State Regulations by Nick Maurer

I thought about pouring it down the storm
drain on my street. The ocean

harmonizes dark and discordant futures.
Or under night's binding I could pour

the tainted mixture in my neighbor’s large yard.
His fence rattles against lengthening summer winds.

But I’ve left the bucket out there
behind the broken bicycle pump and among

the splintering leaves blown in and crumbling stucco
blown down and cracked terra cotta pots filled

with pests and tares counting on tomorrow’s sun
to evaporate the waste I keep

stirring up, the plans
I have for this bucket.



Nick Maurer received an MFA from UC Irvine. He lives in California. Website: jnmaurer.com

Blood in a Drought Year by Joe Cottonwood

In a midnight thunderstorm, Jeannie phones
to say a young man pounded on her door
dark and bleeding like a redwing blackbird
so she wrapped his ribs in a sheet.
“Wait a minute. You let him in?”
“Of course! He’s darling!”
Jeannie is 80, still a coquette.

I go next door to Jeannie’s house.
On the floor, drops of blood.
Back yard I find a sheet, scarlet stain.

She won’t let me call the cops.
“He’s the stabbee,” she says. “Not me.”
The oak trees drip but the rain has stopped.
Jeannie shivers hugging her own chest and says
“No matter how badly my body hurts,
nights like this keep me alive.”

Thunderstorms drench the night,
quickly pass. After lightning,
the air is so crisp, so fresh.
We need the rain.



Joe Cottonwood can’t help it. He’s drawn to mountains and a more hardscrabble way of life. From Maryland at the foot of Appalachian ridges, he settled in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California among wildfire and redwoods and the occasional lion.

Sunkissed, Listless by Ash Evan Lippert

Pretend I’m here, in the grove, lilac clouds
like sleeping lion’s heads nodding

against blameless green,
breathing. Say: I am here. I am still

nothing.
& now I will embrace the ebb

to thoughtlessness.
A robin sends

light branches shaking purple.
Failing petals may only

fall, paling in the wind like February
snow. Impermanent. Barely

probable.
& where am I really?

In my apartment, too real & bodied & strewn
amongst my sweat-stained

covers. Watching
the evergreens scatter their ever-green,

clover colored light bare
across my blank-stare walls.

Someone help me, I’ve forgotten how to live
here, in my time;

here, where trees reach to the sun,
unashamed of their need.



Ash Evan Lippert is a clay artist and emerging queer poet residing in the South Carolina upstate. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Failed Haiku and Euonia Review. They are happily at work on their first novel, and the ongoing project of parenting two "whimsical" cats. To check out more of their work, please pay them a visit http://wanderstruckreverie.wordpress.com/

Oldest Son by Al Ortolani

As a boy we had a dog die
about once a year. They ran loose,
each morning leaving the house,
returning at night from wherever
the neighborhood pack took them.
We knew each member of the pack by name,
by their owner’s names,
by their speed, their thievery, their bark.
They chased cars on the county road,
and ate the poisoned meat
the farmers set out for rats.
Dogs were free. By that, I mean
we never paid for a puppy.
They came to us tumble deep
in cardboard boxes. Someone
always had a dog to give away.
A “Free” sign, once painted, was kept
in the garage next to the scrap lumber.
Mother handed me a shovel and the car keys.
She said, go before the others get home.
I used a towel, rubbery with Shinola.
I sunk the spade like my father did,
used my weight to lift the earth.



Al Ortolani is the Manuscript Editor for Woodley Press in Topeka, Kansas, and has directed a memoir writing project for Vietnam veterans across Kansas in association with the Library of Congress and Humanities Kansas. He is a 2019 recipient of the Rattle Chapbook Series Award.

Nearing Sedalia by Al Ortolani

There’s a silo along the highway
with a tree growing out of it, the top
branches splayed across the sky
like an umbrella, like an anemone.

It’s a landmark for us as we drive
across Missouri, as much a mile marker
as a small town, a fishing creek
with an iron bridge, a cemetery

in a children’s game.

We watch for it on the hill
behind the barn, behind the ghost sign
faded across the barn roof:
hickory baskets, walnut bowls, moccasins.

The silo is made from tile bricks,
carefully cemented, the domed roof
of sheet metal and wood collapsed,
blown into the pasture, the sapling

in a cylinder of sun.



Al Ortolani is the Manuscript Editor for Woodley Press in Topeka, Kansas, and has directed a memoir writing project for Vietnam veterans across Kansas in association with the Library of Congress and Humanities Kansas. He is a 2019 recipient of the Rattle Chapbook Series Award.

Uprooting the Lilac by Al Ortolani

Today, we plant a Limelight hydrangea
in the hole where we dug out the lilac,
where just a month ago, I chopped back
the roots with my garage sale axe.
My wife gave up on it ever flowering,
tall and spindly, spreading
everywhere and nowhere at once.
She gave it seven years to get itself together,
to become a lilac goddammit.
The shovel popped and bent as I pried
the root ball from the earth, the brown
soil, greasy with clay, with shards
of sandstone. The tap root gripped
until it gave, and only the silence held.



Al Ortolani is the Manuscript Editor for Woodley Press in Topeka, Kansas, and has directed a memoir writing project for Vietnam veterans across Kansas in association with the Library of Congress and Humanities Kansas. He is a 2019 recipient of the Rattle Chapbook Series Award.

Bingo Faith by Ellen Skilton

What if loftiness is a false flower —
and the church’s real purpose is
bingo faith, not sanctuary salvation?

My grandmother was a prophet
of generosity, her cash creed:
You don’t win if you don’t give it away.

Much more than mad money,
her profits from games of chance
were pillars of her ballsy beliefs.

She’d quietly teach me her own
moral code, whispering of her best friend:
She never wins because she keeps it all.

Once, I saw her use her own shoe
to create a secret stain and a righteous
discount on an overpriced baby hat.

In the early 80’s, when I had big hair,
born-again friends told me this scorching untruth:
Your grandmother is going to hell.

These Saturday-bingo-grandmas
that don’t pray in pews get tut-tutting from
Sunday-church-goers so damn sure they’re blessed.

They are all wrong. Helen’s holiness shined
in bright kitchen light, adding up winnings
and givings in her flowered, cotton housedress.



Ellen Skilton is a professor of education whose creative writing has appeared in The Dewdrop, Cathexis Northwest Press, The Scapegoat Review, and The Dillydoun Review. She is also an excellent napper, a chocolate snob, a swimmer, and lives in Philadelphia with a dog named Zoomer, a cat named Katniss and some lovely humans.

The Chapel by Brandon McQuade

In the quiet hours
the wind howls
and the snow drifts
like mountains.

The fire burning
in the hearth
of the chapel,
in the heart
of birch and frost
is not lost
on this wilderness.

These are the keys
to our survival
and comfort—
necessary fragments
of our domestic,
modern world:

knife, tent, firestarter,
pen and paper, a good book
and a sack lunch—
companions we carry with us
like torches into the wild.



Brandon McQuade is the founding editor of Duck Head Journal. His debut chapbook, Bleeding Heart was published by Kelsay Books (2021) and is available on Amazon. His debut collection, Mango Seed, is forthcoming with Scurfpea Publishing. He lives in Gillette, Wyoming with his wife, Jacqlyn and their children.

Between Us by Deirdre Fagan

My husband takes the dog along
to gather the mail.

His grey matching winter’s muzzle,
a retriever seamlessly blending into snow.

The walk to the box is as long as a meadow;
a city block to remember from whence he came.

Once, there was no dog, no country home,
only letters through a slit in the door.

Four bedrooms, one occupied—no children,
no wife.

We are nearly ten years into this game—
we’re still playing.

But that’s not what he’s thinking as I eye
him from the window—the dog flanking his calves.

It’s the distance that excites, it’s the return;
it’s the marrow between us.



Deirdre Fagan is a widow, wife, mother of two and associate professor at Ferris State University. Fagan is the author of the memoir Find a Place for Me (forthcoming, 2022), a collection of short stories, The Grief Eater (2020), and a poetry chapbook, Have Love (2019). Meet her at deirdrefagan.com

Arlington Racetrack by Jason Fisk

I used to want to spend
my summers
at the horse track
writing about the characters
I would see there
but I never got around to it

Now the track has
permanently closed
and I’m stuck writing
mediocre poems
about failed plans
to write great poems



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 few decades in the Chicago area. He has a novel, The Craigslist Incident, coming out in June. www.jasonfisk.com

Ghost Garden by Jason Fisk

She lived alone in the middle part of the country
In a little blue ranch house with white trim
She loved her family and her garden
The grandkids helped her weed
when they visited from out of state
She would reward them
with cinnamon candy
and iced tea

She used to straighten the house
every night before bed
I once asked her why
and she told me
that it was for the paramedics
She didn’t want them
to see a dirty house
when they came
to take her away

She told me that she
was just waiting
to go be reunited
with Grandpa Earl
in heaven

After her funeral
I went to the blue house
and walked inside
It was clean
which made me smile

I walked to the back
and opened the sliding glass door
and saw her garden
The overgrowth reminded me
of how long it had been since I’d visited
An aching loss churned in my stomach

And then I noticed a sweet little rosebud
peeking through the purple and green
of the inhospitable thistle
and I started pulling
the weeds away
from the base of the rose
My arms and hands torn
by the various thorns
It somehow felt right

I went into the garage
and got a shovel
and a bucket
and I dug the rose up
and put it in the bucket

I drove to her new grave
and planted it
where I imagined
her heart would be



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 few decades in the Chicago area. He has a novel, The Craigslist Incident, coming out in June. www.jasonfisk.com

Winter Birds by Jack Powers

I keep thinking they missed their cue,
seduced by some false November sun
and now suffering for their sins.
Such scrawny legs and feet, translucent claws!

Yet they seem to survive: chickadee, junco
nuthatch, cardinal. These birds of winter searching
for seeds, spiders, tree buds, fluffing their feathers
for warmth–alone, in pairs or flocks
that litter my yard or string themselves
in black rosaries across the sky.

In a blizzard they disappear, huddling,
I hope, in hedges, the downwind side of trees.
In the morning sun, a nuthatch flutters in a backyard fir,
tooting his horn like an answered prayer.



Jack Powers is the author of Everybody's Vaguely Familiar. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, The Cortland Review, Inkwell 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. Visit his website: http://www.jackpowers13.com/poetry/.