Mother Is Dying by Howie Good

You’re whichever tree
sheds its leaves first.

The terrible part isn’t how cold it gets.
It’s how much you tremble.



Howie Good’s latest poetry books are A Ghost Sings, a Door Opens from Another New Calligraphy and Robots vs. Kung Fu from AngelHouse Press.

Portraits of Childhood by Rachael Hershon

I.
Shadow of a mill
heavy on roadside
Nearby a dam spits 
water flecked with
cigarette butts
Motorcycles rattle
disappear behind
gridded ranch houses
where last scraps of sun
cling to pine tips

II.
Blue curtains
blue paper masks
extra large johnny
unemptied commode
your father asleep
beside a chiming
heart monitor
weight of your bag
at the foot of his bed

III.
Stretches of brick
hold shards of sun
Silver river
bluefish belly-up
ghosts of violet mountains
inhale waking smokestacks



Rachael Hershon's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Avalon Literary Review, Poetry Quarterly, and A Quiet Courage. She is from the Boston, Massachusetts area and is currently an undergraduate studying English and Creative Writing at Brandeis University.

The Cleaner by Gareth Culshaw

I was told he was gone by his son.
Remembering his frown, like a
ballast of railway line.
Firm as a cliff edge.

He was ex army. Bringing with him
discipline, strictness.
When he came out he opened up a
cleaning business.

Wiping away the used breaths on glass,
brushing away the dead leaves,
sweeping away the lost voices,
hoovering up dead skin

removing nightmares of wars he had known.



Gareth Culshaw lives in Wales. He has been published in various places across the UK and USA.

Birds at the Burial by Natalie Crick

Near the riverbank where we
Buried her, I light a candle

And wait, patient as a hunter
Detecting what the beast will do

In the next moment.
Someone, somewhere, will see it.

Barn owls celebrate
Over their cathedral of bones,

Screaming skies clawed with crows.
The man asleep on his lumpy mattress

Has a head full of ghosts and
Sad, erotic dreams.

Gulls rise, small white banshees
Worshipping the sun.



Natalie Crick, from Newcastle in the UK, has found delight in writing all of her life and first began writing when she was a very young girl. She graduated from Newcastle University with a degree in English Literature and plans to pursue an MA at Newcastle this year. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in a range of journals and magazines including The Lake, Ink Sweat and Tears, Poetry Pacific, Interpreters House and Jet Fuel Review. Her work also features or is forthcoming in a number of anthologies, including Lehigh Valley Vanguard Collections 13. This year her poem, 'Sunday School' was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Last Passage by Shulamith Chernoff

          To my mother Shoshanna, 1893–1994

Your skin is stretched taut
on concave bone, worn thin
by ninety-nine years of battle
with wind, sun, and bursts
of joy and rage.
Your arms that commanded
now quiver, your shrill voice
has softened.
The sapphire blue dress
on your thin shoulders,
a shroud of rustling silk.

Your eyes still retain
their cobalt blue, peer through
the veil of memory.
You recall dense
Polish forests, thrusting trees that
pierce clouds and sky.
Your small town Tarnov,
close to Kraków.
You remember the mushrooms
that carpeted the fields
like waxen flowers.
You see the peasants who
plucked feathers from fattened
Polish geese. You feast on berries,
red garlands that cascaded
from baskets of straw.
The peasant market throbbed
with a babble of tongues,
rising in the humid afternoons.

You have not forgotten
the hymn to Kaiser Wilhelm,
or the samovar and feather bed.
Your silver candlesticks
passed from hand to hand.
You remember all the names
of the first-grade children
in the fading leather album.

World War One:
you took a boat of passage,
spent three weeks in steerage
to arrive at Ellis Island.
Deloused and shorn
of given name,
you proclaimed your right
to conquer America.



Shulamith Chernoff is an Associate Professor Emeritus of Education at Southern Connecticut State University. She holds graduate degrees from Columbia University and the Teacher’s Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Her poetry has appeared in Caduceus, Connecticut Review, and Louisiana Literature. Her second collection, Solace, is forthcoming from Five Oaks Press in 2017.

What Remains by Shulamith Chernoff

          To my mother, Shoshanna, 1893–1994

After all these years without you,
your bed still remains untouched.
The white goose down quilt from Poland
still bears the imprint of your body.
Photographs crowd your dresser—
you and Aba, your head erect,
your black hair a crown of braids.
Imperious, your swan neck
and blue eyes commanded attention
even then.

With a cloud of dust,
I open your old trunk.
Three braids lie neatly coiled
in paper: one black, one gray, one white
Here is the brass Russian samovar,
a wedding gift in 1913.
Here are the letters, the fine script
in Polish, Russian’s French, Hebrew,
love letters from my father
when you visited your parents in Tarnov.
I cannot live without you. I long for you.
I am intruding. 

I find your notes to me,
a letter of thanks to Shulenku
for her endless devotion.
Is this the same person I feared
as a child? Your steady script
etched in your diary
before your hands trembled
beyond control.

You left instructions for me,
how to open the safe.
You carefully typed the letter:
I must face the hard reality
that my days are coming to an end.
My illness made a great splash
among my grandchildren.
I lived in a state
of pleasant estivation.

You looked at me for the last time
as I held your fraying letters, your master’s degree,
pictures of your family in Poland,
the Russian samovar gleaming
in the darkened room.



Shulamith Chernoff is an Associate Professor Emeritus of Education at Southern Connecticut State University. She holds graduate degrees from Columbia University and the Teacher’s Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Her poetry has appeared in Caduceus, Connecticut Review, and Louisiana Literature. Her second collection, Solace, is forthcoming from Five Oaks Press in 2017.

Nostalgia by C.C. Russell

A song that you left for me
on a mix tape – somewhere around ’95.
Today, a cover; this softer voice
singing the same words
to a slower tune –
a tone more mournful
than we would have ever imagined
then.



C.C. Russell lives in Wyoming with his wife and daughter. His writing has appeared in such places as Wyvern Lit, Rattle, Word Riot, The Cimarron Review, and The Colorado Review. He has also lived in New York and Ohio.

Things by Richard Martin

Whenever I walk into the living room,

a host of silent voices call to me --

the footstool, sofas, coffee table, pebbles,
candlestick, carpet all remind me

where and when they were bought, given,
collected -- inanimate yet vital;

my armchair embraces me and supports
a tired arm reaching for a glass of wine --

things make it clear that they're essential
to the magnetism of home.



Richard Martin was born in London and studied at Cambridge. For many years he taught English and American literature at the University of Aachen in Germany. He and his wife live just across the border on the slopes of the highest hill in Holland. His poetry has appeared in magazines in England, USA, Ireland, and Austria. He has published three collections.

Translation of a Basketball Slapping the Concrete by C.C. Russell

The way that dusk defeats us,
divides us.

There is a young man
in the apartment complex
across the street
who has been practicing all day,

his limbs robotic in their completed,
perfected movements.

I slowly disappear watching him
as he recedes. Sound. Only sound –
this consistent dribbling over asphalt.

How dusk erases the world
around us,
how dusk leaves
only our habits, their echoing rhythms. 



C.C. Russell lives in Wyoming with his wife and daughter. His writing has appeared in such places as Wyvern Lit, Rattle, Word Riot, The Cimarron Review, and The Colorado Review. He has also lived in New York and Ohio.

I can't by Matthew Borczon

tell enough
stories or
take enough
pills or
write enough
poems
can't stop the
helicopters
from landing
nightly in
my dreams
taking me
back to
the war
I still
call home.



Matthew Borczon is a nurse and Navy sailor from Erie, Pa. He currently has two books available: A Clock of Human Bones (Yellow Chair Review) and Battle Lines (Epic Rites Press). Another book Ghost Train will be published by Weasel Press in 2017.

Data Dada by Howie Good

Somewhere on the edge of town,
sirens woo-who, woo-who, woo-who,
inspiring dread even at this distance,
as I come back from walking Dewey
carrying a little plastic bag of dog shit,
the night sky hole-punched with stars
that I can’t identify but also satellites
in synchronous orbit, 140 by last count
and all peering at us through the dark,
like remnants of the gods of old who,
in a pinch, would eat their own offspring



Howie Good's latest books are A Ghost Sings, a Door Opens from Another New Calligraphy and Robots vs. Kung Fu from Angel House Press.

Here and Now by Richard Martin

A brief flash of blue and brown,
as wings fold their fluttering feather --

a jay has settled itself
in a fork of the chestnut's leafless branches --

from this vantage point,
it seems to survey its surroundings intently --

I contemplate the bird,
savouring the essence of the here and now.



Richard Martin was born in London and studied at Cambridge. For many years he taught English and American literature at the University of Aachen in Germany. He and his wife live just across the border on the slopes of the highest hill in Holland. His poetry has appeared in magazines in England, USA, Ireland, and Austria. He has published three collections.

Thirty-Five by Emily R. Frankenberg

I am the age of youthful presidents,
decrepit models and fading athletes,
as well as others, nondescript throughout the day:
the tired waitress with the memory
and the uniform she hates,
the polished lawyer with the torment in his head,
the distracted sales clerk and the teacher
with a notebook of failed plans.
I’m two years older than the carpenter
who died upon the cross,
and one year younger than Anne Bancroft in The Graduate.
Also, adjusting for the species,
I’m the same age as my cat,
who knows his tail and his routines,
but with persuasion can be made to chase a string.



Emily R. Frankenberg was born in New Jersey, but has lived in Seville, Spain since 2006. She writes in both English and Spanish and has been published in Amaryllis Poetry, Revista Literaria Baquiana, La bolsa de pipas, Typehouse Literary Review, Strong Verse, and the Apeiron Review, as well as in an anthology of poetry released by Editorial Zenú (Colombia).

Something for Nothing by CL Bledsoe

There were plates and bowls, crockery
with little yellow and blue daisies
on them. Every week, IGA had a different
piece. They gave out stamps when
you bought enough. Fill up a book,
and you got something. When
the vacuum broke, Mom saved stamps
in her little book. She had to take
them all the way to the mall in Jonesboro.
Dad said, “You can’t get something
for nothing.” Mom said, “It’s not
nothing.” He wouldn’t take her
until she threatened to go by herself.
On the hour drive up, he repeated,
“You can’t get something for nothing.”
On the drive back, the vacuum sat
in the back seat, quiet as Dad up front. 

 

 

 

CL Bledsoe is the assistant editor for The Dead Mule and author of fourteen books, most recently the poetry collection Trashcans in Love and the flash fiction collection Ray's Sea World. Originally from rural Arkansas, he lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.

Because Everything Matters by Ben Rasnic

The miniature rose bush
shed its paper thin pink
petals & delicate lime green leaves
with the first kiss
of November frost.

Against all odds, we brought the barren
rigid stems inside, carefully
tamping their fibrous roots
into a soothing caress
of organic potting soil;          

gave them a nourishing cocktail
of cool water & Miracle-Gro,
then patiently awaited
the re-animation of fresh green leaves
& vibrant new buds.

It would have been an easier choice
to abandon this life form
to its own primitive resources;
to die a natural death
& simply be replaced

the following spring
than to sacrifice five minutes                                                     
& three cubic feet
of den space,
the difference being       

what separates the dead of winter
from the magic of the season
where each new day begins
with the glow of transparent pink petals
in the pale morning light.



Author of four collections of poetry, Ben Rasnic currently resides in Bowie, Maryland crunching numbers for a living in Northern Virginia. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart prize and for Best of the Net.

Sleeping by Neil Ellman

          (after the painting by Phillip Guston)

In the morning
when the birds begin
their dawn chatter
and conversations
with the light and rising sun
a shadow puppet
hiding behind a cloud
my smoke-ring dreams
will fade and dissipate       
after still another night
spent, not on sleep,
but squandered
on half-lit cigarettes
empty coffee cups
lined up like sheep
and visions of a life
more imagined than real.

If only I could
cover my head
with blankets
of forget-me-nots
and in the darkness
know the sleep
that others know
and make me feel
as I once did.



Neil Ellman, a poet from New Jersey, has published numerous poems, more than 1,000 of which are ekphrastic, in print and online journals, anthologies and chapbooks throughout the world. He has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net.

dad by Justin Hyde

there are no
warm childhood moments
to savor
when the clouds wax
nostalgia.

it was all barbed wire
misunderstanding
and mutual intransigence.

but he mellowed

i mellowed

the world humbled me
over and over.

at first
i shook his hand.

now
i give him a hug.

like you know
the sun rises
in the east

i know
if i call him up
in any season

he'll come
and save my ass.



Justin Hyde's books and other poems can be found here: http://poets.nyq.org/poet/justinhyde.

blairstown pears by Justin Hyde

uncle denny
worked at a factory
in bell plaine.
he watched nascar on tv
and golfed when he could.
i never saw him angry
or heard him talk sideways about anyone.
he always had a smile
always did what aunt holly said.
every summer
he and aunt holly took me and my six cousins
on an overnight trip
to the amusement park in des moines.
i think he actually enjoyed it.
i judged him simple steady and banal
in my twenties
and never sought his advice.
my son met him a few times
before a back-ache turned cancer.
all he remembers
is uncle denny handing him a pear
from the tree in their back-yard.
blairstown pears he calls them
dad let's go get some blairstown pears.
aunt holly sold the house
and moved to a condo in cedar rapids.
the pear tree is gone. replaced
by an extension
of the driveway.
uncle denny is still there.
thirty-seven steps from grandpa fiester
on the south hill
of the blairstown cemetery.



Justin Hyde's books and other poems can be found here: http://poets.nyq.org/poet/justinhyde.

Fall at the Playground by Martha Christina

Backs to the wind
we watch our young
granddaughters swing

the same swings
we bailed out of
as little girls,
skinning our knees,
but not crying.

Our families are
home for Thanksgiving,
and so we exchange a few
sentences about pies
and brining turkeys,
then: her husband's stents,
my husband's chemo.

"It will be better in the spring,"
she says, and we wipe
our runny noses on our sleeves,
although we know better.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears recently or is forthcoming in Bryant Literary Review, Muse Literary Journal, Naugatuck River Review, and in earlier postings of Red Eft Review. Her second collection, Against Detachment, was published in April by Pecan Grove Press.

Terminal by Ronald Moran

Too late for me to say to my terminally ill
                         friends,
I hope you feel better soon, when I know
                         they will
not get well, and if they could still respond,
                         they might

want to say, It's Ok, Ron, we are ready,                         
                         a chorus
joining others in that final stage when
                         every
breath comes only in forty second cycles,
                         and

I don't know what I should hope for next:
                         another breath
or cessation, their eyes fixed at either open
                         or partially
closed, never all the way, as if to declare,
                         We tried.



Ronald Moran lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina. His poems have been published in Asheville Poetry Review, Commonweal, Connecticut Poetry Review, Louisiana Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Negative Capability, North American Review, Northwest Review, South Carolina Review, Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and in thirteen books/chapbooks of poetry. Clemson University Press published his Eye of the World in the spring of this year.

One Night in a House with My Parents by Ronald Moran

Snow or debris filled this house I do not
remember being in before, while my father

broke window after window, as snow,
or whatever, accumulated inside so fast

I could not remove it. I do not know why
I was there, me, over a decade older than

they lived to be, my mother silent, out
of character, sitting in a small room with

only one chair, staring at me, as if to ask,
You? What are you doing in this house?



Ronald Moran lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina. His poems have been published in Asheville Poetry Review, Commonweal, Connecticut Poetry Review, Louisiana Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Negative Capability, North American Review, Northwest Review, South Carolina Review, Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and in thirteen books/chapbooks of poetry. Clemson University Press published his Eye of the World in the spring of this year.

Apology for Breathing by Howie Good

The seabirds
that dive-

bomb for fish
only seem

to be crying,
Sorry, sorry.



Howie Good co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.

100 Little Deaths by Roderick Bates

By the time she took her first step at 10 months, 
Elizabeth had already changed so many times
I had suffered a whole string of losses.
The deep-sleeping wiggler was gone,
as was the toothless sucker of nipples,
the rolling giggler bent on sitting up,
the crawler who had not yet found reverse.

Always, with each achievement –
the new tooth, the proud holding
of her own spoon, tied shoelaces,
training wheels bent and unneeded –
came the hard knowing
that some part of her life was now over,
as gone as last night’s shadows,
as forever as a broken knife blade.

When I walk in this small-town Vermont cemetery,
read the history of influenza
on all the tiny stones that just say Baby,
I am beat down by true loss.

                             And yet, tonight, as I hold
this chewed copy of Pat The Bunny
and talk to you in another state,
holding your own baby who reaches
for the off button of your laptop,
I feel the hundred small cuts of your growth,
the hundred dark moments
of each new separateness,
the hundred small stones marked Baby,
and First Grader, and Brownie,
and Graduate.  
And I wonder if, when I call you,
sometimes you hear through the wire
the hundred echoes of missing
as I say I love you.



Roderick Bates has published poems in The Dark Horse, Stillwater Review, Naugatuck River Review, Hobo Camp Review, and Rat’s Ass Review (which he now edits). He also writes prose, and won an award from the International Regional Magazines Association for an essay published in Vermont Life.

Father and I by Rachel Caruso-Bryant

You’re brown, baked by the Texas kiln, firmly lined and chiseled
Wearing a red plaid shirt, unbuttoned, with sun washed jeans,
On the couch, passed out after a long day bleeding oil on the fields.
I’m smooth-skinned, pale, and blonde as an ear of white corn,
Wearing white Hanes underpants, topless, chest down
On top of you, mouth open, drooling, deep in memory making sleep.



Rachel Caruso-Bryant is originally from Florida and is now an English language lecturer at a university in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. She lives with her husband and three cats and travels the world whenever she gets the chance. Her poems have appeared in A Lonely Riot and the Stark Poetry Journal.

My Mother's Alzheimer's by Ben Rasnic

The days, weeks, months, the
passing of the seasons
dissolve into jumbled
blank calendar squares.

The alternating glow
and fade of fireflies
captures her childlike wonder,
briefly signals familiar names
and faces,

memories flickering
particles of light
short circuiting the strange gray
passage of time,

a deluxe continuum
jigsaw puzzle
missing interlocking pieces;

unfinished crossword entries
even I no longer
can complete.



Author of four collections of poetry, Ben Rasnic currently resides in Bowie, Maryland crunching numbers for a living in Northern Virginia.

Sleeping in Railroad Cave by Al Ortolani

We woke in the darkness, looking out

into the light, the entrance curtained

with ice. The sunlight caught

as it would behind a window,

luminescent like the first sun.

Already, trickles of melt were running

in barely detectable currents, cold beads

on the tips of the frozen. By mid-morning,

the ice would drop, a harvest loosened

from the limestone. Reluctantly,

we kicked our way out. The span of ice

shattered with the force of our boots

across the leaf fall. We emerged

into the early sun, cold pinching our nostrils,

each step a snapping twig, a circling crow,

a woodpecker drumming dead wood.



Al Ortolani's newest collection, Paper Birds Don’t Fly, will be released in 2016 from New York Quarterly Books. His poetry and reviews have appeared in journals such as Rattle, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, and New York Quarterly. His poems been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Currently, he teaches English in the Kansas City area.

Their Daughter by Martha Christina

Even in a small town

          no longer quite as small,

          news travels fast.


Today in the card shop

          the talk is all about

          the newcomers'

          teenage daughter,


how she balanced, briefly,
          on the bridge railing

          then took to the water

          like a flower,

          opening.

 

 

Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears recently or is forthcoming in Bryant Literary Review, Muse Literary Journal, Naugatuck River Review, and in earlier postings of Red Eft Review. Her second collection, Against Detachment, was published in April by Pecan Grove Press.

Along Back Roads by Martha Christina

Misfolded
and creased,
the map leads us
down Old Stage Road
to the intersection of
Bug Hill and Bear Swamp.
Left, then right, to Echo Valley,
where you pull over
near an abandoned farm
to photograph
not the blazing maples
but yet another
dilapidated barn.


An aspen beside
the shuttered house
gives an obligatory
shiver in the light wind.
Each day its leaves
turn a little more vibrant,
as if coloring
marked their future,
not their end.


I listen hard for voices,
a slammed door,
the bleat of sheep,
but hear only
crickets in the ditch
and the ticking
of our hazard lights.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears recently or is forthcoming in Bryant Literary Review, Muse Literary Journal, Naugatuck River Review, and in earlier postings of Red Eft Review. Her second collection, Against Detachment, was published in April by Pecan Grove Press.

Dreamscape by Claire Hersom

Until the silken silhouettes of the shore scatter

          gray warblers and chimney smoke marry fog
          hide in the oxygen of the river,
          dance with the cool draft that drifts
          out of the forest

                    never give up, you say
                    there is always a stronghold

In sleep, we fall to nothingness
while our minds gather at the round table to debate
what the day ignored

we wake with angst,
a vague sense of disapproval

who can tell what’s fact, fantasy,
or restless dream

but it’s morning now, a new day

so go ahead

rise



Claire Hersom is a native Mainer who lives in Winthrop. Her work appears in several poetry journals including Yankee Magazine. Her book, Drowning: A Poetic Memoir, (Moon Pie Press) was supplemental text for UMS Rockland campus. In 2011, she received an Emerging Artist Grant in Literature from Boston’s St. Botolph Club Foundation. She serves on the Board of Directors for Maine Equal Justice Partners, and volunteers in local schools giving poetry ‘workshops’. She is one of three organizers for the Hallowell Maine poetry venue, the Bookey Readings at the Harlow Gallery. Her poem, "October Moon" was recently anthologized in the second edition of Wes McNair’s laureate project, More Poems from Maine: Take Heart.

Drought by Claire Hersom

The lake
thirsting in the sun

          rests
          waits

saves its energy
dreams of winter
          its mouth wide open
          begging for an unrelenting
          rain

Shadows under the surface
their dark secrets revealed

          frown
          worry

plants reach,
so close now to freedom

Granite,
with its map of creation
appears

its cataracts removed
          so generously
          by the sun's intense
          and constant heat

the relentless summer
masquerading as beauty.



Claire Hersom is a native Mainer who lives in Winthrop. Her work appears in several poetry journals including Yankee Magazine. Her book, Drowning: A Poetic Memoir, (Moon Pie Press) was supplemental text for UMS Rockland campus. In 2011, she received an Emerging Artist Grant in Literature from Boston’s St. Botolph Club Foundation. She serves on the Board of Directors for Maine Equal Justice Partners, and volunteers in local schools giving poetry ‘workshops’. She is one of three organizers for the Hallowell Maine poetry venue, the Bookey Readings at the Harlow Gallery. Her poem, "October Moon" was recently anthologized in the second edition of Wes McNair’s laureate project, More Poems from Maine: Take Heart.

The war that would bring us together by Mark Danowsky

Once around the lunch table
a kid I hardly knew paced and ranted
about how a war with giant insect invaders
would bring us together

I wanted the war to come
to fruition, in my imagination
it would solve the petty everyday indecencies

This was before that geometry class
when we were shepherded to a tv
to watch a plane hit a building over and over



Mark Danowsky’s poetry has appeared in About Place, Beechwood Review, The Broadkill Review, Cordite, Red River Review, Shot Glass Journal and elsewhere. Originally from the Philadelphia area, Mark currently resides in North-Central West Virginia. He works for a private detective agency and is Managing Editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal.

City Harvest by Ben Rasnic

With a secondhand garden hoe
sculpted rows of powdery black earth
by the cedar panel fence
where the sun breaks free
from lodge pole pines and towering maple,
framing my private sanctuary
like a secret window.

A growing season compromised                   
by cold snaps in May
& the long shadows of September,
cucumber vines find a way
to spread their wings
like uncaged birds
beyond the trellises.

Cayennes and jalapeños
pulse from forest green to fiery red
as firecracker August heat
finds plush ripe tomatoes bursting
with sweet crimson fruit
and okra spears sprouting from
fleshy green stems.

Two streets down,
work crews buzz saw a grove
of vibrant evergreens, 
layer the greenbelt
with a fresh glaze of asphalt,
breaking ground
for the next Olive Garden.



Ben Rasnic is the author of four collections of poems: "Artifacts and Legends"; "Puppet"; "The Eleventh Month" and "Synchronicity". Ben currently resides in Bowie, MD.

upholstery by Catherine Weiss

woke up alone
my first thoughts
tarnished pennies
i didn't bother to collect

tiptoed room to room
opened curtains by rote

i’ve faded into the background—
the transition has been seamless
my flannel shirt aligns flawlessly
with the plaid wallpaper of your parlor

i’ve become just another piece of furniture
hoping to be made useful

please
sit



Catherine Weiss is a poet based in Western MA. She has been published in such journals as Voicemail Poems, Melancholy Hyperbole, Jersey Devil Press, and Yellow Chair Review. Catherine enjoys competing in poetry slams, hanging out with her dogs, and playing ping pong.

Moon House by Howie Good

A couple of teenagers beat
a homeless man to death
with their skateboards.

I saw the story on the news
as summer night sounds
drifted in through the windows
like a murmured incantation.

Somewhere between sleeping
on the streets and the silver clouds
there must have been a woman
carrying a child up the stairs.



Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry. He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.

A Stitch in Time by Ronald J. Pelias

In the emptiness of her house, she
sits at her kitchen table, crocheting
round pot holders, her sight gone
with her husband of sixty-eight years.

Each stitch marks time until,
as she says, she can join him.
Each stitch pulls together
another memory into the circle.

“Nobody wants these things.
I can feel all the mistakes.
They pass the time though.
That’s all I got—a little time.”



Ronald J. Pelias’ work has appeared in a number of journals, including Small Pond, Midwest Poetry Review, Margie, and Whetstone. His most recent books, Leaning: A Poetics of Personal Relations (Left Coast Press), Performance: An Alphabet of Performative Writing (Left Coast Press), and If the Truth Be Told: Accounts in Literary Forms (Sense Publishers), call upon the poetic as a research strategy.

Someone else's mother speaks to me for the first time by Robert Ford

It wasn’t quite my first day there, and while I sat at the safety
of a long wooden table, a mile-wide belt of asteroid children
fizzed about the hall, high on screams and random collisions,

pounding its feet on a sprung floor all glassy with new varnish.
Her long-fingered hands were working the grown-up scissors,
the chafing of the blades against each other making that noise

I still don’t know the word for. You’re very patient, she told me,
freeing me from my cosmic reveries like one of the starfish
she was busily fashioning from a stack of coloured card.



Robert Ford lives on the east coast of Scotland. His poetry has appeared in both print and online publications in the UK and US, including Sweet Tree Review, Antiphon, Eunoia Review and Wildflower Muse. More of his work can be found at https://wezzlehead.wordpress.com/.

Swerve by Howie Good

It’s a two-lane road
in rough repair,
and if you’re wasted
or simply speeding
and unfamiliar
with its idiosyncrasies,
the dips and sudden severe twists
as it winds around
the base of Illinois Mountain,
it can be dangerous,
but especially on nights like this,
when there’s no moon,
only the distant porch lights
of a few lonely houses,
and so dark that you risk not seeing
the cross of plastic flowers
by the crushed guardrail
just before thunder crashes
and the skies open up.



Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry. He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.

I take by John Reinhart

my business
places

where
the owners

get
their hands

dirty
and profit

is a distant
third

to livelihood



An arsonist by trade, John Reinhart lives on a farmlette in Colorado with his wife and children. He is a frequent contributor at the Songs of Eretz, member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and was awarded the 2016 Horror Writers Association Dark Poetry Scholarship. His chapbook, "encircled," is available from Prolific Press. More of his work is available at http://www.patreon.com/johnreinhart.

Fantasy by Louise Robertson

Right now, summer makes
the bedroom a hot mouth.
All I want is to push my feet
into cold sand,
at night, waves inhaling
and exhaling beside us.
See, there’s the fantasy:
I said “us.”



Louise Robertson has completed the following checklist: Journal publications (Crack the Spine, Zetetic, Gyroscope, and others). Poetry event organizer. College (Oberlin). MFA (George Mason University). Awards (Mary Roberts Rhinehart, Columbus Arts Festival, and others). Slam teams (Rustbelt, NPS, and others). Full-length book (The Naming Of, Brick Cave). Trouble sleeping. Tries to be nice. Likes biking and swimming. Hates running. Does it anyway. Loves her two kids.

Hold on Me by Geoff Anderson

Smokey Robinson serenades my brother
and his girlfriend in the kitchen
with a definition of relationship;
I don’t like you, but I love you
on their lips while chopping garlic,
their hands around their waists,
the water already boiling
two months before the breakup
dismantles our apartment.
We listen to the piano quiet
and he tells her it is his
favorite song as I grab the knife
from his cutting board,
rinse the peels off and scrub
the handle as carefully as the blade.



Geoff Anderson teaches foreigners "their", "they're", and "there" in Columbus, OH. His work can be found in Wherewithal, Cider Press Review, and Modern Haiku, among others.

Baby Birds on Beach by Howie Good

The doctor called the results
of the blood test “concerning.”
You tell me this over the phone

with long pauses between words.
I stop walking while I struggle
to absorb what you’re saying.

You’re saying if Gavin has what
the doctor thinks he might have
he won’t live past the age of 10.

Evening has turned everything
a sludgy gray. Warning, the sign
says, Baby Birds on Beach.

Their eyes are dark in color,
just like when they were alive.



Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry. He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.

Cuttings by Gareth Culshaw

The saw chewed along the pencil line
with my thumb as a guide
‘Long and slow’ he said
as I tried to create a groove

All the names got me
Coping, Hack, Tenon, Bow
The names always sounded evil
‘Nice and slow’ he ordered

Sawdust built up and I blew it away
with the same speed as blowing birthday
candles. Creamy flakes snowed the bench
My thumb shitting itself as the triangular blades

cut, sawed, bit, jumped
He stood there casting a shadow
that still hasn’t left



Gareth lives in Wales. He is an aspiring writer who hopes one day to achieve something with the pen. He has been published in Magma, Limestone, London Grip and others.

Tenacity by Ed Ruzicka

After my father retired at 84, before he
finally started joining mom at St. Irene’s,
dad would lay out in the garden for hours
picking weeds in overalls. Oafishly
rotund, a mass, a mound, he seemed

more at home with himself than he had
been since childhood. Though he never
talked about childhood except to say how
his dad would park his butt on a curb,
bid him sit still. Behave, while ole grand
dad went in to have a few with the boys then
stumble back out to his son, dusk and home.

It would be summer. Dad would tune the
transistor to W. G. N. for the Cubs’ games.
First he braced on a fence post or hoe to
tenderly ease his bulk down to one knee,
right hand descended, then the other knee.

Finally, legs-kicked-out, dad would prop on
his elbow, side-wise. Reach out, tug, claw,
pull, roll, crawl around the garden for hours.
It was a process, a procedure in which his
hands worked with a dogged determination

I have come to appreciate as I gnaw through
a branch with a wide-toothed saw or as
I build a chain of exercises, of activities
that lead one of my stroke-stricken patients
back to lifting his arm, dressing himself alone
in a room inlaid with complex geometries
by dawn’s relentless march into shadow.



Ed Ruzicka has published one full length volume, “Engines of Belief.” His poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Xavier Review, Plainsongs, Red Eft Review, Big River Poetry Review as well as other literary journals and anthologies. Ed lives in Baton Rogue, LA and is an occupational therapist. More works can be found on his website, edrpoet.com.

Jane by Ronald Moran

It is your time of diminishments:
loss of hair, the spine and pelvis
gone soft and cracking. White
blood cells savage and deplete

you like schoolyard bullies, like
cannibals of blood. Last night
while I was stroking your head,
you woke up just long enough

to say you heard your mother
calling out your name, twice.



“Jane” is reprinted from Saying These Things (Clemson University Press, 2004).



Ronald Moran lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina. His poems have been published in Commonweal, Connecticut Poetry Review, Louisiana Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Negative Capability, North American Review, Northwest Review, South Carolina Review, Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and in thirteen books/chapbooks of poetry. Clemson University Press published his latest book Eye of the World in 2016. He has won a number of awards and his work is archived in Special Collections at Furman University.

Rites of Passage by Ben Rasnic

Took great pride
in supplying your first taste
of Canadian Club at age 12,
“This’ll make a man outta you”
he slurred.

Even the best of us can snap
at one time or another;
be it from stress, substance abuse,
faulty biorhythms
or simply witnessing your mother shatter

beneath one more crushing
close-fisted punch;
but the fact is
cause and effect mean nothing
when your father lies immersed                                       

in an expanding pool
of deep red blood engulfing
the linoleum kitchen floor
& you,
hyperventilating, hands trembling,

cling to the smoking
nickle plated Glock
you never wanted
but he bought you anyway
because he loved you.      



Ben Rasnic is the author of four collections of poems: "Artifacts and Legends;" "Puppet;" "The Eleventh Month" and "Synchronicity." Ben currently resides in Bowie, MD.

In Golden Gate Park by Brad Rose

A cocoon of myself, molting
in these enormous minutes,
I have no idea what my address is.
Every day, in the same skin,
I come here to dream of something
that’s more beautiful
for having been broken.
Pockets stuffed with Karaoke money,
my clothes ache,
my face, an apology.

The clinic says I think about things too much.
I ask them how much thinking is just right?
Then I tell them I’m only thinking the thoughts I’m thinking,
not all the other ones.

Tuesday, I read in the newspaper
the Governor said the lethal injections aren’t working,
that the prisoner’s body shook like a marionette. 
Wrapped in that story, I hardly slept Tuesday night.

Did you know people are less likely to flee
an approaching hurricane with a woman’s name
than one with a man’s name? 
My ex-wife said I’m real smart,
but I’m always solving the wrong problem.

Lightning is four times hotter than the sun.
I never sleep in the same place twice.



Brad Rose was born and raised in Los Angeles, and lives in Boston. He is the author of Pink X-Ray (Big Table Publishing, 2015.) Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize in fiction, Brad’s poetry and fiction have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Folio, decomP, Lunch Ticket, The Baltimore Review, The Midwest Quarterly, San Pedro River Review, Right Hand Pointing, and other publications. Links to Brad’s published poetry and fiction can be found at: http://bradrosepoetry.blogspot.com/.

Bloomsday's Mystery at the James Joyce Pub & Restaurant by Richard Weaver

In the bathroom today
a 20 something Japanese man
stands barefoot at the handicap urinal
American Standard. 3.8 Lpf/1.0 gpf.
wringing out his socks on the tile floor.
Once done, re-socked and re-shoeed
he walks to the sink, pulses
the soap dispenser, lathers up
and quickly washes his hands.
Two paper towels complete his visit.
Moments later I see him, seated
with three friends, all four studying
the dinner menu. No one the wiser.
Especially me.



Richard Weaver is an unofficial snowflake counter (seasonally) in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Publications include Crazyhorse, 2River View, Black Warrior Review, and the ubiquitous Elsewhere. He works as a volunteer for the Maryland Book Bank. Recent poems have appeared in Southern Quarterly and Conjunctions. Future poems in Steel Toe Review and Little Patuxent Review.

Creation by Howie Good

I hauled the stones in a wheelbarrow from the woods
behind our house, killer work for someone my age,
and dumped them in a growing jumble at the end of the garden,
and within a few days, and despite battered fingers,
I had gathered enough to build a winding two-foot-high wall,
lifting and heaving and wedging the stones into place,
misshapen pieces in a kind of extended jigsaw puzzle,
some stones as flat as dishes and others as fat as bricks,
but most as free-form as words before words form a poem.



Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry. He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.

True Story by Catherine Zickgraf

You’re a fire hazard,
said the elder,
stepping between
my wheelchair and
the church’s infant room,
wriggling nursling in my lap.



Catherine Zickgraf has performed her poetry in Madrid, San Juan, and three dozen other cities—yet homeschooling her autistic youngest inspires her the most. Her writing has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, [Pank], Victorian Violet Press, and The Grief Diaries. Find her at http://caththegreat.blogspot.com.

Too Much Happiness by Russell Rowland

This lot was recently paved. 
The neighborhood boy has a good acre
on which to run his model racer
by hand-held remote control.  

The car circles, reverses like a live thing. 
Perhaps he was sent outside
for tormenting the housecat with it.

The toy is less interesting
than his face, its pleased private smile. 
He has learned not to look too happy.

Someone always feels called
to ruin too much happiness. 
Too much happiness invites a taunt
from a speeding, full-sized vehicle.

It sets you up to discover you left
your treasure in the driveway last night
and Dad backed over it this morning.

So smile, don’t grin. Don’t dream
of laughing. If your nosy Mom
even guesses how happy you are,
swear the woman to silence.



Seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee Russell Rowland continues his trail maintenance work and baby-sits his toddler granddaughter in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region. Chapbooks “Train of All Cabooses” and “Mountain Blue” are available from Finishing Line Press.

Freedom Takes Many Forms by Michael L. Newell

The small lass with the hula hoop
was swinging and swaying when
the rain arrived in a fine fury.

All her classmates ran for cover.
She continued to swing the hoop
faster and faster in wilder and wider

circle upon circle until it slipped over
her hips and slid to the ground;
then she sped toward shelter

with a skipping run lifting her right knee
into graceful hops high off the ground,
her face tilted toward the sky in full-throated,

uninhibited laughter (audible over
the storm) which I heard and joined
from the window I stood in above

the playground which she was vacating.
She heard my guffaw and waved
in my direction before, with wildly

swinging arms and bounding leaps,
she disappeared down the steps
and out of sight around an elementary building.

A gust of wind blew a stinging sheet of rain
in my direction, and (smiling) I leaned into it
and longed for the abandon of childhood.

                                              Kigali, Rwanda, November 29, 2011



Michael L. Newell has recently been published in Jerry Jazz Musician, Verse-Virtual, and Culture Counter.

The Professor Is In by Howie Good

A student who has missed more assignments
than he has completed is standing in the doorway.
“Can I do something for extra credit?” he asks
as he slips off his backpack. I hate that question
and look out the window to avoid showing how much.
The trees have molted. A groundskeeper, a short,
sturdy man with a leaf blower strapped on his back,
is noisily waving the nozzle over the sidewalk
as if it were a magic wand. The student plops down
in the chair reserved for students. There are consequences
I must explain to him, charmed particles coming apart.
But not just yet. He turns his head toward the window
to see what I’m seeing – an incautious conjurer inspiring
the last ragged remnants of summer to get up and dance.



Howie Good is author of Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry.

Is It Too Late to Keep Your Secrets Safe? by Ace Boggess

          - news tagline on CNN

I used to hold onto them like hundreds of pills
with side effects all forms of loneliness.
Secrets stink of empty rooms, dust on bookshelves,
dangling spiders petrified from grief & loss.
I won’t go back into that rundown house,
its blinds pulled, its door safely double-locked.                           
I prefer standing bare-skinned on a stranger’s lawn,
shouting, Look at me! Look! I’m a fool!
to know that even the ugliest truth soothes
like the cigarette after an argument.



Ace Boggess is the author of two books of poetry: The Prisoners (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2014) and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled (Highwire Press, 2003). His novel, A Song Without a Melody, is forthcoming from Hyperborea Publishing. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.

Is This the Noise You Hate? by Ace Boggess

          [overheard downtown]  

Babies with their demonic bullhorns
sound like alarm clocks on TV:
old-fashioned pot-banging clatter
or the digital chirp of a robot chick,                                     
I put on headphones, move to another seat                         
before I realize I’m trapped by jackhammers
laughing from four corners of the city.
Rap bass bounces by like tires blowing flat.
A rescue chopper above rasps its menacing purr.
A woman near the ice cream shop
shouts “Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!”
as if channeling a British soldier
warning us all of the Nazi advance.
At least the book store has imprisoned quiet.
I go inside, consider heading for the coffee bar
to synthesize my own adventure:
caramel, or maybe crème de menthe.
I love how the barista works the knobs &
metal pitchers, even the steam
despite its heavy snoring. I love
how he says, “Enjoy,” in a whisper
as if there’s a conspiracy between us,
as if a theft of quiet ours to keep.



Ace Boggess is the author of two books of poetry: The Prisoners (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2014) and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled (Highwire Press, 2003). His novel, A Song Without a Melody, is forthcoming from Hyperborea Publishing. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.

Flora's Cafe by Tanja Bartel

Famous for its fights and eggs
He used to drive me all the way into the city
during the long bus strike of ’82
Park on Granville Street
when there was still parking
Breakfast before my shift

Flora and her little husband
would argue loudly in Mandarin
over the roar of spitting grease and sizzle
She’d scream over our tightening sausages
Yell down onto the world’s most delicate scrambled eggs
Flip and shove them with her metal spatula
Serve them, still quivering, to us newlyweds



Tanja Bartel is a writer and teacher. Her work has appeared in Right Hand Pointing, Prose Poem Project, Grain, Contemporary Verse 2, NewPoetry.ca, and upcoming in Rusty Toque.

First Haircut by CL Bledsoe

Mom loved my long, blond locks. Dad
thought I looked like a girl. He waited

as long as he could stand, until the tresses
reached my shoulders, snatched

me up and took me to the barber shop
downtown. A man I didn’t know helped 

me up onto the booster on his chair
with a smile. When I cried because Mom

had cried, he tried to convince Dad
it was okay to wait. But Dad

insisted, and I left looking like a boy.
It wasn’t long after that my hair darkened 

from Mom’s blond to Dad’s raven
black stain.



CL Bledsoe is the author of a dozen books, most recently the poetry collection Riceland and the novel Man of Clay. He lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.

You were ready to go on the road by Kelley White

sold it all, house, furniture, tools,
took your clothes and the lamps and dishes
to the Goodwill, bought yourself a little travel
trailer to take on tour; first trip you lost
control, it sheared, knocked
the little house right off its wheels
now you come back dragging
an empty chassis
to my door

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.

Only the Poor Have Dirty Hands by Howie Good

I worked after school and over Christmas
and during the summer, all sorts of shitty jobs,

washing dishes, unloading semi-trailers,
alphabetizing files in an office, driving a taxi,

once even clearing a field for an old farmer
who stared skeptically at my shoulder-length hair,

the sun a torturer’s cigarette being ground out
on my back as I hacked at weeds with a sickle

and no bugs or birds sang but all around me
and seemingly forever the very air itself blazed.



Howie Good is author of Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry.

Tumbang Preso by Billy Antonio

There’s something about
The empty milk can
Squatting in the middle
Of the circle.
Discarded
This morning.
How it commands
The attention
Of half-a-dozen
Street children
Armed with slippers
Either too small
Or too big
For their calloused feet.



Billy Antonio is a teacher. He writes poems to remind himself of the things he thinks are worth remembering. He lives in the Philippines with his wife, Rowena, and daughters, Felicity and Asiel Sophie.

Jawbone by Howie Good

I should have kept it, brought it inside,
put it where I’d see it every day,
on the desk or on top of the dresser,

a chunk of jawbone with teeth
like nuggets of hard fact that I found
along the abandoned logging trail

and, for a long moment, weighed in my hand,
wondering at it, the message of it,
before turning back as night neared.



Howie Good recipient of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry for his collection Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements.

My Girl by Michael Estabrook

She likes her cereal soggy
can’t swallow pills
makes the bed as she’s crawling out of it
takes baths not showers
doesn’t drink or swear
can’t go to bed without emptying the dishwasher
is always on a diet but refuses to call it a diet
moves her lips while she’s reading
always changes our table in restaurants
never sweats
loves puzzles, giraffes, and mangoes
doesn’t keep any houseplants
doesn’t like eating fish or swimming in the ocean
amazing what you learn about a woman
after being with her 45 years.



Michael Estabrook is writing more poems and working more outside now that he has retired. In fact, he recently noticed two Cooper's Hawks staked out above his yard which explains the disappearing chipmunks.

Ways of Knowing by Michael L. Newell

A cello tells a story
of a life's journey; the woman
with the bow is young, but
the music is as old as man;

across the room an old man
puffs, at slow intervals, on a cigar,
and sips old bourbon. His eyes
have slipped to other times and places.

The melody flows with the sinuous grace
of a river spanning a continent; the woman
knows only the music; and the old man
remembers life, his and oh so many others.



Michael L. Newell was a long time expatriate teacher who retired to coastal Oregon twenty-one months ago, after living in thirteen countries on five continents. He has also lived in thirteen of the United States. He has had around 850 poems published in over seventy magazines.

Disappearances by Ronald Moran

Why is there a missed call
when my phone never rang?
Why do things disappear
before me, such as strips

of garnish at a restaurant,
or an after-dream vision
of my father in color,
or a mattress cover just

removed from wrapping?
Once, after I woke, I saw
Jane asleep, fetal position,
at the end of our ancient bed,

and I wanted to cover her
with a blanket but was afraid
I would awaken her pain.
Before I could, she left again.



Ronald Moran lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina. His poems have been published in Commonweal, Connecticut Poetry Review, Louisiana Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Negative Capability, North American Review, Northwest Review, South Carolina Review, Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and in twelve books/chapbooks of poetry. Clemson University Press will publish his Eye of the World shortly. He has won a number of awards and his work is archived in Special Collections at Furman University.

June Bug by Martha Christina

My mother's rage
fills the kitchen.
Her lovely voice,
transformed,
throws threats
against the screen door,
again and again, like
a June bug, desperate
to get to the light,
as my father
disappears
into the dark.



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.

White Flag Raised by Corey D. Cook

 

 

My fourth chapbook, White Flag Raised, was recently released by Kattywompus Press and is available for purchase online (http://kattywompuspress.com/).

 

Sammy Greenspan (Editor of Kattywompus Press):

"Take a dash of married life with young kids, mix in a pinch of childhood memories and teen angst, and season with longing for your real life: Cook’s poems offer a humble and honest banquet of growing up, growing into one’s own skin, coming of age and coming out."



Perception: Summer by Bob Carlton

Light breeze:
cottonwood leaves
catch the light, twist
it into shadow.



Bob Carlton (www.bobcarlton3.weebly.com) lives and works in Leander, TX.

Brown Sofa by Sandy Benitez

Three sturdy bison
grazed on a patch of greenery
in otherwise yellow fields;
the distance between us
a chain-link fence
and a busy roadway.
A year ago,
I thought I saw
an oversized, furry brown sofa.
The lone bison didn't move,
it just lay there,
watching the world go by.
I thought of the homeless
who frequent Weston Park,
sleeping beneath the arbor
together
but always alone.



Sandy Benitez is the founding editor of Flutter Press, Poppy Road Review, and Black Poppy Review. Her latest chapbook, The Lilac City, was published by Origami Poems Project. Her first book, a YA paranormal fantasy novella titled, The Rosegiver, will be released later this month. Sandy resides in Southern California with her husband and two children.

Blue Couch by Sandy Benitez

Yesterday,
driving along familiar streets
of San Jacinto,
towards charter schools,
a sapphire blue couch
squatted in an empty parking lot.
It appeared disheveled
but otherwise in good condition.
Not much further down,
near an abandoned railroad track
a single, grungy sneaker
tossed aside like garbage.
Yet another loose thread
in the tattered fabric
of this forgotten town.



Sandy Benitez is the founding editor of Flutter Press, Poppy Road Review, and Black Poppy Review. Her latest chapbook, The Lilac City, was published by Origami Poems Project. Her first book, a YA paranormal fantasy novella titled, The Rosegiver, will be released later this month. Sandy resides in Southern California with her husband and two children.

The Shiver by Tom Montag

The shiver
of a winter
morning.

The light.
Birds at
the feeder.

My need
for one more
moment

like this.
Again, morning,
again.



Tom Montag, Fairwater, Wisconsin, is most recently the author of In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013. In 2015, he was the featured poet at Atticus Review (April) and Contemporary American Voices (August). Home-made music is important to him: he plays once a week with a friend, for their own amusement.

Angkor Wat by Tina Hacker

          A Temple Complex in Cambodia

Tourists see
a spiritual wonder,
marvel of architecture,
international treasure.

I see stairs.

A decay of branches
and logs that carried ancient
pilgrims closer to heaven
separate the present-day steps.

One flight up
one down.

Two sheer cliffs
of steep, wobbly planks.
The lower stairs, orphaned
of railings, the upper,
corded with them.

Lifelines of difficult labors.

Tourists lean
on partners and walking sticks,
mine their cache
of muscle memory
to balance as they inch
from the lower stairs
to those with the handrail.

They grasp it
as if it were the arm of God.



Tina Hacker is writing about her interesting experiences on a recent tour to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Her full-length poetry book, Listening to Night Whistles, published by Aldrich Press and her chapbook, Cutting It, published by The Lives You Touch Publications are available on Amazon. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she has work in a wide variety of journals.

Grace Chapel by David Jibson

Remnants of a neon sign that once proclaimed,
Jesus Saves, dangle from a frayed wire
above the boarded over front door.
The pastor, who worked days at a grain elevator,
packed up and moved his family to the city years ago
before the last of his congregation died out.
Ragweed and goldenrod have pushed themselves
up through the graveled parking lot where flat-bed trucks
and the occasional tractor would gather
Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings
for long sermons that floated out through windows
open to the summer air.
The last of them was about forgiveness,
according to a fallen sign that lays on its back
in a patch of stinging nettles
which it wears like a thorny crown.



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".

First Snow by David Jibson

It arrived early this year,
a week before Thanksgiving
and heavier, I think,
than we have ever seen.
The ground was still warm,
of course, so it began melting
even before it stopped falling.
The fort in the park rose one day
and fell the next, like
the walls of Jericho.
The snowman in the neighbor’s yard
walked off sometime during the night,
leaving only his ragged, knitted scarf behind.



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".

Winter Solstice by Ronald Moran

Only if one insists on interpreting day
                    as light
is this the shortest day of the year,
                    a misnomer

at best––at worst, a cause to admit
                    the bleakness
of one's life, as mirrored in the absence
                    of light,

as if clouds obtained, their low-lying
                    legions
parading, so as to honor one's general
                    affirmation

of the law of correspondences, used
                    too often
to justify the slow but nonetheless sad
                    drop

into darkness, when one can say today,
                    at least,
O yes. It must be in the stars, or, rather,
                    their absence.



Ronald Moran lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina. His poems have been published in Commonweal, Connecticut Poetry Review, Louisiana Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Negative Capability, North American Review, Northwest Review, South Carolina Review, Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and in twelve books/chapbooks of poetry. Clemson University Press will publish his Eye of the World shortly. He has won a number of awards and his work is archived in Special Collections at Furman University.

Interlude by Ed Ahern

The small being sleeps on my chest.
My breathing sways plump arms.
He unable, me unwilling to rise and part.
We are never closer than this touching
that he will not remember
and I will not forget.
Unconcern nestled into gentle custody.
Neither knowing, or just now caring
about changes to come.



Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He has his original wife, but advises that after forty eight years they are both out of warranty. Ed's had over a hundred stories and poems published so far, and two books.

PTSD 1 by Matt Borczon

My muse
is the
severed
leg that
I find
in my
bed
in every
single
nightmare
I’ve had
since the
war.



Matt Borczon is a writer and nurse from Erie, Pa. He was stationed in the busiest combat hospital in Afghanistan from 2010-11. He writes about war and his experiences since coming home. His work has been published in Yellow Chair Review, Dead Snakes, Busted Dharma and The Pressure Press. His chapbook, A Clock of Human Bones, will be published by Yellow Chair Review in early 2016.