ISSUE 22 August 2021
Judy Ireland, Editor
Judy Ireland, Editor
If you are poet, prophet, peace loving artist, tolerant, traditional or anarchistic, haiku or epic, and points in between; if your poems sing, shout, whisper, dance, scratch, tickle, trot or crawl; if you value the humane treatment of every creature and the planet on which we dwell, SoFloPoJo seeks your best work.
Poetry Page 2
Samantha Madway Patrick Maynard John McDonough Bruce McRae Megan Merchant Ana Michalowsky Tim Moder Daniel Edward Moore Shareen K. Murayama Bill Neumire Fasasi Abdulrosheed Oladipupo
B.M. Owens Ann Pedone Bonnie Proudfoot Radoslav Rochallyi Samantha Samakande Alfonso Sito Sasieta James Scruton Tufik Shayeb Hilary Sideris Jim Simpson Sarah Jeanine Smith Kory Vance Brendan Walsh Kelly Weber Stephen Scott Whitaker Sarah Renee Wollstonecraft Ellen June Wright
B.M. Owens Ann Pedone Bonnie Proudfoot Radoslav Rochallyi Samantha Samakande Alfonso Sito Sasieta James Scruton Tufik Shayeb Hilary Sideris Jim Simpson Sarah Jeanine Smith Kory Vance Brendan Walsh Kelly Weber Stephen Scott Whitaker Sarah Renee Wollstonecraft Ellen June Wright
Samantha Madway Philadelphia, PA
Made in Voyeur
There was that day he came in on the waves,
looked at me like I was a map, a longitudinal thing,
like I was an unclaimed coat begging for finders keepers;
looked at me like I was licking his lips for him; like my disgust
was his version of all aboard!, and I was the train he’d been waiting
on the platform for; like I was somewhere he was entitled to explore
simply because, well, if not for him, who else would my body be for?
Samantha Madway is working on a collection of interlinked poems and flash fiction. She loves her dogs, Charlie, Parker, and Davey, more than anything else in the universe. Though technophobic, she attempts to be brave by having an Instagram @sometimesnight. If the profile were a plant, it would’ve died long ago. Her writing has appeared in the Laurel Review, Raw Arts Review, Hey, I’m Alive, Wild Roof Journal, Sunspot Lit, High Shelf, Linden Ave, Sky Island Journal, SLAB, and elsewhere.
There was that day he came in on the waves,
looked at me like I was a map, a longitudinal thing,
like I was an unclaimed coat begging for finders keepers;
looked at me like I was licking his lips for him; like my disgust
was his version of all aboard!, and I was the train he’d been waiting
on the platform for; like I was somewhere he was entitled to explore
simply because, well, if not for him, who else would my body be for?
Samantha Madway is working on a collection of interlinked poems and flash fiction. She loves her dogs, Charlie, Parker, and Davey, more than anything else in the universe. Though technophobic, she attempts to be brave by having an Instagram @sometimesnight. If the profile were a plant, it would’ve died long ago. Her writing has appeared in the Laurel Review, Raw Arts Review, Hey, I’m Alive, Wild Roof Journal, Sunspot Lit, High Shelf, Linden Ave, Sky Island Journal, SLAB, and elsewhere.
Patrick Maynard Berlin, Germany 2 poems
Booms
A nap
On the Christmas Afternoon
Of Christmas Day
Interrupted only by a pair
Of solid German feet
In solid German house shoes
On the floor above.
I go backward
10 years.
To the sound of booming cargo containers,
Being shifted by cranes in a freight yard in Baltimore.
20 years.
I am on a summer glider,
Reclined on a porch under a thunder-covered awning,
Reading about vampires, Hari Seldon, HyperCard.
In the basement,
A sister plays a flute.
Another watches I Love Lucy on VHS,
Dreaming of living far away,
In a big city, where people stomp above apartment ceilings.
A nap
On the Christmas Afternoon
Of Christmas Day
Interrupted only by a pair
Of solid German feet
In solid German house shoes
On the floor above.
I go backward
10 years.
To the sound of booming cargo containers,
Being shifted by cranes in a freight yard in Baltimore.
20 years.
I am on a summer glider,
Reclined on a porch under a thunder-covered awning,
Reading about vampires, Hari Seldon, HyperCard.
In the basement,
A sister plays a flute.
Another watches I Love Lucy on VHS,
Dreaming of living far away,
In a big city, where people stomp above apartment ceilings.
Big shopping
Rills from the hills,
The husbands and wives descend,
On Saturdays and Sundays,
From village outposts.
Following route 57,
Tracing the stream,
Until it enters the Bečva,
They open the windows to
Smell the river.
The car arrives. A Kaufland aisle.
A robotic voice.
Tady jsem správně.
Eight rolls of paper towels.
A frying pan.
A new toaster.
From the parking lot,
The kids can see
Back up to the hills.
Look! It's the giant, Krakonoš!
Second look: It's a pair of cows.
Third look: it's a cloud, coming out of the smokestack,
At the edge of town.
Patrick Maynard grew up near the shores of the Great Lakes and has lived in the United States, the Czech Republic and Germany. His writing has been featured in more than a dozen publications. He currently resides in Berlin.
Rills from the hills,
The husbands and wives descend,
On Saturdays and Sundays,
From village outposts.
Following route 57,
Tracing the stream,
Until it enters the Bečva,
They open the windows to
Smell the river.
The car arrives. A Kaufland aisle.
A robotic voice.
Tady jsem správně.
Eight rolls of paper towels.
A frying pan.
A new toaster.
From the parking lot,
The kids can see
Back up to the hills.
Look! It's the giant, Krakonoš!
Second look: It's a pair of cows.
Third look: it's a cloud, coming out of the smokestack,
At the edge of town.
Patrick Maynard grew up near the shores of the Great Lakes and has lived in the United States, the Czech Republic and Germany. His writing has been featured in more than a dozen publications. He currently resides in Berlin.
John McDonough Exeter, NH
Heavy Ass Weights
When I was born it was my sister who came to me Before the nurse had a chance to wash me Before my mother had a chance to name me Before my father had a chance to know me
She pressed two fingers into my still soft forehead
One to get my attention
One so I would remember
It was so hard that if it had been my chest she would have been directly accusing my heart of something
Backlit by halogen she half sung me a dowry to the earth:
Everybody wants to be a body builder
Don’t nobody wanna pick up those heavy ass weights
It was then I was married
To something
Three days later she picked me up and ran home with me like I was a small bag of sand
The kind you collect to remember a trip to the beach
When my mother set me in my crib that night she spun the mobile above my bed
It was a pack of wild dogs
They all took turns being leader, they all took turns casting shadows
She walked out and began to close the door,
With a shadow on her face she turned around like she had just remembered something to say She said the word “grow”
She said it like an insult
She said it every night for 8 years
She said it so my sister could hear
I swear it lasted all night until morning
I swear when the light of day came you might have thought I was a cypress tree
I seem to remember a man saying my name like I was a cypress tree
But only in daylight
I learned to hate night
So much that every night me and my sister would sleep facing each other on other sides of the room
We would speak to each other, or
To our pillows like a prayer:
Everybody wants to be a body builder
Don’t nobody wanna pick up those heavy ass weights
Soon we began doing just that
Every night we would say it, the next morning we would perform great feats of strength
I picked up a cord of fire wood and stacked it in front of the front door piece by piece
My sister picked up my report card
She threw it in the road
It became a bird
When I got the first hint of my first mustache
I picked her up a pack of cigarettes
It felt like a kettle bell
It might have been a kettle bell
She smoked it just the same
The leaves started to change, then started to fall
Then it was fall and
Then winter and then we
Slept under a blanket that was under a sycamore tree
I woke up when a pick up drove by and then there was sun
We realized the night before we had forgotten to say anything at all, just slept
The sun still rose, but
We had to pick it up and push it across the sky
And that’s what we did
That’s what we kept doing
That’s what we had to do, most of the time
Some days one of us would sleep in, and the other would try with a grimace but
The sun wouldn’t rise
Crops died, dogs cried
We resolved to become stronger
Every night we would pick things up and carry them as far as we could
One night she picked up a bag of bowling balls
The next night I picked up an arrest warrant and ran a long way
We ran to a new town, then a new school, but
The sun kept following us
Begging
It begged us
“Let me Rise, Help me rise
I am composed of molten gas and I have no legs or wings and
Don’t nobody wanna pick up those heavy ass weights
But one day somebody might and so just tonight
Make it day
Anyway the bus will be here soon and you don’t want to wait in the dark, there are monsters Make it day”
And so we did
Every day
Sometimes with smiles but less than we used to
And then we would both ride to school
I would sit behind her and we would both stretch our legs out and rest
I began to fall asleep
I began to fall asleep every morning
I began to forget what stopped everybody from being a body builder
I began not to notice the changes in our posture
I began not to notice the Sycamore trees
I stopped noticing the sun We had lifted or that my sister was sitting alone
And then she wasn’t
And then she was singing
I was so asleep I didn’t see her press her fingers on new foreheads
Strange foreheads
One day I did wake up
She was whispering to a boy as loud as a gunshot
“...heavy ass weights”
I spent the day trying not to look at anything at all
That night she picked up an anvil, but it might have been the deed to a car She tried to say sorry but I couldn’t hear her as I was lifting up a large rock It was so big I thought there might be a dinosaur inside
Maybe it was a dinosaur
She didn’t think so
I was becoming less and less inclined to believe her
Soon
She left
I ran across the whole town
I picked up the whole school and looked underneath
She wasn’t there
I picked up a bus
I picked up the fire station
I picked up the police station and there were men all in blue playing cards
They looked at me
They spoke
“hey aren’t you...”
I ran
I ran and screamed all at once
I began tearing sycamore trees out of the ground and throwing them
I was only stopped by the small voice of the sun
“Can I rise today?” he said “I am burning hot and it hurts everyone if I am in one place too long but me the most”
I tried not to cry but we cried together
I wrapped my arms around him and we just sat a while
The flowers looked hungry
I thought he might be chasing the moon and I resolved not to chase
I powdered my hands and began to lift
Soon I wasn’t crying and
Soon it was high noon
I liked it so much I let the sun leave me there
I stayed there until 3 o’clock
I watched school let out but I didn’t look for her
Not once
I heard she picked up a new last name
I heard it was a box of fire ants
I heard she picked up a husband
Picked him up with one hand and ran all the way to divorce court
I heard that she had her own little son
One day I picked up a paper and it got heavier and heavier as I read it
It said someone tied a boy up to the train tracks
It must have been some kind of man because all the other tracks had been ripped up
And all the trains had been thrown into outer space
One hit a satellite
It said the boy had on a navy blue jacket with a note pinned to the lapel Written in red ink and underlined
Everybody wants to be a body builder
Don’t nobody wanna pick up those heavy ass weights
John McDonough teaches Humanities at Great Bay Charter School in Exeter, New Hampshire. He is pretty sure there are Bigfoot, but not like... weird about it.
When I was born it was my sister who came to me Before the nurse had a chance to wash me Before my mother had a chance to name me Before my father had a chance to know me
She pressed two fingers into my still soft forehead
One to get my attention
One so I would remember
It was so hard that if it had been my chest she would have been directly accusing my heart of something
Backlit by halogen she half sung me a dowry to the earth:
Everybody wants to be a body builder
Don’t nobody wanna pick up those heavy ass weights
It was then I was married
To something
Three days later she picked me up and ran home with me like I was a small bag of sand
The kind you collect to remember a trip to the beach
When my mother set me in my crib that night she spun the mobile above my bed
It was a pack of wild dogs
They all took turns being leader, they all took turns casting shadows
She walked out and began to close the door,
With a shadow on her face she turned around like she had just remembered something to say She said the word “grow”
She said it like an insult
She said it every night for 8 years
She said it so my sister could hear
I swear it lasted all night until morning
I swear when the light of day came you might have thought I was a cypress tree
I seem to remember a man saying my name like I was a cypress tree
But only in daylight
I learned to hate night
So much that every night me and my sister would sleep facing each other on other sides of the room
We would speak to each other, or
To our pillows like a prayer:
Everybody wants to be a body builder
Don’t nobody wanna pick up those heavy ass weights
Soon we began doing just that
Every night we would say it, the next morning we would perform great feats of strength
I picked up a cord of fire wood and stacked it in front of the front door piece by piece
My sister picked up my report card
She threw it in the road
It became a bird
When I got the first hint of my first mustache
I picked her up a pack of cigarettes
It felt like a kettle bell
It might have been a kettle bell
She smoked it just the same
The leaves started to change, then started to fall
Then it was fall and
Then winter and then we
Slept under a blanket that was under a sycamore tree
I woke up when a pick up drove by and then there was sun
We realized the night before we had forgotten to say anything at all, just slept
The sun still rose, but
We had to pick it up and push it across the sky
And that’s what we did
That’s what we kept doing
That’s what we had to do, most of the time
Some days one of us would sleep in, and the other would try with a grimace but
The sun wouldn’t rise
Crops died, dogs cried
We resolved to become stronger
Every night we would pick things up and carry them as far as we could
One night she picked up a bag of bowling balls
The next night I picked up an arrest warrant and ran a long way
We ran to a new town, then a new school, but
The sun kept following us
Begging
It begged us
“Let me Rise, Help me rise
I am composed of molten gas and I have no legs or wings and
Don’t nobody wanna pick up those heavy ass weights
But one day somebody might and so just tonight
Make it day
Anyway the bus will be here soon and you don’t want to wait in the dark, there are monsters Make it day”
And so we did
Every day
Sometimes with smiles but less than we used to
And then we would both ride to school
I would sit behind her and we would both stretch our legs out and rest
I began to fall asleep
I began to fall asleep every morning
I began to forget what stopped everybody from being a body builder
I began not to notice the changes in our posture
I began not to notice the Sycamore trees
I stopped noticing the sun We had lifted or that my sister was sitting alone
And then she wasn’t
And then she was singing
I was so asleep I didn’t see her press her fingers on new foreheads
Strange foreheads
One day I did wake up
She was whispering to a boy as loud as a gunshot
“...heavy ass weights”
I spent the day trying not to look at anything at all
That night she picked up an anvil, but it might have been the deed to a car She tried to say sorry but I couldn’t hear her as I was lifting up a large rock It was so big I thought there might be a dinosaur inside
Maybe it was a dinosaur
She didn’t think so
I was becoming less and less inclined to believe her
Soon
She left
I ran across the whole town
I picked up the whole school and looked underneath
She wasn’t there
I picked up a bus
I picked up the fire station
I picked up the police station and there were men all in blue playing cards
They looked at me
They spoke
“hey aren’t you...”
I ran
I ran and screamed all at once
I began tearing sycamore trees out of the ground and throwing them
I was only stopped by the small voice of the sun
“Can I rise today?” he said “I am burning hot and it hurts everyone if I am in one place too long but me the most”
I tried not to cry but we cried together
I wrapped my arms around him and we just sat a while
The flowers looked hungry
I thought he might be chasing the moon and I resolved not to chase
I powdered my hands and began to lift
Soon I wasn’t crying and
Soon it was high noon
I liked it so much I let the sun leave me there
I stayed there until 3 o’clock
I watched school let out but I didn’t look for her
Not once
I heard she picked up a new last name
I heard it was a box of fire ants
I heard she picked up a husband
Picked him up with one hand and ran all the way to divorce court
I heard that she had her own little son
One day I picked up a paper and it got heavier and heavier as I read it
It said someone tied a boy up to the train tracks
It must have been some kind of man because all the other tracks had been ripped up
And all the trains had been thrown into outer space
One hit a satellite
It said the boy had on a navy blue jacket with a note pinned to the lapel Written in red ink and underlined
Everybody wants to be a body builder
Don’t nobody wanna pick up those heavy ass weights
John McDonough teaches Humanities at Great Bay Charter School in Exeter, New Hampshire. He is pretty sure there are Bigfoot, but not like... weird about it.
Bruce McRae Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada 2 poems
Tired Out
Ladies and gentlemen, a man
so tired he's turned to diorite.
His bones are tindersticks.
His eyes are eggshells
of a slow and flightless bird.
A man so drowsy his hair is hurting.
He sleeps standing, a winter tree
His words are slurred, his ideas muddled.
The slightest breeze is wild commotion.
Once so cavalier. A libertine.
And now, a worn-out shoe, a drudgery.
Who sees the stars and wonders why
they haven't fallen.
Ladies and gentlemen, a man
so tired he's turned to diorite.
His bones are tindersticks.
His eyes are eggshells
of a slow and flightless bird.
A man so drowsy his hair is hurting.
He sleeps standing, a winter tree
His words are slurred, his ideas muddled.
The slightest breeze is wild commotion.
Once so cavalier. A libertine.
And now, a worn-out shoe, a drudgery.
Who sees the stars and wonders why
they haven't fallen.
The Other Hours
Here comes one o’clock,
disheveled and late for dinner.
And two o'clock not far behind,
beau-naked and free-thinking.
All too soon it's three,
and three's idle talk of insurrection.
Four o'clock is full of pie.
Five conjures up a mystery
from scraps in grandpa's kitchen.
This touches a nerve,
like little bolts of energy,
so six o'clock's a dawdle,
a decoction of glacial minutes
and why so suddenly it's seven.
Lit up like a sinking ship
or whorehouse in Nevada.
Seven o'clock, boasting of fortune,
assigned the prince of numbers.
A voice like a wristwatch.
A face like a broken dish.
Stinking of dug earth and dishwater.
Eight o'clock, nine o'clock, ten.
These are its able henchmen,
eleven the most naive hour.
Twelve o'clock a mountain
of blowing snow seen at a distance.
The planet turns and turns again
and twelve's our reckoning.
Our sure Polaris.
Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician and multiple Pushcart nominee, has had work appear in hundreds of publications around the world. The winner of the 2020 Libretto Chapbook Prize (20 Sonnets), his books include The So-Called Sonnets; An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy; Like As If; All Right Already and Hearsay.
Here comes one o’clock,
disheveled and late for dinner.
And two o'clock not far behind,
beau-naked and free-thinking.
All too soon it's three,
and three's idle talk of insurrection.
Four o'clock is full of pie.
Five conjures up a mystery
from scraps in grandpa's kitchen.
This touches a nerve,
like little bolts of energy,
so six o'clock's a dawdle,
a decoction of glacial minutes
and why so suddenly it's seven.
Lit up like a sinking ship
or whorehouse in Nevada.
Seven o'clock, boasting of fortune,
assigned the prince of numbers.
A voice like a wristwatch.
A face like a broken dish.
Stinking of dug earth and dishwater.
Eight o'clock, nine o'clock, ten.
These are its able henchmen,
eleven the most naive hour.
Twelve o'clock a mountain
of blowing snow seen at a distance.
The planet turns and turns again
and twelve's our reckoning.
Our sure Polaris.
Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician and multiple Pushcart nominee, has had work appear in hundreds of publications around the world. The winner of the 2020 Libretto Chapbook Prize (20 Sonnets), his books include The So-Called Sonnets; An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy; Like As If; All Right Already and Hearsay.
Megan Merchant Prescott,AZ
Self-Portrait as Snow
A man wants me to break him beautiful. I hear his ask
like a cricket in the walls, each chirp a crease along
my wrist, a cleft on my tongue. I pinch and dizzy,
crush an eggshell in the sink. A long line of women
have warned me—smash the ends or a witch will steal
it for a boat, raise a terrible storm. So what if I am?
This blizzard is just a million flakes that I secret
on my tongue. They melt and like fishing line—razor
sharp, invisible. After we kiss, I place a white onion
on the sill, stab it with pins, with what light is left,
ask him to leave from a different door.
Megan Merchant holds an M.F.A. degree in International Creative Writing from UNLV and is the author of three full-length poetry collections with Glass Lyre Press: Gravel Ghosts (2016), The Dark’s Humming (2015 Lyrebird Award Winner, 2017), Grief Flowers (2018), four chapbooks, and a children’s book, These Words I Shaped for You (Philomel Books). Her latest book, Before the Fevered Snow, was released in April 2020 with Stillhouse Press. She was awarded the 2016-2017 COG Literary Award, judged by Juan Felipe Herrera, the 2018 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize, second place in the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and most recently the Inaugural Michelle Boisseau Prize. She is an Editor at Pirene’s Fountain and The Comstock Review. You can find her work at meganmerchant.wix.com/poet.
A man wants me to break him beautiful. I hear his ask
like a cricket in the walls, each chirp a crease along
my wrist, a cleft on my tongue. I pinch and dizzy,
crush an eggshell in the sink. A long line of women
have warned me—smash the ends or a witch will steal
it for a boat, raise a terrible storm. So what if I am?
This blizzard is just a million flakes that I secret
on my tongue. They melt and like fishing line—razor
sharp, invisible. After we kiss, I place a white onion
on the sill, stab it with pins, with what light is left,
ask him to leave from a different door.
Megan Merchant holds an M.F.A. degree in International Creative Writing from UNLV and is the author of three full-length poetry collections with Glass Lyre Press: Gravel Ghosts (2016), The Dark’s Humming (2015 Lyrebird Award Winner, 2017), Grief Flowers (2018), four chapbooks, and a children’s book, These Words I Shaped for You (Philomel Books). Her latest book, Before the Fevered Snow, was released in April 2020 with Stillhouse Press. She was awarded the 2016-2017 COG Literary Award, judged by Juan Felipe Herrera, the 2018 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize, second place in the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and most recently the Inaugural Michelle Boisseau Prize. She is an Editor at Pirene’s Fountain and The Comstock Review. You can find her work at meganmerchant.wix.com/poet.
Ana Michalowsky Portland, OR. 2 poems
Finnian
I understand you. That is, I know
the daylight you’re reaching towards
and the dark box you reach from.
I know your shape, your gait, your hands
as they pluck the plaid from your soft belly;
I know your belly, that you want no one to see.
I know, or rather I understand, the glasses you wear
—their small, black frames—how at night,
before bed, you cherish your blindness.
When I lived at the beach, a hermit thrush
flew into my window, again, again.
People told me it meant
a death must be near. I don’t believe
such signs. To me, he wanted only to be
warm, to be fed, to come inside.
I’m an idiot, I’m an idiot, I tell myself these nights.
Then I hold you, that large head of yours
beneath my collar bone.
You, aged ten, in the back of a pickup; you
with your mother who would not visit
you in the psychiatric hall, although
you did not die there, did
not kill yourself—she paid for
the ticket so you could fly back home.
That bird, he never came inside; I later learned
he saw himself in the glass, so fought
to scare the intruder away.
When I crumple on the carpet before bed,
your hands draw me back to my feet.
Though a full head taller than me, you insist,
Ana, look at me. You did nothing wrong.
You on the couch, playing guitar.
You by the ocean, counting the waves.
Finnian, I see you. Finnian, I hear you.
The throbbing of that hermit thrush.
Your cyclical, viscous beating.
I understand you. That is, I know
the daylight you’re reaching towards
and the dark box you reach from.
I know your shape, your gait, your hands
as they pluck the plaid from your soft belly;
I know your belly, that you want no one to see.
I know, or rather I understand, the glasses you wear
—their small, black frames—how at night,
before bed, you cherish your blindness.
When I lived at the beach, a hermit thrush
flew into my window, again, again.
People told me it meant
a death must be near. I don’t believe
such signs. To me, he wanted only to be
warm, to be fed, to come inside.
I’m an idiot, I’m an idiot, I tell myself these nights.
Then I hold you, that large head of yours
beneath my collar bone.
You, aged ten, in the back of a pickup; you
with your mother who would not visit
you in the psychiatric hall, although
you did not die there, did
not kill yourself—she paid for
the ticket so you could fly back home.
That bird, he never came inside; I later learned
he saw himself in the glass, so fought
to scare the intruder away.
When I crumple on the carpet before bed,
your hands draw me back to my feet.
Though a full head taller than me, you insist,
Ana, look at me. You did nothing wrong.
You on the couch, playing guitar.
You by the ocean, counting the waves.
Finnian, I see you. Finnian, I hear you.
The throbbing of that hermit thrush.
Your cyclical, viscous beating.
( death = death )
Look at me. Father, you’ve been so long dead, and yet
I keep you as my witness. I never could act
alone. In suicide, I called Mother to help
when the pills failed. In love, I call for you. Father,
I’ve kept you from the peace of ashes and earth. Deep
apologies for such a summoning. You’re nothing
but a back door. I open to find myself inside.
You’ve been dead twenty years. Your death has been a life.
He offers me another, calling meenay, though
I write to you. I step out, step through, into
Italian rain. I’ll close the door behind myself.
No longer can I lie, dad, beneath the pine tree
at your grave. I must live with this boy unlike me.
Ana Michalowsky lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. She received an MFA from Pacific University, where she studied with Chris Abani and Marvin Bell, and a BA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. Her work has received a Vaclav Havel Scholarship from the Prague Writers Program and a 2017 Publication Award in the Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Contest.
Look at me. Father, you’ve been so long dead, and yet
I keep you as my witness. I never could act
alone. In suicide, I called Mother to help
when the pills failed. In love, I call for you. Father,
I’ve kept you from the peace of ashes and earth. Deep
apologies for such a summoning. You’re nothing
but a back door. I open to find myself inside.
You’ve been dead twenty years. Your death has been a life.
He offers me another, calling meenay, though
I write to you. I step out, step through, into
Italian rain. I’ll close the door behind myself.
No longer can I lie, dad, beneath the pine tree
at your grave. I must live with this boy unlike me.
Ana Michalowsky lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. She received an MFA from Pacific University, where she studied with Chris Abani and Marvin Bell, and a BA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. Her work has received a Vaclav Havel Scholarship from the Prague Writers Program and a 2017 Publication Award in the Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Contest.
Tim Moder Superior, WI
Song to the Prodigal Son
The road is long for the heavy hearted,
torn open, with outstretched red eyes.
Lose focus in the memory of the fifth
commandment, head down, laden with grief.
Walk toward the sunset into the neon retreat.
Squander what you are in square bare feet.
Wine, of the vine for all to share in the sublime
staggering heat of the midnight dance floor.
Dead eyes soften with fire, burning in the skin.
A tempest, a violent concerto, a ceaseless river.
Rave in melancholia.
Stale morning, face up, slow clouds stretch
tales and fables into familiar features, stories in the sky
seen from a scene in a mud sunken sty
on a pig drunk morning, a fairy tale morning.
Not hungry, starving—an ache in the flesh and in the
bone—a lifetime alone dreaming the sounds of home—a niente.
Hear the rise and fall of a hired man’s breath.
Hear the ragged prayer of a shamed man.
Seamless boundaries straighten crooked roads.
Vagabond, wanderer, coming from the land of Nod.
Tim Moder is a 51-year-old indigenous poet living in northern Wisconsin. He is a member of Lake Superior Writers. He is a father and a grandfather. His work has appeared or will appear in Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, In Parentheses Literary Magazine and Dwelling Literary.
The road is long for the heavy hearted,
torn open, with outstretched red eyes.
Lose focus in the memory of the fifth
commandment, head down, laden with grief.
Walk toward the sunset into the neon retreat.
Squander what you are in square bare feet.
Wine, of the vine for all to share in the sublime
staggering heat of the midnight dance floor.
Dead eyes soften with fire, burning in the skin.
A tempest, a violent concerto, a ceaseless river.
Rave in melancholia.
Stale morning, face up, slow clouds stretch
tales and fables into familiar features, stories in the sky
seen from a scene in a mud sunken sty
on a pig drunk morning, a fairy tale morning.
Not hungry, starving—an ache in the flesh and in the
bone—a lifetime alone dreaming the sounds of home—a niente.
Hear the rise and fall of a hired man’s breath.
Hear the ragged prayer of a shamed man.
Seamless boundaries straighten crooked roads.
Vagabond, wanderer, coming from the land of Nod.
Tim Moder is a 51-year-old indigenous poet living in northern Wisconsin. He is a member of Lake Superior Writers. He is a father and a grandfather. His work has appeared or will appear in Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, In Parentheses Literary Magazine and Dwelling Literary.
Daniel Edward Moore Oak Harbor, Whidbey Island, WA
Sixty-Four
years of one man’s life and the found, fathered,
and frayed unraveled like the edge of an Alabama dress
mother got from a thrift store in Selma, the summer
they bought me from a preacher’s daughter. In 1957,
Methodist sounded like skinny white men wearing
starched black suits with patten leather shoes shiny
as the lie her father told about why her belly was big
as a melon but only my parents were invited to the picnic.
A crownless king with a lightbulb head entered the world
wearing snazzy bow ties and matching suspenders
to shadow his Saddle Oxford shoes. Adopted meant
special meant we chose you to rule the lost and untouched
parts of a world they carried inside. It took all those years
of tender turmoil to build a kingdom of kindness and rage
where this lightbulb head could shine.
Daniel Edward Moore lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His poems are forthcoming in Chiron Review, The American Journal of Poetry, The Bitter Oleander, Plainsongs Magazine, Blue Mountain Review and Drunk Monkeys Magazine. He is the author of Boys (Duck Lake Books) and Waxing the Dents (Brick Road Poetry Press)
years of one man’s life and the found, fathered,
and frayed unraveled like the edge of an Alabama dress
mother got from a thrift store in Selma, the summer
they bought me from a preacher’s daughter. In 1957,
Methodist sounded like skinny white men wearing
starched black suits with patten leather shoes shiny
as the lie her father told about why her belly was big
as a melon but only my parents were invited to the picnic.
A crownless king with a lightbulb head entered the world
wearing snazzy bow ties and matching suspenders
to shadow his Saddle Oxford shoes. Adopted meant
special meant we chose you to rule the lost and untouched
parts of a world they carried inside. It took all those years
of tender turmoil to build a kingdom of kindness and rage
where this lightbulb head could shine.
Daniel Edward Moore lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His poems are forthcoming in Chiron Review, The American Journal of Poetry, The Bitter Oleander, Plainsongs Magazine, Blue Mountain Review and Drunk Monkeys Magazine. He is the author of Boys (Duck Lake Books) and Waxing the Dents (Brick Road Poetry Press)
Shareen K. Murayama Honolulu, Hawai'i 2 poems
waiting for the jaw to release
“But it would not”—This line stopped me from reading how six pods of orcas attacked
a blue whale. I was trying to imagine this prediction: the idea of letting go something
you want. But it would not--
stop coming up to breathe. Holding on to
its jaw, like a landmark. Until periods stretched out into commas, imitating the bend
of a killer, when all I want
to do is pause, breathe a little—
This is what my mind will always see: the last moment as seabirds flap, cawing in the usual
blue. A young whale is bullied over
four hours, a thermal red sprawls across
red. I discovered the maximum possible heart rate for a blue whale is 37 beats per minute,
but, I imagine, even that was broken, too.
“But it would not”—This line stopped me from reading how six pods of orcas attacked
a blue whale. I was trying to imagine this prediction: the idea of letting go something
you want. But it would not--
stop coming up to breathe. Holding on to
its jaw, like a landmark. Until periods stretched out into commas, imitating the bend
of a killer, when all I want
to do is pause, breathe a little—
This is what my mind will always see: the last moment as seabirds flap, cawing in the usual
blue. A young whale is bullied over
four hours, a thermal red sprawls across
red. I discovered the maximum possible heart rate for a blue whale is 37 beats per minute,
but, I imagine, even that was broken, too.
Regulations
the line is drawn / farm girls like you / good for two things / what you don’t have / to give is owed / good hands / strong back / the line means violation / blink-sleep longer than /wetness / no one sees / the line you spin / So fair, for a Ryukyu / means bad example / good for a few spins / a fine against you / muffled rocking / a shift / you yield / two tan of cloth / fabricated lines / your hands / will never be top performer / the morning whistle / means stop / palm-fingers glide down your back / a small break / but the other girls scream / Keep going!
Shareen K. Murayama is a Japanese American, Okinawan American poet and educator. She’s a 2021 Best Microfiction winner as well as a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal. Her art is published or forthcoming in Pilgrimage Press, 433, MORIA, SWWIM Every Day, Juked, Bamboo Ridge, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. You can find her on IG & Twitter @ambusypoeming.
the line is drawn / farm girls like you / good for two things / what you don’t have / to give is owed / good hands / strong back / the line means violation / blink-sleep longer than /wetness / no one sees / the line you spin / So fair, for a Ryukyu / means bad example / good for a few spins / a fine against you / muffled rocking / a shift / you yield / two tan of cloth / fabricated lines / your hands / will never be top performer / the morning whistle / means stop / palm-fingers glide down your back / a small break / but the other girls scream / Keep going!
Shareen K. Murayama is a Japanese American, Okinawan American poet and educator. She’s a 2021 Best Microfiction winner as well as a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal. Her art is published or forthcoming in Pilgrimage Press, 433, MORIA, SWWIM Every Day, Juked, Bamboo Ridge, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. You can find her on IG & Twitter @ambusypoeming.
Bill Neumire Syracuse, NY
Pandemic Days and Nights: Nocturne
Aubade
It rained all day. I was tested because we attended
a funeral for a boy who hanged himself in the American beeches.
Each of these nights I’ve been releasing ravens,
throwing them like knives at this caliginous vigil.
Shadows grow the way age makes you
more than you were when you were young
we were young & alive years ago all gold-burned
glow documenting our
linger but here we are 20 years side-by-side
glasses & oversized
t-shirt asleep on your left side & me awake by
chance thinking through 40 years of breath
trying to track back to an earlier dark
we hide still here in our mortgaged heaven
the winged begin their song I hug myself to you &
wonder who we hide from
we hide from pines weaponizing into giant
arrowheads before cut scene
the air is still full of our great disease of our violet rust
our chorus of coming apart new studies show
we’re all getting divorced hanging ourselves
abandoning our children the dark is other people
or nothing the nothing is hugging the windchimes
now filling the mailbox with needles I do love you
dear but I can’t find you in all this universe
vis a vis a sound I heard
the hospitals
are filling with lungs that can’t perform we know a thing
aristotle says by what it’s for look at yourself looking
for a horizon in the black you poor monologue
coughing into gloom
coughing, is it wrong
to want this minute’s witchy innards displayed in
shorthand to all at once read its code
like seeing within a geode’s origin story the
morning is excessive
after the insular night
where I’m from everyone’s fucked only
avatars exist
how transparent am I when I weep
these keepsakes? whatever I’m a tired
narration I trademarked the allure you
see here
morning’s crass streamers of light transmit
notifications rivalrous gifs appear to catch
at the heart a thing of mourning
like an heirloom sequestered for centuries after the
war
War nostalgia breeds incessant fireworks tonight
reminds me we once went to a concert
on a small river island, the crowd purpled
with stage light & plosive riffs. Quiet skiffs
sleeked by. Neighborhood houses breathed
darkly. In the throes of a solo, I felt. The world
wouldn’t last long.
“It won’t last long,” I thought you said,
& “I’ll only love you if you’re
quiet.” I’m awake in the fingertrap morning in
Syracuse at 9am on a Friday reading that Ashbery
said what we require
is surprise. So I covet a different discourse, a
coronation of notification lifting me toward.
That’s what I call romance. That’s
what I crawl into morning with. Text me the
transcript. Share me like a shot of mood ring. Take
me with you to the plaque commemorating the last
normal day the day broke.
Broke, we’re at the sunset drive-in to wonder
who will make the estate / last? men
as weakness / a pasture of sacrifice / as if volunteering
pain necessitates reward / like digging a grave
deep to find a heaven to enter / a world of gods
with eternal emotions / this is a move toward
the personal / my wife is appreciating
the impatiens / what is it to be a museum?
a statue? the farm / horses eat hay slowly
& have their own method / of knowing
what time it is / what it’s time for / beer works
by drying you with poison / the farmer’s kids walk
the cows into their stalls / I think about the difference
between history & imagination / little gods explode
into leaf & we eat them until we can’t feel.
Feel? Never have I ever felt anything
that wasn’t staged. This whole postpartum summer,
what am I / missing? For example, an agrarian
enjoyment of sunrise? The right champagne? I am
what I’ve bought. Self-portrait / with inground
pool & underwater / disco light. How the
antidepressants lurk / in the guarded part of the
pharmacy while the 12.99 30-pack of Genesee is
freely / afloat in the aisle. I haven’t taken the trash
out in years. Is art just / the word for sale of self?
Thank you / for your honesty. Look at all that magic
/ water cycling through the filter.
Through the filter, we heard the news of car thieves
this evening / under the legislation of fireworks
& blood & a country’s shudder. It dogs me
to know / every part of my nightmare / is me.
In some versions
of tonight / a man trips a motion-activated alarm
&, spooked, shoots me dead when I run out
to scare him off. / The dog shakes & pisses
as the aesthetic bombs go off—war play to celebrate
the way we ripped / ourselves from false
gods across the sea. See, there are many
in other versions of this night shot / in mantic prayer,
their swollen eyes near shut trying to find the end of a dark religion.
The darkly religious comfort of experiments is /
they’re repeatable.
A comfort, this morning coming / over & over. The
moment of its / lasting.
What’s the last sense / that can’t be settled
into sleep? The tomorrows / are congealed now,
a lava / around which I write eyeliner secrets.
Mostly, I want / to be caught,
rent-due in the rain, & told / it’s over,
I can drop / my keys & phone, I can quit / the cult
of critique in this garrison town.
But “it’s time to / get back out there,” the night always says,
even though it’s sick / with provisions, kingless
& crowdsourced, so I slip on my my ancient
crown & ride it.
I ride & ricochet too often to be whole / to be the
kind of holy person who wakes for sunrise / whose
eyes are permitted / to see the blessings. Because
the dog too eschewed / daybreak in the wake of last
night’s worthy worries & we spooned / til 10 AM,
all fur & breath & shaken valance / of apocalypse.
Sleeping in is political, reflective, post-happiness /
in a dawnless morning, the tyranny that follows.
Bill Neumire's second book, #TheNewCrusades, was a finalist for the Barrow Street Prize and 42 Miles Press Award, and is due out this spring. His poems have appeared in Harvard Review, Los Angeles Review, West Branch, and Beloit Poetry Journal. He reviews books of contemporary poetry for Vallum and for Verdad where he also serves as poetry editor. He lives in Syracuse, New York.
Aubade
It rained all day. I was tested because we attended
a funeral for a boy who hanged himself in the American beeches.
Each of these nights I’ve been releasing ravens,
throwing them like knives at this caliginous vigil.
Shadows grow the way age makes you
more than you were when you were young
we were young & alive years ago all gold-burned
glow documenting our
linger but here we are 20 years side-by-side
glasses & oversized
t-shirt asleep on your left side & me awake by
chance thinking through 40 years of breath
trying to track back to an earlier dark
we hide still here in our mortgaged heaven
the winged begin their song I hug myself to you &
wonder who we hide from
we hide from pines weaponizing into giant
arrowheads before cut scene
the air is still full of our great disease of our violet rust
our chorus of coming apart new studies show
we’re all getting divorced hanging ourselves
abandoning our children the dark is other people
or nothing the nothing is hugging the windchimes
now filling the mailbox with needles I do love you
dear but I can’t find you in all this universe
vis a vis a sound I heard
the hospitals
are filling with lungs that can’t perform we know a thing
aristotle says by what it’s for look at yourself looking
for a horizon in the black you poor monologue
coughing into gloom
coughing, is it wrong
to want this minute’s witchy innards displayed in
shorthand to all at once read its code
like seeing within a geode’s origin story the
morning is excessive
after the insular night
where I’m from everyone’s fucked only
avatars exist
how transparent am I when I weep
these keepsakes? whatever I’m a tired
narration I trademarked the allure you
see here
morning’s crass streamers of light transmit
notifications rivalrous gifs appear to catch
at the heart a thing of mourning
like an heirloom sequestered for centuries after the
war
War nostalgia breeds incessant fireworks tonight
reminds me we once went to a concert
on a small river island, the crowd purpled
with stage light & plosive riffs. Quiet skiffs
sleeked by. Neighborhood houses breathed
darkly. In the throes of a solo, I felt. The world
wouldn’t last long.
“It won’t last long,” I thought you said,
& “I’ll only love you if you’re
quiet.” I’m awake in the fingertrap morning in
Syracuse at 9am on a Friday reading that Ashbery
said what we require
is surprise. So I covet a different discourse, a
coronation of notification lifting me toward.
That’s what I call romance. That’s
what I crawl into morning with. Text me the
transcript. Share me like a shot of mood ring. Take
me with you to the plaque commemorating the last
normal day the day broke.
Broke, we’re at the sunset drive-in to wonder
who will make the estate / last? men
as weakness / a pasture of sacrifice / as if volunteering
pain necessitates reward / like digging a grave
deep to find a heaven to enter / a world of gods
with eternal emotions / this is a move toward
the personal / my wife is appreciating
the impatiens / what is it to be a museum?
a statue? the farm / horses eat hay slowly
& have their own method / of knowing
what time it is / what it’s time for / beer works
by drying you with poison / the farmer’s kids walk
the cows into their stalls / I think about the difference
between history & imagination / little gods explode
into leaf & we eat them until we can’t feel.
Feel? Never have I ever felt anything
that wasn’t staged. This whole postpartum summer,
what am I / missing? For example, an agrarian
enjoyment of sunrise? The right champagne? I am
what I’ve bought. Self-portrait / with inground
pool & underwater / disco light. How the
antidepressants lurk / in the guarded part of the
pharmacy while the 12.99 30-pack of Genesee is
freely / afloat in the aisle. I haven’t taken the trash
out in years. Is art just / the word for sale of self?
Thank you / for your honesty. Look at all that magic
/ water cycling through the filter.
Through the filter, we heard the news of car thieves
this evening / under the legislation of fireworks
& blood & a country’s shudder. It dogs me
to know / every part of my nightmare / is me.
In some versions
of tonight / a man trips a motion-activated alarm
&, spooked, shoots me dead when I run out
to scare him off. / The dog shakes & pisses
as the aesthetic bombs go off—war play to celebrate
the way we ripped / ourselves from false
gods across the sea. See, there are many
in other versions of this night shot / in mantic prayer,
their swollen eyes near shut trying to find the end of a dark religion.
The darkly religious comfort of experiments is /
they’re repeatable.
A comfort, this morning coming / over & over. The
moment of its / lasting.
What’s the last sense / that can’t be settled
into sleep? The tomorrows / are congealed now,
a lava / around which I write eyeliner secrets.
Mostly, I want / to be caught,
rent-due in the rain, & told / it’s over,
I can drop / my keys & phone, I can quit / the cult
of critique in this garrison town.
But “it’s time to / get back out there,” the night always says,
even though it’s sick / with provisions, kingless
& crowdsourced, so I slip on my my ancient
crown & ride it.
I ride & ricochet too often to be whole / to be the
kind of holy person who wakes for sunrise / whose
eyes are permitted / to see the blessings. Because
the dog too eschewed / daybreak in the wake of last
night’s worthy worries & we spooned / til 10 AM,
all fur & breath & shaken valance / of apocalypse.
Sleeping in is political, reflective, post-happiness /
in a dawnless morning, the tyranny that follows.
Bill Neumire's second book, #TheNewCrusades, was a finalist for the Barrow Street Prize and 42 Miles Press Award, and is due out this spring. His poems have appeared in Harvard Review, Los Angeles Review, West Branch, and Beloit Poetry Journal. He reviews books of contemporary poetry for Vallum and for Verdad where he also serves as poetry editor. He lives in Syracuse, New York.
Fasasi Abdulrosheed Oladipupo Ibadan, Nigeria
What Welcomes You
The desert is not like your father's room, where you are welcomed
By the scent of cider or hookah's fumes or Miriam Makeba's Soweto Blues,
Desert does not own the savor of musk like your wife's pyjamas,
Everything about desert is dark brown, especially the one you have chosen.
What welcomes you to the desert are the caking bodies of dead boys, a frail bone
Who ran away like you did, what welcomes you are mites, scabies
The parasitologists are still finding names for, not Pubis irritans
Not even Demodex, they say it looks like Cnemidocoptes,
Maybe because everyone that enters the Sahara's street becomes a bird,
Searching for home, I say what welcomes you are Cnemidocoptes humanus
Burning where your hands cannot quench, what welcomes you are the footage of the missing ones,
The rib cases of women finding their husbands till they were bonded with their death.
What welcomes you is the terror of the desert warming you of the doom awaiting you
At the Island, if by chance you are able to see the sea or you ended up crossing it.
The desert is a cruel preacher only you have no ears, widely opened eyes that couldn't see.
Fasasi Abdulrosheed Oladipupo is a Nigerian poet & a Veterinary Medical Student, whose first love is art making. He is an avid reader, who sees poetry in everything, with great interest in storytelling. His works are forthcoming in: Roanoke Review, Santa Ana River Review, Stand Magazine, Louisiana Literature, Obsidian: Literature and Art in the African Diaspora, Collateral, Welter Journal, LEVITATE and elsewhere. He tweets from: @FasasiDiipo
The desert is not like your father's room, where you are welcomed
By the scent of cider or hookah's fumes or Miriam Makeba's Soweto Blues,
Desert does not own the savor of musk like your wife's pyjamas,
Everything about desert is dark brown, especially the one you have chosen.
What welcomes you to the desert are the caking bodies of dead boys, a frail bone
Who ran away like you did, what welcomes you are mites, scabies
The parasitologists are still finding names for, not Pubis irritans
Not even Demodex, they say it looks like Cnemidocoptes,
Maybe because everyone that enters the Sahara's street becomes a bird,
Searching for home, I say what welcomes you are Cnemidocoptes humanus
Burning where your hands cannot quench, what welcomes you are the footage of the missing ones,
The rib cases of women finding their husbands till they were bonded with their death.
What welcomes you is the terror of the desert warming you of the doom awaiting you
At the Island, if by chance you are able to see the sea or you ended up crossing it.
The desert is a cruel preacher only you have no ears, widely opened eyes that couldn't see.
Fasasi Abdulrosheed Oladipupo is a Nigerian poet & a Veterinary Medical Student, whose first love is art making. He is an avid reader, who sees poetry in everything, with great interest in storytelling. His works are forthcoming in: Roanoke Review, Santa Ana River Review, Stand Magazine, Louisiana Literature, Obsidian: Literature and Art in the African Diaspora, Collateral, Welter Journal, LEVITATE and elsewhere. He tweets from: @FasasiDiipo
B.M. Owens 2 poems
At 25, Britney Spears Picks Up Razor
“This is a Story About a Girl Named Lucky” -Britney Spears
The buzz vibrates louder than the cameras
outside and steadies my fingers. The stylist
won’t do it but I can. I’m tired of people
touching me anyway. I hold a strand of dyed
brown hair and release it from my head
the razor cutting through their voices,
“She must be paying the babysitters overtime.”
I pull my hair ready to tear each follicle
out. I’d do it to win custody. I’d do anything.
“Girls gone wild.” I drive the blade through.
“Is Britney a bad mom?” I strike again
and smile and again I’m thinking,
That’s America for you. Halfway
through, I stop—the released
skin on my head breathing new air.
Cameras try to claim what’s left
of my half-mullet but I won’t smile
for them. The stylist says, “all the kids
are going to want to look like you”
and I think back, before my children,
to Diane Sawyer and the upset mothers
that wanted to shoot me for my lyrics,
for my clothes, for my body--
I’m not here to babysit your kids.
I guide the razor and swipe my scalp,
singeing off every hair they’ve touched.
*Quotes paraphrased from Framing Britney Spears, “The New York Times Presents” documentary.
“This is a Story About a Girl Named Lucky” -Britney Spears
The buzz vibrates louder than the cameras
outside and steadies my fingers. The stylist
won’t do it but I can. I’m tired of people
touching me anyway. I hold a strand of dyed
brown hair and release it from my head
the razor cutting through their voices,
“She must be paying the babysitters overtime.”
I pull my hair ready to tear each follicle
out. I’d do it to win custody. I’d do anything.
“Girls gone wild.” I drive the blade through.
“Is Britney a bad mom?” I strike again
and smile and again I’m thinking,
That’s America for you. Halfway
through, I stop—the released
skin on my head breathing new air.
Cameras try to claim what’s left
of my half-mullet but I won’t smile
for them. The stylist says, “all the kids
are going to want to look like you”
and I think back, before my children,
to Diane Sawyer and the upset mothers
that wanted to shoot me for my lyrics,
for my clothes, for my body--
I’m not here to babysit your kids.
I guide the razor and swipe my scalp,
singeing off every hair they’ve touched.
*Quotes paraphrased from Framing Britney Spears, “The New York Times Presents” documentary.
My Dog Teaches Me About Self-care
His original owners choked him— tried to contain him
to a tree with a heavy chain. Left him outside alone
with a prickly metal collar around his neck. He knew
he had to run. He still has that urge sometimes. I see
his paws bolting while he sleeps. He’s still running
from that family in dreams the way I’m stumbling
away from mine. He’s smarter though— he growls
and yips and tells them how their love is wrong
and tears himself out of their grasp. He extends his leg too
far and wakes himself up— a trick I have yet to learn.
He circles the bed shaking off the lingering clinch of that metal
collar cutting into his skin. His fur still hasn’t grown back.
I stay awake watching him lick his paws until he’s soothed
to sleep again where he dreams of foraging through
trash and chasing squirrels and sniffing every angle of every
leaf on a bush. He snores into me while my fingers comb
through his fur and I want to love smells the way
he does— I want to run towards every scent just because
it makes me happy. I want to love myself so much
that I’d fracture the chain around my neck.
B.M. Owens was born in Hollywood, Florida. She is working on an MFA and teaching Assistantship at Florida International University. She is Poetry Editor for FIU's Gulf Stream Literary Magazine. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Salamander Magazine, Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Small Orange Journal, and Jai-Alai Books' Waterproof Anthology. She has also been nominated for the 2021 Pushcart Prize.
His original owners choked him— tried to contain him
to a tree with a heavy chain. Left him outside alone
with a prickly metal collar around his neck. He knew
he had to run. He still has that urge sometimes. I see
his paws bolting while he sleeps. He’s still running
from that family in dreams the way I’m stumbling
away from mine. He’s smarter though— he growls
and yips and tells them how their love is wrong
and tears himself out of their grasp. He extends his leg too
far and wakes himself up— a trick I have yet to learn.
He circles the bed shaking off the lingering clinch of that metal
collar cutting into his skin. His fur still hasn’t grown back.
I stay awake watching him lick his paws until he’s soothed
to sleep again where he dreams of foraging through
trash and chasing squirrels and sniffing every angle of every
leaf on a bush. He snores into me while my fingers comb
through his fur and I want to love smells the way
he does— I want to run towards every scent just because
it makes me happy. I want to love myself so much
that I’d fracture the chain around my neck.
B.M. Owens was born in Hollywood, Florida. She is working on an MFA and teaching Assistantship at Florida International University. She is Poetry Editor for FIU's Gulf Stream Literary Magazine. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Salamander Magazine, Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Small Orange Journal, and Jai-Alai Books' Waterproof Anthology. She has also been nominated for the 2021 Pushcart Prize.
Ann Pedone Millbrae, CA 2 poems
January 24th
I take it back.
The women in Italy
are not made of salt
(as the old man at the
front desk had
told me.)
Behind the elevator. Right
over there. She took him out
of her mouth
made the sign
of the cross
and sent him back to bed.
(Or at least, this is what I was told.)
My husband’s body will no
longer open for me (It’s not only
women’s bodies who open, you see.)
And now the edges of our sleep
have dried. (There’s no
death that can stop this.)
If I knew how to please him
as I used to (or is this the man
in me speaking?)
I would be his naked dancer. Godless.
(And I would never take
it back.)
You don’t have to believe me.
Just look at the Greeks.
They knew exactly what I’m
talking about.
I remember being
in love with him.
(Maybe this is the only pure thing
about me.)
It is a horror,
I confess.
This thing that lives
in the small hours between
a woman’s thighs.
This thing that tells me
I need to be more
than what I want.
Every day I wake in this bed and
wait for him to eat me. Head to toe.
And now I am tired.
I take it back.
The women in Italy
are not made of salt
(as the old man at the
front desk had
told me.)
Behind the elevator. Right
over there. She took him out
of her mouth
made the sign
of the cross
and sent him back to bed.
(Or at least, this is what I was told.)
My husband’s body will no
longer open for me (It’s not only
women’s bodies who open, you see.)
And now the edges of our sleep
have dried. (There’s no
death that can stop this.)
If I knew how to please him
as I used to (or is this the man
in me speaking?)
I would be his naked dancer. Godless.
(And I would never take
it back.)
You don’t have to believe me.
Just look at the Greeks.
They knew exactly what I’m
talking about.
I remember being
in love with him.
(Maybe this is the only pure thing
about me.)
It is a horror,
I confess.
This thing that lives
in the small hours between
a woman’s thighs.
This thing that tells me
I need to be more
than what I want.
Every day I wake in this bed and
wait for him to eat me. Head to toe.
And now I am tired.
February 3rd
My face in the mirror looks red
There are people speaking Italian
in the next room
I think it is a man and a woman
Sent the dry cleaning out with the front desk four
days ago, but it still hasn’t come back
The three stray dogs outside the window
I have $1,350 worth of traveler’s checks in my bag
My passport was issued on September 16th, 1996.
It expires in 2006
I should have enough tampons in my carryon
to last until the end of May
It’s been 13 months since he has let me go down
on him
My sister had told me best to pack three
pairs of shoes, but I see now that she was wrong.
Two would have been enough.
Ann Pedone is the author The Medea Notebooks (Etruscan Press, Fall 2022), and of the chapbooks The Bird Happened (Leave Books), perhaps there is a sky we don’t know: a re-imagining of sappho. (Cup and Dagger Press), DREAM/WORK, and Everywhere You Put Your Mouth (Halas Press.) Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Narrative Magazine, Abralemin, The Phare, West Trade Review, SAND, and The Shore. She has a BA from Bard College, and an MA from UC Berkeley in Chinese Literature.
My face in the mirror looks red
There are people speaking Italian
in the next room
I think it is a man and a woman
Sent the dry cleaning out with the front desk four
days ago, but it still hasn’t come back
The three stray dogs outside the window
I have $1,350 worth of traveler’s checks in my bag
My passport was issued on September 16th, 1996.
It expires in 2006
I should have enough tampons in my carryon
to last until the end of May
It’s been 13 months since he has let me go down
on him
My sister had told me best to pack three
pairs of shoes, but I see now that she was wrong.
Two would have been enough.
Ann Pedone is the author The Medea Notebooks (Etruscan Press, Fall 2022), and of the chapbooks The Bird Happened (Leave Books), perhaps there is a sky we don’t know: a re-imagining of sappho. (Cup and Dagger Press), DREAM/WORK, and Everywhere You Put Your Mouth (Halas Press.) Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Narrative Magazine, Abralemin, The Phare, West Trade Review, SAND, and The Shore. She has a BA from Bard College, and an MA from UC Berkeley in Chinese Literature.
Bonnie Proudfoot Athens, OH 2 Poems
Consider the Aunties and Grandmothers
Points of knitting needles clicking like
daggers, dicing the air,
a circle no girl wants to enter.
Born to keep the outside out,
born to wring the necks of chickens,
pound white meat into cutlets,
cream eggs into sugar, because
there are labors of love and labors of need,
labors of pain, and lifetimes where each moment
seems to click tightly into the next, but where
does that land on a scale of suffering?
Nearsighted or farsighted, not missing
a trick, they know the wrapping paper
of success hides the bomb inside
the present. A gold ring on one hand,
a mop in the other, floors so bright
they win the Glo-Coat prize, red painted
fingernails, skeins of yarn spilling off laps,
apron pockets full of posey. When one dies,
we cover all the mirrors.
Points of knitting needles clicking like
daggers, dicing the air,
a circle no girl wants to enter.
Born to keep the outside out,
born to wring the necks of chickens,
pound white meat into cutlets,
cream eggs into sugar, because
there are labors of love and labors of need,
labors of pain, and lifetimes where each moment
seems to click tightly into the next, but where
does that land on a scale of suffering?
Nearsighted or farsighted, not missing
a trick, they know the wrapping paper
of success hides the bomb inside
the present. A gold ring on one hand,
a mop in the other, floors so bright
they win the Glo-Coat prize, red painted
fingernails, skeins of yarn spilling off laps,
apron pockets full of posey. When one dies,
we cover all the mirrors.
Jarvik-7
My artificial heart refuses
to weep at the commercial
for Folger’s coffee, the one
where the son comes home
early for the holidays
unlocks the door, surprises
the mom. It stops my fingers
from writing a check
to the Humane Society, calmly
beats and re-beats, even though
an emaciated beagle with watering eyes
stares through the chain links, curls
back into a ball, defeated.
My artificial heart sops up the sloppy
and the saccharine, then plops it
back out, ticks and whirrs
as if it were preprogrammed,
a pendulum
pulled by inscrutable
poles of gravity, a contraption
with a built-in irony detector
and a nose that smells a pitch
a mile away.
There was that night,
ten years ago
when it all stopped. I know what
that means.
I know you saved me,
and you still do.
Today, for example,
you wake early to walk the dog,
I hear the whirr
of coffee grinding, the aroma
infusing through rooms, no artifice,
just morning, an average miracle
and like that, cylinders start firing,
and you bet, this way-back machine
wants to rocket out
of its socket, nothing holding
it back.
Bonnie Proudfoot is a recipient of a Fellowship for the Arts in Creative Writing from the West Virginia department of Culture and History, and has had fiction and poetry published or forthcoming in the Gettysburg Review, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, The New Ohio Review. Her first novel, Goshen Road, was published by Swallow Press in January of 2020, and was selected by the Women’s National Book Association for one of its Great Group Reads for 2020. The novel was also long-listed for the PEN/ Hemingway award for debut fiction.
My artificial heart refuses
to weep at the commercial
for Folger’s coffee, the one
where the son comes home
early for the holidays
unlocks the door, surprises
the mom. It stops my fingers
from writing a check
to the Humane Society, calmly
beats and re-beats, even though
an emaciated beagle with watering eyes
stares through the chain links, curls
back into a ball, defeated.
My artificial heart sops up the sloppy
and the saccharine, then plops it
back out, ticks and whirrs
as if it were preprogrammed,
a pendulum
pulled by inscrutable
poles of gravity, a contraption
with a built-in irony detector
and a nose that smells a pitch
a mile away.
There was that night,
ten years ago
when it all stopped. I know what
that means.
I know you saved me,
and you still do.
Today, for example,
you wake early to walk the dog,
I hear the whirr
of coffee grinding, the aroma
infusing through rooms, no artifice,
just morning, an average miracle
and like that, cylinders start firing,
and you bet, this way-back machine
wants to rocket out
of its socket, nothing holding
it back.
Bonnie Proudfoot is a recipient of a Fellowship for the Arts in Creative Writing from the West Virginia department of Culture and History, and has had fiction and poetry published or forthcoming in the Gettysburg Review, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, The New Ohio Review. Her first novel, Goshen Road, was published by Swallow Press in January of 2020, and was selected by the Women’s National Book Association for one of its Great Group Reads for 2020. The novel was also long-listed for the PEN/ Hemingway award for debut fiction.
Radoslav Rochallyi Břeclav, Czech Republic
Radoslav Rochallyi is a poet, essayist, and interdisciplinary artist. He is the author of eight books of poetry. His work has been featured in Variant Literature Journal (North Carolina, USA: Variant Literature Inc.), Havik 2020: Homeward- The Las Positas College Journal of Arts and Literature (CA, USA: The Las Positas College), Cyber Smut (London, United Kingdom: Guts Publishing), Outside the Box ( Illinois, USA: Scars Publications), MAINTENANT 14-Contemporary Dada Art & Writing (New York, USA: Three Rooms Press).
Samantha Samakande Bloomfield, NJ
From an Almost Empty Tube of Toothpaste to its Replacement
She will need you
to be more than you are,
something above
and beyond your calling
and you will become that.
You will mean routine.
You will mean that she is
choosing to get on today.
She will perform you,
spread you flat
over plastic like a tablecloth,
press those barbed bristles
through your back
and grate her teeth
because she is supposed to,
because—muscle memory.
She will work you
into all of her
small spaces, erase you
in tidy circular motions,
a liturgy of smudging.
Spearmint will turn
to metal, the taste of a mouth
full of pennies.
She will bleed
because she brushes hard,
reminds herself
that she is nerve and gums
with hurt. You will lose
your spice. Spit-diluted blood
will invade you, stain
your pale foam to rust.
Only then will she rinse you,
spray you into the neck
of the drain, until nothing
is left of you but aftertaste.
You are the cheap kind
so it will be easy.
Samantha Samakande is a Zimbabwean poet currently based out of Bloomfield, NJ where she resides with her husband. She is a graduate of Allegheny College and is a junior editor for F(r)iction. It is her lived experience as an immigrant that made her a poet, an observer, and a daughter of many tongues and in-betweens. Her work has appeared in Pif Magazine, Hobart, and Gordon Square Review. In 2020, she was the second-place winner of Frontier Poetry’s Award for New Poets.
She will need you
to be more than you are,
something above
and beyond your calling
and you will become that.
You will mean routine.
You will mean that she is
choosing to get on today.
She will perform you,
spread you flat
over plastic like a tablecloth,
press those barbed bristles
through your back
and grate her teeth
because she is supposed to,
because—muscle memory.
She will work you
into all of her
small spaces, erase you
in tidy circular motions,
a liturgy of smudging.
Spearmint will turn
to metal, the taste of a mouth
full of pennies.
She will bleed
because she brushes hard,
reminds herself
that she is nerve and gums
with hurt. You will lose
your spice. Spit-diluted blood
will invade you, stain
your pale foam to rust.
Only then will she rinse you,
spray you into the neck
of the drain, until nothing
is left of you but aftertaste.
You are the cheap kind
so it will be easy.
Samantha Samakande is a Zimbabwean poet currently based out of Bloomfield, NJ where she resides with her husband. She is a graduate of Allegheny College and is a junior editor for F(r)iction. It is her lived experience as an immigrant that made her a poet, an observer, and a daughter of many tongues and in-betweens. Her work has appeared in Pif Magazine, Hobart, and Gordon Square Review. In 2020, she was the second-place winner of Frontier Poetry’s Award for New Poets.
Alfonso Sito Sasieta Washington, DC
Why my beloved está equivocada: a family history
I am sitting on the sofa with my suegro
watching a BBC documentary
on the history of salsa
when my even keel
father-in-law leans forward
subtly but eagerly, pointing his finger
towards Ray Barretto’s oversized glasses
& Roberto Roena’s bongos
smiling at the both of them as though they are long lost brothers
¡y allí está Héctor! he says
surprising himself
with his own enthusiasm
& proceeding to regale me his teenage
years & how at sixteen he went to San Juan
to see the very concert
that we see on this screen, y es más, he goes on
I saw Héctor Lavoe
before he joined Fania All Stars
which is to say, when the seedling of salsa
was just taking root in New York
& here & there
& somewhere on the Panamerican highway between Lima & San Bartolo
my own father
is riding the green & white micro
which is the small, crowded bus
where he sways, where he stays vigilant for ladrones
as he grips the chrome pole & quitely
lip syncs the words to llorarás, llorarás
as he turns his gaze from the Pacific
on his left to the sand dunes
on his right beyond which Oscar d’ Leon
y La Dimensión Latina
are performing en vivo en Venezuela where my suegra
is preparing to leave latinoamérica
for America
& sensing perhaps the impending lack
beyond Caracas, sneaks out the window
of her Andean house
& dances all night until she faints
in exhaustion & the raucous
around her rushes her
to the hospital’s IV
to replenish her body with vitamin B
& who could blame her, really, I mean
how was she to know
that she would meet & marry
the dancing boricua who is sitting on my couch
right now
y no, no, ¡es demasiado! I say to my beloved
chronicling the long lineage of boleros
from which we come, recalling the way
her papi’s parents danced
into marriage, the same way my papi’s parents
did on that fateful night in Lima
when la virgín maría told papapa that he’d meet his wife
at the so & so building in San Borja
but for now, let’s stay with Arsenio Rodriguez
who with blind eyes & intuitive hands
laid the brick-like template for salsa dura
& who, from the rural of Cuba
laid the groundwork for Celia Cruz
to cement the clave & the tumbao
into our psyches before shipping them up and down the americas
for all the brown skinned
like my father
who found himself on the border
of a sundown town in a sundown county
perpetually working
at dusk
in a pizza restaurant
where he is blaring ojitos chinos
which, for all intents and purposes, seems racist
to me, but in the long-ago memory etched in my mind
seems to make my father feel seen
for the Chinese Peruvian he is & I can hear
my cousins greeting him now—
Tío Chin, Tío Chin!
as they step through the back screen door
of la pizzería,
where a few dusty drawers
house Grupo Niche & Joe Arroyo & the Latin Brothers
& it must be said that
las caleñas son como las flores
that blossomed into the music of my life
amongst the many songs from Harlem
& Havana
& below the stacks
of my childhood soundtrack, there is a hidden
home video where my mother is puckering
her lips
& uncovering a secret
sexiness that has just spawned
from one of Chichi Peralta’s songs
& her fast-forwarding is too late,
for she, too, has been wooed
into the million roots that are jutting & reaching
their tentacles into the lush soil
of our diaspora, preparing me
for my first week in DC
when only three days
after we had met, my soon-to-be partner
turned on un verano en nueva york
& then grabbed my hand
& then shook the ancestors awake & then said yes
to salsa dancing
as a Lenten practice
& like all relationships
we still argue about whether or not love
is a choice or some other thing that spans decades
& continents & hundreds of hands
that hold
the clave
Alfonso Sito Sasieta is a Peruvian-American poet based in Washington DC. Half-Lutheran & half-Peruvian, he enjoys playing with the dialects & cultural ways of being he inherited from both sides of his family. Alfonso works in an intentional community called L'Arche, where adults with and without intellectual disabilities share their lives together. His work is forthcoming in L'Arche GWDC and L'Arche USA.
I am sitting on the sofa with my suegro
watching a BBC documentary
on the history of salsa
when my even keel
father-in-law leans forward
subtly but eagerly, pointing his finger
towards Ray Barretto’s oversized glasses
& Roberto Roena’s bongos
smiling at the both of them as though they are long lost brothers
¡y allí está Héctor! he says
surprising himself
with his own enthusiasm
& proceeding to regale me his teenage
years & how at sixteen he went to San Juan
to see the very concert
that we see on this screen, y es más, he goes on
I saw Héctor Lavoe
before he joined Fania All Stars
which is to say, when the seedling of salsa
was just taking root in New York
& here & there
& somewhere on the Panamerican highway between Lima & San Bartolo
my own father
is riding the green & white micro
which is the small, crowded bus
where he sways, where he stays vigilant for ladrones
as he grips the chrome pole & quitely
lip syncs the words to llorarás, llorarás
as he turns his gaze from the Pacific
on his left to the sand dunes
on his right beyond which Oscar d’ Leon
y La Dimensión Latina
are performing en vivo en Venezuela where my suegra
is preparing to leave latinoamérica
for America
& sensing perhaps the impending lack
beyond Caracas, sneaks out the window
of her Andean house
& dances all night until she faints
in exhaustion & the raucous
around her rushes her
to the hospital’s IV
to replenish her body with vitamin B
& who could blame her, really, I mean
how was she to know
that she would meet & marry
the dancing boricua who is sitting on my couch
right now
y no, no, ¡es demasiado! I say to my beloved
chronicling the long lineage of boleros
from which we come, recalling the way
her papi’s parents danced
into marriage, the same way my papi’s parents
did on that fateful night in Lima
when la virgín maría told papapa that he’d meet his wife
at the so & so building in San Borja
but for now, let’s stay with Arsenio Rodriguez
who with blind eyes & intuitive hands
laid the brick-like template for salsa dura
& who, from the rural of Cuba
laid the groundwork for Celia Cruz
to cement the clave & the tumbao
into our psyches before shipping them up and down the americas
for all the brown skinned
like my father
who found himself on the border
of a sundown town in a sundown county
perpetually working
at dusk
in a pizza restaurant
where he is blaring ojitos chinos
which, for all intents and purposes, seems racist
to me, but in the long-ago memory etched in my mind
seems to make my father feel seen
for the Chinese Peruvian he is & I can hear
my cousins greeting him now—
Tío Chin, Tío Chin!
as they step through the back screen door
of la pizzería,
where a few dusty drawers
house Grupo Niche & Joe Arroyo & the Latin Brothers
& it must be said that
las caleñas son como las flores
that blossomed into the music of my life
amongst the many songs from Harlem
& Havana
& below the stacks
of my childhood soundtrack, there is a hidden
home video where my mother is puckering
her lips
& uncovering a secret
sexiness that has just spawned
from one of Chichi Peralta’s songs
& her fast-forwarding is too late,
for she, too, has been wooed
into the million roots that are jutting & reaching
their tentacles into the lush soil
of our diaspora, preparing me
for my first week in DC
when only three days
after we had met, my soon-to-be partner
turned on un verano en nueva york
& then grabbed my hand
& then shook the ancestors awake & then said yes
to salsa dancing
as a Lenten practice
& like all relationships
we still argue about whether or not love
is a choice or some other thing that spans decades
& continents & hundreds of hands
that hold
the clave
Alfonso Sito Sasieta is a Peruvian-American poet based in Washington DC. Half-Lutheran & half-Peruvian, he enjoys playing with the dialects & cultural ways of being he inherited from both sides of his family. Alfonso works in an intentional community called L'Arche, where adults with and without intellectual disabilities share their lives together. His work is forthcoming in L'Arche GWDC and L'Arche USA.
James Scruton McKenzie, TN
When the Student is Ready, the Teacher Will Appear
—variously attributed
It’s not certain who actually said it--
Lao-Tzu, Confucius, Gautama Buddha--
but sometimes on my way to class I wonder
how well he really knew his students,
if, like mine, they were often scrambling
to complete the day’s assignment only moments
before their master arrived
to impart another inscrutable adage.
And supposing whoever said it was correct
about a person’s readiness to be taught,
I would’ve loved to be there on a day
his students tired a little of his precepts,
when they daydreamed a bit before refocusing,
their teacher thus forced to disappear and reappear
again and again till the end of the hour,
one lesson they’d never forget,
and a kind of magic, I like to think,
not all that different from someone’s discovering
in a poem the lines just then so necessary
and true, though I’m not sure it’s the reader
who must be ready for a poem
or the other way around.
The Buddha would know,
but he probably wouldn’t tell me.
Instead, he’d listen for my answer,
then give me that beatific smile
and a smart rap with his walking stick.
James Scruton is the author of five chapbooks and two full collections of poetry, most recently The Rules (Green Linden Press, 2019). He has received the Frederick Bock Prize from Poetry as well as awards from Finishing Line Press and Grayson Books, among other honors.
—variously attributed
It’s not certain who actually said it--
Lao-Tzu, Confucius, Gautama Buddha--
but sometimes on my way to class I wonder
how well he really knew his students,
if, like mine, they were often scrambling
to complete the day’s assignment only moments
before their master arrived
to impart another inscrutable adage.
And supposing whoever said it was correct
about a person’s readiness to be taught,
I would’ve loved to be there on a day
his students tired a little of his precepts,
when they daydreamed a bit before refocusing,
their teacher thus forced to disappear and reappear
again and again till the end of the hour,
one lesson they’d never forget,
and a kind of magic, I like to think,
not all that different from someone’s discovering
in a poem the lines just then so necessary
and true, though I’m not sure it’s the reader
who must be ready for a poem
or the other way around.
The Buddha would know,
but he probably wouldn’t tell me.
Instead, he’d listen for my answer,
then give me that beatific smile
and a smart rap with his walking stick.
James Scruton is the author of five chapbooks and two full collections of poetry, most recently The Rules (Green Linden Press, 2019). He has received the Frederick Bock Prize from Poetry as well as awards from Finishing Line Press and Grayson Books, among other honors.
Tufik Shayeb Phoenix, AZ 2 poems
Said the Werewolf
the mountains, a rusty washboard
we ask for just one soap stain
one drop from that dirty dishrag
we call the Arizona sky
my neck has been thinking long
like ostrich, not short like anteater
I’ve known I am likely to drown
with my face a satellite dish,
inviting the monsoon rain
like a signal from the bright moon
the moon, what a joke, big ball,
always yanking on chains
mistrusting of a sunny day,
I have been sold to the nighttime
but I am not without qualities,
paws-friendly, claws-brave
everything I have ever wanted
is bits and carcass at my feet
and transformation is a neat trick
they teach you grade school
first, you wait for some big event,
cosmological in nature,
your head becomes cymbals and
your shoulders the wind-up monkey
then you emerge from the skin
of yourself,
you shake off the furless past,
howl at your kennelmaster and run
the gut-slugged summer
is vomiting out autumn colors
so fast, we often lose track
of the days we were left with
we do not celebrate birthdays
anymore
there are more urgent questions
begging for resolutions
like your round abdomen,
pooched, a bargain store deity
mornings were once excuses
to reflect about the nighttime
they said I was gone, all berserker
locking myself up for safety
and rightly so, chattered so,
transformation is a neat trick
I’m no were, no were-ostrich
no were-eater, I am safe game
none of that transfiguration stuff
I promise you, pads crossed
there will be desktops soon
and I will see your name
carved so many times, so many
it will seem common again
the mountains, a rusty washboard
we ask for just one soap stain
one drop from that dirty dishrag
we call the Arizona sky
my neck has been thinking long
like ostrich, not short like anteater
I’ve known I am likely to drown
with my face a satellite dish,
inviting the monsoon rain
like a signal from the bright moon
the moon, what a joke, big ball,
always yanking on chains
mistrusting of a sunny day,
I have been sold to the nighttime
but I am not without qualities,
paws-friendly, claws-brave
everything I have ever wanted
is bits and carcass at my feet
and transformation is a neat trick
they teach you grade school
first, you wait for some big event,
cosmological in nature,
your head becomes cymbals and
your shoulders the wind-up monkey
then you emerge from the skin
of yourself,
you shake off the furless past,
howl at your kennelmaster and run
the gut-slugged summer
is vomiting out autumn colors
so fast, we often lose track
of the days we were left with
we do not celebrate birthdays
anymore
there are more urgent questions
begging for resolutions
like your round abdomen,
pooched, a bargain store deity
mornings were once excuses
to reflect about the nighttime
they said I was gone, all berserker
locking myself up for safety
and rightly so, chattered so,
transformation is a neat trick
I’m no were, no were-ostrich
no were-eater, I am safe game
none of that transfiguration stuff
I promise you, pads crossed
there will be desktops soon
and I will see your name
carved so many times, so many
it will seem common again
Hummingbirds
I.
blow clamoring bubbles
with your yellow wand
their contours drawn
like sixteenth century prisoners
give them the rack and maybe
the screw
torture each one
until you wrench out a confession
about the secrets of being round
imagine the people you once
knew in high school
burst each sphere
as it slips by your forefinger,
a one-sided jousting match
and ask,
who’s king of homecoming now,
you sonofabitch?
II.
have hummingbirds surgically
implanted into each digit
and joint
type like the wind
and prod like the devil
your hands are pitchforks,
your nails are endless arrowheads
people will stop and exclaim,
damn, how’d you get so fast!
then wonder
about your prowess in bed
III.
downtown,
near the art museum,
a man pushed a burning sofa
from his third-story window
when police questioned
the male suspect
he had nothing to say except,
that it reminded him
of his supervisor
IV.
have pencil-sharpeners
surgically implanted into each
ear canal
perform bizarre magic tricks
at parties
use a Dixon Ticonderoga
no. 2, take a test
outscore your classmates
and scratch out their response
with its lead and soot
then,
wage war on the bubbles
teach them to hate all
Scantron sheets
V.
from a distance,
the sofa was a giant, orange,
soap bubble
falling, like a slow cartoon anvil,
and people had
the strangest urge to reach out
and touch its flames
just to see it pop
Tufik Shayeb's poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including West Trade Review; The Menteur; The Lost Lake Folk Opera Review, Madcap Review, Heyday Magazine, Blinders Journal, Muzzle Magazine, and others. To date, Shayeb has published three chapbooks and one full-length collection titled, I'll Love You to Smithereens. Currently, Shayeb resides in Phoenix, Arizona.
I.
blow clamoring bubbles
with your yellow wand
their contours drawn
like sixteenth century prisoners
give them the rack and maybe
the screw
torture each one
until you wrench out a confession
about the secrets of being round
imagine the people you once
knew in high school
burst each sphere
as it slips by your forefinger,
a one-sided jousting match
and ask,
who’s king of homecoming now,
you sonofabitch?
II.
have hummingbirds surgically
implanted into each digit
and joint
type like the wind
and prod like the devil
your hands are pitchforks,
your nails are endless arrowheads
people will stop and exclaim,
damn, how’d you get so fast!
then wonder
about your prowess in bed
III.
downtown,
near the art museum,
a man pushed a burning sofa
from his third-story window
when police questioned
the male suspect
he had nothing to say except,
that it reminded him
of his supervisor
IV.
have pencil-sharpeners
surgically implanted into each
ear canal
perform bizarre magic tricks
at parties
use a Dixon Ticonderoga
no. 2, take a test
outscore your classmates
and scratch out their response
with its lead and soot
then,
wage war on the bubbles
teach them to hate all
Scantron sheets
V.
from a distance,
the sofa was a giant, orange,
soap bubble
falling, like a slow cartoon anvil,
and people had
the strangest urge to reach out
and touch its flames
just to see it pop
Tufik Shayeb's poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including West Trade Review; The Menteur; The Lost Lake Folk Opera Review, Madcap Review, Heyday Magazine, Blinders Journal, Muzzle Magazine, and others. To date, Shayeb has published three chapbooks and one full-length collection titled, I'll Love You to Smithereens. Currently, Shayeb resides in Phoenix, Arizona.
Hilary Sideris Brooklyn, NY
La Nuova Bicicletta
Despite the beauty
of the name Bianchi
& the turquoise frame
that lights the room
like my pity for you,
a scrappy post-war baby
born in San Lorenzo,
Rome, a quarter you call
popolare--not popular,
but of the people, poor--
whose mother made him
guess how much a plate
of her gricia would cost
in a restaurant, haggled
with shopkeepers, the child
who never smelled a new
bike’s raw, sweet tires
under the tree, which makes
it Christmas now in our
apartment, I am asking per
favore, can you park it
in the bike room soon?
Hilary Sideris has published poems in The American Journal of Poetry, Barrow Street, Bellevue Literary Review, Free State Review, Gravel, Mom Egg Review, Poetry Daily, Rhino, Room, Salamander, Sixth Finch, Sylvia and Women’s Studies Quarterly, among others. Her most recent book, Animals in English, Poems after Temple Grandin, was published by Dos Madres Press in 2020. She is a co-founder of the CUNY Start program at The City University of New York, where she works as a professional developer.
Despite the beauty
of the name Bianchi
& the turquoise frame
that lights the room
like my pity for you,
a scrappy post-war baby
born in San Lorenzo,
Rome, a quarter you call
popolare--not popular,
but of the people, poor--
whose mother made him
guess how much a plate
of her gricia would cost
in a restaurant, haggled
with shopkeepers, the child
who never smelled a new
bike’s raw, sweet tires
under the tree, which makes
it Christmas now in our
apartment, I am asking per
favore, can you park it
in the bike room soon?
Hilary Sideris has published poems in The American Journal of Poetry, Barrow Street, Bellevue Literary Review, Free State Review, Gravel, Mom Egg Review, Poetry Daily, Rhino, Room, Salamander, Sixth Finch, Sylvia and Women’s Studies Quarterly, among others. Her most recent book, Animals in English, Poems after Temple Grandin, was published by Dos Madres Press in 2020. She is a co-founder of the CUNY Start program at The City University of New York, where she works as a professional developer.
Jim Simpson Atlanta, GA
Green Sun Paradise
Sitting outside at the old green table eating new green curry,
the sun warm on my legs propped in the flower chair,
I’m passing through Desolation Peak's solitude
with Jack the Walking Saint, the Stumbling Saint
tripping down the mountain after two months
of watching for smoke and fires while contemplating the void
and I think back to when I was 20 and reading the other road book
dropping my car at Bob Lee’s, Hank saying Take a day or two to fix it,
and then the long walk home not hitchhiking but
pretending I was Sal loping along 4th St. past laundries,
mom and pop motels, trailer parks, tiny markets,
stopping in for soda and packaged pie slice
all oozing cherries and thick juice down my chin,
and then traipsing back along the asphalt
toward home by the canal, and now home is here in the garden
with apple, peach and cherry trees and lettuce beds and rosemary,
the sun beating down on me and cloth and grass
exuding the long ago scent of starched warm work shirts
the grandfather I'm named after wore in his garden
and who is as long gone as I will be one day,
as Jack has been ever since they said he was a has-been
slowly killing himself in that squat little house on 10th Ave.
in St. Pete, shuffling off at only 47 when I was 7
and busy growing up on the other side of town,
and then 27 years later a mile from Jack’s house
my Aunt Lucille died in a car crash on the road
outside the Diamond Shopping Center
on a crystal clear breath-taking day in spring
with the world green all around except for
the light which kept changing, changing, changing
while she passed through everything under the sun
like Duluoz passed through Mexico and Tangier,
finally returning to do nothing but rest in beatific peace.
Jim Simpson is an award-winning fiction writer, poet and journalist whose writing has appeared in print and online throughout the United States and Canada.
Sitting outside at the old green table eating new green curry,
the sun warm on my legs propped in the flower chair,
I’m passing through Desolation Peak's solitude
with Jack the Walking Saint, the Stumbling Saint
tripping down the mountain after two months
of watching for smoke and fires while contemplating the void
and I think back to when I was 20 and reading the other road book
dropping my car at Bob Lee’s, Hank saying Take a day or two to fix it,
and then the long walk home not hitchhiking but
pretending I was Sal loping along 4th St. past laundries,
mom and pop motels, trailer parks, tiny markets,
stopping in for soda and packaged pie slice
all oozing cherries and thick juice down my chin,
and then traipsing back along the asphalt
toward home by the canal, and now home is here in the garden
with apple, peach and cherry trees and lettuce beds and rosemary,
the sun beating down on me and cloth and grass
exuding the long ago scent of starched warm work shirts
the grandfather I'm named after wore in his garden
and who is as long gone as I will be one day,
as Jack has been ever since they said he was a has-been
slowly killing himself in that squat little house on 10th Ave.
in St. Pete, shuffling off at only 47 when I was 7
and busy growing up on the other side of town,
and then 27 years later a mile from Jack’s house
my Aunt Lucille died in a car crash on the road
outside the Diamond Shopping Center
on a crystal clear breath-taking day in spring
with the world green all around except for
the light which kept changing, changing, changing
while she passed through everything under the sun
like Duluoz passed through Mexico and Tangier,
finally returning to do nothing but rest in beatific peace.
Jim Simpson is an award-winning fiction writer, poet and journalist whose writing has appeared in print and online throughout the United States and Canada.
Sara Jeanine Smith Pensacola, FL 2 poems
Eve
I am a beautiful bone
cracked off your cage,
wrangled out of your viscera.
I am a salvaged appendage,
art from found object,
a gore-streaked crutch
for you to lean on,
a satiating afterthought
to soothe the wound
I made in your flesh.
Just like I ran with that rib,
I will believe and repeat
every story I am told.
Some stories will grow skin
and call me mother.
Others will devour me
and call me whore.
I am so pretty
it is scary. I am so gentle
it hurts. Who could predict
the havoc I will wreak so wryly,
a smile coiling into my red lips?
Soon you will see me
saunter out of this ruined garden,
juice leaking from my mouth.
You will be right behind me.
I will throw you back
that bone I took from you.
I am a beautiful bone
cracked off your cage,
wrangled out of your viscera.
I am a salvaged appendage,
art from found object,
a gore-streaked crutch
for you to lean on,
a satiating afterthought
to soothe the wound
I made in your flesh.
Just like I ran with that rib,
I will believe and repeat
every story I am told.
Some stories will grow skin
and call me mother.
Others will devour me
and call me whore.
I am so pretty
it is scary. I am so gentle
it hurts. Who could predict
the havoc I will wreak so wryly,
a smile coiling into my red lips?
Soon you will see me
saunter out of this ruined garden,
juice leaking from my mouth.
You will be right behind me.
I will throw you back
that bone I took from you.
A Man Gets in Line at the Thrift Store
He is carrying a mannequin’s torso
dressed in short white satin.
The dress hugs the slight curves
of her hips and breasts
perfectly.
He is clutching her headless body
under his arm,
as though she has misbehaved
in the store,
and if she had limbs,
they would be flailing.
If she had a mouth, it might be screaming.
Or perhaps rather than an unruly
pageant toddler,
she is an unconscious prom date,
or even a Vegas bride,
passed out on the way to the altar.
In any case, he must pay for her.
Another man gets in line
behind this one. He inquires
about the dress and who it is for.
The man with the dress tells him
it is for his girlfriend, if she’ll have it.
The other man marvels at a girlfriend
that-perfectly-mannequin-sized and the fact(?)
that this man knows which size dress
to buy, and that the girlfriend
would consent to wear
another woman’s dress
she hasn’t yet tried on.
This other man
has lived a long time.
The man with the mannequin
says he knows his girl pretty well
and he thinks she’ll like it.
He clunks
the gussied up plastic torso
onto the counter. The cashier tells him
he cannot buy the mannequin.
He watches as the cashier
unzips the dress,
undoes the pins
holding the dress against
the mannequin’s cold body,
once having created a crude illusion
of fitting. The white satin
slides off in a milky swoosh.
The cashier places it carefully
in a plastic bag, as though it is skin
a snake just shed.
And the man leaves, deflated,
the bag swinging from his hand.
Sara Jeanine Smith was born in central Florida and grew up in the Florida panhandle. She is an assistant professor of English at Pensacola State College and the mother of two daughters. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Gyroscope Review, Pigeonholes, Roanoke Review, The Stirling Spoon, Psaltery & Lyre, and Hurricane Review. Her chapbook entitled Queen and Stranger was published by USPOCO Books in 2019. See more of her work at sarajeaninesmith.com..
He is carrying a mannequin’s torso
dressed in short white satin.
The dress hugs the slight curves
of her hips and breasts
perfectly.
He is clutching her headless body
under his arm,
as though she has misbehaved
in the store,
and if she had limbs,
they would be flailing.
If she had a mouth, it might be screaming.
Or perhaps rather than an unruly
pageant toddler,
she is an unconscious prom date,
or even a Vegas bride,
passed out on the way to the altar.
In any case, he must pay for her.
Another man gets in line
behind this one. He inquires
about the dress and who it is for.
The man with the dress tells him
it is for his girlfriend, if she’ll have it.
The other man marvels at a girlfriend
that-perfectly-mannequin-sized and the fact(?)
that this man knows which size dress
to buy, and that the girlfriend
would consent to wear
another woman’s dress
she hasn’t yet tried on.
This other man
has lived a long time.
The man with the mannequin
says he knows his girl pretty well
and he thinks she’ll like it.
He clunks
the gussied up plastic torso
onto the counter. The cashier tells him
he cannot buy the mannequin.
He watches as the cashier
unzips the dress,
undoes the pins
holding the dress against
the mannequin’s cold body,
once having created a crude illusion
of fitting. The white satin
slides off in a milky swoosh.
The cashier places it carefully
in a plastic bag, as though it is skin
a snake just shed.
And the man leaves, deflated,
the bag swinging from his hand.
Sara Jeanine Smith was born in central Florida and grew up in the Florida panhandle. She is an assistant professor of English at Pensacola State College and the mother of two daughters. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Gyroscope Review, Pigeonholes, Roanoke Review, The Stirling Spoon, Psaltery & Lyre, and Hurricane Review. Her chapbook entitled Queen and Stranger was published by USPOCO Books in 2019. See more of her work at sarajeaninesmith.com..
Kory Vance Sacramento, CA 3 poems
Butter and Sugar
The Good Lord and his pearly white heaven blessed my childhood with ragweed and vinegar. Rice vinegar from the Ozark wetlands. We kids sat around garden sprinklers and drank the vinegar out of Mason Jars. Our mucky paws smudged the glass. Later my peers-draped in Dixie-went to Washington and attempted an insurrection.
***
There’s vinegar on our lips
And it’s so-so humid
Clumping up the sugar jar
The kitchen counter’s
covered in
Globby melted
butter and
The kids are getting hungry
How should we set the table for supper?
***
The mud in Missouri isn’t like all the other mud. It’s heavy and red. It sticks to you like suction cups. We had shoes that picked it up-the clay/mud-and it became them by 90%-engulfed. Might even lose a rubber boot. We walked out of the mud in the big shoe clumps-big shoes. We thought we filled them.
***
Everyone needs a southern feast
We need it greasy
fat
and sweet
Raised and reared to smoke the meat
The woods are filled
With
Hickory
So fire it up
Put on the supper
Call up the neighbors
Put out the butter
***
Our customs gave us politics like a gummed-up carburetor. Flush it out and get-goin! Every Missouri boy has hands covered in grease and tar. Even collared shirts and smart phones can’t scrub that out of our DNA. Some of us settled in the ground moss of those familiar Mark Twain Forest hills. Some of us traveled to space.
***
Pucker up!
Pucker up!
It’s barbeque
With vinegar!
Please pass the bread
Good senator
It’s to your right
We’re to your left
***
Corn fields were our mountains. We climbed them with combines and hay rides. Also with our grandads shucking corn cobs-learning to pull off almost every sticky string. That the money in corn is a trap-we only knew it in whispers. That crop chains you to a tractor and a dying ground. We never knew the people in the lab coats cooking it down, let alone the men buying yachts off the yellow profit. All the while, the rage on red was taught in 9 a.m. Sunday School.
***
Supper needs a glob of sauce
and boy
oh
boy
we need it hot
We’re Southern Born
We need it sweet
so boy
oh
boy
who adds the corn?
Who adds the corn?
Who adds the corn?
Who adds the corn
adds the power
Stir it up
Stir it up
Stir in the corn
hide the sour
***
Me and mine, we really tried not to hate. Knowing how was hard before Twitter. We always had butter in the house, two or three sticks in the fridge, and a half of one out on the counter under a knick-knack “china” dish. We had sugar, too, both in a rolled-up paper bag pushed way back in the cabinet behind chocolate chips and corn syrup, and also in a ceramic jar by the microwave. The kitchen floor was peel ‘n stick “tile” and there was a horizontal strip of faded wallpaper with images of flowers and roosters. We kept the plastic bottles of Wal-Mart white vinegar under the sink with the bleach.
***
It’s time for the good moms of the world to come into play
They always break up the sugar clumps
Pull back their hair and clear the clutter
Roll up their sleeves and place the butter
The kids are waiting
Hunger
Hunger
Hunger
In the words of mother
It’s time for supper
***
AND THE CHOIR SINGS
Praise! Praise!
Praise be to God!
Praise be to Allah, Vishnu, Odin and Buddha!
Give praise for Heaven and Earth
Give Praise for Butter and Sugar!
The Good Lord and his pearly white heaven blessed my childhood with ragweed and vinegar. Rice vinegar from the Ozark wetlands. We kids sat around garden sprinklers and drank the vinegar out of Mason Jars. Our mucky paws smudged the glass. Later my peers-draped in Dixie-went to Washington and attempted an insurrection.
***
There’s vinegar on our lips
And it’s so-so humid
Clumping up the sugar jar
The kitchen counter’s
covered in
Globby melted
butter and
The kids are getting hungry
How should we set the table for supper?
***
The mud in Missouri isn’t like all the other mud. It’s heavy and red. It sticks to you like suction cups. We had shoes that picked it up-the clay/mud-and it became them by 90%-engulfed. Might even lose a rubber boot. We walked out of the mud in the big shoe clumps-big shoes. We thought we filled them.
***
Everyone needs a southern feast
We need it greasy
fat
and sweet
Raised and reared to smoke the meat
The woods are filled
With
Hickory
So fire it up
Put on the supper
Call up the neighbors
Put out the butter
***
Our customs gave us politics like a gummed-up carburetor. Flush it out and get-goin! Every Missouri boy has hands covered in grease and tar. Even collared shirts and smart phones can’t scrub that out of our DNA. Some of us settled in the ground moss of those familiar Mark Twain Forest hills. Some of us traveled to space.
***
Pucker up!
Pucker up!
It’s barbeque
With vinegar!
Please pass the bread
Good senator
It’s to your right
We’re to your left
***
Corn fields were our mountains. We climbed them with combines and hay rides. Also with our grandads shucking corn cobs-learning to pull off almost every sticky string. That the money in corn is a trap-we only knew it in whispers. That crop chains you to a tractor and a dying ground. We never knew the people in the lab coats cooking it down, let alone the men buying yachts off the yellow profit. All the while, the rage on red was taught in 9 a.m. Sunday School.
***
Supper needs a glob of sauce
and boy
oh
boy
we need it hot
We’re Southern Born
We need it sweet
so boy
oh
boy
who adds the corn?
Who adds the corn?
Who adds the corn?
Who adds the corn
adds the power
Stir it up
Stir it up
Stir in the corn
hide the sour
***
Me and mine, we really tried not to hate. Knowing how was hard before Twitter. We always had butter in the house, two or three sticks in the fridge, and a half of one out on the counter under a knick-knack “china” dish. We had sugar, too, both in a rolled-up paper bag pushed way back in the cabinet behind chocolate chips and corn syrup, and also in a ceramic jar by the microwave. The kitchen floor was peel ‘n stick “tile” and there was a horizontal strip of faded wallpaper with images of flowers and roosters. We kept the plastic bottles of Wal-Mart white vinegar under the sink with the bleach.
***
It’s time for the good moms of the world to come into play
They always break up the sugar clumps
Pull back their hair and clear the clutter
Roll up their sleeves and place the butter
The kids are waiting
Hunger
Hunger
Hunger
In the words of mother
It’s time for supper
***
AND THE CHOIR SINGS
Praise! Praise!
Praise be to God!
Praise be to Allah, Vishnu, Odin and Buddha!
Give praise for Heaven and Earth
Give Praise for Butter and Sugar!
Roses on Your Table
I saw the roses on your table
I could not have pulled in a breath
Even with a winch bolted to my sternum
That surprised me
It must be true
I missed our chance
I always was afraid of the feast
A mon born for goat keeping
Prayer
And celibacy
Now I’ve made my home
On whims and barstools
And slept in mud
Despite room in the stable
I smell bread when you smile
I saw the roses on your table
I saw the roses on your table
I could not have pulled in a breath
Even with a winch bolted to my sternum
That surprised me
It must be true
I missed our chance
I always was afraid of the feast
A mon born for goat keeping
Prayer
And celibacy
Now I’ve made my home
On whims and barstools
And slept in mud
Despite room in the stable
I smell bread when you smile
I saw the roses on your table
A Mouse Named Heaven
Let me be the one to hold you-let me be the one to hold you
Even if my hands get cold
Let me be the one to hold you
The wind picks up-the wind gets cold
We bought a little house with wooden floors and paneled cupboards
The little house was full of mice on our floors and in our cupboards
You loved the little mice-we let them roam on our floors and in our cupboards
You loved the little mice-we gave each mouse a name
We named each little mouse exactly the same name
Every little mouse in our little house was named Heaven
Let me be the one to hold you-let me be the one to hold you
Even if my hands get cold
Let me be the one to hold you
The point of love is growing old
A mouse named Heaven opened a mousetrap factory
All the little mice worked in the mousetrap factory
All the little mice believed in love and democracy
The mice had no time for love or democracy
All the mice died inside the mousetrap factory
The mousetrap factory was named Heaven
Let me be the one to hold you-let me be the one to hold you
Even if my hands get cold
Let me be the one to hold you
I have no god-I want no gold
The little mice don’t get a grave-they’ve already been to Heaven
All the graves would say the same-this mouse is still in Heaven
Then all the mice who visit graves-would see what Heaven gives
They’d stand outside the church and shout-To Hell with all this Heaven!
Then all the little mice are renegades-only God would love them
Let me be the one to hold you-let me be the one to hold you
Even if my hands get cold
Let me be the one to hold you
The wind picks up-the wind gets cold
Kory Vance is a poet and affordable housing advocate originally from Southeast Missouri. He currently lives in Sacramento and in his free time enjoys strongman and dark beer. You can find his work in The Salmon Creek Journal and HASH Journal, and follow his Instagram at @koryvance.poemz..
Let me be the one to hold you-let me be the one to hold you
Even if my hands get cold
Let me be the one to hold you
The wind picks up-the wind gets cold
We bought a little house with wooden floors and paneled cupboards
The little house was full of mice on our floors and in our cupboards
You loved the little mice-we let them roam on our floors and in our cupboards
You loved the little mice-we gave each mouse a name
We named each little mouse exactly the same name
Every little mouse in our little house was named Heaven
Let me be the one to hold you-let me be the one to hold you
Even if my hands get cold
Let me be the one to hold you
The point of love is growing old
A mouse named Heaven opened a mousetrap factory
All the little mice worked in the mousetrap factory
All the little mice believed in love and democracy
The mice had no time for love or democracy
All the mice died inside the mousetrap factory
The mousetrap factory was named Heaven
Let me be the one to hold you-let me be the one to hold you
Even if my hands get cold
Let me be the one to hold you
I have no god-I want no gold
The little mice don’t get a grave-they’ve already been to Heaven
All the graves would say the same-this mouse is still in Heaven
Then all the mice who visit graves-would see what Heaven gives
They’d stand outside the church and shout-To Hell with all this Heaven!
Then all the little mice are renegades-only God would love them
Let me be the one to hold you-let me be the one to hold you
Even if my hands get cold
Let me be the one to hold you
The wind picks up-the wind gets cold
Kory Vance is a poet and affordable housing advocate originally from Southeast Missouri. He currently lives in Sacramento and in his free time enjoys strongman and dark beer. You can find his work in The Salmon Creek Journal and HASH Journal, and follow his Instagram at @koryvance.poemz..
Brendan Walsh Fort Lauderdale, FL 2 poems
god. 5
the text message, sent in haste, a small typo,
says, “how beautiful is three moths off?”
which was supposed to be about summer,
but is still absolute in its poetry,
which makes me believe that language
is an element akin to god. remember
on mosquito-soaked july nights,
sneaking liquor by the back porch,
half-drained vodka bottles stashed under piles
of composting leaves, the woods loud with peepers,
three moths off the faint yellow dome bulb
flapped like pillow cases into hotmidnight.
the text message, sent in haste, a small typo,
says, “how beautiful is three moths off?”
which was supposed to be about summer,
but is still absolute in its poetry,
which makes me believe that language
is an element akin to god. remember
on mosquito-soaked july nights,
sneaking liquor by the back porch,
half-drained vodka bottles stashed under piles
of composting leaves, the woods loud with peepers,
three moths off the faint yellow dome bulb
flapped like pillow cases into hotmidnight.
god. 26
fiddler crabs fall from mangroves
into pocked mud. a wild metronome.
click-quiet-click, click-quiet-click,
their bodies bounce and recover.
there’s no word for reverence
that feels adequate. this isn’t sunrise
or a flock of ten thousand cranes,
yet the ground makes music of
clumsiness. crab colonies climb,
drop, dig, pick algae from roots,
their faces all abubble with progress
that deadens only a second, until,
mud scooped from their periscope eyes,
they set off towards another tree.
i’ve been given so much in this life.
Brendan Walsh has lived and taught in South Korea, Laos, and South Florida. His work appears in Rattle, Glass Poetry, American Literary Review, and other journals. He is the winner of America Magazine's 2020 Foley Poetry Prize, and the author of five collections, including Buddha vs. Bonobo (Sutra Press), and fort lauderdale (Grey Book Press). His chapbook concussion fragment, winner of the 2021 Elsewhere Chapbook Prize, is forthcoming from Elsewhere Press. He’s online at www.brendanwalshpoetry.com.
fiddler crabs fall from mangroves
into pocked mud. a wild metronome.
click-quiet-click, click-quiet-click,
their bodies bounce and recover.
there’s no word for reverence
that feels adequate. this isn’t sunrise
or a flock of ten thousand cranes,
yet the ground makes music of
clumsiness. crab colonies climb,
drop, dig, pick algae from roots,
their faces all abubble with progress
that deadens only a second, until,
mud scooped from their periscope eyes,
they set off towards another tree.
i’ve been given so much in this life.
Brendan Walsh has lived and taught in South Korea, Laos, and South Florida. His work appears in Rattle, Glass Poetry, American Literary Review, and other journals. He is the winner of America Magazine's 2020 Foley Poetry Prize, and the author of five collections, including Buddha vs. Bonobo (Sutra Press), and fort lauderdale (Grey Book Press). His chapbook concussion fragment, winner of the 2021 Elsewhere Chapbook Prize, is forthcoming from Elsewhere Press. He’s online at www.brendanwalshpoetry.com.
Kelly Weber Fort Collins, CO 2 poems
Omphalos: Termed
At the center of the wind I was not born
but cut free. This is how you be a person
the world will call a woman my mother told
me. Chewed loose. We nearly died.
Afterwards she held me and in my mouth slipped
coals. I learned to spit up poison
by filling my belly with flammable griefs.
When I was thirteen I remembered the sound
of her downpour and followed to be born again.
She drew circles around my new nipples
and said You can be everything that you are.
I climbed to the deer stand at the coldest blue hour
and waited for breath to appear. Grace
held in the body, deep in a nine-months’ winter
I enter once again.
At the center of the wind I was not born
but cut free. This is how you be a person
the world will call a woman my mother told
me. Chewed loose. We nearly died.
Afterwards she held me and in my mouth slipped
coals. I learned to spit up poison
by filling my belly with flammable griefs.
When I was thirteen I remembered the sound
of her downpour and followed to be born again.
She drew circles around my new nipples
and said You can be everything that you are.
I climbed to the deer stand at the coldest blue hour
and waited for breath to appear. Grace
held in the body, deep in a nine-months’ winter
I enter once again.
Omphalos: Shorn
My mother learned to mother
from a woman who wished her a boy, cut
her daughter’s hair and wept to her nightly
the shredded days she could not bear.
A house filled with a man’s loaded rifles
and cloth that could never be made clean.
The slap of her hand to my mother’s face
the sound of a ring teaching blood to rise
to meet skin. The light of the TV a baptism
revealing all her father’s sharp points.
The first time my mother posed nude
for a woman to paint she found a way
into beautiful. The first time she guided
my father’s hand I heard the clock unwind
its teeth, its pendulum the ungrown pulse
of night and all its tongues—broken
surfaces, what we labor forth to light.
Kelly Weber is the author of the debut poetry collection We Are Changed to Deer at the Broken Place (Tupelo Press, 2022) and the chapbook The Dodo Heart Museum (Dancing Girl Press, 2021). Her work has received Pushcart nominations and has appeared or is forthcoming in The Laurel Review, Brevity, The Missouri Review, The Journal, Palette Poetry, Southeast Review, Passages North, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Colorado State University and lives in Colorado with two rescue cats. More of her work can be found at kellymweber.com.
My mother learned to mother
from a woman who wished her a boy, cut
her daughter’s hair and wept to her nightly
the shredded days she could not bear.
A house filled with a man’s loaded rifles
and cloth that could never be made clean.
The slap of her hand to my mother’s face
the sound of a ring teaching blood to rise
to meet skin. The light of the TV a baptism
revealing all her father’s sharp points.
The first time my mother posed nude
for a woman to paint she found a way
into beautiful. The first time she guided
my father’s hand I heard the clock unwind
its teeth, its pendulum the ungrown pulse
of night and all its tongues—broken
surfaces, what we labor forth to light.
Kelly Weber is the author of the debut poetry collection We Are Changed to Deer at the Broken Place (Tupelo Press, 2022) and the chapbook The Dodo Heart Museum (Dancing Girl Press, 2021). Her work has received Pushcart nominations and has appeared or is forthcoming in The Laurel Review, Brevity, The Missouri Review, The Journal, Palette Poetry, Southeast Review, Passages North, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Colorado State University and lives in Colorado with two rescue cats. More of her work can be found at kellymweber.com.
Stephen Scott Whitaker Onley, VA
What It’s Like to Get Up and Go to Work When the Black Cowl of Depression Covers Your Face
Into space, I was falling. Backward, I was. Into space, I fall, tumbling in the nothing that is the belly of me, falling. I had fallen and will fall backward through a door inside me where I fell belly first into the backward of it. The falling into me, a moveable space falling in on itself, collapsing inward as I walk and sit and write checks and pretend to not be falling, to be anything but falling when falling is all there is happening inside my space. The matter of me, the matter of all I can be and want to be, for that matter, the matter of my body, my breast, my great flutter, so what if I fall down an abyss in the middle of my heart? I already fell. It’s the falling that gets you, it never ends.
Stephen Scott Whitaker (@SScottWhitaker) is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the co-editor of The Broadkill Review. A teaching artist with the Virginia Commission for the Arts, an educator, and a grant writer, Whitaker’s work is forthcoming or has appeared in The Rumpus, The Maine Review, Great River Review, Oxford Poetry, The Best of Helios Quarterly & The Southern Poetry Review Series: Virginia. Mulch, a novel of weird fiction is forthcoming from Montag Press in 2021.
Into space, I was falling. Backward, I was. Into space, I fall, tumbling in the nothing that is the belly of me, falling. I had fallen and will fall backward through a door inside me where I fell belly first into the backward of it. The falling into me, a moveable space falling in on itself, collapsing inward as I walk and sit and write checks and pretend to not be falling, to be anything but falling when falling is all there is happening inside my space. The matter of me, the matter of all I can be and want to be, for that matter, the matter of my body, my breast, my great flutter, so what if I fall down an abyss in the middle of my heart? I already fell. It’s the falling that gets you, it never ends.
Stephen Scott Whitaker (@SScottWhitaker) is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the co-editor of The Broadkill Review. A teaching artist with the Virginia Commission for the Arts, an educator, and a grant writer, Whitaker’s work is forthcoming or has appeared in The Rumpus, The Maine Review, Great River Review, Oxford Poetry, The Best of Helios Quarterly & The Southern Poetry Review Series: Virginia. Mulch, a novel of weird fiction is forthcoming from Montag Press in 2021.
Sarah Renee Wollstonecraft Toledo, OH 2 poems
taste of well water
we don’t raise these kids
anymore, we grow them
rapid, wiry, sturdy
stalked, and disease resistant--
pour pesticides in the two percent,
opioids into the water. they blossom
legs in the morning, photosynthesize
off broken bike reflectors. behold
their holy glow. they profligate, find
curious hungers. in each of them
the allure of an open well—
sweet june bugs crawl up your wrists.
to jump would be to drown them.
baby’s breath catches the breeze
and whispers to them, there is more
to know in your fear than comfort.
in the three hundred foot reflection,
there is this to be discerned:
you are here as much as there, you
are winter’s ice, summer’s ash.
you were born for dying times.
you are worshiping concave gardens
growing bitter apples, sour plums.
we don’t know who this was meant
to feed, but it was never us.
we don’t raise these kids
anymore, we grow them
rapid, wiry, sturdy
stalked, and disease resistant--
pour pesticides in the two percent,
opioids into the water. they blossom
legs in the morning, photosynthesize
off broken bike reflectors. behold
their holy glow. they profligate, find
curious hungers. in each of them
the allure of an open well—
sweet june bugs crawl up your wrists.
to jump would be to drown them.
baby’s breath catches the breeze
and whispers to them, there is more
to know in your fear than comfort.
in the three hundred foot reflection,
there is this to be discerned:
you are here as much as there, you
are winter’s ice, summer’s ash.
you were born for dying times.
you are worshiping concave gardens
growing bitter apples, sour plums.
we don’t know who this was meant
to feed, but it was never us.
hello, we haven’t met
when summer heat shifts
to raging skies, when crimson
thickets scratch their way
through my garden, i know god
has forgotten my name.
i am held on trial, held fast
by my naked neck when i realize
god’s fear of me. i am a face
god cannot recognize, i am
a god unto god. hell leaks
into my penny flats, burns
behind me as i walk. the moment
i stop moving i will fall beneath
the earth. my death may bring
questions, my birth only more.
when i make nice with your god
i will say only this:
that i believe love to be infinite,
and painful, and like anything
worthwhile, it is founded
in mercy and grace. any cruelty
from love is a horrific misnomer
and there can be no polite
disagreement to this. here,
i will conclude early, collect
my scattered papers and inform god
there is nothing more for us to discuss.
Sarah Renee Wollstonecraft is a poet and rogue librarian currently haunting the greater Toledo area. She received her BFA in creative writing in 2018 from BGSU. Her poetry has been featured in Lucky Jefferson, Mangrove, and Asterism. Her fiction has been featured in the Same where she was nominated for a pushcart prize.
when summer heat shifts
to raging skies, when crimson
thickets scratch their way
through my garden, i know god
has forgotten my name.
i am held on trial, held fast
by my naked neck when i realize
god’s fear of me. i am a face
god cannot recognize, i am
a god unto god. hell leaks
into my penny flats, burns
behind me as i walk. the moment
i stop moving i will fall beneath
the earth. my death may bring
questions, my birth only more.
when i make nice with your god
i will say only this:
that i believe love to be infinite,
and painful, and like anything
worthwhile, it is founded
in mercy and grace. any cruelty
from love is a horrific misnomer
and there can be no polite
disagreement to this. here,
i will conclude early, collect
my scattered papers and inform god
there is nothing more for us to discuss.
Sarah Renee Wollstonecraft is a poet and rogue librarian currently haunting the greater Toledo area. She received her BFA in creative writing in 2018 from BGSU. Her poetry has been featured in Lucky Jefferson, Mangrove, and Asterism. Her fiction has been featured in the Same where she was nominated for a pushcart prize.
Ellen June Wright
Even On Her Days Off Mother Rose Early
I'm not sure when I ever saw her linger in her bed
except if she was very ill or comforting us
until we fell asleep beside her. On days off,
she found another house to clean besides her own.
On woman's wages, she provided like a man.
She and the network of island women just like her
laughed loud and chatted patois on the phone like market day--
grown folks business we were not supposed to hear.
Leave de room and fine suppen else fe do
and ‘member there’s a God. Press ya clothes
for Sabbath. Worship, our weekly holiday--
to thank Him for all that He had done.
I'm not sure when I ever saw her linger in her bed
except if she was very ill or comforting us
until we fell asleep beside her. On days off,
she found another house to clean besides her own.
On woman's wages, she provided like a man.
She and the network of island women just like her
laughed loud and chatted patois on the phone like market day--
grown folks business we were not supposed to hear.
Leave de room and fine suppen else fe do
and ‘member there’s a God. Press ya clothes
for Sabbath. Worship, our weekly holiday--
to thank Him for all that He had done.
Self Portrait with Affirmations
You are the universe, galaxies
everything rolled into one celestial container.
Look at your limbs, look at the tips of your fingers.
See what God has made
see how finely wrought you are
perfect inside and out.
You, brown woman, are so much that
you are more than enough
more than anyone should want
more than anyone deserves.
People should tell you every day
you fascinate them?
You are a branch of science onto yourself.
You could be studied for eons.
You are God’s prototype for perfection.
Look in the mirror and see mother earth in your face.
Look in the mirror and see God's grace.
If Jesus came today, he'd come as you.
Be lifted up and draw all men unto you.
You, black woman,
survivor of many ocean voyages
the auction block, master’s wrath
cotton fields, tobacco crop,
boll weevil, great migration.
You, black woman,
mother to nations
giver of all good things
daughter of the Most High.
Ellen June Wright’s poetry has most recently been published in River Mouth Review, Santa Fe Writers Project, New York Quarterly, The Elevation Review, The Caribbean Writer and, is forthcoming in, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. Her work was selected as The Missouri Review’s Poem of the Week for their website. She was a finalist in the Gulf Stream 2020 summer poetry contest and is a founding member of Poets of Color virtual poetry workshop in New Jersey.
You are the universe, galaxies
everything rolled into one celestial container.
Look at your limbs, look at the tips of your fingers.
See what God has made
see how finely wrought you are
perfect inside and out.
You, brown woman, are so much that
you are more than enough
more than anyone should want
more than anyone deserves.
People should tell you every day
you fascinate them?
You are a branch of science onto yourself.
You could be studied for eons.
You are God’s prototype for perfection.
Look in the mirror and see mother earth in your face.
Look in the mirror and see God's grace.
If Jesus came today, he'd come as you.
Be lifted up and draw all men unto you.
You, black woman,
survivor of many ocean voyages
the auction block, master’s wrath
cotton fields, tobacco crop,
boll weevil, great migration.
You, black woman,
mother to nations
giver of all good things
daughter of the Most High.
Ellen June Wright’s poetry has most recently been published in River Mouth Review, Santa Fe Writers Project, New York Quarterly, The Elevation Review, The Caribbean Writer and, is forthcoming in, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. Her work was selected as The Missouri Review’s Poem of the Week for their website. She was a finalist in the Gulf Stream 2020 summer poetry contest and is a founding member of Poets of Color virtual poetry workshop in New Jersey.