Issue #27.11 A Triple Issue: Sam Rasnake, Elena Streett, and
Russell Rowland
A Poem by Sam Rasnake
The Wild Beast
If I am a wild Beast I cannot help it. It is not my own fault. – Jane Austen, from a letter
1
Jane is writing herself into the story again. A house by the sea, a storm threatening, a road from anywhere. This is to know you have something to say to a far world you will never know, never walk in – but you write the words anyway – each one its own gift of immensity.
2
Jane writes herself by leaving out the best parts. She fears Byron – his words, his books, what they do to her – flaming darkness in her hand and eye and heart.
After the chapter’s finished, her pages put away – characters whisper to each other – eyes widening – as another strange, beautiful world begins its waking.
3
She sets aside her pen. Closes the inkwell. Her pages nearly filled. Glances out the window. A thick summer rain pecking against glass. In the garden, an oak’s leaves tremble. Footsteps over gravel. A dog barks. The fireplace is silent. Her eyes close – for a moment – willing the unsettled truth to her head.
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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, Boudin (McNeese Review), Moist Poetry Journal, FRiGG, UCity Review, Best of the Web, Southern Poetry Anthology, and Bending Genres Anthology. Follow Sam on Bluesky @samrasnake.bsky.social.
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A Poem by Elena Streett
Lent
And though my fingers stretch and strain and claw at clocks and rushing hands, I swim upstream, a salmon slick and swift, alive and roaring in my gut the ancient urge to leave a clutch of gleaming roe behind, before I sink into the sandy bed and turn again to river silt to feed another year of young. And they, so brief, will stumble through this muck, shudder at the sight; and they will grasp at words and gasp for air.
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Elena Streett is a junior Creative Writing major at Oklahoma Baptist University. Her poetry has appeared in Folio: the Literary Journal of Holy Family University and Vita Poetica, and is forthcoming in Oakland Arts Review. Her musical, Dreamers, received its university premiere in 2024, and was an invited production for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Region 6 in 2025.
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A Poem by Russell Rowland
Digging Up the Shaker Village
Surveys and mapping, then pails and shovels— backhoe turning, turning. Careful, careful!—the past is buried, the present fragile.
See what archaeology’s excavations uncovered—
pretty brooches, perfume bottles, pipe stems, pipe bowls, wine and whisky bottles. Can even elders, eldresses, ever
shake, shake out of them all that is carnal?
Where lies a man’s, a woman’s, childhood now? “What became of my one-eyed doll?”
“They put my dog to sleep without telling me.” “I wish I’d known my father better.”
Dig deeper, deeper, Brothers, sisters, until finally you strike water.
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Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, where he has judged high-school Poetry Out Loud competitions. His poetry books, Wooden Nutmegs and Magnificat, are available from Encircle Publications. He is a trail maintainer for the Lakes Region (NH) Conservation Trust.
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