Father and Child, Alone by Joseph Mills

In the dream, my father sits by himself
against the back wall. The room is full.
People are in pairs and small groups,
but he is alone and clearly lonely.
When I wake, I call to make sure
he’s okay. I know his life has become
a series of doctors’ appointments,
each one like the checking of a lottery ticket
to see if the numbers mean anything.
He says he’s fine although surprised
by the call since we talked a week ago.
I explain the dream, the feeling I needed
to check in, and he says he hopes I have
more dreams like that and so will call
more often which makes me feel shitty
although he doesn’t mean it like that
(I don’t think). I say I will, regardless
of what dreams may come, and I mean it,
at that moment, and he knows I do.
I have good intentions, most of the time,
and perhaps that’s what it comes down to
for parents, the belief in good intentions,
despite experience, the small comfort
they still come to their children in dreams.



Joseph Mills is on the faculty at University of North Carolina School of the Arts. His most recent collection of poetry is The Holiday Cycle (Press 53).

Circles by Ruth Holzer

Even among the expats
you were treated as second-class,
not a member of the inner circle,
never invited to those famous parties
with actors, directors and couturiers.
Excluded from their escapades
but subjected to their tales.

No matter how it had been spent,
sprinkled with what small random pleasures,
when the day ended
you had to return by yourself
to the arched doorway
that bore a lion’s head biting an iron ring
and spend the night
picturing the people you loved
loving each other instead.



Ruth Holzer is the author of ten chapbooks, most recently, On the Way to Man in Moon Passage (dancing girl press). Her poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, California Quarterly, Freshwater, POEM, Slant, Thema and elsewhere. She is a multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee.

No Show Snow by Terri Kirby Erickson

In the deep South, when we go to sleep
with the possibility of snow and wake
to the sound of disappointment in the form
of pelting rain, we should be compensated,
in my view, with fields of blooming bowl
of cream peonies, each flower fully formed,
every petal softer than cashmere, the color
of snow mixed with clotted cream. Sadly,
there would be no ice-covered hills for kids
to slide down on their sleds, no men made
of snow. But think of the fragrance—rich
and powdery—of so many peonies at the
pinnacle of their beauty, how miraculous
it would be for thousands of flowers to
appear all-at-once, overnight. Bees would
shed their winter jackets and feast among
them, delirious with nectar. Deer would
stroll through them as rabbits zig and zag
with wild abandon, unseen by predators.
At least it would be something more than
brown lawns and bare trees, the skies gray
as gym socks. If not snow, let there be this—
multiple fields of cream-colored peonies
glistening with drops of cold winter rain.



Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in “American Life in Poetry,” ONE ART, Rattle, The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and many others. Her awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Nautilus Silver Book Award.