That Which Was and is Not by Steve Brisendine

Tempted
to hit the brakes –
but the hamburger joint
where Gary and I ate last March
has closed.

Not all
tombstones are hewn from granite, bear
chiseled names and lifespans;
some simply read
FOR RENT.



Steve Brisendine lives, works and remains unbeaten against the New York Times crossword puzzle in Mission, Kansas. His work has appeared in I-70 Review, Southern Quill, Modern Haiku and elsewhere, and he is the author of five collections of poetry. In his spare time, he tries to make himself seem far more interesting than he actually is.

misfit by Steve Brisendine

new calendar,
same old dreams
of broken reading glasses
and unpaired shoes

with somewhere
important to be
five minutes ago --

the last final for the degree
I never finished, maybe,
or a deadline to apply
for the job I already have

(if I could only wake up
and remember)



Steve Brisendine lives, works and remains unbeaten against the New York Times crossword puzzle in Mission, Kansas. His work has appeared in I-70 Review, Southern Quill, Modern Haiku and elsewhere, and he is the author of five collections of poetry. In his spare time, he tries to make himself seem far more interesting than he actually is.

Broken Fiddle by Jason Ryberg

Tonight, the moon is
     a white chrysanthemum and
a lone cricket is
squeaking out a sad country
          tune on a broken fiddle.



Jason Ryberg lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.

Wrong Turns by George Nevgodovskyy

laminated roadmap
folded in glove box
your fingers
trace along
black lines tethered
to orange dots
taking all the blame
for leading us astray

now our kids say
cell phones do it for you
but there are days
I don’t want to arrive
take wrong turns
pull over unfold
our outdated map
your fingerprints
on its surface
and no one to blame
but myself



George Nevgodovskyy was born in Kiev, Ukraine, but has lived in Vancouver, Canada for most of his life. He has previously been published in East of the Web, Eunoia Review, trampset, Shot Glass Journal, and others. He does his best writing after everyone has gone to sleep. Check out more of his work at georgenev.blogspot.com

Pieces of You by Andrea Maxine Recto

A small house with a broken, red back door. The radio station on
in the morning. Cheap cigarettes and stale coffee
by the window. You kept my finger paintings taped to the fridge
and called them art. We had breakfast for dinner.

Five-dollar bills and small teeth tenderly tucked
underneath pillows. Burnt meatloaf and two glasses of milk.
The smell of wood shavings and your gray-blue
leather gloves. Sunday walks sitting on your shoulders, my hands grabbing
your hair to stay warm. Bedtime stories and you giggling in the dark.

Stuffed bras, red lipsticks, and painted black nails. I remember
your nervous laughter when you gave me the sex talk. Movie nights
and truffle and butter popcorn on a brown, beat-up couch.
Finding your blood in the bathroom sink. Doctors, nurses, and words
I don't understand. Wishing I still had my old stuffed bear
with the patched-up leg. Pillows soaked with tears.

Pills, pills, pills. Tidy hospital food trays and sterile sheets.
How terrified I was to hear your voice
in the middle of the night. Your bloodshot eyes. Holding hands
while we fell asleep.

Someone presses a small, silver cross into my hand. I shake
my head, eyes welling up. There are casseroles stacked
on every kitchen surface. Your name is whispered
over and over. Lilies, carnations, and roses are everywhere,
and you are nowhere in sight.



Andrea Maxine Recto is a Spanish-Filipino poet living in Manila. Her work has appeared in the Santa Clara Review and ONE ART, with more forthcoming in the Long River Review and elsewhere.

Time Bomb by Carolynn Kingyens

          The photograph is concerned
          with the power that the past
          has to interfere with the present:
          the time bomb in the cupboard.

          — Penelope Lively

Sometimes complicated emotions,
too heavy to bear, require suspension,
not in a mid-air dangling kind of way
like ribboned mistletoe suspended
over a lone threshold,
or a golf course green colored piñata
in the shape of an angry T-Rex
suspended over the heads of small children
at the birthday party but rather a suspension
of reality — some faraway, metaphysical place
Where The Wild Things Are, and the emotional
baggage I refuse to feel right now,
you know — painful things
like my estranged mother's suicide,
whom I loved from afar, where it felt safe,
and a nagging dread that history
may repeat itself as only dysfunction can
so I hit an invisible pause button on life:
on CPAP machines and separate bedrooms;
on a daughter, whom I can't reach
no matter how hard I try;
on our mid-century modern home
where the floors are made
entirely of delicate egg shells.

But in this suspension, this pause,
I'm free to binge-watch YouTube videos
under cute animal channel names
like GeoBeats and Cuddle Buddies,
becoming a much-needed comfort
in the tumult like the one about
a lonely black and white yak
named Marge and a lonely
black and white cow
named Maxine that soon become
fast friends under the swath
of bright pink and orange sky,
living out the rest of their days
together on a humane ranch
in the middle of Montana.

Or the video about the quirky,
purple-haired retiree named Pauline,
who rescues a baby squirrel,
she names Earnest,
that falls from its nest, landing
serendipitously in the sanctuary
of her backyard.

Pauline ends up remodeling
half her home to accommodate
the on-going gymnastics
of an indoor pet squirrel;
perhaps filling some kind
of maternal void.

It's amazing what I can keep
at bay while suspended
in this jelly-like grief.

For one, an ocean of emotion
resides just outside myself
wanting full entry the way water
demands — by way of a slow, steady
seep into the depths of my cracked
psyche-boat as I stay afloat — for now
with the help of non-stop amusement
and Starbucks.

Yesterday, my daughter called me
Karen, and right now there's a massive
beehive suspended under my roof's eave
in the shape of a furious, ticking time bomb
about to fall and scatter, changing everything
for good.



Carolynn Kingyens is the author of two books of poetry — Before the Big Bang Makes a Sound (2020) and Coupling (2021), both published by Kelsay Books. In addition to poetry, Kingyens writes narrative essays, book / film reviews, and short fiction. Her short stories "Bye Bye, Miss American Pie" and "The Invitation" were selected for Best of Fiction 2021 and 2023 list, respectively, by Across the Margin, a Brooklyn-based arts & culture webzine and podcast.

The Great War by Howie Good

Lt. Wilfred Owen, in a letter home,
described the front with the license
of a modern poet as smelling “like
the breath of cancer.” And as Simon
and Garfunkel fans know, “Silence
like a cancer grows.” I have had cancer.
At my last appointment, the oncologist
fumbled for words in relating the results
of a recheck. Wilfred Owen would be
killed on night patrol in no man’s land.



Howie Good's latest book, Frowny Face (Redhawk Publishing, 2023), is a mix of his prose poems and handmade collages. He co-edits the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.

Charles and Lydia by John Ziegler

The sepia photo of my great grandparents
is their only record beyond their headstones.

I imagine the soft flesh of her wrists,
her ginger hair curls like a French horn,
Charles as white as a cod without his shirt.

As she lays her smock across the maple rocker,
the casual yellow dog, watches discreetly,
his chin on the braided rug.

They slip beneath the muslin sheet,
exhale and smile.

In this bed she conceived
their ninth child,
the same day she became a grandmother.



John Ziegler is a poet and painter, gardener and traveler, originally from Pennsylvania, he recently migrated to a mountain village in Northern Arizona.

How much does the spirit weigh? by Michael J. Galko

Ask the pallbearers
fifteen years after

carrying the closed casket
of a murdered friend.

Feel the hasty flinch
even when your hand

                        rests

on their shoulder
in clear kindness.



Michael J. Galko is a scientist and poet who lives and works in Houston, TX. He was a finalist in the 2020 Naugatuck River Review narrative poetry contest and the 2022 Bellevue Literary Review poetry contest. Recent poems have appeared in Eclectica, Clackamas Literary Review, and Tar River Poetry.

Carum Carvi by Russell Rowland

The trivet, with its pretty picture
of that curative plant, is among my takeaways
from the long-ago divorce.

It rests on a table; often I look at the image.

Also called caraway, it will blossom in June
and July, and its seeds

give off a pleasant aroma, crushed.

It has been found effective
in getting down and keeping down whatever
is hardest to swallow in life.

I’m always grateful to learn a little;

grateful for so many things I’m aware of now
that I was not, until the hard
divorce—when my eyes were opened, almost

too wide for their sockets, while my weight
fell for a time to one-hundred-eight.



Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire. Recent work appears in Wilderness House, Bookends Review, and The Windhover. His latest poetry book, Magnificat, is available from Encircle Publications. He is a trail maintainer for the Lakes Region (NH) Conservation Trust.

Twin Red Oaks by Russell Rowland

If that Federal-style house on Route 107
ever aspires to B&B, “Twin Oaks” is what it will call itself.

The pair out front have been together
since they were acorns. Old-school, however—minimum
public display of affection. Oh,

they nod to each other over private arboreal concerns,
shared memories of the hurricane.

By midsummer, it’s difficult to tell whose foliage is whose.

Trunks don’t touch—
just stand like people waiting to be properly introduced.

But underground, with only moles, worms, water veins,
and rocks to notice, these two
are holding hands. And if one ever topples to gale forces,

we know the other will catch and support it.



Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire. Recent work appears in Wilderness House, Bookends Review, and The Windhover. His latest poetry book, Magnificat, is available from Encircle Publications. He is a trail maintainer for the Lakes Region (NH) Conservation Trust.

A Chicken Strays from the Neighbor’s Flock by Sharon Waller Knutson

A coyote follows
the brown hen
from the neighbor’s
yard as she traipses
across our property,
breaks her neck
as she bends
to pick up the popcorn
kernel on the ground.

My husband stands
at the window watching
the blizzard of feathers
as the coyote carries
the dead chicken back
to his den and the rooster
crows a warning:

Predator in our Midst
as the sun rises in the valley,
just like the warning
we gave our neighbor
when she got the chickens
and let them roam
in the wildlife habitat.

The neighbor wagged
her finger as she does now
when she sees the feathers
covering our lawn. It’s your
fault my chicken is dead,
she says. You lured coyotes
with your water. And my
chickens with your snacks.

We close the door knowing
reasoning with her is like
trying to convince a hungry
coyote to stop dining
on the smorgasbord of squirrels,
chipmunks and chickens,
fearing the feral feline is next.



Sharon Waller Knutson has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has published 12 books of poetry, including the most recent, The Leading Ladies of My Life (Cyberwit 2023) and its sequel, My Grandfather is a Cowboy (Cyberwit 2024). She has published 1,000 poems in more than 60 publications. She is the editor of Storyteller Poetry Review and lives in Arizona.

Serving Time by Jean Ryan

A royal family in Polynesia was gifted
a tortoise hatchling by the explorer Captain Cook.
For 188 years this reliable creature hauled itself
across the property, accepting whatever
hindrance it encountered. Some days
it likely went nowhere, just hunkered where it woke,
disinclined to travel or eat or even gaze at the greenery,
the act of breathing engagement enough.
How can we assume that a turtle who lived 68,620 days
didn't get bored or grouchy, didn't want to occasionally bite
the hand that fed it, just to shake things up?
How many decades was it saddled with aches and pains?
How much had it slowed down before the difference
between living and dying became too small to measure,
and did it give itself away then in agreement
or did it fight, like us, for one more wretched inch?



Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in coastal Alabama. Her debut collection of short stories, Survival Skills, was published by Ashland Creek Press and short-listed for a Lambda Literary Award. Lovers and Loners is her second story collection. She has also published a novel, Lost Sister, a book of nature essays, Strange Company, and a poetry collection, A Day Like This. https://jean-ryan.com/

Best Friend by J.I. Kleinberg

The dog sits by the door
below the hooks where jackets
and scarves, raincoats and a leash
hang in a tumble of color. The dog
is curled on the forbidden couch.

The dog stands at the side of the bed,
chin resting near the pillow, watching.
The dog feels the car approaching,
and barks an announcement, a warning.
The dog is a blur on the beach,

a zigzag shadow in the woods. The dog
carries the growling hunger of the pack,
stands ready, eager to be the metaphor.
The dog chews the delicious shoe,
so redolent of love.



J.I. Kleinberg is an artist, poet, and freelance writer. Her chapbooks include The Word for Standing Alone in a Field (Bottlecap Press), how to pronounce the wind (Paper View Press), Desire’s Authority (Ravenna Press Triple Series No. 23), and she needs the river (Poem Atlas). She lives in Bellingham, Washington, USA, and is on Instagram @jikleinberg.