The Math of Love by T. R. Poulson

We’re almost lovers, though nothing
has happened—if nothing is the way
his words hold me close as kiss, as touch
of thighs. We’ve talked about
everything, and now
                         I tell him
about the time I found a calf, licked
and left behind. Searched the herd
to find her mama. Only one cow
had the long pink ribbons of birth
beneath her tail. But she had a calf
beside her. I carried the abandoned
heifer calf to the new mama. Her moos,
mild as milk, told me both babies
were hers. She kept forgetting one
sister, keeping the other.
                              I was a child,
but even then I understood—how easy
to love what I can touch, can’t stop thinking
about the lonely twin, licked and left
asleep, her head curved around her body
until she woke up hungry, alone, not
knowing how to live. Not yet knowing
she was loved.



T. R. Poulson, a University of Nevada alum, lives in San Mateo and delivers for UPS in Woodside, California. Her poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in various journals, including Best New Poets, Gulf Coast, and Booth. Find her at www.trpoulson.com, and on social media as @trpoulson.       

Old House by Lorri Ventura

Awaiting demolition
The vacant house sags tiredly on its lot
Cracked windowpanes stare defeatedly at a bulldozer
Creeping steadily forward on lawn-lacerating tracks
In its final moments, the aged structure conjures ghosts
As faded as the stained, peeling wallpaper
Visions of children splash raucously, sloppily,
In its pink tiled bathroom
Doors slam in anger
And burst open in welcome
Sunbeams tickle the faces of late sleepers
At holiday gatherings
Families crowd first at the kitchen table
And then around the piano
The abode feels sapped but satisfied
With the knowledge that it served well
Today the house takes its final measure
It creaks its hardwood floors, gouged by cleated footwear
Jostles moth-eaten Persian carpets rolled up against the walls
Shakes its mouse dropping-covered countertops
Wriggles the wires that dangle above each room as testament
To the former locations of ceiling lights
Sections of its framework are torn off,
Mourned by now useless nails that protrude, dagger-like,
Menacing the passage between living and dining rooms
The house quakes with the weight of memories
The bulldozer’s inexorable approach
Warns the old house that it is time
For surrender to the future —
A trophy home intended to impress
The once venerable homestead heaves one last shudder
(An onlooker swears she hears it sigh)
As the mighty machine relentlessly pushes
Up against its outer walls
Then, with a mighty roar that sounds somehow celebratory,
The old house collapses



Lorri Ventura is a retired special education administrator living in Massachusetts. Her poems also have been featured in All Poetry, Mad Swirl, Parapraxis, Quabbin Quills, and Writing in a Woman's Voice.

November Edits by Brendan Constantine

This afternoon I rebuild a house,
a street, and your body, leaving out
the sickroom, the neighbor’s wakeful
dog, the blur in your lung. I add

more flowers than there were,
more fits of laughter, the two
deck chairs you never got round
to buying. I’m on the fence about
the fence — I want it to be higher,

that dog farther from your ear,
want more space between you
and your last day. But then
you’d lose the view, the sound

and color of the apricot tree,
the burnt sugar smell you said
you could live in.



Brendan Constantine is a poet and educator from Los Angeles, California. He is the author of several collections of poetry and his work is widely anthologized. He currently teaches at the Windward School and, since 2017, has been developing workshops for writers living with Aphasia and Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI).

Autumn Abundance by Renee Williams

Autumn leaves fall like unfulfilled dreams or unspoken wishes
as Canada geese honk overhead, engaging the V formation
with a lone straggler struggling to catch up.

So much undone, trips not taken, adventures not realized,
motorcycle rides missed to tend to loved ones,
summer flies away on the wings of the hummingbirds, taking our hopes with her.

Red-winged black birds are gone, harbingers of spring,
wanting nothing to do with falling temperatures or frost on cornstalks.
Juncos will arrive soon, demanding only the finest sunflower seeds.

Remaining leaves are golden, oaks the last to turn, autumn rains claiming what they can,
as breezes float through the branches. Squirrels scurry, carrying hickory nuts to their dens.
Stacks of wood are prepared for winter’s wrath of power outages and plummeting temperatures.

My soul is in a cup of warm mocha, a yoga blanket wraps my feet. Early evenings
become the norm, darkness descending, carrying a stillness so respected, a hush so soothing,
a solitude signaling surrender.



Renee Williams is a retired English instructor, who has written for Guitar Digest, Alien Buddha Press, and Fevers of the Mind.

Sometimes We Try by Judith Sornberger

          Mount Saviour Monastery, February 2020

The pasture snow is bright as an unmarked page
as I saunter past after a morning at the desk.
Fir trees in the distance could be a chorus
line of nuns in crisp white habits,
or anything else I might imagine. Except

dead ahead, on my right, I see the frenzied
jerking of a deer, her bleeding hind leg caught
between fence wires. My soothing words as I climb
the snowbank don’t fool her. She knows
my kind—the ones who build fences, shoot her sisters.

But as I strain to pull the wires apart, she drops
to her knees--waiting, perhaps hoping. Once
I catch my finger between the wires, panic
when they won’t release me. My pain must be
sharp as her fear, but I’m not the one bleeding.

When I release myself, I huff and puff
up the hill to borrow wire clippers.
Find my friend who drives us back to the deer.
All the while we hope she’s broken loose,
but, of course, she hasn’t.

The clippers are made for lighter wire,
but we take turns cutting, twisting, pulling—
surprised when the wire lets go.
The deer limps to a copse of trees,
and we wince to see her white bone.

The firs shiver in the wind, silent witnesses like us,
praying she’ll make it, knowing she probably won’t.
It’s cold. She’s in shock. Come darkness, coyotes
will hunt her. All night my pinkie finger throbs—
the welt a token of another creature’s terror.



Judith Sornberger’s most recent poetry collection is The Book of Muses (Finishing Line Press). She’s the author of four full-length poetry collections and five other chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Prairie Schooner, The Comstock Review, Presence, Windhover, and The Grotto and have received four Pushcart nominations. She is a professor emerita from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania. www.judithsornberger.net

Thanking My Mother for Checking Out Poetry by Judith Sornberger

I see you in the new suburban branch library
on a hot July afternoon like the ones when
we were kids and came home early from the pool
to visit the library with you. Back then it was in
an old church, the air smelling of sacred mustiness
in the semi-darkness. You’d head to Adult Fiction
while each daughter found her favorite section—
for me Nancy Drew and Judy Bolton.
We’d meet at the circulation desk with our bounty—
a bundle of six books each. Talk about amazing grace!
Two decades later you’ve found your way to Poetry,
a single shelf, probably half empty, hoping to solve a mystery—
why a daughter of yours would follow a love of writing poems
to grad school when she’s a single mother with two kids
to support. I wish I could see the titles before you.
I hope you’ll find Whitman, whose poems are bighearted
as you. Nature mystic that you are, maybe Dickinson
and Frost. Clifton since you love living in a woman’s body.
Brooks for music leading to new neighborhoods.
A nice collection of haiku perhaps, and I think you’d get a kick
out of cummings. Please let there be no Plath.
She would only make you worry, and you’ve worried enough
about your eldest daughter who fell for this aisle
of words you’re following her into.



Judith Sornberger’s most recent poetry collection is The Book of Muses (Finishing Line Press). She’s the author of four full-length poetry collections and five other chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Prairie Schooner, The Comstock Review, Presence, Windhover, and The Grotto and have received four Pushcart nominations. She is a professor emerita from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania. www.judithsornberger.net

Two Blue Horses by Richard Weaver

          -Inspired by Franz Marc's painting of the same name

dancing in flame
around a towering cedar,
fearless bookends.
No moon calls them.
No moon demands
they follow in its footsteps.
The sun has taken
a rare day away
and sees no reason
to be involved.
Between each horse
a single heart beats:
desire and ambition.
Flesh and spirit.
The world seeps
and the horses know
more than they can say
to the hand that creates them,

to the life           balancing.



Post-Covid, Richard Weaver has returned as the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. Among his other publications: conjunctions, Louisville Review, Southern Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, Coachella Review, FRIGG, Hollins Critic, Xavier Review, Atlanta Review, Dead Mule, Vanderbilt Poetry Review, and New Orleans Review. He’s the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and wrote the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005) which has been performed 3 times in Alabama, and once at Juilliard in NYC. He was one of the founders of the Black Warrior Review and its Poetry Editor for the first three years. Five poems from his Franz Marc manuscript will be appearing in the Alabama Anthology (Nov. 2023). His 200th prose poem was recently accepted.

Two Blue Horses by Franz Marc

Yellow Seated Female Nude by Richard Weaver

         -Inspired by Franz Marc's painting of the same name

Dearest Prince,

When my Dresden letter to you
returned today, I was distressed
and felt a moment of panic,
and wondered if you had wandered 

beyond this earth and its naked eyes. 

And then I remembered the water cure.

Kneipp’s early answer to distress.
I was relieved to know you were whole 

and that our worries were without merit. 

Please forgive me for my doubtfulness. 

My vision was obscured by my heart.

You are our cloud of knowing.
Be sure of that. Be comforted.
We are your hosts. We wish
we were worthy angels in flesh.
Our apologies for being less.
                           - the Blue Rider

Post-Covid, Richard Weaver has returned as the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. Among his other publications: conjunctions, Louisville Review, Southern Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, Coachella Review, FRIGG, Hollins Critic, Xavier Review, Atlanta Review, Dead Mule, Vanderbilt Poetry Review, and New Orleans Review. He’s the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and wrote the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005) which has been performed 3 times in Alabama, and once at Juilliard in NYC. He was one of the founders of the Black Warrior Review and its Poetry Editor for the first three years. Five poems from his Franz Marc manuscript will be appearing in the Alabama Anthology (Nov. 2023). His 200th prose poem was recently accepted.

Yellow Seated Female Nude by Franz Marc

white pony by Bonnie Proudfoot

The white pony died on a January night,
it might have been below 0, no snow,
just one of those clear, cold-snap nights.
He died where he liked to stand, just outside
the barn, while our other pony, the gold one,
would stand just inside, seeking shelter,
nose to nose. From the barn I saw him,
as if asleep, but frozen already, legs splayed,
no cloud of breath, no warmth left. When
we got him he was old, maybe thirty,
judging by the wear on his teeth, a lifetime
of grinding. He'd been a coal mine pony,
and lost his right eye, the socket healed
into a pink fist of scar tissue, the other eye
pale blue with a dark grey center, bloodshot,
pink lashes, a short white mane, a small
round white belly that sagged like an
unmade day bed without springs, his spine,
a line of rocks in a shallow stream, his withers
a shaggy snowy hillock. We called him Cyclops.
Why not? And saddled him up at birthday parties
and sleepovers. Unlike the other pony,
he never tried to buck or shy. We led him
around the paddock, or set him out to
graze, watched him outside in the rain,
the snow, his pink lashes barely blinking, tail
flicking flies, pink hooves smaller than my palms.
I used to picture him, hunched in some tunnel,
carting wagons of black sooty rock, keeping
his head down. A small thing, glowing. He
made it out. We waited until the ground
thawed, started digging not far from the barn,
where the hillside sloped away. It could've
been half a day, piling stones and clay, then
we hitched up the other pony, and guided
the traces as he dragged the small white stiff
shell of his only friend. One living pony, sides
heaving with a weight barely possible to know,
one dead one, shut eye toward the ground,
open eye staring empty at the sky.



Born in NY, Bonnie Proudfoot now resides in Athens, Ohio. She writes poetry, reviews, fiction, and essays. Her novel, Goshen Road (Swallow Press, 2020) received WCONA’s Book of the Year and was long-listed for PEN/Hemingway. Her chapbook, Household Gods, (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2022), includes poems published in Red Eft Review.

Kindness by Penelope Moffet

          For Dick Bogue

Knowing it was his last night,
he didn’t eat or drink
because he knew
his bladder and his bowels
would empty. He wished
to spare Jane too much mess.
A kind man, Dick.
Her friend Molly had arrived
so Jane could get some rest.
He heard rain thrum the roof
and smiled. Water coursed
through desert washes
waking seeds, waking
creatures underground.
Molly soothed him
with her presence,
finally dozed, jet-lagged.
Thunder. Harder rain.
He pulled the tubes
out of his nose.
It was the emphysema
that trapped him in the bed
but Jane is sure
it was his heart
that took him out.



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, among them One, ONE ART, Natural Bridge, Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor, and The Rise Up Review.

Stuttering Breath by Penelope Moffet

Rhythmic sweep of the sprinkler
in early morning,
stuttering breath as it swipes
across ragged grass,
honeysuckle, ladders leaning on
the weathered termite-bitten
wood of the garage wall.
Too early for the wet
heat to rise, the unseasonal
moisture in the air, here
at the brink of summer,
the stepping-off
from glorious bloom
to drying-out.

On the road north,
golden grasses mix with
chartreuse growth and,
a little higher,
clefts and hills carpeted
with gray-green chaparral
and upthrust spikes
of Spanish Bayonet,
Our Lord’s Candle.
Sunflowers nod godheads
in ditches by the road.
A careless or deliberate light
tossed from a car
and all of it would burn.
I tell myself
I’m done with fear.



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, among them One, ONE ART, Natural Bridge, Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor, and The Rise Up Review.

My Children Ask Me Why I Have So Much Stuff by Tamara Madison

Your preschool art projects:
Hand-painted tiles, clumsy clay pots
brought home for Mother’s Day
A box of books you made in kindergarten
A lock from your first hair cut
A tin of your teeth
Boxes full of photographs of you at all stages:
Naked, toothless, chubby
As Superman in a Halloween parade
Onstage, a Nutcracker snowflake
You playing with cousins
Walking Auntie’s shelty
Sitting on Grandpa’s lap
Your suntanned face bobbing in a crowd
at summer camp
You in tassled cap and gown
Why are you keeping all this crap? they ask
I don’t tell them why I keep these remnants,
don’t say that to throw away mementos
feels like inviting death



Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbooks The Belly Remembers (Pearl Editions) and Along the Fault Line (Picture Show Press), and three full-length volumes of poetry, Wild Domestic, Moraine (Pearl Editions), and Morpheus Dips His Oar (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions). Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, the Writer’s Almanac, Sheila-Na-Gig, Worcester Review, and many other publications. She is a swimmer and a dog lover. More about Tamara can be found at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.

Foggy Morning by Tamara Madison

I have given my sister's name
to the stateliest, most graceful
in a row of sycamore trees.
I wade through damp grass
in muffled sunlight to visit her.

I need to go there,
need to touch her trunk,
look up into the patient wisdom
of her branches, listen to the fog
drip from her leaves, feel
the loss of her wring my chest.

I start for home.
The fog begins to lift.
Warm day ahead, a bit of summer.
The sycamores are going sallow
in slanted autumn light.

A cluster of geranium blossoms
greets me at home—her lipstick.
I remember the person she was
when she wore that shade.



Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbooks The Belly Remembers (Pearl Editions) and Along the Fault Line (Picture Show Press), and three full-length volumes of poetry, Wild Domestic, Moraine (Pearl Editions), and Morpheus Dips His Oar (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions). Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, the Writer’s Almanac, Sheila-Na-Gig, Worcester Review, and many other publications. She is a swimmer and a dog lover. More about Tamara can be found at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.

Staying Alive by Sharon Waller Knutson

My father was pushing
82 - the same age
as I am now - when
he went to sleep and never
woke up. When I succumb
to sleep in the darkness
I am surprised when the sun
shines and birds sing.

It is pitch black and I awaken
to the crowing of the rooster
and know he is communicating
with his hens like he does
in the daytime when they stroll
across our property.

I hope the chickens are in the coop
and the feral cat is curled up
on the couch in the sunporch
because I hear the yipping
of a pack of coyotes hoping
for raw meat for breakfast.

I close my eyes again and sunlight
splashes me awake. The chickens
are cackling and pecking
and the tabby is standing
outside the door waiting
for his breakfast and unlike my father
I have lived to see another day.



Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in Arizona. She has published eleven poetry books, including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields (Flutter Press 2014), What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say (Kelsay Books 2021), Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob (Kelsay Books 2021), Survivors, Saints and Sinners (Cyberwit 2022), Kiddos & Mamas Do the Darndest Things (Cyberwit 2022), The Vultures are Circling (Cyberwit 2023), and The Leading Ladies in My Life (Cyberwit 2023.) Sharon's twelfth collection, My Grandfather is a Cowboy, is also forthcoming from Cyberwit in January of 2024. Her work has appeared in more than 50 different journals and she is the editor of Storyteller Poetry Journal, which is an online publication dedicated to promoting narrative poetry.