City Harvest by Ben Rasnic

With a secondhand garden hoe
sculpted rows of powdery black earth
by the cedar panel fence
where the sun breaks free
from lodge pole pines and towering maple,
framing my private sanctuary
like a secret window.

A growing season compromised                   
by cold snaps in May
& the long shadows of September,
cucumber vines find a way
to spread their wings
like uncaged birds
beyond the trellises.

Cayennes and jalapeños
pulse from forest green to fiery red
as firecracker August heat
finds plush ripe tomatoes bursting
with sweet crimson fruit
and okra spears sprouting from
fleshy green stems.

Two streets down,
work crews buzz saw a grove
of vibrant evergreens, 
layer the greenbelt
with a fresh glaze of asphalt,
breaking ground
for the next Olive Garden.



Ben Rasnic is the author of four collections of poems: "Artifacts and Legends"; "Puppet"; "The Eleventh Month" and "Synchronicity". Ben currently resides in Bowie, MD.

upholstery by Catherine Weiss

woke up alone
my first thoughts
tarnished pennies
i didn't bother to collect

tiptoed room to room
opened curtains by rote

i’ve faded into the background—
the transition has been seamless
my flannel shirt aligns flawlessly
with the plaid wallpaper of your parlor

i’ve become just another piece of furniture
hoping to be made useful

please
sit



Catherine Weiss is a poet based in Western MA. She has been published in such journals as Voicemail Poems, Melancholy Hyperbole, Jersey Devil Press, and Yellow Chair Review. Catherine enjoys competing in poetry slams, hanging out with her dogs, and playing ping pong.

Moon House by Howie Good

A couple of teenagers beat
a homeless man to death
with their skateboards.

I saw the story on the news
as summer night sounds
drifted in through the windows
like a murmured incantation.

Somewhere between sleeping
on the streets and the silver clouds
there must have been a woman
carrying a child up the stairs.



Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry. He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.

A Stitch in Time by Ronald J. Pelias

In the emptiness of her house, she
sits at her kitchen table, crocheting
round pot holders, her sight gone
with her husband of sixty-eight years.

Each stitch marks time until,
as she says, she can join him.
Each stitch pulls together
another memory into the circle.

“Nobody wants these things.
I can feel all the mistakes.
They pass the time though.
That’s all I got—a little time.”



Ronald J. Pelias’ work has appeared in a number of journals, including Small Pond, Midwest Poetry Review, Margie, and Whetstone. His most recent books, Leaning: A Poetics of Personal Relations (Left Coast Press), Performance: An Alphabet of Performative Writing (Left Coast Press), and If the Truth Be Told: Accounts in Literary Forms (Sense Publishers), call upon the poetic as a research strategy.

Someone else's mother speaks to me for the first time by Robert Ford

It wasn’t quite my first day there, and while I sat at the safety
of a long wooden table, a mile-wide belt of asteroid children
fizzed about the hall, high on screams and random collisions,

pounding its feet on a sprung floor all glassy with new varnish.
Her long-fingered hands were working the grown-up scissors,
the chafing of the blades against each other making that noise

I still don’t know the word for. You’re very patient, she told me,
freeing me from my cosmic reveries like one of the starfish
she was busily fashioning from a stack of coloured card.



Robert Ford lives on the east coast of Scotland. His poetry has appeared in both print and online publications in the UK and US, including Sweet Tree Review, Antiphon, Eunoia Review and Wildflower Muse. More of his work can be found at https://wezzlehead.wordpress.com/.

Swerve by Howie Good

It’s a two-lane road
in rough repair,
and if you’re wasted
or simply speeding
and unfamiliar
with its idiosyncrasies,
the dips and sudden severe twists
as it winds around
the base of Illinois Mountain,
it can be dangerous,
but especially on nights like this,
when there’s no moon,
only the distant porch lights
of a few lonely houses,
and so dark that you risk not seeing
the cross of plastic flowers
by the crushed guardrail
just before thunder crashes
and the skies open up.



Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry. He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.

I take by John Reinhart

my business
places

where
the owners

get
their hands

dirty
and profit

is a distant
third

to livelihood



An arsonist by trade, John Reinhart lives on a farmlette in Colorado with his wife and children. He is a frequent contributor at the Songs of Eretz, member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and was awarded the 2016 Horror Writers Association Dark Poetry Scholarship. His chapbook, "encircled," is available from Prolific Press. More of his work is available at http://www.patreon.com/johnreinhart.

Fantasy by Louise Robertson

Right now, summer makes
the bedroom a hot mouth.
All I want is to push my feet
into cold sand,
at night, waves inhaling
and exhaling beside us.
See, there’s the fantasy:
I said “us.”



Louise Robertson has completed the following checklist: Journal publications (Crack the Spine, Zetetic, Gyroscope, and others). Poetry event organizer. College (Oberlin). MFA (George Mason University). Awards (Mary Roberts Rhinehart, Columbus Arts Festival, and others). Slam teams (Rustbelt, NPS, and others). Full-length book (The Naming Of, Brick Cave). Trouble sleeping. Tries to be nice. Likes biking and swimming. Hates running. Does it anyway. Loves her two kids.

Hold on Me by Geoff Anderson

Smokey Robinson serenades my brother
and his girlfriend in the kitchen
with a definition of relationship;
I don’t like you, but I love you
on their lips while chopping garlic,
their hands around their waists,
the water already boiling
two months before the breakup
dismantles our apartment.
We listen to the piano quiet
and he tells her it is his
favorite song as I grab the knife
from his cutting board,
rinse the peels off and scrub
the handle as carefully as the blade.



Geoff Anderson teaches foreigners "their", "they're", and "there" in Columbus, OH. His work can be found in Wherewithal, Cider Press Review, and Modern Haiku, among others.

Baby Birds on Beach by Howie Good

The doctor called the results
of the blood test “concerning.”
You tell me this over the phone

with long pauses between words.
I stop walking while I struggle
to absorb what you’re saying.

You’re saying if Gavin has what
the doctor thinks he might have
he won’t live past the age of 10.

Evening has turned everything
a sludgy gray. Warning, the sign
says, Baby Birds on Beach.

Their eyes are dark in color,
just like when they were alive.



Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry. He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.

Cuttings by Gareth Culshaw

The saw chewed along the pencil line
with my thumb as a guide
‘Long and slow’ he said
as I tried to create a groove

All the names got me
Coping, Hack, Tenon, Bow
The names always sounded evil
‘Nice and slow’ he ordered

Sawdust built up and I blew it away
with the same speed as blowing birthday
candles. Creamy flakes snowed the bench
My thumb shitting itself as the triangular blades

cut, sawed, bit, jumped
He stood there casting a shadow
that still hasn’t left



Gareth lives in Wales. He is an aspiring writer who hopes one day to achieve something with the pen. He has been published in Magma, Limestone, London Grip and others.

Tenacity by Ed Ruzicka

After my father retired at 84, before he
finally started joining mom at St. Irene’s,
dad would lay out in the garden for hours
picking weeds in overalls. Oafishly
rotund, a mass, a mound, he seemed

more at home with himself than he had
been since childhood. Though he never
talked about childhood except to say how
his dad would park his butt on a curb,
bid him sit still. Behave, while ole grand
dad went in to have a few with the boys then
stumble back out to his son, dusk and home.

It would be summer. Dad would tune the
transistor to W. G. N. for the Cubs’ games.
First he braced on a fence post or hoe to
tenderly ease his bulk down to one knee,
right hand descended, then the other knee.

Finally, legs-kicked-out, dad would prop on
his elbow, side-wise. Reach out, tug, claw,
pull, roll, crawl around the garden for hours.
It was a process, a procedure in which his
hands worked with a dogged determination

I have come to appreciate as I gnaw through
a branch with a wide-toothed saw or as
I build a chain of exercises, of activities
that lead one of my stroke-stricken patients
back to lifting his arm, dressing himself alone
in a room inlaid with complex geometries
by dawn’s relentless march into shadow.



Ed Ruzicka has published one full length volume, “Engines of Belief.” His poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Xavier Review, Plainsongs, Red Eft Review, Big River Poetry Review as well as other literary journals and anthologies. Ed lives in Baton Rogue, LA and is an occupational therapist. More works can be found on his website, edrpoet.com.

Jane by Ronald Moran

It is your time of diminishments:
loss of hair, the spine and pelvis
gone soft and cracking. White
blood cells savage and deplete

you like schoolyard bullies, like
cannibals of blood. Last night
while I was stroking your head,
you woke up just long enough

to say you heard your mother
calling out your name, twice.



“Jane” is reprinted from Saying These Things (Clemson University Press, 2004).



Ronald Moran lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina. His poems have been published in Commonweal, Connecticut Poetry Review, Louisiana Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Negative Capability, North American Review, Northwest Review, South Carolina Review, Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and in thirteen books/chapbooks of poetry. Clemson University Press published his latest book Eye of the World in 2016. He has won a number of awards and his work is archived in Special Collections at Furman University.

Rites of Passage by Ben Rasnic

Took great pride
in supplying your first taste
of Canadian Club at age 12,
“This’ll make a man outta you”
he slurred.

Even the best of us can snap
at one time or another;
be it from stress, substance abuse,
faulty biorhythms
or simply witnessing your mother shatter

beneath one more crushing
close-fisted punch;
but the fact is
cause and effect mean nothing
when your father lies immersed                                       

in an expanding pool
of deep red blood engulfing
the linoleum kitchen floor
& you,
hyperventilating, hands trembling,

cling to the smoking
nickle plated Glock
you never wanted
but he bought you anyway
because he loved you.      



Ben Rasnic is the author of four collections of poems: "Artifacts and Legends;" "Puppet;" "The Eleventh Month" and "Synchronicity." Ben currently resides in Bowie, MD.

In Golden Gate Park by Brad Rose

A cocoon of myself, molting
in these enormous minutes,
I have no idea what my address is.
Every day, in the same skin,
I come here to dream of something
that’s more beautiful
for having been broken.
Pockets stuffed with Karaoke money,
my clothes ache,
my face, an apology.

The clinic says I think about things too much.
I ask them how much thinking is just right?
Then I tell them I’m only thinking the thoughts I’m thinking,
not all the other ones.

Tuesday, I read in the newspaper
the Governor said the lethal injections aren’t working,
that the prisoner’s body shook like a marionette. 
Wrapped in that story, I hardly slept Tuesday night.

Did you know people are less likely to flee
an approaching hurricane with a woman’s name
than one with a man’s name? 
My ex-wife said I’m real smart,
but I’m always solving the wrong problem.

Lightning is four times hotter than the sun.
I never sleep in the same place twice.



Brad Rose was born and raised in Los Angeles, and lives in Boston. He is the author of Pink X-Ray (Big Table Publishing, 2015.) Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize in fiction, Brad’s poetry and fiction have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Folio, decomP, Lunch Ticket, The Baltimore Review, The Midwest Quarterly, San Pedro River Review, Right Hand Pointing, and other publications. Links to Brad’s published poetry and fiction can be found at: http://bradrosepoetry.blogspot.com/.

Bloomsday's Mystery at the James Joyce Pub & Restaurant by Richard Weaver

In the bathroom today
a 20 something Japanese man
stands barefoot at the handicap urinal
American Standard. 3.8 Lpf/1.0 gpf.
wringing out his socks on the tile floor.
Once done, re-socked and re-shoeed
he walks to the sink, pulses
the soap dispenser, lathers up
and quickly washes his hands.
Two paper towels complete his visit.
Moments later I see him, seated
with three friends, all four studying
the dinner menu. No one the wiser.
Especially me.



Richard Weaver is an unofficial snowflake counter (seasonally) in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Publications include Crazyhorse, 2River View, Black Warrior Review, and the ubiquitous Elsewhere. He works as a volunteer for the Maryland Book Bank. Recent poems have appeared in Southern Quarterly and Conjunctions. Future poems in Steel Toe Review and Little Patuxent Review.

Creation by Howie Good

I hauled the stones in a wheelbarrow from the woods
behind our house, killer work for someone my age,
and dumped them in a growing jumble at the end of the garden,
and within a few days, and despite battered fingers,
I had gathered enough to build a winding two-foot-high wall,
lifting and heaving and wedging the stones into place,
misshapen pieces in a kind of extended jigsaw puzzle,
some stones as flat as dishes and others as fat as bricks,
but most as free-form as words before words form a poem.



Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry. He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.

True Story by Catherine Zickgraf

You’re a fire hazard,
said the elder,
stepping between
my wheelchair and
the church’s infant room,
wriggling nursling in my lap.



Catherine Zickgraf has performed her poetry in Madrid, San Juan, and three dozen other cities—yet homeschooling her autistic youngest inspires her the most. Her writing has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, [Pank], Victorian Violet Press, and The Grief Diaries. Find her at http://caththegreat.blogspot.com.

Too Much Happiness by Russell Rowland

This lot was recently paved. 
The neighborhood boy has a good acre
on which to run his model racer
by hand-held remote control.  

The car circles, reverses like a live thing. 
Perhaps he was sent outside
for tormenting the housecat with it.

The toy is less interesting
than his face, its pleased private smile. 
He has learned not to look too happy.

Someone always feels called
to ruin too much happiness. 
Too much happiness invites a taunt
from a speeding, full-sized vehicle.

It sets you up to discover you left
your treasure in the driveway last night
and Dad backed over it this morning.

So smile, don’t grin. Don’t dream
of laughing. If your nosy Mom
even guesses how happy you are,
swear the woman to silence.



Seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee Russell Rowland continues his trail maintenance work and baby-sits his toddler granddaughter in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region. Chapbooks “Train of All Cabooses” and “Mountain Blue” are available from Finishing Line Press.

Freedom Takes Many Forms by Michael L. Newell

The small lass with the hula hoop
was swinging and swaying when
the rain arrived in a fine fury.

All her classmates ran for cover.
She continued to swing the hoop
faster and faster in wilder and wider

circle upon circle until it slipped over
her hips and slid to the ground;
then she sped toward shelter

with a skipping run lifting her right knee
into graceful hops high off the ground,
her face tilted toward the sky in full-throated,

uninhibited laughter (audible over
the storm) which I heard and joined
from the window I stood in above

the playground which she was vacating.
She heard my guffaw and waved
in my direction before, with wildly

swinging arms and bounding leaps,
she disappeared down the steps
and out of sight around an elementary building.

A gust of wind blew a stinging sheet of rain
in my direction, and (smiling) I leaned into it
and longed for the abandon of childhood.

                                              Kigali, Rwanda, November 29, 2011



Michael L. Newell has recently been published in Jerry Jazz Musician, Verse-Virtual, and Culture Counter.