Chris Dungey

October 2026 | poetry

Waste Management

At five o’clock in the morning

I am awakened by a distant thunder.

Rather, by a sound like approaching thunder

heard at a distance of five or so miles.

But there is six inches of snow on the ground,

temperature in single digits. Could this be it,

my first bomb cyclone? No luck. I watch

as a garbage truck empties it’s green, steel

boxes at the township primary school

across the road. Long, forklift arms raise

the bins over the compactor—like a wrestler

poised to body slam a heel or fling

him over the ropes. Out fall milk cartons,

pencil sharpener grindings, flattened

juice pouches, Kleenex wads, more treacly

silt they can’t recycle. The lids dangle

aloft, shivering the backstage sound effects

that woke me. My alarm would allow another

hour but I start coffee, nurse my chagrin

that the newest weather phenomenon

was just more landfill. At least

the polar vortex is quiet.

Chris Dungey

Chris Dungey is a retired autoworker in Michigan. He rides a mountain bike to work on his fupa and a Honda Ruckus for the planet. More than 160 of his poems have found publication in litmags and online, most recently in Thimble Lit Mag, Penman Review, Argyle Review, and Macrame Review.

Barbara Daniels

October 2026 | poetry

It’s Not a War

What’s inside me? Surgery clips, a stent trail,

stones, plastic. All the people inside me are

clamoring to get out, sliding little doors open

in my belly, lurching onto the bed, red dressed,

blue uniformed, drums throbbing, trumpets lifting

and blaring. That’s why I don’t think of illness

as war: the anarchic little army on my side

get their steps mixed up and then forget to salute.

When I was a child, everybody had a doll

with a big crocheted skirt to hide a roll of toilet paper.

Yes, the toilet paper doll. That’s how I learned not to

love my belongings. Who needs a clock striking

and striking, new doeskin gloves. sad little parodies

of dress-up clothes? That blood in my urine. I like

to think it’s just an infection, something slipped into

my body. Decades ago the tip of a Foley catheter bounced

in my bladder for three years. A nurse didn’t notice it

when she smoothly pulled out the catheter. It was bad luck,

not some lost battle. I got the crumbs that slid off a table.

I got the duck bone, white in my broth. The forecast is

healing. I admit that’s only a theory, a grasping at straws.

But there’s no need to wash my hands of hope. I read

about a tornado, fires in New Mexico, smoke moving east.

l get it. I’ll breathe till I stop that breathing, turn to what’s

blooming, put purple blossoms into my hands. The dirt

smells like rain and pine fronds. Just beyond there’s a dune

and the salt-sand. Wind keeps shaping it. Spindrift froths up.

Barbara Daniels

Barbara Daniels’ Talk to the Lioness was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. Among her other books are Rose Fever: Poems and four chapbooks: Moon Kitchen, Black Sails, Quinn & Marie, and The Woman Who Tries to Believe. Her poems have appeared in Good River Review, Neologism, Rust & Moth, Lake, and elsewhere. She received four fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

Carella Keil, Featured Author

October 2026 | poetry

Fireflies

Your eyelash fell

On my cheek

As we made love, you made

A wish

In another dimension

My breasts two full moons

I placed your hand on my belly

The first kick

Your eyes lit up with a thousand fireflies

I blew each candle out

Birthday cakes counting backwards

My eyes mounds of dirt

Yours, four-leaf clovers

I planted a periscope

In my chest

Now every day I’m telegramming you

My darkest confessions

Full stop. Expecting

You to drop my heart but

Every time I throw

You catch it

I know I love you I’m jealous

Of the pillow crushed

Against your body when I’ve missed

Your bed too many days

Broken trust

Is a feral cat

On the fire escape

Waiting to be coaxed

Back inside

In this dimension

I throw myself down

The well of your love

Landing on a soft

Bed of wishes

Carella Keil

Carella is a writer and digital artist who splits her time between the ethereal world of dreams and Toronto, Canada, depending on the weather. Her work involves themes of mental health, nature, and sexuality, often in a surrealist tone. Many of her short stories jigsaw together into a magical realism narrative, and she is currently working on the connective tissue for a fiction collection. Her debut poetry collection, Undercover Butterfly, was published in May 2026 by Dark Thirty Poetry Publishing and is available for purchase. She is the 2023 Door is a Jar Writing Award winner in nonfiction and the Fall 2025 Cardinal Sins first-place award recipient in fiction. She has received multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and is the featured artist for the Fall 2024 issue of Blue Earth Review. Her work previously appeared in Burningword 104 and 114, and in numerous literary journals including Columbia Journal, BULL Lit Mag, Berkeley Fiction Review, Ponder Review, Wizards in Space and Tangled Locks. Her art is featured on the covers of over a dozen literary journals, including Glassworks Magazine, Nightingale and Sparrow, Cosmic Daffodil, Silk Road Review, In Parentheses, and Straylight Magazine.

Josje Weusten

April 2026 | poetry

Cardboard Car Hanger

Its needle-sharp smell

penetrates the cheap shop,

the type where people riffle

through racks,

thoughtlessly throwing

underpriced things into carts.

Intended purchases left behind
in places different

from where they were picked up.

It isn’t supposed to be lying

between the car window screens,

let alone stripped

of its plastic wrapper.

In my father’s post-divorce car,

its cardboard twin had dangled

along with turns,

unexpected,

like the changes in his mood.

As I tense up,

my three-year-old squeezes my hand,

pleadingly persuading me

to leave

with Miffy-shaped screens,

the hanger staying

where it belongs.

Josje Weusten

Josje Weusten (she/her) is a Dutch writer/poet living in Belgium together with her partner and two daughters. She holds a PhD in literary studies, is an alumna of Faber Academy London, and teaches English literature and creative writing at Maastricht University. Her debut novel, ‘Fake Fish’, was published internationally by Sparsile Books (UK) in 2024. Her poems and shorts have appeared in various publications, including Litbreak Magazine, The Bookends Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, and The Brussels Times. In 2025, she won the Short Story of Belgium Competition 2025. For more information about her work: https://josjeweusten.co.uk/