Introduced by Laure-Anne Bosselaar There is such a deeply intelligent and multi-layered humor in Clayton Clark’s poetry. She has a keen eye and fiercely focused attention to detail.  I love her unique & compelling observations: subtle, big-hearted and metaphorically delightful. The three poems below reflect her talent for precision and visual clarity. Grief as Present Not sure how to thank you for all the flowers, I’ve received in your name. Not sure why you, as backdrop, are needed to make light brighter, make roses smell sweeter, bring tears to relieve stress. Does it make you giddy, Grief, to push us to the cliff’s edge then drag some lucky ones back with…

Atmospheric River   Winter rainstorms flounce a pink camellia bushlike the bottom hem of a woman’s gown— a certain kind of woman at galas, on runways,wearing vintage someone else has fumigated and freshened, while the leathery womanon her haunches near the curb bends so low her forehead nearly touches the swollen earth.It looks like reverent prayer. It isn’t prayer. Her cardboard sign soaks and crumbles.Where last night she had laid her head down now the letters run, an atmospheric river.They say it rains on the just and unjust alike: Refuse that lie. The woman’s eyes followthem on the street: the scarved and booted under an umbrella’s canopy. Even whenthe winds…

Spoon I inhale the substance.The light from the windowsPools in the doubling… Everything’s in it—Birdbaths, hydrangeas bobbing.The morning glories Have climbed halfwayUp the trellis. I’m almost unstuck;In this house of mirrors There’s a boy visibleIn the clean whorl of steel.He’s disconnected again. David Dodd Lee is the author of thirteen books of poetry, including Animalities (Four Way Books, 2014), the forthcoming The Bay (Broadstone Books, Fall, 2025), and Dead Zones, the Dictionary Sonnets (Wolfson Press, Summer, 2025), as well as a volume of persona poems, The 574 Calling Area Has Been Hit by the Blast, which will appear in 2026 (Willow Springs Books). His poems have appeared in Southeast Review,…

Revelation It is a translation, a faithless beauty—faithless to what is not in accord with the exigencies of a pure language.          —Paul Valéry   When Mrs. Middleton stopped singing and criedout, I turned to learn the cause and sawthat she had risen, her eyes skywardand wide and spilling tears. Then her body, as if locked in a dog’s jaws,shook, and she opened her mouth and pouredforth a flood of vowels, part canticle, part howl—such a burning current of weird words surging back to pure sound that my stunned ears drownedin the babble and I trembled in my pew.Terrified as I was, I remember thinking, even then,that…

Introduction by Heather Sellers Ciara Renaud is attracted to spare lines, lists, overhead bits of conversations, and simple, searing images from daily life. She is gifted collagist. Her pieces bristle with juxtaposition. Often, her work is strikingly humorous, though here, in these pieces, there is an emphasis on the strangeness of grief—the loss of a beloved grandparent, the end of childhood. Always, I appreciate Renaud’s dedication to precision, simplicity, concision, and clarity. In placing high value on close observation and the weirdness of the human experience, she often reminds me of Lee Upton and Dorianne Laux. At Kemptville Union Cemetery Winter Monopoly set on the kitchen table overlookingThe barren snowy…

An Exaltation Running errands this morning,I took my grief with me,carried it into the UPS store,waited in line with it at the bank,brought it to the recycling center,where it sat in the car as I hoistedmy cardboard and glass bottles.We drove home in silence,flat brown fields rushing by us,nothing ahead but more days like this,and then, as if I had asked for help,the cloud-blown sky swept me up,not the part of me holding the wheel,but the person, the predicament,and just like that, my grim rider was goneand in the vanishing time of my lifehaving loved you was enough. Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in coastal Alabama. She is the…

Prison Legal Clinic As a law student I learned quickly there was almost nothing we could do for our clients besides file hopeless appeals arrange transfers to other prisons they thought would be better and wouldn’t listen helplessly to complaints about mean guards, rotgut food slow mail service, inadequate yard time Many lied to us more than a few told me they loved me one bought me an elaborate, fold out Valentine’s card at the inmate commissary Our Love is our Destiny sad story there Vietnam vet who howled crouched childlike in a corner when overhead a helicopter whirled its blades That card smelled like burnt macaroni and cheese the…

When I Find Out I Have Cancer I am at work and my least favoritecoworker comes to console me first.I cry into her secondhand smokesweatshirt, think this is who I haveat the worst point in my life? I leaveearly for the day. When I find out I have cancerI grab my chest, rub my collarbones,feel that I still have edges and lines,remind myself that I am more thana round mass without end,that I am a skeleton holding multitudesof fear and undigested piecesof chocolate croissant. When I find out I have cancerI question my response. Was Isad enough? Were my tearsauthentic? Why did I gasplike that? I trust my bodyso little…

Regrets of the Witch At home, the witch stirs her winter soup of clippings and bones, then waits for lost children to knock on the door. It has been a long time since aimless visitors sought shelter from snow and wind. Lonely for the hum of human voices, the witch now regrets eating that last meal and the lingering bitter taste the boy left on her tongue. Maureen Sherbondy‘s forthcoming book is The Body Remembers. Her work has appeared in Calyx, Upstreet, New York Quarterly, and other journals. Maureen lives in Durham, NC. www.maureensherbondy.com

What the Wind Knows It’s said tobacco is the bringer of knowledge, so I’ll sit here smoking between planets till something only known to the wind comes my way. The moon is full. She’s eaten all the stars and is heavy and dripping of silver while the horizon still bleeds. I wait on the wind, but the wind says nothing. I stare at the sky, but the sky stays silent. There is no stillness in this quiet dusk; only darkness roosts in these trees. All light has gone underground, taken root in earth till spring. Settle in, wind says. Wait, sky says. The morning takes time. Haley Hodge is a…