35

March 15, 2020

By Phil Huffy

Revival

I walked the old street last night

finding your front steps

now claimed by other lovers

and saw them in shadow light

knowing that such times

are youthful, frantic moments

when the future is so distant

that reminiscence

is never even pondered

Phil Huffy lives in Western New York and writes poems at his kitchen table. He has placed about 180 pieces in the last couple of years and has discovered that he is eminently googleable.

By Cameron Morse    

Deer Sausage

I would like to throw my arms

around the creased red neck of the man

who paid my insurance premiums

through chemo and radiation,

but settle for a fraternal pat on the back. 

On the road to Le Claire, transmission

towers drape their ledger lines over Iowa

with intervals of turtle doves. Bird nests

clot like blood in veiny branches.

On the road to pay our annual visit,

sleet shakes white pellets, seasoning

the cows that graze with their heads down

in the yellow chapel of the field.

Starry-eyed headlights streak the blacktop,

a blizzard of albino snakes blowing sideways.

After we arrive, Uncle Steve moseys out

in his sweatpants and army cap. I would like a hug

but settle for a slice of deer sausage,

the jalapeño & cheese-spliced

yield of his yearly hunt: four bucks, three does,

a miniature pogrom of dainty rodents

on his iPhone, black eyes glassed open.

By Cameron Morse    

Snowflake Projector

An orange extension cord draped over the cold

shoulder of the lawn links the glittering

crystal eyeball of the projector

to the portico. All day it casts invisible snowflakes

over the gables and garage door.

In the wreckage of December—empty culm,

bird bath sucked to motheaten

leaves and shriveled berries, mailbox lid lolling

in tin metal silence—its light-emitting

diodes rotate in their cast iron socket, their black stake

driven among the oak leaves. Its unraveling 

light is unseeable—wasted,

or waiting? After nightfall drags its photographer’s

cape over the house we live in,

we enter the darkness. See the light.

Cameron Morse lives with his wife Lili and son Theodore in Blue Springs, Missouri. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Terminal Destination (Spartan Press, 2019).

By Cameron Morse  

Day Without Sun

Fog machine morning

our frog figurine lounges

in absolute recline, snail

facedown in the flowerbed’s 

understory of oak leaves,

its whiskers of catmint.

Theo rolls over the happy turtle

below blown-out garden mums.

Real oak leaves dock

in mock vegetable garden slots

for rubber carrot, plastic onion,

and radish in the Little Tikes

cottage. Canadian geese, 

hidden in cloud, creak like swings

in the playground of one cloud

smothering the daylong sun,

a dark station poised like a curse,

hollow culm that I am. Somewhere

in the whiteout, sirens blare.

Silence, somewhere, is making

a bed for me. Climb in, says

silence, be tucked

in calm, earless on your hands

scrabbling the braille of acorns.   

Cameron Morse lives with his wife Lili and son Theodore in Blue Springs, Missouri. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Terminal Destination (Spartan Press, 2019).

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This, That and the Other Thing                                 

By Michael Steffen

February 15, 2020

A fool and his money, a bird in hand—common proverbs I learned from my mother—

a penny for thoughts, let sleeping dogs lie, and don’t judge a book by its cover.  My humble dad with his old-fashioned views kept a stiff upper lip to his grindstone.  It’s fiction, he swore, that’s stranger than fact.  A faint-hearted lady can never be won. 

I, on the other hand, often mused about this, that and the other thing.  How could one person make a difference when two heads were better at figuring?  How, I would question with furrowed brow, could less of a thing be considered more?  My mother clutched a half-knitted blanket and told me, frankly, she wasn’t sure. 

She needled her crocheted semblance and sighed, Things often are easier said than done,   and we’re all just doing the best we can.  Her varicose veins glowed like the sun.  My father, in a sleeveless undershirt, his muscled arms for labor made, snored and snuffled  loudly in his lounger through the graceful sadness of Mozart’s score. 

Flush with hindsight, they both died speechless, amidst the strident discordance of prayer, decomposing, perhaps, into purer wisdom, or possibly into something rarer—some speck of what the priests call God, some quantum particle left behind—the calming echo of their well-worn words repeating in my troubled mind. 

Michael Steffen is a Y2K graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Vermont College and the author of three full-length poetry collections:  “No Good at Sea” (Legible Press, 2002), “Heart Murmur” (Bordighera Press, 2009) and “Bad Behavior” (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2013).  Individual poems have appeared in Poetry, Poet Lore, Potomac Review, Rhino, The Ledge, and other journals.

Only Ten Shopping Days Left

By Michael Steffen

Michael Steffen is a Y2K graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Vermont College and the author of three full-length poetry collections:  “No Good at Sea” (Legible Press, 2002), “Heart Murmur” (Bordighera Press, 2009) and “Bad Behavior” (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2013).  Individual poems have appeared in Poetry, Poet Lore, Potomac Review, Rhino, The Ledge, and other journals.

A supermarket in late August.

I’m here because I need milk. 

There are others—a girl in a sun dress,

a woman in khaki, her crying baby. 

Already it’s Halloween,

candy and pumpkins on display. 

I feel anxious. 

How far ahead should we live? 

Cantaloupe are migrating south. 

It’s Christmas among the canned goods. 

Five minutes ago, things were different— 

there were fewer wreaths, 

I could see the dairy aisle,

I could linger. 

It’s snowing in Frozen Foods. 

The baby is a toddler, a teen

in a blue parka.  Now she’s woman

with long white hair. 

Almost All

By Mary Rohrer-Dann

A pale flower opening,

my mother’s face.

She knows she knows us.

Perhaps, when we tell her

our names, remembers.

We’ve brought fruit, Danish,

Dunkin Donuts coffee. 

            Wonderful.

Even more now, she responds best to men.

Eyes alight, chin tilted, she strokes

my husband’s muscled forearm.

            You look so good! So young!

She turns, pats my cheek.  

            You look good too. 

Her happiness is forthright. 

Fleeting.

She shudders.

Weeps and weeps and weeps.

She cannot remember all she has lost,

but knows she has lost almost all.

What My Mother Gave Me

By Mary Rohrer-Dann

The Christmas I was twelve, Herman’s Hermits.                  

Dvorak’s New World Symphony, Eugene Ormandy 

conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra.                                                         

At thirteen, The Monkees, Copeland’s Appalachian Spring.

At fifteen, West Side Story, Tales from Vienna Woods.

Afternoons, I stole away with Jethro Tull, Richie Havens.   

Downstairs, my mother traveled her own secret trails—                  

Chopin, Mozart, Schumann—as she browned a roast,                                 

folded wash, sewed a sea-green paisley dress for my dance.                                    

Home permanent nights, she doused my head in foul lotions,       

winched my hair in pink plastic rollers. We ate cashews                  

and apple slices while Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones               

sang If I loved You and You’ll Never Walk Alone.                            

She gave me Lanza and Callas.                                 

Later, I took her to see Tosca, Butterfly,                                                       

La Boheme at the Academy of Music.                                                          

I will always wish I had taken her to the Met.                                              

Softly, through my father’s fevered last days,                                              

she kept the small radio on his dresser playing,                                            

enfolding him in strings, horns, rolling timpani.       

Mary Rohrer-Dann is a writer and painter in central PA, and a recent “graduate” of teaching creative writing and literature at Penn State for more years than she wants to count.  Recent work has appeared in Literary Yard, San Antonia Review (forthcoming), The Drabble, Vita Brevis, Flashes of Brilliance, and Literary Heist (forthcoming). Two of her narrative poem projects, La Scaffetta and Accidents of Being, were adapted to stage by Tempest Productions, Inc. and produced in NYC; State College, PA; and Philadelphia.

33

By P.C. Scheponik

Regal Red Tailed

P.C. Scheponik is a lifelong poet who lives by the sea with his wife, Shirley, and their shizon, Bella. His writing celebrates nature, the human condition, and the metaphysical mysteries of life. He has published four collections of poems: Psalms to Padre Pio (National Centre for Padre Pio, INC), A Storm by Any Other Name and Songs the Sea has Sung in Me (PS Books, a division of Philadelphia Stories), and And the Sun Still Dared to Shine (Mazo Publishers). His work has also appeared in numerous literary journals, among them, Adelaide, Visitant, Red Eft Review, Boned, Time of Singing, WINK, Poetry Pacific, Streetlight Press and others. He is a 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee

He sits, solitary watcher

on the telephone wire.

A young red-tailed hawk,

a crown prince surveying

his future kingdom.

His stature, puffed

in February’s chill.

His feathers,

royal cape draped

about the shoulders

of his folded wings.

This would-be ascendant,

future king of sky and field.

This warrior raptor

whose beak and talons

whose vision and wings

will make small earthbound

animals yield to shadows and fears.

He holds court there

on the lonely station of an otherwise

empty telephone wire—

a force to be reckoned with,

a primal desire to survive,

to rule with the urgency

of wings spread wide enough

to block out the sun for anyone in his path.

Mary Rohrer-Dann is a writer and painter in central PA, and a recent “graduate” of teaching creative writing and literature at Penn State for more years than she wants to count.  Recent work has appeared in Literary Yard, San Antonia Review (forthcoming), The Drabble, Vita Brevis, Flashes of Brilliance, and Literary Heist (forthcoming). Two of her narrative poem projects, La Scaffetta and Accidents of Being, were adapted to stage by Tempest Productions, Inc. and produced in NYC; State College, PA; and Philadelphia.

January 15, 2020

Power Lines

By Amanda Crum 

Amanda Crum is a writer and artist whose work has appeared in publications such as Barren Magazine and Eastern Iowa Review and in several anthologies, including Beyond The Hill and Two Eyes Open. She is the author of two novels, The Fireman's Daughter and Ghosts Of The Imperial. Her first chapbook of horror-inspired poetry, The Madness In Our Marrow, was shortlisted for a Bram Stoker Award nomination in 2015; her story "A Shimmer In The Parlor" was a finalist for the J.F. Powers Prize in Short Fiction in 2019. Amanda's middle-grade fiction book, The Darkened Mirror, will be published in the summer of 2019 by Riversong Books. She currently lives in Kentucky with her husband and two children.

As tall grass

wavers

inside a citrine twilight

we whisper of specters

trapped inside the old barn

imagine haints

swinging from the beams

where tobacco leaves

wither

You speak

of decay and clover

because here they hold hands

but all I can see

is a church

born of tortured sunsets

and cicadas

a place to worship

caught between power lines

CULTURE OF TODAY DESTRUCTS  CULTURE OF THE PAST 

By Martina Rimbaldo

December 15, 2019

32

Martina Rimbaldo is a 28-year-old women who lives and works in Croatia. She always wears a pen and a notebook in her purse in the case of a sudden inspiration in order to write it down. Her poem will be published in Nightingale & Sparrow magazine in August. She loves to paint abstract paintings  ,  read religious books, watch horror as well as old movies. Her goal is to be a good person.

Army of half bare zombies

Marching through the alley of middle-aged cultured town

Eclectic sounds  coming from the background

Forces stone blocks to tremor and tumble down

Massive drinking to  stop your reason thinking

The limit is expelled by  grotesque  burnish -towny  colored  smelling  vomit

Saddened alley remains  silent

We bear the rotten fruit of our tragic youth

No manners turn man into animals

By Amy Gaeta 

Feeders

By Amy Gaeta 

Traffic Lapse 

It’s our one weekend a month.

We ride for hours, or however

long seven Van Morrison songs is anyways.

Next, my mary janes slide me all over the cobbled streets,

begging to be carried, lifted into the magical

den of soft walnut crusted wheat rolls,

maple pecan coffee beans, no, not that

Green Mountain dirt. Only the freshest

for duck feeding season. Sneaking slices by slipping

into my linen pockets.

Ducks cluster around the

stash I plan to devour on the

way home. He laughs at me

in lieu of conversation. Two more hours

scheduled of this. Calls me "pack rat",

then begins on our old neighbor.

The hoarder with no heat or power,

Gun parts waiting

to be reassembled, waste catalogued

by month. TLC never shows the organized

 collectors of mass shit. Sudden silence, then he has

 "stuff to do", "Gotta meet a guy".

Twenty minutes later I watch as Mom watches the birds who never flew

South. We tear Sara Lee wheat bread,

toss it in plow zones. Hope they find it

first. Hope they are okay for the winter. Hope

they don't regret staying.

Amy Gaeta is a poet and Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Amy's creative work explores how trauma and injury are ordinary and mundane conditions that shape how we perceive and order the world. Her poetry has been published in various local venues, museum catalogs, and journals. A selection of these include Soundings East, Crab Fat Magazine, OPE! A Madison Anthology, and the 2016 Poetry Speaks catalogue from the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. She grew up in Boston and now resides in Madison, WI.

Amy Gaeta is a poet and Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Amy's creative work explores how trauma and injury are ordinary and mundane conditions that shape how we perceive and order the world. Her poetry has been published in various local venues, museum catalogs, and journals. A selection of these include Soundings East, Crab Fat Magazine, OPE! A Madison Anthology, and the 2016 Poetry Speaks catalogue from the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. She grew up in Boston and now resides in Madison, WI.

The flight attendant from Boston

to Milwaukee International lied. The former

would always be colder.

Subtle warmth followed

           the cab

           that was now

          “mine.” Past industrial parks, families,

            outskirts. Soundless,

            until obnoxious-- wheels

            halted, launching my memory

            into the space between last winter

            and this moment before.

Squeaks from the dog’s toy,

              cradled between her tail and leg,

              next to everyplace we try

              to sleep. High pitch coos, to/from both of us.

              I stroke your forearm out

              of habit, resulting in ruptures of

             “you scared me!” squeals.

              As if we aren’t constant motion, scattered about

              our room like quickie marts on

              city map grids. In Winter, we slow,

              act like big city strangers, connected

              through shared space, Moving through

              rhythms of our communal

              score: traffic screeches, microwave timers,

              picking the dirt from under nails in a nervous

              manner, buttons breaking on father’s jacket, whip

             cuts of crooked bangs, closing

             clasps of your butterfly pill box.

In 1998, you could practice your French in France

By Natalie Campisi

In 1998, you could practice French in France. The new and old words were still distanced by
water and paper and games of telephone.

It was the year of the Euro. The year of Kosovo. The year of Sampras and the Yankees.

The bus wobbled on steel-belted cartoon wheels toward Montpellier from Paris. Not Marseilles
where they steal your money at knifepoint. We had little money and no credit cards and no gold
to sell in a pinch.

In 1998, you relied on maps and eyes and lips and eyes.

In 1998, old lives couldn’t be accessed through an app and unrequited loves could remain in
amber, forever lithe and limitless, forever Lotte -- not living in Haddonfield with four kids and a
mortgage.

<<Je voudrais deux billets, s'il vous plaît?>>
With paper maps and paper money, we packed on the packed bus with skinny people who
mumbled grunts and slip n’ slide words, a potion of sweet and mildew. The wheel was too big
for the driver’s hands. The mirror too small to see.

The faded baby blue bus was peeling-paint old.

The windows were trimmed in white and had curved corners.

A man pressed against me. I sent this postcard of the man pressing against me to my older self,
and I received it -- perhaps in the middle of the night -- and realized he had assaulted me. He had
pressed his body against mine on purpose. It wasn’t just a packed train. Assault is a big word
when time gets between action. Too big. But, memory remains. I hated it.

I send a postcard back to my 22-year old self: “Push him away. Disez: Arrêtez! Arrêtez!”

But, no. It’s in amber now. The bus keeps moving.

In 1998, Montepellier was a college town. Probably still is. With old Roman light, and curved
streets and corners that spiral around into other universes. A Pasolini dream of youth and sex and
light and infinity.

Where was la plage? Où est la plage? Open sesame. Another bus, this one with kids our age.
College kids. Skinny, loud college kids. Backpacks, not ergonomic like American backpacks, in
mismatched colors -- feminine, like this country.

Accidents are scientific phenomena that are caused by destiny. They are caused by magnets that
pull us. Invisible air marshals. Waves that we hop on and ride by hunch, a temporary tunnel of
force until we get to our destination.

Whoosh. Gasp. Ding. Palavas Les Flots! A spit of beach that was handspun out of blue cotton
candy and pale yellow gauze.

A wave. A magnet. A marshal.

In 1998, the streets of Palavas are thin and lean.

Maybe it was late morning or late afternoon, it was late something. The end of some section of
time. This is important. Because it was Sunday. And nothing is guaranteed on a Sunday. This is a
rule of life.

The Sea and Cake Hotel was vertical and lean like a dancer who smoked.

And the windows, long and narrow and open, let through a breeze that blew sheer curtains
toward us, the wind choosing a shape.

Let us take a moment to think about drapery. There is drapery meant to conceal. And drapery
meant to adorn. And drapery meant to give dimension to the outside. A windowless frame
provides a clear picture. A window provides a view with distortion. A sheer drape over a window
on a frame provides a tease.

On the beach, the circles of young bodies hunch like hooks and smoke hashish rolled into small
cigarettes with some tobacco mixed in. They motion and we sit.

Across the Atlantic is a blonde Hungarian disguised as an American. His skin is pink and his
eyes are blue. His hair is curled, down to his shoulders. His teeth are big and his smile is
venomous. He will go to Samoa. She will never send him a postcard when she’s older.

In 1998, under this vertical sky, under a happy film of hashish, the Hungarian in American
accent has vanished. It’s just now.

A whirl of half-naked bodies pack into a small French car. It zooms sideways down beach-town
roads.

The day would be the sea. The night would be homemade pastis: anise, licorice root, and boiled
sugar poured into a bottle of vodka. Steaks and green beans. Ketchup for the Americans. A song
about love. A song about AIDS. Kissing in French and speaking without words.

Sleeping bodies tangled up. Sleeping bodies on a beach. Sweetness in the breath that comes from
the gut. Everything is smooth. Everything is bright.

In 1998, you could practice French in France. You could hang your underwear off a rucksack to
dry. You could kiss sweet breath in $2 flip flops without feeling self conscious. You could be
naked in the sea and know that this moment is Le Morne Brabant.

You can take it with you for later. There are always leftovers.

31

By Kate Lohnes

atop our dublin apartment a crash of blackbirds 

curdled my body cuts

sharp lines in shadowed turf

on roof bedded you sprawl yourself

glowing there in sun’s soft syrup

each sprouted follicle lit and glossy

were there any love

you might have felt it then

i recall only erosion on the banks

of our anatomy    how i let myself open

like canyon

split to wounds of earth shifting

those shared breaths

steaming off me hot

as i paw fake grasslocks till sky

snaps in wineblack fury

above us

like runaway kite or fighter jet hurling

or snake

slick tongue wet with promise

begging of me only ever

consume

some moments are too viscous

to condense further:

i took one bite of sweetflesh

wet chin ever coiling stream

i formed a river of myself  

Kate Lohnes is a senior at the University of Iowa studying Philosophy and Creative Writing. She spent time reading for The Iowa Review and has been published by the Iowa Chapbook Prize [creative work] and Encyclopaedia Britannica [academic work]. 

The Funeral

By Linda Rhinehart

Linda Rhinehart is a poet, writer and translator who has been writing for almost three years. She first began writing when she was accidentally invited to a poetry festival and became inspired. Over the course of her life she has lived in the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland and the United States. She holds an MA in Translation and another MA in English Literature. In her spare time she enjoys playing piano and going on short hikes.

there is a cold breeze in this place
the touch of the door handle under my finger-
tips is ice steel and silver
eons of loneliness inscribed in one touch
in the hours before wakefulness

​

the next day is warm but not
enough to dispel the breeze’s whispering
among the garish flowers
magenta neon and solemn geraniums
that line the polished funeral car

​

I try to shrink and hide from the eyes
of the breeze and from its silent laughter
among the cars cyclists and funeral-goers 
but in the silence it recognizes me
with its unblinking never-sleeping eye 

Natalie Campisi is a journalist and fiction writer currently residing in Los Angeles. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in fiction and her work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Auburn Literary Journal, and Writer Magazine. She was recently awarded a writing scholarship to the Chautauqua Institution in New York. Currently, Natalie's producing, directing and performing in a fully improvised play based on the work of Wes Anderson, which is running at ImproTheatre in Los Angeles.

November 15, 2019

By Rachael Mayer

Breakfast

I remember breakfast. 
September, 1939. 
The kitchen is more like a free floating box 
than a room in a framed-out house, 
a box suspended in ether
now that
two out of three of us are dead.
Breakfast, 
and there's no relief
from an interrogating sun. The light 
in the kitchen is so white 
the edges of the room will singe—my 
grandmother’s spine is so straight
she is like a lamppost 
though her arms
and hands are busy, her elbows sharp–
she will be like this all her life, 
tall and sinewy—
she has lots to say
though her back is turned.
My mother is looking at her back.
I see her round pale face, and her wintry 
blue eyes—she is squinting,
somewhat frozen in minutes.
Her snowy curls are so sweet, so soft
like actual cotton flower—they camouflage 
her anguish, her lost father,
abandonment in many episodes is preordained.
You can see how young she is
by the dimples in her hands. 
There is a generous serving
of cruelty with her porridge
though it is of the 
for your own good variety.
Half of me was there, a follicle.

Rachael Mayer’s poetry has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Hiram Poetry Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Hudson Valley Echoes, The Avatar Review, Poetry Quarterly, Typishly and is forthcoming in Mothers Always Write. Ms. Mayer lives with her family in Montclair, New Jersey.

October 15, 2019

30

Hoarded Birds

By Samantha DeFlitch 

I think a lot about a red knife my uncle held in his hands

on the night my grandmother died.

I never actually saw the knife

but my father woke me before mass,

told me to avoid the kitchen.

This was before a tamed canary

grew very wild inside of my throat,

and I travelled as far south as Guadalajara

to find a doctor who would remove it, whole.

She shook her head, no, no,

this is a thing you must do yourself.

One morning in a dining room, maybe,

with the daybreak haloing fresh lavender

someone has arranged on the tablecloth.

There are no miracles anywhere,

unless the bird takes flight and carries us

north once more.

Turnpike Toll-Taker

By Samantha DeFlitch 

Why the man in a green shirt? See –

half asphalt, half me, toll taker

hovering over damp roads where

is the interchange, the city? I am old.

A gull over an ocean. The reckoning

brought on – my children.

Headlights live inside the third eye

of the final deer. I am nights full of

Garth Brooks, motorcycles, the last

cars westbound – drivers, red-ringed eyes,

eyes, me! Awake! 1:37 in the morning I

am the fourth side of a triangle, alone.

Samantha received her MFA from the University of New Hampshire, where she is the Associate Director of the Connors Writing Center and recipient of the Dick Shea Memorial Award for Poetry, as judged by Shelley Girdner. Her work has appeared both online and in traditional literary journals, in places including Rattle, Appalachian Heritage, The New Engagement, and On the Seawall. She lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Samantha received her MFA from the University of New Hampshire, where she is the Associate Director of the Connors Writing Center and recipient of the Dick Shea Memorial Award for Poetry, as judged by Shelley Girdner. Her work has appeared both online and in traditional literary journals, in places including Rattle, Appalachian Heritage, The New Engagement, and On the Seawall. She lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

By Robert Lesher

Chief Billy

I sit with Chief Billy,

Coming home

On the Outer Wharf bus.

He hums to himself,

Hands folded on his lap.

Billy is mostly Hiada;

Lives at a halfway

On Dallas Road.

In 1964 a drinking binge

Brought him from Nanaimo

To a pub on View Street.

“I spend five years falling down.

My sister took the bus here

To find me,

To say our mother had passed.

Twice she came here.

But she never found me.

I was too drunk.

I was invisible.”

His voice is thick and dark brown

As the wet earth of the Malahat,

White hair to his waist

flowing like elf clouds

around and over crowds

Of forest peaks

just beyond the Alberni inlet.

“I am sober now,

For the last few years.

I will stay that way

So that,

If nothing else,

My mother’s spirit

May haunt me

For the rest of this life.”

Robert Lesher has appeared in Electrum, Voices International, Cathartic, and most recently in Big Smoke. Robert also has a non-fiction piece published in Splash of Red. Since 1965, Robert has been a professional musician and song writer, mostly in the Blues Idiom. He lives with his wife, Jana, his four cats and a dog, in the house he was raised in, in Fullerton, California.

September 15, 2019

29

Look Into the Light

By David Bankson

1

My pills inspire mirrors

to keep my novel spine from snapping shut.

Stars punch effortlessly through

the vision of a street lamp halo

in a language we all share:

call it aesthetics or beauty.

Sucking the yellow from our brushes

until stars shine brighter than any lamp.

Swallow the light until your jaw

                       falls open.

Do we even speak the same language?

I turn my face to the mirror

                       and break open

                       the night.

2

It's true that I've been the eldest, youngest, middle, and only

child amid 8 different marriages      & it's true

I love guilt    it is my roof it is my mattress

my own heart ready to take it when water rises

(if I only had looked then I'd have known of cancellation)

(if I wasn't so often out of my head I could have stopped

the robbery) & in the day I invoke the moon

& fall to my calloused hands in supplication

to ask my own heart & mind for answers & answers & answers

& afterwards stand & dust myself off

look into a pool of moon-filled water & answer with

nothing    nothing    nothing

David Bankson lives in Texas. He was finalist in the 2017 Concīs Pith of Prose and Poem contest, and his poetry and microfiction can be found in concis, (b)oink, {isacoustic*}, Artifact Nouveau, Riggwelter Press, Five 2 One Magazine, and others.

Back then you were a globe

By David Bankson

held apart by ocean arms,

melted glaciers refrozen,

vodka & ice castles,

your exterior severe

as the dusk's late light, draining

every window in the house with day-

killing darkness; I

stitched together the broken bits of myself

& learned to ignore loose threads

& pricked thumbs.

I learned of the difference

between being silver & moon

glimmering on the top of a stray puddle.

Between hearts & the seas

without end I mistook them for.

Surrendering & being seen

to have surrendered. A globe

& a land without smooth slopes.

Between such an example of weakness

& leaving before it could be proven.

David Bankson lives in Texas. He was finalist in the 2017 Concīs Pith of Prose and Poem contest, and his poetry and microfiction can be found in concis, (b)oink, {isacoustic*}, Artifact Nouveau, Riggwelter Press, Five 2 One Magazine, and others.

The Meaning of Dawn Snow

By David Bankson

Sorrow on a soil gaining the weight

of snow. A moon giving no light.

You tear down an overpass. You shout for help

while cities drown and trampled violets shrivel,

the sky pinched with panic.

Snow destroys color in a story.

Snow baby steps. Snow loses

its head and recalculates.

What you see unblends

into modern disquiet,

discolor. That water cooler flavor

while you disassociate from that cutting room

until the newest beginning. While you reply

with a black stare, meaning drops and cracks.

Black, meaning difference and division.

"I know a little more

how much...a snowfall

can mean to a person." -Plath

Black-and-white snow, return to your cloud.

Meaning: I want to see the sky again.

​

David Bankson lives in Texas. He was finalist in the 2017 Concīs Pith of Prose and Poem contest, and his poetry and microfiction can be found in concis, (b)oink, {isacoustic*}, Artifact Nouveau, Riggwelter Press, Five 2 One Magazine, and others.

The Shaking

By Lili Weckler

Maybe the body is a location. Like a nation.

Its outline infinitely long as a shoreline.

There were three girls who taught me to police myself.

They claimed access to magic: voodoo

dolls of ostracized boys (buried in the field),

who later came down with strange illnesses.

Boddich, from old English: a brewing pot;

the body ferments, cooked by the organisms

in the air. Stirred, preferably, but not shaken.

Magic might have freed my body, made me servant

only to time and uncontrollable rain;

to underworlds of sticks and dark silt.

Boddich. Sounds like witch. The body a

cauldron, a landmass, an infinite moving location.

Magic, let let me ferment! Said my young

spleen, my new heart with its natural tenderness,

my little liver, learning its miraculous churning of blood.

But magic instead was usurped, by the feverish

games of truth or dare in my mother’s basement;

our fingers publicly stuck in our crevices.

The original passage I granted my own

hands also given to the malicious eyes

of these girls, to their promise of initiation

if I succumbed, first, to their torment.

From their gaze, I learned that my body

was too fat, my hair ugly, my voice

chafing and dumb. I learned that I knew

too little or too much, depending

on the context, learned that I must struggle

to change myself, if I wanted to be loved.

Maybe the body is a glass jar

filled with water, magnifying the world

outside. A liquid body, but capped; in a case.

This is how we are trained. By our hungers.

This is how we lose our sense of our own infinity.

Our liquid is made discrete

by a vessel’s walls, and the vessel

is those we wish will accept us.

We are made by wanting.

Lili Weckler is a multi-disciplinary artist from Oakland, CA. She is the Artistic Director of Lili Weckler | Unhinge Dance Theater, and is currently choreographing a dance rock-opera she wrote and composed for the SF International Arts Festival. She holds an Interdisciplinary Arts MFA from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2010, and her publications include Thin Air Magazine, Blue River Review and sPARKLE and bLINK, among others. Also a musician, she released a folk-rock album in 2017.

August 15, 2019

28

"Self Portrait."

Heather Dorn has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Binghamton University where she teaches writing. Her poetry and prose can be found in The American Poetry Review, Paterson Literary Review, Ragazine, and other similar journals. Drawing and digital art has always been a creative outlet for Heather.

from the top looking down

By Luke Harvey

He used to make up names and stories for him,

stories that told of tragic accidents

or unrequited love. Or how he’d seen

something he wasn’t supposed to see and then

had sought asylum in the Boston streets,

sharing his secret with the crackheads and

the corner prostitutes who tell him “sweetie

I know it must be hard.” 

                               Now none of it

was true of course, but when you’re high up in

your penthouse office suite, a hit of blow

lining your cedar desk, the dread-locked man

who digs the cans with dirt-caked claws below

the overhang of the downtown Holiday Inn

is better entertainment than another

shot of internet porn.

                           He can’t imagine

what it must be like to dive in other’s

waste, to finger through their soggy fries

so fat and soft like city sewer slugs,

or to what depths of shame you stoop to find

yourself a picker of the street-life’s shit, the dregs

of the human race. He tries to imagine how

he’d will to go on living if every day

was desperate search for sustenance, and he vows

he’ll never reach that point, to see a day

when life’s reduced to scraping and clinging on.

But never him, not the twenty-first century’s youngest 

CEO of the largest firm in Boston!

The intercom rings and yanks him coldly past

his window musings as Bekah let’s him know 

his wife has brought him lunch.

                                He tells her to send

her up, clears his search-bar history, scans through

his cell-phone messages, and sniffs the cocaine

off the desk. Outside, the man has left

his post. He wonders how you could live like that. 

By Luke Harvey

on coming home to an eviction notice

“You don't ask what a dance means. You enjoy it. You don't ask what the world means. You enjoy it."  - Joseph Campbell

We are young today, my dear,

in a world that makes no sense,

and whether we'll understand

one day, nobody can say.

But we are young today,

my dear -- so let us dance,

spinning to the sound

of neighbors shouting upstairs,

then pirouetting past

the pile of unpaid bills

peering out cooly from

their plastic windowsills

with urgent time-stamped stares.

Let's laugh a laugh that resounds

above the city sounds

of taxicabs that pinball

past in seedy streets

below, a laugh that drowns

the drone of evening news

evaporating through

the plastered walls too thin

to block the mumbles of

the neighbor's TV set --

the traffic's heavily clogged

on East Magnolia St.

And then let's sing, my dear,

let's sing the sort of song

that takes the smoggy rain

of weeping city skies

[drumming the window-unit

that hangs itself outside

like wire-dangled sneakers]

and turns it into tin-roof

rain on a farmhouse night,

a soothing lullaby

to hush our wind-tossed minds

and settle us both in sleep.

And when we wake with hair

turned grey, my love, when knees

that work are a delicacy

we can no longer afford,

and our voices cannot sing

since our ears no longer hear

the soundtrack of the city --

when we cannot twirl and laugh

the way we've done before,

careening past the empty

fridge in barefoot frolic --

I hope you'll come outside

to sit with me silence

up on the fire escape,

and I will bring you tea

with almond milk -- the kind

with hint of hazelnut --

to sip while from above

we watch the youthful streets

go hustling on below.

But we are young today,

my dear, alone in a world

that makes no sense. Let's dance.

After a stint as a college athlete, Luke graduated with his BA in English and MA in teaching. He currently teaches high school English, coaches baseball, and writes on the side. Luke is planning on pursuing his MFA in the next year. His focus on poetry is to give a voice to the "least of these." 

After a stint as a college athlete, Luke graduated with his BA in English and MA in teaching. He currently teaches high school English, coaches baseball, and writes on the side. Luke is planning on pursuing his MFA in the next year. His focus on poetry is to give a voice to the "least of these." 

By Ron Riekki

To the Person Who Stole My Clothes at the Laundromat

Films

By Ron Riekki

Ron Riekki’s books include U.P. (Ghost Road Press), Posttraumatic (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle), and the upcoming My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction (Loyola University Maryland’s Apprentice House Press, 2019) and i have been warned not to write about this (Main Street Rag, 2020).  Riekki co-editedUndocumented (Michigan State University Press) and The Many Lives of The Evil Dead (McFarland), and edited And Here (MSU Press), Here (MSU Press, Independent Publisher Book Award), and The Way North (Wayne State University Press, Michigan Notable Book).  He has anthologies upcoming with Edinburgh University Press, McFarland, MSU Press, and WSU Press.

I don’t mind.  I still have my car.  That green T-shirt

was a present that I only used for weightlifting, a shirt

like a shamrock on fire.  Those socks were old.  Wait,

that’s not the right word.  Those socks were oooooold.

They owed money.  They were homeless.  Those socks

sucked.  They were sick.  You own them now.  Or they

own you.  And my underwear, well, they were dead,

pretty much cadavers, medical school corpses, sawed

up for multiple classes.  I mean, here’s my point:

there had to be a lot of choices in that ’mat.  Any—

and I mean any—of those swirling holes would’ve

held more of a treasure than my stupid circus-y pile.

But you had your choice and I am seriously happy

that you didn’t take my car.  I had a friend who had

his computer stolen and he committed suicide right

after that; I’d mentioned how they seemed linked

and someone told me I’m crazy to think that, but

there are things you can steal that can destroy lives,

and without my car, I’d lose my job.  But without

my clothes, it’s no big deal.  I just show up naked,

my boss looking at me like I’m an idiot.  And I am.

I like to watch films sometimes.

I know, I’m strange that way.

You just do things that are different.

Like I had a roommate who did LSD

so many times that he’d walk in the room

and just stand in the doorway and stare.

I’d say, “How you doin’, Jim?”

(His name wasn’t Jim in real life,

just in this fake poem.)

And he wouldn’t say anything.

He’d just stare, like he was seeing

speech come to life and walk around

the room, like the walls were having

sex with the ceiling and if he moved

it’d break their concentration.

And I’d just stare at him staring

at nothing and it was like this amazing

anti-drug campaign where all I wanted

was to be so sober that I’d feel

all my pain everyday as clear as can be.

Ron Riekki’s books include U.P. (Ghost Road Press), Posttraumatic (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle), and the upcoming My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction (Loyola University Maryland’s Apprentice House Press, 2019) and i have been warned not to write about this (Main Street Rag, 2020).  Riekki co-editedUndocumented (Michigan State University Press) and The Many Lives of The Evil Dead (McFarland), and edited And Here (MSU Press), Here (MSU Press, Independent Publisher Book Award), and The Way North (Wayne State University Press, Michigan Notable Book).  He has anthologies upcoming with Edinburgh University Press, McFarland, MSU Press, and WSU Press.

By Isabelle Doyle

Mama’s Girl

Persephone knew a thing or two about bitterness even before she was a dead girl walking. It’s one thing to be dragged into hell; it’s another to live with your mother humming in your blood and bone— to be born with a wound that her want shines through. So when Hades stole the daughter and branded her with spiders that made spirals up her thighs and ran in rings around the flowers Demeter painted on her shoulders, when he squeezed her with love until her body was blue, it was just another cage her soft skin got her in, nothing new. Hades’ mother loved him too much, too, cut the crusts off his sandwiches and made his twin-size bed, and sang him to sleep and cradled his head, and look how little good it did. Look at the person he is.

Isabelle Doyle is a fourth-year undergraduate student at Brown University, studying English and Literary Arts. Her poetry has been published in such literary magazines as Bluestem Magazine, Typo Magazine, Thin Noon, Cargoes, The Blue Pencil Online, The Round, Clerestory, and Triangle. Her full-length poetry manuscript, BABYFACE, was the 2018 recipient of the Frances Mason Harris Prize, established in 1983, which is awarded annually to a woman undergraduate or graduate student at Brown University for a book-length manuscript of poetry or prose-fiction.

27

July15, 2019

“Monday-Thursday." 

Heather Dorn has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Binghamton University where she teaches writing. Her poetry and prose can be found in The American Poetry Review, Paterson Literary Review, Ragazine, and other similar journals. Drawing and digital art has always been a creative outlet for Heather.

By Meghan Sterling'

If I Could Speak: Florida, 1996

Passing a cigarette in the parking lot,

the words of the actress echoed in your

mouth. “I’m not sorry. Are you sorry?”

I was 16 and I watched your mouth

as I waited for the right moment

to tell you that I liked girls.

You had a long sloping jaw and a space

between your front teeth, a sidelong glance

that made me feel invisible. It was a brief

friendship, and I was sorry, but because

I didn’t know how to read you.

Were you? Weren’t you?

My hand grazed yours and I felt sick

in my stomach. You didn’t flinch.

You danced in the car lights like they did in

Natural Born Killers, your long arms sweeping

up slowly toward a sky heavy with Florida

rain clouds, threatening. You were daring

it to rain, in a white button down shirt with no bra,

your breasts like car lighters about to pop

with their circular heat.

Meghan Sterling's work has been published in Driftwood Press, lingerpost, the Chronogram, red paint hill, Balancing Act, the Sandy River Review, Sky Island Journal and many others. Her chapbook, How We Drift, was published by Blue Lyra Press in the Fall of 2016. Meghan will be attending a residency at Hewnoaks Artists' Colony in September, 2019. Her work can be found at meghansterling.com.

By Meredith Cottle

Inertia

Seeking: Someone to lean against when I’m shaky.

On the green tongues of the farmers moving their

cattle and in the blue eyes of the girls kick-flipping

over one another in the schoolyard there are matches

burning like the last good firecracker, the one that

really booms. On the fingertips of every old man

strumming his banjo during breakfast on a Sunday,

and the lips of all the redshirted kids who silently

sweep half-chewed kernels off the theater floors there

is a rattle like the last leaf on a tree in November, or

my grandmother drawing her signature. It is fragile,

like most precious, useless commodities, ceramic bowls

and glass birds waiting to be smashed, like it would

be a relief from the solitude of perfection or stillness.

Seeking: Someone to smash me out of my stillness.

It aches to be the listless sprocket among others which

know how to move, even if they are not moving yet.

You feel the way they tick beneath their skin, pipe

bombs anticipating the deliverance of chaos. Maybe

your skeleton isn’t cut out for that kind of destruction.

Your bones may be uncommonly heavy, your feet

unusually firm in their fixed position; like some expert

ballerina, plié. The dancer spins alone, some concave

creature operating under its own power. An automobile

struggling up a hill when no one is around, this is a

solitary performance. There is no audience, she just

turns, waiting for someone to stop her. She just turns.

Meredith Cottle is a poet from New York studying at Binghamton University. Her work has appeared in the online magazines Ragazine and Shrew Literary Magazine, and the University of Wisconsin- Green Bay's literary journal The Sheepshead Review. In her spare time she plays guitar and collects jackets.

By Nathan Harrell

Morning’s Choir

Nathan Harrell is a self-taught poet and currently works in the finance industry to help pay for his book and ukulele habit. Nathan currently lives in Evansville Indiana with his wife and three children. 

Dawn comes slowly, stumbling in like a shoeless wino. I sit by a quiet fire, made quieter by the soft misty fog settling in like a whisper around me. I can hear my oldest son snoring in our tent nearby, his heavy breathing is mixed with the sweet trill of the warblers and the morning chorus that surrounds us. Life is rarely made up of moments that feel made specifically for your happiness, so I will sit here staring at the muted fire, drink my coffee and thank the trees for their knowledge. 

By Meredith Cottle

Hallelujah

8 minutes ‘til the cataclysm. It hits like no one expected; slow.

Strollers stop being pushed. Birds begin to fall from the sky.

The oceans float weightlessly upward. Ponytails go up like

matches. The firetrucks melt in motion. Good-byes lay

singed in the dirt. Somehow, even though there is nothing,

there is still dirt. There is no more cherry soda. Hallelujah.

Surf’s up. The trash piled, wheezing over the landfills is gone.

Storefront windows turn a sickening, blistered red. Your pants

are missing. The dog is missing. There are no more bad days.

Meredith Cottle is a poet from New York studying at Binghamton University. Her work has appeared in the online magazines Ragazine and Shrew Literary Magazine, and the University of Wisconsin- Green Bay's literary journal The Sheepshead Review. In her spare time she plays guitar and collects jackets.

26

June 15, 2019

Sean Johnson was born in Houston, Texas where she attended University of Houston. There she majored in Education and minored in Art. Though she has always been a writer, her interest in visual arts began in 2012.  Since that time she has been a featured live painter, exhibition artist, and vendor at Block Market, Black Girl Excellence, Survivor Seminar, Midtown Arts Center, and a host of other events.  Many of her works are centered on personal experiences, poems she has written, and life as a Black woman

​

Instagram: @seanjohnsonarts

Facebook.com/SeanJohnsonArts

Twitter: @seanjohnsonarts

 

Cathedrals

By Beate Sigriddaughter

A little girl hardly trusts God,

but puts her pennies on the plate at church

just in case. This cannot be discussed

with certain authorities. God is

for adults, and they are all in agreement. 

She stares at stained glass

windows spelling grace, yearning, wealth. 

How rich the churches must have been.

Later she comes to know more.

Maybe artists didn’t cost much; maybe

lives cost less, but

business was good. Any awkward woman

could be accused as witch, condemned to

confess, and her property seized. 

That of her family as well. 

The golden chalice gleams. The mystical

creations reflect the light

of the impartial sun

so purely, or of candles, rich garments,

threaded with gold. 

One woman cured a bishop with herbs, and was

so bold as to ask for payment; take that

for female wisdom. He accused her of

witchcraft and she was burned

before the payment came due. 

Sweet smoke of incense and candle wicks,

not burning flesh under the incense,

not a hint of evil intent in the clarity of blood

stained glass vision.

Sometimes she is almost certain the inquisitors,

as all religious fanatics, believed they were

serving God and the world and were serving them well. 

Gloria in excelsis deo. 

She imagines each stone paid for by the household

of a woman condemned. She shudders

and prays to be wrong. 

Here And There

By Bruce McRae

Here, life’s handiwork and idle rumblings,

solar oscillations, quantum waves in suspected ether,

the diminishing radius of what lies untouched, unseen.

Here and there, strange truths spooled and pleated,

making new mysteries from old water and fire,

we ‘carbon-based hydrogen-eaters’ gulping

at the sight of spooks and thought of spectres,

asking big questions in the small hours –

why are we? and what are we for?

Here, the full spectrum of joy and inviolable grieving,                 

filtered light trickling down from the cosmic overhang,

a thin and wearisome light, bloodshot with endless journeying,

spatiotemporal meanderings in a void sans frontiers,

every proton a miracle of misunderstanding,

all that strangeness and charm, the timeless spinning,

wheel somersaulting inside of wheel, then turning for home,

walking through the door and no one there to greet you,

every atom in your ringing soul tarnished by the perfect vacuum.

Beate Sigriddaughter, www.sigriddaughter.net, is poet laureate of Silver City, New Mexico (Land of Enchantment). Her work has received several Pushcart Prize nominations and poetry awards. New books out in 2018 are Xanthippe and Her Friends (FutureCycle Press) and Postcards to a Young Unicorn (Salador Press). 

By John Grey

FISHING VILLAGE FOG

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with well over a thousand poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are ‘The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press), ‘An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy’ (Cawing Crow Press) and ‘Like As If” (Pski’s Porch), Hearsay (The Poet’s Haven).

I’m walking through cool rising fog,

so thick, the street-lamps barely shimmer,

traffic lights foam and if I wasn’t thinking

I wouldn’t know I was here.

Boats are in and tethered.

Fishermen gather in their favorite cash-only bar.

Only the smell of the catch remains,

a fog for the nose, impossible to sniff through.

I’m making my way up the narrow sidewalk

to the home I’m renting for the season.

Night’s moving in but without the animus

of what’s rolling in.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in the Homestead Review, Harpur Palate and Columbia Review with work upcoming in the Roanoke Review, the Hawaii Review and North Dakota Quarterly.  

25.

May 15, 2019

By DF Paul

For Wong Kar Wai

DF Paul is a writer living in the Midwestern United States. He has no special qualifications to add legitimacy to his writing. His most recent work can be seen in Open Minds' Quarterly, and at Midnight Lane Boutique. A complete list of his published work can be seen at: www.dfpaul.wordpress.com

Wounded creatures live

outside measured time.

Above the after,

inside what has passed,

never in between

insight and existence.

By Evan Williams

Dead Buck: I

*Inspired by Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s Dead Doe: I*

Dead buck in the basement.

Electrical issues: no, suicide:

Maybe. Sixteen is a trap

With blue eyes and blonde hair;

Pavement gone bleary: yes

Mothers are whatever fathers say they are:

no, father—You are

whatever mother says you are: yes

Flames blazing in the Sunday heat—

A funeral: no

Cremation: yes

Muddled beauty in a crumbling roadside inn—

The commercial value of paint-stripped pillars in Perry County: low

The commercial value of painted and lacquered bars in Perry County: high

I am he: no

I am she: yes

Says the boy in defiance of educational authority,

A soul perturbed by the little nowhere

Town tumbleweeds that roam: unexplained

Boy’s tears or girl’s tears: same response

To meeting dead bucks on the school bus,

Antlers taking seats: stand

Bully destroys art project: once—shame

On Him—Bully destroys art project: twice—shame

On me—Bully destroys art project: thrice—

Pencil goes through his hand.

He’s done for, Mother,

In the most unremarkable of ways.

Evan Williams is a first year athlete the University of Chicago. He is unable to properly wind a hose, and often burns himself while lighting candles. 

By Leonora Simonovis

I Dream of Yeasty Corners

and cockroaches         our

building gulps me in

my mother screams during

a black out      there’s

an elevator but no way out           

the owl outside my window

stares   I step on white

eagle feathers    see a raven

drinking dirty water from

a rain puddle   a man

tells me about whale songs

suddenly I’m leash walking

a female wolf     she doesn’t

look at me       I tell her I’m

not her master             a chain

appears between my hand and her neck

Leonora is a Latinx writer, educator, and poet who grew up in Venezuela and currently live in San Diego, CA. She has a PhD in Literature and will be starting her MFA in Poetry at Antioch University in December. Her work has appeared in ROAR, The American Journal of Poetry, Tiferet Journal, Non-Binary Review, and Revista fron//tera, among others.

24.

April 15, 2019

By Andrew Shields

Face Paint

Andrew Shields lives in Basel, Switzerland. His collection of poems "Thomas Hardy Listens to Louis Armstrong" was published by Eyewear in 2015. His band Human Shields released the album "Somebody's Hometown" in 2015 and the EP "Défense de jouer" in 2016.

On her cheek, a crescent moon

waxes imperceptibly among

stars its light effaces.

On her other cheek, a star

wobbles infinitesimally with

its unseen planets and moons.

Scrubbed off, they wash

invisibly away

with the swirling bathwater.

By Andrew Shields

New Life Stories

It's time to tell a new life story

            to someone on a train,

a meandering tale of darker glory,

            to spin again and again.

You never know what you'll have to do,

            so have one more to share

with someone that you're handcuffed to

            about what led you there.

Andrew Shields lives in Basel, Switzerland. His collection of poems "Thomas Hardy Listens to Louis Armstrong" was published by Eyewear in 2015. His band Human Shields released the album "Somebody's Hometown" in 2015 and the EP "Défense de jouer" in 2016.

For Us

By Alexandra Kulik

We have gone separate ways.

I sit in a monk’s robe on Mt. Tremper,

pulling my breath down by the last fiber

of my umbilical cord hanging through the navel ring

you expected me to have that first time

sun eclipsed moon.

In just one month sounds warm
and flower on my tongue
ho ja ya chi …. chiri ni shiu ra, wisteria.

I walk rice cakes to the cabin, tired

bear patting a fattened belly in the morning

I wake without you in the forest

fear frog-hops out puddles and I run

to where bells are ringing.

            You watch the jellyfish rumps of women

            slime the walls and bar stools of a café
            in Havana,

wild red shoes scratch the itching skin
            of your secret underground while you’re dreaming
            Bucanero drowns your manuscript and carries it to sea.

 

I’m crawling to peak alone for once,
barefooting fanged hills, a downpour
of nails the abbott swears should cease

but I see Jesus up there with doves
at his feet and it seems he’s really

packed a lot for me.
 

            You’re entering the pregnant belly alone for once,  
            plunging into the salt world your genitals
            swimming through ghost ovaries
            and food pulp and seaweed you come
            to understand you’re a rare lordly fish
            and must not broil in the sun. (I told you this
            all along)

            my love,

I hope when the times comes

we are not torpedos splitting the Atlantic,
but tortoises toppling down hills roaming the eastern railroads.
I hope when we meet again,

billions of years from now, it will be springtime
in the universe gone to find itself

and they’ll have left a home

for us
with a quaint flower bed

and little golden bugs from the seed of time
and a place to sit and entwine and
maybe, if we think it fit, conceive
the new world.

By Andrew Shields

Detour

I missed my exit and had to take

the scenic route, but I couldn't see

a thing in the fog, not even the lake

beside the road, or a single tree.

I stopped without being sure

whether I'd reached an unknown end

or was too tired after my detour

to look around another bend.

Andrew Shields lives in Basel, Switzerland. His collection of poems "Thomas Hardy Listens to Louis Armstrong" was published by Eyewear in 2015. His band Human Shields released the album "Somebody's Hometown" in 2015 and the EP "Défense de jouer" in 2016.

By David Bankson

Untitled 

David Bankson lives in Texas. He was finalist in the 2017 Concīs Pith of Prose and Poem contest, and his poetry and microfiction can be found in concis, (b)oink, {isacoustic*}, Artifact Nouveau, Riggwelter Press, Five 2 One Magazine, and others.

I am a man who shouldn't be.

I wouldn't rise

I would never.

I would--

                        Show me how to hug without choking.

Don't look at me, the no one made of smog.

I am silence & houses of string.

Don't seek me out.

This is no game.

Nobody wins.

Nobody hides here, too.

Into the Sea

By David Bankson

there was a time when I couldn't breathe

they started sending film crew when things got too fake.

they took their spotlights there.

the worm began to tunnel,

                            where waves lap

                            forgotten memories

                            are flame dresses

                            visions of scalps, blood

                            reverse revelation --

too large for the room,

listening for ships passing in the night

to horns that sound like the fish I've seen.

"I hear drowning to death is preferable."

the ladles of logic are slipping

the house paint on the plank siding

is in curls --

I'm not a demon, but am I worth it?

power lines whipping in the dusk,

feeling that flames.

the following evening after it sank

I say: "The fish always know first."

                             but the fish have died since then.

Alexandra Kulik' work has been published in Bayou Magazine, Punch Drunk Press, Sweet Tree Review, and Black Fox Literary Magazine, among others

David Bankson lives in Texas. He was finalist in the 2017 Concīs Pith of Prose and Poem contest, and his poetry and microfiction can be found in concis, (b)oink, {isacoustic*}, Artifact Nouveau, Riggwelter Press, Five 2 One Magazine, and others.

23.

March 15, 2019

By John Stephens 

The Seedman's Watchers 

A dog gnaws at a juicy bone, and from a rock

comes the sharp chuck-chuck of a blackbird. 

The day is too dark for shadows,

and the seedsman, in his steady rhythm

slowly slices the ground hardened by time       

into a shallow, 4-by-8 pit. 

The bird lingers, as does the hound.

The seedsman hunches over his shovel, 

then knuckles the hard soil into a mound. 

How many planks does he need? 

Does good wood need linseed oil?

The neighbor hangs laundry, her tired dress 

drips like the oil off his rag. Her full body 

works like habit. Bowing his head,

he nails the planks. The leaves slip off trees,

to what is a yearn. These are not

the only things turning. The first cool gust 

of fall blows its invisible wants, 

and the seedsman fits the empty raised bed

into the pit. He looks at his wrist watch,

turns over more earth. Now, behind the glass pane,

she is bare. And he steals a long glance, intently,

continues to work, and her screen door 

slides shut like the last prayer in church. 

JOHN STEPHENS is the author of Return to the Water, (C & R Press June 2013) which was reviewed by, The Georgia Review (Dec. 20, 2013). Other published work include poems in, Stone River Sky, An Anthology of Georgia Poems (2015), Iodine Poetry Journal (2016), Amarillo Bay (2016), Stream Ticket (2016), Boston Accent (2016), Head and Hand Press (2016), Glassworks Magazine (2016) and ArLiJo (Gival Press) 2016.  John lives in Milton, Ga. and his gifts have helped to establish the Adam Stephens Night Out for Poetry at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Poetry @TECH series.

By John Stephens 

A Showers Edge

She watches a drizzle of wind turn the plastic pinwheel

of red. Her thoughts flicker like a vintage 16mm film,

where boredom jabs without making a puncture.

She steps off the porch, yanks a dress off a chair,

Reaches in the soft fabric, pulls out a Ziploc

and Zig-Zags. Droplets run down

her breasts in a rush for intimacy. She

bends, shifts, tugs the dress over her head 

rainwaters fall more and more swiftly.  

Smells the rain in her hair. Breathes out

a burst of vapor, that hangs as if nailed to a wall. 

Twirls sluggishly, Dylan turns on a cassette deck. 

Stretches out her tongue to catch the waters,

feels herself slowly being blown to dance on wet grass.

Birds on a line go mute, two cats in a ball stop

licking each other. Twigs snap, stones roll, she spins

eyes the neighbor. He takes long steps with a bottle

of whiskey, drinking the shadows of the shower.

JOHN STEPHENS is the author of Return to the Water, (C & R Press June 2013) which was reviewed by, The Georgia Review (Dec. 20, 2013). Other published work include poems in, Stone River Sky, An Anthology of Georgia Poems (2015), Iodine Poetry Journal (2016), Amarillo Bay (2016), Stream Ticket (2016), Boston Accent (2016), Head and Hand Press (2016), Glassworks Magazine (2016) and ArLiJo (Gival Press) 2016.  John lives in Milton, Ga. and his gifts have helped to establish the Adam Stephens Night Out for Poetry at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Poetry @TECH series.

By John Stephens 

Face to Face

JOHN STEPHENS is the author of Return to the Water, (C & R Press June 2013) which was reviewed by, The Georgia Review (Dec. 20, 2013). Other published work include poems in, Stone River Sky, An Anthology of Georgia Poems (2015), Iodine Poetry Journal (2016), Amarillo Bay (2016), Stream Ticket (2016), Boston Accent (2016), Head and Hand Press (2016), Glassworks Magazine (2016) and ArLiJo (Gival Press) 2016.  John lives in Milton, Ga. and his gifts have helped to establish the Adam Stephens Night Out for Poetry at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Poetry @TECH series.

Melancholy sits upon her in the blue strap-chair.

Crosses bare ankles, pulls a cigarette from under

black hair, habits have a different direction now.

Murmurs a secret to some crooked roots, removes

a load, that was a half-life. Shuts her eyes to feel

the thoughts. Gestures the neighbor, he steps the yards

sets a whiskey bottle on the table, pulls out

a Zippo, rolls the black wheel against the flint.

She does this thing lacing her hair, inhales.

He glimpses her lips, pauses for courage wants to lean in, 

to tell a truth it could have consequences for them. Instead

he hears the flutter of moths. See’s only  an empty space,

mumbles, "Would you like a drink?" She drags

the smoke, warms her lungs, "No, I drank too much last night."

Some latch keeps his head from spinning the words.

Puts his eyes to hers, eyelids hang on a ledge. Regrets

everything to everyone, now quite empty, stone idol,  

words evaporate where the drug of silence slays him.

By Shana Ross

Raccoon Attack

Shana Ross is a poet and playwright with a BA and MBA from Yale University.  She bought her first computer working the graveyard shift in a windchime factory, and now pays her bills as a consultant and leadership expert.  Since resuming her writing career in 2018, her work has been published in or is forthcoming from Anapest Journal, Anatolios Magazine, Ghost City Review, Indolent Press’ What Rough Beast project, SHANTIH Journal, Voice of Eve, and Writers Resist. 

This morning all business of busy-ness, the work of getting stuff done, fine mist of nonspecific out-of-sorts slicks everything, clings to your lungs.  Muscle through never ending list of to-do’s, resorting to things that can be crossed off free of inspiration: move forward, heave and lurch and labor: forward, onward, onward, until there’s a groove to fall into.  Sit for coffee at last, stare through the email, let your gaze wander.

Through the sliding glass door I finally see: last night things happened.

The screen door ripped, something has come into the porch.  Scrabbling hands gone through the trashcan that was tucked into a corner, upended everything.  The garbage I’d forgotten about, picked over, spread all over the slate tiles I just swept I just swept I just swept over the weekend thinking it would be nice to feel beautiful and tidy is close.

The world chips through and floods me – most snakes will vomit when faced with stress and I fixate with nausea on how very unaware I have been, blind to new chaos, impervious to probabilistic atomic decay.

                                                                                                I mean, it’s been like this, obviously.

                                                                                                                                                 It’s already done and unavoidable,          but I spent the morning blithe, saturated in the tasks of an outdated world like the tree that fell in last year’s ice storm.  Broken, tied to the taproot by a thread, it bloomed where it lay, didn’t finish dying until almost July.  Now is the joyless singing of the stomach on comfortless roller coaster, spiraling, rising, plummeting.

The raccoons have realized that my screen is as fragile as a social convention and I do not know what to do now.

the shades of depression

By Timothy OJO

depression is offering a mirror when,

you see your body entering your shadow like a receeding hairline. and you are looking for how to paint the future in the colours of bloom, yet you see doom spelt out in the corners of your room, but no, the way of doom leads home. // death is a deliverance into the soft embrace of home.

in this poem, there is;

a lost boy seeking refuge in subterfuge//

a boy crying to the meadows for rain.

[clouds give rains]

.& at the end of it all, a boy wants a truce.

but there are rotten dreams he must wade off.

there are cobwebbed cabins he must sail in bluesy waters.

a boy is lost. he seeks refuge in subterfuge.

he says a prayer, death snorts.

              //

in this poem, there is;

 a boy is creating an episode of inertia on the ball of pendulum, life girded him with. //this boy wants to be a cannonball. in a forward trajectory. a monumental piece of acceleration.

/the seventh law of motion/

perfection.

a boy recites the Lord's prayer and it jerks emptiness into him and he sees crimson as a bald man.

he gently whispers;

the way of depression leads home.

in this city is the antidote to depression, but you have to fight the city in you first.

you have to know that,

hope beckons in a mug of self-realisation.

Timothy OJO is a blue butterfly who believes that in every arid land, there is an oasis. Raised in the the swampy areas of Lagos, having survived polio at  six months of age. He is driven to get the most of life after been exposed to a lot of hurts and pains since he was a child. Writing poems gives him utmost pleasures that is unexplainable. An ardent lover of metaphors to convey his messages.

His works are up or have appeared in Kalahari reviews, Tuck magazine, Ilanot review, Penn review, Calimus journal. 
A graduate of Fisheries and Aquaculture of one of the foremost universities of technology in Nigeria.

February 15, 2019

22.

By Amirah Al- Wassif ​

As An African Child

As an African child
I crawled on mama arm
Searching for an imaginary house
Which bear me with a fancy view 
Of the coming clouds upon my head

As an African child
I jumped many times for seeing the clown
Who laugh and cry
Making jokes
Acts an excellent spy
With many children in their bed

As an African child
I saw the bitterness oon mamaface
And tried to chase
Her shadow before her cheek is wet

​

As an African child
I drew my plan on the clay pot
I insisted to fly
Asking mysun to let
The charming of justice light
And asking the darkness to rest
 

Amirah Al Wassif is a freelance writer. She has written articles,
novels, short stories poems and songs. Five of her books were
written in Arabic and many of her English works have been
published in various cultural magazines. Amirah is passionate
about producing literary works for children, teens, and adults which represent cultures from around the world. Her first book, Who do not Eat Chocolate was published in 2014 and her latest illustrated book, The Cocoa Book and Other Stories are forthcoming.

By Saoirse Nash  

Oxford Street

A Study in Chiaroscuro

By Sarah Lao 

In the firelight, mother twists in her

edges something dark. Something

lost & feral. There’s a half opened

bottle oxidizing in the spill of her

palm, & when she corkscrews the

rim, liquid murk swishes & climbs

up the curve of the neck. Something

viscous, vicious. I see her stringent

& brittle, glass blown to a breaking

point, hot iron welding over the

cracks. Her hands shake, sweat-slick,

crowded over the fire for something

like warmth, & outside, the wind is

still beating the window & the clock

on the mantelpiece is still ticking &

the fire is burning something so hot

I feel cold.  

Sarah Lao is a sophomore at the Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Georgia. She currently serves as a first reader at Polyphony HS and as an editor for Evolutions Magazine.

caught the last train home,

oxford street crawled with the

usual suspects, cockroaches,

rats, ghosts of high school's past lurk down side streets.

rose bushes looked more thorn

than flower and yellow street light

looked more accusing than even

the glass littered pavement,

either way all the concrete seemed

to know.

and all my friends are medication-made

lightweights, drunk through weak days

and weekends,

suffering no less madness,

though, maybe suffering less.

and at no point have I been able to escape

the hand crafted macho bravado

taught like alphabet to pre-schoolers,

at no point do we exist without walls,

the agricultural revolution of fence

and captivity extended not just to land

but into soul,

now, we do not know freedom in our hearts.

and oxford street crawled,

beaufort street crawled,

the gay bar was full of straights,

and I was worried I didn't look gay enough,

like it mattered, like i should care,

like i could look anything other than bisexual

and still the men grabbed me,

and I had to force myself to be angry,

had to remind myself my body is my own,

and that i am not a rag doll,

had to remind myself to care about my life,

that I have to live in it tomorrow,

and still the streets crawled,

like my skin,

like my history,

like my misfiring, miss-signalling brain.

tomorrow they will paint over the graffiti

on the apartments outside my work,

and it will hurt in the strangest fashion.

Saoirse Nash is a performance poet, freelance events organiser and publisher from Perth, Western Australia. She is a co-coordinator at Spoken Word Perth and has performed at events around the country including twice at the National Young Writer’s Festival, sold out Fringe Show “Star Crossed Poetry” as well as backyard gigs, open mics and feature events in her own city. Saoirse’s beliefs about love, life and joy are coloured through an anarchistic lens and she believes that life is enriched most through compassion and community. 

21.

By Yvonne Higgins Leach

Middle Seat 

In the aluminum tube 
with recycled air circulating,
we find our spaces 
and shove our possessions
overhead or underfoot.
One of us shoulders the window,
another the open aisle,
and I in the middle seat
graze each of you unintentionally
in my attempt to settle in.

​

You, young one, to my left
EarPods in, lean your forehead 
on the frame and close your eyes. 
You, at my right, pull out a thick document
and begin highlighting key sentences. 

The thrum of engines,
the horizon flashing by,
the impetus to lift toward sky—
self-propelled and exposed 
out toward our destination. 
As we slice through the blue air
and over the silver-studded hills,
I will never know whether
you are coming or going,
if you have family you like
and some you don’t,
or your take on God, 
if you have one.

Even in the moment 
of turbulence, we look
straight ahead. 

Yvonne earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Washington State University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Poetry from Eastern Washington University. Over the years, Yvonne has been published in literary magazines and anthologies in the United States. Her work has appeared in Cimarron Review, Clare Literary Magazine, Crack the Spine, Fogged Clarity, Former People, Ramingo’s Porch, Reed Magazine, Rocky Mountain Revival, South Carolina Review, South Dakota Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Suisun Valley Review, and Wisconsin Review, among others. Her first collection of poems, Another Autumn, was published in 2014 by WordTech Editions.                 

January 15, 2019

By Fabrice B. Poussin​

Farewell to His Snow

It will be a few flakes
it always is so soon to burn
in a flash of lightning
through the open door. 

​

The fire rages in the hearth
blinding in the semi darkness
of a room we all know    
when winter says time to sleep.

​

Reeds collected from fall
now fashioned into baskets
soon to adorn each mantle
of every room of the mansion. 

​

skin broken from the cold without gloves
blood trickles with the rhythm of a dying age
unforgiving to the one who works this Earth
comforting with the peace of snowy days.

​

A few flakes will fall
but the air does not know
the sun setting does not care
it will be time to rest again soon.  

​

The fireplace will muster the heat
of the logs freshly cut
under the light natural, the cotton blanket 
and a heavy book of old. 

​

He will have another sip of his drink
close his eyes, and rock on the wobbly bench
rub the sore fingers as he does every night
and smile as he winks to the soul of a happy day.

The basket is alive
a shape of his making
for two hearts to find healing
next to the other small for the little ones.

​

The streams whisper as they come to a halt
obscurity crawls behind the light 
he says not a word and takes a deep breath 
warm from the home-brewed cider. 

​

Now to deep infinity he looks
the hands of time softly lift him
to let his gentle thoughts find peace
sweet dreams old man sweet dreams. 
 

Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and dozens of other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications. 

Paris

By Teesta 

Teesta is currently a student at the University of Pennsylvania pursuing a Bachelor of Arts. She writes both poetry and prose, and has had work published in the Case Reserve Review. Her love for nature and her heritage strongly influences her writing, in addition to a general love for the world and its people.

And its grey-beige walls and grey-blue roofs

And her feet on soil, so fragrant so rich

And the dusty, vine-entwined merchant’s house

She saw him, she saw him, she saw him

Paris​

Outside it rained, warm from the precocious heat of August

Drenched arms running clear with raindrops

Feet pounding the pavement up and down

Street signs the same, withering straight down the torrential downpour

Cheeks two quivering leaves

Paris

He tried it all, he tried being it all

            I want to find myself so I came to Paris

One

Two

Three

Paris 

One. Two. Three.

          Just be.

December 15, 2018

20.

By Kate LaDew

when they translated the bible into eskimo it was jonah who suffered most of all

first from god who clearly didn’t like the cut of his gib

and then the inuit themselves, who promptly shut the book and would have none of it.

what hope is there for a man who waits in the dark complaining instead of falling on his knees,

thanking whatever in the sky blessed him with an entire whale of his own,

blubber up to his ears?

there are bad men at the top

By Kate LaDew

twirling their mustaches

so I bolt all the doors,

check the alarm three times

hide under the covers

from all those husbands with daughters

(sisters too) all those good - swear it! - good good guys

with their big eyes big hands big teeth

the better to you rule you with

checking the closet one last time the man inside smiles

 fancy meeting you here

when he’s done he puts on his blazer, knots his tie

straightens his flag pin and reaches into the closet,

throwing a coat hanger my way

don’t say I never gave you anything

By Kate LaDew

there's a long silence,

and it’s the salt-wind in our hair, the sand in our sneakers,

the crisp hiss of a bottle of coke cracked and shared,

and I sigh, your eyes soaked with hope turn up to me

never could say no, not to one thing you ever wanted even if it killed me, you, both of us

you buy some Jack, some other guy smiling up from the ID,

ice at the liquor store with the neon lady on the sign flashing OPEN like a promise

another long silence, shaky, tight breaths and my lashes fluttering, slipping closed

your teeth on your bottom lip and the silence breaks with the sound out of you,

a grinding sound like an engine left still through the winter,

struggling to break over into a scream,

blood on my legs, blood like a fight, blood like a whisper, whimper in the dark

and it’s finally done and I don’t know how long I’ve got you but you’ve got me

Kate LaDew is a graduate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a BA in Studio Art.  She resides in Graham, NC with her cats, Charlie Chaplin and Janis Joplin.

By Hugh Giblin

Brothers

I saw him coming down the street,

right away, I knew he was going to hit on me,

He did, dread-locked, dark clothes, high,

He had on a black stocking cap,

dressed in the uniform of the homeless.

It was the usual prelude: “How you doing man?”

“Good”, “Good, say man, could you help me out?”,

“all I need is a dollar to get me a room tonight”

I knew that was all standard bullshit,

but I was more bemused than annoyed.

He showed me is homeless ID

as that legitimized him somehow.

“You're high right now” I said,

“you're going to get a bottle.”

I said it matter of fact, no judgment.

“No man, no man, I'm not high”

I usually blow off these guys with a “sorry man”

give them a shrug and walk down the street.

I knew I was making the mistake by talking to him,

now we were in a dialog, a relationship.

“All I've got is a twenty and I'm not giving you that”

He lit up, put his arm around me, the hustle touch.

He took out a roll of dollar bills

His life's fortune for that night,

and put them in my hand.

I laughed, “what, you got change?”

He gave me the roll, he had eight dollars.

I knew that this was the time to leave,

but my brain wasn't talking to my feet

and I liked the guy, thought what the hell.

“Walk me to my car”, I said.

He didn't hesitate, we went down the street

like two men on a mysterious mission.

He stood respectfully back on the sidewalk

while I went thru the glove compartment

and came up with four singles.

When I gave it to him, his eyes grew moist,

“I appreciate it man, I really appreciate it”,

“You could have driven off on me

but instead you take care of me”

I told him it was okay and shook his hand.

He showed me his card again, “my name is Elvis”

He laughed, “yeah, look Elvis P. Lewis, Elvis!”

“the P. is for Prescott”. He said it with a certain pride.

His identity card, his only connection to society.

I was trying to dispatch myself now, but he persisted,

“I really appreciate it man, you took care of me”.

He was liquor-earnest, grateful, emotional.

Passerby’s were watching our little drama,

race always conjuring up a provocative plot.

I started to turn, “take care of yourself” I said.

“You took care of me” he hugged me,

“You my brother man, my brother”

Despite the liquor, the sentimentality of it all,

I felt, somewhere deep down, he meant it.

He stood on the curb waving goodbye,

as I drove away toward the expressway

his voice and words stayed with me,

as I drove home on I-40,

“You my brother man, my brother”.

Hugh is originally from Chicago. He considers himself  an activist and some of his poems reflect his political views. He had a feature investigative article published in a national magazine. Hugh has published poetry online and in local literary journals and has had two plays produced locally as well.

November 15, 2018

19.

By Brigid Hannon

Flowerbox

I plant flowers in cheap dirt and pray for miracles

like raindrops and sun

but the ground freezes over again and I am reminded

that this is Buffalo and I should know better

than to get my hopes up like the vines

of the morning glories I try to bring to life

despite rocky soil and poor climate.

I don’t know excitement,

because I can never muster it,

no thanks to tiny pills that run my body for me

because it is too tired to run itself. 

I look for joy in these little seedlings,

but find myself disappointed

when nothing remains but dirt.

By Daniel B. Summerhill

Ecdysis

Space between

           his shoulders

makes a mosaic

           brown, bloody

         and the kind of pink

that reveals itself

on playgrounds after

             jumping from the swing

in midair.

             Don't scratch:

Instruction,

            how his skin

was didactic,

             showing each reader

the differences

             in terrain, be it

vast dry land

             or tropical from the way

fingernails wrecked

            the ecosystem.

Calamine in palms,

             Oatmeal in water,

him singing praise

            to them both,

despite genetics

             telling him to shed.

Brigid Hannon is a writer and caregiver from Buffalo, NY. She is currently digging through twenty years of writing looking for pieces for possible publication, and has likely fallen asleep at her desk. She can be found at https://hamneggs716.wordpress.com and on Twitter
@stagequeen.

Daniel B. Summerhill is a poet and performance artist from Oakland, CA. Currently an MFA candidate at Boston’s Pine Manor College, Daniel has performed and taught guest workshops and lectures throughout the U.S, Europe, and South Africa. He has published two collections of poems Crafted and Brown Boys on Stoops and has been asked to perform at Ted Talk and Def Jam Poetry with Danny Simmons. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Pine Hills Review, Cosmonauts Avenue and The Voice among others.

By Lydia Flores

The Prose of a Puss Filled Poetic Wound

Lydia Flores is from Harlem, New York. She is a Writographer *(writer & photographer) and a multitude of mysteries. Her work has been featured in Kettle Blue Review, Rising Phoenix Review, Deaf Poets Society, Visceral Brooklyn, & several others. A full collection and other surprises are forthcoming. Find her at inlightofmysoul.com

Weeping sore head between my knees somewhere there is a cloud swelling like a womb but my prayers have gone up seven times over and have seen nothing my lips are quivering with my tongue penning petitions to the God of this Israel. the hardest part about writing this is the nonfiction of it. a lot of people wonder how poems are made, for some a stanza comes speaking in the voice of prophet Elisha and others the paint of blood that spills.

Skin is the color of shame and I do not mean the primary colors in the rainbow of social justice crawling across the sky in the aftermath of a Katrina or the passing bill in congress that they don’t know is document full of grenades. it is always raining somewhere. 

This poem is just trying to find its way home.

Home is Puerto Rico even though I was not born there.

Sometimes, home is where your blood clots.

My mother talked to me in Spanish and I answered in English.

My tongue still is grief with an accent.

I am sitting on cold concrete in North Carolina having stolen someone’s Wi-Fi whose fate lies in the battle of net neutrality. I am straddling a fence of being homeless and waiting for a door to open. Well, aren’t we all in want and waiting? anticipating. warranting.

There is no point to this poem except the exclamation of truth hovering like a dagger. & I can bleed here. because the best place be vulnerable is at the feet of Jesus or the emptiness and ear of the page.

My memories are still in bereavement and some say that I am hard to get to know, but no one has owned that I am worth it though. In the onion of it, how at the peeling of it, I either make people cry or make them want to die and I do not mean in the suicide sense of it. There are multi dimensions of death and I didn’t lose my best friend to the badged bullet of it.

Comfort tries to make trauma summarizeble and my heart, the real, bloodied, vessel thing,

is a dissertation of stillborn joy.  & I don’t know what else but here is the truth.

poetry is peeled fruit &

what gives a knife it’s power?

the sharpness of its blade or its intent?

By Daniel B. Summerhill

Shakespeare Teaches a Lesson on Loyalty

They never made me read Shakespeare or Blake,

and if I wanted to, i’d have to ride my bike through

a couple cities to find the nearest copy. My cannon-

MTV, the way Pac used alternative rhyme and ATCQ

re-imagined narrative. Brenda and her baby, my mother

and I, six girls on our block have no idea who Ophelia

is or how they become synonyms every time a razor

slit reveals itself. Still-  every time I sit in literature class,

I feel my body rebel. My mind sets sail to 1998, the first time

I heard Midnight Marauders, Q-Tip was spittin’ a crazy

sixteen that shook my body electric. Its current, my canon-

considered to be the most important and influential.

Daniel B. Summerhill is a poet and performance artist from Oakland, CA. Currently an MFA candidate at Boston’s Pine Manor College, Daniel has performed and taught guest workshops and lectures throughout the U.S, Europe, and South Africa. He has published two collections of poems Crafted and Brown Boys on Stoops and has been asked to perform at Ted Talk and Def Jam Poetry with Danny Simmons. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Pine Hills Review, Cosmonauts Avenue and The Voice among others.

18.

October 15, 2018

By Nathaniel Meals

Open and Away

Nathaniel Meals recently earned an MFA in fiction from Bowling Green State University. He's been awarded a Devine Fellowship, as well as worked as an assistant editor for the Mid-American Review.

His open palm was bloated with the mud of disuse.

I broke away from the shake too soon.

We moved into open space, my limbs lost.

Loose within himself, he made away with all.

Then doors opening into closet darknesses

as I clutch a lighter and look away

wondering what open books lay buried

in the scum of memory. He has gone away,

only I remain, open-mouthed in the open air, tobacco-tongued

by cigarette smoke pulled wayward in wind edging

north through night. This openness is

a way for us to watch all that we have lost

bind itself to distant moments, openly, overly—

like a hand flattened by non-movement and the one-way arrow of time.

Surnames

By Mukund Gnanadesikan

Mukund Gnanadesikan is a physician, poet, and novelist who lives in Napa, CA. His work has been published or is forthcoming in the anthology Sheets: For Men Only, Adelaide Literary Magazine, The Ibis Head Review, Tuck Magazine, and The Cape Rock Review.

Little boy stares

At ornate lettering

On gold-embossed nameplate

Asks me origin of surname

Saying it is unfamiliar

To his vision and his ear

And I know he means

The words I heard before

“What are you?”

But he asks

With tact and curiosity

And so I answer

That I was born here

Of parents hailing from subcontinent

Far away and dimly understood

By spectators who see exoticism

In my brown skin

And despite absence of intonation

Smell turmeric and ginger

In my aura.

The Jourdan Boulevard

By Carter Vance

Slipping between the broken paving stone,
shoes bleating a harried rhythm in rubber,
I move visibly, sallowed,
as a humbled painter,
staring blankly at the unblemished canvas
of even time:

coming through clearly, loud,
coming through in found feather ambiance,
the ego of lazy weekend wanders coming back
as united strumming on
bending jazz break corners.

The tuba honks in Metro
underpass drew a line
with pathway’s depth on
gold flake etching of what
it was in pas march to
dead hot wire, imperial
fantasia and the rest of
it.

There isn’t some idle hope
here: I’d be lying
to take it further, in shade of
wishing wells, giving trees.

Carter Vance is a student and aspiring poet originally from Cobourg, Ontario, currently studying at Carleton University in Ottawa. His work has appeared in such publications as The Vehicle, (parenthetical) and F(r)iction, amongst others. He received an Honourable Mention from Contemporary Verse 2's Young Buck Poetry Awards in 2015. His work also appears on his personal blog Comment is Welcome.

By Mukund Gnanadesikan

Pinwheels

Patriotic toy

Decorated

In stars and bars

Spinning under influence

Of quixotic winds

Now clockwise

Now reversed in motion

Planted firmly

In the front yard

Remnant of a life

Cut off in service

Of beloved Uncle Sam

Duct tape testifies

To multiple repairs

Still they stand

Twirling in silence

Mukund Gnanadesikan is a physician, poet, and novelist who lives in Napa, CA. His work has been published or is forthcoming in the anthology Sheets: For Men Only, Adelaide Literary Magazine, The Ibis Head Review, Tuck Magazine, and The Cape Rock Review.

By Steve Deutsch

Untethered

By Benjamin D. Bresee

Interminable Winter

We all knew something

was not quite right with Mike.

What sprang from his mouth

had him spending more time

in the Principal’s office

than in the classroom

and angered the older kids,

who would periodically lay him out

in schoolyard beatings.

1967,

the year we turned 16,

he climbed the fifty-foot maple

just outside the Post Office

and neither his father’s threats

nor his mother’s tears

could convince him to come down.

The fly-catchers got him

and took him upstate

to the red-brick asylum

on the river.

Mike told me once

he felt as if he had left

all solid ground behind.

“On good days I was drowning—

sea-slimed and salted

on a relentless ocean.

On bad days I fell through the sky

like a kite some distracted child

had let fly off

to be steered untethered

by a sorcerer’s wind.

I fell and rose,

and fell again.”

He got worse after he returned—

though I didn’t stay to watch

his downward spiral.

I see Mike now and again

downtown.

He lives in the half-way house

at the bottom of Gray’s Hill

and runs errands for a local restaurant.

We sometimes reminisce

for a moment or two

on the busy sidewalk.

Gentled now by the years,

he always has a kind word

and asks about old friends

while I search his weary face

for the child I once knew.

Some say it is frail; must be handled with a delicate touch.  If it crumbles under any pressure, it wasn't love.  It isn't the fire, nor the kindling.  Ashes don't mean there was never warmth.  It stands the test of time.  We always find a way, to keep warm.

In the winter, I always remember the times when we burned

I remember laying

in a dead man's clothes,

looking out a locked window

at your light, and wondering

if you kept it on for me. 

Lying among the other vagrants

with nothing but a head full of ash

and an empty pit

I'd push the scattered remains around

to resemble the songs we played. 

I burned with self hatred,

and longed for the warmth

I'd lie to myself

and say you'd wait til spring.

​

Steve Deutsch lives with his wife Karen--a visual artist, in State College, PA.  He writes poetry and the blog: stevieslaw@wordpress.com.  His recent publications have been in Gravel, Literary Heist, Nixes Mate Review, Third Wednesday, Misfit Magazine, Word Fountain, Eclectica Magazine, The Drabble,  and The Ekphrastic Review. In 2017, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His Chapbook, “Perhaps You Can,” will be published next year by Kelsay Press.

By Madeleine Gallo

that don't rhyme

Benjamin D. Bresee is a father of a 2 yr old and is a grocery manager.  He writes things as he walks to work, and around his small city of Binghamton N.Y.  He sometimes posts them to his Instagram page, and has been published a few times in online magazines, but mostly an admirer of the art- he'll tell you it saved his life.

he told her the night after he dismantled the crib

when he stashed the toys into the closet

and folded the booties

under the nightgown she had worn to the ER

he found her curled like a shrimp next to the baby monitor

which for a month now had recorded silence

still every night she spoke lullabies to the empty wavelengths

and he wished her song into something classical

something with a melody

to follow the caesura –

a rhyme transcending unmetered memory

Madeleine Gallo is currently a graduate student at Wake Forest University. Her work has appeared in Susquehanna Review: Apprentice Writer, Fermata, Sun and Sandstone, Belle Reve Literary Journal, The Pylon, Sigma Tau Delta Review, Into the Void, Litro, and Rattle. After graduation, she plans to pursue a PhD in Contemporary American Poetry.

17.

By Beate Sigriddaughter

Ten Cents

I found a dime in the dirt

by the mailboxes down the hill

day before yesterday.

I had a teacher once who was

so brimful of integrity, she said

to leave even a penny on the street

because it wasn't mine. Soon

afterwards I found a dollar

and passed it along

to a panhandler, telling him

I'd found it anyway. "You are

lucky," he said, and I agreed.

As for me, I also believe

if you put a leaf in the river

and watch it dance along

the current toward the distant sea,

you may well believe you changed

the world, but you didn't.

That world put you there

that moment with that leaf

and those hands, and that

precise excitement in your heart.

A child explained this

to me once, and he was right.

Beate Sigriddaughter, www.sigriddaughter.com, is poet laureate of Silver City, New Mexico (Land of Enchantment), USA. Her work has received several Pushcart Prize nominations and poetry awards. New books out in 2018 are Xanthippe and Her Friends (FutureCycle Press) and Postcards to a Young Unicorn (Salador Press).

By Anurak Saelaow

Weltschmerz

As it always is: language disguising language,

rinsing out yesterday’s espressos from the glass,

imploring us to come back in. I scrape a chair

along the parquet like a surly husband.

Having swiveled though the great ballet

of things, one ankle grazes another

in a foreign spasm of tenderness.

This guise, this throat, a vacant

portrait of sky sloping backwards through

the window. I didn’t know what to make of it.

When the water boiled and sense

fogged through the unit — when the form

of this kitchen, clean and enfolded,

spoke back — we put off the decision.

I think of the nestling’s flight, a hydrant

in full display. There is no taking back.

Anurak Saelaow is a Singaporean poet and writer. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Hayden's Ferry Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Eunoia Review, and Ceriph Magazine, amongst other places. He is the author of one chapbook, Schema (The Operating System, 2015), and holds a BA in creative writing and English from Columbia University.

CREMATORIUM:

By Phil Capitano

dead

bones rise

in ashes,

furnace spews clouds

smelling putrid smoke,

tongues consume bodies all,

aeolian whispers fan

Varanasi’s fierce appetite,

prayer flags wave like a wick of hope

while the ruddy Ganges silently flows.

Phil Capitano has been writing poetry, short stories and essays for decades and his work has appeared in anthologies, magazines and newspapers. Recently, he was awarded Third Prize in the Poetry Institute of Canada’s nation-wide contest for 2017 and his first book of poetry called Roses On The Moon was released in the same year. Phil enjoys music, reading, sports and other outdoor activities. He has three daughters and resides in Huntsville, Ontario with his wife Debbie.

September 14, 2018

Chief of Stuff

By Anurak Saelaow

Paced through the modern wing

of that Chicago museum, pausing

to see sleek bronze caught in flight:

golden pen, contoured dart

soaring through flesh and stone

and page, the unending edge

of Loy’s inaudible word pushed

up against the threshold.

Pearly tongues of fire waiting

in the doorway to greet you.

One of many, in fact: a bauble

or a babble. Regardless.

A multitude, more or less —

ranks and divisions of the hoard.

Observe how each shifty piece

clamors from the margin,

nipping for attention. 2I bound

and rush like a shaggy dog

gathering burrs in the field.

So many and yet so many

left unpicked, little black words

moldering on their placards.

How many steps from door

to door? How many eyes?

The dog bounds the way

the pen swerves or the golden

bird shoots haphazardly up,

never taking back. It laps

with its tongue at the faucet,

waiting for the river’s edge.

Anurak Saelaow is a Singaporean poet and writer. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Hayden's Ferry Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Eunoia Review, and Ceriph Magazine, amongst other places. He is the author of one chapbook, Schema (The Operating System, 2015), and holds a BA in creative writing and English from Columbia University.

By Anurak Saelaow

Hymn

The steepness of the sink, the lamp, the sunk

spiral of the bamboo-plant — these unwise props

blocked and set, furnishing the steady drip

of our days. Was there ever a moment where,

towel-clad and sighing, basking on the plaster

balcony, we felt the tickle of coming wisdom?

I can’t recall what I saw, exactly: a sun-spot

shaped like a laden ox. A tale without a head.

An omen came prancing above the shoreline

of our view, urging us to make peace with

the absurd solidity of things. A coming

wake of air rapped like a fist on the rampart,

disturbing our Eanna. I prayed for a thought

to glide through the window like a sprinkle.

Anurak Saelaow is a Singaporean poet and writer. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Hayden's Ferry Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Eunoia Review, and Ceriph Magazine, amongst other places. He is the author of one chapbook, Schema (The Operating System, 2015), and holds a BA in creative writing and English from Columbia University.

Laundry Cycles

By Alyssa Trivett

Birdcage rattles and coffee cup floats

as laundry cycles

and my misplaced alien ship socks

show up looking for their doppelganger

lost amongst the house,

perhaps in a nook-and-cranny of

the puke-orange green sofa

inherited from grandmother’s,

the one the cat fancies.

We clock tick on through

with the day.

Alyssa Trivett is a wandering soul from the Midwest. She chirps down coffee while scrawling lines on the back of gas station receipts. Her work has recently appeared at In Between Hangovers, Apricity Magazine and The Rye Whiskey Review.

16.

August 13, 2018

The Day My Heart Skipped a Beat

By Adam Levon Brown 

Teetering on the precipice

of hazy darkness that is

memory

I sparsely remember

the time we interlocked

fingers on the bridge

at Jefferson Park

For once, my heart

was at ease and I didn't

have these blood seeking

impulses

It's not your fault

that things faltered,

I am just tainted

beyond salvation

Go with the light

and save me the darkness;

It is where I belong.

Adam Levon Brown is an internationally published author, poet, amateur photographer. He is Founder, Owner, and editor in chief of Madness Muse Press. He has had poetry published hundreds of times in several languages,

along with 2 full collections and 3 chapbooks.

He also participates as an assistant editor at Caravel

Literary Arts Journal

Phoenix in Chains

By Adam Levon Brown 

Your words set

me ablaze

as I am the kindling

you threw in the fire

to keep you warm

The winter months

of rumination came

fast and violent

You had no choice

but to sacrifice your

only loved one

to keep the demons at bay

From the ashes, I will

gather what strength

is left and use my

fiery corpse to

keep you warm

for but one more night.

Adam Levon Brown is an internationally published author, poet, amateur photographer. He is Founder, Owner, and editor in chief of Madness Muse Press. He has had poetry published hundreds of times in several languages,

along with 2 full collections and 3 chapbooks.

He also participates as an assistant editor at Caravel

Literary Arts Journal

Peace in Places Unknown

By Adam Levon Brown 

Caught in a maelstrom

of sadness and grief

No longer able to tell

how exactly I feel

prolonged numbness

leads to death of tissue

The same can be said

about emotions

As Buoyant blackness

encompasses my broken being

I can see the light

but I no longer wish

to reach it

I have become accustomed

to living inside the eye of the storm

Adam Levon Brown is an internationally published author, poet, amateur photographer. He is Founder, Owner, and editor in chief of Madness Muse Press. He has had poetry published hundreds of times in several languages,

along with 2 full collections and 3 chapbooks.

He also participates as an assistant editor at Caravel

Literary Arts Journal

By Gus Knobbe

Damselflies

I saw your face in a photograph

And felt nothing

It’s only a hazy memory, like

An old blurry film

Of an ancient sunlit forest

With meandering streams

And in the distant background

Soft piano music plays

Oh God, the piano music,

As when our hands danced

Together across the ivory

Like courting damselflies

And our dance turned to

Embraces, those hallowed nights

Drowning in each other’s arms

But those nights turned

Drunken, and cruel

And still it is a blur to me

Why did our words turn from loving melodies?

To dull ramblings, to lashing claws?

We wept to the stars and the cold moon

Praying for solace, for an cure

For this addictive venom, caustic and sweet

That we sewed into each other’s veins

In the end, we let ourselves die

Like a wounded animal in the street

I saw your face in a photograph

And felt nothing

Because that’s all I can afford to feel

Burning Summer

By Glenn Pearl

When I threw the cat off the porch,

It kept the skin from my shirtless back.

Where its claws held, bright lines grew.

Retribution, I thought.  How many times

Have I tried to throw you out of this poem?

Dead afternoons.  Dead streets.  Brittle

And browned grass, prickly under bare feet.

After I set the woods on fire, my father jabs

A knee into my butt each step up the stairs

To my room.  Later, we play catch.  Later,

I am the eye in a black and ashen circle

Of trees.  Later, I join Cub Scouts.  We learn

Fire safety.  A boy tells a story of stolen

Matches and not listening to his mother.

Later, I learn cities are on fire.  Marshmallows

Burned from their sticks.  Ghostly black

Birds, spitting sparks, drift into the night.

On a swing a boy wings earthward.  Always,

Earthward.  I have learned the secret of

Bobbing for apples.  I drive down one now

To the bottom edge of our Den Mother’s

Black speckled roaster.  Broken fruit flowers

From my mouth.  No one is faster.  Godzilla

Dreamily wades through Tokyo Bay, given

To the fragrant crackle of high-voltage wires.

Glenn Pearl lives in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, where he is employed as an administrative assistant at a trauma-informed therapy practice.  The appearance of his poetry in this issue marks the first publication of his work in a major literary outlet. 

Lost Son Haibun

By Jules Henderson

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. T.S. Eliot

The day I left I took my half of the estate. It was April, and the forsythia were flaunting their riotous display of yellow flowers. You warned I would get lost. Said I’d be nothing but a thrush in a wood full of songbirds. In a distant country I carried out my wild living: Traded my words for an audience with the white queen. Bartered my memory to feel the weightlessness of forgetting. Surrendered an eye to see the face of God, just once. I laid with women and I laid with men. Hawked my crown to buy their love till vice gave way to famine—bleaching miles of colonized coral, scorching scores of ripened vines, cracking even the skin of the sky. You said when this happened I should ask for the time. Study the sun’s position on the horizon. Begin the slow march south.

For days, I rehearsed what I would say—Forgive me for I have sinned against you and against Heaven. I do not deserve to be called your son. And you would know the hour of my arrival. You’d beat the ceremonial drum to signal my return. Dress me in the finest robe and call me worthy. Put a ring on my finger and call me beautiful—call me beloved. At the edge of the wood I stood with feet bloodied and swollen from coursing through miles of thicket and bramble. Arms weak and wrists dangling. Eyes sunken. Heart malnourished. Found myself in the clearing where as a child I hauled fantasies in a red wagon through rows of lavender, never once imagining my world would lose its shine. And in that stillness I thought, when I get back, I better find you all dancing.

Fetch the fatted calf—

I was lost, but now am found;

blind, but now I see.

Acts of Devotion

By Jules Henderson

Jules Henderson is a Writing MFA candidate at the University of San Francisco where she studies under D.A. Powell, Bruce Snider, Brynn Saito, and Rachel Richardson. Her work has appeared at the Paradise Review, Bookends Review, The Social Poet, The Drunken Odyssey, and in Words Fly Away, a collection of poems that address the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

At that time, I was praying in tongues and eating spoonfuls of honey. I waded daily through muddied rivers, placing coins in the mouths of the dead as payment for crossing. You were my kind, I was certain. And I kept moving, flanked all the while by beasts of disease, hunger, and fear. When I found you I would tell you of the nights I spent at the mercy of the Guilty Joys. How they cackled as they claimed my radiance for themselves. How I thought of you even then and knew to press on.

Streets were vacated. Entire cities were emptied. Outlying towns poured themselves into canyons and dissolved into valley walls. You’d have thought the stars would be easier to see but none felt compelled to shine. When all went black I conjured your flame (not knowing your face), and at the sight of the faintest spark you saved the spirit from the grave. You were far but

I could see you. In

a world unlit, I glimpsed your

light and carried on.

Legs

By Matt Nagin

These legs could save a floundering ship,

heal a doomed saint, whip up gallantry

from the craven and debilitated, start fires

and get eagles to soar backwards towards

moonlight broken and days shattered like

a plate, and these legs can talk filthy, rearrange

the furniture, inspire deception, solve absurd

riddles, make you forgive your father and keep

the economy running while putting kids with

cancer into remission; but most of all these legs

remind us—we zombies in an alien land—

of the reason we started up with all this clamoring

and stirring and working diligently towards an

unseen goal as we die every moment we wade

more completely into the paradox of achievement.

Matt Nagin’s poetry has been published in Antigonish Review, Dash Literary Journal, The Charles Carter, Grain Magazine and Arsenic Lobster, among other markets. His first poetry collection, "Butterflies Lost Within The Crooked Moonlight," was released in 2017, and has obtained very strong reviews. More info at mattnagin.com.

By Emily Strauss 

Black Rabbits on Snow

15.

the futility of hiding–
they sit in plain view

black fur sleek

​

             in the open

​

magnified by leafless trees
painting shadows on white
                        drifts

​

           rabbits exposed–

they watch, brown eyes alert
as the dogs sniff

                                    then lunge–

they can only flee
     toward the dark humus
            by the frozen stream

the black patch 
     under the elms

​

feeling the hot teeth of the chase 
                        behind them

they are unfit in winter
not being snowshoe hares

Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry, which she has written since college. Over 400 of her poems appear in a wide variety of online venues and in anthologies, in the U.S. and abroad. She is a Best of the Net and twice a Pushcart nominee. The natural world of the American West is generally her framework; she also considers the narratives of people and places around her. She is a retired teacher living in Oregon.

July 15, 2018

Editing Room 

By James Croal Jackson

Evenings in the video lab laughing at ourselves acting in

perpetual circles the clicks of play and rewind in a dialogue

with eternity rectangular how to zoom into self with microscope

both of us learning but look at you now in the fighter jet

sky tethered to wirings of small precise instruments of war how

we live in the perpetual unknowing state of    I want you always

to come home even not to me because back then 

every small moment was contained in its forever

James Croal Jackson is the author of The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017). His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Columbia Journal, Hobart, FLAPPERHOUSE, and elsewhere. He edits The Mantle from Columbus, Ohio. Find more at jimjakk.com.

By Emily Strauss 

Watering as a kind of faith...

for seeds to rise from bare dirt

the dry wash filled with dead branches

            palo verde couldn't wait

for the stars to align and show us a wetter path

            spring to warm, artemesia to green

a night-blooming cereus that opens once

            an agave sprouts a 25-foot flower spike

waiting for the end of another drought

with parched mouths open to random drops

this act to supplant the rains that fail to arrive

            when we won't need to water again

the futility of saving the forest one bucket at a time

            visible among thin trunks and dry needles:

watering as a kind of faith that no longer holds true

Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry, which she has written since college. Over 400 of her poems appear in a wide variety of online venues and in anthologies, in the U.S. and abroad. She is a Best of the Net and twice a Pushcart nominee. The natural world of the American West is generally her framework; she also considers the narratives of people and places around her. She is a retired teacher living in Oregon.

bathroom noises from the apartment upstairs

By Sarah Valeika

another cough suppressant

on the shelf rattles

as he bangs the

mirror, throttles a dixie

cup,

dixie girl curlers sputter

one by one

off the cabinet-top

hopping into the ground

where safety

lies in pools of purple

cough suppressant

dribble.

dixie girl curls her fingers around

a bottle of exfoliating

scrub and rubs her other

hand around her hip, ink-

dark eyes hiding in the

sink drain staring up

at her, as she wets a cloth

to clean it all

away.

​

​

Sarah Valeika is a poet whose works have been featured in Dying Dahlia Review, Breadcrumbs, Eunoia Review, Navigating the Maze, and other journals online and in print.