Coming Up For Air: Shallow
by Anne Pollard James

Retreat
by Sharon Fagan McDermott

I am thinking of the shark fisherman of August
many years ago, laughing as they cast their heavy lines

off the pier on St. Simon's Island. How hot it was
that night. How high the tide. The air reeked of chum.
How I loved being part of something, which I knew

absolutely nothing about. How woozy the moon.
How I rooted for the sharks and whispered this
to the ocean below. How bloody the heads of bluefish

and mackerel, the bucketed bait. How happy my friend
and I were. The fishermen said we could stay if we were
quiet. Gladly, we welcomed the silence swelling around us,

only the sound of waves pulsing pylons. Silence was wet air,
sacrificed fish, blurred stars. Silence was salt and the fishermen’s focus
on the lines that sank beyond sight into the private world

of the sea. My friend and I were on our own, seeking peace,
and we found, instead, delicate fish bones, gators in the creeks
where we biked, and a man mopping his face with a filthy T-shirt.

We found where indigo sea met indigo sky. Which was which—
and who cared? All was all and silence, the moon of the night.
Swim away, shark, I sang in my head. I couldn’t name

a single constellation, though they swung low and glaucous.
Life ballooned. I pocketed every star.

The soft and thin soaring of a first light, Tiziana Rasile

With light in hand
by Michele M Miller

wait through the ember months, look up before you’re done
with the backs of envelopes and your lists of groceries and
kindling and concrete mortality and the thick of desert horizon,
blind yourself, there is no reason not to, the dark dark rolls a
flashbulb around its mouth and swallows, it shows you things,
shows you cold birds beneath the windowpane and the skin
tone of roses you could not grow, shows you and shows you
and most of the time it is something bearable, but sometimes
the old house flares up and slaps you in the face and says see
the redwood slivers from the locked fence of your childhood,
the rocking horse on the back porch, your knees bent and
hands holding the imprint of reins

A Very Long Conversation, Amy Robinson Gendrou

The Zone of Interest
by Matt Coonan

We archive the day by activity. Food shopping.
Couch naps. Lukewarm showers. Pouring seed
into a small home for paused flight. Pointing out
the subtle variations in beak size. Dragging
a rusted firepit to the curb. Placing tiger lilies
on the mantle. Reheating honey ham & lasagna.
Unwinding in the den. Choosing a film. The one
about a family planting lilies in a garden
as families are fed to fire yards away. The day-to-
day routines. Gentle thrills. The hog slaughtered
to seat a family at the table. Children playing
catch with explosives. A serene blue sky
swallowed by ash that will coat the flower beds
a soft gray to ignore for the promise of rain.

City, Pranav Prakash

Poem Because In Any Given Room, I Anticipate Violence
by Rita Mookerjee

clever as always my phone tries to finish my sentence
sees the word active & knows that shooter must follow.

her next guess is volcano which is also correct because
my hands are molten as I decide how to flip the table

& shove it against the door. I decide that a mechanical
projector arm will make a good bludgeon while I wait

to see why all the lights have gone out. the good news is
that some alarms are false. the bad news is that I live

braced for a nightmare my hands like blades. my rage is salt
& mortar. hours later I realize that I never even bothered to

grab my phone. clever as she is my phone is only steel
& plutonium not a shield from bullets.

I’m not a fighter says R to me after class, her hair looping red.
I will die for you we promise each other. one american day.

The Final Show, Clara Lowe

Takoyaki, St. Marks Place, 2008
by Rita Mookerjee

you had only seen them on TV 
alongside counters & tall stools
& tentacles of steam & the beery
perfume of spent sake bombs

not that people in Tokyo do sake
bombs     your octopus balls are
scalding but it’s 2AM so you let
gold bonito ribbons proclaim your 

drunkenness like a house sigil on
2nd avenue    you don’t leave your 
dorm without eyeliner and lipstick       
you don’t burn your mouth because 

you have trained it to open wide 
you think you have a plan  :  to pour 
the city into a clear bowl & drink 
instead you fry yourself in its batter.

Lift Off, Karen George

On Language
by Dallas Raquel Klein

I hated reading poems by Latinx writers aloud
in college. White classrooms
with students eager to read together, line by line—
someone always begged to read aloud the Spanish version
like a game, a moment
for us to make mistakes, to parody
our seriousness. They laughed at their failing
tongues. I winced. I burned.
Oh, I thought you spoke Spanish?
Around the room we’d read.
Each time around
a reminder of what was taken.
Mom can’t even roll her tongue.
Dad thinks it’s funny—calls her a coconut.
I think america beat it out of her.
My turn would come
back around, and I’d feel fire
ants in my mouth.
I made sure to laugh loudest in the room,
masking, howling, playing
dress up with my teeth.

Coming Up For Air: Shallow, Anne Pollard James

Questions for my body after sex
after Eduardo C. Corral
by Tran Tran

Were your parents home?

What did you crave: his fingers or loneliness?

Who did you look like when you were naked?

Did you tell him about your pubic hair?

How hard were his teeth?

How many times did you respond fuck me to his I love you?

Fake moans?

Who taught you to use your tongue like that?

Did you cry?

New metaphor for pain?

A Yama, Pranav Prakash

The End of Everything
by Christian Paulisich

My boyfriend fears the fault
on which my family lives.
The last big quake was in 1868,
he says. Decades overdue. I know
our years of preparation
might not measure up; a crack
in Earth too long unperturbed
can only signal danger. Pent-up,
frustrated, January
dry, a month without
his touch. Would the Earth feel
collision at its core, or would it hurt
as love so often does?
Unsatisfied with my it is
what it is, he shakes his head
and changes the conversation.
Duck and cover no match
for impending disaster. I’ve lived
through more earthquakes,
however small, than lovers.
I tell him we can live
forever waiting
for the end of everything. So
here, as his hand slips
down the cleft
of my back and further,
I want everything to come
tumbling down.

Glasses, Sara Bailey

Wasp Nest Speaks
after Jericho Brown’s “Duplex”
by Kaley Hutter

Before you spat me out, you chewed me a skin.
You wanted to love the world, to gnaw it up.

I tasted like the world you gnawed up,
so you loved me too, bore me in saliva.

I loved to bear the womb of your saliva—
so a house emerges, sheet by suckled sheet.

You merged us to a house where we suck and sheet.
Below, a girl reads. I’m halfway in your mouth.

I read the girl while you lick out my mouth,
the part you’ll return to when the making’s done.

I plan to turn you into parts when we’re done.
You told me, glory begins in the tooth.

I’m telling you, glory in my cells, my teeth.
From now on, I spit you out. I choose your skin.

She, Like Water Does, Anne Pollard James

Sisterly
by Pamela Wax

 
The vulture sniffs for carrion
in the valley below. You admire
its orbits, balletic, the dancer
you might have been. Had you been

an omophagist without two left feet.
Had you a taste for meat, you’d serve
some up raw to impress the other
members of your kettle. As if

a lean cut filleted from your own
barren womb. No, you would truss
it. Yes, you’d truss it into shape
with the girdle you found

in your mother’s lingerie drawer.
Its garters remind you of the Playboy
Bunny she thought you’d never play.
You’re not as perky as your sister,

she said long ago, though you sport black
underthings, and your sister
models dowdy. You no longer duel
for sororal first blood. Together

you belt out Prince to get through
this thing called life, mouthing
truisms like we’re all gonna die,
and sometimes your sister plays

soulmate, and you scavenge dark
corners for prana and pheromones,
patrolling every in-breath,
Thanatos humming in your ear.

Glimpse of St. George, Amy Robinson Gendrou

contributors

Amy Robinson Gendrou is a mixed media artist living in western NY. Amy’s interests in nature, sustainability, mindfulness education, and mental health profoundly influence her artistic practice. She uses landscape to better understand intersections of physical locations and events, and address environmental destruction, climate change, and humanity’s impact on the earth.

Anne Pollard James (b.1972) is an Oklahoma contemporary painter. Largely self-taught, she discovered art in her late 40s. Her works are loud, hard, soft, sweet & sharp, and always through the lens of the spectacular strength of women.

Christian Paulisich graduated from Johns Hopkins University, where he worked on The Hopkins Review. He now works as a therapist in Maryland but is originally from the Bay Area, California. He was chosen as an honorable mention for the 2024 Gulf Coast Prize for Poetry and a finalist for Frontier Poetry's 2024 Nature & Place Contest, and he received a summer 2024 fellowship from Brooklyn Poets. He has published and has forthcoming work in The Southeast Review, Salamander, Prairie Schooner, Meridian, The Rumpus, Literary Matters, Crab Orchard Review, Denver Quarterly, fourteen poems, and other magazines. Follow along at https://christianpaulisich.wixsite.com/christianpaulisichpo.

Clara Lowe is a 23-year-old artist from Spartanburg, South Carolina. As a recent graduate with a bachelor's degree in studio art, she is focusing her energy on expanding her professional portfolio and cementing her status as an artist.

Karen George’s photographs appear in Indianapolis Review, Riparian anthology, and 3Elements Review. She’s author of the poetry collections Swim Your Way Back, A Map and One Year, Where Wind Tastes Like Pears, Caught in the Trembling Net, and the collaborative Delight Is a Field. Her website is: https://karenlgeorge.blogspot.com/.

Matt Coonan is a poet, emcee & teacher from New York. He is the author of Toy Gun (Button Poetry, 2023). His poems have been featured on Button Poetry and published in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, The Southampton Review, Inklette, among others.

Pamela Wax is the author of the collections Walking the Labyrinth (2022), Starter Mothers (2023), and Every Single Beast of My Heart (2026). Her poems have received several awards and three Best of the Net nominations. An ordained rabbi, Pam lives in the Northern Berkshires of Massachusetts.

Pranav Prakash is a multidisciplinary artist and humanities scholar residing in Tallahassee, Florida. He is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Florida State University, a Senior Fellow at the Rare Book School, University of Virginia, and a Trustee of the American Printing History Association (APHA) in New York. After receiving a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Iowa, he was appointed as a Junior Research Fellow and the Director of Studies for Asian & Middle Eastern Studies at Christ Church, University of Oxford, UK. He specializes in the comparative study of book arts, literary cultures, and religious traditions in Persian and South Asian societies. His artwork and research grapple with the experiences of underprivileged communities in India, Iran and Central Asia. For exploring more about his artistic and academic work, please visit: https://www.pranav-prakash.com/.

Sara Bailey is a South Carolina-based artist who specializes in drawing and oil painting. Bailey was the winner of the Tryon Block House Steeplechase Poster Contest, as well as a recipient of the President’s Award at the Converse Art Society Juried Exhibition.

Sharon Fagan McDermott is a poet, essayist, and teacher. She has four collections of poetry, most recently Life Without Furniture (Jacar Press). In 2023, her first book of essays, Millions of Suns: On Writing and Life, was published (University of Michigan Press). “Poets and Writers Magazine” named it “A Best Book for Writers.”

Tiziana Rasile is an italian abstract artist. She completed the course of study at the Academy of Fine Arts. During her career she participated in numerous international events. Her research explores light and chromatic vibration. It focuses on the possibility of creating a multidisciplinary dialogue. She is represented by Laura.I Gallery in London.