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.
John Dorroh
You Ought to Know My Face by Now | On Opening a Jar of Vlasic Pickles
You Ought to Know My Face by Now
It’s an inch and a half between the inside corners of my eyes,
and three from the tip of my nose to the bottom of my chin.
The diameter of my mouth is that of a jumbo garden hose,
rather a small kisser for a man who makes such noise.
My hairline receded two inches in the time it takes
to read Ulysses 100 times. Sunlight reflects
off my forehead like a potato wrapped in foil,
a beacon of hope in stormy weather, the poster child
for managed fragility. Images in your rearview mirror
may appear larger than they are.
I share genes with a chameleon: Hazel eyes when I wear
green shirts, brown when I tell you lies. If eyes are the windows
to the soul, I must be dying in boiling water.
My head fits neatly into a square-foot box, but don’t forget
to punch some breathing holes so I won’t suffocate.
My face is one-sixth of a cube. It announces itself
so that you will never forget. Roll it like a die,
see what number comes up. You should have every inch
of it memorized by now.
On Opening a Jar of Vlasic Pickles
I’m good at opening jars for those who seem to find them glued
shut, tight like mouths in a fire. It’s not a particularly strong grip,
more of the way I hold my lips, such grimace, a parfait of emotions
all bottled up, squeezed like toothpaste from the bottom of the
tube. I tap it on the rim of the lid with the dull side of a huge butcher
knife, cascades of warm water under the tap. Sooner or later,
it gives way.
This is one technique to reach a destination. This is how I do it
on stormy days. I don’t ever use a flashlight because the batteries
are always dead. I plunge forward in the dark, unafraid – perhaps
a bit anxious – and certainly not nimble. Those days are long gone.
John Dorroh travels as often as possible. He inevitably ends up in other peoples’ kitchens exchanging culinary tidbits and telling tall tales. Once he baked bread with Austrian monks and drank a healthy portion of their beer. Six of his poems were nominated for Best of the Net. Others have appeared in over 100 journals, including Feral, North of Oxford, River Heron, Wisconsin Review, Kissing Dynamite, and El Portal. He had two chapbooks published in 2022. He lives in rural Illinois, USA, near St. Louis.
Anthony DeGregorio
Sitting in Putnam Hospital Center Lobby
Sitting in Putnam Hospital Center Lobby
Half the conversations in the hospital’s lobby today pause—
The passing speaker stops walking to sip coffee; fumbles for keys;
Turns to face the listener for emphasis or in surprise—
Then resume along with the hurried strides
Even more determined on departure, soles treading,
Tearing away awkwardly loud, aware with each step
Of the adhesions to a well-travelled floor,
And have, for the most part,
To do with eating and shitting,
The other exchanges mostly centering around fear, famine, death, and/or guilt.
It’s so much like being back at the dinner table when I was growing up
That I expect my father to resurrect himself, fork in dirt-blotched hand,
Cutlery still sanguine with tomato sauce, damp earth tone dark
With braciola, the speared meat and its guts
Shred between the tines,
Asking if I was learning anything in school, and reminding everyone
Before I could answer that the toothpicks and string,
Used to hold the rolled delight together, be saved for future use.
And my mother to ponder aloud in her chair
(as if I were not there)
When someone was going to cut my hair.
Her 180º dramatically subtle surveillance
For a coiffeur’s apparition, hovering
In a corner only she knew back then,
(Not unlike her own glow
In this lobby now) His
Hands slick with
Shampoo
Dripping, extended
Over a sink still warm
From drained pasta water
And coated in the milky trans-
Lucency of starch residue, adding
Italian special effects to this eerie scene,
As her eyes continued slowly moving, left
To right, from appliance to menacing appliance,
Her face and body contorting, exaggerated
In silent movie mannerisms secretly un-
Folding before the green screen of
Our kitchen’s fruit wallpaper.
A crescendo of suspenseful music muted …
(The crackling chaos of memory’s bleary background reverberating with commercials and news pouring from AM stations and syphoned through a brown RCA radio suspended on a small wooden shelf adjacent to the classic Last Supper reproduction witnessing every meal we had in that kitchen, jingles for cigarettes & gum beer & Brylcreem manically upbeat preceding or following AP reports and local human interest stories of tragedy or triumph)
… the sound of snipping silver scissors,
A strange metallic staccato conjuring imminent loss
Among my then-thick long strands,
A thatch of curly brown hysteria
Tremoring #$^()_*%@!
Standing frizzily
On end.
I am hallucinating the smells of broccoli rabe and chicken z’armi,
The language of lost years and shadows, of insecurity and grief,
In the unseasoned aesthetic of a hospital lobby,
As the elevators open and close,
For visitors and patients;
Doctors on cell phones looking distracted as discontinued monitors
As they increase the pace of their gait toward the rear exit;
The lost faces of those holding no change of clothes,
No newly released book to finish, returning for a last stay;
The newborn wide eyes mapping a strange geography,
Bound and bundled bodies in blankets on a summer day.
All the while smiling volunteers in bright jackets at the front desk struggle to
Two-finger type long consonant laden names for room number inquiries.
The faint smell of disinfectant and oatmeal
From the floors above mists the still air
Stirred only now when a body passes.
A door is held open too long.
An absentminded exit
Prolongs in
Pause—
Catches in a slowly revolving door.
Beyond its strained curved glass
A circling lane leads out off the grounds.
Valets at another entrance to the left
Repeatedly leave and return throughout the day.
A vague humidity pressing upon the windows
Overcasts the view into the back parking lot
That I’ve blurred for forty minutes.
The roped off player piano begins a new tune,
A text vibrates a shirt pocket, a pant leg, into a sweaty palm
Bleeding the BiC-Blue of a paperless reminder,
A phone number, an errand, a name,
Scrawled into clammy flesh, smeared, lost forever
To anxiety-stained memory and primary hyperhidrosis.
How’s he doing today? Any better? How does she feel? Any change?
Same. :( …
Anthony DeGregorio’s writing has appeared or is scheduled to appear in various publications including Mande, Yellow Mama, Yearling, The Raven Review, TheRavensPerch, Libre, Abandoned Mine, Italian America Magazine, Phantom Drift, Aromatica Poetica, Bloom, Nowhere, Wales Haiku Journal, Polu Texni, and So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. He taught writing at Manhattanville College for twenty years, and in another life or two or three he worked in various capacities for the Department of Social Services, much of that time while teaching at night. Prior to that, and brief stints at a myriad of jobs in another century beyond time, is anyone’s guess, but please don’t let that stop you.
Ren Wilding
Resistance | On January 20, 2025, I Thought of My Own Grave
Resistance
After Rebecca Solnit
I am a penguin
with my back to the cold
I am a musk ox with horns
facing the wolf
I want my turn at the center
of a reindeer cyclone
protected as their young
inside a whirling ring
of bodies and hooves
I want to be soft
but I’m afraid
the inside of the circle
will be gone soon
how many laws
are you willing to break
to keep the predators at bay
or will you give up
join with the wolves
On January 20, 2025, I Thought of My Own Grave
I never wanted a grave,
just scatter my ashes
or keep them in a jar.
But if I die because
of government violence,
I want a fucking grave.
I want children to come
on school tours
and teachers to say:
the name on this headstone
is one this person chose.
They were openly trans.
They loved themself
and did not stop
even when the government
tried to take everything.
No one could take
their love.
I want trans children
to know someone fought
so they could be here,
so they could grow up,
so they could grow old.
I don’t want flowers.
I only want graves
dug when we die old,
asleep in beds in quiet moments
when our loves have left the room.
Loves who will put the names
we chose on memorial pamphlets.
Memorials filled with all our loves.
I want us to come, to live,
and go from life adored.
If this isn’t forgotten,
if we never go back—
You can use my body,
my headstone
to build this world.
Ren Wilding (they/them) is a trans, queer, neurodivergent poet who earned an MA in Literature and Gender Studies from the University of Missouri. Their work appears in Braving the Body (Harbor Editions), The Comstock Review, One Art, Palette Poetry, Pine Hills Review, Red Eft Review, Tulip Tree, Zoetic Press, and elsewhere. They were a finalist for Lily Poetry Review’s Paul Nemser Prize, have received a Pushcart nomination, and are co-curator of the Words Like Blades reading series. Their chapbook, Trans Artifacts: Bones Between My Teeth, is forthcoming from Porkbelly Press in 2026.
Sheila Wellehan
Breakage | Heist
Breakage
I break things—
vases, dinner plates, friendships.
I stomp and I scare and I smash.
I pound what I love
into a fine powder with a hammer,
then grind the dust into the ground
with my heels.
When I sweep up the mess,
hours or years later,
I breathe in the vapor
of what I’ve destroyed.
It seeps into every cell
and swims through
my bloodstream. I break things,
then they break me
from the inside.
Heist
It looked like salvation,
or at least sustenance,
something to get me through the night.
The humble potato at the 7-11
was bathed in holy florescent light.
I studied the staff, overwhelmed
by the crush of midnight customers.
I watched other shoppers,
busy scooping up six-packs
and microwaving dubious snacks.
I placed my hand gingerly on the potato.
I wrapped my fingers around it, trying to hide it.
Then I whooshed the potato into my pocket.
I’d have food with my whiskey tonight—
if I didn’t get caught.
I wandered up and down the aisles,
pretending to scan them, pretending to consider
boxes of Hostess Donettes and cans of SpaghettiOs.
No one suspected my thievery.
No one acknowledged my existence.
No one noticed me at all.
Emboldened by my success in evading detection,
I snatched a mini-cup of Half & Half
at the coffee dispenser near the door.
I popped it into my other pocket
then casually sauntered out.
Walking home to my basement apartment,
I felt the haul sheltered in my pockets,
and smiled at my fortune, my wealth.
I caressed the potato’s smooth hollows
and mysterious pebbles, the Half & Half’s slick plastic ribs.
I’d harvested sustenance
to fill my belly and fuel me,
luxury to transform the staple into a delicious dish.
I felt ancestors from Sligo, Cork, and Kerry
nod approvingly at me.
Sheila Wellehan’s poetry is featured in On the Seawall, Psaltery & Lyre, Rust & Moth, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Whale Road Review, and many other publications. She’s served as an assistant poetry editor for The Night Heron Barks and an associate editor for Ran Off With the Star Bassoon. Sheila lives in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. You can read her work at www.sheilawellehan.com .
Lisa Low
Crush | Henrietta
Crush
I thrilled to think how fast those hands
could pull me from a fire, but it was
what you said about Plath that made
you my god. Standing at the board,
dragging your fist down the chalk,
talking of the shock Emily Dickinson
gave you, I caught every come hither
look you threw. Poetry already had me
in its arms; already bent its intoxicating
lips to mine, but coming from you,
it was a new kind of love. I planted
myself in the front row and swung
at every fastball you threw, skidding
past home, skirt-up, to please you.
I wanted to catch your eye, then maybe
your heart, but you weren’t as clever
as I thought, and it was easy to make you
smart; easy to catch you in my crosshairs
and plummet you to something small.
I was young and I wanted to win, and
I didn’t know then, how much and how
dearly, I would pay for it later: my sin.
Henrietta
My father was always on the move
or on the run; fast-talking with strangers,
heading out for a beer; having no
time for us; showing up late for dinner,
my mother in the kitchen, stomping
her foot and saying damn that man; but,
in his old age, my father fell head over
heels for a squirrel he named Henrietta.
He dreamt about her nights and kneeled
on the back porch to feed her crumbs.
Shyly, as if they were courting, she came
up the back steps; shyly, as if they were
courting, he fed her acorns from his open hand.
Lisa Low was first runner-up for the Shakespeare Prize at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her poetry has been nominated for Best New Poets 2025 and shortlisted for Ploughshares. Her work has appeared in many literary journals including The Adroit Journal, The Boston Review, The Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, Phoebe, and Southern Indiana Review. Her first chapbook Late in the Day was released in July 2025 from Seven Kitchens Press.