ALOCASIA

welcome, & unlock thousands of heartwarming savings. the boba time on  vermont & the one on vermont again, little further down, across from _______  _________. menu covered in dancing skeletons, sit down and experience 3x the  nirvana. bogo cup deal for officers on horseback. free upgrade to power. hi again,  check out our properties. we’re located in the backwash of twin octagon jails and  the slap of jalapeño dough on bleach countertops, glisten, wetzel pretzel  potential of an orange morning in the station. we never close. coffee in the  station pitcher burning its own tongue over an over. skip town. double decker  cars skate rubble, railroad spikes eat whole neighborhoods for breakfast. (step on  in a filched village, off in santa fe.) before you go– don’t miss aladdin bail bonds.  the staff was so amazing. they work with you & try their very best to help you get  your loved one out of jail quick.

then there’s this deal where you can bite off more than you can chew. get hip to it.  crouch down in thai basil grown from the light of helicopters. yam leaf lessons  learned quick. garden glazed in carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, benzene, nitric  oxide, soot. pluck from the main root, rat labyrinth where the rats play tag, stems  covered in ant families, aunts and uncles carrying signals, signals bout a new  crumb, back to the queen. carry legs, threads, and heart-shaped bites of leaves.  while we’re at it. don’t miss pw liberationissweet1957* plus roaming Stater’s for  Strawberries at 11 pm on Valentimes Day : Wake up an smell thee..day oldfolger’s  teabag brewing in yer yellow cup. trying to undo the crick in our neck. crick in  our whole life. that brittle searing shoulder blade from too much use. let’s pour a  gallon jug of vinegar from the gas station over the intersection of hill and college.  replay the part where the tracks hoot you way up the hill. feel the last twenty  days blow through you. shape of yourstory not far from the shapeofyourmouth,  swallowing over an over the road.

feeling crowded? take everything out. bring back only what you need 

Originally published in newname road (Kaya Press).

 

annakai hayakawa geshlider’s work has been published in Hanging Loose Magazine, Actually People, Malibu Magazine, and Rad Families: A Celebration. her chapbook, newname road, was published by Kaya Press in March 2025. she lives near the mother ditch of a river.

When the frangipani taints the air with its haunting, lonely, loveliness,
I wrap myself in its rot of tautologies, how I am either longing for the girl it belonged to or I am not,
think about making the drive up to Kintamani, to lay my head down below the sacred Trunyan Tree.
Because what wholeness can hold you better than a phantom in bloom, an island away
from ancestors whose thousands of copulations culminated in a face that continues to miss you
so– a face that knows the iPhone, that remains leagues away from Java and
the poor girls who practically inhale niacinamide to look like me. When all I’ve ever wanted
was to look like you, freckled from the Flores sun and at home disappearing into the rich, green undergrowth.

 

Swann K.A Lee (he/she) is a writer of mixed Southeast Asian descent currently studying English Language & Literature at Hong Kong Baptist University. His work has been published in fifth wheel press, Wet Love Zine, and Where Else: A Hong Kong Anthology under Verve Poetry Press. You can find him on Instagram, Substack, and other platforms at @swannscribe.

Cavitation

of course, even
                                              the sessile organisms speak
most in hertz too subtle for the non-winged non-thoraxed
among us                                      and now they say
mustard plants talk when dying of thirst
rhythm mustered into undulating waves
imagine a brittle frond unfurling fingertips, 
root twisting fungi to call SOS through the earth
             help.
the sequoia, receptive, rallying a return 
                                              of course.
                            yes.
we give because what else is there to do
               there is no other way to reach towards the sun
listen                                    listen
cavitation the chatter of air bubbles bursting 
too subtle for big-brained mammals
how ignorant the lifeform that cannot 
                              hear 
                                                                          pleading.

 

Casuarina Elegy, But Not.

To inhale earth tapestry
pungent as pine, but not.
To finger limbs draped 
in ruffled lichen cloaks 
velveteen sleeves of moss,
arms as tree branches, but not.
Seedlings to sink the shorelines, 
almost wet footed, but not.
Branchlets of fine feathered leaves,
but not.                 {Teeth. All teeth}
Floor fungi don beige berets,
death caps, for unhinged lovers, 
but not.
I enter the grove as sacred site 
church pews of humus and silver
woven lofts; St Andrew’s cross.
Spider performing last rites
a prophylactic prayer,
religious, but not.                   

 

Myfanwy Williams (she/her) is a Sydney based queer poet and writer of Filipino Welsh heritage. With a passion for ecology, social and environmental justice, her writing seeks to recentre nature in contemporary poetic discourse. Her poetry has been published in Plumwood Mountain Journal, About Place Journal, Wild Roof Journal, The Winged Moon Literary Journal, Querencia Press’ “We Were Seeds,” and others. In 2024, her poem “The Carrying” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by Querencia Press. She holds degrees in literature, psychology, and sociology, with a PhD in Social Science from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, where she currently teaches. 

for Theresa

Ravenswood.

Spackled in moss-hatched, epiphytic splendor,
humidity gathers the fine hairs along restless
limbs—me too, alternately thin, curly, heavily scaled,
on my bench, my back, my guard; the chain linked
curls of the Spaniard’s beard, pendants spiral upward
through bald cypress, branching sunlight, slendering
along silver tendrils—we grow aerial roots and shelter
beneath the wings of live oak.               

No air. Innocent. Still—cousin-ness bonding us
against older kid oppression—                       

               Snap!

Her ancient shadow upon us, the tyrant with her
unpredictable rule: Stops time. Her own arcana of
offensives blistering us ‘til we glisten, in what followed,
afternoon punishment—                     

(like evangelical Sunday explosions, corporal fathers
and soldier uncles who flared like lightning)—          

but herself predictable as the afternoon storm,
thundered and struck at the nursery, her incubator,
reckoning to fill a quota of injury by inflicting upon us
enough to match her own.                    

 

Tom Pearson (he/they) is a poet, choreographer, multimedia artist, and horticulturalist. He is the author of two volumes of poetry, The Sandpiper Spell (2018), and Still, the Sky (2022), with Ransom Poet Publishers. The bi-lingual (Eng./Ital.) edition of the latter, is also available as “Eppure, il Cielo” (2023) from Interno Poesia Editore, Italy. He lives in the woods, just north of New York City, with his partner, cats, and plants on the traditional lands of the Munsee-Lenape. Social media (IG, X, FB): @tompearsonnyc & online at tompearsonnyc.com.

This morning is my favorite morning so far:
an east wind rustling through wild onion blossoms
just coming up, pale purple and thin. I wake
up from another

morning after, warm light—warm skin. Everything
west-facing: witness the end of another
era, another life, another inside
whispering to me:

I don’t smell sweet, but I flavor this soft green.
Every dish lately is savory—I want
sweet melody echoes, a karaoke
tongue: sing another’s

final praise song for a lover, bittersweet
tasting with all of your mouth. This morning is
my favorite morning so far: a little
taste of tomorrow.

 

Caroliena Cabada writes fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in Hawai’i Pacific Review, Elysium Review, ONE ART, and elsewhere. Her first book of poetry, True Stories, is available from Unsolicited Press.

i know / i get it / she’s sunlight / and nutrients / and everything / good / with hair / the color of dried-out fertilizer / and i knocked you off a windowsill / once / yes / i know / she hums / soft / under her breath / and talks sweet / to you / and i don’t / have six ice cubes / like google recommends / like she pries / from freezing plastic / for you / just / water / from my bathroom sink / i’m not precise / like she is / my fingers shake / i leave the blinds / closed / or window / open / let december embed / into your aerial roots / and she’s so warm / isn’t she / and i only think / of myself / of coping / curled in a comforter / unmoving / except to shiver / but i scrambled / for your bark chips / when you fell / on the floor / remember / me / on my knees / apologizing / picking them / out / of / the / carpet / with my chewed nails / again / and again

 

Zoe Reay-Ellers is the proud EIC of the best dish soap-themed mag worldwide. She owns 20 plants and is currently an undergraduate student at Cornell. Her work has appeared in a number of places, including Kissing Dynamite, HAD, and Fish Barrel Review. You can find her on twitter at @zreayellers.

i keep running fingertips
along the sunflower of my skin
like a path,
                                 or an exit
forgive me if ever i follow the stem

tracing lines to exhale –
if for a moment
ponds of dewdrops blossoming pink
i had such steady hands painting forests
i don’t know what
changed

gnashed and shattered leaves
are changed too, though,
seasons make sure of that
winter strips each orchid to a memory
year over
                                 year
but for all of the wreckage that lays
on that path,
there is a promise of petals
returning again
this fragile body is bare
                                 but it will be pink

forgive me –
some chemical blight
will always look to the stem
and imagine how it feels
to greet earth at its root
i do not know where the years will find me
or if the seasons will steady their hands
enough to grasp that life is
                                 and will be
perennial 

 

j marvain is a transfem creative from delaware. she believes all mammals are just different shapes of rat, and all emotions are in tune with shifts in nature. to her, there is no greater love than community and solidarity.

I.

In Laguna, you wake me up at dawn 
to pick wildflowers with you 
on the coconut meadow. As we walk, 
tumbling from flower patch to 
flower patch and stems between 
our fingers, I tell you what each 
is called: the magenta ones,
malatungaw; the little violets on 
wicks, kandikandilaan; and 
the pale butterflies with
the fragrance of ginger and 
sampaguitas, kamia. 

Later, in bed, you ask me 
what these are, the itchy
grass sticking out of
the hems of our shirts and
all over our shorts. Amor seco, 
I say, meaning, “dry love”
in Spanish. Seeds which latch onto
any passing hair and
thread of yours with the hope of
finding themselves elsewhere with
you, eventually.

Tomorrow, will you 
remember all 
these names I’ve told you?

II.

Back in the city, you 
are gone and so are the flowers 
we picked together. But the amor 
seco remains, on my clothes and on 
my blankets, wash after 
wash, its countless seeds like 
arrowheads pricking the skin 
of my calves and
thighs while I
turn restlessly in my
sleep.

 

March Abuyuan-Llanes is a writer and poet from Quezon City, Philippines. They have work in This Is Southeast Asia, Ghost City Review, Haluhalo Journal, and elsewhere. They are the editor of LIGÁW anthology, an anthology zine of militant poetry from emerging LGBTQ+ Filipino writers and are a founding member of Kinaiya: Kolektib ng mga LGBTQIA++ na Manunulat. Besides writing, they are a peasant advocate of Artista ng Rebolusyong Pangkultura (ARPAK). You can follow them on Twitter and Instagram @magmartsa and find more of their work on magmartsa.neocities.org/writing.html.

we shared a drink amid the milkweed
too shy to see him through anything
but summer screen of bees and bergamot

he wrote me notes all in Garamond
folded lines, autumn tang of coffeeshop
woodgrain pressed braille under the letters

he didn’t comprehend when I fed his paper
through nourishing flame, folded into loam
how I preserved his words in rootstock

how it could be read in abecedarian
in spring’s wet tasseography of old leaves
the resurrection of trillium and trout-lily

we shared an apartment, for a little time
too shy to see each other through anything
milkweed split, spilled words through the air

 

Rick Hollon (they/them) is a genderqueer author, photographer, parent, and former archaeologist, with roots in Appalachia and the American Midwest. They are currently writing two collections of poetry, and are planning several novels. Their poetry has appeared in Delicate Friend, Kaleidotrope, Stanchion, miniskirt magazine, and elsewhere. Their website is mimulus.weebly.com.

The Felled

our bodies plaqued with wet leaves in the seam of fall
shoulder out of enclosures stamped into the ground
as passed from hand to hand chipped nuggets of root go
with muscled vine and tendrils of fine resin dripping
on the smooth-of-dark sleep-cut stone in dim October
and this building calm in the slumping tug of the hush
our bodies plaqued with wet leaves in this seam of fall
move buoyantly in the twig-steam and spiced vapor
of the all-living duff as we assemble unknowingly
the mudstuck bower where we’ll at last lay down

 

 

 

Woodpile, July 4–September 21

shouldered enclosure
bodies of            trees
masses of bodies
passed by censors
in-delicate embrace
sung wet outlines
are shown through
on the stacked wood
white drip of viscid
snug moonlight in rows
scented masses
the boys singing
passed by censers
in cords of wood
box-cities of it
the cricket captured
still giving, giving
invertebrate skyscrapers
to the duff
serving still
all                living
rain bringing
no censers
no smoke
just considering 
cooling days
over endless chirping
we are
                              here
the scent of fire

 

 

 

[Litany]

the burnt aspens
the eaten spruce
denuded
the hidden redwood
newborns chasing flames
a tree new to science
but known by its people
throughout centuries
of colonization
a specimen
may it go on
as it will outstanding
the worldwide gingko
famously forever
before Sycamore Gap
(felled)   
after afforesting windbreak
(in-built)   
a “great green wall”
to negotiate the Gobi
all who still hold up
streambanks against wash
who still hold down
sliding plates of soil
and fold the rocks
we carve our names in
the bark to burn off
even still then together
as mountains moving
three mourning cypress
in a German painting
and the ashes they cut
the ashes they cut
the Joshua poached
because we forget
how a yucca needs
the sand its moths
make habitat of
as we seem to need
anonymous lumber
chipped and pressed
the ply  martyrdom
the bananas  in rows
their pickers  looked over
(faint scent fading by
old name of “Cavendish”)
still freshly nursed
the two I forgot 
but can see through this
a gift from the city
through this window
implanted street trees
where the city ashes cut
to hold back green
bejeweled invaders
these two need water
so in dry weeks I—
my hose  a breast
my breath  their air
my mulch  a swaddle
the puddle of milk
on the sunken sidewalk
for my tulip and elm
my rosid and poplar
in loose yellow slump
leaf dropping summer 
my lament  dehiscence
but in this drought
yes I will too drip
and decohere
placefully made
a home for another

 

 

 

Why I Forgot to Garden

1. The shaking wind like the gush of breath I let out as a kind of sigh-huffed punctuation when the conversation sputters into the wet mud of my complaint like a refurbished Packard.

2. The unallocated desire that had burned in me for ten months already when the days went cool on us again.

3. The garden looking abandoned simply because no human had passed there and it was thickening with the wool of blown seed not far from its birthing grounds of next year just below where loose assorted wonderful vermin had turned the soil just by being there into a kind of dry mush that if someone did come along they’d find as pleasant to step on as one of those polyfoam mats you can buy at a bougie enough office store.

4. The tear in the fabric of text hampering the ergonomics of the passenger seat’s pleather.

5. The way the winds drive harder in the fall because the jet stream still somehow comes down to our latitude following the seasonal descent of the sun.

6. Turbulent flow as an ongoing area of research.

7. More leaves falling when more wind is blowing.

8. The unallocated desire that has burned in me for ten years already.

9. Novel form as a passage to the end of such desire; the fact that no such invention should be necessary. That if I could speak plainly. That I do not see where we’re going from here. Struggling to be okay with that. That I need more and I do not understand how this is not plain to you or how you could deny it to me. Every time you think I don’t know what I need.

10. “Plain” being a long stretch of uncultivated field but homophonous with a kind of shaving device used to make things square and proper, or, in circumstances demanding decoration, to add a straight line of curved ornament to a wooden surface.

11. Time-worn symbols of fertility complicated by the fact that we are both men still managing to manifest themselves as if they were unalterable truths.

12. The theory of metaphor as the structure of thought. 

13. Literary inheritance as a valid but still deficient substitute for the continual creation of kinship. Having heard the words the Fisher King before I understood who or what it was. Knowing that was passed to me by a professor to whom it was passed by a long line of mainly men down from Eliot from all the way back to Chrétien des Troyes back on to the oral origins of the legend back on to perhaps another man whose inability to reproduce was more physical. My ongoing engagement with A. and other young poets by the acts of speaking, reading, writing, and thinking as an endlessly reticular or I should say rhizomatic continuation of such a line, “rhizomatic” being taken not so much from French theorists as from my own more immediate inductor whose name was David and whom I claim here as a forebear. This is all for you.

14. The industrial reversal of the man/nature divide as manifested in the fact that a plain is not an uncultivated field. A field is a cultivated plain.

15. The violence of feudal times and the mysterious wound of the Fisher King contrasted with the bureaucratic stranglehold of the adoption process.

16. The fact that I’m externalizing this to such a degree that I cannot admit adoption would be perfectly achievable but that it just isn’t something you think we’re ready for. And I know you’re right, so instead I blame the state. 

17. The recognition that if we were not both men it could happen just by accident. Knowing the terror of such an accident without denying what it would mean to me. Knowing that such a terror will never be mine.

18. All the times I’ve daydreamed of it happening by the accident of some family connection of yours needing a home for newly bereaved children. That I can only envision such a scenario when it is paired with any given variety of societal collapse.

19. Knowing that wouldn’t sway you either. Thinking I could even know that. Recognizing that in discussing the issue with you my expectation that you will always refuse its possibility (even when you explicitly do not) is itself a barrier to achieving its realization.

20. The salience of this issue, having derailed completely what could have been a perfectly plain, juicy, ominous narrative depiction of a common couple’s argument that nonetheless would speak to some fundamental, fated disagreement, the plain truth being sometimes quite ugly, even technical when the mind is technical. Such textual ugliness an obviousness so naked that the performed circumvention of emotional pain gives the reader a direct but voluntary conduit for said pain. 

21. This text still causing to arise in the writer an idea of the redemptive power of literature-as-kinship (repeat item 13). The unallocated desire that has burned through ages.

22. Whereas, having also just polished off the final changes of a poem for a dear junior writer who learns from me I can return now to a more proper allocation (dislocation) of said desire and write a beautiful poem. Something my body not only allows but would seem to require.

23. The dry mush of my bereavement. Its fictive nature its real nature. Its real nature one day coming about only by means of fictive elements. Washed by words and placenta. Made new because the soil when living makes itself new. All conditioned things bitter except for the spotlessness of bitterness well spotted. So I give it up. I give it all up for you. Repeat item 3.

24. Just by being there. Pain so naked it can only be yours if you choose to bear it.

 

Jacob J Billingsley is a queer guy who blushes at the word “man.” His work has appeared in ALOCASIA #5, ANMLY, Empty Room Radio’s “compulsion petal,” on social media, and in his DMs. His sibling gave him a now-giant Cereus as a housewarming gift, and his backyard has more Ageratina in it every year. He can kind of drive.