Calling

By Deron Eckert

The satellite in what was your yard

brings questions to me from afar.

Are you the one sending them

from wherever it is you are?

Or am I merely asking myself

if an object so large can signal

you out there in what I call

the great unknown and you

knew simply as heaven above?

I ask you to send a message below

when I visit your humble grave,

but the dish on which I used to play

could not be less than five miles away.

And that’s much too far to have

any hope of using it to shout out

to you in the unknown or above.

So, I brush the grass beneath

my feet and at yours with my hand

as if it were your hair, and I feel

not as if you are still near

but as though I can hear

you telling me to appreciate

the beauty in this world

the way you did before

you got sick and not to be afraid

like you were at the end

but curious like you were until

the end because you’ll meet me

up there and alleviate my fear

of the unknown, which you know

to be simple now after you learned

none of us have to go it alone.

---

Deron Eckert is a writer who lives in Lexington, Kentucky. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Door is a Jar, Ghost City Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, Fahmidan Journal, and elsewhere. He is currently seeking publication for his Southern Gothic coming-of-age novel and his first collection of poetry.

Minnow

By Elizabeth Levinson

We were a summer of water,

flashing silver fish,

what minnow was a shiner,

a dace,

a chub,

a larval salmon

along the shoreline,

 we were loose limbed

in the waves,

on the sandbar,

knees planted

on shifting ground,

we were sun bruised cheeks

and love bruised thighs,

we were read eyes, redeyes. 

We were love slick

and love sick and soon,

before we knew it,

summer was over and

we were washed up,

bleached white and

picked clean,

bones cold to touch

in the autumn air

bones soon to be spread

by the icy tides

and winter hungers.

---

Elizabeth Joy Levinson is a high school teacher in Chicago. Her work has been published in Whale Road Review, SWWIM, Cobra Milk, Anti-Heroin Chic, and others. The author of two chapbooks, As Wild Animals (Dancing Girl Press) and Running Aground (Finishing Line Press), her first full length collection, Uncomfortable Ecologies, will be published in the summer of 2023 (Unsolicited Press).

Overwinter

by sarah fawn montgomery

Is it enough

to say I tried?

I could not leave

so I chose to hide.

Dug deep as claws

could bear, half-moon

black and stinking

as the rot of the fallen—

leaves, a hollowed

gourd, the weak

crow—and I know

to envy what is

still beating, escape

the encroaching cold

by building myself

a burial like the garden

beds, the way in summer

I remove the heads

to fool more flowers

but in winter I must will

myself mostly dead

in order to just survive.

---

Sarah Fawn Montgomery is the author of Halfway from Home (Split/Lip Press), Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir (The Ohio State University Press), and three poetry chapbooks. She is an Associate Professor at Bridgewater State University. You can follow her on Twitter at @SF_Montgomery.

The Willowish Hue of an Inverted Relief

David M. Alper

Of a midwinter sky, the smoke of a sauna,
the radiance of a midwinter night. Also here
we read of interconnection, we see both
being drawn together in the same breath:

A few misfortunes, I fear, that more than
offset the good I have done. The number of
misfortunes seems certain, as the adjectives
have their number and differ only by their

exponents, we will hear of them all.
In addition to these are the misfortunes that
are good, you can be sure that the willow
will endure this good, in order to indicate

this. I say that you can be sure of it, because
I believe that the willow has been watching
you, because the good occurs for all who
find delight in it.

---

David M. Alper's forthcoming poetry collection is Hush. His work appears in Variant Literature, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, Oxford Magazine, and elsewhere. He is an educator in New York City.