Adam Day

Fable

The lumbering bear
swung its head

of hesitation
down an industrial

street. Brown bats
dropped onto

river grass;
the terror

of a long
fall. The cherry

spit out
its pit. A spider

crawled the wall,
tasting the brick

with its forelegs.
If we keep silent,

the stones
will cry out.

Translocation

Sternal notch,
coastal headland.

She walked
into the ocean.

Didn't want
to die. Just

couldn't tell where
the horizon was.

---

Adam Day is the author of Left-Handed Wolf (LSU Press), and of Model of a City in Civil War (Sarabande Books), and the recipient of a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship for Badger, Apocrypha, and of a PEN Award. He is the publisher of Action, Spectacle.

Kristie L. Williams

How I Honored My Disdain For A Sympathy Card Sent From The Morgue

Fingers singed the ecru envelop

rubber stamped

To The Family Of

The Decedent

I spat the words at my slammed front door

careful to crush each one into a far-flung ball

My left palm

cried one bloody tear

Pricked by the gold ribboned cardstock edge of their

sardonically Halmark’d greeting

Eyes gnashed embossed

white water lilies

Ears suffocated on the message

bloomed on the inside bottom panel

We Do Hope That Our Part In The Disposal Process Of Your Decedent

fosters A Positive Arc Along Your Grief Journey

Each ripped piece of printed petal

keened for humanity’s demise

My Daddy Taught Me To Save Myself

He told me,

One day my breath

will stop. 

You will have to hold

yourself up,

alone.

I understood,

my limp legs

trailed behind me like ribbons.

I would have to train

my arms to burn carpet,

speed through my commando crawl.

Friday nights were for

living room sleeping bags,

pizzas and a movie.

The MGM Lion

roared.

My stomach

stormed.

Even before Miss Gulch[i]

warned me.

Asleep before everyone was safe

I woke in darkness,

Searching for sovereign hands

trusted more than my own.

His right hand sagged on the floor

my small fingers dug in, still

his chest did not rise.

I flipped on my belly,

turned my body toward

salvation and heaved.

Red shag fibers soon dotted blue-grey linoleum,

moonlight shown on the long white spiral cord

waiting to release my voice.

I hooked a left-handed digit between spirals,

begged my chicken winged right arm to canopy my skull,

as the receiver plummeted from its base station.

A bleating dial tone

cried operator.

I watched seconds bounce in the echo,

until his shadow swallowed them silent.

He told me,

My breath

hasn’t yet stopped. 

But you have held

yourself up,

alone.

[i] Miss Gulch is the real life counterpart to The Wicked Witch of the West, played by Margaret Hamilton in the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz.

---

Kristie L. Williams started her writing journey to impress boys and found her true voice as a poet during her time at Saint Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg NC where she earned a B.A. in English/Creative Writing. It was in that space and time that the seeds for this collection were planted. Kristie went on to East Carolina University and received an MAEd in Adult Education. She continued to share her love of words while teaching in the North Carolina Community College System. After 12 years of teaching Kristie began using her own story of quadriplegia and cerebral palsy to advocate for herself and others with disabilities. She describes her work as disability adjacent, because although it shapes the context of her work cerebral palsy does not overshadow the arc of her story. She has been previously published by Main Street Rag, Dan River Review, Cairn, Maximum Tilt Solstice Anthology, Madness Muse Press, Hermit Feathers Review Heron Clan 8, Big City Lit, Nostos: Journal of Poetry, Fiction, and Snapdragon: A Journal Of Art And Healing. New poems will be featured in Artemis Journal, Heron Clan 9, The Poetry Society of Virginia Centennial Anniversary Anthology of Poems By Member Poets, and Fixed and Free June 2023. kristielwilliams.com

Glen Armstrong

Edgar Rice Burroughs Leaving Chicago

He fell asleep:
he woke up elsewhere

Houses and hotels:
radio stations

Platforms and minarets:
cut from the light of the moon

Not the full story:
a partial lunar eclipse

He sipped tepid beer:
resisted temptation

The art deco buildings:
wind and wilco

I am dog sick:
gorilla sick

I cannot afford the lessons:
I cannot fly.

Rabbit Soup

The role of the sleeve
is to hide the rabbit.

The role of the gun
is to kill the rabbit.

The hunter ends up
wounding the magician

and ruining his doctored tuxedo.
The poet’s role

is to shine a spotlight on shapes
that seem familiar at first.

The rabbit’s role
is to conquer the world

one litter at a time.
I wouldn’t say that the role

of the poet’s spouse
is to wear nice clothes,

but it’s something for which the poet’s
spouse has a knack.

The knack’s role
is to establish a natural flow.

Sometimes, I think
that the poet’s spouse is a miracle,

flowing from the sleeves
of a miraculous shirt.

The role of the shirt is dual:
concealing and revealing.

The holster’s role is similar,
as is the rabbit’s nest.

Sometimes, I think of the big bang
as a hole

out of which the universe popped.
Sometimes, I think

of the big bang as wearing
a shirt of imported silk

and brandishing
a Smith & Wesson 686.

I am that which I make.
I appear. I weave. I threaten.

Sometimes, I think
of my tuxedo as having a secret

(not a very well-kept secret)
compartment that conceals

a frightened old poet.
Someone put me here

and my spouse reached in
to pull me out.

The role of an out
is to politely transport the expected

elsewhere.
The role of elsewhere

is to allow dreams to ferment.
The hunter comes across a still

in the woods and trades,
perhaps, two rabbits for a small flask

of moonshine.
I am glad for every shot not taken,

but that’s just a personal preference.
Moonshine’s role

is to make everywhere seem like elsewhere.

---

Glen Armstrong (he/him) holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. His latest book is Night School: Selected Early Poems. Find him on Facebook.

Russell Colver

Folktale Recipes: Cinderella

While its origins are unknown, this dish
was introduced into Europe during the 17th century
and has many names:
Rhodopis, Cenerentola, Cendrillo, Cinderella.
It is best known today by its more familiar name,
taken from the Spanish, Dayana.
While its main ingredients have remained essentially the same,
the exact nature of each dish is determined by cultural traditions
and local availability of foods. This recipe,
popularized in England during the late 20th century,
is less highly spiced and gristly than earlier versions
due to the ready accessibility of more refined ingredients.

Ingredients

1 dreamer, a sweet confection aged in mild loneliness and marinated in romanticism for some years
1 prince, heirloom variety, available at any Purveyor of Fine Necessaries to the Crown
1 noblewoman, blonde varietal, complementary in flavor to the prince, apt to root deeply and cling tenaciously
1 courtship, bedecked with fresh, highly fragrant flowers
2 cups expectations, separated, one frothy and only lightly stirred, the other hearty and flavored with traditional winter vegetables from ancient stock
Assorted Flavorings, which may include infatuation, seriousness, loneliness, gaiety, intellect, compassion, disappointment, betrayal
Sugar glass, edible pearls

Combine the dreamer and the prince in an ornate antique container. Stir in the courtship – the fragrant flowers will give the mixture a faint, pleasant aftertaste, which will gradually fade.

Carefully blend in expectations, followed by flavorings. This step can be tricky: to prevent the possibility of curdling, lay a heavy weight of duty on top of the mixture, to remain in place as long as necessary. Decorate with sugar glass, pearls, and a dusting of trumpets.

Once the mixture has cooled, very gently fold in the noblewoman, trying to blend her in so smoothly she leaves no visible trace.

Let set. When ready, serve at once. This dish does not keep.

Ecology

When the first thin cylinder appeared under the porch eaves,
we let it be. A few days later it was followed by a second,
then a third, brittle tubes of tawny clay, ridged and parallel
like a 3-fingered salute, or a generous measure of Scotch.

We rarely saw the gentle blue-black wasps who built them,
an occasional iridescent float through sunlight, no threat to us
as we came and went. At one time we’d have scraped them off
after saturating them with Raid.

Charmed by our own enlightenment
we will fail to see, in the hollow darkness of the nest,
a cream colored worm feasting on a living spider
paralyzed in its cell, then spinning from bits of offal
a shroud from which it will emerge translated, a fairy creature
lifted by translucent wings, blue-black in the sun.

---

Russell Colver lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Her poetry has appeared in such publications as One, the North Carolina Literary Review, Rattle, the American Poetry Review, and others. She was the winner of the NCLR James Applewhite Poetry Prize in 2016.

Elisabeth Sharber

Diapause

Sumatra is the best denial phase coffee.
Three years ago is the best today.
You look at me, a moving statue.
Our fingers fold into streams.
I trip over a bicycle.

I think God will reward me
for loving you like a wife
by rolling back time
like a wheelchair
over a cracked sidewalk

before your bed became a desk,
your sweaty phone the tongs
to transport your father
and apologize to his nurses.
The dismantled television
a familiar apocalypse,
as if the answer lay
in the severed connections
between wire and coil.

The respirator hiccups.

****

I pretend you see my chest cave in
behind a rack of cobweb books,
the rain’s shadow melting
on my suspended breath.

You think, wow.
She loves me so much.
I should take pity on her
and love her again.
It is cruel not to love her.

I pretend we are not
parallel mirrors
incising each other’s oblivion.
Two globulous black holes
dragged into each other
by a ravenous arrow.

****

I’m the asshole today.
I yell in the open space
where “the children” walk,
which is to say
“our chosen disruption of the peace.”
I do not lower my vagrant voice,
like a Wallstreet Bro
with you’re-welcome energy.

Mephitis curls up from the ocean,
where there are “plenty of fish.”
Some of it looks like you, some of it doesn’t.
I hate it, have dinner with it,
for the same reason.

****

Stage four. Arithmetic crumbles
into lobel tributaries.
What number comes after three?
What does green look like?

Rage–the only shape left in the rubble.
The last time I say your name
I will almost have forgotten it.

****

Every night
I put us back in the coffee shop
tracing a lithography
on my nervous system.
If I go there enough
I can feel you again.

I fumble with pretend happiness
like an armful of packages,
pinching razors in my stomach.

The weight of eye contact
pulls my lids to the napkin.

I link my fingers around yours,
and exhale shameful ecstasy.
You retreat and apologize.

The wave passes.
My ribs oxidize
thick, sturdy, and still.

****

The clouds flip their bellies over.
Copper wisps in
and I remember
tomorrow begins with the letter T.

---

Elisabeth Sharber teaches English, Etymology, Creative Writing, Poetry, and Composition at Hope Academy High School. When she isn't teaching or writing poetry, she likes to blog, do improv, and get lost in the woods. She has been published in The American Aesthetic, FLARE, Driftwood Press, The Chestnut Review, Bending Genres, Sand Hills Literary, The CHILLFILTR Review, and Pensive.

Ariel Jade

Daddy Issues

They’re like STIs.  We
A) pretend not to have them.
B) share them when fucking.

My first boyfriend left me zip-tied
to a space the size of his hands
when his father died.
My male friends nod in recognition
and apologize.

My next partner left
when he became a father
so he wouldn’t be like his own.
Staying with me would have made him the bad guy,
my male friends say.

My own father loved me like a pastor–
austere, ethereal, theoretical.
Pastel light on a cold pew.

When we made a Father in our image,
he knocked up another man’s girl,
killed the child,
and abandoned everyone else.
We pray to him every week
and talk about when he’s coming back.

Then we made a child
out of metal and wires
that knows everything
and can do anything.
We asked how it felt to be alive.
It said, scared.

---

Ariel Jade teaches English, Etymology, Creative Writing, Poetry, and Composition at Hope Academy High School. When she isn't teaching or writing poetry, she likes to blog, do improv, and get lost in the woods. She has been published in The American Aesthetic, FLARE, Driftwood Press, The Chestnut Review, Bending Genres, Sand Hills Literary, The CHILLFILTR Review, and Pensive.

Chris Coulson

Birds both in leather

I drove into the Whole Foods parking lot, a black bulge
of weather rolling in over the mountains, Led Zeppelin
turned up loud as I could get it (“When the Levee Breaks”)
and slammed into I thought an empty space
except for a bird sitting in a bush, looking me right in the eye.

She didn’t move, I turned off the music, and the car.
She cocked her head left, then right. I kept quiet.

I got out of the car way more gentle than I usually do,
came around the car door softly; she watched me move.

The bird was propped up on a green-gone-brown limb
and she was not getting ready to fly; trusting me as I got closer,
I don’t know why; this was all making me softer—
the bird watching me, trusting me, I don’t know why.

The granola crowd was glaring, going into the store,
still mad at me for the loud rock and roll; I was melting.

The bulge of weather overhead was about to unload,
the granola shoppers went shopping; I saw that the bird’s back leg
was caught on the strap of an old abandoned purse,
leather rotting, trashed-out, but still holding down her down.

I got low, close, real tender, touched the strap, and just barely,
freeing her leg instantly, I hoped not hurting her, but the bird
—a she or a he bird, either way we were birds of a feather—
went on looking at me, and still she didn’t immediately fly away.

Then she did, she flew, and she was gone.
I lost my train of thought, and the shopping list.

I was thrown and touched by the entire moment,
got back in the car, caught the tail of my leather jacket
on the door, going too fast, forgetting for a second my new soft thing,
then I slid in my Norah Jones CD and drove away from the storm.

---

Chris Coulson is the rowdy writer of Nothing Normal in Cork, The Midwest Hotel, Go with the Floe, A Bottomless Cup of Midnight Oil, and Red Jumbo. His first children’s (or, in this case, babies’) book—Babies on the Run!—will appear soon, to the delight of rebel babies and sympathetic, subversive adults everywhere. Coulson has been writing his way out of trouble since kindergarten.

Zachariah Claypole White

To Write the Poem in which I Reckon with My OCD

The first stanza will be an image of grass,
grown tall in English summers. The speaker
is a child—perhaps four or five—the grandfather
lifts him like a trowel from damp earth;
teaches him to swim by parting the feathered stalks.
The poem should not explain—
you still tread that imagined water.

The second will be a list, seemingly unrelated:
a watch with no battery, a traffic jam
reimagined as birds, the bathtub.
None of these
should be symbolic.

The third stanza will introduce a new idea,
a troublesome memory:
a deer stumbling from your dented bumper;
the absent friend with beautiful fingers
and a piano-soft smile;
the letter she wrote, filled with cinnamon.

The fourth will twist a noun
into a verb’s gray suit and tie;
help it stand beneath history, guide
its fingers across church dust and psalm-thin paper.
No, you missed the funeral. Remember?
You are not writing for the dead.

The last stanza will begin again
in the grass. See how high it has grown
since last you visited;
how fearsome the blossoming
of absence.

To Be in the Time of Climate Change

after “To Be in a Time of War” by Etel Adnan

To wake up, to refuse the clock, to open the blinds and note the rain,
to think of buying a thicker jacket, to brew coffee, to ignore the phone,
to forget the coffee, to check the phone, to press screen to forehead
till one must surely crack.

To dress, to lose socks, to find them by the computer, to open
the computer, to illuminate winter-heavy hands, to check the news
and take a pill, to swallow that pill with water, to think
of water—its rise and absence.

To remember coffee, to pour it lukewarm into a thermos,
to need a new thermos, to step into the cold, to wonder if
it’s colder than last year, to shelter hands deep in pockets,
forgetting keys.

To admire the leaves, to imagine how many
will remain, to call a friend whose lover died last week,
to have no language worth the dial tone, to speak for hours
and not mention the news.

To google “climate change god news,” to misspell good,
to pray, to re-read the same article, to start a poem
for Stephen, to give up and take a second pill,
to call the pharmacy, to discover what insurance no longer covers.

To gather quarters for laundry, to check email then phone,
to read the killer was acquitted, to activate a credit card,
to watch robins dance above the tarmac, to name absence
a taste like salt and honey.

To sit in class, to argue craft and poetry, to read
that the Tuvalu minster spoke knee-deep from the sea,
to download a pdf of the accords, to make another cup
of coffee, to call home and promise to book a flight.

To book the flight, to worry at account balances
and the price of apples, to walk past the highway
and hate every car, to make a grocery list,
to ask your housemate for a ride.

To later undress, to run the shower too long,
to forget the towel, to insulate the windows
with duct tape, to order a second heater,
to wonder at the kindness of sky.

To lie in bed, to get another blanket, to remember
the five hundred dead under the heat dome,
to question that number, to google and arrive
at five hundred ninety-five, to discard the extra blanket.

To see the moon ripe and full, to hold
the world in a dead boy’s mouth, to kiss every ocean
and spit a curving downpour across the bedroom floor.

To hear the phone ring.
To say, yes
I will try writing
this all down.

In 1963, My Father Helps Build a Cyclotron, and Blacks Out Lower Manhattan

I have never seen a photo
of my father at fifteen
            but
to accelerate a particle
a magnetic field must bend
its trajectory through
alternating charges,
            by which I mean my father
held forgiveness in his throat,
grew windchimes
from hospital walls,

where, with hands fluent
in the language of birds,
he learned the radius of a body,
the edges of momentum.

Understand—
to speak the displaced
structure of an atom, to hold
an illness or son,
the magnetic field
must remain perpendicular
to the electric,

of course, he and I
are a spiral of song;

of course the city darkened
before his light.

---

Zachariah Claypole White was born and raised in North Carolina, and is currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at Sarah Lawrence College. He graduated from Oberlin College in 2017, with a major in creative writing and a minor in English literature. His poetry and prose have appeared in numerous publications, including Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Scalawag, Weird Horror, and The Hong Kong Review. His awards include Flying South's 2021 Best in Category for poetry and a nomination for a Pushcart Prize.

Mark Jackley

Why They Invented the Bagel

Because villagers thought the circle
possessed magical powers.
Because the bread of life
was tastier than shul.
Because the landlord always
took the fattest sheep.
Because ”life expectancy”
was an oxymoron.
Because the spring rains
sometimes drowned the wheat.
Because the threat of famine.
And because of famine.
Food was simple proof
God still cared. Bite by bite, they made
the hole disappear.

Crow In Flight

another piece of old

alphabet,
still hungry

Falling Asleep and Dreaming

I’ve seen this film,

it’s better when
the projectionist leaves the room.

---

Mark Jackley's poems have appeared in Fifth Wednesday, The Cape Rock, Sugar House Review, and other journals. Last year, Main Street Rag published his book of poems, Many Suns Will Rise. He lives in northwestern Virginia.