By Maria Dylan Himmelman
Featured Image: “Through the al-Nil” by Ryan Davis

In January 1896, The Word Committee
conducts its annual séance in order to pull
from Beyond the year’s new words
The Committee head channels Ape-man
and Guttersnipe; the vice, Unicycle and Firebug
There is some discussion of Béarnaise Sauce
and Beef-Steak Tomato before all agree 
on Actuary. There are not yet words for what
happens next, a small boy in the gloom
chasing rats through the alley, a torch burping
smoke like shots on the battlefield, the music
of breaking glass. There’s no sense really
in calculating the odds. It’s already
dark outside 

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Maria Dylan Himmelman’s first collection, Sundry Abductions (Hanging Loose 2023) won the First Annual Founders Award. Her recent work has appeared in Plume, Poetry Daily, Image, Notre Dame Review, Berlin Lit and Nimrod.

Ryan Davis (b. 1989 Cincinnati, OH) is a NYC based painter and visual collage artist and HS visual arts teacher. His work is inspired by the natural world and an enjoyment for working with wood to build objects.