Issue #34.2 Natalie Marino, Jacob Schepers, Charles Hensler, Zebulon Huset
Two Poems by Natalie Marino
Feminine Mystique
A bagworm moth starts to build her case— made of silk and soil or sand— just after she hatches. Inconspicuous, she lifts her head in the night’s shade. She can eat lichen but prefers green leaf. Because she is wingless and her legs are vestigial she cannot leave. She waits for a male to choose her. When this finally happens she lays her eggs and dies.
No One Likes a Feminist
Born to be a traitor or hero
I was always a feather ruffler.
Seeing a prize to win in every ring
I learned long ago how hard it is to shake off guilt
when you carry all your mistakes in a suitcase.
A great leader isn't afraid to talk to God
or intimidated by one hundred years of war.
I wear white lilies wherever I go.
Too brave to worry about
blame or claims of blasphemy
my name is a synonym for day
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Natalie Marino is a poet and practicing physician. Her work appears in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Little Patuxent Review, Pleiades, Puerto del Sol, Salt Hill, wildness and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook End of Revels (Bottlecap Press, 2025). She lives in California. You can find her online at nataliemarino.com or on Instagram @natalie_marino.
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Four Poems by Jacob Schepers
Four excerpts from glitch whelps
we’re known to the nth degree,
our reputation looming
on the warp, the woof.
there’s plenty of danger in it.
there’s plenty of anger in it,
in what we do, glitching,
upsetting ye olde
established norms
we’re surveilled because we pose
this threat like any threat surveilled.
yes, we glitch. what of it?
yes, we’re whelped. what’s more?yes, we’re whelped. what’s more,
we’re whipped into shape
and then some, more
for good measure. do you get
they want us tender
in order to fall apart in your
mouth, go to pieces at the first
sign of a patch, a fix?
bad, bad, bad is how we run,
foolhardy, reckless. downright
naughty. poured from our amniotic
sac, we’re liquid bugs. We take the shape of
whatever container you put us in.whatever container you put us in
is bound to leak. we bore
holes in any holding cell and
prison. when we are bored we cause
trouble. when we aren’t we wreak
havoc. we hear sirens, calls
of alarm wherever we go.
when we surface from our pits
we feel the shame you foist on us,
sense your unease. however
you may think of us, please know
we don’t think highly of you.
chastise us if you must.chastise us if you must.
muzzle us as befits the need.
raise us from the malware
wreckage, siphoning us straight
from the tank. before you ask,
we confess we sugared that tank,
tanked that malware,
created a need, caused a ruckus.
we have our assignment, our bindles packed, slung over our shoulders.
don’t worry about us, darling;
we’ll be just fine.
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Jacob Schepers is an editor at ballast and the author of the poetry collections Ugly Ground Swell Moss (Carbonation Press, 2026) and A Bundle of Careful Compromises (Outriders Poetry Project, 2014). More at jacobschepers.com and on Instagram @jacobschepers.
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A Poem by Charles Hensler
Pale Yellow
Snow is falling in Ohio. I’ve never been. God bless the people toiling in that cold. Warm rain falls in my hand so I know something of a sky gently collapsing. When the postman comes I’m quick as a sparrow—who doesn’t like the surprise of an arrhythmia, the promise of an unexpected glance in the cartographer’s window? You, reflected, above oceans, among mountains, somehow smaller, that pale yellow coat— diaphanous hand extended, catching rain.
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Charles Hensler lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in North American Review, West Trade Review, Epiphany, JMWW, Rust & Moth, The Shore, Stone Circle Review and others.
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A Poem by Zebulon Huset
Shark v. Hole
While it’s uncouth to pit body counts against each other, in the football game of shark vs holes dug in the beach,
the holes have it 16-11*, and one way or another, both teams ended up with a safety which is what
Alanis Morrisette would call ironic. Lifeguards seek grey fins in an undulating field of blue-grey choppiness,
the sandcastle’s moat grows. The frat boy is buried vertically and forced to bong four beers—left passed out, neck deep in his crater.
When they remove the body to sleep it off horizontally, the excavated sides slump, it liquifies with the tide into
the quicksand that haunts our Saturday Morning Cartoon nightmares. In the end it almost never is the monster—it’s an old man in a mask,
a pod of dolphins, some mud, the wind, just a little swamp gas. It’s just the habit of humans to find patterns in mind-numbing voids of meaning.
*from 1990-2006
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Zebulon Huset is a public high school teacher, writer and photographer. He won the Gulf Stream 2020 Summer Poetry Contest and his writing has appeared in Best New Poets, Booth, Meridian, Smartish Pace, The Southern Review, Fence and others. An advocate of strength conditioning your creativity, he has posted over 2k writing prompts at his blog Notebooking Daily and edits the prompt-based Sparked Literary Magazine which is back from hiatus in 2026.
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