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."

Homeless Man in Downtown Cheyenne by Sheryl L. Nelms

head
protected

by a red
motorcycle helmet

he sports

a ragged plaid shirt
cutoff jeans

and orange
flip flops

while balancing
a backpack

holding a silver
baseball bat

that threatens
invaders

of his space



Sheryl L. Nelms is from Marysville, Kansas. She graduated from South Dakota State University. She has had over 5,000 articles, stories and poems published, including fourteen individual collections of her poems*. She is a three time Pushcart Prize nominee.

*For a longer list of credits, visit http://www.pw.org/content/sheryl_l_nelms.

Catalpa Beans by Sheryl L. Nelms

hang
from the

leafless branches

in slim bunches
of brown

rattled
by the wind

they
sound

like dry
bones

bumping



Sheryl L. Nelms is from Marysville, Kansas. She graduated from South Dakota State University. She has had over 5,000 articles, stories and poems published, including fourteen individual collections of her poems*. She is a three time Pushcart Prize nominee.

*For a longer list of credits, visit http://www.pw.org/content/sheryl_l_nelms.

Keep by Claire Hersom

          - for Beulah and John

The window panes
are small and dry,
with a bubble or two,
corners chipped, but sturdy.
Through them is the other side,
a world away.

Keep busy.
Know what the words coming
will be made of.

Keep moving.
Make sure there's
a place to sit, hang your coat,
a plain wall for photos,
and a wood stove to warm
aching hands.
Move the rocker, face
a view of flowers,
and, if you can, birds
at a feeder.

Keep your eye on the sun.
It appears behind the pines
each morning to engage
with the world as it is,
no complaint.



Claire Hersom’s work has appeared in several poetry journals including Yankee Magazine’s New England Memories. In 2012, her book Drowning: A Poetic Memoir (Moon Pie Press, Westbrook, ME, 2008) was supplemental text for the University of Maine’s Rockland campus. Claire serves on the Board of Directors for Maine Equal Justice Partners, a non-profit organization dedicated to finding legislative solutions to poverty in Maine.

Haiku for the Hospice Thrift Store by Jane Vincent Taylor

Dainty handkerchiefs

once secured upon our heads at Mass

girls with no hats

 

small cut glass bowls

we dug out of oatmeal boxes

almost weevil poor

 

a beaded party purse

to carry cigarettes and mints

smells lindy like

 

a pile of vinyl

thirty-threes and forty-fives

black and groovy

 

in a velvet box

like my own old diamond ring

leftover fireworks

 

 

 

Jane Vincent Taylor is a poet who lives in Oklahoma City and teaches creative writing at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. Website: janevincenttaylor.blogspot.com.

Housekeeping by Jane Vincent Taylor

Hanging curtains, polishing mirrors, separating rooms from other rooms
          that can't be eaten in, dusting,
          fluffing pillows, whitening grout, these
          are not the domestic arts I can claim to know.
Under the sink I might as well have only my grandma's Babo,
          a jug of bleach, Dawn, Brillo pads.

House, I regret I cannot keep you polished, stylish, fit
          and congruent of aesthetic.
Now I'm banging another nail into the fading lemon yellow wall
          to hang my mother's Mexican landscape.

Sandy soil and cactus are about to blow into our rooms.
The sun is rising over an ancient mesa. Maybe
I should find a broom and be the old woman
          sweeping back the desert at the threshold of adobe.
Some days my mother, too, threw off chores to paint a picture.



Jane Vincent Taylor is a poet who lives in Oklahoma City and teaches creative writing at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. Website: janevincenttaylor.blogspot.com.

Reading a Coworker's Obituary by Corey D. Cook

She answered the phone
for six months or so
before being asked to leave,
she answered the phone breathlessly,
always breathlessly,
& tried to direct calls,
tried to take messages.

She left patients on hold
far too long
& unknowingly hung up
on others.

She left messages on your desk
& the caller’s name
would be spelled wrong,
or the phone number
would be missing a digit,
or the piece of paper
would have Coke stains on it.

She spoke of her dog,
her dog that slept in bed with her,
snarled at the maintenance man.

She died in her apartment
& you know her dog nudged her,
howled at the door
& she would have dutifully responded,
if only she could.



First published in ugly cousin



Corey D. Cook works at a hospital in New Hampshire and lives in Vermont. He edits Red Eft Review.

Memory Lane by Laura Lee Washburn

In the flea market the women talk
about men falling down.  He wasn’t hurt

but he couldn’t get up.             And the next time

he knocked that recliner on its side.

No broken hips.  That’s what she’s afraid of.

He crawled to the den to the phone.

Hips already replaced, pins and screws,

he can feel them when he lays on that side.

 

The talk is business.  The farmer’s market

failing this year, the store on main. Everyone’ll

be down at the school, not shopping.  No one

reads the paper anymore, can’t get them in

with an ad.  They wonder

whose funeral with so many cars

this morning. 

Laura Lee Washburn, Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University, is the author of This Good Warm Place (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Valparaiso Review, Carolina Quarterly, 9th Letter, The Sun, Red Rock Review, and Valparaiso Review.

The Ambigram by Kelley White

It’s honest dirt, blackening his fingers, though a shock
against the newborn’s head—he knows how to cradle
a newborn, has a natural way of rocking just a little
as we talk, and the mother’s on her cell phone in the hall.

You can see how much he loves the child. I don’t mind
the ragged jacket, the leather vest plastered with patches:
Vietnam vet, Harley-Davidson, Gypsy Motor Tour,
Native Riders. He’s earned the black and iron gray braid

hanging down his back. He whispers to the babies scalp,
kisses a patch of sparse pale hair, his huge hands cross
around her buttocks, knuckles spelling L-O-V-E H-A-T-E.
I explain the signs of illness to look for, give him my home

phone number. He warms a bottle under the faucet, shakes
a few drops on his wrist, the baby pale as milk against
his arm. We’ll recheck a weight in two weeks. Does he have
any questions. Yes, do we do DNA testing? Her last boy friend’s

kids all have red hair and blue eyes and I’m. . .I hold
his eyes. Do you want to know? What will it change?
Everything. Yes. Does it matter? He calls me two days later
from a bus on the way to Lowell, the baby has a diaper rash.

I talk him through the way to treat it. The mother’s sleeping
she needs her rest. It’s been a year now, well child checks,
a few colds, a fever. He always brings the child. Now
the woman’s pregnant. Another red head? It doesn’t matter

the love is in him. Who looks at hate.



Pediatrician Kelley White worked in inner city Philadelphia and now works in rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent books are TOXIC ENVIRONMENT (Boston Poet Press) and TWO BIRDS IN FLAME (Beech River Books.) She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.