ISSUE 12.2 SPRING 2025 welcome issue contents > fiction > nonfiction > poetry > art contributors interviews our editors Andrea avery“If anything has brought me to my knees, it is the vulnerability of motherhood..”There’s no space for other people in that kind of anger, anger that shouts you down, burns your home, shoots you dead. alexis barton“Through poetry, I’ve been able to bring so much more out of my hardships. Through poetry, my grief isn’t just loss.” jane berg“…even a poem that resists confession can be evocative, like a conversation that relies on subtext.” Mela blust“If anything has brought me to my knees, it is the vulnerability of motherhood..” rachel aviva burns “Brings in the idea of continued motion and life even in the midst of the stillness and mourning” georgie contreras“The blank postcard was calling to me across my room like the Green Goblin mask meme.” Savannah cooper “This poem came to me easily because it was just a matter of listening and empathizing.” shena crane“I loved the challenge of gathering all my characters together in a high-conflict scene where emotions and stakes were high, and then seeing how they found their way through it..” Marco etheridge“What I want readers to take away from this story is that we are all citizens of a very small planet. Think before you smite.” bryana fern“There’s a recklessness in loving things.” melissa french“I have always been preoccupied with that connection and my family’s personal ties with rivers. This piece was really about weaving these strings together and seeing where they met.” michael J. Galko“Like many poets I have a side gig as an unpaid flaneur—just walking around observing things and people.” SAM GREENE“This possibility of (dis-)identification within memoir and autotheory is, I believe, the form’s greatest power. This reminder that we are all tiles in the great mosaic of humanity.” MARIKA GUTHRIE“Revisiting it was like writing about a breakup, not from a person, but from a future vision I had for myself.” walter holland“Writing is a message in a bottle floating out on the sea of time.” jayant Kashyap“To me, writing love poems in particular is a different kind of effort…” barbara krasner“It’s important to me that readers put themselves into the setting of my stories. I want them to feel the mood and tone of the place.” elina kumra “I wanted to challenge that paradigm, making readers confront a reality where survival itself becomes heroic, yet utterly devoid of neat resolution or triumph.” cassady o’reilly-hahn“Finding the sweet spot…it’s a flavor, a taste, with a range of positive associations.” jennifer patino“Poetry for me is a way to alchemize life experiences.” claire scott“Writing keeps my heart open. I don’t think you can write anything meaningful with a closed heart. ” michelle spinei“It’s a matter of working with the mundane parts of life and finding, if not the beauty, then at least the humor in them.” tricia steele“The ocean is the furthest we can go with our own bodies alone.” jacob strunk“Who hasn’t felt the near panic of loneliness, of isolation, or the animal desire to consume what we crave, to own it, to take it with us? To fill us up.” Meghan Joyce tozer “…this poem is a reminder that we humans are, in fact, all animals.” b.j. wilson“While revisiting the past through different people, I have been able to chronicle my own life too.”
