All I Was Ever Told by Jason Ryberg

Down through the clouds’
raggedy, tattered fabric
and the trees’ veinous limbs,
branches and twigs, the moon
shone blue, sometimes,
on the tin roof of the old
(semi) converted tar-paper
shotgun shack I lived in,
for free (mostly), that year,
out back of the big house
where my somewhat effete
and mildly eccentric friend
lived with his very eccentric
mother, like something straight
the fuck out of a goddamned
Faulkner or Capote novel
another friend was overheard
to say (complete with idiot
man-child kept in the basement
I, myself, often suspected),
and all I was ever told was to
mow the lawn and shovel the snow,
help yourself to the liquor cabinet
and try not to burn the
whole place down.



Jason Ryberg is the author of thirteen books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and, a couple of angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors. His latest collection of poems is Are You Sure Kerouac Would Have Done it this Way!? (co-authored with John Dorsey, and Victor Clevenger, OAC Books, 2021).

W. C. Fields, Esq. (William Claude Dukenfield) by Richard Weaver

said many things memorable. Most funny.
He juggled words the same way he did balls 

in the air as a tramp with fake beard and faded
tuxedo. Cigar boxes, canes, tennis balls, hats.
All became part of the Eccentric Juggler’s act.
Masterly. World class. Between pool, cards, 

alcohol, movies, and women, he kept many things
up in the air simultaneously. He once said
“It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.”
At the end he said to his mistress of many years,
“God damn the whole friggin’ world
and everyone in it but you, Carlotta.”



Richard Weaver volunteers with the Maryland Book Bank, CityLit, the Baltimore Book Festival, and was, until Covid, the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. He remains the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and provided the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005), performed 4 times to date. Recently, he published his 150th prose poem since 2016.

The Threat of Keepsakes by Louis J. Fagan

The quilt survived the flood,
tattered muddied forlorn, I
rescued it from the waist-high
river water in the basement

fly-fishing waders strapped on, I
descended the stairs into the cold
black water staking its claim
to space intended off-limits

the Christmas angel, crockery,
kept books, preserved Barbies,
photos, CDs bobbed like buoys
in my wake as I waded through

the quilt had been neatly draped
across the back of the wooden rocker,
half-submerged it now drifted aimlessly
on currents I couldn’t feel

I’d saved the quilt once already, taken
when my mother-in-law cleaned
our closet during the visit she’d made
to help with our first born, years ago

it lay wadded up next to garbage bags
for pick up at the end of our driveway
when I pulled in from work, what’s my
great-grandmother’s quilt doing out there

I asked my wife when I came in the house,
quilt rolled, tucked beneath my arm, the baby
in her arms, swaddled in a blanket carrying
with it the threat of becoming a keepsake too

fishing in the river water was one thing,
casting a line and pulling out trout,
but reaching into it, surrounded by four
walls, for the quilt chilled my arms, my soul

drenched and cold, material thinned
and frayed from age, it tore away from my touch
when I scooped it up and spread it across
my shoulders, tightening it to my chest



Louis J. Fagan is an English professor at FMCC in Johnstown, NY. He is currently at work on a novel based loosely on his short story, 'Slit,' which was published in Weber: The Contemporary West. More of his short fiction can be found in Typehouse Literary Magazine and Five on the Fifth.

The Lead Stereos by Ed Ahern

On the deck of our house
are two seventy-pound stereos,
curves opposed, print facing out.
Lead still shiny, headlines still legible
after fifty years of weathering.
The base for a glass-topped table.

They are an obelisk for the
slow death of print newspapers,
and the withering away
of balanced reporting.
The profession I trained for
gone electronic and shrill.

No one misses the smudges
of lamp black and petroleum oil,
or the hassle of recycling,
and in a few more years
no one will care that
newspapers gave us the world.

There was an underpaid nobility
in reporting investigated facts
and recording marriages and deaths,
and the current, fleeting buzz
leaves us all with little sense
of permanence and place.



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

Five Beautiful Words by Lisa Molina

          (elegant, peaceful, inspiration, warm, womb)

The elegant fish swim in the bubbling tank.

The purpose: To provide a peaceful place in this room of bald children
connected to poles of poison, being
pump
pump
pumped
into their veins.

All of them weary, and wishing not to be, “An inspiration.”

We follow the pedi onc to the private room. My face, now red,
warm from the fierce flames of my
pounding heart, as he tells us the cancer has returned, to the blood of the babe of my womb.



Lisa Molina is a writer/educator in Austin, Texas. She has three chapbooks forthcoming in 2022, and her poetry has been published in numerous print and online publications, including Beyond Words Magazine, Sparked Literary Magazine, Trouvaille Review, Neologism Poetry Journal, Fahmidan Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, and Sledgehammer Literary Review.

Bad folks go to Hell when they die says my... by Gale Acuff

Sunday School teacher, she should know even
though she's not bad, not that I know of, she
works for God and the other Trinity
members, Jesus and the Holy Ghost, and
our church, too, plus she works for free and one
day I'll be a preacher because that will
always remind me of her but I'll get
paid for it, too, probably not much but
a parsonage to go with it and ours
is a mobile home but it's not so mo
-bile anymore, unless when Preacher prays
and no one's around it soars to Heaven
so I asked my teacher if that's so and
she gave me a dreamy smile, then said No.



Gale Acuff has published hundreds of poems in over a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. He has taught university English in the US, China, and Palestine.

Lost Echo by Howie Good

On the airwaves
of memory floats

the voice of a child
chanting one one

thousand, two one
thousand, nothing

the least menacing
or even remarkable,

unless for you, just
as for me, the voice

lingers like the yellow
green of a faded bruise.



Howie Good is the author of Failed Haiku, a poetry collection that is the co-winner of the 2021 Grey Book Press Chapbook Contest. It is scheduled for publication in summer 2022.

Haiku by Douglas J. Lanzo

crumpled newspaper

lining homeless man’s dreams
with stories of strangers



An award-winning and featured poet and novelist, 187 of Douglas J. Lanzo's poems have been published in 42 journals and 3 anthologies since 2020 across the U.S., Canada, England, Wales, Austria, India, Mauritius, Australia, Japan and the Caribbean. His Author’s Website (with poems, including by his twin sons) is located at https://douglaslanzo.com.

Mounds Hill by Christine Cock

Is it a good sign or warning
to be compelled to prove

          there are still traces of happiness––
          such as grapefruit, hanging,

dozens of weighted yellow orbs
waiting to be plucked and cored,

          or crossing the hayfield on a cow path
          worn ancient by hooves and moccasins

then sitting alongside the fox atop a burial mound
watching the coming world.

          Is it right to say thanks for Covid 
          even though the neighboring farmer is too ill to plow––

leaving the field fallow, fully ripening for the first time in years
giving meadowlarks a chance to nest, clutch, fledge, and sing?



Christine Cock lives in the woods of Florida and has been a naturalist and Curator of Zoo Conservation. Her degree is in Creative Writing with a Writing Excellence Award from Eckerd College. She has been published in numerous online journals and literary reviews, including Tiny Seed and Sandhill Review.

Monday Morning, Senior English by Jennifer Novotney

He is looking down
then shifting his eyes
to the laughing kids in the classroom
through the doorway facing us
the hall empty after the first period bell.

He towers above me by half a foot
his long, languid body tilting
at the middle like a plant shoot
that has grown too quickly
needing support, wilting
from its own weight.

Wavy, long red hair tumbling
down his face like a mudslide
obscuring his brown eyes
almost too dark, like buttons
stuck into a freckled snowman.

He asks about his grade
through clenched teeth
his body turned away from me
a flag at half-mast.

The tension between us
its own living, breathing being
pumping and palpitating
birthing a new breed
of insolence, coating us

thick like syrupy fingerprints stick
creeping into my consciousness
every time our eyes meet.



Jennifer Novotney’s work appears in Edison Literary Review, The Beatnik Cowboy, Still Point Arts Quarterly, and The Vignette Review, where she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She won the 2014 Moonbeam Children’s Book Award for her novel, Winter in the Soul. She lives in Pennsylvania where she teaches English.

Dream Bounding North by Meghan Elizabeth Kelley

I’m on a train
that bolts only

northbound,
all sleek windows

and no escape. Blurs
of what I abandoned

dissolve as I arrow through
the alpine

north. I’m white-knuckled,
lockset, roped in by the lure

of completion.
I go

the way a buck bounds
kicking memory

behind him as he chases
the doe. When the tracks

crumble, I belly-crawl
into the trees,

forage for any glimpses
of the past my deer mouth

can catch, devour every
berry, hard

and shriveled,
each one a familiar

snapshot, a bitter bite
I mistook for sweetness

when I didn’t know
I could wake up.



Meghan Elizabeth Kelley is a poet and writer in Jenkintown, PA. Her work has appeared in District Lines, For Women Who Roar, Trouvaille Review, and The Inflectionist Review, among other places. She is also a yoga nidra and meditation facilitator, which helps shape her creative process.

The Missing Woman by Heather Sager

In the barnyard grass out back
from her house,
we found her mud boots standing,
open, waiting
for tender feet
to slip into them.

As my friend and I walked,
the field of crows
sounded-out our thrumming recollection
of the woman and her husband—
his rages toward her—
the shouts we heard, the whole
town heard, down the street
that one night.

I called to memory
an afternoon when we met,
her quick-heart, her chapel-mind.
The flash of her brown eyes
darting.

In the afternoon, under cirrus-twined sky,
country spires supplicated
and smoke
tended to the ether.

In the barnyard grass out back,
we found her mud boots standing.



Heather Sager lives in Illinois. Her most recent poetry appears in Fahmidan Journal, Magma Poetry, Version (9) Magazine, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Red Wolf, Trouvaille Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and more. Recent fiction appears in The Fabulist and elsewhere.

Golden Pines Suite by Robert Demaree

1. So here we all are,
New residents on a new street
Of patio homes at Golden Pines.
We gather around the spinach dip,
Bright, eager exchanges
Like the first social in the freshman dorm:
Threads of things held in common,
Coincidence of childhood streets,
Sons and daughters, stepchildren, grandchildren,
Their schools and games,
Career paths crisscrossing the continent
Over fifty years.
We lived in Boston once, our first child was born there.
We may have left behind along the way
Some furniture, or faith or energy,
Or the spouses we started out with.
What we have in common mostly, though,
Unspoken,
Is that these paths have all led here,
This acknowledgement, this choice and throwing-in together
We all have made.

I walk along the pond at dusk;
Low vapor lamps cast a friendly orange glow.
I exchange greetings with the Canada geese.
A cottage we pass by each day
I see is suddenly empty:
Someone else will be there soon.
So here we all are:
It is only a matter of time.

2. To reach our house at Golden Pines
You go across a bridge,
The last bridge, my friend, age 80, calls it.
Don’t say that, I tell him,
Blood pumping, pulsing
Against skin turned to paper by the years.
For it had seemed to me,
Until not long ago, that
We might be exempt
From certain statistical probabilities
And live forever.

3. On the eve of his seventh birthday
Philip and I play bocce at Golden Pines.
I roll the red ball hard, to give him a chance.
A silly game, he thinks he knows who is meant to play.
He considers evidence:
The ramp descending gently into the pool,
That only grandparents seem to live at Golden Pines,
And what might happen next.
We watch the swans nesting by the pond.
Philip’s ball, heavy, deep granite green,
Eases toward the pallino:
This day, I think, will not come again.

4. Morning walk at Golden Pines:
Late February sky deep blue
Through trees for now still leafless
But about to change their minds.
A moving van packs up the contents of a cottage,
Fewer since her husband died,
And takes them to Assisted Living,
As if there were some other kind.
Across the pond, the hink and honk of geese,
Heading north, programmed to care for their own.
An ambulance pulls slowly away
From the Health Care Building,
Siren, blue lights turned off.

5. We’ve brought some wooden chairs,
In pieces, glue dried out,
To the storage shed at Golden Pines,
Metal repository for life’s archives,
A kind of purgatory of possessions.
Their time will come around again:
My mother’s walker, her wheelchair;
The board games our girls once loved—
Philip will be able to enjoy them soon.
The chairs, which could be fixed, I guess,
Join a roomful, floor to ceiling, of
Things one doesn’t feel quite up to
Dealing with just now:
At length, of course, someone will.



Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders, published in 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems have received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club. He is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Bob’s poems have appeared in over 150 periodicals, including Cold Mountain Review and Louisville Review.

Meeting My Father by Greg Watson

I was ten years old when I first met
the man, shaking hands in a shopping mall
parking lot, as my mother looked on,
unimpressed and uncertain as to whether
this was a wise idea for any of us.
He was tall, dressed in a courtroom suit
and tie, saying, "Good afternoon" with
the practiced ease of a natural salesman;
told my mother that I was a good-looking kid,
as if I weren't standing there beside him,
as if he couldn't speak to me directly.
This man I had secretly dreamed of,
who had, by default, become the hero
and villain of all my boyhood tales,
this man who by his absence alone
had all but defined me, seemed to me
in that moment to be unforgivably ordinary.
We had a polite lunch, the three of us,
conversation sporadic and strained.
There was much to avoid, though we were,
all of us, long adept at doing just that.
There were no tears and no explanations.
I sat to his right, at his suggestion,
two left-handed eaters avoiding elbows.
And he was right. We did not touch.
Not that day, or any day yet to come.



Greg Watson's work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. His most recent poetry collection is All the World at Once: New and Selected Poems. He is also co-editor with Richard Broderick of The Road by Heart: Poems of Fatherhood.

Winterizing by Greg Watson

My brother and I pulled the old ladder
from the loft of that damp, falling-down garage,
snapped the cold and grimy storm windows
into place one by one, our mother imploring us
from the earth below not to breaks our necks,
not to slice our fingers on those jagged
pieces not yet repaired, broken by flying balls
or an elbow thrown back in self-defense.
We caulked up the wind-trembling cracks,
closed off the uninsulated storage room,
hoisted great, thick sheets of plastic
over anything else left facing the light.
A new silence took root inside each room,
everything suddenly nearer, muffled.
Sometimes I imagined those sheets to be
sails, as if we were about to set forth
toward a world we could not yet fathom.
But only the darkened edges of trees
shook themselves occasionally, the vague
shapes of winter bodies passing outside.
You had to have faith that something out there
was being created, something both startling
and familiar coming back into focus,
so slowly, so tentatively that none of us
would have noticed, or been able to speak it.



Greg Watson's work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. His most recent poetry collection is All the World at Once: New and Selected Poems. He is also co-editor with Richard Broderick of The Road by Heart: Poems of Fatherhood.

Broken Glass as an Obvious Metaphor by Jen Finstrom

          So many useless things
          which nobody broke
          but which got broken anyway
               -“Ode to Broken Things,” Pablo Neruda

You knew it was a bad idea to stand barefoot on
a folding chair to change the kitchen lightbulb
but worried more about the chair breaking, losing
your balance, than about dropping the rounded
light cover which explodes in tiny pieces
of snow-colored glass, trapping you on the chair
where you simply remain standing, staring at it.
In the end, you climb down in the one clear space
between the refrigerator and the sink and push the chair
forward, climb on it again, reach one of your blue
slippers that isn’t full of tiny shards and hop
through to safety where you can begin to consider
cleaning up. Over the past months it’s become so
tempting to let inertia have its way. Two broken
blinds hang uselessly in their windows, letting in
more sun than you want, and for a second, you
imagine a world where the glass remains on your
floor while you continue to live around it, never
setting foot in your kitchen again, dishes always
undone, half-finished cup of coffee forever out of reach.



Jen Finstrom is both part-time faculty and staff at DePaul University. She was the poetry editor of Eclectica Magazine for 13 years, and recent publications include Atlanta Review and Escape into Life. Her work also appears in Ides: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks and several other Silver Birch Press anthologies.

Traipsing the Trailer to the Thrift Stores by Sharon Waller Knutson

Our past packed in boxes,
on a maudlin Monday morning
we snake up Seventeenth Street
to Deseret Industries. The gray
building and parking lot
are empty as a mausoleum.
The gate is locked tight.

Google Gal guides us on
Boulevard past the boarded
up buildings where we sipped
fountain sodas in the sixties
on swiveling suede stools
while waiting for a prescription
at the corner drug store.

And the A & W Drive-In
on G street where we
drank root beer
in frosted glass mugs
from bare-legged bunnies
who hopped car to car.
The microphones and trays
still hang from the poles
unused for sixty years.

To the striped and steepled
Salvation Army church
where they still serve soup
to starving strangers.
Sorry, we aren’t taking any
more donations except for food.
Come back in January, the Santa
Claus look-alike tells us.

We google Goodwill
and head on Holmes
where the store stands
next to the Dollar Tree.
We take anything but tires,
mattresses and bed frames,
says the cheerful worker
who hauls away seventy-
five years of our lives.



Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in Arizona. She has published several poetry books including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields by Flutter Press and What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say (to read a book review click here) and Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob now available from Kelsay Books. Her work has also appeared in One Art, Mad Swirl, The Drabble, Gleam, Spillwords, Muddy River Poetry Review, Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, Red Eft Review and The Song Is…

The Bar at the End of the World by Vikram Masson

You’ll take the Bergen Avenue
bus and pull the buzzer right around

McGinley Square where they would
have already lifted their third or fourth.

The Budweiser neon sign will flicker
and gasp like death as you enter into

the warmth of the little room, with its murky,
unwashed mirrors, its cigarette machine

that always has the Kools you smoke
because white guys don’t smoke them,

where the men talk the Yankees, Reagan,
and the wounds of the endless wars

their country made them fight. You always
wanted to lift a glass to the great writers

but every time you got sloshed enough
to talk Proust or to sing a song about Rilke

in the German you’d half forgotten
you remembered they would laugh you out

into the street, where the snow whipped
and eddied before crusting up against

the iron railings, where you’d be down
to your last 4 bucks while the leather frayed

off the toe box of your left boot, where old Joe
would find you wheezing with too many

cigarettes, sick with drink, and say,
you’re too young for this pain, go the hell home.



Vikram Masson writes at the intersection of faith, identity and culture. His poems have been featured or are forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, Glass, Juked, Prometheus Dreaming, Rust + Moth and Without a Doubt: poems illuminating faith (NYQ Books).

Let Be by Barbara Daniels

          in memory of John Claps

For a night journey I vow silence.
Tires struggle on asphalt, deer walk

like brown phantoms at the edge
of the parkway, hooves in gravel, teeth

in the grass. The wind itself is an instrument.
Even the stars have something to say.

What died with the man was the clangor
of roller skates down Tasker Avenue.

Night looms over me. At the center of memory:
mystery. After a while I sing along with the radio,

talk back to the Phillies for letting runners steal
bases at the back of a new young pitcher.

A deer starts toward me and jinks
sideways. I pass safely among the trees.



Barbara Daniels’ Talk to the Lioness was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. Her poetry has recently been accepted by Permafrost, Westchester Review, Philadelphia Stories, and Coachella Review. She received four fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the most recent in 2020.

Haiku by Barrie Levine

walking with dad
the crunch of leaves
softened by rain



Barrie Levine retired from the practice of law and in her seventies began avidly reading and writing haiku. She participates in virtual open mics and teaches a writing class at her senior center. If anyone asks what she does in her retirement, she proudly identifies herself as a haiku poet.

City Afternoon by Barrie Levine

I saved an outside table
for coffee in October
with you, dear daughter,
our sugar cubes
and conversation
dissolving in laughter



Barrie Levine retired from the practice of law and in her seventies began avidly reading and writing haiku. She participates in virtual open mics and teaches a writing class at her senior center. If anyone asks what she does in her retirement, she proudly identifies herself as a haiku poet.

Monoku by Eric A. Lohman

stripes on the winter fly   referee’s coffin



Eric A. Lohman is a psychiatric social worker in the ER of a large hospital in Atlanta, GA. He lives nearby with his wife, kids and an assortment of animals. His poetry has been widely published and he edits FreshOut Magazine, an online journal of poetry and art.

Haiku by Mona Bedi

leaf blower - 
all my thoughts
here and there



Mona Bedi is a medical doctor in Delhi, India. She has been writing poetry since childhood, but a few years back she started writing the Japanese form of haiku. Mona is the author of two poetry books: they, you and me and dancing moonlight. She has won prizes in many haiku competitions and received honorable mentions at the 2021 Japan Fair as well as the 2021 Autumn Moon Haiku contest. 

The Wind by M.J. Iuppa

An apparition of wind winds its way
     down the deep-rutted dirt road, scuffing
dust in its quick twist up the sleeves
     of soaring evergreen trees, swaying in-
visible signals to those who happen
     to look up to see its ripples of air rising
full of prayer and apricot light, singing
     beneath its constant breath— whispering
good-bye with its filmy wings— this evening’s
     dance— autumn’s departure.



M.J. Iuppa’s fifth full-length poetry collection The Weight of Air is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in May of 2022. For the past 33 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 and life’s stew.

True Enough by M.J. Iuppa

          Howden Pond, 2021

Standing at the pond’s edge, watching four swans
sleep soundly, heads tucked beneath folded wings, I
wish I could live passively, letting hours slip by with-
out a worry of wind riffling over the water’s surface,
over white feathers that compose these bodies drifting
like clouds, like voices in a dream unsung . . .

How often I hear music when I watch this quartet
floating in an accidental arrangement— never once have
I heard the same song, but a melody made better by the pull
of memory—these idle dreamers passing me like countless
hours I’ve wasted—we wake together, shaking off the chill
of what is unimaginable, knowing there will be a time when
we no longer find ourselves dreaming.



M.J. Iuppa’s fifth full-length poetry collection The Weight of Air is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in May of 2022. For the past 33 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 and life’s stew.

Waiting for the End by Scott Wiggerman

This listlessness. You wallow
in another day, another day
not quite the same as depression,
but definitely a complementary shade.

The same book retrieved from a shelf
with the same bookmark at the same page
of another day. Another day
like a household cat’s, interchangeable

Sundays, Mondays, holidays. Days
differentiated by what’s new on TV
or when you run out of clean
underwear (Wear another day?

Who’s going to care?). Two months
and the canvas is still empty,
the journal still short of words. Maybe
another day, maybe tomorrow, maybe.



Scott Wiggerman is the queer Albuquerque author of three books of poetry, Leaf and Beak: Sonnets, Presence, and Vegetables and Other Relationships; and the editor of several volumes, including Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry. In 2021, he was inducted into the prestigious Texas Institute of Letters.

Haiku by Roberta Beach Jacobson

rise
of desert dust
earthquake



Roberta Beach Jacobson is the editor of Cold Moon Journal.

Haiku by Roberta Beach Jacobson

letting go
of balloon string

child's hand



Roberta Beach Jacobson is the editor of Cold Moon Journal.

Unspoiled by Lynn White

I didn’t spoil easily,
not even as a child.
I took the treats in stride
and resisted my mother’s attempts
to mould me in her image.
I knew it would ruin me,
arrest my development,
curtail my growth,
my flowering.
So I was ready for you

when you tried.
You tried.
But by then
I knew who I was
and there was nothing
you could do
about it.



Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. Find Lynn on Facebook and at lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com.

We Both Lose Words by Vera Kewes Salter

I push something square
into a silver machine

and eat it for breakfast. White
emptiness where the words should be.

He supplies the word toaster.
I kneel to tighten his shoes.

As we walk around the park
we struggle to find the word

for a water bird with a snake-like neck
that dips its head below the surface.

We see a lone sailboat moored near
the winter shore,

watch gulls crack clams and mussels
on the asphalt pier.

Then, in sudden unison shout—
cormorant.



Vera Kewes Salter is aging with her husband in New Rochelle, New York. She is published in Red Eft Review, Persimmon Tree, Nixes Mate Review, Writing in a Woman's Voice, New Verse News and other publications.

Haiku by Stephen Toft

winter dusk

fading to grey
the cat’s milk



Stephen Toft is a poet and homelessness worker who lives in Lancaster, UK with his wife and their children. He is the author of three haiku/tanka/minimalist poetry collections.

Haiku by Stephen Toft

christmas eve
everybody boards the train
except the station guard



Stephen Toft is a poet and homelessness worker who lives in Lancaster, UK with his wife and their children. He is the author of three haiku/tanka/minimalist poetry collections.

Haiku by Stephen Toft

firefly night

the glow
of distant tents



Stephen Toft is a poet and homelessness worker who lives in Lancaster, UK with his wife and their children. He is the author of three haiku/tanka/minimalist poetry collections.

Haiku by Stephen Toft

leaf blower -

the convict makes
a cloud of colour



Stephen Toft is a poet and homelessness worker who lives in Lancaster, UK with his wife and their children. He is the author of three haiku/tanka/minimalist poetry collections.

Hunger by Rose Mary Boehm

It’s always the one that got away, that sheep
lost in the sand storm, the man who couldn’t love you
and the child that didn’t want to be born. Then there
are the talents you wanted to develop but instead
you had to crunch numbers in Mr. Henry’s lumber yard--
the songs you wanted to sing, the guitar strummed
by the boy across the road who never wrote you
a love song. Even your mum who made you who
you are today: practical and food on the table.
She never noticed you went hungry.



Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry journals. Her latest collection, Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders, has just been snapped up by Kelsay Books for publication in May/June 2022. Her website: https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

Walking Corpse Syndrome by Howie Good

Now that I’m seventy,
night files in so quickly

it seems time itself has
sped up. To anyone with

a healthy imagination,
the moon might look like

a silver button dangling
on a loose thread, and not,

as it does to me, a cracked,
and weathered skull. God!

I’ve thoughts I wish I never
had – with sharp little teeth

and murderous claws and
the subtle smell of blood.



Howie Good is the author most recently of the poetry collection Famous Long Ago (Laughing Ronin Press).

Critical Condition by Ben Rasnic

Toss a few stones
at the imposter
in the mirror;

potential unmet,
expectations lowered,

a blurred image
in need of sharpening;
engaged in pointless conversations
that reach no consensus;

a life left idling
with the meter still running.



Ben Rasnic currently resides in Bowie, Maryland. Author of four published collections (three available from amazon.com), Ben's poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.

Words, Birds, and Me by Richard Martin

          "… if you can stop identifying things then
          you have a better chance of identifying with
          them." Steven Lovatt. Birdsong in a Time
          of Silence.

Two young magpies clutch at a branch
of the chestnut tree on the street corner;
their squawking screeches make it easy
to identify them – but then, does that really matter?

Two more have flown out of the fir tree
to join yet another pair on our neighbours' chimney –
a collection of birds, but not being their parent,
or a predator, my only interest is in their actions:

I see them as mirroring myself searching for changes
in perspectives of the view, and envy them the ease
with which they can manage this.



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.

Restless Autumn by Richard Martin

The calendar announces that autumn has begun,
although the trees, the true harbingers of the season,
have not yet got the message – they remain green,
apart from the chestnut‘s skeletal fishbone branches
with their handful of crumpled paper leaves,
due more to sickness than the season.

Only the winds sending gale force shudders
through twigs and leaves seem truly seasonal –
however, the agitation of piled up leafy cushions
only narrates the foreground story of unrest;
far away on the skyline stolid arboreal regiments
resist the wind‘s determined advances.

Here, neither mists nor mellow fruitfulness,
only the occasional russet or yellow leaf
fluttering uncertainly on the fruitless cherry tree.
The magpie in its erratic flight, swooping,
diving, skimming from fir to beech and back,
is the true image of autumn in its restlessness.

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.

A City in the Rain by Steve Klepetar

My parents landed safely
after a long trip in the rain.

Everyday the same clouds,
like one grey blanket spread

to the horizon, sheets of rain
on the famous monuments.

We can barely see our hands
in front of our faces, my mother

writes. Nothing from you yet.
We wonder how it is with you.

Next time I will send them ten
postcards before they leave,

each one filled with little,
comforting lies.

Maybe then the rain might stop
or something wonderful will occur.

Maybe their hotel will rise above
the city’s famous river.

They will eat a fabulous meal
at the rooftop restaurant

as brilliant birds, wings bursting
in colors of flame, warble the hymns of night.



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

A Song in the Snow by Steve Klepetar

A thin man hovers near the pond.
He has walked a long way
through cold drizzle
to reach this neighborhood.

All I know about being cold
I learned near a small Wisconsin town.
I walked for miles in the snowy woods,
searching for a friend who fled in the dark.

He lives in Los Angeles now,
with his gray cat and expensive guitar.
Sometimes in winter his voice falls
through branches of the barren trees.



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

Hearts Too Full by Ann E. Wallace

It has been a year
since my doctor wheeled
me through the bowels
of Mt. Sinai to the emergency
wing, worried about my heart.
A year since I sat on her table,
legs dangling over the edge
as I swooned and faded
to dark, dizzying ellipses
in our talk of the long tail
of the virus that would
not quit, that still does not.

It has been a year
since fifty-odd friends
sent love and luck as I waited
in my curtained bed to be cleared
and released. I reaped
their blessings, left for home
with no answers, but survived,
even if this is not yet
what we might call living.

But two whose wishes
held weight beyond words,
streamed to me across our city
for fourteen, fifteen months
of terror, until they could
no more, leaving me
to wonder, had they been
more selfish, held their luck
closer to the bone,
might they have steeled
their own hearts,
which in the end beat
too hard and too full
for this world of sorrow.



Ann E. Wallace, a poet and essayist from Jersey City, New Jersey, is author of the poetry collection Counting by Sevens (Main Street Rag). She is online at AnnWallacePhD.com and on Twitter @annwlace409.

Rooting by Ann E. Wallace

Your birthday was full
and happy, your skin
aglow from a day
of sun and water.

And yet you carried
a scrambling frustration,
a rooting, an unnamed
yearning.
By day’s end,
nothing satisfied.
You wanted
more.

It has been four months
and you are still
learning new ways
to miss your mother.



Ann E. Wallace, a poet and essayist from Jersey City, New Jersey, is author of the poetry collection Counting by Sevens (Main Street Rag). She is online at AnnWallacePhD.com and on Twitter @annwlace409.

When the Forsythia Blooms by Ann E. Wallace

My father once told me the time
to put down grass seed
is when the forsythia blooms.
I noticed those scraggly yellow buds
on the roadside the other day,
the same week that my backyard
cherry tree began sprouting
soft sprays of pink.

And so it is time to tend
to the winter-trodden earth
of my garden, to kneel in
the damp soil to till it by hand,
prune out old growth and stones
that surfaced in cold upheavals,
and smooth the ground
in preparation for spring.

But I am still heaving
rocks myself and carrying
the cold weight of winter
that has held on too tight and
too long, as I gasp for air
and kick toward the surface
where yellow and pink flowers
have begun to blossom.



Ann E. Wallace, a poet and essayist from Jersey City, New Jersey, is author of the poetry collection Counting by Sevens (Main Street Rag). She is online at AnnWallacePhD.com and on Twitter @annwlace409.

The Letter She Tried to Compose in Mirabeau Hospital by Shoshauna Shy

Did you choose my window
because I was less likely
to have anyone in my bed,
an assumption lassoed
from watching me walk home
maybe twice toting one grocery
bag, one armful of books?
Did you determine at the bus
stop on 75th that I was the type
who wouldn’t call the cops
once you escaped, at least
not right away? Was the beige
curtain some kind of giveaway?
My bedroom tidy as a nun’s closet

your reassurance; the radio tuned
to string orchestras confirmation
no gun waited under my pillow.
My neighbor’s adjacent window
lifted wider than mine, her hair
the color of California grasses in July –

and yet did you decide to trade the heft
of her D-cup breasts for my teacups,
certain a woman with her platinum strut
would whip anchormen into a frenzy,
that detectives would race to take
her case, jockey overtime
to crack it?



Shoshauna Shy turns to poetry to live moments more than once. She likes spending time with books, trees, cats, chocolate and her husband, preferably all at the same time.

Chester Fardy Is Rich by Shoshauna Shy

Rumors confirm
what newspapers hinted:
Boy-on-the-block becomes
heir to a fortune
that exceeds what we'll earn
in 11 lifetimes.
Assets float him above
the rigors of rations:
Shoes meant to last until
basketball season,
allowances earmarked
three weeks in advance,
the thin purse that dictates
it has to be Greyhound.
Now stocks erase plans
for lawn-mowing schemes,
make superfluous the need
for busboy auditions,
render irrelevant
his GPA.
My garden gate bangs
and I tilt my visor,
crouch for a vantage
of this corduroy shuffle.
Let me survey
the impact of a windfall,
catch the strut
of a millionaire.



Shoshauna Shy turns to poetry to live moments more than once. She likes spending time with books, trees, cats, chocolate and her husband, preferably all at the same time.

Sixth Station of the Cross by Lorri Ventura

First Fridays were for praying
At the stations of the cross
The petite young mother
Chapel cap pinned to her hair
Rosary beads clicking against her fingernails

She pulls along her little girl
Whose rubber-soled Buster Browns
Squeak the entire length of the tiled church aisle
While she twirls her ponytails
And practices crossing her eyes
To make the time pass more quickly

But when they arrive at the sixth station
The little girl always forgets her boredom
And stares at the image of Veronica
Wiping Jesus’ face with a cloth
His visage appears on the fabric
The way the funnies in the newspaper
Slide onto her Silly Putty
When she presses it against the newsprint

The child is drawn to this station
Because it shows a female
Doing something important
This legend somehow gives her hope
For her own future

At home, she gingerly presses a washcloth
Against her Chatty Cathy’s face
Pretending the doll’s upturned nose and freckles
Materialize on the terrycloth

The child becomes a woman
Who passes judgment on the Church
That itself has judged and excluded so many
Yet she clings to her belief that the Divine
Lives within all
And that the image shown on Veronica’s cloth
Shines within us whenever we show love



Lorri Ventura is a retired special education administrator living in Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared in a number of anthologies.

Terminal Lucidity by Jean Ryan

Hours,
sometimes days,
before death,
those who have been missing
resurface, appearing as they once were,
speaking and smiling
as if freed from a curse,
giving their loved ones
one last chance.
No one knows how a brain
clogged with plaque,
marred by stroke,
can come back whole,
even for an instant,
unless the brain serves
the mind and can be summoned,
even while broken,
the way a man can lift a car 

if he must.



Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in coastal Alabama. Her work has appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies. Nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize, she has also published a novel, Lost Sister. Her debut collection of short stories, Survival Skills, was published by Ashland Creek Press and short-listed for a Lambda Literary Award. Lovers and Loners is her second story collection. Strange Company, a compilation of her nature essays, is available in digital form, paperback and audio. https://jean-ryan.com/

Thanksgiving by Martha Christina

After weeks of no sightings,
a rabbit reappears at dusk

to feed in the first snowfall
of the season. It doesn’t

seem to mind the flakes
that settle on its back,

and eats from the remains
of summer’s clover.



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

An August Evening, Then by Martha Christina

I sit outside with my father,
in the breezeway, escaping
my mother and the heat
of the house. We take
turns calling out the makes
of cars driving down our street,
a game my father invented
for us to play together. He’s
taught me what to look for:
hood ornaments, tail lights,

grills. He’s a good teacher,
good at explaining things.

My mother doesn’t join us.
Before and after supper
she stays inside, either
preparing, or cleaning up.
A rotary fan sits on the
kitchen counter, and it
drowns out our voices.

It’s getting dark; soon
my father will drive to
the house of the woman
he has just told me he loves.
A young widow, with a
son my age. Ten. She’s
also a teacher. Don’t
ask me to explain, he says.



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

Sea Lions by Martha Christina

As fifth graders
in the heartland,
none of us has
seen a sea lion.
We call them seals.

Our teacher corrects
us, kindly. A veteran
of the war in the Pacific,
home of sea lions and
atrocities, he knows
enemies and friends
are as distinct as
sea lions and seals,
            or
as easily confused.



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

Man Emerges from His Slumber by John Grey

The stars anticipate the light,
disappear before dawn.
Warblers also
prepare for what’s to come.
Their first notes
loosen the lake trout
from their shadows.
Trees hold out their branches
like palms of hands,
foreseeing not begging.
A woodchuck stirs.
Deer gather in the grasses
at the edge of the woods,
get close up with their hunger,
underplay their fear.

It takes more than the hint
of a new day
to get me going.
I need a room ablaze,
a shine in my eyes
akin to heaven’s.
I don’t apologize
for being a yawn or two
behind nature.
I am that which all of me depends upon.
And I am willing to wait.



John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, Leaves on Pages, Memory Outside the Head and Guest of Myself are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Lana Turner, Blueline and International Poetry Review.

Death by Jason Fisk

A semitrailer full
of sleeping pigs
drives seventy
down I-90
A hog’s coarse
hair blows
in the truck wind
It has a cowlick
like my son

A scrawny fox
out in the middle
of the day
Mangy fur
ribcage shadows
It chases a bunny
but can’t keep up

A teenage boy
punches a heavy bag
in the garage
Neighbors gossip
about his abusive
father
Beads of sweat
and revenge
stream down his face



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.

Junk Drawer by Corey D. Cook

Red Eft Review contributors and readers -

I wanted to share some exciting news with you...

My sixth chapbook, Junk Drawer, will be published by Finishing Line Press on February 18, 2022.

It is available for preorder now through December 24, 2021.

See link below for more information...

Junk Drawer by Corey D. Cook – Finishing Line Press

I hope you will check it out.

Thanks for considering.

Corey

Trout Fishing in Lee County, Virginia by Ben Rasnic

Drove five miles
of meandering 2-lane country road
then parked in the mud
as he made his way
down the embankment
to Martins Creek,
applied some powerbait
to his hook
like a skilled ceramicist
and cast his line
into the shimmering water
like Sandy Koufax
lobbing a warmup pitch
to John Roseboro, then
just as smoothly
reeled in the most beautiful
rainbow trout
I had ever laid eyes upon
and later
when someone would ask him
how big was that trout
that he landed at Martins Creek
he would pause, space his arms
and hands apart
and simply say
“Oh about yay big.”



Ben Rasnic currently resides in Bowie, Maryland. Author of four published collections (three available from amazon.com), Ben's poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.

February 3, 1959 by Christopher Pellizzari

A great crash in the cornfield...
then silence again.
Corn, snow, soil, sky
shifting back to quiet,
like an old man returning to his sofa,
which has absorbed his shape,
after changing the radio channel by hand.

Corn stalks like weather vanes,
pointing in all directions,
to the hysteria of snowflakes
swarming the sky like flies,
the sky itself something dead.

The shivering pale sun arrives on scene
to identify what remains of the young men,
like some grieving mother,
a mother for all four mothers,
as men in cars approach cautiously
from a distance.

Buddy Holly’s glasses are in the snow.
They are unaccustomed to snow.
They remember the arid high plains of Lubbock,
the dust bowl sand storms against
the boy’s window,
the whistling of something never heard before
in neon orbits still in the Western sky,
far from this frozen place.

The glasses are picked up by a boy in Liverpool,
who tries them on when he writes his first song,
in his comfortable bedroom on Menlove Avenue,
far from this frozen place.



Christopher Pellizzari was born in Gary, Indiana. He didn’t start publishing his poetry until 2019. He is Lithuanian-American, the son of an immigrant mother.

Rear View Mirror by Heidi Slettedahl

The soft edges of a dream tease
at me while I awaken.
A child in a short cotton dress,
rosy pink with grass stains on the hem,
clasps her hand in another’s
as they cross the street,
a line of children daring traffic.

Her partner lets go.

Her hand slips to the pavement,
dusty sand burrows in her knees.
Sprouts of blood dampen the gravely ground
and the car that’s approaching doesn’t stop.

Doesn’t stop.

The edges of the dream are fading.
The shadow of the car
that brushed my consciousness
has driven away.
The driver permitted one slow last gaze,

my eyes are blurry from slumber
and I cannot recognize the face.



Heidi Slettedahl is an academic and a US-UK dual national who goes by a slightly different name professionally. She is hoping to live up to her potential now that she is over 50. She has been published in a variety of online literary journals (including Red Eft Review).

Venice by Heidi Slettedahl

I rarely talk about my babies,
Eight in all,
The loss too large for casual conversation.

Eight that I am sure of.
Who wants to know of clinics and injections, and odds you’d never bet on
Until you do.

The number might be nine, if I include
The one who left me in Venice
With blood and chills.

At least I think he did, if he was there at all.
So hard to know for sure.

My friends love Venice,
Return to it year after year.

I prefer Verona.
A smaller city, prettier, less crowded.

Fewer memories of loss.



Heidi Slettedahl is an academic and a US-UK dual national who goes by a slightly different name professionally. She is hoping to live up to her potential now that she is over 50. She has been published in a variety of online literary journals (including Red Eft Review).

What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (#14) by Matthew Borczon

In Fort Jackson
the Army trainers 

who got us ready 

for Afghanistan
used to
call us
killers
hello, killers
nice shot, killer 

good work, killers
it was supposed
to make
us feel tough 

and strong 

so we started
using the term 

as well
but we
never managed
to say it
like they could 

we couldn’t roll
the "r"
couldn’t sound tough 

could only sound
like scared
young boys
telling their fathers 

they were men
for the
first time.



Matthew Borczon is a poet, a nurse and Navy Sailor from Erie, PA. He has published 17 books of poetry and publishes widely in the small press.

What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (#13) by Matthew Borczon

I took
care of
so many
people who
had lost
arms and
legs and
sometimes
both that
one day
I would
meet one
of these
Marines 11
years later
and not
remember
him at all.



Matthew Borczon is a poet, nurse and Navy Sailor from Erie, PA. He has published 17 books of poetry and publishes widely in the small press.

Chips of Glass by Cameron Spencer

Chips of glass like ice
          lie along the sideboard:
slivers of an argument
          waiting to be swept away
          and forgotten until the next time.
A bruise fades
          but leaves a sore spot—
          tender to the touch where tenderness failed
Just as an open cut retreats
          under new skin
          but remains a scar:
          a reminder.

Cameron Spencer lives in Savannah, Georgia. Her work has appeared online (including Red Eft Review) and in Savannah Authors Anthology. She is a long-time member of Rosemary Daniell's Zona Rosa writers group.

Silence Is Golden by Sharon Waller Knutson

Use your words,
our daughter-in-law
tells our toddler grandson.
Lips zippered into a smile,
his bird hands flutter
please and thank you
as his blue moon eyes
sparkle like the bubbles
he blows before dancing
like a dust devil. Doesn’t
talk because he’s deaf,
she says. I holler his name,
he whirls and I wave.
He races into my arms
and plants a sloppy kiss
on my cheek and I know
this kid is right as rain.



Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in Arizona. She has published several poetry books including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields by Flutter Press and What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say and Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob now available from Kelsay Books. Her work has also appeared in One Art, Mad Swirl, The Drabble, Gleam, Spillwords, Muddy River Poetry Review, Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, Red Eft Review and The Song Is…

Camp School Suite by Robert Demaree

1.
Next to our cottage is a tutoring camp;
My father taught there summers ago.
I walk along the lane behind the tents
They use for classrooms
And listen to the commingled voices
Of young teachers and their kids.
Much of it is new and strange, of course,
But some I recognize:
Third person plural, active voice…
What Gatsby really means…
And I am carried back to
Forty years in schools:
A mug of coffee
To put my hand around on cool mornings,
A smile for the 14-year-old,
Embarrassed at his mistake,
Wanting to try again.

2.
I came upon my father’s grade book today,
On the cottage shelf
Where we left it when he died,
Twenty years ago now.
I wish that he’d retired
While his memories were all good ones.
I see him in his classroom on the pond,
Leaning forward, wanting to tell a boy or two,
Sullen, not unkind, needing credits,
About the Generation of ’98,
But struggling with the preterite, I think.
Then the meaning comes to me:
A tutor is someone who keeps you safe.

3.
There’s this to be said for adolescents,
They are able to form communities quickly.
The kids at the camp school
Arrive in June, a hundred of them,
All strangers to each other.
In five weeks they have bonded,
So that, gathered as a group,
They are able to call out,
In noisy recognition and friendship,
Yeah, Stacy-y-y-y,

This afternoon they read their poems,
Itself an act of courage,
And they invite me to take part.
After the reading a girl of 16 or so
Wants to ask about the
Craft and discipline of poetry.
She has read with confidence and feeling.
What is required, she asks,
What must one do?
Listen, I tell her,
Listen and watch.

4.
The tents by the Teaching Grove are empty,
Will be coming down soon.
I walk along the lane
And hear echoes of the summer,
Of the voices of teachers and students,
Waiting to be scattered.
What has been gained here,
What will be remembered
Of these five weeks?
Friends they may not see again,
The confidence to start afresh
At new schools in different places,
The teachers who persuaded them
That they could write,
Or draw, or succeed.
The teachers will file their reports,
Take their own kids
For a last look at the pond,
Lash kayaks
To the tops of their cars.



Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders, published in 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems have received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club. He is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Bob’s poems have appeared in over 150 periodicals, including Cold Mountain Review and Louisville Review.

The History of Forever by Howie Good

Some 2,000 years ago, when Julius Caesar sentenced
a gang of pirates to be crucified, a slow, agonizing form
of death, geese migrated in a V-formation and autumn
painted the leaves startling colors, just as now, but before
the crosses on which the pirates were nailed were hoisted,
Caesar, in a rare show of mercy, personally cut their throats.



Howie Good is the author most recently of the poetry collections Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing) and Famous Long Ago (Laughing Ronin Press).

Ripe by Penelope Moffet

Gravenstein apple
fresh-fallen
from a tree,
so tart-sweet
I ignore the tunnels
left by worms
who also love
this taste,
breathe deep
where bees
conduct business
among daisies
near a green
clawfoot tub
that will call me later
to steep under stars
near bats and frogs.
No one is luckier
than I am,
to have lived this long,
to have wandered
among sand dunes,
seagulls, ravens, crabs
and barnacles
quick-flicking
their black feet
as waves caress
and leave them.
Afternoon light
licks maple leaves,
a cool wind
stirs the ferns.
How strange
yet how ordinary
so late in my life
this flowering,
this fruit,
every bite
delicious.



Penelope Moffet is the author of two chapbooks, most recently It Isn’t That They Mean to Kill You (Arroyo Seco Press, 2018). Her poems have been published in Gleam, One, Natural Bridge, Permafrost, Pearl, The Rise Up Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Verse-Virtual, The Missouri Review and other literary journals.

How to Dream in a Foreign Language by Steve Klepetar

Speak with an accent,
as if your tongue had been soaked
in vinegar, as if your teeth
had been nibbling ice and cheese.

Roll on the surface of this bed
like a clown sweeping a puddle of light.

Play a folk tune on the violin
as the old couple dances in the living room.

Collect smooth white pebbles
by a small pond
where children search for salamanders,
the ones glowing red in late summer grass.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. Recent poems appear in Verse-Virtual, Midlothien Poetry Review, and One Sentence Poems.

The Orchard by Andrew Williams

The dainty hand plucks a Gala apple.
Under the tree, I open the bag—
space for one more.

Walking back, the cicada chorus
whirrs, like a biker revving her engine
before speeding off.

Summer is nearly over; fall is imminent,
and yet, the heat continues
to linger.

            As the daylight fades, we stop,
plant ourselves, and eat an apple together,
as dusk turns to darkness.



Andrew Williams is a writer living with his family in Pennsylvania, USA.

Letter to My Mother by Terri Kirby Erickson

If only I had been there to catch you when you fell,
to hold you in my arms and lower you to the ground.

It was September, among the leaves and blossoms
of your yard that I found you—the mother I adore,

in the sleep from which you never again awakened.
I would have done anything to save you, but there

was nothing of you to save—only the body you left
behind like a sweater draped across a chair. Every

day since, I have walked the earth with grief lodged
in my throat like a bone, shouldering the burden of

your sorrows as well my own, as if they belong to me.
The son you lost became my son and my brother, our

misery merged into one. And each disappointment of
your life, every regret, turned into mine. But it is time

now, to stop picking up the pain you have discarded,
trying to heal what has already been healed. I want to

carry, instead, memories of your laughter, and the love
you gave to me—as weightless in my hands as light.



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

Obits by John Muro

Still as paper-weights, their portraits
Freckle columns in a loose shroud of
Black-ink blot. Most gravely smile
With their breath drawn back,
Swallowing cries, wanting something
More than the disquieting narration
Told in the split and spill of serif.
A curious few may find themselves
Lingering above or below the fold,
Shaking off sadness and making
Certain note of the hard particulars:
Age and place and cause. Laying
The paper down, perhaps they’ll
Take in the sun’s slow rising or
Setting, drifting like crumpled gold
Dust from room to room, grateful for
The scent of paperwhites, the sweet
Muscle still throbbing in the chest,
And brackish blood coursing in
Currents towards the outcroppings
Of fingers – age narrowing eyes
And choices among the daily ads.



A resident of Connecticut, John Muro's professional career has been dedicated to environmental stewardship and conservation. In the Lilac Hour, his first volume of poems, was published last fall by Antrim House. John’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in numerous literary journals, including River Heron, Sheepshead, Moria, Writer Shed, Third Wednesday and The French Literary Review.

Paupers Cemetery by Lorri Ventura

Turkey vultures
Venture beyond a nearby landfill
Circling evocatively above the paupers’ graves 

On Mayflower Hill.

Grave markers resemble key heads
Bearing not names, but numerals
A potter’s field
Stretching from a trash-strewn roadside to a forest

Unnamed graves embrace the insane
Forced to sew their own burial shrouds
While hunched on cots
In the nearby state hospital

Alongside them are infants and children
Resting eternally with strangers
In group plots
To conserve space

The earth comforts the nameless poor
Their dreams curtailed by monsters
Bearing melodic names—
Diphtheria, Dropsy, Dysentery, Dementia, Despair

Beneath numbered iron markers
Lie the forgotten, abandoned, and lost 

Lives perhaps un-noted
But not without value



Lorri Ventura is a retired special education administrator living in Massachusetts. Her poems have been featured in a number of anthologies

Joe, Shoshauna and Sharon by Sharon Waller Knutson

Arizona must be hot,
Joe says as he stands
under a California redwood
scratching his scruffy beard.

Shoshauna is waiting
in Wisconsin, I say
as he opens the door
of his trashed truck,

crammed with carpenter
and car fixing tools.
Just in case, he says.
as we head for the highway.

On the 1-80 East passing
through Wyoming we spot
a buxom blonde in skinny
jeans staring at a tire flatter

than roadkill on a Toyota
on the side of the road
and hear a baby crying
from the back seat

piled with blankets, shirts,
boxes and baby clothes.
Joe pulls over, grabs
his lug wrench and jack

and removes the spare
tire from her trunk
as she hands me the blue
eyed baby and a bottle.

She peers down the road
like she’s looking for the man
who left the rainbow
rimming her right eye.

Joe tosses the flat in the trunk,
hands her a fistful of greenbacks.
I’ll pay you back I promise,
she says as she takes the baby.

Shoshauna shows up
in sunglasses in her sedan
at a rest top in Nebraska
and pulls out her picnic basket.

Joe grins under his floppy hat,
Shoshauna smiles, her dark
hair and my blonde hair
blanketing our backs as we chew

chicken and buttermilk biscuits.
Are your poems true stories? I ask.
I have to admit sometimes
I embellish, says Shoshauna.

Mine are true until the poem
finds its own truth, Joe says,
What about yours? But before
I can answer I wake up in Idaho

and the bell is ringing
and the clock says 4:30 am
and we race to the hospital
bed to get my mother-in-law up.



Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in a wildlife habitat in Arizona. She has published several poetry books including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields by Flutter Press and What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say and Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob forthcoming from Kelsay Books. Her work has also appeared in various journals, most recently in One Art, Mad Swirl, Gleam, Spillwords, Muddy River Poetry Review, Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, Red Eft Review and The Song Is…

Waiting for the Uber at the Assisted Living Facility by Sharon Waller Knutson

Those Ukrainians really know
how to satisfy a sweet tooth,
says the man with the gray beard.
The honey in the Koliva tastes
heavenly and the fruit filled
Koliva is to die for. Five stars for sure.

But the hostess’s hair was a disaster.
She looked like Little Orphan Annie
at 100 years old, states a woman
with wrinkles deep as ditches
and hair blue as the cloudless sky.
The Shepherd’s Pie at the shindig
for the shaggy Scottish gal was delish.

Who can forget the roast pork and cabbage
at the celebration for the bald guy
with the bushy eyebrows from Estonia?
she adds while the beard brags;
The ham glazed with orange juice
and brown sugar at the gala
for the burly Brit was the best.

How do we get an invitation
to these fancy dinner parties?
the white poodle frizz asks.
No invitation necessary, blue hair
replies as the Uber pulls up.
Just read the obituaries. The foreigners
serve the best funeral food.



Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in a wildlife habitat in Arizona. She has published several poetry books including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields by Flutter Press and What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say and Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob forthcoming from Kelsay Books. Her work has also appeared in various journals, most recently in One Art, Mad Swirl, Gleam, Spillwords, Muddy River Poetry Review, Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, Red Eft Review and The Song Is…

Distance by John L. Stanizzi

Side by side in fainting candlelight
a man and a woman in bed
the woman curled up crying
the man flat on his back
motionless
the walls filled with night
and cold

Clothes strewn around the darkening room
their shadows
a crowd of old mourners
viewing the bodies
of two complete strangers



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, Chants, Sundowning, and POND. Besides Red Eft Review, John’s poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Cortland Review, American Life in Poetry, and others. John’s nonfiction has been in Literature and Belief, Stone Coast Review, and others. John was awarded an Artist Fellowship in Creative Non-Fiction, 2021 from the Connecticut Office of the Arts. https://www.johnlstanizzi.com

Squirrel World by Tamara Madison

One could do worse
Than to be a squirrel in this park
Where each tree is a sovereign country
And the ground between tree continents
A freeway of grass and dirt.
Each of these trees
A navigable land of plenty;
A squirrel can leap from the top of one
To a thin twig at the tip of another
With no fear of falling. Sure,
There are hawks to contend with,
And owls. But we
Have cancer, Covid-19,
A myriad of ills, and each other.
Worst of all, each other.



Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbook The Belly Remembers, and two full-length volumes of poetry, Wild Domestic and Moraine. Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, the Writer’s Almanac, Sheila-Na-Gig and many other publications. More about Tamara can be found at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.

Red Haiku by Howie Good

1
Beyond the window
the sky glows wildfire red

A movie trailer
for the apocalypse

2
The killer’s bloody handprints
Red autumn leaves

3
The hummingbird
spreads a wealth of pollen
among the red flowers

A wandering lunatic
with communistic visions



Howie Good is the author most recently of the poetry collection Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing). His chapbook Famous Long Ago is forthcoming from Laughing Ronin Press.

My Father’s Last Summers in New England by Robert Demaree

1985

In the ’80s you could fly
Piedmont into Worcester, Mass.
Weary Friday-night salesmen joked,
Helped the attendant pronounce the name.
This was my parents’ penultimate
Summer in New England,
My father agitated,
Convinced they had left
Without packing, and hoping
He could get a shave
At the barbershop in the lobby
Of a Days Inn motel,
My mother, wearied,
Glad someone else would drive
The rest of the way.
The other day I bought a postcard
On eBay, outbidding someone
Who must have wondered
Why anyone else
Would want a souvenir
Of the Worcester Airport.

1986

My dad’s last summer on the pond
I flew up Labor Day
To help close up, drive them home.
The airport bus
Only came as far as Dover.
Somehow they managed to get there,
Him wandering around the restaurant,
Agitated,
My mother with the
Caregiver’s exhausted sadness.
The restaurant is still there,
Different name, different owners:
I pass by that place
And still feel
An unbidden welling up,
How one thing comes
To stand for another.



Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders, published in 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems have received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club. He is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Bob’s poems have appeared in over 150 periodicals, including Cold Mountain Review and Louisville Review.

Smoke by Stephen Ruffus

          for Kathy

When we first met
you smoked unfiltered Pall Malls.
I watched as you gently spit
the tiny flecks of tobacco

from your lip in a kind of kiss.
Or picked them,
almost as an afterthought,
from the tip of your tongue.

With a quick turn of your head
you’d exhale a gentle breeze
from the side of your mouth
like you were whispering

to a person standing beside you
a secret I might discover,
if I were lucky enough.
Even with your eyes squinted,

I could still see that they were
starkly blue and endless.
You’d take another long drag,
and with the smoke now

swirling around your face
you almost disappeared
until the veil was lifted,
and everything was revealed.



Stephen Ruffus is originally from New York City. He has lived in Colorado and California where he studied at Colorado State University and the University of California at Irvine. Currently, he lives in Salt Lake City, Utah where he fulfilled a career as a college teacher and administrator.

My Mother Climbs Mt. Timpanogos by Stephen Ruffus

She would climb each floor to the top
of the five-story walk-up she lived in
as a girl, slept on the fire escape
and the rooftop in the summer heat,
a whole block of families camped out
under the same dream in one great
breath rising into the evening air.
But now this woman—
visiting her son where mountains
suddenly rise at the edge of the plain,
climbs straight up for an hour
carrying her purse she would never leave,
both of us weak for reasons
we keep to ourselves, as I lead her
by the hand as though up winding stairs.



Stephen Ruffus is originally from New York City. He has lived in Colorado and California where he studied at Colorado State University and the University of California at Irvine. Currently, he lives in Salt Lake City, Utah where he fulfilled a career as a college teacher and administrator.

Across the Web by Julianna McCarthy

Almost light enough to see the color
of the morning cars, windshield wipers
whispering away the dew. A golden orb
weaver picks across his web
to captured damselflies in this last
lavender hour, with your robe on the floor
and mist on the mirror.
It's going to be a hot day.



Julianna McCarthy is a poet based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including in The Antioch Review, Catameran, Hole in the Head, American Journal of Poetry, Nimrod and others. Her collection of poems Night Surgery was just published by Blue Horse Press. She holds an MFA in poetry from New England College

Round House by Brendan Constantine

My infant son wakes in the night
to recite launch codes for a weapon
buried in a corn field.

Numbers, bits of verse, and silence
while he waits for the coded response
of a stuffed swan.

It’s a swan song, I think. My wife,
who cannot read my thoughts,
who is deeper asleep than oil,

says aloud, Stay away from swans.
Dangerous... I reach out, smooth
her hair. She settles back

into earth. I yawn and remember
I don’t have a wife and son. And
the swan has never been happy

with me. She glides in place
down the bed, her shadow
a stopped fuse.



Brendan Constantine’s work has appeared in Poetry, Best American Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Tin House, and other journals. His most recent collections are Dementia, My Darling (2016) from Red Hen Press and Bouncy Bounce (2018), a chapbook from Blue Horse Press. He teaches at the Windward School in Los Angeles.

A Hundred Trains Leaving by Brendan Constantine

I gave up on acting because I couldn’t cry
on demand / and I was sure someone would
demand it / Every script ever written calls
for crying / especially the comedies / There’s
no way / I said / The director will nod at me
and I’ll make a face like I’m trying to grow
a tree from my forehead / or worse / I’ll try
to make a noise like weeping / which only
works for concert cellists / and it’ll be awful /
just awful / Well / it’s been thirty years /
I’m as many lives away / and brother / I can
cry like a man painting a wall / Where do you
want the tears to fall / How long / How loud /
At any time there’s a hundred movies playing
inside me / a hundred trains leaving as many
painted stations / a hundred lovers waving /
a hundred orchestras playing over each other /
without harmony / I’ve got motivation I can’t
use / This town will never work in me again /
Look at me / Don’t look at me / That's my cue



Brendan Constantine’s work has appeared in Poetry, Best American Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Tin House, and other journals. His most recent collections are Dementia, My Darling (2016) from Red Hen Press and Bouncy Bounce (2018), a chapbook from Blue Horse Press. He teaches at the Windward School in Los Angeles.

Never Have I Ever by Brendan Constantine

          (1 point for each)

Faked a cataclysm
Cheered for a mountain
Got dressed up for an animal
Followed a sleepwalker outside
Forgiven a compliment
Seen the oxen doze in their red yoke
Judged a funeral
Recognized bric-a-brac
Stopped thinking about a particular cloud in 1975
Made out with a statue
Heard back from Jeremy
Misplaced a chariot
Shown you the door
Drank from cupped feet
Watched my own birth video on continuous replay
Flooded the airwaves
Reappeared downstream
Wanted a different word for Zebra
Curled at the edges
Sparkled like a cave



Brendan Constantine’s work has appeared in Poetry, Best American Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Tin House, and other journals. His most recent collections are Dementia, My Darling (2016) from Red Hen Press and Bouncy Bounce (2018), a chapbook from Blue Horse Press. He teaches at the Windward School in Los Angeles.

After the Storm by Martha Christina

Beside the splintered
apple tree, a pair of robins
gathers grasses, rebuilding.



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

Role Reversal by Martha Christina

Outside your window
at the nursing home

a female cardinal opens
her beak like a nestling,

and the male who has landed
beside her at the feeder placed

to entertain you, feeds her
a single sunflower seed.

He does this repeatedly;
an action meant to win her

as a life-long mate. You
open your mouth for your

pureed dinner; I feed you,
spoonful by spoonful.



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

Gull Time, Human Time; What Can Be Said? by Martha Christina

Some days like this: a stainless
steel sky, rough water, gusty winds,
gulls refuse stale bread. But today
they’re ravenous and quarrelsome.

I watch from the car, my eyes on one gull.
Insistent on its space, it repeatedly warns
the others off. It attacks and defends, eats
and eats more, completely in the present.

In my fifth grade classroom with its
pastel maps and illustrated books,
I dreamed myself out of the heartland,
into New England, this space and time.

The gull continues its posturing,
its threatening gestures, its eating.
I watch in the present we share,
here, for whatever time remains.



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

Bird Watching by Ben Rasnic

My friends

from adolescence
have never aged
in my mind.

I imagine them still
at Cumberland Bowl Park,
swimming or cycling,
soaking in the sun-rays
of perfect cerulean sky
summer days;

some reeling in walleyes
camped beneath Hurricane Bridge;
others grinding out grueling
2 a day workouts
in sweat saturated
helmet & pads
for a chance to star
under Friday Night lights.

Some of them have passed
beyond this dimension,
yet still they remain young
in my mind as well, vibrant &
entertaining & my heart breaks
for their absence.

I am retired now, existing
on Social Security & Disability,
passing a miserably hot summer day
on the back deck canopy swing,
sipping a light beer
against doctor’s orders.

At rest, my entire body
is tinged with pain;
in motion, that pain becomes electric,
shocking my bones
into almost total submission,
a condition I have learned to live with.

I have already outlived
professional medical
& common sense expectations
& although I have become forgetful & sometimes draw blanks in mid-speech,
in many ways I still feel young
in my mind.

I used to look at people
like me
& think ‘there but for the grace
of God go I’
& now here I am

lost in thought,
on my back deck canopy swing
in sweltering summer heat,
reminiscing.

A baby thrush lands
at my feet, tilts
it’s tiny head,
eyeing me curiously
as if it knew me, perhaps
in a previous life,

takes a few clumsy steps
with shaky pipe stem legs,
hesitating, then peers up at me
as if it had something
of importance
to say,

skitters nervously,
unsure of its surroundings
& then with a coarse chirp
of seeming remorse,
shrugs its shoulders,
twitches its tiny wings,

disappears.



Ben Rasnic currently resides in Bowie, Maryland. Author of four published collections (three available from amazon.com), Ben's poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.

Chrysalis by Richard Weaver

When its wings had dried
it took to the new world air.
My wait had been a wish granted.
I collected my hat and paints,
took the brushes to rinse
in a tidal pool, and could not
have been happier had the sun
chosen that moment to wink.



Richard Weaver lives in Baltimore City where he volunteers with the Maryland Book Bank, CityLit, the Baltimore Book Festival, and is the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. He is the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press). Five poems from this MS became the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars, 2005, performed four times to date.

Yellow Butterflies by Richard Weaver

Newly hatched and glistening after birth,
what brings them to lend themselves
to this landscape where I’m living?
This narrow path that bends and bends,
leading me like a gypsy’s heart, straight
from the house where I no longer hang my hat?
Like thoughts they turn in the wind.
Their singular wings catching the light
that suspends them between this world
and the next. Servants of the sun,
they dance on the heads of flowers,
part cloud, part rain, or catapult into the mind
of those who won’t be caught and those like me
who have turned away from life on land.



Richard Weaver lives in Baltimore City where he volunteers with the Maryland Book Bank, CityLit, the Baltimore Book Festival, and is the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. He is the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press). Five poems from this MS became the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars, 2005, performed four times to date.