Month: September 2023

Postcard from the Knife-Thrower’s Wife by Alex Stolis

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Postcard from the Knife-Thrower’s Wife
August 10 – Hamilton, Ontario

Today I felt the rain before it came. It was
a premonition. A quickening. A flash of light
from nowhere. Once, when I was not more
than ten, I almost drowned. Could feel my
body sinking. I closed my eyes tight as if
that very act would cause me to float back
to the surface. I spread my arms winglike
hoping to become an angel. When I finally
came up for air what felt like minutes had
been mere seconds. I laughed, half choked
on a mouthful of water and within moments
splashed ashore. Now, I feel the drops fall
one by one by one. I know without looking
there is a bird in flight. Can feel the beat of
it’s heart. Can feel it bank towards the edge
of the sky. Now, the drops fall two by three
by four by five. You hum softly to yourself,
peel an orange, suck the pith from under
your nail; that sky a perfect shade of blue.

*

Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis; he has had poems published in numerous journals. The full length collection, Postcards from the Knife-Thrower was runner up for the Moon City Poetry Prize in 2017. Two full length collections Pop. 1280, and John Berryman Died Here were released by Cyberwit and available on Amazon. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Piker’s Press, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Eunoia Review, and Star 82 Review.

When earth gives way to bulb, by Darcy Pennoyer Smith

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When earth gives way to bulb,

snowdrops remind me
of brighter days to come.

Delicate white bells bob and
bask in cool air and the winter sun’s kiss,
making their debut.

In third grade, the chasm widened when
my father said no to Sara’s slumber party.

Instead, we watched Jeopardy.
“Mom would have let me go,” I mustered.

My cheek stung from the slap,
my arm burned from the grab,
my heart grew numb.

“I can’t let you go,” he stammered, and then
“Psychology for 200, Alex.”
So went my tween years.

Now, as his coffin lowers and settles next to hers,
the earth warms as it swallows his anger.

*

Darcy Pennoyer Smith is a poet and high school English teacher from New Canaan, CT. Although she is a lifelong writer, she is just venturing into the realm of submitting her poems for publication.

1am Going Home by Julia Bindler

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1am Going Home

The road pulled taut
ahead of me, stretched
like black elastic.

Snow rippled above it
like a black and white photo
of sunlight in a pool.

There went the dark nursery
where our ghosts walk, asking
the names of plants.

The philodendron’s corpse still lives
in my house, under a window,
no longer eating sunlight.

A glowing racoon
turned out to be
a toppled traffic post.

I considered the positives
of having nothing to lose.

*

Julia Bindler lives in Minneapolis with her dog, Lenny. She is currently participating in The Loft’s poetry apprenticeship program.

Fattoush by Valeria Vulpe

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Fattoush

The recipe called for
tomatoes, cucumbers,
radishes, onions, and
pomegranate seeds,
pomegranate seeds!
but not in a made-up
way like a slice of
orange on a cocktail
glass or a sprinkle of
himalayan salt from
way too high,
but like a
“good afternoon passengers”
as you buckle up kinda way,
or a brushing your teeth
in the morning kinda way,
and it made me so hungry,
this fruits on vegetables
bravery, this matter-of-fact
asking for something
that doesn’t belong
and mixing it in

*

Valeria Vulpe grew up in Moldova and started writing as a child in her native Romanian. After a 20 year break from writing as she was busy moving, ticking boxes and collecting credit cards, she joined the Writing Salon in San Francisco and began writing in English. Her poems have neither appeared nor disappeared.

Cute As by Karen Poppy

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Cute As

Oh! Boots! I’m—your Princess Anne—(as you call me) who only wants to be your button […]

— Letter from Anne Sexton to her husband, Alfred Sexton, Venice, Italy, September 27, 1963

I am as cute as volcanic flames,
Each leap symbolic—muscled
Flanks lather and foam, fire
Jumping fire, my darling.

Sweated out, head tossing.
Beaded button thirsty, feisty.
Swollen red by your words,
I love you more than I love

This shifting dream in flight,
Crackling and opening,
Lifting and welcoming—
Yes, and galloping, galloping

Galloping home to you.

*

A non-binary poet, Karen Poppy’s debut full-length poetry collection, Diving at the Lip of the Water, is published by Beltway Editions (2023). An attorney licensed in California and Texas, Karen Poppy lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Photographic Documentation by Kevin Canfield

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Photographic Documentation

The boy brought to school a very old photo,
black and white and brittle, gently scalloped
on the borders; it showed three military vehicles
and a few soldiers with their backs to the camera;
in the sky above the men, the boy informed his
teacher and his classmates, god was plainly visible,
looking down on a battlefield in the Pacific,
just before an important Second World War battle;
look, you can see his beard, the boy said of a
cloud resembling an equilateral triangle
made of feathers; and those are his eyes,
he added, pointing at two dark clefts of sky;
one of the boy’s ignoramus classmates insisted
that there were no such battles in Asia,
and another demanded to know where the boy got
the photo in the first place; the boy ignored his
detractors and continued with his monologue;
the photographer was killed not long after he
took this picture, the boy said, and though he offered
no proof that this was the case, he said it with
tremendous conviction, his voice quavering by the
end of his presentation, and when he sat down,
the teacher confessed that although she was not
a believer, at least not today, she was certain that
she would think about his photo again, today
or tomorrow, or whenever someone says god

*

Kevin Canfield lives in New York City. His writing has appeared in Cineaste, the Los Angeles Review of Books, World Literature Today and other publications.

Dream in Which I Stop to Say Goodbye by Julie Weiss

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Dream in Which I Stop to Say Goodbye
         ~In memory of my father, Gerald Weiss (January 26, 1942 – September 14, 2023)

Gather your tears like a fistful of pebbles.
Drop them on the doorstep before entering

the gallery of my life. Toss off the drab
mourning attire, stiff hat, the pain veiling

your face. Toss the regrets, the words
never spoken, into a daffodil field

and do the twist with someone you adore,
someone whose legs haven´t yet

buckled under the gravity of so many
accumulated joys. Smile as though

a jokester dwelled in your belly!
Everyone knows I loved a good joke.

Think not of me but of children.
From the vantage point of stars, the world

is a sparkling clarinet, billowing out
the laughter of every child on earth.

Honor me by not forsaking those who need
the seeds in our full hands to flourish.

When I alighted on the shore of your dream
to say goodbye, what I meant was

I vow to spend my eternity collecting
all these moments of indescribable beauty

for your sake, stacking them in my heart´s
jar as you would seashells or precious stones.

For now, if you wake in a fret, know that
I haven´t wandered far. I´m the glorious

dawn colors adrift on an eagle´s wings.
The sunlight winking across the Bay.

A swirl of butterflies caught, for a second,
in an unexpected tease of wind.

*

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 recent work appears in Random Sample Review, Wild Roof Journal, and ONE ART, among others, and is forthcoming in Chestnut Review. Originally from California, she lives in Spain with her wife and two young children.

Gone by Laura Goldin

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Gone

I lost my mother and then my metro card. A black pen,
single earring, more than the usual number of socks.

Where in the five-stage model is confusion –
dropping and breaking things, reading without

comprehension? Anger is there, but what of the rage
that shows up out of order, takes the corner chair and settles in,

preparing to eat everything: well-meaning people,
beloved people? I don’t sleep much anymore, but sleep

was never my forte. Three times in over sixty years
I disobeyed her: ate chocolate before dinner,

slept with my college boyfriend, stole what remained
of her lucidity when someone young enough

to be my child asked permission and I nodded, let them drip
the morphine she’d refused. A few times more I lied to her,

the last one when I said we’d take a short ride,
get the medicine, check out right afterward.

Go home again.

*

Laura Goldin is a publishing lawyer in New York. Five of her recent poems appear in the Spring 2023 issue of The Brooklyn Review; one is forthcoming in Driftwood Press 2024 Anthology, and one was a finalist for Best of the Net 2023. Others have been published or are forthcoming in a variety of journals including Apple Valley Review, Gargoyle Magazine, Mom Egg Review, and RHINO.

Evacuation by Tammy Greenwood

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Evacuation

We could see the smoke billow
beyond the ridge. The car packed

with fire escapes of mementos,
each choice an act of judgement day.

Now with room for only half the artwork
on the walls, I was sure I heard the sigh

of houseplants as I closed the door.
And that heavy Gray’s Anatomy book

filled with pressed wildflowers I collected
and labeled the spring of lockdown —

purple nightshade, wild Canterbury bells,
California poppy, silver lupine, presuming

they needed me as much as I needed them.
Now rescuing them a second time,

I fill the birdbaths like chaliced offerings
hoping for another reprieve.

*

Poet and Printmaker, Tammy Greenwood is a Louisiana native residing in California. Her work is heavily influenced by the varying landscape and culture of both states she calls home. Since graduating from California State University, San Bernardino, she continues her studies while working on her upcoming book of poetry. Her work appears in or is forthcoming in Door is a Jar, Rust & Moth, Orange Blossom Review, San Pedro River Review, Under the Radar, California Quarterly, Poetry South, Emerge Literary Journal, FERAL, and elsewhere.

Night Music by Mary Beth Hines

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Night Music

Mayhem made me. Rum
& Terrapin Station playing all night
on the common room stereo, and I fell
for it. Crushed velvet, wavy glass
and a cardinal pecking at its own
reflection. Bedlam. Heaven
forbid my Saturday night trespasses
torque back to haunt me—the men,
the moon, sows jumping over, my plunge
from the cradle into rosa rugosa
where I lit on all fours, before hush
could ambush me, fled from the lure
of Kyrie eleison soaring at cockcrow
from St. Cecelia’s organ. Heaven
forgive my come-on and surrender
into the blur of allegro, vibrato.

*

Mary Beth Hines lives and writes from her home in Massachusetts. Her work appears in Cider Press Review, SWWIM, Tar River Poetry, Valparaiso and elsewhere. Kelsay Books published her debut collection, “Winter at a Summer House,” in 2021. (https://www.marybethhines.com)

haiku by A.R. Williams

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Hiking in Appalachia
a massive black bear
gobbles down a turkey club

*

A.R. Williams is a poet from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley (USA), and has been published in Black Bough Poetry, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Neologism Poetry, among many others. He is also the editor of East Ridge Review and can be found on twitter @andrewraywill

BRAND LOYALTY by Alyson Gold Weinberg

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BRAND LOYALTY

I made a Pledge to Cheer with Joy whenever my little
Dove(s) are near. To caress their Downy heads. To keep
Tab(s) on them—and spend many a Summer’s Eve
When the Nerds are asleep—L’eggs open, welcoming the Soft

Scrub of your beard on my Crest. You’re Charmin. You’re Fantastik.
Head and Shoulders above the rest, but these days I don’t
Comet in a Jiff—a bit of my libido has gone down the Drano.
Fancy a foursome with Mr. Clean and Mrs. Butterworth—?

We can get Miracle Whip(ped) until Dawn when they gotta Bounce.

*

Alyson Gold Weinberg is the author of Bellow & Hiss, A New Women’s Voices finalist, forthcoming in September, 2023 (Finishing Line Press). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in december, Halfway Down the Stairs, Poetica, among others. She was a 2021 Jeff Marks Memorial Prize finalist (judged by Carl Phillips) and a 2022 Harbor Review Jewish Women’s Poetry Prize Finalist. When not writing poetry, Alyson is a speechwriter and the ghostwriter of five non-fiction books.

Two Poems by Tresha Faye Haefner

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Self Love Poem
After you left I started writing love
letters to myself.
The kind of over-the-top things you would have said to me
if you had stuck around.
My god, I say to myself in the mirror, you’re glowing.
Your hair a yellow stream full of diamonds.
Your eyes Terabytes of Blue Data. A promise from space aliens. Instructions
on how to build the color blue, in case we forget.
I send myself nude photos of myself. Pictures where I’m looking myself
directly in the eye, daring a response.
Sometimes I worry I’ll get caught. Sometimes I close my laptop quickly
so I don’t see what I’m doing behind my back.
It’s tricky, loving yourself this hard, without anyone getting suspicious,
accusing me of being arrogant or self indulgent, selfishly lavishing all this time
on planning trips to Europe with myself. The hotel I’ll rent, the hats I will buy
for my glorious head.
I take time away from work to sneak myself messages. Promise crazy things.
I’ll take myself on
a cruise to Greece and Turkey.
Throw whole olives in my mouth, the pitted kind so they go down soft.
Grapes, peaches, all the stone fruit I can eat.
Eventually this kind of ebullience gets old though.
The pressure to be the recipient of so much adoration.
I suggest a quiet night at the movies. Take myself
to watch independent films.
Pretend I’m interested
even though I hate subtitles, and was never a fan of the French New Wave.
Make an excuse to go home early, get enough sleep
for work the next day. Anything to avoid my own company.
I know something is off. It’s a distortion. There’s someone else
I’ve been seeing. But I won’t admit it. Try to cover.
The lies become tiresome. The effort to get myself
to like myself this way.
I miss the simple days of taking a road trip down the 405.
Pulling over to the side of the road to stare at cows,
or watching a butterfly land on my windshield while I’m stuck
in traffic. At night I turn off the radio,
listen to the sound of the earth.
Crickets in bushes. Fruit falling and splitting against the ground.
The sound of the earth, so quietly supportive.
So casually giving me everything I’ll ever need.
I try to resettle myself like the center of a Tibetan Singing Bowl.
I spend whole afternoons in silence now.
Tonight I will turn off all sounds, make a meal of lion’s mane mushrooms,
morel spores mixed with rice, white wine, parsley and herbs,
and then go take a long shower with lavender soap
and spend all night staring at my reflection in silence
as I pat my ordinary skin dry,
and deliriously comb my hair.
*
Letter Home
In the Northeast
the ice is everywhere,
black and invisible.
schoolyards are lowered
by flags. The teachers don’t know
what to do. When I arrived
I was naïve as paper.
A dress walking
through snowstorms.
You tried to warn me,
there were not enough words
to describe the love
between a man
and his money.
Why someone would shoot
a naked photo of a child.
A classroom of kindergarteners,
an insulting email to HR.
I tried to pump the breaks.
The screech of an empty
bank account slammed me
to snowbank.
I thought I would be better. But
I am only a girl. Break me
in case of emergency.
Be careful. When they tell you
You are a match
for any danger,
You will be the one
they strike.
The newest thing
they have to burn.
*
Tresha Faye Haefner’s poetry appears, or is forthcoming in several journals and magazines, most notably Blood Lotus, Blue Mesa Review, The Cincinnati Review, Five South, Hunger Mountain, Mid-America Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Radar, Rattle, TinderBox and Up the Staircase Quarterly. Her work has garnered several accolades, including the 2011 Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize, and a 2012, 2020, and 2021 nomination for a Pushcart. Her first manuscript, “Pleasures of the Bear” was a finalist for prizes from both Moon City Press and Glass Lyre Press. It was published by Pine Row Press under the title When the Moon Had Antlers in 2023. Find her at www.thepoetrysalon.com.

Four Poems by Dan Butler

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A Picnic in Golden Gate Park

Sunny, shirts off, he newly moved
to San Francisco, me at the end of
a solo cross-country bike trip, we’re
making out on a blanket in the midst
of kids playing, families and friends
having a good time. I’ve never kissed
a man like this, outside, among other
people, but he seems so comfortable
that I follow his lead, amazed how it
feels so easy, natural, sublime.

And now he tells me he felt the very
same thing, that he’d been raised never
to show affection of any kind in public.
And I laugh, ‘So I was leading you?’
We’re on the phone, connected for
the first time in 40 years, reliving that
day. “You were so fucking cute” he says,
the thickness of his Minnesota accent
surprising me, the memory of his beauty
still bowling me over. “An elderly couple
was on the bench beside us,” he says,
and the gratitude, realizing that this day
was as indelible for him as it has been for
me all these years, is beyond words.

And I still can feel the brush of his leg on
the back of mine, momentous and ordinary,
40 years ago and now at the same time,
basking in the newfound happiness of being
more completely me.

*

Father Son Talk

My mom and dad dated again
after their second spouses died,
some 30 years after their divorce,
and they’d call me up giving their
versions of how it went. I could
only utter single syllables like
‘oh,’ ‘wow,’ ‘good,’ the kinds of
words I was trained to use on the
suicide prevention line where you’re
urged to never challenge any of the
callers’ delusional voices they might
be dealing with. Dad had all these
plans for their future while mom
was reminded why they had split up
in the first place. He was excited, she
found herself getting depressed.
The dating only lasted a few months
when mom finally called it off and
afterwards every time I’d visit, dad
would pour over conspiracy theories
of who had poisoned her thoughts
against him. “It was all going so well,”
he’d repeat and I’d mostly nod, try
to steer the topic off in another direction,
avoid giving advice or hurting him further,
thinking of all the plans, romantic and
otherwise, that hadn’t turned out even
near the place I’d intended. ‘Sometimes
there isn’t a reason, dad. Things just
don’t work out.’ And we drive in silence
for a while, on our way to Smokey Bones
for a little barbeque, corn fields spreading
out forever on either side of the interstate,
silos standing sentinel in the distance.

*

Mom in the Nursing Home

          Where or When – from “Babes in Arms” by Rodgers and Hart

I sit by her wheelchair. We listen to a jazz duet
entertaining the memory unit. She’s all smiles.
The keyboardist is me and I’m a guy hitting on her.
When we’ve held hands, it’s been a death grip; now
it’s soft, intimate. Her Estee Lauder is all for “me.”

          And so it seems that we have met before
          and laughed before and loved before
          but who knows where or when?

She’ll know me again in the morning, but for now
it’s getting late, so I kiss her goodbye on the cheek
and tell her that I’ll see her tomorrow. Pleased, she
fixes me with a look I’ve never seen before and asks,
“And what’s going to happen then?”

*

Early December Farm Breakfast with my Grandpa, 1962

Why do I keep coming back to this kitchen?
What dark nourishment do I seek?
I sit at the oil-cloth covered table watching him
fix breakfast, the meal I’ve watched him make
a million times before.

The grease sizzles and pops in the cast iron skillet,
smelling of smokehouse and slaughter. He has
his back to me, focused on the task at hand.
The eggs are hard for him to break. He tries to
work the arthritis out, opening and closing his
thickly calloused hands that smell of lava soap
and work, a life of work. He takes turns rubbing
each hand, trying to bring life back. Useless,
useless, he whispers, as if I’m not even there.
He leans against the counter near where his
cane is hooked, near where his birthday cake
sits, barely eaten though it’s apricot, his favorite.
He wears faded bib overalls and flannel to keep
the December chill out. He’s kept the heat off
because it costs dear. He’s a man of few words,
but I wish he’d talk to me. It’s all on his terms.

Outside it’s dark, down in the coal mines dark.
Inside too. Eggs sunny side up, though the sun
won’t be up for a good while now and he won’t
be here to see it. The ground outside the breezeway
waits, as does the hunting rifle. Ground he plowed
and planted and harvested, all grey corn stubble now.

Breakfast made, he places a plate over it to keep it
warm. He’s not hungry. Down the hall, Uncle Bob,
who will find him, dreams of robbers. And as Grandpa
makes his way out of the room toward the inevitable –
a smile on his face, something I didn’t expect – he turns
to look at me. He sees me, years older than he was then.
And he leaves. Again.

*

Dan Butler is known primarily as an actor whose credits include major roles On and Off Broadway, on television, and film where he has also written, directed, and produced. In 2011, Dan adapted and directed a screen version of Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s verse poem “Pearl” starring Francis Sternhagen and himself which had a great life on the film festival circuit. In addition to being published in ONE ART last April, Dan’s poems have been seen on the Poetry of Resilience site, on the “Commissary,” a creative artist’s collective, as well as in the anthology “The Paths to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy” edited by James Crews.

Two Poems by Laura Foley

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My State

At daycare, she says, Sue serves us spoiled eggs.
Oh, you mean boiled?
No. Spoiled. And I don’t like them.

Later I ask Sue, who elucidates, Scrambled.

In the parking lot, we talk license plates.
Mine has a loon, she explains,
And yours is green.

Yes, yours is a loon because you’re from Maine.
Yes, Grandma, but I’m from License Plate too.

I squint into space,
trying to imagine the state of License Plate,
but find a mind of scrambled eggs.

*

Someone

I once lived on a great wide river,
a time of deep aloneness, after loss.
How soothing it was to watch waters passing,
sunlight reflected in circular currents,
a white moon cresting
above the shadowed mountain.
I miss the river, though not
the hushed quietness of that time,
the endless plumbing of depths
I never guessed, which nonetheless
led me to choose—a wife
calling me from another room,
as she is now, to come downstairs for tea,
steeped to the color of the river.

*

Laura Foley’s most recent collection is: It’s This (Fernwood Press, 2023). Her poems have won many awards and appeared in many journals such as Alaska Quarterly, Valparaiso, Poetry Society London, Atlanta Review, and included in anthologies such as: Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. Laura’s poems have been turned into choral music and performed in venues such as the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and Carnegie Hall in New York. She lives with her wife, Clara Giménez, and their two romping canines, among the hills of Vermont.

Three Poems by Lois Perch Villemaire

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Hot Tea and Hamantaschen

A cup of hot
vanilla caramel tea
with a cherry
hamantaschen
takes me back.
No, it’s not Purim.
My local bagel shop
bakes them all year round.

The tea—
a reminder of my mother,
faithful tea-drinker;
the hamantaschen—
a reminder of the time
one of my daughters
brought home a recipe
from pre-school.

Sipping on my tea
I see my little girls
as we baked together,
mixing and rolling dough,
spooning cherry pie-filling
then folding just so—
into the shape of Haman’s
triangular hat.

*

Happiness

is not handed out
like Halloween candy.
If there is none
where you wish to find it,
feel the loss then rejoice
in fortuitous discoveries.

The deep purple bloom
of an African violet
created from a single leaf,
the taste of a fresh banana,
the company of someone you love,
the encouragement of a friend,

a book you long to return to,
music—an arrow to your heart,
baby birds with open beaks
in a nest outside your window,
and a blossoming hydrangea
you planted seven years ago
in memory of your sister.

*

Calling All Poets
         After June Jordan

Slow down
look around
there’s something
impressive to see.

Feel the silent breeze
watch the wisdom
of the birds
building nests
with precision.

Listen to their calls
rhythmic chirping
rings through the air.
I wonder—
what is the message?

Notice how swiftly
trees convert
from naked
to full bloom,
barely time to
grasp
the transformation.

*

Lois Perch Villemaire writes poetry, flash memoir, and fiction. Her work has appeared in such places as Blue Mountain Review, Ekphrastic Review, One Art: A Journal of Poetry, Pen In Hand and Topical Poetry. Anthologies, including I Am My Father’s Daughter and Truth Serum Press – Lifespan Series have published her memoir and poetry. Her first book, “My Eight Greats,” a family history in poetry and prose, will be published in September. Originally from the Philadelphia area, Lois lives in Annapolis, MD, where she enjoys yoga, researching family connections, fun photography, and doting over her African violets.

Two Poems by Eileen Pettycrew

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I Couldn’t Do What the Pedicure Lady Does

All day bending toward disagreeable
outcroppings, operating
with a surgeon’s precision—
especially not the way she does it,
always trying to catch my eye,
while I, already squirming
from the intimacy of the procedure,
try to stay inside
the separate station of my book.

I think of feet, how they tether me
to this world, how one day
they’ll be reduced to nothing,
and she will no longer take them,
naked as mole rats,
into her hands, rubbing the heels
and between the toes
with her lotioned fingers.

Now as I wait for the polish to dry,
she sweeps nail clippings
and clumps of skin into a dustpan.
Someday everything in this salon
will be gone—fake poinsettia wreath
on the door, the oversized calendar
printed with Bui’s Natural Tofu.
Box fan in the corner ruffling
a strand of my hair.

I think seven years into the future,
when my skin will have renewed itself.
I like to think I’ll reinvent myself
with whatever warmth
she carries in her hands
as she kneads my calves,
her fists pounding look up, look up.

*

First Week in April

Already the azaleas
are in bloom, the rhodies
busting out too.
Everything’s moved
up a month, as if time
has rolled up the rug
and left town. What will
happen to the Mother’s Day
rhododendron show?
Maybe folks will learn to love
the delicate skeletons
left behind.
          Last night
at the square dance, I loved
others’ attire—window-pane
fishnets, a hot-pink shirt.
I slid into do-si-dos,
swing your partner.
I think of my father’s
artificial hips, how he quit
dancing for fear
of falling. He and my mother
out on the floor,
suede soles gliding
across the wood as if
they could go on forever.
          I think I know
of loss, but I don’t.
Or it’s been here so long
it seems normal,
like browned-out grass.
The days
mean something,
don’t they?
Rising as they do
when the sun returns
after a cloudburst.
Fleeting as steam.

* 

Eileen Pettycrew’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in New Ohio Review, CALYX Journal, Cave Wall, SWWIM Every Day, and elsewhere. In 2022 she was one of two runners-up for the Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry and a finalist for the New Letters Award for Poetry. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Eileen lives in Portland, Oregon.

Losing a Homeland by Zeina Azzam

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Losing a Homeland

It’s as if we are reading a book
with too many unfamiliar words
and keep having to look them up.
If only it were that easy to understand the story
of how one loses a homeland,
how a young couple flees
with only a suitcase to fit their life’s belongings.
In their minds the sentences shortened,
certain words disappeared, some things
were unspoken until their hair grayed, fell.
Maybe they would never be uttered or heard.
How will our family story live?

*

Zeina Azzam is a Palestinian American poet, writer, editor, and community activist. She is the poet laureate of the City of Alexandria, Virginia, for 2022-2025. Her poems appear in literary journals, webzines, and anthologies, and her full-length poetry collection, Some Things Never Leave You, was published in July 2023 by Tiger Bark Press. Zeina’s chapbook, Bayna Bayna, In-Between, was released in 2021 by The Poetry Box. She has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. www.zeinaazzam.com

White Gloves by Mary Sesso

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White Gloves

Yesterday a katydid was keeping me company
on the patio when a praying mantis snatched it.
That must be why my dreams are scary—
I’m afraid the clock might run out while I’m enjoying
the sun, and suddenly it’s dark black with no
leftover green bits of summer.

Time, like a butler in white gloves doesn’t care
if I’m katydid gentle or if my bite doesn’t hurt.
Last night I dreamed he brushed sand
off his fingers, and suddenly I was filled with a fear
of the dark. Then I watched him exit with a murmur
of sun in his eye.

*

Mary Sesso is a retired nurse who lives in Bethesda, MD with her dog, Beau. Her latest work appeared in Lock Raven Review, Cardinal Sins and Cutbank Literary Review. She’s the author of 2 chapbooks, The Open Window and Her Hair Plays With Fire.

Undone by My Own Hands by Angela Hoffman

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Undone by My Own Hands
-After Mary Oliver, “It Was Early”

I’m in grade five. I notice a snag in my tights.
I pull the loose thread. The unraveling begins.
I try in vain to leave it alone, but I continue to pick at the flaw
until one half of my tights sags around my ankle,
leaving the other half to rest above my knee.

I try everything to close the gap:
knotting, self-pity, paper clipping, hiding,
but come to terms that the only way out is to stand,
allowing all in the room to gaze upon this mess I’ve made.
Sometimes things have to fall apart in order to see
the blessedness hiding underneath.

*

Angela Hoffman’s poetry collections include Resurrection Lily and Olly Olly Oxen Free (Kelsay Books). She placed third in the WFOP Kay Saunders Memorial Emerging Poet in 2022 and was a runner up in the 2023 Wisconsin Sijo competition. Her poems have been published in Agape Review, Amethyst Review, As Surely As the Sun, Blue Heron Review, Braided Way, Bramble, Cosmic Daffodil Journal, Moss Piglet, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Muleskinner Journal, Of Rust and Glass, Poetica Review, Solitary Plover, The Orchards Poetry Journal, The Poet Magazine, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ Museletter and Calendar, Whispers and Echoes, Wilda Morris’s Poetry Challenge, Writing In A Woman’s Voice, and Your Daily Poem. Her poems have also appeared in Amethyst Review Poetry Anthology: All Shall Be Well and The Poet Anthology: Our Changing Earth. She writes a poem a day. Angela lives in rural Wisconsin.

Two Poems by Gaby Bedetti

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Civil Suit

We assemble in the hall
eager to administer justice and pick
an amount fair to both sides.

The plaintiff’s back is said to be
blotched by light therapy
despite smiling cruise photos.

Her attorney
approaches her in the witness box,
and offers a packet of Kleenex.

Hands resting on hip,
her counsel locks eyes
and presses for compensation.

The litigant meets our verdict with
a blank stare. The settlement
mitigates her suffering.

Outside the courthouse a man
sleeps on a steel bench. Snowflakes fall
on his head.

Citizens turn to look
at the pink blanket-draped
body.

*

Tricky Notes

The choir director prays for us to abandon
fear, yet by the fifth verse I forget my one note.
What I would do if I were not afraid:
make the swamp oak shudder like thunder,
disrupt the cheeping that holds the flock together,
let my hair fly free and tangle in the wind,
eat hot wings and listen to dance tunes,
go to sea with the owl and the pussycat,
tango with my sage, battle my saboteurs,
pop the infant off my breast,
smudge the love letter,
commission a raise, chip
the china, leave a sandwich for the man
under the bridge,
sing tall the tricky notes.

*

Born in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, Gaby Bedetti is the American translator of Henri Meschonnic’s work, a contributor to Lexington’s poetry blog and a professor at Eastern Kentucky University. She has published in Off the Coast, Poet Lore, Italian Americana, Cold Mountain Review, and elsewhere.

Kindergarten by Matthew Murrey

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Kindergarten

“It’s boring, boring,
boring. I hate school,”
he said near tears
on the way over in the car.

Big hand, small hand:
I walked him to class,
then turned my back
and left, though he begged
in a raspy whisper—
chin and lips quivering,
eyes brimming and blinking,
“Stay longer—please
don’t leave, please.”

Like a doctor who lost
his patient, or a priest
who lost his faith,
I headed off to my job.

Before lunch at work
I was thinking of angels;
“Pity us,” I whispered
as if there were pity,
as if there were angels.

*

Matthew Murrey’s poems have been in One Art and other journals. Poems have recently appeared in The Shore, Whale Road Review, and EcoTheo Review. He’s an NEA Fellowship recipient, and his collection, Bulletproof, was published in 2019 by Jacar Press. He was a public school librarian for over twenty years and lives in Urbana, Illinois. His website is at https://www.matthewmurrey.net/ and he is still on Twitter @mytwords.

Carrying Water by Mike Bagwell

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Carrying Water

The year of the sheep got lost in an airport
and just bounced from shoulder to shoulder.
The crowds left blurred vapor trails of themselves
and the whole place swirled in light browns
and the faded azure of jeans.
Everywhere I went crows called
themselves Adam, crawling
out of pitch-black pools and drying off their feathers.
I never quite grasped the significance of this,
no matter how many times they demanded
I pull out one of their ribs.
“I’m not God,” I told them, even though
I was having clear, frictionless thoughts.
At 1 p.m., a sheep becomes insecure about
anything with the color purple.
Suitable gifts:
bathrobe, broach, peppermint oil, seashells,
massage, theater tickets.
Maybe the soul is joined to the body by deep pits of water:
you pull feathers out of your mouth
and walk around a crowded airport.
Instead of diving back in,
you just get comfortable.

*

Mike Bagwell is a writer and software engineer based in Philly. He received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence and his work appears or is forthcoming in trampset, Halfway Down the Stairs, HAD, BULL, Bodega, Whiskey Island, and others. Some editors have kindly nominated him for a Pushcart. He is the author of the chapbook A Collision of Soul in Midair (forthcoming from Bottlecap Press). He was the founding editor and designer of El Aleph Press and his work can be found at mikebagwell.me.

Two Poems by Lois Roma-Deeley

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For All the Little Lost

If today you should find yourself staring into the blue
fluorescent lights swinging overhead
at the Wal-Mart store, just leave
the half-full shopping cart
in the middle aisle. Go and find

the boy standing under a street light
looking up at his stolen shoes
hanging around the metal pole.
Tell him there will be other days

filled with unasked-for kindnesses, like a kiss
waking him from sleep. Now turn your thoughts

to sea flowers waving their tentacles.
Cast a spell in his direction.

What will it cost you?
Remember the cashier at the Circle K
who thinks you might have a secret life?
The one in which you’re loved and perfectly whole.

But you, Reader of Signs, know better.
Like the five pointed star tattooed over your wrist
or the three rings of bruised grass on which you stand
try to interpret the designs of each life,
the context of desire.

Open the Book of a Thousand Titles,
where vermillion snakes and indigo lions
wave to you from the edge of every page.
Study the illuminations….Like this

—oh just mouth these words—

reach into the future and take hold,
for whatever it is that comes for us,
like a lightning bolt striking open water,
don’t let go.

*

My Heart, A Broken Compass

When giant Saguaros lift their hallelujah arms
and creosote bushes weep sweetly
for the brief relief of monsoon rain,
I take to wandering in circles, my heart
a broken compass in a wilderness of despair.

Then before the sun rises, once again,
over Windgate pass, mercy notes
rise up from wide city streets,
float over the tops of olive trees
settling in the tallest branches.
And now I find myself

standing on a crowded sidewalk.
surrounded by familiar sounds,
the push and pull of steady voices
echoing in and around small shops
and mountain passes. The city hums—
but do I hear it?
better days are coming.

*

Lois Roma-Deeley’s poetry collections include Like Water in the Palm of My Hand, The Short List of Certainties, High Notes, northSight, Rules of Hunger. She’s published in numerous poetry anthologies and journals, is Associate Poetry Editor of Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry. and is Poet Laureate, Scottsdale, Arizona, USA. www.loisroma-deeley.com

Connections by Sharon Waller Knutson

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Connections

Michael is missing, his mother tells me
as she buys Louis Lamour novels
in my Idaho Falls used bookstore
while the sky is streaked with black clouds.

Although we lived in the same small
town briefly and were the same age,
Michael and I never met but his mother
was a longtime friend of my father’s.

Michael’s hound howls from her Jeep
Cherokee. The dog was discovered
on the road between Blackfoot
and Pocatello where we drive often.

Her son was last seen with two strangers
in a bar across from the bus station
where my grandmother met the Greyhound
carrying me as a child to Idaho from Montana.

A month later, cops arrest two cowboys
driving Michael’s Ford Explorer
with blood in the trunk in Billings
where I was a reporter in the sixties.

His mother won’t stop until she finds
her son and puts his murderers in prison.
Michael’s body is found near Whitehall
where my father rodeoed in the fifties.

The murderers will die in a prison
near Deet Lodge where we spent the summer.
I understand the grief etched on her
face many years later when I lose my son.

*

Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in Arizona. She has published eleven 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,) The Vultures are Circling (Cyberwit 2023) and The Leading Ladies in My Life (Cyberwit June 2023.) Her twelfth collection, My Grandfather is a Cowboy is forthcoming from Cyberwit in 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.

Postpartum by Tamara Kreutz

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Postpartum
                after “Forgetfulness” by Billy Collins

Just when I thought I’d be myself
again, my belly flops beside me in bed—
stretched, gelatinous,
an upper lip at the smile of my pelvis,

And standing before the mirror
I find my body has forgotten who she was—
my hips sway wide, my feet ache from falling flat.

Stripped of sensuality, my breasts, stiff and dimpled, drip
like garden hoses—twin milk stains through my cotton shirt.
They throb for the creature who spends most of her hours
with her mouth latched onto me.

Slumping through the house, half asleep
in daytime, I’m half awake at night,
listening to the rhythm of my baby’s breath.

I hate my husband beside me.
He’s stolen my sleep and hoarded it all
for himself. His body and brain seem so unchanged

while a stranger lives in my pendulous skin,
and memories of me before birthing are shelved
in gated-off corners of my mind.

No wonder my phone lights my face up in blue, as I nurse
and scroll through timelines on bouncing back
No wonder I watch the moon each night,
as it drags me through the dark into each new day.

*

Tamara Kreutz lives with her husband and three young children in Guatemala, where she works as a high school English teacher at an international school. Poetry gives her grounding in a life full of moving pieces. She is currently working towards her MFA at Pacific University and has had her work featured in Rattle – Poets Respond, Stonecoast Review, and Verse-Virtual among others.

2 Meters Down by Brian Duncan

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

2 Meters Down

Nearing the end of a hike one day,
I overtake a man and his young son.
Their little white dog busies
himself sniffing bushes
at the side of the trail.
The boy pokes a mushroom with a stick.

We chat, the man and I,
and he extolls the virtues
of his dog’s breed.
In a heavy Slavic accent, he says:
Did you know that a Jack Russell Terrier
Can dig 2 meters down in the earth?
Some day he will dig my grave.

*

Brian Duncan lives in Kendall Park, New Jersey. He has poems out this year in ONE ART and Thimble, and in an upcoming issue of Whale Road Review.

Two Poems by Daniel Edward Moore

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Small Obsessions

Moved as I am,
          to love little things,
like a mote in the eye
             of a blinking god
or the spider whose life
          depends on my foot,
marrying a ballerina
                    or soldier.
What is it about
          the intensity of small,
beating my chest like
       a handsome paramedic,
breaking my ribs as
    the hummingbird’s beak
pokes me with the meaning
          of pierce and release?

The older I get the
                    more torn I am
by how tenderness
      looks like a tiny house
built by the starfish
            of rugged hands,
big and wide as the
         ocean that made them,
my heart, a million pieces
    of shells, happy
to hold those rays
   of light from which
I am bound to burn.

*

I am Not the Face

If you’re living in a
warehouse of secret rooms

find a face you can trust,
to tell you what is real.

You forgot your address years ago.
Make sure they know that.

Make sure your ghostly breath
stumbling through lips

on a Sunday morning
reminds you of the way a

soldier kissed after laying
his gun before God.

Then ponder the
question of trust.

How its absence
has a seductive power

to harm tender things,
forcing wrinkles to open

so words may die
peacefully under the skin.

All it takes is a face.
I am not the face.

*

Daniel Edward Moore lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His work is forthcoming in I-70 Review, Passengers Journal, Watershed Review, Flint Hills Review, Sugar House Review, The Main Street Rag Magazine and Impossible Archetype. His book “Waxing the Dents,” is from Brick Road Poetry Press.

Two Poems by Jhilam Chattaraj

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Hampi, Karnataka

In Hampi,
streets are not interrupted
by delivery boys.

Apps are merely cosmetic.
Cyber rhizomes meld
into the antique sun.

Boulders rise from brambles —
quiet colossal remnants
of a jeweled empire.

Women — their hair,
heavy with the musk of jasmine
occupy smooth, winding roads.

Children wait for the school bus.
Men carry goats on bicycles.
Stones break into gods.

Everybody obeys to seasons of stillness.
There’s mercy in Hampi’s brick-red dust.
Faith fascinates life.

*

Hunger

Once I saw papa
eat boiled papaya with bread —
raw, bland, edgy.

I could not fathom.
My teenage tongue
would not allow me to.

Now, I know.
Each day, after work,
anything edible is delectable.

Hunger is perhaps a burden.
A task to be settled
with the swiftness of fighter jets.

On days, when despair
creeps out of wrinkled bills,
I eat bread with mango pickle.

It’s late in the evening.
My fingers are fixed to the keyboard.
Sun storms erupt in my belly.

I order tandoori chicken,
lemon coriander soup,
and warm up last night’s tomato-rice.

*

Jhilam Chattaraj is an academic and poet based in Hyderabad, India. Her works have been published at Calyx, World Literature Today, Colorado Review, Asian Cha among others.

Milk by Jessica Goodfellow

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Milk

Because we were waiting for the end of days, we drank
only powdered milk, rotating out the old stuff stock-

piled in the basement, date coming due, as we bought
its replacement boxes, the new expiration dates.

I’d wake sometimes after midnight to the whirring
of the blender, my mother having also woken panicked

that she’d forgotten to mix up milk for the next day’s breakfast.
Bluish, thin as water, suspicious in its froth, it flooded

our sugarless cereal, it fluffed our dehydrated potato flakes,
but we rarely drank it from a glass. Or cup. Or mug.

Sometimes we’d swallow a clot of undissolved powder
and gag. Once a friend’s mother apologized, ‘Sorry,

we’ve only got 1%,’ and handed me a glass—one gulp
and my tongue and throat were coated and I almost couldn’t

breathe. The canned peas, the reconstituted soy-based meat
substitute we swallowed docilely, waiting for the end. For

an end. To the stories. Of a land that flowed with milk
and honey. For I had drunk the milk. And there was no honey.

*

Jessica Goodfellow’s poetry books are Whiteout (University of Alaska Press, 2017), Mendeleev’s Mandala, and The Insomniac’s Weather Report. A former writer-in-residence at Denali National Park and Preserve, she’s had poems in The Southern Review, Ploughshares, Scientific American, Verse Daily, Motionpoems, and Best American Poetry. Jessica lives and works in Japan. www.jessicagoodfellow.com

Five Poems by Aly Allen

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Auditory Processing Disorder

I listen closely
so my response sounds
less like bullshit.

I never know what
I say, until after
someone else hears it

first. My speech mimics
whomever speaks most
in proximity to me. I look

like I’m thinking, mostly
I’m plotting a response
to conversations had.

I don’t know what
you said. Now I
didn’t hear you. I said

something of an echo.
I can sprinkle in and hypothesize
layers of ideas. Undo

the desire to be exclusive.
I don’t want to be
unique, I want to be like everyone.

*

Now I Study Metaphor

Spent three decades learning
what words meant
only to find
people say one thing
to mean another

still get confused
about whether I am
an expert on bugs
or origins and elision

Cicada molts crack
turn to powder under wind
they scream not from shedding

it’s the forgetting
how to fly

the best way to thresh

* 

Color by Number

I always use the inverse
color on the color wheel,
in correlation to coordinated
numbers. The scheme is fine,
I’m sure. Your results
always the same. I’m trying
to remain sane. Following directions,
after all, is why we need to pause.

* 

Same Food

Every day since a Monday
some twenty-three years ago
I’ve prepared and eaten
a bowl of oatmeal:
boiled on the stove,
cold from the fridge,
hot in the chow hall.
Always mix in peanut butter first.
Won’t eat more than a bite
if the banana slices are missing,
raisins seal the trinity, add
broken pecans and honey occasionally.
Milk makes it feel too rich.
Black coffee on the side.
I bought a full container of oats
and this morning
peeled them open.
I tilted the cannister, but before
I could pour, my taste buds
changed my mind. I’m not sure
what else to consider for breaking
fast. I stuff the oatmeal silo behind
the bread, position pasta boxes
to make my routine incorporeal.
I make stir-fry, with chicken and veggies,
which heat while the teriyaki congeals
in the pan. Bitter sips between bites.

*

It Wasn’t a Date But…

I have issues
with object permanence,
so, I wrote your name
on my wall. I read it
aloud whenever I remember.
The wall reminds me
of your steady gaze.
The giddiness to get
to know you as more than
a smattering of patterns. I could see
how it might be awkward
when you come over,
it’s not a shrine, though,
don’t worry,
it’s more a spell.

*

Aly Allen is a trans poet. Her writing focuses on family, trauma, and identity. Her first full-length collection, Paying for Gas with Quarters, debuts this October from Middle West Press. Recent publications appear in Two Hawks Quarterly, new words (press), and Press Pause. She holds an MFA creative writing from Oklahoma State University, where she now teaches composition. Find her on Instagram and Threads @notasquirrel

It was the 80s and gay girls at our high school got the hell beat out of them by Marcy Rae Henry

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It was the 80s and gay girls at our high school got the hell beat out of them

Too much truthtelling in poetry. It ain’t lyrical.
Stick with your own kind. Smoldering
and unwashed and looking for the nearest spigot.

That’s more like life.
But the thing is, there was a drama teacher.
Asymmetrical haircut. Glasses on a long chain of beads.
And a love scene: You have to kiss whoever I pair you with.

She looked at me and added, Even if you have a boyfriend.
Wasn’t the first time she looked. Or threatened to fail me.
And in her Birkenstocks and floral scarves, she failed me
alright, as only our kind can do.

The day of my kiss the boyfriend and I ditched to do our own
scene. Truant officers in those days. And everything happened
before I understood the success of arranged marriages.

Back in class, We’ve raised the stakes, she said meaning just her.
Now you have to kiss a girl in order to pass.
People love stakes when it doesn’t concern them.

That is to say, the class was in on it. A peahen trying to be a peacock
stood up. There are times when I’d ask god WTF if I could find him.
But then, just No, no, no. I can’t.

They were in the center of the room, iridescent as soap bubbles.
I was red and looking for the nearest spigot. It wasn’t even
the beginning of full circle. Just years of what did she see in me?

*

Marcy Rae Henry is a multidisciplinary artist, una Latina/x/e and an advocate/member of the LGBTQ community. Her writing has received a Chicago Community Arts Assistance Grant, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize nomination and first prize in Suburbia’s 2021 Novel Excerpt Contest. DoubleCross Press is publishing her chapbook We Are Primary Colors. M.R. Henry is an associate editor for RHINO.

To Anna, On Her Retirement by Robbie Gamble

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments

To Anna, On Her Retirement

Is this what you’ve been
imagining you could discard:
the petty supervisors clucking
about their neurotic fiefdoms;
rubrics, memos, misogyny,
emails, emails, more emails?
A friend described her passage
as “rewirement,” and it’s amazing
the difference a letter makes,
all your beleaguered neurons
shedding buckets of cortisol—
see how they unclench from
“doing, doing, doing” into simply
being. The mountain across
the valley isn’t doing anything,
it just is, a gorgeous astonishment
every sunrise when I open
my eyes. As are you. The trees
in the orchard, sure, they bear
fruit, but mostly they radiate
gratitude for having found
a home here, on this hillside
as you have too, reveling
in healthful elements: air,
water, rich soil, good friends
the churn of seasons, a circle
of community. You have always
been loveable, but now you have
time to savor this hard-won truth.
Taste it, Beloved, let it wash
over you like a sunset’s tender
afterglow. And welcome!

*

Robbie Gamble (he/him) is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in Lunch Ticket, Poet Lore, RHINO, Salamander, and The Sun. He divides his time between Boston and Vermont.

Buzzword by Howie Good

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Buzzword

The committee in charge of such things must have voted overnight, for when the sun came through the window in the morning, “iconic” was the newest buzzword. Anyone who could read was now pretty much guaranteed to encounter “iconic” this and “iconic” that in print or online. A frozen daquiri would be dubbed the “iconic summer drink,” Monopoly the “iconic board game,” 7-Eleven the “iconic convenience store.” Meanwhile, more young people were adding .com to their names. They yearned to escape emotional strife, acquire a certain aloofness, the equanimity of machines. Or that may have been in a movie I saw. I don’t know, I can’t remember, but despite the early hour and our advanced age, we were exchanging long, slow, sticky kisses as if just prior to launch we had shared an iconic Eggo waffle in warm syrup in bed.

*

Howie Good’s newest poetry collection, Heart-Shaped Hole, which also includes examples of his handmade collages, is available from Laughing Ronin Press.

Two Poems by Dick Westheimer

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Ghazal For a Fallen Nation

It’s tough when it’s all just conspiracy shit
that they’ve beamed down from the mothership.*

In America friendships are split when friends
raise the flag on the wrong color ship.

The neighbor boy whose suicide we lament
idolized his granddad’s warriorship.

My bluegrass buddy wound up on a vent,
he mistook reading Facebook threads for scholarship.

It is forbidden to speak of politics when in bed
rocking the waves of my lover’s hips.

My dad sang God Bless America at every event.
Like Irving Berlin he treasured his citizenship.

* Quote from the August 1, 2023 filing indicting former President Trump

* 

Another Fucking Poem About Insomnia

I pass the night picking digits off the clock
in ones and twos, counting cricket chirps on my fingers,
trying to remember a line from a poem I’d yet to write,

not remembering if I took out the trash. By 3 AM,
the covers strewn and sheets tangled at my knees,
my head hurts from thoughts like squirrels scritching

at each other, bounding off walls, like a thousand pingpong
balls. At four I stick the numbers back on the clock—the five
and then the six—and when the alarm goes off at seven, I am

grateful I don’t remember falling asleep. Outside my office
window the drone of bees in the hibiscus flowers drowses me,
makes me think I could nap. I can’t nap.

I don’t know how to let things happen without me—
what if I miss a breaking news headline or the flash
of that line of poetry I’ve waited for? And here it is midnight,

again, and I am afraid—to go up to bed, knowing I will be obsessed
picking those red-hot digits from the clock again. And as the bee
sleeps in the hive and the hibiscus petals

are wrapped tight for the night, I am kept awake,
listening for that drone of sleep that never comes.

*

Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio. He is a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have recently appeared in Whale Road Review, Innisfree Journal, Gyroscope Review, Banyan Review, Rattle, Ritual Well, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, and Cutthroat. His chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine, is published by SheilaNaGig. More at www.dickwestheimer.com

Summer Means Cover Bands in the Park by Hilary King

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Summer Means Cover Bands in the Park
(Ode to Fleetwood Masque)

And we don’t wait to dance, rising
from our camp chairs with an oof

as soon as the first chord lands,
stampeding slowly past blanket buffets

of charcuterie boards, brownies,
and sweating bottles of sauv blanc.

We rock out to every song, even dance
to Landslide, early August sun still high

over this silver-haired ocean. When
the band takes a break, the tall grass

calls us back, but we remain swaying,
humming to our own distant echoes.

*

Hilary King is a poet originally from Virginia and now living in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Her poems have appeared or will appear in Ploughshares, Salamander, TAB, Belletrist, SWWIM, Fourth River, The Cortland Review, and other publications. She is the author of the book of poems, The Maid’s Car, the founder of Bay Area Poets, and an editor for DMQ Review.

Feast by Jane Edna Mohler

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Feast

I love the fat of summer, flabby
green weeks when weeds lap

over the vague rims of back
roads, just as batter overtakes

a griddle. Poplar leaves wave
wide as cows’ tongues slurping

syrup-thick air. Here, summer spits
when it talks, gulps cold milk

and wipes a hand across its mouth.
I want to stuff myself full

with warm fields, hills tender
and round as yeast rolls bathed

in butter. Oh to scoop the ooze
of June’s soft eggs, consume

this season, lick its juices, chew
salty bacon days.

*

Jane Edna Mohler is a Bucks County Poet Laureate Emeritus (Pennsylvania). She won second place in the 2023 Crossroads Contest. Recent publications include Gargoyle, River Heron Review, and New Verse News. Her collection Broken Umbrellas was published by Kelsay. She is the Poetry Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. www.janeednamohler.com

Two Poems by Ellen Rowland

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Cake

A stupid argument and I take it out
on the eggshells, seize them
in the palm of my hand and crush,
tearing the delicate inner lining.
Take it out on the baking chocolate
still in its wrapper. The recipe calls
for finely chopped but I slam the bar instead
again and again against the edge
of the counter. Crush the beaters into
the side of the bowl and whip, whip
a well of furious flour. Rip the baking paper
across the metal teeth edge and begin
the slow rise of regret, begin to fear
the cake will be infused with my ire–
yolks curdled, sugar grained, butter gone bad.
Like the daggered ice crystals that form when
still in water state, are told they are ugly and hated,
worthless and unloved, I worry I have sullied
the crumb, bittered the icing, muddied each layer.
So, before I take the first bite, I say, I’m sorry.
Forgive me. I love you. Both our mouths are full.
It is so, so good.

*

Endangered Pleasure
(after James Crews)

Add this to my list of small ecstasies:
the way honey creams together
with butter on freshly baked bread,
the innocence of its warm alchemy
as churn, as rise, as breaking down
of simple sugar. I swear, I can taste
the tantra of the hive, the tending to
of queen by drone, the dripping cone,
workers’ legs impossibly laden with
thick pollen, deposited and darned.
This, from the buttercups and purslanes
most would have condemned to the curb
as bothersome weed. This from the common
dandelions we left to riot just for the bees.
An entire patch of golden suns now radiating
as endangered pleasure on my tongue.

*

Ellen Rowland is the author of two collections of haiku/senryu, Light, Come Gather Me and Blue Seasons, as well as the book Everything I Thought I Knew, essays on living, learning and parenting outside the status quo. Her writing has appeared in numerous literary journals and in several poetry anthologies, most recently The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy and Hope is a Group Project. Her debut collection of full-length poems, No Small Thing, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press in 2023. She lives off the grid with her family on an island in Greece. Connect with her on Instagram and Facebook.

Betrayal by Valerie Bacharach

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Betrayal

After strokes corroded synapses, sent neurons flaring into nothingness.
After her body’s right side became unwilling.

Once, my mother clothed herself in ruby and obsidian,
harnessed the spinning world, drank scotch in a heavy glass.

After existing in assisted living, refusing to dress, to eat,
to sleep in the hospital bed, her own bed too big, too high off the ground.

Once, my mother begged me not to hate her, confessed
affairs with married men, her loneliness a halo.

After language decamped until only no remained.
Her frenetic heart, her stuttering lungs pinned me to earth.

Once, in the week before she died, my mother said
dying isn’t like it is in the movies.

Riddle: Who can laugh and cry at exactly the same time?
A daughter.

*

Valerie Bacharach’s writing has appeared or will appear in: Vox Populi, The Blue Mountain Review, EcoTheo Review, Minyon Magazine, One Art, The Ilanot Review, and Poetica. Her chapbook After/Life will be published by Finishing Line Press. Her book Ghost Recipe will be published by Broadstone Books.

ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of August 2023

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  1. Roseanne Freed – I Mention the Unmentionable In the Yoga Class
  2. Karen Paul Holmes – Two Poems
  3. Betsy Mars – A Fawn Has No Scent
  4. David Lee Garrison – Aloha
  5. Brent Martin – Three Poems
  6. Gail Thomas – Forgiveness, I am still working on it
  7. Robbi Nester – In the August of my eighth year, I started a business.
  8. Julie Pratt – Reclamation
  9. Alison Luterman – My Vibrato
  10.  Jennifer Garfield – Five Poems

Two Poems by Heather Truett

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Honey Stung

Time heals all wounds, but you gave her
the whole damn flu. So sick, so sad, so that girl
with the wailing scream. All her sweet dreams
drip with bees, and it doesn’t make a difference
if she’s naked, she’s got
old pandemics, and new
vaccines. Shattered rules and chiffon
wrinkles in her open and closed case
of the Mondays, the sundaes, the HIPAA
violations. A local doctor shoots
her with target radiation, all that money
for nothing and chips for free means
she’s just a virgin, touched

for the thirty-first time. She’s a Betsy,
she’s a bleeder, she’s broke
in a dam on a shame-damp day, trying like hell
to weave her bambi braid. Hello
millennium, she took her medicine,
a piece of your wrong connection. You’ll tune
in to find the light, spin the dial, gild the guide
to your guilty god, and bristle brush
away her pain through strands
of T-cells, gliding gold plaited placebos, and honey
stings. Gotta keep this girl

on a real short leash or she will ride
the wind on another planet, hop a plane and ask
what the plan is. She’s sick, she’s dying,
and if you’re too busy try try trying to make
her stay, she’ll slice those strands and fly
away, severed connection in the night.

She asks the bartender how
she might give you the slip, he curls
his lip and says, there’s a window
in that bathroom on the right.

*

Black Sabbath Hymn for My Brother

Shattered glass, yellow lines, you drank
from the chalice. I can’t drive
without seeing your absence.
The sun lifted you with her rising, swept
her skirt across your eyes and gave thanks
for broken body, spilled blood. The sky
and I accept Eucharist this morning, a fender
for a crucifix, red racing stripes and a crown
of shards amid soft brown hair. You were
an iron man, smelted in fire, baptized
in the creek water of our front yard. How did
you become a child of the grave, messiah
on a gravel throne? Disciples gather a fallen
feast, last supper on the asphalt, a red
stop light to wash your feet. Our family’s
Fraction Rite is made with empty
whiskey bottles and the wafting burn
of a cigarette still smoking in your hand.

*

Heather Truett holds an MFA from the University of Memphis and is a Ph.D. candidate at FSU. Her debut novel, KISS AND REPEAT, was released from Macmillan in 2021. She has work in Thimble, Hunger Mountain, Sweet, Whale Road Review, Jabberwock, and others. Heather serves on staff for Beaver Magazine and is an editor emeritus for The Pinch. Find out more at www.heathertruett.com.