By Allisa Cherry
Featured Art: “Lily, Out of Breath” by Mallory Stowe

I startle a deer mouse 
squirreling straw into a pile of burlap.  
It freezes then returns to its instinctive labor 
caring for its litter of pups–still deaf and blind. 
Each as small and pink as a baby’s toe.  
How miniscule my reflection must be,  
turned upside-down in the gloss of its dark eye. 
At the beginning of the war in Ukraine 
a woman approached a Russian soldier, 
gave him a handful of seeds,  
and told him to carry them in his pocket  
so when he died on Ukrainian soil  
at least sunflowers would grow where he fell.  
At least. No matter how great the devastation,  
it requires a small act of resistance for scale.  
Consider those moments Roland Hayes  
stood in a resolute silence while members  
of the Nazi party booed and cursed 
his blackness. Alone under a spotlight on stage  
in a concert hall buzzing with hatred.  
And still his throat softened  
and a song—Du Bist die Ruh—rose  
from his throat until every fascist heart  
had been stroked by the finger of its beauty.  
But I have never been brave.  
I’ve only ever waited out the clock  
in those moments when I was afraid.  
So, when my older sister asked me 
—the apostate daughter—to help her  
dress my mother’s dead body  
in her temple robes, tie the fig leaf apron,  
fasten her bonnet and veil, I couldn’t  
take in the tenderness of her heresy  
all at once. Instead, I narrowed my focus  
to the industry of my fingers, 
half expecting them to snap into flames  
as I pushed each pearl button  
through its braided hoop.  

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Allisa Cherry is the author of the poetry collection An Exodus of Sparks (Michigan State University Press) and the 2024 recipient of the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize (RCAH Center for Poetry). Her work has recently appeared in journals such as Rattle, EcoTheo Review, The McNeese Review, and The Penn Review. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon where she teaches workshops for immigrants and refugees transitioning to a life in the U.S. and serves as an associate poetry editor for West Trade Review.

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.