On My Return by John Grey

It's not what I expected on my return. 
My boyhood home hadn't changed
one slap of paint, one poster on the wall.
Those left behind felt most comfortable
in nothing ever moving on.
It all was where I left it.
That made the love so much easier.

All the hopes, the promise, the beginnings, were intact.
Even ones that ended badly.
Fingermarks, books in shelves,
old letters in drawers, ceramics on mantles,
even the clock that hadn't worked in years -
those were the bearings of a life.

Back to such normalcy,
I sat at the table with familiar faces
discussing how life ought to be.

Mother said, we can clean now, varnish,
even move furniture around.
I tried but was of no help
because I could imagine no other house but this.



John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Perceptions and the anthology, No Achilles with work upcoming in Big Muddy Review, Gargoyle, Coal City Review and Nebo.

Your Recovery by John Grey

I can't get away from them -
TV, the internet, twitter,
even talk around the water cooler -
celebrities have assumed the role
of the center of the universe.

But then you call me =
you're out of hospital.

At last, news sends me a gift.
It doesn't care who's dating who
or wearing what designer dress.

I can imagine you seated on your patio,
family around you,
setting sun drenching your face.

You're coddling a wine glass in your wrinkled hand.
You're distanced from the superficial
by a canyon of heart and mind

The wine, I'm sure, tastes like the earth and growing,
like the land that spreads before you,
a family history in blades of grass and fences.

A smile plays out
beneath your warm farm-girl eyes.
You doze, contented, with the past around you,
dream a year not yet lived.



John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Perceptions and the anthology, No Achilles with work upcoming in Big Muddy Review, Gargoyle, Coal City Review and Nebo.

Great Blue Heron at Powder Mill by John Grey

The great blue heron's startle
is not the quick dart of the song sparrow
to the nearest bush..
Nor is it the crow's high caw
or the chickadee's Morse Code trill.
It doesn't flap noisily into gear
like the mourning dove
or join the pigeons
in high-tailing it up to the upper eaves.

It's almost dusk, late summer.
The pond is brown, the weather dry.
The heron stalks unseen fish,
moving slow, deliberate.
One long thin leg unfolds forward
like a ballerina in slow motion,
the other pivots in the mud.

It doesn't see me as other birds do.
Still sensing water's seismic shift with thin, sharp beak.
I fill the corner of an eye.
Its feathered crown rises,
wings gradually fill the horizontal.
It doesn't so much fear me
as appreciate that it and I are fated
to never occupy the same lush feeding grounds.
No hurry in its takeoff,
merely a gentle flap, an arcing of the neck,
a graceful lift,
a measured glide over the tree-tops.
So much for the slow, ambling, earthbound gait
of the rest of us..



John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Perceptions and the anthology, No Achilles with work upcoming in Big Muddy Review, Gargoyle, Coal City Review and Nebo.

Embrace by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

Her embrace broke my neck
She weighed only ninety-four pounds
but each ounce was purely intense

Her husband had threatened to kill her
He suffered from psychotic jealousy

She focused only on her survival
and had even forgotten her son

She still loved her husband
a foible common to abused women

She owned no pets
She was afraid of the dark

She hid books behind books
in her son’s bookcase

Her husband didn’t believe in women
reading books
He didn’t want her to speak to
or even look at
other men
There were men in books

She woke frequently in the middle of the night
to check for rabbits in her garden
She stopped when she and her husband were evicted

If she were murdered
she told me
she would come to my roof
in the form of two swans
necks entwined

Her embrace was powered by desperation
My only armor was
my good intentions

The sinews stood out on her arms
Her skin was blue
but she’d concealed their hue
with flesh-colored make-up

This was the third time
I’d had my neck broken
once when I was playing college football
the second when I was driving drunk

My doctor says that a spine was not designed for this
level of abuse



Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over nine hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net for work published in 2011 through 2014. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. He lives in Denver. He works at combating his own ego, as Ego is the source of Greed, and Greed is destroying our world.

Light Confession by Maril Crabtree

Talk to me
about your night fears.
How you keep the light on
beside your bed,
hoping you won’t wake
and feel the familiar terror.

How you sleep
on your side, turned away
from the window, knowing
they could come through anyway.

How your dreams
are the only things that save you
from your own dread.

How ready you are
to plunge into the undiscovered
day, into whatever is on
the other side of night.



Maril Crabtree’s most recent chapbook is Tying the Light (Finishing Line Press). Her work has appeared in journals such as Kalliope, I-70 Review, Coal City Review, Main Street Rag, and Third Wednesday, She previously served as poetry editor for Kansas City Voices. More of her work can be seen at www.marilcrabtree.com.

The Abandoned City by Thomas O'Connell

The city has been deserted, next
Year’s phone book will not include
Our last name, nor will any mailbox.
There must be some obscure relative
Remaining in a two-family house
Somewhere, but I could not tell you
Who, or where they buy their groceries,
Which weatherman they quote. We will no longer

Stand at a bar-b-q in somebody’s driveway, cousins
Shooting baskets into a frayed net
Hung over the oil stains left
By a car, purchased from a common grandmother.
I will not think of the local parish
Until retrieving a prayer card
Tucked in a pocket of some dark
Coat I seldom wear.



A librarian, as well as three time Pushcart Prize nominee, Thomas O’Connell’s poetry and short fiction has appeared in Caketrain, NANO Fiction, Elm Leaves Journal, and The Los Angeles Review, as well as other print and online journals. As of January first, he will be the poet laureate of Beacon, New York.

Two of Many by Martha Christina

They work their way across the wide lawn
by means of a Frisbee. The thinner man can

barely throw, can't catch. He drops the Frisbee
and his body to the cushion of early spring grass.

His companion kneels beside him, retrieves the disk
and turns it like a steering wheel, as if driving them

to a happier destination. If this were only about
imagining, I could create from their desire

a happy ending: restored health, long lives.
But their story isn't mine to alter as they rise

and proceed to the clinic door. Two bodies,
one shadow.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities and Three Line Poetry. Longer work appears or is forthcoming in the Aurorean, Bryant Literary Review, Blast Furnace, Main Street Rag, and The Orange Room Review. She lives in Bristol, RI.

Monofilament Whiskers by Al Ortolani

Dying stinks on a cat. His preening has stopped, no longer licking his paws or cleaning his coat. He slinks and crowds toward the milk plate, bones like loose bundles of fishing poles, hooked claws, sinker eyes, a jar of blood bait hardened to paste. Demanding privacy, he disappears into quiet corners of the garden. At night, he is just a small swell of moonlight behind the rhododendron. In the morning his face is turned upwards like he was searching the sky.

slow rain before dawn,
owl calling beyond
the churchyard pines



Al Ortolani’s poetry and reviews have appeared, or are forthcoming, in journals such as Rattle, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, and the New York Quarterly. He has published six collections of poetry. Currently, he is teaching English in the Kansas City area and serves on the Board of Directors of the Writers Place. His poems been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

First Encounter Beach by Howie Good

A man in a yellow rain slicker
rides a three-wheeler
loaded with empty plastic crates
out toward the oyster beds.

Here where the Nauset
first encountered the Pilgrims,
it is late afternoon, low tide.
A red dog runs along the shoreline
scattering the seagulls
while its owner futilely calls it back.

Though only early October,
the wind blowing in off the water
has already developed a psychotic edge.
We can’t rely on tomorrow
being another day like today,
silver bay and big sky and precious light.

The oyster farmer has shrunk
to a tiny dot in the distance.



Howie Good’s latest poetry collections are Dark Specks in a Blue Sky (Another New Calligraphy) and Bad for the Heart (Prolific Press). He is recipient of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry for his forthcoming collection Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements.

Carefree, Arizona by Stefanie Leigh

          - for my mother

The only way to feel back home now is to drive out far
Past where the developers have tried to reach
Out where there are still saguaro & jackalopes & jumping cholla.

Around Lone Mountain I feel you riding in the car with me;
I’m rolling down the windows, you’re turning up the radio,
And together we sing along to Fleetwood Mac:

But now it’s gone, it doesn’t matter what for.

I miss it all – a place that didn’t exist until I left it
Foundations of red rock and long stretches of dirt road
That weren’t beautiful until I couldn’t see them anymore.

But now it’s gone, it doesn’t matter what for.
When you build your house, then call me home.

Everything looks the same now down on Cascalote –
Desert landscaping and shining water features.
I drive by, but you’ve been gone for years.


Stefanie Leigh teaches environmental law in a distance learning program and recently earned an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. Her first (and almost completed) novel, The Truth, was longlisted for the 2015 Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award.

How Fishing Went For Us by Ed Ruzicka

          - for Helen Miriam and Nicolette Ruzicka

Back then I would walk you down
the block, up one more, then turn a wandering left
100 feet until we came under that stand of spruce
you thought was a forest creaky and frightful,
ripe for the wolf’s paw or witch’s cowl.

Except that we were just across from
a white, dilapidated house where Nicolette
and I once went peddling Girl Scout cookies
and got invited in to an oil-cloth kitchen
by a woman who tottered above her cane.
One who couldn’t spare a dollar or her tabby
would go fishless for days. So we came back
weeks later with boxes of Thin Mints and
told her they were excellent kept in the freezer
and even better crumbled over vanilla ice cream.

She said, "But I don’t have anything to give you."
Then made us weak tea we couldn’t get away from
fast enough as she spent the whole time scuttling around
scraping together a tote-bag of marbles, one carefully
rolled sheet of dryer lint, three peach pits, photo
of her middle boy by the Sunday shore in San Diego
and the fuzzy torsos of yellow jackets cased in amber.
She forced the bag into my hand as we sailed
off hailing our "So longs" forever and anon. 

On an afternoon like this under tall pine
I might completely undo one of my shoe laces
to lay across your tiny palm. You would
cast it out upon the waters of the puddle
that always formed at that low spot.
I remember those days tasting like aluminum
as I stood by with my mind overcome by sky
as any puddle can be while a daughter
sings softly so that fish will drift in.
Your song a sort of lure, as every song is,
that caught us nothing those days but now seems
to be catching everything, here, I could ever want.



Ed Ruzicka has published one full length volume, "Engines of Belief - Engagement in Modern Art". His poems have appeared in Plainsongs, the Atlanta Review, the Xavier Review, Big River Poetry Review and other literary journals. Ed lives in Baton Rogue, LA and is an occupational therapist. More at: edrpoet.com.

PTSD 4 by Matt Borczon

Dump the
sand from
your boots
and check
for camel
spiders
remember to
get your
uniform from
the laundry
pay the
extra dollar
so they
get the
blood off
of it
make sure
your mopp
gear is
under your
rack because
its late
and if
you manage
to fall
asleep
you are
sure to
need it
knowing where
your nightmares
are headed.



Matt Borczon is a nurse and writer from Erie Pa, he served in the busiest combat hospital in Afghanistan from 2010-2011. He writes of his experiences there and the difficulties of readjusting to life back home. His poems have appeared in Busted Dharma, Dead Snakes, The Bond Street Review, Big Hammer, Hanging Loose, and The Pressure Press as well as other small press publications.

rejection by Kurt Nimmo

first poem in weeks.
the habit is thin now as
weather turns against autumn
and the male cat sleeps
in the blue chair.
another literary magazine
rejection today.
not like the old days
the grandiosity of an envelope
with my return scrawl
hand-delivered.
now a few electrons indistinguishable
from spam. the literary world
as presently construed
is unknown
no longer a discovery.
rejection does not bother me
like it did when I was a poet.
now I have
the sleeping cat
and his zen curl on a Mexican blanket.
sure beats the byline
and the words crowded on
a tight page

jostling for recognition.



Kurt Nimmo was born in Detroit, Michigan. In the late '70s, he co-edited the successful literary magazine, The Smudge. In the '80s, he edited Planet Detroit. Kurt has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes for fiction, and two of his books were selected as "modern classics" by Wormwood Review. He lives in Smithville, Texas with his wife and two cats.

We're Pregnant by James Valvis

He sneaks out for a cigarette,
and when he returns the child
is already sliding out of her mother.
All he sees are the toes coming free.
This is the best case scenario.
Other men wanted to be there,
or claimed they did. Nowadays men
announce to family “We’re pregnant,”
as if they too will be getting fat,
vomiting, walking with plantar fasciitis.
“Push,” they say. “Breathe.”
“I’m going through this with you.”
What a bunch of bullshit.
He prefers the old days,
when the father waited outside,
got the good news,
then handed out cigars.
At least there was no mistake
who deserved credit for the labor.
Later, when he finally holds his child,
he informs his wife the toes are his,
and the rest hers. Being nice,
she agrees to let him have
more than any man deserves.



James Valvis has placed poems or stories in Arts & Letters, Barrow Street, Ploughshares, River Styx, The Sun, and many others. His poetry was featured in Verse Daily. His fiction was chosen for Sundress Best of the Net. A former US Army soldier, he lives near Seattle.

An Afternoon Walk by John Grey

He turns at the Revolution Coffee shop
and walks two blocks.
Twilight is conducive to a stroll.
Even old tenements are gilded.
And the brick freshens up.
Lawns sprout gleaming grass.

He steps around an oncoming skateboarder,
stops to smell roses protruding through a fence.
A young woman sits on a patio,
head lowered over a guitar her fingers gently strum.
She sings pure as the late afternoon air.
He lingers, listens.
The song is more wistful than sad.
It's a step up from the flowers.

Another woman approaches
pushing a stroller.
He has to sum her up in a moment -
will she be fearful if I
bend my head
into her baby's face
or insulted if I don't?
He settles on a modest version of the former.
A pretty singer and a comely mother -
two warning shots
over the bow of his bachelorhood.

But a plain suburban house
quickly changes the subject.
The older woman in the kitchen window
lowers his bottom lip.
Her eyes shine
from the sun's flat angle
but more like a lighthouse beam
warning ships from the rocks.

And next door,
an old couple argue on their doorstep,
over something trivial he expects,
or even imaginary.

An afternoon walk is always good for the health,
good for the confirmation of what he always suspected.



John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Perceptions and Sanskrit with work upcoming in South Carolina Review, Gargoyle, Owen Wister Review and Louisiana Literature.

The Walled Garden by Kevin Casey

Puttering about his three-room apartment,
the old man does little more than tend
to the clear floret of a shot glass
with his handled jug. An amber ashtray
sprouts from a brass stand, a vine of smoke
reaching toward the dull glow of a shaded window.

Across the room, the radio alighted
on the sideboard holds its crackling note
above the boulevard’s steady chorus.
After years in this urban hermitage,
loneliness has lost its meaning
to the inadvertent anchorite,
his life now pared away to a spare
and accidental habit of prayer.



Kevin Casey has contributed poems to Hartskill Review, The Orange Room Review, Rust + Moth, San Pedro River Review, and other publications. His new chapbook “The wind considers everything --” was recently published by Flutter Press, and another from Red Dashboard is due out later this year."

on the day the roofers came by Wanda Morrow Clevenger

          for Stan Barker

I don’t write on
days when I hear
a friend up
and dies––too soon
and cliché 
the roofers pound
I expect light fixtures
to crash down
walls to fall in

gray shingles drop
are gathered
away
ZZ Top’s “Legs”
throbs from
an open van
a compressor makes
an intermittent frizz

I drink honey tea
I read social sympathy
I pay bills
the washer/dryer
agitates/spins
I chase dust

tomorrow
the roofers
will pound the last
fresh shingles on – I’ll
look up and pretend
all is put to right 



Wanda Morrow Clevenger is a Carlinville, Illinois, native who will relatively soon be a Kansas resident. She has published over 300 pieces of work in 122 print and online publications. Her debut book This Same Small Town in Each of Us released in 2011. She likes betta fish and orchids, both of which she has repeatedly managed to kill.

John by Wanda Morrow Clevenger

social worker John asked
what was it I thought about
on the long rides up there

he wanted the gory deets
the fill in the down
and dirty blanks

I could tell by how he
leaned back in his chair
he had no better answers
than the rest

nothing at all I said
I stare at the same scenery
or try to sleep but can’t

in his entire social worker career
he hadn’t come across anything
quite like us, I could tell by
how he leaned back
in his chair
and said nothing



Wanda Morrow Clevenger is a Carlinville, Illinois, native who will relatively soon be a Kansas resident. She has published over 300 pieces of work in 122 print and online publications. Her debut book This Same Small Town in Each of Us released in 2011. She likes betta fish and orchids, both of which she has repeatedly managed to kill.

Outside the Church Window by Suzanne Samuels

Outside the church window
Leaves tumble down
Softly as flurries

The leaves don’t know the season
Pale yellow against verdant green

Sunflowers unrelenting
Zucchini ripening
Coreopsis ever blooming 

Still they fall 
Death amidst abundance

Only the most insistent wind
Compels the cascade
In stillness, they cling

I wonder
Was that a trick of the eye?

If I had not seen it
Outside the church window
Then I would not have believed

The way they surrendered
Falling down

Though the sun is overhead
The clock hands at noon
And the threat of winter distant



Suzanne Samuels is at work on her historical novel, The Orphans' Wheel, set in Sicily and New York City at the turn of the twentieth century. Her work has appeared in a number of journals, among these, Cyclamens and Swords, Cactifur, and Snapdragon.

Niagara Winter by David Jibson

The famous mist had frozen to everything
so solidly that it couldn’t be scraped away
so we sat hunkered inside the car,
shivering with the dampness,
listening to Sarah Vaughn, waiting
for the defrosters to do their work,
talking about the drive ahead
over the Rainbow Bridge into New York
and on to Connecticut,
how we thought the little motel in Ontario
was overpriced for this time of year
until we realized the price was in Canadian dollars
and how the mist frozen to your eyelashes
made you look like a chorus girl -
even at this age.



David Jibson lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan where he is an associate editor of Third Wednesday, a literary arts journal, a member of The Crazy Wisdom Poetry Circle and The Poetry Society of Michigan. He is retired from a long career in Social Work, most recently with a Hospice agency. He believes the most important element in his poetry is "story."