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The Spinning Center


Well traveled lovers, we have filled

the same set of suitcases together

for thirty years, know the seams

where grit likes to hide, still

set them side-by-side in the trunk,

on conveyor belts.


Tonight,

in this logged room fixed

in your family for 74 years, I

need you to turn the music off

so I don’t follow the lyrics

to Wildflowers. So I stay

in this room with our suitcases

where your grandparents perhaps

touched each other after four

children and a mistress. Turn

the music off long enough

to board the bed’s space

ship, feel its trembling

lift off.


Us in the galaxy now,

familiar vessels unearthing young pulsars,

moving deep into the Milky

Way, closer to time’s spinning

center than we have ever been—



Second Tuesday of September

A golden shovel after Richard Wright


How clear the sky, a

good morning to walk with the buggy, balmy

with sunshine, garden flags in gentle wind.


My seven week-old reminding

me of air’s soothing power, giving me

an hour’s silence, an hour of

my body all my own. Then something


happens. My husband calls and I

pull the tv out of attic storage, watch people who cannot

withstand any more. That sky, the last they will recall.



Michelle DeRose


Michelle DeRose is Professor of English at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she teaches creative writing and African-American, Irish, and world literatures. She is the 2023 recipient of the Faruq Z Bey award for a poem relating to music and the 2022 first place winner from the Poetry Society of Michigan for a poem about loss. You can find some of her recent poetry in The Healing Muse, Dunes Review, The Lakeshore Review, Sparks of Calliope, and G.I. Days: An Anthology of Military Life.


board setup: griptape


i use a razor

blade to cut out


an oval of sky

a screwdriver


to file down

the perimeter


of the night

blow the moon


dust off

my fingers


board setup: bolts


moods swing between

phillips & allen

one silver bolt


in the northeastern part

of these heavens

just under a light


year away from my heel

i'll take whatever

light's left of these


dim constellations

trusting their suns

won't rattle


won't slowly

unscrew themselves

from the sky as they burn


board setup: trucks


mall grabbers unite

give a shoutout


to the slappy kids

to the speed wobbles


we had coming

no matter how


many times you kiss

the concrete


you can't give up

the reward


of rolling away

so what


if you were born

& raised


in wheelbite city

grind the soul


all the way

to the axle


Larry Narron


Larry Narron's poems have appeared in Phoebe, Bayou, Hobart, Booth, and Sugar House Review, among others. They've been nominated for the Best of the Net and Best New Poets. Larry's first chapbook, Wasted Afterlives, was published in 2020 by Main Street Rag. He teaches language arts at a secondary school in San Diego.


Collision. Uneven floors.

Broken glass & dizziness.


Wasteland. Life grows

out of the cracks


Of the concrete outside.

Wind whips through dyed


Hair & the fabric of skirts.

Black buckles adorn my boots.


Bruises trace the edges

Of skin that was once soft.


It is a self-induced madness.

Who could find their God


In the strangling, the cry for

Help, finally answered?


It is movement untamed.

There is something here


I have yet to name, &

In the chaos of my body


Meeting body meeting

body of stranger,


I am suspended in time

& sound & present in all things,


& when the one above

Calls my name, I answer.


Ariana Alvarado


Ariana Alvarado is an undergraduate student at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky studying English, Creative Writing, and Theology. At Bellarmine, she has served as founder and President of Pen and Sword Open Mic Club. She has also served as an editorial board member, Vice President, and President of the Ariel Literary Society Her work has been published in The White Squirrel Magazine, Preposition: The Undercurrent Anthology, Sanctuary Magazine, and two editions of the Ariel Magazine. Her poem “I ask my father why he believes.” won the Flo Gault Student Poetry Prize in 2022 from Sarabande Books.

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