Amanda Abel is a West Texas-born educator, photographer, beadweaver, editor, spoonie, and poet who lives in Louisville, KY with her cats and her neglected garden, and she is occasionally fortunate enough to consume tasty treats and walk around with people she loves out in the world. She earned an MA in Social Documentation through photography from UC Santa Cruz and an MFA from Vanderbilt and taught teenagers English for almost a decade until the strains of COVID and teaching with a disability did her in. She is now cobbling together a creative life, dreams of learning guitar and bread-baking, and is part of a small writing community that often feels like it has saved her life. Though she no longer teaches high schoolers, she still believes young people can save the world. Follow her here and here. Buy her earrings here

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Crag

for Craig Arnold

n. A steep rugged mass of rock projecting upward or outward.

[Middle English, from Welsh craig or Scottish Gaelic creagh]

Your parents couldn’t know
when they inscribed you
in the register of earthly beings
that your death knell sounded
there within the scratch of the pen
Beautiful cat man, awkward imp,
sly and sylph. You were the opposite
of rock: water, restless, always seeking,
filling every rough crevice with your curious
& liquid laugh. Or air—breath, breathless,
you were all words, spilling them forth, filling
rooms with them so that even in the single arch
of an eyebrow, sentences ushered forth,
wending their way up the legs of whoever
they were meant for, down the arm, perched
on a fingertip, and then blowing
across the cheek into an open ear.
You were any god that loved mischief,
and if you’d been handed such power, Christ,
all the heavenly and earthly realms
would have trembled with glee
and terror at your tricks.
And so it was right, in the end,
for you to leave us this way:
Were you even gone? No splayed
body at the bottom of the cliff’s
edge. But there it was: crag. Your
namesake. Last known location
on earth. Evidence of friction
there in the crumbling soil. Crag as in
body falling, perpetual motion,
never found. You are not rock,
but what fills the spaces between,
light and motion, whatever blossom
or leaf wafts this way with its tender
scent. You are the pebbles
underfoot, my dear, my liminal
friend. I remember you.

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Kendra is a fifth generation Texan who has made her home amongst the evergreens of the Pacific Northwest.Her first poetry collection is currently moving from the realm of daydreams to stacks of paper on her kitchen table. When she isn’t daydreaming or writing, she may be found on a glassy lake, sharing nachos with a friend, or creating mediocre photos with her cheap film camera. Someday she’ll have a substack. For now, you can find her on instagram @kendra crowfields.

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OOOOH LA LA, LALALALALA

biceps stiffening
weed wacker thrusting
shirtless and sweaty
digging up blackberries

hell yeah! tame that wild, Oregon yard!
that’s hot, so hot.

a balanced budget
excellent credit score
and a freshly vacuumed floor
oh baby, somebody save me

handle that chef’s knife
just right - index finger on top
carrots chopped
please. don’t. stop.

see me melting like the candles; lit up
who needs a man when I adore me so much?

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Alisha Skeel (she/her) is a queer, autistic writer based in Columbus, Ohio. Her work explores the friction of navigating the world as an autistic creative. You can find her haunting local open mics and making animal friends wherever she goes. She has several poems slated for publication in forthcoming 2026 anthologies.

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Proof of Life

Espresso pulls like taffy, filling my husband’s
cup, my black tea IV shocking me awake
for our morning stand up, grocery runs between –
Can you hop on a quick call?

belly beast growls, another hour past her feeding,
what a pest.
Camera ready, circling back, around the school pickup
line, my smile, stitched together, his is the sun –
How was your day?
empathy sings from his young lips, grateful he likes therapy,
grateful we can give him things we didn’t have, grateful,
grateful, grateful
for groceries tucked in my trunk for safekeeping,
questioning which deity allowed me such a bounty, while others wither away,
cartons caught between borders, bellies
emptied by “complicated politics”, controlled
not by some god, but by men, full
of a rot, homegrown and power-hungry.
Bright rainbows chopped and stirred into my pot
as screams and rubble rattle my Instagram feed, echo
through the cast iron, drill new holes through my heart. My family, we speak
truth to each other, refuse to strain reality from our bowls, eat
and strengthen our resistance.
Proof of life clattered in the sink, wet metal stench a reminder
of blood and those
who are out for it,
a cycle through the dishwasher might cure me
of this affliction. But I prefer to keep the matter
of the earth beneath my nails as I
claw,
and claw,
and claw,
toward a better world.

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Nicole Peattie is a nurse by profession, writer/photographer by passion living with her husband in the Silicon Valley of California. She has been previously published in Five Minute Lit and the “If You Ever” Anthology, a poetry collection inspired by Kim Addonizio’s poem “To The Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall.” You can find her making pictures with old film cameras, traveling, and writing in her Notes app about the love and loss that has shaped her life.

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Triage

Help me find a nurse to ease
this need, this deep ache
in my rubber ribcage
where a compass should be.
Listen, can you hear the
beeping, the calligraphy of
heartbeats telling the
doctor exactly where it
hurts?
Help me find the mother
wound, the place she bore
me from and tried to
keep me, where I refused
to stay.
Listen, I don’t know why we die,
but I’ve seen a pumping heart
outside of it’s cage, held in
human hands, still beating,
and called that a life.

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Holly Trusiak is a writer and editor living in Portland, Oregon. Holly's love of storytelling began around the campfire and continues to drive her insatiable curiosity of people, the world we live in and how we all got here in the first place. The majority of Holly's work has been published without a byline but she will rectify that at some point.

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Breakfast

I burned the eggs to the bottom of the pot.

I can hear what you would say,

“What hap-pened? Why’d you do it that way?”

When I transfer the eggs to the plate,
a crumb falls past the rim, bounces
off of my bare left foot and into
the nether regions beneath the cabinets.

I look for it but don’t care.
I don’t find it.
I know you would care.

Often when I am making breakfast,
I’m not the adult me cooking in my own kitchen.
I’m smaller me, at home in the open-air kitchen in the Adirondacks
making toast in the morning and you’re calling out,
“What are you doing? Painting a picture?”
as I meticulously spread peanut butter.

Fat soundless tears roll off my cheeks.
I’ve worn myself out telling people you’re gone.
Over and over again I have to find a way to say,
“My dad is dead.”

Kevin Frazier is a writer and photographer and chocolate lover and cheese lover and his favorite month is October and he loves cooking fish and he thinks poetry is best served on cocktail napkins because the people that need poetry are the people who just had a horrible day or are going through grief or a breakup or the weights of the world. He lives in California and is learning to dance. His hips as it turns out were actually full of lies.

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I went to Catholic school and all I got was the Jesus and Mary Chain
They told me about miracles as I learned what white blood cells were
in that special time where spirit life leaves through the open door
but peaks back and whispers something you inevitably won’t learn
until it’s too late. I was full of sand and bombs and hearts breaking.
There were commercials asking for donations. And anything is too much
to ask with just fuzz in your pocket and nothing to say to the anybody’s
I could love. There was a controller and no memory card. I wondered why
miracles were necessary and if God was working the counter at 7-11
chasing kidsmoke. Clocking in and clocking out. I wondered where he’d been.

Turns out God was on a road trip with Kerouac and they’d broken down
in New Mexico. Their fingers dripping with honey and fry bread
forgetting they’ll eventually have to work for wonder but thinking
“This ain’t so bad for now.” As I parented my dad through fictitious gunfights
and that game lonely kids play in the backseat, when they’re siblings are sending love letters,
where I imagined a motorcycle or a monster truck gliding the hills alongside
the too straight stretch of highway hell. Saying things in the hotel
next to the hospital like, “Maybe it was for the best” in the moments after
you’re told they’re gone by doctors who must have tried. Once a brother.
What is he now? Once a father. Same question.

I meet my dad on the street and he hands me dead flowers and a match.
Every conversation a duel. Shots fired. Dead again. He just can’t seem to remember any of it.
Years later his boyhood drops off a box of old sympathy cards.
I want to tell him I know he’s dead. I strike the match.
God laughs. What does she know?

Just last week I stared a flower in the eye and lived to tell the tale. She
could have eaten me. A roaring bottle of fire swallowed whole.
But her iris bent me towards the sun. Threw sheets on my flames. Never extinguishing,
just tempering. Her petals, slow little assassins of my heart.
I think about miracles. The endless railways of blood snare drumming
and high hatting through my core and my mouth still able to move.
This is a first. I decided not to pick her but plant her. We must water our flowers.
I look at the sky and grumble, “Don’t you agree?”
Then there’s the endless joy I’ve discovered in this new life. My hands
never not caked in dirt. If I laid starving I’d gift my last drop of saliva in service of her petals.
All of the sudden we turned into a John Prine record. Full of honesty and peaches and sunshine.
sigh, “Fine, we’ll call it even.”

Epilogue
...And I want to thank God again because even bigger than my challenge trying to
describe what we went through, the gratitude of seeing what we saw, doing what we did,
and being with who I was with-it’s too big just to be in one body.

Victor Glover – Nasa Astronaut – Artemis 2 Pilot

Sue Ann Gleason is a lover of words, a strong believer in the power of imagination, and a champion for women who want to lead a more delicious, fully expressed life. Her work has appeared in a collection of literary journals and several anthologies, one of which, The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace & Renewal, won the 2024 New England Book Award in poetry. She’s written one full-length poetry collection, in the glint of broken glass, and one chapbook, Pencil Man. When she’s not worrying over words, she’s leading grassroots efforts, facilitating soul-inspired writing circles, and building broccoli forests in her mashed potatoes. You can find her on Instagram and Substack .

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Comfort

The nursing home asks that each article of clothing
be marked with your name. Permanent marker.
Nothing that can unravel in the wash. I consider
the Merino wool sweater because I want you to be
wrapped in a shatter of softness. Mom says, Oh no,
don’t bother. They’ll just ruin it.

I buy it anyway.

You aren’t speaking much at this point, but I watch
you soften into white jasmine dusk, and I tell myself
you’re comfortable.

On the day we buried you, the sky broke open.
From relentless storm to shock of sunlight. Sky,
so blue. I thought I was finished writing this story
but threads of that sweater, unraveling still.

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Milkshakes at the Waffle House

Tomorrow I will wake up in the best possible timeline,
the instagram video tells me way past my bedtime,
and I allow myself to dream. God slides
into my dm’s like a waitress at a waffle house,
disheveled and unbothered,
What do you want, kid?
And I can’t remember the last time I had a dream,
being hopeful makes me nervous.
When I make a gratitude list, I write
This could be worse
Right at the top, to keep my yearning heart in check.
The menu of desires reads like I wrote it while I was high
Universal Basic Income
Pizza with no calories
A man that cares about my orgasms and my feelings
A world where I can actually believe everyone is trying their best without squinting
The attention span to read a full book from cover to cover without forgetting the main
character’s names,
A strawberry milkshake with whipped cream.
And maybe my childhood back,
so I could just for a moment
imagine what it could have been like if
someone kept me
Safe.
God doesn’t laugh, she slides beside me in the booth,
slams the tickets down on the table, and pulls out a bowl of
unicorn sprinkles, shoveling them in her mouth like potato chips,
confetti getting stuck in her teeth while she talks.
She tells me to stop interrogating joy like I’m trying to
crack an unsolved mystery.
Pushes the milkshake into my hands and says, “Drink up.”

Haley DiRenzo is a writer and attorney specializing in eviction defense. Her work has appeared in Barely South Review, One Art, and Bending Genres, among others. She was a 2026 Best of the Net Finalist in Fiction for her flash piece, “Upending the Garden,” published in Epistemic Literary. Outside of work and writing, you can find her browsing book stores, brewing tea, and at the theater. Instagram: @haleydirenzo.

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Muscle Memory

Now I often wonder
if I was really in love at sixteen.
But still, a forest green Pathfinder
draws my eyes through the driver’s side
window wondering if they’ll find you.
That car must be in the junkyard
by now, but some muscles don’t lose
their memory. One night your voice
through the phone telling me
look at the sky—see how it’s orange
in the snow? Something
I never noticed then never forgot.
And isn’t that what love is?
Waking up to the world glowing
around you. Staring at the sky
even after they’re gone.
We dismiss the firecracker
of feeling young, all explosions
and gasoline. Forgetting
something that shocks your touch
can still be admired from a distance.
Leave embers that flicker
through ash when love comes back
to root. And you realize
you recognize it.

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Marci Lassen is a poet, writer, and mother living in Southern California with her husband and three children. Her writing explores themes of identity, belief, and belonging. She is passionate about supporting and uplifting other writers and has been leading the Monday Morning Group in Joy Sullivan’s Sustenance writing community for over two years. She is currently working on her first chapbook. Connect with her on Instagram at @marcilassen.

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Namesake

You named me for a god of war
so all that chases me is sorrow.
I’ve tried to drop my weapons, pay penance
by clearing the battle field, but how

can you pull blood from soil?
Look at what I have done.
There is no praise, only
witness. Night descends and I lead

with keening. Sound must carry
what our eyes cannot behold.
Listen, now, the day cracks open.
The light is loud. Know this —

The field will never be empty.
But we can choose what it holds.

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Oliver Carmichael is a poet based in North East England. He is the winner of the 2024 Winchester Poetry Prize and the 2024 Aurora Prize for Writing. In 2025 he was longlisted for the Disabled Poets Prize, shortlisted for Nine Arches’ Primers Volume 8, and was a finalist in Only Poems’ inaugural Bob Hicok Poetry tFellowship. As the recipient of the Michael Donaghy Award, he is currently part of the 2024-2026 cohort of Arvon’s Advanced Writing Programme.

Instagram / Bluesky: @oliverinthenorth.

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I mentioned an author in this podcast named Dr. Atul Gawande. Dr. Gawande is an author of several NYT best sellers such as "Being Mortal," "The Checklist Manifesto," , and many other books and New Yorker articles. I suggest every person I know reads “Being Mortal” as a look at how you might want to live your life, and just as importantly, how you want to die.

Nicole Dalcourt is an award-winning Canadian poet and author of What Remains, her debut poetry collection. Dalcourt’s work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Writerly Magazine, Bangs, Sky Island Journal and Anti-Heroine Chic. She is a member of the League of Canadian Poets and the Ontario Poetry Society. When not writing, Nicole hosts and participates in open mics around the region. Her favorite colour is green. You can follow her on Instagram at @nicoledalcourtwrites.

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Bio: Makayla Wamboldt lives and writes in San Diego. Her work has been shortlisted for the Central Avenue Poetry Prize, nominated for Best New Poets 2026 and Orison Books’ Best Spiritual Literature award, and has appeared in numerous publications. She writes the Substack Earth School, where she documents the trials and joys of being a forever student, and is the author of the debut poetry collection Temporary Cathedrals. Her work can be found at makaylawamboldt.com

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DORMANT

In the spring, branches of the willow may
dip into the water like a paintbrush readying
the indigo. Its body will remind you of a girl
with round hips swishing in a grass skirt.
Remember? You were a girl with little certainty,
but the path along the south end of the river,
the tree’s curved and knotted trunk. Each branch
making a world.

You think time is linear. You think there is only one
path and it is the one you are not yet walking. Say
you visited again. Saw the ducks, slicked emerald,
bow their heads into the water. Suppose
the snow melted. Buds came back. Could you
be content though you have not arrived anywhere
you haven’t already been? The girl you were,
long gone.

The daffodil bulbs planted by the gardener will
surprise you after all this time, when you’ve forgotten
something can go dormant so many seasons
and live.

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Miranda Saake is a writer, teacher, and mother from Northern California. She is published in the US and the UK. You can find her at mirandasaakepoetry and

The English Teacher

We build worlds with our words.

By Miranda Saake

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If you loved Miranda’s poem “Ritual,” we ask that you check out the publication Stoat Magazine where it is published.

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Jordan Shea Page is a habitual traveler, homebody, and huge fan of alliteration. Her work has been published in New Feathers Anthology, Witcraft, and the If You Ever Anthology. Her Substack, , explores prickly thoughts through poetry and essays, and she is an obsessive, devout member of the Sustenance writing community, led by Joy Sullivan. She writes, reads, and travels a lot. Connect with her on Instagram @jordansheapage.

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We regret to inform you

Dear Person Who Tried,
Thank you for your application.
While on paper (the lines creasing your face)
you appear perfect for the role, we fear you

do not have the required qualifications
to be a grown-up. Your references spoke
of your imaginative problem
solving (as if that is a positive trait)

and your essay reads a touch too light
hearted and metaphorically optimistic.
Poems are not necessary
in this fast-paced position. We do not believe you

will be able to take the nature of this job
as a fully functioning adult seriously enough,
regardless of how often you admire a sunset.

During the interview, when asked
to describe what your life will look like in five
years, you responded, I’m not sure, and isn’t that wonderful?
We, the committee, do not agree. You are welcome

to apply again once you’ve left behind
the child-like wonder, and committed
to the hustle necessary for this work-hard
play-not-at-all role.

Good luck in your future endeavors!
But grow up.

Sincerely,
The Human Hiring Department of Adults

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I keep saying while recording that this is episode five, but it is actually episode six. I do pre-record so I am not rushing to book guests, just so you know.

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Jayne Shore is the author of the chapbook of poetry, Fluent in Silence, published this year by Finishing Line Press. She has published stories of scientists and inventors in outlets such as Popular Science, Psychology Today, and STAT News, as well as poetry in journals including Salt Hill and the Indianapolis Review. Jayne lives in Minneapolis with her family. In honor of her late grandmother, she writes under her last name.

You can buy Jayne's book, Fluent in Silence, here.

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Coddington Lake
by Jayne Shore

A swan kicked
in me.

I was the stillness
a fisherman sent for, scatterer
of the emeralds in his eyes
before taking his hook
and you ask how I became
so easily the things I feared.

What diamond survives
a ring?

What butterflies stay
on battlefields?

Once the map was wrong
about me, I could be anything–
loon’s breath, a doe
bowing to drink her reflection.

I was even lonely in the night,
even safe in the dark.

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I mention repeatedly my online writing community, Sustenance, led by the poet Joy Sullivan. I wanted to link to her website so you can get on the waiting list for Sustenance, buy her book or read her Substack.

Kristina Percy (she/ her) lives on Vancouver Island, BC in the traditional territories of the Ligwiłda’xw people. Neither of her degrees have anything to do with creative writing. Her debut collection, Both True, was a runner up in the 2024 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest. You can find her on Instagram @_kpwrites & occasionally on Substack .

You can buy Kristina's collection "Both True," here.

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Friendly beasts

On Christmas Eve, animals speak. This is the story
I tell to lure you into the world. Wiping scales

from your back, I ignore your fleeting tail. I know
not to search for threat of venom or fang in the gift

of your mouth. You land on my breast, bare
of feathers or fur, ruffle your wings

& find them clipped, press your harmless
paws into a human mother. I wonder

when you realize my trick. I had to,
you see. Who would agree to be born

a child? You howl & howl.
I answer in every language.

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Lisa Conquet is a poet, mom, and psychotherapist who grew up in NYC. Her upbringing taught her life sometimes feels like being on a high wire, but she has learned to trust words will always catch her. She was shortlisted for The Central Avenue Poetry Prize 2026. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous places, including: Five Minute Lit, the If You Ever, Shame/less, and An Apple a Day anthologies. Lisa is a member of Joy Sullivan’s writing community, Sustenance. You can find here on Substack and on Instagram at @clarityandvisioncoaching.

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Thanks for listening. Please subscribe or follow and share with anyone who needs some poetry. Feel free to leave a comment below.

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Yoda Olinyk (she/her) loves to make people comfortable, which is too bad because she is a poet. When she's not writing or editing, Yoda works as an abortion doula and workshop guide for people in recovery. Her work has appeared in many beloved journals, including Rattle and The Shore. She has published a memoir about restaurant life and is working on a book of poems. You can find at www.doulaofwords.com. Her Instagram is @doulaofwords.

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I Cannot Write a Dog Poem

without calling it unconditional love. For all the times
I’ve lied—about my age, relationship status, hair colour.

For the times I’ve been careless enough to leave
the house with a candle burning. For the time I got banned

from uber; got so drunk in Ohio, I woke up in Austin.
For the time I stole that ring, the one I could have paid for,

from that sleepy, seaside shop in Alma. For the time I cried
all night because your poem got published and mine didn’t.

For everything that happened in August. For when I screen
my sisters’ calls even though I am the only number in her phone.

For the time you said I love you but I didn’t say it back.
For the time I kissed Andrea and said it didn’t count.

For the time we fought so hard, I stopped watering the orchid
you gave me, or the time I googled: “what plants thrive best

in a cold, dark room.” For the time I killed a spider just for
looking at me. For every time your water dish goes dry —

I scold, and moments later, you paw my bruise as if to say,
you are a good girl.

-by Yoda Olinyk

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The bookstore Yoda and I were referencing in the podcast is called Little Wren Bookshop.

I just wanted to issue a trigger warning for some swearing. I cuss a little. Just so you know.

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Candace Kronen is a poet, activist, and speech-language pathologist living in Ontario, Canada. She is interested in the power of language as a tool of connection; how it succeeds, how it fails, and everything in between. Her work has been nominated for 2026 Best of the Net, as well as shortlisted for the 2026 Central Avenue Poetry Prize and long listed for Only Poems' Bob Hicok Fellowship. Candace is the co-editor of the poetry anthology If You Ever: Poems Inspired by Kim Addonizio. Additional writing can be found on Substack at and on Instagram at @candacekronenpoetry.

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Thanks for listening. Please subscribe or follow and share with anyone who needs some poetry. Feel free to leave a comment below.