- 65 Years in the USA & Transference— Samantha C Carleton
- Anti-portrait of a lady by the lake — Ahana Chakrabarti
- Anybody Reading This I Need To Borrow A Winnebago — Colin James
- Blue Fireflies — Claudia Kessel
- Preludes — Stephen Mead
- Citizenship — John Repp
- Clouds — Claudia Kessel
- Coming up on six decades of progress — Edward Thomas-Herrera
- Concords — Taylor Hagood
- False Hope & Dark Ornament — Shriya V Karnic
- the definition of a good daughter — Shekina Oh
- Dictionary — Shelby Fairbairn
- Epilogue — Eirene Gentle
- Euphoria — Dylan Marsan
- Franko’s Cadenza for Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 — J. Nishida
- Gone, Gone, Gone, Cormac — Racheal Strahlman
- Go Lightly & Refuge — Sunitha Mary Mookken
- THE HEART — John Grey
- His Little Voice & New Light— Sheila Murphy
- How I unlearned my accent — Sam Wilson
- Incense Ash & The Salt Harvesters — Yi-Jung Chen
- Kensington Gardens — Iván Gonzalo
- THE LIGHT OF A BLIND SHADOW — Ibrar Sami
- The Mockingbird Learns My Heartbeat — Aeesha Abdullahi Alhaji
- Morning — J. Nishida
- Mother — Cithara Patra
- Moths to the flames (Part IV) — Ranze
- Neisseria gonorrhea — Luchang Zhu
- On Going Back To Work, Again — Amelia Napiorkowski
- The Outcast: A Refugee’s plea — Alshaad Kara
- Premeditatively, You could Not Choose For Riches — Colin James
- The Process of Living — Christine Yurick
- RedHood — Aeesha Abdullahi Alhaji
- RESPONDING TO EVE AFTER THE FALL BY AUGUSTE RODIN — Sylvia Munoz
- Sauropod day stretches — Casca Dominiski
- Seizure — Amelia Napiorkowski
- Small, Seed-Eating Songbirds — Ava Ermiger
- Square One — Dylan Marsan
- Strictures & Running Out of Gas — Ed Ahern
- Sweet Little Thing — Brenna Moore
- To B. & To W. — Gabriella Garofalo
- TO MY UNSEEN BELOVED — Afsana Siddika
- transformation rituals — Nathaniel Thomas
Notes from the Poetry Editor:
“My pen is a tool; with it I shall dig.”
— Gayle Clemans
In August—I just looked back and it was exactly on August first—I applied for the position of “poetry editor” with a small startup literary magazine that I had found through Instagram (if you guessed Wintersweets, ding ding ding! You got it). Perhaps biting off more than I could chew, as I am known to do, as I was preparing to begin my final year in art school, I jumped into the role with a fervor that I hadn’t felt in a long time. Each poem that I have read, no matter whether I felt it was strong or lacking, has filled me with a great warmth. I see a passion in the heart of poetry, and in the heart of every poet that has come across my desk, that is unmatched. The poems featured here are, each in their own way, an exhumation of
humanity, in all its love and pain, joy and fear. As poets, we write because we must; our pen is our tool, and with it we shall dig
