Equinox Vol. 4 2023 : simplebooklet.com

ContentsSECTION 1: FLICKER 10life light Saleem AbdalKhaaliq (poetry) 11Untitled Izzy Torres (art) 12Only at Dusk Frank Pool (poetry) 13Country Road Joe Larsen (poetry) 14firefly Traci Duncan (poetry) 15Untitled 40 Ellen Mary Hayes (art) 15I Never Believed They Were Fairies Charlene Stegman Moskal (poetry) 16Banksy's Paint Pot Angel in Rose K. L. Johnston (art) 17Letter to Hans Christian Anderson Gabrielle Langley (poetry) 18Circle 29 Ellen Mary Hayes (art) 19A Child First Sees Fire As Fuel Luvon Roberson (poetry) 20the midday sun setting Jerome Berglund (poetry) 21All My Fires Swim Through This James Ellis (art) 21 Desert Life House Fire Kumari de Silva (prose) 22I Want to Touch What Keeps Us Alive Tina Carlson (poetry) 23Light Up the World Margo Stutts Toombs (art) 23Dusk Beneath a Quarter Moon David Meischen (poetry) 24Lubbock Lights from a Distance Dreaming Tamara NichollSmith (poetry) 25Joie de Vivre Susan Beall Summers (poetry) 26If I could light up the world with my ass Margo Stutts Toombs (poetry) 27Untitled Margo Stutts Toombs (art) 27SECTION 2: FLAME 28The Say Firefly Linda Reising (poetry) 29still/life Saleem AbdalKhaaliq (poetry) 30Monet's Pond, Giverny, France Vanessa ZimmerPowell (art) 30midsummer madness RC deWinter (poetry) 31Lessons in Fire Kimberly Hall (poetry) 32Candelight John Slaby (art) 33Volcanology Kimberly Hall (prose) 34First Fire Traci Duncan (poetry) 35And the Bird Flew On Donna Perkins (art) 36Untitled Becca Ziegler (poetry) 37Poppy Vanessa ZimmerPowell (art) 38Flirtation Cindy Huyser (poetry) 39Zen of the Heart Joe Blanda (poetry) 40ContentsThe Storm Cynthia Yatchman (art) 41Air Currents Claire Vogel Camargo (poetry) 42The Choice Alexander Harber (art) 42Easy Weekend Ryan Scariano (poetry) 43Untitled Claire Vogel Camargo (poetry) 44Untitled D E Zuccone (art) 44Sonja Ann Howells (poetry) 45Untitled 17 Ellen Mary Hayes (art) 45Ode to Candles Sandi Stromberg (poetry) 46Out Out John Slaby (art) 47A Short List of Flies Rebecca Danelly (poetry) 48Self Portrait with Fly John Slaby (art) 49SECTION 3: FLARE 50Yanked from a Dream Rachael Ikins (prose) 51Sekhmet Rohan Buettel (poetry 52Fire Seeds Holli May Thomas (art) 53Blast Lyman Grant (poetry) 54Up in Smoke Margo Davis (poetry) 55some days i just want to be a dog Izzy Torres (poetry) 56Yellow Bastard Cabage Gabrielle Langley (poetry) 57Fly Sex Vanessa ZimmerPowell (art) 57Questions for the Entropy Discussion Board Lyman Grant (poetry) 58Tectonic Shift Donna Perkins (art) 59Legacy Kumari de Silva (prose) 60Untitled 1, Robertson Draw Fire K. Wayne McClane (art) 61Monarch Carol Barrett (poetry) 62Brilliant COVID Landscape Cynthia Yatchman (art) 63Fire Barry Lewis (poetry) 64Untitled 2, Robertson Draw Fire K. Wayne McClane (art) 64Extreme Heat Warning Jen Karetnick (poetry) 65to this fresh hell Terry Dawson (poetry) 66We're All Too Busy to See the World Burning Gabby Gilliam (poetry) 67While Everything's on Fire Mark Jodon (poetry) 68To Ashes Lyman Grant (poetry) 69Untitled 3, Robertson Draw Fire K. Wayne McClane (art) 69

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ContentsThe Storm Cynthia Yatchman (art) 41Air Currents Claire Vogel Camargo (poetry) 42The Choice Alexander Harber (art) 42Easy Weekend Ryan Scariano (poetry) 43Untitled Claire Vogel Camargo (poetry) 44Untitled D E Zuccone (art) 44Sonja Ann Howells (poetry) 45Untitled 17 Ellen Mary Hayes (art) 45Ode to Candles Sandi Stromberg (poetry) 46Out Out John Slaby (art) 47A Short List of Flies Rebecca Danelly (poetry) 48Self Portrait with Fly John Slaby (art) 49SECTION 3: FLARE 50Yanked from a Dream Rachael Ikins (prose) 51Sekhmet Rohan Buettel (poetry 52Fire Seeds Holli May Thomas (art) 53Blast Lyman Grant (poetry) 54Up in Smoke Margo Davis (poetry) 55some days i just want to be a dog Izzy Torres (poetry) 56Yellow Bastard Cabage Gabrielle Langley (poetry) 57Fly Sex Vanessa ZimmerPowell (art) 57Questions for the Entropy Discussion Board Lyman Grant (poetry) 58Tectonic Shift Donna Perkins (art) 59Legacy Kumari de Silva (prose) 60Untitled 1, Robertson Draw Fire K. Wayne McClane (art) 61Monarch Carol Barrett (poetry) 62Brilliant COVID Landscape Cynthia Yatchman (art) 63Fire Barry Lewis (poetry) 64Untitled 2, Robertson Draw Fire K. Wayne McClane (art) 64Extreme Heat Warning Jen Karetnick (poetry) 65to this fresh hell Terry Dawson (poetry) 66We're All Too Busy to See the World Burning Gabby Gilliam (poetry) 67While Everything's on Fire Mark Jodon (poetry) 68To Ashes Lyman Grant (poetry) 69Untitled 3, Robertson Draw Fire K. Wayne McClane (art) 69

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ContentsSECTION 4: FADE 70Colloquy in Black Larry D. Thomas (poetry) 71Reach Out Charlene Stedman Moskal (poetry) 72Untitled 4, Robertson Draw Fire K. Wayne McClane (art) 73you must be fuckin kidding me Ryan Scariano (poetry) 74 [and] i am totally full of shitBrisas de Huelva Elina Petrova (poetry) 75A Torn Fragment Adele Ne Jame (poetry) 76Chod Priscilla Frake (poetry) 77A Guide for Pyromancers Tina Carlson (poetry) 78Sunset Forest Cynthia Yatchman (art) 79Flame Maple K. L. Johnston (art) 80Magenta K. L. Johnston (poetry) 81On One Night in June Patricia McMahon (prose) 82Fire Season Priscilla Frake (poetry) 83Little Lightbulb Ryan Scariano (poetry) 84Flown K. L. Johnston (art) 85Tequila Factory Dome John Milkereit (art) 90MAKERS' CORNER 86Anthony Sutton, Poetry Judge 87D E Zuccone, Prose Judge 88Mary Wemple, Art Judge 89Kelly Ann Ellis, Editor 90Carrie Kornacki, Guest Editor 91Vanessa ZimmerPowell, Page Design 92Makers' Bios 93Honorable MentionsIzzy Torres, some days i just want to be a dog (poetry)Kumari de Silva, House Fire (prose)Kumari de Silva, Legacy (prose)Patricia McMahon, On One Night in June (prose)Donna Perkins, Tectonic Shift (art) Donna Perkins, And the Bird Flew On (art)James Ellis, All My Fires Swim Through This Desert Life (art)Contest WinnersPoetry Adele Ne JameA Torn FragmentProse Kimberly Hall Volcanology, or the Writer Laments the Effects of Tactile Sensitivity on Her RelationshipsArt John SlabyOut OutJudges' CommentsPoetry Anthony Sutton Sutton relates why he was lured by Ne Jame's poem: "This poem begins with a storm but instead of tearing through the location of the poem, it tears through time and allows for visitations from Henry David Thoreau and the 16th century mystic Theresa of Avila. And then there's the mysterious and charming "you." We never find who this person is exactly but we know the speaker is drawn in "the lureof your words," and truly they are lured in deep. I found myself lured too by language like "whiteout quotidian" and "Later, we understand the intoxicated heart / has no prerogative at all.'" Prose D E Zuccone“…if the stillness is Volcanic…”In commenting on why he selected Hall's work, Zuccone quotes Emily Dickinson and says:"Emily Dickinson came to mind in reading this essay, an unexpected emerging from the obvious to intimate surprise. “Fire flies, and the volcano weeps “ a tactile defensive speaker inhabits a privatevolcano of a body encountering romance and negotiating “the difference between boundaries and rifts”. Zeno’s paradox redefined in a volcanic rapport with love."Art Mary WempleRegarding her experience judgning, Wemple says, "This was a great opportunity to judge the art competition for Equinox. The works I selected were all original. I am a poet, so the titles wereimportant. Each piece had a title that complemented and expanded the work. Also, in each of them, I saw they had taken time and care to create; I could see the effort in each piece.The first place, Out, Out, referenced Shakespeare in the title, the brevity of life, but also could be asymbol of our times with COVID. I enjoyed the layers of meaning."

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Only at duskfor CharlotteFireflies swarmed only at duskfar back in deep East Texasthey were lightning bugs they camefrom abandoned fairways greensgone to seed on the old golf courseinto our yard under the big oak treewhere we caught them put somein a jar but never enough lightto read by they looked so plainin daylight a couple stripes onlydelight of ornament but as nightfell on the creeks the reedsthe pine trees they glowedsparkled and my sister crushedtheir shining abdomens againsther forearm she looked likesome constellation come to earthslow sidereal precessions in the darkwe played together radio indoorssquawked about the Bay of Pigssqueamish about the squashingthose cold lights blinking distantchirping maybe an owl hootedsomewhere it all has gone nowwe knew so little then of time’sillusions that passed us we thoughtwe could spread space and timeon our skins like eternal starsin another century rememberingthe lightning bugs of Minervafly only at dusk. FFrraannkk PPooooll

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I Never Believed They Were FairiesAs a child on hot summer nightsI sat on the stoop, waiting;the jelly jar waiting,the punctured lid waitingas if just being there could summona flickered army of magic.Someone told me they were fairiesbut I never believed it.Fairies would look like meonly smaller the size of my pinky finger.They would be me with wingsthat could fly out of the city’s June heat,feel wind rush through my always tangled hair,escape from the confines of bus fumesand gravel playgrounds, sleeping alcoves,bickering parents, the smell of cooking wafting under apartment doors at dinner timeand the sounds of sirens interrupting sleep.And so I waited, silent to catch the nonfairiesand when they came, slow as if wanting a home,my jar was ready to scoop them to an early death.I looked at their bellies, yellowgreen lights, on/ off, beating at the lid for escape;no fairies, just me in a jar. I let them go. CChhaarrlleennee SStteeggmmaann MMoosskkaall

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Letter to Hans Christian AndersenDear Mr. Andersen,I am very sorry I outgrew the walnut shell before I finishedreading Thumbelina.I think it happened when I spilled the cherry cola,or maybe because I hid Twinkies underneaththe sofa cushions.And anyway, using a rose petal as a boatcouldn’t have kept me afloat for long, couldn’t have stopped mefloundering like a tiny minnow—a mermaid embryo in green water—couldn’t have kept me fromthe dry land.And what could have possibly kept my mother’s feet from feeling the knives when she fell in love with a mortal man,or the father who pranceddrunk and nakeddown the hallway likethe Emperor on parade,or the Snow Queenwho taught usnever to speak of it?You weren’t responsiblefor that ugly male toadhiding in the brambles. GGaabbrriieellllee LLaanngglleeyy

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A Child First Sees Fire As Fuel It’s a fire that fuels, even flies. and I want to go back return to that place of childhood seeing, once again, myself when I, first seeing the fire, standing, in Mr. Charles’s laundry store, his small storefront on 108th Street and Northern Boulevard. Seeing the tall white steel machines, stacked high, nearly to the ceiling hammering, or so it seems, the dirt and grime and stains and, indeed, all proof of living, of life’s ejaculations, from shirts & pants & panties & jockstraps & pj’s & undershirts & hoodies & sheets & charred rope & all garb worn to mask and to clothe. Chug, chug, chugging, then whipping, or so it seems, into a frenzy, all the whites, gathered as one, stretching, or so it seems. like ghostly clouds faintly afly,disappearing in a blur, against steel barrel, then twisting into a long strand, perhaps like a noose, as the machines whirl and churn. While all the coloreds – gathered, too  and all the blacks – together, also – behind thick doubly fortified window swirling, swirling changing with each turn like some kind of kaleidoscope or iridescent eyes of green flies and I, in that childhood moment, first seeing behind the steely all, espy a purpleblue propulsion, brightly firing that steely white machinery and I, hearing and only faintly, a whispering: poppoppop, emitting, something like a quiet hissing – unlike a gun  or so it seems – yet firing, firing, firing. LLuuvvoonn RRoobbeerrssoonn

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House Fire 5129 South Cornell was not a mansion of any sort. But it was the first–the only–house my parents together had ever owned. I was excited to move in as a six year old. Getting my own room was a huge draw! Until I had one, and I realized how afraid I was to sleep alone. The house was haunted. This, despite it being a brandnew 1971 build, and us, the original owners. The strangeness started when I couldn’t sleep. I heard soft raspy breathing in my room. Someone was there  but who? I certainly wasn’t close enough to hear my brother breathing through an interior wall let alone hear the neighbors. My mother had a little patience, my father had none, for what they considered a childish freak. Try as I might to prove to them that there was some thing breathing in my room, they never stayed with me long enough to hear her. The children I babysat lived in an identical townhouse across the row. The year I was 14, their house had a fire. No one died, although their clothes were destroyed. Among the variety of losses was a closet full of music rolls for their player piano, which had itself miraculously survived. Then there was another small fire at my best friend’s that sparked right out of the wall electrical outlet. Linda and I were both at her house playing when it happened. The moms and dads started questioning the builders about “all these fires” in what were essentially brand new townhomes. Demanding answers. Two fires in as many years? Two years later I had a terrifying nightmare of a woman dying in a fire; she was coming out of my wall at me. I didn’t recognize the person. But I was fully aware that she died. I wondered if this was the spirit of the person who had been breathing in my room. But when I thought about it, timidly, in the morning light, I couldn’t get past the reality of us being the original owners. When would she have died?I moved far, far away after high school graduation. Never thought much of my old Chicago home because my dad had gone nocontact with me for reasons not relevant to this story. Through a cousin, I learned of the fire. My father’s girlfriend was spending the night (my mother had died when I was 20). The girlfriend woke my dad, telling him to get out. While he survived, she didn’t. Having gone back to get her purse, she became trapped by the smoke and burning furniture. Like the lady in my dream, a bookcase had fallen over her. Though he was sad, I suppose, my father didn’t contact me. I had to imagine him moving to a crappy motel while the rehab was done. I wondered if I had remembered the future all those years ago, like backwards dejà vu—or if it were just a premonition, alarming me to get out. KKuummaarrii ddee SSiillvvaa

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I Want To Touch What Keeps Us AliveDec 2021: For the first time in history, a spacecraft has touched the Sun. NASA’s has now flown through the Sun’s corona, which is roughly 2 million degrees Fahrenheit.My loves, I have pierced sun’s crown, her almighty heat beyond magma or flame. Dived into storms of particulatewind, pelted by magnetized flares. Know you have each gifted gold, your hands on my sapphire cup. I dream what I’ve lost: spring snow, breeze in pines. Violins, blue birds, mud, smell of the rain.Beloveds, I’m built to shun sadness and scorch: shielded by carbon’s slick coat. Seven flybys to Venus: her gravity pulls and alters my course. She glows in the night, covered in streaks, gets me closer each time to my star.Hold me, Loves, in my spiraling feat. Like the boy with wax wings I’ll drown from her blaze, burn in her face made of fire. TTiinnaa CCaarrllssoonnLight Up the World Margo Stutts Toombs

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Dusk Beneath a Quarter MoonStarlight shimmers around us. Nakedon the limestone shelves of Windy Point,belts and buckles, shirts and denims discarded,our lungs expanding, we breathe free.From the limestone shelves of Windy Pointwe plunge into cool Lake Travis water.Our lungs exhilarate, the breeze freeing us—Mylène and David and Jürgen and Maureen.We dive. The waters of the Colorado chillthe fire that burns in us. We are July’s children—Karl and Jeannie. Michael and Marvin and Kate.We are twenty. We will never die.We burn as children burn, as July burnsin limestone beneath our feet. Diving,we count to twenty. No sleep for us.How can these splashing moments end?We dive. Limestone along the Pointmurmurs moonlight, star light—this nightendless, these voices splashing, falling,swimmers drenched and glimmering.Moonbright, starfired, night murmurs in us.Our clothing shed with our former selves, drenched, we rise from the waves.We shimmer, naked as starlight. DDaavviidd MMeeiisscchheenn

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Lubbock Lights from a Distance DreamingMarvel of new man, how you shine, you, distant lights, so small and many hang, how you, by invisiblestring hang, float, hover, as if winged, aloft in night's sky, wishing for some riotous unfurling freedom,wishing yourselves temporary fireflies for just one day of dancing tails, a few magical blest hours,spent garish, fleetlit, lambent, blazing.This, yes, this. This, your everything day,fullon with sparkle day, confettiburst and oh happy mess day. Yes.you, constant lights, that shouldn't want, shouldn't be able to have dreams.But your Kind Maker, made you morethan a mere colony of lights, industrial illumination,made you to shine, to daylight night and halo in halogen tall towers, fat pipes and columns, and — to want.Above, you are reflected in a mirror of slow stars. They movein tranquil pageantry towardsthe quiet shore of dreams. They whisper to voyage through the gate of hornsand bathe in motherlight, all glitter and yes, yes, you can. Flight. Alight. TTaammaarraa NNiicchhoollllSSmmiitthh

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Joie de Vivre My dog slips under the fence, ignores my whistle, runs…Envious of his freedom,I remember being fiverunning barefoot through Julycatching lightning bugslooking up at the stars, wonderinghow bugs could twinkle and if stars were bugsam I a captive in a giant Mason jarand the lid holes let the light inside?When do we lose the joy of life?I turn up the music and dance in my kitchennot my usual 80s dance tunes, but Lizzo.I daydream of summer beach trips.I want to shake off life’s leash,remember what lights me up,kick the surf making luminous sparks,run into the ocean beneath a rising moonand scream, “You can’t catch me!”I wonder if I can be luminous again.the dog returns panting and grinningNo remorse. Joy can’t be fenced.Lizzo confirms, “It’s about damn time.” SSuussaann BBeeaallll SSuummmmeerrss

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The Say FireflyThomas Say had already explored islands off the shores of Florida, Georgia, posingfor a portrait before he left, a remembrancefor his family, in case natives of the region did not appreciate the white man’s science.He had scaled the Rocky Mountains, namedthe swift fox, rock wren, orangecrownedwarbler. But his greatest work awaitedas he stood on the deck of the Boatloadof Knowledge, its passengers’ destinieswaiting to be woven to their destination—New Harmony, Utopia on the Wabash.Here, he would study the mussels, clutchingfreshwater pearls, long before buttonmakers drove their neartotal disappearance.In these virgin forests and springtime marshes,Say studied all that crawled and flew,but he lit upon the firefly as a favorite subject, its cold light warming the duskalong the banks. And he came to recognizetheir illumination as speech, signals of flirtation,desire, creatures who by their very naturecould not hesitate, life ending in a flash. LLiinnddaa RReeiissiinngg

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Lessons in FireLesson 1:Most fires require three things to ignite: heat,an oxidizing agent,and fuel. Deprived of any one of these,the fire is rendered unableto sustain itself.This is not an accident. This is chemistry. Lesson 2:The coolest part of a candle’s flame hoversaround 600 °C, while the hottest part of the same flamecan reach temperatures up to 1,400 °C. Both of theseare more than hot enoughto damage your fingertips if you hold themtoo close. Even for a moment, sweetheart.Even for a moment.Lesson 3:People so often describe romance and passionas burning flames, but sweetheartmy experience of lovehas never felt like fire. No bolt of lightning ever struckthe ground beneath my feet – no wildfire sparked in the firepitof my gut – no flames licked higher and higher along the rungs of my spine,like tinder, like the branches of a driedout tree – no,sweetheart, my sunspot, my morning glory, what we had togetherwasn’t fire – it was flowers. Fields and fields of wildflowers. Mallow andprimrose. Bluebell and beebalmand thistle.But it hasn’t rained in so long. It hasn’t rained in so long, sweetheart,and bindweed has stubborn roots. Bindweed has choking,smothering stems. Moonflower, morning glory, I adore youand your beautiful blossoms,but the rest of my fields can’t cope.Lesson 4: Remember, sometimes the best thingfor an ecosystem in distressis a controlled burn. KKiimmbbeerrllyy HHaallll

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Volcanology, or the Writer Laments the Effects of Tactile Sensitivity on Her RelationshipsI.On May 18, 1980, after a twomonth series of smaller episodes, Mount St. Helens erupted violently, carving a crater into her north side and spewing ash and volcanic debris for miles.Many years later, as a treat for my birthday, my dad and I flew in a helicopter over the monument left from this eruption. Our guide told us that the earth around the volcano was still sensitive, prone to extrusions – it was safest for everyone to minimize physical contact.I remember, even as a child, barely acclimated to my own cinder cone body, wondering if I was built to erupt like that too.II.Most days, I just don’t like being touched.It’s not personal – it’s sensory. The difference between boundaries and rifts.In the absence of touch, I am a shapeshifter. I imagine myself many things. Today, I am a firebreathing dragon. I have bright red wings and scales like armor. Today, I am a lighthouse on a cliff by the sea. Today, I am a volcanologist, whispering unanswerable questions into the mount of a reticent volcano.Today, I am the reticent volcano.III.Overstimulation: the feeling of fire lips digging themselves into my body’s crust, lateral fissures like wounds where the pressure inside me no longer fits inside me; a precursor to either meltdown or eruption.Most days, the volcano lies dormant. The volcano avoids uncomfortable seams. The volcano filters out seismic activity, and ambient noise. The volcano rests beneath a weighted blanket.Other days, every point of contact becomes a tectonic collision, and every collision edges closer to subduction – the pressure inside the volcano builds and builds and builds until one touch digs just deep enough (maybe a relative’s nudge to my shoulder, intended to be playful, maybe the scrape of my blind cat’s whiskers against my arm) and then – Fire flies, and the world shakes. Fire flies, and the volcano weeps. Along the deepest trenches, the aftershocks can last for years.IV.The first time you tried to hold my hand, I flinched – a nearviolent red burst of motion – and immediately you snatched your hand back, as if that momentary brush of skinagainstskin had burned.I should have said something then. I wanted to. About how my skin shuddered, but beneath it my hands vibrated with yearning – about how my heart beatbeatbeat inside my chest, a thundering stampede running wild at the heat – about how magma plumed between my ribs, churning and bulging, higher and higher until its pyroclastic flow surged outward into my fingertips –But then you smiled, all red and orange and honeygold, and the fires cleared. You smiled, and the thundering ceased. You smiled, and the eruption slowed. KKiimmbbeerrllyy HHaallll

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Easy WeekendSurely, this, along with all the other infinitesimal miseries that surround us, confirms we’re inhabiting some insignificant and obscure, decimally positioned circle of hell.– Donte Alegre, You Must Ignore the Miracles: How to Use Your Common Sense to Navigate HellA devil came in a dream long ago and convinced me I’d never had a mother.I’ve been an American child ever since, sitting on the couch, drinking, looking funny dressed in my coffin.But I love my dead body. I’m fascinated by my decomposition.I suppose it’s okay that it’s summer, fine that it’s so damn hot.These thunderstorms will start fires.I’m writing to unlock the booze in my heart.Obviously, I’m not the only one who enjoys cocktails while making dinner—a state of being that might mimic heaven.For my Sunday brunch, leftovers and scented rain, the angels’ dust washing away. RRyyaann SSccaarriiaannoo

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A Short List of FliesMayflies swarm across the lake’s surface. Aunt Fran slams the door. Soon the glass iscovered with carcasses.Fly me to the moon? Or somewhere by the sea? Or dance me to paradise? How about an argument sitting in the dark about our favorite book?Flying makes me nervous though I pretend otherwise. The plastic cup shivers in my grasp. A father in a gentleman’s jacket. A teenage daughter. A flying shoe. Tears and a middle finger.In the salve, I found a kicking horse fly and three white hairs.What flew out of the cave? Not bats. Jackrabbits.She sent her love a selfhelp book she bought in the airport before flying to Albuquerque. A glass flies, shatters against a wall. Books fly and fall to the ground. Paper creased and torn. Words fly and I want to hit you with your mother’s ashtray. Paper planes fly. Flies fly. Embers from campfire’s marshmallows fly. RReebbeeccccaa DDaanneellllyy

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Yanked from a DreamI don’t need to wake up yet, but the tide is running, cat feet pattering waves up and down my bodymy face, cats sing songs of robin lust and other deep throated implications. I look at the clock there is no reason to rise but hungry claws knead my belly flesh looser since spring, knead a bowl of bladder filledto brimming.I don’t need to leave my bed this early. Next door Nancy dreams onoblivious to the chicken I spatchcocked yesterday after the freezer belched open, kicked by one of the cats shoving off into the deep.Cats can fly over water, I’ve seen it. They don’t need wings. A mug of water jumps into bed. I’ll roll my legs in wet sheets yearn to return to the dream where I sat in a circle with friends on a beach last night, fire burped and fluttered, while daylilies fringed us palming scapes for tomorrow’s thrust,we recited poetry, got drunk and listened to bats hunt mosquitos.Should we poison mosquitoes?What of bats? Bass? Water?It sloshes in my bed. Patience waits outside a mole burrow for hours on feline paws, while in our wheezing world thirsty toddlers motor miniJeeps, shriek, “Faster! Daddy, faster!” RRaacchhaaeell IIkkiinnss

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SekhmetI am the daughter of the sun incarnatewith the body of a woman;the head, the proclivities, of a lion.My desiccating breath withers crops;lays waste grazing lands;denatures plains, creates deserts.I don a bloodred mantle,bide my time, arms emblazoned,ready for an incendiary strike:incinerating forests;radiating the scorching, blazingheat of a thousand suns;flinging destruction;the roar of conflagration;searing chaos across foreign lands.I stain the sky red, then black;char a country;cremate a continent.My wrath uncontrolled, hurls dry lightning; immolates worlds.Dread my name, my power, my might;my slaughter indiscriminate;I bring retribution.What sacrifices will you make to appease me?It matters not, only a hard raincan drown, douse my ardor. RRoohhaann BBuueetttteell

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BlastHe can’t remember the order that he sensed it. Which came firstthe boom or his house quaking?Or did they both announce themselvestogether, like an angry coupleyelling and banging at the front doorfor some secret unknown offence.He does remember that he stopped stillin the middle of the kitchen and gazed upward, not toward God,but merely to the ceiling to seeif it was splitting and tumbling,opening into a blue abyss,his wife and son falling through.After a few exploratory howlsto locate the safe, but alarmed,all three stepped outside and foundtheir neighbors also escapingtheir shaken homes, tentatively surveying the skies. Both hope and fear rose to hover, like clouds, above their little neighborhood, tucked securely midst their tepid and untroubled town. Thenit began to fall upon them, insulation,gray dust, shards of packing materials, like rain, like sleet, like a virus, like a knowledge, and before they retreated back indoors, they began to perceive down the hill, above the tree tops, beyond their beloved park, the flames climbing higher, the smoke maskingthe morning light, and the sirens awake now screaming and screaming. LLyymmaann GGrraanntt

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Up In Smoke He went missing Friday at halftime, worst game of the season. No one liked him, not even Coach whoproclaimed the kid lacks discipline. Parents assured one another that scrawny George or deaf Francis couldn’t have gotten even. The makeshift Fire Department braced themselves for dealing with the boy’s dad, a fire plug whodelayed the rescue squad with, where’s the fire? passing a flask among men standing unevenly onhis ant pile yard. This gathering a local would drive miles to avoid. Uneven curtains parted, closed. Grown men shuffled, rolling then unrolling worn sleeves. The evening wind carried a whiff of scorched barbeque across the pockmarked field. Hunger vied with overwhelming relief that good kids were accounted for—an asthmatic, a stooped pimplymath whiz, the crosseyed lonerwho claimed he tracked fireflies, let him help. A shy girl whoapologized if someone bumped her. MMaarrggoo DDaavviiss

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Yellow Bastard CabbageThe flowers used to be real pretty heresays the rancher from across a barbed wire fencebut not so much now. Old yellow bastard cabbage. They took over our Indian paintbrush. The bluebonnets too. Hardly any bluebonnets this season. Don’t let those yellow flowers fool you lookin’ like golden clouds.It’s still a weed. Invasive species.He breaks off another piece of tobacco, tucks it into his mouth.You can call it turnipweed or mustardweed it’s still a weedand now it’s come to Texas takin’ over everythin’.See how it chokes out all the rest. Scientists over to A&M figured the seeds snuck over on a cargo boat from China.And now look at ‘em! takin’ over the whole damn country. The rancher spits tobacco juice on the warm grass.Yep. Those yellow bastards ruinin’ springtime here in Texas. GGaabbrriieellllee LLaanngglleeyyFly SexVanessa ZimmerPowell

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LegacyWe keep so much from our children in an effort to protect. I mean, it’s not like you want to share with them how you felt about the fires blazing after the bomb dropped in Hiroshima, a story my mother shared only once with us. Though she’d been only twelve, she recalled with clarity a horse, blinded and confused with all its hair singed off, running wildly into the crowd. And the crowds. She remembered the astonishing crowds. The crowds and crowds of people pouring out the ruined city–burnt with their skin hanging off of them like rags, looking for water. My mother’s family had left their real home in Tokyo to avoid the worst of the bombing. Then, having survived in the suburbs of Hiroshima, my mother was promptly sent to the country. She spent several unhappy months on a farm.I guess a lot of kids back then got separated from their families for periods of time. For safety. For the best. She didn’t need to see how her father got sick from breathing that heavilyradiated air when he went back in, looking for a cousin who had been instantly obliterated at the beginning. No body ever found. But she did see him suffer later, after she got home, because it took him ten years to actually die from this shameful sickness that took him slowly, painfully, ugly and hurting. No. You try to protect your kids from knowing. When you’ve relocated to another country, learned another language, you put those fires behind you. Generational trauma exists but we didn’t have a word for it back in the 1970s; we called it a generation “gap.” Because they couldn’t get why we wanted to smoke dope, see Lou Reed sing, and wear black goth clothes. And I didn’t get why my mother had such a goofy sense of humor. Why little things didn’t seem to bother her. How she took everything in stride. I guess the gift of a really shitty childhood is a neverending well of compassion. I guess. Because if you’re kind of mean, you can grow up to be a bully, and if you’re kind of sweet, like I was, you can grow up to be a victim. I was always feeling sorry for people who had “lessthan” and it never occurred to me that some of these people might be trying to take advantage of me. Oops. I made terrible marriages with exploitative partners. But my mom? She really didn’t do so bad. I mean, there were nightmares and a little too much drinking while I was trying to get through adolescence. But if I’d been through what she’d been through, who knows? Now I’m one of the old folks and when kids tell me World War II did not exist, deny the Holocaust, or say Anne Frank is make believe, I think of my fourth grade teacher who had a tattoo. One of the numbered tattoos that have today become an identifying mark of Holocaust survivors. And my mom. I think of my mom who passed away when I was only twenty. KKuummaarrii ddee SSiillvvaa

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MonarchThis morning’s Times noted the heat domewe are living under. It stretches beyond the wildBootleg Fire, residual smoke silting airwaysacross the Midwest, streaking East Coast sunrise.Satellites orbit above, snap pictures: the vastwasteland we have made of our oncegreen earth.This canal, too slim to show in the smoky visage. I am witness: still you flow, tilt headlongover stone, permit an arced trestle to carryhurried walkers overhead. Rabbits run for coverin your lean grasses as a spaniel sniffs the path, floppy ears fuzzy as thistle down, swaying like cattails beyond the brink. How we need to save this stream! Not all farmers can turn their grass to fronds of lavender. Cyclists need rest for pedaled miles. Children must learn to connect bee and flower, fruit and bowl. An old man raises his cane to the pulsing stream, offers a final blessing. A honeyed butterfly flits at water’s edge, California poppy tantalizing. So much depends on a red flower, roots grateful for damp earth, lips drinking the skies, waving its small bright head like a warning flag, the day’s losses sighing. Hear the faint rumble of wordsbecoming archaic – courage, old growth, cycle, season, ample, bloom. Jagged new words jut across the path like exposed roots: coronavirus, solar panel, drone, driverless truck, unprecedented. CCaarrooll BBaarrrreetttt

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Extreme Heat WarningAn abecedarian ghazalAll over this country we burn,beg to address and redress our burns.Charred flakes leave our skin likedander, ash in the air after a prescribed burn,executed, controlled, set from both ends soflames can meet in the middle to burn.Give up your guns, one sidehears after an AR15 spits 21 burns.Inflation is Russia’s fault, the other sidejustifies as our stocks and bonds burn:kindling for a recession. Treason has becomelavish entertainment, the kind we used to burnmen and women for but instead now televise,nodding along with comebacks and cool burnson TikTok remixes the way some did with Amber Heard’spoop takes, turning discontent into memes that burn,quadruplicating every millisecond, our corneas.Raked by sizzling sun, even the land burns,summer ablaze not with flowers but fires.Too friable to walk on, the pavement burnsunder our dogs’ paws, crumbles around our shoes. Thisviolence of asphalt an assault. To compensate, we burnweed and pop pills, stay indoors, play too muchXbox where in the games our avatars are a sapphirine burn.Yet always we come back to life, unlike in the war whereZelensky’s Ukrainians fight with only resolve left to burn. JJeenn KKaarreettnniicckk

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to this fresh hell(Kyiv, Ukraine, 2022)for Vitaliy, Elina, Christina & Lexto this fresh hell we now wake daily in a house of our own making as it draws us back into the past — a pastleft like our decaying leather luggagein a dingy, crowded railway station,one suitcase strap snapped and replacedby a rope already fraying like our nerves because it stuffed with explosives —because we cannot stop its flash of fire — cannotreach now to hold the Persiancat of a girl from Odessa as sheblows her nose and waits to escapenot even the cat’s soft greeneyes can calm us — but why?why should we be calm?the world’s small corner in flames,smoke only begins tocoat in pitch our one last hope —the tracks of the coming train curled uplike tusks: this the mastodon we’llleave for unburying by anothergeneration  one we assumed must be protected from the terrorour parents actually thought they doused TTeerrrryy DDaawwssoonn

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We’re All Too Busy to See the World BurningI’ll just put the pot on to boil while I wash the dishes, precariously stacked porcelain and glass caked with crumbs and dry ketchup dinner detritus circling the drain the grating of the garbage disposal as I erase the evidence of past hunger. Before the water boils I will toss the lettuce slick with brown slime and the carrots coated in thin hairlike roots gone gray and wrinkled in their old age and the week old ground turkey which plops into the garbage and sinks out of sight. The pot begins to bubble but I run to grab a load of laundry corralling socks with the basket balanced on my hip. Clothes move from washer to dryer back to basket before I head upstairs. The boy in the living room needs help with long division—dividends and divisors and remainders of decades old math lessons dredged up while we solve the first problem. The smoke detector screeches but I don’t have time to wave a towel beneath it as I run the clean clothes to my room. When the fire trucks arrive I’m surprised to find the boy has fled to the parking lot with his math problems, smoke wandering through the open door the kitchen already burning. GGaabbbbyy GGiilllliiaamm

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Reach OutI see the pictures on TV,smell smoke sent over the mountains,see the sky muted by a gray scrim.Something from the mind of reasonhas been sent from the old godsto remind the earth who controls what.There is little that tames the conflagrations—the waters weep ash, carry charred bones of what once lived there.A message ignored scrawled on a wall of cloudswritten by lightening and Santa Ana winds saysdust unto dust, the inevitable dirge for our Mother.Tall specters of bodies riseas trees are engulfed in sacred orangeand golems walk out of the flames.The remnants are screaming denials—blame measured in decibelsdoesn’t make it right..Their eyes rheumy and old blindfoldeddampened in salt lakes to ease the crust of denial Bony fingers point in four directions –as the mountains burn and life crawls to escape searing torments.With providence the fires will bend their stiff necks, allow them to understandthe vision of what comes after themand mottled, veiny hands will claspthose coursing with life to realize a future filled with science and sanity. CChhaarrlleennee SStteeggmmaann MMoosskkaall

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you must be fuckin kidding me[and] im just totally full of shitMake do with this or else.– Grant Bell, The Cows, The Parents, The Kids, and 5Ghow cow do you cope so eloquently ive joinedthe beef program and oh how i feed corn and cornto my religion then put it in a small box this boxbecomes a cage that becomes a bridge to lol ymbfkmim sorry but theres no path forward that smells pretty andlooks nice the sun will hate us more than ever the lizard underthe rock will mock us the moon will forget us back the waywe came must be the only viable avenue that path pavedwith sunset vistas with stars haha i know that you knowthat ijtfos lol sometimes in my despair i aspireto live like an epigraph and im sadly fine with sitting herewatching the smoke billow as long as theres internet and acand i think its definitely worth saying againhow cow RRyyaann SSccaarriiaannoo

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Brisas de Huelva“Flamenco is a way to express yourself that must lighten up your life greatly. But if you express it and no one is at your beat, it is as if you never did a thing."— El Niño MiguelWhen El Niño Miguel left for his el camino to the invisibleto whom he talked, his sunken cheeks made chewing movements out of habit. He mixed his music awards from Madrid television with cans in the pantry he’d forget to open, roamed to the port of rusting boats and weeds. Startled by seagulls, he ascended the market street to taste olives and cured ham. He sleepwalked to cafes where gentlemen in Zegna suits and afternoon drunks nibbled on tapa. In a rumpled jacket, he tuned his guitar missing a string or two to play pawnshopped love, as the wind browsed pale walls and faces at the patio, mocked the impossibility of telling one’s story to those who didn’t take the same pilgrimage.He played, imagining a woman with charcoal eyes, oddly innocent like of that girl from a Velasquez sketch. What was her name? Mariam? Drop of the sea where music emerged, nude in a scallop shell? The wind browsed her hair like breezes of Huelva. His fingers – bronzed, with untrimmed nails—were also the wind. This world is going mad anyway. Why not play for hours in the Sun to its madness till the green haze veils the kitchen opening? Why not play fandangowith precise tension in the remaining strings? EElliinnaa PPeettrroovvaa

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A Torn FragmentLately you write of weather, a storm you worry hitting the Midwest now whereI see outside my tall windows fronting the lake snowwind slamming across Mendota—a whiteout quotidian. I say to you the freeze seems endless here far fromour island home. Ripped from the rock, you say, the fair winds, heat of the sun, the open ocean—but live in the present, you say,“launch on every wave”—channeling Thoreauwho you intimately call Henry as if, time undone, you might have an arm slung over his shoulder in tender communion:“we are each like one of the laciniae of a lichen, a torn fragment, but not the less cheerfully we expand in a moist day and assume unexpected colors. We want no completeness but intensity—” Laciniae, I think, a filament that reaches out to hold fast. The lure of your words, your images: the candleflame lichen, the fringe lichen, symbiotic organisms withcilia like eyelashes for the rain and the wild air as we, enthralled, saw it years ago clinging to Ohia branches in Waikamoi, the forest realm of the gods. Young thenand taken by the drum beat of blood pounding through our arteries, the fever of the night, every night going deeper—a lavish magnetic storm of dark magentaaround us, a streaming blowtorch of violetgold— an aurora night. The mystics would saythese are the fires of the dead flaring gorgeously across the dark heavens— as if falling to engulf our radiant bodies and blessing us. This is the alchemy of the gods that changes us forever. Then the stillness, the absolute absence. Later, we understand the intoxicated heart has no prerogative at all, so that we forgo completion for the song, the same sacred one all those before us were enraptured by and not unlike the golden rain of light, the momentary brilliance of Theresa of Avila who when so powerfully struck said of the wound,so surpassing was the sweetness of painthat she could not wish to be rid of it—and so it seems she transcended the daily human business of defeat, or so we’d like to think. AAddeellee NNee JJaammee

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Chod“This meditation is purposely performed in frightening places, such as cemeteries and charnel grounds… “Alejandro ChaoulThe hairdresser shaved off my hair. I saw the way she looked at me, but said nothing. Better to rise into lossat once. Better to burn without flinching.In Chod, a Tibetan practice,the monks chant in a charnel ground,offering their bodies as a banquetLike other patients, I loosed the prayer flags, I prostrated myself at the desk of the Physician, I journeyed weekly to the shrine of loss, where nurses, out of kindness, stabbed hard to draw blood.for the assembled spirits, watching themselves dismemberedand cooked. They continue to chantWe had the bald heads of renunciates,we had the illfitting robes.We had been severed from the world. by a deity with a cleaver and play thigh bones like flutes, make skulls into cauldrons in which to cook flesh,During the infusions, I sometimes visualized bonesbeing purged into ash, as death slowly entered my body, killing marrow, epithelium, follicle, malignant cell.until all is transformedinto nectarinto music.After the IV and the skyburial, the clumsy vultures rise, and driftinto the eye of the invited sun,into the prodigal burning. PPrriisscciillllaa FFrraakkee

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MagentaThe storm pruned the crepe myrtlesalready overburdened, snapping their limbs, scattering shocking drifts of flaming blossoms making the road impassable.From her front porch our neighbor supervises unsmiling. She has appointments to keepand we are her obstacle. I can do the responsible thing, solemn and diligentwith saw, broom and wheelbarrow.But I laugh as I sweep up the last of it, wishing I could indulge the urge to play, to spin and toss arm loadsof watermeloncolored flowers still brilliant and soft, to glory in this unexpected gift of magenta fire.The road cleared for her, she stares straight ahead, ignoring my wave, unable to bear my smile, misconstrued.She speeds away, petals swirling, ablaze. KK.. LL.. JJoohhnnssttoonn

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On One Night in JuneWhile the radio plays a symphony, the young brown dog pounces onto thered couch, a rolled white rubber newspaper in her mouth. With her headshe pushes under my arm. In her language, which I cannot speak butunderstand, she says Throw this, I will chase it and, here’s the good part, we will do it again. And again. Then, surprise, one more time again. The black dog, whose eyes no longer see, listens from the blue chair; my dearest old friend who now only dreams of jumping. Her tail wags as the newspaper squeaks. My daughter laughs in the kitchen filled withdirty dishes as a boy tells her just what she wants to hear. I rememberwhen who was on the other end of the phone could change the world. The puppy lifts one paw. I do my part, hurl “The Doggy News.”And then, at the exact moment the puppy flies in pursuit, the music soars to a crescendo as my girl’s laughter peals higher, and the blind dog barks to be heard. Who can know how my heart breaks at this moment.I simply want to know is this what life is for?For no one will know when I am gone, and the old dog long before me, and the puppy as well. I can do the math.No one will know how, at this moment of my life, my heart soars. I want to live another day in the hope of the same.I write this down, so that this hour, the dogs, andthe daughter, have been recorded and may have mattered. PPaattrriicciiaa MMccMMaahhoonn

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AAnntthhoonnyy SSuuttttoonn,, PPooeettrryy JJuuddggee“I wanted to finish the conversation,” Anthony Sutton begins—and we lean in to listen. Because it’s wonderfully weird here. I mean, how often do you find “C’mon and Show Me Something Newer than even Dante” listed three times in the Table of Contents, and each uniquely each? (And then the gracious, grateful owningup later, the titletimes threeis from Bernadette Mayer’s poem “Sonnet.”) Plus in this mix: “A Small God Carrying Endless Light.” Amen. Which is to say: speaking of prayer, these poems godlessly slip and keep crossing a river to figure out, to understand. So this remarkable dreamworthy first book of poems rolls on, offering an imaginative real world that upends, sings, surprises and also somehow delights and unravels. Somehow because is there a way to explain the sweet overwrought “lightning bugs whisper electricity in the trees” or “someone else hands around / a boxwine from Kroger” patched up in a book with Icarus famously falling to water (“I actually don’t like Auden” blurted out pages hence) until it’s the lost boy—or maybe Suttonsaying “Words are not a sea. / They’re a river. / They have direction.” I’d agree with this poet that “Keats concurred.” Keats, whose ghost is everywhere here.—Marianne Boruch“Anthony Sutton’s debut book is haunted by the old, existential question no one has yet been able to answer satisfactorily: Who or what am I? Rimbaud proclaimed, Je est un autre or I is another. Sutton updates Rimbaud with wry postmodern panache. In one poem, his I is a “Mixed White/Filipino Poet” who “Interrogates the Basic Notion of ‘Passing’ and then Accepts Being Read as a Latinx Woman.” In others, he is the zombie who has lost his identity after being “roofied.” He is also the person who knows “if I had a god to pray to // it would be the light fixture / in the jail cell I spent most / of a day in.” All I know is that I want to keep reading and rereading these lovely, strange, wise, and wisecracking selves that Sutton invents for himself in Particles of a Stranger Light. This virtuoso book passes like a Category 5 hurricane through our consciousness and, if you let it, will rearrange who you are.”—Donald Platt, author (most recently) of SwansdownParticles of a Stranger Light by Anthony SuttonA Lambda Most Anticipated LGBTQIA+ BookSmall Press Distribution RecommendationPurchase the book: https://tinyurl.com/anthonysuttonSutton'sDebut CollectionRead the Reviews:

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DD EE ZZuuccccoonnee,, PPrroossee JJuuddggeeZuccone'sDebutCollectionVanishes celebrates a wandering carnival of mystery and selfdeception. An artworld of counterfeit magic where vanishes remain like a threedollar bill. Truth is dealt out or handed down in card tricks and in a fictional noir world in which performers eat fire, catch bullets, and engage in a mythos of dancing, gambling, and wearing paintedon smiles. Zuccone’s panoply of performers are halfcostumed, hustlers in transit, a battered tiltawhirl next to the House of Mirrors, with small time gangsters, insomniacs, and cabaret performers who exist in a world of desperate wonders both entertaining and truthfully illusive. Vanishes isn’t about exposing how but rather sharing those instants of attraction and pleasure people feel when being fooled. Here is a fascinating volume of poems that explore a nearly deserted midway of “as if”—the provocative space in between performance and belief."D E Zuccone’s debut as an agile narrative poet takes place in “a tented world,” a magician’s arena of rabbits conjured from hats, voluble ventriloquist dummies, and “devils with the fingertips of Mephistopheles.” Though there’s a whiff of a bygone era in the sleight of hand realms the poet conveys with unfailing humor and a meticulous attention to detail, this is no exercise in mere nostalgia (“I grew up in invisibility. Words were full/of leaves only frantic motion”). Zuccone’s unerring descriptions (“he finds his Virgil staying in the PennOhio Motel”) have an almost Xray beauty that suggests the keen, Depression era notations of an Edward Hopper painting. “Pleasure’s such a surprise we have to kiss it goodbye/before it arrives,” the speaker of “The 6s and 9s” laments. Vanishes is a focused, captivating, and delightfully distinctive first book."—Cyrus Cassells, More Than Watchmen at DaybreakPublished by 3: A Taos PressPurchase the book:https://www.dezuccone.com/book

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CCaarrrriiee KKoorrnnaacckkii,, GGuueesstt EEddiittoorrCollapseSomething shatters basic black.Feel thefragments fly—ruby and electric blue.Hide behind the sky.Darkest Nova,did you know? I fly as fire flies,sealed insideyour aphotic soul.Of Weight and FlightIn a small square of sand, surrounded by an old chainlinked fence, gates open, and far from the rush of waves; layers of her coalesce with handfuls of discarded romance novels, split open and exposed. Faded brown words pose on paper like dry parchment; pages arch up and out like wings,pulsing in poundedcopper light and the tumult of a woman’s narratives, where she, the heroine, in the middle of her obsession, could not see the cliches.This woman standing in sand at dusk, knows parts of her stories should never have been written. But she cannot surrender them. So, touching each page, she will fold its pinions into her earthuntil she flies.

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Makers' BiosAnthony Sutton resides on former Akokisas, Atakapa, Karankawa, and Sana land (currently named Houston, TX), as an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor fellow at the University of Houston’s Creative Writing and Literature PhD program and teaches in the community for Grackle and Grackle. The author of the poetry collection Particles of a Stranger Light (Veliz Books, 2023), Anthony’s poetry has appeared in Grist, guesthouse, Gulf Coast, The Journal, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, Oversound, Quarter After Eight, Southern Indiana Review, Zone 3, the anthology In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy, and elsewhere.D. E. Zuccone has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His poetry has been published in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Water Stone, International Review of Poetry, Southern Indiana Review, Schuylkill Review, Hurricane Review, Big River, Apalachee Review, Deep Water Literary Review, and South Florida Poetry Review, among others. His work has appeared in anthologies from Round Top, Taos Artists, Words& Art, Mutabulis Press, and Big Poetry Review. Mr. Zuccone curated the online poetry discussion Ex Libris and was on the Board of Directors for Houston’s Public Poetry. He has been a featured reader in Houston, Brooklyn, Taos, Los Angeles, and a frequent reader at Archway Gallery and Words & Art at Rice University and at the Menil Collection.Mary Wemple is an artist and poet. She holds degrees in English and Studio Art from the University of Houston and an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. Her art work has been shown in Houston at the Inman Gallery, DiverseWorks, the Blaffer Art Museum, Lawndale Art Center and Archway Gallery. Her work has also been shown all over Texas and nationally. She has won Best in Show for Envision Arts virtual gallery, an international contest, and Best in Show for Collage and Mixed Media for the 1st Annual East Lubbock Art House Competition.Kelly Ann Ellis holds an MA in English Literature from the University of Houston, where she currently teaches. A member of the critique group Poets in the Loop, she is the cofounder of hotpoet and the managing editor of Equinox. Her poetry, which has appeared in numerous publications, was featured in the REELpoetry festival for three years running 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 in 2020 for a Pushcart prize, and Lamar University Literary Press is publishing her upcoming collection, The Hungry Ghost Diner. 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/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.Vanessa ZimmerPowell has an MA in Communications Sciences and Disorders, a BS in Communication Sciences and Disorders, and a BA in English Literature. She is a speechlanguage pathologist, photographer, filmmaker, and poet. 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 shown at ReelPoetry and Gulf Coast Film Festivals. She was a 2023 finalist for her onewoman production of Dislocation at the 2023 ReelPoetry festival. Her chapbook, Woman Looks into an Eye is published by Dancing Girl Press.