My Father's Remains by Brian McAllister

There with a scattering of his things,
an old tie tack, a spelling medal,
his lieutenant’s bars from the war,
was the torn corner of an index card,

two letters, three numerals, neatly penned.
What could it be? It’s his handwriting all right,
that flat-topped three and crossed seven
relics of his degree in chemistry.

But what is it? Not a phone number, nor
an address, but something he wanted
to remember inscribed on something at hand
that found its way into an odd drawer.

I have no idea what it is,
and I don’t know why I’ve kept it. 



Brian McAllister is a retired academic who lives and writes in rural Southwest Geogia.

Babies and Blocks by Jacqueline Jules

Babies build with blocks
only to knock them down.

They don’t circle their creation
or ask for admiration.

Instead, they giggle
when the tower crashes,
enjoying the process
more than the outcome.

Babies have so much to learn.

Like peekaboo doesn’t
make a person disappear.

And poop goes in the potty.

But somehow, they know
to simply start over
when it all falls down.



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). Visit her at www.jacquelinejules.com

Condolences by Jacqueline Jules

My pen poised above the pink rose on a card,
I pause before writing standard sentiments,
the way I always do, the way people did for me.

Yes, there is a blessing in memories.

To remember the night
he danced in the kitchen
waving a wooden spoon
and stirring soup
three days before the stroke.

Instead of all the days after,
sitting by a hospital bed,
watching the same man
breathe through tubes.



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). Visit her at www.jacquelinejules.com

National Poetry Month by Mark Danowsky

A reminder call
to write each day

and to read
what we love

and we should
heed the call

as well we know
we should

not need this
nudge this

token slice
of time

this celebration
of all we know

we wish
to cherish

to savor
to cheer

and we do
our best

but it is hard
to show up

to show love
for our labor

to let breathe
our open wounds



Mark Danowsky is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry as well as Poetry Craft Essays Editor for Cleaver Magazine. His latest poetry collection is Take Care (Moon Tide Press, 2025). He curates Stay Curious on Substack.

A Black Notebook by Steve Klepetar

In my imagination I was in Berlin,
riding a tram through the pale afternoon,
the buildings whispering history
through cracked paint.
I carried a black notebook filled with names—
not of places, but of moments that refused to die:
my father’s laughter in a language I never learned,
my mother’s silence when she heard rain.
A street musician played something half-forgotten,
and I thought it might have been the national anthem
of a country that never existed,
one where pigeons ruled the boulevards
and clocks melted into puddles near the Reichstag.
I bought coffee from a woman
whose eyes flashed like the ones in my dreams,
and she said, you’ve been here before, haven’t you?
I wanted to tell her about the snow
that fell in August once,
how it covered the tracks between memory and desire,
but my German collapsed into smoke.
That’s when the tram stopped, and everyone filed out
into a sky that smelled faintly of lemons and loss.
I followed them, hoping someone might turn and wave me home.



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.