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Through the Crimson Swirl

The offshore mist of a sober summer
swallows mistaken expectations 
as a small bud within my body 
swells against its sepals.


Unable to trace the teary streams of a self
dissipating, my calloused mind peels to reveal
the raw underbelly of nothing-knowing, new
as you will soon be. Chin to the sun, 
I let my soft petals push 
up and out, fall 
like the silk nightgown of a waking soul. 


We are all pulled from the earth
and dying. Come winter, I will forget
wildflower whispers — how I leaned 
closer, eyes closed, desperate, 
decayed. The immolation of this season 
will give way to new growth. 
Through the crimson swirl 
of my smolder, I will see 
your edges unfurl
and no longer need my own.

Elizabeth Birch lives in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Her poetry has been featured in the Yellow Arrow Journal, The Tiger Moth Review, Nixes Mate, Writers Resist, Willows Wept Review, Stirring, Third Wednesday, Portrait of New England, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. You can find her on Instagram and Facebook at ebirchpoetry.

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Visual Art by Janina Karpinska

Janina Aza Karpinska captures the poetry of visual images through lens of eye or camera, with work shown on covers of: Drawn to the LightHeart of Flesh; Under_Score Magazine; The Genre Society, and in: The Empty Mirror; Quibble, 3 Elements Review; Antler Velvet,Blue Mesa Review,  and Kelp Journal amongst others. She lives on the south coast of England. 

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Pierced and Curly at the Mall


 
Eighteen in 1980, full of fears
and expectations and hormonal delusion,
and with a headful of uncontrollable hair,
I let myself believe one of several mall
crushes might be impressed by my pierced ear.
 
First Anna-Maria, hairdresser, Sophia Loren
eyes and wild black tresses, cut my
twisted locks at more than one house
party, but, perhaps for the best, never
got more intimate than fingers on scalp.
 
The now nameless girl at India
Imports, cash register counter
between us, let me touch her tight
blonde curls, or I dreamed she did,
dry and soft, like a woolen sweater.
 
Elinore, tomboy, hair wavy and dark, worked
beside me at the drugstore, we played
tennis once, safely separated by the net,
before she took me home and told
me, the supportive friend, she was pregnant.
 
Memories have become symbols, as if those
ringlets I longed for in my ignorant youth
prefigured yours where I love to hide
and imagine we knew each other then,
when I was pierced, and we both were curly.

Image by Adam Strong

Poem by: Brian Mosher

Brian Mosher writes poetry and fiction from his home in Mansfield, MA. His work has appeared in Lily Poetry Review, Nixes Mate, Anomaly Poetry, eMerge, Esoterica, and others. His unpublished short story collection was shortlisted for the Unleash Press 2025 Book Prize, and his short story “Fragments” was a winner of the Nikki Hanna Literary Challenge. He has self-published 3 books, all available on Amazon. Mosher’s most recent collection, “A Muster of Melodious Musings” (2025) is published by Metaphysical Fox Press. His poetry chapbook “Relict” is slated for January 2026 release from Finishing Line Press.

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The Last List

Ginger tea (helps with nausea)
Saltines
Ensure drinks – vanilla if they have it
Appt with Dr. Chen – Thursday 2:30

Soup – chicken noodle
Soft foods – yogurt, applesauce
Ask about increasing pain meds
How many weeks left?

Lotion for dry skin
Warm socks
Hospital bed arrives tomorrow
See one more sunrise from my window

Thank you cards
Stamps
Their faces when I tell them – can’t bear it
How does a mother say goodbye?

Notebook
Write down how his hair smells after bath time
How her laugh sounds when tickled
The way they feel in my arms

Popsicles (cherry)
Fresh flowers
Make the room smell alive 

Gatorade – blue
DNR papers signed
Remember combination: 24-18-07
Same as their birthdates

Chocolate (dark)
Wedding photo under pillow
Their tiny handprints in clay beside me
Thirty-six years wasn’t nearly enough

Tell them Mommy wasn’t afraid
Tell them every moment was love
Let go

Image by Adam Strong

Poem by: Georgia Coomer

Georgia Coomer is a recent graduate from Lindenwood University. She has an English degree with an emphasis in Creative Writing. Her poetry and prose have appeared in multiple publications, including The Albion Review. When she isn’t wrestling semi-colons into submission, she can be found playing the latest Persona game.

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THE FOREST THAT WEAVES OUR NAMES


The trees here grow in reverse—
roots braiding skyward,
leaves plunging
where the earth’s heartbeat
thumps like muffled drums.
We enter with a palmful of grandmother’s ashes
The last verse of a hymn cut short
That metallic taste
when the rain smells like blood
The river speaks in tongues
At dawn, it whispers in Gullah
By noon, it argues in Creole
Come dusk, it sings
the half-finished lullabies
of drowned railroad men
We pay our passage with
A lock of hair
Three tears (one sweet, one salt, one rust)
The thicket spits back
A baby shoe filled with honeybees
The middle name you forgot you had
The blueprint for building
a freedom ship
from broken rocking chairs
Now we harvest
Thunderstorms from magnolia blossoms
Forgiveness from fireweed
The soil remembers what we bury
Gold teeth
Jury summons

Image by: Adam Strong

Poem by: Gloria Ogo

Gloria Ogo is an American-based Nigerian writer with over seven published novels and poetry collections. Her work has appeared in Brittle Paper, Spillwords Press, Metastellar, CON-SCIO Magazine, Kaleidoscope, The Easterner, Daily Trust, and more. With an MFA in Creative Writing, Gloria has served as a reader for Barely South Review. She is also the winner of the Brigitte Poirson 2024 Literature Prize, the finalist for the Jerri Dickseski Fiction Prize 2024 and ODU 2025 College Poetry Prize both with honorable mentions. https://glriaogo.wixsite.com/gloria-ogo.

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Tunnel Tune: An MRI Adventure


The drum goes rat-a-tat
a steady beat.
The guitar clangs, screams, and squeals
sometimes slowly
sometimes shrill.
The conductor gave me earplugs.
The tunnel is made of resin
with flying magnets.
I lie on a board,
slats on either side of my head.
A blanket to cover me,
it’s freezing here.
The conductor announces
how long each riff will last.

Poem by: Lucy Sage

Image by: Adam Strong

Lucy Sage began writing poetry at a young age. Born in Philadelphia, she subsequently lived in the Philippines and Nigeria while her father worked for the United Nations. She attended boarding school in England in the mid-sixties but dropped out of high school in 1969 to live in San Francisco. After waitressing and finally earning her degrees, she worked for politicians for 30 years. In addition to poetry, she likes riding her bike, painting, and exploring cities. Her poems have been published in Underwood Press, The Closed Eye Open, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, and Quail Bell, among others. She currently lives in Harrisburg, PA.

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When I Long to Hold You

Yearning soft flesh, I find thistles
all spike, all thorn,
green turned bitter.
Winter buried you
deep from me, son
deep from the wounds of generations,
but somehow
the heart of you lives
in a place

I can’t fathom.
Where now my sapling
where now my
willow-limbed sprite?
Where now the boy who played in the barley
the skylark that flew?

Where now the snowdrop
huddled beneath the rime?

Poem by Heather Haigh

Images by Heather Haigh

Heather is a sight-impaired spoonie, working-class writer and visual artist. She is published by Oxford Flash Fiction, Fictive Dream, Bath Flash Fiction, Sunlight Press, Pithead Chapel and numerous others. She has won or been placed in several competitions and awards. She lives in Yorkshire with her husband and too many balls of yarn.

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Sea Monsters

Oh how you shine in this

midnight honeydew

succulent drops on lashes

lowering into ocean depths

where I dive, searching for

hope clinging to crab shells

soft and blue, we shed who we were

rising from the waves and froth

as sea monsters coiled,

but honey, I’ve learned to

love the monstrous

the vulnerable flesh, the searing, tooth-pocked bliss 

Poem by Kat Schmidt

Image by Adam Strong

Kat Schmidt (they/them) is an author and artist from Michigan. They have an MFA in creative writing from the New School and work for Orion Magazine. Their work can be found in Orion, The Inquisitive Eater, the citizen trans* {project} by new words {press}, and in Wingless Dreamer’s Echoes of Midnight anthology. Their work is forthcoming in Beyond Word’s Father’s anthology.

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Visual Art by Lorette C. Luzajic

Lorette C. Luzajic is an award-winning mixed media artist from Canada. Her work is driven by eclectic curiosity and the joy of juxtaposition, exploring the whole world with  irreverence and an eye for beauty. She takes inspiration from art history, literature, uncanny objects, cinema, culture, and personal experiences, mining everything she sees for possibilities. Her work has been widely exhibited at home and around the world. It has been used on two textbook covers, served as set props in film and television, blown up on a billboard in New Orleans, displayed at the Royal Ontario Museum, purchased for the collection at the Union Hotel in Toronto, and chosen for an ad campaign for a Madrid-based diamond company. Lorette represented Canada at an art symposium in North Africa. She has been a juror for the City of Barrie Art Awards, and thrice for the international Boyne’s Art competition. She is also a widely published writer, and founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review, the flagship journal of literature inspired by visual art. She teaches creative writing and art history through The Ekphrastic Academy and around the world on Zoom, and mixed media art to people living with mental illness. She has art collectors in forty countries so far. Lorette is an addiction and cancer survivor. Visit her at www.mixedupmedia.ca.

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Still Life of Butterfly and Robin (Tanka)

Yellow moon lurking
in the trees like a grinning
glow skull, and a lone
whippoorwill off in the dark,
somewhere, like an old record
skipping, over and over…

Image by Adam Strong

Poem by J. Ryberg

“What I Thought I Saw” is no longer available. The rest o them are. Thanks again.

-J

BIO:

Jason Ryberg is the author of twenty-two books of

poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full

of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could

one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and countless

love letters (never sent). He is currently an artist-in-

residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted

P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an

editor and designer at Spartan Books. His work has

appeared in As it Ought to Be, Up the Staircase Quarterly,

Thimble Literary Magazine, I-70 Review, Main Street Rag,

The Arkansas Review and various other journals and

anthologies. His latest collection of poems is “Bullet Holes

in the Mailbox (Cigarette Burns in the Sheets) Back of the

Class Press, 2024)).” He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO

with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named

Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks,

near the Gasconade River, where there are also many

strange and wonderful woodland critters.