Marcy Rae Henry

July 2025 | poetry

francis bacon’s black mouths: a love poem

painted over and over because he wanted

to perfect blackness in different states of mouthness

the black before the scream

i’ve printed ‘em to put over the bed

folded into origami orgasms

as if doing squats over a speed bump

onery alley critters—! no two sound alike

no matter what you say

more is less in the long run

oak-aged ale

and opium

but love—

looks like a pot pie looks like love in the mouth

my love—i’ll pump your heart empirically

kill ‘em with kindness and expectorants

spewing from my black mouth

mouth i love pot or pies or periodontal surgeons

kneeling in front of a frontrunner

never felt so god

gnawing on truthisms with jagged little teeth

jam perhaps blackberries jammed into the mouth

to replace the fist

i’ve iodine stains

henna-like investments

and : i of the tiger

pronounce you wooed

under dark lights casting a cast-iron shadow

i’ll continue to woowoo with my juju

detail the mouth going south

going black where it doesn’t belong

at times bleached and iron-clad

that after-heat black

that passion in the bedroom

the courtroom

manslaughter of the mouth

a mouth in blackness

plague-eaten and purple taken into account

the glistening shrieking wetness

that scream to a whisper

that mouth open and black for more

 

Marcy Rae Henry

Marcy Rae Henry is a multidisciplinary Xicana artist from the Borderlands who’s had motorcycle crashes in Mexican-America, Turkey, and Nepal. She is the author of the body is where it all begins (Querencia Press), dream life of night owls (Open Country Press), and We Are Primary Colors (DoubleCross Press). Her poetry collection, death is a mariachi, won the May Sarton NH Poetry Prize and will be published in spring 2025. Her work has received a Chicago Community Arts Assistance Grant, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, a Pushcart nomination, first prize in Suburbia’s Novel Excerpt Contest, and Kaveh Akbar recently chose her fiction collection as a finalist for the George Garrett Fiction Prize. MRae is a professor of English, literature, and creative writing at Wright College, Chicago, a Hispanic Serving Institution, where she serves as Coordinator of the Latin American Latino/x Studies Program and received Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society’s 2023-2024 Outstanding Educator Award. She is a digital minimalist with no social media accounts. marcyraehenry.com

Louis Faber

July 2025 | poetry

This is Kansas, Toto

There is a two-headed man

living just outside Topeka

who rarely goes into town.

On Friday nights quite late

he’ll wander into the roadhouse

and order two Heinekens.

He’ll draw the odd stare, but

as long as he puts a twenty on the bar

the drinks will keep arriving.

There’s usually at least one

drunk in the corner who will stare,

so potted he sees a single head

on each of two men, with hair

shifting from black to bleached

blond and back again.

Most of the patrons, by last

call, see him and smile, totter

home and tell their wives

of the strange man with

two heads who lives somewhere

outside of town, near, their wives

assume, the twins, who stumble

home each Friday night, arm in arm.

 

Louis Faber

Louis Faber is a poet and writer. His work has appeared in MacGuffin, Cantos, Alchemy Spoon (UK), Meniscus and Arena Magazine (Australia) New Feathers Anthology, Dreich (Scotland), Prosetrics, Erothanatos (Greece), Defenestration, Atlanta Review, Glimpse, Rattle, Cold Mountain Review, Eureka Literary Magazine, Borderlands: the Texas Poetry Review, Midnight Mind, Pearl, Midstream, European Judaism, The South Carolina Review and Worcester Review, among many others, and has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His new book of poetry, Free of the Shadow, was recently published by Plain View Press.

Todd J. Donery

July 2025 | visual art

Empty Night, artwork

Empty Night

Quiet, artwork

Quiet

Todd J. Donery

Todd J. Donery is a Minneapolis-based freelance photographer, photo assistant, camera operator, and stagehand. He earned his degree in photography and digital imaging at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. He has also attended Minneapolis College of Art and Design and studied film at Minneapolis Community College. Todd has had numerous solo and group exhibits of his photography and published photos in online journals and print publications. Todd has worked with musical acts to create album cover art, promo photos, event captures, and visuals for live performances. He enjoys working with start-ups and small businesses, photographing their products and personnel to help them establish their presence and grow their business. Todd also donates his time and talents to nonprofit organizations and fellow artists and is also a founding member of the Homewood Photo Collective in the Twin Cities. The submitted photographic works by Todd, Empty Night, and Quiet are examples of his taking a new look at what he sees almost every day in the world, capturing a moment in time that will never be seen the same. This persistence of vision allows us to understand in a new way that what we see every day looks different each time we see it.

Laurence Carr

July 2025 | fiction

George’s Boys, 1960

The leather jacket boys hung out at George’s Texaco and could put away

a six-pack of Iron City, Duke or Schlitz in record time, but Rolling Rock,

on the other hand, was considered a queer beer that was lifted or purchased

as a last resort when a Saturday night binge involved Candy or Franny

and the profane prayer of a little girly action in the ravine down by the tracks

where mile long box cars crawled through every Tuesday and Friday on their

way west laden with smoldering virgin steel from the 48-inch rolling mill that

supplied George’s boys with enough pocket money and rubbers, when they

remembered, to kindle sly and secret grins with the knowledge that the army

or the Federal pen would never cage them

 

Laurence Carr

Laurence Carr lives in New York’s Hudson Valley. His book of poems and short essays is Strides: reflections on 6 acres, with images by artist Edward M. O’Hara. Other books include Paradise Loft (CAPS Press and Lightwoodpress); Traverse, a collaboration with artist Power Boothe. Pancake Hollow Primer, winner of the Next Generation Indie Book Award for first novel. This and two poetry collections, Threnodies: poems in remembrance and The Wytheport Tales, are published by Codhill Press. As anthology editor at Codhill, he edited or co-edited five anthologies, including A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley (Winner of the USA Best Book Award for Fiction Anthology). Laurence is currently the publisher of Lightwood, an online arts and culture magazine. www.carrwriter.com and Lightwoodpress.com

Marina Carreira

July 2025 | poetry

Thumbprints and Tree Rings

 

Are basically the same, yeah? Circular markings

on living beings that show we originate from one

genius source, one brilliant astral scientist who saw

the stunning in all creation and said, I think I’ll

leave them symbols of their innate connection

to one other, hide them in plain sight.

Make it special when they close their eyes and lean

toward the light, like sunflowers. Maybe this is why

people hugs trees, smell roses, ground themselves

barefoot on grass—to know we are in this together.

Still, I ask Big They why we wreck the very things

that sustain us, cut off our noses to spite our faces.

Still, I admire trees more than ever: their grandeur,

elegance, fierce giant magi always pointing up

at the stars. And stars, stardust! We are made of that too—

carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms created in previous

generations of stars over 4.5 billion years ago.

We forget how much earth we contain, how much

space we hold. Like right now, I’m sitting on my bed

watching the oak outside my window house two sparrows.

She is me, spirited but strong. I am her, hopeful and still.

 

Marina Carreira

Marina Carreira (she/they) is a queer Luso-American poet and artist from Newark, NJ. A Pushcart Prize nominee and 2024 Luso-American fellow in the DISQUIET Literary Program, Carreira is the author of Dead Things and Where to Put Them (Cavankerry, forthcoming 2025), Desgracada (Bottlecap Press, 2023), Tanto Tanto (Cavankerry Press, 2022), Save the Bathwater (Get Fresh Books, 2018), and I Sing To That Bird Knowing It Won’t Sing Back (Finishing Line Press, 2017). She has exhibited her art at the Newark Museum, Morris Museum, ArtFront Galleries, Monmouth University Center for the Arts, among others. Carreira works in higher education and teaches Women and Gender Studies at Kean University. Find her on Instagram at @savethebathewater.