It comes in before the bolts are drawn, not through the gates but through the glass, a slow, deliberate spill of gold across the floor of every cell.
It rests a while on the metal bed, warms the thin blanket folded twice, lays a quiet hand on a shoulder turned too long toward the wall.
The sun moves tier by tier, uncounted, unseen, softening the corners of concrete thought, touching the scar no one asks about, the knuckles, the jaw, the held-in breath.
It polishes the dull of a steel sink, coaxes a flicker from tired eyes, lingers in the hollow of a name spoken only in memory.
On it goes, patient warden of light, through corridors humming with yesterday, slipping past locks, past numbers, past files, mending what it can without witness
a warmth in the chest that loosens the fist, a brightness that edges regret into shape, a steady insistence that time can move forward, even here.
It finds the ones who do not sleep, sits with them through the longest hour, leans through the bars like a listening friend, says nothing, but does not leave.
In the yard it opens its wide, clear palm, lets faces lift, lets shadows fall behind, lays out a sky no wall can hold, a brief and boundless reprieve.
And when the day has done its work, when names are called and doors release, when footsteps cross from counted ground into the unmeasured air
the sun does not follow.
It pauses on the threshold, sets its warmth in the hands that wait, in the streets, the homes, the turning world,
and gives them back not as they were, but as they might yet be to us.
About the author:
John Dennis was born in New York and moved to Sweden after being stationed in Italy while serving in the US Navy. He holds a Master’s degree in Pedagogy from Malmö University where he also studied Creative Writing. A stroke ended his teaching career giving him more time to write. He is married to Anna, father to Julia and grandfather to Noah.
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.
—he asked his friends to run the water cold in the tub
and unwind the prologue of antichrist
while he slips unbidden / blindfolded below the cooling skin
a slice of porcelain not quite bone in a kiln
—that they touch for a brief
his loneliness / fill the belly of bits that
he might know which part of the body it is
so it was like preparing food / the exultation and wreckage of the pretty boy in the bath
with the authenticity of his muted heart flashing
phonating over / the grievance
of frozen peas from a spoon
but for every prior day / spackle over it
and maybe for the linger of a particular voice-color
i was a child stomping about in gutter after rain for it seemed
a great mystery was left in living but also count the cost
to be seen just as i am
—we didn’t know yet, what was driftwood
or how the final note would be
shaken from the wire
—not for N.
Bonus audio of JC reading her poem:
About the author:
JC Talamantez’s work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, New Ohio Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Salamander, Smartish Pace, The Hopkins Review, Frontier Poetry, Boulevard, Water~Stone Review, Nimrod, Colorado Review, the Florida Review, and others. She teaches philosophy at Texas State University.
In the ride, I know I am empty. Alone In my demand for what continues & What will follow the treachery of trees.
All day I ride around with fruits juggling In the playground of my belly. There is Water on the floor, I carry thirst in a jug.
Outside, the trees have gone through Gestation. Their hands now developed In the threading of ropes. They have
Mastered their hunger, more so how To harbor its decorum of dominion. I try to avoid the lesson. Ride far
From the quarrel of birds amongst This banquet of bruise. I probe A door, & a hand meets me there.
It is all mine. This presence. This Abundance of annoyance for the Length of a journey. I am not alarmed
That we share a love of trees as much As our hatred for this hour of agony. To be full of love too is to decline
What gathers the birds. When We switch mouths, we marinate Our tongues, wounds dipped
Into spirit. We become the source Of our bruises. There is no measure For how much ruin a being can carry.
About the author:
I Echo (b. Chris Baah) is a Ghanaian-Nigerian writer. He is the Founding Curator of NENTA Literary Journal, where he also serves as a Poetry Curator. He has work in Mudroom, Ußwali, & elsewhere. He is also studying for an MFA at George Mason University.
