Rabbit Day

By Abigail Cain

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the temper of her tethered around
the sharply woven basket, the wood
wick of the carrier from pink to
yellow to green and beyond like the
many colored stars that dapple the girl
sky. she takes the splinters of the thing
and pokes between the ridges of her
fingerprints where the world is numb,
warm, and porous. she uses her hand
as a coffer for the rabbit’s chocolates
which fall in small eggs from the commonly
large trees of girl land. sweet sugar on the
tongue is bright blue lacey and white.
the temper of her simmered from the rays of
girl sun to the evening sliver of light.

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Abigail Cain is a writer hailing from rural Pennsylvania. She is grateful for the professors who have mentored and supported her. Her work can be found in Eunoia Review, Yin Literary, Yellow Light Magazine, Jardin Zine, and Querencia Press. Cain is the author of Girls are Fish, a novelette set to be released in August 2027 through Girl Noise Press. Sardine Can Collective is her literary magazine, a project that was formed from her passion for the more obscure parts of literature. abigailruthcain.blogspot.com

Softness Drowning Dusk

By Anna Geoffroy

᠅

the seventh day of the seventh month
finds the thousand girls temple supplicants still stuck
with the wives of shallow heart wondering how
long they will have to wait for the rebirth of glory wondering how
long til they get to the violent part of the story as if what happened
between toxic spouses wasn’t traumaporn enough when a woman
gets used to her body being used to soothe
the tempers of her tethered tortured torturer she can struggle to see
the horrors as they are and they are
impatient for healing impatient for change
impatient with themselves and their recalcitrant brains the meditation is
working even when it feels like it’s sticking the work is
wading and in the mud of the abbess’s past selves there is
a path out a lesson that took a thousand cycles to master and they are after
a speed run samsara learning for once
from secondhand suffering that it was always
enough it was always time to leave it was never
too early you can always walk
away.

᠅

Anna Geoffroy is a Massachusetts-based poet, propagandist and pope (non-exclusive). She is the co-host of the live-to-tape Contro-Verse open mic in Malden and editor of the Holy Nonsense project. She has performed at festivals, galleries, coffee shops and porch fests from Manchester to Mansfield, and other places not starting with the letter M. Her poetry has been published in Oddball Magazine, The Blood Rag, the Depose Anthology, and the Massachusetts Bards 2025 Poetry Anthology. You can also find her poetry and artwork featured in the 2022 Lines Connecting Lines exhibit at UMA, the Malden Covid Memorial, and a street post near you. qgpennyworth.com | Contro-Verse open mic

Rewriting Tanabata

By Jackie Chou

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There is no question
if she was godlike
if she was an artist
weaving tapestries
from pink ribbons of sunrise
to navy curtains of night
until her eyelids droop
without earning a dime

As for her cowherd husband
not even the fiercest passion
can survive eternity

Her love for him has long faltered
the way her aged feet feels
every time she steps
onto that magpie bridge
connecting them
across the Milky Way

She has learned to dread
the seventh day of the seventh month
hoping for Tanabata
to be canceled due to rain

It is just another night
to put on a show for folks to see
with pretend hugs and kisses
before she returns
to her side of the sky

᠅

Jackie Chou (she/her) is a writer from Southern California who has two collections of poetry, The Sorceress and Finding My Heart in Love and Loss, published by cyberwit. Her poem "Formosa" was a finalist in the Stephen A DiBiase Poetry Prize. She also has poems published in Synchronized Chaos, The Ekphrastic Review, Panoply Zine, Alien Buddha Zine, and Spillwords.

Quite A Puzzle

By Lynn White

᠅

“It was an alternative to Rorschach”, he said
just choose the dots to connect
in whatever way suits you,
and draw whatever comes to mind.
She wondered if this had been the challenge
set to God, or the gods,
when the night sky had been designed.
Random stars joined into a pattern
ready to be re-imagined
And named.

She looked at the page and wondered
if she was godlike,
if she was an artist,
or if she was a mere mortal
about to construct a puzzle
for someone else to interpret
just as she had pondered the night sky.

᠅

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She has been nominated for Pushcarts, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

So what if my neck is shaped like a mountainside

By Maureen Moroney

᠅

The black and white photos came with the claim: “We are just nature”
That is true, but the photos showed
in juxtaposition
a thorny stem next to a human back and the peaks of its spine,
a human wrist with raised vessels next to a jagged lightning bolt,
a human neck with head tilted back to show cartilage and sinew next to a craggy mountain slope.

Art and science are not separate, and the parallels to be drawn
are good fodder for observation and metaphor.

But a spine is not a stem and vertebrae are not thorns.
The cause of lightning is worlds different than how veins are formed in bodies.
The shape of your neck is not a result of the Earth’s crust crashing into itself.
The way physics acts on grains of sand is not the way the human psyche works.
A mother does not pass her body image issues through inherited cellular materials.

“These things look the same” says nothing, gives no insight
about the world and how it works.
It is lovely to find inspiration,
but folly to imply relationships where there are none,
to choose the dots to connect in whatever way suits you,
to draw conclusions about our behavior based on theirs.
That false connecting line
pretends to offer meaning, but is empty.

But there is still poetry
in a sunrise.
Gently falling snow
or endless crashing waves
do something to a soul.
These things are true.
These things have meaning.
I won’t say they carry the conscience of the universe.
I will carry them with care.
Sometimes the only way to describe a feeling
is to invoke tectonic upheaval.

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Maureen is an analytical chemist in central Iowa whose work can be found in Backchannels Journal and the Bond Street Review. No links, just support your local mutual aid organization and give a big, long (consensual) hug to someone.

Resilience is a Tardigrade

By Marilyn Close

᠅

A one-millimetre invertebrate moss piglet.
An eight-legged little water bear
able to survive extreme environmental conditions
under suspended animation.
hot - cold - dry - wet
    In a vacuum
          Dissociated & Alive

My brain must be inhabited by microscopic moss piglets
as thoughts float around. Unnoticed but for
a thick, clumsy lump in my throat.
Only these organisms can survive humanity’s toxicity
then come to the surface after laying dormant
deliver green energy out of ruminations.

Our gentle Tardigrades, to accompany reincarnation
with their ‘come-back-to-life’ cycle.
They carry the conscience of the universe.
I will carry them with care.
Join their swamp parade from earth to ashes to dust
           and back again.

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Marilyn Close wrote sappy poetry as a little girl and then put her pen down. Recently the desire emerged to write again. She lives in Canada with a few published poems and more in progress.

Curated

 By Dale Parnell

᠅

Losing her
felt like drowning in wool,
a thick, clumsy lump in my throat,
the strands
knotted
around my tongue
with all the begged chances
she wouldn’t hear.

It took ten minutes to pack her things -
Cherry-picked from the gallery we had curated
together,
and I realised
how little of herself
she had ever shared,
how little our lives
touched.

᠅

Dale Parnell lives in Staffordshire, England with his wife and their imaginary dog, Moriarty. Dale has had over twenty poems published, but he doesn't feel like he can call himself a poet. You can find Dale on Facebook and Instagram @shortfictionauthor.