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.

In 7th Grade Music Class by Elya Braden

          Listen to the story told by the reed, of being separated. / “Since I
          was cut from the reedbed, I have made this crying sound….”
          ~Rumi, The Reed Flute’s Song

I longed to float on hollow notes silvering up
to heaven, to dance in the high, thin atmosphere
of grace like swallows swooping outside my bedroom
window. Instead, I inherited the tarry sorrow

of my older brother’s hand-me-down clarinet,
conduit of lack and desperation. I practiced for hours
in my solitary bedroom, walls crawling with flowers,
as if I’d dreamed a jungle of security in a house

all open doors and border crossings. My brother’s
fingers intent on exploration, determined to pluck
my song from sealed lips. As I fingered secret melodies,
my lungs expelled each insult into reed after reed.

That year, I learned salvation didn’t live in winning
first chair, couldn’t hide in a crawlspace under the stairs
where, under flashlight’s flickered beam, I inked myself
into erasure, breath caught at the grasp of hand on door.



Elya Braden is a writer, mixed-media artist, and editor for Gyroscope Review. She has authored two chapbooks. Her full-length manuscript, Dragonfly Puzzle Box, is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2026. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. www.elyabraden.com.

Unhurried by Steve Deutsch

Snow this morning.
Flakes as big
as oak leaves flutter
in the eddying air,
as if their appointment
with the ground
might wait.

I watch them
from a window
that overlooks
a small porch
heavy with
garden tools—
artifacts

from a forgotten season.
I sip a third cup,
warm in the warm house
and curl up
in my easy chair—
looking no farther ahead
than lunch.



Steve Deutsch is the poetry editor of Centered Magazine and was the first poet in residence at the Bellefonte Art Museum. He has been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net Prizes multiple times. Steve is the author of six volumes of poetry. One of those collections, Brooklyn, won the Sinclair Poetry Prize.

The Pusher by Ace Boggess

The neighbor with dementia wants what she wants.
I go to five or six shops to find it,
even then a close approximation: Slim-
Fast milkshakes—wrong flavor,
but will do—I come to learn her family rations
like a week’s supply of oxycodone tablets.
When she asks, I have no idea she overdoes it,
overdoses in greedy abandon,
a delight without the rapture.

One junkie recognizes another. We do
what we can to help as long as it doesn’t rob us,
leave us short. I’ve been out of the scoring game
for years, didn’t expect to become
my neighbor’s SlimFast connection, diet-drink hustler.

The next day, her granddaughter
comes knocking, lets me in on the situation.
We share a laugh about it, but I can’t help
looking back at my addiction &
how far I was willing to go the one time
someone stood between me & my drug.



Ace Boggess is author of seven books of poetry, most recently Tell Us How to Live (Fernwood Press, 2025) and My Pandemic / Gratitude List (Mōtus Audāx Press, 2025). His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes, watches Criterion films, and tries to stay out of trouble. His first short-story collection, Always One Mistake, is forthcoming from Running Wild Press.

Surgeon General Warns of Epidemic of Loneliness by Ace Boggess

We wade through shallow ends
of empty pools & crowded rooms.
Our heads drip onto our phones.

Who are you? says the stranger,
a lusty god on his lips.

What are we to each other?
says the lover
as she turns away
the first of many times.

Our partners move to another town,
parents fade in twilight,
children were never born
to play the blues on a red guitar.



Ace Boggess is author of seven books of poetry, most recently Tell Us How to Live (Fernwood Press, 2025) and My Pandemic / Gratitude List (Mōtus Audāx Press, 2025). His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes, watches Criterion films, and tries to stay out of trouble. His first short-story collection, Always One Mistake, is forthcoming from Running Wild Press.

Ash Loaf by Steve Klepetar

The bakery burned all night.
Flames rose like astonished birds.
The smell of sugar turned bitter
as smoke stitched itself into the trees.
By morning the windows wept soot.
Someone said they saw a face
in the rising ash, the baker’s wife
or no one at all.
Children came with buckets,
scooping black crusts into the air,
pretending it was snow.
I stood by the curb,
holding a loaf I’d bought yesterday,
still soft, still throbbing with warmth.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. He is a contributing editor for Verse-Virtual. His poems have appeared widely in the U.S. and abroad and have received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Ordinary Life by Terri Kirby Erickson

My father wore threadbare white t-shirts
and blue pajama bottoms to bed, a plaid
bathrobe in the mornings. He liked to read
the local paper on the dining room table,
Jake the Cat curled at his slippered feet. In
the kitchen, my mother cracked eggs and
fried bacon while gazing out the window
over the big backyard where bird feeders
rocked from tree branches with the weight
of hungry squirrels, their whiskers shedding
husks. Mom looked like a blonde bombshell
in her plain cotton nightgown, but she never
noticed—Dad a real heartthrob with his salt
and pepper hair and dark, soulful eyes. Yet,
all my parents ever wanted was an ordinary
life. They liked being together in their own
house, never traveled a lot or cared to, didn’t
particularly like company except for family.
So this is a poem where nothing happens and
nobody dies, where my mother and father are
having their bacon and scrambled eggs on an
ordinary day. You can live forever in a poem
like this one—and now they will.

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.

Cashews by Penelope Moffet

Every month or so they come,
Mom quietly, Dad trying to be nice.
Last night he had me slivering cashews.
He wanted them precisely sliced
but I kept dropping them.

Dad raged about my clumsiness
and the cold air coming from an open
door and window. Mom slipped outside
the sliding glass and closed it, stared at me
without reproach, waiting to be let back in.



Penelope Moffet’s most recent chapbook is Cauldron of Hisses (Arroyo Seco Press, 2022). Her poems appear in Eclectica, ONE ART, Calyx, Sheila-Na-Gig and other literary journals. A full-length collection of her poetry will be published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2026.

Maui Wowie by Howie Good

Grass smells funky, just like it did when I was young
and cool and my use of it was nonmedicinal, but now,

given my accelerated rate of decay, the aftereffect
of cancer treatment, it lifts me out of my broken body,

like a mother lifts a howling red-faced baby out of a crib,
gently, and fills me with distance and strangeness and

light that has traveled thousands of years to be here.



Howie Good's latest poetry collection, True Crime, is scheduled to be published by Sacred Parasite in early 2026.

“Till That Plate Is Clean, Young Man" by Russell Rowland

The stalemate was over corned-beef hash.
As sunlight faded in the kitchen,
family life went on elsewhere without me.

It was a meal without grace or benediction.

My mind got up from the table many times.
I was back at their wedding,

my little cellophane bag of confetti, tight
in my hands—
I refused to throw any, because it was mine.

I thought back to an even earlier household:

Mother left me there
with another man. I looked a lot like him.
The front door slammed.

Hash-standoff must have ended: here I am.



Russell Rowland continues his trail work for the Lakes Region (NH) Conservation Trust, and his practice of writing a poem every day.

At the Warner, NH Indian Museum by Russell Rowland

Good morning!
You may call me Ellie. I will be your guide today.
My Abenaki name is Lady Slipper.

This exhibit hall is circular,
in keeping with our tradition that all life is a circle.

I will show you moccasins and regalia,
dugout and birchbark canoes, wigwams, teepees.
Teach you to survive winter on acorns,

explain why life depends upon following the bison.

About my Abenaki name.
I come from a subfamily of orchids. We remain
adaptable to varied habitats.

(Imagine being told where you will live henceforth,
and assigned a different name.)

I have sedative properties,
efficacious against nervousness, muscle spasms,
even dental pain.

I am adept at putting museum visitors at ease.
Now if you’ll follow me…



Russell Rowland continues his trail work for the Lakes Region (NH) Conservation Trust, and his practice of writing a poem every day.

Gifted Student by Lorri Ventura

In the amount of time it takes you to brush your teeth
He assembles 500-piece jigsaw puzzles
Starting by turning every interlocking bit
Over onto its unprinted side
Because the visual images offered
On the picture side of the puzzles
Overstimulate him
And trigger hyperventilation

Share with him your birthdate
And, instantly,
He will identify the day of the week
You were born
Recite your car’s license plate
And, even if he has seen your vehicle
Just once,
He will tell you the car’s make and model
But, if an automobile’s license plate
Ends in a letter rather than a number
He will not ride in that car

He sees colors when listening to music
And creates stunning watercolor paintings
Depicting melodies he sees
Loving all music except for G notes
Because G’s are red
A color he fears

He predicts the onset of rain
With the accuracy of a Torricellian barometer
Yelling to everyone on the school playground
When air pressure suddenly drops
And frantically urging them to seek cover
Because he doesn’t like getting wet

“He has needs related to autism,” they sigh
At his special education meetings
His teacher nods knowingly, then replies,
“And he also has gifts related to autism”



Lorri Ventura is a retired special education administrator living in Massachusetts. Her first full-length poetry collection, Shifting the Mind's Eye, was published in 2024.

Anneliese by Rick Swann

          born 8/30/2025

A fire in the Olympic Mountains
cast a golden spell on the moon
the moment of your birth.
Out on the deck, a breeze
from the west brought a whiff
of smoke and the taste of salt,
picked up while crossing
Puget Sound and evoking
memories of campfires
on the beach. The moon paved
a radiant road across the water.



Rick Swann's poems have been appeared in One Art, English Journal, Autumn Sky Poetry, Typehouse, Last Stanza, and other publications.

Bezoar by J.I. Kleinberg

Our third-grade teacher, Mrs. Dyer,
says to us: No Chewing Gum.

But ruminants, we chew and chew —
Double Bubble, Juicy Fruit —

and blink away a rush of tears
when avid teeth chomp down

on cheek or tongue. A probing finger
checks for blood. We snap and pop,

ventriloquists — it wasn’t me! —
until she turns, her palm outstretched

as if we might release that pallid wad
now hardening and flavorless

into her hand. That righteous posture,
lipsticked mouth a lipless line,

that hand outthrust, she wades
into a rising tide of battered desks.

We suck in telltale Black Jack breath,
gaze earnestly at blackboard, book,

attend her steady skirted swish
and square-heeled clomp until it stops.

Dry-mouthed, we swallow, open wide
to show our gumless gums, our blameless teeth.

We watch her hand, which drops to drum
the desk and drops again to strum the pleats

that spill, a brown cascade, from waist to shins
— that empty hand.

The gum, the gum is gone, hard bruise
to track its slow descent, gullet to gut,

where now, we know, we have been warned,
it will accrue, agglutinate, remain. Forever.



An artist, poet, and freelance writer, J.I. Kleinberg lives in Bellingham, Washington, USA, and on Instagram @jikleinberg. Her chapbooks include The Word for Standing Alone in a Field (Bottlecap Press, 2023) and Sleeping Lessons (Milk & Cake Press, 2025) as well as three collections of her visual poems.

Letter Home by Richard Weaver

After the train to Canton no one believed
I wanted to walk. There is the train they said.
Or bus. But for twenty days I’ve walked
across China. And by this month’s end
I’ll face the sea-blue mountains of Tibet.
I sleep in graveyards, not because it is quiet,
or the only high ground not given over
to growing rice, but because there are soldiers
whose eyes follow me through the villages.
I am safer with their honorable ancestors.

Walking fast is impossible since everything I see
is strange and new and fills me with green fire.
I feel drawn to every shadow and light.
When I stop to draw a boy herding geese with a stick,
those who see me wonder how I can
work with a brush held so poorly and not
made of bamboo. The people are kind though,
offering rice and even wine. I’m learning
language as I go, although my accent
will never be other than Mississippi.

Mary, they ride water buffaloes here
the way you ride a horse, meaning no insult to either.
You could show them a trick or two I’m sure.
I saw a group of women in a village
all fanning themselves like pelicans.
I wasn’t sure if it was my presence, their habit,
or the weather. But I’m glad my fate isn’t that
of a water carrier, balancing two pots
on a six-foot stick. I’d last no more
than day at best, and no doubt
I’d drink up the profits!
My love to you and ours
from the mountain’s shadow.



-Previously published in Underfoot Poetry



Richard Weaver continues as the official writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub, though he splits time with Hooley’s Public House in San Diego.

Father Mississippi: A Prayer by Richard Weaver

Bless these ferns that struggle to lift their heads
in a world where temptation

is a bulldozer and man is blind to everything
that doesn’t bite him first. And bless

the four-legged starfish who crawls across the reef
only to be eaten, and rejoice in the kingdom of salt.

Bring peace down
upon all those who glow in this dark

so that we might see their way.
And allow the beached dolphin one last glimpse

of the daymoon before it too fades into blue.
Let the treefrogs sing their song of this earth.

And the earth turn this flesh
back to shapeless clay.



-Previously published in The Cape Rock

Richard Weaver continues as the official writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub, though he splits time with Hooley’s Public House in San Diego.

Confessions of a Beachcomber by Richard Weaver

If I wake early I walk
toward the sun; if late, away.
I accept what the island provides.
Obvious things I leave:
shells, numinous and ordinary.
driftwood--it burns faster
than I can carry it to camp.
But always there are surprises:
a pair of shoes came in one day, my size!
A bottle of port wine.
A pair of unattached wings.
Lemons, onions, an alligator pear, toys.
One day a book washed in --
The Pageant of Literature-
and a pair of trousers. My size.
And once, for seven or eight miles
the beach was green with banana stalks.
All the animals on the island
joined me in the feast.
I took my share, leaving the rest
for the grackles and crabs,
the few raccoons who won’t
wait for them to ripen.



-Previously published in Underfoot Poetry



Richard Weaver continues as the official writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub, though he splits time with Hooley’s Public House in San Diego.

Absence by Steve Klepetar

If only the wind had leaned in with a whisper,
instead of slamming the door like a judge.
If only the tea had steeped a little longer,
and the sparrow hadn’t struck the glass.
You might have lingered by the stove,
watching steam rise like old secrets.
We could have wandered to the orchard,
where dusk gathers in the branches like sleep.
If only I had remembered what you said
about time, how it folds like a napkin,
never straight. But your eyes were already
turning toward the dark shape of the road.
Now your absence sits in my chair
each morning, quiet as a coat filled with rain.



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

Beyond the Frame by Ann Leamon

The woman lies alone in the field—
you’ve seen the painting—peering
over the horizon. The gray, weathered
house looms behind her, overwhelms her fragile
life. Did she really drag herself
out to the field? Why? Maybe for the same reason
my mother dragged the four of us back then:
to pick blueberries.

We packed a lunch, spent the day. Mom
picked berries, we climbed the rocks
along the cove, water cold
and green and clear as our futures seemed to be.

As the sun slipped low, Mom’s buckets full
of berries for jam and winter muffins,
we went to the steep hill
you can’t see in the painting,
above the little graveyard, and threw ourselves
down to roll,
roll,
roll,
arms and legs flying, shrieking
with delighted terror and surprise, to end
at the bottom dizzy, covered with twigs and leaves.

Stumbling, sunburned, sleepy—
Mom piled us in the station wagon for
the long drive home. The berries are still there,
I hear, and Christina hangs in the museum,
looking out of her frame to that hill,
to the graveyard at the bottom,
where she will be buried.



Ann Leamon writes poems, reviews, essays, and technical finance material. Her non-technical work has appeared in Harvard Review, The Arts Fuse, Tupelo Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, and River Teeth Journal, among others. She lives on the Maine coast with her husband and an opinionated Corgi-Lab mix.

Love Song in Silence by Ann Leamon

Four days before Christmas,
          he died.

She wrapped herself
          in silence.

No need for that constant stream
of one-sided
conversation,
explanation,
commentary,
description,
documentation,
the unending, inevitable questions
answered
          and answered
                    and answered again.
How often can you speak the time, the day, your name?

Few responsibilities now
except the fire,
children busy with the farm,
sunlight streaming warm through the
skylight, its bright square trudging
across the tattered carpet with the hours.

Why speak?
No one would answer.

The doctor ordered, “You must speak.” The brain contracts
without words.

Now, she drinks her tea
and reads aloud her poetry
to the husband
who left her one week
before their 64th anniversary,
who waits, not far, with their lost beloveds,
who understands
what she’s saying,
with words and without.



Ann Leamon writes poems, reviews, essays, and technical finance material. Her non-technical work has appeared in Harvard Review, The Arts Fuse, Tupelo Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, and River Teeth Journal, among others. She lives on the Maine coast with her husband and an opinionated Corgi-Lab mix.

Small Acts of Subversion by Ann Leamon

We are becoming a police state,
says HCR, who lives across the river.
Apparently, she never
sleeps. Her essays, cited thoroughly
—to rub metaphorical salt
in psychic wounds—
no longer conclude with hope.

She chronicles the collapse
of a culture that tried—for a
faltering, flickering, firefly’s moment—
to improve, to trust
its better angels. The lesser angels
won this round, ICE among the swing sets,
tax-payers dragged to prison camps.
I practice saying, “You do not need
to answer any questions.” My voice breaks.

Animal shelters are full and turn away
owner-surrenders as people
losing their homes find one more mouth
—even a small one, even attached
to a fuzzy face and a wagging tail—too much
to feed. A pet becomes a stray,
crying, hungry, wondering
what it did wrong. I donate dog food
to the food pantry.

My husband fixes houses
for our neighbors, stretches
his tiny budget to cover
windows and doors that don’t close,
leaking plumbing, rotten floors.
I fill the feeder for
woodpeckers, finches.

The one milkweed from last year
has returned in triplicate,
three times the welcome
for the monarchs that matter.



Ann Leamon writes poems, reviews, essays, and technical finance material. Her non-technical work has appeared in Harvard Review, The Arts Fuse, Tupelo Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, and River Teeth Journal, among others. She lives on the Maine coast with her husband and an opinionated Corgi-Lab mix.

Reunion Registry by Shoshauna Shy

Methodist Social Services sends mention
my maternal grandmother suffered
with arthritis, died of diverticulitis,
but there is nothing more.
The adoption agency’s report lists
my mother’s age, height, color of hair
at time of relinquishment.
The Adoptees’ Association tells me to
petition juvenile court for sealed records.
Instead, I fly the under-radar route, apply
to reunion registries, hope my arrow
of request makes data slide into one
vertical slot proving a half-sibling, nephew
by marriage or cousin-once-removed–
even a shirttail one–stretched their bow
and hit mine.
But within a month, all spinning stops.
Triplicate replies stack up and form
a buttress: No Matches Found.
My mother, my father, singly or together
leapt like deer into a tamarack woods
gone golden with sundown in September,
to their ongoing ready-made lives, to
other children they cherish.



Shoshauna Shy's poems have been made into videos, produced inside taxi cabs, and even decorated the hind quarters of city buses. She is also a flash fiction author — but that's a whole ‘nother story!

Knots by Frank C. Modica

My impatient adolescent brain
thought Alexander the Great
got it right when he severed
the Gordian knot with one slash.
I spent many years trying
to emulate his example,
racing through life
as I attempted
fast, easy solutions.

I think about all
the wasted effort;
how I lost so much
with the quick cuts.
I hope I’ve gotten
wiser in my 8th decade
as I pick at the twists,
untangling strands
one at a time.



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

Paid Obituaries by Fran Schumer

No one will pause at the headline

to the obituary I won’t have,
the kind you don’t have to buy,
written before you die.
Reporters actually interview you for those,
bury them later in a place called,
believe it or not, the morgue.
But I prefer the tiny agate notices,
whole novels reduced to a one-inch note,
written about people no one knows,
paid for by loved ones who want
the world to know he loved Mozart,
she bred collies, his roses won a prize.
The same impulse that causes us
to paint, to plant trees,
splash graffiti on buildings,
trash cans, subway cars
rusting in old train yards –
To say: we were here
and we wanted someone to know.



Fran Schumer’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The North American Review, and elsewhere. She won a Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing poetry fellowship. Her chapbook, Weight, was published in 2022. She studied political theory at college but wished she spent more time reading Keats.

Why? by Martha Christina

wasn’t a question
asked in my family,
and so remained
unanswered.

Adults avoided
emotional outbursts;
salt tossed over a shoulder
took care of misfortune.

Still, grief arrived
like a poor relation
come for dinner, not
invited, but fed. No one
questioned that presence;
no one answered for it.



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.

With a Predictable Ending by Martha Christina

When my late neighbor
moved from Southern
California to Southern
New England, she
was a new widow.

She told, repeatedly,
stories of her young
and busy life. Young
and busy myself, I
barely listened, but
her stories were
always my own,
waiting to be told.



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.

Anhedonia has an affair with the poet by Alex Stolis

It's not just the pretty words or how he seems to read
her heart; it’s the way he kisses her wedding ring,
says he loves her more than love.

Calls her muse, scribbles in his notebook when they’re
in bed; knows everything she is and everything she's not.
They sit on the fire escape, share a cigarette, the sun a dull

ache, the rattle of the A-train full with commuters dreaming
of home. He’s there-not-there. She can’t interpret the wind,
translate birdsong. They’re left with a rebuke

from the sky, they’re full, yet starving. She knows he’s
a magpiecharlatanthief, feels his words trickle down
her neck. He lies in ways that don’t matter.

When his poems are published, stark black against loud
white; she feels immortal, beautiful; convinces herself
they’re not for his wife.



Alex Stolis lives in Hudson Valley, NY.

Two Horses by Terri Kirby Erickson

Old and sway-backed, starved
and abused, two horses sold
for meat were bought and saved

by my compassionate friend.
Let loose to graze in verdant
pastures, their heads are bowed

like nuns in prayer for hours—
until they can hold no more.
Gently, gently their rescuer

speaks to them, her words like
a soft breeze, her hands twin
messengers of grace and peace.

Now they will call to her, nicker
when she is near, two horses
that have seldom, if ever, been

safe. Watching their ribs sink
beneath pounds of added flesh,
their coats begin to shine like

copper pots, her face is shining,
too, like lighted windows, like
the sun rising, like love that lasts.



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.

Scarecrow by Jacqueline Cleaveland

It wanted to stand on its own,
that straw scarecrow
with square pink patches
sewn into its cheeks
to resemble rosy mirth.
It never failed to smile
that black, thinly stitched smile
enhanced by round blue eyes,
that each have a small white dot
painted near the right of its pupil
to mimic a soul’s glimmer.



From Southern California, Jacqueline Cleaveland works as a staff writer for a local university.

Gathering by Jacqueline Cleaveland

I see him again
in my dreams
at a Christmas party. He is the center,

he commands as the host, quietly
in a white tie, his shoes touch
the polished wooden floor.
Grandfather to all, we are in his house—
it is filled with people I do not know,
they’re cousins of mine, I am told.
They laugh with me
as if they know my name.
One sits close to me,
we press thigh to thigh
in a single rocking chair.

Another relative asks me to translate
a love letter written in French, I help her
even though I don’t know the words
away from that room. She thanks me,
and her breath smells of far-away smoke.
There, I see him, amidst his smile
he winks. He knows.
His glasses are still round, his chipped tooth
gleams. I am relieved. “Thank goodness, he is alive.”
That other life where he is gone
is merely a trick.



From Southern California, Jacqueline Cleaveland works as a staff writer for a local university.

Surrender by Jacqueline Cleaveland

I will be forgotten.
Tonight is practice,
for in this darkness,
vanity has no supply.

I slip down
and dissolve,
forgetting
in mind, remembering
in some other way
like how a flower knows
when to close its bloom,
and how fallen, uneaten fruit
understand stillness.

Here, I find faith
to be simple, secrets
deliver hope, amidst
this vastness,
amidst our anonymity,
somehow, I know you.



From Southern California, Jacqueline Cleaveland works as a staff writer for a local university.

184 Days in the ICU by Lisa Olsson

You may be ready to let go
before they are—or it could be
the other way around.

It wasn't you who chose
catheter and cotton smock,
IV and cool bed rail.

Who synchronizes death?

Day and night the same here.
Fluid noise, machine noise
blend into a music.

Now you only stare.
The bone exposed.
How will you tell them when?



Lisa Olsson is a poet, cellist, and painter who lives in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Her debut chapbook was published by Finishing Line Press. She was a winner of the Poetry in the Pavement competition of the Hudson Valley Writers' Center.

On Painting by Julia Caroline Knowlton

I multiply weightless suns
on ocean horizons:
some watery as tears,

some sticky as blood.
My sable brush says
come nearer, rose tone.

Come blue me in flood.



Julia Caroline Knowlton teaches French and Creative Writing at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta. The author of five volumes of poetry, she has twice been named a Georgia Author of the Year in the poetry chapbook category. She lives in Atlanta and Paris.

Four O'Clock by Kelley White

The cats are here between me and the window
because it is a warm sunny afternoon and they will not
let me work. They bathe themselves. They bathe
each other. You’ve come in. It’s a lovely late
August day. Your legs surprise me, veins knotted,
pale, blue beneath your thinning skin. So thin.
Muscles disappearing with each day we survive.
My face is warm too. Soon I will have to pull
the curtain against the sun. And we will both lie
down. Sunlight, cats, autumn. Nothing more
needed. Unless you count us both, the way we keep
breathing, the way we can sleep with sun washing
our faces.



Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in Philadelphia and New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle, and JAMA. Kelley's most recent chapbook is A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press.) She is the recipient of a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant and she is Poet in Residence at Drexel’s Medical School. Kelley's newest collection, NO. HOPE STREET, was recently published by Kelsay Books.

I Come From by Diane Webster

I come from sagebrush
where rattlesnakes coil
in shade away
from the mid-day sun.

I come from rocks
where chukars call
an echo across
fossilized riverbeds.

I come from immigrants
deserting Russia and England
for a trip across the Atlantic
when I would have been
seasick hung over the rail
hungry for land I now call home.



Diane Webster's work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One and other literary magazines. Micro-chaps were published by Origami Poetry Project in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. Diane was a featured writer in Macrame Literary Journal and WestWard Quarterly. Her website is: www.dianewebster.com

The Spoilers by Terri Kirby Erickson

I wasn’t sure I liked it, the A-framed skirt of that
prom dress with its yellow roses, its layer of creamy
chiffon. The sash showcased the tiny waist I took
for granted, but I didn’t care about that. My friends
were all slender reeds, as thin as we would ever be
again. What we wanted was to make our prom dates
swoon with desire. But you can’t say such a thing
to the gray-haired co-workers of your mother’s in
the department store where she worked. They’d
taken me to the bridal section, which had the best
mirrors, and they all, along with my mother, were
oohing and aahing, their faces shining like polished
apples. I didn’t have the heart to disappoint them
and it was the best of the lot in the place where my
mom could get a discount. So, I wore it on prom
night with a yellow and white corsage on my wrist,
my hair like dark water tumbling over my rose-
patterned shoulders, my date as sullen as an old man
forced to rise from his chair when company came
to call. He was a spoiler of special occasions—you
know the type—whose good looks make girls forget
about their ruined Christmases and birthdays, the
dances when we call our dads to pick us up early.
But I still remember that feeling of let-down—how
glad I was that the nice salesladies couldn’t see me
tear off my rose-covered dress like it was on fire.



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.

Lasting Love by Lorri Ventura

As the sun sets over the bleak cemetery
One of its rays rests upon an old man
Slumped on a park bench
The octogenarian nods in response to the sunbeam’s gentle nudge
And blows a kiss full of loneliness and longing
Toward a lichen-festooned headstone

He wipes an errant tear from one eye
As, with a grunt, he slowly hoists his complaining bones
Into a reasonably upright position
Coaxing his walker ahead of him
He reluctantly inches away from the gravestone

He finds comfort in the knowledge
That he will return tomorrow
And every day thereafter
Until he comes to rest there forever
Beside his beloved



Lorri Ventura is a retired special education administrator living in Massachusetts. Her debut poetry collection, Shifting the Mind's Eye, was published in 2024.

Looking at a Lone Woman in a Bar by Doug Holder

          *The Burren Pub: Davis Square

They are always so impenetrable.
A dead stare at the wall.
Her drink,
Some half-empty prop.
And the cigarette...
Still holding
A torch
But for what?

No -
My gaze will not be met
And the clues
She will leave
A certain dead end.
And the cigarette will smolder.
The smoke
Will follow its trail
To oblivion.



-Previously published in Poems from the Left Bank: Somerville, Mass. (Propaganda Press)



Doug Holder is the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press and is on the board of the New England Poetry Club. He teaches at Endicott College in Beverly, MA.

Domestic Psalm by A.R. Williams

She brews a pot
while the children are still asleep,

her ritual.
Today, I joined her.

As I sipped,
warmth poured through my darkness.



A.R. Williams is a poet from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. His poetry collections include Funeral in the Wild (Kelsay Books, 2024), Time in Shenandoah (Bottlecap Press, 2024), and A Weathered Ship (Ridge Books, 2025). Website: virginiapoet.com

Terribly, Almost Never: A Golden Shovel by A.R. Williams

          “When I need them most terribly, never.”
          —Franz Wright, “Words”

There comes a time, for all, when
we are asked to lose ourselves. That’s when I

discovered the fullness of feeling empty, the need
to find abundance through release. Now I sing an anthem
made of silence, craving most

the absence of self; only then, terribly,
do I find what’s always here, though felt almost never.



A.R. Williams is a poet from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. His poetry collections include Funeral in the Wild (Kelsay Books, 2024), Time in Shenandoah (Bottlecap Press, 2024), and A Weathered Ship (Ridge Books, 2025). Website: virginiapoet.com

The Oil Stain by Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad

When you fry sardines the whole world will know,
my mother would say, seated at the kitchen table.

She rubbed the fish with chili paste, silver skins
sparkling, as they crackled like fireworks

in the blazing vat. Oil splattered in amber spots
she never wiped away. People often complain

about the stench of sardines, but I never found it
repulsive. Never thought of them as fertilizer

for trees either. What the neighbours used
for garden compost, I saw as sustenance—

delicious salvation served on a plate. It was the year
of the war. Mother called it the year of the eclipse,

the year of the wandering feet, the year of flames
and ash. But, misfortune was no match

for my mother’s grit. She gathered our restless souls
and held us in warmth at the kitchen table—

a mahogany bench, on which she served the same
humble meal, night after night: green beans, yogurt

and sardines on rice, each dish infused with faith,
and the hope that we might rise from the trenches

of strife, that we might find stable ground again.
And slowly, the shadows yielded to light.

Bad times faded as our wheel of fortune creaked
and turned and brighter days returned. And now,

all these years later, what I still remember
is my mother at that kitchen table—seated

at the mahogany bench from the year of the war,
the year of the eclipse, the year of the wandering feet,

how that table glowed like an apparition, like an altar
of sacred communion, with its green beans, yogurt

and fried sardines shimmering in a plate of bronze,
how I once toppled the fish and a puddle of oil

splashed onto the wood in the shape of a fluttering pool,
seeping deep like a prayer, like a hymn, how the memory

still lives in that oil stain on that kitchen table,
still warm, still holy like my mother’s fearless heart.



Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is a widely-published Indian-Australian artist and poet. She is the author of Patchwork Fugue (Atomic Bohemian Press UK 2024), and A Second Life in Eighty-eight Keys (winner of The Little Black Book Competition, Hedgehog Poetry Press UK 2024). Find her on X @oormilaprahlad and www.instagram.com/oormila_paintings

Calling, Calling, Calling by Ann E. Michael

Today’s children will never know
what it was like to hear, from outside,
the sound of the telephone’s ring
inside the house: that persistent bell,
regular, plaintive, and how you’d
have to run to the door, perhaps
up some steps, open the latch, turn
the doorknob—all this time the phone
ringing, urging you to hurry,
from its sedentary spot on a table
or a wall—and how sometimes
you’d pick up the handset just in time
to talk to your grandmother or your
best friend, or a secretary reminding
you of your dental appointment;
but often, the ring would cease
its beckoning before you answered
so that you would hear not a friendly,
human voice but the vacant hum
of the dial tone, an accusation about
your lack of haste and the mild
recrimination that told you
someone called, you cannot know
whom, and you did not answer.



Ann E. Michael lives in eastern Pennsylvania. Her latest poetry collection (2024) is Abundance/Diminishment. Her work has appeared in Ninth Letter, One Art, Ekphrasis Review, and many others, as well as in numerous anthologies. She chronicles her writing, reading, and garden on a long-running blog at www.annemichael.blog

Red-eared Sliders in Southern New Jersey by Ann E. Michael

Along the Cooper River and Pennsauken Creek
late spring on the humid coastal plain
red-eared sliders slipped through mud and sedge,
leaf litter and Coke bottles, seeking
sustenance after a winter of not-quite-torpor.

We watched for them. They were likely some
former pet a child outgrew, set loose
to fend and forage, feed on toad spawn, fish-bait,
water-striders, duckweed—omnivorous
and swift, even on land.

We did not catch them. Our mothers would object,
and we thought a turtle indoors boring,
but beside the creek we crept behind them,
we lay willow wands on water’s surface
to capture their attention.

In motion, in their voraciousness, they rose
in our esteem, even as they rose
above the stream, ever urgent and moving forward.
They were colonists, southern strangers—unlike us,
intent on settling in.



Ann E. Michael lives in eastern Pennsylvania. Her latest poetry collection (2024) is Abundance/Diminishment. Her work has appeared in Ninth Letter, One Art, Ekphrasis Review, and many others, as well as in numerous anthologies. She chronicles her writing, reading, and garden on a long-running blog at www.annemichael.blog

Class Countessa by Russell Rowland

Erstwhile classmate Rosemary—
I’ve heard she married a count: making her,

in the usual course of things, a countess.

Either she left the new world for the old,
or he came over in this direction,

and allowed being a count to count for less.

Rosie would wear her title light—
no inviting the paparazzi in for a photo-op
when she read to children—

she’d answer her own phone, keep a budget,
carry her shopping bags herself.

In home-room, she sat
just behind me. We would visit, awaiting
the first-period bell.

Once, she requested
my hand, gently turned it over, and said—

“Let’s see what our two lifelines tell us.”



Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire, where he helps judge Poetry Out Loud competitions. His latest poetry books, Wooden Nutmegs and Magnificat, are available from Encircle Publications. He is a trail maintainer for the Lakes Region (NH) Conservation Trust.

Winter under frozen stars by Richard Weaver

The lung is draining well, the Doctor says
during my lunch; at least he has hope.
But most mornings I sit in this bed

tired of my little stories like birds bred in cages.
And still the cough comes like a false dawn.
The afternoon train has left for Paris,

taking the Doctor back to his wife.
Blind as any moon, there was nothing
reassuring in his smile, or in the warm fist

that taps the hollow of my chest.
The sun is a bright red balloon
passing outside my window today. A small boy

holds it, terrified
it might carry him off.
His mother scolds and pulls him

from my vision. They are as far away
as last week or the week before
when I had fresh fruit and waited for your letter,

thinking at the time
perhaps I’d reach you before now.
It was foolish to think. The day hot, and red

dust settling on the tables. Somehow
the weather seemed responsible
for my being here without you.

You would have found it quaint.
The waiter dressed in black. His skin
shone like copper with the light.

His eyes were what most intrigued me.
When he brought me a China fingerbowl
painted with white jonquils

it was as if he meant to tell me
not to hate God for the blood I’ve spat.
I was helpless in that widening silence.

                         * * *

Do you remember our last garden?
All greens and gold, the spears of lavender,
strawberries pale before the frost?
And the dragonflies when a mist settled
on their wings! Sometimes you’d brush
your hand through the apple-mint
and then spread your fingers to comb the scent
through my hair. I’m sure sparrows have eaten
all the figs. I see them now in this salmon-colored
dusk, pecking the soft green husks for the secrets
kept inside. Their wings smartly folded,
their heads swivel at right angles to the veranda
where a cat sits, eyes closed, reflectively licking
a paw. Isn’t that the way it happens?
One minute alive. And in the next
someone wears a garland of your feathers
in his mouth.

                         * * *

Sometimes I want to throw these letters
into the fireplace, and watch
as the gray-white ashes rise, stumbling
into the air like a gorged sparrow.
Tonight my body is a bottomless well
into which I drop all hope.

The long winter has numbed everything:
the books you sent, the doctor’s promise
I’d recover enough to be with you. Everything
except the fever that burns
its sulfur in my chest. Last night
by the fire, I watched and listened

as rain and wind rushed over
the chimney’s mouth, making a hoarse sound
until the room itself answered.
I could hear it saying,
I freeze, I burn. Over and over.

Is this what I wait for?
Visits from a voice that might be
yours or mine, but isn’t?
What I fear most is near at hand.
The red song in my throat
longing to escape. Readying its escape.

-Previously published in Slush Pile

Richard Weaver continues as the official writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub, though he splits time with Hooley’s Public House in San Diego.

When I Was a Child by Heidi Slettedahl

When I was a child
Pluto was a planet
and a dog.

When I was a child
Mercurochrome solved everything
with its orangey amber blur.

When I was a child
we played with mercury
when my mother dropped the glass thermometer on the floor.

When I was a child
you could buy cigarettes from a vending machine
and fireworks from the back of someone’s truck.

When I was a child
Stranger Danger meant
we forgot to look at our uncles and our cousins and our next-door neighbors.

When I was a child
family business was family business
and you didn’t tell.

You never told.



Heidi Slettedahl is a US-UK dual national who goes by a slightly different name professionally. Her most unusual talent is her ability to ride a unicycle. Mo(u)rning Rituals (Kelsay Books), her first collection of poetry, was published in 2024.

River Birds by Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue

The taut turn of river birds through the thick summer air.
White-winged axes gliding above the eddies.
The river low here.

For a brief instant, my eyes spot a silver rippling radiance,
and then, as if I hadn't seen it,
thought the trip dull.

The river, a meandering ditch.
Our world's default setting of never-surprised, jaded ennui.
But it was beautiful for an instant –

fully full of that thing – beauty –
as were my eyes – heart and soul,
if such be real.



Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue is a retired high school English and ESL teacher living in beautiful Fort Worth, Texas. He has had poems published in Concho River Review, The Texas Observer, Borderlands, California Quarterly, Book of Matches Literary Review, and two anthologies of Texas poetry.

At the end of a war by Rose Mary Boehm

I hadn’t seen him for a whole lifetime.
When you’re eight, three years are that.

I skipped across the broken veins of a badly
damaged asphalted road. Nodded
to absent neighbors repeating
the singsong of happiness:
Picking up my father. I do so
have a father!

Waiting on the platform
I looked along those two
iron tracks. In the far
distance they met.

‘Vanishing point’ they called it at school.
The train didn’t vanish.
It appeared.
Got larger.
The smoke hung well back.

Then its bulk puffed into the station. Stopped
with a final shiver, as though it wanted
to throw off its human cargo hanging
from handlebars supported only by footplates,
or balancing precariously on the roof. Like dead
insects they fell onto the station platform
or oozed from too small doors.

I scanned the faces of all the men
spilling from the train. Jumped up
hysterically, tried to look around
so many big people who took their time
to leave the platform. Hugging,
saying good-byes, waiting for others.
I worried that I may have forgotten
his face.

Slowly I accepted my first
betrayal. There was no Father.
My life changed shape.

Finally the train left.
And still I stood, rooted.
By the time I saw him on the
other side of the tracks
my heart had hardened.



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 (and rejected) mostly by US poetry journals. https://www.rose-mary-boehm

Fox Sighting in the Middle of the Night by Joan Leotta

My own sneeze woke me up,
a restless mind, scratchy throat
kept me from returning to sleep.

Pulled on my black velvet robe
then wrapped my neck in a red
fleece scarf for added warmth.

Downstairs, as I waited for my
tea to heat I heard yip, yip
from the street below.

At the kitchen window,
in the streetlight’s glow
I saw fox prints on fresh snow,

leading to our hedge and
a pair of bright eyes over a
narrow nose peered up at me.

I waved my scarf
toward the small face
in the hedge.

A rustling noise then fox
darted out of the hedge, his
bushy red tail waving back at me.



Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. She’s been published as an essayist, poet, short story writer, novelist, and a two-time nominee for the Pushcart and Best of the Net. Her poetry, essays, and stories have appeared in many journals in the US and abroad, including Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Impspired, Red Eft Review, One Art, Gargoyle, Verse Virtual, and Storyteller Poetry Review. She performs folktale programs that often highlight her heritage, food, family, and strong women, and offers the one-woman show, “Meet Louisa May Alcott, Author, Nurse, and Writer.” Her email is joanleotta@gmail.com

Call Them by Jean Ryan

Call them.
It’s a kindness,
letting people know they mattered.
No harm in a phone call,
not with all the time gone by,
the bulwark of spouses and children.
Just don't mention that afternoon,
the chocolate cake,
how you can't even look
at chocolate cake now
without blushing.
Don't start any sentence with
Do you remember
because they don't,
not like you remember.
Just tell them you love them
and no one gets hurt.



Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in coastal Alabama. She is the author of 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/

Box Turtle by Jean Ryan

Found a box turtle today
butted up against the curb,
so I slipped my hands under
the hard plate of her smooth belly
and lifted her onto the grass,
a move she seemed fine with,
keeping her blunt head free
of its checkered vault.

Walking away, I kept looking back
at her stillness.
Was she was watching me too,
halted by curiosity,
or simply yielding
to the unbroken moment
of her life?

Turtles, manatees, sloths, snails—
the slow ones undo me,
mercy being their only chance
in a world better off without us.



Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in coastal Alabama. She is the author of 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/

Bound by Jean Ryan

The dead leave their stories
with those who knew them,
different versions for different people,
all of them true.

I wish I could speak of you freely,
the way others can.
I am not one of them.
I am not fine.
You were, we were, a secret.
To mention you is to skirt the truth.

When I am gone,
our story will go with me,
will slip beneath dark waves
and sink to a place where
all things bound can finally
come undone.



Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in coastal Alabama. She is the author of 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/

This August morning by Sarah Russell

hummingbirds are at the feeder--
impossible creations dipping
into the nectar.
I wonder at their flair for flying
backwards, their nests no bigger
than a walnut shell, their weeklong
journeys on whirligig wings following
the flowers. It gives me peace,
thinking of small, iridescent lives,
momentary and breathtaking.



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 3 poetry collections published by Kelsay Books, I lost summer somewhere (2019), Today and Other Seasons (2020), and Emergence (2025). Her novella The Ballerina Swan Lake Mobile Homes Country Club Motel was published by Running Wild Press. She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net

New England Spring by Sarah Russell

It has rained for days—sometimes early fog
and a gentle mist that reminds me of the moors;
sometimes the wind and drench of squalls
from the Atlantic. Flowers love this spring,
but worms sprawl helpless on sidewalks
and die in the first patch of sun. The dog
comes home bedraggled from his walks,
happy and shaking on the stoop. I drape
my slicker over a chair with a towel beneath
to catch the drops, brew some tea, open
my journal. A perfect morning.



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 3 poetry collections published by Kelsay Books, I lost summer somewhere (2019), Today and Other Seasons (2020), and Emergence (2025). Her novella The Ballerina Swan Lake Mobile Homes Country Club Motel was published by Running Wild Press. She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net

Great Horned Owls, Mid-Winter by Sarah Russell

On our evening walk we hear them
in a stand of oak and pine–the female’s
breathy notes; the male’s answer, deeper,
like tones blown across a stoneware jug.
Before their sortie over snowy fields
they whisper greetings to their mates⸺
an alliance voiced in shadow. Our breath
clouds in the twilight.



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 3 poetry collections published by Kelsay Books, I lost summer somewhere (2019), Today and Other Seasons (2020), and Emergence (2025). Her novella The Ballerina Swan Lake Mobile Homes Country Club Motel was published by Running Wild Press. She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net

Pueblo Tourist by Sandi Leibowitz

The open door invited visitors.
Limping up the steps,
clinging to the loose wooden rail,
I apologized for my arthritis.

He pointed good-naturedly to his cane,
gave me a smile of true welcome
and began to talk about his home.

He’d been born there,
where his father also had been born,
generations before them resident
in this one cell of the pueblo’s honeycomb.
Like a duke admitting tours to fund
the upkeep of his palace,
he was living testament to love of place.

Almost no possessions, and those few old.
A radio with neatly taped antenna.
Some bright, chipped mugs.
Two chairs like shy toddlers tucked about
the plastic gingham skirt of a painted table.

Tired linoleum floors reminded me of
Grandma’s Kings Highway walk-up
(long since demolished),
its kitchen redolent of oily fried eggplant,
peeling paint, and untranslated Yiddish,
the window overlooking a Brooklyn alley
where shadows devoured stray cats and garbage cans
under the damp flags of drying underclothes.

“It’s not big,” he said,
“but for us it’s enough.”
“I’m from New York,” I said;
“we live in even tighter spaces—”
but he didn’t let me finish,
didn’t want to know.

Later on I tried again
to make dialogue,
share.
Met the same adobe wall.

I wanted to say, “I’m not white White.
My people know about persecution—”

but I shut up.
The best gift I could give him was
my attention.
I bought the bread
he’d baked from his mother’s recipe
in the traditional horno standing
with patient, open mouth outside the door.
Unlike the honey-sweetened fry bread
of the dog-thronged woman by the river,
this was as dense and unpleasant as history.

I ate his bread.
And I listened.



Sandi Leibowitz is the author of Ghost Light, Eurydice Sings, and The Bone-Joiner. Her poetry has garnered second and third place Dwarf Stars, as well as nominations for the Elgin, Rhysling, Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net awards. She lives in New York City.

A Jonah by Howie Good

She says I should take a spoon
of black seed oil daily, eat turmeric

and garlic, and cook using only
stainless steel. None of that is likely

any time soon. In the waters off
Patagonia, a kayaker got swallowed,

boat and all, by a whale and lived.



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

On or About_______ by Michelle Reale

Days, weeks, months and years she goes about not hearing from her groom, but still, she does not worry. The show must go on. Third and fourth cousins on her mother’s side hang flowers on grosgrain ribbons stuck into the ceiling with T-pins. It’s the latest rage: a floating horticultural ecology. The large headed flowers resembling cruciferous vegetables are heavy, but still slightly sway in the air-conditioned air, as though they were in a dream. A stiff-backed woman wearing a brocade dress with epaulettes keeps her hands poised over the old Wurlitzer chipped ivory keys, ready to bust out a groove when given the signal by the one-eyed usher. Orange and green sherbert sit like icebergs in cold Hawaiian Punch, to be served in decorative thimbles, which will be given to the bride to aid her in the fashioning of a life after marriage, stitch by lonely stitch. Guests begin to arrive, and in lieu of gifts, many carry in a heavy grudge or two. They pile onto the groom's side and begin placing bets. The bride wears nothing but old-fashioned underwear and coyly, like the coquette she always dreamed of being, waves and blows kisses. Save it for your husband, one woman growls, and the women, pleased with themselves, titter behind their gloved hands. It’s a waiting game. Some need more time to make up their minds. Others are willing to live in suspended moments for so little return on their investment. The clock ticks a rhythm, that the old man by the door, in his dusty tuxedo, taps his toe to. A note is played on the piano and then another. The joint starts jumpin’. The bride wriggles in her old-fashioned underwear. More than a few, with good reason, hold their breath.



Michelle Reale teaches poetry in Arcadia University's Low-Residency program. She is the author of several collections of poetry including the forthcoming Let it be Extravagant (Bordighera Press, 2025).

My Husband’s Aunt Starts Speaking German by Sharon Waller Knutson

A language she never learned
and no one understands
after her son drives her
out to the property where
she believes a house
is being built for her.

She stares at the cows
chewing their cud in the pasture
and must have realized at 91
that she is never getting
out of the closet-size room
in assisted living where she moves
after selling her mobile home
when she is confined
to a wheelchair. The center
had promised to build her
a comfortable cottage.
But the cottages go to couples.
Her husband is long gone.

Dementia, the doctors diagnose.
And her sister, my mother-in law,
a nurse, concurs with the doctors.
Grandma speak English, her grandson
pleads as he visits for the first time.
Mom, stop this nonsense, her daughter
insists but the old lady responds
in German gibberish her family
doesn’t believe even she understands.
Her nephew, my husband thinks otherwise.
She studied Dutch. German is similar.
No one but the nurse taking her vitals
hears her last words: Auf Wiedersehen.



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.

Half a Hug, Whole Heart by Veronica Tucker

It happens mid-run,
mid-sentence,
mid-mess,
a flyby embrace,
one arm slung loosely
around my middle
before she vanishes
down the hall.

No eye contact.
No warning.
Just motion,
like a breeze that pauses
to remind me it’s still spring.

Her hand is still sticky
from a granola bar,
and I feel it imprint
on the fabric of my shirt
like a signature
she didn’t mean to leave.

I don’t call her back.
I don’t ask for more.
Because that quick squeeze,
that distracted gesture,
holds the full weight
of everything she knows
about love.

And it’s enough.

Some days,
it’s more than enough.
A reminder
that even in her rush
toward independence,
she still orbits me
briefly,
but beautifully.



Veronica Tucker is a lifelong New Englander, physician, and married mom of three. Her poetry explores memory, caregiving, and quiet moments of connection. She enjoys running, travel, time with her family, and finely crafted matcha lattes. Her work has appeared in redrosethorns and Medmic, with additional poems forthcoming.

Tellers by Martha Christina

This morning's bank teller
is a chatty sub who tells
me she noticed, just
yesterday, some
new wrinkles. She
adds (and not happily):
I'm looking more like
my mother every day.

I'd be happy to join
the club of women
whose faces age into
our mothers', but I
favor my father's
older sister, a plain
woman who believed
herself a fortune teller.
Once, peering into my hand
she told me You will
age like your mother.



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.

Lost in the Bardo by Carolynn Kingyens

          For my mother—
          a mystery.

Two years ago
the phone call arrived,
tragic as a gut-punch,
you know —That Call...
that call every estranged
adult-child dreads;
one I could never prepare for
even after being asked
by a Manhattan therapist,
the same therapist
who'd inform me that
my sleeping
inside of a sleeping bag
atop the celery-green
shag carpet floor
in my parents' bedroom,
curled up next to my mother's
bedside like a loyal labrador
was actually something
called enmeshment,
strange behavior that
could be named.

For seven years
my father would treat me
like a perpetually
annoying cockblock,
perhaps my mother's goal
all along.

"Will you go to her funeral?"
he'd ask me in one of our sessions.

My lack of an immediate answer
would later morph
into a hypothetical poem,
a poem about going home
after the dreaded, hypothetical
phone call from the brother,
whom I hadn't seen
in well over a decade,
not because of a lack of love
but rather due to the cringey,
social awkwardness
that existed in all our familial
relationships.

In this hypothetical poem,
I would portray myself
as a total stoic;
didn't cry,
didn't scream
before taking the last
poetic flight
out of LaGuardia.

And when the imaginary plane
circled the Hudson—
the perfect trajectory
to study the river,
also embodied with secrets,
I'd sit and stare
out the oval window
looking down at the watery graves
of those poor souls
dismembered and discarded
like Angel Melendez,
the New York City Club-Kid;
murdered and dumped
in the Hudson by Michael Alig,
who'd later be played
by Macaulay Culkin
in Party Monster.

I digressed.

The first boyfriend
I ever brought home
told me my father's eyes
looked dead
in all his photographs.

In 1997
I read a short story
by Will Self
called "The End
of the Relationship,"
the last story
from his book Grey Area
about an "emotional
Typhoid Mary"
who'd make
all her lovers' eyes
go dead
just like my father's.

Maybe that was who
my mother was,
maybe that's who
I am by extension of her —
an emotional Typhoid Mary,
a F—up folie a deux —
a loyal labrador
lost in the bardo.

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 essays, reviews, and short fiction. Two of her short stories were selected for The Best of Fiction List in 2021 and 2023. In the Fall of 2024, two of her essays were republished by YourTango. And her latest review is the tribute book for Larry Robin, who is to Philadelphia as Allen Ginsberg is to Paterson. You can read her latest book review at The Arts Fuse. Carolynn writes on a myriad of topics ranging from pop culture to pop psychology to true crime on Medium: https://medium.com/@ckingyens

Before I knew I wasn’t a girl by Ren Wilding

I went on a date with a straight man. His voice, when I was with him,
an echo in an empty hallway. I wasn’t there. He worked in a warehouse.
I was in grad school, trying not to assume we’d have nothing to say.
When we parted, I said I didn’t text, still had a phone with no keyboard.
I asked him to an exhibit at the city library, as if putting him in a room
with art would make me feel like a girl. He told me maybe, so I went
alone. I was a collage undone, pieces flaking out of the frame, caught
by another with glue still wet, unfinished. He texted, what are you
doing later? I pressed the numbers to spell stop and I can’t, the answers
to my own questions.



Ren Wilding earned an MA in Literature and Gender Studies from the University of Missouri. Their work appears in Braving the Body, Comstock Review, Palette Poetry, Pine Hills Review, Tulip Tree, and Zoetic Press, and others. They received a Pushcart nomination and are co-curator of the “Words Like Blades” series.

The Key to Finding Love is Fucking Up the Pattern on Purpose by Ren Wilding

You made a big deal about showing me
your Andrea Gibson tattoo, as we drank
coffee at ten pm. It was before I had a tattoo,
when I could still drink coffee late.
You asked me to your apartment for a movie
and showed me your bedroom copy
of The Ethical Slut with the door
wide open. In an alcove, we sat on the sofa
under a blanket without touching.
It was before I’d had sex with a woman,
before I’d had sex at all. Your roommate
walked by, and nothing about this was private.
I didn’t know what you wanted, so I went out
with you again just to see what you would do.



*The title is a line from Andrea Gibson’s poem “Pole Dancer” from Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns.



Ren Wilding earned an MA in Literature and Gender Studies from the University of Missouri. Their work appears in Braving the Body, Comstock Review, Palette Poetry, Pine Hills Review, Tulip Tree, and Zoetic Press, and others. They received a Pushcart nomination and are co-curator of the “Words Like Blades” series.

Beethoven in Snow by Richard Weaver

Like watching clouds
dissolve into animals
the snow beneath my fingers
takes the shape
of a man long dead.
A portrait in white
and winter wind.
January’s sun relenting.



Richard Weaver continues as the official writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub, though he splits time with Hooley’s Public House in San Diego.

Home by Vera Kewes Salter

Shoes scattered
by the door

Coats thrown on
the couch

Cat sits on the wide sill
to watch birds

Your coat still
hangs in the closet



Vera Kewes Salter lives and writes in New Rochelle, New York. Her Chapbook In Lewy's Body about her husband's struggle with Lewy Body Dementia was published by Finishing Line Press in February, 2024. She has a full-length manuscript titled Girl on the Underground which starts with her life in London as a daughter of refugees from Europe, and continues with her life in the United States with her African American husband and family.

Caregiving by Frederick Wilbur

We craft word-coffins for our inner necessity,
holding our parents’ hands in hospice quiet;
questions of loss and grief are not asked
as time embezzles riches from us all.

Racing against the morphine drip,
we swear to respect their inconvenient wishes.
We wonder if our gift of flowers consoles them,
too late perhaps, naïve in our hope.

But why are they still blind to our brother’s thefts and abuses?

No ransom for the cruel kidnapping of disease;
days priceless, grief without end,
yet poorer, we turn to leave dissatisfied,
counting our own lives without answer.

Why are they bankrupt of plausible, even cheap excuses?



Frederick Wilbur’s poetry collections are As Pus Floats the Splinter Out, Conjugation of Perhaps and forthcoming, The Heft of Promise. He is poetry co-editor and blogger for Streetlight Magazine. He was awarded the Stephen Meats Poetry Prize for best poem of the year by Midwest Quarterly (2018).

After All, They’re Only Things by Rose Mary Boehm

I always passed that shop window
on my way to work—
my first job as a married mother of two.

Earthenware at its finest:
a decorative bowl with pulled-up edges,
a carafe with a round belly, an abstract
design covering their surfaces.
Slick.
Painted in a fat yellow,
a summer sky blue,
a bright but gentle red,
and some almost black lines
offsetting the colour fest.

This boldness would be perfect
in the reception area in our house,
a focal point of exuberance and joy,
perfect for the middle of that old round mahogany
table with the loose leg given to me by a friend
in the old days, at a time when I had not even a bed
in my new flat.

With my first paycheck I finally bought
the coveted items from the knick-knack shop,
and delighted at the perfect match.

I am not sure what it was that produced
his ire. But one day soon after showing
my pleasure—during a somewhat heated
argument—he looked into my eyes,
no, not a cold stare,
more a look of deep satisfaction,
then he took both bowl and jug into his hands,
holding them aloft over the hard-wood floor,
the knuckles white.
Then he opened his big hands.
Slowly.



Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as eight poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was several times nominated for a ‘Pushcart’ and ‘Best of Net’. Her eighth book, LIFE STUFF, has been published by Kelsay Books (November 2023). A new MS is in the works. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

Breaking Even by Steve Klepetar

I drive home from the casino, having almost broken
even at blackjack, having overeaten at the buffet.

The air conditioning blasts on high and everyone is cold.
All around us the air vibrates with disease.

Someone coughs as the van hurtles through the night.
We have come to the old sign begging us to “Drive Careful!”

and I will. I slow down as the road curves downhill, past
the dangerous crossing, where an open field ends in a pretty pond.

We get out, stand on the little foot bridge.
Lightning bugs plunge toward the water in a fiery dance.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. He is on the editorial board of Right Hand Pointing and Verse-Virtual.

Anne Boleyn - Second wife of Henry VIII (died 5-9-1536) by Richard Weaver

Her last
words
spoken
from
the Tower:
"The
executioner
is,
I
believe,
very
expert,
and
my
neck
is
very
slender."
But not
as slender
as the
blade’s
shining edge.



*From the author's series on the final words of persons of historical note



Richard Weaver continues as the official writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub, though he splits time with Hooley’s Public House in San Diego.

Jaroslav Hašek (died 1/3/1923) by Richard Weaver

          (The Fate of the Good Soldier Švejk)

The road lengthens. Death never seems near enough.
The wind points its cold finger at me, acknowledging
my existence. But you, my countryman, see me as the Other.
A presence best buried in the marshes. The frozen regions.
The places where no one ever looks. I’m only dying
naturally, and cannot claim to be surprised that Death has
arrived with a poorly printed invitation in hand. If I could read it,
assuming it was legible, I might accept. But for now I choose
to ignore the typography and arrogance. A man can die his way.
No one, not even Death, can dictate otherwise. Our lives are ours.
Therefore, I will die when and where and how I decide. I choose
to die numb. Vodka is good. An easy favorite. The local choice.
Red wine is nice. Symbolically appropriate. But brandy, if handy,
is better than the rest. I will not be denied this death wish. I am
entitled. Military regulations require “one for the road,” and we all
know what that means. I said earlier something about a long road.
It’s shorter now, the road that is, was my life. Humor a good soldier.
“Give me the brandy! No? You are cheating me!”



*From the author's series on the final words of persons of historical note

Richard Weaver continues as the official writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub, though he splits time with Hooley’s Public House in San Diego.

Answer to a Recent Question Regarding Supporting Me and/or Red Eft Review

An incredibly thoughtful and kind poet recently asked how she could support me and/or Red Eft Review. It made me feel seen and appreciated. And I am happy to report that others have asked this same question in the past. So I figured I would write a brief post...

I will never charge poets to submit. I have considered adding a "Donate" or "Tip Jar" option, but I don't see myself doing that as long as I have a job and I am financially stable. 

An easy way to support me and other editors is to buy our books. We are also poets struggling to share our work with the world. If you do buy a book and like what you read, let others know about it and/or consider buying another one by the same editor. 

Below are links to my poetry collections that are currently available online should you be inclined to check them out. 

Thanks, as always, for considering. 

Corey

heads held low 

Passing Cars and a Review of Passing Cars

Junk Drawer

The Weight of Shadows

White Flag Raised

Winter Morning Observations by Russell Rowland

A gentle powdering of snow
overnight, like talc on a baby’s bottom.

Enough to show there are no footprints
outside my door,
or under my bedroom window.

I find that reassuring, as most would.

Still, crows are about, in lower air. Snow
is a background against which
they can remind us that black is beautiful.

“In your own way,”
I concede, from behind my windowpane.

An ambulance happens by
without red lights on: either the urgency
is no emergency, or else EMTs

are heading to McDonald’s for breakfast.

When I open the window, snow lies on
the sill. I write my name.



Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire, where he helps judge Poetry Out Loud competitions. His latest poetry books, Wooden Nutmegs and Magnificat, are available from Encircle Publications. He is a trail maintainer for the Lakes Region (NH) Conservation Trust.

Mabel and the Band by John Grey

On a makeshift stage at the back of the bar,
Mabel Starr and her band belted out
the blues of their sharecropper forbears,
infused with a misery all their own.

Pain so energized, the Cajuns
guzzled beer to it and the Creoles
paid in kind with the sweat of sinewy
dance steps in that squeeze of body and brow.

It never felt better than to be reminded
of the bad times, some down so low
they even clapped hands to the accordion,
or ground their bones against the bass.

The guitarist’s busy fingers
belied his lazy look, as he pitched into a solo
that cased the entire fretboard
and laid the strings to waste.

The drummer, in his cocked red hat,
pounded pigskin like a miner
trapped behind a rubble wall,
so hard, so fiercely, he freed himself.

And then there was Mabel, a full-bodied
woman in a sparkling hourglass gown,
hugging the mike to her breast like a lover,
rasping sweet with a voice from before she was born.

A gut’s worth of delivery, nothing withheld,
chest like bellows, swaying back and forth,
in the ring with everything ever done to her
and punching from the throat.



John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, City Brink, and Tenth Muse. His latest books, Subject Matters, Between Two Fires, and Covert are available through Amazon. John also has work upcoming in Hawaii Pacific Review, Amazing Stories, and Cantos.

Trophy Shot by Howie Good

You kneel in your camos beside a three-point buck,
and grabbing the elegant head by the antlers,
twist it with both hands into an unnatural position
just for the picture, man the hunter, the born killer,
in a classic pose, while all around you, the forest trees,
already nearly bare, reach up as though pleading,
starved for the cold, clean touch of snow.

Howie Good is author of the poetry book, The Dark, available from Sacred Parasite, which will also publish his book, Akimbo, in 2025.

The Woman Named After the First Woman Asks for a Poem on Gratitude During a Farmers Market in July by Michael Brockley

Eva buys a purple hydrangea from the vendor in the turquoise truck beside the poems-on-demand tent. She tells the poet behind the orange typewriter she is grateful for the mornings, after dawn showers have washed away the humidity. She samples couscous with chickpeas at a Moroccan breakfast booth. And welcomes the voices of shoppers that wash over her like the fragrance of garden phlox. With the hortensia blossom fixed behind her right ear, Eva strolls through the market in the company of a light breeze. Appreciating the new friends she makes and learning the names of leashed dogs and cats in papooses. Thor and Aragorn. Luna and Betsy Ross. The poet who types the ode to gratitude compliments Eva on her black dress that is decorated with red flowers. Florets so small they might be any hybrid from the gardens of history or fiction. Eva is grateful on this Saturday morning for her beautiful daughter, whose name, Gina, means “queen.” And thankful for her daughter’s father, as well, who is still alive. On this first weekend in July, Eva is grateful for her own name. Eva, which is a sonnet when spoken by the poet fourteen times.



Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His prose poems have appeared in The Prose Poem, confetti, and 912 Review. His prose poems are also forthcoming in Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Unlikely Stories Mark V, and Down in the Dirt.