Three poems, by Eva Ribich

Eva Ribich is a Swedish American award-winning poet and the author of more than ten poetry collections published in Swedish. With her partner, Charlotte Jung, she has also translated North American poets, such as William Carlos Williams and Nelson Ball, into Swedish. In recent years, she has ventured into asemic poetry. www.evaribich.com

Five poems, by Gary Barwin

Tree charm.

Probably Haiku 15 (+2) (after bpNichol)

Haiku

Composition 2025 #7 (for Lamonte Young)

Speech (for Laura Kerr)

Gary Barwin is a writer, musician, educator and multimedia artist and the author of 35 books of poetry, fiction and essays. He won the League of Canadian Poets’ Lifetime Membership Award and has twice been shortlisted for their Spoken Word prize. He has taught and been writer-in-residence in many universities, colleges and universities and is currently a committee member of Parchment Magazine, Meet the Presses Collective and the LitLive Reading Series. His latest novel, The Comedian’s Book of the Dead will be published by Book*Hug in Fall 2026. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario. garybarwin.com

Two poems, by Joshua Martin

 

Adjusted situational precariousness remains vivid

[implied]
…bloodiest histories reach decisions
          …imperial historiographies
              accepted discouraged
              framework…
[alcohol failed dissenters].

   Material stresses shift
   negotiated confessions 

leaping colleges streamed
into conspiracies behind
obvious grammar school
militancy on a mission
to extirpate diligence
          /          / Once
status reached influence
subjects reconciled a
form of surplus     / 

            reduced
long                     term
         population        victory
< 
     contracts
                   > economic
abilities to local
                          defiance. 

[vessels] [northwards]
        [maim]
                [reductive
          irrationality
                            ]. Colonial
in scope – three scoops
ranging circumventing
missionaries rampaging. 

[broadband crusade]
…critical surrender
    under the walls
    later surviving
    discarded uprising…
/
[combined but actual]
reinforcements manifested
as blockade
                   distressed
                           possessed
[summed up] 

entailing a degree of
general sedition 

                 operating out of
                 inevitable conflict.

 

 

 

To crypt explorers
 

waters build
experiences
[…]
coins as digital
as monthly
ventures increasing
focus on captives
[///]
the attention of
hybrid briefings                     ,

subtle infrared
regulatory lists
                     ,
challenges
          insights
perspective
          stigmata
[,,,]
hippo holding astute
wetlands
/
outdated
          impacted
                     aligned
/
masthead
foundational
          descriptive
crisis proposed
          motel
related shoes
          paced
notoriously
          allocated
transparent
          puncture
villainous
          milestones
[;;;]
across virtually
accelerating poverty
formless coverage
ready causation
[:::]
          going forward
no imminent
          potential
clear & present
          hardened
hacking fire
          warehouse
[???]
                     captive
          owners
wander                              pinnacle
                     alternative
          flesh
test               risk
          disillusion
                               [.] 

 

 

Joshua Martin is a Philadelphia based writer and filmmaker, who currently works in a library. He is a member of C22, an experimental writing collective. He is the author most recently of the books punctuated avalanche (Stone Corpse Press) and en=raptur=ed [riverrun] & mingle (Ranger Press) He has had numerous pieces published in various journals. You can find links to his published work at joshuamartinwriting.blogspot.com

from PurgatorioXIX: Sir Samuel Walker Griffith, The Divina Commedia of Dante Alighieri, Oxford UP, 1911, by Andy Weaver

 

1.

in
chill

  

dawn in
long dusk
in dreams stuttering
in distorted
lack

 

 

 

 

to

 

inveigle 

a
song 

when
in
confusion

 

2. 

disdainful

 

rending

 

 

a
mountain 

 

laden with

here

 

wings of

granite
pinion us
to 

art
an
angel mounted
and misgiving

 

3. 

ancient saw

 

 

King orders
falcon
turns
desire 

to

freedom

 

 

with words

 

 

 

thus poet was

 

 

urned
where
desire was king

 

4. 

pleasure
that creature
whose 

return

 

 

 

plunges

its 

 

burdens seem a feather
ah
Roman 

art

of

 

 

purgation
a bitter penance

 

5. 

 

whelmed
tinguished 

stricted
captive

 

 

but
obeisance
bent
to 

an other

owner

 

discourse

disturbs weeping
with
yonder
its wicked
yonder

 

 

 

PurgatorioXIX is a book-length project that erases numerous translations of Canto 19 from Dante’s Purgatorio. Each section works through a different translation, erasing all but nineteen words from each page (taking each page of the translation as a separate numbered part of the section and preserving the line on which each word appears).

 

Andy Weaver is an Associate Professor of creative writing, contemporary poetry, and poetics at York University in Toronto, Canada. His fourth book of poetry, The Loom, was published in 2024 by the University of Calgary Press. His work has been nominated for the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry, the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award, and the 2022 Nelson Ball Prize.

 

Two poems, by Stephen Brockwell

 

Lost Tongues
for Pearl Pirie

It was as if our tongues
escaped the compound
and ran off by themselves
to the riverbank.

Words dropped like spit
into the river
never forming thoughts
that might save us from ourselves.

I could not tell you
I love you; the air
would not hold
the sound of the words.

I could not hear you;
I am no lip reader
and you were wading
downstream in the current.

We had never borne witness 
to such quiet—not silence:
it was as if the wind had chosen
to carry other sounds, not ours.

Our agreement with the air—
ephemeral glyphs
traced by a fingertip
on infant skin,

sung to a dozing child—
had been forgotten;
the pact expired
after generations

failed to remind us of it.
No one whispered, “Oh, Sam,
before I go, don’t forget
your obligation to the air.” 

It was as if the larynx,
loom of the voice,
had lost the warp
of the air.

Even in a storm
I could have brought
my mouth
close to your ear,

cupped my hands,
and spoken over the gusts.
I kneel on riverbed gravel.
I am a clay tablet

for the grief of the air
inscribed on my knees
in the cuneiform
of wind-scattered pebbles.

 

Shade Lakes


Late September sunsets
in the shade lakes in the valleys
of the Colorado Rockies
hold liquid depths of absent light.

Steel crustaceans glint
as they dine on sediment, soil,
stone, ore, and trees
the way a king crab

samples the seabed for barnacles
and sunlight from the surface
reflects from its opening
and closing mandibles.

As we fly toward Denver,
shadows evaporate
into a plain of late fall
sunlight. Boulder houses,

revealed by window
reflections, emerge
on a plateau that was once
an ancient seabed.

See the fossils
of our future remains:
earth-throats of rare
earth mineshafts,

sclerotic vasculature
of superhighways,
skeletal concrete towers,
human coral we

recolonize every morning.
What will future species
make of the pacemaker
they recover from the calcium

birdcage where my lungs
and heart coordinated
the supply chain
of my light-devouring eyes?

“Nothing, darling,”
a nearby passenger sighs,
responding to a question
asked by someone else,

words at least one of us
utters every moment,
somewhere, in a multitude
of tongues, answering

a private question a spouse
whispers because nothing
is what we make of it all
and will be made of all of this.

Stephen Brockwell is an Ottawa poet. His book All of Us Reticent Here Together won the Archibald Lampman award in 2017. He is a software development director at the Environmental Systems Research Institute.

Two poems, by John Levy

 

Through the Cemetery

I take this detour again.
It's in my mind. Again I find
the small boy in a dark suit
that fits him, chosen by his mother,
and he has wandered 

away from the speeches again
and taken the small red rubber ball
out of his pocket to bounce
against a headstone. He doesn't care
that a stranger, me, has also wandered 

away from the words. He throws
and catches, throws
with the measured force of a boy
who knows what he's doing
among the dead.  

 

 

Beginning with a Line from an Email from John Phillips (12/12/25)

 

“I’ve been doing a bit too much thinking in my head.”

 

All my life I’ve had this head, with visiting

thoughts

keeping me company

along with what vanishes, as do

sentences─

and then here are the people

when they stay.

 

John Levy lives in Tucson. He is married to the painter Leslie Buchanan. His most recent book is 54 poems: selected & new (Shearsman Books, 2023). A chapbook, Vast Spaces, appeared in 2026 from above/ground press. He will have a book published soon by Yavanika Press and another book published in 2027 by Shearsman Books.

Two poems, by Mark Valentine

 

The Rhythm Machine

It calculates that I like
sunrise in a far galaxy
comet melodies
whistling stars
flying saucers
blue love, blue looks
lark rise as heard
by the third ear 

Good. It hasn’t
found out yet
about double syrup
the carnival apple
frozen orange juice
honey on the tongue
the ghost in the coffee cup
and the taste of winter 

 

 

Piccalilli Variations

cauliflower, carrot, courgette
red onion, cornflower, sugar, salt
cider vinegar, mustard, turmeric
fennel, coriander, cumin seeds 

cauliflower, cucumber, onions
green beans, vinegar, caster sugar
mustard powder, turmeric, garlic
flour, allspice, nutmeg, salt 

pickling onions, cauliflower, cucumber
french beans, malt vinegar, rock salt
muscovado sugar, cornflour, garlic
mustard seeds, ginger, turmeric 

cauliflower, cabbage, green beans
carrots, white vinegar, sugar
red chilli, green chilli, garlic
cumin, turmeric, mustard, salt 

cauliflower, courgette, shallots,
apple, caster sugar, cornflower
cider vinegar, root ginger, coriander
mustard seeds, turmeric, salt 

cider vinegar, cauliflower, marrow,
beans, onion, sugar, mustard,
cornflour, turmeric, coriander,
allspice, cinnamon, ginger, salt 

cauliflower, gherkins, silverskins
french beans, mustard seeds, salt
cider vinegar, honey, cinnamon
nutmeg, turmeric, ginger, cloves

Mark Valentine is from Northampton and now lives in Yorkshire. His short stories and essays are published by the independent presses Tartarus (UK), Swan River (Ireland), Sarob (France), Zagava (Germany) and others. His poetry has appeared in PN Review, Agenda, ink, sweat and tears, M58, dadakuku and elsewhere, and in chapbooks.