Haiku by Douglas J. Lanzo

kids’ first snorkel
expanding their world
by seventy percent



A featured poet published in 20 journals across the United States, England, Wales, Australia and the Caribbean in 2020, Doug’s award-winning haiku have appeared or are pending in 10 haiku journals, including Frogpond. His 11-year old identical twin sons have published haiku collections in Australia and the United States.

The Ballad of Lipstick and Comb by Irena Pasvinter

I remember watching you
as you put on your lipstick,
always the same red color,
too bright for my cautious taste.
Oh come on, Grandma, I thought,
why do you even need this,
in your eighties,
with Grandpa long dead?
It’s not like you’re into
catching another husband.
So really, at your age, why bother?
I kept my mouth shut, of course.
What you did with your lips
was none of my business.

And then in the hospital,
when you insisted
on combing your hair each morning
and god, this red lipstick again...
This time I might have
even said something, to Mom:
“Really, why does she bother,
being so ill? Ridiculous,

this lipstick business.”

But now, as I drag myself
out of bed in the morning,
and glance at my ghost
in the bathroom mirror,
I finally get why you did this:
not for me or for men
or for god or for devil —
for yourself,
to feel whole and alive,
to keep going.

Lipstick is still not my thing,
but never mind, I get the idea:
self-respect is a life-time job.
Thank you, Grandma.



Irena Pasvinter divides her time between software engineering, endless family duties and writing poetry and fiction. Her stories and poems have appeared in many online and print magazines. Her poem "Psalm 3.14159..." has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is currently looking for a publisher for her first novel. Visit Irena at https://sites.google.com/site/ipscribbling

Pay It Backward by Janet Carl

Who knew what went through his head,
the man who said,
"I'll pay for the people behind me, too--how much?"

About twelve bucks. Not high
philanthropy, but kindness in a
world that seems not to remember
kindness.

Some spark jumped from his car to hers, and
hearing that her family's
hamburgers, fries and shakes had been paid for,
she said, "I'll pay for the people behind me."

Nine hundred gifts,
two and a half days, over and
over, in the bleak almost-winter
of Brainerd, Minnesota.

We've been cheated, lied to,
humiliated on the world stage.

We've been profiled, beat up, spit on
and killed.

We've collapsed and died--
more of us than our fathers and uncles who died in
World War II.

We've grown to dislike and distrust each other.

But some guy at a DQ
changed the world,
turned that ice cream parlor into a shrine.
Brought out plain old vanilla
decency.



Janet Carl's poetry has appeared in Lyrical Iowa, her children's fiction in Plays and Young and Alive, her nonfiction in Nonprofit World and the Des Moines Register.

Deleting Old Emails by Eileen Curran-Kondrad

While deleting old emails
I came across one
you sent me the year
before you died.

Still there
floating in ether
as though you
are still able
to give me your
big brotherly advice.

I worried that you
hadn’t approved of
my choice of career.
I should have reached
higher than teaching, you implied.
Then I came across a story you sent.
One of those forwards that go
round and round to friends
like lost souls
looking for a place to rest.

Teachers can never tell
where their influence stops, it said.
They affect eternity.

So do you big brother.
So do you.



Eileen Curran-Kondrad is adjunct faculty in the English department at Plymouth State University. Her work has been published in NEATE, Journal of The New England Association for Teachers Of English, Teaching Moments, New Hampshire Business Magazine, Centripetal, Upbeat, Folded Word and Red Eft Review.

Four Fabric Squares from Christo’s Central Park Gates by Patricia Behrens

We waved to each other across Cathedral Parkway,
yours an extravagant wave as if you’d braved perils,
traversed continents, not simply come uptown to meet me

to explore this northern section of the park, festooned
in fluttering orange banners. You led us along snaking
rocky paths, sometimes walked ahead

last year’s chemo-slowed gait now vanquished.
We goaded each other south through the February cold,
smiling at strangers, led on by the saffron-arched walkways,

the distant sightings of orange through branches.
Blue sky, looking up--these were pleasures again, when
so recently they had made us think of too-low planes, falling towers.

It was as if billowing fabric had released our grief,
allowed us to recover breath. You turned back to me, hatless,
pointing to some fresh shimmer, spoke, too far away for me to hear.

Why do certain moments freeze in memory?
When they took down the banners and recycled the fabric
they gave small cloth squares to people who asked.

I have four in a clip on my desk. I picked one up today
and smoothed its curled-up edges, recalling how the show
was made to be a temporary wonder, was never meant to last.



Patricia Behrens grew up in Massachusetts and now lives and writes in New York City. Her poetry has appeared online and in journals such as American Arts Quarterly, Mom Egg Review, Perfume River Review, and The Same and in the anthologies Nasty Women Poets: An Anthology of Subversive Verse and Vine Leaves Literary Journal: a collection of vignettes from across the globe.

Fort Jackson, South Carolina, 1961 by Robert Demaree

1. Thanksgiving

Filled with turkey and family,
I recall another late gray November,
An Army post between wars,
Brave comrade clerks
In the Dental Detachment.
We nibble on celery,
Stuffed with cream cheese
And watch the Detroit Lions on TV.
My friend, from Grosse Pointe,
Wonders if his parents are there
This year, the first he has missed.
Our commanding officer,
Who had perhaps expected better,
Has put on his dress blues,
Walks around the room,
Makes himself greet
Each of us
Cordially:
Where are you from, Soldier;
What did you do on the outside?

Later, his wife calls reminding him
To pick up a jar of turkey gravy
On the way home.

2. Summer, Fall, Early Winter

Another friend is just back
From the flight of honor,
Service of a generation greater than mine.
Why do my days seem now unreal,
Six months active duty, actually less,
In a time disguised as peace?
Trainloads of boys from Oklahoma,
Sons of displaced natives;
Slim scraggly pines unable to shade
The sandy South Carolina soil,
Heat you could see rising
From the company street on Tank Hill;
A lingering Army fragrance:
Fatigues with dried sweat,
Aluminum cookware in the side sink,
Scalloped potatoes, detergent,
Spent shells on the firing line;
The empty threats of sergeants ignored.
Crawling the range at night,
Under wire that seemed to be barbed,
Fire we took to be live,
Preparation for the filing of dental records.

There have been no reunions.
I do not recall their names.
We did what we were asked to do.
I drove out of there at midnight
On the day the first American fell.



Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders, published in 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems have received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club. He is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Bob’s poems have appeared in over 150 periodicals including Cold Mountain Review and Louisville Review.

They will always be scammers, I tell the bishop by Sharon Waller Knutson

But he disagrees with me: Sinners
can change. We baptized them
and gave him a job in the thrift
store and her counseling for conning
you and all the charities in the county.

I almost believe him when I see
the husband driving off in the Chevy
at dawn without flipping cigarette
butts on the lawn and his wife walking
to town without stopping to complain.

She writes out the rent check, smiling
sweetly in a skirt skimming her calves
and blouse buttoned up to her neck.
But I am skeptical when the bishop
reports strange happenings.

First a Lazy Boy couch and chair
are reported missing from the thrift store
where he worked. Then he turns up dead.
He says she has applied for widow’s
benefits and I agree to go with him

to get the death certificate. Meeting
us at the door, she wipes her eyes
with a Kleenex and explains: the document
was delayed and invites us to sit on the Lazy Boy
couch next to her brother, a dead

ringer for her late husband. She plops
in the matching Lazy Boy chair
as the bishop and I exchange smirks.
Can’t we skip the paperwork.
I need the money to pay the rent.



Sharon Waller Knutson lives in the Arizona desert where she writes narrative poetry. Her work has appeared in various journals including Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Five-Two, Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, The Song Is… and U.S. Worksheets. “They will always be scammers, I tell the bishop” is a sequel to a poem that was posted by Red Eft Review on October 5, 2020. Click here to read it.

What I Might Have Said by Richard Nester

Everything stops.
When I look at my wrist,
I am reminded of the skinny bones
of marriage. That’s how
poetry works.
Something abstract is wedded
to something concrete. When describing
some tender emotion, do it in terms
of something you couldn’t
care less about like a brick or a cloud
or some tree roots.
Or the other way around.
The bigger you want to get, the smaller
you have to start. That way
we get the idea that least things
matter most. To touch deeply,
touch sharply, in one spot,
before your sight fails you altogether.



Richard Nester is the author of 4 books of poems, the most recent Red Truck Bear (Kelsay, 2020). His poems have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Cape Discovery: the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Anthology, Ploughshares, and Seneca Review and on-line in Qarrtsiluni and Inlandia.

Life, in Moments by Natascha Graham

Vita, who sits
Book propped open with a fork
At her Sissinghurst dining table
With jars of pickles and fine preserves,
With real butter on thick-cut bread
And little piles of the milk and brown bones of a pheasant
Would, should it be possible,
Exchange all the champagne in the world
For a glass of Rodmell water
To dine from Virginia’s garden
Off radishes pulled from the ground
Bitten from stalks
In the kitchen
In the late afternoon sunshine
Of September
-A scrambly lunch
With Virginia
Dropping hairpins
Wearing an old silk petticoat with a hole in it
And a dress with a hole in it
And the wind blowing right through her



Raised simultaneously by David Bowie and Virginia Woolf, Natascha Graham writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry, as well as writing for stage and screen. She lives with her wife in a house full of sunshine on the east coast of England. Her play, How She Kills, was performed by The Mercury Theatre in August 2020 and broadcast on BBC radio in September. Natascha's second play, Confessions: The Hours, has been performed by Thornhill Theatre London, and both have been selected by Pinewood Studios and Lift-Off Sessions as part of their First Time Filmmakers Festival 2020. Her poetry, fiction and non-fiction essays have been previously published by Acumen, Litro, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Yahoo News and The Mighty.

Shingle Street (When My Best Friend Died) by Natascha Graham

and she doesn’t look like Gillian at all
when I tell her.
Except her face is all screwed up
in that way that she has
when she’s chewing on her thoughts

She pokes a stick between stones into sand
How’d she die? She asks
up-turning the hollowed-out shell
of the body of a crab
Dunno, I say, then, she killed herself

And we sit, for a while
in old black coats
and wellington boots
with the old grey sea
who was never meant for me, or her
but here we are again,
anyway

And when we leave
over ploughed fields
and dust-cracked earth
in the old red Land Rover
that jolts
And the seats that squeak
and bounce
I don’t watch the sea
disappear
out of sight



Raised simultaneously by David Bowie and Virginia Woolf, Natascha Graham writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry, as well as writing for stage and screen. She lives with her wife in a house full of sunshine on the east coast of England. Her play, How She Kills, was performed by The Mercury Theatre in August 2020 and broadcast on BBC radio in September. Natascha's second play, Confessions: The Hours, has been performed by Thornhill Theatre London, and both have been selected by Pinewood Studios and Lift-Off Sessions as part of their First Time Filmmakers Festival 2020. Her poetry, fiction and non-fiction essays have been previously published by Acumen, Litro, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Yahoo News and The Mighty.

Mercurochrome by Steve Klepetar

There in shadow, steep stair wells
in brick buildings
around a dying square of grass.
How they chased us, as if
behind those hedges anything would grow.

Curses broke against our backs.
We learned to write them on the walls
in colored chalk,
hopped on sidewalks, leaped off stoops.

Across the street the high school,
immense and brooding and the rocky field
we weren’t allowed to use. We climbed the fence,
They chased us out with curses. We lost our ball.
In weeds we cut ourselves on broken glass,
went home to the kiss of mercurochrome on torn up knees.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. His work has appeared widely in the U.S. and abroad and has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.

Dream of Rain by Jocelyn Olum

california desert cools off in the evening, but heat lingers in the badly ventilated dorm rooms—
new freshman’s first night. still air, and a too-soft mattress,
and the incessant creaking from the boy who will sleep above him
some arizona kid who eats well and snores loud and dreams heavy.

new freshman supposes that he’ll get used to it. everybody must, after all, two whole semesters
in the place which is now to be his home—
his impermanent residence. ten months is just long enough to grow out of the habit
of his own bedroom, but too short and dry and institutionalized for anything but
the scraggliest of desert roots put down

anyway it doesn’t feel like home now. now it feels like standing fan loud against the
cricket-less stillness outside his window
like unfamiliar bed and door and bathroom, and a heavy double weight
hot air and the solid suffocating irrevocability of what life will now hold for him

he sighs out a too-warm breath and rolls over. the sound of his breathing
is muffled by the fan’s whirring and he does his best to lose himself to the unquiet
brush his mind clear like wiping pine needles from a flat rock in the forest
give up time and place for a green homeland serenity he now might only find in dreams

it doesn’t exactly work. when he drifts off finally it is a fitful sleep
disturbed by snores and sweat and the groaning of the bunk beds, but nevertheless
he passes the hours semi-conscious
eventually sometime past midnight a cool breeze wafts in through the window and he settles deeper behind his eyelids
asleep in skin and boxers and the single sheet he pulls up around his torso
the endless hush of the fan turns in his dreaming to the recent, childhood rainstorms
now only present in his mind.



Jocelyn Olum is a writer, a student, and a circus performer. She grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, where she was awarded both Gold and Silver Keys from the Regional Scholastic Writing Awards for Poetry.

Soon Enough by Jocelyn Olum

“I can’t help falling in love with you”
two times fast
is still pretty darn slow.

I used to listen to it that way
likeariverflowssurelytothesea
commuter train home in the evenings
anything to make the darkness outside the window look a little less scary—

you laughed when I told you that.
darlingsoitgoessomethingsaremeanttobe
I played it for you a year later
side by side in those big maroon train seats, which was not quite as romantic as I had imagined
wisemensayonlyfoolsrushin
one earbud for each of us, and our sweaty hands separated only by four impossible leather inches.



Jocelyn Olum is a writer, a student, and a circus performer. She grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, where she was awarded both Gold and Silver Keys from the Regional Scholastic Writing Awards for Poetry.

Relearned by Martha Christina

When my sister calls
to tell me our last
surviving aunt has died,
she says aunt as though
it were the insect, the same
way our parents and their
siblings said it, the last
of those voices, gone.

I moved away from family,
from their familiar accents;
I learned to say ahnt,
like my new neighbors.

In our weekly keep-in-touch
calls, my sister chides me
for my affectation, as she
calls it. But today, I repeat
our aunt’s name the way
I first learned to say it,
the way my sister says it,
the way we all did, back home.



Martha Christina has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press). Her work appears in earlier issues of Red Eft Review, and recently in Star 82 Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Tiny Seed Journal’s Pollinator Project. Born and raised in Indiana, she now lives in Bristol, Rhode Island.

At the Supermarket by William Blake Brown

I heard the happy footsteps hurrying
behind me, and I steered my shopping
cart to the side of the aisle by the bread
to clear a passing lane.
He looked to be about four, and he was
celebrating a pristine pair of shoes.
With every step, he planted
the sole with a satisfying slap.
His father, trailing in his wake caught
my smile and returned it as we shared
an understanding: it doesn’t take
much to make a kid happy.



A former journalist, William Blake Brown writes poetry and plays and makes photographs.

Anticipation Jostles by Diane Webster

Cat paces from door to me,
yowls incessant plea for out
not even a stern “no” pauses
as she hears doves outside feeding
on seed-strewn snow.

Wings flap as each dove vies
for biggest pile of seed
to stand in the middle of
like guarding chicks beneath wings
and twittering protests as pecking order
progresses through flock
until each ends up where it began.

Cat scratches door,
yowls louder until she leaps
into window sill; in unison
all doves fly.
Cat jumps to the floor,
silently waits beside door;
so I let her out.



Diane Webster grew up in Eastern Oregon before she moved to Colorado. She enjoys drives in the mountains and takes amateur photographs. Writing poetry provides a creative outlet exciting in images and phrases Diane thrives in. Her work has appeared in Home Planet News Online, Old Red Kimono, Salt Hill, and other literary magazines.

The Wooden Urn with Carved Daisies by Jean Biegun

Mother began as a tidy person,
hair primped just so for Sundays,
neck scarves tied according to photos
in her high school Home Ec book.

She’d rip out every crooked seam
we sewed on the treadle Singer,
scrubbed our hair three times with kerosene
when we brought home nits,
ironed even the sheets though the wind
flattened them pretty well on the line.

The day young Mel left for Viet Nam,
she washed every window including the cupola,
the high-up little room we never went to:
always told us cleaning something
was the start to fixing everything.

When he came home in a casket,
she let the flower beds go first,
and the daisies spread out helter-skelter.

Took years before her vegetable rows
came back somewhat straight,
for her skirt pleats to be almost crisp.
It was like mud had won out.

While the tumor did its slow dance
(borderline the word during that long turn),
she’d go to the garden,
sit on her short stool and sift the loosened
soil through her fingers.
No gloves.

Said she liked the warmth of it,
the way it anchored everything,
trees and houses and people:
that it was what we lived on.
She laughed every time we pointed out
the dirt under her nails.



Jean Biegun, retired in Sacramento, began writing poetry in 2000 to counter job stress, and it worked. Poems have appeared in After Hours, As It Ought to Be, Mobius: The Poetry Magazine, Mused: BellaOnline Literary Review, Ariel Chart, Goose River Anthology, World Haiku Review, Amethyst Review and other places.

The Harvard Square T by Daryl Muranaka

runaways squat
behind cardboard signs
sipping coffee
smoking cigarettes
SEEKING HUMAN KINDNESS



Daryl Muranaka lives in the Boston area with his wife and two children. He enjoys aikido and tai chi chuan and exploring his children’s multiple cultures. His poems have appeared in Gyroscope Review, Eunioa Review, and Akitsu Quarterly. He has published one collection and two chapbooks.

Up and Away by Shannon Cuthbert

Among my friends,
My claim to fame was being a balloon holder
At the Macy’s Day Parade.
I wanted that to be how I was remembered
If anything should happen.
For instance, if the balloon
Shaped inevitably like a Snoopy or Tweetie
Ran off with me one day.
I wanted the newscasters,
Especially the blonde on Channel Five,
To tear up into the camera,
Tell them what a brave soul I was,
To cross the Pacific holding onto a string.



Shannon Cuthbert is a writer and artist living in Brooklyn. Her poems have been nominated for three Pushcarts, and have appeared in Plum Tree Tavern, Bangor Literary Review, and The Oddville Press, among others. Her work is forthcoming in The Metaworker, Big Windows Review, and EcoTheo Review, among others.

Rocking Chair by Michael Estabrook

I wonder what
my grandfather did every day
in his little room
off the living room at the front of the house.
I know he’d sit in his rocker
read newspapers both The Daily
Home News and the New York Post
but you can’t read newspapers all day long
so what else did he do?
There was nothing else in there
that I could see
no books or hobbies or TV
not even a deck of cards.
Sometimes I’d glance in
and he’d be sitting in his rocker
staring out the window into the street
at nothing in particular.



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

Somehow by Michael Estabrook

I recall the first time I read
Dante’s Divine Comedy
all the way through
as a medical sales rep
carrying it with me faithfully
as I trudged through airport lounges and hotel hallways
diners, company lobbies, doctors' waiting rooms . . .

Not because I was trying to show off
traipsing around with such an important
work of literature
but instead because reading it lifted me up and out
of my humdrum existence
into a world I scarcely could’ve imagined
with demons and torture, angels and sunlight
and everything in between.

Expecting that the mere reading of every word
would save my soul somehow.



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

Haiku by George Held

Basho, asked to be
Superintendent of Poetry,
answered, softly, “no”



Winner of the blue ribbon for haiku at the 2019 Long Island NY State Fair, George Held has received eleven Pushcart Prize nominations. His most recent poetry collection is the chapbook Second Sight (2019), and his forthcoming book, The Lucky Boy, collects some of his short stories.

Haiku by George Held

A young buck, six points
glinting in November sun,
ready to rut



Winner of the blue ribbon for haiku at the 2019 Long Island NY State Fair, George Held has received eleven Pushcart Prize nominations. His most recent poetry collection is the chapbook Second Sight (2019), and his forthcoming book, The Lucky Boy, collects some of his short stories.

Evening by Howie Good

The sky shifted
from light to dark,
back and forth,
like a crime
gorgeously lit
by big arched windows.

There were
no cops around.
I could have
stayed a long time,
looking.



Howie Good's newest full-length poetry collection, Gun Metal Sky, is due in early 2021 from Thirty West Publishing.

Shoes by James Mulhern

Too old to put her shoes on,
she watched me place her feet
into her favorite pair of Doctor Scholl’s.

“My toes are crooked. They must look funny to you.”
I smiled, trying to ease her embarrassment.

“My mother cleaned houses for the rich,” she said.
“We had to wear the shoes she brought home.
They were often small.
That’s why they look that way.
The toes, I mean.” She laughed.

“I know.” I pulled the second shoe over her heel.
She looked out the window and sighed.

Did she see her mother walking down the street,
a bag of used shoes in her arms, shoulders curled in the wind?

My great-grandmother, moving slowly,
her own shoes worn and broken
like the skin on her red, cracked hands.

She would be teary but faintly smiling,
relieved she had something more to give.



James Mulhern’s writing has appeared in journals over one hundred and thirty times. In 2015, Mr. Mulhern was awarded a fellowship to Oxford University. One of his stories was longlisted for the Fish Short Story Prize. In 2017, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His novel, Give Them Unquiet Dreams, was a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2019.

Special by Joe Cottonwood

You can’t help but
watch them quarrel
about their ‘relationship’
as she calls it
while your coffee steams.
She finally says
Can you tell me I’m special in any way?
and he says
I’ll think about it
and you and everybody
at all the tables are silently urging
Leave now, sweetie
but she keeps badgering
Tell me one way I’m special
and he says
I’m still thinking
and she says
Tell me!
while his cheeks are slick with tears
Tell me!
until she rises from her chair
leans across the tiny table
kissing,
solemnly, deeply, slowly
and you have to look away.
Your coffee, everybody’s coffee
needs warming.



Joe Cottonwood has built or repaired hundreds of houses to support his writing habit in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. His latest book is Random Saints. joecottonwood.com

Translation by Jimmy Pappas

The spring
rain

continues to
tap

with nervous
fingers

an urgent
message

of gradual
decay.



Jimmy Pappas, a finalist in the 2017 Rattle Poetry Contest, won the 2018 Readers Choice Award. His book Scream Wounds contains poems based on veterans' stories. He won the 2019 Rattle chapbook contest for Falling Off the Empire State Building. His interview with Tim Green is on Rattlecast #34.

Releasing a Monarch by Jimmy Pappas

To my
surprise

it flies
up

above a
pine,

searching for
something

in the
sky

I cannot
find.



Jimmy Pappas, a finalist in the 2017 Rattle Poetry Contest, won the 2018 Readers Choice Award. His book Scream Wounds contains poems based on veterans' stories. He won the 2019 Rattle chapbook contest for Falling Off the Empire State Building. His interview with Tim Green is on Rattlecast #34.

The Robin's Nest by Jason Fisk

          -for Jim Harrison

The nest was mud-wedged
into the crotch of the tree
and for weeks my family
watched the process
standing on tippy toes
peering from the edge
of our deck

We watched as beaks opened
to receive food from mama bird
and we saw them grow
crowded in the nest
and they stood on the edge

flapping

their

wings

testing their new equipment

And then one morning
I came out with my coffee
and the nest that had once
been the center
of so much activity
and attention
was now empty

I thought about going over
to the base of the tree
to make sure that they all
made it out, but I didn’t
have the heart especially
after reading that half
of new birds don’t live
through their first year

Up to one billion birds die every year
Where do all the bird bodies go?
Do they just disappear to heaven?
Are they really angels?



Jason Fisk lives and writes in the suburbs of Chicago. He has worked in a psychiatric unit, labored in a cabinet factory, and mixed cement for a bricklayer. He was born in Ohio, raised in Minnesota, and has spent the last 25 years in the Chicago area. https://jasonfisk.blogspot.com/

Hourglass by John Valentine

Black Widows surging on the shed door.

New-born

But already deadly, the mother sending them

To warn

The world. So many coded messages:

The final fall

Of azaleas, a rigid deer by the road, darkness

In a dying face.

Living life in the sun, you forget

The shadows. The years.

Inexorability of the clock. There,

In the grass, time

Moving. The scatter, relentless.

The very hourglass

Itself.



John Valentine lives and works in Savannah, GA.

Today You Are Four Months Old by Emily Patterson

and I am existentially / tired. It is early / November
in a church basement where I voted for our next
President. I have new / glasses; I can see the teeth
on the Japanese maple leaves, red against / blue
sky. Motherhood has me / constantly searching
for firsts: / laugh, tooth, stretch / of sleep
long enough to hold uncharted / dreams.



Emily Patterson earned her B.A. in English from Ohio Wesleyan University--where she received the Marie Drennan Prize for Poetry--and M.A. in Education from Ohio State University. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Spry Literary Journal, Better Than Starbucks, Apeiron Review, Mothers Always Write, and elsewhere.

Cages by Lorette C. Luzajic

“I’m very powerful,” a friend told me once, and her silver tumble of curls as she cocked her head left a poem forever in my mind. I stirred my tea, waiting patiently for revelation. “I can feel the vibrations, the energy deep in the earth,” she said. I hated to kill the mood, but I had to. “I think we all can,” I said gently. “This café is right on top of the subway.” I pictured her in a velvet gown the colour of dried blood, wading in the sea, the picture of who she wanted to be. Her hands and face were moon pale. She was carrying a birdcage like a lantern.



Lorette C. Luzajic is an award-winning visual artist and widely published creative writer, living in Toronto, Canada. Her most recent book, Pretty Time Machine, is a collection of ekphrastic prose poems. She recently won the MacQueen's Quinterly flash fiction contest, and has been nominated for three Pushcarts and two Best of the Nets. Lorette is the editor of The Ekphrastic Review, a five year old journal of writing inspired by art. Visit her at www.mixedupmedia.ca.

What Am I Saving? by M.J. Iuppa

I stir the pan, watching plum
                                        tomatoes melt into a pottage

that bubbles & pops, sending
                                        its hot splash onto the stove top.

I am staring, I know, without
                                        seeing what’s happening

before me. I smell the burn of
                                        splotch simmering to carbon.

Elements smoke. I accidentally
                                        touch the heat with my fingertips

as I take a swipe with my sponge,
                                        but I don’t feel a thing.

I keep stirring, locked in position, like
                                        a woman spellbound—an ineffable

moment, if anyone were to watch me
                                        going through the motions

of putting by.



M.J. Iuppa’s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past 32 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.

The Gravity of Rain by M.J. Iuppa

In restless sleep, a murky storm
swarms, making it impossible
to hold a pose in bed

Toss then turn, it repeats
as lightning flares in
the mouth of clouds

and thunder worries, back
and forth, with heavy
footfalls

Why am I hiding?

Looking down upon
my body’s spread
like a distant star, I

know I am no longer
here or there—
a pinprick of light

a small comfort, maybe . . .
Electricity distills the air, leaving
a thick sour smell

then rain, un-
ribbons, tumbling
down



M.J. Iuppa’s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past 32 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.

With Love, Your Mother by Darrell Petska

What could she do
when her legs ignored her commands
to walk the rooms she’d groomed
like the children she’d raised through the years?
She wheeled through time and thus carried on.
What could she do
those days she could scarcely drag from her bed
to glimpse her yard’s lush handiwork,
the rampant daisies, nodding hollyhocks, spireas and mums
she once prodded and pushed like unwilling children
toward the fullness of their bloom?
She sorted old photos of her children
swinging, playing ball, singing and dancing,
then tucked them in folders labeled Marie, Jason, and Stu.
When her breath grew too frail to savor her kitchen,
her living room steeped with family auras,
or her nursery drapes bearing baby-fresh
scents of grandchildren bathed and bundled,
she drew life from a cold green tube and prayed her rosary.
And what could she do
when her children gathered to say, “Mom...”
then moved her to a room that smelled of antiseptic,
with a bed that possessed no memories, or at least not her own,
and a window whose view seemed painted on?
That no guilt could dilute her loving family’s loss,
she fought, fought long enough,
then in the peace of night let go.



Darrell Petska is a writer from Madison, Wisconsin. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Buddhist Poetry Review, Nixes Mate Review, Right Hand Pointing, Boston Literary Magazine, Verse-Virtual and Loch Raven Review. See his published work at conservancies.wordpress.com.

Stone Wall by Ronald Moran

Scoffing advice from any landscaper,
my father built a low stone wall
separating the part of our lot in back
that swooped down toward patches
of scrub and a creek from our slim
run of grass, when snakes began
sunning themselves on his newly
laid rocks during hot summer days:

copperheads and blacksnakes often
lying next to each other, sometimes
touring the flat area of our backyard,
boldly impervious to any restrictions
my father thought might obtained if he
built the wall with no help whatsoever.



Ronald Moran has published poems in a number of journals, including Asheville Poetry Review, Evening Street Review, North American Review, Northwest Review, Tar River Poetry, and Yankee. His last six books of poetry were published by Clemson University Press. He lives in Simpsonville, SC.

Response to a Planting by Ronald Moran

When I saw it sticking out of the dark
patch of mulch in my backyard, I knew
it had to have been planted by my fine
neighbors next door. They look out for me
as if I were incapable of doing anything
by myself in the vast domain of vegetation.
I agree.

Early next morning, I shaved, showered,
drank my juice, ate my banana, went out,
stood by the curb, stopped the first walker
I saw, asked her to view, 

then identify my planting. She called it 

a crepe myrtle.

I stood alone in the chill of the morning,
thinking, How come? Having always assumed
a crepe myrtle was a delicacy served only
to the elite for breakfast. Some time ago
I watered the plastic flowers under my mailbox
for several months, until the guy next door said
to stop.



Ronald Moran has published poems in a number of journals, including Asheville Poetry Review, Evening Street Review, North American Review, Northwest Review, Tar River Poetry, and Yankee. His last six books of poetry were published by Clemson University Press. He lives in Simpsonville, SC.

We're All Getting On by Nancy Byrne Iannucci

          -for Keith Hufnagel

When I asked my brother
how far a walk it was from Mulberry
to 98 Orchard Street, he said,
"It’s one bunion and two corns away."

Hiding hurt with jokes is how he copes,
but I saw through his bushy bearded laugh,
and expensive Italian shoes. Me in my 1960s
Mary Janes came prepared

to do a Mr. Rogers switch on the way,
but that kind of pain never came. We
were en-route to see Keith,
and not see him at the same time,

dulling the usual splendor and chaos
of the Lower East Side. We walked
by a protestor preaching on Delancey,
guitarists, and squatters

all doing their thing, sitting next
to their signs, but the only messages
we could see were in curbs, ledges,
and traffic cones that once caught

his pop and style.
At every corner time ticked back
a click to when Manhattan
was his and theirs, a hum of bees

pushing through rush-hour streets,
making Lafayette Supreme back in 1995.
I was still wearing my Mary Janes
when we reached Orchard.

A crop of old familiar faces
greeted us, some sitting
on their boards,
others taking photos with Keith

who was smiling hanging on the gallery wall.
"This is the first time one of our friends
died of an illness and not drugs,"
Jones said, "we’re all getting on."



Nancy Byrne Iannucci is the author of Temptation of Wood (Nixes Mate Review 2018) and Goblin Fruit (Impspired, September 2021). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a number of publications including Gargoyle, Ghost City Press, Clementine Unbound, Dodging the Rain, Three Drops from a Cauldron, 8 Poems, Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist), Hobo Camp Review, and Typehouse Literary Magazine. Nancy is a Long Island, NY native who now resides in Troy, NY where she teaches history at the Emma Willard School.

Weather Girl by Duncan Smith

Sitting here on my trailer’s stoop
waiting for the next tornado.

My Army Ranger rotates round the bed
stuffing his knapsack with everything he owns.
He’s off to his next deployment.
10% chance it’s another country;
90% chance another woman.

Tonight’s forecast calls
for another shift at the Mini-Mart.
Where my customers are mean,
the wage minimum,
the probabilities not
the ones you want.



Duncan Smith is a librarian-entrepreneur who lives and writes in Durham, NC. His essays, poetry and prose have appeared in Booklist, Broad River Review and The Crucible. A North Carolina native, he is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Absentee Ballot by Vera Kewes Salter

Decades ago I moved in with him
in an excess of passion and never left.
I lived my own life though I may
have overindulged his whims.

Today when I bring him his ballot,
he asks for the Argonwald 1916
letter opener my mother
gave him for his 41st birthday.

I pace as he slowly slits
the envelop and pulls out
the ballot and the second
envelope with stiff fingers.

He reads the instructions
and asks whether he should
fill in the circles straight
across the top.

I give him a pen and watch as
he slowly colors the bubbles,
eases the ballot into the secure
envelop and signs on a slant.

I tell him that today's date is
written 10.10.2020. I drive us
to the post office. How much
is love and how much duty?

Vera Kewes Salter was born in England to a family of refugees from Europe. She moved to the United States and married and raised a family here. She has recent publications in Writing in a Woman's Voice, Red Eft Review, Right Hand Pointing and Persimmon Tree.

Two Poems for a Late Friend by Robert Demaree

1.

Someone said that we have come
To Golden Pines to die.
My friend said: No—to live.
Well past 90, he played golf,
Wrote and recited
Long strands of verse,
Robert Burns and Robert Frost,
And his own wry take on the world he saw.

Soldier, actor, salesman,
Student, scholar, leader,
Husband, father, teacher, friend,
Adored by the grandchild in us all,
Deeply faithful to his school, his church,
To those who counted on him,
Spinner of yarns born of
A South Carolina growing up,
Child of a minister who held,
As our culture holds,
That he has gone now to a better place
Where he can speak of
Poetry and decency and grace
With those who precede him there.
For us, this place, this firmament
In which we dwell for now,
Has lost a star,
Shines less brightly
Than yesterday.

2.

The afternoon following the service
And the eulogists are at loose ends.
Intense that morning with texts
They wrote and read
To honor the professor,
Their mentor, their poet-friend,
They begin now to settle in
To the deep unendingness of his,
Of anyone’s, being gone.

What do we believe, they wonder,
What should we believe?
Could we be persuaded like Paul,
By Paul,
Is it a long, deteriorating sleep,
Or, one smiles to ask,
Should we play along,
Just in case, faith
A comfort to survivors?
Will we see the light
Jane Kenyon saw?
Guess we’ll find out.



Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders, published in 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems have received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club. He is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Bob’s poems have appeared in over 150 periodicals including Cold Mountain Review and Louisville Review.

Clouds by Howie Good

It’s late in the day,
and the clouds
are mischievously shaped

like swan boats,
ripples on a pond,
like a face whose once dear details
I’m trying to remember

and can’t.



Howie Good is the author of two new poetry collections, The Death Row Shuffle (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and The Trouble with Being Born (Ethel Micro-Press, 2020).

The Misanthrope's Talent by David Spicer

I’m not prejudiced, I hate everyone, my father liked
to say, and that includes me. I never asked him why:
maybe he failed in the jobs he worked at haphazardly,
for this short man had less patience than a bored judge,
but one task he undertook with a grace nobody matched,
the one skill other people envied? His penmanship,
imitated by sisters and brothers, daughters and sons,
customers marveling at the way he handled a fountain pen:
his stroke quick and sure as he wrote his name, the J
of his James looping like a sail on a white sea of paper,
the serifs on the gate of his initial H four fancy curling waves,
and the S of his surname a musical note that sang in silence,
he wrote his name with a statesman’s pride. Then, the man
who couldn’t love soared like John Hancock’s ghost.



David Spicer has published over seven hundred poems. Nominated for a Best of the Net four times and a Pushcart twice, he is author of six chapbooks and four full-length collections, the latest two are American Maniac (Hekate) and Confessional (Cyberwit.net). His fifth, Mad Sestina King, is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press.

Amputee #10 by Matthew Borczon

The amputee
worked hard
in the hospital.

Determined
to stand
when he
received his
medal.



Matthew Borczon is a poet and Navy sailor. He has published thirteen books of poetry and is included in numerous anthologies, journals and college textbooks. He is a sailor in the Navy reserve who recently returned from deployment to NYC to help fight the Covid-19 outbreak. He is married with four children.

Amputee #6 by Matthew Borczon

The soldier
asked me
if I knew
what happened
to his
boot.

He never
asked
about his
foot.



Matthew Borczon is a poet and Navy sailor. He has published thirteen books of poetry and is included in numerous anthologies, journals and college textbooks. He is a sailor in the Navy reserve who recently returned from deployment to NYC to help fight the Covid-19 outbreak. He is married with four children.

Amputee #4 by Matthew Borczon

Looking at
a Marine
with one
arm gone
and thinking
he was
pretty lucky

was the
day I
realized
I had
been in
Afghanistan
too long.



Matthew Borczon is a poet and Navy sailor. He has published thirteen books of poetry and is included in numerous anthologies, journals and college textbooks. He is a sailor in the Navy reserve who recently returned from deployment to NYC to help fight the Covid-19 outbreak. He is married with four children.

What Is Wild by Jean Ryan

"I won't hurt you," I want to say
to the spider crouched in my shadow,
to the lizard ready to run,
to the finch startled from the feeder,
to the squirrel already gone.
I have tried, again and again:
whispering the words,
slowly offering my palm,
searching those glossy black eyes,
as if I will never learn
that what is wild wants only
my distance.



Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in coastal Alabama. Her debut collection of short stories, Survival Skills, was published by Ashland Creek Press and short-listed for a Lambda Literary Award. Lovers and Loners is her second story collection. She has also published a novel, Lost Sister, and a book of nature essays, Strange Company.

Shadow & Light by Carolynn Kingyens

Shadow:

He once called her
his better half –
before the arrival
of children,
the car payments,
and bankruptcy,
before the sex addiction,
the mistress,
and murder
in the middle of the night –
“a familicide,”
they called it
on the six o’clock news.

It always starts a seed,
a snag, some technicality –
a lust so small
you have to squint
to see it.

Light:

Now the heroes,
those firefighters,
who’d storm
the Twin Towers,
carrying the weight
of breath in tanks,
before climbing
an infinity of stairs
to an awaiting doom.

Or how that rookie cop,
the son of a veteran,
delivered a baby boy
in the backseat
of a beat-up Buick,
outside Vegas,
gently placing the
wet, screaming newborn
inside the warmth
of his coat,
before bringing him
close to the heart.



Carolynn Kingyens’ debut book of poetry, Before the Big Bang Makes a Sound (Kelsay Books), can be ordered through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Greenlight, Book Culture, and Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop. In addition to poetry, Carolynn writes narrative essays, book reviews, micro/flash fiction, and short stories. Her latest short story, "Fast Car," can be read here. She lives in New York City with her husband of almost 21 years, two beautiful, kind daughters, a sweet rescue dog, and a very old, chill cat.

Coupling (2008) by Carolynn Kingyens

I listened to you retell it,
the story of how we first met
to our new friends
from our new church.
I sat in silence
with my hands under the table,
wrapping my dirty, cloth napkin
around a small fist.

Your version of events
were tidy and clean,
when you said
you knew I was the woman
you were destined to marry
the moment you saw me
in your doorway,
punctual as always,
asking for Harrison,
my blind date,
and your perpetually late
roommate.

Our new friend, Allison,
cocked her head, cooing out
a falsetto's squeal
to her mute husband –
Isn't that romantic.

If she only knew our truth;
you had no interest
in wanting to marry me
the day I showed up
in your messy doorway
with empty chip bags and t-shirts
strewn across wood floors,
that it had nothing to do
with coupling.

I was ripe, hot,
willing to please -
not yet the bitch
you would later marry.

I was naïve in a white,
strapless sundress,
and long hair still shower-damp,
smelling of mint and clover.

I let you kiss my mouth,
my neck, my back
in your bedroom;
let you hide me
inside your closet
when Harrison rapped
on your door,
asking about a girl.



Carolynn Kingyens’ debut book of poetry, Before the Big Bang Makes a Sound (Kelsay Books), can be ordered through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Greenlight, Book Culture, and Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop. In addition to poetry, Carolynn writes narrative essays, book reviews, micro/flash fiction, and short stories. Her latest short story, "Fast Car," can be read here. She lives in New York City with her husband of almost 21 years, two beautiful, kind daughters, a sweet rescue dog, and a very old, chill cat.

I am hired after the management company is fired for not collecting the rent by Sharon Waller Knutson

The 19-year-old tenant
slides out from under
the Chevy leaking oil
in the driveway and
tosses his cigarette butt
on the lawn. Sorry
I can’t pay the rent
because I have car
payments. I hand him
an eviction notice.

His 17-year-old wife
stomps bare foot. I don’t have time
for this. I’m late for my math
class, I’ve been puking
all morning, my poor
grandmother is on Social
Security and thanks to you
she is broke. She slams
down a check on my desk.
By the way, she says, the faucet
is dripping, but the plumber
says it works just fine.

The mayor calls and says
the city is paying their rent.
Why? I ask. He beat
her and left her pregnant
and penniless. I look out
and see him changing a tire
flat as her belly as she
stands by the Chevy.
He is still here. The check
arrives in the mail.

The cigarette butts pile up
and oil drips in the driveway
daily as she tells me
about the termites, the ants,
the mice, the fried wires,
banging pipes. Something stinks.
I know something stinks
as the experts bill me
for their wasted time.

I’m stuck with them because
the rent checks keep coming
from the county, the state,
the Baptists, the Lutherans,
the Presbyterians, the Methodists,
the Mormons and the Unitarians.
My patience is as thin as her body
as she demands: Shampoo
my carpet before the baby comes.
I tell her I’m the manager,
not the maid, and to stop bothering
me with her nonsense.

The due date arrives and departs
but there is no baby and no check.
I watch her empty her vacuum
bag in the front yard before
calling and shrieking: The carpet
and yard are filthy and I’m not
paying any rent until you clean it up.
I know she’s run out of charities to con
and hand her an eviction notice.
She smirks. Legal Aid says you
can’t evict me for complaining.



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, Your Daily Poem and The Song Is…. 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.

First Day 2020 by Jack Powers

On this early September morning the neighborhood is loud with children
posing for pictures in driveways, waving from bus steps, adjusting new masks,
nodding to the driver in gloves and shield, settling into Lysol-scented seats

and now parents wave as the yellow bus moves to the next driveway
and the scene repeats. Leaving pods of parents waving in the distance,
a lawn's length between them, the roar and stop, roar and stop receding

down the tree-lined road. No parades this year growing at each driveway
and pausing at street's end for the group photo of jostling children
scoping out the new year's pecking order, showing off new backpacks, lost teeth.

No parents mingling outside the school, inhaling the hope of a new year,
exhaling the sadness of a summer gone. No chatter as they return to their offices
and their errands past straggly tomato plants, weary-leaved maples and oaks.

This year they mourn in solitude or in pairs, take the steps back to their desks
and monitors, stopping first to wash their hands as they sing a little song.



Jack Powers is the author of Everybody’s Vaguely Familiar and has had poems in The Southern Review, The Cortland Review, Red Eft Review and elsewhere. He won the 2015 and 2012 Connecticut River Review Poetry Contests and was a finalist for the 2013 and 2014 Rattle Poetry Prizes. He recently retired from teaching special education in Redding, Connecticut. Visit his website: http://www.jackpowers13.com/poetry/.

Grin and Bear It by Martha Christina

My surviving sister tells me
she went alone to scatter
our older sister’s cremains
over the family plot where
our parents are buried, and
was surprised by a tiny angel
shining among the bits of
bone and ash; the pin
our mother gave our sister
as a birthday gift, years ago.

She pressed it into the soil
above our mother’s grave,
and left it there.

We are half a continent apart,
connected by FaceTime on phones
neither Alexander Graham Bell
nor our parents would recognize.
A toast, my sister suggests, and we
raise our glasses, hers in Indiana,
mine in Rhode Island. Here’s to
a better rest of the day, she says,
and let’s grin and bear it.



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, Crab Orchard Review, and Tiny Seed Literary Journal's Pollinator Project. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

Cookie-Cutter Dream by Martha Christina

We’re at the drinking 

fountain, just in from 

recess. My third-grade 

boyfriend’s wearing 

his Cub Scout uniform 

and opens the wallet he 

made at camp to show me 

a picture of his grandsons; 

two never-born boys 

with his red hair and freckles. 

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, Crab Orchard Review, and Tiny Seed Literary Journal's Pollinator Project. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

Long Division by Barbara Alfaro

          for Sheridan Smith

I never told the first man in my life I loved him.
I never thanked him for helping me with math.

He could do long division in his head.
I never said how impressive it was that he

graduated from high school at fifteen or sad
the money he’d saved for college paid for

his brother’s surgery. I doubt my grandmother,
an Irish immigrant, knew about scholarships.

I never thanked him for being the only one
who didn’t judge me when I left my husband.

Four or five years old and curled on his lap,
I played possum and pretended to be asleep

because I knew when my mother said, “Sherry,
put her to bed,” my father would always answer

“Not just yet, Irene, I don’t want to disturb her.”
I never told the first man in my life I loved him.



Barbara Alfaro is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Playwriting. Her memoir Mirror Talk won the IndieReader Discovery Award for Best Memoir. Barbara’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poet Lore, Boston Literary Magazine, Trouvaille Review, Voices de la Luna, The Blue Mountain Review and Variant Literature. http://www.BarbaraAlfaro.net

Hand Holder by Allison Futterman

A cold, wet day—
They make their way to the museum.
Never a gentleman,
he holds the umbrella only over himself.

They’re engaged—
adjective, not verb.
A rare Saturday spent together,
which feels no different than being alone.

They work their way through the exhibit—
he walks ahead, oblivious to her.
She sees a little boy grab his hand,
obviously mistaking it for that of his father.

He shakes the small, sweet innocent hand—
out of his own.
Shakes it with force and revulsion.
In that moment, she knows they’re done.

Judith the Obsessive by Kyle Hemmings

She places a vase of plastic peonies
square center of the dining room
window.

She composes her water color paintings,
especially the ones of geese in the park,
strictly according to the rule of thirds.

She hates it when they guard their
mates sitting on their eggs, or flap 
their wings when she gets too close.

Over time, she learns to respect
DISTANCE.

As a rule of thumb, her husband will
come home and ask what she's cooking.
By now, he knows she only does microwave.
She tells him to wash his hands for 30 seconds.
Dinner will be served in twenty-two
minutes. It’s a little joke between them.

As usual, she will seem distant, distracted
by something she can’t quite grasp.

But it’s nothing at all. The great artist
who composed all of us will sooner
or later place everything in its
proper place.



Kyle Hemmings has been published in Sonic Boom, Right Hand Pointing, Unbroken Journal, and elsewhere. He is the ex associate editor of Yavanika Press.

What I Remember About Kissing Ricker Kentroff by Shoshauna Shy

on my basement sofa
one August afternoon
was the moment we happened
to look up through the window
at my mother unpinning
bed sheets from the line
her dress a full billow
like a sun umbrella
the nest of fur sandwiched
between mammoth thighs

how Ricker rolled off me
Didn’t visit again



Author of 5 collections of poetry, Shoshauna Shy's poems and flash fiction have appeared in a variety of anthologies, journals and magazines, and even on the hind quarters of Madison Metro buses. She usually gets ideas for new poems and stories while stuck doing something else.

Her 90th December by Shoshauna Shy

Sun hesitant this short day
During her husband’s funeral.
Crowding into the church

Muscles his youngest brother
Who died on a 16th birthday;
The twin sons another long-gone brother

Did not have; the daughter of a third brother
Who perished in a fire at the age of six.
There are the brothers and sisters

That she herself was not given
In that silent channel she paddled
Called childhood. Squeezing into place

Beside her two daughters
Are the handsome virile men
That they befriended time and again

Yet never married,
Along with the in-laws
Not acquired, the grandbabies

Never born.
So full the sanctuary,
Even while empty.



Author of 5 collections of poetry, Shoshauna Shy's poems and flash fiction have appeared in a variety of anthologies, journals and magazines, and even on the hind quarters of Madison Metro buses. She usually gets ideas for new poems and stories while stuck doing something else.

I {Heart} My Wife by Shoshauna Shy

My husband loves me, too,
but what kind of man plasters
a sticker like that onto the bumper
of his pick-up?
Perhaps it’s an in-law’s inside joke
or his wife slapped it on
after a week-long rage when
the truce included that he
broadcast his passion, let it serve
as fair warning to any woman
at bartime – Oh, that silver
in his sideburns, the diamond glint
in dark eyes, even his thickened
torso courtesy of apple pies
in matrimony’s kitchen!
Although he could have rubbed
that sticker on himself knowing
ladies try harder, sigh deeper,
treat him more tenderly when
propelled by jealous surges,
are compelled to try a shoplift
of a man wussed by wedlock
while the unmarried get wistful,
the long-married depressed.



Author of 5 collections of poetry, Shoshauna Shy's poems and flash fiction have appeared in a variety of anthologies, journals and magazines, and even on the hind quarters of Madison Metro buses. She usually gets ideas for new poems and stories while stuck doing something else.

Man Found Dead in City Park Restroom by David B. Prather

Thistle and primrose blur
along the street, those untended patches
in the breeze of passing cars.

Long-suffering purple
flowers shake their foolhardy heads,
even this close

to bike paths and tennis courts.
Yellow blossoms promise renewal
as they shiver through

chain link fence. Sunlight
leaves tracks up and down the arms
of oak trees here, where

every other road ends
in shadow shift and curb despair.
It gets so a body can’t leave

the house without stumbling
over addiction. Knotweed leans
against block walls, closes its weary eyes.

Some of us never mean to leave
this world. We mean to rush away
with daylight, ready to rise

anew after the mortal hours
of night. How telling, the flowers,
goldenrod, yarrow.



David B. Prather is the author of We Were Birds (Main Street Rag Publishing). His work has appeared in many journals, including Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, and Poet Lore. He studied acting at The National Shakespeare Conservatory, and he studied writing at Warren Wilson College. He lives in Parkersburg, WV.

I Always Wanted Galway Kinnell’s Hair, by David B. Prather

that loamy color of soil deep in a forest, that shadow
beneath pine trees, that musk of wild things hidden,
watching every move,
                                        that touch of wind,
that finger-combed look where locks fall over
the forehead, that hint of carelessness
looking devil-may-care, looking sexual
or roguish or midsummer-night-dreamish.
I always wanted
                                        that casual look
like I just rolled out of bed after making love,
that sense of getting away with something
even though the whole world knows
                                        what I’ve been up to,
that feeling of spending another night
in the ruins with rocks and branches,
sky and fog and stars above.
                                       Someone waits
for just this moment, knowing all I want,
to walk into the house after flower herding,
hair in my eyes, that kind of blindness
when someone, a lover, brushes their fingers
across my face to sweep those strands away.



David B. Prather is the author of We Were Birds (Main Street Rag Publishing). His work has appeared in many journals, including Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, and Poet Lore. He studied acting at The National Shakespeare Conservatory, and he studied writing at Warren Wilson College. He lives in Parkersburg, WV.

susceptible by J.J. Campbell

the soft curves
of your brown
skin

feel as right as
any bottle, glass
or joint has ever
felt in my hands

i get lost in your
eyes every time
i take the chance
to just shut up
and listen

if i’m going to
be susceptible
to addiction

it might as well
be you



J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) is stuck in the suburbs, plotting his escape. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Synchronized Chaos, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Beatnik Cowboy, otoliths and Cajun Mutt Press. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

The First Parts by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

A seed into a trunk
and arms for climbing.

A tulip bulb rises
& opens a palm of plush petals.

All galaxies form from dust
and children from touch.

That first night
I made you dinner,

starting with chopped garlic,
fresh ginger, and sliced shallots—

the humble foundation
of almost everything

I love to eat—
I asked you to kiss me,

saying, If this kiss doesn’t work,
nothing else will.



Sarah Dickenson Snyder has three poetry collections, The Human Contract, Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), and With a Polaroid Camera (2019). Recent work has appeared in Rattle, Artemis, The Sewanee Review, and RHINO. sarahdickensonsnyder.com

Home Haircut by James Crews

I run the clippers over his scalp
watching tufts of grown-out hair
gather at the blades of the guard
then fall away to the towel wrapped
around his shoulders, to the slats
of the deck, before being carried off
by a breeze to the far reaches of the yard.
Because no other hands can touch him
on this first warm day of spring,
I'm cutting my husband's hair, at last
snapping off the black plastic guard
and shaving a line at his neck as I imagine
robins, sparrows, and goldfinches
the next morning squabbling over
those softer, cast-off pieces of him now
scattered on the wind, now clamped
in their beaks, and lining the middle
of tucked-away nests as they dream
of hatchlings soon to be swaddled
in a bed of his blond curls.



James Crews is the author of three collections of poetry, The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, and Bluebird. He is also the editor of Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. He lives with his husband in Shaftsbury, Vermont.

Hygge by James Crews

The Danish word, hygge (pronounced hoo-ga), refers to anything that offers a quality of coziness, comfort, and well-being.

Steam rises from broth on the stove
and fogs the windows as we move across
cold floors in wool socks and flannel,
chopping carrots, onions, and potatoes
for the chicken soup that's slowly coming.
Outside, the red coal of a cardinal burns
a hole in the otherwise white day while
inside, when it's time to eat, we fill
our bowls to brimming with this medicine
we have made together out of all the earth
gave when it was awake, and all it will
give again—that guarantee stored like
the sun in every warm bite, in every sip
that goes down as golden as summer light.



James Crews is the author of three collections of poetry, The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, and Bluebird. He is also the editor of Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. He lives with his husband in Shaftsbury, Vermont.

Stubborn Praise by James Crews

          for Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Bless the unkind, the mean, the petty—
for they remind us how not to move
through our lives. True, we can allow
the anger of others to turn us bitter,
fool us into thinking the whole world
is made of nettles ready to sting us
wherever we touch. But let's instead
go around stubbornly praising those
whose hearts stay closed, though we
can't yet see the line of light shining
beneath the locked door, though we
can't quite trust that kindness stirs
in each of us like the child we were,
wanting only to run through a field
with friends at dusk, holding hands
and chasing the sun.



James Crews is the author of three collections of poetry, The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, and Bluebird. He is also the editor of Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. He lives with his husband in Shaftsbury, Vermont.

My Carving Life by Frederick Wilbur

Behind Albinoni’s oboe concerto on NPR,
a woodpecker chisels to his own measure

the rake board of my shop roof looking for
carpenter bee grubs in their round wombs.

I brush walnut chips from the carving bench
that is cross-hatched by implacable mistakes—

the earnestness of apprentice labor.
Bee dung on white clapboard points to

the corruption of trim that I’ll have to replace
on the first cool afternoon of autumn,

so the bird’s splinters and ragged excavations
are of no matter to me except we

work wood together. We know the progress
of seasons toward deadlines, the same payment

for survival. Someday my children will
understand our serious art and how

we found it in the livelihood we pursue;
my signature in blood as indelible

as the bird’s red disappearing
into the vicissitudes of forest nearby.



Frederick Wilbur’s poetry has appeared in many print and online journals. His collections of poetry are As Pus Floats the Splinter Out and The Conjugation of Perhaps forthcoming from Main Street Rag Publishing.

Escazu by Kenneth Salzmann

Two roads run down the shoulder
of the mountain into Escazu:
one is a brief indulgence
snuggled behind iron bars
screeching sirens
and sunbaked certitude;
the other is a jazz funeral
sounded loud
by dusty third-world dogs
scratching at tin shacks
that pour music into
rising strands of night
driving lusting melodies
deep into dirt road darkness
when the peasant moon
rumbles like a new drum.



Kenneth Salzmann lives in the mountains of central Mexico. He is the author of The Last Jazz Fan and Other Poems and co-editor of the anthologies What Remains: The Many Ways We Say Goodbye and the forthcoming What But the Music.

Growing Up Appalachian (June Bugs) by Ben Rasnic

As kids we would tie a white string
to the hind leg
of June bugs we captured,   

the emerald backs
of those curious creatures
shimmering in the sun, circling
against a backdrop
of clear azure sky.

The kids
whose parents
were more affluent
flew paper kites

or remote control
airplanes, inevitably tangling
in the neighboring evergreens
or crashing to the ground.

I always felt
we were the lucky ones,

despite the protestations
of 3-legged June Bugs.



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 Way by Laura Foley

A soft spring morning,
tender rain after a violent night,
of house-shaking winds,
loud belts of thunder.
I stride to my car,
with backpack,
yoga mat, snacks,
my wife calls to me
from our bedroom’s
second floor window—
she must have removed the screen—
she leans out,
calling in love and friendliness,
and it occurs to me
I finally have what I wanted
all my life, as I smile back,
on the way to my day.



Laura Foley is the author of seven poetry collections. Why I Never Finished My Dissertation received a starred Kirkus Review and was among their top poetry books of 2019. Her collection It's This is forthcoming from Salmon Press. Laura lives with her wife among the hills of Vermont. www.laurafoley.net

Keep Trying by Laura Foley

After snowshoeing up the steep hill
in deep swathes of snow, we stop,
beneath a glittering globe of sky
the space of silence opens over us—

standing as if we were the base,
channeling current to a bulb too hot
to touch. We remove gloves, hats,
jackets, in surprising winter heat—

in this quiet spot on the top,
in a forest of would-be lamps, sensing
the thaw that will spark their green,
our lips find each other’s.

Gazing upward, stretched out
together on snow, yet apart,
we keep trying, as Mary Oliver instructs,
to make of ourselves a light,

one bright enough to guide us
to kindness, toward ourselves,
toward each other,
toward every living thing—

hoping to carry that shine
back down the hill,
into our separate lives.



Laura Foley is the author of seven poetry collections. Why I Never Finished My Dissertation received a starred Kirkus Review and was among their top poetry books of 2019. Her collection It's This is forthcoming from Salmon Press. Laura lives with her wife among the hills of Vermont. www.laurafoley.net

Aesthetics by Sandi Leibowitz

The birthday party
on the beach:
a mockingbird posing
on the restaurant’s weather vane,
silhouette sharp as if cut from black paper;
sailboats on the blue curve of bay;
three green-umbrellaed tables
spread on the sand;
sunlight caught in the ice
of beaded water pitchers
glinting like the Met’s chandeliers—
beautiful.

But most beautiful of all,
my friend’s father,
paterfamilias, our host,
strolling blissfully through the surf
with his tiny, swim-suited grand-daughters
in his long-sleeved white shirt,
black pants, and laced black shoes.



Sandi Leibowitz, author of Ghost Light, The Bone-Collector, and Eurydice Sings, lives in New York City. Her poetry has garnered second- and third-place Dwarf Stars, as well as nominations for the Elgin, Rhysling, Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net awards. Please visit her at www.sandileibowitz.com.

Praying Mantis: In Memory of Louella by Julene Tripp Weaver

My Great Grandmother, Louella,
on my mother’s side, lived long
and strong till nearly 98.
In my teens she had a stroke,
lived on our closed-in porch
in Queens. She became my advocate.
What they did was wrong—
forced her to move to the city
from her country farmhouse—
after they found that frozen
praying mantis on her screen door
early spring. An omen they said.

Each summer we drove upstate
to Great Grandmas. Mother and Uncle
grumbled, she's too old to spend winters alone.
Then, that praying mantis—
a sign of paralysis—so they moved her
like they moved me—to a concrete
bound world, the city.
She stood up for me, said
it was fine I go on a first date.
She became our neighborhood
window watcher, knew everyone,
every secret on our block.

She told stories, at Kitty Hawk
the first airplane flew like a bird,
stories from the Civil War, how the men
in our family fought, her husband on
the North side, the right side.
We lost so many memories
when we lost Louella.



Julene Tripp Weaver, a native New Yorker, is a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle. Her book, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and won the Bisexual Book Award. Check out more of her work at www.julenetrippweaver.com.

Artifacts of Love by Meg Pokrass

Bodies are artifacts
of time spent in search of love.
The mirror reflects greyish hair
A neck of sweet creases.
Skin that has tanned,
Been made up,
lingered long in smoky rooms.
The maps around my eyes remember
a country of vague approval,
the best one was always:
‘You’re different’,
an endless procession of mornings
waking up different.



Meg Pokrass is the author of five flash fiction collections and a book of prose poetry, Cellulose Pajamas, for which she received the Blue Light Book Award. Her work has been widely and internationally anthologized, most recently in New Micro (W.W. Norton & Co., 2018), Flash Fiction International (W.W. Norton & Co., 2015) and The Best Small Fictions 2018, 2019. She serves as Founding Co-Editor of Best Microfiction.

House Near the Long Beach Airport by Meg Pokrass

Your not-boyfriend is cooking a chicken
in his mother’s kitchen.
The house is upside down.
His sister holds a blow dryer,
her hair like knotted black rope
so beautiful it hurts.
The soup is almost ready to taste.
Tomatoes from their garden
near the Long Beach airport.
Sour, like the rumble of planes
which means he’ll leave again soon.
The house will become right side up.
His brother with the worried eyes
will return from work, muscled arms like a fork,
will ask if you would like to be his supper.



Meg Pokrass is the author of five flash fiction collections and a book of prose poetry, Cellulose Pajamas, for which she received the Blue Light Book Award. Her work has been widely and internationally anthologized, most recently in New Micro (W.W. Norton & Co., 2018), Flash Fiction International (W.W. Norton & Co., 2015) and The Best Small Fictions 2018, 2019. She serves as Founding Co-Editor of Best Microfiction.

No Luck at All by Meg Pokrass

It's as if luck were a finicky houseguest
who left quietly
dripping parmesan cheese in her wake.
The smell of luck is in here
somewhere, but only the animals
can sense it. The dog sits waiting
for a treat, the cat stares outside
at moving bird shadows.
The lizard sits profoundly silent,
waiting for the luck of dead crickets.



Meg Pokrass is the author of five flash fiction collections and a book of prose poetry, Cellulose Pajamas, for which she received the Blue Light Book Award. Her work has been widely and internationally anthologized, most recently in New Micro (W.W. Norton & Co., 2018), Flash Fiction International (W.W. Norton & Co., 2015) and The Best Small Fictions 2018, 2019. She serves as Founding Co-Editor of Best Microfiction.

Lifesaving by Larry Oakner

When you are floundering
in despair and wrath,
your voice raised with irritation,
I don’t know how to pull you out of it,
unlike the time you nearly drowned
in the bay off St. Croix
when your snorkel filled with seawater
and you just managed to cough out
“I need a little assistance here,”
not wanting to bother anyone by crying for help.
So I towed you by your vest back to the boat
where you thanked me in your coy, wet embarrassment.
But that was many lifetimes ago
and we were different people then.



Larry Oakner is the author of three books of poems: Sex Love Religion, The 614th Commandment, and Sitting Still (chapbook). His work has appeared recently in WINK, The Oddville Press, and Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine. A graduate of UCLA, he lives on Long Island, NY.

An Afternoon for Tea by Penny Harter

This is an afternoon for tea—
rich red of strawberry hibiscus
deepening in a brown ceramic cup.

I delight in dunking my teabag
up and down, lowering my face
into the rising steam’s sweet scent.

On today’s escape from shelter I ride
through a graveyard, some stones so
old their dates are half-eroded.

A light rain begins to fall, darkening
the pebbled road, nurturing the newly
springing grass between the plots.

Years ago at my mother’s memorial
gathering, my toddler granddaughter
perched on someone’s marker, singing.

I hadn’t thought of that for years, but
some roads take us back, even when
they wind through greening trees.

Home again, an afternoon for tea, hands
clasped around the cup’s kind warmth—
blessed comfort sheltered from the rain.



Penny Harter writes from the South Jersey shore area. Her recent books include A Prayer the Body Makes (2020); The Resonance Around Us (2013), and Recycling Starlight (2010). A featured reader at the 2010 Dodge Poetry Festival, she has won fellowships from the NJSCA; the Mary Carolyn Davies Award from the PSA; and residencies from VCCA. Please visit pennyharterpoet.com.

Baby Rabbits by Terri Kirby Erickson

Baby rabbits, you have wrung
my heart like a wet dishrag, set
my pulse racing whenever you,
your soft bodies quivering, stray
too far from the burrow. I watch
you from my kitchen window,
knowing I cannot help or save
you from the dangers lurking
all around you—the neighbor’s
cat, a hungry hawk, the heavy
paw of a large dog sniffing the
ground. So small and helpless,
the four of you, like infants left
by the side of the road, I can’t
imagine how you will survive,
though I make myself believe
you will. Have mercy, I say out
loud, my hand on the hard glass.



Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of six collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in “American Life in Poetry,” The Sun, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and many others. Her awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Nautilus Silver Book Award.

Canada Geese by Terri Kirby Erickson

Early this morning, before anyone was about,
four Canada geese were grooming themselves

in the road. They pulled their feathers, one by
one, ridding them of dirt and drops of the rain

that had fallen during the night. And as they
shook and ruffled and preened, down drifted

from beaks and bodies into the moist air, and
stuck to the street like giant flakes of freshly

fallen snow. Then they turned in unison and
walked away, feet slapping the wet pavement,

heads held high like four old friends leaving
an upscale salon, certain they all looked good.



Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of six collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in “American Life in Poetry,” The Sun, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and many others. Her awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Nautilus Silver Book Award.

Breakfast with My Parents by Terri Kirby Erickson

I loved my parents’ pillow-creased faces,
their soft robes—how their house smelled
of fresh-perked coffee, orange juice, and
toast with jam. We would sit together at
the dining room table, my mother slicing
and sugaring my father’s grapefruit since
he could barely see it—my father holding
a newspaper his failing eyesight no longer
let him read. Still, he liked the feel of it in
his hands, the sound of the paper rustling.
He would eat the glistening pieces of fruit,
talking between bites, his voice deep and
more gravelly in the mornings. My mother,
meanwhile, would move on to making the
eggs, whipping the whites and yolks with
a dinner fork while adding a dash of cold
milk, her golden hair gleaming with light
from the kitchen window. And Dad, while
he waited, would often turn on the radio,
its cheerful voice saying what he already
knew. It was going to be a perfect day.



Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of six collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in “American Life in Poetry,” The Sun, The Writer’s Almanac, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and many others. Her awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Nautilus Silver Book Award.

Driftwood by Carolynn Kingyens

No one tells you
how it will end,
or when you know
you’ve reached
a rock bottom heart,
where I imagine
echo and void dwell
in these badlands,
in these drylands,
a tumbleweed of memory –
your dress socks
rolled into a ball
in some dust bunny corner;
loose change
atop your dresser;
a slamming door
a room away;
a long shower;
another lukewarm meal
in relative silence.

Yet we still cling
to that other
in this darkness;
our driftwood bodies
busy becoming one
in this bed,
in this flood
of our making.



Carolynn Kingyens’ debut book of poetry, Before the Big Bang Makes a Sound (Kelsay Books), can be ordered through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Greenlight, Book Culture, and Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop. In addition to poetry, Carolynn writes narrative essays, book reviews, and short stories. Her latest short story, "Fast Car," can be read here. She lives in New York City with her husband of 20 years, two beautiful, kind daughters, a sweet rescue dog, and a very old, chill cat.

What I Wait For by Rich Heller

Every evening this week
at dusk she stands
by the kitchen window—

the dishes done—
listening to
the birds’ final calls,

waiting for the lone raccoon
to appear for a drink
at her tiny garden pond.

Her silhouette
in the darkening window
is what I wait for.



Rich Heller studied creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh. His poems and short stories have been published in over 25 literary journals.

Cottage on the Pond by Robert Demaree

1. Closing up the Cottage September 1986

My dad’s last summer on the pond
I flew up Labor Day
To help close up, drive them home.
The airport bus
Only came as far as Dover.
Somehow they managed to get there,
Him wandering around the restaurant,
Agitated,
My mother with the
Caregiver’s exhausted sadness.
The restaurant is still there,
Different name, different owners:
I pass by that place
And still feel
An unbidden welling up,
How one thing comes
To stand for another.

2. Closing up the Cottage October 2012

To our cottage on the pond,
I ascribe human attributes,
And why not:
Four generations of
Idiosyncratic postures,
Favorite chairs,
The smiles of grandsons
Around each corner,
In every splash off the dock,
Scent of decades of pine rooms,
My father’s shaving brush,
Memories in other artifacts
We did not buy.

So when we leave,
Packing up board games
Along with Beth’s shy grin,
We ease out onto the lane,
Regret visceral
Until about the Massachusetts line.
The cottage, at first forlorn,
Has figured out what’s going on,
Recognizes the red kayak,
An intruder in the guest room,
But, relaxing under its cover of
Newspaper, moth balls,
Frayed bedspreads,
Like an old bear we know,
Dozes off for the winter.

3. Opening up the Cottage June 2020

Our daughter and her husband
Came up this year
To help open the cottage
And by the time we arrived
Had done things we used to do:
Got the kayaks from the guest room
Down to the dock,
Swept up the thick yellow pollen
Left on the porch
By a New Hampshire spring,
Discarded the paper and mothballs
In which the furniture had slept.

We are older than my parents were
The last time they drove north.

We will pay to get some things done—
Pine straw off the roof;
Other things—the high windows
That face the water—may not get done.
I save for myself one task—I must:
Putting up our sign
At the head of the lane, our name,
The metal loon looking down
Toward the pond.



Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders, published in 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems have received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club. He is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Bob’s poems have appeared in over 150 periodicals including Cold Mountain Review and Louisville Review.