Poetry
What to Watch For
by Jordan Hirsch in Issue Twenty-Three, June 2026
Grandmother taught me what to watch for:
curling blue leaves growing opposite each other.
Every year, she threw a handful of seeds in the soil,
and now I do, too. She taught me
what to watch for: cooler mornings,
something called frost, the shores receding back
to the line they’d crossed w...
The Carcass of the World
by Ai Jiang in Issue Twenty-Three, June 2026
When the carcass of the deer first appeared
erect and alive—not in flesh but in soul—
Father told me that the world was ending.
Its antlers grew, rose into the sky, pierced
its heart with its sharpened edges, and we stood,
watched as the clouds bled, pouring dark tears,
unleashing lightning r...
The Archivist of Vanished Tongues
by Oladosu Michael Emerald in Issue Twenty-Three, June 2026
They say the wind here speaks in broken alphabets. I collect dying languages, fragile things made of breath and dust, barely alive, like insects caught in amber. I’m a boy born with sand in his mouth, raised by silence and the slow scratch of forgotten scripts across his skin.
At night, the walls...
SOLD: One Soul, Gently Used
by Nico Martinez Nocito in Issue Twenty-Three, June 2026
I rattle thirteen sparse coins
in a pocket more used to moths than money,
the soft click disappointingly
empty.
Going once!
I need, I need, I need.
Instead, I frown.
Young, healthy, secular, loving: my soul
could fetch nine hundred, minimum—
enough for a year of food and a year of school...
Poison
by Marvellous Mmesomachi Igwe in Issue Twenty-Three, June 2026
For Ogoniland
‘Water was the source of life;
it is now the cause of death’
— Anonymous
Heaven falls again. & the river cries black.
So much until it becomes a miracle, how a
woman can bleed & not bring out blood the
color of night. In my ache for catharsis, I
baptize in his mouth of fil...
A Science Center Education
by Lynne Sargent in Issue Twenty-Three, June 2026
I once spun a wheel
in a science center,
in an anonymous city of sufficient size to have one.
Paint and plastic peeled at its edges
the stopping lines surely unfair
worn down such that even the non-stakes
of its turning might have been a cheat.
It was a wheel of probability,
of all the li...
Roommate
by Arthur H. Manners in Issue Twenty-Two, February 2026
Persephone Wins Custody of Herself
by Marisca Pichette in Issue Twenty-Two, February 2026
Mothercraft (a villanelle)
by Erin Brown in Issue Twenty-Two, February 2026