Adaptation by Meg Pokrass

I’ve stood at low tide with my frizzy
hair puffing, looking for starfish.
I could never find them, with their simple
eyes, like everyone else’s family
they seemed to have better things to do.
I stood there hoping to see a glow,
or a pirate ship, or a shark
close enough to measure.



Meg Pokrass is an American writer living in the Scottish Highlands. A two-time winner of the Blue Light Book Award, her work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including New England Review, Electric Literature, Five Points, waxwing, Plume, RATTLE, Atrium, Cottonmouth, Unbroken and elsewhere.

Out in the Dark by Ruth Bavetta

The television grumbles,
plane crash off the coast,

computer hackers, trouble
in Israel and Iran. Newspapers lie
on the floor.

Out in the dark
the neighbor’s dogs are going nuts.
My grandmother’s clock strikes nine.

The dogs are louder now,
a frenzy of barking and snarling.

The moon is a saucer-shaped glow
in the clouds, the stars hidden.

The lamp by my side is reflected
in the window. Above the noise,

a woman yells, a man shouts something
I almost understand.



Ruth Bavetta’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Nimrod, North American Review, Slant, Nerve Cowboy, Atlanta Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She likes the light on November afternoons, the music of Stravinsky, and the smell of the ocean. She hates pretense, prejudice, and sauerkraut.

Disposable Warmth by Lauren Poplock

Somewhere over the Pacific, wrapped in one of those thin airline blankets that never quite cover your whole body, I realized I was falling for you in that dim, drifting blue of half-sleep. It was only a week— a soft, sun-soaked stretch of days with a near-stranger who somehow slipped into my life as easily as the warm sand between my toes.

When I landed, the morning light felt too sharp, and I folded the blanket neatly on my lap as if that could keep you from slipping away.

That night, I kept waking in the dark, reaching for that same thin softness, certain I could still feel the ghost of your arm brushing mine. I told myself it was just exhaustion, the kind that turns strangers into memories you carry like fabric worn thin from too much holding.

But some loves are like those airline blankets—meant only for the hours in the air, warm for a moment, and gone the second your feet touch the ground.

Lauren Poplock is a writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has been recognized by Hollins University, The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and The Live Poet’s Society of New Jersey. She is published or forthcoming in The Eunoia Review, Neologism Poetry Journal, Gargoyle Magazine, and more

Little Owls in the Olive Trees of the Castilian Plateau by Rose Mary Boehm

The nearby village promised revelry—
and there would be music, of course,
a neat paso doble perhaps and the Aserejé,
the 'ketchup song.' A little flamenco, a guitar,
there would be tortilla española, various tapas—
empanadas, bollo preñao, grilled chistorra,
and paella, wine and beer in abundance.
There would be laughter and loud voices,
boinas and walking sticks, home-made lace
offered for sale by the old lady with the big boobs,
there would be the caustic old farmer
who always sold the freshest veggies
at the same spot—right by the fountain.
Oh, yes, we were as willing as we were able,
it was the end of summer. Still warm.
Dusk and silence, except for the occasional
splash of a walnut bombarding the ground below,
except for the wood pigeon's hoarse cry,
still calling for her lover.
We locked the gate, brushed invisible fluff
off each other's jackets and started the old furgoneta.
We crossed the bridge over 'our' brook
and entered the dirt road leading through the olive groves.
A variety of suicide bombers splashed
onto the windscreen, even though we drove
oh. so. slowly. Suddenly, there, in the middle
of that old country track a tiny owlet, paralyzed,
its two big eyes reflecting our headlights like two
shiny disks in the almost dark of this Castilian evening.
After cutting the engine and opening the car doors,
we heard the soft ooh-hoos from Mum coming
through the dark from one of the gnarled olive trees.
I picked the owlet up, its small warm body so solid
and yet so vulnerable in my hands,
its heart speed beating in panic. The ooh-hoos
getting more frantic, there were gentle whistles.
I put the little guy down under one of the trees.

We suddenly craved the silence of a late summer night,
and I made a very careful 12-point turn.



A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels, eight poetry collections and one chapbook, her work has been widely published mostly by US poetry journals. A new full-length poetry collection is forthcoming in 2026/27. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/