Backwards Trajectory

Elizabeth Birch lives in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Her poetry has been featured in the Yellow Arrow Journal, The Tiger Moth Review, Nixes Mate, Writers Resist, Willows Wept Review, Stirring, Third Wednesday, Portrait of New England, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. You can find her on Instagram and Facebook at ebirchpoetry.

Janina Aza Karpinska captures the poetry of visual images through lens of eye or camera, with work shown on covers of: Drawn to the Light; Heart of Flesh; Under_Score Magazine; The Genre Society, and in: The Empty Mirror; Quibble, 3 Elements Review; Antler Velvet,Blue Mesa Review,  and Kelp Journal amongst others. She lives on the south coast of England. 

Image by Adam Strong

Poem by: Brian Mosher

Brian Mosher writes poetry and fiction from his home in Mansfield, MA. His work has appeared in Lily Poetry Review, Nixes Mate, Anomaly Poetry, eMerge, Esoterica, and others. His unpublished short story collection was shortlisted for the Unleash Press 2025 Book Prize, and his short story “Fragments” was a winner of the Nikki Hanna Literary Challenge. He has self-published 3 books, all available on Amazon. Mosher’s most recent collection, “A Muster of Melodious Musings” (2025) is published by Metaphysical Fox Press. His poetry chapbook “Relict” is slated for January 2026 release from Finishing Line Press.

Image by Adam Strong

Poem by: Georgia Coomer

Georgia Coomer is a recent graduate from Lindenwood University. She has an English degree with an emphasis in Creative Writing. Her poetry and prose have appeared in multiple publications, including The Albion Review. When she isn’t wrestling semi-colons into submission, she can be found playing the latest Persona game.

Image by: Adam Strong

Poem by: Gloria Ogo

Gloria Ogo is an American-based Nigerian writer with over seven published novels and poetry collections. Her work has appeared in Brittle Paper, Spillwords Press, Metastellar, CON-SCIO Magazine, Kaleidoscope, The Easterner, Daily Trust, and more. With an MFA in Creative Writing, Gloria has served as a reader for Barely South Review. She is also the winner of the Brigitte Poirson 2024 Literature Prize, the finalist for the Jerri Dickseski Fiction Prize 2024 and ODU 2025 College Poetry Prize both with honorable mentions. https://glriaogo.wixsite.com/gloria-ogo.

Poem by: Lucy Sage

Image by: Adam Strong

Lucy Sage began writing poetry at a young age. Born in Philadelphia, she subsequently lived in the Philippines and Nigeria while her father worked for the United Nations. She attended boarding school in England in the mid-sixties but dropped out of high school in 1969 to live in San Francisco. After waitressing and finally earning her degrees, she worked for politicians for 30 years. In addition to poetry, she likes riding her bike, painting, and exploring cities. Her poems have been published in Underwood Press, The Closed Eye Open, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, and Quail Bell, among others. She currently lives in Harrisburg, PA.

Yearning soft flesh, I find thistles
all spike, all thorn,
green turned bitter.
Winter buried you
deep from me, son
deep from the wounds of generations,
but somehow
the heart of you lives
in a place

I can’t fathom.
Where now my sapling
where now my
willow-limbed sprite?
Where now the boy who played in the barley
the skylark that flew?

Where now the snowdrop
huddled beneath the rime?

Poem by Heather Haigh

Images by Heather Haigh

Heather is a sight-impaired spoonie, working-class writer and visual artist. She is published by Oxford Flash Fiction, Fictive Dream, Bath Flash Fiction, Sunlight Press, Pithead Chapel and numerous others. She has won or been placed in several competitions and awards. She lives in Yorkshire with her husband and too many balls of yarn.

Poem by Kat Schmidt

Image by Adam Strong

Kat Schmidt (they/them) is an author and artist from Michigan. They have an MFA in creative writing from the New School and work for Orion Magazine. Their work can be found in Orion, The Inquisitive Eater, the citizen trans* {project} by new words {press}, and in Wingless Dreamer’s Echoes of Midnight anthology. Their work is forthcoming in Beyond Word’s Father’s anthology.

Lorette C. Luzajic is an award-winning mixed media artist from Canada. Her work is driven by eclectic curiosity and the joy of juxtaposition, exploring the whole world with  irreverence and an eye for beauty. She takes inspiration from art history, literature, uncanny objects, cinema, culture, and personal experiences, mining everything she sees for possibilities. Her work has been widely exhibited at home and around the world. It has been used on two textbook covers, served as set props in film and television, blown up on a billboard in New Orleans, displayed at the Royal Ontario Museum, purchased for the collection at the Union Hotel in Toronto, and chosen for an ad campaign for a Madrid-based diamond company. Lorette represented Canada at an art symposium in North Africa. She has been a juror for the City of Barrie Art Awards, and thrice for the international Boyne’s Art competition. She is also a widely published writer, and founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review, the flagship journal of literature inspired by visual art. She teaches creative writing and art history through The Ekphrastic Academy and around the world on Zoom, and mixed media art to people living with mental illness. She has art collectors in forty countries so far. Lorette is an addiction and cancer survivor. Visit her at www.mixedupmedia.ca.

Image by Adam Strong

Poem by J. Ryberg

“What I Thought I Saw” is no longer available. The rest o them are. Thanks again.

-J

BIO:

Jason Ryberg is the author of twenty-two books of

poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full

of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could

one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and countless

love letters (never sent). He is currently an artist-in-

residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted

P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an

editor and designer at Spartan Books. His work has

appeared in As it Ought to Be, Up the Staircase Quarterly,

Thimble Literary Magazine, I-70 Review, Main Street Rag,

The Arkansas Review and various other journals and

anthologies. His latest collection of poems is “Bullet Holes

in the Mailbox (Cigarette Burns in the Sheets) Back of the

Class Press, 2024)).” He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO

with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named

Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks,

near the Gasconade River, where there are also many

strange and wonderful woodland critters.