Aunties on the Porch by Martha Christina

My cousins and I danced
in and out of the sprinkler
in the heat of a southern
Indiana summer, while
our aunties planned
our supper: Aunt Della’s
green beans, slow-cooked
with a ham hock; Aunt Golda’s
prize-winning peach pie.

They’d come far from
the shoeless summers
of their childhoods,
barefoot in barnyards
and berry patches,
picking and selling
eggs and blackberries,
earning their school shoes.

They sat rocking
and fanning, rarely
reminiscing, while
we cousins ran
barefoot, laughing
across wet grass,
without fear
of hookworms
or hunger.



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 Cell Phone Lot by Robert Demaree

Part One: RDU

Because we have not done this before,
Are 81 years old,
Because it conforms to the way we do
Other things,
We arrive at the cell phone lot
An hour before her flight,
Our friend’s daughter, only child,
Coming to take her father,
Recently bereaved,
Back to Kansas,
To her family, his family,
His daughter, her wife,
Their son,
Only child of only child,
Trombonist in the marching band.
The week before we had mourned
A passing; poems were read,
Family photos on the mantle.

We watch planes land.
Cars come and go
In the cell phone lot,
The insolent competence
Of people who do this all the time,
And we eat our Subway sandwich
As in the days of
Our grandchildren’s concerts—
Handel’s Largo from Xerxes
Scored for high school band.
The phone rings,
Her plane is on the ground.
In grieving
You see the best of families.

Part Two: MHT

At the Manchester airport we wait for
Our daughter coming to help open up.
We realize this is more
Than a sweet gesture.
Heavy lifting in short
Spurts now.
I rest while she sweeps.
Early June in New Hampshire.
Various green light
Rich with possibility.
We are 81,
My parents’ age, I now recall,
The last time
They drove themselves north.



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.

Summer of '89 by Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad

It was almost always low tide,
on those white hot afternoons
when we raced down the shore,
cotton shorts and T-shirts billowing.

the sea would stretch, pulled away,
a distant placid puddle
of peridot and peacock blue.
stamped into the shallow waters,
the clumsy wave breakers
loomed like chunky bullies.

those were the days before scary CGI,
when the Jaws series,
(with its fake looking shark,
and ominous score,)
could still give you chills.
it was fun being seven years older -
I could prank you easily
with a white plastic shovel
stuck strategically into the silt,
you had to be dumb to believe,
that it was the washed up fin
of the Great White from the movies,
or you had to be five years old.

with the light oblique on our faces,
we could have lain forever, dozing,
two snug sardines, you and I,
our soft brown limbs buried
in the fast cooling sand,
till the runny yolk of the lukewarm sun,
dissolved and bled red,
in the deepening evening blues,

soon, the sea would transform
into an agitated entity,
whooshing and spewing white foam -
the lacy trims of the thundering tide
inching closer with each crash,
till they nibbled at the edges
of our powdery sand blankets.

we would dust our salt crusted hair,
wash ourselves in the strengthening waves.
and one last time
I would hum a deep ‘daa dum daa dum’ -
my infamous Jaws number on you,
falling over laughing,
as you bolted for shore
through the now whirling waters.



Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is a Sydney based artist, poet, and pianist. She holds a Masters in English and has worked in media and education. Oormila is a member of Sydney’s North Shore Poetry Project and performs her poems at venues in Sydney. Her work is forthcoming in the Eunoia Review.

The Inefficiency Center by Todd Mercer

Many are chosen, few are called
at the DMV Bureau. Those with time to spare
and those without a precious moment free
huddle hopeless lo these many hours,
waiting to win the lottery prize of being waited on.
A spot at the state clerk’s business window,
a chance to write checks and drive one’s car,
legal-like. I may not get there with you,
to the line’s front or the other side of these
two hundred souls. Some are simmering,
others drift in daydreams. The Now Serving numbers
change in no discernible order. A few break
for the door, opting to save their bodies
and/or minds from interminable dusk
as the clock spins and the masses
wait as long as wait is going to take.



Todd Mercer was nominated for Best of the Net by in 2018. Mercer won the Kent County Dyer-Ives Poetry Prize. His chapbook Life-wish Maintenance is posted at Right Hand Pointing. Recent work appears in: A New Ulster, The Lake, and Mojave River Review.

Vacation Memories by John Grey

Tourists trudge through
the makeshift marketplace along the dock,
inspect the obligatory merchandise:
chess sets, shell necklaces,
coconuts carved into faces.
“Very cheap,” says one local after another.

But they have little time to stop.
They’re on their way
to a flotilla of buses
that will take them around the island.
They’ll hear the history, see the sights.
No need to worry that they’ve missed a bargain.
The trinkets aren’t going anywhere.
They’ll be even cheaper on their return.

Besides, there’s such a thing as
tourist’s Alzheimer’s –
all interesting tidbits from the past
are completely forgotten
with the first sip of a rum punch back on board.
And sure, the photographs of turquoise sea,
palm-tree hills, will make the family rounds.
But, in a month, they’ll have been overlaid
by close-ups of somebody or other’s new baby.

But a ceramic dolphin,
made in China,
will occupy pride of place on their mantle.
People will ask
or they’ll ask themselves,
“Now where did that come from?”

Somewhere, in the Caribbean,
the locals are parading their wares
before the next boat-load
and are much too busy to answer.



John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dunes Review, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Thin Air, Dalhousie Review and failbetter.

The Ant by Ahrend Torrey

You can’t help the life you were given, like the ant can’t help hers,

the one crawling the white wall at work, in the bathroom, where

my hands, tied to the clock, can’t help, and where there are no windows.

I shut the door behind me, think, how will she survive?

Through the smallest crevice somewhere, I know she will.



Ahrend Torrey enjoys exploring nature in southern Louisiana, where he lives with his husband Jonathan and their two rat terriers Dichter and Dova. He is the author of Small Blue Harbor published by the Poetry Box Select imprint (Portland) in 2019. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Atavism by Joseph Helminski

A hawk slipped off
a hickory branch

in that moment
I could not think

of the word hawk
or hickory

the bird falling
gliding upward



Joseph Helminski teaches English at Oakland Community College near Detroit. His poems have been published in The Tulane Review, Olentangy Review, Sweet Tree Review, Eunoia Review, Assisi, and Great Lakes Review.

Night and Day by Joseph Helminski

After nightmares
of a robbed house

I awakened
to find locked doors

and intact glass
and light came through

windows making
me two shadows



Joseph Helminski teaches English at Oakland Community College near Detroit. His poems have been published in The Tulane Review, Olentangy Review, Sweet Tree Review, Eunoia Review, Assisi, and Great Lakes Review.

7.6.19 / 7:28 a.m. / 66 degrees by John L. Stanizzi

Photo-op shy, the new frogs leap from the shore ahead of me, and I admit to feeling
overwhelmed by the daily sameness; the miracles of damsel and dragon, the swallows’
nifty gliding, hunting, and the miracle of the tadpoles’ metamorphosis, their
diurnal changes which they are too frightened to share, those powerful new legs, that archaic tail



John L. Stanizzi is author of Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits – Fifty 50-Word Pieces, and Chants. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, The New York Quarterly, Blue Mountain Review, Paterson Literary Review, The Cortland Review, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, and many others. Stanizzi has been translated into Italian and his work has appeared in many journals in Italy. He has read at venues all over New England, and his newest collection, Sundowning, will be out later this year with Main Street Mag. Stanizzi teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, CT and he lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry.

7.4.19 / 7:31 a.m. / 67 degrees by John L. Stanizzi

Punctuation marks swimming in a school? It looks that way from here.
Operating like a single entity, could this be a school of catfish fry? The tadpole's
noddle looks more “frog like” now as he rests on the shore with his
dragontail, and in the trees the wood thrush sews lace with perfect nonchalance.   



John L. Stanizzi is author of Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits – Fifty 50-Word Pieces, and Chants. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, The New York Quarterly, Blue Mountain Review, Paterson Literary Review, The Cortland Review, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, and many others. Stanizzi has been translated into Italian and his work has appeared in many journals in Italy. He has read at venues all over New England, and his newest collection, Sundowning, will be out later this year with Main Street Mag. Stanizzi teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, CT and he lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry.

Bathroom Crucifix by Carolynn Kingyens

I remember the first time I touched a crucifix;
five years old, inside my grandmother’s powder-blue bathroom,
unaware of suffering and sacrifice,
unaware of the million and one ways
a sinner could torture a saint and still get away with it,
when I felt compelled to caress Christ’s hard, flexed veins
arched away from his shin bones, muscles, pretty feet.

The crucifix was nailed to the floral pattern wall,
above the light switch.

His eyes forever cast down,
staring at my grandmother’s personal things,
her nighttime rituals —
boxes of Polident,
rosary beads,
little jars of beauty cream,
and an old photo of her only son,
my father, forever a boy dressed for Holy Communion,
mimicking the face of innocence;
wedged securely inside the edge of the switch.



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.

Just Once by Steve Klepetar

It happened once, just once
after all the times her mother
came at her with the broom,
face twisted, shrieking about
her smart mouth, screaming
Because I said so,
swatting at the girl with
the handle, raising welts.
Just once.
Her mother advanced
like a storm system,
an avalanche of rage:
I said now!
The girl blocked the blow
with her forearm,
ignoring the black and blue
pain of it, swinging
her open hand with a hard slap
to her mother’s astonished face,
who stepped back, then swung
her own slap at the girl,
who slapped her mother again,
hard as she could,
spinning her halfway around.
It happened just that once,
and never again
the broom or slap,
only the phantom pain
on her arm and the silence
that lived beneath that house,
so polite now with explanations and requests.



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 (Flutter Press) and Why Glass Shatters (One Sentence Chaps).

Summer of the Bear by Steve Klepetar

My son texts me a photograph of his little daughters,
six and three, backs to the camera by a large picture window.
On the other side, a black bear cub.
You can’t see their faces,
but judging by their body language,
they aren’t at all afraid, pressing close to the glass.
And the cub too looks mild and unafraid,
curious it seems, at this interspecies meeting
by a house in the woods.
I post the photo on Facebook, “Granddaughters with bear.”
The comments fly in.
“OMG!”
“OMG!”
“OMG!”
One friend: “Isn’t it dangerous?”
Me: “Only if the glass breaks.”

That night, driving home from Tanglewood
(Hillary Hahn, an all Bach program) we pass a bear
ambling down Hawthorne Street.
The next day someone has posted a hand-scrawled sign
on the clubhouse, where we pick up our mail:
“Beware! Large male bear sighted
between the pond and the red barn.
Keep your dogs on a leash.”
Next to the sign, a photograph.
He is enormous, and just behind him to the left,
maybe fifty feet away you can see our house.

We read about black bears,
how they shy away from humans,
how there have been sixty-one recorded killings
by black bears since 1900,
how last year many more people were killed by bees,
domestic dogs, lightning strikes.
We sit on our porch, looking out toward the reeds,
the high grass and woods, hoping for a glimpse.
All night we roam the dream woods, where the great bears live
in the shadows of trees, leaking sometimes into the waking world.



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 (Flutter Press) and Why Glass Shatters (One Sentence Chaps).

Broadview by Ed Ahern

The houses were sided with bricks.
And small. And much alike.
The avenues were numbered north-south,
and east-west streets were named.
Unnamed alleys between the numbered avenues.
My growing up had no outside measurements,
so whatever we lacked went unnoticed.
The Europe-descended neighbors
lived and died in their houses

Until, within two decades,
the white Broadview checkerboard square
shifted to black.
Recoloring the high school meant
twenty years of fights and brawls,
mostly after my time.
My class reunions were all white,
the black quarter of us
unwilling to return to minority
and staying away.

Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had over two hundred stories and poems published so far, and five books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories, where he sits on the review board and manages a posse of four review editors. 

https://twitter.com/bottomstripper 

https://www.facebook.com/EdAhern73/?ref=bookmarks

Happiness by Gene Goldfarb

I saw it on an old survey map
of my house and lot,
Hathaway Downs,
very Anglican—
made me imagine 
a happy little sweep
of a dale with frolicking rabbits
multiplying and munching everything in sight
especially those well-tended greens
and a hapless farmer looking on
resting on the staff
of his pitchfork
rubbing his
chin,
muttering
to no one
in particular
Guess I’ll have to
call in the man.



Gene Goldfarb lives on Long Island, to write poetry, do volunteer work, and travel. His poetry has appeared in Black Fox Literary Magazine, Quiddity, Misfit Magazine, Green Briar Review, and elsewhere.

In Between by Richard Martin

It's all in the spaces,
the emptiness between buildings,
the transparent air
that holds the trees in place –
where true action: flight, diving,
gliding, takes place,
in the spaces –
the twisting turns
of a flight of pigeons;
two magpies hurl themselves
between fir and pine,
and a solitary crow
dives from nowhere
into the thicket of a hedge.
That's why I can so often ignore
the interruption of a block of flats,
or the intrusion of grey siding --
what's truly interesting
hovers in between.



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.

Seeing the Sunrise by M.J. Iuppa

          There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us
          at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.
          ~Jean Paul Sartre

Soon enough—swallows begin
to stir under the barn’s eaves—
one becomes three, becomes five,

filling up twilight’s air— so many
blue-black wings scissor-switch
sky to yard—patterns cut in figure

eight precision, turning dawn’s
pink light into a ramp of sun that
singles out our bedroom window,

our pillows soaked with sleep, and
wakes us to swallows sitting side
by side on a power line, chipping

a tune that echoes until we rise &
look out bleary-eyed upon gardens
we’ve left undone, knowing we

have another day to finish
what we’ve started the day
before yesterday.



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.

Haiku by John McManus

climbing roses
I push gran’s wheelchair
a little closer



John McManus is an award winning haiku poet from Carlisle, Cumbria, England. He is the author of Inside His Time Machine (Iron Press, 2016) and after night rain (Bones, 2019).

Haiku by John McManus

oil spill footage
the whole room
falls silent



John McManus is an award winning haiku poet from Carlisle, Cumbria, England. He is the author of Inside His Time Machine (Iron Press, 2016) and after night rain (Bones, 2019).

Haiku by John McManus

waning moon
grandpa coughs up
more blood



John McManus is an award winning haiku poet from Carlisle, Cumbria, England. He is the author of Inside His Time Machine (Iron Press, 2016) and after night rain (Bones, 2019).

Haiku by John McManus

alone at last
she unzips
my sleeping bag



John McManus is an award winning haiku poet from Carlisle, Cumbria, England. He is the author of Inside His Time Machine (Iron Press, 2016) and after night rain (Bones, 2019).