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What we call Dark

is often what we don't understand, or cannot yet
explain. Dark as in: unseeable; not observed.
The inside of the box. Beyond the boundary.

The energy stretching the universe
faster than reason can catch. The matter that,
unseen, drives gravity mad.

But these too are dark: the consciousness
that torments itself with unknowable things;
the inside of the apple; the underside

of the serpent's tongue; the knowledge that,
once tasted, darkens like fruit rotting
out of its place. Some darkness

comforts, shields from day's fire
and its scrutinising eyes. Some hides
its own darkness inside it, the deeds

that even evil shames to think of.
And some – the thick darkness
where Moses found God – is only

dark in its mystery. Nothing to fear,
although fearsome. May we
reach for You in our knowing

and our unknowing too,
prepared, like the possum with its
tail black as night I saw scampering

through the forest, sure in
its maker's nocturnal providence,
the treasures of the dark.

Matthew Pullar is a Melbourne-based poet. He has had poems published in Ekstasis, Poems for Ephesians, Amethyst Review, Fare Forward and Reformed Journal. Most recently, his collection of poems, This Teeming Mess of Glory (Wipf & Stock, 2025) was shortlisted for Australian Christian Book of the Year.

To Pet a Dragonfly

Is to be so aware of your own skin,
you feel it vibrate as it makes contact
with mystery. It is to be close enough
to observe the twitching of a tiny mouth,
and to wonder whether the iridescent
creature, shining in blue and red,
has something to say to you. 

To pet a dragonfly allows the truth
of who you are to be observed
by thirty thousand lenses. 
It is a small, yet significant, event
in your life. But for the dragonfly—
who lives mere weeks—the merging
of skin and exoskeleton is a lifelong
experience. Each day, you wonder
if you will ever see her again.

You remove your finger, 
she makes a complete circle 
above you, and lightly buzzes 
your head. Once she has blessed you, 
she disappears into the glossy 
green of the wild magnolia
on her brief journey through 
water, Earth and sky.



Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbooks, Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books), The Last Time I Saw You (Finishing Line Press), The Wild Parrots of Marigny (Querencia Press), and I Can’t Recall Exactly When I Died (Kelsay Books). She is also the author of four Origami Poems Project microchaps, and her poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction have been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world. Her author blog is Diane Elayne Dees: Poet and Writer-at-Large.

Four Elements
				for Magi Pierce

			
Air, fire, water, earth: each element 
matched with a cardinal direction.

Air with the East. The inhale is inspiration,
expanding breath, a promise not yet embodied.

Fire with the South. Breath at the apex, 
burning with creation and destruction.

Water with the West. Movement and memory,
the sinking sun, the passing of life.

Earth with the North. Emptiness and eternity,
the ground underfoot, cessation of breath.

The exhalation is the letting go.
The emptiness is what is left.

Think of an ice cube lying
on the ground on a neutral day.

The fire of the focusing mind
fed by the air of the breath

softening ice into water,
melting and moving,

unlocking memory 
petrified to habit.

Anne Whitehouse is the author of poetry collections: The Surveyor’s Hand, Blessings and Curses, The Refrain, Meteor Shower, Outside from the Inside, and Steady, as well as the art chapbooks, Surrealist Muse (about Leonora Carrington), Escaping Lee Miller, Frida, Being Ruth Asawa, and Adrienne Fidelin Restored. She is the author of a novel, Fall Love. Her poem, “Lady Bird,” won the Nathan Perry DAR 2023 “Honoring American History” poetry contest. She has lectured about Longfellow and Poe at the Wadsworth Longfellow House in Portland, Maine, and Longfellow House Washington Headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Memos To the Great Attractor  
#7
Touchstone

Here I go again, picking up pebbles for my pocket
until I become too heavy to swim. Nostalgia.

What was a comfort, maybe still is,
turns cumbrance, possibly lethal;

but finally, just comes down to mementos of skin, of bone,
down to composing notions, the face in the glass.

Time to box some more china for Angel's Treasures
at the village church, to pitch out more old traces,

the irrelevance now of genealogies. Broken-limbed trees.
I’ve pared down the piece of precious found wood to a nub

that might yet become a pencil or be fitted with a blade
like the ones the architect fingers for models and designs,

nub round as the crown a mother shoves through into its separate possibility.
You know about all this, lover and schemer. Building up and taking down.

This touch-stone in my palm's jasperite like the Makapansgat Cobble 
the collector Eitzman found in a South African cave, seeing in it a face

that seemed to be carved — by an ancient Australiopithican,
so he thought — cradled nubbly in his palm like the touch of the ancient hand

of a sculptor reaching out to him. But no. 
A natural simulacrum, experts said, made by pressure and heat

and the pummeling of ages. Nothing more. But then they noticed
it lay nine miles from any geologic source,

so it was carried by a prehistoric collector into that cave
of human remains, someone who saw that same face

looking back, another explorer seeking connection
from a deeper antiquity, a sacred emblem

left behind, to carry on speaking the holy
into a future loneliness, a shared wonder.

A much-published bi-national immigrant, gardener, Bonsai-grower, painter, Jennifer M Phillips has lived in five states, two countries, and now, with gratitude, in Wampanoag ancestral land on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Phillips’ chapbooks: Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity (iblurb.com, 2020) and A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street Press, 2022). Phillips has two poems nominated for this year’s Pushcart Prize. and is a finalist in the current Eyelands Book Competition, and Cutthroat’s Joy Harjo Poetry contest.

Gruene, Texas Gift


The presents jut jauntily beneath
the Gallerie’s storefront Christmas tree,
wrapped in red or shiny foil with terrific
bows, terrific beckoning bows. An invitation

to her eye. Like a summons calling
her to dismiss the unshakeable
emptiness inside, empty as the dried up
carcass of the cicada who once sang; empty

as the wren’s nest after the hawk;
empty as the other side of the bed. And find
the presents filled, even if only with
the stale re-circulated air of shoppers

shopping, their inhalations swelling the balloon
of their chests as they canvas shelves, their pockets
weighted with wishlists, the longed for and unreconciled.
Hoping still to find the right something.

Or anything. Like the way it was that December
evening with a whiff of the Guadalupe
River in the air, running solo through a hanger
of pecan trees, crunchy carpet of shells

cracked open and already scratched clean
by squirrels. Lungs huffing like a forced laborer,
but anyone could see her heart only half
present, just trying to keep a rhythmic beat.

Then a footstrike away, weeks after the tree
gave the last of its fruit, a whole nut draws
her eye. The slight slit in its brown overcoat 
an invitation to kneel down,

unwrap it and feast on the saving sweetness
of the last pecan. Even now you dig in again
and again, reaching across the emptiness
for the unbroken goodness inside.
 

Patricia Watts is a former Language Program Coordinator and ESL teacher now nurturing her love of creative writing. She is a member of the Transformative Language Arts Network and various craft-oriented writing groups. Two of her poems were published in The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative, and she has numerous professional articles in academic journals and edited books.

Barn Owl at Midday


He remembered  
her.

He remembered her joy
at the silent flight of this night hawk
through the leafless apple trees.
Its confident gaze meeting hers.

He remembered the ladder
she made him climb
to place a roost
built for ‘her’ bird.

A gentle man.
Standing alone 
focus driving into the ground beneath a plain stone.
His shadow pooling dark round his feet,
while the sun trumpeted midday heat.

The owl made no sound
as it cut through
the force of his concentration. 
Shattering the shades that surrounded him.

His eyes lifted 
to meet, just inches away,
the dished face of the day time owl,
calm and still.

Reassuring.



Viv Longley has been writing for her own pleasure since she was a child.  Later in life she undertook an MA in Creative Writing at The Open University, specialising in poetry. As well as having one collection (Tally Sheet, Currock Press, 2021) she is undertaking a number of collaborative publications, notably, the anthology Daughters of Thyme. She is also preparing a second collection of her own and a number of essays – the latter to be called I am in a Hurry. 

Yudel Huberman is from Vancouver, BC. He grew up within Hasidic Judaism and has since pursued studies in forest conservation and ecology. He is currently a graduate student in forest conservation at the University of Northern British Columbia. His writing combines a love for the natural world, forest ecology, and Jewish spirituality.

A Prayer to Endure


Whatever calls me by name
may I answer
filling purposes I may never understand
each dream unremembered
flowing through my blood
each assassination
rinsed from my eyes
circling down the drain.

Whatever I gather from the gutter
may I make of it a kite,
a song, a shadowbox of flower buds.
For each ending I endure
may I walk forth
my every heavy step 
pushing new seeds into earth.
Arms outstretched, palms open.
Ready to lend a hand where I can.

Alfred Fournier is the author of A Summons on the Wind (2023, Kelsay Books) and King of Beers (March 2025, Rinky Dink Press). His poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Indianapolis Review, Cagibi, The Sunlight Press and elsewhere. He lives in the foothills of South Mountain in Phoenix, Arizona, with his remarkable wife and daughter and two birdwatching cats.

The Eaten Years

"I will restore to you the years 
That the swarming locust has eaten"
Joel 2:25a

Name the swarm Bitterness,
blown in by the eastern wind.
Bile-bloated abdomens,
bladed mandibles click grim.
Hear their crepitation thicken,
crescendos of distortion crash.
Mourn the sweetness of peace
as good harvests turn to ash.
Who can answer sound and fury?
Who can meet Hate's appetite? 
Who can bear to sow good deeds
on the land condemned to blight? 
Humbly were the prophets clothed,
wild honeyed-meekness fed,
waiting for the years restored,
for Love to conquer, as He said. 

Ryan Helvoigt is a poet based near Denver, Colorado where she lives with her husband and three children. Her poetry has been published in Ekstasis, Clayjar Review, Fathom magazine, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, and Amethyst Review.

Cloud Chamber

The sky of superposed clouds teases thought
to come out of its locked room and rejoin
the elements. And thought is swiftly caught
up by the heels and shaken free of coin,
of every stitch of decent clothes, of blood,
of murky tokens of itself. Thought, bare
of all the weight it bore, soars up, a flood
of emptiness, that mingles with the air.
There obviously is no more to say,
but saying goes on of its own accord.
Look here, it says, from lowest, ragged gray,
to highest, paper white, the clouds afford
a view incomparable to those below.
For saying can’t resist a windy show.

Dan Campion is the author of Calypso (1981), The Mirror Test (2024), A Playbill for Sunset (2022), and Peter De Vries and Surrealism (1995) and is a co-editor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (1981, 2nd ed. 1998, 3rd ed. 2019). Dan’s poetry has appeared previously in Amethyst Review and in Able Muse, Light, Poetry, Rolling Stone, THINK, and many other magazines.