Samuel Day Wharton
After the Big Bang | What's Your First Bird of the Day
After the Big Bang
at 2am
lying awake
I imagine disaster
a plane crash
an assassination
bombs under bridges
(our sun too young to collapse / the universe expanding
at speeds too fast to imagine
none of it comforts me as much
as your hand at my side
your breath at my neck
dogs at our feet)
as helicopters swirl in the night sky
What’s Your First Bird of the Day?
someone asks & I look
immediately, though it’s mid-
day, out the windows
at the house-finch
it’s roseate likeness hanging
off the evening primrose
seeding the ground
around the fig tree. I look
with all my eyes the ones
fully covered by salt-
moss & the ones my niece
gave me in hopes of clearer
weather. Inches away, steady-
handed D. takes a blade
to the straggling morning
glory in my hair. The furthest
I’ve been in this memory
is dawn & there they are
every morning: the mourning
doves in pairs, there pecking
through the redwood mulch
Samuel Day Wharton makes wine & writes poems in Sacramento CA. Recent work has appeared (or will appear) in Stone Circle Review, the engine(idling, The Shore, Some Words, & Poetry Is Currency. You can find him on Bluesky here: @fakeourway.bsky.social
Lucas Wildner
Representations | Another Fraction | Radetzky, Grant and Swan
Representations
Stacy,
baking was my escape
that first pandemic December.
Seattle’s Pacific Standard gloom
and isolation summoned
sentimental visions
of the Advent Jause
I was missing.
Every Sunday a candlelit wreath
on the coffee table,
joined by steaming mugs of frütchetee,
a platter of Vanillekipferl,
Husarenkrapfen, Lebkuchen,
Rumkugeln—all homemade
by my father, transformed
from the man who saved foil
in a drawer for a second or third use
into a baker in need
of another stick of butter,
another tin for the latest batch.
Nostalgic,
I was a good consumer.
The night the hand mixer arrived
my boyfriend and I
ate Husarenkrapfen on the couch.
They tasted like my father was about
to return from the kitchen
with a refilled platter,
like practice for the inevitable after.
They didn’t last a week.
*
You bought a kettle
to boil water the Austrian way.
A chopper
to chop onions Austrianly.
For an Erdäpfelsalat, I assume.
I’m stalling
because I don’t want to say
how I learned your name:
the Notice of settlement email
a year after you became
Class Representative
for all who believed in Mueller’s
Austrian Representations,
the red-white-red,
umlauted distractions
that allowed the company
to overcharge us
for European quality.
Suffering,
the attorneys called it—
the cooks and bakers tricked
by Chinese-made products,
who needed Austrian quality,
Old World magic in the kitchen.
I never told him. I knew
he would have scolded me—
it hadn’t been on sale.
But news of the settlement
almost made me reconsider.
$7.50 to make me whole.
It would have made his day.
Another Fraction
There were
years pretending
to read his birthday wishes,
handwriting as inscrutable as the German.
Silently you would count to eight
then Danke, Papa interrupted your smile.
The party could move on.
Didn’t need much German
to be grateful.
Decades later,
a first: in a card for Easter
addressed to you and your boyfriend,
you find your parents transformed,
twin territories held together
by boundary: Papa/Günter Mom/Mary.
That he can’t or won’t write Dad—
a joke possibly only to you,
one you feel guilty enjoying, but
isn’t this
what you wanted, a boyfriend
and a relationship with your parents
that don’t get in each other’s way?
Part of it is how he sounds in English,
I hope that a visit in Seattle is on my travel plans.
Part of it is the retreat, again, from German.
Another fraction subtracted.
You agree, the card is nice.
An attempt at gratitude.
Don’t need much at all.
Radetzky, Grant and Swan
Late night errand for conveniences
at the 24-hour pharmacy. I park
and my parents are waltzing again,
memories of Neujahrskonzert broadcasts
in the living room that fade
as soon as I step out of the car,
startled by the outdoor speakers
management has armed
with Classical, enough decibels
to discourage loitering,
provide an un-unhoused shopping experience.
A hostile hospitality
already half-forgotten
by the time I drive off
with my electrolyte packs.
Turning to the audience
the conductor lifts his baton.
The imperial capital claps along.
Victory, victory. In their hands
a sting sharpening.
Lucas Wildner (he/him) lives in Seattle. He is repairing his relationships to German and English and.... Ghost City Review published his debut chapbook Fluency in June 2022 and his chapbook [eyes emoji] was published by Hot Mess House in 2024. He can be found.
Laura DeHart Young
Truck Stop Prayer | What I Couldn't Fix
Truck Stop Prayer
Bless the smell of cinnamon buns,
burnt coffee, wet gravel after a
sudden rain.
Cigarette smoke and truck exhaust,
engine oil, garbage stench, and grit.
Bless finding a truck stop just in time.
Bless a strong woman
who studies the horizon,
doesn't bend or bow.
Weighs her words—
a fire in her silence
revealed through dusky eyes.
Like the woman at the next pump,
directing the flow of fuel
into a black pickup—
her glance straying
from the shimmering horizon
to my wrestling
with a jammed gas cap.
Bless the arm that reaches across
and twists it open
with a calloused hand.
A hand you want around
to open dill pickle jars
and strawberry jam.
“Where you headed?” she asks,
cowboy hat flapping in the breeze.
Maybe it’s a blessing I don't own
a western hat—just passing through
these foreign plains
where footsteps shed grief
and forward motion dulls pain.
I am good at running away—
from discomfort,
reckoning.
Shattered stoneware
flying past my head
in nightly dreams.
Bless glances that say just enough—
this woman leaning
against the pump,
asking with concern: “You hungry?”
Sunlight burns her shoulders,
streaks of gold woven
through brunette hair.
She must have noticed
the bruised cheekbone, stitches.
Bless the gravel crunching
under our boots
past license plates from states
I’ve never visited.
We order Buc-ee’s brisket sandwiches,
eat in the bed of her truck—
closeness I no longer remember.
Bless the wide felt brim
casting shadows across her face—
hiding softness,
voice quiet, but deliberate.
She owns a small dairy farm off 80 East
outside Lincoln—
runs it with her brother,
barely breaking even.
Her forehead is lined with hard work,
face tanned, shoulders sculpted.
She lifts me down—
presses a number into my hand.
“Call me,” she says.
Bless that.
What I Couldn’t Fix
There wasn't much visible
under the sink.
Laced boots and an inch of jeans.
Your muffled voice,
asking for the crescent wrench.
I study the same tool
in a hardware store off Route 66—
balance its weight on two fingers,
cold in my palm as I adjust it.
Imagine your hand reaching,
pipes clanking years ago.
The screen door slams for the tenth time,
never fully closing.
The store a dinosaur of time—
stuffy, organized chaos
with an inch of desert dust,
sharp smell of grease, and
tang of WD-40.
A lone fan spinning overhead
accomplishes nothing.
I return the wrench
to a faded pegboard
where it's likely been dangling
for a decade—
step over a golden retriever
sprawled in the next aisle.
Locate tire pressure gauges—
what I really need—
piled high in a plastic bin.
I remember using one on your Datsun—
you standing, hands on hips,
asking, “What is that thing?”
The same woman who could
fix a sink
was car clueless.
I pick up a handful,
let them slip back
through my fingers into the barrel
like I’m sifting
through old memories.
Kneeling on snow-covered ground,
testing tires—pressure low.
Explaining the readings to
a blank stare.
At the counter, a man in a stained apron,
informs me, “Cash only.”
Punches an old-time register,
indicator window displaying the price.
Bells chime, the drawer flings open.
I forgot what a penny looked like.
I leave this museum of spare parts,
each one built to repair something—
except what’s gone.
No tool has ever existed
to fix what happened to us.
Laura DeHart Young is a queer poet and novelist whose work explores memory, resilience, and the emotional terrain of relationships. Her poems have appeared in The Eunoia Review, Last Leaves Magazine, The Ravens Perch, The Bluebird Word, Book of Matches, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Burnt Toast and Benedictions, was published in October 2025. She is the author of seven novels from Bella Blooks.
JR Walsh
Celebrating our cheese anniversary | Our bags were packed for us | The semester always flees
Celebrating our cheese anniversary
Here is a maze.
I drew the maze.
Begin at start. Trace a line (use this pencil) straight forward until you are blocked. You are
blocked? The maze is defective. I drew the maze badly. I authorize you to jump that
blockade. Here let me– Give me– I used pen or I would erase the
blockage. Look here. Go again. Take back the pencil. Go until you are
stopped. You are stopped again? Go back the other way.
The way you just came from. There. It’s boxed in a sideways L with some pencil scratches in it.
Start. I know those are yours. How can you see your next move with all that back and forth scribbling?
Here. I’ve crossed out that barrier. Pretend it’s a pond. To wade through. Drag the pencil
through. Get your mouse to the cheese. I should’ve told you, you’re a mouse.
We’re mice. In the middle, that’s cheese. Swiss. See the holes? Those
are holes. I think we mice can swim.
Swim the shallow puddle. A puddle from a much-needed rain. A puddle of our mistakes. Just go again.
Start from here. You’re almost there. Give me the– Look–
If you can’t– Give me– You just jump these walls and you’re in the cheese. I know I know.
The pencil is dull now. Sharpeners are not in our budget.
Our bags were packed for us
Everyone asked, Why don't you move
away again?
They were sad that we were missing out
on the experiences everyone enjoyed so much.
The vibrating noise! The specific smells!
& not necessarily in this order.
Every fun example free from our loss.
We didn't wish to be swayed by public opinion,
so we only half-considered moving again.
But you can't only half-
move even if you think it will be
at least or
at most half-
fun.
We moved to take a vote.
It was unanimous.
Fun didn't move us one bit.
The Semester Always Flees
Special thanks to Feiga Khutoretsky
“Happy Friday of Mondays!”
Collective shrug.
“Something I'm trying out. Tell the people.”
Near-collective mystification.
“Only two more classes are left, so today's our last Monday!”
Student asks, “Will Wednesday be the Friday of Wednesdays?”
“Absolutely.”
“When's the Wednesday of Fridays?”
Calculating. “About seven weeks ago.”
Unison mumble. “Would’ve been nice to know.”
Four days later, “Happy Friday of Fridays!”
The instructors face falls off, suddenly sullen.
Tepid faces. Fidgeting.
“Remember those first days, when I couldn’t remember your names?”
It’s different now, the instructor doesn’t say.
“You want a medal?” nobody says, not out loud anyway.
“You promised cake.”
The podium spotlight flickers.
Nothing new, but rather,
consistent like slow blinks
or iambs Chaucer dreamed of before death.
JR Walsh teaches creative writing at SUNY Oswego. He is the Online Editor for The Citron Review. His writing is in beloved publications such as The Greensboro Review, New World Writing, Switch, Litro, The Hong Kong Review, FRiGG, Bull, Flash the Court, HAD, Fractured Literary, 50-word Stories, 3rd Wednesday, Taco Bell Quarterly, and Esquire. More: itsjrwalsh.com.
Mark Jackley
Some Nights | Kenny, Almost Heaven | Cul de Sac Morning
Some Nights
my head’s
a jar of
fireflies,
more the
jar, not
the desperate
light, a gift
trying
to reach
the world
Kenny, Almost Heaven
survived
the wrecks
but walked away
from all twelve steps
whose turnips
taste like
cancer like
crumbled
mountaintop
so hungry
no one sees him
only
deer heads
in the taverns
staring through
the dimness
as he hunts himself
Cul de Sac Morning
I was sizing up last night’s dream.
But never mind the handcuffs,
the hacksaw, and the kiss.
Its remnants won’t exceed
the size of tarnished keys
to getaway cars that don’t.
I will stick them in my pocket,
I will jingle them all day.
Mark Jackley lives in Richmond, Virginia. Recently retired, his back aches from volunteering at a nearby community farm. His poems have appeared in Fifth Wednesday, Sugar House Review, The Cape Rock, Tampa Review, and Does It Have Pockets.
Rebecca Michels
Moon Phase | Women's Work
Moon Phase
Before I knew it
was the lunar eclipse,
I caught the reflection
in my kitchen window:
low and yellow. I was
searching for an email—
a discount for a lymphatic
facial brush; could I really
brush the burgeoning
wrinkles from my forehead,
lift my cheeks back up
where they belong—
I searched the words
I remembered, sorry late.
Instead, a missed reply
from my long-ago ex.
I hope you’re safe was all
I’d written. He’d survived the fires,
but, he went on, a week later
his brother killed himself.
I knew his brother—his brother
was a complicated asshole.
Years later, I’d write about him.
Years ago, he’d written about me;
a song about the hike
my ex and I took
on the tallest mountain in Maine.
On top of the razor’s edge,
I was terrified. He called it Loon.
I downloaded the attachment,
and he sang out my name,
sang about us pulling through
—we didn’t pull through.
His voice was tender, alive,
and the moon was high and
crystal-clear in the black sky.
Women’s Work
I know women have a lot to do,
says the woman in the next seat
as she holds mine down
so it won’t snap up. I’m overloaded
with the kids’ jackets and programs.
We’re here to see a musical
about the Suffragist movement
and half-way through I’m ashamed
to admit I learn a lot, like how
the leaders were force-fed in prison.
The washing machine breaks down
at my parents’ place while we’re visiting;
I wash heavy jeans and sweatshirts,
small cotton underpants in the tub.
Leaning over the edge, I move
the way I’m sure my grandmother did
with her washboard in the basement.
Are you a project manager?
asks the plumber. Yes.
I make the kids’ breakfast, pick
white pith off mandarin segments.
Good luck, my mom says as she does
when I’m on my way out. I’m picking up
my shoes at the shoemaker.
He shows me my shoes, half-soled,
You didn’t tell me to do the heels.
I recognize the character actor in front of me
with her daughters, tap her shoulder,
I’m a longtime fan of your work.
She says, That means a lot to me.
I’m here with my kids too, I say, and
sit back down for the second act.
Rebecca Michels is a poet and artist living in Madison, Wisconsin. Her recent work appears in Plume and Midway Journal, and is forthcoming in UCity Review and Grand Journal.
John Cullen
Seeking | On Your Knees | Limon Libertab!
Seeking
I’m finding hope in strange places.
When I kayak, I paddle close to shore, the desert
of lily pads, the hilarious hair of young waterfowl
and the suicidal courage of an enraged swan.
Last week, I witnessed a Saguaro cactus
near Adam’s Motel outside Tempe, Arizona.
An elf owl peaked from a woodpecker hole.
Thunder rumored. I understand now
old mystics who fingered innards
and washed the mandrake’s weeping
thighs with wine and incense
to discover in the red flow
the raisin of hope.
On Your Knees
Watch a mouse negotiate
into grass after you shroud
him with a tea towel
and release, or deliver mail
to the nursing home and discuss
slippers with a failing patient
who wet his pants but calmly
awaits a nurse, or forget you will die
and feel the buzz reverberating
bones as you touch the power grid.
Renewed, you understand
forgiveness isn’t necessary
or yours to give. But if it makes you
feel better, go ahead
and forgive yourself.
Bended knees is not about knees
but about levelling eye to eye
with mouse, diaper, and death.
Limon Libertab!
Bees on the butterfly bush clog
a stumbling foreplay to recreate
the world, pollen and nectar
pellets in saddle bags, each centimeter
the right direction. Staring
out the kitchen window,
you too plan to stash and drink
sweet tears as a reward.
Behind your back, huddled
lemons in a bowl discover courage.
They felt the breeze sing,
and cry “Limon Libertab!”
A lemon’s cry is like a fly’s curse,
and yet there is a possibility
they will parachute onto the lawn.
because when you read those lines,
aloud at Starbucks or mumbled
in the dusk of your eye, you danced
with the bee and wed shy fruit.
This happens for the same reason
compelling anyone to stare
into an open manhole.
John Cullen graduated from SUNY Geneseo and worked in the entertainment business booking rock bands, a clown troupe, and an R-rated magician. Recently he has published in American Journal of Poetry, The MacGuffin, Harpur Palate, North Dakota Quarterly, Cleaver, Pembroke Magazine, and New York Quarterly. His chapbook, Town Crazy, is available from Slipstream Press, and Bass Clef Books will release the chapbook Observation of Basic Matter in 2025.
Jennifer Hyde Dracos-Tice
Roar of All Septembers | Trying to Transfer the Weight
Roar of All Septembers
She stood on stage, class president,
red boa round her neck, sparkly
tiara: raised her hand, and the party began.
Opening trumpets of Earth, Wind, and Fire—
and seniors burst like victorious fans
through double doors behind
teachers who lurked in back
for quick get-away, drank
forbidden coffee, fidgeted
with phones. Kids streamed
down aisles in slow motion,
spinning, striking disco poses,
progressing arm in arm,
a parade bugled forth
under the bars of September,
of life that can’t see
its end. Do you recall
summoning our memories,
faculty on our feet, pulled
into the aisles, too, reliving
ancient pep rallies in wooden bleachers,
roar of all Septembers, young bodies,
beads tossing hair pumping
palms bumping sweets flying,
tuba trombone flash of brass—
scrim lift and fall, we celebrated
the beginning of our end.
Trying to Transfer the Weight
1.
Fourth position, practiced at the barre, preparation
for center work. Shifting in plié, from back foot
to front, anchors the arabesque’s rise.
Travel in triplets across the floor, one-two-three,
waltz of the modern dancer, down-up-down,
cover swaths of sprung floor, launch
into a partner’s hands, which grip below hipbones,
rutch tights pulled over a black leotard.
When a man lifts a partner, she must
pull abdominal muscles tight, as if tethering
them to her spine’s inside, careful
not to give him all
her dead weight.
2.
My wife’s working air traffic again
in her nightmares, radar down, pushing tin,
no one answering her hand-off phone calls
from Atlanta Center to a faceless guy
in another underground bunker
in Tulsa or maybe Charlotte,
to hand off control of a plane
to a new airspace. Burden
of 200 souls on her back,
pulling her neck, already straining,
until she wakes up, wrenching covers
tight like locked seatbelts and
screams. I touch her arm, sweat
cold, press my palm
between her breasts. She
sits up, turns on the light.
3.
Knees pulled tight under chin,
arms hugging shins, a student
will sit close by, looking
at anything but me.
So, how are you?
And the stories inch in,
sit around us, fat full caterpillars
on the classroom floor, stories—
pills taken
or that should have been
an uncle staying
down the carpeted hall
from her bedroom
a sidewalk soaked
with a cousin’s blood
a fall down stairs
to take care of it
Today, my student leans
forward in a sage-green chair, sinks
back, eyes on a carpet square,
wants to tell me, but wants
me not to tell. I can’t
not tell. I’ll be fine, I’m fine—
She unfolds each leg, pulls denim
purse to her chest, shoulders
her blue nylon pack, book
corners jutting like fetal
elbows into her back.
Jennifer Hyde Dracos-Tice (she/her) has poems in Witness, Psaltery & Lyre, SWWIM, Literary Mama, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. Her debut collection, Lodged in the Belly, was published in 2024 by Main Street Rag. A long-time high school English teacher with literature degrees from Brown and Indiana-Bloomington, she lives with her wife in Florida. Learn more at her website: jhdracostice.com/
Colleen Harris
Funeral Shoes | Hobbyhopper | Christmas Cake
Funeral Shoes
for Shara
Your dress is black—dark, plain, cut
below the knee for the modesty
expected in a Southern church,
covering most of your tattoos.
Standing barefoot before the closet,
one more absurd decision to make.
You would go barefoot, you would go
naked if you could, the way she walked
out of the shower, unabashed,
toward the dresser with less care
than when you stood over each other
in fraternity house basement bathrooms,
safely pissing by turns and checking
that the rum hadn’t smudged your red lips.
The closet looms. Fifty-two pairs
to choose from: sedate Mary Janes
somber in black, platform hooker-heels
refusing all reality in purple and green,
sneakers, mules in classic brown leather,
ballet flats in a pink delicate as new skin.
Blue, red, leopard print, colors wheel
before your eyes, they blur like lights,
like central Kentucky college party nights.
Finally you choose—dusty purple
and yellow, with black leather bows
and witch-point toes, a muted whimsy
her contrary spirit would have loved,
would have stolen at the first chance.
The drive to Louisville takes years.
The casket is closed. There is an easel,
a poster-sized photo of her smiling face,
still alive, she could walk in any moment.
You walk to an open pew in low heels—
click clack, come back, click clack.
Hobbyhopper
First it was Red Heart yarn, when her mother taught
her to crochet. Hours walking craft aisles, choosing
colors, shades of olive, blues, and plums, she sought
every hue along the haunted spectrum of bruising.
After that, quilting. Ignoring fiscal sense, she bought
a Singer sewing machine, carry-case, sharp notions,
fat quarters of fabric in red, gold, and grey. She ought
to start small, stick to one hobby, but once set in motion
she is a menace, a fanatic, a woman demon-possessed
to find something—anything—to bring her mind rest.
Christmas Cake
Pine Knot, Kentucky
When the cake tin tipped
landing icing-side down
on the Tahoe carpet,
I ducked my head,
waited for my father’s rage
to spill from your lips.
Instead, you laughed,
said it would make the dogs happy,
and brought the hounds out
to sup on the sweet mess.
I knew then you would ask,
that I would say yes.
We arrived late, small
store-bought cake in hand,
sugar still on our shoes,
laughter like champagne
rising from our throats.
Colleen S. Harris holds an MFA in Writing from Spalding University and works as a university library dean in Texas. Author of four poetry books and four chapbooks, her most recent collections include The Light Becomes Us (Main Street Rag, 2025), Toothache in the Bone (boats against the current, 2025), The Girl and the Gifts (Bottlecap, 2025), and These Terrible Sacraments (Doubleback 2019; Bellowing Ark, 2010). Her poems appear in Berkeley Poetry Review, The Louisville Review, and more than 80 others. Follow her writing at https://colleensharris.com
Haley DiRenzo
Mother | Your Blood and Mine
Mother
A string of sharp barks rang
round the fogged canyon
before the dog was upon us.
Daggered teeth bared at our ankles,
muscles beneath taught skin
rippling in the morning glow.
Her pups huddled across the road
a mass of miniature bodies.
We kept moving but did not run.
Heads down, breaths whistled shallow.
Finally, she receded, watching
as we escaped around another curve,
no longer a threat. I do not know
what it is to be a mother
but I think it must be something
like a wild thing, capable of carnage
but offering mercy.
Your Blood and Mine
The first boy I ever kissed got bloody noses. Sudden viscous
red dripping down his face as our legs dangled
off playgrounds where we met. Something romantic
in his head tilting back toward my hands, then pressing
tissue to catch this part of him that overflowed.
Scraped knees rushing home as the streetlights
turned on – the way we kept time without phones
in a neighborhood you could roam in
before dark. I picked that wrinkled flesh
over and over, watched fresh blood rush
to the surface, turn to knitted scar cross my skin.
Jealous of my friends’ becoming, I snuck
to bathrooms to check my underwear constantly
looking for that crimson stain of belonging
only for it to show up dingy and brown, so unlike
what I expected I had to ask my mother what it was.
Now I have spent hours rinsing blood
from garments and sheets. It always seems
at first it will never fade but gives up easily
running pink through my hands to the porcelain.
Now my husband slices his finger cooking dinner —
a wet chunk of it left behind stuck
to the knife. I sit him down, wrap a clean cloth
around the wound, watch his face turn white.
Haley DiRenzo is a Colorado writer and attorney specializing in eviction defense. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Barely South, Thimble, Gone Lawn, and Ink in Thirds, among others, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. Outside of work and writing, you can find her browsing book stores, brewing tea, and watching movies and live performance in the theater.
Ben Starr
raised by skunks | how to make eggs
raised by skunks
Zeus, that bruising philanderer, was raised by a goat.
Amalthea suckling him with her powerful milk,
Zeus’s prematurely muscled hands brushing
the profitable underside of her soft creamed coat.
The Dog was raised by man. Beautiful, imperfect,
flatulent, man. Stealing leftovers like a bindle-carrying
vagabond. Quickly begging forgiveness with drooping
eyes, a pair of melting coins. The Dog did meet
a skunk once, in his youth, But he didn’t suckle.
And what he received was certainly not milk.
So he smells. Like brimstone belched from the force
of two inclement planets colliding. But
when illness gnawed at the soft talc of my child’s
bones, he lay by her side, like Patroclus and Achilles.
Nudging her chin upwards with nothing more than
his benevolent nose, cold as death’s curved blade.
how to make eggs
if you know someone
who hasn’t slept with your ex-girlfriend
who happens to have access to a chicken,
get the chicken. steal it if you have to.
Don’t be rude, just make it clear,
be a shame if something happened to those eggs.
next, get out your record player. it is well
known that chickens love philadelphia soul.
spin some hall and oates for her, maybe some
b-side from voices or abandoned luncheonette
once you’ve got that white boy
soul music cranking
that bird will drop eggs like
nickels at a slot machine
when you get home, make a mimosa,
you deserve it. then crack those embryos
in one of the Tiffany’s champagne flutes
your wife neglected to take
when she moved in with Craig,
and suck those babies down like coca-cola
Ben lives in Los Angeles with his wife, a high school teacher, and three extremely powerful little girls. Ben studied poetry in college and as part of the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Maudlin House, Eclectica, Talon Review, Club Plum and other journals
Sarah Scarberry
Spirit Like a Seam Ripper | Body Like a Wishing Well
Body Like a Wishing Well
I like when the night comes early
like joy came easy to my grandad
Last night I saw a cowboy drink
a glass of red wine
that matched his lady’s and he smiled
She took their picture
I thought of music then
I thought of grandpa
and that every new song
I learn is a handmade wish
I make over and over
into the pressed flesh groove
of my fingertips
Through the slick stream memories
I ride a liferaft lullaby
cast out from the ghost ship
of all the versions of myself
that could not carry me
I set sail drifting towards the cosmos
containing the constellation
of his version of me
that dimmed as he died
And I watched it flicker
And maybe I see in the distance
A whorling of all of the wishes I have ever made
The lullaby beneath my body
My body this wishing well
tells me to take my time
but even now I am rushing
My fingers tremble speeding
across the keyboard
to cast this out like a fishing line
like we used to cast out into the still
simmer pond
Wishing for a catch to pull
reeling like I reel my
spirit bucket up
from the bottom of my gut
Whispering please please
Let this be the way.
Spirit Like a Seam Ripper
I know I soften the spirit of a room
When I sink into the plush vulnerability
That rests between my clavicle bones
Or more that I mend easily the rips at the spirits
Of those ragged strangers, friends, lovers, people
Like forgotten teddy bears so worn with/by love
I find myself surprised at the texture that plumps
Stuffed companions, the wadding that scratches
Unexpected, the touch when opened, scrunched out
My sister had a stuffed rabbit named Emily once
She didn’t know any Emilys or at least not well
Still she carried the rabbit with her everywhere
One day Emily’s love worn paw took an accidental dip
Into my sister’s cereal bowl and hardened to milk crust
Bereft, my sister found she could no longer love her
I suppose there’s no mending a dunk into or way to know
What disgusts us until it does with no easy way to return
And repair the thin veil between our love and our distaste
But the mending tires my finger bones sometimes
But not enough to stop me from ripping at the seams
Of the tenuous thread we’ve stitched between each other
To dip the metal tip of such a tool made for breaking
Into the soft fabric looking for what once bound us
To pull that binding up forcefully and quick, to rip
Afraid I stitched us together wrong, false, and crooked
Afraid something stronger will come along and do it
Afraid, afraid, afraid of myself and my indelicate ways
But I’m sorry I got distracted, nearby there are babies making friends
And it would be a crime to not to watch them totter toward and smile
At each other, a quick tie, good enough, a tiny bond between tiny souls
New.
Sarah Scarberry grew up in Appalachian Ohio, and their work is deeply rooted in Appalachian mythos, cadence and values. They currently reside in Colorado with their partner and rescue pup. They've worked in public libraries for a decade, dedicating their life to intellectual curiosity and the love of a good story.
Merie Kirby
The selkie refuses to look at the sea | The selkie considers what to pack
The selkie refuses to look at the sea
She already knows all its stories, the forms
it takes, how between moments it changes
from grey-blue to that icy green
she painted her kitchen last spring.
She spent the last year swimming
in pandemic seas, her house as much a safe
skin as the seal suit ever was. Striking out on first legs
as thrillingly terrifying as a first trip into
a restaurant with a naked face.
Years ago she moved inland, promising
it was only for a few years.
You know this story.
Sometimes she flies back to visit, tears
like grains of sand scraping her throat
as they climb to her eyes, pit of her stomach
always washing back out to sea with the waves.
The waves hurt the most, the way they can
change, reject each shape as insufficient for the next
moment, no regret, no hope, no gaming the future
in search of big happiness.
Once she lived there. Once she too
whispered the present, the present, the present.
The selkie considers what to pack
Coming ashore she brought only her skin and all
it could hold. She would not call it light. This life
on land is a life of collection, a life spent placing things
on shelves and in boxes. Tidy containment. Nothing
drifting free, no tendrils of seaweed moved by currents
to wrap an unsuspecting leg. Or so she thought.
I keep thinking about all my mistakes, the old man said.
I have to get all that shit in little boxes so I can forget.
An ocean of memory and no container watertight.
When she drove towards the center of the continent,
the truck bed packed tight with boxes, she saw
the wind moving long grasses in green billows.
Merie Kirby grew up in California, between the beach and the Eastern Sierras. She now lives in Grand Forks, ND and teaches at the University of North Dakota. She is the author of two chapbooks, The Dog Runs On and The Thumbelina Poems. Her poems have been published in Whale Road Review, SWWIM, The Orange Blossom Review, Strange Horizons, FERAL, and other journals. She also writes opera libretti and art songs in collaboration with composers. You can find her hanging out with her family, reading, writing, playing board games, and watching sci-fi movies. She’s online at www.meriekirby.com.
Alicia Wright
Good American Speech | No One Said Simon
Good American Speech
It’s cicadas or it’s crickets
or it’s something else entirely—
it’s whatever a peeper is.
I lost it somewhere, mashed it to paste
between my teeth; no buggy, no crawdad,
nobody redding up the table for supper,
but something Mid-Atlantic—
crooked on the tongue and never fit
enough for the stage.
We’re all Shakespeare in the foothills
here, damp clover clinging to our ankles,
but the crick bleeds in:
I can’t explain the night without it,
or the jellied mass of eggs sprouting limbs
and crawling for the hemlock,
can’t tell the truth about the water’s bite
or our clothes in wrinkled piles on the bank.
I can’t spell the name of the bone-white shells
raked by the palmful from the mud,
thin as fingernails,
quiet as parentheses.
No One Said Simon
She’s been trying to die for years
and here she is now, finally
but some gummy analgesic
has swaddled her iridescent—
I am my father in the doorway,
my mother, myself in OshKosh,
the violent shock of June,
and the arms dragging her
gasping from the pool.
I am not the neon frisbee
abandoned at the hem
of tide-wash.
I’ve seen the rippled VHS, seen
the Little Mermaid towel caping
her peeling shoulders;
press rewind and she is acid-
washed and losing a game
of Simon Says
and I am on my knees
at the table, humming-
bird cake beyond reach.
Alicia Wright (she/her) is a writer from Appalachia. She holds an MFA from Bowling Green State University and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Antiphony Journal, The Inflectionist Review, River and South Review, Thimble, and elsewhere.
Bob Kirkley
The Prayer Within a Prayer | From the Wilderness of Lapland | Commencement Address
The Prayer Within a Prayer
Let us bow our heads and pray
this feels wrong
Gracious Father
great white heron
Thank you for this day
that sprang from the mangrove tree
The beauty of nature
crackling branches
The food upon our table
unfolded its wings
Use it Lord to strengthen our bodies
almost six feet end to end
So that we may better serve you
and flew silently and alone
We ask it in your name
low across the flats
Amen sunlight on its back Amen
From the Wilderness of Lapland
You message me at 9:52 p.m. Central European Time,
a solitary photo without a caption. Stars are snow
falling through the lights of the aurora borealis, green
tonight—their normal state—magical and ghostly. You
feel haunted. Powder in the branches of the Norwegian wood
enhances the illusion of descending snow.
I type “Merry Christmas,” but don’t send it. You and I
sat together too long in a room without chairs.
You’re not in the photograph, and I know that you’re alone—
your natural condition. Even now, I love your solitude,
and, of course, I hit send. But what does it matter?
Anyone can see that the slush-covered road lies empty—
nobody comes from either direction—and, by morning,
it will be frozen over hard.
Commencement Address
You don’t have to serve the Holy Trinity
of electricity, air conditioning, and refrigeration.
Find yourself a boat, instead,
that hasn’t a motor,
that hasn’t sails,
that hasn’t dock lines,
and drift with intent to an island remote.
Drop anchor there.
Though it hasn’t a chain,
though it hasn’t a rope,
you will secure it soundly and float.
Live on the cay by yourself
till you’re no longer lonely.
A stranger will arrive soon after
on a bark without a rudder.
They will know by then the stuff inside the stars.
That’s how they will find you.
Greet them at dusk at the waterline,
honest and detached.
Bob Kirkley received an MA in creative writing from Florida State University. Since then, he has served for twenty-eight years as a high school English teacher in South Florida. His other pursuits include coffee roasting and paddleboarding. Dry-processed coffees from Ethiopia are his favorites because, while they are not flavored, some taste like blueberries. And he has paddled about 1,500 miles so far, mostly on his own in the Keys. For links to his published works, please visit bobkirkleypoetry.com.
Andrew Walker
Poem Before Blue Skies | HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
Poem Before Blue Skies
It’s been bigger lately, that mouth, god, what a throat, so wide with song,
I’m yodeled lonely to its lips. No rain again today, humidity’s hand cupped
to keep sick down. Open air holds me instead. I am most whole when held
like an unpopped kernel on thirsty tongue, when peppered in salt and
soaked in saliva, when tooth-caught after shatter, shucked wet
from cheek, body’s husk streaked across the underside of couch arm,
pant leg. Some days, when the sky smiles wide enough to chubby bunny
popcorn clouds, I write still feel like dying in a notebook I’ll tear soon to
pieces, feeding an overstuffed bin little bits of me, crumpled but harmful—
a rock packed into a snowball, glass wrapped in the delicate flesh of a donut.
Most days, I think sky keeps me here panopticoned by the beauty of its breath—
how it dips despair in runny chocolate, leaves it to harden overnight. Tomorrow is
just another strawberry—just another fruit to let rot, to spoil the gifted
sweetness from damp soil, afraid to quench may I choke on pith, may I ruin
blue appetite, trauma tummy grumbly at the open lips of fridge—not hungry,
searching for something to rest within, held here in chilled light.
HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
after Mary Ruefle
Tape an old family photo to the wall and throw a dart at it; if it does not hit the picture, try again until
it does. Find the person with the hole in their chest and interview members of your family about
them—What is their favorite color? Did they have any pets growing up? Which parts of themselves
have they molted in their aging? When you have compiled enough information, write a 750 - 1,000
word profile of them, highlighting the pivotal moments in their life. For extra credit, have the subject
read their own profile and record their weeping on camera.
Andrew Walker is a writer from Colorado living in Michigan. Their work has appeared in Guernica, Black Warrior Review, and Ninth Letter among others. They write weekly on their Substack, Observing Edges and have compiled a full list of their poetry and prose for your perusal at druwalker.com.
Gail Goepfert
Do-over | Coming Clean
Do-over
It is plain black
and white. The sign
that turns my head early
this morning.
Old pain. We recycle.
Me. Me! my voice, soundless.
I want to participate—
could someone, anyone
put pain to better use,
cut it into strips
like in a video I scrolled—
an artist crocheting
designer bags
from Goodwill sheets.
I yearn for that
transformation.
To divvy it up—
surely an act of generosity?
In an instant I count
each pain amassed
in the jar of my brain—
countless
lightning bugs seeking
release.
Is it one second, two
before I reread
that plain old black and white—
Old Paint. We recycle.
Coming Clean
The windows in the storefront flaunt an orange neon Repair sign with blue-green
outlines of a loafer and wristwatch to say welcome in. I leave my father in the car, and
inside all indications that this was ever much of a store have vanished—a few belts
hang from pegboard J-hooks, a dozen watchbands drowse in a dusty glass case. A
man emerges from the back with a body-slouch just shy of hunchback. His dress and
language say misfit. Eccentric. “I need a stretchy band. My father’s 100-year-old
fingers can no longer fasten the clasp, and he likes this watch.” That will be $17 for the
band, if I have one that works, and $17 to remove links if needed. That’s much more work. Cash
only. But I can’t do that without seeing his wrist. Then silence. He fiddles, then couples a
new silvered band—could this task be this easy? I don’t want to have to pull out the
walker, launch Dad from the car. Where is he? he asks. I point out the window. He
glances. A sidelong glance. It’s going to be $17 you know. $17 more if I have to remove a link.
Cash only. Resigned, I head out to bring Dad in, but he scuffs along behind me on my
heels to the passenger side. There Dad sits, patient, in his button-down shirt and
khakis. The guy slips the band on Dad’s wrist—a flawless fit. The man warns him not
to twist the band, instructs him three times how to put it on. I pleat the cash into his
hand as he walks off, and he says, Most people his age are not. He’s so clean. So clean.
Gail Goepfert, an associate editor at RHINO Poetry, authored books that include A Mind on Pain (Finishing Line Press, 2015), Tapping Roots (Kelsay Books, 2018), Get Up Said the World (Červená Barva Press, 2020), and Self-Portrait with Thorns (Glass Lyre Press, 2022). This Hard Business of Living, a collaborative chapbook with Patrice Boyer Claeys, was released in 2021 from Seven Kitchens Press, and two photoverse books, Honey from the Sun (2020) and Earth Cafeteria (2023), celebrate fruits and vegetables with Claeys’s centos and Goepfert’s photography.
Tarn Wilson
The Grasshopper | Even My Ghosts Are Rusty
The Grasshopper
I couldn’t stop thinking about Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater,
how he kept his wife in a shell. Were her walls damp
and stringy? Did she carve a door? Did she set her elbows
on a spongy windowsill? I didn’t want to be Cinderella,
a princess in a pumpkin carriage. I wanted a tail: I wanted
to be a soft animal who could adjust her balance. My New
Age mother said I might carry bad spirits. I feared they
clung to my sweater or accumulated in corners, chewed
and gaunt and disguised in shadow. My mother stole
money from my piggy bank. Some summers, I lived
with my father on the docks. I loved the lapping water,
little fish, and dock cats. I had never felt such loneliness.
I wanted a red wagon and a father who would pull it.
I got lost in the swirly eyes of marbles. I collected quartz
from roadsides and trailsides and badly-tended lawns:
fairy tale jewels scattered. I feared vans with no windows.
My only strategy was retreat. I’d make myself long
and flat as a line so I could be mistaken for a horizon.
~
Now I’ve been colonized by little men with pointy
shoes and long to-do lists. Now, sleep is a delicate thing,
carefully tended. Now, I’m afraid to pack my suitcase:
I’ll forget what I most need. I still love yellow construction
equipment, deer eyes with big lashes, granite boulders
under my fingers. I’m in love with lava, melted rock from
Earth’s hot heart. I’m in love with this elusive miracle:
the little salt harvest mouse who eats pickleweed
and drinks salt water. I did not imagine, then, the wars
would keep coming and coming. I’m still afraid it’s my
fault. All of it. I still search for bits of quartz: sometimes
I buy polished eggs and shimmery spheres. I’m confused
about what to give God as an offering. My first
strategy is still retreat, but I have a few more tactics now.
This is what I miss: the grasshopper on my thumb,
heavier than it looks, gripping with its strange hooked
feet, the weight and tension of all that coiled potential.
Even My Ghosts are Rusty
Here’s my super power: give me a sip of your tap water
and I can taste
the rust in your pipes. When I was little,
rust meant docks and boats and salt air and a quiet horizon
and men with strong arms and hands, quiet as stones.
Now I have a dream house by the sea
which flakes away, bit by bit.
The edges of my favorite books have yellowed. My windshield
is pock-marked by bits of gravel. My desire is waterlogged.
Rust mottles the surface of my compass like shadows.
There’s rust in my lasagne.
Even my ghosts are rusty. They creak and move in slow motion.
They leave red-brown tracks on the stairs I chase with a vacuum.
Rust has no magnetism. No rizz.
But rust has hustle. You have to give it that.
It’s bubbling all the enamel on my new, cheap cookware.
Rust takes up more room than the metal it eats.
It frightens our foundations.
Still, there is something heavy and steady and slow in rust
that I like. The reminder that everything is a slow crumbling
and transformation.
Forever and ever.
In my future, when it rains rust, what umbrella will I use?
Tarn Wilson is the author of the memoir The Slow Farm, the memoir-in-essays In Praise of Inadequate Gifts (winner of the Wandering Aengus Book Award), and a craft book: 5-Minute Daily Writing Prompts. Her essays have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Assay, Brevity, Gulf Stream, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, River Teeth, and The Sun. She is currently taking a break from her long-term relationship with prose and has been shamelessly flirting with poetry. New work has been published in Grey Matter, Imagist, Museum of Americana, One Sentence Poems, Pedestal, Porcupine Literary, New Verse News, Right Hand Pointing, and Sweet Lit and is forthcoming in ONE ART, Only Poems, and Potomac Review.
James Kangas
If Wishes Are Forces… | Chart on the Wall
If Wishes Are Forces...
Shit, dammit, hell—she’d had
a second son, she'd had
enough. Nipper, she said
(milking her clear chagrin),
I wish you had been born
a girl. Into the whorl
of my ear she pronounced
her burden. Like birdsong
then it flew from her mouth,
an impromptu refrain.
It became (my God!) my first
memory, except for
watching my father
piss in the tall grass
behind the woodshed one
indelible noon, that soft flesh
unloosed from his fly.
When I got big enough
I tried to make her wish
come true--a blue skirt fished
from the rag box, a small
parade. But I outgrew that,
grew tall, grew hair on my chin.
Mother, wanting grandgirls now,
nudged me altarward: When
are you getting married?
In the arms of the best man
I've found yet, I think: Ma,
life suits me just the way it
turned out, thanks (or not)
to you whom some might blame
for wanting me in pink—
sackcloth I thought once
when nothing seemed to fit.
The truth is (well, some frayed
scrap of it)--slipping
into her wish, I found it
became me.
This piece first appeared at Chiron Review, Winter 1992.
Chart on the Wall
Reclusive almost, more than
wincingly shy (my eyes veering
towards a certain football player
I'd spot in the corridor), I didn't
date, I didn't think to
sham convention, I couldn’t have
faked it if I'd wanted to.
Come junior prom time, I had no
intentions—ostrichlike sank my
nose in Jules Verne. My chemistry
teacher got wind of this
and of Barbara D's datelessness,
kept me after lab and said:
If you don't ask her, I'm going to
do it for you. I protested,
and caved in.
She sat cattycornered
from me, but I knew her only
as another wallposy, another latent
person. I bought her a corsage
which dwarfed her breasts,
and we danced once, deadpan,
gaping mouths all around.
Of course she knew we wouldn’t bond—
we weren’t potassium and bromine
to be plugged into a formula,
Mr. Curie, Mr. Quack! And after your
public fizzle with our two incompatible
substances, I trust you took some time
(among your beakers, your burettes,
those twenty Bunsen burners) to mull
the periodic table of elements.
This piece first appeared at Chiron Review, Spring 1997.
James Kangas is a retired librarian living in Flint, Michigan. His work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Does It Have Pockets, The New York Quarterly, The Penn Review, Unbroken, et al. His chapbook, Breath of Eden (Sibling Rivalry Press), was published in 2019.
Beth Gordon
Question #1: Have you experienced changes in your sleeping patterns? | Memory of Sadness
Question #1:
Have you experienced changes in your sleeping patterns?
I’m back on my bullshit again: watching murder television as a form of salvation. Cataloguing subgenres of violence & crime. Weaving my own small tragedy with strands of carpet fiber: stray eyelashes: observable traces of skin & blood beneath the victim’s fingernails. Saliva is always involved. A faint smell of bleach. Unanswered phone calls. Concerned co-workers. Frantic mothers. Indifferent & incompetent sheriffs who never seem to learn that missing certainly means dead. The narrator’s voice is the cure to my insomnia. Turns out I’m not alone. Turns out that I no longer idolize the rippling of death: the river: the skyscraper: the open oven door: the razor’s edge: the messy exit in the form of tequila & Ambien. Turns out I no longer believe in the future. Turns out I can no longer fathom the past. I’m only awake in this moment: trying to convince my pillow to conform to the shape of my dread: dear God, help me: I just want to sleep through the night.
Memory of Sadness
I say that I remember watching the first moon landing. Cross-legged on utilitarian carpet. Inches from our neighbor’s console color television. Which sounds magnificent but was entirely inadequate to contain the hissing transmission of outer space. Also, the broadcast was in black & white. I never learned what colors swirl on that impossible terrain: 56 years later I still don’t know. I say that I remember we had been swimming that day. That my mother made us wait 30 minutes after eating charred hot dogs & soggy potato chips. She was/is a stickler for the rules and a child had drowned somewhere because of muscle cramps: overeating in the heat: a negligent babysitter who let him dive right in. Girls were required to wear swimming caps in 1969: a rule that would soon prove ridiculous in the face of long-haired men & short-haired women: the rising popularity of untamed androgyny. I say that I remember grainy astronauts on the screen & maybe it’s true. Not all memories are re- cycled versions of someone else’s stories. Some take root: wrap their tentacles around your heart.
Beth Gordon is a poet, mother and grandmother living in Asheville, NC. She is the author of several chapbooks including The Water Cycle (Variant Literature), How to Keep Things Alive (Split Rock Press), Crone (Louisiana Literature), and The First Day (Belle Point Press). Her second full-length collection, Alchemy of Nests, is forthcoming from Acre Books in 2027. Beth is Managing Editor of Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Assistant Editor of Animal Heart Press, and Grandma of Femme Salve Books. Instagram, Threads and BlueSky @bethgordonpoet.