Christian Hanz Lozada

Writing for the Mixed Race

At The End of The Long Dark Hallway

is our craft room. When we bought the house,

Nani and I fought for it. She wanted it as the guest room,

and maybe, if God or some other source of miracles wills it,

the baby’s room. I wanted it for the craft room.

It has the biggest windows in the house,

its own glass entrance and all the natural light needed

to write, to paint, to build, to create everything but a child.

Six months into the house, and I’m the only one that uses

the room. I write poems like this one. And when I leave

the room, down the long dark hallway, towards the bathroom

I can see my silhouette in the mirror above the sink.

I’m all shadow, bald, and big almost shapeless, almost.

I think I’m seeing Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, haunted

by futility, mortality, and the unspoken definitions of impotence.

---

Christian Hanz Lozada is the son of an immigrant Filipino and a descendant of the Southern Confederacy. He knows the shape of hope and exclusion. He authored the poetry collection He’s a Color, Until He’s Not and co-authored Leave with More Than You Came With. His poems have appeared in journals from California to Australia with stops in Hawaii, Korea, and the United Kingdom. Christian has featured at the Autry Museum and Beyond Baroque. He lives in San Pedro, CA and uses his MFA to teach his neighbors and their kids at Los Angeles Harbor College.

John Grey

May’s Eternal Life

So the time for death drew near,

the body imploding,

the head immersed in thirty years before,

but a sock needed mending,

the ceiling paint was peeling.

Someone had to do something.

Being dead was no help.

So wrinkled arthritic hands set to work

with needle and thread,

brush and can of paint.

The sock could be worn again.

The ceiling would look like new.

She finished the day exhausted,

seated at the kitchen table,

coughing up blood into a handkerchief.

She reckoned, surely, this must be it.

But then a handkerchief needed cleaning.

Our Nightly News, Conversation Style

So we start with the weather

but move quickly onto the stories of the day -

the Middle East, American politics, Wall Street.

Then we get on to the more personal -

my married life, your relationships.

And we typically end-up with sports -

the disappointments,

the optimism that will be more disappointments later.

To each other,

we’re the nightly news.

The only difference is

in the puff pieces.

Instead of a new baby panda

at the Washington Zoo,

I provide a brief update

on a new favorite restaurant.

In lieu of the Kardashians,

you bless me with

a minute or two

of someone called Angela.

And we don't break for commercials.

Just for another sip of beer…

more taste, less filling.

---

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad.

Trish Hopkinson

Aftermath: ~48 Hours

The hallways stink of chemical

cleansers & bleach, too bright,

brighter than the dim rooms

where vampires fill tubes with your blood

every four hours. I write

on the whiteboard: 4am blood test.

I write it in red. They take your blood

to a lab before they taste it. They season it

with salt for flavor—your sodium 

entirely too low, your glands wrecked,

knocked senseless by pavement.

The nurses are confused. They think

you’re the monster. I think they are

Annie Wilkes. They tether your feet

to the bed & Velcro your wrists to rails

to keep you from pulling

staples out of your head

with your fingernails. They think

your chipped black nail polish means

you’re an angry young man.

They ask: Is he an angry young man?

I scream in my head: No, he’s a peaceful vegan.

The scream pounds the walls

of my skull with your fists.

Your head aches when Nurse Wilkes

is late. It hurts so much you cry.

I write it in red. I write the type

& time: Tylenol: 6am, 12pm, 6pm, 12am

Oxycodone: 8am, 12pm, 4pm, 8pm, 12am

Shift change: 7am / Doctors rounds: 9am

All must go on the whiteboard. All

staff names must be spelled correctly.

I fold down the back cushions

on the sofa & lie here

while you are still. Scrubs walk by

pushing a cart. I look at the clock:

4:13am. I look at the whiteboard.

A couple of hours before Tylenol,

I roll to my side & cover my feet,

close my eyes, look at the clock

& whiteboard. Scrubs walk by

without a cart. Machines hum.

Something beeps. I close

my eyes, look at the red.

Intensive Care

IV might fail     heart rate might lower     aide might be late for their shift     man next door with whom you share a nurse      might go into cardiac arrest      just before your medication is due     you might wake up angry     you might wake frightened     you might not          I might stand bedside      monitoring every machine   listening in on the staff   making sure    to make sure      breaks           are important     I’m sure    I ate quickly in the cafeteria   I’m sure my panic remained     what if what might happen is preventable    what if    I’m the one to prevent it     press the call button      ask a question      insist on another scan     something as simple      as walking five minutes away     some small luxury becomes        the split second shim      between life      & letting it slip

To My Unconscious Son

Is it wrong for me

to be grateful your face is unharmed?

You, laid out on a tilted hospital bed.

Me, not knowing where your mind is now

—if you are at all, if you will wake.

Your body will heal

if your brain does—the brace holding

your neck, mattress supporting your fractured

vertebrae and pelvis, pillow indented

where your skull has been sewn and stapled.

I’m selfish

in this moment, relieved even, that I can see

your calm expression without visible injury.

If someone saw you now, they’d think

you were sleeping; they’d not know

the peril your body is in,

wouldn’t know you aren’t dreaming—or are you?

Will you be able to tell me what you are thinking

if you are thinking at all in these hours

of absence from the living?

I didn’t know whom

to call this morning—extended family,

close friends. I know I should be telling someone

where we are, what has happened.

But I just want to wait—

I somehow don’t think

about the chance you may not be the same,

that the last time we spoke will have been

the last time. No, my imagination

won’t let me wander to the worst.

There seems no possibility

for any other outcome. I don’t stop

looking at you, your skin still warm, without

the paleness of one who is dying—somehow

that’s enough to let me know

here in this room

with the clock clicking and scent of disinfectant

—a mother and son alone but for the hum

of machines and shuffling of strangers

on the other side of the door and

the sunrise edging in.

Back to Life

You buy your first bicycle since the pickup truck assault.                    

It’s matte black, the color of asphalt.

You name it Deathwish.

I wish you’d named it Unridden.

You post photos of you standing beside it,

helmet on your head, six months healed.

Your sense of humor still intact.                        Mine, not so much.

I tell myself, your odds are better now.         But odds

are not the same as probability.           The risk

    of being killed skydiving

is one in a hundred thousand.

    Dying in a car? Fifteen times more likely

                          than on a bike.

What are the statistics

          for outliving one’s children?

   In 2015, there were 818 bicyclist deaths—

almost 819, still

     less than 2% of traffic fatalities

               but not less than the number of times

       I feared

         you wouldn’t make it home.

How many breaths     did it take           to revive you?

How many pumps on                     your chest?

Some stranger’s palm thrusting                        into your ribs,

their lifeline drawing                         your line of fate.

I’m relieved you can’t recognize

   the one who saved you,

      don’t remember

     your body tossed into the air        like a coin on a bet.

Note: These poems were previously published in A Godless Ascends (Lithic Press, 2024)

---

Trish Hopkinson is a poet and advocate for the literary arts. You can find her online at SelfishPoet.com and in western Colorado where she runs the regional poetry group Rock Canyon Poets and is a board member of the International Women's Writing Guild. Her poetry has been published in Sugar House Review, TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics, and The Penn Review; and her most recent book, A Godless Ascends, is forthcoming from Lithic Press in March 2024. Hopkinson happily answers to labels such as atheist, feminist, and empty nester; and enjoys traveling, live music, and craft beer.

D Larissa Peters

Specifics

 I remember everything and nothing,

when my brother died.

I couldn’t keep track of the outside world, but I know

just how the chain of the swing felt—cold against my bare leg,

shorts too short for January.

I remember the smell of metal, covering over

the smell of hospital clean mixed with gravy and stale urine.

Every heart disaster after followed this pattern … a friendship lost

re-enters consciousness with the berry flavor of sangria, a melody

threading through my meal, my break ups

marked by the soft peripheral rustle, crisp dried rose petals

hanging upside down on the side of my fridge

crunching every time I lean against the counter. Everything but nothing

at all of importance reminds me in the crack of the moments of my years.

Seeds

You’re my dandelion wish—on a hot

summer’s day, lawn mower buzzing —

coughing bright yellow spots,

foggy billows on stems

I used to wish for a million dollars

because I knew someone like you

would never come along.

---

D Larissa Peters grew up in Indonesia and has been somewhat of a nomad. After meandering around the East Coast for more than 10 years, she now resides in California. Her recent published poems have appeared in Blue Villa, Honey Guide Magazine, Suspended Magazine alongside a few forthcoming pieces elsewhere.

Christina Ruotolo

Holding on to letting go

The buzz

cold against

your tender skull

salt and pepper

filaments

            fall

the last time roots

will know a home

strands

            dance

                        fly

silently to the floor

you scoop a handful

in your tired palms

seal the bundle

in a plastic sandwich bag

            fast forward

ten years after cancer

            ravaged you

the bags remains

            unopened

            sealed

            hidden

in a safe deposit box

held hostage by me

            I pray

the smell of you

remains inside

eventually

I’ll set your strands

            free

and one day

your scent

the heart of you

will bring me back to life.

Triggers

The mind never forgets…

infant blood poisoned

with a mother’s addiction

smell of 80s hairspray

half-empty Dr. Pepper bottles

fifth of vodka nestled

under her pillow

a forensic, glazed stare

anything but motherly

strawberry blond hairs

on the back of a couch

she’s passed out on

as your feel the lighter

between three year-old fingers

the spark, Matchbox car

flaming down the plastic track

carpet burning, then smoke

you creep out the back door

afraid to wake her

addiction shouldering

the night you slept in

the backseat of a car

in an alley after a drug deal

windows steamed up

tracing circles on the glass

the loaded shotgun

pointed at your chest

as you try to save her

from another man’s wrath

the trip to the mall at fifteen

an argument over a gold chain

you learned to drive on I-95

addiction passed out behind you

the mind never forgets

images, baggage, smells

building, growing wild

until one day you

take your first sip too

triggers washed away

seeds planted

watered as you welcome

addiction home.

---

Christina Ruotolo is a poet, creative writing instructor and editor of Her Magazine. She was shortlisted for the 2019 James Applewhite Poetry award, runner-up for the Heart of the Pamlico Poet Laureate in 2021 and a long list finalist for the 2023 Fish International Poetry Award. She is author of the poetry collection, The Butterfly Net and the nonfiction book, The Day the Earth Moved Haiti. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in Wednesday Night Poetry, Petigru Review, NC Bards Poetry Journal, Gyroscope Review, Heron Clan, and various other magazines and journals.

Joan Mazza

Vessels

 Crystal and ceramic bowls filled

with lemons and oranges, one avocado

shouting, Now! Hand-painted, Polish

pottery bowls with Romaine leaves

in a bouquet of green inside a pattern

of blue swirls. An inlaid vase

with Capodimonte porcelain blooms.

Yard sale vases sold for fifty cents,

Mason jars overflowing wildflowers.

Teacups, jelly glasses, watering cans,

pots for boiling pasta, Dutch ovens

loaded with cucumbers, zucchini, ripe

tomatoes, red, green, and orange peppers.

Buckets of rainbow chard and samposai.

Let every container be filled with color

and perfect plants at their peak. Let

no stomach go empty. Let every heart

swell with joy like mosses after rain.

Your Notebook Will Never Leave You

I study the notebooks of the famous,

how they thought on paper with drawings,

diagrams, sketches from different views,

how they captured three dimensions

with shadows, labeled the parts. I wish

I could read Leonardo’s mirror script

in Fifteenth Century Italian. I wish

I could learn his quirks of penmanship

and idiom, the slang of the day, wish

to cultivate some of his flamboyant style,

his dogged curiosity to ask questions

and come back to them again and again

in writing to find what was right. I’d like

his patience with observation, the ability

to watch how the wings of dragonflies

on my pond move, the wings of a phoebe

when it catches an insect for its nestlings.

Let me make notes and to-do lists with

my final breath. His last notebook ends

with geometric shapes as he puzzled

over rectangles. These musings fizzle out.

He writes he must stop now

… because the soup is getting cold.

---

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self, and her poetry has appeared in Atlanta Review, Prairie Schooner, The Comstock Review, Poet Lore, Slant, Italian Americana, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia.

elizabeth iannaci

Talking with the Whale

Would you look into her eye, ask

if  Melville got it right: that a fist

full of spermaceti cleanses you

of rage, the need for revenge?  Is that

why whales are so forgiving:

corset & collar stays 

hooped skirts 

fishing rods

carriage springs

soap

varnish

afternoon-tea spoons

buggy whips

piano keys

baby teethers

typewriter springs

chess pieces

handles of walking sticks

rejuvenating cosmetics

oil for a bright, clear flame

all forgiven? Would you stand hoping

she sees that you want, more than breath,

to lean your whole self against her,

the timpani in your chest hammering

her wetsuit-slick skin.  Might she

generously humor you, let you gentle

what you think is the spooked mare

of her, or would she turn as slowly

as she could (to not damage you)

dive away, slapping the water white

with the handlebars of her tail?

Love—A Tattoo on the Lining of the Heart

Step One

Someone said      you, mine      someone left a mark,

At first, a soot-covered thread pulled through the skin,

by a sliver of polished bone,

a pin, a ballpoint pen,             and a guy’s initials,

a wing emerging from a red center,      a love,  a dove,

then a claw holding a scrolled Lola,

a big cat crafted, sand-colored, nestled

in the small of a back, a serpent over a shoulder,

vining up the curve of neck, lost in a shag

of hair. After some years you come

to understand it was the wrong tiger,

not your Celtic knot, a stranger’s

cursive initial in the center of a Valentine.

Step Two

To fade the tattoo, try rubbing a salt solution

into it. Scrape away or sand down the skin.

Freeze- burn the area with liquid nitrogen.

Laser-removal may feel as though you’re being pelted,

with hot grease, sound like bacon frying.

Throw kerosene on it and light a match.

When it heals, the tattoo should be gone,                

but       there may be scars. Fluorescent colors—

purples, greens are nearly impossible to be rid of—

the bigger,      brighter,          the harder to erase.

Step Three

When the scars settle, the skin

faded enough, think hard,

take measurements, dig deep,

make drawings. Start with black & white;

add colors: burnt sienna, naranja, scarlet.

when you get the image exactly right,

set the paper on fire

over the bathroom sink. Use the ashes

to smear a charcoal shadow

from the canthus edge upward

above the lid, deepening

your eyes’ natural hollow.

---

Widely published and anthologized, elizabeth iannaci shares a birthday with Red China, Julie Andrews, Jimmy Carter and the anniversary of Roger Maris’s 61st home run. Raised in Southern California, she’s never been on a surfboard. She once hitchhiked from California to Florida with her then husband, along the way getting a ride from a geezer who hocked his teeth for bottle of whiskey. Elizabeth has worn various diverse hats from chicken wrangler to Music Industry publicist, to Marilyn Monroe look-alike. She holds an MFA in Poetry from VCFA and still writes letters on paper that are delivered by humans.

Andrea Penner

May It Please Superior Court

Their favorite color is blue.

Eyes, soft as a lazuli bunting.

Blue, like the mountains of Santa Cruz

on late evening drives, blue

highway wending down through

redwood forests to the green-

blue sea. Watery sky, sublime

Paris blue. Fluid boundary

birthing ocean, cloud.

California blue, they tell you. Indigo,

sung by midnight saxes, transposed

sapphires. You know—piano vibes.

Not your seventies’ Joni album Blue.

A stripe of harmony in rainbow

flags—fly yours! Androgynous, like

spiky hair, bubblegum, and recycled 501s.

Non-binary blue, eighteen candles tall,

legal birthday, turquoise pride takes the cake.

Petition granted. Their name is Blue.

The Writer’s Asana

I write

short

            loose lines

because my hand goes numb

if I grip

            too tightly

or type for too long.

I write in snapshots

because my mind

photographs

its memories

for Anne Lamott’s

one-inch picture

frame that holds only

so much color, line

and shadow.

I write myself

into a corner

with nowhere

else to go but

there

where

I must stay

until I write

myself out

again

again because

out of things to say

or else to go nowhere

but there

here.

I write beneath the flannel night

and into the denim pocket of the afternoon.

I write

sideways in my journal

pen poised with an unquiet mind in child’s pose.

---

Andrea Penner lives in New Mexico where she serves up poetry and creative non-fiction on In Our Own Ink. Her poetry appears most recently in Neologism, Sky Island Journal, and Flora/Fauna (Open Shutter). Her second book, Rabbit Sun, Lotus Moon (Mercury HeartLink, 2017), was a poetry finalist for an Arizona/New Mexico book award. Once upon a time, she was a college professor. Before that, well, that’s another story, the stuff of her memoir-in-progress, which she aspires to write with clarity and grace.

Mark J. Mitchell

Notes on Tea From the Drowned City

Beyond the walls, low rolling hills

grow yellow blooms. Come Fall, they went

vermillion, ready. Plucked by hand

on half-moon nights, young girls would sort

the perfect flowers, making tea.

The only tea the great ones drink

On the back of the hill

there are brown and green leaves.

The small girls stoop to pick

only choicest, the soft

supple ones, to take home

to their mothers for their tea.

A Parable of Apples

She drops

green-gold fruit

to slow down

running children.

“Soft for cider,”

she calls,

“firm ones

for school pies.”

Then she takes

her first step

up her leaning

ladder and plucks red.

Before dropping

a full sack

to the boy below,

she looks up.

Shining red and

and perfect, she stretches.

Is this sin?

Her bite’s quick and sharp.

---

Mark J. Mitchell has been a working poet for 50 years. He’s the author of five full-length collections, and six chapbooks. His latest collection is Something To Be from Pski’s Porch Publishing. A novel, A Book of Lost Songs, is due out in 2025.He’s fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Dante, and his wife, activist Joan Juster. He lives in San Francisco. Find him on Twitter,  Facebook, or his website.

David Sheskin

Oh Yes, There Were Casualties

Perusing the morning paper I come upon the fact that as

Miss Patty Perkins read a story to her Second Grade Class

From the quaint little book Master Peter Potter had brought to school

A Ferocious Fire Breathing Dragon suddenly leaped out of Page 4

Admittedly Chaos ensued for some time

Before the Blazing Beast was Humanely Subdued

By two fine Officers of the Law

Oh Yes, there were Casualties

Miss Perkins sustained Second Degree Burns

Principal Danny Dotts lost the tip of his Once Fine Nose

And a Nurse Becky Bortwine is still mourning the loss of her Pinky Finger

As for the Children

They all have Nightmares

The Dastardly Dragon has been transported to a place called Animal Land

 A Sanctuary of Sorts

Where it shares Food and Air with a menagerie of assorted Irascible Four-Legged Misfits

A Nasty Hippopotamus, a Sadistic Rhinoceros, a Vulgar Skunk, a Choleric Porcupine

To name a few

Rumor has it that in the not too distant future

Miss Perkins will take her little charges to visit

The poor Beast and his New Coterie of Friends

Because she is of the opinion that a Person

Even one who is Little and Brittle

 Should make Peace with

Those Afflictions and Challenges

Life sees fit to Impose upon us

Psychiatric Parable

It was once believed

The Only Way

To cure Madness

Was to Harness a Poor Soul

With arms outstretched

In a Standing Position

Firmly Bound

To a Wooden Cross

For a full a day and a half

During which time

At alternate hours

One would be assaulted

With

Boiling Water

And

Assorted Vermin

History has recorded that if by chance

A Body had the Good Fortune

To Survive such an

Exercise

No longer would the Patient

Exhibit

Delirious Outbursts

And once lowered to the ground

Upon awakening from a

Long and Peaceful Sleep

One would be a

Model of Restraint

And from that Point on be

An Ardent Disciple of

Cure by Crucifixion

---

David Sheskin is a writer and artist whose work has appeared in numerous magazines over the years. Most recently he has appeared in Superstition Review, The Dalhousie Review, Quarterly West and Chicago Quarterly Review.  His most recent books are David Sheskin’s Cabinet of Curiosities and Outrageous Wedding Announcements.

Tom Barwell

imagination announces itself

to end,

there is sufficient question

to spiral a snail;

leave the blind men to stare at

the strewn stones,

mooncast in cold blue,

until they topple and multiply.

trees reign over these craggy silhouettes,

ancient brothers named for monks,

towering vespers in

cathedrals, fingertips into

the vault itself.

a stillness watches,

a depthless bath,

where no apple could

dare to fall

and risk disgrace.

our silent psalm ushers the

bowed heads of snowdrops,

a chorus fruited by

a far-off owl, so attuned to her note,

even breath enters the crypt.

a fox’s bark

prickles back the cool air,

places her own blade

through the sternum of this

wordless imagination,

and the grey trumpets of daffodils

dip their bonnets

in the echo.

the lowly herbivore in my

palm wears a cracked

galaxy upon

her back like a telescope

from childhood. i place her

on the damp grass

for the next eternity,

the stark waves ebbing through

distant fields.

the slip of my shadow rings

on a stone floor like a terrible bell,

and from gemini rafters

the barn owl returns, summoned

on silent wings by the spell

that feeds her young.

slate rooves in scottish rain

an orchestra of fingernails

tap out a stone piece

on 400 million year old knuckles –

this rain has lasted

longer than that.

conjoined storms, head

to head to head, rushing

sea-monster of a thousand eyes,

holds out ten thousand frozen,

atlantic talons to

slash these unflinching few houses,

november to october.

but we, pale-aged cavers,

are warmed to our hearts by

such welcome, savage percussion, as

if it were our hearth:

otherwise lit by a pecuniary

photon once a month,

the beat of beaten claws is

familiar evidence of

this firmly anchored world.

bearded green, lichen tree-topped,

and trousered with a thousand mosses,

our blue veins wriggle with the

confidence of teeming streams,

plume skin-born clouds to

meet the great recycler,

tame as a toothed fossil,

shut out by a finger’s snap.

i picture ferns sheltering insects,

i picture a billion beetle wings, iridescence

shading layers of thick deer hides, bracken

scented, every bark and oil you might

infuse, distilled like malt whisky,

millennium blend, thicker than tar.

i raise a toast of tongues, these

fine rocks spun by a spinning sun –

shield, skin, father, drum,

tuned in perfect time.

---

Tom Barwell is an English poet, who is also recently published in Poetica Review. He’s a perennial student of nature and human nature, and works as a psychotherapist and coach. He lives by a creek, which feeds him his best lines.

Jim Stewart

Air Quality Index

The sky's been blit with the color

of an LCD screen streaming cheap CGI,

the scary half of a Marvel movie poster,

or the kind of show we would put between us

to pretend we could share the couch

One would like certain words adjacent

if the space has enough dimensions, as in

I like to play with my pet blank.

I do. But the beagle terrier cross and the tabby

don't bother to fight anymore. I picture the car closer

to the black & white piebald sleeping in the walk in closet.

A dot product gives a sense

of nearness when plotted, and though

we've been distant before, I fear

we'll be shown orthogonal. And in different quadrants

distance stops having meaning. Sequoia smoke

from Nova Scotia settles over the estuary. The skyline

is a cloud mirage castle.

I know this smell; was it five, ten years ago

when northern California burned, or was it the time

we had to evacuate the house in Oregon?

Now, is there anything left but shared accounts?

A bunch of semi-random strings I invented

when passwords could be easy to remember

enshrined in our story like secret sacred mantras?

Even that costs money now. The channel's

new terms of service call us out

on our pretense we are a unit.

I'd imagined an experimental way to tell this,

a 2d plot or nodes with edges.

But I was scared to write it at all.

The last time I put you in a poem

there was a ring in the box. Now I must tell you

it's in there again. Hasn't every generation

said the end was just a little further down the gradient?

And weren't they always right?

I have seen a billion universes

They're all the same. Every time

the ice dam broke in Utah, floods

swept out the Columbia River Valley, left

acres of vineyards, that eternal

Taco Bell on the corner of Rand.

Every time the elms in Yale Park

dropped papery seedling discs, sap-stuck

to windshields, piled on curbs until

they tore the park out for the bookstore. You think

my choice of major, your first kiss, rose

to the collapse of the spin of some pixel flash

entangled to a CRT showing

some late episode of Gilligan's Island?

A billion times I was born into this

simulation, same seed every load. Every time

that elevator to the 7 at Grand Central breaks.

Every time the white horse serves cheap

tonic, haddock shiny with grease. If you look

close enough, they say, you should see

the shortcuts, misplaced voxels, lazy-

loading truth waiting till you bother to ask. They can't

find it. No one has the cheat codes. You think

if you load a new map it'll play any better?

I've watched this season a billion times, dishes

piled in the sink, back door open for the cats. Every time

they closed the ferry dock by the KAWS Mickeys. Every time

the waterfront towers devour the sky bite by bite. It always

ends this way. You think the next binge you'll want

to sit here all the way through? Every time

it ends this way. Every time we fall in love. Every time

we hurt each other till the show's canceled. I don't

need to watch it again. I know I will.

---

Jim Stewart has been published or has poems forthcoming in In Company, New Mexico Poets after 1970, Liminality, Rattapallax, Passengers Journal, The City Key, and the Moonstone Arts Center's Ekphrastic Poetry anthology. He co-edited and designed Saint Elizabeth Street magazine and hinenimagazine.com. He teaches programming and logic in New York.

Merlin June Mack

Things I Think About Driving Past The Movie Theater That I First Gained Consciousness In Which Is Now Closed Down and Has Rats

---

Merlin June Mack (they/them) is an intergalactic lesbian, proud disabled human and writer with all the pizzazz of a jackalope. If they aren't writing on their laptop covered in stickers they can be found reading a book with at least one good literary motif in it. They are currently working towards a BFA in Creative Writing. Merlin has work published in Main Squeeze Magazine and Lavender Review. They currently reside in the Pacific Northwest with lots of love.

James Gering

A Shining,  a Revving, a Jiggling   

‘Quickly, Isabella – drop everything, come ’n see!’ 

A vintage Cadillac, roof cast open, has come a revving

a shining, a jiggling into our cul de sac.

The driver, half a century old, coiffed and sporting

shoulder pads, manoeuvres his lime-green lolly into

the no-stopping zone below our second-storey window

and eases off the engine. Lovely leather upholstery

in cream and tan. A bull-doggy pup, wearing goggles

and a matching scarf commands the passenger seat.

‘Okay, Snoopy,’ the bloke says, ‘you’ve got two minutes

for a pee and a run-around.’ Snoopy leaps out, has a pee

and a run-around. The day waits. Bella and I wait.  

Click goes the courtyard gate of the residences yonder,

and tralaa… a young woman – light of step, summery of

garment emerges and beelines for the spiffy wheels.

Let’s call her Gloria. Bella suggests Gloria

is the bloke’s daughter. I smile and wince.

Hug-hugs, kiss-kisses play out in the illegal zone.  

‘Is this your car?’ Gloria asks. 

The fellow – let’s say Roger – winks and swings

open the passenger door in a flurry of charm.

Snoopy jumps in. Roger responds at warp speed,

his tanned arm practically a blur,                                

flicking the dog into the Cadillac’s rear.

Roger breathes afresh, pat pats the passenger seat

and ushers in the usherette of the day.

He scoots around and leaps in behind the wheel.

‘Right, he says. What shall we… I say we head for

the nursery café in that grungy suburb. You’ll love it.

It’s a jungle.’ Roger starts the car and glides away.

A Shining, a Revving, a Jiggling – The Return   

Bella, Bella, come quickly!

The lime-green Cadillac is back from the cafe,

a jiggling, a shining, a revving. 

Gloria sports a vast bouquet of jungle flowers

in her lap. Snoopy is brooding in the back.

Roger pulls into no-stopping and kills the motor.

‘So, as I was saying,’ he says,

‘we could stay at romantic Jervis Bay.

I know this perfect bed ’n breakfast...’

I have to lean precariously out of the window

to catch the words and the action

but the danger is poetically worth it.

Gloria climbs out of the car. Roger also, to meet

her behind. Gloria sees him coming and hoists her bouquet

like an inverted traffic cone with foliage protruding.

She leans around the flowers, air-kisses Snoopy

and wiggles two fingers at Roger,

a revving, a shining, a jiggling.

---

James Gering is the Australian Society of Authors Emerging Poet of the Year, 2018. His collection of poetry, Staying Whole While Falling Apart, was released by Interactive Publications in July 2021. His second collection, Tickets to the Fall of Icarus, came out in December 2023 with the same publisher. Publication credits in the United States include Rattle, San Pedro River Review and Star 82 Review. James lives in the Blue Mountains near Sydney. There he climbs the cliffs and rappels the canyons in search of Rilke’s solitude, Chekhov’s humility, and dreamscapes in general. He welcomes visitors at jamesgering.com.

David Kirby

Silly Kids

Kids like to run and skip—walking’s not fancy enough

for them! Walking’s vanilla. Kids don’t like vanilla,

they like mint chocolate chip, rocky road, raspberry ripple,

cookies and cream. And then something happens.

A friend tells me her daughter was crying last night

because she wants to give away the stuffed animals

she’s had since kindergarten; she’s older now, she says,

and she doesn’t know how to play with them any more.

What happens to that power of imagination? You lose it,

sure, but it deepens later, gets better. A neighbor’s child

was sitting in her front yard this morning at a table stacked

high with all sorts of knickknacks and a sign that says,

“School supplies sold here and nail salon and make-up.”

She’s thirty-six. Kidding! Just kidding. She’s a kid, too,

and, like all kids, thinks big. Boundaries, barriers, borders,

limits, lines: who needs them? If you love school supplies,

love crayons, scissors, pencils, paints, markers, sharpeners,

and glue sticks, and who doesn’t, why not stock them

right there next to the files, brushes, buffers, nippers,

clippers, cuticle exfoliators, and such other items as might

be required by your licensed nail technician who just

happens to be not only willing but thrilled to throw a few

pens, pocket folders, and hole punchers into the bargain.

One of my nephews wants to be an astronaut and fly

to Mars when he grows up but also own a 7-Eleven

so he can have as many grape slurpees as he wants

whenever he wants them, though the odds are that

he’ll do neither of those things but something he hasn’t

thought of yet and won’t for years. Marianne Moore

loved animals and athletes because they mind

their own business: “Pangolins, hornbills, pitchers,

catchers, do not pry or prey or prolong the conversation,

do not make us self-conscious, look their best when

caring least.” In Stanley Elkin’s novel Boswell,

the main character goes to his son’s sixth-grade science fair

where he sees a spaceship, a water-processing plant, a robot.

And then he gets to his son’s entry: two raisins, a paper

clip, a wad of toilet tissue, a dead fly, and a scrap

of paper on which the boy has written “grbge dunpf.”

Look at that silly kid. You were him. Look at you now.

Always Something

I’m in the airport at the moment, sitting across from a guy

            who is glaring at me as though I’ve committed some offense

of which only he knows, since I’ve done little more than

            take my seat across the way and gaze about with what

I’d like think is a pleasant and inoffensive expression,

            one that contrasts distinctly with that of the guy whose glare

actually seems to be intensifying, now that I think about it,

            as though I’d questioned his parentage or said something

defamatory about his favorite political candidate or sports team.

            Karl Popper said, "It is impossible to speak in such a way

that you cannot be misunderstood,” but I haven’t even

            said anything yet! Then again, you can always insult someone

without uttering a single word: during the Turkish siege

of Vienna in 1683, legend has it that a baker working late

at night heard the Turks tunneling under the walls of the city

            and alerted the military, who collapsed the tunnel, thus

eliminating the threat and saving the city. To commemorate

            the occasion, the baker baked a crescent-shaped pastry

in the shape of the Turks’ emblem, the crescent moon,

            and thus was born the croissant which permitted

a famished Austrian to satiate his early-morning appetite

            but also devour a symbol of Turkish culture. Oh, kick a guy

when he’s down, will you? Or a bunch of guys, or an entire nation.

            There was a letter in the “Dear Abby” advice column today

in which a woman said that her husband, Alex, doesn’t like Roy,

            the husband of her friend Darlene, because he thinks Roy

is obnoxious, to which Darlene took umbrage, saying Roy is

            a great person and Alex should apologize, whereupon Dear Abby

replied that, while the writer and Alex shouldn’t be

            guilt-tripped into spending time with Darlene and Roy,

Alex shouldn’t have said Roy is obnoxious, at which point

            I realized I didn’t know what the word “obnoxious” meant,

so I looked it up. Did you know that “obnoxious” not only

            has two meanings but that those meanings are the total

opposites of one another? “Obnoxious” derives from

            Latin “ob” (or “to,” “toward”) and “noxa” (or “injury,”

“hurt”), which, combined, mean "subject to something harmful”

            and “exposed to injury,” or at least that’s what it meant

back in the 1590s. But by the 1670s, people forgot

            the “ob” part and just started using “obnoxious” the way

they used “noxious,” that is, to mean "offensive, hateful,

            highly objectionable.” Maybe Alex was looking out for Roy!

I bet Alex was a Latin scholar and was using that word

            in the old-fashioned way. Boy, people were really stupid

in the 1670s, weren’t they? Anybody can be stupid,

            though. My Nigerian student Dami says that if you are

from his country and speak English, people will think

            you are smart, even if you aren’t. Same here, Dami!

I bet Roy was exposed to injury and didn’t know it,

            and Alex was being a good guy and trying to protect

Roy from some pending catastrophe that only he, Alex,

            was aware of, which is all very fine and useful,

I’m so sure, only here in the airport, the guy sitting

            across from me is still glaring at me

as though he’s about to tell me to step outside and say that.

GumElvis

            The room where I write backs onto a busy street

bordered by a sidewalk, so all day long I hear people

            talking—on their phones, to their companions

or just themselves—and right now I’m listening to a boy

            saying something to his mother that she doesn’t like,

            because even though I can’t make out his words,

I can tell from his tone that they are disrespectful,

            a guess which is confirmed when the mother shouts

You keep that up and I’m gonna tear your ass

            to pieces! and suddenly I’m four years old

            and my mother is hosting a garden party, meaning

that the ladies from her garden club are wearing

            their big hats and flowery frocks and sipping tea

and nibbling finger sandwiches and cookies

            as they eye and sniff and effusively compliment

            my mother’s roses, jonquils, day lilies while I,

who am invisible in the shadow of the hedge,

            fill my lungs with air and cry I’m a 100 million

jackasses and stinkpots! over and over again

            because my brother, who is eight, has told me to.

            My mother boils away from the other ladies

just long enough to yank me from my hiding place

            so she can wear me out, which was her version

of tear your ass to pieces, though even as she

            raises her arm to strike, it must occur to her

            that the sound of a child howling in pain as his mother

wears him out will appear even more unseemly

            to her guests than her younger child’s assertion

that he is 100 million jackasses and stinkpots.

            Even a four-year-old knows what a jackass is,

            but why 100 million of them, and what, exactly,

is a stinkpot? One definition says that it is a type

            of turtle capable of producing an unpleasant smell,

certainly an accurate description of your average

            four-year-old boy, particularly one who spends much

of his time outdoors in the Louisiana humidity.

           Who are we, really? The last time I splashed around

in a hotel hot tub, I was joined not long after

           by a middle schooler, I’d say, with questionable orthodontia

and a worse complexion, yet he fixed a scowl on me

            for so long a time period that after a while I felt

as though I’d done something wrong, though

            I didn’t know what it was. He got out after

a while and took the first steps toward a life

            he’d enjoy with straight teeth and clear skin

            and become successful and travel himself

and end up in a hotel hot tub somewhere

            being scowled at by a twelve- or thirteen-year-old

who hasn’t even been born yet as I sat there still,

            wondering if maybe I’m not the hotshot I thought

            I was up to that moment, not the gift to humanity

in his own mind that GumElvis is, that being

            the name I’ve given to the guy at my gym

who chews his jawful of Juicy Fruit so loudly that

            the other gym members scowl at him, especially

            the women, and he combs up his tresses into

a towering pompadour, having previously dyed them

            a shoe-polish black, and even sneers the way

the King did and has alienated himself from

            the more serious lifters not only by cracking his gum

            just when someone is trying for a personal best

on the bench or the squat rack but also,

            instead of observing strict form, by performing

sloppy repetitions with far too much weight

            and far too many grunts! and yeahs! of the type

            Elvis voiced during his karate-chop period

and in that way failing to have any effect at all

            on his own physique, which remains slack

and pudgy. Loves that gum, though. Oh, to enjoy

            the self of steam of a GumElvis! Not for him

            the doubt that plagues the rest of us. Not for

GumElvis the alternating self-love and shame

            of the man who confessed to Dear Abby

that his wife found it “weird” that he liked

            to wear panties and bras under his business suits.

            Wonder what kind of childhood that guy had—

GumElvis, too. The man says he has tried

            to suppress his desire to wear lingerie

in what will almost certainly be a futile attempt

            to keep his marriage together, though at least

            he has found some solace in telling the women

at the lingerie stores he frequents “that what

            I am buying is for me, and I delight in the fact

that they are accepting and that they help me

            find items that I like.” I’m with him.

---

David Kirby teaches at Florida State University. His latest books are a poetry collection, Help Me, Information, and a textbook modestly entitled The Knowledge: Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them. Kirby is also the author of Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll, which the Times Literary Supplement described as “a hymn of praise to the emancipatory power of nonsense.” He is currently on the editorial board of Alice James Books.

Daniel Addercouth

Beavers Will Save Paradise Fields

1
Oh Christ, not more bleeding Jocks. Bloody city’s full of them already.

2
You were happy to hunt us to extinction for our flesh and fur. Happy to deem us fish when it suited you. Now you decide you need us. A miracle cure, imported from north of the border. Well, stand aside. Let us clean up your mess.

3
Pretend that shopping trolley isn’t there. Imagine dams across the river. A series of pools, connected by channels. Wetlands glistening in the sun, sponging up rain. Excursioning school groups face-to-face with nature. Yes, Mathilda, those are reeds.

4
The city has always welcomed newcomers.

5
Who doesn’t love a keynote species? Nature’s architects, geoengineering the environment to suit their needs. (And ours, of course.) Consider the benefits:

(a) Provide a wide range of ecological services
                  (b) Limit environmental disasters cost-effectively
                  (c) Save McDonald’s from flash flooding.

6
Well, why not? Worked with them voles, didn’t it? Same body plan. Just a thousand times larger.

7
And then one evening as you lie in bed, you hear, beyond the sirens and the stereos, the gnawing of their teeth, which never stop growing. Building, building, building.

Inspired by the article “Will Beavers be eager for London life?” in the 1-2 July 2023 edition of The Financial Times.

Give Us a Billion Bitcoin or Humanity Is Doomed!

For my next book I’m going to write a thriller set in the Global Seed Vault in the Svalbard archipelago. International terrorists will take over the underground vault and demand a ransom from the United Nations, otherwise they’ll blow up the bunker with its millions of seeds. In this near-future, crops are failing around the world and the seed vault is humanity’s only hope as the back-up for all of agriculture. The terrorists have their own private island stocked with enough canned food to last a lifetime, of course. The seed vault doesn’t have permanent staff on the ground, but the charismatic director will be on site for the 25th anniversary of the opening. She’ll be assisted by a local teenage hacker who breaks into the vault’s security systems for fun. The director and the hacker will be chased around underground. Bullets will ricochet off concrete walls, boxes of seeds will be smashed, entire strains of Peruvian corn will be lost forever. The electricity supply will get cut off and the vault will begin to warm, threatening the viability of the seeds. In the denouement, the leader of the terrorists will let a polar bear into the vault to devour the director and her hacker accomplice. Except it’ll end up eating the terrorists instead, just as a fleet of UN helicopters turns up to save the day, showing that nature and international cooperation always triumph in the end. At the end, the director and the hacker will stand outside the vault watching the Arctic sunset, secure in the knowledge they’ve saved humanity. But the final scene will show drops of water falling from the vault’s tower as the ice melts. The warming will get us all in the end, seed vault or no seed vault.

Plausibility of Fact

Cranberry juice. Nice. Are you aware they

grow in marshes? I’m Alex, by the way.

Are you friends with the host? No? Me neither.

Excuse me, does this have onions in it?

I’m allergic. And are these gluten free?

You’re a doctor? Me, I fact-check poems.

I know, it sounds like an oxymoron.

But it’s a fun job. I’ve become a more

interesting guest, if nothing else.

It’s not my task to tinker with the poem.

I’m not there to catch the poet out.

I’m trying to save their blushes when they

confuse Fahrenheit and Celsius

or place a chiming clock in ancient Rome.

I know the weight of clouds and the types

of cherry trees you can find in Sweden.

I know how many fragments Sappho left.

And I can quote Homer to you at length.

If I find an error, I get in touch

and suggest that Wordsworth probably did not

skate on frozen Windermere as a kid.

Or explain that Cortez never set foot

in Darien. They must mean Balboa.

(I’m just making that one up. That was Keats.)

I don’t take pleasure in finding mistakes,

but I don’t trust anything these days.

Thanks, I’m OK for a drink. Go ahead.

Have you tried the pumpkin? It’s very good.

Did you know it’s related to nightshade?

Inspired by the New Yorker Poetry Podcast, 21 December 2016: “How Do You Fact Check a Poem?” with reference to The Poet's Mistake by Erica McAlpine (Princeton University Press, 2020).

---

Daniel Addercouth grew up on a remote farm in the north of Scotland but now lives in Berlin, Germany. His work has appeared in New Flash Fiction Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Roi Fainéant Press, among other places. You can find him on Twitter/X and Bluesky at @RuralUnease.

Christine Potter

On A Photo Of Edna St. Vincent Millay Sitting By Her Swimming Pool At Steepletop

Hair draped to one side. Naked—as she insisted guests

be to swim—under a toga-wrapped white towel, one

hand and one foot trembling the dark reflections of tall

bushes and trees. I want to say August. I want to say

cicadas whirring like wind-up toys, the air musky with

summer growing old. I want to say the humid air, want to

say a thunderstorm muttering somewhere off beyond

Great Barrington. She’s sitting on crab grass by the

pool’s stone border, a white stone bench behind her.

In her house, day blows in and out open windows, her

papers rustle—imagine that sound—and curtains

shrug in the breeze. Also wind-borne: a car’s motor.

Coming here?  No, turning away. The pale, loose curl

of her body like the pose my mother asked of my fingers

on the piano. The music of a camera’s shutter, its

metallic kiss. The sign hanging in her library: Silence!

Things

 My mother volunteered at her church thrift shop.

When she began to forget many things, she stopped

donating and started bringing things home. This

on top of her red and white wedding china, which

I’d stored for her in white plastic cases along with

the other things my father wouldn’t let her give me:

lawn-green Depression glass, brown casseroles,

rolling pins older than her marriage, maybe older

than my grandmother’s marriage. Even after he

died, when Mom lived alone with her helpers, I

couldn’t bear to take much. After they were both

gone, we had to hire people to help us give it all

away. Grief-stunned, I watched as table things, as

kitchen things, as the antique, bought-at-auction

oak dining set, the marble-bottom candle holders

with their rainbow-casting cut crystal tears, all got

sent to Good Will. I did speak up for some things,

took the china, some hobnail glasses, more things

than I want or even have room for, and somehow

still not enough. Maybe the wrong things? I don’t

know what to think. Their household. Paychecks.

Goods. Presents, department stores. The interior

arena of my childhood, a sugar bowl in the shape

of a Tudor cottage, English muffin crumbs left on

the kitchen table. The day I realized my parents

wanted to love me but had no idea how. A cobalt

vase, a white milk glass pitcher. Sun in wavy glass

windows, strings of Christmas lights that twinkled

on and off one bulb at a time, from Italy! But not

the cheap kind, my father always said, never cheap.

I Can’t Lie To You

Why should I trick you with daisies

and pastels? Peace is not a blue flag

applauding a blue sky, not the two or

three hundred encircled arrows I drew

without even thinking about it on my

notebook in 1969. Truth is, we’re all

angry. We woke up afraid. We were

left alone to cry it out. Someone once

raised a loud, deep voice to us. Now

we recruit armies. We’re all looking

for a false dawn: that yellow line of

light at the bottom of our shut-tight

bedroom doors as our parents drink

downstairs. We hear the rising tide

of their laughter, smell the enticing

bonfires of their cigarettes. But they

don’t hear us calling them. And we

pretend we don’t remember. I can’t

lie to you. Peace sits by herself on  

the breathing ocean’s other side and

watches the darkness of a ruined city.

She texts neighbors who fled the war,

phone a candle cupped in her fingers.

Then a full moon unravels the clouds.

And Yet

 I am thinking about the things that silence me today—

fear of ridicule, fear of being wrong, the great fear

of harming someone with my words. I worry, but the

day rolls over in its sleep, tugging the clouds’ torn

blankets over one shoulder. A weak stripe of Western sun,

a breeze, a frost-blackened sunflower stalk nodding

the dead star of its flower. I am thinking about wars,

of people who plan how they will happen and where—

and I am thinking how every war burns down the

house we all have to live in. And yet someone hurts

badly enough to drive a tank down a city street, or run

into a concert with guns. We have always had weapons,

always. But autumn’s slide into this winter felt like

someone full of dinner fighting to stay awake and watch

TV’s neon lies. I want to say the world is what’s truly

beautiful, and I’m having trouble today. If you hold

your open hands in front of you, fingers slightly curved

as if you were trying to catch something, you might

feel the heft of your life, and it might be holy. Newly

baptized babies almost always reach for the candle the

priest is holding, towards its light—cheap trick or not.

So we all know where the light is; we just can’t agree on

its name. See how the sky has cleared? How can you

ignore sunset through that architecture of empty trees?

---

Christine Potter’s poetry has been curated by Rattle, Kestrel, Third Wednesday, Thimble, Eclectica, The Midwest Quarterly, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily—and featured by ABC Radio News. She has work forthcoming in The McNeese Review and One Art. Her young adult novels, The Bean Books, are published by Evernight Teen, and her third collection of poetry, Unforgetting, by Kelsay Books. She lives in Valley Cottage, NY, in a house with two ghosts, two spoiled cats, and her husband.

Robert Okaji

Metastases

This is the story of a body and a man. A history of failure and whimsy. Of numbers and proliferation and electrical impulses oscillating without thought of consequence. The voice vanished. The body grew, and then lost itself. Thighs withered, overnight. Cells divided without invitation. This is bullshit, he says. I never believed in the Marlboro Man. But I wear boots, drive a pickup, and live in a ranch house with a blue dog. The driveway of crushed stone. Black vultures soar overhead. Dung beetles. Dew. Pancetta. Everything touches everything. What is a cough but an explanation? An expression of counted failure and cast-off reckonings? A dream, diminishment? Heart and hip. Mind and bliss. Left ventricle. A leaf. Body and man. Fractures and lesions. Refusals. That hole. The whole.

A Patient Noose

The man thought of spiraling towers, of concentric circles in nature, how they resembled his relationships, both failed and successful. Round and round, up, down and over. What is the use, he asked, of reflection or deflection, of shields and traps and Taylor Swift? I am that sullen soul in the fifth circle of Dante’s Hell. I am that scorpion lurking in the boot's shadow, a patient noose on a political t-shirt worn by a mad woman. If the treatments work, I will gather time, listen to those I once ignored, recover lost energy. If I regain my voice, I will sing.

Everywhere But Here

…or the leaf, twisting in its ecstasy. How does the man rectify such movement in light of his failure in simplicity, in reason: the junco at the frozen birdbath, chuck roast thawing on the counter. Ground glass nestled comfortably in his lungs. If I could insert myself into a particular vein in that leaf, he asks, would I enhance the wind, or merely disappear in the moment’s arc, a beginning, middle and end touching everywhere but here, on the south side of the window, looking out, looking in.

---

Robert Okaji was recently diagnosed with late stage metastatic lung cancer, and lives, for the time being, in Indiana with his wife, stepson, and cat. His full length collection, Our Loveliest Bruises, will be published by 3: A Taos Press sometime in the near future (not posthumously, he hopes). His poetry may be found in Threepenny Review, Only Poems, Vox Populi, Evergreen Review, North Dakota Quarterly, The Big Windows Review, The Night Heron Barks, Indianapolis Review, and other venues.

Laura Damian

Future job prospect

How about an invisible bird nesting in the old ficus tree

at the end of the street. You know, the one that leans

against the school wall. I would apply for an entry-level position

on the bottom branches, the light heavy with green,

chirping allowed and encouraged from sunrise to down.

With my organizational skills, the fellow sparrows would

sing higher every time pedestrians walk by so they stop

and pay us a smile. I could negotiate with the wind

to blow gently and leave a small white cloud above us,

the perfect drawing model for the 5-year-olds looking

through their class window. I would oversee the blossom

like a Victorian mother hurrying her daughters to pinch

their cheeks to be courted. And maybe you’d argue

our inconspicuous flowers are not a threat to the violet

jacarandas around the corner, but you’ll come back to us

in a month or so, to breathe in our shadow and spy together

on the old couples—women with stoic faces carrying

on their shoulder the hand of their beloved, convinced

they are being guided through life. At noon, when the only

lingering sounds are the echoes of teens—#MyFuckingMom

ToldMeToTidyMyRoom—I would plunge into the debate

between the cocky bunch of birds of paradise and the austere ficus,

the underground mycorrhizal network humming with controversy.

The next day

Boa feathers scattered in the hotel elevators

like early morning dream fragments—blown

by hot wind on the silent streets, spilling

from garbage cans, even the train. You

dedicated months looking for the perfect

concert outfit; stuck brilliant hearts

to your jeans, bought 3 t-shirts and

a red boa online from China, practiced

makeup in the bathroom for months.

“Glitter on the cheeks too, you have to be

a real fan to understand it, mamma!”

You wore his necklace under uniforms

and pajamas, and his real-sized

cardboard dummy—Alba’s gift for

your birthday—stiffly smiled at you

until it bent and fell on the floor.

He whispered in your headphones

“I’m coming” and you whispered back

the letters of his songs untuned. We

woke at 5am, took a fast train to Madrid

and a bus, mangled in the buzzing waves

of 65 thousand joyous people sweating

happily. He was there. You cried,

you sang, you yelled, you danced.

You saw him. Almost. He vanished,

leaving behind the echo of his songs,

sore throats and boa feathers. Now what.

Liver biopsy chronicle

I’m a mutant. My friends laugh when I tell them

Magneto could not take me down in a fight;

my liver accumulates copper, a superpower

my genetic disease awarded me. Being a mutant

is an attractive feature to doctors. Not

in a romantic or sexual way, unfortunately.

One can still dream on a freezing hospital bed

when a handsome surgeon approaches

with a 16-cm pointy instrument. “It’ll be quick”

he says. The walls of the operation room bend,

time collapses, and the screams of George,

a pig my grandparents sacrificed for Christmas

40 years ago, burst into my inner ear. Turns out

you cannot bury the sound of death

under a pillow. George was like a hairy pink

marshmallow, liked to play ball, chase the cats,

and once his nose piercing got caught on

my bike chain. With infinite love my grandma

unhooked him, rubbed his belly—same love

she rubbed salt on the slices of fat before

letting them cure 6 weeks. And his liver,

oh his liver made a delicious pie.

---

Laura Damian is a Romanian-Spanish poet residing in Barcelona, whose recent work has been published in Perceptions Magazine. A mother of two teenagers and a dog, she works in finance and enjoys sharing poetry with her colleagues.

Hardy Coleman

If sadness is a nagging doubt,

            well, here's an antidote:

With every breath you fill

            fall in love,

then exhale.

Some of the Reasons

That it is fragile

            and when cracked

may not mend.

That it can be shattered

            by negligence or anger

and the shards shall slice your flesh.

That it can lead you astray

            and the crumbs you've left as markers

have long since been devoured

            by the songbirds of circumstance.

That it may lie and cheat

            on no more than a whim,

a pretty face, a fast car

            or the heat of an old flame.

That it is burning

            like your house down,

your barn, livestock and crops,

            but you've been freezing all this winter.

That it is bright

            enough to steal sight from your eyes

on this night so long and dark

            that you may never see again.

That it is like a puppy who,

            God willing, you will outlive,

then bury down below the garden

            and nourish with your tears.

That it will become a memory

            with parts pared out on the editor's floor and

a scene, here and there,

            like a scar, still tender.

That all of the above,

            given time, are guaranteed.

That it is yearned for.

            That it is needed.

That it is sustenance.

            That it is Holy.

That it

            is what has brought us

into being.

---

Hardy Coleman gave a few bucks and change to an Elvis Presley impersonator who was attempting to impress a girl in a mink stole, but who’s Cadillac was nearly out of gas. He sat next to a Harlem Globetrotter on a New York City subway and they shared a couple of dirty jokes. He resides in Minneapolis with Patricia Enger, drag racing queen of Jackson County, Minnesota and living muse for much of his work.