August Songs by Robert Demaree

Part One

Quiet pond morning in August,
Kayak gliding alongside the past:
A pine tree, now bare, reaches out
Over the shallow bay;
Summers ago our girls
Stood here to pose, then bravely splash
Into the warm, yellow-sand lake, ankle deep.
On the hill we used to climb
The craggy overlook socked in,
Growth of dense green years.
Just as well:
The view we loved now shows
Other hills laid bare for condos.
I paddle home
Against a fresh breeze;
Shoulders that have seen seventy summers
Pull against water heavy with time,
Past the cottages of my father’s friends.

Part Two

It is surely not July,
High hazy sun, grandchildren jumping off the dock.
And not October,
Red and gold against evergreen hills,
Nor even September,
Whose yellowing ferns hint at what’s to come.
The last week in August is its own time,
Campers, tourists mostly gone,
Quiet on the pond:
The angle of the sun,
Cerulean light out of Canada,
Distant warmth on your back,
Walking past the meadow.
Late in August in New Hampshire—
What it tells you is this:
There’s still time,
But maybe not as much as you thought.



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.

& Then There Is the Dog by Kati Goldstein

stretching one paw in front of the other
& yawning the way I’ve always wanted to yawn
or the way I once yawned but can no longer
remember or the way I will begin to yawn now
that the dog is here & the shelves are hung
& I love the way our things look together.



Kati Goldstein is a writer and teacher based in Chicago, Illinois. She received her MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago and her BA in Creative Writing from Colorado College. Her work has appeared in Reality Hands, Voicemail Poems, Phantom Books, and Columbia Poetry Review, among other publications.

When Maria's Ex Burns Down the Building We Helped Him Move Into by Kati Goldstein

we laugh about it in the way women laugh when men
have done something we can’t believe or shouldn’t
but in fact do or when we are scared or there is nothing
else to do or we feel somehow responsible. We read
each other excerpts from local news articles and say
someone could have died over and over
first softly, and then we are yelling it as we pound our open
palms on the counter, laughing again. He once held
her cat so gently and fixed her computer and called her
a whore and said he loved her and that no one would ever
believe her over him.



Kati Goldstein is a writer and teacher based in Chicago, Illinois. She received her MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago and her BA in Creative Writing from Colorado College. Her work has appeared in Reality Hands, Voicemail Poems, Phantom Books, and Columbia Poetry Review, among other publications.

Jube by Holly Day

We close our faces and open the door. One after another, people
come into our house, faces open in grief, ask us
if there’s anything they can do. I take my husband’s hand
in my own, pat the top of it as if I can reassure him,
as if I am capable of reassurance, I pretend I am a rock

painted brilliant in swirls of peacock feathers and greeting card graffiti
closed off to the grief, I can do this.

I keep quiet as boxes are packed, as things are put into them,
I don’t look at those things, I don’t know what they are. People
sweep through my house like some terrible wave
of staged grief, I don’t believe them, someone
says they know how I feel, that things are going to get better,
I don’t believe them.



Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and The Tampa Review. Her newest poetry collections are In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), A Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), Folios of Dried Flowers and Pressed Birds (Cyberwit.net), Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), and Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing).

Callitrix by Holly Day

At birth, only fingerprints defined the difference between
the creatures with the small, round heads. Both of them constantly cried,
began and ended in a constant open-mouthed scream, black eyes tightly shut,
tiny hands clenched in mirror-perfect fists. It’s impossible to know
how their mother chose which infant to love and which to hate,
what tiny imperfection drew her ire.

At birth, only their fingerprints defined the difference between
the small, hairy bodies, the tiny forms that screamed and cried
every night. Perhaps it was the pitch of the screams that separated the twins
in their mother’s ears alone, perhaps it was the way one tossed and turned more
in its sleep, an indication of needing more love from her, or perhaps
some indication of a rejection she herself couldn’t handle. Or perhaps

it was the quieter twin that earned her ire, easier to ignore than the louder one
easier to surrender to the dark.



Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and The Tampa Review. Her newest poetry collections are In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), A Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), Folios of Dried Flowers and Pressed Birds (Cyberwit.net), Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), and Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing).

our hearts molding into one by J.J. Campbell

the soft curves
of what i hope
to be the last
woman i'll
ever be in
love with

her brown
skin resting
in my arms

simpatico

our hearts
molding
into one

the world
completely
against us

the only way
we'd like it



J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) is old enough to know better. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Mad Swirl, Synchronized Chaos, Horror Sleaze Trash, Misfit Magazine and Live Nude Poems. You can find him waxing poetic most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

On His 85th Birthday by Vikram Masson

In December the ice had left
an eggshell coating on New York’s
streets, but still we insisted--mother,
brother, all of us--to celebrate your 85th birthday.
The grandchildren giggled at the man
smashing avocados and onions into guacamole
and we all grew tipsy drinking margaritas
rimmed with lemon and salt.

My nephew made a speech about
how you are the root of the family’s tree.
One branch of the tree led to me, and the other
to my brother. We all marveled at his eloquence
and laughed and pretended that you were actually there,
that your center hadn’t died and iced over,
that your mind still brimmed with a father’s memories.
That you did not stare at us
and struggle to remember.



Vikram Masson is a lawyer by training who lives in Richmond, Virginia. His poetry is featured in Amethyst Review, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Young Ravens Literary Review, and The American Journal of Poetry.

Eros and Dust by Robert Beveridge

Dry, sandy plain that used to be
Elysian fields of hops, barley. No
farms since the drought. Homesteaders,
even, have gone. Most of them, anyway.
Nothing grows here except base emotions.
Saloon in what used to be town waters those
ever too well. Every mother's fool who still
lives here has a tab. And uses it. Come
evening, you see them all lined up,
scotch, rye, bourbon, and the card games
swallow three years' wages in a hand.

Ugly town. Ugly world. Only bright spot
Nellie, middle-aged good-time gal with the finest
derriere this side of Colorado. She does
enliven the place. Caused more marital tension
round here than even old Compton's prize heifer.

That there was a story. Bout ten years back, old
Hill, he says he's in love with that gal.
End of his marriage, you can bet. We went

next morning down to Compton's, and there,
I swear, there's Tim Hill, stone dead,
gash in his noggin shaped like Elsie's
hoof, and we just couldn't help but laugh.
This place ain't all that bad, sometimes.



Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in The Virginia Normal, Credo Espoir, and Chiron Review, among others.

Wednesday Night at the Bar by Josette Torres

“I’ve heard it all before,” she says, balancing
a drink tray against her hip. “How can you
not? I’m surrounded by drunk guys for eight

hours at a time.” And drunk girls, too, I add
silently, pushing the empty glass across
the table. The band’s lead singer circles

the room with a red plastic bucket. I smile
at the waitress and her death-defying chest—
I never take those kinds of fearless risks

with clothing anymore. My old age turned
me into a spinster. One day at the mall
I realized I was shopping for sensible shoes

and I nearly cried for my discarded youth.
She brings me another cocktail and I settle
back into my chair, quiet, dissonant, still.



Josette Torres received her MFA in Creative Writing from Virginia Tech. She also holds a BA in English and Creative Writing from Purdue University. Her work has previously appeared in Star 82 Review, The New Verse News, Palaver, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Blacksburg, Virginia, where she works as an IT professional at Virginia Tech.

Woman in a Nursing Home by Lorri Ventura

The skin on the backs of her hands
Looks like lady slipper petals
Translucent
Tiny-veined
So delicate
She scratches it incessantly
Buckled into a wheelchair
By the elevator door
In front of the nurses’ station
Which is where the staff
Park the patients who don’t get visitors
Threadbare pate pitched forward
Stained hospital gown doing its job half-heartedly
Covering body parts
That are faded memories
Of what they once were
Seemingly asleep
Until the elevator doors
Ping their announcement
Of someone’s arrival
Then, only then
Does she become animated
Her head lifts
Her smile is almost rictal
“Hi - Hi - Hi - Hi - Hi!”
She sing-songs
“See me!”
Her unspoken plea
I bend down
And carefully embrace her
Telling her she looks pretty today
Her fingers catch in my hair
Her skin smells like
Chicken grease
Rheumy eyes lock on mine
“Bless you - Bless you - Bless you!”
She warbles
It feels like a long time passes
Before we release each other
I think she just might be
The most inspiring human being
I’ve ever met



Lorri Ventura is a retired special education administrator. She lives in Massachusetts and this is her second appearance in Red Eft Review. 

Ashes by Al Ortolani

After my father died, my mother
spent her days sorting through
his closets, giving away armloads
of clothes, unused tools, electric gadgets,
especially watches, purchased
from the shopping channel
for 19.95 or less. It was his way
of saying my time to the poverty
of the immigrant, the Valley of Ashes
only miles from his door.
Cleaning out my own house years later,
I move boxes of books, notebooks of old
poems, spirals of unfinished novels,
all that my father and mother
gave me, the shirt on my back,
graduate school, sheaves of
college ruled paper. You can be
anything you want they said.



Al Ortolani’s poetry has appeared in journals such as Rattle, Prairie Schooner, and the Chiron Review. His newest collection, On the Chicopee Spur, was released from New York Quarterly Books in 2018. He is a recent recipient of the Rattle Chapbook Award for 2019.

What We Keep by Al Ortolani

I consider myself lucky to sit today
at an old desk, window open,
the soft whirr of the brass-bladed Emerson
fluttering the pages of a paperback.
On the wall is a photograph (1909)
of my grandmother, age 3 or 4, staring
quizzically into the lens, sister
and cousins of similar ages, caught
at the feet of their grandparents.
A quilt hangs as a backdrop
from the porch of their Ozark home.
My uncle once said that he knew
where the quilt was stored, but that was
years ago. Even more time has passed,
my uncle gone, his children
as old as grandparents themselves,
the quilt in a chest somewhere, or not.

Al Ortolani’s poetry has appeared in journals such as Rattle, Prairie Schooner, and the Chiron Review. His newest collection, On the Chicopee Spur, was released from New York Quarterly Books in 2018. He is a recent recipient of the Rattle Chapbook Award for 2019. 

Multiple Choice by Martha Christina

Some say this man
who every Tuesday
rides his bike
to the Library
is the son of
someone famous.

Some say he
graduated with
honors from Yale,
or maybe Harvard.

Some say he and his
clothes are unwashed,
that he mutters obscenities
in the stacks, that he tried
to flush another patron’s
laptop down the toilet.

Some say he owns a condo
on the Cape, is heir to a
sizable fortune, is homeless.

Some say he served as
a Navy Seal, as though
that might explain
why all or none
of the above is true.



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).

The Critic by Martha Christina

Yesterday’s mockingbird
returns today, bringing
an addition to its repertoire.
To my ears, it mews a good
imitation of my cat, but she
merely twitches an ear
in the bird’s direction,
doesn’t open her eyes.



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).