And of the many causes worthy of protest, it seems silly to choose a botanical garden. But that is what we’ve done – refused to pay the fee and decided, instead, to walk through this city that is constantly bending uphill. We are sunburnt around our edges from the boat ride in the San Francisco Bay. All five of us eat ice cream for lunch and revel in well-worn jokes older than our worry for aging parents or fraying marriages. In this sisterhood we taste food with our whole bodies. We are stealing pieces of each other to keep in our pockets, like warm sourdough bread that will sustain us between reunions. At the corner of Lombard Street and Powell someone shouts free nature! We stop in front of a riot of hot pink confetti – paper petals like origami love letters climb the brick building. We say bougainvillea too many times until we can’t stop laughing, until tears are melting into our ice cream.
About the author:
Audrey Lane is an Austin-based writer who grew up in Dayton, Ohio. After earning degrees in English and environmental science from Davidson College, she pursued an MA in English from Middlebury’s Bread Loaf School of English and an MFA from Queens University. She is currently working on her first poetry collection.
finds it cyclical, boring even the force of his hand, swung down marking the exit of life
he wipes his hands and listens it’s his version of grace the damned plead their case
i was born here fees went up 200% what more can i give
he is almost moved denied almost melts away i am almost a dog
“you’re free to return home”
he is a grim reaper now explaining to lost souls the events of their own passing
where to? where to?
the procession of bodies are frantic they must search for their heads heads they will never find
what can they offer the executioner? once the head is gone what else is left?
a headless woman grabs me she could be my mother i am almost moved
if I could find her head i would spend eternity sewing it back tender her chin in my palms
who better than the damned to build a home from hell find family in the dying and dead
before i am moved, she is gone an agent directs her back to her end while another eyes my neck
what a merciful day in hell before anyone can draw my blood i become a citizen
About the author:
Cianga is a Congolese artist based in California, by way of South Africa. They have an MFA from Bennington College and their work seeks to decolonize language and knowledge. Winner of the 2023 Evaristo Prize, Cianga has also been a semifinalist for the 2021 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and NFSPS Board Award. Their work can additionally be found in New England Review, Berkeley Fiction Review and elsewhere.
When my mother left my father, he shot her clay figurines
out of the trees, littering the forest floor with shards of fragile animals
faces pulverized to white dust. Trust me, he said,
They weren’t very good.
~
In memory she leaves me standing
on a rocky shore. Lighting fires the sky. My mother tells me,
There’s a way of dying gracefully— our family
has never been good at it.
Then she wades into the grey electric surf.
~
When my father left this earth, he died on the inhale,
still taking more in, as though gearing up
to tell one last joke or explode. I tried
to make that mean something in my dreams
where there is no image only sound:
Gunfire. Heavy rain.
~
Which of us is bullet, which trigger? We leave each other
loaded silent in the forest of our resentments
until the shot rings out.
Bonus audio of Jamie reading her poem:
About the author:
Jamie L. Smith is the author of “The Flightless Years”, and “Trojan Horses: Voices from the Opioid Crisis”, winner of the 2025 Unleash Press Book Prize. Her chapbook “Mythology Lessons” was winner of Tusculum Review’s 2020 Nonfiction Prize and is listed as notable in Best American Essays 2021. Her poetry, nonfiction, and hybrid works appear in publications including Southern Humanities Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Best New Poets, The Good Life Review, and anthologies by Indi(e) Blue, Allegory Ridge, and Beyond Queer Words. Please visit jlsmithwriter.com for more information.
This document covers the removal of a white oak, older than any of us, older than the house, and somehow still trying.
The work was necessary. That does not make it less of a loss.
It stood through storms that renamed streets, through years when the house changed hands, but the shade didn’t.
It held the yard together. It gave us a place to stand without thinking about why.
EXISTING CONDITIONS
The canopy thinned gradually, as if practicing disappearance.
Hollowing present but concealed. Decay progressed inward, doing its work quietly.
The trunk remained load-bearing. Leaves returned on schedule.
From the outside, it performed as expected.
ASSESSMENT
This was not sudden failure. This was a long decline—the kind that forces you to decide when endurance becomes danger.
Leaving it would have meant collapse, not dramatic, just unavoidable.
The risk was not to the tree. The risk was to what it had spent its life protecting.
PREPARATION
Call the arborist.
Learn the vocabulary of permission: a. canopy reduction, b. controlled drop, c. section by section.
Establish boundaries.
Remove what can be carried away.
Stand back.
Stay close enough to witness.
REMOVAL
Begin at the highest point. There is no gentler order.
Each cut is measured, precise, almost reverent.
Limbs descend like remembered instruction— how to hold, how to shelter, how to last.
The sound travels farther than expected.
The smell is green, old, unmistakable.
The trunk resists, not out of will, but because it has always been upright. It has been doing this work for a very long time.
STUMP
What remains is broad, exposed, ringed with years you can count but not translate.
There is decay at the center, a soft place where strength used to be.
No one is surprised. We were hoping.
AFTER
The yard is brighter. This is not an improvement.
Birds hesitate, then leave.
The space feels unguarded. The sky presses closer.
We keep the wood. It feels wrong to let all of it go.
Bonus audio of Sam reading his poem:
About the author:
Sam Aureli is a design and construction professional, originally from Italy, now calling the Boston area home. A first-generation college graduate, he’s spent decades immersed in concrete and steel. Poetry is what truly feeds his soul these days. With retirement still some time away, Sam balances the grind of his day job with the refuge he finds in writing. His work has appeared in The Atlanta Review, West Trade Review, Chestnut Review, and other literary journals. Sam was also the Grand Prize Winner in The October Project’s 2025 Poetry Contest, a Merit Award winner in the Atlanta Review 2025 International Poetry Competition, and shortlisted in the Bournemouth Writing Prize.
Farmworker Dies Fleeing an Immigration Raid in Southern California | Karla Hernandez Torrijos
Title taken from the New York Times article of the same name by Mirian Jordan and Jonathan Wolfe. Form invented by Nicole Sealey.
What is the right form for laying down the dead man’s body? Closing his eyes? For pulling the hospital sheet over his head? What is the appropriate number of caesuras to convey loss, absence? If I end stop the line on a question mark, does it accurately represent my confusion, my lack of understanding? Does it absolve my complicit pen? In this, I am losing faith. I used to be a true believer. Recited poems as scripture or prayer. I prayed every day. Stood at the pulpit, sat in the pew, I built stained-glass windows from words that glimmered when spoken. What words will I speak now, I wonder, now that a man is dead? now that a man is dead? What words will I speak now, I wonder, from words that glimmered when spoken. I built stained-glass windows Stood at the pulpit, sat in the pew, I prayed every day. scripture or prayer. Recited poems as I used to be a true believer. I am losing faith. In this, Does it absolve my complicit pen? my lack of understanding? does it accurately represent my confusion, If I end stop the line on a question mark, to convey loss, absence? What is the appropriate number of caesuras For pulling the hospital sheet over his head? Closing his eyes? for laying down the dead man’s body? What is the right form His name was Jaime.
Bonus Audio of Karla reading her poem…
About the author:
Karla Hernandez Torrijos is a formerly undocumented writer and teaching artist. Beginning at an open mic in 2017, she has since read her work in venues across Nebraska, New Mexico, and California. An award-winning poet, Karla’s work interrogates our understanding of home, displacement, and the liminal space in between. She is currently at work on her second manuscript.
How to Be a Jewish Woman in Amerikkka while Your Friends Sleep Fitfully in War Zones | Mara Lee Grayson
“I saw in my mind’s eye the fleeting image of a tiger, poised for attack… Unlike the impala, though, we tend to have trouble returning to normal after being in this state.” – Peter Levine
Arrange your body on the dais. Be the script of Sunday’s sermon: wrath & fear, & their belief that G-d & mortal beings chose this world for you.
Hide your father’s star between your breasts; wear Mother’s white fur stole like skin. Tie yourself in knots,
undo the binds, embrace the dissonance (or don’t) Then drive alone to Monticello, pace the grounds, trod-down by unpaid sweat & violence. Cross the country, slow through sovereign lands & sundown towns
(knuckle-grey your grip, keep the music low) where liminality, intangible
distinguishes geography from place, and women like you know the steps from door to shelter, There, they huddle close until the sirens cease, at least tonight
so visit Rushmore, mount its face & smile! (unnatural as eight eyes, four mouths of stone.)
Go!! Climb the crown of Lady Liberty to set her torch on fire. Become your own panopticon,
project yourself in all directions, spiral in & look around: No tiger in the corner now.
The tiger’s in your ribcage, scraping at your lungs.
Mara Lee Grayson’s poem was selected as the 2026 Honeybee Poetry Prize winner by Marya Hornbacher. Marya had this to say about the selection process and the poem…
Unsurprisingly, this was a difficult decision – the poems selected as finalists were remarkable in both caliber and range. After repeated readings, considerable deliberation, and a good deal of sitting with each piece, I have selected “How to be a Jewish Woman in Amerikkka while Your Friends Sleep Fitfully in War Zones” as the winner.
While its timeliness is undeniable – and brutal, and vital – the poem’s urgency and power derives as much from its linguistic and imagistic precision as from the subject matter. A palpable undercurrent of fury, desperation, and fear – not merely the speaker’s – is contained and given shape by the poet’s exacting syntactical design. Far from lessening its impact or cooling the poem’s fire, this deliberate restraint heightens the reader’s sense that the poem – like its subject – is barely contained, and may yet burn out of control.
Bonus audio of Mara reading her poem…
Mara Lee Grayson’s poetry has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Tampa Review, and Nimrod, among other literary journals, and has been nominated multiple times for the Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes. An award-winning scholar of rhetorics of racism and antisemitism, Grayson is the author or editor of five books of nonfiction. She holds an MFA from The City College of New York and a PhD from Columbia University and was previously a tenured professor in the California State University system. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, she currently resides in New Jersey.
At the Printer’s During Election Season | Cheryl Dyer
At the sound of the door buzzer, you emerge from the backroom of this dusty building that shakes with the rumbling and thudding of printing machines. They sound like angry ogres stomping about, grinding out the thousands of shiny fliers that are daily boxed up, and shipped out to every house in the city.
I imagine they’ve not stopped for weeks and you reek of body odor and have dark rings under your eyes like you’ve been the one to stay awake and prod these monsters to keep churning out papers plastered with angry faces, big red ‘X’s and words like evil, devastate, and surrender.
You made time, though, to hear me out about printing something different.
When I mention artwork, I see you soften, like, I really see your shoulders relax and you lean
forward as I pull out a piece from the portfolio that shimmers with speckles of patent gold.
It is something that makes no claims. Or maybe does make claims– wild claims.
But, it causes nothing to splinter apart, no one cowers when it speaks.
About the Author:
Cheryl Dyer is a poet, visual artist, and calligrapher residing in Omaha, NE where she lives with her partner as a new empty-nester. She recently graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska in Omaha. She has received Honorable Mention for the Helen Kenefick Poetry Prize twice and has had work published in several literary journals, such as The Gilded Weathervane, Tethered Literary, and River and South Review.
Letter I Wish My Mother Wrote from Virginia | Daniel Lurie
Son, I watched dusk spring a leak into dawn. I only knew it was morning when the cats woke up your sisters. The chemo has been rough, but I thank Hashem they caught it before it was too late. You have to advocate for yourself at the hospitals. Especially with the doctors. You know the mold that you scraped out of the windowpanes with steel wool? It’s started to grow back like frost. I can’t lift my head to see, so Ivy painted birds onto the glass in acrylics. She made it look like the scene from our backyard in Montana, down to the green paint flaking from the old feeder. It has the bluebird duo, the towhee with its demon eyes, the rafter of turkeys, the tanager looking comically out of place… She must’ve used glow-in-the-dark, because I woke in the night and saw a million beating heartbeats. Unsettling, yet comforting, the way they’re there to hold me. The moving company broke all the dishes, so Dana replaced them with plastic ones from Dollar Tree. She gathered the shards and cemented a mosaic pathway leading to the garden, which I have to believe I’ll walk one day. The kitchen is full of such life when your sisters sing off-key and the walls sweat with whatever’s in the oven. They made friends with a kind gentlemen from next door who still has all his hair. I think he’s sweet on me. I never dreamed someone would be interested after your father died, but he rubs my feet while we watch American Pickers, and we don’t say a word, other than that one time he said he’d need to take me dancing.
About the Author:
Daniel Lurie is a Jewish, rural writer, from eastern Montana. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Idaho and is co-editor of Outskirts Literary Journal. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pleiades, Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review,Poetry Northwest, and other publications. Daniel won the 2026 Mississippi Review Prize and phoebe’s 2026 Greg Grummer Poetry Contest, selected by Diane Seuss. He served as the 2025-2026 Ronald Wallace Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a 2026-2028 Wallace Stegner Fellow. Find him at danielluriepoetry.com
In the holy holy holy hush now time autumn sky lets herself cry for all that was for all that was taken and all that will not come again
About the Author:
Barbara Schmitz taught writing and literature at Northeast College for thirty years, initiating the Visiting Writer Series. She has six books of poetry (two that won the Nebraska Center for the Book Award) and a spiritual memoir. She is a recipient of an Individual Writer Award from the Nebraska Arts Council. Husband Bob and she live on Highway 81.
Christian & Dorthea Marie Rasmussen
Front: Theodore(Ted) August Rasmussen, Christian Rasmussen, Carl Alfred Rasmussen, Dorthea Marie Rasmussen(Christainsen), Marie Rasmussen(Ibsen),
Second: Nels Peter Rasmussen, Harry Rasmussen, Helena Berthina Rasmussen(Helser), Anne Marie Rasmussen(Stienike), Clara Christine Rasmussen(Jensen),
Back: Andrew Rasmus Rasmussen, Christian Oswald Rasmussen
Homestead | Brad Anderson
My great-grandfather was a homesteader. President Chester Arthur signed his deed in eighteen eighty-three. By that time he had lived there five years, carved a small farm out of open prairie and started a young family. I am proud of how he moved from Denmark to the Great Plains of the United States. How with hard work and sweat he made something out of nothing.
But it wasn’t nothing. It was land taken from the Pawnee either by war or broken treaty or outright lying. A fact we conveniently misremember or forget entirely. Colonize is another name for conquest, for taking something that was not given. What makes us think we can colonize the stars? Don’t we think the current residents might object? Are we the invasive species that will destroy their ecosystem?
I have happy memories of my grandfather’s farm not far from the original homestead. Memories not complicated by the absence of the Pawnee or the buffalo they hunted. Memories of family gatherings, of aunts, and uncles, cousins and food. Grateful for our bounty, for our good fortune. Unaware of the ghosts on the land around us, what was lost for our gain, what was forgotten… for our happiness.
About the Author:
Brad Anderson started writing poetry as a means of survival during his late wife, LuAnne’s, journey through Alzheimer’s. Poetry helped him deal with her loss. Brad’s poetry has been published in Voices From The Plains, The Gilded Weathervane, and The Sugar House Review. His forthcoming chapbook, Water, Flour, Salt, and Time, from FarmGirl Press, will be released in July. Brad lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, and enjoys volunteering at Larksong Writers Place.
