Editor’s Note
Somewhere beyond words, in words, made out of words we forgot how to say, from words that have no letters and are only found in the intake of breath. . . if I scrape out a moment of stillness I can hear it. And if I listen even harder, I can hear it from everyone around me and people I haven’t met yet. The universal cry in these times:
AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!
- Kit Lascher (10/31/25)
Featuring:
Storm Ainsely
S.D. Dillon
Oliver Fahlen
Lindy Giusta
Paul Hostovsky
Steph Kudisch
Kate Laster
Jeanne Blum Lesinski
LindaAnn LoSchiavo
Jacob Madden
William Taylor Jr
Bill Wolak
Lindy Giusta
“Kill the Lantern Fly”
I’m beginning to lose my sanity?!!?!?
My eyes avert themselves to the shadow scantily falling down the wall…
A weighted panic dropped in my chest like the bulldozers slowly dropping dirt in the endless construction.
“Oh it’s just my mind playing tricks on me, but is it?!”
Some minutes pass by, not like I’m counting or anything.
Then I see it, in my flickering aromatic candle lit room
I SWITCH ON THE LIGHT FASTER THAN YOU CAN SAY ROTTEN APPLE!
I can hear its body hitting the floor,
I peer down…..
It is another LANTERN fly.
If past lives exist, I was somehow connected to lagomorphs but definitely not lantern flies.
We are enemies that beast of a fly and I.
My heart beats a little faster,
But
I
Just
Can’t
Kill
It
Yet!
So I will cower until I can.
Steph Kudisch
Jacob Madden
Jackhammer
dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg
Daniel’s eyes broke open at the sound of a jackhammer smashing the concrete. It was as if a smaller hammer were doing the same to the roof of his skull. He tried to get back to sleep when his alarm went off – at EIGHT.
He squeezed his eyes shut and lifted the duvet over his head, but the noise was not even slightly muffled, leading him to believe – briefly, in his drowsy state – the noise was internal, a migraine maybe. He slunk to the window to confirm, separated the slats of the blind, and peered down five storeys at the street: men with high-visibility vests were digging the road. Bastards.
He needed to start work. He sat down at his desk and opened his laptop. As most of his clients were in America, there were always lots of emails to dg-dg read first dg-dg thing in the dg-dg morning dg-dg-dg.
SHUT IT, he said through his teeth, as if it might do something. What made it all much worse was the hammer would stop and start, stop and start, and so there was always the hope it might stay quiet – but it did not.
dg-dg-dg-dg
dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg
dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg
dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg
He took out his notepad from his desk drawer and began to scribble mindlessly, going faster, faster, faster, faster, FASTER, till the nib tore through the page. He stabbed the notepad with the pen – heurgh! heurgh! – creating many tiny indentations several pages deep and forcing the nib back into the barrel. He looked at the pen’s sunken, useless face. It was his only pen dg-dg-dg-dg.
He went to place the pen back on the desk and noticed his hand tr-tr-trembling. His quivering dg-dg grew more dg-dg vicious dg-dg, became exaggerated dg-dg, till he was borderline convulsing dg-dg-dg-dg-dg.
Breathe…
BREATHE, damn you!
He went over by the window, pen in hand, glowering at those vile, little, scum-sucking shitheads, none of whom were aware of his existence. He shoved the window open. The volume didn’t change. It remained LOUD dg-dg-dg.
These men, these tiny, insufferable, roach-like men, were intent on destroying the floor, creating a pit into which everything would fall. These spawn of Satan! With little hesitation, Daniel launched his pen as far as he could, watching it fly many feet, bounce off a fire hydrant, and roll into a storm drain. They were further than the noise suggested.
dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg
dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg
dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg
dg-dg
With the loss of his pen, his only pen, his anger multiplied as if by mitosis. It was his only pen, yet there had been something gratifying in launching it at those hellish familiars. Rage, it seemed to him, found its outlet in motion, but when that motion came to an end, the rage returned full thrust. Thus, Daniel realised, if he were to subdue his fury, he must remain in motion.
He rummaged through his stationery drawer and gathered coloured pencils, an eraser, a bottle of Tippex, and four AAA batteries, which he promptly threw down onto the street in a fusillade of miscellany. He grunted with every throw. Oof! Oof! Oof! Nothing landed anywhere near those heartless invaders or their mechanical beasts.
Daniel slammed his fist onto the desk, then again and again and again and again and AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN. For a while, his slamming battled with the noise of the hammer, vying for control of the airspace around his ears, until the dg-dg-dg won out.
REMAIN. IN. MOTION.
He gathered more objects, preparing for the next barrage: a mug half-full of milky, lukewarm tea; an empty deodorant spray-can, recently finished, and a full deodorant spray-can, as yet unopened; a portable speaker, to make full use of its portability; a wireless mouse, a framed picture of his dog, a pillow, a comb, a laptop charger, a multi-socket extension lead, a slipper, two slippers, his collection of cheap gemstones: lazurite, malachite, amethyst, and tiger’s eye – everything! Everything which could be snatched by his greedy fingers was tossed out the window with mechanical regularity. Sometimes it would bounce off the closed window, and he would pick it up and fling it even harder.
Still, nothing on target dg-dg-dg-dg.
He opened another dg-dg drawer and saw a pack of dg-dg pens. There had been dg-dg pens the whole dg-dg time? Oh, it’s too late to show up now. It’s too dg-dg late. This revelation made his earlier rage less warranted, which made his present rage MORE warranted. As if adhering to some natural law, he launched the pack out the window, only it caught the window handle and slipped down the side of the building.
dg-dg-dg-dg
dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg
dg-dg-dg-dg
dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg
dg-dg-dg-dg
Despite all he had thrown, the street looked unscathed. Everything continued as normal. And those men, those twisted, God-awful cretins, who so relished destruction, hadn’t turned once. He hadn’t seen their damned faces! That was going to change, he thought.
The room was stark, but he was not yet out of ammunition. He removed a screwdriver from his drawer, with which he carefully unscrewed the restrictor on the window preventing large objects from going through. Then, he chucked the screwdriver.
One by one, he removed and lobbed each empty desk drawer, hearing the wood splinter on the pavement. He threw his clothes rack, his laundry basket, his suitcase, and the rice cooker he kept in his room. He unplugged his bean-to-cup machine, filled up its water tank in the bathroom for extra weight, then hurled it with a grunt. Oooof! It tumbled as if in slow motion. The waste water tray separated mid-flight, as did the puck bin, the bean container lid, and all the little coffee beans, which hailed down like Arabica bullets.
A metallic bang resounded as it smashed on the concrete.
One of the men, who was scribbling on a clipboard, lifted his head slightly, briefly, all too briefly. Incurious swine! With tremulous hands, Daniel clutched the windowsill and dug his nails in, leaving scratch marks in the paintwork. Everything was gone. Everything, GONE. He quaked with fury.
dg–––––––dg––––––dg–––––dg––––dg–––dg––dg–dg–dg–dg–dg–dg–dg–dg–dg–dg–dg–dg–dgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdg WHAT WAS LEFT? dgdgdgdgdgdgdg WHAT WAS LEFT THAT WASN’T BOLTED DOWN? dgdg dgdgdgdgdgdgdgdg NOTHING! dgdgdgdgdgdg NOTHING ASIDE FROM HIS dgdg LOUSY dgdgdgdgdg GOOD-FOR-NOTHING dgdgdgdgdg CHAIR dgdgdgdgdgdgdg dgdgdgdgdg WITH ITS PLASTIC CASTORS AND dgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdg STAINED UPHOLSTERY. dgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdg USELESS HUNK OF CRAP. dgdgdgdgdg HE RIPPED IT FROM ITS PLACE, dgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdg AND TRIED dgdgdgdgdg SHOVING IT THROUGH dgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdg THE WINDOW, dgdgdgdgdg ONLY dgdgdgdgdgdg THE BASTARD WOULDN’T GO! dgdgdgdgdgdgdg ITS FIVE LEGS CLUNG dgdgdgdg DESPERATELY dgdgdgdg TO THE WINDOW FRAME. dgdgdgdg dgdgdgdgdgdg IT WOULDN’T GO. dgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdgdg
It wouldn’t go.
He put the chair down and tucked it under his desk. There was nothing else for it. He made one last look around before mounting the windowsill. He shuffled his shoeless feet till his toes were on the frame. He stared ahead, the high-rises like rotten teeth in a foaming maw. Damned chair. If only…
He flung himself off the ledge. The jackhammer grew quiet. He was in motion, and it was not rage he felt.
William Taylor Jr
Reminder:
Hey you dumbass
wretched half-baked saints,
you slapdash sinners,
you feckless dupes
selling your garbage pail souls
to a lesser demon’s lackey
the first chance you get,
you wackos still dreaming
of beauty in the face
of the machinations
of the dull and monstrous kings
who bleed you like
the dumb animals you are,
you 5 time suicides,
you muses to the damned,
you elegant weirdos,
you fucking mooks,
you losers dreaming
of victory, too close
to the sun with your paper bag wings,
you knuckleheaded fools
forever rushing in where angels
wouldn’t dare —
listen, there’s no time left
for your bullshit
or mine.
We’re already gone, and the void
offers no rewards for our best intentions.
Eternity is a long time not to exist,
so quit fucking around.
Take your grubby little fingers,
plunge them into the fierce
and bitter heart of yourself
and eat.
Paul Hostovsky
Confessional Poem
I whacked off in these woods once.
But that was a long time ago when
everything rhymed a little with
the trees all facing upward and the sky
was full of itself and no one
was around. And everything smelled good.
I smelled good myself. A sweaty,
muddy, musky, burning smell of
autumn or late summer or very early
spring was in the air, and I was so
excited to be so young and existential
and solipsistic, that I peeled off my shirt
and pants and underpants, and stood there
erect and steeply rocking under a sycamore,
my peeled bark in a little pile at my feet,
my head tossing in the wind, my mouth
opening, wider, wider, as if trying
to pronounce all the vowels at the same time
and failing deliciously, and sinking down
to the ground, totally spent and spluttering
a few choice consonants like kisses meant
for the pursed lips of the wind.
Love Poem
I love this poem.
I would do anything
for this poem.
I am not above
stealing for example.
I stole in the past
and I stole from the past
and I’d gladly steal from your past
for this poem.
I would lie
for the sake of this poem.
I would lie in the face of this poem
just to make the poem face me.
Just to feel on my face the hot, sweet, faint
bad-tooth breath of the poem.
I could sink to anything.
I think I could kill.
I think I have killed
for the shape, the sheer
body of this poem.
Look how beautiful,
feel how impossible,
this slender, limned thing
weighing next to nothing,
saying next to nothing.
Saying everything.
Everything.
Oliver Fahlen
A Libra Man on Tinder
YOU MATCHED WITH LIBRA ON 10/12/18
Fri, Oct. 12, 9:30 PM
My fair lady,
You doth look radiant as a
Flower blooming on a warm
Summer’s day
Might I bother you for
A date out with a man as
Fine as me
Dashing, muscular,
Handsome.
Fri, Oct, 12, 11:15 PM
No, thank you.
You are not interested?
Thurs, Oct. 17, 1:00 PM
TBH, I accidentally swiped on your profile,
you really aren’t my type. Sorry man.
Nonsense
No such man better than
Myself exists.
I shall collect you at six.
What would be the address of the abode of a
Woman as fine as you?
Thurs, Oct. 17, 5:30 PM
Well, my love, if you will not give me
Your address,
I will be
Forced to take further action.
Sat, Oct 19, 8:45 AM
Are you seriously threatening me over Tinder?
No, my dear lady, that was not a threat,
I am ever so sorry you took it as such
Perhaps if I took you to
Dinner at six,
You might see past my
“Unpleasant” demeanor.
I think I’m just gonna report you.
No, my beautiful lady,
Do not set the authorities upon me.
You doth protest too much.
If perchance you do not show
I shall be forced to off myself.
Mon, Oct. 21, 11:00 PM
What the fuck?
Jk.
Tues, Oct. 22, 1:15 AM
Hello?
You are not permitted to send any more messages to this user.
Jeanne Blum Lesinski
Domestic Suppernova
Plant Maintenance
LindaAnn LoSchiavo
Elizabeth Siddal Rossetti, Cemetery Superstar
Retaining fame 160 years
After I died unknown—artwork unsold,
My verses unpublished—has been bizarre.
Do stars need darkness to appreciate
Their glowing? Or wise men to point them out?
My temperamental husband, mad with guilt,
Laid me to rest with poems, his bound book.
This he missed — more than my companionship.
Where’s my work now? Just then there came a crash.
Rude crowbars pried apart my long-sealed lid.
Men open-mouthed like choristers stared shocked.
Distraught, he’d sent them. Dig her up! He’ll learn
My flesh looked pale, my red hair’s grown more wild.
Rossetti’s poems sweetened maggots’ meals.
Worm-eaten scraps had crowned my coffined head,
A spectral tapestry akin to my
Ophelia pose, a dead girl prettified,
Myself a teen when painted by Millais.
A painting’s fame forgets dead models—but
Art helps us dream back everything that’s lost.
. . . . . .
Note: Elizabeth Siddal [1829-1862] wed Dante Gabriel Rossetti in1849. In 1869, her husband’s agent Charles Augustus Howell encouraged Rossetti to put an exhumation in motion to retrieve the poems from her grave.
Kate Laster
S.D. Dillon
The Pace of Things
Humans race into
condition. Food chains skip
steps. Slopes slip &
the tornado spirals faster—
Conflict fells structure
under its own weight.
Without resistance, momentum
bursts through—
Better mousetraps
and ping pong balls,
combustible celluloid flung
through the audience.
The more efficiently we use fuel, the more
it makes sense
to use it.
And how easily our attention is diverted
when the threat
is a slow grower
& urgency hides
on the incremental.
Our minds are conditioned to—
Look—a goldfinch—
Screams
Wordless faces drain cold of blood.
Ghastly wood planks abut plaster un-white walls.
A blank room.
Floorboards pickled & sun-bleached as coral.
Molding, a frame and some hooks.
Empty tracks of xylem and phloem. Wind-carved
Grains of railroad ties.
Gravel, weeds.
The abandoned line under the avenue,
The anxious lean that teeters in.
Bill Wolak
Become the Mirror's Openness
Fleeting as an Arousal from Beyond
Storm Ainsely
“Some Kinda Way” it’s a thing these days to say that. Heard it in a pop song. A way to suggest it’s complicated & not all good. Without going into it. But why? Maybe that wasn’t the point. No detours here. Or the audience could be dangerous, the way too vague for words yet. Probably we don’t want to know. Stupid, right? As if not saying how we feel actually changes it. Have some fucking courage. We aren’t ghosts yet. Figure it out.
Fine is hair or cloth, it’s tiny grains of sand. It’s not coarse. It’s not how you feel unless you feel like tiny grains of sand today. Do you? Feel run over by the ocean, unable to get out of the tub, like if someone could come & form a castle out of you your pinnacle would be reached? Do you feel like you’ve been swallowed to help a bird digest its worms?
Some kinda way . . . is it supposed to be shorthand for every liminal space? The mist handprint fading from the glass, the train disappearing down the tracks, the whistle in the dark long after the train’s stopped running, the tracks paved over. The shooting star the most glorious debris gets to be. Do you feel like debris? When you remember the star you wished on might have gone out a thousand years ago?
Maybe we just mean feelings are NSFW. Can’t keep our place in line like that while shivering over the heat death of the universe. Clearly it does not mean I feel like a fucking god! (and dear god can that mean so many transcendent and vile things itself) but we know it doesn’t mean this because when you feel like a fucking god you at least make an orgasm face if you don’t happen to be screaming so.
Nope. So it’s nostalgic. Like “Not It” at recess. Even if you wouldn’t go back for a million dollars, the memory still smells a bit like cake. The in-between-feelings feeling.
Arms out. Hair in the breeze. Indefinite. Unfixed. Or cloak like. How we leave flying for dreams.
Some kinda way=you ain’t got the password today. Nothing to open here. Explosives inert. Disarming will not work. Has honesty always been a radical act? Or is that an invention of later poisons? Everyone ought know Adam & Eve is whack, there was no fucking devil snake, what kind of asshole says, “Here’s everything beautiful I can dream up & it’s yours except don’t touch that?” Dude that got touched before asshole even walked away. Punishment for inherent nature is bullshit. God is bullshit. Cry about it, cause that made you feel! Angry/Sad/Betrayed … maybe Bored because you thought that already. Not some kind. Not some sort. Not fine.
Sometimes I feel like I could explode & take the whole world with me, except even once I imagine that I’m still there. I wonder if that’s even a smidgen of what a suicide bomber feels. May as well be since I’ll never get to ask.
Today I’m trying to feel like a fuzzy blanket on the couch. Full of pancakes. Not like crying in the bathtub. I don’t need a reason to feel like this, but if we both wanted, I could make a list. I don’t. Do you?
They say misery loves company, is that some kinda way too? You know, how people who curse are perceived as more honest? & again we find the wall
NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW
like it’s all about cordiality & not about being liars. So we invented a shorthand for “I’m a complicated human being but you don’t want to know about that & when it’s bad enough I don’t either.”
Gratitudes, Comments, and Credits
Storm Ainsely loves sending postcards. Her favorite color when she was 5 was green & maybe it should be again. Her work has appeared in Trace Fossils Review, Exist Otherwise, and West Trade Review among others.
Native New Yorker. Poet. Writer. Dramatist. In 2024 LindaAnn LoSchiavo had three poetry books published in 3 different countries; two titles won multiple awards.
In 2025, two titles are forthcoming: “Cancer Courts My Mother” and “Vampire Verses.”
A segment of my formal verse functions as dispatches from the Bar-do—that liminal space she escapes to with her imaginative alter-egos and gothic predilections.
BlueSky: @ghostlyverse.bsky.social
LIndy Giusta is a queer, neurodivergent, prolific and passionate visual artist and writer from California. They have had their artwork published in various limags like Peatsmoke, Bleating Things, Hemlock Journal, and more and their poetry featured in Unleash Lit and Dark Poets Club and have shown their art across California and New York. When not writing or creating art they love exploring cities and nature, playing their mandolin and drinking copious amounts of coffee. Say hello at: IG: @lindydoesart
William Taylor Jr. lives and writes in San Francisco. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, and a volume of fiction. His work has been published widely in literary journals, including Rattle, The New York Quarterly, and The Chiron Review. He was a recipient of the 2013 Kathy Acker Award, and edited Cocky Moon: Selected Poems of Jack Micheline (Zeitgeist Press, 2014). His new poetry collection, The People Are Like Wolves to Me, is forthcoming from Roadside Press. https://x.com/WilliamTaylorJr
Bill Wolak has just published his nineteenth book of poetry entitled What Love Calms Only With Nakedness with Expeditions International Publishing House. His collages and photographs have appeared as cover art for such magazines as Phoebe, The Passionfruit Review, Inside Voice, and Barfly Poetry Magazine.
These artists are fierce and magic, and I’m so grateful to have them as part of this project.
Thank you to all contributors, my community who has supported this project, and the Oakland Public Libraries where I did so much editing, curating. and designing work.
And thank you for being here.
-Kit
Paul Hostovsky's poems appear and disappear simultaneously (ta-da!) and have recently been sighted in those places where they pay you for your trouble
with your own trouble doubled, and other people's troubles thrown in, which never seem to him as great as his troubles, though he tries not to compare.
He has no life and spends it with his poems, trying to perfect their perfect disappearances, which is the title of his newest collection, which you can find here:
S.D. Dillon has an MFA from Notre Dame and lives in Michigan. His poetry has appeared recently in SORTES, Last Leaves Magazine, and The Shortlist: Best of BarBar 2024, and he received the 2025 Visual Poetry Award from Bacopa Literary Review. He can be found on Instagram at @sddillon50.
Jeanne Blum Lesinski is a writer and multi-media artist from the Midwest whose work often deals with personal relationships and nature. Her work has appeared online and in print journals, among them Quartet, Panoply, and Literary Mama. Tethers End, her debut poetry collection, appeared in 2023. Visit her at jeanneblumlesinskiwriter.com.