Elizabeth Eklund

“While I’m restless myself, I find reassurance in the river’s constant drone, which accompanies the andante of my heartbeat.”

Shelly Jones

Crossword puzzles, Duolingo, cats and co-habitation.

T. S. J. Harling

“In the isolation of the pandemic, I feel I am slowly drifting away, like an astronaut cut loose, untethered from the mothership. I am becoming strange.”

Berkay Bayram

“always been a big fan of nightingales
and fascinated by how they serenade their spouses.
they got a secret language to speak to each other’s souls. “

Charles Rammelkamp

“They used to hammer me as a kid
with Jesus dying on the cross for me,
as if I owed something
to this guy I’d never met,
a debt I’d never be able to repay.” 

Anna Schulte

“These nights spent reading
alone in the doorway, and it’s scary
talking to you
even from this distance.”

Hibah Shabkhez

“If I might die, if you might die, if we might die, if anyone can die not of some vague anything at some vague anytime but of this, today or tomorrow or next week, is this really what you want to spend your last days on?”

Sunny Talero

“we melted together so quickly
no one could hear me scream.”  

Staginald “Jaye” Walthour

“They called it ‘the gay plague.’ It didn’t stop a small-town Georgia man from dancing.”

Arpa Hacopian

“It takes between twelve and sixteen hours to get from the ‘third world’ to the ‘first’ by plane, but it would take approximately 87,600 hours to comprehend the differences between the two.”

Ayling Dominguez

I’m sorry that I asked you
to hold so much
back

Jeremy Trager

“I had lost something, but there was opportunity in that loss.”

Jason de Koff

“They continued to bask in golden glows
and wave and bow to passers-by,
but this was not the time for buds
to form and shine on cue”

Connor Harrison

A breathing exercise for the chronically breathless.

Catalina Aranguren

Photographic moments of silence.

Melissa Calderon-Rougié

“I awaken free of all my yesterdays
emerge a bruised garden”

Mitchell Nobis

Reflections on jazz, fatherhood, childhood, and the things that find their way into the space between our ears.

Judy DeCroce and Antoni Ooto

“Sometimes a crack of light is all there is.”

Gary Griffith

“It must be Monday. Charlie took the garbage out.”