Compartmentalize by Carolynn Kingyens

          You got to hear this. World's a hungry place.
          And the darkest things are the hungriest,
          and they'll eat what shines.

          - Stephen King, Doctor Sleep

I wish I could
compartmentalize
like the REDRUM boy
in Kubrick's film
The Shining,
who can lock away
his monsters
in all kinds
of impenetrable,
mental boxes
like the old hag
in Room 237.

Once I imagined you
locked away
in a soundproof room
still squawking
like some mute,
animated chicken:
head bobbing,
wing-arms flailing.

I laughed,
but it was
a nervous laugh.

When the therapist
mentioned enmeshment,
I'd envisioned
a spider web -
intricate as a lace doily
covering an entrance
of a doorway,
waiting for a hapless,
blissful bug
to buzz through
to its inevitable
entrapment:
its iridescent wings
frantically flailing
until the end.



Carolynn Kingyens’ debut book of poetry, Before the Big Bang Makes a Sound (Kelsay Books), can be ordered through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, McNally Jackson and a few more independent bookstores in NYC. In addition to poetry, she writes essays, book and film reviews, and flash and short fiction. Her latest short story, "Bye-Bye, Miss American Pie" can be read by clicking here. Carolynn resides in New York with her husband and two amazing daughters.

Constellations by Michael Estabrook

          Make the most of the time
          you have because
          you’ll never be here again.

Old man sitting on a bench in the soft sunlight anxiously waiting for his wife 

inside getting her physical therapy shoulder rehabilitation. He’s trying to 

write a poem about nothing in particular, watching the old ladies coming and 

going carrying their colorful yoga mats and exercise balls, hearing the faint 

whir of the building air-conditioners, feeling the breeze moving the hairs on 

his legs ever so slightly, the smell of fresh cut grass flinging him back 

decades to his summer job on the golf course watering the greens at night 

then lying on his back memorizing the constellations twinkling above billions 

of miles away.



Michael Estabrook has been publishing his poetry in the small press since the 1980s. He has published over 20 collections, a recent one being The Poet’s Curse: A Miscellany (The Poetry Box, 2019). He lives in Acton, Massachusetts.

Ghosts by Michael Estabrook

          Just like that – time flew
          dragging us from high school
          to retirement in a flash!

I wonder about the people
who have passed
through my life who
I haven’t seen in years, in decades
wonder how they
are doing now
all of us being older
old high school friends
college friends and favorite professors
church people I knew
coworkers, teammates, and neighbors
my first girlfriend, I hear her life was rough.
So many people I wonder
how many if I added
them all up.
They are all here with me
part of my life whether I like it or not
helping make me who I am
but no longer accessible
there but not there
like ghosts.



Michael Estabrook has been publishing his poetry in the small press since the 1980s. He has published over 20 collections, a recent one being The Poet’s Curse: A Miscellany (The Poetry Box, 2019). He lives in Acton, Massachusetts.

After the CDC’s Recommended Two Weeks from Final Dose of Covid-19 Vaccine by Joann Renee Boswell

welcome drips weird
from these immunized hands

we embrace at my doorstep
and just like that

you step inside, shrug
off your coat, pass into

our physical lives
we laugh over shared popcorn

buttered fingers grip beer
we slip into remembered rhythms

we are chaplain / poet
scholar / professor

we flow back in a Spring rush
flooding the banks like nature

there is only ease
coming back together

all those months pool

behind us, deep with relentless caution

but we can swim now
and it feels wildly unchanged



Joann Renee Boswell, the author of Cosmic Pockets (Fernwood Press, 2020), is a teacher, mother, photographer and poet currently living in Camas, WA with her husband and three children. She loves rainy days filled with coffee, books, handholding, moody music and sci-fi shows. Read more at joannrenee.com

In the Attic by Russell Rowland

I have no idea where that memory went.
It’s somewhere in the attic. Often at night
I hear it scampering around on mousy feet.
But when I run upstairs to look, all is quiet.

Maybe it was a bad memory, so I hid it.
Maybe a good one I just took for granted,
as we do with those who love us most—
and it’s getting back at me by playing coy.

I keep far too much up there—do you,
in yours?—boxes on top of boxes. Stuff
gets lost. Which implies we don’t need it,
but who knows what we’ll need someday?

We need memories. They are the letters
of our names. I’ll catch up to that rascal
in my attic, my missing letter. Perhaps if
I ignore it, it will tiptoe down to see why.

Jed says when he visits Melanie, his wife
in the Alzheimer’s unit, she tells him how
her husband never visits. Jed is a good
listener. Melanie has emptied her attic.



Seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, where he has judged high-school Poetry Out Loud competitions. Recent work appears in Poem, Main Street Rag, and U.S. 1 Worksheets. His latest poetry book, Wooden Nutmegs, is available from Encircle Publications.

Fortifications for Rain by Zebulon Huset

She made tiny
sandbags
of mother’s
used teabags
to protect
the GI Joes
her brother had
set up for war
in the backyard
the night
before.

Gobs of Elmer’s
glued the bank
properly in place
until she deployed
to college,
content as the
conservator of
a closed museum.



Zebulon Huset won the Gulf Stream 2020 Summer Poetry Contest and his writing has appeared in Red Eft Review, Meridian, The Southern Review, Fence, and Texas Review (among others). He publishes Notebooking Daily, Coastal Shelf and Sparked, and recommends literary journals at TheSubmissionWizard.com.

Late Afternoon Farm: August by H. Lee Coakley

There is only the
looking glass pond
on the far edge of the street,

the one that we rupture with our
parched, heaving bodies
and rise up, gasping, from

a day spent
crouching & carrying,
cultivating what greens, what
passes for knowledge
in these dense parts.

We are still
mostly young.

As the cicadas hum
their live wire, we run barefoot
along the fence,

pinching the ends of
honeysuckle, praying for a
light touch - one that grants an

impossibly small drop
of golden ambrosia
on our tongue. A reminder

of how hard it is we work
to squeeze the sweetness
out of anything.



H. Lee Coakley (they/she) is a Queer poet & nutritional healer currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Their work has been featured in The Lavender Review, Utterance Journal, The Voices Project, Blueshift Anthology and The Mad Farmer Reading Series.

In the Kitchen by Alice G. Waldert

I hear him downstairs
emptying the dishwasher

I filled late last night.
Glasses and cups clink,

rinsed of wine we shared.
Plates, forks, and knives rattle,

assembling like good soldiers
waiting to be of service.

We are alone in a house
that once sustained the shouts

and laughter of two girls and a boy,
but they outgrew this domain.

The boy lives many roads away,
the girls, adventurers–

live as ex-pats in foreign lands.
Our house now empty,

I welcome any sounds that replicate
the noise we made

when we all basked like sunning seals
in front of the TV

and believed
we’d always stay that way.



Alice G. Waldert’s poetry has appeared in Tiny Seed, The Voice of Eve, Poet's Choice, Sisyphus Lit, and Survivor Lit. She is a former humanitarian officer for the United Nations and is an adjunct English Professor at Westchester Community College in New York. She holds an MFA from Manhattanville College.

Shopping in the Pandemic by Marianne Szlyk

When I used to shop at Food Lion,
I felt closest to my mother,
clipping coupons, trying to buy
only what was on sale.

                       I’d pass up
the Fuji apples for Golden Delicious,
stock up on boxes of Corn Chex
and cans of chicken noodle soup,
even ignore the firm tofu
that lingered in produce
next to the greens
no one buys.

But the last time I shopped there,
the short stout woman hugged
the last twelve pack of toilet paper close
before placing it with the other one in her cart.
She steered her cart down the aisle of empty shelves
to grab dank greens and the last tofu
as I could only watch.



Marianne Szlyk's most recent book is Poetry en Plein Air (Pony One Dog Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Verse-Virtual, Muddy River Poetry Review, The Sligo Journal, and other journals/websites. Some poems have been translated into Polish, Italian, and Cherokee.

The Headmaster's Song by Robert Demaree

1. The Pluperfect Tense

Old New England school men come to Texas,
Dressing for dinner like Brits in India:
We wondered why Tom Perdue had called his wife
The pluperfect tense.
A Latinist, too, he cared about things
People don’t think of these days:
Pronouns agreeing with antecedents,
The voice and mood of verbs but not of persons,
The way sand blows over footprints.
She had smiled sadly, as I recall.
Rereading Vergil,
It came to me:
The completed act, prior to past time,
A sense of finality apprehended,
The tears of human ways:
Sunt lacrimae rerum.

2. Harold

He worked for the firm
That cleans our building.
The night he died
We walked the school together.
With amiable displeasure
I had shown him things,
Unstripped wax,
Unwiped blinds and louvers,
And we lamented
(Him an old school man, too)
How kids are these days,
Trouble getting good help.
Someone else must make some sense
Of the notes he took that night.
The company doesn’t know
Who they’ll send us now.
See, there on top of the lockers,
In the dust caught in the afternoon’s late light,
Furrows plowed by the
Fingers of a hand which
Must have been his.

3. Approaching Retirement

Where he works
Pewter cups have replaced the gold watch.
The head thinks they’re nice,
But people smirk and roll their eyes,
Which he used to think unfair
Until recently.
I may decline the cup, he thinks.
The years are mine:
I will not risk entrusting them
To summary or tribute.
I will slip out, like the old baseball man,
In the bottom of the fifth,
In a game that doesn’t matter,
One man out,
No one on.

4. Head of School

He knew all the students,
Would call them by name,
Walking across the quad
Between ivied classes,
Tried to say to each
Something cheerful, personal:
Good game last night, Phil,
Or: Liked your op-ed piece.
He went to their concerts,
Their debates and swimming meets.
He thought they liked him.
It came to him later,
When he was working somewhere else,
That his best love
Had gone into the spam folders
Of their adolescent hearts.



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.

The Call Never Comes by Sharon Waller Knutson

He is working the night
shift at the Montana Standard
when his new bride
shows up with a draft
notice and a pepperoni pizza
they share with a reporter
who says, You’re going
to Vietnam, Buddy and he
says, You’re next. For weeks
the newsroom night shift
takes bets on when he will
be shipped off to boot camp.
His editor remains calm
and quiet. He waits and waits
and when the call doesn’t come,
he moves to Minnesota
for another sports editor job.
It isn’t until he sees the Vietnam
Vets waving flags in the parade
in Rochester years later
that he realizes that if the call
had come, he too could be in
a wheelchair.



Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in a wildlife habitat in Arizona. She has published several poetry books including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields by Flutter Press and What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say and Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob which are forthcoming from Kelsay Books. Her work has also appeared most recently in Spillwords, Trouvaille Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor, Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, and The Song Is…

Formaldehyde, Vinegar and Newsprint by Sharon Waller Knutson

He scrubs, lathers and suds
skin, hair and clothes
in scalding hot water.

Still the stench remains
of the vinegar in the vat
as cucumbers

marinate and pickle,
at the factory where
he works after classes.

Of the formaldehyde
he uses to turn the dead
into mummies

and mannequins
to pay for college
and his room across the hall.

Now he wears the scent
of newsprint proudly
as he takes photos and writes

for his hometown weekly,
sniffing the smell
of success on a city daily.



Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in a wildlife habitat in Arizona. She has published several poetry books including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields by Flutter Press and What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say and Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob which are forthcoming from Kelsay Books. Her work has also appeared most recently in Spillwords, Trouvaille Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor, Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, and The Song Is…

Rainbow Trout by D. Walsh Gilbert

          —Pierre-Auguste Renoir (France) 1841-1919

Lined up on banks of cracked ice shoveled
by the fish monger dressed in rubber
boots and a canvas apron, rainbow trout
lie emptied—boneless—butterflied
as if they were crucified, fins splayed,
hearts torn out by the carver’s fingers.
He says, These. Past due—to be discarded.

I beg for two, or three, or four, please,
and watch him fold one body half
onto another and so return their dignity
as fish, and in the glint of Whole
Foods’ light—their eyes—their rainbow—
the pink stripe gill to tail is unmistakable.

Gloved hands poise to scrape scale against
scale, his knife ready to dismember
pectoral, dorsal, caudal fins now still, but
they’ll need these spines when I slip
the pair or two back into Purgatory Brook,
rain swollen rush among the trillium
and river scree where a hibernating bear
and her two cubs just woke,
where the raccoon, the possum and her brood
survive. No—leave them closest to alive.



D. Walsh Gilbert is the author of Ransom (Grayson Books). A Pushcart nominee, she recently won The Ekphrastic Review’s “Bird Watching” contest. Her work is forthcoming in The Dillydoun Review and recently appeared in the anthology, Waking Up to the Earth. She is co-editor of the Connecticut River Review.

Insect Guidance by Richard Martin

A beetle wanders along one of the planks
that make up the terrace, following the grain,
obeying the laws of perspective,
to that meeting point of disappearance.

An ant seems to have picked up its scent
and follows it along a parallel track –
but then the beetle discovers the beam
below the plank and takes off at right-angles.

Can I read this as illustrating the irrelevance
of man-made rules to the path of life,
or merely as another instance of the haphazard
nature of the very existence of us all?



Richard Martin is an English writer who lives in the Netherlands close to the point where Belgium, Germany and Holland meet. After retiring as a university teacher in Germany, he turned his attention to writing, and has published three collections of poetry and numerous poems in magazines in England, the US, and Austria.

I Laugh When I Look Out the Bedroom Window by Carey Taylor

until you wince as you lift your left leg and place
your bare foot on the folding patio chair.

In one hand you hold a heavy-duty toenail clipper,
in the other a wire cutter.

Your back pirates profanities at the hard work of
old nails—tough as week old sourdough.

Clippings fly through air to grass, which reminds me
of that July we tossed bread crumbs off South Sister,

how we skimmed scree and corn snow with packs
of heavy gear and warm beer.

Ravenous, we tallied peaks up and down that Cascade
spine of fire—St. Helens, Adams, Hood, Thielsen.

So sure, in those slick-skinned days, this was the only
age we would travel.



Carey Taylor is the author of The Lure of Impermanence (Cirque Press 2018). Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she has a Master of Arts degree in School Counseling. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon and when not outdoors, blogs at: https://careyleetaylor.com.

Daily Briefing by Elizabeth Palmer Kellogg

                                                            This 

                                                  morning

                                                     I

                                              made

                          our

                      bed. 

All

the 

blankets

were 

on 

your 

side. 

Elizabeth Palmer Kellogg is Assistant to the Director of Research at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, MI. In her spare time, she writes poetry, reads poetry, quilts, and plays hide-n-seek with her two grandchildren.

Test by Don Thompson

He looks up, nitric eyes
testing you like acid on gold.
You feel fake. Exposed.

For once the crow has no comment,
which says it all,
and shrugs himself into the air

like a pawnbroker turning his back,
offering nothing—not a cent
for your most precious heirloom.



Don Thompson has been writing about the San Joaquin Valley for over fifty years, including a dozen or so books and chapbooks. A San Joaquin Almanac won the Eric Award for 2021 in the chapbook category. For more info and links to publishers, visit his website at www.don-e-thompson.com.

Pasture by Don Thompson

Under a nondescript, not-quite tree,
six or eight heifers
loaf in the scant shadows,
haunch to haunch.

Their dappled russet hides remind you
of Impressionist picnickers.

They’ve browsed the foliage
as high as they can reach
and would, if they could,
consume all of their own shade—

insatiable—

like those Parisians on Sunday afternoon
with their wine and cheese,
their indolent lust.



Don Thompson has been writing about the San Joaquin Valley for over fifty years, including a dozen or so books and chapbooks. A San Joaquin Almanac won the Eric Award for 2021 in the chapbook category. For more info and links to publishers, visit his website at www.don-e-thompson.com.

The Fort by Sarah Ockrim

I follow the dirt trail where the earth’s been packed down
to a small clearing in the woods by the railroad tracks.

Fresh from reading The Boxcar Children,
I’m not a dreamer, just a girl with a plan.
We’ll build a fort, a place for shelter and secrets,
a place where we can be ourselves.

We’ll make the rules, live the way we want to,
wade in the creek every day. Freckled and fierce,
we’ll spend hours at the playground,
avoiding adults who ask us why we aren’t in school.

We’ll scour the alley, looking for old bricks,
abandoned boards and still straight nails,
collecting bits of rope and sticks,
lucking out on a sheet of corrugated steel.

We’ll gather berries and eggs,
sleep under the stars, live off the land.
We’ll build a fire pit out of stones and bricks,
stretch a tarp over us when it rains.

Nevermind that winters are harsh
or that berries are only in season for weeks.
Nevermind that there aren’t any chickens
for us to steal eggs from.

Looking back, I remember craving freedom
and fairness and a place where I could be myself.

I want to tell that girl that she’s my favorite person,
that I love her tangled hair, her skinny knees
and her wild, searching soul. I want to say,

“Dream so hard it feels like you’ll burst from it,
burn brighter that you think is possible,
and read always, read every day of your life.”



Sarah Ockrim is a poet and painter. She lives in southwestern Virginia with her husband and two sons.

Why by Terence McCaffrey

I don’t know why
I’m into gardening,
but I do feel the forest
watching me. I imagine
its myriad living things
around me, cheering,
clapping their paws
or wings with each churn
of the earth. I itch
to keep checking
a single seed’s march
as if my own, to keep
willing it to sprout
out of the dark
like the birth of a star.



Terence McCaffrey’s poems have appeared in Connecticut River Review, Freshwater, Right Hand Pointing, and elsewhere. He received a M.A.L.S. degree in Humanities from Wesleyan University and a B.A. from the University of Hartford where he was the recipient of the Phyllis B. Abrahms Award in Fiction. He lives with his wife and two children in West Simsbury, CT.

Wild by Terence McCaffrey

We emerge
from the pause
of days
in muted wonder,
start passing
an hour
in purposeless
wandering
around the local
farm. You sprint
along the line
of early
chokecherry trees,
the new sun
strong, the old
trail fresh. Laugh
like birds
that want to
be noticed.
And it’s easy
to notice you
because we’re
finally out
of the house.
Forgive me.
You have my gaze
now. Go, burst
forth across
this afternoon.
Eat what you can
of the wide,
true sky.
And if I speak,
don’t listen.



Terence McCaffrey’s poems have appeared in Connecticut River Review, Freshwater, Right Hand Pointing, and elsewhere. He received a M.A.L.S. degree in Humanities from Wesleyan University and a B.A. from the University of Hartford where he was the recipient of the Phyllis B. Abrahms Award in Fiction. He lives with his wife and two children in West Simsbury, CT.