Poetry
One-Way, Through the Fire
by Lin Darrow in Issue Seven, November 2022
It’s the first thing they tell you in Temporal Navigation 101:
Time is water,
But it knows no gentle ebb,
Only the rage and riot of rapids.
You can’t go back, the Temporists say;
The currents are too strong.
On this, the handbooks are agreed: don’t cling to lost time.
Drift forward, travel on...
My FEMA trailer
by Gary Bloom in Issue Seven, November 2022
Early in the morning
I can hear my neighbor’s TV
Reverberating through the tin foil
Walls of her FEMA trailer
And into my own
Consciousness
Lying on the paper thin mattress
In my own FEMA trailer.
We are together
In a trailer park built
On the ruins of Katrina
And no matter what
They say...
Little Arson Grasses
by Jennifer Crow in Issue Seven, November 2022
If you love me, you will burn.
Put your cheek against mine
and feel the heat my bones
release into the world. We plant
ourselves in dry soil and gather
water from every deep and shallow
source, and our thirst grows
like the weeds between rows
of corn, and the river sinks
between the stones ...
In and out of water
by Overcomer Ibiteye in Issue Seven, November 2022
There’s a fierce audacity about water:
the way it barges into palimpsest buildings unannounced
the way the buildings are sucked into a void
the way the water barrels our bodies into a concave
cross-referencing us with open tombs.
There are different ways to view the sea,
different ways to zigz...
Two Beaches
by Devin Miller in Issue Six, September 2022
I want to show you the beach
that has been with me since I was in utero.
Now I carry it inside me in my turn:
the rocks, the barnacles with their
fronds and sharp edges,
the shards of bathroom tile and blackboard,
the mud and grabbing kelp and broken shells,
the living sand dollars and starfish and...
Skyscraper
by Annika Barranti Klein in Issue Six, September 2022
First published in Fireside Quarterly, January 2020
I was thinking today of a
world without traffic lights
where pushing the button
on the dashboard for recirculated air
would send the carbon dioxide
we breathe out from the cabin
into a special compartment full
of plants and the compartment would
be...
send down the rain is no song when the belly goes to war
by the_people in Issue Six, September 2022
zephyr sings a lullaby into my body
that she may light my eyes and dulcify my tongue
don't listen to her—
the aphorism of my stomach roared in hurt
and reluctantly, i was submerged in its words:
that a lay cannot quench the lust for bread
the lyrics to sweet melodies won't enchant
food into my ...
Let the Water in
by Vanessa Jae in Issue Six, September 2022
The earth tears at her concrete visage
until she can breathe through the cracks.
Listen to the viscous vows of retaliation
she presses through her stuffed throats:
Let the water in,
she murmurs as she feels rain brushing against
her mask of stone, begging for reunion.
Let the water in,
she rumbles a...
Factory Reset
by RC deWinter in Issue Six, September 2022
The rain, sweet with the scent of summer,
soaks the earth in its persistent falling from a woolly sky
heavy with moisture imported from a place far away.
Those who know tell us it will rain for days
as the west burns in the unrelieved heat of the sun –
all of this beyond our control thanks to t...
We Greet the Solstice
by Avra Margariti in Issue Five, July 2022
Inside extant skulls of extinct giants
We’ve made our homes for many a summer
Solstice. Wildflower wreaths, crowns, garlands
Ornament the colorlessness of bone,
Our way of giving thanks to the earth
For not having annihilated our kind just yet.
On solstice eve, ritual celebrations:
Small chi...