December 2025
What Fall Leaves
By Samir Firas Atassi
we will always keep. The farmer’s scythe sweeps
and leaves gold to be reaped. The fall lights tiny
campfires in our teeth, leaves us
to navigate long, dark fields
by their glow. The fall
leaves our shadows
as one shadow
that plays
on the side of the barn, the farm at dusk
its form. It leaves
pictures of its heart
engraved on the glistening treeskins, wood-
cuts burning with returns, as fawns
test out their new legs
and the tractor slumps its shoulders
in the ditch, vowing to one day beat
rust. The fall leaves us
behind,
as its restless, windy arms
pull scarves of smoke from every chimney
across our noses
with the soot of the past. It leaves
every house alone to its own silence, like an old man
asleep with his pipe, ten last wishes
inside his mouth.
Biography
Samir Firas Atassi is a poet from the Northeast Ohio region who’s been writing for over twenty years. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Ashland University, and his works have appeared in various publications including River Teeth Online, Painted Bride Quarterly and The Ghazal Page. He currently lives and works as a librarian in North Olmsted, Ohio.
on Thursday night they
By Jordan Boyd
smile at me
as I smile
at them
and perhaps
they perceive
a boy prodigal
with arms open
to sanctuary gates
all riches squandered
as actions
become actions
manifest consequence
or just shitty circumstances
such as
back straight for two hours
eyes open
as they all whisper amen
I sit with the urge to be
somewhere
anywhere else
than here
tugging vessel
against flow
and sit on down
in a cushioned chair
a few rows
in front of the stage
where tonight’s sermon
is strummed
by my father’s echoes
on the Word say
let there be
reverb between
past deeds and
karmic cascades
is and is not
this Thursday night
an odyssey
shipwreck
upon shore
as eyes are open
while they pray
Biography
Jordan Boyd is a writer and musician living in Oakland, California. Jordan released the poetry collection, shadow burn, with Nomadic Press in 2020. Jordan has had his work published in Lunae Press, Cult Magazine and Every Body Magazine. Jordan released the solo music album, yes yes yes yes yes, in 2025.
for your never named sake
By Sambhu Ramachandran
Dear child, you turned me into a polyglot overnight.
I found myself staring hard
at the fine print of loss in every language
grief knows to write, and making sense of them all
as though in a flash
I had become preternaturally intelligent—
should I feel grateful or wretched for this gift?
Tired of too much knowledge,
I sought the lair of forgetfulness
overhung with the intoxicating smoke
of burnt hours where my red-hot brain
tattooed with suffering, was gripped by tongs,
and dipped in cool nothingness:
but after a while remorse intervened.
Now I am a kleptomaniac
pilfering what is left
of your scant memories
from mushrooming malls of transience.
I squat for days inside the same question: how to let go?
My nights, married to melancholy,
contemplate adultery with sleep.
Dear child, you never planted your little feet
on the earth’s forehead
burning with a fever
for which ecologists say there is no common cure.
To moonlight you never confided your terrors,
to the sea’s kind nature,
easily moved to an opulence of tears,
a stranger you will remain:
you will never hobnob with the rain.
We never had a chance to meet,
forge a bond that was supposed to last,
and see it broken beyond repair.
Now I will never get to play
the stern patriarch
blaming you for your incorrigible ways
and you—young prodigal—
won’t have a chance to flaunt your defiance
and bring your father to his knees,
his flammable ego
burnt to ashes
by a love at once fierce and forgiving.
Yet we were on either side
of your mother’s tummy for a while,
me knocking and knocking
with insistent whispered greetings
to you too eager for my voice
and kicking frantically as though you meant
to break free of your loving captivity
and measure out the world
with your little feet.
I imagined you wrapped up like a surprise,
snug in her womb,
swaying to my lullaby.
Then all of a sudden, you were still
and through the deafness of disbelief,
I heard the word ‘bradycardia’ leap off the doctor’s lips.
Now that you are gone,
the silence of your unheard cries
will migrate to the interior of my ears.
My heart, which sprang to its legs,
like a dog that is thrown a bone,
will to its dullness retreat.
Though I have no hope
of finding you up there among the stars,
as far as you have lived here will remain forever.
Your hands I never touched will caress
the gnarled root of my pain,
your eyes I never saw burn like tapers in the strangling darkness.
I’ll be a Gazelle
After Rilke
By Sambhu Ramachandran
I’ll be a gazelle wandering the savannah, and you
a leopard stalking me from behind the curtain
of dry grass. The recoil of the gun of instinct
in your tense muscles will send you whizzing
like a spotted bullet across the distance. Startled
by your swiftness, I’ll flee to where I think an asylum
lies, but you will outrun my urge for self-preservation
and paw my flank ever so softly to ask, don’t you know
we’re playing tag? Dumbfounded by death passing me
close by, I will pause for a moment to catch my breath.
The wind sifting through the baobab trees
will scatter flecks of auburn light on our bodies.
Then, it will be my turn to chase you—a blur
of yellow and black. Thus, we will spend our day in sport
though your glinting teeth and lingering roar are sure
to disrupt the idyll. After we lie down side-by-side
tired of speed, you’ll stretch strings of grass across
my antlers and strum them like a harp with claws so sharp
that all my prayers will be for the music to last.
My Daughter’s Feeding Bottle
By Sambhu Ramachandran
My daughter’s attachment
to her first-ever feeding bottle
outlasted her love affair with formula.
Like a soldier who had seen
too many battles,
the bottle’s longevity only seemed to grow
as the months rolled by.
It had the illustration
of a blue baby dolphin arcing nimbly
through excited waves
to the surface,
a striped ball balanced on its rostrum.
Whenever we tried to get her to drink
from a cup,
she reeled in abhorrence of its gape-mouthed kiss,
and bounced off, imitating the reflexes
of a kangaroo
sensing danger closing in.
But that was not all:
she called the bottle loving names,
petting it indulgently like a petulant baby,
and could sleep at night only after
she had sucked long and hard
on its stiff rubber nipple,
which made her mother’s instincts erupt
in a billowing fire-flecked cloud of envy.
Though I realised the perils
of such dependence,
my will became a turncoat
at her least resistance,
and the bottle continued its reign
of personhood, superimposed with a pathos
both mildly menacing and absurd.
I remember the day the bottle went missing:
we ransacked cupboards, startled the darkest crannies
with torchlight, and stripped our minds
of the furniture of forgetfulness
as she cried her heart out
to the high-pitched lullaby of loss.
Desperate, I bought another bottle
of the exact same size—
complete with lanyard and all—
and rubbed the incriminating logo
clean off,
with added touches to make it look old.
Well, I made up a story about the baby dolphin
leaping back into the ocean
in search of its mother pining away in its absence.
Somehow that satisfied her. A smile
twinkled in her moist eye as though she wanted to say,
I know you are lying, but I trust you.
I guess we are all blithely sucking
at comforting lies of this kind
in our search for some larger meaning in life.
We know the feeding bottles
of our cherished beliefs
are all surrogates for the one taken away from us
by our growing too wise. Still,
we hold on to them,
guarding the illusion of authenticity
with a fierceness
that could be called scary.
We must be thankful for this pretence:
we would all have died of thirst otherwise.
Biography
Sambhu Ramachandran is a bilingual poet, translator, and short story writer who moonlights as an Assistant Professor of English at N.S.S. College, Pandalam. His work has appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Two Thirds North, The Bombay Literary Magazine, and The Tiger Moth Review, among many others. He lives in Kayamkulam, Kerala, where he attempts to capture the transience of the world through his writings and occasionally answers to @sambhuramachandran on Instagram.
Pilgrims
By Amy Allison
the sky never looks the same
anywhere from day to day
while people try
to secure the earth
with walls and towers
and so many windless places
these things pilgrims can tell you
before sleep finally tames them
theirs the freshness of the morning
theirs the bright beckoning way
Biography
Amy Allison is a poet and fiction writer who lives in Southern California. Her writing appears at NewMyths.com, The Gravity of the Thing, and The Genre Society. Her novella, Sunset, is forthcoming from Willow River Press. Visit her online at ByAmyAllison.com. Follow her on Instagram and Bluesky @byamyallison.
Picture Perfect
By Michael A. Russo
A contemporary masterpiece?
Surely not.
A groundbreaking, culture-shaping landmark?
More accurately, the world’s biggest long shot
No, no
Under the harsh critical auspices of reality,
It is destined to be the work that escaped memory
And is it “picture perfect?”
Not remotely.
But then again,
Neither are we.
Biography
Michael A. Russo is a veteran Long Island public school teacher of 25 years. He is married to his beloved wife and has two remarkable children. His eclectic poetry is inspired by the gritty and realistic works of the 1970s. It also reflects the many joys, absurdities, and tragedies of the human condition. He also takes pride in speaking for the silent, silenced, and forgotten.
Cantonese
By DS Maolalai
fat builds beneath
my pectoral like unspoken
language. the gut balloons
outward with pus. we speak
english easily: will you love me
if I lose my skinny arms?
I don’t speak french
or cantonese. my genetics
purely irish. I love you
more than anything
and you married me
so you must love me too.
lately I’ve been looking up
old girlfriends in the evenings.
had a yen, it turns out,
for women with promising careers.
all academics in postgrad
or else making money. you make
obscene money so I must
stay thin for you, and publish
my poems in english.
fat beats at my chest
like water at docksides.
chrysty: you speak languages
that I can’t understand,
and I want to. I would learn
cantonese but I’m worried
you’ll hear me speak clumsily
working out words for hello.
I’m worried that will be the thing
which tells you finally I’m a fool
after I’ve fooled you so long
and so very successfully.
Biography
DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as “a cosmopolitan poet” and another as “prolific, bordering on incontinent”. His work has been nominated fourteen times for BOTN, ten for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections; “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016), “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022)
The Crested Fisher
By Harrison Fisher
Awake in the middle of the night,
then truly quits with sleep, I see my hair
is standing straight up.
At this moment, I am no longer just Fisher,
but The Crested Fisher.
All the poltergeists
stop their kitchen racket
to marvel at my transformation,
my wispy hair
now an order of feathers.
Perhaps I can fly,
skimming the river,
catching fish and eating them raw—
I practice on an autumnal can of tuna—
Oh, sudden swooping down with the can opener.
Oh, the last time I will taste onion and mayonnaise,
the price of freedom.
Oh, yes, this will be preferable to work.
Rippling
through my goose pimply flesh,
the promise of riparian freedom!
Biography
Harrison Fisher published twelve collections of poems from 1977 to 2000, most recently Poematics of the Hyperbloody Real. After a hiatus for most of the 21st century, in 2025 he had new work in numerous magazines, including Amsterdam Journal, BlazeVOX, The Corpus Callosum, Metachrosis, Misfitmagazine, Panoplyzine, Rundelania, Slipstream, Trampoline, and Uppagus.
The Ways of Winter
By Arvilla Fee
I
shrieks echo against drywall,
release the little beasts!
it’s a snow day—freedom
red noses peek above scarves;
there’s a new crop of snowmen
II
tires spin uselessly on ice
reverse, forward, reverse…
curses fog the windshield,
hot coffee in the cupholder,
also useless on these roads
III
Undulating hills of snow,
a beautiful delight
from a living room window,
a fire burning in the hearth,
teakettle shrieking on the stove
Biography
Arvilla Fee lives in Dayton, Ohio with her husband, three of her five children, and two dogs. She teaches for Clark State College, is the lead poetry editor for October Hill Magazine, and has been published in over 100 magazines. Her three poetry books, The Human Side, This is Life, and Mosaic: A Million Little Pieces are available on Amazon. Arvilla’s life advice: Never travel without snacks. Visit her website and her new magazine: https://soulpoetry7.com/
The Number
By Joey Colby Bernert
In the back of a Bible,
a phone number written down,
no name,
just digits pressed hard enough
to dent the thin paper.
I stare at it a long time
before picking up the receiver,
the thought that anyone at all
might answer,
might remind me the world
still speaks.
Fifteen minutes,
a call carried on wires,
a stranger’s voice breaking the quiet.
I say little,
listen more.
The line goes dead,
but for a moment,
it felt like leaving.
Biography
Joey Colby Bernert (any/all) is a clinical social worker, statistician, and MPH student. Joey is the Editor in Chief for the Orichalcum Tower Press. They are a recovering heroin addict and alcoholic. They work to with rural populations to provide treatment for substance abuse.
Most days
By Morgan Boyer
It’s a miserable existence;
most days I spend undoing
yesterday’s mistakes
Like leaving milk-stained bowls out to spoil,
tainting the kitchen with the scent of gas station diary
as the steam from the coffee dissolves
giving out my PIN number to a scam artist
with Cheeto-coated fingers gliding across
the well-worn keyboard like a grand piano
forgetting the password to a streaming service
and having to sit through waiting music that
sounds like a canary being strangled in a tin can
crack an egg in a non-stick pan, watch
the goo hit the slightly-heated skillet,
and contemplate how it’s only 1:31 pm
you still have so much time
to make all the mistakes you’ll
have to correct tomorrow
Biography
Morgan Boyer is the author of The Serotonin Cradle (Finishing Line Press, 2018), If I Wasn’t Sacred (Alien Buddha Press, 2025) and a graduate of Carlow University. Boyer has been featured in Kallisto Gaia Press, Thirty West Publishing House, Oyez Review, Pennsylvania English, and Voices from the Attic. Boyer resides in Pittsburgh, PA.
Underseasoned
By Kevin Daniel Scheepers
Demons gaining ground, he’s under
the cosh, severed head under the cloche instead
of the amuse bouche,
sous chef went stir crazy cooking up witches’ brew,
no half measures—the host
served a non-alcoholic apéritif to amuse fools.
He couldn’t decide between the signature tenderloin
and beef bourguignon—
ground cardamom and coriander seed-crusted
plaice for her,
complimented with sea salt battered chips.
Dinner table politics overpowered his palate—
golden goose in the pressure cooker
with sprigs of rosemary
underarm, dried bay leaves and garlic in the pocket.
Sweet tooth, still turned his nose
at his just deserts,
troubles bleeding at the boundaries like a layered trifle.
Rendered the fat he trimmed and scored,
then asked for the cheque.
Acrid smell of bleeding hearts burning, the chef’s kiss.
Exegesis
By Kevin Daniel Scheepers
A suspicious shadow remained
long after the bird had flown away.
What has tomorrow done for me?—
infinity steadily tending to zero.
I exist in vacillating hermeneutics,
too ineffable to grasp,
too daunting to forget—
a smothering love
like a water hyacinth river.
False signals produced real symbols—
a scintilla of hope
to see you again if Andromeda keeps her word,
if nature let’s parallel lines merge.
Would be a fool
to not use the ancestors as ghostwriters.
What lies buried in the library of Alexandria?
in the lost desert libraries of Timbuktu?—
mindshare and a shadow
cast long into the sable night.
Sacred Sufi, empty sack of wool—
desecrated beauty like
a dusty tome with a weathered spine
and dirt-brown fore-edge.
I bask in art forms within me
and beyond.
Biography
Kevin Daniel Scheepers is a 28-year old man from Pretoria, South Africa. He completed an MSc in Biotechnology in 2023, but always maintained a personal interest in the written arts, particularly poetry. His work has previously been published in Audience Askew and Harrow House Journal, and is soon to be published in Brittle Paper, Emergent Literary, South Africa Poetry Magazine, Soul Poetry, Prose & Arts Magazine, and Academy of the Heart and Mind.
In a reverie
By Plamen V.
In the hush of twilight’s gentle embrace,
Where shadows blend and the day finds grace,
I wander the meadows of thoughts unconfined,
In a realm of reverie, sweet dreams intertwined.
The whispering breeze sings a lullaby’s tune,
While stars sprinkle silver on the cusp of the moon.
I dance with the echoes of moments long past,
In this fleeting haven, where dreams hold steadfast.
Clouds drift like memories, soft and profound,
Casting shapes of visions that glimmer around.
A tapestry woven with threads of pure light,
Each shimmer a story, a spark in the night.
I sail on the rivers of time’s gentle flow,
With laughter of children in currents below.
Their giggles are raindrops, they fall with delight,
Turning mundane minutes to purest of flights.
The fragrance of blossoms, their colors ablaze,
Paints canvases rich in ethereal glaze.
I pick at the petals of yesterdays gone,
Finding beauty in moments that linger on.
Here, in this reverie, I find who I am,
A dreamer, a seeker, a quiet heart’s slam.
With each breath I take, I gather the stars,
Mapping the cosmos of hopes and of scars.
So let me linger, let me drift and collide,
With the wonders of a world that dwells deep inside.
For in this enchanted, ephemeral sea,
Reverie cradles the essence of me.
Biography
I am Plamen V. , an award-winning freelance writer/poet with published works online and in a dozen US magazines. I have been writing since I was 10. I have won numerous writing contests and have awards from different parts of the world.
I am a creative person with big dreams and also love to help people. I also have Certificates on Creative Writing from the UK writing centre, from the Open University in Scotland, Oxford Study Centre and from Harvard University.
The Invisible Past
By Marc Cohen
I have nothing left to give to the invisible past,
not a drop more of blood sweat or slaver, my sense
of purpose having lost its vision the way
windows can lose their transparency in certain gray light, the way
water darkens against a lip of coarse land
protruding through its undercurrent.
We are born strangers to this world,
aware of bad news no more
than dancers attentive to the mirrors
that contain them. I know people
who strip off ideas like clothing,
who shed identities the way aphids change
their armor. It must be wonderful
to divest yourself of so much generational trauma
without negating the causes.
Whereas the past just keeps slipping outside
the red or the violet, unseen, forbidding change—
it’s incredible, when you think about it,
how from day one we are taught
to be ashamed of our bodies
not by our parents, but everyone else’s,
to see ourselves geomorphically, as loci
of tidal and continental stress,
to laugh at our mistakes
until our sides split
and tears cascade from the incisions.
The way you never see the insect
before you feel its bite. I guess
I should try to be more observant.
Perhaps you are being kind to me
but I have no idea how to detect this
even in this allegedly safe space.
I am tired.
My body grows distant.
My limbs curl in on themselves,
into the shape of an insoluble question.
Aphids never truly mature, I suppose.
They just slowly shed themselves invisible.
Biography
I am a writer and artist born in the United States and residing in Toronto, Canada. My creative work explores existentially topical themes like alienation, dislocation and the quest for meaning in a shifting semantic landscape.
Dolmen/Tinkinswood Burial Chamber; Tinkinswood, Wales
By Loralee Clark
Next to the chamber lay a long stone, sideways
like an animal’s torso: a pit carved
where a shoulder would connect,
sharpening areas like ribs along the flank.
Those engineers began using the wisdom
of earth’s bones: stone to cut stone,
sharp blows reverberating, shaking flesh
to shape where they rhapsodized, exalted
the living divine, the soul to be reborn.
These alchemists
pregnant with curiosity,
chests blooming like linden trees,
fragrant and light
assembled three stones, recited the names
of all who came before, beginning in darkness,
relying on their inner sight
navigating plains of desire.
If you fall asleep here, under the rock roof,
it is prophesized you will die, go mad,
or become a poet: decode my fate. I woke
seeing snakes, umbilicus of this earth,
healthy, vital, sweet, cool, rope wriggling,
shedding itself to cast off death:
a new moon with her own rebirth.
Grass snake, moon snake,
brown beauty blessing this stone,
slinking away to multiply herself,
build the mountains: world born from her seed.
Biography
Loralee Clark has a fourth chapbook forthcoming: Neolithic Imaginings: Mythical Explorations of the Unknown (Kelsay Press, 2026). Clark has been nominated for three 2026 Pushcart Prizes. She resides in Virginia; her website is sites.google.com/view/loraleeclark. Her Substack, which focuses on the process of creativity, is nosuchthingasfailure.substack.com.
Kashmir
By Peycho Kanev
I watch the pigeons coo and
love each other gently
on the windowsill.
It is Sunday.
Beaks and feathers, heated by the sun,
touch.
From their throats comes
sweet gurgling and it touches
my fingers.
Time slips away…
And it is still Sunday.
And they love each other…
I light my pipe and let the smoke
do the same with the emptiness
of this room.
Biography
Peycho Kanev is the author of 12 poetry collections and three chapbooks, published in the USA and Europe. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, such as: Rattle, Poetry Quarterly, Evergreen Review, Front Porch Review, Hawaii Review, Barrow Street, Sheepshead Review, Off the Coast, The Adirondack Review, Sierra Nevada Review, The Cleveland Review and many others.
An American Life
By John Grey
Shut your eyes at the end.
Screw pain out of a job.
Absently you petted the bald head
& then you got out after 80 years
in that labyrinth
& not once finding any wisdom –
then your long struggle down
faltered below the brow-line
blasted its way out the mouth & nose
with loud sneezes
& coughs that burnt a hole in your throat
accompanied by unrelenting fever
& throughout your brain,
the hammer of the devil –
Come on, eat up you fool!
Come on out of your inhibitions,
your contentment in solitude.
your shriveled expression…
yes you,
so many miles distant.
cradling a dog like a baby.
Crooned…as a stray dog
dropped into your ancient lap,
as patient as tear to fall,
next stop…
the ground.
Deep within,
old cootie came up from the desert,
did not realize
how little of the liquor remained.
Eyes shut tight –
fat, but not as fat
as you once were –
only as deaf as you feel.
Fear takes root in bedroom shadows,
gazing across at what could be ghosts,
hastening upon a fallen comrade
& the chant of endless lullabies.
You hurl stones
at puddles here & there,
sniffing dry, scentless air,
make plans to never get up again,
Some minutes strike hard.
Others stagger into noon.
Make time from near death.
Dress like mannequins.
Creep. Put on flesh.
Whisper:
don’t expect any angels out of this,
o simple & deluded one.
Lie down in the path of rising waters.
Keep snakes company.
Sing lullabies to put yourself to sleep.
For hours on end if you have to.
Stretch a little.
Such was yours.
Now you suck your cheeks dry.
Midnight’s jaws –
that’s where they find you.
Pull you out, piece by piece.
Then pick the pieces up
& think they have you.
They fall for it
like a magician’s audience:
It goes with the hours spent crying,
Death – too mute an adversary.
Tucked into the earth,
it won’t even make itself known.
& yet it turns your head.
For something not there,
it’s strangely unused to being ignored,.
especially in the depths of the night
when it send vibrations out
like advance troops,
or visions of the ones who died before you,
(where the dying will meets the circling vultures)
Earth will make new stock from your molecules.
In the meantime, someone will be searching
for your one acceptable suit.
Harvard Sunset
By John Grey
A silver flight of birds,
ancient trees, copper domes,
splendor’s tropes,
open to the night experience.
Gemstone stars trace covert arcs
above the walls of pewter and brick.
Trees comply with coming darkness
while, in light’s fade,
grow the giants, Eliot and Lowell,
in early American skies,
a silent pleat of genius into night.
It seems as if it’s, all been here a thousand years,
with roots in dark ages
but tips gilded like tomorrow’s dawn
and, in between, great branches rising.
Colonnaded facades, high chapel vaults,
libraries, halls, crisscrossing paths
that gleam and flow;
a statue on a pedestal of etched history
softens its hard marble stance,
points to graying grass or amber buildings
glowing like clay through mist.
Six p.m., everything goes quietly
and yet, nowhere does it submit.
Biography
John Grey is an American poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, River And South and The Alembic. Latest books, Subject Matters, Between Two Fires, and Covert are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, Wite Wall Review and Cantos.