
It is December now. The year is ending. The year has ended hundreds of thousands of times. The world has spun and we have lost and been lost. We have struggled and grown and learned new lessons about death and grief and acceptance and how to look to the future. We have learned about the smaller parts of ourselves we could more easily deny before 2020 showed us the mirror daily. Nothing will ever be the same, and now it is time to reflect on the cocoon of this year, and then, become.
Kris Hiles, EIC
The Obscure
M.P. Powers
I’m not interested in hearing the latest gossip
about the Queen of Furs or some Hawaiian-born
health-obsessed halleluiah-peddling
voice actor. I don’t want to hear any small talk,
no trivial factoids, no gridiron scores nor political opinions,
nothing to do with money, empire, big data,
the proliferation of mobile devices in Tanzania or commercial
spaceflight. I want to hear about Heraclites, the unshaven,
mad-eyed hermit, descending from his mountain retreat
in 485 BC and leaving the people four simple
words to chew on for eternity: lightning drives all things.
(Everything else is a dream).

Déjà Vu
Bhavya Bhagtani
City ruins
And, your hands
Felt a lot
Like one another
.
Cold
Abandoned
And, desperate
For something to call their own

has previously appeared in The Alipore Post and The Bombay Review. One of her poems is forthcoming in Airplane Poetry Movement’s poetry anthology.
subscapularis
Shon Mapp
it once felt like home,
a singular dwelling
made of you. invaded by aliens
who laid waste, preyed on muscle
and memory, harvested its waters
made sport of its connective tissue,
expelling something foul, foreign
and altogether identical to the eye.
only my skull, knows the difference

Elegy for Lavender
Yash Seyedbagheri
lavender, lovely and lilting
the color of Mama’s nightgown
and her walls, sharp angled, yet smooth
lavender, the color of smiles at sunset
while she twirled to Tchaikovsky
but then she switched over to black
more power, she said
while her smile slunk away
Mama became Mom
and pursed lips pursued bills and promotions

Sunday Morning Prayer
Matthew J. Andrews
With head bowed and eyes closed,
I inch closer to the canyon’s rim,
arms spread wide like a bird’s wings:
is it today I will be pushed?

The Great Auk
Molly Knox
Flammable flight on the North Atlantic
Pinguinus Impennis, now crossed
Off the list. Although flightless,
Can they still dream?
To not be smudged
All their ruler sized inches
Off this muddy blue
Globe.

Husk
David Linklater
By the water in a pair of welly boots
I wander, light a cigarette and pass
the old boat rotting in the shallow. Her
owner left for the war and never came home.
She waits there still, hoping, and on quiet
mornings the old folk say you can hear her weep
in the waves she knows so well.

Juncture Approaching
Mitchell Solomon
Dressed in a pattern of hearts and palms
Clasped, staring forward towards
This is where it all began
A future poorly stitched together, light
Peeks through split seams and crumbling fabric
A place to decide upon and process
A mirage of a tunnel
In this frigid cave
An end. Thank you for the blanket.

Into the Sea
Anisha Kaul
At twilight, noiselessly, they cross the ocean
Together bid adieu to chaos
Abandon their hearts into the still waters
Tonight, they disappear into the sea of
Dreams and memories

chimera
Tiffany Shaw-Diaz
unraveling/tangling. and i just want to watch
the twilight become
