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delicate emissions may 25

delicate emissions poetry zine

volume IV, issue 2

may 2025

"Such Visions Have..." by William Blake. Courtesy of the Public Domain Image Archive.

a note from dusti
In North America, it's Beltaine (my chosen spelling from several that are thought to be "correct") time. Beltaine is a seasonal festival that marks the spot between the Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice. Now, delicate emissions is not an explicitly Pagan zine and I am not an explicitly Pagan person. But as my regular ways of keeping time the last couple decades become unsustainable -- my children are grown so I no longer mark things in months, and the news cycle is heinous and toxic -- I relish the idea of using the seasonal festivals to do so. For this issue, I put out a themed call around the word fire, and the results please me.
Volume IV, Issue 2 begins with a hopeful poem by AnnaMaria Phelps,"A Campfire," reminding us of the sweet promises of the milder, early days of summer. By the time our journey ends, with Robert Donohue's "Up and Away," we remember our own mortality. It's not somber, though. Lydia Rae Bush provides us with a fiery brevity in "Sunset" and "Ember." David R. DiSarro's "Outside" and "Trying to Get a Table" play with warmth, heat, and fire, and the ways they work in the natural world (this editor is also a sucker for poems about birds) as humans look on. In "Bible Study," Chloe Bryan breathes heavy for us, bringing the heat in just a few words, and leading us to a beautiful prose poem by Karis Wojakowski-Bird, urging us to heed the signs of the times.
And now for a brief life update: the August 2025 issue will still be published, likely on time, just from a different place. I spend my summers on the management staff of a new play festival. I'll be working on the zine in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, deep in Appalachia, on the border of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Once my summer contract ends, I'll head home to south Alabama for a few days to pack my life up and move it eight hours west to the Louisiana Prairie, where I'll begin a three-year MFA/MA program. I'm excited to keep delicate emissions poetry zine going while continuing as a student, a poet, a playwright, a theatre professional, a literary manager, a dramaturg, and university instructor. Publishing and sharing poetry brings me an incredible amount of joy.
You can order a physical copy of this issue -- as well as a couple of our back issues -- here.
Wherever you are, may you be held in the amber glow of the sun. To quote Karis Wojakowski-Bird's "a poem for snow on the spring equinox," go, go be a blackbird trilling from a snow-covered reed.
And now...the poetry.
Your friend,
dusti rw levyeditor

a campfire in early evening, with a landscape of trees and hills in the background.

A Campfire

by AnnaMaria Phelps

Hungry orange tongues caress the forest’s fallen.

Tiny fireworks mark the consumption of sap and water.

Acrid clouds drift away to join the canopy.

Soot and ash rain gently in its circle.

Shadows flicker but never approach.

A welcoming glow, the light of togetherness,

Distant echoes of 10,000 years of humanity,

And the promise of a charred, gooey marshmallow.

a pink, purple, and gold sunset sky over tree-lined mountains

Sunset

by Lydia Rae Bush

I hold onto your hope—

the sunrise I'd not focus on,

though somebody's got to.

We've only got so many

hands between us

to encompass the world.

a collection of red and gold blurry twinkling lights

Ember

by Lydia Rae Bush

Some gorgeousness, all the wrong

colors—bright red

in this black & gray, white &

brown, all the light reflecting. I'm

sorry for staring, don't

you be sorry. I like having

something from which

to avert my gaze.

very new baby bird, nearly traanslucent, in a nest

Outside

by David R. DiSarro

A yellow finch feathers

through the soft palate

of a drizzling afternoon

to a blooming hedge,

a nook, a nest like steel

wool, where her babies, blind

black marble eyes and trans-

lucent beaks, beat

back tiny thimbles of rain

dripping from ocular flowers,

and wait for the warmth

of their mother’s breast.

patio seating of a restaurant featuring a stone wall, brown tables, and woven red and white checkered placemats.

Trying to Get a Table

by David R. DiSarro

Spackled sunburns outside some seafood dive,

scorched against a tuxedoed crustacean, meaty

porcelain claws swaddling a serving tray, filled

with squashed cigarettes, sunflower shells, and bird-shit,

we waited while her lips seeped a viscous syrup,

pouring out onto the gaslit patio - and everyone,

everyone in earshot knew she was in charge that night.

a red lily against a black and white blackground of rotting flowers

Bible Study

by Chloe Bryan

In the bouquet, only one lily

open. The rest laced—

mild bodice. Good fit.

I wonder if any bulb grows

suitable to lie under.

Set a petal in the fire,

make it glow.

a red-winged blackbird sitting on icy reeds on a cold day

a poem for snow on the spring equinox

by Karis Wojakowski-Bird

and suddenly we enter aries season with sleet the fury of spring is not flowers it is oscillation,

give me your highs and lows it seems to say melt and freeze are all part of the get up and go, go

be a blackbird trilling from a snow-covered reed, go be the shriek of a wood frog in a slushy

pond, be the wind that brings that 50-degree-drop, call it fire

a hot orange flame that is almost in the shape of a rose

Up and Away

by Robert Donohue

Before it was, the universe was dark:

There was no up or down, no near or far,

No limit where we set the bar,

Or any guidance after we embark.

If seen across the midnight’s cosmic arc

How truly rare it is, from star to star.

Although today it’s made us what we are,

From countless strikes we only hold a spark.

It lies behind the power we’ve obtained.

Fearsome, yet strangely fragile, in its turn

A single breath can put it out; once tamed,

It can appear it is unfairly blamed

For passionate unrest, but then we learn,

Perhaps too late, that everything can burn.

This Issue's Poets

David R. DiSarro is currently an Associate Professor of English at Endicott College in Beverly, MA. His work has previously appeared, or is forthcoming, in Bending Genres Literary Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, ANTAE: A Journal of Creative Writing, The Wilderness House Literary Review, The Hawaii Pacific Review, among others. David's first chapbook, I Used to Play in Bands, was published by Finishing Line Press. He currently lives on the North Shore of Massachusetts with his wife, Riley, five children, and two rambunctious dogs.

Lydia Rae Bush is a poet exploring themes of embodiment and social-emotional development. Her work can be found in publications such as Vocivia Magazine, Corporeal, and Sage Cigarettes Magazine.

Chloe Bryan is a poet and editor. Originally from the Midwest, she has also lived in Memphis, TN, and Brooklyn, NY. She is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Hollins University.

Robert Donohue's Poetry has appeared in Amethyst Review, The Asses of Parnassus, and others. He lives on Long Island, NY.

Writing from their home in rural Michigan, Karis Wojakowski-Bird seeks to capture the voice of a landscape in poems exploring themes such as distributed selfhood, queerness, and ecological consciousness.

AnnaMaria Phelps is a freelance writer of short mysteries and fantasy. She is also the head of Violet Daisy Games, a studio focused on storytelling.

About the Editor

Dusti RW Levy is a queer disabled poet, essayist, performer, and playwright, as well as a 2025 National Dramaturgy Fellow at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. Dusti is an assistant editor at Thirteen Bridges Review, and is the editor and publisher of delicate emissions poetry zine. You can read their poetry in FUCKUS Literary Journal; boats against the current; and the tide rises, the tide falls, among others. Their essay "Posthuman Illumination" is forthcoming in Issue 8 of Windmill: The Art & Literature Journal of Hofstra University. They are on the staff of Contemporary American Theatre Festival as a manager and accessibility specialist, and a reader for the Jewish Plays Project. Raised mostly in the desert Southwest and having spent many years on the High Plains and in Cascadia, Dusti now splits their time between the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, the Louisiana Prairie, and the coastal plain of Alabama.

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