WINNER OF THE INVERTEBRATE OF THE YEAR 2026

by Angela Sucich 

A neon green solar-powered slug that lives underwater is the winner of the increasingly popular Invertebrate of the Year competition run by the Guardian. The leaf sheep, Costasiella kuroshimae, triumphed in the global ballot after hundreds of thousands of readers around the world read about and shared their appreciation for the spineless creatures who make up the majority of animal life on Earth. Announcing the winner, the broadcaster and environmental campaigner Chris Packham said: “It’s very, very beautiful but also very smart too. It harvests photosynthetic material from the algae it feeds upon and builds its own solar panels.” — The Guardian, August 20, 2026

We need you right neon-now, leaf sheep.
Glowing your purloined sustainability,
loving your undeniable sea slug self.
Don’t dim on our account,
we’re here for the freak show.
Can’t pass up a contest, an elimination
round. Which one will win this time? 
The polls have spoken. 
It was closer than we’d like.
But your shock of green leaves, 
appendages, cerata, etcetera, 
that normally let you blend in,
are waving at us as you come out on top.
Your ovine face munching on photosynthetic 
algae as you build your own energy 
palace. You’re a solar, solo FU 
to the world, if not its mascot.
Not chosen for cuteness but to cut
to the chase: We all want something 
to love, to distract, to distance, to despise. 
To read into your kleptoplastic grazing, 
stealing of shine, hermaphroditic egg-laying, 
our own pride and loathing. A sheep’s 
an easy metaphor to talk about flock
behavior, flock cameras, information 
gathered, animals herded even as the algae 
disappears. To be an invertebrate that wins
the game is to answer from its gut
a question: Do swallowed chloroplasts 
know whose body they’re lighting up?


Angela Sucich's poems appear or are forthcoming in RHINO, Nimrod, Southern Humanities Review, Consequence, and SWWIM. She was honorably mentioned for the Pablo Neruda Prize (2021) and Francine Ringold Award (2020). A poet with a PhD in Medieval Literature, Sucich published a chapbook, Illuminated Creatures (Finishing Line, 2023), which won the New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition. She lives in Leavenworth, Washington, with her husband and daughter.

STARGAZING NOTES

by Dan Overgaard

Erupting star, incinerating star:

the likes of which has never been observed 

or measured in our skies—oh yes! we are 

observing now, obsessively, but maybe not 

as worshipfully as you might be wishing—

if, that is, you ever spent a wish on us.

And I’ve been searching, high and rather low, 

for some device—an image or a metaphor

sufficiently sensational for you—

but you told us you’re a star, so let’s use that.

Astronomers who stay up late observe

astonishing phenomena so they can 

measure light, and theorize. Most any night

they catch spectacular releases,

flares of blinding and exploding gas—

and you’ve got those, so we’ll be theorizing

for a long, long time about your molten core

of darkness and whatever’s broken there. 

But it’s hardly theoretical—or celestial—

for everyone who’s burned by your debris. 

In fact, you’re most unheavenly, the way

you’re not content to shine like other stars, 

or hold your corner of our constellation up

so we can navigate or wish upon you 

as our steady and illuminating guide.

Though stars, by definition, don’t have moons,

you’ve commandeered more moons than Jupiter,

and flogged them round about you til they blur

together, more like Saturn’s rings, and then

you trash them all unless they make you shine.

The stars out there do all their starry things:

forming and shining, guiding and blinking out.

It’s not fair to compare them in this way.

You claim to be our star while you are here,

but all your sucking needs may cave us in.

In time, you’ll be assessed by smarter

scientists than me, but frankly I don’t think

you’ll be the greatest in the firmament,

and I can tell you that this galaxy of ours

has never been—and won’t turn—white for you. 

And so, collapsing star, we watch you burn. 

You torch us as you smolder and pretend—

but though you smite us, we will not go blind.

Your gas is dissipating now, and soon—

before your end—you’ll be an empty dwarf.

Dan Overgaard was born and raised in Thailand. He attended Westmont College, dropped out, moved to Seattle, became a transit operator, then managed transit technology projects and programs. He’s now retired, and probably gardening or catching up on reading. His poems have appeared in Mobius, Santa Clara Review, Across The Margin, The Galway Review, pioneertown, As It Ought To Be, The High Window, and other journals.

AUBADES FOR WOMEN LOST

by Andrena Zawinski

“Aubade,” 1942 by Pablo Picasso

So—

(An Aubade for a Woman Lost

So he gave her a pearl handled gun,

its skull and crossbones in a red red rose.

So she packed it moonlighting 

driving nights for a ride share.

So she never used it.

So it was used on her.

So he shoved it sideways inside her

mouth smeared bloody with lipstick.

So her temple bore a jewel of a bullet bloom.

So her dark eyes rolled backwards ghastly white.

So she kept on talking: no, oh no, oh no.

So he was a person of interest let go.

So they strung a cardboard toe tag

where she had worn his gold band.

So they put her in the cold bed 

silenced in a morgue drawer.

So at daybreak on her birthday, he ate 

that same gun, metallic on the tongue, 

crying out: no, oh no, oh no.

So it never even made the evening news.

—for Georgeann Eskievich Rettberg 

    (1952-2003)

She—

(Another Aubade for a Woman Lost)

She, mother of three

in the routine of another day,

shot down driving away 

in the Minnesota snow 

from ICE officers

mixed and missed dictates.

She, another woman lost, 

her wife and observers

in a chorus of fear

calling out

oh no, oh no, oh no.

She, a poet who wrote

of solipsist sunsets,

tercets from cicadas,

that the bible and qur’an 

and bhagavad gita…

make room for wonder.

She, now a metaphor

of lilies and lavender,

votives and tea lights

peace signs and queer flags

for what could have been,

what could be for any of us.

She, in a murderous

last rite anointed as fucking bitch

silenced by three bullets,

face awash in blood.

She, reduced

to an endless loop 

of twisted narratives

on the news circuits

while women cry out

again and again an endless

oh no, oh no, oh no.

—for Renee Nicole Good 

    (1989-2026)

Andrena Zawinski is the author of four full-length collections of poetry, most recently Born Under the Influence. Her work has been lauded for its appreciation of nature, spirituality, social concern, and craft. Her writing appears widely online and in print, including at Verse Daily. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, she has made her home on Alameda Island in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

GOODBYE, KYIV

by Donald Sellitti

Goodbye, Kyiv and thank you
for the chance to stand in solidarity
with you at safe remove to
write of you with passion and with
anger in my slanted rhymes.

I cared a lot, I really did, and bared
my heart in lines I broke in
unexpected places, taking 
risks you wouldn’t 
understand.

You’re not a poet.
I was just as brave as you.

The moving zeitgeist though
has moved and left you 
far behind as winds of war
have blown again and lauded us with
new and fresher outrage for the
dead and dying. My anger needs
new tinder, not the charcoal
of your cities, for its burning.

I’m back inside my garden now
where themes of death and
inhumanity present themselves
in quaint and small tableaux.

A newly fallen tree; a spider that
I’d stepped on carelessly
with one leg tapping. Death is 
all around me as it is with you.

I might write of you again, Kyiv,
if something fresh emerges from
the blandness of unending war, 
a bomb as blinding as the sun 
perhaps, awash in metaphor.

But for now, goodbye Kyiv. 
Best wishes for the future,
really. 


Donald Sellitti honed his writing skills as a scientist/educator at a Federal medical school in Bethesda, MD before turning to poetry following his retirement. Numerous publications in journals with titles such as Cancer Research and Oncology Letters have been followed by publications in journals with titles like The Alchemy Spoon, Better than Starbucks, and Rat’s Ass Review, which nominated him for a Pushcart Prize in 2022.

PERFECT PORTRAIT

by David Radavich

Sometimes metaphors are

too perfect for words:

 

Police in riot gear

standing in a school hallway

in Uvalde, Texas

                

doing nothing

 

for 77 minutes,

strolling, phoning,

reaching for hand sanitizer

 

while inside the classroom

the crazed gunman

mows down

 

one child after another

two teachers

 

air burning

with smoke and blood

 

and screams

only ending

 

when death explodes

or oozes out.

 

This is America in 2022:

Immobilized.  Imprisoned

in a trap of power.

Lost in the hallways

of moral evasion.

 

We can’t address

racial justice

or climate change,

enforced poverty

or violent inhumanity.

 

We are the cops

standing around

checking our phones

 

doing nothing

 

to save our children

to guarantee our future.

 

Look in this frame

and see 

 

what we’ve become.

Among David Radavich's poetry collections are two epics, America Bound and America Abroad, as well as Middle-East Mezze and The Countries We Live In.  His latest book is Unter der Sonne / Under the Sun: German and English Poems from Deutscher Lyrik Verlag.

PLANTING TIME IN UKRAINE

by Anne Harding Woodworth

A crucial portion of the world’s wheat, corn and barley is trapped in Russia and Ukraine because of the war. Credit: Vitaly Timkiv/Associated Press via The New York Times, March 20, 2022

The fibers of the breadbasket are unraveling.

Metaphor is of no use in wartime.

 

Call the breadbasket what it is: fertile country

that supplies grains near and far,

 

threatened now, as arable fields lie unplowed,

despoiled by the Bear at planting time.

 

Metaphor is useless. The tractor with plow

(or seeder) attached should be chugging out

 

into the fields now and on into the end of April—

but won’t be.

 

Man or woman on a tractor—easy target for the Bear.

But that’s metaphor, too.

 

Call the Bear what he is: greedy and cruel creature.

And not all bears. This one is a singular carrier of evil,

 

who leads his cubs to do his bidding.

There’s little grain left for the families,

for the animals, and none to ship out to Egypt,

Indonesia, Morocco, Israel, Spain, Tunisia.

Tunisia, once called a breadbasket itself,

until it was swallowed up by desert.

Now do you see how metaphors

don’t always work?

The world is hungry and hungrier, as the Bear

destroys fecund fields. No seeds will open.

No grains will be harvested. The breadbasket

empty, crushed. War destroys metaphor.

 

Food! is the only word left.

Anne Harding Woodworth’s seventh book of poetry Trouble received the 2022 William Meredith Award for Poetry.

EVER GIVEN

by Kat Frabotta

“Ever Given” by DaveRiver at Deviant Art.

She trudged on, steered towards Rotterdam

The captain’s son called him. Something pestering

The wind. He felt itchy. His grip tightened

He jerked the wooden wheel

Left. Left. How fucking far can you go.

Too far, it seems.

A simple, swift U-Turn will fix things

She had other plans.

Had since leaving Taiwan, but now he spurred her on.

Now it wasn’t just a magical dream of a looming, vast, powerless vessel

He had actively propelled her, set her off, equipped her with the tools needed

To make her mark.

Ever Given,

For decades, Passing various goods to every spot she’s been told

Humans have not moved her.

People shoot Asians, step on the necks of black men,

Buy plastic to put on top of plastic

As the world burns.

Incredulous, she did what she could

With her mass and the blessing of propulsion

She burrowed deep.

She takes to Egypt, ignoring the cries of the Captain

Slowly entrenches herself into the sand of the canal.

And now she sits.

She sits, she blocks. She has no intention of budging.

Why should she?

We don’t budge.

And maybe we need to get stuck for a while right now, she thinks,

Shutting her eyes and making herself comfortable.

Kat Frabotta is a 29 year-old living in New York City. She is currently an advertising student and aspiring creative. In her freetime, she loves cuddling with her orange cat and talking to friends over a bowl of penne alla vodka.

THE AMERICAN VARIANT

by Pepper Trail

It has always circulated among us

We know that, and we know

Mutations happen all the time

So what makes this so virulent

So easily transmitted

Neighbor to neighbor, father to son?

 

It is airborne, that is clear

Transmitted on the breath

On the words carried on the breath

Capable of crossing great distances

Broadcast on the seething turbulence

Filling our air, our airwaves

 

Experts speak of it with awe

The terrible beauty of its design

How it targets our vulnerabilities

Binds to our fears

Produces an inflammation

Disorderly and wild

 

There are treatments

Not painless but effective

But the problem is this:

The genius of this variant

Its most deadly symptom

Is denial of the disease itself

 

And so the epidemic rages

The world waits for the crisis

For the fever to break

To burn itself out

Or to infect every last one of us

Burn everything up, at last

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

I CHECK THE POLLS AT 5 AM

by Katherine Smith

I rise in the dark to check the last polls,

then wait for light to shine through

 

gold-green leaves before I lace my shoes.

Courage. The sun is shining on the most beautiful

 

leaf, which is dead, and glowing with light.

Everything is metaphor this morning.

 

Even the wind, even my sanity

even the mangled carcass of a groundhog

 

I skirt on the road, whispering please

don’t let it still be there tomorrow.

 

Katherine Smith’s recent poetry publications include appearances in Boulevard, North American Review, Mezzo Cammin, Cincinnati Review, Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Southern Review, and many other journals. Her short fiction has appeared in Fiction International and Gargoyle. Her first book Argument by Design (Washington Writers’ Publishing House) appeared in 2003. Her second book of poems Woman Alone on the Mountain (Iris Press) appeared in 2014. She works at Montgomery College in Maryland.

DENIAL

by Joanne Kennedy Frazer

Dying Sunflower is a photograph by Robert Ullmann

The huge       yellow-orange sunflower
     once showy    &    tall    &    haughty       
 
looked down       on common      
      ordinary      plant life.
 
Now     petals gone     devoid     of seed     
      spine collapsing     it does not
notice        its season     has  passed.

Joanne Kennedy Frazer is a retired peace and justice director and educator for faith-based organizations at state, diocesan and national levels. Her work has appeared in several Old Mountain Press anthologies, Poetic Portions anthology, Soul-lit Spiritual Poetry, Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine, Panoply Literary Zine, Snapdragon Journal, Whirlwind Magazine, Kakalak, Red Clay Review and Gyroscope Review. Five poems were turned into a song cycle, Resistance, by composer Steven Luksan, and performed in Seattle and Durham.  Her chapbook Being Kin (CreationRising Press) was published in 2019.  She lives in Durham, NC.

THE PROBLEM OF ERASING THE WIRING IN THIS HOUSE

by Frederick Charles Melancon

Artwork source: Vox

We rip out the old lines.
Fragments of bright copper

shine on concrete still trapped
in white and black casing.

New yellow cords replace
white insulated ones.

Asked the electrician does
this make any difference.

Reports to everyone
it’s safer, but confides

running through each cable
is the same old power.

Frederick Charles Melancon lives in Mississippi with his wife and daughter.  Even as an untrained electrician, he knows to turn the power off before touching the power lines.

DOWN ON BENDED KNEE

by Sari Grandstaff

Sari Grandstaff is a high school librarian in the Catskill Mountains/Mid-Hudson Valley of New York State. Her poetry has appeared in many print and online journals such as TheNewVerse.News, Eastern Structures, and Chronogram. During National Poetry Month 2020 her haiku was chosen to be featured by poets Danez Smith and Jane Hirshfield on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.

JEALOUS GODS

by Devon Balwit

            for Mary Oliver 1935-2019

This morning, the world mirrors rather than mocks,
fog-shrouded, pines diffident in gauze.

Mary Oliver has died. Determined to save
the only life she could, even she yielded

in the end. Now, she awaits the mercy of time.
I read her and carry her memory one day further.

The spirit, she writes, needs the metaphor
of the body. Mine pains me and would do better

to seek another vessel. What sufferer can be
heroic? Look me in the eye, Mary. Tell me

all do not long to pass the dark baton.
Her cricket moves grains of sand, dedicated

to its humble effort, but what if, secretly,
it ached for more, the dead poet missing

the yearning shuttered behind its elytra?
I appreciate evangels, welling good news,

but old gods are not so easily shed. Jealous
of our attention, they are not above

turning our heads where they want our gaze
or of swallowing the prayers of well-wishers.


Devon Balwit's most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems can be found here as well as in The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Fifth Wednesday (on-line), Apt, Grist, and Oxidant Engine among others.

METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING

by Howie Good



via GIPHY

Pushing again and again
as though intending to lift
the cumulative weight of heartache,
just the very, very tips emerge,
the first shoots of spring,
medieval pilgrims in weird green headgear
leaning out of the dark past.

Howie Good is the author of The Loser's Guide to Street Fighting, winner of the 2017 Lorien Prize from ThoughtCrime Press, and Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry.

WORLD SERIES

by Richard Marx Weinraub

Baseball is a metaphor for life.
The pitcher and catcher—the rubber and cage—
play out as a sadomasochistic game.

The heart of the drama transpires at home.
The plate is stolen and a beanball is thrown.

Murphy’s the oil, the law, and the goat.
Matt’s the dark knight falling short of glory.
Familia is the story of a family gone wrong.

God relieves Satan. Citi Field’s Jericho—
the towers struck out by the pitch of Allah—
Babylon bombed by the squad of Jesus.

“It is the Inquisition, the/Revolution,”
the good doctor said (not Ben Carson).

Imagine the flight of the bat and the balls
and the hole they are trying to fill.


Richard Marx Weinraub has published three collections of poetry: Wonder Bread Hill, Heavenly Bodies, and Lapidary.  His work has appeared in many journals including The Paris Review, Asheville Poetry Review, South Carolina Review, Green Mountains Review, North American Review, Slate, and River Styx.  

BRIEF SONNET FOR SNOOPS

by Jen Karetnick

Image credit: mjak / 123RF Stock Photo

The government is reading my emails,
they say. I wish they’d read my poems instead.
I would submit them for review as shells
of free-verse, villanelle grenades, bomb threats
whose line breaks they can’t unworm from their ears.
I would send them to the front lines to serve,
volunteer them as SEALs, special forces,
if that’s what it takes, poems leading the charge
in the fight to be the best in the world,
submissive soldiers of allegory
and slant rhyme. But poems are dismissed as girls.
Metaphors don’t receive the attention they
deserve. My emails are scanned, deleted,
the poems in them no gun to anyone’s head.


Jen Karetnick is a Miami poet with three published chapbooks, the latest called Landscaping for Wildlife (BigWonderful Press, 2012). Her next two books, an anthology of South Florida poetry and prose, Sun-Struck Matches (Tigertail Productions), and a cookbook, Mango (University of Florida Press), are forthcoming in fall 2013 and fall 2014. Jen works as the Creative Writing Director for Miami Arts Charter School and a freelance food-travel critic and writer. These poems are from a manuscript-in-progress, My Buddha Wears a Pout.

CHAMBERED NAUTILUS REVISITED

by Mary Cresswell

           after Oliver Wendell Holmes

Image source: Carnivoraforum

This is the ship of state
swimming backwards through a grimy sea
spewing foam, its hundred sticky arms
waving wild and pale and aimlessly.

Chamber after chamber fills and closes
blocking out what’s gone before.
No contamination can leak out –
thoughts sealed inside appear no more.

Adding empty gap to empty gap
the hulk is finally cast up on the beach,
where we toss it back and forth, and ask
what kind of truth had one time grown beneath.


Mary Cresswell is from Los Angeles and lives on New Zealand’s Kapiti Coast. Her third book, Trace Fossils, came out in 2011.