“Midrash on Judges 15:4” by Reyzl Grace

MPJ 
I don’t know why I always imagined
the fields in dusk—the little flame-
tailed foxes dragging their torches
behind. Do you think, as they rushed from their doors,
the Philistines saw how beautiful it was?

It must have been: the purple twilight
crushed against the grain like the velvet
of a noblewoman in adultery, her robe slumped
to a mosaic floor; the breeze slipping
through the guard hairs of the foxes like a quiet kiss.

God, how we love what is in pain—how it reminds
us of youth. You know that the sun was created
setting on a Tuesday? I think Samson
knew . . . but where was I? Yes,
looking out on the fields, on stalks become candles, 

on foxes, coats rusting in the gloom 
against the golden crop. The rabbis
hunt every letter of Torah
for sport, shoot each with a thousand arrows,
yet the Talmud glosses this only once,

when R. Bar Abba tells us the fox
was a symbol of renegation—the only creature
that runs in reverse. But don’t we all?
Don’t we run from the Ark and the Tabernacle 
still turning toward them, enraptured? Yes.

We are on fire, but still must breathe—
little kits gulping air
as we twist and writhe around each other.
In a moment, all will be desolation and burnt
hair, but for now, it is lights gay

as summer bonfires, bobbing up
and down the rows of the vineyards and the oliveyards,
the rigid ranks of wheat and barley,
the tangled foxes snarling as they spin
and snap like firecrackers. How I wish

I could make you see it as I did—a child
who had lost nothing, felt nothing,
never asked what happened to the foxes. 
Sometimes I wish I had never asked.
Sometimes I think that the rabbis were wise.

Reyzl Grace (reyzlgrace.com / @reyzlgrace) is a poet/librarian with work in Room, Rust & Moth, So to Speak, and other magazines, as well as an editor for Psaltery & Lyre. She lives in Minneapolis with her novelist girlfriend, arguing over which of them is the better writer. (It’s her girlfriend.)

“Once, Offhandedly, An Ex-Boyfriend Said He Hoped I Could Find Someone Who’d Be OK With Me Working on Sundays.” by Megan McDermott

MPJ 
after Adélaïde Labille-Guiard’s Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Marie Gabrielle Capet and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond, 1785

I teach you to look head-on at those looking at you, to not, in returning 

gazes, drop your palette or your work. Surely men will look at you 

with hopes of causing pause, so wear your daring dresses and your hats 

with feathers and look at them right back, with a look that tells everything: 

there is no me without this canvas or those who will learn over my shoulder.

Megan McDermott is the author of Jesus Merch: A Catalog in Poems and chapbooks Woman as Communion and Prayer Book for Contemporary Dating. Her poetry has appeared in various journals, including Amsterdam Review, the Maine Review, the Christian Century, and more. She is an Episcopal priest in Massachusetts.

“Apocalypse Love Poem” by Wendy Wisner

MPJ 
This week, as I watched the sky turn ash orange,
saw the air quality ticker go red, purple, maroon,

glimpsed two construction workers exchanging soft blue masks 
under the dusky morning moon,

witnessed my children sink into the couch—
“Not this again!” my son raged, hazel eyes hot with tears—

I wondered if I’d loved enough, risked enough for this earth, 
which is clearly raging back at us all,

how my son would sit under the desk during remote learning,
fists red as beets, biting his nails till they bled.

Last night, I dreamt again about losing my kids in a surge 
of stormy black water, the levees failing again, again.

I dreamt and dreamt until I had to push myself out of the dream 
so I could walk through the dense summer morning

with you, the two of us catching our breaths 
as the sky swelled, finally, with rain—

oh the blue blue sky in all its merciful radiance.

Wendy Wisner is the author of three books of poems, most recently The New Life (Cornerstone Press/University of Wisconsin Stevens-Point). Her essays and poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Spoon River Review, The Washington Post, Lilith Magazine, and elsewhere.

“Missing Parts” by Sam Rasnake

MPJ 
                   – after “It is essential… to undertake
                   the reconstruction of the primordial Androgyne
                   that all traditions tell us of… within ourselves.”
                   André Breton & Androgyne III
                   (1985, Magdalena Abakanowicz)


as if these definitions –

she and him, she and her, 
he and him, they and 
her, they and him, they
and them, she, they, him

– weren’t enough, the dark 
blurs of who, what, and why 

coil their supple excesses
through the night hours 
and behind walls – when
the heart only

knows the heart

Sam Rasnake is the author of Fallen Leaves (Ballerini Press, forthcoming), Cinéma Vérité (A-Minor Press) and Like a Thread to Follow (Cyberwit). His works have appeared in Wigleaf, Stone Circle Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, UCity Review, Best of the Web, Southern Poetry Anthology, and Bending Genres Anthology. Follow Sam: Bluesky @samrasnake.bsky.social.

“Shopping Music of the Gods” by Kyla Houbolt

MPJ 
Someone said hurdy gurdy heart
so of course I thought accordion heart,
vuvuzela heart, calliope heart.

Hello, heart, I say as it knocks
on my door.  What have you been
up to? Oh nothing much, says
heart, achingly.

We have broken much together,
heart and I, and yet we still
do not know each other
very well. I offer my kazoo.

Heart declines. Pulls out
a blues harp, says,
shut up them damn birds,
I got something to say.

Kyla Houbolt is a poet and gardener living in North Carolina, USA. “Shopping Music for the Gods” will appear in her full-length selected and new poems, Becoming Altar, forthcoming from Subpress in autumn 2025.

“One Year After Release From the Behavioral Health Unit” by Brittney Skye

MPJ 
The sun setting over the Wellsville mountains and the clouds roaring pink.
Tulips unclenching in the bedroom vase.
A hot bowl of cheesy shrimp-n-grits, a taste I almost missed.
The wretched face of the beautiful man who called 9-1-1. 
A beaver dam overflowing with winter run-off.
A surprise bridge in the path.
 
This is how I fall in love with the hard of my life:
With words and a pen. With neither fist raised.
Even if there’s no one to share a poem with, I am saved
By writing it in the first place.
We only ever talk about “taking your life” 
When someone’s taking it away,
 
But have you ever thought of taking your life on a date?
 
Sometimes surviving is beautiful
And sometimes it’s a phantom limb’s ache.
I have punished myself enough for trying
To go away. The body will pick up its pieces
Whether you want it to or not; your body will love
Being alive, whether you want it to or not.
But the soul takes longer to come home.
 
Sometimes she runs up to me with her childish fists scratched,
Full of sunrises and my first nephew laughing, 
Our best friend’s wedding in the woods, 
The bed where, for a year, I’ll wake with a dog under each arm. 
With her freckled nose and busted lip, 
She holds up the places in life 
Where there would be a vacuum without me,
Not just an absence but a life-sized ache. 
Knowing what I do not about living again.

Brittney Skye is a poet from Cache Valley, Utah. She graduated with her Master’s of Arts degree from Utah State University in 2020. In 2021, her first chapbook, titled Harvest, was published by Finishing Line Press.

“live” by Ash Vale

MPJ1 Comment

you have to live to hold your own failures in cupped palms, drink them up like gin and fire. to spit blood on burnt earth. to bind your chest wrong the first time. to feel the blunt pain of it and know it still hurts less than your family calling you a girl. to try again and keep trying and keep trying and keep trying until it still hurts but you kind of like it.

you have to live for spite. for prickling intuition made gooseflesh. for late night gas station snacks and shy smiles from a trans girl. for the hurt that swallows the love. for you. for you. for every version of you because they all deserve catharsis, even when you hate them.

you have to live because the bad guys will. because fuck planting seeds in a garden unless you’re here to see it blossom and bloom and occupy. because the bird in your ribs doesn’t yet know the skies. because you’re going to weep the first time you step out of your skin and into yourself.

you have to live so you can feel softness in the brambles. so love can find you even though you’ve mistreated it. so you can write shitty poems and send them to your friends because this version of you has friends you can send poems to. so that when you get that email at 3 AM telling you the aurora is visible, you can rush outside into the snow and stare in awe at the magnetised sky, pink and purple and green and yours forever.

Ash Vale (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, neurodivergent Canadian. They’re a big fan of cryptids, guts, and weird lil guys. Their work has been published in places like Heartlines Spec, DreamForge, and more. You can find their newsletter and stories at https://linktr.ee/ashvale or on BlueSky and IG as @AshValeWrites.

“REALLY THIS IS A POEM ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE” by Emily M Goldsmith

MPJ 
When this hurricane comes, I am all candles, all reverence,
All wafts waving lavender up the walls of each room in the house.

I feel the cool ridges of tourmaline bite my palm. As I squeeze,
They mark me. All my plants have diseases; I can’t keep them alive.

The leaves stop reaching for the sun. Wilting, speckling, 
discoloring, unusual curling. Even the aloe vera drying up into itself. 

I remember when, my mother with the green thumb, watched me break
A lamp and declared, everything you touch, you ruin. 

This was not a prophecy. That same mother made cookies, cautiously folded 
In chocolate chips. When I receive an Oomancy reading about the plants, 

I am told my ancestors protect me. I am told Persephone wants my attention. 
I do not take chances: I set up my altar, I finish the protection wreath and salt

Every window. Living across from a cemetery is enough to know we don’t 
Tempt the beyond. I wait out the storm, I light more candles,

I wear the crescent on my neck. I flash my tits to the moon for good measure. 
I wait to see if my plants survive this storm and the next. 

We are all waiting. My husband is ready to start a film, his thumb resting
On play. I am waiting for the cake in the oven when vanilla meets my nose.

My friend from New Orleans paces, wondering when they can return 
To their apartment so they might salvage what remains of the wreckage. 

In small ways, each of us waits for the world to end.
Some days it feels sooner: like when the thunder rumbles, 

When the house shakes, when I wade through water waist deep
On the streets where I grew up—when the trees crush roof to rubble. 
 

Emily M Goldsmith (they/them) is a queer, non-binary Louisiana Creole poet. Emily received their MFA from the University of Kentucky and PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi. Their creative work can be found in or forthcoming from Midway Journal, Gnashing Teeth, Zaum, The Penn Review, and elsewhere.

“Capacity” by Nathan Fako

MPJ

for David

You slap me after the kiss, 		and two sounds
ring up around the steeple:
the rippled hush-clap of rock doves
taking sudden, startled flight—it is August, eightish—
                                                      and the clear ping of the basketball
                                                      which strikes blacktop and returns
                           to the root of your palm.
                                                                     Two surfaces,
that tender span along my jaw still thick
with baby fat, 			the length of flawless skin
                                                      from which your fingers bloom
the striking moment of connection
                                                      and the language of our reel, 
                           quiet bodies syncopated by the ball.
Two boys, water into rust.

Nathan Fako (he/they) is a former high school teacher. He’s currently an MFA candidate in poetry at BGSU in Ohio. His work is published in West Trade Review and elsewhere.