Mother and Child by Greg Watson

Just across the street, where yet another
sleek, modern apartment complex has arisen,
seemingly overnight, I can spy the figure
of a woman in one window, many stories up,
gently swaying, her baby blanketed and held closely,
moving perhaps to a music which only they
can hear, or to the silence they share between
them, framed within this moment, far above
the winter groans of traffic below, a maddening
wind rushing the clouds along, rattling the
tiny metal doors of streetlamps and flagpoles,
bending the trees one way, then another.
I look away, only for a moment, and of course
they are gone, the window glass shimmering with
winter blues, an amber-tinted lightbulb
reflected like a distant star, slowly receding
from view on such a cold and bitter morning,
just now beginning to stir, just now
beginning to wake into the story of itself.



Greg Watson's work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. He is the author of nine collections of poetry, most recently The Sound of Light. He is also co-editor with Richard Broderick of The Road by Heart: Poems of Fatherhood.

D.A.V. Thrift Store by Greg Watson

Another nowhere job in my early twenties was
the D.A.V. Thrift Store on University Avenue,
unloading and pricing junk merchandise
as it rolled in off the box trucks.

Used toasters, baby strollers, bedding,
odds and ends, those old man cardigan sweaters
which I had suddenly grown fond of.
Harry, already in his 60s, black brille-cremed hair,
pencil mustache, blue-green Merchant Marine
tattoo fading into itself, chain-smoked
throughout the workday, shaking his head
in wonder at the myriad things
people were willing to pay money for.

He had eyes for Gina, the young, blonde cashier,
doughy-faced, quiet, and disarmingly naive.
Then, there was the middle-aged man who had
been permanently banned from the store
for obsessively sniffing women's shoes,
kneeling before the rack in a form of obeisance
or defeat, a grossly tragic or comedic form of
loneliness, depending on your perspective.

We were all doing time in our own way,
students, retirees, and the occasional criminal,
going nowhere on a daily basis.
Except, as it turns out, Harry and Gina,
who ran away together without notice, sending
a postcard-sized photo back months later
of no determinable location: trees bent
into question marks, and long grass waving,
sparks of blue water in the background.

"Wish you were here," was all it read.
And I would venture that every one of us,
without exception, certainly did.



Greg Watson's work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. He is the author of nine collections of poetry, most recently The Sound of Light. He is also co-editor with Richard Broderick of The Road by Heart: Poems of Fatherhood.

A Day That Lost Its Meaning by Heidi Slettedahl

How do you celebrate the day that lost its meaning?
My parents’ wedding anniversary, unmarked,
            no calendar line reminding me.
            And yet, it nudges a fleeting thought,
            a memory of cards once made or bought
The end date unremarked and unrecalled in specificity:
a date in May not emblazoned in my heart.



Heidi Slettedahl is an academic and a US-UK dual national who goes by a slightly different name professionally. She lives in western New York with her husband and two Springer Spaniels. She has been published in a variety of online literary journals.

A Long Strange Trip by Ruth Bavetta

They say the human body replaces its cells every seven years.
That means I have been 12.285714 different people.

The timid little girl who ate toast and tea with her grandmother
became the teenager who ordered a hamburger and fries

for breakfast and wanted to be left alone became the young adult
enamored with guitars and folksingers and spaghetti with garlic

became the adult who married twice and was happy
with sardines instead of macaroons, crackers rather than cookies.

But now I’m old and have fallen under the sweet spell
of Cherry Garcia, an extended, rambling improvisation

of the melody of maraschinos, grace notes of chocolate,
soaring solo of cream. I want to make things up as I go along,

wandering among the notes, seeking the sweetness,
longer and longer and longer before the music stops.



Ruth Bavetta’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Nimrod, North American Review, Slant, American Journal of Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies. She has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Her fifth book, What’s Left Over, won the Future Cycle Poetry Book Prize for 2022.

Apology to My Ex Husband by Ruth Bavetta

What should I call you? Lover, father,
breadwinner, handyman, controller,
suitor for the unsuitable?

I’m sorry for the intersection
of promises crossed and abandoned
at the lip of the fault line, for evenings

found wanting, for the blatant
and the subtle, but not for the life
I found between the pages of my days.

I’m sorry for always wearing red,
for misunderstanding the depth
of your longing for black and white.

I’m sorry you are gone and yet not sorry.
Were you happy before the end? I could not
hear you when you did not speak.



Ruth Bavetta’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Nimrod, North American Review, Slant, American Journal of Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies. She has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Her fifth book, What’s Left Over, won the Future Cycle Poetry Book Prize for 2022.

Counterfeit Cowboy by Sharon Waller Knutson

He wore a black ten-gallon hat
and snakeskin boots. Levi’s
so tight they painted his legs blue.

I never saw a gun, but he said
in Texas, he wore a Saturday
night special in a holster on his hip.

All of my friends did, he said.
Murderers got six years
and victims got death.

He said he went to high school
in Lubbock with Waylon
Jennings and drove George

Jones home from the bars
when he was too drunk
to drive himself. But he said

a lot of things like I do
and Till death do us part
with a mistress on the side,

sexy as a sirloin sandwich
on rye with sweet pickles,
mayo, and mustard.

After his wedding to Wife No. 3,
days before our divorce was final,
I figured everything was a lie,

until I found the photo album
with pictures of him drinking
whisky with Waylon and George.



Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist and a widely published poet who lives in a wildlife habitat in Arizona. She has published ten poetry books including: What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say (Kelsay Books 2021,) Survivors, Saints, and Sinners (Cyberwit 2022), and The Vultures are Circling (Cyberwit 2023.) Her poems have appeared most recently in ONE ART, Black Coffee Review, Verse-Virtual, and Your Daily Poem.

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.