Author’s statement: I learn things about my own body year after year because sex health and education are still taboo. I’m trying to participate in collaborative knowledge as much as I can, especially if I can help other people avoid the difficult experience of being a non-heterosexual non-cis (non-able, non-white etc) person at a gynaecologist consultation.

CLUB SANDWICH CLUB is Alex (they/them), a graphic designer and intersectional activist based in Berlin, Germany. As a queer and non-binary person, Alex uses their intimate experience to raise awareness around social justice issues. Follow at @clubsandwichclub_

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One consequence of leaving my bicycle outside year-round, aside from rust and spiderwebs, is that a bird built a nest in my bike basket. When the thunderstorms finally dissipated and early summer weather lured me outside for an afternoon bike ride, I discovered the nest of straw and string with two perfect, red-umber-speckled, marble-sized eggs. With the greatest of intentions, I undid the bungee cords, lifted the nest, and placed it on a lawn chair. Then I panicked—realizing that I might have disturbed the eggs and scared the mother away—perhaps she, fearing a predator, would abandon her babies. I uploaded a photo of the eggs to iNaturalist which suggested that the eggs belonged to a Carolina wren—a compact, ochre-brown bird with striking white eyebrows. Throughout the day, I watched the nest to see if the mother bird would return. No sight of her all evening, or the next morning. It turns out I had broken a law: it’s illegal to move the nest of a migratory breeding bird. Yet on the third day, I peered into the nest to find a miracle: a third egg had appeared! Mother bird must have returned in the night. I watched all day—no sign of her. Later that evening—I checked the nest to find a fourth egg, but still no sign of the bird. The following day, I followed my ritual of examining the nest as soon as I woke up, and suddenly the mother bird flew straight out of the basket into my face with a flurry of wings. I caught my breath and gave her time to return to the nest; a few hours passed, she returned, and she hasn’t budged for two full days. I’m now more wary when I examine the nest for eggs— I’ve learned to respect her boundaries and observe from a distance—but I can see her little beak barely protruding from the straw.

I have baby fever, but not the kind you think—yes, I am a woman in my mid-thirties, which makes me the perfect demographic for this affliction—but my obsession is with nonhuman animal babies, rather than wee humans. I seem to be a magnet for baby animals, or perhaps it’s my confirmation bias—I’m subconsciously on the lookout for young, cute animals, and I find them everywhere I look. All day I listen for the chirps of the young woodpeckers in the hole of a black locust tree outside my kitchen window. Today, on my walk to campus to teach a summer class on science and nature writing, I came upon a fawn—a veritable Bambi with pale polka-dots and spindly legs—she seemed lost and hadn’t yet found her fear of humans, so she wobbled right up to me, sniffed the air, and kept on her merry way. I was tempted to cancel my class to keep my eye on this wayward orphan, to see if she had lost her mother to a car, but instead I taught my class in a state of distraction and worry, peeking out the window every five minutes to watch the fawn’s promenade around campus. While walking my dog to the post office, I watched a mother squirrel carry her baby in her mouth while crossing the street and hopping up into a tree. While hunting for fossils in a streambed, I lifted a rock and found a tiny red eft, no bigger than my pinky finger. I was ecstatic. I drove out of my way to visit Clementine, the baby orangutan at the Columbus zoo, and to my surprise and delight, I also witnessed a baby gorilla and two baby macaques.

These newborns at the zoo led to a sudden bloom of primate representation in my personal media: I binged all the nature documentaries I could stream, starting with Chimp Empire, featuring a fresh-faced toddler chimpanzee, and my instagram algorithms display almost exclusively baby orangutan photos. My compulsive appetite for baby animal content reached its peak during a recent storm—tornado sirens be- gan blaring during a thunderstorm, and they didn’t stop for several hours; emergency alerts lit up on my phone; campus safety emails warning of the danger flooded my inbox; rain and wind battered against my thin windows. My faculty apartment doesn’t have a basement, so—following the national recommendations, I sheltered in place in the next best room—my closet. Tintin and I crawled into the dark space with pillows, a flashlight, a water bottle, a helmet (in case of falling trees and debris), and my laptop. I checked all the local news and watched the weather radar as the tornado approached my little town, then as my fear and need for comfort increased, I succumbed to my illness: I watched a wildlife documentary about baby animals. Imagine if the tornado had actually hit my apartment—the last thing images to have reached my brain would have been a beach full of newly-hatched turtles racing towards the ocean; three lion cubs hiding in a rock pile, a young elephant learning how to use his trunk, and a baby orangutan peeing on his mom in the treetops.

For all of my affection for these furry, aquatic, and feathered infants, I don’t have any interest in having a child of my own. I swear! To clarify—my partner has an eight-year-old daughter whom I love dearly, but I am steadfast in my decision to not produce a little animal from my own womb. I can’t imagine it; I’m an androgynous queer woman, and the concept of giving birth just doesn’t feel natural to me. I also don’t feel thrilled about adding to the exponential population of humans on this overburdened planet, and I am not financially, emotionally, mentally, or physically stable enough to raise a child of my own. I still feel like a kid—I have so much growing to do, and so little time! I can envision the disastrous hypothetical possibility of my giving birth; first I would succumb to postpartum depression, mourn the loss of my free time and compromised career, then overcompensate by hovering anxiously around my baby with my helicopter-parent rotor blades in overdrive.

When I called my mother in a state of elation to tell her about the primate babies at the zoo, she asked, “Does this mean you’re considering having a baby?” I laughed to cov- er my frustration—I’ve previously expressed my aversion to childbirth—and said, “I already have one, Tintin!” in reference to my dog, who is also eight years old, but still looks and acts like a puppy.

The thing is, I’m hardwired to melt in the face of all these little critters—we all are—there’s a science to cuteness: The “baby schema” or kinderschema, first introduced by zoologist Konrad Lorenz in 1948 describes the pattern of traits (big eyes which sit low on the face in relation to a large forehead, round cheeks, small mouth and chin), that trigger a positive, care-taking reaction from humans towards infants across species, including ducks, hares, tigers, lions, and dogs. The adaptive explanation is that the cuter the baby, the more attention it will get from its parent, and therefore the higher chances it has at survival (think food, protection, and warmth). This theory has been tested and investigated through countless studies since, corroborating that humans think babies of most nonhuman animal species are cute. While this resonates with me, most of these papers are limited to primarily human-like species and domesticated pets, whereas my particular baby fever extends to birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish, mammals, even mushrooms. There are a few notable exceptions where I draw the line—I don’t harbor warm and fuzzy feelings towards larvae, and vulture babies are just as disturbing to me as their naked-headed parents.

What does a deliberately childless human do with their maternal instinct? It’s a modern plague: sick with baby fever but no desire to have a baby. What do I do with this abundant love? One solace has been to think of one of my family’s favorite authors: Gerald Durrell, who from a young age devoted his time and attention to strange beasts from around the Greek island of Corfu, where he grew up. He raised pelicans, turtles, snakes, any species that crossed his path. He then grew up to become a zoologist and wrote dozens of memoirs, including My Family and Other Animals in which he developed deep personal satisfaction from his observations of and relationships with his menagerie. Or, in my more fantastical moods, I imagine myself as the good witch from the 1963 film The Three Lives of Thomasina. In a Scottish countryside, a young girl loses her beloved cat, and discovers a woman known as “Mad Lori” MacGregor, who lives in the woods and rescues injured wild creatures like rabbits, deer, squirrels, and lost cats. MacGregor is not really a witch, but she does seem to have a magical charm in her connection to the inhabitants of her bestiary, as though she is able to overcome the human-animal language barrier. That’s my goal—maybe if I obsess over these baby animals enough, they’ll join my clan and tell me their secrets. I’ll keep working towards it, one wren egg at a time.

FRANCES CANNON is a writer, editor, educator, and art- ist. She is the Mellon Science and Nature Writing Fellow at Kenyon College. She also edits for Green Writers Press, Onion River Press, and Maple Tree Press, and she recently served as the managing director of the Sundog Poetry Cen- ter in Vermont. Cannon has taught at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, Champlain College, the Vermont Commons School, the University of Iowa, and Burlington City Arts. She has an MFA in creative writing from Iowa and a BA in poet- ry and printmaking from the University of Vermont. She is the author and illustrator of several books: Walter Ben- jamin Reimagined (MIT Press, 2019), The Highs and Lows of Shapeshift Ma and Big-Little Frank (Gold Wake Press, 2017), Tropicalia (Vagabond Press, 2016), Uranian Fruit (Honeybee Press, 2016), Sagittaria (Bottlecap Press, 2022), Preda- tor/Play (Ethel Zine, 2020), Fling Diction (Green Writers Press, 2024), and Queer Flora, Fauna, Funga (forthcoming with Valiz, 2026).

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She wanted to die of cancer. She’d stopped living years ago. Death was only a formality, something to stop the tedium. She was about to get her wish. Her boyfriend acted like he wanted to die of cirrhosis of the liver the way he drank. No one said anything about that, but cancer? All her friends recommended cancer treatments, and this annoyed her. They told her to get the chemo. She didn’t want to stop the cancer her bone marrow had started to reproduce.

She wasn’t a girl anymore, just old. No one called her anything, thought of her as anything, just assumed she wanted to live to 105. And then one day, she became a woman. By then, she was in her sixties. It would have been sooner, but she had had a fucked up childhood. Growing up, her mother was a daisy and her sister a rose. That left her the thorns, stems and leaves to form herself separate, distinct.

One night, after talking with her boyfriend, she imagined herself in the doctor’s office, standing up and announcing she would not do chemo, have her blood cells reengineered or partake of any other attempt to save what was a life better left behind. She realized that she was a woman, not because of all the usual reasons, but because she imagined, after her tirade, her boyfriend’s response, her boyfriend’s mouth agape before the screaming started. “No, you can’t give up. It’s not fair. And what are you going to do? Die on me? What the fuck is wrong with you? You are not even going to try?”

She imagined herself there in the doctor’s office, the doctor, small, with short, black hair, watching the fiasco that was only scheduled for 20 minutes.

She was a woman because she could be silenced before the screaming even started, and that made her mad. She had become someone who said yes if only there would be no yelling, yes if only she wasn’t called a bull dyke for being strong. As long as she wasn’t hated like Hillary Clinton or Gloria Steinem. She was tired, couldn’t fight anymore, have a strong will anymore. No one told her it got harder with age to be a tough cookie. It seemed that her priorities had changed and now she wanted peace, plain and simple. She would do the chemo. She would learn how to live when the game had changed. And she started with wanting silence. It was all she wanted, like the last piece of pie, the stray leaf in February clinging, clinging, letting go.

CARROLL ANN SUSCO has a chapbook, Bean Spiller, on Variant Literature Press. She also has an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and 40 publications, including Anodyne and The Sun Magazine. See her LinkedIn page for a list and links. These flash are both fiction and nonfiction, maybe more non than fiction.

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I’ve returned to the university hospital
an ellipsis long used to periods as
a doctor has finally listened to me,
has acknowledged that
this kernel inside rubbed-raw flesh,
smooth as a tapioca pearl
when quiet
but the reason I can no longer ride
a bike, this glitch of being sentimentally
active, which became infected, then refused to heal,
this underground node,
a frozen bulb never to flower,
has become a companion to my every move.

My doctorate is only real
because my doctor is also a young woman,
our appointment a mirror
to gaze upon ourselves,
to drink in deeply
the birth control pills she takes back-to-back
to refuse periods because
she’s not courting pregnancy.
And while my flow is already a capillary-thin whisper
of its former self, benumbed by the pill,
her words bloom smiles in my cells
at the promise of one month lapping into the next.
When I open my legs
to the stirrups, it takes her all of two seconds to say,
Yeah, we gotta take care of that.

I am ready for the surgery that
three other doctors refused to approve.
The anesthesia is running
smooth as a bath.
My doctor asks me to count back from 10,
her fingers stroking the top of my right hand, 9,
like the delphiniums I saw for the first time, 8,
having missed the peonies, 7,
like the bride and her bridesmaids floating
through the arboretum . . .

DANA MURPHY lives in California. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in carte blanche magazine, The 2River View, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Lily Poetry Review, and Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. In 2024–25, she is a Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center.

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the equinox has peeled back snow from the roadside,
a layer of plastic wrap whose shine gives

way to beer cans crushed and cigarettes stubbed
beneath winter’s sparkling wrappings.

i bend with gloved hand and deposit refuse
into a yellow plastic bag, the only one

our waste center allows.
it’s best not to imagine how one shoe runs out

on its mate, how a fast food wrapper insulates
itself on a back country ditch, an individual

flosser, or condom stripped from skin.
while gathering the litter others fling

from their windows, intentional exorcisms
of a single-use society, i think of my sister—

how the blunt force of law bruised
her in the gutters no one could see, subordinated

her body to a single-use, a throw-away woman
whose womb became so toxic she collapsed

in the parking lot with fever, with cramps that crumpled
her onto herself and septicemia coursing

through her veins before a hospital would care
for her. her body was too compromised to cure.

in the clinic when i peel the white coverlet
from her face to ask what i can do, she keens.

i’m barren now, too contaminated
to carry life.

SARA LYNN EASTLER lives in Midcoast Maine where she dutifully serves her feline overlord and a flock of treat-loving chickens. She is a recovering biochemist, freelance contributor to the Southern Review of Books, and MFA candidate at Queens University of Charlotte. Her work can be found in Stanza, Cathexis Northwest Press, and Voices of Decolonization.

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so blessed be the YouTube tutorial
on how to turn your empty pill bottles
into a string of fairy lights.

blessed be the chatty four-way FaceTime call
between college kids who just so happen
to be prepping their injections.

blessed be the friends who don’t
question me when I cancel plans.
blessed be the friends who cancel plans.

blessed be those who know not all
spoons are for food or tea or cough syrup.
blessed be the spoons.

blessed be every soul who knew better than
to mistake my small stature for a permission slip,
my small voice for a dismissal bell.

blessed be the librarian
who never tried to convince me
to read more uplifting books.

blessed be the ex-lovers
who kept my specialty formula
stocked in their mini-fridges.

blessed be the grandmother who researched
adult diapers and sent me screenshots, lest
my browser history falls on judgmental eyes.

blessed be my sister, pausing
the tour to ask the wedding
planner about accessibility.

blessed be my mother, printing off another
article while the self-proclaimed soothsayers
hung up their scrubs and forgot about me.

blessed be the room-for-one turned penthouse suite,
the visitors’ passes, three butts to one cot,
wheelchair races, and board games unfolded over bedspreads.

blessed be the drumbeat in my throat, the hands
raising tinker bell solo cups like champagne goblets,
laughter choking out the machines I don’t need to tell me

I’m still living
blessed be everything
that shows me I’m still living.

blessed be the hands that healed me,
not one of them gloved,
not one of them gripping a tool,

every one of them holding another.

CAROLINE WOLFF is a queer and disabled poet and essayist from San Antonio, Texas, USA. Her work has been featured in Skyline and The Trinity Review, and is forthcoming in SICK, The Fruitslice, and The Marbled Sigh. She is a freelance arts & culture journalist at San Antonio Current and a poetry acquisitions editor at West Trade Review. When she isn’t writing, you can find her devouring a novel, doing pilates, or snuggling with her tuxedo cat. To follow Caroline on her writing journey, visit her Instagram page: @carolinemariewrites.

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Artist Statement: Several months ago I went to my local private clinic to receive an IUD. Due to the testosterone I take, and some unlucky genetics, an IUD is my only sustainable option aside from a hysterectomy. It was for this reason that my boyfriend drove me to the clinic and held my hand as I laid back into the stirrups and braced myself. I could not have foreseen how violently poorly my body would react to such an invasion, vomiting and shaking with every muscle clenched like a fist. The two nurses who cared for me were gentle with me, my boyfriend rubbed my sides to soothe me. In the end I was laid on a soft couch facing a window painted like stained glass. It was among the worst pains I have ever experienced, but what would it have been if I had been in a local hospital? I am grateful that I am able to receive this kind of care without speculation, without prying questions.

TOM INFECTION (he/they) is a transmasc autistic artist in New Hampshire. His work discusses queerness, neurodivergence, and whatever else catches his fancy. With a background in agriculture, sound engineering and fish mongering, Tom is now a college student studying art and design.

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I keep the sad in my feet,
in the body part furthest from my heart,
the body part which is always cold–

I’m told I have bad circulation
and a high red blood cell count
that stops the blood from flowing
as quickly as it should,

so I wear grippy hospital socks,
even when I’m not in the hospital,
and wrap my feet in a separate blanket
from the rest of my body,
hoping for some kind of warmth.

I try friction and hot chocolate,
but nothing thaws this sad.

I keep the sad in my feet
because my brain floats above my head
and the weight of the sad
keeps me grounded.

So when the hospital calls my name for review,
I have something to tether me to the sticky,
just waxed floors as I follow the crisis nurse to a private room.

Private here means so that we won’t be overheard,
but also so that the nurse can keep an eye on me.

They don’t keep pens or cords in the private room.
I’m told to remove my shoelaces.
She asks if I am wearing a belt.

She takes my hoodie and reveals the
badly-taped gauze on my arms.
She takes note of my medications,
Takes vitals and has me rate my physical pain
before starting her questionnaire:

She asks me if I’ve been feeling hopeless,
if I’ve been feeling sad,
and she scribbles down every word of my answer
as I tell her I don’t feel sad,
I am holding the sad.

As I change into a new pair of grippy socks
I look for it, but you can’t see the sad,
you can only see feet,
just like you can’t see me there,
floating, just above my head,
using the sad like a weight for
my balloon brain. She tells me I am
disconnected from reality,

that I’m not feeling right,
and that I’ll have to stay the night.
In the morning they’ll review my medications
and try to find something that brings me back.

She doesn’t specify if she means back from balloon
or back from this ledge,
but she tells me she’ll help me.
She doesn’t say it reassuringly,
she says it because she has to.

And as she walks me from the
always open-doored bathroom
to the always open-doored bedroom,
she doesn’t offer me a second blanket.

DAMEIEN NATHANIEL is a queer, trans, autistic poet from the Northeast U.S.. They recently completed their MFA in poetry from Arcadia University, with their work centering around themes of trauma, loss, mental health, and queer identity. Dameien can be found performing at open mics and slams throughout New England and on Instagram @SpasmOfFeelings.

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JASMINE DUONG was born a middle child in Rosemead California to a loving family of 5. She is currently in college at Cal State University of Long Beach. She has not had a lot of exhibition experience, but that does not mean life experience. Nothing stops her from trying to spread her art to the world.

STATEMENT: When we are awake, where do our emotions go? Do the dreams that bring us the utmost happiness or conjure up our utmost terrors hold a droplet of truth? In the darkness our feelings condense to create shapes and forms of color to dance in the wonderful world of our consciousness. To me building worlds, landscapes, poems, and all in all making art is building a place where our emotions can reside. Where it can be encapsulated and held to be steeped in, or coaxed out in the stories long forgotten by the day to day life. What is life if not with the things we can experience and feel, but can not see. The bubbles of given definition that include love, pressure, connection, and etc. I mean what is love? Is it the aura our minds swim in or is it hormones that course through our veins? What is addiction? Is it the little voice that calls to us for the sake of happiness or the urge we get that drives us into deep delirium? I create homes for the invisible clouds that blind, guide, torment, and bind us to live in.

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what solution do you want to end on? what resolution
are you set on? how far exactly does your sight extend?
no, this is not an interrogation. there are other venues

to approach that. this remains something like an examination.
a determination of the prognosis. tell me, do you still shy away
from treatment? does it bring to mind anything new?

where do you move from there? trace a map for me to follow.
this questionnaire will stick between your teeth, keep floss
or a toothpick close at hand. what was the last moment

you can remember the exact timing of? how far have you gone
from it? tell me what it is you’re trying to forget, and why
it was the first thing that came to mind. do you trust anyone

to protect yourself? have you realized i’m not up to the task?
you’ve spent years chasing anything that could name you
worthy. isn’t it time to give your splints a rest?

BEE LB is a living poet, or at least the facsimile one; a porcelain pierrot with a painted face. they collect champagne bottles, portraits of strange women, and diagnoses. they’ve been published in G*Mob, MOODY, Landfill, and The Racket, among others. their portfolio can be found at twinbrights.carrd.co and at twinbrights on ig.

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