The Scarlet Tanager by George Held

Or, “Teenager,” as we used to call it:
how long has it been since I’ve seen this
summer beauty in the canopy of a fir
and hushed myself in mid-sentence in awe
of nature’s fearsome abundance in a bird?…



George Held, an 11-time Pushcart nominee, has poems currently in Jerry Jazz Magazine, Untold Stories, Blue Unicorn, and Neuro Logical (Ireland). This poem featured in Red Eft Review today is among his forty new poems about birds. He writes from NY.

Redwings by George Held

These are blackbirds with colorful yellow
and, yes, red shoulders on the male; its mate
is brown. When, on my March way to Sunday
School, they whistled and cried in the marsh:
the first migrants to arrive and build nests…



George Held, an 11-time Pushcart nominee, has poems currently in Jerry Jazz Magazine, Untold Stories, Blue Unicorn, and Neuro Logical (Ireland). This poem featured in Red Eft Review today is among his forty new poems about birds. He writes from NY.

Piscatology by Penelope Moffet

You can decide to be happy.
It may not work but there it is.
So what if you’re alone
in a lakeside guesthouse
bedecked with fish,
from a motion-activated bass
singing “Take Me to the River”
to cotton trout on a stringer
to pike-shaped lamp pulls
to oven mitts with catfish emblems
encouraging you to eat more chicken,
to carp-shaped candlesticks,
to bluegill in the bottom
of a bowl. Bathroom towels
with bullhead emblems.
Dusty fishnets on the walls.
Pillows covered in
embroidered salmon.
A faded chart depicting
all the western gamefish.
You can decide
the kitsch doesn’t matter
and neither does the dead grass yard
you’ve no desire to read in.
Be glad the lake, the place
the real fish live,
is near. Go swim.



Penelope Moffet is the author of three chapbooks, Cauldron of Hisses (Arroyo Seco Press, 2022), It Isn’t That They Mean to Kill You (Arroyo Seco Press, 2018), and Keeping Still (Dorland Mountain Arts, 1995). Her poems have been published in many journals, including The Missouri Review, Columbia, Permafrost, One, ONE ART, Natural Bridge, Gleam, The Rise Up Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and Gyroscope.

Night Out by Cate Davis

A cramped corner table.
We wriggle in, our coats steaming from the cold.
My shivering knee borrows your warmth.

We sit close enough to dream.
Thoughts grasp your muscles before you speak.
It’s been so long, so long.

A slim waiter in black attends,
His movements swift and seamless
Like that magician we saw, that time.

An alphabet of aromas…cardamom, cumin, caramel…
Not yet, but soon.

Two women behind us,
One in sober blue, the other defiant pink.
Their ironic chuckles and tender complaints reach us:
A rained-out trip south, a pompous son-in-law, a menu favourite found.
Old friends.

A small window to the left.
Ice pellets hit the thinning glass…tith, tith, tith.
To hear them is not to feel them.
To hear them is to absorb their externality.

We are like fossils, sealed in,
Soothed, buoyed, glowing, half-filled, unrepentant…

You reach for my hand, breaking the spell.
Come, My Love. It’s time to go.



Cate Davis lives in Toronto.

Sycamores by Tamara Madison

In late July I stroll the rows
of sycamores
which just last May
opened wide green hands to sky.
In summer’s height
their sallowing leaves
already show they’ve turned
their thoughts toward fall.
When the leaves wither,
brown, and drop,
they’ll leave in their place
the grace of naked limbs
reaching high above the roof.
I know in spring
I’ll feel sad at first
to have that view obscured
by all that eager green.



Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbooks The Belly Remembers and Along the Fault Line, and two full-length volumes of poetry, Wild Domestic and Moraine. Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, the Writer’s Almanac, Sheila-Na-Gig, Worcester Review, and many other publications. Her newest full-length collection, Morpheus Dips His Oar is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. More about Tamara can be found at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.

Tasting Pine by Tamara Madison

Sap glistens in drops
beneath the new-trimmed
pines. I think of tears,
bits of shattered glass,
even diamonds, remember
the sticky beads
that gathered beneath
a wasp’s nest;
once I touched my finger
to a viscous drop,
put it on my tongue –
sweet, like Karo.
Now I touch the pine sap,
put finger to tongue;
the pungency of pine
resounds in my head
all morning, along
with Mother’s warning
that some things are better
kept in the realm
of imagining.



Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbooks The Belly Remembers and Along the Fault Line, and two full-length volumes of poetry, Wild Domestic and Moraine. Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, the Writer’s Almanac, Sheila-Na-Gig, Worcester Review, and many other publications. Her newest full-length collection, Morpheus Dips His Oar is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. More about Tamara can be found at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.

in two shitty days, i made these poems by Ahrend Torrey

/ day one /

 

i’ve almost given up on hope. 

i’ve almost given up on dreams. 

i’ve almost given up on everything— 

 

except for the child 

i see through the living room blinds, 

learning to ride a bike, 

a helmet over their eyes. 

 

it’s friday evening, in the suburbs, 

around five. 

 

their parent has a smooth face, 

dark glasses pulled over their eyes;

the most soothing lavender hair.  

 

i push the side door open—

let the dogs out

to their gunky bowls, 

 

then hear clapping, over the road—

 

you’ve got this, babe, 

   you’ve got this!

 

                         — keep going! 

                         — keep going!

 

\ day two \

 

i can sit here in my own misery. 

 

i can sit here at the edge of this bed 

with my hands slapped over my face, 

defeated, my spirit drilled into the ground, 

like steel.  

 

—or i can go to the cabinet, 

grab a heaping scoop of seed, 

 

take it to the field, near the lake, 

where i like to sit upon the rock 

and sling it to the shiny geese, eating 

from the showy grass— 

 

this, is what I really want—

to do something

to keep the world beautiful.

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

Endings by Martha Christina

Two brothers
come home
to visit their
dying mother.

One drives his
own red hybrid;
the other, a rented
grey sedan.

For three days they
take turns practicing
their futures; saying
good-bye.

When they were small,
their mother read
to them; stories
ending with

lessons learned
by those who
suffered,
and endured.



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.

Fame by Martha Christina

Once upon a time, as the famous stories begin,
I was a part-time secretary at an Ivy League
university, and assigned to assist a famous composer
putting on the regalia for his honorary degree.

He said he loved the Beefeater hat. “I love
your music,” I said, embarrassing myself;
but I was young and not much at conversation,
and he was, as I’ve said: famous.

Back then, he was also already stooped from years
bent over the piano, composing, becoming famous.
But even famous, he wasn’t always recognized.
Out on the street, he was another black man, at risk.



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.

At Midnight by Martha Christina

My cat carries
a dead mouse
up the 14 steps
she can barely
manage, arthritic
as she’s grown
in her old age.
She lays it at
my feet, makes
of death, a gift.



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.

She Brushes Dirt from the Stone by David Mihalyov

A fresh bouquet beside her,
bright colors to offset the gray,
ready for presenting to someone
unable to appreciate the gesture.

I stand nearby at my parent’s grave,
their weathered stone less tidy.
They share a plot, more intimate now
than I remember them in life.

She rises, wiping hands
along the thighs of her jeans
and I see in her wet eyes a grief
more recent than mine.

At my mother’s service, I held
the box which held her ashes.
Unsure of what to do
when the ritual had finished,

I approached a man smoking
by a truck, waiting for us to finish.
He told me to place them by the grave,
said he would take care of it.

How strange to let a stranger
be the last to hold her.



David Mihalyov lives in Webster, NY, with his wife, two daughters, and beagle. His poems and short fiction have appeared in several journals, including Concho River Review, Dunes Review, Free State Review, New Plains Review, and San Pedro River Review. His first collection, A Safe Distance, was published by Main Street Rag Press in 2022.

Initiation by David Mihalyov

The older men look on
when I step onto the porch,
their faces flaunting iron stubble
from a weekend of not shaving.
One of them nods at my father,
who either nods back or doesn’t,
either way I’m handed a can of beer,
a baptism of sorts into the fraternity
of those wrestling with the waking hours.

It’s Sunday, wives and girlfriends
inside preparing food
as the men wait for the second half to begin.
Was this who I would become, drinking
my way through marriage, family, work?

I pull the tab and push it into the can,
taking a long swallow as several of the men
watch me. I watch them back, their knuckles
swollen and scarred, from fights
with machines or each other I don’t know.

One of them asks if I was going to the same factory
as them, with my father, and so many of my friends.
And I don’t talk about dreams of getting out.

Another round of beer, and I reach. My father
shakes his head no, as if this glance into
his world was enough, that if I stayed
I would not be able to leave.



David Mihalyov lives in Webster, NY, with his wife, two daughters, and beagle. His poems and short fiction have appeared in several journals, including Concho River Review, Dunes Review, Free State Review, New Plains Review, and San Pedro River Review. His first collection, A Safe Distance, was published by Main Street Rag Press in 2022.

Revisionist History by Daniel Brennan

There is no black ice hidden
on the road up the mountain;
the corners and bend of a two-lane
passage aren’t slick with a death threat.
Our mother, she’s behind the wheel,
she hasn’t had a drink in years. She blinks
when the crisp edge of dusk recedes
behind the canopy. My brother, nursing
a half-eaten bologna sandwich, me, with
an empty coke can, breathe easy as night
comes forward, sliding into the grooves
our Chevy suburban, the metal and rubber,
creates. My ribcage doesn’t shake, my lungs
don’t expand in a gasp. We make our way
up the hill through the falling starlight
just as other planets burn into view.
That night we don’t miss a beat, we fall asleep
with our heavy childhood limbs, our mother
exhaling, smooth as black ice, when she closes
her book and sends us dreaming.

*

There is no black ice hidden

on the road up the mountain, 

the corners and bend of a two-lane

passage aren’t slick with a death threat. 

Our mother, she’s behind the wheel,

she hasn’t had a drink in years. She blinks

when the crisp edge of dusk recedes

behind the canopy., My brother, nursing

a half-eaten bologna sandwich, me, with

an empty coke can, breathe easy as night

comes forward, slides into the grooves of

our Chevy suburban, metal and rubber,

creates. My ribcage doesn’t shake, my lungs

don’t expand in a gasp. We make our way

up the hill through the falling starlight

just as other planets burn into view. 

That night we don’t miss a beat, we fall asleep

with our heavy childhood limbs, our mother

exhaling smooth as black ice when she closes

her book and sends us dreaming. 

Daniel Brennan (he/him) is a queer writer and resident of New York City, whose work focuses on the juxtaposition of human intimacy and the ever-changing climate of our world. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in CP Quarterly, The Garfield Lake Review, ONE ART, Feral, and GLT.

Slow by Janis Greve

Too shy, too sensitive,
to utter them outright,
words, when they came, seemed to flutter
from your eyelashes,
weighed first like packets of sand,

then paced slowly,
deliberately,
one word
in front of the other,
keeping us in rapt suspense
as you rounded the curves of a blue-eyed yarn,
beer bottle in hand.

This, too, was the way you moved,
stork-like, unhurried,
one leg lifting,
settling,
taking measure of the ground,
before the other followed suit—
the patient progress of a lanky man.

Oh, how it sunk in,
the deep, contagious tremor of your laughter
spreading out across the couch cushions,
stealing up spines,
until a mountain range of quaking shoulders,

sweet, convulsing release,
as we watched Monty Python downstairs,
all of us taut teenagers then.

I refuse to say that you “committed” anything—
one day you had the gumption
to do what you’d been putting off,

the loneliest task there is,

in the bathroom, the soap that loved you
one last time,
in the crisper drawer,
romaine lettuce and green peppers found fresh.



Janis Greve teaches literature at UMass Amherst, specializing in autobiography, disability, and service-learning. In addition to writing poetry, she makes comics. She has previously published in such places as The Florida Review, New Delta Review, North American Review, and The Berkshire Review, among other places.

Crosswords by Richard Weaver

Each morning he’d walk to town
as my grandparents called it,
barely two blocks, stopping to say Hello
to the many merchants, neighbors, relatives,
and friends. Somedays we woke early enough
to walk with him, to be shown in town
as Tom's boys from Texas. We'd walk
behind his measured limp, one knee stiff,
a storied football memory. He always bought
two papers: the Birmingham News
and the Tuscaloosa News,
and read them without glasses
before settling in on the porch
with the puzzles. No one dared
attempt them before him. And he never
left them unfinished. No pencil for him.
Always the confidence of ink.
Only its permanence would do.
Nothing to do with dementia.
The brain is a muscle; he challenged it
daily to do its best, to do more.
Not a way to strengthen memory
or learn new tricks at an advanced age:
it was simply what he did, the way
today began after the sun appeared.
He’d learned the tricks, the odd words
and language quirks, and found ease
in knowing his life had not been left behind,
in a suitcase or attic; his mind alive even though
the anvil of his body was daily shrinking.



Post-Covid, Richard Weaver has returned as the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. Among his other pubs: conjunctions, Louisville Review, Southern Quarterly, Free State Review, Hollins Critic, Little Patuxent Review, Loch Raven Review, The Avenue, and New Orleans Review. He’s the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and wrote the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005). Recently, his 180th prose poem was published. He was a finalist in the 2019 Dogwood Literary Prize in Poetry.

Cleaning the Bones by Richard Weaver

I've never seen anyone eat fried chicken
the way my grandfather did. As thoroughly.
It amazed me that any bones survived.
All that remained after dinner,
(lunch to my grandparents
since dinner was supper)
was a small, neatly stacked pile,
picked clean, never enough left
for an anthropologist to reconstruct
even a mythic bird. No skin.
No gristle. The marrow sucked free.
Though I still try I can never clean the bones
as he did. Gristle, bone, marrow and all,
it disappeared easily into a man who had once
with his brothers’ help, taken apart
a neighbor's wagon as a prank
and reassembled it thirty feet up
in a tree; a man who never shrank
in my eyes even as age outran him.
At 60 he'd once raced a cousin
forty years younger, and sprinted
past him. I admired his strength,
the hand that always shook yours
in a test of sinew and bone,
always stronger even at 90,
sure of its grip and firm with life.
That hand extends itself to me tonight
as I remember what his life taught:
love needs no form to express itself.
Even the small pile of bones
left on a plate wiped clean
with a last slice of bread
were a testimony to his life.
An offering I now know as part of me.



Post-Covid, Richard Weaver has returned as the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. Among his other pubs: conjunctions, Louisville Review, Southern Quarterly, Free State Review, Hollins Critic, Little Patuxent Review, Loch Raven Review, The Avenue, and New Orleans Review. He’s the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and wrote the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005). Recently, his 180th prose poem was published. He was a finalist in the 2019 Dogwood Literary Prize in Poetry.

Only a Bed of Water Now by Margaret Duda

Undulating ocean waves
come splashing to shore,
bringing shells, stones,
multi-colored sea glass.

They both had to cross it,
my father in steerage,
my mother in second class,
to meet and make a new life.

Married, they lived near it
and I still say I heard waves
crashing as I was pushed
through the narrow canal.

Many years later, we approach
the time to spread ashes on the bed
of water my parents had to cross
so that waves can rock me to sleep.



Margaret Duda is the daughter of Hungarian immigrants and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She has had poems, short stories, articles, and books published. A book of poetry entitled I Come from Immigrants will be published by Kelsay Books in 2023

Video Tapes by Miriam Manglani

I found them in a dusty bag in my mother’s attic,
buried under old board games.

Video tapes so unassuming
in their black plastic cases
one would never suspect they had captured
precious pieces of the past—
my father’s final words to his children,
staring into the camera with his shiny soulful eyes.

I watched the footage wishing
I could pull him from the screen into my world.

Another preserved my mom’s pre-stroke voice,
the one I couldn’t summon in my head
when I needed to hear it because I missed her,
looked for in old voice mails.
I listened now, drinking it in like a potion
to conjure up the mom I once knew.

I watch her giving a tour of our house
with its spacious bedrooms and yard
right before she sold it because dad got sick.

The beautiful woman with perfectly applied
makeup and wide smile preserved like a fine artifact —
had no idea her daughter would be watching and listening
decades later to her footsteps as she walked
in heels on our old house's wood floors,
to the words she spoke in her old voice,
wishing she was still here just the way she was.



Miriam Manglani lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and three children. She works full-time as a Technical Training Manager. Her poems have been published in various magazines and journals, including Sparks of Calliope, Canyon Voices, Rushing Thru the Dark, and Paterson Literary Review. Her poetry chapbook, Ordinary Wonders, was published by Prolific Press.

Pell-Mell by Margaret McGowan

Nature is disorganized
If left alone
The grass an unruly
Mop, sparrows flit
From tree to tree
Squirrels wreak havoc
In our backyard, don’t pay
Attention to our hints
Or body language
All I want is for them
To leave the apples alone
Let us eat them for a change



Margaret McGowan is the author of Ancestors and Other Poems (2021). She was a finalist in the 2022 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Contest and received an honorable mention in the 2019 HVWG Poetry Contest. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in QU, Hobart, MoonPark Review, and others.

When I Was a Waitress by Margaret McGowan

all those cups
of coffee and miniature

creamers, maybe five,
would fit in a monkey

dish, the sandpipers
outside dancing

on the sunny beach,
I had no time to watch

them, my order
was up, I knew

because my
morse code of dings

had just spilled out
of the speakers

that usually played
fifties pop music



Margaret McGowan is the author of Ancestors and Other Poems (2021). She was a finalist in the 2022 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Contest and received an honorable mention in the 2019 HVWG Poetry Contest. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in QU, Hobart, MoonPark Review, and others.