Toward the Other Shore A chuff of gray smoke. Diesel engines groaningas the ferry leaves the dock, its lower decksloaded with cars. The morning could be a postcard: clear skies, calm seas, green hillson the horizon. Sun climbing higher into its ownblind perfection. The lazy drift of birds. Rumbling softly, the boat finds its pace,gliding over the waves like an idea wateredwith spirits. There is nothing to change or know. My mind wanders as the minutes pass, airsliding cooly over my skin. The boat fades intoa half-dream. The water goes on forever. Jason Ranek is an American poet living in Norway. Over the last 30 years, his work has appeared…

Aubade The morning smells like melons.Green and ripe, about its businessin the not-yet heat. A bird sings in the treetops,an orange slug crosses the path,valiant and deliberate. The soul understands:the not-yet,the throat filled with a mysterious joy, the difficult passage from hate to lovewhich is the soul’s business. Tessa Kale is the author of an award-winning collection of poetry (Crow’s Cup, Discovery Award, Red Mountain Press, 2021) and an award-winning chapbook (The Hudson Line, Finishing Line Press Award, 2010) and has publications in periodicals such as The Yale Review, The Western Humanities Review, Prelude, and others.

Blackberries “Men must enduretheir going hence, even as their coming hither:ripeness is all.”– William Shakespeare, King Lear Ripeness is allI think,picking blackberries in the cool morning,softly squeezing each fruitbetween thumb and forefingerbefore plucking the ready onesfrom the vine,leaving the hard and nubby,deeply purple though they may be,for tomorrow. When truly ripethe juice oozes readilyonto my fingers,the flesh soft and squishy.Their time is short, only for todayperfectly plump and fullof sweet nectar.If left overnightthey fuzz over,disintegrate to mush,juice pooling in the bottomof the bowl. But those short on timeare the sweetest,wine-rich, their dark flavordancing on the tonguein a fervent burst,delicious in the momentsbefore decay. Erika Sweet grew up in the farmlands…

West of Edmond     Tall grass comes volunteer in the pasturesI pass, striving in poor soil, stunted by drought,like one of those times that arrivewhen what you need doesn’t come,as if the gods deprive to purify youbut also to say that you     are all you have. There’s a wind that comesmoist with promise, when my eyes raise to horizon,words lead to lines showing me new vistas covering the old ones,my will running rampant over valleys, hills,taking what comes, as I am able—or think I’m able, or tell myselfI am able. There’s a wind that comes dry,day after day, when I see the options I thought I hadvanish.…

Lorain, Loud Down on Broadway Gemini birthday, milk glass cloak poured over a water color dress. She poses like a China doll, Latinabrown. Mariachi Hummer blowing by, motorcycle daddies rolling deep. Somebody bumpin’ trap.Everybody yelling about church. “I LOVE JESUS” in red sequins on hunter’s camo. Goth waitressfinds me golden as a nugget in the sun. She plops down the mojito, her black lace top a shock on theblue skim milk of her skin. Thanks for coming. Ford Focus dives off the curb, exhaust dropped like amatch dragged down the road. An American sparkler. Sarah Sorensen (she/her) MA, MLIS is a queer writer based in the Metro Detroit area. She’s…

The Genesis Project First, the head is crowned in the castle. The faceis given a name. Then that wrinkled army of lovecrawls through history using ten tiny toes, forcingtomorrow into a pair of stilettos, those groundbreakingfeminine beauties. From a breeder’s perspective andyes, there are many, most are driven by the desire tocreate a red-carpet version of themselves. Even thoughmost men answer to Eve, that sensual siren, naked onthe shore of the throat’s crashing sea, remember, drowningis the glory of swimming when life is too heavy to float. Daniel Edward Moore lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His work has appeared in Southern Humanities Review and elsewhere.  His work is forthcoming…

Holy Pregnancy Sonnet IV I often think of Rilke, who didn’t attend his daughter’s weddingFor fear it would distract from his poetry, or RodinWho (nearly) didn’t marry his wife of 53 years,Who never claimed his son. And then there is Thoreau in Walden.Even my friend, a wife, an only daughter, a professor, chose notTo have children and instead writes five masterpieces a year.              But then there is Sharon Olds holding her life’s life in her arms,              Or Silvia Plath and her little loaf,              And Ben Johnson, who, when his seven-year-old son died,              Wrote here lies my best piece…

When the Fur Shop on Sandy Boulevard was Razed Decades Ago Dander that had siftedfrom thousands of animal peltsinto the shop’s floorboard cracksfell to dirt newly exposed. Then was coveredby asphalt’s dark ooze. Bits of my dander, too. Sloughed-off skin cells.Jots of sleep that crusted the corners of my eyes.Lint from my blue gingham dress. And more dross from my grandparents,the furrier and his wife, Archie and Ann.Shoe-shine flake. Loose face powder, talc.The rime from epsom salts.Caked lipstick, wisps of gray hair.All that, now beneatha parking lot for a bicycle store. Nana and Archie and me, we’re under therewith the minks and conies and karakuls.Mixed into chinchillas, foxes, Persian lambs.Side…

To 321-6078 O first chain of digits I ever memorized,number I punched in button by buttonor, when very young, draggedawkwardly around the rotary dialwith my finger to call home.O number that followed my parents and me, then just them, from houseto house for nearly fifty years—Picketts Way, Westport Drive,Willow Woods Lane, and finallyVienna Way—until before longthe phone rang less and less, then not at all, or onlywith recorded messages, remindersof doctor’s appointments, wrongnumbers, someone selling insurance.They took the boxy black phoneoff the wall, pulled the jack, the hole plastered, painted over and forgotten.A framed seascape hangs there now.O number my parents filled in onpermission slips for school field tripsto say…

Day’s End How tranquil the light    that spills from the moon-shaped globe my husband hung    on the kitchen ceiling. Once I thought radiance    flowed from the sky. Butlook: it hums in my fingers,    ringless, bitten, working a sponge. What if happiness is no more    than the tune that spins in my headwhile I scrub at a dried slash    of sauce on the spoon rest? Merrill Oliver Douglas’s first full length collection, Persephone Heads For the Gate, won the 2022 Gerald Cable Book Award from Silverfish Review Press. She is also the author of the poetry chapbook Parking Meters into Mermaids (Finishing Line Press, 2020).…