---

Jillian wants to live in a world where the coffee is bottomless and the sweatpants are mandatory. She spends her days crafting creative copy for clients in numerous industries and is known for her work in Children’s Programming. Her poetry and narrative essays have been featured in Remington Review, Coffee & Crumbs, and Gypsophila Zine.  When she’s not writing, Jillian can be found snuggling with her two adorable children and cheering on the Baltimore Ravens.

Today, I have decided I will go to CVS.
I will put on a belt and socks and shoes,
put my keys and my phone in my pocket,
and walk toward the door. I will almost forget
my mask, but I will remember, put it on, and
once again walk toward the door.

I love going to CVS. I hate people. My mask
helps me reconcile these feelings. CVS
also helps. My local store has minimized
the role of other people in my purchasing
experience through its use of automated
checkout machines, emailed receipts,

a rewards program based on a virtual card
that is stored on my phone, tracking my every
move and purchase so that I might not be bothered
with such things, and other innovations. I look forward to
the automatic doors sliding open for me, beckoning me
with the invisible light of their innumerable sensors,

their silent welcome nestling me into my nearest
branch’s warm, fluorescent arms. I relish this moment. I
consider the fact that my father briefly worked
at Walgreens — a major CVS competitor. CVS
brings with it the possibility of resolution
of childhood trauma. CVS is what the self-help

books I read on the basis of my therapist’s
recommendation tell me I have been looking for
in a partner. It was right there in front of me
all along, just past the corner of happy & healthy,
at the intersection of Convenience, Value, and Service.
I want to take off my shoes and socks and feel the store’s

abrasive carpet on my feet. I want to rub my
body on every available surface and belt out
as many words as I remember of “All For You,” “Kiss Me,”
“Always Be My Baby,” and other 90s favorites. I want to splatter
my humanity all over this store’s palette of eggshell and teal.
But I will restrain myself. I am an only child. I will consider

what this moment of life compels me to buy.

As I check myself out with a convenience only the absence
of workers can afford, money seeps out of me. I don’t
exchange it so much as I allow it to flow in response
to the flow of goods into my Gem House USA Pavilion
tote bag. The money I give is mostly an idea. It’s a
particular formation of language having something to do

with power. Most of the words involved are numbers.
The technical term for this is Near Field Communication.
The money feels like water or the idea of water or something
else of similar viscosity. This money flowed into me from my employer,
through a rivulet carved into the earth over many years
by the caste ascribed to my ancestors and subsequently to me

because of our similar appearance. While much of my employer’s money
comes from taxpayers and the surplus value of my work —
which is to say, from me — due to the nature of my work,
I can only assume the remainder of my employer’s money
flowed there from medical students. Demographic information
tells us that this money flowed to them primarily from their

wealthy parents. I imagine one of these parents being
Larry J. Merlo, president and CEO of CVS who, in a 2015 SEC filing,
reported the highest CEO-to-average-employee pay ratio
of any American company. And so the money,
having flowed through many different streams and over many
different fields, now returns to the lake from which it came.

Welcome home, money. The lake has missed you.
Now imagine where that money came from. Imagine longer journeys.
Imagine the ocean and sky. From the depths of that ocean, millions of
people call out to their money.

Sgr A*

---

William Hazard makes poems with computers. Recent work can be found in Ghost Proposal, Beloved Radio, Audio Flare Gun, and on GitHub. He teaches at Temple University. He edits at Overpass Books. He hangs out at llllllll.co

Each morning I rose from the bed of my own heavy August
dreams, wandered in an orange glow, watched the wind heave
bellows and break through the blanket of earth’s own breath.
We were children of the stadium, filling it with waves and chirps,

dreamy trombone, clarinet, and the orange trumpet blare in wind. Heavier
under each hour on the turf. A sauna of sneakers and spit. Instruments
chirped and marched into form. Stadium babies made to make waves
for the press box to watch a rolling beach of brass and steel. We ached

after each hour on the turf and spit sunscreen from sticky lips. The sun
started to slip on her evening dress. Ourselves stretched out on fake grass
while the press box watched. We rolled around the brass and steel. Hugged
our knees, pointed toes, rubbed our ribs jeweled in sweat. When Vera

found me, we ran like we ourselves were the evening dress on the sun
and clung to something sparkling. The ever-moving glitter of the river
welcomed our knees and toes and rubbed our ribs until jeweled. Vera
called us sirens warning the world, asked for bliss and plunged again.

---

Gwenyth Wheat, nominated for Best New Poets 2024 is a M.F.A and M.A. candidate at McNeese State University. She is the Assistant Poetry Editor for the McNeese Review. She received her Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Great Lakes Review, The Poet’s Touchstone, ZAUM, NOTA, LIGHT Magazine and elsewhere. You can find more about her and her work by following @gwenythwheat on Instagram. 

Beyond the cornfield,
up from the old dirt road,
the tree perch in the field,
deer in those trees for miles,
I played in the sand of the lot
by the road leading up through
the pasture. I spent days
skipping down the steep steps
to the river, out to the dock,
to greet my grandfather,
gutting a fish.

He used a pair of rusty handled pliers
to peel off its inky skin, sipping a beer from a
key stroke hole in the can.

He saw a light in me for the black water
and the bull frogs croaking at night,
and because I had just turned eight,
he let me ride into town
for the July dance.

Riding back, the air sucked in from
the windows down of my cousin’s truck,
speeding back on the highway,
shifting the gears for my cousin’s
girlfriend driving us, my cousin in the
passenger seat, my brother
between him and my own body
circling, I could see the peanut fields
for miles.

We were forbidden to walk
one hundred yards past the outhouse
because of the bed of water moccasins
in the creek living below the one-laned bridge,
the bee hive in a tree on the edge of the clearing,
the copperhead we had seen earlier on a log,
and the rattlesnake dead
in the back of my grandfather’s
motorboat, floating belly up,
next to the one he had killed
the week before.

From all the way out there
on the water, you could smell
yesterday’s catch cooking,
the tails dipped in batter,
fried in butter. You could
hear the tails crackling,
my grandfather laughing.

We hurried back fast through the
patch of lily pads and cattail blossoms
which reminded me of an outcropping
I had seen once before of a patch of
cypress knees jutting out from the
water along the swamp road leading down
to North Carolina.

We continued along, some of the trees
still tied up, orange string on the low branches
my grandfather had set, bait for catfish.

I was half out of the boat before
the others tied to the dock. I was
already most of the way up the stairs
when everyone else started up.
We all ran to the kitchen to wash our hands.
We found our seats at the table,
sat up tall in our chairs, as we were taught,
the blue and red checkered tablecloth
lining the grey wood planks.

The rule was we ate the fish’s tail last,
the last inch or two of it at least,
an old tradition we had kept from
the years before, attending to it,
believing in us, telling ourselves this,
this part of the river, this part of the fish
holding some knowledge.

---

A. Logan Hill is a poet, writer, artist, and educator currently based in Richmond, Virginia. He graduated with his MFA in Poetry from UMASS Amherst in 2017, his B.A. in English from James Madison University in 2012, and spent his formative years as a member of The American Boychoir where he graduated in 2004. When he isn’t teaching, he types poetry for people on demand using a 1953 Royal Quiet Deluxe typewriter.

Everything about us fits
like two keys for one chest

one chest opening to make
a space large enough for all

the fear we carry. I cherish
most the way our hands knew

the first time they touched.
Our lips, too, met like old lovers.

The rest of us a dozen volcanoes
determined not to go dormant

until our bodies are red and hot
and empty, my shoulders covered

in your explosion, teeth like small
craters. A history that aches

for days after you leave. Your ribs
and hips carry our night sharp

bruised and wanting for one more
chance at uninventing this impossible

distance between my pulse and yours.
I tell you I feel your pulse at the tip

of my finger. You flex and unflex
against my knuckles. I wonder

if you know how good my imagination
is. How with each flex my hips flinch.

I hear you tell me to come. Your voice
already a familiar song I sing to myself

for weeks—at the grocery store, folding
clothes, at the gym. Everywhere

you are with me, telling me to come.
I am already home.

---

Ronnie K. Stephens is the author of Universe in the Key of Matryoshka, They Rewrote Themselves Legendary, and The Kaleidoscope Sisters. He joins the many artists calling for a Free Palestine and an end to genocide in every corner of the world.

I stole my father’s suit jacket

Before it became mine—

Tenderly, oversized and engulfed

In it, proud, powerful. I can inhale a blue

Whale in this tux, deep into my diaphragm, then

Blow you a balloon bouquet. I’ll wear these

Pressed silhouette lines

That are also soft to the touch; curves of fine

Fabric that is worn with hugs and pats

On the back but also soaked in alcohol

Induced scream-singing and unabashed

Goosebumps that tickle the satin lining;

I’ll wear it until it is worn

In every stitch and seam, with soda can

And champagne flute condensation

On the sleeve edges, and the lapels lick

The sweat of your perfect palms

When you kiss me like you can’t

Picture anyone else wearing it.

---

Hillary Nguyen (she/her) is a Vietnamese-American writer from the Bay Area who enjoys experimenting with creative mediums (such as spoken word and written poetry, photography, and fiber arts). Her work has been featured in One Art Poetry, midsummer magazine, and Hot Pot Magazine. In her spare time, she enjoys exploring any eclectic, elegant, and extraordinary places she can find.

---

Reece Rowan Gritzmacher lives in a mountain town surrounded by ponderosa pines, but grew up hugging mossy trees in the Pacific Northwest. Their poetry and prose have appeared or are forthcoming on Barrelhouse, About Place Journal, Chapter House Journal, Eunoia Review, Bending Genres, and elsewhere.

---

Mike Bagwell’s latest thing is exploring gratitude as a poetic form until it’s overwhelming, having recently overcome a bout of mutual antagonism towards the sky. He is a writer and software engineer in Philly and received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence. His work appears in Action Spectacle, ITERANT, Sprung Formal, Heavy Feather, HAD, Bodega, Okay Donkey, and others, some kindly nominating him for a Pushcart. He is the author of the chapbooks A Collision of Soul in Midair (Bottlecap Press 2023), Or Else They Are Trees (El Aleph Press), and micros from Ghost City Review and Rinky Dink Press. Find him at mikebagwell.me, @low_gh0st, or playing dragons with his daughters.

I believe in carpentry, hammer, nail,
grunting with the heft of old tools and oak.
My gospel is wood dust billowing and
watching it float through a ray of sunlight.
In knowing all that you have created
and destroyed will fall transformed at your feet.
I believe in a strong back, sore muscles,
hard hands sanding rough edges, sweat, splinters,
in the Father’s esoteric wisdom,
His Sunday project, the whole day passing
through your nostrils as the saw blade rings loud
its hymn of second coming, the Abba
with his t-square, level, promise of nirvana
once the last piece of wood is flung.

---

Camille Norvaisas believes imagery is a funnel by which life’s experiences are filtered into her poetry. Deism was previously published by The Schuylkill Valley Journal and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.