Letter Home by Richard Weaver

After the train to Canton no one believed
I wanted to walk. There is the train they said.
Or bus. But for twenty days I’ve walked
across China. And by this month’s end
I’ll face the sea-blue mountains of Tibet.
I sleep in graveyards, not because it is quiet,
or the only high ground not given over
to growing rice, but because there are soldiers
whose eyes follow me through the villages.
I am safer with their honorable ancestors.

Walking fast is impossible since everything I see
is strange and new and fills me with green fire.
I feel drawn to every shadow and light.
When I stop to draw a boy herding geese with a stick,
those who see me wonder how I can
work with a brush held so poorly and not
made of bamboo. The people are kind though,
offering rice and even wine. I’m learning
language as I go, although my accent
will never be other than Mississippi.

Mary, they ride water buffaloes here
the way you ride a horse, meaning no insult to either.
You could show them a trick or two I’m sure.
I saw a group of women in a village
all fanning themselves like pelicans.
I wasn’t sure if it was my presence, their habit,
or the weather. But I’m glad my fate isn’t that
of a water carrier, balancing two pots
on a six-foot stick. I’d last no more
than day at best, and no doubt
I’d drink up the profits!
My love to you and ours
from the mountain’s shadow.



-Previously published in Underfoot Poetry



Richard Weaver continues as the official writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub, though he splits time with Hooley’s Public House in San Diego.

Father Mississippi: A Prayer by Richard Weaver

Bless these ferns that struggle to lift their heads
in a world where temptation

is a bulldozer and man is blind to everything
that doesn’t bite him first. And bless

the four-legged starfish who crawls across the reef
only to be eaten, and rejoice in the kingdom of salt.

Bring peace down
upon all those who glow in this dark

so that we might see their way.
And allow the beached dolphin one last glimpse

of the daymoon before it too fades into blue.
Let the treefrogs sing their song of this earth.

And the earth turn this flesh
back to shapeless clay.



-Previously published in The Cape Rock

Richard Weaver continues as the official writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub, though he splits time with Hooley’s Public House in San Diego.

Confessions of a Beachcomber by Richard Weaver

If I wake early I walk
toward the sun; if late, away.
I accept what the island provides.
Obvious things I leave:
shells, numinous and ordinary.
driftwood--it burns faster
than I can carry it to camp.
But always there are surprises:
a pair of shoes came in one day, my size!
A bottle of port wine.
A pair of unattached wings.
Lemons, onions, an alligator pear, toys.
One day a book washed in --
The Pageant of Literature-
and a pair of trousers. My size.
And once, for seven or eight miles
the beach was green with banana stalks.
All the animals on the island
joined me in the feast.
I took my share, leaving the rest
for the grackles and crabs,
the few raccoons who won’t
wait for them to ripen.



-Previously published in Underfoot Poetry



Richard Weaver continues as the official writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub, though he splits time with Hooley’s Public House in San Diego.

Absence by Steve Klepetar

If only the wind had leaned in with a whisper,
instead of slamming the door like a judge.
If only the tea had steeped a little longer,
and the sparrow hadn’t struck the glass.
You might have lingered by the stove,
watching steam rise like old secrets.
We could have wandered to the orchard,
where dusk gathers in the branches like sleep.
If only I had remembered what you said
about time, how it folds like a napkin,
never straight. But your eyes were already
turning toward the dark shape of the road.
Now your absence sits in my chair
each morning, quiet as a coat filled with rain.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. He is a contributing editor for Verse-Virtual. His poems have received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Beyond the Frame by Ann Leamon

The woman lies alone in the field—
you’ve seen the painting—peering
over the horizon. The gray, weathered
house looms behind her, overwhelms her fragile
life. Did she really drag herself
out to the field? Why? Maybe for the same reason
my mother dragged the four of us back then:
to pick blueberries.

We packed a lunch, spent the day. Mom
picked berries, we climbed the rocks
along the cove, water cold
and green and clear as our futures seemed to be.

As the sun slipped low, Mom’s buckets full
of berries for jam and winter muffins,
we went to the steep hill
you can’t see in the painting,
above the little graveyard, and threw ourselves
down to roll,
roll,
roll,
arms and legs flying, shrieking
with delighted terror and surprise, to end
at the bottom dizzy, covered with twigs and leaves.

Stumbling, sunburned, sleepy—
Mom piled us in the station wagon for
the long drive home. The berries are still there,
I hear, and Christina hangs in the museum,
looking out of her frame to that hill,
to the graveyard at the bottom,
where she will be buried.



Ann Leamon writes poems, reviews, essays, and technical finance material. Her non-technical work has appeared in Harvard Review, The Arts Fuse, Tupelo Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, and River Teeth Journal, among others. She lives on the Maine coast with her husband and an opinionated Corgi-Lab mix.

Love Song in Silence by Ann Leamon

Four days before Christmas,
          he died.

She wrapped herself
          in silence.

No need for that constant stream
of one-sided
conversation,
explanation,
commentary,
description,
documentation,
the unending, inevitable questions
answered
          and answered
                    and answered again.
How often can you speak the time, the day, your name?

Few responsibilities now
except the fire,
children busy with the farm,
sunlight streaming warm through the
skylight, its bright square trudging
across the tattered carpet with the hours.

Why speak?
No one would answer.

The doctor ordered, “You must speak.” The brain contracts
without words.

Now, she drinks her tea
and reads aloud her poetry
to the husband
who left her one week
before their 64th anniversary,
who waits, not far, with their lost beloveds,
who understands
what she’s saying,
with words and without.



Ann Leamon writes poems, reviews, essays, and technical finance material. Her non-technical work has appeared in Harvard Review, The Arts Fuse, Tupelo Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, and River Teeth Journal, among others. She lives on the Maine coast with her husband and an opinionated Corgi-Lab mix.

Small Acts of Subversion by Ann Leamon

We are becoming a police state,
says HCR, who lives across the river.
Apparently, she never
sleeps. Her essays, cited thoroughly
—to rub metaphorical salt
in psychic wounds—
no longer conclude with hope.

She chronicles the collapse
of a culture that tried—for a
faltering, flickering, firefly’s moment—
to improve, to trust
its better angels. The lesser angels
won this round, ICE among the swing sets,
tax-payers dragged to prison camps.
I practice saying, “You do not need
to answer any questions.” My voice breaks.

Animal shelters are full and turn away
owner-surrenders as people
losing their homes find one more mouth
—even a small one, even attached
to a fuzzy face and a wagging tail—too much
to feed. A pet becomes a stray,
crying, hungry, wondering
what it did wrong. I donate dog food
to the food pantry.

My husband fixes houses
for our neighbors, stretches
his tiny budget to cover
windows and doors that don’t close,
leaking plumbing, rotten floors.
I fill the feeder for
woodpeckers, finches.

The one milkweed from last year
has returned in triplicate,
three times the welcome
for the monarchs that matter.



Ann Leamon writes poems, reviews, essays, and technical finance material. Her non-technical work has appeared in Harvard Review, The Arts Fuse, Tupelo Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, and River Teeth Journal, among others. She lives on the Maine coast with her husband and an opinionated Corgi-Lab mix.

Reunion Registry by Shoshauna Shy

Methodist Social Services sends mention
my maternal grandmother suffered
with arthritis, died of diverticulitis,
but there is nothing more.
The adoption agency’s report lists
my mother’s age, height, color of hair
at time of relinquishment.
The Adoptees’ Association tells me to
petition juvenile court for sealed records.
Instead, I fly the under-radar route, apply
to reunion registries, hope my arrow
of request makes data slide into one
vertical slot proving a half-sibling, nephew
by marriage or cousin-once-removed–
even a shirttail one–stretched their bow
and hit mine.
But within a month, all spinning stops.
Triplicate replies stack up and form
a buttress: No Matches Found.
My mother, my father, singly or together
leapt like deer into a tamarack woods
gone golden with sundown in September,
to their ongoing ready-made lives, to
other children they cherish.



Shoshauna Shy's poems have been made into videos, produced inside taxi cabs, and even decorated the hind quarters of city buses. She is also a flash fiction author — but that's a whole ‘nother story!

Knots by Frank C. Modica

My impatient adolescent brain
thought Alexander the Great
got it right when he severed
the Gordian knot with one slash.
I spent many years trying
to emulate his example,
racing through life
as I attempted
fast, easy solutions.

I think about all
the wasted effort;
how I lost so much
with the quick cuts.
I hope I’ve gotten
wiser in my 8th decade
as I pick at the twists,
untangling strands
one at a time.



Frank C. Modica is a retired teacher. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sheila-Na-Gig, Trouvaille Review, and Uplift Lit. Frank's first chapbook, What We Harvest, nominated for an Eric Hoffer book award, was published in 2021 by Kelsay Books.

Paid Obituaries by Fran Schumer

No one will pause at the headline

to the obituary I won’t have,
the kind you don’t have to buy,
written before you die.
Reporters actually interview you for those,
bury them later in a place called,
believe it or not, the morgue.
But I prefer the tiny agate notices,
whole novels reduced to a one-inch note,
written about people no one knows,
paid for by loved ones who want
the world to know he loved Mozart,
she bred collies, his roses won a prize.
The same impulse that causes us
to paint, to plant trees,
splash graffiti on buildings,
trash cans, subway cars
rusting in old train yards –
To say: we were here
and we wanted someone to know.



Fran Schumer’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The North American Review, and elsewhere. She won a Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing poetry fellowship. Her chapbook, Weight, was published in 2022. She studied political theory at college but wished she spent more time reading Keats.

Why? by Martha Christina

wasn’t a question
asked in my family,
and so remained
unanswered.

Adults avoided
emotional outbursts;
salt tossed over a shoulder
took care of misfortune.

Still, grief arrived
like a poor relation
come for dinner, not
invited, but fed. No one
questioned that presence;
no one answered for it.



Martha Christina has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press). Her work appears in earlier issues of Red Eft Review, and recently in Star 82 Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Tiny Seed Journal. Born and raised in Indiana, she now lives in Bristol, Rhode Island.

With a Predictable Ending by Martha Christina

When my late neighbor
moved from Southern
California to Southern
New England, she
was a new widow.

She told, repeatedly,
stories of her young
and busy life. Young
and busy myself, I
barely listened, but
her stories were
always my own,
waiting to be told.



Martha Christina has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press). Her work appears in earlier issues of Red Eft Review, and recently in Star 82 Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Tiny Seed Journal. Born and raised in Indiana, she now lives in Bristol, Rhode Island.

Anhedonia has an affair with the poet by Alex Stolis

It's not just the pretty words or how he seems to read
her heart; it’s the way he kisses her wedding ring,
says he loves her more than love.

Calls her muse, scribbles in his notebook when they’re
in bed; knows everything she is and everything she's not.
They sit on the fire escape, share a cigarette, the sun a dull

ache, the rattle of the A-train full with commuters dreaming
of home. He’s there-not-there. She can’t interpret the wind,
translate birdsong. They’re left with a rebuke

from the sky, they’re full, yet starving. She knows he’s
a magpiecharlatanthief, feels his words trickle down
her neck. He lies in ways that don’t matter.

When his poems are published, stark black against loud
white; she feels immortal, beautiful; convinces herself
they’re not for his wife.



Alex Stolis lives in Hudson Valley, NY.

Two Horses by Terri Kirby Erickson

Old and sway-backed, starved
and abused, two horses sold
for meat were bought and saved

by my compassionate friend.
Let loose to graze in verdant
pastures, their heads are bowed

like nuns in prayer for hours—
until they can hold no more.
Gently, gently their rescuer

speaks to them, her words like
a soft breeze, her hands twin
messengers of grace and peace.

Now they will call to her, nicker
when she is near, two horses
that have seldom, if ever, been

safe. Watching their ribs sink
beneath pounds of added flesh,
their coats begin to shine like

copper pots, her face is shining,
too, like lighted windows, like
the sun rising, like love that lasts.



Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in “American Life in Poetry,” ONE ART, Rattle, The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and many others. Her awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Nautilus Silver Book Award.

Scarecrow by Jacqueline Cleaveland

It wanted to stand on its own,
that straw scarecrow
with square pink patches
sewn into its cheeks
to resemble rosy mirth.
It never failed to smile
that black, thinly stitched smile
enhanced by round blue eyes,
that each have a small white dot
painted near the right of its pupil
to mimic a soul’s glimmer.



From Southern California, Jacqueline Cleaveland works as a staff writer for a local university.

Gathering by Jacqueline Cleaveland

I see him again
in my dreams
at a Christmas party. He is the center,

he commands as the host, quietly
in a white tie, his shoes touch
the polished wooden floor.
Grandfather to all, we are in his house—
it is filled with people I do not know,
they’re cousins of mine, I am told.
They laugh with me
as if they know my name.
One sits close to me,
we press thigh to thigh
in a single rocking chair.

Another relative asks me to translate
a love letter written in French, I help her
even though I don’t know the words
away from that room. She thanks me,
and her breath smells of far-away smoke.
There, I see him, amidst his smile
he winks. He knows.
His glasses are still round, his chipped tooth
gleams. I am relieved. “Thank goodness, he is alive.”
That other life where he is gone
is merely a trick.



From Southern California, Jacqueline Cleaveland works as a staff writer for a local university.

Surrender by Jacqueline Cleaveland

I will be forgotten.
Tonight is practice,
for in this darkness,
vanity has no supply.

I slip down
and dissolve,
forgetting
in mind, remembering
in some other way
like how a flower knows
when to close its bloom,
and how fallen, uneaten fruit
understand stillness.

Here, I find faith
to be simple, secrets
deliver hope, amidst
this vastness,
amidst our anonymity,
somehow, I know you.



From Southern California, Jacqueline Cleaveland works as a staff writer for a local university.

184 Days in the ICU by Lisa Olsson

You may be ready to let go
before they are—or it could be
the other way around.

It wasn't you who chose
catheter and cotton smock,
IV and cool bed rail.

Who synchronizes death?

Day and night the same here.
Fluid noise, machine noise
blend into a music.

Now you only stare.
The bone exposed.
How will you tell them when?



Lisa Olsson is a poet, cellist, and painter who lives in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Her debut chapbook was published by Finishing Line Press. She was a winner of the Poetry in the Pavement competition of the Hudson Valley Writers' Center.

On Painting by Julia Caroline Knowlton

I multiply weightless suns
on ocean horizons:
some watery as tears,

some sticky as blood.
My sable brush says
come nearer, rose tone.

Come blue me in flood.



Julia Caroline Knowlton teaches French and Creative Writing at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta. The author of five volumes of poetry, she has twice been named a Georgia Author of the Year in the poetry chapbook category. She lives in Atlanta and Paris.

Four O'Clock by Kelley White

The cats are here between me and the window
because it is a warm sunny afternoon and they will not
let me work. They bathe themselves. They bathe
each other. You’ve come in. It’s a lovely late
August day. Your legs surprise me, veins knotted,
pale, blue beneath your thinning skin. So thin.
Muscles disappearing with each day we survive.
My face is warm too. Soon I will have to pull
the curtain against the sun. And we will both lie
down. Sunlight, cats, autumn. Nothing more
needed. Unless you count us both, the way we keep
breathing, the way we can sleep with sun washing
our faces.



Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in Philadelphia and New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle, and JAMA. Kelley's most recent chapbook is A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press.) She is the recipient of a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant and she is Poet in Residence at Drexel’s Medical School. Kelley's newest collection, NO. HOPE STREET, was recently published by Kelsay Books.