Over coffee she asked me by Rose Mary Boehm

          for Jean Charity, March 2012

She’d just had the verdict:
a huge shadow on both lungs.
They’re not sure whether it’s
the old one or a new one or
whether it’s one at all.

She said they have difficulties
taking out enough with their needles
to make that damned analysis.

They probably have to cut her
breastbone. Or was it breaking
her ribs. So we had coffee.
Sinful, black and strong. The sort
that makes your heart quake.

It may just be a shadow
strategically placed.
It took me by surprise,
her question:
What would I want
to be remembered for.



A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and three poetry collections, her work has been widely published in US poetry journals (online and print). 

Ending by Steve Klepetar

Cold sunlight blazes down onto snow.
Already night approaches.
The old sun is busy dying in the sky,
leaning toward the west.
Crows skim above their shadows
on the frozen lawn,
and now they leap into the air
above the pines like black puffs of smoke.
I stand at the door in my blue coat,
watching as they disappear into the woods
behind the pond, grateful for their visit,
for the mystery of black wings in the bright cold.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. His work has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Klepetar is the author of fourteen poetry collections, the most recent of which are A Landscape in Hell (Woodhaven Press) and Why Glass Shatters (One Sentence Chaps).

The Weight of Dried Beans by M.J. Iuppa

Pintos, cranberry, black
bean pods hang straight
& long— their sundried

rattle startles me when I
snip them off vines, three
at a time, and let them

drop into my shirt-turned-
apron that fills to overfull,
forcing me to teeter back

to the start of the row where
I left my mesh bag hanging
on a pole, ready to contain

these quick fingers, pointing
every which way out.



M.J. Iuppa's fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past 29 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life's stew.

Free to Go by M.J. Iuppa

          Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us.

          - Pablo Neruda

Evening shadows pool
beneath apple trees, settling

above ruts full of snow-
melt & fallen leaves

that float like sparrow
wings, slicing the sky's

echo in two. A bald
moon stares deeply at us,

watching us slip in
and out of the kitchen

with dinner plates and bits
of conversation that sputter

like a candle flickering on
the sill, like the whistle of

the kettle, like shadows making
their way no further than this

sudden squall of snow.



M.J. Iuppa's fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past 29 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life's stew.

uncomfortable smile by J.J. Campbell

the raven-haired beauty
caught me looking at
her

her uncomfortable smile
gives me all i need to
know



J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) is old enough to know where the bodies are buried. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Chiron Review, Horror Sleaze Trash and Rusty Truck. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights (http://evildelights.blogspot.com)

Southern Childhood by John Grey

This is the delta.
So much water oozes through
and yet it seems to never move.
That's an egret
pecking in its shallows.
And a couple of kids picking pecans.
And a coral snake
slithering across the surface.
Those are mosquitoes, of course,
whirling black clouds
of the miserable biters.

That's the wrought-iron railing
of a verandah.
Those are windows leading to a bedroom,
a fan spinning shadows across the ceiling,
netting draped over the bed.
Someone is screaming below,
"Do not bring that thing into the house."
A boy follows his father
to a favorite fishing hole.
A wild girl trails at a distance.

One child is living in the north now,
another far out in the western mountains.
The others are somewhere beneath
that greenish-white gathering of tombstones.

The air is as hot and steamy as bathwater.
A body wilts just by breathing.
But not all is lost for those born in the bayou.
Memories, at least, can take the heat.



John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Homestead Review, Harpur Palate and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Roanoke Review, Hawaii Review and North Dakota Quarterly. 

A Hole in the Hull by Todd Mercer

Movies show resourceful characters
thriving after fate strands them.
Boat sinks, heroes work it out—
a common TV Guide slug-line.
By contrast, those actually marooned
on obscure Pacific islands
typically didn’t graduate
from wilderness survival school.
That’s where you climb rocks
and the instructors ask you:
Which three items
would you take?
When a ship wrecks
on an unmarked reef,
passengers don’t know
what’s indispensable.
Nine times in ten
they let it sink with the craft.
Those swept overboard
make for awful television leads.
Castaways on the average
are (frankly) fairly out of shape
when they wash up
on the sparkling sands
of nowhere atolls.
They’re un-handy, accident-prone,
they are soon hungry. And then…
It’s easy to become unbalanced,
lacking other human reference.
Stuck without calories,
bad at fishing. Missing all their shows.
Real castaways fail at survival,
they suffer and expire
before rescuers get there.
It’s not exotic, what comes of regular people
when ships crack open out there.
If ever stranded, be strong,
strive to be cinematic.
Beat those long odds
sell the film rights,

play yourself if the money is fair.

Todd Mercer was nominated for Best of the Net in 2018. Mercer won 1st, 2nd & 3rd place of the Kent County Dyer-Ives Poetry Prizes and the won Grand Rapids Festival Flash Fiction Prize. Recent work appears in: The Magnolia Review, Plum Tree Tavern and Praxis. 

The Day After by Martha Christina

“I’ll be right there,” she said
to the finches at the feeder.

“I’ll be right back,” she told the cats,
waiting for fresh food and water.

So began the first of many days.

Sympathy cards came in the mail;
more condolences over the phone.

The cats ate and drank.
The birds emptied the feeder.


Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in Star 82 Review, and Crab Orchard Review. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

New Widow by Martha Christina

She shuffles
her late husband’s
marked deck,
lays out another
game of solitaire
on the kitchen table.

She knows which
face-down card is
the 5 of Diamonds,
the Ace of Spades,
the King of Hearts,
but she doesn’t
cheat, even alone.

She loses again,
so she shuffles again,
lays out another round.

She thinks of Edward
Hopper, his skill
at turning loneliness
into something more.

How much
time and work
that took. Takes.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in Star 82 Review, and Crab Orchard Review. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

Late by Martha Christina

He wore
a leather jacket
custom-made
at my father’s
insistence
and expense
at the little shop
below our hotel
on the Gran Via.

He was multi-lingual
but we spoke only Spanish
in the brief dream where
he was alive and well again.

Gracias, he said
(his accent, native)
to my father
to the tailor
to the clerk.

Then he took off the jacket,
draped it over my shoulders.
Gracias, I said. Tengo frío.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in Star 82 Review, and Crab Orchard Review. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

Waiting by Richard Martin

Only this morning while waiting for the plumber
(who is always late, but always comes),
the thought came to me that waiting
is what I've been doing all my life –
waiting for my wife to return from town,
waiting for the bus, the train, the plane,
waiting for Christmas, for the year to end.

It's not that I wait for some great event,

a climactic experience, a life-changing moment –

I'm content that I don't wait for the shots to stop,
for the earthquake tremors and floods to cease,
or for the end of hopeless journeys on foot –
no, my waiting has been of the everyday kind.

Yet can it be that from the moment of birth
I've been waiting for the end, waiting for the moment
when someone closes my eyes and crosses himself?
No, indeed, my waiting is sitting in my armchair
looking out of the window at the trees and fields,
waiting for one more leaf to fall from the beech.



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. 

Watchers by Robert Demaree

By birth a Midwest Presbyterian
Not given to creeds,
He cheerfully went along
When he took a Methodist bride,
A daughter of the New South,
Still Protestant, more or less.
I grew up in the boarding school
Where he taught, one of his duties
Sunday worship in the ivied chapel,
Not Anglican but close,
Still Protestant, more or less.
Once, visiting my grandparents’ church,
The pastor invited us forward
To rededicate our lives.
Dad and I headed out the back door.
That church moved and changed with the times,
So that in retirement he was content
To spend the sermon counting
Blue shirts in the congregation
And smiling that sweet, distant smile.

I became a Presbyterian the same way,
The circle completed, unbroken, more or less.
I think of those blue shirts,
Of the creedal advice the young seminarian
Received: say just the parts you do believe.
And, as the offering is brought forward,
I sing different words to the tune of the doxology:
Vigiles et sancti, ye watchers and ye holy ones,
The words we sang at The Hill School,
In Pennsylvania,
In 1955.



Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders, published in June 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club, and have appeared in over 150 periodicals. A retired educator, he resides in Wolfeboro, N.H. and Burlington, N.C. 

Loneliness by Ben Rasnic

is not the state
          of being alone;
is most often felt
   swallowed up
           by smothering crowds
   of humanity
          or at a family reunion
where it becomes
           painfully obvious
you have nothing
       in common
with even your own kin
             or sometimes                                                                                     
it manifests
      while in bed
              with the wife drooling
on the pillow case                                                           
and making guttural noises
as you lie quietly,
                  patiently, painfully
still
     so as not to disturb
            the tenuous slumber
                  that usually follows
a ridiculously,
         frivolous
                  fight.



Ben Rasnic currently resides in Bowie, Maryland. Author of four published collections (three available from amazon.com), Ben's poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.

Frequency by Ben Rasnic

When I was five,
I grabbed onto a live
electric wire fence
that wouldn’t let go.

My grandfather, deftly rolling Prince
Albert into OCB papers from his creaking
porch swing yells “Let go of the wire!”
but the current is too strong

so I am shaking like a dog
that just came in from the rain
& my grandfather is privately chuckling
as he calmly pulls the power box lever down.

58 years later,
I am hurled to the floor
by my ICD firing electric shocks
and as I lie there trembling,

I see my grandfather in 1959
awkwardly rising from his creaking
porch swing, cancer pulsing
through his cholesterol encrusted veins

and as he reaches
for the power box lever,
turns to me and says,

“To be forgotten
is when we truly die.      

Sometimes the memory
just needs
a good jolt.”         



Ben Rasnic currently resides in Bowie, Maryland. Author of four published collections (three available from amazon.com), Ben's poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.

Andres by Jeffrey Zable

Made it to age 56. Survived mostly off Medicaid.
Obviously had a difficult life, early polio leaving him
permanently disabled: prosthetic leg; crutches or a wheelchair
to get around. Yet he was upbeat in spite of it.
I originally met him through a friend who said that Andres
was also a poet who loved Afro-Cuban music.
And so whenever I ran into him at Café La Boheme,
we usually talked a bit about the Latin music scene,
our own poetry, and some of the poets we both knew.
And I remember that the last time I saw him
he asked me for 5 dollars, which I immediately gave him.
Surely if I had known he had cancer and only a couple
more months to live I would have given him a lot more.
For some time thereafter, whenever I was at the cafe
I thought of him and wished I’d gotten to know him better,
which, of course, is often the case after all is said and done. . .



Jeffrey Zable is a teacher, conga drummer who plays Afro-Cuban folkloric music for dance classes and Rumbas, and a writer of poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction. More recent writing in The Bitchin’ Kitch, Corvus, After the Pause, Third Wednesday, Remington Review and many others. In 2017 he was nominated for both The Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize.

Montag by Kara Goughnour

          
          There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine,

          to make a woman stay in a burning house;

          there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.

          ― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451


It was a pleasure to burn

with you, eyes a black,

eaten thing, both scarce

and scared.

A pleasure to see deeper,

charred wafer-thin pieces

gone, slate clean. To think black

eyes iridescent; catch

a peek of beetle-green.

To know bright June light,

refracting off the window pane,

giving sight to my page,

is fire enough for me.

Kara Goughnour is a queer writer and documentarian living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is the 2018 winner of the Gerald Stern Poetry Award and has work published or forthcoming in Third Point Press, Riggwelter Journal, The Southampton Review, and others. Follow her on Twitter @kara_goughnour or read her collected and exclusive works at karagoughnour.com. 

Arc Spelled Ark by Howie Good

Animals are
slowly creeping
into my life.

An orange cat.
A yellow Lab.  
A motherless
baby rabbit.

And that’s just
fine with me.

As a kid, I spent
a lot of my time
watching TV alone

in the basement,
in the dark.



Howie Good's latest poetry collections are I'm Not a Robot from Tolsun Books and A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel from Analog Submissions Press.

Wolf, Wildlife Refuge by Joe Cottonwood

Gandy the tawny wolf picks me
from a crowd of gawkers at the fence,
leans in sniffing, studying. Gus the keeper says
Gandy’s keying on your aftershave.
Nope. I’m gray-bearded, unshaven.

I ask if Gandy is an old wolf.
You’re very perceptive, Gus says.
Nope. Saw it in his stiff movements. Like mine.

I seem the only one engaging Gus or Gandy
while spectators aim phones, capturing us
in digital cages.

Gus says wolves can smell cancer or arthritis,
helps them select which moose
to cull from the herd.

Gus says Gandy still acts like
the alpha wolf, hates competition.
They keep him penned separately
so no one gets mauled.

Gandy steps to the fence.
From his throat, a low growl.
Like an anvil, the snout.
My joints ache.
And Gandy stares at me. Hard.



Joe Cottonwood is a carpenter by day, writer by night. Self-taught in each. His most recent book is Foggy Dog: Poems of the Pacific Coast.

The Way I Knew Him (1944) by Antoni Ooto

You could say I knew him by
his way of leaning into the path.

He saw the ruts
and chose to step into them.

Never complained about mud,
a fallen tree, or war left in his path.

And I watched, following his courage,
never really knowing him at all.



Antoni Ooto is a poet and flash fiction writer and has been a frequent contributor to Palettes and Quills, An Upstate of Mind, Amethyst Review, Front Porch Review, Young Ravens Literary Review, and Ink Sweat & Tears. He lives and works in upstate New York with his wife writer/storyteller Judy DeCroce.

December 7, 1941 by Judy DeCroce

After that, safety fell off,
there was no before.
It was just now.
And the now filled all the spaces.

What we were doing gained importance
as a memory of a moment.
The change shivered through us,
and them,
and all that was.

Far away…
but not far away, an impossibility
loomed.

Sounds blackened clocks,
war closed the minutes, the hours.

Fear found us
watching the radio.



Judy DeCroce, a former teacher, is a poet/flash fiction writer who has been a frequent contributor to Palettes and Quills. Also published in An Upstate of Mind, Amethyst Review, Front Porch Review as well as Writers & Books. She is a professional storyteller and teacher of that genre. Judy lives and works in upstate New York with her husband, writer Antoni Ooto.

Listening by B. S. Dixon

your words
broke somewhere
in the space
between us.

I have
done my best
to make sense
of the pieces.



B. S. Dixon is working on his first poetry collection, "Outreach," about his work with the homeless population in Boston, MA. His work has most recently been printed in Poem Wars and Boston Literary Magazine.

sunday drive by Wanda Morrow Clevenger

I had seen and heard
it all
with three older sisters
every seven days
a mini Armageddon

mom, dressed in her best
riding shotgun

those sunday morning drives
the half dozen blocks from
home to church

the shrieks and wails
the gnashing of teeth
the thanking God we were
finally in the parking lot



Wanda Morrow Clevenger lives in Hettick, IL. Over 500 pieces of her work appear in 163 print and electronic journals and anthologies. The first of a 5-volume chapbook series young and unadorned – where the hogs ate the cabbage (Volume 1) is available through Writing Knights Press. If you would like to check it out, click here.

Common and Proper Nouns by Martha Christina

My neighbors return from
their walk around the block.
He’s 92, she’s 87.

In spite of his sciatica
he walks with her. Last
week she wasn’t sure
which way to turn, but
made the right guess.

Tonight he’ll fix the pasta
dish they both like, though
he can’t remember what
it’s called. And as they eat,
they’ll ask each other
names they used to know
of people, places, and things.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in Star 82 Review, and Crab Orchard Review. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

Gizmo by Martha Christina

It promised
to replicate
the language
of a house finch.

Envious of my friends
who couldn’t use their
front door until a brood
fledged from a wreath
of faux forsythia, I
wanted to call a pair
to nest in the wisteria.

Two twists and a half, clockwise,
countered by two turns in reverse.

Whatever I said,
the finches
settled elsewhere,
and there were

no returns.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in Star 82 Review, and Crab Orchard Review. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

At the Concert by Martha Christina

In the back row
the couple
who recently
lost a daughter
to suicide
leans away
from each other.

He thinks:
If this music
were a CD,
I would
turn it off,
go outside,
rake leaves.

He notices
his wife’s
quiet sobbing,
but doesn’t
move closer.

The Fauré,
like grief,
goes on
and on.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in Star 82 Review, and Crab Orchard Review. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

Letter to an Old Friend by C.C. Russell

When we were young
we were willing to try,

to do
          anything.

How did we end up living

such ordinary
lives?



C.C. Russell has worked many jobs in his life – everything from hotel air conditioner repair to retail management with stops along the way like dive bar 80s night DJ. His writing can be found online and in print. You can follow him on Twitter @c_c_Russell.

Memory Gardens by Ben Rasnic

In 1978 my father bought me
a ‘75 Chevy Nova
when my Pontiac Lemans
succumbed to poor craftsmanship
and consequently found exile
in the local junkyard.

Parked in my parents’ unpaved driveway,
that first night we scrutinized
each particular feature of this icon,
smoking Salems, drinking beer and listening
to Virginia Tech football
on the radio.

This moment resurfaced tonight
while alone, scanning
each accessory & function of this 2015
Nissan Frontier parked
in my freshly paved driveway;

not oblivious to the fact
that no one buys Chevy Novas
or listens to football games
on the radio
anymore.



Ben Rasnic currently resides in Bowie, Maryland. Author of four published collections (three available from amazon.com), Ben's poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.

Boat Lies by Diane Webster

The overturned boat lies
forgotten in the grass
expecting mist to rise,
to thicken, to conceal
like spring runoff filled lake
bulging at shores,
tickling boat planks,
rippling back and forth
in lullaby mesmerism
drifting
by currents of wind,
floating on dreams
that by sunrise
someone will desire
a sail above fishes.



Diane Webster grew up in Eastern Oregon before she moved to Colorado. She enjoys drives in the mountains to view all the wildlife and scenery and takes amateur photographs. Her work has appeared in Philadelphia Poets, Eunoia Review, Better Than Starbucks, and other literary magazines.

looking for something better by J.J. Campbell

i am in love with a
woman that wishes
i wasn't

she constantly 

reminds me that

she's looking for
something better

i know she will
eventually find it

for now, i can

still dream that 

the impossible

has a chance

eventually,
loneliness will
reclaim her space

as my only constant
companion



J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) is currently trapped in the suburbs, wondering where all the lonely housewives have gone. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at The Dope Fiend Daily, Lucidity Poetry Journal, Horror Sleaze Trash, Academy of the Heart and Mind and The Rye Whiskey Review. His most recent chapbook, the taste of blood on christmas morning, was published by Analog Submission Press. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (http://evildelights.blogspot.com)

(Sun)flowers by M.J. Iuppa

Along our split rail fence, sunflowers grow
into a free-standing crowd: their heads, large

and small, turn to follow the sun’s waning
light. Swaying in the constant shift of

air, in this perfect weather, their beauty
becomes my held breath.

                                   Watching them, I
can’t help myself; I sway too. My arms

float over my head; my upturned face
eclipsed by shadows unfolding

like bolts of cloth, ready
to wrap around me, once

and forever.



M.J. Iuppa's fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past 29 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability and life’s stew.

that summer by John Sweet

the story that tracy tells, how she
was molested by her mother’s boyfriend,
or the story that cheryl tells, how she
was raped by her stepfather, and the days just
coming at us straight between the eyes,
one after the other

the nights splitting open like
overripe corpses

all of us waking up from half-remembered
nightmares, never quite sure
whose bed we’re in



John Sweet, b 1968, still numbered among the living. A believer in writing as catharsis. Opposed to all organized religion and political parties. His latest collections include APPROXIMATE WILDERNESS (2016 Flutter Press) and the limited edition chapbooks HEATHEN TONGUE (2018 Kendra Steiner Editions) and A BASTARD CHILD IN THE KINGDOM OF NIL (2018 Analog Submission Press). All pertinent facts about his life are buried somewhere in his writing.

Haiku by George Held

Leaves yellowing
on the Siberian elm –
soon a Hudson view


A ten-time Pushcart nominee, George Held publishes regularly in zines like Red Eft Review, Home Planet News Online, and Transference. He writes from NYC.

October Somewhere Else by Robert Demaree

The trees are turning here—
Yellow, orange, gold,
But it's not New Hampshire.
I picture the secret red
Of the maple at the water’s
Edge, where the dock should be.
A couple passes slowly in a kayak.
I’m guessing they have been in love,
This trip her gesture
Toward reconciliation.
They pause to consider the dock,
Winched up onto the shore
For the winter, the empty cottage,
The wisp of clothes line
Left knotted to a slender birch,
By which we mean them
To understand
We will be coming back.



Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders, published in June 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club, and have appeared in over 150 periodicals. A retired educator, he resides in Wolfeboro, N.H. and Burlington, N.C. 

Not Our Wagtail by Richard Martin

          Little trotty wagtail, you nimble all about,
          And in the dimpling water-pudge you waddle in and out.
          John Clare

In white shirt-front and black waistcoat, he certainly is nimble ,
strutting business-like over the rocks by the pool –
but he's far too correct and trim to waddle anywhere,
the elegant avian version of the city gent.

I think of him as our wagtail, in that possessive way
we talk about our oak, our weeds, our flowers --
so we go on imposing ourselves upon nature,
rather than seeing ourselves as just part of the scene.

Maybe we should think of our garden as a delightful
and varied community of living beings, where we share
air and light, sun and moon, with ants and mice,
dandelions and dragonflies, and indeed with wagtails.



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.

Night Sweats by Ben Rasnic

Can’t recall
what was playing in my head
just before waking
only that when I did,
I was drenched in a feverish surge
of cold sweat
& the thermostat
read 68 degrees,

kind of like
when I was in school,

would always miss the days
everybody kept talking about.



Ben Rasnic currently resides in Bowie, Maryland. Author of four published collections (three available from amazon.com), Ben's poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.

On the occasion of buying a used copy of my own damn book by Janette Schafer

Reasons why you should not Google yourself:
My book was on Amazon marked,
“Used. Good Condition.” I decided to buy it.
Arriving media mail, it pleased me
that it was read; pages were dog-eared,
a poem "Sanctuary" highlighted in orange,
and the name of the most recent owner
in pristine cursive on the first page.

The first owner was Susan—
I had signed that it was lovely
to meet her and her husband.
To Louis, the second owner with
the beautiful signature, I am glad
my words were with you for this long while,
and pained that you decided to let them go.



Janette Schafer is a freelance writer, nature photographer, part-time rocker, and full-time banker living in Pittsburgh, PA. Her play "Mad Virginia" was the winner of the 2018 Pittsburgh Original Short Play Series. Recent and upcoming publications of her writing and photographs include: Watershed Journal; Yes Ma'am Zine; Eunoia Review; Nasty Women & Bad Hombres Anthology; and Unlikely Stories V. She is pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at Chatham University.

Domestic Violence by Lorri Ventura

Daddy shot the family dog
Because it looked at him the wrong way

Mommy’s ribs
Like two rows of broken wishbones
In the x-ray

Shut up, little girl, and swallow the Benadryl
So you can sleep through the yelling
Fifty-five years later
Oral meds still taste like terror and rage

Those are just baby teeth
It’s okay that Daddy knocked them out
You’ll grow new ones
And he had a hard day at work
Poor Daddy

Daddy’s handgun lived on the hutch
Always oiled
Always loaded
Often brandished in our faces
To keep us in our places

Pray, sweet child of mine, Mommy said
You are my little angel
Daddies can’t kill angels
They just like to try
The little girl refuses to pray
To a God who sees

Without helping

Lorri Ventura is a retired special education administrator. She lives in Massachusetts. "Domestic Violence" represents her first foray into creative/non-technical writing.

Weird and Bound for Hell by Steve Klepetar

She tells me that my poems are weird
and that I’m probably bound for Hell.
I ask her why. “Ghosts,” she says.
“Your poems are full of ghosts,
and sometimes you write about Hell
as if you were already at home there.
Even when you’re trying to write pretty,
there are ghosts in the trees
or by the pond or flitting up the hills.
That’s kind of like witchcraft, you know?
Not something you should write about.
I’m going to stop talking to you now.
I try not to have conversations
with people who are Hell bound.
Just, you know, mend your ways, ok?
And try not to be so weird.”
She walks away toward a knot of people
in pastel party clothes who are talking
about owls and fireflies and horses sleeping in the rain.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. His work has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Recent collections include A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press) and Why Glass Shatters (One Sentence Chaps).

Deer in the Forest by Ikiah Mosely

          After a painting of the same name by Franz Marc

There are five of them huddled close
amidst a turbulent storm of red and yellow thread.
There is silent contemplation broken
only by the cracking of trees and snapping of branches,
the shriek of fleeing birds desperately seeking shelter.
The white yarn of the wind reaches down and tugs at them
trying to separate them.
But, they stay bound together,
wrapped in gold and brown silk.



Ikiah Mosely is a creative writing major at New England College. Her fiction and poetry have been published in The Henniker Review and in publications associated with A26 Boston, a program that publishes work of Boston area students. She plans to return to the Boston area after graduation.

To See a Winter by Ikiah Mosely

1.
Cold breath gasping from between chapped lips,
Hurried steps on cracked sidewalk
To return to a halo of warmth.

2.
Sipping on Peppermint Mocha,
Waiting and watching.
Steam slowly rises like a daydream.

3.
A hushed silence over busy buildings
As snow falls relentlessly and yields to no forecast.
The whole city waits.

4.
Peaceful contemplation in front of a frosted window.
It’s quiet here, in between moments.

5.
Ice floes of white and ivory
Float down the usually rushing river.
It bends around the town to seek warmer waters.

6.
The room is silent and empty at this time.
There is no sound, save for the hiss of the radiator and typing.

7.
The apartment rings with the sound of doors opening and closing,
Mini worlds revealed then locked again.

8.
The days go by slowly in this ecosystem.
Soft lamplight illuminates tired faces
Coffee is slowly brewed and cups are readied.

9.
Packed bags serve as silent reminders.
Guardians of home that state:
Soon.



Ikiah Mosely is a creative writing major at New England College. Her fiction and poetry have been published in The Henniker Review and in publications associated with A26 Boston, a program that publishes work of Boston area students. She plans to return to the Boston area after graduation.

Postcard from Edson Cemetery by Jason Baldinger

crickets chirp
at Kerouac's grave
the road is life



Jason Baldinger is a poet hailing from Pittsburgh. He is the author of several books, the most recent are This Useless Beauty (Alien Buddha Press), The Ugly Side of the Lake (Night Ballet Press) written with John Dorsey and the chaplet Fumbles Revelations (Grackle and Crow) which are available now. The collection Fragments of a Rainy Season (Six Gallery Press) and the split book with James Benger Little Fires Hiding (Spartan Press) are forthcoming. You can hear Jason read poems on recent and forthcoming releases by Theremonster and Sub Pop Recording artist The Gotobeds as well as at jasonbaldinger.bandcamp.com

The Benefit of the Doubt by Sharon Waller Knutson

That’s what the deputy on our doorstep

says he’s giving the three shooters

who park their 2018 Lexus in our driveway

and fire fifteen bullets into the darkness

while we hide under a desk on the phone

with a 911 dispatcher who tells us to stay safe.

 

The deputy says he’s not going to arrest them.

They’re just dumb kids who know nothing

about the law. They drove sixty miles

from the city to shoot guns in the desert.

They said they didn’t see the No Shooting signs.

They have a clean record and show remorse.

 

He sounds like a permissive parent or grandparent

unlike my strict husband who lays down the law:

No shooting after dark. No shooting near a residence.

No shooting on private property. Disturbing the Peace.

The deputy’s face reddens and his voice raises:

You are not a victim. They were not shooting at you.

 

We insist on pressing charges. I’ll need identification

to fill out the paperwork. He goes to his patrol car,

returns with a younger deputy and no papers.

You don’t have any priors or warrants, he says

handing back our driver’s licenses, letting us know

who he thinks are the real lawbreakers.

 

The younger deputy speaks in a level tone,

his eyes begging us to listen to reason.

They are only seventeen, they can’t pay the fine,

you’d have to go to court, and there’s paperwork.

We’re going to let their parents handle it

and if they come back they’ll go straight to juvenile hall.

 

In the end, we reluctantly relent if the shooters apologize.

The younger deputy herds them across our lawn

and under the dim porch light I see my grandsons

in the young man with the wheat colored curls

and the tall teen in glasses, but the ringleader,

who makes excuses, looks just like a politician’s son.

 

You tortured and terrified us for an hour, I lecture them.

Would you want your grandparents to go through that?

They shake their heads. But I see no trembling lips, shaky legs

or hangdog looks and know this is a familiar routine to them.

They look us in the eye, say sorry and shake our hands and promise

never to do it again after a stern warning from the older deputy.

 

We never see them out here again. But we do see them on TV.

Hauled off in handcuffs, they look right into the cameras and say

they are sorry for shooting up the school and promise to never do it again.

 

 

 

Sharon Waller Knutson, a retired journalist, writes poetry from her Arizona desert home. Her work has appeared in The Orange Room Review, Literary Mama, Verse-Virtual, Wild Goose Poetry Review and Your Daily Poem. She is the author of five chapbooks: Dancing with a Scorpion, My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields, Desert Directions, They Affectionately Call Her a Dinosaur and I Did It Anyway.

The Weight of Shadows by Corey D. Cook

The Weight of Shadows is now available for preorder online at finishinglinepress.com

The presale runs from September 18, 2018 through November 16, 2018 and the book will be mailed out on or after January 11, 2019.

I also wanted to share that this presale period will determine the pressrun for the book. So if you are interested in buying a copy, now is an opportune time to do so!

Thanks for considering.

Corey D. Cook, Editor

All You Need (First Love) by Ben Rasnic

Every day after school,
some fifteen year-old kid
would lie sprawled across
his twin bed mesmerized
by the dried paint drip
on the ice blue ceiling,
with “All You Need is Love”
refraining over and over
on the automatic turntable
as if somehow
that would overwrite
the hideous messages
in his head
telling him
over and over
he was too ugly
to ask out
the prettiest girl
in Mrs. Watson’s
algebra class.



Ben Rasnic currently resides in Bowie, Maryland. Author of four published collections (three available from amazon.com), Ben's poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.

The Weight of Shadows by Corey D. Cook

Available for preorder on September 18, 2018

~ Finishing Line Press ~

Friday After Labor Day by Robert Demaree

Monet convinced himself
That each glint of light on haystacks,
Each angle of the sun,
Changed by one degree,
Could be a new canvas.
But I have decided this morning:
No more kayaking poems,
Have said most of what I want to say,
More than once.
On my ritual end-of-season loop
Around the pond this quiet morning
Of the Friday after Labor Day
The only voices are the guys
Working on the huge new place
Where Gaston’s cottage used to be.
I watch to see whose boat
Is still in the water,
Whose dock, pulled up on land,
Exposed, lonely,
Waits for the winter,
Hopes for June.



Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders, published in June 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club, and have appeared in over 150 periodicals. A retired educator, he resides in Wolfeboro, N.H. and Burlington, N.C. 

bad mother by Sarah Elizabeth Colona

books are my children
spines warped in hot cars
birthdays uncelebrated



Sarah Elizabeth Colona is the author of three poetry collections: Hibernaculum (Gold Wake Press, 2013), Thimbles (dancing girl press, 2012) and That Sister (dancing girl press, 2016).

Mother by caro

when you were me
you left home
with a student visa
and no intention
to go to school
navigated a country
with no language
survived lonely nights
without your mother
asleep in the next room

but the hardest thing
you have done
was live without your name
when that visa expired
trade your identity
for a chance
the only choice
you had

to think
you don't even
look like a Barbara



caro is a musician, writer, and freelance audio tech living in New York. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Chronogram and right hand pointing. She can be found around the internet @caroblahblah and thisiscaro.com.

Compadre by caro

he is sitting in the glass house of the gas station
as he has done for my entire life
and will do until the end
I am surprised to see him
surprised that after all this time
he still knows my car
still smiles when I say hola
the way a white girl says hola
and looks me in the eye
asking: silver? full?
still gives me the receipt
wrapped around the credit card
and takes my hand with both of his
speaking slow: cuídate, cuídate
an offering for me to take
I, smiling: sí, sí
never thinking twice about
giving my hand
to a stranger in a gas station
never once wondering
his name



caro is a musician, writer, and freelance audio tech living in New York. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Chronogram and right hand pointing. She can be found around the internet @caroblahblah and thisiscaro.com.

Time is a Dog; Space is a Cat by Robin Boyd

A dog marks time by smell. He knows
when you're due to arrive home as your scent
molecules dissipate with each passing hour.

He was waiting at the door ten minutes
before you turned left into the driveway --
his tail, a metronome, keeping time to gladness. 

His wake-up call is an engine starting on a cold day.
It begins with a low rumble deep in the chest before roaring
to life as a full-throated bark demanding love & breakfast.

He is the grizzled muzzle as the years pass,
the lengthening naps, shorter walks,
long sighs of contentment by the fire.

He forces us to consider our finite lives the day
he politely declines his food. He is an interval,
a path to letting go and taking the risk to love.
 

                              * * *

Cats are like birds -- they inhabit a world
both vertical and horizontal and are less
beholden to gravity than most wingless beasts.

They take on the shape of whatever space
they occupy -- a cardboard box, a flower pot,
the span of the dining room table. Sunshine.

They kindly allow us to share their domain
not so much as you might move an inch
or two to make room for me on a bench,

but as a librarian might welcome us
into the stacks, a nod and a slight smile
to acknowledge the pact of amiable silence
as we each follow our own curiosities.



Robin Boyd lives in New Hampshire. With degrees in creative writing and environmental education, her work explores the edges where human and nonhuman worlds connect and inform each other. Her most recent work appears in Cutthroat and Briar Cliff Review. Her book of poems, Among the Slow Roots, was published in 2007 by Gap Mountain Press.

Teenie by Ben Rasnic

being the runt of the litter,
seemed an appropriate name
for the family dog.

Mornings walking to grade school,
Teenie would follow faithfully
In that familiar crooked gait
despite our most adamant protestations

& when the afternoon bell rang
she would be there
patiently waiting
to escort us home again;

patrolled our bungalow porch
like a loyal foot soldier, the
welcome mat her bivouac,
dreaming of cars to chase, buried
skeletal remains, unfamiliar butts
to sniff;

In summers would hang
with the neighborhood strays
in a world without leashes, exploring
new and familiar territories

as documented
by nine litters
of multi-colored pups;

survived 126 dog years
until under cover of darkness
my father accidentally backed the car
across her sleeping frame

her lifeless, mange ridden carcass
exhaling a free spirit to roam
in a heaven for animals,
in a world without fences,

chasing hologram automobiles
in a world without pain & suffering;
without hunger or cold.

And when the final bell tolls for me
I know she will once again
be waiting
this time at the crossroads,

to guide me
into a new light,

where ultimately
we must travel
our pre-destined pathways.



Ben Rasnic currently resides in Bowie, Maryland. Author of four published collections (three available from amazon.com), Ben's poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.

Anthrobscene by Howie Good

A young black woman
in a Red Sox t-shirt
was writhing on the sidewalk,
her right leg splayed
at a gruesome angle,
her face contorted with pain.

Huddled over her

were five or six friends

whose idea of help
was to just keep repeating,
“C’mon! Stand up!”

People say we’re living
in a golden age,
but I shake my head at that,
and if I were you,
I wouldn’t put too much faith
in God or man or robot bees.



Howie Good is the author of The Loser's Guide to Street Fighting, winner of the 2017 Lorien Prize. His latest collection is I'm Not a Robot from Tolsun Books. He co-edits the journals UnLost and Unbroken with Dale Wisely.

Watches by Cathryn Shea

It’s no longer acceptable to wear a wristwatch,
you must tell time by the shadows
cast on buildings and trees.

You are not allowed to look at your phone,
that would be rude.

Prove that you can navigate the world
without props and aids.

Use your head.

Imagination is a peculiar loam,
infinity captured
in the dark matter we don’t understand.

The poet dies in his sleep.
And I’m jealous
because that is a good way to go
and I fear I might linger.

My grandfather told me his ticker was slowing down.
He felt it. I planned to visit soon.
Within the clock’s twenty-four hour sweep
his heart stopped.



Cathryn Shea is the author of “It’s Raining Lullabies” (dancing girl, 2017) and “My Heart is a Salt Mirror Like Salar de Uyuni” (Rinky Dink, 2018). She’s been nominated for Best of the Net and appears in Tar River Poetry, Gargoyle, Permafrost, Rust + Moth, Tinderbox, etc. See www.cathrynshea.com and @cathy_shea.

Learning to Swim by Terence McCaffrey

My son dog paddles over the scratchy string
of blue and white buoys and into the murk
of the deep end, oblivious to oblivion,
water overwhelming water, the lesser body losing.
He jerks across the surface, his skinny limbs
raking the darker depths, stirring the cold
hardness of becoming.

He looks the way most adults feel:
all strain and struggle, desperate
to stay afloat. Myself, I’m teetering on a sliver
of vinyl liner in a 1984 T-shirt, forever watching,
begging him with every inch he gains to stay
just as he is: a boy, a ballplayer, an aspiring author.

Nights, I’ve been finding him in our bed,
so I carry his long body, heavy with the weight
of new worry, back to his small blue room
where he still dreams high flying
comic book dreams, but they’re waning dreams
I know will someday disappear.

Afternoon shadows spill across the uneven pavers.
He’s spitting now. Smiling. I think he’s got it,
the notion that progress takes work.
His hand slaps the ladder’s rung, and somewhere
young sparrows pull and sweep from their nest.

Sparks of water fly from his trunks as he shuffles
for the shallow end, returning to where he started,
the safe, clean neighborhood of childhood.
When his face flashes with kindness
I feel like a fugitive with a stricken heart, knowing
this will happen again when he’s older,
this latest test of his will. This test of mine.



Terence McCaffrey’s poems have appeared in Connecticut River Review, Freshwater, Right Hand Pointing, and elsewhere. He received a M.A.L.S. degree in Humanities from Wesleyan University and a B.A. from the University of Hartford where he was the recipient of the Phyllis B. Abrahms Award in Fiction. He lives with his wife and two children in West Simsbury, CT.

Haiku by Stephen Toft

autumn sunset
cows all facing
the same direction



Stephen Toft is a poet and homelessness worker who lives in Lancaster, UK with his wife and their children. His first collection "the kissing bridge" was published by Red Moon Press in 2008 and in December 2016 Scars Publications released his chapbook "naming a storm: haiku and tanka." In 2018 Yavanika Press released his third collection “deer heart” as a free to download e-book.

Haiku by Stephen Toft

honeymoon
the sunlight between
our toes



Stephen Toft is a poet and homelessness worker who lives in Lancaster, UK with his wife and their children. His first collection "the kissing bridge" was published by Red Moon Press in 2008 and in December 2016 Scars Publications released his chapbook "naming a storm: haiku and tanka." In 2018 Yavanika Press released his third collection “deer heart” as a free to download e-book.

Haiku by Stephen Toft

summer’s end
a rope dangles
over the river



Stephen Toft is a poet and homelessness worker who lives in Lancaster, UK with his wife and their children. His first collection "the kissing bridge" was published by Red Moon Press in 2008 and in December 2016 Scars Publications released his chapbook "naming a storm: haiku and tanka." In 2018 Yavanika Press released his third collection “deer heart” as a free to download e-book.

Press Release for Corey's Poetry Reading

COREY D. COOK TO READ AT MOULTONBOROUGH, NH LIBRARY

Poet and editor Corey D. Cook will be the featured reader at the Moultonborough Library Evening of Poetry on Tuesday, September 4, 2018, at 7:30 p.m.

Cook grew up in Vermont and received a B.A. from New England College in 2002. His pieces, mostly poems, have appeared in over 120 online and print publications, including the Aurorean, Brevities, Chiron Review, Entelechy International, Freshwater, Loch Raven Review, Lummox, Northern New England Review, Pearl and The Somerville Times. Corey’s fifth chapbook, The Weight of Shadows, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in early 2019. He edited The Orange Room Review with his wife, Rachael, for eight years and currently edits Red Eft Review. He works at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH, and lives in Thetford Center, VT.

There will be an “open mic” time following the feature. The Moultonborough Library is located at 4 Holland Street, near the blinking light at the intersection of Routes 25 and 109 North.

Haiku by Stephen Toft

shade of a pine
migrant workers
share their lunch



Stephen Toft is a poet and homelessness worker who lives in Lancaster, UK with his wife and their children. His first collection "the kissing bridge" was published by Red Moon Press in 2008 and in December 2016 Scars Publications released his chapbook "naming a storm: haiku and tanka." In 2018 Yavanika Press released his third collection “deer heart” as a free to download e-book.

Tim by Turner Wibbelsman

Every summer, dad’s friend
would return home from Alaska,
having worked the king crab
seasons, toughing the ice
and brute of the Bering Sea,
those massive hands
calloused thick from nylon
nets and steel winches, blood
left behind, washed through
the bulwark drainage slits
to mix with that dark sea.

And we could hear the diesel
engine long before the pick-up
pulled in the back driveway—
running barefoot across the wet
yard, my brother and I shouldering
the large white cooler, its ice sloshing
our long-awaited treasures.

Unhinging rubber latches,
we lifted that great lid,
thick as my fist, having held
the north Pacific chill
across all those long states,
finally released onto grinning faces
as we plucked king crabs
from the ice-water, hands
wincing from brief
submersion and shell points
pressing into soft palms—
our small price to pay.

And as the crabs cooked,
we laid newspaper
on the porch table, set out
wooden mallets and peered
under the green grill lid
until our feast was ready
to be dumped on the table—
sitting on our knees so we
could reach across the pile,
finding that greatest red claw.

Years later, I received
news that he had suddenly
passed, traveler’s soul approaching
the strange final destination,
flying down the parkway
with June’s sweet air filling
the truck cab, having weathered
winter at sea, bringing the world’s
regal gift back home.



Turner Wibbelsman is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and former editor of UNC's Health Humanities Journal. He plans to attend medical school in the future. 

One of Those People by Shannon Lise

          After “The Carousing Couple,” a painting by Judith Leyster

You would perhaps
have liked
to be one of those people

like Judith Leyster, painting
her splotchy red
faces back in the 17th century

getting other people’s signatures
forged over her own
until she was quite forgotten, but still

knowing how to capture laughter
how to make even
her unattractive characters –

the round rubber-cheeked woman
with a huge forehead,
the insecure squat-nosed man fussed

up in that ridiculous French collar
and pretending to play
violin – look happy, even pleasant

as if they’d seen the way poplar leaves
turn fuzzy silver
undersides to the sunlight. As if they

knew that sometimes it does snow
on Christmas
even in places like Abilene.

But we could’ve filled a blank Bible-
length notebook
with the things you would’ve liked to be.



Originally from Texas, Shannon Lise spent twelve years in the Middle East and currently lives with her husband in Quebec, spending as much time as possible in the woods or on the water. She also writes epic fantasy realism and is the author of the novel Keeper of Nimrah (Ethandune Publishing, 2014). 

At the Farmer's Market by Martha Christina

“How’s your husband?” the man
selling fruit and berries from his
orchard asks. We haven’t seen
each other since October when
he left to winter in Florida, and
your prognosis was for a quick
recovery. So I have to say again
the words I’ve had to say for
months, and he kindly offers
condolences with his nectarines.

I buy a bag and move on, past
the man selling fish, the woman
promising rugalah like her Nana’s,
another offering the first sweet
corn of the season, and the recent
divorcee making lemonade, her
husband still alive and a worry.

I pick up my farm-share from
the woman who reminded you
of our daughter, and who gives
me a weekly hug because she
knows fresh produce only goes
so far.

And all the while, this week’s
live music drifts over and
around me: guitar and harp,

a husband and wife duo.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in the anthology Ice Cream Poems from World Enough Writers. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press). 

Reception by Martha Christina

Monday, a window-
washing crew arrives
with squeegees
and drying chamois.

Tuesday, a mason repairs
brickwork where the silver
maple went down in a late
March storm.

Wednesday, Thursday,
and Friday, the lawn care
team prunes, mows, and
turns five leaf blowers
to full force and volume.

All this in preparation for
Saturday’s celebration
of the daughter joining
her father’s law firm.

Saturday morning, rain ticks
against the freshly-washed
windows. It falls all day on
the brickwork, on the lawn,
and on the tent filled with
music and laughter; and

on the caterer’s server:

undocumented, checking

her cell-phone in case
a message comes to
get out of there, quick.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in the anthology Ice Cream Poems from World Enough Writers. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press). 

Another Kind of Prospering by Martha Christina

Up from New Orleans
to New England,
Rosa held fast to
southern traditions,
named her three
table restaurant
“Lagniappe,” and
served an extra
beignet or wedge
of cornbread to
all her customers:
no extra charge.

I’d like to say
her little restaurant
prospered with
a steady stream
of locals and tourists,
but it lasted only
one season. Rosa
and her new hire
(a woman who’d
never been out
of Massachusetts)
closed up, settled
their debts and
themselves, newly-
wed in New Orleans.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in the anthology Ice Cream Poems from World Enough Writers. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press). 

about feeling lonely and lost by J.J. Campbell

my best friend
complains about
the pain

complains about
feeling lonely
and lost

i tell her it's
cancer

all her negative
thoughts is
cancer winning

i worry she
will die before
i get to see her
again

die alone in
a damn alley
turning tricks
for money for
dog food

i told her it's
okay to die

when that stops
making her angry

i know the end
is near



J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) is old enough to know where the bodies are buried. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Under the Bleachers, Synchronized Chaos and Otoliths. His most recent chapbook "the taste of blood on christmas morning" was published by Analog Submission Press. You can find him most days waxing poetic on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (http://evildelights.blogspot.com)

A Silence by Steve Klepetar

“Had we remained together
we could have become a silence.”

          Yehuda Amichai

Like roots of trees or masonry
in a wall, like fish gliding
through darkness, with just
our hands brushing against
each other’s skin. We could
have entered through doors
we kept locked, turning keys
gently, pulling on the knobs.
We could have stepped into
the hallway, wandered through
rooms of a large house, near
where green mountains loomed.
We could have sailed through air,
without words to drag us back to earth.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. His work has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Recent collections include A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press) and Why Glass Shatters (One Sentence Chaps).

First Snowfall by Nathan Graziano

Early December, and the first snow covers
all things on the outside. Across the street
a young mother pulls her snow-suited girl
in a blue plastic sled—the toddler sitting
upright with her legs straight out and arms
in the air. I’m watching from the window
in the kitchen, waiting on a pot of coffee.

In the windowless basement, my wife
and my daughter—suddenly a teenager—
wrap Christmas presents, side by side,
lost in folds and tape and tags and paper
and bright ribbons in a dank, dark place.  



Nathan Graziano lives in Manchester, New Hampshire. His books include Teaching Metaphors (Sunnyoutside Press), After the Honeymoon (Sunnyoutside Press) Hangover Breakfasts (Bottle of Smoke Press in 2012), Some Sort of Ugly (Marginalia Publishing in 2013), and My Next Bad Decision (Artistically Declined Press, 2014). Almost Christmas, a collection of short prose pieces, was recently published by Redneck Press. Graziano writes a baseball column for Dirty Water Media in Boston. For more information, visit his website: www.nathangraziano.com. 

Girl Gone Ghost by Nathan Graziano

You took the first flight back to San Diego

bringing all your possessions—your clothes, 

light for California, your hardcover book

on astrology, the silver ring you wore

as a wedding band whenever we went out

so no one would stare, your service dog

with its papers in the pocket of your fur coat.

I swallow that pronoun like antifreeze—yours.

You slipped from me without a decent goodbye,

without apology, with nothing but a quick kiss

at a bus station, a mumbled promise that we’d see

each other again, someday. I didn’t know better.

You booked a flight out of Boston, the first flight

for ghosts then deleted me, the married man

who never whispered into your ear the things

you needed to hear, the syllables to make you stay.

Nathan Graziano lives in Manchester, New Hampshire. His books include Teaching Metaphors (Sunnyoutside Press), After the Honeymoon (Sunnyoutside Press) Hangover Breakfasts (Bottle of Smoke Press in 2012), Some Sort of Ugly (Marginalia Publishing in 2013), and My Next Bad Decision (Artistically Declined Press, 2014). Almost Christmas, a collection of short prose pieces, was recently published by Redneck Press. Graziano writes a baseball column for Dirty Water Media in Boston. For more information, visit his website: www.nathangraziano.com. 

Good Day by Mark Danowsky

I hear often
folks have a good day
right before they die

There goes Uncle Doug
out in full sun
doing a few laps around the pool

Something cruel and green
about hope
or wishful thinking

Glimmer of what was
a flash of blinding light
off the deep end



Mark Danowsky is a writer from Philadelphia. His poems have appeared in About Place, Cordite, Gargoyle, The Healing Muse, Right Hand Pointing, Shot Glass Journal, Subprimal, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere. He is Managing Editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal and Co-Founder of Wood & Water Press.

Chest Wounds by Jack Powers

I wasn't horny enough for my eighth grade girlfriend.
She was older and fed me shots of vodka to get me in the mood.
I didn't like being rushed. She didn't like waiting.

I just threw up and passed out and sometimes
woke up drunk the next day. My mother was worried
about me seeing a ninth grader – pestering my brother,

complete strangers, even my knee doctor
to talk some sense into me. "Tell him he's too young," she'd say.
The doctor mumbled, "Listen to your mother," shrugged

and said something about leg lifts. I was tired of the spin-
the-bottle, over-the-bra-feel girlfriends my own age.
I was skinny, but tall and looked older than I was.

She was thrilling and scary and sometimes I hated her.
Maybe I was afraid I’d disappear. So I dug in
countering unstoppable with immovable.

But when we went to her house one Tuesday afternoon
and found her mother passed out in vomit on the living room rug,
we cleaned her up and carried her to her bed.

I wanted somehow to close that wound
as we made out in her room and began to work our way around
the bases. Maybe she thought I could pin her down

and blast her into a new life. On the bus one day,
she found a poem I wrote in English class and read it aloud.
It was about birds or fish or communism and I just wrote it

to get Mr. Zaboray to leave me alone. Her friends shrieked with laughter.
The next day at lunch I didn't sit at our table, returning instead
to my eighth grade friends. She came over, scrunched her lips.

"I don't know what you're trying to prove –" she said,
but I interrupted her. "I need to break up," I said.
She turned and walked away. "I'm sorry," I whispered,

but she wasn't listening. Her dark figure blurred, disappearing
into the shrill yellow light of the lunch room windows.



Jack Powers’ poems have appeared in The Southern Review, The Cortland Review, Rattle, Poet Lore and elsewhere. His first book, Everybody’s Vaguely Familiar, will be coming out in the fall. He won the 2015 and 2012 Connecticut River Review Poetry Contests and was a finalist for the 2013 and 2014 Rattle Poetry Prizes. He teaches in Redding, Connecticut. Visit his website: http://www.jackpowers13.com/poetry/. 

Everybody's Vaguely Familiar by Jack Powers

Four rows up in 27E I saw Judy Something (I started with A: Allison?
     Barbara? Carol?), a teacher from the middle school and her husband, Bill
(or Bob), my son's old principal. The silver-haired women in 31A and 31B
     might have bowled with my mom. We might have bumped behinds
on the dance floor at my wedding as the band played "All of Me."

Even the steward-flight attendant-whatever guy looks like a goateed
     version of my cousin Mark. I doubt he's left his wife and children,
but who knows? We've lost touch. Maybe he was afraid to tell me -–
     afraid I'd disapprove. But Mark, It's okay. I could be you on another plane
or you could be me sitting here wondering if the guy stuffing a too big,

too green bag in the overhead is a taller, pock-marked Uncle Pete –
     if he put on thirty pounds. How identical we almost are. How subtle
the variations. I sit, hello smile ready, still nursing the light stomach
     of the plane's take off, contemplating not just the unknown places I could go,
but the people I might have been – like the tanner, rounder me

I passed in 2B in sun-glasses, clad in black, with paint stains

     in the ridges of his knuckles. He could be the me who stayed in LA

thirty years ago returning now from some gallery opening

     or on-location background paint job or just another visit
to my parole officer. And now, as a stewardess – a dead ringer

for Debra Winger – drags her cart and hands an aluminum-wrapped chicken
     to the pale bald man in 31D, I study his profile. We may have grown up
in the same county, he too may have won Best Camper at Camp Holy Cross
     or he may have a sister who taught my children Spanish. Below us,
the shadow of our plane crosses Iowa fields, squares of yellow

and green broken up by brown ribbons of river. The Spanish teacher's
     brother ponders the in-flight crossword. The way he taps his pen
against his teeth seems so familiar – like a relative maybe, like me.



Jack Powers’ poems have appeared in The Southern Review, The Cortland Review, Rattle, Poet Lore and elsewhere. His first book, Everybody’s Vaguely Familiar, will be coming out in the fall. He won the 2015 and 2012 Connecticut River Review Poetry Contests and was a finalist for the 2013 and 2014 Rattle Poetry Prizes. He teaches in Redding, Connecticut. Visit his website: http://www.jackpowers13.com/poetry/. 

Curbside on Uncle Willy's Street by Grace C. Ocasio

this chubby boy in a red cotton T-shirt
insinuated himself into my space.

He wore this look, flailing like a flag,
as if he'd never take it off.

I placed my hands like blind slats
in front of my eyes.
Shreds of his red shirt
shot through the gaps
between my fingers.

The stink of red
clung to my nostrils:
this boy whispered in my ear
words rank as chitterlings.

When I got in Dad's car,
I rolled my backseat window down,
inhaled enough fresh air
to last me a year.



Grace C. Ocasio’s poetry manuscript, Family Reunion, received honorable mention in a recent Quercus Review Press Contest. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she placed as a finalist in the 2016 Aesthetica Creative Writing Award competition and received a 2014 North Carolina Arts Council Regional Artist Project Grant.

The Moment by Howard Faerstein

when you think
the moon is gone forever
just when they tell you
the war is over
just when the fire appears to be dying

a spark ignites the bark
banked in the stove’s corner
the camera focuses
on the dead black boy
brandishing a plastic gun
the first sliver of ivory whitens
the unfixed sky

And you watch as the flames
consume the split oak
crackling
blazing
till you can’t sit
in the room any longer
till those with you
begin to burn



Howard Faerstein’s full-length book of poetry, Dreaming of the Rain in Brooklyn, a Silver Concho selection, was published in 2013 by Press 53. A new book, Googootz and Other Poems is forthcoming this fall. His work can be found in numerous journals including Great River Review, Nimrod, CutThroat, Off the Coast, Rattle, upstreet, Mudfish and on-line in Gris-Gris, Peacock Journal, and Connotation. He is Associate Poetry Editor of CutThroat, A Journal of the Arts, and lives in Florence, Massachusetts.

Deadeye by George Held

I carry the corpse
of my blinded right eye
in its socket,

dead weight
in my skull, optic nerve
dead, sight beyond

reclamation, fated
for cremation
with my organic

remains, so I’m grateful
for my “good” eye,
my ocular,

with which I view
what’s left of
the visible world.



George Held regularly publishes poems, stories, translations, and book reviews in journals such as Blue Unicorn, Home Planet News, Transference, and American Book Review and has received ten Pushcart Prize nominations. His new book, his twentieth, is Dog Hill Poems (Seattle, 2017).

Unsocial Media by George Held

Friend Alice is having
a meltdown

in capital letters
on Facebook

but nobody seems
to recognize it;

friends click endless "likes"
and a few hearts

while Alice goes
deafeningly NUTS.



George Held regularly publishes poems, stories, translations, and book reviews in journals such as Blue Unicorn, Home Planet News, Transference, and American Book Review and has received ten Pushcart Prize nominations. His new book, his twentieth, is Dog Hill Poems (Seattle, 2017).

Elixir by Janette Schafer

When I was 5, I discovered alcohol in abandoned red cups
scattered about the Green House, the first place we lived
in Detroit after Venezuela.

Dad rolled blunts on a burned out coffee table while Mom
played with his wiry black hair. Aunt Sherry put her hand
on his knee, slid her fingers up to his zipper.

I went from cup to cup and room to room
as motorcycle after motorcycle parked
in our front yard.

The beer was a healing bitter herb,
a toy kaleidoscope, swirl of orange, yellow,
and red in fragmented shapes

amid the noise of black leather
and silver chrome. Dizzy with drink,
I fell in a slow arc,
laughter loud in my ringing ears.



Janette Schafer is a freelance writer, nature photographer, part-time rock n roll singer, and full-time banker living in Pittsburgh, PA. She is a 2017 awardee of the Maenad Fellowship through Chatham University. Her writing and photographs have recently appeared in: Rigorous Journal; Unlikely Stories V; Nasty Women & Bad Hombres Anthology; Dear America, Reflections on Race; and PublicSource.

Arriving in New Hampshire: June 2018 by Robert Demaree

Midday: the pond glistens

With the special brightness

Of a front passed through.
The dock is in the water,
Some boards on the walkway
Starting to rot.
We walk down the path to the cottage,
And see a tree across the roof,
Resting on the ridge beam,
Topped, as they say, in a May storm,
The most serious damage to a nest
Where two wrens had expected
To raise their young.
The tree guy can come that day and
Works quickly; before leaving he blows
Pine straw off the roof:
We are paying for things
We used to do for ourselves.
I gather up small branches
And haul them to my brush pile,
Rest between trips longer,
More frequent.
Martha has a cane
But only uses it going up to the car.
I notice on my leg, just below the knee,
The first traces of those
Blue roadmaps of veins
(They don’t wash out),
Further evidence of things
To which
One must not give in.



Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders, published in June 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club, and have appeared in over 150 periodicals. A retired educator, he resides in Wolfeboro, N.H. and Burlington, N.C.