Cat's in the Cradle by Carolynn Kingyens

My black, jade-eyed cat
and I press our noses
squarely against the coolness
of the kitchen's screen window
but for totally different reasons:
his, out of infinite pining
for feral-freedom,
hunting mice and birds
with reckless abandon
before his entrapment
and ultimate rescue
for the safe, mundane life
of an inside cat,
always ready to bolt;
and mine, for relief
from a searing hot flash
while stirring a large pot
of homemade sauce,
where I add sugar
to cut into the acidity
of garden variety tomatoes;
just the two of us,
side by side,
our heads leaning,
almost touching
while we stare out
into the vast, open darkness
of the backyard.

My life has begun to morph
to the mercy of middle age;
to the mercy of teenage daughters
with their scorched earth eye rolls
and ignored text messages
after spamming their phones
with sentimental mother-daughter
reels and memes,
a declaration of my love
despite the obvious thud
from the time in their lives
when I was present
but not fully present
long enough for their validated
resentment of me to seed -
take root, and then flourish
like Mimosa Pudica,
a type of foliage known
to quickly fold inward
and droop whenever touched.

If anything, middle age offers
perspective, however precarious,
like the time I swallowed a fly whole
while riding a Citi Bike
along the Gowanus canal
as a result of my mouth-breathing.

Now I'm learning new terms
like active listening, which,
according to the family therapist,
means being able to hold
the ball while listening
to difficult truths, without reacting,
just holding the ball
as heavy as regret.



Carolynn Kingyens was born and raised in Northeast Philadelphia. She 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 short fiction and narrative essays. Two of her short stories were selected for Best of Fiction 2021 and 2023. And two of her essays, "There's a Tiffany in Every Dysfunctional Family," about the youngest sister of David and Amy Sedaris, and "How Creative Resilience Saved Me from Childhood Trauma" were recently republished by YourTango, a large, female-led NYC publisher. You can read some of her narrative essays on Medium, where she dives into a myriad of topics from The Royal Family to true crime.

Air Raid by Steve Deutsch

In Brooklyn,
in 1953, the air raid
sirens would wail
their warning once
or twice a week.

We would
dive under our desks,
assuming the half-inch
oak would protect us
from anything,

although the teachers
never assured us.
My brother assured me
my eyes would boil
in their sockets,

my charred skin
would peel
from my bones,
and no one
would know me from the skeletons

in the Museum of Natural History.
My parents said
that was silly talk,
but my brother told me
the commies had a missile

trained on the Empire
State Building
with a blast radius of 13 miles
and we were within the blast zone.
“Fortunately, he said, the bomb will incinerate us

before the blast blows us apart.
You’re toast,” he added,
taking a huge bite of the rye bread
that he had slathered
with half a stick of butter.

I couldn’t get the eyeballs
out of my mind,
and the day mom left me to shop,
the sirens wailed,
and I hid in the closet

covered in coats.
For the next month
or so, mom would tell friends
and relatives she found
me wailing louder

than any siren
could, and I might
be an instrument of Civil Defense.
70 years later, sirens still
make me close my eyes tighter than tight.



Steve Deutsch is poetry editor of Centered Magazine and is poet in residence at the Bellefonte Art Museum. Steve was nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. His chapbook, Perhaps You Can, was published in 2019 by Kelsay Press. Steve's full-length books, Persistence of Memory, Going, Going, Gone, and Slipping Away, were also published by Kelsay Press. Another poetry collection, Brooklyn, was awarded the Sinclair Poetry Prize from Evening Street Press and his latest full-length book, Seven Mountains, was just published.

Morning After the Death of My Mother by Terri Kirby Erickson

They call it daybreak and the crack
of dawn. Even so, light spreads over
the backyard field like melting butter
and songbirds sing. Shy deer retreat
to the woods, and night owls sleep,
dreaming of moonshine and stars. A
red-tailed hawk circles sunlit roofs
of houses in which most of us will
rise as if there is no danger in it—
as if we will never die nor cry in the
dark like frightened children. There
is comfort to be found in our warm
and cozy slippers, the feel of a tooth-
brush in our mouths. So what if we
are growing old and bleary-eyed, our
days shorter? The coffee is brewing.
There are eggs to be whisked, toast
to be spread with jams and jelly. Yet,
the widow clutches her countertop,
her loneliness undaunted by the blue
sky or the scent of hollyhocks wafting
through open windows. And parents
whose son—lost so long ago, no one
remembers but his mother, his father—
the little things that made their boy
real. But breakfast must be eaten, the
grass mowed. And if time tramples us
like soldiers marching in the streets,
we go on reaching for each other like
our grip will never be loosened. We
drink our coffee even when the cups
are cracked, the day already broken.



Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in “American Life in Poetry,” Rattle, 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.

Sparrows by Howie Good

Inside the Home Depot, I hear but can’t see the birds
chirping away among the exposed steel beams overhead –
house sparrows, probably. Halloween has only just ended.
The red Christmas poinsettias on display, when I look closer,
prove to be fabric. I ask a man in a carpenter’s apron who isn’t
a carpenter where the heavy-duty tarps are. “Aisle 41,” he says
and points. The word “cancer” follows me. It is the scariest word
in the language, scarier somehow than even “death.” I am being
murdered by my own body. The sparrows go on chirping their
simple three-note song as if there is no extra time for complexity.



Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose newest poetry book, The Dark, is available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.

Measuring the Foundation by Steve Klepetar

I look at the cabin, it’s splintery walls.
My father walks around outside,
measuring the foundation.
He has carried a tire from the truck,
and he sits now by the edge of the lake.
Turtles swim in the shallows.
I find a pair of hiking boots
with one lace missing, a rusty canteen,
a hand axe with a chipped blade.
It begins to rain, and we remember
the misspelled sign in a neighborhood store:
TURTELS FOR SALE.
The owner had fallen asleep at the counter.
Even the little bell failed to wake him.
We slipped out through the back door,
hungry for soup or bread or something
we couldn’t yet name. Night had come on
and streetlights glowed along the avenue.
It’s been a day of memories, which can seem
like ghosts in the half light, or the ending of a dream.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. He is a contributing editor for Verse-Virtual and serves on the editorial staff of Right Hand Pointing. His poems have received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.