Swallowing the Dark

In Hindi, the phrase for meteor
means “broken star.” I like to think
a star might break off

from the jaws of night
like a loose tooth to rush toward
our open mouths.

Tonight, under the constellation of Krittika,
I tell my boys a tale
have them know dark witches

can be as magnanimous
as a summer sky, deeper
enchantments than a pallid

tooth fairy await them.
I have pretended so hard, so long
to be ordinary, there came a time

I started to believe it.
Novice hunters, we target
constellations in the crosshairs

of our phones, guzzle broken
stars, let them blaze
in our pulsing throats.

The Skin Finds Its Way Home

For years, my mother was the map of the world.
Now I ask my body where it wants to go, where
                                                it will feel safe.

As soon as I walked into this house I knew it would be mine.

Because my skin remembered the future—
how my children would run up and down
the stairs, their finger stains
on the turmeric-yellow walls.

I make mango smoothies and place
a welcome mat at the door.
The stop sign at the corner, an octagonal
heart, beats a small panic every time I leave.

Back at home my skin relaxes
its hairs            lowers its fine blades
in the way of all fearful things returning
to their lair.

And Just When You Think You’ve Attained the Heart

of the labyrinth it doubles back
If there is a place to walk toward
this might be it:
what coils and uncoils like a surprising
octopus in a grove of silver birches swaying
hello. Sound of water
over river stones in memoriam
to lost babies. Once, hidden like a bird
I watched a woman walk, balanced
on the narrow outlines: who was she
when she teetered on the edges?
Arms airplaned—
              for balance?     for        ?         
              for joy?

Woman

on the reversal of Roe v. Wade

Say fallen,
and I give you the arch
of a spine, make a bridge between
animal and anointed.

Say ointment, for I have doctored
myself, scraped my wounds—
you laid them out
like contrails for the world to see.

Say control,
and I’ll stretch.
In my enduring will nest
the buds of new beings.

Say body,
I sing my throat raw,
breath as holy as
the first blow of spring.

Say spring,
and I leap like
a spark in charged air
like a hiss

like a flame     like refusal

Agni: An Invocation

Under the auspices of fox and feather, once again
I knelt at the trinity—
water, wood and wing. The vessel wishing
for the stove, for what needs to be simmered,
fanned through ancient attention, blown
breath through quiet coal. Cold marrow
astonished to flushed heat, the autumnal body
freshly molten, molts into                     : what am I now?
            where can I go?
Draw me a map, I beseech my kindling tinder heart

“Swallowing the Dark,” “The Skin Finds Its Way Home,” and “And Just When You Think You’ve Attained the Heart” appear in Yamini Pathak’s collection Her Mouth a Palace of Lamps (Milk & Cake Press, 2025).

*

Yamini Pathak is the author of poetry collection Her Mouth a Palace of Lamps (Milk & Cake Press, 2025) and chapbooks Atlas of Lost Places (Milk & Cake Press, 2020) and Breath Fire Water Song (Ghost City Press, 2021). She is a member of the 2025 Poets & Writers’ Get the Word Out Poetry Cohort and serves as the editor of Inch with Bull City Press. A recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, her work has been supported by Vermont Studio Center, Tin House, Kenyon Review Writers Workshops, and VONA. She has been nominated for Best New Poets and has been a finalist for Frontier Poetry’s Global Poetry Prize (South Asia). Yamini holds an MFA in poetry from Antioch University, LA, and her poems appear in West Branch, Poetry Northwest, Tupelo Quarterly, among other journals.

gods & kings

the men in my bloodline
walked like storms—
not toward peace
but through it,
like it was something
to be conquered.

i was raised
on gospel & grief,
on silence served
with sunday wine,

where the only prayers answered
were the ones we learned
not to ask.

they called themselves kings
but ruled nothing
but the dinner table,
stacked with unmet apologies
& full plates of rage.

i learned early:
a crown ain’t nothing
but a cage
if it don’t fit your head.
& god?

god was the whisper
between beatings,
the breath i held
beneath my tongue
when i wanted
to scream.

what kind of god
watches his sons
break their own hands
just to be worthy
of touch?

what kind of king
never teaches his heir
how to cry?

i’ve been unlearning
the myths since—

laying down
every armor
passed to me
like inheritance,

rewriting scripture
with softness,
with salt.

i ain’t looking
to reign.

i’m looking
to rest.

i don’t want to be
a god or a king.

just a man
who can look in the mirror
& call himself
free.

My Grandmother as Prayer Warrior

for the woman who knelt so we could stand

She never raised her voice—
not once.
But the house would tremble
when she prayed.

No need for pulpit or praise,
she sanctified the living room rug,
made altars out of ashtrays,
turned grief into gospel
with nothing but breath
& a Bible missing its back cover.

When the world gave us nothing
but “no,”
she’d murmur our names
into her cracked palms
like they were seeds
& whisper:
You gon’ bloom anyway.

This is the woman
who baptized me
in sweet tea & second chances,
sang Precious Lord
while shelling peas,
& taught me
that prayer don’t need pretty—
just purpose.

She prayed like fire:
not to burn the wicked,
but to light the way for the lost.

My grandmother didn’t fear no devil—
she’d already buried too many
to be scared of ghosts.

I watched her lay hands
on my mother’s grief,
rub the sorrow from her scalp
like it was dandruff,
like deliverance could come
through repetition.

She believed in a God
who listened
especially when the angels didn’t.
Believed in a love
that outlasted funerals,
believed in me
when I was nothing
but shaking bones
& poems too scared to be called holy.

& when I write now—
when I teach,
when I fold grief into metaphors,
when I let my voice quiver
but not disappear—
I know it’s because
her prayers
are still ringing through me.

I am the answered prayer
she never got to see bloom.

Still, I rise.
Still, I speak.
Still, I carry her name
like scripture beneath my tongue.

Because my grandmother
was a prayer warrior.
& I?

I am the war.

1000 Paper Cranes

He holds them
in his filthy, dirt-covered hands—
delicate wings smudged
with the proof of his undoing,
creases heavy with everything
he never said out loud.
I watch him,
this boy I once bled for,
folding promises into birds
that were never meant to fly.
They say if you fold a thousand,
your wish comes true—
but he never made it past ninety-seven
before calling it love.
The truth is:
no matter what we hold—
paper birds, broken hearts,
a past we pretend doesn’t still breathe between us—
we will never be perfect for each other.
Not in the way the poems promised.
Not in the way our hands once trembled
against each other’s skin
like we were trying to rewrite God.
We were too much ache
& not enough sanctuary.
Too many prayers
folded into silence.
Too many nights
I spent convincing myself
that pain was just
another word for staying.
So I let go—
not because I stopped loving him,
but because I finally loved myself
enough to stop confusing
his chaos for destiny.
& still—
some part of me
wants to believe
that somewhere,
those cranes
are flying.

*

Dr. Darius Phelps (he/him) is the author of My God’s Been Silent (Writ Large Press, 2026) and The Holy Ghost Lives In Her Laugh (Kith Books, 2026). A poet before anything else, his work bears witness to grief, faith, and the act of becoming—offering language as a form of liberation and light. Through the lens of poetic inquiry, Dr. Phelps explores how verse can function as pedagogy, healing and survival. Rooted in Black literary traditions and personal testimony, his poems navigate silence, ancestry, and resilience, creating sanctuaries for voices too often unheard. His work has been featured by Diode, Een Magazine, School Library Journal, and many more across platforms that champion the power of story to honor every body, every history, and every voice.

MUCH AS I WANTED IT

It was of its time. It was out of time.
Like the holdover dirt road, oiled twice a year.
I told myself I was better for it.
I talk to myself a lot.

There are problems I don’t have.
Given a choice of all of them, you’d choose yours.
In a heartbeat, my father always said.
A theory like that gets tested.

But about big things, he was seldom wrong.
In the desert, I think of him.
And of Jesus, alone, naturally.
It’s not such a big deal, whatever it is.

I used to imagine the palm of God’s hand.
My sisters and I made-believe a lot.
Stupid talk fills adult days.
A little girlhood feeling keeps me company.

You don’t have what you don’t need.
I went there and back. There and back.
I looked over my shoulder.
Miles and miles: nothing to see.

RADIANT

Awake for something I can’t name.
Is someone thinking of me?

Wishes gather round.
The full skirt of the rose;

the sound of the word locket;
stopping talking.

The habitual grows dull.
Childishness will get you nowhere.

I look around in the dark.
I would like a soft place to land.

KEY IDEAS

So little holds my interest. What happened yesterday?

A cardinal in the pussy willow at dusk.
Some rain, which came at last.

Perhaps I’m a contemplative, since childhood.

Other people have ambitions.
An array: little lights strung in a tree…

Love used to make sense to me. A home.

June again. I am climbing a hill. Then a staircase.
Some towns are built this way.

*

Mary Ann Samyn is the author of seven collections of poetry, including The Return from Calvary and Air, Light, Dust, Shadow, Distance. She teaches in the MFA program at West Virginia University, writes about all things Cake & Poetry on Substack, and lives in WV and in her home state of Michigan. 

Author’s Note

The following poems are an excerpt from Shannon Vare Christine’s verse novella, These Walls, forthcoming March 13th. The summary below gives context to the book, as you read the poems that follow. See the author’s bio for more information about how you can get a copy of These Walls.

Philadelphia, 1985: shuttered factories, stubborn neighborhoods, where racial tensions, economic decline, and fierce local pride coexisted with block-by-block resilience and the daily insistence on survival.

Philadelphia, 2020: hushed, anxious city-streets half-empty under lockdown, grief and fear moving through house walls even as neighbors found quict, improvised ways to care for one another amid uncertainty.

The Baldwins lived here in 1985 and the McClarens took up residence in 2020. Their experiences were separate yet similar as they inhabited the same Philadelphia home, worlds apart. These Walls is a verse novella in which the house serves as a quiet witness telling the story of these two families. As the poems move between timelines, striking parallels emerge in how families respond to crises, care for one another, and absorb public history into their private lives. Intimate and spare, TheseWalls explores how place holds memory, revealing how different generations endure remarkably similar struggles—-and how history lingers within the walls we call home.

Philadelphia, PA, 2020

1954: Brick by brick, I rose.
            Summer of integration plans, unrest.
Rock and roll beat down.
            Humid waves rose from us
from the black asphalt streets
            warn the city the days ahead
would slowly simmer      slow boil       rolling boil
            roiling                        churning       turbid                        turmoil
until tensions spilled onto the streets.
My shingle-roofed covered porch, columned fortress
false protections
I bore witness                      protests marches riots.
Now, I am powerless.
My wood and bricks defend contend maintain, but
to the families living within
I am home.
My heart-soul beats deep
            within my foundation core.
Late at night, stand stick still at my side.
            Creaks crack my spine-walls
                        squinchy steps shudder stretch
                                    whisper-whys-sighs slip out

as I settle                                                      down
                                    to sleep.
Expansion-contraction-communication,
each family’s language, their dialect.
 
I have had many makeovers in my day
            painting  restyling  additions  subtractions.

The Montgomerys moved out
made room for the Baldwins.
After the Baldwins
along came Susie Floyd.
Then family, family, family                    fast forward
years-decades———                                 now.
Brings us to the McClarens, their visions
            my fixer upper status charmed their
            DIY, TLC hearts.
But me? I don’t get a say.
I’m growing weary of these renovations.
Break through the kitchen wall,
            strip away the mauve carpeting,
lay bare the soft planks of pine flooring,
            tear out the mint green jadeite sinks, 
reveal original brick, buried under creamy stucco.
Mid-century modern farmhouse is my new name.
            On and on and on and on and on and——- 
No space sacred.
No surface untouched.
Am I even structurally sound?
It’s unsettling not to have a voice, a choice,
            always the mercy of another’s will.
But in the end:
No one can ever erase my soul,
            the layered years stored within,
                        my frame (history), nestled (history),
                                    in between (history) the
                                                attic (history) beams,
                                                            buried underground.
This is where I hold
two families worth of secrets———————————

                                                                                    until now.

That One Time in the Baldwin Family TV Room, 1985

Room by room:
contents are emptied        corralled       covered.
Kate redecorates                redesigns      debates 
ditsy florals   vs.   pastels.   vs.   plaids.   vs.   leather. 
Kate has a singular mission.
Not everyone will be converted.
 
The oldest of five prays daily, nightly
this room will be spared.
These scratchy, synthetic, woolen nubs,
this duct-tape-patched olive green.
On this hallowed couch, Jessie cut
her musical molars, sunk her teeth into
video-upon-video-upon-world-premiere-video.
Robotic chants , tinny sirens,
holding teens transfixed:
                                                I want my M-T-V.
Blessed be Madonna, The Bangles, Boy George,
Bruce the Boss, Beastie Boys.
Blessed be their blared bass tracks,
background gospel truths,
inner monologues of Jessie’s days and nights.
My four walls shook:
music, dancing: could not contain Jessie.
 
Kate studies her paint swatch and carpet sample bound Bibles, coordinating colors,
tries to choose wisely:
prays this will                                 be the solution
that brings the                                family together
more often                                       once again.
This sacred space               had a visiting preacher
from time to time.              Jessie’s beloved older cousin     always draws me in                      for some drama.           Tiffany barks orders                                  as soon as she                      comes down the stairs:                  Stand there, yep,       little to the left, ok, hold it,              h-o-l-d-i-t.      Don’t move.
 
Jessie is a proud, loyal disciple of Tiffany:
nods her obedient Orphan Annie curls, waits.
Tiffany dangles her Casio keyboard
in the crook of one arm, wields her copy
of Purple Rain in the other.
A door-to-door preacher bringing along
the good news of pop culture,
ready to convert her cousin with one flick
of her jelly-braceleted, neon-plastic
watch covered arms, outstretched in reverence
to the deities of the ‘80s who appear:
shadowy specters, on the vacuum-tubed TV screen.
I silently wait for the miracle
to be bestowed upon Jessie:
                                                Will today be the day?
Tiffany bows toward Jessie:
You can play one song
watch one music video if you…
 
I hold my breath, keep my walls still,
hoping Jessie doesn’t have to sell her soul.
 
Jessie agrees to the terms:
cleans Tiffany’s bedroom,
mops the kitchen,
takes out the trash, and
washes her laundry for the        next            full         week.
And one more thing…         Tiffany holds the power.
Jessie stands perfectly still.
Sweat droplets down her back,
muscles tense then shake,
threatens to move her hand,
holding the tinfoil rabbit ear antenna in tune.
 
Both cousins thought they had
the best seats in the house
to watch the televised Live Aid Concert.
Tiffany’s sermons were moving.
Jessie never wavered once.
Her initiation ceremony almost complete.
Jessie held on,
Tiffany played along, hoping to
turn this world around…put your troubles down…
a chant, a prayer, a creed:
welcoming Jessie into the Cousin Cult of 1985.
 
Kate watched them from the stairs:
knew this space didn’t need her salvation.

The McClaren Family TV Room, 2020

As I get ready to settle in for the night / the TV glow
beckons me / to check in / on them

one more time.

I watch over Lindsay and James / their silent
guardian house angel / ready to alert them / if anything is

out of place.

Before lockdown / quarantine / before the world /
put on pause / hold, please / I was alone

most times.

I didn’t worry / wasn’t nervous / never thought /
disaster could strike / close to home to harm

out of habit.

No travel plans / the lovebirds grounded / No
concerts / Broadway shows / roost ruminate.
For how long? / No one knows. / Lindsay sprawls on couch / stretches legs, limbs
/ redefines hours

out of mind.

James perches on his chair: / settles into: / front row: / tonight’s living room
concert: / relax retreat:

passing time.

Grainy live-streams: / Zoom-cast episodes /
well-worn TV shows / characters reunite /
raise funds:

ideas run out.

Stand-up acts. / Book talks / Movie premieres. / World shows up. / Pays a visit: /
to their nest:

serving time.

I peek at them again: / content for now. / Small
admission fee: / tunes / jokes / return to them:

ending silence.

Crowd out boredom. / The outside world / will spin once more / they’ll fly. / I’ll be here:

waiting.

waiting.

waiting.

*

Shannon Vare Christine is a poet, teacher, and critic living in Bucks County, PA. She is an alumnus of The Community of Writers and Tupelo Press 30/30 Project. Her poems are featured in various anthologies and publications, and her manuscript, Chrysanthemum, was a finalist for publication by The Word Works. Additionally, her poetry reviews and literary criticism were published or are forthcoming in Lily Poetry Review, The Lit Pub, Cider Press Review, Sage Cigarettes, Compulsive Reader, The Laurel Review, Vagabond City, Tupelo Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Harbor Review, and Uirtus.
 

Archived writing and a copy of These Walls:
www.shannonvarechristine.com
Instagram @smvarewrites
Substack: @shannonvarechristine

Small Act of Persistence

The sun hits the cloud. Splendor
of battered light. Not for me,

this airy battle, this crossfire
falling onto my porch.

What am I, this early hour,
a pulse against a wall, trying to name

the color of the wound that opens
and closes the sky.

Still, what unfolds comes
like an indifferent empire.

I stand at the rusted railing and
rehearse the art of loss until

every heartbeat is an omen. Then
the morning widens. The world

is mine and mine alone
in the way that a burned field

belongs to the only surviving tree.
In my mouth, the metal taste of dawn.

I stay in the gray hour.
The cruelty of having to look

at the stubborn reflex of waking,
the slow work of un-ghosting, a body

nailed to place, pierced
and preyed on, as the day arrives, ruined.

When the Heavenly Dog Swallowed the Sun

The gate to the other world opened. I hid in our thatch hut.
There were sounds: hymns, prayers, mumblings. Someone
rang a bell. Someone breathed syllables. There was always
someone. Mother didn’t like visiting relatives—especially the
dead ones. Still, she cooked rice topped with a thick piece
of pig-head meat, side-dished with complaint. After placing
bowls on the table, I was introduced to each of our dead. My
body—my young body—became a festival of names.

Looking for Shambhala

I need to believe in my walking. My lungs heave. A choked
morning. The land knotted in shade—then a forest of
rhododendrons: pink rumpling white. The golden tips of stupas.
Prayer flag winds. Beneath me, the river’s green recesses. The
brambles riot. I’m locked like a fish in two hands. If I could
understand every fallen leaf. If I could be naughty as rain. If I
could hear whatever a pinecone has to tell—a confession tastes
like thistle and I tear my throat open. Alone, I win by losing what
I hold dearest: my wound lying far beyond—

*

Aiden Heung is a recent immigrant to the United States, originally from a Tibetan autonomous town in China. A finalist in the Disquiet Literary International Contest, he is also the winner of the Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize and the Levis Prize in Poetry. His debut collection, All There Is to Lose, selected by Ilya Kaminsky, was published in March 2026 by Four Way Books. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Washington University.

waiting room poem

He was in town visiting for a long weekend.

I told him he didn’t need to come to the monthly doctor’s appointment with me;
waiting would be like the movies,
all of us singing to ourselves
and shaking our heads and feet.

He grabbed his book and said, I love to dance.

DEATH TEXT

– after Book of the Dead for the Chantress of Amun Nauny
            and the Pearl Jam cocktail at The Ball & Biscuit

at a lounge bar in Indianapolis
we rehash our recent breakups 

the past persons sent weighty texts
during the darkest part of departing

            a mother died, no one cares 
            a daughter died, no one cares 

I tell him about the MET Museum
about a scroll that details next steps

what to do when someone you love dies 
storying how to move on to the afterlife

            breathed relief into our potions 
listened            in         aspirational     awe 

he hands me a Bible to make use of
I peel out the pages to make more use of

*

Kristine Esser Slentz is a queer writer of Maltese descent, raised in the Chicagoland area. A cult escapee and GED holder, she is the author of EXHIBIT: an amended woman, depose (FlowerSong Press, 2021, 2024) and the forthcoming collection face-to-faces (ThirtyWest Publishing House, 2026). A TEDx participant and regular contributor to The Saturday Evening Post, her work has also appeared in TriQuarterly, Five Points, and elsewhere. KRISTINE is the co-founder, organizer, and host of Adverse Abstraction, a monthly experimental artist series in New York City’s East Village. She also produces and performs in Verse & Vision, a stage production currently in a micro-residency at NYC’s DADA, and that has just completed a second run at the IndyFringe Festival. Follow her art on Substack at Carnations & Car Crashes.

How Will I Know You

The morning before
the melt

a wren lands
on the porch

post closest
to the window

I look at You
through, the one

just under
the iron bell

oxidizing
its resentment

of winter
In two days

spring will be
here like a party

guest too
prompt to be

wanted but
we do want

her, we
cannot help

but want her
in her polkadots

and fever It is
the day before

all this goes
away I say

to myself
and the wren

says What do you
know It is all

already gone
Then

he goes

How Will I Know You

The frog song
trembles

up to the worm
blood moon Night

comes first
Then, the birds

*

Rebecca Gayle Howell is a poet, librettist, and literary translator. Among her awards are the United States Artists Fellowship, two fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, and the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry. Her next book is Erase Genesis, forthcoming this April from Project Poëtica/Bridwell Press.

Ocean Park #60

Suppose I were to step into a blue painting—a Diebenkorn, maybe, from his Ocean Park series. 

Suppose I were to bathe in its countless layers, to allow myself to sink to the bottom. Suppose I were to discover that though blue holes do exist, much of the ocean’s floor is navigable. 

Suppose I were to visit this painting in a gallery. Suppose it were to draw me in immediately—past the Pollocks, the de Koonings, the Klines. The illuminated Albers, portrait of the expanding field. 

Suppose I were to resist at first—as though approaching a stranger at a party but not wanting to be seen doing so. 

Up close, I can see the faint lines beneath the brushstrokes. That green-lit sea, glowing through.

There is a kind of blue that, in order to see it, you have to look away.

The blue inside the blue, not blue at all but a coppery green verdigris, whose neat geometry remains visible through layers of paint, its symmetries and planes intersecting and abutting each other.

Greenish blue, grayish blue, Berlin blue.

Something in the throat, wanting to lift into flight. Verditter blue, a blue that must be carefully listened for. Bright and lyrical, with a higher proportion of tin. 

What could a person possibly invent to contain all these overlapping fields of light? It seems impossible, and yet there it is, sky inside sea inside more sea, dimensions opening further, the farther away you get.

In its smudgy brushwork, I hear the rushing of water, or maybe wings—regions of green, showing through like feeling, overlaid and contradictory.

Berlin blue, mixed with emerald green and a little white. Lapis lazuli, fennel flower, azure, apple green.

An algal bloom, shimmering in air. Suppose I were to hold its sound in my mouth without swallowing, to lift it to your lips in a shallow dish, knowing you might not like its bitter tincture. 

To allow the thin film of light to swirl slowly toward you, face incandescent with longing. 

Hyacinth, flax flower, purple anemone.

Suppose I were to swim through its cloudy layers like a scuba diver, scouring the sea floor for a lost object or the remains of a sunken ship.

Broken glass, rubber bands, crumpled wrappers, and discarded sponges. Blue marbles, pieces of rubble, bus tickets, cicada wings, bottle caps.

Suppose I were to gather all these bits of blue, like a bowerbird—indigo pits, glass beads, cyanotypes, blue doors, blue ceilings, blue shutters—and once I had done that, simply sat, waiting for something to happen. 

If my life flooded with light in a hillside chapel, blue-tinted glass staining my arms, the backs of my hands. Face, lips—all of it, blue. 

If it were to carry me, a tide of blue—all I’ve ever wanted to say: I love you. I miss you. When will I see you. 

Like standing in a field as it fills with the rush of wings, until all I see is blue, mirroring the sky in its vastness.

Its voice from all around, as if from the air itself, godlike, like a voice inside us, speaking both to and within us.

A box inside a box inside another box. And in every box, the endlessness of sky. Its blue infinitude.  

[Text adapted from: Celeste Ng, Roni Horn, Louise Glück, Nature’s Palette: A Color Reference System from the Natural World,  Jennifer S. Cheng, Yanyi, Chiyuma Elliott, Online Encyclopedia of Organ Stops, Jane Mead, Maggie Nelson, Elizabeth Willis, Jason Moran and Alicia Hall Moran]

Wave Organ

&  one day    walking  the  shell line  with  a friend    she might  enter  a new  form  
of  intimacy   not  made of  words    but the steady rush of  ocean  on shore  where  
she might  find  the  tiny  emptied  husks   of  crustaceans   a papery  translucence    
& for  days  later    she might  hear  the waves   breaking  in  her inner  ear   beneath  
her   feet    the sand’s  gritty   clench  & release   both  of  them    barefoot now  
slipping a  little    in the sand     sneakers doubled  in one  hand   the other   tucked  
into  a pocket   for warmth    between  them  something   she  struggles   to  find 
a  word  for   not silence     but  a  nameless    quiet  on the inside   the  secret  inner     
life   of organs   contracting &   expanding     a work  they share     each contained  
in the gentle   privacy of the  self      &  later  she might  pick up  a sand  dollar   
wet  sand   puckered  around  the little marks   her fingertips   leave  on the  beach   
its delicate   veiny  blue   making it  plant  & animal  both   & the silence   unfold-
ing within   &  between  them    the tide’s pull  & retreat     waves  skating   across
the surface     the  sky’s milky  blue    a  hue that  spreads  &   spreads

          the endless    treasure

                      ocean

                          the       shimmer

 a      work

                                she might find

             inside

                                       they

       share

this  feeling      that   opens 

                       between     them

a  nameless   quiet

                              her     

        delicate         veiny 

                                                        life

                   un fold in g  

*

Mia Ayumi Malhotra is the author of Mothersalt (Alice James Books, 2025) and Isako Isako, California Book Award finalist and winner of the 2017 Alice James Award, Nautilus Gold Award, National Indie Excellence Award, and Maine Literary Award. She is also the author of the chapbook Notes from the Birth Year (Bateau Press, 2022). Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, The Gate of Memory: Poems by Descendants of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration, and They Rise Like a Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women Poets. A dedicated member of the Choir of St. Paul’s Burlingame, Mia’s commissioned texts have been performed as choral anthems throughout the United States and the United Kingdom. Currently she is a 2025-2026 Distinguished Visiting Writer at Saint Mary’s College of California and at work on a manuscript about music and the interior life.

Dear citizen, dear continent of care,

The heart of the forest takes no prisoners.
Its iris clouds. The book uncertain, spell

to which we keep returning, its spider-raiment,
clammy in the cheek, bright aurum at the breast.

All of us enter with eyes bound. Some of us will
emerge, blinking in the silky gray sun, faint taste

of iron worrying our tongues. Some of us, too,
must stay. Who can say what keeps us here—

the enchantment too thick, our bodies too burdened
with sawdust and stone. Spin us a ditty. A capsule,

a basket of razor-tipped rhymes. Let the line pierce
the redwoods, gather up hard bark and cinder,

salve for a sentence too thick to swallow. How
the notes of the coda eat themselves, rouse the mice

from the mouths of their holes. The lone stag still trapped
in the bushes, heaving. Sing us a hymn for the ones left behind.

fragment

what pieces of the rufous
feathered self. if you ask. which
question of the body. think:
jeanette isabella. white room.
pinked night. the torch brought.
no baby. the forest’s burled shutter. opens
to hinged moon. in the undergrowth, glazed
sedge. sugared mouth. no birds. no
song. a darkly chromatic tune. yes,
sinew. another think: pieces of story.
the room on shuffle. pile of spent
drains and needles. all tentacles
coming to. womb hanging a sickle. milk
stump. your mystery of faith. of movement.
will we. the one thing: rose window of a word.
what it means to retrieve it. womanhood,
if bodied. yarn overs. controlled slip.
catechised needle nip. a visible
mend. the lip stitched over. wraiths for
hands. piped carol. you a blank december.
singed from the inside. fresh coal. but you.
the surface scrambled. only fuzz. if nacre. pearl,
partridge shape. well, waking. who will
write. unreach. the robin-throated tree.

[paper border]

A Story About Trees in Winter

My country is locked in deep freeze, streets smothered by turrets of snow, power lines sunk, encased in necklaces of fortified glass. My loved ones in three states brace for disaster, filling the bathtubs, filling the generator, dripping the faucets, buying up choy sum and rice.

Keep them safe. The prayer a talisman I worry like a pebble—but how can I know? What is safe when each week, we number another among the dead? And that little boy, wide-eyed, lost in the salt rime and subzero haze? The hundred clergy hauled from the concrete where they knelt, prayers breaking softly over the curls of their breath? Amazing grace—what sound must it make for a heart to remove itself? Last night, I could feel mine trying, hot as embers, shivering through the soles of my feet.

The page asks: What is the grammar of atrocity? What does failure feel like in the body? Ice behind the temples; a cold stone expanse; old bones suspended for all to see; the lake seized clear through to the bottom. I cannot concentrate on poetry. My mind pings off each image, dull to the words’ slow music. I move through soup. I drag my heart to work, my body to the phone, to the next walk, the next glass of ferric water.

Someone tells me a story about winter. When they were a child, they learned to stay clear of the forest: When bitter enough, a tree’s blood stills to stone. Crystal chafes cambium, pushes its bounds in the night, explodes.

Woman in the Philadelphia Airport

I am angered by her anger; the words
she lobs like grenades—at the agent,

who does not control the fog, the manifest,
the connection, the purple of the rainclouds

peeling up from above the crimson-cast
tarmac. The pitch of her screams unravels

the drowsy morning whirr of electric trollies,
roller bags bumping along on linoelum floors.

I want to tell her, stop this, and lady,
we’ll all get there, but today, I’m stopped

by the salt brimming up in the back of my own throat,
recalling my mother alone in the driveway, the dark

of the house’s shell after the funeral guests
had gone. Who knows what ache we each hold

in the closets of our chests—this woman,
soiling the counter with spit and tears, the agent,

whose eyes cloud the color of the storm,
and me, with the fist in my throat, the surprise

of the shine on my cheeks as the sun fills
the terminal with ruby-bright dawn?

*

Iris A. Law is the author of Periodicity (Finishing Line, 2013). Her work has been published in journals such as The New England Review, The Georgia Review, and The Offing, and has most recently been anthologized in The Nature of Our Times: Poets on America’s Lands, Waters, Wildife, and Other Natural Wonders (Paloma, 2025) and They Rise Like A Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women Poets (Blue Oak, 2022). From 2009 through 2022, Iris served as cofounding editor of Lantern Review: A Journal of Asian American Poetry.

The Gig Economy 

I moved to New York City 
with $400 in the winter of 2014. 
I made deliveries on my bike. 
The air was a wall of white. 

The streets were sheets of ice. 
I was blind in one black eye. 
I delivered a list of groceries 
for some grown-ass man. 

5 apples, 6 rolls of paper towels, 
2 six-packs of sparkling spring water, 
and 12 fucking bananas. 

The Food Emporium 
was out of fucking bananas. 
So I tried two more stores, 
which were also OUT OF BANANAS. 

It had been over an hour. 
The pay-out was four dollars. 
I grabbed three plantains and
arrived at grown-ass man’s high-rise
an abominable snowman.

The service entrance 
was through a labyrinth. 
The security guard was a minotaur 
who chased me up to the 70th floor

where grown-ass man 
appeared to live alone 
in his early twenties. 
I was late…

So he did not tip.

Elocution

When I grow up 
I want to be a soldier 
in the liberal
War on Christmas. 
 
The anchorman 
majored in broadcasting 
to learn that phony cadence. 
They all sound like Pleasantville,
 
plastic Kens and Barbies
trying to sell me Tupperware, 
Tunisian pearls, or the myth 
that being rich means one is smart. 
 
An assumption 
in a sumthin  
is a white noise.
Sure, sounds good. 
 
Have a factoid.   
Have a tabloid. 
Have an Altoid. 
Have a cute cow 
chanting space force. 
Have a viral virus. 
  
Cable box 
overheats 
underneath 
the vitriol. 
 
Tomorrow it will tell me 
science says 
dark chocolate is a panacea 
for politics. 

Can someone fact check my opinion?
I believe white nationalism  
is now as American as apple pie. 
 
My brother mortgaged two houses 
in the South. 
He says I have more money than him.
He’s right and I also own nothing 
and eat halal in a New York City gym. 
 
We fight each other 
in the same boat
but it doesn’t rock at all 
and we don’t make any waves. 

Signs 

Hacked out in lines,

the newsprint casts spells,
makes his story history,
obeys rhetoric and syntax.

   Next, we’ll tack a tax on sin,

      chuck things taken for granted
                 back into the woods
   
   to be absorbed by ferns.
 
        There’s an economic depression
 blooming in my mind.

Sometimes,
I stare out the window of the train  
as if it were a television set,

as if I’m not flying 
through a slow apocalypse
and forget

we are all animals

who survive 
by waiting   

in breadlines.

Free Will

Do the right thing 

if you can. 
If you can’t

then do wrong.
And forgive yourself 
and forgive everyone else 

if you can. 
If you can’t 

then you’ll die 
lonely.

Try not to do that 
if you can

because you can’t 
not die. 

A Subterranean Hellscape 

Feeling sick? 
(Or like a sardine 
packed in a tin can?)

The next station 
is closer than it will seem.  

Exit the train
and get pushed off the platform. 
Avoid the dog-sized rats. 

An employee 
will discover you 
eventually
if the mole people 
don’t first. 

Don’t vomit on the third rail. 

Please remember to take any trash 
you fell onto the tracks with 
back up to the platform with you 
and place it in a designated receptacle. 

If you see something
say something. 

If you feel something
shut the fuck up. 

Please do not lean on the doors 
or lay down on the seats. 

We are increasing police 
presence in the stations 
(mostly to catch fare evaders). 

If your card doesn’t work 
at the turnstile 
please swipe again. 
Use more finesse. 

If the sign has read 0 minutes 
until your train arrives 
for the past half-hour 
That’s tough shit. 

Exit the station
and take an Uber. 

We will be raising your fare
to 3 dollars per ride soon. 

Thank you for riding 
with MTA NYC Transit. 

Stockholm Syndrome 

Babe, when I get paid 
we’re gonna finally buy that boat. 

Babe, I’ll have a stack 
of the most romantic notes. 

We can finally get that horsepower. 
We can hit us that high note, 

that carbon cred, that grandeur,
that perfect lumbar support. 

Our prosperity gospel 
is a $1000 toothpick. 

Baby, we can speak in tongues. 
We can cure that male pattern 
dullness. 

We can get that impunity. 
We can get away with it.

Babe, we can get that dark money. 
We can clean our hands of calluses. 

We can buy ourselves titles, 
to which were not entitled,

name a library after us,
immortalized in stone as idols. 

Baby, we can make it rain. 
We can greenwash our images,

Afford the freedom to forget 
that freedom isn’t free. 

(We can sell what’s priceless)

We can influence the ethos,
stroke the lawmakers’ egos 

Pop a cork off into space. 
We can actually buy happiness. 

We can hover above the rest,
descend into moral bankruptcy. 

On Epstein’s flight manifest, 
Babe, that could’ve been you and me. 

We can finally be like our overlords,
the demagogues with whom we identify. 

After we send the aliens 
back to their other worlds,

we’ll finally get that mansion 
Christ prepared for us in the sky. 

*

Craig Kite is a New York City–based singer-songwriter and poet whose performances put words at the center. With a catalog shaped across countless open mics and intimate stages, his songs carry the quiet intensity of confessions and poems set to melody. Drawing on the lyric-driven traditions of Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, Craig is building toward his debut solo studio release, while publishing his first poetry collection, Sad City, and recording with his indie rock band, Pinko.