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Feb 2026 Issue #40 Poetry
featuring:
Jonathan B. Aibel, Arielle Arbushites, Angela Arnold, Devon Balwit, Ali Beheler, Sara Burge, Joseph Byrd, Michael Cuervo, Marc Alan Di Martino, Merrill Oliver Douglas, Alexander Duringer, Meg Files, Susan Grimm, Liz Grisaru, Tom C. Hunley, Koss, Olga Livshin, Philip Newton, Mike L. Nichols, Lee Pelletier, John Pring, henry 7. reneau, jr., Tucker Riggleman, Sophia Saco, Hilary Sallick, mike sluchinski, Stephen Foster Smith, Ben Starr, Kashawn Taylor, Veronica Tucker, Carter Vance, Nala Washington, Cindy Wheeler, Matthew Zhao
Jonathan B. Aibel, Arielle Arbushites, Angela Arnold, Devon Balwit, Ali Beheler, Sara Burge, Joseph Byrd, Michael Cuervo, Marc Alan Di Martino, Merrill Oliver Douglas, Alexander Duringer, Meg Files, Susan Grimm, Liz Grisaru, Tom C. Hunley, Koss, Olga Livshin, Philip Newton, Mike L. Nichols, Lee Pelletier, John Pring, henry 7. reneau, jr., Tucker Riggleman, Sophia Saco, Hilary Sallick, mike sluchinski, Stephen Foster Smith, Ben Starr, Kashawn Taylor, Veronica Tucker, Carter Vance, Nala Washington, Cindy Wheeler, Matthew Zhao
Poetry Launch Reading Friday February 13th at 7:30 PM
Hear the poets from Issue 40
Please register in advance
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/VAd28iFyT9mhIFZ67hhbmw
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Jonathan B. Aibel
October, Dear Wife
Frost warning. The window
will be closed. I'm ready to close
the window, you are deciding
what you want me to do or not do.
You're telling me what you want,
I try to listen, stepping into our bed,
turning away from window, from you.
I'm ready to go out the window,
a wonderful flight―if I land
on the grass, it will be softer
than our bed. I'm exhausted
with feeling sick. Not
your fault. I only want
to straighten books, wash
dishes, plant a plot with hyacinth.
I am holding on, as you asked.
I am letting go, as you asked,
my hands off the windowsill,
I lie down, in our bed,
not touching anything.
Frost warning. The window
will be closed. I'm ready to close
the window, you are deciding
what you want me to do or not do.
You're telling me what you want,
I try to listen, stepping into our bed,
turning away from window, from you.
I'm ready to go out the window,
a wonderful flight―if I land
on the grass, it will be softer
than our bed. I'm exhausted
with feeling sick. Not
your fault. I only want
to straighten books, wash
dishes, plant a plot with hyacinth.
I am holding on, as you asked.
I am letting go, as you asked,
my hands off the windowsill,
I lie down, in our bed,
not touching anything.
Jonathan B. Aibel, a recovering software engineer, lives in Concord, MA, traditional homelands of the Nipmuc. His poems have been published in Barrelhouse, Chautauqua, Pangyrus, Lily Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, and elsewhere. Jonathan's chapbook Echoes of Uruk was a semi-finalist for the Tupelo Press 2024 Snowbound Prize. http://www.jbaibelpoet.com.
Arielle Arbushites
Blood Bank
I gave blood today.
It slithered its way out of my arm
like a serpent of dark rusted silk
as I sat in the back of a mobile blood bank
with my feet up, reclining,
half captive, half queen,
sipping water and nibbling tiny crackers
that kept falling into my lap
like confetti for this ceremony of exhaustion.
Near me, she bloomed in yellow―
matching glasses, shoes, and purse
peeking from around her hip,
a sunflower tethered to a seat,
grinning as she ticked through
the endless parade of to-do lists.
We commiserated:
at last, an hour unclaimed.
A deep breath, a reprieve.
Who looks forward to the sting of a needle,
the opportunity to be closed up
in the back of a van
for permission to stop?
Mothers.
We beseech the medical staff
as they bandage our veins,
our tired smiles in place,
coffee waiting.
Can we stay a little longer
with our feet up?
I gave blood today.
It slithered its way out of my arm
like a serpent of dark rusted silk
as I sat in the back of a mobile blood bank
with my feet up, reclining,
half captive, half queen,
sipping water and nibbling tiny crackers
that kept falling into my lap
like confetti for this ceremony of exhaustion.
Near me, she bloomed in yellow―
matching glasses, shoes, and purse
peeking from around her hip,
a sunflower tethered to a seat,
grinning as she ticked through
the endless parade of to-do lists.
We commiserated:
at last, an hour unclaimed.
A deep breath, a reprieve.
Who looks forward to the sting of a needle,
the opportunity to be closed up
in the back of a van
for permission to stop?
Mothers.
We beseech the medical staff
as they bandage our veins,
our tired smiles in place,
coffee waiting.
Can we stay a little longer
with our feet up?
Arielle Arbushites is many things, but above all she is a licensed social worker who has been a writer all her life. She has mainly published poetry on social platforms and lit mags/journals, including work in Maudlin House, Four Tulips, and The Orchards Poetry Journal. Arielle lives and writes in Lehigh Valley, PA, where she balances motherhood, hospice work, and poetry as a means of understanding what it means to be alive and connected.
Angela Arnold
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Their Stairs Are Our Stairs
I heard the reporter: So you stayed, despite...?
I watched them say: No, we said no, not leave.
Till the doves of the mind were torn apart
and fell and still
we stayed
even as disbelief thudded,
brash in our ears, impossibles
piled up, slammed in, took over, while we remained
pinned to the thinnest hope
among a tear of concrete and a lightning of shrieks
in the road below: molten fragments
of pain released from the sky
like an absurd evil
snow fall to earth.
Fragments of dreams
no one ought to have: settled.
The limp doves edging slowly closer to
being meat; water drained
from the unradiators; and in a screaming volley
of earth-and-air shudder
the stairs are gone.
Where are the stairs? How
will we, the little flakes of humanity
left, now snow safely to the ground, as we
should? A last should?
These quiet nothing stairs sound infinitely
worse than the convulsions
that racketed in and took them – like something
that could ever, at all, be taken.
The void left
looks world-bendingly worse
than the lit-candle blocks left and right, lively
with a smoke that can still beckon.
We can hear their prayers already, in the swirl
of our heads. Will that grow back the many, far
too many steps? In our minds?
Today it said they knotted together their clothes
and their feet touched a ground rendered foreign.
I heard the reporter: So you stayed, despite...?
I watched them say: No, we said no, not leave.
Till the doves of the mind were torn apart
and fell and still
we stayed
even as disbelief thudded,
brash in our ears, impossibles
piled up, slammed in, took over, while we remained
pinned to the thinnest hope
among a tear of concrete and a lightning of shrieks
in the road below: molten fragments
of pain released from the sky
like an absurd evil
snow fall to earth.
Fragments of dreams
no one ought to have: settled.
The limp doves edging slowly closer to
being meat; water drained
from the unradiators; and in a screaming volley
of earth-and-air shudder
the stairs are gone.
Where are the stairs? How
will we, the little flakes of humanity
left, now snow safely to the ground, as we
should? A last should?
These quiet nothing stairs sound infinitely
worse than the convulsions
that racketed in and took them – like something
that could ever, at all, be taken.
The void left
looks world-bendingly worse
than the lit-candle blocks left and right, lively
with a smoke that can still beckon.
We can hear their prayers already, in the swirl
of our heads. Will that grow back the many, far
too many steps? In our minds?
Today it said they knotted together their clothes
and their feet touched a ground rendered foreign.
Angela Arnold is a writer, poet and artist. Her poems have appeared widely in print magazines, anthologies and online, both in the UK and elsewhere. Collection: In Between, ‘inner landscapes’ and relationships (Stairwell Books, 2023). A second collection is forthcoming. She lives in Wales.Twitter/X @AngelaArnold777; angelaarnold777.bsky.social
Devon Balwit
Jacob’s Ladder
[for the 80-year-old who drove down the Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti]
To a man my age, all steps are Jacob’s Ladder.
A summons comes in the night, and I rise and go,
following one furtive angel after another.
Somehow, they ascend, but I remain below.
This is no longer the city of my youth―
its streets have become as strange as my skin—worn
travertine. A man approaches. Could it be Death?
No, just a police officer. Forlorn,
I ask if aging is a crime. He shakes his head,
sighs, and makes a call. A crane whirs
in the night, but only my car lifts overhead.
He returns me to my family: Take care, Sir,
he says as they twitter their concern. Why did I drive
the stairs? they demand. For no reason they’d believe.
[for the 80-year-old who drove down the Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti]
To a man my age, all steps are Jacob’s Ladder.
A summons comes in the night, and I rise and go,
following one furtive angel after another.
Somehow, they ascend, but I remain below.
This is no longer the city of my youth―
its streets have become as strange as my skin—worn
travertine. A man approaches. Could it be Death?
No, just a police officer. Forlorn,
I ask if aging is a crime. He shakes his head,
sighs, and makes a call. A crane whirs
in the night, but only my car lifts overhead.
He returns me to my family: Take care, Sir,
he says as they twitter their concern. Why did I drive
the stairs? they demand. For no reason they’d believe.
When making art, Devon Balwit walks in all weather and edits for Asimov and Stripe Press and Asterisk and Works in Progress Magazine.
Ali Beheler
Undermusic
You get there by the way
your body disobeys
your youngest part, the child
who just found words―
how she cries
when she thinks
of her favorite thing
she can no longer find:
a body like the ones
you’ve seen lit sometimes
from inside, curling out
of language―the way
his whole golden vellus
once rose over you,
swallowing sky
into field you ran
your toes through, tongue
in earth, mouth moving
not making words―the way
they bent toward light,
the chained-up leaves
of your skin-rooted hairs,
the way they loosed
and pulled their limbs
to a curve, climbing upward―
the way everything stretched
into shape of ear, hollowed,
attuned to the way he sang
into dark, blurring all outlines,
the way the sky
slid down each night
after he played for you, unmade
and everything left
aquiver—that hum.
You get there by the way
your body disobeys
your youngest part, the child
who just found words―
how she cries
when she thinks
of her favorite thing
she can no longer find:
a body like the ones
you’ve seen lit sometimes
from inside, curling out
of language―the way
his whole golden vellus
once rose over you,
swallowing sky
into field you ran
your toes through, tongue
in earth, mouth moving
not making words―the way
they bent toward light,
the chained-up leaves
of your skin-rooted hairs,
the way they loosed
and pulled their limbs
to a curve, climbing upward―
the way everything stretched
into shape of ear, hollowed,
attuned to the way he sang
into dark, blurring all outlines,
the way the sky
slid down each night
after he played for you, unmade
and everything left
aquiver—that hum.
Eye’s an Artist, Mind Works with Its Own Two Hands
By this age at least I know this
as I see you glide across the restaurant floor and sit
in front of me for the first time
how this part is nice, wipe
of slate, canvas blank, my mind, my eyes
on something so new, you
could be anything and I am feeling
so kind I will let you and the manifold you contain
take up the whole room. Here.
It’s the least I can do. Since I can feel it
starting already, your long arms and the way you grab
your own hands when you laugh,
your glance back at me when you
head to the bathroom, still chewing a little,
your fork left so freely beside
your knife on second glance become
flung. How next time you walk toward me I will see the swing of your step
before your heel even hovers, already
paint you pulling your chair back out
with a careless scrape, let your empty frame sliding back into your seat
take on the weight of my creating
what’s there and underneath like warm clay
I’m guiding up and down your wire-wrought outline of a torso,
limb, intention, filling all the holes
so you take shape. While you just sit there, just you
for the last time, sailing out toward the horizon over a plate. How very soon
on the sidewalk, through my doorway, to see you walking behind me
I won’t even have to turn around.
By this age at least I know this
as I see you glide across the restaurant floor and sit
in front of me for the first time
how this part is nice, wipe
of slate, canvas blank, my mind, my eyes
on something so new, you
could be anything and I am feeling
so kind I will let you and the manifold you contain
take up the whole room. Here.
It’s the least I can do. Since I can feel it
starting already, your long arms and the way you grab
your own hands when you laugh,
your glance back at me when you
head to the bathroom, still chewing a little,
your fork left so freely beside
your knife on second glance become
flung. How next time you walk toward me I will see the swing of your step
before your heel even hovers, already
paint you pulling your chair back out
with a careless scrape, let your empty frame sliding back into your seat
take on the weight of my creating
what’s there and underneath like warm clay
I’m guiding up and down your wire-wrought outline of a torso,
limb, intention, filling all the holes
so you take shape. While you just sit there, just you
for the last time, sailing out toward the horizon over a plate. How very soon
on the sidewalk, through my doorway, to see you walking behind me
I won’t even have to turn around.
Ali Beheler’s recent work appears or is forthcoming inThe Penn Review, The Shore, SRPR, Harpur Palate, Tupelo Quarterly, ballast journal, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and elsewhere. Winner of the SRPR Editor’s Prize (2024) and the Milton J. Kessler Memorial Prize in Poetry (2025), she has received residencies from Sundress Academy for the Arts and Dorland Mountain Arts Colony. She teaches at Hastings College in Hastings, NE. Find her at www.alibeheler.com.
Sara Burge
Melancholia
I lie sometimes or lie by omission
when I can’t deal with their feelings their sorries
make them feel better
so I say two siblings and leave out brother
or just start talking about sisters no matter what they ask next
but sometimes you cannot be avoided
predicate with no subject
joke with no punchline
earth with no atmosphere
then I imagine earth with no atmosphere
wonder if we’d all fly into space
but no, that’s gravity, there would still be gravity
or burn or freeze or suffocate or what first
I’m no astronomer / philosopher
if we would be emitted or omitted from earth
and sometimes I think of Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia
and I get it, girl, I always got it
or would it be like when you floated away and I never saw you again
no air no heat no cold no gravity no dinosaurs no Christians no dentists no aliens no air
nowhere to hide while I watched our mom screaming then floating away then I floated away
from earth fried food cats microplastics greenhouse emissions
and Kirsten Dunst’s face
as that other planet got ready to collide
and her sister crying and screaming because they were all going to die even her son
but Kirsten Dunst’s face was serene
so glad that shit was done
this little zoo of misery and wonder and never trusting good news
because I am constantly bracing for impact
because someone got tired someone was so tired
someone left the gate unlocked and you blew through it
you had to escape this atmosphere this godawful place
and sometimes I say I had a brother, but he’s gone now.
I lie sometimes or lie by omission
when I can’t deal with their feelings their sorries
make them feel better
so I say two siblings and leave out brother
or just start talking about sisters no matter what they ask next
but sometimes you cannot be avoided
predicate with no subject
joke with no punchline
earth with no atmosphere
then I imagine earth with no atmosphere
wonder if we’d all fly into space
but no, that’s gravity, there would still be gravity
or burn or freeze or suffocate or what first
I’m no astronomer / philosopher
if we would be emitted or omitted from earth
and sometimes I think of Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia
and I get it, girl, I always got it
or would it be like when you floated away and I never saw you again
no air no heat no cold no gravity no dinosaurs no Christians no dentists no aliens no air
nowhere to hide while I watched our mom screaming then floating away then I floated away
from earth fried food cats microplastics greenhouse emissions
and Kirsten Dunst’s face
as that other planet got ready to collide
and her sister crying and screaming because they were all going to die even her son
but Kirsten Dunst’s face was serene
so glad that shit was done
this little zoo of misery and wonder and never trusting good news
because I am constantly bracing for impact
because someone got tired someone was so tired
someone left the gate unlocked and you blew through it
you had to escape this atmosphere this godawful place
and sometimes I say I had a brother, but he’s gone now.
Sara Burge is the author of Apocalypse Ranch (C&R Press), and her second book, Sexy Fish, is due out from Cornerstone Press in 2027. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Pleiades, Willow Springs, Phoebe, Virginia Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Pinch, and elsewhere. She lives in Springfield, MO, and is the Poetry Editor of Moon City Review. Featured work can be found at saraburge.com.
Joseph Byrd
Angel
Sometimes, an angel shows up without warning,
eyes like cups of tea as it wakes you from the
dream you once thought your life would be.
Having once sung soprano on a middle-school
stage while Taylor Hobbs shouted
“Girls can’t feel your vocal chords, Joey!”
you have remained dignified as a hubcap,
hanging on to what some would call a very dear life.
A different angel showed up in your
8th-grade PE class, too, just as Taylor twisted his
wet, white gym towel into a mace-and-chain, ready to be
flung at your naked knighthood, your only nobility a
selective mutism that made wordlessness your weapon.
And all these decades later, when December’s light does
less than it should, what you could not speak then starts to
pour from your eyes as you learn that Taylor is dead,
your wet, white page a thing not to fling back, but to
wipe away the overdose, the car crash; to swaddle the
words you wish you could have said as his eyes darkened.
Be not afraid. That’s what all the angels say.
You taught me that, too, Taylor, in your own way.
Sometimes, an angel shows up without warning,
eyes like cups of tea as it wakes you from the
dream you once thought your life would be.
Having once sung soprano on a middle-school
stage while Taylor Hobbs shouted
“Girls can’t feel your vocal chords, Joey!”
you have remained dignified as a hubcap,
hanging on to what some would call a very dear life.
A different angel showed up in your
8th-grade PE class, too, just as Taylor twisted his
wet, white gym towel into a mace-and-chain, ready to be
flung at your naked knighthood, your only nobility a
selective mutism that made wordlessness your weapon.
And all these decades later, when December’s light does
less than it should, what you could not speak then starts to
pour from your eyes as you learn that Taylor is dead,
your wet, white page a thing not to fling back, but to
wipe away the overdose, the car crash; to swaddle the
words you wish you could have said as his eyes darkened.
Be not afraid. That’s what all the angels say.
You taught me that, too, Taylor, in your own way.
Bereavement Lessons
I went to that school, but I can’t
write anything unless I’m writing
about you teaching me about
everything. That sentence would
flunk me. I’m learning that our
friendship asked one question:
Who’s driving the car to the
funeral? It is the body that
teaches, and I will take this
lesson even further: With each
sunrise, God is whispering about
us again, and I know I will wake
up some day. Every time I say
what God is, I run into a grocery
store and call you from my worst
aisles. You were always ok with
ramen for dinner. You taught me
what lives between the rabbit and
the top hat. Mercy is a needle and
Non Sum Qualis Eram the tattoo
we agreed to. You died before
the ink dried on us. And I love
how you’d lift weights until there
were no more. My question now:
Wow. Or maybe why, but I am
learning not to ask that. Who
can take you from me after the
ways I’ve already let you go?
I went to that school, but I can’t
write anything unless I’m writing
about you teaching me about
everything. That sentence would
flunk me. I’m learning that our
friendship asked one question:
Who’s driving the car to the
funeral? It is the body that
teaches, and I will take this
lesson even further: With each
sunrise, God is whispering about
us again, and I know I will wake
up some day. Every time I say
what God is, I run into a grocery
store and call you from my worst
aisles. You were always ok with
ramen for dinner. You taught me
what lives between the rabbit and
the top hat. Mercy is a needle and
Non Sum Qualis Eram the tattoo
we agreed to. You died before
the ink dried on us. And I love
how you’d lift weights until there
were no more. My question now:
Wow. Or maybe why, but I am
learning not to ask that. Who
can take you from me after the
ways I’ve already let you go?
Joseph Byrd is a 2025 Best Small Fictions winner, a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, and was in the StoryBoard Chicago cohort with Kaveh Akbar. An Associate Artist in Poetry under Joy Harjo at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, he reviews for The Bear Review and Antiphony. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in West Trade Review, Exposition Review, The South Carolina Review, Stone Canoe, CutBank, Pedestal, South Florida Poetry Journal, DIAGRAM, Novus Literary Arts, and elsewhere.
Michael Cuervo
Homesick in a Florentine bathroom
Cooked pigeon looks just like any other meat, and the statue by the door, if I close my eyes, looks just like me, I can project myself onto anyone if I’m homesick enough, like now, right now, I’m taking nudes in a Michelin star bathroom because some man back in Miami asked to see just how hung I really am, and something about taking nudes makes me feel at home, something about my body in someone else’s phone, but I’m also standing guard by the Ponte Vecchio, I’m looking around this windowless bathroom and thinking of standing outside a closed jewelry shop, brushing my fingers against the arched windows on the door, this restaurant is so fancy, too fancy, I’m thinking about stealing from the jewelry shop where another version of me is standing, thinking about kicking through the glass, I’m the glass, the door, the display, I’m painted on the ceilings of so many churches, I’m the painter, too, the architect of the Duomo, call me Filippo, Francesco, Arnolfo, Emilio, the woman in the Prada store looking down at my scuffed Adidas, the man holding a fistful of umbrellas upside down and I’m buying an umbrella from myself, I’m manning the wine window and pouring myself a little extra red, I’m the woman I bought a small painting of mums from, the mums and the hills and the birds, all me, I’m the ridges between cobbles on these bumpy streets, I’m back in this bathroom and the sink water that rests in the ceramic bowl a moment before circling the drain brings me to the puddle of muddy water outside my hotel, more of me, I break the toilet in my room just so I can be the plumber, I’m on my back underneath the neighbor, the local DL Italian from Rome on a day trip with his wife, I’m the sheets, the mattress, the man’s spit and cum, I’m the chef, the waiter, the hostess, the midnight rooftop view of Florence, the stars, the dimmest, the brightest, I’m one and all craters on the moon, the sun setting in Miami six hours behind, but really, I am naked in my phone and leaving the bathroom, and I’m walking past the statue, and I brush his fingers, and I look up to see my face, and instead it’s just a man, strong jaw, firm pecs, no nipples, just a statue, so I return to my table, and still on the plate, a cooked and glazed slice of pigeon that I will not eat.
Cooked pigeon looks just like any other meat, and the statue by the door, if I close my eyes, looks just like me, I can project myself onto anyone if I’m homesick enough, like now, right now, I’m taking nudes in a Michelin star bathroom because some man back in Miami asked to see just how hung I really am, and something about taking nudes makes me feel at home, something about my body in someone else’s phone, but I’m also standing guard by the Ponte Vecchio, I’m looking around this windowless bathroom and thinking of standing outside a closed jewelry shop, brushing my fingers against the arched windows on the door, this restaurant is so fancy, too fancy, I’m thinking about stealing from the jewelry shop where another version of me is standing, thinking about kicking through the glass, I’m the glass, the door, the display, I’m painted on the ceilings of so many churches, I’m the painter, too, the architect of the Duomo, call me Filippo, Francesco, Arnolfo, Emilio, the woman in the Prada store looking down at my scuffed Adidas, the man holding a fistful of umbrellas upside down and I’m buying an umbrella from myself, I’m manning the wine window and pouring myself a little extra red, I’m the woman I bought a small painting of mums from, the mums and the hills and the birds, all me, I’m the ridges between cobbles on these bumpy streets, I’m back in this bathroom and the sink water that rests in the ceramic bowl a moment before circling the drain brings me to the puddle of muddy water outside my hotel, more of me, I break the toilet in my room just so I can be the plumber, I’m on my back underneath the neighbor, the local DL Italian from Rome on a day trip with his wife, I’m the sheets, the mattress, the man’s spit and cum, I’m the chef, the waiter, the hostess, the midnight rooftop view of Florence, the stars, the dimmest, the brightest, I’m one and all craters on the moon, the sun setting in Miami six hours behind, but really, I am naked in my phone and leaving the bathroom, and I’m walking past the statue, and I brush his fingers, and I look up to see my face, and instead it’s just a man, strong jaw, firm pecs, no nipples, just a statue, so I return to my table, and still on the plate, a cooked and glazed slice of pigeon that I will not eat.
While applying for reincarnation, I check off the box that says other
At the beach
I saw an army
of men lined up
like ants, ten toes
in the sand,
marching in place
where the ocean foams
against the shore,
waiting to take turns
to poke the body
of a washed-up
jellyfish,
swollen and wet,
they look so silly,
these men, arms stretched
out so far, their shoulders
detached like tiny dolls
and their fingers,
knuckley and boney,
creep in
to jab the something-like-a-fish,
they take pictures posing
with this soft, unaware body,
leaning forward, towering over
a fleshy puddle
and flicking it off,
two middle fingers up
to a thing that was
someone’s child
and in death gets fingered
by so many
silly men
When I’m asked
what I want to be
in the next life
I will mark the box
that says other
and I will beg
to make sure
I come back,
unaware,
as nothing
but the gaping
gummy hole
left behind
by all those silly men
and I will doodle
as my description
this jellyfish,
whole and round,
crisping in the sun,
leaking into the sand,
along with the veiny
fingers of men like ants
poking through my mushy head,
popping my membrane
bursting my bubble,
wiggling their nailbeds around,
scooping out my guts,
squishing my slimy skin
til it tears, til I ooze,
juices clear and sticky,
pinch and rolling
this mucus
between index and thumb,
finger-shoveling
all this gunk
out of the way,
hunting down a brain,
feeling for a heart
I do not have,
I cannot feel
as they dig deeper,
as I plop open
like a soggy blister,
as they avoid
my stingers,
as they try so hard
to not hurt
themselves, so they don’t
have to pee
on their own
greedy hands
to heal
At the beach
I saw an army
of men lined up
like ants, ten toes
in the sand,
marching in place
where the ocean foams
against the shore,
waiting to take turns
to poke the body
of a washed-up
jellyfish,
swollen and wet,
they look so silly,
these men, arms stretched
out so far, their shoulders
detached like tiny dolls
and their fingers,
knuckley and boney,
creep in
to jab the something-like-a-fish,
they take pictures posing
with this soft, unaware body,
leaning forward, towering over
a fleshy puddle
and flicking it off,
two middle fingers up
to a thing that was
someone’s child
and in death gets fingered
by so many
silly men
When I’m asked
what I want to be
in the next life
I will mark the box
that says other
and I will beg
to make sure
I come back,
unaware,
as nothing
but the gaping
gummy hole
left behind
by all those silly men
and I will doodle
as my description
this jellyfish,
whole and round,
crisping in the sun,
leaking into the sand,
along with the veiny
fingers of men like ants
poking through my mushy head,
popping my membrane
bursting my bubble,
wiggling their nailbeds around,
scooping out my guts,
squishing my slimy skin
til it tears, til I ooze,
juices clear and sticky,
pinch and rolling
this mucus
between index and thumb,
finger-shoveling
all this gunk
out of the way,
hunting down a brain,
feeling for a heart
I do not have,
I cannot feel
as they dig deeper,
as I plop open
like a soggy blister,
as they avoid
my stingers,
as they try so hard
to not hurt
themselves, so they don’t
have to pee
on their own
greedy hands
to heal
Michael Cuervo is an essayist, poet, and hybridist. He is currently enrolled in the creative writing MFA at Florida International University, where he serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Gulf Stream Literary Magazine. His work can be found in Peachfuzz Magazine and is forthcoming in Foglifter Press & Journal. In his free time, he likes making unnecessary lists on Letterboxd.
Marc Alan Di Martino
|
Day Last Forever by Mario dell'Arco
Translated by Marc Alan Di Martino |
Annie and Me
for Diane Keaton (1946-2025)
It was Annie Hall more than anything
that crippled me, Keaton’s disarming laughter
tolling like the bell on a brand new Schwinn.
A black-and-white still of Alvy and Annie
surrounded by lobsters hung in the bathroom
at the Gotham Book Mart. I was visiting
my sister and her husband one December
when they were newlyweds and I unemployed
in a bad funk. I asked them to rent the film
from Blockbuster because I wanted them to see
what New York did to people, how it had remade
me in the image of its despotic, neurotic god.
My girlfriend and I drained a quart of Bushmills,
bellowing, knee-slapping at each wisecrack
as if all the wisdom of the Coney Island Cyclone
were seeded in it, while my sister just smiled
languidly, guessing at what sort of creatures
had emerged from the hells of New York City
and taken root in her living room. O, Annie!
your little bicycle bell will forever echo
with the necessary innocence of snowfall
over the grimy cross streets of Manhattan.
for Diane Keaton (1946-2025)
It was Annie Hall more than anything
that crippled me, Keaton’s disarming laughter
tolling like the bell on a brand new Schwinn.
A black-and-white still of Alvy and Annie
surrounded by lobsters hung in the bathroom
at the Gotham Book Mart. I was visiting
my sister and her husband one December
when they were newlyweds and I unemployed
in a bad funk. I asked them to rent the film
from Blockbuster because I wanted them to see
what New York did to people, how it had remade
me in the image of its despotic, neurotic god.
My girlfriend and I drained a quart of Bushmills,
bellowing, knee-slapping at each wisecrack
as if all the wisdom of the Coney Island Cyclone
were seeded in it, while my sister just smiled
languidly, guessing at what sort of creatures
had emerged from the hells of New York City
and taken root in her living room. O, Annie!
your little bicycle bell will forever echo
with the necessary innocence of snowfall
over the grimy cross streets of Manhattan.
Marc Alan Di Martino’s books include Day Lasts Forever: Selected Poems of Mario dell'Arco (World Poetry, 2024—longlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation), Love Poem with Pomegranate (Ghost City, 2023), Still Life with City (Pski's Porch, 2022), and Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His poems and translations appear in Rattle, iamb, Palette Poetry and many other journals and anthologies. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Currently a reader for Baltimore Review, he lives in Italy.
Merrill Oliver Douglas
|
|
For I Will Consider My Orange Action Figure
After Christopher Smart
For he is the most faithful of all the items on the sill.
For he stands, as he has for years, astride a Lucite cube that contains the whole world.
For the maps on that globe still proclaim the Soviet Republics, and the cube bears the insignia of
Cubic Automated Revenue Collection Group.
For he lunges deeply, eyes red, teeth bared, winged cap edged with cobweb.
For he lifts his throwing star behind him, ready to fling toward the plant pot.
For the throwing star is larger than his head, its circumference greater than
the round of his waist.
For he holds one arm before him and makes of his body an arrow.
For his loins, calves and boots are translucent and gleam even on dull days.
For he has nothing to say to the paperweight with its spiral of tropical fish.
For the computer and stapler know him not.
For his chest and fist still bear smudges of the road where he appeared to me.
For I plucked him up and took him home because I wished to be That Sort of Person.
For I recall how my small son dropped to a squat at the sight of any bit of colored plastic on the
ground and had to take it in his fingers.
For that child has grown, but his Zbots still tangle in the carton with the wooden blocks.
For the sill is littered with crisp geranium petals and ladybug husks, while the action figure keeps
his face locked on the future.
For he has no name that I can think of.
For he doesn’t curse or sing.
For the scars on his back proclaim his origins in China.
For he passed weeks in a shipping container only to be stuffed in a bag with a burger and fries.
For his feet stand firm. For his knees never fail.
After Christopher Smart
For he is the most faithful of all the items on the sill.
For he stands, as he has for years, astride a Lucite cube that contains the whole world.
For the maps on that globe still proclaim the Soviet Republics, and the cube bears the insignia of
Cubic Automated Revenue Collection Group.
For he lunges deeply, eyes red, teeth bared, winged cap edged with cobweb.
For he lifts his throwing star behind him, ready to fling toward the plant pot.
For the throwing star is larger than his head, its circumference greater than
the round of his waist.
For he holds one arm before him and makes of his body an arrow.
For his loins, calves and boots are translucent and gleam even on dull days.
For he has nothing to say to the paperweight with its spiral of tropical fish.
For the computer and stapler know him not.
For his chest and fist still bear smudges of the road where he appeared to me.
For I plucked him up and took him home because I wished to be That Sort of Person.
For I recall how my small son dropped to a squat at the sight of any bit of colored plastic on the
ground and had to take it in his fingers.
For that child has grown, but his Zbots still tangle in the carton with the wooden blocks.
For the sill is littered with crisp geranium petals and ladybug husks, while the action figure keeps
his face locked on the future.
For he has no name that I can think of.
For he doesn’t curse or sing.
For the scars on his back proclaim his origins in China.
For he passed weeks in a shipping container only to be stuffed in a bag with a burger and fries.
For his feet stand firm. For his knees never fail.
Merrill Oliver Douglas’s first full length collection, Persephone Heads For the Gate, won the 2022 Gerald Cable Book Award from Silverfish Review Press. She is also the author of the poetry chapbook Parking Meters into Mermaids (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Baltimore Review, Barrow Street, Tar River Poetry, Stone Canoe, SWWIM Every Day, Verse Daily and Whale Road Review, among others. She lives near Binghamton, New York.
Alexander Duringer
Pietá
Eight swimmers have sunk to the bottom of Lake Pleasant
& it’s barely August. It’s a big lake, says an official
when asked where the last body is. I wish I believed
in ghosts, even possessive, graywet ones dripping
desire on hardwood so that I might point
divers to the right spot of muck & silt. I gave
up on the breaststroke when the green current
topped me, its thrusts consistent as Gunn’s meter
marching his scabbed men to self-inflicted ends,
their shields cracked, useless. The surf pushed my head
down til I discovered beauty in the visage of a man’s
red speedo. His gilded trail of hair. His hands broke
the water’s vice & lifted me to the shore where he kissed
my blued lips & I, small, desperate thing, lived.
Eight swimmers have sunk to the bottom of Lake Pleasant
& it’s barely August. It’s a big lake, says an official
when asked where the last body is. I wish I believed
in ghosts, even possessive, graywet ones dripping
desire on hardwood so that I might point
divers to the right spot of muck & silt. I gave
up on the breaststroke when the green current
topped me, its thrusts consistent as Gunn’s meter
marching his scabbed men to self-inflicted ends,
their shields cracked, useless. The surf pushed my head
down til I discovered beauty in the visage of a man’s
red speedo. His gilded trail of hair. His hands broke
the water’s vice & lifted me to the shore where he kissed
my blued lips & I, small, desperate thing, lived.
Alexander Duringer is from Buffalo, NY, and is a PhD student at the University of Utah. He is the editor of Quarterly West. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Cherry Tree, Poetry Northwest, Four Way Review, The South Dakota Review, &Change, Cola Literary Review, The Shore, and Poets.org, among others.
Meg Files
|
|
RUBBLE
The photos would be sepia but
for the blown door of blue. Two
stories bared. Gray washed sky.
What to make of the composition,
two panels of rubble, that cute word,
with a human upright on the scoured
road between. If road. Maybe a bicycle
or a cart. Who pressed shoot on that
symmetry. This night I am safe beneath
my orange-segment moon. A painting
lifts from the photograph — no cups,
no curtains — and the bodies swarm
into the smear of clouds, turning down
blindly, as they must, to breadless
kitchens and corrupted wells. All
is fixed in thick oils. My rain scents
the earth here. The photo is silent,
the bombs having done their work,
and they are bombed dead, starved
dead, drowned dead. The painting
should be Guernica but how should
I presume, not perpetrator, victim,
or photographer. If I could paint it,
which I cannot, except here, the rebar
would be grotesque and elegant,
and my monsoon descends, and that
lone human is lost, be silent, be quick,
but what can that mean against rubble.
My green desert and its delicate purple
cactus flowers are irrelevant, though
I am gladly here, yes, and now, storm
imminent, a hawk comes down at me
no a vulture fallen, fallen, all fallen.
The photos would be sepia but
for the blown door of blue. Two
stories bared. Gray washed sky.
What to make of the composition,
two panels of rubble, that cute word,
with a human upright on the scoured
road between. If road. Maybe a bicycle
or a cart. Who pressed shoot on that
symmetry. This night I am safe beneath
my orange-segment moon. A painting
lifts from the photograph — no cups,
no curtains — and the bodies swarm
into the smear of clouds, turning down
blindly, as they must, to breadless
kitchens and corrupted wells. All
is fixed in thick oils. My rain scents
the earth here. The photo is silent,
the bombs having done their work,
and they are bombed dead, starved
dead, drowned dead. The painting
should be Guernica but how should
I presume, not perpetrator, victim,
or photographer. If I could paint it,
which I cannot, except here, the rebar
would be grotesque and elegant,
and my monsoon descends, and that
lone human is lost, be silent, be quick,
but what can that mean against rubble.
My green desert and its delicate purple
cactus flowers are irrelevant, though
I am gladly here, yes, and now, storm
imminent, a hawk comes down at me
no a vulture fallen, fallen, all fallen.
Meg Files is the author of the novels Meridian 144 and The Third Law of Motion, Home Is the Hunter and Other Stories, and the novella A Hollow, Muscular Organ. Her poetry books are The Love Hunter and Other Poems, Lit Blue Sky Falling, and most recently, The Beasts. Her book Writing What You Know is about using personal experience and taking risks in writing.
Susan Grimm
|
|
Recurrence
Was it the last time. So many times before, the light
wheedling out. Bubbles fall into the glass, the tree
lit. Only a sip. She was probably cold in her long
sweater skirt, scrambling to stand in the same
place, placing the reindeer, leaning heavy
on the counter before the first step. Standing
in a waver of images riffling the years―the repeating
mirror, its frame a collision of light, And now it was
evening. Not neon but stars. Turn on the lights.
The tinsel breathes like a girl in a flapper dress.
Was it the last time. So many times before, the light
wheedling out. Bubbles fall into the glass, the tree
lit. Only a sip. She was probably cold in her long
sweater skirt, scrambling to stand in the same
place, placing the reindeer, leaning heavy
on the counter before the first step. Standing
in a waver of images riffling the years―the repeating
mirror, its frame a collision of light, And now it was
evening. Not neon but stars. Turn on the lights.
The tinsel breathes like a girl in a flapper dress.
Susan Grimm has been published in Sugar House Review, The Cincinnati Review, South Dakota Review, and Field. She has had two chapbooks published. In 2004, BkMk Press published Lake Erie Blue, a full-length collection. In 2022, she received her third Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Grant.
Liz Grisaru
Ice on the Hudson
Today from the highway overpass,
riding the lazy arc and swing that bring
the river into side-eye view, I didn’t see
the bone-white fingers of winter ice,
bone-white and pale transparent blue.
In other years, as deep as now I am
in the unyielding season of the unmoved dark,
those ice trails like winding weeds
would seize the river from bank to bank.
Those years, when teasing spring arrived
and tickled open that insistent grip,
I would watch ice blocks the size of school desks
tumble downriver on the flood, and think
of the brave rowers in their fragile shells. Easy to forget
what normal meant. Today’s sight gnaws―without ice,
no scouring of the deep sleeping mud, no stirring
of the heavy anaerobic mats. Without ice,
will there even come a flood?
Today from the highway overpass,
riding the lazy arc and swing that bring
the river into side-eye view, I didn’t see
the bone-white fingers of winter ice,
bone-white and pale transparent blue.
In other years, as deep as now I am
in the unyielding season of the unmoved dark,
those ice trails like winding weeds
would seize the river from bank to bank.
Those years, when teasing spring arrived
and tickled open that insistent grip,
I would watch ice blocks the size of school desks
tumble downriver on the flood, and think
of the brave rowers in their fragile shells. Easy to forget
what normal meant. Today’s sight gnaws―without ice,
no scouring of the deep sleeping mud, no stirring
of the heavy anaerobic mats. Without ice,
will there even come a flood?
Liz Grisaru’s poetry has appeared in Months to Years, Poetica Magazine, Trolley, and the online publications of the Hudson Valley Writers Guild. She lives outside of Albany, New York, and spends time with family on the Maine coast. Liz works for the State of New York in renewable energy policy.
Tom C. Hunley
|
|
Credo
Even at age eleven, I understood that
Mom was hurting my little sister bad
when she lied that our dad planned to
kidnap her from the playground and told
the principal to keep my sister inside during
recess, and when Mom tried to make us hate
our dad, I came to believe I could find the words
to shield my sister, who was five and innocent,
and when Mom made the cover of Weekly World News
for picketing Dad’s apartment after he fell behind
on child support, I understood that Mom craved
attention more than food, and when she changed
our last name to Christian, I didn’t know
the term virtue signaling, but I knew she wanted
to look good, wanted Dad to feel bad,
and didn’t care what we wanted. If Mom’s
a Christian, I don’t believe in it anymore.
I’ve stopped believing in a Heaven where she
can stop suffering or a Hell for all the suffering
she caused us. I’ve stopped believing I can write
a syllogism so logical that it will cure her,
that I can write a poem juxtaposing images
so clearly and musically that she can live
inside of it and find some peace there,
that I can write a story with its plot showing
cause-and-effect like dominos that, falling,
would make her see reality, make her sane,
but I believe in a god who brought me through,
in my wife and kids, in a few good friends,
in music that refreshes me like cool water,
in the power of words to make sense
of the world. I believe that I can still be happy.
Even at age eleven, I understood that
Mom was hurting my little sister bad
when she lied that our dad planned to
kidnap her from the playground and told
the principal to keep my sister inside during
recess, and when Mom tried to make us hate
our dad, I came to believe I could find the words
to shield my sister, who was five and innocent,
and when Mom made the cover of Weekly World News
for picketing Dad’s apartment after he fell behind
on child support, I understood that Mom craved
attention more than food, and when she changed
our last name to Christian, I didn’t know
the term virtue signaling, but I knew she wanted
to look good, wanted Dad to feel bad,
and didn’t care what we wanted. If Mom’s
a Christian, I don’t believe in it anymore.
I’ve stopped believing in a Heaven where she
can stop suffering or a Hell for all the suffering
she caused us. I’ve stopped believing I can write
a syllogism so logical that it will cure her,
that I can write a poem juxtaposing images
so clearly and musically that she can live
inside of it and find some peace there,
that I can write a story with its plot showing
cause-and-effect like dominos that, falling,
would make her see reality, make her sane,
but I believe in a god who brought me through,
in my wife and kids, in a few good friends,
in music that refreshes me like cool water,
in the power of words to make sense
of the world. I believe that I can still be happy.
“Why Won’t You Go to Counseling with Me?”
Because you’d rather get attention than get better.
Because you treat therapists like your personal assistants
and fire them when they won’t echo you. Case in point:
when I was sixteen, after you found a rum bottle
in my room, you pulled me out of History class
and dragged me to the Youth Services Bureau
where two social workers agreed with me when I said
that sometimes you were in my face talking nonsense
to start a fight, and at such times, a good idea
would be to take a timeout and head to opposite sides
of the house. When they sided with me on that one point,
you ran out of the room and down two flights of stairs,
said you were going to kill yourself, got into your shitty
Chevette, and peeled out of their gravel parking spot.
One social worker wrote down your license plate number
and the other grabbed my shoulders, looked me in the eye,
and said Whatever happens, I want you to know it’s not
your fault. Whatever. I returned her look and asked for
a ride to tennis practice and said my racquet was in the backseat
of your shitty Chevette. I knew that this made me look
heartless, but I didn’t have the words to explain that
about once a week you would say you were going to
kill yourself, but then you’d come home an hour or
two later with a car full of groceries, whistling.
Because you’d rather get attention than get better.
Because you treat therapists like your personal assistants
and fire them when they won’t echo you. Case in point:
when I was sixteen, after you found a rum bottle
in my room, you pulled me out of History class
and dragged me to the Youth Services Bureau
where two social workers agreed with me when I said
that sometimes you were in my face talking nonsense
to start a fight, and at such times, a good idea
would be to take a timeout and head to opposite sides
of the house. When they sided with me on that one point,
you ran out of the room and down two flights of stairs,
said you were going to kill yourself, got into your shitty
Chevette, and peeled out of their gravel parking spot.
One social worker wrote down your license plate number
and the other grabbed my shoulders, looked me in the eye,
and said Whatever happens, I want you to know it’s not
your fault. Whatever. I returned her look and asked for
a ride to tennis practice and said my racquet was in the backseat
of your shitty Chevette. I knew that this made me look
heartless, but I didn’t have the words to explain that
about once a week you would say you were going to
kill yourself, but then you’d come home an hour or
two later with a car full of groceries, whistling.
Tom C. Hunley is the author of eight full-length collections, eight chapbooks, two textbooks, and two produced films. He has published poems in journals with names beginning with every letter of the alphabet, from Atlanta Review to Zone 3.
Koss
|
|
How to Talk Hot Dogs to Your Younger Self
you can hunger without naming it
just feel the lay of your gut
its grumbled memories of fullness
or Cheerios rumbling through
from mouth to gut to bowel
a body maps its longings
no bird feed nor song in the empty cage
of you but you nurse a small hope
of a meat stick or orange peanut
tucked in a secret cubby
or surprise groceries from Grams
she brings at just the right time
what is time at age three
but an empty fridge ticking
there was newspaper you wadded
and dog biscuits, but what would Suzie eat
you bit into the butter stick
and hauled the half-gone jug of milk
to the gold-flecked counter
dragged the chair up to fetch a glass
the cupboards, also abandoned
the last bit of food, gone, your mother
has spent days in bed, but try not to worry
about it, nor dwell on the unknowns
you live in ever-now, tomorrow will always be better
or worse, just try not to think of food
you can distract yourself
also without naming it
you’ve invented your own language
of crayons and sticks and sand
after several suns and moons
you lug the sour milk
to the garage into your red toy car
and sit there, still, intent on driving
trying to remember the route
to Gram’s house, and the garage
grows dark as hours pass
and at last someone says
come in, it’s ‘bout time to eat
and Lee has shown up
with a package of hot dogs
she thrusts at your mother
you can hunger without naming it
just feel the lay of your gut
its grumbled memories of fullness
or Cheerios rumbling through
from mouth to gut to bowel
a body maps its longings
no bird feed nor song in the empty cage
of you but you nurse a small hope
of a meat stick or orange peanut
tucked in a secret cubby
or surprise groceries from Grams
she brings at just the right time
what is time at age three
but an empty fridge ticking
there was newspaper you wadded
and dog biscuits, but what would Suzie eat
you bit into the butter stick
and hauled the half-gone jug of milk
to the gold-flecked counter
dragged the chair up to fetch a glass
the cupboards, also abandoned
the last bit of food, gone, your mother
has spent days in bed, but try not to worry
about it, nor dwell on the unknowns
you live in ever-now, tomorrow will always be better
or worse, just try not to think of food
you can distract yourself
also without naming it
you’ve invented your own language
of crayons and sticks and sand
after several suns and moons
you lug the sour milk
to the garage into your red toy car
and sit there, still, intent on driving
trying to remember the route
to Gram’s house, and the garage
grows dark as hours pass
and at last someone says
come in, it’s ‘bout time to eat
and Lee has shown up
with a package of hot dogs
she thrusts at your mother
Koss is a mixed-race, queer poet with publications in Chiron Review, Michigan Quarterly (Mixtapes), South Florida Poetry Journal, Cincinnati Review (miCro), diode poetry, Five Points, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Pinch, San Pedro River Review, Midway Journal, and others. Anthologies including Best Small Fictions 2020. They won the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry contest and made the ’24 and '25 Wigleaf Top 50 Longlist. Their chapbook, Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary award.
Olga Livshin
Photo by Shalimar Varvoutis
Aeneas in the 21st Century
War is fate. Where did you start out,
what Bucha now. Bright red currant juice
on the eternal mouth. Goddesses
meddling with your gift for navigation.
Me, I left Troy, left Kharkiv, Kherson
for the front, but my baby tribe followed me
in gigabytes. On my bright screen,
women with undone hair whisper, Aeneas.
Somebody has to be. All my stumbling
in the sea of wheat. Stalks wave
as I ask every patch of terra firma:
Are you my mother? Someone has to be
She-wolf suckling fearless boys.
It has been three years, but still I must
put tired ones in the trenches, must invent
better flying machines, or put us into the teeth
of battle. I sing our soul the soil,
but wear a shield decorated with scenes
from a future I can’t decode. A clown, some say.
It must be funny, watching me hide, listening
for signals in the dark from some towering rock.
The Sigean Straits burn with the inferno’s reflected light.
____________________________________________
Author's note: I am indebted to Stanley Lombardo’s translation of Virgil’s The Aeneid for the last two sentences of this poem.
War is fate. Where did you start out,
what Bucha now. Bright red currant juice
on the eternal mouth. Goddesses
meddling with your gift for navigation.
Me, I left Troy, left Kharkiv, Kherson
for the front, but my baby tribe followed me
in gigabytes. On my bright screen,
women with undone hair whisper, Aeneas.
Somebody has to be. All my stumbling
in the sea of wheat. Stalks wave
as I ask every patch of terra firma:
Are you my mother? Someone has to be
She-wolf suckling fearless boys.
It has been three years, but still I must
put tired ones in the trenches, must invent
better flying machines, or put us into the teeth
of battle. I sing our soul the soil,
but wear a shield decorated with scenes
from a future I can’t decode. A clown, some say.
It must be funny, watching me hide, listening
for signals in the dark from some towering rock.
The Sigean Straits burn with the inferno’s reflected light.
____________________________________________
Author's note: I am indebted to Stanley Lombardo’s translation of Virgil’s The Aeneid for the last two sentences of this poem.
And I, Aeneas,
am a garden. And I, a tender dad.
And each night, when the sky detonates
over my trench, I shrink and ask my father:
“Tell me again why we keep going.”
Father speaks from the underworld, mind to mind:
“Fate owes your descendants new lives for your pain.
Let me show you your future family album.
Rain is whispering. Someone snuggles into her Saturday.
She worked with numbers, cold machines. Her beloved
brings her cherries. They embrace. Their arms are wings.
Another is folding laundry. Through fatigue, green
kitchen towels’ softness, like a pet. One shares their bread
and tangy blueberry jam with their toddler.
The little one’s cheek, cool softness. Crumbs fall.
First fall chill. Buildings grow outside.
None of them feel your battle in their veins.
You just wait, son, in your gray chrysalis,
fight just a little more for the pied,
many-winged life that will burst out.
Your war is love. It will birth peace.”
“How astonishing, Dad, to be ordinary.
I, too, want to live like that.” “Son,” my dad says,
“the prophecy is clear: first, someone
has to be a warrior. Go shoot down a drone.”
And I, Aeneas, go, and go, and go.
am a garden. And I, a tender dad.
And each night, when the sky detonates
over my trench, I shrink and ask my father:
“Tell me again why we keep going.”
Father speaks from the underworld, mind to mind:
“Fate owes your descendants new lives for your pain.
Let me show you your future family album.
Rain is whispering. Someone snuggles into her Saturday.
She worked with numbers, cold machines. Her beloved
brings her cherries. They embrace. Their arms are wings.
Another is folding laundry. Through fatigue, green
kitchen towels’ softness, like a pet. One shares their bread
and tangy blueberry jam with their toddler.
The little one’s cheek, cool softness. Crumbs fall.
First fall chill. Buildings grow outside.
None of them feel your battle in their veins.
You just wait, son, in your gray chrysalis,
fight just a little more for the pied,
many-winged life that will burst out.
Your war is love. It will birth peace.”
“How astonishing, Dad, to be ordinary.
I, too, want to live like that.” “Son,” my dad says,
“the prophecy is clear: first, someone
has to be a warrior. Go shoot down a drone.”
And I, Aeneas, go, and go, and go.
I sing you cake,
sugar I sing you, fireworks of egg whites, the complex cake
of peace. My holiday might not be the same as yours,
but you, too, know survival, can see frost
in a trench, the warrior’s fixity in his living grave.
Then the transfer, and two whole days of leave,
his children’s faces are suns, they have lost baby teeth,
sweetness resurges blazing, he walks hand in hand with them,
sleeps by their side, and wakes beside them.
My girlhood I celebrate, women baking
the queen of all strudels. The restful
sound of sugar pouring, whisk’s staccato strut,
solemn rolling pin, sculpting plumpness into petals.
I sing the disappearance of this common effort
when we emigrated, learning again how to talk,
to move through a street,
long years of frustrated longing.
I celebrate the return of recipes, my mother’s quiet
mirth on the phone, laboring the cake of Yiddish,
honig lekach, honey-licking, into existence,
clear honey she now pours.
I sing you, reader, accidental audience of our wounds.
War is the lump in our throats, the dybbyk
with foul breath, disembodied animal faces
staring us down in Gogol’s story.
O apple of discord, sharlotka filled with tender apples,
meringue top so crisp, it shatters at the touch of a spoon.
Soldiers’ future rest I sing, the future, yours and mine,
butter, fluttering, flour, dawn.
___________________________________________
For details of a soldier’s leave from the front, I draw on Artem Chapeye’s Ordinary People Don’t Carry Machine Guns, trans. Zenia Tompkins.
sugar I sing you, fireworks of egg whites, the complex cake
of peace. My holiday might not be the same as yours,
but you, too, know survival, can see frost
in a trench, the warrior’s fixity in his living grave.
Then the transfer, and two whole days of leave,
his children’s faces are suns, they have lost baby teeth,
sweetness resurges blazing, he walks hand in hand with them,
sleeps by their side, and wakes beside them.
My girlhood I celebrate, women baking
the queen of all strudels. The restful
sound of sugar pouring, whisk’s staccato strut,
solemn rolling pin, sculpting plumpness into petals.
I sing the disappearance of this common effort
when we emigrated, learning again how to talk,
to move through a street,
long years of frustrated longing.
I celebrate the return of recipes, my mother’s quiet
mirth on the phone, laboring the cake of Yiddish,
honig lekach, honey-licking, into existence,
clear honey she now pours.
I sing you, reader, accidental audience of our wounds.
War is the lump in our throats, the dybbyk
with foul breath, disembodied animal faces
staring us down in Gogol’s story.
O apple of discord, sharlotka filled with tender apples,
meringue top so crisp, it shatters at the touch of a spoon.
Soldiers’ future rest I sing, the future, yours and mine,
butter, fluttering, flour, dawn.
___________________________________________
For details of a soldier’s leave from the front, I draw on Artem Chapeye’s Ordinary People Don’t Carry Machine Guns, trans. Zenia Tompkins.
Olga Livshin’s poetry recently appears in Poetry and the Southern Review, and is forthcoming from AGNI. She is the author of A Life Replaced: Poems with Translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman (Poets & Traitors Press, 2019).
Philip Newton
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The Winter
A fragment of grain
and a haze on the
edge of blindness
Berry drunk birds
filling feathered skins
This cold finds
every void
I want to forget
that sinking sun
and that stony
precipice of night
and to forget that
I was ever warm
The young season is
always the young season
But it moves on
waits like a child
hides in corners
while we pass by
Out in the yard
the last apple falls
A fragment of grain
and a haze on the
edge of blindness
Berry drunk birds
filling feathered skins
This cold finds
every void
I want to forget
that sinking sun
and that stony
precipice of night
and to forget that
I was ever warm
The young season is
always the young season
But it moves on
waits like a child
hides in corners
while we pass by
Out in the yard
the last apple falls
Philip Newton is a writer, musician and stonemason from Oregon. His poem, "Memphis," won first prize in the California Poetry Society's Poems of Location in August, 2024. In addition to work appearing in Letters Journal, California Quarterly, Wilderness House, Roanoke Review, Ginosko Literary, Calliope, Bangalore Review, Gargoyle, and other publications, his novel, TERRANE, was published by Unsolicited Press in September, 2018. His longform work, WAR, was published by Der Koolschrank Press in March, 2025.
Mike L. Nichols
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Dead Mom Walking
Marching off to your death down winter sidewalks while clutching your knee length, wool blend coat to your throat after the cigar puffing oncologist has delivered the final verdict must be like sneaking into that nightmare where malproportioned creatures with pointy teeth build a gallows in the town square. You trudge through tar toward it. You know there is no waking up from this. You must be brave and obedient when the command to surrender is given. The room darkens and she sweeps in like a wraith of judgement. That blue nightshift that she wore the night she slapped my face hangs from her. I’ve fallen short of the standard. I’m breaking her heart even as she marches to the gallows. An unrepentant child scorning her pain. Monsters gabble and slink outside her bedroom windows. In snatches of lucidity between little white pills she hears them murmur and knows why they wait. They fight over the two rough poles and a darkly stained piece of canvas they’re fashioning into a stretcher to carry her away. She stands at the top of the stairs. She wears her crown of stubbly white chemo-hair and that thin gray nightshift she wore the night she hugged me hard saying, “I’m glad you came back home.” A cunning-eyed monster peers over her window ledge. The black rodent claws of the others do not go clickity-scratch as they scrabble through the opening. Grubby hands shunt her to the window and fling her through to the rough stretcher. Her right hand flops to drag the dead March lawn. And she’s gone. I stand barefoot in the black night. There is: No flash of white hair. No flutter of nightshift. No death march song of monsters to bend the air. She slipped off while I was distracting myself. She left behind the echoes of her bare feet scritch-scratching down the bare-bulbed hall. |
Mike L. Nichols is a graduate of Idaho State University and a recipient of the Ford Swetnam Poetry Prize. He lives and writes in Eastern Idaho. Look for his poetry in Rogue Agent, Tattoo Highway, Ink & Nebula, Plainsongs Magazine, and elsewhere. Find more at deadgirldancing.net
Lee Pelletier
To the Boy I Meet in the Dark
Darkness so obsidian I keep kissing your left eyelid.
Us, in my father’s basement, talking about how we’re scared
of our fathers. Hush. Footsteps harsh above like hail breaking
on our heads. Outside: September. The sun still gives us
its best go. You want to know: January. Will we survive?
But first there will be orange and autumn and frost edging
up windshields in the night. Dread up the base of your spine.
Allspice. Reddening: leaves, knuckles, crests of ears when
father insults mother. Readying to let go. I can’t
let go. Even now, your heartbeat quickens when I hold
your hand. Even now, September sounds like Sacrifice.
Sounds like the mice afloat in the pink insulation holding
their breath with mine. A tension so viscous our jaws lock
on it. A life I birth alone. The only midwife: the gathering cold.
Darkness so obsidian I keep kissing your left eyelid.
Us, in my father’s basement, talking about how we’re scared
of our fathers. Hush. Footsteps harsh above like hail breaking
on our heads. Outside: September. The sun still gives us
its best go. You want to know: January. Will we survive?
But first there will be orange and autumn and frost edging
up windshields in the night. Dread up the base of your spine.
Allspice. Reddening: leaves, knuckles, crests of ears when
father insults mother. Readying to let go. I can’t
let go. Even now, your heartbeat quickens when I hold
your hand. Even now, September sounds like Sacrifice.
Sounds like the mice afloat in the pink insulation holding
their breath with mine. A tension so viscous our jaws lock
on it. A life I birth alone. The only midwife: the gathering cold.
Lee Pelletier is a poet from Southington, CT. She was a finalist for the 2024 Frontier Poetry OPEN and an honorable mention for the 2025 Miami Book Fair Emerging Writer Fellowship. She has been published in Frontier Poetry, the Sonora Review, Ditch Life, and the Bangalore Review. She read her poem on her family member’s opioid addiction at the CT Senate for an event held by Senator Saud Anwar.
John Pring
Misophonia
A phone call is breaking
her face into a sadness
so luminous
it might be joy.
She wears glass in her new
mouth. Her grandfather
is gone and she
is gathering details
like currency, bright
silver weighing
the tenderness of her hands.
They move to her face.
They fail to catch or suitably
arrange the pieces.
A phone call is breaking
her face into a sadness
so luminous
it might be joy.
She wears glass in her new
mouth. Her grandfather
is gone and she
is gathering details
like currency, bright
silver weighing
the tenderness of her hands.
They move to her face.
They fail to catch or suitably
arrange the pieces.
John Pring is a poet and author based in the UK. He has poems published or upcoming in The Comstock Review, Epiphany, The Gramercy Review, Poetics, B O D Y, The Passionfruit Review, Humana Obscura, The King's English Society, and others.
henry 7. reneau, jr.
Photo by Mercedes Herrera
the signs and wonders
the dissonant blue[s] chord signifying a consequential stress
: was not the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people
, but the appalling silence and indifference of the good people
. everyone sees the tears in the seam but usually only want to talk
about the weather . everywhere , the polyglot hierarchy of languages
and stamped passports . a linguistic swagger of murmuration , like
an imperfect repetition of cultural complexities arising from
the platitudinal complicity of social interactions laced with the
obsession of flies that vomit wherever they land
. the new normal , because words either fail , or else , take a breath
of their own and softly murmur , whispering a deep truth : what we
have done to this planet , we have also done to one another
. we create what destroys us like war is a maw : great white gaped
. a sulfurous taint of brimstone and fire , rimmed with fangs
that know the enemy’s name : enemy combatant . terrorist Muslim , aka
the new nigger in a long line of lower caste , like power in the wrong hands
are gears in collusion , crushing the innocent that fall between them
. in fraud we trust , now as soundbyte cliché as corruption , and every
so often , a Rev . Dr . MLK
, just so , the thermal updraft of wind beneath battered wings of hope
, like Jesus waiting in our throats , foreshadowing a shame of flags
soon aggrieved at half-mast . and we all
, bearing the unconvincing facsimiles of a noble heart
, looked away
. this is how tomorrow moves on , every plot twist
a mustache swirl of exclamation point ! the anyone hurricane squall
of bad intentions . every shame , a concealed but persistent pentimento
, unable , or unwilling , to admit to [Others] what really happened
. and the nation , like all transgressions that have moved on
, eventually forgets : february 2020 , covid-19
. honor meant dishonor ; loyalty meant treason ; knowledge meant delusion
, with insane solutions being proposed—inject bleach ! take hydroxychloroquine
! corpses were piling up in trucks because the morgues were full . death tolls
soared . citizens attacked citizens , and the cities , a pandora’s box of corruption
, conflagration , crime , and corpses sacrificed on the altar
of maximum profit : money’s might as a state of being . materialism
transmitted at digital speed , coagulates as symbolic wealth , a gnostic system
, or an imaginal machine etherealized as sheer representation . semiprecious
coins to paper (poli-text backed by metal) , then by imaginary metal , then by
sheer imagination making wealth out of credit . a pure textuality creating
whatever fits personal desires . something out of nothing , seemingly at a distance
from the killing jar of those in power—an [us] , ass-/similated into the larger
Borg collective : a machine with dangerous moving parts that start automatically
, and unexpectedly . the first law of thermodynamics
states that in a closed system , energy can be neither created nor destroyed
, only converted into other forms . for example , when a gun is fired
at Black children , the complicit energy of the gunpowder is converted
into the killing energy of the bullet—the faint , faraway plea of someone’s
voice balanced upon the edge of survival . the signs and wonders
: when a doctor says myocardial infarction i can’t help thinking
that our hearts are just too overburdened to withstand the doublethink
of democracy . when a lawyer says it is against the law to perjure oneself
under oath , she is warning you not to lie like Trump . when a structural
engineer says the structure was unable to withstand the gravitational , tensile
forces placed upon it , what he is really saying is that the contractor used
substandard building materials to construct the Twin Towers . when critics say
that i , as a poet , write in a voice that is too strident , bitter , or angry
, i actually hear them saying , they are not Black born in amerikkka , and are
unable , or unwilling , to acknowledge the trials and tribulations
Black people are faced with every day of their lives . when someone
, who was not born and raised in amerikkka says this , i tell them they should
study the true history of this country , before they try to tell me how , why , or
what i should say , feel , or do
. this is me hoping to find something real in a consumer nation’s reality
. a half-moon squint of day moon from a billiard chalk-blue sky
and all i could hear is sirens and Lawd Jesus , No !! and God’s wrath
lodged in my throat , stammering in the lint-blue syntax of umbrage
. this poem is a prayer to have no need for the apparatus , of the operating
room . to be safe from all bodily harm . to know love without exception
. to be a saint in any form .
______________________________________
Author's Note : Italicized fragments from the “How to Avert a Tragedy” speech by Martin Luther King Jr. used in the film, “Driving Miss Daisy,” and from the poem, “prayer” by Patti Smith.
the dissonant blue[s] chord signifying a consequential stress
: was not the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people
, but the appalling silence and indifference of the good people
. everyone sees the tears in the seam but usually only want to talk
about the weather . everywhere , the polyglot hierarchy of languages
and stamped passports . a linguistic swagger of murmuration , like
an imperfect repetition of cultural complexities arising from
the platitudinal complicity of social interactions laced with the
obsession of flies that vomit wherever they land
. the new normal , because words either fail , or else , take a breath
of their own and softly murmur , whispering a deep truth : what we
have done to this planet , we have also done to one another
. we create what destroys us like war is a maw : great white gaped
. a sulfurous taint of brimstone and fire , rimmed with fangs
that know the enemy’s name : enemy combatant . terrorist Muslim , aka
the new nigger in a long line of lower caste , like power in the wrong hands
are gears in collusion , crushing the innocent that fall between them
. in fraud we trust , now as soundbyte cliché as corruption , and every
so often , a Rev . Dr . MLK
, just so , the thermal updraft of wind beneath battered wings of hope
, like Jesus waiting in our throats , foreshadowing a shame of flags
soon aggrieved at half-mast . and we all
, bearing the unconvincing facsimiles of a noble heart
, looked away
. this is how tomorrow moves on , every plot twist
a mustache swirl of exclamation point ! the anyone hurricane squall
of bad intentions . every shame , a concealed but persistent pentimento
, unable , or unwilling , to admit to [Others] what really happened
. and the nation , like all transgressions that have moved on
, eventually forgets : february 2020 , covid-19
. honor meant dishonor ; loyalty meant treason ; knowledge meant delusion
, with insane solutions being proposed—inject bleach ! take hydroxychloroquine
! corpses were piling up in trucks because the morgues were full . death tolls
soared . citizens attacked citizens , and the cities , a pandora’s box of corruption
, conflagration , crime , and corpses sacrificed on the altar
of maximum profit : money’s might as a state of being . materialism
transmitted at digital speed , coagulates as symbolic wealth , a gnostic system
, or an imaginal machine etherealized as sheer representation . semiprecious
coins to paper (poli-text backed by metal) , then by imaginary metal , then by
sheer imagination making wealth out of credit . a pure textuality creating
whatever fits personal desires . something out of nothing , seemingly at a distance
from the killing jar of those in power—an [us] , ass-/similated into the larger
Borg collective : a machine with dangerous moving parts that start automatically
, and unexpectedly . the first law of thermodynamics
states that in a closed system , energy can be neither created nor destroyed
, only converted into other forms . for example , when a gun is fired
at Black children , the complicit energy of the gunpowder is converted
into the killing energy of the bullet—the faint , faraway plea of someone’s
voice balanced upon the edge of survival . the signs and wonders
: when a doctor says myocardial infarction i can’t help thinking
that our hearts are just too overburdened to withstand the doublethink
of democracy . when a lawyer says it is against the law to perjure oneself
under oath , she is warning you not to lie like Trump . when a structural
engineer says the structure was unable to withstand the gravitational , tensile
forces placed upon it , what he is really saying is that the contractor used
substandard building materials to construct the Twin Towers . when critics say
that i , as a poet , write in a voice that is too strident , bitter , or angry
, i actually hear them saying , they are not Black born in amerikkka , and are
unable , or unwilling , to acknowledge the trials and tribulations
Black people are faced with every day of their lives . when someone
, who was not born and raised in amerikkka says this , i tell them they should
study the true history of this country , before they try to tell me how , why , or
what i should say , feel , or do
. this is me hoping to find something real in a consumer nation’s reality
. a half-moon squint of day moon from a billiard chalk-blue sky
and all i could hear is sirens and Lawd Jesus , No !! and God’s wrath
lodged in my throat , stammering in the lint-blue syntax of umbrage
. this poem is a prayer to have no need for the apparatus , of the operating
room . to be safe from all bodily harm . to know love without exception
. to be a saint in any form .
______________________________________
Author's Note : Italicized fragments from the “How to Avert a Tragedy” speech by Martin Luther King Jr. used in the film, “Driving Miss Daisy,” and from the poem, “prayer” by Patti Smith.
henry 7. reneau, jr. does not X-insinuate, Tik Tok, Facebook, Twitter-twaddle, or Instagram. It is not that he is scared of change, or stuck fast in the past; instead, he has learned from experience that the crack pipe kills. His poetics are situated at the intersection of experimental modernist and contemporary poetry. His work is published in Prairie Schooner; Notre Dame Review; Punt Volat; The Ana, and Oyster River Pages. His work has also been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
Tucker Riggleman
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Tiger Lilies
Slender orange suns burst through the deep
green of summer’s blanket.
With each patch I drive past,
I grab the air with my hand. A show of affection
in my imaginative harvesting
of their wildness. I wish I could stop,
bring them with me.
When I was five years old,
my parents freshly divorced,
I was a cruel reminder of failed love.
As my father drove away,
I studied his hand
as it raised from the wheel
like it was lifting me towards him,
the truck still moving, my feet
in the unmowed grass.
Slender orange suns burst through the deep
green of summer’s blanket.
With each patch I drive past,
I grab the air with my hand. A show of affection
in my imaginative harvesting
of their wildness. I wish I could stop,
bring them with me.
When I was five years old,
my parents freshly divorced,
I was a cruel reminder of failed love.
As my father drove away,
I studied his hand
as it raised from the wheel
like it was lifting me towards him,
the truck still moving, my feet
in the unmowed grass.
Tucker Riggleman is a writer and musician from West Virginia. His work often centers on themes of rural resilience, sobriety, and the healing power of nature. Tucker self-published his second poetry collection, The Wind Through the Sycamores is a Violin, in 2024. He is a recipient of a 2025 West Virginia Creative Network Literary Arts Fellowship for poetry.
Sophia Saco
Loneliness
after Victoria Chang
after Victoria Chang
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Loneliness—quiets July 22nd, 2024, the way my body recovers after a panic attack, chest inflating itself more fully, entirely, until finally, a palm presses down hard and doesn’t collapse into a cavity. Electric buzz twitching my fingers. Crackle of lightning in the form of bioluminescent algae at the drop of a pier. Twin Size Mattress prophesying these flood waters that fill my lungs, but Camila turns the volume up in one fluid maneuver and the draining begins. East Colonial to the shore of Titusville is a straight shot. The road is familiar, even absent of lampposts. Summer tastes like cigarette filters, cold McDonald’s French fries and draft beers and Moscato and Publix BOGO and saltwater gargles and tears and Cerave lotion. Summer tastes like loneliness feels—too much. My mouth is open as we drive over bridge after bridge to an easternmost point I don’t know. Camila says I’ll love it. I trust her, as always. Camila is the only other person to embrace loneliness with a side-gaze, the way someone approaches an acquaintance after years. My mouth catches the mosquitoes zipping around us, tongue dry and hanging. I stand at the railing of a pier I can’t pinpoint on a map and stare at the abyss of the Atlantic Ocean. Ignore the corner of people dancing salsa with smoke and pipes and the two men fishing beside us and exhale the weight of loneliness. Bright algae bob hello.
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Sophia Saco is a poet from Hialeah, FL. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Florida where she was a Provost Fellow, specializing in prose poetry. Winner of the 2025 AWP Intro Journals Award, her work has been published in The Writer’s Chronicle, Tampa Review, Swim Press, The Acentos Review, and elsewhere. She is an Assistant Poetry Editor at The Florida Review. She is a Creative Writing Instructor at Page 15 in Orlando and adjunct professor at MDC Online and Valencia College.
Hilary Sallick
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Alternatives
Carrying dinner to my friend
the bowl in my hands covered
by a cloth through the evening I cut
behind the subway station crossing
the park and saw the gathering of
people who make their shelters
of open umbrellas with drapery
of sheets or towels for privacy
and with blankets
in the new chill and
there they were five or six maybe
and nearby a man was sitting
on the curb I saw a police car
was pulled over and another man crouched
before the seated man was the one
on the curb injured was the crouching man
a medic caring for the other
for he seemed to be working
with gentleness and attention
upon the man’s feet what
could have happened what accident
or violence for now
I saw the police car was
at an awkward angle as if the stop
had been urgent and sudden and then
the man on the curb was
helped to his feet and then
I saw his hands behind him
and understood it was shackles
the other man had been
securing not a bandage not a
cure or relief but the
shackled man moved easily almost
readily into the back of the car
as if he were receiving something
he needed and I considered this possible
sliver of truth as well as its
alternative
Carrying dinner to my friend
the bowl in my hands covered
by a cloth through the evening I cut
behind the subway station crossing
the park and saw the gathering of
people who make their shelters
of open umbrellas with drapery
of sheets or towels for privacy
and with blankets
in the new chill and
there they were five or six maybe
and nearby a man was sitting
on the curb I saw a police car
was pulled over and another man crouched
before the seated man was the one
on the curb injured was the crouching man
a medic caring for the other
for he seemed to be working
with gentleness and attention
upon the man’s feet what
could have happened what accident
or violence for now
I saw the police car was
at an awkward angle as if the stop
had been urgent and sudden and then
the man on the curb was
helped to his feet and then
I saw his hands behind him
and understood it was shackles
the other man had been
securing not a bandage not a
cure or relief but the
shackled man moved easily almost
readily into the back of the car
as if he were receiving something
he needed and I considered this possible
sliver of truth as well as its
alternative
Hilary Sallick is the author of Love is a Shore (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2023), long-listed for the 2024 Massachusetts Book Award; and Asking the Form (Cervena Barva Press, 2020). Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Pensive; iamb: poetry seen and heard; Thimble; Action, Spectacle; Permafrost; Potomac Review; Notre Dame Review; and elsewhere. A teacher with a longtime focus on adult literacy, she lives in Somerville, MA. (www.hilarysallick.com)
mike sluchinski
“disappearing acts the blood of my poetry and lit journals i loved”
i mean you try to find a cheaper date you can drink
beer or wine maybe on a sunny day with and if you’re lucky
you read it again and again and one more time and you pick it
up six months later and you read it again whether your work was
in it or not and i liked them and i didn’t know this would happen this
disappearing act and how these magazines disappear like they’re
in a maze filled with pellets or white dots being eaten up by some
smiley faced chuckler who’s knowing the joke’s on you the joke’s on you
and they’re being eaten up and god knows where they really go i went
to one and they said they were closed and my heart dropped four feet
four feet and my lower intestine bloated and gurgled and squirmed that
was the deepest part of me that moved and where do they go and what happens
was someone there in that space online guarding my poems was there a
guard dog or some program that announces all clear your poems are safe
they’re just here in storage and i want well all of them to come back sure
because they were good and i read them and did everything end up at
some counter at a store with a lost and found box and were the poems ok
were the poems ok i shouted i’m looking for one with five metaphors for
drinking wine and one may have been about gassing up or filling up
a car and now i can’t remember the lines and who can find them these
ones now i have to write first published by so and so but i mean who’s
keeping track they’re out of business like an empty san francisco
street car rolling down a track with no stops and no riders just grief and
a cold winter sunset where the sky looks as gray as the sidewalk and i still
have a couple of real issues i can hold in my hand but the ones online
well there is no magician there is no rabbit disappearing under a table
somewhere and there’s no magic wand it’s the opposite of all that some
hell of steel filing cabinets stacked row on row with papers crushed in steel
doors stuffed full and twisted vanilla pages reach out and grab legs hoping
for readers or websites and cold servers with lonely lonely small green
lights blinking on and off and the time between the lights gets longer
until the lights dim and the only thing left to do is to ask the magicians
the ones in the top hats with the black capes and maybe a few bucks
for bandwidth to bring me back my rabbit and tap on the hat and
hope someone says ta daaaah and brings me back my poem
the one with five metaphors for drinking wine so i can
get back to my bottle and the blood of my poetry
and bring back the body of work so i can
read it one more time
i mean you try to find a cheaper date you can drink
beer or wine maybe on a sunny day with and if you’re lucky
you read it again and again and one more time and you pick it
up six months later and you read it again whether your work was
in it or not and i liked them and i didn’t know this would happen this
disappearing act and how these magazines disappear like they’re
in a maze filled with pellets or white dots being eaten up by some
smiley faced chuckler who’s knowing the joke’s on you the joke’s on you
and they’re being eaten up and god knows where they really go i went
to one and they said they were closed and my heart dropped four feet
four feet and my lower intestine bloated and gurgled and squirmed that
was the deepest part of me that moved and where do they go and what happens
was someone there in that space online guarding my poems was there a
guard dog or some program that announces all clear your poems are safe
they’re just here in storage and i want well all of them to come back sure
because they were good and i read them and did everything end up at
some counter at a store with a lost and found box and were the poems ok
were the poems ok i shouted i’m looking for one with five metaphors for
drinking wine and one may have been about gassing up or filling up
a car and now i can’t remember the lines and who can find them these
ones now i have to write first published by so and so but i mean who’s
keeping track they’re out of business like an empty san francisco
street car rolling down a track with no stops and no riders just grief and
a cold winter sunset where the sky looks as gray as the sidewalk and i still
have a couple of real issues i can hold in my hand but the ones online
well there is no magician there is no rabbit disappearing under a table
somewhere and there’s no magic wand it’s the opposite of all that some
hell of steel filing cabinets stacked row on row with papers crushed in steel
doors stuffed full and twisted vanilla pages reach out and grab legs hoping
for readers or websites and cold servers with lonely lonely small green
lights blinking on and off and the time between the lights gets longer
until the lights dim and the only thing left to do is to ask the magicians
the ones in the top hats with the black capes and maybe a few bucks
for bandwidth to bring me back my rabbit and tap on the hat and
hope someone says ta daaaah and brings me back my poem
the one with five metaphors for drinking wine so i can
get back to my bottle and the blood of my poetry
and bring back the body of work so i can
read it one more time
mike sluchinski is a recent pushcart prize nominee and adds dadaist, ekphrastic, stream of consciousness, and pop art elements to his punk and post punk collages, poetry, fiction, and non. he’s grateful to be read in tulane review, mantis, failed haiku, inlandia journal, kaleidotrope, eternal haunted summer, the wave (kelp), the literary review of canada, the coachella review, welter, poemeleon, lit shark, proud to be vols. 13& 14, the ekphrastic review, meow meow pow pow, kelp journal, the fib review, syncopation lit. journal, south florida poetry journal (soflopojo), freefall, pulpmag, in parentheses, and more coming!
Stephen Foster Smith
Small, Quick Movements
And what do you demand? Mothers in Memphis know.
So too the Fathers in Philly. Black children in Cuthbert
are sure as well. It is the same for those who came over the hills
at dusk, their faces hidden under bandanas.
And too those who held packed-together clay and shale...
When you come to it, you understand: being free requires
imagination. Imagination, this way, as practice, as praxis.
Yes, the green of trees. Yes, the hot silver of a comet trail.
Yes, you as the tree and comet trail. Searing. Resolute.
It requires recognizing what has you bound and demanding
your life be your own. It is not coaxing a stubborn horse from a stable
with a cube of sugar. It is being the wind at all times―
the guarantee the gust could and will flatten. So remember everything.
The past is your gravity. I have been given this piece of advice:
memory is a prerequisite for freedom. I have a memory of loving
and wanting to be loved better. If you have never measured your life
alongside an ever-present absence, you may have only known
power. If you have never known an ever-present absence in that way
you cannot imagine freedom. When I began living without the governance
of heaven and hell, I became a full thing, a drunken tick on its back.
Tonight, the people everywhere are in the streets again.
Are down on their knees with messages that measure
the shapes of their lives. They must remember. They must remember
what is not their own. They must remember there is a future to be had.
And what do you demand? Mothers in Memphis know.
So too the Fathers in Philly. Black children in Cuthbert
are sure as well. It is the same for those who came over the hills
at dusk, their faces hidden under bandanas.
And too those who held packed-together clay and shale...
When you come to it, you understand: being free requires
imagination. Imagination, this way, as practice, as praxis.
Yes, the green of trees. Yes, the hot silver of a comet trail.
Yes, you as the tree and comet trail. Searing. Resolute.
It requires recognizing what has you bound and demanding
your life be your own. It is not coaxing a stubborn horse from a stable
with a cube of sugar. It is being the wind at all times―
the guarantee the gust could and will flatten. So remember everything.
The past is your gravity. I have been given this piece of advice:
memory is a prerequisite for freedom. I have a memory of loving
and wanting to be loved better. If you have never measured your life
alongside an ever-present absence, you may have only known
power. If you have never known an ever-present absence in that way
you cannot imagine freedom. When I began living without the governance
of heaven and hell, I became a full thing, a drunken tick on its back.
Tonight, the people everywhere are in the streets again.
Are down on their knees with messages that measure
the shapes of their lives. They must remember. They must remember
what is not their own. They must remember there is a future to be had.
Aquarius
There is no feeling in the memory:
coming through the canal into light.
So perhaps I seek it, coming alive.
I rise at dawn. I put my feet to the floor.
I see the giant magnolia reaching two ways
and I give thanks. But it is not enough.
I have to push it. I had to take you back
against my will right there in that bar. It’s how
I finally understood free will. Then it stormed
for months. It was like the irritable start of spring:
everything brought on by a vase
submerged in a river.
In one version of the myth the lovers sailed
for days on a ship the husband built.
He had anticipated a flood. Did it feel that way to you?
Not like being thoughtful. But mythic. Grand.
As if we were a great flood.
Are not two bodies together at play
the making of a sea? Music used to play
and I lay there dancing under you.
You sent small fires up the walls
and I’d bury my hands in the fields of your hair.
Today if I ran into you by the tomatoes
I’d fake as if I did not want to know
the reason you suddenly kept yourself from me
after complaining I was analyzing you. Again,
if we were by the tomatoes, stuck
in each other’s path, I’d fake it. Become airy
and short about it. Wish you well.
Say the whole thing was like turning a knob.
The briefly being together. That it ended twice.
There is no feeling in the memory:
coming through the canal into light.
So perhaps I seek it, coming alive.
I rise at dawn. I put my feet to the floor.
I see the giant magnolia reaching two ways
and I give thanks. But it is not enough.
I have to push it. I had to take you back
against my will right there in that bar. It’s how
I finally understood free will. Then it stormed
for months. It was like the irritable start of spring:
everything brought on by a vase
submerged in a river.
In one version of the myth the lovers sailed
for days on a ship the husband built.
He had anticipated a flood. Did it feel that way to you?
Not like being thoughtful. But mythic. Grand.
As if we were a great flood.
Are not two bodies together at play
the making of a sea? Music used to play
and I lay there dancing under you.
You sent small fires up the walls
and I’d bury my hands in the fields of your hair.
Today if I ran into you by the tomatoes
I’d fake as if I did not want to know
the reason you suddenly kept yourself from me
after complaining I was analyzing you. Again,
if we were by the tomatoes, stuck
in each other’s path, I’d fake it. Become airy
and short about it. Wish you well.
Say the whole thing was like turning a knob.
The briefly being together. That it ended twice.
Stephen Foster Smith’s creative nonfiction has appeared in Prism & Pen, Vagabond City Lit, 805 Lit + Art, and is forthcoming in The Blue Mountain Review. He has poetry published with Obsidian Literature & Arts, PRISM International, Cathexsis Northwest, and Screen Door Review. He is a fellow of The Watering Hole and a past participant of the PocketMFA program. He currently lives in Atlanta, GA.
Ben Starr
i matched with the blob on hinge and it is not working out
Won't be surprised to hear he doesn’t talk much. Mainly just oozes. Oozes on the chair. Oozes on the dog’s sheepskin throw. Oozes on the monkeypod table next to his stack of gothic erotica. When we started dating he was very attentive. Embracing my curves in his shapeless form, my scalp disappearing into one of his many pink orifices. He’d spend all day deliberately dripping over dinner in our cramped kitchen, pen love notes splattered in plasma, leave portions of himself sprinkled throughout the house simply so I’d know he was there. But recently he’s seemed distant. Or maybe it’s me? Maybe I pulled away once the townspeople, all rolled-up sleeves and bitter pitchforks, came for our clandestine coupling in one big collective moan. Maybe if I try just a bit harder he’ll touch me like he used to, thick froth of arms looming over me like Kanagawa’s great wave.
Won't be surprised to hear he doesn’t talk much. Mainly just oozes. Oozes on the chair. Oozes on the dog’s sheepskin throw. Oozes on the monkeypod table next to his stack of gothic erotica. When we started dating he was very attentive. Embracing my curves in his shapeless form, my scalp disappearing into one of his many pink orifices. He’d spend all day deliberately dripping over dinner in our cramped kitchen, pen love notes splattered in plasma, leave portions of himself sprinkled throughout the house simply so I’d know he was there. But recently he’s seemed distant. Or maybe it’s me? Maybe I pulled away once the townspeople, all rolled-up sleeves and bitter pitchforks, came for our clandestine coupling in one big collective moan. Maybe if I try just a bit harder he’ll touch me like he used to, thick froth of arms looming over me like Kanagawa’s great wave.
Ben Starr studied poetry in college and as part of the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Dishsoap Quarterly, Maudlin House, Gone Lawn, Club Plum, and other journals. Find more of his work on X @benjaminstarr and at benstarrwrites.com
Kashawn Taylor
Text to a Friend at 1AM
Do you ever see the dead? Because I think I do, like, all the time. Not glaring at me from the low places or with glowering eyes through the morning gray, but in the sunlit faces of the living. On Monday, I saw Amber’s mom, ordering a coffee in the Dunkin’ line. She looked full and content and tumorless, ready to loan me her last twenty bucks again to get my rustbucket to a big boy job interview. Wednesday night: Leo pulled up at the drive-thru. Eyebrows thumbtack sharp, tatted arms like art of the gods. Before I blinked, those almond eyes begged, were starving for just a little more time. Stunned to stillness. The young man through the window asked, What is wrong with you? When we strolled through Yale’s campus on Saturday, Kenny’s cackle sliced through the crowd. I spun on my heels, almost kissed the pavement to catch a glimpse of those lanky limbs, the coiffed combover, and that goofy I’m-just-happy-to-be-here grin. For an eternal second I saw him: the man who left me, for whom I harbor both love and resentment, whom I miss & hate all at the same time. Then you tugged at my shirtsleeve, a flock of pigeons scattered into the skies, and he was gone. No, I am not haunted like that house at the dead end of my street, but there is the man whose face I’ve never seen, whose blood stains my hands no matter how long I dip my hands in the flames. His face looms like storm clouds sleeping on the horizon. He could have been my nephew or uncle, the beggar outside the liquor store. Any Brown man, the shades and hues and gravel of precious earth. No, not exactly haunted by these ghosts but ghastly impressions on space to save them from a second death – Do you see the dead how I see the living? He could have been my little brother, a boy walking home from school, the reflection when I look in the mirror. Oh, how he could have been he could have been he could have |
Kashawn Taylor is a writer and educator based in CT. His poetry, short fiction, and essays have been or will be published by such journals and magazines as The Poetry Lighthouse, Lucky Jefferson, Oyster River Pages, The Offing, Sequestrum, The Ilanot Review, and Poetry Magazine. His full-length collection of poetry, subhuman., was released by Wayfarer Books in March 2025. He currently teaches with Gotham Writers Workshop and works with Prison Journalism Project as the 2026 Audience Engagement Fellow.
Veronica Tucker
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The Morning After a Night Shift, I Stand in the Doorway
The house is still, cupping its breath
like a match not yet struck.
I smell the faint sweetness of cereal milk,
the ghosts of crayons settling
under last night’s chair.
My children sleep like small countries
I have sworn to protect, each one
bordered by blankets, dreaming
in languages that do not need translation
until morning forces their mouths open.
All night in the emergency department
I listened for the first flicker
of a failing rhythm, the quiet rumor
of a body preparing to leave. Here,
even the floorboards seem to wait
for my feet to remember who they are.
A toy truck rests on the windowsill.
Its chipped paint holds the kind of story
that never makes a chart, the kind
you can only learn by touching.
I place my palm on the doorframe
and feel the house consider me.
It does not invite or refuse,
only widens its silence
until I can step into it
without knowing what it asks.
The house is still, cupping its breath
like a match not yet struck.
I smell the faint sweetness of cereal milk,
the ghosts of crayons settling
under last night’s chair.
My children sleep like small countries
I have sworn to protect, each one
bordered by blankets, dreaming
in languages that do not need translation
until morning forces their mouths open.
All night in the emergency department
I listened for the first flicker
of a failing rhythm, the quiet rumor
of a body preparing to leave. Here,
even the floorboards seem to wait
for my feet to remember who they are.
A toy truck rests on the windowsill.
Its chipped paint holds the kind of story
that never makes a chart, the kind
you can only learn by touching.
I place my palm on the doorframe
and feel the house consider me.
It does not invite or refuse,
only widens its silence
until I can step into it
without knowing what it asks.
My Great-Grandfather Walks Through the Wheat Again
Before he had a country
my great-grandfather had a field
and the terror of being seen.
The wheat rose taller than a man
and held him the way dusk
holds the last blue of the sky.
The soldiers’ boots tore through
the stalks. He remembered only
the sound, a crackling like ice
breaking underfoot, the world
splitting open to let him hide.
In the woods he ate scraps
that others would not claim,
learning how hunger can shape
a man into a prayer
he never meant to say aloud.
On the ship to America
salt crusted the railing
like a thin frost. Each morning
he ran his thumb across it
as if testing whether the ocean
still wanted him.
In Boston he built a fruit cart
from scavenged boards, stacking
oranges in precise towers
that glowed like small suns
he could finally touch
without fear of being burned.
When he told his children
never let anyone tell you
you are not Jewish
his voice stayed quiet,
a soft current moving through
the kitchen air, certain
as dust refusing to lift
even when the door swung open
and winter pressed in hard.
Before he had a country
my great-grandfather had a field
and the terror of being seen.
The wheat rose taller than a man
and held him the way dusk
holds the last blue of the sky.
The soldiers’ boots tore through
the stalks. He remembered only
the sound, a crackling like ice
breaking underfoot, the world
splitting open to let him hide.
In the woods he ate scraps
that others would not claim,
learning how hunger can shape
a man into a prayer
he never meant to say aloud.
On the ship to America
salt crusted the railing
like a thin frost. Each morning
he ran his thumb across it
as if testing whether the ocean
still wanted him.
In Boston he built a fruit cart
from scavenged boards, stacking
oranges in precise towers
that glowed like small suns
he could finally touch
without fear of being burned.
When he told his children
never let anyone tell you
you are not Jewish
his voice stayed quiet,
a soft current moving through
the kitchen air, certain
as dust refusing to lift
even when the door swung open
and winter pressed in hard.
The Patient Who Would Not Say His Name
He sat on the edge of the bed
as if balancing on a question
he could not bring himself to ask.
His hands trembled in small circles
like minnows skimming a lake
that had just learned about wind.
He arrived after sunset,
the sky still bruised from its own story.
I asked what hurt and he said
everything, then nothing,
then pressed his fingers to his sternum
as if checking for a hinge
no one else could see.
Sometimes medicine is a lantern
that falters when the air shifts.
Sometimes it is a shallow bowl
we offer gently, waiting for someone
to trust the shape enough
to place their truth inside it.
When he finally met my eyes
they did not ask for rescue.
They asked whether I could stay
long enough for the air between us
to become something he could name.
I wrote his initials on the chart.
It felt like mailing a letter
to a stranger who might leave
before dawn understood its own light.
Still, I stayed.
Still, he breathed.
Still, the room thickened with a quiet
that seemed to lean toward him,
as if preparing to speak
on his behalf.
He sat on the edge of the bed
as if balancing on a question
he could not bring himself to ask.
His hands trembled in small circles
like minnows skimming a lake
that had just learned about wind.
He arrived after sunset,
the sky still bruised from its own story.
I asked what hurt and he said
everything, then nothing,
then pressed his fingers to his sternum
as if checking for a hinge
no one else could see.
Sometimes medicine is a lantern
that falters when the air shifts.
Sometimes it is a shallow bowl
we offer gently, waiting for someone
to trust the shape enough
to place their truth inside it.
When he finally met my eyes
they did not ask for rescue.
They asked whether I could stay
long enough for the air between us
to become something he could name.
I wrote his initials on the chart.
It felt like mailing a letter
to a stranger who might leave
before dawn understood its own light.
Still, I stayed.
Still, he breathed.
Still, the room thickened with a quiet
that seemed to lean toward him,
as if preparing to speak
on his behalf.
Veronica Tucker is an emergency medicine and addiction medicine physician, mother of three, and lifelong New Englander whose poetry explores the intersections of medicine, motherhood, memory, and being human. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her work appears in Rust & Moth, Eunoia Review, and The Berlin Literary Review, among others. She shares more at veronicatuckerwrites.com and on Instagram @veronicatuckerwrites.
Carter Vance
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Strawberries
When I asked you, how to
say freedom in a Persian
dialect from Qom,
you laughed:
“You have to taste the word,
in chalk, blood, bite marks,
rubber, gas,
let it drip down, sweet fruit,
and find its place with you,
see how it feels in the back
of big yellow taxis,
in front of star patterns
in shattered glass.”
I took a rosebud from
the counter case, studied in light,
how it would feel to run out
with dynamite sticks and megaphones,
break car windows, slash tires,
pour sugar down drainpipes,
give cotton candy to onlooking children.
You said it was the same as
strawberries
Whether I liked them, or not.
When I asked you, how to
say freedom in a Persian
dialect from Qom,
you laughed:
“You have to taste the word,
in chalk, blood, bite marks,
rubber, gas,
let it drip down, sweet fruit,
and find its place with you,
see how it feels in the back
of big yellow taxis,
in front of star patterns
in shattered glass.”
I took a rosebud from
the counter case, studied in light,
how it would feel to run out
with dynamite sticks and megaphones,
break car windows, slash tires,
pour sugar down drainpipes,
give cotton candy to onlooking children.
You said it was the same as
strawberries
Whether I liked them, or not.
Carter Vance is a writer and poet originally from Cobourg, Ontario, Canada, currently resident in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. His work has appeared in such publications as The Smart Set, Contemporary Verse 2, and A Midwestern Review, amongst others. His debut novel, Smaller Animals, was released in November 2025.
Nala Washington
Ghost Sonnet For Toni
like Morrison, i too, wish to live free.
she spills about blue black in the white eye
look, see? the carefully crafted sage green
vibrancy signaling a great relief. spring
bounces in, there are fewer grotesque Cholly's
roaming on all fours. fall welcomes blackened
babies alive. it's the black marigolds that
gets me. the promise of a golden birth.
the black babies are always harvested,
regardless of age. and still Toni, their hatred for
this black stain skin does not leave like seasons.
the black marigolds are planted, denied.
well then. do i tell her, there are blue eyes
blank watching me, as if i should be dead?
like Morrison, i too, wish to live free.
she spills about blue black in the white eye
look, see? the carefully crafted sage green
vibrancy signaling a great relief. spring
bounces in, there are fewer grotesque Cholly's
roaming on all fours. fall welcomes blackened
babies alive. it's the black marigolds that
gets me. the promise of a golden birth.
the black babies are always harvested,
regardless of age. and still Toni, their hatred for
this black stain skin does not leave like seasons.
the black marigolds are planted, denied.
well then. do i tell her, there are blue eyes
blank watching me, as if i should be dead?
Best of the Net Nominee Nala Washington (she/her) is a poet, writer, and educator, completing her MFA at Texas State University. You can find her words currently/forthcoming in South Florida Poetry Journal, Midnight & Indigo Lit, The Hemlock Journal, Mouthful of Salt, The Santa Clara Review, Livina Press, Essay Magazine, and more. Nala was a featured performer at the Kennedy Center in 2020 for the Arts Across America Series and was the 2023 BIPOC Scholarship winner for the Fine Arts Work Center. Currently, she is a participant of Austin Poetry Slam and Every Word Poetry in Austin, TX.
Cindy Wheeler
The Last Drink
If I decide to let my brother drink
an Orange Soda he will die.
He will drown.
Standing in the hallway
outside his hospital room
In what was once the maternity ward,
make shifted into a critical care unit
for covid patients and never turned back,
I feel underwater.
The young resident tells me
they still cannot figure out why
my brother keeps aspirating liquid
into his already pneumonia laden
lungs. Even ice cubes are forbidden.
Haywire I say too loud, so loud
that I make myself jump because
I thought I was only thinking it.
Haywire. Doctors with no answers,
organs running riot, running ramshackle,
forgetting their function.
The lungs keeping the kidney’s water.
The liver like the leaf clogged filter
of our childhood home’s pool.
Our father would never clean that
thing. A film of green algae coated
the sides making it hard to get out.
His dirty pool filter liver has poisoned
everything including his brain and so
he doesn’t get to have the final say
about that orange soda. I hear the words
cognitively impaired.
I ask for an hour.
I try to explain to him that yes,
he can have an orange soda,
one last orange soda or fifty last
orange sodas, understand?
Just go to the fucking cafeteria Cindy,
they have it, just go.
And then he starts to cry
and I go get on the elevator.
He smiles a beautiful
broken tooth smile with the first sip.
The unbound joy of the parched, quenched.
We laugh. He becomes so clear
after a few more sips.
He says he’s hungry.
He hasn’t eaten in days.
We order a mushroom pizza from
Pizza Hut and watch Matthew McConaughey
in “Lincoln Lawyer” on his iPad.
The mundanity of this, the any other day-ness
starts to make me feel
like I can’t breathe either.
When I am not looking
he fast forwards to the end
but pretends like he didn’t.
I feel slightly betrayed like he sped up time.
I can’t tell if when he says,
I’m tired, I’m going to close my eyes and rest,
if he knows what that means.
He asks me to put on some Chopin,
something I never knew he liked.
I watch the ice cubes melt and
the unreal orange color slowly fade.
By morning it is mostly water.
If I decide to let my brother drink
an Orange Soda he will die.
He will drown.
Standing in the hallway
outside his hospital room
In what was once the maternity ward,
make shifted into a critical care unit
for covid patients and never turned back,
I feel underwater.
The young resident tells me
they still cannot figure out why
my brother keeps aspirating liquid
into his already pneumonia laden
lungs. Even ice cubes are forbidden.
Haywire I say too loud, so loud
that I make myself jump because
I thought I was only thinking it.
Haywire. Doctors with no answers,
organs running riot, running ramshackle,
forgetting their function.
The lungs keeping the kidney’s water.
The liver like the leaf clogged filter
of our childhood home’s pool.
Our father would never clean that
thing. A film of green algae coated
the sides making it hard to get out.
His dirty pool filter liver has poisoned
everything including his brain and so
he doesn’t get to have the final say
about that orange soda. I hear the words
cognitively impaired.
I ask for an hour.
I try to explain to him that yes,
he can have an orange soda,
one last orange soda or fifty last
orange sodas, understand?
Just go to the fucking cafeteria Cindy,
they have it, just go.
And then he starts to cry
and I go get on the elevator.
He smiles a beautiful
broken tooth smile with the first sip.
The unbound joy of the parched, quenched.
We laugh. He becomes so clear
after a few more sips.
He says he’s hungry.
He hasn’t eaten in days.
We order a mushroom pizza from
Pizza Hut and watch Matthew McConaughey
in “Lincoln Lawyer” on his iPad.
The mundanity of this, the any other day-ness
starts to make me feel
like I can’t breathe either.
When I am not looking
he fast forwards to the end
but pretends like he didn’t.
I feel slightly betrayed like he sped up time.
I can’t tell if when he says,
I’m tired, I’m going to close my eyes and rest,
if he knows what that means.
He asks me to put on some Chopin,
something I never knew he liked.
I watch the ice cubes melt and
the unreal orange color slowly fade.
By morning it is mostly water.
Cindy Wheeler is a Brooklyn based poet. She spent 25 years working as a songwriter, founding the critically acclaimed rock bands Pee Shy and The Caulfield Sisters and released five studio albums. Her poem “Things You Do on Your Knees” appeared in “LIP-The CD With a Big Mouth” alongside poets Eileen Myles, Anne Waldman, and Exene Cervenka. Most recently, her haiku “Covid-Ku” appeared in The Best Haiku of 2022 International Anthology (Haiku Crush). She studies at The Writers Studio in New York.
Matthew Zhao
Can You Blame Him?
I used abuse as vindication
when I couldn’t stand thinking
about the things I had done,
like accidentally brushing up
on that girl in a crowded bar.
The degree of accident looser
than my jaw when I start talking
lies like I’ll teach you Chinese
and I’ll give you my heart.
Call it love-bombing but I mean it
and these feelings are real
no matter where they come from.
Therapy said it wasn’t my fault because
I was a victim of you
and you of your dad’s love.
I forgot to speak up and
twenty years later I’m on your doorstep,
second-guessing my knock,
deficient in touch,
craving forgiveness from my mom.
I call myself every name like
borderline, addict, and spectrumed.
No longer numb, no more boulder to roll up.
I let it come crashing down.
I used abuse as vindication
when I couldn’t stand thinking
about the things I had done,
like accidentally brushing up
on that girl in a crowded bar.
The degree of accident looser
than my jaw when I start talking
lies like I’ll teach you Chinese
and I’ll give you my heart.
Call it love-bombing but I mean it
and these feelings are real
no matter where they come from.
Therapy said it wasn’t my fault because
I was a victim of you
and you of your dad’s love.
I forgot to speak up and
twenty years later I’m on your doorstep,
second-guessing my knock,
deficient in touch,
craving forgiveness from my mom.
I call myself every name like
borderline, addict, and spectrumed.
No longer numb, no more boulder to roll up.
I let it come crashing down.
Matthew Zhao is a poet from Michigan, now a PhD student at Florida State University and an Assistant Editor of Poetry for Southeast Review. He was a finalist in the National Poetry Series and Mississippi Review Prize, and a semifinalist in the Longleaf Press Book Prize, Autumn House Press Poetry Prize, and others. His poems recently appear in swamp pink, Four Way Review, The Indianapolis Review, PRISM international, Pinch, The Louisville Review, and elsewhere.