Terminal by Ronald Moran

Too late for me to say to my terminally ill
                         friends,
I hope you feel better soon, when I know
                         they will
not get well, and if they could still respond,
                         they might

want to say, It's Ok, Ron, we are ready,                         
                         a chorus
joining others in that final stage when
                         every
breath comes only in forty second cycles,
                         and

I don't know what I should hope for next:
                         another breath
or cessation, their eyes fixed at either open
                         or partially
closed, never all the way, as if to declare,
                         We tried.



Ronald Moran lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina. His poems have been published in Asheville Poetry Review, 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 thirteen books/chapbooks of poetry. Clemson University Press published his Eye of the World in the spring of this year.

One Night in a House with My Parents by Ronald Moran

Snow or debris filled this house I do not
remember being in before, while my father

broke window after window, as snow,
or whatever, accumulated inside so fast

I could not remove it. I do not know why
I was there, me, over a decade older than

they lived to be, my mother silent, out
of character, sitting in a small room with

only one chair, staring at me, as if to ask,
You? What are you doing in this house?



Ronald Moran lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina. His poems have been published in Asheville Poetry Review, 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 thirteen books/chapbooks of poetry. Clemson University Press published his Eye of the World in the spring of this year.

Apology for Breathing by Howie Good

The seabirds
that dive-

bomb for fish
only seem

to be crying,
Sorry, sorry.



Howie Good co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.

100 Little Deaths by Roderick Bates

By the time she took her first step at 10 months, 
Elizabeth had already changed so many times
I had suffered a whole string of losses.
The deep-sleeping wiggler was gone,
as was the toothless sucker of nipples,
the rolling giggler bent on sitting up,
the crawler who had not yet found reverse.

Always, with each achievement –
the new tooth, the proud holding
of her own spoon, tied shoelaces,
training wheels bent and unneeded –
came the hard knowing
that some part of her life was now over,
as gone as last night’s shadows,
as forever as a broken knife blade.

When I walk in this small-town Vermont cemetery,
read the history of influenza
on all the tiny stones that just say Baby,
I am beat down by true loss.

                             And yet, tonight, as I hold
this chewed copy of Pat The Bunny
and talk to you in another state,
holding your own baby who reaches
for the off button of your laptop,
I feel the hundred small cuts of your growth,
the hundred dark moments
of each new separateness,
the hundred small stones marked Baby,
and First Grader, and Brownie,
and Graduate.  
And I wonder if, when I call you,
sometimes you hear through the wire
the hundred echoes of missing
as I say I love you.



Roderick Bates has published poems in The Dark Horse, Stillwater Review, Naugatuck River Review, Hobo Camp Review, and Rat’s Ass Review (which he now edits). He also writes prose, and won an award from the International Regional Magazines Association for an essay published in Vermont Life.

Father and I by Rachel Caruso-Bryant

You’re brown, baked by the Texas kiln, firmly lined and chiseled
Wearing a red plaid shirt, unbuttoned, with sun washed jeans,
On the couch, passed out after a long day bleeding oil on the fields.
I’m smooth-skinned, pale, and blonde as an ear of white corn,
Wearing white Hanes underpants, topless, chest down
On top of you, mouth open, drooling, deep in memory making sleep.



Rachel Caruso-Bryant is originally from Florida and is now an English language lecturer at a university in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. She lives with her husband and three cats and travels the world whenever she gets the chance. Her poems have appeared in A Lonely Riot and the Stark Poetry Journal.

My Mother's Alzheimer's by Ben Rasnic

The days, weeks, months, the
passing of the seasons
dissolve into jumbled
blank calendar squares.

The alternating glow
and fade of fireflies
captures her childlike wonder,
briefly signals familiar names
and faces,

memories flickering
particles of light
short circuiting the strange gray
passage of time,

a deluxe continuum
jigsaw puzzle
missing interlocking pieces;

unfinished crossword entries
even I no longer
can complete.



Author of four collections of poetry, Ben Rasnic currently resides in Bowie, Maryland crunching numbers for a living in Northern Virginia.