Perfect Paradox by John Zedolik Poetry - “the idiosyncrasies, stamps of my proprietorship” (3/24/2025)
The Worst of Our Fathers by Mark Botts Poetry - “we struck/each other so often, too often,/like astronauts/scraping for the last flight/back to earth” (3/21/2025)
My Best Friend’s Sugar Daddy by Anna Christina Piccione Poetry - “waxen winter plants, an oil portrait of a stillborn son,/sensory deprivation tank” (3/19/2025)
Midwestern Mice in Silk Kimonos: Yuki Tanaka’s “Chronicle of Drifting” by Johnny Payne Essay - “[Yuki] Tanaka’s singular view, somewhat detached yet not lacking in compassion, soberly reckoning while allowing for flights of optimism, is, again, the product of the angle of vision of the flaneur, the stranger in town, the person who has seen it all but decides not to linger on individual premises too long.” (3/16/2025)
Miscalculated by Marla Dial Moore Poetry - “For this, we built a star-searcher/and launched it/into the galaxies:/Mirror upon giant mirror/sifting through time” (3/14/2025)
Observance, 2022 by Christina E. Petrides Poetry - “Someone recently fell/into an industrial mixer at the latter’s factory./The company sent bread/from the same facility to her funeral.” (3/10/2025)
Saints by James Scannell McCormick Poetry - “What kind of light flames on them? What’s on fire—/A church? A shop? But also inward:  desire” (3/7/2025)
Language for Throat and Tongue: Elise Paschen’s “Blood Wolf Moon” by Johnny Payne Essay - “[Elise] Paschen’s writing give new meaning to the term ‘ethnopoetics,’ taking it outside the boundaries of ‘traditional societies,’ ‘the informant,’ and the outsider who goes in to record ‘pre-literate narratives.'” (3/2/2025)
Night Stalkers by W. D. Ehrhart Poetry - “hide in the bushes,/imagine we’re soldiers on patrol,/evading the Krauts and the Japs.” (2/28/2025)
I Thought I’d Live ‘til Ninety-five by Miriam Bruning Carmichael Poetry - “I envisioned myself old on a mountain hike/a soft breeze lifting my long white hair/I thought I’d live ‘til ninety-five” (2/23/2025)
Asterisk* by Brook J. Sadler Poetry - “Sinister pinwheel/stuck to a breezeless sentence/as sly ornament—” (2/21/2025)
The Wake by Cameron Rife Poetry - “I swore I heard willows cry/through the zig zagged fields,/traveling through my universe/as quickly as the moon touches our light” (2/19/2025)
Haunted by the Sonnet: Erica Reid’s “Ghost Man on Second” by Johnny Payne Essay - “In [Erica] Reid’s Ghost Man on Second, the real ghost man floating through the pages is the sonnet.” (2/16/2025)
Moth by Aki Duenas Poetry - “The city never sleeps: the isle of faces illuminated by cell phones/is proof its waking isn’t rising, only beeping, only static,/only the cashier in the convenience store, only flickering.” (2/14/2025)
Nostalgia by Kip Knott Poetry - the gilded tree that glitters in dusklight/like an upside-down chandelier (2/12/2025)
Witness. Target = Rubble by Lori Shridhare Poetry - “We thought there couldn’t be anything more./But hurricanes can collide with tornados, can join floods./Beautiful and horrific are the moment’s songs.” (2/7/2025)