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Roy Bentley 7/2/25 Roy Bentley 7/2/25

Scooch

The lower I scooch, the better the reception.
Like the signal’s intensity is what it is except
around me. We’re watching The Rockford Files
in my father-in-law’s recreational vehicle in a
private drive in Ft. Lauderdale, James Garner /
Jim Rockford handing out uber-macho lectures.
It’s 1980. I’m a new dad and reading Faulkner
for a class. I catch the politics of calling women
Honey. The woman in tennis whites has framed
Rockford for felony murder. Her navel, an innie,
packs loads of social import before its vanishing.
Arthur Dixon, my kind father-in-law, stands. He
steps to the antenna. Now he’s motioning Scooch,
Jim Rockford smart-mouthing his way to triumph,
the rest of our family inside the house or at church.
This evening, Arthur loves his battery-powered TV,
asks if I like Florida. I say, Positively, as Rockford
calls up William Faulkner in a ’74 Firebird Esprit,
skillfully spinning a steering wheel—like America
is okay just fine but you need to be willing to, well,
scooch down so you catch sight of the road ahead.

This piece was featured in Volume 3, Issue 2. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.

Justin Lowe 7/2/25 Justin Lowe 7/2/25

On the Death of a Queen

there is laughter like the ripples
when something dark breaks the water,
the laughter of children colliding
with the inert thigh of their mother
stood hollering,

there is the laughter of that discovery
of looking up at the mother's face softening
and learning fear is a thing
you grow into
not out of,

there is the laughter of wind filling a sail
and two lovers’ hands on the tiller,
peacocks pluming and the dogs’ mistress returning
to a forest of tails around the hearse,
there is

the laughter of doors opened slowly by lovers
with a bottle in one hand and a lie in the other,
then the dark laughter of the same door closing some hours later,
the laughter of disbelief and crumbs in the bed,
there is

the laughter of the town crier drunk in the night
swaying under a lit window
where
the pert whisper of a curtain being drawn
seems louder than the tolling bells.

Jed Myers 7/2/25 Jed Myers 7/2/25

Still Wondering if You Made It

We're proud to feature this poem from Jed Myers’ chapbook Our Use of the Stars, which was selected by Olatunde Osinaike as a finalist of The Headlight Review’s 2025 Poetry Chapbook Contest.

I’ve been able to miss you, without knowing
if your silence began at the grille of a truck
on a state route at dusk, or with a secret
decision, or in sudden sickness I’d never learn
the first thing about, but about the first thing
you told me—you were already in love
with the bristlecone pines. Their twisted praise
clawing the sky, agonized and ecstatic
in their spare clusters and pairs, catatonic
manics in wait for the rapture they look like
they’re in. You’d need to go stand among them
you said. And though it took tearing your roots
from the sea-level riverbanks where we lived—
though it meant never seeing your wish
for us to wrinkle up slow into faithful twin
writhings on our slope of years—you did,
on one forgettable argument’s thrust, set out
for Utah I guess, to walk up the ridge
where you hoped you’d find them, bare ancient
wood warped and gouged and goldened
in the late light, alive. They’d stand by you,
silent but for wind brushing their skin—
presences surer than this one who misses you
and still imagines the horn-blast, the brights

Maya Williams 7/2/25 Maya Williams 7/2/25

My Therapist Shows Me How to Write in the Affirmative or An Alternative to Writing “Don’t Kill Yourself”

We're proud to feature this poem from Maya William’s chapbook Feminine Morbidity, which was selected by Olatunde Osinaike as the winner of The Headlight Review’s 2025 Poetry Chapbook Contest.

stay kin stay kin stay kin stay kin
stay kinder to myself stay kinder to myself stay kind stay alive
I want to stay kind I want to stay alive I want to stay kind I want to stay alive I want to
stay alive stay kind stay be alive be kinder to myself be kinder to myself
be kind be alive I want to be kind I want to be
alive I want to be kinder I want to be alive I want to be alive be kinder
be stay alive stay alive be alive stay alive be alive stay alive be alive stay alive
be alive stay alive be alive stay alive be alive stay
alive be alive stay kind be alive be kind stay alive
be kinder to my self be kinder to my self be kind be alive
I want to be kind I want to be kind I want to be kind I want be kind I
want to be alive be kind be alive be kinder to myself be kinder to myself
be kinder to my self stay kinder to my self be kinder to my self stay
kinder to my self
be stay alive stay alive be alive stay alive be alive stay alive be alive stay alive
be alive stay alive be alive stay alive be alive stay
alive be alive stay kind be a live be kind stay a live
stay a live be a live stay a live be a live stay a live be a live stay
a live. be a live stay a live be a live stay a live be
a live stay a live be
a life a life a life a life a life a life a life a life a life a life a life a life a life

M. Ezra Zhang 7/2/25 M. Ezra Zhang 7/2/25

Ars Poetica with Amateur Tarot

We’re proud to feature this poem from M. Ezra Zhang’s chapbook Self-Portrait with LSD and Mirror, which was selected by Olatunde Osinaike as a finalist of The Headlight Review’s 2025 Poetry Chapbook Contest.

While my lover the tarot reader is comatose
in the bedroom after a night of talking to a god
I could not taste or touch, I scatter
the cards across the living
room like spores
into darkness. Yesterday
under the domination of that god, my face
thrummed in my hands as if
I were wielding a bucket of light. Recoiling from its glare
I was disgusted to find that it followed
me everywhere.

Knowing nothing
about divination I pull three cards:
the moon, the tower, the devil.
If you, like me, don’t know the interior of these
cards, I beg you not to look for them.
It will only make things worse. Look at me
instead while I tell you something true:

One night you are moving
under the hot wet animal of the moon.
You coil upwards a couple hundred
spells until the horizon drowns into the earth
and abandons. At the eye of the tower you become the
eye of the tower. The black grass from below
swells heavenward and then you
become that darkness too.

Today on earth, the living
room window transfixes me
for hours but I find no tranquility in the scene
of the people of the world arriving
at where they need to be.

Gordan Struić 6/25/25 Gordan Struić 6/25/25

ACCESS_DENIED: heart.exe

> Running diagnostics...

Emotional drive:
fragmented.

Accessing main directory:
/hope/memory/you

Status:
file: touch.exe — missing
file: laugh.wav — corrupted
file: promise.txt — overwritten
folder: trust/ — access denied

Attempting repair...
Error: permission denied.

System prompt:
“Feeling requires vulnerability. Proceed?”

User input:
...
Suggested action:
abort.

Some systems forget
how to open again.

Gordan Struić 6/25/25 Gordan Struić 6/25/25

Shutdown.log

if (soul == None):
log("disconnection detected");
backup("last known version of me");

if (heartbeat.variation < 0.01):
run("old songs");
try:
trigger("feeling");
except:
pass

if (voice == empty):
load("your messages.txt");
loop:
hear("you saying goodbye");

if (system == unstable):
restart();
load("quiet");

if (presence == ghost):
print("I loved you");
shutdown("gently");

Instructions for leaving.
When there’s no one left.

Hannan Khan 6/24/25 Hannan Khan 6/24/25

final sale: no returns

shelf life
expiration date
say you love me before the price tag peels off
[aisle 13, fluorescence flickering—]
you reach for the last dented can of chickpeas & so do i & so we do
& suddenly our delicate hands are tangled like a broken barcode…
like an error in the quick scanner—like a misprint on the receipt of fate.
(does fate even issue refunds?)

the can rolls & gravity takes its tax—bottoms out—bottoms out—out. out. out. we both bend
down, the linoleum yawns. an abyss in the waxy white tiles. (buy one get one free. but
who is one and who is free?) a voice on the loudspeaker crackles: attention shoppers,
all prices are final. but my knees are on clearance—your laughter is marked
down—our shoulders gently brush & suddenly, the barcode of your
wrist is scanning my pulse. i’m full of expired metaphors. you’re
full of unspoken coupons.
(fine print: offers valid while supplies last)

the manager’s voice rustles overhead, a plastic bag in the wind. the fluorescent lights glitch.
the can rolls towards the underworld of the shelves. disappears. the lowest shelf. (where
forgotten things go. where we’re going. where we—) you giggle—you giggle—
you peel the last digit off a price tag and whisper it into my ear like a
prophecy. i mishear it as love. and then all markdowns,
we disappear in the bustling crowd.
(reduced for quick sale)

but then—
i wake up in aisle 13 again. again. again. the same can waiting. you reach. so do i. the scanner
beeps. the loop begins again. (does fate even offer exchanges?) the can rolls—but this time
it doesn’t stop. it keeps rolling, past the lowest shelf, past the waxed linoleum, past
the storeroom door left ajar. down. down into the supermarket catacombs
where carts with rusted wheels hum lullabies and lost items mutters
fainted names. (who is lost? the can? us?) you follow it. i
follow you. a door abruptly closes behind us. the
intercom gives a ding: attention shoppers,
this store is now closed.

and when we returned around—there is no aisle 13…13…13…
no fluorescent light—no way back. only shelves stacked
high with things we do not remember losing. And
shadowy price tags that bear our names.
this item is no longer available.
(final sale. no returns.)

Dudley Stone 6/23/25 Dudley Stone 6/23/25

Love Song Intended to Stave Off Discontinuation of Relations (Unsuccessful)

Say you want me
And I’ll be your boy toy

If you want me hard to get
I’ll be your coy boy toy

If you want me Scottish
I’ll be your Rob Roy boy toy

If you want me to swell and sway with the crowd
I’ll be your hoi polloi boy toy

If you want me strong like copper and steel
I’ll be your smelted alloy boy toy

If you’re Jewish and I’m not
I’ll be your goy boy toy

If you want me saucy like Szechuan beef
I’ll be your Kikkoman-smothered bok choy boy toy

If you want me After the Thin Man
I’ll be your William Powell and Myrna Loy boy toy

Or, if you want something that melts in your mouth
Slavic and sweet (and you don’t mind
sharing the bed with crumbs)
I’ll be your Bolshoi Ballet/Chips Ahoy! boy toy

Michael Rerick 6/16/25 Michael Rerick 6/16/25

[a go phone shivers something important past outdoor seating pints and appetizers]

a go phone shivers something important past outdoor seating pints and appetizers
while the quiet trumpet flower springs bright jazz with a deep throated calico reach
like schoolyard entropy with a slow universe heat death blasted from lily depths
I manage curb horse rings with small plastic horses tethered to a rediscovered history
where there is witness to a dead cigar butt still available to cartoon tramps
we recognize faces as human just as squirrel recognizes squirrel scampering away
in the wet purple dawn berries begin the hard work of turning color
with a quick sweet peep across car tops we question the Palm Springs of Washington
to jokingly shit on a small town we drive through buried in a fruit tree basin
not the airport locker return in a new city hauling clothes books and sleeping bag
avoiding gnat clouds and mosquito gatherings with continuous movement
a momentary raspberry can be plucked crushed and rolled for the juice pockets
reminding a thick blanket nap symbol across couch cushions
and a morning pigeon litany praying for seed and air in both cloud and sun
as the flowers stream brighter with a particular court conviction
celebrated with a book warehouse sale rush to add to shelves and stacks
saying

the act of writing about writing is the act of writing