New England Spring by Sarah Russell

It has rained for days—sometimes early fog
and a gentle mist that reminds me of the moors;
sometimes the wind and drench of squalls
from the Atlantic. Flowers love this spring,
but worms sprawl helpless on sidewalks
and die in the first patch of sun. The dog
comes home bedraggled from his walks,
happy and shaking on the stoop. I drape
my slicker over a chair with a towel beneath
to catch the drops, brew some tea, open
my journal. A perfect morning.



Sarah Russell’s poetry and fiction have been published in Rattle, Misfit Magazine, Third Wednesday, Red Eft Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She has 3 poetry collections published by Kelsay Books, I lost summer somewhere (2019), Today and Other Seasons (2020), and Emergence (2025). Her novella The Ballerina Swan Lake Mobile Homes Country Club Motel was published by Running Wild Press. She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net

Great Horned Owls, Mid-Winter by Sarah Russell

On our evening walk we hear them
in a stand of oak and pine–the female’s
breathy notes; the male’s answer, deeper,
like tones blown across a stoneware jug.
Before their sortie over snowy fields
they whisper greetings to their mates⸺
an alliance voiced in shadow. Our breath
clouds in the twilight.



Sarah Russell’s poetry and fiction have been published in Rattle, Misfit Magazine, Third Wednesday, Red Eft Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She has 3 poetry collections published by Kelsay Books, I lost summer somewhere (2019), Today and Other Seasons (2020), and Emergence (2025). Her novella The Ballerina Swan Lake Mobile Homes Country Club Motel was published by Running Wild Press. She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net

Pueblo Tourist by Sandi Leibowitz

The open door invited visitors.
Limping up the steps,
clinging to the loose wooden rail,
I apologized for my arthritis.

He pointed good-naturedly to his cane,
gave me a smile of true welcome
and began to talk about his home.

He’d been born there,
where his father also had been born,
generations before them resident
in this one cell of the pueblo’s honeycomb.
Like a duke admitting tours to fund
the upkeep of his palace,
he was living testament to love of place.

Almost no possessions, and those few old.
A radio with neatly taped antenna.
Some bright, chipped mugs.
Two chairs like shy toddlers tucked about
the plastic gingham skirt of a painted table.

Tired linoleum floors reminded me of
Grandma’s Kings Highway walk-up
(long since demolished),
its kitchen redolent of oily fried eggplant,
peeling paint, and untranslated Yiddish,
the window overlooking a Brooklyn alley
where shadows devoured stray cats and garbage cans
under the damp flags of drying underclothes.

“It’s not big,” he said,
“but for us it’s enough.”
“I’m from New York,” I said;
“we live in even tighter spaces—”
but he didn’t let me finish,
didn’t want to know.

Later on I tried again
to make dialogue,
share.
Met the same adobe wall.

I wanted to say, “I’m not white White.
My people know about persecution—”

but I shut up.
The best gift I could give him was
my attention.
I bought the bread
he’d baked from his mother’s recipe
in the traditional horno standing
with patient, open mouth outside the door.
Unlike the honey-sweetened fry bread
of the dog-thronged woman by the river,
this was as dense and unpleasant as history.

I ate his bread.
And I listened.



Sandi Leibowitz is the author of Ghost Light, Eurydice Sings, and The Bone-Joiner. Her poetry has garnered second and third place Dwarf Stars, as well as nominations for the Elgin, Rhysling, Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net awards. She lives in New York City.

A Jonah by Howie Good

She says I should take a spoon
of black seed oil daily, eat turmeric

and garlic, and cook using only
stainless steel. None of that is likely

any time soon. In the waters off
Patagonia, a kayaker got swallowed,

boat and all, by a whale and lived.



Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose newest poetry books, The Dark and Akimbo, are available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.

On or About_______ by Michelle Reale

Days, weeks, months and years she goes about not hearing from her groom, but still, she does not worry. The show must go on. Third and fourth cousins on her mother’s side hang flowers on grosgrain ribbons stuck into the ceiling with T-pins. It’s the latest rage: a floating horticultural ecology. The large headed flowers resembling cruciferous vegetables are heavy, but still slightly sway in the air-conditioned air, as though they were in a dream. A stiff-backed woman wearing a brocade dress with epaulettes keeps her hands poised over the old Wurlitzer chipped ivory keys, ready to bust out a groove when given the signal by the one-eyed usher. Orange and green sherbert sit like icebergs in cold Hawaiian Punch, to be served in decorative thimbles, which will be given to the bride to aid her in the fashioning of a life after marriage, stitch by lonely stitch. Guests begin to arrive, and in lieu of gifts, many carry in a heavy grudge or two. They pile onto the groom's side and begin placing bets. The bride wears nothing but old-fashioned underwear and coyly, like the coquette she always dreamed of being, waves and blows kisses. Save it for your husband, one woman growls, and the women, pleased with themselves, titter behind their gloved hands. It’s a waiting game. Some need more time to make up their minds. Others are willing to live in suspended moments for so little return on their investment. The clock ticks a rhythm, that the old man by the door, in his dusty tuxedo, taps his toe to. A note is played on the piano and then another. The joint starts jumpin’. The bride wriggles in her old-fashioned underwear. More than a few, with good reason, hold their breath.



Michelle Reale teaches poetry in Arcadia University's Low-Residency program. She is the author of several collections of poetry including the forthcoming Let it be Extravagant (Bordighera Press, 2025).

My Husband’s Aunt Starts Speaking German by Sharon Waller Knutson

A language she never learned
and no one understands
after her son drives her
out to the property where
she believes a house
is being built for her.

She stares at the cows
chewing their cud in the pasture
and must have realized at 91
that she is never getting
out of the closet-size room
in assisted living where she moves
after selling her mobile home
when she is confined
to a wheelchair. The center
had promised to build her
a comfortable cottage.
But the cottages go to couples.
Her husband is long gone.

Dementia, the doctors diagnose.
And her sister, my mother-in law,
a nurse, concurs with the doctors.
Grandma speak English, her grandson
pleads as he visits for the first time.
Mom, stop this nonsense, her daughter
insists but the old lady responds
in German gibberish her family
doesn’t believe even she understands.
Her nephew, my husband thinks otherwise.
She studied Dutch. German is similar.
No one but the nurse taking her vitals
hears her last words: Auf Wiedersehen.



Sharon Waller Knutson has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has published 12 poetry books, 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.

Half a Hug, Whole Heart by Veronica Tucker

It happens mid-run,
mid-sentence,
mid-mess,
a flyby embrace,
one arm slung loosely
around my middle
before she vanishes
down the hall.

No eye contact.
No warning.
Just motion,
like a breeze that pauses
to remind me it’s still spring.

Her hand is still sticky
from a granola bar,
and I feel it imprint
on the fabric of my shirt
like a signature
she didn’t mean to leave.

I don’t call her back.
I don’t ask for more.
Because that quick squeeze,
that distracted gesture,
holds the full weight
of everything she knows
about love.

And it’s enough.

Some days,
it’s more than enough.
A reminder
that even in her rush
toward independence,
she still orbits me
briefly,
but beautifully.



Veronica Tucker is a lifelong New Englander, physician, and married mom of three. Her poetry explores memory, caregiving, and quiet moments of connection. She enjoys running, travel, time with her family, and finely crafted matcha lattes. Her work has appeared in redrosethorns and Medmic, with additional poems forthcoming.

Tellers by Martha Christina

This morning's bank teller
is a chatty sub who tells
me she noticed, just
yesterday, some
new wrinkles. She
adds (and not happily):
I'm looking more like
my mother every day.

I'd be happy to join
the club of women
whose faces age into
our mothers', but I
favor my father's
older sister, a plain
woman who believed
herself a fortune teller.
Once, peering into my hand
she told me You will
age like your mother.



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.

Lost in the Bardo by Carolynn Kingyens

          For my mother—
          a mystery.

Two years ago
the phone call arrived,
tragic as a gut-punch,
you know —That Call...
that call every estranged
adult-child dreads;
one I could never prepare for
even after being asked
by a Manhattan therapist,
the same therapist
who'd inform me that
my sleeping
inside of a sleeping bag
atop the celery-green
shag carpet floor
in my parents' bedroom,
curled up next to my mother's
bedside like a loyal labrador
was actually something
called enmeshment,
strange behavior that
could be named.

For seven years
my father would treat me
like a perpetually
annoying cockblock,
perhaps my mother's goal
all along.

"Will you go to her funeral?"
he'd ask me in one of our sessions.

My lack of an immediate answer
would later morph
into a hypothetical poem,
a poem about going home
after the dreaded, hypothetical
phone call from the brother,
whom I hadn't seen
in well over a decade,
not because of a lack of love
but rather due to the cringey,
social awkwardness
that existed in all our familial
relationships.

In this hypothetical poem,
I would portray myself
as a total stoic;
didn't cry,
didn't scream
before taking the last
poetic flight
out of LaGuardia.

And when the imaginary plane
circled the Hudson—
the perfect trajectory
to study the river,
also embodied with secrets,
I'd sit and stare
out the oval window
looking down at the watery graves
of those poor souls
dismembered and discarded
like Angel Melendez,
the New York City Club-Kid;
murdered and dumped
in the Hudson by Michael Alig,
who'd later be played
by Macaulay Culkin
in Party Monster.

I digressed.

The first boyfriend
I ever brought home
told me my father's eyes
looked dead
in all his photographs.

In 1997
I read a short story
by Will Self
called "The End
of the Relationship,"
the last story
from his book Grey Area
about an "emotional
Typhoid Mary"
who'd make
all her lovers' eyes
go dead
just like my father's.

Maybe that was who
my mother was,
maybe that's who
I am by extension of her —
an emotional Typhoid Mary,
a F—up folie a deux —
a loyal labrador
lost in the bardo.

Carolynn Kingyens was born and raised in Northeast Philadelphia. She is the author of two poetry collections, Before the Big Bang Makes a Sound and Coupling, both published by Kelsay Books. In addition to poetry, she writes essays, reviews, and short fiction. Two of her short stories were selected for The Best of Fiction List in 2021 and 2023. In the Fall of 2024, two of her essays were republished by YourTango. And her latest review is the tribute book for Larry Robin, who is to Philadelphia as Allen Ginsberg is to Paterson. You can read her latest book review at The Arts Fuse. Carolynn writes on a myriad of topics ranging from pop culture to pop psychology to true crime on Medium: https://medium.com/@ckingyens