Climate Anxiety

my grandmother tells me the temperature in delhi is
fifty-three degrees,
the hottest it has been—ever.
old women are collapsing in the streets

in november, mom and i will travel back
we’ll hoard water, behave like tourists
she’ll show me the taj mahal
you might not even like india, mom says
to deter me
(i’ve been studying the hindi alphabet online)
meaning: your eyes
and ears and nose and
white skin,
your anxious thoughts
daughter-of-a-white-man-schemas
and thought paradigms
are too weak
meaning: what do you know about heat?
meaning: yes it’s bad but stop panicking
do you see your grandmother?
there are ways we survive.

Meera Rothman is a writer currently based in Brooklyn. Their poems and essays have appeared in the New Haven Independent, the museum of americana, Rise Up Review, and The New Journal.

by Mary Robles

Mexican Folktale

Listen to the rain: drunk, metallic.
This is how you came into the world.

We were tired of this kind of story:
Another girl and her imagined pueblos of pink cloud-structures.

No one can help a troubled soul, even the old folks knew.
One eye like a wild blackberry from God, a chestnut one
from the devil, and a tongue twisted up without lengua.

Only your grandmother loved you.

Now, you sound like rain when you talk.
Now, you walk backwards into her spotted sleeve.

Mary Robles is from El Paso, Texas. She is a current MFA candidate in poetry at Bowling Green State University and Poetry Editor at Mid-American Review. Her work has recently appeared in AGNI's "To Never Have Risked Our Lives: A Portfolio of Central American and Mexican Diaspora Writing," The Adroit Journal, and Grain Magazine. She has poems forthcoming in Copper Nickel and elsewhere.

by Daniel Pieczkolon

Maybe. Maybe Not.

Maybe,
we have all that we need.
There’s a can of chickpeas
in the cupboard,
some paprika & coriander on the shelf.
A beautiful bartender just down the block—
a decade away in either direction.

American Football & the halftime show.
An empty nursery upstairs,
unwritten poems for wallpaper.
A tomorrow on the calendar
with yesterday’s blood
coursing through its May/December veins.

And outside:
a night so black
it’s just begging
to be danced through.

When I cast my gaze though,
I’m always searching
for what’s just out of frame.
The ghost that nudged
that swaying hanger,
the last century.

Even right now,
as the orange moon
grows fat as a happy husband,
& I’m staring at Kristine
sleeping on the couch,

I want to know
what she’s dreaming.

Daniel Pieczkolon is a poet, teacher, & labor activist who lives in Philadelphia. He teaches courses in literature & writing at Arcadia University and serves as the President of the United Academics of Philadelphia. He has been a Best of the Net nominee. You can find his work in Rust + Moth, Kettle Blue Review, The Bond Street Review, and elsewhere.

by Demi Richardson

Sleepwalker Poem

David, this is the end of the story:
you don’t come back to bed.
I could get on every plane and none
would take me to you.

David,
I am supposed to be talking to the living.

Imagine a world in which we don’t need each other.
now tell me I am supposed to
live there.

David,
I don’t want to save anyone in this story.
Bodies are heavy and hard to carry.
The children are difficult to put to bed.

David, I am no one’s heroine.
I can’t pull anyone out of the river.

Demi Richardson studied English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and currently resides in the Midwest. Her work has appeared with decomP, The Adirondack Review, and Broken Tooth Press, among others.

by Ed Gaudet

After a Saturday Night

The sun irritates me with hope.
The trees copulate spilling vernal pools for miles -
there can be nightjars nestled among cattails, waiting.
Summer fireflies flash briefly then are screwed -

She cut herself on a wine glass shard last night -

we go rogue again.

We stare through thoughts and things. The sun is sad.

She’s in headlights swallowing winter’s truth,
She’s dulled by the edges of your flickering emptiness,
She—like me—clinging to a fleeting fight

O swirling stardust we hold, forget us.

Ed Gaudet is a writer and software entrepreneur who lives in Hanover, Massachusetts. His work has appeared in The Southwest Review, JAMA, Nixes Mate Review, Blood & Bourbon, Burningword Literary Journal, The Inflectionist Review, Panoply, Clade Song, Naugatuck River Review, Massachusetts Bards Poetry Review 2024, and Book of Matches, Lit.