by Charlotte Alexander
Charlotte Alexander is an aspiring poet from Vermont. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Idaho. She is often found fly fishing small streams, hugging her favorite trees, and writing poems in her email drafts.
by c. rivera
c. rivera (they/she) is a queer disabled poet & food writer from NYC. They were named a Brooklyn Poets Fellow, a prize winner for Eavesdrop Magazine’s Queer Joy issue, a contributor in Querencia Press’s We Were Seeds anthology, and in Fruitslice’s issue on Repair. You can follow them on Instagram @crystal.e.rivera.
This poem previously appeared in The Plenitudes.
by Dylan Emmons
I want to write about eternity too
just like the cats
probing at their breakfasts
or your two week old hands Isadora
brushing my beard like sleepwalking
windshield wipers or the way the sun
uses maple leaves as lampshades
if we can spend as much of ourselves
in time as out of it if our conch shell ears
keep after months the cymbal samba of the sea
if your feet tender toweled and purpling
remember the ant hills and thumb tacks
and jelly spills they haven’t found yet
if your big sister and her enormous feelings
and your mom and her incomparable well
of kindness and how they use each moment
almost like a ladle if everything is like breath
if we can use jazz the way we use a shower
if everything can be a little of everything else
if the naked basement bulb of my patience
in its morse distress can most times be enough
if the slapstick surgeon of memory can hang in
if the horror show doesn’t get too hungry
for more and more dimensions if we can start
carpet bombing the nations of the earth
with dollar bills and daisy petals instead
if our favorite pizza place can please fall
into the amber bath of immortality and
we can live there in perennial Friday evening
they’re bringing cups of ice and the ovens are awake
Dylan Emmons is a writer and educator living in the Hudson Valley. His work appears or is forthcoming in: Lenticular, Action/Spectacle, Autism Parenting Magazine, and elsewhere.
by C. Late
three soldiers in tinfoil jackets
roasting on the bottom oven rack
she’d cut the ends off one too long for its own good
hacked chunks from the pudgy pocked one
sliced the largest of the lot into quarters
pulling used foil from a crumpled stash she
manhandled the starchy meal
into silver uniforms
tried to unwrap and uncrinkle
but eventually abandoned hope
supper could be smooth or smartly dressed
when the oven sang out its warning
she skinned them from the foil
burned fingers in her haste to separate
what she’d spent so much energy on
wadded up the bits she couldn’t reuse and
chucked ‘em in the bin
the bin
it’s where most of us find ourselves
after a relationship
sharing space with those silver skins
not fitting any better than the aluminum did
her and her meal prep
her and her insistence others should hide
what she plans to devour
C. Late has serious punctuality issues. This doesn’t stem from a lack of respect, isn’t a result of over-scheduling, and C loves you—yes, you—specifically. But time is weird, and time is difficult.
You have been warned.
C. is attracted to spooky shit and fidget toys. They can be found on bluesky at @c-late.bsky.social
An earlier version of this poem appeared in A Glimpse into Anywhere: A Compilation of Selected Poems by Billy Collins’s MasterClass Students (2019).
by Jenna Cardinale
Jenna Cardinale is a poet and climate activist. The author of two chapbooks, her poems have recently appeared in LIT, Broken Lens Journal, and $ – Poetry Is Currency, which nominated her work for the Pushcart Prize. She lives in the county of Kings in New York, where she co-edits Chartreuse Lit.
by Micaela Camacho-Tenreiro
Micaela Camacho-Tenreiro is a Venezuelan-American poet, dancer, and troublemaker. A 2025 CantoMundo fellow and Best of the Net nominee, their work has been published in American Poetry Review, La Revista Bilingüe, and elsewhere; featured by Brooklyn Poets and ONLY POEMS, and commissioned by the Center for Brooklyn History and the Feminist Bird Club of Jersey City. They hold a B.A. in Hispanic Studies from Brown University and received a 2025 Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
[Note: This audio is from Micaela’s first public reading of the poem, in February of 2025, which they recorded and sent to the person to whom the piece is addressed.]
by Jamie Hood
May 10th
Perseverance is terminal,
Every day dully getting up.
The end times keep edging us
But I’m a Taurus—
I prefer to come
And to go another round.
They shot Katy Perry
Into orbit, then let her back in.
We turned the mission into memes
To stop thinking of burned old growth forests,
Boiling oceans, where all the bees have gone.
In the shuttle there was something
To do with a world tour.
Will the wet bulb be worth it?
A senator says we all have to die sometime,
Which is news to me!
I am always telling people
How Katy Perry killed a nun.
Now she’s coming for the rest of us.
I too could call myself an astronaut;
We tell ourselves stories in order to et cetera.
I wanted heaven
But space spat me out.
I heard earth girls are easy.
I’m so easy I only learned how to fight
Back last week. I didn’t win.
But I cured my depression
By making the bed!
The cure lasts ‘til just past
The point I’ve smoothed the duvet.
I draw the curtains. I play a record.
I shake my locally-sourced oat milk
To eke out one more use.
Does it bother me, us fucking other people?
Jury’s out. But if I picture you
Brushing another woman’s hair
From her mouth an atom bomb detonates.
I see all my bones. They are female
And furious. They rattle and shriek like death
Metal. Don’t fucking brush another woman’s hair
From her mouth. A hole’s a hole, darling,
But tenderness is non-renewable.
Bottle your affection for only me.
I’m sorry.
I have to get up again.
I hate when there’s only one outcome.
Jamie Hood is the author of Trauma Plot: A Life, the hybrid pandemic diary how to be a good girl, the semi-monthly, Proust-infused newsletter, regards, marcel, and a book of love poetry, forthcoming in 2026. She lives in Brooklyn.
Lauren Mills is a student at Dartmouth College. She writes poems and plays.
This poem previously appeared in The Chrysalis BREW Project.
by Alexa Vallejo
Solidarity is pissing
in adjacent stalls.
A godly marriage
is a throuple with
Christ. Dude was
a real trove of sword
lore. We cheered for
the biracial babies.
At the racist wedding,
the pastor praised
Korean cars &
submissive wives.
Cousins snuck liquor
into the dry reception
while sober Christians
gnashed their teeth.
So began the diaspora.
One spent a year in
Singapore; another
posted pics from
Botswana. Were
we the first to get
divorced? At least
on that side of the
family. For twelve
years she was my
grandmother too.
Remember how we
buried her in the rain,
& how afterward we
ate crab cakes.
Alexa Vallejo’s writing has most recently appeared in Discount Guillotine, Illuminations, Black Fox Literary Magazine, and swamp pink. Her chapbook, Girls Love, was published in 2025 by Bottlecap Press. She lives in West Philadelphia with her wife and two cats. Find her on the web at www.sashav.love.
by Juniper Danger
Juniper Danger is a Philly based queer poet and future science teacher. She
loves filling her house with people and filling those people with soup. You
can find her poetry and other work at @androjunous on instagram
