October Oceans
By Daniela Montorzi

but frigid sand stings my toes
and autumn reminds me
she likes warm socks—the ones with
the polka dots that
don’t
make your feet itch.

Next time we walk the shore
I’ll bundle us up in
oversized sweaters that smell of vanilla
and used to fit your grandfather

just right.

Hiding In The Dark
By Oisin

Anticipation of danger hidden in the curtains of darkness
breeds stress in one’s mind when traveling through narrow tunnels

of shadow. The radius of detection grows as the pursuer of explora-
tion moves deeper into the shadows, one must focus to find a threat, a

threat that will embrace the absence of light that the dusk has blessed
it with. It would pinpoint the target, use surreptitious stealth strategies
to snake its way around detection, before reaching striking range to
commit to an attack. One shall keep their senses acute and be ready
to deploy all defenses when something could be hiding in the dark.

Autumn Turns
By Chandler

The leaves turn brown, turn down, turn ‘round
We turn our eyes to next year
As school turns up there’s no turning back
Always turning on my heels
I’m left taciturn
Turning through my calendar
As the weeks fall past

memory tract

By Azurite Petrichor

Knees serrated, drifting down the subway
tracks, surrounded by ways I’ve swallowed this
habit, garnered soft to the lips. We crush
hours over this threshold that reaches
to drown me and shifts languid to hold you.
Now lightning cracks, stretching porous across
the smoke, mottled thick out of tradition.
Pearled fog dips and lifts across the city,
a kiss best kept in the palm of your hand.
Bells churn to wring out the calendar, crisp
as leaves between front doors. The pulsation
unfurls as divots ripple to cup our
days, flaking into grief. Flay time
as a foreign wound, worship all that’s fled

this
skyline.

Kneeling, we count the stars and lose.

Untitled
By Colette Kennedy

And changes have finally come, I see it in the trees
My senses interpret a prophesied transition is soon needed
So I choose my gravesite and built a bonfire

And the wicker cage in which my body’s liveliness will too turn dry
But when my soul crawls out through the charred,
to admire the flames mimicking all the leaves above,
How funny is it that I will find that change never left,
that the ash lingering in the wind

This collection of poems also appears in our October 2024 print edition.