At Big Bend by Denise Provost

More water in it, once, the Rio Grande -
even rapids roughed its winding run
through what was wall-less desert.

On its southern side, where trade has made
the border porous, maquiladoras sprawl
under an unremitting sun.

Country women travel here,
eager to toil in broiling factories -
a better fate than starving by degrees.

It’s spring. The cactus blooms, spectacular.
Hummingbirds sip nectar; hover
over hot springs on the Mexican side -

although they easily could cross
El Rio’s shifting width, without
presenting any visas or passports.



Denise Provost has published two poetry collections, and in Ibbetson Street, Muddy River Poetry Review, qarrtsiluni, Poetry Porch, Constellations, and Light Quarterly. Twice Pushcart-nominated, Provost won Best Love Sonnet in the 2012 Maria C. Faust Sonnet Competition, the 2021 Samuel Washington Allen Prize, and was elected co-president of New England Poetry Club in 2022.

Perseverance by Martha Christina

The downy woodpecker
clings to the suet cage,
helps itself to an easy
meal after unsuccessful
drumming on the lilac.

Breaking news loops
through the latest images
of chaos and tragedy.

The downy returns to
the lilac, drums again
at its dying center,
believing nourishment
can be found there.



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. Born and raised in Indiana, she now lives in Bristol, Rhode Island.

Special by Martha Christina

When the young squirrel
stood up on its hind legs
and immediately fell over
on its side, I thought: rabies.
The Animal Control Officer’s
line was busy, her message box,
full, so I hung up, and watched
from the window. It was easy
to distinguish it from others.

This squirrel worked hard to
balance on the old stump
spread with sunflower seeds.
It fell off, repeatedly, its right
rear leg, much shorter than
the other three, compromised.
But it could run away, and did.

If the squirrel’s story were mine
to create, not relate, it would
have been a story with a happy
ending, a metaphor for any
disadvantaged person or group.
Able to overcome hardship and
ignorance, able to convince those
who had been dismissive or hostile
that it was special in the very best
sense of the word.



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. Born and raised in Indiana, she now lives in Bristol, Rhode Island.

Sympathy for the Devil by Howie Good

The old Armory, built to resemble a medieval castle
but undergoing renovations that fall, was imprisoned
in a cage of scaffolding, and imprisoned with it, strangely,
was a tree, tall and dignified, very possibly a white oak,
a capricious branch of which reached through the steel bars
and zigzagged out over the sidewalk and sometimes when
I passed on my way to and from cancer treatment would
shimmer as if for me its few remaining heart-shaped leaves.



Howie Good's newest poetry collection, Frowny Face, a mix of his prose poems and collages, is now available from Redhawk Publications. He co-edits the online journal UnLost, which is dedicated to found poetry.

Desert Lake by Richard N. Mott

          “Mystery ailment killing ducks at Virginia Lake”
          — Reno Gazette-Journal, July 25, 1986

The summer our household came apart
I rose each day at dawn to walk a path
in dust on the heart-shaped shore of
a desert lake, one foot before the other

In a bid for survival against a backdrop
of dying wildlife: a contagion had swept
the lake leaving its flocks of waterfowl
rigid in the water and slowly sinking

Into the whirlpool of weeks that
I kept watch from the footpath
staying one step ahead of a loss
I felt might also pull me under.

Had I advised the stricken birds from
the safety of shore, I’d have told them:
Above all else, keep moving—away from
grief, let your headwinds lift you up.



Richard N. Mott is a late arrival to writing poetry, having spent a career in wildlife conservation and climate advocacy. His work has appeared in After the Pause, Mudfish, and Chiron Review.

The Math of Love by T. R. Poulson

We’re almost lovers, though nothing
has happened—if nothing is the way
his words hold me close as kiss, as touch
of thighs. We’ve talked about
everything, and now
                         I tell him
about the time I found a calf, licked
and left behind. Searched the herd
to find her mama. Only one cow
had the long pink ribbons of birth
beneath her tail. But she had a calf
beside her. I carried the abandoned
heifer calf to the new mama. Her moos,
mild as milk, told me both babies
were hers. She kept forgetting one
sister, keeping the other.
                              I was a child,
but even then I understood—how easy
to love what I can touch, can’t stop thinking
about the lonely twin, licked and left
asleep, her head curved around her body
until she woke up hungry, alone, not
knowing how to live. Not yet knowing
she was loved.



T. R. Poulson, a University of Nevada alum, lives in San Mateo and delivers for UPS in Woodside, California. Her poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in various journals, including Best New Poets, Gulf Coast, and Booth. Find her at www.trpoulson.com, and on social media as @trpoulson.       

Old House by Lorri Ventura

Awaiting demolition
The vacant house sags tiredly on its lot
Cracked windowpanes stare defeatedly at a bulldozer
Creeping steadily forward on lawn-lacerating tracks
In its final moments, the aged structure conjures ghosts
As faded as the stained, peeling wallpaper
Visions of children splash raucously, sloppily,
In its pink tiled bathroom
Doors slam in anger
And burst open in welcome
Sunbeams tickle the faces of late sleepers
At holiday gatherings
Families crowd first at the kitchen table
And then around the piano
The abode feels sapped but satisfied
With the knowledge that it served well
Today the house takes its final measure
It creaks its hardwood floors, gouged by cleated footwear
Jostles moth-eaten Persian carpets rolled up against the walls
Shakes its mouse dropping-covered countertops
Wriggles the wires that dangle above each room as testament
To the former locations of ceiling lights
Sections of its framework are torn off,
Mourned by now useless nails that protrude, dagger-like,
Menacing the passage between living and dining rooms
The house quakes with the weight of memories
The bulldozer’s inexorable approach
Warns the old house that it is time
For surrender to the future —
A trophy home intended to impress
The once venerable homestead heaves one last shudder
(An onlooker swears she hears it sigh)
As the mighty machine relentlessly pushes
Up against its outer walls
Then, with a mighty roar that sounds somehow celebratory,
The old house collapses



Lorri Ventura is a retired special education administrator living in Massachusetts. Her poems also have been featured in All Poetry, Mad Swirl, Parapraxis, Quabbin Quills, and Writing in a Woman's Voice.

November Edits by Brendan Constantine

This afternoon I rebuild a house,
a street, and your body, leaving out
the sickroom, the neighbor’s wakeful
dog, the blur in your lung. I add

more flowers than there were,
more fits of laughter, the two
deck chairs you never got round
to buying. I’m on the fence about
the fence — I want it to be higher,

that dog farther from your ear,
want more space between you
and your last day. But then
you’d lose the view, the sound

and color of the apricot tree,
the burnt sugar smell you said
you could live in.



Brendan Constantine is a poet and educator from Los Angeles, California. He is the author of several collections of poetry and his work is widely anthologized. He currently teaches at the Windward School and, since 2017, has been developing workshops for writers living with Aphasia and Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI).

Autumn Abundance by Renee Williams

Autumn leaves fall like unfulfilled dreams or unspoken wishes
as Canada geese honk overhead, engaging the V formation
with a lone straggler struggling to catch up.

So much undone, trips not taken, adventures not realized,
motorcycle rides missed to tend to loved ones,
summer flies away on the wings of the hummingbirds, taking our hopes with her.

Red-winged black birds are gone, harbingers of spring,
wanting nothing to do with falling temperatures or frost on cornstalks.
Juncos will arrive soon, demanding only the finest sunflower seeds.

Remaining leaves are golden, oaks the last to turn, autumn rains claiming what they can,
as breezes float through the branches. Squirrels scurry, carrying hickory nuts to their dens.
Stacks of wood are prepared for winter’s wrath of power outages and plummeting temperatures.

My soul is in a cup of warm mocha, a yoga blanket wraps my feet. Early evenings
become the norm, darkness descending, carrying a stillness so respected, a hush so soothing,
a solitude signaling surrender.



Renee Williams is a retired English instructor, who has written for Guitar Digest, Alien Buddha Press, and Fevers of the Mind.

Sometimes We Try by Judith Sornberger

          Mount Saviour Monastery, February 2020

The pasture snow is bright as an unmarked page
as I saunter past after a morning at the desk.
Fir trees in the distance could be a chorus
line of nuns in crisp white habits,
or anything else I might imagine. Except

dead ahead, on my right, I see the frenzied
jerking of a deer, her bleeding hind leg caught
between fence wires. My soothing words as I climb
the snowbank don’t fool her. She knows
my kind—the ones who build fences, shoot her sisters.

But as I strain to pull the wires apart, she drops
to her knees--waiting, perhaps hoping. Once
I catch my finger between the wires, panic
when they won’t release me. My pain must be
sharp as her fear, but I’m not the one bleeding.

When I release myself, I huff and puff
up the hill to borrow wire clippers.
Find my friend who drives us back to the deer.
All the while we hope she’s broken loose,
but, of course, she hasn’t.

The clippers are made for lighter wire,
but we take turns cutting, twisting, pulling—
surprised when the wire lets go.
The deer limps to a copse of trees,
and we wince to see her white bone.

The firs shiver in the wind, silent witnesses like us,
praying she’ll make it, knowing she probably won’t.
It’s cold. She’s in shock. Come darkness, coyotes
will hunt her. All night my pinkie finger throbs—
the welt a token of another creature’s terror.



Judith Sornberger’s most recent poetry collection is The Book of Muses (Finishing Line Press). She’s the author of four full-length poetry collections and five other chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Prairie Schooner, The Comstock Review, Presence, Windhover, and The Grotto and have received four Pushcart nominations. She is a professor emerita from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania. www.judithsornberger.net

Thanking My Mother for Checking Out Poetry by Judith Sornberger

I see you in the new suburban branch library
on a hot July afternoon like the ones when
we were kids and came home early from the pool
to visit the library with you. Back then it was in
an old church, the air smelling of sacred mustiness
in the semi-darkness. You’d head to Adult Fiction
while each daughter found her favorite section—
for me Nancy Drew and Judy Bolton.
We’d meet at the circulation desk with our bounty—
a bundle of six books each. Talk about amazing grace!
Two decades later you’ve found your way to Poetry,
a single shelf, probably half empty, hoping to solve a mystery—
why a daughter of yours would follow a love of writing poems
to grad school when she’s a single mother with two kids
to support. I wish I could see the titles before you.
I hope you’ll find Whitman, whose poems are bighearted
as you. Nature mystic that you are, maybe Dickinson
and Frost. Clifton since you love living in a woman’s body.
Brooks for music leading to new neighborhoods.
A nice collection of haiku perhaps, and I think you’d get a kick
out of cummings. Please let there be no Plath.
She would only make you worry, and you’ve worried enough
about your eldest daughter who fell for this aisle
of words you’re following her into.



Judith Sornberger’s most recent poetry collection is The Book of Muses (Finishing Line Press). She’s the author of four full-length poetry collections and five other chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Prairie Schooner, The Comstock Review, Presence, Windhover, and The Grotto and have received four Pushcart nominations. She is a professor emerita from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania. www.judithsornberger.net

Two Blue Horses by Richard Weaver

          -Inspired by Franz Marc's painting of the same name

dancing in flame
around a towering cedar,
fearless bookends.
No moon calls them.
No moon demands
they follow in its footsteps.
The sun has taken
a rare day away
and sees no reason
to be involved.
Between each horse
a single heart beats:
desire and ambition.
Flesh and spirit.
The world seeps
and the horses know
more than they can say
to the hand that creates them,

to the life           balancing.



Post-Covid, Richard Weaver has returned as the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. Among his other publications: conjunctions, Louisville Review, Southern Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, Coachella Review, FRIGG, Hollins Critic, Xavier Review, Atlanta Review, Dead Mule, Vanderbilt Poetry Review, and New Orleans Review. He’s the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and wrote the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005) which has been performed 3 times in Alabama, and once at Juilliard in NYC. He was one of the founders of the Black Warrior Review and its Poetry Editor for the first three years. Five poems from his Franz Marc manuscript will be appearing in the Alabama Anthology (Nov. 2023). His 200th prose poem was recently accepted.

Two Blue Horses by Franz Marc

Yellow Seated Female Nude by Richard Weaver

         -Inspired by Franz Marc's painting of the same name

Dearest Prince,

When my Dresden letter to you
returned today, I was distressed
and felt a moment of panic,
and wondered if you had wandered 

beyond this earth and its naked eyes. 

And then I remembered the water cure.

Kneipp’s early answer to distress.
I was relieved to know you were whole 

and that our worries were without merit. 

Please forgive me for my doubtfulness. 

My vision was obscured by my heart.

You are our cloud of knowing.
Be sure of that. Be comforted.
We are your hosts. We wish
we were worthy angels in flesh.
Our apologies for being less.
                           - the Blue Rider

Post-Covid, Richard Weaver has returned as the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. Among his other publications: conjunctions, Louisville Review, Southern Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, Coachella Review, FRIGG, Hollins Critic, Xavier Review, Atlanta Review, Dead Mule, Vanderbilt Poetry Review, and New Orleans Review. He’s the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and wrote the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005) which has been performed 3 times in Alabama, and once at Juilliard in NYC. He was one of the founders of the Black Warrior Review and its Poetry Editor for the first three years. Five poems from his Franz Marc manuscript will be appearing in the Alabama Anthology (Nov. 2023). His 200th prose poem was recently accepted.

Yellow Seated Female Nude by Franz Marc

white pony by Bonnie Proudfoot

The white pony died on a January night,
it might have been below 0, no snow,
just one of those clear, cold-snap nights.
He died where he liked to stand, just outside
the barn, while our other pony, the gold one,
would stand just inside, seeking shelter,
nose to nose. From the barn I saw him,
as if asleep, but frozen already, legs splayed,
no cloud of breath, no warmth left. When
we got him he was old, maybe thirty,
judging by the wear on his teeth, a lifetime
of grinding. He'd been a coal mine pony,
and lost his right eye, the socket healed
into a pink fist of scar tissue, the other eye
pale blue with a dark grey center, bloodshot,
pink lashes, a short white mane, a small
round white belly that sagged like an
unmade day bed without springs, his spine,
a line of rocks in a shallow stream, his withers
a shaggy snowy hillock. We called him Cyclops.
Why not? And saddled him up at birthday parties
and sleepovers. Unlike the other pony,
he never tried to buck or shy. We led him
around the paddock, or set him out to
graze, watched him outside in the rain,
the snow, his pink lashes barely blinking, tail
flicking flies, pink hooves smaller than my palms.
I used to picture him, hunched in some tunnel,
carting wagons of black sooty rock, keeping
his head down. A small thing, glowing. He
made it out. We waited until the ground
thawed, started digging not far from the barn,
where the hillside sloped away. It could've
been half a day, piling stones and clay, then
we hitched up the other pony, and guided
the traces as he dragged the small white stiff
shell of his only friend. One living pony, sides
heaving with a weight barely possible to know,
one dead one, shut eye toward the ground,
open eye staring empty at the sky.



Born in NY, Bonnie Proudfoot now resides in Athens, Ohio. She writes poetry, reviews, fiction, and essays. Her novel, Goshen Road (Swallow Press, 2020) received WCONA’s Book of the Year and was long-listed for PEN/Hemingway. Her chapbook, Household Gods, (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2022), includes poems published in Red Eft Review.

Kindness by Penelope Moffet

          For Dick Bogue

Knowing it was his last night,
he didn’t eat or drink
because he knew
his bladder and his bowels
would empty. He wished
to spare Jane too much mess.
A kind man, Dick.
Her friend Molly had arrived
so Jane could get some rest.
He heard rain thrum the roof
and smiled. Water coursed
through desert washes
waking seeds, waking
creatures underground.
Molly soothed him
with her presence,
finally dozed, jet-lagged.
Thunder. Harder rain.
He pulled the tubes
out of his nose.
It was the emphysema
that trapped him in the bed
but Jane is sure
it was his heart
that took him out.



Penelope Moffet is the author of three chapbooks, Cauldron of Hisses (Arroyo Seco Press, 2022), It Isn’t That They Mean to Kill You (Arroyo Seco Press, 2018), and Keeping Still (Dorland Mountain Arts, 1995). Her poems have been published in many journals, among them One, ONE ART, Natural Bridge, Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor, and The Rise Up Review.

Stuttering Breath by Penelope Moffet

Rhythmic sweep of the sprinkler
in early morning,
stuttering breath as it swipes
across ragged grass,
honeysuckle, ladders leaning on
the weathered termite-bitten
wood of the garage wall.
Too early for the wet
heat to rise, the unseasonal
moisture in the air, here
at the brink of summer,
the stepping-off
from glorious bloom
to drying-out.

On the road north,
golden grasses mix with
chartreuse growth and,
a little higher,
clefts and hills carpeted
with gray-green chaparral
and upthrust spikes
of Spanish Bayonet,
Our Lord’s Candle.
Sunflowers nod godheads
in ditches by the road.
A careless or deliberate light
tossed from a car
and all of it would burn.
I tell myself
I’m done with fear.



Penelope Moffet is the author of three chapbooks, Cauldron of Hisses (Arroyo Seco Press, 2022), It Isn’t That They Mean to Kill You (Arroyo Seco Press, 2018), and Keeping Still (Dorland Mountain Arts, 1995). Her poems have been published in many journals, among them One, ONE ART, Natural Bridge, Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor, and The Rise Up Review.

My Children Ask Me Why I Have So Much Stuff by Tamara Madison

Your preschool art projects:
Hand-painted tiles, clumsy clay pots
brought home for Mother’s Day
A box of books you made in kindergarten
A lock from your first hair cut
A tin of your teeth
Boxes full of photographs of you at all stages:
Naked, toothless, chubby
As Superman in a Halloween parade
Onstage, a Nutcracker snowflake
You playing with cousins
Walking Auntie’s shelty
Sitting on Grandpa’s lap
Your suntanned face bobbing in a crowd
at summer camp
You in tassled cap and gown
Why are you keeping all this crap? they ask
I don’t tell them why I keep these remnants,
don’t say that to throw away mementos
feels like inviting death



Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbooks The Belly Remembers (Pearl Editions) and Along the Fault Line (Picture Show Press), and three full-length volumes of poetry, Wild Domestic, Moraine (Pearl Editions), and Morpheus Dips His Oar (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions). Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, the Writer’s Almanac, Sheila-Na-Gig, Worcester Review, and many other publications. She is a swimmer and a dog lover. More about Tamara can be found at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.

Foggy Morning by Tamara Madison

I have given my sister's name
to the stateliest, most graceful
in a row of sycamore trees.
I wade through damp grass
in muffled sunlight to visit her.

I need to go there,
need to touch her trunk,
look up into the patient wisdom
of her branches, listen to the fog
drip from her leaves, feel
the loss of her wring my chest.

I start for home.
The fog begins to lift.
Warm day ahead, a bit of summer.
The sycamores are going sallow
in slanted autumn light.

A cluster of geranium blossoms
greets me at home—her lipstick.
I remember the person she was
when she wore that shade.



Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbooks The Belly Remembers (Pearl Editions) and Along the Fault Line (Picture Show Press), and three full-length volumes of poetry, Wild Domestic, Moraine (Pearl Editions), and Morpheus Dips His Oar (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions). Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, the Writer’s Almanac, Sheila-Na-Gig, Worcester Review, and many other publications. She is a swimmer and a dog lover. More about Tamara can be found at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.

Staying Alive by Sharon Waller Knutson

My father was pushing
82 - the same age
as I am now - when
he went to sleep and never
woke up. When I succumb
to sleep in the darkness
I am surprised when the sun
shines and birds sing.

It is pitch black and I awaken
to the crowing of the rooster
and know he is communicating
with his hens like he does
in the daytime when they stroll
across our property.

I hope the chickens are in the coop
and the feral cat is curled up
on the couch in the sunporch
because I hear the yipping
of a pack of coyotes hoping
for raw meat for breakfast.

I close my eyes again and sunlight
splashes me awake. The chickens
are cackling and pecking
and the tabby is standing
outside the door waiting
for his breakfast and unlike my father
I have lived to see another day.



Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in Arizona. She has published eleven poetry books, including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields (Flutter Press 2014), What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say (Kelsay Books 2021), Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob (Kelsay Books 2021), Survivors, Saints and Sinners (Cyberwit 2022), Kiddos & Mamas Do the Darndest Things (Cyberwit 2022), The Vultures are Circling (Cyberwit 2023), and The Leading Ladies in My Life (Cyberwit 2023.) Sharon's twelfth collection, My Grandfather is a Cowboy, is also forthcoming from Cyberwit in January of 2024. Her work has appeared in more than 50 different journals and she is the editor of Storyteller Poetry Journal, which is an online publication dedicated to promoting narrative poetry.

The Artist Takes Down Her Show in Which Not a Single Painting Sold by Shoshauna Shy

and pauses between hauling canvases
across the rough floorboards to watch
from the doorway as a bus brakes
at the curb outside, exhales and lowers
itself to discharge a passenger.
Wordlessly, a young woman in cut-offs
and sandals, handbag swinging, leaps
from the vehicle and strides away.
The bus lifts itself back into position
like an elephant coming out of a kneel,
lumbering on to do this thankless job
at the next stop, and the next.



Shoshauna Shy's poems have been made into videos, produced inside taxi cabs, and even decorated the hind quarters of city buses. Not a monogamous writer, she works on 7-11 pieces at the same time. She is also a flash fiction author— but that's another story!

Playground by Shoshauna Shy

Substitute teachers are never
as good as the originals.
They forget names, rely
on notes, glance at the clock
too much.

And then that word chosen.
When it’s from a batch of discards,
how special is that?
And don’t forget: chosen once
means not chosen a bunch
of other times.

Stand-in. Who were you expecting?
What ghost am I competing with?

The word real.
All the kids who ask
“Is she your real mom?”
I want to bark, “No, she’s fake.
She’s pretending. So am I.
I’m pretending you didn’t ask
me that.”



Shoshauna Shy's poems have been made into videos, produced inside taxi cabs, and even decorated the hind quarters of city buses. Not a monogamous writer, she works on 7-11 pieces at the same time. She is also a flash fiction author— but that's another story!

fi•bi by A.R. Williams

After my daughter
scaled the tree

an eastern phoebe frightened,
thrashed her wings

like a river
struggling against its

banks, returned to her perch,
and once again

chirped her name.



A.R. Williams is a poet from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley (USA). His debut chapbook, Funeral in the Wild, is slated to be released with Kelsay Books in February 2024. He can be found on twitter and instagram @arw_poetry

A Thunderclap of the Mind by A.R. Williams

I can still see your
blue face,
swallowed by
an oxygen mask, your
mother’s consciousness
returning like
a weathered ship
finding its way back
to shore,
and my hands shuddering
like a sail at sea,
even now,
as I zip up your sleeper.



A.R. Williams is a poet from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley (USA). His debut chapbook, Funeral in the Wild, is slated to be released with Kelsay Books in February 2024. He can be found on twitter and instagram @arw_poetry

A Clean Well-Lighted Place by Doug Holder

          * inspired by Ernest Heminway's short story

All I want is a clean
well-lighted place,
perhaps the silhouette of a tree
shadowing my face.
A beer so dark
and deep
it loosens the secrets
that I keep.

The polished bar
gleaming with Mahogony
serenity.

No music
to break the spell,
a table,
an old man
before he faces
the stygian kiss of
the night
where he
dwells.



Doug Holder is the co-president of the New England Poetry Club and the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville, MA.

When That April by David Ram

After the widow’s daylong funeral,
the grieving guests departed, grown children
returned to their lives, and timed lamps appeared,

the windows of her empty house emit
an amber glow along the gravel road,
illuminating yellow daffodils.

In several months, the realtor arrives,
admires the lady ferns flooding the curb,
the tiger lilies lining the driveway,

and the kousa dogwood draping the walk,
but inside, he pulls wilted violets
from alcove sills and trashes plastic pots.

When a fluke October blizzard buries
the garden, the new woman and her two
little children build a snowman with eyes

of stone, a carrot nose, and pine-branch arms;
below the soppy snow, daffodils dream
of flowering and form their daughter bulbs.



David Ram lives in western Massachusetts, where he practices poetry writing and dory rowing: his recent poems appear in Naugatuck River Review and Grand Little Things; his rowboat appears regularly on Nashawannuck Pond.

Passing Cars by Corey D. Cook

My seventh chapbook, Passing Cars, was published by Maverick Duck Press yesterday and is now available for purchase on their website. See the link below... I hope you will consider ordering a copy. Your support would mean a great deal to me and this small / independent press.

Passing Cars by Corey D. Cook - Payhip

Life, come back to me by Gillian Cummings

Life, come back to me.
Star in the fog. Lone

calf in the far field.
Blackbird nestled in night.

And the sweet, shy song
of the first spring rain.



Gillian Cummings is the author of two poetry collections: The Owl Was a Baker's Daughter (CLP, 2018), and My Dim Aviary (Black Lawrence Press, 2016). She lives in Catskill, NY with her composer husband and her parrot.

I say, "I am lost" by Gillian Cummings

I say, I am lost.

Find a path back,

you tell me,
your hands holding
breadcrumbs.

But they disappear—

birds’ beaks like dusk.



Gillian Cummings is the author of two poetry collections: The Owl Was a Baker's Daughter (CLP, 2018), and My Dim Aviary (Black Lawrence Press, 2016). She lives in Catskill, NY with her composer husband and her parrot.

Ruin by Jean Ryan

It can start early,
through no fault of your own.
Someone tampers with you
and from that time on
you will never look at a father
without suspicion, will never
see children playing without
wondering: which ones?
And then there’s plain old bad luck—
illness and accidents and terrible timing,
the steady toll of being alive;
along with the harm you do to yourself
as you move through your mapless days:
detours, bargains, lapsed resolutions.

Still your heart breaks for the world
and doesn't care that you wake in ruins
to see what can be salvaged.



Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in coastal Alabama. Her writing has appeared in many journals and anthologies. 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. She has also published a novel, Lost Sister, and a book of nature essays, Strange Company. Her first poetry collection, A Day Like This, will be published in May 2024 by Kelsay Books. https://jean-ryan.com/

How to Survive Cancer by Howie Good

A neighbor of ours once worked
as a counselor of some sort
in a cancer ward. She told me
when she caught up with me
the other day she could predict
just by looking which patients
would survive and which wouldn’t.
The ones who made it, she said,
exhibited a positive attitude.
Then she handed me a baggie
of very finely ground pot.



Howie Good's newest book, Frowny Face, a synergistic mix of his prose poetry and handmade collages, is forthcoming from Redhawk Publications.

Gold by Julianna McCarthy

First the bats
foraging, scouring gnats, mosquitoes
then swallows
snatching mites in the half light
where the cat works his way
through the tall grass
toward the golden orb weaver
waiting for darkness
at her loom
the this, then this
symmetry of slaughter
while an old moon swallows
the light.



Julianna McCarthy is an award-winning Los Angeles poet. Her poems have appeared in the Antioch Review, American Journal of Poetry, Catamaran, Nimrod, Hole in the Head, and others. Her first full-length collection, Night Surgery, is available from Blue Horse Press. She holds an MFA from New England College

Bailing Our Grandson Out of Jail by Sharon Waller Knutson

Hi, Grandpa, the voice on the speaker
phone says. I just got out of the hospital.
I was in a car wreck last night. It was
the pregnant lady’s fault, but they arrested
me. I couldn’t blow in the breathalyzer
because I had blood in my mouth.

Although he mumbles and moans,
I recognize the voice of our oldest grandson,
who works long days to feed his family
of seven in Utah and never drank a drop.

When he says, I love you both, my heart
breaks for our sensitive boy who still
sends us love notes in texts and emails.
I’m in the courthouse. I need bail money
or I’ll go to jail. His voice is shrill
and shreds my heart.

They couldn’t get him on a DUI
so they charged him with reckless
driving and failure to take a breathalyzer,
his attorney says. This young man
has a clean record. If he goes
to jail, he may lose his job and his family.

I am glad he has such a caring attorney.
We offer to pay by debit card or PayPal,
but he says we need to buy two blue dot
gift cards from Walgreens 30 miles away.

My husband shakes his head. Points
to the extreme heat warning. His father
and other grandparents are dead. He’s
counting on us, I say. So we fly down
the highway and call the attorney
from the gift cards section. A woman
wearing a name tag appears.
You’re being scammed, she says.
See he hung up. Call your grandson.

My husband and I stare speechless,
never dreaming that wasn’t our grandson
on the line. He dials and our grandson
answers. He sounds like the imposter,
but he is speaking clearly.
Where are you? I ask. He laughs.
At work. I tell him I’m glad he’s okay.
Your grandparents were scammed,
the Walgreen’s woman informs him
You’re the best grandparents, he texts.

We drive home feeling foolish
but now we understand
my in-laws weren’t senile,
but loving grandparents
when they sent money
to scammers to keep our son
out of jail in Mexico
when he was safe in West Virginia.



Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in Arizona. She has published eleven poetry books, including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields (Flutter Press 2014), What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say (Kelsay Books 2021), Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob (Kelsay Books 2021), Survivors, Saints and Sinners (Cyberwit 2022), Kiddos & Mamas Do the Darndest Things (Cyberwit 2022), The Vultures are Circling (Cyberwit 2023), and The Leading Ladies in My Life (Cyberwit 2023.) Sharon's twelfth collection, My Grandfather is a Cowboy, is also forthcoming from Cyberwit in January of 2024. Her work has appeared in more than 50 different journals and she is the editor of Storyteller Poetry Journal, which is an online publication dedicated to promoting narrative poetry.

Marimba by Chris Butler

Even after the final shot
shatters the sound barrier,
and the officers
in tactical body armor
with semi-automatic
handheld war machines
have swept and cleared
every classroom,
they never hear silence,
as the cell phones
with no
sons or daughters
left to answer
ring until the battery's
are all dead.



Chris Butler is an illiterate poet and an anorexic starving artist from the new world's New England. The 10th and final volume in his "Poems of Pain" collection, Beatitudes, is scheduled for publication in 2023. He also has published a book of poems co-written with Dr. Randall K. Rogers, entitled Dead Beats. He is the co-editor of The Beatnik Cowboy.

Sunny Day after Rain by Russell Rowland

The sun unfortunately waited till the rain
was finished so there was no rainbow to look for

but all in all we were content
with clouds breaking ranks and raindrops shining
on blades of grass like bright students

Glad we ran with newspapers over our heads
as the ground thirsted and the heavens complied

as if nature maintains such balance that everything
comes round all right at end of day

Drooping flowers straightened their shoulders
and looked gratefully to the sky

Farmers nodded in satisfaction while the widow
came indoors with her watering can
and the itsy-bitsy spider went up the spout again



Seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, where he has judged high-school Poetry Out Loud competitions. His work appears in Except for Love: New England Poets Inspired by Donald Hall (Encircle Publications), and Covid Spring, Vol. 2 (Hobblebush Books). His latest poetry book, Magnificat, is available from Encircle Publications.

the beauty of gornergrat by Judith Teich

lake geneva’s graceful shore
disappears behind us as
stark dramatic alpine slopes
loom ahead.
the train rumbles past
groups of hikers
cable cars swaying above valleys
paragliders floating among rocky peaks.

enroute to a solitary hotel
in the shadow of the matterhorn
in zermatt we climb aboard
a small red cogwheel train
rattling up a barren incline.
no roads nor other means
to reach this remote spot,
a small modern hotel that huddles
next to an astronomical observatory
from the nineteenth century.

my son, i hope,
will love this place.
since childhood he has dreamt
of stars and planets and space.
high school intern at nasa
college degree in astronomy and physics
now a high school physics teacher.
after a training program
in particle physics
at world-class cern* in geneva
i have joined him
for a brief journey
into the heart of the alps.

emerging from the cog train
into the sunlight
we stand to crane our necks
at the old dark wood structure
with its shining twin telescope domes.
enthralled at this unfamiliar world
wordlessly we savor the closeness
of craggy snow-covered mountains,
pure air
deep enormous silence.
no other signs of habitation here
just soaring peaks at 10,171 feet
unlike anywhere we have ever been
unlike anything we have ever seen.

we trudge the steep footpath to the hotel
a young concierge shows us to our room
reminding us to rest
and drink water to guard
against the effects of altitude.
my son throws open the huge window
we lean out to exclaim in amazement
at huge eagles and vultures
with outstretched wings
swooping by us inches away
drafting on air currents from the ravine below
sharp pinnacles on every side.

the light begins to fade
as the last cog train of the day
carries a gaggle of noisy day-trippers
down the mountain
leaving us and a few other travelers
in silence and seclusion.
we drift outside to drink in
the brilliant sunset colors
dancing behind the peaks.

curious, we join a group of guests
peering over the terrace wall
at a herd of ibex
on a narrow precipice ten feet below.
the ibex jostle for a turn at a salt lick
vying for our attention
butting heads with their long curved horns
coyly pretending to shove
each other off the tiny ledge.

awake at daybreak
we hastily grab random clothes
stumble to the upper viewing terrace
hoping to capture the sunrise.
high clouds at night
dashed our hopes of stargazing
but the dawn sky
is miraculously blue and cloudless.
we sit frozen, perched on rocky benches
mesmerized by the
incredible stillness
the breathtaking beauty
of the jagged peaks
as they glow from pink and orange to gold.

since he was a toddler
i have traveled with my son
to many beautiful places
but none as magnificent as this.
sharing our travels has always been
a joyful privilege for me
strengthening our close relationship
for more years than i dared hope.

but at age twenty-eight
a new phase of his life begins:
proposing marriage
to his girlfriend
planning their life together.

my happiness for him and their future
is bittersweet, tinged with sadness
knowing that this era of travels
with just the two of us
is ending.
my secret hope is
that our adventures
have meant as much to him
as they have to me.

mid-morning, reluctantly, too soon,
we board the cog train again
descending to catch another train
past the ancient terraced vineyards at lavaux
toward the city of lausanne.
lake geneva shimmers into view
as we nestle close to one another
his head on my shoulder
pensive, silent
both of us hoping to make the spell
last a few moments longer.



*European Center for Nuclear Research



Judith Teich’s personal essays have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, Moment Magazine, The Ravens Perch, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the Washington Post Travel Section, among others. A clinical social worker and mental health services researcher, she lived and worked in Israel for 4 years in her mid-20s, and helped to establish the first community mental health center in Israel, in Jaffa. Upon her return to the U.S. in 1974, she worked in several major teaching hospitals, the National Academy of Sciences, and subsequently for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for 27 years. She is the author/co-author of 40+ peer-reviewed research publications. After retiring from the federal government in 2018, she works as a freelance writer and researcher, and serves as a volunteer for the Montgomery County Literacy Council and the National Park Service.

Rehearsal by Jacqueline Jules

Each time he goes to the hospital,
I rehearse: eating alone,
sleeping alone, having no one
to discuss the morning news with.

And each time he comes home,
I feel like I’m standing
on a bare stage,
not knowing my lines.

He has a new diet, new prescriptions,
a new doctor to consult.

I hurry to the grocery, the pharmacy,
rush to rearrange my calendar
and my hopes, still shaken
by our last rehearsal.



Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021), Itzhak Perlman's Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press, and Smoke at the Pentagon: Poems to Remember (Bushel & Peck, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications. Visit www.jacquelinejules.com

Predictive Powers by Jacqueline Jules

Sonia brought me the scraggly
green stems from her garden.

“Celandine poppy,” she said.
“Blooms a pretty yellow.”

I was skeptical.

“Plant them,” she insisted.

The poor things flopped over
when I placed them in the ground.

I didn’t expect them to last the night,
much less perk up so quickly, lifting
hand-shaped leaves toward the sun.

People or plants.
I can never tell who will thrive
and who will wither.

My therapist suggests a mantra:
“You have no predictive powers.”

She thinks meditative repetition
will be calming
through my husband’s chemo.

It could be.
But not like standing
at my patio door seeing
those scraggly stems
grow strong in my backyard.



Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021), Itzhak Perlman's Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press, and Smoke at the Pentagon: Poems to Remember (Bushel & Peck, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications. Visit www.jacquelinejules.com

Orbit / Obit by Carolynn Kingyens

I would type orbit
instead of obit
right after your pretty name,
which meant Messenger of God,
and the middle name
of my oldest,
in the Google search engine
and thought to myself
how fitting the typo — orbit
since the majority
of my life would be
spent orbiting around
you and your stream
of stories where I'd like
to cast myself
as your protector
and confronter
of demons;
the strong one,
and an absolute fool.

It was my therapist
who said it had a name,
this thing we shared,
our once closeness —
enmeshment,
the blurred point
where you ended
and I began.

Think of us as a patchwork quilt,
or a paper doll chain
holding hands for all eternity;
smooth edges
blurred and frayed
at random.

A few months ago,
I'd watch a Netflix movie,
a true story,
about twin sisters
from England
named June and Jennifer,
who did not speak,
and developed their own
language, becoming
enmeshed, too.

It would be Jennifer
to die first from
acute myocarditis,
a sudden inflammation
of the heart.

And when I went
no contact a decade ago,
I'd think about you every
single day as I wrote
poetry to ghosts,
and ate until I felt all numb
inside.

After I received the call,
I'd scream Mommy!
Mommy! Mommy!
as a forty-nine-year-old orphan,
rocking myself into oblivion
atop an unmade bed
in a fancy boutique hotel
in Toronto.

My cries muffled
by the sound
of someone vacuuming
right outside my door.



Carolynn Kingyens is the author of two poetry collections Before the Big Bang Makes a Sound and Coupling, both published by Kelsay Books. In addition to poetry, she writes essays, book and film reviews, and short fiction. She is currently working on the completion of a short fiction manuscript with the working title Attachment Theory based on a myriad of dysfunctional characters who after plot twists and turns individually arrive at a resigned truth. The title is derived from the quote by the Buddha: "The root of suffering is attachment." Her short story, Bye Bye, Miss American Pie was selected for the Best of Fiction 2021 list.

Gunshots Ring Out by Sharon Waller Knutson

I think my husband
is watching reruns
of Gunsmoke on TV.
But the office is empty.

I hear pop, pop, pop
as I open the door
and my husband shows up
after dodging bullets on the roof

and grabs an orange vest
and a camera and creeps past cactus,
snapping photos of the utility
truck parked in our driveway

and the man in camouflage
firing bullets from a rifle in one hand,
pistol in the other, as he leans
against a No Shooting Sign.

Fish and Game arrest the shooter
as he drives home in the truck
emblazoned with his name
and cell phone number

after my husband faxes
them the photographs.
The judge gives the shooter
a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

But that is no consolation
to the mate of the missing
coyote who got a death sentence
for drinking water at our pond.

We mourn with her as we listen
to her howling her heart
out as she stands vigil
over the body night after night.



Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in Arizona. She has published eleven poetry books, including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields (Flutter Press 2014), What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say (Kelsay Books 2021), Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob (Kelsay Books 2021), Survivors, Saints and Sinners (Cyberwit 2022), Kiddos & Mamas Do the Darndest Things (Cyberwit 2022), The Vultures are Circling (Cyberwit 2023), and The Leading Ladies in My Life (Cyberwit 2023.) Sharon's twelfth collection, My Grandfather is a Cowboy, is also forthcoming from Cyberwit in January of 2024. Her work has appeared in more than 50 different journals and she is the editor of Storyteller Poetry Journal, which is an online publication dedicated to promoting narrative poetry.

Scarlet Sunset (Santa Marta, Colombia) by Lorraine Caputo

Upon the seawall
     people sit to watch
          another sunset

Children still shout, playing
     in the sea, mothers
          call time to go home

Coffee vendors roam with their
     thermoses, hot dog stands &
          make-shift grills are
     being fired up

Madder & apricot run
     across periwinkle heavens
          & fade into twilight

Slowly into the flood-lit
     port steams a ship
          sooting the sky

& once moored, the
     deep hum of its idling
          engines vibrates
     across this bay

& there where the sun
     is sinking beyond, a last
          glow of scarlet



Poet-translator Lorraine Caputo’s works appear in over 400 journals on six continents; and 23 collections of poetry – including In the Jaguar Valley (dancing girl press, 2023). She is a Best of the Net Prize nominee. She journeys through Latin America, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth.

The Beggar by Rose Mary Boehm

A sharp wind
makes me pull down my hat,
tighten my coat.
"Bloody freezing, innit."
He has no gloves.
His blue swollen fingers
barely close around the cup
which rattles in response
to the few coins I let drop.
"Thanks, mate."
He huddles a little deeper
into the recess by the bank’s
cash machine.

"They should move them on.
Bring the neighbourhood down."
I turn. The owner of the complaint
is tall, blonde, sheep-skinned,
with tell-tale signs
of trying to stem the tide of aging.

I suddenly feel guilty by association.
Because I gave him so little?
Because I gave at all?
Because I smiled at her?



A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and seven poetry collections, her work has been widely published in US poetry journals. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

Fuzzy Edges by Rose Mary Boehm

She can see the lake. Heavy tree branches
sag into the water. Reflections.
Dry leaves crunch underfoot.
It’s not so much a memory as a reconstruction
of a day in late fall, thirty years ago,
when the days were shorter, the sun lower,
when he leaned into a northern wind
and held her hand, when the unsaid
stood between them, frozen,
when she tried to study the lines
in his face and he asked her
not to forget him.



A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and seven poetry collections, her work has been widely published in US poetry journals. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

A Small Patch of Perfection by Rose Mary Boehm

A fragment of beach.
Smooth sands, pristine
and untouched by foot or crab.
Not even the gentle Pacific
allows its waves to roll in

as far as this. I see Emilia
at a great distance, having
wobbled with her bucket and spade

to the end of the world.
She turns thoughtfully,
one sandy finger in her mouth,
worry written all over her face.

Birds land at a fair distance.
Approach with in-turned toes
until they feel uneasy. Cock
their heads. Look at me.
Look at her, and chatter.

A small patch of perfection
invites a formal gathering.



A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and seven poetry collections, her work has been widely published in US poetry journals. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

My Father Raises His Voice by Steve Klepetar

Once you argued with the handyman,
whose English was much worse than yours.
He had failed to show up at our apartment
to fix a leaky faucet, which had progressed
from a trickle to a steady stream, and you
were so mad that you raised your voice,
as you almost never did, and he began to cry
as if whatever had beaten him down in his
dreadful life had finally gotten too much.
You patted his shoulder, spoke gently, using
simple words. He nodded his head.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said. “I get tools, I fix,”
and half an hour later the faucet was fine
and you and he were in our tiny kitchen,
drinking beer and nibbling smelly cheese.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. He serves on the editorial staffs of Verse-Virtual and Right Hand Pointing. He is a regular contributor to Lothlorien Poetry Review, One Sentence Poems, and Verse-Virtual.

Disaster Repairs by Shoshauna Shy

My lifeline to food, beer,
a bed, cigarettes
is this foreman at the site
in Boca Raton
after Hurricane Matthew
when he hired me on
without needing a reference,
an address, first name.
Paid me in cash, an
all-around win-win.
So, when I slipped up
at the start of week six,
thought it was sympathy
his drive across town,
the chit-chat in his truck
with a Bill Evans CD
to coat over my shock.
Then he says Good luck here,
brakes at the St. Mary’s ER.
Guess he’d hauled many a joe
to get a finger reattached.
Why I expected he’d keep me
shows I was just plain dumb
considering how I hadn’t
even got the job done.



Shoshauna Shy is the founder of the Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf program. Her poems have recently been published by Poetry South, RockPaperPoem, Write City Magazine, and Pure Slush Books. Her poems have been made into video, produced inside taxi cabs, and even decorated the hind quarters of city buses.

Letter at the Office in Her Mailroom Cubbie by Shoshauna Shy

I am one of the husbands
of your husband’s lovers
states the letter written
on 24-lb. bond
Her fusty-sweatpants Teddy
who snorts when he sleeps?
Spends evenings Velcroed
to his TV-lassoed chair?
You ought to know they meet
in a cabin on Lake Wist
says the pale slanting script
Call me to devise what
our strategy will be
Area code and cell
but no signature
no name

She flips the envelope over
Sees it’s actually addressed
to somebody not her
Lets the paper fall in folds
ordained by its own creases
Rewraps this missive
intended for her boss (7 months
pregnant and married but a year
“to Mr Right who loves me
more than anybody else”)
and positions it discreetly
in its rightful slot–
or drops it in the wastebasket
at the bottom of the stairs?



Shoshauna Shy is the founder of the Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf program. Her poems have recently been published by Poetry South, RockPaperPoem, Write City Magazine, and Pure Slush Books. Her poems have been made into video, produced inside taxi cabs, and even decorated the hind quarters of city buses.

Do What I Know by Richard Fox

Planning my funeral
feels familiar.

Line up poems.
Tune in songs.

Create a program,
calming the house.

Sequence for effect.
Laughter. Tears.

No rehearsal.
Single staging.

Transform errors
into improvisations.

My last feature.
Perform and pretend.

Muted.

Front row.
Box seat.



Richard Fox’s poems feature rock ’n roll and youthful transgressions, but his focus is cancer and hospice from the patient’s point of view. He is the author of eight poetry collections and winner of the 2017 Frank O’Hara Prize. smallpoetatlarge.com

One last loop by Richard Fox

Bailey Dog,
my shadow. Senses
pain, weakness.
Mirrors angst.

Cuddles.
His back, my hip.
Alert to coughing,
addled breaths.

Plan my funeral
procession. Measure
distances from service
to burial to reception.

Which shul shortens
the stress of riding
in grief? Want my family
unburdened by silence.

Choose a rabbi.
Music. Readings. Poems.
Ask difficult favors
that can never be repaid:

eulogies, pallbearers, obituary,
mourners to hold my loved ones
when dirt and gravel
strike wood.

Time is lost in voids.
Mortality, the inescapable escort,
sits next to me
in the backseat.

Bailey has diabetes.
We are old, ill males. Waiting.
Blind, he will guide me
through darkness.



Richard Fox’s poems feature rock ’n roll and youthful transgressions, but his focus is cancer and hospice from the patient’s point of view. He is the author of eight poetry collections and winner of the 2017 Frank O’Hara Prize. smallpoetatlarge.com

Neighbor by Robert Darken

We rake leaves into moldy piles, stuff them
in paper sacks. The neighbor works too, his eyeglasses
spotted with rain. Ruined oak leaves cling
stubbornly to the ground.

This is not the raking I remember from childhood. Leaves
dropped from the twin maples like stemmed stars,
gold and red, woody and fragrant as apples
when my brothers and I in our puffy vests
plunged in, rosy and shrieking, the sky a lake
framed in the maples’ sudden black grasp.

And Dad, gray and strong in his flannel shirt,
prodded flame to whisper in the burn barrel
until the good smoke climbed to the heavens.

That was before he sold our house and moved
to the Home where he sits, watches football
with the volume too loud, the air inside
heavy with microwave dinners, newspapers,
wool sweaters, medicines.

Down the hall a neighbor’s door stands open. From inside
comes the murmur of a radio, the scrape of a stepladder,
the smell of new paint, the smell of vacancy.



Originally from the Midwest, Robert Darken now resides in Connecticut, where he teaches high-school English. His poems have appeared in One Art, The Orchards, and New Verse News.

The Man I See by Robert Darken

I never knew how a life can burn down
like a slow candle, the way my father is and is not
the face at his end of a weekly video call
initiated by a nurse’s aide,
positioned badly in the frame: one eye, silver rim
of eyeglass, bridge of a nose patched long ago
after a carcinoma, thick lips, some teeth,
a missing upper bridge.

Sparse whiskers glint against a sagging throat.
Where do you live now? he asks me,
and I tell him: still Connecticut.
Still a thousand miles from him in Sister Bay.
Is that anywhere near you, Rudy? he asks
the image of my brother in another window.
Rudy is still in California, so no, not close.

At my age it’s still no trouble to conjure a memory
of my father singing O My Darling, Clementine,
as he sits in a lawn chair before a fire
on a family trip to Colorado, or see him
bend the driver’s seat all the way forward
so his three boys can scramble into the back
of the green Ford Maverick during that era
when he drove us to the Field Museum
practically every Saturday. I see him
in a plaid coat and a laughably small blue beanie
stop for a breather in the midst of shoveling snow,
both hands resting atop the wooden shaft.
Was that the same man?
Every moment was a moment that he was becoming
the man I see now on screen.

What do you hear about Helmer? he asks
about his brother, dead more than twenty years.
His hair stands in stalks
like wisps of white smoke
reminding me suddenly of a young Lindbergh
on the tarmac, tousled by an Atlantic wind,
about to pass into the fog and out of sight.



Originally from the Midwest, Robert Darken now resides in Connecticut, where he teaches high-school English. His poems have appeared in One Art, The Orchards, and New Verse News.

What Remains by Robert Darken

Dad never threw anything away, we laugh, chests hollow
and heavy: a dozen toothbrushes, stacks of Christmas cards,
a legal pad where he’d written the name of every Bears quarterback.

We cram books into boxes; drop a desk
with Secondhand Sue. Proceeds go to the food bank, she smiles,
pushing back curls. It’s magic: cast offs made into meals.

We scrub evidence of life: crumbs in the recliner, coffee rings
on the TV tray. The sink guzzles lemon juice, soy sauce.
In three days a home becomes a blank page.

We hurry, make choices: Danish porcelain bubble wrapped,
shipped to California; grandma’s hutch goes to charity.
I have someone in mind, says Sue. There’s life in that yet.

Somewhere, a golden clock chimes on the mantle of a stranger.



Originally from the Midwest, Robert Darken now resides in Connecticut, where he teaches high-school English. His poems have appeared in One Art, The Orchards, and New Verse News.

Inheritance by Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue

From all my old relatives – decked out in always
out-of-fashion clothes that stunk of mothballs –
without even a word, I imbibed:

the Great 1900 Storm, Model T's, Doughboys, Charlie Chaplin,
the Lindy, “The Jazz Singer,” the 1929 Crash, the Depression, WPA,
musicals, big bands, Pearl Harbor, Nazis, Iwo Jima, rationing coupons,
scrap metal drives, VE and VJ Days, the jitterbug, the Bomb,
an economy on high-octane fuel, the Cold War, Korea, Civil Rights
marches, TV, Uncle Miltie, the twist, the sadness of aging –

so many relatives dying so young, the stress of the daily grind
on their minds and bodies, and always the unspoken pressure
to, by God, fit in, to keep up appearances at all costs.



Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue has had poems published in The Texas Observer, Concho River Review, Borderlands, California Quarterly, and two anthologies of Texas poetry. His collection of poetry What I Did Not Tell You (Hungry Buzzard Press) was published in the fall of 2020.

My wife by Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue

is always dying in some hospital somewhere, miles from home.
I am always rushing to get ready: taking showers, shaving,
walking the dog. Then through ground fog and indifferent
traffic I make my way on arterial, meandering roads I barely

recognize to spend a few hours watching TV (old sit-coms
in the main), reading aloud to her her favorite books, chatting
with nurses and techs, sitting in always uncomfortable hospital
chairs guaranteed to cause future back pains. I am always failing

her – getting there too late, or not staying late enough to catch the
ones who don't give a damn. Or, being too distracted by my phone
or just a bone-weariness – lo, these many months – that's numbed me.
Yet another night, she has trouble sleeping. She knows she is dying.

We hold hands, recite our good times like a benediction: our wonderful
daughter, our happy 30 years, camping in Colorado, Arkansas, New
Mexico, our trips to New York, Santa Fe, Asheville. Finally, her meds
kick in and she calms. I kiss her goodnight. Tell her I love her. Turn out

the light. Outside, streetlights lit, roads shorn of traffic, I drive through
ice and snow, through thunderous light shows, my hood peppered by hail,
or nights eerily calm, a sharp contrast to our roiled life. Once home, I walk
the dog, read till I fall asleep in my La-Z-Boy, wake up at two, muddle-headed.

Walk spraddle-legged, like an old man, to sleep fitfully, coiling alone
in what was once our bed.



Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue has had poems published in The Texas Observer, Concho River Review, Borderlands, California Quarterly, and two anthologies of Texas poetry. His collection of poetry What I Did Not Tell You (Hungry Buzzard Press) was published in the fall of 2020.

After a Week of Storms by Martha Christina

I’m ashamed to say I didn’t once wonder 

how the gulls were faring. I worried 

about the song birds who disappeared 

from the feeder. I worried about my roof, 

would the shingles hold or yield a new leak? 

I don’t know where gulls shelter or feed 

in high winds and heavy rain, but today 

they’re eating last week’s stale bread, 

fanning the air with their wings, making 

their own singular music. 

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. Born and raised in Indiana, she now lives in Bristol, Rhode Island.

What and How He Taught Me by Martha Christina

My bedroom window faced our
small backyard, far from the street,
no need for a pulled shade.

I heard heavy steps
in fallen leaves
behind the house.
I turned off the lamp;
looked out into faint
moonlight. A figure
I didn’t recognize
stood waiting,
like someone
in a theater,
for the show
to begin.

My screams filled every room.

Remember, my father said,
when he came back inside,
you see from dark into light.



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. Born and raised in Indiana, she now lives in Bristol, Rhode Island.

My Older Sister and I Share Memories of Baths in the Clawfoot Tub by Martha Christina

Hers:

You were screaming. . .two and
a half, maybe three. . .screaming,
but she insisted the water wasn’t
hot enough to scald you; she
insisted. . . .That was the last
time she bathed you.

Mine:

My sister and I took turns
sliding down the tub’s curved back,
splashing each other, laughing.
        Unsupervised.



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. Born and raised in Indiana, she now lives in Bristol, Rhode Island.

When Virgil Pitches Softball by M.J. Arcangelini

His whole middle-aged body twists
Into the windup, a quickening spring
As he draws back, the ball clutched
Between glove and bare right hand
His body leaning as though the ball
Were a weight pulling him backward
His left leg rises from the ground
His body thus balanced, poised for release
His arm swings out then low, foot reaches
Forward, drops into a cloud of dust, the
Ball flies from his hand toward the batter
Arching into the air, searching out home plate
With maybe a spin added at the last moment
He freezes for a long instant waiting
To hear the crack of the bat or
The thud of the ball finding
The catcher’s mitt
Ready for whatever happens next.



M.J. Arcangelini, (b. 1952, Pennsylvania), has resided in northern California since 1979. He has published extensively both online and in print. He is the author of 6 published collections, the most recent of which is Pawning My Sins (released by Luchador Press in 2022).

After the Storm by Howie Good

A sparrow about the size of a fist
shuttles back and forth, back and

forth, transporting in its beak what
we’d consider litter – now a dead

twig, now a bit of paper or string –
to add to the nest it’s resurrecting

with immaculate care in the sun-
crowned tree just outside our door.



Howie Good's newest poetry collection, Heart-Shaped Hole, which also includes examples of his handmade collages, is available from Laughing Ronin Press.

Talking to Myself by Carolynn Kingyens

You have made us
for yourself,
and our hearts are restless
until it rests in you.

— Saint Augustine



A seminary student,
whom I once knew
back in college, an old friend,
who'd lose his faith entirely
after one of the little girls
at a makeshift church
he helped pastor for a time
in Mawlynnong,
the one with the glass eye
the color of jade,
and the cutest giggle,
was raped and strangled
by a group of barefoot
village boys, who'd
plead guilty, then
disappear in the night,
one by one.

"Where was God for that little girl?"
he asked me over bottles
of Stella Artois and falafel
after reconnecting on Facebook
after a decade
of ghosting each other.

An atheist now, and an insomniac,
who'd get high every night
to Coltrane records
and warm baths,
"a routine," he said, "that coaxed
him to sleep —just fine."

He told me that he didn't mind
when his glasses clinked loudly
inside the kitchen cupboard
everytime the silver bullet
subway train roared
underneath his first floor
apartment in Clinton Hill,
that the sound reminded
him of a cousin's wedding,
when all the guests would
raise their goblet glasses high
and clink them with knives,
forks, spoons, in unison,
prodding the groom to kiss
his bride, on demand.

He told me the story of Joey Cabrio,
the kind, homeless man
he befriended outside his apartment.

He told me about their deep discussions
around the philosophy of Saint Augustine,
and their shared love for Coltrane,
Lester Young, and Johnny Hodges,
who'd end up stabbed to death
over some stupid, imaginary turf war
between a fellow homeless person
off his meds.

"Why are humans
so evil to one another?"
he asked me, now buzzed.

I wanted to say my canned
Christian response to pretty
much all of life's troubles,
the only one I knew —
Because of sin,
Because of free will,
but chose to stay silent
instead.

He told me that every
time I prayed to my
invisible, Judeo-Christian
God that I was merely
talking to myself.

"Do you enjoy talking
to yourself?" he'd quip back
with a fox-like grin.

When I was ten years old,
I came to the realization,
on my own,
that for all those years,
all those Saturday afternoons
at my best friend's house
playing Barbies in her basement —
with her Barbie Dreamhouse,
with her Barbie Camper,
with her Barbie McDonald's,
Jen owned all the good toys;
acting out brutal, betraying scenarios
to put our Barbies through —
the cheating scandals with Ken;
the heartbreak of the blonde Barbie
with the bad haircut;
the runaway Skipper;
the terminal illness of Jazzercise Barbie,
that all along I was playing a merciless god,
myself.

And it was at that moment
I was done with Barbies for good,
moving on to the pretty,
Roman Catholic boys
of St. Anselm's Parish;
once French kissing an alter boy,
who resembled Ralph Macchio
of The Karate Kid
during an innocuous, pubescent
closet game of Seven Minutes
in Heaven
at Jen's twelfth birthday party,
down in her basement,
where I used to talk to myself
for hours.



Carolynn Kingyens is the author of two poetry collections: Before the Big Bang Makes a Sound and Coupling, both published by Kelsay Books and available on Amazon. In addition to poetry, Kingyens writes essays, book and film reviews, and short fiction. She is presently working on the completion of a short fiction manuscript with the working title Attachment Theory that consists of twelve short stories, ten of the twelve stories previously published. Her short story "Bye-Bye, Miss American Pie" was selected for Best of Fiction List, 2021, by Across the Margin, a Brooklyn arts and culture webzine. She has been married to her husband and best friend for almost twenty-three years, and they share two beautiful, kind, and very creative daughters.

My Mother is Not a Crier by Sharon Waller Knutson

and neither am I, so I am not surprised
she is not sobbing when she calls me
and says, I tried to wake your father,
but he was cold and blue. The paramedics
are on their way. Please hurry.

I drive clear across town, expecting to see
my father sitting in his recliner drinking
a cup of hot coffee and I prepare to hand him
his carton of Camels and box of chocolates
he told me to buy him the night before.

We stand frozen as two men wheel a black bag
out of the bedroom. Do you want an autopsy?
a policeman asks my mother. We both stare
speechless. We are two marooned sailors
lost at sea. He thinks we killed daddy, I whisper.

I’m off shift, he says, I’ll be happy to stay.
But we smile and say we are fine. When I return
the cigarettes and candy unopened, the clerk
is confused. My father is dead. My voice cracks
like thin ice on a deep lake where I am skating.



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. She is the editor of Storyteller Poetry Review. https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/

Forsythia Chronicles by Russell Rowland

When the bushes go up with a shout

like pyrotechnics set off at ground level,
we step aside as Moses did, to see
how they can blaze yet not be consumed.

At twilight, these are often the last
things glowing, so we suspect their brilliance
is more than reflective.

It is hard to chronicle the bushes without
wandering into biography;

to pass a long row of them and not detect
emotions like bees in the blossoms.

Why does a man trim the branches back—

what cutting anger, taken out
on their exuberance? It might be the solace
of control, at least over something.

And that woman who breaks off
a twig in passage, to set in water back home:
who is that in remembrance of?

One who died, at last year’s blossoming?



Seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, where he has judged high-school Poetry Out Loud competitions. His work appears in Except for Love: New England Poets Inspired by Donald Hall (Encircle Publications), and Covid Spring, Vol. 2 (Hobblebush Books). His latest poetry book, Magnificat, is available from Encircle Publications.

Dogwood Flowers by Terri Kirby Erickson

From a distance, it seems
as if an eclipse of White
Spring Moths is fluttering
around the trunk of a dog-
wood tree—each bright
wing the color of Chantilly
lace. But when the breeze
moves on and the tree’s
slim branches cease their
trembling, one might think
that time itself has stopped.
Now, every moth-like flower,
at the pinnacle of its beauty,
seems suspended in midair—
as perfect as a photograph
or a memory we hold so tight,
nothing in this world could
ever tear it from our hands.



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.

Possible Bag by Richard Weaver

No one remembers how it started. It simply was
something that always happened. Part tradition,
part necessity. We never traveled without knowing
that each stop would be a series of repairs, a never-ending
journey of fixing things. A life spent answering
the questions of probability. My father found pleasure
deep in darkened televisions aglow with new test-patterns
of life and silent radios given voice again. He never tired of trying.
I knew from him that nothing was impossible. Every solution
was somewhere at hand. In the fingers. In the mind.
The patient offering of time. As a child I often held the work light
steady, though not always steady enough, while he searched
the arcane schematic for pathways towards life, or I held the meter
while his probes sought out an electrical pulse. He still tells the story
of the time I took apart a manual typewriter and 30 years later
it still sits in pieces in his workshop, a shining lesson in the method
of “how not to.” My sons bear witness to this, I have made them
my accomplices, just as my father did me. They are quick to believe
in the magic of simple tools and slow to accept the impossible.



Post-Covid, Richard Weaver has returned as the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. His work has also appeared in Conjunctions, Louisville Review, Southern Quarterly, Free State Review, Hollins Critic, Little Patuxent Review, Loch Raven Review, The Avenue, and New Orleans Review. Richard is the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and wrote the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005) which has been performed 3 times in Alabama, and once at Juilliard in NYC. 3 poems appeared in Alabama Poets (1990). He was one of the founders of the Black Warrior Review and its Poetry Editor for the first three years. Richard's poems are forthcoming in the Alabama Anthology (2023) and his 195th prose poem was recently accepted.

Saying Uncle, Saying Father by Richard Weaver

          In Memoriam, AFD, Jr.

I called you Uncle sometimes
though at times I wished
it could have been Father.
I did my best to understand
my father in you, what he became
in your presence. Your absence. Death
has not taken that from me today.
Today, when I make bread for my family,
my hands think of you as they work
the dough into biscuits or bread.
Fred bread they called it, the many loaves
you baked and gave so that others might have.
I add the iced water now and ride a memory:
17 miles off shore, bill fishing, 6’ to 8’ foot swells,
a bottle of port shared between lulls. A sailfish
spotted before we turned to outrun the squall
back to shore. Captain Donnie pogoing
the Mam’selle North towards Dauphin Island,
shouldering the waves aside. The hull shuddering
as the twin Mercs hurled us from wave to wave.
Landing with a thwack. My brothers both sick
at the stern. Teetotalers to this day.

As children we once rose together
into the blue beauty of a summer's day.
My brothers and I in the silver cocoon
of your twin-engine Cessna.
We rose from the thin edge
of a horizon we knew safely as home,
lifting beyond the fireball of the sun.
Looking down we accepted the toy
movements of miniature cars and trucks,
our trailing shadow, a winged dream
as it passed over trees and water towers,
the squared shoulders of buildings;
a first glimpse from heaven. I think
of the black and white photo taken that day:
3 small boys with matching
blond crewcuts, your dark hair
against the backdrop of the plane.
A miracle we never questioned.



Post-Covid, Richard Weaver has returned as the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. His work has also appeared in Conjunctions, Louisville Review, Southern Quarterly, Free State Review, Hollins Critic, Little Patuxent Review, Loch Raven Review, The Avenue, and New Orleans Review. Richard is the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and wrote the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005) which has been performed 3 times in Alabama, and once at Juilliard in NYC. 3 poems appeared in Alabama Poets (1990). He was one of the founders of the Black Warrior Review and its Poetry Editor for the first three years. Richard's poems are forthcoming in the Alabama Anthology (2023) and his 195th prose poem was recently accepted.

Ardor in the Outback by Jean Ryan

Each autumn in the Australian Outback,
a hefty lizard called the shingleback skink
hauls its armored body across miles of terrain,
searching for the love of its life.
Eventually, inevitably, it locates her scent trail,
and they spend several minutes engaged
in a ritual of licking and mating.
For the next eight weeks they knock around together
before the male turns tail and resumes his solitary existence,
leaving his pregnant consort behind.
The two carry on this way for up to twenty years,
neither one inclined to look elsewhere for company.
If the female happens to perish while they are together,
the male will stay with her body, nudging it now and then
in despair or bewilderment—who can say?

It is not the lizard’s monogamy that surprises me—
many creatures live devoted lives—
it’s those ten months of separation,
the unwavering hunt that follows,
the odds of finding one tiny scent
in that rocky, empty wild,
as if the shingleback skink
is here in reassurance,
in proof of faith.



Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in coastal Alabama and believes that retirement is highly underrated. Her writing has appeared in many journals and anthologies. 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. https://jean-ryan.com/

Twilight of a Mild Day by Martha Christina

Earlier, in bright sunlight,
two yellow crocus opened
while I sat inside,
no longer a new widow,
but still breathing winter.



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. Born and raised in Indiana, she now lives in Bristol, Rhode Island.

My Older Sister Remembers by Martha Christina

Before I was born, our father
set up a ping-pong table
in the hall outside his office
at the school where he was
the principal. They both
laughed and laughed as he
taught her how to play.

By the time I was old enough
to go to that school, our father
had the same job, but he was
not the same man; our family
was not the same family.

Our mother recovered, physically,
from a case of encephalitis, but
her memory was affected, and her
moods became erratic: she was
quick-tempered, often violent;
sometimes catatonic. Ping-pong
or any light-hearted diversion,
only someone else’s memory.



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. Born and raised in Indiana, she now lives in Bristol, Rhode Island.

Surety by Martha Christina

Sure of food,
sure of shelter,
house finches
fill the feeder’s
perches, fill
themselves,
then disappear
into the shelter
of wisteria.
Mind the birds,
my grandfather
would say, how
they fill up, then
disappear when
a storm is coming.



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. Born and raised in Indiana, she now lives in Bristol, Rhode Island.

Reliability by Michelle Reale

The crucifix on the pale wall will cast a shadow that dances. The fruit in the bowl will age with grace. The black thread and needle will find their rhythm. The pills in the old-fashioned coffee saucer will find the right mouth. The foot in the shoe will clench like a claw. The mottled and misshapen eyes will twitch. The seer on the television will predict and we will blindly believe and follow. The old man two houses down will heave himself onto the ambulance gurney. He will not return. The fragile heads of flowers will droop dejectedly on their stems. The days will grow impatient and exhausted. The night will have us toss and turn with eyes wide open. Birds will fold themselves into their iridescent wings. Dinner will burn in the pot. Mothers with great anxiety will pace wooden floors with wailing infants while their partners will grind their teeth into dust. Piebald dogs and wolves bearing grudges will whine with resignation and loneliness. The evening news will drone yet paralyze us with fear. Spots will appear on the hand that trembles. The weather will have its way with us. We will verify unintelligible words for those who need it. We will stigmatize those within the domestic sphere appropriately. The weather will have its way with us. We will forget what it is we ever wanted to say. We will make room for what we no longer need but still want. We will peek over the high walls from the place we carelessly and begrudgingly call home.



Michelle Reale is the author of several poetry collections, including Season of Subtraction (Bordighera Press, 2019) and Blood Memory (Idea Press), and from Alien Buddha Press is her prose poem collection, In the Year of Hurricane Agnes. She is the Founding and Managing Editor for both OVUNQUE SIAMO: New Italian-American Writing and The Red Fern Review.

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.