on the keister,
our young brother
was sent back
down home
to till his soil
solo,
Vesuvius bile
vomited
out of bitter lips –
even still!
Venom unabated,
poison spittle
distorting the crops
we consume:
hell, it’s in our clothing!
Endgame?
Dissolution of the collective
dream.
R James Sennett Jr
R James Sennett Jr lives, works, breathes, and chases his muse in Louisville, Kentucky. His poetry has appeared in numerous publications for which he is grateful.
Lines as points that flow
from the first to last,
planes as groups of lines
that define a surface,
some rippling surface
a topographic map
defined by rippling lines
also to mean mountains
but they move too fast
to define a moving figure
a human figure computed
in its sudden contortions
on a flatscreen of colors
limbs that part from bodies
or melt back into the torso
from which they came
or part like distended ribs–
it’s all just lines distorted,
flowing points composing lines,
points that move on a plane
crossing boundaries of others
nota bene the wrestling harlequins
as they melt into another
in the prize ring.
Scott Penney
Recent publications have been in Artful Dodge, basalt, Faultline, Fugue, Chiron Review, and other magazines. He has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and the Vermont Studio Center. Currently, he lives in Chelsea, Vermont.
Always, our need to know.
The way a burn pit is in conversation
With its burning.
How we are ordered to breathe,
To stand and breathe
So our blood can acknowledge
What is entering the lungs.
The particulates of precious heavy metals.
Vulnerable as we are, ordered
To be more so
To perform upon command
Even when we suspect it to be lethal.
And somehow, still, our need to know.
The temptation to put the knife-tip of fire
To our tongue.
Smoke rising like the voice of a chanteuse,
The Steinway’s lacquer liquifying in the heat
Air to breath to blood.
And no one, no one
Is allowed to leave.
The singer still singing her desire,
The burn pit burning brighter.
Ken Holland
Ken Holland has been widely published in journals including Rattle, Atlanta Review, Tulane Review, and Tupelo Quarterly. His work has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. He placed first in the 2021 New Ohio Review poetry contest and was a finalist in the 2024 Concrete Wolf and the 2025 Moonstone Press chapbook contests, which Moonstone subsequently published. Also, a finalist in Bicoastal Review’s 2025 contest. More at kenhollandpoet.com
I dreamt last night that Mothra died. Three pebbles and a few rented orphans attended her wake, a modest affair. I was working. I was lurking inside a bouquet of Forget-Me-Not’s. I was fucking around inside the last coyote’s lair and I still needed a hair-cut, a blue noose, a way to stop choosing my adventures. No one picked up Mothra’s body from the good morgue. No one cared. And I was scared, so I answered the telephone. The man from the morgue said: Everyone is dead here, Henry Sugar. Your mother’s wings are getting in the way of my salad. Would you like to play Marry-Fuck-Kill? Silly me, as if I am not still beholden to how poor we were, the burnt toast, the loaves of old ghost stories. I dreamt that I scared myself awake, on the way to the death chamber, the womb reclaiming. At the morgue, Mothra smiles at me like an old flying saucer and I book us two tickets to Tokyo. We wander around the Marunouchi, and she is reminded of San Francisco. She asks: Was I a wonderful mother? and I hate that every question has an answer. Lying is a strangled yodel and Mother Mothra is easier now that she is dead. It’s a simple thing to stay silent and so I quit my mouth like an overdose and went mild. She drinks sake. We eat o-nigiri and remember Ghirardelli Square. I wish my blood could turn our quiet love to technicolor. I show her the shop where my husband and I bought the painting of the tree, the color of sour limes. She asks me if I cried when she died. I don’t remember. I do not say that I forgive her, as my tongue is only as thick as rose-beds. I touch her ashy wing and little parts of her fall into me, a telescope or hesitant quicksand. I say: I am happy, now. On the third morning, I miss my husband and take a flight home. As the jet rises over the city, I look out the window. Mothra is still on that park bench, staring with eyes that will never close, over the vast bay. I let go.
Jason Davidson
Jason Davidson is a poet, fiction writer, playwright and performer. He’s written and directed over 200 works of experimental theatre and his one-act plays have been widely published. His poetry has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Hobart, SoFloPoJo, Heavy Feather Review, HAD, Luna Luna and other journals. Jason lives on California’s Central Coast with his husband. Find him on Instagram at @jasonwriteswords or visit his site at jasonwriteswords.com.
I wake with that fear again,
leaping then hindquarter stung.
I’m out and I’m fake.
How am I in charge of myself?
I’m wasted opportunity,
a bug lit for only a second.
I hiccup madly, remove the dart,
resume my unfounded fear of the future,
the usual abracadabra routine.
Should’ve stopped for that hit cat,
should’ve penetrated more deeply
as I swam those laps.
Instead, a still life: Darkness
with Eyes Closed, the haunting feeling
I’m the one who hit the cat.
Brian Builta
Brian Builta is a graduate of the University of Texas and lives in Arlington, Texas. His poetry has been published most recently in Ploughshares, Beatnik Cowboy, and Sugar House Review. He is the author of three collections of poems, and more of his poetry can be found at brianbuilta.com.
Texas dawns humid
green anole at my feet skims
hot deck planks
pink dewlap
pulses orchid
throbs crimson
anole gutters
along downspout
adhesive toepads
cling
release
skitter
lust
out of view
in caliche cactus wood chip garden
When sun enough has ignited the sky
I call my mother in California
We laugh about how often we name upstairs
and down as recent destinations
Not beach or river downtown or lunch gym
84 she no longer drives; Covid she stays home
I order for both of
green anole toenail polish palette
Paint mine red predictable
pad out to the deck signal
Orchid my mother plants herself in the lupine bougainvillea
fuchsia gumweed garden at the cliff
Sea foam sketches the deserted beach
Blue whales
scoop krill
crack the Pacific surface
migrate south to Mexico
Jane Hammons
Jane Hammons taught writing for three decades at UC Berkeley, where she received a Distinguished Teaching Award. Upon retirement, she moved to Austin, Texas, for five years before returning home to New Mexico. Her writing appears in numerous journals and anthologies: Alaska Quarterly Review, Southwestern American Literature, The Main Street Rag, Yellow Medicine Review, Hint Fiction, (Norton), The EastOver Anthology of Rural Writers of Color, 2023 and 2024, The Maternal is Political (Seal Press), and Selected Memories, (Hippocampus Books). She enjoys photography as part of her writing practice, and three of her photographs are included in Taking It To the Streets: A Visual History of Protest and Demonstration, an exhibition of the Austin History Center. She is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation.
