Darkness follows us.
Car tires sneak
through these streets.
Above, headlights
smile and rumble
in on-coming traffic.
Below we keep our lives
hidden like graves.
We shoot out the sun
and day vanishes
into concrete as we
listen to the apostrophes
of tired blind men
click their canes
down unnumbered
alleys. The dust
under this bridge
never settles.
We look
into the muddy sky
where the gray light
of night pulls us
away. Always
the traffic to remind
us we breathe.
M.P. Carver is a poet and visual artist from Salem, MA. She is Director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, miCrO-Founder of Molecule: a tiny lit mag, and teaches at Salem State University. Her work has been published in Rattle, Mantis, and Nixes Mate, among others. She has received funding or fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Essex Community Foundation, the T.S. Eliot Foundation, and Disquiet International. In 2022 her poem “You & God & I” was awarded the New England Poetry Club’s E.E. Cummings Prize. Her chapbook, Selachipmorpha, was published by Incessant Pipe in 2015, and a chapbook with Lily Poetry Review Books, Hard Up, is available now.
More at mpcarver.com.
Ọna Anosike is a writer, editor, and literary leader whose work sits at the intersection of storytelling, community building, and educational design. She is a published writer and the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the TONIC, a literary journal dedicated to amplifying bold, original storytelling from underrepresented voices. Under her leadership, the TONIC has grown into a curated space for emerging and established writers alike. She has served as a writing instructor, both at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and was chosen as a judge for the 2025 Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Prize for Undergraduate Literary Magazines.
Her editorial and mentorship work is grounded in a decade of experience as an educational consultant and program specialist, designing inclusive learning systems for schools and nonprofits nationwide. She is currently completing a literary short story collection and a young adult novel, with early agent interest. She holds an M.S.Ed. in Education Entrepreneurship from the University of Pennsylvania, an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University, and a B.A. in English from Northeastern University. She is also the founder of Inkwell Montessori, an authentic Montessori school opening in Somerville, Massachusetts, in September 2026.
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