 Untitled, by Andrea Bogdan (USA) 2025 A Portal Opens Tonight, the night sky was all my own As if a private viewing, laid on for me And exactly as I always knew it would A third of the darkness burst into light The portal was here for me once again As a reminder that my return was due That outer ring was like a tear in space As if a green cloud had ripped through Encircling that glorious main invitation To look inside and view another reality Of white slashes made by cosmic knives A circular frame to a large orange hole And there in its midst, the portal waits I knew that my time here was all done As I was lifted off this planet’s surface Ready for the creation of another Earth Howard Osborne Howard has written poetry and short stories, also a novel and several scripts. With poems published online and in print, he is a published author of a non-fiction reference book and several scientific papers many years ago. He is a UK citizen, retired, with interests in writing, music and travel. ** Moonglow The second moon was pasted to the middle of the sun. Green, encircled by what looked like a beard of Q-Tips. Blobby as an amoeba. Visible all day. A neon that Laura associated with highlighters and lizards. This new moon alarmed her. There was something aggressive about its presence, the way it leaked green onto the sky, grass, trees, people’s faces. Everything seemed smaller. Acrid and breakable. If the old moon caused the tides to move, what would this new one do? At the beach, Laura studied the ocean, which advanced and receded with race car speed. She gazed up at the green invader and nicknamed the moon Esme. After all, she reasoned, when you gave something a nickname it became a lot less scary. She decided to start a Substack for it. The scientists couldn’t figure out what was happening or why. It had to do with the lunar clock, they said. Apparently that was broken now. The new green moon affected rhythms and the reproductive cycles of animals and humans. Also, migration and navigation of birds, insects, even the lowly dung beetle. The earth’s rotation was speeding up. Each day, more time lost. Each night, a wobble. But why this was occurring they didn’t know. Nothing to do with climate change, they insisted. A green haze engulfed Rhode Island, where Laura lived. It reminded her of smog though she never saw smog up close before, only in the movies. Using the second moon’s voice, which she imagined to be scratchily seductive, she wrote poetry. Thirty-seven synonyms for green, including the best ones – chartreuse and emerald. My face is an oval lime, she wrote. My eyes are vinyl records. What is beauty – a look, a feeling, a farce? By Thursday she had nearly a million followers. The second moon clung to the sun as if it was competing for who could shine brightest. Scientists recommended wearing sunglasses all the time, even indoors. The first moon used to provide natural light in the evening but now it sparked, dimmed, and vanished entirely in a smoky whisper. Although some climate scientists said maybe it had morphed into a star that people could make a last, best wish on. A meteor careened toward earth. Laura watched its streaky glow with alarm. She knew the old moon would have been able to absorb its impact. But online, writing as Esme, she said, don’t fear what you can’t understand, and people took to the streets twirling in the heavy green glow, stumbling into one another like a bunch of drunken teenagers. Laura felt like a medium channeling the dead. Rejoice, she wrote. Then she deleted that because it sounded too religious and wrote, My lips are dead bees playing the clarinet. The mayor gave her a key to the city and the scientists took her picture. When the meteor arrived, not in a shower, as predicted, but in a sparkly trail of light like a costume jewelry necklace, Laura noticed a third moon behind it. A pentagon this time. Blue as fingers with frostbite, as the flame trapped inside a candle wick. A huge blue moon crowding out all the stars in the sky. She ran to get her laptop, but the moon was too quick, spilling blue onto buildings, ice cream, frogs, Laura, until it drowned the world in ink. Beth Sherman Beth Sherman’s novella-in-flash, How to Get There from Here, will be published in July 2026 by Ad Hoc Fiction. She has had more than 200 stories featured in literary journals, including Ghost Parachute, Fictive Dream, Bending Genres and Smokelong Quarterly, where she is a Submissions Editor. Her work appears in Best Microfiction 2024 and 2026 and Best Small Fictions 2025. The author of five mystery novels, she can be reached on social media @bsherm36. ** Handling Charge She holds whole world, palm of her hand; led by that hand, she would hold ours. What she sees, feels, her painting marks - our question mark, as we react. So reading palms (this palmistry) hands back to us an eroteme; where does it stir us, memories, or lead us in our mirror search? Or will we brush off what is asked from city where the angels named? For at a stroke our poise disturbed, indifference is, hear, deposed. Our current charge is being sparked to look again, respond to art, so play our part in dialogue, discover more about ourselves. Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com ** Unsuccessfully Twisting jumbled thoughts, trying to break from madness, unsuccessfully. Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher has been writing since 2010 and has had many micro-flash fiction stories published. In 2018 her book Shorts for the Short Story Enthusiasts was published, The Importance of Being Short in 2019, and In A Flash in 2022. She currently resides on Long Island, New York with her husband Richard and two dogs. ** Manufacturer's Recommendations I did it all by myself Went to the drugstore Grabbed them from the shelf No research, no asking for help Then went straight home And jammed them into my ears Rolled and rubbed Between forefinger and thumb Tiny batons end-over-end spun Short bursts of pleasure With long-term impactions Trophies molded in wax collections Or, at least that's what I thought Those cotton swabs I bought Only scraped a surface layer Then shoved down deeper Masses of stratified settlements Like cerumen fossils cast in sediment And I wasn't hearing it The whispers of warnings Saying I shouldn't block my senses Or dam the flow of my canals Or build up a barrier between The world's wise instructions and me But now, reading the stacks of swabs Lining my bathroom countertop I know these aren't something to be proud of Instead, the piles of dashes and dots Encode admonitions from archeological plots In messy texts of ancient thoughts And these signals don’t hide in secrecy They resonate in high frequency Saying what is enough and what is fair Relaying when to enjoy and when to beware All I have to do is quiet my inclinations And listen to the manufacturer's recommendations Brendan Dawson Brendan Dawson is an American born writer based in Italy. He writes from his observations and experiences while living, working, and traveling abroad. Currently, he is compiling a collection of poetry and short stories from his time in the military and journey as an expat. ** Now Home, Matchstick Girl Sweet little fire soul, you sprint through dark, snow-crusted alleys trying to spark customers celebrating the old year’s end to buy enough matchsticks to keep your family inside their home, breath inside your body. An impossible task-- no number bought will barricade the wind and ice from your bare skin and open heart. Before the next year starts, your life will have stopped. But beneath your burnt-out matches blazes a child’s golden soul, to be lifted by feathery arms into Heaven where you’ll grow fat on sky feasts, rest on cloud beds, laugh with other children frozen by Earth’s indifference, thawed by joyful embraces that forget the pain of being forgotten. So spread your arms like wings, let your gentle innocence pulse like a glowing beacon in the snow. Come home, child-soul. Come home, where you will never be snuffed out. Brennan Thomas Brennan Thomas is a Professor of English at Saint Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania, where she teaches creative writing and media studies. She has published short fiction and poetry in various online magazines, including engine(idling, Rue Scribe, and Right Hand Pointing. ** Liminal Highway The rural highway is lonely, stretching long into somewhere else, but it’s lined on both sides in an explosion of jonquils, like sunshine fell to earth. We coast to a stop on the shoulder so I can snap a picture, a liminal moment frozen in time when each flower was a song and altogether was a symphony of wild Mississippi. I imagine a time when this stretch of traveled blacktop was a secluded homeplace where a gardener’s calloused hands planted the first generation of jonquils to cheer up a weary hard-scrabbled life at the end of Winter. These few moments play like an 8mm reel projected on a sheet hanging in my mind where we are together again, if only in my memory, driving home from a day exploring forgotten country haunts. Charlotte Hamrick Charlotte Hamrick’s creative writing appears in a number of literary journals and is included in Best Small Fictions 2022, 2023, and 2025. Her debut chapbook of micro memoir & creative prose Offset Melodies, is included in Grieving Hope (ELJ Editions 2025), a collection of micro chapbooks. Her literary work can be found listed on her Linktr.ee and she writes frequently in her Substack, The Hidden Hour.. ** Somewhere in the Universe Lost somewhere in an unknown Universe Where vassals, all lined up, look like strange rafts. Each one fighting against their daily curse, Protecting their lands from invading crafts. All fight for Liberty to save their lives. Under an unknown and fragile power, Every faithful habitant survives In an unsafe and babelic tower. Meanwhile, light-years away, on planet Earth, Which was destroyed without any remorse, People dream of a possible rebirth On an untitled planet, their new source. Myriads of spaceships are used to invade their new home and kill it in a decade. Jean Bourque Jean lives in Montreal. ** Cotton Swab / I Ching What book to consult for the meaning of such cleromancy? An audio book to hear the flotilla sailing on the dark river around the sunbaked island foliage of one's mind? What infinite hexagrams can provide the answers, the course corrections for such journeys? dan smith dan smith is the author of Crooked River and The Liquid of Her Skin, The Suns of Her Eyes. Widely published, dan has had poems in or at The Rhysling Anthology, Dwarf Stars, Star*Line, Scifaikuest, Deep Cleveland Junk Mail Oracle, Gas Station Famous, Jerry Jazz Musician and Lothlorien Poetry Journal. Nominated for the 2025 Pushcart Prize, the Touchstone Award and The Red Moon Anthology, his most recent poems have been at Five Fleas Itchy Poetry, dadakuku and smols. ** The Importance Of Being I wanted to explain my thoughts on the nature of light and dark, of sharp and soft, of circles and rings. I thought I’d succeeded but no one understood me and I wanted to be understood. It was a puzzle I tried hard to resolve but no one understood me unless I called them by their names. Unless I call them by the names that they had created I am misunderstood, misinterpreted unresolved. But now, I think that I like this mystery that I have created. Though I am always open to interpretation. I am what I am. Lynn White Lynn White lives in North Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She has been nominated for Pushcarts, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Consequence Magazine, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/ ** Score It in Light In memoriam Charles J. Fagan (1941–2026) At the centre a pale green glow opening into flame, orange and red, a radiance that knows itself. Around it, a ring of darkness: sunset burning outward, shadow pooling like mud at the rim of the cosmos. Across this ordeal, white scratches in clusters. They could be signs, not decoration, not accident, but tally marks, someone keeping count: I was here. I endured. I mattered. Or fragments of a hexagram or rune, messages breaking through. Or sutures, closing what the night split open. But Charlie never knew any of that. He would have called them memories, joys, labours, sorrows, years: fourscore and five. Two children. Four grandchildren. A divorce. Work that felt like a hundred years feeding the poor. Whispers in dim confessionals on Saturdays. The Host on his tongue at dawn. Decades of Our Fathers and Hail Marys, bead by bead through his fingers. Ancient Order of Hibernians, Our Lady of Knock Division. Grand Marshal, green/white/orange sash for the St. Patrick’s Day parade. Whiskey laughter with friends. Birthdays. Anniversaries. Father’s Days. Christmas and Easter, year after year. Baptisms. Weddings. Wakes. A girlfriend. A loyal Labrador. Saltaire wind off the water. He believed in God, in a centre beyond himself, but he did not have visions. Leave that to saints and mystics. No voices. No ecstasies. No language for flame. Perhaps only glances, small gasps. An ordinary life lived among family and friends, repetition wearing its groove into time. The center spoke more clearly to others than to him. Still, light pressed quietly through, in thin places. The dark did not hold. Score it in light. StevieB. StevieB. (Stephen McDonnell) has lived a life of mystical and erotic adventure, trusting the body’s hungers as thresholds to the divine and wandering the soul’s leadings as a wounded healer—part priest, activist, therapist, and trickster. His work rises from queer eros reclaimed as prayer. In his sixties, he began shaping the prose of that journey into lyric poetry, apprenticing himself to Rumi, Whitman, O’Hara, Ginsberg, Anne Carson—and the great, mysterious in-between. He lives in an anchor-hold with windows in every room, beneath the wide sky over the farmlands of eastern Long Island. ** The Transfer There is a line of women whose hands run hot. One pressed her palm to canvas -- no brush between skin and pigment, no tool to cool the transfer. The orange went down first, then the green at the center, held there, not yet speaking, learning the shape of its own edges the way a root learns dark before it learns light. One read the bodies of children, feeling where damage had gone deep, knowing before the mind knew. Her hands worked until the joints turned on themselves -- the healer's fire with nowhere left to go, burning inward, becoming the very thing she'd spent her life releasing in others. One learned late. Found that her hands ran warm against another's skin, the fascia loosening under heat that didn't need to be explained. She uses them still. On friends. On animals. On the page, pressing language down without the safety of distance, without a tool between what she carries and what she makes. The green at the centre does not speak. Not yet. It is pre-verbal, still learning its own edges, still becoming. But it has been tended by fire that runs in the hands, by women who pressed directly in, who did not cool the transfer, who let what they carried through. When it speaks, it will have so much to say. Lynne Kemen Lynne Kemen’s full-length book of poetry Shoes for Lucy was published by SCE Press in 2023. Her chapbook More Than a Handful appeared with Woodland Arts Editions in 2020. She is a nominee for a Pushcart Prize, and her work is anthologized in The Memory Palace: an ekphrastic anthology(Ekphrastic Editions, 2024), Seeing Things and Seeing Things 2 (Woodland Arts, 2020 and 2024). Lynne is an Editor and Interviewer for Blue Mountain Review. ** To Andrea Bogdan Regarding Untitled Untitled I cannot conceive, confessing humbly how I grieve an image orphaned from the thought and passion wed to have it wrought, here not as something else to see, but very moment meant to be the worth your soul has given weight by hand it guided to create, perhaps as thermographic sense, raw inflammation, heat intense, amidst the cooling underway of healing shedding spent decay becoming thus disruption stilled as treatise Seeming Unfulfilled. Portly Bard Prefers to craft with sole intent... of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise for words but from returning gaze far more aware of fortune art becomes to eyes that fathom heart. ** The Orange Mystery This Green Baby of infinity surrounded by a Q Tip World startles me. Reminiscent of this Orange Trump hyper vision that invades my senses. I cannot bear to look at it, or look away. This orange moon and aquiline sky dazzles, confuses and inspires. I visualize it in a circular swirl of notable dimensions. Rotating in a blessed sky making devotees of us all. Sandy Rochelle Sandy is a notable poet, actress, filmmaker, and voice over artist. A Voting member of the Recording Academy in the Spoken Word Category. Grammy and Emmy nominated. Publications include: Impspired, Dissident Voice, Verse Virtual, Amethyst Review, Wild Word, Haiku Universe, Cultural Daily, One Art, Poetry Super Highway, and others. Her Chapbook Soul Poems was published by Finishing Line Press. Sandy is a member of the Acting Company of Lincoln Center. ** eruptive sulphur hisses man’s death-dealer furious cauldron in doom’s crevice the matchstick fence is folly no defence iron-hearted core explosion from earth’s mantle vent the magma plume too deep to plumb fizzing caldera at the edge’s precipice land’s life-giver lava tongues speak volcano Lizzie Ballagher A winner in Ireland’s 2024 Fingal Poetry Festival Competition and in 2022’s Poetry on the Lake, Ballagher focuses on landscapes, currently creating a collection of poems about Exmoor. Having studied in England, Ireland, and America, she worked in education and publishing. Her poems have appeared in print and online throughout the English-speaking world. Find her blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/ ** In the Time of Aries I fly through stratospheres. Across seas, serene with constellation. Towards pulsing, morphing orb. It would like to envelop me into its hope chest, winks a promise at me. This terrene wandering star. It took so long to flee earth, how keenly I’d made my roots there. Our spirits parted like a primal scream. My wound is fresh. Visible only to those who can see. Sometimes you look around you and question your reality. Then have to concede It’s true. The nightmare is real. The quickening doom. Before I left. And yet. I hope the blue planet, my once-home, is not lost. Will remake herself from dust and mourning. Despite warlords, villains, demons, plunderers. Must death be the only way for clearing? Still I pray good things unfurl unseen. Persist in gentle ways. To step out into the light. To bring about a face of earth it always wished to become. How many revolutions will it take? Still I long for my mother. One day. May she flourish and recover and never perish. I miss you, Earth. I love you. But I have a new assignment now. I am dispatched to a new planet. Whose orange suns beckon me into their orbit. This lone flight, my new form. Stronger and lighter. I have become. Electricity. I scent a change in atmosphere. A contortion of woodsmoke, a dream on fire. Something I can’t name. I draw close. What awaits me I do not know. Luminous sparks greet me as I tumble into the new realm… Nina Nazir Nina Nazir (she/her) is a neurodivergent British Pakistani poet, writer and fine artist based in Birmingham, UK. She has been widely published online and in print. She is also a Room 204 writing cohort with Writing West Midlands. You can usually find her surrounded by books, writing, or making art, which she sometimes shares on Instagram: @nina.s.nazir or on her blog: www.sunrarainz.wordpress.com ** The Call it a “Military Operation” The fires consume all. The rubble buries foe and friend. Missiles have no allegiance. Smoke from the bombed oil wells releases massive amounts of toxic pollutants. drastically altering the atmosphere with soot (black carbon), sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and various volatile organic compounds. The black smoke burns lungs. Thousands of living beings disintegrate; of her daughter they found a shoe. The djinn has left the bottle. The fires consume all. Rose Mary Boehm A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels, eight poetry collections and one chapbook, her work has been widely published mostly by US poetry journals. A new full-length poetry collection is forthcoming in 2026/27. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** since syntax after E. E. Cummings since syntax is second what will it matter if i say instead lost are wander who those all not; for god only knows what only god knows my soul relents, and colors are a bolder choice than composition lady i vow before the muses. Don’t dismay —the strictest order of the mind is weaker than orangish red around lemon green, which shouts we are free unto ourselves: then wonder, creating as you go for art is not a formula and the beholder’s eye cannot signify Lara Dolphin A descendant of immigrants, Lara Dolphin lives with her family among the Allegheny Mountains of Central Pennsylvania on the ancestral land of the Susquehannock/Iroquois people. She has written three chapbooks In Search Of The Wondrous Whole, Chronicle Of Lost Moments, and At Last a Valley. She, like countless others, hopes for a world filled with greater peace. ** Aware, a Painting When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. What am I not aware of? Painting... not aware, what am I doing? In my painting, I’m doing - not aware, of painting, of what I’m doing in painting. When I’m not aware, am I painting? When I’m doing am I aware? In my doing, painting. Robin White ** Exam “You shouldn’t do this,” the art teacher said. “I can’t be party to theft, Karen.” “Don’t worry,” I said as I grabbed a tied bundle of firewood from a lean-to and left the garden. “This house is a holiday let. The owner lives abroad and there are no visitors here at the moment. Who’ll miss these sticks?” The art teacher looked around. “Okay,” she said, “but let’s hurry.” I nodded and for several minutes led the way along a path to a former boat shed, one of the island’s many abandoned buildings. The art teacher stared at me and said, “What are we doing here?” “This is where I left the brushes and phosphorescent paint I took from your cupboard at school.” “What? You really should have asked me first.” “It’s all in the name of creativity.” “You must be the cheekiest pupil I’ve ever had,” the art teacher said with a sigh. “And I’m probably mad to allow you to drag me out on this so-called ‘art adventure’ that you say is your exam submission.” I decided not to reply. Instead, I shook the paint tin, prised it open with the blade of a penknife and began to brush phosphorescent white over the bundle of firewood. “Give me a brush,” the art teacher said. “Let’s do this as quickly as possible.” With a grin, I handed her a brush and placed the paint tin between us. When we’d finished, I put on a pair of disposable gloves and picked up the painted firewood. “You’re as prepared as ever,” the art teacher said. “So, what’s next?” Despite her earlier concern, I sensed that her interest in my art adventure had grown. “Follow me,” I said. We took a path that led up to a cliff. From here, we could see the two other islands that lay a short distance away. Between all three islands, the sea’s currents met in such a way that they formed a whirlpool. This phenomenon attracted visitors during the tourist season; today, though, at the end of winter, only the art teacher and I looked down upon it. “Now watch,” I shouted above the noise of the water and wind. I threw the bundle of firewood as far as I could. It tumbled down and hit the whirlpool at the circumference, where the rush of water caught it. For some reason, I now lost confidence in the effect I had hoped to achieve and turned away. “You might have to use your imagination,” I said into the art teacher’s ear, but she shook her head. “No, Karen, look. It’s wonderful.” I turned back. The phosphorescence of the firewood lit the water as the bundle spun down into the whirlpool’s centre. Red, orange, lime and blue colours appeared in succession before we lost sight of the firewood and the whirlpool’s habitual blue-black shade returned. The art teacher took a deep breath. I looked at her and asked, “Have I passed the exam?” She said nothing, just nodded. K. J. Watson K. J. Watson’s stories and poems have appeared on the radio; in magazines, comics and anthologies; and online. ** When the Sun Explodes If when the sun Says it’s done Gases that have been burning Since the dinosaurs’ first day Thrust their way to the surface Expanding, extending Out to Mercury and Venus and Earth And even further A mother’s embrace before her limbs rattle then collapse Just over eight minutes A grand finale of amber orange jade Blinding white Before just a maroon blackness remains Like snapping your lids against an intense light In the middle of a dark movie scene I have always feared pain I hope I’m not here And I will have no children whose Children will wave goodbye But perhaps by that time Humanity will watch from a nearby planet Until gravity quits and they fall And are taken in by a new heroic star. Samantha Gorman Samantha Gorman, a lifelong lover of books, lives in Western Pennsylvania. After taking several creative writing classes, she found her voice and had begun the adventure of becoming a writer. She writes poetry, short fiction, and is working on her first novel. ** Untitled Dream Or a blazing heart, like the sky in your eye, managed by a shepherd, the furnace fenced in. Distributed annually for the benefit of those who wish to remain anonymous, untitled, obscene. We shrink into porous stone of unfiltered anger, and dance as if the end of the world were one sniff away. Is that what we stand for? Is that the choice we offer ourselves over coffee, and a slice of carrot cake shaped into a supernova? Brought to justice as the midday breaks into a maudlin sense of self. If I blink in my sleep, does that create the black hole we are aiming for with our rockets? Shiver now, and pretend to forget. Let matchsticks embrace you as the winter night turns gold one final time. Dreams burning, and trying to emulate the empyrean shine; and our freedom is put to bed, in the hope that someone might remember to wake up, and switch the sun on again. Zachary Thraves Zachary Thraves is a writer and performer. His poems have been published by Broken Sleep Books, Juste Millieu and at Poetry Worth Hearing. His plays have been performed internationally. In 2023 he created a one-man fringe show exploring his experience with bi-polar, and in the same year won best actor for portraying Charles Dickens. Zac is also a co-host on the podcast: The Outsiders. He lives with his partner in East Sussex. Find him on Bluesky @28hary. ** Matchless for Andrea Like a hand reaching through time, like a sun bursting through dark, glowing against the night, like a silken scarf around the neck of the world. Donna Reiss Writer, editor, teacher, bookmaker, and mixed media/paper artist, Donna lives in Greenville, South Carolina, where she is a member of the Greenville Center for Creative Arts, the Guild of American Papercutters, and the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Follow her on Instagram @dreissart ** Untitled My finger finds the divot in his foot, fills the convexity with tenderness. The scar’s a souvenir of the stingray’s serrated barb, where the venom entered as my husband tried to exit the ocean. And when I ask him what it felt like, he points to this image of a painting, untitled, like the pain he stoically endured after an innocent swim, one sunny summer day. Tracy Royce Tracy Royce is a writer and poet with work recently appearing in Brilliant Flash Fiction and The Ekphrastic Review, and forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review, Hot Flash Literary, and Best Microfiction (2026). Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, a Touchstone Award, and a Pushcart Prize. Find her on Bluesky. ** Hedges The hedges are the backbone of this prehistoric land, They catch the wind that blows across the bleak landscape, They cast the shadows that hide the eerie secrets, The energies that drive this ancient world. The hedges keep the rough harmony between the elements, The air whistling and singing through the branches in winter and trapped and lifeless in the summer heat. The rolling, roiling water running around their roots, drowning and nurturing by turns. The fire held by the moss and tuffs of undergrowth, buried deep beneath the trunks. The earth that keeps them tethered, protecting the creatures, the flesh ones and the spirit ones. Those that belong in the other world survive unseen in the darks of the hedges, And on nights like this, when the moon lights the sky and blackens the ground, The energy bubbles up and escapes their gnarly grasp, Playing in the dead space between hedge and heaven, Until the watery sun banishes the shadows and the hedges rule again. Caroline Mohan Caroline Mohan is based in Ireland and writes sporadically - mostly stories with the occasional poem and mostly in workshops. ** Starlines Birds that build nests on rough black boughs must be bold. Timid or wise ones would resist nesting above red alchemical mists. Would anyone see them plummet, bodies impressed, like lead letters, onto the region the mist encircles, refreshed there by herbs, grasses, fruit bearing trees, seed within, each of its kind, pastured on a green-gold mind? When air cools, would they rise and ribbon back like a skein of geese guided by genetic maps? Or, like others, find the way by following lines scratched into bark as signposts? Common species use familiar positions of stars to orient their bodies in unfamiliar space, but the cleverest ones make their own constellations, place white horizontal sticks around their nests, symbolic starline guideposts. Margaret Flaherty Margaret Flaherty is a retired attorney living in Takoma Park, Maryland. She received a Masters in Poetry from the Ranier Writing Workshop, Pacific Lutheran University, in 2020. Her poems have been published in Passager and Yellow Arrow, Vignette. In 2023, she was awarded first prize in the Bethesda Urban Partnership's 2023 poetry competition ** Haiku We chased the sun round Into Earth’s molten center To burn together Rose Menyon Heflin Originally from rural, southern Kentucky, Rose Menyon Heflin is a poet, writer, and visual artist living in Wisconsin. Her award-winning poetry has been published over 250 times in outlets spanning five continents, and she has published memoir and flash fiction pieces. She has had a free verse poem choreographed and danced, an ekphrastic memoir piece featured in a museum art exhibit, and two haiku published in a gumball machine. Among other venues, her poetry has appeared in Deep South Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, and San Antonio Review. An OCD sufferer since childhood, she strongly prefers hugging trees instead of people. ** Fracked It began when we no longer saw the stars at night. Floodlights surrounding the drilling site guaranteed we would no longer gaze at the Milky Way, the Leonids, the Big Dipper. Another artificial glow came from the creek, bilious B-grade horror movie sludge creeping its way downstream. Bones erupted from graves in the hilltop cemetery emerging not as recognizable skeletons, but congregations of similar morphology. Platoons of ribs lined up by eights, fibulae in groups of nines, rows of metacarpals, fourteen each. Fog rolled in across the valley, pulling tangles of woven corn silk into the trees. It ended in an incessant colossal flare Scorching the chasm that spawned it. Rebecca Hosta Rebecca Hosta is a mixed media artist and aspiring poet living in rural Ohio. When she is not stitching an art quilt or writing, she enjoys growing heirloom vegetables, walking through the fields and woods where she lives and working on a quest to bake her ideal chocolate chip cookie. Her entry for this challenge was also influenced by the uncertainty of the gas and oil drilling frenzy around her home, and the Qatsi trilogy of films by Godfrey Reggio.
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