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This time, we invited our writers to praise their beasts.

Here, we see a little family in a mailbox, a little girl, a haunted house, a room filled with decay. We see children who respond to life’s frailty with chocolate bets over a fish tank. We see praise laced with grief, with empathy, with awe, richness, and gratitude. Here there is praise for moments, for loss, for monsters, for ghosts, praise for geese and feathers and bodies. There is intimacy here, and tenderness, and reverence, and desire. Here, there is praise.

The editorial team too deserves praise, for their sharpened veneration and lullabies and incantations. Thank you team, and thank you.

And so we wondered by this project’s end, whether praise itself is also a form of asking, an invitation, a call eager for response—a fractured way to say, as Aidan Daniel does here: “somebody come and find me / somebody come and find me.” Or, Anthony Thomas Lombardi, with a mix of fear and relief: “it’s dark & i am listening & something / is listening to me.” One could add, “I hope.” When we praise, we hope for someone on the other line. For our writers, Reader, that someone, here, is you.

-MH

Poetry

Mandy Bach
care home fish tank

James Champion
Leaf Between

Anne Champion
Triggered Memories: Grief

Aidan Daniel
Roadkill Astronaut

Sean Glatch
Lepidoptera

Anthony T. Lombardi
the wolf will live with the lamb

Brittany Micka-Foos
Our Lady of Sorrows

Carly Joy Miller
Epistle on Desire

Lexi Pelle
Ode to the Way We Move

Staff

Web Editor
Michael Hurley

Senior Editorial Assistants
Emily Stutzman, Jonathan Villa

Editorial Assistants
Selena Adetunji, Anthony Carpenter, Jermaine Dykes, Sam Fisher, Aaron He, Maheen Majid, Alyssa Marmolejo, Brisa Martinez, Eli Medack, Cindy Mu, Maya Raviv, Riley Roots, Michaella Rosenow, Khaleah Webb, Matilda Wolf