Playground by Samuel Swauger

I haven’t forgotten what we were like then,

when I couldn’t see over the kitchen table
and sunbathed slides left burns on my legs.
We never thought about the discomfort, it happened
and off we ran with our make-believe soldiers.

It was instinct to take your hands and
rub chalk on the asphalt together,
laying on the rocky forgeries
of a Dr. Seuss book and
squinting at the animals in the clouds.

Our school has long since been derelict.
The parking lot is lone and level now,
eroded to graphite hues.
At some point I learned to hesitate

and grew taller than my mother. 

Samuel Swauger is an author and poet from Baltimore, Maryland. His work appears in magazines such as Wordgathering, Bandit Fiction, and the Front Porch Review. His website is samuelswauger.com and his Twitter is @samuelswauger.

Black Moon by Will Reger

A new fabric of air settles in—
a feeling of knife-swath—while you
bring in the last tomatoes;
the last baskets of fall apples,
aromatic, sweet; potatoes
smelling of earth.

Wearing pink tights
and faerie wings,
your daughter sings
and dances at your table.
She has drawn chalk flowers
on the sidewalk for hours,
in light like darkening honey,
until the twilight cuts her short

and the black moon rises
above the turning birds
who leave the roughening sky.
But you can light a fire
in your front room and gather
around it with your children:

For you, nature is all arranged,
the texture of it smooth
as the marshmallow
melting in your s’more.



Will Reger is the 2019/20 inaugural Poet Laureate for the city of Urbana, Illinois. He is a founding member of the CUPoetry Group (cupoetry.com), teaches at ISU in Normal. His work appears in numerous publications, including most recently The Blue Nib Literary Magazine. His first chapbook is Cruel with Eagles.

Haiku by Stephen Toft

autumn chill
the seashell still
in my pocket



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 night
a boy skims a stone
across the moon



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.

What You Could See by Pamela Hobart Carter

It is the last time we talk.
We sit close together
at the end of the dining room table
as if the rest of the family knows
this is my final visit—
while you can dress and mix and eat—
and gift us proximity.

We look at photographs you’d shot
of turkey poults and Canada goose goslings
standing in the unmowed grass beyond the ridge
of the back hill. Maybe the blue pall
was an issue of overexposure or your film
had decayed. I can tell we are looking at birds
and fields. Can distinguish your careful compositions.
I suppose these prints are your final creative work.

So often you snuck into a meadow to perch
in solemn patience on a boulder
and sight through your enormous Leica
to save for us what you could see.



Pamela Hobart Carter's poems have appeared in Barrow Street, The Ekphrastic Review, and The Seattle Star, among others. Her most recent poetry-involved events included curating a science poetry journal in theater form for Infinity Box Theatre Project and reading her poems at South Seattle College Community Chorus's spring concert. 

Last Desires by Pamela Hobart Carter

Sucking on your orange popsicle —
all hospice palliative meds allow,
you speak of fried egg sandwiches
with ketchup, which I don’t hanker for, thank you,
but I love knowing your cravings for humble tastes
last through your final days.

Our passions may withstand
cancer and memory loss. Our tongues
still ask for what they want,
like astronauts on a far-away planet
answering to a distant captain’s call.

Before we say our most important I love yous,
you shift to the topic
of the brain, how amazing
this sack of fat
that has so much to take,
that has so much to give.



Pamela Hobart Carter's poems have appeared in Barrow Street, The Ekphrastic Review, and The Seattle Star, among others. Her most recent poetry-involved events included curating a science poetry journal in theater form for Infinity Box Theatre Project and reading her poems at South Seattle College Community Chorus's spring concert. 

Birthday Beetles by Eric Fisher Stone

Each birthday June bugs
headbutted porchlights like mad angels.
I loved their wings’ brown olives
fizzing through night.

My strawberry hog-shaped birthday cake
heralded summer joys. A space pirate
flying saucer captain, I led
my dog lieutenant to planets
in our backyard. I made
Taco Bell hot sauce packets joust
with toothpick spears, their bloodstains
still on the living room ceiling.

A week before fall classes in August,
I dug for dinosaur bones
in mom’s garden, all the June bugs died
but I found their larvae, grubs’ moon-pale
fingers greasing through soil. I wept
to wait a schoolyear for their wings.



Eric Fisher Stone is from Fort Worth, Texas. He recently acquired his MFA in Creative Writing and the Environment degree from Iowa State University. His poetry has appeared in various journals. His first full length poetry collection, The Providence of Grass was published by Chatter House Press in 2018.

Dust by Ann Rhodes

As the opening door stirs the ancient air
of his empty bedroom, his mother counts
the infinite particles of dust glimmering
in the yellow haze of sunlight cast by the window--
dust lingers in the breathless air.

Dust streaks on the surface of stuffed dragons,
plush teddy bears, and boxed board games.
Dust gathers in the folds of a rocket ship comforter
that still lays in a crumpled, unmade pile
pushed to the right side of the twin bed.
Dust rests on the back of a drooping movie poster,
the photograph on the front so deeply bent
its warped contents are indiscernible.
Dust hovers in the corners of the cobwebbed ceiling
where glow-in-the-dark stars sag
from loops of unsteady masking tape.
Dust settles on the once-polished hardwood floor,
its deep red color now varnished by a gray sheen.

As she looks on at the drifting and stagnant dust,
she knows her own floors are immaculate,
her own bed sheets neatly smoothed out,
her own belongings sorted into drawers.
The dust reminds her of how things were before--
the slow accumulation of disarray,
of disorder, indecency, disappointment.
Empty glass beer bottles scattered
across a moldy linoleum kitchen floor.
Drunken arguments with her husband,
voices shouting until the red sunrise.
Separate bedrooms down the hall,
the isolation letting hers grow disheveled,
a convoluted labyrinth of paperwork,
from AA meetings, marriage counseling, divorce court.

She’d kept everything spotless ever since they left.
The bottles were thrown out, never bought again.
Every tile on the linoleum was scrubbed
until the unbroken white shone through.
Her paperwork was shredded, belongings stacked away.
She swept dust off every surface she could reach.

And now, as she stands in the doorway
of a lost son who hasn’t inhabited this room
in too many years, who she hasn’t even visited
in too many months, she recognizes the disarray.
She counts the dust particles once more and knows
she’s cleaned up her act everywhere but here.



Ann Rhodes is an author from Southern California. She enjoys writing virtually everything from poetry to sci-fi novels. Her work appears in several publications, including Nine Muses Poetry and The Short Humour Site, and she will be publishing several books and collections in the upcoming months.

Ephemeral Beauty by Ann Rhodes

We lived on a dead-end street
of sharp gravel that would stick
to the bottoms of our foam flip-flops
when we walked, and we marveled
at the prolific blackberry bushes
and the fleeting swallows
crowding the cerulean sky.
At night the heat of the Georgia air
rose to let the dewy ground cool,
lifting a thousand fireflies
to gleam like opalescent stars
over sun-singed lawns.
We huddled by the bay window
when thunderstorms hit,
watching the splitting glow of lightning
reflecting off the glass--
in the muggy veil of those evenings,
we went looking for tadpoles
in puddles left behind
and played princesses in the forest
until we were called in for dinner.

We learned too young
that beauty was always ephemeral.
We left the cobwebs behind
and piled into a too-small minivan,
hoping the journey would convince us
the swallows once darting overhead
were merely lost scavengers
and the fruit-covered blackberry bushes
no more than giant weeds.
We left a tricycle on the curb,
a collage of sidewalk chalk
suffocating the tar driveway,
strings of ivy choking the outer walls
of a house that once smelled like Cheerios
and dried maple wood.
We were no longer princesses
in the far-gone forest.
Instead, we were merely four sisters
whispering in the backseat
about how we’d divide up room
in a two-bedroom city apartment.



Ann Rhodes is an author from Southern California. She enjoys writing virtually everything from poetry to sci-fi novels. Her work appears in several publications, including Nine Muses Poetry and The Short Humour Site, and she will be publishing several books and collections in the upcoming months.

Miracle by Michael Estabrook

A miracle really that a doctor
can make two small holes
in your shoulder one for a tiny camera
the other for an arthroscopic tool of some sort
then repair your mangled rotator cuff without
a drop of blood without slashing through skin and muscle
a miracle indeed that I have no interest whatsoever
in being subject to again.



Michael Estabrook is retired now, which means he is writing more poems and working more outside. He just noticed two Cooper’s hawks staked out in the yard or rather above it. This explains the nerve-racked chipmunks. The Poet’s Curse, A Miscellany (The Poetry Box, 2019) is a recent collection.

I Saw That Too by Brian Rihlmann

we stood outside the office
waiting
him with head bowed
over smartphone
me craning my head back

he glanced over and saw me
looked quickly
in the direction of my gaze
and seeing nothing
asked what it was

i pointed
“there are buds on that tree”

he looked again
said “oh”
then chuckled
and returned his eyes
to the comforting glow
of the portable hearth
one finger swiping madly
over its fiery glass

a crow glided in
landed on the topmost branch
steadied himself
and folded his wings

a swaying silhouette
against yellow dawn

i saw that too



Brian Rihlmann was born in NJ, and currently lives in Reno, NV. He writes mostly semi autobiographical, confessional free verse. He has been published in Constellate Magazine, Poppy Road Review, The Rye Whiskey Review, Cajun Mutt Press and has an upcoming piece in The American Journal Of Poetry.

Synthetic Beast by Carly Noble

strip the cellulite from her thighs
like the butcher skins his fallen cow,
paint the roses with glycerin.

preservation was never meant to be pretty.

we pick ourselves apart like dandelions
i love me, i love me not



Carly Noble is a junior from Summit High School in Summit, New Jersey. She has been recognized nationally by the Scholastic Writing Awards and has forthcoming work in Polyphony Lit and Quintessence.

Etched in Glass by Steve Klepetar

Here, the road where you rested, sitting on your pack,
waiting for breath to return, waiting in the shade
on a hot afternoon, watching broken sky
between the pines.
And there, the lake where you listened
to bullfrogs before morning mist burned away.
So many pictures etched in glass.
Watermelon, which you never liked,
sliced on a paper plate, with its rind like jade,
its faint flavor cold on your teeth.
Three lean boys in the bed of a pickup,
shovels and picks, crewcuts, axes and saws.
Blisters and dust, lukewarm water from canteens.
Summer has come again with its promise
of rain and grass. All night barn owls hooted
and soared along the pond.
Here, the car you couldn’t drive, its broken wheel.
There the house in the woods where the old man lived alone.
Once at the range, you lay on your belly, rifle in hand.
“Squeeze the trigger,” someone said.
In the stillness that followed, you tore the target to shreds.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. His work has appeared in nine countries, in such journals as Boston Literary Magazine, Deep Water, Antiphon, Red River Review, Snakeskin, Ygdrasil, and many others. Several of his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His fourteen collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto, The Li Bo Poems, and Why Glass Shatters.

No One Is Immune by Carolynn Kingyens

          Baby, don’t you wanna dance
          up on me?
          - Britney Spears

A pillowcase stuffed full
of cold cash is dumped
over the head
of a buxom blonde
naked atop an unmade
bed in a hot mess motel
the color of puke
somewhere south
of Rio Grande.

Later, in a convertible
he carjacked, she’ll take
the wheel - and do donuts
where a lake used to be,
stirring a dust-bowl the size
of Dallas as he fires off
his gun into the air
for no other reason
than crazy.

Their door mat reads:
My Consequences Don’t
Live Here Anymore,
and for a while, this is true.

But a house built on shot
glasses, pill bottles
and ash trays will age
a body strangely — 
broken biology,
Freakonomics,
the way a fresh face
can turn into a catch-all
mitt, weathered before
its time; the way a delicate
voice can turn into the bark
of a seal, while the body,
from the neck down,
remains preserved
much longer.

The buxom blonde will rock
those daisy dukes, tank tops,
and cowboy boots
just like her favorite, aging
pop-princess, who shakes
her money-maker
night after night
on the Vegas Strip,
singing the same old songs;
dancing the same old
hip-hop moves
she did when she was 18
as her fans, who have aged
along with her,
scream her name in ecstasy
in the encore.

No one sees those swollen
joints she ices after each
show, cursing the
crookedness
that is her industry.

But the body, like time,
continues to keep score
on all of us, and no one
is immune.



Carolynn Kingyens lives with her beautiful family in NYC. Her poems have been featured in Boxcar Poetry Journal, Glass Poetry Journal, Word Riot, The Potomac, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Across the Margin, and The Orange Room Review. Her poem, “Washing Dishes” was nominated for Best New Poets by Silenced Press.