by Thomas McDade

“Today a possum lies / Dead as if the monster / Had scared it to death…”

by Robert McDonald

“The dark lady laughed again. A sound like crows shouting at the old tom cat in the backyard. The dark lady laughs, at plans, and predictions, at anyone who thinks they know how life is going to be.”

by Ewen Glass

“Read in me at each fingertip / the lines of rising tides, / the milky crescent of nail / that finds calcium in soil…”

by Kathleen Nalley and Gabrielle Brant Freeman

“They incinerate placentas after birth. / They burned us at the stake just for being.”

by Naa Asheley Afua Adowaa Ashitey

“Yesterday, I accidently tripped on that annoying part of the stairway that has now accumulated eight different work orders.”

by Mykyta Ryzhykh

“Mushroom pickers picking mold on my fish spine / A basket full of ashy cast-iron nights and red bony sunsets…”

by Jason Davidson

“I’ll be cold asleep on the floor, with you sutured inside my skull’s / parlor, / a naked cowboy, a shining giant, a beautiful hoax, a permanent coma.”

by Chantel Lavoie

“The last Manson girl-child in prison / whose arm, at 21, grew sore, stabbing / wakes every day, knowing / she’s a destroyer. She regrets.”

by Dario Cvencek

“we deem some children’s deaths more tragic than others.”

by Zebulon Huset

“Eric would eventually be promoted to drive-thru— / one of the few teenagers content to make a buck / and not fuck off frequently enough to be fired…”

by Zev Levinson

“Valërea Ing gives up on singing Ducks beneath enamelled symphonies Dreams of a village on the far-off mountain And forgets she dreams a thing”

by Charlotte Cosgrove

“There’s more forest fires somewhere else (phew, not here) / More crazy scientists warning of ecological collapse – / The consequences are dire, we need to act now.”

by Adrian Frey

“Apple seeds line the altar in the empty church, / Down the one lane dirt road, / They do not grow Shulamite.”

by Terry Ann Wright

“…we wove a snare. we became / our own noose. o we aver / sour & we savor mourn. we / see moon & we become omen.”

by Mandie Lopatka

“you are who my heart can hold / like a penny or an aspirin in my vase of violets / a blank universe that makes me the star / a mirror image I don’t recognize…”

by John Jeffire

“…bend suppliant / to the shadow…”

by John Jeffire

“She looks at him as he looks out the kitchen window into the evening darkness.  She does not think of whose pain she would be easing.”

by Grady VanWright

“The train grinds into its final station— / a street, present and pulsing, / where a man sells honey / in jars that mirror his eyes.”

by David Koehn

“Red ink draws a teardrop around a green-eyed tea with no pupil. / What kind of madness might I ask for from the startling whiteness of Labrador tea?”

by Daniel Edward Moore

“Here, lips obediently swallow / the laws of drunken gods and / salvation is delusional, making / the real, unreal.”