A woman walked into the forest
and never came out.
Read it in Crow & Cross Keys
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“Fairy Tale for Backwaters & Hesitant Mothers” by Taylor Hamann Los
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“The Healing Silence” by Joseph Hutchinson
Well, with Mother gone, the Home adopted us out—
except for me. Who wants some teenage boy around
causing trouble? At least I got to keep our name.
The rest got other names.Read it in Heimat Review
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“A Man Takes a Fox, a Chicken and a Sack of Grain Across a River in a Small Boat” by Jo Withers
Except I am the chicken, my brother is the fox, and the boat is my mother’s funeral car.
The sack of grain is my brother’s wife who sits between us, clinging to his arm, dabbing dramatically at her non-existent tears.
Read it in Flash Frog
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“the war is to” by Scott Ferry
stay in the body when anxiety
splits the glassi usually find myself coiled in a closet
behind burnt mothwingsRead it in Cold Mountain Review
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“In a Team Development Class My Professor Says To Me My People Need to be Bombed” by Ashley Hajimirsadeghi
How do you tell a professor, someone who is
supposed to be teaching you, the meaning of Persian kindness?
Before this fire burns out, tell me we exist as a poem, a memory,
that never stops writing itself. In 1950s America, it was
considered flirtatious, even sexual, to call someone an atomic
bomb.Read it in Pidgeonholes
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“human hours” by John Sibley Williams
outside he
interrogates a winter woodpile with an axe that fails
to split his questions openinto answers : no into maybe
into just this once into please :Read it in Five South
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“Winter Simulator” by Melissa Tuckman
I’ve seen my breath once before. I was on a porch, I’m not sure where—it’s one of those childhood memories that’s hard to place. The atmosphere wasn’t yet toxic. It was night. I think my dad had woken me up, to witness “condensation.”
Read it in Litro
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“Collateral” by Emily Kingery
Instead of exchanging actual gifts, we wrote poems about trees.
The metaphors extended like plastic bags about to drop: his tree was naked and praiseworthy and obviously my body in the cold interior of his car
Read it in New South Journal
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“Death by Opossum” by Matt Goldberg
She composed herself, smoothing down her headscarf, and asked quietly if I wanted to know how I’ll die, her voice timid in comparison to her omniscience.
I frowned. “That’s not what I came here for.”
“I understand,” she said. “But that’s what I saw.”
“Okay,” I said, figuring it’d be better to prepare for that long night rather than crash headlong into it. “Tell me.”
“You’ll be killed by roving opossums,” she said, betraying no emotion.
Read it in Vast Chasm Magazine
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“Sincerely,” by Molly Zhu
and the thumb you lived under, and the life you’d
built that somehow turned around
only to smother you.Read it in Small Orange
A Quiet Root 