Covenant by Brandon McQuade

When I look up
I see a doe edging closer

in the early evening fog,
stopping at the bend in the trail

where we have stopped
to have our pictures taken.

When I look up again
over the camera lens

our eyes lock, as if
we’ve made a pact

to endure the remote stillness
of this moment, to welcome

the countless lives
we are both destined to live.



Brandon McQuade is an award-winning poet and founding editor of Duck Head Journal. He is the author of two poetry collections, Mango Seed and Bodies, for which he was awarded the 2022 Neltje Blanchan Memorial Writing Award. He lives in Northern Wyoming with his wife and their children.

January by Brandon McQuade

Snow settles calmly on the handrail.
School is cancelled again,
and down the street another car
has drifted into the ditch.

Snow has no remorse, it just is.
Like a steel trap sinking its teeth
into the hind leg of some unsuspecting prey,
it has no hunger or motive. It does not want.

There’s something soothing about snow,
when it falls like this, when it lays down
like a wet pelt over the earth’s welcoming lap.

When it’s almost as if wind has never existed,
and the world has never known
such quiet.



Brandon McQuade is an award-winning poet and founding editor of Duck Head Journal. He is the author of two poetry collections, Mango Seed and Bodies, for which he was awarded the 2022 Neltje Blanchan Memorial Writing Award. He lives in Northern Wyoming with his wife and their children

Holding On by Jack Powers

A couple in their nineties announce they're getting divorced. Why now?
they're asked. We wanted to wait until the children had died. If children
follow romance, what follows children? I study old neighbors for clues.

Sally sits on our stonewall when her hip acts up on walks. Her husband, Phil,
sits beside her and lets her do the talking. What's your name again? she asks me.
They hold hands like seventh graders. Our children are all grown and gone.

Gil and Cindy sit outside when it's warm. He talks openly about her dementia.
When it's cold, she sneaks out of the house and walks. She doesn't go far,
Gil says. I keep an eye on her from the window. She says she's going home.

The Porters kept the house like a museum of knickknacks and photographs.
It smelled like 1962, the year Ben coached the football team to the State title.
He drove the old pick-up. Liz made lunch. She died three days after Ben.

Each anniversary, a couple in their nineties sky dives using one chute.
Asked the secret of their longevity, they said, Make sure you go together.



Jack Powers is the author of Everybody's Vaguely Familiar and Still Love. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere. Jack won the 2015 and 2012 Connecticut River Review Poetry Contests and was a finalist for the 2013 and 2014 Rattle Poetry Prizes. Visit his website at http://www.jackpowers13.com/poetry/.

Surrender by Jack Powers

The river was higher than when we'd forded in the fall, but it was late
and this wide bend in the Housatonic was still the shallowest spot.

So we re-cinched our tents and bags, strapped on our packs
and, under a cloud-shrouded moon, began crossing–Guy first, then Tom
and Sarah, me at the rear for clean-up.

                                                                At sixteen, camping had become
the only time I wasn't fighting to make my life my own. Guy crossed
like a summer stroller, but the lovebirds wobbled. Keep your head down,

I shouted above the river's roar. Test each step. They screamed at the current.
Be the river, I yelled. They laughed, slowed, clasped hands, alternated steps.
I walked in a low stance, spotting with arms held wide.

                                                                                            Sarah then Tom
climbed up the opposite bank with a Whoop! and a Yes! I relaxed and looked up
as the moon broke free of the clouds and laid a rippling sword of reflection

right down the river into my gut. With an Oof, I fell back, floating, surrendering
to the current, a contented speck of the quick river, white moon, black night.



Jack Powers is the author of Everybody's Vaguely Familiar and Still Love. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere. Jack won the 2015 and 2012 Connecticut River Review Poetry Contests and was a finalist for the 2013 and 2014 Rattle Poetry Prizes. Visit his website at http://www.jackpowers13.com/poetry/.

By your bedside by A.R. Williams

You lay in the hospital bed 

with breath heavy as iron,

a face frozen like a retired
pocket watch, and limbs

as numb as the prayers
uttered at your side.



A.R. Williams is a poet from Virginia, USA, and has been published in Anti-Heroin Chic, Briefly Zine, Fevers of the Mind, Ink, Sweat & Tears, among many others. He is also the editor of East Ridge Review and can be found on twitter @andrewraywill.

And That Rain Again by Lorraine Caputo

Misting fog sinks
            into this valley, masking
            the hills, the lanes,

            the sleeping homes 

Masking the fireworks splaying 

            from the Holy Hill 

 

                        3:33 a.m. I am awakened 

                        by the desperate scurries 

                        of a kitten lost 

                        in the maze of my ceiling 

 

Before dawn, through the fog 

            of my dreams, 

            I hear the coos 

            of nesting doves 

Somewhere there a rooster crows 

            & there … & over there 

 

                        Mother wails 

                        for her lost kitten … 

                        … she answers back  

 

& the rain again … 

            again the rain falls … 

Poet-translator Lorraine Caputo’s works appear in over 400 journals on six continents; and 23 collections of poetry – including On Galápagos Shores (dancing girl press, 2019). She is thrice nominated for the Best of the Net Prize. She journeys through Latin America, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth.

Rescue by Martha Christina

1.
I capture the insect
in a paper cup, carry it
to my biologist friend
for identification. A true
bug, he laughs. Harmless.

He died that summer
researching in a remote
location. No one could
reach him in time
to save him.

2.
Today’s harmless
true bug crawls up
and down my kitchen
window, carrying loss
in its folded wings.

I capture it in a paper cup,
carry it to the porch railing,
where it sits for a moment as if
reassessing its surroundings,
its chances, then opens its wings.



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.

The Same by Martha Christina

When asked “How’s your
mother?” by those who’d
known her before her
illness, when she was
lovely and lovable. I
learned to say “the
same.” But that was
not to say she was
as she’d been before her
illness, not my father’s
lovely wife, not my
lovable mother. I meant
she was the only way
I knew her: completely
changed; that same.



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.

Parting Ways by Martha Christina

My grandfather planted
and harvested according
to what he learned from
his father, then in turn tried
to teach my father the same.

My father believed
his father could tell him
nothing he needed to know.

And so, they parted ways,

an old-fashioned saying,
full of wisdom, and loss.



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.

Valley of the Sun by Rosalie Hendon

Take Adams, it’s nicer
Julio tells us, driving us from the airport.
They’re supposed to finish all this before the Super Bowl.
He shakes his head.
The traffic cones wink jauntily.
Holes gape in the pavement,
city’s veins exposed to air.

At least the buildings cast shadow.
Palo verdes line the street,
green branches scarred and smooth.
Tiny thorns hide in the feathery leaves.

Those thorns bite, we learn
in the dry arroyos of the Phoenix Mountain Preserve.
Stucco walls and wrought iron fencing
block our way to the street.
A man is cleaning the pool.
He doesn’t see me, waving.
Later I see him drive away in his pickup,
the handle of the pool strainer sticking out the back.

Every year tourists die hiking Camelback,
Abbie warns me.
What time are you hiking?
Bring a lot of water.
Salted peanuts.
It’s snake season.
Watch your feet.
Don’t step on a cactus.
The teddy bear chollas shed pieces of themselves,
scattered along the path.
My coworkers imagine them,
pew pew, shooting out their barbs
like it’s a video game.

A German family was hiking,
another Uber driver tells us.
Did they all die? Tina asks.
No, just the mom. They were all disoriented.
The husband and son left her to get help.
She wandered off, looking for shade.
It was a while before they found her.
She was dead when they did.
Who leaves their wife behind?
Their mom? he asks.
We don’t answer.



Rosalie Hendon is an environmental planner living in Columbus, Ohio. She started a virtual poetry group in 2020 during quarantine that has collectively written over 200 poems. Her work is published in Change Seven, Planisphere Q, Call Me [Brackets], Entropy, Pollux, Superpresent, Cactifur, and Fleas on the Dog.

Ringo by Rosalie Hendon

“You better get up,” my brother warns,
“You’re on his level now.”

Ringo paws, sneezes, wedges his head under me.
His doleful eyes entreat--
centuries of artificial selection
making him irresistible.
Big-eyed fur baby to coddle
and dress in Christmas sweaters.

My brother has fallen sway,
latest convert to Ringo’s cult of personality.
He takes him on long walks,
lets him ride shotgun,
carries him over thickets of thorns.

But here I am, scratching behind his ears,
smoothing the velvety fur on his head,
enthralled by those beseeching brown eyes.

Americans spend enough on their pets’ birthdays,
I once read,
to end world hunger.



Rosalie Hendon is an environmental planner living in Columbus, Ohio. She started a virtual poetry group in 2020 during quarantine that has collectively written over 200 poems. Her work is published in Change Seven, Planisphere Q, Call Me [Brackets], Entropy, Pollux, Superpresent, Cactifur, and Fleas on the Dog.

Am I Real? by Doug Holder

sometimes
i wonder.
i feel
like the mist
a transitory ghost
that dissipates
into the ether
a trail of vaporous
cigarette smoke
i feel
like an empty
glass
among cups that
runneth over
when the clouds
roll in
i want to join them
i want to billow
far above
and far away.



Doug Holder (he) is the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press and the Co-President of the New England Poetry Club.

Twigs and Trinkets by Laurie Kuntz

When you were a child,
every remnant of a stick,
a lost button, a flattened penny,
that random feather in the grass
was a gift from the fairy godmother,
who knew our every step, our planned journeys
to the market, movie, or park,
ball and bat in hand, this was magic,
not the disappearing kind, but the magic
of what can be rescued from under a tree,
in a sidewalk crack, or from a trinket
left on a wooden park bench.
Random gifts, fallen plum blossoms,
bestowed by wind and neglect,
then discovered like a shuffled card
from a deck of tricks,
leaving you in awe of all that is offered.



Laurie Kuntz's fifth poetry collection, Talking Me Off the Roof, is published by Kelsay Books. Her other poetry books are available from Finishing Line Press, Texas Review Press, and Amazon. She has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net Prize. Visit her at: https://lauriekuntz.myportfolio.com/

Looking for a Happy Ending by Margaret Duda

Jack and Rose, madly in love,
are up to their necks in freezing water
after the Titanic hits an iceberg
and sinks on the TV screen
in our daughter’s guest room.

We hold onto each other
like life rafts during six weeks
of drug trials two hours away.
On the nights I stay, you insist
we watch the Titanic together,
memorizing meaningful lines.

Open your eyes.
I’ve got everything I need
right here with me.
When the ship docks,
I am getting off with you.
Do not let go of my hand.
I will never let go.

Did you hope that if we watched
it over and over again, the Coast Guard
would rescue Jack too and doctors
would find a cure for your cancer
and neither Rose nor I would
end up weeping in sorrow?

But life and movies don’t always
have happy endings, as we discovered.
In the freezing water, Jack helps Rose
onto a wooden plank for one
and hangs on as long as he can,
but finally dies of hypothermia.
Rose is saved by a returning lifeboat,
then rescued by the steamship Carpathia.
You die in your own bed at home,
leaving me to sail on alone
on our own ship of dreams.



Margaret Duda is a poet, short story writer (one made the distinguished list of Best American Short Stories), author of five non-fiction books, and is on the final draft of an immigrant family saga novel. She also traveled to forty countries and sold travel photographs to the New York Times for 10 years. She will have a book of poetry published by Kelsay Press next spring entitled I Come from Immigrants. The poem above is from that book.

Saying Goodbye to Bobby by Sharon Waller Knutson

Vultures feast on a coyote
carcass as we caravan
along the Superstition Highway
from Queen Valley to Superior
like we did for decades
with Bobby, the leader
of the band, to eat
Chimichangas and bean
burritos at Los Hermanos
and drink beer and play gigs
at Porters, Bobby’s growly deep voice
booming louder than a microphone
when he sang “Sixteen Tons” and “Lodi”
for six decades, now silenced.

Those of us who outlive our legend
inhale the crisp mountain air
as we stop along the side of the road
and climb the hill to the top of the tunnel
between Superior and Globe to honor
his last wishes. I see Bobby in his wool
Long Johns straddling a cloud canoe
in the blue sea sky on Top of the World,
his mouth making music as he strums
an acoustic guitar. Wanda with wings
flies beside him playing the bass
with Gene in his goatee playing the dobro
as he floats on his back next to Bobby.
As Bobby’s blue eyes peer over his bushy
beard, his straw cowboy hat he had worn
at every gig is whipped by the wind
and boomerangs down the cavern,
followed by his ashes swirling like smoke.
And we look up into the sky and Bobby is gone.



Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in Arizona. She has published nine poetry books, including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields (Flutter Press 2014), What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say and Trials and Tribulations of Sports Bob (Kelsay Books 2021), and Survivors, Saints, and Sinners and Kiddos and Mamas Do the Darndest Things (Cyberwit 2022). Her work has also appeared recently in Discretionary Love, Impspired, GAS Poetry, Art and Music, The Rye Whiskey Review, Black Coffee Review, Lothlorien Review, Silver Birch Press, Trouvaille Review, ONE ART, Mad Swirl, The Drabble, Gleam, Spillwords, The Muddy River Review, Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, Red Eft Review, and The Five-Two.

Things I Keep from My Wife by Jean Ryan

That small scratch in our new car, at least until she notices.

Broken egg yolks. I give her the perfect yellow rounds, the slightly bigger shrimp, the cookie with more chocolate chips. I am nothing if not vigilant.

News of animals, their misfortunes. Hopefully she has not seen these stories. I wouldn't know.

Worry about her health, especially her asthma. My anxiety will not help her breathe.

Worry about my own health. The little things. My body is my job, not hers.

Silly, daily mistakes I make. Which might, at this age, cause her concern.

My sullied childhood. This is what therapists are for, to hear the words that must be said to those who will not be gutted.

Behavior I regret, the pages of our book I want to rip out. Admission is not absolution. Instead of soiling her with these images, I offer myself now, the improved version, the best I can muster. So far.



Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in coastal Alabama and believes that retirement is highly underrated. She has published four books, and her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies. https://jean-ryan.com/

On Sunday Morning by Jean Ryan

New to this muggy sprawl of bayous and billboards,
I keep forgetting the rules.
I pop into the store for some milk, bread, cheese,
then grab a bottle of wine on my way out—
an afterthought really, I’m innocent as a cookie.
But the cashier seizes my bottle,
looks at me as if I tossed a puppy
into traffic, and tells me again
that she cannot sell alcohol on Sundays
“Till ONE PM.”
Never mind that I don’t believe
in clock-watching deities,
or in deities at all,
unless you count butterflies,
and the northern lights,
and redwood trees.
This is God’s country,
where you can buy a gun
but not a beer
on Sunday morning.



Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in coastal Alabama and believes that retirement is highly underrated. She has published four books, and her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies. https://jean-ryan.com/