At the outset of putting together Issue 3, I’m not sure any of the editorial staff anticipated what a challenge the summer of 2023 would be when it came to releasing an issue worthy of its contributors. We learned a lot from the struggles of Issue 3 and, going forward, we will be looking to… Read More The Many Gardens of Sentience
On the night my father died, I sat on the floor with my son who he had guessed was a daughter. I didn’t answer the call, the voice mail told me We think we have your father. Is his name Jack? I had to think for a second to remember and ask my wife Should… Read More “On the Night My Father Died” by J Ryan Bermuda
I woke up with a poem on the tip of my tongue, the beginning of the daydream where I think of the word azar in Spanish so fluky, and how the z in the middle forms its sound in the center of my cupped tongue and slides out my mouth almost surreptitiously between my upper… Read More “En la Punta de Mi Lengua” by Cecilia Martínez- Gil
The old plum tree on the vacant lot where the family home stood two decades since bends like a dancer, two arms reaching in from the fence, black twigs tipped in purple. It bloomed outside the kitchen door that banged when the child who could not drink cow’s milk came home with a shout from… Read More “On the Bluff” by Suzanne Gill
The blossom comes after weeks of empty gray days. Its gestation was unknown to us. We did not think the soil capable of such transfiguration, or the gray dead branch clever enough to make a hole that bled such beauty of form and color and fragrance. We were impatient we broke the twig ourselves and… Read More “In Lent” by Suzanne Gill
…et vitam venturi saeculi From time to time they’d decide it was high time to get ready and they would lay out the good china with care and polish all the gleaming silver and examine against the linen’s light the stemware of their consciences for smudges chips or cracks. Long weeks and months and even… Read More “The Arrival” by DB Jonas
Impatience is a plumb line stylites use to measure laymen’s balance when both feet are on the ground. The yogi topping his pillar seated above temptation, the showman poised on his flagpole doing nothing effectively, thinking his backbone is the planet’s axis. Inner peace does not belong to the tortoise for no matter how far… Read More “Festina Lente” by Denmark Laine
I miss the womb of that magic house, walking its garden, a lush labyrinth of green, always here in a dream, running my hands along warm wooden walls, memorizing moments, abiding ancestors who call, long-distance, from the in-between. I yearn for the fruit: I can still taste the gooseberries growing down by the fence, smell… Read More “Villanelle at 37” by Rosa Sophia
“Say, Ana,” Lyn says. “Give me a word for ordinary.” “Why?” “Just do it.” We are tucked under our seatbelts, en route to Williams, Pennsylvania. My feet graze the floor; Lyn’s feet do not. She is shorter than me and likes to fog the car glass with her breath. She thinks it is unique and… Read More “Collector of Words” by Cathleen Balid
He shows up at my door on a Friday night, reeking of rum. I almost don’t recognize him—overgrown hair, bushy beard—but there’s no mistaking those gold-flecked eyes. He was out with some friends, he says, when a song came on that made him think of me. Of those long drives the two of us used… Read More “Bygones” by Lori Cramer
Sentience Literary Journal 