Mother and Child by Greg Watson

Just across the street, where yet another
sleek, modern apartment complex has arisen,
seemingly overnight, I can spy the figure
of a woman in one window, many stories up,
gently swaying, her baby blanketed and held closely,
moving perhaps to a music which only they
can hear, or to the silence they share between
them, framed within this moment, far above
the winter groans of traffic below, a maddening
wind rushing the clouds along, rattling the
tiny metal doors of streetlamps and flagpoles,
bending the trees one way, then another.
I look away, only for a moment, and of course
they are gone, the window glass shimmering with
winter blues, an amber-tinted lightbulb
reflected like a distant star, slowly receding
from view on such a cold and bitter morning,
just now beginning to stir, just now
beginning to wake into the story of itself.



Greg Watson's work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. He is the author of nine collections of poetry, most recently The Sound of Light. He is also co-editor with Richard Broderick of The Road by Heart: Poems of Fatherhood.

D.A.V. Thrift Store by Greg Watson

Another nowhere job in my early twenties was
the D.A.V. Thrift Store on University Avenue,
unloading and pricing junk merchandise
as it rolled in off the box trucks.

Used toasters, baby strollers, bedding,
odds and ends, those old man cardigan sweaters
which I had suddenly grown fond of.
Harry, already in his 60s, black brille-cremed hair,
pencil mustache, blue-green Merchant Marine
tattoo fading into itself, chain-smoked
throughout the workday, shaking his head
in wonder at the myriad things
people were willing to pay money for.

He had eyes for Gina, the young, blonde cashier,
doughy-faced, quiet, and disarmingly naive.
Then, there was the middle-aged man who had
been permanently banned from the store
for obsessively sniffing women's shoes,
kneeling before the rack in a form of obeisance
or defeat, a grossly tragic or comedic form of
loneliness, depending on your perspective.

We were all doing time in our own way,
students, retirees, and the occasional criminal,
going nowhere on a daily basis.
Except, as it turns out, Harry and Gina,
who ran away together without notice, sending
a postcard-sized photo back months later
of no determinable location: trees bent
into question marks, and long grass waving,
sparks of blue water in the background.

"Wish you were here," was all it read.
And I would venture that every one of us,
without exception, certainly did.



Greg Watson's work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. He is the author of nine collections of poetry, most recently The Sound of Light. He is also co-editor with Richard Broderick of The Road by Heart: Poems of Fatherhood.

A Day That Lost Its Meaning by Heidi Slettedahl

How do you celebrate the day that lost its meaning?
My parents’ wedding anniversary, unmarked,
            no calendar line reminding me.
            And yet, it nudges a fleeting thought,
            a memory of cards once made or bought
The end date unremarked and unrecalled in specificity:
a date in May not emblazoned in my heart.



Heidi Slettedahl is an academic and a US-UK dual national who goes by a slightly different name professionally. She lives in western New York with her husband and two Springer Spaniels. She has been published in a variety of online literary journals.

A Long Strange Trip by Ruth Bavetta

They say the human body replaces its cells every seven years.
That means I have been 12.285714 different people.

The timid little girl who ate toast and tea with her grandmother
became the teenager who ordered a hamburger and fries

for breakfast and wanted to be left alone became the young adult
enamored with guitars and folksingers and spaghetti with garlic

became the adult who married twice and was happy
with sardines instead of macaroons, crackers rather than cookies.

But now I’m old and have fallen under the sweet spell
of Cherry Garcia, an extended, rambling improvisation

of the melody of maraschinos, grace notes of chocolate,
soaring solo of cream. I want to make things up as I go along,

wandering among the notes, seeking the sweetness,
longer and longer and longer before the music stops.



Ruth Bavetta’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Nimrod, North American Review, Slant, American Journal of Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies. She has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Her fifth book, What’s Left Over, won the Future Cycle Poetry Book Prize for 2022.

Apology to My Ex Husband by Ruth Bavetta

What should I call you? Lover, father,
breadwinner, handyman, controller,
suitor for the unsuitable?

I’m sorry for the intersection
of promises crossed and abandoned
at the lip of the fault line, for evenings

found wanting, for the blatant
and the subtle, but not for the life
I found between the pages of my days.

I’m sorry for always wearing red,
for misunderstanding the depth
of your longing for black and white.

I’m sorry you are gone and yet not sorry.
Were you happy before the end? I could not
hear you when you did not speak.



Ruth Bavetta’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Nimrod, North American Review, Slant, American Journal of Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies. She has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Her fifth book, What’s Left Over, won the Future Cycle Poetry Book Prize for 2022.

Counterfeit Cowboy by Sharon Waller Knutson

He wore a black ten-gallon hat
and snakeskin boots. Levi’s
so tight they painted his legs blue.

I never saw a gun, but he said
in Texas, he wore a Saturday
night special in a holster on his hip.

All of my friends did, he said.
Murderers got six years
and victims got death.

He said he went to high school
in Lubbock with Waylon
Jennings and drove George

Jones home from the bars
when he was too drunk
to drive himself. But he said

a lot of things like I do
and Till death do us part
with a mistress on the side,

sexy as a sirloin sandwich
on rye with sweet pickles,
mayo, and mustard.

After his wedding to Wife No. 3,
days before our divorce was final,
I figured everything was a lie,

until I found the photo album
with pictures of him drinking
whisky with Waylon and George.



Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist and a widely published poet who lives in a wildlife habitat in Arizona. She has published ten poetry books including: What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say (Kelsay Books 2021,) Survivors, Saints, and Sinners (Cyberwit 2022), and The Vultures are Circling (Cyberwit 2023.) Her poems have appeared most recently in ONE ART, Black Coffee Review, Verse-Virtual, and Your Daily Poem.