Issue 43
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Nectar
art by Stephen Ground
by Catherine Buck
We met at the place where water plunged over ground, where everyone met in song and story and so it seemed a fitting place for a rendezvous of our own.
You found me seated on the boulder. When the rains came hardest they’d coat the surface slick, so I always checked the skies to confirm I was in no danger. That day, the rock was dry and the sun directly overhead. My feet waited flat on the stone and I could feel the beginnings of a burn.
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Arts and Crafts
art by Virgil Suárez
by Steven Dampf
I forage for leaves and fallen bark in the park. Looks like an old face. I’ll make a sculpture, and become acquainted with it, the shedded skin from the still-breathing cherry blossoms. I’ll lay the pink flowers over a plate of paste and dry it into paper for my poetry, and melt whatever’s left into soy wax for a candle. Light it during my moments that turn out as defining moments, and one day associate the aroma with this stage in my young life.
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My Father, Still
by JV Dias
art by Virgil Suárez
January 8, 2023[1]
I – 09:15 AM – WAKE UP!
My father enters the room in a disordered manner. The door swings open with excessive force, slams against the wall, then recoils a few inches, trembling before surrendering to the weight of its own wood. The impact tears me entirely out of sleep. I do not wake gradually, but all at once, my body rigid and my heart racing from the shock. For a few seconds,
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Anthems in Prose
art by Virgil Suárez
by Forrest Rapier
Forrest Rapier has poetry and prose forthcoming in 2River and Midway Journal. His debut collection, As the Den Burns, was published by Texas Review Press in 2022. Recently, he received the Dean’s Award for Doctoral Excellence at Florida State University and he is a finalist for the 2026 Apogee Poetry Chapbook Award.
Instagram: @forrest.rapier
Virgil Suárez was born in Havana,
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After the Rabbits
art by Virgil Suárez
by Lex Williams Page
A year passed before I finally noticed
the rabbits missing from the yard.After spring came & went & with it the grass
& the mowers & my duty to this earth—the question of the garden,
whether I would tend to it this year—& last summer’s strawberries nestled in beds
of cocoa mulch, budding again & needing new nets,all uneaten, when April arrived,
& even in June. -
Redhead
art by Reena Choudhary
by Matthew Partney
My mother was abducted from the Free and Sovereign State of Tamaulipas in Northeast Mexico in 1964. She was one of three. Her older sister was abducted with her, but did not survive the journey north. The bounty placed on them allowed for an acceptable level of attrition.
My mother’s sister was just the cost of doing business. She never saw her younger brother again.
My mother told me the only thing she brought with her was her name.
