Deadfall by Robert Okaji

Clouds capture the moon.
The shifting branch cracks,
as if shedding thought.
I add words to the kindling, a few notes.
The tune flares against the wall.
Though I hum, no one hears.
Night muffles our song.
Abandoned, the flame reaches out.



Robert Okaji lives in Texas. His knives need sharpening and his chain saw has been silent for months. The author of five chapbooks, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Vox Populi, The High Window, Nine Muses Poetry and elsewhere.

Ten by Melissa Huff

Sometimes
all it takes to feel
ten again     is to not
bundle up     to shed
those layers that protect
middle age     to dress
sparsely     feel
the breeze brush
my skin     smile
as my mind hears
a wisp of that old phrase
“you’ll catch your death
of a cold”     strip off
shoes     socks     grin
as my bare feet grip
the pavement     stride
into the wind     try
to outrun     the late
November sun.



An award-winning poet, Melissa Huff enjoys exploring both formal poetry and free verse, Her publishing credits include Halfway Down the Stairs, Glass: Facets of Poetry, Winterwolf Press, and River Poets Journal. She currently serves as secretary of the Illinois State Poetry Society.

The Weight of Shadows by Corey D. Cook

Friends of Red Eft Review -

I am excited to share that my fifth chapbook, The Weight of Shadows, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. It will be available for preorder from September 18, 2018 through November 16, 2018 and will be released on January 11, 2019.

I will do my best to post updates as they become available.

Thanks so much for visiting the site and I hope you will consider purchasing a copy of the book in the Fall.

- Corey D. Cook, Editor

Laundress by Khalilah Okeke

I am no longer an American
because i,
     peg my laundry on the
     line in the backyard
     Pray it doesn’t rain,
     then rush out to rescue it
     from monsoon downpours
     and lightening bolts.

I am no longer an American
because my,
     husband keeps windows
     gaping in winter, letting in
     sea-breezes, leaving me to
     bare hardwood floors with
     naked feet.

I no longer,
     jump from spiders the size
     of 50 cent pieces, I save my
     terror for the lunging ones the
     dimension of dinner plates.

I am no longer an American
because i,
     collect my mail from a letterbox
     dropped off by a man on a
     motorbike, Gamble with oceans
     that contain the extraterrestrial
     And risk my life for a swim.

Sometimes I wish I were American
so i could,
     toss my laundry in the dryer,
     wear uggs in public, and smoke
     joints on porch steps.

Sometimes I wish I were American
so i could,
     take month long road-trips
     with my family, and watch
     mountain ranges fleet by in
     rear-view mirrors.

I miss,
     lighting fireworks on Fourth
     of July, and doctors that speak
     English. 

I miss,
     sterile hospitals that smell of
     safety, and men that help with
     laundry.



Khalilah Okeke is a North American born: Nigerian, European, East Indian. She now resides in Sydney, Australia, with her husband and two small children. She has had poems published in The Orissa Society of the Americas Journal.

Rain over Ice by Patricia Fargnoli

The driveway is a slippery flatfish,
the landscape a gray foil around it
and fog, not far off, settles
around twin beeches
behind the town garage.
A hard rain pounds my winter jacket,
Ice under water beneath my feet–
each layer making the other
more treacherous.
This morning my daughter
posted on Facebook, pictures
of her perfect tanned legs
stretched out on a Florida beach.
I try not to envy her and fail.
Hood over my head, I edge my way
to the car, hang on to the side.
Unbalanced in this frozen moment, I wonder
why I’m going into the chancy weather
only for mail, to pick up a prescription
when I could have chosen instead to stay in
with the computer, the clock, the clicking
on and off of the furnace.

Patricia Fargnoli has published 5 books of poetry. Her latest book is Hallowed: New & Selected Poems, Tupelo Press, 2017. A former NH Poet Laureate and a MacDowell Fellow, she’s published widely in journals such as Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Alaska Quarterly et. al.

Sometimes by Patricia Fargnoli

Sometimes I feel like
the sad gray bird
flying panic-stricken back and forth
just beneath the ceiling,
flying above the aisles full of
soup and pasta, the cases
of beef and chicken,
the stacks of tomatoes and
grapes, bananas and lemons,
of Shaw’s grocery store
in Walpole New Hampshire
on a cold April Tuesday
at ten a.m. in 2018
trying to find any opening,
trying to find sky.



Patricia Fargnoli has published 5 books of poetry. Her latest book is Hallowed: New & Selected Poems, Tupelo Press, 2017. A former NH Poet Laureate and a MacDowell Fellow, she’s published widely in journals such as Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Alaska Quarterly et. al.

Prayer by Gail Braune Comorat

At my daughter’s city home
I watch a soundless flight of cormorants
skim a rubbed-chalk sky
toward Smith’s Creek, their number uneven.

A year of ups, downs. Yet I know this life that dazzles
and disappoints is our rosary.
We must touch and worry each moment in the knotted
strand that separates us.

I unclip wash from her backyard line
as a cool rain begins to fall. Above, the birds string out
like loose black pearls
tossed randomly across the ever-changing heavens.



Gail Braune Comorat is a founding member of Rehoboth Beach Writers’ Guild, and the author of Phases of the Moon (Finishing Line Press). Her work has appeared in Gargoyle, Grist, Mudfish, Philadelphia Stories, and The Widows’ Handbook. She’s a long-time member of several writing groups in Lewes, Delaware.

The Body is Not by Gail Braune Comorat

a colored illustration in a science text,
not a flattened pocket containing all
that we are, an androgynous outline
with celluloid sheets we lift
to reveal the muscles, the veins,
the glossy white bones. And

neither is my friend’s body a city
despite the way her scans light up
like a runway with night descending.
Like looking down on BWI,
she says when she shows me
her body’s dark transactions:
a map of bright mushrooms
displayed in brutal radiance.



Gail Braune Comorat is a founding member of Rehoboth Beach Writers’ Guild, and the author of Phases of the Moon (Finishing Line Press). Her work has appeared in Gargoyle, Grist, Mudfish, Philadelphia Stories, and The Widows’ Handbook. She’s a long-time member of several writing groups in Lewes, Delaware.

Dad's Photography by Laurie Kolp

After lunch at the new Cajun place,
we pause beside an old rusty truck
(which is permanently parked
on the restaurant’s front porch)
so you can take my picture.
I show you which button to touch
how to extend your arms like a zombie—and snap.
I strike a pose beside the crusty Ford,
a perfect picture prop for my Facebook profile pic.
Two ladies pass by. One says she hopes I’m
up-to-date on my tetanus shot
(while the other one cautions me
not to ruin my white pants).
I scoot away from the truck’s corroded door
but you’re already snapping away
unaware that you’re snapping away,
twenty-five freeze-framed angles
of the same me we soon discover
while swiping frame to frame.
Somewhere in the middle I’m smiling
not for the picture but because
you’re taking my picture
after all those years
of disconnection.



Laurie Kolp’s poems have recently appeared in Stirring, Whale Road Review, concis, Up the Staircase, and more. Her poetry books include the full-length Upon the Blue Couch and the chapbook Hello, It's Your Mother. An avid runner and lover of nature, Laurie lives in Southeast Texas with her husband, three children, and two dogs.

The Second Bridge by Robert Demaree

The satellite had shown a second bridge
Farther up Perry Brook,
A place my grandson might enjoy next June.
I climb to snap a picture and,
Descending, make a wrong turn
And then another, down the wrong creek bed,
Pungent mire on my shoes,
Small dead trees toppling at my touch,
Decay and renewal hidden in the forest.

In time male pride gives way to sense:
I am not where I thought I was,
In woods I should have known.
I dial my wife,
Then 911, my first such call
But surely not the last:
74-year-old guy, I tell them,
Wandered off the trail.
A granite boulder is my base,
A place to sit and wait,
Shelter for the night perhaps,
Workspace where I lay out my camera,
Cell phone, dark glasses
As light fades,
And the steady woodland chorus
Settles in,
Known but not by name.
If there are others here,
I do not encroach upon their space,
Or they on mine.

In my mind I compose notes of thanks
To different agencies,
For it did not occur to me
They might not come,
That I might not survive this night,
Or see again my wife,
Our girls, their kids.
I listen for the search dogs,
Watch for lights on the ATV
Down the old logging road.
It did not cross my mind
That I could die this night,
But it did come to me,
As it had not before,
That one day I would.
I have my picture of the second bridge,
Which Philip may or may not ever see.



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.

For Once by Marcia J. Pradzinski

My mind does not flutter away
from the room, the table
I lie on, the people surrounding me.

My body holds my mind still as I
wait and squeeze the soft ball the nurse
has placed in my left hand, its rubber
smell absorbing my attention.

A flake of foreboding dances near her voice,
take a deep breath in, but melts in the
notes of Mozart overhead and the doctor’s
questions about my life – my work, my family.

Lost to me this time – the internal shivering,
the breath-freezing dread of the needle
and its cold steel that burns.



Marcia J. Pradzinski, an award-winning poet, lives in Skokie, Illinois. Her poems have appeared in print publications, anthologies, and online. Blue Heron Review, Olentangy Review, Paper Swans Press (UK), and Pirene's Fountain have featured her poetry most recently. Her chapbook, Left Behind, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2015.

Ila White by Terri Kirby Erickson

In the dark dresser drawer my grandmother,
Ila White, slept as if she was still in the womb,

an infant so small, she fit in her father's palm.
Three babies ahead of her died before birth

and another one, soon thereafter. We won't lose
this child, my great-grandmother, Nannie, said,

opening the drawer and tucking her daughter in.
Ila's kidney-bean-sized-lungs might have held

a thimble-full of air, and her cry was a mewling
sound, like a newborn kitten. But her mother

heard it clear across the barnyard; the cow she
was milking bellowing at the loss of her warm

hand on a cold morning as Nannie kicked over
the wooden stool, grabbed the bucket, and ran.



Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of five collections of award-winning poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Asheville Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, storySouth, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. Awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Nautilus Silver Book Award. She lives in North Carolina.

At the Window by Martha Christina

I’m grateful for this view
of our neighbors’ daffodils
and budding magnolia.

A dead leaf catches
in the arborvitae,
their privacy hedge;
not tall enough to hide
a kiss at the end
of a working day.
Not thick enough
to mute their
laughter, young
and fresh as spring.

Our last day together,
your lips opened
on your final breath,
then wouldn’t close.

I turn away from the window.



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 is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review and *82 Review. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

Two, Watching by Martha Christina

The male robin who
appears at the base
of the feeder, doesn’t
sing, and shows no
interest in the spillage
of sunflower seeds.

He worries a worm
out from under
a budded daffodil,
then hops onto
the common fence
and faces the window
of our neighbor’s shed.

A friend has told me
a robin saw his reflection
in her dining room window,
and threw himself at it,
territorial and protective
of the nest and its eggs.

This robin makes
no aggressive moves;
makes no moves at all.
He sits as I sit:
silent,
transfixed,
watching.



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 is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review and *82 Review. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).