The Winter I Wore My Mother’s Coat by Marianne Szlyk

That fall my friend told me that Marilyn

had been size sixteen, Fifties’ curves too large
for the Eighties in Boston. There bone-thin
women earned MBAs, wore strings of pearls;
slight girls danced all night to the Talking Heads.

That year I borrowed Mom’s old coat to wear
on the subway to class. I’d risk coffee,
oil paint, turpentine stains on night-blue wool,
fur cuffs soft against my wrists. I was size
sixteen like Marilyn, like Mom’s old coat.

Mom said she hated to think of her coat
riding the subway, wandering the streets.
Her coat, her smart coat she’d bought at Denholm’s
with her first paychecks to walk to St. Luke’s
when the priest, back to all, still spoke Latin.

If she knew, if she’d seen me wear her coat
as I followed Mike Green around Boston,
she’d be furious. Then the lining tore.
I thought nothing of it. I could not sew.
Light snow turned to rain. Cars splashed her coat.

Spring came. Mom discarded my winter coat
like high school diaries, Janis Joplin
LPs, my thin, hippie skirts. I should have
brought Mom’s old coat to the cleaners to fix
the lining at least. There were dry cleaners

on each corner, even near campus
to fix the coat I had not bought, the coat
I had stolen just to feel like someone,
not a fat girl, not a drab girl in art class.



Marianne Szlyk's poems have appeared in Green Elephant and One Art. Her stories are in Mad Swirl and Impspired. Her book Why We Never Visited the Elms is available on Amazon.

The Spider, and the Web by Kelley White

Another prison mark, like the teardrop
and the clock, it can weave over elbow,
knee, nape of neck, belly, back. It might be
nothing more than graphic, part of a sleeve,
or vest, but it may mean prison—see
that boy lifting his baby to his shoulder,
that man pulling a woman to his side
by her hair. So tell me, where
is the spider. All, she’s a female.
She’s a black widow, her hourglass
emptying fast through her narrow waist;
watch out for her sweet lethal kiss.



Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent collection is NO. HOPE STREET (Kelsay Books). She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.

Waitress with a Chance of Death by Heidi Slettedahl

The flight attendant read through the entire bumpy flight.
A thick book, not easy to carry on a plane.
Perhaps she got extra luggage,
a certain benefit for being a waitress with a chance of death.

She never served us on the flight.
The pilot told her to remain seated.
But she stood instead, her back to us.
A sort of defiance I admired, if simultaneously abhorred.

What is poetry if not a transcription of the world made more beautiful?



Heidi Slettedahl is an academic and a US-UK dual national who goes by a slightly different name professionally. She has been published in a variety of online literary journals. She is the author of Mo(u)rning Rituals (Kelsay Books, 2024).

My Childhood is Strange to Me by Heidi Slettedahl

We didn’t think it macabre

to have a rabbit’s foot in our pocket,
to stroke it against our palm or face.

We played with cap guns and candy cigarettes.
Our mothers never knew where we were.

Once I almost drowned in our neighbor’s pool.
I told no one, fearful I’d never be allowed to swim again.

We found Hustler and Playboy in the woods,
crumpled and torn and sticky with sap.

A man kissed me in the parking lot near our house.
I didn’t take the five dollars he offered me.

I was afraid of ghosts and being buried alive.
I didn’t know what else to fear.



Heidi Slettedahl is an academic and a US-UK dual national who goes by a slightly different name professionally. She has been published in a variety of online literary journals. She is the author of Mo(u)rning Rituals (Kelsay Books, 2024).

What We Carry by Joseph Mills

A family of five, we trailered
a pop-up tent on highways
all around the country,
camping in state parks,
picnicking in rest areas.
It was how we could afford
to go anywhere. Each of us
had a beer case in which
we could put whatever
we needed or wanted.
Clothes, toiletries, snacks.
I filled mine with comic books,
choosing to wear the same outfit
for an entire trip to make room
for Archie, Batman, Casper,
Richie Rich, the Fantastic Four,
Spider-Man, Tales from the Crypt,
Two Fisted War Stories, and
I would read for mile after mile
after mile after mile after mile.

Annoyed, my father would say,
Put those damn comic books down
and look out the window.
You may never be here again!
I would glance up to see
some mountain or forest or
tourist attraction, say “nice,”
then go back to reading.
Years later, I hear his voice
in mine as I tell my children
to get off their phones
and Look at that! Look! Look!

I understand my father now,
his desire for us to be present,
but I was traveling elsewhere
as we crossed Ohio or Nebraska.
Before I ever heard of multi-verses,
I knew what they were. They were
stacked in that beer case. They were
pages and panels. They were worlds
made by words and images. They were
stories we travelled with and in, ones
we needed more than clothes or food.



Joseph Mills is a faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Joseph Mills has published several collections of poetry with Press 53, most recently Bodies in Motion: Poems About Dance.

Anywhere But Here by Russell Rowland

A young couple, new to the trail,
were both appreciative of our advisories—

what lay ahead, the footing, the elevation gain,
one inconvenient newly-fallen tree—

while an older woman behind them—mother
to one, mother-in-law
to the other?—glared icicles in our direction,

as if reaching deep

into a repository of resentments, long saved up,
against the day—the effort—us.

We shook our heads afterward:
high mileage on our hiking boots, each of us
aware that the only mishaps

we ever had on a mountain
happened on days we were mad at the world,

and wished we were somewhere else.



Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire. Recent work appears in Wilderness House, Bookends Review, and The Windhover. His latest poetry book, Magnificat, is available from Encircle Publications. He is a trail maintainer for the Lakes Region (NH) Conservation Trust.

A Tour of the Cellar Holes by Russell Rowland

Some day after black-fly season,

but before it snows, I will take those interested
to Ossipee Glen to see the cellar holes:

labor of hands established—then, completed,
left for earth to swallow up again.

I will not moralize—

just study the faces of those who cared to come,
as they consider work

they themselves have done or left undone.

Once they’ve seen it all,
thought it over for themselves, I’ll lead them back

to the hiker’s parking lot—

from which they will go home, a few may realize,
to no continuing city.



Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire. Recent work appears in Wilderness House, Bookends Review, and The Windhover. His latest poetry book, Magnificat, is available from Encircle Publications. He is a trail maintainer for the Lakes Region (NH) Conservation Trust.