Author: Editor Team

Sakari Kautz  The story goes I come from a long lineof strong-willed survivors and divers.We fished and hunted for our food. Strived to survive, live, undo, what colonialism did to us.Displaced, chased onto new land, a reservation we couldn’t escape,left to fend for ourselves. They brought sickness like a wave,washing over our people, in their…

Viktor Volkov She took me to her atticuncreaking, up those dusty stairsled by a sickly cold – frail handhung thick with cobwebs but mostly bare Watcher Lover CaretakerMy conscience said, “Don’t follow her there.”Toes dancing ‘round pillars of whitestirred clouds of dust and unvoiced fears Back pressed firm to chimney stacksshe said:, she spent most…

Jordan Sheeres Out in Union Gap where the flood broke I’m  parked at the wrecking yard with six or so  other townies watching the ruddy river run damned-  rampant through the by-no-means-literary  sage, squishy loam, matted grasses, bramble and  thistle with swollen thirsty berry vines reaching ready at the brackish slough, bleeding drowned brush beneath the  nob-hill bridge where the unhoused make camp. The same  displaced…

Addie Francis Standing on the rock, chains begin breaking offDarkness becomes light.One step forward, the chains fall off.Two steps forward, the light shines.Three steps forward, the darkness becomes a puddle.Mud beneath my feet, I stomp and splashChains disappear into the lightPuddle of darkness dries in the lightLying down, the light consumes meGoodbye darkness, hello light.

V.E. My leaves groan and bend under the weight of the icy dew that drips down from the suspendedfrozen fog. My petals lay below me, chipped and shattered, the color of smoke-stained walls. Each day I grow skinner; shorter. My color fades to an ashen sage and my stem shrivels andflakes apart like white paint…

Josie Price O my brother if ever you were a flower You areone of these: signature orange coif atopskinny solitary stalk, bright faceopened like a handtoward the God-sun, perennially.Corolla closedas a fistin cold,in wind,in night.Cup of gold,cup of sunlight–I congregate sprigsfor your gravesite. Petalsflaxen banners blazing throughcement clefts at every street cornerin the city where…

By Kaiden Larimer Aside from the priest and the funeral director, both of whom the old man had gotten to know quite well over the past few years, he was the only one left at the cemetery. The old man had been standing beneath a fir tree with limbs still dead from the winter for…

By Kaitlyn Collins In a long stretch of fields, rich with alfalfa and clover, a unicorn lays dying. He is a young colt, just barely a yearling. His milk-white body is still lanky and thready, legs too large for the rest of him. Despite the anxious stature, he wears his beauty with the confidence that…

Addey Christmann  Belly heavy, thick with emotion What was once thin, dainty and free  Now contains life, hidden behind muscle and shifting skin Pain rips through  Dancing and swaying  Until nothing but silence fills the air Holding its breath for the screaming to begin 

Evan Gilbert  Brilliant thoughts, trapped in a vast, yet small web of neurons. Axon sheaths are prison bars,rattling with every want to write. Cells decay, memory fades, the thoughts remain bound, their spirits cracked, broken,and forgotten to time. Flesh decomposes, bone rots away,thoughts lay buried with the bodysix feet beneath the soil,never to see the light of day. The…