art by Denver Boxleitner 

by Lance Le Grys

fishing with worms
from the bank of the river
I saw the head of Orpheus come bobbing along from upstream
eyeless and swollen
I called to it

is it true that you saw your Euridyce
before she melted to fog

the swift current carried it past
knocking against the bank and the rocks in the riverbed
dropping my pole I ran alongside keeping pace with the head
turning up like a barrel it spoke

it is a lie
my beloved turned to no mist fools pass on such stories garbled and senseless

falling into a pool the head paused as it turned in an eddy

when I turned to see if she followed
it was not she but the earth
that melted away
the rocks dribbled like ice in the sun
when I reached
my arms flapped like flat weeds
against stones in the bed of a river
it was I who was mist and unconscious

we were now approaching the white rapids

what then I cried the river outpacing me quickly before you are lost

but the head turned over again
and
face down in the water
was sucked into the foam of the rocks

Lance Le Grys is the author of the poetry collection Views from an Outbuilding (Clare Songbirds Publishing House,

painting courtesy of the MET Museum Archives

by Leah Skay

something in the air calls for soft peaches

and slow forgiveness.

the rain catches us smitten and selfish with cherries,

misting us to spare the downpour of yesterday.

I hold up two fingers and dare you

to spit the pits of sweet fruit through the goalpost

to challenge your aim, where you’re going. I

hope you miss and hit me so we’re square.

strawberry seeds fly with flesh shrapnel,

art by Jacelyn Yap

by Kirsten Chen

When I came here
            I said I wouldn’t bring death with me
                         but it snuck into my suitcase

and now it’s all over my clothes.
            Death wears me like a period stain.
                        Death wears me defiant

and obvious as a long night the next day.
            There’s a well beneath my eyes.
                          There’s a motorbike in my brain.

It’s distant and spinning
            and at night I am the emptiness
                        its highway craves.

art by Jacelyn Yap

by James Croal Jackson

Industry

So much industry in your mouth– fake a gasp
as you unzip your pants. Another binge.

At your worst, you are greed
and restless enough

for the pizza to come, for the beer
you gulp & burp from plastic cup,

a heap of chicken wings to devour
without tasting a thing,

squeezing a flood of ranch out of plastic
to smear on your lips like ChapStick

every day but it is only brunch
on Sunday

25th

I wore a gray-black striped shirt.

art by Amari Becker

by Susan Wheatley

No feelings attach to this sentence.
That's a wonder, not easy in this
medium where lines break and fall,
as when the ropes of early English
coal miners broke in the shafts.

The miners dreaded the goblins
on the tunnel walls—but those were
only fossils, something they didn't know
then. They only had candlelight.

The wonder is that they kept
going down. O dark, dark, dark.
They all go into the dark,

"Rooftops, Brooklyn" Fidelia Bridges, 1867

by Debasish Mishra

The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For reach one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.
–Samuel Beckett

Imagine we’re                 all clinging to                 one breast

one mouth                       must withdraw              for the other 

and                                    the other                         for another

so that                              the milk                           is shared

and also                           the lactating                   mother

the mouths                     deprived of                      milk

drink the tears               till another turn             of the gyre

we’re siblings                 for more                          than one reason

our cravings for             love and carvings          on skin

architecture                    of the same                     school

and our knowledge       of universal                    truths

are derived                     from the same               hearth

of history                        and habit                        our methods

of killing                         a mosquito                     and of making

love                                 are tangents                   of a fixed

diameter                        our despair                     is tinted

like tears                        and our hopes               are milk-white

the gloss                        of an undying                flashlight

Debasish Mishra,