Elements of Winter by M.J. Iuppa

1.
Deep in woods, footsteps muffled
by fresh snow— Yanty Creek sings
its lonesome repair to this year’s un-
ending peril that slips beneath a thin
skin of ice.
2.
In the distance, between two pines,
light snow drifts like feathers—
no bird in sight—to speak of this
literature of loss, this hypnotic
vortex of stars.
3.
Endlessly repeating—waves of
exhale—I think gods are hiding
in tree bark— unblinking eyes
watching me walk to the pond’s
edge—I’m here today.
4.
Lost in reflection— the pond
drinks the sky without clouds,
without hesitation— I want to
catch my breath blossoming
in cold air.



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.

Another Premonition by M.J. Iuppa

Lately, when I stand at the window facing the orchard, I
          stare and stare, at winter’s vague shadows, not realizing

that I’m visualizing a path through these chilly spaces where
          windswept branches could catch hold of my woolen coat

with its loose buttons, and keep me from going deeper in-
          to the hour known for its twitching light— its corridor of

mirrors that reveal my body’s slow ache as it mounts
          each step’s steep incline, moving chamber to chamber

as if I were inside a nautilus lost long ago . . . What has
          become my work before dying? Am I to find my DNA

in Rome’s catacombs and breathe it back to life? I feel my skull’s
          bones beneath soft flesh—this mask waiting to be lifted.



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.

Midnight or Later by Howie Good

I dreamed the other night
I was covered in blood
but couldn’t discover
despite a frantic effort
whether it was my blood
or someone else’s.

Who isn’t secretly afraid
of being dragged off
some rainy night
to an interrogation room

and beaten with fists
and clubs and forced
to answer questions
posed in a language
they don’t understand?

When the 8th-century poet Li Po
had to travel at night,
he carried a cage of fireflies
to light the way.



Howie Good is the author of more than two dozen poetry collections, including most recently The Death Row Shuffle (Finishing Line Press), The Trouble with Being Born (Ethel Micro Press), and Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing).

Alphabet by Bonnie Proudfoot

Last night the dog went to the window,
rumbled a growl,
then curled up on the rug
at the foot of my bed.
Awake, I heard barred owls,
deep throated, calling.
Come morning, fresh inches of snow,
icicles fringe the porch roof,
sunlight plays them
like a xylophone.

From the kitchen window
the snow seems
so pristine, but head out,
and tracks appear
as if everything was going
somewhere in the dark.
The neighborhood fox crossed the porch,
a doe and fawn pawed up
a bare spot under the birdfeeder,
a rabbit two-stepped
a dotted line from woodshed
to garden fence.

These marks in the snow,
they could be an alphabet.
Night has written the mystery
of itself, now sunlight
melts it all. What it is
isn’t supposed to
belong to me.



Bonnie Proudfoot lives outside of Athens, Ohio. She has published short stories and poetry in a variety of journals. Goshen Road, her first novel, was published in January of 2020 by Ohio University’s Swallow Press, and is long-listed for the PEN/Hemingway Award.

Doves by Bonnie Proudfoot

Outside my window this morning snow
piles up on porch rails and trees,
the only motion is a pair of doves perched
under the eaves, thin black beaks, clay-colored
round heads pressing together like a valentine,
their coo-coo-coo ocarina calls set off against
a backdrop of silent snowflakes. If they’re
the same pair as the last 3 years, they arrived
early, mid-February instead of April, but maybe
this year they’re trying to get it right.

They’ve had a run of bad luck, no postman-stork
delivering baby doves, instead clutches of eggs
that refuse to hatch or tiny naked chicks that don’t
make it. Long after the wrens, flycatchers
and robins build their nests, dart to the lawn
and head back to a cluster of open mouths,
after those other fledglings stand in a little bird
conga line on the porch railings and work up
the nerve to take first flights, this pair of doves
is still in phase one, trading shifts, nest guarding,
egg sitting, unflinching and inscrutable as buddhas,
their ruby eyes meet mine as I head outside.

I could climb a stepladder, chase them off,
clean out the nest, but I can’t bring myself
to break it to them. Do you know what I mean?
Maybe they don’t see the writing on the wall,
or they could care less about the other birds,
they stay with the thing that matters most,
and I wish I was more like that, after all,
there isn’t a day that doesn’t have its share
of glaring headlines, dire conclusions, so many
wrecking balls aimed at every plan. Even today,
disaster hangs like the wind-chill factor, and here
they are, innocent optimists with work to do,
all hopes and feathers and dreams.



Bonnie Proudfoot lives outside of Athens, Ohio. She has published short stories and poetry in a variety of journals. Goshen Road, her first novel, was published in January of 2020 by Ohio University’s Swallow Press, and is long-listed for the PEN/Hemingway Award.

House Made of Sound by Steve Klepetar

You toss all night in a bed that sails on a river of dreams.
Someone has left the oven on, but when you go to turn it off,
a light blinks green, and lo! The bread is done!
You find the oven mitts, lift the loaf pan onto a wire rack.
How good everything smells.
And then bells are ringing again, and you climb the stairs,
wondering as you go what the walls will do.
At the top you meet a small boy, drumming with a short stick.
He has no bells, but he points and whispers
“it’s the goat,’ and so it is, a small nanny with a white bell
around her neck. Now there is music everywhere -
horns and cellos and violins.
The roof opens and above there is a river of stars
floating in a black sky. You have bread and milk
and a house made of sound steering you back to that other shore.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. His work has received several nominations for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize.

Rosebush by Ginny Wood

I heard the hose running,
pushed through the busted backyard gate
and saw the green snake of it spilling
onto the root bed of a skeletal rosebush,
a puddle at the base of a wraith.
I told her to shut it off. Stop wasting water.
That was the last time I saw my mother.



Ginny Wood is a former English teacher originally from the Carolinas who now resides in Redding, Connecticut. She earned an MAT in Secondary English from University of South Carolina and a Master in School Administration degree from the University of North Carolina. Her favorite pastime--other than writing poetry--is entertaining her Boston terrier, Daisy.

Nature Morte by Julia Caroline Knowlton

Sun at dusk, moving across
polished silver. Pieces of fruit
reflect pieces of light. In a painting

I cannot make, we become
perfect color. Our voices still.
Life coming to a hush, a hush.



Julia Caroline Knowlton is Professor of French at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta. The author of four books, she has a PhD in French Literature (UNC-Chapel Hill) and an MFA in poetry (Antioch University). In 2018, she was named a Georgia Author of the Year. Her literary achievements include an Academy of American Poets College Prize and a Pushcart nomination.

Pennsylvania Songs by Robert Demaree

FIELDER’S CHOICE

A small bedroom,
In the apartment at the boarding school
Where my father taught:
My parents tiptoe in to tell me,
Not quite ten, not quite asleep,
That the Philadelphia A’s have purchased
A slugging right-fielder.
Nothing came of it, of course.
The A’s finished last,
Moved on, not once but twice,
Shibe Park a dream deep in urban rubble.
O, Eddie Joost;
O, Elmer Valo:
Lost warriors of that last perfect recalling
Of childhood, the pull of home,
Empty steel mills in a town
By a weary river.

MIKE FREEDMAN AT WINTERCROFT SCHOOL: 1950

1. At our little grade school,
Progressive—wooden bungalows,
Open air, dim light in winter,
Blankets brought from home—
Mike Freedman and I were the jesters:
Instead of learning our Latin declensions
We devised a synthetic tongue
We called Reboshkan
And began an epic on Der Fertz,
Garbage Man of Rheims in the Time of Charlemagne.
Tom Carlisle, our wise headmaster,
Cut us some slack,
Allowed us to perform at lunch
Parodies set to tunes
We sang in Music class—
“It was from Tom Carlisle’s big beer party
We were seeing Nellie home.”
Mr. Carlisle let us have a baseball team.
To put nine on the field
We had to use fifth graders,
Even girls. Gerry pitched and I caught.
Michael didn’t play.
He did earn a doctorate, I think.
It did not come to us until later
How much we owed Tom Carlisle.

2. I wonder from time to time
What became of Mike—
Went off to boarding school
After eighth grade,
Wound up, we heard or imagined,
A professor of something somewhere.
He was our age but seemed older,
With a vast and profane knowledge.
Gerry and I marveled, were puzzled
At the information he possessed
About girls, about private parts.
Gerry died some years ago
Of those cigarettes we shared
In the sad back alleys
Of those young Rust Belt days.
Without success I’ve looked for Mike
On the Internet, curious
With that urge that comes
Of being 80
To learn how things turned out,
A baroque quartet
Come back around,
A resolving, a tying off.

RIDGE PIKE

The poet was talking about his father:
You’d think after all these years, he said,
I’d have this figured out.
Set me rummaging
Through the messy desk drawer of time:
Gray December drives down Ridge Pike—
Norristown, Manyunk—
To Shibe Park, could have been Fenway
But took culture’s wrong turn instead.
He bought sherry by the gallon.
I did not know what this meant,
Long before juried chardonnay.
One night—I must have been ten—
He sat on my bed and
Explained in the dark
A boarding school teacher’s
Net worth.
He lived long enough, I guess,
To be proud of me.



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.

Two About Teeth by Martha Christina

1
My neighbor calls
to account for why
he hasn’t called:
yesterday, indulging
in a cookie for lunch
dessert, he broke
a tooth, a soft cookie,
he says, and I hear both
appreciation and betrayal
in his voice.

2
My father spoke proudly
of his strong teeth, a
triumph over rural poverty,
with dental care far beyond
his parents’ means. When
he first saw a dentist, he
was away from the farm,
earning a salary, enough
each month to rent a room
above the dentist’s office.
Their friendship led to
an examination, gratis,
a word they’d both
learned in college. Given
my father’s history, his teeth
amazed his dentist friend who
made and displayed a model
of my father’s perfect bite.



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.

From the Ridgepole by Martha Christina

Sure-footed, over
hidden shingles,
three crows step
through fresh snow,
their tracks quilting
my neighbor’s roof.



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.

Valentine's Day Redux by Martha Christina

Alone at the kitchen table,
she loses hand after hand
of Solitaire, and scowls
at the Knave of Hearts.



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.

His Room by Matt Pitt

A single bed.

Four pairs of shoes, polished, ranked.
Eight shoe-trees.

On the bedside table
a copy of Anna Karenina and

a balding teddy bear, one eye gone.

Dust-motes.

In the slightly open window,
tomorrow’s ironed shirt

hanging.



Matt Pitt is a poet and screenwriter from Brighton, UK. He has previously published in Acumen, Ambit, Prole and Under the Radar. His debut feature film, Greyhawk, received a Special Commendation Prize at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. His second feature, Man of Sorrows, begins shooting in 2021.

Observation 2021 by Ben Rasnic

Nothing so sexy
as the parenthetical
crinkle of your eyes
whenever you smile
behind the mask
you wear.



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.

Step by Step by Kara Knickerbocker

my older brother teaches me about fear
with my belly close to the cool stone
in the midst of an August day, clinging
to the rocky cliff buried in the woods
on the side of the deep canyon
back behind our neighbor’s house
where we’d gone to explore, for the first time,
together. It had been his idea to scale
the steep surface and, not wanting to appear
like a girl, or a baby, but for once, his equal,
I climbed after him, trying to retrace his steps
but the navy blue splash of his gym shorts
was already waves ahead of where I was,
bringing swift sickness when I looked up.
I became paralyzed with fear, my left hand
dumb in one crevice, my right sweating
into the sharpness of another. There was nowhere
to step, even if I could uproot my feet. Already
at the top, he shouted down to me directions
for a space to grip, pointed corners jutting out,
something to hold to, but I could not move.
It was then he lowered himself down the face of the wall
until he reached me, left foot here, he instructed,
it’s okay, he said, and I shifted into trust, as step
by step, like a method for living, we pulled ourselves
from the gorge below, back on common ground.



The author of the chapbooks The Shedding Before the Swell (dancing girl press, 2018) and Next to Everything that is Breakable (Finishing Line Press, 2017), Kara Knickerbocker's work has appeared in or is forthcoming from: Poet Lore, HOBART, The Dallas Review, among others. She currently lives in Pennsylvania and writes with the Madwomen in the Attic at Carlow University. Find her online: www.karaknickerbocker.com.

Traveling Home by David Milley

Driving back from Batsto, we took the long way home,
the road running through places where your youth began.
"So many houses that were here," you say, "are gone."
I reply, "So many new ones now that weren't here then."

So, another road story begins. You first took me down
this road the year we met, and I joined you on that day
when you, so proud, took me to your parents' home.
Another time, we stopped in every bar along the way.

That field you tilled, now grown in oak. The store
where friends met, shuttered. I know every memory,
can recite each, line by line, the map of our adventure.
I reach across the car and rest my hand upon your knee.

After forty years together, traveling home with you,
every road's familiar, and every road is new.



Writing since the 1970s, David Milley's work has appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Christopher Street, and Bay Windows. David lives in New Jersey with his husband of four decades, Warren, who's worked as farmer, woodcutter, nurseryman, auctioneer, beekeeper, and cook. Nowadays, Warren gardens and keeps honeybees; David walks and writes.

Hen and Mutt by David Milley

In matching chairs, two old women watched tv each night.
Henrietta browsed a book; Mutt did her crochet.
Volume turned low, each worked in her own light,
pausing, now and then, to chat the doings of their day.

Our favorite aunt, Henrietta stood taller than our Mom.
Above a sea of holiday socks, Hen soared in, bearing planes,
a chemistry set, that special doll. In all her visits to our home,
Hen made her sister laugh, told stories of old times.

Mutt never came to see us; Mom, smiling, shook her head.

At the end of every night, two old women climbed the stairs.
Mutt went first, to light the way and warm their single bed.
Hen would close her book at last and rise to join Mutt there.

Each night, this way, for more than sixty years, until the day
Mutt came downstairs alone, kissed Hen, and put her book away.



Writing since the 1970s, David Milley's work has appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Christopher Street, and Bay Windows. David lives in New Jersey with his husband of four decades, Warren, who's worked as farmer, woodcutter, nurseryman, auctioneer, beekeeper, and cook. Nowadays, Warren gardens and keeps honeybees; David walks and writes.

A Long Night's Work Ahead by Rose Menyon Heflin

The ancient
lighthouse keeper
slowly
ascended
the stairs -
one at a time,
one at a time -
drenched in sweat,
grasping the railing
and silently
counting
to two hundred
and fifteen,
when he finally reached
the top,
only to find that
the summer night
had turned
stormy
and the waters
choppy,
with visibility
waning,
a dense,
impenetrable fog
bearing down
on his troubled,
aging mind.



Rose Menyon Heflin is a poet and artist from Wisconsin who loves nature. Among other venues, her work has recently been published or is forthcoming in Bramble, The Closed Eye Open, Eastern Structures, The Light Ekphrastic, Littoral Magazine, Plum Tree Tavern, Red Alder Review, Sparked Literary Magazine, and Visual Verse.

Still Life on the Saint Simons Causeway, Eastbound Traffic Stopped by an Accident by Steven Croft

Window down, stalled between mainland and island

on a winter evening, line of cars tethered by the sounds
of our rumbling motors.

A brown marsh rabbit noses in the roadside grass
cut away monthly by orange riding mowers
from the tufted expanse of Spartina.

White egret perched in a nearby hammock of cedars,
quiet inquisitor of water, mud minnows and tadpoles,
narrow throat speechless, shoulders tensed with stillness.

Up ahead, hidden by the rising arch of a channel bridge,
EMTs pull the injured from a three-car pileup, life
still or trembling in their hands.

Two cars back, rap music pounds the frame of a powder
blue Chevy, as, in my rearview, the sun gives a blood kiss
goodbye to sky and tidal marsh.



Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. He is the author of New World Poems (Alien Buddha Press, 2020). His poems have appeared in Willawaw Journal, Canary, The New Verse News, Red Eft Review, and Anti-Heroin Chic, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Roadie by Sharon Waller Knutson

She looks like a Barbie Doll
with her painted face and nails,
synthetic breasts rising

under her pink T-shirt,
long lean legs in Levis,
small feet in slingback stiletto sandals.

From a red Cardinals Baseball cap,
her hair, once golden, now silver,
falls like a blanket over her shoulders.

Navajo bracelets jangle
on both wrists as she carries
the electric guitar and microphone

for the Kenny Rogers lookalike
she has followed cross country
for a quarter of a century.

Her face is a roadmap of where
they’ve been since she left
her children behind with their father

in the trailer park eating pizza
and drinking coca cola
and watching a Braves game,

but the past is about to catch up
as their adult faces shine
in the audience like a neon sign.



Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist whose poems have appeared recently in Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Five-Two and The Song Is… Her first full-length book collection, What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Tell You, will be published by Kelsay Books in October.