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we find them low along the bank

mottled gray and yellow

dangling in late August

like forgotten lanterns

swaying in trees

 

I snap open my penknife

score the skin along its seam

fruit flares open

gold as a candle

flickering in church

 

seeds slide from pulp

slick as river stones

we both know

tomorrow you leave

where I cannot follow

 

I split the fruit

hand you half

juice runs bright

warm across your fingers

the last gift I can offer

 

the Lehigh drifts on

indifferent

while black seeds

cool in my palm

heavy as the silence between us

---

Baskin Cooper is an award-winning poet, visual artist, and multidisciplinary creator based in Chatham County, North Carolina. His work spans poetry, songwriting, sculpture, screenwriting, and voice acting, weaving together visual, narrative, and musical elements. He holds a PhD in psychology and previously lived in Cork, Ireland, experiences that often shape his explorations of folklore, lyricism, and personal history. His poems have appeared in Verse-Virtual, ONE ART: A Journal of Poetry, Ink & Oak Lit, and others. His debut collection, The Space Between Branches, is currently seeking publication.

 

When my father failed

at frying an egg

on the occupational therapy stove,

 

forgetting to press in the knob

before turning it to medium-high,

 

then cracking the shell

too hard on the skillet’s rim

so half the white

dribbled down the outside

and onto the burner,

 

then struggling to reach a plate

from the nearby cupboard

on account of the plastic tubes

coiling out of his kidneys,

 

the pouches of urine

velcroed to his hips

like pistols in a holster,

 

the social worker suggested

he be discharged to a sniff

instead of going home.

 

And when I looked puzzled,

she clarified a sniff

is a skilled nursing facility,

commonly abbreviated

S-N-F, or sniff.

 

Sniff, I repeated, my mind

pondering that acronym

turned onomatopoeia

 

for the sound we make

to clear tears from our noses,

 

or the method by which

we detect the smell

of something suddenly burning.

---

Doug Fritock is a writer, husband, and father of 4, who was born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia, but now lives in Redondo Beach, California. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Prime Number Magazine, and Whale Road Review among others. He is an active member of Maya C. Popa’s Conscious Writers Collective. 

 

On the walk to my grandmother’s grave,

my mother says she’d like to be buried in a cemetery

by a lake where the family could go to have picnics.

 

I nod, like I understand cemeteries. Like I understand

my mother’s need to visit and be visited, as if this is the only way

we can still talk to the dead (as if there are no poems).

 

Like I can imagine burying my mother, my husband,

myself. Like I can imagine my grave as anything

but grown over and haloed by vultures.

 

I’ve been told there’s a place prepared for me

with many rooms. No one in Heaven is going to look

for these bodies, forgotten like faded nightgowns.

 

A grave says nothing, remembers nothing.

There are so many stones grown over,

engraved names that fill with dirt and time.

 

A woman on the radio cried when she read a letter

found in an abandoned home from a dying woman

giving birth to a son no one knew about.

 

I worry about her, the radio woman said.

Abandonment is worse than death—it means

no one cares. I’m afraid of the clean slabs

 

ripped-down homes make, afraid of becoming one:

paved over, no one would know I was ever here

(isn’t that why there are poems?).

 

I pull back the grass. In my notebook,

I write down names

I’ve never heard before. Carry them

 

in my mouth as we drive home

like hard candies and whisper them

sweet under my breath.

---

Meg Eden Kuyatt teaches creative writing at colleges and writing centers. She is the author of the 2021 Towson Prize for Literature winning poetry collection “Drowning in the Floating World” and the forthcoming “obsolete hill” (Fernwood Press, 2026) and children’s novels including the Schneider Family Book Award Honor-winning “Good Different,” and “The Girl in the Walls” (Scholastic, 2025). Find her online at megedenbooks.com.

 

I’m often wrong about

the true nature of things.

 

A turtle turned out to be a rock,

a sleeping dog a rotten stump.

 

I wish the world could provide

all that my mind imagines

 

though, once, as I was walking

through Washington State Park,

 

I saw, wrapped around a patch

of willow beside a stream,

 

a band of brown cloth that I took

for debris from a recent flood.

 

Trash, I thought, until the form

animated, raised a narrow head

 

and, hissing. shot into the water

faster than my eyes could follow.

 

Afterwards, it was as though

the burning bush had gone silent.

---

Chris Bullard lives in Philadelphia, PA. In 2022, Main Street Rag published his poetry chapbook, Florida Man, and Moonstone Press published his poetry chapbook, The Rainclouds of y. Finishing Line Press published his chapbook, Lungs, in April and his work appeared in Keystone: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, this May.

 

on our first date i’ll take you to

that field of carnations in wisborg

and tilt your fanged head

towards the unpolluted constellations:

look, there’s cygnus. and draco. and cassiopeia—

we’ll turn the color of elephants in the starlight

and earth will forget to turn

the same way it does during daylight savings.

i’ll carve you a vase the shape of a pomegranate

and fill it with dust from a blood moon;

you’ll talk about planets in retrograde,

neither of us knowing what that means.

we’ll fear the day much more than

garlic or silver or wood, all things that

maim but don’t kill.

every time you leave i’ll put away my telescope,

gaze at the five-pointed indent of your body

and wait for the sun to set again.

---

Jason Zhang is a Northeast Philadelphian whose hobbies include thrifting, open water swimming, and watching horror movies. His writing has been recognized by organizations including the Scholastic Awards, the New York Times, and Adroit. He is currently in his first year at Stanford University, where he plans to study Political Communication—and keep writing, of course.

 

The car is silver, not taxi yellow,

and nothing in nature could ever account

for the green of the driver’s hair.

 

It’s the color of money, she says. She says

sometimes her life can fold in like a purse,

but she always knows the price she’s paying.

 

She says her name is Faith, and she thinks

her mother meant it ironically,

but the karma seems to be working okay.

 

I could have been born a boy, she says,

or married one. Or both. I could

have become some kind of tycoon. Or worse.

 

I’m happy, she says, the way I am.

I know where I’ve been. I do not begrudge.

I know where I’m going. I am not driven.

---

George McDermott is a full-time writer and occasional teacher living in Florida with a Renaissance Woman and their remarkably literate Border Terrier. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Harvard Review, Notre Dame Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Painted Bride Quarterly. His chapbook—Pictures, Some of Them Moving—won the Moonstone Chapbook Award. He is also co-author of What Went Right, a nonfiction book about the successes and missteps of public education in the United States.

 

Nine Months at Philly Parks and Rec: #1

 

They hand me forgotten dice

each a different shade of white —

a plastic snake who’s tail has been ripped off.

Can we glue it back together? they ask.

No, we have to bury it, I say.

Their toy from home with instructions

that no one else is to touch it but me.

Miss Holiday, look, they say.

 

Look

at this piece of paper —

a drawing of a broken heart.

It’s mine – earlier I stole her nose and

have yet to give it back.

Then another drawing of a whole heart after

I asked if she wanted my heart in pieces.

Look, Miss Holiday, they say.

 

Look at

my Lego spaceship,

what I can do on one leg,

at this bug, is it dead? Look

at how this hurts me!

 

I too still walk with cupped palms

outstretched, in search of a recipient

of my own salvaged shards.

I understand a plea

for deliverance.

 

And so when they offer, ask,

lay siege,

I accept.

---

Holiday Noel Campanella is a multi-disciplinary writer and artist from South Philadelphia. Her work has been published in numerous lit mags and journals, (Gigantic Sequins, San Pedro River Review, Pink Disco, Meow Meow Pow Pow) exhibited and sold nationally, (The Smithsonian Museum, Anthropologie, The Clay Studio) and collected in public and private collections (The Free Library of Philadelphia, Vanderbilt Libraries Special Collections). She has a BFA from the University of Pennsylvania and The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in painting and creative writing. You can find out more at holidaynoelcampanella.com.

 

I did the work your nervous fingers

were afraid to do

 

I pulled the razor gently

over the turns in your face –

 

a landscape I have traced since birth –

I fill a wooden cigar box full of lasts

 

last laugh, last drive with you drumming the dash

last song deejayed in the kitchen with the broken cabinets

 

your skin – once baby soft – now covered

in blonde stubble, smothered in shaving cream

 

I pulled the razor down over the jawbone – widening

as the years stretched you towards manhood

 

last dirty sock strewn in the front hall, last homework assignment not yet done

last voicemail, last text

 

I pulled the razor down your trembling neck

Adam’s apple rising – not sure if it could trust me

 

last sticky bag of Swedish fish tossed just shy of your trash can

the last thing I said

 

I finished with the thin space

above your top lip

 

a space so intimately yours

I wondered even then

 

if this would be the last time

I touch you

---

Colleen Ovelman is an editor and poet, originally from West Chester, Pennsylvania, now living in Vermont. While much of her work and publications are focused on evidence-based medicine, her creative work has previously appeared in the Best of the Burlington Writer’s Workshop, the Grand Exit podcast, and in Vermont Stage’s Winter Tales. She is currently working on a collection of poems, a history of mending, which explores living with grief in the aftermath of her teenage son’s death.