Vol. 9 No. 1

Summer 2026

The one who guarded the city from people
Editor's Note
The Great Aria
Zelensky, dead now
House Lessons
Coffee Shop Denizens
Spectral
on Oklahomans
Twilight in Archer City
After Triage
Umolchaniye
Wearing it Well
Ghost of Post Office Past
Unidentified Lying Object
The House That Keeps Us
Ambivalence
Lots Over Motel
Hide and Seek
Ekphrasis for a Painting that Does Not Exist
Drifters
Ready for the Graveyard
The Mystery Guest
Inheritents
When my head slept on the mountain
Dream Girl
I’m still mad at Jesus for breaking Madeleine’s heart
When you taught yourself cartwheels in the backyard
Would They Believe You
(Eunoia)
Big Leaf Parsley as Potted Plant
Abecedarian for Lyuba
TAFKAP the Love Symbol
(Ramé)
Suzanne Valadon Glosses over am Question of Career Preference
Evidence (Glasses)
Feverdream: Accent (1)
Her
The Younger Woman
Nostalgia Tastes Like Boone’s Farm
Feverdream: Accent (2)
The Winter After
Mislaid
Stealing Lipstick
Feverdream: Accent (3)
Dear Blue Eyeshadow
Professional Dyke
here where the wild
Self-Portrait
From "american cyclorama"
My Daughter,
Day Hike in El Capitan
Tribute to Niki de Saint Phalle
Sanctuary
The Mental Load
Skunkwatching
Tribute to Susan Bee
A True Story
El Silencio
Drawing a Map with a Rat Tail Comb
In a Time of War (Four Poems without Words) 1
Twenty-Five
Broadway
Shisa Kankō…Pointing, Calling
In a Time of War (Four Poems without Words) 2
Reasons to Winter Over
Sentimental
Verges
In a Time of War (Four Poems without Words) 3
Eulogy for the Goldfish and Past Dreams
Requiem at Cana
In the next galaxy
In a Time of War (Four Poems without Words) 4
What Happens When
Loose Change
Separation
(Hülya)
The Glove
A Heron Undressing
Now and Later
Cha!
Dear Delphi
I tell the coast forest why I haven’t come back
Record Keeping
Death Row
What Praying is For
The Horse Sun Blinds My Eyes
Innocence Lost

Drifters

An average human has eight thousand thoughts a day
The thought of that much thinking

Makes me want to be a sea otter munching on crab
It’s a fact: sea otters eat 25 percent of their body weight daily

They even make tools, sharpen rocks to break open hard-shelled prey
A lot of thought must go into that

My husband is an over-thinker
I remember one time in Port Angeles we watched the sea otters

There’s no way to fact-check this
Or that we ate burritos by the shore

And talked about how good the guacamole was
But also shared things we’d never shared before

Or that I kept looking at the babies so cozy
On their mothers’ bellies and they made

Me feel peaceful, like when you put your
Arms around me and I held the nape of your neck

You don’t have a middle name
I forget whenever I fill out paperwork

Like that summer morning when I signed my name
And saw yours, a million thoughts surmising

You told me that a group of sea otters
Are called a raft, so here we are floating

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