I.

Wendy Videlock

The Lesson of the Solstice

From solstice we mortals

begin to learn the difficult skill

of holding still,

the art of the magician’s arc,

the secret of the dark spark

and the sleeping seed,

the Lilith and

the Persephone lesson,

the earthen words

of Chichen Itza

the ancient ways

of paying attention,

the polar body twins                                     

of following through

and changing direction. 

Subject to Erasure

Captains, drop your weapons.

Fathers, show your faces. 

Makers, know your pencils

are softened by your natures,

are sharpened by your visions,

are subject to erasure

are snapped by undue pressure.

Physicians, know your flora.

Sisters, know your natures.

Brothers, meet your brothers. 

Mothers, know the sutures

you’ve tended through the ages. 

Teachers, send the mentors

with rivers filled with waters

and spirits filled with saplings

to fill the books with pages

of nature with its mirrors

of its children and its sages.

Wendy Videlock lives in Western Colorado. Her work appears in Best American Poetry, Poetry Magazine, Hudson Review, Rattle, and elsewhere. Her upcoming book, Desert Kin: Speaking Animal in the American Southwest, essays & poems, will appear in early September of 2026.

Matilda Silver Sykes

The USB Ports

have all changed on the X61 

from Edinburgh to Pittenweem, I can 

connect nothing with nothing. 

A wandering trolley sieves wind

through its regular network of ribs—

it is silver 

and no one on earth is missing it. 

Flesh winds drift down Queensferry Road.

I’ve had enough of flesh, enough

of marble sky museums, impossible

inventories. What is it 

anyway the clouds

have for so long been processing? 

What happens 

when they’re through?

The man to my left kicks

his wellies in the air with each

feathery cough. His two blue eyes

look wrong, like early moons.

My life (long piss-hot bus) 

is rippling over the Firth of Forth,

over milky prancing water

and here the light lights nothing:

lambs gambolling like bridesmaids,

crows drawn low over bright fields

of rape. When did serious

come to mean only dark? Serious here

is light. The pair to my right are

laughing themselves to tears.

Matilda Silver Sykes is a poet and critic from London. She is currently living in Baltimore, Maryland, working on her first book as a member of the Johns Hopkins’ Writing Seminars programme, supervised by the poet Andrew Motion. She reviews contemporary poetry regularly for The TLS.

Aaron Poochigian

Heliolatry

There are the trees forever doing
a slow, expansive dance
called “Reaching Toward the Light.”
 
Then there’s how shadows keep imbuing
the patterns with askance
and horizontal height.

The whole show, with its matching ways

of moving, points to one

bright source of bud and sprawl.
 
I close my eyes and tilt my gaze
into the sun, the sun,
the pivot of it all.

Aaron Poochigian

Matthew King

Barbecue

Two-stroke motor exhaust, the strangest thing

I love, I think, boat emissions, oil mixed

with gasoline, “incomplete combustion”—

the worse the woodstove’s burning the better

the aroma from the stovepipe and best

of all the paper and match that starts it—

cigarette smoke, a pipe, a good cigar,

or a bad one, what difference does it make

to this nose our bodies have for danger—

no wonder then we love the smell of flesh

over a fire, flesh cooking, flesh that could

as well be ourselves, exsanguinated

fatty fluids feeding the flames, as if

we’re not already mortified enough.

Matthew King used to teach philosophy at York University in Toronto; he now lives in "the country north of Belleville", where he tries to grow things, counts birds, takes pictures of flowers with bugs on them, and walks a rope bridge between the neighbouring mountaintops of philosophy and poetry.

Christina Linsin

Rootless

I know the many reasons evergreens

can only grow here on this southern slope;

the craggy northern side, instead of trees,

springs mosses, thick from pockets, packed in close.

They calico with greens and browns spread wide

the spirals pushing outward, linked in sprays

to yearn across the jutting mountainside 

their shallow rhizoids cling to rock and clay.

I know long roots require soft thick soil

to hold, support, the weight and height of pines.

But still tenacious, rootless moss uncoils       

reminding me how I myself can thrive.

For growth is more resilient than presumed;

you don’t need roots to grow or even bloom.

Christina Linsin is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and teacher in Virginia who examines complexities of mental illness and creating meaningful connections. Her poems have been published in Still: The Journal, Stone Circle Review, The Mid-Atlantic Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, and others.

David Middleton

After Reading Revelation 21:23

   Where endless faith shall shine serene

   And twilight never intervene.

       —St. Ambrose (c. 339-397 A.D.)

    in memory of Janet Lewis Winters (1899-1998),

    author of the poem “Country Burial”

Here on the porch I sip a calming tea,

Brewed from valerian and chamomile,

Till stars come from a dark their lights reveal     

As like and yet unlike them as can be.                             

This is the only world I’ve ever known,

Its elements, whose causes I surmise,               

All being all I see through human eyes,       

Matter and mind together and alone.             

So take me to no place of blinding light,                   

Of hymns unending where we keep no time,             

Where no space can be made to make a rhyme,     

That City laid on graves of day and night.

But let there be a garden by the gate

Through which the River narrows to a stream     

Beyond perfection’s twelves—gemstones agleam—       

And let a humble tending be my fate                           

Where flowers still bring healing from the loam, 

Where noon will pass in being what it means,     

And welcome twilight always intervenes,                             

And stars head calmly homeward as they roam.

Woman Drawing Water from a Well (II): A Meditation

  ca. 1848-49

  after the drawing by Jean-François Millet (1814-1875)

  black conté crayon on paper

  provenance: private collection

  John 4: 4-43; 1 Chron. 11:17-18; Gen, 26:18

This is no well where guardian spirits live     

Or angels bring annunciations down

Or where a coin flipped spinning means a wish

Is granted or denied by heads or tails.

And yet it is the way we have to draw

Not water only but the waters’ fire                                   

Both cold and molten branching as they flow,

Cognates of the ur-tongue’s first and final word.

The girl has surely leaned into the shaft               

Peering toward depths too dark to see beneath,

Come face to face with facelessness itself                             

Where echoes and reflections cannot be.       

And when we look toward stars or down a pit         

We find no firmer ground on which to stand,           

Though still with spade or telescope we probe             

For elemental ghosts of earth and air.

There are no proclamations from afar.                 

The girl is not The Woman at the Well                 

Near Kingdom Come or kin to one who poured               

Libations from the Gate of Bethlehem                       

But clay that charcoal shaded into light,               

Like water purified by lime alone                           

In patterns made of stasis and of change,

Its provenance too private to be known,       

A well not even Isaac could have named. 

David Middleton

Sally Thomas

Egret

I have seen the snowy egret standing
Knee-deep in bright-skinned water in the sunset,
Its whiteness dark against the light, its profile
West-facing. The intrusion of that one
Abrupt detail into the general blur
Of fields and wetlands by the interstate

Abides with me. Another second, and
It might have shaken loose its folded wings
And lifted—as a rowing soul abandons
The body that has been its habitat—
Itself into the infinite gold sky.
I did not stop. How could I? I was driving. 
Always, when I see these things, I’m driving.
The dashboard clock is flicking out the minutes
That one by one become a passing hour. 
But I have seen the egret: darkly white
In all its liquid landscape, upright, waiting, 
Here and gone like everything you think
Will still be standing there when you come back.

Sally Thomas

Deborrah Corr

To Believe in Water

                   -after Marie Howe, “The Maples”

I stood by the river as it bulged against its banks

and asked, what difference does one person make?

The river hurried on toward the lake.

The swelling sorrow of the world pressed inside my ribs.

What is the worth of a single drop, I asked,

and water licked my feet.

A merganser swam against the current,

the work of its feet concealed beneath.

On a high branch, a heron watched.

Be the rain, I thought, as each drop let go

of itself, eased into unending flow.

Deborrah Corr is the author of the chapbook Naked Rib (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have appeared or will be appearing in many journals, including The Penn Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Booth, Passager, Rust and Moth, Epiphany, The McNeese Review, Painted Pebble, and several others.

Matthew Kirby

The Pull

As springs give birth to creeks, so creeks to streams,

and streams to rivers rushing toward the bay.

Ditch water from beside the rural way

ends tossed among the wide Atlantic’s breams.

Trout take the other path, seeking the shade

of forests, cold flows filtered over stone.

A crafty brown, hunting clay banks alone,

can live and thrive unseen where town dogs wade.

It haunts the runnel past the soccer field

in woods where kids ride bikes on plywood ramps

or stargaze out of range of Main Street’s lamps.

Both fish and youth stay artfully concealed 

but, some nights, feel the pull of the unknown:

fathomless darkness and the ocean’s foam. 

Matthew Kirby’s poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in various periodicals, recently, Tar River Poetry, Little Patuxent Review, Doubly Mad, and Literary Matters. He writes from Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.

Ramya Yandava

Sea-Bed

And by the margin of the sea I’ll rest

my tired body on the sun-warmed sand

and let the ocean press her swelling breast

against my breast, her hand against my hand.

I need no down—the dune will be my pillow,

the waves a briny blanket, salted sheet,

washing me wakeless in a wet crescendo

that rolls and swells, then quiets at my feet.

Asleep beneath the ceaseless pulse of sea,

rocked soundly in the ancient cradle’s sway,

I hear the crooning of a melody

and lapse into a silent spell, away

into a reverie of ships and fishes

where mermaids—smiling, blue-lipped—grant my wishes.

Ramya Yandava lives in Boston. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Oxonian Review, The Society of Classical Poets, The Classical Outlook, and Merion West. She writes the newsletter Soul-Making at soulmaking.xyz.

Adrienne Su

Solitude

How can I be sure

events occurred, if no one

accompanied me?

A naïve question.

Many who were once with me

no longer endure

to affirm, refute,

or compare memory with.

That we once traveled

together, or ate

apples, or circled mountains

is mine to assert —

mine alone, as if

I’d made up the anecdote,

which no longer dwells

anywhere but here

in my unreliable

retrieval system,

which I keep trying

to make indelible, or

at least readable,

lest experience

vaporize. Without syntax,

without solitude,

I assimilate

nothing, have no idea

what I want, even

as I intuit

that I desire what any

person desires, that

I could consume it

as naturally as food,

water, mountain air,

if I could muster

the will to receive one thing

without naming it.

Konmari

I’m the type who likes to work ahead, advance faster.

In high school I sat at the back of French I, doing chapters

not yet discussed. In adulthood I started downsizing

while deep in the acquiring phase, theorizing

it made sense to prepare. Out went uncomfortable lace,

anything dry-clean-only, particleboard, videotapes,

individual tart pans. Book-disposing guidelines

go gentle on teachers and writers, but I went nine times

to the library annex, offloading novels, anthologies,

textbooks, a few Collected Works. Inevitably

there would be regrets: the thesaurus I had to re-buy

in worse condition, the pan-Asian cookbook that despite

offensive language made good food. When a new semester

descended, I abandoned the cull. Which could be compared

to the end of French, but French was simply displaced

by other languages. Peak tidying – photos and keepsakes – 

demolishes time travel. Shreds evidence. That clearing out

was in fashion meant that someday, not clearing out

would be in – both dangerous trends. But that’s an excuse.

I didn’t want to touch anything radioactive. Also wanted to,

just not yet. Isn’t value proportional to reaction?

Shouldn’t everyone keep poison letters, to have options?

I was suffering not from procrastination

but refusal to imagine my own obliteration,

the inability to excise the vision in which my ghost

keeps active vigil, editing captions. Redacting notes.  

Adrienne Su

Jared Carter

Abandoned

Burdock and vines, so overgrown
         that none can see
The loose bricks tumbled down. Unknown,
         the destiny
 
That haunts things gone asunder. Where
         few care to look,
The wreckage seems almost aware,
         the way a book,
 
Left in the twilight, its pages
         turned by the wind,
Sifts through whatever engages,
         somewhere within.

Chess

I have always liked to play black.
         I think it suits
My basic outlook—to hold back,
         wait for the fruits
 
Of innocence to shrivel, droop,
         and be picked off
One by one. In the chicken coop
         the slightest cough
 
Betrays the fox, who makes no sound,
         but grabs each hen
By the throat, waltzing her around   
         like an old friend.

Cicadas

They toil not, neither do they spin,
         and only sing
By forcing from their bodies hymns
         of journeying
 
Up from earth, from years of darkness—
         sound unsurpassed,
That by reverberation tests
         their need to clasp
 
The light—to seize and transform all
         that will around
Them fade. To momentarily call,
         at last unbound.

Jared Carter’s most recent book of poems, The Land Itself, is from Monongahela Books in West Virginia. He lives in Indiana.