Tetsuhiro Wakabayashi, Alexander Etheridge, Julian Cason, Sara Aultman

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.