Month: June 2023

For the First Girl I Loved by Helena Mesa

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For the First Girl I Loved

I lived across the street—across two streets.
The cemetery lay behind you, a field of stories

stretched behind a thin row of trees: there
this silence would mean a louder silence,

the sinking of stones, roots tracing their fists,
knuckling the soil. Someone could hover,

talk seemingly to no one—words meant
for someone else. You loved stories of

the past—pioneer girls doing the right thing
in flower nightgowns, a sister saved, a white lie

righted, and you always fell asleep to
whatever hands I whispered were reaching

through the window, the lie you never needed
to forgive. In the morning, you made instruments

for whatever surgery I imagined—a doll’s arm
scratched my stomach; a plastic fork

raked my shoulder, then spread salves.
Your fingers trailed the soft fold

of my elbow—skin and head
tingling, and then, a stillness

so unexpected I begged you not to stop.
And when the V of your collar dipped low,

the pink tip of your scar appeared
swollen, raised. I willed myself

not to finger the ridge
stitching your cracked chest shut.

*

Helena Mesa is the author of Where Land Is Indistinguishable from Sea (forthcoming from Terrapin books) and Horse Dance Underwater, and is an editor for Mentor & Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The one time I wrote to Dear Abby by Sara Burant

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The one time I wrote to Dear Abby

I wish I could say I hadn’t been drinking
Bacardi & Coke with Mary Bartolone,
her mom at work at Numero Uno’s.
I wish I could say later that night I hadn’t
dragged a Christmas tree found on a curb
into Linda Nicholas’ basement where
the party was languishing, at least for me.
I wish I could say I’d felt playful, elvish,
but it was really a lonely awkwardness,
it was really wanting something, anything
to happen while my best friend Mary
made out with Paul DeStefanis whom
she would love unrequited for many years.
I wish I could say I commandeered
the stereo, putting on the album Wish
You Were Here carried at all times with
a spiral-bound notebook in my corduroy
satchel—I was always wishing someone
was there—was it Dear Abby? Dear reader
was it you? The tree was a marvelous,
disastrous sensation, not some dead thing,
not Charlie Brown’s pathetic little tree,
it was fragrant & shapely, strands of icicle-
tinsel still clinging to its boughs. After
being expelled from the party, I wish
I could say I took the tree down to the lake,
a small but meaningful journey, to listen
to waves slap & glug against the ice,
the wave-action molding ugly figures,
one of which turned to us, Rumpelstiltskin
exacting a promise it would be impossible
to keep in exchange for turning the tree
into someone I could wish for, even love.
I wish I could say the letter I wrote
to Dear Abby that night was coherent
& graceful & that she wrote back
on her personal stationery in a flowing
script, the start of a long correspondence
which made those years a little more ok.

*

Sara Burant’s poems and reviews have appeared in various journals, including Ruminate, Spillway, Quartet and Spry. The grateful recipient of a 2023 Oregon Literary Fellowship, she’s the author of a chapbook, Verge. She lives in Eugene with a red heeler named Penelope.

The Home I Abandoned by Bethany Jarmul

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The Home I Abandoned

I’d touch our home—
the red-brick house
at the end of a dead-end
street, with my heels,
our neighbor’s with my palms.

Scripture hanging on the walls.
My father’s fiddle atmospheric
in folk song, hymn.

A cracked alley, hills with oak,
maple, sycamore leaves loose.

The Appalachians as
makers, mothers, or
captors.

The girl who caught fireflies
in Tupperware, bare toes in moss,
marveled at hail clanging
against the tinny awning
over the porch.

*

Bethany Jarmul’s work has appeared in more than 50 literary magazines—including Salamander, Emerge Journal, Cease Cows—and been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Spiritual Literature. Her prose poem chapbook This Strange and Wonderful Existence is forthcoming from Bottlecap Press. Her nonfiction chapbook Take Me Home is forthcoming from Belle Point Press. She earned first place in Women on Writing’s Q2 2022 & Q2 2023 essay contests. Her essay “Intersections” earned the award for “Best in Show: Creative Nonfiction” for Winter 2023 from Inscape Journal. She lives near Pittsburgh. Connect with her at bethanyjarmul.com or on Twitter: @BethanyJarmul.

Two Poems by Corey D. Cook

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High School Yearbook Addendum #3

The flag is at half-mast
for my grandmother –
a well-known alumna.

And I am bleary-eyed
and inconsolable
in the hallway.

Absentmindedly carrying around
my Algebra 1 textbook –
its frivolous problems.

As I pass locker
after locker.

Each one a casket
waiting to be opened.

Waiting to be closed.

*

Visiting My Mentor and His Wife at the Nursing Home

He says, I am worried about Theresa.
She won’t eat.

And I find that her body
has become an anchor,
angular and unmoving,
at rest under a sea
of starched linen,
that her chin is raised,
that her eyes move
from one side of the room
to the other
as she clenches her teeth,
grimaces.

I speak to her,
reach out,
but she does not respond,
the pain all-consuming,
soul relinquishing.

The next time I visit…
her bed is empty.

I am all alone, he declares
as I sit by his side,
unsure of what to say,
what to do,
finally think to ask,
Remind me again how
the two of you met
and she comes back to us again.

*

Corey D. Cook’s sixth chapbook, Junk Drawer, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2022. His poems have recently appeared in *82 Review, Black Poppy Review, Duck Head Journal, Freshwater Literary Journal, Muddy River Poetry Review, Naugatuck River Review, Nixes Mate Review, South Florida Poetry Review, and Spare Change News. Corey lives in East Thetford, Vermont.

Emergencies by Jo Angela Edwins

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Emergencies

In the hospital room
where no one can adjust
the broken blinds,
it’s hard to understand
the time of day.
My sister knows me
and little else.
She wants to borrow my phone
to call heaven, she says,
to tell our mother
how I won’t listen
to a thing she says.
She will not take the pills
from the nurse’s hand
or from mine.

On my way home I use
the phone I did not let her hold
to dial 911 when I see
a truck on the side of the road
in flames. The smoke reaches
into the afternoon blue
beyond the tops of the pines.
Even in my closed car
I can smell the chemicals burn.

People who know what to do,
or think they do,
are stopping. A woman runs
away from the truck. A man
runs toward it. I drive by slowly,
try to guess the distance
to the next marker. I tell the voice
on the other side of the line
what I’ve seen. He asks again
and again. Every time
I say the same thing, all the while
gunning my own engine,
putting distance between
myself and the growing fire
I can no longer see.

*

Jo Angela Edwins has had poems published in over 100 journals and anthologies and is a Pushcart Prize, Forward Prize, and Bettering American Poetry nominee. Her chapbook Play was published in 2016 (Finishing Line Press), and her collection A Dangerous Heaven is forthcoming this year from Gnashing Teeth Publishing. She is the poet laureate of the Pee Dee region of South Carolina.

Condensed History, with Silver Pin by Lynne Knight

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Condensed History, with Silver Pin

He bought the tickets—he worked
in the city then. I was home for winter
break. I hadn’t seen him since September.

He was saving money to go to Europe
for a year. I was still a senior. In love
with someone else, I’d written to him

weeks before. He read the letter
in the lunchroom at work. But there
were the tickets, the plan. So we went

to the Garden, cheered for Michigan
(we lost). He left for Europe weeks later.
I married. He sent a silver pin

from Greece by way of congratulation.
Two decades later, two marriages each,
we found our way back to each other.

Doubts, still, but after many years,
marriage. I hardly ever wear the silver pin.
I’m afraid to lose it, it’s so delicate.

*

Lynne Knight is the author of six full-length poetry collections and six chapbooks. Her work has appeared many journals, including Poetry and The Southern Review. She lives on Vancouver Island.

A Former Patient Returns by Janet Ruth Heller

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A Former Patient Returns

Like an alumna to her college,
I return to your office
after five years
for more therapy,
check for changes
in your face, your voice,
your wardrobe.

You seem the same.
We two women
resume our journey.

But I stare at my own body, hear
my voice from a distance
like an echo across a canyon.

*

Janet Ruth Heller is the past president of the Michigan College English Association and a past president of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature. She has a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. Heller has published four poetry books: Nature’s Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021), Exodus (WordTech Editions, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012), and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011); a scholarly book, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama (University of Missouri Press, 1990); a middle-grade fiction chapter book for children, The Passover Surprise (Fictive Press, 2015, 2016); and a fiction picture book for children about bullying, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; 7th edition 2022), that has won four national awards, including a Children’s Choices award. Her website is https://www.janetruthheller.com

Two Poems by John S. Eustis

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My First Obituary

Senior year, one of our high school teachers
gave us this assignment, to be finished
within the classroom hour: write your own
obituary—how you want your life recorded.

The idea must have been to get us thinking
about our place in the world beyond school.
Did we seek recognition, children, wealth?
How would we like to be remembered?

If only I had saved that one-page paper.
Surely it would prove illuminating now.
I don’t remember what I wrote that day,
but I do recall giving it a blaring headline.
“SENATOR EUSTIS ASSASSINATED!”

No doubt I was influenced by the murders
of King and the Kennedys in recent years.
Still, those three words reveal two conflicting
truths about my younger (and older) self.

First, that I possessed, at an early age,
a politician’s smoothness, a canny
ability to talk my way out of things
that might have gotten me in trouble,
coupled with a sense of civic-mindedness.

Second, that I knew I had a tendency
of being too blunt for my own good,
of saying the true but unpopular thing,
so much so that it would not be too
surprising if someday, somewhere,
someone would want to see me dead.

*

The Gift

Although my Uncle Jeff had been
briefly married a couple of times,
he never had children, and lived
alone in a trailer park not far from me.
He must have been there twenty years
before moving to a nearby nursing home.
I visited him now and then, in both places,
although we weren’t terribly close,
except geographically. I liked him.

After he moved, his trailer stood vacant
for a few years, and sometimes I would
go over there to check on the place
or to bring him some item that he wanted.
Eventually mice started finding their way in
and I had the unpleasant task of cleaning up
the mess they made and setting traps.

When my uncle passed, he left me the trailer
and all its contents in his will, something
I suppose I should have anticipated.
Of course I had no use for it, and now I had
the huge chore of getting rid of the thing.
Selling or even giving it away were options,
but it was old and not in very good shape.

Clearing out his belongings, I discovered
a wet spot under one of the bedroom walls,
coming from behind a small panel
where the hot-water heater was kept.
It looked like it’d been leaking for a long time.
Black mold had spread all through the alcove.
Now I was afraid to pass it on to anyone else,
for fear they would get sick and sue me.
At this point my wife and I started calling
my inheritance “the gift that keeps on taking.”

The original wheels of the trailer had sunk
into the ground, so hauling it away was not
an easy choice. In the end, I had to find
a demolition crew that could dismantle
and safely dispose of it, mold and all,
at a cost of many thousands of dollars.

Going through the trailer one final time,
clearing out drawers and cabinets,
Linda found a note my uncle
had scribbled to himself, tucked under
a salt shaker on the kitchen counter.
It contained just two words: “check leak.”

*

John S. Eustis is a retired librarian living in Virginia with his wife, after a long, quiet federal career. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Pirene’s Fountain, Slipstream, Tar River Poetry, and other places.

Two Poems by Alan May

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MONSTER POEM

I moved the limp body
out of the road

to the frozen grass
felt the broken spine

of the stray who ate
our table scraps

I was a child
but still I knew

there was nothing
we could do

animals pass away
or go on moving

toward some new danger
I pet the orange cat

next to me now
one of many

here and gone
but all are the one

dark creature
I lay next to

dark body I left
mewing in the cold

*

THE ARTIST AT WORK

The morning ended as usual.
I painted with the color chartreuse.

I made a sandwich out of fire
and ate it as I was driving

around the room in an ancient golf cart.
My understudy, a retired

vice admiral, stared at me
as if I were an assassin

suddenly arriving
with a whole platoon of seahorses.

I stayed in the golf cart. I ate
my goddam sandwich made of flames.

*

Alan May holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama. He has published three books of poetry. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Hollins Critic, The Idaho Review, New Orleans Review, Interim, The New York Quarterly, Willow Springs, The Laurel Review, and others. He hosts The Beat, a poetry podcast produced by Knox County Public Library. https://alan-may.com/

Res et Verba by Anthony DiMatteo

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Res et Verba

Words can say things quickly such as
your brother was murdered or you have
cancer or the old man down the block
just died. We’re lost beyond hope.

Could be good things said. Just married!
The storm went to sea. I hit the lotto.
But the point is what can last a lifetime
or change one can be stated in few words

though no words hazard all that’s involved
the way one can stand at canyon’s edge
a few miles deep and not hear a thing.
The fusion of near absolute silence

and immense space staggers the mind.
Just so two words can say more than one can
fathom, the earth itself tentative,
surrounded by infinity on all sides.

*

Anthony DiMatteo’s third poetry collection Secret Offices is just out. Why secret? One can’t take credit for an office dedicated to the pursuit of beauty and fairness as a poet must be. No one knows what one is doing in such a search, a prerequisite for it. His previous collection In Defense of Puppets explored the way we imagine things when we speak for others or they for us. A recent chapbook Fishing for Family charted the experience of language from infancy to senescence. Recent poems have appeared in The Connecticut River Review, Cimarron Review, The MacGuffin, North Dakota Quarterly and The Galway Review.

My Voices by Howard Moon

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My Voices

My voices are not god
I make no claims to hear the divine
I am neither Adam
          Nor Noah
          Nor Hagar
          Nor Mary
          Nor Joan
They are none of Ferlinghetti’s wiggy prophets

I am not one of the many that history
Tells us had conversations with god
And yet –
Who can say where my voices come from
Are they less important than that
Which Moses heard on the mountain
Are they any less real
These voices
My voices
Are a significant part of my life
They sustain me
I am not arrogant enough to tell others
To listen to or believe in my voices
Why are they so intent on taking
          My voices from me
They electrocute me
Pump me full of poison
At time I understand how Joan must have felt
          As the flames grew higher
I have faith in my voices
Why would you take that faith from me

*

Howard Moon is a writer and poet. His writing and poetry have appeared in multiple collections and anthologies, Small Change, Montana Mouthful, Das Literarisch Journal, Of Poets and Poetry, Native Skin, Breath and Shadow, Ariel Chart, and more. He has won national, local and regional awards for writing.

He is of Native heritage and identifies as BIPOC. In 2012 he suffered a brain injury and has been diagnosed with a mental illness — Pseudobulbar Affect. He has also been diagnosed as a hemipelagic.
He is retired and lives in central Florida with his wife.

Summer by Donna Hilbert

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Summer
          for T.E.

Solstice again. One year, we waded into the sea
to wash crystals. (It was all about feng shui.)
The water was cold, the sky, cloud gray.

Back in the house, you fingered your name
onto the foggy windows, with hearts for O’s,
frames, and punctuation.

I took a photo of this.
Now, it’s proof you were here,
and for a time, happy.

*

Donna Hilbert’s latest book is Threnody, from Moon Tide Press. Earlier books include Gravity: New & Selected Poems, Tebot Bach, 2018. She is a monthly contributing writer to the on-line journal Verse-Virtual. Work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Braided Way, Chiron Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Rattle, Zocalo Public Square, One Art, and numerous anthologies. Poems have been featured on The Writer’s Almanac and on Lyric Life. She writes and leads private workshops in Southern California, where she makes her home, and during residencies at Write On Door County. Learn more at www.donnahilbert.com

On the Second Anniversary of His Death by Sharon Waller Knutson

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On the Second Anniversary of His Death
for Ben

His white and blue hat
sailors salute on the submarine
sits on the glass hutch
beside the empty urn.

In the windowsill,
a spider on stilts
spins a web that snares
a buzzing bumblebee.
Outside, a Sonoran toad
weeps and wails as rain
washes him from his
underground bunker.

When the sun smiles,
bald baby eagles
chirp from their nest
in the Saguaro Cactus.

*

Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in Arizona. She has published several poetry books including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields (Flutter Press 2014,) What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say and Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob (Kelsay Books 2021) and Survivors, Saints and Sinners (Cyberwit 2022) Kiddos & Mamas Do the Darndest Things (Cyberwit 2022) and The Vultures are Circling (Cyberwit 2023) and has two collections forthcoming: The Leading Ladies in My Life (Cyberwit June 2023) and My Grandfather is a Cowboy (Cyberwit January 2024.) Her work has also appeared in more than 50 different journals. She is the editor of Storyteller Poetry Journal, dedicated to promoting narrative poetry.

Evidently by Michele Parker Randall

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Evidently

My sister keeps using the word forensic
while breaking up dad’s house. Breaking

down? Breaking house. Stacking empty
blue Royal Dansk tins that held cookies,

then jam tarts, year after year. Drinking
cups of coffee as we jab with boxes,

memories, facing poses in dusty frames,
any thunder long passed, but the echo of

was that when…he must have been…did she
ever…do we dare ask? I place a few photos

under my knee—my sister by a honeysuckle-
covered slash pine, the kiddie pool at our house

on Cecil Field Naval base, a slumber party
with our pink sleeping bags, our Great Dane,

Cindy as my pillow. I can’t remember where…
whose orange tree were we in…where was…?

We never ask. There is no coming back from
critical-hit throws of the die. No escaping

a once remote thought sharpened into fact. But
we dig on, silently, for material and evidence.

*

Michele Parker Randall is the author of Museum of Everyday Life (Kelsay Books 2015) and A Future Unmappable, chapbook (Finishing Line Press 2021). Her poetry can be found in Nimrod International Journal, Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere.

While the hawk preys by Vic Nogay

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While the hawk preys

In heavy March,
railroad tracks and rural routes
cut Ohio deep—

frozen, empty
fields of soy and corn
sectioned off into a measured grid,

tracks and roads, straight and slim
like stitches closing
the white world, waiting.

This is not sweet June’s
patchwork quilt,
not a honeysuckle breeze,

this is cars and trucks,
telephone lines,
the sick bite of sunlight

gasping, setting low
beneath the cloud bank and you,
stopped at a train a mile long, waiting and waiting and waiting.

*

Vic Nogay (she/her) is a Pushcart Prize- and Best Microfiction-nominated poet and writer whose work appears in Fractured Lit, Barren Magazine, and Lost Balloon, among others. Her micro chapbook of poems, “under fire under water” was published in 2022 by tiny wren publishing. She is an Associate Poetry Editor for Identity Theory and lives in Columbus, Ohio. Find her online at vicnogay.com

Midwinter & my father wants to know by Amy Williams

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Midwinter & my father wants to know

if I can forgive him. Brow
furrowed, I know it’s just

a matter of time. Unstable
blood vessels & his hazel

iris failing to control
light. It’s natural, the way

Mercury changes position
when it approaches the sun.

It’s natural, the way
tissues decay & my blurred

face when the optic nerve
sparks images in his brain.

He’s sixty-six years old
& my body tenses still

at the sound of his heels
in a quiet room.

I swear I still can feel his fingers
curving the base of my

girl neck. Darkening
my mind. Darkening

stars that rupture
in a black hole’s gravity.

You know how dust
glitters in the sunlight

before it’s pulled to the ground?
I want to know the mathematics

of it. I want to know
how he outlived my mother.

I want to know
what he remembers.

I want to know
how much I’ll regret.

*

Amy Williams is a writer and educator based in New Delhi. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in West Trade Review, Rust + Moth, Bodega Magazine, The Shore, Redivider, Sweet Tree Review and Contrary Magazine.

twin by Scott Ferry

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twin

i have always had a roundness to my voice / a softness which is fleshy and feminine / a gay friend of mine told me that he thought i was gay / why i asked / lots of things he said / the way you hold your body / your gentleness / something in the way you talk / i said well i know but i am hetero as they come / he gave me a look like he didn’t fully believe me / when i watch myself on video i see the girl in me / i didn’t realize everyone could see her / a moonish twin in my limbs / an easy weeping at movies / a woman’s lilting tone / but i have never tried to rip her out / i have never tried to conceal her / she is a soft thing in me that has survived / she has grown flowers out of her many heads / flourished next to the archetypes and models of gender / sang into rivers and oceans my many glowing tears / at night when i feel frightened / she holds my bones together in her hands

*

Scott Ferry is a RN in the Seattle area. His most recent books of poetry are collaborations: Midnight Glossolalia with Lillian Nećakov and Lauren Scharhag and Fill Me With Birds with Daniel McGinn, both from Meat For Tea Press. His third book from Impspired Press is titled each imaginary arrow with the first two being Skinless in the Cereal Aisle and The Long Blade of Days Ahead. He continues to write feverishly as the voices in his head demand. He tries to be a decent husband and father and general human whilst screaming into the mirrored lake of oblivion at intervals. More of his work can be found @ ferrypoetry.com.

Two Poems by Anna Abraham Gasaway

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Not Enough
Never will it be so easy, my sister
said, to calm your child down. She comes bringing
my son to me. I am bleary tired.
It is the first few days, when you sink
or tread water—perfectly flanged lips, just
like Dr. Sears says, he made swallowing
sounds—pulling it out of me—and then milk
in his belly, passed out. I was afraid
to move, he nursed constantly when he
was awake. My husband’s mother came
to visit the first few weeks after his birth.
Mira, she told her sister, rummaging
around in the refrigerator for
the two ounces of milk pumped after I fed
him, Tia shook her head. Both of them clucked
their tongues, Que Flaquito she whispered
to my husband. She’s starving my baby!
my mother-in-law wanted to feed
baby formula from a bottle. Not
enough, not enough my breast pump said.
Too exhausted to explain the benefits—
and how I knew that he would be my only
after the death of his sister at thirty-
six weeks when I wept in the bathtub
and my breasts sprayed in sympathy. I knew
that there would not be another and so
I took him strapped to my chest nursing
all the while to walk the pier just us two.
*
Drenched
Now, you wake up in a swamp of sweat. It only happens near the heart,
your beaded sweat could make a necklace. The sweaty curls at on the back
of your neck could launch a thousand ships. Your entire torso
becomes slick every night, doesn’t matter what you have
or haven’t eaten, doesn’t matter if you’ve done yoga or taken a shower
before bed, you wake up crabby, your T-shirt dripping, and change,
twice a night. Maybe the husband has left the bed because you snore, so
you roll on to his side. You sleep in comfort for a time, but then it
starts again. You sleep in a puddle, a stream, Lake Michigan. Did everybody
know except you? Your doctor laughed when you told her that you soaked
the sheets every night. Oh, that. Yes. It’s all part of the change.
Your aunt set out an Our Bodies Ourselves book when you visited
the Bethesda family twice a year, but Dad said it was sin to know
your bodies. The book said masturbation and held forth no shame.
You didn’t know the term, perimenopause. You were shielded
from the knowledge of how your body was going to change. You thought
that period was blue because Florence Henderson soaked an Always pad
with blue liquid in her commercials and when you finally got your period,
asked yourself what the frick is this? (You would have never said fuck
in those days.) Did they talk about these symptoms in the sex ed classes?
The ones that your parents refused to let you go to? You wake up drenched
and change T-shirts and another and another and the sheets are soaked through.
You don’t change them every time, you just pull back the covers and let the fan
have at it because you will only sweat in the clean sheets. Is that horrible? You
can’t change the sheets and risk your back and so you have to rely on your son
who’s sixteen and a love and he will be glad to do it if asked but look these sheets
have just been changed, and already a wet indentation, a drenched pillowcase.
*
Anna Abraham Gasaway (She/Her) is a stroke-surviving, disabled writer that has been published or has upcoming work in the Los Angeles Review, Literary Mama, Corporeal, The San Diego Poetry Annual and others. She reads for Poetry International at San Diego State University, where she recently received her MFA with an emphasis on Poetry. She can be found on Twitter @Yawp97.

Two Poems by Melody Wilson

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White Mare

          Only if there are angels in your head will you
                    ever, possibly, see one.
                                        —Mary Oliver
                                        The World I Live In

All my horses are dead now.
The Shetland pony, the sorrel,

          the bay. Gone like grandparents
          trailing genes. When I say

that once I rode
very well, I mean

          summer thighs clung
          to the mare’s barrel,

our sweat mingled like
blood brothers. I mean

          I first studied my reflection
          in the eye of a horse—

the flea-bitten gray who leaped
tumbleweeds, no saddle, no shoes,

          my hands twisted into mane,
          her hoofs striking sand:

one-two, one-two. My heart
falls into rhythm even now.

*

Bijinga

Three dots of concealer still
mute my age spots. Dot, dot,
dot, and my skin appears
as I imagine it once did.

The Japanese call this
Bijinga, the art of painting
women to reveal their
inner beauty. No matter

whether the image matches
the model, what counts
is an inquisitive brow, pursed
lips, hair restrained by silk

flowers and a small jade
sword. My mother
pulled her hair back,
threaded it through a bun

she brought from a box,
wound the tail around.
She tilted toward the mirror,
applied lipstick, tore a sheet

of toilet paper from the roll,
closed her lips on the fold,
popped them open.
She appraised her face

in the mirror, tossed the tissue
aside. I knew she was
leaving when the dresser
was littered with kisses.

*

Melody Wilson’s work appears in Sugar House Review, VerseDaily and The Fiddlehead. Upcoming work will be in Kestrel, Crab Creek Review, and Archetype Magazine. She received 2022 Pushcart nominations from Redactions and Red Rock Review, and was semi-finalist for the Pablo Neruda Award. Her chapbook Spineless: Memoir in Invertebrates comes out in August 2023. She’s pursuing her MFA at Pacific University. Find her work at melodywilson.com.

What I Loved by Robbi Nester

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What I Loved

As a child, I often visited my grandmother and cousins
in West Oak Lane, straight lines of dark brick rowhomes,
old trees, so wide you couldn’t get your arms around them.
In summer, people sat out on the stoop and watched
neighbors in their somber suits and hats parade
to service in the tiny synagogue where my uncle
served as sexton. In the back of each house, there was
an open space, a paradise of gardens, some gated.
I loved the ones with a reflecting ball, precisely
in the center, mirroring the bees and sulfur yellow
butterflies. I thought I saw some other country
there, one that I’d explore on some dull day
when my cousins were busy with their chores
or their piano lessons, and I was left to roller
skate for hours on the cracked concrete behind
their house. I didn’t like the other decorations—
plastic flamingos or painted plaster gnomes,
objects with no mystery about them, far preferred
to peer between the iron filagree or wooden slats,
pretending that I stood on soft green grass
instead of forever banished, on the other side.

*

Robbi Nester is the author of four books of poetry and editor of three anthologies. She is a retired college educator and elected member of the Academy of American Poets. Her website is at http://www.RobbiNester.net

A PHOTOGRAPH OF A BOY’S LESSON IN MANHOOD by John Grey

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A PHOTOGRAPH OF A BOY’S LESSON IN MANHOOD

That’s me behind the lawn mower.
My father is in the background,
shouting orders.
“Hold down the bar!
Pull the cord!”
The grass is not high
but that’s not the point
of this exercise.
Though my head
barely rises over the handle,
he figures I’m old enough
to start the machine
and push it up and down
the back yard.
It’s his job normally.
But, in this photograph,
he’s working at his other job –
making me into
a miniature version of himself.
We’ve done the fishing-rod ritual.
We’ve played catch so much
I feel like a retriever.
And I’ve hammered a nail.
I’ve wielded a screwdriver.
And now it’s time
to mow the lawn.
This picture shows neither
triumph nor failure.
It’s the moment before
both things are possible.
So what happened?
As far as I know,
I did.

*

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Rathalla Review. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and Open Ceilings.

Razing Cain by Olga Dugan

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Razing Cain

Cain roams the world without a rest.
The street hood strolls into my classroom
to have his turn at making palimpsest,
to write over the first fratricide’s doom.

He just strolls into my classroom
to spill some brother’s blood,
to write over the first fratricide’s doom,
clueless of a choice to stem this flood.

No. He’ll spill some brother’s blood,
scouring each row as he takes a seat.
Clueless of a choice to stem this flood,
he turns that imperative stare on me,

chooses a row, takes a seat: Where is he?
Do you belong here? Could not help but ask.
He trades that stare for tongue in cheek—
hell, yeah, Miss umm…I belong in your class.

Do you belong here? Could not help but ask;
behind the malice was a young man,
who yes, for a moment belonged in my class.
The light of ancient wisdom had chiseled its plan

behind the malice mask of this young man—
a heritage of creative power, virility.
There, in his brow, wisdom chiseled its plan
for a Homer’s or a Griot’s ability.

But over creative power, virility,
Cain rises in a frowning forehead,
a haughty chin—over Homer’s ability,
the Griot’s grace, he grouses instead:

What you lookin’ at? Cain’s mark is on his head.
He’s my brother, but not for me to keep—
over wisdom’s grace, he takes hate instead—
You leave now, or I call security.

My voice weeps for the brother I cannot keep.
The door clicks thunder behind him.
Soon after, he shoots my student for security
on the word of a slighted friend.

I watch police slam car doors behind them,
the coroner cover vacant eyes, miss a shoe,
and wonder if, a slighted friend
might someday serve Cain his fair due.

Later, I recall vacant eyes, the shoe,
as I wield my chalk to make palimpsest
of hopes we’ll someday serve him his fair due—
by razing Cain to give our world a rest.

*

Olga Dugan is a Cave Canem poet. Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, her poems appear in many literary journals and anthologies including Ekstasis, Relief: A Journal of Art and Faith, Sky Island Journal, Channel (Ireland), Cathexis Northwest Press, Kweli, The Windhover, The Write Launch, The Southern Quarterly, Poems from Pandemia – An Anthology, Cave Canem Anthology: XIII, and Red Moon Anthology of Modern English Haiku. Articles on poetry and cultural memory appear in The Journal of African American History, The North Star, and in Emory University’s “Following the Fellows.”

Waitress Wanted by Bill Garvey

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Waitress Wanted

I was scraping garbage
from dinner plates into a pail
and happened to glance up
at the owner sitting across
from her, nodding, feigning
interest – her smiling, needing
the job, responding to the ad
that said Waitress Wanted
and not a word about whites only,
but this poem isn’t telling you
what you don’t already know.
It’s reminding me I didn’t say
a word as I watched her leave,
watched her open the door
like a camera lens, a blast
of sunlight flooding into the
restaurant, watched him mime
a jump shot – her balled
application spinning toward
the pail just as she turned
to face us for the last time.
I could tell myself I was just
a kid, as powerless as her,
but as I struggle with word
choice and line break, I wonder
if this poem isn’t asking me
something else, like why
I did nothing, or why
I still remember, or what
I would do differently now.

*

Bill Garvey grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, and is a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. He and his wife, Jean, live in Toronto, Ontario and Hacketts Cove, Nova Scotia for equal parts of the year. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Rattle, Cimarron Review, Nixes Mate Review, New Verse News, Margie, 5AM, Slant, Concho River Review, and others.

Teaching My Father to Hug by W. D. Ehrhart

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Teaching My Father to Hug

I had to teach my father how to hug.
For years, he’d grip me by both arms,
one hand on either bicep, firmly
holding me away from him, our bodies
never touching. I’ve no idea why.
Men don’t hug? Afraid he once held
tight, he’d not let go again? Beats me,
but in my thirties, I got married,
and he’d hug my wife the same way.

I finally decided this would just not do.
Every time he tried to grab my arms,
I’d step inside his grip and pull him
close to me, a bear hug he could not
escape. I did this time and time again
until he finally got the hint, gave up,
and hugged me back as if he meant it.

We had our problems, Dad and me,
a lifetime of arguments and ugly
moments and miscommunications,
but he learned to hug before he died,
and I feel pretty good about that.

*

W. D. Ehrhart is an ex-Marine sergeant and veteran of the American War in Vietnam. His latest book is Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems, McFarland & Company.

Driving My Granddaughter Back to Her Dad’s House by Susan Vespoli

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Driving My Granddaughter Back to Her Dad’s House

Spring
trees covered
with blossoms toss
shade over bus stops. Yellow
palo verde and purple jacaranda
offering refuge to roofless beings
on a street where my son
was roused from sleep
by a cop, then shot
on his last
24-hours
alive.

Shopping
carts piled with
blankets, plastic bags,
a man holding a cardboard
sign at the stoplight: HUNGRY.
People huddled in the shadow
of the onramp. A roadside
altar: flowers and
a wooden
cross.

I drop
into a litany
of what I might
have done differently
until Molly points and shouts, Look!
from her car seat. Two massive
trees backlit in sunlight,
lavender and gold
shimmering
like wind
chimes.

*

Susan Vespoli is a poet from Phoenix, AZ. Susan’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Anti-Heroin Chic, New Verse News, Mom Egg Review, Gyroscope Review, and others. She is the author of Blame It on the Serpent (Finishing Line Press, Jan. 2022) and Cactus as Bad Boy (Kelsay Books, 2023). https://susanvespoli.com/

Cigarettes by Patricia Clark

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Cigarettes

Sometimes my students, knowing the long list
of dangers, would ask me, “Why would anyone
smoke?” I would look at them lounging in plastic
portable chairs that had a bowl beneath each
of them for bookbags or books. “Have you ever tried
it?” I said. I could see myself twenty years ago,
smoking and drinking coffee as I read Virginia Woolf
for the first time, To The Lighthouse. How I was
transported to Cornwall or the Isle of Skye, the shore
of Scotland, the gardens, the rackety house with windows open
curtains blowing in, sea-salt air. Or I watched
my father walking the riverbank of the Snoqualmie
or Chehalis, a wreath of smoke circling his head
while he reeled in a steelhead. Years later everyone
quit, and he quit, too, when the doctors
told him, but until his last days he remembered
the feel of the pack in his chest pocket, the good
crinkle of cellophane when he opened a new pack,
the thump against his hand to knock the first one
free, the snap of the lighter, blaze of flame, whoosh
of ignition before the delicious pull of smoke,
Chesterfields, into his lungs, first smoke of the day.

*

Patricia Clark is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Self-Portrait with a Million Dollars (Terrapin, 2020) & the author of three chapbooks. New work appears in Plume, Tar River Poetry, Paterson Literary Review, Westchester Review, I-70 Review, Atticus Review, Midwest Quarterly and elsewhere. She is professor emerita of Writing at Grand Valley State University.

The Bottom by John Struloeff

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The Bottom

I once lived in a town that flooded.
The vast park with its picnic tables
and evenly spaced pine trees had turned
into a massive river, as if a brown glacier
had melted and filled the valley.
A few friends and I took a Jeep
to the park that night. The headlights
shone out onto this obsidian glass
that stretched to the house lights
a half mile ahead. Let’s do this,
my friend driving said, and we rolled forward.
Water rumbled beneath the floorboard
and washed along the bottom of the doors.
Then the front end dropped, the headlights
submerging into the brown murk
until everything was dark.
The Jeep had become unmoored
from the road, drifting sideways.
We grew silent. There was no one here
to see us if we rolled, and we now felt
the hidden urgency in the river.
He pounded the accelerator,
the engine roaring and gurgling. The water
was right at my shoulder against the glass.

Of course we survived, although I didn’t know
we would. There was still so far we had to go
before we drifted all through those pine
silhouettes, until we felt that leaning buoyancy
become firm ground, and the front lifted,
and the lights shone out again across
what remained of that black glass.
We learned later that eight people died
in that flood as it pushed its dark water
through homes and across fields and roads.
Twenty-four years now, and I think
I’m remembering it because I feel that
current again, silently moving into my life,
even though I can’t yet see the water.

*

John Struloeff grew up in the coastal rainforest of Oregon. He is the author of The Man I Was Supposed to Be (Loom Press) and The Work of a Genius (Finishing Line Press) and has published poems in The Atlantic, The Sun, Verse Daily, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, ZYZZYVA, PN Review, and elsewhere. He is a former Stegner and NEA Fellow and now directs the creative writing program at Pepperdine University.

Hunk of Junk by Bob Kirkley

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Hunk of Junk

“I’m afraid,” the jeweler says, “it’s worthless,”
meaning the Bulova Marine Star my father wore in life.

I see the merchant’s point, the crystal all scratched up,
the bezel scraped and gouged, the crown bent,
threads grimy, reluctant to turn. My father never
took the watch off, reaching down into machines,
changing the oil himself, tightening belts,
replacing gaskets and heads, precise
as a tuning fork.

The jeweler places the watch on the countertop.
Steel clinks glass like a toast.
“Anything else?” he asks.
“Yes, can you restore it?”
“Why bother?” he says. “It would cost
more than it’s worth, more than a new one.”

I weigh that and the white tuning fork, framed in silver,
at twelve o’clock on the dial. Meanwhile, the red tip of the second hand
strikes the marks squarely, steady as a hammer.
When my father was admitted to the hospital at the end,
they asked him to remove the watch—
the gift my mother gave him on their 25th
wedding anniversary. “No,”
he said, “it stays right here.”

“Fix it,” I tell the jeweler, “this timepiece
that you say has no value.”

*

Bob Kirkley received an MA in creative writing from Florida State University and serves as a high school English teacher in the Florida Keys. His poetry has appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Eunoia Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Better Than Starbucks. He can be reached at https://www.facebook.com/bob.kirkley.7/.

Two Poems by Steve Deutsch

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Syzygies

There was a full moon
the night you died.
You would have wanted that.

When we were 8
and 10, we snuck
down the fire escape

one night to walk
the length of Church Avenue.
From the first rise

we looked out
on the near
perfect alignment

of street lights.
The moon was full
and we told each other stories

of how the planets aligned
like streetlights
and the pull of gravity

animated the vampires
the werewolves and the creature
from the Black Lagoon.

You said you could see them—
crouched like ravenous tigers
on the streetlight stanchions.

But we were young
then and only afraid
of make believe.

*

Halloween

They came for candy
this evening from 6
to 8, as the city allows.
Their parents trailed

with flash lights, bottled water
and warm clothing.
Costumed for cute
they dangled decorated

bags or plastic
Jack-o-lanterns
to carry home
hermetically sealed chocolate candies.

In Brooklyn, we dressed
for combat, ready to do battle
with the feisty folks
in poorly lit tenement halls

that smelled of cabbage
and kippered herring.
Remember when old lady
Blocker baptized Pete

with a pot of boiling water
rather than part with a penny
sweet. Outside it was mayhem.
The older kids blowing

the covers off manholes
with cherry bombs—
screaming like banshees
on sugar highs

until someone got too close
and spent the evening
being stitched at Beth-el.
They lit things up—

my brother was the star
of the show
with dad’s zippo and a paper bag
of puppy poop.

Our parents ignored us—
preferring Sgt. Bilko on TV
to refereeing the goody wars.
But the candy was sweeter then—

as if it were stolen fruit.
As if we had earned the right
to ruin our teeth on jelly
beans and turkish taffy.

*

Steve Deutsch is poetry editor of Centered Magazine and is poet in residence at the Bellefonte Art Museum. Steve was nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. His Chapbook, Perhaps You Can, was published in 2019 by Kelsay Press. His full length books, Persistence of Memory and Going, Going, Gone, were published by Kelsay. Slipping Away will be published this spring. Brooklyn was awarded the Sinclair Poetry Prize from Evening Street Press and has just been published.

Few Words for Father by Tina Barry

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Few Words for Father

We recognize our father,
even with his edges blurred,
and the baritone that once curled

around our names, lost
in the hush
of the hospital’s language.

The doctor tells us he’s comfortable,
and promises to phone
when things change. And they do.

By morning, he is gone.
Because we’ve had so little
of our father to share,

we speak of him in a kind
of shorthand.
I pour coffee, and we begin:

Brut, my sister says,
recalling his cologne.
Parfait, pretty girls,

the pool, I say,
where he played with us.
Once.

*

Tina Barry is the author of Beautiful Raft and Mall Flower. Her writing appeared in ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Rattle, Verse Daily, A-Minor, Nixes Mate, The Best Small Fictions 2020 (spotlighted story) and 2016, Trampset, Gyroscope Review and elsewhere. Tina teaches at The Poetry Barn and Writers.com.

One Poem by Kaiden Ciongoli

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I Remember This One Time I Went to Speak with My Boss in the Cooler Because We Needed to Give Out Gift Cards Because We Did Such a Shit Job Getting Chicken out on Time and She Said

“What else could I give to those fucking vultures, my job?”
and she was fired that same week

*

Kaiden Ciongoli is the winner of the Gerald Stern Prize in Poetry, he works at Walmart while pursuing a degree in Communications with a minor in Creative and Professional writing. Born and raised in the Pittsburgh area, Kaiden works to celebrate Western Pennslyvania poets in his podcast “Po-Eds: Mini Editorials of Poetry You Should Know.”

Homecoming. by Fara Spence

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Homecoming.

My old home lures me inside–
the Sold sign a burst of red, the door
open like a throat.

The house is bare; the walls skinned of color.
But there’s pine on the floors—
I joked that the old dark wood
came from a 1960s confessional.

From the kitchen window, I stare into
the courtyard where I placed stones
into the fountain. During a party, a black bird
perched on the frame above the door
and I predicted death.

I had yet to learn that death
isn’t always the grand gesture
of a graveyard.

It’s the empty chair,
the silence on the stairs,
the people that die of heartbreak
and wander
like half-ghosts
through broken homes
gutted.

*

Newfoundland born novelist, playwright, and poet, Fara Spence holds a master’s degree in Education from Mt. Saint Vincent University. A former columnist and high-school teacher, her recent publications include ‘Equus,’ by Adelaide Magazine (2021). She lives in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia where she teaches Creative Writing.

Two Poems by James Feichthaler

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All prayers that go unheard won’t go unanswered

As conscience rummages through the trash of life
The young me wrestled to ambition’s curb —
Used notebooks, empty beer cans, microphones,
Old Nikes, several basketballs, and a blurb
(I penned way back) about some rapper’s beef –
The world is wakening to its usual sins
Of self-importance, self-neglect, self-hate,
While dead men slump into their freezing cars
And start their engines up, reluctantly;
On last legs, weeping at eternity’s gate.
Like them, I’ve longed for something better, to be free
Of bosses’ snarls and hope-starved stressful hours
That fill with meaningless and menial work,
Having screamed my silent prayers into the deaf-eared dark.

*

From their perspective, everything looks dead

Most here won’t notice Nature’s handiwork,
Despite an office window-seat, which looks
Out on the wintry beauty of a park,
The shimmering lake that’s just beyond their books;
Ignoring the many geese that gather there
To pluck away the remnants of a season,
The brown-leaved trees, the breeze that’s blown them bare,
As though their noting them requires a reason.
Face down in paperwork, or scrolling up
To see what TikTok star’s destroying her rivals,
Their short attention spans prefer the slop
Society offers, drawn to glowing idols
Of soulless nonsense; making extra time
For things that don’t exist in the sublime.

*

James Feichthaler’s poems and essays have appeared in numerous print journals and e-zines throughout the years; most recently in One Art, Schuylkill Valley Journal, E-Verse Radio, and the Mad Poets Society’s Local Lyrics series. His first book The Rise of the COVFEFE was published by Parnilis Media in autumn 2020. For the past ten years or so, he has been the host of an open mic poetry series in Manayunk, PA called The Dead Bards of Philadelphia. He is also a hip-hop artist (Taliesin aka Big Tal) with a couple of albums under his belt and dozens of songs and music videos up on YouTube.

Two Poems by Michael T. Young

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What’s Owed

On some stretches of a drive overnight,
darkness is dense enough to seem mystical,
like a breath held so long it hardens
into a black ore. I sometimes think
if I look deeply, my eyes could drill

to the bottom and perceive its value.
But off-road station signs burn through
the tree line with a distracting cost,
a banality highlighted by advertisements
and rest stops, so I never quite see it.

In the passenger seat, my wife stares,
as if something lurks in the shadows
just ahead. At this late hour, the world
is like a promise that might not be broken,
but also a skin that twitches under threat.

Exhaustion blurs the border of vision
toward dream and a kind of betrayal,
like dear leaping from the black shapes
and over the guardrail. I think of my
children in the back seat, who,

in their deep sleep, hold to something
I can’t reach, no matter how many miles
I drive. And I keep thinking of Dido, the price
she paid for loving someone who believed
he had no choice but to keep traveling.

*

Education

Mother quietly cried into her perfectly made
potato soup because father kissed another woman.
That starch warmed my chest going down,
and I could feel the stiffness in my pockets.

It’s why, for my entire life, I couldn’t seem
to pay enough for what was needed.
Back home, the plants were watered
but the shades were drawn, so they paled.

Father filled the crock outside the bedroom
with cigarette butts, the odor of ash and spent days
weighed the air and dampened every word
drifting through the halls among us.

So even when I was young everything I said
was stale. My phrases were brittle like paper
in old books. And I always spoke carefully,
trying to keep every broken thing from falling apart.

*

Michael T. Young’s third full-length collection, The Infinite Doctrine of Water, was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. He received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award for his collection, Living in the Counterpoint. He also received honorable mention for the 2022 New Jersey Poets Prize. His poetry has been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac. It has also appeared in numerous journals including Main Street Rag, Pinyon, RATTLE, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Vox Populi.

Levels of Concern by Stephanie Frazee

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Levels of Concern

Late summer.
We stay inside,
though the house is an oven,
because the outside air
is damaging.
The sky—
dystopian-future orange.
Air seeping
under the doorframes
smells of campfire, bonfire.
I’m ashamed
to want
a marshmallow.

The chickadees are silent
as they flit to the feeder,
the same color red
as the AQI warning.
Beneath feathers, muscles, breast bones,
particulate matter
deposits itself
in a system designed
for lungs the size
of peanut halves
to find oxygen at high altitudes.
But here they are,
low,
gleaning oxygen from smoke,
dropping seeds
from the feeder
onto the wooden porch rail,
furred with rot,
and hopping down to eat them.
I’ll hold my breath
if I refill
the seeds.

Spring again, and
the chickadees nest
in the laurel hedge.
I’m still waiting to hear
the hungry shrill of chicks.
One daffodil, bent over,
half yellow,
half brown,
half dead already.
The hydrangea
is all brittle wood.
I forget the last year it bloomed.

*

Stephanie Frazee’s work is forthcoming from The Evergreen Review and Bayou Magazine and has appeared in Third Wednesday, Juked, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is a reader for Juked, American Short Fiction, and No Contact, and she lives in Seattle.

Two Poems by CL Bledsoe

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A Burning in the Air

There were things I meant to say
about the struggle to take light in
hand. The longest travail of human
history has been where to find
water and how to take it with
us. Light’s like that. It will be all
around except when we need it.
It’s easy to forget the power of
darkness, the way it quiets the roar
of the world. There is a kind of catfish
in a cave in Kentucky that never
sees light. I’ve lived in houses
like that, full of eyeless complainers.
Light is so forbidding they gave it
names but couldn’t make it love us.
If you look too closely into its
eyes, you lose yours. There are great
penalties for wanting to see things
more clearly. One has to wonder.

*

Date Night

On our movie date night, you snuck in bourbon,
collapsible cups, Coke, sparkling lemon water.
A woman down the row glared while we got
drunk on a passable superhero movie. Legs
entwined. I have to stop myself from touching
you every few seconds. Your lips, your eyes, so
beautiful my heart sputters like a man proved
wrong. I want you upside down in the back
of my eyes. I want to kiss your neck, your soft
skin against my lips, the smell of your hair. After,
we drank more at the arcade downstairs, played
broken games until we won enough to trade for
a gift for my daughter. You rode home with me,
too wasted to drive, and made scones with too
much sugar while we watched Christmas movies.
Once, you asked me what my happiest memories
were. It’s you, that next morning, curled into my
chest. Your breasts and stomach while you were
getting dressed. The shape of your lips
when you say my name.

*

Raised on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas, CL Bledsoe is the author of more than thirty books, including the poetry collections Riceland, The Bottle Episode, and his newest, Having a Baby to Save a Marriage, as well as his latest novels Goodbye, Mr. Lonely and The Saviors. Bledsoe lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.

Four Poems by Barbara Crooker

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

THE O IN WIDOW

is empty, a room with no windows.
The lifeless moon in a bleak sky.
The hollow in your throat I used to kiss.
A deep well, without a wish.
Without.
Where there used to be a couple,
the deep division of negative numbers.
The unused chair at the kitchen table.
The vast Sahara of one side of the bed.
The air in my hand as I reach out for yours.
The shape of my mouth when grief
sneaks up and takes me unaware.
The heartless dawn with you still gone.

*

AVOID THE IMPOSSIBLE QUESTION
It takes the form of ‘How are you?’ or “How are you doing?’
        Dr. Joyce Brothers

Pretend you have hearing loss.
Bend down and tie your double-knotted
shoes. Ignore the question; instead, ask one—
people love to talk about themselves.
Don’t even think about how you really are,
which is lost. Bereft. Adrift. A shell
tumbling in the tide. A crust of bread,
not the whole loaf. An empty glass,
the residue of wine. The real answer:
still here, though I wish I was gone.

*

CHRISTMAS WITHOUT YOU

I no longer make fruitcake—those garish
cherries, sticky chunks of glacéed pineapple,
candied peel—snug in their bed of dark spiced
cake. No one but you ever liked it. And I’m not
capable of walking in the ice-crusted woods
to chop down (really, saw) a fragrant tree,
wrestle it on top of the car, then lug it inside,
water it daily on hands and knees. Instead,
an artificial tree, pre-lit with tiny lights,
does its best to brighten these dark nights.
Where I sit in front of the fire, alone,
with my solitary glass of wine. The stocking
you sewed for me the first year we were
together hangs empty. As does yours,
felt cut-outs sewn by your mother when you
were two. There are no presents to wrap
or gifts to hide. The cookies are unbaked.
Roasts untrimmed. Just the silence of the snow,
the flame from a single candle. The longest
night of the year.

*

MAY YOUR MEMORIES BRING YOU COMFORT

Those were the words I’d often used when writing condolence
cards. But when I lost you, my beloved, I found I’d also lost
my memories. Not all of them, but the order of things:
when we met for dancing that night at the bar, was it before or after
the spaghetti dinner? What was the name of the restaurant in Lyon
that brought us a bowl of mousse au chocolat big enough to swim in,
and said, “Help yourself?” In which park in Paris did we find the horse
chestnut now resting in the shadow box? We used to joke, on our travels,
that together we made up a five-year-old. Who am I now, as I try
to traverse this difficult world without you?

*

Barbara Crooker is author of twelve chapbooks and nine full-length books of poetry. Some Glad Morning, Pitt Poetry Series, University of Pittsburgh Poetry Press, longlisted for the Julie Suk award from Jacar Press, is her latest. Her previous collection, The Book of Kells, won the Best Poetry Book of 2019 Award from Poetry by the Sea. Her other awards include: Grammy Spoken Word Finalist, the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council fellowships in literature. Her work appears in literary journals and anthologies, including The Bedford Introduction to Literature.

Nebulous by Elizabeth Martin Solsburg

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Nebulous

When you taught me that word,
I thought it was a constellation,
a sweep of stars across the sky,
all the ones you called by name,
chanting them into the night —
Arcturus, Antares, Andromeda
and Sirius, your favorite —
the name you gave your first dog
years ago, when both of you were small,
lying in the dark grass behind the barn,
howling together at these same stars
whose names you can only recall
sometimes, when it’s been a good day,
when you aren’t calling your long-dead
dog to come in out of the cold,
when you point to Pegasus
in the September sky —
when my name is not a nebulous
wisp of fog you cannot hold.

*

Elizabeth Martin Solsburg is a poet and editor who lives and writes in the Midwest. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan whose poems have appeared in America Magazine, Avalon Review, American Scholar online, The Northern Appalachia Review and others.

How to Bury Your Dog Using a Sonnet by Brian Duncan

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How to Bury Your Dog Using a Sonnet

Close your eyes, smell his fur for the last time,
clip a lock from his tail, tie it with yarn,
hang his faded blue collar by the door,
dig a hole under his black locust tree.

Feel the rough gray leather of his paw pads,
run your fingers over the half-moon scar,
from the broken bottle he stepped on in the pond,
fill the hole with bully sticks, balls, and surrender.

Flip his ear inside out, then back again,
lock the gate that leads to the trails out back,
pull the batteries from the GPS tracker,
plant sweet pepperbush all around.

Scrape the food dishes, empty the water bowl,
listen for echoes of nail clicks on tiles.

*

Brian Duncan lives in Kendall Park, New Jersey with his wife Margie and two cats. He worked in a virology laboratory at Princeton University for many years and is now happily retired. He enjoys devoting his time to poetry, gardening, and hiking. He has been writing poems for many years, but has only recently started submitting. He has a poem that will be coming out in the summer issue of Thimble.

Something Always Comes Along by Libby Bernardin

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Something Always Comes Along

                            In memory of James Longenbach
                            and after his “Barcarolle”

              I am eating eggs with provolone cheese
when Jim steps into a cloud, after writing
that Matthew Arnold speaks of passive suffering.

I’m bewildered—passive: How can that be?

He’s in Sicily with the gods eating goat cheese,
and drinking new wine pondering the word,
though I know he too is struggling.

Something always comes along when we grieve:

Chopin wafting from a river awakening
him with what it means to be alive—such little
gestures that fall from hands, fingers, a mouth.

Or this morning, out my bedroom window, a tree
gilded by sun’s heart—artistic, blinding
until this snatch of ephemeral dazzlement dims

and I am left with a pale slice of life from the God
of all things, suffering—flame of summation,
satisfactory passage—
                                                        brilliant yielding.

*

Libby Bernardin is the author of House in Need of Mooring (2022) and Stones Ripe for Sowing (2018) both from Press 53. She has published two chapbooks and contributed to many journals. She has won poetry awards from the Poetry Society of SC and the NC poetry Society, and is a member of both poetry societies. She is a lifetime member of the Board of Governors of the South Carolina Academy of Authors.

Two Poems by Julie Weiss

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To the Pre-Adolescent Boy Stuck on Top of the Climbing Rock

We´ve all been marooned
on an island of terror at one time
or another. We´ve all sought
refuge in our coiled shell
of a body, been tossed about
by a wind that wore its impatience
like some flashy pirate´s garb.
When I was your age, a pack of us
armed with explorer kits and splashy
imaginations crawled into a cave-
like opening, yards from home.
I was the only one who screamed
and screamed, convinced the narrow walls
were crushing my life into a pitiful pile
of remains, skeletons were dancing
a derisive jig on the stage of my follies,
or at least that´s what I glimpsed through
my tears, the same swells thrashing
your dignity every time you peek over
the edge. Ignore the younger children
scurrying up and down the rock,
their triumphant chirps. I, too, went
limp on the flash-quick tongue
of my friends´ laughter yet endured
to assure you, forty years on, that hollows
eventually belch out defiant children.
That no, you won´t be condemned
to spend the night outside, prey
to the owls and rats of your father´s
threats. Though he´s been circling
the base for hours, all fins, teeth
and suspense music, all ravenous for
home, remember that in his youth
even he must have been blindfolded
by bravado, jostled to the edge
of a challenge, and at the last hopeless
moment, implored his various gods
to unleash rung after rung of salvation.

*

Prayer

Say the day steps out in an ensemble of wind,
hurtles you backwards seconds before a branch crashes
onto the path, inches from your feet. Say the wind
nestles your cheek, slips its whole body into your
dimmed memories, those times when, like a high note, we´d
rock it out on the vibrato of God´s hymns, your
eagle soul perched on the verge of your future,
larger than a soar of prayers.

Say an eagle appears, gliding on the wind of your hallelujah.
Don´t ever pluck the feathers off coincidence, son.

Sometimes, an odd sparkle in the dew-swept grass might
lead you to the coin or trinket you´d thought missing
among the scattered days of your life. Someday, you´ll
understand the planes I´ve traversed to say: don´t let my
goodbye gala trip you up like a crack in the sidewalk. No
hill of grief is too steep to scale, once you drink from
the glory cupped in heaven´s hands. If you´re lost, know I´m
everywhere, in wind, tree, dew, and bird. I´m here, watching you
rejoice in a world spun on the axis of my love.

*

Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection published by Kelsay books, and a chapbook, The Jolt: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, published by Bottlecap Press. Her “Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children” was selected as a finalist for Sundress´s 2023 Best of the Net anthology. She won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award for her poem “Cumbre Vieja,” was named a finalist for the 2022 Saguaro Prize, and was shortlisted for Kissing Dynamite´s 2021 Microchap Series. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work appears in ONE ART, Rust + Moth, Orange Blossom Review, Sky Island Journal, and Wild Roof Journal, among others. Originally from California, she lives in Spain with her wife and two young children.

Three Poems by Shikha S. Lamba

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A Prayer

If she could break every self-sacrificing bone in her body, she would.
If she could wring her body dry, drain herself out,
letting each drop reeking of compromise and over endurance
that had been lullabied into her brain since childhood,
preparing her for an inevitable future of no self, and everyone else,
she would.
She would strip her grandmothers of their self-proclaiming badges of honour,
she would strip her mother down to herself too,
and have them all stand bare in their own skins, devoid of the world’s expectations.
She would have them vomit out their words when they confessed
they were okay being married at sixteen, giving up their dreams,
because in the end at least I married a good man.
She would talk to these women from before her time who
married themselves young, and found themselves widowed young
with not a Rupee to their names, forever silencing their desires.
If she could, she would look her mother straight in the eye,
each time she was told take my life as an example,
see what all I’ve been through, and how well I’ve survived it all.
She would tell her mother of how she has begged the Gods to
not make her own life an example for her daughter to follow,
of how she wants her life to be a peace offering instead,
a handful of blossoming marigolds falling gently over time.

*

Headache

I know what’s happening when my head
throbs right down to my knuckles,
arguments slamming into each other between my ears.

The ache disintegrates all reasonable thought,
curdling any logical explanation for the pain.
All I hear are voices swimming in vertigo.

These voices won’t rest till they’ve spoken,
the chatter within the chatter,
an ongoing conversation of the mind within the brain.

I try to dull it with caffeine, tend to the exhaustion, pop a pill or two.
I try to let it fade, wither down like a punished child,
hoping it may dissolve my thoughts and quiet my mind.

But where’s the fun in that, my headache smiles,
pulsating around my skull, Where’s the fun in that.

*

The Mess We All Have

We can start with the mess in our lives
and if that proves to be too tedious,
start with a room. Clear the cobwebs
as you might clear the
intricate patterns of self-deprecating thoughts
you’ve built in your head. Dust it all away.
Those books never read, now piling on
dust from the air – they wait, choking
under a layer of forgetfulness.
How much do you forget about yourself daily?
You can start by wiping windows clean to see the world afresh,
start by folding away all that you choose not to wear – and then
ask yourself why you choose to live under covers where your body can hide.
In every dust-covered corner of your rooms, how many
dreams lie in solitude making homes with spiders?
If the mess in your head overwhelms,
start by clearing those corners first,
before you clear your mind.

*

Shikha S. Lamba is a jewellery designer and poet living in Hong Kong. She is also the co-editor of an online magazine, Coffee and Conversations. In love with all things creative, she has contributed poetry for various publications in Hong Kong, US, UK and India over the years. Passionate about raising awareness about women’s health and mental health issues through her writing, Shikha’s poems often touch on themes of feminism and social injustice. She admittedly lives a big portion of her life online and can be found on most social media sites for her jewellery, magazine and writing.

Changing rooms by David Hanlon

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Changing rooms

long wooden benches
no backs
oversized white shorts
string vests
pink/pale flesh
hairless legs

rows of coat hook rails
uniformed hooks
soldiers’ heads
floating
decapitated

I’m wearing
my new two-tone Nike trainers
boys remark
half-discuss
how cool they are

before one boy
the most popular
highest-ranking
disagrees
profusely

then gay boy
gay boy gay boy gay boy
with gay trainers

*

David Hanlon is a poet from Cardiff, Wales. He is a Best of the Net nominee. You can find his work online in over 50 magazines, including Rust & Moth, Kissing Dynamite & Homology Lit. His first chapbook Spectrum of Flight is available for purchase now at Animal Heart Press. You can follow him on twitter @davidhanlon13 and Instagram @welshpoetd

House of Cards by Shaun R. Pankoski

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House of Cards

I never left the house yesterday,
except to open the gate
so the cat could venture
through a tunnel she made in the grass
at the vacant lot next door.
Searching for the big-headed tom
that she loves to fight with,
she came home at 2am, soaking wet.

Tuesday I met a friend for lunch.
We ate mediocre Mexican food
and talked mostly about her father
who had recently died in hospice.
The whole time, I kept thinking
of the last time we ate together.
She told me then that she thought
Trump had some good ideas.

When I got my diagnosis,
it occurred to me that I probably
wouldn’t live long enough
to cook all the recipes
I had clipped and collected. That,
and who would take care of the cat.
But I still clip recipes, buy the ingredients.
I have an appetite now.

My baby brother, once my heart,
came home on a hot July day,
went into his bedroom and shut the door.
When his wife went in to check,
she started to scold him
for not removing his shoes before lying down.
He was dead. For this, and other reasons,
I hate my birthday.

*

Shaun R. Pankoski (she/her) is a poet most recently from Volcano, Hawaii. A retired county worker and two time breast cancer survivor, she has lived on both coasts as well as the midwest as an artist’s model, modern dancer, massage therapist and honorably discharged Air Force veteran. Her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review and Verse-Virtual. She will soon be a featured Storyteller of the Week in Storyteller Poetry Review.

Two Poems by Kelley White

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Abscond

as if it would rain on a day of ninety degrees
before sunrise, as if you and I woke
before that dawn and turned from each other
caring nothing for birdsong and hope;
and only our old angers simmering, called out
nevermore by crows and tomorrow by mourning
doves, old spinsters, left rattling the empty trees

*

A NH car dealer is giving away an AK-15 assault rifle with each sale

Pontiac or Jeep. Do they even make Oldsmobiles
any more? It doesn’t seem right to put a gun
in a Volvo station wagon. Or even a Dodge
Caravan. Soccer Mom cars. No, it must be the Dads
want these. A Durango, a Maverick, a Thunderbird.
Or perhaps it’s better with an unmarked car. No license
plate. Hard to trace. When he pulls off the road
at what he didn’t know was his destination. Leans into
the viewfinder and lets loose.

*

Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner-city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent chapbook is A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press.) She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant and is currently Poet in Residence at Drexel University College of Medicine. Her newest collection, NO.HOPE STREET has just been published by Kelsay Books.

Fragments of a visit to Buchenwald by Julia Caroline Knowlton

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Fragments of a visit to Buchenwald

a survivor on film recounts
one prisoner killing another

over a fistful of potato peels
meant to feed the officers’ pigs

the iron table where gold fillings
were extracted

from angel-light corpses

our guide showing us art
made by prisoners
how did they get paper and pencil
I asked

our guide our teacher
the angel-light art still here
bearing witness

on Sundays some prisoners
held small concerts
singing songs remembered

cherished
reciting poems

*

Julia Caroline Knowlton is the Adeline A. Loridans Professor of French at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta. Recognition for her poetry includes an Academy of American Poets College Prize and a 2018 Georgia Author of the Year award. Kelsay Books will publish her newest chapbook, Life of the Mind, in the autumn of 2023.

STOPPING BY by Kenneth Pobo

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

STOPPING BY

My mother said
butterflies visited her
in dreams. Outside
my bedroom window,
a yellow butterfly.

That’s her, stopping by,
then off she goes.

*

Kenneth Pobo (he/him) is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections. Recent books include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press), Loplop in a Red City (Circling Rivers), and Lilac And Sawdust (Meadowlark Press) and Gold Bracelet in a Cave: Aunt Stokesia (Ethel Press). His work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Asheville Literary Review, Nimrod, Mudfish, Hawaii Review, and elsewhere.

My Mom Dies During a Pandemic by Laurie Rosen

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My Mom Dies During a Pandemic

A hospital bed replaces
the one she shared with my father
for over 70 years,
her brain long ravaged
by Alzheimer’s.

She writhes,
the nurse says she’s transitioning.
I stand masked
in her bedroom doorway, immobile,
scared. I leave her dying

to the professionals.
It’s her birthday. I carry a card,
decorated with flowers and sparkles,
nothing more.

*

A lifelong New Englander, Laurie Rosen’s poetry has appeared in The Muddy River Poetry Review, Peregrine, Oddball Magazine, Zig Zag Lit Mag, Gyroscope Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Inquisitive Eater, a journal of The New School, Pure Haiku and elsewhere. She is a proud member of the Tin Box Poets in Swampscott, MA and was a reader at The Improbable Places Poetry Tour in Beverly, MA.

The Black Madonna by Attracta Fahy

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The Black Madonna

Somewhere there is guilt 
that this is happening to you,
as if your existence was an intrusion
on the world, everything built
on a collective belief that you are fine.

I bound my shame into control,
like when a rubber band is stretched
too far, it snaps.
I kept snapping, stifled my rage
smothered with sugar, then threw up.

Survival meant moulding a false self
into a montage. Pretence is an art.
Distracted from loss, tortured,
I turned everything inwards.

I can’t name all the flowers in my garden,
still, colours reflect some bit of comfort.
It’s true, the vulnerable are always victimized—
now I let everything grow wild, weeds too, and
I don’t need names to know how to love.

Possessed by the Black Madonna,
I made an altar in my garden. We live
on mother, she feeds us, our great
oesophageal snake, the open mouth
of a hungry gut that cannot decide
which to choose; life, or death.

It’s good to have something to pray to,
her soothing blue campanula, alpine
growing from a thread beneath rocks.

Not allowing anyone to see me like this-
I wanted to be seen. Like a robin, anxious
and startled, flies under a bush, then slowly
with trust, eats from your hand,
I too hungered to connect.

*

Attracta Fahy, Psychotherapist, MAW NUIG ‘17. Winner of Trócaire Poetry Ireland Poetry Competition 2021. Irish Times; New Irish Writing 2019, Pushcart & Best of Web nominee, shortlisted for: Fish International Poetry Competition 2022, OTE 2018 New Writer of the Year, Allingham Poetry competition both 2019 &’20, Write By The Sea Writing Competition 2021, Dedalus Press Mentoring Programme 2021. Her poems have been published in many magazines including the Crannóg, Stinging Fly, Banshee, Poetry Ireland Review, Honest Ulsterman, Poethead, Orbis, Abridged and several other journals and anthologies at home and abroad. Attracta was a featured reader at Over The Edge Reading in Galway City Library, Cultivating Voices, and read with poet Paul Muldoon and Adrian Rice at The Poetry Salon with the Irish American Society of New Mexico. Fly on the Wall Poetry published her debut best selling chapbook collection Dinner in the Fields, in March’20. Her chapbook was chosen by Poet Kevin Higgins as one of the best poetry books of 2020 for The Morning Star Newspaper. She received an Arts Council Agility Award 2022 and is presently working towards a full collection.

Two Poems by Amy Beth Sisson

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

The Abrasive

Sweat sheened my forehead
Under the mass of Jewish frizz
That gave me my nickname: Brillo

I wanted it off
Clipped
Shorn

I side-eyed the breasts on girlie
Mags littering waiting tables
Me, in my Members Only cordovan
Leather armor—stiff and shiny

As he buzzed my head,
The barber said,
I’ll cut girls’ hair.
Not the oriental.
It’s like needles.
Gives me splinters.

Half shorn silent—half blind—pinned
A barbed hook resisted removal

He read my disapproving grimace
Angry-eyed
Attacked with his clippers
I put on my glasses

Saw my scalp glinting in patches
From under the fuzz
And cried

When I got home—I tore off
My t-shirt and slapped at black shards
On my scoured neck

My girlfriend shoved me
Into the shower, lustful
Your head is incandescent.

The prickle of her hands
Hot on my scalp
Stroking the sparse bristle

*

At my ex’s

My son grabbed a ballpoint from the glass coffee table -click
Thumbed small lever: open shut, open shut, with each one -click

In the upholstered armchair sat the small-town policeman
Dark uniform, with holstered gun -click

His eyes glared at my child. Fifteen, 6’3”. Stubbled
I still saw him in soft cotton PJs. Robotman -click

That night in a Hendrix tee, sagged jeans
Shrugging, slouching -click

Until the officer shouted, “quit that”
But this story is wrong. The cop picked up the pen -click

No one could ask him to stop
With each click my son flinched in his wooden seat -click

Until the cop shouted, “quit that”
An order. My son sat up straight -click

This is still wrong. My son doesn’t recall me there
His memory: the cruiser’s hot hood

Where the cop pressed his face down
Before he was cuffed -click

*

Amy Beth Sisson (she/her) Poetry has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, The Night Heron Barks, Ran Off With the Star Bassoon, The River Heron Review, Philadelphia Stories and is upcoming in The Shoutflower. Sundress Publications selected her manuscript I Instruct My Toad How to Write Poetry as a semifinalist for its 2022 Chapbook Contest. She got her MFA in poetry in 2023 at Rutgers Camden, is a project manager for the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice, and an Editorial Assistant for FENCE Magazine.

Three Poems by Caroliena Cabada

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Small House

Our parents never kicked us
out of the nest, but now
that we’ve left, they can’t
leave it behind like
robins do every season—
stuck in the forks of an oak
or maple until the fallen
leaves reveal the hollow home.

*

Today, my anger was a falling knife

Today, a sanguine sunset filled
my vision—I blinded myself in
anger, self-inflicted. Why I am mad
was a small thing, a pebble gumming up
a gear. Today, I was an angel,
falling. Today, my anger was a falling
knife, gyrating on its long axis.
I keep my knives dull—yes, you
caught me—even though it’s dangerous.
By the time I get around to sharpening,
the urgency is gone. And this way the
blade I catch doesn’t cut.

*

Self-Portrait With Aphantasia

I write this poem with no inner eye—only
the words on this thin page appear
before me. There is ink that has still
not dried, transfers green on my arm
like grass stains. I can say whatever
I want, and you’d believe me: that I am
sitting on a freshly-mowed lawn near
the library, that I am letting an ant crawl
all over me, tracing the path that
a melted popsicle left. I can say
that I bleached my black hair bright blonde
and can still smell the chemical, even under
the scent of the green dye that makes me
look mermaid-like. I write this poem
imagining my ideal without images.
You can see her: right-handed, filling
up the blank page. Isn’t she beautiful,
the way she takes up space?

*

Caroliena Cabada teaches first-year composition and creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she is earning her PhD in English. Her debut poetry collection, True Stories, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2024.

Two Poems by Shannon Frost Greenstein

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

I’m Not a F*cking Superhero Just for Raising My Autistic Son

I just don’t know how you do it, she says, marveling,
her eyes wide like prey to express
just how awe-struck she truly feels.
You’re a Superhero.

My son, stimming, cavorting happily around the room;
neurodiverse, a bright ray of sun, simply delightful,
and brilliant like a savant;
she sees his meltdowns
his struggle to use the bathroom
declares me to be the Ubermensch
and I resist the urge to roll my eyes.

There is consolation in her voice;
like she is sending up a holy prayer
of thanks
her own children do not have special needs.

It is really condescension, though,
because I am someone to be pitied; because I am someone
with something broken.

But hold up for a second there, Miss Becky Home-ecky.

My son is perfect precisely as he is; he is a joy to nurture and get to know.
There’s no need for heroism,
because loving him
requires nothing superhuman at all.

After all, it doesn’t take an Avenger
to be an Autism mom;
it just takes
a mom.

So save your pity
when you meet my child on the Autism spectrum
because we are both doing just fine.

And I am not a f*cking Superhero
just for raising my autistic son.
I raise my autistic son
because I am his f*cking mother,
and that is just
what mothers do.

*

I Blame George Balanchine

I blame George Balanchine
for decades upon decades
of the most vicious kinds of eating disorders;
for veneration of the waif
at the expense of growing old;
for the toxicity and abuse
that defines professional ballet
and the pervasive legacy of exclusion
that still persists to this day.

I blame Saint Augustine
for the devaluation of women
and the marriage of church and state;
for back-alley abortions
and unresearched stem cells;
for the stigma of sex
just for the sake of sex
and the pervasive legacy of judgement
that still persists to this day.

I blame Nancy Reagan
for propagating systemic racism
as the face of the War on Drugs;
for equating addiction
with weakness of character;
for commanding us all to Just Say No
as crack ravaged the Black community
and the pervasive legacy of an epidemic
that still persists to this day.

I blame Donald Trump
for his epidemiological illiteracy
and killing one million Americans;
for misogyny and bigotry and prejudice and hate
because he is just the worst kind of person;
for humiliating our nation
on a geopolitical scale
and the pervasive legacy of intolerance
that still persists to this day.

I blame them all for the damage they’ve caused
and for reinforcing the otherhood of people like me
and if you agree with anything they have to say
then, you prick, I fucking blame you, too.

*

Shannon Frost Greenstein (she/her) resides in Philadelphia with her children and soulmate. She is the author of “These Are a Few of My Least Favorite Things”, a full-length book of poetry available from Really Serious Literature, and “Pray for Us Sinners,” a short story collection with Alien Buddha Press. Shannon is a former Ph.D. candidate in Continental Philosophy and a multi-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Pithead Chapel, Litro Mag, Bending Genres, Parentheses Journal, and elsewhere. Follow Shannon at shannonfrostgreenstein.com or on Twitter at @ShannonFrostGre.

Three Poems by Andrea Potos

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

AT THE GREEN CEMETARY AND NATURAL PATH SANCTUARY
           For Rosemary

I’m lost on the narrow trails sloping
and curving among the exuberant green of late May.

I suppose my friend is everywhere here,
and that is the point: growing into the earth

now, indistinguishable from fern or maple,
oak or ash. Birdsong crisscrosses

everywhere as I make my way deeper
into the woods. It is supposed to be enough;

I might be too set or greedy, I want more–
one marker with dates chiseled

or raised in burnished bronze.
I want a stone that endures for her name.

*

A LIST,
           for Rosemary, in memory

Today I tried making a list
of all the places you and I gathered
together: Lombardinos for Italian,
LaBrioche for bi-weekly poetry tea,
the Bubble Up Bar for nightcaps,
the bookshops where you’d sit front row
whenever I gave a reading.

And I will never not see you,
settling onto your living room sidechair
while waiting for your signature Bolognese sauce
to find its final perfection for our dinners.
           There you are again–drawing your fingers upwards
through your light hair as you make another
passionate point; your smile widening, ablaze–
you are looking at me as you speak, how easy it was
to love myself in that glow.

*

ANOTHER JUNE MORNING HAS ARRIVED

Anniversary of my mother’s leaving,
exuberance of early summer

and triumph of the peonies, their pink
and white faces spread like joy.

Every year it is the same, I count the days
until her last has arrived.

Every year an early hour
calls the birds to singing.

Every June I remember
how waking belongs to song.

*

Andrea Potos is the author of several full-length collections of poems, most recently Her Joy Becomes (Fernwood Press), Marrow of Summer (Kelsay Books), and Mothershell (Kelsay Books). Her poems appear widely online and in print, most recently in Potomac Review, Braided Way, Poem, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.

OLD GRIEF by Sean Kelbley

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

OLD GRIEF

Someday you’ll glance at bare-branched trees
and not think veins, and in those trees

the squirrels’ ragged nests will not be clots.
Above, the wispy cirrus clouds will look

like clouds and not at all like strands of lost
and drifting hair. It will be the same, in time,

with taste and touch and smell: senses
apprehending too-done steak, pilled Army blanket,

rained-out fire as only and exactly
what they are. Then dawn will dawn

as dawn instead of shiv, instead of even
dull and rusted butterknife, and you’ll forget

to wear an albatross to breakfast.
Which day? I’m sorry,

but it has to be a missed surprise,
unrealized until next morning

or a month of mornings after that—
whichever day some hungry disremembered

correspondence comes to table,
looking for a place you didn’t set.

*

Sean Kelbley lives on a farm in Appalachian Ohio and works as a primary school counselor. In addition to ONE ART, his poetry has appeared in Rattle, Sheila-Na-Gig Online, Still: The Journal, Sugar House Review, and other wonderful journals and anthologies.

Two Poems by James Diaz

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

The Hard Talking We Do

For Dennis

What’s on your mind, friend
What has you twisted
I’d sure like to know it’s name
Walk a while with you
Towards the thing causing you so much pain

I have none of the answers
But I am certain to know the song you’re singing
Alone in the dark
And knowing is the ark

I’ve been around that part of town
I know the dangers
The regulars
The sound of a train where trains don’t run anymore

I see it’s gone dark in your house
You’re pacing the hours
Considering your options
The tools you’ll use for the job of extraction

Who can know if that dark will ever lift
Who has the right to keep you here
But, you know, I sure hope you stay
If only for another day, one at a time

I am still amazed by all the subtle cruelties
How they do you
Has nothing to do with you
You know

I know you know
But there it is again
If you need it

I’ll be around
Pacing my own dark
Waiting on the new day

I sure hope you stay.

*

In the good light

There is a quiet work
Unseen things bend themselves to
Say, around twilight
A talon dug into ground, a feather lost
To takeoff, wild sees wilder
Turns tail in darkest wind
Boy, have I been there before

And mercy is the rain
Is the window I leave open
Running my hand across kitchen dim light
Counting blessings; begrudgingly
The rust on the tea kettle
I can’t bear to throw away
The rust on me
On everything
Everything

God, though I know you’re not
I wish you were
And it is easier this way
(Oh, what a lie)
I take what I need
And I forgive
What’s been taken
From me

Over hill and high water
Through rougher crossing may you almost
Every time

Right there, like that
In the good light
Feathers lost
Take it off
All that shame
Stay awhile in this here
Right now

Be true in it
Just be in it

We are almost home.

*

James Diaz (They/Them) is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) All Things Beautiful Are Bent (Alien Buddha, 2021) and Motel Prayers (Alien Buddha, 2022) as well as the founding editor of Anti-Heroin Chic. Their most recent work can be found in Rust + Moth, Sugar House Review, Chaotic Merge Magazine and Thrush Poetry Journal.

Lovers’ Geometry by Claudia Mills

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

Lovers’ Geometry

How the shape of me
fits into the shape of
you, the long lean
line of your body
as I curve against it,
your leg right-angled
over mine, the oval
of my head tucked
beneath the square
of your shoulder,
forming a composite
figure of which
even Euclid had
nothing to say.

*

Claudia Mills is the author of over 60 books for young readers, including most recently the middle-grade verse novel The Lost Language (Holiday House 2021), named a Notable Verse Novel of the Year by the National Council of Teachers of English. She is also a faculty member in the graduate programs in children’s literature at Hollins University. Claudia lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Four Poems by Amy Smith

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

After You

I’m not any sadder, certainly not
sadder than that day in August, returning
bra to breasts in the dressing stall
at the mammogram place when Adele came on.
I’d only known you for two weeks then, but I wept
so hard I thought my chest would cave in.
And I remember how good it felt to be held at all–even
in that space, saddest of rooms. Looking back now
I think even cancer didn’t want me that summer,
and how lucky I am–
there’s still time for anything.

*

The Fourth of July

and nobody told the end of the world.
Or maybe the end of the world didn’t tell
the Fourth of July. Either way,
some things don’t need saying. And there are still
small kindnesses remaining: a sprinkler
slicing through the thickness of summer, the cardinal
unapologetic in her living, Mom
in the garden caring for things that return to her
year after year.

*

Ode to the MRI Machine

O
tunnel
of
terror
&
sound
take
courage
take
cover
turn
despair
around
take
wrong
take
rage
make
right
take
gadolinium
light
take
T2/Flair
take
tissue
take
bone
take
image
O
eggshell
white
throne
take
orders
take
oath
take
Hippocrates
to
hell

*

Acceptance

The night we waited for your sister,
warm after baths in the dim bedroom light,

you dragged a bug-eyed kitty cat up
my left arm, the one that’s usually numb

but not completely without feeling.
That August, the Reiki master felt it

and said, You’ve got blocked energy
there. And I cried, though I didn’t know why.

I guess even the stuffed animals sensed
I needed healing.

What a cute little guy! I said, watching
that bug-eyed kitty cat.

I had another one but it got lost in the butterfly room
forever and ever and ever, you said

(without the r’s,
or a trace of sorrow or self-pity).

You were three.
Even now, it astonishes me

how we love
the things we lose.

*

Amy Smith’s poems have appeared in Waxwing, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She works in a high school library in central New York.