Morning After the Death of My Mother by Terri Kirby Erickson

They call it daybreak and the crack
of dawn. Even so, light spreads over
the backyard field like melting butter
and songbirds sing. Shy deer retreat
to the woods, and night owls sleep,
dreaming of moonshine and stars. A
red-tailed hawk circles sunlit roofs
of houses in which most of us will
rise as if there is no danger in it—
as if we will never die nor cry in the
dark like frightened children. There
is comfort to be found in our warm
and cozy slippers, the feel of a tooth-
brush in our mouths. So what if we
are growing old and bleary-eyed, our
days shorter? The coffee is brewing.
There are eggs to be whisked, toast
to be spread with jams and jelly. Yet,
the widow clutches her countertop,
her loneliness undaunted by the blue
sky or the scent of hollyhocks wafting
through open windows. And parents
whose son—lost so long ago, no one
remembers but his mother, his father—
the little things that made their boy
real. But breakfast must be eaten, the
grass mowed. And if time tramples us
like soldiers marching in the streets,
we go on reaching for each other like
our grip will never be loosened. We
drink our coffee even when the cups
are cracked, the day already broken.



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.

Sparrows by Howie Good

Inside the Home Depot, I hear but can’t see the birds
chirping away among the exposed steel beams overhead –
house sparrows, probably. Halloween has only just ended.
The red Christmas poinsettias on display, when I look closer,
prove to be fabric. I ask a man in a carpenter’s apron who isn’t
a carpenter where the heavy-duty tarps are. “Aisle 41,” he says
and points. The word “cancer” follows me. It is the scariest word
in the language, scarier somehow than even “death.” I am being
murdered by my own body. The sparrows go on chirping their
simple three-note song as if there is no extra time for complexity.



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

Measuring the Foundation by Steve Klepetar

I look at the cabin, it’s splintery walls.
My father walks around outside,
measuring the foundation.
He has carried a tire from the truck,
and he sits now by the edge of the lake.
Turtles swim in the shallows.
I find a pair of hiking boots
with one lace missing, a rusty canteen,
a hand axe with a chipped blade.
It begins to rain, and we remember
the misspelled sign in a neighborhood store:
TURTELS FOR SALE.
The owner had fallen asleep at the counter.
Even the little bell failed to wake him.
We slipped out through the back door,
hungry for soup or bread or something
we couldn’t yet name. Night had come on
and streetlights glowed along the avenue.
It’s been a day of memories, which can seem
like ghosts in the half light, or the ending of a dream.



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

What's a Boy But the Contents of His Pockets? by John Hicks

A lucky stone that sparkled to you;
a ring shaped like a cowboy saddle
found while digging in grandma’s garden;
a length of twine rescued from the kitchen;
receipts you can’t yet read; skeleton key
from the junk drawer. Your pockets
reliquary of the world beyond
what grown-ups said was best for you.

When you asked: What’s this for? Where
did this come from? adult answers were vague,
or you couldn’t understand them, or
they dismissed with When you’re older.

So, you made your own stories—
like the ring lost by a passing cowboy;
messages hidden in grocery receipts; a secret door
in the basement the skeleton key would open.

Some things you shared with other boys:
a single-bladed pocketknife with a broken tip,
the shiny Zippo lighter that might be made to work,
the rusty railroad spike from behind the depot.

You hid your talismans in cotton darkness,
to take out when alone: a copper nugget
from a desert camping trip, blue and roughly round
(larger than your blue marble shooter),
a pearl button like on Gene Autry’s shirt;
a wheat penny from the floor of the Willys.

But wonders found gave way to car keys,
credit cards, and currency you emptied
onto your dresser top at night. You came to
care how clothes fit; stopped seeing things.

A wheat penny in my change today.
I held it up to read the date, wondering
if it was from the year I was born, a reminder
of what slipped away.



John Hicks is working on his first book. His poetry has been published by: Valparaiso Poetry Review, I-70 Review, Poetica, Blue Nib, Verse-Virtual, and others. He writes in the thin mountain air of the southern Rockies. He’s been nominated for two Pushcarts and one Best of the Net.

What I Wanted to Say by Joan Leotta

What I wanted to say
to the handsome, bearded young man,
walking along the beach, wearing
black shorts and t-shirt, his phone, like mine
poised to capture the precise moment
when the sun leaps out of the sea to
balance itself on the tightrope line of the horizon--

what I wanted to say
was, “You look so much like my son!
Maybe a bit older.” But I kept silent,
simply smiled briefly in his direction,
fearing that if I spoke, after my declaration
of his resemblance to Joey,
he might ask, “Where is your son?”
Then I would answer truthfully,
“My son died a few years ago,”
and this young man might recoil, perhaps
consider it a bad omen to resemble
a departed one, even a beloved departed.
So, instead, I quietly watched him walk
away, snapping his sunrise pictures
as my own son might have done—
kept still instead of saying
what I wanted to say.

Silently, I sent a blessing
to this young man, wishing him
many stunning sunrises and a peaceful life
full of love and joy.
At last, I turned and climbed the steps
to leave the beach. From the top step,
I glanced back down
for one more glimpse of him
but he was gone.



Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. Internationally published as an essayist, poet, short story writer, and novelist, she’s a two-time nominee (fiction and poetry) for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. As a story performer, she offers folktale programs and a one woman show, “Louisa May Alcott Comes to Speak.”

On What Would Have Been Our Son’s 48th Birthday by Sharon Waller Knutson

Cowboys on horses
round up cattle
with their blue heelers
like he and his brothers used to do.

ATVs roar by in a cavalcade
and I swear I see him
in the driver’s seat leading
the pack up the dirt road.

Two does and their fawns
frolic on the lawn and I can
picture him sitting cross-legged
on the couch watching.

The flicker knocks and knocks
but no one opens the door
and I hear him say how lucky
we are to live out here

before he walks away
and disappears into the white
clouds that swirl in a sky
blue as his eyes.



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.

Before I Leave the House by Jacqueline Jules

I have to check the stove again.

And the coffee maker. Is it unplugged?

The refrigerator closed?

What about the back door? Is it locked?

And the toilet? Did it stop running?

I have to be sure everything
is safe and secure while I’m away,
so there won’t be any headaches
over house stuff, the last thing we need
right now when we don’t know
when you’ll come home or if.

So I haven’t left yet.

Still busy going back to the stove
and the back door and the bathroom,
circling like a hawk over all the bad things
that could happen if I don’t check one more time
before I go to the hospital where I’ll be
helpless to control what happens to you.



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). Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications. Visit her online at www.jacquelinejules.com

Tell Me About Him by Jacqueline Jules

That’s what she said.

Not “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Or “That must have been so hard.”

Instead, she asked me
to describe the person
he was before he became
someone to be sorry about.

It made me blink.
I was so used to nodding my head,
mumbling a platitude in return.

“He had my mother’s eyes,”
I offered softly. “Grayish blue
with flecks of green.”

“Lovely,” she said, touching my arm,
giving me permission to say
he coached Little League in the spring,
and cooked outside on an old grill
that came with the rented house
he shared with three college buddies.

“So he loved baseball?” she asked.

“And hockey,” I answered.
“We used to watch games together.”

“You must miss him,” she said.

I do.



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). Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications. Visit her online at www.jacquelinejules.com

Marriage by Rose Mary Boehm

We kept the mattress on the floor
for reasons of economics—remember?
When our baby son crawled in to sleep between us
without much ado, it became a godsend.
We didn’t keep each other warm,
laughter hid our emptiness.
We didn’t notice the spiders
undoing their fragile web.

The luxury bed that lifted our heads
and feet if we so chose, the 500-thread cotton,
the large, mirrored wardrobe,
the jacuzzi, the private school, the two Beemers
were only hiding wounds that could not heal.

We smiled and nodded like wind-up toys;
I spent time with the mothers and sometimes fathers
of the kids’ friends. You were always too busy.

One day a young woman came to our house
and asked for your hand.

We all survived the end of another marriage,
the quake and its aftermath,
forever changed by the tsunami of our lack of wisdom,
everyone in their own kayak riding the rapids.
Loathing—the hors d’oeuvre
Forgiving—the main course
Friendship—the dessert

Many years ago, we each married others,
but when you dared to die, I missed you.



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 in US poetry journals. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

Gravid by Tamara Madison

A young deer steps
with caution
across the grass
toward the fence
at the edge of the garden.
It is afternoon. He is alone.
I have seen him here before
I think, a yearling
behind a pregnant doe
walking slow. Yesterday
she was alone; I watched
her shadow move
into the dark woods
beyond the fence. Perhaps
she was seeking a place
to lie down in damp grass
to foal. Now her elder child
walks alone. I think I know
his loneliness, his puzzlement.
And I know her need
to do the hard, natural work
in solitude. In these woods
I've seen the wild apple trees
gravid with blossom, standing
alone among the birches
who have just given birth
to a new generation of leaves
glistening with dew,
trembling in wind,
opening themselves
to the wonder that is rain.



Tamara Madison is the author of three full-length volumes of poetry, Wild Domestic, Moraine (both from Pearl Editions), Morpheus Dips His Oar (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), and two chapbooks. Her work has appeared in the Writer’s Almanac, Sheila-Na-Gig, Worcester Review, and many other publications. Read more about Tamara at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.

Bones and Song by Jennifer Mills Kerr

Today I discover a pile of bird bones
near the chain link gate, licked clean
by my cat, embroidered by ants.

An offering of pick-up sticks, a strategy
of careful tenderness–a game you
never played. I can’t decide if remembering
our distances draws you closer or
outlines your absence.

Maybe it doesn’t matter, maybe tangled
thinking is perfect, as daughter playing
mother, I learned the endless practice
of pulling apart your knots, trying to unravel
what I’d done or didn’t do to upset you
again. Now I bury the offered bones

beneath the front porch. The soil, never
touched by rain or sun, a silky sand,
transparent as the love songs you sang
alone in the kitchen every Sunday when
you thought no one was listening.



Jennifer Mills Kerr is an educator, poet, and writer who loves mild winters, anything Jane Austen, and the raucous coast of Northern California. Connect with Jennifer through her Substack, Poetry Inspired or say hello at her website.

The Moonwoman Dreams of Pluto (November 2016) by Penelope Moffet

After the election
I woke in sorrow
night after night,
wondering what
would happen
to the earth,
the air and waterways,
bees and wolves and newts
with no one strong enough
to say their health
means as much
as ours, that
our health
leans on theirs.
Day after day
I dragged up
out of bed
feeling a close
relative had died.
All I could do
was add a little color
to a drawing
before I went to work,
dwarf planet Pluto
and its five moons
above a golden camel,
a white rabbit,
a gray Moonwoman
rattle – crescent
eyes, strong nose,
crooked lips open
as if to gasp
or speak.



Penelope Moffet is the author of the 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).

Painting by M. Benjamin Thorne

I think my father secretly
wanted to be a painter;
he’d talk about retirement,
stock market pressures behind him,
and buying paints and canvas, maybe.
His once-thought-lost high school art,
preserved in framed collages, featured
dazed Don Quixotes, weeping Vietnam vets.
It’s odd to think about, the armors he donned
at various points to suit his need: leather jacket
for the street trouble-seeker; varsity coat
in football season; smock for art class;
pin-stripes and tie for Merrill Lynch.
The last he wore longest, and heaviest
I think. But when you come dirt poor
from West Virginia to Wall Street, you need
some heraldry to prove you belong,
some shield against ridicule and scorn.

Mornings meant shined shoes and tied knots;
evenings a collapse into silence and cigarette haze,
his ironed shirt and Brooks Brothers shorn
for sweats and crinkled newspaper wall.
Sometimes his eyes peered over the crenelation,
and rarely, defenses lowered, I’d see a smile—
and what beautiful vistas that simple stretch
of tired muscles sketched in my eager heart.



M. Benjamin Thorne is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. Possessed of a lifelong love of history and poetry, he is interested in exploring the synergy between the two. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Griffel, The Westchester Review, Rising Phoenix Review, Feral, Gyroscope Review, and Molecule. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, NC.

Wren by John L. Stanizzi

a wren solos
where the offering of daybreak
brightens the road

and as the day
returns to heat
the bird’s music is sewn
into the branches
like lace
so delicate
it cannot be seen



John L. Stanizzi is the author 15 collections and has published in over 200+ journals, including Red Eft Review several times. You can find him in Prairie Schooner, Rattle, VIA, and others. His nonfiction is in Stone Coast, Metaworker, etc. John is a former Wesleyan University Etherington Scholar, Poet-in-Residence at Manchester Community College, and in 2021, he received a Connecticut Fellowship in Creative Writing – Non-Fiction from the Connecticut Office of Arts. His piece, "Pants," was named “Best of 2021” by Potato Soup Journal.

Shadow of the Gun by Howie Good

Video from the school shooting in Georgia
was playing with the sound off on the TV
behind the counter at the convenience mart.
“Have a good one,” the cashier rotely said,
handing me my change. I was still thinking
about the school shooting as I turned to leave.
The next customer in line towered above me,
a big, strong-looking guy in t-shirt and jeans
and with a six-pack of Bud Light tucked under
his thick right arm. Across the front his shirt
declaimed “Protect Gun Rights” in red, white,
and blue. I confess to it all as I would a crime.



Howie Good is a retired professor living on Cape Cod. His new poetry book, The Dark, is available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.

Sweet Dreams by Jean Ryan

Because of backyard fledglings,
because of ferals and snakes and ticks,
I keep my cat inside, where his cupped ears are tuned
not to the scuttle of a mouse but to the lid of his cat food,
where his night vision leads him not through deep woods
but around a monotony of furniture,
where his claws and fangs and whiskers
are only ornamentation.
Each day he sits at the back door, tail flapping,
and studies through the terminus of glass
the squirrels he will never chase,
the birds he will never kill.

Which is why I love to watch him dream.
Stretched alongside me, I see his paws twitch,
his muzzle crimp, the fur on his spine lift up.
In sleep he breaks free of my world
and finds another, some marvelous labyrinth
where small warm beings tremble in burrows
and unknowing birds peck at the ground.
Like a ribbon he moves toward the smell
of meat, he can already taste the blood.
And waiting there too is a willing mate,
ready each time he nods off.

My house is where he shelters.
Sleep is where he lives.



Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in coastal Alabama. She has published 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/

The Winter I Wore My Mother’s Coat by Marianne Szlyk

That fall my friend told me that Marilyn

had been size sixteen, Fifties’ curves too large
for the Eighties in Boston. There bone-thin
women earned MBAs, wore strings of pearls;
slight girls danced all night to the Talking Heads.

That year I borrowed Mom’s old coat to wear
on the subway to class. I’d risk coffee,
oil paint, turpentine stains on night-blue wool,
fur cuffs soft against my wrists. I was size
sixteen like Marilyn, like Mom’s old coat.

Mom said she hated to think of her coat
riding the subway, wandering the streets.
Her coat, her smart coat she’d bought at Denholm’s
with her first paychecks to walk to St. Luke’s
when the priest, back to all, still spoke Latin.

If she knew, if she’d seen me wear her coat
as I followed Mike Green around Boston,
she’d be furious. Then the lining tore.
I thought nothing of it. I could not sew.
Light snow turned to rain. Cars splashed her coat.

Spring came. Mom discarded my winter coat
like high school diaries, Janis Joplin
LPs, my thin, hippie skirts. I should have
brought Mom’s old coat to the cleaners to fix
the lining at least. There were dry cleaners

on each corner, even near campus
to fix the coat I had not bought, the coat
I had stolen just to feel like someone,
not a fat girl, not a drab girl in art class.



Marianne Szlyk's poems have appeared in Green Elephant and One Art. Her stories are in Mad Swirl and Impspired. Her book Why We Never Visited the Elms is available on Amazon.

The Spider, and the Web by Kelley White

Another prison mark, like the teardrop
and the clock, it can weave over elbow,
knee, nape of neck, belly, back. It might be
nothing more than graphic, part of a sleeve,
or vest, but it may mean prison—see
that boy lifting his baby to his shoulder,
that man pulling a woman to his side
by her hair. So tell me, where
is the spider. All, she’s a female.
She’s a black widow, her hourglass
emptying fast through her narrow waist;
watch out for her sweet lethal kiss.



Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent collection is NO. HOPE STREET (Kelsay Books). She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.

Waitress with a Chance of Death by Heidi Slettedahl

The flight attendant read through the entire bumpy flight.
A thick book, not easy to carry on a plane.
Perhaps she got extra luggage,
a certain benefit for being a waitress with a chance of death.

She never served us on the flight.
The pilot told her to remain seated.
But she stood instead, her back to us.
A sort of defiance I admired, if simultaneously abhorred.

What is poetry if not a transcription of the world made more beautiful?



Heidi Slettedahl is an academic and a US-UK dual national who goes by a slightly different name professionally. She has been published in a variety of online literary journals. She is the author of Mo(u)rning Rituals (Kelsay Books, 2024).

My Childhood is Strange to Me by Heidi Slettedahl

We didn’t think it macabre

to have a rabbit’s foot in our pocket,
to stroke it against our palm or face.

We played with cap guns and candy cigarettes.
Our mothers never knew where we were.

Once I almost drowned in our neighbor’s pool.
I told no one, fearful I’d never be allowed to swim again.

We found Hustler and Playboy in the woods,
crumpled and torn and sticky with sap.

A man kissed me in the parking lot near our house.
I didn’t take the five dollars he offered me.

I was afraid of ghosts and being buried alive.
I didn’t know what else to fear.



Heidi Slettedahl is an academic and a US-UK dual national who goes by a slightly different name professionally. She has been published in a variety of online literary journals. She is the author of Mo(u)rning Rituals (Kelsay Books, 2024).