I Watch Star Trek So I Don’t Throw Myself Under a Bus

by Amy M. Alvarez

Have I become cynical? Probably. Anxiety
mounts the horse of optimism and drives

her into the ground. There is no here here
and I am trapped in the melody of mountain

and …

Self-Portrait as MRI

by Annie Wenstrup

 

For Immediate Release:

On July 1st, 2022, neurologist Jane Smith discovered the original
Ingalls Cabin. While conducting a routine MRI (patient: 36, F,
Dena’ina and white, familial history of aneurysms) Smith …

Ma hope o Nau ā Wali na Kunane Wooton

by Brandy Nālani McDougall

Auwē
this weight
of history    we nau

uwē this   history
uwē this     white stone
uwē this       story

uwē us    kaumaha we
kali us    ahonui we

kaumaha    …

When I Hum Improvised Songs

by Millicent Borges Accardi

After “One Last Love Poem” by Juan J. Morales

 

Aside from the time they might’ve
Been casting curses for others,
Helping priests for the Inquisition
Banishment and cleansings
Bruxaria, …

Grandmother

by Mary Leauna Christensen

Grandmother/ i want to cause discomfort/ squeeze these angled bones/ between warmth & the side of Your armchair/ tell me i am pinching Your leg/ allow me to stay/ …

DESCANTS

by Damian Smyth

 

1. Christmas Lights

What made it December, in the fields, was that everything
Was silent, except for the ice creaking in every blade of grass,
As if each one …

Aviary

by Anna Loughran

 

Milling about before the clinic
opened for a routine blood test,
I walked through a flurry of parakeets,
ducking as they swooped to feed
on blueberries & sunflower seeds,
& …

Exact Fits Make Me Superstitious

by Dean Browne

 

The fusty pinstriped suit jackets of larger men
are sagging the racks. Stretch full length in one until
your ears surge and still your fingertips won’t reach
out of the …

Cats of Cádiz

by Miriam Gamble

 

Cats own the breakwater rocks of Cádiz. This has been decreed – or has grown up as a consequence of cats deciding it and congregating there: Cats own …

Only the Water

by Brandy Nālani McDougall

 

 for the stolen water, lands, and lives of Hawaiʻi, and especially those of Lahaina

 

to divert, to steal, to hoard,
to pollute, to contaminate

to leak fuel   into
to …

It was now when it happened

by Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe

Editorial Note: This poem twins a Māori legend of the pīwakawaka (New Zealand fantail) with an Irish myth concerning Diarmuid (son of Donn), and …

7th North Street

by Matthew Petit

Glowing cross red neon perched
like a robin on the church roof vaulted
made of stone thick tresses of ivy

spill from it afternoon light scatters broken
images of the Virgin …