Issue #21, March 2025

Ping Yi writes poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction. After a three-decade detour in public service, he resumed his lifelong interest in speculative, humor and travel writing. His work appeared in Orbis (Readers’ Award Joint 1st), Litro (Editor’s Pick), London Grip, Meniscus, StepAway, Harbor Review, Vita Poetica, Litbreak, ONE ART, Witcraft, and Poetry Breakfast, among others, and is forthcoming in The Stony Thursday Book and MacQueen’s Quinterly. Ping Yi lives in Singapore with his spouse and their son.
 

Kelsey L. Smoot (They/Them/He/Him) is a full-time PhD student in the interdisciplinary social sciences and humanities. They are also a poet, advocate, and frequent writer of critical analysis. Kelsey is the winner of the 2021 Sad Girls Club Spring Literary Contest, the 2023 The Good Life Review Honeybee Prize, and the Grand Prize Winner of the 2024 Button Poetry Video Contest. He is both Pushcart Prize nominee, as well as a Best of the Net nominee. Proudly, Kelsey the author of a chapbook titled, "we was bois together" with CLASH! (An Imprint of Mouthfeel Press) and another chapbook, "Muse," with Another New Calligraphy.
 

Billie Jean Stratton is a 73-year-old farm girl who never liked the barn and spent much of her youth sidestepping hired hands by practicing the flute in an acoustically superior bathroom. She and John Montague worked together at The New York State Writers Institute for several years in the late 80s and early 90s, and she was fortunate to meet Joseph Brodsky when he first came to America. She’s been published in 2002's Comstock Review, 2005's Sulfur River, and 2014's Lost Orchard - Prose and Poetry from the Kirkland College Community. Resurfacing after many years, Billie’s poem “Brodsky” was recently published by Ibbetson St. Press and was nominated for a 2024 Pushcart Prize.
 

Daniel Edward Moore lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His work is forthcoming in Xavier Review, The Chiron Review, Hurricane Review, Bryant Literary Review, The Meadow Journal, The Stillwater Review, Clackamas Literary Review and The Denver Quarterly. His book, “Waxing the Dents,” is from Brick Road Poetry Press.
 

Sarah Spaulding Avento is a recent graduate of the MFA program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and was formerly an Editorial Assistant at The Believer and LitHub. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tar River Poetry, New Limestone Review, Red Ogre Review, Sheepshead Review, and This Former Present Glory: An Anthology of Honest Spiritual Literature. She now lives back in her beloved Tennessee mountains and will never again take trees for granted.
 

Trapper Markelz (he/him) writes from Arlington, Massachusetts. He is the author of the chapbook, "Childproof Sky," a Cherry Dress Chapbooks 2023 selection. His work has appeared in the journals Baltimore Review, Passengers Journal, Pine Row Press, Wild Roof Journal, Greensboro Review, and Poetry Online, among others. Learn more at trappermarkelz.com
 

M. Benjamin Thorne, a Pushcart Prize nominee, is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. Possessed of a lifelong love of history and poetry, he is interested in exploring the synergy between the two. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Feral, Neologism Poetry Journal, San Antonio Review, Thimble Lit Mag, Last Syllable Lit, and Salvation South. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, NC.
 

Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems: THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS (both Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press), and four collections of shorter poems: A POVERTY OF WORDS, (Prolific Press, 2015), LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), THE BEAUTIFUL LOSSES (Better Than Starbucks Books, 2023), and THE LIBERATOR (Survision Books, 2024). Pollack has appeared in Poetry Salzburg Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Magma (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum, Chiron Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, etc. Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire Review, Mudlark, Rat’s Ass Review, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, etc. Website: www.frederickpollack.com.
 

P. Q. R. Anderson has published four volumes, "Litany Bird," "Foundling's Island," "a long poem In a Free State: A Music" (“Destined to be a landmark in South African poetry” – J.M. Coetzee), and "Night Transit" (Dryad). He is the recipient of South Africa’s Thomas Pringle Prize for Poetry (2018) and the Sanlam Literary Award (2006), and was runner-up in the Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize of Canberra University in 2017, judged by Simon Armitage, and in The Rialto/RSPB “Nature and Place” competition in 2020. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2024. He teaches English at the University of Cape Town. His work has appeared in The London Magazine, Denver Quarterly, TEXT, The Rialto, New Contrast, New Coin, Stanzas, The Hopkins Review, Blue Earth Review, Rougarou, Tears in the Fence, La Piccioletta Barca, and other magazines.
 

Ed Sage is a writer, teacher, and activist from Portland, Oregon. He lives in Portland with his wife, Kate, and their two children, Oliver and Lillian. Ed's poetry and nonfiction have been published in ZYZZYVA (under the name Ed Varga, Jr.), Verseweavers, The Portland Review, 4th Street Journal, The Ponder Review, Plainsongs, BULL Lit and The Passionfruit Review. He has been considered for a Pushcart. Can be found at edvargasage@gmail.com
 

Christine Andersen is a retired dyslexia specialist who now enjoys the freedom of daily hikes through the Connecticut woods, pen and pad in pocket, dogs at her heels. Many of her poems are inspired by time outdoors. Publications include the Comstock, Awakenings, New Plains, Gyroscope and Octillo Reviews, Glimpse, Dash, Her Words, The Dewdrop, Slab, and Coneflower Cafe, among many others. Christine won the 2023 American Writers Review Poetry Contest and the 2024 Lee Maes Memorial Award #1 in the National Poetry Day Contest of Massachusetts.