Anatomy of Grief

Time folds itself like linen at the foot

of the bed, creased from nights we’ve

held under it, our bodies pressing new

constellations into the fabric of our loss.

Each exhale is a new type of departure,

each inhale return, the lungs building and

demolishing the same small world. We

call this breath, it feels like prayer, our

mouths a doorway for our unnamed ghosts.

Each moment we remember slices at

the tender lining of our throats. We gasp

and only ash and smoke remain. The light

is gone by the time we call it beautiful.

Betty Stanton (she/her) is a Pushcart nominated writer who lives and teaches in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals and collections and has been included in various anthologies. She received her MFA from the University of Texas – El Paso and also holds a doctorate in educational leadership. She is currently on the editorial board of Ivo Review. @fadingbetty.bsky.social

Poem Panting Like a Deer for Water

Here, river runs dry until deluge

A body could die of thirst

or drown under a cloudless sky

I like to walk in the arroyo

past prickly pear and alders

I’m told the river flows under

this arid bed Her movement unbound

I want to feel it—that subterranean stirring

permeation as path

Jesus said those who believe without seeing

are blessed but can I be a tongue

Can I see anything I don’t already know

I ask the river to turn me holy

unkink my garden hose

and let cement steps cascade

There are places in the desert of saturation

Spots beneath sand where snowmelt

cleansed by the rock it penetrated, waits

There are days—maybe weeks—in spring

When river flows low and green

looking, if you don’t know any better, pure

And sometimes in the canyon a spirit

splits the air, subsumes everything in her path

panting to make estuary with ocean

I want to know where holiness pools

Erase my edges, O God

Crack me like an egg

Aubrey Yarbrough is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College where she received the Ellen Bryant Voigt Scholarship. Her work has appeared in New American Writing, Spillway, and Los Angeles Press. She lives in Los Angeles. 

Boy's Guide to Pyrotechnics

My first death is in the basement

on the concrete  at the blade

of my father’s shovel  slim

black snake coiled  garden hose

and no spigot—roadkill season

headless deer season  hacksaw

and trophy season comes after

Thanksgiving  ODOT

pickups rove the highway

we dodge traffic to miss them

on the way to Walmart

in the snow  gloves and cover

-alls  the men pitch wintered

muscle into truck beds  our

brothers  our cousins  their

foam napalm  their burning tires

they go too glassy to teach

there is a raccoon in the cemetery

there are stakes fence-wired

into a headstone crucifix  this

is not ours  this

won’t ever

be ours.

Alicia Wright is a writer from Appalachia whose work appears or is forthcoming in SWING, APARTMENT Poetry, As It Ought To Be, New Croton Review, and elsewhere. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Pictura Journal, and her first poetry collection will be published by Pulley Press in 2026. She currently resides in West Virginia. You can find her on Instagram at @ajwright304