Poetry
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By Jacq Schroeder Gemini 𖤓 | Aries ⏾ | Cancer ↑ My cat scratch got infected on October 28th.By Halloween rotten pumpkin gut spills down my calf on the front step.Cinderella’s glass slipper sticks in putrid orange puss,An apologetic candy bar melts in her cavities. A week ago plastic skeletons broke from the branches of
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By Ella B. Winters Son Daughter for Wren You are changing,and I’m not really surewhat to do with the partsyou no longer havea use for. Thorax crushed,wings unformed,without a cocoonthe slimy mess of itdissolving everythingI knew, right in front of me. Still, the matteris the same. The DNAisn’t altered. Componentsrearranged, but the energynever dies, keeps
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By Dorian Mackle Bayley Cancer 𖤓 | Libra ⏾ | Virgo ↑ i call the oceanon a conchwho tells me i spitthe rising tidewho tells me, to knowhow a whale tastes,she onceswallowed the moon. i put on starsto introducemy fingers to the rock pool crabsand there she is — tossing night acrossher scapula,biting epidermis cliffs,teaching
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By E. L. McKee Scorpio 𖤓 | Cancer ⏾ | Sagittarius ↑ I think I’m finished with waiting for the stars to align. I’d rather not be at the behest of their fickle twinkling. The Big Dipper doesn’t get to decide, the Ram and Bear be damned— I won’t be governed by The Celestial Body
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By M. B. Duffy Capricorn 𖤓 | Capricorn ⏾ | Virgo ↑ Is this body an anchor or a penal colony? A moot memory, a book etched in bone, Untranslatable as your dead grandfather’s extinct mother tongue, Still lingering in the syntax of your sleep As a ghost, harsh words pass through me As flesh, our hologram lifespan
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By Molly McDonough I Warm salted water tumbles me like laundry to land. I swim back out unafraid. Wave after wave buoys my eleven-year-old body. It’s my favorite week of every summer—visiting my great aunt at Myrtle Beach. On the shore, my mom waves with her whole arms, cups hands to mouth and screams something.
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By Najla Elmachtoub This piece has been selected by our editors to be nominated for the 2026 Pushcart Prize. “Bokra1, I will visit my brother in America,” you tell me, more like a fact than a desire. Every exhale of your cigarette affirms this belief and kisses my nose with our family scent: farm-soil-sweat and tobacco. You’re talking about
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By Sandra Beth Levy I love flowers, especially as they roll open, surprise at each angle and iteration. But from you afar,always choose a phone callover a bouquet, the gift of your voice is more velvet.Always choose a home visit to sharefamily dinner over connectionat large lavish events, abundance is in the contagion of our
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By Paul Hostovsky I used to think spring was the sexiest seasonbut now I think it’s fallwith all its burning smellsand the musculatureof the impatient trees with theirred pants down around their kneesalready—and all this talk of peakfoliage, which reminds me of the talkof orgasms, which are both the point andso beside the point. I
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By Mahailey Oliver Mahailey Oliver (she/her, Pisces 𖤓 | Capricorn ⏾ | Pisces ↑) holds an MA in English from Stephen F. Austin State University. Her work has recently appeared in The Raven Review, Spark to Flame, and Blue Daisies Journal. For a full list of her publications, peruse her author website: https://sites.google.com/view/mahaileyoliver
A Curious Moon 