Illustration by Ichpochmak /Shutterstock.com | Edited by Mafe Izaguirre

CENTO: I KNOW YOU’RE TIRED, BUT COME. THIS IS THE WAY by D. Dina Friedman

D. Dina Friedman has published widely in literary journals and received two Pushcart Prize nominations for poetry and fiction. She is the author of one book of poetry, Wolf in the Suitcase (Finishing Line Press), and two young adult novels, Escaping into the Night (Simon & Schuster BYR) and Playing Dad’s Song (Farrar, Straus and Giroux BYR). She has an MFA from Lesley University and teaches at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Illustration by Ichpochmak /Shutterstock.com | Edited by Mafe Izaguirre

LIKE LIVING IN AN EPILOGUE by Linda Hillringhouse

Linda Hillringhouse holds an MFA from Columbia University. She was a first-place winner of the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award (2014), a second-place winner of Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry (2012), and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2020). Her work has appeared in Lips, New Ohio Review, Paterson Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the Macdowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her recent book of poetry, The Things I Didn’t Know to Wish for (New York Quarterly Press) was shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize in 2021.

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2020 VISION by Gail Griffin

Gail Griffin is the author of four books of nonfiction, most recently Grief’s Country: A Memoir in Pieces, named a Michigan Notable Book, and “The Events of October:” Murder-Suicide on a Small Campus. Her essays, poems, and flash nonfiction have appeared widely and been honored in publications including Southern Review, Fourth Genre, Missouri Review, and New Ohio Review. A native of Detroit, she spent a long career teaching literature, writing, and women’s studies at Kalamazoo College, where she won awards for both teaching and creative/scholarly work. She is at work on a collection of personal essays on confronting whiteness; she is also digging through a stack of paper to see if a poetry collection is hiding there. From her vantage point in southwestern Michigan, she studies, and mourns, the cracking open of America and dreams of her next trip to the shore of a Great Lake.

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SMOKE by Kelly Cressio-Moeller

Kelly Cressio-Moeller is a poet and visual artist. Her poetry has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Gargoyle, Guesthouse, North American Review, Poet Lore, Radar Poetry, Salamander, Southern Humanities Review, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Water~Stone Review, and ZYZZYVA among others. Her debut collection, Shade of Blue Trees, is forthcoming from Two Sylvias Press. She is an associate editor at Glass Lyre Press.

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LOVE POEM IN THE SHAPE OF A DREAM by Bobby Martinez

Bobby Martinez, half Mexican and half Portuguese, is an architect who lives in San Francisco and writes poems when he doesn’t feel any alternative. For the last fifteen years, he has enjoyed reading his poetry at Billy and Radical Faerie Gatherings, as well as at the retreats of his sangha. His poems have appeared in Christopher Street and in an anthology of contemporary Luso-American literature.

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PROTESTATION by Daisy Bassen

Daisy Bassen is a poet and practicing psychiatrist who graduated from Princeton University’s creative writing program and completed her medical training at the University of Rochester and Brown. Her work has been published in Oberon, McSweeney’s, The Sow’s Ear, and [PANK] as well as multiple other journals. She was the winner of the So to Speak 2019 Poetry Contest, the 2019 ILDS White Mice Contest, and the 2020 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize. She was doubly nominated for the 2019 Best of the Net anthology and for a 2019 Pushcart Prize. She lives in Rhode Island with her family.

PERHAPS by Aremu Adams Adebesi

Aremu Adams Adebisi is a North-Central Nigerian writer and economist. In 2019, he was nominated for Best of the Net, a Pushcart Prize, and the 2019 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. His work of poetry, “Force Mechanism,” was adapted into Lucent Dreaming’s first theatrical performance in Wales. He has works published in Newfound Magazine, Lucky Jefferson, and elsewhere. He served as a mentor for SprinNG Fellowship and a panelist for the Gloria Anzaldua Prize. He edits poetry for ARTmosterrific, facilitates Transcendence Poetry Masterclass, and curates the newsletter Poetry Weekly on Substack.

Illustration by Mafe Izaguirre

OTHERING by Aremu Adams Adebesi

Aremu Adams Adebisi is a North-Central Nigerian writer and economist. In 2019, he was nominated for Best of the Net, a Pushcart Prize, and the 2019 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. His work of poetry, “Force Mechanism,” was adapted into Lucent Dreaming’s first theatrical performance in Wales. He has works published in Newfound Magazine, Lucky Jefferson, and elsewhere. He served as a mentor for SprinNG Fellowship and a panelist for the Gloria Anzaldua Prize. He edits poetry for ARTmosterrific, facilitates Transcendence Poetry Masterclass, and curates the newsletter Poetry Weekly on Substack.

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THE POWER IS IN YOUR PULSE by Paula Coomer

Paula Coomer spent most of her childhood in the industrial Ohio River town of New Albany, Indiana. The daughter of more than two hundred years of Kentucky Appalachian farmers, she moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1978. She has been a migrant farm laborer, a waitress, a bean sorter in a cannery, a cosmetics saleswoman, a federal officer, a nurse, and a university writing instructor. Her essays, short fiction, and poetry have appeared in Gargoyle, Ascent, and The Raven Chronicles, among others.

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THE WITNESSES by Margarita Serafimova

Margarita Serafimova is the winner of the 2020 Tony Quagliano International Poetry Award and a 2020 Pushcart nominee. She has four collections in Bulgarian and a chapbook, A Surgery of A Star (Staring Problem Press). Her chapbook, En Tîm (Wilderness) (San Francisco University Poetry Center), and a full-length collection, A White Boat and Foam (Interstellar Flight Press), are forthcoming. Her work appears widely, including in the Nashville Review, LIT, Agenda Poetry, Poetry South, Botticelli, London Grip, Steam Ticket Literary Journal, Waxwing, A-Minor, Trafika Europe, Noble/ Gas Qtrly, Obra/Artifact, great weather for Media, Origins, and Nixes Mate Review.