Hila Ratzabi
Capture

Hila Ratzabi - Capture

Poetry
Hila Ratzabi is the author of the poetry collection There Are Still Woods (June Road Press, 2022), which won a gold Nautilus Book Award and was a finalist for a National Indie Excellence Award. Her… Read more »
Kelly Terwilliger
Fishing Trip

Kelly Terwilliger - Fishing Trip

Poetry
Kelly Terwilliger is the author of two collections of poetry and a forthcoming book combining poetry, painting, and prose. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies in the US, Canada, and… Read more »
Daniel J. Rortvedt
For Sylvia

Daniel J. Rortvedt - For Sylvia

Poetry
Daniel J. Rortvedt is a writer, educator, founding editor of Vilas Avenue, and author of the poetry chapbook Layers (2024). His poetry appears in Lunch Ticket, word west revue, JAKE, Bulb Culture… Read more »
Jemma Leigh Roe
Ma

Jemma Leigh Roe - Ma

Poetry
Jemma Leigh Roe is the author of Running with the Hare, winner of the 2024 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition. Her poems and artwork have appeared in Sonora Review, Redivider, The Baltimore… Read more »
Merrill Oliver Douglas
Mannequins on Smoke Break

Merrill Oliver Douglas - Mannequins on Smoke Break

Poetry
Merrill Oliver Douglas’s first full-length collection, Persephone Heads For the Gate, won the 2022 Gerald Cable Book Award from Silverfish Review Press. She is also the author of the poetry chapbook… Read more »
Nicholas Barnes
sun’s coming up

Nicholas Barnes - sun’s coming up

Poetry
Nicholas Barnes is a poet living in Portland, Oregon, whose work has appeared in over eighty publications, including Redivider, HAD, and Cola Literary Review. His debut chapbook, Restland, is… Read more »
Kimberly Gibson-Tran
What Hope Is There

Kimberly Gibson-Tran - What Hope Is There

Poetry
Kimberly Gibson-Tran studied linguistics at Baylor and The University of North Texas. Her recent poems appear or are forthcoming in The Bombay Literary Magazine, Passages North, Reed Magazine,… Read more »
Hannah Keziah Agustin
Wisconsin, Summer

Hannah Keziah Agustin - Wisconsin, Summer

Poetry
Hannah Keziah Agustin is from Manila, Philippines, and resides in New York City. Her work is found and forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Michigan Quarterly Review, Guernica, and elsewhere. Read more »

What Hope Is There

Kimberly Gibson-Tran

My husband took it hard, learning our marriage counselors divorced. Five years ago we sat meekly on their worn couch, enamored they were a married couple, both ministers. Yesterday I lit on one of their posts bemoaning a 5-2 custody schedule. I sat up rapt. Couldn’t believe. One was quoting Yung Pueblo, the other decorating new rooms. When one had the kids, the other took a soul-searching vacation to the same place the ex went the previous month—Sedona or the Grand Canyon. I gape at chasms, rippling sunset caverns. I watch them trod the same red ground on separate weeks. The world contracts. Their ink is on our marriage contract. In one's backyard a chimenea casts its glow on an unstirred swimming pool. It's surreal. The kids smile with their parents’ mingled faces. One keeps the house. One keeps the church. When my husband learned this news, he lurched in his seat, pressed me for my take, for updates. “What hope is there for the rest of us?” he said. It had been a blessing, driving in fog, to follow the brake lights ahead. We shelter in statistics—the 50-50— wonder if we’ll stick. I was surprised to be the unsurprised one. I am my husband’s second wife; wouldn’t he know the fault lines no one finds ahead of time? Here is what I learn—this stout candle in our abyss—we’re desperate for the light of it. I can't remember nearly five years back, the ceremony words the ministers fed us. Though I see the moment we lit two tapering ends and bent them together. I would do it again.
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