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Founder and Editor-in-Chief
Brandon Shane is a poet and horticulturist, born in Yokosuka, Japan. You can see his work in Rattle, trampset, Variant Lit, The Chiron Review, Stone Circle Review, IceFloe Press, The Marrow Poetry, One Art Poetry, Spectra Poets, Plague Circus Press, among others. His chapbook “Whale Bones” was released in 2026.

Founder and Editor
Kate Efimochkina is a writer and artist, born in Moscow, Russia. You can see her work in bethh, Stone Circle Review, The Turning Leaf Journal, among others.

Ahi | After Placement

After the fire, I built a cupboard—
too narrow for plates, deep enough
for letters.

The wood still gave.

Weeks later, heat rose
when the door shut—
ash lifting
to a rim that would not take it.

No one asked what burned.
I set a word down—
left it there.

It warped.
I scrubbed once.

The mark moved—
grain opening
around it.

The neighbours painted—
kākāriki.

I left mine
as it was—
still taking.

One hand set it—
then withdrew.

Breath clung to wood.
Nothing closed.

What survived
took weight.

The statue in the village square 

is alive.

No one believes me.
 Yet every morning the horse’s hoof is raised a little higher 
a little lower
stray hair on rider’s head displaced
stoic gaze more vacant
as if to cast a sneer of doubt 
upon these bold assertions.

 A bronze plaque speaks of founding works. Heroic, righteous deeds. 
Not why Jenny’s glove’s left hanging 
from the tip 
of a dew-slicked sword.

Millefiori

I quit smoking, started chewing coffee grounds
To win my way back into her good graces, though
California waits for no one, her sun beats on other shoulders 

I’ve been gone, been busy pairing up my thoughts
Nicely, teaching children sounds to make
Inventing paper flowers

Wondering if spring tastes the same
As when the future still pealed like a bell
And mussel shells thumb-wrestled 
God until the sun went blue. If it tastes

Like new carrots— spindly, earthy, and cold
Barley tea, a blind driveway’s kicked-up dust
The quiet sour of a young grape stem
Unwound around a scrap-metal trellis 

Campfire smoke, citronella, screwdriver, vomit
Superbloom, superbloom, superbloom

Masso delle fanciulle

We watch her undress before she slips smooth
as an eel under the surface.
She seems young.

My father’s sentence vanished. It’s another
of those things with no real conclusion.

Girls came to die here, letting themselves slip
from the boulder to the shallow waters.
They refused marriages.

Here are the men. 
All castigated by their same nature. 

Why we remember what we remember from
childhood is a mystery.

The girl resurfaces. She smiles: she knows
they watch her. 

My father’s sweat drop is a dark ring on the 
white stone. He looks for me, and there I am,
on the riverbank,

pulling stones and dry moss from my mouth, my 
hand always deeper as I retch, tears filling
as I whelp.  

I’m looking for ways 
to stay quiet lately and 
that’s something new to 

me. Usually 
I like loud. I move towards
explosions, towards 

the threat of something 
more raucousful than my head:
distractions, at least 

equilibrium. 
Not these days. These days I dream
of a vast silence. 

Not literally. 
Literally, I dream of 
my drains breaking. Full 

vessels awaiting 
my scoop, a bailing out or 
some sudden magic

which I often poss-
es in liminality.
Once awake, I’m sure 

there is meaning to
be found, lines to trace, pins to 
press. I search my day 

for night-semblances,
keep notes of clues some other
me-ish body has

placed with precision, 
a scavenger hunt of the 
psyche and I think 

this is normal. No-
thing to look too closely at. 
I’ve said that enough 

that I believe it. 
The sink and tub and other 
sink and shower are 

quiet. Maybe that’s 
how I know not to be scared
in the dreams. Nothing 

deadly is silent,
famously. And anyways, 
my antagonist 

can’t be obvious 
like that, can’t be commonplace; 
something out to get

me would have to be
less utilitarian,
more in love with me. 

Evening Star

There is no moon tonight. No city lurks
over bloodshot floodgates of this late horizon.

Mercurial fragments of the clouds revise
themselves, leaking on the lake. Songbirds look

like wild arrows spilling down the water.
Fireflies atomize. Scrolls of birch bark peel.

The bullfrogs’ choir fills the still black pools.  
A fish backflips—now circles ring out wider.

Each tree conjoins its shadow over pastures.
Come, lie out in the shivering, dew-wet fields.

The earth takes our impressions. Let us yield 
to its material of daily rapture…

The love-slow cerements of errant weather
bind us. Darkness marinates. Stars gather.

Not a Deer

Somewhere out there is a poem in its natural habitat,
a poem with fields to run through, and a sky as big
as a song above it. Somewhere there is a poem, slinking
between trees, dappled by light. I am not going to hunt
it down, but I will admire it from my perch in a poplar,
the glow of it, the steady munch of teeth. It is not
permeable by bow and arrow, or susceptible
to birdshot. It is a poem after all, right now it eats
grass, later sunlight, and the ominous buzz of  mosquitoes.

Contemplating life from the deck of the cottage in Grand Tracadie, Prince Edward Island, Canada

on a day such as this 
ospreys circling gracefully overhead, their sleek
forms gliding in the light blue sky, before 
diving through whisps of clouds
into the steel grey water of the Gulf, their shape
magnified on the Lincoln-green grass
as they return to the nest next door

yet, yet
even in that moment  
ospreys are teaching their young
how to hunt and kill, urging
them to fly longer and faster
in preparation for the lengthy flight to come
knowing what is so hard for humans to imagine
on such a day as this

the water near me, so warm 
freezing, 
the tree leaves, so resplendent.
falling, 
the grass so soft and lush
turning brown 
and brittle
and covered in frost

and me, forgotten
a mere pile of bones, but

even knowing the fate 
for me, for this cruel unforgiving land
on a sublime day such as this, kissed by God

how I sing! How I soar!

Honey Island

There are days
	when the last shadow in
this swamp steps to the edge
	of the clearing and
howls. Its echoes
	rouse herons from the tops
of trees and chase catfish
	deeper into the mud.
Even the ticks on
	the shadow's back
tighten and pray
	not to fall loose
when that sound
	clears the tree line.

The Tattoo on Your Chest Has a Typo

Andy sneaks up behind me in the tall grass
even though he’s the one that brought me here.

He tells me that his name means strong and manly,
flexes his arms to prove to me words don’t lie.

I lead him to the river where he immediately undresses
and I think about leaving him there, vulnerable.

We’re not dating and we’re not friends. 
We’re a third thing I’m too afraid to put words to.

He tells me my name must mean beautiful 
as he tries convincing me to join him in the water.

I don’t have the heart to tell him it means ‘rival’
and I imagine myself with a sword but no shield.

My knees are muddy from the water’s edge as
I observe him like he’s the creature and I’m the human.

His eyes are the worst secret keepers of all
and I dip into them every chance I get.

I don’t have the heart to tell him that words do lie
and when I wipe my knees of mud and my hands of him,

I practically hear the leeches sucking on his skin.

The Folly River Still Knows Our Names

The Folly River still knows our names.
I am certain of this.
Some evenings, when the moon hangs low above the water
and the tide pulls slowly through the marsh grass,
I imagine the river, whispering them back and forth to itself,
as if we have become part of its language.

You lived next door.
Between us was a shared deck
overlooking that impossible stretch of green water,
the kind of green that seemed borrowed from a dream.
We spent whole afternoons out there without saying much,
Just two young men
leaning against one another,
watching sunlight scatter across the current.

The river never seemed content
to be only itself.
When the sun struck it, it became sunlight.
When the moon found it, it became moonlight.
Whatever loved it,
the river reflected back.

Maybe that's why I loved it so much.
Maybe that's why I loved you.

At night, the palmettos would sway in the dark,
their fronds brushing together like distant applause.
The air tasted of salt,
not a hint or suggestion of it,
but salt you could actually taste on your lips,
making every kiss taste unmistakably of Folly.

Sometimes we'd settle into each other,
your leg draped across mine,
watching the boats move through the darkness
as if we had nowhere else to be.
Sometimes we talked about our future. Sometimes we didn't.
The river seemed to understand both languages.

Maybe some places become too complete.
Maybe certain memories survive
because we leave them undisturbed.

You are married now.
More than twenty-five years.
I'm glad. I mean that.
Love should be allowed to find its home.

Still, every now and then, I wonder 
what might have happened if we had lived in a different time.
If we'd been given choices that didn't yet exist.
If the road ahead of us had been wider.
If two young men in love had been allowed 
to imagine permanence without first imagining sacrifice.

But the river doesn't care about questions like these.
The river only carries what was.
And what was is still beautiful.  

Will

I don’t say anything. I look through his window. It’s all dark. All covered by big pine trees behind me. Everything is blue. And glowing. —little gems, dust of gems, glows in the sea foam. Soap bubbles on my skin glow. Will pops them. I sink my head into the water and keep my eyes open. The soap stings. —owls are scary. One is behind me. I know because he coughed, he’s undetectable otherwise. I still turn to look for him, and I see nothing. I suppose I won’t hear him fly away. Then the clouds must have gone and the pine firs cast the moonlight down like bedsheets. Drapes them over branches, dancing around the missing owl. 
	Can I tap his window? Thinking of the fact makes me still and fearful. I cower, my body goes limp on the weeds. A car drives past. It slows down and a garage door opens, noiseful, then closes. —I’m dry and clean on the living room floor. I see Will in fresh clothes. Lou, he says my name, be okay, I’ll be right back. Okay. The garage door creaks slowly into its closing, and I hear him drive away. I lay on his floor, ashamed of my dullness, and telling myself to be polite and not to look into his bedroom. Leave his stuff alone. But the bedroom door is open, it gives me a peek. —I look through his window. I see trash. Broken stuff, amalgamations of unknown litters. I see plastic wraps, splinters, twisted metal, fiery, satanic molten metals. —I see his life painted across exit 6B. I hear the goosebumps, I hear ten years of fear. I’d paint his bed the same way. I lay on exit 6B like I’d lay with him. —lay on the weed. Break the window. How dare he lock the windows. The dead have no right to lock their windows. Lock them from the people that spend their lives looking in. —I lay my face against a stranger’s car window —my head against his bedroom window.
	—C sharp, C sharp, C sharp. The microwave beeps a C sharp, he tells me. —C sharp, C sharp, C sharp. —he taps a keyboard, C sharp, see? He plays a melody on the scale. Come here, put your hand like this and keep pressing down, in a rhythm like this: —C sharp, C sharp, C sharp, I press, I press in a rhythm just like that. —a rough man holds me back from the car door windows. Something drips, something cracks, drips down my brow and I can’t see well. —I fall over the windowsill and strain my neck landing onto paper trash. 

You’re good. You’re so good. I scream, but I don’t say anything. These words abandon me. I’m only seeing and sensing motions. His whole room is in movement. I think I’m still falling over the windowsill. —just like that—falling through his bed, I beg God that it’s all chance. There is no depth outside of poker. Outside of chance and betting psychology. He didn’t do it on purpose. There is no intention. —Will takes the papers back and tells me a good artist is a very intentional one —you’re good, you really are, so intentional. You rebuilt the house when you shut the garage. You rebuilt your stretch of the highway at 125 miles per hour. —I blow more bubbles out underwater. I imagine the Atlantic pulling us to somewhere foreign. I shut my eyes from the stinging soap. Blue and black. I clutch onto his dark limbs, his chest out of sight. Will’s room is so black and blue. The walls have gone, and the pines have leapt into thundering motion. Blue and black dancing all around me, even the owl, black and blue and red, red.

Snow Plow Pose

It’s a pose I suppose for going through
snow slowly.  Intentionally.  Like down 
hill, standing on top an extravagant
avalanche about to spill.  More glacial
in pace.  More like the farmer following
his mule, though plodding and pock-marking dirt,
not snow, and wiping his brow with his sleeve.
The trick’s in turning the ankles, knocking 
the knees, and keeping each ski separate
but equal in weight distribution.  All
winter, I perfected the move.  Practiced
it while skating on Kelly’s Pond.  Added
it to the five positions of ballet.
Studied my reflection in the mirror 
behind the barre.  The look of focused
concentration on my face, the frown of
consternation on the teacher’s.  Never 
graduated.  Never got those skies I’d asked
for Christmas.  But the skill, like performing
an arabesque, never left me, and we 
all need to keep our equilibrium.
My go-to pose even when it’s not snowing.
 

Golden

10 AM. Golden, Colorado.
The mountains are scrubby, working class.
They drink Coors. They nestle Coors in their cleavage,
absent snow caps and dramatic spire,
absent purple slides of light.
 
A gradual raising of short earthy grass
to rust-faced, blunt lumps of rock.
A golem-hydra backpedaled from life,
its wizardry nixed and its heads flattened

over stumpy necks of tattered ochre.
I rather like their unapologetic demeanor
when the wind bears down, grumbling

what earth   for this work
for I work   this earth

and for what

Bird Feeder Rocking
“Songbirds like zebra finches practice their melodies while asleep. Their vocal muscles move in ways that mirror daytime singing.” – Rob Brezsny, The Source, 30 (25), 54.

Next time a yellow splash
bounces the feeder, happy
I have just put out fresh seed,
I’ll think of the hours before
this swinging moment. Somewhere
tucked away high up in fir boughs,
a little cousin finch has been
practicing for its morning debut.

Doubt I’ve been as industrious
in my sleep. Last night I woke
to seasonal allergies, sinuses
clogged at desperate intervals. 
Dreams in progress had to wait, 
could not work through
the hand dealt by sudden loss,
vocal cords on temporary hold.

But when the pine pollen’s been
washed away in a good steady rain, 
I’ll be back at it, practicing
what I could say to the one who left,
who now watches the finches 
from a faraway place, practicing
the ultimate dream. I aim to wish him 
well, despite his terrible timing.

I’ll be sure to refill the feeder tonight,
the birds and I, dressing for dawn.