Three Poems by Jane Edna Mohler

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Rare Beasts

The surface is broken
by my boat,
the hard heads
of turtles, fish stretching
their limits,
and dead branches
that have nothing left to defend.
Then a snake.
I understand
those better-safe-
than-sorry turtles leaping
from their logs; curious carp
that briefly visit our dimension.
But this snake,
this nonchalant
swimmer with such composure
decides that I’m
of no concern.
Yet my heart pounds,
as when holding my breath
for scans of my organs,
or listening for what to expect
while counting backwards.
So when do I get
that devil-may-care spirit,
the glassy eyes
of that scarce species that never worries?
Maybe that snake’s heart
beat a little too fast
when he saw me coming.
And why do I hope that’s true?
Our kind
is always crashing
in the calm between two thorned
shores: the threat
we feel or the threat we are.
I raised my paddle high.

*

Ornithology Lessons

I.

My yard ripples
with blue jays, a throng
of little tyrannosaurs

screeching and shuffling
seed. Before consulting
Peterson’s, I offered

apple and peach parings.
All spurned. Now I know
those jays want berries.

Is it a trivial thing to learn
what pleases
another?

II.

Whenever Mother deemed
some effort worthless,
she’d wave an arm and say,

That’s for the birds.
With no propensity for parenting,
cowbirds leave their eggs

to the care of others. Yet
how those fledglings
strut, it’s all

sweet feed
and what’s right
now.

* 

She’s Always Hungry

Winter arrives with the blank
face of a runway model, languid

and sheer as the chiffon scarf
that drifts across her shoulders.

Bored by the heat of living,
she abhors the goo and mess.

Old German named her
the time of water.

She makes my lake crack
and groan. That crisp

look she gives, so alluring
you’ll ignore the chilly

clues of flat infatuation.
You don’t stand a chance.

An empty retreat that never serves
meals; she wants us to learn

the difference between hunger
and greed. Praise the rare blue sky,

the weak brushstrokes of charcoal
trees, but don’t fall for those sharp

bones that grin from under
her waxen skin. Prepare

a bed of crocuses, anxious
to spring from her grave.

* 

Jane Edna Mohler is the 2020 Bucks County Poet Laureate (Pennsylvania). Recent publications include MacQueen’s Quinterly, New Verse News, and Verse Virtual. Her collection, Broken Umbrellas was published by Kelsay (2019). She is Poetry Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. www.janeednamohler.com

Three Poems by Renee Williams

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Bad Boys and Johnny Cash

How many times can you listen
to Folsom Prison Blues
at the request of a whiny five-year-old,
on the drive home from a trip to Florida,
who’s forgotten her Tatters doll,
left at the hotel a hundred miles back,
who’s crying nonstop, still demanding
to listen to Johnny Cash,
stomping and slamming her sticky,
snot-encrusted fists against the back
of the head rest so many times
that everyone in the cars feels
like they are in prison and just wants
to toss her out on the highway?

My Dad caved, went back,
got the doll. Growing up, I’d
cut out photos of Cash,
and stick them on my bedroom walls
because I could never get enough
of the Man in Black.
Probably the start of something not good,
never any good…

My father is to blame for all of this,
for indulging me
and introducing me to motorcycles
and dragging me on the back
of that dilapidated dirt bike
into Snake Holler and having it break down
on us when we ran out of gas
and had to walk home,
Walk of Shame, clean home
to Mom, who wasn’t amused,
just wanting us to wash
off the mud, so we could
have a proper dinner.

The flurry of bad boys hit
until I straight up married a proper fellow,
who became an accountant and had tax season,
but I just wanted to party, so I found
a better one, the love of my life.

We married, and he got a bike,
and then several more,
multiplying like rabbits.
He even got me one
for my own self.

But I couldn’t tell Dad.
Because I knew he’d be jealous,
because he couldn’t ride anymore,
because he thought I was getting
CPR training to save his life,
when I was really taking
my motorcycle safety class.

But I wasn’t there
when the CPR was needed.

When I go to see Dad now,
I’m greeted by Hoss,
the sexton’s Old English bulldog pup,
who nearly knocks me down
with his 70 pounds of bad boy exuberance,
the therapy dog for the ones
who still have imprisoned pulses
who still have teary blues
who still have tattered hearts
walking among the headstones.

*

Unmoored

They say that grief comes in waves,
but I find it lapping at my feet
as ocean waves tease the shore,
ripples small and steady for so long,
until one plows into me,
nearly knocking me off my feet.

Bobbing like a buoy in rough surf
I’m staggering through this life
no longer chained to commitments
and now I don’t know what to do.
Maybe the saddest thing in the world
is a caregiver
who no longer
has anyone to care for.

Tears won’t stop no matter how I try,
but lies come easily.
Everyone will believe I’m just suffering
from those darned allergies, right,
or maybe raging sinuses?
It’s been over a month.
Shouldn’t I be moving on by now?

I seek messages and meaning
in feathers and foliage,
creatures and constellations.
And I am left
as befuddled as I was
when my feet hit the floor
this morning.

*

We Know You Here

Our priest asks us to step into the light,
not to hide in the darkness.
I understand the metaphor,
but the reality horrifies me.
I recoil.

The sun, beautiful muse of goodness,
is not where I belong.
Please leave me here in the dark
and let the messages
come to me. In the shaded woods
illuminated only by moonlight
I am comforted, nurtured, restored.
Deer peek at me from the brush
eyes aflame, yet they do not fear me.
The chorus of spring peepers reminds me
this is my home. Safety is here.
Yes, coyotes prowl these hills at night
but they, too, will avoid me.
Ancient opossums traipse through the lawn
and sometimes a raccoon or rabbit or two
may join them. Nuisances, annoyances,
problems to so many, but here, they have a place.

I dance with Luna moths,
letting them light on my fingertips,
precious butterflies of the night.
Stay with me, I urge them.
The light is not your friend.
It will hurt you as it has me
mutilating and maiming.

But the sunlight beckons me forth
the highest card in the Tarot
the child astride a stallion
beams of light surrounding him.
I am drawn to that beacon of warmth.
I want to bask in those soothing rays.
But it’s an illusion.

I step back into the night and breathe.
Crisp night air fills my lungs.
Stars fall from the sky, as if offering me gifts
to welcome me home.
Stay, they tell me.
We know you here.

*

Renee Williams is from Nelsonville, Ohio. She is a retired English instructor whose poetry has appeared in Of Rust and Glass, Alien Buddha Press zines, Verse-Virtual, Deep South Magazine, Panoply, Impspired, Sein und Werden, The Rye Whiskey Review, The Amethyst Review, The New Verse News, and Beatnik Cowboy among others. She has written interviews and concert reviews for Guitar Digest, as well. Her photography has been featured in the Corolla Wild Horse Fund calendars, the Santa Fe Review, Moss Piglet, Anti-Heroin Chic, Swim Press, Lumineire as well as several others. She enjoys spending time with her family and dogs; she takes orders from her cranky cat who bosses her around daily.

Two Poems by Nicole Caruso Garcia

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Song of Solidarity
        For Dustin Brookshire, after reading his book To the One Who Raped Me

No matter I’m a woman, you’re a man,
and yours hurt you one night and mine one morning;
although we’ve yet to meet, our poems touch:

We hate to say the word…yet say it.
Why didn’t we fight back against those traitors?
When nailed upon a cross, it’s hard to run.

How is it we eschew the label victim,
yet crown ourselves with something sharp as shame?
How can we tell our parents we are stillborn?

Some artifacts must burn (for you, the mattress);
are these our proxies for self-immolation?
A smile, a joke, a lyric, or a movie

may be a landmine, yet we’re told, Calm down.
We can’t, not with calm so close to claim.
So let us conjure no more images

of dogs, for even Fido learns to yield
to No, a word conditioned out of some men.
They’re neither dogs nor monsters. Just ordinary.

Now are you not self-salvaged, welded, wrought
from wreckage, as am I, a makeshift dreadnought?
Archimedes says, displace your trauma.

It costs so dearly, the luxury of softness,
so while we sleep, our red, red books take aim.
New lovers learn our sovereign terrain.

*

After Explaining to My Mother Why We Need
Solar Eclipse Glasses, I Recall My Childhood
        For my mother, April 8, 2024

In trouble, dead to rights, at first I would
avert my gaze, not out of deference
when, not unlike a beautiful Medusa,
you’d stop and grab me by the sassy chin:
Look at me when I’m talking to you.
Obedient, I stared into the sun:
the sun so very disappointed in me,
the sun that wished to low-key murder me.

Your glowing hydrogen and helium
a constant source of warmth, you helped me grow,
yet gave no quarter from your gamma rays.
All other punishments weren’t half as wise.
Mother star, you forged me, don’t forget.
There’s no stare that I can’t meet now. No sweat.

*

Nicole Caruso Garcia’s full-length debut OXBLOOD (Able Muse Press) recently received the International Book Award for narrative poetry. Her work appears in Best New Poets, Light, Mezzo Cammin, Plume, Rattle, RHINO, and elsewhere. She serves as associate poetry editor at Able Muse and as an executive board member at Poetry by the Sea, an annual poetry conference in Madison, CT. Visit her at nicolecarusogarcia.com.

I hear you can drown in just an inch of water by Shana Ross

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I hear you can drown in just an inch of water

I get caught up in my own shit and text my friend
on the anniversary of her rape. She calls immediately.
I answer and she gives me grief. It feels good
to yell at you right now so thanks. My friend has become
a tin can and string. Telephone, telephone. Better this
than a living body. All that voice can pass through.
She says fuck off I’m playing video games today
because they can be won. A body needs to remember
what victory feels like. My friend says I do not
have time for your petty bullcrap when she sees
my litany of paper cuts and office pissing matches,
milk gone bad and who will find time to buy more and
why is it me, the plumber come and gone with expensive
warnings, a literal stubbed toe and my hand out for sympathy.
She says are you fucking kidding me right now?  But also
she will listen if I want to scream into the phone – no words
from me, no reply from her. I shrug and offer the same terms
back, and yes, she wants to wail. To be heard, even
when there is nothing she can say. I take in the scream,
dissolve it into my blood. My heart pumps salt and sour,
like a pickle plugged in and lit up, tinfoil compressing
in your molars as you chew it like gum. She hangs up first.

*

Shana Ross is a recent transplant to Edmonton, Alberta and Treaty Six Territory. Qui transtulit sustinet. Her work has recently appeared in Great Weather for MEDIA, Ilanot Review, Ninth Letter, Quarter After Eight and more. She is the winner of the 2022 Anne C. Barnhill prize and the 2021 Bacopa Literary Review Poetry competition. She prefers walking in the woods to social media, and budgets her time accordingly.

Weird Up Your Language: A Workshop with Grant Clauser

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Weird Up Your Language
Instructor: Grant Clauser
Wednesday, December 11, 7:00pm Eastern
Duration: 2 hours
Price: $25 (payment options – Stripe / PayPal / Venmo / CashApp)

Workshop Description:

As poets, sometimes it feels as if we’re stuck in the mud, unable to get out of our imaginative rut. That’s when it pays off to stir things up, get weird. In this workshop, we’ll explore techniques to get outside of our routine patterns, make strange connections, find insights in incongruities, and create metaphors from mud. These techniques are great for starting new poems or adding fuel to drafts you’re stuck on.

If Only by Shaun R. Pankoski

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If Only

If only
someone would invent love
in powdered form.
I’d sprinkle that shit
everywhere.
I’d cut big, fat lines of it,
invite everyone to the party.
I’d put it in the food,
the water, in the gas tanks.
Hell, I’d make bombs with it,
drop it from planes.
I’d do anything, anything
to make us love
one another
again.

*

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. A 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems have appeared here, Quartet, SWIMM, Thimble, Mackinaw Journal and MockingHeart Review, among others. She was selected as a finalist by Lefty Blondie Press for her chapbook manuscript, Tipping the Maids in Chocolate: Observations of Japan.

Gone by Barbara Eknoian

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Gone

The flowers are disappearing now
that it’s fall. Soon my property
will be covered with leaves, gone
will be the cheery yellow flowers.

My two grandsons have returned
to their home in Tennessee.
It was a short visit, but a happy one.
I make their beds until next time.

My oldest grandson has scheduled
his wedding for next autumn;
he has been here since he’s eleven.
The time will fly, and he’ll be gone.

I fell in June and broke my hip.
I’m alone most of the time. I’m learning
to walk again, but my phone stopped
ringing with invitations to go anywhere.

Hopefully, in time family and friends
will return, except for my son,
who I lost without warning.
He can’t return like the flowers.

*

Barbara Eknoian’s work has appeared in Pearl, Cadence Collective, Redshift, and Your Daily Poem. Recently, her New & Selected Poems, More Jerkustances, has been published by Editor Eric Morago. She lives in La Mirada, CA, with her daughter, grandson, two dogs, and two cats (one is mild and the other is full of mischief). There’s never a dull moment at her house.

Small Rocks by Ann E. Michael

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Small Rocks

At the park’s playground
I fumed in my loneliness
sad and angered
at what, I can no longer recall.
But I remember the way
I flung small rocks
across the field
the ache in my right arm
a relief, an expulsion,
pitching away at the fury
that gnawed at my neck
and grappled with my ribs—
jealousy, sorrow, fear.
Wildly I whirled my unspent
anger until one of those
quartzite missiles struck
my sister’s best friend
behind the ear.
How the rage in me emptied
my body drained into
stillness, cold with horror,
shuddered at what
anger does, knowing I
could not undo that damage.

*

Ann E. Michael lives in eastern Pennsylvania. Her latest poetry collection is Abundance/Diminishment. Her book The Red Queen Hypothesis won the 2022 Prairie State Poetry Prize; she’s the author of Water-Rites (2012) and six chapbooks. She is a hospice volunteer, writing tutor, and chronicler of her own backyard who maintains a long-running blog at https://annemichael.blog/

Two Poems by David B. Prather

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Caring for Someone Who Won’t Care for Themselves

My parents drop by again today,
and when I say today, I mean to put you in my frame
of mind, this moment. My father
              doesn’t even come into the house.
It’s the middle of summer. It’s morning,
and it’s already ninety degrees.
              He sits in the breezeway
while my mother opens the kitchen door
and enters. She’s just had her hair cut,
but she tugs on a few strands that were missed.
I get the scissors and clip the strays.
Have you ever trimmed your mother’s hair?
I foresee a time when this will be a weekly show
of affection, which will then become washing
              and toweling and brushing
every day. Putting her purse on the counter,
the one I bought her for Christmas,
she tells me my father still won’t take care of himself
the way he should. And when he’s my father, I know,
              and I’m sure you understand,
my mother is frustrated with him.
She wants him to live as long as possible.
I’ve begun to think of the world without my father.
I can’t say when the clock in my brain started
that countdown. Are you the kind of person
              who wakes before the alarm?
I have a habit of tapping the snooze button,
sleeping through those warnings.
I don’t want to imagine the worst, but I am unable to stop.
My mother says he’s troublesome, that he ignores
his own heart, the way it beats like a trapped bird.
How is your heart these days? Mine is a mourning dove.
              Mine calls out under the threat of rain.

*

When my mother asks why

I spend the entire day in bed,
I tell her I’m a dog who’s lost
his master, my paws stretched

across the grave, unmoved
when called by name, unresponsive
to that come-home whistle.

I tell her I am a tree fallen
in the forest, heartwood rotted out,
food for the parasites that brought me down.

I tell her the blankets are too heavy,
made of an element so dense
they drag me down

to the center of the earth.
I tell her the air is so oppressive, a giant
pressing down on my body, this body

I don’t even know anymore.
I tell her I want to be done
with this life, but I don’t want to be done,

but I do, then I don’t, and I do, I don’t.
I tell her I don’t know anyone
who wouldn’t want a day alone

under the covers with their dreams
tangled up in the sheets.
I tell her I’m adrift on a raft

over the deepest trench in the ocean,
and all around me is only horizon,
the line that divides one life from another.

*

David B. Prather is the author of three poetry collections: We Were Birds (Main Street Rag, 2019), Shouting at an Empty House (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2023), and the forthcoming Bending Light with Bare Hands (Fernwood Press). His work has appeared in many publications, including New Ohio Review, Prairie Schooner, The Comstock Review, Gyroscope Review, etc. He lives in Parkersburg, WV. Website: www.davidbprather.com

It’s Going to Be Okay by Abby E. Murray

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It’s Going to Be Okay

I know it will be okay
because NASA has confirmed
Stephen Hawking was right
and the world will end
probably by the year 2600,
which means we are celebrating
the birth of our children
into oblivion with instructions
to make their own children
in the path of oblivion,
as if to hope someone’s children
at some point, and therefore
all of us, will live to be
obliterated, but the children
keep being born, keep entering
the world as if it is a relief
to finally be here, screaming
from the terrible joy of it,
and we all know children
carry wisdom from a universe
none of us can revisit
or reclaim, where our pre-sight,
pre-form, pre-human, pre-vengeance
and pre-war selves may still exist
as the perfectly contented
and eternally miserable dust
of stars, and the way back
to that place is printed inside
a pocket of the brain that’s been
sewn shut one fatal stitch
at a time, one earth-day
at a time by a divine and quiet
needle that does not ask
our permission, which explains
how we begin as children
but grow into grimness
then end up desperately needing
to understand how okay it will be,
and I know it will be okay
because there was a double rainbow
glowing against a heavy storm
as it fattened and purpled
over my city this morning
and all my friends took pictures
before the power outages
and fallen trees were noted
on living maps and grids,
and now we have proof
of the irreverence of light waves
and the indiscriminate
appearance of hope to look at
on dying screens tonight,
and I know it will be okay
because I overheard a crying man
in the lobby of an animal hospital
telling the shivering one-eyed dog
beside him that it would be okay,
he promised, it would be okay,
and when I asked what the dog’s
name was, the man said
my name, said Abby,
and isn’t that ominous,
isn’t it meaningful whether I like it
or not, and isn’t it true
that it happened and my dog self
was alive and visibly comforted
by his words, shivering less,
maybe awake more, loved more,
even though dogs are dual citizens
of this universe and the one
we can’t reach back to, where
wisdom is still just another type
of common matter, which is to say
dogs—animals—consistently know
it is not okay, has never been okay
will not become okay
and yet they gather with us
in the path of disaster after disaster,
purring or playing or burrowing
happily into our warmth
because it is not survival
to pursue anything otherwise,
and I know it will be okay
because I keep dreaming
that my daughter and I are falling
through the atmosphere toward
the very real stone earth
and when she yells what’s happening to us
I take two equally crucial steps:
first, I put my body between hers
and oblivion, and second, I shout
through the guiltless but roaring silence
that it will be okay
because even in my dreams
I am learning that another answer
would be death before impact
and I contain the residue
of asteroids, I am part animal,
so are you, and so is my child,
and we have been going on
for millennia through the awful
and the sometimes okay
without ever knowing how.

*

Abby E. Murray (they/them) is the editor of Collateral, a literary journal concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. Their book, Hail and Farewell, won the Perugia Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Abby served as the 2019-2021 poet laureate for the city of Tacoma, Washington, and currently teaches rhetoric in military strategy to Army War College fellows at the University of Washington.

Three Poems by Justin Carter

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Bachelor Party Dunk Contest

My bachelor party wasn’t at some
         seedy strip club or

a casino across the Louisiana border.
         I got BBQ with old friends

who drove six hours
         for short rib Frito pies.

My wife was there, though I suppose
         she wasn’t my wife yet. It wasn’t

the conventional thing.
         A craft beer bar in town

was having a dunk contest
         in its side alley

so we headed over to see
         if any of us could dunk. The rim

was low enough for me to dream,
         but high enough that my best attempt

found my fingers just grazing
         the fringe of the net.

None of us made the final.
         Not that we expected to.

I had this whole plan: pull my phone out,
         mid-dunk, take a selfie

of that triumphant moment. Maybe,
         I thought, the judges

would give me extra points
         for the trick. But I couldn’t

make that leap—sometimes the mind
         gets ahead of the body.

*

Everyone In Des Moines Wants To Talk About Caitlin Clark

& they don’t want to talk about the dissonance
of loving women’s sports at a time
when the governor is pushing the whole state
to the right, an acceleration
toward limiting so many things. This guy
walks up to me in a bar & asks if I
can tell him something he doesn’t know
about Caitlin Clark. I could have said
anything. I could have told him
that birds shoot from her hands when she releases
the logo three. Could have said
she knocked one in off the jumbotron.
Everything’s believable if you have
the right subject matter. My in-laws
complain that the game is on ESPN tonight
& they don’t have ESPN. We could fix that—
I could log them in so they could watch
what might be her collegiate swan song,
but I’m not sure they want that,
to potentially witness her end. No one
does. On Twitter, the sports business guy
makes another uninformed post about NIL
like that might change something,
a different decision. His words
fork no lightning. Tell me, the man says again
because I have stood there & said nothing.

* 

The ROMCO Super Late Model Series

I told my father I wanted to be a racer
at a car show in Houston,
which of course we couldn’t afford,

but we could afford the free tickets
one booth was giving out to something
called the ROMCO Super Late Model Series,

which was running at a track
on the northwest side of the city. That place
had the best cheeseburger I’ve still

ever eaten, my first onion bun. “Play
That Funky Music” blared
from a busted speaker. My parents

made friends with one driver’s wife.
I can’t tell you who won,
but after the checkered flag, when we went

back to the garage, that driver let me
sit in his car &, for a moment,
it felt like dreams might

be attainable. What’s it matter
that he’d finished near the back.
That we’d go there once more,

to see him run an even bigger race
& he’d finish worse than before.
He gave me a signed hat

for the 18-wheeler parts company
he ran up in Oklahoma. Years later,
I was watching a documentary

about a man & his tigers,
& in the background, that hat,
& I thought about that onion bun.

*

Justin Carter is the author of Brazos (Belle Point Press, 2024). His poems have appeared in Bat City Review, DIAGRAM, Sonora Review, and other spaces. Originally from the Texas Gulf Coast, Justin currently lives in Iowa and works as a sports writer and editor.

Three Poems by Shawn Aveningo-Sanders

~ ONE ART ~ 2 Comments 





I close my eyes

                                      and I see him 
wearing a pale-green hospital gown, ready 
to receive my kidney. A forever hug and
our See ya after the surgery, I love you. I
close my eyes and see him wearing a black
rented tuxedo, fighting tears to usher me into
my new life as a wife. I close my eyes and 
he is sitting in the front row of my dance 
recital beaming for his little hippity-hoppity 
tapdancing frog. I close my eyes, and he is 
telling me, in that heartbreaking tone, how 
I’ve disappointed him. I close my eyes, and he is
wearing a smile of approval and boasting how 
proud I make him. I close my eyes, and he is
wearing that crocheted, beer-can hat I made
for him in Girl Scouts, trying to put the worm 
on the hook at the father-daughter fish rally. I
close my eyes and he’s holding his pink swaddled
girl for the very first time and handing out cheap
cigars, announcing to a roomful of strangers he has
a new “tax deduction,” with his trademark dry wit. 
I close my eyes and he’s naming me after the first 
girl he ever kissed. I close my eyes. I close my eyes. 
I close my eyes. I keep trying to forget the memory
that comes rushing when my eyes open—the one
where he’s wearing a dark suit, in a casket, and I’m 
tucking a goodbye poem into his pocket.

*
 
Two Questions

           Fully aware that there is no adequate answer. 
            We offer a tattered, inadequate little bouquet of language…
                                    —George Bilgere, Poetry Town 


When they learn he lived for two years 
after the transplant, they always ask me 
the same two questions: Was it worth it? 
Do you have any regrets? 
                                            And every time, 
I am gobsmacked. Such audacity slaps me 
like February wind whipping the Mississippi 
under the old Eads Bridge. And then, I see
the innocent curiosity in their eyes. How
could they know?— 
			           About that day we spent 
at Butterfly House, Dad’s first summer sporting 
my kidney like a new pair of Bermuda shorts. How 
when he tried on the silly caterpillar cap, I giggled 
like a four-year-old little girl. Or the home-run taste 
of Budweiser at our last Cardinal game when Holliday 
rounded third base. 
                               How when confessing his mistakes, 
he found forgiveness in my eyes, and could finally drop 
the stone he carried in his heart pocket. 
                                                                   Or how success 
of the operation isn’t measured by mere years. Rather, 
by grains of sand, each one adding to the castle a girl built 
with her dad, how the low tide of his passing could never 
wash it away. 
                       An old man walks into the room. With him—
the scent of my father’s aftershave. 

*

 
Tomato

She kneels before her altar, this
modest garden box of leftover
lumber, filled with entangled 
varietals of heirloom fruit. Each orb 
lush with blush-a-bursting, begging 
to be plucked. A plant’s desire to share 
the juicy tangy-sweet, that it alone
could offer in this sacred moment
under a blistering sun. When she carries
one to her kitchen, she brings generations
worth of struggle and adaptation, not
unlike its Cherokee namesake—its purple
bruise of heartache and a fullness ripe 
with the tenacity of survival. A single
slice brought to her tongue with a trail
of salt left upon a cutting board. Her tears
fall for this harvest. Her love no longer
beside her, to relish this bounty with her. 

*

Shawn Aveningo-Sanders’ poems have appeared worldwide in literary journals including ONE ART, Calyx, Eunoia Review, Naugatuck River Review, Poemeleon, Sheila-na-gig, About Place Journal, and Snapdragon, to name a few. She is the author of What She Was Wearing, and her manuscript Pockets was a finalist in the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Contest. She’s co-founder of The Poetry Box press and managing editor of The Poeming Pigeon. Shawn is a proud mother of three and Nana to one darling baby girl. She shares the creative life with her husband in Oregon. 



			

	


			
				


	

		
Abecedarian for the Friend with Chronic Soul Injury by Agnieszka Tworek
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 4 Comments					

				

		
Abecedarian for the Friend with Chronic Soul Injury


Although albatrosses’ wings are covered with soot and oil,

Bears wheeze dreaming of bulletproof bones,

Castaways crave the freedom of clouds,

Dreams you raised have been plucked,

Extricate yourself from fear’s arms.

Forgive yourself for wrong turns and falls.

Grow gardenias, zinnias, and geraniums.

Hide the hints of light in an unbreakable vault.

Ice the bruised areas on the feverish earth.

Jot down the lark’s morning song on your palm.

Kick back a ball to a lonely kid in the park.

Listen to waves while lighthouses beckon toward the lost boats.

Make marionettes out of magnolia leaves and linen threads.

Name all the trees on your daily walks.

Orient yourself toward the sun even when it’s camouflaged by gray.

Praise the tenacity of perennial plants.

Quiet the quivering poplar’s twigs with your touch.

Remember your way home even when your home is no longer there.

Serenade your worries to sleep.

Try to learn a poem by heart each month.

Unlock the cage with your past and release it into the wild.

Visit headstones forgotten in the tall grass.

Wave to a woman sitting in front of her house.

X-ray humanity and strive to heal its heart.

Yield the way to bees because they came here first.

Zoom in on hope despite, despite, despite…


*


Agnieszka Tworek was born in Lublin, Poland. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, Rattle (Poets Respond), The Shore, Third Wednesday, Mobius, Lake Effect, The Indianapolis Review, and in other journals.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Take Me There by Andreas Treki Dohtdong
	

				

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Take Me There


There are no asylums for the restless souls

Lost in a world not of their own.

Half a universe away

There could be a town

Where all our dreams blossom

Like some rare wildflowers spreading

In between all the shrubs and space invading trees.

There, where each spot of light is not fought for

But given by some guiding hand,

Take me there.

Where a new sun births a new love,

Not of this earth,

But of something more.


*


Andreas Treki Dohtdong was born and raised in the city of Shillong, Meghalaya, India. He is a member of the Khasi community. Some of his favourite poets are Ovid, Auden, Rilke and Cavafy. He is an aspiring writer and filmmaker.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Heather Swan
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 4 Comments					

				

		
What the Potter Knows


The way water bends the stem

of the daffodil as you

look through the vase

to the window where

the yard has suddenly

filled with birds––the doves

who only eat seeds

from the ground, and clouds

of sparrows who move together

suddenly like the ripples that

form on water after you

throw the stone––


Believe it––there is a different way

to know and see.


The woman with clay

in her hands and the sea

in her eyes knows more

than the man who believes

the daily kaleidoscope

of numbers spooling across

the screens are what to be

banking on. She spins

the wheel, a tale not

of woe, in spite of it all. Watch

as the birds return and return to her

as she bends down briefly

to touch the head of a violet

rising from the uneven ground.


*


Your Grandfather Loved Birds My Mother Said


In the dark, he’d wake his daughters

and lead them to the pickup truck,

hand them hot cocoas,

and drive them to the edge

of the arboretum to find birds

they didn’t know the names of

that he needed like stitches

to hold his day together, bright bits

of halcyon beauty.


This, rather than fold

under the weight of the war

he’d endured while the others

in his ski troup died in the same

room he had to hide in to

survive. So many days with

their bodies disappearing until

finally someone came for him.


As girls, they did not

understand this need

to get there at first light

to hear that fabric of song.

Years later, when they poured

bird seed into feeders to

invite the brightness, the flight,

the miracles, they understood:


It is worth it,

despite the horror,

to be alive another day.


*


Heather Swan is a poet and nonfiction writer. Her poems have appeared in such journals as The Hopper, ONE ART, Terrain, Poet Lore, Phoebe, The Raleigh Review, and Cold Mountain. Her most recent collection Dandelion was released from Terrapin Books in 2023. Her first book, A Kinship with Ash (Terrapin Books), published in 2020, was a finalist for both the ASLE Book Award and the Julie Suk Award. Her nonfiction book Where Honeybees Thrive (Penn State Press) won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. A companion book, Where the Grass Still Sings: Stories of Insects and Interconnection, was just released in May 2024. She has been the recipient of the August Derleth Poetry Award, the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Best Chapbook Award, the Wisconsin Center for the Book Bookmark Award, the Martha Meyer Renk Fellowship in Poetry at UW Madison, and an Illinois Arts Council Poetry Fellowship Award. She teaches environmental literature and writing at UW Madison.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Heather Kays
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 2 Comments					

				

		
Never Yours


They call me monster,

stone-hearted, serpentine queen—

but look deeper.

I was once tender, soft,

until the world taught me

hardness was survival.


Medusa, they say,

cursed by gods and scorned by men,

but what of the girl who loved?

What of the woman left shattered

beneath the weight of cruel desire?

The snakes are my protection,

not my punishment.

I did not turn men to stone,

I merely reflected what was already there.


I see Lilith in the shadows,

cast out for her refusal to bow.

A woman who dared to claim

her body as her own,

her voice as more than a whisper.

She chose to be free—

they called it rebellion,

I call it righteous.


Eve, they say, started it all,

but what choice did she have

in a garden full of silence?

Her bite was a hunger

for more than Eden’s cage—

it was her way to know herself.

In her shame, I see strength.

In her sin, I find salvation.

She did not fall,

she rose.


And then there’s Pandora,

blamed for every sorrow.

They never speak of the hope

she clutched in her trembling hands,

the last thing she saved

when all else was lost.

Even in chaos, she chose light.


We, the women of darkness,

the sisterhood of the misunderstood,

the ones they fear but never know,

We bear the weight of their myths,

yet we are so much more.


Medusa’s gaze wasn’t meant to harm,

but to hold the world accountable.

Lilith’s flight wasn’t defiance,

but the first act of courage.

Eve’s apple wasn’t betrayal,

but the taste of freedom.

Pandora’s box wasn’t her curse—

it was her power.


Call us monsters,

call us wicked,

but know we are heroes

in a story you’ve never learned to read.


You call us cursed,

but we are creators.

You name us temptresses,

yet it is you who are tempted.

We never sinned for you,

we simply sinned.


How do your sins make you human…

and our sins make us villains?

Can you taste the hypocrisy in your judgments?


We are not your scapegoats,

not your nightmares,

not your excuses.


We are the ones who stood,

broke the silence,

chose the fire over the chains.

We are the breath of storm winds,

the hands that tilt the scales.

Each of us, a force untold,

each of us, a reckoning.


We are Medusa,

we are Lilith,

we are Eve,

we are Pandora.

Our stories are not your warnings—

They are your reminders

that we were never yours to name.


*


The Matador’s Skin


My former stepfather is a bull of a man.

Filled with rage and misunderstanding —

He stomps, breaks, and smashes,

Never fulfilled by the carnage. Always craving more.


I tried to play matador.

I put on my bravest face and waved a red flag,

Trying to coax that bull away from my mother and siblings.

I purposefully wore a target,

Hoping my distraction and subterfuge

Might save the rest of my family some hurt.


Every bruise a declaration of war,

My skin now the only ground left to fight on.

Beneath the surface, the fault lines tremble,

Waiting for the next eruption, the next battle scar.

Blood pooled beneath the skin like silent rebellions,

Each one a promise that peace was never an option.


I am not the kind of woman

Who wants to hold hate in her heart.

I want to forgive, to grow, to love.

But I can’t love or forgive a bull of a man

Who treated my family like a china shop

He lived to destroy.


*


Heather Kays memoir/family saga, Pieces of Us, explores her mother Emma Mae’s struggles with alcoholism and addiction. Her upcoming YA novel, Lila’s Letters, follows a young woman finding strength and healing through unsent letters. Writing has been her passion since she was 7, and she also runs The Alchemists, an online writing group. Heather enjoys discussing storytelling, complex narratives, and the balance between creativity and marketing.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Forgotten Landscape by Joan McNerney
	

				

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Forgotten Landscape


I am driving down a hill

without name on an

unnumbered highway.


This road transforms into

a snake winding around

coiled on hairpin turns.


See how it hisses though this

long night. Why am I alone?


At bottom of the incline

lies a dark village strangely

hushed with secrets.


How black it is. How difficult

to find what I must discover.


My fingers are tingling cool, smoke

combs the air, static fills night.


Continuing to cross gas lit streets

encountering dim intersections.


Another maze. One line

leads to another. Dead ends

become beginnings.


Listening to lisp of the road.

My slur of thoughts sink as

snake rasps grow louder.


See how the road slithers.

What can be explored? Where

can it be? All is in question.


*


Joan McNerney’s poetry is published worldwide in over thirty-five countries in numerous literary magazines. She has received four Best of the Net nominations. The Muse in Miniature, Love Poems for Michael, and At Work are available on Amazon. A new title Light & Shadows has recently been released.

			

	


			
				


	

		
After the News of Your Passing by Bunkong Tuon
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 6 Comments					

				

		
After the News of Your Passing


1.

I went out of my way to tell people about you:

                                                Do you remember him?

He hired me straight out of graduate school.

        What did this refugee kid from Cambodia know

about teaching at a private liberal arts college?

        He must have seen in me a fawn trapped

in a well, eyes pleading, crying

        in the cold dank dark. He had my office

next to his. Every morning, we talked about classes,

        students, he reminding me of the good things

I already had: a wife and, years later, kids.

        He was my wisdom coffee, waking me up

with a clarity of mind to the magic

        and the good work before us.

He continued to teach in retirement.

        That was his calling. Kind teacher.

I told people, man,

        that man could disarm a bomb with his humor.

And he could converse on any topic

        meandering over valleys and rivers

then turning back to the original points

        with a new-found clarity.


Afterward you felt seen, lifted & loved.


2.

I was almost gleeful,

        eerily excited

to talk about you after your passing.

        Was it my way of honoring you?

My way of keeping you alive—

        Which has always been the domain of stories,

of poetry, and of songs?

        Was the mind in denial?

Whatever it was, it certainly beat

        driving alone to a grocery store at night,

pulling over on the side of the road,

        weeping in the dark


saying your name over and over.


*


Bunkong Tuon is a Cambodian American writer, Pushcart Prize–winning poet, and professor who teaches at Union College in Schenectady, in NY. His work has appeared in World Literature Today, Copper Nickel, New York Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, diode poetry, Verse Daily, among others. He is the author of several poetry collections. In 2024, he published What Is Left, a Greatest Hits chapbook from Jacar Press, and Koan Khmer, his debut novel from Northwestern UP/Curbstone Books. He lives with his wife and children in Upstate New York.

			

	


			
				


	

		
The Election
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 9 Comments					

				

		
After the presidential election on November 5th, regardless of the outcome, ONE ART will publish poems the following day, the day after that, and the day after that.


In certain ways, November 6th will be just another day. So will January 6th, 2025. So will January 7th. Each day, there will be poetry. That much I can guarantee.


Mark Danowsky

Editor

ONE ART

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Heidi Seaborn
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 4 Comments					

				

		
I’ve Been Thinking About Love


as I read the news

gunning its engine


as it muscles

over the streets at night


as my neighbor tends

the rare rose of four percent

remission hope


as her wife touches

the belly of her cancer

and considers death—


as the soft sand of land

beneath our homes

slowly erodes.


Yes, I’ve been thinking

how love arrives like a bird

then becomes


a burden—

difficult to hold,

impossible to let go. Yet


as the world howls,

it is the bird I hear.


*


On the September Day I Help My Mother Move into Senior Living


Am I too quick? The days already foreshortened.

A glass of rosé passé.


We unwrap each plate, goblet, tureen—

a final shelving.


Yet, a vase of dahlias—.

Light traces the rooms


we sift through like memories.

The gleaming silver tea set—


heirloom doomed for crucible and torch.

I lift a file box marked IMPORTANT.


For when I die you say—

I place it beyond


reach. Then fold the linens,

make the bed, carry the empty boxes


out into a tarnished evening—

returning to the shimmer of you.


*


Heidi Seaborn is Executive Editor of The Adroit Journal and winner of The Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors Prize in Poetry. She’s the author of three award-winning books/chapbooks of poetry: An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, Give a Girl Chaos, and Bite Marks. Recent work in Agni, Blackbird, Copper Nickel, Financial Times of London, Poetry Northwest, Plume, The Slowdown and elsewhere. Heidi degrees from Stanford and NYU. heidiseabornpoet.com

			

	


			
				


	

		
Omnipotence by Loralee Clark
	

				

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Omnipotence


The dress, a hollyhock curling around itself,

blossoming on the bedroom floor

as the raw energy of death wakes

like frost slipping into a room;

morning’s companion, a hook of star.


How comforting to know we are the same,

boxes without companion lids.

Alike after all; tired of being emptied

like a pocket, a poor woman’s wallet.


*


Loralee Clark is a writer who grew up learning a love for nature and her place in it, in Maine. She resides in Virginia now as a writer and artist. Her Instagram is @make13experiment. She has a book forthcoming, “Solemnity Rites”, with Prolific Pulse Press LLC and has been published most recently in Choeofpleirn Press, Wingless Dreamer, Washington Writer’s Publishing House, Heart on Our Sleeves, The Taborian, Superpresent, Thimble Literary Magazine, Impossible Task, Studio One, Cannon’s Mouth, and Big Windows Review.

			

	


			
				


			
				


	

		
These hints and clues by Lee Potts
	

				

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These hints and clues


might have led me

like a river if I had been able

to stitch them together:


Unpacking after

a drawn-out journey

to find nothing

was lost or left behind.


How little thought we gave

to cutting out everything

the last owner planted.


The stiff rope knot

stuck in my gut

most mornings.


The spider plant cuttings

that would not drop roots

into a jar of water.


Finding myself

holding onto prayer

like a kite string

beside the sea.


*


Lee Potts is founder and editor-in-chief of Stone Circle Review. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, his work has appeared in The Night Heron Barks, Rust + Moth, Whale Road Review, UCity Review, Firmament, Moist Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. He is the author of two chapbooks – And Drought Will Follow (Frosted Fire Press, 2021) and We’ll Miss the Stars in the Morning (Bottlecap Press, 2024). He lives just outside of Philadelphia with his wife and daughter.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Vincent Casaregola
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 1 Comment					

				

		
Night at the Convenience Store


It’s not like there’s something wrong,

not like you’d think—no inner demon

willing me to kill or be killed, inspiring

some direct-to-video tragedy—


what I hear is softer, a whisper

of secrets and the sound of shadows

sliding slowly over hollow space,

someone else’s ghosts, not mine.


Some people broadcast themselves,

and I, despite myself, receive

an endless chain of repetitious fears,

the plainsong of pathetic histories.


At home, at night, the soft sounds

of furnaced air surrounding me,

I’d still find no peace, deafened almost

by the family’s atonal dreams.


So now I work the graveyard shift at the

convenience store, as ghosts come and go,

some in awkward bodies, some in minds,

and a few, just a few, carried on the wind.


*


In the Sunlight


Black letters, “Do Not Cross,”

on shiny yellow tape, rising and

falling on the afternoon breeze,

rustling, surrounding the site


Bright yellow, with black numbers,

the bent plastic markers, just like

what restaurants use to tag the order,

scattered randomly on black asphalt


Brass casings, cast like seed

on hard ground, some still smooth,

some dented, but each one shining

in the hot, late-summer sun.


*


Vincent Casaregola teaches American literature and film, creative writing, and rhetorical studies at Saint Louis University. He has published poetry in a number of journals, including 2River, The Bellevue Literary Review, Blood and Thunder, The Closed Eye Open, Dappled Things, The Examined Life, La Piccioletta Barca, Lifelines, Natural Bridge, Please See Me, WLA, Work, and The Write Launch. He has also published creative nonfiction in New Letters and The North American Review. He has recently completed a book-length manuscript of poetry dealing with issues of medicine, illness, and loss (Vital Signs) that has been accepted by Finishing Line Press.

			

	


			
				


	

		
EASTHAM by Royal Rhodes
	

				

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EASTHAM


Here on the outer Cape

near the last windmill

are scrub pine and sand bars

near tide pools we walked

in ankle-deep warm water,

and found horseshoe crabs,

moon snails, razor clams,

and tangled knots of seaweed.

This is the flung-out arm

of the bay that beckoned

the hungry pilgrims and Nauset

in their first encounter,

where both, surprised,

ran off, over round stones

rubbed smooth by tides.

The gray heavens or clouded

blue air fills with low

flotillas of observant gulls,

as if visiting ghosts

from some invisible realm.

Here understanding grows

and stuttering love

outlasts the soon altered.

In each summer season

mourning doves croon

love from the few trees

with hours wearing away

where we have sat still,

here with the world’s weight

as night comes too soon.


*


Royal Rhodes is a poet who lives in retirement in rural Ohio. His poems have appeared in: ONE ART, Last Stanza, Amethyst, Ekphrastic Review, The Montreal Review, and others. His poem, “Solstice”, was issued as a poetry and art collaboration broadsheet by The Catbird [on the Yadkin] Press in North Carolina.

			

	


			
				


	

		
The Naked Truth by Robert Nordstrom
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 1 Comment					

				

		
The Naked Truth


I stand naked inside the closet

where my costumes hang,


each more authentic than the others

when buttoned and zipped


into today. But here, before the mirror,

the naked body sags into tomorrow,


offering pause and gratitude

dressed in breath


before the light switch clicks

and the door blows shut.


*


Robert Nordstrom has published poetry in numerous regional and national publications, including upstreet, Main Street Rag, The Comstock Review, Naugatuck River Review, Chiron Review, Third Wednesday, ONE ART and various others. Several poems have garnered awards from the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and the Oregon Poetry Association. His poem “Old Lovers” won the 2014 Hal Prize, and his 2016 poetry collection, The Sacred Monotony of Breath, received honorable mention from the Council for Wisconsin Writers. His latest collection, Dust on the Sill was published in 2023.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Jenna Wysong Filbrun
	

				

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Illness


When a windstorm

blasts in from the north

with a sudden

and desperate rage,

even the cottonwoods bow

to the white sheets of rain.


Behind the single

silver-green leaf

plastered to the glass

of the patio door, you can see

the awful flailing

of the trees flying apart

like someone drowning.


When all you can do

is keep your heart

close to the hurt,

you keep it close.


*


Like It Was


Yesterday, a finch

flutter-flapped from the barn

like the sound of a horse

clearing its nose.

I could smell the sweet

sweat smell of the horse

coming around the corner.

Hear ripe grass ripping

into crunch and chew,

snort and stomp,

swish swish toss of tail.

Sometimes the old life

passes over this way, smooth

and warm like a neck,

like a velvet nose

lipping my hair.


*


Jenna Wysong Filbrun is the author of the poetry collection, Away (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and have appeared in publications such as The Dewdrop, Gyroscope Review, Wild Roof Journal, and others. Find her on Instagram @jwfilbrun.

			

	


			
				


	

		
The Day Chandler Died by Eithne Longstaff
	

				

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The Day Chandler Died

after Frank O’Hara


I drink a cocktail with an orange

slice moon on the roof terrace

of our hotel and watch the street

sellers in Piazza della Rotonda throw

blue lights high and one lands

on the dome opposite and pulses

in the gutter      going       going       gone


then the American lady in pyjamas

comes up for her 8pm roll-up

and we take the elevator down

and outside dolphins gush

and Maggie nearly gets

knocked down by a Piaggio –

she is on her phone –

and she says Matthew Perry


is dead and I think

could that be any more sad

then we walk to Ivo for pizza

and watch the one where

he meets Jill Goodacre

in a vestibule and I text

the boys don’t swim on your own

after dark and I cry a little


because the funny guy

shouldn’t stage exit first

and on the way back Maggie

does a cartwheel in the Pantheon

portico and I imagine soft

rain falling like glitter on its marble

floor and how even in the dark

it would look like there is a light on inside


*


Eithne Longstaff is originally from the North of Ireland and now lives in England. She is studying for an MA in Creative Writing and her poems have been published in Dreich and online in Rattle and The Ekphrastic Review.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Preservationist by Edie Meade
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 2 Comments					

				

		
Preservationist [American sonnet in American sentences]

for WD


what do you call a man, old, unmarried and outliving his children?

do you call him, do you let him send your children his old belongings?

I know he doesn’t want anyone to feel sorry for him, it’s just

he lives alone there, no heirs, with a library of biology

guides to spiders, venomous snakes of Tennessee, wildlife of the south

every week they arrive mummified in packing tape and grocery bags

estate sale preemption, keepsakes widowed into the arms of strangers

he sends each book wrapped more tightly than the last, handwriting unraveled

to index card, thumbprint smudge notarized, legacy the task at hand

let the kids lay into it, their excitement breaking safety scissors

this is the natural order of things, this is the future, this is it

I saw him on the news, nearly eighty, snatching a timber rattler

shirtless in the woods, all tendons and lightning and ferocious smile

he said, preserving a habitat means caring for the hard to love


*


Edie Meade is a writer in Petersburg, Virginia. Recently published in Room Magazine, Invisible City, The Harvard Advocate, JMWW, The Normal School, and Litro.


Twitter: @ediemeade

Instagram and Threads: @edie_thee_meade


Website: https://ediemeade.com/

			

	


			
				


	

		
Phone Call from a Brown Son by Vicki Boyd
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 10 Comments					

				

		
Phone Call from a Brown Son


My son calls driving home from work

in the dark, with one headlight,

he mentions too casually.

My heart the beating wings of a trapped thing,

I manage the smallest sips of air.


In the dark he casually mentions one headlight,

and I am a deer standing in my kitchen

choking in a trickle of air.

When do you think you might get that fixed?

I try for nonchalance.


I am a deer standing in my kitchen, suffocating

in the floodlamp of a single imagined headlight.

It’s OK. They can’t stop you for that, he says,

my feigned dispassion a failure.

We don’t say what we’re both thinking.


They can’t stop you for that, he repeats.

In my chest a trapped thing’s beating wings,

kitchen crackling silence, we can’t say

what we’re both thinking when my son calls

driving alone in the dark.


*


Vicki Boyd has made a professional life in education and publishing. She owes her writing life to Mrs. Williford, first grade teacher, who coached her in composing her first sentence, a dictation. When Vicki added embellishments, Mrs. Williford delighted in that, enough to set Vicki writing for life. Vicki has only recently begun writing for publication, her first piece appearing in Teach.Write: A Writing Teachers’ Literary Journal. She lives and walks and kayaks with her wife and their dog Rosie in and around Portsmouth, NH.

			

	


			
				


	

		
That’s on you by Sophie Frankpitt
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 1 Comment					

				

		
That’s on you


watch her fade away

her gaunt cheeks and

hollowed eyes, once

bouncing hair now in

tendrils, cheekbones

jut in sharp lines and

wrists that look too

fragile to touch, watch

her punish herself for

all she is not


that’s on you

all you taught us

all the pictures

the waist-touching,

leering, the men on

the street who shouted

at fifteen-year-old us,

the boys who lined us

up on the playground,

the dates women didn’t

come home from, the

streets we can’t walk

down, the live location

always on, hit by hit –


hit by hit –


scream by scream

deafened by other

women’s pleas

she fell to her knees

praying that her own pain –

the pain you so ironically

call self-made –

would distract her

from lifetimes of yours


*


Sophie Frankpitt is a poet and linguist from Somerset, England, having recently graduated from the University of Warwick with a Linguistics degree. She is a newly emerging poet, though she regularly performed spoken word in Amsterdam during the year she studied there.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Broken Wishbone by Steven Concert
	

				

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Broken Wishbone


The sum total of everything

brought you to me. We used


to break wishbones together.

Each time you let me win,


knew my wish would

be for us, not me,


and the happiness

of a lifetime together.


Two haiku, we were the words

that made it to the page,


and together we were divisible

only by the nothing that remained.


*


Steven Concert, gay American poet, resides in northeastern Pennsylvania. In June, Steven was elected 1st Vice President of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. His work has been published by Discretionary Love, Agates, Common Threads, Cracked Walnut, and Mad Poets Society. Steven can be found on Facebook @ Paperless Poets.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Buddy & Skippy by John Dorsey
	

				

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Buddy & Skippy


as a boy

my cousin steve

had a pair of imaginary friends

just in case

one of them

was ever out sick

just so neither of them

would ever have to feel lonely

35 years later

i think about how

none of us

have any friends at 3 am

unless we’re dying

& at a certain point

we all grapple with loneliness

& i wonder if steve’s imaginary friends

had imaginary friends of their own

the kind you can call

any time

for any reason

day or night.


*


John Dorsey is the former Poet Laureate of Belle, MO. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Which Way to the River: Selected Poems: 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020), Sundown at the Redneck Carnival, (Spartan Press, 2022, and Pocatello Wildflower, (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2023). He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Upcoming Reading: Sunday, 10/27 — 7pm Eastern
	

				

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Sunday, October 27 — 7pm (Eastern)

Featured Poets: Ace Boggess, CL Bledsoe, Anton Yakovlev, Jason Gordy Walker

Tickets available here (Free or Donation)


~ About The Featured Poets ~ 


Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021), I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, and The Prisoners. His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.


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.


Anton Yakovlev’s poetry collection One Night We Will No Longer Bear the Ocean was published in 2024 by Redacted Books, an imprint of ELJ Editions. His chapbook Chronos Dines Alone (SurVision Books, 2018) won the James Tate Poetry Prize. The Last Poet of the Village, a book of translations of poetry by Sergei Yesenin, came out from Sensitive Skin Books in 2019. Yakovlev is also the author of Ordinary Impalers (Kelsay Books, 2017) and two prior chapbooks: The Ghost of Grant Wood (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and Neptune Court (The Operating System, 2015). Originally from Moscow, Russia, Anton is a graduate of Harvard University and a former education director at Bowery Poetry Club. More info here.


Jason Gordy Walker’s poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Confrontation, Measure, ONE ART, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol. X: Alabama, among other places. His reviews and interviews can be found in Birmingham Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, Subtropics, and the blogs of Dos Madres Press and NewPages. He has received scholarships from the New York State Summer Writers Institute, Poetry by the Sea, and other institutions, and he earned his MFA from the University of Florida and his MA from the University of Alabama-Birmingham. Currently, he lives in Alabama and practices translating Norwegian poetry.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Jean Voneman Mikhail
	

				

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Breath


Tent of my kid pitched in the backyard,

blown over, collapsing in on himself.

Tent stake through his heart.


I’ve left him to the rain, again,

grass blades stuck to his back,

huffing a billowy paper bag of breath.


A baggie of cut triangular sandwiches.

A baggie of blow. A baggie of weed.

Holy trinity of school lunches.


I have fed him to live to build

fingers for sandwiches and fiddle.

I have opened his Oreo black eyes


when they wouldn’t open.

I’ve unscrewed the lids,

and looked into the frosted eye whites


and scraped him of sweetness.

I fear I’ve made a mess of him.


I gave him sippy cups with blow holes.

Juice boxes with snorting straws.

Straws to stick up a turtle’s nose.


Once, he cared about

all the animals.


He cried for the neighbor’s kitten dead

in winter, fed on snowy moonlit milk.


He wanted the world to be kinder.


Is there any way to save him, now,

from chasing that washed up baggie

turning inside out in the waves


long ago down a stretch of beach,

a baggie filled with ocean water,

safety locked, zipped full of air?

His breath.


* 


LGLG


Dear God, with your capital G,

I see what you’re up to,

counting bodies down in Portsmouth,


Ohio, of all places to leave him.

God, listen to me, you can’t

have him all to yourself in an alley.


Your wrought iron doors,

windowless eyes bricked in,

having ceased watching over him,

haven’t you? How


would I ever know? Quietly,

cable wires cross this city,

trains rock themselves

to sleep at the end of the line.


But where is he, where is my son?


If he must die, if he must die,

how with dignity, how—

with forgiveness, how without shame?

How do I keep him from death

if death is what he chooses?


Should I lie down with him

and die, too, on the crescent moon

sidewalk of what was to be

our first total solar eclipse,


For my son, for my son’s life,

I’d give just about anything

except what I can no longer give.

No shelter. No food. No more.


God, no.


What kind of insanity is this?

Let go, let God. LGLG.

Give me a break.

I’ve given enough.


*


Jean Voneman Mikhail lives in Athens, Ohio, where she first came to study for a Masters in Creative Writing. Many years and a few kids later, she now writes more than ever. She has published in Sheila Na Gig Online, The Northern Appalachian Review, Pudding Magazine and other poetry journals and anthologies.

			

	


			
				


	

		
The Muse Commands by Tamara Madison
	

				

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The Muse Commands


We stop at the end of the pier,

where the full moon spreads its path

across the sea. Our little son gasps

at the sight, claps his hands, looks up at us

and says in a voice that is like a swoon

I want to draw that! I have to draw that now!


I know the feeling. We hurry to the market

before it closes, buy the only art supplies there.

Back at the hotel he sets to work, pink tongue

peeking from the corner of his mouth.

But crayons and rough paper are not enough

to capture his sense of it, the way the moon

stroked the water like a mother.


And I remember the time my brother

found me writing and insisted I share

my poem with him. Who could be closer

to you than me, your own brother?

Because he was older, I handed it over.

He read it silently, then left the room.

I read it again, but the feeling was gone.


*


Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbooks “The Belly Remembers” (Pearl Editions) and “Along the Fault Line” (Picture Show Press), and three full-length volumes of poetry, “Wild Domestic” and “Moraine” (Pearl Editions) and “Morpheus Dips His Oar (Sheila-Na-Gig). Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, the Worcester Review, A Year of Being Here, One Art, the Writer’s Almanac and many other publications. A swimmer, dog lover and native of the southern California desert, she has recently retired from teaching English and French in a Los Angeles high school. Read more about her at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Four Poems by Justin Karcher
	

				

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For About Three Minutes and 45 Seconds the Dead Come back to Life


while the eclipse shrouds all of Buffalo.

My mom tells me she sees the ghost of my dad

parking the car across the street.

I don’t try to redirect her eyes to the sky

because grief is its own kind of eclipse.

A sudden darkness covering up our hearts.

If someone is ready to look, you let them look.


*


East of Eden in Western New York


It’s midnight and I’m returning a book

to the library. Carl is standing near

the drop box and lifts up his shirt

to show me the spot where he got shot

all those years ago. He hides the wound

after I give him a couple bucks and hurries

into the street where a car has to swerve

to avoid hitting him. I toss the book

into the abyss and notice a crowd

in front of this house. There’s a cellist

on the top porch playing beautiful lullabies.

Some trees turn into snakes. They shed

their leaves like tears as complete strangers

hold hands to keep warm as summer

starts to slither away.


*


Life Is Learning How to Live Inside a Broken Poem


During the poetry workshop, we spend

a lot of time wondering how it would feel

waking up with your skin turned inside out.

“Like an alien,” I say, my mouth

half-filled with cheese. Julio quickly replies

“Half the country thinks I already am one.”

There’s some uncomfortable laughter

and I look out the window at twentysomethings

hurrying toward the busy queer bar

at the end of the block

looking for that feeling of home.


I remember smoking there on the patio one night

listening to a woman tell her friend

about a dream she keeps having

where she locks her newborn son in the car

and as she’s trying to figure out how to free him

an angry crowd appears just to scream at her.

When she wakes up, there are always tears on her pillow

and she wonders why she never breaks the glass.

“I’m here for you” is all her friend says and I realize

that sometimes that’s all anyone ever has to say.


*


It Can Take Years to Understand Denial if You Ever Do


I find a nearly dead man on Carolina St

barefoot and shirtless and lying on the concrete

inside a circle of mismatched sneakers.


An elderly couple comes out of their home

to see what’s going on. They make the sign

of the cross and I call 911. I can hear the bags


under the dispatcher’s eyes blowing in the wind

of broken faith. But she does what she has to.

When first responders arrive, they perform


what looks like a miracle.


Later in the night I’m at an open mic and I notice

all the girls wearing Hozier shirts from his concert

earlier this week. When the café closes, they walk


across the street to Bidwell Pkwy and start singing

“Take Me to Church.” Between a clearing of trees

a unicorn carcass is rotting in the moonlight.


I tell my friends that a group of unicorns

can be called a blessing but they’re not listening.

I’m scared they’re not seeing anything at all.


*


Justin Karcher (Twitter: @justin_karcher) is a Best of the Net- and Pushcart-nominated poet and playwright from Buffalo, NY. He is the author of several books, including Tailgating at the Gates of Hell (Ghost City Press, 2015). Recent playwriting credits include The Birth of Santa (American Repertory Theater of WNY) and “The Buffalo Bills Need Our Help” (Alleyway Theatre). https://www.justinkarcherauthor.com

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Shannon Frost Greenstein
	

				

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Your Hands


When you play music for me, I watch

the nimble joints of your practiced fingers

curl over the faded piano keys

like diaphanous wings unfolding in the heat of sunrise

and I feel something I did not feel before.


You play a chord and I see

a web developer, fabricating a brand-new reality

from a Lego pile of ones and zeroes; and

a surgeon, hands holding mastery

over the cellular processes of life itself; and

God, mixing the soundtrack of the cosmos

like a DJ high on bass and MDMA.


When you play music for me, your wrists

dance like Baryshnikov between sharps and flats and perfect fifths,

percussion as choreography as language as song,

and as your entire body resonates with music you yourself have scripted

I remember what it was like to fall in love with you.


You write me a song and I reflect

on tempo and poetry and heartbeat and joy, the privilege of immortality

captured in something beautiful and heretofore unknown –

art that exists where art previously did not exist,

a Big Bang birthing matter from the seeds of nothing at all –

and everything because I was lucky enough to meet a musician and my soulmate

one summer night at a bar.


When you play music for me, I forget all about how

I used to yearn for the touch of tragic artists

who sow the sort of lust and mystery

I would later reap as heartbreak

and instead picture the silk of your palms against the landscape of my naked back

as you soothe my restless body when I am unable to sleep.


You compose and I watch your fingertips

sculpting notes into paths and layers and staircases and peaks,

thousands of hours of work culminating in this very moment and,

in an act of primal validation orchestrated by Darwin himself,

a rush of neurotransmitters through my blood affirms my choice

that this is indeed the mate to father my young.


When you play music for me, I cannot look away

from your hands.


*


She Gave Me Her Last Diet Coke


I blame my mother, of course,

for conceiving

and birthing

my own addiction to Diet Coke.


They say eating disorders are a family disease;

they say an eating disorder is like a gun.

The pistol is the genetic predisposition

to seek out control when things feel uncontrollable;

the bullet is a culture that venerates thin

and praises the anesthetic of becoming less.

The trigger is unbearable anxiety or distress,

so is it any wonder that childhood trauma leads to eating disorders?


Screwed by both nature and nurture,

my mother’s eating disorder was planted in my genome

before I even had a say.

Ballet and abuse and mental illness and assault

germinated my Anorexia by the time I was eight.

And the rest of my life has been spent

grappling with the one firearm

I never wanted to fire.


They say recovery from an eating disorder can take over a decade;

they say maybe it isn’t even possible to recover at all.

After three decades of punishing myself

for requiring the fuel of food

I still don’t know if I will ever be free

from the voices that inform me I am worthless

deep within the bowels of my broken brain.

For years I have worked, and cried,

and done my best to get where I am today.

But my Diet Coke addiction remains a vestigial artifact

of the times it would take two twenty-ounce bottles

just to quench my hunger.


I eventually forgave my mother

for loading the gun that became my cross to bear;

after a lifetime of estrangement,

she was finally my friend

by the time she passed last November.

And I know she loved me

because the last time I saw her before she died

she gave me her last Diet Coke.


*


Shannon Frost Greenstein (She/They) resides in Philadelphia with her family and cats. She is the author of “Only as Sick as Your Secrets: Notes from Residential Eating Disorder Treatment,” a forthcoming memoir with Watertower Hill Press, “The Wendigo of Wall Street,” a novelette with Emerge Literary Press, and “Pray for Us Sinners,” a collection of short fiction from Alien Buddha Press. Shannon is a former Ph.D. candidate in Continental Philosophy and a multi-time Pushcart Prize nominee, with work in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Pithead Chapel, Bending Genres, and elsewhere. Follow her at shannonfrostgreenstein.com or on Twitter at @ShannonFrostGre. Insta: @zarathustra_speaks

			

	


			
				


	

		
My Mother Could Write Lines for Fortune Cookies by Barbara Krasner
	

				

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My Mother Could Write Lines for Fortune Cookies


Your father may think you’re a genius.

I know you’re not. #77


You have many outfits that make you look thinner.

What you’re wearing now isn’t one of them. #206


Dye your hair. Go much lighter. #95


You don’t make any mistakes,

but marrying the village idiot?

That was a lollapalooza. #89


Only you have the strength

to withstand divorce. #91a


Only you have the strength

to raise a toddler on your own. #91b


You need more color.

Wear make-up. #86


Dying people always reach

out for their mamas.

You will too. #208


*


Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is the author of three novels in verse for young readers. Her work has also appeared in Nimrod, Michigan Quarterly Review, Consequence Forum, The Ekphrastic Review, Paterson Literary Review, and elsewhere. She lives and teaches in New Jersey.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Michael Robins
	

				

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Keep Mississippi Beautiful


All the way until the magnolia state to finally see the cows hotfooting

their field & we too were undoubtedly grateful having missed the

accident by minutes, livelihoods & lifetimes bent in the awkward

angles. A hundred miles earlier, the kids wanted to know if driving is

hard. I did my best, which feels like the middle lane when a tree falls

across the interstate, no one waiting around to say, When you next

travel this road your wife of a decade will be dead, your children will

have grown, you’ll mostly leave what you thought you’d love for good.


*


See You Next Time


Whispering to the hours among the corners of grief. Like an animal

curled in the middle of the floor & such symbols everywhere, wishing

but rooms with separate bowls of ice cream, just kids & some six

hundred miles apart, a long shot if we ever met. Early morning

showers, even the fish taking sides by skipping meals. I miss you, &

later these late goodbyes until there’s nothing left to say. A little

hungover, I know, & a single strand of hair. The half-eaten cicadas &

enough. It’s been a rough summer, I think aloud before writing it down.

To be everywhere at rest. To be at once. I mean September flying.


*


Michael Robins is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently The Bright Invisible (2022) and People You May Know (2020), both from Saturnalia Books. He lives in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where he teaches in the MFA program at McNeese State University and serves as editor of The McNeese Review.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Craig Kirchner
	

				

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Size


I’m a 7 hat, a 10 ½ shoe and a large shirt.

We need sizes, rankings and ratings

for everything. Is it center, left of center,

far right. Is your hospital 1-star or 5-star,

how about your choice of restaurant?

I’m wondering, where would I stack up

in a personality ranking, 1-10,

how about on a dating site?


The business card scene in American Psycho,

the office stature ranked by location and view,

all with a number, pride and self-esteem.

What would you rank your parents, childhood,

the girth of your education?

I had an office once, it was about as big

as a queen-sized bed and had no windows.

I lasted 2 weeks, borrowed money, and bought a store.


The job, had I stayed would have been a 10,

the liquor store almost killed me.

I’m projecting next Friday will be an 8,

the cleaning lady is coming, I have a tee time,

a dinner date, and it’s not supposed to rain.

This number could jump up depending on sex,

but do the numbers really mean anything,

do we really need them?


These shoes fit, they’re a 10 ½ to me

and the rest of the world but they’ll still fit

when the size designation wears out.

Numbers are as important as we make them,

it’s 2 PM because the clock says so,

but our bodies know what time it really is

and that number is only important

if you have an appointment.


I’m 75, age is only a number, you’re only

as old as you feel. I never wore a watch,

don’t remember ever being late.

I’m looking to buy a hat,

no matter what the tag says,

I’ll try them on until one feels right,

fits nicely on my head and around my ego

which I’m sure is about a 7, or an 8.


*


Cognition


It’s Monday, I have an appointment

to get a thing, looks like a tiny pinecone

zapped off my forehead,

and my dermatologist wants to look at my Mohs scar.

Tuesday, early, first of the day I see my cardiologist.

I tell him of my AFib episode and my guess as to the trigger.

He says the EKG is perfect, my blood pressure was good,

and that all his patients should be doing so well.


It’s Wednesday, I’m to meet and greet my new GP.

My last two left, one to a big title job,

the other went to South Carolina to be a missionary.

The girl weighing me and taking my blood pressure

tells me they all just call him Dr. V.

He’s young, seems efficient and smiles,

we go over medications, which takes a while

and no, I don’t still take Vicodin.


Two were prescribed for a root canal,

but I tell him he can renew that if he’d like.

He doesn’t mention that my blood pressure is 105

over some ridiculously low second number,

just that I should keep taking the two blood pressure meds.

Does anyone ever come off these?

We finish meds and he asks me how I am in general.

This is where I could have just said ‘fine’

but the storyteller in me went off.


He heard about the skin cancer, the bad knees

and phlegm, clearing my throat all the time,

and the lack of activity due to too hot to go outside

or its raining buckets,

or the gel shots only last 4 months, not 6,

and I realize I must sound like an ungrateful

hypochondriac, because poor thing can’t play golf.


I finish with so that’s me, and he asks if I’m depressed.

I tell him the skin cancer thing stressed me

and I was miserable for two weeks

but I didn’t want to kill myself.

Then he explains that Medicare requires a

cognitive test, I smile thinking of Trump.

He asked me my birthdate – I got it right.

what state are we in? Florida. Right.


What day is it? I said Thursday. Its Wednesday,

oh yeah Wednesday, I knew that.

Tell me as many animals as you can in one minute.

He looks at his watch and says go.

Dog, cat, elephant, I list about 10 more

and start thinking about getting the day of the week wrong,

unless it’s Thursday night football, it could be Tuesday,

Wednesday, Thursday, what do I care or know.


Jaguars, bears, falcons, lions. I already said lions, didn’t I?

He says you have 20 seconds left.

Alligators, crocodiles, lizards, and then I think

does anyone think of these as animals, they’re reptiles.

He says the questions will get harder now

and I get the addition and subtraction right.

He then tells a story about Jill the stockbroker,

who got married, had kids and went back to work as a teenager.


Keep in mind he’s sitting all the way across the room,

and I realize a lot of what I hear is convoluted

unless I can read lips. He asks me her name. Jill.

What did she do for a living? She was a stockbroker.

When did she go back to work?

As a teenager, but that doesn’t make sense, but it’s what I heard.

Listen again, he tells the whole story.

I’m feeling as useless as Jack, her husband.


Turns out she went back to work when the kids

became teenagers. She was middle age.

Interesting answer.

Can you repeat the words I listed when we started?

Apple, pen, tide, house, car.

I didn’t know when he listed them

if the middle word was tie, tied or tide,

but I repeated tide, and he said good.


That’s when it hit me. He wasn’t going to tell me

that I had not done well, or why Medicare needed to know

there was one more candidate for dementia.

He was just going to smile, give me a Flonase prescription,

let me keep the keys, see me in six months,

and send me on my way.

I asked him if I could write about our meeting.

He said he didn’t see why not.


*


Craig Kirchner thinks of poetry as hobo art, loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. He has had two poems nominated for the Pushcart, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. Craig houses 500 books in his office and about 400 poems in a folder on a laptop. These words tend to keep him straight. After a hiatus he was recently published in Decadent Review, Chiron Review, The Main Street Rag, Hamilton Stone Review, The Wise Owl, Dark Winter and several dozen other journals.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Unbody by Rukan Saif
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 1 Comment					

				

		
Unbody


                    For Alia Ansari


My mother has started wearing the hijab again

on the anniversary of Alia’s death. Her murder


a cruel and trodden pilgrimage for all my people.

For this journey, I relinquish the body.


I was never there. Neither was my mother.

Instead, we are two October birds


dragged by our collars and flightless.

We predict the coming of rain,


which, too, has relinquished the body and pooled

into a shoebill’s halved cry: a ringing


gunshot. The instant

between a door slamming & its padlock & a blackened pistol


cocked from the earth’s insides.

It happens quickly. Aching talons uncouple


the clouds to cleave the earth

with a silver bullet, blood-hungry.


Here, the earth is not the earth

the same way a mother is not an orbed target, and the same way


her daughter cannot be a lucky witness, brought to that beaten cliff.

When she was found bloody and veiled, did you come


with questions or nocked arrows for blame: its own

scriptured body? Tell me why


the word hijab appears only twice in the Qur’an but is written

all over Alia’s body. She didn’t ask for this


remembering. Overhead, the last dove zips the sky closed.

I must confess: this memory is not about dying


but about a mother’s strength and dipping

into her wreckage. That she left this dunya a rustling


of feathers: glowing and everywhere.


*


Rukan Saif is a recent graduate of Johns Hopkins University living in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in The Penn Review and Furrow Magazine.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Grief by Rose Gubele
	

				

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Grief


I wrote a note to myself: “Remember to grieve.”

I don black, turn my eyes down.

I need a minute to untangle my past,

mourn the girl who could have been.


Monsters are real:

not embodied evil, stalking silver screens,

not experiments performed by

unethical inventors who drink their own toxins.


Monsters have logic, though not excuse.

They can be kind, if it suits the goal:

manipulation, control, power.

Corrupted by pride, arrogance, greed.


I still remember the monster in the hallway:

no sharp claws, no pointed fangs,

just a boy with a knife,

trying to make his own life better.


*


Rose Gubele is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Central Missouri where she teaches courses in rhetoric and writing. She received her Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition at Washington State University. She has previously published poems in Red Ink and Penumbra.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Ode to the rainstorms that keep my friends close by M.J. Young
	

				

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Ode to the rainstorms that keep my friends close


Bless my friends

who, when I came

out to them, said

deadass not because

they didn’t believe

me but because

I had finally said

I’m gay, bless

their hooting after

I confirmed

with my own deadass

even though I don’t

like using profanity

but their happiness

overpowered my guilt

so it was okay

even if

the librarians inside

were wondering why

five young

twenty-somethings

were huddled under

the covered patio

in the butterfly garden

when it’s raining

so thickly, laughing,

but it wasn’t as if it

was raining

when we got there

and when it started

to rain we figured

that it would stop

in a few minutes

because it’s summer

and the rains

are usually frequent

but quick,

spits, as my mother

says, but I don’t

because it reminds

me of having saliva

in my face

and the accompanying

words I’d rather forget

and I’d rather be happy

when thinking about

the little dash

of summer rain

we’re gifted, laugh

with my friends

who were scrambling

to pick up the pieces

of our board game

as the wind tried to

claim them for itself,

me hugging

a copy of The Goldfinch

to my chest

because even though

I wondered

if Tartt would make

Theo canonically gay

or bi or something

before remembering

that this book was popular

so that wouldn’t happen

I still like

her writing style

and besides,

I was with my friends

so who cares about

Theo who doesn’t

even exist

when the wind

made us hysterical

in a giddy way

because in that

moment

the most important thing

was to make sure

that none of

the character

or room or

weapon cards

or score sheets

got too wet or were taken

by the wind

which was a nice worry

to have

compared to everything

it is we were dealing

with on our own,

but under the patio

in the middle of

the butterfly garden

walled in by the rain

that smalled

our worlds,

we could laugh

with each other

and not look past

the problem

of getting out

of the rain unwetted.


*


M.J. Young is a writer and MFA student at Florida International University. His poetry can be found in Vagabond City Lit, Stone of Madness Press, and more. In his free time he enjoys listening to Philip Glass and exploring bookstores. He can be found on Instagram @mjyoungwrites.

			

	


			
				


	

		
March Birthday by Jeanne Griggs
	

				

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March Birthday


I knew it was your birthday

as soon as I woke

so I told your father,

called your grandparents to come,

took your sister out with a friend,

packed my bag and smoothed the sheet

on the bassinet, ready for you.

All these years later I still wake

knowing it’s your birthday. I sent

a cake and a text

because you don’t know

how you’re still part

of the circulation of my blood,

your fetal cells still in my marrow,

and that the thought of you

is like sunshine on the forsythia

outside my bedroom window,

the same twigs suddenly showing

blooms as on that first morning.


*


Jeanne Griggs is a Pushcart nominated poet; her poems have appeared in the Mid-Atlantic Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Inquisitive Eater, Thimble Literary Magazine and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. Jeanne is the author of Postcard Poems (Broadstone Books).

			

	


			
				


	

		
Three Poems by Jeanne Wagner
	

				

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The Homing Instinct

         ―Princeville, Kauai


The guide tells us Laysan albatross look

the same at seventy as they do at seventeen,


Except to another albatross I think, but stop

short of saying, not wanting to spoil


the exception which proves the rule, every

rule a law made to be broken, a law


much like gravity, which is why all good

escape artists want feathers on their arms.


I envy migratory birds, the way they navigate

the same sky I always want to get lost in.


The albatross chicks waiting, solitary, a little

sullen, resting on their snug circles of dirt.


The first story always one of place, of hunger,

or being hungered for, like their prey,


squid or krill, or the eggs of the flying fish

with their built-in longing to break into sky.


The albatross almost became extinct because

women wanted feathers in their hats.


But how lovely I felt at seventeen when I wore

my new hat to Mass, the feathers all dyed


that pink we mistake for innocence, and me

just sitting there, barely dreaming of flight.


*


One Person


Peter Sellers said, I do not exist. There used to be a me,

but I had it surgically removed.


We laugh, yet who doesn’t feel pain remembering some

layer of skin


flayed by a casual remark, and afterwards the air, without

even a breeze, raking the spot raw.


We are always one person, no matter how many times

we’ve been effaced.


See how even the moon suffers its monthly mutilations.

This goddess of a sphere


left like a slice of lemon peel garnishing an empty plate.

But now a whole new moon


floats over the dawn redwood in the frame of our skylight.

Who else will ever see it,


the nexus of this place, these seconds, with these eyes?

Who will ever know you as I do?


*


After a Stroke, the Doctor Asks Me to Describe the Cookie Theft Picture


         ―The Cookie Theft Picture, a cartoon of a retro family

         in the kitchen, is a common diagnostic tool for aphasia.


She looks like my Fifties mother asking me to turn down the heat.

Our leg of lamb, forgotten in the oven, was beginning to overcook.

A boy is reaching for the cookie jar, the stool slipping from his feet.

The girl lifts her hand. The boy starts to fall. His falling overlooked.


My mother overcooked the leg of lamb, her body helpless on the floor.

This mom is drying dishes, ignoring the water cascading from the sink.

The girl lifts up her hand to her brother, but I’m not that girl anymore.

This isn’t my dysfunctional family, but I keep searching for some link.


This mom is drying dishes. The overflowing water a symbol of tears,

Every kitchen is an engine room, is a hearth, the heart of the home.

My dysfunctional family must be at it again; the meaning isn’t clear.

I fell on the kitchen floor, where once I found my father, already gone.


Every kitchen is an engine room, but I long for the heart of the home

where once my Fifties mother kept asking me to turn down the heat.

Falling is a family trait. Like gravity. Something I’ve always known.

This boy, he just keeps on reaching. The stool slipping from his feet.


*


Jeanne Wagner is the author of four chapbooks and three full-length collections: The Zen Piano-mover, which won the NFSPS Poetry Prize, In the Body of Our Lives, published by Sixteen Rivers Press, and Everything Turns Into Something Else, published as runner-up for the Grayson Book Prize. Her manuscript, One Needful Song is the recent winner of the 2024 Catamaran Prize. Her more recent awards include the 2020 Joy Harjo Award and the 2021 Naugatuck Prize. Her work has appeared in North American Review, Cincinnati Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Shenandoah and The Southern Review.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Picture Strip in My Underwear Drawer by Cynthia Ventresca
	

				

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Picture Strip in My Underwear Drawer


You, in a photo booth at a wedding reception,

wearing that navy-blue suit.

There are four frames and I study them: tilt

of your head, toy ukulele in your hands—

wonder where I was when light flashed

in your face. Because I cried

in the bathroom that night, after our fight,

balled up napkin in my fist, listening

to high heels click on the cold tile. I wanted

to disappear. And that feeling. Like the scar

I’ve had since I was a child, beneath my chin—

I’m forever touching it. The wound, it’s sear,


and always, the years. A counting of.

How many, how many now, have I loved you?


*


Cynthia Ventresca wrote her first poem at seven years old after receiving a typewriter as a Christmas gift. Publication credits include American Life in Poetry, Orbis Quarterly International Literary Journal, 3rd Wednesday, Dreamstreets, Glassworks, The Main Street Rag, Sky Island Journal and One Sentence Poems. Pending publication in SWWIM Every Day, the Bay to Ocean Journal, and Eunoia Review. She was longlisted for the 2023 Palette Poetry Rising Poet Prize and serves as an assistant poetry editor for Narrative Magazine. She is currently working on her first manuscript of poems.

			

	


			
				


	

		
The Family I Just Met by Marianne Szlyk
	

				

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The Family I Just Met


Having seen only old country portraits

in the parlor, graduation pictures

without smiles, hectic-colored prints of saints

and martyrs, eyes rolling, hands clasped in prayer,


I thought that Dad’s side of the family

was grim. They came from behind the Curtain,

iron folds falling, about to slam shut.

Left behind, Dad’s uncle Alex was shot.


In the boxes of snapshots to unpack,

I found my grandfather’s laughter. He sat

in his low armchair, roaring at the show

Mom’s card-playing, movie-going folks loved.


It was Christmas. The war was long over.

He didn’t have to open his market,

butcher meat still in short supply, sweep floors

until you could have eaten off of them.


He could sit by the radio and snort

at the show my friends’ families in the Bronx

loved, laugh at the snapshots his children took:

Bobby throwing snowballs, my dad leaning,


taking a smoke break, dark sunglasses on,

Bobby a cowboy on the horsehair couch

while his sister Irene rolls her eyes, smokes,

and Rita sits close to Henry, her beau,


the young Polish man just home from the war.


*


Marianne Szlyk is a professor at Montgomery College. Her poems have appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Verse-Virtual, Green Elephant, and ONE ART. Her fiction has appeared in Mad Swirl, Impspired, and Storyteller Poetry Review. Her books Why We Never Visited the Elms, On the Other Side of the Window, and I Dream of Empathy are available from Amazon and Bookshop. She and her husband, the writer Ethan Goffman, live with their black cat Tyler who likes to hang out with them while they write.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Highland Boulevard by Bruce Morton
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 1 Comment					

				

		
Highland Boulevard


I do not know if it was conceived as a grand design

Or the work of someone who had an appreciation

For metaphor and science, or who had just a sense

Of humor, because it is kind of funny in its naturally

Morbid way. Down the boulevard it is all progression

As gravity and life conflate, each a force doing what

It does. Sometimes you cannot help but be struck

By how things are laid out, a plot set to play out.

Be it plan or coincidence, it is genius nevertheless.

Not to mention logical in its simple elegance.

You make your way to the top of the hill,

Where the water tank looms large, a sentinel,

A monument to quench the thirst of affluence,

A resource that greedily absorbs the landscape,

Which from there flows down hill, sloping to

Main Street and the hum and drum of our daily

Life. It unfolds in order, as if by some divine

Invention, or intervention. Here, newly built, are

The upscale homes for senior citizens,

Then the apartments for those who desire

And can afford independent living nestled close

Up against the building for assisted living—as if

Anyone has ever lived unassisted. Next there

Are the offices that house the doctors, all specialties

Stacked for diagnosis and prognosis, each enjambed

To the hospital with its red-roofed emergency room,

A veritable medical smorgasbord. It is a complex

Thing this inevitable slide down the boulevard,

Nature at work, no control to the roll—such is

The nature of it. Until we must cross over

The street to the mortuary-crematorium, funereal

With its black smoke rising above its black hearse,

A dark cloud polluting our small universe.

Conveniently, we need only drive back across

The boulevard to Sunset Hills Cemetery, a misnomer

Because it is located at the east end of town.

Perhaps in consideration of reincarnation?

Situated between mortuary and cemetery is

A pre-school, its children loud with play,

A seeming incongruence. We sometimes see them

Cheerfully queued, plodding on the sidewalk

Up the boulevard, blissfully defying gravity.


*


Bruce Morton divides his time between Montana and Arizona. He is the author of two poetry collections: Planet Mort (2024) and Simple Arithmetic & Other Artifices (2014). His poems have appeared in numerous online and print venues. He was formerly dean at the Montana State University library.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Rattlesnakes by Sarah Mackey Kirby
	

				

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Rattlesnakes


The young folk came from Nashville,

from the Bronx, and Carolinas.

To the land of rattlesnakes,

of cotton,

of wildflowers,

and tomato sandwich picnics.

To the land of burning crosses. Lynchings.

Crickets playing Mississippi blues.


The 1960s Delta. And my dad,

raised in a Brooklyn housing project,

nervous, poor, but proud,

felt a calling to Atlanta.

Then to Freedom Summer’s promise.

Hattiesburg, where mosquitos

were never short on blood.


They were young women. Young men.

Black and white together,

filled with fear and courage.

In cars. On buses. Walking miles

to sign folk up to vote.

My dad was beaten in his back

with a police baton in Jackson.

Many times arrested.

Chased by the Klan

one magnolia afternoon.


They were workers.

They were students.

Singing songs

of freedom,

praying grace

would rise up

from the clay.


He’s dead now.

Like so many of the rest.

I think about him as a boy,

listening. Ear to his transistor.

Rooting on Pee Wee Reese

and Jackie Robinson.

Hopeful the Dodgers would

take the Series in ’55.


I think about the hissing

nine years later.

Rattlesnakes warning danger

if he stepped foot

where he didn’t belong.

The cypress and pecan trees.

The grasses and the stars.

History’s grit turned into songs

that if not sung and sung,

will lay untold and dormant.

Stuck like old truck tires

in the Mississippi mud.


*


Sarah Mackey Kirby is the daughter of Ira Grupper. Her father was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and lifelong civil rights, disability rights, and labor rights activist who passed away July 23, 2024. Like her dad, she loves to write. She hopes this poem honors him. And all the people who walked through this hell to effect change.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Cora Schipa
	

				

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Hotel Room


The granite is cold on my bare feet the way expensive things are,

crystal heirlooms and heavy pens,

probably lugged here from Venice by a hundred calloused hands

and fitted snugly amongst its ancient sister slabs

seven stories above a strange buzzing earth

of dry-cleaned suits and damp cardboard,

days two-sided as coins rattling in old Tupperware.


Maybe because I’ve just eaten diver scallops

butter-drowned in their own shells

and gulped my rent’s worth of bubbly,

its spilled residue sticky down my throat and chest like jewels,

the night swells with that precise joy of the lavish,

that spoiled, unsatiated joy, the kind that always wants more.

Could this be life? This could be life.

I lean close to the hard floor

in a dress he bought me liquid as gin,

knees purple-cold, churning bruises,

palms forming auras of heat,

and stare into the tiny stone-veins

until they wiggle. How old are you? I ask.

How much have you seen? Who

has touched you?


And at the same time I am a child in the grass

with plaid cutoffs and a body

that hasn’t yet learned how to numb itself,

digging a hole in the sweet earth and hovering

my sunburned face above it, breathing in,

not wanting anything more than to inhale that alive smell

in the balmy elbow of a too-long Southern summer day.


The toilet flushes.

His gravity enters, stiffens the air-conditioned room.

When he sees me he laughs,

always half-jovial, half-like finding a dog chasing its tail,

asking, What on earth are you doing?

and I look at the pressed bed skirt,

the claw-foot chair in the corner,

the wide wide windows opening to a starless night,

and my body on its hands and knees

and I tell him

I don’t know, looking up at him,

I don’t know.


*


Heirlooms


I imagine my grandmother

bound by paper-bag lunches

and unreciprocated love,

watching divorce shimmer

like heat in the distance,


tucked away

in a Pacific-ocean

house made of glass,

china bright as mirrors,

laundry rolling endlessly,

lacquered wood, kitten heels,

whiskey in the linen closet,

candle-lit dining table.


Sometimes I think I remember her,

the cool sharpness of her rings,

the quiet sounds they made as she

fit a bottle between my gums.


I wonder about her, if she ever sat still enough

to feel the earth’s plates moving,

slow and achingly wise, if she felt

gravity

like that, so much it hurts.

I wonder if she ever felt like a forest, burning

its rot to survive.


I know her heart, I have

it, arrhythmic, rolling

over itself like

going under a wave too late, thrashing against

the sand, dizzy, bottom-up;

it’s congenital, they say,

and I think of heirloom pain,

of women tethered down to what they love most

of alcoholism and second chances

and curses and genes and the promises

our bodies make

but cannot keep.


In a photograph of us—

suspended in that in-between space before

anything happens,

my tiny cheek pressed against hers,

the two of us utterly unknowing—

she’d been sober for 6 months.

I turn it over.

The cursive reads “first sleepover”

as if there would be more.

I feel her salt

stuck to my face.


*


Originally from the West Coast, Cora Schipa is a poet and writer now residing in the marshland of Charleston, South Carolina, where she holds degrees in creative writing and sociology from the College of Charleston. She works as a creative writing mentor and tutor for girls and gender-expansive youth, and plans to continue her literary career at an MFA program in the coming years.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Elegy for Dewey Stone by Bonnie Proudfoot
	

				

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Elegy for Dewey Stone


Last May, Dewey died from diabetes after

a slide into dementia, not fully, just enough

to lose nouns, verbs, to ache with the loss.

Did I mention his name was not really Dewey?

That once, hitchhiking from Buffalo to Woodstock,

someone named Louie picked him up, and

in the car was another guy named Hughie.

“I’m Dewey,” he said, and then he was. We

rolled joints on album jackets, listened to Santana

and watched cartoons. He sang, “I got a black

magic marker.” Did I mention that once when he

was away, while I was watching his husky, she

darted across the road into an oncoming car.

I held her broken body, watched her blue eyes

go blank. Didn’t Roadrunner take a magic marker

out of his invisible pocket and draw a tunnel

into a mountain? Is that where the dog is?

Are they together, with their shining blue eyes?

Does he still stop on the sidewalk every time

a girl says, “Beautiful dog.” Does he say, “yes,

I know. Her name is Yahweh.” I still listen to Santana.

If I had a black magic marker, I could block out

a portal through time and gravity, someplace between

11:30 and midnight. He called from the hospital.

“It’s fucked up,” Dewey said. “I cry a little every day.”

I never asked whether he forgave me for killing

his dog. I never wanted to hear him say he did.

Did I mention how much we used to laugh?


*


Bonnie Proudfoot’s fiction, poetry, reviews, and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies. Her novel, Goshen Road (Swallow 2020) received WCONA’s Book of the Year and was long-listed for the PEN/ Hemingway. Her poetry chapbook, Household Gods, can be found on Sheila-Na-Gig editions, along with a forthcoming book of short stories, Camp Probable. She resides in Athens, Ohio. bonnieproudfootblog.wordpress.com/

			

	


			
				


	

		
Clavicles by Susanna Stephens
	

				

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Clavicles


I knew two children

who fractured their collarbones.


One tried to fly

like a scene from E.T.


The other was on skis

and more like Steve-O


from Jackass.

Both recall seasons of naked


quiet, not the vibrant cackling

with chums,


but the blankness that comes

when time loses


shape. The curtains

drawn all afternoon.


Crisps and apple

juice on the nightstand.


Clavicles come in pairs,

one boy explained.


Like flesh and what

rattles inside.


When one breaks,

the other collapses too.


*


Susanna Stephens, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst and poet living in Brooklyn, NY. Her work is published in Rust & Moth, Red Eft Review, Eunoia Review, ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action, and DIVISION/Review. In addition to writing, she maintains a private practice in Manhattan.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Shoveling by Jill Moses
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 3 Comments					

				

		
Shoveling


What is this life anyway

but an accumulation

of sitting in a kitchen

with a china cup of tea

a small breeze moving

the white gauze curtain

you barely notice or remember

or an overheard conversation

where voices get louder

and someone’s feelings get hurt

over soup and red applesauce.

Perhaps you were reading

“The Heart is a Lonely Hunter”

overlooking the golf course

or perhaps it was a card game,

11-card gin with a plate of change

on top of a bowl

or a stripe of sunlight

on the formica

where you sit in the afternoon

with an aunt or an uncle

eating cheese bread

and you learn a card trick

or a few words of Yiddish.

Perhaps you see the black and white photograph

on the matching end tables

that resemble large encyclopedias on their side

or the photograph appears later in a shoebox

perhaps when you watch your cousin

put on her makeup

or during a funeral

as you’re shoveling dirt

on top of the casket

not doing it properly

trying not to think about

how deep the grave goes

how grave it is

to be alive

to be the archive

of the generation

speeding down the tracks

its final train car

disappearing into the distance.


*


Jill Moses earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon, where she received the Graduate Award in Poetry. Other awards include the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, and honorable mentions through the Lane Literary Guild, the Chester H. Jones National Poetry Competition, and the San Diego Book Award for Best Unpublished Poetry Chapbook. She is currently the assistant director of the first-year writing program in the Department of English and Philosophy at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Young Lady Auto Mechanics 1927 by M. Nasorri Pavone
	

				

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Young Lady Auto Mechanics 1927


        From a vintage photo of high school girls in shop class


Were we brazen or that curious?

We were certainly teased

for putting our hands at risk.


Anyone with a beef about it

blamed the school for our folly.

But what if we didn’t grow out


of our interests? We guessed why

we had to read The Scarlet Letter.

We learned what was expected.


Some killjoy compared us to Eve

with the snake rolling out

an auto-size apple.


From where you sit we look

as united as an all-girl garage band

posing for an album cover,


our blunt bobs, our Mary Janes

beneath our rolled up cover-all cuffs.

The boys called us degenerates.


So? What we’ll never know is

how you came to love us in a way

we’ll never get to share.


At left there’s me, Grace Hurd. That’s

Evelyn Harrison, Corinna DiGiulian,

and Grace Wagner under the car


at Central High in Washington D.C.

We weren’t kidding. We got in there,

got greasy, made that engine sing.


*


M. Nasorri Pavone’s poetry has appeared in River Styx, One, b o d y, Sycamore Review, New Letters, The Cortland Review, The Citron Review, Innisfree, Rhino, DMQ Review, Pirene’s Fountain, I-70 Review, 86 Logic, and others. She’s been anthologized in Beyond the Lyric Moment (Tebot Bach, 2014), and has been nominated several times for both Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Who Shot Mr. Moonlight by CL Bledsoe
	

				

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Who Shot Mr. Moonlight

          after a song by Bauhaus


Someone shoot nostalgia

in the back so I can get some sleep.

Its chattering never stops.

A constant comparison that never

existed. The future is coming

and I can’t find my pants. I’m hiding

in the bushes while all the cars go by.

Families walk past while I sit

and read. It’s exhausting, all this dying.

But better days will surely come.

I just have to try harder.

Consider the mundaneness of clocks;

I can’t turn my eyes away. We’re

all looking for something nobler. Kierkegaard

said we settle for the level of despair

we can tolerate. Wouldn’t that be nice?

To turn off the struggle and snuggle in.

The blind door in the background

of the soul, behind which there is nothing

except cheesecake. It’s better

than telling strangers about your backsplash.

I was so young, then. Fat and soft. I still am.

Watch me roll down this hill. Watch me run.


*


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 If You Love Me, You’ll Kill Eric Pelkey and The Devil and Ricky Dan. Bledsoe lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Ekphrastic Poetry: A Meeting of Art and Words — A Workshop with Ellen Rowland
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 9 Comments					

				

		

Ekphrastic Poetry: A Meeting of Art and Words





Instructor: Ellen Rowland





Wednesday, November 6, 10:00am (Eastern)





Length: 2 hours 





Price: $25 (payment options)





Note: Participants capped at 15 for this workshop.





Workshop Description:       





Ekphrastic poetry is a written response to a work of art— a painting, drawing, photograph, sculpture or other type of rendering. Since the age of Homer, poets have devised various ways to interact with art, including analyzing the work, exploring symbolic meanings, inventing stories, or even creating dialog and dramatic scenes. The artwork often leads the poet to new insights and surprising discoveries. 





In the first half of this two-hour workshop, we’ll go over the history of Ekphrastic poetry, discuss different approaches to and examples of ekphrastic works. Then, we’ll use our dedicated writing time to create a draft poem inspired by one of three different images provided.





Attendees are invited and encouraged to engage, discuss and share their poems with the group, although this is not mandatory. This workshop is limited to 15 participants so that everyone has a chance to share their work in a safe and intimate space.





Limited to 15 participants





About The Workshop Leader:





Ellen Rowland is a writer and editor who leads small, generative poetry workshops on craft and form. She is the author of two collections of haiku, 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 poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and in several anthologies, most recently The Wonder of Small Things, edited by James Crews and Facing Goodbye by The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press.Her debut collection of full-length poems, No Small Thing, was published by Fernwood Press in 2023. Her poem within, “When the World Was Whole,” was nominated for Best of Net by Braided Way Magazine. She lives off the grid with her family on an island in Greece. Connect with her on Instagram and Facebook






			

	


			
				


	

		
THE ONLY DRESS YOU’LL EVER NEED by Ronda Piszk Broatch
	

				

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THE ONLY DRESS YOU’LL EVER NEED


Turn to sideview, it takes your breath away. It swings.

That the narrative your internal critic weaves begins


to fade is no illusion. This dress drips blue deep notes.

Wrinkles time. Pour your body like hot wax into its


merciful stitches. This shift thistles any suitcase, loads

a pack like thunder, takes to task the naysayers, owns it.


Icicle shards from every cliff, this is not your mama’s frock,

solid and pocketful. It shocks. Slips like the membrane you


were born in, nurtures your most internal desires. Full on

juicy, this gown bleeds pomegranate, cherry and plum.


Where sun and ocean horizon, this skintight caress of a

dress throws light-coins on the water at your feet. Go on,


sonnet with random abandon! Queen in it! This robe rocks

atomic, pulses glory in the most quantum way.


*


Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Chaos Theory for Beginners (MoonPath Press, 2023), finalist for the Sally Albiso Prize, and Lake of Fallen Constellations, (MoonPath Press). She is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant. Ronda’s journal publications include Greensboro Review, Blackbird, Sycamore Review, Missouri Review, Palette Poetry, Moon City Review, and NPR News / KUOW’s All Things Considered. She is a graduate student working toward her MFA at Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Life Span by Ann E. Michael
	

				

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Life Span


Isn’t it a fine strange thing
how little information we can glean
about our future surely-numbered days?
How many snowfalls? How many
restless nights, or long drives
to how many friends’ homes?
Is it possible to count
the scores of leaves that fell
in each of the witnessed autumns?
Can these be measured: the light
sun shower that startles midday,
fox leaping like a lamb in the meadow,
someone’s recording of Rigoletto
distantly woven into the drone
of a diesel engine?


We are born and find that we live
in a world of water-bears and
wolverines, tire irons and railroad
tracks, shale, gas, stem cells,
sycamore trees. We categorize.
We kiss. We weather our own climate,
mark out our joys. We span everything
resembling a ravine, pleased with our
ingenuity. And then comes death,
which, like the hermit thrush,
has whistled all along, half-hidden,
as though it knew a fine strange thing.


*


Ann E. Michael lives in eastern Pennsylvania. Her latest poetry collection is Abundance/Diminishment. Her book The Red Queen Hypothesis won the 2022 Prairie State Poetry Prize; she’s the author of Water-Rites (2012) and six chapbooks. She is a hospice volunteer, writing tutor, and chronicler of her own backyard who maintains a long-running blog at https://annemichael.blog/


 





			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Katie Hartsock
	

				

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Etiologies and Other Satisfactions


Many years ago, a travelling circus—

my friend will remark, passing

         a certain hill in his flat city—


performed in this park, and an elephant,

Cricket, died. Instead of a grave, they piled earth

         around her, and soon the grass


got mown, soon children climbed toward the sky.

An elephant named Cricket! My friend and his son

         imagine as if remembering her.


What’s true: the parks commission built a hill

for sledding next to the cricket field.

         What would you rather have—


a graph to track how Cricket Hill acquired

its origin story, so that my friend grew up

         believing it, or, his belief?


A beast, a burial, a beloved elevation—

and yet some would choose the curse of correction.

         In the prologue to The Last Crusade,


we meet a boy still unafraid of snakes; a few scenes

later, he’s running the roofs of a steaming circus train

         and falls through a hatch into a crate


unlidded, unlikely, full of writhing scales

that girt the horror on his face like Scylla’s

         first glimpse of dogs barking below her waist.


A few scenes after that, he gets his hat.

Meanwhile, his father works at a desk,

         his back to the world as he translates it.


Old man not yet so old, you’re like one who knows

each moment suffers for another—

         one day your boy will admire


how you locked your heart and time

up tight. How long ago you had to start

         to get this ending right.


*


Thrones


My son picks up the roll of white

paper tape I’ve kept out

for my bandage. What is this?

Oh, it’s nothing—


so close to bedtime, everything

feels like nothing. He hears the dismissal.

His perfect shoulders grow like he’s

an offended god,


an imbroglio of a superhero

about to reveal his angered self,

aggrandized in size and strength

just by breathing.


At the preschool Christmas concert tonight,

his teacher told the story, with Herod

so angry, so angry—Can you make

your best angry face?


he asked the dozens of kids arranged

on risers, who glowered, showed their teeth,

and snarled. And we all laughed at our children

mimicking Herod.


My son about to brush his teeth

holds the roll of tape. WHAT IS THIS?

he demands, from his far-off crystal fortress,

his secret cave.


One of my jobs is to define;

not to mimic, not to mock.

Definition is not mockery

except those moments,


in spacious chambers warm with people,

when mockery unmakes, dethrones

the terrible. When it tells terror,

You are nothing.


*


Katie Hartsock’s second poetry collection, Wolf Trees (Able Muse Press), was listed as one of Kirkus Review’s Best Indie Books of 2023. Her work has recently appeared in the Threepenny Review, Plume, The New Criterion, Tupelo Quarterly, Image, Literary Matters, and elsewhere. She teaches at Oakland University in Michigan.

			

	


			
				


	

		
~ ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of September 2024 ~
	

				

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~ ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of September 2024 ~





    

  1. Betsy Mars
    2. 




  2. Robbi Nester
    3. 




  3. George Franklin
    4. 




  4. Linda Blaskey
    5. 




  5. Terri Kirby Erickson
    6. 




  6. Le Hinton
    7. 




  7. Liz Marlow
    8. 




  8. Kim Addonizio
    9. 




  9. Sue Ellen Thompson
    10. 




  10. Michelle Meyer
    11. 


			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Andrea Potos
	

				

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MY MOTHER’S NAME


Two days before the last, after

the seizure had rearranged

my mother’s bearings,

I sat beside her while

the young dark-haired nurse

fluffed her pillow, measured her pulse,

offered to apply

my mother’s signature lipstick,

the Revlon Hot Coral we both loved.

I listened as the nurse asked my mother

to say her name out loud,

and in a gravelly almost-whisper my mother

chose Penny Kosmos—her maiden name

spoken so readily as if she were already

winding back to her beginnings

without us, before me

or my sister, before my father,

back to her girlhood

even to the origin of space

and time, of a world

that so loved her in it.


*


FOR MY COLLEGE BOYFRIEND KILLED IN A PRIVATE PLANE CRASH AT AGE TWENTY-NINE


I see you tall and handsome still,

chestnut hair cut extra short

for your Navy duties those last years.

From the photo you sent me, I noted

a hairline receding just a little;

I like to think you’d eventually be balding

as your tall, professorial father was bald.

I like to think of you again, as my own still-long hair

thins and loses some dark sheen; I like to think of you

as one of us now—some added weight around the middle

perhaps, lines around the eyes and the mouth that maps

a generous life—an older man who once loved so well

an insecure girl-woman of nineteen whose long dark hair

whirled delightfully in the air while you drove her around the city

in your dashing red convertible.


*


Andrea Potos is the author of seven full-length poetry collections, most recently Her Joy Becomes from Fernwood Press and Marrow of Summer from Kelsay Books. A new collection from Fernwood entitled Belonging Songs will be published in 2025. New poems are forthcoming in Women Artists’ Datebook 2025, The Healing Muse, Braided Way, Delta Poetry Review, Midwest Quarterly, and the Paterson Literary Review.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Mary Lou Buschi
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 4 Comments					

				

		
Fire


            After Marianne Moore


Burned you didn’t it, my mother used to say.

Nowhere near a stove or flame but the accusation

hung there, in the air like refraction waves.

Burned you, you who should have known better.

You who stuffed a short skirt, two panties

in your purse after tracing Kit Fever, not your name

on a frequent flyer ticket. You who barely flew – came

the minute he said so.

No phone, no media, no way to track

the Landcruiser bouncing

over the Grand Tetons. Burned you.

Once. Twice. Shame on you.

Love, was it? Girl alone on a barstool at the Gaslight Saloon.

A dog with three legs curled under the rungs.


*


To the Ninth Grade Girl Crying in the Nurse’s Office During Lunch


You will be invisible in your 50s. Cheese will always be delicious. One day you will drive past a row of trees and name them: Sumac, Walnut, Tulip, and know which ones are invasive. You will become concerned with all things invasive as you stare out the window at a yard too large for your diminishing energy. People will be less interesting, but you will love more of them than you ever thought you could, deeply, finding flaws that enact that velvet kind of love that softens your eyes and warms the curves of your ears. Let–it–go. All of it. Not much matters. Not the stop sign you hit during your driving test. Not the Great Lash you lifted in middle school, or the date you ditched at Lucky Strike. Not the way you organize your closet by color, bookshelves by imagined dinner parties. It all gets left behind for someone to sort. It may be an unassuming couple that throws what you held dear into a rented dumpster. Dear Ninth Grade Girl, you will try to step off this world many times. Many times, I hope you fail.


*


Mary Lou Buschi (she/her) is the author of 3 chapbooks and 3 full length poetry collections. Her 3rd book, BLUE PHYSICS was published in February 2024. (Lily Poetry Review books). PADDOCK, her second book was also published by (LPR). Her poems have appeared in literary journals such as Ploughshares, Glacier, Willow Springs, On the Seawall, among many others. Mary Lou is a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and holds an MS in Urban Education from Mercy University. Currently, she is a special education teacher working with students on the spectrum in the Bronx.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Ode to My Spine by Valerie Bacharach
	

				

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Ode to My Spine


Vertebrae, pale as winter sun, fixed in place

by screws tiny as a newborn’s fingernail.

Trace its path on the x-ray—

a trail alive with reconnecting protons and electrons.

When I sit in silence, I can hear

the swift flow of blood,

ligaments with their quiet song.

Nerves freed from compression flare

down my leg like last night’s lightning.

Muscles speak again in the body’s code—

contract and release, release and contract.

My spine’s aging column holds me

erect as one foot steps forward,

hovers in space above sidewalk,

breath held tight in lungs, my future a tenuous thing.


*


Valerie Bacharach is a proud member of Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops. Her book, Last Glimpse, will be published by Broadstone Books. Her chapbook After/Life will be published by Finishing Line Press. Her poem Birthday Portrait, Son, published by the Ilanot Review, was selected for inclusion in 2023 Best Small Fictions. She has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and one Best of the Net.

			

	


			
				


	

		
The Giveaway by Gloria Heffernan
	

				

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The Giveaway


Some people call it downsizing.

Barbara simply calls it the next step

as she lightens the load she will carry

to the assisted living community

down the road from her home of thirty years.


She extends an invitation to loved ones

to come and choose items

from the living gallery she has curated

throughout her eighty-three years.


She gives me a quilt she made by hand.

To her daughter, the collection

of blown glass paperweights collected

with Charlie during their three-decade marriage.

To her brother, all the tools and gardening supplies

used for a lifetime of spring plantings,

and their mom’s mixing bowl that he cherishes

even though he never bakes.


Every gift comes wrapped in a story,

and as they are carried out to various cars,

she smiles and nods approval,

each item a liberation.


*


Gloria Heffernan’s Exploring Poetry of Presence (Back Porch Productions) won the 2021 CNY Book Award for Nonfiction. She received the 2022 Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Prize. Gloria is the author of the collections Peregrinatio: Poems for Antarctica (Kelsay Books), and What the Gratitude List Said to the Bucket List, (New York Quarterly Books). Her forthcoming book Fused will be published by Shanti Arts Books in 2025. Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including Poetry of Presence (vol. 2). To learn more, visit: gloriaheffernan.wordpress.com.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Michael J. LaFrancis
	

				

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Assisted Living


Nan’s mother told her

she would not die from rust;


rather, she will pass away

when her life is all used up.


Her mother would live on

in her own home until she fell


out of it at ninety-three,

more than twenty years later.


Nan always said advice has to fit

the stage of life you are living in. Now


a nonagenarian herself, these words

are inspiring her. Nan has taken up


oil painting, bead making, praying on

rosary beads, calling neighbors by name.


After her husband of sixty-two years

gave up his spirit, she went to the cafeteria


at breakfast; the whole room came over

to extend condolences. Her heart heard


God’s promise—my house has many rooms,

I will prepare a place for you.


*


Cathedrals


We are centered,

in an ancient ecosystem,

of towering columns and spires

that seem to open heaven’s gate.


They are wearing a course red bark,

that can be one to two feet thick,

protecting their heartwood from fire,

Lucifer’s or anyone else’s.


They are fulfilling their promise,

with a quiet reverence, like apostles.

Their dark green and white ceilings

filter light, like stained glass windows.


Their parish is a connected community,

families surrounding proud parents;

some that have passed away.

Each is a resurrection from ashes and soot.


*


Michael J. LaFrancis is a trusted advisor, advocate, author and connector supporting individuals, groups and organizations aligning purpose and capabilities in service of their highest ideals. Writing poetry is a contemplative practice providing him with insight and inspiration for living a creative life. His poems are appearing in The City Key, Mocking Owl and Amethyst Review in the coming months.


LaFrancis’ hobbies include landscape gardening, nature walks, collecting fine art and writing. He and his partner Sharon are co-authors of their autobiography: Our Wonderful Life. They have two sons and have recently been promoted to being grandparents.


@michaeljlafrancis on Instagram

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Magda Andrews-Hoke
	

				

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Fig


Life is a crystal fig

dropped

from a great height.


It’s not

that it might break,

but will.


Inevitably,

it glitters

in the plummeting.


* 


At the Walnut Lane Bridge


Over the bridge, the sun set

in a peach perfume.

Standing by the railing,

I peered into the creek below

and watched the dark

increase by small stitches

of indigo. What I hoped

to find there, I did not find.

And in that searching,

I was blind

to what was there. But

peace, but patience, waiting

stillness, have brought silence

to this qualm. And in its place

a subtle hymn, of softer colors

than the scene.


*


Magda Andrews-Hoke lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she works at the Kelly Writers House. She studied Linguistics and English at Yale University and was a 2019 recipient of the Frederick Mortimer Clapp Fellowship for poetry. Her poems can be found in Commonweal Magazine, Philadelphia Stories, and elsewhere.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Terri Kirby Erickson
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 8 Comments					

				

		
Talking to Fake Keith Richards on Facebook Messenger


First off, he called me Pretty Face, which most of us,

even grown women with PhD’s and adult acne (neither

of which I have, by the way) want to hear. I mean, I

knew it wasn’t him and possibly even a teenage girl


in Russia or China, but I went along with it because

I liked imagining that I, out of millions of slavering

Stones fans, somehow got Keith Richards’ attention

on social media, so much so that he (sticking to male


pronouns) wanted me to switch to a more private app,

which was a red flag, for sure, and I wasn’t about to

do it. Still, he kept the ruse going, often addressing me


as Dear like an elderly lady chatting with her favorite

nephew—not as enticing as Pretty Face, I have to say.

If I were his partner in conning women on the internet,

I’d tell him to drop the Dear and keep going with the


Pretty Face stuff or similar words of seduction. I spent

maybe ten minutes on this exchange, enough to know

it was a real person, at least, who asked questions like

Why did you become a poet? and not the numbers of


my bank account or my favorite position, and I don’t

mean politically. It ended with him saying he couldn’t

take a chance on talking to people with fake profiles

which is why he wanted to shift to a more confidential


way to communicate. So, I said Thanks for making such

great music as if he were Keith Richards and not some

unreasonable facsimile and signed off, at which point


he disappeared like a stone tossed into a river—on to

a more vulnerable mark, I guess. Then my handsome

ex-rockstar husband, a drummer (to whom a fan once

asked, between sets, to squeeze sweat from his t-shirt


into a jar) and I went to bed sort of laughing about the

whole fake Keith Richards episode. But we were sad,

too, for other pretty faces out there who would fall for

it because even I, who knew better, wanted to believe.


*


Dish Towel


One of my parents’ dish towels

hangs on the handle of our stove.


It is aqua-blue, covered with red

and yellow poppies. How many of


their dishes this towel must have

buffed, plus silverware, glasses,


cookpots and pans. For decades

Mom washed them and Dad did


the drying. But after he died, she

stood alone at their sink, letting


the water grow cold—soap suds

like glaciers slipping into the sea.


Six months a widow and she, too,

was gone, leaving a lone bowl in


the drainer, a single spoon, a fresh

dish towel draped just so on a ring.


*


Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven full-length collections of poetry, including her latest collection, Night Talks: New & Selected Poems (Press 53), which was a finalist for poetry in the International Book Awards. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of literary journals, anthologies, magazines, and newspapers, including “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, JAMA, Poetry Foundation, Rattle, Sport Literate, The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and many more. Among her numerous awards are the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Nautilus Silver Book Award, Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize, and the Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize. She lives in North Carolina.

			

	


			
				


	

		
An Anniversary Poem from Far Away by Keith Taylor
	

				

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An Anniversary Poem from Far Away


I know people who ache

to be away from home,

gone to far places, who

feel alive only if climbing

the walls at Rhodes

or watching puffins fly

off the islands in Maine.


But you, my love, have given

life a flavor that stays

with me when I travel

to Greece or Maine, that makes

me long for our kitchen

where I could make coffee

or wash yesterday’s dishes.


*


Keith Taylor has published poems in such places as Hanging Loose, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, and many others. He published two books in 2024: All the Time You Want: Selected Poems with Dzanc Books; and What Can the Matter Be with Wayne State University Press.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Three Poems by Derek Thomas Dew
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 1 Comment					

				

		
The Promise of Variety


This is the hour when nothing makes us happy.

Some of us are weightless, some of us are struggling

with forms of debt, some are sure that they’ll crumple

into a ball on the ground if they leave the restaurant

and face the day, others are in the alley collecting cans.

Everyone seems to be going about in their own way,

but there’s a pebble in every shoe, a clanging tension

the neck shares with the hands, a sense of missing the mark,

a feeling that the white plastic patio chair would shatter

if one of us tried to sit down in it, but that the shattering

would reveal nothing to us, except maybe that the promise

of variety was a lie. Is this really part of a day? Any day?

This is the hour when the prospect of rescue sets us

against each other, as there’s always been an unachievable balance,

a symmetry we can’t join, some ideal born when we close our eyes

and listen patiently for the whisper that never finds us,

the one which we would have no idea

how to answer anyway.


*


Paid For


One day the idea of ourselves came through the faded gold

pollen dotting the pines, through the empty french fry boxes

and crumpled up burger wrappers on the floor of the parked cars,

it came over the tar shingled roofs and into the barrel fires

at the bicycle chop shop deep down the alley, and finally, it hit us.

We could no longer remain in our story, in its victorious coming from

and going to emptiness, so now in its wake we have a cheek resting

against a hand, sun on the face, and we try to make it work, make it enough,

but instead of what might have been—enough to pay rent, enough

for a bus pass—we have the idea of ourselves, which only seems

to suggest that endurance is a haunting, one without sensation;

we’re prompted to search for a building in the center of the buildings

which look so close to rotting they’ve become a miracle of presence,

indivisible in mood and resolve, and we try to model our faces

that way in the windows, now in a twitch in vain, scared, tired,

and we stare at the outside, sit and stare, as though everything,

everything out there were already bought and paid for.


*


The Seven-Year-Old


Nobody else was there

Dark under summer palm

Streetlight slanting in

The window spread me

Far across the room

Sirens in the distance

My hands began to slip

Down along the curtains

Just to part the yellow

Then to prop it open

With an old ashtray

So I could see the street

Denying the wind

I wandered to the room

Where a cardboard dresser

Shouldered a small tv

Faux-wood & thick glass

With a twist of the knob

Shocked into high bronze

Twitched up channel ninety

The screen just mixed colors

But the moans came through

Just fine they overlapped

Bright then split again

I stopped on that channel

& I knew that sound

How it retreated fast

Into itself from the walls

But had I seen the image

Assembled on the screen

Seen who was doing what

I would have known

What had happened to me

I would have guessed

My place in the picture

I am the one enacting

My own definition

Halfway to becoming

Everybody else


*


Derek Thomas Dew (he/she/they) is a neurodivergent, non-binary poet currently earning an MFA in poetry. Derek’s debut poetry collection “Riddle Field” received the 2019 Test Site Poetry Prize from the Black Mountain Institute/University of Nevada. Derek’s poems have appeared in a number of anthologies, and have been published in a variety of journals, including Interim, Twyckenham Notes, The Maynard, The Curator, Two Hawks Quarterly, Ocean State Review, and Cathexis Northwest Press.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Four Poems by J.R. Solonche
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 3 Comments					

				

		
PIN OAK


The tree man came to do tree work.

You should cut down that dead pin oak, he said.

Why? I said.

It’s dead. It could fall in the first big storm, he said.

How long has it been dead? I said.

Hard to say. When did it leaf out last? he said.

I’m not sure. Two or three years ago maybe, I said.

You should get rid of it, he said.

What’s the proper period of mourning for a dead pin oak? I said.

I never heard of a proper period of mourning for a tree, he said.

Me neither, but I’m starting it. Four years for a pin oak, I said.


*


MIRROR


I saw an old mirror

at the side of the road

to be picked up with

the trash. I stopped to

look at myself in it,

but it was very old and

cracked and missing

most of the silver backing,

so it was more of a window

than a mirror, a window

looking out at a wall

looking back at me.

I should have taken it home.

It’s the perfect mirror for

me, old man that I am.


*


CANCER


My friend, Yvonne, is a poet.

She has cancer, so she’s been

writing “cancer poems.” They

are very, very good poems.

They have been published in

The Hudson Review and JAMA.

Congratulations, I said. Please

don’t say that. I wish I didn’t

have to write them, she said.

I understand, but you do, and

you did because you must,

I said. Still, I wish it weren’t such

a must when there is so much

else to write about, she said.

You do write about so much else,

I said. Yes, but it all smells of chemo,

she said. Even the roses, even them.


*


BARREN ROAD


I have a friend who lives

on Barren Road. It’s a

shame he’s not a poet.

“It’s a shame you’re not

a poet,” I said. “Why’s

that?” he said. “Because

you live on Barren Road,”

I said. “So that’s why it’s

a shame I’m not a poet?”

he said. “Yeah. Consider

the irony,” I said. “I do.

I’ve been considering it

all the time since it really

was barren,” he said. “I’m

surprised at you. This is

the first time you said it’s

a shame I’m not a poet.

Well, I think it’s a shame

you are. A damn shame.

What a waste of a mind,”

he said. I understand.

He’s a sociologist.


*


Nominated for the National Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of 38 books of poetry and coauthor of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Three Poems by Cam McGlynn
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 3 Comments					

				

		
My Universe Runs out of Stars


This Equation Shows That the Universe Will Run out of Stars

         (Scientific American, July 11, 2024)


We sit in the middle

of a cosmic afternoon,

red clouds headed

towards evening.

One day soon, you

will let the neighbors’ dog

out to play and forget

to put her away. We’ll walk

the neighborhood, hand

in hand, as you try

to call her home,

without remembering

her name.

Here, in the red-shifted past,

can we predict

which future day

will be the last one

a star was formed?

What formula will show

the day

your last star shone?


*


Total Obscuring of One Celestial Body by Another


         to my daughter


I wouldn’t write poems about the eclipse.

What can I say that hasn’t been said?

My hand’s curled around your small fingertips?


“Biblically awesome” might come from my lips

but only defined like “I’m trembling in dread.”

I shouldn’t write poems about the eclipse.


The dusk broke too fast. I couldn’t come to grips

to the graying of day and the colors all bled.

My hands couldn’t feel their own fingertips.


Our ancestors read omens of apocalypse.

I wondered if soon I’ll be one of those dead.

I’ll never write poems about the eclipse.


In the darkening day, when the sun, my star, slipped

behind the small globe of the moon’s crowning head,

your hands curled around my large fingertip.


Darkness was there, but there too was the glimpse

of how sun rays are birthed and daybreak is spread.

I’ll try to write poems about the eclipse.

Curl the pen in my hand with your fingertips.


*


Yellowstone


elk bugle

bison bellow

geysers gasp and groan


fractured faults

rumble heat

out of fumaroles


microbial mats

of thermophiles

grow out green and gold


belching mudpots

stink the hides

of steaming buffalo


bear cubs learn

from mother bear

how to grub and gobble


whortleberries raked

from their stems

burst by the mouthful


rhyolite chunks

of old, cold crust

grind to granite and gravel


tell me, please

what faults of mine

could also be this bountiful

*


Cam McGlynn is a writer and researcher living outside of Frederick, Maryland. Her work has appeared in Open Minds Quarterly, Helios Quarterly, Cicada, Quatrain Fish, and Bewildering Stories. She likes made-up words, Erlenmeyer flasks, dog-eared notebooks, and excel spreadsheets.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Rachel Marie Patterson
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 1 Comment					

				

		
Stonetown Road


Sunday, black coffee and

rectangles of dishwasher soap.

We get the call at 10:30—

my mother-in-law fell hard

on the kitchen floor.

So we race two hours north

to find her in a mechanical bed,

two staples in her head,

asking every nurse to take her

for a cigarette. When I ask,

she can’t remember whether

she chewed the aspirin.

Outside the security glass,

a hawk surveys the embankment.

The night we met, I howled

with laughter as she gripped

my sleeve with a gauzy, manicured

hand. Her eyes were as clear

as the lake behind us. How

my husband gushed and beamed.

His mother used to write cards

and keep appointments, before

her pretty cursive looped away

to oblivion. In the ICU, he leans

to kiss her bloody forehead.

I know now I will watch him

lose her, slowly. Driving back,

we pass his childhood home–

the natural pool full of snakes.


*


Emergency Vet


When the dog stops blinking, I wrap

her in a towel and swerve the highway,

one palm cupping her distended bowel.

In the cement waiting room, black

coffee in a styrofoam cup. I stare

at the framed canine dental chart

while they thread the catheter and split

her open. Remember how she ate tissues

from the trash because they were mine,

wore circles into my bedroom carpet.

For 13 years, she followed me

from home to home, licking the salt

from my eyes. Now, there is nothing

to do but leave her.


*


Rachel Marie Patterson is the co-founder and editor of Radar Poetry. She holds an MFA from UNC Greensboro. Her poems appear in Cimarron Review, Harpur Palate, New Plains Review, The Journal, Thrush, Parcel Magazine, Smartish Pace, and others. The winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize, her work has also been nominated for Best New Poets and Best of the Net. Her poem “Connemara” was a Special Mention for the Pushcart Prize in 2019. She is the author of Tall Grass With Violence (FutureCycle Press, 2022).

			

	


			
				


	

		
FINESSE by Martha Zweig
	

				

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FINESSE


How did your day go? First it twiddled nine

of its knots loose, then tripped off. Hurry

home by midnight or the chimes strike stone-

&-stubborn dead, I said.


Be nice, an alter ego prompts.

Try it, you’d be surprised? Might I entertain

any such actual spook? No. I squirm

along in the leaves to take outwits one

after another each by its own surprise.


Are we over? When did we last care?

Coax me into your plump folds, if you dare.

I’ll purr. I countercalculate every

& each of my moves to end me up exactly there.


*


Martha Zweig’s four full-length poetry collections include GET LOST, DHP Oregon; MONKEY LIGHTNING, Tupelo, and WHAT KIND and VINEGAR BONE, both from Wesleyan University Press. Her chapbooks are POWERS, Stinehour Press, Vermont Council on the Arts, and A SKIRMISH OF HARKS, Jacar e-book. Zweig’s recognitions include Hopwood Awards, a Whiting Award, Pushcart and Best-of-the-Net nominations, and a Warren Wilson MFA. She lives in Vermont where she worked ten years as an advocate for seniors, after ten years handling garments in a pajama factory where she served a term as ILGWU shop chair.

			

	


			
				


	

		
The God of Late Summer by Melinda Burns
	

				

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The God of Late Summer


         after Lorna Crozier


The God of Late Summer

makes no apology as she sweeps up

the last of the long lazy days,

pulls the sun down ever earlier,

tips the top of the maple tree

with a hint of radiance to come


She sprinkles finches on the goldenrod

singing their little flute songs even

as their colour starts to fade

She brings you peaches,

heaped in bowls, sun-blessed

sweetness rising with every bite


She still brings heat but cooler

nights and promise of respite

from barbecues, picnics, family reunions

And downpours to make

you stay inside, looking out

the windows, listening

for the thunder


*


Melinda Burns is a poet in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Her poems have appeared in Fiddlehead, the New Quarterly, and One Art. Melinda is the author of “Homecoming” (forthcoming in 2025, Bookland Press).

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Haiku by Robert Lowes
	

				

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yellow-breasted chat

in my binoculars—

singing for someone else


*


empty basketball court

the sun spots up

at the top of the key


*


Robert Lowes’s second collection of poetry, Shocking the Dark (Kelsay Books), was published earlier this year. His first collection, An Honest Hunger (Resource Publications), came out in 2020. His poems have appeared in journals such as Southern Poetry Review, The New Republic, Modern Haiku, and December. He is a retired journalist who lives with his wife Saundra in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. Lowes has been playing the guitar—electric and acoustic—since 2017. He rocks out in a band called Pink Street.

			

	


			
				


	

		
some taverns use shotguns for door handles by Kimberly Sailor
	

				

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some taverns use shotguns for door handles

For Jessica


you’re a vegetarian, and that’s where things got complicated at the Americana Holiday Spectacular. three dive bars in a tucked-in mining town, shafts sealed up after Nixon, lampposts still burning gas. avant-garde menus with two types of burger: cow or hog, pickles or none. sometimes fried food is just processed cheddar, but it comes from the same spitting oil vat as the animals, and you wouldn’t mix and match. i still don’t know how a bite-sized town budgets fireworks in December, or how the volunteer fire department times the lighting of the tree perfectly with the last big smoky bang, but fragile miracles happen everywhere. like how you married a hunter who makes his own jerky. like the way you lean into me when I say something funny.


*


Kimberly Sailor, from Mount Horeb, WI, is the editor-in-chief of the Recorded A Cappella Review Board and author of the 2024 poetry chapbook “Holy Week in Cave Country” (Finishing Line Press). She has been a finalist for the Wisconsin People & Ideas poetry contest and the Hal Prize for poetry. Sailor serves her community as a volunteer firefighter/EMT. www.kimberlysailor.com

			

	


			
				


	

		
From Personal to Universal: Using Emotion to Craft Deeper Writing — A Workshop with Karen Paul Holmes
	

				

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From Personal to Universal: Using Emotion to Craft Deeper Writing
Instructor: Karen Paul Holmes
Thursday, October 3, 7:00-9:00pm (Eastern)
Duration: 2 hours
Price: $25 (payment options)


Workshop Description:
Writing the personal can make your poems more expansive, more capable of striking a true chord in others. In this workshop, we’ll explore ways to “go inward to go outward”— to draw from emotionally resonant personal experiences and observations to find deeper connection with readers. We’ll discuss a range of poems that effectively navigate concepts of joy, anger, grief and other emotional states. Join us for a two-hour session focused on giving you the freedom to express emotions and the tools to craft the poems you want and need to write. You’ll leave with prompts and a healthy dose of inspiration.


About The Instructor:
Karen Paul Holmes won the 2023 Lascaux Poetry Prize and received a Special Mention in The Pushcart Prize Anthology. Her books are No Such Thing as Distance (Terrapin) and Untying the Knot (Aldrich). Her poems have been widely published in journals such as Plume, Diode, Glass, and Prairie Schooner and have also been featured on The Slowdown and The Writer’s Almanac. After a long career in Corporate America, which included leading workshops as international conferences, Holmes became a freelance writer and has taught creative writing to adults at various conferences and venues.


 





			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Jeneva Stone
	

				

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Entropy


Cats hiss like water spilled on a hot stove. An evaporation of

aggression.


Distracted by my own thoughts, I once heard “poof” and

turned to see the wok flaming, yellow blades igniting then

joining forces in cacophony.


Sometimes energy exerts itself with an inescapable boom—

other times it releases softly. A physicist might intervene and

say something about quantity and molecular structure and

other factors I can’t account for.


There’s an equation for everything. This I know.


But does it matter how your world destabilizes? A stack of

crockery, piled inexpertly, teeters.


You’ve heard that sound—sharpness of the initial strike, softer

cadence following, a dull splitting open, a fear of being caught

in that deluge of rapid-fire noise without shelter or a way

home.


*


Empty Nest


Somewhere there’s a sun that doesn’t sink beneath an

inevitable horizon. Star fire.


I like the way some loves burn yellow-white, small

arms curling and dancing. That band of the color

spectrum blazes steadily. That is, it lasts.


The hottest flames are violet, one letter short of

destruction.


Before 1700, English didn’t differentiate between

“son” and “sun.” Or “sonne” or “sunne.” So many

letters have fallen away, no longer needed.


In the nineteenth century, yellow roses, nested gold

petals, each layer cupping close the next, meant

friendship. Or joy.


One day our sun will grow large, expanding beyond

the invisible limits of those that orbit him. We won’t

burn. We’ll merely cede our place.


*


Jeneva Stone (she/her) is a poet, essayist and advocate. She’s the author of Monster (Phoenicia Publishing, 2016), a mixed-genre meditation on caregiving. Her work has appeared in NER, APR, Waxwing, Scoundrel Time, Cutbank, Posit, and many others. She is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Millay Arts, and VCCA, and has been nominated multiple times for a Pushcart Prize. Her opinion writing has been featured in The Washington Post and CNN Digital. She holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program.


Jeneva volunteers for multiple health care and disability groups, coalitions, and boards/taskforces at local, state and federal levels. Her leadership roles include: Blog Manager for Little Lobbyists, a family-led organization advocating for health care of children with complex medical needs and disabilities; Maryland Community Ambassador for the Rare Action Network, and governor’s appointee to Maryland’s Rare Disease Advisory Council.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Hysterical by Cindy King
	

				

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Hysterical


A happy summer’s day:

cut-offs and gladiator sandals.

Hungry lions, zero.

Heads on pikes, none.

Every person on earth,

regardless of tongue,

appears to be simultaneously laughing

while you go to the gym,

stay for a week on the elliptical.

It is your language.

At times you sit or lie still—

sleep, kombucha, vampires on TV.

But always you come back

to your gym and the elliptical.

This is not an apology,

but will someone tell you they’re sorry?

You wouldn’t ask but like a hen

that never roosts,

because you are a clucky,

cacophonous bird, too full

of spite and eggshells

to sit and brood.

Besides, there is the perpetual laughter.

Even when the joke is no longer funny.

Even when there isn’t a joke.


*


Cindy King is the author of a book-length poetry collection, Zoonotic (2022), and two poetry chapbooks, Easy Street (2021) and Lesser Birds of Paradise (2022). Her latest poetry manuscript won the C&R Poetry Book Award and will be published in 2024. Her chapbook, OhioChic, will be released by Galileo Press in 2024.


Cindy’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Sun, Callaloo, The Threepenny Review, New England Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Denver Quarterly, American Literary Review, Gettysburg Review, River Styx, Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. She recently served as a featured Festival Poet at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. She has also received fellowships and scholarships from Tin House, the Sewanee Writers’ Workshop, the Fine Arts Work Center, Colgate University, and other organizations.


Cindy was born in Cleveland, Ohio and grew up swimming in the shadows of the hyperboloid cooling towers on the shores of Lake Erie. She currently lives in Utah, where she is an associate professor of creative writing at Utah Tech University and editor of The Southern Quill and Route 7 Review. She also serves as an editorial assistant for both Seneca Review and TriQuarterly.

			

	


			
				


	

		
DEAD VIOLETS STAIN THE WHITE PORCH by Camille Newsom
	

				

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DEAD VIOLETS STAIN THE WHITE PORCH


I haven’t seen the lady who walks the rural road

in weeks.


Asphalt heat roasts the chickens.

Three deaths this week already.

The guineas abandoned their nest.

Dollars dead, says the farmer.


I, too, want to bask in the moonlight

on the other side of life.

The animals tell me it’s cold and turquoise.


*


Camille Newsom is a livestock farmer in Western Michigan. In her poems she observes our living and dying world through humor, grief, and a sprinkling of spite. Her first chapbook is This Suffering and Scrumptious World (Galileo Press, 2023). Her poems have appeared (or are forthcoming) in Southword, Terrain.org, Main Street Rag, MAYDAY, and others.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Betsy Mars
	

				

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Argyle


Unpacking the box

a year after death

I find the knitting

pattern, the socks

themselves,

gone


*


Ars Parrotica 


We squawk, beg for crackers, display

our plumage to the world, soil

the newspaper in the bottom of our cage,

spit out shells, swallow the seed;

if free, we splat on your head.

We’re a nuisance, listening in,

mimicking what we hear,

making what passes for conversation

through the bars of our imprisonment.

We shake a feather, claw. Toothless,

our talons cling to any extended branch.

When we escape we propagate, flock

to the treetops, confuse the populace,

so used to the dismal gray of pigeon frocks.


*


Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, photographer, and assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Recent poems can be found in Minyan, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. Her photos have appeared online and in print, including one which served as the Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge prompt in 2019. She has two books, Alinea, and her most recent, co-written with Alan Walowitz, In the Muddle of the Night. In addition, she also frequently collaborates with San Diego artist Judith Christensen, most recently on an installation entitled “Mapping Our Future Selves.”

			

	


			
				


	

		
What My Family Never Talked About by Sue Ellen Thompson
	

				

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What My Family Never Talked About


Why my mother came home from the hospital

with a flat stomach and put the bassinet

back in the attic. When my Aunt Ginna

divorced Uncle Charlie—they showed up together

at family gatherings for decades, so how

would we know? Or the summer my sister

was planning her wedding—what went on

in the spare room so late at night

with our handsome Australian houseguest.

When my nephew first started walking,

he held a coat hanger straight-armed

in front of him, as if he were dowsing

for water. But no one ever mentioned

autism or suggested that his behavior

was anything other than fine.


If I asked my mother—gone 22 years

now—to please explain, she would use

the same gesture employed when a fly

dared to enter the kitchen where she

was preparing our dinner—as if to say Nothing

could be less important. Now please

set the table and call in your brothers to eat.


*


Sue Ellen Thompson is the author of six books, most recently SEA NETTLES: NEW & SELECTED POEMS (Grayson Books, 2022) and the editor of The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (1st ed.). She has won a Pushcart Prize, the Pablo Neruda/Nimrod Hardman Award, two individual artist’s grants from the State of CT, and a Pulitzer Prize nomination. Thompson teaches at The Writer’s Center in Washington, D.C., and received the 2010 Maryland Author Award from the Maryland Library Association.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Smells like Middle-Aged Spirit by Katie Kemple
	

				

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Smells like Middle-Aged Spirit


I think of Janeane Garofalo when I fold

my teen’s t-shirts. Well, no, Janeane

Garofalo’s character in Reality Bites.

The one who’s a manager at the GAP.

That place Winona Ryder’s character

is too good to work at. We were supposed

to relate to Winona’s character,

her dedication to art and filmmaking.

(And the start of reality TV?) Don’t be

a sellout, the wisdom of a generation.

X marks your spot in it. Profit, the culprit.

We didn’t know X would mark Twitter

would piss over the playground of our

20s. The Internet, a place where you can’t

fold t-shirts for the GAP, abounds

with sell-outs selling out their own

brands. The future cut Ben Stiller’s

character out of the market. He’s surfing

YouTube Shorts and TikTok for clients.

Ethan Hawke’s character didn’t make it big

in time to ride the wave of CD sales,

his music Napstered, Spotified, played

out in 90s cover bands. And a lot of us

are X out of luck. I’ve had so many jobs.

They’ve come and gone like t-shirts.


*


Katie Kemple’s poems have appeared in various pockets of the internet and at katiekemplepoetry.com.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Three Poems by Charlie Brice
	

				

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Sky


According to Jim Harrison, when we die

it will be like falling through the sky.


According to Bob Dylan, even the birds

are chained to the skyway.


According to me, the blur of the Milky Way

in the Michigan night-sky is the footprint of infinity.


And in morning, how do clouds decide to float by us,

those jellyfish of the heavens? How long have they spied

on us? Do they congregate, gossip about what they’ve observed?


If enough of them are interested they huddle

together, the easier to hear the juicy parts,

and give us shade that hides their busybody meanderings.


They must hate us for dumping tons of poison

into their sky-home. Still, on those Magritte days,

they parade by us, dispense wonder, offer forgiveness.


*


Dan


Why didn’t you go to Paris, or even Reno?

You liked to gamble. Remember when you

went to the Superbowl with your son and won

back the thousands you spent to get there

on the crap tables in Vegas? Yeah, you could

have gone to Vegas. Instead, you went and died.


Starting a year or so ago my dreams have

been populated by the dead. Last night I

dreamed that I was reminding Rollo May

of the dinner we had with Maurice Freedman

in San Diego in the eighties. They are both

dead—long dead. Do I have to put you

in my dreams now, Dan?


We had such fun at Pirate games before you

decided you didn’t like me anymore. Our

friendship died long before you did. Still,

I miss you, old friend. Maybe I’ll see you

in a dream.


*


Wisdom


I had to admire the effort. My

mother-in-law, who couldn’t

stand me, presented me,

every Christmas and birthday,

with owl figurines—

some crystal,

some wood,

some agate

or sandstone.


After trying to find something

positive about me, she settled

on wisdom. She decided that

I would like it if I thought

that she thought I was wise

and, as we all know,

owls are wise.


Somewhere Freud wrote

that, because there’s

an unconscious,

it’s impossible to really

fool anybody.


*


Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His sixth full-length poetry collection is Miracles That Keep Me Going (WordTech Editions, 2023). His poetry has been nominated three times for the Best of Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, Chiron Review, The Paterson Literary Review, Impspired Magazine, and elsewhere.

			

	


			
				


	

		
After a Quote by Emerson by Howie Good
	

				

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After a Quote by Emerson


Want to make

people aware


of the troubles

in the world?


Forget it.


There are finally

just too many.


“Build therefore

your own world.”


And without cities

of bombed buildings


and charred cars,

above which silvery


white clouds drifting

in slo-mo really do


look like angelfish.


*


Howie Good is a writer living on Cape Cod. His newest poetry book, The Dark, is available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Back Before I Was by Gary Glauber
	

				

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Back Before I Was


My parents never had kids.

But here I am, a miracle of sorts,

proving everything wrong. Again.

They were young, so young.

Younger than daylight and

totally not up to tasks at hand.

My father hid from war

with a heart disease that

made him timid, not heroic.

Yet he somehow fostered a belief

that he could have been a

starting pitcher for the Cardinals.

My mom was a left-handed woman

plucked from her independence

to a life of artistic pursuits and

cigarettes smoked while speaking French.

It was an eclectic home life.

They were constantly at odds.

Neither had much in the way

of self-confidence and swagger.

Every year was a new experiment.

I lacked a functional mentor.

Even my school guidance counselor

refused to guide me, particularly after

an errant home run of mine accidentally

broke her living room window.

Yet I managed to machete my way

through the jungle morass

toward a path of growth and vision.

Nah, just kidding. I was a hot mess.

I fainted while wearing a lobster bib.

Calculus threw me for a loop.

And even though I had super

impressive quadriceps, it did not

help my football skills in the least.

No one cared that I could use my legs

to lift all that weight – it served no

practical purpose whatsoever.

So I grew the best set of mutated sideburns

a young teen could manage

and joined a band. No one liked

the love song about the Vietnam vet.

Still, I played on.

Went to football camp, where

I honed my standup comedy skills.

I learned that a lifetime

of good stories was helpful

in rationalizing a string of poor crushes

that never worked out well.

I was hopelessly romantic

in a time of more practical ways,

too young for the war

and for Woodstock too,

but at least I had the watch.

And boy did time fly.

Went off to a college

also ill-suited for me,

an engineer’s school

for those rejected

by the Ivies.

I managed a hairline

fracture of my ankle.

While in my cast,

I tried out for the play.

Then I was in two casts.

I played a character

with a limp. Badly.

But it was Shakespeare,

so no one noticed.

I read lots of books

and came home every

weekend to head out

to comedy clubs.

I was not the picture

of happiness,

but who was back then?

Besides, I could grow

decent facial hair,

and that counted for something.

I vowed to spend the next year

away from myself, far far away.

And I did. But I’ll never

forget my humble beginnings

becoming a person

in spite of strong odds against me.


*


Gary Glauber is a widely published poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. He has five collections, Small Consolations (Aldrich Press), Worth the Candle (Five Oaks Press), Rocky Landscape with Vagrants (Cyberwit), A Careful Contrition (Shanti Arts Publishing) and most recently, Inside Outrage (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), an Eric Hoffer Medal Provocateur finalist. He also has two chapbooks, Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press) and The Covalence of Equanimity (SurVision Books), a winner of the 2019 James Tate International Poetry Prize.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Eschatology by Kim Addonizio
	

				

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Eschatology


No way this ends with everyone rising from the family plot

& rattling toward the celestial courthouse to be judged. Are we all frightened villagers?


Well, yes. Everyone’s cowering from something. Right now, yet another atmospheric river

is dumping stalled container ships of rain on the house, uprooting trees on the hillside


& in the Christ-addled brain of my neighbor, the divine horses are being brushed & saddled,

angels are polishing their instruments, struggling into their armor. It’s true


that things look more accurate, prediction-wise, if your prediction is more flooding & wildfires,

more monstrous bugs scuttling toward the corridors of power. My neighbor believes


she’s pure enough to be resurrected & Hoovered into heaven while the secular infidels moan

about science & get trampled underfoot. If I have to think about resurrection, all I see


is a Netflix series where reanimated jake-legged corpses shuffle through the streets

while the real humans kill them again, & sometimes each other, the compromised world


of the future pretty much already here. But how did we get into this discussion?

Someone brought up the apocalypse at the barbeque last week


over a few grilling chicken thighs. My neighbor, who thinks I’m the Whore of Babylon,

watched me disapprovingly as I refilled my wine glass of abominations


& spoke of God’s people as credulous idiots. She said she would pray for me,

smug in the knowledge of my imminent destruction. Oh, to be that certain.


I almost admired her. But like the Whore of Babylon I was

I told the dirtiest joke I could think of, & watched her grow red-faced & offended,


& there the neighborly visit quickly ended.


*


Kim Addonizio is the author of over a dozen books of prose and poetry. Her latest poetry collection is Exit Opera (W.W. Norton, September 2024). Her memoir-in-essays, Bukowski in a Sundress, was published by Penguin. Addonizio’s work has been translated into several languages and honored with fellowships from the NEA and Guggenheim Foundation, and her collection Tell Me was a finalist for the National Book Award. She lives in Oakland, CA and teaches poetry workshops on Zoom. kimaddonizio.com

			

	


			
				


	

		
Phone Visit with Jenny by José Chávez
	

				

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Phone Visit with Jenny


Approximately 5 percent of people aged 65 to 74 years and 40 percent of people older than 85 have some form of dementia, according to the Merck Manual.


My sister Jenny calls from the facility

where she’s been living for four years

& I move to our living room couch

to get comfortable.


It becomes a three-way conversation

when my older sister joins in

& I ask Jenny how she’s doing.


She says she’s OK

but she’s too warm—

Why is it so hot in here?


We remind her that it’s

January & very cold outside

In Albuquerque.


But she’s still too hot

& there are no lights

on the Christmas tree downstairs.


Maybe they unplugged them

my older sister says

now that the holiday passed.


Jenny says they taped off

the living room by the tree

so you can’t sit there

on that soft blue couch.


We say it’s probably due to

the need for social distance

but she’s adamant—still too warm down there

& she can’t find her son.


He was just here & left she says

he’s at the airport now

maybe it’s due to the virus we say

maybe he had to go back home.


My older sister & I know

he passed ten years ago

& they had been living together.


She pauses . . . wants us to know

that all is well with him

& reveals more of her expansive truth

that percolates often amid a crush of anxiety.


I know it doesn’t seem real

she tells us—

But      He      Was      Here     

I don’t know where he is now.


Her words envelope our hearts

& we pause for a few moments.

My older sister asks if she was able to sign

the Christmas cards with stamps ready

to be mailed out last week.


I don’t know where they are—

Why is it so hot in here?


*


José Chávez dedicates his life to writing. He’s had poetry published in the Multilingual Educator Journal, Acentos Review, and the Inlandia Anthology. José is the author of two bilingual poetry books for children: Little Stars and Cactus and Dancing Fruit, Singing Rivers.

			

	


			
				


	

		
If You Knew by Susan Rich
	

				

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If You Knew


this would be the final person

you’d ever kiss; this the last toast-

scented neck you’d lean towards


under an arched earlobe—

then perhaps you’d rest a minute,

more inhaling anarchist curls


casting curtains around your heads.

Even if this were just a penultimate touch:

neckline, lips, scent of apples—


what more could you ask, except

for time to slow—

then stop—as if in a children’s game


of statues, or in the fable, where

couples stumble into an underwater cave

opening outward towards a new country—


similar to the summer you turned twenty

and interlocked fingers with a stranger—

his limbs winged with a bronzed shine.


How this came together escapes

you now. What remains

are the tracks of his hands—


the most intimate touch,

until now—intuited as

in the way a cloud color transforms


in the indigo bowl of sky,

all of itself and another.

The way the sacred world


above the collarbone captures us

pinioned, tucked in, and never

in want of anything more.


*


Susan Rich is the author of six collections of poetry and co-editor of two prose anthologies. Her most recent books include Blue Atlas (Red Hen Press) and Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry). She co-edited Demystifying the Manuscript: Creating a Book of Poems (Two Sylvias Press) and Strangest of Theatres: Poets Crossing Borders (Poetry Foundation). Susan’s previous poetry books include Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue–Poems of the World–winner of the PEN USA Award. Birdbrains: A Lyrical Guide to Washington State Birds is forthcoming from Raven Chronicles Press.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Carolyn Chilton Casas
	

				

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Storms


It’s hard to grasp.

How one day is innocence

itself, calm waters to the horizon,

broadcloth sails billowing

against a coral sky.

The next, you’re diving

for cover,

canon balls plummeting

all around your boat,

and the comrade you thought

had your back

has left on the only raft,

leaving you wounded and alone,

conjuring easy seas

of the past.


*


A New Day


To hold the day before me

like a rare treasure,

the hours smooth pearls

strung by hand

on a thick thread of longing.

To recognize my heart

connection to the whole

and remember my time here

is but a blip

on the edge of infinity.

To honor the miracle of breath,

organ, muscle, and bone.

Today, I open my child’s eyes

to wonder—how the doe

and the fawn trust me

as they nap on the grass,

how the whirring hummingbird

glistens green then ruby

in the fading sun.


*


Carolyn Chilton Casas is a Reiki master and teacher who often explores ways of healing in the articles she writes for energy and wellness magazines in several countries. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace and Renewal. She lives on the central coast of California where she enjoys nature, hiking, and beach volleyball. More of Carolyn’s work can be found on Facebook or Instagram and in her second collection of poetry Under the Same Sky.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Jacqueline Jules
	

				

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Without An Intermission


Following the news

I feel like I’m watching

one of those movies where

the character suffers on and on

through one challenge after another

only to end after three hours

with a cryptic scene I can’t tell

is hopeful or not.


I’ll accept that Happily Ever After

only exists in some parts of Movie Land

but couldn’t we at least have

intermissions, like the old days

when we watched movies in palaces

with red velvet curtains and chandeliers.


Ghandi was the last major film

to have a built-in break

and that ends with the hero’s ashes

scattered over the Ganges.


What does that foretell for me

if I stay tuned in to the headlines

without an intermission?


*


Double Zippers on His Backpack


He asked me this morning,

as I packed his lunch, to pull

the double zippers to the top.

It’s easier for him to open

when he’s hooked to machines.


We are quiet on the drive over,

except for a few pleasantries

about how we hope this session

won’t take as long as the last one,

maybe the nurses won’t be as busy

and there won’t be a lag between

the pre-meds and the chemo.


We don’t discuss how he’s offering

his veins for another eight weeks

to elicit an extension, not a cure.


The words feel double zipped

inside the laden bag

he slings over his thin shoulder

before he waves goodbye.


*


Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021), Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press, and Smoke at the Pentagon: Poems to Remember (Bushel & Peck, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications. Visit her online at jacquelinejules.com

			

	


			
				


	

		
Packing Lunch by Brandice Askin
	

				

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Packing Lunch


From clavicle to ribcage – – – 

a ragged zipper scar.

Soon to be reopened.


Your battery heart has wound down.

No one would know it.

Your eyes hold the sunlight of ten worlds,

and you never stop moving.


Tomorrow, a fancier version,

with remote boosting powers

plugged into your pacemaker.

Finally ready to keep the beat

for the slumber party

of nerf guns and cotton candy

you always wanted.


You peer inside the Totoro lunchbox.

Crusts cut. No mayo. Oreos. Even Takis.

Your smile is a beam.

Snap the lid tight; zip lunch box closed,

my kitchen gloves paler than surgical blue

as I do what only a mother can:

make your mouth tingle

your stomach full with forgetfulness.


*


Brandice Askin writes poetry and fiction to help her sleep at night. A cat can often be found obstructing her keyboard. Her poetry is published in Cool Beans Lit and Moonstone Arts. She is a past winner of the Suncoast Writers Conference Short Fiction Contest. She currently lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, but has also called Oregon and California home. Find her at brandiceaskin.com.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Three Poems by Linda Blaskey
	

				

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Scarf


I’m driving home pleased with the gift I’ve purchased

for a friend when I see cedar waxwings lying so near

the edge of the road I am forced to steer toward the centerline.


They are drunk on the fermented berries of Fall,

some staggering about still.


My first husband, on the last day of his life—

we, divorced ten years—drunk-walked in the road


and was hit by a drunk driver, the two a better match

than we ever were.


The weave I have chosen is variegated colors of three

of a year’s seasons, because sometimes that is all we have.


*


Fox Skull by the Side of the Road


It’s bleached to a purity we don’t often see.

Teeth Hollywood white, the color we all strive for.


It has been here, by the mailbox, for months,

first intact then the slow disintegration, joint-sutures giving up their grip.


It’s all here, picked clean, scattered – parietal bone,

maxilla and mandible with canines and incisors fixed tight.


Despite the loss of interest by carrion eaters, despite deterioration,

there is something that rests uneasy, like the days

my skin doesn’t fit quite right.


I could gather the shards, toss them, but there’s vibration in such beauty

that tells me it, eyeless, wants to see this through to the end.


*


Paying for Lunch at the Arby’s Drive-Thru


The man is tall, with a tat below the sleeve of his tee.

When he leans his face close to the window to tell me

seven fifty-five, a lizard moves behind his eyes.

The small silver cross that adorns his ear hypnotizes

as he offers his change. I can feel it already—

the quarter, the dime, two nickels— the burn beginning,

the bite in the palm of my hand.


*


Linda Blaskey is editor at Quartet, an online poetry journal featuring the work of women fifty and over; poetry/interview editor emerita of Broadkill Review, and past coordinator of the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2014, and numerous journals and anthologies. She is the author of the prize-winning chapbook, Farm, the poetry collection, White Horses, and co-author of Walking the Sunken Boards, and Season of Harvest. She is the recipient of three Fellowship Grants from DDOA, including the 2022 Masters in Literature: Poetry. She currently lives in Delaware.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Two Poems by Elizabeth S. Wolf
	

				

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Shattered


Coming home from college,

crouched down on the kitchen floor,

she wouldn’t couldn’t look me in the eye

she wouldn’t couldn’t tell me why

her blanket was a tangled bundle stained with vomit

but I knew, a woman knows, a mother doesn’t want to

so I asked, did someone try to hurt you and then

said what I really meant, did someone try to rape you

and she nodded, head averted looking down

         he was choking me

                  but it stopped when I threw up

and she whispered no one believed and Andi

blamed me for ruining her goodbye party and I

guess I had it coming since I was just starting to

feel kind of good about myself and I felt pretty

and I was having fun and I guess I went too far

and a mother’s heart sinks

bile rising up your throat

because this shouldn’t still be happening

and I know that late-teen type of cocky

that heady joy of looking good

that tastes almost like tossing back

a shot of pure verve— that rush

of coming into your own self—

a righteous confidence that

never comes back the same

once the spell is broken.


* 


At Seventeen


I borrowed my mother’s car, a cherry red Buick Skylark

circa 1971. It was the first anniversary of my father’s death

but instead of demurely lighting a Yahrzeit candle I took off

to see a boy, a hot boy, a rad boy, a bit-of-a-dangerous

bad boy, who was staying with friends; we had all scattered

when the halfway house for troubled teens suddenly totally

closed. We met up and headed out into a steamy summer night.

He broke into a stacked rack of mailboxes, looking for checks;

broke into a holy Catholic church, seeking silver and gold;

broke into me, brusque with lust; recklessly ran a red light

and smashed the car, high-style bumper and driver-side doors

dented and scratched, stolid white upholstery stained by

splotches of blood. I waited for sunrise to return the keys;

my mother rolled over in her empty bed and asked me to

leave. Later the doctor stitching me up would laugh:

Tell your boyfriend to be more careful next time.

For years after I lit a commemorative candle, a tall taper

stuck in the graceful green neck of an empty bottle, dripping

wax melting and merging, colors converging, layers emerging

year after year like the rings of a tree, latewood circling

spring growth, rising high above riddles of sealing or healing.


*


Elizabeth S. Wolf has published 5 books of poetry, most recently I Am From: Voices from the Mako House in Ghana (2023). Her chapbook Did You Know? was a Rattle prizewinner. Rattle Summer 2022 featured her project with Prisoner Express. In 2023 Elizabeth taped readings at the White House, Supreme Court, and US Capitol with The Scheherazade Project. In 2024 her work landed on the moon with the Lunar Codex. Learn more at https://www.amazon.com/author/esw

			

	


			
				


	

		
When You Get Bad News by David Salner
	

				

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When You Get Bad News


Take a deep breath. Then,

imagine a view of the Bay spread out before you

in wide ripples of color ranging from azure to blue liquor.


In the foreground, the beached hull of an antique vessel and,

behind that, a sky full of masts, yachts at rest in their slips.

You’re coaxing all nature to hold its breath.


Water and sky are perfect, as if painted on glass.

No news of a storm. From here to the horizon,

no squalls, no spouts catch your eye.


It’s a vista untroubled by news of any kind.

News you’ve been given just now.


*


Of David Salner’s sixth poetry collection, John Skoyles, Ploughshares poetry editor, said: “The Green Vault Heist is not only a beautiful book, it is great company.” Summer Words: New and Selected Poems also appeared in 2023. More writing appears in Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, North American Review, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. He’s worked as iron ore miner, steelworker, librarian, baseball usher.

			

	


			
				


	

		
How I Lost My First Magen David by Liz Marlow
	

				

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How I Lost My First Magen David


It had been my Bubbe’s,

about the size of the tip

of my pinky, nothing

to notice except that it

was my sun—mornings,

it could guide me home.

Though on birthdays,

friends had given me glass

bead or plastic charm necklaces

and bracelets, this was too dainty

to be costume. Its chain

had been free

with a golden heart locket—

a throwaway placeholder

in the gray felt jewelry store box—

meant to be changed out

for something fancier, thicker.

My mom didn’t think this star

pendant needed a sturdy chain—

after all, thicker gold chains cost more—

I was just a child. As if belief

were enough to keep the chain

from breaking, during swim practice

at the JCC, diving into the pool,

engulfed in splash, it would float

to bump my chin, nudging,

הנני—here I am.


*


Liz Marlow is the author of They Become Stars (Slapering Hol Press 2020). Additionally, her work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Best Small Fictions, The Greensboro Review, The Idaho Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is the editor-in-chief of Minyan Magazine and a coeditor of Slapering Hol Press.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Down the Shore by Robbi Nester
	

				

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Down the Shore


Every summer when our un-airconditioned house

grew too hot to bear, when we stuck to the sofa’s

plastic cover and wanted to avoid the city pool

packed with adolescents acting stupid on the diving

board, we headed down the shore to dawdle

on the Boardwalk, play Pachuco, eat fish and chips

and hotdogs on a stick. We’d lie prone on sand

studded with used hypodermics and plastic waste,

and watch the white horse prodded up the rump

jump off Steel Pier into gray waves. Sometimes

we’d pile into a wicker rolling car and pedal to

the Planters Peanut Stand, grab a bag of freshly

roasted nuts. Evenings, we’d watch the phosphorescent

waves roll in, then catch a tiny purple jitney to the

boarding house, windows wide open to the ocean breeze.


*


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 RobbiNester.net

			

	


			
				


	

		
Three Poems by Michelle Meyer
	

				

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We Were Just Getting to Know Each Other


And then you died.

It was September. When I saw you

in April we put on your dresses,

adorned our bare necks

with your handmade scarves

and drove, windows down,

to a concert.

Before we left

I took your picture.

You were seated

in the dining room

looking out the window,

face turned, legs crossed,

the sun, a halo

circling your body.

There was one photo that you liked

best. In it, your image was blurred,

hazy around the edges, faint

as your ghost.


*


The Way It Is


I’m running. It’s the anniversary

of my mother’s death

and I’m a few miles out when I stop

to take in the view.

Somewhere I hear a rooster crowing

and somewhere else a siren

is wailing.


My Grandma used to smoke Marlboro’s,

drink Manhattan’s and say,

That’s the way it is. A lazy answer

to her bruises, the world’s bruises,

but then again, she could only bear to live

in the moment and in those moments

she wasn’t wrong.


I run further, see a purple morning glory

blooming near a discarded styrofoam cup,

an overstory of green shimmering

above an understory of brown.

There is a visible line

where the chemicals end, where life hovers

above death.


Everything is straddling some kind of line.


Mom is dead. Grandma is dead.

The tiny, nearly translucent spider

that I squashed with the tip of my thumb

is dead.

I had no right.

I am full of shame

but that’s the way it is.


* 


The Question of Whether or Not We Should Sell Our House


One day it feels like we should

and the next day it feels like we shouldn’t.

We speak of the pros and cons,

but logic has never lived here.

This is a place of romance and charm

say all of the eager realtors

whose calls we never return.

My dark-haired ambition has gone gray.

I’ve lost control

of two out of the five flower gardens.

It’s your prairie, says a friend,

and I remember how the goldenrod bloomed

at our wedding. My anxiety wilts.

I’m the only one who can see it

turning to seed, drifting away,

replanting itself in a daydream.

The one where I am sitting by a lake,

reading a book and all the sailboats

are unmoored.


*


Michelle Meyer is the author of The Trouble with Being a Childless Only Child (2024, Cornerstone Press) and The Book of She (2021), a collection of persona poems devoted to women. Recent work appears in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Humana Obscura, Remington Review, Under Her Eye: A Blackspot Books Anthology, and Welter among others. She is one of those people who loves kale.

			

	


			
				


	

		
Three Poems by George Franklin
	

				

			 ~ ONE ART			 ~ 4 Comments					

				

		
Dog Years


Tomorrow, I’ll get up early to drive

The dog to the vet. He’s having the rest

Of his teeth removed. They’re decayed,

And he gets gum infections. He bleeds

From his mouth, and his breath smells like

Something that’s been dead for a while.

There’s a hernia too—none of it’s good.

Ximena asked what he’ll eat afterwards.

I told her “The same food. Dogs don’t

Really chew; they mostly swallow.”

This one, named after Joseph Brodsky, is

Nine years old, which for a collie is getting

Up there. The collie who slept in my

Room when I was growing up—or slept in

My parents’ room—only lived to be twelve.

I was away at a high-school debate workshop

When they called me to say they’d had him

“Put down.” I was speaking from a wooden

Phone booth at a college in Texas, and I

Remember the grain of the wood. We have

Lots of euphemisms about killing dogs. I

Think I hate every one of them. When the vet

Gave my doberman an injection that stopped

His heart, I was still young enough not to

Imagine myself like him, unable to walk,

A cancer growing down my spine. Now, it’s

All too easy to picture: the cold metal of

A raised examination table, the professionally

Sad look of the veterinarian as her syringe

Empties into my vein, maybe the distant

Sound of somebody crying, a receptionist

Mumbling under her breath, something

About the “rainbow bridge.”


*


Barcelona


Down the street, a dog is barking, and pigeons

Coo in reply, a low trill that celebrates the end

Of daylight, mares’ tails floating in from

The Mediterranean. Perhaps, in Mallorca,

A different set of pigeons are making the same

Sound, and a different dog is barking to be let inside.

Perhaps, the mares’ tails have floated there as well.

The courtyard is quiet this evening. A few voices,


But no one has started cooking dinner. I told

Ximena that we travel in the hope it will make us

Different, but I’m a bad tourist. Our friend Eduard

Showed us all the markets, the Hebrew inscription

In the Gothic Quarter, the recycled blocks of stone

From the Jewish graves on Montjuïc, the Roman walls

Of the old city, stone fountains empty from the drought.

In a narrow walkway in Raval, we passed


Bored prostitutes and junkies sniffing powder

Off the back of their hands. My feet and knees hurt

From walking, but I haven’t changed. We saw

The square that was bombed by Mussolini’s air force,

The shrapnel-torn walls, and the walls where

The ones who weren’t fascists stood to be shot.

Some of the bullet holes were too high, and

I wondered if one of the executioners had


A bad conscience and fired above the skulls

Of his targets. I want to think so, but I’m not

Sentimental enough to believe it. In one of

The apartments, an air conditioner or a washing

Machine has stopped, and it’s even quieter

Than before. Somewhere, water is draining

Down a pipe. Eduard also showed us the spot

On Rambla del Raval where a terrorist


Rammed his rented van into a crowd.

The van stopped on top of a Miró mosaic.

A few meters away, there’s a Botero sculpture

Of a cat. Still, I’m a bad tourist. I don’t know

What to make of what I see. The same dog

Continues to bark, and someone has put on

Some music I can barely hear. The sun has

Slipped behind the mountains.


*


There Was a Pine Tree


If I have faith, it’s that the world is sayable,

That I can find words for what I didn’t think could be said.

The weight of a stone fountain filled with clear water,

The sunlight that plunges through vacant clouds,

Thoughts that are just images, faces, words spoken

Without meaning, the way one room in a dream becomes

Another, how it resembles the room I slept in at my

Grandfather’s house, the deep red of the bricks,

The solidity of the white front door. There was a pine tree

In the front yard, and the sap thickened and dried

Between the shapeless tiles of bark, the smell of resin

That was left on my fingers, the infinity of acorns from

The live oak, the trunk that was older than anyone living

Who was not a tree. When my grandfather died, I didn’t

Know what to believe. When my parents died

Thirty years later, it wasn’t much different. I don’t have

The talent for belief. Their voices only come to me

In snippets, in crumbling pieces of tree bark, in the odor

Of pine or the feel of acorns rolling in my hand.


*


George Franklin is the author of seven poetry collections, including What the Angel Saw, What the Saint Refused, forthcoming this month from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. Individual poems have been published in SoFloPoJo, Another Chicago Magazine, Rattle, The Banyan Review, New York Quarterly, and Cultural Daily. He practices law in Miami, is a translation editor for Cagibi, teaches poetry workshops in Florida prisons, and co-translated, along with the author, Ximena Gómez’s Último día/Last Day. In 2023, he was the first prize winner of the W.B. Yeats Poetry Prize. His website: gsfranklin.com.