Terminal by Ronald Moran

Too late for me to say to my terminally ill
                         friends,
I hope you feel better soon, when I know
                         they will
not get well, and if they could still respond,
                         they might

want to say, It's Ok, Ron, we are ready,                         
                         a chorus
joining others in that final stage when
                         every
breath comes only in forty second cycles,
                         and

I don't know what I should hope for next:
                         another breath
or cessation, their eyes fixed at either open
                         or partially
closed, never all the way, as if to declare,
                         We tried.



Ronald Moran lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina. His poems have been published in Asheville Poetry Review, 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 Eye of the World in the spring of this year.

One Night in a House with My Parents by Ronald Moran

Snow or debris filled this house I do not
remember being in before, while my father

broke window after window, as snow,
or whatever, accumulated inside so fast

I could not remove it. I do not know why
I was there, me, over a decade older than

they lived to be, my mother silent, out
of character, sitting in a small room with

only one chair, staring at me, as if to ask,
You? What are you doing in this house?



Ronald Moran lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina. His poems have been published in Asheville Poetry Review, 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 Eye of the World in the spring of this year.

Apology for Breathing by Howie Good

The seabirds
that dive-

bomb for fish
only seem

to be crying,
Sorry, sorry.



Howie Good co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.

100 Little Deaths by Roderick Bates

By the time she took her first step at 10 months, 
Elizabeth had already changed so many times
I had suffered a whole string of losses.
The deep-sleeping wiggler was gone,
as was the toothless sucker of nipples,
the rolling giggler bent on sitting up,
the crawler who had not yet found reverse.

Always, with each achievement –
the new tooth, the proud holding
of her own spoon, tied shoelaces,
training wheels bent and unneeded –
came the hard knowing
that some part of her life was now over,
as gone as last night’s shadows,
as forever as a broken knife blade.

When I walk in this small-town Vermont cemetery,
read the history of influenza
on all the tiny stones that just say Baby,
I am beat down by true loss.

                             And yet, tonight, as I hold
this chewed copy of Pat The Bunny
and talk to you in another state,
holding your own baby who reaches
for the off button of your laptop,
I feel the hundred small cuts of your growth,
the hundred dark moments
of each new separateness,
the hundred small stones marked Baby,
and First Grader, and Brownie,
and Graduate.  
And I wonder if, when I call you,
sometimes you hear through the wire
the hundred echoes of missing
as I say I love you.



Roderick Bates has published poems in The Dark Horse, Stillwater Review, Naugatuck River Review, Hobo Camp Review, and Rat’s Ass Review (which he now edits). He also writes prose, and won an award from the International Regional Magazines Association for an essay published in Vermont Life.

Father and I by Rachel Caruso-Bryant

You’re brown, baked by the Texas kiln, firmly lined and chiseled
Wearing a red plaid shirt, unbuttoned, with sun washed jeans,
On the couch, passed out after a long day bleeding oil on the fields.
I’m smooth-skinned, pale, and blonde as an ear of white corn,
Wearing white Hanes underpants, topless, chest down
On top of you, mouth open, drooling, deep in memory making sleep.



Rachel Caruso-Bryant is originally from Florida and is now an English language lecturer at a university in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. She lives with her husband and three cats and travels the world whenever she gets the chance. Her poems have appeared in A Lonely Riot and the Stark Poetry Journal.

My Mother's Alzheimer's by Ben Rasnic

The days, weeks, months, the
passing of the seasons
dissolve into jumbled
blank calendar squares.

The alternating glow
and fade of fireflies
captures her childlike wonder,
briefly signals familiar names
and faces,

memories flickering
particles of light
short circuiting the strange gray
passage of time,

a deluxe continuum
jigsaw puzzle
missing interlocking pieces;

unfinished crossword entries
even I no longer
can complete.



Author of four collections of poetry, Ben Rasnic currently resides in Bowie, Maryland crunching numbers for a living in Northern Virginia.

Sleeping in Railroad Cave by Al Ortolani

We woke in the darkness, looking out

into the light, the entrance curtained

with ice. The sunlight caught

as it would behind a window,

luminescent like the first sun.

Already, trickles of melt were running

in barely detectable currents, cold beads

on the tips of the frozen. By mid-morning,

the ice would drop, a harvest loosened

from the limestone. Reluctantly,

we kicked our way out. The span of ice

shattered with the force of our boots

across the leaf fall. We emerged

into the early sun, cold pinching our nostrils,

each step a snapping twig, a circling crow,

a woodpecker drumming dead wood.



Al Ortolani's newest collection, Paper Birds Don’t Fly, will be released in 2016 from New York Quarterly Books. His poetry and reviews have appeared in journals such as Rattle, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, and New York Quarterly. His poems been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Currently, he teaches English in the Kansas City area.

Their Daughter by Martha Christina

Even in a small town

          no longer quite as small,

          news travels fast.


Today in the card shop

          the talk is all about

          the newcomers'

          teenage daughter,


how she balanced, briefly,
          on the bridge railing

          then took to the water

          like a flower,

          opening.

 

 

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 by Pecan Grove Press.

Along Back Roads by Martha Christina

Misfolded
and creased,
the map leads us
down Old Stage Road
to the intersection of
Bug Hill and Bear Swamp.
Left, then right, to Echo Valley,
where you pull over
near an abandoned farm
to photograph
not the blazing maples
but yet another
dilapidated barn.


An aspen beside
the shuttered house
gives an obligatory
shiver in the light wind.
Each day its leaves
turn a little more vibrant,
as if coloring
marked their future,
not their end.


I listen hard for voices,
a slammed door,
the bleat of sheep,
but hear only
crickets in the ditch
and the ticking
of our hazard lights.



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 by Pecan Grove Press.

Dreamscape by Claire Hersom

Until the silken silhouettes of the shore scatter

          gray warblers and chimney smoke marry fog
          hide in the oxygen of the river,
          dance with the cool draft that drifts
          out of the forest

                    never give up, you say
                    there is always a stronghold

In sleep, we fall to nothingness
while our minds gather at the round table to debate
what the day ignored

we wake with angst,
a vague sense of disapproval

who can tell what’s fact, fantasy,
or restless dream

but it’s morning now, a new day

so go ahead

rise



Claire Hersom is a native Mainer who lives in Winthrop. Her work appears in several poetry journals including Yankee Magazine. Her book, Drowning: A Poetic Memoir, (Moon Pie Press) was supplemental text for UMS Rockland campus. In 2011, she received an Emerging Artist Grant in Literature from Boston’s St. Botolph Club Foundation. She serves on the Board of Directors for Maine Equal Justice Partners, and volunteers in local schools giving poetry ‘workshops’. She is one of three organizers for the Hallowell Maine poetry venue, the Bookey Readings at the Harlow Gallery. Her poem, "October Moon" was recently anthologized in the second edition of Wes McNair’s laureate project, More Poems from Maine: Take Heart.

Drought by Claire Hersom

The lake
thirsting in the sun

          rests
          waits

saves its energy
dreams of winter
          its mouth wide open
          begging for an unrelenting
          rain

Shadows under the surface
their dark secrets revealed

          frown
          worry

plants reach,
so close now to freedom

Granite,
with its map of creation
appears

its cataracts removed
          so generously
          by the sun's intense
          and constant heat

the relentless summer
masquerading as beauty.



Claire Hersom is a native Mainer who lives in Winthrop. Her work appears in several poetry journals including Yankee Magazine. Her book, Drowning: A Poetic Memoir, (Moon Pie Press) was supplemental text for UMS Rockland campus. In 2011, she received an Emerging Artist Grant in Literature from Boston’s St. Botolph Club Foundation. She serves on the Board of Directors for Maine Equal Justice Partners, and volunteers in local schools giving poetry ‘workshops’. She is one of three organizers for the Hallowell Maine poetry venue, the Bookey Readings at the Harlow Gallery. Her poem, "October Moon" was recently anthologized in the second edition of Wes McNair’s laureate project, More Poems from Maine: Take Heart.

The war that would bring us together by Mark Danowsky

Once around the lunch table
a kid I hardly knew paced and ranted
about how a war with giant insect invaders
would bring us together

I wanted the war to come
to fruition, in my imagination
it would solve the petty everyday indecencies

This was before that geometry class
when we were shepherded to a tv
to watch a plane hit a building over and over



Mark Danowsky’s poetry has appeared in About Place, Beechwood Review, The Broadkill Review, Cordite, Red River Review, Shot Glass Journal and elsewhere. Originally from the Philadelphia area, Mark currently resides in North-Central West Virginia. He works for a private detective agency and is Managing Editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal.

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.