First Date by John Grey

There were four of them
getting ready for the one date.

Chrissie swished various blouses, dresses, pants,
across the sight-line of the mirror
like swiping groceries in a checkout line.
Her mother garbed her over-racing heart
in sips of wine.
Her father slipped a good half hour
of parlor pacing on his feet.
Tina, her little sister,
swaddled herself in giggles.

Chrissie fiddled with her hair.
Her mother wiped her eyes.
Her father flexed his hands,
imagined them wrapped around
the throat of a boy
who got too fresh with his daughter.
Tina looked out the bedroom window,
eager for that first glimpse
of this surely wretched, ugly boy.

Chrissie dabbled in just enough makeup
to move her age slightly forward.
More tears turned back her mother's clock.
Rage at his own teenage misbehavior
fueled her father's calendar.
Tina vowed to never grow up.

Chrissie didn't mean to pose
at the top of the stairs
but her nerves, her light head
couldn't help themselves.
Her mother watched from the kitchen wings,
proud and afraid.
Her father was transported
to different stairs, twenty years before,
Chrissie giving way to the woman he ultimately married.
Tina saw the car drive up,
the boy emerge with a bouquet of flowers.
She was eleven years old.
For a moment or two,
she struggled to stay that age.



John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Front Range Review, Studio One and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Poem and Midwest Quarterly.

First Kiss by Ben Rasnic

Sat behind her
in second grade,
would tug her pigtails
to let her know.

At recess,
we hid together
behind the tall hedges
and traded valentines;

our stomachs queasy,
hearts racing
like Rin Tin Tin
and then

the clash
of stainless steel
& enamel,     

hint of grape pixy stix



Ben Rasnic's poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Currently residing in Bowie, Maryland, Rasnic spends his free time in summer writing, tending his vegetable garden and supporting the Baltimore Orioles' AA farm team, the Bowie Baysox.

Bats at Night by Richard Martin / Photograph by Gerd-Wolf Schaefer

Like the paper darts I folded as a boy
to fly across the living room,
minute black arrows circled
the garden pond, shooting suddenly
from bush and tree – tiny fragments
of black tissue paper swooping down
to the water, only to speed away again,
adding to the dusky spectacle
of the evening – blue-grey sky,
puffs of reddish clouds, punctuated
by the invasion of bats – mere dashes
in the shady text of night.

Richard Martin is an English writer who lives in the Netherlands close to the point where Belgium, Germany and Holland meet. After retiring as a university teacher in Germany, he turned his attention to writing, and has published three collections of poetry and numerous poems in magazines in England, the US, and Austria.

Copyright Gerd-Wolf Schaefer

The Amaryllis by Marne Wilson

A co-worker planted it on a whim
and then abandoned it just as casually.
Now this amaryllis is mine by default.
Time after time, I have watched it
try to create a bloom.

The flower stalk becomes overeager,
growing so quickly that it cannot support itself,
then falling over dead,
a victim of its own success.
After that the bulb lies dormant for a while
until I reluctantly begin to water it again.

But this time is different.
After months without water,
the bulb decides on its own to grow.
I check on it one day and discover vigorous shoots
breaking out of the dry soil.
What can I do but quench its thirst?
But I also ask myself for the first time
exactly what went wrong in the past.

I see that the bulb is planted too shallow,
so that it has no anchor.
I take the plant home and add more soil to the pot
until the bulb is buried up to its neck.
Some say that I will smother it this way,
that bulbs need to get plenty of air.
But I say that my mother
kept her amaryllis for fifty years
and watched it bloom many, many times.
I say that sometimes old ways are best.
I say that I am going to watch it grow.



Marne Wilson lives in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Her poems have most recently appeared in Atlas & Alice, Poetry East, and Oyez Review. She is the author of The Bovine Daycare Center (Finishing Line, 2015).

So little by Ben Rasnic

So little

I depend on;
the cry
of a freight train,
its faint echo
waning.



Ben Rasnic's poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Currently residing in Bowie, Maryland, Rasnic spends his free time in summer writing, tending his vegetable garden and supporting the Baltimore Orioles' AA farm team, the Bowie Baysox.

Voyage by Trivarna Hariharan

When
spring falls

upon
a crumbling town,

who can
tell a leaf from its

flower?



Trivarna Hariharan is an undergraduate student of English Literature from India. She has authored The Necessity of Geography (Flutter Press), Home and Other Places (Nivasini Publishers), and Letters I Never Sent (Writers Workshop, Kolkata). Her poems appear or are forthcoming from Alexandria Quarterly, Allegro, Birds Piled Loosely, Random Sample Review, Sweet Tree Review, Fourth & Sycamore, Vayavya, Open Road Review, TXTOBJX, Vayavya, Café Dissensus, Red Bird Chapbooks, The Sunflower Collective, Quail Bell, Eunoia Review and others. Besides writing, she learns the Electronic Keyboard, and has completed her 4th Grade in the instrument from Trinity College of Music, London.