Sam Calhoun: Colitis

Fresh cut wound across the morning sky--

Late for work, stopping to make it later--

Count the highway stripes to the next exit

as sparrows flush one maple to another

above the stench of asphalt.

Crows begin again from ropes

thrown like hummingbird vine tendrils.

Across the field harvested corn lies spilled,

kernels ringing against the crisp grass.

A busted tire, unpredictable in the field--

The field ready for the trouble of winter rain--

The rain steady for what comes next.

Sam Calhoun is the author of five chapbooks. His work can be found in Cosmic Daffodils, Eratos, and Cold Moon Journal. He lives with his wife in Elkmont, AL. Follow him on Instagram or X @weatherman_sam, or his website, www.weathermansam.com

Lara Dolphin: Whoever It Was

after “Whoever She Was” by Carol Ann Duffy

They see me as only a mythical creature

on city art.  Not alive. My jaws,

still new, chew through the cap. I smell the wax

mingling with lemony pheromones.

Bee, say the giant voices of the keepers

of the round helmets. Bee.

A grist of insects, suck nectar

or pollinating crops for food. The buzz

of tiny wings repeatedly. I do not mind. 

Perhaps someday. If you’re very lucky.

The cycle repeats. The comb is 

crushed and strained of honey. When you 

think of me, I’m an orchestral interlude

played on violin. Bustle of music. Listeners’ delight. 

What do you want to be when you grow up?

A bit of zizz hangs on the petals. My scientific name

sounds wrong. This was the garden.

There are the coneflowers. Packing sweetness

Into hexagonal cells. For when they come. 

Whoever it was, forever their veiled eyes watch it

as it journeys from snapdragons to primrose. 

It cannot be my kind and still I have a jar 

of light amber honey to prove that it was here.

You remember the precious things. Sunny days

or finding your way home. One bee doesn’t matter. 

You fix your dead apian eyes on the drone 

which is spraying insecticide on your field. 

A native of Pennsylvania, Lara Dolphin is an attorney, nurse, wife, and mother of four. Her chapbooks include In Search Of The Wondrous Whole  (Alien Buddha Press), Chronicle Of Lost Moments (Dancing Girl Press), and At Last a Valley (Blue Jade Press). 

Joseph A Farina: in between

marbles were still moonstones

saved in a Crown Royal pouch

comics, adventures in a cardboard box

beneath your bed to read when you wanted 

magnets and magnifying glass

under summer sunshine 

trolling curbside refuse for treasure

long days of discovery walking

alley trails and marshes

secret paths behind old fence lines

where buried caches of our trove lay hidden

balancing on rusty railroad tracks

through backlots of foundries

far enough from home

you could boast being an explorer

close enough to run back if you had to

Joseph A Farina is a retired lawyer and award winning poet, and a pushcart nominee. His poems have appeared in Philadelphia Poets, Tower Poetry, The Windsor Review, and Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century. He has three books of poetry published: The Cancer Chronicles, The Ghosts of Water Street and The beach, the street and everything in between.

Francine Witte: Without You

I drone through the day, bee-like, automatic.

The circuit of movement – alarm clock, cornflakes,

bus. Once on, I take a seat, and the man next to me

is lost in his phone, the sun through the window

placing its thumb on his dark meadow of hair.

I can’t help but notice that he is flower and musk,

and for a moment I wonder if he could be the next love

of my entire life. The love gurus on the internet warn

it will be like this for a while. Me, flitting near men,

led by that pull that keeps the species alive. Scientists

tell us that without bees to pollinate the food crops,

Humanity is doomed. And so, it’s only natural

that I am lured to this stranger and halfway in love.

It’s only natural for him to sit there, still and unaware,

all the while drenched in the pheromone of petals,

the stickiness of seed. Last night I dreamt you again.

This time I was the flower, dew-flecked and heart-crimson.

You had forgotten that you don’t love me anymore.

I woke up sudden and sweat-flecked, finally falling

back into uneven sleep. When I woke up hours

later, I thought about starting over, how life

is a garden full of beautiful blooms. And so here I am,

on a bus, next to a stranger who looks like my next forever.

But then, something catches me, and I look past him out

the window, some random street corner with honking cars,

or a swarm of school kids in front of a candy store.

Scientists say that honeybees die once they have stung

a victim. That’s because their stinger gets screwed in

so deep, they can’t pull it out. Of course, the honeybee

doesn’t know this, doesn’t know better. But I do, and so

I look at the man next to me and think that yes, he is lucky

to be so sweet and sting-able, but I’m not ready to die again

this soon. The bus pulls up to my stop – hisses, shrieks.

I step on to the street, take one last look at him

through the window. The bus starts up again,

rumbles, pulls away.  

Francine Witte’s flash fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous journals. Most recently, her stories have been in Best Small Fictions and Flash Fiction America. Her latest flash fiction book is RADIO WATER (Roadside Press.) Her upcoming collection of poetry, Some Distant Pin of Light is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. She lives in NYC. Visit her website francinewitte.com.

Jenean McBrearty: Relocation

America’s spacious desert skies

that linger in my eyes.

When urban winter descends,

I lament the terminus of my wanderlust

is a green pallet instead of rust,

and verdant hills that roll instead of red rocks that jut

from barren landscapes.

“You’d be happier in a trailer

on the Valley Slabs,” my son said,

and he spoke the truth

about the place where Okies and Arkies

encamped near the Salton Sea.

I long to be warm,

hear God’s voice in the silence.

What need have I of others who

don’t share my love

of a world without fences and freeways?

As long as I have water, sun,

and peanut butter sandwiches,

food for the cat, and books for the soul,

I’d be content to die

and lie with parched bones,

my ashes scattered in a place that mattered

to the Quechan and Cahuilla,

food for buzzards,

instead of ashes in a flowered urn. 

Jenean McBrearty is a graduate of San Diego State University, who taught Political Science and Sociology, and received her MFA from Eastern Kentucky University in 2021. She won the EKU Award for Graduate Creative Non-fiction in 2011 for Mexicali Mamas, and a Silver Pen Award in 2015 for Red’s Not Your Color. Her novels, novellas, compilations of published, and stories in anthologies, are available on Amazon.

Alexander Gaul: Places Hurt

After Ovid

Places hurt. You will grieve if you insist

On re-visiting the scene of your first kiss,

Or the room where you lay together,

Lanterns winking on the lagoon, music

From the bar below, and laughter.

Breathe on them and half-dead embers glow;

Quiet longing becomes a raging blaze

When passion’s stirred by sweet remembrances:

Why tell of the half-dark room, the broken lamp,

Your clothes and hers scattered on the floor,

Her poised above you smiling, your name on her lips?

The King of Euboea revenged himself

By tempting the invaders to the rocks

With lights that seemed to promise safety—

And so they died. Let happy memories be

Your Scylla and your Charybdis—the sailors

Skirt around them, trembling, lest the edges

Tear their flimsy boats apart and haul

The men, lamenting, down into the dark. 

Alexander Gaul works in academic administration in a university in the South of Ireland. He is currently working on a project that combines translations of Roman elegies and love lyrics into a novel in verse. 

Lynda Tavakoli: WCNSF

wounded child no surviving family

eyes unshuttered

like a stare of owls

they swallow the dark

with parched tongues

their identities inked

on the surface of skin

as signatures for posterity

    

Noor (Light)

                    Khalid (Eternal)

                                       Layla (Night)

                                                        Nasir (Protector)

asleep upon the hands

of dead mothers

they remember the before

when touch was a cradle

of belonging

and the after a bloom

of stars in paradise  

   

Aziza (Beloved)

                       Amal (Hope)

                                   Farrah (Joy)

                                              Asad (Lion)

their silence shields them

for who can know

the slash of shredded limbs

exported from a screen

or the weep of crusting flesh

from what remained

of what remained

   

Nasir (Protector)

                Safiya (Pure)

                               Dahir (Victorious)

                                      Bashir (Bringer of good news)

gathering of the unclaimed

these children of ghosts

exhuming the darkness

for what was lost to them

these ghosts of children

nothing now to own

but our humanity

Habiba (Beloved)
                         Iman (Faith)
                                              Hamid (Praiseworthy)
                                                             Zara (Flower)
                                                                                    Lina (Tender)

Lynda Tavakoli lives in County Down and is a professional member of The Irish Writers Centre. She has won several international poetry awards and been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Lynda’s recent poetry collection ‘A Unison of Breaths’ is published by Arlen House.

Declan Geraghty: Eire, a Terrible Beauty

She hates me

she looks down

on me

overcharges me

refuses to house me

tells me that she knows better

loves the rich

she gets upset

if I contradict her

makes new laws

to keep me quiet

scolding her little boy

the one she doesn’t take out in public

as I wait under the floorboards

in the basement

she keeps tabs on me

then turns off the heating

she charges me

for potty mouth

gives me strange exams

to keep me down

saying the same thing

over and over again

but I never seem to listen

I hear the rats

scratching

in the walls

down here in the basement

they’re thinking of rising too.

Declan Geraghty is a  working class writer and poet from Dublin. He’s had poetry published in Shanghai Poetry Lab, Epoque Press, Militant Thistles, Cry of the Poor and the Brown Envelope Book. His latest short story featured in Lumpen London issue 11. He has won a mentorship with Words Ireland, and their national mentoring program for new writers. He's recently won a scholarship place with The Stinging Fly Play It Forward Programme, and been awarded a mentorship with Skylight 47 Poetry

Valerie Frost: Driving Lesson

I sat in the lap of your Wrangler jeans.

Your rough, worn pants didn't matter that day

because my legs were in charge.

You let me control the pedals and wheel

while you shifted the gears of your ’95 Civic.

I felt the firm, yet gentle, clutch of your free left hand

around my waist.

I soaked in your words of encouragement, as I

rounded the corners of      

                                    the winding rural roads.

            Three humid summer

            days in a row

            in that small Appalachian

            mountain town

            went like this.

On the fourth day,

when it was your turn to drive,

you took me on your four-wheeler instead.

With a slight head turn back toward me

and a husky Cowboy voice,

you instructed me to,

                                 "Hold on, baby."

I held on—

                            all the way to the cornfield. 

          I felt nothing the whole time.

When I lost my grip,

everything felt different.

There were no more driving lessons after that.

Valerie Frost lives in Central Kentucky with her three joyful kiddos. Her poems have appeared in Eastern Iowa Review, ONE ART, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere.

Greg Watson: Your Obituary

I am reading your obituary, calmly, by lamplight,

as if it were merely a poem I came across

in these old papers -- not the mundane and obligatory

list of facts cobbled together on your behalf, 

of which you would most certainly disapprove --

but the one you wrote, long ago, for your

college writing class, when you were so young

and such an exercise must have seemed amusing,

a mere novelty to be redrafted and played with.

In this telling, you have become the survivor 

of your own demise, able to alter, delete, 

and transform the details of your life, just as you

liked to do when you were in the midst of it.

No one liked a good story more than you. 

So, I am reading of your birth across the Atlantic,

how your very identity was kept a secret

before you were sent by steamship to be raised 

by film stars deep in the Hollywood hills.

It's a tale you could almost make me believe,

and one that you certainly wished were so.

You are no longer here to say, your narrative lost

among the silence that now becomes a kind of

signature -- everything you have left out,

by choice, chance, or simple forgetfulness, faint

red ink on onion skin receding from view.

The ocean hums. Your fiction is safe with me.

Greg Watson's work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net. He is the author of eleven collections of poetry, most recently Stars Unseen, published by Holy Cow! Press. He is also co-editor of the anthology The Road by Heart: Poems of Fatherhood, published by Nodin Press. For more information, visit www.gregwatsonpoet.com.