Committal

Posted on January 21, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

trees knock in the somber dark
pine needles and leaves
are pressed into the frozen grass
by storms firing through—
dampness layered on stone in moonlight
flashes above unyielding shadows

I place my ear to the ground
and listen to the cities below creak
squeezed by the hardened wind
moving there—

weaving diamonds of frost
deep and wide
turmoil crawls into the earth

John L. Stanizzi – 14 collections, including SEE, POND, Chants. Entra La Notte, his 15th volume, is out this month.

Besides Right Hand Pointing, John’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Prairie Schooner, The New York Quarterly, Thrush Poetry Journal, and others.

Creative-nonfiction is in Stone Coast Review, Ovunque Siamo, After the Pause, and many others.

Former Wesleyan University Etherington Scholar, New England Poet of the Year, Fellowship/Creative Writing – Connecticut Department of the Arts, and Potato Soup Journal’s “Best of 2021,” for CNF story, “Pants,” John also won Ekphrastic Review’s Marathon. He is currently in the running for the State of Connecticut Poet Laureate.

He taught literature, Manchester Community College and Bacon Academy – also directed theater – 26 years.

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The Pursuit of Clarity

Posted on January 21, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

the cows tend the river

the foundation emerges to envy sunset
and our ascension from this valley of mud

signatures of birds
children’s toys
coconuts and juice
provide a clearer vision
of ourselves as windless ships
parched with grief

the train whistle does not know us
pulling its one note from immediacy
on through the distance

on the riverbank of iron pan over fractured sand
fish jump onto the shore
the moon brightens
and the necessity of departures descends
with its eyes open

and yet

we are lost in an arena of moonlight
and still cannot
see the way home

John L. Stanizzi – 14 collections, including SEE, POND, Chants. Entra La Notte, his 15th volume, is out this month.

Besides Right Hand Pointing, John’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Prairie Schooner, The New York Quarterly, Thrush Poetry Journal, and others.

Creative-nonfiction is in Stone Coast Review, Ovunque Siamo, After the Pause, and many others.

Former Wesleyan University Etherington Scholar, New England Poet of the Year, Fellowship/Creative Writing – Connecticut Department of the Arts, and Potato Soup Journal’s “Best of 2021,” for CNF story, “Pants,” John also won Ekphrastic Review’s Marathon. He is currently in the running for the State of Connecticut Poet Laureate.

He taught literature, Manchester Community College and Bacon Academy – also directed theater – 26 years.

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I Write to Hope

Posted on January 20, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

I guess
I write to belong.
I write because last November, I woke up

who am I?

In the blast of screeching police sirens, and

where am I?

The nervous stutter of 爸爸’s kindergarten English
thinking

Asian but not American

I was going to be sent back over 6,000 miles
of waves and lonely ocean
but we were stopped
only because we didn’t flash our lights
and watch the road
in the night.
In case you’re wondering,
yes,
I write for hope.
 

I write for who I am.
And I am
the small, lonely Kong Ming lantern 妈妈

someone call her
and tell her I miss her

let fly
in rural New Hampshire
flapping its jellyfish
paper skin, pale and see-through
into the cloudy night sky
swirling with misty and rainy American
tears, after my last birthday
after we missed two Qing Ming festivals in a row
and the language seems foreign
even though it’s where I’m from. even though
it is who I am.
 

Yes. I am
looking for home.
And yes,
I write for hope.
 

我的天哪
I write for joy, too.
At six, I lived for Chinese
New Year:

why is “Chinese” specified?

the steamy, white dumplings
that burst into sugary, oily wonder
in my mouth. I lived for
myths Uncle 凯told me before bedtime
for the incredible 魔法 that rejuvenated
the Old, rebirthed
the Young,
that brought the New Year.
 

And so I write for 魔法.
I wanted to use a wand and
With a wave of my hand and a “SWISH”!
tidy up Uncle’s wavy seaweed silver hair into
streaks of black, his crumpled up,
yellow sandpaper skin pale
like a newborn.
Like me.
Oh yes,

That’s what it is

I write to hope.

Minghan Zou is a junior at Phillips Exeter Academy. Originally from China, his writing focuses on isolation, identity, natural wonder, and culture. He has been published in schoolwide publications, including The Asian Magazine, and is working on a manuscript. He also published in the Kenyon Review Young Writers Anthology, and his recent poem, “Father, Floating,” is forthcoming in the Beyond Words father-themed anthology.

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Aptonym

Posted on January 20, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

Call me

Light—see the stars in my eyes?
            they beat like wings—
            ming like a half-opened snowflake
            insides crystallized and shattering
            outsides a stilted sun and moon,
            melting, melting.
            Their lights beyond me.

Feather—substantial quill—
            han like a Shanghainese luna moth
            every night a forest of diaphanous pages
            sitting there, sitting and
            leaving pools of ink-fed shadow.

Nothing—spoon-fed from father to son,
            zou like a holding up of five thousand years,
            Father’s past lives spent dreaming away—
            unbroken, save the tears,
            a falling, falling,
            the first strains of revolution.

Call me.

Minghan Zou is a junior at Phillips Exeter Academy. Originally from China, his writing focuses on isolation, identity, natural wonder, and culture. He has been published in schoolwide publications, including The Asian Magazine, and is working on a manuscript. He also published in the Kenyon Review Young Writers Anthology, and his recent poem, “Father, Floating,” is forthcoming in the Beyond Words father-themed anthology.

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Metastatic Bloom

Posted on January 20, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

I’m standing by the open-casket and all I can think of is how it doesn’t smell like it should. Where is the heady varnish, the earthy wood, the itchy, ticklish scent of sawdust?

I’m watching the swirl carved into the side, the half an inch of wood where the painter must’ve made an errant stroke and created a slash of gold outside the curve.

I’m avoiding looking at you.

Your wife’s in the corner of the room, surrounded by your friends. You’d insist I call her by her name but I don’t know her that well. I haven’t tried to become acquainted with her. To me, she’s just the woman who lived with you.

Your friends are loud. Boisterous. They’re walking a fine line between consoling and flashing their studded cuffs.

Your mouth is set in a sullen twist. I wonder who bored you to death.

***

Hey, you remember when we were fifteen and you got absurdly, obsessively into basketball? Sinking three-pointers one after the other for hours, endlessly, the sun following the balls and sinking through the basket, well into the night?

You know summer air. You know it means cicadas and mosquitoes, lovely breeze, lilac skies, shimmering stars. You know it means red welts, itchy ankles, sweaty foreheads.

“It’s way better if you’re moving, fucktard. C’mere, shoot hoops with me.” Or some variation of that invitation, sometimes more profane, sometimes more insistent, sometimes even beggary in its persistence.

You knew I wasn’t good at sports. My father said I had girly-wrists. I didn’t see the appeal, frankly: groups of sweaty teenagers tackling each other for a ball of some or other shape?

But I did enjoy watching you play. You did this stupid thing – this fist pump with your elbow tucked against your ribs, this little whispered, “Whoop!” after every shot.

The one time you twisted your ankle while bouncing the ball across half-court, the universal expression of “oh fuck” on your animated face as your body swiveled and all five-feet-something-inches of you slammed against the concrete.

You were laughing before you even touched ground. The tan surface of your knee ripped open – white before the inevitable red – was barely an affliction to your mood.

“All good, man, all good—” you said, but I was already standing up and approaching you.

The distance between us was barely two strides but all the wind in the world had been knocked out of my lungs and I was doubling over before I could grab your arm. The court was tilting, the sky turned to a scarlet vignette, the edges of my eyesight blurred.

That was the first time I coughed up blood.

***

“Wanna see how many Band-Aids I can steal while they’re checking you up?” you asked and I ignored it.

But you were you: a force, a tsunami and a hurricane, a geomagnetic storm and a seismic movement.

“Hey, hey, look at that nurse, the one with the ass.” You grabbed my collar and tugged, pulling our heads down together to whisper. “Look at those boobs. Fake, a hundred percent. Plastic job. Whew.”

We were sixteen and you were already growing a carpet on your face. It bristled against my bare cheek, your breath soft and cool, your skin so close to mine that it was like plunging my head into a furnace.

You like that, don’t you? Being called a furnace. You arrogant, self-absorbed bastard.

***

At seventeen, I had a secret.

Did you ever hear that dumb urban legend about secrets that take root in your chest and fester and grow and eat you until one day your flesh parts and they don’t find any organs – only maggots feasting on your secrets.

It’s a little more beautiful than that.

The X-rays couldn’t find it so we did an MRI instead and my father was in the room with the doctor for a good fifteen minutes. He came out red-faced and walked past me, knowing I’d follow.

“You fucking faggot,” he said, jamming the key into his busted Chevrolet. “You’re growing a fucking tree in your chest. Whose cock did you suck?”

Linkin Park were on the radio, something, something, another light. “Yeah, they’re cool,” I remember telling you when you made me listen to ‘Numb’ and ‘From the Inside’. I listened to all of their songs, all albums, even the feature tracks later.

After my father dumped me at home and left to buy beer, I considered calling you. I didn’t have much to say but I wanted to ask you if you’d like to listen to Linkin Park together.

I figured not.

***

“Terminal?” you asked. Eighteen and just about to graduate.

“Yeah. They couldn’t diagnose it before.” In my pocket, a bloody white flower, the colour of your knuckles.

“You’re fucking with me?”

I shook my head.

“Fuck off. What the fuck are you talking about?”

I looked deep into your crystal eyes – too much shock for tears, too much knowing for disbelief, too many fears confirmed, too many lies lost.

I shouldn’t have kissed you.

I deserved the shove, the betrayal on your face, the twisted anger, the tears finally breaking through. I deserved the way you shrunk away. The embarrassment on your cheeks.

“I’m – I’m not…”

Yeah, you were not. I didn’t think you were. I didn’t expect you to kiss me back. If anything, I expected you to punch me or call me the names I’d heard you call others. You were a twisted, violent monster, you were akin to the gnarled stem spreading into my alveoli; you were eighteen and a man.

But you just fell silent. The last thing you said to me was: “I’m sorry.”

***

In retrospect, shouldn’t have blocked you.

Shouldn’t have moved out without giving you my new address.

Shouldn’t have kissed flowers into as many mouths as I could find.

Shouldn’t have drowned out the stems inside me with alcohol, parties, strangers.

Shouldn’t have left.

Shouldn’t have left you.

I shouldn’t have left you with her.

***

She’s dabbing her smudged mascara with a kerchief now, her golden bracelets jingling with each furious movement of her wrist.

She’s got pretty, girly-wrists.

I don’t know anyone here. I don’t know your new friends, I don’t know your new life, I don’t know you.

I’m a stranger here. An old childhood friend they found on an old Facebook group with an old email that was somehow still functional.

But I’m looking at you now and I see the flecks of red on the seam of your lips. The paper-thin petal peeking out like a shy worm rearing its head for the rain, pale, translucent, almost invisible against your blue lip.

I’m looking at you now and I know why you’re dead. I know there’s a reason, a someone, a someone who’s not her.

And I know it’s not me.

Fuck, I hope it’s not me.

Ruchi Sneha works as the Digital Editor at Hachette India and holds a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Birmingham. Her work has featured in Mulberry Literary, PULP Lit Mag and will soon feature in Academy of the Heart and Mind. She likes to read widely across genres and experiments with different forms of writing. You can find her on Twitter as @EphemeralesqueW and on Instagram as @ephemeralesquewriting.

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Immaculate Daughter

Posted on January 20, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

Nola told me it was scary how my stomach was growing like rocks: all hard and lumped. The boards that made up the apartment building’s porch were bumpy beneath our bodies. It was sort of like trying to float on a frozen ocean where there is no beginning or end to each point and everywhere you move feels just as unpredictable as the last. The tears forming in the glands of my eyes start to moisturize me in the soft wind of the early spring.

“The sky is gray like a tabby cat.” I told her, “It’s the worst place for me to remember this. Every feeling, even the blade of grass is mean to me. I can’t believe I forgot.”

Nola remembers the conversation. We were in my parents’ home, the one I grew up in. I hadn’t been there in twenty days. Nola and I had found an apartment, where the floor is much colder but the air is much more clear. In my parents’ home, it is full of dust, full of late nights with locked doors and silence looming over each dinner conversation. There’s a certain sharpness in my dad’s voice, how hard it really grinds into you like a swarm of blades and rips your skin. He told me I stink. He told me there was something reeking off me, that I had a problem with my smell.

“You shower enough, but not well. You ignore yourself and you’ve stopped praying,” he said the day I left. Mom just sulked.

Nola watched from the sofa where it was comfortable. The carpet separated me from the wood of the floor like a cushion. My mom’s face was very round, very red, very hairy. There was a warmth being blown against my cold nose and I felt like I might melt into one puddle.

“You’re going to have the baby,” is what mom said. “Your dad and I have been hoping for another one and you will have it.”

What I remember: my mouth was open and drying and I was mostly focused on the stench of my soured breath from the milk I had devoured moments earlier. I remember that there was no conception and nobody to conceive with.

What I don’t remember: a baby growing in my stomach.

So I had forgotten it had happened. I had forgotten like it was my dream from last week. I forgot stupidly when I noticed my stomach was growing a bit larger, some more lumps beneath the flesh. I forgot when I felt myself boiling in the middle of the night, like my chest was going to explode. I forgot that I had taken a sudden liking to the salted taste of sardines, the soft crunch of their spine in my teeth. I had forgotten because I was so focused on how poorly I smelled. The steaming scent of dirty underwear on the floor beside the shower. The potent feeling of dirt under my nails and my scalp shedding gently into the pillow case.

I had forgotten, but Nola took me out to the porch to wail into her shoulder. She held my skin gently and caressed the freckle on my elbow. She kissed my forehead when a golden stream like silky liquid started to pour out of me, and I felt plops of flesh falling from my insides and into the bushes.

We took a jar and scooped up the baby and left it on some poor farmer’s table at the market. I had hoped mom would stop by and pick it up and know the gift I had left for her. But I knew she wouldn’t even notice my stomach never grew. I knew she didn’t want to dig deep enough into me to know the baby was never there.

Abigail Cain is a writer from rural Pennsylvania. Their work can be found in Jardin Zine, Querencia Press, and more. Her debut novelette is set to be released in 2027 through Girl Noise Press.

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Street Photography

Posted on January 19, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

I might never get away from Gemeinier and his disease. I smell it on him, like a skin on top of milk that has been heated then stood for too long.

On the street in the 4e, far from my aunt’s tiny apartment, I wait for him to set up the transaction. I’ll receive ten percent. It’s not a real job, but it’s better than nothing. The money helps at home. It’s not safe, but I am never harmed.

Gemeinier shuffles idly at the corner near the lamppost, daylight fading around us as the lights of the City take over. Further up the street, a young woman is taking pictures of everything with her cell phone. She is American, her red hair pulled back in an elastic tie. A cab shushes past, then a police van turns the corner, appears to slow, and all of my muscles react, pull away, like hairs on my arm shrinking darkened from a lighter flame.

“C’est bon?” Gemeinier grunts at me. You good? I wonder if he thinks I will betray him, or if he worries I will bolt, leaving him with no cover. No one to call his son today.

No safety net.

The police van cruises on, then turns up Rue des Chantres and disappears.

I flick the plastic lighter in my jeans pocket. Click. Click. Gemeinier doesn’t care so much about the answer to his question, only that he’s asked it.

Click.

The American redhead steps around Gemeinier, ignoring him. He stares at her behind as she approaches me. I pull into my sweatshirt, try to disappear. “Puis-je prendre votre photo?” she asks, dividing the syllables awkwardly in her stubby diction.

“Sure,” I answer in English, although I shake my head in negation, betraying my true response. It will attract more attention if I refuse; never tell them no. In allowing the picture then I am unmemorable, a set piece for her tour. Anonymous.

I drop my hood so she can see my face and avert my eyes, slouch against the wall behind me. Teenage voyou, Paris.

“Beau garçon,” she murmurs, lines up her phone. She snaps the photo, and takes a second candid after I’ve broken my pose.

Then she steps into me, a waft of floral soap and cinnamon. “Adrien,” she whispers. “This is for your aunt. Tell her it’s paid. Okay?” Her hand is warm against mine. She places a thick envelope into my fingers, clasps them closed.

I inhale her through my nose, emerald eyes meeting my own and with that she’s gone, already steps up the street and capturing pictures of a shopfront on the opposite row, its aqua paint a breath between the buildings clustered sienna and bluff beside it.

The envelope is thick and worn, soft like her fingers in my hands. It has been used to hold documents before, has been wound and unwound with its twine before me. I stuff it into my front jeans pocket with the lighter. I know what it contains. If my time is done, then this is for us, for my aunt, and for me. She’s free of it now and so I can be too.

Gemeinier has already vanished, either knowing the outcome of the tourist’s appearance, or afraid that he could be found out. Not a hint of his stale-milk odor left behind, only the exhaust of the traffic passing.

Another cab purrs through the intersection while I wait at the corner, then I hustle across the road in the direction of the Saint-Paul station, toward the trains that will take me back home.

Chris Grebe (he/him) grew up in the shadow of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, publishing fiction and journalism as a teenager. His works have appeared in Abergavenny Small Press Literary Journal and Dark Horses Magazine, among others. He was an honorarium reader at the F.R.A.M.E. Literary Salon in Boulder. Reach him on Bluesky (@chrisgescribe) or Substack at https://trunkstories.substack.com.

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The Kindest Thing

Posted on January 19, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

You bought me flowers
and occasionally sprang
for dinner,

but one time,

you pulled me in close,

kissed my neck,

and said I smelled
like dandelions
and chocolate.

It was as if no one
had ever smelled me
before.

It hit—
like the best-kept secret

in the world.

Cody Gohl is a Brooklyn-based poet exploring queerness, intimacy, family, and the bright, strange moments that shape a life. His work blends narrative warmth with vivid, sensory detail. By day he works for New York City’s leading anti-hunger organization; by night he continues shaping his debut collection, January 2034.

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Though Knowing

Posted on January 19, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

The house on a hill, overlooking trees; the rain pounding the roof, the porch screen wet, bubbles forming on the mesh.

The trees are an unruly mix of oak and pine, converging with the vines all fighting for space amid the crowd of green rising like a carpet below the lush, grassy slope. The woods ended at a granite outcrop with roughly hewn steps leading to the narrow, graveled track to the mailbox by the road that leads to the highway to the shore, with the roar of the waves spreading from the immensity of the ocean. The breeze gusts at dawn, amid the seagulls’ morning calls.

Here, in this house, the sounds of a summer storm. The wind kicks up, robust, swinging a curtain of heavy rain against the screen. I feel the moisture forcing through the mesh, light sprinkles peppering my shirt while standing, cigarette in hand, cupped against my mouth, lips parted, smoke wafting upward: acrid, unhealthy, but relaxing, romantic, with coffee light and artificial sweetener.

The coffee cup sat on a black tile coaster to protect the rectangular mahogany table, three solid boards carved in place on a single-footed slab. Waxed and worn but never waned, wanted, like the woman he missed: the thick curls in contact with eyebrows above emotive glass-green eyes. Voluptuous lips slightly parting when her head tilted downward, peering up, unsure sometimes, girlish though knowing.

A crystal ashtray, its notches stained from decades of nicotine burned cigarettes to the filter, distracted by writing, telephone calls, and quick kisses snatched from the air with targeted intent.

Smelling the rain, its metallic perfume supplementing, though never overwhelming the sweet pine; the flower boxes placed outside, the dirt transformed to mud, adding to the collection of senses as I stand, staring out over the treetops, watching this storm pass through.

Absorbed, gaze fixed and focused, directed toward but beyond the horizon, the imagined distant shore at the terminus of the highway through the city, the town. That passes the road which leads to the mailbox, from thereon the narrow, gravel track rising through the woods under the forest canopy of oaken leaves with pine needles covering the ground, to the granite cliff, with steps cut by a previous owner leading to the grass, sloping upward to the house, at the porch, through the screen, the window boxes on the railing, filled with her flowers: gardenias and violets, butted against old beams aged and graying, the mahogany table, ashtray, coffee on black tile coaster and the cigarette between my lips, my eyes squinting through the pungent smoke.

This forested hill on which this house sits is an opposing shore, the distance to the beach via the road to town and through the city a veritable ocean.

Her home, although physically unseen beyond the horizon, a home filled with dreams and memory, a known certitude undeniably perceptible, is never denied and cherished.

When the storm passes, the voyage across this distance to the shore shall be taken, journeying to half-lidded eyes staring up with glass-green pools and parted lips, curls exquisitely stroking her eyebrows; a crossing to the sun and stars, and the moon and sky, the golden sands, sparkling with mica.

Mike Lee is an editor, writer, and photographer at a trade union in New York City. His fiction has appeared at Blood+Honey, The Brussels Review, Bristol Noir, The Airgonaut, and elsewhere.

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Grammar of the Shore

Posted on January 19, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

The tideline seam
holds the first rule: salt layering
into legible crust,
pressure’s faint script
on stone’s unyielding face.

Accretion builds the rule—
mineral stacked on mineral,
memory in thin films,
warm only where the sun
refuses the sea’s reply.

Ablation follows:
wave withdraws without mercy,
erasing the soft edge,
exposing fracture lines
that hinge on absence.

Suspension lingers mid-tide—
grit held in water’s grasp,
a vowel half-formed,
the next deposition.

Stone warms on one side only,
its seam a punctuation mark:
not crack, but measure—
the body’s flinch transcribed
in silted repetition.

Breakage reveals the syntax:
pattern emerges only
as it splits, survives
in the instant of release—
a shore that teaches
without tongue or witness.

This grammar erodes the heir,
re-languages the sedimented self:
read the crust before it lifts,
trace the wave’s hand
before it measures you.

Topher Shields is a poet from Aotearoa New Zealand whose work explores ritual, inheritance, and the coastal architectures of identity.

His poems appear in Puerto del Sol, The Shore, DIALOGIST, The Bangalore Review, and others.

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know this

Posted on January 18, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

a goodbye shrouded in fluorescent
trees is still a goodbye, is still
stepping on bees, is still
a funny thing…
wrap it up offer it to the birds
kind of funny,
dirtied the water and now
it’s too muddy,
beat the egg to a pulp
and now it’s too runny,
it’s kind of funny…
a goodbye is another
empty promise if you
don’t stay gone.

Kaylaun Bonni lives in Toronto. With roots in St. Louis, Boston, and Kurdistan, Kaylaun is interested in emotional connection to setting. She is a founding editor of Şerābi, a print zine-anthology on the ethno-religious identity of South/West Asia.

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Anna’s Backyard

Posted on January 18, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

I’ve put myself in charge of the fire we’d lit during the burn ban. I’m doing a good job, or drought makes it easy. Thin white T-shirt is enough to stay warm. Flames in front of me. River rushing behind my back. A third cup of wine I wish is something stronger.

I’m not alone for as long as I’d like. Phone flashlights over the river boulders. Swim suits in the sauna. Dani holds my vape hostage. I don’t mind. He’s a question asker, can really get you talking. Or I am eager to spill. I’m telling him everything my dad taught me about firetending. My family’s woodstove. He’s telling me about boy scouts. Waking up and rushing to the embers of last night. I’m surprised at how surprised I am that he was a scout, let alone a boy. The wine is getting to me. Like always, he hugs me when we say goodbye.

Evan Wiechert (they/he) is a queer writer, student, and energy drink enthusiast. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Fiction from the University of New Hampshire.

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Andrew’s Porch

Posted on January 18, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

A friend takes a picture of you putting out a cigarette on the porch. It’s Halloween. You are drunk for the first time. Six shooters and a neon windbreaker is enough to keep warm. There’s a decent amount of people outside, but less than there are in the house, and you’ve claimed one of the few seats. Floral cushion. Fence to your back. Door in sight. You watch your friends go back inside. Strangers come out.

The girl you were in love with six months ago is here. She talks to you for maybe five minutes, maybe forty-five. She remembers you work at an escape room place. Your research. She asks if you know what her costume is. You don’t. A burial at sea. The netted sweater is too cold for outside. She goes inside for a drink. But your seat is good, so you take out your lighter again.

Evan Wiechert (they/he) is a queer writer, student, and energy drink enthusiast. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Fiction from the University of New Hampshire.

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Twilight

Posted on January 18, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

When the jeans shrink in the wash.
If the seatbelt is too snug. What

it looks like from the outside.
How the tracks warm before the train.

When he’s holding you like that. Why
you’re supposed to dry flowers upside down.

How a certain light slants a certain
way. Or a branch writhes away

from itself. Why the ink stain won’t come
out. How the armchair takes you in.

Why you look in every mirror you pass.
If you stand a loaded gun. If you know it.

When you’re being ugly. How you choose
to play the game. If you’re lucky.

How it feels in your skin. When you want it
bad. If you think you’ll forget.

Theodora Bonis is a writer and educator based in Burlington, Vermont. She holds a BA in English Literature and Studio Art from the University of Vermont, and is the author of Shadowing, a collection of poetry and photography.

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Human flesh bomb as the portrait of an everyman

Posted on January 17, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

I am two steps away
from self-detonating.
Pulling the pin, lighting
the wick, whatever makes
the biggest explosion.
Last summer the newest
sidewalk find was a
double-bent hair pin
every child picked up
and put to their mouth,
this black-bled silver
muzzle. Un-stretchably
shiny. I tell it to stop
worrying about the leaves
turning yellow and falling
onto the street but it doesn’t
acknowledge me. Odd
because suddenly I’m not
eighteen quite yet
and the bottle of delirious
candy still sits on the
Walgreens back counter
collecting dust. My
mother’s license sticking
out of her LV handbag.
Jean pockets empty and
I count a twenty-dollar
bill washed-out fuzzy in
the dryer with my other sock.
I wonder if I stuck my head in
whether my brain would leak
through a tear or my mouth.

Sophia Pan is a Chinese-American writer from Chicago, IL. A 2026 YoungArts winner in poetry, her writing is published/forthcoming in Aster Lit, DIALOGIST, wildscape. literary journal, and others. She is the Editor in Chief of Yin Literary, and you can find her at https://sophiapan.carrd.co. In her free time, Sophia enjoys taking strolls with her dog and can be found hiking away from her problems.

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This poem is about the poem it’s after

Posted on January 17, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

after Real America by Fiona Jin after Richard Siken

I late-night-find my way to a screenshot of the last thing you wrote for me,
something you probably just forgot to send but I am still anticipating this text,
this last fragment I want just to have something close to you. I save the image.
The intangible thing I think is my throat but I’m not sure why I start crying
when I do, only that the time right now is 4:44 and that’s all I want to do.
When the platonic car is the only seat I see and I can see you willing yourself
to tell that girl that you love her but you don’t. I read and reread everything
everything and notice you watch her in love poems and breathing and smiles
smile because it’s okay. It happens like all things happen, right? And I’m sorry
sorry that this isn’t the first poem I’ve written about this standing just outside
your old high school while it’s dripping dark mist outside because I can’t
bear to be inside anymore.

Sophia Pan is a Chinese-American writer from Chicago, IL. A 2026 YoungArts winner in poetry, her writing is published/forthcoming in Aster Lit, DIALOGIST, wildscape. literary journal, and others. She is the Editor in Chief of Yin Literary, and you can find her at https://sophiapan.carrd.co. In her free time, Sophia enjoys taking strolls with her dog and can be found hiking away from her problems.

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I hope no one ate the plum in the fridge

Posted on January 17, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

It said Frances on the Post-It note next to it. I rip the paper and the fuzz on the back. Soft fruits taste sweeter anyways. Like wearing a knit sweater on the first snow of winter. When Fran breaks out the red scarf and snow boots and runs ahead of me just enough so I can pretend I’m staring at the white. I should tell Fran to get a high-collared coat. And let her hair down. Fran only uses this one conditioner. Apple, I think. In English Fran untwists the soft brown knob and lets me braid it. Somehow that day her hair just took much longer to divide into three. Dry palms cup this scent to my lips so it lasts longer. Fran’s perfume. Fran’s size six shoeprints. Fran’s breath in puffs. So crisply white. Mint. The fridge light turns off. I hope the milk gallon rots like eternal December. I hope I stay lactose intolerant so I can pretend I can’t drink it anyways.

Sophia Pan is a Chinese-American writer from Chicago, IL. A 2026 YoungArts winner in poetry, her writing is published/forthcoming in Aster Lit, DIALOGIST, wildscape. literary journal, and others. She is the Editor in Chief of Yin Literary, and you can find her at https://sophiapan.carrd.co. In her free time, Sophia enjoys taking strolls with her dog and can be found hiking away from her problems.

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Slaughter Season

Posted on January 17, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

It happened every year
around Christmas time.

More than the blood
those primal rituals
the worst was
watching my mother cry.

While she cut the fat
she would melt
to preserve the sausages.

She had raised those two pigs
lovingly, for a whole year.

Dolo Diaz is a scientist and poet with roots in Spain, currently residing in California. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in SLANT, The Summerset Review, ONE ART, Third Wednesday Magazine, Rogue Agent, among others. Her website: https://dolodiaz.com.

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Impermanence

Posted on January 16, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

You keep returning to the moment
            before the light knew it was morning,
even after mourning the last chirp of the bird
            and biting the molded part of the apple
and you learn that
            a part of yearning means the sum
of wanting, that someday
            these words too,
will be referenced in absence.
            but nothing yet
had hardened.
            you still vividly remember
the red tint of the streetlights
            and how she sang to you at night
and you will walk away from this earth
            before the sun starts to die
but don’t let go of the superficial sentiment,
            the golden hue your mother gives off
or the sliver of emotion that is,
            a hope still dreaming of sanctity.
Persist in knowing
            the light will hum beneath your skin,
and that, too, is heaven.

Caroline Shin is a student and aspiring poet from Southern California. As a dancer and artist, she seeks to find inspiration in the small moments of everyday life. She hopes her writing can be a vessel for change.

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Home in Diaspora

Posted on January 16, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

cigarette smoke coils through city lights
sticky summers folding me into 서울 (Seoul), the soul i can’t leave
every street vendor, every whiff of buttered bread mingled with red pepper
the monsoon air thick and sweet, cicadas drilling the dusk until it trembles
each trace tugging me backward across oceans i thought i had left behind
until i start mistaking the distance for home, breaching into makeshift pitfalls
crumbling and straightening again
trying to lose myself in translation against words that were never meant for me.
i will yearn until my heart can churn no longer,
listening to its pulse across oceans,
across the muffled exhortations of my own reflection,
the thin thread pulling me between the place i came from
and the place i continue to build.
the spout never stops dripping, even the water resists stillness
its droplets ricochet across time zones, through my half-packed memories
i keep returning—back and forth between lands
where i trip on flat ground
as if gravity itself wrestles with indecisiveness.
my tongue will always stumble over 한글 (hangul)
the phonemes bristle against my teeth,
stretching like tattered sails, folding
into paper boats that drift across my chest,
across fables of belonging
because belonging was always a quieter word for assimilation
i am the one still becoming,
shaped by histories that insist, always insisting
refusing to leave me as an unfinished draft
by identities that resist obliteration,
that cling to me across streets and premises
and in their weaving, i am still here

Caroline Shin is a student and aspiring poet from Southern California. As a dancer and artist, she seeks to find inspiration in the small moments of everyday life. She hopes her writing can be a vessel for change.

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School Days

Posted on January 16, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

Our teacher stands on a desk
in science class, dancing
in erratic rhythm.

The whole class laughs
as he kicks his feet;
makes a wrong step and tumbles
to the ground.

In the lunchroom, I see
my face printed on the side
of a milk carton. I already know
I’ve been missing for years.

The bus ride home is quiet,
or maybe I’m just not listening.

John Sara is a writer from Parma, Ohio. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Ashland University, where he works as an adjunct professor and lead fiction editor for the student-run literary journal The Black Fork Review. His work has been featured in such places as Prairie Margins, Paper Dragon, Blood+Honey, Maudlin House, Schlock! Webzine, Cul-de-sac of Blood and more. You can follow him on Instagram: @darkbat616.

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The Shoes

Posted on January 16, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

two hunks of brown leather,
once part of a cow’s hide,

sit on a dusty shelf amongst
piles of forgotten clothing.

It was said they were found
floating down the river,

bobbing like a wooden log,
or a crocodile breaching the surface;

long detached from the soles of the runner;
who was found nearby, sinking to the bottom.

If polished, they could shine again,
but it wouldn’t rid them of the stink;

the way the flies cover them
in a flood of buzzing;

making a noise like a murmur,
or the scream of a man drowning.

John Sara is a writer from Parma, Ohio. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Ashland University, where he works as an adjunct professor and lead fiction editor for the student-run literary journal The Black Fork Review. His work has been featured in such places as Prairie Margins, Paper Dragon, Blood+Honey, Maudlin House, Schlock! Webzine, Cul-de-sac of Blood and more. You can follow him on Instagram: @darkbat616.

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Y

Posted on January 15, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

Try hymns by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Why? Sly rhythms sync.

Joshua Kepfer lives in California, where he enjoys exploring the wilderness of the mountains and ocean with his wife and daughter. Much of his inspiration to write prose, music, and poetry comes from nature and his faith in Jesus. He has work published in The Bookends Review, Tiny Seed Journal, Azure: A Journal of Literary Thought, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and more. Find him on Instagram and Facebook.

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U

Posted on January 15, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

Us runt punks
Gus, Gump
must bulk
must un-runt.

Curl, crunch, run, punch
Lungs burn, guns bust,
guts hurt.
Uh, um bluh
…
huck up gut muck stuff
Yuck.
Funk stunk.
Us punks slump,
skulls numb.

Joshua Kepfer lives in California, where he enjoys exploring the wilderness of the mountains and ocean with his wife and daughter. Much of his inspiration to write prose, music, and poetry comes from nature and his faith in Jesus. He has work published in The Bookends Review, Tiny Seed Journal, Azure: A Journal of Literary Thought, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and more. Find him on Instagram and Facebook.

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E

Posted on January 15, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

Shep trekked twenty-seven meters
fetched hens’ fresh eggs.
Hens pecked seeds.

Then, Seth went there.
He wrenched seven hens’ necks, slew them.

“Hey! Ew!” Shep yelled.

“We need the fresh flesh.” Seth left. “Chef brews stew.”

Shepherd Ben fed eleven sheep when Seth eyed them.

Seth crept, entered the sheep fence.
“We need three sheep for pelts.”

“Get elk pelts. Get Beef!” Ben yelped.

Seth held, “We need sheep pelts.”

Ben drew steel. Seth drew.

Ben hewed Seth’s knee.

Seth’s knee bled free.

“Next be the neck,” Ben yelled.

Seth, bested, sped west, new peg leg.

Ben, spent, slept there
where sheep bedded
ere the green elm tree

Joshua Kepfer lives in California, where he enjoys exploring the wilderness of the mountains and ocean with his wife and daughter. Much of his inspiration to write prose, music, and poetry comes from nature and his faith in Jesus. He has work published in The Bookends Review, Tiny Seed Journal, Azure: A Journal of Literary Thought, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and more. Find him on Instagram and Facebook.

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