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What Is Similar
Melanie Perish

In Galena Creek, I saw
six trout scull in a line,
tread water between a small fall
upstream and an eddy
downstream.

What a consolation
to see the impulse, to pause
with others in concert,
to see some interludes
won’t disappear.

My thoughts are
wet towels unbalanced in the washer.
When I ask, Trout, are you a lesson
for a world? they say,

The day was hot;
the pool deep; not one of us
was hungry.

Beyond the creek,
light dapples the steep bank
like nets.

—
Melanie Perish’s work has appeared in Sequestrum, Third Street Review, Sinister Wisdom, Calyx, and other publications. Nevada Humanities featured her poems on the websites Heart to Heart and Nevadan to Nevadan. Passions & Gratitudes (Black Rock Press, 2011) and The Fishing Poems (chapbook, Meridian Press, 2017) are recent collections. Foreign Voices, Native Tongues (Single Wing Press, 2021) is her newest book.

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Unceremonious by John Davis Jr.
Small Dyads by Frankie Konieczki

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