A multi-prongued lightning bolt against a purple night hitting a silhouetted city skyline dappled with lights.

This month we offer small tastes of euphoria, owls and all.

Next month we sit with:

water

Submission guidelines can be found here.

dezireé a. brown (they/he) is a Black queer nonbinary Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, scholar, and sjw, born and raised in Flint, MI. They are the winner of the Betty Stuart Smith Award from UIC, where they recently received their PhD in English with concentrations in Black Studies and Gender & Women’s Studies. They received an MFA from Northern Michigan University and they were a Quarterfinalist in the 5th Annual Screencraft Screenwriting Fellowship, often claiming to have been born with a poem written across their chest. They were selected as one of the 2024 Editors-in-Chief at The Seventh Wave Magazine, and their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Foglifter Journal, wildness, Four Way Review, Obsidian, and the anthology A Garden of Black Joy: Global Poetry from the Edges of Liberation and Living, among others.

A city street lamp with two yellow lights lighting up an empty street with with a dark blue night in the background

sweeteners that start with ‘U’

I am not prepared
to find elephants
in supernovas
to quilt a patch of
bubblegum into
my grandmother’s
rings

She sat in a rocking
star in the corner
of the birthing room
gasp, she said, gasp
the spirit in these solar flares
push and pull it to you
child

I rock your quartz of
humming bones
your breath the thing
that brings me forward
into nebulas of cranes
and pieces of a falling
thistle

You’ll turn to me one
day, when black holes arrive
you’ll ask me, owls and all,
about meteor wings and
snowflake howls,
you’ll ask me to carry
you the map of moons
where I etched our
memories

River (they/them) is a poet in the US.
Statement from the writer: “In lieu of a bio, River asserts that the current conflict in Gaza and the West Bank is a genocide inflicted on Palestine by Israel and the US. It must cease immediately and permanently, apartheid ended, and Palestinians must be afforded dignity, self direction, and freedom. Accountability must come to those in Israel, the US and other countries who supported and committed war crimes, and reconciliation and reparations must be made.”
A gaseous blue, yellow, and orange nebula dotted with bright bluish-white stars
A multi-prongued lightning bolt against a purple night hitting a silhouetted city skyline dappled with lights.

This month we offer small tastes of euphoria, owls and all.

Next month we sit with:

water

Submission guidelines can be found here.

dezireé a. brown (they/he) is a Black queer nonbinary Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, scholar, and sjw, born and raised in Flint, MI. They are the winner of the Betty Stuart Smith Award from UIC, where they recently received their PhD in English with concentrations in Black Studies and Gender & Women’s Studies. They received an MFA from Northern Michigan University and they were a Quarterfinalist in the 5th Annual Screencraft Screenwriting Fellowship, often claiming to have been born with a poem written across their chest. They were selected as one of the 2024 Editors-in-Chief at The Seventh Wave Magazine, and their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Foglifter Journal, wildness, Four Way Review, Obsidian, and the anthology A Garden of Black Joy: Global Poetry from the Edges of Liberation and Living, among others.

A city street lamp with two yellow lights lighting up an empty street with with a dark blue night in the background

sweeteners that start with ‘U’

I am not prepared
to find elephants
in supernovas
to quilt a patch of
bubblegum into
my grandmother’s
rings

She sat in a rocking
star in the corner
of the birthing room
gasp, she said, gasp
the spirit in these solar flares
push and pull it to you
child

I rock your quartz of
humming bones
your breath the thing
that brings me forward
into nebulas of cranes
and pieces of a falling
thistle

You’ll turn to me one
day, when black holes arrive
you’ll ask me, owls and all,
about meteor wings and
snowflake howls,
you’ll ask me to carry
you the map of moons
where I etched our
memories

River (they/them) is a poet in the US.
Statement from the writer: “In lieu of a bio, River asserts that the current conflict in Gaza and the West Bank is a genocide inflicted on Palestine by Israel and the US. It must cease immediately and permanently, apartheid ended, and Palestinians must be afforded dignity, self direction, and freedom. Accountability must come to those in Israel, the US and other countries who supported and committed war crimes, and reconciliation and reparations must be made.”
A gaseous blue, yellow, and orange nebula dotted with bright bluish-white stars

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