Forty-two thousand turkey days and seventy-four lightning mornings. Did you like the feeling of ice cubes on your skin? Or did you like the way I dried them with dolphin-patterned paper towels? We bought so many things that first week. Batman mugs. Three hundred forty-two glitter gel pens. I don’t remember the exact brand of laundry detergent we used, but I can remember the exact way you shrieked…

We walked the Lake Erie shore for an hour. No beach glass. Stopped for coffee at a place that looked like Starbucks. "Why now?" she said. "I'm getting too old to make the drive," I said. "And you already are." In a rundown part of Erie we saw a vegetable stand set up on broken pavement. Green tomatoes in a crate.

Sometimes I think there were too many. Other times too few. I've lost track of most of them— the living, the dead, the ones in between. A few show up in dreams. We say things we didn't say back then. Nights on damp sheets. Breath coming back slow. Both of us quiet, not sure what comes next. David Jibson lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he is managing editor of…

I'm in the basement again folding your laundry. It will always be your laundry because that's how we did things. Your laundry to fold, my trash to take out, your dog to feed, my car to wash, your garden to plant, my garden to weed. At the bottom of the basket, a towel that says "his". David Jibson lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he is managing editor of…

Maundy Thursday, Green Park the young man sings at Green Park station /if a ten-ton truck kills the both of us/ and the morning rush bundles by eyes half-shut, ears plugged and pumped with anti-noise inverted sound, they’ve cancelled him out, and I wonder if melody is enough, if words are enough, if anyone even listens anymore, is stillness still a thing on this…

We believed the ground. Until the ground forgot us. Walls went one way, children another. Someone called a name. Someone answered. Beneath stone and dust, a hand found another hand. For one moment, the earth held still beneath us. Eric Goldfarb’s work has appeared in Rattle, Hippocampus Magazine, ONE ART, Sky Island Journal, Third Wednesday Magazine…

The fresh snow early in the morning reminds me of a love poem that most will never read, and instead, they let their footprints become like clumsy words giving directions no one asked for. Richard LeDue (he/him) lives in Norway House, Manitoba, Canada. He writes poems. His last collection, Existential Drunk, was released from Alien Buddha Press in May 2026.

It's waking up early enough to feel the cool breeze against your naked feet after another miserable hot day that you realize eventually there'll be no more hangovers, blankets pushed to one side in the middle of the night or someone next to you, snoring as loud as love. Winter both a desire and a dread of accepting your own footprints…

Reading a dead poet arguing that there's no god seems to at least prove something about the way ghosts can be born from words and a true amen might be the silence between turning pages. Richard LeDue (he/him) lives in Norway House, Manitoba, Canada. He writes poems. His last collection, Existential Drunk, was released from Alien Buddha Press in May 2026.

It's Halloween in Buffalo. Technically, it's the day after Halloween because it's nearly 3 A.M. and I'm dressed as Waldo and stumbling along a street I don't know in a neighborhood I've never been in and I'm wondering what the fuck just happened to me. My phone has no signal and the only thing I have to orient myself is the fleeting magnetism buzzing in my body that tells me Lake Erie is…

they chanced upon a fine school, followed by a casual affair, a common marriage, and a decent job (meaning wages) they had the compulsory children, two sometimes three, and bought a standard house in a green and peach neighborhood. they enjoy rollerblading, two glasses of red wine before bed, sex as perfunctory as 9 a.m. occupations. they throw parties where others like them…

see Giovanni the castrati sing high, his lilt tickles cockles of stars. poppy sleep, plum-plucked as a knee-high boy, Medici tosses roses from afar. a mild rush, all his body can deploy, a fate marked by his nether scar. man must invest, he must try to get by, somewhere sits a vinegar jar. Sameer Saklani is a Brooklyn-born creature of matter, now residing closer to the equator with his loved ones. He explores the humananimal condition alongside the various qualities of language. His work appears sporadically like graffiti upon tortoises.

after Harrison Hamm It was a star-less year—koi-shaped scars on knees, tequila cocktails, fire alarms as exam bells—parents teach us how education is the only way out—while the roof tops swarmed with lost souls—history books summarize the reason each movement failed, list the casualties & economic loss—while returning again and again. i am a vain person dressing up niche with cynicism, word-vomiting in the hollow of your neck—& you take me for what i am: smoked crisp in the slammer, smooth as china, opaque white & rice yellow like snakeskin.

We both sink into quicksand, unsure of who dragged whom. You struggle free, while I cave in, down into the marbles & shells. Deeper, now bumping coccyx bone on the longshore trough. Body molding in a fetal position, a daring sun would mummify & carve. You don't stretch your hand out to save me, from your own pool of tears, sorrow from nowhere,

You are somewhere the lights do not know how to go out, beneath a castle made pink by fireworks, while here the room keeps its old darkness, into the corners and waits for the person who has not come home. There, everyone is moving. The rides lift and return them, children are carried through tunnels of painted stars, a princess bends to hear a name she will forget by morning.

On days that I throw the baby out with the bathwater, I never eat chocolate. When I'm planning on sex with my wife that night, no eating bread bowls of chili. Days where my car won't start, I always wash my hands with extra soap. Doctor's appointments that end well are a gift from God—I never pee in public on those days.

Please pay attention to the man in front of you. He will direct you to the left line or the right one. There is no rhyme or reason to which line you get. Left. Right. Right. Left. Right. And on and on the sorting goes. The short. The fat. The tall. The ugly and the beautiful. Stepping once and then again.

She is taking the china from the cabinet, Its creaking oak softly groaning out the name of Years, and years, and people you won't ever know. She is laying each plate on the table, And then she is smoothing the folds below each piece of tender silver, Each fork, each spoon, each lightly tarnished knife. She is lining the table with napkins folded…

sheds are for tired motors and hiding dimmed women tv is for family films and sticky solitude kitchen chairs are for scratch meals and holding backs upright showers are for muggy hugs and melting filth phones are for listening to lovers and watching strangers a thief burgled my innocence and then took to yours i'm sorry it's contagious Hanna Hathaway…

hardwired eyes scour your grip on braided cow hooving irrevocation DING never unheard ring the throat bell make it sting and stick like my tar on your road Hanna Hathaway is a writer and educator from Powhatan, Virginia. Her work revolves around childhood, psychiatry, and femininity, and she often writes in French. She pivoted from researching nanocapsules for drug delivery in chemistry labs to becoming a fully funded MFA poetry candidate at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.

lust smells like exhaust unburnt hydrocarbons of go kart summers spent in amusement parks and carnivals ransoming little oxygen left in my lungs for a drag of your lips a ride around those merry hips noxious burst of smoke from my sputtering engine all revved up with no where to go. Val I. Vanderburgh writes from Colorado, USA. Working in a pet crematory by day, and writing by night, their work investigates the modern condition. Find more in Aphelion, The Platypus Review, The Sandy River Review, Vernacular, and elsewhere.

There was famine, but the cats didn't know. There was heroism, and we preferred tragedy. There was sadness, but our eyes didn't cry. There was terror, and we went to therapy. There was a storm, but we stayed inside. There was screaming, and we turned up the music. There was fever, but our heads were clear. There was debt, and our savings grew.

resist resis resi res re r r re reg regr regre regret Val I. Vanderburgh writes from Colorado, USA. Working in a pet crematory by day, and writing by night, their work investigates the modern condition. Find more in Aphelion, The Platypus Review, The Sandy River Review, Vernacular, and elsewhere.

There is a shelf at the motor park where umbrellas, plastic bowls, a child's sandal, a sweater, and other lost items are being assembled. Every morning, the attendant wipes them with the corner of his shirt, not clean enough to restore their colours, only enough to remind the objects that they have not been abandoned completely. People come asking for some items: a phone with a cracked screen, an envelope, a backpack, and other things people always lose.

It stood on a corner near a gas station with no other homes around. On the opposite side of the highway, a modern manufacturing plant towered, and across from that, an aluminum-clad truck driver training school. The two-story house was vacant but well kept— lawn mowed, cement walk swept. I can hardly recall its color, but gray and white comes to mind—

There is no furniture, but there are clocks, three clocks, all keeping time. The front room has windows on three sides. Nine windows. I finger the draperies wondering, is there enough blue in them, will they go with the couch? Yes, it will be fine. Everything will be fine. I tie them back and pull up the window shades. The dark arrives.

some mornings i think all of it has gone away but then some afternoons i'm hyperventilating in a Tesco and i can tell myself it's because this is only the third time i've ever stepped foot in a Tesco but really it's because i'm surrounded by dozens of decisions i couldn't make back when i wanted to die and even now it still stings a place in my chest i've forgotten i remember…

thumb wrinkling in the tilt of her mouth, future daughter might grow up the perfect candidate. my body, that flawed engine, built her— how could it carry instincts for health? how can i pass down dimples & thick brows without corrupted impulses, clusters of sickness sitting dormant in the curve of tiny pink cheeks? baby born crying out in hunger & i worry…

And because I am hungry, I take a butter knife to these worries, which resist such handling and jam, knock out my bottom tooth on the first nibble a whistle pulls my throat and ears just long enough to blink: my mother's worries have never been good at sitting still, and now my knife is play and plastic and spooned,

The kitchen displays its soft inventory of light. An overturned cup drained of green tea reclaims its form. Shimmering dust crystals sing their ambient music. Outside, the trees model their latest outfits for the squirrels scampering on their runways, the pulsing dewlaps of opposing lizards. I empty my pocket of thoughts on the counter, next to half-eaten runny eggs, stingily buttered toast,

We return to my husband's childhood bedroom. The blanket is turquoise with white polka dots. The pillows are purple: faded plum and dusty periwinkle. It reminds me of the My Little Pony bedroom set I had growing up. I am noting things, writing down what I see. If I pretend this is not a beginning, it will never have to end.

Everything is an indulgence. Petit crème in a cup. Stirring the sugar into coffee. The way the window shutters are like eyelids flung open. Similes are indulgences. Me indulging myself. My belle-mère says that today everyone has a dog. One dog per person. Even dogs have dogs to reduce their anxiety. There it is again. Indulgence. Esther Sadoff is a teacher and writer from Columbus, Ohio.

We eat potatoes and pork chops. The potatoes are soft as wet sand. Rosemary on the pork chops. Herbs blacken quickly under fire. Before we left home, I decided to sit at the piano everyday. It's important to start so small that you don't even know you started. That's why I am writing this down. Esther Sadoff is a teacher and writer from Columbus, Ohio.

My grandma liked to tell us kids of the sick dog she found and killed with a shovel. Mother's little grace notes drawing your blood as gentle as a Sunday morning. Grandpa never had the heart for it, did he? Grandma laughing and shaking her head, feeling in the floorboards the old rhythm of the man. His portrait's on the mantel…

I. (Autumn) Our years begin And end In September Green light In the rear-view Image A steeple of sound Foundation lost its vestibular mission Tiles in the shower Fragments ended Up down -river, where Heal-all lies beetle, Undershot — the world rivers Over lakes of fire We watch the water Bounce back and run off To waste * Labour Day —

The biggest complaint coming from the Italians who work sewers is that waterworks is full of Canadians. What they really mean is we're useless; that we're a bunch of whining, soft, lazy Ditchpigs. They may be right—not one of us likes working in shit—sorry, wastewater is what it's called in the business, the technical term for everything that gets flushed, drained, or dumped down the sewers.

The new paint job buzzes in my head, it echoes the truth in micro-waves to spare me They interviewed your replacement at 9:30, a cheerful twentysomething with a face like a quiet suburb, the one where you were born, unassuming and safe, with boats for homes and media libraries for seas to conquer. I'm not here, my body's with the Queen's…

I have never seen Notre Dame de La Garde in the bone. I meet her in dreams: stone-cold mother, barrenness divine atop her cliff. If she were flesh, the curls under her veil would sway like nooses in the wind. The fast, sandy sort of wind that gets lodged inside cuts, but slides off skin. Down in the harbor, the catamarans are…

Because the light arrives here secondhand, bounced off the chalk flank of the building opposite, nothing in this room is lit so much as lent – the sill's one glass-ring, welded there by a summer I did not spend; the hairpin gone the copper of a struck match, behind the radiator's ribs; the small unfaded oblong on the wall where somebody's weather hung for years…

Smell the funk: neglected, unwashed body See the lank long lusterless hair hanging over face, head bowed down on yesterday's knees world come undone— could be you, could be me daughter, son, dear dear one be aware: this being may be with you in your last moment those features the last you perceive reaching out to hold your hand with support…

When I was thirteen, my parents bought a bikini model poster for the wall next to my bed. The model, a tan woman with ocean- wet hair, lay on her side on a sunny beach, pouting seductively into the camera. My parents thought I was old enough to have it. They found it at Kmart on Dodge Street, though deep down,

I miss you, the first man to stick his tongue in my mouth. It's been six years since we went on that date on the river walk. I didn't think a man would ever love my fatness, my hairiness. You didn't mind the awkward way I spoke whenever I got anxious, which was always, how I struggled to concentrate, thinking too…

after Arms Break, Vases Don't, a surreal photograph by Erik Johansson I've become a landmine of jagged edges that can cut into the bottom of your bare feet if you're not paying attention. There's no need to cry. I don't want to blame you for thinking you could carry your mother's decorative vase without help. I don't want to lie to you, reassure you…

Most days, I didn't think about my weight, how hard it was to keep up with my skinny classmates in gym class at George Washington Middle School, how hard it was to see my feet just by looking down, my gut a mountain. Most days, I didn't think I was beautiful or ugly. I assumed the world would love me,

I'm drinking water from heaven! her voice creaking in delight, drops still falling from fingers, mouth wet with laughter. She rose from her crouch. Ben Nevis behind her, cloud-headed, summit "blind in mist." Nearby, signs called out warnings: Conditions can change rapidly. Be equipped and prepared for bad weather. The sun was plentiful that day. Recent rains had become rivulets,

Emma only wanted to fix the house up a little—nothing major, just a few improvements she had been wanting to make. It was a nice little house, built in 1939 on the edge of Stafford, a small development with quiet streets named after flowers. It had taken her a long time to fully appreciate its outdated assets. When she and Charles first bought it, she had been too young to know what she had, and it was years before she had overcome the feeling that if she owned it, it could not be of much consequence.

Rondeau of the rotors roaring in the radiant air, relying on rapid winds, rectifying the silence. Riotous revolutions of blades in rhythmic rotation like ravenous ravens in rural rebellion, like roaming rabbits, roasting under a sun yellow as the ragwort of the fields reddening the arresting skies. Gabriela Sanderson is an English teacher from Argentina, now based in Manchester, UK. She writes—both in English and in Spanish—about geographies, belonging, our (dis)connection to the natural world, and the human heart.

Our television baptised my limbs under the blanket, proclaiming I was not holy enough. Father, I wish I could tug the folds of your pillows right now, lie beside you for a while. I want to wallow under the dim of your lights— flickering, in sync with my heartbeat. I want to confess how I aligned my tiptoes to a different frequency.

We've seen this highway flicker into stop-motion— our streetlight-swathed bodies dissolving into shadows. Car wheels became the sprockets & you asked why the colour grading keeps changing. Hey, you must learn how to be grateful. Can't you see. We're in the front seat, cushioned in concrete. Everything for us is free. I am sorry still. This is the only wish our pennies can afford.

The city is still in the early dawn: Raindrops gently peck onto cobbled stones, magnifying the man-made copper. The deckered bus puts on a red coat and whispers good morning to passing bikes, finding comfort along the postered alleys. The sun stands sheepishly behind grey clouds, like a schoolboy peeking beside his mom. I'm in a cafe across last night's pub,