Put Your Shoes at the Door

Posted on July 18, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

The sky has managed a sun.
A thin wick today, already spent above the roofs.
Morning presses its face against the pane.
In the dark room
The wine continues its slow work.

The ceiling. The fan, yes.
Fingers wander from bed to sill
Through yesterday’s ash,
Through yesterday’s ash.

I must have missed the dawn.
The walls are so high;
I cannot see the spring.
Feet fall hard to the floor.
Something was here.

Jack Carson is an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studies mathematics and electrical engineering and computer science. He is the 2025 first-prize winner of the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics Essay Contest, the youngest recipient in the award’s history, for his essay “We Must Know Only Men: A Reading of Levinas.” A 2026 Burchard Scholar at MIT and a 2026 Udall Scholar, he has also studied musical composition at IRCAM and the Boulanger Institute in Paris, and has twice performed at Carnegie Hall. A resident of Oklahoma, he is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.

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Every Person Leaves a Room Differently

Posted on July 18, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

You work with history,
when all you want to do
is forget. There are things
you said decades ago
that you still regret.
Art flows into life,
but you don’t understand it.
Life flows into art,
but you don’t understand it.
What is this world
if not a cracked garden?
There’s a certain type of happiness
that can only be described
as relentless.

Daniel Addercouth grew up on a remote farm in the Scottish Highlands but now lives in Germany. His poetry has appeared in 14 magazine, The London Magazine and Stoat Poetry, among other places. His poem “Quite The Find” was recently selected by The Scotsman newspaper as its poem of the week.

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My Shelter Pets Are Pure Love

Posted on July 18, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

Everyone agrees it was a turning point
when shamanism became the state religion.
We’re all still trying to shock our parents,
especially the dead ones. That’s the price we pay
for a happy upbringing. As a child, I wasn’t allowed
to let cats in the house, but I remember being
the same size as Granny’s dog, lying on the mat
in front of the fire. I’m collecting the stages of grief,
just not in the right order. My father attended Mass
in his undershirt. He didn’t believe in wrapping himself
in robes. Sometimes you need to overstir the batter
to find out what the cake really wants.

Daniel Addercouth grew up on a remote farm in the Scottish Highlands but now lives in Germany. His poetry has appeared in 14 magazine, The London Magazine and Stoat Poetry, among other places. His poem “Quite The Find” was recently selected by The Scotsman newspaper as its poem of the week.

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Pattern Recognition

Posted on July 17, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

Faced with a dark-green canvas, you might
ask yourself: what is there to understand?
At the centre of the storm, we are awake
and watching. I attempt to catch your eye,

want to keep you in the loop. You seldom stop
shivering; I try to simplify things. My attention slows.
An abstract request – another reason to be scared.
The birdsong is still on your lips. I have some calls

to make. What is this life but a succession of locked
cabinets? We are always half-right. The eternal urge
to leave the party with a smile. Stand behind the light,
and everything will be OK.

Daniel Addercouth grew up on a remote farm in the Scottish Highlands but now lives in Germany. His poetry has appeared in 14 magazine, The London Magazine and Stoat Poetry, among other places. His poem “Quite The Find” was recently selected by The Scotsman newspaper as its poem of the week.

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Laundry Day

Posted on July 17, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

Before I box them up
to donate to Goodwill,

the wind breathes my father’s
clothes drying on the line

back to life one last time.

Kip Knott’s most recent book of poems, Rothko’s Gospels, is available from tiny wren publishing. You can follow him on Instagram at @kip.knott.

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Appalachian Funeral

Posted on July 17, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

The earth atop your fresh grave
swells with last night’s rain

while a congregation of wind fills
the pews of the abandoned church

miners once coughed prayers in
before coal veins turned to sulfur.

Murmurings of the forgotten faithful
rattle cracked and shattered stained-

glass windows with a chorus of gusty
Hallelujahs and the soft breeze

of a hundred breathless Amens.

Kip Knott’s most recent book of poems, Rothko’s Gospels, is available from tiny wren publishing. You can follow him on Instagram at @kip.knott.

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Score for a Long Drive

Posted on July 17, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

(for two voices and an engine)

[Silence.]            [Static.]
[A short chorus of a country song, in which the singer over-enunciates the m in America, as if trying to spread the grease evenly over his lips.]
[Static.]            [Click.]            [Silence.]

Tell me something. What? Anything.
[Pause.]
How long ago did we meet? A week ago? Two? Just one. Anyway, two weeks ago, I went swimming in a lake.

I’ve always been scared of lakes. Okay. Let’s make it a pond. I went swimming in a pond, and I could plant my feet in the silt at the bottom, and the fish were all the size of my pinky finger, and the water barely came up to my waist. Thank you.

[Silence, but softly this time, dolce.] [Flags and flocks of geese flutter over the interstate, not heard, but felt.]
I swallowed a lot of lake water. I mean pond water.

Is that the end of the story? No, because the water was full of frog eggs. And because a week later I met you.

[Pause.] [An insect splatters against the windshield. Then another. It’s August, after all.]

What does that have to do with me? [A beat.] I can feel them swimming.

[Silence.]
[A silence that isn’t – cicadas, falling stars, etc.]
[A slight change in engine pitch; the road takes a big, wide curve, and starts uphill.]
Are you scared? Of course.
Are you? Of course.

[Static.]            [Click.]            [Silence.]

Marlow Kurinji (she/they) writes about complicated desires. She hails from Dallas, TX, holds a BA in Psychology from the University of South Florida, and currently resides in Corvallis, OR.

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Self-Portrait as a Hall of Mirrors

Posted on July 16, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

The trail cam blinks twice.      Motion detected. Two stags fighting by the creek. The water is green. It could be a painting except for the blood: pinkish, high- fructose. The blood makes it a movie. It’s mating season, it’s hunting season. Through his rifle-sight the hunter watches the pair stomping and crying locked together and hesitates – then shoots. One stag crumples. The other tries to run, but can’t: his antlers are tangled with the dead one’s after so long touching. The hunter shoots again. The recoil runs up his body      spine to neck. Down the road, at the gas station, you and I share a slushie. The ice melts into a green sludge – if you’re watching closely, it’s the same green of the creek from the start of the movie – you bite the straw and as I drink, I feel the teeth marks with my tongue. Did you hear gunshots? you ask, and I say engine, say fireworks, and we both know I’m lying. The security cam swivels facing the two of us            and winks.

Marlow Kurinji (she/they) writes about complicated desires. She hails from Dallas, TX, holds a BA in Psychology from the University of South Florida, and currently resides in Corvallis, OR.

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Self-Portrait as a Nesting Doll

Posted on July 16, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

Open my mouth:   instead of my tongue
an accordion. Open its bellows
and they gasp   a diver’s last breath
above water. Open water and find light
in the trenches of the sea      so many lights
lights hadal   chthonic   glowing green like
plastic stars I meant to stick to our walls
but never did. Open them and find
every one of the things I meant to say to you
but never did. Open those
and find my mouth   small and wanting.

Marlow Kurinji (she/they) writes about complicated desires. She hails from Dallas, TX, holds a BA in Psychology from the University of South Florida, and currently resides in Corvallis, OR.

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Sheet Angel

Posted on July 16, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

I’ve slept in this bed for as long as I can remember, since the last snowfall in Texas. Now I’m sixteen and the crown of my head knocks against the headboard; my toes hang off the end. I can’t see you behind me, but I can feel the weight of your body, the expansion and contraction of breaths. We don’t kiss. We don’t touch, not even to hold hands. But we lie together, fully clothed, a Bible’s-width apart. My ear is crushed up against the wall and the plaster carries my dad’s voice from the other room; we don’t speak. But we understand: the creak of the bed frame, the thrum of our separate pulses, the perfect machinery of our limbs on the tiny mattress: new alphabets, new songs. When you leave I’ll lay down a spare blanket, try and fail to fall asleep on the wooden floor. I won’t touch the impression of you in the sheets.

Marlow Kurinji (she/they) writes about complicated desires. She hails from Dallas, TX, holds a BA in Psychology from the University of South Florida, and currently resides in Corvallis, OR.

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Solo

Posted on July 16, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

In a strange, sweltering city, my second floor
apartment has ugly linoleum. My new job
starts in a week. I call in. Talk to a machine.

No messages, only unknown voice mails,
panting, obscene. Police cruisers case
the block. Somebody keys my car.

This apartment reeks of cat piss and
an old gas stove. Is it leaking? One morning
my head throbs. I’m doubled, outside myself.

Gliding over the sea of time
I remember we kayaked
to Eagle Island. This time I’m solo.

where the ocean gleams like a fallen sun
streaming through emeralds. Once past
the harbor’s pine-tarred embrace,

this lone voyager savors the breeze,
paddling easy, dipping one blade,
raising the other, like crooked angel wings.

The bow of my boat speck points toward
the island, a rock spruce peninsula, itself
afloat, unkeeled on the horizon.

Gulls swoop in formation. They squawk,
fly beyond, leaving me behind,
rocking, soaked from cold splashes.

My tiny craft dips and reels
lifted by marbled waves. Salt air
drips cold rain and distance.

Swells and ruffles. One nudge from a seal
could send me overboard to early oblivion.
But not yet.

Far ahead, Eagle’s granite ship awaits, tawny
cliffs resting like lions’ paws over
boulder-strewn wreckage on a strange shore

Christine Jackson grew up in New England, a swamp Yankee. She now lives in South Florida, near another swamp, and is a retired university professor of literature and creative writing. Her poetry has been published in several online publications, including Shot Glass Journal, Verse-Virtual, The Ekphrastic Review, and South Florida Poetry Journal.

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When You Leave

Posted on July 15, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

one late May morning,
drive away for awhile

to caverns and canyons,
the little wren is still

on her nest snugged
into the hollow heel

of your old shoe
out on the porch.

At night I slide soft
into an over-sized T-shirt

you brought home to me
from another trip like this one.

l stretch my long legs west
onto your side of our wide bed

to feel for the spot
where your feet should be.

Robin Turner’s work has appeared most recently in Anacapa Review, Unlost, Pithead Chapel, Rattle, Rust & Moth, Verse Daily, The Texas Observer, and elsewhere. Her chapbooks are bindweed & crow poison (Porkbelly Press) and Elegy with Clouds & (Kelsay Books). She is a community teaching artist in Dallas currently working with writers from the Cancer Support Community of North Texas.

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How would you like to die?

Posted on July 15, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

According to James Thurber, “In Gloria Swanson’s arms,”
was Ed Wynn’s prompt reply. It’s the expected norm:
ringed by the faces of loved ones like bright planets.

And that is fine, if that’s how it pans out.
But other ways are good too. I could look
down at my bowl of Buddha’s Delight, observing

the rich mosaic of harvest colors, the gloss
on the snow peas. I could smell the salt
of the soy sauce, feel the warmth

of a thousand supper bowls in the blue-
glazed pottery, let the steam rise to my face.
Remember how the earth has warmed

and fed me, all these years.
                                                            Or I could hold
a cat and stroke it gently through
its cycle – the vigorous purring, rolling

and bunting, then the settling down.
The last stretch of pleasure, the curl
of contentment. Releasing a faint
final sigh, surrendering.

Cheryl Caesar is an ex-expatriate, having returned to Michigan after 25 years in Europe. She teaches writing at Michigan State University, and serves as president of the Michigan College English Association. Her chapbook of protest poetry, Flatman (Thurston Howl Publications), is available from Amazon. Her poetry and artwork also appear in both volumes of Words Across the Water (Fractal Edge Press) and in a variety of literary magazines internationally.

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Poem Beginning with a Line from D.H. Lawrence

Posted on July 15, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

I don’t want everlasting flowers
spoke some prophet who breathed last before any of us were born.

Seasons compose their own rituals
with their own secrets. A soft music rises through them

like dropped petals floating in patterns
no one alive can read. If you try, you’ll fail better

each time. Your failure plays the low notes
that open flowers to daylight and a touch longer—

Again and now. Repeating. It takes
many lifetimes to not desire the breath of flowers.

Mark J. Mitchell has worked in hospital kitchens, fast food, retail wine and spirits, conventions, tourism, and warehouses. He has also been a working poet for almost 50 years.

His latest novel, A Book of Lost Songs, was just published by Histria Books. An award-winning poet, he’s the author of five full-length poetry collections and six chapbooks. His latest collection is Something To Be from Pski’s Porch Publishing.

He is fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Miles Davis, Kafka, Dante, and his wife, activist Joan Juster. He lives in San Francisco, where he makes his marginal living pointing out pretty things.

He can be found on Bluesky: @MJMitchellwriter.

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Questions of Language

Posted on July 15, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

What’s the past tense of when?

Is your tongue a heavy tool or a feather wait?

How does now reach an end?

Can kiss take the imperative voice?

When is regret finally forgotten?

Is thigh in the declension of sigh?

Does a tear sound? Is the vowel long?

Is skin the present tense of lust?

Do nouns form their own songs? Do verbs?

Why does desire always begin a sentence?

Are there enough adverbs for touch?

Can you conjugate the other?

Do you want to?

Should you end a love with a preposition?

Mark J. Mitchell has worked in hospital kitchens, fast food, retail wine and spirits, conventions, tourism, and warehouses. He has also been a working poet for almost 50 years.

His latest novel, A Book of Lost Songs, was just published by Histria Books. An award-winning poet, he’s the author of five full-length poetry collections and six chapbooks. His latest collection is Something To Be from Pski’s Porch Publishing.

He is fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Miles Davis, Kafka, Dante, and his wife, activist Joan Juster. He lives in San Francisco, where he makes his marginal living pointing out pretty things.

He can be found on Bluesky: @MJMitchellwriter.

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Dry Now

Posted on July 14, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

Dry now then, crisp as Autumn,
but lacking the comfort of the
shorter days that bid us rest
before the harder days to come,
not knowing how to stand before
the sharp frosts of a season
that plumbs the depths of storms
past in which we bent, not broken.
Harsher then the still mornings,
branches, brittle, stripped of
the reminder of kinder days,
an insipid, milky sun?
What comfort to warm the heart
before the long cold, the darkness
the eyes now can only see.

J. M. Summers was born and still lives in South Wales. Previous publication credits include Poetry Wales, Another Country from Gomer Press and various other magazines / anthologies. The former editor of a number of small press magazines, he is currently working on his first collection.

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Diagnosis

Posted on July 14, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

Just this. Houses lit, washed,
shut tight before the sharp rain,
ravaging wind. Water courses,
speaking a language older than
the one in which we can only
express imperfectly such hopes,
desires, stubbornly following
the same paths, regardless.
But it is a season for waiting,
one in which to reflect on absence,
left with only this, the simplest
act of faith. To place a candle,
guttering, before the darkness
of the night yet to come.

J. M. Summers was born and still lives in South Wales. Previous publication credits include Poetry Wales, Another Country from Gomer Press and various other magazines / anthologies. The former editor of a number of small press magazines, he is currently working on his first collection.

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Wanted (Urgently)

Posted on July 14, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

Lost dogs at dusk.
All the hugs we didn’t give,
thinking there would be other days
and further nights.
Childhood photographs –
who knows where they might be.
Gilligan’s island.
A good manicure service.
A phone that can take
perfect selfies.
A solitary beach,
but not too much.
Lost dreams to dream again.
A star called Aldebaran
somewhere in the sky.
White butterflies
like the white of canes in bloom.
A river as wide as the Paraná
when evening falls
and there are still clouds.
And a mutilated heart
sharpened by invisible arrows
where there is still some room left
to patiently carve
all my names.

Gabriela Sanderson is an English teacher from Argentina, now based in Manchester, UK. She writes poetry about geographies, our connection to nature, and the human heart.

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Traeth (Beach)

Posted on July 14, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

How much sand do you need
between your toes
on your tongue
your teeth biting stubborn grains
with the taste of wild samphire
as the sea changes colour
and the foam hides
the long arms of adventurous seaweed
the salt in the wind
draws footpaths
on your sunburnt skin
and you dream with the waves
dream
dream
dream
of that house
by a loving ocean.

Gabriela Sanderson is an English teacher from Argentina, now based in Manchester, UK. She writes poetry about geographies, our connection to nature, and the human heart.

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Rhode Island

Posted on July 13, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

Every summer I would burn my tongue on the same hot chocolate
at the creamery stand in Rhode Island.
It would ruin the whole meal
of hot chowder and mac and cheese,
and yet I would do it over and over,
taking pleasure in the ritual.
And we would go home and we would open the windows in the attic room
and I would trace the pictures of my relatives like portraits in a museum,
yet with eyes too much like my own.
And under the blanket of the cool air from the summer moon,
I would listen to the gentle warping of the wooden beams;
the house stretching in its sleep
and hope the night would keep me a little longer.

Coulombe is a writer, poet, and teacher from Miami, Florida. They hold a bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago and currently teach English in France.

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The Painter

Posted on July 13, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

This is not a poem,
only a door I keep opening
to the same small room.

Read
me
another
poem
from the
sun room
of your apartment
in Hyde Park.
Let your voice
be a hue I can keep.

But this time,
catch me
before I slip
into the quiet curve
of your arm,
tracing the slow pattern of us,
in a color only we can see.

I am weary
of tumbling through a sky
too vast to hold.

Let me not be tangled
in the blackberry thickets behind the field,
nettles grazing my skin,
my fingers bruised violet
by the sight of you.

Sometimes I wish the earth would crack open
so I could run to your doorstep,
the last good reason left
for knocking.

You can find me in the garden.
It is autumn.
Everything has turned to seed.
And still, this is a beginning.

I will be the one kneeling
in the cool soil,
speaking softly
telling them the story again:

That once I loved someone
so fully
the tulips leaned closer
to hear their own astonishment.

Coulombe is a writer, poet, and teacher from Miami, Florida. They hold a bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago and currently teach English in France.

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Maryland Cemetery in June

Posted on July 13, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

Here was rain in a midnight’s rondure,
air now thick with wet, a taste of washed
henbit, clover, oxalis, spotted spurge
rasps in my throat as a voice founders

not mine but the sound the soil makes
when bodies bleat their songs skyward,
stone inscriptions flecked with dirt curl
into lyrical scores for cloud-like arias

speaking grief strewn in a forest-line’s
lilting measure, coinwort popping up
trellising lines of gravestones, smelling
of a garlicky salad’s tart fineness.

My nostrils and tongue linger here,
letting the grasses, crickets, trees enter,
tasting the rolling uneven markers one
by one as they meet sun, shower, a clear

weather day, then night again, again,
its dance on the prone sleepers’ limbs
like a silken cloak pirouetting down
and over the fields, the silent grains

of foxtails nodding in the wind’s lone
moan around the rough edges of stone
that lean into the place the way waves
lean towards shore, a world’s bones

delicately sealed in waiting, so the fox
near the jagged stone wall won’t dig,
the tugging, kicking ladders of wind
won’t seize and tear like a hawk

does from out of the blinding blue.
I count years on the stones in front
of me, their smiles below the grass
unfurl in my mind, they press, hew

the salty weeds from my tired eyes,
as the tongue of my cat would purl over
my finger, a soft cleansing hinting
of spring, the final great surprise.

Michael J. Ortiz holds an M.A. in English from Georgetown University. His books include Swan Town: The Secret Journal of Susanna Shakespeare (HarperCollins, 2006) and Like the First Morning: The Morning Offering as a Daily Renewal (Ave Maria Press, 2015). His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Dappled Things, and Solum Journal, and his poetry in Catholic Literary Arts, where he won first place in the 2025 Sacred Poetry Contest judged by Sally Read. His poems have also appeared in The Cortland Review and Eunoia Review.

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Transplant

Posted on July 13, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

The transcontinental journey takes only one day:
two taxis, three flights, four airports, five bags,
visa stamped and signed, translation now you belong here.
The old tenants of my new home left their plants, left me
responsible for something I can’t take care of. A familiar pattern.
I transfer the plants to new pots, check their soil for moisture,
still overwater them. This week’s Facebook Marketplace transaction
takes me downtown to pick up a snake plant. It survives without water,
thrives when neglected. I envy how it flourishes where I flail.
Once-sprouts transform into green-striped shoots, stretching high,
needing nothing but isolation. Needing nobody to check on it.
Grows taller and greener despite me not having once watered it
or even touched its soil. One night, a ladybug lands on the wall,
bathed in lamplight and I ask, How did you get in here?, windows closed
for days, catch her in a takeout container and transport her
back to somewhere she belongs.

Laura Santi is an MFA candidate at the University of British Columbia. Her work has appeared in Pinch Journal Online, Business Insider, and Literary Namjooning, and she is a prose reader for PRISM International. Born and raised in the Midwest, she lived in Morocco for nearly six years, and is now based on the unceded lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ilwətaɬ peoples (Vancouver).

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The peace…

Posted on July 12, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

The peace
In letting go
Brittle leaf

Gareth Nurden was born in Newport, Wales, and has spent his recent years writing haiku, senryu and haiga, and has had several hundred pieces published by sources worldwide in countries such as Wales, England, USA, Canada, Russia, New Zealand and more.

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Emptiness in November

Posted on July 12, 2026 by perfectsublimemasters

Dead leaves fall from trees
that appear defeated
by their final disease.
It’s November’s nature.
The clouds drift by
in their ordinary way,
and the river flows,
somewhere I’ll never go.
Time seems important only
when you must say goodbye.
Absence is the beginning
of all my desires.
Winter, and its weather,
Will forever come and go.
As snow starts to fall,
it seems like a statement,
whose laws are fixed
in cement.
It’s now been a year,
that you have been dead.

George Freek’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals and reviews. His poem “Night Thoughts” was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

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