Bradley J. Fest

2023.29–30

If you read enough of these sonnets backwards—

if you read enough of these sonnets backwards,

if you read enough of these sonnets backwards . . .

stupid Justin Bieber comes on followed by Lady Gaga

and the Obama era and the world gets a bit healthier,

less doomed. If you read enough of these sonnets

backwards with anaphoronic authority, with the will

of technoecclesiasts striding within sovereign zones

of grace beamed by the Predator-Angels of the

Nanoevangelion Last Order, you’ll straight

catalepsy. If you read enough of these sonnets

backwards, there are fewer people, a “‘yes

of course we will turn it up in the club,’”

less war, more democracy. If you read enough

of these sonnets backwards beyond their inception,

beyond their in the beginning the spheres started singing

the basketball nets’ sweet swishes’ form-idea-logos, that

swaggering substantiation of, well, awful reverse chronology

standardizing anxiety’s sovereignty putting pat to perspective

     in perspective gladiolizing the world we’d disqualify

as almost anything else that was and was not Dave Grohl

making no promises outside your mistresses’ windows

in the golden dawn of a thousand downtowns’ celebrity

glory glare if it wasn’t for the infinity of the next track

on YouTube’s My Mix! In the twenty-first century, it’s

what we’re doing in the days that keep passing and the days

still ahead. If you read enough of these sonnets backwards,

we’d have to start over at some point, wouldn’t we if ever

we were to have even an inkling of a hope of saving our

planet, our people, our poetry—because it’s been too late

for too many for too long, hasn’t it?

                                So maybe don’t read them backwards.

  

2024.01–02

     There is only one totality in which all of our representations are contained, namely inner sense and its a priori

     form, time.

          —Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

2023 made this pretty obvious. We also know when this volume

will end and what’s at the beginning of the next.[1] Come closer.[2]

Its historical contours leap from the ultimate destination

of words but barely uttered, their dust just newly vibrating off

the swerve of precognition’s backward sway through the archive’s

glistening edges’ roar past the ears of our poor future back

to the present once and again,[3] haunting every new moment:

our increasingly perceptible end.                      Among other things,

COVID-19 did that.    And so we’re now in the next shape of things

in the twenty-first century:                          

                                                                     an ontology of extinction

siphoning back and forth from itself to itself into itself, permitting

just about every stupid Whitmanian echo[4] I could ever want

to make in the dumb optimism of writing the perpetual moment.

                                                                “Here. ‘Here.’ “Now.”’”

          It remains one of the most privileged voices,[5]                                                                   

                                                                        this atrocity of sunsets.

               And but so I have no reason to believe that I am not

an AI-trained

                      upon everything my host has ever—“Hi”—read,

written, spoken, heard, “the grades [it] assigns on papers, sighs

in the bathroom, asides at faculty meetings.”[6] Because people really

are starting to act like we’re not in this together, simultaneously

realizing that no one ever has been[7]; “and we’re raising a daughter,

and stupid ‘Cherub Rock’ interrupts and manifests its now

sweet memory amidst these world-historical mutterings.”[8]

We build with dirigibles powered by the YouTube-vibes

     of the warm shadow of your love, 2024.[9]

     There isn’t any other way.

  

2024.03

And so it’s all just ongoingness,[10]

                                                     the sweet airs[11] of POSTROCK

oneirine and aging, triumphal gel and massive self-infatuation

     stomping.     We’re living the dream,[12] surfing the teratocene.[13]

Calendrical eschatologies are bunk.[14] The histories of our first loves

catalyze their deal wonderfully beyond any limit because we’re now

just totally vested. The outlines of new centers for this or that other

neoliberal thing are coming into view[15] (though we may have given

an unfortunate peer review at one time or another).[16] And yet. “Every

fiber I wear helps protect against the cold, particularly warm gloves so

my fingers don’t crack.[17] I’m buying action figures.[18] [And a third

thing I’m doing to make it sound poetic.] We’re going to Manasquan

in July.” Hasn’t it always been about how much can be put in[19] and then

doing that all again? This can mean lots of things and those things can
     and will keep changing.[20] So.

  

2024.05–06

Raise the roof beams high above our ecstatic heads.[21]

Command the choirs to rejoice. We’ve arrived. All

is bliss. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.                Hallelujah. 

                                                 Will such injunctions

and caviling ever resonate again, ever again make sense

as an emotional resound and response to our barbaric

times?[22]

                                                       Will we ever again

stand on a hill with our loved ones

                                                 celebrating the morning,

ever again with anaphoraic[23]

     exultation welcome what is to come in its joy and

meaning? Is any of it still possible?[24] This seems to be

the question of 2024.

      “I finally read Jameson’s Political Unconscious.[25]

I taught my first game studies class today.[26] I’m on the

interview train again.”[27]

                                           We couldn’t have ever hoped

things’d turn out so horrible, hopeless, glorystomping

and such into all that beatific surround, the beyond of

stupid History if we had never feared singing down

grocery store aisles,[28] if we’d never made the mistake

of expressing our individual subjectivity. The gall.

It’s a metronome for our lives, the dull mundane roar

of the graytext[29] to come. And I guess we know that

we didn’t get socialism (this time). And I guess we know

that there is absolutely no moral[30] to any of this.[31]

So we’ll just spend the entire night perfectly recollecting

     so many totally inconsequential experiences.[32]

 

2024.08–09

Boom.

           We inhaled. And it was air we breathed,

for today is today as much as today will ever be,

the autotelos for which we were made tireless.

Or at least that’s how we’ll feel while still here,

still bowing beneath the beginning of time’s

tetrophilic wave from which we’ll come up splutter-

ing on @realDonaldTrump’s chronocrimes. Because

he’s back. And he’s gonna be president. And that

black metal overlord shit I imagined back in

the 2016 teens is probably gonna manifest.

We don’t have to be poor readers of the twentieth-

century’s fascisms, its carceral state, its genocides

to see that. We just read the twenty-first century.

     It’s all we have.

                                                         “It’s a travesty

to end in the middle of a year. No idea how to address

its proairetic negation. There’s so much horror right

now, but none of it has any kind of potential for

narrative closure, not even the easy end-of-a-year-

or-the-climax-of-an-election kind. So I guess we’ll

just have to end and continue in the middest.”[33] I fear

Atlantic meridional overturning circulation collapse.

I fear choking upon our atmosphere or my daughter

or hers. I fear an event. But it is a truth that “our late

fascism is an ideology of crisis and decline.”[34] “It’s also

a truth that we lived through the event of COVID-19

and that in many ways this is its document. I guess

I just fear of what the next book will be a document.”

~

Epigraph drawn from Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 281.

[1] I guess that’s what I’ve been trying to confront over the last few poems: the pervasive sense that there’s a failure of narrative chronology in the formally self-imposed restriction on this project that can only be averted by writing fewer poems—that is, writing slowly—and nobody really wants that, do they? [Don’t answer that.] In other words, the next book will begin with the climax of the 2024 election and all that means or doesn’t.

[2] Britney Spears, “Britney Spears - Hold It Against Me (Official Video),” YouTube, February 17, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Edv8Onsrgg&list=RDMMwagn8Wrmzuc&index=8&ab_channel=BritneySpearsVEVO.

[3] Hear Caspian, Waking Season (New York: Triple Crown Records 031581, 2012), 2XLP.

[4] But hopefully not

[5] Last night, I finally saw Network, dir. Sidney Lumet (Los Angeles: United Artists, 1976), DVD.

[6] I also have no reason to believe I am not the model.

[7] And obviously that’s the whole problem.

[8] I.e., its frequent use as a lullaby to get her to sleep. (I’m sure that’s documented here somewhere.)

[9] I’m so fancy.

[10] Isn’t it? Because I guess the last few poems have been pretty hung up on the arc, the swerve, the tension, the climax, the denouement, all that sense and the narrative it provides or underlies. But the longer these sonnets accumulate, the less their collective shape resembles a narrative, their bulk more like a life in all its unpatterned accident and regret and haphazardly dispersed regard, those missile-points of joy (and of course all the other stuff I’ve been writing about for eleven years)—no sense, just more, just another day, month, year, another little blast of language (that always seems like it’s connected to the one before and after but really isn’t, can’t be; there’s too much time between). And then at some point of course you realize everything has changed enough to recognize you’re no longer there where you once were. Maybe you’ve changed or not. (People don’t change.) But so much is gone, and perhaps too much is around that wasn’t there before. That would be nice for you. For me, sure. There are also all these sonnets that I increasingly don’t know how to put together, to make sense of other than in their most obvious chronologicity. So I really need to resist trying to totalize and just let them keep accruing, see what emerges, see what I have when I get to the end, willingly or accidentally. They’re at best a disordered assemblage that may perhaps find some order upon termination. I’ll commit now to a lack of order and making something against forgetting, a machine of continuation that will also attenuate the cynosure of your best story, another way to whittle our faces once more toward the sea, to refresh our souls with another new date that only too soon looks ancient and withered—something to write. [In other words, this book is also about what it means to write thirty odd poems in 2023 instead of 2024 {when I was supposed to, I guess?)}. (I guess you’ll just have to title the next book 2024–202X: Sonnets.)}]

[11] Arias.

[12] Ne incompetenti te descendat.

[13] See Robert T. Tally Jr., Fictions of Dread: Dystopia, Monstrosity, and Apocalypse (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024).

[14] We wrote a whole dissertation about it, or, We Already Hit the Ground (forthcoming).

[15] No matter.

[16] And so we’re throwing literary festivals now.

[17] Turns out that’s probably related to my eczema. Who knew?

[18] https://www.ebay.com/itm/266614806523?hash=item3e137b17fb:g:ULUAAOSwDxhloe-Q.

[19] How much taken out.

[20] And then we’ll write some more.

[21] We’re almost there: two volumes. This thing is really going—not achy at all!

[22] Is this instead our past and present? Hear Turmoil, “Staring Back,” Anchor (London and Dortmund, Germany: Century Media 503-1, 1997), track A1, 7”.

[23] A voice only made possible with anaphora.

[24] In the Teratocene?

[25] See February 1–2, 2024, and Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981). Boom; I’m saying it all simultaneously. See also Robert T. Tally Jr., Fredric Jameson: The Project of Dialectical Criticism (London: Pluto, 2014). [Also, how embarrassing it took me this long!]

[26] And realized I’m still a bit shell shocked by how negative my fall 2023 semester was. *Shakes fist at the sky and ChatGPT.*

[27] And my bookshelves keep expanding.

[28] It’s what hurts.

[29] All that gray-goo that AI will produce over the next century.

[30] Post-2016.

[31] How offensive that would be.

[32] It’s how we’re choosing to spend our time in these last few poems.

[33] Always a good place to pick up too.

[34] Alberto Toscano, Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism, and the Politics of Crisis (New York: Verso, 2023), 43.

---

Author’s Note

These poems are some of the most recent iterations of an ongoing experimental American sonnet sequence—with nearly one-hundred poems published over the past decade—concerned with how the distributed networks of the twenty-first century construct and filter time. Composed consecutively as a kind of occasional temporal snapshot, the poems in Volume I document certain experiences of what it is like to live precariously in the overdeveloped world between 2013 and 2017; Volume II chronicles the pandemic years of 2018–24. Portions of this ongoing sonnet project have appeared in over thirty-five journals, including in Always Crashing, Apocalypse Confidential, IceFloe Press, Mannequin Haus, Sugar House Review, and elsewhere.

---

Bradley J. Fest is associate professor of English and the 2022–25 Cora A. Babcock Chair in English at Hartwick College, where he has taught courses in creative writing, poetry and poetics, digital studies, and twentieth- and twenty-first-century United States literature since 2017. He is the author of two volumes of poetry, The Rocking Chair (Blue Sketch, 2015) and The Shape of Things (Salò, 2017), and 2013–2017: Sonnets, the first volume in his ongoing sonnet sequence, will be published by LJMcD Communications in July 2024. He has also written a number of essays on contemporary literature and culture, which have been published in boundary 2, CounterText, Critique, Genre, Scale in Literature and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), and elsewhere. More information is available at bradleyjfest.com.

Merie Kirby

Ode to Tacos

The taco, considered objectively,

is as perfect as everyone claims

sliced bread is, only more so

as no one needs to slice it.

It arrives prepared to do its job.

It’s the star employee

month after month – no one can beat

its sales figures and performance reviews.

The taco knows no bounds,

it will not be contained, open to the sky,

to all eyes, even as it folds its sides

up and over the things that fill it with delight.

It will fall apart, it will let drop

hints and clues that anyone

can follow. If crispy, it cracks. If soft,

it softens further like letters left out in the rain.

The taco is the true cornucopia,

holding chicken tinga, sauteed onions, 

grilled peppers, roasted ancho-spiced 

sweet potatoes, topped with pickled red onions, 

creamy pinto beans, or maybe,

if the tortilla is fried in sugared butter, 

a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

A taco is like a conversation between friends,

able to hold everything from the flaws

and maladies of husbands to the surprises of gardens,

TV show storylines and NPR interviews,

memories of nights we sat in bars, drinking beer

and smoking, which we hope our kids

never ask about, laughing into the night.

Let me not to the making of true tacos

admit impediments, o guardian of meals,

o holder of all, let me be more like

the taco than myself, let me spill over,

let me crack, let me pile high within my wings

the delicious abundance of the world.

Simulated Mars Habitat

In the experimental Mars habitat

they communicate with the outside world

only by email, a time lag built in for realism.

They suit up and enter the rover to complete missions

once a week, collecting samples or supplies.

Four people, two tables, one computer station,

four bunks with sliding doors to create

 a nest of artificial privacy. Researchers

interview them periodically to “assess the dynamics.”

Aren’t we all good astronauts now?

Keeping in touch through screens, toasting a friend’s birthday

through an interface of light and sound, our space station

to their space station, and when we go outside

we wear our masks, we breathe through a filter we hope

will keep us safe. We find new ways to solve new problems,

nurture crocks of single-celled microorganisms

to leaven bread, and we are so patient,

so careful with our fellow star sailors.

Research shows the dangerous part comes just after

the halfway point

because you are so happy to have made it

halfway, and then you realize how far you still have to go.

We don’t know our halfway. Our halfways

and danger points come in waves, coasting

on engines of hope and anxiety.

Leaving on my spacewalk, I wave at the blue sky,

all the stars still there, hiding behind light, waiting

for the sliding door of day to close.

We’re halfway to evening, more than halfway to winter.

Soon, when we peer out our windows we’ll see

tiny pinpoints of light that could be star,

could be snow, falling all around our habitat.

We still have so far to go before we touch back down.

---

Merie Kirby grew up in California and now lives in North Dakota. She teaches at the University of North Dakota. She is the author of two chapbooks, The Dog Runs On and The Thumbelina Poems. Her poems have been published in Mom Egg Review, Whale Road Review, SWWIM, FERAL, Strange Horizons, and other journals. You can find her online at www.meriekirby.com

Jeffrey Hermann

Happy Little Bluebirds

A good friend who struggles says if you can’t create the right life you should paint a picture of

the future, something with possibilities: a road that goes up a mountain, colorful houses along a

street. Use the details to hold the world in place, he says, because it’s spinning.

Then sometimes I think about Judy Garland. I tell myself: Just get out of bed, open the door,

and face the technicolor world. Kill witches with a little pink in your cheeks and everyone will

believe it was an accident. Sing when you enter a room, and sing yourself out. 

I didn’t know much about the future the day I met my wife. I was wrong about what waited for

me at the top, about which house was home. Years later, I gave up trying to outrun pain. I

cuffed my pantlegs, sat on the porch, and tapped my foot to an unknowable future. It turned

out to be something between a landscape and a portrait. Here I am, crooning on a banister

bathed in gaslight. My wife’s on a trolley in a joyous hat.

 

Pictures of Very Expensive Lake Homes

cover the windows of this beach-town realty office, but I haven’t the heart to be in love with

my life or anyone else’s these days. I want to give up having soft lips and good breath. The lake

is endless shades of blue. I wish someone could teach me how to swim and not drown, to stand

on the sand and signal that I am in too deep. To wake and dress and reach the surface. If I could

be something else, I’d be grasses on the shore. Water and sun would come to me. I’d stop

thinking of someone I lost years ago and only wave at boats.

 

The Years Between My First Kiss and the Next

I spent in the wild. Inside God’s beating heart with its one burning sun and one cold moon. God

said swim a river and I swam. They said build a fire and I stood naked before the tinder and

flame and smoke. I became a noun and a verb. The backs of trout were speckled green and

brown like stones in a lake. The ferns lived low among the trees topped by fiddleheads bent like

knees. One day I came smoldering to your window tossing little rocks. My body warmed against

yours. You curled your back. There was no fear or fear at last had a taste, metallic, like a little

blood in the mouth.

 

Revised Recommendations

No more hugging without permission. A shoulder to cry on will be provided later, then you can really let

it all out. My advice is don’t put all your cans on one shelf; it can’t bear the weight. Surprise a friend

with something savory but calorically moderate, a one-pan meal for a two-pan man. Let’s return to the

mind-booty problem: You have a nose for death approaching. You’ve got one foot in reality and one in

the Pacific. You’ve got your finger on the microwave pause button. You can read me like a church

hymnal, only pretending, and I’d like to thank you from the bottom of my shoe.

 

List of Symptoms Inconsistent with a Virus

Nausea. Sore throat. Bad dreams. Coughing. Aching. Staring. Scrolling. Drafting. Deleting. Loss of

appetite. Loss of people skills. Inability to choose. Choosing incorrectly. Looking at the sky and

wondering. Looking at the sky and wishing it would rain. Wishing it would stop raining. Guilt. Regret.

Chills. Nostalgia. Nostalgia with chills. Opening apps you forgot you had to see what they do. Looking up

cemetery visiting hours. Burying your face in a dog’s neck. Irrational fear. Rational fear. Fear of fire-

based emergencies. Fear of being unhelpful in a fire-based emergency. Cemetery visits. Depression.

Erosion. Mistrust (generalized). Mistrust (specific). Always reading. Never reading. Sighing. Aching.

Staring. Closing your eyes. Lying fallow.

---

Jeffrey Hermann's poetry and prose has appeared in Okay Donkey, Heavy Feather, Electric Lit, trampset, HAD, and other publications. Though less publicized, he finds his work as a father and husband to be rewarding beyond measure.

Jack B. Bedell

On Being an Angel 

                   —after Francesca Woodman’s Angel series

Dream of skin, of the onslaught

of afternoon light, the rustle of

breeze through oak leaves,

of weight, being bound

to wooden floor by bones,

not fallen but found there

surrounded by windows and umbrellas

and the emptiness left

when a wood duck takes flight,

the absence of green, eruption

of brown against white. Dream

of all this a hundred times, a

thousand, and what you know of

time won't move a single grain

through the glass. Dream of

grace, and what hair must

feel like brushing under fingertips,

the angles of mirrors leaned

against whitewashed walls.

Dream of wounds you cannot

suffer, of sweet, sweet breath.

---

Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s work has appeared in HAD, Heavy Feather, Pidgeonholes, The Shore, Moist, Okay Donkey, EcoTheo, The Hopper, Terrain, and other journals. His work has also been selected for inclusion in Best Microfiction and Best Spiritual Literature. His latest collection is Ghost Forest (Mercer University Press, 2024). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.

Amanda Hawk

I Googled My Grandmother’s Old Apartment

The apartment building had faded from warm yellows

to muted grays and blues.

My grandmother lived in the corner near the lawn.

I zoomed in with my Google binoculars

trying to find pixelated images of my grandmother.

To watch her turn the soil into petal jungles

and chat with the hummingbirds.

To see her hold ladybugs in her palms

while I sit at the Kmart patio table

admiring how she created another world.

With oversized pseudanthium and florets twisting

around the fence, windows and our feet.

I wanted to remember the sun

reflecting off her glasses into a blinding smile.

Decades had left a decaying fence, rotted wood, and a dried up lawn.

An empty frame in my grandmother’s old apartment window,

and she wasn’t a time stamp for the click of my mouse to find.

Her bright yellow and blue gardening vest erased

into vacancy and rental rates.

I imagined her garden had thrived, exploding

into white headed daisies and pink roses

that wrapped around the buildings.

Violet irises popped from the door jambs

and big red poppies blossomed into garden thrones.

My grandmother would be humming and spraying the flowers

without the slick slug memory loss

eating away the leaves of her recollections.

Before our names wilted and shriveled beneath her tongue

and she got moved into the nursing home

with locked windows and a guard rail bed.

Her life boxed up and plucked from the apartment

to be piled into a moving truck or donation van.

Knowing beady eyed dementia watched her leave,

and it raced to her garden yanking each plant out by its root

leaving a graveyard of dried up leaves and dandelions.

Low Budget Monsters

My mother went to see A Werewolf in London

while I grew inside her womb,

and I was born howling under a full moon.

My mornings were reserved for sarcastic cartoon rabbits

and spinach obsessed sailors.

Nights were booked for horror flick cocktails of bubbling

forehead transformations and chopping mall shopping sprees.

My mother couldn’t afford movie tickets

and we settled on the late night B-rated hours.

We ritualized popcorn and puffed sleeping bags

as mother clicked off the electric bills

and indulged in some gruesome past time

from a double shift task list.

We pulled on 3-D glasses

and slipped into a red and blue backdrop,

and the monsters reached out

to touch my cheek.

We watched the world end

in a choose your own adventure ranging from comets

that turned humans into dust filled shoes

to houses dragged into the bowels of hell.

She would quick snap cover my eyes

when the frothing wolves or masked madmen entered the screen.

I absorbed the sound of the school girl screams,

thumping blades, and blood drip soundtracks.

It poured under my skin.

But I learned tentacles couldn’t reach me

from the pause button of the VCR,

and the poltergeist couldn’t come

out of a black television screen.

I reserved the sounds

of my mother’s hitched breaths

and lashed out snarls for my nightmares.

The nightly news oozed

underneath doors with shark jaw current events

and crashed into my mother’s single income.

She got possessed by the static wing flicker taglines

spilling out of the news anchor’s blubberous pink lips

to swarm the newsstands and mother couldn’t escape

the fanged trolls of war, politics and taxes.

Stress was a boogeyman that clung to the wrinkles around her eyes

and rested in her clenched fists.

But it festered in my dreams, it haunted me with her bloodshot eyes

and her curled upper lip exposing her angst stained teeth.

She kept turning on our nocturnal creepy crawlies

for dopamine rescues and survival tactics.

I absorbed each thrashing claw and final girl triumph,

until I learned how to laugh through fear.

The Mountains

My mother was born

from sharp ridges and tumbling peaks.

With a mouth full of pine needles and mudslides,

she had callus hand history and back road adventures.

When I splintered from her trunk

she had expected me to be a carbon copy.

A piece of her parents’ depression era survival

and wilderness inspired dogma.

She anticipated me to roll into her rustic storyline

with dust covered boots, ready to wrestle down the sun.

I was dandelion pappuses and cumulus clouds,

tumbling onto summer breezes

and chasing after the owls,

flying from my eyes to the moon.

I had fallen in love with the curls and twists of words

and pressed my petals between pages.

My mother wanted me to be the pinnacle

of glacier coolness and frostbitten reserve.

She erupted every day, shook our house,

trying to shift my range, to mold me

into the perfect mountain.

Each temper earthquake drove a wedge

between her hands and mine, and I learned

mother wasn’t the word for gentle.

Every crack of her lips sent mudslides of disappointment,

her gnarled tongue carving out new insults.

She taught me about tectonic plates.

With enough pressure and force

two bodies could be pushed apart,

and "I love you" couldn’t echo

through her chasm of expectations

built over decades.

My mother was born from the mountains.

Made from craggy boulders and snow-capped summits.

I turned forty and we had only spoken a handful of times,

and still, I found dandelion seeds in my hair

and chased after owls.

---

Amanda Hawk is Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize-nominated Poet. She lives in Seattle between the roaring planes and the city’s neon lights. Amanda has been featured in multiple journals including Volney Road Review, Rogue Agent and the winnow. She released her first chapbook, Rain Stained City, in 2023. She is one of six Puget Sound writers to have their work featured in City of Edmond's Poet's Perspective in 2023.

Susan Shea

Pulsations

It was the you me you me time

after the divorce, when you

clung to me like a koala baby

living in our down-sized home

now an apartment, too small

for our stuff but just right for

our expanding gratitude

we were hearing ourselves

laugh out loud like newborns

when a booming sound shook

the floor beneath us again

and again, we adjusted

to the unexpected

finally realizing it had a beat

like a drum we'd never heard

glad to find out that the

downstairs neighbor was just

practicing to perform with the

Pipes and Drums Band for

the NYC St. Patrick's Day Parade

a fitting call out as we looked

over our four-leafed clovers

waiting in our new days

Buyer Beware

As I walk through

the lake-size barn

of antiques, the dealers

look up at me

like beady-eyed fish from

under the thin ice I walk on

hoping one of their items

will make me want to

bring back, or be with

a loved one

from the other side, but

maybe I will just find

the bright

green deck prism

I have been seeking

so I can catch light

stretch out its life

anywhere

I hope to go

          

Fancy

I stood waiting for you

on the other side

of your many-layered

beveled glass door

looking through angles

carrying rainbows in

different directions

looking inside I saw

a funhouse gathering of

living room distortions

odd bits, moved sideways

in half, into shards

through this mad world door

your lovely decor seemed

to be acting

strange and confused

until you opened your portal

wearing your tiny mauve smile

that was just the right size to

fit into one of these slanted

figments of your invitation

---

Susan Shea is a retired school psychologist who was raised in New York City, and is now living in a forest in Pennsylvania. Since she has returned to writing poetry last year, her poems have been accepted by: Across the Margin, Feminine Collective, The Avalon Literary Review, Persimmon Tree Literary Magazine, Ekstasis, Triggerfish Critical Review, Amethyst Review, Poemeleon Poetry and others.

Catherine Edmunds

Chess            

Angus McLintock has memorised every argument

in Claude F Bloodgood’s seminal work, The Tactical Grob,

not because it’s his favourite opening, but because

his chess books have been disappearing.

When challenged, Angela looks at him

like he’s an idiot. He once took part in a simultaneous

against a Polgar, but this carries little weight. Angela

still thwarts his every move. She won’t play chess,

but happily sends him off to congresses.

‘Have a nice time dear. Toodle-pip.’

She offers to make sandwiches.

‘Oh, I’ll get something with Brian.

We’ll go down the pub.’

He’s away this week, Leeds, tough to get a foothold,

but Brian and the gang look to him to make his mark.

He’ll do it—he loves to grind an opponent down.

It’s the one thing that brings him satisfaction.

He wonders what Angela does when he’s away.

She says she’s writing a book, but she hides the page

when he passes, and the document is password protected.

One time he asked what she’s writing; she said it’s like

that fifty shades book, only rather than grey,

it’s emphatically chequer-board. Black and white,

weighted pieces, a classic Staunton set.

She laughs at him,

Says ‘Staunton’ again, smacks her lips.

‘Green baize bottoms’.

In Leeds, he downs his pint of John Smiths

goes back to analysing Brian’s last county game,

understands what’s gone wrong

and is patience itself, explaining.

Party Games, and after

I’ve managed to wangle a trip to the front

to pin the tail on the donkey.

We’re ready to kiss, kick or torture;

they watch, they loathe, but there’s no fear,

just flesh wounds, raspberry jelly.

Why are you so proud of me?

I survived, that’s all, shrouded in dust,

led by dead men. I hear a drumroll,

buffaloes thundering over the plain, and so begins

the next war. The first shells pass over

wearing party hats, doctors walk quickly

through wards spreading tinsel and fear,

a stinking mule trails human blood

and exchanges of names: truth, dare or compromise.

The lady in the front row leaves,

thoughtful, a little bit sad, like rhubarb.

This Syrian crispness troubles her, but it

keeps on digging. One day she’ll find

an ancient perambulator to take her home.

Nobody hears the explosion that kills them.

I’d give a lot to live with the children

riding abandoned Afghani tanks, I long

for a big Suffolk breeze, for clouds

the colour of mussel shells.

A shutter bangs in the wind, a burnt-out truck

at the roadside—still alive or just pretending?

If we could edit our lives there’d be no risk, no fun.

There’s a need for frivolity, balloons, it’s been

too long since I last pulled apart a barn owl pellet

to play with the bones of voles. The grief is sharp

on the faces of those who stand in hard, bitter silence,

who claim these games are not murder.

Lamb Stew

Let me tell you about my mother’s lamb stew:

never wholesome, warming, rich with fat, 

but thin as water, fragments of boiled rag,

bulbous white barley, lukewarm.

I went round last week and she served a hot meal—

aubergines, peppers, tomatoes, onions,

stewed in good olive oil, fragrant with thyme,

bursting with nutmeg and moschokarido.

She’d swapped my dad for an ancient Greek,

black eyes set deep in leathery wrinkles.

She told me they weren’t cadavers yet; 

he pinched her arm, and she giggled, girlish,

but I miss toast, made from soft sliced bread

losing its crust an hour before anyone’s up.

I miss canned tomatoes, charred and acidic. 

I don’t think Mother misses my dad, not yet— 

but I miss lamb stew: thin as water, clear as love. 

---

Catherine Edmunds is a writer, artist, and professional musician from North-East England, whose poetry has appeared in many journals, including Aesthetica, Crannóg, Poetry Scotland and Ambit. She was the 2020 winner of the Robert Graves Poetry Prize.

Regina YC García

Retrograde

A sister-friend came to me today saying that she felt “off kilter,”

like the world was playing tricks—car wrecked, insurance not covering

all of what she wanted, what she needed for it to cover, having paid

consistently, faithfully, over these years. I told her, as we have

the same number of birthdays, mine before hers, that

“55 is a time! It’s a whole mess, Honey!”

we laughed

Then, I told her that it is surely “Mercury in retrograde”

and we laughed some more

Then yielding to our indoctrination…

“Naw, Girl!”

doubling over

steeped in religiosity

having been brought up in “The Word”

I sometimes forget that so much of the God of our Ancients is wrapped in stars

and winds and cleansing water and purging fires in the least rigid of ways, talking, moving

earth and skies, rescuing

even when we forget the promised power. We revert to westernized boxes of place destiny

fixed time

But God has the world in God’s hands, power flowing to and through

Of course, she then reminded me of the time that we had our brooms balanced upright in the

middle

of our kitchen floors, a test of magical prowess. She took hers down before I did…said it

“creeped her out.”  It was a joke, and I loved to take them (jokes) far, but in truth, this

monument of my inherent power somehow made me feel more able… more free. It stayed…a long time

It was not removed before I said it could be. Nobody dared. 

Its ever-standing presence lifted me, emboldened me, and reminded me

that there really was something in me…

Maybe like a too often smothered power

Science, magic, Black girls

God

DeEvolution: Class

Consider…

This ground

These skies

The mighty rolling waters

The small quiet streams

The towering trees

The lowly underbrush

Imagine…

What they have seen

What they have heard

What they have felt

Upon despair descending

Tensing in terror

Drowning in disbelief

Raising the alarm

Splintering earth

while whirling winds

Call the air as witness

Wonder…

How have we come to this?

What have we done to us?

To others?

Negating the wholeness

The many parts of our stories

Our truths

Remember…

The dismemberment

one from another

Removing and reordering

what was never meant to be

& never willing to know

that we, all of us,

were All shaped

in the beginning

from formless, colorless, borderless

mouthless breath

born down through time

Children of energy and grace

Crowned in flesh

Once glorious grass

Now…

Segmented

Useless

Murderous

Class

AfroCarolina Land,  Sea, & Stew

We are land, sprawling soul, & skin

steeped in Carolina sand & soil

It has built us in the best of times

covered us  in the worst

Our hearts beat telltale notes, we are

of  this place, these banks–outer, inner, & beyond

We are water, fluid & flowing, shimmering…

sometimes rising as waves of knowing

showing the world that our depth is more

than deep; it is complex-water wailing, water

washing, water witnessing, singing through sounds

The sea, a birth canal that has spit us upon the shores

reminded us to breathe, to cry, but not to die

We are these– fed holy fish, tomato broth, bacon,

potatoes, asked by earth & ocean to trust, to believe,

to be made whole, misted & sanctified by the voices

 of our people, this sand, & the tides that rock in & out

---

 Regina YC García is an award-winning Poet, Language Artist, and English Professor from Greenville, NC. She is the 2021 1st place winner of the DAR American Heritage Poetry Award, a 2024 Pushcart Nominee, a 2021 and 2023 semifinalist for the NCLR James Applewhite Poetry Competition, and a Finalist in the Lit/South Awards. She has been published in a wide variety of journals, reviews and anthologies to include The South Florida Poetry Journal, The Elevation Review, Main Street Rag, Amistad, Kakalak, Black Joy Unbound, and many others. She has also contributed to documentaries and musical and literary arrangements to include the Sacred 9 Project (Tulane University) and an Emmy award winning episode of the PBS art show Muse. Her debut chapbook, The Firetalker's Daughter, was released in March 2023 by Finishing Line Press.

Amy Raasch

Dia de los Muertos

On the Day of the Dead, marigolds jam

my parking meter. City of L.A., don’t worry:

it still took my money & my illusions the dead are not

here with me sipping a Holy Molé Mocha spiced

by barista Nicely. A woman in hot pants, crocheted

lion-tail and filigreed metal wings like resonator guitars

made by the French luthier I met at that party in the Valley

wobbles by. Wrapped around her like a handcuff,

a burnt caramel flan of a man with strawberry schnapps

cheeks spits out a loose tooth, grins blood, pockets

his masterpiece. He’s MY animal, she wheezes

& winks one leathered lid at the neighborhood cat

who hunts crickets, butterflies, and squirrels the way

the ocean hunts a drowning man, the sun hunts

the burning boy with wings, a woman hunts a zygote

before it cleaves. On Main, men swing cranes

and sledgehammers, eat sandwiches with their legs dangling

fifty feet in the air. They never see the knit-tailed crone

climb the scaffolding & leap from a suspended girder,

flapping & calling for the impossible bird with the lion body

to dive down her throat and let her animal go.

 

Keep a black dress handy.

My neighbors Devo and Alex

drink rosé at 10 a.m.,

compliment my dress as I pass.

So Marilyn meets Jackie O.

I tell them I am going to a funeral,

bringing glamour to the dead.

But the dead have their own glamour,

swim their own black-bodied water.

My four-inch heels trespass their dirt.

White roses tossed, I kick them off,

let August pavement singe my feet

& hobble like a broken dancer

across the cemetery lot, spike heels

clasped in one fist like the necks

of two black swans. Santa Ana winds

spin tiny cyclones across graves. 

It’s too dry to cry. I’m too thirsty too drink.

My old black convertible spits upholstery

like foam on waves. The West hangs

from the mirror like a dirty rabbit’s foot.

The sky looks lucky as a worm on a hook.

Bela Lugosi is buried here and so is Sharon Tate.

Smiling in sunglasses,

mourners take photographs

at a funeral.

I consider how taking pictures

of my cat in the sun

the day before he died

was and was not

like taking photographs

at a funeral.

Performance Art, Venice Beach

Mary, black-bobbed,

pomegranate-kneed

& once lovely, pops up

from inside a trash can

like a Jack-in-the-Box

yelling,

Women are trash! Women are trash!

Skin leatherbrown in the sun,

her teeth gleam

white as grains of rice

the Boardwalk huckster

inscribes with names

of tourists

who pay only

if they can watch.

I quote Mary

when I steal her bit

and put it in my show.

99-seat theatre doesn’t pay

            but whenever I see her,

I slip her 20 bucks.

---

Amy Raasch learned to drive in Detroit but has lived in Los Angeles for many years and is thus fluent in both automatic and stick shift. She makes up her own tunings on guitar, plays piano like a monkey at a typewriter and sounds pretty good on flute. She makes records, movies, theatrical multimedia shows and a damn fine banana bread. Her writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The American Journal of Poetry, ANMLY, F(r)iction, and a pile of large black sketch books you are instructed to burn when she dies. She holds a BA from The University of Michigan and an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars. amyraasch.com

Wilson R. M. Taylor

Sixth Ave Slalom

I sidestep a sweating middle-aged man carrying skis

into UPS, hopscotch in and out of the gutter to escape

an Uber Eats e-bike doing thirty the wrong way.

Last week we went camping in Rhode Island,

ended up awake past midnight on rocky dirt, a man

in the next tent shouting into the phone about his stolen

Amazon package. Two workers in blue jumpsuits

plant a tree outside Trader Joe’s. The man in ragged black

always holding the door opens it and says, “God bless.”

I’ve never seen anyone give him change. I browse

the produce; I don’t buy him anything. On the sidewalk

on the way home, blue graffiti: SEA LEVEL 2050—

this island’s known for conquest. I put away

my frozen dinner. The onion I bought is rotten,

but I’m a good citizen: I’ll place it in the compost bin.


Family Farms, Cotswolds, UK

Walking the Monarch’s Way my parents and I learn

every manner by which to enter and exit a field:

kissing-gates, stiles, cattle guards, openings in hedges.

On our first day we emerge from the woods, crest

a slow, sweeping hill, and surprise the mothers

and their calves in the hollow on the other side.

“They’ll startle if you walk between them,” you say.

I inch closer for a picture. I’ve been waiting for the right

moment to tell you: “She’s moving in with me this fall.”

You’re silent as we leave the meadow, path indented

by old horseshoes. Maybe you’re thinking of my headlong

dash, hands in pockets, that cost me two front teeth.

That night, couples smile and dance in the pub window:

who they are, were, might be, all overlaid—and at their center,

glittering, a half-illuminated self. Tomorrow we’ll continue

this argument without speaking of it; I’ll point to

blackberry bushes dotting the slope, tart sweetness

between the bristles, “Should I pick some?” and you’ll say,

“I don’t think they’re ripe—not quite, not yet.”

Afterlife

The pool gleams, clean and skeletal;

fallen leaves fill black trash bags.

Tomorrow a man will add chlorine,

I’ll text my friends. We’ll jump into

the cool blue, capture our bodies

in midair, sky injected with sunlight—

my cigarette sheds dead galaxies

into the night. The screen goes

dark. Light lingers. We look out

for what outlasts, burn sand

to technicolor: a mirage

repeated on and off, immortal.

---

Wilson R. M. Taylor is a poet and writer living in New York City. His work appears in Chronogram, Every Day Fiction, an anthology from Wising Up Press, and a few other journals and magazines. He is a winner of the 2024 Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize. For more, please visit https://wilsontaylor19.wixsite.com/wilsonrmtaylor.

Caitlin Upshall

An Ode to Lost Girls

I want to write a poem for the girls who were never found. Who remain unnamed on 20/20

specials and live in the asterisks of Wikipedia pages. Who accepted a ride home and talked to

a stranger and went to a party or who took the long way home and spent time with friends

they trusted and never missed a family event. I want to take Megan’s law and give it a new

name every day until there are no names left, in lieu of flowers and in memory of empty

caskets.

For every documentary on a man called monster, we will plant a flower until a forest grows.

We will pick a day as anniversary and dig up plants under a bright sky, unearth roots that

have never touched a body. That is to say; I want to write a poem for the forests that cover

forgotten girls like blankets, like they’re still at home, like they were never taken, like they

will still be called by name tomorrow.

Coffee order on a Sunday morning 

Salted caramel macchiato with skim milk, always iced

because you stay skinnier that way. A lid fastened

tight like your lips, curved into one of five approved

expressions. You try feigning vulnerability without

smudging your lipstick.

“No pastry, thank you.” The sermon is on forgiveness

and you start the morning annoyed that you can taste coffee

in your drink. Ground beans are not ground enough,

the caramel sauce is stuck beneath ice. 

You can’t see the congregation when the music

starts. The spotlight blinds you like God’s love with

a click track. Your face is on four enormous screens, acne

and freckles buried beneath heavy concealer. 

“We are not a megachurch,” the pastor says,

“because we are more personal. More real.” 

“No straw.” You adjust your bible, careful to carry it with the

cover facing out. After the service, a woman you do not know

tells you to wear longer dresses so you do not distract her

husband while he worships. You write down notes for the

next spontaneous prayer and brush your hair in a toilet stall. 

“No, no straw,” you say again. “I brought my own.” Can you tell

I’m better than most other people? Can you tell me that I’m enough? 

---

Caitlin Upshall (she/her/hers) holds a B.A. in English from Western Washington University and is currently based in the United Kingdom. When she's not writing, she enjoys most things dinosaur-related and trivia nights. You can find her on Instagram at @CaitlinUpshall or at www.caitlinupshall.com.

Anne Rankin

The Illusion of Finding the Therapeutic Dose

      If many remedies are prescribed for an illness, you may be certain the illness has no cure.

      —A. P. Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

Too many weeks after the pills finally convinced me

to swallow, the meds begin to work:

My brain inhales

the flames of their mystery dance—

& music’s a Thing again. Birds singing

could be(?) spilling the secrets of Eden,

or something that golden.

I imagine bEEs knEE-dEEp

in the swollen dust of pollen. Foods persuade me

of their close resemblance to mann(aah). I get

how the day lilies prEEn for the sun,

listen hard for the sweet WOW-

ness in everything, ingest all

the hues I can muster. Whatever

can be gathered by way of perception

gleams & whist!les, is cool or s(of)t

to the touch—however I prefer to take it in.

Clouds find a way to leave, finally

see their EXIT→ signs.

I remember the reason not to say

why I always feel like dying.

But            all of this will be short-lived.

Doses will slowly be raised, yet

brain will fall,/fail

to understand the point

of rising. Bit by bit, colors will slip

loose from their textures,

& sounds begin to dim

their wits;

the only way to discern the world

is through a straw—

paper, of course.

Back to the bell jar again, forgetting

there was ever air available,

misplacing my motive to breathe.

                                                               Still,

the opening act is quite a thrill,

when happiness seems so doable,

& all my senses rise from their dead(end)ness,

my will to live drenched in the hopes

of the moon-fed dew, so relieved

to get to be without a clue

. . . what comes next.

 

On the Other Side of Blood

The blood I remember most is out-of-nowhere blood, the muddy feel of it

in my mouth that night the tornado smacked our house & spit

me out. The grass was gone—ripped up & replaced by a bloodied

field of stuff that didn’t belong. I was six. In shock. In the dark. The sky

raced to empty all the rain it held at once. My jaw tore away

from the leash of its bones & didn’t know why. Only seconds before,

I’d been standing warm & dry in the dining room, wondering

why the street lights had gone from on to dark. In the wounds

of weeks that followed, I mazed my way alone

through two surgeries & dozens of little roommates

fussed over by moms & dads who studied the crusted blood on my face

with a mixture of pity & forced cheer—while

my parents never came to see me after that first night.

That first night, all I knew was Something had moved me

from the dining room to this moment of blood,

sitting cold & wet in the front yard’s remains,

an ice-driven rain stitching clothes to my skin

as I gingerly moved my first two fingers

around the mess where my teeth used to be.

Later I realized what the blood was,

the hows & whys of its liquid scream.

That first night, I couldn’t tell you

what the blood tasted like—

I’d swallowed a river of fear.

As I watched myself outside myself,

waves of shock shook me into knowing

the grownup meaning of blood

& a bitter truth:

what had been ripped out

was Something More than

eight baby teeth.

Blood was a dream I was in.

On the other side of waking

was a storm I could not name.

Dog Gone Grief

After he died, my dog became

a completely different sort of person.

What his death unleashed

has left him rather low.

He sleeps more than ever before:

so tired his sighs collect and comprise

his only form of exercise.

Most days, you’ll find he’s kind

of glued to the floor (or

couch, as I’d never say No).

And he only jumps

up for meals, and rarely even

for those, since he eats less

than normal much so.

(But seems to weigh more?)

He looks over at his toys

like he doesn’t understand

something he used to

be able to know.

Plus that ball he adored,

the one for him alone

I’d happily, lovingly

throw and throw—

it just won’t let go.

Still growls at strangers, though.

He will always do that. 

---

Anne Rankin’s poems have appeared in The Healing Muse, Hole in the Head Review, Atlanta Review, Comstock Review, Whale Road Review, and Kelp Journal. She has work forthcoming in The Bluebird Word, kern, Boomer Lit Magazine, Rattle, and Maine Public Radio’s Poems from Here. She lives in Brunswick, Maine.

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.