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Rebecca Watkins holds an MFA in poetry and an MSed from the City University of New York. Her poems have appeared in The Banyan Review, Sin Fronteras, and The Roanoke Review among other literary journals. Her creative nonfiction has been shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s Open Season Awards. She is the author of Field Guide to Forgiveness (Finishing Line Press 2023) and Sometimes, in These Places (Unsolicited Press 2017). She lives in Hudson Valley with her husband and two dogs. More of her work can be found at rebeccawatkinswriter.com.

I Dream of Crows and Then I Try to Sing Myself to Sleep

I have no ear for holding the just right note,

but any sound tends to carry, especially

at night, especially in the cold. Nights

like this I remember how my great-great grandmother

knew to leave, and then to keep going.

When I am frightened, I say the prayer

her daughter’s daughter wrote and, often,

the world frightens me—the way we human

through it, wavering, in vibrant strokes.

All vision is revision, a sort of seeming:

this small house, these soft lights,

this old dog, newly washed and sleeping

on the couch beside me. All things so close.

All things so far away. I think she’d tell me

there are no bombs here, not yet.

There is no siren scream or whistling

shriek to make the air hold its own breath.

Not once this week, this year, or any year

of my life have I had to throw my body

on top of my child’s—my own shrieking

a shock to myself.

Rebecca Brock’s awards include the 2025 Lascaux Poetry Prize, The Comstock Review's Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Poetry Contest, the Kelsay Book’s Woman’s Poetry Prize and the Editor's Choice Award at Sheila-Na-Gig. Her work appears in The Threepenny Review, CALYX, Mom Egg Review and elsewhere. A MacDowell Fellow, she is the author of The Way Land Breaks (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023). Find more at www.rebeccabrock.org.

Deer Skull

Antlers in the air like a pale boy’s hands

at a metal concert. A sly, defiant look

in its hollowed eye sockets.

I could have been something

like this, something mysterious and clean.

I grew up walking the trails of Pittsburgh parks

named for the industry barons who

carved them into the city landscape:

Carnegie, Frick, Mellon. Among those

soot-soaked trees, I smoked and drank

like something wild. I didn’t get picked over

into bone. I came out of those woods, dazed

and blinking at the lights on Schenley Bridge,

an animal still. Trying and failing

to evolve into someone who knows

how to live in the tamed world.

Onna Solomon’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Hobart, Hopkins Review, and Iron Horse, among others. Her poem “Autism Suite” was awarded the Beloit Poetry Journal’s Chad Walsh Poetry Prize. She lives in Ann Arbor, MI. onna-solomon.com Instagram: @onnasolomon