April 2025 | poetry
Dark sunset blooms above my veins,
Human valleys in marrow eruption.
Amaranthine plum-drip bruises
Mark me crimson thief, orchard’s fox.
Botanic sangria slither, my throat a pink road,
Summer’s death the wine of rot and endings.
Plum thief wears mortal wound,
Seeping fatality brands intruder.
Night beast creeping,
I wear hungry, changing skin.
Soft necks open at my suggestion, sing.
I am a girl as a seed is a contained thing,
an almost thing,
a will-be thing.
I, the slowest bomb, quietest eruption.
This valley will eject me,
The toothy citizen.
Verdant patina, jade of rot’s grasp,
Verdigris mold in resplendent, changeling smear.
I sleep in a pulsing, carmine hollow.
There are a dozen words for wound,
But I suppose my name shall suffice.
There is no place here for predators.
Skin perfumed with twilight’s musk,
Closed eyelid a kaleidoscope veil cracking.
Juice stains fur tapestry, unzipping.
Hunted testament, fur tacked high,
Taxidermy desecrates decay’s appetite.
I am the insatiable heretic.
Morning brings pollen-pulse stain, searing.
You will know when there is no other way.
I slip into purple martin’s skin,
Oil slick whisper,
Become sky’s weightless shadow.
Beak loosed upon green writhe below,
Bellies break in sour plum honey,
For even worms must feast.
There is always another way into the orchard.
Alyssa Blankenship
Alyssa Blankenship is a working artist. Previously unpublished, Alyssa creates works that center around heavy themes expressed through the lens of the natural world.
April 2025 | poetry
Because sweetheart, this life
is a born escape artist,
a migrating fever,
a convict tattooed in invisible ink,
without mercy or nostalgia. – Tony Hoagland
Dear, you tell me you hope
for another 25 years together.
You, who used to skew toward ballerina-looking
lawyers with nary a hair nor argument astray.
You, the noisy admirer of stoicism
waving toward my shoes in admonishment
about the impracticality of carpeting
the world, you wrapped in a blanket
of hermeneutic suspicion, who nonetheless
equates any minor flaw with loss of full humanity−
you tell me I should just shoot you if
you ever 1) limp or 2) go mildly deaf−
you and your paradoxes are infinite:
confusing, amusing as kittens.
Because, let me tell you, such flaws
will grow, will overpopulate like tribbles,
like haystacks of books
and grain siloes of clothes:
a humiliation of abundance,
the digging out of which
could well result in the burial
of the digger. Meanwhile,
the losses peck away their
own claims until it is hard
to recognize−like something moldy
overlooked in the refrigerator−what’s left.
I told you when we met how I hated
the pressure of the term soulmate,
and capitalistic compulsions of Valentine
or Sweetest Days, let alone the big white dress,
like a coconut cake impersonating a woman
or a Christmas tree flocked with chemical toxins.
Because I never expect a lack of trouble;
tennis-hop to be ready for disaster, I request
you wear a helmet in the car, to prevent
head trauma, prompting your eyeroll.
I told Kathy, when she asked
if we’d ever make things
permanent, that permanence,
like perfection, is 1) not a thing
and 2) if it were, we’d only
notice once it was not,
say if I choked on a chunk
of delicious crusty bread
at Osteria Via Stato and
our union and myself alike
pronounced impermanent in retrospect.
But at least she died doing what she loved
with the one she loved.
Julie Benesh
Julie Benesh is the author of the poetry collection Initial Conditions and the poetry chapbook About Time. Her work has been published in Tin House, Another Chicago Magazine, Florida Review, and many other places. She earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College and received an Illinois Arts Council Grant. She lives in Chicago and holds a PhD in human and organizational systems.
January 2025 | poetry
When my children ask me who won
the world, fear grabs all 78 places
American women used to think of as
autonomous. Here in Spain, the news
corners me from 5000 miles away,
its claws sharp but intangible—
a lucky escape, friends say. Luck,
that four-letter misnomer, swaggering
as if clad in tuxedo and bow tie.
Charlatan in a gentleman´s getup,
raping my tongue for days.
What is luck if not unpredictable?
I can´t tell them which natural
disaster he has up his cuffs next.
The number of people who will suffer
or die as he rattles our planet, lunging
for loose change. How many countries´
pendulums have swung perilously
to the right, even ours? The chain
dolls my children made for Halloween
break my gaze, like a bullet through
an eye—if I sketched an oppressor´s face
on each one, they´d stretch the length
of our home, all frown line and sneer,
creepier than ghosts and goblins.
Is anything bad going to happen?
they ask. I say, L and F aren´t so
different, with their rigid right angles.
Their fiery exclamation.
Julie Weiss
Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection published by Kelsay Books, and two chapbooks, The Jolt and Breath Ablaze: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, Volumes I and II, published by Bottlecap Press. Her second collection, Rooming with Elephants, is forthcoming in 2025 with Kelsay Books. “Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children” was selected as a 2023 finalist for Best of the Net. She won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award for “Cumbre Vieja,” was named a finalist for the 2022 Saguaro Prize, and was shortlisted for Kissing Dynamite´s 2021 Microchap Series. Her work appears in Chesnut Review, ONE ART, Rust + Moth, Sky Island Journal, and others. Originally from California, she lives with her wife and children in Spain. You can find her at https://www.julieweisspoet.com/.
January 2025 | poetry
i ask the sun too much
each plant i’ve kept alive so far i call my friend.
each of my friends has its own quiet prayer,
it’s called how i’d like to be cared for—
for instance, from a distance, please & gently,
within reach, without expectation but this—
i will try to stay alive if you try to understand me.
one is never not hungry for all my attention—
the gift of you bending you backwards
to please me. still another’s impossible,
erratic at best & unwilling to clarify—
you’ll just have to learn to learn what i want.
what i want? is a room where the light finds me
easy & all that we need, we have.
i tell my kin the world is burning
fetch a cool glass of water. this side of western ruin
we know as much about fire as we do about forever.
we have four words for the fear of everything,
start praying. begin with god / end with specifics.
ask—for your ancestor, the skill to keep all winter
a single flame alive. ask for revelation, for wanting
no weapon. to be closer, now, to you.
Kristin Lueke
Kristin Lueke is a Chicana poet and author of the chapbook (in)different math (Dancing Girl Press). Her work has appeared in Sixth Finch, Wildness, Frozen Sea, Maudlin House, HAD, and elsewhere. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she was a finalist for the 2024 Porter House Review Poetry Prize and received the Morris W. Kroll Poetry Prize from Princeton University, where she earned an AB in English. She also holds an MA from the University of Chicago. Kristin lives in northern New Mexico and writes at www.theanimaleats.com.
January 2025 | poetry
On the bank of the Seine
in the heath and heart
of the sun’s playground—
that’s where we lay.
Our heads rest on a cushion of plight
as we sink further into the fields
of lush river violets, violets
smooching our petaled cheeks—
blanketing our freckles from the frigid
blistering air, softening
our cracked lips. We smear
violet husks across our faces
until they crumple, shriveling
from an absence of light
in these mallows of mid September
gloom, their ominous purple filling
the smiles across our faces before
their sweet sugar plum scent could
even frolick into our pores. We are
lifeless—but we weren’t always. For years
we smelled of the sun’s honeyed lemons
and orange meringue pie, raindrops
and gifts of gold. Our eyes shimmered
in the leathery moon’s shadows—
a crisp December glistening on the horizon.
At the peak of our ecstacy, we giggled
until cancer’s rind of tree bark
wrapped its treacherous ridges around
our lungs, punted splinters down our throats
to quench our laughter. Somehow
the wavering constellations illuminate
the ball point grasses’ narrow, finite hallways
before they retract into the night sky’s
lustrous black hole, the one trapping
each dusty auburn wish in an endless tunnel—
for more years of violet picking.
for more lemon scented sundays spent
basking in the sun’s generous warmth.
for more time—because the light was never ours.
Kaviya Dhir
Kaviya Dhir is a student poet based in Texas. As a junior in high school, she has been recognized by Georgetown University and the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for her work. She was recently named a finalist for the 2024-2025 Houston Youth Poet Laureate designation.
January 2025 | poetry
I invent a time machine to go back and witness the moment before my birth certificate signing, my parents’ silent prayer before clicking the pen
To Julie, once, Julie, now, Julien, forever, my heart.
What if your name was Antoine or Rebecca or Augustine or Vicky or Beatrice or Walter? Or Ishmael or Clark or Bianca or Dixie or Shauna or Joey or Thaddeus or Milton? Or world-eater, snail-chaser, big walrus, weak handshake, smoke break, sweet manger, good morrow, high heaven, smug winker, long freight car, old matchbox, big sister, door greeter, worm hooker, over-easy, glossy nightville, snooze daily, toast burning, smell-licker, wet shellac, deer herder, my snowman, hot reminder, the shake-up, boy howdy, listen closest, beggar breadbasket, pigeon spikes, gloveless finger, ugly watch guard, open present, pushing wedlock, a gardenia, child’s shadow, castle drawstring, axe in-motion, mother’s comfort, one toe showing, fish-in-ziplock, dear old fellow, the grand lady, hemline feather, long-lost tabby, “Dad, I love you,” the day after mourning, the night before morning, small star one, dancing creased shoes, how to hold you, someone’s baby, street dog drinking.
Julien Griswold
Julien Griswold (they/them) thinks insurance agencies should cover notebook costs as therapy expenses. When they aren’t laying their thoughts bare in said notebooks, they study at Brown University. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Palette Poetry, Pinhole Poetry, The /temz/ Review, Poetry Online, and elsewhere. Connect with them online @cheerupjulien.
