(Goa, 2018) There's a crucifix near the seashore, of a boy who drowned, and I hug it. Christ never felt so close, so human, so warm. I think of him drowning, his body washed ashore for a seaside burial. Late that night I see the last man in the bar dwelling in fish shrunken omelette, and rain. There's music, I'm drowned already,

say not all redness are related to blood. Pepper can be red too. But it does not birth grief. Yesterday, mother cooked a pot of happiness with red oil and father turned to grief after stepping a finger in it. Maybe it is the fire. Fire can be red too. But it does not birth blood. Instead, it drinks blood. Feyijimi A. Fayowolè writes from the coastal line of Cameroon. He tweets: @FeyiJamees002.

Gray coat gathers flakes of snow that dissolve to clear moisture. For now she does not know a destination. Her steps cross a once known location, a campus with a large church where she prayed. She passes emptiness now that students are away. This is how she can accept the place. Softly silent. Her face takes in the cold. Who was she then?

You held me [I held on in cursive shush wind tentative reflex unfurled as relaxation [stillness taunting old haunts as able- ware thrummed amid garden thorns a slippery strophe of snow feathers and bene- fits as befit the guardrail [this little sleight of hand shining [a sister whispering escape Sheila E. Murphy’s most recent book is Escritoire (Lavender Ink, 2025). Murphy has lived in Phoenix, Arizona, all of her adult life.

I startled from a nap in the easy chair of afternoon, a book still open on my lap, my achy shoulder hunched and still asleep, and found my left hand clutching tenderly my right (as if that hand were someone else's, a child's, a lover's) with what you might call something like solicitude, concern, affection, a gesture of support, or as Kafka's diary records…

The writing is this listening, to write is to listen. I don't plan anything. Writing happens. Jon Fosse You take your inspiration from the weaving air itself, your rhythms woven from the braided noise of life, the nervous twitch of time, the soft-sprung metrics of the speaking world, the gauzy prosody that swirls in quiet rooms, the warp and weft of breath, those things…

These deer with fluted ears, listening to my gait, trill shadows into grass. The printer I fear ran out of color for your smile: puncture in a dead-end street where summer's fenced-in hunger splinters into crumpled dreams. In August no-one sleeps. The clouds at my back are mistaken for wings daily, but the chapel which doubles as the cemetery office has a lock I can't pick.

A streak of bone colored moon caught fire in black trees last night and in the morning it hangs limp in limbs. I hear the sun sigh when it sees me, and though I take the form light asks of me, and will have no further questions until the last slide skids by, any idea of a possible future with it that doesn't resolve to a quiet…

Because the air was crowded with a need to be loved I missed the directions to Heaven. The next exit held its breath, and ours, waiting for the palpitations to pass. Turn signals are aspirational here. Anything that marks boundaries could rat you out to the authorities who prowl your white-knuckled dreams. It's better with Vaseline. You've become so slick…

In my head I get to talk to you all the time. I forget to fall into the hole that opens between. Where you, safe from the edge, complete, fold over yourself, smooth. I crack jagged here, right at the edge, my tongue thin like a sheet, ghostly reed. In my head my voice is a smoke clarinet murmuring to buzzards…

You can get tired dragging your shadow around. Sky clouded with regrets, the need to pull up your pants every block or so. The world gets old all around you, and the feeling's mutual. In a plastic yard crowded with flamingos, the fire's gone out. But you're still up, and somewhere, maybe around the next corner, the sun puts cigarettes out on a palm extended…

Subway's All-American Club sounds like it could be the name of a white supremacist group, but other than that I have no qualms with the sandwich establishment. Nam Hoang Tran is a multidisciplinary artist living in New Orleans. His work appears in Posit, The Brooklyn Review, ANMLY, New Delta Review, Tagvverk, Always Crashing, and Diode, among others. W/ Henry Goldkamp, he co-edits TILT – a journal of intermedia poetics.

Before exiting the premise, my female roommate batted me a flirtatious glance and said I should teach her how to make rice sometime. On the counter was my single-button rice cooker. Bitch quit playing I thought but said okay, say less. Nam Hoang Tran is a multidisciplinary artist living in New Orleans. His work appears in Posit, The Brooklyn Review, ANMLY, New Delta Review, Tagvverk, Always Crashing, and Diode, among others. W/ Henry Goldkamp, he co-edits TILT – a journal of intermedia poetics.

Tried welcoming springtime with a spiritually transformative inhale/exhale combo and a bee flew straight into my open mouth. Nature and I are now one. Nam Hoang Tran is a multidisciplinary artist living in New Orleans. His work appears in Posit, The Brooklyn Review, ANMLY, New Delta Review, Tagvverk, Always Crashing, and Diode, among others. W/ Henry Goldkamp, he co-edits TILT – a journal of intermedia poetics.

when i immigrated to broken america—they pried open my kaya-coated lips, overflowing with the taste of soft-boiled egg yolk. unhinged my jaw and let it crack, angulated fractures forming. tell the world of the singaporean water i have grown up drinking and the different shade of red in the singaporean blood i bleed. how foreign i felt here, in this land of abandoned promises & overripe dreams, where 'd's and 't's are distinguishable / and where a tree is different from the number three.

You lean head against my shoulder blade. The night's put the singing to rest Like a cardboard box our bodies fold in. Where they touch slightly and stiffly seals the weighty silence. A geometry perhaps an icon pixels that remain true truer than words because vectors always pull and push directionally. What ever goes two-way? A swing door a too-dear present…

When my first husband and I had been married for a year and a half, he exploded. I was left a widow. I used to tell that story to break the ice when meeting someone new, but I don't anymore. When I say that he exploded, people always think I mean he was a terrorist. Then I have to explain what really happened, which is more embarrassing.

some days sleet's glistening skin distorts my view wind-rushed rain drops pebble the window panes glam up the ordinary lilac with a heavy veneer that bends their head to earth until they melt back to shape with slow tears tabby cat on my lap lies a loaf of purring fur at times friendly other times free-riding sharing warmth nonetheless until cat leaps away…

You and me at our kitchen table designing our destiny blueprinting roads to each other. I remember how exuberant the wild roses plentiful the raspberries. We tended promising trails nurtured fruit and vegetables to winter us over until our roots met clay. The garden shrivelled our discontent fed bitter weeds. I drive through former territories. The forest has reclaimed the fields, swallowed the garden…

James Mc Laughlin (he/him) was born in Helensburgh, Scotland, and earned a BFA from NSCAD University in 2014, and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017. Mc Laughlin is the author of the full-length poetry collection Justified Sonnets (Knives Forks and Spoons Press, England) and two chapbooks. He has exhibited and performed at galleries, venues, and alternative spaces in the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Vague yet beautiful the sunlight finds the field suddenly colours shard slanted against stone recalling James Mc Laughlin (he/him) was born in Helensburgh, Scotland, and earned a BFA from NSCAD University in 2014, and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017. Mc Laughlin is the author of the full-length poetry collection Justified Sonnets (Knives Forks and Spoons Press, England) and two chapbooks.

James Mc Laughlin (he/him) was born in Helensburgh, Scotland, and earned a BFA from NSCAD University in 2014, and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017. Mc Laughlin is the author of the full-length poetry collection Justified Sonnets (Knives Forks and Spoons Press, England) and two chapbooks. He has exhibited and performed at galleries, venues, and alternative spaces in the United States, and the United Kingdom.

It's often the case that you don't think you'll fall until you taste wind. On the first day of a long weekend in Yosemite with my family, Dad and I chose to scale a smooth section of granite with a crack shot through it. Mostly finger jams, a hard but possible route. There was a bolt at the top that we could belay from, but to get us there someone had to lead climb, dragging rope up with them, setting gear as they went.

He didn't mind waiting outside the terminal in the warm spring night, at least not once the Xanax he took to quell his numerous anxieties kicked in. Uneasy fog and a sloshing stomach from a heavy airport beer gave way to a sensory blast of hot humid air as he walked through the vestibule, deluged by the pungent aroma of dogwood and Bradford pear trees.