Poetry

The hose spat once, then died.I carried buckets to the thirsty ones, Umma’s tomatoes hanging tired on their stakes. Her mint curled in its pot.At dawn, as porch lights slept, I shoveled handfuls of earth until worms surfaced, folded them into fresh soil like secrets. A bee landed on my wrist, stayed. I let it.The …

The submission window opens—Diaspora Issue.Mango framed like a moon, perfect bruise marbling the center.Two tabs glow; one for guidelines, one for their subtext.I hold the cursor over Withdraw the way I hover at crosswalks.The form asks demographics, then stars the line when I skip it.Sir, the special? I nod at the polite waiter. The special.Last …

Winner of the 2025 49th Parallel Award in Poetry Forget dull facts of shovel, pail, pump,and sail. Instead, shed curl and skin-scalelike gecko in every sweat-rimmed linen. Leavetraces, knowing the body has already gonemissing. Forget the necking up on Tantalus,no more idling cars or privacy in grovesthat decompose to other kinds of shelter. Forgetslick treasure-trove …

            pleased to see you in my dream last night on a                                     bike in the center of a dim kansas street             to see your gray hair hitting your shoulders and your                                     arms old and muscled in a tanktop, sunspotted             i will do my best to get out in that sun for …

A teacher once told me that she could see auras. That each body pulses, its faint glow only visible to some. I believed her, but could not conjure them, even when squinting. Only body and light: paper cut-outs. My mom rang to tell me. I brushed off the tone; her dealings trended serious. Always heart-lurch. …

mā grew up in the lon-daon I grew up at the crossroad where dialects cloak mandarin mispronouncing her upbringingaccents boiling in a potluck staple lon-daon as nòng tángher generation marinates my generation sips chai in the sweetness of braised pork bellies but we call it tea as iflongjing weds English Breakfast & the colonizers own …

Wrote this on my sneakers at 15, the summer after you died.A decade and change later, a baby you’ll never know sings, He has strong eyes and I know that’s poetry. The tiniest toesin the world, my big purple ones flutter and curl around his soul. Can I keep him forever? Can we always go …

Tuuli Qin-Terrill is a poet and scientist adopted from China living in Northern Michigan. Her work has appeared in The Inflectionist Review, Dunes Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, among others. Currently, she works as a remote biopharmaceutical researcher and is an MFA candidate at Northern Michigan University where she is a poetry editor for Passage …

The blood of the gods has left me, drips on the face of the cliff,green scrub break through red dust, toadstool hoodoos hover on the horizon.I am blue like my beloved, breathless,tracking the dried traces of dinosaurs on hills made sacred by their death.My hand rests, small in the awkward depression,surrounded by even smaller stones …

Jay Julio (they/them) is a first-generation Filipinx-American musician, writer, and educator from New York. Finalist in poetry competitions held by the Philadelphia Stories, Meridian, and Mississippi Review, their writing has appeared in the Cincinnati Review, ROOM, Barrelhouse Mag, Foglifter, and Poetry Online, among other venues. Interests include abolition and ube confectioneries. Find them on IG …