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

Directions to Our House

Heading northeast you will pass a wall of evergreens roughly the length of my ancestors,

standing awkwardly on each other’s shoulders. Some came steerage, others sipped in estates,

all of them live here, all of them tower above me. Each contains the naked seed, unafraid. For

what would fear solve? The seed cannot be abdicated. Look for the mile marker that says how far from civilization we are. Take the second exit. By late afternoon, there will be obdurate shadows. Signs say coast but the earliest sign of life is movement so stumble down to the Trask and squat

and watch for speckled alevin, moving from gravel to freedom.

Merridawn Duckler is a writer and visual artist from Oregon and author of INTERSTATE (dancing girl press) IDIOM (Washburn Prize, Harbor Review) MISSPENT YOUTH (rinky dink press) and ARRANGEMENT (Southernmost Books). She won the Beullah Rose Poetry Contest from Smartish Pace. Work in Seneca Review, Interim, Posit, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, and Best Small Fictions 2025. www.merridawnduckler.com Instagram: @merridawnduckler

Sonnet at Zero

Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass…

–Edna St. Vincent Millay

Strange to say I feel no fear,

just calm readiness for what’s next,

and here we go under a gray cloud layer

earpopping into blue sky over Boston Harbor–

we skitter like a waterbug in the Cessna.

You know you can use a penny to replace a fuse,

said my brother last week, and I thought,

who has a penny? I don’t even have a quarter

in my bag anymore. No change

for the man on the sidewalk with the paper cup

reciting, Change  change change, as he shakes it,

and I say, I’m sorry I have none. I don’t even carry cash–

just loss and desire, rattling and crumpled,

and I’m taking them with me like a field guide.

Melissa McKinstry hosts quarterly poetry and jazz evenings and curates a community Poet Tree in San Diego. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in many journals including Beloit, Adroit, Narrative, and Best New Poets 2023 and 2025, and was selected for the 2025 New Ohio Review Literary Prize and a 2026 Pushcart Prize. An Adroit Djanikian Scholar and the inaugural writer-in-residence at the Millay House Rockland, she currently serves on the Alumni Council for Pacific University’s MFA program and the Board of the Millay House Rockland. MelissaMcKinstry.com.