poetry

The mist is moving

through the deep piney backwoods

like an army of

gray ghosts, while some strange figure

at the dark heart of

the forest is chopping at

the uncarved block of

human potentia with

Occam’s double-bladed axe.

Jason Ryberg

I do not know this world entire⁠—

but my cat, pacing through the dim,

deciphers secrets curled in the folds of wind,

hears the tick of a beetle in the dust,

marks shadows that even dusk forgets.

She listens to the hush

between a radiator’s exhale

and the creak of floorboards’ slow settling⁠—

the quiet syntax

of a house falling asleep.

The sun, in its final stretch,

threads gold through the torn lace

of maple leaves,

dressing the dying in something divine.

Dusk does not introduce itself,

It arrives like a guest we never really know

but welcome anyway,

and my cat does not flinch.

She drapes herself along the sill,

a silhouette of watching,

the faintest curl in her tail

suggesting she knows something

she won’t tell.

The porch lamp flickers into shape⁠—

a blue haze, a beckoning

for the stray passerby,

For the moth brushing its wing

against the glass,

for the echo nesting in the stairwell,

for the owl’s silent wing,

for the cat⁠—waiting⁠—

poised⁠—

at the cusp

of everything

we do not name.

I am a queer South-Asian writer and researcher from NYC. I write poetry as a way to give voice to thoughts that resist easy articulation.

A warbler crashes against my windowsill

and its scattered feathers drift like leaves

searching for a safe landing.

Though it flaps to continue its flight,

pain drips red from its broken wings.

Likewise, I am a wingless bird.

Loneliness builds its tight cage around me

and its iron bars would rather

smother me than let me out alive.

It doesn’t matter how much I try,

my body always surrenders to a slouch,

not even when I made an origami parrot once

and imagined it a companion,

and by morning, found it drowned in a puddle

of spilled water in my room,

and as I lifted it up, its soaked body

fell apart in my hands.

Jonathan Otamere is a Nigerian poet and a current MFA candidate at the University of Mississippi. He is on Instagram @joepoet_

I watch all my TV over the air

I will not spend my money on streaming

Binging network programs without a care

Free films from the library I’m screening

Spending for cable I never would dare

Those hefty bills would just set me screaming

On financial matters I will not bend

An indoor antenna’s a girl’s best friend

E.J. LeRoy is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer with a forthcoming mpreg novella. Curious? Visit http://ejleroy.weebly.com.

They sense that something’s not quite right,
these gen-mod dogs of war—

blinking in the too-bright light
they sense that something’s not quite right

so honed as weapons, bred to fight
they do what they’re made for.

Too late, their handlers see the light
first casualties of war.

Lisa Timpf’s speculative writing has appeared in Lorelei Signal, NewMyths.com, Polar Borealis, and other venues.

I’m not surrrre, it wailed
the haunting refrain of an
indecisive ghost

Stephen Ground is a writer and filmmaker based in Treaty Six Territory [Edmonton, Alberta, Canada].

You have a blessed day too,
I said, and floated out of there
with my coffee and corn muffin,
feeling blessed, beatific, positive-
ly numinous. But now

she says it every time I go in there—
no variation, no shift, no turn.
She just hands me my change
and tells me to have a blessed day—
always bles-səd, never blest, never
a grateful day, an exquisite day,
an applesome day. A failure

of the imagination is what it is.
And it has begun to bother me.
So much so that I have stopped
going there. I miss their divine

muffins. Their heavenly coffee.
But those blessings had a facile, unctuous,
churchy aftertaste. I’d almost rather
have a nice day. Or even a bad one.

Paul Hostovsky’s poems appear and disappear simultaneously (ta-da!). His new collection is Perfect Disappearances (2025).

the poem
has been
good
to me
in times
of need.

my little
fix.

in between
novels
or
short stories
when
i don’t
know
what
the hell
to write
about.

the poem
lands
on me
like
bird shit—
good luck
they say
it is
and i
believe
that every
unannounced
poem
that’s ever
graced
my
door step
time
& time
again
like women
on bukowski’s
stoop
has saved
my life.

Ken Kakareka is an American writer nominated twice for Best of the Net.