Colossal
micro series
poetry
A DEEP BLUE AND GREEN MANTLE
Ryan Di Francesco (he/him) is a Canadian writer, teacher, and editor based in Ontario. His poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Acta Victoriana, Pacific Review, Pinhole Poetry, MIDLVLMAG, Apple Valley Review, and elsewhere. He is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Shadow and Sax.
Sky Burial, Small Town
Veronica Tucker is an emergency medicine and addiction medicine physician, mother of three, and lifelong New Englander. Her writing explores the intersections of medicine, motherhood, memory, and the human experience. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work appears or is forthcoming in ONE ART, The Berlin Literary Review, Rust & Moth, and elsewhere. Her debut chapbook, The House as Witness, was published by Quillkeepers Press in 2026. She lives in New Hampshire, where she writes between shifts, long runs, and finely crafted matcha lattes.
fiction
Turtle Island
Here, I float alone, through dark and tepid waters, rippling still with the echo of the first song that grew me wide and bold, enough to bear the sycamores and redwoods and the crawling, flying, gathering creatures resting in their shade. Along went the beaver, the loon, all for me, all for the dust the little muskrat carried up in his nose to build the shelf for my resourceful, furless riders, with artful minds and thumbed-limbs, heaved upon my spine. They forget now, as they paint my giant’s shell with polyethylene and cadmium. They multiply, my forgetful riders, yet my shell is warped, collapsing inwards, my ether-blood restricted. The air grows thinner as I wade, but I continue, with my purpose, my hope, with a prayer to Creator that the gasses of decay may keep my precious creatures afloat after this last breath passes through me.
Bethany is a fiction writer and spa therapist currently based in Ohio. A lover of travel and an avid reader of literary and speculative fiction, she enjoys taking her weird books around the world with her, especially to quirky coffee shops! Bethany aims to explore more feminist and transgressive themes in her own work and hopes to further her community as a writer.
The Living Cathedral
The sky above the ruins did not darken with clouds, but with intent. Ten thousand starlings fused into a single, breathing architecture — a murmuration that swallowed the wind. For one impossible second they became a colossal feathered face: ancient, indifferent, peering down like a god carved from night itself. A monument of countless tiny hearts beating in perfect unison.
Then a single hawk shrieked. The deity shattered. Ten thousand souls exploded into ash and silence, leaving the empty sky heavier than any fallen empire of stone.
Anatoly Loginov is a writer, educator, and clinical psychologist based in St. Petersburg, Russia. He is the Grand Prix winner of the All-Russian literary competition "Ecology of the Soul — 2026." His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Asymptote, Rowayat, Space and Time Magazine, FlashFlood, Flash Phantoms, Foofaraw, DNDP Quarterly, and Folklore Review. His prose is featured in the upcoming audio anthology "Skvoz Otrazhenie" (International Guild of Writers, 2026). He writes at the intersection of attention, suffering, and the unquantifiable self. He is also the author of several educational and popular science books.
grief numbers
There are 8.3 billion people on Earth, plus about ten in outer space. 93.7 million of them work as teachers. 350 million people use dating apps and 40 million people take bupropion. About 400 million people have hazel eyes, and 150 million have strabismus. Each year, 3,500 people attend the world’s largest Jane Austen festival. About 17% of humankind is trilingual and 12% are left-handed. 4.4 million people ride the New York City subway every day. Every year, between 50 and 100 people die when they’re hit by a train.
Everything about you is on infinite repeat throughout the universe. Logic states that there should be another you. 1 million Americans lose spouses every year. I can’t be the only one who never moves on. Yet here I am, in our bed with the space that was once yours expanding, replicating, threatening to eat me alive.
Anna Lindwasser is a writer and educator who is originally from Brooklyn, New York. These days, she's working on an MFA at the University of Alabama. In December 2025, Anna's first book, a work of YA Hi-Lo fiction called This Trauma Is Sponsored, was published with West44. Two more books, The Soulmate Project and Dear Alien, are coming out in 2026. For more about what she's up to, check out her website: annalindwasser.com.
Kindling
The 10th largest pyramid in the world is a Bass Pro Shop in Memphis, Tennessee. Its metallic skin sweats in the southern swelter. The peak points upward toward a void in the sky, unaligned with any significant star. A primary blue Walmart with parking spots like thousands of perpendicular paws lays sphinxlike at its feet, guarding the otherworldly portal. Inside, I hear bowling thunder fills the cracked tombs recycled air. Dull thuds of archers’ strikes pepper plastic targets. Plastic insects, all the way from China, built to last a lifetime in eternity, flitter in the air conditioners breeze. And the rhythmic beeps of the check-out guns pulse like a healthy heart. Inside, I’m a royal of this little fiefdom. I try to gather all the spectacle in my arms and seal the tomb from inside, ready to take it all with us to another world.
Michael Harper teaches at Northern New Mexico College and is an editor at West Trade Review. He received his MFA from the University of Idaho. His most recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, X-R-A-Y, Hobart, Bat City Review, Terrain.org, The Los Angeles Review, and others.