Cover for Issue Twenty-Five, August 2026
GET ISSUE →

Poetry

SOLD: One Soul, Gently Used

by Nico Martinez Nocito in Issue Twenty-Three, June 2026

I rattle thirteen sparse coins
in a pocket more used to moths than money,
the soft click disappointingly
empty.

Going once!

I need, I need, I need.
Instead, I frown.
Young, healthy, secular, loving: my soul
could fetch nine hundred, minimum—
enough for a year of food and a year of school...

Continue →

Poison

by Marvellous Mmesomachi Igwe in Issue Twenty-Three, June 2026

For Ogoniland

‘Water was the source of life;
it is now the cause of death’
— Anonymous

Heaven falls again. & the river cries black.
So much until it becomes a miracle, how a

woman can bleed & not bring out blood the
color of night. In my ache for catharsis, I

baptize in his mouth of fil...

Continue →

A Science Center Education

by Lynne Sargent in Issue Twenty-Three, June 2026

I once spun a wheel
in a science center,
in an anonymous city of sufficient size to have one.

Paint and plastic peeled at its edges
the stopping lines surely unfair
worn down such that even the non-stakes
of its turning might have been a cheat.

It was a wheel of probability,
of all the li...

Continue →

Roommate

by Arthur H. Manners in Issue Twenty-Two, February 2026

The day after Danny died of pneumonia He came downstairs to call the landlord. I watched trembling from the kitchen As he rasped and bubbled into his phone, “Damp’s gotten worse, you need to get down here.” “Danny, you’re dead,” I said, “They took you away in a bag.” He just smiled, his teeth mos...
Continue →

Persephone Wins Custody of Herself

by Marisca Pichette in Issue Twenty-Two, February 2026

here at the edge, I’m ready to fall. Lean in, little girl— drop pumpkin blossoms into my depths Look into the dark and tell me you don’t want to go. between cold-pink toes the grass my mother worked so hard to plant wilts, browns, dies. white dress stained muddy at the hem, hair tangled wit...
Continue →

Mothercraft (a villanelle)

by Erin Brown in Issue Twenty-Two, February 2026

It isn’t magic, doll, which fastens you. I am the needle, thread, I am the pin. It is the art I wield, the work I do. I hasten credit where I think it due, And do not find earned pride to be a sin. It isn’t magic, doll, which fastens you. The craft of making men is far from new. The stuffing p...
Continue →

If I must exist here,

by Eleanor Ball in Issue Twenty-Two, February 2026

then with open arms. Bitten nails. Tongue bloody from eating itself like a snake. From pressing my mouth to yours. Oracle, puzzle, three-body problem. Then in prayer, licking the wounds of the earth. Then sunflowers, springing from my upturned palms, rimmed with blood-crust, the new Sti...
Continue →

Fairest One

by Sophia Zhao in Issue Twenty-Two, February 2026

(After Snow White) the night Mama decides she can wait no longer, she forces me to my knees before my reflection, teaches me my first prayer: “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who in this land is fairest of all?” the mirror does not answer, but Mama promises, presses her shriveled lips upon...
Continue →

Rainmaker

by Olumide Manuel in Issue Twenty-One, January 2026

Rivers above and below, hear my voice. A ripple is how you speak. A pour is how you sing. I sing with both feet in vestigial bodies. By the stitch of the skies in me, I call you forth to this dance. In the epigenesis of silence, you forged the ways. The womb of the world was sedentary until you fed ...

Continue →

last psalm

by P. H. Low in Issue Twenty-One, January 2026

that you might be appeased by one such as me.
that, smug on your garnet altar,
you would unhinge your jaws
and drink wetly of my fear,
as a thousand mahogany harps
tremble beneath your altar
and ten thousand haunted skeletons
writhe your praise.

yes, my cuffed hands clench;
there’s a clockwise twist...

Continue →