Spring-Summer 2026

 
 
 
 
 

(Cover Art — Summer Gargoyle photo by kerry rawlinson)
 
 
 
 
 

The Poetry

 
 
 
Catherine Arra
 
 
AT THE END OF NIGHT
 
I hear the 5:30 a.m. phone alarm
muffled under your pillow,
 
you breathe-moan-sigh,
hear Daisy, old like us,
 
rise from her bed, shake out bones
bow to groom face in paws,
 
then wait for you to rise,
shake out a stiff-tired body
 
and don downy fleece for “Walkies”
in -8 January degrees,
 
but first, I lock you, arm-leg
in place, pull you into my morning
 
kiss and hold, like a birthday card
celebration when years are fewer
 
and Daisy barks, sparks,
whirls and twirls
 
to say the same.
 
 
Jeff Bagato
 
 
SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
 
Anyone can shoot down
their own hallway,
but if you built the castle yourself
you can lie in it, too.
 
The wife’s not sure what
you want to eat;
she has you smell
the egg before she cooks it.
No smell, no problem.
Most things smell like death.
This isn’t one of them.
 
Drive a hard bargain
wherever you can,
that’s what I say.
You can see the will
drain out of their eyes.
They’ll agree to anything
at that point. No one can
argue without a spine.
Hand it back to
them with the receipt.
You won’t see him again.
Goes with the territory.
Didn’t get into this business
to make friends.
 
Give me a dead
squirrel and I can make
lunch money out of it.
Each part has a
price and a purpose.
That’s life.
Some assembly required.
 
 
Leo Balaban
 
 
I NEED A VACATION
 
I’m always paid to keep my head up, I have no leave.
Usually there’s an electric cable coming through the vinyl
tiles of the factory ceiling connected to my spine, violently
zapping each vertebra into place when it’s time to produce,

but just for now the cables have been replaced
by a thread from the collar of my shirt. It’s been caught
in the almost stringy bark from the top of palm trees,
each vertebra is encouraged into place, gently
rolling back the shoulders and neck to face the sun.
 
 
Ben Banyard
 
 
EVERYBODY’S TALKIN’
 
He whistles along to the radio
as he wriggles each tile free,
stacks them neatly for later.
 
Keeps the radio loud
so he can’t hear
the rows and the chatter,
dogs shut in alone all day,
babies screaming for their naps.
 
Next come the rotten battens,
ragged felt which must be 40 years old.
A blue-sky day, with a lively breeze
which rushes into the attic below,
stirs suitcases of old clothes, keepsakes.
 
This lonely routine,
every day of a working life,
the heights and the heavy gloves,
a whole day of hammering,
on the lookout for rain and sunburn,
with views to die for.
 
 
Marshall Begel
 
 
THIS IS JUST TO SAVE TIME
 
I have eaten
the wheelbarrow
beside the white chickens
which you were probably
depending upon
Forgive me
It was so red
and so glazed with rain
 
 
Robert Beveridge
 
 
The Clearing
for Paula Baker
 
Rain threatened, but didn’t do much more
than piss. You, excited about your new house.
We walked the property, held hands as we entered
the path into the woods. Massive chunks
of cut tree previous owners had never cleared,
paths, sun and droplets through foliage.
You turned left. “And check this out!” I saw
a table, chair, teapot. Then we crested
the treeline and the space found its way
into my breath.
           The fire pit to warm the tea
now choked with beer cans so faded we couldn’t
discern the class of the previous supplicants.
We knew, though, that they worshipped: chicken-
wire sconce nailed to the tree at the very south
of the clearing, above it a skull affixed.
Unhuman, yet no animal either of us recognized.
Alien, or as old as the beer cans. But it is true
that whatever the altar and whomever
the goddess, worship is worship, and in the presence
of the holy I can do no less.
           I prime you with lips
on the back of your neck, clothing shed with a touch
as if gravity had failed in the presence of the divine.
Your freckles deepen under my tongue, back
and breasts awash in beautiful burnished copper, my
hands, lips lowered, lowered again, and as if by magic
the teapot flung to the ground, your body in its place,
our demon, our idol, our incubus forever in our gaze

as my lips affix to you, most sensitive of all
your so sensitive skin, and you sing hymns, wordless
soprano arias to whatever deity would accept such
a sacrament (“take, eat, this is my body, which is wetted
for you”). You sing the heavens down, previous drips
now a torrent. Unbroken bass thunder rumbles
counterpoint your ever-higher song, its clench
around my tongue, my fingers. I can wait
no longer, straighten, and you eager guide me
into the very apse, most sacred space we know. We
worship as we know how, naked, wet, your hymns
shattering the dam, the long, shuddered release (“take,
drink, this is our love, which confirms the Covenant
between angel and demon”)
           then rest, coolness
of rain against sweat-and come-slicked bodies. We look
up at our totem and know we have offered a better
sacrifice than tea, than beer. We rose up,
and we went before him into Galilee.
 
 
THE LOVERS (REVERSED)
 
Blessed be the makers of Effexor
and its various side effects.
Blessed be the past relationships
and the blood they leave behind them
in the water. Blessed be
the societal norms, the pressures of decay.
 
And blessed be those angels who ignore it all
and let their fingers sew the shards
into a new blanket, let their tongues
evoke new, muskier songs,
a sustenance we always knew we needed
but were never able to articulate
with our own fumbling stumps.
 
 
WEDDING DAY
 
“Every day is someone’s wedding day,”
she said, nestling closer
under the crook of my shoulder,
“but November
is a bad month for marrying.”
 
I could feel, this
time as every time,
her breasts pressed
against my side,
her thigh on mine.
 
I started to wonder:
after pulling the virgin birth stunt,
Mary and Joseph got married
and, presumably, went
back to carpentry.
 
But, when he took her
as a husband,
was she ever again with child?
 
Did Jesus have any sisters?
 
The bible, like divorced
men, has a tendency
to never mention the women
it has no use for.
 
 
F.S. Blake
 
 
HAIKU
 
ocean tide pulling
sand from under my bare feet
your ring left no mark
 
 
Rose Mary Boehm
 
 
THE PHANTOM’S LYRE
 
She saw it melt into the wall
on this dark Venetian night,
there, by the Ponte dei Sospiri.
Trembling
she touches the spot.
Needs to know.
 
There is nothing,
just cold bricks and slime.
 
Black water laps against dark stone.
Ancient eyes caress top-lit wavelets.
Skeletal hands raise a silvery lyre
above the water.
 
Sorrowful sounds drip into her heart.
Torpor overwhelms her longing.
 
From the canal rises a cloud
of hungry souls
seeking not victims
but a giver’s feast.
 
Loud voices and bright lights
fall from ornate windows,
and the girl’s cold fingers
no longer pluck the strings.
 
 
Jeff Burt
 
 
CORKSCREW
 
Trading cards on the hot pavement near Orchard Drive,
a dull pink mural of apples and cherry trees,
we pause, too wound to sit, full of corkscrew and knurl,
 
go light firecrackers that the old women in the neighborhood
will startle as they pace on porches like protective curs
or wolves penning their kill. One wails like a baby crying.
 
An August day passes like this, then another, another,
dreamlike, uneventful, deep, our souls imprinted
by mothering nature, indolence, waiting to be born, detach.
 
 
Raymond Byrnes
 
 
LIBRARY TRIP
 
My thoughts still scattered
like crickets at a garage door’s
sudden lift, I select a table,
connect my laptop, and lean back
to reminisce and write.
 
I close my eyes and begin to recall
a young woman’s words whispered
beneath a moonlit yellow maple when
an old man across the aisle starts
yelling something like Norwegian
 
at a little face on his iPhone
as the PA system crackles out
an invitation to join a writers’
group down the hall and a baby
wails in the children’s section.
 
I concentrate on my blank screen
confident that autumn leaves
and recollected words will soon
begin to fall across the page, when a
text beeps in to pick up milk and bread.
 
 
Wendy Taylor Carlisle
 
 
THIS SPRING
 
i.
APRIL FOOLS
 
In France April Fools is
poisson d’avril, April Fish Day
after a Renaissance poem
describing the spring
younglings, easiest to catch
falling for a foolish joke
love is that joke,
a mad lover’s misjudgment.
You are the fish.
 
ii.
MAY DAY
 
Good morning, dogwood
coming into life again
after winter
good morning bare feet
and wind moving
the chimes that sound like birds
and the birds.
 
 
BUT IN JUNE
 
Each day begins,
the birds talking to themselves
a chorus of chirrups
close to the weather.
In the garden, rosemary, begonias,
wicker, a lavender breeze.
These days belong to feathers.
Another summer,
when I hoped to divine something
from dust and sweat if only
the permission to be bird-happy
while I think about the swiftness of
life disappearing if I need
to make myself miserable.
 
 
ACTINIC
 
I am melting
the actinic keratoses
off my thighs
with a poultice.
They are dissolving
like salted
slugs. I am
releasing the rogue
cells like nematodes
from a subway tunnel.
Saints preserve me
but not those ugly
senile disturbances
that interrupt my
live-forever fantasy.
Today, I have settled
into a dream
of let-me go clear,
lift me up smooth
as baby skin,
oh Lord, slick
as the leaches
and minnows
dispensed from
Papa’s Self-Serve Bait,
in Houghton Lake
Michigan.
 
 
Alex Carrigan
 
 
ARS POETICA: SLEEP NUMBER
After “Ars Poetica # ___” by Clayre Benzadón
 
I don’t know how
you can share
 
this bed with me,
handle my cold feet
 
against your back,
or the back of my hand
 
hitting your cheek
every time I roll over.
 
I don’t know how
you can sleep peacefully
 
through my muttering,
words you’ve never heard
 
before I drooled them
onto my pillow.
 
I don’t know how
you can swallow
 
my hair as it
brushes your lips,
 
strands braided into your teeth
that threaten to pull them all
 
out if I’m suddenly awoken by
the sound of a school bus outside.
 
I know I’m not an
easy person to share
 
all of your
nights with.
 
I’ll put these thoughts
on a Post-It note you’ll find
 
stuck on your forehead
when you wake up today
 
so you know I can’t wait
for us to go to sleep again.
 
 
Richard Collins
 
 
SCIENCE AND MISCELLANEOUS
 
In the London Library, works devoted to the subject of Love
are classified under the heading Science and Miscellaneous.
—Anthony Powell, To Keep the Ball Rolling
 
And who’s to say that’s not right, after all?
 
For who’d deny the aptnesses of physics,
biology, physio-psychology,
sociology and soforthology
in what Ovid called simply love’s aesthetics?
 
Isn’t love often just quantum mixes
of chemistry and electricity,
flesh and stone, madness mingled with sanity,
hypotheses and mistakes without fixes?
 
How else classify our random researches
into pleasure and sadness, finickiness
and sloth, bittersweet erotic stickiness,
the whole cocktail of a soul’s drunken urges?
 
While you can tour the London Library,
don’t expect just to browse at your leisure
in search of dusty facts or musty pleasure
whether technical or literary.
 
In sum, Science and Miscellaneous
can embrace any number of things like love
found under the sun or even above,
much that is crude, but nothing extraneous.
 
So who’s to say that’s not the right heading
to hold both theory and praxis of bedding
(or, as Old Coppernose made love, beheading)
with or without biblical begetting?
 
For doesn’t love, like science, encompass all?
 
 
Joe Cottonwood
 
 
GOAT’S MILK YOGURT
 
There is no other panic
like when your child disappears
and you immediately see
the look on your son’s face
of disbelief at his own blood
at what is happening to him
at evil he should never learn
as you race toward the restroom
because at his sister’s soccer tournament
he needs to poo and you say you’ll follow
in a minute after you finish this goat’s milk
because yogurt in restrooms, bad pairing
but Joshua’s on the small side to go alone.
And he’s gone.
 
After the golden dog named Oak
broke free dragging leather leash
that streamed like a kite’s tail
as he chased a stag into the forest,
you searched. If that leash should snag
Oak would stay silent—instinct not revealing
his location—and if attacked
he would fight with his teeth
to the last beat of his heart.
You tramped acorn acres calling “Oak!”
Three days later scratching at your door
the dog with chewed-off leash appeared
for a meal, a long snooze.
 
Months later you meet a woman
who greets Oak as the father
of her chocolate lab’s puppies,
a swarm of calico golden and brown.
She offers you one. More than a stag
he chased, three days. Just so comes Joshua
from the farther, cleaner restroom
walking with a classmate named Lakshmi,
her teeth a white flash in a dark smile.
 
Goat milk tastes like human.
Both good. One, special.
A puppy, thanks, no.
Children grow so fast.
 
 
OLDIES RADIO
 
A girl mouthing into a microphone
in Brooklyn enters your brain through
headphones six decades later in California
so you’re smelling sexy wet wool mittens
in a steam-heated basement apartment
getting your first ever blowjob
with amazing embarrassing results
with sun glinting off snowbanks outside
planted in your memory having nothing to do
with the lyrics of the goddamn song.
 
A song you don’t remember, mind you,
triggering all this, a pleasant melody
in a voice rendered metallic by mic
like brakes on a subway train.
   Please
   love me forever
 
Wikipedia says the singer of shrill
(age 15) recorded the song solo,
then the producer overdubbed
with smooth doo-wop singers from Queens,
and a minor hit was born to travel
cross-continent to worm onto your playlist
bringing mittens and claustrophobia
from when you loved, yes crushingly
briefly loved a red-pigtail girl
who had a voice like birdsong.
   Don’t
   forget me never
 
Does this ever happen to you?
 
 
A ROUTINE PROCEDURE
 
“Nobody dies from it”
says the nurse
meaning less than
one tenth of one per cent
but my feet must pace
the waiting room tiles
 
She is the bare back
where I press my bare chest
whose breasts I cup
whose behind fits my frontal spoon
each night
 
She is 77 years old
 
If you say Eww
then fuck you
 
She is my routine
my procedure
my life’s companion
 
 
WHEN VOICES BLEND
 
I’m no musician but one summer
for campers with my guitar
I sang sad folkie songs.
 
Tell old Bill, when he comes home
To leave those downtown gals alone
This mornin’, this evenin’, so soon…
 
Another counselor, Reggie
with the better voice, high tenor
joined my low in a harmony that thrilled,
sent electroshock quivers deep in my chest.
Closest we ever came to touch.
 
Reggie black, me white.
Inside him, a sadness—you heard it
in the notes, the tinge of blue.
Girls always sweet on him.
He danced, laughed, shied away.
Queer, back then in Missouri, a dirty word.
 
I didn’t understand the mechanics
of harmony, how the notes, which way.
Same so, the culture of gay.
 
And the world shot us out
like pepper spray. No contact
until a photo, Facebook, an obit saying
in New York he taught music, drama,
beloved by college kids, appeared
on stage with Meryl Streep.
 
Oh Lord, tune for me my old guitar.
Fingers are stiff but in a Mendocino fog
after half a century comes the music
of memory, the mystery of harmony,
the shock of love—this morning,
this evening, too late.
 
 
I’M LOOKING AT YOUR HEART
NOT STARING AT YOUR BREASTS
 
Long ago I built a wall
of smooth boulders
without mortar
on a hillside
daring gravity
to find flaws
 
Moss and lichen
made home on stone
while seed settled
into niche
 
Roots tumble rocks
with their quiet strength
like the power
of milk
 
Grandchildren scramble
from your chest
and we laugh
 
 
Tony Dawson
 
 
GAZA STRIPPED
 
Bibi Netanyahu’s Ashkenazi origins
seem so nominatively appropriate
as he reduced Gaza City to ashes
with the efficiency of the Third Reich.
Trump sent Marco Rubio to wail
with Bibi at the wailing wall
while Palestinians were slaughtered,
their homes reduced to rubble,
and their children starved to death.
The recent Scholastic-style dispute,
especially among equivocating
European nations and others, was not
how many angels could dance on a pinhead
but how many deaths added up to genocide.
 
 
STORM
 
Tonight, the earth is as thirsty as
an alcoholic that can’t stop drinking.
Its friend the sky has dropped by
in the company of Storm Emilia
laden with crates of cloud booze,
now pouring down as torrential rain.
The earth can’t sink it fast enough,
its cups are spilling water everywhere.
This spectacle of rain falling in sheets
or as curtains blotting out the landscape
takes me back to my early childhood
when my father used to stand at the door
of the kitchen and to my bewilderment,
would roar at the sky, “Send it down, David!”
 
 

 
 
John Delaney
 
MEDITATION TEMPLE
 
This life is short, fragile, and deceptive as a spring Mayflower or sunny rainbow.
 
Receiving no benefit upon hearing any of the melodious teachings, like a stone thrown into water, is a sign of not having enough merit.
 
If wise beings discontinue their great deeds, this empty world will look much emptier.
 
In this world of pitch dark ignorance, like a sunless day, a moonless night or a starless sky, suddenly a bolt of lightning strikes. That quickly human life passes.
 
The Buddha taught that one must avoid the two extremes of being rich and poor.
 
What is the use of this meaningless body when you don’t have an essential knowledge?
 
Like the moon shines on every water surface, the kind-hearted one will always think of every being’s wellness.
 
Not looking forward is a sign of a fool. Though there is a wide road ahead, the fool chooses the cliff’s edge.
 
Renounce this empty world like a dog renounces grass.
 
If water drops can accumulate to be an ocean, one can accumulate a lot of virtues if he tries hard.
 
Drop by drop even a large container can be filled. The wise advance little by little, improve themselves, and finally attain bodhi mind.
 
A senile old person cannot do much, so do good while you are still young.
 
A fault of this life is that it only lasts as long as a swift waterfall.
 
The sun rises on the summit of a snowcapped mountain the same way thoughts appear in a wise person’s mind.
 
Do not make trouble by telling lies even if the world comes to an end and the earth breaks into pieces.
 
The karma of this life follows one as the shadow of a bird follows the bird itself.
 
One day a sharp arrow will pierce the head of a cow caught in the rocks. Likewise, while you are running here and there one day the arrow of death will pierce you.
 
The path of truthfulness is straight and firm.
 
A found poem of sorts, consisting of Buddhist teachings on signs
encountered to and from Aryabal Meditation Temple, Terelj Tuv (Mongolia).
 
 
Sal Difalco
 
 
PHYLLIS
 
I thought of you yesterday.
Red pumps, plump feet
and the smell of fuzzy orchids
smeared across my eyes
and Mick Jagger lips.
The living room scene
carried on for a slap wash
of the thighs, easy on
the firmament, easy slide
were it happening
without the ma and pa
snoozing upstairs
on their water bed.
I doubt they were
ducking and wicking
as cleverly as I was.
Taking it with eyelids
as if stapled down
and the mouth almost
open but not quite
reminds me of surrender
and bliss wrapped
in Hudson Bay blankets
your pa liked to lay
across his diabetic legs
when we all painfully
sat around watching
the Stanley Cup playoffs.
 
 
Craig Dobson
 
 
CASAVECCHIA
 
It’s a little after nine
when I ease myself into the virgin
and know that everything will be fine.
An old friend’s daughter, I’ve known her years.
Aware how uncertain first times can be,
she asked this of me, wanting – whatever came later –
its strangeness gentled almost to the familiar.
 
The bodies work their ancient ways.
By one, she’s back in her own bed
and I’m left with a whisky in the curtained night.
The lamplight’s antique sepia stains the old oak floor.
Ash heaps grey behind cobwebs trammeling the rusted grate.
The tumbler drips its amber in
and, with it, the beginning of all this for me –
 
my white-walled, blue-skied childhood abroad:
the ubiquity of scent and colour, bare sunlit skin always near,
the aunt who watched me more intently each year;
her friend’s borrowed flat one still, hot afternoon
the dogs dozed through, their dream cries coupling ours.
 
Did she, I wonder – among the half-empty
wine glasses and candlelit plates littering
our family table that evening – feel as I do now?
Was she nourished by or just emptier from
our secret afternoon? I felt both tonight, at times,
then neither.
 
In what remains, the weary drink-eased hours
entertain a paradox of desires at once older
and younger than my recall, till each one
settles in relief, like the pile of unswept ash
shadowing the lamp’s far reach.
 
Foolish with all I’ve learned since then,
I’d need her here to help me with them.
And though only silence echoes
the gilding, relic passages of time,
I still wonder would she come again –
arm extended to take mine
and lead me, gentle, to that other room?
 
 
Jané Dowd
 
 
SILKEN
 
Marriage is a reckoning:
what you owe me, how I’ve been
wrong/ed, all the ways
one is better than another.
 
The short years skid past
composed of long days and
wildflowers: those we see along the way,
those we pick for fleeting bouquets,
and those that bloom unexpectedly
after fire or frost. The fragile
ones we notice
only after
they’re lost
 
 
POSSIBLE CURSES
 
the squirrel pup
I tired of feeding
and later found
cold, stiff
dead
 
all the antelope:
impala, kudu,
blesbok, gnu
keeping my
feet in the air and
out of the blood
and guts sloshing
around the bed. learning
animals carry
their waste
ready-formed
unexpelled, waiting;
also: mammals ooze milk
even after death
giraffes cry silent
tears when they die
 
the many fledgling
doves I abducted,
ignorantly condemned,
thinking
they needed
me
 
the short girl named
Karin that wanted
to adore me
be my friend
look up to me
   be held –
how she hunted
my eyes
across the room, mouthing
are you mad at me, gesturing
a clumsy I love you
 
the dark girl named
Cindy that kissed
me against
a cupboard in a lava
lamp-lit teenage bedroom
buzzing with boys and booze
her giggling breath
on my lips, my neck
the disconcerting undertow;
later on a rooftop
she tells me no one knows
thanks me, watches me learn
to smoke
 
the shy girl named
Susan who kept
her eye on me
from the wings, pulled at
the heavy curtain cord
slipped me a note with
the five-minute call:
do you remember
me? can we
finally
be friends?
 
the boyman that barely
bedded me at eighteen
when he was a virginal
twenty-three, who later
raged at my
denial – indignant
disbelieving, so recently
self-satisfied
 
someone whose boyfriend
I trapped for a night, poolside
starlight (he pretended
not to know me
when she arrived;
now I don’t
recall
his name)
 
the small black boy
my big white father
threatened with
a knife at his throat
 
my grandpa Tom’s
scorned mistress
 
who became a witch
while he was walking
 
away, screaming at
his back:
 
a curse on you,
your children
and theirs:
 
   never
   shall you
   be satisfied
 
 
Damien Farley
 
 
BRANDY AND MY CRAYONS
 
finding I’m a little tired of me –
tired of my reason and the plural –
I concentrate on the contemplation
of Comet® sprinkled, now scrubbing
bathtub crayons (implements,
I advocate, should be part of
every American adult’s existence,
for, if I had you in my shower to myself,
I’d make love to you and scrawl
descriptions of your wicked beauty
upon each surface there)
 
 
Joseph Farley
 
 
THE SUBJECT WAS WALRUSES
 
You walked out in a huff
taking your handlebar mustache
with you.
 
Some people can be so sensitive.
It was only a comment
about facial hair.
 
If you were a woman
I could have understood,
but you are a man
 
in middle age
trying to regain
something,
 
a part of a past
left behind decades ago.
I know
 
you would have rather
bought a flashy sports car,
the kind I could not fit in.
 
Lack of money made you choose
that damned mustache instead.
One dead caterpillar
 
on your lip
was not enough.
No.
 
You had to give it company.
Now you are gone,
along with your larvae.
 
God knows I will miss
your friendship,
but not your mustache.
 
That thing had to go.
Even if it wound up
taking you with it.
 
 
Vern Fein
 
 
CLASS-CONSCIOUS TOMATOES
 
The rich hoard all things Earth.
In the15th century this ripe,
juicy, red delicacy turned deadly
for the upper classes.
As they dined at fancy dinners,
the privileged avoided them
like the plague.
 
Not so the poor. The abundant
tomatoes enriched their fare
and helped their waifs bloom.
Was this some kind of heavenly justice—
God giving a hand up
to the broken and downtrodden?
 
The expensive pewter dishes,
metal mixing with the tomato acid,
produced the deadly poison.
 
The wooden plates of the poor
were safe as they squished
the delicious into their mouths
and were thankful.
 
 
Wendy Freborg
 
 
SCRAPBOOK MEMORIES
 
I really miss your old girlfriend,
the one with the long hair and trim figure,
the one who’d play frisbee on the putting green at night,
walk miles up hills and down the streets to see the sights,
try out new foods just to see what they were like.
 
She wanted to see it all and do it all.
 
She’d drive down the coast on a whim,
pack up and move to the other coast for a dream.
Sleep in the car when she couldn’t find a room,
eat your chili con carne, spicy as it was,
stay at a concert until the band had to go.
 
In a word, she was young.
 
Every day opened the door on something new to do.
Now, each day seems to close a door on a thing I used to do.
 
I miss that girl.
 
 
Meg Freer
 
 
OFFERINGS
love and not justice is the point of things
(W. Kittredge, Hole in the Sky)
 
She lights a cigarette as she exits the liquor store,
he calls to her as she walks toward her BMW,
she responds, “Back in a sec,” opens the car door
and returns with a second cigarette—perhaps
the only thing they have in common, this woman
in a short black dress and this man slumped
against the wall, the building his backbone
at that moment, a cigarette the best
the woman can offer besides her presence.
 
 
Reb Friou
 
 
MAN
 
He literally handed me a baseball bat and begged me to chase him with it around campus so I did as I was told. I invited him to my dorm and we got drunk even though I was literally a minor and he was a full grown adult. We made out on the dance floor and he put his hands down my pants after I had literally just puked and was trying to go to sleep. We only spoke one more time after this and he just told me not to take things so literally.
 
 
MY FIRST KISS WAS
 
in the stairwell of a convent. When
he grabbed my hand to pull me close
I slid across the terrazzo floor in my Mary
Janes. He shoved his unbrushed tongue
against my twelve year old molars. One
by one we returned to AP Human
Geography. I tucked my shirt back into my
skort and he rearranged his boner.
We never spoke again.
 
 
2017
 
my gf was a debutante and i was an afterthought. in places where it was just tuesday, it was just tuesday. here it was mardi gras in new orleans. i thought if i protested the deb world something would change; like maybe no more white men would dress in blackface or make fun of trans ppl. and by protesting i mean sitting at home instead of watching my gf parade around in a wedding gown on the arm of some boy home from college. i wasn’t being an activist i just wanted to lay down all the time because i had sworn off eating and was anxious. but i had to go and i wore a gown my stepmother lent me and i even shaved my armpits for the first time in a year so as not to embarrass my gf’s lineage. during the national anthem i tried to remain seated and my stepmom dragged me up by the arm. also, my gf and i couldn’t even act like gfs at the ball after the debut because they had already announced she was a women and gender studies major and that was cause for concern amongst the ball-goers. i was so slender and so faint and my mother was worried my sexuality was causing anorexia. she texted this to me. my father was pissed that my gf had been sleeping over for months and he hadn’t realized we were finger banging. the man in blackface was unknown to me and definitely someone’s father and the world was bleak. my stomach was growling and my gf was a debutante.
 
 
Mac Gay
 
 
DISHWATER AND LIGHT
 
I think I had been going to
the Church of Tell Me All Your
Thoughts of God Because I’d Really
Like to Meet Her all my life,
even though I was born in 1948 and
wildly hindered by Methodist foolishness.
Then in 2013, when I met the real God,
my dog Skip, I think I knew
the door to heaven had finally
opened, for there was no ego
on the pogo anymore. And when he
died he died upon the cross across
a million miles of frustration. Ultimate
prostration was then my ongoing posture,
for I finally knew unconditional love.
It was like God was Dog was Dove.
 
 
John Grey
 
 
I AM HAVING A BAD MOMENT
 
Recall slams into thought
like cars coming from opposite directions,
both hugging the middle lane.
 
My head is a mangle
of nostalgia
and what do I do next.
 
Gale takes my hand
like some kind of rescue vehicle
but the crash occurred
where she can’t see.
 
And she is there, twice:
the child yet to know me,
the elder, looking back on our relationship.
 
Someone lived.
Someone died.
She doesn’t get to choose.
 
 
THE RATS
 
A woodpecker vanished.
So did a chickadee.
 
Then, all at once, the mockingbird,
the mourning dove and Carolina wren
 
took off for the nearby forest.
The sparrows, at first, were reluctant
 
but, eventually, they moved on
to other houses.
 
The finches followed them,
even their gold summer brethren.
 
The hummingbirds not only left,
they didn’t even arrive.
 
The pole from which the feeder hung
stands empty.
 
Every corner of the yard
is patrolled by a bait box.
 
Nearby construction has upset
the local rat population.
 
They’re drawn to anything that sniffs of food.
They take the bait
 
but like wildebeest in lions’ territory,
rats survive by being so many.
 
They breed in great numbers.
Like anything feral, they steal from what belongs.
 
Taking down the feeders has been
my greatest sacrifice.
 
No more birdwatching.
No more carnival of colors and behaviors.
 
The rats have won.
Their corpses prove it.
 
 
Gary Grossman
 
 
TWENTY-SEVEN DAYS AFTER MOM DIED
 
photographs by her friends began
floating in, gray-scale 2 X 3’s,
4 X 6’s, even an occasional
Kodachrome slide.
 
Mom smiling prior to the late
May day when snake-like Mexico
highway 2D, wrapped round her neck
and hissed snap. She died instantly,
didn’t feel a thing, said the Guardia.
 
Fifty-two years later, a third cousin
hands me a jpeg, crisp and clear
as Gustave Cailliebotte’s portrait
of Parisians on a rainy day.
A photographic capture designed
to overwrite files burned on my
amygdala. As if Mom’s mania,
depression and blows could be
excised by the crop and blur
functions of Photoshop. As if
history could be negated,
or erased. As if this distant cousin
didn’t know exactly what he was doing.
 
 
BOMB CYCLONE
 
I’m not sure
war analogies
 
work with
weather
 
or climate,
the latter
 
long-term,
the former
 
this
afternoon.
 
 
Stephen Ground
 
 
DARWIN
 
saturated to the tips
      like
a kerosene wick
      that’s
primed & ready to
      sizzle,
 
I slurp behind the
      wheel,
chortle the engine to
      life,
& wordlessly wait
   for
 
Nature to happen.
 
 
HEART & HEAD
 
it’s great when they’re
belting epic oratorios in
peerless harmony, but as
of this moment I’d slay
something endangered for
just one of these jokers to
learn the damn words.
 
 
Nevin Nahar Haque
 
 
PERMUTATIONS AND COMBINATIONS
 
the other day I typed your last name
next to my first. two red dotted lines.
under both yours and mine. didn’t
add (insert your last name here) to
my dictionary. instead I idiotically
tried my first middle and last then
a — to join your last name with
mine like a hyphen would make
all four names sing together but it
looked like too many pieces of a
jigsaw puzzle that didn’t fit with
each other. tried my first last and
another hanging hyphen with yours
tried my first middle and your last
I tried too many permutations and
combinations and it all failed me.
I could never turn my head towards
someone who could call out to me,
“hey, Mrs. (insert your name here)!”
four red lines. three red lines. two.
truth be told your name doesn’t
match mine your life doesn’t match
mine your character doesn’t match
mine. yet you were one of the few
people I’ve ever met who always
referred to me by my whole name.
you corrected people when they’d
get it wrong. though you, too, could
never fully pronounce the sounds
you could never pause slightly at
the lilt of my different accent but
you tried, still. you tried, once.
 
 
Robin Helweg-Larsen
 
 
EARTH (AND MARS)
 
This planet is humanity’s place of birth,
but not the end of what we’re capable of –
we’ve just begun.
 
But don’t let Elon Musk take off from Earth:
he’ll nuke us if and when he gets pissed off…
or just for fun.
 
 
1+1=?
 
The kids are in a muddle,
can’t get the math to sum:
the girls just want to cuddle,
the boys just want to come.
 
 
 
 
David Henson
 
 
THE EASY PART
 
You always said
yours was the easy part.
I knew what you meant,
but didn’t want to admit it.
The color of your eyes
wouldn’t let me.
 
I refused help.
It had always been
just you and me.
I kept your meds straight
on my own.
Getting you out of bed
was the hardest part,
but my heart was stronger
than my back.
 
You loved it when I opened
the bedroom window
so you could hear the birds.
You said they sang you
into the past.
 
That morning,
you forced a smile
and said it wasn’t so easy
after all.
 
The birds went silent.
I heard my future.
 
 
Matt Hohner
 
 
“LINCOLN THE RAIL SPLITTER” (NORMAN ROCKWELL, 1964)
   Butler Institute of American Art,
   Youngstown, Ohio
 
The scale is monumental, perspective,
heroic. You are young, smooth-faced,
eyes plunged into a hefty tome in your
left hand, axe clutched by its neck
in your right, sable hair tousled
and rough against the clouds
building in the sky overhead.
Thin as a balustrade, suspenders
pull up your brown work pants tucked
into frontiersman boots, the last, crisp
oak leaves of autumn crushed underfoot.
Behind you, the fence you’re mending
with rails hewn from the trees, now flat
stumps, around you. A narrow flag
of smoke rises from the log cabin
chimney in the flat below, an open
field cleared of old growth, dense forest
the color of gold and fire and blood
defining your horizon. Always measured,
a plum bob slung over your shoulder
points to a red handkerchief half-tucked,
half-spilling from your pants pocket.
You are bathed in a soft, white glow
across the shoulders on an otherwise
overcast day. How desperately I want
to believe that old manifest promise,
that elusive myth, the national lie
always just past an optimist’s reach.
There is soil on your blue shirt, sweat
staining your pants, your dark coat
slung over your arm. In this moment,
you pause to savor a passage before
getting on with the work, before a
nation’s war with itself would ravage
you, before you, too, would give
your life on the unholy altar
of America’s original sin.
 
 
SIERRA, TUNA, SNAPPER
 
for Alejandro Carranza Medina, Colombian fisherman murdered
in the Caribbean on September 15, 2025 by a U.S. military strike
 
“He went offshore to catch sierra, tuna, and snapper, which are
found far out at this time of year.”
  —Cesar Henriquez, friend since childhood*
 
A boat full of nets
leaves a warm shore
for the last time
heading east towards
a thin horizon glow
under a Milky Way
sparkling like cinders,
like shrapnel. I imagine
among the glittering
dome of trillions, a
pinprick or two snuffed
long ago, their light,
like memory, still
arriving for us to see,
their widowed planets
drifting untethered by
gravity like flotsam
in a sea of darkness.
Somewhere a man
scratches another mark
onto a martini shaker,
pours himself a glass,
adds another olive
to the ones already
speared through and
sunk to the bottom.
* Source: CBS News
 
 
Beth Houston
 
 
SEPTEMBER
 
When spring’s ghost joins me on the deck to watch
Gilt city lights click on across the bay,
Some downtown maid squeaks windows, wipes the splotch
Between us. Here, this quiet view. Soft clay
And pungent eucalyptus, thick with rain,
Exude their essence. Summer’s gloom unwinds,
A pane has shattered, and each rampant cane
Of luscious juicy blackberries reminds
My grief entwining August’s humid air.
A wedge of geese pries open autumn, herds
Fat purple clouds toward dusk above the glare
Of distant offices. Your murdered words
Of love on voicemail echo you were dead
Before you put that bullet through your head.
 
 
Edward Cody Huddleston
 
 
MY MESS
 
My mess has a bit of a mind right now,
a mind of its own. I’ve got OCD—
not as in i’M sO oCd AbOuT tHaT—
but the actual medical condition and I hate
medication because it makes me feel
 
like I’m not myself but after accepting that
spending hours every day trying to crack
my knuckles in the right order and stepping
on just the safe floor tiles unless
someone’s watching in which case I have to
do it over again when they’re not watching
is no longer feasible.
 
So, I’m trying Paxil again
and my mess has a bit of a mind right now
and I’m trying to be mindful of it trying
to make me mind it because yes, it’s possible
to ignore the compulsions to perform rituals,
but that doesn’t make it easy.
 
It’s like when I took steroids
after pulling a muscle in my neck,
and I could finally turn my head again,
ever so slightly,
ever so slowly.
 
If I seem like I’m not myself these days,
maybe it’s because I’m not or because
I am for the first time in a long time,
but either way, my mess has a bit of a mind right now.
 
 
Kellin James
 
 
WHAT I’D DO WITH A TIME MACHINE
 
See Nirvana. See the Pistols and the Clash and the Kennedys. Get Jim Morrison and Richey Edwards and HIDE from X to sleep with me, because my most grandiose delusion is that I think I could. See Waterparks and catch them outside the venue after the encore. Hold up a real analog lighter in a rock show pit. Go to Warped, and go again. See Fall Out Boy and My Chem and Panic! before Ryan Ross left. Turn myself fifteen again and linger at that final Warped. Stay long enough to see Waterparks’ set, because I didn’t the first time. Stay for every iteration of that June. Stay in the bedroom that is now only nominally mine. Stay in the bedroom that is now no longer my mother’s. Stay in the bedroom that is now only on holidays my sister’s. Dig through her cassette collection. Dig through her sketchbooks and her diaries and her photo albums. Do it under threat of discovery, and stay in her room even after I’m caught, silent, eyes closed, while she yells. Keep her voice in my head. Keep her shampoo on my skin. Steal the shampoo and pretend I’m her every time someone buries their face in my hair. Bury my face in her hair. Don’t cut my hair. Steal the cassettes. Steal her jewelry. Buy her more jewelry that looks like the jewelry I stole. Hope she doesn’t notice. If she does, hope she doesn’t mind. Catch myself in the mirror and realize most of these clothes could be hers. Imagine another lifetime where they are. Turn her twelve again and linger at that birthday party. Gift-wrap everything I took and leave it by the door. Dye her hair. Dye my hair. Take her to see Nirvana with me. Create a time paradox. Create more. Collapse every other timeline if it would make her happy. Destroy the rest of the universe. I don’t care about physics. I don’t care about possibility. I don’t care about rights and wrongs. I want my sister back.
 
 
Carol Kanter
 
 
HOW COULD THERE BE A BETTER DAY
 
when walking my dog
the first three people we pass
initiate “Good Morning”
this mild summer no-rain day…
 
when I just had word
a friend’s medical procedure
went well and no-news,
good-news of kids, grands…
 
when the latest loan
from my local library branch
is engaging me, the next
“hold” already waiting…
 
when I solved today’s
Connections with no mis-step,
nailed Wordle in three,
achieved Amazing on the Bee…
 
when discipline rivets me,
self-absorbed, to eye merely
what’s at hand, blind to lies,
injustice, freedoms’ demise?
 
 
Daniel Kemper
 
 
WE TALKED
 
Why the mumbled answers, often feeling
weary, staring out the window: bitter,
wistful, dreamy, harried — always reeling,
not engaging, letting out a titter,
mocking laughs or strange and distant crying?
But eventually she says it’s cancer,
not affairs, not me – then we were trying,
talking even if there was no answer.
But I would have those awful times again:
I whispered her to sleep and once she slept
I stroked her scalp and tucked her sheets, and then
I ran off to the shower and I wept.
We talked. We really talked though it was draining,
as one, about the time that was remaining.
 
 
CANCER, SILENCE
 
Cancer. Silence. Not the kind you’re thinking.
Not a silent, moonlit, snowy prairie,
not an endless road, a sun that’s sinking,
only silence served for dinner, wary
silence, staring at a measured serving,
straining bite by bite to manage. Cancer.
Silence. Not a lonely meal–observing
spaces left between the words, the answer
never coming, worry never ending,
only pushed around the plate and waiting,
taking time to show, without defending:
I am not my cancer. Then relating:
Cancer, not your worst imagination.
Silence marbled through the conversation.
 
 
NO MATTER WHAT, YOU’VE GOT TO STRUT
 
A courtly, grand, tradition; sure, but men
are men, and poets, poets; so, of course
behind their art is merry mischief, force
of guile, if not just force; but having then
been properly improper once again
with risqué sonnets, sometimes merely coarse
(if richly rhymed), how long must we endorse
these minuets? Will someone shout, A-men!?
 
Step it up and shake a foot, a
hand, a bodice: make it syncopated–
let it, having been elaborated,
settle for a minute.
Strike a pose. Then strut. And put a
little music in it.
 
 
PARADISOS
   A woman of valor, who can find?
   –Proverbs 31:10
 
Gardening doesn’t begin to describe her activity.
Carefully freeing her hand from her glove momentarily,
twisting a sepal, un-crumbling a blossom, passivity
never in even the tiniest gesture, she airily
loses herself in the moment, then turning the art of her
tenderness downward, she presses the rich, odoriferous
humus with vigor. It needs her attention; it’s part of her
haven. Her messy amusement provokes a vociferous
grunt and she giggles. Amazing. Then grabbing her glove for a
stroll through the rosemary, down to a fountain that’s spluttering
joy, she immerses her fingers–and fills me with love for a
woman creating an art of a garden’s de-cluttering.
Beautiful doesn’t begin to describe her intensity,
tending a garden of human and holy immensity.
 
 
IT’S RAINING LEAVES
 
It’s raining leaves.
A spangled light like tender fingers combs
through slender maple limbs;
a sliver of a whisper
bends and quivers
the leaves
away from them.
It’s raining leaves,
and as the auburn air, adrift,
fumbles
with the tresses that it brushes
with butterfly kisses
of gold and rouge and rust,
so my tumbling thoughts return
to you, across the way.
You feel my eyes.
You let them stay.
Yet keep your boundaries, in
an accommodating way.
It’s raining leaves.
My heart believes
it’s really raining.
My mind does not believe:
it only dreams.
And my soul
has always loved you.
It’s raining leaves.
 
 
Olivia Koo
 
 
CHIPPED CUP
 
The rim is uneven,
a bite taken out of porcelain.
I drink carefully,
lips finding a safe place.
 
It feels like a shortcut,
pretending nothing’s broken
because I can still use it.
 
But it’s also shorthand:
the chip tells me that
the cup has been dropped,
and someone still decided
it was worth keeping anyway.
 
White glaze, rough edge,
a little scar I touch every morning,
as if to remind myself:
fragile things don’t stop holding.
 
 
Christian Lingner
 
 
(THE) FALL
 
With eyes glutted
on summer’s green,
we give a hearty greeting
 
to the flush-flooded,
ruddy scene
of handsome summer, bleeding.
 
 
Charles Livesay
 
 
NOTIFICATION
 
She steps out of her sister’s bakery
after the breakfast rush. The rest
of the day is always a steady trickle:
guys in navy ties, college kids,
stay-at-home moms
who call her honey and sugar
in syrupy voices but never
bother to learn her name.
She won’t vape,
takes a real cigarette break,
gives herself a chance to check
the voicemail that buzzed her phone
when she was up to her elbows
in biscuit dough. She checks her notifications.
Somebody called from the prison.
She wonders what her husband wants
today, hears a bored woman say
she’s sorry but Jamal died of wounds
sustained last night. Condolences.
 
Across the road,
Susan stands with hands wrapped
around the chains of a playground swing,
watches her baby girl jumping
from her own swing’s seat.
She could do without
all that screaming from the street.
 
 
Kelsey D. Mahaffey
 
 
DON’T GO YET
 
Wait. I know there’s more
I could say. Did I tell you
I fled from childhood—
eyes pinched & throat closed?
 
Stuck borrowing from others,
my breath a red dress
I didn’t find until age forty.
 
Never flattering,
I used to avoid the family
of reds except in anger,
opting for the basic
necessity of coal-liner black.
 
But the siren-red 1980’s blouse
that screamed for me from the vintage sale bin,
long forgotten beneath pockets of torn
Pearl Jam flannel & crushed blue silk,
 
now flames in front of my closet
like a fresh breath of fire—
 
one I refuse to put out.
 
 
John Martino
 
 
ENTERING THE WHIRLPOOL
 
April, day of the Fool,
a heap of broken sun
beams, with evening
rising and “Pleased
to meet you,” a potted
lilac, fixed and pasted,
forgetfully (or almost)
wasted, gulping fear
by the handful,
the bartender mixing
another Memory &
Desire, jukebox waxing
nostalgic: “Come on,
baby, light my fire!”
when, out of the dead
land, a dull, dried
tuber stirs, Lazarus
-like with a little life,
though extra cruel
in its surprise, as if
the whole planet
did tilt and pull
at the root of one
curled gray hair,
and shifting to adjust
my jeans at the crotch
and alleviate the clutch,
I spill headlong off
the bar’s high chair.
 
 
OFF THE GRID
 
Well, well, what have we here?
Très passer? Hypocrite reader?
Or C: Brave sonneteer? At any rate,
something undeniably, irresistibly
 
queer. Guess you didn’t see the gate
of blackberry bushes back there.
Or maybe you thought you could
outstrip Fate. Have it your way,
 
and not ingratiate. You thought
you’d cross Enemy Lines and not
INSTIGATE!? I flash my “peace”
and expectorate. I give the high
 
sign of Democracy. Two fleshy
middle fingers and using all three.
Can’t tell the left from the right.
Dead ringers in the year of the plague.
 
Blights! Hammers! Factions!
Last one out ’s a rotted leg.
See that sky turning black as a lung?
Preview of coming attractions.
 
What’samatter? Rat got your tongue?
Smartphone gone dumb?
Mind and Sky are One.
Now let’s have some
 
FUN. Set phaser to stun.
(Write it!) Thou art stone
that once was stoner. This isn’t a bone,
it’s a boner. And I’m not alone.
 
I’m a loner. Cranking off in
the northeast wind,
slipping over your notion
like a drone.
 
 
FIN DE SIÈCLE
 
Homer!—you old War
Horse looking for the gift
in my gab. Getting round
as a doughnut and more
 
yellow, I see. Control-Shift
-Z. What’s lost is now found.
Went down to get uptown.
Lots of titty at the Museum.
 
Come on! Let’s go and see’um!
How she came off the brush.
Back when Skulls were all
the rage. Enough to make
 
Death blush. The Rite
of Spring peeled open like
a cadaver’s arm. Tendons
in mid-pluck. Change your
 
boots. Change your luck.
One ploughed algorithm
at a time. Think Brueghel
taking on the animal kingdom
 
with encyclopedic precision.
White stripe right across
my back. Scalpel’s incision.
Fade to black. Woke with fig
 
leaf of Amnesia. Strategically
placed just to tease ya.
Stuck a feather in his map
and called it Micronesia.
 
Attack of the Endless
Skeleton Army. Infinity
in one small chip of space.
The focus is on Light, Sky,
 
Water as a single boiling
sphere. Hang a guilt frame
around your fear. The pearl
earring sheds a tear.
 
 
Ken Massicotte
 
 
AFTERLIFE
 
Every Monday, a group of recently deceased people
check-in. The social workers in the lodge ask them
to go back over their life and choose one single
memory to take into the afterlife.
—Afterlife, by Hirokazu Kore-eda
 
I’m a young boy with narrow shoulders
home for lunch
then hurrying to cross the street to get back to school.
It’s a windy day in September
with dust and leaves flying everywhere
and I’m wild in the whirl from summer to fall.
I misjudge the traffic
and I’m hit by a station wagon with a big chrome fender.
I’m knocked down but not too hurt
and I run back home —
disturbing butterflies in the goldenrod
in the unpaved alley —
up the rusty wrought iron stairs
to my mother in the kitchen doing dishes.
My head is bleeding but I don’t know this
and I have a headache and I’m crying.
The driver has followed me to our back door
and he’s carrying my scuffed, brown-leather satchel.
My mother takes me to a dark bedroom
and lays a cold compress on my forehead.
She’s dressed for her shift in her nurse’s uniform
and I fall asleep
and I feel safe.
 
 
Hannah McLeod
 
 
MY UTERUS IS ATTACKING ME
   After Pelvic Inflammatory Disease
 
Pat Benatar almost got it right — only —
my uterus is a battlefield. She is
on the prowl, moving in for the kill, screaming
like a banshee as she comes for the tender organs,
scraping them out with a dull spoon. She reeks
of week-old iron and relishes the taste of clot-riddled
blood relish. You never see her coming, a blazing
swirl of red so red it soups black and brown,
Las Vegas drowning in molten lava — pavement,
dirt, sand, red velvet carpet, and neon light stew.
Girl dinners and smile at everyone, especially presumptuous
old men or else the pain gets worse. Dip my clit in
buttermilk and put a cat underneath it — the inebriated
driver of my pain-dazed mind. Agony hunches
over the girl, not the other way around. I stab
through my skin and tear it all out — how about that?
Dusty’s ready to fuckin go. I’ll take a knife to it right now,
with the same precision as cutting fat off pork, which is to
say, very little. Careful as a dump truck. The whole thing
will come out smooth in one piece. Hijo de puta,
tú puedes con todo. This knife is glowing like a temptress
in the night and I am answering her call. Slicing through
the silent skin like a banshee’s scream.
 
 
Lindsay McLeod
 
 
BLIND DATE
 
It’s a roll of the dice
it’s the turn of a card
makes me feel Jesus Christ
it shouldn’t be this hard,
to find someone who’s nice
and attractive to me
but on this carousel
I’ve found only… let’s see
 
Trace was full blown racist
I suspected Venus had a penis,
Enid was a children’s author
ironic, Enid was the meanest,
 
dear Scarlet near insisted
we should hop straight into bed
but I resisted because her eyes
rolled round like marbles in her head
 
met Quasimodo by the tower
then there was Cerberus by the gate,
met Manson then met Alice
(Alice, she was running late)
 
mother Mary was still in mourning
she outlined all she chose to hate,
next came Tessie (that got messy)
who posted me her ‘target’ weight
 
nasty Stella the astrologer
could not believe that I’d refuse,
‘You must have Neptune late in retrograde.’
I told her, ‘That’s not it… it’s you.’
 
Some were happy, some were damaged
(and now I know that I am too),
some were easy, some were hard
some wanted things I couldn’t do.
 
So why put myself out there
why should I bother, even try?
 
I suppose it’s because,
initial hellos can be awkward
but it’s better than
living inside of goodbye.
 
 
Kate McNairy
 
 
BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP…
— Emily Dickinson
 
bare-naked
I walk thru
raw December.
 
my pubic leaves
brush the ground.
 
my fatty bosoms, suet
for the woodpecker feeder.
 
my fleshy stomach
an outie bellybutton
mirrors itself in the pond.
 
I cast my eyes
up to the lunar orb,
very very soon
 
I’ll be up there
part of that nude
blue-green moon.
 
 
Mike Mesterton-Gibbons
 
 
BIGGER AND LOWER
 
The bull in a Paulus Potter painting once had
much larger testicles. Experts believe he toned it
down to respect 17th-century sensibilities.
 
Before The Bull was partly painted out,
Its balls were bigger, dangling lower down—
Genteel Dutch folk were bashful, then, about
Gigantic orbs on pictures hung in town
Establishments. Conservators, who are
Restoring this iconic painting (by
 
A Dutchman) with their modern repertoire,
Not only, using X-rays, verify
Dimensions, but can also resurrect,
 
Like new, the glories last seen long ago
On Potter’s Bull and give it more respect,
With all of its endowment still on show …
Except, they don’t—in art, Dutch bourgeoisie
Remain as bashful as they used to be!
 
 
Marla Dial Moore
 
 
BORDER LINES
  After Saadi Youssef
 
We paused at a crosswalk —
  a traffic light changed,
  the country changed,
  and borders moved beneath us.
 
I am stranded here, without a map
  apart from history —
  what clues it provides:
  the borders have moved beneath us.
 
How will I find America
  once the fog burns away
  and grackles return to their perch?
  The borders have moved beneath us.
 
My home lies buried now
  in sands of red and blue,
  where masked men wait in unmarked cars
  and the borders shift beneath us.
 
Where will my home be
  when you no longer remember me,
  when the dog has forgotten my scent:
  Will the borders still move beneath us?
 
How will I know America
  when the bluebonnets burn in the fields
  and all of this language runs dry,
  now that the borders have moved beneath us?
 
 
Lydia Pearson
 
 
A NEW DANCE
‘Palm to palm is a holy palmer’s kiss.’
 
Your palm touched mine; you jolted me awake.
I hadn’t realised I’d been sleeping.
Those periwinkle eyes twinkling under
the club lights, your face lit bright,
made me look at you with wonder.
 
My breath caught in my throat,
out of place, like a stray tendril of hair
falling over my eyes, blinding.
My heart hammers hard, beating
like a drum caught behind my ribs.
 
A new dance begins.
 
 
Kenneth Pobo
 
 
EAGLE IN MAY
 
An eagle leaves a shadow on our boat
and claims a pine on the opposite shore.
We watch a yellow water lily float.
An eagle leaves a shadow on our boat–
A loon swims by singing a mournful note.
The quiet lake shines like a liquid floor.
An eagle leaves a shadow on our boat
and claims a pine on the opposite shore.
 
 
Tom Probasco
 
 
VOLCANO
 
You and your mother arrive home early
as a cold December first
is turning warmer
and a virus
is turning your mother’s stomach.
Suddenly your demands
are my schedule the rest of the day.
 
At eight months there isn’t much
that you can do for yourself.
The day wears on and I wear down,
and I wonder:
What will you learn from me?
My plans and the course I’ve set us on
look crazier by the hour.
 
Your suppertime rolls around.
We finish that feeding.
I lift you from your chair,
and then it starts.
You grab my head and squeeze.
I push my mouth into the crease
between your head and shoulder,
where your neck will someday be,
and begin to chant in a deep voice:
Boo boo boo.
Boo boo boo.
Boo boo boo.
Squeezing harder you draw a deep breath
and shriek.
Laughter pours forth like lava,
like many times before, and yet
it spews out like a surprise.
Like a gift.
A gift this time instead of a curse
from the earth’s evolution.
I stand with you in its warmth,
between the dining room and living room,
grateful for the eruption.
 
 
Sabrina Ramet
 
 
DUCKS ARE COSMOPOLITANS
 
Ducks are cosmopolitans,
and share the same traditions.
Research shows with certainty
that all of their cognition
 
is everywhere identical
and every time they quack,
any duck around the world
can give a quacking back.
 
They don’t establish nations,
they never go to war,
and there is much to learn as well
from their ancient lore.
 
But crows are squawking all day long;
they think they’re copacetic.
Geese are raving nationalists,
and swans are just pathetic.
 
 
Charles Rammelkamp
 
 
“YOU CAN FIND THE ASSHOLE IN ANYBODY,”
 
my friend Greeley observed.
A freshman in college, I thought it profound.
Yes, it’s easy to ridicule, sneer, isn’t it?
The way the Tea Party patriots made fun
of Obama’s slogan about hope,
the way MAGA Neanderthals sneer
at “woke,” as if compassion is laughable.
The way I sneer at MAGA Neanderthals.
 
How did Abe Lincoln put it?
If you go around looking for the bad in people,
you will surely find it.
I first heard that in Pollyanna, starring Hayley Mills.
But when I mentioned Greeley’s comment
to my roommate Will,
Will said, “He got that from me.
I said it first,”
eager to claim credit.
 
It made me look at Will in a new way,
as if I’d discovered something about him
I hadn’t seen before.
 
 
William James Rosser
 
 
GOLD WINGS
 
This piteous lament of mourning doves
alights from the folds of the Catawba
across the road. And with a blue and grayed-
white backdrop of high cirrus floating south,
the sunlight shivers through the paling leaves,
illumines their spread wings like brushstrokes of
Pissarro’s paint on ochre-toned canvas.
 
Or, stacks of bouillon bars when the dark vault
groans open for the taking – Light, as now,
spreading across my silent porch, flitting
through what I, at first, perceived were earfuls
of waxwing birds in sudden migration,
like gold dust streaks across the early sky –
then making for an unguarded border.
 
Mourning doves rising. No steeples in sight.
It’s Sunday morning. It’s cold, I’m broke, no alms,
landlocked and slighted – far from the crossing.
Yet feathered by calmest coos and rarest
gold wings, despite the nearing clouds and rain.
 
 
John Rutherford
 
 
MY GRANDMOTHER WITH DEMENTIA
DESCRIBES A FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH
 
That picture cost a whole month’s salary,
they took it at the funeral home in town.
Look at the clothes! Fit for a gallery!
Back then, in pictures, everyone would frown.
The children came down with the whooping cough,
in nineteen twenty-nine, that was the year
the market crashed and the farm was written off.
At the time, they lived down the road, so near,
and Dad was finished with sharecropping then,
drove Momma into town with cuts of ham,
canned peaches, and some Bayer aspirin.
She worked miracles with them in her hands
with a thermometer, and iodine,
and no vaccines, she kept us all alive.
She couldn’t save poor cousin Ira Jean,
one day she sat up, sang a hymn, and died.
 
 
Leon Sare
 
 
NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL A YEARNING
FOR THE MASTICATED FLESH
 
you are too large for my skin
i knew it the second i laid eyes on you
combing the crowd for a set of shortcomings that would play nice with mine
but your fingers are hot under my offered weakness
and your hair is coarse and well kept, lined in glitter and night air
(i am drywall against you, harsh and cold)
(easily broken, when bent at the right angle)
 
my body does not offer the kind of real estate it takes to house guests gracefully
there is not an inch of skin you could burrow under
that won’t do permanent damage
(i am going to invite you regardless)
i will leave doors cracked in their frames, lamps buzzing into the night
offer blood and flesh and beautiful, meaningless smiles
pray you take the bait
 
i am in the market for new souvenirs
(i don’t know how to get this close to someone without leaving gouges)
we will return to our respective lives
with pieces of each other stuck in our teeth
 
(the common ground will be good for us)
 
 
Penelope Scambly Schott
 
 
WIND GUSTS EXCEED 30 MPH
 
Over billowing wheatfields
two struggling ravens blow backwards,
 
ahead of them up on the utility tower
impatient squawk of hungry nestlings.
 
Decades ago at my local A&P
how I hesitated near the meat counter
 
totaling my one-dollar bills,
adding the quarters and dimes,
 
my own nestlings waiting to be fed.
 
 
Jason Schwartz
 
 
TASHLICH
 
You told bedtime stories
through optic-white
dentures: escaping Romania,
an orphan on a train’s roof, eating
yellowed ice
among valises.
 
Then a soldier presses
a pistol to your skull base
like a wax seal. A hollow
click. You tumble into a thistled
minefield and I fall
asleep in He-Man undies.
 
Mornings, you dipped
bagel chunks in milky coffee.
The mug chattered. Between
dystrophic nails, you raised
the drowned
like tallit fringes to your lips.
 
Saba, when my daughter learns
not to eat lip gloss, do I squeeze
the dawdling trigger
of your ischemic stroke
or cast you like a sin
into the Hudson?
 
 
Claire Scott
 
 
RUBBINGS FROM GRAVESTONES
 
  & when
Huge oil portraits of my parents
hung on the dining room walls
as though we lived in a museum and people
paid good money to wander through
only no one ever came
 
  & although
Each night after the maids in white uniforms
passed plates of uninspired food
us four kids sat eyes down
on our silent steaks and potatoes or pushed
the Friday fish around with silver forks
 
  & because
We didn’t want to see those eyes
watching us from the walls, eyes
that could see the lies, saying our mother
made big breakfasts no need to bring
turkey sandwiches to school
 
  & while
My mother licked the butter balls
ignoring her dinner, slurping her scotch
my father in a coat and tie carefully carved his meat
into perfect squares before taking a bite
willing her to sanity.
 
 
UNMOORED
 
floating out to sea, no sail, no compass
no telescope, no welcoming harbor
in sight
 
  as a kid I loved drifting on a raft
  waking to find I was too far away to see the dock
  paddling with delight the whole way back
 
not so much now, no need for new adventures
longing for the safety of the shore
old age winning, wrinkles multiplying like sea stars
 
a blocked artery, a pacemaker
who is this person with bruises
from blood thinners, muscles aching from statins
 
  where is the grinning girl on the raft
  fingers trailing the water
  not worried about being lost
 
is the welcoming harbor the last stop?
a helpless hopeless lonely shelter?
if so I want to sail on a little longer
 
my boat whittled by weather
gnawed by barnacles
I want to learn to love the sea
the way I did when I was twelve
 
 
Carol Shillibeer
 
 
NEMESIS IS SEEN IN FULL JUDGE’S ROBES
WALKING DOWN PORTLAND AVENUE.
 
I hear about this from Callisto. I was on a three-day job for Themis, when Callisto turns up at the hotel where I am staying. She sees me in the lobby and comes over.
 
Me, I was just chilling with a big cup of coffee and a murder mystery. It is so weird when Callisto shows up someplace. I swear I can feel a subtle rumble in the floors, like a huge bear is walking by. There’s even the faintest smell of wood, moss, leaf mold, or something that reminds me of the forest floor. She comes to sit next to me. She’s the slightest of women in her human form. Beautiful too. Wavy brown hair, golden skin, a tailored suit that looks Anne Taylor to me. When she puts her arm up on the chair I realize the suit is probably silk. Burgundy. The fabric moves shadow in a way that makes Callisto seem as if she’s rippling.
 
After a beat she said did you hear? Nemesis is close by. I was thankful that she had waited to speak until I wasn’t drinking. I put my coffee down on the small table in front of us and asked, do you know why she is here?
 
Callisto shakes her head. I don’t, but don’t you think it might be related to the Orange Doofus?
 
Oh I hope so, I say. I pick up my coffee again. Man that would be great, I say to Callisto. She nods. I sigh with happiness at the thought of Nemesis on the job.
 
 
Tricia L. Somers
 
 
SANCHO
 
I used to like to look
into your eyes.
I saw stars fall into winter,
spring, and then summer skies.
 
You said my name
with your lying smile,
and sat me on your knee,
I’m so very cherished.
 
Little creeks rush
down the hills of Earth’s cheeks,
to the house on the corner.
 
As we listen to the rain,
your best friend’s girlfriend
waits for you down the street.
 
 
ARMS EXCHANGE
 
Rockets stamped in black ink
US MUNITIONS
Autographed by former
rock stars and politicians
during a photo op
where they draw hearts
on the bombs and smile
 
Exchanged for small arms
of children with their names
written in black ink
so their mother can know
it is her child’s body part
and take them home
in a plastic bag
 
 
Kathryn Spratt
 
 
THE FOLKSY WISDOM I INTEND
TO DISPENSE ABOUT WHITE RABBITS
WHEN I AM APPROPRIATELY OLD
 
Say he’s a real-life magician
capable of casting spells
that poof you gorgeous between the sheets.
Burrowed deep beneath blankets
at the foot of your bed,
lop-eared Insecurity will still be hangry,
and boy can rabbits bite.
 
 
Julie Standig
 
 
AGALMATOPHILIA
 
The Mannequin of Surf Avenue,
stood steadfast in my aunt’s kitchen.
 
This headless body on cast iron base,
mesmerized me as a child,
 
built like my aunt, squat and strong—
busty and wide-waisted. An armless form,
 
wrapped in linen, layered over cotton batting,
and often found shoulder-to-shoulder
 
with Aunt Ray as she prepared borscht,
kreplachs in chicken broth and fresh challah.
 
I had no idea what to do with this thing.
Since my uncle, the tailor, was long dead,
 
the mannequin stood idly naked for years,
overseeing Ray, sadly cooking for one.
 
One of the Russian movers asked,
can I claim this body for myself?
 
This thing? My aunt’s unshapely form,
covered in water marks and whoknowswhat?
 
Was this middle-aged Russian an Agalmatophilian?
I frowned, Aunt Ray would shrug, meshuggana.
 
But my uncle, a small Bedzin warrior,
he would slyly smile, nod and wink.
 
 
BEIGE AND BOTTLED
 
My granddaughters watch
as I pencil in faded eyebrows.
  Where did they go Nana?
  They’re here, just gray now.
 
Their fingers rummage through my make-up.
Warm Bronze Shimmer eyeshadow
Dusty Rose cream blush
Pink Taupe lipstick
Fifty shades of beige—natural is not easy.
  Watch’s this do?
 
The 5-year-old picks up blush—
  Why do you always wear make-up?
  I think it makes me look better.
She scrutinizes my applications,
not quite buying the end result.
 
We sit together at breakfast,
sans make-up, hair uncombed.
  Nana, you need to put on your young stuff.
  You really think so?
She looks at me and sternly nods.
 
 
Alex Stolis
 
 
IF I’D HAD THE CHANCE I WOULD’VE
TOLD MY SON & DAUGHTER
 
When night falls asleep,
paint its earthen walls
 
brilliant sunrise orange
& watch colors bleed,
 
the horizon thick with tears & music of birdsong.
 
conversate with Verlaine
& Rimbaud,
 
follow a random river,
collect stones & sing
 
a love song as the Fates spin, weave & cut around you.
 
Swap stories with Odyseuss,
tell your tales, tall & wide,
 
strap them to the mast, sail
into the wine-dark sea & write
 
a new chapter bold enough to quench the thirst of the gods.
 
 
Faith Thiebaud
 
 
THIRD DATE
 
As I was sitting in my loveseat with
an empty cup of kraft mac and cheese
on the coffee table
your head tilts– eyes wide
 
“Do you not eat because you don’t want to get fat?”
 
No one has ever asked so bluntly
It both offended and fascinated me
It was like in that moment you discovered anorexia
but there was no judgement no pity no uncomfort
just a longing to understand and a desire
to share a meal with me
 
 
WE COULD NEVER AGREE ON BABY NAMES
 
We were supposed to be having babies,
raising life in a little historic townhouse
ideally downtown, so that I could walk
to the coffee shop everyday with the
dog and the kids.
I wonder if we would have had a girl
first, or a boy.
Would we have stopped at one? Two?
Surely not three.
Would we have taken family photos
at every holiday and have large canvases
of our smiling faces covering the walls?
Would we have worn matching outfits–
after you pitched a fit of course–
Or would we be more subtle,
maybe some matching shoes?
Would our daughter have my nose and
our son, your eyes?
I can see us now–
curled up in bed, with the dog in between
my legs, a spunky pigtailed daughter
kicking my ribs in her sleep,
and a mousy younger brother who
accidentally knocks over the collection
of bottles on your bedside table– crying
because daddy hasn’t had much sleep
and is quick to anger when hungover–
The floor covered in shit because the
dog was not let out before you
stumbled into bed
and me, eyes wide open
but stiff as a board
not minding the
repeated jabs in the ribs.
 
 
 
 
Dan Thompson
 
 
HAN SHAN
 
Crazy old man
sitting on Cold Mountain –
stories about you abound.
 
Living in the time of Li Bo and Du Fu
and the eastward journey of Dhyana to China,
what choice was there for you?
 
Today you would be put away –
a menace to society,
a danger to yourself.
 
No doubt you’d be found
clinically disturbed –
and with a raft of prescriptions
and consultations
you might be cured
of your eccentric ways.
 
But without you, Old Graybeard,
where would we all be today?
 
You and your friend –
two crazy old men
roaring with laughter in the wilderness …
 
 
Barbara Ungar
 
 
TO STUART BARTOW
(after Frank O’Hara)
 
I can’t believe there’s not another world where
we’ll sit and read new poems to each other
high on Salem’s hill, looking out upon
the blue hills of the Green Mountains.
You can be Issa, I’ll be Li Ch’ing
Chao, and our cats will be our cats.
Or shall we circle the lake, swimming
and fishing companionably as Yeats’
wild swans, or a pair of loons, or lovers.
Notes from you, delivered by the full moon
to my too big bed, say, Don’t worry,
the insurmountable night will be over
so fast. Wish you were here, but no hurry—
out beyond Circumference. See you soon.
 
 
AUGUST ENCORE
 
If I hold you any closer, I’ll be behind you.
  —Groucho
 
And so I start my 70th year.
Thought I’d be wiser by now.
Always the crickets’ tiny violins…
 
You’re behind me, I’m behind you,
we passed through each other like ghosts.
 
Inscription on a gold engagement ring
that opens out into a micro-cosmos:
The whole universe is in your hands.
 
I am held in your green arms
but cannot grasp you back.
 
I’m real because you believe in me,
Captain Gregg says to Mrs Muir,
but there will be no handsome hologram
 
hovering about the house. It’s more subtle.
You’re eternal, I’m swept away—is that it?
 
There goes summer. A cricket, singing.
Hummingbirds and monarchs hunt
for late blooms. I can feel the pause, the
hinge, all of us taking a deep breath—
 
 
Maura Way
 
 
OSSIFIED
 
Talking is for the exchange of information, I brainwash
myself because my heart is breaking and my ovaries are
cracked. Data is not connection. Now that I know what lack
of estrogen feels like I realize I should have had a more
compelling rhetoric about making babies. Like bones,
hormone rafters hold up only so much, the rest is you.
 
 
Madelyn Whelan
 
 
NOSFERATU
 
“Desire makes you filthy,”
he says,
 
not out of scorn
but burgeoning lust.
 
What else is there
to do
 
when the worst of you
is unearthed,
 
and in your bareness
the other grows hungry?
 
Want blooms
in place of shame, unexpected.
 
The gnash of teeth
while tongues slide
 
in the thick
dark,
 
the moon —
a gleaming witness.
 
 
Heather Wishik
 
 
CUSS WORDS SOUND BETTER IN FRENCH
 
“Merde,” she says, and again, “Merde.”
Her cut finger bleeds profusely over the salad greens.
Dish towel wrapped around the wound, she dumps
the bloody leaves into a strainer, rinses them
in the soapstone sink with a wink in my direction.
 
“Personne ne le saura.” Red hair to her mid-back,
a diplomat’s brat. Her accented French betrays
her story – Morocco born. Her red and yellow
curtains color the light brighter than the day.
“Merde,” she says, and again, “Merde.”
 
 
Robin Wright
 
 
THE TIME WILL COME
 
when there’s a last time for everything.
Think of the hug you gave your granddaughter
today after lunch at Dairy Queen.
Chicken tenders, salad & ice cream
filling your bellies. No thought
beyond how nice a nap
might be when you get home.
 
Who would send or receive
your last email, text, or phone call?
Maybe an old friend you hadn’t
heard from in a long time.
Catching up on her son’s job
as director of a homeless shelter,
your daughter’s foray into owning
an antique shop. Goodbye
& a promise to keep in touch.
 
The last time you mow the grass,
robins recognize nature’s plan,
flutter around, sing a requiem
as you putter about, thinking
about the roast you’ll cook for dinner.
You’ll never know their music was for you.
 
 
John Yamrus
 
 
WHEN I WAS A KID
 
and
couldn’t
read yet, i used to
ask my sister to read things to me
 
and
she was kind
and patient and
read everything that i asked her to read:
 
cereal boxes,
labels on cans,
street signs, billboards,
whatever there was to read
she used to read it, and finally
 
her
patience
wore thin and
i don’t know how old
i was at the time, but i’ll soon be 75,
 
and
i remember it
like it was yesterday…
 
we
were watching
The Lone Ranger on tv,
 
and
the bad guys
had The Ranger tied up
and they lit a stick of dynamite
 
and
set it on top
of a box that had
letters on the side and
while i kinda knew what
the box was, and what it said,
 
i still
had to ask her
to read it to me anyway,
 
and she
got mad as hell
and said it was dynamite
 
and
she was sick of
reading everything for me
 
and
was never
gonna do it again.
 
ever.
 
and she
walked out
of the room and
i yelled back at her:
i don’t care what you think,
and as soon as i learn how to read
i’m gonna read everything everywhere that ever was
 
and you’re not gonna stop me!
 
and
that was
nearly 70 years ago
and my sister lives in Albuquerque now,
 
and she
kept her word,
and dammit, so did i.
 
 
Bänoo Zan
 
 
MOSHA’EREH
 
I recite a line——You recite another
starting with the last letter of my verse—
We orate for hours in Shiraz—
the realm of beauty, wine, and poetry
 
I lost the line who gave me my name
and the one who gave me breath
 
I lost my words—my land
wrote myself in another script—
was lost in struggle
 
Writing abandons intent in translation
I am an unheard pronoun
on this tongue of infinite idioms
Language does not work in this language
 
The stones dry in the wind and the sun
but the eye floods a resourceful stream
What did I expect when I left my passport behind?
 
I steal fire from Prometheus
and time from Time
for poetry joust—mosha’ereh—
with poetry
 
 
 
 

The Reviews

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
Richard Collins
 
 
ON HAVING NO HEAD: JOHNNY CORDOVA’S THE BROKEN BUDDHA ( ROADSIDE PRESS, 2026 ).
 
One of the best books on Buddhism I ever read is Douglas Harding’s On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious. I was reminded of this when reading Johnny Cordova’s forthcoming first book of poetry, The Broken Buddha (Roadside Press, 2026). This makes sense, considering that the literary forebears Cordova hangs out with are such as Li Po, Ryokan, Ikkyu, Jim Morrison, Indian fakirs, and sundry beggar poets. What they all have in common is that their spiritual journeys are embedded in the sensual floating world, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes heartbreaking, always true.
 
There aren’t many writers who can make a collection of poetry read like a lyric novella, but this is the effect of the book’s three sections, which take us from erotic adventures in Thailand in “All Night Rain,” through his spiritual tours in India in “Sketches of India,” then back to the roots of an American upbringing (and downfalls) to see where it all began and may end in the final section called “Ashes.”
 
The Broken Buddha of the title poem serves as the controlling metaphor and synopsis of the poet’s story, how he identifies with an ancient Burmese statue that he finds in a public bazaar. It had been broken, he speculates, by some careless monk, only to be cast off as trash and then to languish in the marketplace for years until:
 
I bought him because I too missed a step
and went crashing down some stairs
my love in my arms
and could not be put back
together.
 
Thus the ensuing exploration of getting entangled in the “red thread of passion between one’s legs” in Thailand, the search for clarity and reparation in India, and a narrative resolution at home as he finds forgiveness in the ashes of the bridges he has burnt in his life, and above all in the ashes of his young daughter whose death was a breakage that could only be repaired by repairing his life.
 
If we are honest, though, we are all broken, just as we are all Buddha. One loses one’s head, unable to see ourselves except from the partial perspective of a disembodied self-awareness. But this perspective can be made whole again, if only we embrace our whole selves, body and mind. We can put our heads back on. Losing it can be painful, but as Harding explains, also necessary for any awakening that comes with spanking the ego. The repair serves as a reminder of what egregious errors we humans are capable of, but also how they teach us lessons we might otherwise have missed out on. I should point out that Cordova never comes off as a didact or moralist, that is my own projection and interpretation. Always candid, never crude, he continues to embrace the messy proposition of being human, with all its brokenness and put-togetherness.
 
Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken things with gold and lacquer to demonstrate not only the ephemeral nature of our material nature, but also how broken things (like hearts and buddhas) can be even more beautiful when repaired with art, can in fact have a life that endures well after their first unbroken one.
 
Full disclosure: I once met Johnny Cordova briefly at the Arizona ashram where he practices a daily meditation and tends the resting place of the ashes of his daughter. And where he lives with his wife, the poet Dominique Ahkong. Together they co-edit Shō Poetry Journal, resurrected in 2023 after a twenty-year gap, along with their new Beggar Poet Series. I can tell you this: you can hardly see “the crooked / cracked line” around his neck, and it is golden.
 
 
 

 
 
Peter Mladinic
 
 
More, a review of Captain Beefheart Never Licked My Decals Off, Baby, by John Yamrus. Anxiety Press. 2025. $16. paper.
 
John Yamrus is in the packed house of a big theater. The Magic Band has finished their concert, and the audience wants them to come back. Captain Beefheart comes back on stage alone, stands and whistles the entire “More,” a pop song antithetical to the avant-garde sounds of the band. No words, no music except for the Captain’s whistling. Then he walks off. Just one example of the outrageousness evoked in this John Yamrus memoir introduced by Sarah Hajkowski, who gets it. With not-a-word-wasted Hajkowski nails Yamrus, and his memoir. “The whiff of lofty principles with no substance will always catch his nose with distrust, but the ass-end-of-a-fish authenticity of real hold on tight weirdos has Yamrus’ eternal respect.” More about the fish, a dead fish, later in this review. In centering his memoir around The Magic Band’s album Trout Mask Replica, Yamrus “reels in” ideas on art, music, and literature that place the album in a cultural milieu that is at the center of his artistic-spiritual life. How he says what he says is key to an appreciation of a writer who has been rightly called “the master of minimalism.” Like Sarah Hajkowski, John Yamrus comes right to the point.
 
Robert Frost, when asked to define poetry, said it’s a thing poets write. Art is a thing artists do. In putting the Beefheart album in an artistic context, John Yamrus notes how The Magic Band’s thrift store, ragtag attire sets their album art apart from album covers of other musicians of the psychedelic era of the late 60s and early 70s, whose attire reflected a sort of ruffled shirt Elizabethan look. Yamrus mentions The Rolling Stones; other examples of that ruffled attire are Paul Revere and the Raiders, and The Yardbirds. The ragtag Magic Band not only sounded different but also looked different, in thrift store threads that, on album covers, got a reaction. Yamrus likens The Magic Band’s attire and their music to Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, the painting’s “fractured bits and pieces and angles and edges and how they all came together to make something whole and different and real.” On The Magic Band’s album Trout Mask Replica, “cut 13, DALI’S CAR” is “a direct reference to the king of surrealists, Salvador Dali.” Also the surreal artist Andy Warhol is referenced as Yamrus links what listeners hear (music) to what views see (art).
 
A poem “old records” in the middle of his memoir, ends with the mention of Lee Andrews and The Hearts, a vocal group from the 50s; some call their music doo wop, others say rhythm & blues. To Yamrus, labels are not important; what’s important is the distinctive sound that leads Yamrus in his poem to call the group “the one and only Lee Andrews and The Hearts.” He explores The Magic Band’s roots in the blues and the similarity of Don van Vliet, Captain Beefheart’s voice, his sound, to the sound of the famous blues musician Howlin Wolf. Yamrus talks about Bob Dylan’s transition from acoustic to electric music, and about another innovator, Frank Zappa, whose band van Vliet played in and who recorded The Magic Band’s Trout Mask Replica. John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme is Trout Mask’s jazz counterpart. Two very different albums, Beefheart and Coltrane are similar to Yamrus in that”It seems to me that every artist…every real artist…pushes things to the limit and then pushes again, harder.” Coltrane’s a good example.
 
Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl,” also pushed things to the limit, as did the innovative poems of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and the prose of Jack Kerouac. Similarly, in the nineteenth century Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland was something new, surreal, and real.
 
Yamrus references the twentieth century science fiction of Clifford Simak, and the fiction and nonfiction of Norman Mailer, differentiating the hard edged prose of Mailer’s The Fight, an account of the famous boxing match in Zaire between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, to Mailer’s mannered first novel The Naked and the Dead. Readers can only wonder if the author of The Armies of the Night appreciated Trout Mask Replica. Just as Yamrus’s insights lead him to links between Trout Mask and art, they also bring him to things that the best of Mailer have in common with that album, namely attitude and reaction. Yamrus recalls Miles Davis in a get-right-down-to-it attitude. “Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is the other 80 percent.”
 
People react to art. John Yamrus does. The album cover of Trout Mask Replica, Captain Beefheart holding up a dead fish to his face, got John’s attention. As did the Hot Tuna concert where, for a moment, the rest of the band appeared to be mocking their fiddler Papa John Creach as he was playing a solo on “Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning” that his audience, Yamrus among them, was really “getting into.” At another concert, The Magic Band at the Comerford Theater, the reaction is different. Yamrus evokes in concise, exacting phases the dim depth of the Comerford, placing his readers right there, way up in the balcony, as Captain Beefheart, called back for an encore, whistles his solo rendition of “More.” That got their attention. Yamrus tells everything his readers need to know, right down “to the warm red cloth seats we were in” and not a word is wasted. In her introduction Sarah Hajkowski says:
 
  ”Composed by Don “Captain Beefheart” Van Vliet and his Magic Band in 1969, the controversial studio album Trout Mask Replica is the center point from which the entire narrative branches out.”
 
Yamrus illuminates; he discovers connections between art and music, art and literature, and music and literature, that he likely hadn’t thought of before beginning his memoir. In his need to know, he creates those connections, and does it with attitude.
 
 
 

And a Coda

 
 
John Yamrus
 
TALK ABOUT SYNCHRONICITY
 
Talk about synchronicity . . . and blind, stinkin’ luck! Every now and then I seem to do something right (no matter what my wife says). Here’s the story: I recently published a book called CAPTAIN BEEFHEART NEVER LICKED MY DECALS OFF, BABY. It’s a really short book (trust me), but I had high ambitions and tried to touch a lot of bases with it. On the surface it’s a book about a 1968 rock and roll album that very few people have heard of and even fewer (trust me, again!) understand or appreciate. The album is called Trout Mask Replica and the group is Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band. The title of my book kinda references an album they released right after Trout Mask, called Lick My Decals Off, Baby and people have told me (as if I didn’t already know) that giving my book the title that I did doesn’t make any sense, but you gotta look at it from my perspective and think about how bad it would have been if I called the book CAPTAIN BEEFHEART’S TROUT MASK FUNHOUSE or something like that. It wouldn’t have made any sense, and you wouldn’t be reading this article right now because I wouldn’t have cared a rip to write it.
 
Anyway, for some reason, the book struck a chord with readers . . . people who regularly buy my books and people who are still able to look back at the ‘60s and smile. And that’s cool.
 
Like I was saying, the book tries to touch a lot of bases in a very few pages – but hey, I AM known mostly as a minimalist. I’ve even taken it so far as to publish a poem that’s just one word long. I can talk about that poem and the dust it stirred up in a ton of places and all the “literary” arguments it caused, but right now I’ll let that conversation sit for another time and place . . . right now I’m talking about my Beefheart book, and the things in the book that have absolutely nothing at all to do with The Captain or his music or that one, strange and wonderful album. Things like the genetic duplication of dinosaurs and the pros and cons of running away from home. And why are there very few corner candy stores around anymore? What’s with that? And whatever happened to the nice old man and old lady who ran the one you used to go to?
 
If you can dig all that, maybe you’ll dig the book.
 
But, I was talking about synchronicity . . . at least that was the first line of this little article here. Synchronicity. It’s such a nice word. It feels good when you say it. It makes you sound like you know what you’re talking about. It makes you sound smart.
 
Most times, I don’t. And most times I’m not, so I looked it up . . .synchronicity. The first definition I found described it as “The simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related, but have no discernable causal connection.”
 
That’ll work. No discernable causal connection.
 
Now, put that thought in your back pocket and let me get back to talking about the book. Like I said, it was doing well (and that’s a relative term, because I’m very much a small press kind of guy with small press kind of sales, so you know what that means) and I was looking for ways and places to help get the word out . . . for me and my publisher and even those few readers who have stuck with me thru everything for more years than I care to count. Actually, I DO count . . . I can tell you how many books I’ve published (43) and how many poems I’ve published (exactly 3,587 as of yesterday morning) and how many years I’ve been doing all this (55. My first book came out in 1970, which actually makes me older than dirt or snot, whichever came first).
 
So, here I am, looking for ways to get the word out on my little book about a band nobody’s heard about and an album very few love. And I start looking around on my computer. I start looking up websites and Facebook groups about Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band and I was sort of surprised to see just how many Beefheart groups and sites there are. Tons of them. Some with just a few members . . . maybe a couple dozen or a hundred or so . . . and some with thousands and thousands. I have to say I was surprised. And the marketer in me . . . the salesman in me . . . starts to thinking . . . what if I joined some of these groups and posted some things about my book? Wouldn’t that be a great way to get the word out and get a couple or two or three new readers?
 
So, I did it. First, I joined some groups and then started posting some of those goofy little ads about my books that have served me so well in the past. I geared it toward the Beefheart book, of course . . . and when people responded with a comment or a “like,” I took it from there. And it was fun. It still is. And then it got to a point where I was even in some “chats” or whatever the heck they’re called (remember, I’m 74 and not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to computers and things) and I start talking back and forth with someone named Jeff. He seemed like a nice enough and smart enough guy, so I looked up his name (I’m at least smart enough to be able to do that) and the guy’s name is Jeff Cotton. A nice name. Ordinary enough. Jeff.
 
I can’t say we talked for very long . . . I mean, we didn’t swap photos of our dogs or early girlfriends or anything like that, but, we talked and he really seemed to know what he was talking about when it came to Trout Mask. And then (I’ll keep this short and maybe even leave out some stuff that doesn’t need to be brought up here and now) . . . and then he sends me this old publicity picture of himself from way back in 1968 . . . back when he was more popularly known as Antennae Jimmy Semens. It turns out that Jeff Cotton . . . the same Jeff Cotton I had been talking with back and forth . . . the guy who seemed to know an awful lot about the Trout Mask album was and still is Jeff Cotton, AKA Antennae Jimmy Semens! He played freakin’ guitar on one of my favorite albums ever. How cool is that???
 
Talk about synchronicity. Talk about cool. Talk about this old rock and roll lover having a pinch me moment! I couldn’t wait to tell my wife! I couldn’t wait to tell everybody! My stupid little book got me talking with THE Antennae Jimmy Semens.
 
I told Kathy, and I don’t think she was impressed. Much. I mean, she smiled, but it was the kind of smile you give your old uncle Dutch when you see he finally figured out how to put his toupee on straight. But, we’ve been married 50 years (as of a couple weeks ago) . . . long enough to know that she thought I did good.
 
So, here I am, right now, sitting here at my desk in the basement. I got a new book out . . . I got to talk (however briefly) with the guy who played guitar on Trout Mask Replica, one of the best and coolest albums ever . . and I have a wife who loves me enough to let me know when I finally went and got my wig on straight.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Artists’ Bios:

 
 
Catherine Arra is the author of four full-length poetry collections and four chapbooks. A former English and writing teacher, she now facilitates local writing groups. Her newest chapbook, Perennial Cosmology, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. Her newest full-length collection, Last Evening With All the Versions of Myself, was first finalist in the 2025 Donna Wolf-Palacio Poetry Book Prize and will be published by Finishing Line Press, September 2026. Arra lives in the Hudson Valley of upstate New York with her partner Alex Stolis and their dog Daisy. www.catherinearra.com
 
 
Jeff Bagato produces poetry and prose as well as mail art, electronic music and glitch video. His latest books document experimental text work from the past few years, including And the Trillions, Part 2, In the Engine Room with Bettie and Andrea Reading Pornography, Gonch Poems, Robot Speak, and Floral Float Flume: Flue Flit Flip. A blog about his writing and publishing efforts can be found at jeffbagato.wordpress.com
 
 
Leo Balaban is a 23-year-old writer and poet from Brooklyn. He studied English and fell in love with poetry at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. His senior year collection, To Be Still, received honors and can be viewed on Skidmore’s CreativeMatter repository. He is now working on getting more of his work published and creating his first chapbook Blue Period.
 
Ben Banyard lives in Portishead, UK, on the North Somerset coast. His three collections to date are Hi-Viz (Yaffle Press, 2021), We Are All Lucky (Indigo Dreams, 2018) and Communing (Indigo Dreams, 2016). Ben edits Black Nore Review blacknorereview.wordpress.com/ Website: https://benbanyard.wordpress.com/
 
 
Marshall Begel became a serious poetry hobbyist when he found that bad jokes are better received in meter and rhyme. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin and has had many pieces in the journals Light and Lighten Up Online.
 
 
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 Random Sample Review, Golgonooza, and The Stray Branch, among others.
 
 
F.S. Blake is a Bronze Star decorated U.S. Army Veteran and Pushcart Prize nominated poet. His work appears in The Military Review, Welter at University of Baltimore, San Pedro River Review, and The Main Street Rag, among others. His chapbooks, Terminal Leave, Above the Gold Fields, and The Few Drops Known are available from Finishing Line Press. His full-length poetry collection, Forever or a Week is forthcoming from Kelsay Books.
 
 
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels, eight poetry collections and one chapbook, her work has been widely published mostly by US poetry journals. A new full-length poetry collection is forthcoming in 2026. rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/>
 
 
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California. He has contributed work previously to Rat’s Ass Review, Williwaw Journal, Willows Wept Review, and Heartwood. He has a new book out in January from Sheila-Na-Gig, The Root Endures. More can be found at jeff-burt.com
 
 
Raymond Byrnes’s poems appear in scores of print and on-line journals such as Main Street Rag, Cathexis Northwest Press, and Shot Glass Journal. His work has been featured as Editor’s Choice in at least six, including Typishly, Third Wednesday, and The Writer’s Almanac. He lives in Virginia.
 
 
Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of four books and five chapbooks, and is the winner of the 2020 Phillip H. McMath Poetry Award. Her work has appeared widely, most recently in Attached to the Living World, the Ecopoetry Anthology, Vol.2. Her website is wendytaylorcarlisle.com
 
 
Alex Carrigan (he/him) is a Pushcart-nominated editor, poet, and critic from Alexandria, VA. He is the author of Now Let’s Get Brunch (Querencia Press, 2023) and May All Our Pain Be Champagne (Alien Buddha Press, 2022).
 
 
 
 
Richard Collins, abbot of the New Orleans Zen Temple, lives in Sewanee, Tennessee. His books include In Search of the Hermaphrodite: A Memoir (Tough Poets, 2024), Stone Nest (Shanti Arts, 2025), and Cartoons for the Chaos (forthcoming from Shanti Arts). Special features and nominations (Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Spiritual Literature) appear in Clockhouse, Philly Chapbook Review, Shō Poetry Journal, Willows Wept Review, and Seventh Quarry.
 
 
Joe Cottonwood has repaired hundreds of houses to support his writing habit among the redwood trees in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. His new book of poetry is “buck naked is the opposite of hate.”
 
 
Tony Dawson, an 88-year-old English writer, has been living in Seville since 1989 and continues to publish widely in the USA, UK and Australia since he took up writing during the pandemic. Many of his poems have been published as three small collections: Afterthoughts ISBN 9788119 228348, reviewed: london-grip-poetry-review-tony-dawson Musings ISBN 97819115 819666, reviewed: london-grip-poetry-review-tony-dawson2 and Reflections in a Dirty Mirror ISBN 9781915819949 reviewed: london-grip-poetry-review-tony-dawson3 as well as a selection of flash fiction, Curiouser and Curiouser ISBN 9788119 654932.
 
 
John Delaney’s publications include Waypoints (2017), a collection of place poems, Twenty Questions (2019), a chapbook, Delicate Arch (2022), poems and photographs of national parks and monuments, Galápagos (2023), a collaborative chapbook of his son Andrew’s photographs and his poems, Nile (2024), poems and photographs about Egypt, Filing Order: Sonnets (2025), and CATechisms (2025), poems and photographs about his senior cat. He lives in Port Townsend, WA.
 
 
Sal Difalco writes from Toronto, Canada.
 
 
Craig Dobson has had poetry and short fiction published in magazines in the US, Canada, Europe and Asia. He’s currently working towards his first collection of poetry. He lives and works in the UK.
 
 
Jané Dowd (b.1987) is a South African poet whose work explores the tension between tenderness and rupture, often drawing on the natural world as witness and counterpart. Her poems move through grief, wonder, and the bewildering work of being human, with a voice that is intimate, reflective, and unafraid of complexity.
 
 
Damien Farley is not a writer. He is native to, and resides in, northern New Jersey. He is probably old enough to be your father. (Might he be? Ask your mom.) His first published work recently appeared in Maudlin House and Tap into Poetry.
 
 
Joseph Farley‘s poetry collections include The Dog Scowls Instead Of Biting, Hard Times For The Circus Clown, Yellow Brick Pilgrim, Written In The Sand, Longing For The Mother Tongue, Her Eyes, and Suckers. His fiction books include Beware The Cartoonist, Nightmares And Hiccups, Farts And Daydreams, Once Upon A Time In Whitechapel, Labor Day, and For The Birds. He served as editor of Axe Factory for 23 years.
 
 
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. A better new year to all.
 
 
Wendy Freborg is a retired social worker and former editor whose poetry has been published by Rat’s Ass Review, Right Hand Pointing, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Misfit, and WestWard Quarterly. She is a frequent contributor to Scalar Comedy and Little Old Lady Comedy. Her pleasures are her family, learning new things, and remembering old times. She writes poetry to find out what she is thinking but does not always like the result.
 
 
Meg Freer lives in Ontario, where she works in the arts. Her work has appeared in many journals, and she has published four poetry chapbooks. She is co-poetry editor for The Sunlight Press and you can find her published work on her Facebook page, or her Substack blog at: https://megfreer.substack.com/.
 
 
Reb Friou is writing and crying. They are the creator and coeditor of adultgroceries.com
 
 
Mac Gay is the author of 7 poetry collections. His poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Main Street Rag, and The American Journal of Poetry. He lives in Covington Ga. with his partner Jana Peirce.
 
 
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, River And South and Flights. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Levitate, Writer’s Block and Trampoline.
 
 
Gary D. Grossman enjoys sharing his poems and essays, published in 70+ literary reviews. He doesn’t enter contests but his work has been nominated for the usual awards, i.e., Pushcart, Best of Net, etc.- no wins yet, so meh, right? His graphic memoir, three books of poetry and gourmet venison cookbook all may be purchased via his website or Amazon. Gary enjoys running, fishing, gardening and playing ukulele. Website: https://www.garygrossman.net/
 
 
Stephen Ground is a writer and filmmaker based in Treaty Six Territory [Edmonton, Canada].
 
 
Nevin Nahar Haque is a Muslim, Bangladeshi-American storyteller born and raised in Queens, New York. Her writing explores the intersections between generational trauma, diaspora, psychoanalysis, grief, and love. She is currently a fiction MFA candidate at Columbia University School of the Arts, working on her first novel.
 
 
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
 
 
David Henson and his wife reside in Illinois. His work has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net and has appeared in various publications including Best Microfictions 2025, Rat’s Ass Review, Ghost Parachute, Moonpark Review, Maudlin House, and Literally Stories. His website is http://writings217.wordpress.com. His X handle is @annalou8.
 
 
Matt Hohner (MFA, Naropa University) has published two collections: At the Edge of a Thousand Years, winner of the 2023 Jacar Press Poetry Book Contest (now out of print), and Thresholds and Other Poems (Apprentice House 2018). His publications include Prairie Fire, Rattle: Poets Respond, Takahē, Smartish Pace, New Contrast, Narrative Magazine, Poetry Ireland, Prairie Schooner, The Baltimore Review, and elsewhere. Hohner is the Poetry Editor at The Loch Raven Review.
 
Facebook: facebook.com/MattHohnerPoet
 
Bluesky: charmcitypoet
 
Instagram: mobtownpoet
 
 
Beth Houston (www.bethhouston.com) has taught writing (mostly creative writing) at ten universities and colleges in California and Florida and has worked as a writer and editor. She has published a couple hundred poems in dozens of literary journals. She writes free verse and formal poetry, mostly sonnets, and has published a novel, two nonfiction books, and six poetry books (out of print). She edits the Extreme formal poetry anthologies via one of her indie presses, Rhizome Press (www.rhizomepress.com).
 
 
Edward Cody Huddleston was born in New Jersey, raised in Georgia, and now occupies several liminal spaces. His poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction have been widely published and won numerous awards. He loves haiku and his debut collection, Wildflowers in a Vase, is available from Red Moon Press. You can visit him online at echuddleston.com.
 
 
Kellin James studies anthropology and creative writing at University of California, Riverside. He has previously been published in Two Hawks Quarterly.
 
 
Carol Kanter’s poetry appears in over ninety journals and three chapbooks: “Out of Southern Africa,” and “Chronicle of Dog” (FinishingLine Press); “Of Water” (Peterborough Poetry Project). She paired poems with her husband’s photographs for four coffee-table books. DualArtsPress.com Carol is a psychotherapist; her book And Baby Makes Three explores the emotional transitions to parenthood.
 
 
Daniel Kemper, a former tournament-winning wrestler, black belt in traditional Shotokan karate, and infantryman has earned a BA in English, an MCSE (Systems Engineering), an MBA, and an MA in English and had works accepted for publication at more than a dozen magazines, including a pushcart nomination. He’s been an invited presenter at PAMLA 2024 and presided over the Poetics Panel in 2025 and has been the feature poet at several Sacramento venues.
 
 
Olivia Koo is a high school student and emerging poet. When she’s not writing, she enjoys reading, movies, and music. She is currently putting together her writing portfolio.
 
 
Christian Lingner is a teacher, songwriter, and poet living in Nashville, TN. He is an enthusiast of John Prine and of the Kansas City Chiefs, and enjoys going on long walks with his wife and little son.
 
 
Charles Richard Livesay is a forty-four year old teacher from Knoxville, Tennessee, and has started taking his writing seriously this year. He has had poems published in Strange Horizons, Dreams and Nightmares, 4LPH4NUM3RIC, Trollbreath, and forthcoming in Star*Line. Send Email
 
 
Kelsey D. Mahaffey is a Nashville poet who keeps half her heart in New Orleans. Her work can be seen in: Deep South Magazine, Pinch, Arkansas Review, SWING, Eunoia Review, and Cumberland River Review, among others. Her debut chapbook, No Fault of Water, is available now from Finishing Line Press. Find more at www.kelseydmahaffey.com.
 
 
John Martino is a writer, photographer, and educator currently residing in Hong Kong. His debut poetry collection, American Sonnet (Half Inch Press), a suite of 51 “little songs,” was published in September 2025. Some of his other poems have found a home at North Dakota Quarterly, Another Chicago Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, and J Journal, among others. He is the Executive Editor at Home Planet News. (homeplanetnews.com)
 
 
Ken Massicotte is a poet and musician who lives in Hamilton, Ontario. He has taught English in various countries, delivered furniture and flowers. He has been published in many journals, including: Grain, New Square, Rat’s Ass Review, New World Writing, Main Street Rag, and Waxing and Waning. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
 
 
Hannah McLeod is an educator, fiction writer, and poet from Appalachia. Her fiction has been published in Yonder Literary Magazine and Re:AL Literary Magazine. Her poetry has been published in The Banyan Review and Saw Palm. She can be reached at mcleodh828@gmail.com.
 
 
Lindsay McLeod lives down the Port in South Australia with his cattle dog, Mary. His writing has won awards and been published all over (in spite of rhyme and reason) and found homes most recently with THE HUMAN WRITERS, MENISCUS, EPHEMERAL ELEGIES, TIPTON POETRY, SNAKESKIN, PULSEBEAT and THE MARTELLO. Forced into early retirement, Lindsay is said to be considering a life of crime to support his poetry habit.
 
 
Kate McNairy —Take, for example, two words walk—one up, one down a narrow set of stairs. The moments they jostle, shuffle, shift as the words meet each other is the space when the poem begins. I’ve published three chapbooks the latest When the Cats Yawn (2025),Finishing Line Press. I live with Jon and two kittens, Comet and Dark Star who bring us lots of fun.
 
 
Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His poems have appeared in Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Light, Lighten Up Online, the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, WestWard Quarterly and several other journals. In 2025 he won the Children’s Unpublished category of the Eyelands Book Awards with Flora’s Flock and Other Stories to Read Aloud.
 
 
Peter Mladinic’s most recent book of poems, The Whitestone Bridge, is available from Anxiety Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.
 
 
Marla Dial Moore is a recovering journalist and poet living in San Antonio, Texas. She was a 2025 “Best of the Net” nominee whose work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Merion West, The Metaworker, The Quasar Review, When the River Speaks, Soul Poetry, Prose and Art Magazine, San Antonio Review, and others.
 
 
Lydia Pearson is an emerging 22-year old writer from Lancashire, England. She is currently studying English Literature and Creative Writing, hoping for a 2:1. She’s had 36 poems, 24 articles, 5 pieces of short fiction, 14 blog posts and 16 posts for Mental Health Notebook published, plus 260+ fanworks since April 2019. She’s currently working on her debut novel, ‘Love Dotty.’ She aspires to be a published novelist, poet and journalist one day.
 
 
Kenneth Pobo (he/him) has a new book out called It’s Me, Dulcet Tones (Half Inch Press) and a chapbook called Raylene And Skip (Wolfson Press). He’s retired and looking forward to spring so he can garden.
 
 
Tom Probasco has had poems published in Rat’s Ass Review, the Northwest Indiana Literary Journal, the INverse Poetry Archive, and in several Indiana Writers Center publications, including Flying Island. In addition to writing the occasional poem, he plays harmonica in the Indianapolis band North of Shanidar.
 
 
Sabrina Ramet was born in London, England, earned her undergraduate degree in Philosophy at Stanford University, and her Ph.D. in Political Science at UCLA. She has published 16 books of history. She has also published six absurdist verse and two short absurdist novellas with a hybrid publisher (New Academia Publishing). She likes to sing songs from Irving Berlin around the house and sometimes yodels in restaurants.
 
 
Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. A collection of persona poems and dramatic monologues involving burlesque stars, The Trapeze of Your Flesh, was recently published by BlazeVOX Books. His collection, The Tao According to Calvin Coolidge, has just been published by Kelsay Books.
 
 
kerry rawlinson is a mental nomad & bloody-minded optimist who gravitated from sunny Zambian skies to solid Canadian soil. Her photo-art covers and awards include: Consilience Journal; Makarelle; Rattle; CAGO Online Gallery and recent publications include: IceFloe Press Geographies; Novus Literary; Inscape; Wild Roof Journal; NonBinary Review, Touchstone amongst others. She’s also the recipient of New Millennium Writings; Princemere & Canterbury Poetry Prizes, and has placed in several more, e.g. CV2; Haiku Crush; Bridport. kerry’s enthralled with the gore, music, brutality & beauty of the world, the edges of which she explores in her work. She still wanders barefoot through dislocation & belonging—and still drinks too much (tea). kerryrawlinson.com @kerryrawli
 
 
William James Rosser is a poet and former sommelier living in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He studied journalism and literature at Lamar University, and admires the poetics of, among many, Archibald MacLeish, Robert Penn Warren, R. S. Gwynn, and Robert Hass. His work has appeared previously in RAR, as well as Texas Poetry Assignment Quarterly and the upcoming issue of Chiron Review. He writes from a century-old house, at the foot of the Osage Hills.
 
 
John Rutherford is a poet and writer living in Beaumont, TX with his wife and three badly behaved cats. When not working at the Department of English and Modern Languages at Lamar University, he is an MFA candidate at the University of St. Thomas(Houston).
 
 
Leon Sare is a writer from the American Midwest, specializing in poetry, genre horror, and the nauseating ordeal of having a body. They’ve been published in a local collection, Journey 2025. Sare is the proud owner of The Abdicated Flesh Lifestyle Ministries, which live at abdicatedflesh.substack.com.
 
 
Penelope Scambly Schott’s recent books include WAVING FLY SWATTERS AT ANGELS and ON DUFUR HILL. She is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry.
 
 
Jason Schwartz is a crypto tax lawyer. His work has appeared in Dodging the Rain and Toasted Cheese. He posts about crypto, taxes, and cryptoart as @CryptoTaxGuyETH on X.
 
 
Claire Scott is an award-winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.
 
 
Carol Shillibeer‘s poems have been published in many print and online publications, and received nominations for both Pushcart and Best of Net. One of her most recent manuscripts language be like won the 2025 Alfred G. Bailey Prize for poetry.
 
 
Tricia L. Somers lives with her family and a couple of crazy cats in L.A. Ca. You can find her work in La Resaca Issue 2, New Verse News, Poetry Marathon anthologies 2022 & 2025, Rat’s Ass Review, and elsewhere. Visit her at Bitch n’ Complain on Substack.
 
 
Kathryn Spratt has received the Brilliant Poetry prize and the Eleanore B. North Poetry Award. Her poetry has appeared in Consilience and Rue Scribe.
 
 
Julie Standig is the author of two poetry books— The Forsaken Little Black Book, (Kelsay Books) which was nominated for an Eric Hoffer Award and a chapbook, Memsahib Memoirs (Plan B Press). Her poems have appeared in Schuylkill Valley Journal, Gyroscope Review, New Verse News, Macqueen’s Quinterly, Rat’s Ass Review, One Art and elsewhere. A lifetime New Yorker, she now resides in Bucks County with her husband and their springer spaniel.
 
 
Alex Stolis has had poems published in numerous journals. Two full length collections Pop. 1280, and John Berryman Died Here were released by Cyberwit and are available on Amazon. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Piker’s Press, Ekphrastic Review, Louisiana Literature Review, Burningwood Literary Journal, and Star 82 Review. His chapbook, Postcards from the Knife-Thrower’s Wife, was released by Louisiana Literature Press in 2024, RIP Winston Smith from Alien Buddha Press 2024, and The Hum of Geometry; The Music of Spheres, 2024 by Bottlecap Press. He lives in upstate New York with his partner, poet Catherine Arra.
 
 
Faith Thiebaud is a 25 year old East Texan poet and writer. You can find her on most socials @faiththiebs.
 
 
Dan Thompson (PhD) is a U.S. Army veteran and former editor-in-chief whose creative and critical work has appeared in a wide range of literary and scholarly journals, including, within the past year, issues of Feral, Canary, Eclectica, The Raven Review, Black Coffee Review, Rat’s Ass Review, and Jerry Jazz Musician, among others. In an earlier life, he worked as a music producer for educational videos and as a disc jockey at a country-music radio station.
 
 
Barbara Ungar is the author of six books, most recently After Naming the Animals (The Word Works). Honors include the Snyder Publication Prize, Gival Poetry Prize, and being named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie Books of 2015 and 2019. Her work has been translated into Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Bulgarian.
 
 
Maura Way is the author of Mummery (2023) and Another Bungalow (2017), both from Press 53. Her poetry has appeared widely in journals such as DIAGRAM, Puerto del Sol, Poet Lore, Cleaver, and The Hong Kong Review. She has also been a school teacher for over twenty years, most recently at New Garden Friends.
 
 
Madelyn Whelan is a queer poet originally from the Boston area, currently in their first year of Oregon State University’s MFA program for poetry. She has attended the Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and writes to further understand themself and the world, as well as to find queerness wherever it exists. She has work published in BRUISER.
 
 
Heather Wishik is a poet and visual artist living in Woodstock, VT. She studied poetry with Ellen Bryant Voigt and Heather McHugh at Goddard College, and with Marie Howe, Jessica Greenbaum and others since. Her poems have been published in literary magazines and anthologies including Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time (Larkin & Morse, 1988), and more recently in Dreamers Creative Writing, 2024, and Sprout: An Eco-Urban Poetry Journal, Issue 3, 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, The New Verse News, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and her first chapbook, Ready or Not, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.
 
 
John Yamrus is widely recognized as master of minimalism and the neo-noir in modern poetry. In a career spanning more than 50 years as a working writer, he has had nearly 4,000 poems published in books, magazines and anthologies around the world. His writing is often taught in college and university courses. Three of his more than 40 books have been published in translation. Fittingly, the 75 year old’s newest book is a volume of his signature minimalist poetry called AIN’T DONE YET.
 
 
Bänoo Zan is a poet, translator, and curator, with numerous published pieces and books including Songs of Exile and Letters to My Father. She is the founder of Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night), Canada’s most diverse and brave poetry open mic series (inception 2012). Bänoo, with Cy Strom, is the co-editor of the anthology: Woman Life Freedom: Poems for the Iranian Revolution and the recipient of the 2025 Writers’ Union of Canada Freedom to Read Award.