poetry – TERSE. Journal

Anamorphosis by J.Y. Tan

Everyone I meet is someone else entirely. I’m convinced there’s something larger than life in the greenish-yellow fog around your neckline. Are you home yet? I think about my friends 3 years away & hope they’re fine. If given a chance to be anonymous, I wouldn’t take it because apart from these roundabouts there’s nothing…
III Poems by Kashiana Singh

Can Chat GPT make butter? I asked them about making butter They judged my question, a smirk Then asked me a reverse question Do you want a poem? Want me to do haiku? Shakespearean sonnet? Or do you want to butter someone As in trying to ass lick, coexistence Is it about the…
An Interview with Konstantin Kulakov by Aubrey King

Konstantin and I first met in Boulder, Colorado during our MFA program at the Jack Kerouac School. Our friendship, however, blossomed during the pandemic, after Konstantin had moved back east and I stayed mountainside. We would have hours-long phone calls about our lives and current events, but Konstantin isn’t much interested in small talk—he dives…
Brooding by James Penha

Expat New Yorker James Penha (he/him🌈) has lived for the past three decades in Indonesia. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry, his work is widely published in journals and anthologies. His newest chapbook of poems, American Daguerreotypes, is available for Kindle. His essays have appeared in The New York Daily News and The New York Times. Penha edits The New Verse…
Everything’s Temporary by Joan Mazza

A friend turned eighty last month.Thinking of her, how time sweeps us out,the way birch brooms clear away mouse nests,cobwebs. No different from our ancestorsbeating rag rugs in spring sunlight, watchinga weathervane, patterns of clouds, fluffy whitebefore layering like slate tiles. Slip into a longburlap apron and tie the knot behind the back,three times for…
To See Something New In Your Own Backyard: A reading list for appreciating nature’s minutiae by Brennan Keifer

Because of the Climate Crisis, we often think about nature and the environment on a large, often global scale. The question then asked is what can we, as cities, states, and nations, do to protect the earth and offset global warming. There is utility in this way of thinking. In fact, the Climate Crisis has…
Year of the Sad Robot by Kris Huelgas

Kris Huelgas (he/ him) is a Filipino-American poet living in Los Angeles, CA. Kris writes poetry about robots and dinosaurs. His work is published or forthcoming in Drunk Monkeys, Sweet Tooth Poetry, Alternative Milk Magazine, and others. Find him on Twitter and Instagram @krswellgs
II Poems by Heikki Huotari

Heikki Huotari attended a one-room school and spent summers on a forest-fire lookout tower. Since retiring from academia/mathematics he has published poems in numerous journals and in five poetry collections. His manuscript, To Justify the Butterfly, won second prize, and publication, in the 2022 James Tate Chapbook Competition.
Book Collecting/Ongoing Longing by Tiago Duarte Dias

Tyra woke up with a reasonably warm and satisfying feeling about life in general on a warm February day. The sky was an uncannily soothing shade of light blue, permeated by long and thin clouds; an oneiric tiger she must have dreamt once or twice. The sun shone, and it was one of those winter…
“Cold Pitch” by Bradon Matthews

Email dragged from brain,Dropped into the inbox of someUncaring face illuminatedIn blue, probably exhausted, This is career advancement, we’ve returnedTo begging lords,The peasants grew potatoes, I growBored of staring at a screen,The sun beamsStifling themselves, by the timeI go outsideIt’s raining and windy, it feels likeSomething’s happeningBut I know better, Inside the quiet humOf the…