Humpty Dumpty

April 2025 | nonfiction

I was in the waiting room of a hospital.  Someone burst through from behind the reception desk, making a loud crashing sound.  He was in a blue gown, tied in the back, barefoot he ran out, not seeing me, into the street. I screamed, “That’s my son!”. On a cot, he was sedated.  “Mom”, he said and sobbed open mouthed into my neck.  Our crying was meteoric, messy.  The two guards looked straight ahead.  I sat in a chair by his side, leaning towards him, my hand in his. At 4am, I drove home alone. I felt like an egg, cracked, oozing, with no way to gather myself.

 

Valentine Mizrahi

It took almost 50 years for Valentine Mizrahi to allow herself to write and another ten to get published.  She was recently featured in the Style Section of the Sunday New York Times and won first prize for nonfiction at one of her favorite literary journals.

Megan Peralta

April 2025 | visual art

Spyglass

 

As a former newspaper writer and photographer, Megan Peralta often had front-row access to the excitement. For her, the perfect shot is always the unexpected “catch,” the moments the naked eye would miss. She and her wife live in the mountains of California with their menagerie of wildlife friends and semi-tamed dogs.

Jiyoo Nam

April 2025 | visual art

Flute Flurry

 

Jiyoo Nam, a junior at Korea International School, focuses on art, writing, and film. She creates videos that address social and personal themes, enhancing her skills in scriptwriting, camera usage, and Premiere Pro. Jiyoo is committed to advancing her creativity in both film and writing.

Moriah Hampton

April 2025 | visual art

Winter Overgrowth III

Winter Overgrowth IV

 

Moriah Hampton teaches in the Writing and Critical Inquiry Program at SUNY Albany. Her fiction, poetry, and photography have been featured in Ponder Review, The Coachella Review, Arkana, Gargoyle Magazine, Poetry South, and other publications. Originally from the Southeast, she has Scottish and English ancestry and is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She is also on the autism spectrum.

The Thing of the World That I Love Most

April 2025 | poetry

Thank you for laughing each time

I aver, “Who is Samuel Pepys?” when

the Jeopardy category pings “Diarists.”

I thank grad school for resurfacings,

the tedious pages worth a chilly May,

 

Hampton Court morning around

the corner where some costumed King

Henry adjusts blue velvet cuffs, offers

guests winks, wisteria patches traipsing

purple along brick walls. You leave for real

tennis viewing while I warm in the Chapel,

a Royal steward my new mate who details

below floor Victorian heating flanking

Jane Seymour’s green gallbladder. No other

tourists around, he shifts

 

his head as if preparing to cross streets,

leans closer, then loud whispers a question

I’m sure he’s bottled for weeks:

 

You know Samuel Pepys?,

 

and before I can nod, he unbuttons the red

waistcoast, his Tudor Crest patch disappearing,

and I wonder if he’ll display rows of fake

watches like a shady tv character. No, I am

not scared or nervous when he produces

scissors, I think, smiling at me, them palmed

flat for high regard.

 

He had stones, bladder ones,

 

he informs, his hand rising with each word,

so pleased he seems to clarify “forceps,” as in

those used to remove Pepys’s pain. So many

 

questions clog my cords, my larynx, did he know

I’d be his audience today, and what do seventeenth

century tools go for on ebay these days?, still

he marvels at surgery without anesthesia, greets

your reentry, and I thank him for his time.

 

At the gift shop on our way out, I try on the Boleyn

stacking rings, how seamlessly the “B” fits into

pearled band, yet all I want is to run back, search

the gardens’ gravel borders and paths for any

cloudy or misshapen pieces in honor, homage, stones

rescued, revered not solely for Pepys’s pages,

but to etern on his chamber’s mantel.

 

Amy S Lerman

Amy Lerman, by way of Florida, Illinois, England, and Kansas, lives with her husband and very spoiled cats in the Arizona desert, where she is a residential English Faculty at Mesa Community College. Her chapbook, Orbital Debris (Choeofpleirn Press), won the 2022 Jonathan Holden Poetry Chapbook Contest. She has been a Pushcart nominee, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Passengers Journal, Atticus Review, Muleskinner, The Madison Review, Radar Poetry, Slippery Elm, Rattle, Smartish Pace, and other publications.