Kenton K. Yee
My eyes that once searched for saucers now stare at the big sky tulip. There are more, of course—all beyond reach or so it seems. I am of you, it says. The tulip doesn’t actually speak but it’s what I hear. Luminosity misleads. Twinkles are beyond reach. Why bother? I’m not athletic, I can’t fly, I’m not witty—all doubts I’ve indulged in.
the pond sloshes
with frog
legs
So what keeps drawing my eyes back to the tulip? Where are its stems? Soil? Roots? Photosynthesis was happening three billion years before our ancestors could see. Stars shine brightest when they explode. The purple nebulae are mostly hot air.
on hold, I nap
wake up—
same song
KENTON K. YEE’s recent poems appear (or will soon) in Kenyon Review, Threepenny Review, LIGEIA Magazine, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Rattle, and many others. A theoretical physicist, Kenton writes from Northern California.
Tony Kitt
Flame tigers float
across the moonlit mystery.
Be your greenest self,
be the star harvest.
Unzip your inner zoo.
We remember primordial light.
We remember nothing.
Lend us fireflies, so we avoid
ripples of time.
By the well, mud with the mind of a madman,
its sticky embrace.
Lava candles, beastly amulets,
the wish-book of wash.
Fir-tree antennas vibrate with Braille;
windows are pregnant
with other rooms.
Houses become whispers.
TONY KITT is from Dublin, Ireland. He has been working as a creative writing tutor and a magazine editor. His poetry titles include Endurable Infinity (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022) and The Magic Phlute (SurVision Books, Dublin, Ireland, 2019). A new collection, Sky Sailing, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry, Ireland, in spring 2025. His poems appear in multiple magazines and anthologies, including Oxford Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Daily, The North, Cyphers, The Cafe Review, Plume, Matter, Posit, The Fortnightly Review, Under the Radar, etc. He edited the Contemporary Tangential Surrealist Poetry anthology (SurVision Books, 2023) and the anthology entitled Invasion: Ukrainian Poems about the War (SurVision Books, 2022).
Jessica Fordham Kidd
I’m pleased with this geomancing king—
the way sand grains appear to slip through
his fingers and the way his eyes are both
proud and cowardly.
His robes flow beautifully
even if his steps are slightly stilted
in one scene.
He moves for me, yes,
but he doesn’t move me
like the wolf, the witch,
or the soldier who simmers
in her manly disguise.
It took me a few nights to realize
they had quickened.
I wasn’t just misplacing them
around the studio.
Then, once I knew, they spoke.
Their tiny, tinny voices are like a record player
without a speaker.
They tell me how we’re all escaping
after this film. How we’re going together
to some fantastic realm
where puppet, painting, and person
are all as real as real.
Even the king will step smoothly there,
they assure me.
They know he’ll have kind eyes
once filming is wrapped.
JESSICA FORDHAM KIDD is a lifelong Alabamian and teaches at the University of Alabama. Her poetry has appeared in The Paris Review, Ninth Letter Online, Tinderbox, and other journals; her fiction credits include Phantom Drift, Puerto del Sol, and others. She is the author of the poetry book Bad Jamie published by Anhinga Press.
