By Hannah Smith
Featured Art: “1000 Miles From Nowhere” by Mallory Stowe

You can say a prairie fits into a plain,
but not the other way around.
Like a square and a rectangle, I’ve been
looking for boundaries, sharp corners

I might tuck myself into. The plain
is both a noun and an adjective, a landscape
and a modifier to mean common. I’ve been called
a common woman: a forgetful blonde girl

in a bluebonnet pasture who must’ve been
asking for it. An ask can also be a prayer,
with the added expectation of an answer.
If I can fit myself into small spaces,

on a molecular level, I might see my compounds
in soil chemistry. Wildflower is synonymous
with weed, and that’s an issue with differing
opinions of beauty. Weeds restore

over-exposed soils, fertilize degraded spreads.
You can’t construct a new ecosystem,
but you can repair one that’s breaking.
I’m building another bionetwork that’s anything

but ordinary. Some day soon, I’ll find
myself in a prairie patch along the floodplains.
A sewing needle in hand, and a bucket
of rain-ripe compost.

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Hannah Smith is a poet from Dallas, Texas, where she works as the Production Manager for Southwest Review. Her poetry appears in Best New Poets, Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, Image Journal, and elsewhere. Hannah is the co-author of two collaborative chapbooks, Metal House of Cards (Finishing Line Press) and Astral Gaze (dancing girl press, forthcoming). She received an MFA from The Ohio State University, and her poetry has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Yaddo Residency.

Mallory Stowe is a painter interested in the awe and anxiety of the natural world. Her work reflects how systems of memory, whether in the body, the environment, or society, can perpetuate suffering or nurture empathy. Stowe received her BFA from Ohio University in 2022 and her MFA from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2025.