Grace Chapel by David Jibson

Remnants of a neon sign that once proclaimed,
Jesus Saves, dangle from a frayed wire
above the boarded over front door.
The pastor, who worked days at a grain elevator,
packed up and moved his family to the city years ago
before the last of his congregation died out.
Ragweed and goldenrod have pushed themselves
up through the graveled parking lot where flat-bed trucks
and the occasional tractor would gather
Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings
for long sermons that floated out through windows
open to the summer air.
The last of them was about forgiveness,
according to a fallen sign that lays on its back
in a patch of stinging nettles
which it wears like a thorny crown.



David Jibson lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan where he is an associate editor of Third Wednesday, a literary arts journal, a member of The Crazy Wisdom Poetry Circle and The Poetry Society of Michigan. He is retired from a long career in Social Work, most recently with a Hospice agency. He believes the most important element in his poetry is "story".

First Snow by David Jibson

It arrived early this year,
a week before Thanksgiving
and heavier, I think,
than we have ever seen.
The ground was still warm,
of course, so it began melting
even before it stopped falling.
The fort in the park rose one day
and fell the next, like
the walls of Jericho.
The snowman in the neighbor’s yard
walked off sometime during the night,
leaving only his ragged, knitted scarf behind.



David Jibson lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan where he is an associate editor of Third Wednesday, a literary arts journal, a member of The Crazy Wisdom Poetry Circle and The Poetry Society of Michigan. He is retired from a long career in Social Work, most recently with a Hospice agency. He believes the most important element in his poetry is "story".

Winter Solstice by Ronald Moran

Only if one insists on interpreting day
                    as light
is this the shortest day of the year,
                    a misnomer

at best––at worst, a cause to admit
                    the bleakness
of one's life, as mirrored in the absence
                    of light,

as if clouds obtained, their low-lying
                    legions
parading, so as to honor one's general
                    affirmation

of the law of correspondences, used
                    too often
to justify the slow but nonetheless sad
                    drop

into darkness, when one can say today,
                    at least,
O yes. It must be in the stars, or, rather,
                    their absence.



Ronald Moran lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina. His poems have been published in Commonweal, Connecticut Poetry Review, Louisiana Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Negative Capability, North American Review, Northwest Review, South Carolina Review, Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and in twelve books/chapbooks of poetry. Clemson University Press will publish his Eye of the World shortly. He has won a number of awards and his work is archived in Special Collections at Furman University.

Interlude by Ed Ahern

The small being sleeps on my chest.
My breathing sways plump arms.
He unable, me unwilling to rise and part.
We are never closer than this touching
that he will not remember
and I will not forget.
Unconcern nestled into gentle custody.
Neither knowing, or just now caring
about changes to come.



Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He has his original wife, but advises that after forty eight years they are both out of warranty. Ed's had over a hundred stories and poems published so far, and two books.

PTSD 1 by Matt Borczon

My muse
is the
severed
leg that
I find
in my
bed
in every
single
nightmare
I’ve had
since the
war.



Matt Borczon is a writer and nurse from Erie, Pa. He was stationed in the busiest combat hospital in Afghanistan from 2010-11. He writes about war and his experiences since coming home. His work has been published in Yellow Chair Review, Dead Snakes, Busted Dharma and The Pressure Press. His chapbook, A Clock of Human Bones, will be published by Yellow Chair Review in early 2016.