Disaster Repairs by Shoshauna Shy

My lifeline to food, beer,
a bed, cigarettes
is this foreman at the site
in Boca Raton
after Hurricane Matthew
when he hired me on
without needing a reference,
an address, first name.
Paid me in cash, an
all-around win-win.
So, when I slipped up
at the start of week six,
thought it was sympathy
his drive across town,
the chit-chat in his truck
with a Bill Evans CD
to coat over my shock.
Then he says Good luck here,
brakes at the St. Mary’s ER.
Guess he’d hauled many a joe
to get a finger reattached.
Why I expected he’d keep me
shows I was just plain dumb
considering how I hadn’t
even got the job done.



Shoshauna Shy is the founder of the Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf program. Her poems have recently been published by Poetry South, RockPaperPoem, Write City Magazine, and Pure Slush Books. Her poems have been made into video, produced inside taxi cabs, and even decorated the hind quarters of city buses.

Letter at the Office in Her Mailroom Cubbie by Shoshauna Shy

I am one of the husbands
of your husband’s lovers
states the letter written
on 24-lb. bond
Her fusty-sweatpants Teddy
who snorts when he sleeps?
Spends evenings Velcroed
to his TV-lassoed chair?
You ought to know they meet
in a cabin on Lake Wist
says the pale slanting script
Call me to devise what
our strategy will be
Area code and cell
but no signature
no name

She flips the envelope over
Sees it’s actually addressed
to somebody not her
Lets the paper fall in folds
ordained by its own creases
Rewraps this missive
intended for her boss (7 months
pregnant and married but a year
“to Mr Right who loves me
more than anybody else”)
and positions it discreetly
in its rightful slot–
or drops it in the wastebasket
at the bottom of the stairs?



Shoshauna Shy is the founder of the Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf program. Her poems have recently been published by Poetry South, RockPaperPoem, Write City Magazine, and Pure Slush Books. Her poems have been made into video, produced inside taxi cabs, and even decorated the hind quarters of city buses.

Do What I Know by Richard Fox

Planning my funeral
feels familiar.

Line up poems.
Tune in songs.

Create a program,
calming the house.

Sequence for effect.
Laughter. Tears.

No rehearsal.
Single staging.

Transform errors
into improvisations.

My last feature.
Perform and pretend.

Muted.

Front row.
Box seat.



Richard Fox’s poems feature rock ’n roll and youthful transgressions, but his focus is cancer and hospice from the patient’s point of view. He is the author of eight poetry collections and winner of the 2017 Frank O’Hara Prize. smallpoetatlarge.com

One last loop by Richard Fox

Bailey Dog,
my shadow. Senses
pain, weakness.
Mirrors angst.

Cuddles.
His back, my hip.
Alert to coughing,
addled breaths.

Plan my funeral
procession. Measure
distances from service
to burial to reception.

Which shul shortens
the stress of riding
in grief? Want my family
unburdened by silence.

Choose a rabbi.
Music. Readings. Poems.
Ask difficult favors
that can never be repaid:

eulogies, pallbearers, obituary,
mourners to hold my loved ones
when dirt and gravel
strike wood.

Time is lost in voids.
Mortality, the inescapable escort,
sits next to me
in the backseat.

Bailey has diabetes.
We are old, ill males. Waiting.
Blind, he will guide me
through darkness.



Richard Fox’s poems feature rock ’n roll and youthful transgressions, but his focus is cancer and hospice from the patient’s point of view. He is the author of eight poetry collections and winner of the 2017 Frank O’Hara Prize. smallpoetatlarge.com

Neighbor by Robert Darken

We rake leaves into moldy piles, stuff them
in paper sacks. The neighbor works too, his eyeglasses
spotted with rain. Ruined oak leaves cling
stubbornly to the ground.

This is not the raking I remember from childhood. Leaves
dropped from the twin maples like stemmed stars,
gold and red, woody and fragrant as apples
when my brothers and I in our puffy vests
plunged in, rosy and shrieking, the sky a lake
framed in the maples’ sudden black grasp.

And Dad, gray and strong in his flannel shirt,
prodded flame to whisper in the burn barrel
until the good smoke climbed to the heavens.

That was before he sold our house and moved
to the Home where he sits, watches football
with the volume too loud, the air inside
heavy with microwave dinners, newspapers,
wool sweaters, medicines.

Down the hall a neighbor’s door stands open. From inside
comes the murmur of a radio, the scrape of a stepladder,
the smell of new paint, the smell of vacancy.



Originally from the Midwest, Robert Darken now resides in Connecticut, where he teaches high-school English. His poems have appeared in One Art, The Orchards, and New Verse News.

The Man I See by Robert Darken

I never knew how a life can burn down
like a slow candle, the way my father is and is not
the face at his end of a weekly video call
initiated by a nurse’s aide,
positioned badly in the frame: one eye, silver rim
of eyeglass, bridge of a nose patched long ago
after a carcinoma, thick lips, some teeth,
a missing upper bridge.

Sparse whiskers glint against a sagging throat.
Where do you live now? he asks me,
and I tell him: still Connecticut.
Still a thousand miles from him in Sister Bay.
Is that anywhere near you, Rudy? he asks
the image of my brother in another window.
Rudy is still in California, so no, not close.

At my age it’s still no trouble to conjure a memory
of my father singing O My Darling, Clementine,
as he sits in a lawn chair before a fire
on a family trip to Colorado, or see him
bend the driver’s seat all the way forward
so his three boys can scramble into the back
of the green Ford Maverick during that era
when he drove us to the Field Museum
practically every Saturday. I see him
in a plaid coat and a laughably small blue beanie
stop for a breather in the midst of shoveling snow,
both hands resting atop the wooden shaft.
Was that the same man?
Every moment was a moment that he was becoming
the man I see now on screen.

What do you hear about Helmer? he asks
about his brother, dead more than twenty years.
His hair stands in stalks
like wisps of white smoke
reminding me suddenly of a young Lindbergh
on the tarmac, tousled by an Atlantic wind,
about to pass into the fog and out of sight.



Originally from the Midwest, Robert Darken now resides in Connecticut, where he teaches high-school English. His poems have appeared in One Art, The Orchards, and New Verse News.

What Remains by Robert Darken

Dad never threw anything away, we laugh, chests hollow
and heavy: a dozen toothbrushes, stacks of Christmas cards,
a legal pad where he’d written the name of every Bears quarterback.

We cram books into boxes; drop a desk
with Secondhand Sue. Proceeds go to the food bank, she smiles,
pushing back curls. It’s magic: cast offs made into meals.

We scrub evidence of life: crumbs in the recliner, coffee rings
on the TV tray. The sink guzzles lemon juice, soy sauce.
In three days a home becomes a blank page.

We hurry, make choices: Danish porcelain bubble wrapped,
shipped to California; grandma’s hutch goes to charity.
I have someone in mind, says Sue. There’s life in that yet.

Somewhere, a golden clock chimes on the mantle of a stranger.



Originally from the Midwest, Robert Darken now resides in Connecticut, where he teaches high-school English. His poems have appeared in One Art, The Orchards, and New Verse News.

Inheritance by Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue

From all my old relatives – decked out in always
out-of-fashion clothes that stunk of mothballs –
without even a word, I imbibed:

the Great 1900 Storm, Model T's, Doughboys, Charlie Chaplin,
the Lindy, “The Jazz Singer,” the 1929 Crash, the Depression, WPA,
musicals, big bands, Pearl Harbor, Nazis, Iwo Jima, rationing coupons,
scrap metal drives, VE and VJ Days, the jitterbug, the Bomb,
an economy on high-octane fuel, the Cold War, Korea, Civil Rights
marches, TV, Uncle Miltie, the twist, the sadness of aging –

so many relatives dying so young, the stress of the daily grind
on their minds and bodies, and always the unspoken pressure
to, by God, fit in, to keep up appearances at all costs.



Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue has had poems published in The Texas Observer, Concho River Review, Borderlands, California Quarterly, and two anthologies of Texas poetry. His collection of poetry What I Did Not Tell You (Hungry Buzzard Press) was published in the fall of 2020.

My wife by Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue

is always dying in some hospital somewhere, miles from home.
I am always rushing to get ready: taking showers, shaving,
walking the dog. Then through ground fog and indifferent
traffic I make my way on arterial, meandering roads I barely

recognize to spend a few hours watching TV (old sit-coms
in the main), reading aloud to her her favorite books, chatting
with nurses and techs, sitting in always uncomfortable hospital
chairs guaranteed to cause future back pains. I am always failing

her – getting there too late, or not staying late enough to catch the
ones who don't give a damn. Or, being too distracted by my phone
or just a bone-weariness – lo, these many months – that's numbed me.
Yet another night, she has trouble sleeping. She knows she is dying.

We hold hands, recite our good times like a benediction: our wonderful
daughter, our happy 30 years, camping in Colorado, Arkansas, New
Mexico, our trips to New York, Santa Fe, Asheville. Finally, her meds
kick in and she calms. I kiss her goodnight. Tell her I love her. Turn out

the light. Outside, streetlights lit, roads shorn of traffic, I drive through
ice and snow, through thunderous light shows, my hood peppered by hail,
or nights eerily calm, a sharp contrast to our roiled life. Once home, I walk
the dog, read till I fall asleep in my La-Z-Boy, wake up at two, muddle-headed.

Walk spraddle-legged, like an old man, to sleep fitfully, coiling alone
in what was once our bed.



Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue has had poems published in The Texas Observer, Concho River Review, Borderlands, California Quarterly, and two anthologies of Texas poetry. His collection of poetry What I Did Not Tell You (Hungry Buzzard Press) was published in the fall of 2020.

After a Week of Storms by Martha Christina

I’m ashamed to say I didn’t once wonder 

how the gulls were faring. I worried 

about the song birds who disappeared 

from the feeder. I worried about my roof, 

would the shingles hold or yield a new leak? 

I don’t know where gulls shelter or feed 

in high winds and heavy rain, but today 

they’re eating last week’s stale bread, 

fanning the air with their wings, making 

their own singular music. 

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.

What and How He Taught Me by Martha Christina

My bedroom window faced our
small backyard, far from the street,
no need for a pulled shade.

I heard heavy steps
in fallen leaves
behind the house.
I turned off the lamp;
looked out into faint
moonlight. A figure
I didn’t recognize
stood waiting,
like someone
in a theater,
for the show
to begin.

My screams filled every room.

Remember, my father said,
when he came back inside,
you see from dark into light.



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.

My Older Sister and I Share Memories of Baths in the Clawfoot Tub by Martha Christina

Hers:

You were screaming. . .two and
a half, maybe three. . .screaming,
but she insisted the water wasn’t
hot enough to scald you; she
insisted. . . .That was the last
time she bathed you.

Mine:

My sister and I took turns
sliding down the tub’s curved back,
splashing each other, laughing.
        Unsupervised.



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.