Dashboard Horus: A Bird's Eye View of the Universe

  Michael Dwayne Smith is the author of five books, including a forthcoming poetry collection, Shaking Music from the Angry Air (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, September 2025); his work haunts many literary houses, including Heavy Feather Review, ONE ART, Third Wednesday, New World Writing Quarterly, decomP, Heron Tree, Gargoyle, Monkeybicycle , and Star 82 Review . He's a recipient of the Hinderaker Poetry Prize, the Polonsky Prize for fiction, and several Pushcart Prize/Best of the Net nominations. He lives near a Mojave Desert ghost town with his family, rescued horses, and Calamity the California calico cat. Do You Remember the Last Stars of Visalia? We took a Greyhound up Route 99, chugging through San Joaquin Valley, the day overtaken with haze and drizzle, past lingering rolls of farmland, graffitied bridges, little Tipton’s railroad ghosts, knots of trees tied to the Tule Rivers, through Tulare, small fieldhand towns dotted with pickups and boots and cantinas, us chatting up the ...

  Born in Mexico, Luis, lives in California and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His poetry, poetry books, and poetry chapbooks have appeared in B lue Collar Review, Borderless Journal, Deadbeat Press, Fearless, Kendra Steiner Editions, New Polish Beat, Poet’s Democracy, Propaganda Press, Pygmy Forest Press, Ten Pages Press, and Unlikely Stories . His latest poetry book, Make the Water Laugh, was published by Rogue Wolf Press. Tiny Houses  In the sky the clouds are tiny houses  with open windows and empty rooms.  There is a chair waiting in every house  worn-out by terrestrial travelers and  there is but a handful of dust in each  room. In the waiting chairs names are carved to announce someone was  there.  So many names, in so many  languages were left. There is a  kiss imprinted in one of the windows  and dead flowers in a vase. It is  the smell of death. The terrestrial  travelers always leave in h...

Cynthia Linville’s work has been published in numerous poetry anthologies and in her two books of collected poems, The Lost Thing and Out of Reach (both available from Cold River Press). She has received three mini-grants from Poets & Writers to perform in collaboration with musicians. Linville is also a photographer whose work has appeared in People’s Tribune , Sacramento News & Review , Capital Public Radio website, WTF, and more. She occasionally shows her photographs in Sacramento galleries. You can see more of her work at CynthiaLinville.com. Joshua Tree National Park I watch bees dance in the shade of this desert rock where fingernails of the gods have scratched blood-red lines and I think about your scars. I would like to learn you by touch. I love the stillness here: a place quiet enough to hear each other’s thoughts but an obscure bird call teases us a fragrance puzzles us (sage mixed with desert thyme?) and all I can think about is the jalapeño slice you carefully...

  A much-published bi-national immigrant, gardener, Bonsai-grower, painter, Jennifer M Phillips has lived in five states, two countries, and now, with gratitude, in Wampanoag ancestral land on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Phillips' chapbooks are: Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity ( iblurb.com , 2020), A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street Press, 2022), and Sailing To the Edges (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming 2025) . Phillips had two poems nominated for this year's Pushcart Prize. and is a 2024 finalist in the  Eyelands Book Competition, and Cutthroat's Joy Harjo Poetry contest. Her collection is Wrestling With the Angel (Wipf & Stock, 2024). Kasha Katuwe (Tent Rocks, ABQ, New Mexico) High country constant wind, soil long ago lifted and gone    and now even the red dust in migration. Hoodoos, the idols wind chisels for our admonishment    hat-stoned, a looming eerie supervision threatening to petrify us into virtue or at least  ...

  Liam "Lee" Balmeo is an emerging poet & activist. I.  You can feel it, can’t you? The ominousness present, on the sand. All around the hand that held life in its fingertips, the people in its grasp. But we know that something’s wrong, that offtone sensation of emptiness in our stomachs. The ocean and sand do not fall with the tides but follow the season’s games as clouds shelter the ones under its brow, caressing the ocean with its shadow. We smell the brine sweeter than its carcass, changed with the lips of Mother’s kiss while holding the gritty sand of pebbles spit unevenly across the ocean floor. The rocks have been turned by time and glazed with rough edges. They’ve been waiting—they’ve been longing for someone to set them free. The land and its living steer clear of this zone—but only the ones that can see it. Palm trees sway crooked in the raging winds because their limbs are removed in the form of delicate leaves; their shrubbery below has stolen the sunlight and...

  Getting Off That Train         The Expo Line train turned north after stopping at USC. It rumbled along, full of passengers heading home from work or school or heading to work, depending on their schedules. There were elderly ladies with shopping carts and young men with dreadlocks holding phones that played hip-hop. A couple of old men were nodding out, slumping in their seats. A girl who may have been a student was burying her face in a book while another student was reading his Kindle one line at a time with his finger.     The train came to a stop. It was not the next station. No one said anything because trains often stopped for a minute or two for unknown reasons. But the train stayed still and silent for more than a couple of minutes.      “Not again,” said a young man. His friend nodded and remarked “Third time this week.”       People continued to do whatever they had been doing but there were a few murmurs. ...

  James Barros lives in Los Angeles. He is an active mason and thelemite. Icarus I found Icarus dead hung from a tree his parachute unfurled  like clouds of celestial halls  and blood at his feet  like the wet flapping end  of an infantryman  I found Icarus dead  by the side of the road  his body still warm  scent still there  and his holes defiled  by beast and and man  I found Icarus crying  and begging at my feet  to silence the noise  of rushing air   © 2025 James Barros

  Pediatrician  Kelley   White  has worked in inner-city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in  Exquisite Corpse, Rattle  and  JAMA.  Her recent books are  Toxic Environment  (Boston Poet Press) and  Two Birds in Flame  (Beech River Books). She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant. Aquedoctan At a place called Aquedoctan Paugus Bay meets Winnipesaukee, Here dwelt Abenaki people Long before the current era Here they fished in spring and summer Traded food and strings of wampum Feasted, prayed, danced and courted Made alliances with each other Tribes that came to gather winter Supplies and share the new news Of other people’s dealings further To the North, South, East, and Western And the doings of the English Who soon enough a man called Endicott Came from the stolen land of Massachusetts And he claimed a rock that guarded The stoneworks long relied on To support the basketwork weirs ...