Michael J. Galko

An ugly fish,
scraped metal scales,
blotched,
sucking at rocks
beneath the docks.

Or a skein of skin
sun-dried and bleached,
holding the thump 
of a wave– drum as verb
and reverb.

MICHAEL J. GALKO is a scientist and a poet who lives and works in Houston, TX. Michael is the owner, creator, and curator, of “Haiku House”, a residential art project less than a mile from downtown Houston. Michael was a Pushcart Prize nominee in 2019 and his poems and haiku have appeared in dozens of poetry and haiku-themed journals over the past few years, including Gargoyle, Gulf Coast, Paterson Literary Journal, Right Hand Pointing, Noon: Journal of the short poem, descant, Frogpond, and The Heron’s Nest.

Jacquelyn Shah

Jackal: opportunistic; frequents rubbish dumps
in pursuit of food; most active at dawn or dusk;
represented as wily, a trickster; makes unique 
sounds to deliver a message; used as literary
device to illustrate loneliness.

I am jacql 
crepuscular, incredulous
Had I been god there would be
no dust  lint  lust  loneliness
or seasons of treason

I am jacql at dawn
listing to the side to avoid 
a leaking of inner anger
No rage here
just hunger

Jacql, my cunning
and trickery trigger
a tracking of shimmering
words, to purloin
repurpose and twist  

As jacql at dusk
I close eyes to see not
what one more day has been 
in the Land of Missing 
Truth  

            Truth?
Opportunistic, I’m jacql 
I chew on residue left
after its slaughter, and  slow 
awful   bleeding   out
What I eat is acrid,
but then, I’m jacql

JACQUELYN “JACSUN” SHAH, iconoclast, pacifist: A.B., English (Rutgers U); M.A., English (Drew U); M.F.A., Ph.D., English literature/creative writing (U of Houston). Publications: chapbook—small fry; full-length book—What to Do with Red; poems in journals; Winner: Literal Latté’s 2018 Food Verse Contest. She loves what’s quirky and/or surrealistic in literature . . . and life.

Isabelle Doyle

The dump bear is so hungry. People see her plodding, 
weirdly elegant, around the green dumpster. They see her 
on two legs banging a tuna can like a battle drum,
slapping flies away from winnowed chicken bones 
with weary paws. They see her crouching in the parking lot, 
naked and vulnerable, over half a cinnabon. 

People don’t know what’s going on with the dump bear. 
The dump bear gets nervous about the disintegration of the planet
in a way where it’s like Girl, you can’t do anything about that. 

She insists on humiliating herself in public, 
and this makes everyone feel uneasy. 
Everyone is reminded of many unpleasant things 
watching the dump bear feast on garbage 
and listen—the dump bear picks up on that. 
If the dump bear is making everybody else uncomfortable, 
there is a good chance she is making herself uncomfortable as well. 

The dump bear used to worry that maybe 
she isn’t as self-aware as she thinks she is—
but no, the dump bear understands 
that she is constituted through action, 
that her classification is a consequence of her own decisions, 
that she could stop anytime, walk back into the woods. 
But the dump bear is so hungry. No matter what, she will eat. 

ISABELLE DOYLE lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and loves chrysanthemums. She is between twelve and thirteen feet tall in high heels.