Backwards Trajectory

My origin is a distant memory.
For now, I am a Cascadian:
one with this vegetation
on these chilly farm nights,
even though I have no home.
But the deluge becomes warlike;
and my tent becomes a fortress.
You told me I can’t live this way,
but just because I’m resting now
doesn’t mean I won’t eventually find peace.
Don’t walk away in silence;
the rain’s seeping through.

Image by Adam Strong

Poem by Judy Valentino

Judy Valentino (she/her/hers) is a writer, actress, musician, podcaster, and director from New Jersey who is now based out of Portland, Oregon, where she writes about living on the margins, inspired by her experiences dwelling all across the United States. When she’s not writing or reading, she can be found watching old B-movies, messing around with obscure technology, and performing her poetry at coffee shops.

Last night as we left the planetarium,

I reflected on the fact that all humans

are made of the stuff of stars.

I tried to remember…

how exactly does our matter interact with light?

You drove. I donned

those throwaway paper prism glasses and

Seventh Avenue burst with color.

Aspiration!

just beyond reach of the naked eye.

Image and poem by Sara King

I ask my interlocutor to repeat
what I’ve already understood.
The last line of a poem is like a mist
imprinted into my brain. I see contours
slowly shaping into letters, like the shadow
of a leaf, where the leaf is only implied.
I always turn the page too soon.

Image by: Adam Strong

Poem by: Esther Sadoff

Bio: Esther Sadoff is a teacher and writer from Columbus, Ohio. She is the author of four chapbooks: Some Wild Woman (Finishing Line Press), Serendipity in France (Finishing Line Press), Dear Silence (Kelsay Books), and If I Hold My Breath (Bottlecap Press). She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Hole in the Head Review.

Bio:Word/visual author Lance Mazmanian…once Random House distributed with Harlan Ellison, got a coffee as payment. Mazmanian was internationally published 2025 by London Writers’ Salon, Fiction On the Web UK, WILDsound Writing Festival (TIFF; Canada), more. Leonard Cohen (RIP) once thought Mazmanian and he should do a poetry chapbook together. Until the hard disk. As a multi-genre builder, Mazmanian is Co-Creator on a 2025 Sky TV series starring Billy Hayes from MIDNIGHT EXPRESS. As Homo sapiens, Mazmanian is half “Old Country” Armenian, the other half from Dame Judi-style genetics. He doesn’t have her fabulous blue eyes, however. Site: https://archive.org/details/@andromeda_snow_globe

Four Saxophones

Midsummer Spell

Tytti Heikkinen is a Finnish visual artist working across photography, painting, and digital media. Based in Finland, she has exhibited internationally, with work appearing in Amsterdam Review, Arkana, The Ana, and Ex-Puritan, among others. She lives in Hämeenlinna.

Diffused like a bonfire burned with rain as the spark
sprinkles over a pair of heavy-duty, protective boots,

with stern eyes (but please do lay out your mysteries


on the table, on the scratched marble finish, to-day)

blurred from a wet downpour, it leaves you drenched
& unable to head towards the thin, hollow horizon.

Like tempered glass, home is a cloak you force all—
all the families, celebrations, savouring the moon—

into a place uncharacteristic of your home country;
cracking the blood-red creature pulsating within,

declaring, “You’ve no right to be here” (but who’s
to say who chooses assimilation or resistance? When

did these people come? I don’t know, and I don’t
care) as you glare at a family flooded in destitution.

My family sits beside me, as dad’s mouth is bitter:
past memories are all shot by a bow and arrow. 

Poem by: Timothy Bai-Nielsen

Image by: Timothy Bai-Nielsen

Timothy Bai-Nielsen is a poet, songwriter, and a soon-to-be-senior student in his local high school. He has been involved in the craft of poetry for 3 years but expresses excitement and ambition towards sharing his art with people. His favourite poet is Ocean Vuong.

When the dogs come by, walking on their hands
so the dog inside can dream of a pack
weaving its molting winter warmth
through patches of pine, of wounds
made of snow, healing beneath
an absence of fat deer, fat elk,
fat forgotten in what remained
of summer before the leaves
all ran to the ends of flimsy branches
and dove into the air, plunging
toward the surface of a ground
unwilling to open like a splash.
Crave company with all the blue-eyed
hunger hunting what is yet to bear its young,
weak and dying things, dead things
lying like a steak upon a plate.

Poem by Stuart Watson

Image by Adam Strong

Stuart Watson is an age-enhanced writer, honored for injecting journalism with poetry at newspapers in Anchorage, Seattle and Portland. He has work in Rattle, the Broadkill Review, Beach Reads, the Muleskinner Journal, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Horror Sleaze Trash, Abandoned Mine, Al Dente Journal, Stanchion, Southword, The Glass Post and more. Explore links at chiselchips.com. He lives in Hood River, Oregon, with his wife and their current “best” dog, hiking, windsurfing and cooking.

Once the sun tanks into hostility, hundreds
May freefall. Vessels of later years,
Traversing the surface of the flood,
Crave iron & candles. Liquids dart
Into the tunnel.
Once spring spins toward exit,
Stress shifts to the powerhouse. Carvings
Interrupt the route with boundaries
Behind the field. Nobody radios in
Six months
Before the critical guard.

Poem by S.D. Dillon

Image by Adam Strong

S.D. Dillon has an MFA from Notre Dame and lives in Michigan. His poetry has appeared recently in Bloodroot, The Phare, Antler Velvet, ephemeras, #Ranger, Canary, and The Shortlist: Best of BarBar 2024, and is forthcoming in MORIA, Southland Alibi, and elsewhere.  He can be found on Instagram at @sddillon50.

Village girls, some heather, hazel trees,
afternoon vapor.
Young Oise…
Overcast sky, the colocase, you sweaty.
A hotel until sundown.
Lakes, poles, railway stations,
virgin sands, the ponds,
or gold my mind.

Erasure of “Larme” by Arthur Rimbaud using the last two words of each line.

Poem by Lucien Levant

Image by Adam Strong

Lucien Levant is a Southern California-based businessman currently pursuing an MBA at Pepperdine University. His influences include other professionals-turned-writers such as ETA Hoffmann, Wallace Stevens, and Dana Gioia. His poems have been published, or are forthcoming, in Calla Press Journal, CANA Journal, and dadakuku.  

all day the thoughts came.
it was like being pecked at
by birds. in the office
in the baldonnell business
park. on the road into dublin.
he hadn’t smoked anything
for ages. hadn’t had beer
and had mainly been eating
a vegetable broth which he made
to save the hassle of cooking.
that night he’d slept badly.
his wife was away. the afternoon
had threatened rain for hours
without ever raining. would it be better
to just rotate the wheel
into traffic? to lay your eyes shut
and kick down?

Poem by DS Maolalai 

Image by Adam Strong

DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as “a cosmopolitan poet” and another as “prolific, bordering on incontinent”. His work has been nominated thirteen times for BOTN, ten for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections; “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016), “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022)