Yellow Seated Female Nude by Richard Weaver

         -Inspired by Franz Marc's painting of the same name

Dearest Prince,

When my Dresden letter to you
returned today, I was distressed
and felt a moment of panic,
and wondered if you had wandered 

beyond this earth and its naked eyes. 

And then I remembered the water cure.

Kneipp’s early answer to distress.
I was relieved to know you were whole 

and that our worries were without merit. 

Please forgive me for my doubtfulness. 

My vision was obscured by my heart.

You are our cloud of knowing.
Be sure of that. Be comforted.
We are your hosts. We wish
we were worthy angels in flesh.
Our apologies for being less.
                           - the Blue Rider

Post-Covid, Richard Weaver has returned as the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. Among his other publications: conjunctions, Louisville Review, Southern Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, Coachella Review, FRIGG, Hollins Critic, Xavier Review, Atlanta Review, Dead Mule, Vanderbilt Poetry Review, and New Orleans Review. He’s the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and wrote the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005) which has been performed 3 times in Alabama, and once at Juilliard in NYC. He was one of the founders of the Black Warrior Review and its Poetry Editor for the first three years. Five poems from his Franz Marc manuscript will be appearing in the Alabama Anthology (Nov. 2023). His 200th prose poem was recently accepted.

Yellow Seated Female Nude by Franz Marc

white pony by Bonnie Proudfoot

The white pony died on a January night,
it might have been below 0, no snow,
just one of those clear, cold-snap nights.
He died where he liked to stand, just outside
the barn, while our other pony, the gold one,
would stand just inside, seeking shelter,
nose to nose. From the barn I saw him,
as if asleep, but frozen already, legs splayed,
no cloud of breath, no warmth left. When
we got him he was old, maybe thirty,
judging by the wear on his teeth, a lifetime
of grinding. He'd been a coal mine pony,
and lost his right eye, the socket healed
into a pink fist of scar tissue, the other eye
pale blue with a dark grey center, bloodshot,
pink lashes, a short white mane, a small
round white belly that sagged like an
unmade day bed without springs, his spine,
a line of rocks in a shallow stream, his withers
a shaggy snowy hillock. We called him Cyclops.
Why not? And saddled him up at birthday parties
and sleepovers. Unlike the other pony,
he never tried to buck or shy. We led him
around the paddock, or set him out to
graze, watched him outside in the rain,
the snow, his pink lashes barely blinking, tail
flicking flies, pink hooves smaller than my palms.
I used to picture him, hunched in some tunnel,
carting wagons of black sooty rock, keeping
his head down. A small thing, glowing. He
made it out. We waited until the ground
thawed, started digging not far from the barn,
where the hillside sloped away. It could've
been half a day, piling stones and clay, then
we hitched up the other pony, and guided
the traces as he dragged the small white stiff
shell of his only friend. One living pony, sides
heaving with a weight barely possible to know,
one dead one, shut eye toward the ground,
open eye staring empty at the sky.



Born in NY, Bonnie Proudfoot now resides in Athens, Ohio. She writes poetry, reviews, fiction, and essays. Her novel, Goshen Road (Swallow Press, 2020) received WCONA’s Book of the Year and was long-listed for PEN/Hemingway. Her chapbook, Household Gods, (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2022), includes poems published in Red Eft Review.

Kindness by Penelope Moffet

          For Dick Bogue

Knowing it was his last night,
he didn’t eat or drink
because he knew
his bladder and his bowels
would empty. He wished
to spare Jane too much mess.
A kind man, Dick.
Her friend Molly had arrived
so Jane could get some rest.
He heard rain thrum the roof
and smiled. Water coursed
through desert washes
waking seeds, waking
creatures underground.
Molly soothed him
with her presence,
finally dozed, jet-lagged.
Thunder. Harder rain.
He pulled the tubes
out of his nose.
It was the emphysema
that trapped him in the bed
but Jane is sure
it was his heart
that took him out.



Penelope Moffet is the author of three chapbooks, Cauldron of Hisses (Arroyo Seco Press, 2022), It Isn’t That They Mean to Kill You (Arroyo Seco Press, 2018), and Keeping Still (Dorland Mountain Arts, 1995). Her poems have been published in many journals, among them One, ONE ART, Natural Bridge, Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor, and The Rise Up Review.

Stuttering Breath by Penelope Moffet

Rhythmic sweep of the sprinkler
in early morning,
stuttering breath as it swipes
across ragged grass,
honeysuckle, ladders leaning on
the weathered termite-bitten
wood of the garage wall.
Too early for the wet
heat to rise, the unseasonal
moisture in the air, here
at the brink of summer,
the stepping-off
from glorious bloom
to drying-out.

On the road north,
golden grasses mix with
chartreuse growth and,
a little higher,
clefts and hills carpeted
with gray-green chaparral
and upthrust spikes
of Spanish Bayonet,
Our Lord’s Candle.
Sunflowers nod godheads
in ditches by the road.
A careless or deliberate light
tossed from a car
and all of it would burn.
I tell myself
I’m done with fear.



Penelope Moffet is the author of three chapbooks, Cauldron of Hisses (Arroyo Seco Press, 2022), It Isn’t That They Mean to Kill You (Arroyo Seco Press, 2018), and Keeping Still (Dorland Mountain Arts, 1995). Her poems have been published in many journals, among them One, ONE ART, Natural Bridge, Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor, and The Rise Up Review.

My Children Ask Me Why I Have So Much Stuff by Tamara Madison

Your preschool art projects:
Hand-painted tiles, clumsy clay pots
brought home for Mother’s Day
A box of books you made in kindergarten
A lock from your first hair cut
A tin of your teeth
Boxes full of photographs of you at all stages:
Naked, toothless, chubby
As Superman in a Halloween parade
Onstage, a Nutcracker snowflake
You playing with cousins
Walking Auntie’s shelty
Sitting on Grandpa’s lap
Your suntanned face bobbing in a crowd
at summer camp
You in tassled cap and gown
Why are you keeping all this crap? they ask
I don’t tell them why I keep these remnants,
don’t say that to throw away mementos
feels like inviting death



Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbooks The Belly Remembers (Pearl Editions) and Along the Fault Line (Picture Show Press), and three full-length volumes of poetry, Wild Domestic, Moraine (Pearl Editions), and Morpheus Dips His Oar (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions). Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, the Writer’s Almanac, Sheila-Na-Gig, Worcester Review, and many other publications. She is a swimmer and a dog lover. More about Tamara can be found at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.

Foggy Morning by Tamara Madison

I have given my sister's name
to the stateliest, most graceful
in a row of sycamore trees.
I wade through damp grass
in muffled sunlight to visit her.

I need to go there,
need to touch her trunk,
look up into the patient wisdom
of her branches, listen to the fog
drip from her leaves, feel
the loss of her wring my chest.

I start for home.
The fog begins to lift.
Warm day ahead, a bit of summer.
The sycamores are going sallow
in slanted autumn light.

A cluster of geranium blossoms
greets me at home—her lipstick.
I remember the person she was
when she wore that shade.



Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbooks The Belly Remembers (Pearl Editions) and Along the Fault Line (Picture Show Press), and three full-length volumes of poetry, Wild Domestic, Moraine (Pearl Editions), and Morpheus Dips His Oar (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions). Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, the Writer’s Almanac, Sheila-Na-Gig, Worcester Review, and many other publications. She is a swimmer and a dog lover. More about Tamara can be found at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.

Staying Alive by Sharon Waller Knutson

My father was pushing
82 - the same age
as I am now - when
he went to sleep and never
woke up. When I succumb
to sleep in the darkness
I am surprised when the sun
shines and birds sing.

It is pitch black and I awaken
to the crowing of the rooster
and know he is communicating
with his hens like he does
in the daytime when they stroll
across our property.

I hope the chickens are in the coop
and the feral cat is curled up
on the couch in the sunporch
because I hear the yipping
of a pack of coyotes hoping
for raw meat for breakfast.

I close my eyes again and sunlight
splashes me awake. The chickens
are cackling and pecking
and the tabby is standing
outside the door waiting
for his breakfast and unlike my father
I have lived to see another day.



Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in Arizona. She has published eleven poetry books, including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields (Flutter Press 2014), What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say (Kelsay Books 2021), Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob (Kelsay Books 2021), Survivors, Saints and Sinners (Cyberwit 2022), Kiddos & Mamas Do the Darndest Things (Cyberwit 2022), The Vultures are Circling (Cyberwit 2023), and The Leading Ladies in My Life (Cyberwit 2023.) Sharon's twelfth collection, My Grandfather is a Cowboy, is also forthcoming from Cyberwit in January of 2024. Her work has appeared in more than 50 different journals and she is the editor of Storyteller Poetry Journal, which is an online publication dedicated to promoting narrative poetry.

The Artist Takes Down Her Show in Which Not a Single Painting Sold by Shoshauna Shy

and pauses between hauling canvases
across the rough floorboards to watch
from the doorway as a bus brakes
at the curb outside, exhales and lowers
itself to discharge a passenger.
Wordlessly, a young woman in cut-offs
and sandals, handbag swinging, leaps
from the vehicle and strides away.
The bus lifts itself back into position
like an elephant coming out of a kneel,
lumbering on to do this thankless job
at the next stop, and the next.



Shoshauna Shy's poems have been made into videos, produced inside taxi cabs, and even decorated the hind quarters of city buses. Not a monogamous writer, she works on 7-11 pieces at the same time. She is also a flash fiction author— but that's another story!

Playground by Shoshauna Shy

Substitute teachers are never
as good as the originals.
They forget names, rely
on notes, glance at the clock
too much.

And then that word chosen.
When it’s from a batch of discards,
how special is that?
And don’t forget: chosen once
means not chosen a bunch
of other times.

Stand-in. Who were you expecting?
What ghost am I competing with?

The word real.
All the kids who ask
“Is she your real mom?”
I want to bark, “No, she’s fake.
She’s pretending. So am I.
I’m pretending you didn’t ask
me that.”



Shoshauna Shy's poems have been made into videos, produced inside taxi cabs, and even decorated the hind quarters of city buses. Not a monogamous writer, she works on 7-11 pieces at the same time. She is also a flash fiction author— but that's another story!

fi•bi by A.R. Williams

After my daughter
scaled the tree

an eastern phoebe frightened,
thrashed her wings

like a river
struggling against its

banks, returned to her perch,
and once again

chirped her name.



A.R. Williams is a poet from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley (USA). His debut chapbook, Funeral in the Wild, is slated to be released with Kelsay Books in February 2024. He can be found on twitter and instagram @arw_poetry

A Thunderclap of the Mind by A.R. Williams

I can still see your
blue face,
swallowed by
an oxygen mask, your
mother’s consciousness
returning like
a weathered ship
finding its way back
to shore,
and my hands shuddering
like a sail at sea,
even now,
as I zip up your sleeper.



A.R. Williams is a poet from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley (USA). His debut chapbook, Funeral in the Wild, is slated to be released with Kelsay Books in February 2024. He can be found on twitter and instagram @arw_poetry

A Clean Well-Lighted Place by Doug Holder

          * inspired by Ernest Heminway's short story

All I want is a clean
well-lighted place,
perhaps the silhouette of a tree
shadowing my face.
A beer so dark
and deep
it loosens the secrets
that I keep.

The polished bar
gleaming with Mahogony
serenity.

No music
to break the spell,
a table,
an old man
before he faces
the stygian kiss of
the night
where he
dwells.



Doug Holder is the co-president of the New England Poetry Club and the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville, MA.

When That April by David Ram

After the widow’s daylong funeral,
the grieving guests departed, grown children
returned to their lives, and timed lamps appeared,

the windows of her empty house emit
an amber glow along the gravel road,
illuminating yellow daffodils.

In several months, the realtor arrives,
admires the lady ferns flooding the curb,
the tiger lilies lining the driveway,

and the kousa dogwood draping the walk,
but inside, he pulls wilted violets
from alcove sills and trashes plastic pots.

When a fluke October blizzard buries
the garden, the new woman and her two
little children build a snowman with eyes

of stone, a carrot nose, and pine-branch arms;
below the soppy snow, daffodils dream
of flowering and form their daughter bulbs.



David Ram lives in western Massachusetts, where he practices poetry writing and dory rowing: his recent poems appear in Naugatuck River Review and Grand Little Things; his rowboat appears regularly on Nashawannuck Pond.

Passing Cars by Corey D. Cook

My seventh chapbook, Passing Cars, was published by Maverick Duck Press yesterday and is now available for purchase on their website. See the link below... I hope you will consider ordering a copy. Your support would mean a great deal to me and this small / independent press.

Passing Cars by Corey D. Cook - Payhip

Life, come back to me by Gillian Cummings

Life, come back to me.
Star in the fog. Lone

calf in the far field.
Blackbird nestled in night.

And the sweet, shy song
of the first spring rain.



Gillian Cummings is the author of two poetry collections: The Owl Was a Baker's Daughter (CLP, 2018), and My Dim Aviary (Black Lawrence Press, 2016). She lives in Catskill, NY with her composer husband and her parrot.

I say, "I am lost" by Gillian Cummings

I say, I am lost.

Find a path back,

you tell me,
your hands holding
breadcrumbs.

But they disappear—

birds’ beaks like dusk.



Gillian Cummings is the author of two poetry collections: The Owl Was a Baker's Daughter (CLP, 2018), and My Dim Aviary (Black Lawrence Press, 2016). She lives in Catskill, NY with her composer husband and her parrot.

Ruin by Jean Ryan

It can start early,
through no fault of your own.
Someone tampers with you
and from that time on
you will never look at a father
without suspicion, will never
see children playing without
wondering: which ones?
And then there’s plain old bad luck—
illness and accidents and terrible timing,
the steady toll of being alive;
along with the harm you do to yourself
as you move through your mapless days:
detours, bargains, lapsed resolutions.

Still your heart breaks for the world
and doesn't care that you wake in ruins
to see what can be salvaged.



Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in coastal Alabama. Her writing has appeared in many journals and anthologies. Her debut collection of short stories, Survival Skills, was published by Ashland Creek Press and short-listed for a Lambda Literary Award. Lovers and Loners is her second story collection. She has also published a novel, Lost Sister, and a book of nature essays, Strange Company. Her first poetry collection, A Day Like This, will be published in May 2024 by Kelsay Books. https://jean-ryan.com/

How to Survive Cancer by Howie Good

A neighbor of ours once worked
as a counselor of some sort
in a cancer ward. She told me
when she caught up with me
the other day she could predict
just by looking which patients
would survive and which wouldn’t.
The ones who made it, she said,
exhibited a positive attitude.
Then she handed me a baggie
of very finely ground pot.



Howie Good's newest book, Frowny Face, a synergistic mix of his prose poetry and handmade collages, is forthcoming from Redhawk Publications.

Gold by Julianna McCarthy

First the bats
foraging, scouring gnats, mosquitoes
then swallows
snatching mites in the half light
where the cat works his way
through the tall grass
toward the golden orb weaver
waiting for darkness
at her loom
the this, then this
symmetry of slaughter
while an old moon swallows
the light.



Julianna McCarthy is an award-winning Los Angeles poet. Her poems have appeared in the Antioch Review, American Journal of Poetry, Catamaran, Nimrod, Hole in the Head, and others. Her first full-length collection, Night Surgery, is available from Blue Horse Press. She holds an MFA from New England College

Bailing Our Grandson Out of Jail by Sharon Waller Knutson

Hi, Grandpa, the voice on the speaker
phone says. I just got out of the hospital.
I was in a car wreck last night. It was
the pregnant lady’s fault, but they arrested
me. I couldn’t blow in the breathalyzer
because I had blood in my mouth.

Although he mumbles and moans,
I recognize the voice of our oldest grandson,
who works long days to feed his family
of seven in Utah and never drank a drop.

When he says, I love you both, my heart
breaks for our sensitive boy who still
sends us love notes in texts and emails.
I’m in the courthouse. I need bail money
or I’ll go to jail. His voice is shrill
and shreds my heart.

They couldn’t get him on a DUI
so they charged him with reckless
driving and failure to take a breathalyzer,
his attorney says. This young man
has a clean record. If he goes
to jail, he may lose his job and his family.

I am glad he has such a caring attorney.
We offer to pay by debit card or PayPal,
but he says we need to buy two blue dot
gift cards from Walgreens 30 miles away.

My husband shakes his head. Points
to the extreme heat warning. His father
and other grandparents are dead. He’s
counting on us, I say. So we fly down
the highway and call the attorney
from the gift cards section. A woman
wearing a name tag appears.
You’re being scammed, she says.
See he hung up. Call your grandson.

My husband and I stare speechless,
never dreaming that wasn’t our grandson
on the line. He dials and our grandson
answers. He sounds like the imposter,
but he is speaking clearly.
Where are you? I ask. He laughs.
At work. I tell him I’m glad he’s okay.
Your grandparents were scammed,
the Walgreen’s woman informs him
You’re the best grandparents, he texts.

We drive home feeling foolish
but now we understand
my in-laws weren’t senile,
but loving grandparents
when they sent money
to scammers to keep our son
out of jail in Mexico
when he was safe in West Virginia.



Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in Arizona. She has published eleven poetry books, including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields (Flutter Press 2014), What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say (Kelsay Books 2021), Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob (Kelsay Books 2021), Survivors, Saints and Sinners (Cyberwit 2022), Kiddos & Mamas Do the Darndest Things (Cyberwit 2022), The Vultures are Circling (Cyberwit 2023), and The Leading Ladies in My Life (Cyberwit 2023.) Sharon's twelfth collection, My Grandfather is a Cowboy, is also forthcoming from Cyberwit in January of 2024. Her work has appeared in more than 50 different journals and she is the editor of Storyteller Poetry Journal, which is an online publication dedicated to promoting narrative poetry.