Issue #33.10 Melissa Gish, Zoë Davis, Patrick T. Reardon, William Pruitt
A Poem by Melissa Gish
Tarantula Migration, Late September
Every fall they come out of the caliche hills, males, crossing the two-lane in the low light, unhurried, as if they know the whole desert will wait for them. I slow the truck and watch one cross, legs moving like paper being carefully folded and unfolded.
They’re looking for mates, my father told me once, walking miles for something that might kill them. I didn’t understand devotion at that age, only that something so feared could look, up close, almost gentle—fur catching the last light like velvet.
A red-tailed hawk circles above, waiting for whatever the migration leaves exposed. Nature doesn’t pause for tenderness. It just keeps moving, the way the tarantulas keep moving, the way the hawk keeps circling, the way the whole desert keeps insisting on itself.
By morning most of them will have vanished into the brush, back into whatever burrow will have them, and the highway will just be a highway again, empty and pale, no sign that anything crossed at all except, if you look closely, a single, patient print in the dust.
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Melissa Gish is a Minnesota-based writer of dozens of juvenile nonfiction books on natural history and, when the mood strikes, other creative tidbits. She teaches online English courses for a rural West Virginia university, holds an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato, and founded the indie press Sabre Lake Publishing in 2024. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in eMerge Magazine, Gyroscope Review, SORTES Magazine, Submission Fetish, and Maverick Duck Press.
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A Poem by Zoë Davis
Notes from Prometheus
I am at my wits end playground rain deliverance tissue paper
torn on acceptance body templing fear sphynx lounging where lions once claimed
weathered plinths outside the house remarking what am I
if the one who made me doesn’t need me if the one who bought me doesn’t want me if the one who needs me doesn’t know
who gave the monsters fire?
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Zoë Davis is a writer from Sheffield, England. She's a stubborn FND sufferer and fights what her body says she can't do by playing wheelchair rugby league. She writes poetry and prose, and especially enjoys exploring the interaction between the fantastical and the mundane, with a deeply personal edge to her work. You can find her words in publications such as: Ink Sweat & Tears, Strix, Roi Fainéant and Red Ogre Review. You can also follow her on X @MeanerHarker where she's always happy to have a virtual coffee and a chat.
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A Poem by Patrick T. Reardon
Mustard seed
Go, get a mustard seed from a home without longing and loss.
Delineate, edge, mystic skill and arrogance, quest to escape the limits, escape the being and breathing, rise above, untether. Float away.
Let the new mustard seed escape the laboratory and, as an invasive species, blossom in the fear garden.
What it tends, where it wends. The winding of the wedding linen and burial sheets. White morning, white mourning.
Scatter the bomb makers, the computing brains, the empty-hearted — scatter the lightning of balloon-construction, of fabric, wine, alloy of strength and flexibility. Speak the Eden name.
Plant a new Tree of Life — pride of strength, arrogance of emptiness, despite breathing limit. Good and bad knowledge. Under the sun: a great and fragile people.
Put a mustard seed on the scale and see justice arc the sky, supercharge the long-arid soil, mud of blood and clay and tears and joy.
Born, die, plant, pluck up, kill, heal, break down, build up, weep, laugh, mourn, dance, cast away stones, gather stones, embrace, refrain, get, lose, keep, cast away, rend, sew, keep silent, speak, love, hate, war, peace.
This one and that one next to each other, unjudged, unmeasured.
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Patrick T. Reardon, a Chicago Tribune reporter from 1976 to 2009, is the author of eight poetry collections. His latest is a chapbook from Bottlecap Press called New Chicago. His book Every Marred Thing: A Time in America was the winner of the 2024 Faulkner-Wisdom Prize. He is a six-time nominee in poetry for a Pushcart Prize. His poem “Mud” was one of the winners of the 2026 Lost Penny Press Broadside Competition. Reardon’s poetry has appeared in America, RHINO, Commonweal, Long Poem, Blue Unicorn, After Hours, Autumn Sky, Burningword Literary Journal and other journals. His website: patricktreardon.com
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A Poem by William Pruitt
Deck Umbrellas atop the Hilton Head Courtyard Marriott
Reflected light dances where sun can’t see but I can, on the ceiling of a pergola for birdwatchers, sunbathers, swimmers in this rooftop pool by the sea
Five robed figures stand among patio tables, their furled canopies suggest not deck umbrellas, but a gaggle of oracles, cast in Greek marble, the sculptors versed in shaping stone as folds and wrinkles, all knowledge of Before, After and Absolute Reality condensed into their shiny silver billiard ball heads, from which the mystics must bury themselves in their cloaks for protection, no room in this latest collapsing of space for the Ark of the Covenant’s mercy seat
Two women come by, picking up discarded things, pushing chairs back under tables like anxieties, business taken care of not taking the time to notice the figures around them, nor the fabulous doom they presage
whose unshakable certainty fish crow dismisses with clipped caw, beckoning to her mate with extended fluttering of wings and hind parts, as they both fly to places neither I nor sun nor mystics can see
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William Pruitt has stories and poems in such places as Kestrel, The Adelaide Literary Journal, BlazeVOX, Ploughshares, Anderbo.com, Cottonwood et. al., and has published seven books of fiction and poetry from White Pine, FootHills and the Indian press, Cyberwit.net. He has told stories in numerous places in Rochester and upstate New York, including the National Women’s Hall of Fame. He wrote over a thousand critiques as first reader of submissions to Narrative Magazine. He taught English for 26 years to non-native speakers while working for BOCES, the University of Rochester and the New York State Migrant Education Department. He and his wife Pam have two children and two grandchildren.
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