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.
January 2025 | poetry
The boy’s feet are bound to the floor, body held before a mirror.
Cold lake, the glass spinning his near-naked body into fable, or cautionary
tale. How, how it sings back. Diamond-toothed doppelgänger.
The chambered hallways of his heart bisected, something like
a cathedral spire piercing through, thorny fingered; the enemy,
caught in his eye’s lazy gleam. The fluorescents whining overhead.
There is far too much skin to shed; it’s fastidious in its hold of him.
He doesn’t have the years required to unbind himself, to know what’s real;
can you blame him for mistaking a stranger’s touch for kindness?
Seismic: the hand clasping his wrist, roughing his chest, over his mouth.
He might never sleep again. Lips dry, eyes swallowing light. Every sound
scratching flesh. He doesn’t hear the night mother calling from beyond
the black-out curtains. When it rains, it pours his hot guts onto the black
and white tile. Germinates the future with his certainty that he will never
feel this way again. Even now: in the back of his skull,
a parable unraveling. An old preacher’s words like whiplash, hot sting
of bare thigh against the pew’s modest wood. Should he have known
how the past can come squirming up through a stomach, worms
up through mud during a storm? The living do their best not to drown here.
When did the dark grow talons so fine? He shudders, cold sweat.
Tired boy. Sick boy. Boy with a body of wet-dark tombs.
Cold mirror and his cold face staring out from the glass.
Glass defaced with crude sharpie sketches, a cock ejaculating across canvas.
A phone number. A name. The future, again and again.
His limbs fall one by one like autumn. His limbs are not his own anymore.
The high keeps coming, just as he was told. High beams
severing shadow in two. Everyone gets a piece when he gets this way.
He hopes you’ll stay.
Daniel Brennan
Daniel Brennan (he/him) is a queer writer and coffee devotee from New York. Sometimes he’s in love, just as often he’s not. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize/Best of the Net, and has appeared in numerous publications, including The Penn Review, Sho Poetry Journal, and Trampset. He can be found on Twitter @DanielJBrennan_
January 2025 | poetry
Sun again:
that geode cold light
that briefly splits the granite sky:
storms there: storms there:
darker because of this
temporary brightness.
The first shadows in a week
like inkfade ancient tattoos
impermanent crease crosshatched
on the last of the blue wash snow.
And the red and cream lilies
you stem snapped two days ago
despite again March like thaw water
still pollen fill the living room
with the smell of blossoming
which for them is the smell
of fade dying:
but not yet:
but not today.
John Walser
John Walser’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Spillway, Water-Stone Review, Plume, Posit and december magazine. His manuscript Edgewood Orchard Galleries has been a finalist for the Autumn House Press Prize, the Ballard Spahr Prize, and the Zone 3 Press Prize, as well as a semifinalist for the Philip Levine Prize and the Crab Orchard Series First Book Award. A four-time semifinalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize, as well as a Best New Poets, a Pushcart, and a Best of the Net nominee, John is a professor of English at Marian University and lives in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, with his wife, Julie.
January 2025 | poetry
If I count the times I cried today,
I would need more than two hands—
an 81 year old passes through security
and tells me her mother just stopped driving
yesterday at the age of 108; a woman at the counter
hands me my coffee and says Here, baby;
and when we are lining up at the gate by letter
and number and I don’t know where to go,
a woman tells me conspiratorially that I should
just go behind her. Sometimes life feels conspiratorial.
Like we are conspiring to help each other despite the noise.
How can I explain why I am crying for the glassy-eyed
dog being carried in a tote? For the little boy being led
bleary-eyed to catch a plane I pray will land safely?
I don’t want to be a part of this world, but I can’t stop
negotiating with time, with flesh, audience to myself,
spectator to my own body. I couldn’t bear to be called
baby every day and poured a cup of something hot.
I think it would break me. I can’t bear to be be born
again into the kindness of each and every moment.
I want to believe we are not witless, just wingless,
trying to soar above the wreckage we have made.
That tears are never wasted. Is it foolish to pray
for something you know already exists?
For something that is everywhere?
Esther Sadoff
Esther Sadoff is a teacher and writer from Columbus, Ohio. Her poems have been featured or are forthcoming in Little Patuxent Review, Jet Fuel Review, Cathexis Poetry Northwest, Pidgeonholes, Santa Clara Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, among others. She has three forthcoming chapbooks: Some Wild Woman (Finishing Line Press), Serendipity in France (Finishing Line Press), and Dear Silence (Kelsay Books). She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Hole in the Head Review.
