By: Brian Goad I walk down the street to the dealer's kiosk "Four hundred and fifty, please" receiving back a faintly glowing stack of slides, no thicker than a quarter the slides come to life in my hands, showing endless wonders, infuriating injustices, people just like me I flip through the deck, time melting, spent slides lost somewhere in the room, the only light scattered on the floor across piles of dirty clothes dissolving into darkness when the dealer closes shop, he

By: Molly Mayhead Fishermen in hip waders and denim perforate the surf’s edge swapping stories of the one that got away, push their dories from sand into sea, muted reds, blues, browns, exotic insects suspended in undulating aquatic resin to bring home sea’s treasure. Men with crumpled grocery bag faces and shadowed eyes look beyond the horizon, captain boats Penny Jo, Sally, Carpe Diem, Smooth Sailing, Sweet Spot, The Limit— a confessional of lovers and possibility. When s

By: Elisa Carlsen not saddle broke but broke ass upside down pissing time too big for your britches girl, someday someone is gonna knock you up or knock you out and what are you gonna do then? I’m gonna run like horses until there is no gallop no ground no canter no star no planet no X, no Y no U Elisa Carlsen was born and raised in the high desert of Northern Nevada. A contemplative poet and artist, her writing has appeared in Lunch Ticket, Scapegoat Review, Carte Blanche, A

By: Darren C. Demaree The flowers come & I try to whisper, even if I’m too old for that kind of kiss, I try whisper to them to fill my body with a new season, something blue-green that will cling to sun- light even half-buried. I’m enough of burden on this world to get no real answer. It’s calming. Nothing is ever whole. The bloom breaks us into pieces. Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-four poetry collections, most recently “Now Flourish Northern Cardinal”, (Small Ha

By: John Dennis My mother kept plants that frightened me. Large tropical things with split leaves and hanging roots that drank sunlight greedily from the windows. At night, they changed shape. At least I believed they did. The monstera beside the hallway seemed larger after dark, its shadows opening across the wallpaper like hands. My mother spoke to them while watering. Not lovingly. More like negotiations. After she died, the apartment became impossible by degrees. First ca

By: Kathy Pon She stumbles and friends pretend not to notice, and she pretends too. She stumbles on her blind spots, ruptured truths, struggles and backslides in slicks of self-doubt. As she stumbles, she faces her flaws, is humbled by her clumsiness. Strangers stare at her clunky shoes while they tie their own laces tighter. Shuffling on shaky terrain, she does not expect her body will become graceful, only prays her legs won’t buckle. Stumbling lands her in dark places, fum

By: Claire Scott I won’t be good at it confusing rows of pills in orange vials two pink ones at noon instead of at night forgetting the antiseptic wipe and sterile gloves when I flush his port I worry I will be resentful anger unfurling like a wind-whipped flag overcooking his eggs forgetting to order Depends I worry my life will be swallowed by his needs no time to walk, to write to have tea with friends I worry I will be lonely I watch others in the clinic one helping her h

By: Benjamin J. Kirby Crash helpless against the molten surface of God’s angry sun Wound the mighty starlight with a meager shadow that lands Under my feet on the summer hot sidewalk of Little Rock walking north, past the school, past the church, past the park past a store that sells fresh coffee smelling of exotic places Rebound sideways to the choking reaches of forgotten space They call it dark matter, unseen but so is air, so is oxygen This is the course of your finality,

By: James Ducat A bird chortles and as I turn on the camera – who believes in bird-laugh – a red-tailed hawk carves a hole above the trees while the mobbing bird dives at it again and useless. The cackle is a threat the hawk doesn’t find funny or frightening. I was too stunned to hit record. That was them, dive-bombing after dinner in the room with ladderback chairs and wine-colored carpet. We get up but they stay, we move and they stay. Who is clearing d

By: Madeleine Tompkins It is the second day of October. An onslaught of raindrops plays thunderously over every line somehow making each song sound grander and more tender while I sit at the stoplight on my way to work. The hillside next to me, covered in lilting grass as always, suddenly changes its uniform from a vibrant green to soggy waves of brown. The setting sun greets me early as I drive home, so bright and low I can barely see the road. Stay with me a little longer?

By: Paul Doty Amongst the many poems in a binding-split notebook is a last word a final line, an end. Seek a metaphor for raising sons and it’s a rubber soul worn off the vinyl, bald sneakers, long grooves walked, which, are, well, walked. Seated revolt, glass of beer crystal ball in hand looking backwards on accelerating time wanting to explain wait. Hall and Oates singing “Wait for Me” on the car radio driving north from Chesire County New Hampshire as coda to a daughter la

By: DB Jonas Strictly speaking, he was only an impediment on the way to the menagerie. Franz Kafka, Ein Hungerkünstler The noise that drifted up to us in the otherwise empty gallery was nothing human, something rather like what we’d expect from a loosened drainpipe or desiccated seedpod rattling in the wind, a rusty hinge, a groan of faulty plumbing in the wall. Before too long, the connoisseurs of tedium had wearied of this slow uneasy art of his, an art composed of quiet

By: Anna DiMartino My father calls to tell me he’s dying– the priest has come to give him his last rites. His words, a slow churn of gravel, each syllable dredged from a muddy gutter. I assure him there’s no priest, it was a dream. He says he’s made his peace, has no regrets, then asks about my brother and starts sobbing. I remember my father’s temper, his thick, calloused hands, the flash of heat that seared, bloomed raw, his brand on my skin, but his words, barbed and sharp

By: Becca Alexandra Hurst Dad drives me to get cherry Pepsi. We only talk in the car. At home, I retreat, not dramatically, just in a to-do-list kind of way. You know? I stretch my legs on the dash. The sun hits just right. Sometimes I bring the fur throw from the front room, a cinema seat, a therapy couch, both. We keep our eyes ahead. No detours. Just the loop. The time it takes to finish a cherry Pepsi. Slowly. Our script’s well-rehearsed: job stuff, how my recovery is goi

By: Rebecca O’Hagan She lay in a bowl of afternoons shrinking into herself, skin dulling, but how long the soul lasts in the hide of a tough old broad I couldn’t say; only burrow in, all claw. It starts with a sound: a golden sort of ticking tears through the sunless noon in tiny meteors of serum but the webbing underneath fights before conceding at last to sting and bless the eye, and now through the air a drift of miracle swings: summer in February whose tart freshness is a

By: Ahmed Shareef Sometimes God comes to earth disguised as me, we both tremble at the man throwing rocks together in the shape of a cross by the side of the street, telling him this is not me. I would have been at the hospital, during the birth of my father, wrapping the umbilical cord around his throat, like declining an invitation. My mother told me, “you belong to the world, you animal.” and I decline it. How could I be disguised as God when the strangers on the streets a

By: Kelly Lynn (how it feels to have memory loss) a steel wire shivers / shakes / quakes with each little ache - beat - my heart dares to make / to break apart dices my insides / every time someone unties a memory in their mind, ready to ride down the lane while I sit - behind - roadside encases / won’t let it start - skips - / loses its grip / - trips - sputters out across the floor beneath my feet heels click caustic citrus drips down my throat to promote silence as friends

By: Mary Elliott The land claimed by river spirits in this city of rain. They linger on bridges, cloud-veiled, patient. Their voices coil through the steel, whispering: “All things, eventually, return to water. Stone, Flesh, Memory – all yield to time.” And the people pass blind beneath it all, blessed and cursed alike, their names scrawled in the rain and washed away by it. Mary Elliott is a member of the California Poetry Society and recently received an Honorable Mention i

By: Bethany Jarmul The leaves flip like coins against the heart-heavy sky & frost fills the window’s reseau with toile. My mother folds her body beneath a blanket, clutching her wrinkled hands, eyes barren. In the hallway my father’s slippers whisper against the wood floor, pausing at each doorway as if to listen for a pet or playmate long-gone. A voice speaks—my voice, purpled with age. I feel the texture of the words, but can’t grasp them between my palms. A moth flits its

By: Austin Reece compare her heart to a well & his to brackish water sink down the well like a stone touch the sides of this wet cell let the rot make contact * he was never hard as rock she was never smooth as glass he was calloused fingers and cold hands she was smoke swelling from a cigarette * like braille on a broken heart he tried to decipher the signs

By: Ashley Harris “Picking the right type of music, at the right time, and for the right task, can be a powerful productivity booster.”—Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, “Can Music Make You More Productive?”,
 Harvard Business Review, September 13, 2022 With the first notes 
of the cello, the idea
 tantalizes, then vibrates, 
 and she trembles….
 Not at the naughtiness,
 but whether she 
 might get caught. 

 But the violins—
 their yes, yes, yes, yes, yes—
 hurl her toward the plante

By: Gillian Leonard (after Marianne Moore) “There are two types of people; you are one, and I am the other. You tend to dwell and think too hard. Remember all those parties I had after your father left. He was just like you. And what about the books you read? Everything has to be dark. Like Viktor Frankl––I just didn’t get that book, the one you said totally changed your life. And the boys you bring home are just like the books. You should go to the beach and find some differ

By: Mon Malanovich-Gallagher why sleep when back alleys swell with love song fog veils over lampposts’ heads their eyes agleam and bridelike time travels slowly like a hand of a lover over seaside wakening low rumble of waves coming crashing swallowing my grief premature and unspoken it is only with its’ breath wreaking havoc on my neck that I fill this life with wonder jump between pockets of streetlight like those in my teen jeans too small for their purpose become an exp

By: M. Nova You never bloomed every summer— even when the heat blistered There were islands shores too dazzling, too barren whispered about never touched We planted the dead there equinoctial lilies drenched them in tears cheap vodka If you once brushed their petals— why go quiet now so lethal? Bees swarmed what you adored stripped the blossoms to bone Quick hands, sugar-drunk stinking of a first sin Who was I to take it? Who were you to let me? We lived scattered— on the roa