Issue #29.10 A Quadruple Issue: Garth Pavell, Charlotte Cosgrove, Michael J. Kolb, Grace Lynn
A Poem by Garth Pavell
Walkie Talkie Transience
The patience of plants makes the leaves nuts
in the way you give back in a sex dream.
It's safe to let the night flower for a bat in bed,
pumping winged blood through the sonar dark.
Early this morning I let my lizard-skinned cactus
drink fluid conversation, prompting dreams to fall
asleep with the clouds laying on the grass by
the soccer field’s goal posts. It’s too early to
cheer children’s mercurial cleats
kicking dirt onto the day’s ground
rules so we have time to talk without words.
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Garth Pavell wrote “Walkie Talkie Transience” after being introduced to Dean Young’s poetry, which Garth says never strays from having fun. Additional poems by Garth Pavell can be found in the recent or upcoming issues of Broadkill Review, Epiphany, Glint Literary Journal, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Misfit Magazine, Peatsmoke Journal, and VOLT. Connect on Instagram @garth_and_the_unwieldys and YouTube @garthpavell.
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A Poem by Charlotte Cosgrove
Theft
Memory is harsh. Saturday afternoon bags of shopping in the kitchen Chocolate bars flirt, expose themselves through thin plastic.
What colour was the Time Out font? Blue wrapper, six in a pack Individually wrapped and then wrapped again like bandaged legs, ready to be undone The quick actions of an unthinking junkie.
They’re under my top, meeting rolls of loose flesh Locked door, My throat - a trebuchet Throwing the unwrapped feast into myself.
Denial, denial, denial. She knows it was you. She can’t prove it. Wrapping trapped down the side of the bed That you lay on. The door remains locked.
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Charlotte Cosgrove is a poet and lecturer from Liverpool. She has published two collections of poetry and is the editor of Rough Diamond poetry journal. You can find her on Twitter @CharleyAustin89 and Insta charlottecosgrovepoet.
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A Poem by Michael J. Kolb
Tomorrow’s Not Promised
They never say it plain,
but I hear it,
in the doctor’s rehearsed calm,
in the nurse who studies the floor.
I check my labs before I check the sky.
I plan in fragments:
a dinner cooling half-cooked,
a book stalled mid-scene,
the bag zipped but never sealed.
Some days I pull on clean socks
like sacred cloth.
I brew coffee I may never drink,
still setting a plate I might not need.
Hope isn’t cosmic,
it lives in folding shirts,
in brushing teeth,
in the body repeating yes
while the mind whispers no.
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Michael J. Kolb is Professor of Anthropology at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He writes across disciplines, exploring nature, memory, and illness, asking what we carry and what we leave behind. His manuscript What Keeps Me Looking Out the Window was a finalist for 2026 Press 53 Award. He is the author of Making Sense of Monuments (Routledge 2020). His poems appear in Third Wednesday, Sky Island Journal, Eunoia Review, Defenestration, and San Antonio Review, Speckled Trout Review, and Moss Piglet. Instagram: @michaeljkolb; substack.com/@michaeljkolb.
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A Poem by Grace Lynn
Retire From Reclining
—-Inspired by Modigliani’s Reclining Nude (1917)
You must be one of Modigliani’s women of bulimic diameter. How many miles did you log today swimming compulsively in the sea? A Madonna monk of malted milkshakes, cheese burgers, bars and bad habits. Abstaining to sleek the hourglass corset of your flesh, you lounge provocatively in luminous breasts polished peaches and creams. Shining faint on your bed’s dark crimsons and forest greens, you coyly peck at cucumbers and romaine leaves. Squinting in your almond eyes at your gentlemen callers as if they are TikToks of distracting recipes. My eyes trace the curved lines of your torso, though your hands and feet fizzle like ginger ale bubbles beyond the frame. You remind me of homerooms where I practiced long division on my body, giving up Ritz crackers and cheddar for the remainder of sharp angles and spindly legs, of Vogue covers and storm-emaciated willows, laying limbless in your ballerina trunk. I want to take you to the corner bakery and sit beside you at a banquette. I will hammer, anvil and stirrup my every nerve into a hingeless ear for you speak freely of your hurt without Modigliani monitoring your manners or muting the noise on your voice, powdered sugar sticking to the white tiles of your teeth.
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Grace Lynn is an emerging painter who lives with a chronic illness. Her work explores the intersections between faith, the natural world, art and the body. In her spare time, Grace enjoys listening to Bob Dylan, reading suspense novels and investigating absurd angles of art history.
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