Thanks to all who participated in the first Moist Poetry Journal Full Moon Haiku Contest! Moist received SO MANY beautiful haiku entries in the last twenty four hours. It was not at all easy to choose three favorites! Thank you for all the wonderful reading and the moon magic during last night’s Super Moon, Blood Moon, Full Moon in Scorpio, and Lunar Eclipse. Please enjoy the three haiku selected by EIC Han VanderHart–winners received a small cash prize for chapbooks or other poet needs!

C.T. Salazar

moon shines (
all the blackberries
shine back)





Michael Metivier

oh porcupine moon
falling from tallest trees and
into them again





Susan Monroe

A cold pale plate thrown,
Slow motion, into the dark.
Mantic moon of spring.

Songbird, tiniest crab 
on my fingertip, tussled 
and tossed and flip-belly 
horseshoe. At the periphery 
of the golf course, a blue 
butterfly dips in and out 
of cattails. She burns 
borders tender, 
moves clear through: 
dusting everything, trailing 
life. She slurps everyone up. 
Soft body against the sea
-rusted private property 
sign, the men in cargos 
riding plastic white 
cars on the greens, 
wielding metal rods. 
The armored check point 
I mean entry gate, angry red 
stop sign, cop pacing 
this stretch of sand
back and forth, back 
and forth, smiling 
at the bodies of animals 
in linen on lounge chairs 
who paid good money 
to be here, laminated 
flags on each car. 
Last week, I’m told 
Bradley Cooper ran 
these backroads shirtless. 
Oh, aching world. All I want 
to do is touch you, for everyone 
to touch you equally, equitably. 
Rising tide-bodies, shore 
covered in coins: pink 
and yellow iridescents, 
deflated balloon heads tongued 
by each communal wave: 
congrats, grad! and one bright 
nylon star come down 
from the heavens to glint 
among human feet, burning 
on this land.

Zoë Fay-Stindt (she/Z/they) is a queer, bicontinental poet with roots in both the French and American south. Their poetry has appeared in museum galleries, on the radio, on the streets of small towns, in community farm newsletters, and other strange and wonderful places. Z’s work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and has been featured or is forthcoming in RHINO, Muzzle, VIDA, Southeast Review, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. She lives in Ames, Iowa, where she is an MFA candidate at Iowa State University and co-managing editor for the environmental writing journal, Flyway.

I saw him from across the way, 
across the green-lawn,
slightly tilted above the groves 
of the older and young men alike,
all bare, with their dangling arms and legs 
and groins, and just beyond 
the chlorinated pools and misting hot-tub,
it was him standing this near and far 
away — I wanted to touch his left cheek
of his handsome face but he wasn’t handsome
any longer. It’s not age that aged him,
nor the sweltering desert heat at 110 degrees,
but the length of both of his arms tracked 
down along the way, raked confusingly 
down the middle where the drugs entered.
I traced my finger down that flesh 
once and kissed it, and kissed 
him, and imagined a world silent 
and in a vineyard without danger.
Instead, he smiles at me, inviting me in,
and I understand, I do — I could suffer 
for it — the harm we were once both in.
I wasn’t driven to throw the iron 
of my warm pelvis onto him, or kiss him, 
or touch him anymore. I wanted to ask
Are you okay? And I failed.
I clutched my hand over the back
of his hand with eros and kept it there,
silently, for all the seconds of the earth
and pulled back. I pulled away as if
saying I no longer wish for harm
and I lost someone at that moment
of the last hour of the last evening
by saying my first farewell.

Anthony Aguero is a queer writer in Los Angeles, CA. His work has appeared, or will appear, in the Carve Magazine, Rhino Poetry, 14 Poems, Redivider Journal, Maudlin House, and others. He has received two Pushcart Prize nominations and has his first forthcoming collection of poetry, Burnt Spoon Burnt Honey, with Flower Song Press.

That summer the sand was thick with jellyfish corpses / giving everybody
a view of ghostly cogs & wheels / like the expensive watch my cousin wants
us to covet / also / nothing like a ticking watch/  we approached the confession	
booth of salt water with murder in our hearts / knives in hand / everyone
fears tongues or teeth. The untethered sun / the storm-thick sky / even God wants
every living thing to kill or be killed.  We wanted night-vision goggles/ some  
broken metal detectors / mothers & toddlers in a mid-morning cathartic
ritual: seaweed / sea turtles/ driftwood / a song to infuse the usual narrative.
The waves retreated into their own unspoken souls/ we wandered / we waited for 
the jellyfish to rot / to melt in a mass of unimaginable existence/ it
was the only way summer could end / our plastic shovels busy with the 
necessary destruction of castles / with the proper burial of the guilty
and innocent without discrimination / their tentacles/ their faces / especially.







(Golden Shovel inspired by True Detective, Season 1, Episode 5)

Beth Gordon is a poet, mother and grandmother currently living in Asheville, NC. Her poetry has been widely published and nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, and the Orison Anthology. She is the author of two previous chapbooks and her full-length poetry collection, This Small Machine of Prayer, was published in 2021(Kelsay Books).  Her third chapbook, The Water Cycle, is being published by Variant Lit in January 2022. She is Managing Editor of Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Assistant Editor of Animal Heart Press, and Grandma of Femme Salve Books.

are full of seed, sprouts and leaves and rain
 
I wear this irksome suit of flesh & yet
the fields
 
are scented, sweet with dirt and singing
 
I watch my days fall and die like embers & yet
the fields
 
are tangled with grasses and asters
 
I smile a cruel curve, a drawn bow & yet
the fields
 
are recycling the soft wreckage of harvest
 
I hate like a god hates when it is forgotten & yet
the fields
 
are still in love with green
 

Donna Vorreyer is the author of To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016) and A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Waxwing, Poet Lore, Cherry Tree, Salamander, Harpur Palate, and other journals. She lives in the suburbs of Chicago where she serves as an associate editor for Rhino Poetry and hosts the monthly online reading series A Hundred Pitchers of Honey.

It is cold this morning,
the field beside us curbed 
by frost, crystals of muted color,
refracted light growing
with the sun’s rise. Our tail lights
flicker and inch closer to the window.

A woman orders her coffee,
a bag of sugar, butter stains
already seeping across a white
bag, hints of smeared jelly. 
From here I can just make out
the creases of a smile as she grabs
the bag, imagine the crinkle of sturdy
paper, the roll of it between the pads
of her finger tips.

Somewhere further back in line,
a horn honks like ovals of geese 
bobbing softly beyond us 
to find a grassy field. My eyes are shut
I see them gathering, their necks’
slow ungulation, long sighs,
an old conversation. They are
unconcerned with interruption—

so, at first, they do not recognize
the calf, still ruddy with its first
fur, looming at the edge of the wood
curious, listening to their chatter
sniffing the dried thistles at its feet
it’s all right now to dream 
of something dim and sweet, otherworldly, 
the air thick with morning.

Jared Beloff is a teacher and poet who lives in Queens, NY with his wife and two daughters. You can find his work in Contrary Magazine, Rise Up Review, Barren Magazine, Bending Genres, The Shore and elsewhere. He is the editor of the Marvel inspired poetry anthology, Marvelous Verses. His work was nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize for 2021. You can find him online at www.jaredbeloff.com

as us. even the sunset aims - and shoots its bullet right 
through the heart - i would have held it - held

you, if only the sound was small enough
for the two of us, and created its own paradise with

the whispers of a god. instead we did hear,
in fact, clear as the sun with a gun

of marble, pillars of powdered calcite
under our fingers. the sky is purple with blood. we are still

dancing, still guilty of demanding to be seen - the things
i would do to keep your smile. we look up

                                         and the moon is in pieces.

Siena Ho Shun Yi (she/her) is a writer from Hong Kong and Malaysia. Her favourite word is pretty and her favourite things are pretty things (words remain the prettiest). In her natural habitat, Siena can be found watching anime or bothering her friends, and she would like to bother you on Twitter @sienasyed.

Rehoboth Beach, 1979

A rip current is a horizontal current. Rip currents do not pull people under the water—they pull people away from shore. Drowning deaths occur when people pulled offshore are unable to keep themselves afloat and swim to shore. This may be due to any combination of fear, panic, exhaustion, or lack of swimming skills.
Google Search Engine

Make no mistake: the sea would swallow us all,
every last one of us, if she had her way.
Having read about oceans extensively,
I was aware of their association
with both high adventure and early demise.
My own childhood was landlocked. Smaller bodies 
of water were familiar, though. We skated,
my sister and I, during the winter months
across ripples of lakes frozen solid while
gripping corners of a tattered patchwork quilt
that had seen better days (it smelled of Pennzoil,
like the trunk of our green Chevy Malibu),
propelled by howling winds. This felt akin to
sailing. I had also fished in rivers and 
swam in ponds and splashed in puddles and whatnot.
Who would have thought my first sight of the sea would
be my last? Its scope almost too vast to be 
believed, the imprint of waves crashing onto
the beach projected onto an inward screen 
even after the lids of my eyes were closed
to shield them from the rays of sun blazing down,
the stinging stench, rotten yet somehow clean, as
saline scoured my nasal passages and made
the snot flow freely, the grit of sand in each
and every fold of skin, the searing heat on
the soles of my feet axed by the icy tide,
the roar even more imposing than all my
other senses rolled together into one.
I’d lost a fingertip in an accident
involving the bolt lock on the kitchen door
and had to hold my bandaged hand encased
in a plastic sandwich bag above the waves,
which is probably why I failed to notice
how the riptide started to wrest me away
from the shore, where both my parents stood helpless, 
their shouts of warning shredded by the breeze.

Tanya Huntington is a bi-national author and artist who resides in Mexico City. She is Managing Editor of the digital magazine Literal: Latin American voices. Her most recent books are Vidas sin fronteras (Alfaguara Infantil, 2019) as an illustrator and Solastalgia (Almadía, 2018) as a poet. She holds a Ph.D. in Latin American literature from the University of Maryland at College Park, where she studied under José Emilio Pacheco, and currently teaches Poetry and Design at CENTRO. She received a membership grant from the National System of Creative Artists of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA) for the 2018-2021 cycle. Her articles, poems, photographs and art have been published in Comment Is Free for The Guardian, the Laberinto section of the newspaper Milenio, the Cultura section of La Razón, and the magazines Casa del Tiempo, Cold Mountain Review, Dead Skunk Mag, Desbandada, df, Diario de Cuba, Este País, La Gaceta del FCE, Hoja por hoja, Letras Libres, Metrópolis, National Geographic Traveler, Nexos, Otros diálogos, Periódico de Poesía, Sin Embargo, Transtierros, and ZiN Daily, among others. Follow her on Twitter @TanyaHuntington and Instagram @tanya_huntington or contact her directly at tanya.huntington@gmail.com

The small blue Nissan ahead of 
Me at the stoplight has a plastic 
License plate holder that says I’D 
RATHER BE AT A RICK SPRINGFIELD 

CONCERT, and, buddy, wouldn’t we 
All rather be catching a tan
In the summertime lawn seats at 
Some amphitheater off the 

Highway, wearing sunglasses to 
Protect our eyes from the sun and 
The gleam of Rick’s professional
Teeth, watching his wavy dyed brown

Septuagenarian goatee
Frame his mouth as it sings “Jessie’s 
Girl” with his mind on autopilot, 
Wondering what he’ll have for dinner 

Later as he croons Where can I 
Find a woman like that? for the 
100,000th time as we 
Dream of this life we’re in for the 

100,000th time instead 
Of cubicles and gray, the beige 
Hallways we walk for decades before 
Demise? We dream, relaxed in the 

Warm air we ignore for another 
Decade as some gulls try to steal 
Fries from a couple who are busy 
Groping their fiftysomething bodies, 

Their bodies here still, soft & alive,
Sagging in the lawn but fifteen 
Again and lost in their friend’s basement 
Again making out on the bean bag 

In the corner, frantic in hazy 
Afterschool limbo before 
The friend’s parents get home from work.
They knock over what’s left of a 

Margarita in a can. It 
Trickles green through the grass as Rick’s 
Band cuts straight to the opening 
Riff for “Love Somebody.” The drummer 

Pounds the toms, the thuds summoning 
1984 as the guitar 
Chimes and harmonies swoop in and 
Swallow the heating air. You better 

Love somebody / it’s late, the frogs
Evaporating in the wetlands 
By the offramp. 

Mitchell Nobis is a writer and K-12 teacher in Metro Detroit. His poetry has appeared in Hobart, Nurture Literary, The Night Heron Barks, and other great lit mags. He facilitates Teachers as Poets for the National Writing Project and hosts the Wednesday Night Sessions reading series. Find him at @MitchNobis or mitchnobis.com.

As burgeoning muscles flicker like lowgas streetlamps in the dawn, it’s blooming, boy
Girls who dance like slick newborn fawns. So lead me. There’s a moth on your shirt 
In the closet, a mark on your face: an instruction, my luminous tongue sings 
Sweet as sin or music, whichever calls your body to move
Past me, into the quiet rooms of shame I thought I’d given up. 
Your abs twin my lips. Believe it: I’ve never had a lover move inside me. 
If this was our last night uncovered, could you call me by my name? Imagine 
We’re married: eyes coy behind my bridal veil, your family checking our sheets 
For blood. But this isn’t a constellation, no myth of harvest gods 
We’re singing. You lead me well; I lower my head with a smirk & a bow
Ties my hands together. Hiding, a memory without a name--our careless dress & 
dance. Kiss me soft & quiet, an arrow launched from our quivering mortality. Hands 
Lead us back to the beginning: two boys in a dark room, begging to be made. Holy
Never ends safe, you say. We give each other up. Under naked stars, we pray. 

Willow James Claire (they/them) is a bi, gender-fluid poet and writer from Arizona. Willow’s work has been nominated for both the Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize anthologies, and has appeared or is forthcoming in online and print publications including Frontier, The Indianapolis Review, the minnesota review, and Foglifter. Willow holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. You can find Willow on Twitter @thesundaypoet; they currently live in Orange County.