Ilari Pass

—After Em Berry’s “Because of Us”

The English word is gauze—(a finely woven medical cloth), comes from the Arabic word  غزة or  Ghazza because Gazans have been skilled weavers for centuries.

There is no need to wonder

Wounds will continue

to be left open

and not because

There isn’t enough wounds

left in the world

that can’t be dressed

But because we have

ran out of all the gauzes

to save anyone that is left

Daedalus

the boy washed ashore

with melted wings, his still body lay

for days—turning and turning

one new color after another

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Ilari Pass is a four-time Best of the Net nominee and other accolades, with Greatest Hits appear or forthcoming in BULL, Dialogist, South Dakota Review, Cutleaf Journal, Pithead Chapel, and others.

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Natasha Deonarain

the desert in between

grackle cloaked in purple-black sheen glares with one golden eye	this land lies supine under a moth-eaten sky	whir of dragonfly wings in the hushed      desert night
	wind wails through the emptied eyes of a coyote’s skull	vulnerable, bruised	lake crawls back and into herself
gray-white ash left on her unmade bed		demon’s breath on my face	thorn-coated tongue licks sweat from my neck
	hooded moon turns her pallid face to dark		saguaro’s corpse beside a rattler coiled nearby
twisted, dry	horned owl calls at midnight		cricket click-crawls
	a hiss rises like two hands from the ground

I step outside these words       and find you—

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Natasha N. Deonarain is the author of two chapbooks, winner of the 2020 Three Sisters Award and Best of the Net Nominee. She was born in South Africa, grew up in Canada and currently lives in Arizona.

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Sara Eastler

Song of Anna May Wong

And so it came to pass that I carried

a lantern in that first film, uncredited,

the way women were see-through as wind— 


orchestrating the flapping of flags, propelling

sails across seas. The way Bits of Life handed

me a baby and husband after years of rice

paper roles to see, finally, my silent name

in print. The way stardom burned

beyond the Hollywood lighthouse, scattering

crushed diamonds, sharp-edged

and glittering in gowns like a well-lit

sea. Beware the siren call of men in suits,

of growing beyond the island that tames

your imported fruit. I was too Chinese

to play a Chinese, too forbidden fruit

to kiss a moon-faced man. But roles

and tides reverse course— so produce

what the heart must and shed the dragon

skin to embrace the pomelo’s yellow.

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Sara Lynn Eastler is a poetry editor for Qu Literary Review & freelance contributor to the Southern Review of Books. Find her work: Passengers Journal, Anodyne, Bangalore Review & saralynneastler.com

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