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Tetsuhiro Wakabayashi, Alexander Etheridge, Julian Cason, Sara Aultman


STAR FISH, TETSUHIRO WAKABAYASHI
STAR FISH, TETSUHIRO WAKABAYASHI


DAY’S-END INVITATION

Alexander Etheridge


See now

dusk comes on

with its raft of thoughts


Time is a crucible


Elm shadows

grow over elms


and everything is linked by

dismantlement


Watch the sundown with me

There’s a glow

with shadows woven

inside it


As stars begin appearing

our minds take flight

and our oldest questions become

a delicate thread of

silences

Our prayers


are like leaves blowing over the roads

Walk with me


past the border of words

into a lost forest

Look around

meet the dark behind moonlight


and meet the light

behind it all




URSA MAJOR/AVERTED VISION                           

Julian Cason


This garden is a sheltered cove at night,

the overbearing hug of trees, 

a tease of never-quite-crumbling cliff,

which has devoured silently

half the maw of sky.


I watch the dog’s pre-bed wander: he won’t look up,

his nose, a lab-rat trapped within a maze,

missing these drooping 

stalks of stars.


I think of those dying, too ill to be moved, 

even wheeled

to see such blooms again. 

They who need most 

these purest buds of smithereens,

each a poke of hope: the shyest flickering eye

behind a keyhole.


The Plough is nearly overhead, 

its seven stars are Arab-named,

I knew each of them once, though they still appear 

the same.


The handle’s hinge is Megrez, by far the shallowest hole.

I can also remember Alcor, Mizar, 

a micro moon and earth:

one star, a stare splits;

two worlds caught interminably

midway through their waltz. 

You see them best as with all things,

by sneaking past 

then telling lies 

about the looking back.



THE RELIQUARY YOU LEFT UNCLAIMED

Sara Aultman


Stardust wiped clean from my skin, prayer beads from palms

peeled back slowly like gauze plucked from puckered 

wounds bleeding battlefield-red. A version of me stares 

back from the mirror’s dim lit silver shine, and I see brown

eyes smudged smoky black, near enough to chase out spirits. 

Every knuckle and threadbare joint cracks ash from the wildfire 

that sundered these tinderbox limbs. Champagne psalms dry my tongue, 

sultry brimstone grits between these uneven teeth. No dawn-licked hour 

hears me cry. Empty is the thin-hatched chapel that should’ve enshrined 

these fragmented bones, hateful in absence. Stripped of giddy 

sainthood, I feel only frostbitten grave-dirt shift beneath me. 

Before silent choirs and gaping mouths, I unbury these naked toes.



Tetsuhiro Wakabayashi After graduating from Kanazawa College of Art, I worked in package design and video production. In 2014, I started my creative work in the rich natural environment of Kanazawa. I am drawing on the poetic sentiment within myself.


Alexander Etheridge’s poems have been featured in The Potomac Review, Museum of Americana, Welter Journal, The Cafe Review, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999. He is the author of, God Said Fire, and, Snowfire and Home.


Julian Cason lives in Cardiff. His professional life has been mainly spent working with the terminally ill.

Publications include Envoi, Pulp Poets Press, The Dawntreader, Black Bough Poetry, Full House Literary, The Frogmore Papers, Southlight, Dreich, Ninnau, Carmen Et Error, Dream Catcher, The Starbeck Orion. Short-listed for Black Bough Collection Competition 2023. Contributing Poet to The Oldest Music (Parthian Books 2023) and Thin Places, Sacred Spaces (Amethyst Press 2024). Short-listed Cinnamon Pamphlet Award 2024.


Sara Aultman is a Seattle-based poet of liminal things. Previously featured in Fahmidan Journal, Olney Magazine, HAD, Stone Circle Review, the anthologies Black Stone / White Stone (Making the Machines that Destroy Us) and HELL IS REAL: A Midwest Gothic Anthology, Sara can be contacted on Twitter @TheSaraAult and Bluesky @saraaultman.bsky.social.

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