in the hotel, on the eve of district playoffs by Natalie Schriefer

the others are sleeping.
through a slit in the curtain
you watch the rain. past
midnight, it peters off
like an ellipsis, the silence
between


            window plinks


                           lengthening.
you’re nervous. the parking
lot is dark. in the shadows
you can imagine anything
you want—yet you never
imagine yourself winning.



Natalie Schriefer, MFA is a bi/demi writer often grappling with sexuality, identity, and shame. She loves asking people about their fictional crushes (her most recent are Riza Hawkeye and Gamora). A Best of the Net nominee, find her on Twitter @schriefern1 or on her website at www.natalieschriefer.com.

Honey Bee by Ruth Holzer

You stagger on the stepping stone,
losing strength in autumn’s chill.
At times you tumble over on your back,
and struggle to right yourself again,
to resume your futile crawl.

Where now your single-minded flight
toward the seduction of an unfurled flower?
Where now the gift of golden dust you bore
back to the hive? Can you remember
the summer when you hummed,
when you danced among your sisters?

This is where all your labors tend.
Useless and alone, you must drag
your brittle body back and forth
until you weary yourself
and cease, for there is no one here
to crush you out of mercy.



Ruth Holzer's poems have been widely published. She lives in Virginia.

Foraging by Frank C. Modica

Grandpa knew the best places
to gather bundles of dandelion leaves
to feed his family.
He bypassed easier pickings
closer to home, trash-polluted plants
in crowded neighborhoods for
green fields in distant cemeteries
at the ends of streetcar lines.

Before coming to America
he ate the wild dandelions in Sicily—
often his only meals,
so he rejoiced to see the bountiful
fields in America, free for the taking.
He harvested them young,
once yellow blossoms opened,
the leaves tasted sharp and pungent.

Some years jobs were scarce,
the bosses tight-fisted.
He’d work long hours
for low pay; empty pockets
for streetcar fares.
When he could finally forage,
he closed his eyes to the yellow
blossoms emerging in overgrown yards,
along curbs, in empty city lots—

After the long ride to the cemetery,
a bitter harvest.



Frank C. Modica is a retired teacher. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sheila-Na-Gig, Red Eft Review, and Willawaw Journal. Frank's first chapbook, What We Harvest, nominated for an Eric Hoffer book award, was published in the fall of 2021 by Kelsay Books.

Pretty Hard to Know by Jeffrey Zable

Watching an old movie from the 40’s in which every one
of the actors--except for maybe the kid--has passed on,
a question comes to mind: What would any of the actors think
if they knew I was watching them right now? which, in a sense,
is keeping them alive.

After I asked myself this, I wondered how I might feel when I’m gone
if somehow I could observe someone reading one of my poems,
smiling afterward, or even raising their head in serious reflection.

I guess, in the end, it’s pretty hard to know. . .



Jeffrey Zable is a teacher, conga drummer/percussionist who plays for dance classes and rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area, and a writer of poetry, flash-fiction, and non-fiction. His writing has appeared recently in Chewers & Masticadores, Linked Verse, Ranger, Cacti Fur, Uppagus, Greensilk, Aether Avenue, and many others...

Gifts from a Neighbor by David Q. Hutcheson-Tipton

Dwayne moved home to help his aging parents.
We’d have Cokes on their porch. After
a beach week they brought us salt-water taffy.

Dwayne’s stomach hurt, his appetite was gone.
His clothes looked like they hung on a hook, not a man. The doctor ordered studies, a biopsy:

Pancreatic cancer.

We told them about hospice. Fentanyl
was like god for him, eased the pain.
What was his mother’s name? Ernestine.

His father was also Dwayne. Senior. The lights—
without sirens—finally came, not to save him
but to pronounce his death.

Maybe they were the same thing.



David Q. Hutcheson-Tipton’s poems have appeared in Willows Wept Review, Unlost, One Sentence Poems, and previously in Red Eft Review. He holds an MFA from Regis University. He lives near (sometimes in) the Colorado Rocky Mountains with his wife and several miniature poodles.

Marking Time by Howie Good

Almost the first thing I do in the morning
is take a bunch of pills, usually with my coffee,
but sometimes with the sordid remains
of a glass of wine from the night before.
Back in the fall, I had cancer surgery,
followed by thirty sessions of radiation.
My skin cracked and peeled like old paint
and my bones turned strangely rubbery.
Now every three months I must drive
into Boston from the South Shore
for a precautionary CAT scan of my chest
and abdomen. Parking is impossible.
The hospital buildings are topped
by coils of razor wire. And I’m still dying.



Howie Good co-edits the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.

Emergence by Sarah Russell

Today I saw a single silky thread from aspen
to eaves. I traced it and watched a spider,
backlit by the sun, weaving precise gossamer
tendrils, interconnected. There’s a new hatch
of dragonflies at our pond, the final leg
of a year’s journey from egg to nymph to adult.
It’s called Emergence—their last, fruitful days.
It’s what I feel after 80 years—an emergence
of days, of seasons, each one savored,
and family—eggs, nymphs, adults—the intricacy
of webs and silken threads.



Sarah Russell’s poetry has been published in Rattle, Misfit Magazine, Red Eft Review, and Third Wednesday. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She has two poetry collections, I lost summer somewhere and Today and Other Seasons (Kelsay Books). She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net

Autumn by Sarah Russell

Sugar maples are the first to turn,
mottled orange and scarlet with the green,
trying on the season. I need a sweater
now for morning walks.

The geese abandon summer ponds
in keening, migrant skeins to follow
shorelines south.

In twilight, remnant fireflies
glint urgent calls to mate, hopeful,
as we are, for one last tryst
before winter.



Sarah Russell’s poetry has been published in Rattle, Misfit Magazine, Red Eft Review, and Third Wednesday. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She has two poetry collections, I lost summer somewhere and Today and Other Seasons (Kelsay Books). She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net

Ode to My Purse by Sarah Russell

The one that’s 10 years old —
its leather soiled and supple,
lining grayed by a thousand
ins and outs of billfolds, keys,
candy. The purse fits me,

softening with use, sagging
into the middle of itself, scarred
by day to day, but refusing
to concede to age, zippers
still meshing, handle still
carrying its weight, stitching
still strong.



Sarah Russell’s poetry has been published in Rattle, Misfit Magazine, Red Eft Review, and Third Wednesday. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She has two poetry collections, I lost summer somewhere and Today and Other Seasons (Kelsay Books). She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net

Textures by Ahrend Torrey

Do we only live when the big promotion is given?

Do we only live when the awful day comes, and the ambulance arrives,
and everyone’s gathered around our loved one?

Do we only live on exciting vacations to foreign countries?

     Or

do we also live when we don’t realize we’re living at all—between
big memories?

—Like now, Deek and Dova are tearing up the grass,
are chasing each other’s tail,

and Purl (my cat) is peering up the storm door
at a tree frog
stuck to the glass.

My husband just stepped from his office: we ate hummus together,
during his fifteen-minute /break/ from class.

Do these textures also make up living? Of course,
let us feel them—

I’m learning they’re quickest to wear away.
They never last.



Ahrend Torrey is the author of Ripples (Pinyon Publishing, 2023), Bird City, American Eye (Pinyon Publishing, 2022) and Small Blue Harbor (Poetry Box Select, 2019). His work has appeared in storySouth, The Greensboro Review, and The Perch (a journal of the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health, a program of the Yale School of Medicine), among others. He earned his MA/MFA in creative writing from Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and is a recipient of the Etruscan Prize awarded by Etruscan Press. He lives in Chicago with his husband Jonathan, their two rat terriers Dichter and Dova, and Purl their cat.

The End is Music by A.R. Williams

Cascading water pours over
rocks vested in
moss, whispering to me
like a mother soothing her child.

At a distance,
a visitor crunches through the underbrush
as the rain’s rhythmic
clattering swells. Suddenly, a
croaking frog calls to me like the town crier,
heralding the arrival of night break.

Reclining in wooded solitude,
I end the day
with nature's symphony.



A.R. Williams is the author of A Funeral in the Wild (Kelsay Books, 2024) and editor of East Ridge Review.

Gratitude List #48 by Ace Boggess

Forgive me when I praise my wealth
of aspects not yet praised:

aches in back, ankles, knees
of which I complain
to have something to say
when conversations come to me;

the tornado that leapt me,
a last-minute pardon,
its straight-line downdrafts
painting a swirling mural
of muted colors;

all advances I missed
while locked in a cell
so I stepped from that time machine
into a shocking future of fascination;

the comets hidden by city clouds;

the women & men I didn’t love
while too afraid of their touch I craved.

Praise my pain & fear.
Praise absences, no-
second-chances.
Praise cuisines I’ve never tasted.
Praise suffering & praise contempt.

Not once have I praised my awfulness.
I praise it now & know this brings me peace.



Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy. His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble. His seventh collection, Tell Us How to Live, is forthcoming in 2024 from Fernwood Press.

With Six Grandsons Behind the Wheel by Sharon Waller Knutson

The call we fear
we're going to get comes
while we’re eating
popcorn and watching
television in the evening.

It’s our oldest son
who just turned fifty.
I hear sadness
in his voice
and clutch my cell
phone like a raft.

I gasp for air
as he speaks
of a car collision,
our second oldest
grandson in a coma
in an ICU, a machine
breathing for him.

I see the baby
with chubby cheeks
and curls turn into
a tall twenty-five-
year-old reciting
his vows in a suit
just three months ago.

My heart is broken,
I say as my son
and his father go silent.
I wish I could
change places with him.
But all I can do is wait.

On his fifth day in the ICU,
we get another call.
This time his mother
shouts, He’s breathing
on his own and opened
one eye and said,
What’s up Mama?



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.

When We Were Younger by Martha Christina

I’m beginning to shuffle,
my older sister says in
our weekly long distance
phone call. Remember
how Mom always yelled
‘pick up your feet’
as we ran to get away
from her, and ‘stand up
straight’ each time she
caught us slouching?

We reminisce about how
straight our mother stood,
her back like a ramrod. We
remember her quick temper,
sweetened by a surprise dessert
after a day filled with scolding.

Neither of us speaks of
our mother’s own eventual
shuffling and slouching,
nor the silence she chose
when we visited, no longer
recognized; instead, we
agree on her quick-tempered
young self, her posture, her
scolding, her excellent pudding.



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.

Waiting by Martha Christina

Small songbirds crowd
the feeders: finches, a pair
of Carolina wrens, a solitary
junco. Three squirrels join
them at the old stump, strewn
with wild bird seed. . .as if
they weren’t all wild.

The church clock four blocks
away strikes noon. “By noon,”
the surgeon said, “your mom
should be back in her room
and lucid.”

The birds abandon the hanging
feeder, leave it swinging in their
abrupt departure. A crow lands,
folds its dark wings, paces
among the spilled seeds.



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.

A Gift by Martha Christina

On his birthday
my friend, Michael,
will have an MRI.
His neurologist
wants to affirm
or rule out
suspected
Parkinson’s.

For now, his
diagnosis is
essential
tremor. Not
essential to me,
Michael laughs,
as if diagnostic
labels were a joke.



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.

Reunion by Steve Deutsch

Mom and Dad
loved lupine,
but couldn’t control it.

Year after year, they’d plant
the finest seeds
in the finest soil

but it bloomed where it would.
My brother left
home the day

after his sixteenth birthday.
I hear from him now
and again—chicken scratch

on the back of a postcard
or a long-distance call
from some place

in the California desert
where lupines are native.
Perhaps he is harvesting

some to bring home—
a handsome gift
for a nurturing couple.

The lupines come up
whenever they will
wherever they will

and my brother
just called
from someplace new.

In a better world the lupine
Would grow where they plant it
and my brother would walk in the door.



Steve Deutsch is poetry editor of Centered Magazine and poet in residence at the Bellefonte Art Museum. He has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. Steve's chapbook, Perhaps You Can, was published in 2019 by Kelsay Press. His full-length books, Persistence of Memory and Going, Going, Gone, were also published by Kelsay Press. Another collection, Slipping Away, was published this past spring and his latest, Brooklyn, was awarded the Sinclair Poetry Prize from Evening Street Press and has just been published.

Over the Hill to the Poor House by Kelley White

It’s not on the shelf. I kept it in the antique
bookshelf, that might have been my mother’s
(or your father’s), the one that locked with
a tiny key and was missing one of its glass
doors, (which made the lock after all ineffective)
and held a six-volume set of THE THOUSAND
AND ONE NIGHTS and early Jules Verne
and a dear pink pocket copy of A CHRISTMAS
CAROL with Tiny Tim in a small, gilded oval
frame on the cover. You remember your mother
reading it to you, so it may have been a picture
book, but I think it may have been music,
a song, a strange lullaby, for I find images
of sheet music with ornate flourishes, golden
trumpets at each corner. Or it might have been
a movie. A movie we saw together. The old couple
put out of their home. Their children unwilling
to take them in. Oh, those selfish children! Those
selfish grandchildren! And I have lost both shelf
and book. And forgotten the music. If it ever
existed, any of it, at all.



Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent collection is NO. HOPE STREET (Kelsay Books). She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.

On Forbidden Drive, Along the Wissahickon by Kelley White

The chestnut gelding nuzzles the blue-eyed
filly along the bridle path. Ah! This is too easy
a metaphor. You and I walk like heavy machinery.
My game knee clicking, you stopping at every lamppost
to stretch your back. (You look like a marathon
runner drenched in sweat and Gatorade looking
for his time on the great clicking clock.) But

the horses are beautiful. Velvet muzzles. (It’s a cliché
but there is no other word for it once you’ve run
the back of your hand against them.) And those long
lashed eyes. The filly bows her head. And for
the moment a gentle breeze wafts the bitter tang
of horse away from us and plays about the corners
my parted lips. Ah, they snort, not unlike your

evening noises when I turn in the nearly dark room.
(Used to be I’d wait, pretending sleep until you parted
the sheets. And then pretend an accidental roll
into your arms. And then.) Well, we are old now. Content
with just the little touches of comfort. (Almost. Though
there are those surprise evening invigorations. . .)
The girl on the filly rises from the saddle, urges her

horse up a little rise; the old man on the gelding digs
his heals into its side. There is nickering, blowing,
both horses straining against the reins. And they
are parted. You and I swing hands together for a moment.
Then we part.



Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent collection is NO. HOPE STREET (Kelsay Books). She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.

It Was Late August When Princess Di Crashed and I Tried to Walk on the Ocean by Susanna Stephens

Summers were plops of raspberry ice cream on a driveway
of broken scallop shells, the way the late afternoon sun poured
through lattice work on the Dutch-style windmill, its rays spilling
into a shadow on a mop head of grass, chunks of Orleans lobster
flesh dunked into fatty halcyon, Mom scouring

the flea market for jigsaw puzzles and Wentworth China. It’s the kind
of ease that comes with enough idle time and the way we drop pieces like

the look on my mother’s face when she walked through the door
after a long day of work, pallid save for

rosy blotches once she had her glass of merlot. I was trying to walk
on the ocean, going to that reservoir in my chest where the tears live,
on that late August day, but an egret at the marsh cocked its head
as if to say,

This has nothing to do with Princess Di.
And it was right: I was 14, never paid attention
to royalty let alone wear makeup, but why
so much crying, save for

how does a mother hold all the pieces of herself
and those of her children who wander into the night?



Susanna Stephens, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst, poet and mother living in Brooklyn, NY. Her work is published or forthcoming in Rust & Moth, ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action, and DIVISION/Review. In addition to writing, she maintains a private practice in Manhattan.