SoFloPoJo Contents: Essays * Interviews * Reviews * Special * Video * Visual Arts * Archives * Calendar * Masthead * SUBMIT * Tip Jar * Social Media
Aug 2025 Issue #38 Poetry
FEATURING
David M. Alper, Mary Beth Becker, Wendy Taylor Carlisle, Sara Lynn Eastler, Nicole Farmer, Rebecca Faulkner, Zary Fekete, Robbie Gamble, Iain Grinbergs, LC Gutierrez, Matthew E. Henry, Jeffrey Hermann, C. Heyne, Paul Hostovsky, Dani Janae, Sam Kerbel, Al Maginnes, brice maiurro, Meghan B. Malachi, Jennifer Maritza McCauley, Judith H. Montgomery, Rick Mulkey, Bill Rector, Amy Riddell, Daniel Romo, t.r. san, Oscar Sanders, Kimberly Ann Southwick, Sarp Sozdinler, Linda Ann Strang, Kenneth Tanemura, Rais Tuluka, Joemario Umana, Swan XVII, Miles Waggener, Joshua Walker
David M. Alper, Mary Beth Becker, Wendy Taylor Carlisle, Sara Lynn Eastler, Nicole Farmer, Rebecca Faulkner, Zary Fekete, Robbie Gamble, Iain Grinbergs, LC Gutierrez, Matthew E. Henry, Jeffrey Hermann, C. Heyne, Paul Hostovsky, Dani Janae, Sam Kerbel, Al Maginnes, brice maiurro, Meghan B. Malachi, Jennifer Maritza McCauley, Judith H. Montgomery, Rick Mulkey, Bill Rector, Amy Riddell, Daniel Romo, t.r. san, Oscar Sanders, Kimberly Ann Southwick, Sarp Sozdinler, Linda Ann Strang, Kenneth Tanemura, Rais Tuluka, Joemario Umana, Swan XVII, Miles Waggener, Joshua Walker
|
Watch poets from our August Issue here & on our YouTube channel @soflopojo |
|
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 & you value the humane treatment of every creature and the planet on which we dwell, SoFloPoJo welcomes your best work.
|
|
|
|
|
David M. Alper
The Last Train from Huntington
You know the station by sound—the sigh of metal
on metal, the heavy rumble that penetrates the
tangerine mist of the streetlamp, through the
benches salt-strewn, which lie there dumb and
sentinel-like like an unhealed wound. There,
the wind tastes of rust and wet leaves, metallic
sweetness that clings at the throat. You keep the
flavor of it years afterward, when autumn arrives
too soon, tearing the green edges to gold. The
platform is vacant. Always was. But isn't that the
trick of memory? The way it glosses over the
loose dog wandering the edge of the tracks, the
crushed cigarette butts trodden into designs on the
ground. You boarded without glancing back. The
train continued, carrying you away from a town
that displayed its grief too openly—in the
boarded-up windows, in the sigh of the waitress
who served coffee as if it were a confession. But
there are towns that never release. Huntington
holds on—in creaking hardwood boards, in light
seeping through grime. In nightmares, the train
reverses, the whistle slicing through sleep like a
hard, raw hack. You return, and the town is the
same—its shapes round, soft, like blue mountains
fuzzy on the horizon at sunset. The station rusts,
the flavor of leaving. And the town, waiting.
Always waiting.
You know the station by sound—the sigh of metal
on metal, the heavy rumble that penetrates the
tangerine mist of the streetlamp, through the
benches salt-strewn, which lie there dumb and
sentinel-like like an unhealed wound. There,
the wind tastes of rust and wet leaves, metallic
sweetness that clings at the throat. You keep the
flavor of it years afterward, when autumn arrives
too soon, tearing the green edges to gold. The
platform is vacant. Always was. But isn't that the
trick of memory? The way it glosses over the
loose dog wandering the edge of the tracks, the
crushed cigarette butts trodden into designs on the
ground. You boarded without glancing back. The
train continued, carrying you away from a town
that displayed its grief too openly—in the
boarded-up windows, in the sigh of the waitress
who served coffee as if it were a confession. But
there are towns that never release. Huntington
holds on—in creaking hardwood boards, in light
seeping through grime. In nightmares, the train
reverses, the whistle slicing through sleep like a
hard, raw hack. You return, and the town is the
same—its shapes round, soft, like blue mountains
fuzzy on the horizon at sunset. The station rusts,
the flavor of leaving. And the town, waiting.
Always waiting.
David M. Alper's work appears in The McNeese Review, Kelp Journal, The Argyle Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. He is an educator in New York City.
Mary Beth Becker
SELF PORTRAIT AS STORM BREAKING OVER OMAHA
The city of Omaha, Nebraska, is an atmospheric heat island—a weather phenomenon whereby an overabundance of concrete, sparse tree cover, and too many dark-roofed buildings force hot air upward, interrupting large weather systems overhead. As a result, most thunderstorms and blizzards disappear when they reach the city, or split into two smaller systems which then move north or south.
How to say it? I arrived a puddle
reflecting the field I’d drowned
In the great dictionary of weather
a daughter precipitates, meaning
harbinger When I gather gray
I say what’s coming do what’s mine
I dream the water I was
easier, the field–
away from concrete, just loam
wanting to drink all of me
I hover now ten Aprils without magnolia,
their pinkfull wind pulling me west, west,
across the Nishnabotna, the North
and South Racoon, Troublesome Creek
I could be troublesome, creek, but oh,
good daughters drive west, with clouds like petticoats
to gather in one hand so I fly faster
towards what made me. River
flow and magnet Up here
in the great dictionary of weather
a good daughter returns to the source
But they’ve annexed the field Now nothing
thirsts for me. I break
over the Missouri which this spring
has already claimed four daughters
I am one of four daughters Up here
in the great dictionary of weather
a good daughter evaporates
What unwants me smells of asphalt
In the great dictionary of weather
a good daughter comes home
willingly, in any shape
But there is no rain in Omaha just centuries
of pavement undaughtering rainstorms
They track me on the radar
Disappearing I blow closer
Their mouths are so dry
The city of Omaha, Nebraska, is an atmospheric heat island—a weather phenomenon whereby an overabundance of concrete, sparse tree cover, and too many dark-roofed buildings force hot air upward, interrupting large weather systems overhead. As a result, most thunderstorms and blizzards disappear when they reach the city, or split into two smaller systems which then move north or south.
How to say it? I arrived a puddle
reflecting the field I’d drowned
In the great dictionary of weather
a daughter precipitates, meaning
harbinger When I gather gray
I say what’s coming do what’s mine
I dream the water I was
easier, the field–
away from concrete, just loam
wanting to drink all of me
I hover now ten Aprils without magnolia,
their pinkfull wind pulling me west, west,
across the Nishnabotna, the North
and South Racoon, Troublesome Creek
I could be troublesome, creek, but oh,
good daughters drive west, with clouds like petticoats
to gather in one hand so I fly faster
towards what made me. River
flow and magnet Up here
in the great dictionary of weather
a good daughter returns to the source
But they’ve annexed the field Now nothing
thirsts for me. I break
over the Missouri which this spring
has already claimed four daughters
I am one of four daughters Up here
in the great dictionary of weather
a good daughter evaporates
What unwants me smells of asphalt
In the great dictionary of weather
a good daughter comes home
willingly, in any shape
But there is no rain in Omaha just centuries
of pavement undaughtering rainstorms
They track me on the radar
Disappearing I blow closer
Their mouths are so dry
Mary Beth Becker is a 2025-2026 Loft Mentor Series Fellow in poetry. She was raised in the woods north of Omaha, Nebraska, but lives in Minnesota. Her work is published in Split Rock Review, Hobart, West Trade Review, Spillway, and Ballast, among others. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best-of-the-Net nominee.
Wendy Taylor Carlisle
Tell Me a New Story.
Someone like me doesn’t escape. Louise Glück
I have looked away.
I have said I don’t care.
I have laughed at the firehose.
I have felt
momentarily safe.
I say, our lives are stories
we tell ourselves.
Tell yourself
a new story. Tell one
to your friends.
Thousands of government pages
gone one Friday night,
each Friday night, each Saturday
a new barbarity
slips in
under cover
of weekend dusk.
Damned if the nightmares
haven’t begun again.
I don’t believe the camps are
for them.
Tell Me a New Story.
Someone like me doesn’t escape. Louise Glück
I have looked away.
I have said I don’t care.
I have laughed at the firehose.
I have felt
momentarily safe.
I say, our lives are stories
we tell ourselves.
Tell yourself
a new story. Tell one
to your friends.
Thousands of government pages
gone one Friday night,
each Friday night, each Saturday
a new barbarity
slips in
under cover
of weekend dusk.
Damned if the nightmares
haven’t begun again.
I don’t believe the camps are
for them.
Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives and writes in the Arkansas Ozarks. She has published four books and six chapbooks and is the winner of the 2020 Phillip H. McMath Poetry Prize. Find her work in pacificREVIEW, Atlanta Review, Terrain, Tab, Rattle, About Place, and at www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com
Sara Lynn Eastler
When My Daughter Learns Her Dad is Leaving Me, She Hands Me Her Boxing Gloves
The first time I slide my hands into her gloves
they feel too large, hands that hold
onto more in this life than I have asked to have
or hold, and even though its been years
since I hooked and jabbed and raised a bag
from its chains with upper cuts, I now know
the importance of embracing my stance, of rising
on the balls of my feet to meet the moment
and to sink into my knees that link me
to the ground, and each time Everlast
swivels into view, I wonder how solid
is this promise because I need the punching
bag to outlast a marriage without separating
from its rings or splitting the joist that bears
the load of all that is built upon it, as I drill
my fists, pneumatic machines, whole body
engaged in throwing punches— the fist that pivots,
the shoulder that extends, the gut that tightens,
the hips that rotate, the mind that sharpens
to a single bee sting as each fist lands, one hand
tasked with protection, chin tucked in, I am
a blade and the bag takes all I have to give.
The first time I slide my hands into her gloves
they feel too large, hands that hold
onto more in this life than I have asked to have
or hold, and even though its been years
since I hooked and jabbed and raised a bag
from its chains with upper cuts, I now know
the importance of embracing my stance, of rising
on the balls of my feet to meet the moment
and to sink into my knees that link me
to the ground, and each time Everlast
swivels into view, I wonder how solid
is this promise because I need the punching
bag to outlast a marriage without separating
from its rings or splitting the joist that bears
the load of all that is built upon it, as I drill
my fists, pneumatic machines, whole body
engaged in throwing punches— the fist that pivots,
the shoulder that extends, the gut that tightens,
the hips that rotate, the mind that sharpens
to a single bee sting as each fist lands, one hand
tasked with protection, chin tucked in, I am
a blade and the bag takes all I have to give.
Sara Lynn Eastler is the Poetry Editor for Qu Literary Magazine and a freelance contributor to the Southern Review of Books. Her poetry has recently been published in Cagibi, Passengers Journal, Anodyne, Voices of Decolonization, and Lucky Jefferson. She's an MFA candidate at Queens University of Charlotte and you can find her at saralynneastler.com.
Nicole Farmer
|
|
late summer
all the delicate sinewy spiders
have left their egg sacks
in the corners of our porch
their valiant attempt
to carry out the lineage little
do they know the men
with pressure wash guns will
arrive next week and blast their
time-bomb creations with soapy
hot water into gutters and rails
a smashing crashing chemical death
which I just cannot stand
to think about this foggy morning
so I take the broom to the right
angles as gently as I can and wipe
their sacks so brown and round
fragile with hundreds of future
friends – into the yew shrubs,
their poisonous berries waiting to turn
my lips blue and stop my heart
in seconds but may just offer
hospitable shelter from the winter
winds and rain so that my
charming Charlottes can take
up residency next
spring on this old porch
to save me from the pesky flies
when we can all gaze out of our many
eyes at the hay field to watch
the deer and turkeys by turn
together.
all the delicate sinewy spiders
have left their egg sacks
in the corners of our porch
their valiant attempt
to carry out the lineage little
do they know the men
with pressure wash guns will
arrive next week and blast their
time-bomb creations with soapy
hot water into gutters and rails
a smashing crashing chemical death
which I just cannot stand
to think about this foggy morning
so I take the broom to the right
angles as gently as I can and wipe
their sacks so brown and round
fragile with hundreds of future
friends – into the yew shrubs,
their poisonous berries waiting to turn
my lips blue and stop my heart
in seconds but may just offer
hospitable shelter from the winter
winds and rain so that my
charming Charlottes can take
up residency next
spring on this old porch
to save me from the pesky flies
when we can all gaze out of our many
eyes at the hay field to watch
the deer and turkeys by turn
together.
Nicole Farmer spent her teen years in her daddy’s Bayou Vermillion honky-tonk. She has published three books of poetry, Wet Underbelly Wind (FLP 2022), Honest Sonnets (Kelsay Books 2023), and Open Heart (Kelsay Books 2025). She’s been published in Wisconsin Review, Suisun Valley Review, Apricity, Kakalak, Wild Roof Journal, Poetry South, and many other journals. She lives in Asheville, NC. NicoleFarmerpoetry.com
Rebecca Faulkner
|
|
Good Friday
What does a frozen landscape dream of?
Late April ice floes melting. Longed for June
with its wide blue wings.
A trellis that needs mending. Blessing of downpour.
Staggering at the shoreline he sees white
ankle socks floating like swollen waterlilies
a rainbow pinwheel cycling slowly
in the pondweed. Clocks of clouds, ticking on.
He will never forgive himself for letting her play
too close to the river. Seeing her stumble again and again
dreaming of his own death as barter
for the life of his only child. Lowering the floodgates
to be swept away by silt. I know he tried
to save her, brackish water rushing at his knees.
But he did not try to save us.
Soon the river will freeze again. My daughter’s stone boat
is moored near the edge of the woods. At dusk
I light lamps to bring them both home. They shine so bright
I have to close my eyes.
What does a frozen landscape dream of?
Late April ice floes melting. Longed for June
with its wide blue wings.
A trellis that needs mending. Blessing of downpour.
Staggering at the shoreline he sees white
ankle socks floating like swollen waterlilies
a rainbow pinwheel cycling slowly
in the pondweed. Clocks of clouds, ticking on.
He will never forgive himself for letting her play
too close to the river. Seeing her stumble again and again
dreaming of his own death as barter
for the life of his only child. Lowering the floodgates
to be swept away by silt. I know he tried
to save her, brackish water rushing at his knees.
But he did not try to save us.
Soon the river will freeze again. My daughter’s stone boat
is moored near the edge of the woods. At dusk
I light lamps to bring them both home. They shine so bright
I have to close my eyes.
Rebecca Faulkner is a London-born poet based in Brooklyn. She is the author of Permit Me to Write My Own Ending, (Write Bloody Publishing, 2023), which was a finalist for the 2024 Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize. Her work appears in The Maine Review, The Poetry Society of New York, CALYX Press, and elsewhere. She was a 2023 poetry recipient of the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women. Her new collection, Daughters of the Minotaur, is forthcoming in 2027 from Regal House Publishing. www.rebeccafaulknerpoet.com
Zary Fekete
|
|
dear resident we’re building a new park in your neighborhood
they’re building a new park in the lot behind the old outdoor theatre i jog past every morning where the homeless guys congregate where they remember where they were during the ’56 revolution they’re all old enough to remember it even though some of the younger ones were only children then and the older ones describe reading calls to action from the yellowed newspapers and the younger ones remember seeing the first tanks roll up the wide boulevards just to scare people at first until the first shots were fired and some people really died
the oldest one said he saw hamlet performed here on the chipped stage even though that’s hard to imagine since it’s all grown over with weeds and covered with broken glass and last night’s feces and i don’t know if they would have performed Shakespeare back then since so much effort went into propping up the government and probably would not have signed off on anything coming from the west not holiday inns or cokes or taco bell
all that’s different now of course with the city center across the river glisteny with new funds from brussels and dog walking parks with pre-portioned baggies and daily pickups for trash and rows of office buildings with words from california or shanghai
i jog on and realize none of these old guys are in the plans for this new park and sooner or later they’ll be met by the shovels and bulldozers that will take away the soft shady weedy places where they sleep off the afternoon’s heat made easier by casual swigs from plastic jugs bought from the corner store up the street where two coins will get you a loaf of bread and a few slices of cheese even though they always just settle for the cheap wine because once you’ve had enough of it you forget you’re hungry and more
i jog past the new restaurant with its polished floors and carefully curated displays of what used to be a street market of what used to be where the old women shouted bargains for peppers and tomatoes their hands gesturing like they held the truth of what was passed down through generations that was before the taste of bread spread with lard turned into something you needed a reservation for and the restaurant smells of ambition and spice but in the middle of it i swear i hear the low hum of what’s been buried waiting half-remembered
the last few steps of my jog before i turn back take me to the top of the hill where the whole city lays before me where the distance makes it easier to see it as a glistening jewel on the danube and makes it harder to remember that each street corner down below have old guys like the ones next to the theatre down the hill behind me who never make it up this high either literally or figuratively and certainly don’t waste time thinking in these half-assed poetic terms i’m embarrassed to say i try to do
i’ve been trying to write this down trying to say something true about this place about what’s changed but the words keep slipping like water through my fingers still i keep writing still i keep chasing these thoughts like birds in the sky wondering if one of them will land
Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary. He has a debut novella (Words on the Page) out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection (To Accept the Things I Cannot Change: Writing My Way Out of Addiction) out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete Bluesky:zaryfekete.bsky.social
Robbie Gamble
|
|
MRI
The tech remembered to turn the music on
twenty minutes into my session.
I had requested a classical feed
and in its absence, I had been bending
the electronic boops and mechanical grinds
emanating from my surrounding tube
into a kind of synthesized etude, something
Brian Eno might have composed
in an over-caffeinated state. It was
almost soothing, as I focused
on keeping my torso absolutely still,
and then the music, the opening strains
from Bach’s Well-Tempered Klavier,
welled up in my earphones.
I was astonished to discover
those well-worn keyboard arpeggios
were in perfect harmony
with the grunting obligato from the machine.
For two glorious minutes I hung
suspended in an improbable polyphony
inside that diagnostic tunnel,
borne up by notes and magnetic pulses
swirling around my pelvis,
unraveling a suspect architecture
within my prostate
that frumpy walnut of a gland
so underappreciated, except
in the moment of ecstasy.
The tech remembered to turn the music on
twenty minutes into my session.
I had requested a classical feed
and in its absence, I had been bending
the electronic boops and mechanical grinds
emanating from my surrounding tube
into a kind of synthesized etude, something
Brian Eno might have composed
in an over-caffeinated state. It was
almost soothing, as I focused
on keeping my torso absolutely still,
and then the music, the opening strains
from Bach’s Well-Tempered Klavier,
welled up in my earphones.
I was astonished to discover
those well-worn keyboard arpeggios
were in perfect harmony
with the grunting obligato from the machine.
For two glorious minutes I hung
suspended in an improbable polyphony
inside that diagnostic tunnel,
borne up by notes and magnetic pulses
swirling around my pelvis,
unraveling a suspect architecture
within my prostate
that frumpy walnut of a gland
so underappreciated, except
in the moment of ecstasy.
Robbie Gamble (he/him) is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in the Cagibi, Whale Road Review, Post Road, Salamander, and The Sun. He divides his time between Boston and an apple orchard in Vermont. https://robbiegamble.com
Iain Grinbergs
|
|
Letter to Jack McFarland
Sadder than an understudy, sponsored by vodka
and stolen cologne, I wanted to jazz through life like you,
you with your mid-sentence high kicks, your soul
a pink feather boa, a body stuffed with delusion and laugh tracks.
I, too, wanted to see my reflection in a dance studio
and fling headshots like glitter, singing Celine Dion into the void
until the void sang back. You taught me how to fall
in love with my own spotlight, to flirt with every room, to cry
like an Emmy was on the line. A crop top hanging
like a screenplay. An audition for a world that never asked.
What would you call me now, Jack? Still a project like Will
and Grace? What would Karen say? Go on: Hold me like your
Cher doll—let’s pirouette towards Broadway, gasping all the way
through Central Park, both of us chaos made flesh, battling life’s
silly choreography. Jack, are you listening? Let’s grow old
together in matching PJs and watch reruns of The Golden Girls.
Sadder than an understudy, sponsored by vodka
and stolen cologne, I wanted to jazz through life like you,
you with your mid-sentence high kicks, your soul
a pink feather boa, a body stuffed with delusion and laugh tracks.
I, too, wanted to see my reflection in a dance studio
and fling headshots like glitter, singing Celine Dion into the void
until the void sang back. You taught me how to fall
in love with my own spotlight, to flirt with every room, to cry
like an Emmy was on the line. A crop top hanging
like a screenplay. An audition for a world that never asked.
What would you call me now, Jack? Still a project like Will
and Grace? What would Karen say? Go on: Hold me like your
Cher doll—let’s pirouette towards Broadway, gasping all the way
through Central Park, both of us chaos made flesh, battling life’s
silly choreography. Jack, are you listening? Let’s grow old
together in matching PJs and watch reruns of The Golden Girls.
Letter to Karen Walker
When I was sixteen and thin as a cocktail pick,
infused with vermouth dreams, I wanted to strut
like a goddess across the TV screen. I, too, knew truth
like a stiletto thrown, the champagne fizz up one’s
powdered nose. I wanted diamonds to sass my clavicle,
a boa for all the misses in my guilt. The sticky rim
of gin-time. My mouth a collapsed penthouse, a Bentley
on cinder blocks, a cackle running along the leopard print arm
of society, a voice that would sue the sun while my
Versace dangled on. Pillboxes and reruns. Alcohol sucked
from a deodorant stick. An Oh, Smitty for all intimacy―
I still want to know: What would you name me?
And would you bring me on a shopping trip? Come on, dear:
knight me with your lipstick, your narcissism of mink.
We could both slur across the stage of space-time,
our Prada bras snapping, our sauntering long.
When I was sixteen and thin as a cocktail pick,
infused with vermouth dreams, I wanted to strut
like a goddess across the TV screen. I, too, knew truth
like a stiletto thrown, the champagne fizz up one’s
powdered nose. I wanted diamonds to sass my clavicle,
a boa for all the misses in my guilt. The sticky rim
of gin-time. My mouth a collapsed penthouse, a Bentley
on cinder blocks, a cackle running along the leopard print arm
of society, a voice that would sue the sun while my
Versace dangled on. Pillboxes and reruns. Alcohol sucked
from a deodorant stick. An Oh, Smitty for all intimacy―
I still want to know: What would you name me?
And would you bring me on a shopping trip? Come on, dear:
knight me with your lipstick, your narcissism of mink.
We could both slur across the stage of space-time,
our Prada bras snapping, our sauntering long.
Iain Grinbergs (he/they) is an English professor and the author of Vanity Twist, a chapbook (Bottlecap Press). He earned his Ph.D. in English from Florida State University. His work appears in or is forthcoming from Screen Door Review, Rogue Agent, Meridian, The Dewdrop, Jersey Devil Press, Eunoia Review, Hotch Potch, FlashFlood, Ghost Parachute, 50-Word Stories, The Daily Drunk: Pop Culture That Pops, The Pegasus Review: A Medical Literary Journal, and other journals.
LC Gutierrez
|
If You Want to Write a Poem From Scratch
you’d need first to create the universe. Instead it’s duct tape, nuts, shovel and heartbreak. A cup of something to run across the tongue. But do not get to work, because it’s not work. Do love, and maybe have a child, trading your breath for theirs and then it’s too late. Live (almost) alone with it, and wrap yourself around yourself. Close your eyes and name the colors. Let everything that’s been rise up around you then you’ll find that still you must breathe. The pitch is just below a scream, but you should try to say it softly. Start with the word, end with the light, and something in your own image will fuck it all up. When fortune spits its lessons at you it will wait for your weak lob back across the net and, yes, that alone might just be good enough. Iron(ic) Mike
Lisping assassin soft-speaking clock cleaner. How you bared your God-chiseled chest and gleamed your tiger-eye to spark our fist-balled dreams. A time when truth had seemed as crisp as lip to leather. Men felt no shame in loving you- victory a ride in your sweaty sweet brutal wake. Improbable demigod raised amongst pigeon shit: would have given you bites off both of our ears for fifteen minutes in your trunks to be a man-chopper to wield the swivel-hipped thunder of your novacaine blows when you were that immortal perfect and terribly made thing. Vertical Divider
|
(Sober) March
i. The dog-nosed importunity that masks as innocence sneaks up on spring and lifts her skirt. That’s when all the singing starts the blood camouflaged by so much green. Humping squirrels shake the branches. Sharp little beaks accuse the heavens of their upturned hunger, and worms. Life as prelude to puny deaths. ii. Today the doctor who’s read the images says it looks like laceration of the liver, while I can’t count the categories of liquor it took to get there, feeling like those beatnik 60’s jazz cats who checked out early from heroin and booze. But he’s telling me this in Spanish and I just turned 60 last month. So how do I explain that I’m an acorn too long sitting on a sill ready now to deep dive into the loam: or show him the paws and the claws I’ve grown, when all I want is to spill more honey from the marrow of life? That I’m a blinking bear coming out of it still. The birds just started chirping. |
LC Gutierrez is a Southern and Caribbean writer living in Madrid, Spain. His work is most recently published or forthcoming in Notre Dame Review, Sugar House Review, Trampoline Journal, New York Quarterly, Delta Poetry Review (Pushcart Nominee), Ballast Journal, and Arkansas Review. He is a poetry reader for West Trade Review.
Matthew E. Henry
|
|
“oh God! please stop!!”
from the back of the class, his cry careens
over the heads of the rest—their stricken faces, jaws slack
or furiously clenched, eyes dewy or attempting to shut out
the assailant in my words—but I refuse. continue explaining
the lynching by car of James Byrd Jr., briefly mentioned
in Rankine’s The White Card, open on their desks. the event
is presented as a turning point, character development for ‘Charles,’
a billionaire with Basquiat’s Defacement on his wall. a news story
whose horror shook him into seeing that racism still existed
in the enlightened, heady days of 1998. a details-oriented educator,
I clarify why ‘Charles’ was so troubled.
Byrd—49, disabled, Black—was walking home
when three white men—one he thought a friend,
had known his whole life—offered him a ride
in a grey Ford pickup. crushed between them,
they forced him to remote woods, kicked and punched
and baseball batted him in and out of consciousness,
spray painted his face blacker, pissed and shat on him,
retrieved a 24-foot-long chain from the truckbed,
noosed it about his ankles, and dragged him for 1.5 miles.
the FBI’s autopsy determined he was conscious―
trying to keep his upper-body off the road-rashing concrete―
until their carefree swerving swung him into a culvert,
which severed his right arm and head. undaunted,
they continued to drag his remainder for another 1.5 miles
to the cemetery of a Black church, where they mutilated
and distributed his corpse to be found in time
for the following morning’s Sunday service.
I tell my class this did not happen in a grainy, black and white photo
of the past. 81 pieces of Byrd were jigsaw-scattered through Jasper, Texas
on June 7th in 1998, two weeks before I graduated from high school,
that I was only two years older than they are now. I remind my stunned―
sobbing, silent—students that I am younger than their parents,
who may send me emails asking why I would subject their children
to these horrors from another time, who may—echoing ‘Charles,’
echoing their children, echoing James Byrd Jr—ask me to please stop.
but the truck didn’t, so I can’t.
from the back of the class, his cry careens
over the heads of the rest—their stricken faces, jaws slack
or furiously clenched, eyes dewy or attempting to shut out
the assailant in my words—but I refuse. continue explaining
the lynching by car of James Byrd Jr., briefly mentioned
in Rankine’s The White Card, open on their desks. the event
is presented as a turning point, character development for ‘Charles,’
a billionaire with Basquiat’s Defacement on his wall. a news story
whose horror shook him into seeing that racism still existed
in the enlightened, heady days of 1998. a details-oriented educator,
I clarify why ‘Charles’ was so troubled.
Byrd—49, disabled, Black—was walking home
when three white men—one he thought a friend,
had known his whole life—offered him a ride
in a grey Ford pickup. crushed between them,
they forced him to remote woods, kicked and punched
and baseball batted him in and out of consciousness,
spray painted his face blacker, pissed and shat on him,
retrieved a 24-foot-long chain from the truckbed,
noosed it about his ankles, and dragged him for 1.5 miles.
the FBI’s autopsy determined he was conscious―
trying to keep his upper-body off the road-rashing concrete―
until their carefree swerving swung him into a culvert,
which severed his right arm and head. undaunted,
they continued to drag his remainder for another 1.5 miles
to the cemetery of a Black church, where they mutilated
and distributed his corpse to be found in time
for the following morning’s Sunday service.
I tell my class this did not happen in a grainy, black and white photo
of the past. 81 pieces of Byrd were jigsaw-scattered through Jasper, Texas
on June 7th in 1998, two weeks before I graduated from high school,
that I was only two years older than they are now. I remind my stunned―
sobbing, silent—students that I am younger than their parents,
who may send me emails asking why I would subject their children
to these horrors from another time, who may—echoing ‘Charles,’
echoing their children, echoing James Byrd Jr—ask me to please stop.
but the truck didn’t, so I can’t.
Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of six poetry collections, most recently said the Frog to the scorpion. He’s editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, creative nonfiction editor at Porcupine Literary, and an associate editor at Rise Up Review. MEH’s publications include Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, Terrain, and The Worcester Review, among others. MEH is an educator who can be found at www.MEHPoeting.com writing about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground.
Jeffrey Hermann
|
My Friend the Maple
It was the day the trees began speaking to me that I noticed a change in my chemistry. Something’s off, I said, interrupting the big Maple in my front yard. I’d taken my temperature, checked my pulse. Nothing conclusive. What do you think the weather will bring, asked the Maple. Turns out they never stop with the weather. Just then I felt a chill. Do you ever wake up and feel like something is wrong, I asked. We don’t wake up and we don’t sleep, said the Maple. We believe in whatever happens. We trust the sky. The sky right now and the sky tomorrow. But what about what’s underneath, I said. You can see a hundred feet into the earth–what is it like, I asked. Don’t worry, it said, it’s beautiful there. And warm, I asked? And warm, said the Maple. |
Jeffrey Hermann's work has appeared in Okay Donkey, Electric Lit, Heavy Feather, Passages North, and other publications. His first full-length collection of prose poetry and flash fiction will be published by ELJ Editions in 2026. Though less publicized, he finds his work as a father and husband to be rewarding beyond measure.
C. Heyne
|
|
How I Know It
A weathered marriage holds
hands in Central Park, decades of
slipping into the folds of your lover, a
seasoned gesture. The body knows
where it has gone, especially if it will
return. My Grandmother was a pianist.
With frail fingers, she needed no sound
in order to play. Memory in her bloodstream.
A wrist that turns one hundred apples will turn
one hundred more, each precise, without
stall. It’s how I know, when he did it, the light
-bulb slowly turned off, against consent, with no
hesitation, with no whispered again through my teeth,
a tongue too conscious of the mouth’s roof, a note
he never meant to hear, he would do it as he had
before. He would again. I know it.
A weathered marriage holds
hands in Central Park, decades of
slipping into the folds of your lover, a
seasoned gesture. The body knows
where it has gone, especially if it will
return. My Grandmother was a pianist.
With frail fingers, she needed no sound
in order to play. Memory in her bloodstream.
A wrist that turns one hundred apples will turn
one hundred more, each precise, without
stall. It’s how I know, when he did it, the light
-bulb slowly turned off, against consent, with no
hesitation, with no whispered again through my teeth,
a tongue too conscious of the mouth’s roof, a note
he never meant to hear, he would do it as he had
before. He would again. I know it.
C. Heyne is a writer from Sunrise, Florida, and resides in Jersey City, New Jersey. He is the recipient of the William Morgan Poetry Award and the author of my room (and other wombs) (Bullshit Lit ’23). His poetry appears in Sundog Lit, Taco Bell Quarterly, DreamPOP, Maudlin House, the lickety~split, HAD, and elsewhere. He also reads for Spoon River Poetry Review.
Paul Hostovsky
|
|
OMG
Two teenagers
saying it over and over
sprinkled in among their sentences
in front of him in line at the Dunkin Donuts
gave him this great idea for a poem
about God being on everybody’s tongue―
it would be numinous and reverent,
yet at the same time colloquial
and irreverent, which was exactly
what it was: vernacular and a little
oracular. It would show (not tell)
how everyone (even those who don’t believe
in God and never give God a thought)
call upon Him in their everyday gab, palaver, gossip,
chatter, cavil, quibble, grumble. It would be
an apology of sorts in defense of
taking the name of the Lord thy God in vain
(he would look up which Commandment that was).
It was all coming together in his head
until his turn came in line and he ordered
a medium regular, and a glazed donut―
on second thought, two—then checked
his phone. Then forgot all about
the poem. Meanwhile the two teenagers walked
out the door and across the parking lot,
still talking about the world with God
on their tongues, God in every other breath,
God in their exhalations, God evaporating
in the air above the Dunkin Donuts
like a great idea.
Two teenagers
saying it over and over
sprinkled in among their sentences
in front of him in line at the Dunkin Donuts
gave him this great idea for a poem
about God being on everybody’s tongue―
it would be numinous and reverent,
yet at the same time colloquial
and irreverent, which was exactly
what it was: vernacular and a little
oracular. It would show (not tell)
how everyone (even those who don’t believe
in God and never give God a thought)
call upon Him in their everyday gab, palaver, gossip,
chatter, cavil, quibble, grumble. It would be
an apology of sorts in defense of
taking the name of the Lord thy God in vain
(he would look up which Commandment that was).
It was all coming together in his head
until his turn came in line and he ordered
a medium regular, and a glazed donut―
on second thought, two—then checked
his phone. Then forgot all about
the poem. Meanwhile the two teenagers walked
out the door and across the parking lot,
still talking about the world with God
on their tongues, God in every other breath,
God in their exhalations, God evaporating
in the air above the Dunkin Donuts
like a great idea.
Paul Hostovsky's poems and essays appear widely online and in print. He has won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, the Muriel Craft Bailey Award, and has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer's Almanac. He makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter.
Dani Janae
Portrait by Will Crooks Photo
Pushups
My whole god is a flight of good
gin. A mouth of florid speak,
the bite of a seed, tone.
While you do your humble work
I am a parable on time.
I am the hook of bitters, heady
on light and the concentration
it takes to become a pin-drop of
fluid. Flushed berry, the girth and
menace of a spider, toiling until
the color floods out and I become
everything you love. While you relax
your smooth muscle I am doing pushups
in the corner, waiting to topple you
like a wave from the ocean floor.
The fixed nebula of my desire:
what it wants is your throat, the gloss
of your eyes, its own planet.
I am all heel and mountain.
Shivered and hound, your greatest
adversary. I grow muscle where
your muscle grows quiet. Of better
days, there are none. There is only
me, the looking glass and the vision
beyond it. So delicate is our dance.
Carrying flowers on the tongue.
Oh how the ice age of your heart
found its warmth here. The spice
of liquorice root, your ever-coming
toward the strange familiar.
Will you recall the pop of citrus,
cardamom, the rude curve of your lips
as they form around one sip?
My whole god is a flight of good
gin. A mouth of florid speak,
the bite of a seed, tone.
While you do your humble work
I am a parable on time.
I am the hook of bitters, heady
on light and the concentration
it takes to become a pin-drop of
fluid. Flushed berry, the girth and
menace of a spider, toiling until
the color floods out and I become
everything you love. While you relax
your smooth muscle I am doing pushups
in the corner, waiting to topple you
like a wave from the ocean floor.
The fixed nebula of my desire:
what it wants is your throat, the gloss
of your eyes, its own planet.
I am all heel and mountain.
Shivered and hound, your greatest
adversary. I grow muscle where
your muscle grows quiet. Of better
days, there are none. There is only
me, the looking glass and the vision
beyond it. So delicate is our dance.
Carrying flowers on the tongue.
Oh how the ice age of your heart
found its warmth here. The spice
of liquorice root, your ever-coming
toward the strange familiar.
Will you recall the pop of citrus,
cardamom, the rude curve of your lips
as they form around one sip?
Dani Janae is a poet and journalist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her work has been published by Longleaf Review, SWWIM, Palette Poetry, South Florida Poetry Journal, and others. Her debut collection of poetry, Hound Triptych, will be published by Sundress Publications in Spring 2026. She lives in South Carolina.
Sam Kerbel
Cathedral
My favorite summer restaurant
Can be reached by boat
Tied to the shade
Under plumes of fava
Greedy fish wait to greet you
Under the cypresses
Some thousands of years
Have left to themselves
The chairs are filled with beautiful men
Who wag their fingers, beat
Their dogs. The water is reachable
From the tables
You can taste the machinery
Looming from Eden
To eat you need not more
Than all you’ve ever loved
Lemons & olives cater here
To the blood of beasts
Who’ve washed these wooden
Boards since the Lord spoke
Saying you are not bitter
Tis merely the water
Whose bed sleeps you
Beneath sun-lichened canopies
Rivers are eluding
Our saint-crossed oasis
Leaving sublunary oceans
To light their votives
And the stars to recede
Into true night
Which poets long have sung
But never seen
My favorite summer restaurant
Can be reached by boat
Tied to the shade
Under plumes of fava
Greedy fish wait to greet you
Under the cypresses
Some thousands of years
Have left to themselves
The chairs are filled with beautiful men
Who wag their fingers, beat
Their dogs. The water is reachable
From the tables
You can taste the machinery
Looming from Eden
To eat you need not more
Than all you’ve ever loved
Lemons & olives cater here
To the blood of beasts
Who’ve washed these wooden
Boards since the Lord spoke
Saying you are not bitter
Tis merely the water
Whose bed sleeps you
Beneath sun-lichened canopies
Rivers are eluding
Our saint-crossed oasis
Leaving sublunary oceans
To light their votives
And the stars to recede
Into true night
Which poets long have sung
But never seen
Sam Kerbel lives in New York. He was shortlisted for the 2024 Oxford Poetry Prize. His first chapbook, Can't Beat the Price (2025), is available from Bottlecap Press.
Al Maginnes
|
The House Where They Lived
A carpet unraveled, one spread forth to reveal no dusty magic, no stirring of legend to shake away the dust gathered since the last time I drove this road where the Wings used to live, eight in a three bedroom house, now the last house standing on their brief cul de sac. In front of the house, the square of concrete, where two of the Wings, Keith and Dale, my homeboy Dennis, and I sat or leaned, staring through the humid draperies of one long summer. One night I rode a skateboard down this road’s small hill until I was blended with the curve of hill and vanished for a while from a life I was exactly in the center of. Nights were just long waiting. We would do anything to break apart the stillness. And we did. It’s hard to love or forgive who I was then, but I have to try. I’m the one still here I have to forgive before I can understand. Someone will survive to tell the stories. What if it’s me? Vertical Divider
|
Believing In What Is There
I dreamed an order in the way events and lives weave forth, so I read religion, physics. I understood maybe a third of what I thought I was learning. I read less these days, give more time to staring at clouds, knowing full well the time any of us has is infinite but less than yesterday. The sky’s silent wisdom never diminishes whether we believe in what’s there or not, solace we take a long time finding. There’s vision we’ve mined and made our own, borrowed from all the thinkers who cared or whose friends cared to record their words. I could talk about some of those works until night laps down from the cold branches, but I cannot, for all of me, find words wide enough to speak about the sky. |
Al Maginnes has published ten full-length collections and four chapbooks of poetry, most recently his new and selected poems, Fellow Survivors (Redhawk Publications, 2023). New poems and reviews appear in Offcourse, Arkansas Review, Rattle, Lake Effect, and many others. He is retired from teaching and lives in Raleigh NC.
brice maiurro
|
|
nocturne no. 1 in b-flat minor
they say the park closes at nine pm
but the moonflowers have just opened
the crickets arguing in such a gorgeous way
namecalling across the river of the golf course
a blade of grass once beneath flat bare feet
is reborn rising slowly like an old yogi
moths dance around a flickering lamp post
between a bright hunger & a dark confusion
an attentive ear can close its eye & hear the stars burning
an even more attentive ear just might hear the bricklayer
laying his cosmic bricks & material mortar into the wall
at the end of the universe–where they say it all ends
hovering over the wall are the hunter the twins the little dog
& the great bull bellowing–
hunched
ready to tear it all down
they say the park closes at nine pm
but the moonflowers have just opened
the crickets arguing in such a gorgeous way
namecalling across the river of the golf course
a blade of grass once beneath flat bare feet
is reborn rising slowly like an old yogi
moths dance around a flickering lamp post
between a bright hunger & a dark confusion
an attentive ear can close its eye & hear the stars burning
an even more attentive ear just might hear the bricklayer
laying his cosmic bricks & material mortar into the wall
at the end of the universe–where they say it all ends
hovering over the wall are the hunter the twins the little dog
& the great bull bellowing–
hunched
ready to tear it all down
brice maiurro is a Colorado poet, workshop facilitator, storyteller and artist. He is the Editor-in-Chief of South Broadway Press. He has authored four collections of poetry, including The Heart is an Undertaker Bee, published by Middle Creek Publishing. His work has been published by Voice & Verse, Tiny Spoon, and Inverted Syntax. Themes of his work include human connection, ecology, and finding the divine in the mundane.
Meghan B. Malachi
|
Mid December
Just as I’d suspected, none of it mattered when the time came: not the bank accounts, not the name on the house, not the jewelry to be split evenly four or five ways. What mattered was the way they found you. And who found you. And how a deep grumble returned my hello? when I called your landline to see if you’d received my card in the mail. And how odd― the frigid, collected voice of a man answering your phone. And how strange of him to ask how old are you? and how soon can you get here? Vertical Divider
|
The Woman is Fungal
The esteemed poet says the poem starts off gross. There’s a line about dandruff under my cornrows. I shouldn’t know this. It’s effective though. How do I tell him that he shouldn’t know any of it. That we were never meant to know so much of a person. That I can only hope that my blood isn’t stale, that he just can’t stand the sight of blood. That I don’t wish to write about the men who turn the stinking skin of their backs towards me at night. How with practice I learned the topology of each marking, the depth of scratched flesh—their bodies a wall of sleep and avoidance for my musing. No, no I wish to write about the litter of pale green roaches I found under the five-day old fish sauce. The way they swarmed against my violent sponge, how the strays landed under my pushful finger. The horror lain stiff in my throat. I upturned bowls and pans and mugs in search of the mother, found her brown carcass floating in the oil. I wish to write about the itch. The day I learned that stress might breach systems meant to keep you safe and a breached system might let in fungus and fungus might cause an itch. And that itch might start in the armpit, spread to the neck, stretch its reach under your belly’s flap. This fungus might spread so far as to reach the brain. Now all your thoughts grow a layer of filth. You see things for what they are: Your body has always been a harborer of dirt. All you see now is fungus. It’s everywhere—on the ceiling trickling into your sleeping mouth agape. Under your bed rolling around with the stray hairs and balls of lint. You accept it: You deserve every bad thing that’s ever come your way. You are the keeper of skin flaking in the crack of your ass. The hyperpigmentation between your legs is here to stay. Since you were a girl, you’ve been called a mess. A hoarder. You were scolded for not cleaning up after yourself, and your friends say they don’t mind, fix up your closets and drawers for you. You tried to hide your beast, your savage—throw bath towels over piles of unfolded clothes, consolidate crumbed dishes into a vertical pile. Your college roommate doesn’t mind it. Your soul is innocent and your room a sin. She likes it. You dated a dishwasher and thought it was a perfect match. Your dirty habits trailed you city after city. You were destined for fungus, destined to be fungal. One day you stood at your grandmother’s kitchen sink, lathered dish after dish, gleamed out the window. You grew watchful of grime, protective of crannies and steel. You felt harmony in the suds bubbling over your nail beds. Felt light in the service of another. That night you stepped into the shower, scrubbed the fungus out red. |
Meghan B. Malachi is a Bronx-born, Chicago-based poet. She is an associate editor at RHINO and a programming coordinator at the Guild Literary Complex. Meghan is the first-place winner of the Spoon River Poetry Review 2022 Editor's Prize Contest and runner-up of the 2024 Princemere Poetry Prize Contest. When she's not writing poems in bed, you can find her window shopping downtown or commuting on the red line.
Jennifer Maritza McCauley
Sálvate
How have I lived this little and fucked up so much?
Lost the jolt of this joking body, I’m funny starfish
puckering for air in rootless mog.
Washed-up whelk egg carried to shore
after spinning dizzy in crumbles of baby foam.
It’s so easy to talk shit about what’s wrong, and who knows
I might keep doing it. I’m just saying: when I was a child
I spoke as a child, and that shit barely budges with time.
I’m always poised to leave town, sprint-ready
at the edge of county line. Always bound
to straddle the thinnest boundary.
Thinking: where can I find a small home, who to tell
my best secrets, where to hide my nose
in soft chest for good.
*
Sure, the kindest hands feel strongest when they’re leaving.
Sure, belonging is a stupid smack of idealization,
Sure, there are always differences within textured difference,
but besides that, there are few better
places than Right Now.
*
I want to say I’m writing about rooting.
But rather: this is a poem about giving
up your dream, of the loveliest place
to island, rather: just go. Anywhere. Go. Still.
Don’t ask me why: be a walking tree. Take up
your bags with your best and brightest self, burrow,
quickly, or however
long. I don’t know.
Sure: go, stay, save that body,
just sálvate.
How have I lived this little and fucked up so much?
Lost the jolt of this joking body, I’m funny starfish
puckering for air in rootless mog.
Washed-up whelk egg carried to shore
after spinning dizzy in crumbles of baby foam.
It’s so easy to talk shit about what’s wrong, and who knows
I might keep doing it. I’m just saying: when I was a child
I spoke as a child, and that shit barely budges with time.
I’m always poised to leave town, sprint-ready
at the edge of county line. Always bound
to straddle the thinnest boundary.
Thinking: where can I find a small home, who to tell
my best secrets, where to hide my nose
in soft chest for good.
*
Sure, the kindest hands feel strongest when they’re leaving.
Sure, belonging is a stupid smack of idealization,
Sure, there are always differences within textured difference,
but besides that, there are few better
places than Right Now.
*
I want to say I’m writing about rooting.
But rather: this is a poem about giving
up your dream, of the loveliest place
to island, rather: just go. Anywhere. Go. Still.
Don’t ask me why: be a walking tree. Take up
your bags with your best and brightest self, burrow,
quickly, or however
long. I don’t know.
Sure: go, stay, save that body,
just sálvate.
Elevated
For J. Savage
I am not elevated
yet, cousin.
The loss I feel is the wind-spread
chasm of potential.
Fast flicks of jaunty fun
we’d dream about as we soared
down fresh, black streets in Westport
and you would whip
the crowd into wild.
Your voice, the fizzy keyboard set against
the mean rush of heart-scuffed voice;
your cresting mind, its fulling tide.
That rapflow, a new knife cutting up, slicing cold
like the folks who dared to spit their sins at your
blazing face.
Dead-iced woman, under the cut of bad pain.
I am not putting on the unfinished mask of
That shit anymore.
You taught me easy things like:
You are not who you used to be: girl
You are a raging woman who is lifting, lifting, lifting.
I ran out of good words.
Your sugar-voiced family
will say it all, warmly, and they’ll say it
better and I will see you in the pastiche
and spread of mind’s eye.
For J. Savage
I am not elevated
yet, cousin.
The loss I feel is the wind-spread
chasm of potential.
Fast flicks of jaunty fun
we’d dream about as we soared
down fresh, black streets in Westport
and you would whip
the crowd into wild.
Your voice, the fizzy keyboard set against
the mean rush of heart-scuffed voice;
your cresting mind, its fulling tide.
That rapflow, a new knife cutting up, slicing cold
like the folks who dared to spit their sins at your
blazing face.
Dead-iced woman, under the cut of bad pain.
I am not putting on the unfinished mask of
That shit anymore.
You taught me easy things like:
You are not who you used to be: girl
You are a raging woman who is lifting, lifting, lifting.
I ran out of good words.
Your sugar-voiced family
will say it all, warmly, and they’ll say it
better and I will see you in the pastiche
and spread of mind’s eye.
The Way You Melt a Midnight (A Jazz Poem)
The blasting scuff of night is oncoming.
Man, it’s quick-easy, grace-stuffed
and lonely.
Yeah, it’s a new brush of something
I don’t understand,
haven’t gleaned yet
or built up brightly.
See, here’s the deal:
you arrived, for a snapping flash.
You’ve always been haloed
and lucky and I want heaven’s Will
or at least a ring around my head
of holy too.
Look, I’m just a mewling duckling
of clicking sentences
searching for a dropping light
that I can embody or
care for, not emulate.
I adore watching you undress
every sliver of line.
You get that power-rich
spirit tough, unearth something
primal or fun in scribbles and phrases.
You asked me about beauty (I’d
rather talk about yours) and
we speak about so many things
and so many nothings.
Dear pulchritudinous avatar;
I am solidly corporeal.
So whenever:
walk me through your witnessing,
teach me another volume.
Your distance, always-away
is so thick I want to ram through it
And crush it until all I see are the
seraph’d lines of your God-infused eyes.
The blasting scuff of night is oncoming.
Man, it’s quick-easy, grace-stuffed
and lonely.
Yeah, it’s a new brush of something
I don’t understand,
haven’t gleaned yet
or built up brightly.
See, here’s the deal:
you arrived, for a snapping flash.
You’ve always been haloed
and lucky and I want heaven’s Will
or at least a ring around my head
of holy too.
Look, I’m just a mewling duckling
of clicking sentences
searching for a dropping light
that I can embody or
care for, not emulate.
I adore watching you undress
every sliver of line.
You get that power-rich
spirit tough, unearth something
primal or fun in scribbles and phrases.
You asked me about beauty (I’d
rather talk about yours) and
we speak about so many things
and so many nothings.
Dear pulchritudinous avatar;
I am solidly corporeal.
So whenever:
walk me through your witnessing,
teach me another volume.
Your distance, always-away
is so thick I want to ram through it
And crush it until all I see are the
seraph’d lines of your God-infused eyes.
Jennifer Maritza McCauley is the author of the cross-genre collection SCAR ON/SCAR OFF (Stalking Horse Press), When Trying to Return Home (Counterpoint Press), a short story collection, Kinds of Grace (Flowersong Press), a poetry collection, and the forthcoming speculative fiction collection Neon Steel (Cornerstone Press/U.Wisc-Stevens Point.) She is fiction editor at Pleiades, seasonal faculty at Yale Writers’ Workshop and an assistant professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Judith H. Montgomery
|
|
GRAY ETUDE
When I struggle out of sleep, the sun has not
yet colored the world. The round mirror propped
above my dresser mirrors nothing, not even
tangled strands of dream. Against the ceiling’s
pale gray, the fan’s starfish arms stop, dark.
Grayed, the blanket under which I breathe.
Grayed, the quilt on your side of the bed―
flat, untouched since yesterday’s remaking.
And the day’s before. September, it’s 6 a.m.
Day 89 of mourning since your heart quit.
Bereft, I know if I wait—and what is there
to do but wait—the world candle will flame
above tame hills. If I part the blackout curtains
at the window, the yard will shake itself awake
in blue frilled asters and last pink angelonias.
In this abandoned room, gray walls will warm
to fawn, the mirror resume its silver reflections.
The quilt’s rumpled and unrumpled halves
will blossom into color, and my body assume
its usual hues. I will dress it in gray sweats, will
step outside into my brightened garden where
endless tomatoes ripen on bent stems sagged
from the metal cage meant to shelter them.
Felco pruners in hand—your last Christmas gift
to me—I’ll harvest the crop. Too late for some:
they’ve given up their hold, dead-ripe yielding
to time and gravity. Red flesh and seeds splay
on droughty ground. Nothing red can stay.
Judith H. Montgomery’s poems appear in the Gyroscope, South Florida Poetry Review, and Epiphany, among other journals. Her chapbook Passion received the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Her second full-length collection, Litany for Wound and Bloom, a finalist for the Marsh Hawk Prize, appeared in 2018. Her prize-winning narrative medicine chapbook, Mercy, appeared from Wolf Ridge Press in 2019. Her latest chapbook, The Ferry Keeper, received the 2024 Grayson Books Chapbook Competition Prize.
Rick Mulkey
Outro
I will arise and stretch my stiff back now and go
to Walgreens for ointment so I can pretend
I’ve more years ahead than behind;
and I’ll return home, power up my turntable
and place the needle to a Stones’ track, “Gimme Shelter,”
recorded when women screamed and cried for Mick
to take them away, and I’ll turn up the volume
to create a hive of electric guitar hum, chiming hammer-ons,
and thumping drums, and I’ll dance in my socked feet
as if my hips have never locked into a rictus of knotted muscle,
as if later I won’t swallow a handful of Gabapentin and Codeine
to numb the ache and invite some rest;
and I’ll dream the narcotic visions of youth,
remembering everything: days love-wrecked,
blood-buzzing on grain-laced punch,
waking to bowls of cheerios and Mad Dog 20/20,
infatuated with the feedback of joy, grief, laughter, pain,
and convinced I’ll live it all before I die
because I’ll never grow old, disciple to a blues progression,
forever high in a Sonic Youth induced spell,
forever rising up against the deaf, heartbroken world.
I will arise and stretch my stiff back now and go
to Walgreens for ointment so I can pretend
I’ve more years ahead than behind;
and I’ll return home, power up my turntable
and place the needle to a Stones’ track, “Gimme Shelter,”
recorded when women screamed and cried for Mick
to take them away, and I’ll turn up the volume
to create a hive of electric guitar hum, chiming hammer-ons,
and thumping drums, and I’ll dance in my socked feet
as if my hips have never locked into a rictus of knotted muscle,
as if later I won’t swallow a handful of Gabapentin and Codeine
to numb the ache and invite some rest;
and I’ll dream the narcotic visions of youth,
remembering everything: days love-wrecked,
blood-buzzing on grain-laced punch,
waking to bowls of cheerios and Mad Dog 20/20,
infatuated with the feedback of joy, grief, laughter, pain,
and convinced I’ll live it all before I die
because I’ll never grow old, disciple to a blues progression,
forever high in a Sonic Youth induced spell,
forever rising up against the deaf, heartbroken world.
Rick Mulkey is the author of six collections of poetry including most recently All These Hungers. Previous work has appeared in Georgia Review, the Literary Review, Poet Lore, Southeast Review, and elsewhere. For 15 years, he directed the Low Residency MFA at Converse University where he continues to teach.
Bill Rector
|
Caution: Eternal Recurrence At Work
The traffic light at Laurel and Main turns red. A kid strolls past my window, juggling oranges for change. I turn out my pockets, nada, check my wallet, moths, thumb the ashtray, not even ashes. I don’t have a penny to my name meanwhile this kid is raking in money hand over
The boy bows. The navels drop like obedient birds into a pouch on his belt. When I get to my cubicle at Universal Life Insurance, the kid is seated in my chair, adding columns of figures in his head. There’s an orange on the desk. An eye is drawn on the rind.
|
Bill Rector is a retired physician. He has published five poetry chapbooks: Lost Moth (Chapbook Prize Winner, Epiphany Magazine 2017); Biography Of A Name (Unsolicited Press, 2018); Brief Candles, (Prolific Press, 2018); Two Worlds,(White Knuckle Press); and Hats Are The Enemy Of Poetry (Finishing Line Press, 2021). He formerly edited The Yale Journal Of Humanities And Medicine.
Amy Riddell
|
Endlessly Circling the Condo Pond
My husband and I wheel the curving path, his thin shoulder blades knifing through my denial, his hair regrown in dandelions that I gently blow to the wind, wishing away his wheelchair. I want to be like the great blue heron, a buddha plumbing a deep composure, all stillness and inward gaze, not a one-legged question mark at the end of a tirade against death. I yearn to taste the salt of this moment, to relish this inedible morsel of time, my beloved with me in the delicious space between certainty and doubt where the heron suggests acceptance or at least the possibility, despite what hovers like a mirage over hot pavement, despite the truth my dearest allows but keeps to himself. Vertical Divider
|
Perennial
I am no botanist, dear daffodil. No. I am a white nightgown wandering suburban streets, all grounding lost until my mind returns to my husband in our garden, his hand reaching to hang a thistle feeder in the sweet gum tree for goldfinches returning to naked branches. On the mantle beside his readers and copper urn, a cairn of favorite stones. In a lidded box, his watch and wedding band. Daffodil, you are alive, so it must be spring, your yellow oh so ordinary. You abide the perennial mystery, surrendering as if death were not a scalpel that cuts all the way through. |
Amy Riddell is the author of two poetry collections, Bullets in the Jewelry Box (Future Cycle Press) and Narcissistic Injury, a chapbook (Pudding House Publications). A Pushcart nominee, Amy has poems in the current issue of The Inflectionist Review (#20) and The Orchards Poetry Journal. Poems are forthcoming in Rust & Moth and Rat’s Ass Review. Previous publishing credits include Prairie Schooner, Black Warrior Review, and Birmingham Poetry Review.
Daniel Romo
|
|
Realidades
When the woman mistook me for another
poet at the writers’ conference, I paused as
she congratulated me on my reading the
night before and allowed her to continue
talking because it’s rude to damn any stream
of compliments, though I wondered at what
point we correct others as they give us credit
for what we’re not, or the blame for what we
never were. I don’t recall when I met Ken,
but he listens to a Spanish-learning app on
his Mac next to me in this coffeeshop
where I like to be despite my fatiga de le gente.
It’s not that I don’t like people, but this
fatigue leads me to be more of a watcher
than a talker and if more folks bit their
tongue before speaking, their words would
be more heart than pinkie toe, and they’d
learn how to roll their R’s. It’s when you’re
truly exhausted that you unearth the gravity
and unraveling of your guts which leads to
the discovery of self-bestowed grace.
Con-fron-TAR, Ken says aloud as if a
conviction for those who need to confess
they’re not the man you thought they were,
as if a plea to set the record straight in this
mundo incorrecto.
When the woman mistook me for another
poet at the writers’ conference, I paused as
she congratulated me on my reading the
night before and allowed her to continue
talking because it’s rude to damn any stream
of compliments, though I wondered at what
point we correct others as they give us credit
for what we’re not, or the blame for what we
never were. I don’t recall when I met Ken,
but he listens to a Spanish-learning app on
his Mac next to me in this coffeeshop
where I like to be despite my fatiga de le gente.
It’s not that I don’t like people, but this
fatigue leads me to be more of a watcher
than a talker and if more folks bit their
tongue before speaking, their words would
be more heart than pinkie toe, and they’d
learn how to roll their R’s. It’s when you’re
truly exhausted that you unearth the gravity
and unraveling of your guts which leads to
the discovery of self-bestowed grace.
Con-fron-TAR, Ken says aloud as if a
conviction for those who need to confess
they’re not the man you thought they were,
as if a plea to set the record straight in this
mundo incorrecto.
Daniel Romo is the author of Bum Knees and Grieving Sunsets (FlowerSong Press 2023), Moonlighting as an Avalanche (Tebot Bach 2021), Apologies in Reverse (FutureCycle Press 2019), and other books. He received an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, and he lives, writes, and rides his bikes in Long Beach, CA. More at danieljromo.com.
t.r. san
no lights, camera
in my blue movie dream it was 6pm snowing in a cut
-and-quartered fraction of north dagon with no traffic
and mother lies half-naked facefirst on watery asphalt
bloodlike and inky she had hair like herself again and
dream-i thought no yangon tire’s built for real winters so
it’s safe, this midroad offering, no car’s sleeping woman
and because it was snowflurrying like a budd- and guthrie
-soundtracked scene from mysterious skin i laid myself
down dirtbedded on the roadside, like the wet black below
was an insect-ridden dusk rooftop where i had no one left
to save and only a too-bruised sky left to ponder, no hints
at all of any starlife, no pinholes of falsewhite dotting at all
except the sight of motorbikelights a dart, nova, piercing―
a street haunter on unfit wheels still riding on weird nights
—mother was going to die lynchianly i knew i had to wake
her knew it more than any groggy heart, ofcourse, i woke as
june was winding down around us like no june before had, in
my weak little loud yelp of mother move don’t let life kill you
but she stirred unmoved and it just rushed past her, willy-willy
till it wanted to ram into me and i wanted abruptly to remember
my iphone SE moonbathing on concrete, in snowstruck abandon
at which point the question became to dive or die and die not
diving– my entire life in it, all three minutes’ worth of it, you
must understand, in subpixels with subpixels locked away in
dreams in enrapture with every rainy season evil―so i dove
against white like whistle-sharp breath, life flashed and lived
as poems don’t accommodate everything dreams don’t either
and death defies it all and takes memory and want with it so
i woke up and called s., excited to remember no night terror
so mother can we build this town over, lie through everything
in my blue movie dream it was 6pm snowing in a cut
-and-quartered fraction of north dagon with no traffic
and mother lies half-naked facefirst on watery asphalt
bloodlike and inky she had hair like herself again and
dream-i thought no yangon tire’s built for real winters so
it’s safe, this midroad offering, no car’s sleeping woman
and because it was snowflurrying like a budd- and guthrie
-soundtracked scene from mysterious skin i laid myself
down dirtbedded on the roadside, like the wet black below
was an insect-ridden dusk rooftop where i had no one left
to save and only a too-bruised sky left to ponder, no hints
at all of any starlife, no pinholes of falsewhite dotting at all
except the sight of motorbikelights a dart, nova, piercing―
a street haunter on unfit wheels still riding on weird nights
—mother was going to die lynchianly i knew i had to wake
her knew it more than any groggy heart, ofcourse, i woke as
june was winding down around us like no june before had, in
my weak little loud yelp of mother move don’t let life kill you
but she stirred unmoved and it just rushed past her, willy-willy
till it wanted to ram into me and i wanted abruptly to remember
my iphone SE moonbathing on concrete, in snowstruck abandon
at which point the question became to dive or die and die not
diving– my entire life in it, all three minutes’ worth of it, you
must understand, in subpixels with subpixels locked away in
dreams in enrapture with every rainy season evil―so i dove
against white like whistle-sharp breath, life flashed and lived
as poems don’t accommodate everything dreams don’t either
and death defies it all and takes memory and want with it so
i woke up and called s., excited to remember no night terror
so mother can we build this town over, lie through everything
t.r. san is a burmese & transgender lesbian poet. their work can be found in The Offing, The Cincinnati Review, beestung, & elsewhere. read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter/X or trsan.carrd.co.
Oscar Sanders
|
Oscar Sanders performing "SHIT"
from Exposing Politics: A Play of Acts - Play to Movie Version Ft. Oscar Sanders "SHIT" follows the poem "Bigoted Sadist" and comes just before the finale "They Still Hate You." Link to the entire work: https://youtu.be/7gdlNIbEt0M?si=jbkzR2sF0x3l0h6q |
|
Dramatic actor, Background Actor, model, playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, social justice spoken word poet, and author. One man solo performer of self-written plays for education and entertainment, performed in thirteen different characters. Oscar Sanders reads dramatically virtually and live. He has won 17 awards for his creative endeavors in all these areas.
Kimberly Ann Southwick
|
|
|
FIRST CONTACT
April 2020 Tess says what I am thinking, admitting how nice it is to not have to go into the record shop six days a week: I’m just wondering when I’ll be able to hug my friends again. be able to versus feel safe to versus want to—right now we want to. I hug my daughter, whisper, this is love. this is contact. her bird bones, her pig snort, our unburst bubble. -- ode to my nipple, my areola’s mug-stain diameter—what did it look like before my body ballooned & changed size: quarter sized? half dollar? in plague times, its abilities are priceless, formula one less pantry item to worry about, for now. Esmé fishfaces her way around it, pecking at my chest like a small monster, & it crinkles like in cold as I guide her gummy mouth to it. ode to my milk ducts, each mammary gland, ode to the lunch my husband is preparing in the kitchen that will eventually make its way to her though me. -- garden mint tea with red raspberry leaf tea with maple syrup & lemon & honey. triple zero lanolin. Duross & Langel buttercream moisture lotion. Burt’s Bees beeswax lip balm. that chocolate bar I got because it was on sale from Whole Foods a while ago now, dark chocolate & coconut. one Ricola original herbal cough drop. -- daddy wills her eyes blue after a second bath. I cry when she hiccups because I can’t help them away & tell her about how she used to hiccup inside me. ode to my nipple, the way it contours to her mouth’s suck & then reforms, the way it is there for her, how she puckers towards & around it. how she hugs the whole breast with her small arms, grabs my thumb with her whole hand. what contact we have, so small but so apparent. how Tess & Patrick waved to her, told us from six feet away how beautiful she is, how smart. her pig squeal. her fish mouth. MARS POETICA
Mars could be habitable by 2050 is a headline to a pop science article I might read or title to a poem I could write as Earth turns in circles & circles the sun & we just keep fucking up. There is nothing personal about ice caps melting, nothing personal about a hole in the ozone layer. I make more sense on the page. It makes more sense to add whiskey to buttercream frosting when we are out of vanilla if there is whiskey somewhere in the house. On facebook, my Mom posted a link to an article explaining how these bad winters are the fault of global warming. I didn’t read it, but I looked at the graphs. My thoughts need metaphors to come close to what they are doing inside of my brain. Whales are my favorite animals because even though we can translate English to French, French to Japanese & learn all of these different human alphabets, we have no idea what the fuck whales are saying & they have language. & don’t tell me I can come up with a better word than fuck; don’t say, you’re a writer, if anyone you, & don’t tell me that language is flimsy or faulty or poetry is faulty or no one reads that stuff anyway, don’t tell me I can’t change the world around me— don’t tell me, no, you stop yelling, unless you’re yelling that it’s all going to be okay. I am tired of ending poems with this same sentiment, that the sun will rise another day, hold your honeys close, it’s all going to be okay. When I lost the first fertilized egg, all the blood. When I lost the second, & surgery later, I was nothing, a shrug’s numb embodiment of a cupcake upside down on the unswept kitchen floor. But then, I wanted to be able to take something small & gone & use it to change the world. My Mom used to say, you can only change the small part of the world around you. But my body couldn’t even do what I wanted my body to do, what I was told it should do. Tiny abyss, small loss, as catalyst to art that shakes sea & sand, haunting like whalesong & whiskey. So don’t tell me it’s all going to be okay, unless you are yelling, unless we are in the streets, with our masks on, yelling & it is dark & night & we aren’t drunk at all, could care less if the neighbors hear. This poem is about how it’s all going to be okay only because this poem is what makes everything okay. Find your way in. This is your goblet, your pitcher. Do like Frost says & drink the melting snow. When the glaciers have shed their last years, meet me on Mars & bring all of my exes. There used to be water here. Start digging: soon it will be spring. |
Kimberly Ann Southwick is an Assistant Professor in the English department at Jacksonville State University in Alabama, where she lives with her daughter, Esmé, and their dog. She is the author of the debut full-length poetry collection Orchid Alpha (Trembling Pillow Press, 2023). She has work forthcoming in American Poetry Review. Kimberly is the founder and Editor in Chief of the literary-arts journal Gigantic Sequins, which has been in print since 2009, and a board member of the Emily Dickinson International Society.
Sarp Sozdinler
At 2:47 A.M. in a Sheetz Parking Lot off I-81,
I Realized I Hadn’t Spoken to Anyone in Three Days
In the quiet part of the desert,
where the land bends into itself―
I walk the space between images:
a dried riverbed, cracked like an old painting
I didn’t finish in college,
still waiting for color,
the blues, the reds of someone else’s grief.
They say the land here holds stories
like a skin too tight over bones.
The old woman at the gas station
tells me about the fire that didn’t come last year.
“Most things burn,” she says,
as if I should know,
her words curling between us
like the dust that comes down from the hills.
A single cactus blooms in the distance,
its petals, pale as watercolors,
but who paints out here?
The men in town drink their beer
underneath a flag that waves in nothing―
“Made in America,”
but what does that mean
on a stretch of highway
where the wind’s only company is
the broken glass of old bottles?
The silence hums,
even the road signs can’t decide
if they belong to someone.
A bird flies low,
as if it knows where it’s going,
but I can't see the horizon
through the yellow haze.
I am nothing but a flicker of shadow
on a painting
that doesn’t know its end.
I Realized I Hadn’t Spoken to Anyone in Three Days
In the quiet part of the desert,
where the land bends into itself―
I walk the space between images:
a dried riverbed, cracked like an old painting
I didn’t finish in college,
still waiting for color,
the blues, the reds of someone else’s grief.
They say the land here holds stories
like a skin too tight over bones.
The old woman at the gas station
tells me about the fire that didn’t come last year.
“Most things burn,” she says,
as if I should know,
her words curling between us
like the dust that comes down from the hills.
A single cactus blooms in the distance,
its petals, pale as watercolors,
but who paints out here?
The men in town drink their beer
underneath a flag that waves in nothing―
“Made in America,”
but what does that mean
on a stretch of highway
where the wind’s only company is
the broken glass of old bottles?
The silence hums,
even the road signs can’t decide
if they belong to someone.
A bird flies low,
as if it knows where it’s going,
but I can't see the horizon
through the yellow haze.
I am nothing but a flicker of shadow
on a painting
that doesn’t know its end.
A Turkish writer & poet, Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Masters Review, Trampset, and Normal School, among other journals. Their work has been selected or nominated for anthologies including the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. They are currently working on their first novel in Philadelphia and Amsterdam.
Linda Ann Strang
|
|
Imagine yourself as a sugar bowl
thrown across the immaculate kitchen.
Now conceive of yourself as a sugar crystal,
your apartment building the broken porcelain
piece that is shaped like the wing of a bird.
A flightless bird wing is the new foundation.
Somebody hand painted that underworld.
A new foundation for the underworld,
your home is a crockery capitulation, concave,
piercing, covered in glaze. Slightly rocking,
where is the mall, the park, the gas station?
Love’s Travel Stop’s under your refrigeration,
the mall is shattered, the park is a half lid,
rooftops are bone, and the neighbourhood’s broken.
The splinters are cars in a glaze near the station.
The cars can now cut you; the station is crushed.
Your lid once closed above celadon loti,
or hovered with hands that were clinking for cake.
Now half of the lid is a C that won’t fit.
The point of the bird lid was cover for Buddha.
Ceramic, he floated with celadon cloud curls.
But Buddha is parked with the lilies in pieces,
and a bird with no voice is the point of a sword.
thrown across the immaculate kitchen.
Now conceive of yourself as a sugar crystal,
your apartment building the broken porcelain
piece that is shaped like the wing of a bird.
A flightless bird wing is the new foundation.
Somebody hand painted that underworld.
A new foundation for the underworld,
your home is a crockery capitulation, concave,
piercing, covered in glaze. Slightly rocking,
where is the mall, the park, the gas station?
Love’s Travel Stop’s under your refrigeration,
the mall is shattered, the park is a half lid,
rooftops are bone, and the neighbourhood’s broken.
The splinters are cars in a glaze near the station.
The cars can now cut you; the station is crushed.
Your lid once closed above celadon loti,
or hovered with hands that were clinking for cake.
Now half of the lid is a C that won’t fit.
The point of the bird lid was cover for Buddha.
Ceramic, he floated with celadon cloud curls.
But Buddha is parked with the lilies in pieces,
and a bird with no voice is the point of a sword.
Linda Ann Strang’s published poetry collections are Star Reverse, shortlisted for the 2023 Glenna Luschei prize for African Poetry, and Wedding Underwear for Mermaids. Her poems have appeared in New Ohio Review, Image Journal, Portland Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa.
Kenneth Tanemura
Sumi-e
What a repetitive
thing love is
universe reduced
to a figure
Japanese sumi-e
bird and branch
without the calm
acceptance of spring
or fall anyone’s
voice calling back
the one voice
books now unworthy
of being read it’s
love that is
the dark place
and years after
the dark displaces
another darkness
comes past the
age of love
What a repetitive
thing love is
universe reduced
to a figure
Japanese sumi-e
bird and branch
without the calm
acceptance of spring
or fall anyone’s
voice calling back
the one voice
books now unworthy
of being read it’s
love that is
the dark place
and years after
the dark displaces
another darkness
comes past the
age of love
Kenneth Tanemura teaches writing at the University of Central Florida.
Rais Tuluka
|
|
|
The Swamp Held
They found him face-up, a hush in the reeds / Birds combing the spindle trees, eyes like pond-glass, buzzing out glitch-songs above the body / not again, not again / moss swaddled his jaw like a jaw still thinking / his eyes full of dusted glass / not shut, not open / He was once fire / once feet / once cornmeal and deer sinew / now just wet cloth and the smell of rusted pennies / Swamp moss draped over the arcades / the frogs croak / tabulate / bear witness without comment / we watched them—two of them― half-boys, half-breath / The first son did not speak / The second son dropped to his knees in the bog-water / cupped air before he dared touch / He reached for the man’s cheek the way one might reach for fire they used to know / a cheek like dried leather / a ghost’s shoulder / he wanted to know him / to call him back / to say: you were not alone / we saw you / we came / But the first son gripped his wrist—tight― No / said with a glance / No / said with the bones he came from / the rule was unspoken / The frogs croaked louder / like rattles / or teeth in an old mouth / The boy fought for the right to know / to press palm to cheek / to feel the weight of the silence passed down / to name what had no name but memory / or warning / or mirror / The swamp took in his struggle / did not speak / only shivered its mosquitoes / flexed its breath / A drop of body oil the size of a water balloon slid from the man’s collar / split on a fern / atomized into salt and silence / Roiling in the stillness was something holy / or wrong / or both / A footstep is a swamp in which gators rise / a carnival of teeth beneath us / He was once breath / once drum / now just a story the earth almost forgot / And still—the boy wanted to touch him / as the frogs croaked / as the sky held its breath as moss curled around the names we never say aloud. Vertical Divider
|
After the Toppling
To the crisp crack in the dusk, the moment returns home. Long syllable sounds between palm and limb, between lips and skin. Grip this instant current—hushed― what if it was my breath? To revisit, after ages, the same district of peril: an old borough you recall like the shaft, the notch, the lever. I long to return to the vessel that carried me from the distant edge years before. What I dwelled in—those dialects—I misplaced, the regions I abandoned that I now wish to rename. Were we glimpsed? Were we uttered? Were all the hounds howling? Met at the margin of the vivid shadow of drizzle, Time cannot keep its vow to fracture, revisit, or dwindle. Swear upon this cycle, this we shall, this wound we foster. We in the globe would shape a soft oath, birthed low. Hung slack at the waist, to be a firm sentinel who dirtied his traded spirit for the right to be the first to listen, first to wait, to welcome. In the targeting, I am heir to no paddle to grasp. I am on both ends of the barrel― peal as echo or price: one that always echoes, and the other never circles. Each clasp is the first flaw on language’s slope, forged by wonder that one might find another, feel his mold, his edge, his tremble. "You are saved," cried Captain Delano, more and more astonished and pained; "you are saved: what has cast such a shadow upon you?" To speak of mercy is to stretch the mouth wide around silence. No pledge claimed to rescue, no redemption, no balm, no courage, no applause, no republic― only a dawn that asks us what kindness will cost. |
Bethlehem
If I’m honest, the story reached me
like heat rolling in off desert stone
this man, not yet thirty,
pulling water from the bones of jars
and making it wine. They say he opened
a blind man’s eyes with spit and dust,
called a dead man out of his tomb
like it was nothing more than sleep.
But what if, by some ruin in the stars,
some curse woven through our lineage
like cracked olive branches,
the grief still comes
no matter how we bow,
or lift our hands toward something greater?
The way they found Ezra’s boy
folded in the straw behind the stable,
face calm as if dreaming,
the mother shaking him softly,
then not at all
what god would allow that?
Am I wrong to say I stopped praying after that?
I even said as much on the walk back
through the alleys of the old quarter,
where bread cost more than a man’s word,
and word of miracles passed
quicker than famine.
Even now, when someone says
they’ve seen him—the Nazarene
standing in the market with eyes
like fire held at bay,
I feel my chest lock up.
At any moment, something terrible
could crack open again.
A child gone, a wife taken by fever.
The ache hasn’t left me.
It sits behind the ribs,
quiet as a lion waiting.
They say he walks among us now.
That he weeps. That he laughs.
That his touch is like morning.
But I have been wrong before.
I have waited, and nothing came.
Still….still..
I want it to be true.
I want the blind to see.
The dead to rise.
The stone rolled back. One day, I will believe again,
I feel it coming―
like thunder under sand.
I will walk the path barefoot,
head bowed,
asking only for a sign
that the world might heal.
That someone still walks among us
who remembers how.
If I’m honest, the story reached me
like heat rolling in off desert stone
this man, not yet thirty,
pulling water from the bones of jars
and making it wine. They say he opened
a blind man’s eyes with spit and dust,
called a dead man out of his tomb
like it was nothing more than sleep.
But what if, by some ruin in the stars,
some curse woven through our lineage
like cracked olive branches,
the grief still comes
no matter how we bow,
or lift our hands toward something greater?
The way they found Ezra’s boy
folded in the straw behind the stable,
face calm as if dreaming,
the mother shaking him softly,
then not at all
what god would allow that?
Am I wrong to say I stopped praying after that?
I even said as much on the walk back
through the alleys of the old quarter,
where bread cost more than a man’s word,
and word of miracles passed
quicker than famine.
Even now, when someone says
they’ve seen him—the Nazarene
standing in the market with eyes
like fire held at bay,
I feel my chest lock up.
At any moment, something terrible
could crack open again.
A child gone, a wife taken by fever.
The ache hasn’t left me.
It sits behind the ribs,
quiet as a lion waiting.
They say he walks among us now.
That he weeps. That he laughs.
That his touch is like morning.
But I have been wrong before.
I have waited, and nothing came.
Still….still..
I want it to be true.
I want the blind to see.
The dead to rise.
The stone rolled back. One day, I will believe again,
I feel it coming―
like thunder under sand.
I will walk the path barefoot,
head bowed,
asking only for a sign
that the world might heal.
That someone still walks among us
who remembers how.
Rais Tuluka is a poet and essayist based in Sacramento, California. He is the author of Iron Wrapped in Wool, a hybrid collection exploring masculinity, spirituality, and Black interiority through poetry and personal essay. His work interrogates inherited silence, political awakening, and the sacred within the ordinary. When not writing, he works in public health and mentors youth, committed to bridging art and healing across generations.
Joemario Umana, Swan XVII
|
|
|
Barbershop
black hair lets go of its home as a clipper passes through, like every immigrant in this country leaves home upon being passed through by something like suffering. i am sitting on a couch in the barbershop, watching the hair carpet the floor into sorrows, as i wait on my turn to have my fade. asa’s jailer flees through a speaker and a mouth gathers the freed lyrics, like the floor gathers the freed hair, & a country gathers every immigrant leaving their own for her. the mirror before me doesn’t lie, it only remembers. it holds my brother’s jawline, the stubborn curl of my father’s brow. the barber hums alongside lucky dube’s voice that has exiled asa’s, his voice trimming silence into shape. behind him are posters of faded afros & clean tapers— dreams catalogued on glossy paper, all with names like freedom, ambition, bliss fade. outside, the city smells of rain & exhaust. it’s june. inside, eucalyptus oil & talcum whisper of uyo afternoons, & mother’s hands in the morning, combing through scalp with coconut-slick fingers, untangling more than knots— unraveling questions: who will you become? what will you lose to belong? before sending us into the arms of education to secure our future. the clippers buzz me out of my daydream. someone speaks of greener pastures that only grow at the other side of the country’s border & the room marinates it, digest it — abrahams all seeking to leave home. the migratory nature of man reveals itself here. but i don’t blame them. i blame the country that is not home enough. i am called. i rise, step into the chair like a ritual throne, neck draped with a cape that feels like my mother’s wrapper, smelling faintly of camphor & hair cream. the barber asks, “how you want am?” i say, “just clean. new.” but what i mean is: make me belong here. make me still carry home on my head like a basin of dreams balanced in the ache of departure. |
Joemario Umana, Swan XVII, is a Nigerian creative writer and a performance poet who considers himself a wildflower. He tweets @JoemarioU38615.
Miles Waggener
Unwanted Nocturne
The helicopter is landing on the roof again.
Your tethers strike the metal rails of your ICU bed and you try
to speak. Am I the only person in the room to tell you
to lie back, relax? What you want
to tell me is important. But the years counting back
to this hard moment are panicked flutter beats
in night’s thorns, spear-shaped leaves, overgrown walls
along a shuttered house. The blood drop eye
of the towhee thrashing in the hedges is eying me.
Trauma bee drawn to my gray flower, the helicopter
touches down above us and brother, you stir,
you who told me all the stories in my life. I’m telling
the dead to calm down, lie back, I’m right here,
but your mouth keeps moving.
The helicopter is landing on the roof again.
Your tethers strike the metal rails of your ICU bed and you try
to speak. Am I the only person in the room to tell you
to lie back, relax? What you want
to tell me is important. But the years counting back
to this hard moment are panicked flutter beats
in night’s thorns, spear-shaped leaves, overgrown walls
along a shuttered house. The blood drop eye
of the towhee thrashing in the hedges is eying me.
Trauma bee drawn to my gray flower, the helicopter
touches down above us and brother, you stir,
you who told me all the stories in my life. I’m telling
the dead to calm down, lie back, I’m right here,
but your mouth keeps moving.
Miles Waggener is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Superstition Freeway, published by The Word Works. His new poems appear or are forthcoming in Nomadartx, Sugar House Review, Action-Spectacle, and Plume Poetry. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska.
Joshua Walker
|
The Man Who Fixes Ghosts
Outside of Tulsa, there’s a man who repairs hauntings. You bring him the cold spot, the crying stair, the clock that shouts at 3:00 a.m.― he listens like a priest at confession. His shed hums with bell jars, each holding a whisper, a name, a tooth wrapped in linen. Most ghosts, he says, aren’t angry. Just archived wrong. Some need a porch light. Others, a proper goodbye. He wears flannel like it’s sacred, never charges. “Grief pays its own way.” When I asked the cost, he handed me a mirror and said, “Start here.” |
The House I Was Buried In
They buried me in the living room. No headstone. Just silence, mother’s hush, father’s shadow in the TV glow. The floor bowed like ribs. The couch swallowed its own shape. I moved once—age ten, dreaming of a window. My brother said, “Windows are for houses that love you.” He wasn’t wrong. They built a new kitchen above me. Tiled over my absence. Still, I rose with every boiling pot, every laugh too loud, every fork scraping a plate. One day, they sold the place. A young couple moved in. Painted everything white. Slept like children. Never heard me. Never knew they bought a grave. |
Joshua Walker is a poet with work forthcoming in Potomac Review and previously published in Dandelion Scribes, Wells St., Libre, and Crowstep Journal, among others. He shares his poetry with over 152,000 followers on Bluesky (@bigjosh84) and 1,400 on Threads, both devoted to modern poetic storytelling. His work blends raw emotional honesty with layered imagery across traditional and experimental styles.