ICE

a Golden Shovel

after Adrienne Rich's  “What Kind of Times Are These”

by Nancy Sobanik

"We support our neighbors and we will stand with our neighbors," Leslie Carlson, a protester, said.

We are born suffused with stardust, not this
armload of crumbling charcoal. Hate isn’t
underground, it feeds on oxygen. A
tinderbox of words erupts like Russian
folk dancers. How quickly a poem
turns to men in black balaclavas. This
is our warning. Fire needs no wind, it is
fed by the pause. The wisp and spark not
stamped, and mouths bare their teeth. Somewhere
another will smother the burning, why else
would we let fire taste our own door?
But—
think of ash, think of diamonds. Grow them here.

A poet and Registered Nurse living in Maine, Nancy Sobanik (her/she) has recent work curated or forthcoming by The Orchards Poetry Journal, Mobius, Chiron Review, Jackdaw Review, Hole in The Head Review and others. A Best of The Net and Pushcart nominee, she is a three-time finalist awarded second and third place in the Maine Postmark Poetry Contest.  A manuscript screener for Alice James Books, her debut chapbook “The Unfolding”will be published by Finishing Line Press in 2026. Bluesky: nancysobanik.bsky.social

HUMAN

by Darrell Petska

Photograph and sculpture by Yuichi Ikehata

I’m part American, part Czech, part
Israeli and Kenyan, part Russian, Swedish,
Palestinian, part northern hemisphere
and southern, part all things spawned
from stardust in the roiling sea of space,

so why does my body war with itself,
one eye peering left, the other right, one ear
denying what the other one hears, each leg
opposing the other’s direction while my hands
hammer and claw each other till they bleed?

One by one, I pare away my warring parts,
yet the battles rage on. Soon, of all I was,
only my two-sided heart shall remain.
Already, each side argues a different allegiance—
surely one will stop beating just to spite the other,

and there I’ll lie, at last a heap of bones some
beast shall drag into its lair as lesson to its offspring
of what transpires when a body’s many parts
fail to live in harmony. More fortunate stolid
stone and knobbly bark than unruly human flesh.

Darrell Petska, a Wisconsin poet, is one part of a large and loving family.

FOR CARRIE FISHER

by William Cullen Jr.






A princess without a royal entourage
always out there with riffraff and rebels
plotting against an empire
for a yet unnamed republic
ready to spill your blue-blood
for the stardust of all people
you shift now to another dimension
as only our memories can glimpse you
moving forward at light speed
you show us the way to freedom.

William Cullen Jr. is a veteran and works at a social services non-profit in Brooklyn, NY. His poetry has appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, Canary, Gulf Stream, Right Hand Pointing, Star*Line, and Written River: A Journal of Eco-Poetics.

THE JOY OF SCIENCE

by Tricia Knoll

The Voyager-1 spacecraft has become the first manmade object to leave the Solar System. "This is really a key milestone that we'd been hoping we would reach when we started this project over 40 years ago - that we would get a spacecraft into interstellar space," said Prof Ed Stone, the chief scientist on the venture. "Scientifically it's a major milestone, but also historically - this is one of those journeys of exploration like circumnavigating the globe for the first time or having a footprint on the Moon for the first time. This is the first time we've begun to explore the space between the stars," he told BBC News.

They deserve a dance
of joy, a cheer, a beer
these people who tracked
that small ship into the outer

limit of imagination, the caffeine,
the endless nights brought home
when science goes further,
goes better, does beyond

into the interstellar cloud
of stardust, the dark where
both goatherds and villains
have stared, wondering. 


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet. The night sky in western Oregon is frequently obscured by cloud cover. When it's not, she too stares, wondering.