Wrecking Ball by John Grey

Heavy equipment closes in on the mansion.
No one has lived in it for ten years.
The owner died waiting for a heart transplant.
His trophy wife moved to Florida
with her personal trainer boyfriend.
The two kids from his first marriage
have no attachment to it.
Nor have they money for the upkeep.
They’re barely getting by.

The birds nesting in the eaves
will have to find new homes.
Same with the rats in the basement.
And the painting on the wall
of the family patriarch
from three generations back
will end up in the dumpster,
joining what’s left of the money he made
at the turn of the last century.

A giant silver ball
smashes into the second floor.
Once. Twice. Three times.
Walls cave in.
Floors collapse.
It’s all over within the hour.
It crushed the house.
It did a bang-up job on the family.



John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dalhousie Review and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in Qwerty, Chronogram and failbetter.

The Electric Bakery, Park Falls, WI by Fredric Hildebrand

Tonight I wonder about
the woman who used to visit

the bakery before the mill
closed, the bakery with it.

She picked her way down the cracked
sidewalk with her cane, same time

every morning. Her husband
loved crullers, the clerk said,

offering me a Bismarck instead.
We save the last one for her.



Fredric Hildebrand is a retired physician living in Neenah, WI. His poetry has appeared in Art Ascent, Bramble, Millwork, Tigershark, and Verse-Virtual. He received the Mill Prize for Poetry Honorable Mention Award in both 2017 and 2018. When not writing or reading, Frederic plays acoustic folk guitar and explores the Northwoods with his wife and two Labrador retrievers.

Flyway by Robert Demaree

1.
I told myself I would not write
A poem about not writing poems.
Well into my 82nd year
I have seen most of what I
Expect to see,
No need to pretend, like Monet,
That each angle of the sun
On the bird feeder is different.
And yet:
I am right—that is a woodpecker,
Gray stripe up his back.
My wife will look to see what kind—
Hairy, downy, pileated,
An attention to detail
That has served us well
These many years.
By the shore the kingfisher
Awaits his prey, built to disdain
The food we have set out,
Unaware that his name
Puts us in mind of
That old radio show—
Not curious at all, is it,
How what was thought funny then
Seems disgraceful now.

2.
By this time in August
The blackbirds have gone,
We don’t know where.
Not missed, they eat
More than their share,
The flash of red what makes them
Less objectionable than grackles.
It is breeding time for the goldfinches,
Their young, lots of them,
In bright yellow swarms at the feeder.
Are their parents fearful,
Are they anxious about leaving home?

The sign at the town high school
Says “Freshman Jumpstart” this morning.
There will be 14-year-olds
Worried about their attire,
Will someone sit with them at lunch?
I supervised days like this
For many years
And think it just as well
That someone else
Does it now
While I fill the birdfeeders.

3.
The new book of poems
Has a blue heron on the cover.
Across the pond at Golden Pines
I can see two of them,
One metal, one real,
One resting, just landed,
The other a work of someone’s hand,
Beyond the trees I spot
A Fedex cargo plane
Making its approach with enormous slowness,
And I can picture the C-5A,
How it hangs in the heat of late afternoon,
Against a round low sun over Cobb County,
In Georgia, in 1968.
This plane would carry materiel
To troops in places where they will die.
In Kroger’s the wives of British engineers
Complain of being sent home.
The C-5A shares with the blue heron
A grace of hugeness and slowness,
If not of intent.
We have watched it from test flight
To obsolescence
And then to emerge from mothballs,
Things we’d as soon not know,
Poems written and forgotten.



Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders, published in June 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club, and have appeared in over 150 periodicals. A retired educator, he resides in Wolfeboro, N.H. and Burlington, N.C. 

ICU by Heidi Slettedahl

The first trip was after midnight.
Woken from a sort of sleep, I hesitated.
Couldn’t decide on what to wear.
What do you wear?

The second time I didn’t delay.
Got into the car almost as I was.
Hungry, I seem to recall.

The vending machine didn’t work, the quarters stuck inside.
I stayed without a fix of sugar, salt and fat.
Hunger in a waiting room, then next to him, who also wasn’t eating.

Each time I enter more disheveled.
Each time his breath is less secure.

Did I do this the wrong way around?
Shouldn’t I offer a more presentable face?
Be more ready?

My practice at this seems endless.
Except that it is not.



Heidi Slettedahl is an academic and a US-UK dual national who goes by a slightly different name professionally. She has been published sporadically in small literary journals, most recently by Picaroon Poetry, Vita Brevis, Dream Noir and I Want You to See This Before I Leave.

The Alphabet Game by Heidi Slettedahl

In the absence of billboards I always find the same J.
A sullen part of the journey, the sign my only savior.
          I don’t remember the name, just that it’s there,
          engraved on the Adopt-a-Highway face.

In memory of someone.

Enough to push me past the tricky letter, move me on.
Road construction and closed lanes,
a truck always in front, always slow, impossible to pass.

Kay Ell Emm Enn Oh Pee

I listen to the radio, as it secures its sound and then retreats, impossible to hold
until the exit to Rochester,
where the Qs and Xs and Zs are easy to find.
I always get to the end before I stop, liquor stores and plazas helping out.

A left at Mayo, a right to parking.
They trust the families to pay the fees, at night.

Sometimes I shave a half an hour off the fee,
the envelope still heavy with quarters and fat with dollar bills.

Sometimes I don’t pay at all.
Leave the honor system behind.
Become the bad girl I never was.

If you knew you’d be there daily, you’d buy the weekly pass.

I should have bought the weekly pass.

I wish there were a monthly one.

I wish.

Heidi Slettedahl is an academic and a US-UK dual national who goes by a slightly different name professionally. She has been published sporadically in small literary journals, most recently by Picaroon Poetry, Vita Brevis, Dream Noir and I Want You to See This Before I Leave.

Out of Bed by Steve Klepetar

I thought I heard you singing last night.
You were out of bed in the cold
and your voice surrounded the room.
I opened the curtain and there was snow.
It had piled up on the deck and it lay
on the pines along the pond,
and the naked birches seemed to reach
into low clouds. I knew this couldn’t
be true, your singing in the night
and snow gleaming even beneath the fog,
the gray sky. You were telling me something
about the way things end, how quiet
everything will be once moon and sun
fall away, and sky folds up, wrinkles the stars
to a single brilliant point as the final note fades.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. His work has received several nominations for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize.

The Hotel Bar by Steve Klepetar

They told me you had left on the train that starless night
when the wind blew shingles from our roof
and snow fell and fell.
I may have heard a whistle in the darkness.
I may have been dreaming when you reached the station,
when you walked to the village, leaving tracks along the way.
Maybe the streets were empty.
Not even the plows were out and you sat in the hotel bar
chatting with a girl in a white dress and a fire tattoo
who burned as you talked about thick flakes falling.
“It looks pretty,” you said
but she wondered if it ever would stop.
“This may be the final snow, the one that buries us all.”
You clinked glasses and drifted into the night, lighting up the storm.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. His work has received several nominations for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize.

Serengeti Pilgrimage by Jane Richards

Twenty one elephants process
single file across the endless plain;
mothers, offspring,
and their priestess--

tallest in stature, long tusks brushing dry grasses.

Twenty one elephants approach

the stream with ceremonial dignity,
wrinkled skin the ancient vestments of their kind.
Two teens turn to spar, short tusks locking--
an elder’s trunk nudges them on.

Twenty one elephants crowd
at the bank,
a family at table,
heads nod, ears flap,
trunks sway in slow dance.

For this timeless ritual,
twenty one elephants unroll their trunks,
glide them to the river,
the young stretch, kneel to reach the surface--
all in reverent silence
but for the splash
of precious water.



Jane Richards is a piano teacher with an intense interest in writing and nature. She has a masters degree in creative writing from Columbia College, Chicago, and has published poetry and non-fiction works in Snowy Egret, Rosebud, The Plum Tree Tavern, The Weekly Avocet, and Bird Watchers Digest.

The Pine by Jane Richards

Sun lures me onto the snowy path,

deserted on this frigid day;
not even a sparrow scuttles in the bushes.
Dried grasses bend low,
laden with icy burdens;
resolute oaks, stark against the bright sky,
shoulder snow on their branches.

A single pine defies winter’s shroud.
Rich in its deepest hue,
it breathes into bleak woods,
opens itself to the weather,
welcomes the snow,
gathers it in clumps like heavy fruit.

A reminder as I plod
through this frozen world,
so silent since your passing,
that I, too,
breathe, and gather



Jane Richards is a piano teacher with an intense interest in writing and nature. She has a masters degree in creative writing from Columbia College, Chicago, and has published poetry and non-fiction works in Snowy Egret, Rosebud, The Plum Tree Tavern, The Weekly Avocet, and Bird Watchers Digest.

North Country Trail by Jane Richards

          O-Kun-de-Kun Falls

Familiar friend, this overgrown trail—
we picked its blueberries,
identified its ferns,
whistled to its vireos,
skirted its bear tracks.

Skipping over tree roots,
we sang silly songs in bad French,
and when we heard the falls, shouted,
hurried to feel thunder in our bones,
bask on sandstone flats,
mist cleansing our sweat.

This place, planted in our memories,
as the path marks its history:
maple leaf, once scarlet, now a bit of soil,
aster seed, awaiting rebirth,
scent of fox, long gone…
the soles of our boots.



Jane Richards is a piano teacher with an intense interest in writing and nature. She has a masters degree in creative writing from Columbia College, Chicago, and has published poetry and non-fiction works in Snowy Egret, Rosebud, The Plum Tree Tavern, The Weekly Avocet, and Bird Watchers Digest.

Transporting Squirrels by Martha Christina

Caught in my neighbor’s
Havahart trap,
the young squirrel
runs back and forth,
back and forth, frantic.
It can’t imagine what
I know my neighbor
has planned.

She loads the trap
into her car. Those
vermin dug up my
tulip bulbs again,
she says. Those
bulbs cost money!
She slams the door,
heads south, across
the bridge, across
the bay to a treeless
cove, to empty the trap.
Useless to remind her
transporting is
against the law;
she’s willing to pay
any fine, if caught.

Over the week,
she traps and
transports three.
Useless to remind her
squirrels live in families.
My son-in-law would
shoot them, she says.

And so would mine.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in Star 82 Review, and Crab Orchard Review. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

Mistaken by Martha Christina

Spatzies
my German
aunt called
house sparrows,
and shooed them
away from her
feeder. She had
other names for
certain local boys
she likewise shooed
away from me,
her visiting niece.

But it was my
first cousin
she should have
been wary of,
the way we turned
to one another
under water
at Barkers’ Lake,
opened our look-alike
blue eyes, and more.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in Star 82 Review, and Crab Orchard Review. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

Strength by Martha Christina

The young squirrel
at the bird feeder
can get no higher
than the first perch.
It clings there with
its front paws, eats
in a frenzy while
its back feet slip
down the pole.

I watch its shoulders
as it pulls itself up
again and again,
the strength of those
muscles like Janey’s,
a polio survivor.

Stronger than any
of the boys in our
third grade class,
she pulled herself
up on the chinning
bar, swung from
rung to rung on
the parallel bars
while her wrist
crutches formed
an X on the ground,
marking that spot
where no one
could match
or out-do her.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in Star 82 Review, and Crab Orchard Review. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

Winter Mailbox by Diane Webster

Some silly child thought
it grand fun to open
every mailbox along the street,
perhaps making it faster
for the mailman tomorrow
when all he has to do
is insert mail and slam
the lid shut with the box
nodding agreement,
and icicles plunge
into tire tracks melting
a parallel trail
pausing at each house.

Except one mailbox lid
collects snow undisturbed
by arriving and departing mail --
a perfect mound
of snowflakes offered
to the sun to consume
or brushed aside by a letter
signed, “Love, anyone.”



Diane Webster enjoys the challenge of picturing images into words to fit her poems. If she can envision her poem, she can write what she sees and her readers can visualize her ideas. Her work has appeared in The Evansville Review, Philadelphia Poets, Better Than Starbucks, and other literary magazines.

listening to christmas songs by J.J. Campbell

my mother describes
her physical therapy
as torture

i'm the one sitting
here listening to
christmas songs
in the waiting area

she has no clue
what torture really
is



J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) is old enough to know where the bodies are buried. He's been widely published over the last 25 years, most recently at Cajun Mutt Press, Synchronized Chaos, The Beatnik Cowboy, Horror Sleaze Trash and Ink Pantry. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

Sand Verbena by Tamara Madison

Mine is a pale land:
pale sky, pale sand,
pale sun-bleached everything.
My playground was bare sand
studded with stone and shell
from a long-dead sea.
My playmates were lizards
and quail, my playthings
rocks and my own thoughts.
Some years, winter watered
seeds that slept in the sand,
then spring covered the dunes
with purple verbena, low-growing
flowers with furry leaves
and furry stems. I made bouquets
of them, stumbled over dry gullies
to give them to Mother — a clutch
of sweet-smelling blossoms
that sagged in my sweaty hands.



Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbook “The Belly Remembers”, and two full-length volumes of poetry, “Wild Domestic” and “Moraine,” all published by Pearl Editions. Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, A Year of Being Here, Nerve Cowboy, The Writer’s Almanac and many other publications. She is thrilled to have recently retired from teaching English and French in a Los Angeles high school.

Foragers by Marilyn Humbert

since yesterday’s tilt
the back creek is running clear
we fish for native perch in the flush
from the summertime storage
roasting our catch in embers and ash
watching ibis striding shallows

today new foragers stalk the ibis’ patch
plucking cans and plastics
filling bags among dreck and ruin
beside the creek’s belly
flecked with algae blooms
stagnant puddles and dead fish

while seniors at the mall
rummage skip-bins
skater-kids ghost bitumen
rustling house rubbish
for 10 cent treasures

on Sundays
they wait in snaking lines
their shadows back to back
at the return and earn



Marilyn Humbert lives in the Northern suburbs of Sydney NSW Australia. Her tanka and haiku appear in international and Australian journals, anthologies and online. Her free verse poems have been awarded prizes in competitions and some have been published.

Where We Come From by Deonte Osayande

Suits steal
water, drink
incoming profits

while children
thirst for lead

and are met with more
bullets, the

impeachment proceeds

and the hood will
still be the hood

covering our
people in

poverty we've had
for so long, we don't

know the origins

Deonte Osayande is a writer from Detroit, MI. His nonfiction and poetry have been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology, and the Pushcart Prize. He has represented Detroit at four National Poetry Slam competitions. He's currently a professor of English at Wayne County Community College. His books include Class (Urban Farmhouse Press, 2017), Circus (Brick Mantle Books, 2018) and Civilian (Urban Farmhouse Press, 2019). He also managed the Rustbelt Midwest Regional Poetry Slam and Festival for 2014 and 2018.

Something Runs Through My Blood by M.J. Iuppa

Each day begins: the tilt of a cup to
lips ready. Eyes closed, then opened,

knowing this is the way it is— this
small savor, this swallow that is

at first too hot, then just right— just
right as the sky pinks with the morning

star at its brightest in the East before
the sun rises, and that cup left absent-

mindedly on the counter grows cold . . .
Is that what I wanted to say?

I forgot, the moment I saw the sky.



M.J. Iuppa's fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past 30 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life's stew.

Everyday Gestures by M.J. Iuppa

          For my daughter, Meghan Rose

I stand here, before this stove, stirring the pot's
simmering sauce, tasting the tang that drips from
my spoon; feeling the brief poof of steam anointing
my face, a thousand times, in the turn of hours,
wondering if this work in itself is wonder: whose
recipes do I savor these many years, keeping
their secrets in quart glass jars?         

I think of life that happens outside of me, what
I can't imagine is going on while I am here, and
you know I am here, and you are there, miles
away, waiting for your gardenia to bloom on
your vanity, in the steam of your bath, some-
thing unexpected and pure, and spicy, like
jasmine, like harmony and grace, like this.



M.J. Iuppa's fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past 30 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life's stew.

A Wintry Mix by Russell Rowland

The morning forecast was spot-on:
snow, sleet, freezing rain, then rain.
Weather Channel is our counterpart
to prophets crying in the wilderness.

Somber clouds make no distinction
who to snow, sleet, or dump upon—
the hearse stops at every doorway
in due course, loads up, drives on.

At the mercy of grey winter moods,
moods at the mercy of the weather,
we get Seasonal Affective Disorder.
Every church cancels. Cabin fever.

Yet here comes the village sander,
our Saint Bernard rescue dog. All
shall be well, all manner of thing
be well, with our drive downtown.

So we cleave to one another, share
the same hopes in an austere clime:
gardens cultivated, children raised
to face steadfastly whatever comes.

Winter’s landscape monochrome
arrives more or less as anticipated.
We seeded, weeded best we could,
bore fruit, and in jars preserved it.



Seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire's Lakes Region, where he has judged high-school Poetry Out Loud competitions. His work appears in Encircle Publication's "Except for Love: New England Poets Inspired by Donald Hall." A full-length collection, "We're All Home Now," is available from Beech River Books. 

Cold Sun by Howie Good

Every day the world
burns down anew
on the six o’clock news.

A window shimmering 
with streaming raindrops 
moves me more,

like the saddest sadness ever,
but cast in platinum
and encased in diamonds.



Howie Good is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press.

Mourning the Fig Man by Joan Leotta

When summer’s sweet brown figs
hung heavily, Fig Man
invited neighbors
to share the sweet harvest.
"Half for birds, half for us,"
he admonished.
I was always careful to obey,
picking only from the netted side.

Yesterday, I learned he died.

Today, I walked over to
give condolences.
As I rounded the corner, I saw

crows, kites, grackles
gathered silently—
some on the lawn
facing the house,
others, standing sentinel
along the roof’s crest.

Proceeding, I nodded,
Acknowledgement to those birds,
paying their respect,
as I was paying mine.

Before ringing the doorbell,
I glanced down the drive
at the fig tree.

Usually still green at
this time of year, today
it was bereft of leaves,
a twisted mass
of barren branches.
Together, we mourned them both,
Fig Man and his tree.



Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. Her poems, essays, articles, and short stories ahve been internatinallly published in journals ranging form anti-heroin chic, to Eastern Iowa Review to Sasee and the Washington Post. She performs tales of food, family, and strong women in museums, schools, libraries, and at festivals. When she is not on the computer or on a stage, you can find her walking the beach or curled up with a good book.

A Bostonian by Lorri Ventura

His home is a rag-filled refrigerator box
Propped crookedly on broken sidewalk
Alongside the Boston Common

When I ask him his name
He says, "Just call me 'Least of Your Brothers,'
Then winks conspiratorially

He tugs off mismatched gloves
To jab his raw fingers
Into his tepid cup of Dunkin'
Before gulping its dregs

Coffee trickles through his beard
As he offers a sip from the empty cup
To a passerby
Who squawks in protest
Before bolting to the other side of Tremont Street

The gold-gilded State House dome
Shines down on him
As his gnarled fingers weave gently
Through the yarn hair of a grimy, one-eyed, Raggedy Ann
Propped in his lap

Every so often
He leans forward and kisses the top of the doll's head
With a sweetness that brings tears to my eyes

Seeing people turn their faces away
As they rush past
Pretending not to see him
He waves and grins lopsidedly
Showing three wobbly teeth and chortling,
"Smile! I won't hurt you! Have a nice day!"

I squint through the sunlight
As I watch him from the nearest corner
I think I see
A halo around his head.



Lorri Ventura is a retired special education administrator. She lives in Massachusetts and her work has been featured in the poetry anthologies Songs to the Sun and Poetry Is a Mountain.

10.2.19 / 5:35 p.m. / 75 degrees by John L. Stanizzi

Piping of dusk begins to encircle the pond on this
outright hot and humid day; a return to summer, though this
natatorium, the pond, is sky for constellations of leaves
dolefully dragged across the water on the slightest ripples pulled by the slightest breeze.



John L. Stanizzi is author of the collections – Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits, Chants, and his brand new collection, Sundowning. John’s poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, The New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, Blue Mountain Review, and many others. His work has been translated into Italian and appeared in many journals in Italy. His translator is Angela D’Ambra. His nonfiction has been published in Stone Coast Review. John has read at venues all over New England, including the Mystic Arts Café, the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, Hartford Stage, and many others. For many years, John coordinated the Fresh Voices Poetry Competition for Young Poets at Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, CT. He is also a teaching artist for the national recitation contest, Poetry Out Loud. A former New England Poet of the Year, John teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, CT and he lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry.

10.1.19 / 7:23 a.m. / 58 degrees by John L. Stanizzi

Plaudit of the rain is so soft it cannot be heard on this,
October’s first day, though the pond is stippled with raindrops; the
neaped shoreline’s arrangement of rocks is taking in the water too,
droplet by droplet, every one a balm to the starved pond.



John L. Stanizzi is author of the collections – Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits, Chants, and his brand new collection, Sundowning. John’s poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, The New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, Blue Mountain Review, and many others. His work has been translated into Italian and appeared in many journals in Italy. His translator is Angela D’Ambra. His nonfiction has been published in Stone Coast Review. John has read at venues all over New England, including the Mystic Arts Café, the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, Hartford Stage, and many others. For many years, John coordinated the Fresh Voices Poetry Competition for Young Poets at Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, CT. He is also a teaching artist for the national recitation contest, Poetry Out Loud. A former New England Poet of the Year, John teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, CT and he lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry.

Norman Explains Why He Sits on the Back Stoop by Wilda Morris

Where Father lives in town,
the road’s not paved.
Wild roses dot
the edges of the lawn.

I prefer to be out here
in the country
where those blossoms swarm
like bees, splash

pink among tall grasses.
Monarchs embroider themselves
on milkweed stalks,
take off across unfenced fields.

Black snakes drink water
spilled by the well,
capture rats for their lunch
while I sit on the back stoop,

rest from my work in the garden,
roll a cigarette. Irene brings me a bowl
of beans, a cup of strong, black coffee.
I need nothing more.



Wilda Morris, Workshop Chair of Poets and Patrons, has published poems in numerous anthologies, webzines, and print publications. Her first book was Szechwan Shrimp and Fortune Cookies: Poems from a Chinese Restaurant. Pequod Poems: Gamming with Moby-Dick (Kelsay Books), was published in 2019. Her blog, wildamorris.blogspot.com, features monthly poetry contests.

Norman Ponders Wheels, Circa 1947 by Wilda Morris

I wonder if Thoreau ever owned
a horse and carriage, if other men
laughed at him when he walked
from Walden Pond into town
for dinner with Emerson
or a meeting of the Transcendentalists.
Some men think to be a real man
you must drive a Ford like my brother Fred’s.
Wheels and speed, they say, give a man
independence, new scope for adventure.
I can’t afford such luxury, but no matter.

When I walk, I stop, like Thoreau,
to examine a speckled leaf,
a milkweed beetle. I laugh
at baby squirrels trying their legs
in the ash trees. I follow a path
made by deer, marvel how rabbit ears
perk up as I approach,
how red-winged blackbirds’ defend
their nests. I whistle with cardinals
while Fred zips down the highway singing,

seeing so little.

-Previously published in Keystrokes

Wilda Morris, Workshop Chair of Poets and Patrons, has published poems in numerous anthologies, webzines, and print publications. Her first book was Szechwan Shrimp and Fortune Cookies: Poems from a Chinese Restaurant. Pequod Poems: Gamming with Moby-Dick (Kelsay Books), was published in 2019. Her blog, wildamorris.blogspot.com, features monthly poetry contests.

at the right time by J.J. Campbell

she liked to dance naked
in the neon under a full
moon

she only wanted an audience
of one on these nights

i was never lucky enough
to be in the right place
at the right time

would only get to hear
these stories over drinks
at the corner bar the
next afternoon

i asked her once if she
would grant me permission
to show up one evening

she laughed and said no

i asked why and she
said you already know

twenty some years later
i'm still as dumbfounded
as back then

she's been divorced twice

so, i imagine the dancing
really isn't that good



J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) is currently trapped in suburbia. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Heroin Love Songs v2.0, Synchronized Chaos, Record Magazine, Cajun Mutt Press and The Rye Whiskey Review. You can find J.J. most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

Ugliness by Joe Cottonwood

Cold day in a cool city
she walks without shoes
down Telegraph Hill.
Stops at a shattered
bottle outside Cafe
Trieste. Stoops, plucks
with delicate fingers
green spits of glass. Drops
them into a white paper bag.

People stop, stare. Maybe
mental? She’s unconcerned,
gathering glass, barefoot in a
wool dress, legs unshaved.
Pimples cluster, spatter
her face. A body heavy,
not stylish. A smile
of inner peace.

Three young men
pause, snicker.
“Hey!” one shouts.
“Don’t you know you’re ugly?”
They laugh. She’s
humming, gathering
broken glass.



Joe Cottonwood has built or repaired hundreds of houses to support his writing habit. His latest book is Foggy Dog: Poems of the Pacific Coast. He’s a pretty good carpenter and a crackerjack grandfather in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. joecottonwood.com

Power Outage by Jason Fisk

It had been my turn to pick the movie
She spent most of the film on her phone
Then the power went out
She pulled the blanket off her lap
and I heard her rummaging in the kitchen
Soon, her assorted assemblage
of scented candles collectively burned
throughout the tiny apartment
The candle glow improved the ambiance
and everything looked less worn and dirty

The candle scents intermingled in the room
Bakery Air mixed with Mango Madness
Santa’s Pipe amalgamated with Bahama Breeze
The smell was overpowering
My head innards began to protest
pushing out against my skull
I listened to the wicks’ hiss as they burned
and I watched her thumb her phone
The blue glow of the screen
lit the underside of her face

For some reason, it was at that moment
that I knew this relationship
wasn’t going to work

Later that night
I laid next to her
and stared at the ceiling

The scent of the extinguished candles
lingered in the dark



Jason Fisk lives and writes in the suburbs of Chicago. He has worked in a psychiatric unit, labored in a cabinet factory, and mixed cement for a bricklayer. He was born in Ohio, raised in Minnesota, and has spent the last 25 years in the Chicago area. www.jasonfisk.com

Long Hair and Bleach by Jason Fisk

I took the garbage bags to the end of the driveway
and doused them with bleach
so no wildlife would annihilate the plastic bags
before they were taken away in the morning
The orange-yellow-pink evening light
angled through the garage window
as my dad tinkered at his workbench

I placed the bleach bottle back on the shelf
and dad turned and said, I think we need to talk
What about? I asked
Your hair…
Why? I asked
Because it’s too long. You should get it cut, he said
You’re just jealous ‘cause you don’t have any hair, I said
Maybe, he said and turned back to his work
His faded denim shirt hugged his back
as he bent over his workbench

At 46, I stand in the middle of my garage
and stare at my son’s shaggy hair
and I now know what my dad was really asking
He was asking
if I was hanging out with the wrong people
if I was drinking
if I was doing drugs
He was asking
if we could just talk for a minute
He wanted to know what was going on with me
and I insulted him…



Jason Fisk lives and writes in the suburbs of Chicago. He has worked in a psychiatric unit, labored in a cabinet factory, and mixed cement for a bricklayer. He was born in Ohio, raised in Minnesota, and has spent the last 25 years in the Chicago area. www.jasonfisk.com

The Onion by Anisa Rahim

shorn of its wrapping paper
discard one layer maybe two
it is quiet in the house
heads are sliced off

clear green filament peeled
till there is nothing left
but white clarity
its face before you



Anisa Rahim is a writer and public interest lawyer. Her poetry has been published in OJAL, Blazevox Magazine, Tiny Seed Journal and elsewhere. See more of her work at anisarahim.com.

October Songs by Robert Demaree

Part One: 2009

A change of seasons
Shifts cloud and light about October skies;
Against a luminous gray, it casts
Albescent brightness
On those gingerbread cottages
Across the pond
Or on the red gold stripe of sugar maple
Up a ridge on Gunstock,
Dramaturgy on a crisp day.

At the restaurant the owner smiled
As though he might remember us.
I see him twenty years ago,
Holding the door for my mother,
A kind touch, softly, on the elbow,
Her gnarled hands gripping the walker,
Slowly up the ramp.
That was the summer my father died;
Time accrues before you feel
The mnemonic pull of a place.

Part Two: 2019

We filled the birdfeeders three weeks ago.
Against the yellow wood
We can see they have not gone down
At all.
We may wind up spreading the seed
On the ground
For the chipmunks and squirrels,
Who will consider it their due.
Forty degrees on the porch this morning.
In town orange lights set out for Halloween,
Evidence of lives that go on
When we are not here.
The somber beauty of leaves turning
In the rain.
Along the shore
The water pipe lies atop the ground.
The town will turn it off next week.
The birdfeeders are still full.
The birds have headed out
And so will we.



Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders, published in June 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club, and have appeared in over 150 periodicals. A retired educator, he resides in Wolfeboro, N.H. and Burlington, N.C.

The Sound of a Breaking Heart by Rida Altaf

It is not deafening;
it does not scream in caps lock
or wave its big fat hands
in a place full of statues.
It does not stand out like
coal on snow, or stick its
sore thumb into the mouth
of anyone who listens

The sound of a breaking heart
is a quiet, almost inaudible crack
you'll hear it if you pay attention:

When someone's voice sounds like
a rubber band that's stretching,
as if someone tied their vocal cords
so they can only speak in strangled tones

When someone's laughter becomes
nothing more than a mere exercise;
a part of the balanced diet required
for social acceptance

When someone's views become
a metaphor for their despair,
as if extremism will force their heart to
come out with all its open wounds and
face the world

The sound of a breaking heart,
is like a glass that is seconds
away from exploding,
the first crack is hardly audible -
but when it truly breaks,
there is no way to fix it all up again.



Rida Altaf is a Pakistani student, poet, and a cheese-lover. She thinks that caffeine is the ultimate source of ideas for all her poems. She believes in hard work and creativity and is always hiding in some corner, reading a book. She posts her poetry on Instagram (@deskofideas).

On the occasion of attending a gymnastics event by Janette Schafer

A quiet, dark girl--
all rage and concentrated muscle--
flung her body like a child's rag doll.

I envied her center of gravity,
steadiness of gaze and body.
They call it tumbling

except she always seemed so sure.
I wondered how she walked on earth
after tasting sky.



Janette Schafer is a freelance writer, photographer, singer, and banker living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is the chief editor of Social Justice Anthologies and the Artistic Director of Beautiful Cadaver Project Pittsburgh. Her writing and photographs have appeared in numerous publications. She is pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University. She has a forthcoming collection of poems titled “Something Here Will Grow,” from Main Street Rag Publishing in 2020.

Boy with a Guitar by John Grey

I have a picture of myself
at fifteen,
seated on the edge of the bed,
with guitar in hand.
I’m not playing it.
It was still no more than a prop
at that age
and the face is far too innocent
to invoke nascent rock star.

But there it is,
the boy and his instrument,
forever willing to contradict
the man staring into it,
through older eyes,
harder face,
and the doubtful benefit
of life history.

I could tell the kid how he did
in the years to come
but what’s the point of that.
It‘s just a photograph.
He’s not enough in the world
to hear my spiel,
to be disappointed
or even consoling.

For all this glossy’s nostalgic effect,
the conversation’s only ever
with the one
who’s holding it between his fingers.
Yes, I have my share of regrets.
But I don’t share them with this kid.



John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dunes Review, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Thin Air, Dalhousie Review and failbetter.

West 85th & West End by Carolynn Kingyens

Every day a new page turns
high above the beanstalk;
above the disco-ball-moon
and fog-machine clouds,
where an unamused angel
finger-flicks an arrow
affixed to a wheel,
spinning indefinitely,
an eternity.

Down here, I knock
on my neighbor’s door
in search of time –
not egg, flour, or a cup
of hourglass sugar
for my invisible cake.

It’s no coincidence
we dash to markets,
clearing shelves
of bread first –
hunker down
when the storm comes;
when the storm
is christened a name –
Lilly, Olive, Coltrane –
the name of my daughter’s
first grade friend,
whose father works
at the U.N.;
trilingual, plays chess
like an old man.

Trouble is a loose brick,
fifteen floors up, at the co-op
on W 85th & West End,
where an inviting bench awaits

impending doom.

Carolynn Kingyens was born and raised in Northeast Philadelphia. Today, she lives in New York City with her husband and their two kind, funny, creative daughters. Carolynn has a forthcoming book of poetry, Before the Big Bang Makes a Sound, scheduled to be released May/June 2020.

New Widow, Observing Finches by Martha Christina

Sheltered
by arborvitae,
the female
fledgling tries
a short flight.
She makes
some progress,
then stops.

Another
(her mother?)
flies to her
from the feeder,
a sunflower seed
in her beak. She
feeds this reward
to the resting one.

I watch them repeat
these actions three
times: progress,
rest, and reward;
a lesson in how
to move forward.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in Star 82 Review, and Crab Orchard Review. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

In the Vegetable Garden by Martha Christina

Signs of your presence,
and your absence: ID tags
in your handwriting, cold
frames and raised beds
built by your hands, new
lettuces, old okra, peas
and green beans, new
blossoms, old pods.

Along the shore, among
the rosa rugosa, perfect
explosions of bittersweet.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in Star 82 Review, and Crab Orchard Review. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

After a Summer Shower by Martha Christina

The rain hasn’t discouraged
the finches; wet as they are
they keep feeding, flying
between the six perches
on the feeder and the rain-
bent rose canes. My cat
watches from the windowsill,
begins to chatter in a language
perhaps the finches understand,
but they ignore her, as if
they recognize the safety
the screen provides.

On the porch railing
sheltered by the wisteria,
a squirrel grooms its
wet whiskers, wet tail.

The rabbit with the white blaze,
slips under my neighbor’s fence,
begins to eat the freshened clover.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in Star 82 Review, and Crab Orchard Review. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

Evan plucks his socks again while classmates read "The Odyssey" by L.R. Harvey

His piston fingers tirelessly fire,
powered by the sleepless engine of autism. Thread
by bleached-white thread, his Nike socks retire
into wisps of yarn that spread
around the classroom carpet, his manna in
this wilderness.

A student scans for homework answers in
the text. Another rubs his chin, looking for prickles he’s
never found before. I yawn
and look for coffee.

Telemachus is questioning in Nestor’s halls
while Megan stares at Mike and questions if she'll die alone.
A lip-sticked mother calls
the school's front desk
to question why her daughter has a B. Right down the hall
Jim Walker asks the AC vent
why it won't work.

In here, the still
is interrupted only by the prick
of yarn in Evan’s questioning
fingers, unraveling the thickness
of the world, searching for something,
answers, all his own.



L.R. Harvey writes poetry and teaches high schoolers in Chattanooga, T.N. His most recent work has appeared The Write Launch, Tennessee Magazine, After the Pause, Light, and many other magazines and journals. He holds his B.A. in English and his M.A. in teaching, and he is hoping to pursue his MFA within the next year.

Cravings by Joey Nicoletti

San Francisco, how sweet you talk
at night, whispering your misty history
into the open, majestic mouth
of my hotel room window. I look
towards the bathroom. I imagine
my love, stepping out of the shower
in another room, a bigger one
two floors up, ten years earlier,
before the Buffalo snow, smoke, and ice joined
our family, back when my ambition was
a row house, a lavender
Painted Lady, 2.5 miles from here, and endless
concerts of clanging: all of the trolley rides
I could ever want. But tonight
I crave a round of sleet, pounding the roof
as my love steps into a hot bath, the Boston
terrier and Schnauzer, chasing the short-haired cat
down the hall; streets glittered with salt.



Joey Nicoletti is the author of eight books and chapbooks, including Boombox Serenade, which is forthcoming this winter, and Cannoli Gangster, his first full-length poetry collection, which was a finalist for the 2009 Steel Toe Books Prize. Joey currently teaches at SUNY Buffalo State. 

Death of a Naturalist by John Fritzell

It happened at an intersection
in the middle of almost nowhere,
at the edge between the green
tamaracks and the wide open
above the flowering of muskeg…

At his shack, three days later,
a slow stream dissects the clearing,
a doe nudges her fawn to drink,
pale etchings of bear claws
weather the garage door closed,
a buck-horn helmet protrudes
under moss laden eaves,
a calcium cradle of spring-
robins’ detritus, broken
now above a bustle
of Black-Eyed Susan’s,
a limp dog chain draped
over an empty kennel,
a hanging thistle feeder a half-
day from empty,
and a flurry of birds,
Golden-crowned Kinglets,
skyward.



A graduate of Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA, John Fritzell is a Wisconsin-based poet whose work has appeared in Gray’s Sporting Journal and Canoe & Kayak Magazine among others; although he strives for diversity in his poems’ themes, he keeps returning to the natural world.

Elegy for a Bird by Alice Lander

The sour smell of damp attic & the sleeper too small
for the three of us on it, our father between us & one set
of legs loose & bicycling over bed edges,
the hour of storytelling, of Huck Finn when
we were much too young for that & Little House
on the Prairie & Robinson Crusoe & the Epic of Gilgamesh
& January wading through snow, nose sharp
with fresh metal scent & boots filling up, feet
fleeced in socks bought from Caldor's before
it closed & summer ice pops from Shop-rite in bright
neon tubes & grassy stomach & the baby bird
we tried to save dead in a shoebox, left overnight in the cold
garage as autumn rolled in & the wood-worn door
to your bedroom where I sat some nights
listening for clues you were there, & loved me,
scavenging for love,
four-foot-three & fixed on the still glass knob, limbs
tucked tight in footie pajamas as dawn came
teal & strange in our square suburban yard & how,
suddenly, the scythe of the moon became a real danger.



Alice Lander lives in Jersey City, New Jersey with her husband, cat and growing plant collection. Her poetry has appeared in Eunoia Review and Prometheus Dreaming. 

Haiku by John McManus

climate change debate

the barmaid cools herself 

with an ice cube

John McManus is a haiku poet from Carlisle, Cumbria, England. He is the author of Inside His Time Machine (Iron Press, 2016) and after night rain (Bones, 2019). His Twitter handle is @johnnyhaikumcm1. 

Road Trip by Diane Webster

Dad drives…searching?
Looking for his passenger
of sixty years, wondering
if he left her at the restaurant
when she went to the bathroom?

Trying to discover if his memory
still remembers Highway 95
Ends up in McCall where rumors
flew that a sea monster lurked
beneath the lake’s surface?

Or maybe only following

road’s dotted white lines

around each curve

until a stop sign demands decision.

Left, right, home again or later?
If road beckons familiar
or lures adventure?



Diane Webster's goal is to remain open to poetry ideas in everyday life and to write from her perspective at the moment. Many nights she falls asleep juggling images to fit into a poem. Her work has appeared in Philadelphia Poets, Vita Brevis, The Evansville Review and other literary magazines.

Joy to the World by Paul Hellweg

7 a.m., December 25th,
too depressed to get out of bed,
contemplating solutions,
the unmentionable comes to mind,
followed quickly by a desire
to simply get drunk and
fuck this stupid observance of a deity
killed off long ago by
Nietzsche and friends.
The whole world and everyone I know
are seemingly drunk with good will,
but what’s under the Christmas tree
piques more interest and is of greater concern
than the war our country is waging
thousands of miles away
and in our hearts.



Paul Hellweg has had more than 200 poems published. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and multiple Best of the Net Awards. His first poetry collection, Ode to a Drunken Muse, was recently published by Alien Buddha Press and is available on Amazon. To see more, please visit www.PaulHellweg.com.

August Songs by Robert Demaree

Part One

Quiet pond morning in August,
Kayak gliding alongside the past:
A pine tree, now bare, reaches out
Over the shallow bay;
Summers ago our girls
Stood here to pose, then bravely splash
Into the warm, yellow-sand lake, ankle deep.
On the hill we used to climb
The craggy overlook socked in,
Growth of dense green years.
Just as well:
The view we loved now shows
Other hills laid bare for condos.
I paddle home
Against a fresh breeze;
Shoulders that have seen seventy summers
Pull against water heavy with time,
Past the cottages of my father’s friends.

Part Two

It is surely not July,
High hazy sun, grandchildren jumping off the dock.
And not October,
Red and gold against evergreen hills,
Nor even September,
Whose yellowing ferns hint at what’s to come.
The last week in August is its own time,
Campers, tourists mostly gone,
Quiet on the pond:
The angle of the sun,
Cerulean light out of Canada,
Distant warmth on your back,
Walking past the meadow.
Late in August in New Hampshire—
What it tells you is this:
There’s still time,
But maybe not as much as you thought.



Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders, published in June 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club, and have appeared in over 150 periodicals. A retired educator, he resides in Wolfeboro, N.H. and Burlington, N.C.

& Then There Is the Dog by Kati Goldstein

stretching one paw in front of the other
& yawning the way I’ve always wanted to yawn
or the way I once yawned but can no longer
remember or the way I will begin to yawn now
that the dog is here & the shelves are hung
& I love the way our things look together.



Kati Goldstein is a writer and teacher based in Chicago, Illinois. She received her MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago and her BA in Creative Writing from Colorado College. Her work has appeared in Reality Hands, Voicemail Poems, Phantom Books, and Columbia Poetry Review, among other publications.

When Maria's Ex Burns Down the Building We Helped Him Move Into by Kati Goldstein

we laugh about it in the way women laugh when men
have done something we can’t believe or shouldn’t
but in fact do or when we are scared or there is nothing
else to do or we feel somehow responsible. We read
each other excerpts from local news articles and say
someone could have died over and over
first softly, and then we are yelling it as we pound our open
palms on the counter, laughing again. He once held
her cat so gently and fixed her computer and called her
a whore and said he loved her and that no one would ever
believe her over him.



Kati Goldstein is a writer and teacher based in Chicago, Illinois. She received her MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago and her BA in Creative Writing from Colorado College. Her work has appeared in Reality Hands, Voicemail Poems, Phantom Books, and Columbia Poetry Review, among other publications.

Jube by Holly Day

We close our faces and open the door. One after another, people
come into our house, faces open in grief, ask us
if there’s anything they can do. I take my husband’s hand
in my own, pat the top of it as if I can reassure him,
as if I am capable of reassurance, I pretend I am a rock

painted brilliant in swirls of peacock feathers and greeting card graffiti
closed off to the grief, I can do this.

I keep quiet as boxes are packed, as things are put into them,
I don’t look at those things, I don’t know what they are. People
sweep through my house like some terrible wave
of staged grief, I don’t believe them, someone
says they know how I feel, that things are going to get better,
I don’t believe them.



Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and The Tampa Review. Her newest poetry collections are In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), A Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), Folios of Dried Flowers and Pressed Birds (Cyberwit.net), Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), and Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing).

Callitrix by Holly Day

At birth, only fingerprints defined the difference between
the creatures with the small, round heads. Both of them constantly cried,
began and ended in a constant open-mouthed scream, black eyes tightly shut,
tiny hands clenched in mirror-perfect fists. It’s impossible to know
how their mother chose which infant to love and which to hate,
what tiny imperfection drew her ire.

At birth, only their fingerprints defined the difference between
the small, hairy bodies, the tiny forms that screamed and cried
every night. Perhaps it was the pitch of the screams that separated the twins
in their mother’s ears alone, perhaps it was the way one tossed and turned more
in its sleep, an indication of needing more love from her, or perhaps
some indication of a rejection she herself couldn’t handle. Or perhaps

it was the quieter twin that earned her ire, easier to ignore than the louder one
easier to surrender to the dark.



Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and The Tampa Review. Her newest poetry collections are In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), A Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), Folios of Dried Flowers and Pressed Birds (Cyberwit.net), Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), and Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing).

our hearts molding into one by J.J. Campbell

the soft curves
of what i hope
to be the last
woman i'll
ever be in
love with

her brown
skin resting
in my arms

simpatico

our hearts
molding
into one

the world
completely
against us

the only way
we'd like it



J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) is old enough to know better. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Mad Swirl, Synchronized Chaos, Horror Sleaze Trash, Misfit Magazine and Live Nude Poems. You can find him waxing poetic most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

On His 85th Birthday by Vikram Masson

In December the ice had left
an eggshell coating on New York’s
streets, but still we insisted--mother,
brother, all of us--to celebrate your 85th birthday.
The grandchildren giggled at the man
smashing avocados and onions into guacamole
and we all grew tipsy drinking margaritas
rimmed with lemon and salt.

My nephew made a speech about
how you are the root of the family’s tree.
One branch of the tree led to me, and the other
to my brother. We all marveled at his eloquence
and laughed and pretended that you were actually there,
that your center hadn’t died and iced over,
that your mind still brimmed with a father’s memories.
That you did not stare at us
and struggle to remember.



Vikram Masson is a lawyer by training who lives in Richmond, Virginia. His poetry is featured in Amethyst Review, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Young Ravens Literary Review, and The American Journal of Poetry.

Eros and Dust by Robert Beveridge

Dry, sandy plain that used to be
Elysian fields of hops, barley. No
farms since the drought. Homesteaders,
even, have gone. Most of them, anyway.
Nothing grows here except base emotions.
Saloon in what used to be town waters those
ever too well. Every mother's fool who still
lives here has a tab. And uses it. Come
evening, you see them all lined up,
scotch, rye, bourbon, and the card games
swallow three years' wages in a hand.

Ugly town. Ugly world. Only bright spot
Nellie, middle-aged good-time gal with the finest
derriere this side of Colorado. She does
enliven the place. Caused more marital tension
round here than even old Compton's prize heifer.

That there was a story. Bout ten years back, old
Hill, he says he's in love with that gal.
End of his marriage, you can bet. We went

next morning down to Compton's, and there,
I swear, there's Tim Hill, stone dead,
gash in his noggin shaped like Elsie's
hoof, and we just couldn't help but laugh.
This place ain't all that bad, sometimes.



Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in The Virginia Normal, Credo Espoir, and Chiron Review, among others.

Wednesday Night at the Bar by Josette Torres

“I’ve heard it all before,” she says, balancing
a drink tray against her hip. “How can you
not? I’m surrounded by drunk guys for eight

hours at a time.” And drunk girls, too, I add
silently, pushing the empty glass across
the table. The band’s lead singer circles

the room with a red plastic bucket. I smile
at the waitress and her death-defying chest—
I never take those kinds of fearless risks

with clothing anymore. My old age turned
me into a spinster. One day at the mall
I realized I was shopping for sensible shoes

and I nearly cried for my discarded youth.
She brings me another cocktail and I settle
back into my chair, quiet, dissonant, still.



Josette Torres received her MFA in Creative Writing from Virginia Tech. She also holds a BA in English and Creative Writing from Purdue University. Her work has previously appeared in Star 82 Review, The New Verse News, Palaver, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Blacksburg, Virginia, where she works as an IT professional at Virginia Tech.

Woman in a Nursing Home by Lorri Ventura

The skin on the backs of her hands
Looks like lady slipper petals
Translucent
Tiny-veined
So delicate
She scratches it incessantly
Buckled into a wheelchair
By the elevator door
In front of the nurses’ station
Which is where the staff
Park the patients who don’t get visitors
Threadbare pate pitched forward
Stained hospital gown doing its job half-heartedly
Covering body parts
That are faded memories
Of what they once were
Seemingly asleep
Until the elevator doors
Ping their announcement
Of someone’s arrival
Then, only then
Does she become animated
Her head lifts
Her smile is almost rictal
“Hi - Hi - Hi - Hi - Hi!”
She sing-songs
“See me!”
Her unspoken plea
I bend down
And carefully embrace her
Telling her she looks pretty today
Her fingers catch in my hair
Her skin smells like
Chicken grease
Rheumy eyes lock on mine
“Bless you - Bless you - Bless you!”
She warbles
It feels like a long time passes
Before we release each other
I think she just might be
The most inspiring human being
I’ve ever met



Lorri Ventura is a retired special education administrator. She lives in Massachusetts and this is her second appearance in Red Eft Review. 

Ashes by Al Ortolani

After my father died, my mother
spent her days sorting through
his closets, giving away armloads
of clothes, unused tools, electric gadgets,
especially watches, purchased
from the shopping channel
for 19.95 or less. It was his way
of saying my time to the poverty
of the immigrant, the Valley of Ashes
only miles from his door.
Cleaning out my own house years later,
I move boxes of books, notebooks of old
poems, spirals of unfinished novels,
all that my father and mother
gave me, the shirt on my back,
graduate school, sheaves of
college ruled paper. You can be
anything you want they said.



Al Ortolani’s poetry has appeared in journals such as Rattle, Prairie Schooner, and the Chiron Review. His newest collection, On the Chicopee Spur, was released from New York Quarterly Books in 2018. He is a recent recipient of the Rattle Chapbook Award for 2019.

What We Keep by Al Ortolani

I consider myself lucky to sit today
at an old desk, window open,
the soft whirr of the brass-bladed Emerson
fluttering the pages of a paperback.
On the wall is a photograph (1909)
of my grandmother, age 3 or 4, staring
quizzically into the lens, sister
and cousins of similar ages, caught
at the feet of their grandparents.
A quilt hangs as a backdrop
from the porch of their Ozark home.
My uncle once said that he knew
where the quilt was stored, but that was
years ago. Even more time has passed,
my uncle gone, his children
as old as grandparents themselves,
the quilt in a chest somewhere, or not.

Al Ortolani’s poetry has appeared in journals such as Rattle, Prairie Schooner, and the Chiron Review. His newest collection, On the Chicopee Spur, was released from New York Quarterly Books in 2018. He is a recent recipient of the Rattle Chapbook Award for 2019. 

Multiple Choice by Martha Christina

Some say this man
who every Tuesday
rides his bike
to the Library
is the son of
someone famous.

Some say he
graduated with
honors from Yale,
or maybe Harvard.

Some say he and his
clothes are unwashed,
that he mutters obscenities
in the stacks, that he tried
to flush another patron’s
laptop down the toilet.

Some say he owns a condo
on the Cape, is heir to a
sizable fortune, is homeless.

Some say he served as
a Navy Seal, as though
that might explain
why all or none
of the above is true.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in Star 82 Review, and Crab Orchard Review. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

The Critic by Martha Christina

Yesterday’s mockingbird
returns today, bringing
an addition to its repertoire.
To my ears, it mews a good
imitation of my cat, but she
merely twitches an ear
in the bird’s direction,
doesn’t open her eyes.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in Star 82 Review, and Crab Orchard Review. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

Aunties on the Porch by Martha Christina

My cousins and I danced
in and out of the sprinkler
in the heat of a southern
Indiana summer, while
our aunties planned
our supper: Aunt Della’s
green beans, slow-cooked
with a ham hock; Aunt Golda’s
prize-winning peach pie.

They’d come far from
the shoeless summers
of their childhoods,
barefoot in barnyards
and berry patches,
picking and selling
eggs and blackberries,
earning their school shoes.

They sat rocking
and fanning, rarely
reminiscing, while
we cousins ran
barefoot, laughing
across wet grass,
without fear
of hookworms
or hunger.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in Star 82 Review, and Crab Orchard Review. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

At the Cell Phone Lot by Robert Demaree

Part One: RDU

Because we have not done this before,
Are 81 years old,
Because it conforms to the way we do
Other things,
We arrive at the cell phone lot
An hour before her flight,
Our friend’s daughter, only child,
Coming to take her father,
Recently bereaved,
Back to Kansas,
To her family, his family,
His daughter, her wife,
Their son,
Only child of only child,
Trombonist in the marching band.
The week before we had mourned
A passing; poems were read,
Family photos on the mantle.

We watch planes land.
Cars come and go
In the cell phone lot,
The insolent competence
Of people who do this all the time,
And we eat our Subway sandwich
As in the days of
Our grandchildren’s concerts—
Handel’s Largo from Xerxes
Scored for high school band.
The phone rings,
Her plane is on the ground.
In grieving
You see the best of families.

Part Two: MHT

At the Manchester airport we wait for
Our daughter coming to help open up.
We realize this is more
Than a sweet gesture.
Heavy lifting in short
Spurts now.
I rest while she sweeps.
Early June in New Hampshire.
Various green light
Rich with possibility.
We are 81,
My parents’ age, I now recall,
The last time
They drove themselves north.



Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders, published in June 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club, and have appeared in over 150 periodicals. A retired educator, he resides in Wolfeboro, N.H. and Burlington, N.C.

Summer of '89 by Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad

It was almost always low tide,
on those white hot afternoons
when we raced down the shore,
cotton shorts and T-shirts billowing.

the sea would stretch, pulled away,
a distant placid puddle
of peridot and peacock blue.
stamped into the shallow waters,
the clumsy wave breakers
loomed like chunky bullies.

those were the days before scary CGI,
when the Jaws series,
(with its fake looking shark,
and ominous score,)
could still give you chills.
it was fun being seven years older -
I could prank you easily
with a white plastic shovel
stuck strategically into the silt,
you had to be dumb to believe,
that it was the washed up fin
of the Great White from the movies,
or you had to be five years old.

with the light oblique on our faces,
we could have lain forever, dozing,
two snug sardines, you and I,
our soft brown limbs buried
in the fast cooling sand,
till the runny yolk of the lukewarm sun,
dissolved and bled red,
in the deepening evening blues,

soon, the sea would transform
into an agitated entity,
whooshing and spewing white foam -
the lacy trims of the thundering tide
inching closer with each crash,
till they nibbled at the edges
of our powdery sand blankets.

we would dust our salt crusted hair,
wash ourselves in the strengthening waves.
and one last time
I would hum a deep ‘daa dum daa dum’ -
my infamous Jaws number on you,
falling over laughing,
as you bolted for shore
through the now whirling waters.



Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is a Sydney based artist, poet, and pianist. She holds a Masters in English and has worked in media and education. Oormila is a member of Sydney’s North Shore Poetry Project and performs her poems at venues in Sydney. Her work is forthcoming in the Eunoia Review.

The Inefficiency Center by Todd Mercer

Many are chosen, few are called
at the DMV Bureau. Those with time to spare
and those without a precious moment free
huddle hopeless lo these many hours,
waiting to win the lottery prize of being waited on.
A spot at the state clerk’s business window,
a chance to write checks and drive one’s car,
legal-like. I may not get there with you,
to the line’s front or the other side of these
two hundred souls. Some are simmering,
others drift in daydreams. The Now Serving numbers
change in no discernible order. A few break
for the door, opting to save their bodies
and/or minds from interminable dusk
as the clock spins and the masses
wait as long as wait is going to take.



Todd Mercer was nominated for Best of the Net by in 2018. Mercer won the Kent County Dyer-Ives Poetry Prize. His chapbook Life-wish Maintenance is posted at Right Hand Pointing. Recent work appears in: A New Ulster, The Lake, and Mojave River Review.

Vacation Memories by John Grey

Tourists trudge through
the makeshift marketplace along the dock,
inspect the obligatory merchandise:
chess sets, shell necklaces,
coconuts carved into faces.
“Very cheap,” says one local after another.

But they have little time to stop.
They’re on their way
to a flotilla of buses
that will take them around the island.
They’ll hear the history, see the sights.
No need to worry that they’ve missed a bargain.
The trinkets aren’t going anywhere.
They’ll be even cheaper on their return.

Besides, there’s such a thing as
tourist’s Alzheimer’s –
all interesting tidbits from the past
are completely forgotten
with the first sip of a rum punch back on board.
And sure, the photographs of turquoise sea,
palm-tree hills, will make the family rounds.
But, in a month, they’ll have been overlaid
by close-ups of somebody or other’s new baby.

But a ceramic dolphin,
made in China,
will occupy pride of place on their mantle.
People will ask
or they’ll ask themselves,
“Now where did that come from?”

Somewhere, in the Caribbean,
the locals are parading their wares
before the next boat-load
and are much too busy to answer.



John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dunes Review, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Thin Air, Dalhousie Review and failbetter.

The Ant by Ahrend Torrey

You can’t help the life you were given, like the ant can’t help hers,

the one crawling the white wall at work, in the bathroom, where

my hands, tied to the clock, can’t help, and where there are no windows.

I shut the door behind me, think, how will she survive?

Through the smallest crevice somewhere, I know she will.



Ahrend Torrey enjoys exploring nature in southern Louisiana, where he lives with his husband Jonathan and their two rat terriers Dichter and Dova. He is the author of Small Blue Harbor published by the Poetry Box Select imprint (Portland) in 2019. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Atavism by Joseph Helminski

A hawk slipped off
a hickory branch

in that moment
I could not think

of the word hawk
or hickory

the bird falling
gliding upward



Joseph Helminski teaches English at Oakland Community College near Detroit. His poems have been published in The Tulane Review, Olentangy Review, Sweet Tree Review, Eunoia Review, Assisi, and Great Lakes Review.

Night and Day by Joseph Helminski

After nightmares
of a robbed house

I awakened
to find locked doors

and intact glass
and light came through

windows making
me two shadows



Joseph Helminski teaches English at Oakland Community College near Detroit. His poems have been published in The Tulane Review, Olentangy Review, Sweet Tree Review, Eunoia Review, Assisi, and Great Lakes Review.

7.6.19 / 7:28 a.m. / 66 degrees by John L. Stanizzi

Photo-op shy, the new frogs leap from the shore ahead of me, and I admit to feeling
overwhelmed by the daily sameness; the miracles of damsel and dragon, the swallows’
nifty gliding, hunting, and the miracle of the tadpoles’ metamorphosis, their
diurnal changes which they are too frightened to share, those powerful new legs, that archaic tail



John L. Stanizzi is author of Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits – Fifty 50-Word Pieces, and Chants. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, The New York Quarterly, Blue Mountain Review, Paterson Literary Review, The Cortland Review, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, and many others. Stanizzi has been translated into Italian and his work has appeared in many journals in Italy. He has read at venues all over New England, and his newest collection, Sundowning, will be out later this year with Main Street Mag. Stanizzi teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, CT and he lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry.

7.4.19 / 7:31 a.m. / 67 degrees by John L. Stanizzi

Punctuation marks swimming in a school? It looks that way from here.
Operating like a single entity, could this be a school of catfish fry? The tadpole's
noddle looks more “frog like” now as he rests on the shore with his
dragontail, and in the trees the wood thrush sews lace with perfect nonchalance.   



John L. Stanizzi is author of Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits – Fifty 50-Word Pieces, and Chants. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, The New York Quarterly, Blue Mountain Review, Paterson Literary Review, The Cortland Review, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, and many others. Stanizzi has been translated into Italian and his work has appeared in many journals in Italy. He has read at venues all over New England, and his newest collection, Sundowning, will be out later this year with Main Street Mag. Stanizzi teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, CT and he lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry.

Bathroom Crucifix by Carolynn Kingyens

I remember the first time I touched a crucifix;
five years old, inside my grandmother’s powder-blue bathroom,
unaware of suffering and sacrifice,
unaware of the million and one ways
a sinner could torture a saint and still get away with it,
when I felt compelled to caress Christ’s hard, flexed veins
arched away from his shin bones, muscles, pretty feet.

The crucifix was nailed to the floral pattern wall,
above the light switch.

His eyes forever cast down,
staring at my grandmother’s personal things,
her nighttime rituals —
boxes of Polident,
rosary beads,
little jars of beauty cream,
and an old photo of her only son,
my father, forever a boy dressed for Holy Communion,
mimicking the face of innocence;
wedged securely inside the edge of the switch.



Carolynn Kingyens lives with her beautiful family in NYC. Her poems have been featured in Boxcar Poetry Journal, Glass Poetry Journal, Word Riot, The Potomac, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Across the Margin, and The Orange Room Review. Her poem, “Washing Dishes” was nominated for Best New Poets by Silenced Press.

Just Once by Steve Klepetar

It happened once, just once
after all the times her mother
came at her with the broom,
face twisted, shrieking about
her smart mouth, screaming
Because I said so,
swatting at the girl with
the handle, raising welts.
Just once.
Her mother advanced
like a storm system,
an avalanche of rage:
I said now!
The girl blocked the blow
with her forearm,
ignoring the black and blue
pain of it, swinging
her open hand with a hard slap
to her mother’s astonished face,
who stepped back, then swung
her own slap at the girl,
who slapped her mother again,
hard as she could,
spinning her halfway around.
It happened just that once,
and never again
the broom or slap,
only the phantom pain
on her arm and the silence
that lived beneath that house,
so polite now with explanations and requests.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. His work has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Klepetar is the author of fourteen poetry collections, the most recent of which are A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press) and Why Glass Shatters (One Sentence Chaps).

Summer of the Bear by Steve Klepetar

My son texts me a photograph of his little daughters,
six and three, backs to the camera by a large picture window.
On the other side, a black bear cub.
You can’t see their faces,
but judging by their body language,
they aren’t at all afraid, pressing close to the glass.
And the cub too looks mild and unafraid,
curious it seems, at this interspecies meeting
by a house in the woods.
I post the photo on Facebook, “Granddaughters with bear.”
The comments fly in.
“OMG!”
“OMG!”
“OMG!”
One friend: “Isn’t it dangerous?”
Me: “Only if the glass breaks.”

That night, driving home from Tanglewood
(Hillary Hahn, an all Bach program) we pass a bear
ambling down Hawthorne Street.
The next day someone has posted a hand-scrawled sign
on the clubhouse, where we pick up our mail:
“Beware! Large male bear sighted
between the pond and the red barn.
Keep your dogs on a leash.”
Next to the sign, a photograph.
He is enormous, and just behind him to the left,
maybe fifty feet away you can see our house.

We read about black bears,
how they shy away from humans,
how there have been sixty-one recorded killings
by black bears since 1900,
how last year many more people were killed by bees,
domestic dogs, lightning strikes.
We sit on our porch, looking out toward the reeds,
the high grass and woods, hoping for a glimpse.
All night we roam the dream woods, where the great bears live
in the shadows of trees, leaking sometimes into the waking world.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. His work has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Klepetar is the author of fourteen poetry collections, the most recent of which are A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press) and Why Glass Shatters (One Sentence Chaps).

Broadview by Ed Ahern

The houses were sided with bricks.
And small. And much alike.
The avenues were numbered north-south,
and east-west streets were named.
Unnamed alleys between the numbered avenues.
My growing up had no outside measurements,
so whatever we lacked went unnoticed.
The Europe-descended neighbors
lived and died in their houses

Until, within two decades,
the white Broadview checkerboard square
shifted to black.
Recoloring the high school meant
twenty years of fights and brawls,
mostly after my time.
My class reunions were all white,
the black quarter of us
unwilling to return to minority
and staying away.

Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had over two hundred stories and poems published so far, and five books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories, where he sits on the review board and manages a posse of four review editors. 

https://twitter.com/bottomstripper 

https://www.facebook.com/EdAhern73/?ref=bookmarks

Happiness by Gene Goldfarb

I saw it on an old survey map
of my house and lot,
Hathaway Downs,
very Anglican—
made me imagine 
a happy little sweep
of a dale with frolicking rabbits
multiplying and munching everything in sight
especially those well-tended greens
and a hapless farmer looking on
resting on the staff
of his pitchfork
rubbing his
chin,
muttering
to no one
in particular
Guess I’ll have to
call in the man.



Gene Goldfarb lives on Long Island, to write poetry, do volunteer work, and travel. His poetry has appeared in Black Fox Literary Magazine, Quiddity, Misfit Magazine, Green Briar Review, and elsewhere.

In Between by Richard Martin

It's all in the spaces,
the emptiness between buildings,
the transparent air
that holds the trees in place –
where true action: flight, diving,
gliding, takes place,
in the spaces –
the twisting turns
of a flight of pigeons;
two magpies hurl themselves
between fir and pine,
and a solitary crow
dives from nowhere
into the thicket of a hedge.
That's why I can so often ignore
the interruption of a block of flats,
or the intrusion of grey siding --
what's truly interesting
hovers in between.



Richard Martin is an English writer who lives in the Netherlands close to the point where Belgium, Germany and Holland meet. After retiring as a university teacher in Germany, he turned his attention to writing, and has published three collections of poetry and numerous poems in magazines in England, the US, and Austria.

Seeing the Sunrise by M.J. Iuppa

          There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us
          at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.
          ~Jean Paul Sartre

Soon enough—swallows begin
to stir under the barn’s eaves—
one becomes three, becomes five,

filling up twilight’s air— so many
blue-black wings scissor-switch
sky to yard—patterns cut in figure

eight precision, turning dawn’s
pink light into a ramp of sun that
singles out our bedroom window,

our pillows soaked with sleep, and
wakes us to swallows sitting side
by side on a power line, chipping

a tune that echoes until we rise &
look out bleary-eyed upon gardens
we’ve left undone, knowing we

have another day to finish
what we’ve started the day
before yesterday.



M.J. Iuppa's fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past 29 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life's stew.

Haiku by John McManus

climbing roses
I push gran’s wheelchair
a little closer



John McManus is an award winning haiku poet from Carlisle, Cumbria, England. He is the author of Inside His Time Machine (Iron Press, 2016) and after night rain (Bones, 2019).

Haiku by John McManus

oil spill footage
the whole room
falls silent



John McManus is an award winning haiku poet from Carlisle, Cumbria, England. He is the author of Inside His Time Machine (Iron Press, 2016) and after night rain (Bones, 2019).

Haiku by John McManus

waning moon
grandpa coughs up
more blood



John McManus is an award winning haiku poet from Carlisle, Cumbria, England. He is the author of Inside His Time Machine (Iron Press, 2016) and after night rain (Bones, 2019).

Haiku by John McManus

alone at last
she unzips
my sleeping bag



John McManus is an award winning haiku poet from Carlisle, Cumbria, England. He is the author of Inside His Time Machine (Iron Press, 2016) and after night rain (Bones, 2019).

Playground by Samuel Swauger

I haven’t forgotten what we were like then,

when I couldn’t see over the kitchen table
and sunbathed slides left burns on my legs.
We never thought about the discomfort, it happened
and off we ran with our make-believe soldiers.

It was instinct to take your hands and
rub chalk on the asphalt together,
laying on the rocky forgeries
of a Dr. Seuss book and
squinting at the animals in the clouds.

Our school has long since been derelict.
The parking lot is lone and level now,
eroded to graphite hues.
At some point I learned to hesitate

and grew taller than my mother. 

Samuel Swauger is an author and poet from Baltimore, Maryland. His work appears in magazines such as Wordgathering, Bandit Fiction, and the Front Porch Review. His website is samuelswauger.com and his Twitter is @samuelswauger.