My Blue Peninsula

By Kristen Keckler
after Joseph Cornell & Emily Dickinson

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The sky is a bucket
of lapis lazuli pigment
tipped
onto a stretched canvas
through the window
of my simple room,
framed by bleached wood
and square-wire
shutters
that offer me and bees
a reprieve from
the world’s gaze.

After you visit from
your own box,
I don’t perish
from bliss and delight—
I feel fortified
by my technicolored
daydreams
unspooled in flesh,
dopamine coasting
swift currents.

Then weeks of bleeding
sunsets,
and memories
cling like grass burrs
picked up
while gardening,
ready to collapse
at a soft touch.

To tame my brain’s
electric filaments
I scrawl doting notes
carried by messenger
pigeons, launching
my songs into sauntering clouds.
I linger in the warm
bath of you until
it grows shivery,
attempt to gently
shake you out
like fine sand
from a white towel.

I would, no doubt,
be lonelier
without the loneliness
that clutches my chest with
a funk that sometimes
only sunlight can evaporate—
or busy hands
in a patch of peonies.

If the space between
two lovers
is as immense as
a keening ocean,
hope is the finger
of Italy summoning
empty lungs to fill again.
Between our pages
I press the downy feather
you once left
on my doorstep,
waiting for your return
envelope.

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Kristen Keckler teaches creative writing at Mercy University in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Her work has appeared in L’Esprit Literary Review, The Argyle, The Collidescope, The Iowa Review, Vestal Review, Free State Review, and other journals. She can be found rummaging around garage sales and thrift stores, on the lookout for unexpected treasures. “My Blue Peninsula” was inspired by the Joseph Cornell shadow box that was, in turn, inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poem #405.

Unchased

 By Chad Parenteau

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I am not strong enough to witness
any tongue with a hint of intent
and honest motive that can break
down barriers that exist less as
protection and more for shade from
the world’s gaze while I slowly
die unwanted. There is no me in
needs. There was too much plea after
each please. I have stopped asking.
The secret is not to not ask but to not
want to ask and that’s why my
defenses stand strong, which is to say
unchallenged, ready to collapse at
a soft touch that never comes.

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Chad Parenteau hosts Boston’s long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Pocket Lint, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, The New Verse News, dadakuku, Nixes Mate Review and The Ugly Monster. He has also been published in anthologies such as French Connections, Sounds of Wind, Reimagine America, and The Vagabond Lunar Collection. His newest collections are All's Well Isn't You and Cant Republic: Erasures and Blackouts. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine and co-organizer of the annual Boston Poetry Marathon. He lives and works in Boston. www.chadparenteaupoetforhire.com

Repressed Memories

By Donalyn White

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Listen — the fact is
I remember things that were coming apart.
My mind seeks them out —
a wandering, rude tongue
prodding the gap of a missing tooth.
Wait — I am uninterested
in touching the bruise
of my own weeping grief.
Please — I am not strong enough
to witness the violence
of my own impossible resuscitation.

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Donalyn White (they/them) is a teacher, PhD student, and tender of archives living in Southern California. Their political musings can be found on Truthout and CounterPunch, and their poetry appears in MockingHeart Review and Plainsongs. They spend their spare time wandering around museums, exploring tide pools, and thinking about all the ways to melt ice.

Bohemian

 By Maureen Moroney

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I remember the splinters of the thing
like badly stapled upholstery
and I remember chapped lips
and I remember things that were coming apart
and I remember things that hurt
and things I couldn't help
but pick at.

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(Author’s note: The title refers to a bar and venue that was called the Boheme, not to people of Bohemian or Romani ancestry.)

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.

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 @g1rl0blivion

Softness Drowning Dusk

By Anna Geoffroy

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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.

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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

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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.