Rainbow Trout by D. Walsh Gilbert

          —Pierre-Auguste Renoir (France) 1841-1919

Lined up on banks of cracked ice shoveled
by the fish monger dressed in rubber
boots and a canvas apron, rainbow trout
lie emptied—boneless—butterflied
as if they were crucified, fins splayed,
hearts torn out by the carver’s fingers.
He says, These. Past due—to be discarded.

I beg for two, or three, or four, please,
and watch him fold one body half
onto another and so return their dignity
as fish, and in the glint of Whole
Foods’ light—their eyes—their rainbow—
the pink stripe gill to tail is unmistakable.

Gloved hands poise to scrape scale against
scale, his knife ready to dismember
pectoral, dorsal, caudal fins now still, but
they’ll need these spines when I slip
the pair or two back into Purgatory Brook,
rain swollen rush among the trillium
and river scree where a hibernating bear
and her two cubs just woke,
where the raccoon, the possum and her brood
survive. No—leave them closest to alive.



D. Walsh Gilbert is the author of Ransom (Grayson Books). A Pushcart nominee, she recently won The Ekphrastic Review’s “Bird Watching” contest. Her work is forthcoming in The Dillydoun Review and recently appeared in the anthology, Waking Up to the Earth. She is co-editor of the Connecticut River Review.

Insect Guidance by Richard Martin

A beetle wanders along one of the planks
that make up the terrace, following the grain,
obeying the laws of perspective,
to that meeting point of disappearance.

An ant seems to have picked up its scent
and follows it along a parallel track –
but then the beetle discovers the beam
below the plank and takes off at right-angles.

Can I read this as illustrating the irrelevance
of man-made rules to the path of life,
or merely as another instance of the haphazard
nature of the very existence of us all?



Richard Martin is an English writer who lives in the Netherlands close to the point where Belgium, Germany and Holland meet. After retiring as a university teacher in Germany, he turned his attention to writing, and has published three collections of poetry and numerous poems in magazines in England, the US, and Austria.

I Laugh When I Look Out the Bedroom Window by Carey Taylor

until you wince as you lift your left leg and place
your bare foot on the folding patio chair.

In one hand you hold a heavy-duty toenail clipper,
in the other a wire cutter.

Your back pirates profanities at the hard work of
old nails—tough as week old sourdough.

Clippings fly through air to grass, which reminds me
of that July we tossed bread crumbs off South Sister,

how we skimmed scree and corn snow with packs
of heavy gear and warm beer.

Ravenous, we tallied peaks up and down that Cascade
spine of fire—St. Helens, Adams, Hood, Thielsen.

So sure, in those slick-skinned days, this was the only
age we would travel.



Carey Taylor is the author of The Lure of Impermanence (Cirque Press 2018). Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she has a Master of Arts degree in School Counseling. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon and when not outdoors, blogs at: https://careyleetaylor.com.

Daily Briefing by Elizabeth Palmer Kellogg

                                                            This 

                                                  morning

                                                     I

                                              made

                          our

                      bed. 

All

the 

blankets

were 

on 

your 

side. 

Elizabeth Palmer Kellogg is Assistant to the Director of Research at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, MI. In her spare time, she writes poetry, reads poetry, quilts, and plays hide-n-seek with her two grandchildren.

Test by Don Thompson

He looks up, nitric eyes
testing you like acid on gold.
You feel fake. Exposed.

For once the crow has no comment,
which says it all,
and shrugs himself into the air

like a pawnbroker turning his back,
offering nothing—not a cent
for your most precious heirloom.



Don Thompson has been writing about the San Joaquin Valley for over fifty years, including a dozen or so books and chapbooks. A San Joaquin Almanac won the Eric Award for 2021 in the chapbook category. For more info and links to publishers, visit his website at www.don-e-thompson.com.

Pasture by Don Thompson

Under a nondescript, not-quite tree,
six or eight heifers
loaf in the scant shadows,
haunch to haunch.

Their dappled russet hides remind you
of Impressionist picnickers.

They’ve browsed the foliage
as high as they can reach
and would, if they could,
consume all of their own shade—

insatiable—

like those Parisians on Sunday afternoon
with their wine and cheese,
their indolent lust.



Don Thompson has been writing about the San Joaquin Valley for over fifty years, including a dozen or so books and chapbooks. A San Joaquin Almanac won the Eric Award for 2021 in the chapbook category. For more info and links to publishers, visit his website at www.don-e-thompson.com.

The Fort by Sarah Ockrim

I follow the dirt trail where the earth’s been packed down
to a small clearing in the woods by the railroad tracks.

Fresh from reading The Boxcar Children,
I’m not a dreamer, just a girl with a plan.
We’ll build a fort, a place for shelter and secrets,
a place where we can be ourselves.

We’ll make the rules, live the way we want to,
wade in the creek every day. Freckled and fierce,
we’ll spend hours at the playground,
avoiding adults who ask us why we aren’t in school.

We’ll scour the alley, looking for old bricks,
abandoned boards and still straight nails,
collecting bits of rope and sticks,
lucking out on a sheet of corrugated steel.

We’ll gather berries and eggs,
sleep under the stars, live off the land.
We’ll build a fire pit out of stones and bricks,
stretch a tarp over us when it rains.

Nevermind that winters are harsh
or that berries are only in season for weeks.
Nevermind that there aren’t any chickens
for us to steal eggs from.

Looking back, I remember craving freedom
and fairness and a place where I could be myself.

I want to tell that girl that she’s my favorite person,
that I love her tangled hair, her skinny knees
and her wild, searching soul. I want to say,

“Dream so hard it feels like you’ll burst from it,
burn brighter that you think is possible,
and read always, read every day of your life.”



Sarah Ockrim is a poet and painter. She lives in southwestern Virginia with her husband and two sons.

Why by Terence McCaffrey

I don’t know why
I’m into gardening,
but I do feel the forest
watching me. I imagine
its myriad living things
around me, cheering,
clapping their paws
or wings with each churn
of the earth. I itch
to keep checking
a single seed’s march
as if my own, to keep
willing it to sprout
out of the dark
like the birth of a star.



Terence McCaffrey’s poems have appeared in Connecticut River Review, Freshwater, Right Hand Pointing, and elsewhere. He received a M.A.L.S. degree in Humanities from Wesleyan University and a B.A. from the University of Hartford where he was the recipient of the Phyllis B. Abrahms Award in Fiction. He lives with his wife and two children in West Simsbury, CT.

Wild by Terence McCaffrey

We emerge
from the pause
of days
in muted wonder,
start passing
an hour
in purposeless
wandering
around the local
farm. You sprint
along the line
of early
chokecherry trees,
the new sun
strong, the old
trail fresh. Laugh
like birds
that want to
be noticed.
And it’s easy
to notice you
because we’re
finally out
of the house.
Forgive me.
You have my gaze
now. Go, burst
forth across
this afternoon.
Eat what you can
of the wide,
true sky.
And if I speak,
don’t listen.



Terence McCaffrey’s poems have appeared in Connecticut River Review, Freshwater, Right Hand Pointing, and elsewhere. He received a M.A.L.S. degree in Humanities from Wesleyan University and a B.A. from the University of Hartford where he was the recipient of the Phyllis B. Abrahms Award in Fiction. He lives with his wife and two children in West Simsbury, CT.

Almost, Time by M.J. Iuppa

Consider space between trees:
corridors of wind, making un-
expected turns in green leaf light

Flickering sounds, like a travel clock’s
faint tick—those sweeping seconds
caught in Spring’s tide

Drunk on the sight of dandelions, I
can’t feel the lingering cold beneath
my fingertips, which makes me

wonder if heaven is boring— will I
stand beside this cemetery’s fallen
angel & know what I’ve lost?



M.J. Iuppa’s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past 33 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.

Pink Moon, Sprouting Grass Moon by M.J. Iuppa

She couldn’t sleep, knowing the seeds she planted
        yesterday in the greenhouse were starting to
tick-tick in thick black loam— starting to sprout

curly tails that turned their shells inside out— &
        those calculating cells divided, unfurling
the blueprint of our garden-soon-to-be

planted without leaving any open spaces— only
        pulsating shadows of so many honeybees finding
their afternoon’s work fascinating— and she couldn’t

sleep, knowing another season was revving up—
        green and luminous and warm in the scent of
apple blossoms and darkness, and something

out there, tipping over the water can, or stirring
        among the bins in the barn, or the mirror of green
eyes— those green eyes, she just couldn’t sleep.



M.J. Iuppa’s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past 33 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.

Benched by Ben Rasnic

Change can happen
quicker than Colorado climate,
how a simple procedure
can render you powerless,
disabled, a mere invalid.

The storm has passed
and now you are faced
with the devastation
left behind in its wake—

extended hospital stays,
struggling for breath, self
worth, a meaningful
existence,

watching the world
spin out of control
on the nightly news,
saturated with details
of yet another

mass shooting
as you sit
on the sidelines
awaiting a new heart.



Ben Rasnic currently resides in Bowie, Maryland. Author of four published collections (three available from amazon.com), Ben's poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.

Morning Migration by Andrew McSorley

A flock of birds relents
on the golden-drunk coast,
skipping their black-flecked
bodies over invisible currents.

Dazed and listless in a summer chair
I watch the wing-beat wheel
them higher across the berm
of horizon and into the battered
tongue of sunrise; this throng
of blur-lit birds, this feathered yawn
on the shadow-fleeced morning,
and me,
my stubborn heavy feet,
what little they carry.



Andrew McSorley is the author of What Spirits Return (Kelsay Books, 2019). A graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at Southern Illinois University, his poetry has previously appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as The Minnesota Review, UCity Review, HAD, Birmingham Arts Journal, and many others. He lives and works in Appleton, Wisconsin.

Night Came On by Steve Klepetar

My mother talked for hours on the phone.
We could hear her muttering in the bedroom.
Upset about something, she scraped her voice
across the blackboard bolted to the wall
of my brain. My father smoked cigars,
sipped a little scotch on ice, read history
and old novels from the public library.
“I’m afraid of Virginia Woolf,” he’d say,
looking up from the pages of Orlando
or The Waves. He wasn’t afraid of my mother,
though, had learned by then to ignore her
sighs and symptoms. Night came on.
Wolves roamed beneath the streetlights.
Often I heard hooting, or giant frogs, a deep
throaty note, like the bass string on a guitar.
Where we lived, the wildlife was something
else, prehistoric and terrible, in the old sense,
striking in the darkness like a terrible swift sword.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. His work has appeared widely, and has received several nominations for The Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Elegance by Frederick Pollack

A house inside a room inside
what the Gnostic Marcion called “this pitiful cell.”
The furnishings and people of the house
have the perfection of miniature,
which always – that’s the art of it –
leaves something out. (This doesn’t apply
to the chandelier in the ballroom,
its smallest crystal atoms wide.)
There should be jewels
on the gown of the woman at her vanity.
Her expression should be bland
or pleased, not reflective –
perhaps there was a slip of the one-hair brush.
The man in the salon at one with his tux
has too few features to feel much.
The children tumbling (advertently?) down
the curved stairs look too eager,
considering there’s no tree or anything
resembling a present. Are they all
going out? Why then the table grandly set?
If not, where are the others? Mislaid,
stolen … It seems a shame
to subject such craftsmanship to error and loss.



Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure and Happiness (Story Line Press; the former to be reissued by Red Hen Press), and two collections, A Poverty of Words (Prolific Press, 2015) and Landscape with Mutant (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018). Many of his other poems have appeared in print and online journals.

Haiku by Stephen Toft

deepening snow

a missed call from
a withheld number



Stephen Toft is a poet and homelessness worker who lives in Lancaster, UK with his wife and their children. His first collection the kissing bridge was published by Red Moon Press in 2008 and in December 2016 Scars Publications released his chapbook naming a storm: haiku and tanka. In 2018 Yavanika Press released his third collection deer heart as a free to download e-book.

Haiku by Stephen Toft

skein of geese

a love letter stamped
by the prison censor



Stephen Toft is a poet and homelessness worker who lives in Lancaster, UK with his wife and their children. His first collection the kissing bridge was published by Red Moon Press in 2008 and in December 2016 Scars Publications released his chapbook naming a storm: haiku and tanka. In 2018 Yavanika Press released his third collection deer heart as a free to download e-book.

Haiku by Stephen Toft

a cop fills up

her patrol car...
winter stars



Stephen Toft is a poet and homelessness worker who lives in Lancaster, UK with his wife and their children. His first collection the kissing bridge was published by Red Moon Press in 2008 and in December 2016 Scars Publications released his chapbook naming a storm: haiku and tanka. In 2018 Yavanika Press released his third collection deer heart as a free to download e-book.

Goodbye to All That by Mary Rohrer-Dann

The house emptied, she lies on the floor
of her parents’ bedroom, the ancient fan
pushing air thick with heat and shadows.

They argued throughout her childhood,
voices muddy behind the door, except
for the abrupt Ukrainian curse–Suka! Mudak!

Did they make her under this creaking fan?
And was she made in joy, or mere animal need,
as she and her husband had made their youngest,

lying afterwards in silence, bodies subsiding,
hearts raw, both counting the minutes until
he moved to the guest room down the hall.

Her parents seemed to find their way back.
Did they have more faith in love,
in each other? Or was it simply

the Old World dictum against divorce?
And at what cost? Tomorrow
she will sit with her widowed father

at closing and pass the house to its new
owners, a Latino couple, first on the block,
the tiny woman’s belly big with twins.



Mary Rohrer-Dann writes and paints in central PA; her work appears in Clackamas Review, Third Wednesday, Rat’s Ass Review, Vestal Review, The Drabble, Flash Fiction, and other venues.

Assassin by Howie Good

When I saw the brown snake
lift its wedge-shaped head
from the grass, I picked up
a stone and threw it without
really aiming. I don’t even
know what kind of snake it was,
harmless or poisonous, but
it died instantly all the same.
I had just turned 12, and a bunch
of us guys had gone camping
overnight alongside the Delaware.
The snake was already losing shape
as we got back in our canoes
that morning and pushed off
into the river and, with the sun
in our eyes, blindly paddled away.



Howie Good is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including most recently Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing) and The Bad News First (Kung Fu Treachery Press).