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Sheryl Luna was the Poet-in-Residence and taught English 315 Creative Writing: Poetry during the Fall 2024 semester at CSU Pueblo. Her collections include Magnificent Errors, recipient of the Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize and the Juan Felipe Herrera gold medal award, Seven, finalist for the Colorado Book Award, and Pity the Drowned Horses, recipient of the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize and finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Work has appeared in Poetry, Huizache and Puerto del Sol. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, the Anderson Center, Ragdale and Canto Mundo, and received the Alfred Cisneros del Moral Foundation Award.

Hunger

-After Etel Annan

The red sky with golden hopes

Sets over the Franklin Mountains

In El Paso. Gray-blue foothills tell

The story of migrants. The steel rising

Fence rusts with inhumanity.

Here in my fat wealth, sloth,

And fears, I sit with American

Want. I am sleepy with indulgences

And nightmares. Children forever lost

To their parents. Juárez’s hopes,

Cracked streets and bars alive

With dancing youth. Each night a bright

star yellows the black hills.

The Santa Fe bridge once planked

With plywood. We would march

towards separation

And a false superiority. “Speak English” the hounds barked

Towards the angels who lived there.

The river below, a muddy loss,

A bridge near fields of cotton.

I can see white rows

In the clear blueness. The black

Turkey vultures plotting.

According to Need

We live here, with commodities

And shadows, forget the sky—

Open presents beneath plastic trees.

In Eritrea, nuns are gathered up,

Locked up, prayers caught, arrested.

Wooden crosses, rosary beads between

Dark fingers, the way sons have fled

The broken country, drive

Medicaid cabs for now in the U.S.—

It was his infant girl that finally opened a broad smile

on Amanuel’s face. He hadn’t seen his mother in twenty years.

His eyes two brown eclipses after refugee camps,

                     Two brown tears,

                     Two curiosities,

                     Two brown questions,

                     Two sorrows.

He hates driving—

Rain on the windshield, ice on it,

Yearns for Eritrea’s grasses, his mother’s eyes

                      On his child’s eyes—

“You know nothing of this world,” he tells me.  

From editor Rory Finley: 

"Madonna – Whore Complex" by Irene Pollack is an acrostic poem that everyone on the editor’s team really enjoyed. We liked the poem’s format and how it resonates with our mostly female editing team. We also enjoyed the poem due to its emphasising nature on societal views. The title is eye-catching and clever.

Excerpt from "Madonna - Whore Complex":

Whore, promiscuous, bad, or

Heavenly, pure, good?

Ovulating so therefore not to be taken seriously or

Rational, serious, so then somehow be seen as ‘feisty’

Ergo also not to be taken seriously?

From editor Alex Macias: 

"Sanctuary" by Molly Matic is an adventurous and equally creepy short story submitted to our 2024 issue of Tempered Steel. With amazing imagery and quick pacing, the editors of our magazine were left on the edge of our seats throughout our reading and left in awe of Matic’s incredible storytelling.

From "Sanctuary":

In the sanctuary of the dead 

The Book of Shadows lies 

Unimaginable treasure awaits 

The one brave enough to Wield it.