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If you are a poet, prophet, peace-loving artist, if you are 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.
What do we mean when we say "your best work?" Or that we seek well-crafted poems that are thematically complex, emotionally nuanced, or "in your face,"
filled with images that excite wonder, mystery and dread, and challenge the reader to question their assumptions?
We hope you will enjoy reading this issue as much as our editors enjoyed answering that question by selecting these works.
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.
What do we mean when we say "your best work?" Or that we seek well-crafted poems that are thematically complex, emotionally nuanced, or "in your face,"
filled with images that excite wonder, mystery and dread, and challenge the reader to question their assumptions?
We hope you will enjoy reading this issue as much as our editors enjoyed answering that question by selecting these works.
May 2023 Issue # 29 Poetry
Jason Abbate * Emily Adams-Aucoin * Yael Aldana * Frank Carellini * Eleanor Claire * Jim Daniels * Denise Duhamel * Ashley Elizabeth * Melissa Eleftherion * Jacklin Farley * Jeff Friedman * Shannon Frost Greenstein * John Grey * James Hannon * Romana Iorga * Stephen Jordan * Frances Klein * Ethan Mackey * Sam Moe * Doug Ramspeck * henry 7. reneau, jr. * Kim Silva * Annie Stenzel * Melissa Tolentino * Sara Moore Wagner * Christian Ward * Madison Whatley * J.P. White * Robert Wilson * Maggie Yang
POETRY Launch Reading - Tuesday, May 9th at 7 PM ET
Please Register in Advance
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEvcuCrqDksEtDu4ZzQV0dU4i3UZmDROrdG
Please Register in Advance
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEvcuCrqDksEtDu4ZzQV0dU4i3UZmDROrdG
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Jason Abbate
How to Believe in Iceland
When you spotted me I swore that the sleeve of your white coat was a cast I was made out of nowhere You were made out of trembling Your smile corkscrewed my topsoil Your small skin said “there are so many places, it will be easy to find somewhere” We huddled behind the eye teeth of Paris, heavy with placebos and the drunk pulp of normalcy Should we have become the glass bricks we stacked against the city’s paper bridges? Should we have believed that one place is another, that three goes into none? I am made of brush strokes The boardwalk fortune teller said that I would hold everything too dearly like a kettle of boiling tears I know my role in the oxygen chamber The part was written for a larger man, more at ease with the gears who is too full to be swaddled in dream cloth who doesn’t believe in Iceland Not the diamond gorges Not the god of nonsense They will whisper some numbers and the years you’ve practiced being afraid of time will crack off like the last of the glaciers But I’m staying here, where the raindrops know the sound of my spine Jason Abbate lives and writes in New York City. His work has been included in publications such as Red Rock Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Black Heart Magazine, Subprimal and pif Magazine. He is the author of Welcome to Xooxville.
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Emily Adams-Aucoin
The Room
now we’ve finally come to the room that we were hoping, all along, to avoid. isn’t that how it happens? even as we turn away from something, we acknowledge its presence. in trying to erase it, we take part in its creation. the only way out is through. the only way through is in. stories of the room haunted my childhood. my mother warned me. these things are myth until they happen, & then they’re our immutable history. perhaps there was a path through some sunlit grove, maybe we missed it or assumed there would be another with louder birdsong, with clearer signs. forget it. we can’t rewind the bulk of our lives, all our questionable choices. if we could, the room wouldn’t be here; windowless, windowless & so very dark. Emily Adams-Aucoin is a poet from Upstate New York who now writes from Denham Springs, South Louisiana. Her poetry has been published in various anthologies, as well as in Electric Literature’s The Commuter, the Rappahannock Review, Split Rock Review, Meridian, and Colorado Review, among other publications. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @emilyapoetry, as well as her website www.emilyadamsaucoin.com.
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Yael Aldana
Eagle Ray
There is a boy naked slumped in a white
plastic patio chair, legs twisted around himself.
He was born wrong, his mother says, without
enough oxygen, his mother says, a part of him
missing, his mother says. He slumps on his back
porch facing the ocean. I am there too. His mother
hoses him off, his shower she says. Water drips from
his slight folded brown body. To me, she says, watch him
to me, his sister’s friend, his sister in parts unknown.
The mother leaves the slicked wet porch, edies swirling
on concrete. Why, I cannot remember. I cannot watch
the boy in this wretchedness, that his mother would
uncover his smooth unblemished skin fully before
a 12-year-old girl, his sister’s friend, his dignity flayed.
I watch the irregular tumbling surf, now cobalt blue,
now turquoise, now bleach white. Then, he comes,
his form wavering deep brown hugging sand in shallow
water, his darkened body undulates under his own
power, at his own speed. I look at the boy. Does
he see him too? This bay brown molted slip of a creature,
his skin’s darkness punctuated by uniquely white spangles,
the chestnut swooped tips of his wings breaking through
viscous thickness to touch air. The boy’s head remains
bowed, eyes turned away as the ray disappears
from our sight.
There is a boy naked slumped in a white
plastic patio chair, legs twisted around himself.
He was born wrong, his mother says, without
enough oxygen, his mother says, a part of him
missing, his mother says. He slumps on his back
porch facing the ocean. I am there too. His mother
hoses him off, his shower she says. Water drips from
his slight folded brown body. To me, she says, watch him
to me, his sister’s friend, his sister in parts unknown.
The mother leaves the slicked wet porch, edies swirling
on concrete. Why, I cannot remember. I cannot watch
the boy in this wretchedness, that his mother would
uncover his smooth unblemished skin fully before
a 12-year-old girl, his sister’s friend, his dignity flayed.
I watch the irregular tumbling surf, now cobalt blue,
now turquoise, now bleach white. Then, he comes,
his form wavering deep brown hugging sand in shallow
water, his darkened body undulates under his own
power, at his own speed. I look at the boy. Does
he see him too? This bay brown molted slip of a creature,
his skin’s darkness punctuated by uniquely white spangles,
the chestnut swooped tips of his wings breaking through
viscous thickness to touch air. The boy’s head remains
bowed, eyes turned away as the ray disappears
from our sight.
Yael Aldana is a Caribbean Afro-Latinx writer and poet. Yael and her mother and her mother’s mother and so on are descendants of the indigenous people of modern-day Colombia. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Florida International University (FIU). Her work has appeared or is upcoming in Miniskirt Magazine, The Florida Book Review, Scapegoat Review, Antithesis Blog, and Slag Glass City. She teaches creative writing at FIU, and she lives in South Florida with her son and too many pets. You can find her online at YaelAldana.com.
Frank Carellini
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My father was a painter
and has likely made a masterpiece by now but i’d only recognize his earlier work, which resembled something like Saturn devouring his son —what we’ve come to inherit are brushes caked with ochre so as to know you is to pull each bristle from a heart of mud if you supposedly named this life portrait of an artist as recluse it would provide helpful context to the faces that elude me. i scavenge impressions on a linen cloth for the bridge of your nose —only shades remain what cannot be preserved with varnish are words unspoken as i tear apart a loaf of week-old bread ― what i feed as shadow: are koi & memory |
The year i was a woman
We name boulders and wolves as we do children. Assign engines animal noises. and genders. in Blombos cave a seashell hoarded as mirror; an ostrich egg, as metaphor for mother There’s some ex-lover antagonist we all weave into this plot or a lost father carved in ochre― Banana republic sends me ads for a corduroy dress and come to think, there was a year i was a woman. we name children our names as we do stars and boats and as we do, machines: Alexa, next please. |
Frank Carellini's automatic reply: frank is currently out of office and will return once he's figured out how to use a mirror. in case of emergency, please contact his mother
Eleanor Claire
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masquerade
maybe you were only ever pretending to be lightning maybe you were always water, moving moving moving before you became the stillness of night haven’t you written the same poem too many times? or are all poems the same, line after line of your fear, speaking into existence your own bruises, peeling back your skin to expose the same bones that were born broken – maybe you simply turned on the lights and called that filament home |
disappearing act
talk to me of the moon, how she always manages to come back after becoming darkness wrap me in nothingness and see if I shine, too – there is an empty room in a distant hall where I cloak myself in night and practice summoning my bones back from the dead I promise to never leave I promise to never leave for too long |
Eleanor Claire is a disabled, queer, and nonbinary South Floridian who works as a therapist in Chicago. She studied poetry at the University of Miami under Maureen Seaton and John Murillo. Their work has been featured or is forthcoming in The Cape Rock, In Parenthesis, Plainsongs Magazine, DeLuge Poetry Journal and others.
Jim Daniels
YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE A NATURAL WOMAN, 2015
Kennedy Center Honors for Carole King
when Aretha rises from the piano bench
and shrugs off her coat to give it
just a little bit more Aretha
the world turns into a calm sea
of the most beautiful floating birds
and the birds rise up
and Aretha rises up
and the birds spread their bold feathers
and her coat falls
and the woman who gifted the song
and the woman who unwrapped the song
and gifted it to the rest of us
are one, and Obama, the wise president,
knows when to just look on
and when to weep.
Kennedy Center Honors for Carole King
when Aretha rises from the piano bench
and shrugs off her coat to give it
just a little bit more Aretha
the world turns into a calm sea
of the most beautiful floating birds
and the birds rise up
and Aretha rises up
and the birds spread their bold feathers
and her coat falls
and the woman who gifted the song
and the woman who unwrapped the song
and gifted it to the rest of us
are one, and Obama, the wise president,
knows when to just look on
and when to weep.
Jim Daniels’ latest poetry collections include Gun/Shy, Wayne State University Press, and two chapbooks, The Human Engine at Dawn, Wolfson Press, and the forthcoming Comment Card, Carnegie Mellon University Press. His new fiction collection The Luck of the Fall, Michigan State University Press, will be published in fall 2023. A native of Detroit, he lives in Pittsburgh and teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA program.
Denise Duhamel
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Summer of Love
Decades before my mom left to live at Mount St. Rita’s Health Centre, she worked as a nurse there taking care of elderly patients― mostly nuns back then. She was surprised when they swore, their guards down at last. They no longer wore habits, their gray hair popping up in clumps or braided down their backs. Around that same time Sinead O’Connor was sent to a Catholic reform school in Ireland where the Magdalene Laundry Girls, grown old by then, were abandoned in an adjoining building—no medicine for their pain. As punishment, Sinead was made to sleep in the same room, their cries making her feel scared and useless, no way to help. Centuries before, St. Rita, the Patron Saint of Impossible Causes, was married at twelve, abused, and prayed for her sons’ deaths before they committed the mortal sin of murder. Later in life, she became a nun at Saint Magdalene’s after she levitated into the Italian convent. As an infant, bees swarmed into her mouth but didn’t sting. I was allergic to bees and no saint. St. Rita made peace, mended political feuds. My mother could mend feuds within the family but wasn’t always overtly political. I once asked her about the Vietnam War and the Summer of Love. She said it was all a blur―I was busy those days working and taking care of you. |
Last Picnic
We bundled her up and took her to Iggy’s in Narragansett. It was still chilly, early May, as she perched in her hooded jacket on the seat of her walker so she didn’t have to slide onto the wooden bench. Her great grandsons ran to the playground spinner and slides. My mother’s chowder flipped in the wind and landed on her lap. I wiped her up with a bunch of napkins. My sister rescued the bag of rolling clam cakes. Denise Duhamel’s most recent books of poetry are Second Story (Pittsburgh, 2021) and Scald (2017). Blowout (2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A former contributor to SoFloPoJo, she is a distinguished university professor in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami.
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Ashley Elizabeth
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brain teaser
my father buys me donald duck orange juice from mars the days i am home sick from school and i almost take it for granted. he is a simple man. who wants to do right by his family and in the eyes of some god. he has been this way. steadfast and stubborn for as long as i remember. for what i remember. some things do not change. but what has is the fact i am collecting pieces of my past like pokemon cards and i am still missing more than i think. there is no reason to it. something will just happen. something will turn a key in a long repressed something i will taste something. or hear something. or smell something. or see something. or touch something. and i am six, mixing crystal hot sauce in my mac and cheese from the roost and i am nine with a twisty cone in my hand and i am seven, sweetart wrappers littering my bedroom floor and bedside and i am twelve on broadway for the first time, lights turning my head every which way as we walk and i am sixteen, mashing potatoes with my grandmother with a fork and i am ten and quitting ballet and i am fifteen and getting yelled at by my tennis coach over my weight for the eighteenth time even though i have proven i can run and run and run some more, have told him suicides don’t bother me none and i am fourteen emptying my mother’s drainage and i am thirteen trying to kill myself for not the first time and i am eleven, dancing to my hello kitty boombox and i am nine trying to play basketball with my cousins and i am five sitting on the floor playing mario kart and trying to be better than him, beat him at something i can actually win and i am seven again at a crab feast/barbecue/family reunion in a backyard getting tore up by mosquitos but every minute is so worth it and i am fifteen smoking a black and mild on the way to the movie theater because i think it looks cool, and even cooler i think it will help me get my girlfriend back because she’s a smoker and i want nothing more than to taste her all day. and i am eight onstage in a tutu with graceful arms and legs and neck because as a ballerina, you must be fluid, moving at once, make it look easy and i am sick of trying to build and rebuild a life that shouldn’t have been shattered by nasty hands in the first place. |
Ashley Elizabeth (she/her) is a poet and teacher from Baltimore, MD. Her work has appeared in SWWIM, West Trestle Review, and Rigorous, among others. Ashley's chapbook collection, black has every right to be angry, is forthcoming from Alternating Current Press (Fall 2023). She habitually posts on Twitter and Instagram (both @ae_thepoet). She lives with her partner and their cats.
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Melissa Eleftherion
in the scales of empire we say we can’t go on
we circled anxious and multitasking at all times we kept toggling between many open browser tabs doing life admin paying medical bills and also struggling to find joy and we went to work and there were murder hornets and we went to work and there was monkeypox school shootings church shootings grocery store shootings nightclub shootings movie theatre shootings subway shootings parade shootings casino shootings backyard shootings park shootings shootings under the covers we are not religious but still we pray for no more shootings our town nearly burned down and we went to work we distributed N95 masks and bottled water gleaned hope from friends finding each other we practiced gratitudes and dried lemon balm took vitamins and shaved our legs we tried not to cry when we put on our masks we tried to brave the day our children got sick with Covid and we wore masks in the house we ate in separate rooms we were internet privileged we used g-chat to communicate and we masked back to work and there were confused bureaucrats and we went to work and distributed Covid tests we had dis-regulated nervous systems and studied stars to help aid our subconscious we spared our midsections with abdominal grapefruit squares and we worked and still we worked grateful to feed our families and we went to work and we all pretended this arsenic was food we looked for joy in the corners and joy in the shoulders of our partners and our undoing we looked for joy in the fur of the daily wilderness of discovery we just kept going Melissa Eleftherion (she/they) is the author of the full-length poetry collections field guide to autobiography (The Operating System, 2018), & gutter rainbows (forthcoming from Arteidolia Press, 2023), as well as eleven chapbooks from various small presses. Born & raised in Brooklyn, Melissa lives in Northern California where she manages the Ukiah Branch Library, curates the LOBA Reading Series, and serves as the Poet Laureate of Ukiah. Recent work is available at www.apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.
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Jacklin Farley
You’re Not Like the Other Emily Dickinsons
Only you could drip down the family staircase with all the classical elegance of a clothesline whipping wind like cream. Only you could make your guests question "Is she a ghost or really in the flesh?" Only you could lay a lily on the grave of a stranger's lap and call it an introduction, serve an entire dinner party without lifting a spoon, only your maiden's mind, your cut-throat tongue through steak and faint chatter to the medium-rare occasion of company. How clever you have been to make anyone believe you could be mastered, that you could be collected like a stamp in a book like good daughters and wives and sisters in any other respectable New England township. Oh, Emily, I wouldn't feel too bad about what's-his-face calling you “eccentric.” No one remembers stupid pastors or priests on account of there being so many of them, and even more sermons, all of them boring, pulpit-pushers pumping hot air up to heaven with all their bibles and thumping. What are they or any other man to you, an eternal bride of time, eternal spirit enduring mortal multiplicities and municipal magnitudes, words that do not suit your slick spinster-bun ambition, much less inspire good poems. Your covenant has never been with God or this world, anyway, but rather Death and Nature, and instead of burdening you with offspring as numerous as tesseract grains in a sugar cube universe, you give birth to yourself, over and over: On intimate slips of paper, you are born, over and over, each time so unlike any other girl listed under "Dickinson" in the phonebook. What I wouldn't give for a nickel to call you with, to stand in that London-style booth next to the diner at the edge of the galaxy, just to hear the fresh-flutter of your breath through the receiver. And my celestial body would speak your celestial body into oblivion from beyond the glass: "My God, I have never seen so much happening out a single window in my entire life!" and then you, putting down your fork, would say back: "I have." Jacklin Farley (she / her) is a second-year MFA student of poetry at Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL. Her work has appeared in The Decadent Review, Oakland Arts Review, and hedra helix. Vertical Divider
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Jeff Friedman
Performance Artist
She walks out on the stage to great applause and blows kisses to the audience to show she returns their love. When she begins, she can feel her voice rising from her diaphragm into her throat, gliding over her tongue, but no words come out—no sounds even. She lets her arms fall to her side and checks herself, straightening her spine and breathing in and out with long, slow breaths. She clears her throat soundlessly and begins again. The same thing happens—silence. The audience looks at her funny as though they had just seen something she had not wanted them to see. Whispers spread through the auditorium like the sound of crickets. She gathers herself one more time and with her chest filled with breath, blows her voice out of her body as though trying to snuff the sounds flickering in the dark of the auditorium. Though the voice is still soundless, the crowd members feel its heat on their faces and bodies. On stage, she folds into herself and then expands repeatedly, her song rising and falling. The crowd leaps to their feet, weeping with joy, opening their arms, shouting every single word they can’t hear her sing. Jeff Friedman’s tenth book, Ashes in Paradise, will be published by MadHat Press in the fall of 2023. Friedman’s poems and mini stories have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Poetry International, New England Review, Flash Fiction Funny, Best Microfiction 2021,2022 and 2023, and The New Republic. He has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship and numerous other awards. Meg Pokrass and Friedman’s co-written collection of microfiction, The House of Grana Padano, was published by Pelekinesis Press in 2022.
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John Grey
Our Old House
Our old house is now a fever in the brain. It’s buttons loose that no one cares to mend. It’s creaking bones. It’s chill getting in through gaps in the windows. You don’t understand. There are people locked up in there, They no longer recognize me. They live in fog and thickening of the arteries. One day, they will set fire to themselves. But, for now, they pretend the matches are children. I am weary from thinking about our old house. A ghost peaks out of the window. Another bends over the stove. Can you believe it but one of these phantoms is even singing in a harsh, decrepit voice. It is a dirge not a song of joy. Why won’t someone turn on the lights in our old house. The rats have left. Why not the white-haired captain. The dribbling first mate. But our old house is misapplied rouge, smudged lipstick, hopeless and heartless and as dry as a sermon. We move about but it never does. We change our address but it stays put with the earth that owns it. Some days it wraps a shredded scarf around its rooftop. Some nights, it cuts itself, bleeds the darkest blood. Vertical Divider
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Floyd County Moonshine. Latest books, Covert, Memory Outside, The Head, and Guest Of Myself are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and Open Ceilings.
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Shannon Frost Greenstein
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One Must Imagine Hippocrates Happy
“These days, I feel more like a car mechanic that no one trusts.” – Benjamin Currant, M.D.,* on the sacred art of medicine Part One Swaddled in leather, exuding testosterone, a smoldering cigarette clutched between his teeth, Albert Camus French Existentialist libertine heartthrob that he was would meet a sadly-Absurdist end amidst the twisted rubble of his trendy automobile on a winding road between Provence and Paris, one Monday in 1960. But before he departed – blowing smoke from pursed lips, penning metaphysics, cheating on his wife, gazing upon his glittering Nobel Prize – Camus told us that one must imagine Sisyphus happy. Camus said everything is chaos and the universe does not care; he said life has no meaning. He said we are all heroes just for being alive, so who cares that life has no meaning? Camus said to exist is absurd and he said to exist the fuck out of it for precisely that reason alone. So when I discovered yesterday morning that those shadows are actually cancer, I asked a friendly Medical Doctor acquaintance what the hell I am supposed to do right now. And as we discussed mortality and the unbelievable privilege that is my unfettered access to the best of Western Medicine, he said something that made me think of Sisyphus and how we choose to deal with the absurd curses we are dealt. * Name has been changed for privacy |
Part Two
I swear by Apollo the Physician…that according to my ability and judgement, I will keep this Oath and this contract.” – Hippocratic Oath[1] I tell my friend Dr. Ben that I venerate doctors as rock stars and he needs a full minute to stop himself from laughing. I will…benefit my patients according to my greatest ability and judgement, and I will do no harm or injustice to them. A car mechanic is how he tells me he feels and my favorite image of a leather-clad Camus, a billow of cigarette smoke like a halo, pops into my skull. One must imagine Sisyphus happy I say and picture the existential boredom of the same scalpel carving through the same extremities day after day in the exact same way. To heal is an art and to make art is to suffer. So long as I maintain this Oath faithfully and without corruption, may it be granted to me to partake…the practice of my art, gaining the respect of all men for all time. Camus tells us that being damned by Zeus can be a blessing in disguise; and Sisyphus teaches us about the sheer heroism that is choosing to take just one more step forward. Hippocrates made you swear not to use a knife I say and I do not need Dr. Ben to point out that this hypocrisy is about to save my life. Camus would be killed in a car wreck at the height of his popularity and the apogee of his thought, the father of philosophical Absurdity whose death itself was absurd; because given how much that man fucking smoked you’d think he would have ended up with cancer just like me. [1] Translation from the Greek by Ludwig Edelstein. From The Hippocratic Oath: Text, Translation, and Interpretation, by Ludwig Edelstein. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1943. |
Shannon Frost Greenstein ( she/her) resides in Philadelphia with her children and soulmate. She is the author of These Are a Few of My Least Favorite Things, a full-length book of poetry available from Really Serious Literature. Shannon is a former Ph.D. candidate in Continental Philosophy and a multi-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Pithead Chapel, Bending Genres, and elsewhere. Follow Shannon at shannonfrostgreenstein.com or on Twitter at @ShannonFrostGre.
James Hannon
Snake in the Sun
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The first position is snake in the sun.
Uncoil. Breathe. Absorb. Feel the earth along the length of your body. Feel the sun, bright, warm. The sun is a god. No, the sun is the sun. Start to feel trapped in this position. As you begin to rise, remember you have no legs. Settle back. Start to panic you have no legs. Breathe. Ride it out. You have had legs and will have legs again until you don’t have legs. The sun is not God, but God is great and made the sun. He is almighty. Picture a urinal. Reject a gendered divinity. Reject anthropomorphic gods. Absorb the earth, the heat. Recall a girlfriend from long ago. She loved you so much! |
You loved her so much until you didn’t.
What happened? Become sad. Breathe into it. It’s all right to feel sad. Consider impermanence. Become anxious. Breathe through it. What lasts? The sun. No, not even the sun. Stars burn out. Feel thirsty and start to rise. Snakes don’t need a lot of water and your legs are numb. Perhaps you’re paralyzed. No, you’re not. Even if not, you will die. Breathe through it. Ride it out. You should visit that old girlfriend. Breathe through it. Ride it out. Ask yourself, why am I doing this? Uncoil. Absorb. Feel the earth along the length of your body. Feel the sun, bright, warm. |
James Hannon is a psychotherapist in Massachusetts where he accompanies adolescents and adults recovering from trauma, mood disorders, and addictions. He has worked in hospitals, outpatient programs, methadone clinics, and prisons. His poems have appeared in Blue Lake Review, Cold Mountain Review, Psaltery and Lyre, Soundings East, and other journals and in Gathered: Contemporary Quaker Poets. His second collection, To My Children at Christmas (2022) was published by Kelsay Books.
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Romana Iorga
Reluctant Panegyric
Forget the vowels. Speak only in consonants. Thick-soiled like freshly plowed earth, thick-soled & thick-souled. Forgive me. I held a word all morning like a limp-necked bird in my hand. Would that it drank. That it opened its one lidless eye. That it sang. On mornings like this, each of the parallel lives I could have lived comes back to haunt me. Skinny. Barely dressed. Possibly mortal. Passably. Listen. Each day I guilt myself into action: pull words by the scruff of their necks from the bog while they still breathe foul language. I teach them to fly by flapping my own two arms in a mockery of ascent. Other birds are already high up, soaring in the thermals. I watch them from afar. Do you see them? Look! They are mere blots against the sky. This lumbering body has never seen more beautiful blots. Romana Iorga is the author of Temporary Skin (Glass Lyre Press, 2024) and a woman made entirely of air (Dancing Girl Press, 2023). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various journals, including New England Review, Lake Effect, The Nation, as well as on her poetry blog at clayandbranches.com.
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Stephen Jordan
So These Aliens With our halcyon sprawl in the crosshairs Target employees step into the sunlight blinking heavenward on a spread of parking lot concrete Flying in green arms akimbo spaceships on a bit of an angle lozenges in hand ‘cause when this goes down a throat could hurt no one to gainsay the invaders maybe some chicanery here and there full bottles of Nepenthe They travel with that surfeit of mettle you’d come to expect in otherworldly visitors Get inside the mall Hustling across the polished tiles past the Cinnabon grabbing from the Sunglasses Hut and tossing merch into that crackling-thick laser-beam sweet nectar of destruction running straight through three preppy boy shirts on the yeomanly stuff still underneath heading for new shoes ceiling showering down fake plants caramelized muzak feedback shrapnel crash the mannequins domino-ing take a leg for a knobkerrie who would argue howl and pound Ants at a picnic killed by weekenders Stephen Jordan was born and raised in the Midwest, the son of Colombian and Serbian immigrant parents. He has taught high school English for over twenty years, taking leaves of absence to live and work in South America, East Africa, and the UK. Steve has been published in Blue Unicorn, Lalitamba, The Raven Review, October Hill Magazine, Third Wednesday, Lotus-eater, English Journal, Lyrical Somerville, Common Chord Anthology, Down in the Dirt, Sparks of Calliope, and Gamut Magazine.
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Frances Klein
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What Arrives on Your Due Date
Here is a leaf, sun-dappled, still latched to the branch. Here is a monarch, fresh from the creche, too toddler-fingered to fly. Here is a squirrel, all rust and brush, gnawing its way through your Jack O’Lantern’s sinuses. Here is the snowglobe of memory with your aunt inside, one hand holds a geode, the other a hammer. Here is the nail the hammer was missing, picking the teeth of your vacuum. Here is nothing you asked for: an unraveled hem, a swarm of millipedes, six stitches above the thicket of your brow. Here is a shade of blue that has a name only in certain dead languages. Here is the living language of loss to coax open your jaw, place on your tongue the future, that bitter pill, to massage your throat until you swallow. |
What We Do After
When the word gets out that there is no God, and the sky closes like a lid, we all go on much the same as before. The old churches continue to be converted into Ramen lounges and Spirit Halloweens, the most famous saints still the ones with the glistening wet eggs of SuperBowl rings perched above their knuckles. We adjust to the way our prayers rebound, land shuddering at our feet like stunned starlings. We lived like there was no God when we thought there was one, but now that we know better, we go out of our way on the sidewalk to avoid crushing the line of black ants doggedly ferrying kernels of popcorn back to their hill. We keep extra bandages in our pockets to give to the children of strangers when they fall off their bikes. The bandages have characters on them from the cartoons we have continued to make even though there is no God, cartoons where the frog and bear say harsh words at first, then come together in the final minutes to share a blanket while they take turns looking through their telescope at the empty, star-filled sky. |
Frances Klein (she/her) is a poet and teacher writing at the intersection of disability and gender. She is the 2022 winner of the Robert Golden Poetry Prize, and the author of the chapbooks New and Permanent (Blanket Sea 2022) and The Best Secret (Bottlecap Press 2022). Klein currently serves as assistant editor of Southern Humanities Review.
Ethan Mackey
i’m a cool dad
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driving down the street
windows down, music loud. we stop at a red light by a sexy sports car redder than my neighbor’s wife’s tomato garden hotter than my wife’s passive aggressive comments about my socks on the floor. then there’s the driver, he has cool sunglasses. he slicked his cool hair. he flicked his cool cigarette. sunglasses says nice ride and laughs. the light turns green and his car explodes into the sunset while my minivan farts around the corner and I wonder how wet graham crackers got smooshed in my shirt again. |
later, after mild postcoital warm blue gatorade leftover from T-ball practice, I lay down in the refrigerator, the only way left I know how to be a cool dad hiding between the limp cucumbers and almond milk. in the morning, my children will pour what’s left of me in their cereal one third of me digested in their little bodies and the two thirds of me left to sour on the table after breakfast, myself evaporating into the air Ethan Mackey is a self-taught poet. He was recently displaced by Hurricane Ian and is writing to stay sane. |
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Sam Moe
Poppy Nucleus Heirloom
Rooting around in the tomato bins again, you ask why I keep lifting each individual pop, why am I always with half my arms in the water, into grapes but not grape soda, don’t care for ribs but ribeye and beefsteak, the vine and heirlooms in the bedroom that still smells like smoke, he’s gone but his presence lingers, as a presence does, as a presence is wont to do, his ashes inclined in the incline out back, near the alicante and salt patches, better boys and black krims, what’s with the bells and the softness, will some salt do or should we reach straight into the sugar jars, I wake early these days, I couldn’t name my own history if you wanted me to, if you pointed to a knife and said, here it is, will you take and name this sharp thing, I tell you it looks like my darling, my love, the creature which sets apart the center of all meat, you’re shaking your head, again, you ask, are we really doing this old song and dance but I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m living only for the moon and the occasions when we have dinner, we bring mints and creamy disks of icebox cake, the rubies and friars, sweetness of blood and amber, you mistake me this is about elephant hearts and action, greengage, and how my lips pucker for syrupy plumcots, this is about the relationship between plums and apricots but you’re worrying again about risk, should we even be opening the curtains later, won’t evening stars enter into the living room—and then what? more letters about cherry plums and butterscotch, what’s that old saying, writer who never met a word she didn’t find delicious, eats lemon icebox cookies right off the page, cutting the words with tiny golden bird scissors, not to be confused by the sharpness of the redbirds outside, not to be mistaken for a knife, let’s write the dinner on a roll of cloth, we can share the section that says maple-pecan, I’ll dab my mouth with slice and honey, you want hazelnut and the guests fight over who gets oatmeal raisin, someone smears chocolate chip with their palm, she has arrived with edible glitter and buttercream in cans, you ask if I’m going to write all of this into another poem, not to be mistaken for meal, candor, candy or love, not to be mistaken for hatred and survival, I will eat all the words, I will roll the table onto its side and slice the carvings, her initials and yours, and dip them into the fondant, I wish you believed me when I was standing over the sink, I told you I dreamt I had wings and I flew into a different life, you were too focused on what kind of bird I would be if I left would I have blue wings or green, would I miss eggnog for breakfast, would I be able to remember the sound of her laughter, why yes, I have it bottled in a jar on my nightstand, each day I release a little bit of the memory, and my heart turns to cranberry- orange sugar, I am chocolate slice and low on walnuts, dipping my heart in and out of the sink, the others mistake it for a tomato and eat it unbaked with salt. Sam Moe is the first-place winner of Invisible City’s Blurred Genres contest in 2022, and the 2021 recipient of an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her first chapbook, Heart Weeds, is out from Alien Buddha Press and her second chapbook, Grief Birds, is forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in Spring of 2023. You can find them on Twitter and Instagram as @SamAnneMoe.
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Doug Ramspeck
Crow Oracle
There is a song like a contagion in the air. It comes to us out of its own body, out of the manifold arms of day. I hear the quickening of your breaths as you wake. Hear the prophecy of crows. Once we blamed winter for the dying grass, blamed ice for the frozen stasis of the years. We grow old inside our thoughts, dreaming of how the early hours have come to seem like statuary. Then later we walk by the river where the crows wait disembodied and the orange sky is the artist’s room. The days paint themselves one into the next. We walk atop ice that almost will not hold. We hear the snow crunch into a primitive and secret language. And still the crows wait nowhere to be seen. They exist as whatever sound fissures air. They are a kind of faith. We remember them as those dark shapes or as living chips of sky. We give them names: forgotten covenant, first shroud. And we look for them amid the clouds with their scarred and muddy faces. Doug Ramspeck is the author of nine poetry collections, one collection of short stories, and a novella. His most recent book, Blur, received the Tenth Gate Prize. Individual poems have appeared in journals that include The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, Kenyon Review, Slate, and The Georgia Review.
Vertical Divider
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henry 7. reneau, jr.
child of God
innocence & dookie braids.
[her] contradictions
caustic & absolute.
yet, [she] would still deny it
if there were any other choice.
today, [she] combs & preens [her] Barbie doll.
tomorrow, [she] will test the effectiveness
of concrete, child-proof plastic
& applied, high velocity.
think strategic insanity
twisted, bent, & mangled―
the lamb’s shepherd & the lord of flies
rocking & swaying at the edge of things
just to watch you squirm.
God could only have a girl-child’s mind
caustic & absolute
pulling the wings from human lives
but doesn’t always have to make sense.
our daughters, whose hidden faces
are not their own
can hold a civil tongue that is Oscar-worthy
will forgive, but never
forget.
theirs is an exhausted compassion, the glacier
melt, grief-gigantic global warming the sea.
a shoreline abraded
by their absent father’s intermittent, sometimes
long distant love. [she] is the quiet one
yo mama warned you about, who can never resist
a sideways sarcastic smirk of plastic burning. [her] hyper-
melodramatic diss, & tongue-in-cheek contempt.
our daughters, whose every loss
is measured solely by a father’s absence.
think undefinable intent, a billion, seething desires
like a dormant dancing twinkle in the shadows
the sparkle in our daughters’ eyes, that doesn’t eat
and doesn't sleep.
innocence & dookie braids.
[her] contradictions
caustic & absolute.
yet, [she] would still deny it
if there were any other choice.
today, [she] combs & preens [her] Barbie doll.
tomorrow, [she] will test the effectiveness
of concrete, child-proof plastic
& applied, high velocity.
think strategic insanity
twisted, bent, & mangled―
the lamb’s shepherd & the lord of flies
rocking & swaying at the edge of things
just to watch you squirm.
God could only have a girl-child’s mind
caustic & absolute
pulling the wings from human lives
but doesn’t always have to make sense.
our daughters, whose hidden faces
are not their own
can hold a civil tongue that is Oscar-worthy
will forgive, but never
forget.
theirs is an exhausted compassion, the glacier
melt, grief-gigantic global warming the sea.
a shoreline abraded
by their absent father’s intermittent, sometimes
long distant love. [she] is the quiet one
yo mama warned you about, who can never resist
a sideways sarcastic smirk of plastic burning. [her] hyper-
melodramatic diss, & tongue-in-cheek contempt.
our daughters, whose every loss
is measured solely by a father’s absence.
think undefinable intent, a billion, seething desires
like a dormant dancing twinkle in the shadows
the sparkle in our daughters’ eyes, that doesn’t eat
and doesn't sleep.
(S)laughter
The smolder trapped in lint, suddenly sparked fire from the darkness, as
inwardly anxious as when They exit in panic, with or without intention,
one ruthless tradition of social ruination
for another.
And God laughs like children squee watching a cat chase a spot of light.
They viral increments of horrified insight after a habit of denial
when two contradictory truths exist in one place, the scientific
proof of global warming vs. the self-serving Republican, nay-
saying the way a car free-bases gasoline
refined from the bones of doomsday dinosaurs,
like the antidote's unmentioned nod to poison.
And God is bent over double like listening to a Richard Pryor album.
They Anthropocene acceleration towards extinction, like an auto-
erotic asphyxiation consumed by instant gratification. An idiot's laughter,
as hideously deranged as humanity itself, They buhloone-mind
go pop/pop/pop . . .
Like the imperialist age of 21st century gunshots. They crack high
kissing Jesus, as They sought omnipotence, a global-
I-zation, by way of free trade zones and drone strikes. Even before
it happened, everything They never believed
could happen,
would happen
—did happen.
And God falls off of his throne, laughing out loud, in hindsight of
the punch line. As They fashion a means to an end, the (es)scapegoat,
the disavowed killer,
a Lee Harvey Oswald,
manipulated into an air-conditioned trailer,
turned command bunker,
in Nevada. The way Amerikkka auto-erotic asphyxiates herself,
avoiding the truth They always knew, but never talked about.
The justifications,
now something feral, like the only way to get people thinking
is to let them fill in the silence
left in the void unanswered prayers
to an absent God.
The smolder trapped in lint, suddenly sparked fire from the darkness, as
inwardly anxious as when They exit in panic, with or without intention,
one ruthless tradition of social ruination
for another.
And God laughs like children squee watching a cat chase a spot of light.
They viral increments of horrified insight after a habit of denial
when two contradictory truths exist in one place, the scientific
proof of global warming vs. the self-serving Republican, nay-
saying the way a car free-bases gasoline
refined from the bones of doomsday dinosaurs,
like the antidote's unmentioned nod to poison.
And God is bent over double like listening to a Richard Pryor album.
They Anthropocene acceleration towards extinction, like an auto-
erotic asphyxiation consumed by instant gratification. An idiot's laughter,
as hideously deranged as humanity itself, They buhloone-mind
go pop/pop/pop . . .
Like the imperialist age of 21st century gunshots. They crack high
kissing Jesus, as They sought omnipotence, a global-
I-zation, by way of free trade zones and drone strikes. Even before
it happened, everything They never believed
could happen,
would happen
—did happen.
And God falls off of his throne, laughing out loud, in hindsight of
the punch line. As They fashion a means to an end, the (es)scapegoat,
the disavowed killer,
a Lee Harvey Oswald,
manipulated into an air-conditioned trailer,
turned command bunker,
in Nevada. The way Amerikkka auto-erotic asphyxiates herself,
avoiding the truth They always knew, but never talked about.
The justifications,
now something feral, like the only way to get people thinking
is to let them fill in the silence
left in the void unanswered prayers
to an absent God.
Download the pdf of this poem here:
| (S)laughter.pdf henry 7. reneau, jr. |
henry 7. reneau, jr. does not Twitter, Tik Tok, Facebook, Snapchat, or Instagram. It is not that he is scared of change, or stuck fast in the past; instead, he has learned from experience that the crack pipe kills. His work is published in Superstition Review, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Zone 3; South Florida Poetry Journal and New Note Poetry. His work has also been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
Kim Silva
The Pariah
The pariah grows without limitations; with satin fur and glossy fins, with dark green veins in the leaves for pushing, for kneading, for making milk flow. Circus days over. No longer will he jump through hoops of fire. Or seek the favors of those with long legs and arms and heads that sit like peanuts upon their stems. All kinds of animals—neighing, barking, scrabbling, snuffling—peacocks harsh cry like claws on bark; crocodiles simmering in a guttural pot of swamp. Pariah’s natures blend and integrate in his body. He lacks a skin; he lacks a computer brain. His heart beats like footsteps on solid earth. Neighbors shout, their white teeth flashing, chewing up their lawns to a one-inch carpet. Trees erased from memory in twenty minutes. Leaves blown and brushed and snorted in white lines. Butterfly cocoons boiled alive, making soup that giggles in the pot. Animals gleaming and pink-skinned in the fridge, dripping watery, pale lines of blood onto the tiled floor. The fox is a bear is a whale was once a lizard. Is a mountain. Is cold skin like a dynamite-blast. Is a green forest, raped and left for dead. Crippled scenery like corpses left to rot. The pariah dives from his pot through the living room window to the outside, towards the driveway, into the bed of rhododendrons. Splintered glass sparkles like diamonds all over the sleeping street and snoring lawns. The neighbors fly awake—the pariah; mangy, nasty, ticks, fleas. Rabies! Will kill us. The community communes—guns, knives, poisoned bait, steel traps. Don’t sleep, watch out for your pets. The pariah stumbles. His eyes sting. Tall steps; he feints left and right, through poisoned rivers, over bald forests. Scoops up coyotes and wolves that tremble behind trees. Using their eyes full of bullets, the neighbors aim at the creatures. Down go wolves, down go foxes, down go squirrels, possums. Down go talking rocks, big shots, semen in the cooler, down go grizzlies in their dens. Arms and legs and fists and spit. Darkness and moisture, poisoned earthworms. The pariah keeps running, past lazy boys and plywood splinters. The animals tumble and fall and scatter. The pariah casts a shadow like a long amnesiac, a twilight nap; picking up each and every hated and feared creature. Tucks them under his wings, disappears into clouds full of golf balls and missing shoes. A pariah who is a fox is a bear is a whale is a bird is a pariah. Flying to a gossamer hole in the sky, which opens like a mouth to swallow them all. And the carcasses are carried by the living up up up into the split hole of gossamer silk showing the brilliant blue that lies beyond and all the animals go through the hole and when it is done the hole closes up and the seam is seamless. And the streets are left empty and there is no sound to be heard, except of course for the eternal sound of the blower of leaves.
The pariah grows without limitations; with satin fur and glossy fins, with dark green veins in the leaves for pushing, for kneading, for making milk flow. Circus days over. No longer will he jump through hoops of fire. Or seek the favors of those with long legs and arms and heads that sit like peanuts upon their stems. All kinds of animals—neighing, barking, scrabbling, snuffling—peacocks harsh cry like claws on bark; crocodiles simmering in a guttural pot of swamp. Pariah’s natures blend and integrate in his body. He lacks a skin; he lacks a computer brain. His heart beats like footsteps on solid earth. Neighbors shout, their white teeth flashing, chewing up their lawns to a one-inch carpet. Trees erased from memory in twenty minutes. Leaves blown and brushed and snorted in white lines. Butterfly cocoons boiled alive, making soup that giggles in the pot. Animals gleaming and pink-skinned in the fridge, dripping watery, pale lines of blood onto the tiled floor. The fox is a bear is a whale was once a lizard. Is a mountain. Is cold skin like a dynamite-blast. Is a green forest, raped and left for dead. Crippled scenery like corpses left to rot. The pariah dives from his pot through the living room window to the outside, towards the driveway, into the bed of rhododendrons. Splintered glass sparkles like diamonds all over the sleeping street and snoring lawns. The neighbors fly awake—the pariah; mangy, nasty, ticks, fleas. Rabies! Will kill us. The community communes—guns, knives, poisoned bait, steel traps. Don’t sleep, watch out for your pets. The pariah stumbles. His eyes sting. Tall steps; he feints left and right, through poisoned rivers, over bald forests. Scoops up coyotes and wolves that tremble behind trees. Using their eyes full of bullets, the neighbors aim at the creatures. Down go wolves, down go foxes, down go squirrels, possums. Down go talking rocks, big shots, semen in the cooler, down go grizzlies in their dens. Arms and legs and fists and spit. Darkness and moisture, poisoned earthworms. The pariah keeps running, past lazy boys and plywood splinters. The animals tumble and fall and scatter. The pariah casts a shadow like a long amnesiac, a twilight nap; picking up each and every hated and feared creature. Tucks them under his wings, disappears into clouds full of golf balls and missing shoes. A pariah who is a fox is a bear is a whale is a bird is a pariah. Flying to a gossamer hole in the sky, which opens like a mouth to swallow them all. And the carcasses are carried by the living up up up into the split hole of gossamer silk showing the brilliant blue that lies beyond and all the animals go through the hole and when it is done the hole closes up and the seam is seamless. And the streets are left empty and there is no sound to be heard, except of course for the eternal sound of the blower of leaves.
Kim Silva lives in Rhode Island with her musician husband and their dog, Zelda. She has been published or will be published in Fleas on a Dog journal, Barbar Publishing, LitBreak, Poor Yorick, and Corvus Review, Mono Literary Journal, Unbroken, Gone Lawn. Another story was short listed for a contest for Flash Fiction Online. Kim loves animals, nature. Kim holds an BA in Writing and Painting from Vermont College in Montpelier, Vermont; MFA in Painting from Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, Georgia.
Annie Stenzel
“Loneliness arrives on a leash of scorpions.”
(after Eduardo C. Corral)
But my dream world is filled with people, colorful and kind
plus people you haven’t met if you don’t read Austen or Dumas.
Shake hands with people now dead, even if it makes you shiver.
Now meet some of the people I whittled from blocks of soft wood.
My mother knitted characters from books, but I have painted people
so grey people mingle with the pink, as in old and young.
People I have only imagined, conjuring them in several dimensions.
But most people are eclipsed from time to time. Or beclouded.
Certain people are regularly gauzed with the stain of morning light
especially if they’re starved for beauty. Other people are cloaked
in mystery, aghast when they collide with people who are fully visible.
At this point, no one ever tells me, your people shall be my people.
Plus, nobody argues with this claim: People are strange. So lonely
people are everywhere, always. That’s just another E-minor earworm.
(after Eduardo C. Corral)
But my dream world is filled with people, colorful and kind
plus people you haven’t met if you don’t read Austen or Dumas.
Shake hands with people now dead, even if it makes you shiver.
Now meet some of the people I whittled from blocks of soft wood.
My mother knitted characters from books, but I have painted people
so grey people mingle with the pink, as in old and young.
People I have only imagined, conjuring them in several dimensions.
But most people are eclipsed from time to time. Or beclouded.
Certain people are regularly gauzed with the stain of morning light
especially if they’re starved for beauty. Other people are cloaked
in mystery, aghast when they collide with people who are fully visible.
At this point, no one ever tells me, your people shall be my people.
Plus, nobody argues with this claim: People are strange. So lonely
people are everywhere, always. That’s just another E-minor earworm.
Annie Stenzel (she/her) was born in Illinois, but did not stay put. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in U.S. and U.K. journals including Ambit, Atlanta Review, FERAL, Galway Review, K’in Literary Review, Lily Poetry Review, On the Seawall, Rust + Moth, SWWIM, Thimble, Third Wednesday, UCity Review, and Verse Daily, among others. A poetry editor for the online journals Right Hand Pointing and West Trestle Review, she lives on unceded Ohlone land within walking distance of the San Francisco Bay.
Melissa Tolentino
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The bard remembers she has errands to run
and like every other burnt out musician-slash-magic-user, drops them in favor of trying seventeen different chords on her lyre with some wrecked ideas about love and war for company. The sun in the window is a damp sock and the day is already caramelized in the sky. The neighbors are out, have been out: they’ve seen her around and they know she’s no-good-news. The notes sound like wet cats being wrung out, but she slides off the couch upside down and keeps trying. —Nope. Nope. Not working. It’s been awhile since she played for fun. It’s been awhile since she used her instrument as the kind of weapon it was intended to be. All the songs she used to know have become stones in her pockets. Maybe she’ll wander out to sea later. All the songs she used to know are photos on the windowsill now, edges beckoning and colors yellowed, baked egg memories that sat in the heat for too long. Maybe she’ll hijack your boat later. She’s not a siren, but the EMTs in the ambulance are still afraid of her. Once, three hundred years ago, they saw her wipe a field clean until it was all poppies crushed underfoot. Once, three hundred years ago, she knew a song or two about love and war. |
Melissa Tolentino currently lives in the DC metro area. Her poetry and fiction have been recognized by a number of publications and organizations, including Rust + Moth, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Emerge Literary Journal, FreezeRay Poetry, The Adroit Prizes, and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers.
Sara Moore Wagner
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Inheritance
“You have to be a sea to absorb a dirty stream without getting dirty.”—Nietzsche If it’s true there is, as Nietzsche points out, a Last Man, one who lives with the roof caving, does not feed the birds in the yard, who cleans his gun, collects scraps of tin to build a blind—perhaps he was my father every night on the couch, sunk into the couch like a buoy, bouncing on the surface of the earth, photographing the sky at various angles and lights. As a child, I found him only capable of taking: see, the hours crossed of the calendar, see the boat he’d fill with stones. I walk the yard now, a river ocean, it’s mine. Next of kin, I’m called. Inheritor of the mess, his mother― grief. I can’t read the news. Like my father, I watch what the deer do, dive into roads just as the traffic picks up. Here are the spaces he dismantled before me: flowerbed, oversized garage, my room, my mother’s body, the street where we grew up where no one is outside on the porch anymore. His own lungs. His mouth, a trench. The neighborhood has changed. Even the police don’t come here anymore. I want to put on his camouflage, tar under the eyes. It is my job to take possession of, knock down, shatter, knock over, stuff my mouth with bean dumplings, to go inside and put my feet up, to let the dog clear the leftovers of the day from my plate. Nothing I say is enough to fix it, and anyway, I know what I am. I’m ready to fight, to guard and wall off, to consume everything, even his accidental creations: the broken hot tub which looks like something else: a nest built for a child to enter and lay down her head, sleep until the next day brings something else. |
Me Time
I want an afternoon with no shadow. For the children to sort the lentils from the beans, sort the socks into clean piles. No, I’m not worried about the children’s piles, the gulp of the creek calls me, shoeless and phone-less to go in toe first and not worry about chemical run-off from the train crash, pesticides on the golf course, that rustle in the trees behind where I’ve cast off my body. I want to cast off my body, to float like a child or petal, to buzz over our house where the children are sound asleep or running through each hallway, banging the doors closed so every picture falls from the walls. I know I am the one who dressed them up, buttoned their shirts, combed their hair, wet-wiped the grime from their cheeks, clean. I sat them in front of the photographer and danced. I danced in circles like a fly until they laughed, then snap. I chose the best shots, printed and framed and gave copies to your mother. They hang in the quiet room where she lays out breakfast. Let me collect myself, too, is all I am saying. Let me undo. |
Sara Moore Wagner is the winner of the 2021 Cider Press Review Editors Prize for Swan Wife (2022), and the 2020 Driftwood Press Manuscript Prize for Hillbilly Madonna (2022), and the author of two chapbooks. She is also a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient, a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist, and the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals and anthologies. Find her at www.saramoorewagner.com.
Christian Ward
First CT Scan
My body is a collection of taxidermied animals:
jackdaws in hangman hoods, wood pigeons
dressed like Victorian vicars, the dour watchtower
of a tawny owl. Guac shaded parakeets
caught mid-flight. The long foil of a garfish.
A common red fox snarling at a badger
in slow motion. A brown bear with wind-up forearms.
Peel back the layers to reveal the S of a king cobra
poised to attack, the furious network of fire ants
engulfing me in flames. The leopard's sad eyes.
My body is a collection of taxidermied animals:
jackdaws in hangman hoods, wood pigeons
dressed like Victorian vicars, the dour watchtower
of a tawny owl. Guac shaded parakeets
caught mid-flight. The long foil of a garfish.
A common red fox snarling at a badger
in slow motion. A brown bear with wind-up forearms.
Peel back the layers to reveal the S of a king cobra
poised to attack, the furious network of fire ants
engulfing me in flames. The leopard's sad eyes.
Christian Ward is a UK-based writer who has recently appeared in Open Minds Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, The Seventh Quarry, Bluepepper, Tipton Poetry Journal, Amazine and Rye Whiskey Review.
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Madison Whatley
Guy on Hinge
Said, I didn’t think anyone actually lived here, meaning Miami, but I do. My great-grandparents are buried in Hialeah and will sink with this state, and maybe, so will I. The little flowers broke off my new heels while making out with this stupid-ass from New Jersey on South Beach, and while I loved his abs, I thought I left kissing under the guard shack behind in high school, and sand kept hitting my face. Sometimes I think about how everything that has made me will become ocean soon. I think about it every time I sunbathe. It relaxes me to close my eyes, listen, and think about the waves rising over me. Maybe I’m meant to lay to rest on the seabed. My aunt says in another life I probably died on the Titanic because I get an urge to look up photos of the wreckage late at night, even though they scare me. I’m not sure I want myself or my family to belong to the Atlantic, but there’s no choice. I live next to a tomb. The guy from Hinge asked me what kind of adventure I’m looking for on the app. It’s a stupid question, so I said I want to get bit by a shark. He said he didn’t expect that answer. One day, when Miami is underwater, I hope a shark moves into my apartment. The shark wouldn’t have to pay rent or marry someone to split bills with. I hope she finds the flowers from my heels and clips them in her gills to go on dates. If she went on my Hinge date, she’d say, Thank you for the Jack and Cokes, but you have a weird tongue. I wouldn’t want to bother the shark. I just want a small love bite from something that could kill me. Madison Whatley is a South Florida poet and a graduate of Florida International University's MFA program. Her poetry has appeared in Variant Literature, FreezeRay Poetry, and Cola Literary Review.
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J.P. White
Talking Among the Manatees
The governor of Florida has sent out his warlords to my little queer college on Sarasota bay. On the first day, he replaced half the Board of Trustees. How far will his fear take him? Only 500 students when I was there. Like an Italian wedding. You could design your own curriculum. No grades. No required courses. I remember one called, The Naked Dance of Chemistry. Poetry was the only thing I wanted to study. My teachers said there would be a quiz at the end. I don’t remember defending a syllabus. Every day I traveled the world with poets. I went to Alexandria, Beijing, Rome, Wales, Florence. Many days I fell asleep while terza rima Took me to the underworld. My therapist there had studied with Jung. On many mornings beside the bay We talked among the manatees. She believed poets were the only hope in a time of war. J.P. White has published essays, fiction, reviews, interviews and poetry in The Nation, The New Republic, The Gettysburg Review, Agni Review, APR, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, The Georgia Review, Southern Review, The New York Times, Willow Springs, Crazyhorse, and Poetry (Chicago). White’s sixth book of poems, A Tree Becomes a Room, was the 28th winner of the White Pine Poetry Prize and is forthcoming in 2023. Norah Bow, a second novel, is forthcoming in 2024 from Regal House Publishing.
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Robert Wilson
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Othello
Every day in General English IV, the Puerto Rican kid and I look out the window at the maintenance guys whose summer jobs have turned into their whole lives. He has 18 weeks of Independent Study to translate Othello to Spanish, to put a language he doesn’t understand into his own words. “Wear your heart on your sleeves?” he says to me. “Whose hands can they be? Whose hearts, if not our own?” Fridays we steal out and walk under the sign Beach Access/Private that leads to Blind Pass, empty vacation rentals crowding one another for a better view of the end of Florida. We search for mermaid money and sea glass, and he says, “Turn towards me, guera,” as we sit on resort furniture, sounding like a boyfriend rather than a dentist. The yellow and black cover of his Cliff Notes on Shakespeare’s Othello that I read to him looks like Do Not Cross police tape. I have trouble explaining why Iago betrays his friend, and why Othello strangles Desdemona. It’s easy to lie in lines that rhyme at the ends, like valentines or church hymns. Someone or other is always dying or wanting to die in these plays. Even though it’s not real, people hurt each other and we’re forced to listen to them, then read cheat sheets that explain what exactly is going on. |
Dolphin Tour
Find a disturbance, a flattening of the surface. Imagine the water is a long passage. Search for the main idea, skipping all unimportant dialogue, transitions, and supporting details. A woman on-board lifts her right hand, fingers together, thumb spread apart, points just above the knuckle of her ring finger with her left lift index finger to show where she lives, Traverse City, Michigan. Allow your vision to be buoyant, full of breathe, a sky lantern out of light landing in the Gulf. Notice the clouds just beneath the surface, as illusionary as the clouds in the sky. Have you lost a child? Search as if they will reappear, drift close so you can rescue them, lift them onboard, hold them and feel the damp salty warmth of their body. See through what you are looking for. Allow sunlight to bathe your eyes. Think of the ocean as an x-ray and you’re looking for a fracture which shows up as a dark area on a bright white bone. My adult daughter stands next to me. Her astigmatism is worsening, her eyes bending light unnaturally, her corneas flattening. Still, she searches for the shape of the dolphins, their short, stiff necks and torpedo-like bodies. Avoid missing what you are looking for by staring in one place too long. Don’t outrun the limits of your vision. Glance this way and that. Pretend the world is set in motion for you to see what you’ve never seen before. A young girl walks the deck announcing that her father was born in China. China is shaped like a rooster which is shaped like China. The divide between the shape of the dolphins and the shape of expectations is symbolic. Picture someone you love. Listen to them asking if you are looking hard enough. |
Robert Wilson is a tutor and writer whose poems have most recently appeared in Welter and Havik and whose chapbook, Whose Who Among American Teachers, will be released this spring. He lives beside the ocean in Cape Haze, Florida.
Maggie Yang
Delineation
The crooks of my fingers still smell of sins. Rituals
smoldered with needles. I learn how to cross-stitch
and iron two fabrics that I don’t own. Begin
pickpocketing color and smoothing patterns,
I watch how long it takes for my hands
to stab each other. Note that the thread
choreographs across the floor, even though
I am burning it with each breath.
The mannequin in the corner cosplays a dress,
a list of reparations feathered into receipts,
as again and again my fingers bleed
through the threads and stain the table.
My eyes reverse metal, scaffoldings
birthing themselves into memory;
take solace in this sewing machine,
an action packaging heirlooms into
pocket change. The metallic sound rusts
into air as I feed its mouth with unmended
surfaces. Collars unclaimed, sleeves unrolled,
numb, as I recall the price of possession,
of half-trimmed names
The crooks of my fingers still smell of sins. Rituals
smoldered with needles. I learn how to cross-stitch
and iron two fabrics that I don’t own. Begin
pickpocketing color and smoothing patterns,
I watch how long it takes for my hands
to stab each other. Note that the thread
choreographs across the floor, even though
I am burning it with each breath.
The mannequin in the corner cosplays a dress,
a list of reparations feathered into receipts,
as again and again my fingers bleed
through the threads and stain the table.
My eyes reverse metal, scaffoldings
birthing themselves into memory;
take solace in this sewing machine,
an action packaging heirlooms into
pocket change. The metallic sound rusts
into air as I feed its mouth with unmended
surfaces. Collars unclaimed, sleeves unrolled,
numb, as I recall the price of possession,
of half-trimmed names
Maggie Yang is a writer and artist from Vancouver, Canada. Her poetry has been recognized by the Poetry Society, The League of Canadian Poets, and Poetry in Voice, and appears or is forthcoming in Eunoia Review, West Trestle Review, F(r)iction Lit, among others. Her art appears in The Adroit Journal. An interdisciplinary artist, she is particularly intrigued by the intersections of the written word with the visual and performing arts.