we flinch, what we cast out, and what it reveals about us. Interested in the intersection of accessibility, disability justice, and design, they are always circling back to one question— What does it mean to be held?

revolution in the air

a courtroom sighs

one too many times

& the earth bemoans

what is rightfully

Hers.

epilogue:

heaven

silent

is not

open

for business

today.

---

david woodward aka un-known lives just south of Montreal with his wife and son. Some of his most recent work can be found in the engine(idling (poem nominated for Best of the Net), North Dakota Quarterly, Sunday Mornings at the River (“f**k the patriarchy” series), The Field Guide Poetry Magazine (Featured Poet), Sea to Sky Review, Wilderness House Review, and upcoming in The Universe Poetry Journal in the U.K.

 (Thanks to Beth Muccio)

Summer scent on the breeze & pushcart pretzels I think of,

subway heat beneath NY snow or the damp salt of Cape

blankets when the leaves outside seem to drip

green upon the curling calendars that time in our fingers

flip the photo blossoms of while our breath is a stamp,

our flesh, just packages, the tape, the strings,

the pungent, the brown, unwrapping any landscape’s

familial face as a phoning friend, an in-transit lover

between the pages of some scrapbook where fragrances wait

to press upon, to seize.

---

 Resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, https://thestephenmeadchromamuseum.weebly.com/ ,Stephen Mead is a retiree whom, throughout all his pretty non-glamorous jobs still found time for writing poetry/essays and creating art.  Occasionally he even got paid of this. Currently he is trying to sell his 40-year backlog of unsold art before he pops his cogs, Art Collection from Stephen Mead

 after Dylan Baker and Juna Barnes

                  this beautiful disease

            makes addicts who don’t care

                                            the cage ceiling is painted

                                                                                                 like the sky 

          drawn by the lone porch light 

                                                                        I feel alive in reminiscence 

                                                                                      the creaking loveseat rocking 

         the bonfire by the river

                                                                                           a yearning touch

                                                                     yearning   yearning not for me exactly

     I merely occupy a space and time

                                                                                                                   yearning to quell 

          the icy fire in her body        

                                   by pushing it into another fire

yearning

                                                          to soothe the northern bird

                                                                               that feathers a long cold wind

---

Bobby Steve Baker is a Canadian/American writer/photographer/neuro-ophthalmologist living in Ontario and Orlando. He has recently published in Ink Nest, Fieldstone Review, The Soliloquist, Litmosphere, and Charlotte Lit. He has three books of poetry the latest book of poetry and photography the latest is This Crazy Urge to Live by Linnett’s Wings Press. 

for her

to fit

we all

have to

make room enough in the tiny

wooden

womb

---

Julietta Bekker (she/they) is a writer, educator and illustrator who lives with her husband and child in Portland, Oregon. Her poetry has been published by Pile Press, Bitter Melon Review, 7th-Circle Pyrite, Seedlings and Querencia Press, and is forthcoming from The Dread Literary, Flat Ink Magazine, Gather, and Oyster River Pages. Her work incorporates elements of the natural world to explore political and societal themes through the lens of a queer parent. 

Oh Lonely Rock

Cold water flutters in the mountain stream beneath the unearthly clarity of a starburst sky. Invisible frogs chirp like happy birds to the pure naked rock wall across the river. The noble passion between a perfect moment and eternity. Doors, windows, words, silent prayer, nor deep meditation could open wide enough to let us in, or out. For the first time I think I understand. A jealous God.

                     a leaf turning slowly past the pilgrim’s deep bow

Faces in the Dark

Wink at the ink and the ink winks backs. It is a strange relationship I have with the words I write. They come from different places: the words of others, the mysteries of the muse, the vast architecture of language, where holy music plays. They come to me as gifts. They are mine, though not exactly me. They keep a part of me growing older, still in the limbo of time, where life becomes stories. To fashion to remember what never might have been. Sunlight failing against a wall. What is left in these fragile monuments, these chapels where I venerate my other selves? Chapels built on the ruins of chapels. Ten thousand prayers for the dead, chanting words I need to know.

                                                             night’s song

                                                             scribbled in stars

                                                             gravity’s nebula

---

 Robert Witmer has resided in Japan for the past 46 years. Now an emeritus professor, he has taught courses in poetry and short fiction not only at his home university in Tokyo but also in India. His poems have appeared in many print and online journals, including Lily Poetry Review, The Mean Street Rag, Bacopa Literary Review, New Verse News, Parody, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Bewildering Stories, The Opiate, and Moonday Mag.  He has also published two collections of poetry, Finding a Way (2016) and Serendipity (2023). A third book, Sunrise in a Rabbit Hole, will be published in 2025.