Passover Redux

By Kyle Hunter

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At bible study, the kids are deciding
which of them would die
if there was another passover,
and whether step-siblings count,
and how they might pray
that someone else’s puppy
was the first in the litter, and how
the only way not to die
would be to kill,
and whether that is the way of God
or of the whole world, and how hard
they think it would be
to get that kind of blood
off their hands and clothes,
and whether the shingle at the back
of their tongues tastes like knowledge
and pride, and whether that
knowledge and pride are the type
that condemn or redeem.

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Kyle Hunter is a poet and managing editor of the literary journal the 50. His poems have appeared in Main Street Rag, DASH, So It Goes, Rockvale Review, New Verse News, Rat's Ass Review, and elsewhere. His poem "Peach Tree on Winfield" was nominated for the Best of the Net prize by Flying Island.

Whatever is Below the Roof

By Caleb Helfrick

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At dawn is when the monsters decide to climb out of my ceiling
The tiny crevices between the tops and the walls are no match for their slither
These snakes fly from the sky and enter my room with ease
Watching me bite the apple that tastes like knowledge and pride
This is the thin line you see in-between heaven and hell
The texture of fruit is not so important in this type of moment
But as I finish my snack I look back up at the sky
Just to see nothing but snake skins stretched by a popcorn ceilings

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Caleb Helfrick is an actor based in Longview, TX that has in interest in writing. He has been filling up his “Notes” app and journals with poetry since 2019. This year he has decided to submit poems for publishing. His first and only published poem titled, “The Tooth Fairy Grins” can be found on Navy Pen’s website. Follow Caleb on Instagram @calebhelfrick.

I lay on the grass and worry

By Dmitriy Kogan

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I lay on the grass and worry
as the stars stare down at their second lives
I think about every global event
not so important
in the grand scheme of things
as the only thing I feel is
my head on the grass
and the chill of the wind
on my feet

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Dmitriy Kogan is a short story writer and poet from Staten Island, New York. His work is forthcoming in Straylight Magazine, BULL, Close to the Bone, and Some Words. Read his other stuff at dmitriykogan.net and follow him on X at dmitriykogan.

THE STARS HAVE SECOND LIVES

By Shailendra Ahangama

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The stars stare down at their second lives
From the grand, velvet firmament.
Their glowing forms are imitated in
A great oblong lake in the countryside.
Far above us in unfathomable heights
Born from the marriages of gases and dust,
Sentries born to burn till their demise,
How they inspire great awe and wonder!
But these complexities of space
Are easily reflected in a body of water
Surrounded by paddy fields and cat-tail reeds.
The stars wish to descend from
Their cold, insular celestial throne
And be a part of this bucolic communion.
The lake wishes to ascend from its simple rural refuge
To become an astral body worthy of adulation.
These are passions that stir conflict and contention,
Yet they are all extinguished gradually
As the minutes approach the dawn.

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Shailendra Ahangama is an aspiring writer from Sri Lanka, who also loves music, nature and film. He has published a poetry anthology, titled 'The Beauty Of Becoming' in 2019. His work has also been published on The Piker Press, The Worlds Within and Small World City. Find him on IG @shailo17_ah.

NIGHTMARE AS VILLANELLE MINUS ONE

By Ian Parker

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Where is it you have gone?
I have been reeling in the hours
as the minutes approach the dawn.

Bleached my hair and keep it shorn,
my eyeballs are falling out.
Where is it you have gone?

Tears go off like a bomb,
leaving me in emotional drought
as the seconds approach the dawn.

My legs have etched in the lawn
a path of retreaded doubt —
where is it you have gone?

Leave me to carrion,
the remains of me without
where it is that you’ve gone
as the sun retreats from dawn.

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Ian Parker is a poet, musician, and photographer living in Portland, OR. He has been previously published by wildscape. literary journal, Mikrokosmos Literary Journal, and Thimble Literary Magazine, among others. Find him on IG @gloomsayer_ and gloomsayer.bearblog.dev

Schizoaffective

By Jackie Chou

after Edvard Munch

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The screams are stuck inside of me
so no sound is coming out
I cover my ears
to silence the voices
my palms squeezing my cheeks
my lids stretched so wide
my eyeballs are falling out
and I have pulled off my hair
I am bald
bald as the nakedness of my fears
my mouth forming into the oval
of shrieks landing on deaf gods
The sunset is fiery and fierce
my friends having abandoned me
without leaving so much
as a silhouette

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An ekphrastic response to The Scream by Edvard Munch.

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.

Childhood Photo Negative (Found)

By Ravneet Kaur Sandhu
after Hilma af Klint

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Hope is a horror of love
You and I
We don’t like uncomfortable feelings
My feet are turning blue

Finding my voice to yell
There’s a language inside of me that dies
When our mouths pull against gravity
Into a polyphonic rage

If I cannot change it
I don’t let myself feel it
If the space between two loves
Is as immense as a keening ocean
Then why is it the only voice that laments?

The screams are stuck inside of me
You push, I pull
And we don’t go anywhere
Insects in amber, fossilized in our own secretions
Stuck between feathers used for flight

We need to think outside the trap of ourselves
I press the down feather you once left
Into the void framed by bleached wood and square-wire shutters
Waiting for the sun to purify it

Give me romance give me love give me some action
Give me an ending that is happy
Alchemize these emotions, cremate the hate
Swallow it down like fine sand

I would be, no doubt, be lonelier without
The dance of mated swans on a canvas of ice
Glaciers break and the ocean between us rises

The rage is on our mouths
Outstretched wings and angry beaks
We both have bad teeth

᠅

An ekphrastic response to The Swan, No 1 by Hilma Af Klint.

Ravneet Kaur Sandhu currently lives near Philadelphia with her husband. Her short stories have been published in The Offing, Gordon Square Review and Tiny Spoon Magazine. Find her on Instagram at @ravneet_recommends.

My Blue Peninsula

By Kristen Keckler
after Joseph Cornell & Emily Dickinson

᠅

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