touching dawn

Today the moon in your sign is lined up with Saturn, which has criticized the moon in the Passive Aggressive Mode, suggesting that Saturn will be “perfectly fine” with any place the moon chooses to eat out, because it’s not like Saturn has spent much time with the moon, since the moon ended that long-distance relationship with Orion’s Belt, which Saturn had predicted would happen eventually.

Taurus (April 20-May 20)

Entertain at home. But not at YOUR home. Check whether Frank's door is unlocked, since Frank is out of town, and, if so, entertain there. Serve light refreshments. Avoid artificial sweeteners until instructed otherwise. Listen to King Crimson’s Beat. It’s not that good, but neither are Taurus people. No offense.

Gemini (May 21-June 20)

Relations with a friend or a member of a group might be a bit stiff or cool today. Don’t react to this. Let stiff and cool pass of its own accord, or start a band and call it “Stiff & Cool.” For about half of this day, you may experience disorientation while your friends’ shadows pass over Mars. Don’t be judgmental, although others around you might be. I mean, after all, they’re pretty tacky. I mean, who wears that kind of thing to work?

Cancer (June 21-July 22)

This is not an ideal day to ask for permission or approval from a parent, boss or anyone in a position of authority, including the police. So, in regard to the police, better just to run from them. Very likely, their response will be irritation when they catch you. Tell them that you just wanted to know if they could take a joke. When they ask you what the joke was, tell them a joke about police and donuts. Then run away again.

Leo (July 23-Aug. 22)

Travel plans might disappoint. Several flights out of O’Hare will be delayed. If you end up having to spend the night in Chicago, call Amy at 312-555-0001. She’s super nice. Ask her to make that mushroom-egg noodle thing. Don't ask her about how things are going with Brad. Things with Brad aren't going that well.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)

Withdraw the money. Nothing larger than $20 bills. Put it in a plain paper bag. You know where to leave it. Do not involve the police, especially the ones that put you down hard on the ground for running from them. Twice.

Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)

Today has its challenges because Neptune is opposite your sign, which by itself means that you must go get your Kia's front-end aligned. In addition, remember that the moon is lined up with Saturn, which can be depressing because Saturn just won’t let it go. Time to send out for dark chocolate. Use Uber Eats for that. It’s only money. Just don’t take any of the money out of the paper bag. That’s my money.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)

Keep your head down and your powder dry today. Tomorrow, you’ll need to get that head back up and get your powder wet. On the following day, it will be head down again but powder still wet. Then there will be a low-pressure system from the east that will, unfortunately, mean at least ten more days of wet powder.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)

Mostly sunny and very toasty conditions; possible danger of dehydration and heatstroke while doing strenuous activities. Today’s high 95 and tonight’s low 68. This is either your Sagittarian horoscope for the day or the forecast for Boise, Idaho. You decide because we get them mixed up, like, ALL the time.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)

Remember to get more sleep. Avoid productive work. Life just seems to be too ironic today. And it seems like no matter how hard you hint at it, Jeanette just won’t clean out the fridge.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)

This is one of those days when it’s easy to feel that your cup is half-empty instead of half-full. It’s all a matter of perspective, but today it will be impossible to tell from what perspective. Relations with that nice-looking pharmacist at CVS are not likely to go anywhere. Let it go. Also, it's half-empty.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)

When you hear Tyler talk in his sleep, rather than just tucking him back in and patting his back, lift him out of bed and let him put his arms around your neck, his legs around your waist. Be careful stepping out into the backyard. Once outside, know that even though he won't wake up, this night will find a place in a memory deeper than the one whose currency is waking moments. Look at the moon for yourself, and look at it again so the sight of it can enter Tyler's dream. This is the one night of the year when you'll be able to hear the moon. It's the same sound you heard as a child while swimming in rivers, your head under the water. Rounded rocks, clicking together.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this issue which, I must say, I find particularly lovely. Thanks to our editorial team of F. John Sharp, F. J. Bergmann, Ken Chau, Amanda Weir-Gertzog, Bill McCloud, and Ina Roy-Faderman. Special thanks to Howie Good, Tom Fugalli, and Tina Carlson.

Peace to you and yours,

Dale

Wendy Taylor Carlisle

March

This morning I can almost see
the first grasses on the hillside,
Spring seemed early this year
winter, everyone must have noticed,
was almost invisible. Still, I am
uneasy gossiping about the weather
to my neighbors who don’t believe
the earth is warmer.
There used to be snow every November.
Once it snowed in March. I swear.

Jeff Mock

Parting Words

The journey of a thousand miles also
Ends with one step. The bed

Is made. The last dish is washed,
Dried, and put away. The daughters

Grow up, make their own mistakes,
And learn to fix what they can.

The laundry is folded. The floor is swept.
The sun shines whether it’s cloudy

Or not. Later, in sleep, let
The hands unclench. Whatever

Is broken is fixed, finally, even if
It must be broken all the more.

If Everything Is Connected, No Two Asteroids Remain Unacquainted

Halfway between us lies
A point where we will

Never meet. A straight
Line is the greatest boredom

Between two points.
Let us meet instead

In one of the universe’s distant
Accidents, which seem

Always so random
that they must be planned,

As if to challenge gravity
And wake us to astonishment.

Eleanor Carpenter

The swifts

The swifts are back, he said to me.
They always come on a light blue evening,
when next-door’s lilac is leaning over the fence
and the candyfloss of the elder at the back is still unpicked.
An aerial shriek, taking our eyes up from the border
to see the first curved arrow, wheeling,
always followed by the other.
He said it to me every year.
This year I say it to him
but he cannot hear.

Michael J. Kolb

All Our Striving

I speak of next year,
the small repairs I keep postponing.

Below me, one wave
fails perfectly on the rocks.

The wind shifts.
A gull draws one crooked line

and refuses
to correct it.

David Harrison Horton

A Song of Sabotage

A gazelle nears a clearing,
unaware
of the predator
that will soon eat it.

In one theory, life
is the boringest video game
ever,
more boring than Kant.

The yogi stretches into a position
that does not require a name.

A polluted river runs
into a polluted lake,
where fishermen trawl
for an answer to starvation.

Colin Golden

Nescius

You wipe your spill from the table in the café,
smile and nod to taxi drivers’ eyes in the mirror,
tidy the house before the cleaner comes.
Still,
crumbs
in the sheets.

Joshua Michael Stewart

Ballad of an Orphan-Child

This orphan-child was born the hour the east winds sounded the evening drums. If your heart were like mine, what other companion would I need? We expect the moon to go on shining, drunk with breath. Whatever has died between us can endure the moon’s brightness. I’m accompanied by chrysanthemums. The pine sings my medicine. A raven leaves no trace in snow. The hills cool beautiful against the backdrop of the heavens. I’m adrift in a rowboat on a star-freckled lake. Oarlocks and wood creak. Oar-blades dipping in and out of sleep.

through mist
in a field
a skylark caroling

Joel Bush

Scrap

We dug out battered cans
from dusty ditches,
tossed them in black trash bags.
The Bud and Coors Light tallboys
still housed droplets
of stale, reeking brew.
The aluminum leeched
the summer sun’s warmth,
singeing our fingertips.
We trudged up the hills
with our oversized burdens,
saying words kids weren’t
supposed to say.
But for us, it was okay.
We knew no one important
was listening to us anyway.

Nancy Kay Peterson

Q and Mc

Damn. I was going to title this poem damn, but that would defeat the purpose of having at least one poem in the Q and Mc dividers in my binder. I should have at least one poem in each section. Since Mc is really an abbreviation used for people’s last names, I could pretend it doesn’t matter, maybe even remove that section. So, one poem starting with Q would fulfil my poetic destiny. Quaint. Quite. Quiet, the sound after tonight’s phone call telling me my last living aunt had died.

Laura Hannett

While you wait at the red light,
see that reclining cloud-queen?

Her ankles drape the brick bank,
rumply thighs and bright-white tush,
rising high above the gas pumps.

Through your windshield, she spots you
and seems to ask a question:

Why not stretch your fretful mind
languorously
on the chaise longue of the world
and see what happens?

Seductive, no?

Her body changes slowly:
Becoming a map? A dragon?

Green light: Go.

Nude Over Bridge Street

Amy Miller

Natalie Wolf

Sun Grazer

No goodbye, just
a beginning. The promise
but no follow-through, a dance
off into the sunset. Off into
the fire. The amber flames
flickering off his skin, the heat
reaching his heart. Eyes, limbs,
the spidering capillaries.
Calcifying the body, dissolving
the mind. Leaving only
the image. Outlined, shadow
boxed. An eternal silhouette
against the holy star.

Brad Rose

Shock of Spring

Outside my window, the indifferent trees nap
as the daffodils,
their green arms thrown up to the sky,
shriek, terror-stricken
by the spring sunlight.
Last year, crop circles,
now, this.

Paul Bavister

Whaler

Whenever he thought I wasn’t tough enough,
he told the tale of when he took a ship
to the Antarctic whaling station,

then on his hundredth trip, chasing bowheads,
the ship beached and they were stuck
on a gravel bank. I never questioned the facts

when he said they were menaced
by polar bears until the rescue ship
could pick them up; I took it all as truth

when he said he ate the last great auk.
I tried my hardest to be like him,
but never quite lived the life

he never lived.

Anna Anderson

Jamey

Picture me and her in the sun: lemon juice streaks in our hair 'cuz she wishes she was blond, her bikini bottoms pulled to one side to show off the bruises purpling. They're from barbell hip thrusts at the gym; the boys all like a juicy ass, and anyway she doesn't mind. She calls them 'proof of life' but she's wrong. Even a corpse will bruise.

That was the summer of me behind the bleachers, letting Tommy Higgins put his mouth on my throat because later she'd lean in close, all suntan lotion and bony fingers, wanting a look at the hickey. That was the summer of her black-eyed and broken-cheeked from one ex-boyfriend or another. Always it was me that cried.

Picture me and her, picking up her baby brother from preschool: swinging him by his hands between us, drawing squares on steaming concrete with a thick pink stub of chalk. She could hopscotch like no one else - backwards, one foot, with her eyes shut; it didn't matter. She never touched a single line.

Tallulah Howarth

Simple Epiphany

The sky was terracotta-plated
as you rode the rented bicycle
through the sunset

Your skirt, carefree,
rode up towards your thigh
and for once you didn’t pull it down

It is good to move your body,
good to think,
make friends from different countries

Each night you bolt
out the sound of cicada,
symphony of dogs…

Sonnet Mondal

The Weight of Rain

The sky carries what we bury.
So many unshed sorrows
hang heavy in the sky.

Today, grief distilled into water
falls softly
as if the clouds couldn’t hold us anymore.

Ben Sloan

This Neck of the Woods

While an army of lighthouse keepers
runs up and down a narrow staircase,

while a bellows sucks in then disgorges
half a liter of air 17,000+ times a day,

and a squeezy tube
moves chewed food downstream

to a remote location
where blood is cobbled together,

we release into the sky a swoop
of starlings sharing a single purpose,

each its own distinct black star
in a far-flung, billowing flag.

David Anson Lee

After the Power Outage

When the lights return
everything feels rehearsed:

the refrigerator beginning again,
the clock blinking 12:00
as if nothing before counted.

We move through the house
turning things on
that were already ours.

Outside, windows light
one by one:

small squares agreeing
we are still here,

though for a while
we weren’t sure
what that meant.

In the kitchen,
I reset the microwave

and hesitate
before pressing start,

as if time
might notice.

Polly Conway

Golden Hour

Big day: Fred Astaire’s granddaughter
came into the frozen yogurt shop,
her smile a candelabra.
I spoke in bad
Spanish to the drunk
man, who wanted a beer but
got a sundae. There was nothing
else to give him. Lo siento.
At five o’ clock,
the sun lit us all. The peach
fuzz on my face made me
sparkle.

Mark LaMonda

In the End He was More Like Cats Than Expected

Heaven was nothing like he expected.

Dogs everywhere --

and not to sound cliché, but lions were lying down with lambs,
and there were a lot of them,
and it stank,
and the dogs and other creatures loved the stink.

He crouched close to the ground
surrounded by orange tabby cats
that licked themselves incessantly,

looking askance at this world
that was nothing like the Heaven they expected either.

Matthew Caretti

When the cane toads sing

it’s too late to take it back.
Love is like that; once it’s out
there, there’s nothing to be done
but let nature run its course.

Here that means chorus practice
until well after midnight. Until
that first thought of touching
dawn.

Contributors 164

Photo by j.lewis.

Anna Anderson is an English literature graduate student and aspiring writer currently living in rural Minnesota.

Paul Bavister has published three collections of poetry with Two Rivers Press. His work has appeared in Oxford Poetry, The Rialto and Dream Catcher.

Joel Bush reads things. He also writes things. Well, sometimes he reads the things he writes. That tends to help. His work has been featured in The Spotlong Review, Meniscus, and Muleskinner Journal.

Matthew Caretti’s collections include Harvesting Stones (2017, Snapshot Press eChapbook Award) and three with Red Moon Press: Africa, Buddha (2022), Ukulele Drift (2023) and Slow Boat to Samoa (2025). He is the recipient of a 2024 Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun and lives a simple life in Pago Pago, American Samoa.

Eleanor Carpenter is from London, England. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Neologism Poetry Journal Thimble Literary Magazine, Carmina Magazine, Pictura Journal, and others.

Polly Conway is a writer based in Alameda, CA. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in One Art, Wildscape, MEMEZINE, Pictura, Ellie, Jelly Squid, and more. She is the Poetry Editor at Nulla, a multimedia journal. She holds an MFA in Poetry from California College of the Arts.

Colin Golden is a writer and coach, amongst other things, from Dublin, Ireland. His work explores attention, inheritance, and the hidden patterns shaping how we live and relate to one another.

Laura Hannett's poems appear in such journals as Willows Wept Review, Belladonna's Garden, Sheila-Na-Gig, Abandoned Mine and Amethyst Review. Her work is included in several anthologies, among them The Color Wheel: Poems (Terrapin Books) and Into the Deep, Dark Woods (WordFire Press). She lives in Central New York.

David Harrison Horton is a Beijing-based writer, artist, editor and curator. He is author of Necessary (Downingfield, 2025) and Maze Poems (Arteidolia, 2022). His work has recently appeared in The Belfast Review, Roi Fainéant, Modern Literature and Yolk, among others. He edits the poetry zine SAGINAW. davidharrisonhorton.com

Tallulah Howarth is a multidisciplinary creative and co-ordinator of the Writing Squad. They are particularly passionate about foraging and archives. Her debut, An Alternative Xanadu, came out this April with Ossa Prints - in which the ft² of each room in her house dictates the word count for each poem. You can find more of their work at tallulahhowarth.com and @tallulahhowarthcreative on Instagram.'

Michael J. Kolb is a poet, teacher, and scholar whose work explores body, memory, place, and survival. He teaches anthropology and history at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His poems have appeared in journals including Speckled Trout Review, Eunoia Review, Sky Island Journal, Bramble Literary Review, The Shore, and Third Wednesday.

Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Mark LaMonda is an artist and writer who currently lives in Santa Clarita, California. His work has appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Tough Poets Review, SoFloPoJo, Autumn Sky and is forthcoming in San Pedro River Review, Rat's Ass Review, and Blue Unicorn.

David Anson Lee is a physician, philosopher, and poet whose work appears in Eunoia Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Orchards, and Braided Way. His writing explores memory, medicine, and the quiet tensions of ordinary life. He lives and works in Texas.

j.lewis (Jim Lewis) is an amateur photographer who subscribes to the idea that if life gives you lemons, leave them on the kitchen counter and go outside with your camera. The lemons will keep. The perfect sunrise doesn’t last. More of his photography can be found at www.jlewisweb.com/photography.asp

Amy Miller is a writer and visual artist whose watercolors and paper art have had showings in several galleries. Her poetry has appeared in Copper Nickel, The Missouri Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and ZYZZYVA, and her most recent books are Astronauts (finalist for the Oregon Book Award) and The Trouble with New England Girls. She lives in Ashland, Oregon.

Jeff Mock is the author of Ruthless. His poems appear in The American Poetry Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, New England Review, The North American Review, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. He directs the MFA program at Southern Connecticut State University.

Sonnet Mondal writes from Kolkata and is the director of Chair Poetry Evenings – Kolkata’s International Poetry Festival. His ten books of poetry include Clamour for a Handful of Rice (Copper Coin), An Afternoon in My Mind (Copper Coin), and Lautati Dopaharein (Rajkamal Prakashan).

Nancy Kay Peterson: Bellevue Literary Review, Bluebird Word, Dash Literary Journal, Earth’s Daughters, Naugatuck River Review, RavensPerch, Spank the Carp, Steam Ticket, and Tipton Poetry Journal. She co-published Main Channel Voices: A Dam Fine Literary Magazine (2004-2009). Her chapbooks are: Belated Remembrance (2010) and Selling the Family (2021). (www.nancykaypeterson.com)

Brad Rose is the author of eight collections of poetry and flash fiction: Or Words to that Effect, I Wouldn’t Say That, Exactly, WordInEdgeWise, Lucky Animals, No. Wait. I Can Explain, Pink X-Ray, de/tonations, and Momentary Turbulence. His website is www.bradrosepoetry.com

Joshua Michael Stewart has appeared in Massachusetts Review, Brilliant Corners, New Flash Fiction Review, and Best Small Fictions 2025. https://joshuamichaelstewartauthor.com

Ben Sloan has a chapbook entitled Who and What We Are due to be published by Seven Kitchens Press in August 2026. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Natalie Wolf is an MFA student in creative writing at the University of Kansas. Her work has appeared in Short Story, Long; The Hooghly Review; I-70 Review, and more. Natalie is an editor at One Sentence Poems. You can find her on her website (https://nwolfmeep.wixsite.com/nmwolf) and on Instagram @nwolfcats.

Collage by Sarah J. Sloat