The Scarlet Tanager by George Held

Or, “Teenager,” as we used to call it:
how long has it been since I’ve seen this
summer beauty in the canopy of a fir
and hushed myself in mid-sentence in awe
of nature’s fearsome abundance in a bird?…



George Held, an 11-time Pushcart nominee, has poems currently in Jerry Jazz Magazine, Untold Stories, Blue Unicorn, and Neuro Logical (Ireland). This poem featured in Red Eft Review today is among his forty new poems about birds. He writes from NY.

Redwings by George Held

These are blackbirds with colorful yellow
and, yes, red shoulders on the male; its mate
is brown. When, on my March way to Sunday
School, they whistled and cried in the marsh:
the first migrants to arrive and build nests…



George Held, an 11-time Pushcart nominee, has poems currently in Jerry Jazz Magazine, Untold Stories, Blue Unicorn, and Neuro Logical (Ireland). This poem featured in Red Eft Review today is among his forty new poems about birds. He writes from NY.

Piscatology by Penelope Moffet

You can decide to be happy.
It may not work but there it is.
So what if you’re alone
in a lakeside guesthouse
bedecked with fish,
from a motion-activated bass
singing “Take Me to the River”
to cotton trout on a stringer
to pike-shaped lamp pulls
to oven mitts with catfish emblems
encouraging you to eat more chicken,
to carp-shaped candlesticks,
to bluegill in the bottom
of a bowl. Bathroom towels
with bullhead emblems.
Dusty fishnets on the walls.
Pillows covered in
embroidered salmon.
A faded chart depicting
all the western gamefish.
You can decide
the kitsch doesn’t matter
and neither does the dead grass yard
you’ve no desire to read in.
Be glad the lake, the place
the real fish live,
is near. Go swim.



Penelope Moffet is the author of three chapbooks, Cauldron of Hisses (Arroyo Seco Press, 2022), It Isn’t That They Mean to Kill You (Arroyo Seco Press, 2018), and Keeping Still (Dorland Mountain Arts, 1995). Her poems have been published in many journals, including The Missouri Review, Columbia, Permafrost, One, ONE ART, Natural Bridge, Gleam, The Rise Up Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and Gyroscope.

Night Out by Cate Davis

A cramped corner table.
We wriggle in, our coats steaming from the cold.
My shivering knee borrows your warmth.

We sit close enough to dream.
Thoughts grasp your muscles before you speak.
It’s been so long, so long.

A slim waiter in black attends,
His movements swift and seamless
Like that magician we saw, that time.

An alphabet of aromas…cardamom, cumin, caramel…
Not yet, but soon.

Two women behind us,
One in sober blue, the other defiant pink.
Their ironic chuckles and tender complaints reach us:
A rained-out trip south, a pompous son-in-law, a menu favourite found.
Old friends.

A small window to the left.
Ice pellets hit the thinning glass…tith, tith, tith.
To hear them is not to feel them.
To hear them is to absorb their externality.

We are like fossils, sealed in,
Soothed, buoyed, glowing, half-filled, unrepentant…

You reach for my hand, breaking the spell.
Come, My Love. It’s time to go.



Cate Davis lives in Toronto.

Sycamores by Tamara Madison

In late July I stroll the rows
of sycamores
which just last May
opened wide green hands to sky.
In summer’s height
their sallowing leaves
already show they’ve turned
their thoughts toward fall.
When the leaves wither,
brown, and drop,
they’ll leave in their place
the grace of naked limbs
reaching high above the roof.
I know in spring
I’ll feel sad at first
to have that view obscured
by all that eager green.



Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbooks The Belly Remembers and Along the Fault Line, and two full-length volumes of poetry, Wild Domestic and Moraine. Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, the Writer’s Almanac, Sheila-Na-Gig, Worcester Review, and many other publications. Her newest full-length collection, Morpheus Dips His Oar is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. More about Tamara can be found at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.

Tasting Pine by Tamara Madison

Sap glistens in drops
beneath the new-trimmed
pines. I think of tears,
bits of shattered glass,
even diamonds, remember
the sticky beads
that gathered beneath
a wasp’s nest;
once I touched my finger
to a viscous drop,
put it on my tongue –
sweet, like Karo.
Now I touch the pine sap,
put finger to tongue;
the pungency of pine
resounds in my head
all morning, along
with Mother’s warning
that some things are better
kept in the realm
of imagining.



Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbooks The Belly Remembers and Along the Fault Line, and two full-length volumes of poetry, Wild Domestic and Moraine. Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, the Writer’s Almanac, Sheila-Na-Gig, Worcester Review, and many other publications. Her newest full-length collection, Morpheus Dips His Oar is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. More about Tamara can be found at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.

in two shitty days, i made these poems by Ahrend Torrey

/ day one /

 

i’ve almost given up on hope. 

i’ve almost given up on dreams. 

i’ve almost given up on everything— 

 

except for the child 

i see through the living room blinds, 

learning to ride a bike, 

a helmet over their eyes. 

 

it’s friday evening, in the suburbs, 

around five. 

 

their parent has a smooth face, 

dark glasses pulled over their eyes;

the most soothing lavender hair.  

 

i push the side door open—

let the dogs out

to their gunky bowls, 

 

then hear clapping, over the road—

 

you’ve got this, babe, 

   you’ve got this!

 

                         — keep going! 

                         — keep going!

 

\ day two \

 

i can sit here in my own misery. 

 

i can sit here at the edge of this bed 

with my hands slapped over my face, 

defeated, my spirit drilled into the ground, 

like steel.  

 

—or i can go to the cabinet, 

grab a heaping scoop of seed, 

 

take it to the field, near the lake, 

where i like to sit upon the rock 

and sling it to the shiny geese, eating 

from the showy grass— 

 

this, is what I really want—

to do something

to keep the world beautiful.

Ahrend Torrey is the author of Ripples (Pinyon Publishing, 2023), Bird City, American Eye (Pinyon Publishing, 2022) and Small Blue Harbor (Poetry Box Select, 2019). His work has appeared in storySouth, The Greensboro Review, and The Perch (a journal of the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health, a program of the Yale School of Medicine), among others. He earned his MA/MFA in creative writing from Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and is a recipient of the Etruscan Prize awarded by Etruscan Press. He lives in Chicago with his husband Jonathan, their two rat terriers Dichter and Dova, and Purl their cat. 

Endings by Martha Christina

Two brothers
come home
to visit their
dying mother.

One drives his
own red hybrid;
the other, a rented
grey sedan.

For three days they
take turns practicing
their futures; saying
good-bye.

When they were small,
their mother read
to them; stories
ending with

lessons learned
by those who
suffered,
and endured.



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. Born and raised in Indiana, she now lives in Bristol, Rhode Island.

Fame by Martha Christina

Once upon a time, as the famous stories begin,
I was a part-time secretary at an Ivy League
university, and assigned to assist a famous composer
putting on the regalia for his honorary degree.

He said he loved the Beefeater hat. “I love
your music,” I said, embarrassing myself;
but I was young and not much at conversation,
and he was, as I’ve said: famous.

Back then, he was also already stooped from years
bent over the piano, composing, becoming famous.
But even famous, he wasn’t always recognized.
Out on the street, he was another black man, at risk.



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. Born and raised in Indiana, she now lives in Bristol, Rhode Island.