Simply eating her salad by Michael Estabrook

Sometimes I become completely overwhelmed
by merely being in her presence,
like this afternoon
at McDonald’s with the grandchildren,
suddenly I’m choked with emotion,
barely able to speak,
while simply watching her
sitting there eating her salad, quietly, unassumingly.

I had to work at not crying,
(What a silly spectacle I would have been.)
dabbing at my eyes
with a crumpled McDonald’s napkin.
“Guess my eyes are watering
because it’s so cold outside.”
(Sure, nice try, you silly old man.)

I can understand being so smitten
when you first fall in love – how can you help it!
The beauty, the youth, the vigor and vitality,
the inescapable mystery of it all,
crashing over you like an avalanche in the Alps.
But come on! I’ve been at this now a long time,
with this woman almost half a century!
How could it be possible
that I still get all choked up watching her
sitting there simply eating her salad?



Michael Estabrook has been publishing his poetry in the small press since the 1980s. Hopefully with each passing decade the poems have become more succinct and precise, clear and relatable, more appealing and “universal.” He has published over 20 collections, the latest being Bouncy House, edited by Larry Fagin (Green Zone Editions, 2014).

Batteries by Michael Estabrook

I try to keep up but the youngsters
walk faster talk faster work faster eat faster
          play faster learn faster . . .
“Becomes harder every year doesn’t it”
quips another old man at the beach
in his floppy hat and Growing Old Ain’t
for the Faint Hearted t-shirt
watching me taking up the rear
clutching onto my towel and chair.
Sure does but at least I made it
          to the ocean
again this year best place
in the world to recharge the old batteries.



Michael Estabrook has been publishing his poetry in the small press since the 1980s. Hopefully with each passing decade the poems have become more succinct and precise, clear and relatable, more appealing and “universal.” He has published over 20 collections, the latest being Bouncy House, edited by Larry Fagin (Green Zone Editions, 2014).

April Morning by Richard Martin

Looking out of the wide window this morning,
it came to me that green is the colour of hope –

rebirth, look at the chestnut unfolding its leaves,
or the birch's shimmer, the beech's green veil;

but then there's also white: the innocent cumulus
of the cherry, and the dogwood's diffident purity –

green promises future fruitfulness; summer to come,
whereas blossom is so temporary, a halfway house.

Let us sit back and gaze upon this present richness --
with relief that seasons move on, in spite of man.



Richard Martin is an English writer who lives in the Netherlands close to the point where Belgium, Germany and Holland meet. After retiring as a university teacher in Germany, he turned his attention to writing, and has published three collections of poetry and numerous poems in magazines in England, the US, and Austria.

The Sacred Texts by Holly Day

I would have had so many more poems to show you
but the priest destroyed them all when he came
said my pre-Columbian ideals, my life before him, were wrong
told me I was wrong. I stood by, penitent, as he hauled

box after box of handwritten journals
out to the curb to melt in the rain, came back
covered in sweat and ink to remind me
it was for the best, he only wanted the best

for me. I watched the codices that had recorded my life before him
disintegrate through the crack in the curtains, pretending
to keep an eye on children bicycling in the rain
that I was impatient for the mail. I watched

as history, deprived of its tongue
forgot all about me.

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in The Cape Rock, New Ohio Review, and Gargoyle. Her nonfiction publications include Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, Guitar All-in-One for Dummies, Piano and Keyboard All-in-One for Dummies, Walking Twin Cities, Nordeast Minneapolis: A History, and Stillwater, Minnesota: A History. Her newest poetry collections, A Perfect Day for Semaphore (Finishing Line Press), I'm in a Place Where Reason Went Missing (Main Street Rag Publishing Co.), and Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing) will be out mid-2018, with The Yellow Dot of a Daisy already out on Alien Buddha Press.

Nothing wakes me... by M.J. Iuppa

like rain pounding
its two-fisted anthem
on every surface
within earshot
and closer—

an echo galloping
with a crowd’s
commotion, moving
in a clatter of tin
elbows and knees—

hands reaching 
as the snare of a
truck’s headlights
on a wet winding
road finds rain

leaping in its down-
shift of wheels
whistling a near escape
into puddles full
of moonlight.



M.J. Iuppa's fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past 29 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.

Family Vacation 1965 by Jack Powers

In Providence, they put Nanny between us to stop the punch wars
      I was losing to Donny, though I would never admit it until my bruised
and battered biceps fell off my shoulder, even then I wouldn’t cry,

wouldn’t give Donny the satisfaction of knowing he’d won,
      wouldn’t give my parents an excuse to move me into the way-back
where Ellen read surrounded by luggage or between them

in front where Chrissy bobbed her head like some dashboard Virgin Mary,
      smiling like she never did anything wrong which isn’t true
since that’s why she was sitting there in the first place.

Now I felt sorry for Nanny on her first vacation to the Cape trapped
      between bored ten-year-old me and more bored thirteen-year-old Donny;
we could only stare out the window for so long before the monotony

drove us to team up and start watching her lips, saying what she said
      at the same time she said it, until she begged, Please boys, stop.
It’s not funny, as we begged along until my father swung his arm over the seat

and threatened, Don’t make me pull over, slapping blindly with his hand
      as my mother pleaded, Please Don, watch the road, and the car
swung back and forth in traffic like a dog straining against a leash.

Then Dad slammed on his brakes and swerved into the line
      for the Cape exit and we all panted in relief and excitement
as if returning from our wild selves, glad to have survived again

until at the Bourne Bridge, cars backed up at the circle,
      their roofs piled high with coolers, bikes and beach chairs,
Donny asked if I wanted to see who could hit the softest

and I reached across Nanny and brushed his biceps
      and he reached across and clocked me, knuckle twisting
to reach the bone and as I cried out, he smiled and said, You win.



Jack Powers’ poems have appeared in The Southern Review, The Cortland Review, Rattle, Poet Lore and elsewhere. His first book, Perfectly Good Shoes, will be coming out in the fall. He won the 2015 and 2012 Connecticut River Review Poetry Contests and was a finalist for the 2013 and 2014 Rattle Poetry Prizes. He teaches in Redding, Connecticut. Visit his website: http://www.jackpowers13.com/poetry/.

Leaves by Robert Hudnut

The other day when we went walking, we
Looked for leaves to grace the dining table
And the window sills.

The yellows, reds, and golds were all astir
Across the path, which made it easy to
Reject the ones that failed to meet the test.

But what, exactly, was the test? Just how
Would we decide which leaf would make the grade
And which would not?

Soon your hands were full,
While mine held only two.

And yet, your wanton leaves, I felt, put mine
To shame, for you had gathered richly, while
The leaves that I had picked, though perfect, made

A paltry contribution when compared
To the munificence of what you brought
To grace the table and the sills.



Robert Hudnut is a former pastor, three churches; writer, thirteen books (Harper, et al); former trustee, Princeton University.

Evening by Steve Klepetar

My father sits in the living room, reading,
drinking gin. My mother is on the phone
with her lover, a sad, small man who keeps
everything neat.
He has a collection of pre-Colombian art.
On weekends he washes his T-Bird at the beach.
He lifts weights at the gym and boxes
to keep in shape. Once he beat up
a young thug for sitting on the hood of his car,
sent him home crying and bloody.
My father’s face is gray, the book heavy in his hands.
Opera on the radio, a spring breeze blowing
through an open window.
My mother has been talking for nearly an hour now.
My father freshens his drink, turns a page.
Slowly the room burns. On the shelves, books turn to ash.



Steve Klepetar has recently relocated to the Berkshires in Massachusetts after 36 years in Minnesota. His work has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, including three in 2017. Recent collections include A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press), How Fascism Comes to America (Locofo Chaps), and Why Glass Shatters (One Sentence Chaps).

Smoke Break Outside Swann's Chapel Church by Abby N. Lewis

He sits in his Lincoln, smokes a cigarette
and thinks of his wife.
No doubt she has a list of chores for him
as long as his hours spent at work:
the wall in the bedroom needs a facelift,
the pool could use sanitizing
after the grandkid’s last visit, the second
guest room door squeaks.
No one ever stays in that room anyway.
Then she’ll complain
she forgot the butter for the brownies,
could he buy some?
He rehearses how to tell her no,
sticks a hand out the door
and taps the rolled paper. Eventually,
he smothers the butt
on the dash—the Lincoln coughs to life,
and as he pulls away,
exhaust smoke rises in the rearview mirror
to blend with the alabaster wall.



Abby N. Lewis is a poet from Dandridge, Tennessee. She is the author of the poetry collection Reticent. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Timber, Cheat River Review, The Allegheny Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, This Fluid Journey, will be published by Finishing Line Press in September 2018.

elusive sleep by Cordelia Hanemann

sounds of the city rattle
my sleep: as revelers laugh
into the night and distant
fireworks sound like shots
in the dark; fierce semis tear up
the interstate; scavengers forage
in the black garden, and night-raptors
court beneath a cloud-fringed moon;
nearby rustle: coons desperate in the cold
scramble into the cave of my crawl-space;
sleep: precious and elusive     my place
in the dark: lonely
            and not lonely enough.



Cordelia Hanemann, a writer and artist in Raleigh, NC, has published in Southwest Review, Connecticut River Review, and Laurel Review; anthologies, The Well-Versed Reader, Heron Clan IV and Kakalak 2017 and in her own chapbook, Through a Glass Darkly. Recently featured poet for Negative Capability Press and The Alexandria Quarterly, she is now working on a first novel, about her roots in Cajun Louisiana.

Drowned on Dry Land by Howie Good

Walking at dusk,
no definite purpose in mind,
along an empty stretch
of Kalmus Beach,

my shoulders hunched
against the wind
swirling off the water,

I’m just about to pass
the lifeguard shack,
boarded up for winter,

when the one gull
on the roof squawks,
Ha-ha, ha-ha-ha,

like a minor character
dressed always
in a white shirt
with a dirty collar

who suddenly refuses,
out of sheer malice,
to cooperate with the author.



Howie Good is the author of The Loser's Guide to Street Fighting, winner of the 2017 Lorien Prize from Thoughtcrime Press, and Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry.

Many Happy Returns by Jackie Craven

Long before periwinkles appear, life is hoed
into tidy blue rows on the 1040 I prepare
for the government. Radiators hiss and sing of dividends—
ordinary or qualified? Sometimes I fill notebooks
with leaning towers of calculations. Sometimes
I work in the pixilated glow of a MacBook Air—
miles of depreciations before I sleep.
I am teaching myself Excel. I am watching crocuses
push through mud. Shall I itemize on Schedule A or settle
for the standard exemption? Beyond my window,
a weeping cherry tries to bud. For the first time in years,
I see the blooms spread wings. Every spring I used to fly
to my stepfather who dozed in his swivel chair,
feet submerged in statements and invoices,
coffee-stained receipts, pages torn from ledgers,
cancelled checks, insurance claims, photocopies
of my mother’s obituary, numbers clipped and bound
with rubber bands. He struggled over line 45—
How can a minimum have an alternative?—
and I thumbed through sepia folders,
stirring dust and the scent of cigars, racing
against a deadline we could never meet
because he was born on April 15.
Neighbors brought balloons and a frosted cake.
My sister called from the kitchen—
Just file for an extension. Blessed be the IRS
for granting us more time.



Jackie Craven is the author of Secret Formulas & Techniques of the Masters (Brick Road Poetry Press, forthcoming summer 2018). Her chapbook, Our Lives Became Unmanageable (Omnidawn, 2016), won the publisher's Fabulist Fiction Award. Recent poems appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Spillway, and elsewhere. www.JackieCraven.com

Pageantry by Cindy Benabderrahman

In second grade,
my mother and her best friend
Rebecca took the shortcut
home from grade school,
fashioned a beauty pageant
from ribbons and flowers
they found in the trash out back
of Sweeney-Dodd's funeral home.

"In Memorium" and "Dear Husband"
sashayed home with lily-scented hair,
their pageant sashes sparkling with glitter.



Cindy Benabderrahman lives in Amsterdam, Ohio in a 19th-century company house with her husband, Oualid. She left K-12 education for a career in telecommunications, and she does freelance editorial work on the side. She is a mixed media artist and writer, and her work has been published in journals including Red Fez Review, Orange Room Review, and Arabesques.

Cow Creek Snow by Al Ortolani

I remember you running
through the curtain
that was the door to your
bedroom, and retrieving
a hatchet from under
your bed, just a fragment
of a memory, boys
with important plans
that required a small axe
to cull a clearing
along Cow Creek, sharpening
stakes into lances
for a rampart, or rather,
a redoubt.

I sent flowers to the funeral home
after a Facebook post, having read
that you were a grandfather,
retired from a lifetime
of sharpening stakes, from
tearing down and rebuilding
in a town we'd never considered
as boys. Along Cow Creek
in the dense vine-hung woods,
we found a fox skin in the snow,
you peeled it from the bone
with the hatchet's edge, the fox’s
red tail soft, windswept
in the winter sun.



Al Ortolani’s poetry has appeared in journals such as Rattle, Prairie Schooner, and Tar River Poetry. His newest collection, On the Chicopee Spur, will be released from New York Quarterly Books in the Spring of 2018. Ortolani is the Manuscript Editor for Woodley Press in Topeka, Kansas, and directs a memoir writing project for Vietnam veterans across Kansas in association with the Library of Congress and Humanities Kansas.

DNA by Al Ortolani

He's always been good to us
was a line my mother used
when referring to someone the family
could rely on. Her words
elevated them to an ally,
like the optometrist
who took payments for
eyeglasses, a little a month
squeezed out of my father's
teaching salary, or the owner
of the grocery store on Joplin Street
who ran an account,
paid once a month when the check
came in. It was a poor person's line,
a reference of respect to those
who didn't hold their position
like a clipboard of overdue slips,
or rustle a sheave of eviction notices.
My mother’s people were Irish,
forced from Kerry to Appalachia, then
from Kentucky to Missouri, finally,
scattering in Ancestry.com files.
The line was engrained in her DNA.
Field after field, they set
the plow-turned stones
in fences with narrow stiles.



Al Ortolani’s poetry has appeared in journals such as Rattle, Prairie Schooner, and Tar River Poetry. His newest collection, On the Chicopee Spur, will be released from New York Quarterly Books in the Spring of 2018. Ortolani is the Manuscript Editor for Woodley Press in Topeka, Kansas, and directs a memoir writing project for Vietnam veterans across Kansas in association with the Library of Congress and Humanities Kansas.

Martha by Martha Christina

. . .the very last pigeon of her kind.

Suppose you shared a name
with the last passenger pigeon,

and suppose your husband,
though not named George,
had, like hers, died
in a facility where he
was thought to be safe
and getting good care.

Small wonder then
you’d also feel

. . .a barren relic of past abundance.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in the anthology Ice Cream Poems from World Enough Writers. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

Call and Response by Martha Christina

I do the supper dishes alone,
after another supper alone;

Ellington’s Solitude, turned
down low on the CD player.

Over that aching music,
a male cardinal riffs

seven notes, and from
the distance: an answer.

One calls, one responds,
over and over, changing

solitude to just another
way of listening, until

the lingering light
of the new Spring fades,

and the cardinals’ voices,
like yours, fall into the dark.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in the anthology Ice Cream Poems from World Enough Writers. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

Early Spring, Without You by Martha Christina

The pair of cardinals
you photographed
last fall returns
to the feeder.

Under the budding lilac:
a single mourning dove.



Martha Christina is a frequent contributor to Brevities. Longer work appears in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Naugatuck River Review, earlier postings of Red Eft Review, and most recently in the anthology Ice Cream Poems from World Enough Writers. She has published two collections: Staying Found (Fleur-de-lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press).

playing it safe by J.J. Campbell

two dark souls
united for one
last ride that
hopefully ends
in a beautiful
death

there's a
revolution
at hand

and i'm tired
of playing it
safe

they only build
statues for people
on the wrong side
of history in the
south



J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) is currently trapped in the suburbia, waiting for the revolution to begin. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at The Beatnik Cowboy, Mad Swirl and Horror Sleaze Trash. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights (http://evildelights.blogspot.com).

Appropriating the Dance by Emily Strauss

White people shuffle sheepishly
in a circle following the leader
watching their feet, trying to sway
to catch the rhythm of a frame drum

three Modoc women in braids strike
at sunset, the yellow rays fingering
the far hills across the green hay fields
a fire built to lend smoky atmosphere.

White people circle, grinning
in solidarity, look— they're dancing
stepping on toes, trying to feel
the land's spirit, pretend they know

the words of the chant or the coming
night out on the desert while they retire
indoors, plug in the hair dryer, the drums
gone by then, echoes of a heart beat

lost on the smooth road back home.



Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry, which she has written since college. Over 400 of her poems appear in a wide variety of online venues and in anthologies, in the U.S. and abroad. She is a Best of the Net and twice a Pushcart nominee. The natural world of the American West is generally her framework; she also considers the narratives of people and places around her. She is a retired teacher living in Oregon.