---

Ave Goorbarry is a writer from South Florida. Ave’s writing has won awards regionally from Scholastic Art and Writing and has been previously published in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Words & Whispers, the Origami Review, and elsewhere. Ave is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Diet Water Magazine. 

the hare is fast
the hare multiplies, grows, jumps
over flower and foe, and is prized
for neither fur nor flesh nor
friendship to man, too small to be
feared and too large to be
hated, burrowing beneath
and in cartoon memory
transforming rocks to roads
evading the hunter’s gun
quick-witted and wondering
when the clover will grow?
ask the rabbits in the field,
one yesterday had its hundredth daughter
and she was born
murmuring that winter
would bloom white tomorrow,
a message from the before and after
place the hare knows so well
Alice’s worst timekeeper,
follow the rabbits
and they’ll take the long way
underground and put on
the old role of Chiron,
with a carrot instead of a coin
and big ears for sad stories
and no chance of bringing
anyone back up with you.
nobody reincarnates like
a hare, the generation that
led you down the tunnel system
gone and returned by the time
your sister shakes you awake,
and gazing down from the moon
monthly the same trickster, round
like birth and guarding the entrance
of another lucky month.

---

Julia Gwiazdowski is a Philly-born and based poet. Being gay and trans, she often writes about queerness and gender but also cannot resist ekphrastic pieces and love poems. Julia has been previously published in Wizards In Space, Stone of Madness Press, and Three Line Poetry. She can be found under the username @atreenamedjulia on Instagram, BlueSky, and Tumblr.

On Sunday—sheets stripped,
bed bare, afternoon edging toward
gold—my sister picks up

on speaker phone. As she feeds
her brand-new daughter—
backdrop all static and shift,

a chorus of coos until, suddenly,
that hush of relief—my own child
emerges with wordless urgency

to show me the split in her fingernail,
pink and soft as a shell
tossed to shore. I take her hand,

try to smooth what is sharp—
cradling the phone
between cheek and shoulder

to catch my sister’s half-formed
sentences, my niece’s chirps
and starts. My daughter

frees her hand, skips away
singing. Light breaks through
the blinds, fills the whole room.

---

Emily Patterson is the author of So Much Tending Remains (2022) and To Bend and Braid (2023). Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appears or is forthcoming in Rust & Moth, SWWIM Every Day, CALYX, Sweet Lit, West Trade Review, tiny wren lit, The Shore, and elsewhere. Emily holds a B.A. in English from Ohio Wesleyan University and an M.A. in Education from Ohio State University. She lives with her family in Columbus, Ohio.

I am headlining an apology tour
plums and paydays in the icebox
mommy’s little hubris of god
got carried away again
tailgating someone else’s ritual
a lesson in humility, a good humbling
bent over and expelling bile
like a good time girl should
a three calyx fold in baby pink
center stage in paradise

I promise you can call me
mine and want by the cure
I, too, bunny the fool
ardently love fucking around
but never one dalliance
just a bender
surrending me to
six color gardens
miserable at the honky tonk
my full heart bucks
to be bad, too

I’m supposed to believe
with love comes pain
old heads will tell you
you’re no deer
quanda a roma
I call my love
tommyknocker
roughneck
he could die down there

it is “tell me I’m pretty” hour
in my fertile crescent ruin garden
I draw on the grotto to preserve its fidelity
meant to feel abandoned at the aqueduct
answer the crying calls, apologize
the Virgin Mary, convertible
I catch you at the center of lucky
scrawled on the furthest wall
ever preen and come to be a fuck up?
ever sleep and stand redeemed?

I am a pile of water
me and my contrition
may the galleria ossify
and the stairs swallow me
I use your picture to pick my teeth
so rest in piss phantom solitaire
it’s why chefs kids love fast food
the cobbler’s daughter has no shoes

bless the unholy and the dirty
high highs, the low lows, and good enough
doesn’t anyone have a job anymore?
maybe window licking
in the hall of gems, in the pudding club
there is no rest for the wicked
only evil on quick wash
there are no such thing as problems
only opportunities

so this is the second song
where we stand in symmetry
where lightning might strike us
at the overlook
my toothache deliverance
all love songs
in cipollino marble
in crocodile tears
so I am the center
yours in murder
miss monster

The hormonal implant has taken hold
and I cannot seem to stop buying plants.
A kind woman sold me a pothos while
misgendering me over and over

like petting a cat the wrong direction.
I’m pushing an unwieldy orange cart
at Home Depot to buy one supplicant
succulent. She quakes in the cupholder

on the drive across punctured Washington.
I’ll protect you, we say to each other.
She’s holding a sword behind her back.
We are ready to fight a minor god.

The first time I killed a plant I complained
I had better things to do like read books
as though books are not made from plants
as though weekly water was such a weight

My tricep pumps progestin now
I carry the watering can up the stairs.

---

Olive Esther Kuhn is a Philadelphia-based writer, translator, and organizer whose work focuses on queerness and surviving capitalism. Their first book, Losing Lorca: a mixtape critique, was published by Recto y Verso Editions in 2020. Their work has also been published in Laid Off NYC and La Voz Magazine (translation and literary criticism) and Socialist Alternative (political reporting). Olive writes and performs music under the project Spidr. Their work can be found at oliveestherkuhn.com & spidr.bandcamp.com.

for Joe

at sixteen
I want to slip
between

your ribs and
entwine myself
with your heart

I want to fall
asleep behind
your sternum

(to exist outside
of you just
isn’t enough)

this I remember
thirty-five years
later when again

we meet and
hold a gaze
that feels

softness
I have not
since you

unafraid
to be seen
I don’t turn

away
or even
blink

you call me
poet not
surprised

and hold my
hand as we
drive home

from the shore
purple rain now
on apple music

you don’t say
anything but
I know you

never meant
to cause
and only want

to see me laugh
and for a while
longer we do

---

Michelle Ortega has been published at Tweetspeak Poetry, Tiferet Journal, Exit 13, Snapdragon: A Journal of Healing, The Platform Review, Paterson Literary Review, Rust + Moth, Humana Obscura, Stillwater Review and elsewhere. Tissue Memory (Porkbelly Press, microchap, 2022) and other work featured at:  www.michelleortegawrites.com

If I don’t text back immediately
I’m not mad, I’m just

Laughing because the Calm app tells me I’ve had zero mindful days / wondering if aliens had tracksuit eras at some point in their evolution of if they just skipped by the whole look / Googling the voice actors from Hey Arnold to see what they’re up to now / tracing my bloodline to find royalty or a claim to a stately home in the vain hope it’ll get me out of having to go to work tomorrow / confused at how the US military lost an $80million fighter jet after the pilot ejected and it took itself on a joyride for a while before crashing back down to earth / trying to decide if anyone actually notices when I pull an Irish goodbye / attempting to understand mortgage rates so I’ll be able to follow what people are talking about when it comes up in conversation / putting my life on Vinted so I can make room for my next life / debating whether it’s too pedantic to get out of bed to unplug the toaster to save a few pennies because I’m worried I won’t be able to afford the electric bill this month / on the phone to my mom telling her not to worry / figuring out if I am okay to start letting go of the hubris of my own vanity and slip into middle age as if youth is so forgettable / talking myself down off the ledge again / protecting my peace / convincing myself that I’m not a ghost / practicing sounding like everything is okay and doing one thing a day to prove it.

---

Stevie Green is a poet from Birmingham, England, and refers to his poems as
his ‘mad little essays.’ He took to poetry in an attempt to romanticise his
own life, because nobody else was going to do it. He now lives in London
and can be found on Instagram @stevenhamezgreen.

I got that dog in me, orchestra of barking,
I got work in the morning and a flock of dogs
beneath my sternum, I got bottled rage and a whole lotta corks,
I’m quirked up and collapsing courts, I’m crushing quartz idols
and scattering the powder, the dogs are powerful,
on God, they’re guards, they watch for onlookers
looking for danger, I’m done with mercy sex
and ungrateful strangers, I’m over my ex-boyfriend
but not what he did to me, I forgot to forgive,
the dogs were kids once too, puppies,
I got progeny, sons like I’m Saturn,
quiet fires, it’s quietus, these riotous dogs
demand change but cringe at righteousness,
beware of evil bosses, beware
of good dogs, beware of crosses.

---

William Ward Butler is a writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the author of the poetry chapbook Life History from Ghost City Press. He has received support from the Community of Writers and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. He is the poetry editor of Frozen Sea: frozensea.org

Text your glamorous friend
in their better city something
incriminating and selfish.
Buy a vibrator with your
royalties. Prefer men
to landscapes. Listen
to that Joni Mitchell record
with the big scratch
on the B side. Live inside
the scratch. Feel
like everyone who loves
you is a better person
than you. Try to sink.
Try to drain. Get your
ass grabbed. Spool
apart like honey
in a homemade
centrifuge. Wrestle
your sister to the ground
until the neighbors
call the cops. Stay
home from the house
party. Spend your
birthday hangover
looking for the naked guy
with the infected lotus
tattoo. Find him
strung out under
your roommate’s mom’s
crocheted quilt
on the living room
floor. See the same band
fifteen times. Wear
your friend’s slip dress.
Snort ketamine off
her fist. Laugh when
someone who saw your
tits ten years ago says
he’ll miss them. Remember
that a fluke is a worm
or the man who was killed
by a deer that ran
through the plate
glass door of the bus
he was driving and kicked
him to death in his
seatbelt. Be told you
will forget everything.
Remember it
anyway. Become
angelic in your
hospital bed. Feel
left out when the hawks
circling you speak
to each other. Return
to your body like a wasp
into the vinegar trap.
Learn to love this,
the only thing you’ll
own forever.

---

Gion Davis is a trans poet from Española, New Mexico where he grew up on a sheep ranch. His poetry has been featured in HAD, MAYDAY Magazine, Sprung Formal, and others. His debut collection Too Much (2022)was selected by Chen Chen for the 2021 Ghost Peach Press Prize. He graduated with his MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2019 and currently lives in Denver, Colorado. Gion can be found on Instagram @starkstateofmind & on Twitter @gheeontoast.