FEATURE: The Poetry of Jennifer Ruth Jackson
Woodland of the Fair Folk
We were misled, through woods where boughs
of pine ate starlight from the ground. Our
FEATURE: The Poetry of E.G. Ware
A Hymn to the Mother-Sire
What hand first stirr’d the calculus of clay,
and bade the mineral think,
FEATURE: The Poetry of Melissa Shepherd
Sonnet for a Gravestone
Not for nothing would I kiss your chloral
corpse, grandmother—panic-flung near Fresh Kills
(before
SPRING 2026: Lyric and Elegy
Some of you have been with The Dread long enough to remember when this was a looser, less intentional space.
FEATURE: “The Journeyman of Suspicion” by Andy Mallory
You might find such a claim disagreeable, but what I contend is this: there exists an interminable impermanence to human
FEATURE: “the reader” by Christopher Woods
we heard he was coming
weeks before, when people
in the village heard from relatives
the other side of the
FEATURE: “When Satan Smiles” by Ramesh Gupta
When Satan Smiles
When slumber o’er-takes the steadfast state
of worried wakefulness;
when sleep comes silently and unshaken
FEATURE: “High Strung” by Katherine Pickett
The attic bedroom was a pleasant enough place to sleep in fall and spring. Less so in summer and winter.
FEATURE: “The Silence Between” by Ria Cabral
It started with the faucet.
Not the one in the kitchen, the one in the bathroom—the one Anna had
FEATURE: “In A Vegetative State” by Bob McWilliams
As I remember it, a mean, ugly April rain hammered us for three straight days. It was the kind of
