Existence by Ahrend Torrey

The ground we walk on
in its solidity, what is it
other than a place to exist?

What is existence
if it goes unnoticed—

if we, walking the grounds,
do not stop and hold firm
our bare feet

into wet soil?

To exist, is to feel,
taste, hear,
smell the summer air—

filled with prairie blossoms
and bees...

If bees are still alive,
taste them
with your ears;

reach out, now,
beneath the sun—

Touch them with your eyes!



Ahrend Torrey is the author of This Moment (Pinyon Publishing, 2024). His work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, storySouth, The Greensboro Review, and West Trade Review, among others. He lives in Chicago with his husband, Jonathan; their two rat terriers, Dichter and Dova; and Purl, their cat. Learn more about his poetry at https://ahrendtorreypoetry.wixsite.com/website

A Brief History of Schnickelfritz by Penelope Moffet

My mother named her Schnickelfritz,
mischievous child. A gray tabby
who hummed the world to sleep
with her sweet purr.

One of the pets who lived with us
until we moved and left them.
We moved a lot.
We shed those cats like fleas

and then hatched more. I swore
I’d care for future felines
their whole lives. The two
I live with now are 17 and 15

but they still whisk around
like Schnickelfritzes,
pratfalls and all. They bless me
with their biscuit-making paws.



Penelope Moffet is the author of the 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 and essays appear in Eclectica, ONE ART, Citric Acid, Calyx and other literary journals.

Keeper of the Keys by Penelope Moffet

Biscuit-colored fur
his ribs show through,
dark liquid eyes, Kai is
gentle as a doe but plants
his legs like stilts, looks sidelong
when I tug the leash.

Each day I’m here at one
to take him for a midday
pee and poop and amble.
Eager to go out,
once his bladder’s empty
he’s done with exercise

so we walk in circles, me
coaxing him on, him
pulling back. Sometimes
his white cheeks shake.

He walks up to a gardener,
stands as long as fingers rub
his head, his ears. More,
the chocolate eyes say. More.

Once he ran faster than a man
but now he’d rather meditate
than sprint. He contemplates
each bush, each grass clump,
bit of trailing ivy.
Then he sighs.

Kai means Shell in Japanese,
Sea in Hawaiian, Keeper
of the Keys in Welsh.
Dog built like a deer,
yearning for his bed.
He tries to lead me home.



Penelope Moffet is the author of the 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 and essays appear in Eclectica, ONE ART, Citric Acid, Calyx and other literary journals.

After the Burial by A.R. Williams

An antique mirror browned
at the edges, now hangs in my entryway.

It sees me, pauses, searching for my grandmother.

Brought home after the burial,
rescued from the estate sale.

I clung to constancy, finding only change.



A.R. Williams, a poet from Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, is the author of A Funeral in the Wild (2024) and Time in Shenandoah (2024). Website: virginiapoet.com.

Becalmed by Sarah Russell

Late afternoon in summer,
air so heavy I can’t move,
rumbling in the east and a flash
on the horizon. No birdsong—
fledglings gone from the oak
anchored in red clay. The grass
has surrendered, parched and longing.
The porch swing creaks under my weight,
breathing for me. There are chores,
but there are always chores. For now,
only stillness, asking what is next
without you.



Sarah Russell’s poetry and fiction have been published in Rattle, Misfit Magazine, Third Wednesday, Red Eft Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She has two poetry collections published by Kelsay Books, I lost summer somewhere and Today and Other Seasons. She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net

Bird Woman by Sarah Russell

Nearing the shore at twilight,
she drifts in the wind’s current.
The lagoon below is still
as held breath.
Her eyes skirt the trees,
the marshy undergrowth
for a safe settling.
She tires easily now,
seeks sheltered landings
on timeworn wings,
her flight nearing
an unfamiliar shore
that beckons
with no promises.



Sarah Russell’s poetry and fiction have been published in Rattle, Misfit Magazine, Third Wednesday, Red Eft Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She has two poetry collections published by Kelsay Books, I lost summer somewhere and Today and Other Seasons. She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net

Cherokee Purples by Sarah Russell

There’s melancholy in picking
the last of these heirlooms
before first frost. The May potential

of seedlings. Yellow blossoms,
then tiny green fruits, hard as marbles,
in July. Deep red beauties, bending stalks

under their weight, radiant and tender
to the touch in August and September,
harvested in threes and fours, starring

in salads, roasted with garlic, eaten
like apples. This small bounty—triumph
of urban farmers who nurture, stake,

feed, and brag about their crop
outgrowing cages to sprawl
across the neighbor’s fence. Oh, the pride

in sharing one or two with friends
who didn’t grow their own this year.
And finally in October, the wistful goodbye

to a generous friend whose final gifts
grace a windowsill to ripen, seeds salvaged
for spring planting.



Sarah Russell’s poetry and fiction have been published in Rattle, Misfit Magazine, Third Wednesday, Red Eft Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She has two poetry collections published by Kelsay Books, I lost summer somewhere and Today and Other Seasons. She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net

The Day I Stopped Writing Poetry for the Nth Time by Howie Good

Tantalizing illusions designed to keep us
toiling have dwindled to a tattered few.

A local fishing trawler was only now coming
into harbor with the morning catch. It was

painted blue, the paint chipped and peeling,
but the name Lauren was fussily lettered

in white across the bow. The gulls hovering
over the boat sounded on the verge of hysteria.

Their shrieks contained urgency, alarm, an element
of pleading. Hell is when no one believes your cries.



Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose newest poetry book, The Dark, is available from Sacred Parasite, which will also publish his book, Akimbo, in 2025.

heads held low by Corey D. Cook

My eighth chapbook, heads held low, was published by Bottlecap Press yesterday and is now available for purchase on their website. See the link below... This collection contains 24 haiku and senryu. I hope you will consider ordering a copy. Your support would mean a great deal to me and this small / independent press.

heads held low by Corey D. Cook

Trestle by Royal Rhodes

The trestle no longer shakes,
rivet by rivet, as engines
surge along loose, iron rails.

The ties, coated with oozing pitch,
have been replaced by a boardwalk
for bikes and disciplined exercise.

A human knot of young runners
make a syncopated drum on the wood
floor of this giant erector set.

They show identical sweat stains
on their shirts like the joggers ahead
who sweeten the air with their bodies.

The bridge parts the curtain of foliage,
and the light is blinding in brightness
between the woods ahead and woods behind.

In the river, where water made this valley,
anglers wade upstream, like the heron
whose singleness causes us to wonder.

Humans and birds are watchful for fish
in the currents, surrounding debris
that constructs islands in the river flow.

From above we can see the farm run-off,
floating residue like a curious script
whose letters expand and then pull apart.

But there is no one left to read it.
The sites with fire pits along the banks,
when this was called Little Indian Run,

are claimed by others now, who leave
trash and testimonials of indifference
best forgotten, reduced down to ashes.

What was once called the "place of the owls,"
at least for the past two hundred years,
remains, and remains when we are gone.



Royal Rhodes is a retired teacher of global religions. His poems have appeared in numerous journals in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada. He lives in a small village in central Ohio.

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.

What's a Boy But the Contents of His Pockets? by John Hicks

A lucky stone that sparkled to you;
a ring shaped like a cowboy saddle
found while digging in grandma’s garden;
a length of twine rescued from the kitchen;
receipts you can’t yet read; skeleton key
from the junk drawer. Your pockets
reliquary of the world beyond
what grown-ups said was best for you.

When you asked: What’s this for? Where
did this come from? adult answers were vague,
or you couldn’t understand them, or
they dismissed with When you’re older.

So, you made your own stories—
like the ring lost by a passing cowboy;
messages hidden in grocery receipts; a secret door
in the basement the skeleton key would open.

Some things you shared with other boys:
a single-bladed pocketknife with a broken tip,
the shiny Zippo lighter that might be made to work,
the rusty railroad spike from behind the depot.

You hid your talismans in cotton darkness,
to take out when alone: a copper nugget
from a desert camping trip, blue and roughly round
(larger than your blue marble shooter),
a pearl button like on Gene Autry’s shirt;
a wheat penny from the floor of the Willys.

But wonders found gave way to car keys,
credit cards, and currency you emptied
onto your dresser top at night. You came to
care how clothes fit; stopped seeing things.

A wheat penny in my change today.
I held it up to read the date, wondering
if it was from the year I was born, a reminder
of what slipped away.



John Hicks is working on his first book. His poetry has been published by: Valparaiso Poetry Review, I-70 Review, Poetica, Blue Nib, Verse-Virtual, and others. He writes in the thin mountain air of the southern Rockies. He’s been nominated for two Pushcarts and one Best of the Net.

What I Wanted to Say by Joan Leotta

What I wanted to say
to the handsome, bearded young man,
walking along the beach, wearing
black shorts and t-shirt, his phone, like mine
poised to capture the precise moment
when the sun leaps out of the sea to
balance itself on the tightrope line of the horizon--

what I wanted to say
was, “You look so much like my son!
Maybe a bit older.” But I kept silent,
simply smiled briefly in his direction,
fearing that if I spoke, after my declaration
of his resemblance to Joey,
he might ask, “Where is your son?”
Then I would answer truthfully,
“My son died a few years ago,”
and this young man might recoil, perhaps
consider it a bad omen to resemble
a departed one, even a beloved departed.
So, instead, I quietly watched him walk
away, snapping his sunrise pictures
as my own son might have done—
kept still instead of saying
what I wanted to say.

Silently, I sent a blessing
to this young man, wishing him
many stunning sunrises and a peaceful life
full of love and joy.
At last, I turned and climbed the steps
to leave the beach. From the top step,
I glanced back down
for one more glimpse of him
but he was gone.



Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. Internationally published as an essayist, poet, short story writer, and novelist, she’s a two-time nominee (fiction and poetry) for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. As a story performer, she offers folktale programs and a one woman show, “Louisa May Alcott Comes to Speak.”

On What Would Have Been Our Son’s 48th Birthday by Sharon Waller Knutson

Cowboys on horses
round up cattle
with their blue heelers
like he and his brothers used to do.

ATVs roar by in a cavalcade
and I swear I see him
in the driver’s seat leading
the pack up the dirt road.

Two does and their fawns
frolic on the lawn and I can
picture him sitting cross-legged
on the couch watching.

The flicker knocks and knocks
but no one opens the door
and I hear him say how lucky
we are to live out here

before he walks away
and disappears into the white
clouds that swirl in a sky
blue as his eyes.



Sharon Waller Knutson has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has published 12 poetry books, including the most recent, The Leading Ladies of My Life (Cyberwit 2023) and its sequel, My Grandfather is a Cowboy (Cyberwit 2024.) She has published 1,000 poems in more than 60 publications. She is the editor of Storyteller Poetry Review and lives in Arizona.

Before I Leave the House by Jacqueline Jules

I have to check the stove again.

And the coffee maker. Is it unplugged?

The refrigerator closed?

What about the back door? Is it locked?

And the toilet? Did it stop running?

I have to be sure everything
is safe and secure while I’m away,
so there won’t be any headaches
over house stuff, the last thing we need
right now when we don’t know
when you’ll come home or if.

So I haven’t left yet.

Still busy going back to the stove
and the back door and the bathroom,
circling like a hawk over all the bad things
that could happen if I don’t check one more time
before I go to the hospital where I’ll be
helpless to control what happens to you.



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 her online at www.jacquelinejules.com

Tell Me About Him by Jacqueline Jules

That’s what she said.

Not “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Or “That must have been so hard.”

Instead, she asked me
to describe the person
he was before he became
someone to be sorry about.

It made me blink.
I was so used to nodding my head,
mumbling a platitude in return.

“He had my mother’s eyes,”
I offered softly. “Grayish blue
with flecks of green.”

“Lovely,” she said, touching my arm,
giving me permission to say
he coached Little League in the spring,
and cooked outside on an old grill
that came with the rented house
he shared with three college buddies.

“So he loved baseball?” she asked.

“And hockey,” I answered.
“We used to watch games together.”

“You must miss him,” she said.

I do.



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 her online at www.jacquelinejules.com

Marriage by Rose Mary Boehm

We kept the mattress on the floor
for reasons of economics—remember?
When our baby son crawled in to sleep between us
without much ado, it became a godsend.
We didn’t keep each other warm,
laughter hid our emptiness.
We didn’t notice the spiders
undoing their fragile web.

The luxury bed that lifted our heads
and feet if we so chose, the 500-thread cotton,
the large, mirrored wardrobe,
the jacuzzi, the private school, the two Beemers
were only hiding wounds that could not heal.

We smiled and nodded like wind-up toys;
I spent time with the mothers and sometimes fathers
of the kids’ friends. You were always too busy.

One day a young woman came to our house
and asked for your hand.

We all survived the end of another marriage,
the quake and its aftermath,
forever changed by the tsunami of our lack of wisdom,
everyone in their own kayak riding the rapids.
Loathing—the hors d’oeuvre
Forgiving—the main course
Friendship—the dessert

Many years ago, we each married others,
but when you dared to die, I missed you.



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

Gravid by Tamara Madison

A young deer steps
with caution
across the grass
toward the fence
at the edge of the garden.
It is afternoon. He is alone.
I have seen him here before
I think, a yearling
behind a pregnant doe
walking slow. Yesterday
she was alone; I watched
her shadow move
into the dark woods
beyond the fence. Perhaps
she was seeking a place
to lie down in damp grass
to foal. Now her elder child
walks alone. I think I know
his loneliness, his puzzlement.
And I know her need
to do the hard, natural work
in solitude. In these woods
I've seen the wild apple trees
gravid with blossom, standing
alone among the birches
who have just given birth
to a new generation of leaves
glistening with dew,
trembling in wind,
opening themselves
to the wonder that is rain.



Tamara Madison is the author of three full-length volumes of poetry, Wild Domestic, Moraine (both from Pearl Editions), Morpheus Dips His Oar (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), and two chapbooks. Her work has appeared in the Writer’s Almanac, Sheila-Na-Gig, Worcester Review, and many other publications. Read more about Tamara at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.

Bones and Song by Jennifer Mills Kerr

Today I discover a pile of bird bones
near the chain link gate, licked clean
by my cat, embroidered by ants.

An offering of pick-up sticks, a strategy
of careful tenderness–a game you
never played. I can’t decide if remembering
our distances draws you closer or
outlines your absence.

Maybe it doesn’t matter, maybe tangled
thinking is perfect, as daughter playing
mother, I learned the endless practice
of pulling apart your knots, trying to unravel
what I’d done or didn’t do to upset you
again. Now I bury the offered bones

beneath the front porch. The soil, never
touched by rain or sun, a silky sand,
transparent as the love songs you sang
alone in the kitchen every Sunday when
you thought no one was listening.



Jennifer Mills Kerr is an educator, poet, and writer who loves mild winters, anything Jane Austen, and the raucous coast of Northern California. Connect with Jennifer through her Substack, Poetry Inspired or say hello at her website.

The Moonwoman Dreams of Pluto (November 2016) by Penelope Moffet

After the election
I woke in sorrow
night after night,
wondering what
would happen
to the earth,
the air and waterways,
bees and wolves and newts
with no one strong enough
to say their health
means as much
as ours, that
our health
leans on theirs.
Day after day
I dragged up
out of bed
feeling a close
relative had died.
All I could do
was add a little color
to a drawing
before I went to work,
dwarf planet Pluto
and its five moons
above a golden camel,
a white rabbit,
a gray Moonwoman
rattle – crescent
eyes, strong nose,
crooked lips open
as if to gasp
or speak.



Penelope Moffet is the author of the 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).

Painting by M. Benjamin Thorne

I think my father secretly
wanted to be a painter;
he’d talk about retirement,
stock market pressures behind him,
and buying paints and canvas, maybe.
His once-thought-lost high school art,
preserved in framed collages, featured
dazed Don Quixotes, weeping Vietnam vets.
It’s odd to think about, the armors he donned
at various points to suit his need: leather jacket
for the street trouble-seeker; varsity coat
in football season; smock for art class;
pin-stripes and tie for Merrill Lynch.
The last he wore longest, and heaviest
I think. But when you come dirt poor
from West Virginia to Wall Street, you need
some heraldry to prove you belong,
some shield against ridicule and scorn.

Mornings meant shined shoes and tied knots;
evenings a collapse into silence and cigarette haze,
his ironed shirt and Brooks Brothers shorn
for sweats and crinkled newspaper wall.
Sometimes his eyes peered over the crenelation,
and rarely, defenses lowered, I’d see a smile—
and what beautiful vistas that simple stretch
of tired muscles sketched in my eager heart.



M. Benjamin Thorne is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. Possessed of a lifelong love of history and poetry, he is interested in exploring the synergy between the two. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Griffel, The Westchester Review, Rising Phoenix Review, Feral, Gyroscope Review, and Molecule. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, NC.

Wren by John L. Stanizzi

a wren solos
where the offering of daybreak
brightens the road

and as the day
returns to heat
the bird’s music is sewn
into the branches
like lace
so delicate
it cannot be seen



John L. Stanizzi is the author 15 collections and has published in over 200+ journals, including Red Eft Review several times. You can find him in Prairie Schooner, Rattle, VIA, and others. His nonfiction is in Stone Coast, Metaworker, etc. John is a former Wesleyan University Etherington Scholar, Poet-in-Residence at Manchester Community College, and in 2021, he received a Connecticut Fellowship in Creative Writing – Non-Fiction from the Connecticut Office of Arts. His piece, "Pants," was named “Best of 2021” by Potato Soup Journal.

Shadow of the Gun by Howie Good

Video from the school shooting in Georgia
was playing with the sound off on the TV
behind the counter at the convenience mart.
“Have a good one,” the cashier rotely said,
handing me my change. I was still thinking
about the school shooting as I turned to leave.
The next customer in line towered above me,
a big, strong-looking guy in t-shirt and jeans
and with a six-pack of Bud Light tucked under
his thick right arm. Across the front his shirt
declaimed “Protect Gun Rights” in red, white,
and blue. I confess to it all as I would a crime.



Howie Good is a retired professor living on Cape Cod. His new poetry book, The Dark, is available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.

Sweet Dreams by Jean Ryan

Because of backyard fledglings,
because of ferals and snakes and ticks,
I keep my cat inside, where his cupped ears are tuned
not to the scuttle of a mouse but to the lid of his cat food,
where his night vision leads him not through deep woods
but around a monotony of furniture,
where his claws and fangs and whiskers
are only ornamentation.
Each day he sits at the back door, tail flapping,
and studies through the terminus of glass
the squirrels he will never chase,
the birds he will never kill.

Which is why I love to watch him dream.
Stretched alongside me, I see his paws twitch,
his muzzle crimp, the fur on his spine lift up.
In sleep he breaks free of my world
and finds another, some marvelous labyrinth
where small warm beings tremble in burrows
and unknowing birds peck at the ground.
Like a ribbon he moves toward the smell
of meat, he can already taste the blood.
And waiting there too is a willing mate,
ready each time he nods off.

My house is where he shelters.
Sleep is where he lives.



Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in coastal Alabama. She has published two short story collections, Survival Skills and Lovers and Loners. She has also published a novel, Lost Sister, a book of nature essays, Strange Company, and a poetry collection, A Day Like This. https://jean-ryan.com/

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.

Route 9W by Christine Potter

doesn’t take you where it did: to scarlet
picnic tables under green neon at Annie’s
Snack Shack and tall bottles of beer icy-
wet as bare-handing snowballs. To onion

rings on sheets of red and white wax paper
in plastic baskets. Hoyer’s bright old sign
with the four-foot-high soft-serve cone has
unplugged its electric buzz, and this road’s

lost itself to no place special: nail salons,
gun shops, chain drug stores faced in fake
antique brick. The summer cottages down
by Rockland Lake are winterized or gone,

front porches masked-up in vinyl siding, AC
blasting the breath of weary ghosts. We’re
all of us tired: beyond fireflies, not ready for
crickets. We all need a vacation and nobody

takes much of one anymore, not here. No
dads down in Manhattan send the wife and
kids up the Hudson for open windows and
music echoing from a lakeside dance hall—

music that could inspire anyone to grow up
and want that fun, that fun exactly. It didn’t
work out that way. We went out for a drive—
hey, anyone would have—and ended up here.



Christine Potter is the poetry editor of Eclectica Magazine. She has poetry forthcoming in Tar River and Grain. Her poems have recently been in Rattle, The McNeese Review, Cloudbank, ONE ART, and featured on ABC Radio News. She's the author of the young adult series The Bean Books, and her latest poetry collection, on Kelsay Books, is Unforgetting.

Birds of Slow Motion by Frederick Wilbur

Uncle Morris stowed his wooden canoe
in the rafters of grandmother’s garage,
upside down as if floating on the depth
of apex, a doubt on spiritual mystery.

As a ten-year old, the ribs seemed
a fence against darkness, or a whale’s
cavern: something I’d never seen before.

Of the float, it was stranded.
It was waiting.

My uncle did not want to be a lawyer,
would take cousins and cousins
to the Sound to swim,
to picnic at Fairfield Beach Club.

For me, the canoe remained paddleless
all my years growing up
like memories that wait for their time,
vultures of intention slow to finalize meaning.



Frederick Wilbur’s poetry collections are As Pus Floats the Splinter Out and Conjugation of Perhaps. His work appears in The Comstock Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, New Verse News, Red Eft Review, and Shenandoah. He is poetry editor for Streetlight Magazine. He was awarded the Stephen Meats Poetry Prize by Midwest Quarterly (2018).

O Cache Luxurious by Lisa L. Moore

This is a summer memory: that’s why
my feet were bare. Helen’s head was round,
her forehead high and pale, her blue eyes meek.
Her English parents did not speak fluent
sunscreen, so that day her face, scarlet
and swollen, caused her pain. The goal back then
was burn, peel, bronze, suntan. My olive skin
tanned easily beneath my thick brown bangs.
A tan was said to be my one beauty,
so I was ungreased, unprotected too.

We had discovered treasure in the lane
behind her house: O cache luxurious!
Pale grey cement rectangles, no doubt
destined for construction in our raw
new neighborhood. Like toybox blocks, and free!
we thought. We’d build ourselves a playhouse.
Brick by brick, we carried what we’d need,
in four-year-old fingers, one girl on
each end, across the street and into my
backyard. We couldn’t mess up Helen’s yard,
we knew. Her parents were the only ones
scarier than mine.

          I used to start this story at the end,
when Helen dropped her side and broke my toe.
We grew up with injuries like this, and others,
mostly secret. As the harbor opens out
today on Pearl Street, the screen slides back.
I glimpse anew. We were making something,
fingers slipping, eyes on one another.



Lisa L. Moore is the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning Sister Arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes, as well as the poetry chapbook, 24 Hours of Men. Most recently, her poems have appeared in Waxing and Waning, Nimrod International Journal, and Hairstreak Butterfly Review. She lives in Austin, Texas.

Dad, too, had been a child of deprivation by David Q. Hutcheson-Tipton

He is a traveling salesman child
of the Great Depression who,
thank God, stopped traveling
(much) by the time I was 13.

Before him Pap-Pap, a jovial giant,
had been an overseer for the Pennsylvania Railroad.
The boys at the firehall he & Dad had floored one summer
appreciated his largesse.

“Another round for everyone!” he’d boom.

Na-Na, slight as a rail
& rail tie sturdy,
sent Dad as a boy
into bars after Pap-Pap

to try to get him
to come home
before his paycheck was spent—

David Q. Hutcheson-Tipton is proud to appear again in Red Eft Review. His work has also been in Lothlórien Poetry Journal, Poem Alone, and dadakuku.com. He and his family enjoy dogs, good food, good friends, each other, and travel.

Reassurance by Martha Christina

My old cat yowls
loud and long
into the dark.

My sympathetic vet
explains: She wakes
disoriented, uncertain
of where she is, where
you are. You can let her
know, reassure her.

In those first months
when I was learning
my new identity: widow,
half-asleep I sometimes
felt my husband’s weight
against my back. Waking
fully, I’d find this same cat
curled in that space, as if
she could reassure me.



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.

Hot Water by Martha Christina

Widowed and childless,
he married again; his
second wife, my aunt,
also childless, a
professional woman
before that term was
used. Past child-bearing
age, they lavished
affection and attention
on other people’s children
and on each other. Their
favorite drink: hot
water, with a splash
of top milk, a scant
teaspoon of sugar

added to each cup.
Comfortable, they were
also well-past the rural
poverty they’d worked
their way out of. Even
so, with Starbucks
within our means,
as they liked to say,
they drank hot water,
grateful for every
sweetened swallow.



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.

Practicing by Martha Christina

Today the fledged finches
are on their own, practicing
how to feed themselves,
how to fly. The females
dominate the feeder, filling
all six perches, trading places
before the males can land.

Two males practice flight
between the rose canes,
and the wisteria, then cling
to the kitchen window screen,
resting their young wings.

They’re in no danger, ignored
by my old cat, who’s practicing
the sleep she has perfected.



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.

Royal Crown by Linda Parsons

As my grandfather’s handkerchiefs stiffened
on the line, she filled a used Royal Crown bottle,
sometimes Dr. Pepper (those sugar tits we craved
at ten, two, and four), to dampen the squares
embroidered with an M for Mac or McClanahan.
I begged nickels to help, aimed the shaker top
at each curled corner. Heat puffed from the iron’s
silver prow, cotton’s thin skin pressed to the board.
Her airless kitchen, a warmth that evaporated
when I left their house. People say more stars
in her crown for this or that goodness, and it’s true—
she wouldn’t leave him, no matter how many
amber highboys he slid to the side of his chair.
Through the steam, I counted a thousand or more.



Poet, playwright, essayist, and editor, Linda Parsons is the poetry editor for Madville Publishing and the copy editor for Chapter 16, the literary website of Humanities Tennessee. Her sixth collection, Valediction, contains poems and prose. Five of her plays have been produced by Flying Anvil Theatre in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Day at the Beach by Terri Kirby Erickson

Slathered with suntan lotion and sitting
under a Shibumi, my husband and I along
with two of our dear friends—all of us

over sixty-five—ate our lunch. Pimento
cheese and turkey sandwiches, potato chips
and chocolate pound cake, made for a grand

picnic as we sweltered in the heat, pressed
bottles of cold water against our sweaty
foreheads. Adding our ailments together,

we’ve had cancer and a heart attack, high
cholesterol and a movement disorder, each
of us taking daily medication. So be it. We

still looked good, if a bit shopworn, in our
beach attire, including billed hats and bare
legs—white, brown, or freckled. Look at

that, we said a few times while watching
people of all ages do whatever it was they
were doing. There was a lumbering little boy

wearing a thickly padded life jacket, loads
of nearly naked teenagers, and tattoos galore
on both firm and sagging flesh. Couples

strolled by and mothers with babies, dads
with more hair on their legs than their heads.
Most people were stationary, like us, parked

beneath their umbrellas and Shibumis, music
blaring, beverages in hand, soaking up sounds
of the sea, the white-hot glare, and a cloudless

sky the color of blue jeans washed a thousand
times. And despite the occasional temper tan-
trums of hot and tired children, the screaming

gulls fighting over bits of stale bread, and the
blistering heat, we were content to breathe the
humid air and brave those soaring temps for

a few carefree hours with the friends we have
known for years, talking or not talking—just
watching the world go by. We were happy

to be alive on a sunny summer day that will
never come again—but could shine through
the scrim of a poem long after we are gone.



Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven collections of award-winning poetry, including Night Talks: New & Selected Poems (Press 53), a finalist for the International Book Award for Poetry. Her work has appeared in “American Life in Poetry,” Rattle, The SUN, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and many others.

Class Outside by Paul Willis

Evening light in the sycamore trees,
the tilting pines, the sandstone
boulders across the lawn. Crows call,
dogs bark, soccer players on a distant field
shout and plead with one another.

But here, the quiet urgency
of a circle of students at their desks
on a patio, each eye pausing
over the path of a wandering pen,
taking direction from the wind.



Paul Willis has published eight collections of poetry, the most recent of which are Somewhere to Follow (Slant Books, 2021) and Losing Streak (Kelsay Books, 2024). Individual poems have appeared in Poetry, Christian Century, Southern Poetry Review, and the Best American Poetry series. He is an emeritus professor of English at Westmont College and a former poet laureate of Santa Barbara, California, where he lives with his wife, Sharon, near the Old Mission.

Simulacrum by Richard Weaver

          After Modigilani

With one hand he suspends everything
in the framed space of an open window.

He lifts the canvas weight as easily
as her almond-shaped eyes rise to take

pleasure in the wind wrapping itself around
the spine of a tree. Her faith’s a gravity slowly

lowering to earth. There’s a spreading light
beyond this violence. A column supporting

the athlete of the eye, and in the painted figure
of a nude on the beige wall, a one-handed effigy.

The strength of its secret lies in the collusion
of objects, not in the straightforward abstraction.

The red square, the blue circle and yellow triangle
whetting the edge of a voice. Pressed against the wall

rising in short, broken waves, a human head expands
in an arabesque of its own faith which begins in pleasure

and now fades in the autumnal cry of an opaque sun
in the space between the perfect shadow and a fixed sessile light.



Richard Weaver is the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub in Baltimore. Other publications include 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). He was one of the founders of the Black Warrior Review and its Poetry Editor for the first four years. Recently, his 204th prose poem was accepted since he began writing them in 2016. (Only 353 remain available as of today).

While My Niece Vacuums, Her Daughter Finds the Paper Scissors by Chris Dahl

I cut, she says, I cut, Mama.
As if they were hedging shears
she opens and closes the blades with
both hands, the advice I offer ignored.

The scissors twist in her clenching.
Apparently, my job is to turn the paper
to the blades, feeding it perpendicular,
tightening the flimsy edge until

a portfolio emerges, page after page
with fringed borders, a floor
debauched with nicked scraps.

Fiercely, she metes out the paper’s
punishment, snick after snick, her face
a bud of concentration. By the time
the floor is vacuumed—twice—
she’s embellished seven sheets.

Once I let go of my need to teach.
Once she understands what is possible.



Chris Dahl cups handfuls of murky pond-water hoping to examine another world half-hidden in this one. Her chapbook, Mrs. Dahl in the Season of Cub Scouts won Still Waters Press “Women’s Words” competition. Extensively published, she also serves on the Olympia Poetry Network board and edits their newsletter.

After Chemo by Maryfrances Wagner

How long have I been like this? she asks,
as though her chemo was a hangover.
Three days, I tell her. She punches
her pillow, a little drool creeping
down her chin, her sigh like my cat
before he gave up. No one should ever
have to live like this, she says. It’s easier
to die. I cover her with a quilt. No,
she says, I’m getting up. She wobbles
to the light switch. A devil came out of here.
He imitated me pulling my pain. Never
mind. You wouldn’t understand. I refresh
her ice water and juice, guide her
back to her bed, fluff her pillow
as she did for me, her cool hand
rescuing me from what hovered
outside my window, waiting.



Maryfrances Wagner co-edits I-70 Review, was Missouri Artist of the Year, and was Missouri’s 6th Poet Laureate. Red Silk won the Thorpe Menn book award and was first runner up for the Eric Hoffer award (2024). Her poems have appeared in New Letters, Laurel Review, Main Street Rag, Rattle, etc.

Thirty-Two Degrees by Hannah Dilday

Laid to rest beneath the All-Seeing Eye,
watched your grand master tie an apron 'round
the mahogany casket, your bloated waist.

You died at the penultimate level,
but I only knew you as Dad, not a
member of some secret society.

So I buried a stranger with the face
of my father, grave decorated with
a compass set to thirty-two degrees.



Hannah Dilday is an emerging American writer currently residing in the Netherlands. She earned her BS in philosophy from The University of Oregon and has been living abroad for the past four years. Hannah's poetry has appeared in ONE ART, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Poem Stellium.

Chamomile by Joey Nicoletti

My mother told me:
five years after World War Two,
the chamomile seeds
that German soldiers spat out
into the seared ground
of her family’s homestead
grew into bushes even
thicker than my Nonno Giovanni’s forearms,
glistening in the sweat of anticipation
as they boarded the S.S. Colombo,
their ship, the silver voices of church bells
shrouding Genoa in mist.
“We will grow like chamomile
in America, my sweet angel,”
Giovanni said. “We will grow.”



Joey Nicoletti's most recent books are Extinction Wednesday: A Memoir (Bordighera Press, 2024) and Breakaway (Broadstone Books, 2023). He is the Reviews Editor of VIA: Voices in Italian Americana and teaches in the College Writing Program at SUNY Buffalo State University.

Umbra by Michelle Reale

On a cold day in June I rocked my granddaughter to sleep. I buried my face in her curls then felt an intense swirl of heat surrounding me. It rested in my throat. This came on the heels of a week of ultramarine dreams, which made me feel out of time. I kept pressing my feet into the floor, trying to ground myself. I emptied out a folder of old photos. I focused on one of my father in Rome’s Piazza del Popolo, his hands deep into the pockets of an overcoat with broad shoulders. Common nightingales in various states of flight surrounded him. He looked pensive, much the way his own father tended to look in photos. Always an edge of fear. The colors in the photo were muted with time, much like my father’s memory of that day. The sky was such a pale blue, it looked nearly bereft. It awakened a homesickness in me that had thus far been muted. I tracked the cause of past suffering to indecision and maybe a lack of touch. Emotional investments made me realize that I was made for freedom, but the road was narrow. I must have an ancestor somewhere, whose name, long forgotten, meant something important that could be useful to me, who could help me to survive certain brutalities. The future may make us tremble, but we will walk into it anyway. Once someone loved me and gave me a diamond ring like my very own star, brilliant, but prone to fading over millennia. Love was a miracle in the way that hysteria is: it comes out of nowhere and no one can make sense of it in time enough for it to matter. There is a photograph of me, but it is a creation of my own imagination. I am wearing a light violet dress. The sun is weak. I am pensive, like my father. I am off to the side, leaving most of the photograph empty. But I have a memory and I want to pass it on to the little one in my arms: behind enormous light, there was a raw purple moon. My blood diamond. A far off summer symphony. Now my ring finger is empty save for the scar where it used to sit like a shining star.



Michelle Reale is the author of several poetry and flash collections, including Season of Subtraction (Bordighera Press), Blood Memory (Idea Press), In the Year of Hurricane Agnes (Alien Buddha Press), and Terra Ballerina (Alien Buddha Press). She is the Founding and Managing Editor for both OVUNQUE SIAMO: New Italian-American Writing and The Red Fern Review. She teaches poetry in the MFA program at Arcadia University.

That Which Was and is Not by Steve Brisendine

Tempted
to hit the brakes –
but the hamburger joint
where Gary and I ate last March
has closed.

Not all
tombstones are hewn from granite, bear
chiseled names and lifespans;
some simply read
FOR RENT.



Steve Brisendine lives, works and remains unbeaten against the New York Times crossword puzzle in Mission, Kansas. His work has appeared in I-70 Review, Southern Quill, Modern Haiku and elsewhere, and he is the author of five collections of poetry. In his spare time, he tries to make himself seem far more interesting than he actually is.

misfit by Steve Brisendine

new calendar,
same old dreams
of broken reading glasses
and unpaired shoes

with somewhere
important to be
five minutes ago --

the last final for the degree
I never finished, maybe,
or a deadline to apply
for the job I already have

(if I could only wake up
and remember)



Steve Brisendine lives, works and remains unbeaten against the New York Times crossword puzzle in Mission, Kansas. His work has appeared in I-70 Review, Southern Quill, Modern Haiku and elsewhere, and he is the author of five collections of poetry. In his spare time, he tries to make himself seem far more interesting than he actually is.

Broken Fiddle by Jason Ryberg

Tonight, the moon is
     a white chrysanthemum and
a lone cricket is
squeaking out a sad country
          tune on a broken fiddle.



Jason Ryberg lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.

Wrong Turns by George Nevgodovskyy

laminated roadmap
folded in glove box
your fingers
trace along
black lines tethered
to orange dots
taking all the blame
for leading us astray

now our kids say
cell phones do it for you
but there are days
I don’t want to arrive
take wrong turns
pull over unfold
our outdated map
your fingerprints
on its surface
and no one to blame
but myself



George Nevgodovskyy was born in Kiev, Ukraine, but has lived in Vancouver, Canada for most of his life. He has previously been published in East of the Web, Eunoia Review, trampset, Shot Glass Journal, and others. He does his best writing after everyone has gone to sleep. Check out more of his work at georgenev.blogspot.com

Pieces of You by Andrea Maxine Recto

A small house with a broken, red back door. The radio station on
in the morning. Cheap cigarettes and stale coffee
by the window. You kept my finger paintings taped to the fridge
and called them art. We had breakfast for dinner.

Five-dollar bills and small teeth tenderly tucked
underneath pillows. Burnt meatloaf and two glasses of milk.
The smell of wood shavings and your gray-blue
leather gloves. Sunday walks sitting on your shoulders, my hands grabbing
your hair to stay warm. Bedtime stories and you giggling in the dark.

Stuffed bras, red lipsticks, and painted black nails. I remember
your nervous laughter when you gave me the sex talk. Movie nights
and truffle and butter popcorn on a brown, beat-up couch.
Finding your blood in the bathroom sink. Doctors, nurses, and words
I don't understand. Wishing I still had my old stuffed bear
with the patched-up leg. Pillows soaked with tears.

Pills, pills, pills. Tidy hospital food trays and sterile sheets.
How terrified I was to hear your voice
in the middle of the night. Your bloodshot eyes. Holding hands
while we fell asleep.

Someone presses a small, silver cross into my hand. I shake
my head, eyes welling up. There are casseroles stacked
on every kitchen surface. Your name is whispered
over and over. Lilies, carnations, and roses are everywhere,
and you are nowhere in sight.



Andrea Maxine Recto is a Spanish-Filipino poet living in Manila. Her work has appeared in the Santa Clara Review and ONE ART, with more forthcoming in the Long River Review and elsewhere.

Time Bomb by Carolynn Kingyens

          The photograph is concerned
          with the power that the past
          has to interfere with the present:
          the time bomb in the cupboard.

          — Penelope Lively

Sometimes complicated emotions,
too heavy to bear, require suspension,
not in a mid-air dangling kind of way
like ribboned mistletoe suspended
over a lone threshold,
or a golf course green colored piñata
in the shape of an angry T-Rex
suspended over the heads of small children
at the birthday party but rather a suspension
of reality — some faraway, metaphysical place
Where The Wild Things Are, and the emotional
baggage I refuse to feel right now,
you know — painful things
like my estranged mother's suicide,
whom I loved from afar, where it felt safe,
and a nagging dread that history
may repeat itself as only dysfunction can
so I hit an invisible pause button on life:
on CPAP machines and separate bedrooms;
on a daughter, whom I can't reach
no matter how hard I try;
on our mid-century modern home
where the floors are made
entirely of delicate egg shells.

But in this suspension, this pause,
I'm free to binge-watch YouTube videos
under cute animal channel names
like GeoBeats and Cuddle Buddies,
becoming a much-needed comfort
in the tumult like the one about
a lonely black and white yak
named Marge and a lonely
black and white cow
named Maxine that soon become
fast friends under the swath
of bright pink and orange sky,
living out the rest of their days
together on a humane ranch
in the middle of Montana.

Or the video about the quirky,
purple-haired retiree named Pauline,
who rescues a baby squirrel,
she names Earnest,
that falls from its nest, landing
serendipitously in the sanctuary
of her backyard.

Pauline ends up remodeling
half her home to accommodate
the on-going gymnastics
of an indoor pet squirrel;
perhaps filling some kind
of maternal void.

It's amazing what I can keep
at bay while suspended
in this jelly-like grief.

For one, an ocean of emotion
resides just outside myself
wanting full entry the way water
demands — by way of a slow, steady
seep into the depths of my cracked
psyche-boat as I stay afloat — for now
with the help of non-stop amusement
and Starbucks.

Yesterday, my daughter called me
Karen, and right now there's a massive
beehive suspended under my roof's eave
in the shape of a furious, ticking time bomb
about to fall and scatter, changing everything
for good.



Carolynn Kingyens is the author of two books of poetry — Before the Big Bang Makes a Sound (2020) and Coupling (2021), both published by Kelsay Books. In addition to poetry, Kingyens writes narrative essays, book / film reviews, and short fiction. Her short stories "Bye Bye, Miss American Pie" and "The Invitation" were selected for Best of Fiction 2021 and 2023 list, respectively, by Across the Margin, a Brooklyn-based arts & culture webzine and podcast.

The Great War by Howie Good

Lt. Wilfred Owen, in a letter home,
described the front with the license
of a modern poet as smelling “like
the breath of cancer.” And as Simon
and Garfunkel fans know, “Silence
like a cancer grows.” I have had cancer.
At my last appointment, the oncologist
fumbled for words in relating the results
of a recheck. Wilfred Owen would be
killed on night patrol in no man’s land.



Howie Good's latest book, Frowny Face (Redhawk Publishing, 2023), is a mix of his prose poems and handmade collages. He co-edits the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.

Charles and Lydia by John Ziegler

The sepia photo of my great grandparents
is their only record beyond their headstones.

I imagine the soft flesh of her wrists,
her ginger hair curls like a French horn,
Charles as white as a cod without his shirt.

As she lays her smock across the maple rocker,
the casual yellow dog, watches discreetly,
his chin on the braided rug.

They slip beneath the muslin sheet,
exhale and smile.

In this bed she conceived
their ninth child,
the same day she became a grandmother.



John Ziegler is a poet and painter, gardener and traveler, originally from Pennsylvania, he recently migrated to a mountain village in Northern Arizona.

How much does the spirit weigh? by Michael J. Galko

Ask the pallbearers
fifteen years after

carrying the closed casket
of a murdered friend.

Feel the hasty flinch
even when your hand

                        rests

on their shoulder
in clear kindness.



Michael J. Galko is a scientist and poet who lives and works in Houston, TX. He was a finalist in the 2020 Naugatuck River Review narrative poetry contest and the 2022 Bellevue Literary Review poetry contest. Recent poems have appeared in Eclectica, Clackamas Literary Review, and Tar River Poetry.

Carum Carvi by Russell Rowland

The trivet, with its pretty picture
of that curative plant, is among my takeaways
from the long-ago divorce.

It rests on a table; often I look at the image.

Also called caraway, it will blossom in June
and July, and its seeds

give off a pleasant aroma, crushed.

It has been found effective
in getting down and keeping down whatever
is hardest to swallow in life.

I’m always grateful to learn a little;

grateful for so many things I’m aware of now
that I was not, until the hard
divorce—when my eyes were opened, almost

too wide for their sockets, while my weight
fell for a time to one-hundred-eight.



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.

Twin Red Oaks by Russell Rowland

If that Federal-style house on Route 107
ever aspires to B&B, “Twin Oaks” is what it will call itself.

The pair out front have been together
since they were acorns. Old-school, however—minimum
public display of affection. Oh,

they nod to each other over private arboreal concerns,
shared memories of the hurricane.

By midsummer, it’s difficult to tell whose foliage is whose.

Trunks don’t touch—
just stand like people waiting to be properly introduced.

But underground, with only moles, worms, water veins,
and rocks to notice, these two
are holding hands. And if one ever topples to gale forces,

we know the other will catch and support it.



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 Chicken Strays from the Neighbor’s Flock by Sharon Waller Knutson

A coyote follows
the brown hen
from the neighbor’s
yard as she traipses
across our property,
breaks her neck
as she bends
to pick up the popcorn
kernel on the ground.

My husband stands
at the window watching
the blizzard of feathers
as the coyote carries
the dead chicken back
to his den and the rooster
crows a warning:

Predator in our Midst
as the sun rises in the valley,
just like the warning
we gave our neighbor
when she got the chickens
and let them roam
in the wildlife habitat.

The neighbor wagged
her finger as she does now
when she sees the feathers
covering our lawn. It’s your
fault my chicken is dead,
she says. You lured coyotes
with your water. And my
chickens with your snacks.

We close the door knowing
reasoning with her is like
trying to convince a hungry
coyote to stop dining
on the smorgasbord of squirrels,
chipmunks and chickens,
fearing the feral feline is next.



Sharon Waller Knutson has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has published 12 books of poetry, including the most recent, The Leading Ladies of My Life (Cyberwit 2023) and its sequel, My Grandfather is a Cowboy (Cyberwit 2024). She has published 1,000 poems in more than 60 publications. She is the editor of Storyteller Poetry Review and lives in Arizona.

Serving Time by Jean Ryan

A royal family in Polynesia was gifted
a tortoise hatchling by the explorer Captain Cook.
For 188 years this reliable creature hauled itself
across the property, accepting whatever
hindrance it encountered. Some days
it likely went nowhere, just hunkered where it woke,
disinclined to travel or eat or even gaze at the greenery,
the act of breathing engagement enough.
How can we assume that a turtle who lived 68,620 days
didn't get bored or grouchy, didn't want to occasionally bite
the hand that fed it, just to shake things up?
How many decades was it saddled with aches and pains?
How much had it slowed down before the difference
between living and dying became too small to measure,
and did it give itself away then in agreement
or did it fight, like us, for one more wretched inch?



Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in coastal Alabama. 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, a book of nature essays, Strange Company, and a poetry collection, A Day Like This. https://jean-ryan.com/

Best Friend by J.I. Kleinberg

The dog sits by the door
below the hooks where jackets
and scarves, raincoats and a leash
hang in a tumble of color. The dog
is curled on the forbidden couch.

The dog stands at the side of the bed,
chin resting near the pillow, watching.
The dog feels the car approaching,
and barks an announcement, a warning.
The dog is a blur on the beach,

a zigzag shadow in the woods. The dog
carries the growling hunger of the pack,
stands ready, eager to be the metaphor.
The dog chews the delicious shoe,
so redolent of love.



J.I. Kleinberg is an artist, poet, and freelance writer. Her chapbooks include The Word for Standing Alone in a Field (Bottlecap Press), how to pronounce the wind (Paper View Press), Desire’s Authority (Ravenna Press Triple Series No. 23), and she needs the river (Poem Atlas). She lives in Bellingham, Washington, USA, and is on Instagram @jikleinberg.

Ignoring Rough Weather by Martha Christina

Because the sun
is shining, we ignore
the forecast, ignore
the gathering clouds
we can't identify by
name: cumulous?
cumulonimbus?
Nor do we know
what they portend.
Portend, hardly
ever used, even
in poetry.

Did I say "we"
in the opening
lines? As if I
weren't alone
with only my cat
to hear me.
The sun is shining,
I tell her again.



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.

The Latest News by Martha Christina

A squirrel monopolizes
the feeder, eating as if
the cylinder were filled
solely for its nourishment
although the seeds are
labeled "Wild Bird Seed."

Finches and sparrows
shelter in the bare
wisteria vines, waiting.

Today's killing continues.



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.

Wrong by Martha Christina

I mistake the small moth,
wings folded, unmoving,
for a bit of dried leaf stem
in the basin; but when I
reach to remove it,
it opens its wings
reflecting sunlight
and life.



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.

in the hotel, on the eve of district playoffs by Natalie Schriefer

the others are sleeping.
through a slit in the curtain
you watch the rain. past
midnight, it peters off
like an ellipsis, the silence
between


            window plinks


                           lengthening.
you’re nervous. the parking
lot is dark. in the shadows
you can imagine anything
you want—yet you never
imagine yourself winning.



Natalie Schriefer, MFA is a bi/demi writer often grappling with sexuality, identity, and shame. She loves asking people about their fictional crushes (her most recent are Riza Hawkeye and Gamora). A Best of the Net nominee, find her on Twitter @schriefern1 or on her website at www.natalieschriefer.com.

Honey Bee by Ruth Holzer

You stagger on the stepping stone,
losing strength in autumn’s chill.
At times you tumble over on your back,
and struggle to right yourself again,
to resume your futile crawl.

Where now your single-minded flight
toward the seduction of an unfurled flower?
Where now the gift of golden dust you bore
back to the hive? Can you remember
the summer when you hummed,
when you danced among your sisters?

This is where all your labors tend.
Useless and alone, you must drag
your brittle body back and forth
until you weary yourself
and cease, for there is no one here
to crush you out of mercy.



Ruth Holzer's poems have been widely published. She lives in Virginia.

Foraging by Frank C. Modica

Grandpa knew the best places
to gather bundles of dandelion leaves
to feed his family.
He bypassed easier pickings
closer to home, trash-polluted plants
in crowded neighborhoods for
green fields in distant cemeteries
at the ends of streetcar lines.

Before coming to America
he ate the wild dandelions in Sicily—
often his only meals,
so he rejoiced to see the bountiful
fields in America, free for the taking.
He harvested them young,
once yellow blossoms opened,
the leaves tasted sharp and pungent.

Some years jobs were scarce,
the bosses tight-fisted.
He’d work long hours
for low pay; empty pockets
for streetcar fares.
When he could finally forage,
he closed his eyes to the yellow
blossoms emerging in overgrown yards,
along curbs, in empty city lots—

After the long ride to the cemetery,
a bitter harvest.



Frank C. Modica is a retired teacher. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sheila-Na-Gig, Red Eft Review, and Willawaw Journal. Frank's first chapbook, What We Harvest, nominated for an Eric Hoffer book award, was published in the fall of 2021 by Kelsay Books.

Pretty Hard to Know by Jeffrey Zable

Watching an old movie from the 40’s in which every one
of the actors--except for maybe the kid--has passed on,
a question comes to mind: What would any of the actors think
if they knew I was watching them right now? which, in a sense,
is keeping them alive.

After I asked myself this, I wondered how I might feel when I’m gone
if somehow I could observe someone reading one of my poems,
smiling afterward, or even raising their head in serious reflection.

I guess, in the end, it’s pretty hard to know. . .



Jeffrey Zable is a teacher, conga drummer/percussionist who plays for dance classes and rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area, and a writer of poetry, flash-fiction, and non-fiction. His writing has appeared recently in Chewers & Masticadores, Linked Verse, Ranger, Cacti Fur, Uppagus, Greensilk, Aether Avenue, and many others...

Gifts from a Neighbor by David Q. Hutcheson-Tipton

Dwayne moved home to help his aging parents.
We’d have Cokes on their porch. After
a beach week they brought us salt-water taffy.

Dwayne’s stomach hurt, his appetite was gone.
His clothes looked like they hung on a hook, not a man. The doctor ordered studies, a biopsy:

Pancreatic cancer.

We told them about hospice. Fentanyl
was like god for him, eased the pain.
What was his mother’s name? Ernestine.

His father was also Dwayne. Senior. The lights—
without sirens—finally came, not to save him
but to pronounce his death.

Maybe they were the same thing.



David Q. Hutcheson-Tipton’s poems have appeared in Willows Wept Review, Unlost, One Sentence Poems, and previously in Red Eft Review. He holds an MFA from Regis University. He lives near (sometimes in) the Colorado Rocky Mountains with his wife and several miniature poodles.

Marking Time by Howie Good

Almost the first thing I do in the morning
is take a bunch of pills, usually with my coffee,
but sometimes with the sordid remains
of a glass of wine from the night before.
Back in the fall, I had cancer surgery,
followed by thirty sessions of radiation.
My skin cracked and peeled like old paint
and my bones turned strangely rubbery.
Now every three months I must drive
into Boston from the South Shore
for a precautionary CAT scan of my chest
and abdomen. Parking is impossible.
The hospital buildings are topped
by coils of razor wire. And I’m still dying.



Howie Good co-edits the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.

Emergence by Sarah Russell

Today I saw a single silky thread from aspen
to eaves. I traced it and watched a spider,
backlit by the sun, weaving precise gossamer
tendrils, interconnected. There’s a new hatch
of dragonflies at our pond, the final leg
of a year’s journey from egg to nymph to adult.
It’s called Emergence—their last, fruitful days.
It’s what I feel after 80 years—an emergence
of days, of seasons, each one savored,
and family—eggs, nymphs, adults—the intricacy
of webs and silken threads.



Sarah Russell’s poetry has been published in Rattle, Misfit Magazine, Red Eft Review, and Third Wednesday. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She has two poetry collections, I lost summer somewhere and Today and Other Seasons (Kelsay Books). She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net

Autumn by Sarah Russell

Sugar maples are the first to turn,
mottled orange and scarlet with the green,
trying on the season. I need a sweater
now for morning walks.

The geese abandon summer ponds
in keening, migrant skeins to follow
shorelines south.

In twilight, remnant fireflies
glint urgent calls to mate, hopeful,
as we are, for one last tryst
before winter.



Sarah Russell’s poetry has been published in Rattle, Misfit Magazine, Red Eft Review, and Third Wednesday. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She has two poetry collections, I lost summer somewhere and Today and Other Seasons (Kelsay Books). She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net

Ode to My Purse by Sarah Russell

The one that’s 10 years old —
its leather soiled and supple,
lining grayed by a thousand
ins and outs of billfolds, keys,
candy. The purse fits me,

softening with use, sagging
into the middle of itself, scarred
by day to day, but refusing
to concede to age, zippers
still meshing, handle still
carrying its weight, stitching
still strong.



Sarah Russell’s poetry has been published in Rattle, Misfit Magazine, Red Eft Review, and Third Wednesday. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She has two poetry collections, I lost summer somewhere and Today and Other Seasons (Kelsay Books). She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net

Textures by Ahrend Torrey

Do we only live when the big promotion is given?

Do we only live when the awful day comes, and the ambulance arrives,
and everyone’s gathered around our loved one?

Do we only live on exciting vacations to foreign countries?

     Or

do we also live when we don’t realize we’re living at all—between
big memories?

—Like now, Deek and Dova are tearing up the grass,
are chasing each other’s tail,

and Purl (my cat) is peering up the storm door
at a tree frog
stuck to the glass.

My husband just stepped from his office: we ate hummus together,
during his fifteen-minute /break/ from class.

Do these textures also make up living? Of course,
let us feel them—

I’m learning they’re quickest to wear away.
They never last.



Ahrend Torrey is the author of Ripples (Pinyon Publishing, 2023), Bird City, American Eye (Pinyon Publishing, 2022) and Small Blue Harbor (Poetry Box Select, 2019). His work has appeared in storySouth, The Greensboro Review, and The Perch (a journal of the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health, a program of the Yale School of Medicine), among others. He earned his MA/MFA in creative writing from Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and is a recipient of the Etruscan Prize awarded by Etruscan Press. He lives in Chicago with his husband Jonathan, their two rat terriers Dichter and Dova, and Purl their cat.

The End is Music by A.R. Williams

Cascading water pours over
rocks vested in
moss, whispering to me
like a mother soothing her child.

At a distance,
a visitor crunches through the underbrush
as the rain’s rhythmic
clattering swells. Suddenly, a
croaking frog calls to me like the town crier,
heralding the arrival of night break.

Reclining in wooded solitude,
I end the day
with nature's symphony.



A.R. Williams is the author of A Funeral in the Wild (Kelsay Books, 2024) and editor of East Ridge Review.

Gratitude List #48 by Ace Boggess

Forgive me when I praise my wealth
of aspects not yet praised:

aches in back, ankles, knees
of which I complain
to have something to say
when conversations come to me;

the tornado that leapt me,
a last-minute pardon,
its straight-line downdrafts
painting a swirling mural
of muted colors;

all advances I missed
while locked in a cell
so I stepped from that time machine
into a shocking future of fascination;

the comets hidden by city clouds;

the women & men I didn’t love
while too afraid of their touch I craved.

Praise my pain & fear.
Praise absences, no-
second-chances.
Praise cuisines I’ve never tasted.
Praise suffering & praise contempt.

Not once have I praised my awfulness.
I praise it now & know this brings me peace.



Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy. His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble. His seventh collection, Tell Us How to Live, is forthcoming in 2024 from Fernwood Press.

With Six Grandsons Behind the Wheel by Sharon Waller Knutson

The call we fear
we're going to get comes
while we’re eating
popcorn and watching
television in the evening.

It’s our oldest son
who just turned fifty.
I hear sadness
in his voice
and clutch my cell
phone like a raft.

I gasp for air
as he speaks
of a car collision,
our second oldest
grandson in a coma
in an ICU, a machine
breathing for him.

I see the baby
with chubby cheeks
and curls turn into
a tall twenty-five-
year-old reciting
his vows in a suit
just three months ago.

My heart is broken,
I say as my son
and his father go silent.
I wish I could
change places with him.
But all I can do is wait.

On his fifth day in the ICU,
we get another call.
This time his mother
shouts, He’s breathing
on his own and opened
one eye and said,
What’s up Mama?



Sharon Waller Knutson has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has published 12 books of poetry, including the most recent, The Leading Ladies of My Life (Cyberwit 2023) and its sequel, My Grandfather is a Cowboy (Cyberwit 2024). She has published 1,000 poems in more than 60 publications. She is the editor of Storyteller Poetry Review and lives in Arizona.