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.

Playing in the Street by Anne Mesquita

There was a time the boys across the street,
age nine and eleven,

would ring our bell, a basketball under an arm.
Can Gregg play?

Never mind that Gregg was 52.
Like watching him age in reverse, slipping back into his youth.

As if we got to witness him playing in the neighborhood on Myrtle Avenue
as a child, playing ball, or cowboys with his buddies

in Vineland, New Jersey, circa 1948.
He spoke often about his aunt as if we lived with her.

Finally he called everyone,
even his daughters, Mom.



Anne Mesquita studies poetry at the Hudson Valley Writers Center. She is producing a collection about her father’s illness, grief, and coming-of-age. She works in Libraries Administration at Columbia University. She lives in Westchester, New York with her husband and daughter.

Rewritten Memories by Mark Danowsky

You tell yourself the story
Over and over
But only in part
So each time a little frays
Around the edges
Until reality and memory

Lose sight of each other



Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry. His short poetry collections include Meatless (Plan B Press), Violet Flame (tiny wren lit), JAWN (Moonstone Press), and As Falls Trees (NightBallet Press). Take Care is forthcoming from Moon Tide Press in 2025.

heady taste by David Q. Hutcheson-Tipton

crabapples
were bitter
from the first bite,
but that
childhood tart—

like the taste
of mint or
parsley
filched from
the neighbor's
garden—

was the taste
of freedom,
autonomy,
a simple but
powerful start
to making your
own way
in the world,
heady

like the
scent of
lilac,

like the
stings of
bees you tried
to catch
in mason jars



David Q. Hutcheson-Tipton is a Denver-based poet and semi-retired physician. His poems have been curated in Unlost Journal, One Sentence Poems, and Mountains Talking.

Horseshoe Crab by Jack Rossi

The bay is restless this morning.
Waves hiss their complaints
and slap the sand for my attention,

as I step carefully among the
slipper shells, razor clams, and seaweed strands
along the highwater line,

where a horseshoe crab,
upended, legs rhythmically pedaling air,
waits the return of the tide.

He’s in no hurry.
The dark clouds are of no mind.
He does not fear death – like me,

carefully lifting him back to the sea.



Jack Rossi is a landscape architect and multi-media artist from Woodstock, Vermont. He has been writing since childhood and studied poetry later in life at Dartmouth College. Jack enjoys writing about the subtle whispers nature reveals when we look a little more intently. His poems have been published in PoemTown and PoemCity (Vermont poetry walking anthology events) as well as the Sycamore Review and other college literary journals. In the winter you can find him high in the hills of Vermont teaching alpine skiing to the young and old.

The C Word by Howie Good

I’m a cancer survivor – for now, anyway.
Every three months, I must have blood drawn,
and my chest scanned, to determine if any

cancer cells migrated, nomads in search
of grass and water. “You’re going to feel a pinch,”
the motherly woman in the lab coat says.

I stare straight ahead to avoid watching her
insert the needle. Holiday decorations are still up
on the wall, although Christmas is long over.

It feels actually more like a sting than a pinch.



Howie Good's newest poetry collection is Frowny Face, a mix of his prose poems and collages from Redhawk Publications. He co-edits the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.

Dog Star by Russell Rowland

Fourteen years ago Rufus was a pup: goodness,
that’s a weight of years
for a big dog to carry, even with four legs—

and Bob who walked him was pushing a walker
himself when they went out. A lot
of stop-and-go, since pees came hard for Rufus.

Well, I haven’t caught up to inquire;

still, either arrangements were made on behalf
of Rufus, or else Rufus made
arrangements on his own behalf—because now

I see Bob shuffling with his walker,
all alone. His head is bowed, and other things
could account for that—

aside from walking a Rufus who isn’t there.

Meanwhile, Sirius ascends to heaven—
Dog Star, part of Canis Major, the Great Dog;
brightest star in Earth’s dark sky—

visible cloudless nights this time of year.



Seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, His latest poetry book, Magnificat, is available from Encircle Publications.

An English Teacher Reflects by Lynn Hess

School's out today—
from hallways children burst
like milkweed from pods, but I remain
to pluck thumbtacks from boards,
stack grammar books, tug stubborn
gummy bears out of bare cubbies.
Another school year, gone.

Beneath a shelf, a tattered paper plane
extends a wing inscribed
“Juan loves Diane!”
A missive missile launching
a first love. I wonder,
did it ever reach its mark?

I wonder whether Luke will learn to spell.
Will Mia ever master punctuation?
Out in the yard, the final yellow bus
slaps shut its doors.
Another class departs.

Again, I tuck Jane Eyre and Frankenstein
beneath a summer quilt of frayed art paper.
Life moves on, unmoving,
I’m content an eighth-grader forever
who, like a figure on Keats' timeless urn,
expresses truth, so others
may know beauty.



Lynn Hess is a retired teacher who also conducted poetry-writing workshops in elementary and middle schools. Her poetry has appeared in magazines including Spoon River Quarterly, Blackberry, Encore, The Berkshire Sampler, youngperson, and Aeolian-Harp. Where Tigers Roar in Silence, a book of her poetry for children, was published by Lime Rock Press.

Stray Kids of Fernandina Beach by Steven Croft

hunger a small price for our endless summer,
free of parents, chores, older brothers

The chrome-glinting cars of island tourists
swished by, between us, five darkly tanned boys spanning
both sides of Atlantic Avenue, barefoot in bathing suits.
Shirtless, like crows scavenging for leftover bits
of nourishment, we lift feet occasionally to extract
pesky sandspurs, search verge grass for castaway bottles
we can return to Jiffy for a five-cent deposit.

We find the richest cache, four bottles,
by the entrance to Fort Clinch State Park,
a reputed burial place of Blackbeard's gold --
somehow appropriate. My group waits to run across
the hot, shimmering asphalt which can pierce through
calloused soles with kettle-hot heat, our arms full
of bottles. Four girls old enough to drive yell wildly
and wave. I can't wave back.

Down the strip, past The Surf Motel, the waterslide,
go-karts, we enter Jiffy like conquerors, holding enough
bottles to buy two bags of potato chips. Heading
under the Main Beach Pavilion's corrugated metal roof, we
divide the spoils on a concrete picnic table, talk about
that day we asked a lady grilling at one of the pavilion's
battered steel grills if we could have one of her burgers, sizzling
with seductive aroma. "You boys hungry, sure!" She gave
each of us one, saying, "We just homefolks from Callahan."

After the chips disappear from the table, we go watch
the go-karts, dreaming of five dollars and shoes -- a sign
in red says, SHOES REQUIRED -- that would let us race around
the oval track (driver's licenses not required). We drift
to the nearest apartment complex with its fenced pool,
FOR RESIDENTS ONLY. We swim as the guests of Clint if
questioned -- a schoolmate resident gone to summer with
his mother in another town. Later, as day fades, we'll
collect our bikes from their stack behind Jiffy. I'll ride home,
feet turning petals, mouth already tasting dinner's leftovers.

hunger a small price for our endless summer,
free of parents, chores, older brothers



Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. He is the author of At Home with the Dreamlike Earth (The Poetry Box, 2023). His poems have appeared in online and print journals and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Father Knows Best by Sharon Waller Knutson

My father is sitting
at his desk grading papers
and eating a Snickers
while waiting for his ride

after the faculty and students
with bad grades,
attitudes and tempers
have left the middle school

for broken homes, part
time jobs or friends
when he hears footsteps
on the stairs and a scrawny

guy with glasses sticks
his head in the door
and says, Gordy and his boys
are coming to kill you.

Go call the cops, my father
says as tires squeal
on the pavement and boots
pound down the hallway.

With one arm shriveled
from shrapnel in the war,
my fifty something father
channels his younger cowboy.

Tackles the three teen
football stars and disarms
them one by one
and has them hogtied

and in a pile with his foot
on the chest of the biggest
by the time the cops show up
with guns and handcuffs.

After the front page newspaper
headlines hail him a hero,
the hoots and hollers,
high fives and fist bumps

fly the way of my father
and for the rest of the school year
my father’s students are obedient
while his attackers stew in jail.



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.

1000 Piece Puzzle by Jacqueline Jules

She found the battered box in the basement,
searching through her father’s old things.
“A puzzle! Grandma, can we do it?”
We dumped a thousand pieces
on a table, sorting through the colors,
lining straight edges to form a frame.

“So many pieces, Grandma.
Do you think we’ll ever finish?”
“Maybe.” I shrugged, pressing
a small cardboard shape of solid blue
into the socket of a matching shape.

And thinking how I’ve spent
hours, days, years putting together
a life with thousands of jagged parts
I’ve had to turn again and again
before they snapped into place.



Jacqueline Jules is the author of 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). Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications. For more information visit www.jacquelinejules.com.

Me and My Shadow by Jacqueline Jules

If my shadow was lost,
I wouldn’t search for it
like Peter Pan.

Wouldn’t ask Wendy
to sew it back on.

I’m tired of dark shapes
on the sidewalk ahead.

Some tall. Some short.

Always tightly attached
to my feet.

As long as there is light
there will be objects to block it.

If I’m smart,
I’ll separate myself
from what lies beyond
this moment in time.

And giggle with my grandson,
as he raises each hand against
the sun, so tickled to see
his every move mimicked.



Jacqueline Jules is the author of 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). Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications. For more information visit www.jacquelinejules.com.

Twin Packs at Costco by Jacqueline Jules

One doesn’t need terminal cancer
to consider mortality at Costco.

Will I live long enough to finish
this twin pack of mustard? A bargain
for sixty ounces at $6.49.

How many condiments will I consume
in my remaining time on this earth?

Something to calculate, standing
in an aisle full of jumbo sizes.

At 65, I could have twenty more years,
even thirty—or as few as ten.

I’m descending the mountain now,
not climbing it. The biggest stretch
behind, not ahead.

And the knowledge is as pungent
as the mustard seed ground with spices
I spread on a sandwich every now and then.



Jacqueline Jules is the author of 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). Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications. For more information visit www.jacquelinejules.com.

Overlooking the Pacific by Rose Mary Boehm

Where others have a wall, there are large windows.
Where others hear ambulances, police cars, motorbikes,
we hear the waves of the southern Pacific.
And there are the books and comfortable sofas,
and a big black chair that doesn’t let you read but closes your eyes.

Each morning we open the door to the terrace,
to the water and the world beyond the horizon.
We breathe in the breeze caressing our bed hair,
watch the small fishing boats that have been out for
hours, the seagulls following them full of hope.

And as the spines of the books lose colour
in the harsh, subtropical light, as the red of the Chinese fruit
fades on the parchment, and the black
of the dining chairs fights against being bleached,
we hold each other and know that this
is where we have planted our last roots.



A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm, lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and eight poetry collections, her work has been widely published in US poetry journals. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/