Marc Harshman

Folio for a Morning With Thunderstorm and Squirrels

The bitter tea is almost enough to suffice

for a dose of reality.

Somewhere someone is playing a saw, its sweet melancholy

hesitating on a flight of stairs long enough

to become perfection itself.

I’ve issued an invitation to two squirrels to come into my studio,

have cranked open the window, hinted there is a cache

of butternuts I’m willing to share.

Religion grows in the crevices

where tears and senseless good fortune mingle.

Sometimes sour-grass, sometimes a single violet

arise as testament.

An avian choir has assembled

under the dripping eaves of the morning storm.

Somewhere in the basement the plumbing provides

accompaniment for them, for me.

Serendipity remains the most important linguistic contribution

to my life since 1969.

Far off the bellows in a lab of forgotten meteorologists are working

at the embers of mystery:

I hear their moans, I see

them light the sky

with an arcane foolscap of light.

I like to think an hourglass is a sentient being that, stood before me,

is witness to both gravitas and whimsy: 

what’s gone is gone

and what’s lost

can be turned

on its head

if not now, well, then . . .

And sometimes that ellipsis simply represents

the circle around which

I meet myself coming in from the rain

to a happy house

filled with squirrels and birdsong,

with carpenters and music

and a kind of cryptic lighting

with which I see, ancient

as the first birthday of time,

the truth of everything.

and begin then to think

the playwright of this world

didn’t do as badly as I’d thought. 

Yes, there’s the butcher’s bill to be paid but

I have an hourglass 

and know how to use it.

~

Dedication

To be sure, it was a holy ceremony

with redwoods, rocks, and a sprinkling

of Latin from a concordance of fools,

after which the baby sprouted,

and began to thrive,

spreading its roots and opening windows

every time we blinked.

Mother slept through it all.

Taxis barked below with their horns.

The parade departed hours ago

marching south with live ammo.

We became fixated on this

news reel from beyond,

and worried.

Look:  the dinosaurs fighting their way

through the blizzards,

the plastic cave men lifting their little sticks,

the distant factories of the sun

pounding hydrogen into helium.

Still, the Red Sea was again rolled back like a carpet

worth more gold than any army of men.

And, although there are spooks winking at us from within the byzantine

warren of our suburb’s familiar streets,

double agents who know and carry our future toward us,

they do so without rancor or judgment.

And then there’s this new god, at play in the crib of chrysanthemums,

testing each word before blossoming.

It seems it may yet work out.

The windows are all open now.

And despite our exhaustion—entertaining

this little scamp has been real work—

we intend to soon lay down our fiddles and drums,

and hope we, too, will get to dance

over Bergman’s black and white mountain, as we smell the hay,

listen to the birds,

feel that kiss

on our cheek

like a baby’s breath.

---

Harshman’s collections of poetry include Green-Silver and Silent [Bottom Dog], Woman in Red Anorak [Lynx House], winner of the Blue Lynx Prize, Believe What You Can [WVU], winner of the Weatherford Award, Following the Silence [Press 53] and Dispatch from the Mountain State from WVU Press in 2025. He was named Appalachian Heritage Writer for 2024 by Shepherd University. He is also the author of fourteen nationally acclaimed children’s books including The Storm, a Smithsonian Notable Book.

Travis Stephens

July 4th at Suicide Lake

the heat arrived

after June’s mild outlook

& April’s laziness, July

bit the sun that fed it.

if a rocket flies over,

it is tempted to torch

a landscape of

dirt like eczema

flowers dust dried

amid brittle leaves

of midday angst,

too tough for caterpillars

& too dry for aphids

so only the black 

beetle biters persist.

no birds.

everything smells of

gunpowder &

flinches.

~

“let the wicked fall into their own nets”

Psalm 141:10

the mermaid plays coy,

flicks her long hair,

a shrug, a come hither,

while the rest of the fish

spill from the seine.

the wind is backing,

smites me with a gust of rain.

my feet are wet.

i have not slept in three days.

the sail slats like an overgrown

puppy tugging at the leash.

keep a hand on the sheet, always,

i’ve been trained, but this flax

sail was woven by my daughter

and there will never be another.

my hand stings and despite

the woven chain on my wrist

i can feel the solt blisters open.

this is the first good day

since the season opened.

the buyer boat has a

list of expenses owed:

tarred marline

needle

pound of coffee

an orange.

the mermaid surfaces

just out of reach.

i have a gaff hook.

i have a grapnel.

she regards me as the

whale regards a tanker.

swirl and

gone.

---

Travis Stephens is a tugboat captain and writer living with his family in California. His work has recently appeared in Word’s Faire, Washington Square Review, and Red Ogre Review.

Kristina Percy

My son wants to know why he can't say fuck

Because someone uncountable lifetimes ago decided 

it was rude. Because my mother, who hasn’t even lived

one lifetime yet, still thinks it is a little rude. Because 

your teachers will think I am a terrible parent, 

letting you swear at your age. Maybe 

if I let my son say fuck as a child it will grow 

into any other word: wrinkle or bushwhack or apricot. 

What word will he use when his first love leaves him 

to work on a sailboat? When they come back? Sluice. 

Carbonated. When his skin sings jumping 

into a December lake? Tailgate. What is the word 

for when your mother forgets your birthday, 

can no longer lift her mug of mint tea? Mom, 

what do you mean you were at the hospital? 

Why didn't you tell me? I would have come,

I could have helped. Mom, what the fridge?

~

Career aspirations, age six

Our neighbour, the dive instructor, tells us

one of her students is now a sewer diver 

making a hundred grand working half a year 

clearing our pipes of all the shit that isn’t shit: 

tampons & baby wipes & huge rotting tangles 

of hair. Who doesn’t know you’re not supposed to flush 

tampons? I scoff (as if I also knew you’re not supposed 

to flush hair). Later, my daughter insists she wants 

to be a sewer diver when she grows up. I nod, 

like maybe I think this is an excellent career choice; 

or maybe I am just enjoying the angelhair 

pasta she requested for dinner. I don’t say so, 

but when she grows up I hope 

we won’t even need sewer divers because no one 

will put anything in the toilet that doesn’t belong there. 

Listen, I know that’s not realistic (you’re how old

& don’t pretend you knew hair was on that list).

I know of all the things that need our attention, this one 

can probably wait. Will you let me have it anyways? 

Let me imagine my daughter in some distant 

future where we are all exquisitely careful. 

In this future she is telling her own child, 

my granddaughter, When I was a kid

it was someone’s job to swim in shit

because everyone flushed things down the toilet 

they shouldn’t have. Let me laugh 

at the improbability of such a thing: 

a granddaughter, a future.

~

Fairy Griefmother

You have the wrong address, I said. I don’t know 

you. Shifted the groceries between my hips, shut 

the door tight, like I meant it. I cried when the baby cried 

& named it rage. When my son laughed

without breathing; when he grabbed my fingers 

& wouldn’t sleep; ate only plums & learned

to say No; all those years, I would not take her calls. 

You are mistaken, I insisted, any time she tricked me 

into picking up. Finally, she snuck into the kitchen 

while we were out walking nowhere at all. I could smell her, 

thick like a green river, as the sun chased us

back inside. Why don't you help someone 

who actually needs it! I shouted, desperate

to convince all of us that I didn't. Can’t you see 

that no one is dead here? I waved both hands at my living,

screaming child. She looked hard at me but said nothing 

as she lifted the sponge from its sinkwater & began 

to wash out last week's noodles. I wanted her so badly 

to be a stranger. She made a pot of peppermint tea,
refilled the soap in every bathroom. I never told her

where anything was & she didn’t ask. She just moved

through the house, silently, like she already knew.

---

Kristina Percy (she/ her) lives on Vancouver Island, BC in the traditional territories of the Ligwiłda’xw people. Neither of her degrees have anything to do with creative writing. Her debut collection, Both True, was a runner up in the 2024 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest & while most of Kristina's work lives in her Gmail drafts, you can also find her on Instagram @__kpwrites.

Scott Kenimond

Virginia Woolf Goes to Ikea

I had meant only to buy a bookshelf, and yet the thing

expanded around me, as certain places do, until it

seemed I had entered not a store but a method of

thinking. The arrows directed me onward with an

authority I found both comforting and faintly absurd,

and I followed them through kitchens already inhabited

by invisible breakfasts, through bedrooms in which no

one had slept and yet which appeared to remember

sleep. Everywhere there were objects waiting for

attachment: lamps waiting to illuminate a reader, tables

waiting to collect letters, bowls waiting to receive fruit.

I found myself wondering whether we choose these

things or whether they choose us, arranging themselves

quietly in the background of our lives until one day we

mistake them for necessity. A woman examined curtains

with great seriousness. A child disappeared behind a

tower of flat-packed boxes. Somewhere above us a

voice made an announcement that dissolved before I

could understand it. And all the while I drifted onward

beneath the white lights, thinking how strange it was

that so much effort should be devoted to the

construction of domestic happiness, as though

happiness might be assembled from diagrams and small

metal screws. Yet I could not entirely resist it. There was s

omething moving in the sight of these unfinished

rooms, these provisional lives displayed so confidently

before us. By the time I reached the warehouse, where

shelves rose in orderly ranks toward the ceiling, I had

forgotten the bookshelf altogether and was occupied

instead by the curious sensation that I had been

wandering through the visible architecture of other

people's expectations, carrying my own among them.

~

Cold Section of Myself

The ceiling fan keeps mispronouncing my name as a

bowl of peaches sweat through the windowsill. I keep

waiting for a sentence with enough gravity to ruin my

life in the right direction. Something of quality with

antlers made of lightning. Something that climbs out of

a notebook dragging my career through a flooded

parking lot. My friends are here. Their voices gather in

the room like folded maps. I touch the edge of every

laugh and still end up standing in the cold section of

myself. The jukebox is full of wet leaves and I am really

fucking horny. The new moon knows this already,

watching me mistake a weathervane for prophecy. Will

I ever meet someone to date? Not that random bodies

aren’t beautiful — it just gets tiring carrying home

another constellation that forgets my name by morning.

I want to write a poem called splooge. The title arrived

first like a shopping cart rolling across a field. Maybe

this is it? Dirty words excite me. I hide them in coat

pockets. I tuck them beneath receipts in a shoebox

where I keep old leather. I stare at people’s footwear.

Shoes know things like departure times carrying entire

biographies as feet turn to walk away afterwards.

Afterwards feels like a deer standing in a pharmacy

waiting on Xanax. That man’s pants are very high, or

the river is very shallow. He is sexy as fuck. I need to

stop thinking with my dick. The church bell falls into a

puddle dripping from the motel ice machine — singing

little silver songs so tiring. I wish he would text me

back. Inside, his silence hangs in the air like a ladder to

nowhere. Outside, the evening folds itself into smaller

evenings and the peaches have gone bruised. I want

people to come hang out with me more often. I want a

porch light bright enough for returning. I want a room

that keeps becoming a room even after everyone leaves.

---

Scott Kenimond is a graduate student and TA in his third year of the NEOMFA at The University of Akron. He writes poetry, flash and micro fiction, creative nonfiction, and even dabbles in photography. His work has appeared in AshBelt, Villain Era Lit, and CrayfishMag. He believes one day he will be as big as his idol Madonna—if not already.

Tresha Faye Haefner

In the Beginning There was the Internet

And the Face of the light moved over the monitor. And the God of ones and zeros was monitoring all of us. And the government was listening. And we came, we that were not of the internet, but sent to use the internet. And the web browsers locked us out. And the encrypted messages remained encrypted. And we were sent emails to unlock our messages. And we were sent secret codes to unlock our accounts. And yay, we wept at the sight of the monitor grown dead as the eye of a behemoth slain at the bottom of the sea. And we did struggle. We did wander. We did disembark the arc of our airplane and wander through the airport and there was light and shadow, and macchiatos and foam neck pillows. And there were people from everywhere crossing in front of us, carrying suitcases full of chargers and gee-gaws and they were leaving baggage claim to take ride shares to hotel rooms, far from the crowds, far from cars, far from their homelands, listening to strangers on television. And they were turning to one another saying “verily, verily” we have arrived as they searched for an outlet, and plugged in an electric toothbrush, and put on their night ointments and fell asleep under paintings of ships setting sail on the ocean, luminous and nailed against the wall.

~

My Sister Gave Birth to a Fox

They think it’s some kind of miracle,

like women haven’t been giving birth

To foxes for centuries now.

It’s orange tail. Its bright, unexpected ears.

She spends all her time with him now,

Bathing him, quilting him into the landscape.

When I get a chance to steal him,

I take him to the place

Where the lawn meets the forest.

I tell the fox I too was an animal once.

I might want to be an animal again.

The fox touches my mouth with his fingers.

He’s searching for my fangs, my incisors. 

When he pulls his hands away

They are pink with the smell of civilization.

We spend the rest of the day picking flowers,

Pawing the dirt. Biting each other’s haunches

To tear away the fleas. 

---

Tresha Faye Haefner’s poetry appears, or is forthcoming in several journals and magazines, most notably Blood Lotus, Blue Mesa Review, The Cincinnati Review, Five South, Hunger Mountain, Mid-America Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Radar, Rattle, TinderBox, and Up the Staircase Quarterly. Her work has garnered several accolades, including the 2011 Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize, and a 2012, 2020, and 2021 nomination for a Pushcart. Her first manuscript, Pleasures of the Bear was a finalist for prizes from both Moon City Press and Glass Lyre Press. It was published by Pine Row Press under the title When the Moon Had Antlers in 2023. Find her at www.thepoetrysalonstack.substack.com.

Gregory O’Neill

Longevity

The universe is humped

open between oblique

and oblivion. The insistent

carpet of a shaggy sky,

the unspooling energies

of the earth, a meringue

of whipped air. Science

eats up the wonder

while reclining on its

leather cushion. Some

morning we’ll all be toast.

Secure or not we

dwell in persuasion.

It is something more

like the recognition that

some things matter

enough to absorb a cost

that cannot be fully

calculated in advance.

Whatever came before

is the same as

whatever came after.

The distance

conducts its enormity,

its wonder of whatever was.

And ever since.

~

Corridors

It’s the oldest guilty secret,

the way life spools on, tromps

along, hardening each upturned

face it trails across and sets

a blister there. We swap them

for aches, then callouses. Our

eyes, possessed entirely by

the sky, to a minus quantity.

An atmosphere of clues, a pool

one might fall headlong into—

indigo, cloud, black and light

speckled by night. A quotidian

object lesson in the brutally

distant, the squeamishly close,

and the complicated dance of

siphoning power among a

succession of multitudes

spiraling like fish, toward a

distant unperceived surface

of nothing but reflection.

Advancing equally into the past,

empty spaces so crowded

they push you into the corner,

take your lunch money, turn

and move on.

---

Gregory O’Neill, from Seattle, writes that readers might feel less alone in their ambiguity, more whole in their partial truths. Recent poems appear in The Laurel Review, Mantis Literary Journal, Sagebrush Review, San Antonio Review, Opiate Magazine, Route 7, whimperbang, Midsummer Dream House, Route 7 Review, Relief Quarterly, Cathexis, Eunoia, Litbop, Jackdaw, Quasar, Last Leaves, Zoetic, Jake, Bristol Noir, The Words Faire, Half and One, New Feathers Anthology, TrashLight, Wordrunner eChapbooks, Four Tulips, Gabby & Min’s, Larina’s Lit, Closed Eye Open, Journal of Undiscovered Poets, and others.

William Teets

Now and Forever

Hiding in the daybreak

of the back row pew,

no one recognizes me out of disguise

I should’ve burned

the whole building down a long time ago,

back before even when God was born

I hold my piece, vow

to remain silent forever

Slip out the side vestibule

before bells ring

your glorious announcement

that no man can tear asunder

Some primal rant roils deep within,

and I wish I had said goodbye

I search for a street savior

to parlay my pain

into a spectacular supremacy of joy

and sacramental goodness

Riding the local to Queens,

I fail to laminate my misery

against the Great Sadness

Rain streaks the tempered graffitied glass,

and I wonder if just one last time

you’ll come and see about me 

~

Hard Candy

Reflected raindrops scatter prism beads on pavement, and I promise I’ll love you forever. But you only see multi-shades of moldy-brown, an easter egg dipped in too many dyes at once. Not wicked in your denial, you still haven’t heard the street news that the days of jacking Peter to pay Paul ended in a shootout on the West Fourth courts—say you need to get to Staten Island by morning, and the ferry is always late. When you walk to the corner to flag a cab to the Battery, the colors beneath your heavy heels break apart like hard candy. Over the disorderly street serenade, music pouring out from the bar, all I hear is the taxi door slam shut. I turn, trip, and fall over broken hues of indigo and violet and blue.     

---

William Teets, born in Peekskill, New York, has recently relocated to Southeast Michigan. He misses New York pizza, corner stores, and the Hudson River. Mr. Teets’ work has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Argyle, Underbelly Press, The Engine (Idling, San Pedro River Review, Ink in Thirds, and Ariel Chart. He is the author of two poetry books, After the Fall (2023) and Babylon Redux (2025), both published by Cajun Mutt Press.

Emily Dressler

Truncated Duolingo Lesson: English - Basics (Is this what you call survival?)

Topic: Choices and Finding Meaning While Trying to Seem Easygoing

1. Translation Exercise

Translate to Find Any Meaning:

“Is this what you thought your breakfasts would be like?”

Your answer:
 [“Have I trapped someone into domesticity? Are you sure we live here together? Why is it that every man I’ve ever loved says they never saw themselves getting married?” ]

2. Multiple Choice

Select the correct translation for “I feel alone in a crowded room”:

a) I am good at observation, and I am fine with the personality I’ve cultivated.

b) I might have chosen differently if I had known what any of it would feel like.

c) Doesn’t everyone feel this way sometimes?

d) Someone should have fought harder for their desired outcome.

e) Is this why you love me?

Your answer:
 [ e) “Is this why you love me?” This is the right answer, it’s true. ]

~

We Deserve This

If we were on a cruise ship,

you’d be the greasy little shit who kills

his family and stuffs them into suitcases

thinking that nothing matters

when you’re unmoored.

I’ll give you a nametag that reads

“greasy little shit” so everyone knows

what kind of baggage you’re holding.

My daughter still finds wonder—still!—in the musicians

who kept playing as the

Titanic sank. It was their only chance

to accompany an iceberg—the most diverse

range in chamber music—

and an elegiac effort not to live

without art.

And now?

Who will be the one to keep the cruise ship

Wi-Fi signal strong so the toneless

muzak of Katy Perry or Ed Sheeran

ushers our falling bodies

into the depthless sea, the black of night

like a cup upturned? 

---

Emily Dressler lives in Northeast Ohio. She works as a proofreader at a global advertising agency. Her fiction, flash fiction, and poetry has appeared in Villain Era Lit, the Citron Review, Okay Donkey, and a small smattering of others.

Chris Dolan

Slushy Pie

this morning it snowed

and I thought of you

across town, lingering

on the path behind

our neighborhood where

wild-seeming dogs

herded themselves into packs

cocksure in their number

like you and I rushing

into a mortgage

or that marathon

we never trained for

or like the snowflakes

counting on each other

to insulate against dawn

scraping the car becomes therapeutic

removing something

without destroying it

I turn onto our street and stop

using both arms, I gather the snow

from the roof of the car and plop it

onto yours

~

My Life Goes Ta-Da

My life feels like pulling your boots off,

and the socks go with them.

Once, my socks pulled off while

you snuck around the corner,

and I pelted you with the left.

Eyes glittering and feral

as you closed the distance.

You were like a magic trick.

It worked when I believed.

Misdirection from the hallway,

and I’m left wondering if you

were ever fully here.

I like to believe.

Just last week I freed a sock

from the cushions’ depths.

I held it up like a rabbit

dangling from its ears.

---

Chris Dolan is the founding editor of One Fall Review. He is angry about the nitrate levels in Iowa’s drinking water. Chris’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Strange Horizons, Maudlin House, The Bowery Review, and others.

Matt Zambito

To Green

—to twig equal-signs of meaning photosynthesized between

the unofficial first sprout sprung in spring; and a house

spruced up with a cereus cactus; and frogs about to lose

their version of sinless virginity on a lily pad; and fronds

Palm Sunday congregations hold and hosanna; and a spear

of asparagus envious of a Christmas tree; and reveries

after just enough viridescent absinthe, cannabis, and spicy

guacamole; and barium ending jaded when engulfed by

flame; and a firefly’s bioluminescent bottom floating up

from the grass as it says Hello, as it says Don’t harm me,

as it says I’m horny; and pastures the Shepherd maketh

the psalmist lie down in; and a single resplendent quetzal

swimming through air with wing-flaps; and the feeling

of pining for a lush field of forty-four-leaf-clover luck.

~

That Cheapskate Justin Bieber

Please tell that cheapskate Justin Bieber

he still owes me gas money for the time

I drove him home from the airport.

I can write that on the Internet.

That basically makes it mainly true

as the untrue conviction that apex

artificial intelligence is intelligent

to invent. Please tell Justin Bieber

I like the way his music seems

like something that isn’t actually

blah, meh, ugh, feh. I seem like that

when I listen to his manicured music.

I can write that on the Internet

even if it’s conclusively true I’m more

like that whenever I lie on the Internet

about Justin Bieber owing me dough.

He does owe me the time I’ve wasted

enjoying his bubblegum-pop hits

to just barely tolerate my daily drives

through all manner of traffic, bopping

my noggin down to the upbeats,

lip-synching off-key, ignoring

the potential dread of tomorrow.

Please believe me when I write that

I love more than what I’ve lost

to time’s ever-increasing speed.

Whatever that means, it now means

something on whatever becomes of

the Internet to future music historians

and professors of ancient poetry

(at least until high tech ends autonomies

on the low note of singularity)

feeling owed an instant answer to

their search for “What’s the best poem

about Justin Bieber?” (if anything past

matters, then nothing matters more,

nothing less) and arriving at this.

---

Matt Zambito is the author of The Fantastic Congress of Oddities, and two chapbooks, Guy Talk and Checks & Balances. His poetry and prose are forthcoming in swamp pink, The Adroit Journal, The MacGuffin, Melange: A Journal of Prose Poetry and the Arts, Great Lakes Review, and elsewhere. Originally from Niagara Falls, he has lived in Ohio, Idaho, Washington, and New York, where he now resides with his rescue dog, Sadie.

Isabel Galupo

Open House

Picture me frothing

at the farmhouse sink

baseboards so crisp

I become better

moldings crowning me good

What else can Tracy Do

for me? Finish my novel

unfuck my left hip

give me a skylight above the toilet

a lemon balcony

~

The goddess Mayari is blind in one eye

for Alex

The animal kingdom teaches us

that the loss of one sense

naturally enhances the others.

Recently I’m less interested in sharpening

and more about giving up. I lost myself

on the way back from the bathroom

again last night. Luckily, my husband

a beacon in the swamp.

When I reached the hot nest of blankets

he guided my hand to his ass and said

This is my face

In the dark any lobster can be a wolf,

any woman can fall asleep laughing.

---

Isabel Galupo is an Emmy-nominated TV writer, picture book author, and poet who splits her time between Los Angeles and Louisville. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pegasus: The Literary Journal of the Kentucky State Poetry Society, Pine Hills Review, and Luna Luna Magazine.

William Faller

Ohio turnpike

Throwback Ohio doldrums

in yellow November fields

Where time goes to do long division

stack old newspapers and

erect personalized water

towers that throw shadows

over the scars of irrigation ditches

Dwellings spaced out so far

that two souls caught in a

single frame form a blessed union

Peeling black retread rubber

smoke filled dog bone cavities

along the elongated ribbon

cinched across the muffin

topped midsection of

America this afternoon

until I wonder where they go

home to for Thanksgiving

because it can’t be Toledo

‍

~

my mother boiled hot dogs

my mother boiled hot dogs

for supper while my father

chopped wood behind the

house and later when they

were sure I was asleep one

night I pushed through the

cigarette smoke that folded

onto itself in blue curtains

thinning down until I was

invisible and crawled under

the table where the grown-ups

sat drinking and playing

cards and talked in their

real voices at last

born when people were

forged from cast iron

my grandmother’s voice

was breaking concrete

she once told me not to

bother brushing my teeth

they’d twist them out like

bottle caps and give me dentures

I’d be able to eat corn again

now when I think back

through all that smoke

to my choice of vantage

points under the table

obscured in the totality

of the oblong eclipse

I can’t see their faces at all

and it hurts so bad that

I consider boiling hot dogs

but I don’t

---

William is a Navy veteran from Pennsylvania living in Perry County along the Appalachian Trail. His poems have appeared in various journals and are forthcoming in Rawhead and Schuylkill Valley Journal. Trail name, Wilhelm Fink.

Mark Dunbar

House fire

We wanted to scream

Go back to your mothers! Drop dead!

at the large men in oxygen

masks and helmets and the hoses

they dragged in, the tromping boots

and the seared black

of what I swear

was a kitchen,

but we’d called them,

unlike the neighbors we’d never

see again standing like a chorus

struck dumb on the grass—

neighbors I’d never ask

about the ravishments of glinting

axe heads and sirens fading

into the strange magnificat

of breaking glass.

I only stood back

minting what currency I could

from ruin

and found in its place

my father, who looked at me

in utter astonishment

and laughed.

‍

~

Food train

My sister stood on the pier and said

that a turtle had bitten her—there, on the toe,

and she cried when I said that she was lucky

it hadn’t eaten her complete, that

all of the other animals would eat her too—

the fish and the snakes

and probably even our dog

because that’s how creatures behave.

It was natural and there was a name for it—

the food chain,

and she ran and cried some more

at what she’d heard

and said that she didn’t want

to be on that train,

and I ran too but too late shouting

but you’re the queen, the shining queen

of the train, but she was gone.

She jumped or fell and fingers pointed

and there were shouts as she flailed—

get her you on the pier,

but sun spray blinded me—it pinned me

to the moment as the day

hailed itself from far away

and someone else saved it.

No one likes to talk about

how that tumble became your calling,

how death caught your eye,

no one standing by, queen,

to keep you from stepping out 

with that oaf.  

The old pier has collapsed. The tide runs out.

Somewhere a train strips the night

to an echo, no figurehead blind

on its dirty snout

to fall into the waves.

---

Mark Dunbar lives in Brookfield, Il. His work has appeared in Red Rock Review, Spellbinder, Sky Island Journal, Neologism Poetry Review, Grey Sparrow, and the Ekphrastic Review, among others. Originally from Columbus, Ohio, he attended Kenyon college where he won the American Academy of Poetry prize.

Kathleen McGookey

What a Difference a Day Makes

One day three skeletons appear in the yard by the Wenger’s white

farmhouse.  One tries to mow down another, who braces its feet against the

machine and screams.  The third stands nearby, spotlit, narrating or singing,

I can’t tell which.  The Wengers are nice people, but I have to look away. 

They’re just skeletons, I tell myself, they can’t hurt each other.  The next

day, only the singing skeleton’s head peeks out from a trash can lid, propped

up by one bony arm.  The next day, many more skeletons emerge, pushing

themselves up and out of the ground.  The next day, two armies face off: 

one side holds pumpkins, the other, bones.  One skeleton poised between

them wears a black and white shirt, whistle in hand.  The lawnmower

languishes in the shadow of the barn.  The next day, one skeleton in a white

coat flourishes a syringe; the rest line up for vaccines.  The next day, a rusty

model A truck crashes into a tree.  More skeletons tend the newly dead

thrown onto the lawn.  I look away again.  The next day, under a sunrise

that streaks the clouds pink and gold, the army returns; each skeleton holds

a shovel, ready to dig their own graves.

~

Let the Record Show

In the corrected version of your decline, you never fall, never spend two

days crawling from room to room, searching for a phone.  The ambulance

idles in the hospital bay; your housekeeper mops the kitchen, like always. 

Your hallucinations vanish:  canned goods gather themselves back into

cupboards, the doors click shut.  Your hearing aids nestle in a velvet box

that once held an engagement ring, and you appreciate every word we say. 

Let this corrected version show that you never yell, never strike a deal with

a swindler who promises a mirage:  going home.  Itemized bills slip from

your hands and drift to the floor.  Clean again, your skin glows like a

newborn’s; your head is a friendly bald egg.  You accept the little room with

one window, the path from bed to chair and back again.  Snow and rain or

clouds and fog visit occasionally, peeking in like a couple old friends you

manage to keep.

---

Kathleen McGookey's most recent books of prose poems are Paper Sky (Press 53) and Cloud Reports (Celery City Chapbooks). Her work has appeared in many literary magazines including Copper Nickel, Epoch, Field, Glassworks, Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, Waxwing, and Willow Springs.

Ann Weil

Looking for My Bra, I Forgot

looking for my bra/ I forgot this morning/ to look

in my hand/ searching/ I remembered laying out

my containment/ mis-remembering/ I thought the

bed was where I’d laid the lacy shelf/ but now I

see my own self mirrored/ 63 years and still/

grasping/ I cling to the material/ to my binding

habits/ unnecessary/ yet too tightly held/ to let go/

even though my sieving mind/ seems keen for the purge

so many little birds

flying away

through open windows

‍

And the Beat Goes On

                        Palm Springs, CA

On Valmonte Sur there are fountains, at least one to a yard, that babble like exuberant carnival

barkers hawking their wares, “Step right up!” “Greatest Bath on Earth!” And the crowds flock—

towhee to starling, phoebe to finch, swooping down in giddy groups splashing and preening, all

the while watching the humans in stifling suits and sweat-smelly dresses assembling ahead of the

funeral, or rather, Celebration of Life, as these affairs have been rebranded. The cars lurk in the

drive, and they, too, seem uncomfortable, washed and shined, lights on in broad daylight, doors

hanging open like spread wings. I dread the journey and the day, ugly-cry faces hidden behind

dark sunglasses—everyone looking like past-retirement-age secret service—hands cramped and

damp from clutching sodden kleenexes. (Ugh. Think of the germs!) Nobody wanting to be there,

everyone watching their watches. I can’t stop thinking about coffins and confinement, how I’ll

feel trapped at the church by the chanting cantor, the choking incense, the rambling of a priest

who doesn’t know a thing about me, about how to celebrate my life. If he did, none of us would

be sitting sedately in stiff-backed pews. No one would wear black. Instead, we’d all be

technicolor—  mid-century modernists in vintage muumuus and Mrs. Roper wigs, splashing and

preening in the Sonny Bono Memorial Fountain, belting out I Got You Babe, laughing until we

pee, our wildness contagious even to the mourning doves who will eschew their coos for

whooping guffaws. And for the first time ever, I’ll be the quiet one, resting my eyes, keeping my

mouth shut. But don’t worry. I’m just thinking about how to get out of this damned box.

---

Ann Weil's poetry appears in Best New Poets 2024, Okay Donkey, RHINO, Chestnut Review, 3Elements Review, and elsewhere. Author of Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman (Yellow Arrow, 2023) and Blue Dog Road Trip (Gnashing Teeth, 2024), Weil is a former special education teacher, current kettle corn lover, and four-time Pushcart nominee who lives in Michigan and California. To read more of her work, visit www.annweilpoetry.com.

JC Alfier

Between Concealer and Desire, or The First Time a Makeup Artist Regards Me Credibly

You knew damn well

what the cis ghost would say:

Where do you even start with all this shit?

But fuck that doubter,

ignore his refrain
sung from a deadnamed shadow.

I’ll let this florid spectrum

of brand names,

once peripheral at best,

        consume me now

each one a hawker to fortune me
with soft convictions:

unguessed colors,

shades not found in nature,

but hungry for skin nonetheless:

rouge and shadow,

powder and paste

the legend of a map my flesh must learn:—

a thousand names for a face.

But when does a face belong?

Let’s say it belongs when I sanction

the artist

to make me the next woman

called to the sweet ache of strip-lights

           that frame her mirror,

                  to lure reflection into song:—                                           

changeling in blush,                                

concealer,

eyeshadow,

and that lipstick

named a deadly scarlet,

my mouth brimmed

with a promise, the kind

         that abides no remit.

              The kind that pledges

to lure a target

    easy enough to kiss.

‍

Transwoman Retreats to a Place Thought Popular off Bourbon Street

If I gaze toward the end of the barroom

most in need of light

a recently emptied and stranded shotglass

 holds a strayed hornet that will go airborne

 again if I can furrow the crowd to swirl the fading ice

 and pitch the watery mix

 into the funk of the sweat-rhythmed street

 I know she may yet survive

 breaking moonlight over her wings.

This piece was originally published at Noon Poetry Magazine, Fall 2024.  

---

JC Alfier’s (they/them) most recent book of poetry is The Shadow Field. Journal credits include Copper Nickel, Faultline, Fugue, Notre Dame Review, Penn Review, River Styx, and Vassar Review. They are also a collage artist after the styles of Francesca Woodman, Deborah Turbeville, and Katrien De Blauwer.

Jeffrey Hermann

Life Being What It Is

We’re up to our ears in horsework. I mean housework. One of us does the ceiling and one of us does the floor. We meet in the middle. RIght now you can’t tell if it’s almost fall or almost spring. We decide on one and it comes true. I don’t mind saying I might have been born for caretaking. I like to make lunch and change sheets. I like to brush the coat of a large animal. We hold hands at the top of large buildings. Afraid of heights. I mean hearts. They say it’s one big muscle but that doesn’t account for anything. Living in a small house, I almost always know where you are. But sometimes I do not know where you are and that means you might be in the yard. I look out the window but it’s hard to see. Someone’s been breathing on the pane.

‍

If You Had to Describe Love as a Shape But You Weren’t Allowed to Say Circle What Shape Would You Say Love Is? 

You could be funny and say triangle. Ha ha. Or find a loophole and say oval. People who think about sex a lot will say rhombus. Which I get but can’t explain. If you say love is a hexagon or a pentagon I feel like you’re saying love is a trap. I can’t relate to anything with a lot of corners. Though I could see love as a parallelogram, a square someone leaned on. But the right answer is cone. How it begins wide open and comes to an end. Or the other way around and it starts at a point and enlarges, consuming everything. 

---

Jeffrey Hermann writes short fiction and prose poems in his spare time. One day when he retires he will write in his regular time. His work is out there if you look. His wife and two children and dog mean everything to him. He has two books forthcoming in 2027, from Unsolicited Press and Gnashing Teeth Publishing.

Jason Davidson

Moon

I dreamt last night of party streamers. The possums put them up for their school dance. There was an uncanny play list for the night, but possums are not known for their taste in music. I don’t actually know whether or not that’s true, but it seems reasonable. The possum who wears green trousers wasn’t certain whether he would attend the dance, but he wanted to see his friend Fred, so it seemed reasonable. After his third cup of punch, he said to Fred: I’m really starting to feel the punch, dude. Fred didn’t want to tell his friend that the punch was only pineapple juice and hot pink cherries, so he swayed back and forth to the early aughts house music and closed his eyes, but not tightly. He thought this was another way to look cool. The possum with the green trousers thought Fred looked very cool. He wanted to kiss Fred, but he wasn’t sure if Fred wanted to kiss him so he said instead: This dance is kind of lame, want to come outside and I’ll show you something neat? Fred nodded his possum head, but only slightly. Outside, the possum with the green trousers took a slingshot out of his green pocket and aimed it at the moon. He said: Watch this! He launched a clean shot and the moon took a somersault from the sky and landed on the school’s front lawn. Fred was not impressed. He explained that he’d called in a bomb threat and now that was well ruined. The possum with the green trousers never kissed Fred. Fred ended up in a loveless marriage with too many children, too many bills and a nagging infection in his left ear that ultimately led to his early death. I don’t know what happened to the possum in the green shorts. No one told me.

‍

Dog

I dreamt last night of John. I am packing for us to leave this place when I find him sleeping in a box of old things that remind me of you. They remind me of deserts, Dobermans and hypodermic needles. They remind me of the death fairy and her faint kiss. Her blood whisper. John used to be a dog, but you filled him so full that one of his button eyes was lost in Boulder, one of his feet unraveled in the snow. You went to the mountains once with your three dogs, high out of your good mind. You lost them there. I hear them calling in the middle of the night and how I hate my barter ears. I do not want John to know this. I hold him close. I want to build a dam for John. I don’t want to put him back in the box, but I cannot look at him for long. The idea of going blind is scary. John looks sad like a summer storm. I whisper to him, Mother has gone away for a time, but I’m sure she’ll be back with the snow. Lies like gooseberries or dirty dishes or old roses. I hold him like you did not hold me. I tell him that I lost my dogs too. I am embarrassed by my grief. I am embarrassed by all grief. When someone dies, I dig my toes into the ground, wanting to be buried like a piece of time, wine that I drink now, things I cook when I cannot speak. John nods his head. He knows.

---

Jason Davidson is a poet, fiction writer, playwright and performer. He’s written, directed and produced over 200 works of experimental theatre and his one-act plays have been widely published. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hobart, Club Plum, Pine Hills Review, HAD, SoFloPoJo, Burningword, Heavy Feather Review, Stone of Madness, Luna Luna, Troublemaker Firestarter, The Mackinaw, and other journals. Jason lives on California's Central Coast with his husband and four-legged children. Find him on Instagram at @jasonwriteswords.

Lindsay B. Sears

My light is not sunlight

My security light

outside my dining room window

protecting the side yard alleyway

separating the front from the back

separating me from my neighbor

has stopped paying attention

to my movements. I stand

at 2 a.m. waving frantically

my arms scaring the moths

away. Seeing the wren pretend

bat-like clamped inverted

to my neighbor’s eave. Seeing

the cast shadow of the anemic

bush on my neighbor’s wall

seem like a more robust version

of itself. My light is not

sunlight. Though it can be

as bright as, but not

when it outshines the night.

I lose sight of the feral

ginger who poops under

the light so he can see

the buried traces of himself

making his way to the unlit

porch where he can eat

the food I leave unexposed.

I bargain with my reflection

If you keep the cat safe, I’ll

If you keep the wren safe, I’ll

If you keep the moths

attentive to the moon

flowers, I’ll    

let the bush bloom

like the ones in the front

with their showy snowballs

get the neighbors talking

what is that? they say

but anyway, they’re pretty

My neighbor’s roof disappearing

into the sky. No stars left

winking

at my inside jokes

‍

Posted, (_) Property

A swoop of swallows

perched on oak. Always two

or three at a time and one at a time

taking their turns dining in midair

with their forks flicking in quick twists

and turns and returning

lining the sign sitting perpendicular

to the one that claims there also used to be

elm. In the same way

I suppose there used to be a field

of birch and a grassy meadow with views

of fawn and a secluded depression

two hills and a prairie

that once caught fire

or was made to burn.

(Also known as a gulp.)

There may be some connection

between the myth of the theft of fire

and the way a rufous neck can steal

the sun, a wielded fire that can want

a prairie burned. The view of this place

from nature, reflecting

beyond us and signaling

our presence

posted at every corner.

---

Lindsay B. Sears is a poet, photographer, and a recent MLA graduate from Auburn University, Montgomery. Her work has appeared in About Place Journal, Metphrastics, Still Point Arts Quarterly, The Shallot, and Yellow Arrow Journal, among others. She lives with her feline and human companions in Alabama.

Anna Crandall

Glass House

 Do you watch the sun set each evening behind
the roofline of your neighbor’s house and think you are safe?

The windowpanes turning inwards, reflecting one at a time
glowing bulbs of your little existence.

Each family member passes by, the oldest child with his face
looking out, the youngest seeing only his own heart.

Twilight wipes a soft rag across the sky. The neighbor’s roof catches
with a blaze. It could just as easily be wildfire; we packed bags
last summer as the smoke took one look around, circled, settled down.

Time hovers then shifts, each year seemingly plucked from suspension, dropped
down the run that speeds faster each round.

What is beauty but knowing this will end? To love life even though
the beginnings portend our cellular collapse, the loss of everyone and then some?

The universe keeps expanding as his watch now ticks on the dresser, unused.

Before too long, you’ll lose the stars, the smell
in his handkerchiefs, their small bodies curved towards yours.

It was his birthday yesterday, the years slipping seamlessly
from beneath you. You pulled your fingers through
the brittle grass, lit the barbeque, tempting fate.

Sparks glazed the air like stars that had already died.

You chose to hold it all to your heart. You tried.

---

Anna Crandall (she/her) is a writer living in Portland, Oregon. She has previously taught in Oregon’s Department of Corrections and is currently a high school Language Arts teacher. She is pursuing her Master's in English and Creative Writing and has work recently published or upcoming in MER Literary, Shot Glass Journal, The Pointed Circle, The Vehicle, and more. You can find her on Instagram @teacupsandghosts.