Fall-Winter 2024 Issue

 
 
 
Cover Art “Abstract 50” by Binad Dawadi
 
 
 
 
Alan Abrams
 
IF I FORGET THEE
“Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof…
…Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.”
~Psalm 137
 
we dropped pennies in the slot
the can read trees for Israel
they made the desert bloom
sent us photos from the kibbutz
of lean bronze legs and sinewed arms
where they raised their children jointly
grew oranges that rivaled the sun
 
the nation grew in wealth and power
with gleaming cities by the sea
assailed from all sides
they defeated hosts of Goliaths but
their hearts hardened like the Pharaoh’s
 
what happened to that noble project
that was always under siege
their milk and honey only for the chosen ones
 
now my right hand trembles
my tongue is frozen in my mouth
as their neighbor’s little ones
are crushed beneath the stones
 
 
Susan Ayres
 
 
JASMINE
 
Mama heard me
say, He has a cute butt.
Washed out my mouth.
 
Anna mocks,
General Villa will never
look at you, Manuela.
 
The men smoke
on the terrace. Anna
and I swing in the garden.
 
General Villa walks
towards us, jasmine
blooming, my heart pounding.
 
He says, Girl, your eyes
are like caramel.
Meeting him,
I taste fire in his mouth.
 
 
SPIKENARD
 
Taped to my wall—
the Virgin of Guadalupe, Pancho Villa,
news about Pancho Villa.
 
Mama tears down
Pancho Villa. I cut and
tape up another:
Pancho on his horse,
Centaur of the North.
 
Mama says, Give yourself
to lust, you smell like
pennyroyal. Save yourself
for desire, you smell
like orange blossoms.
 
Too late. I’ve given
myself to Pancho.
Three nights we spent
together in the
garden guesthouse.
Caramel eyes,
Chula, Sweet pigeon,
he sang.
 
To protect my virginity, Mama
sprinkles spikenard holy water
on my bed, my panties, just
as the priest instructed.
 
 
RED ROSE
 
Just as I imagined.
Married, but not living
with the bickering Betita
and Chole
at Hacienda Canutillo.
 
Pancho escapes
to Parral every Saturday.
We stay in the penthouse
at Hotel Hidalgo,
your hotel, he says. My
French antiques, silk
sheets, chandeliers, red
roses.
 
My horse in the stable.
Pancho hollers and whistles
when I compete
with the other charras
wearing ruffled red
dresses, roping and racing.
 
He sings corridos of his battles,
shows me how to shoot
a pistol. Next week he says
he’ll teach me to drive
a roadster.
 
Protégé, Pigeon, La Charra,
Smile he says, as he films me
cranking his movie camera.
 
 
RUE
August 1923
 
My darling,
the bitch Betita
took my hotel,
my luxurious
palace, my penthouse,
everyone knows
it was my wedding
gift from you,
my security
 
in old age,
when 30 years after
our wedding, your
heart might explode
making love to me,
you laughed,
pulling me
to bed, órale!
 
your favorite,
I keep you young.
Kept.
 
When I wake
to Trini’s crying,
I reach for you
half dreaming.
The sudden slap:
no you, only
 
this crying baby
I hate. I only
ever wanted you.
 
 
OBIT (WIFE #14)
 
Mrs. Pancho Villa died (date unknown). Manuela Casas Morales, mother of José Trinidad, met Pancho at a dance, where she swept him off his feet with her tangos, waltzes, and corridos. Each week they saw a movie and drank champagne in a bubble bath at Hotel Hidalgo in Parral, which Pancho promised to deed her. He was assassinated the year they married, 1923. He was forty-five, she fifteen. Their son, José Trinidad, was born in the spring before Pancho’s death, and would later act as John Wayne’s double in movies filmed in Durango.
 
 
Jocko Benoit
 
 
MORTAL COIL VS. SPRING
 
My cat and I are having a bad day.
She lies on the couch in full melting
position. Her face is an unpublished
philosopher whose life work, I Hiss,
Therefore I Am is all in her head.
And I have gone from the lightness
of Nothing really matters to its massively
heavy doppelganger, Nothing really matters.
A failed Platonist, I stare at shadows
and think the cave could use
another splash of black.
 
But when I plunk onto the couch,
I dislodge her favorite bouncy toy
gone M.I.A. for days and she sproings
with the force of a thousand springs
after it, batting it soccer-style
across the floor. She is a ludic
epicurean, caroming from attack
to attack. I perk up when my wife
returns with a surprise parfait
which has, apparently, more layers
than I do. Today, my cat and I
are hedonists and who cares
what we are tomorrow?
 
 
A TEACHING MOMENT
 
The playground at noon in ninety degrees
is a torture zone – implements of play
so close but scorching arms and legs
until we all gravitate to the spackled
shadows beneath the trees with only
grass and dirt to entertain us.
But my son has discovered that his slight
kicks send shimmering dust clouds
in and out of light and I think this
could be a teaching moment
about the possibilities of beauty
in the lowest inorganic things,
about how what we can’t see –
in this case, the fickle breeze – changes
the course of things by the moment.
 
But when he kicks dirt at me
I instinctively return it in a kick
and we circle each other, our shoes
and bare legs browned by our pettiness
and we can’t stop laughing even when
I see the mothers and nannies and
grandmothers staring with
bemused concern. How can I explain
that at this moment son has become
sensei, this dust become magic
settling over me. There is a little boy
he needed and I have come out
from under the dead pile of years.
 
 
F. J. Bergmann
 
 
CATCH AS CATCH CAN
 
Two boys, four or five years old,
standing about six feet apart,
are playing catch on a sunny lawn
with a large black-and-white cat.
 
They are tossing the cat carefully
back and forth, staggering under
its weight, but they catch it
every time. Its heavy body dangles
limp, relaxed and purring.
 
Any kind of love, no matter how
strange, has got to be better
than no love at all.
 
 
Robert Beveridge
 
 
A PASSING THOUGHT
 
In the last moments before sleep,
huddled together beneath the quilt, the taste
of our mingled sweat against our skin,
 
I most feel the way your fingers
on my chest leave prints in the slickness,
 
the way your lips on my cheek
cause my fingers to clench at your hip,
 
how our legs entwined fall together
as those from one beast.
 
 
Brook Bhagat
 
 
LIZ CHENEY WINS
 
She knew the price, knew she would lose
her seat. She’s soft in her square glasses
and blue gingham button-down, out of date.
She doesn’t pound the podium or look
to the heavens. She is small and female,
her speech unhurried, standing calm
against the don.
 
What kind of politician chooses truth
over power? What kind of woman
chooses death threats from goons?
She knew they would come after her.
 
What she doesn’t know is what she has given me
the next morning, something worth saying
in the car on the first day of 11th grade: just see
how light her shoulders are, boy. Just think
how proud her parents must be.
 
 
Loukia Borrell
 
 
OPENING NIGHT WITHOUT A BROTHER
 
When your body heaved that final time,
just for a thimbleful of air, then silence,
I watched our parents collapse on either
side of you, crying and gulping in all the
air your lungs could no longer hold.
 
I walked to your kitchen counter, to begin
a list of mandatory calls. First, the police.
Then, the oncologist. I will say, “My brother
just died, and I need a DNR form. I’ll be there
soon. I won’t be able to stay long. Please have
it ready for me.” I will give it to the EMTs,
so they don’t try to revive you. Then, I will
call the undertaker and he will come in a
black van. We will watch him load you
onto a gurney and you will go out the front
door, lifeless, and we will know it is forever.
 
I look up from my notes and think I see you at the
table, eating your quiche, the slice you were too
sick to finish the night before. You are well again,
and lift your water glass to me as a tribute for
being a good sister, and maybe a half-apology
for leaving me here with the ensuing chaos.
 
But, you are elated the whole thing is over.
Certainly, there are fun days ahead,
with absolutely no scheduled body scans,
injections, pills, sleepless nights or soiled sheets.
Calendars filled with days of buttoning your own shirts,
swimming and casting your fishing line at the shore.
 
Tonight, because it is my debut as a
brotherless sister, opening night
as a soloist, sleep will not come.
You tell me to pretend my bed is a coffin,
and you are lying next to me. We will leave
open the lid, keep on the lights, and you
will assure me that the bruises we see all
over my body will eventually heal.
 
 
Brian Builta
 
 
SEMI-SPLENDID
 
I’d rather be a Pot-of-Gold porta-potty
quietly organizing people’s shit…
 
I’d rather be a porno-metal song about gay cowboys
disrupting the anti-vax trucker convoy…
 
I’d rather be corn in a cup with mayo, parmesan, and chili con limon,
a circle of citizens in a perambulatory pattern…
 
I’d rather be a spigot pouring days on days,
nothing on nothing clinging to nothing…
 
I’d rather be the next sip, the next stupid statement,
potpourri and flatulence…
 
I’d rather be writing a burp to joy
walking my turtle around the block…
 
I’d rather be frisking the hours for fun and folly,
lush flesh of eleven benevolent elephants galloping…
 
Rather this than to go through life
unloved, uninterrupted, with cancer of the tarantella.
 
 
Jim Burns
 
 
THE MOUSE
 
I killed a mouse,
let me tell you
about it.
Vacationing in a tiny
century-old farmhouse
in Louisiana,
my wife’s ancestral home,
we saw the occasional mouse,
of small concern
among the venomous spiders
lurking behind baseboards
and staging midnight forays
into the space inhabited
by our bare feet.
(NOTE TO SELF: Wear slippers
when up in the dark of night.)
Until, that is,
a particularly audacious rodent
scuttled across the kitchen floor
in full view,
interrupting our pre-meal conversation.
Too much, we agreed, too ballsy,
and bought traps,
carefully avoiding the
conventional snap traps
guaranteed to transform
your every mouse
into Marie Antoinette
for the sticky ones
that ensnare any prey
that sets foot on them
without doing harm.
The following morning
there was the trap,
there was a mouse,
there was a problem
not previously considered—
what to do with the entrapped one?
Scraping off the cringing
piece of gray fur
did not work.
He was firmly stuck,
to be left to starve.
The makers of humane mousetraps
hadn’t addressed this issue
in the packaging
containing the traps.
So out behind the house
we went, victor and victim,
and I spied a brick,
a formidable weapon
which should end this all.
As I raised it to strike,
he looked up at me,
eyes fearful, imploring,
unsettlingly beseechingly human,
Judean at Auschwitz.
I hesitated,
then struck
again and again
before it was over.
I killed a mouse,
and I will never forget
his eyes.
 
 
Jeff Burt
 
 
ODE ON A MUSTANG
 
She was anything but a wild horse
fleet and independent,
the Mustang in which I supposed,
entreated, proposed and inferred.
As I waded through relatives
to escape with my bride
it battled traffic
with the plucky resilience
of an inflated Joe Palooka doll
weighted with sand
to pop back at the puncher.
Tires paunchy and bulging,
wobbling like an old prize fighter,
fenders and doors scarred
from a life on the ropes,
yet it braved pothole and shoulder,
as we yelled, whispered, held,
and talked, scuttled, cajoled,
cuddled, scolded, and kissed.
Duffel bag of tools, towels, and
toys, my tatterdemalion,
how I loved my Mustang.
The radiator cooled like chickens
cackling in a coop.
The pistons pinged like adolescents
cracking gum, rattle-happy,
carburetor clicking
like a telegraph in war,
alternator alternating days
on and off its belt,
like a purr-slurring one-eyed
three-legged tomcat
kept for its perfection.
 
 
Wendy Taylor Carlisle
 
 
NOODLE WEEK
 
I’m welcoming “noodle week” with mafaldine,
Blang Blang, haluski, Bucatini. Textured, floppy,
slick, ruffled, I’m cooking with gas. So many sauces
So many pastas. Tell me a simple story. I’m past
tired of eating trees and roadside grasses,
tired of one scallop on my plate with a nouveau squirt
of wasabi. Give me a steaming, plate of manicotti
or cheesy lasagna, even if ricotta will clog my arteries.
My mouth waters for Pad Thai. I anticipate seven days
of Udon, of tortellini and a sweet dessert kugel,
so easy to swallow, effortless to chew.
 
 
ARS POETICA
 
When I read poems I think—whoa—because there the poets are, often with their mothers or fathers, with the eucalyptus and herons and the edges of whichever ocean, and I’m trying vainly to keep up, to remember what the melaleuca blossoms from my Florida childhood smelled like, and I can’t, except it was something nose-wrinkling. In Florida, melaleuca is an invasive species. In Florida, I was an invasive child—no—I was an invaded child. Anyway, the poems I read have someone in them, maybe not “the” poet but someone, and I see this as the way a poem should go, and that the most delicious of them expose the poet’s guts. Not my guts—thank you—although it’s historical. To draw and quarter—hang, and disembowel, assign impossible pain with the end, eventual death, was first used on the last independent ruler of Wales, and later on Hugh the Dispenser, and Guy Fawkes and others. Political enemies and battle captives, were unpacked for a side-eye or being in the wrong place, or whispering, or killing the King or actual sedition like the Monmouth Rebellion, the same sort of sedition popular now. The I, me, my, mine, are enough torture for me, torment of the sort that comes to us from the Thirteenth Century. I push back. I write about cow ponds and rain, the armadillo and the burr oak. If I’m fair, not everybody has the requisite skillset for exposure, or the desire for extenteration—the lust to release their stomach, liver, lungs, to be excised for bliss. For better or worse, I resist, despite the fact that I am here, in this poem, and allude to a childhood trauma I don’t speak about often, or ever. This is the new me, trying to go clear, struggling to understand, maybe even love, myself and what this new century has unmade of me.
 
 
Joe Cottonwood
 
 
HANDYMAN
 
Here, love, if this faucet were your body
with a toothpick I’d clean
years of gray toxic crap
embedded in the tiny center
of the set screw
so I can insert the hex wrench
allowing me to pull off
the nickel-plated faucet handle

thus exposing the locknut
algae-slippy outside but rust-frozen within
resisting the grip of my pliers
until it jerks slightly
and unscrews counterclockwise
 
exposing the shiny ball mechanism
that I wiggle cautiously until it gives way
with a small burst of stored water
so at last I can nudge out the worn-down
little bitty black barnacle
neoprene washers
 
which I replace
then rebuild in reverse order
wrenching firmly but not killer-tight
and then with a rag I wipe away smeared goo
until the porcelain shines and—
    Voila!
No drip. This I would do
for you.
 
 
EXPOSURE
 
She tells me
the young man flashed her
Walmart parking lot
in the shadow of a Humvee
pants half down his skinny thighs
bare down there like a newborn bunny
and he looked so pitiful
his eyes focusing backward into his brain
like he didn’t even see her
but of course the show was for her
She said nothing to him
walked on
 
Wasn’t scary, she says,
it was more like surrender
and a cry for help
 
But now here’s his photo
in the faculty list teaching English
teaching poetry for fuck’s sake
and if she enrolled
she bets he wouldn’t even recognize her
 
He’s not a danger, she tells me,
except to himself so no
she won’t expose him
 
 
Lori D’Angelo
 
 
BECOMING WONDER WOMAN
 
It wasn’t that I wanted
the bullet-deflecting
bracelets, the invisible
plane or the Lasso of
Truth. No, as a child,
I wanted the confidence
to strut around in a
glorified bathing suit
without being slut
shamed. Now, I
still wish that I
could spin in a
circle transform,
shedding my gender-
masking work clothes
and my big, thick
Diana Price glasses.
Trust me, I’ve tried.
But I’m here, still
female and ordinary
wishing for that
Bang pow boom
miracle moment.
 
 
Scott Davidson
 
 
HOW LONG A SECOND FEELS
 
Time is like jazz, is like water, finding cracks
between lines you’ve only just drawn. It’s not
what I pictured reading comics as a kid about
extra dimensions. The coolest guy at the time
said grab hold of a hot pan and see how long
a second feels. There are Wednesdays that will
never end in the middle of weeks that go by
like that. How could eternity, if it’s anything
on its own, be more than a subset of now?
When this song comes on, I am all the ages
I’ll ever be. Eternity is jazz because how you
approach it is what it becomes. People say the
backend of our software’s too busy. How can so
many if/thens be necessary? Where is the body
without bones? Where is the simple memorable
message, Things come and go, I remain?
 
 
Dani De Luca
 
 
FIREBIRD
 
After learning to make fire
we must learn to keep it.
They are not the same.
One takes a spark, the other
tending. The same could be said
of love.
 
Steal the stars from broken skies,
why not? That’s a spark. But pour
those stars in a lover’s shampoo
or sift them in red velvet
and you’ve tended.
 
At the edge of wonder,
the pulse quickens, firebird.
Hear its music.
 
 
Hannah Dilday
 
 
ACCIDENTALLY
 
When the clock struck nine you slipped away
under the cloak of darkness, as if by accident.
 
I could feel the caterpillars growing restless in me,
ready to hatch into butterflies I had to set free.
 
Like clockwork, I quietly slipped away from
the others—their eyes, ears, and opinions.
 
You waited for me under the stairs and grabbed
my hand as I searched for you, pulling me closer—
 
pulling me into the darkness. You kissed me
almost by accident. I wasn’t that kind of girl, and
 
you weren’t that kind of guy, but tonight maybe we were.
Now that I’d already crossed that line, it was easy
 
to take another step. So, we kissed again, again, and again
until I could no longer see the line in my rearview
 
I’d so recklessly crossed just a moment ago. I was
scared our story would end just as it started, accidentally.
 
You said only time will tell, and we haven’t got much time.
So, I followed you farther into the darkness—
 
darkness littered with the light of stars. The stars
were far too close for any of this to be real, so close
 
I could reach up and pluck one from the sky.
As I reached for a star, you reached for me—
 
I wasn’t that kind of girl, and you weren’t that
kind of guy, but tonight maybe we were.
 
So, we kissed again, again, and again
afraid this might all end just how it began,
 
accidentally.
 
 
Sara Eddy
 
 
GOOD SEX
 
We weren’t right for each other
we fought about stupid things
thought we knew each other
made assumptions, but O
our bodies sang harmonies
and built new worlds.
 
It’s hard to know what to do
with that memory of perfect
wild touch, now that we’re
strangers–but there’s a photo
of me, strong-legged, dusty
and happy, standing in a ruin
on Delos. Behind me
is the spot where Apollo
and Artemis were born.
 
The sun hits my face,
and I’m squinting but smiling,
knowing I’ve been to a place
where gods lived.
 
 
James Evans
 
 
FLOATERS
 
My brother fingerprints floaters, degloves dishpan fingers,
writes prints with his fingertips inserted into the skin of cadavers.
 
“We see down to the bone sometimes,” he says. “Occasionally, meat
slips right off, just like fried frog legs.” Instinctively I feel phantom
 
pains permeating my hands, remember when as kids he warmed them
under his shirt and coat on those cold winter days packing firewood;
 
his hands leading, pulling mine to his torso, my ungloved fists
unfurling, splayed fingers tingling, the heat from his body
 
as he held my rigored hands tight against his skin.
 
 
Arvilla Fee
 
 
THE LAST DRIVE-IN MOVIE THEATER
 
those summer nights, ripe with humidity
humming with mosquitos
thrumming with hormones
the truck parked backwards
tailgate facing the king-sized screen,
music playing through tinny speakers
the smell of popcorn, pretzels and fake cheese
wafting over the grassy lot stacked twenty deep
with convertibles, old beaters, even a tractor
or two—tanned arms and legs hanging out
of doors and windows, cigarette smoke
drifting around heads like Caesar’s laurel,
those were the nights slick with sweat,
flush with freedom
 
 
Vern Fein
 
 
RABBIT
Inspired by Merle Haggard and his prison partner—Jimmy “Rabbit” Kendrick
 
For thirteen years, no one
escaped from San Quentin.
Rabbit and Haggard
hatched a plan.
Hide in a huge desk
to be shipped to San Fran.
Not courageous like Henry Brown,
shipped out of slavery in a box.
 
Criminals who earned
the place they landed.
Merle croaked out songs
on the guitar the warden gifted.
Rabbit just a robber,
one of too many.
 
Rabbit: No; don’t do it Merle.
You got a life.
Escape the only life I got.
 
Merle listened, stayed.
Rabbit escaped.
But Rabbit killed a cop,
died while Merle watched.
If you love Merle,
thank Rabbit.
 
 
Devon Fulford
 
 
OUR STUPID CRAYOLAS
 
red santa fe,
greenbelt of austin,
green bananas,
a grey mushroom-sob
at the top of the stairs
that we couldn’t un-carpet
until our dog died
since he couldn’t
stand without help
on wooden floors.
 
 
John Grey
 
 
THE YOUNGEST OF THE HERD
 
The male antelope stretches his neck high,
pivots like a four-legged ballerina,
looks ahead, to the side, and behind,
alert for threats from any direction.
 
His females nibble on the grasses,
babies sucking at their teats.
They are as calm as he is apprehensive.
 
It reminds me of that old photo of the family.
My father, in Airforce uniform stands,
my mother, in a plain blue dress, sits,
in front of him, a child at either side,
a baby in her lap.
 
The male antelope is well aware
of what could be out there stalking,
camouflaged by savannah brush.
Should a big cat attack,
his warning cry will not save everyone.
 
Not lions, not leopards,
but something equally incessant,
shadowing, deadly,
has taken everyone in that photograph.
I was protected by not being born yet.
 
 
J. Kramer Hare
 
 
WHAT IS POETRY?
 
No bit of kitsch with which to ornament a parlor;
no figurine of frosted glass, nor bourgeois bric-a-brac;
no doily, chandelier, nor candelabra on piano;
no cookie, cuckoo-clock, nor crab-leg gilded gold.
 
It is an altar,
a psalm,
a screaming
nuclear bomb.
 
It is sacramental coitus!
It is hideous, glorious death…
 
Well, either that
or just a way to catch your breath.
 
 
Robert Harlow
 
 
LANDSCAPE: WOMAN IN THE SNOW WITHOUT DOGS
 
She used to have them.
They used to be nearby.
Now all she can do is stand
where they used to be
and bless the snow
surrounding her,
threatening to take her away.
 
Slowly. Intentionally.
Maybe that’s what happened
to the dogs.
She is not just any woman.
She is not a widow
no matter who says she is.
She doesn’t know why,
 
at this moment, she thinks about
the dentist who showed interest in her
by showing her his tattoos.
He pulled up his sleeve.
On his arm, a parade of teeth.
Not everyone understands,
he tells her. She wonders why
 
he doesn’t understand why they should.
When she goes home,
if that’s even possible without the dogs,
she will change dentists.
Yes, she’ll be disloyal to him.
Ranger! she calls out. Rusty! Time to go home!
She is a woman standing in the snow
 
repeating names she knows have consequences,
obligations, agendas, places to be.
If she would just look behind her,
the dogs think, as they look at each other,
she could see us sitting here,
teeth as white as the snow,
happy to know we are wanted.
 
 
 
 
Stephanie L. Harper
 
 
OF THESE ONE AND ALL
    “And of these one and all I weave the song of myself”
~ Walt Whitman, Song of Myself 15
 
The left flesh-melon harbors a pool of sweat;
the right flesh-melon harbors a pool of sweat.
The perimenopausal woman hot-flashes in the kitchen,
while the young-adult son dons wool slippers in the kitchen.
The second husband purchases electric socks for his perimenopausal wife.
The ex-husband, meanwhile, dissociates further from his ex-wife…
And these stoke my hankering for donuts, and I don’t appreciate
how lucky I am to be forced to make do with home-baked banana-nut muffins.
And such as it is to amass five decades of knowledge—
minus where I last left my phone, that is—
I am, more or less, pressing it to my left ear and speaking on it,
as I hot-flash in the kitchen. And of these spates of steaminess,
cantankerous joints, and suddenly uncloseable pants, one and all,
I orchestrate the opus of my middle-age…
 
 
Hayley Mitchell Haugen
 
 
CUSP
 
Unselfconscious in bikinis, we skated for hours
along the strand, fat yellow wheels propelling
us through our day. We rode Schwinn Cruisers
to the snack shack, one-handed it back, bomb-pops
melting sticky blue splotches onto baby-oiled skin.
We ate sandwiches inevitably laced with sand,
and the surf became our soundtrack, children squealing
in the rush and whoosh, Richard Blade endlessly spinning
80s New Wave on K-ROQ. So many rounds of volleyball
and frisbee, gymnastics in the hard-packed sand,
we must have been a sight for the older boys,
all that eye-candy flipping and twisting,
our tanned legs getting stronger, more defined.
They waited until we were juniors to introduce
beer bongs and drinking games in their mothers’ garages,
the intoxicating bounce and clink of quarters
landing in daisy-print glasses. Before sunset,
we’d slip unsteadily back down the ice plant banks,
perform sloppy handsprings, say yes too easily
to skinny-dipping when the sun went down.
The pounding Pacific, amplified by the silence,
turned exotic and dangerous, and there were no
buff lifeguards in their tight red shorts to save us.
 
 
SIX FEET UNDER: SPOILER ALERT
 
I’ve been thinking of dying—a lot—
obsessively, even. Therapy Steve
says this is normal, but I don’t know.
 
Bingeing 63 episodes of Funeral Home
drama in three weeks probably wasn’t
a great idea under the circumstances.
Each hour, a new death, a reminder
that we expire in any number of ways:
choke on a grape and die alone
at the breakfast table; meet your maker
when a hapless roughneck drops his lunchbox
from on high; people get impaled
by space junk, fried by lightning, fall
into vats at industrial workspaces;
heart attack, car wreck, cliff-slip—
unless you choose to go (and some
always do) you don’t get to choose
how you go. Everybody dies.
 
Even our favorite characters.
Nate dies—twice. Anyone could
die at any time: it keeps us in our seats,
cringing at David’s risky, condomless
sexcapades; we are certain Claire will OD,
and when Lisa disappears, we just know
Brenda has a miscarriage, and Keith
gets shot, but not till 2029. And damn—
they told us all along: the embalmer
does not discriminate.
 
Everyone’s final episode is foreshadowed
in the final episode. Claire drives
toward her New York future, and the future
flashes by: Ruth dies, David dies,
Brenda, Rico, and Claire all die;
and I am sobbing over the best,
so-smart TV montage I’ve ever seen,
but also over my aging parents
and eight-year-old puggles
with muzzle-gray and arthritis,
my friends with recurring cancers
and other incurable diseases,
my trans child with a 32-50%
greater chance of dying by
self-harm: I am weeping for all
of us because—spoiler alert:
everybody dies.
 
 
Robin Helweg-Larsen
 
 
NEANDERTHALS
 
Watch how the status of the poor
Neanderthals will rise
when we admit we thank them for
red hair, white skin, blue eyes.
 
 
TEASE
 
I feel good that you want it;
you know it’s under there;
it makes me feel important
but I don’t like your stare.
 
I wear enough to hide it
though all around is bare;
it’s treasure, ’cos you want it;
who you are, I don’t care.
 
 
Jennifer Randall Hotz
 
 
AT THE CONCERT, I AM SORELY TEMPTED
For P., now and always
 
First things first:
I don’t blame him.
 
Itzhak Perlman has no idea,
as he crosses that stage,
 
that as a kid,
I awoke at five every morning
 
to throw the paper route
that funded my violin lessons,
 
practiced three hours a day,
spent nights allured awake,
 
songs tumbling over and
over in my head.
 
He wouldn’t know
that I’ve never understood
 
those screaming girls at rock concerts—
the ones who throw their bras on stage—
 
or that now here, listening
to these first glorious notes
 
(the ones that harmonize
all the beauty in the world),
 
I imagine my hand reaching back
to rip off my bra, send it sailing toward him,
 
until I turn, see my husband beside me—
his eyes glistening
 
because he has made a dream
of mine come true (the first of many),
 
and how can I do anything else
but reach for his hand?
 
 
Doug Jacquier
 
 
BUS STOP DREAMING
 
Sitting at the bus stop,
the bleak midwinter arrived in
the middle of winter
and it was bleak.
Not moor bleak;
more bleak than that.
The wind was keen,
not in that American neat way
nor like mustard,
but sharp
and bleak
because it was midwinter.
I watched it being bleak midwinter
until I nodded off.
In my dream I saw her
through the glass darkly
of the doors of
the bus to nowhere
and I knew I had to
make her mine, make her mine, make her mine.
I leapt aboard and raced up the aisle
dodging the mardi grass dancers,
knocking over old men that looked like Keith Richards
and trampling on the children of the revolution
until I could see her
gazing out the window at Itchycoo Park.
I dreamed that I jumped off at the next stop
and ran through fields of wildflowers
as if in slow motion
until she fell into my arms,
heels in the air,
and we kissed in the heat of the night.
Later, we would perform Shakespeare in the park.
She would wear a yellow cotton dress
foaming like a wave on the ground around her knees.
I would sport a strip-ed pair of pants
and follow her in the dance
as the park began melting in the dark,
with pea-green rain pouring down and
our passion would flow like pea soup in the sky.
We would take a magic carpet ride
and travel with birds
like tender babies in our hands and
look down on old men
playing chess by the trees.
Until I awoke
and it was still mid-winter
on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.
 
 
IN EXCELSIS
 
Patti, the Horses-faced harbinger of rock,
who was a girl named Johnny
who said let’s dream it, we’ll dream it for free, Free Money
who kept Mapplethorpe and Shepard a-muse-d
who birthed children and watched men die too young.
who wrote with Springsteen ‘Because the Night’ said so,
who lost the plot to ‘Hard Rain’ singing Bob at the Nobels.
Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not hers
People say “beware!” but I don’t care
the words are just rules and regulations to me
and her name is, and her name is, and her name is
G-L-O-R-I-I-I-I-A
in excelsis day-o.
 
 
Carey Jobe
 
 
STELLAR MATTER
 
Traces of all we dreamily seek
we catch in burning bits from the stars.
They roll in our palms, dark stones too weak
to reascend if thrown.
         Beyond Mars
drift pitted, hurtling, gun-black ores
that flare like matchheads struck and seen
as they cross night air.
         Sometimes they shatter
above our roofs like pods and scatter
unnoticed dust on our fading green
and restore worn fields with stellar matter.
 
 
Gina Kotinek
 
 
RUNNER ON A HILL
 
I saw a man atop a lonely hill panting
up a storm, his hands in his lap, head
low, and back hunched. Bottled water
in hand, I thought to offer him some
and approached, but up close, I saw
him in broad daylight—wanking.
 
 
Peggy Landsman
 
 
HOOKED
 
Elizabeth Bishop
held that stoic old fish up
halfway out of the water.
She studied him and then let him go, delighted that he had caught her.
 
 
Tyler Lemley
 
 
I DON’T CALL MY DAD ENOUGH
 
The drive home is easy:
a five-hour cringe of grey.
It’s a haunting taunt from my hometown.
I’m only one road from home.
One road from the rust that raised me.
One road from my dad, who I don’t call enough.
 
Going back is a pain you don’t feel at first,
until it’s cut you long enough,
until the scarlet streams run long enough.
Sometimes I stay home long enough
I forget there’s life without blood.
 
But tell me why I’ve never wanted anything
as bad as a camper in Bumfuck, Tx.
Never wanted anything but a cig
in a lawn chair under a muslin awning.
Give me a hillbilly husband, two and a half kids,
give me a home in that sinkhole town.
I’d hate it, but it would heal something in me
to fit.
 
My dad calls, just to hear my voice.
I tell him I’ll be home soon, if I can manage.
In the background I hear thunder.
My blue sky choked by grey storm clouds.
 
 
Dawn Levitt
 
 
MISTLEHEART
 
I asked him to slice open
my chest with a small chainsaw,
and pry apart my ribs. Then
he could reach in and pull out
my abused and aching heart.
 
With the silver hook from a
tiny Christmas ornament,
he hung it in the doorway,
fitting emblem of our love.
It spread a slow stain beneath.
 
Lit by the flickering tree,
he dragged my body to it
like the perfect mistletoe.
I thought he should have closed my
eyes with pennies for this kiss.
 
Still, I could not really care.
Six weeks already since he
tore my heart out with his words.
I felt it was about time
he got on with the real thing.
 
 
WETLAND
 
Living near a wetland is like
having God as your next-door neighbor.
Dizzying duck, winged wine bottle,
ass-heavy and awkward,
paddles through a lake of air.
Wild geese follow a flocked V,
the typeset of their DNA,
honking wildly in the traffic of clouds.
Mated pair of sandhill cranes hoot and rattle
overhead, one leg stretched behind, a kite’s tail,
avian Ian Anderson,
one-legged stork fluting to rock n’roll.
Tall reeds on marshy land,
conceal nests of future generations
while snapping turtles cross the road with
cars in idling witness to inching migration.
The sky ablaze in auburn and aubergine,
slowing the heartbeat of the land,
whisper the coming of dusk,
softly, the swan tucks her head.
 
 
Heather Lewis-Barchue
 
 
BLUE
 
The backdrop for endless magical white clouds the summer of my mental breakdown – we laid side by side on an old, tattered blanket while we whispered of one-eyed pirates, huge floating fishies and playful, puffy puppies that morphed from one thing to the next right before our eyes.
 
The deep shine of the satin of my heels I wore on my wedding day – I walked down the aisle with innocent tears of happiness and joy streaming down my flushed cheeks to stand beside my steadfast, beaming husband as we both dreamt of the unknown days ahead.
 
The still, sparkling pool staring back at me when I was 12 – I stood on the swimmer’s block with beads of sweat dripping from my brow – frozen, terrified, sick to my stomach with anxiety rising as I waited for the blast of the gun that followed the “swimmers take your mark, get set…”.
 
The velvety smooth hue of the ring of sapphires presented to me over a lobster meal in my old apartment – they encircle the large, brilliant diamond in the center of the ring which is a historical piece dating back over a century that reminds me I am as great of a treasure as it is each time I glimpse it throughout the day.
 
The blazing eyes of my 15-year-old daughter as she sees straight into my soul during our deep, emotional chats – the same eyes of her father as he stared back at me through countless screaming matches that now seem so insignificant but ones that ultimately brought us to the painful decision to divorce.
 
The silky, delicate swaddling cloth I chose to wrap my second born son in, the one who died at birth – they placed his tightly swaddled body into the incinerator so we could then neatly collect and pack his ashes into a beautiful wooden box we had personalized on Etsy because what else would we do with a human who only lived within my body but never breathed in this world?
 
The blur of the crystal-clear water engulfing the small island of St Lucia at the end of our honeymoon – we were headed back to our reality, back to our home, back to our day in and day out that felt so opposite of the time we spent together on that once in a lifetime trip.
 
Blue. My favorite color.
 
 
Fay L. Loomis
 
 
I CHING, BOOK OF CHANGES
 
brown leaves clutch
crystalline branches
dulcet fall collides
with adamantine winter
 
a leaf turns
surrender
 
 
Christian Lozada
 
 
EVERY TRIP SINCE 1993 HAS BEEN THE LAST TRIP
 
before White Grandma dies
as we sightsee and eat
she shares stories and taps
her thumb onto her fingertips
searching for a feeling other than
pain // the pads / blunt / depressed
say she’s held on to things more
than her strength lasted as she
spits regrets about following work
and learning how to shit indoors
 
she has resigned herself ‘membering
the pain of cotton bolls cutting cuticles
rather than the sharecropper’s need
to leave the land for regular pay
and plumbing // in portland, she held
on to the rail and the sight of multnomah
falls so long her knees buckled and her skin
burned in the pacific northwest sun
not because of any personal connection
but because she liked it and knew
nothing she likes lasts.
 
 
Jamie Manias
 
 
CT SCAN EKPHRASIS
 
If you put the cross sections in order you have a little animation that plumes and plumes
like an explosion. We could watch in marathons with popcorn and talk about
the shapes we see in the curves. What was your favorite part?
 
I like when your eyes make their quick appearance, growing from nothing
to honest to God dinnerplates and disappearing again. AWOOGA! Eyes like
a cartoon wolf. Quite unlike you as of late. You haven’t had much room
 
To want recently, only to need. To wish. Let me guess: you like the one frame
in the exact middle, when your beautiful nose pops in and makes you look almost
human. Very pretty. You can really see there how pillowy and tall your tongue is.
 
A detail I appreciate is the muscle at the back of your neck. The stringy bit
that shakes and nods to save you the humiliation of speech. That tilts toward the ceiling
every time I ask you “what’s up,” even when we’re on the phone, to confirm your answer of
“The ceiling.” Checking that the roof hasn’t fallen in on you.
 
 
Tim Mayo
 
 
THE SUNSHINE
 
It’s not like I had one of those episodes, where I
float through a tunnel to a bright and infinite room,
and I suddenly feel warm and fuzzy, as though
everything will be all right, because, now, I know
for sure there is a god (of sorts), an afterlife, and
I get to keep my cake and eat it, too. Then
the bright room fades away, because, being infinite,
it never had the necessary walls to keep me. Down
through the tunnel I retreat back into my small
wounded body to wake in a hospital, where a ceiling,
four walls, and a floor confine me.
                   All around me
loved ones are weeping; they mourn my imminent
departure from the touchable world, which had never
really touched me, though I can truly feel it now as hard
as the lump in my bed, poking me in the back, keeping
me from a good night’s sleep. This is where I tell them
I’ve seen the light, that bright infinite room, and maybe
I add some more to the story like my dead mother, who
welcomes me with ragged arms, as she says, it’s alright.
So that’s what I say, it’s alright, it’s alright, end of story!
And everyone stops crying, because I’ve had the vision,
and now I can depart in peace.
                  But in fact, I don’t depart.
I stay here in this bed. I go on living, and I’m depressed
as hell, because my body is all bent and twisted, and I feel
this can’t-put-my-finger-on-it discomfort pervading the air
like a fog with four broken limbs, floating in this unlit room
as I watch these damned, off-white ceiling tiles,
their peek-a-boo holes like beady entries to a dark world,
tiles I can’t stop looking at, because I’m in this neck brace
with a tube down my throat choking me into breathing,
blocking my voice from bitching, and with another tube
poking out of my stomach to feed me drugs––all of this
 
meant to keep me painless, motionless, and complacent,
until I can feel––who-the-hell-knows-when––better
about the sunshine of shit luck and being alive.
 
 
THE STRAW THAT BROKE THE CAMEL’S BICEP
 
Figure the camel’s back is already broken
but he keeps on going. All he needs is five
more pounds of straw for his master
and he’s home free. So, he calculates
the task: time divided by the sum of straw
multiplied by muscle, as he chucks it all
up to the loft, where the long probability
of winter gapes and waits with a heady hunger.
He tosses it like a coin, instead of packing it
all on his back, hauling it over dry sand
 
and dirt, like the beast of burden he really is.
And it works pretty well, until those last
five pounds. This is where we come in,
the citizenry and readers of this poem,
acting as witness to the gritty injustices
of the world. Trouble is all we ever do
is witness and listen to the camel brag
about how he developed his one bicep,
working for the Man––grew it
like a third hump to save his back.
 
It’s late now, and the camel’s still counting:
four point nine-five, nine-six, nine-seven,
eight, nine-nine, and suddenly the poem
goes snap. We, alone, have witnessed this,
but what can we do? We’re just readers,
and the camel isn’t covered by OSHA
or even labor law. He’s just a poor camel
in a parable about work and suffering,
trying to thread his long neck and spindly
legs through the eye of a needle
 
as the Man, turban and all, tries to slip
his fat ass into the kingdom of heaven.
 
 
Thomas M. McDade
 
 
WHITE KNUCKLING
 
Driving a school bus
Greenwich, CT, 1980
the engine is knocking
and tales of rods rocketing
through hoods fill my head.
But halfway to the Convent
of the Sacred Heart the trouble
is first-grader Kim who was picked
to call her classmate Linda, “nigger.”
Stopping for Kathy the Hoofer
who dances in the aisle
to get my goat, I wave at her
dad who doesn’t look rich.
I think of the mechanic
who will repair the damage,
probably get me fired.
Kathy sits alone, taps her
rehearsing feet.
As chosen Kim moves
toward Linda there’s a riot
of banging under the hood
that doesn’t distract me.
I’m poised to hit the brakes
to foil the hateful plot when
Kathy jumps up
and twirling twice lands
in the seat next to Linda.
She stares down Kim
and I mash the gas pedal
to the floor urging the rods
to mimic Cape Canaveral
in Kathy’s honor but the racket
diminishes as the bus bucks
weakly at the convent gate
and dies like what should won’t.
 
 
Mike Mesterton-Gibbons
 
 
A PORTRAIT IN RED
 
Auld Queen Camilla, shown a portrait, said
Politely “Yes, you’ve got him!” to a famed
Oil painter who immersed King Charles in red.
Republicans might hope red paint proclaimed
The king to be a closet one of them.
Red Queen and Alice fans might see instead
A crafty Cheshire-Catlike stratagem
In which King Charles becomes a floating head,
Two floating hands, and nothing more: red haze
Is soon to hide the rest … It goes to show,
No two beholders of what art portrays
React the same. So we can only know
Equivocally how Charles was got: the queen’s
Declined to tell us what her comment means!
 
 
Mish Murphy
 
 
SPEAKING OF ARTISTS
 
who “feed off”
each other’s work—
 
Mozart kept
a pet starling
who sang Mozart’s tunes,
 
belting them out
note for note
without a flaw,
 
except the starling
improved Mozart’s art:
 
it changed
Mozart’s sharps to flats.
 
Question for you—
 
am I your starling
 
or are you
mine?
 
 
Nina Nazir
 
 
REVERIE
 
How I love to see a man in a suit, cycling
with ease, something so attractive about that.
 
Hey you, pumping the tyres there, why
don’t you three sixty round over to me?
 
We could go for a coffee and talk about
what makes you tick, your favourite joke
 
what gets you off. I’ll wear my bare-shoulder
dress for you and let you look all you want.
 
I don’t normally go in for a situationship
but what the hell, the air is heady with
 
the breath of summer and life is a blink.
I would otherwise spend the afternoon
 
ordering my world for a sense of control
I don’t truly possess. How about we
 
get together, make a mess? while away
the hours by the river, the bookshop
 
on the corner, as a fake preamble for
something animal that would surely follow?
 
You can keep your suit on and run your finger
along my inside arm, as you tell me about
 
your humdrum morning, your eyes telling me
something else. Or you can say nothing at all
 
as we hold hands, read poems aloud, steal
a taste of life before it’s gone with the zephyr.
 
 
Yoda Olinyk
 
 
HOW TO CHARM A SNAKE AND OTHER MAGIC TRICKS
 
I know exactly how to stroke his
want. Drag a wand of burgundy
 
across my lips. Presto – they’re the color
of lust. I know how to tease
 
my hair just so. How to conjure
his mother’s cooking as he inhales
 
the rosemary potion behind my left ear.
How to alchemize king-sized
 
scallops in organic butter, give them life
with each curl of my wrist.
 
Tadah! I am now a single
piece of dark chocolate melting
 
on his tongue. I know how to choreograph
my legs on his countertop. How to levitate
 
out of a skirt faster than he can say open
sesame. I know how to make him want
 
me so hard he’ll give up sleep. Abracadabra,
Alakazam. I’ve never met a woman
 
who isn’t willing to saw herself in half
for a charming man with black eyes.
 
It’s only cruel when they don’t know
it’s all a trick.
 
 
JEREMY ALLEN WHITE AIN’T GOT SHIT ON ME
 
When I kiss her the first time, she shucks
her head back, says, I had no idea
you could kiss like that! I don’t ask a single
question, just take her lip ring into my mouth
and show her where the moon is.
The next morning, I stir her
favourite ingredients into a bowl, drip
hollandaise into her lips. I ask her
if she wants to know what we taste like
mixed together. Yes,
Chef!! She moans
as my knees lick the tile.
As my fingers spread her shake. I feed on her
Oh God and Jesus Fucking Christ. Mash
my sweat into her sweet. She asks if I’ll cook
her breakfast again tomorrow –
It is only now that I realize more
is the only word she has for this.
That she is magma and I am earth.
She is yolk and I am bread. That she is
desire and I am devour. That I am mouth
and she, a cavity.
 
 
Fiona Pitt-Kethley
 
 
FUCK SCHRÖDINGER
 
“Fuck Schrödinger” the cat said as he dug
his way out of the box. “Fuck Schrödinger.
I’m taking to the street to plan his end.
Schrödinger was a kiddy fiddler, did you know?
Pre-adolescent pussy was his thing.
The Nobel Prize was sometimes given to shits.”
 
Schrödinger thought his box was still intact
and did not know about the hole below.
His pet got out and cursed him at the door,
pissed on the portals of his former home,
decamped and leagued with other streetwise cats,
starting a widespread cult amongst his kind.
 
Boxes… They worship boxes everywhere.
The open box, a symbol of escape.
You buy them cat toys…They prefer the box.
They like to sit in them and meditate
on Schrödinger and what they’d like to do
if they could get the bastard in the box.
They’ve spread his story all around the world.
The cats in Alpbach dance upon his grave,
leave stinking tributes there instead of flowers.
 
“Fuck Schrödinger” in catspeak is the noise,
the simmering growl that all our furry friends
make when we try to take them from a box.
 
 
Kate Polak
 
 
THE EXHIBIT
 
Can’t much see how much
is and how much is a story
made of volition, velleity,
 
no, that’s not a true thing at all, there
is no order of impulse higher than what
stories do, and I can’t hear
 
nothing. I don’t need your love. Don’t
need much: not safety, or sense, or a dare
against the dare I’m owed, wanted
 
but deferred, whatever never was. If you want-
ed me, you would’ve had me already,
intemperately, spread out beneath you
 
in all the ways I’ve made something
beautiful from nothing. I run it through
my fingers and it disappears—smoke
 
lifting to a sky I smile at, giving it the wink
reserved for inside jokes because it sprawls
and coils, calls and comes just like me.
 
You are exactly how I thought
you would be: sky blue, something I can
live in but can’t touch, can’t see through.
 
 
PORCH SITTING
 
I want to touch the backs of your thighs
where the wicker reads welts in them, letting
the evening come on down to our mouths.
 
 
Jessica Poon
 
 
DEAREST WOLFGANG
 
If the Grand Canyon and the Niagara Falls
were to fuck vociferously and merge,
they would still be nowhere near as beautiful
as the shape of your head leaning against my knee
 
your pure devotion makes the Virgin Mary
seem like a slutty gambler
 
it’s true the moon is a tired old bachelor
that doesn’t even know how to put on a condom,
but every time I see the moon,
glowing like a priest
reverentially unwrapping a cheeseburger,
I know he changed his outfit
in case you ever notice his bolo tie
 
long story made slightly less long,
the moon goes out of his way to see you
but you are busy sniffing terra firma
treating me like the sky
and quite frankly, the sky feels slighted
and has filed a grievance report
 
btdubs, low-key always thinking about your bladder
because you ride shotgun in my mind, forever
 
 
TODAY’S SPECIAL IS A BUZZKILL
 
When we describe writing as polished or clean, what we’re really saying: good job withholding. We like what you have decided to show us. Thank you, for not entrusting us with more than you have; we would not have known how to handle it. We are glad you didn’t show us anything else because your thoughts are not ready for bikini season.
 
When you see yet another sculpture of a naked woman, just remember: the sculptor originally had a seventh tit.
 
A laminated menu, mint green.
All white girls love Halloween.
Everything is a fiction.
Your dog is probably cute because of incest.
Jia Tolentino looks phenomenal as a blonde.
Bitcoin is plot.
What if all I want to do is leave a palimpsest of a palimpsest?
 
You’ll be the couch; I’ll be the settee.
We’ll both wish we were chesterfields.
 
I should be more worried about Greenland.
We are all sluts for something.
Small edible parts.
Render the unspeakable into anecdote.
How much garrulousness is permissible?
 
And oh, your poor mother. You still want a salad named after you? Who do you think you are?
Mint green: a laminated menu.
Wouldn’t you like to see that seventh tit right about now?
 
But all I want to know is, when, exactly, did you stop loving me, and would you have said hello to Dionne Brand if you saw her near Dovercourt Park?
 
 
THIS IS NOT THE WAY THE WORLD BEGAN
 
with a PhD and no job
with a black bean burger and a bamboo toothbrush
with a single square of toilet paper after an impressively rippled fibrous shit
with a diamond ring and an iPhone 100
with organic cotton totes
with a Google search history of Monsanto and praxis
 
 
Ken Poyner
 
 
EVEN-HANDED
 
I am the unfortunate man you caught around the edge of night peering in your window as you undressed mechanically before a soft, stuttering light. Had I wandered by earlier or later, there would have been nothing to draw me into the flowerbed to camp behind the defensive bushes. I would have gone on. There would not have been the moment of you turning, our eyes hooking feral understanding, our civil recognition of collaborative ends. Aware, you continued – not stacking the clothes as before, but asymmetrically letting them then drop disheveled around you. Let me in. I can restore order.
 
 
Charlie Probus
 
 
RESIDUE FROM BIOHAZARDOUS MATERIAL
 
I asked the surgeon
to weigh my tits
when she sliced them off.
 
I thought if I knew
how much they’d been
weighing me down
 
I could finally measure
the weight of everything
that she couldn’t cut out
 
I could finally see
what threatened
to crack me open.
 
She never told me
how much flesh and skin
they carved from my chest
 
but the space that was left
was shockingly close
to what I’d called love.
 
 
Donna Pucciani
 
 
ICE, HIDING
 
Not the breath of angels
as we had hoped, nor the feathers
of invisible doves bringing peace to earth
on the shortest day of this long year.
Not the touch of sweetness, the taste of honey,
the brush of lips, an eyelid’s flutter,
 
but the deception of a quilted coverlet
over ice hard as the steel spade
attacking the impossible freeze
of last night’s ice storm. A diamond-hard
arrogance glares up through dawn’s blizzard
of fluff and frivolity.
 
This is the nature of betrayal.
We play the game year after year,
drawn to the softest chenille
blanketing a driveway needing to be cleared,
surprised by the layer of ice beneath,
catching the blade of the shovel.
A winter’s night has left behind
this dubious gift from a starless heaven,
a passive-aggressive glitter,
a skater’s waltz crunching underfoot,
a wondrous trickery.
 
 
Benjamin Cannicott Shavitz
 
 
AVANT-GARDE
 
A well-cultured artist named Kenny
would gather a crowd up and then he’d
stuff rocks in his rectum
and promptly eject ’em.
It spoke to the few, not the many.
 
 
Heidi Slettedahl
 
 
A MAN TELLS ME I AM BEAUTIFUL
 
I laugh and say I’m sure that isn’t true.
Still it pleases me
and I assume that was his intent
 
He isn’t scary,
not yet at least.
We share a table in a crowded room.
I won’t let him know where I am staying
(At least I think I won’t)
but I accept the proffered glass of wine.
I know better.
Of course I do.
Of course.
 
 
Alec Solomita
 
 
1967
 
We sit on the low stone wall
across the street from school
smoking cigarettes and feeling
superior to the hordes streaming
 
into the morning half of their daily
domestication. “Baa-ing” in mockery,
we take our time, one more smoke
and then, loosely holding our books,
 
we saunter after the wooly herd,
muttering our bumptious morning banter:
“I’m a guay, you’re a guay,
together we’re a Paraguay”
 
Les plans the evening aloud.
He’s got some Acapulco Gold
or so he says, and why not
believe him, he’s an honest sort,
 
and doesn’t know we call him
“Les is less” behind his back but “Slim”
to his face. We’re not cruel, not a bit,
just enchanted by our own wits.
 
And by Shelley’s high denim skirt.
She wears it, she says, to disturb
Professor Bell’s quiet, intense devotion
to Donne’s “busy old fool, unruly sun”
 
Donne would likely write some verses
about Shelley perched on teacher’s
desk with her legs crossed and her blouse
buttoned tight against her generous bust.
 
It was David Bell’s first year as a high school
teacher – young, short, stout but nobody’s fool.
He taught us, despite Shelley’s capers,
to love Marvel, Donne, and Shakespeare.
 
We all loved Shelley without instruction,
four or five boys and three or four fun
girls, but Shelley loved only me.
So, through my dolor she kept my sanity.
 
Not all of the kids in this loopy,
self-satisfied, depressed group
who called others not “squares,” but “cubes,”
thrived as adults as well as the rubes.
 
But Shelley did. In time, she lowered her hems,
married a doctor, got rich, collected art, wore gems.
And now, if her teeth are strong as she once was supple,
she’s chewing contentedly on the Big Apple.
 
 
Trish Somers
 
 
DON’T SAY US
 
There’s still blood in your hair
    Deftones “Mascara”
    Around the Fur 1997
 
Rare fog and a bumped flight
Chance encounter LA airport
Key in ignition
Just shut up and drive
 
me nearby
and a million miles away
Toss the script improvise
Re-cast me in the role
 
of the one you want -almost
Undress me in her clothes
Cos there’s something about us
Don’t say lust
 
The way I shake
in the corner you throw me in
after you drag me back
Don’t say run
 
I’m flying down Melancholy Highway
with a bump on my head
Why should I fear you
when I can miss you instead ?
 
It’s too bad it’s too bad
Lonely is an airport away
and you’re married
to me
 
 
Julie Standig
 
 
EDNA IS IN THE MULLIGATAWNY SOUP
    (because I love Millay)
 
Why mulligatawny?
Well, it’s all about the spice—a little pricey,
and a lot of exotic. And it’s not without demands—
just the right amount to invade your tastes
and permeate your senses.
 
Sauté the diced ginger, onion and carrot,
add crushed garlic (must be crushed)
with tomatoes, and low salt chicken broth.
(Edna’s salty enough). Simmer then spice:
curry, cumin, cardamom, paprika and pepper.
Last, add apples and let it simmer.
 
The final touch? Unsweetened coconut
milk. Must be unsweetened.
Necessary to take things down a notch
and to achieve the desired color.
You know it’s right when it’s a match
to Millay’s ginger red hair.
 
And like Edna, the soup spikes a need.
First just to satisfy, but as you know,
the need for more is soon to follow.
Slip on a silk kimono, add a gin rickey,
elevate your feet, fluff your hair, exhale.
 
A blazing fire is preferred, but you know Edna,
a couple of candles will do.
 
 
Spoiler Alert
 
I didn’t get the big deal over the Barbie movie.
And that multi-level dream house never appeared,
and I do mean never, in any of my dreams.
 
Hard to forget a pink house, pink sofas, kitchen,
toilet and a three-storied winding hot pink slide.
But I did marry a Ken.
 
Never owned a Mattel Barbie doll. My father presented
Genevieve to me. Similar but with black hair. Not blonde,
not blue-eyed. He alleged she was the French version.
 
Can’t remember why, but I did get Midge, Barbie’s bestie.
Brown bangs with That Girl flipped hair, scattered freckles.
Barbie’s only friend at a time when life was less pink.
 
But how about that curious conclusion to this flick?
The now human bouncy Barbie, ecstatic, eager
to check in for her very first pap smear.
 
Barbie’s first dose of reality. But granted, Gerwig funny.
I admit the movie had a strange appeal—gave me an urge,
a need to Google, to ogle, to own a Barbie.
 
My new Barbie just arrived. Very edgy, short punk hair,
perfect poseable body displayed in cropped halter,
metallic skirt and pointy little boots.
 
Still, I say no to reality—no to the trip to the gyno,
give me fantasy, the perfect shapely plastic look of it all.
Not pink and frilly, but finally flawless in black and white.
 
 
Alex Stolis
 
 
WELCOME TO PLANET MOTHERFUCKER
 
They tell you the easy stuff: how the cells will weaken
how they’ve done this thousands of times, how technology
has progressed so much in the past 5-10 years.
 
They tell you about side effects, prognosis vague
in their factual, objective scientific language.
Never talking how hope catches in your throat;
 
never saying how the future suddenly becomes
the now, how you never owned your life;
it’s a gift you’re expected to return.
 
Never saying how we spend our time suspending
this disbelief; making up happilyeverafter stories
with gods in heaven waiting to reward us.
 
Here are your options:
 
Do nothing. Die faster.
Remove the offending organ but not the chance for reoccurrence.
Assault your body with hormones and radiation.
 
Wish for the best.
 
All their knowledge and experience bundled
into glossy tri fold brochures, your road mapped
in brief episodic encounters with strangers.
 
In this notsobravenew world the landscape is charted
by Gleason Scores, grief, and tattooed triangulation
dots on your previously unscarred skin.
 
 
ATOMIC CITY (MINNEAPOLIS RADIATION ONCOLOGY)
 
Doc says the Big C is no joke but I’m intent
on shooting B&W blanks into the sky and wait
 
for the sun to fall. I’m not the man I used to be,
was never the man I was; just another revved-up
 
story in my own mind, hopscotching through
the landscape; scorched earthing through life.
 
Two stone throws away, my past is catching up
to my hubris. Listen, you can hear dawn begin
 
to crack; fear’s a passing malaise, courage a mirage,
a Dali watch ticking away the countdown.
 
Atomic City glows on the horizon, a dystopian Oz
with no Wizard. I’m ready to dance on my grave,
 
going to grab the hand of the nearest radium girl
and jitterbug our way to the end of the world.
 
 
Dan Thompson
 
 
LOVE DURING WARTIME
 
You loved me, and sometimes I loved you.
 
Rice paper walls
white as moonlight on bone –
the twisted alleys a tangled mass of writhing snakes
and just as dangerous.
 
You cried tears of involvement
while I observed my participation
both actor and director.
 
The madness of love whispered into your ear
speaking more loudly
a higher pitch
a rising
wailing
shriek-
high
scream and the wave broke over you …
 
I watched, safe on the beach.
 
 
M. Benjamin Thorne
 
 
THE EMPEROR ON THE HILL
—for Wallace Stevens
 
He placed a poem on a page
and fat it was, but also square.
Plain it was with words melodious
and lush yet somehow spare.
Its vastness sprawled everywhere.
The barren whiteness pooled around
and took shape from its sound,
from a subtle, concupiscent word.
He sang a genius beyond you and me,
like nothing else of sky and sea.
 
 
Nancy Tinnell
 
 
AN ASSAY OF PURPLE
 
children in her class loved the teacher’s celebration:
her favorite color proclaimed in garments, ink pens, markers
they delighted in each day’s purple surprise
for purple thrives in classrooms and crayons
 
ragged gray quartz, subjected to a hammer and chisel
will eventually confess its amethyst identity
revealing crystals of beauty in return for heavy blows
purple is a precious gem hidden beneath a rough exterior
 
anthocyanins create purple flowers
pink wavelengths merge with clouds and blue sky
their atmospheric chemistry delivers a purple sunset
for purple exists both below and above
 
the woman next door never faced a hammer
a fist altered her hemoglobin and bright red blood
bringing purple to her skin, bruise after bruise
purple is an unseen heartbreak visible on arms and faces
 
 
Emma Urbanová
 
 
BARRED TENDER
 
but I think of the world
as always in my bare hands,
tipping:
everything that fits onto my tray
is the weight of the sky and the sun
 
like orange confit
this unpeeled existential mode
 
centuries spent in another skin
decades of being paid for
vigilance
of aproning down on attitude
a constricted state of being on the lookout
for everything
 
waitress, first and foremost
only then
    human
 
 
JEWELRY FROM TEHRAN
 
the tiny room was overcrowded with bodies
trundling on top of one another
hospitality is a perverse industry
tits kiss grab pull   hair choke (the limited vocabulary of sexual encounters)
 
secrets leaving stains on our chipped souls as we swallow them
like rings, carrying them inside our thinned, hollowed out frames
with no backbone. ready to protect our happiness
at all costs, with our hind legs, toward obliteration. towards better days,
like the sour scent in the tiny room the rancid sheets the crumpled
Burger King bag
 
among the knickers, crusted with juice and sweat
among the red-wine-soaked tennis shoes
we pray to dear lord to forgive us   our skins
 
 
Sharon Whitehill
 
 
OBJECT LESSONS
   Colors are the mother tongue of the subconscious. –Carl Jung
 
A revelation to me, when I saw the exhibit,
that those gleaming marble statues I love,
those bodies of perfect proportions, had once
been vividly painted—which led the exhibitors
to paint replicas of the most famous to show
they were not, as earlier scholars convinced us,
left purposefully bare by their creators
to heighten the glimmer of shadow and light
on pale skin.
 
A falsehood, that claim. Which compels me to ask
why artists who lived in countries awash
with the brilliance of sea and sky,
why would they have left their statues unpainted?
Why not clothe them in dizzying harlequin patterns,
as in this exhibit, or paint their skins olive,
their wounds dripping red?
 
Questions that lead me, as the curators intended,
to look askance at earlier scholars’ dismissal
of traces of paint that still clung to the otherwise color-free
stone—as if whiteness reflected the purity of an ideal
in more than just bodies of marble. Questions
that also unsettle me when I admit that I feel overwhelmed
by this garish display. And chagrined to acknowledge
the pleasure I feel to remember the cool white marble
of those lovely sculptures, their power, even now,
to calm and unclutter my mind.
 
 
Robin Wright
 
 
IN MY DREAM I USE MY SUPERPOWER TO CHANGE BUMP STOCKS
 
My lady friends and I stroll to the bump stock club,
glittered walls, strobe lights. In the air, dainty perfume,
masculine musk. We dance the bump stock shuffle
in fishnets, short shorts, tank tops and boots.
Arms flail, legs kick, heads nod
like hammers striking nails.
 
End of the night:
all bodies glisten with sweat.
The only casualties
ripped fishnets and sore feet.
 
 
Susan J. Wurtzburg
 
 
SAFE KEEPING
 
My first important key: silver-colored, entrusted to me
by my father. Pledge of independence slung from my neck,
strung on a red-ribbon. Memorable medal of a latchkey child,
award for the oldest sibling. Later, keys to cars, safety,
 
but not on my bicycle. Wheeling up Toronto’s Yonge Street,
 
a man sprints into the road to spit on me. Saliva-wet cheek,
 
besmirched, I power those pedals uphill, scared to pause.
 
A grandfather sweeps majestically around the corner of Bloor Street,
 
my bike handle caught in his car door, harasses me, speeds away.
 
Key interactions for understanding how men abuse women
in public, private learning a part of the future. Life to come
of many keys safeguarding me; locks on homes, cars, offices,
luggage, garden sheds, bike padlocks, and my stubborn heart.
 
 
Artists’ Bios:
 
 
Alan Abrams, art school dropout, middling carpenter, ace motorcycle mechanic, unfaithful lover. A scribbler of stories and poems, a generous handful of which have been published in journals and anthologies including The Innisfree Poetry Journal, Disturb the Universe, The Raven’s Perch, The Galway Review, Litbop and The Rat’s Ass Review.
 
 
Susan Ayres is the author of Walk Like the Bird Flies (Finishing Line, 2023) and Red Cardinal, White Snow (Main Street Rag, forthcoming). Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her poems and translations from the Spanish have appeared in numerous journals. She lives in Fort Worth and teaches at Texas A&M University School of Law.
 
 
Jocko Benoit is the author of three collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Real Estate Deals of the Apocalypse. His poetry has appeared in Gargoyle, New Ohio Review, Rattle Poets Respond, Southern Poetry Review, Spillway and many other journals.
 
 
F. J. Bergmann lives in Wisconsin and fantasizes about tragedies on or near exoplanets. She is the poetry editor of Mobius: The Journal of Social Change. Her work has appeared in Abyss & Apex, Analog, Asimov’s SF, and elsewhere in the alphabet. She thinks imagination can compensate for anything.
 
 
Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise <(xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry on unceded Mingo land (Akron, OH). He published his first poem in a non-vanity/non-school publication in November 1988, and it’s been all downhill since. Recent/upcoming appearances in Utriculi, Plexus, and The Rumen, among others.
 
 
Brook Bhagat (she/her) is the author of Only Flying, a Pushcart-nominated collection of surreal poetry and flash fiction on paradox, rebellion, transformation, and enlightenment from Unsolicited Press. Her work has won contests and appeared in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and other journals and anthologies. She is a founding editor of Blue Planet Journal and a professor of creative writing at Pikes Peak State College. brook-bhagat.com.
 
 
Loukia Borrell is a first-generation American born in Toledo, Ohio, to Greek-Cypriot immigrants. She is a former print reporter who transitioned to writing poetry and essays in her fifties. Her work has appeared in Pangyrus, Roi Faineant Press, One by Jacar Press, Poetry Bus Magazine and elsewhere. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, with a journalism concentration, from Elon University. She lives in Virginia. For more info, go to loukialoukaborrell.com.
 
 
Brian Builta lives in Arlington, Texas, and works at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. His work has been published in North of Oxford, Hole in the Head Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, New Ohio Review, TriQuarterly and 2River View, among others.
 
 
Jim Burns was born and raised in rural Indiana and spent most of his working life as a librarian in Iowa and Florida. His retirement a few years ago gifted him with time, and he returned to a much earlier interest in writing, especially poetry, being fortunate enough to now have had a number of pieces published online and/or in print. He lives with his wife and dog in Jacksonville, Florida.
 
 
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz Country, California. He has a digital chapbook available,Little Popple River, from Red Wolf Editions, and print chapbook from Red Bird Chapbooks, A Filament Drawn so Thin. He has previously contributed to Rat’s Ass Review, as well as Williwaw Journal, Willows Wept Review, and Heartwood.
 
 
Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives and writes in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the 2020 winner of the Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Award for The Mercy of Traffic. (Unlikely Books, 2020); Doubleback Books reprinted her Discount Fireworks (Jacaranda Press, 2008), as a free download and in 2019 Belle Point Press published a new edition of Reading Berryman to the Dog (Jacaranda Press, 2000). Her website is www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com.
 
 
Joe Cottonwood has repaired hundreds of houses to support his writing habit in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. His latest books of poetry are Foggy Dog and Random Saints.
 
 
Lori D’Angelo’s stories have appeared in various magazines such as Divinations, JAKE, Litmora, Thin Veil Press, Worm Moon Archive, and Wrong Turn Lit. Her first book, a collection of short stories titled The Monsters Are Here, is forthcoming from ELJ editions in 2024. Find her on Twitter @sclly21 or on Instagram at
lori.dangelo1.
 
 
Scott Davidson grew up in Montana, worked for the Montana Arts Council as a Poet in the Schools, and – after most of two decades in Seattle – lives with his wife in Missoula. His poems have appeared in Southwest Review, Hotel Amerika, terrain.org Bright Bones: Contemporary Montana Writing, and the Permanent Press anthology Crossing the River: Poets of the Western United States.
 
 
Cover Artist Binod Dawadi, the author of The Power of Words, holds a master’s degree in English. He has worked on numerous anthologies and been published in various magazines. His vision is to change society through knowledge, so he wants to provide enlightenment to people through his writing skills.
 
 
Dani De Luca is a dancer, death doula, poet and teacher. Her work has been published with Bent Key Press, Querencia Press, and is featured in Free Verse Revolution magazine and Gypsophila magazine, among others. Her debut chapbook Of Lost Things was published by Querencia Press (2024). She resides outside Nashville with her husband and son. Find her via her website dani-deluca.com or @danidelucawriter on Instagram.
 
 
Hannah Dilday is an emerging American writer currently residing in the Netherlands. She earned her BS in philosophy from The University of Oregon and has been living abroad for the past four years. Hannah’s poetry has appeared in ONE ART, Anti-Heroin Chic, Poem Stellium, and Red Eft Review. When Hannah is not writing poetry, she enjoys photography, traveling, and practicing Dutch with locals.
 
 
Sara Eddy’s full-length collection, Ordinary Fissures, was released by Kelsay Books in May 2024. She is also the author of two chapbooks Tell the Bees (A3 Press, 2019), and Full Mouth, (Finishing Line Press, 2020), and her poems have appeared in many online and print journals, including Threepenny Review, Raleigh Review, Sky Island, and Baltimore Review, among others. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, in a house built by Emily Dickinson’s cousin.
 
 
James Evans is a writer from Kentucky. His work has appeared in the San Diego Poetry Annual, The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative, Anti-Heroin Chic, and elsewhere.
 
 
Arvilla Fee teaches English and is the managing editor for the San Antonio Review. She has published poetry, photography, and short stories in numerous presses, including Calliope, North of Oxford, Rat’s Ass Review, Mudlark, and many others. Her poetry books, The Human Side and This is Life, are available on Amazon. Arvilla loves writing, photography and traveling, and she never leaves home without a snack and water (just in case of an apocalypse). To learn more, visit her website: https://soulpoetry7.com/
 
 
A recent octogenarian, Vern Fein, has published over 300 poems and short prose pieces in over 100 different sites. A few are: Gyroscope Review, Young Raven’s Review, Bindweed, *82 Review, River And South, Grey Sparrow Journal, and Rat’s Ass Review. His second poetry book—REFLECTION ON DOTS—was released late last year.
 
 
Devon Fulford is a poet and educator. She has a doctorate in education and masters degrees in both creative writing and education. Devon has published three poetry collections: southern atheist: oh, honey (cathexis northwest press, 2021), the skin song (bottlecap press, 2024), and gulp (red ogre review, forthcoming august 2024). Other poems can be found in body literature, dead mule school of southern literature, longridge review, blood pudding press, indolent books, crosswinds poetry journal, and more.
 
 
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa and Shot Glass Journal.
 
 
J Kramer Hare is a native of Pittsburgh, PA. He enjoys climbing rocks and hearing jazz. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Zero Readers, Jerry Jazz Musician, Clackamas Literary Review, the Oakland Review, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. You can find him at kramerpoetry.com
 
 
Robert Harlow resides in upstate NY. He is the author of Places Near and Far (Louisiana Literature, 2018). His poems appear in Poetry Northwest, RHINO Poetry, Tar River, The Beatnik Cowboy, and elsewhere. Or so he has been led to believe.
 
 
Stephanie L. Harper is a neurodivergent poet, mother, and transplant from Oregon now living with the world’s most adorable husband and cat in Indianapolis, IN, where she completed her MFA in Poetry at Butler University. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Crab Creek Review, The Iowa Review, Laurel Review, Pleiades, Salamander Magazine, Taos Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere.
 
 
Hayley Mitchell Haugen holds a PhD in English from Ohio University and an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington; she is Professor of English at Ohio University Southern in southeastern Ohio. Light & Shadow, Shadow & Light from Main Street Rag Publishing Company (2018) is her first full-length poetry collection, and her chapbooks are, What the Grimm Girl Looks Forward To (Finishing Line Press 2016) and The Blue Wife Poems (Kelsay Books, 2022) She edits Sheila-Na-Gig online sheilanagigblog.com>and Sheila-Na-Gig Editions.
 
 
Anglo-Danish by birth but Bahamian by upbringing, Robin Helweg-Larsen has lived and worked in the Bahamas (bank clerk), Denmark (factories and janitorial), Canada (prison guard, bookstore owner), Australia (restaurant work), USA (25 years of developing and teaching business simulations around the world). Now working on his poetry at formalverse.com
 
 
Jennifer Randall Hotz’s work has appeared in Burningword Literary Journal, Naugatuck River Review, Connecticut River Review, and Literary Mama, among other publications. She won 1st place in poetry for the Virginia Writers Club 2023 Golden Nib Awards and was nominated for a 2024 Pushcart Prize. Her lifelong love of music and words drew her to poetry, where she delights in weaving the various strands of her interests into something new. Find her at: www.jenniferrandallhotz.com
 
 
Doug Jacquier writes from the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. His work has been published in Australia, the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, India and Turkey. He blogs at Six Crooked Highways and is the editor of the humour site, Witcraft.
 
 
Carey Jobe is a retired attorney. His work has recently appeared in The Orchards Poetry Journal, The Lyric, The Road Not Taken, Sparks of Calliope, and The Society of Classical Poets. He lives and writes near Tallahassee, Florida.
 
 
Gina Kotinek is a student at Rice University. She can usually be found hunched over her computer, reading, writing, or searching for the art of conquering carpal tunnel and tendonitis.
 
 
Peggy Landsman is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Too Much World, Not Enough Chocolate (Nightingale & Sparrow Press, 2024), and two poetry chapbooks, Our Words, Our Worlds (Kelsay Books, 2021) and To-wit To-woo (Foothills Publishing, 2008). When she isn’t reading and writing in her relatively cool (78° F) South Florida apartment, she’ll be out walking on the beach where, along with seashells, she sometimes finds the right word. Learn more about her at peggylandsman.wordpress.com/
 
 
Tyler Lemley is a recent graduate of the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Tx where he received his Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Arts and English. Tyler writes from the perspective of a queer person from a small Texas town grappling with love and belonging. He has been published in the Quirk literary journal and has work forthcoming in The Tusculum Review, Voices de la Luna, and The Main Street Rag.
 
 
Dawn Levitt is a two-time heart transplant recipient who co-founded an animal rescue which saves dogs from the streets of Detroit. She is a freelance writer, poet, and essayist who is currently writing a memoir about growing up with congenital heart disease and receiving two heart transplants. She lives with her family near a wetland preserve in the Detroit suburbs. Her work has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Insider Magazine, Newsweek My Turn, Blue Villa, Remington Review, Alchemy Spoon, and Intangible Magazine. Find her at www.dawnlevittauthor.com or Twitter/X @2HeartCore4U.
 
 
Heather Lewis-Barchue is a 44-year young woman who has lived more life in those years than some may experience in an entire century. She loves reading, mothering, writing, fashion, running, the outdoors, meditating, and love – not necessarily in that order. Heather is a woman who has given selflessly for her family while storing away her innermost heart and soul with just a pen and paper in hand.
 
 
Fay L. Loomis leads a quiet life in the woods in Kerhonkson, New York. A member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers and the Rat’s Ass Review Workshop, her poetry and prose appear in numerous publications, including six poetry anthologies.
 
 
Christian Hanz Lozada wrote the poetry book He’s a Color Until He’s Not and co-wrote Leave with More Than You Came With, and his short works have been published all over and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He lives in San Pedro, CA and uses his MFA to teach his neighbors and their kids at L.A. Harbor College.
 
 
Jamie Manias is a poetry MFA candidate and instructor at Bowling Green State University, where they serve as an assistant editor to the Mid-American Review. Their work has appeared in Apocalypse Confidential, dadakuku, and a queer anthology by Moonstone Arts Center. They can be found on Instagram at@jamiemanias.
 
 
Tim Mayo’s poems have received seven Pushcart Prize nominations, and his second volume of poems, Thesaurus of Separation (Phoenicia Publishing, Montréal, 2016) was a finalist for the 2017 Montaigne Medal and for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. His subsequent chapbook, Notes to the Mental Hospital Timekeeper (Kelsay Books, 2019) won Honorable Mention in the 2020 Eric Hoffer Chapbook contest. He lives in Brattleboro, VT, USA where he works in a mental institution.
 
 
Thomas M. McDade resides in Fredericksburg, VA. He is a graduate of Fairfield University. McDade is twice a U.S. Navy Veteran, serving ashore at the Fleet Anti-Air Warfare Training Center, Dam Neck Virginia Beach, VA and aboard the USS Mullinnix (DD-944) and USS Miller (DE / FF-1091). He’s been recently published in The Argyle Magazine.
 
 
Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has now returned to live in his native England. His poems have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, MONO., the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, the Washington Post and WestWard Quarterly.
 
 
Mish (Eileen) Murphy is Assistant Poetry Editor for Cultural Daily. She teaches English online at Polk State College, Lakeland, Florida. A Pushcart nominee, she has published two poetry collections—Fortune Written on Wet Grass (2019) and Sex & Ketchup (2021)—and a poetry chapbook, Evil Me (2020). Mish graduated from New College, Sarasota, and Columbia College of Chicago. She is also an award-winning digital artist, photographer, and book designer.
 
 
Nina Nazir (she/her) is a British Pakistani poet, artist and blogger based in Birmingham, UK. She’s had work published in various journals including Ink Sweat & Tears, The Ekphrastic Review, Unlost Journal and Harana Poetry, among others. She can usually be found at her favourite café with her nose in a book, on Instagram: @nina.s.nazir or on X:@NusraNazir
 
 
Yoda Olinyk (she/they) is a writer, editor, and abortion from Canada. Their work has appeared in many beloved journals and they have two books out. You can find more of Yoda at www.doulaofwords.com
 
 
Fiona Pitt-Kethley has published poetry and prose with publishers including Chatto, Abacus, Salt, Peter Owen, Dreich and others. Her last book was Washing Amethysts in the Bidet. She lives in Spain and is planning to publish some bilingual editions of poems on Amazon.
 
 
Kate Polak is an artist, writer, and teacher. Her work has recently appeared in DIAGRAM, Miracle Monocle, McSweeney’s, Drunk Monkeys, Moria, Inverted Syntax, and elsewhere. She lives in south Florida with her familiars and aspires to a swamp hermitage.
 
 
Jessica Poon is a writer, critic, and former line cook. Her writing has appeared in The British Columbia Review, Joyland, Ricepaper, subTerrain, and the Toronto Star. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. She is currently working on her first novel and is almost always with her dog.
 
 
Ken Poyner’s eleventh book, “Winter’s Last Apple”, came out in Summer 2023. Eight of his previous ten books are still in print. He lives in Virginia with his world-champion power lifting wife of 45+ years, assorted rescue cats, and various betta fish. Recent work has been out in “Sein Und Werden”, “The Literary Yard”, “Café Irreal” and elsewhere.
 
 
Charlie Probus writes a variety of things from Durham, North Carolina. They are a multi-disciplinary artist. Their visual art has been seen at many craft fairs and most recently at the CoLab Gallery in Raleigh and their first play, “Brothers in Arms,” is premiering at the Raleigh Fringe Festival this year. In their paid time, Charlie helps people navigate capitalism, and in their spare time they explore nature and practice all kinds of alchemy.
 
 
Donna Pucciani, a Chicago-based writer, has published poetry worldwide in Shi Chao Poetry, Poetry Salzburg, The Pedestal, Journal of Italian Translation, Acumen and other journals. Her seventh and most recent book of poetry is EDGES.
 
 
Benjamin Cannicott Shavitz is a writer and linguistics scholar. He lives in Manhattan, New York City and received his PhD in linguistics from the Graduate Center at The City University of New York. He has published two collections of his own poetry (Levities and Gravities), as well as an anthology of poems by New York City poets from throughout history (Songs of Excelsior). See www.kingsfieldendeavors.com/writing for links to his writing.
 
 
Heidi Slettedahl is a poet who would like to live up to her potential now that she is over 50. In real life she is an academic who goes by a slightly different name. She has been published in a variety of small literary journals. Her collection of poetry, Mo(u)rning Rituals, was published this summer by Kelsay Books.
 
 
Alec Solomita’s fiction and poetry have appeared in the Southwest Review, The Mississippi Review, Panoplyzine, Poetica, Lothlorien, Litbreak, Rat’s Ass Review, The Rye Whiskey Review, Oddball Magazine, The Galway Review, and elsewhere, including several anthologies. His poetry chapbook, “Do Not Forsake Me,” was published in 2017. His full-length poetry book, “Hard To Be a Hero,” was released last spring by Kelsay Books. He’s working on another, tentatively titled “Small Change.”
 
 
Trish Somers is out of L.A. Ca. where she lives with her Significant Other and a crazy cat or two. Her work is included in the 2022 Poetry Marathon Anthology (print). Online poems can be found at New Verse News, Rat’s Ass Review and elsewhere. For a unique take on today’s issues, visit her Substack page, ” Bitch n Complain”.
 
 
Julie Standig’s poetry has recently appeared in Schuylkill Journal Review, US1 Poets/Del Val, Gyroscope Review and Crone editions, and other fine publications. She is the author of two books, The Forsaken Little Black Book and Memsahib Memoir. She is not done yet. Once a lifelong New Yorker she now happily resides in Bucks County, Pa. with her husband and their Springer Spaniel. website: https://juliestandig.com
 
 
Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis; he has had poems published in numerous journals. Two full length collections Pop. 1280, and John Berryman Died Here were released by Cyberwit and available on Amazon. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Piker’s Press, Jasper’s Folly Poetry Journal, Beatnik Cowboy, One Art Poetry, Black Moon Magazine, and Star 82 Review. His chapbook, Postcards from the Knife-Thrower’s Wife was released by Louisiana Literature Press in 2024. RIP Winston Smith is forthcoming from Allen Buddha Press. He has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize. He can also be found at https://alexstolis.myportfolio.com/
 
 
Dan Thompson is a U.S. Army veteran and former professor. He has also worked as a professional musician and music producer for educational videos.
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M. Benjamin Thorne is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. Possessed of a lifelong love of history and poetry, he is interested in exploring the synergy between the two. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Sky Island Journal, Cathexis Northwest, Griffel, The Westchester Review, Feral, and Gyroscope Review. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, NC.
 
 
Nancy Tinnell lives and writes in Louisville, KY. She has self-published two chapbooks and enjoys planning reading events that include music performances by her friends. Her poems have appeared in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Poetry Breakfast Literary Journal, and ONE ART Haiku Anthology 2024.
 
 
Emma Urbanová (she/her) is a writer from Slovakia currently living and studying in the Netherlands. She holds a master’s from the University of Glasgow in comparative literature and English literature. Her work has been published by small leaf press, From Glasgow to Saturn, GUM, and Speculative Books.
 
 
Sharon Whitehill is a retired English professor from West Michigan now living in Port Charlotte, Florida. In addition to poems in various literary magazines, her publications include two academic biographies, two memoirs, a full collection of poems, and three poetry chapbooks. Her latest, THIS SAD AND TENDER TIME appeared (Kelsay Books) in December 2023.
 
 
Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in As it Ought to Be, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, One Art, Loch Raven Review, Panoply, Rat’s Ass Review, The Beatnik Cowboy, Spank the Carp, The New Verse News, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a Best New Poets 2024 nominee. Her first chapbook, Ready or Not, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.
 
 
Susan J. Wurtzburg enjoys writing poetry, a fun learning experience after an academic career. Her credits include being a semi-finalist in the Crab Creek Review’s Poetry Competition, 2022, and the Naugatuck River Review‘s Poetry Contest, 2022. Wurtzburg is an Associate Poetry Editor at Poets Reading the News, a recent development. In spring, 2025, her poetry book, Ravenous Words (co-author Lisa Lucas) will appear, much to her delight.