Incandescent
by Ana Reisens
originally published in Straight On Till Morning (Lost Boys Press)

Let’s burn together in a raging haze of face-licking
flames & flint-lipped flickers. Let’s sizzle & flare
& hiss, give in to the sweet heat of collision,
boiling to the brim, chanting its hymns of fiery
din as we ignite the night in a blazing cascade of
our own unbreakable light.

 

 

Endling
by Abby Manzella

Muscled and vibrant among the trees, the tiger shines like dappled light. She is hungry; she is the last of her kind—an “endling.” When she dies, this type of tiger will become extinct. She doesn’t know the existential ramifications, but she feels the loneliness of finding no others like her. She roams in hopes of discovery of herself and others, but she is quickly scorned—if not chased away—by any she approaches.

Endling—it has a finality that dangles with hope for action. It contains a diminishing sweetness that says, she was here, she lived, she was alone.

 

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Ana Reisens is an emerging poet and writer. She was the recipient of the 2020 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Award, and you can find her poetry in The Belmont Story Review and the Fresher Press Anthology Winding Roads, among other places.

 

Abby Manzella is the author of Migrating Fictions: Gender, Race, and Citizenship in U.S. Internal Displacements. She has published with Literary Hub, Catapult, Flash Frog, trampset, Five South, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter @abbymanzella.