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Equinox: Gaze into SpaceThis literary journal is a compilation of the creative works of writers and artists included in it.Copyright © 2024 by hotpoet, Inc. and the individual writers and artistsAll rights reserved.ISBN 9781736785119Managing Editor: Kelly Ann EllisArt Editor: Vanessa ZimmerPowellConsultant Editor: Carrie Kornacki Cover Design: James EllisPage Design: Vanessa ZimmerPowellPoetry Judge: Eva SkrandeArt Judge: Greg OaksProse Judge: Alison MooreInterior Cover Photo: Eclipse, Vanessa ZimmerPowellMaker's Corner Image: Inner Space, K.L. Johnston (pg 94)Final Page Image: Color Trianda Tessera, Cynthia Yatchman (pg. 103)Published online, September 2024Publisher:hotpoet, Inc.hotpoetorg@gmail.com

EditorsManaging Editor: Kelly Ann EllisArt Editor: Vanessa ZimmerPowellConsultant Editor: Carrie KornackiDesignJames Ellis: Cover DesignVanessa ZimmerPowell: Page DesignJudges Eva Skrande, PoetryAlison Moore, ProseGreg Oaks, Art a hotpoet publicationVol. 7 2024a hotpoet publicationVol. 7 2024

ContentsSECTION 1: PERSONAL SPACETidal Echoes Liam Wilson (art) 9Turning the Lights Back On Rebecca Spears (poetry) 10 Collided Lightning Carolyn Dahl (poetry) 11A Kaleidescope Rose Gwendolyn Womack (art) 11See How the Galaxies Kris Jodon (art) 12Still Life with Night Sky & Ant Robert Wynne (poetry) 13Inherited Moon Sally Ridgway (poetry) 14Black Cats at Moonrise Marghi Allen (art) 15What We Found in Space John Milkereit (poetry) 16In the Air PW Covington (poetry) 17The Nearness of Distance Varsha SaraiyaShah (poetry) 18Meditation K.L. Johnston (art) 19As You Like It Kumari de Silva (prose) 20The Vanishing Aleksandra Scepanovic 21And then Joe Hoppe (poetry) 22Bubble Carrie Kornacki (art) 22Living Space Holli May Thomas (art) 23Butterfly Explicit Irmi Wilcockson (art) 23Question for the Culture Meriden Vitale (poetry) 24 Give Me Space Eileen Lawerence (poetry) 24Cat Gazing Margo Stutts Toombs (art) 25Visions on tile while sitting on porcelain Julie Chappell (poetry) 26Psychedelic Easy Chair Robin Young (art) 27In A Cow's Eye Charlene Stegman Moskal (prose) 28The Limits of Sight Priscilla Frake (poetry) 29SECTION 2: PRIVATE SPACESolar Bloom Liam Wilson (art) 30A Matter of Perspective Audell Shelburne (poetry) 32Diplopia Liza Boyce Linder (art) 33That Vast Vault of Light Tina Carlson (prose) 34Kaliedescope Starlight Gwendolyn Womack (art) 35Winter Night in Wallingford J. Guzmán Andara (poetry) 35Untitled 1 Marie Carbone (art) 36My Father in Iowa Jaime Danielle (prose) 37Moonwalk from a Parking Lot Jean Sutherland (poetry) 38Male Gaze Margo Davis (poetry) 39 Out of the Woods K.L. Johnston (poetry) 39Expansion Susan Summers (poetry) 40City Park Stroll Kris Jodon (art) 41Sky Gazing Margo Stutts Toombs (prose) 42Quandary Carol Barrett (prose) 43Crash Jennifer Ettleson (poetry) 44Waiting for the Doctor Margo Stutts Toombs (art) 45In the Waiting Room of the VA Vascular Lab Sarah Wolbach (poetry) 46

ContentsThe Black Shuttle is Passing Overhead Lawrence Bridges (prose) 46Storm Nancy Montgomery (art) 47Moonrise at the Yardarm Alison Moore (poetry) 48for P.M. K.L. Johnston (poetry) 49Feeder Road Benediction Nancy Montgomery (art) 49SECTION 3: OUTER SPACEStellar Creatures Liam Wilson (art) 50After We Broke the Sky David Holper (poetry) 52House with Sky Fire Nancy Montgomery (art) 53Red Moon David Fahl (poetry) 54Strawberrry Moon Margo Stutts Toombs (art) 54Is this How Jupiter's Moons Move? Jenn Renee (poetry) 55Equinox on Saturn Laura Peña (poetry) 55Light Banter Dana Kinsey (prose) 56Night Light Vanessa ZimmerPowell (art) 57recollections from the first woman to land on Neptune Brigid Cooley (poetry) 58Test Flight Robin Young (art) 59Oumuamua Joseph Machado (poetry) 60Time Traveling Courtney O'Banion Smith (prose) 61Observing the Bird Bath Robin Young (art) 62city boy d. ellis phelps (poetry) 63Eclipsed: 2024 Saba Husain (poetry) 64roux in blue or blue ruin? Terry Dawson (poetry) 65Fall, Blue Horizon Marcella Wilson (poetry) 66CovidColor, set 2E Cynthia Yatchman (art) 67SECTION 4: INNER SPACE Ebbing Tide Liam Wilson (art) 68Parietal Terry Jude Miller (poetry) 70Deus Videt Marghi Allen (art) 71 Lure Vanessa ZimmerPowell (art) 72Studying His Belly Button? Gary Bolick (poetry) 73 Pentimento David Meischen (prose) 74Pandemic Landscape at Marfa David Meischen (art) 75Arc of Time Ann Howells (poetry) 76Casseopeia Cynthia Yatchman (art) 76Skeleton Key Gabrielle Langley (poetry) 77Tympani Robin Carstensen 78Untitled 2 Marie Carbone (art) 79Between Barry Lewis (poetry) 80Saturday Morning Dede Fox (poetry) 81Untitled Vanessa ZimmerPowell (art) 82

ContentsSECTION 4: INNER SPACESomething About a Mushroom Sherry Poff (poetry) 83She Tells You Why She's Dale Going (poetry) 84Untitled 3 Marie Carbone (art) 85The Guts of the Poem Rachel Ikens (poetry) 86Apparition Liza Boyce Linder (art) 87Sunset in San Miguel de Allende John Milkereit (art) 88When I See a Helium Balloon on the Roof of a HiRise Sandi Stromberg (poetry) 89Beyond the Moon and Back Elisa A Garza (poetry) 90Mirrors in the Sky Robert Wynne (poetry) 91When I am a Dying Star Dana Kinsey (poetry) 92The Ebbing Sea Liam Wilson (art) 93MAKERS' CORNER Eva Skrande, Poetry Judge Orchid (poetry) 95Alison Moore, Prose Judge Riders on the Orphan Train (performance information) 96Greg Oaks, Art Judge Untitled (art) 97Carrie Kornacki, Consultant Editor Cicadas in the Key of E (poetry),Twine (art) 98James Ellis, Cover Designer Untitled (art) 99Vanessa ZimmerPowell, Art Editor Glory (art), Untitled (poetry) 100Kelly Ann Ellis, Managing Editor The Blood Never Lies (poetry) 101MAKERS' BIOS 102IMAGE ON FINAL PAGE Color Trianda Tessera, Cynthia Yatchman 103Honorable MentionsPoetryRobert Wynne: Still Life with Night Sky and Ant (p. 13) Tina Carlson: That Vast Vault of Light (p. 34) ProseCourtney O'Banion Smith: Time Traveling (p. 61)ArtMarie Carbone, Untitled 2 (p. 79)Gwendolyn Womack, A Kaleidescope Rose (p. 11)

Contest WinnersPoetry Sarah WolbachIn the Waiting Room of the VA Vascular Lab (p. 46)Prose David MeischenPentimento (p. 74)Art Aleksandra ScepanovicThe Vanishing (p. 21)Judges' CommentsPoetry: Regarding the winning poem, poetry judge Eva Skrande writes:In this poem, we join the speaker on a flight of the imagination to the freedom of infinity and, finally, the joy found in the mundane world. The central metaphor of light drives the imagination and fanciful hope of the poem and its speaker. Metaphor mirrors experience: light is clenched or trapped in the fists just as the vets are confined to the waiting room. Light becomes the vehicle to freedom as “opened hands” release the “shooting stars” that might “shatter the walls of the waiting room” past “the boundaries of the hospital” through “parking lots, highways, into infinity.” The imaginary world of infinity contrasts with the mundane world of poker or going to bed that the speaker, after being confined, appreciates. Metaphor allows for the travel not only of the poem, but of the mind moving out of the waiting room driving the imagination ofthe poet, speaker and reader.Prose: Alison Moore, prose judge, reflects about the work she chose: Sculptor Donald Judd from NYC chose Marfa, TX as the permanent site for his work after visiting what he felt was the most remote place in the US. His precise, austere work demanded a scale that stretched toward eternity that no gallery in New York could even come close to providing. This prose piece, “Pentimento,” embodies that sense of scale and the “untethered” perspective the viewer experienced while looking from the outside in/inside out. Judd would have appreciated the image this author superimposed of an astronaut severed from his ship, floating free in space.Art: Greg Oaks, art judge, comments on the winning piece:There were a lot of wonderful pieces to choose from but my favorite was the sculpture titled “The Vanishing.” It’s a striking piece, welltextured and constructed, and seeming to illustrate a complex and full person in all their dynamic strength and sorrow, directly facing us. For me, the “space” involved is in the parts of the piece that are missing, as if dark matter itself were weaving its way through the person. I don’t interpret this as time taking the person away because the vanishing seems to be happening right now. Also, the expression on the face hints that the subject is aware of the vanishing and resigned to it and possibly even defiant. I don’tthink I’ll ever forget that expression.

Tidal Echoes 1: Liam Wilson

PersonalSpace

Rebecca SpearsTurning the Lights Back OnOn that day when you meetyourself at the gateand slip into the world again,there, your eyes stripped oftheir usual expectationswould focus on the finest pointof light ahead—as you settle intothe thrall of a long walk—this, after you’d escaped fromthe funk that slugged you silly,leaving you a carcass of yourself—this, after the fictions and nonfictionsceased their competing narrativesand you ended your argumentwith the world (clarity is its ownbest argument, after all)—you could you allow yourselfto become the stillpoint once more,knowing again how to movein all directions, and with good will, find a way back to the crowds or go north to the green pond, cypressshadows, the chirping frogs.

Collided Lightning When lightning clashes with the ultraviolet light of a nebula, sending stars through the internal organs of a transparent frog, its lantern lungs illuminate the wings of dragonflies, the lips of fish, the veins of the leaf on which it sits. Washed in a sudden spatter of sparks, the frog imagines it is a tiny sun, turns orange as the flesh of a pumpkin. Against the rules of arithmetic, storms and nature’s way, the frog swims the universe of its black pond, a luminescent orange bubble, cells humming like a struck Tibetan bowl.A Kaleidescope RoseGwendolyn WomackCarolyn Dahl

Robert WynneStill Life with Night Sky & AntNight creeps through the windowswith an appetite, yawning to revealstars lining the sky, bright incisorsblinking on and off behind grey clouds.The moon swallows enough darknessto keep it from eating any moreof the horizon. On the dusty silla lone ant looks up, questioningwhy he spends so much of his timecarrying solitary drops of water.He’s certain there must be so muchhe’ll simply never learnby tasting the air with his antennaeand taking one tiny step at a time.He longs to know whymore than anything else:why the light is so elusive,why the darkness is always home.See How the GalaxiesKris Jodon

Sally RidgwayInherited MoonIn my father’s love story he’s a newlywed who passed an orange horizon moon and took Motherthe next night to see. It did rise—its own hour later. Tonight, I stop to watch the moon floating in my windowand—as Dad would’ve—turn off the lights. I see my parents, aging, lugging chairs to the hilltop to watch the moon.Dad is waxing about clouds, Like a march of gods! Mother, umming, earthy, sadeyed. He muses, What will happen next? Will I sense at the end a rhythm? Mine, only sixty cycles of seasons. Imagine a lifetime of seeing only sixty anything—trees or tiny things, birds, river rocks. Still, my seven hundred moons. *My parents’ way of seeing is in me—in this moon, so many clouds to display it—tonight’s path of sooty underbellies, sodden and brilliant. I am as a cloud on the run beneath a moon. My own arc over earth, my million footfalls stepping into prints of those before me. But have I observedjust one night like this, with its spiky trees, moon like an orchid? How many days have I noticed even the temperature? Now, Mother says, it’s the first question of a morning, my body sensing the world’s body, place of return—knowing, when I turn away to eat or sleep, the constant moon . . .when I die . . . *Irritable moon, tugging my hand to words—sad, enchanted charmslike a sway of vines on winter trees. Now I watch its slow arc above my window, over the roof, intosomeone else's night.

Black Cats at MoonriseMarghi Allen

John MilkereitWhat We Found in SpaceBoys & girls always kiss in bushes. They climb trees.Is what I murmured during Hide & Seek.And in that moment as we bordered my grandmother’s backyard, our pursed lips like Yellow Stargrass petals pressed forward. Sparkles touched inside my planet head. O how leaving is. Pinescented palms.You clasped my hand anyway, our flight pathzooming past the squirrel sentries in your driveway,past your hidden parents, onto upstairs and the capsuleof your bedroom. Little did I know we liftedoff to play another game, one beginning when a spaceship lands on the surface of a comforter. How I wanted you notto declare, I’ve already kissed another boyseventeen times. How I didn’t expectyour voice might flash, fast as a comet, to crater my notkissinganyonebefore subsurface,but there I was. A doll now dressed up as a breathless astronaut, helmet punctured,oxygen softly hissing from tubes previouslyunknown in the underworld of us.

PW CovingtonIn the Air As a child I’d strain my neck and eyesAfter jet and propeller soundsI’d follow them across my preteen imagination past horizonsAnd yearn to earnWings of my own, somedayEver the arriving vagabondYankee airpirate, barnstormerI still seek those states and places inbetweenEarth and heaven, tease and tormentChaos and order, agreement and compromisePilot in commandOnly vapor trails to point the wayHindsight perfect, eagleeyed as aviatorsNeither here, nor yet thereSuspended in the firmamentOnly ever on the wayIn betweenIn the air…

Varsha SaraiyaShahThe Nearness of DistanceThese few days away from a WednesdayI’ll mark as a milestone birthdaywill soon be unremarkable afterthat too leaves my abode for new answers––Are there any?Electricity usurped by a storm called Beryl,at dusk natural light brushes my floors anew.There is no trace of time but for its stoic stasis.There is no distance in the blurI mark as a spool of memories. One of its tidbitsis a block of ice once I carried dripping through ablazing summer, cooling my cotton skirt as I cycled through the snaking streets toward homewary of the bumps, unruly urban traffic.Ice wrapped in sawdust and a thin jute rag guarded a family pack of vanilla ice cream.It was our party for that summer afternoon.Ice milk we spooned and slurpedfrom the cold bowls of vanilla ambrosia. Sweet stickiness at the endus children licked off the cardboard box.The nearness of parents and siblings, a home.A simple harbor I would never nearno matter how much distance I travelmarveling where did it all go, but for thischronicle I am left withspeckled with its own spacious light.

MeditationK.L. Johnston

Kumari de SilvaAs You Like itWe were 15: blonde bohemian Missy with pale blue eyes, and me slightly shorter, stockier with long black hair and skin the color of coffee. That summer we’d spent nearly every day together. Goofing off, playing games: catch me if you can, hide and seek, or we’d simply go exploring, like you do when you have lots of time for future and very little past.The game required one of us to close eyes to be “blind.” The other would be the guide, walking, going up steps and down, maybe even running. Could she run without opening her eyes? Did she trust me? Was I trustable? Then it would be my turn. I liked being led better than I liked being leader. I felt slightly exhilarated, putting myself completely in her hands. Now summer was lightly coming towards her end.. The trees were hauntingly beautiful russet and yellows. On that warm night, I had walked her “blind” from her house across the Midway Plaisance to the far end of Washington Park. We wandered around The Fountain of Time by Taft. I was struck by the entire spectrum of humanity at various stages of life depicted in ghostly procession. The inscription read, "Time goes, you say? Ah no, Alas, time stays, we go.” I grew quiet. Missy opened her eyes. She had been lightly tracing the edges of the statue with her fingers. She wanted to see what she was touching.The sun was setting, the nearby street lamps not yet illuminated. “I wrote you a poem,” Missy said. My mind drew away from the crumbling sculpture to take the paper she was handing me. “A poem! For me?” I was excited, and then my mind stumbled. In the faded light I read “I’m blind, you say, but you are the one who leads me into treesAgain and again you dash me. . . “ Hmmm I thought, that doesn’t sound very nice. Her poem was about me letting her down, deliberately driving her into obstacles. Did I do that? I wasn’t sure what to say –but then my habit of politeness kicked in when she asked me if I liked it, the poem. Yes of course I did. It was very good, I said. I was very honored to have a poem written for me. Like I thought I was supposed to say.But Missy wasn’t done with me. There was quite a dressing down as the light continued to leach away. The whole time she was talking, I was trying to listen yet also trying not to cry. I stood there dumbly. Frozen. Not refuting a single word. Until finally I said, “We’d better get home.”Strangely, she still wanted me to spend the night. As if I could be her friend as long as I knew I had let her down. But let her down how? I had never deliberately crashed her and I knew it. I just couldn’t get her to admit it. We were fine if I could apologize for what I hadn’t done. Except. Except I was stymied. We got to her house and I had an undeniable urge to eat; it didn’t matter what. I just needed to get the emotions out of my mouth. Missy was back to normal now. As if she hadn’t been hurt and hadn’t said anything hurtful. Like a switch had flicked. Later, we were lying on her bed and messing around with flashlights in the dark. She admitted when she was a kid, her parent’s good friend had taken naked photos of her friends. A lawsuit ensued. Her parents

were so sure their friend was innocent they were character witnesses for his side. She said it matter of factly, like it was a hilarious aren’ttheysilly. “Don’t you think it affected you?” I asked.“No, stupid, I told you already he did it to THEM, not to me,” she scolded me.In the days following, I thought about her poem. I crumpled it up eventually and threw it out. I knew very well I’d never walked her into a tree, but what was the use? She wasn’t going to see that. Weirdly, Missy never mentioned the poem again. Or the story about her parents. We drifted apart. But for me the moment had fused with all the elements around it: the Fountain of Time, the fading light, the vague sounds of traffic, the humid summer air, the jaded space. I’m 60, but it could have been last night.The VanishingAleksandra Scepanovic

Joe HoppeAnd then when her breathstretches the soap film’s flat surfaceinto a sphere floating freebut the tension resolves itselfnot into empty spacebut tiny silver birdsflapping off into the moonlightBubbleCarrie Kornacki

Irmi WilcocksonButterfly Explicit A patch of grassframed by curband ditchjust big enoughfor two tiny butterfliesmating.Living SpaceHolli May Thomas

Meriden VitaleQuestion for the culture Say, if a bird gently landed on my face and at the same moment I inhaled it shat and the shit flew up my nose through the bloodbrain barrier and I died from the ensuing medical complications, would you still love me?Eileen LawrenceGive Me SpaceGive me space—not like the space between my ears and your mouthor the space between my lips when I say “GO,”but s p a c elike the space between the Sun and the farthest edge of the Milky Waythe space between the Big Bang and the right now.That is how much space I need from you:billions of light years between your end and my beginning.

Cat GazingMargo Stutts Toombs

Julie ChappellVisions on tile while sitting on porcelainIAt first the lovers’ kiss, before a hissof snakes galore fills the floor untilthe writhing evaporates revealing apaleolithic painting the color of the Lascauxwall but not of bull or horse, instead an earlydoglike creature leaps into the central panelbecoming a wolf howling at a full moonthen slowly consumed by a giant frog,a baby stegosaurus watching beneath thewings of a pterodactyl in determined flight.IIThe profile and elongated head of Nosferatumorphed into the face of Mark Twain whotransformed into an ancient sea snail the seaflowing up and around, rising into theright leg and foot of a crucified Christ whileon the other side the sea billowed into the faceof an old crone whose hair became the topof a dog’s head the tip of its nose sniffing beforethe swift movement of a donkey its head raisedbrayed the news of the miracle of imagination.IIIWolf howls at the full moon as Crow observesher handiwork of twisted earth and roots turned Crownabove the ancient Nautilus shell with its eternal circlesand Crow flies to the world of men from treetop to treetopcrying her warning of what is to come.

Psychedelic Easy ChairRobin Young

Charlene Stegman MoskalIn a Cow’s Eye When I was in seventh or eighth grade I brought a cow’s eye to class. It was a science project I think or maybe it was because I was vindictive. Anyhow, my friend’s father was a butcher and I was fascinated by the intricacies of vision, (now it's visions and visionaries, but I digress). I stood at the front of the room with this enormous cow’s eye, a table before me, sharpened blade in hand. The eye still had its lid complete with eyelashes and a look of brown surprise. I had talked to it the night before, told it that it would be a star today, that it would add to the knowledge bank of junior high kids, that it should feel proud. It never occurred to me (or did it?) in my knee sox and saddle shoes, plaid skirt and pony tail that the extremely overweight girl who wore ballet flats and a pencil skirt or the pimply faced boy on whom I had a crush and who sat in the front with the obese bleached blonde Nancy because the teacher couldn’t trust them in the back, would not appreciate my efforts to explain the parts of the eye. I took the knife and removed the lid. I then cut the sclera all the way around. The sucker was slippery;I almost dropped it as the vitreous humor went squishing out. I removed the lens, round, large, clear. With the lens gone the pupil was exposed. I thought some might want to see where the light was allowed in but I was discouraged from sending the eyeball on a tray around to the class, who at this point, confirmed my weirdness for the next four or five years. I continued to remove the cornea and show the brown iris and the optic nerve and then I wrapped up my educational sortie in a bunch of paper towels and sat down. I remember there was silence and kids who had put their heads down on the desk when I started, those who had covered their own eyes, now like the unfurling of ferns, lifted those heads and stared at me. I was not embarrassed in the least; I set out to do what I’d done. I threw the dismembered cow’s eye into a toilet bowl in the girl’s restroom. I didn’t flush. In hindsight as I see myself in yesterday’s mirror, I see a girl who knows she is different, knows she’s not well liked and a girl who has the courage and humor to stick out her tongue and give a giant raspberry to them all. Some might have realized it was the Revenge of the Nerds but I just took my A in science and thanked the butcher for his help.

Priscilla FrakeThe Limits of SightI dreamed I was performing surgeryon my own eye, dissecting outbranching veins, resecting the blind roots of a bloody tree. Or perhapsI was excising my I, that stubborn nubof squint perception. I rose and looked about me. Everything seemed the same, unless, in the distance, the lights of town bristled like quilled stars. Then the sun leapt up, creating the world. My eye opened wide and lost itself, wandering among clapboard houses with gold windows, a thin sky padded with winter cloud. But there— in the deepest interior pocket of sight— I saw my own rayed iris, like a halo rimming the black hole of a pupil, where a galaxy revolves around the darkness I can’t see.

Solar Bloom Liam Wilson

PublicSpacePublicSpace

Audell ShelburneA Matter of PerspectiveWe occupy some parallel universe,you and I, where we stand apartdespite intentions to live together.A speaker received a standing ovationfrom half the crowd. I saw them stand,you remarked on the half who sat.We see a man trying (pretending?)to slide a glove on his hand,and we are farther apart than his fingers.We watch videos of cops beating this man,choking that one, shooting others,and you can’t tell me which is the victim.We count ballots and watch elections,the reliability of the vote apparentonly if your candidate wins or loses.We watch the big game, and callafter call is in dispute, especially ifyour team fails to cover the spread.We live side by side, but the spacebetween our views is more than a distancebetween our eyes, our views worlds apart.

DiplopiaLiza Boyce Linder

Tina CarlsonThat Vast Vault of LightOn the ground, camouflageclad boys stabbed each other with sticks. Blown laundry—cotton clouds. Girls in line for hopscotch, chains and pebbles tossed to outlines of chalk. Outside, night loomed as we lay on the ground in our dresses. Summer mothered us with meteors and milky constellations. Whole galaxies bloomed in the ponds of our eyes. We tongued salt on our skin from the heat. Lamps peered from blue bedrooms. One girl died in flight while high—plunged from a cliff to stone.We stayed awake for years, just to hear the cows lowing her name at dawn. Down the street,a boy dreamt himself an astronaut. We stole his helmet for Halloween. There were men circling the moon on every block. We were faster than the speed of light, as ghosts. One girl broke her arm, red coat a sail in the wind. We were not yet rivers of blood. Breezes rustled, smelled of smoke. Our shoes scuffed up, all those stars dying up there. We rustled in green skirts of grass, emptied our memory banks into the heavens, stared at the sun on a dare. After dark, we mined those shy fires for gold. Called kingdom of the gods—that vast vault of light was ours.

J. Guzmán AndaraWinter Night in WallingfordIn the south, Orion was a crystal mobile, low and pendulous. Castor and Pollux, overhead, were two brilliant eyes peering downward,straining to discern Seattle through a glowing veil of fog.So strange…that the winter sky be so clear…therefore I’ll shiver in my father's old brown coat.Kaleidescope StarlightGwendolyn Womack

Untitled 1Marie Carbone

My Father In Iowa Before Iowa, the coldest place he had ever lived was Los Angeles. I remember his neck and shoulders hunching, tightening against winters that piled snow to our secondstory windows. He moved so my mother could raise us near her family.He told stories of his life on Ascension, a tiny island in the middle of the wide Atlantic, halfway between Africa and South America. My father tracked satellites for Northrop, rode dirt bikes up volcanic mountains to watch bamboo grow before his eyes. Shirtless, he played soccer and tennis with other tanned men and dove in clear, tropical waters that teamed with fish and sharks. The photos he showed us of himself, slim and young, kept him warm, I think, when Iowa was particularly cold.On summer nights, when the small town lights were out, he would lay a blanket on the grass and show us how to find satellites, stars that didn’t blink and moved slowly, steadily, perceptibly across the sweep of sky we could see. I remember his arm silhouetted against the night, pointing, always finding them for my brother and me.There aren’t many good memories of my father.But there is that one, warm amidst all that Iowa winter. I take it out and look at it from time to time. Now that he is gone. Jamie Danielle

Jean SutherlandMoonwalk from a Parking LotWe didn’t see the moon walk live.My mother, weary of a weekend “wasted”Waiting, watching television, demanded movement.We listened on the car radio from a parking lotIn Lancaster PA as Amish buggies passedOn carchoked roads.After almost sixty years, we still struggleBetween competing calls to gaze beyond,Reaching for the stars, or to gaze down,Focused on more earthly needsFor justice, equality, peace, conservation.We are still offered false dichotomies.Like buggies in an era marked by cars,The past and present move in awkward rhythm,The future often sounding out of synchLike Ives’ competing hymns against a fugue by Bach.We strain to hear one or the otherAnd suffer from strained nerves, aching hearts.The present has always been a parking lot,A place from which we watch the pastAnd hear the calls of what awaits us.We choose the channels for ourselves,Knowing others will choose differently.Our strength has always been those different choices.

Margo DavisMale GazeMen were pulled by the moon while I went to work at sunrise and returned in darkness to that first small step for mankind. Male astronauts swooned frommoonlight, cameras, the lookers—dreamy, aloof, gazing into space at menall wobblyin pursuit. I scooped upthose on the rebound, men who slipped.Out of the WoodsK.L. Johnston

Susan SummersExpansion (a haibun)I was working on a special project at a coffee shop. As I worked, I began shifting and sorting books, notes, and papers into piles, entering and updating information on my computer. I expanded into the adjacent chair, across the table and then down the entire length of the table. Engrossed in my own thoughts, I didn’t notice the coffee shop had begun to fill up.A woman asked, “May I sit here?”Startled with the sudden realization of the chaos I had created, and embarrassed I was taking so much space, I quickly moved the stack of books, shifted my computer and apologized as I reigned in my debris field.“I’m so sorry. I just spread out wherever I am.”“Don’t apologize. You just can’t be contained.”outside the cone of probability a hurricane

City Park StrollKris Jodon

Margo Stutts ToombsSky Gazing When I was a preteen, I lay on the ground, inhaled the perfume of freshly cut grass, gazed at the sky, and imagined marshmallow menageries. John F. Kennedy, Jr. pierced my cotton canopy when he sent our musings to the moon, and clouds never looked the same.Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus (pronounced "your anus"), Neptune, Pluto (Pluto was a planet then), dwarf planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and meteors. How do we keep from colliding with all of these heavenly bodies? I can't stop wondering. I can't limit my thoughts to clouds. I can't keep my mind on Earth.We stare at stars that burned out thousands of years ago. We peer through the past – rays from phantom suns. How can I trust the universe when it lies to me like that? Or lied to me?I avoid sky gazing these days. My brain cannot contain the ideas of infinity and gravity and massive celestial orbs on a cosmic tiltawhirl. What if we stop revolving around the sun and drop or dangle like ornaments in a black sky?Diagrams that compare the size of the Sun with its planets distress me. Our planet is tiny. I need a magnifying glass to see it. And if the Earth is the size of a pinhead, how small are we?

Carol BarrettQuandaryI stare into the back of the new car, hatch door opening with such delicious ease, my meticulous stash of assorted emergency supplies in case of evacuation: collapsible pet carriers, cat food, bowls, litter boxes and a hefty bag of cornbased litter, flushable, plus bottled water, diet Pepsi, toiletries, changes of clothes, blankets, towels, Kleenex, extra meds. Wildfires are running rampant. Every day the smoke threatens to confine us indoors, while stage three GO NOW orders have gone out to multitudes in nearby towns.I am reasonably prepared EXCEPT my daughter is flying crosscountry with her boyfriend we’ve never met, and I’ve gotta make room for their luggage. I can’t ask them to hold it on their laps. I don’t dare move the emergency stuff until just before the fourhour trip to PDX. The car has got to hold bashful introductions, jet lag, and new connections forged in earnest. She has already met his folks. This, the crucial test.Her father asks me what he should talk about. Cars perhaps? Camping? The new generator? This space has got to hold his anxiety along with my doubts about whether we’re dressed right for the occasion. There will be her pride and joy requiring space, and whatever aura his psyche adds to this feted meeting. I’ll have to trust our young cat sitter on bicycle to handle things at home. She could borrow a car to evacuate, but has no place to take my sweet felines, her mother deathly allergic to cats or at least susceptible to a threealarm case of hives, assuming they aren’t evacuated as well. So much depends on flame. The vagaries of wind. Speed of the blaze, dry fuel, and whether firefighters from four states can jump in time to quell the siege outside city limits, dear souls. I plan the expedient dismantling of supplies, so suitcases can fit. But I don’t want to sacrifice the cats for a possible soninlaw. Am I doomed already in this shifting transaction? I should have bought a roof rack.

Jennifer EttelsonCrashI still hear it sometimes, not a soundA ghost of a soundNot a feeling, a ghost of a feelingIt’s been a year nowIt’s almost July againThe very top of summerLike taking the last step up That Water World water slide towerSee how the world widensAnd grows smaller in splendorAnd shine, the gauzy airThe rounded green treetopsThe cascading lines of rooftopsSloping off in every direction Like little tokens in a gameThe neat green lawns andLong gray streets that connectAnd don’t in a gridThat feels both lazy and rushingTowards some beautiful endingI wasn’t rushing that day, not speeding,Not texting even or choosing a song to playBut I wasn’t awareMy mind had climbed to some high placeWhere I was already thereIn the place I was headingSkipping aheadSo I pulled out from the stop signInto an oncoming truckThat did not slow or swerve or makeAny attempt to miss meBecause on that day it happenedThat we collidedAnd I was broken in three places

The other driver claimed injury, too, As is the new way to doWhether it’s true or notJust another step in the tediousProcess of claiming damagesIt was all my faultI’m grateful I have no one to blameI think that might just beWhat saves me every time.Waiting for the DoctorMargo Stutts Toombs

Sarah WolbachIn the Waiting Room of the VA Vascular Labthe vets slouch tiny suns spark in their clenched fists if they opened their hands like meadows at dawn then shooting stars might shatterthe walls of the waiting room breachthe boundaries of the hospital parking lots highways into infinity or at least shine and sparkle over poker or Rosarioturning down the bed so softat lastLawrence Bridgesi. The Black Shuttle is Passing Overheadii. The Chumash (California) referred to meteors as Alakiwohoch, which simply meant "shooting star." They believed a meteor was a person's soul on its way to the afterlife.iii. The black shuttle is passing overhead, sent each month into space to orbit its cargo over our heads, and then to rest – coffins stacked like hives, pumped with foam for stability, all with little spring launchers to push them home (toward earth). An idea of Amazon.com and Tesla to enter the funeral business and top each other with the most expensive funeral: quarter million per, after the Chumash conceit that shooting stars are souls passing to the afterlife, coffins with carbonite beds, sprung to burn in terrible arcs across deceased family’s night sky. Burial in the stratosphere: clean, sudden, awesome, and godlike. Will wait for favorable skies.

StormNancy Montgomery

Alison MooreMoonrise at the Yard ArmWe sent back the house wine;it had turned for the worsebehind the bar. The tenderscowled, the waitress triednot to. A new bottlefrom California arrived,more than acceptable,and we sirens sang salud,in a manner of speaking,and waited for the moon.When it rose, mysterious, apricotcolored above Corpus Christi Baywe raised our glasses again;the other diners went right oneating. I tapped my wine glasswith a butter knifeand pointed out the picture window.A few turned to look,then went right on eating.Two of us ran out to greet it,take pictures that couldn’tdo it justice. A man from the motelnext door emerged, watchedwith us, said he liked living there,his front yard the bay,a bench with a view.I almost imagined myselfknocking on his door after midnight,something I might well have donefifty (!) years ago. He was old enoughto let me in. The moon lifted, losingits rosy hue as it entered the darkabove the horizon. Just pastfull, already waning, a womanafter my own heart—now close,now distant—luminousat any age. She might have beena harsh mistress to the menwho walked upon her.She’s a goddessto those of us who still look upwith longing, from below.

K.L. Johnstonfor P. M.I want to thank you for that morning in the parking lot when the lightwas pouring from the east and cheerful, you shushed us, our group chattering like starlings, you, pointing skyward into the morning as we all stood awed watching the flight of that one whimbrel circling, gliding, singing,flying out of the sun.Feeder Road BenedictionNancy Montgomery

Stellar CreaturesLiam Wilson

SpaceOuter

David HolperAfter We Broke the SkyAfter we broke the sky, we dithered, or acted as if the sky were not this closing curtain. We pretended the sky was a vacuum where birds and insects and clouds disappeared into absence and where rain pulled itself out of a glossy back hat, when it didn’t forget itself in drought, or deluge; we comforted ourselves, rationalizing the drowned are no longer thirsty. The hanged no longerstruggle for breath. No matter, we said. We pretended the brokenness was something our children’s children would solve with an app or an algorithm.Or maybe AI would conjure some fix, if we couldn’t outsmart ourselves. Money didn’t help.Broken promises didn’t help. When pressed, we said we could exit this planet stage right as if we had that ability or knew exactly the elsewhere to flee. Unsatisfied, we broke the sky beyond measure, wrapping our pretty lies in bright paper, pretending the shattered sky might be unwrapped laterby someone else. Only the earth kept whispering, reminding us of the unmysterious truth about the myriad wayseverything would die. Fast or slow.Noticed or not. Said in the endless susurration of the waves.Coming alwaysfor us.

House with Sky FireNancy MontgomeryNa

David FahlRed MoonI can’t play magician making predictions, It was on the front page of the newspaper,they said we were gonna have a red moon tonight;the moon nearly full and falling into our shadowand the reflection turning red, dark red.It’s no miracle, just light bent by gravity,a little phase shift, no big thing if you know your way around a quantum.So I went outside and lookedand I guess if you kinda squint it’s sorta red,but not RED, if you know what I mean;red like a sunset or a crayon, or a red Mustang.I’ve seen better miracles on red wine and bad weed.I’m standing in my backyard thinkingWalt would call it a miraclebut he called everything a miracle.Then I was looking at the way three old treesstood together in my backyardoverwhelming my puny magnoliaand they seemed to lean together, the three of them,I believe they count themselves luckyof one another’s company.I looked back at the sky and something seemed wrong.For an instant I’d caught myself expecting a night sky from childhood standing alone in a pastureaway from the yard lightsbut they’ve taken all the stars away.And I tried to remember the last timeI heard somebody mention spending an evening looking at the moon.Strawberry MoonMargo Stutts Toombs

Jenn ReneeIs this How Jupiter's Moons Move?Swaying past each other,Twirling for their patron,Noticing nothingBeyond gravitational force?Do moons revel in solitude,Or do they dreamOf being closer to one another?I wish to have more than myNeverending spinning,PretendingOthers don’t rotate near me.Laura PeñaEquinox on SaturnBoth day and nightHalf shrouded in darknessHalf bathed in light—Rings evenly spacedInfinite grooves—as if on a vinyl record —making cosmic music for usStrawberry MoonMargo Stutts Toombs

Dana KinseyLight BanterAct ITwelve chimes sing into darkness. Stars sizzle like curiosity. Sea creatures swim upside down.This has never happened, may never happen again. Sun & Moon gaze at each other over dinner.S Why do forbidden things compel me?M You’ve resisted darkness for billions of years.S That’s not an answer.M Not every question needs one.S Will you please dance with me?M I only dance in you. You know this.S Knowing offers little contentment.Act IIAt twilight, a woman lingers seaside after a swim, shivering, wringing out her long hair. She liftsher eyes and speaks, first to Venus, then to other heavenly bodies that begin decorating Night.You spill like calligraphy from streetlights, shadowplays where I’m understudy no more. Yourspotlights illuminate the players, my loves, who walk in beauty, Byronesque. Your searchlightspenetrate my pores. Some call your meteor debris my afterglow. You believe this is enough ofyou, but then your melody mezzosopranos to me, so I open my body across meadows, Night,waiting for your purple scarf to slip down. You constantly appear on my balcony to stealdevotion already yours. My last poem to you may be a black hole. Prepare the fatted calf.

Night Light (A photograph of James Turrell's Sky Space)Vanessa ZimmerPowell

Brigid Cooleyrecollections from the first woman to land on neptuneOn May 9, 2022, The Indian Express published that “a new study has found that ‘diamond rain’ may be more common on ice giant planets…than previously thought.” engaement ring graveyard. we ventured intothe most expensive hail stormroughly 3 billion miles from earth with precious rocks falling inevery direction — tossing our spaceshipfrom left to right, right to leftmy bumpiest of landingsthe diamond rain glittered like mirrorball reflectionsbut there was no dancing — instead, a woman and her oxygen tankmaking the farthest leap for humankind. from that perspectivei wondered: is saturn only famousbecause of her rings? celebrity, sevenfold but what is so wrong with being an ice giant?frigid and hard to reach. if i’m honest, i longed for a cigarettea silly thing to missin hindsight and yet, i wanted to light one up among the stars my eyes turned toward the newest frontier, all i could think of was the feeling of pursed lips and paper, rolled so very tightly negative comfort

when houston patched in they heard first, silencethen my muffled cry: i miss you, even from here but you should knowon the way home, i craved again the distance.Test FlightRobin Young

Joseph MachadoOumuamuaA million years of tumbleReframed as just a hoverUntil old Sol and brood swept inAnd then out again like a loverStareyed Pan caught that glimpseOf faintest light blinking lyricalReflections from a projectile thatWas conspicuously nonsphericalAnd as closer to the great fire it drewRemaining frozen as the deadWith skin that shone like polished steelFor it emitted no infraredHad it tracked true to Newton’s traceIt might have scarcely raised suspicionBut a slight nudge seemed to lend it speedWithout any concomitant emissionsNo more foreign a thing has come this wayNor one more unexpectedAt least not one our feeble arrayOf instruments has detectedAn old starman coolly weighed the factsAnd every datum he could measureHe knew conclusions that were drawn in hasteCould be regretted long in leisureTo suggest this thing thin as a gossamer sheetThat collected photonic propulsionOn evidence even thinner stillWould risk astronomic expulsion“It’s built! I know it’s built! “ He criedAs he labored o’er his paperWith the words he dutifully inscribed“Of course, we'll need more data”

Courtney O’Banion SmithTime TravelingWe went to Portland in the summer to visit my big brother and escape the Texas heat. For as long as he’s lived there, I’ve lived in Houston—a sprawling metropolis of contradictions where the question Oil or Space? is an acceptable way to inquire about employment. An hour away from itself, I’ve lived on one side of Houston, then the other—my now tween son born only a mile from NASA. All week, my brother wants to take us to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum. I don’t think the boys will like it as much as you hope, I say. I really mean me, but we climb into his dual cab diesel pickup truck anyway.We marvel in our singular ways at humanity’s attempts to leave the Earth, to spite gravity. No matter where I stand, I can’t capture the monstrosity of the Spruce Goose in my phone’s frame—the largest wooden plane ever built that flew only once for 30 seconds, a ridiculous miracle of engineering we agree our dad would have loved. We lean over the railing and look through two floors to see the base of a donated rocket. Its nose cone rests on the floor close by, but we still have to strain our necks to see all of its long body stretching to the roof far above us. A replica of the moon landing and a lunar rover sits in a corner. Empty spacesuits pose as if waving to passersby. Our distorted reflections in the helmets’ golden sun visors peer back. As usual, I eventually wander off alone.A glass room of telescopes fascinates me most—antique to modern attempts to survey celestial wonders, to chart the stars, to observe fragments of the infinite as best we can, to imagine what’s out there as we search beyond the known. A volunteer sighs behind a table with a donation box, pamphlets, and stickers promoting an observatory they plan to build one day. I collect the swag as free souvenirs and smile back. Our eyes connect, and we both know I won’t donate anything.Through the glass, I watch my brother meander through dusty helicopters he could fly once upon a time. He strolls past cold engines formerly fueled by decayed, compressed bodies of fantastic, prehistoric creatures. He pauses periodically to admire the mechanical genius our dad taught him to love. I prefer the mirrors aimed at the sky to catch the timeless light of the heavens.Hands in his pockets, I notice his steelgray hair and how much he looks like our father who’s been gone as long as we’ve lived a fourhour flight apart. My thin, blond son, disinterested in almost everything except his uncle’s attention, stays close to him. The part of me that remembers forgetting longs for impossible things—to see the beauty in machines, to see into and past the past, to preserve memories of a grandfather my sons will never meet, to bring my brother back with us to Texas without the heat.

Observing the Bird BathRobin Young

d. ellis phelpscity boymy grandson wears his new blue rain bootsbought especially for this trip to texasbecause of all our recent rainhe has come from california—the state of eternal drought in his five yearshe’s never seen a thunderstormhis feet have never splashedin a puddle made by rain and except at the beachhe never goes barefoot outsidethese toes have rarely toucheda thick carpet of st. augustine grasslike the one that covers our south texasbackyard his grass in san diego—thin and flat or fakethis morning i say take off your shoes and watch him go tiptoeing through the dewhands out to his sides arms flung widefingertips touching each other as if to pick himself up off the grass with his fingers he dares only a few yardsthen darts back to the concrete patio—this is his safety zoneafter dark we wander outside& lie supine on the stillwarm drivelook! there is scorpio in the southern sky& there poured out by the little dipperthat’s the north starhe is silent i relish this moment thinking he must beas amazed as i as i am certain he’s never seen stars like this beforenauna he says his small voice a quivercan we go inside

Saba HusainEclipsed: 2024The moon comes between the sun and North America,and good people flock to cities, climb rooftops, some go to the seaThe moon glides over the sun. My grandson thinks it’s broken,who will fix it now? O child, close to my heart, your words contain a seaThe moon, high over Gaza, looks down without seeing, like someonewith nothing left to lose forgets the dangers of the seaOne night I stepped into moonlight and came face to face with the moon,dear moon, you are not to blame for the effect you have on the seaThe moon, the cow, the dish and the spoon, the moon, the moon,the silent moon paves with silver, the surface of the seaOn the night of the moon, by the light of the moon, the stance of the moonlooms large over what is, and could be, and the crushing sea.

Terry Dawsonroux in blue or blue ruin?as if they could make off with the good silver snugin the indigo velvetlined chest of night —they who’ll rue the day they riskedsuch sleight of hand under the gazeof this chubby blood moon soon enough they’ll know ruin and seek absolutionto cover their ensemble of sins committedas if one could truly own the celestial realmit won’t; some violations simply don’t wash cleanno matter how blue the earth's shimmeringroux of sea and cloud that we all savorin a heavenly souffle we’ve scored with the demarcationsof states and nations as if we could lay claimto sliced layers of atmosphere, crust, and core:slabs plated by the blades of pilfered stars

Marcella WilsonFall, Blue Horizon after Sydney Bechet’s clarinet solo, Blue Horizon, 1944Fall over usso we can feel wrapped upin your plenty of blue.Soothe usSwaddle us? Reelout the starsfor us hereon the spin of the earth.Why look up?They only winkand burn awayup in the endless vaultthey keep at bay through the nay and the ayeStay steady over usweight of blue.

CovidColor, set 2ECynthia Yatchman

Ebbing TideLiam Wilson

Inner SpaceInner Space

Terry Jude MillerParietalWhile the other eyes sleep,the third eye gazes,constantly scans the universefor enlightenment, an aperturethrough which heaven pulseslike an inviting heart.Bears witness to visions,prismaticchakras, a place beyond the body, becomesthe seer and the source, sun and shadow.Telegraph of resonant prayer,a smokeclever obscuritythat needs no language to communicateits intent.It never tires, never grows dim.Spends its unendingness in awestruckstare.

Deus VidetMarghi Allen

LureVanessa ZimmerPowell

Gary BolickStudying his belly button?If light cannot get from one region to another, no information can.—Albert Einstein Mother turns away:So now the universe is whole andunsplintered.Peering down is no different from looking up.Lake water mirrors: birch, cattail and willow so that they may hoverWithin the skyblueracingcloudssunshineKnowingimpossiblyno gravity just . . .Yes, there:Water bugs prancing from lakefacetohaloing sun Onlynowback to slithering carp, brim and salamanderFirst from withinandunder the water to the sky andback . . . well, no, againno−under−there!So, within thesymphony of a creamandcobalt blueheart:The sky beats the softwhineofcicadaLike woodwindstostrings as the Flappinginsistenceofsilentwings: redtail hawk and blue jayForm an overture with squabbling squirrelsAll driving each movementTo gather as one saturated expression:Forestairgoldenlightunhinderedinallandeveryconnection. To the unschooled child there is simply the light delivering:The mail . . .here.

David MeischenPentimento After Pandemic Landscape at Marfa,photograph of Donald Judd’s indoor installation, Chinati Foundation, May 22, 2021 The outside has gone indoors this morning. Camera out here peering in, stubbled grass behind me carpets gray cement inside the repurposed artillery shed. Through the window, a display: three rows of Judd’s mill aluminum boxes—ample space between for the eye to ponder their crisply linear planes. From where I point the camera, reflection renders random surfaces transparent. What the shutter records severs me from the self who thinks he knows what he’s looking at. The lines are there. Solid aluminum surfaces are gone. Banks of floortoceiling windows open the wall along the far side to flat light of the overcast morning and muted scatterings of desert scrub. Between the panels of windows, the wall itself has disappeared, in its place a seeming treescape of pines superimposed from behind the camera, with a pixelated portion of former quarters in faded brick. The curved roof above the artist’s aluminum geometry is gone entirely. Instead, a pastiche of clouds and sky traversed by electrical wires strung pole to pole.There is no there there, merely space between subatomic particles reeling unseen. I am cut loose, like Kubrick’s astronatut. Tumbling, untethered.

Pandemic Landscape at MarfaDavid Meischen

Ann HowellsArc of TimeThe moon,snow peach ready for plucking,becomes corporealone sliver shy of full,and the whole chaotic universe curlsnose to tail at my feet.Blue serge nighthas ripped its seams, silver edges gleam.Binary stars flare swirling skirts.Blazars burn,darkness presses my back,and thoughts swarm like gnatsI cannot brush away.Uranus sleeps on its side;planets are nine or eight;stars wink on, blink out.And some faraway tomorrowwhen you and I are dust,Apollo’s ruined chariot will upturn,constellations shatter,and the old gods gnash their teethas our Milky Way collides with Andromeda –infinity’s insouciant hand unmovedas the blue planet vanishes.Cynthia YatchmanCasseopeia

Gabrielle LangleySkeleton Keyslipsthrough bone electric blueforgetmenotsbloomingthroughthe ribs fallen soldierssilver needlethimblethreadsewing woundsmy fingerslearnto pickthe lock.

Tympani After Suits, Season Six, Episode 9, Netflix, and their score, Demons of Ruby Mae “Beneath the Surface”Is this what we came for, to expand the heartthrum, like Leonard in orange, waiting in his cell, the steel door opening at lastto the daughter he’s never seen standing there in blue paisley, her armsreaching, the score ripping through time and space?Is it the whole spectrum we came here to know and bear, as in “Could YouBear My Love” from the Demons of Ruby Mae’s snare drumslighting the shards of grief, loss, and hope across their crumpled foreheadsand ours, beating deep into our ribbed heart space?Does our vast, accumulating loss burst us into vaster joy, featheredsong,and purpose brighter than Gallo the Drug Lord’s blue coruscating hate?Will Michael the Archangel be waiting by a glossy black and white limo on our return from our earth mission, hurling or misting through space?Will he catch us, lift us like Michael does Jessica in her patent ruby stiletto heels; will we twirl ‘round and ‘round, dissolving into a vibrato of laughter?Do the ancestors pirouette and bow in a warm bead of light to greet us? Can the angels bear the earth we lived, our fierceness and blistering muddling through space?Will our lives bear wisdom and harmony among the galaxies and moons, all the roles we played, could you bear what we faced here, could you bear the wind howl in the caves of our bodies bent, O, Mystery of Infinite Consciousness, of Randomness, Despair and Delight, of Our Relentless Curiosity, could you bear the spaceamong our particles and waves flashing your light, could you bear us signaling from our Milky Way, on the edge of Lanieakea, Immense Heaven, our Lighthouseon the edge of a supercluster of galaxies upon arcing galaxies, can you bear our light fruit, our gratitude for this edge and the unsparing destiny of space?Robin Carstensen

Untitled 2Marie Carbone

Barry LewisBetweenBetween the clinkof crystal andslamming doorsthere is loveBetween dovesand albatrosses longingBetween holding handsand gritting teethcompromiseBetween fireand iceremorseBetween youand me a chasm

Dede FoxSaturday Morningso I’m walking down a familiar path with oaks, sweetgums, and yaupon reaching overhead untilbranches kiss but I’m on autopilot as usual rehashing some grievance or plotting my next novelwhen I see him walking toward me I blink yes the guy is wearing a tuxedo black cumber bandand tailored slacks as he gets closer I can see the blood splattered on his crisp white shirt swarthyand disheveled he stares straight ahead with glazed eyes I wonder if he’s dangerous look down athis jacket folded over one forearm and hand could he be hiding a gun but neither of us hesitateswalking inches from each other as we pass and it’s not a nightmare but could have been I realizelater when I consider I neither offered aide nor ran when faced with someone so out of place heshould have been a waiter at a fancy restaurant or a soprano not a dazed plodder on a trail usuallypeopled with soccer moms marathon wannabees and raucous kids on bikes I don’t know how hefits into any of my plots but I never broke my pace.

UntitledVanessa ZimmerPowell

Sherry PoffSomething About a Mushroomthe way it sits so near the ground,against a stump or underneatha bush, its small red capa beacon to the watchful;the way its nearly transparent stalkleans just a little, as if searchingfor a signal, the bright disc on topa delicate receiver,one can imagine it has comefrom another world, bearingtiny pellucid beings thattumble from the gillsonto a mossy bed on the forest floorresting in the umbra of their own vessel, amazed and breathlessat such enormous possibilities.

Dale GoingShe Tells You Why She’s writing––inspiration came at night tonight as usual without appreciablepressure with a vast perhaps slightly reducible degree of cumulous imprecisionit is conceivable that in the realest efforts the rules are concealedcumulative the white shroud wrapping warping while unwinding the wordsa fundamental fuzziness clouds every prediction description decisionthe functional fizziness of the excessively unstable human brainmight be most truthbeautiful with blunders––lovely word––a book of mistakes inherent when we interrogate honor or nature or errorall observations are seen to bumble and plunder––I’m going torecord these words to see if they ever appear in conversation again––the musical punning pruning this lattice of letters we pantingly climbas though the letters had no holes to breathe through though they do––they are made to aspire––“never express yourself more clearlythan you think,” she used to say, “if left open the dark will leak out”

Untitled 3Marie Carbone

Rachel IkensThe Guts of the PoemAfter Mary Oliver6 AM almost light, late March.The male robin declares from the roof peak,a cardinal cheers. Open windows let the eyelashesof dawn flutter into your room, that petrichor—your washedwet hair smelling like sheets dried on a linethe way your mother did it. While you took fat bouquets of violetsto school and scrambled through lessons so you could escapebetween the covers of the book you later carried up intothe apple tree that hung over to the road, fragrance,froth and bees’ contentment, your mother stripped the beds.Plain white sheets, hospital corners, the hem of the top sheetfolded, a prayer over the blanket she still had when she was 90.So many secrets shared in Spring; the way to hang a sheetso wind won’t rip it off the clothesline, the tail of my father’s shirtsupside down, never by the sleeves. Sky, bluer blue, single engineplane painted a poem above my head.Facefuls of daffodils, nose filled with lilac and peonies;how you smashed the stem of cut lilac with the prunerso the broken bark could absorb water,all those bouquets, passion for teachers long gone.*****Honeysuckle sprouts, pairs of purple wingsin the snow. Crocuses close their lips and daffodils freeze solid.You grub with stinging fingers into a drift for the buds.In cold wateron top of the fridgethey frill open.Knocked flat, 10 inches of frozen white,under a worm moon—when the sun blushes two weeksbefore the eclipse, they stand up open their parasols again.Be a daffodil.

My mother didn’t teach me that.How to iron my father’s shirts, pillowcases, yes,but not poetry.Not how necessary the darknessof winter compost ripe withsteaming grubsfor the gutsof the poem.ApparitionLiza Boyce Linder

Sunset in San Miguel de AllendeJohn Milkereit

Sandi StrombergWhen I See a Helium Balloon on the Roof of a HighRiseI imagine James Taylor, guitar curled into his chest. London, city of skyscrapers. The roof of a highrise.His silhouette strumming, white pick between index and thumb. His voice mellow asa warm fireplace where I want to rest my heart. Wind flings his notes across the clouds. His words easingthe heaviness of my youngmother days. My ambitions, sleepless nights,gray laundromat days catch onhis melancholy tune, on that gold balloon swaying on the edge of space, whose string I could clutch and ride to join him Up on the Roof, share my contralto about the world getting me down, about my longing for a refuge far above city nights, for days troubleproof.

Elisa A. GarzaBeyond the Moon and Backfor my daughtersAfter our games of farther and more, I write this poem, send the words I love youinto darkness outside the Milky Waywhere galaxy arms appear to hug youI write this poem inside the supernovas of your births, bright gases overlappingas love expands around usI keep writing this poem with love for you even throughthe event horizon of a black hole,breach of time and spacethat only God understandsInside lies the clearest sea,waves that ebb and flow,my heart beating,my hand writingI love you

Robert WynneMirrors in the SkyThe face in the moon watches Godmastering blossoms like a bruise in the heartsof every devotee of the collection plate.But even mirrors favor fists, first thoughtsstinging like a late payment, clothing shy kidsin whatever armor happens to be available.A mathematician theorizing the next deviation,time succumbs to minute after minute,laboratory dog launching a reverie of barkingat no one, trapped behind thick glassas memories threaten like an unlearned command.I’ve always wondered what clouds concealedlike some blindfolded fairy in the sky, expectingmy own childish reflection to finally reveal itself.

Dana KinseyWhen I Am a Dying StarNight will write elegies as those I knew wander lost,blacksilked, telescopes mourning spaces they filled like graduates’ empty desks repolished lateJune, blankets in my babies’ cribs waiting to wrap theirs, men who pursued me, a comet circling sun, then left light flickering in my skin for other men to marvel in.These vacancies will archive my butterflies, joysoakedperfume they’ll want to inhale, memorize, recycle. As stars illumine paths through every evergreen forest, I’ll stack my brilliance atop the endless cosmic trash, my gold hoops glimmering in 27,000 pieces of space junk, like narratives I designed with good in mind that collided in space & time. My rhymes will orbit all that I namedprecious, perfect, traveling ten times swifter than bullets, thirtythree thousand mph, transmitting touches of light, pulsing in rhythms I invented, Morsecoded for my loves.The Heavenly SeaLiam Wilson

Makers' CornerInner SpaceK.L. Johnston

Eva Skrande, Poetry JudgeORCHIDWhat have you become, my Cuba, my orchid of a homeland,besides the stray hairs of my dreams.I am missing three fingers for this journeyof exiled peonies and bees.I wish I could once again seeyour benches where the weary come to sitand watch their burdens bloom into butterflies.I miss the parks under your bridges, the brides walking downthe aisle under canopies of palm trees.O water of infinite bluesplashing on the shoulders of your cities.I want to see the cathedral in the plazawhere men go to wash their feetand women baptize their hopes. If only I couldfind my old house in the streets of your capitalto feel sparrows in the eaves of my heart.Exiles cry, sweet land, for the white rapture of doveswithin your gardens. Even those who are tired are happyalong orchidfilled streets, and pigeons take turns kissingthe stones of your old roads.What boats lead back to the fruits of your hands—O dear country,on what knees did you bid us farewell?Eva Skrande's book is available...Finishing Line Presshttps://tinyurl.com/5n72rtbm/See Eva's bio on pg. 102

Alison Moore, Prose JudgeFind out about Alison's books in her bio on pg. 102. Orphan train performances: https://tinyurl.com/2yfrd9dvLearn about her orphan train performances below.

View Greg's art:@Greg_OaksSee Greg's bioon pg. 102Greg Oaks, Art Judge

Carrie Kornacki, Consultant EditorPhotograph: Twine, by Carrie KornackiCicadas In the Key of ESometimes a whole forest is stuffed in inside me—Oaks and ashes fling up a fecund barricade.My fingers press every hollow, every shaft of lightto find a rupture in this swelling. This heaviness.This sweltering synopsis, a pulsing staccato back of my neck, 97 decibels screaming.See bio. on pg. 102

James Ellis, Cover Designer James Ellis’s art is viewable at James Ellis (@badgrowshop) • Instagram photos and videos.He is available for commissioned projects. Bio. on pg. 102.Art by James: Untitled

Vanessa ZimmerPowell, Art Editor and Page DesignerVanessa's chapbook is published by Dancing Girl Press. https://rb.gy/edhjviImage by Vanessa: GloryInside plane capsuleI am a tight 10hour pillswallowed by nospace,buried in body, until bandsof glory shake me awake.

Vanessa's chapbook is published by Dancing Girl Press. https://rb.gy/edhjviImage by Vanessa: Glory Kelly Ann Ellis, Managing Editor The Hungry Ghost Diner is available at Barnes & Noble Amazonhttps://kellyannellis.com The Blood Never LiesAfter D.H. LawrenceBut it doesrationalizethe hand’s breadthbetween usis goodas a milethe near misswhen we kissaccidentalall shells are fragilein sleepif you flinchwhen we touchit means nothingmuchKelly Ann Ellis's book is available...Published by Lamar University Press* See Kelly's bio. on pg. 102

Makers' BiosEva Skrande's third book, The Boat that Brought Sadness into the World, has just been released fromFinishing Line Press. She is also the author of My Mother's Cuba (Volume 7 of the River CityPoetry Series) and Bone Argot (Spuyten Duyvil Press). Her work has appeared in numerous national and international literary magazines. She has received fellowships from the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston, the Inprint Foundation, and the Houston Arts Council. Eva has taught Poetry Writing and Creative Writing to people of all ages. She is a faculty tutor at Houston Community College as well as a writing coach and founder of Write for Success Tutoring.Alison Moore, MFA, is a former Assistant Professor of English/Creative Writing in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Arizona. She is the author of four books: the historical novel Riders on the Orphan Train, 2012; a collection of short fiction, The Middle of Elsewhere, 2006; a novel, Synonym for Love (Penguin/Plume 1996); and a collection of short stories, Small Spaces between Emergencies one of the Notable Books of 1993, chosen by The American Library Association. She received two National Endowment for the Arts Fiction Fellowships in 1993 and 2010 and the J. Frank Dobie/Paisano Fellowship in 2007. In 2012 she received the Charles Loring Brace Award for helping to preserve the stories of the Orphan Trains. Greg Oaks is a writer and visual artist. He has literary pieces published in Copper Nickel, PoetryDaily and Gettysburg Review and elsewhere. He’s had numerous art pieces in shows at the Hardy and Nance Studios, on the cover of Chaos Dive Reunion, and at Lone Star CollegeUniversity Park, where he is also a professor of English and Creative Writing. He has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Houston and is one of the cofounders of the Poison Pen Reading Series.Carrie Kornacki is a teacher, poet, and fiction writer. She has a B.S. in Journalism from Ohio University and is a veteran English Language Arts Teacher, with years of teaching in the U.S. and in China. She also has taught Creative Writing for Writers in the Schools in Houston, coordinating and launching several youth chapbook projects. In 2015 and 2016, she was the recipient of “The Lucille Johnson Clark Memorial Award” awarded to the top Houston Poetry Fest juried poet who teaches public school. Ms. Kornacki has been a featured reader throughout Houston and has been published in various literary journals. James Ellis is a mobile digital artist who lives and works in Georgetown, KY. He has been the cover artist for four consecutive issues of Equinox. He has accrued several awards (including being the first prizewinner in the image category in the fall 2023 issue) has designed book covers including The Book ofRoger, by Kyle R. Smith; The Hungry Ghost Diner by Kelly Ann Ellis; and The Adventures of Tommy Rocket (forthcoming) by Joel Nobel. His work, which has been featured in TheAppWhisperer, an online digital art magazine, is also used as the cover screen for the IColorama app. Ellis’s art is viewable at James Ellis(@badgrowshop) • Instagram photos and videos, and he is available for commissioned projects. Vanessa ZimmerPowell is a speechlanguage pathologist, photographer, filmmaker, and poet. She holds a BA in English literature and an MA in Communication Sciences and Disorders. She worked as a graphic designer in the 1990s. Her poetry has aired on the radio, has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, and she has received awards and honors for her work. Her cinepoems have been jury slected and featured at ReelPoetry and Gulf Coast Film Festivals. She won an honorable mention for her onewoman videopoem production of Dislocation at the 2023 REELpoetry festival. Her chapbook, Woman Looks into an Eye is published by Dancing Girl Press.Kelly Ann Ellis holds an MA in English Literature from the University of Houston, where she also taught for years. A member of the critique group Poets in the Loop, she is the cofounder of hotpoet, Inc. and the managing editor of Equinox. Her poetry, which has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, wasfeatured in the REELpoetry festival for three consecutive years and showcased in the Houston Fringe Festival in 2019. Her fiction placed 2nd in The Short Story Show's 2020 contest and was rereleased in a “bestof” podcast in 2021. She was twice nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2020, and her poetry collection, The Hungry Ghost Diner, was published by Lamar University Literary Press in 2023.

Cynthia YatchmanColor Trianda Tessera