Waiting for the Ball to Drop in Times Square by Melissa Fite Johnson

We might not have come if we’d considered
thirteen degrees for seven hours, every muscle tensed,
bladders engorged. Last year, we didn’t sing

U2 songs with a dozen college kids from Ireland
or watch thirty-somethings from Barcelona
swallow grapes whole at six p.m., the Spanish New Year, 

and we couldn’t have comprehended the sound
of one million voices counting back from ten
until ours were lost among them. Last year,

we were only two people watching on TV,
but we had one bathroom apiece, and hot chocolate
cradled against our bellies like tiny radiators.



Melissa Fite Johnson’s poetry has appeared in such publications as I-70 Review, The New Verse News, and Inscape Magazine. Her first collection, While the Kettle’s On (Little Balkans Press, 2015), won the Nelson Poetry Book Award. Melissa and her husband live in Kansas, where she teaches English. Her website: melissafitejohnson.com.

High School Pep Band by Melissa Fite Johnson

My flute part never sounded like the song
on its own. When I practiced,
my brother poked his head in my room,
asked if I had any idea what the hell I was doing.
But with the band, the flutes’ voices
soared higher than even the trumpets’
bold balloon squeaks.

The trumpets—and indeed the trombones,
saxes, tubas, even clarinets—
none of them questioned our worth.
We had each other’s backs. We had to.

At the basketball games, we held a kind of
nerd power. No one said much
to us in classes or the halls, but they
loved us at games. They yelled
the words to every song. Together we lifted
those boys, high as the cheerleaders
somersaulting into the air. We were
part of something on those nights.
We were really in high school.

On Mondays we were back to visitor status,
stepping aside to let a row of letter jackets pass.



Melissa Fite Johnson’s poetry has appeared in such publications as I-70 Review, The New Verse News, and Inscape Magazine. Her first collection, While the Kettle’s On (Little Balkans Press, 2015), won the Nelson Poetry Book Award. Melissa and her husband live in Kansas, where she teaches English. Her website: melissafitejohnson.com.

Apology by Laura Lee Washburn

I tell my nephew, I’m sorry
about your crazy grandma.

My mother will be pleased to know
he doesn’t ask which one.

That was some messed up shit,
he says. How’s grandpa, I want to know.

They’ve both lost it, he says.
I live far enough away to learn their dramas

late or not at all and I’m really sorry
truly that she spent four days crying

on the couch, her face scratched,
the dog in city custody, quarantined,

that my nephew cried, that my father cried,
that she lied, that she turned her

own chocolate lab over to animal control
because who does that, who calls the city

because the dog was playing and your
heads bumped even if you are moving soon

to Florida to a retirement village and you
just don’t want to deal anymore

with things so big and messy like the yard
or a pool or a garage full of tools or your

two year old dog, or all these meds. And
pretty soon, if she can ever get down there,

she’ll sign her husband over, too. I send
my nephew a picture of a reindeer hat
because he shows me his creepy eye with antlers ink.

That’s it. I go out and look at the crocuses
that aren’t dead yet, but only a little frayed from snow.



Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Cavalier Literary Couture, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, Red Rock Review, and Valparaiso Review. Born in Virginia Beach, Virginia, she has also lived and worked in Arizona and in Missouri. She is married to the writer Roland Sodowsky and is one of the founders and the Co-President of the Board of SEK Women Helping Women (https://www.facebook.com/sekwhw).

Blowing Leaves by Howie Good

Devoid of anything even close
to resembling a fresh idea,
I’m hunched in front of my laptop
and staring out the window
at a man in a foam baseball cap
and an Army fatigue jacket who,
as if emboldened by the barbaric yawp
of his backpack leaf blower,
walks with a forward lean
into the long shadows of late afternoon,
an incautious conjurer inspiring
the last raggedy remnants
of summer to get up and dance.



Howie Good’s latest poetry collections are Bad for the Heart (Prolific Press) and Dark Specks in a Blue Sky (Another New Calligraphy). He is recipient of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry for his forthcoming collection Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements.

On My Return by John Grey

It's not what I expected on my return. 
My boyhood home hadn't changed
one slap of paint, one poster on the wall.
Those left behind felt most comfortable
in nothing ever moving on.
It all was where I left it.
That made the love so much easier.

All the hopes, the promise, the beginnings, were intact.
Even ones that ended badly.
Fingermarks, books in shelves,
old letters in drawers, ceramics on mantles,
even the clock that hadn't worked in years -
those were the bearings of a life.

Back to such normalcy,
I sat at the table with familiar faces
discussing how life ought to be.

Mother said, we can clean now, varnish,
even move furniture around.
I tried but was of no help
because I could imagine no other house but this.



John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Perceptions and the anthology, No Achilles with work upcoming in Big Muddy Review, Gargoyle, Coal City Review and Nebo.

Your Recovery by John Grey

I can't get away from them -
TV, the internet, twitter,
even talk around the water cooler -
celebrities have assumed the role
of the center of the universe.

But then you call me =
you're out of hospital.

At last, news sends me a gift.
It doesn't care who's dating who
or wearing what designer dress.

I can imagine you seated on your patio,
family around you,
setting sun drenching your face.

You're coddling a wine glass in your wrinkled hand.
You're distanced from the superficial
by a canyon of heart and mind

The wine, I'm sure, tastes like the earth and growing,
like the land that spreads before you,
a family history in blades of grass and fences.

A smile plays out
beneath your warm farm-girl eyes.
You doze, contented, with the past around you,
dream a year not yet lived.



John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Perceptions and the anthology, No Achilles with work upcoming in Big Muddy Review, Gargoyle, Coal City Review and Nebo.

Great Blue Heron at Powder Mill by John Grey

The great blue heron's startle
is not the quick dart of the song sparrow
to the nearest bush..
Nor is it the crow's high caw
or the chickadee's Morse Code trill.
It doesn't flap noisily into gear
like the mourning dove
or join the pigeons
in high-tailing it up to the upper eaves.

It's almost dusk, late summer.
The pond is brown, the weather dry.
The heron stalks unseen fish,
moving slow, deliberate.
One long thin leg unfolds forward
like a ballerina in slow motion,
the other pivots in the mud.

It doesn't see me as other birds do.
Still sensing water's seismic shift with thin, sharp beak.
I fill the corner of an eye.
Its feathered crown rises,
wings gradually fill the horizontal.
It doesn't so much fear me
as appreciate that it and I are fated
to never occupy the same lush feeding grounds.
No hurry in its takeoff,
merely a gentle flap, an arcing of the neck,
a graceful lift,
a measured glide over the tree-tops.
So much for the slow, ambling, earthbound gait
of the rest of us..



John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Perceptions and the anthology, No Achilles with work upcoming in Big Muddy Review, Gargoyle, Coal City Review and Nebo.

Embrace by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

Her embrace broke my neck
She weighed only ninety-four pounds
but each ounce was purely intense

Her husband had threatened to kill her
He suffered from psychotic jealousy

She focused only on her survival
and had even forgotten her son

She still loved her husband
a foible common to abused women

She owned no pets
She was afraid of the dark

She hid books behind books
in her son’s bookcase

Her husband didn’t believe in women
reading books
He didn’t want her to speak to
or even look at
other men
There were men in books

She woke frequently in the middle of the night
to check for rabbits in her garden
She stopped when she and her husband were evicted

If she were murdered
she told me
she would come to my roof
in the form of two swans
necks entwined

Her embrace was powered by desperation
My only armor was
my good intentions

The sinews stood out on her arms
Her skin was blue
but she’d concealed their hue
with flesh-colored make-up

This was the third time
I’d had my neck broken
once when I was playing college football
the second when I was driving drunk

My doctor says that a spine was not designed for this
level of abuse



Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over nine hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net for work published in 2011 through 2014. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. He lives in Denver. He works at combating his own ego, as Ego is the source of Greed, and Greed is destroying our world.

Light Confession by Maril Crabtree

Talk to me
about your night fears.
How you keep the light on
beside your bed,
hoping you won’t wake
and feel the familiar terror.

How you sleep
on your side, turned away
from the window, knowing
they could come through anyway.

How your dreams
are the only things that save you
from your own dread.

How ready you are
to plunge into the undiscovered
day, into whatever is on
the other side of night.



Maril Crabtree’s most recent chapbook is Tying the Light (Finishing Line Press). Her work has appeared in journals such as Kalliope, I-70 Review, Coal City Review, Main Street Rag, and Third Wednesday, She previously served as poetry editor for Kansas City Voices. More of her work can be seen at www.marilcrabtree.com.

The Abandoned City by Thomas O'Connell

The city has been deserted, next
Year’s phone book will not include
Our last name, nor will any mailbox.
There must be some obscure relative
Remaining in a two-family house
Somewhere, but I could not tell you
Who, or where they buy their groceries,
Which weatherman they quote. We will no longer

Stand at a bar-b-q in somebody’s driveway, cousins
Shooting baskets into a frayed net
Hung over the oil stains left
By a car, purchased from a common grandmother.
I will not think of the local parish
Until retrieving a prayer card
Tucked in a pocket of some dark
Coat I seldom wear.



A librarian, as well as three time Pushcart Prize nominee, Thomas O’Connell’s poetry and short fiction has appeared in Caketrain, NANO Fiction, Elm Leaves Journal, and The Los Angeles Review, as well as other print and online journals. As of January first, he will be the poet laureate of Beacon, New York.

Two of Many by Martha Christina

They work their way across the wide lawn
by means of a Frisbee. The thinner man can

barely throw, can't catch. He drops the Frisbee
and his body to the cushion of early spring grass.

His companion kneels beside him, retrieves the disk
and turns it like a steering wheel, as if driving them

to a happier destination. If this were only about
imagining, I could create from their desire

a happy ending: restored health, long lives.
But their story isn't mine to alter as they rise

and proceed to the clinic door. Two bodies,
one shadow.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities and Three Line Poetry. Longer work appears or is forthcoming in the Aurorean, Bryant Literary Review, Blast Furnace, Main Street Rag, and The Orange Room Review. She lives in Bristol, RI.

Monofilament Whiskers by Al Ortolani

Dying stinks on a cat. His preening has stopped, no longer licking his paws or cleaning his coat. He slinks and crowds toward the milk plate, bones like loose bundles of fishing poles, hooked claws, sinker eyes, a jar of blood bait hardened to paste. Demanding privacy, he disappears into quiet corners of the garden. At night, he is just a small swell of moonlight behind the rhododendron. In the morning his face is turned upwards like he was searching the sky.

slow rain before dawn,
owl calling beyond
the churchyard pines



Al Ortolani’s poetry and reviews have appeared, or are forthcoming, in journals such as Rattle, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, and the New York Quarterly. He has published six collections of poetry. Currently, he is teaching English in the Kansas City area and serves on the Board of Directors of the Writers Place. His poems been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

First Encounter Beach by Howie Good

A man in a yellow rain slicker
rides a three-wheeler
loaded with empty plastic crates
out toward the oyster beds.

Here where the Nauset
first encountered the Pilgrims,
it is late afternoon, low tide.
A red dog runs along the shoreline
scattering the seagulls
while its owner futilely calls it back.

Though only early October,
the wind blowing in off the water
has already developed a psychotic edge.
We can’t rely on tomorrow
being another day like today,
silver bay and big sky and precious light.

The oyster farmer has shrunk
to a tiny dot in the distance.



Howie Good’s latest poetry collections are Dark Specks in a Blue Sky (Another New Calligraphy) and Bad for the Heart (Prolific Press). He is recipient of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry for his forthcoming collection Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements.

Carefree, Arizona by Stefanie Leigh

          - for my mother

The only way to feel back home now is to drive out far
Past where the developers have tried to reach
Out where there are still saguaro & jackalopes & jumping cholla.

Around Lone Mountain I feel you riding in the car with me;
I’m rolling down the windows, you’re turning up the radio,
And together we sing along to Fleetwood Mac:

But now it’s gone, it doesn’t matter what for.

I miss it all – a place that didn’t exist until I left it
Foundations of red rock and long stretches of dirt road
That weren’t beautiful until I couldn’t see them anymore.

But now it’s gone, it doesn’t matter what for.
When you build your house, then call me home.

Everything looks the same now down on Cascalote –
Desert landscaping and shining water features.
I drive by, but you’ve been gone for years.


Stefanie Leigh teaches environmental law in a distance learning program and recently earned an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. Her first (and almost completed) novel, The Truth, was longlisted for the 2015 Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award.

How Fishing Went For Us by Ed Ruzicka

          - for Helen Miriam and Nicolette Ruzicka

Back then I would walk you down
the block, up one more, then turn a wandering left
100 feet until we came under that stand of spruce
you thought was a forest creaky and frightful,
ripe for the wolf’s paw or witch’s cowl.

Except that we were just across from
a white, dilapidated house where Nicolette
and I once went peddling Girl Scout cookies
and got invited in to an oil-cloth kitchen
by a woman who tottered above her cane.
One who couldn’t spare a dollar or her tabby
would go fishless for days. So we came back
weeks later with boxes of Thin Mints and
told her they were excellent kept in the freezer
and even better crumbled over vanilla ice cream.

She said, "But I don’t have anything to give you."
Then made us weak tea we couldn’t get away from
fast enough as she spent the whole time scuttling around
scraping together a tote-bag of marbles, one carefully
rolled sheet of dryer lint, three peach pits, photo
of her middle boy by the Sunday shore in San Diego
and the fuzzy torsos of yellow jackets cased in amber.
She forced the bag into my hand as we sailed
off hailing our "So longs" forever and anon. 

On an afternoon like this under tall pine
I might completely undo one of my shoe laces
to lay across your tiny palm. You would
cast it out upon the waters of the puddle
that always formed at that low spot.
I remember those days tasting like aluminum
as I stood by with my mind overcome by sky
as any puddle can be while a daughter
sings softly so that fish will drift in.
Your song a sort of lure, as every song is,
that caught us nothing those days but now seems
to be catching everything, here, I could ever want.



Ed Ruzicka has published one full length volume, "Engines of Belief - Engagement in Modern Art". His poems have appeared in Plainsongs, the Atlanta Review, the Xavier Review, Big River Poetry Review and other literary journals. Ed lives in Baton Rogue, LA and is an occupational therapist. More at: edrpoet.com.

PTSD 4 by Matt Borczon

Dump the
sand from
your boots
and check
for camel
spiders
remember to
get your
uniform from
the laundry
pay the
extra dollar
so they
get the
blood off
of it
make sure
your mopp
gear is
under your
rack because
its late
and if
you manage
to fall
asleep
you are
sure to
need it
knowing where
your nightmares
are headed.



Matt Borczon is a nurse and writer from Erie Pa, he served in the busiest combat hospital in Afghanistan from 2010-2011. He writes of his experiences there and the difficulties of readjusting to life back home. His poems have appeared in Busted Dharma, Dead Snakes, The Bond Street Review, Big Hammer, Hanging Loose, and The Pressure Press as well as other small press publications.

rejection by Kurt Nimmo

first poem in weeks.
the habit is thin now as
weather turns against autumn
and the male cat sleeps
in the blue chair.
another literary magazine
rejection today.
not like the old days
the grandiosity of an envelope
with my return scrawl
hand-delivered.
now a few electrons indistinguishable
from spam. the literary world
as presently construed
is unknown
no longer a discovery.
rejection does not bother me
like it did when I was a poet.
now I have
the sleeping cat
and his zen curl on a Mexican blanket.
sure beats the byline
and the words crowded on
a tight page

jostling for recognition.



Kurt Nimmo was born in Detroit, Michigan. In the late '70s, he co-edited the successful literary magazine, The Smudge. In the '80s, he edited Planet Detroit. Kurt has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes for fiction, and two of his books were selected as "modern classics" by Wormwood Review. He lives in Smithville, Texas with his wife and two cats.

We're Pregnant by James Valvis

He sneaks out for a cigarette,
and when he returns the child
is already sliding out of her mother.
All he sees are the toes coming free.
This is the best case scenario.
Other men wanted to be there,
or claimed they did. Nowadays men
announce to family “We’re pregnant,”
as if they too will be getting fat,
vomiting, walking with plantar fasciitis.
“Push,” they say. “Breathe.”
“I’m going through this with you.”
What a bunch of bullshit.
He prefers the old days,
when the father waited outside,
got the good news,
then handed out cigars.
At least there was no mistake
who deserved credit for the labor.
Later, when he finally holds his child,
he informs his wife the toes are his,
and the rest hers. Being nice,
she agrees to let him have
more than any man deserves.



James Valvis has placed poems or stories in Arts & Letters, Barrow Street, Ploughshares, River Styx, The Sun, and many others. His poetry was featured in Verse Daily. His fiction was chosen for Sundress Best of the Net. A former US Army soldier, he lives near Seattle.

An Afternoon Walk by John Grey

He turns at the Revolution Coffee shop
and walks two blocks.
Twilight is conducive to a stroll.
Even old tenements are gilded.
And the brick freshens up.
Lawns sprout gleaming grass.

He steps around an oncoming skateboarder,
stops to smell roses protruding through a fence.
A young woman sits on a patio,
head lowered over a guitar her fingers gently strum.
She sings pure as the late afternoon air.
He lingers, listens.
The song is more wistful than sad.
It's a step up from the flowers.

Another woman approaches
pushing a stroller.
He has to sum her up in a moment -
will she be fearful if I
bend my head
into her baby's face
or insulted if I don't?
He settles on a modest version of the former.
A pretty singer and a comely mother -
two warning shots
over the bow of his bachelorhood.

But a plain suburban house
quickly changes the subject.
The older woman in the kitchen window
lowers his bottom lip.
Her eyes shine
from the sun's flat angle
but more like a lighthouse beam
warning ships from the rocks.

And next door,
an old couple argue on their doorstep,
over something trivial he expects,
or even imaginary.

An afternoon walk is always good for the health,
good for the confirmation of what he always suspected.



John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Perceptions and Sanskrit with work upcoming in South Carolina Review, Gargoyle, Owen Wister Review and Louisiana Literature.

The Walled Garden by Kevin Casey

Puttering about his three-room apartment,
the old man does little more than tend
to the clear floret of a shot glass
with his handled jug. An amber ashtray
sprouts from a brass stand, a vine of smoke
reaching toward the dull glow of a shaded window.

Across the room, the radio alighted
on the sideboard holds its crackling note
above the boulevard’s steady chorus.
After years in this urban hermitage,
loneliness has lost its meaning
to the inadvertent anchorite,
his life now pared away to a spare
and accidental habit of prayer.



Kevin Casey has contributed poems to Hartskill Review, The Orange Room Review, Rust + Moth, San Pedro River Review, and other publications. His new chapbook “The wind considers everything --” was recently published by Flutter Press, and another from Red Dashboard is due out later this year."

on the day the roofers came by Wanda Morrow Clevenger

          for Stan Barker

I don’t write on
days when I hear
a friend up
and dies––too soon
and cliché 
the roofers pound
I expect light fixtures
to crash down
walls to fall in

gray shingles drop
are gathered
away
ZZ Top’s “Legs”
throbs from
an open van
a compressor makes
an intermittent frizz

I drink honey tea
I read social sympathy
I pay bills
the washer/dryer
agitates/spins
I chase dust

tomorrow
the roofers
will pound the last
fresh shingles on – I’ll
look up and pretend
all is put to right 



Wanda Morrow Clevenger is a Carlinville, Illinois, native who will relatively soon be a Kansas resident. She has published over 300 pieces of work in 122 print and online publications. Her debut book This Same Small Town in Each of Us released in 2011. She likes betta fish and orchids, both of which she has repeatedly managed to kill.

John by Wanda Morrow Clevenger

social worker John asked
what was it I thought about
on the long rides up there

he wanted the gory deets
the fill in the down
and dirty blanks

I could tell by how he
leaned back in his chair
he had no better answers
than the rest

nothing at all I said
I stare at the same scenery
or try to sleep but can’t

in his entire social worker career
he hadn’t come across anything
quite like us, I could tell by
how he leaned back
in his chair
and said nothing



Wanda Morrow Clevenger is a Carlinville, Illinois, native who will relatively soon be a Kansas resident. She has published over 300 pieces of work in 122 print and online publications. Her debut book This Same Small Town in Each of Us released in 2011. She likes betta fish and orchids, both of which she has repeatedly managed to kill.

Outside the Church Window by Suzanne Samuels

Outside the church window
Leaves tumble down
Softly as flurries

The leaves don’t know the season
Pale yellow against verdant green

Sunflowers unrelenting
Zucchini ripening
Coreopsis ever blooming 

Still they fall 
Death amidst abundance

Only the most insistent wind
Compels the cascade
In stillness, they cling

I wonder
Was that a trick of the eye?

If I had not seen it
Outside the church window
Then I would not have believed

The way they surrendered
Falling down

Though the sun is overhead
The clock hands at noon
And the threat of winter distant



Suzanne Samuels is at work on her historical novel, The Orphans' Wheel, set in Sicily and New York City at the turn of the twentieth century. Her work has appeared in a number of journals, among these, Cyclamens and Swords, Cactifur, and Snapdragon.

Niagara Winter by David Jibson

The famous mist had frozen to everything
so solidly that it couldn’t be scraped away
so we sat hunkered inside the car,
shivering with the dampness,
listening to Sarah Vaughn, waiting
for the defrosters to do their work,
talking about the drive ahead
over the Rainbow Bridge into New York
and on to Connecticut,
how we thought the little motel in Ontario
was overpriced for this time of year
until we realized the price was in Canadian dollars
and how the mist frozen to your eyelashes
made you look like a chorus girl -
even at this age.



David Jibson lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan where he is an associate editor of Third Wednesday, a literary arts journal, a member of The Crazy Wisdom Poetry Circle and The Poetry Society of Michigan. He is retired from a long career in Social Work, most recently with a Hospice agency. He believes the most important element in his poetry is "story."

Homeless Man in Downtown Cheyenne by Sheryl L. Nelms

head
protected

by a red
motorcycle helmet

he sports

a ragged plaid shirt
cutoff jeans

and orange
flip flops

while balancing
a backpack

holding a silver
baseball bat

that threatens
invaders

of his space



Sheryl L. Nelms is from Marysville, Kansas. She graduated from South Dakota State University. She has had over 5,000 articles, stories and poems published, including fourteen individual collections of her poems*. She is a three time Pushcart Prize nominee.

*For a longer list of credits, visit http://www.pw.org/content/sheryl_l_nelms.

Catalpa Beans by Sheryl L. Nelms

hang
from the

leafless branches

in slim bunches
of brown

rattled
by the wind

they
sound

like dry
bones

bumping



Sheryl L. Nelms is from Marysville, Kansas. She graduated from South Dakota State University. She has had over 5,000 articles, stories and poems published, including fourteen individual collections of her poems*. She is a three time Pushcart Prize nominee.

*For a longer list of credits, visit http://www.pw.org/content/sheryl_l_nelms.

Keep by Claire Hersom

          - for Beulah and John

The window panes
are small and dry,
with a bubble or two,
corners chipped, but sturdy.
Through them is the other side,
a world away.

Keep busy.
Know what the words coming
will be made of.

Keep moving.
Make sure there's
a place to sit, hang your coat,
a plain wall for photos,
and a wood stove to warm
aching hands.
Move the rocker, face
a view of flowers,
and, if you can, birds
at a feeder.

Keep your eye on the sun.
It appears behind the pines
each morning to engage
with the world as it is,
no complaint.



Claire Hersom’s work has appeared in several poetry journals including Yankee Magazine’s New England Memories. In 2012, her book Drowning: A Poetic Memoir (Moon Pie Press, Westbrook, ME, 2008) was supplemental text for the University of Maine’s Rockland campus. Claire serves on the Board of Directors for Maine Equal Justice Partners, a non-profit organization dedicated to finding legislative solutions to poverty in Maine.

Haiku for the Hospice Thrift Store by Jane Vincent Taylor

Dainty handkerchiefs

once secured upon our heads at Mass

girls with no hats

 

small cut glass bowls

we dug out of oatmeal boxes

almost weevil poor

 

a beaded party purse

to carry cigarettes and mints

smells lindy like

 

a pile of vinyl

thirty-threes and forty-fives

black and groovy

 

in a velvet box

like my own old diamond ring

leftover fireworks

 

 

 

Jane Vincent Taylor is a poet who lives in Oklahoma City and teaches creative writing at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. Website: janevincenttaylor.blogspot.com.

Housekeeping by Jane Vincent Taylor

Hanging curtains, polishing mirrors, separating rooms from other rooms
          that can't be eaten in, dusting,
          fluffing pillows, whitening grout, these
          are not the domestic arts I can claim to know.
Under the sink I might as well have only my grandma's Babo,
          a jug of bleach, Dawn, Brillo pads.

House, I regret I cannot keep you polished, stylish, fit
          and congruent of aesthetic.
Now I'm banging another nail into the fading lemon yellow wall
          to hang my mother's Mexican landscape.

Sandy soil and cactus are about to blow into our rooms.
The sun is rising over an ancient mesa. Maybe
I should find a broom and be the old woman
          sweeping back the desert at the threshold of adobe.
Some days my mother, too, threw off chores to paint a picture.



Jane Vincent Taylor is a poet who lives in Oklahoma City and teaches creative writing at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. Website: janevincenttaylor.blogspot.com.

Reading a Coworker's Obituary by Corey D. Cook

She answered the phone
for six months or so
before being asked to leave,
she answered the phone breathlessly,
always breathlessly,
& tried to direct calls,
tried to take messages.

She left patients on hold
far too long
& unknowingly hung up
on others.

She left messages on your desk
& the caller’s name
would be spelled wrong,
or the phone number
would be missing a digit,
or the piece of paper
would have Coke stains on it.

She spoke of her dog,
her dog that slept in bed with her,
snarled at the maintenance man.

She died in her apartment
& you know her dog nudged her,
howled at the door
& she would have dutifully responded,
if only she could.



First published in ugly cousin



Corey D. Cook works at a hospital in New Hampshire and lives in Vermont. He edits Red Eft Review.

Memory Lane by Laura Lee Washburn

In the flea market the women talk
about men falling down.  He wasn’t hurt

but he couldn’t get up.             And the next time

he knocked that recliner on its side.

No broken hips.  That’s what she’s afraid of.

He crawled to the den to the phone.

Hips already replaced, pins and screws,

he can feel them when he lays on that side.

 

The talk is business.  The farmer’s market

failing this year, the store on main. Everyone’ll

be down at the school, not shopping.  No one

reads the paper anymore, can’t get them in

with an ad.  They wonder

whose funeral with so many cars

this morning. 

Laura Lee Washburn, Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University, is the author of This Good Warm Place (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Valparaiso Review, Carolina Quarterly, 9th Letter, The Sun, Red Rock Review, and Valparaiso Review.

The Ambigram by Kelley White

It’s honest dirt, blackening his fingers, though a shock
against the newborn’s head—he knows how to cradle
a newborn, has a natural way of rocking just a little
as we talk, and the mother’s on her cell phone in the hall.

You can see how much he loves the child. I don’t mind
the ragged jacket, the leather vest plastered with patches:
Vietnam vet, Harley-Davidson, Gypsy Motor Tour,
Native Riders. He’s earned the black and iron gray braid

hanging down his back. He whispers to the babies scalp,
kisses a patch of sparse pale hair, his huge hands cross
around her buttocks, knuckles spelling L-O-V-E H-A-T-E.
I explain the signs of illness to look for, give him my home

phone number. He warms a bottle under the faucet, shakes
a few drops on his wrist, the baby pale as milk against
his arm. We’ll recheck a weight in two weeks. Does he have
any questions. Yes, do we do DNA testing? Her last boy friend’s

kids all have red hair and blue eyes and I’m. . .I hold
his eyes. Do you want to know? What will it change?
Everything. Yes. Does it matter? He calls me two days later
from a bus on the way to Lowell, the baby has a diaper rash.

I talk him through the way to treat it. The mother’s sleeping
she needs her rest. It’s been a year now, well child checks,
a few colds, a fever. He always brings the child. Now
the woman’s pregnant. Another red head? It doesn’t matter

the love is in him. Who looks at hate.



Pediatrician Kelley White worked in inner city Philadelphia and now works in rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent books are TOXIC ENVIRONMENT (Boston Poet Press) and TWO BIRDS IN FLAME (Beech River Books.) She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.

Talkers by Tina Hacker

In the late ‘40s when crying babies
took precedence over Glenn Miller
or Benny Goodman on the radio,
new moms sat on fences
in front of apartment buildings
rocking infants in buggies
as evening shaded the day.
My mother rarely joined them.
She was convinced they gossiped
about her, malicious rumors that rolled
from woman to woman like the L train
nearby. But she occasionally sat
down for a few minutes,
the time it took for an indifferent facial
expression or greeting to confirm
her suspicions.
“Rose thinks she’s better than me,”
she’d grumble as she left.
The name didn’t matter,
Fanny, Jean, Connie.



Tina Hacker’s full-length poetry book, Listening to Night Whistles, was published by Aldrich Press and a chapbook, Cutting It, by The Lives You Touch Publications. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she has been published in a wide variety of journals, both online and paper. Since 1976, she has edited poetry for Veterans' Voices, a magazine of writing by hospitalized and recovering vets.

Myth of My Birth by Tina Hacker

Dad liked to gamble.
The story chronicles his
eight weeks of non-stop luck.
Three dollars won each day
from a Chicago bookie, exactly
enough to pay the hospital’s
daily fee for the incubator
that kept his daughter alive.

What if Dad were dealt a bad
hand, picked the losing pony, tossed
craps? Would my name have
disappeared? I picture an orderly pulling
me from my heated bed. An aide
skipping a bottle or two of formula.
No one in the family considered
a dire ending to this tall tale.
Or offered to help pay the bill.



Tina Hacker’s full-length poetry book, Listening to Night Whistles, was published by Aldrich Press and a chapbook, Cutting It, by The Lives You Touch Publications. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she has been published in a wide variety of journals, both online and paper. Since 1976, she has edited poetry for Veterans' Voices, a magazine of writing by hospitalized and recovering vets.

Weeds by Michael Estabrook

Everywhere they’ve lived
there’s been an old couple
next door or three houses down
puttering in their yard the woman
pulling weeds in her garden the man
mowing the lawn or emptying
his wife’s weed bucket for her
or the both of them relaxing
in lawn chairs sipping tea. Suddenly
he realizes as Jeannie next door
waves over at him that they
are that old couple now.



Michael Estabrook is a recently retired baby boomer child-of-the-sixties poet freed finally after working 40 years for “The Man” and sometimes “The Woman.” No more useless meetings under florescent lights in stuffy windowless rooms. Now he’s able to devote serious time to making better poems when he’s not, of course, trying to satisfy his wife’s legendary Honey-Do List.

Hospital Room by Michael Estabrook

Tomorrow is his surgery
a tumorous kidney
so he calls
to more-or-less say good-bye
although he doesn’t
why would they bother doing
a 9-hour operation
if there was no hope?

I see him 3,000 miles away
watching TV
taking his meds
stretching up to see the tree outside the window
rubbing at the pain
in his back and down his legs
will it ever go away
will he get home again
to his own bed
coffee in his favorite mug
cinnamon toast with scrambled eggs
trying to finish the novel
he’s been working on
for a year and a half
plant those tulip bulbs
he ordered from Holland
so they come up in the spring?

Yes way too much still to be done
not a good time to die
operation must be successful
the doctor is a good doctor
or so he’s heard



Michael Estabrook is a recently retired baby boomer child-of-the-sixties poet freed finally after working 40 years for “The Man” and sometimes “The Woman.” No more useless meetings under florescent lights in stuffy windowless rooms. Now he’s able to devote serious time to making better poems when he’s not, of course, trying to satisfy his wife’s legendary Honey-Do List.

Blue Law Blues by Alarie Tennille

Blue laws lock up the fun,
tie Sunday down with the fidgety,
sit-still binds of a sermon.

Nothing to do, nothing to do,
plodding through the last school-free
hours: a martyrdom of quiet

till Daddy says, “Get in the car.”
We drive to the shopping center,
a gray ghost town.

All those empty parking spaces
lined up like grave stones.
Not even a cola for sale.

We stop in front of Roses
dime store, where my horse
is saddled up, waiting.

Like Daddy, he’s all mine today.
No line, no pushing,
no too-busy excuses.

Daddy feeds in a dime
and I’m off across the wide
range. He leans against a post,

smoking a cigarette.
In twenty minutes, we’ll be back
home, my pardner and me.



Alarie Tennille (alariepoet.com) serves on the Emeritus Board of The Writers Place in Kansas City, Missouri. She’s the author of Running Counterclockwise and Spiraling into Control. Alarie’s poems have appeared in numerous journals including Margie, Poetry East, I-70 Review, Southern Women’s Review and Midwest Quarterly Review.

Honeymoon, First Marriage by Jan Duncan-O'Neal

          Windsor, Berkshire, England

After a morning in the chapel
beneath St. George’s wedding cake vault,

we huddled under the dome of a black umbrella,
crossed streets to the tea shop on a corner

where we folded our hands around tea cups
and ate toasted scones. The Cornish cream

spread thick, the raspberry jam drizzle,
the satisfaction. Relief from another day

of rain: a perfect setting for romance
if I had been in love instead of just married.



Jan Duncan-O’Neal has devoted the past twelve years to writing poetry since her retirement in the library world. Her work has been widely published, and The Lives You Touch Publications published her chapbook Voices: Lost and Found in 2011. She is currently compiling a full length collection and is an editor for I-70 Review.

Grieg's Piano Concerto in South Texas, 1949 by Jan Duncan-O'Neal

          For Bill

Every Saturday morning before he fills
the enamel bucket with fresh water, the boy
places his favorite 78 on the record player.

He listens for a roll of timpani,
a piano flourish. He is on his knees now,
a floor scrubber dutifully washing

a family’s footprints, a week’s dirt
from the Mexican tiled back porch.
The music carries him on, fills his head.

Halfway through the movement,
the needle sticks in the last groove.
The boy, hands damp, reaches 

to turn the record over. Electric shocks pinch
his fingers, run up his arms, but he persists,
throws out soiled water, fills the bucket

with fresh. Scrubbing, moving faster
with the piano’s tempo, he finishes
the floor in record time.



Jan Duncan-O’Neal has devoted the past twelve years to writing poetry since her retirement in the library world. Her work has been widely published, and The Lives You Touch Publications published her chapbook Voices: Lost and Found in 2011. She is currently compiling a full length collection and is an editor for I-70 Review.

Looking at Art by Jan Duncan-O'Neal

We take the children to see art,
sacred to us as prayer in a cathedral,
to look, to find the unexpected—
a dot of pink on a blue canvas,
stars puncturing a coal black sky,
a blood orange sunrise rising
over the harbor anchored by sailboats

The children scurry along,
little half-blind mice
sniffing for a morsel of cheese,
content to play hide-and-go-seek
in rooms of glass cases,
never stopping
to squint at their own reflections.



Jan Duncan-O’Neal has devoted the past twelve years to writing poetry since her retirement in the library world. Her work has been widely published, and The Lives You Touch Publications published her chapbook Voices: Lost and Found in 2011. She is currently compiling a full length collection and is an editor for I-70 Review.

My Hungarian by Ronald Moran

My mother was Hungarian, and she would
never let me remember it, by Anglicizing
her maiden name, by forbidding me from
telling anyone that I was half Hungarian,
refusing to teach me any Magyar, despite
my asking during childhood and the teens.
I could never speak with my grandparents,
who were not taught how to speak English.

When I was just 16, I dated a Polish girl, warm,
sweet. I liked her, and I think she felt the same
about me, but when my mother found out
she was of Slavic descent, she shut the door. 
I want to apologize to her for my absence
of courage over 60 years ago, howsoever late.

 

Ronald Moran has published 12 collections of poetry, two books of criticism (one coauthored), and hundreds of poems, essays, and reviews in a number of journals, including Connecticut Poetry Review, Commonweal, Louisiana Review, Northwest Review, South Carolina Review, Southern Poetry Review, Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, and The Wallace Stevens Journal. His newest collection, Eye of the World, will be published by Clemson University Press in 2016.

Chinese Lanterns by Bob Bradshaw

How many more years will I look out
on these Chinese Lanterns that grow

as wildly as bamboo? "Stop staring,
and help in the garden," my wife advises.

My wife loves massaging the earth
with her hands, announcing

that soon she'll have soil rich
as Lion's Head soup.

Even her orchids are happy
as if thriving on the slopes

of Tai Shan mountain, her hose's mist
rising high above Jing Shi Valley.



Bob Bradshaw lives in California, and hopes to retire to a hammock soon. He has many such ambitious plans. For now he passes the time listening to old Stones' records, and gathers moss. He can be reached at bobbybradshw@yahoo.com when he isn't napping.

That Dark Space by Martha Christina

The young face
of my daughter
smiles up at me
from old photos
spread on the floor,
a rug of sweet memories;
the uncaptured images
of anger and despair,
like the missing front teeth
in a child's smile. That dark
space, darker.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities and Three Line Poetry. Longer work appears or is forthcoming in the Aurorean, Bryant Literary Review, Blast Furnace, Main Street Rag, and The Orange Room Review. She lives in Bristol, RI.

To a Friend Now Dead by Alarie Tennille

You live so vividly
in college memories
that I promise

your husband photos
that never existed.
I search my album.

You were there…
and there…not more
than eight feet from me.

Behind the camera’s eye,
too shy to be the focus
of attention.

I forgot our game—
how you would turn
just as I snapped.

I always lost you behind
a black silk curtain of hair.
I lost you again tonight.



First published in Touch: The Journal of Healing



Alarie Tennille (alariepoet.com) serves on the Emeritus Board of The Writers Place in Kansas City, Missouri. She’s the author of Running Counterclockwise and Spiraling into Control. Alarie’s poems have appeared in numerous journals including Margie, Poetry East, I-70 Review, Southern Women’s Review and Midwest Quarterly Review.

Open Call for Submissions

Red Eft Review is a new online publication dedicated to accessible poetry and is now open to submissions. Please read the guidelines carefully before submitting. Thanks for visiting and I look forward to reading your poems.