Self-Inventory at Seventy by Jacqueline Jules

I miss
spicy foods and caffeine past noon.
A back that doesn’t ache at night.
Hands strong enough to open a pickle jar.
Eyes sharp enough to read small print.
Driving at night.
Mornings without medications.
Smooth skin minus age spots.

I don’t miss
the chemical odor of hair dye.
Tampons. Shaving my legs.
High heels. Tight dresses.
Rising for an 8 a.m. commute.
Running errands on my lunch break.
Office politics. Endless emails.
Juggling children and elderly parents.
Rushing through dinner and chores.
Never having enough sleep.
Always wanting more.
Not feeling fierce joy
in being alive another day.



Jacqueline Jules is the author of The Golden Key to the Garden (Bottlecap Press, 2026), Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021), Itzhak Perlman's Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press, and Smoke at the Pentagon: Poems to Remember (Bushel & Peck, 2023).

The Title is "Title" by Todd Mercer

The password is “password,” which I guessed quickly,
because that’s mine too. Who can remember
random digits to thwart hackers? The hackers get in,
every try, regardless of defensive measures. Meanwhile
I am HIPPA’ed out of my own patient file. I’m stumped
on my ATM PIN. Had it, lost it, changed it, had it…
Lost it. Stayed in stasis ‘til that settled out.
The safe-word has been “safe-word,” so daringly literal
since it’s of key importance not to blank on that one.
Maybe we’re not wild, compared to free-wheelin’ people
from the news cycle, from movies. The key word
is “keyword,” [no space]. Self-reflective
so we won’t forget it, this figurative lynch-pin,
this interstitial Velcro of human relations.
The word is “word.” Dig me?
The less said on that, the better.



Todd Mercer writes fiction and poetry in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His collection, Ingenue, was published by Celery City Press. His short work, Life-wish Maintenance, can be read at Right Hand Pointing. Recent work appears in The Confluence Anthology, Literally Stories and the Michigan Bards Poetry Anthology.

Flight of the Bee by Howie Good

“Want to know a fact?” my young grandson asked,
and without waiting for me to respond, added,
“Bees can’t fly in the rain.” Later I looked up online
if that’s true. It actually is. Even a single raindrop
can knock a bee out of the air or damage its wings.
Bees very sensibly stay in the hive when it rains.
I’m neither steadfast nor brave. My life is ordinary
to the point of dreariness. But given the chance,
I for one might risk the rain to bask inside a flower.



Howie Good's latest poetry collection, True Crime, was published by Sacred Parasite in Berlin this year.

Untitled by Peter Jastermsky

watching a plane
break the horizon

all those
letters
once thought lost

were never sent



A New England native, Peter Jastermsky lives among the Joshua trees in Southern California. He is the author of twelve books of haiku-based work. To learn more, please go to peterjastermsky.com.

Blue Fish Bistro by Richard N. Mott

A woman is seated at the sushi bar,
huddled with the ten-year old boy
she came in with a few minutes ago
—so perhaps dad is out of town or
there is no dad and this is a meal
squeezed in between after-school
basketball and whatever homework
waits in what’s left of this late
weekday evening—I don’t know.
But I want to tell her to love this
moment—the ordinary & unsung
folded into larger plans or deeper
regrets, that nothing could be realer
or more lovely, fragile & fleeting.

Richard N. Mott is a late arrival to writing poetry after a career spent in wildlife conservation and climate advocacy. His work has appeared in After the Pause, the Under Review, Mudfish, Red Eft Review, Mobius, and Chiron Review.

The Penn Lincoln,1960 by Richard N. Mott

Our family arrived in New York
by trans-Atlantic ocean liner then
boarded an all-day train across the
wilds of Pennsylvania and into the
darkening outskirts of Pittsburgh.
We checked in late at the Penn Lincoln
—a hotel now long gone but once a hub
of local activity where businessmen
stopped by for breakfast in a crowded
cafe whose waitresses, all in their
mid-fifties, fussed over us children.
Outside on the busy morning street
ornate moths embroidered the sooty
windowsills, drawn in the night before
by the soft glow of Wilkinsburg lights
and like us, glad to have landed here.



Richard N. Mott is a late arrival to writing poetry after a career spent in wildlife conservation and climate advocacy. His work has appeared in After the Pause, the Under Review, Mudfish, Red Eft Review, Mobius, and Chiron Review.

Haiku by Roberta Beach Jacobson

a decade later
the bell still rings
chemo



Roberta Beach Jacobson is an itchy poet living in the flyover state of Iowa. She writes verses perched on barn roofs or in trees. Her latest book is Demitasse Fiction: One-Minute Reads for Busy People.

Hard to Get by Jean Ryan

Baby doves.
It's a wonder they arrive,
given the adult females,
the way they dodge the males,
darting this way and that
for hours or days.

Female frogs will play dead
to avoid mating. Primates will turn to trickery.
Octopuses have been filmed throwing rocks at their suitors.

Researchers tell us that female doves
are not evading the males—they are testing their stamina.
Other species, sensing they are not fertile,
will drive off any male. Some can even predict
bad weather and refuse to raise offspring
till conditions improve.
Sensible theories, I must admit.

Still. Watching doves in my yard, it is hard to imagine
that the beleaguered females are in charge,
or that an octopus hurling rocks
is playing hard to get.



Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in coastal Alabama. She is the author of two short story collections, Survival Skills (Lamba Literary Award finalist) and Lovers and Loners. She has also published a novel, Lost Sister, a book of nature essays, Strange Company, and two poetry collections, A Day Like This and In This Vanishing Time. https://jean-ryan.com/

Haiku by Stephen Toft

test results

lost in the doctor’s
hawaiian shirt



Stephen Toft lives in Lancaster, UK with his wife and their children. He is the author of three haiku/tanka/minimalist poetry collections. His work has featured in various international competitions, journals and anthologies.