As a Child by Martha Christina

I stumbled
up the stairs,
fumbled with
the closet doorknob,
tried, only by touching,
to find Mother's favorite
cotton dress; knowing
anytime I chose to,
I could open my eyes
and find her there,
wearing it, and laughing.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears recently or is forthcoming in Bryant Literary Review, Muse Literary Journal, Naugatuck River Review, and in earlier postings of Red Eft Review. Her second collection, Against Detachment, was published in April of 2016 by Pecan Grove Press.

The New Year by Martha Christina

the first this, the first that

a new digit to remember

leftovers, and laundry



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears recently or is forthcoming in Bryant Literary Review, Muse Literary Journal, Naugatuck River Review, and in earlier postings of Red Eft Review. Her second collection, Against Detachment, was published in April of 2016 by Pecan Grove Press.

Blonde by Joe Cottonwood

She went out easy.
With previous dogs, there came
a moment of spiritual shudder,
sometimes a visible struggle.
Not here. Under my touch
I feel the chest rise, fall, rise.
Fall.
And rise no more.
Without a sound the heart rests.
A border crossed,
as if she welcomed the end
of cancer’s grip.

I tuck dog legs against dog body.
They are immediately
different, dead weight
utterly unlike a living limb.
Her eyes remain half open
as she so often slept.
She seems half-alert in death.
Still she is warm and has
that marvelous maple fur,
the only blonde
I’ve ever loved.



Joe Cottonwood has worked as a carpenter, plumber, and electrician day by day for most of his life. Some jobs were pretty; some, shitwork. Nights, he writes. Same split. joecottonwood.com

With a single stroke by Kenneth Salzmann

The poem this was
going to be
would have been
built noun
by verb by
unexpected noun,
all stacked
one upon the other
like a daring house
of cards. The poem
this was going to be
could have defied
gravity
and menace
and the soft
breezes that begin
now to lift
nouns
and verbs
and nouns
and verbs
gently out
of reach.



Kenneth Salzmann’s poetry has appeared in such anthologies as Child of My Child, Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude, Riverine, Earth Blessings, and Stories of Music: Volume 1. He lives in Woodstock, New York, and Ajijic, Mexico, with his wife, editor Sandi Gelles-Cole.

Hospitals by Michael Estabrook

1
Whenever he finds himself in a hospital
he vows to take better care of himself
especially this time after noticing the sign
on the men’s room door: “This restroom
accommodates persons over 500 lbs.”

2
Right after Dad died in that stark lonely hospital room
the skinny young Asian doctor looked through
his dark glasses at Mom and said, enunciating
his words like he was trying to make them stick
to the wall “I am sorry, but he has expired.”

3
Sleeping on short stiff benches
beside dusty plastic plants
and torn magazines strewn about on ugly
brown end tables in the ICU waiting room waiting
for her mother to emerge from her coma or not.



Michael Estabrook is retired. No more useless meetings under florescent lights in stuffy windowless rooms, able instead to focus on making better poems when he’s not, of course, endeavoring to satisfy his wife’s legendary Honey-Do List.

Fertility by Nicholas Froumis

Trying one last time
requires
numerous
tests
and
requires
incredible
patience.
Success
requires
timing one last try.



Nicholas Froumis practices optometry in the Bay Area. His writing has appeared in Gravel, Right Hand Pointing, Dime Show Review, Haiku Journal, and Three Line Poetry. He lives in San Jose, CA with his wife, novelist Stacy Froumis, and their daughter.

Sweet Cold by Steve Klepetar

Snow fell all morning.
I could see it piling

on the neighbors’ roof,
on the filigree of oaks.

Its softness quelled
the rage next door.

The whole road
lay quiet in sweet cold.



Steve Klepetar has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, including four in 2016. Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and The Li Bo Poems. Family Reunion and A Landscape in Hell are forthcoming in 2017.

you have beautiful hair by Justin Hyde

aunt marcine
runs a liver-spotted hand
through it.

so thick,
aunt karen coos
tousling it out of place.

this happened
at my other family reunion
in june.

aunt deb
said i was sexy

apologized
for making me blush.

full grown,
jan said
running her palm
up and down my back
a very long time.

at thirty-eight
i've crossed a rubicon

handsome
and manly
to octogenarians.

the twenty year olds
flashing across my radar
like migs

consider me avuncular
if they consider me at all.

so curly,
aunt connie wheezes

leaning way out
over her walker.



Justin Hyde's books and other poems can be found here: http://poets.nyq.org/poet/justinhyde.

Purge by Shirley Jones-Luke

There was nothing sentimental about your leaving.

I watched your back as you headed for the cab,
suitcase in hand, it was raining and the streets were slick,
cab's wipers swished back and forth,
driver had a bored expression,
meter was frozen at zero,
airport was ten miles away, it was evening and rush
hour was at its height, I did not stop you, puddles
formed, a circle of tears, as you stood, not sure if you
should enter the taxi or run back to me, arms out,
enveloping me in a warm embrace, holding on tightly,
your face held a mix of emotions - sadness, anger and confusion
all merging at once to make you appear sick, sick from leaving, but
I remained stoic, unyielding, sick of you, who wanted to leave,
so leave, the cab pulls away, your silhouette remains.



Shirley Jones-Luke is a poet and writer from Boston, Massachusetts. Ms. Luke has an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. She was a 2016 The Watering Hole Poetry Fellow. Her work has been published in ENUF, Raising Mothers and The Voices Project. Ms. Luke is working on a poetry manuscript for 2017.

Mother Is Dying by Howie Good

You’re whichever tree
sheds its leaves first.

The terrible part isn’t how cold it gets.
It’s how much you tremble.



Howie Good’s latest poetry books are A Ghost Sings, a Door Opens from Another New Calligraphy and Robots vs. Kung Fu from AngelHouse Press.

Portraits of Childhood by Rachael Hershon

I.
Shadow of a mill
heavy on roadside
Nearby a dam spits 
water flecked with
cigarette butts
Motorcycles rattle
disappear behind
gridded ranch houses
where last scraps of sun
cling to pine tips

II.
Blue curtains
blue paper masks
extra large johnny
unemptied commode
your father asleep
beside a chiming
heart monitor
weight of your bag
at the foot of his bed

III.
Stretches of brick
hold shards of sun
Silver river
bluefish belly-up
ghosts of violet mountains
inhale waking smokestacks



Rachael Hershon's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Avalon Literary Review, Poetry Quarterly, and A Quiet Courage. She is from the Boston, Massachusetts area and is currently an undergraduate studying English and Creative Writing at Brandeis University.

The Cleaner by Gareth Culshaw

I was told he was gone by his son.
Remembering his frown, like a
ballast of railway line.
Firm as a cliff edge.

He was ex army. Bringing with him
discipline, strictness.
When he came out he opened up a
cleaning business.

Wiping away the used breaths on glass,
brushing away the dead leaves,
sweeping away the lost voices,
hoovering up dead skin

removing nightmares of wars he had known.



Gareth Culshaw lives in Wales. He has been published in various places across the UK and USA.

Birds at the Burial by Natalie Crick

Near the riverbank where we
Buried her, I light a candle

And wait, patient as a hunter
Detecting what the beast will do

In the next moment.
Someone, somewhere, will see it.

Barn owls celebrate
Over their cathedral of bones,

Screaming skies clawed with crows.
The man asleep on his lumpy mattress

Has a head full of ghosts and
Sad, erotic dreams.

Gulls rise, small white banshees
Worshipping the sun.



Natalie Crick, from Newcastle in the UK, has found delight in writing all of her life and first began writing when she was a very young girl. She graduated from Newcastle University with a degree in English Literature and plans to pursue an MA at Newcastle this year. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in a range of journals and magazines including The Lake, Ink Sweat and Tears, Poetry Pacific, Interpreters House and Jet Fuel Review. Her work also features or is forthcoming in a number of anthologies, including Lehigh Valley Vanguard Collections 13. This year her poem, 'Sunday School' was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Last Passage by Shulamith Chernoff

          To my mother Shoshanna, 1893–1994

Your skin is stretched taut
on concave bone, worn thin
by ninety-nine years of battle
with wind, sun, and bursts
of joy and rage.
Your arms that commanded
now quiver, your shrill voice
has softened.
The sapphire blue dress
on your thin shoulders,
a shroud of rustling silk.

Your eyes still retain
their cobalt blue, peer through
the veil of memory.
You recall dense
Polish forests, thrusting trees that
pierce clouds and sky.
Your small town Tarnov,
close to Kraków.
You remember the mushrooms
that carpeted the fields
like waxen flowers.
You see the peasants who
plucked feathers from fattened
Polish geese. You feast on berries,
red garlands that cascaded
from baskets of straw.
The peasant market throbbed
with a babble of tongues,
rising in the humid afternoons.

You have not forgotten
the hymn to Kaiser Wilhelm,
or the samovar and feather bed.
Your silver candlesticks
passed from hand to hand.
You remember all the names
of the first-grade children
in the fading leather album.

World War One:
you took a boat of passage,
spent three weeks in steerage
to arrive at Ellis Island.
Deloused and shorn
of given name,
you proclaimed your right
to conquer America.



Shulamith Chernoff is an Associate Professor Emeritus of Education at Southern Connecticut State University. She holds graduate degrees from Columbia University and the Teacher’s Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Her poetry has appeared in Caduceus, Connecticut Review, and Louisiana Literature. Her second collection, Solace, is forthcoming from Five Oaks Press in 2017.

What Remains by Shulamith Chernoff

          To my mother, Shoshanna, 1893–1994

After all these years without you,
your bed still remains untouched.
The white goose down quilt from Poland
still bears the imprint of your body.
Photographs crowd your dresser—
you and Aba, your head erect,
your black hair a crown of braids.
Imperious, your swan neck
and blue eyes commanded attention
even then.

With a cloud of dust,
I open your old trunk.
Three braids lie neatly coiled
in paper: one black, one gray, one white
Here is the brass Russian samovar,
a wedding gift in 1913.
Here are the letters, the fine script
in Polish, Russian’s French, Hebrew,
love letters from my father
when you visited your parents in Tarnov.
I cannot live without you. I long for you.
I am intruding. 

I find your notes to me,
a letter of thanks to Shulenku
for her endless devotion.
Is this the same person I feared
as a child? Your steady script
etched in your diary
before your hands trembled
beyond control.

You left instructions for me,
how to open the safe.
You carefully typed the letter:
I must face the hard reality
that my days are coming to an end.
My illness made a great splash
among my grandchildren.
I lived in a state
of pleasant estivation.

You looked at me for the last time
as I held your fraying letters, your master’s degree,
pictures of your family in Poland,
the Russian samovar gleaming
in the darkened room.



Shulamith Chernoff is an Associate Professor Emeritus of Education at Southern Connecticut State University. She holds graduate degrees from Columbia University and the Teacher’s Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Her poetry has appeared in Caduceus, Connecticut Review, and Louisiana Literature. Her second collection, Solace, is forthcoming from Five Oaks Press in 2017.

Nostalgia by C.C. Russell

A song that you left for me
on a mix tape – somewhere around ’95.
Today, a cover; this softer voice
singing the same words
to a slower tune –
a tone more mournful
than we would have ever imagined
then.



C.C. Russell lives in Wyoming with his wife and daughter. His writing has appeared in such places as Wyvern Lit, Rattle, Word Riot, The Cimarron Review, and The Colorado Review. He has also lived in New York and Ohio.

Things by Richard Martin

Whenever I walk into the living room,

a host of silent voices call to me --

the footstool, sofas, coffee table, pebbles,
candlestick, carpet all remind me

where and when they were bought, given,
collected -- inanimate yet vital;

my armchair embraces me and supports
a tired arm reaching for a glass of wine --

things make it clear that they're essential
to the magnetism of home.



Richard Martin was born in London and studied at Cambridge. For many years he taught English and American literature at the University of Aachen in Germany. He and his wife live just across the border on the slopes of the highest hill in Holland. His poetry has appeared in magazines in England, USA, Ireland, and Austria. He has published three collections.

Translation of a Basketball Slapping the Concrete by C.C. Russell

The way that dusk defeats us,
divides us.

There is a young man
in the apartment complex
across the street
who has been practicing all day,

his limbs robotic in their completed,
perfected movements.

I slowly disappear watching him
as he recedes. Sound. Only sound –
this consistent dribbling over asphalt.

How dusk erases the world
around us,
how dusk leaves
only our habits, their echoing rhythms. 



C.C. Russell lives in Wyoming with his wife and daughter. His writing has appeared in such places as Wyvern Lit, Rattle, Word Riot, The Cimarron Review, and The Colorado Review. He has also lived in New York and Ohio.

I can't by Matthew Borczon

tell enough
stories or
take enough
pills or
write enough
poems
can't stop the
helicopters
from landing
nightly in
my dreams
taking me
back to
the war
I still
call home.



Matthew Borczon is a nurse and Navy sailor from Erie, Pa. He currently has two books available: A Clock of Human Bones (Yellow Chair Review) and Battle Lines (Epic Rites Press). Another book Ghost Train will be published by Weasel Press in 2017.

Data Dada by Howie Good

Somewhere on the edge of town,
sirens woo-who, woo-who, woo-who,
inspiring dread even at this distance,
as I come back from walking Dewey
carrying a little plastic bag of dog shit,
the night sky hole-punched with stars
that I can’t identify but also satellites
in synchronous orbit, 140 by last count
and all peering at us through the dark,
like remnants of the gods of old who,
in a pinch, would eat their own offspring



Howie Good's latest books are A Ghost Sings, a Door Opens from Another New Calligraphy and Robots vs. Kung Fu from Angel House Press.