Fifteen minutes till dismissal and I am on the top rung that says do not stand here because the wind has caught the banner over the playground

By Joe Karlovec Joe Karlovec is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in Wilmington, North Carolina. His work explores the metaphysical power of vernacular architecture through its historical, mythological, and sociological context. He has spent the last 10 years developing a nomadic style studio while living in Ohio, Florida, South Carolina, and now North Carolina. Karlovec currently works as the Facilities Coordinator for a museum where he manages the preservation of

By Dawn Bratton Dawn Bratton lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she writes poetry and prose orbiting the image of eyes and theme of perception. During 2021 - 2023 she served as secretary and vice president on the board of directors for WordSwell ( wordswelljournal.org ). In 2023, she co-founded Moon Blossom Collective, an arts and wellbeing collective ( moonblossomcollective.org ). In 2025 she founded Karma for supporting the literary and arts communities ( karmafinan

By Joe Karlovec Joe Karlovec is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in Wilmington, North Carolina. His work explores the metaphysical power of vernacular architecture through its historical, mythological, and sociological context. He has spent the last 10 years developing a nomadic style studio while living in Ohio, Florida, South Carolina, and now North Carolina. Karlovec currently works as the Facilities Coordinator for a museum where he manages the preservation of

Beneath endless sky, on a shoreline far away, a lonely blue-footed booby

Remember  the year you sat out the orbit around the sun? The year you hovered in space and all you wanted was to watch the planet

By Christine Sloan Stoddard Christine Stoddard is a multimedia creator and artist named one of Brooklyn Magazine’s Top 50 Most Fascinating People and Style Weekly’s Top 40 Under 40 of Richmond, VA. She co-hosts the comedy TV show “Don’t Mind If I Don’t” with Aaron Gold, and runs the YouTube channel Stoddard Says via her production company, Quail Bell. Her artwork, fiction, and poetry have been featured in the Queens Botanical Garden, the Portland Review, Ms. Magazine, So to S

I did it for her. She never got the chance to go, becoming a mother so young

Ice clacking branches in moonlit gusts deem this trudge conceivably lethal, but dim echoes of its crunching

Flowing, murmuring ribbon mirrors encroaching dark. Twilight’s purple bruised to orange,

I’ve spent a lifetime, waiting to hold my breath. Heart beating fast at the onset of conflict. Running to...

By Ashley Parker Owens Ashley Parker Owens is an Appalachian writer, artist, and spiritualist living in Richmond, Kentucky, USA. Her previous published poetry collections include Euphoric Drift (2018), Retrospecter (2019), Unruly Spirits (Dancing Girl Press, 2018), Puppet (Rinky Dink Press, 2018), and Territorial Misfortune (2017). See video poems at https://www.youtube.com/@visual_poems   https://www.ashleyparkerowens.com

I never heeded the squeaks of the half-opened gate nor the kitchen clock tchhing that you were late.

The ferry gave way to a taxi and Led to a grubby room in yellow.

I first learned that my father was the Messiah in 1989, just days before my 20th birthday. The two of us were in a coffee shop, not far from Tel Aviv University, where he was a professor of statistics and I, a second-year student of philosophy.

Pearls of sweat trickle down my forehead onto my nose and along the wrinkles of my mouth.

The wind coursed through my hair as I seared down the highway at night. The green light of billboards was in my eyes and...

Arriving home he found her baggage gone And his three young children upon his hands.

I sit in a spot where the old Barn cuts out the least sky.

All the rage on the lake: supping. But it’s not my cup of tea, really.