Laura Hannett: On This Bright-Blue Day

 The crisp shadow

of the chain-link fence

scallops the sidewalk

into the perfectly even,

orderly scales

of a round-eyed fish,

gliding with a flip

of its fanned-out tail

across the foxed

and freckled page

of a medieval book

encased in a vitrine

in the dimly lit gallery

where we gazed at it

together, and do you see now

how every thought I have

circles round and spirals in,

like an ammonite,

with you, vanishing,

in the centre?

Laura Hannett carries on her quest for the right words in Central New York. Recent poems have appeared in Right Hand Pointing, Penstricken, Eternal Haunted Summer, and Amethyst Review. Origami Poems Project has published two of her micro chapbooks. laurahannettpoetry.wordpress.com.

Ruth Bavetta: The End of May

Early this morning, voices    

through the bedroom window.

Men in the canyon below,

trying to rip away the vines

strangling the native oaks.

Dampness blurs the horizon.

The sounds rise and fall

like wind curling around the hills —

but the leaves are motionless

and the air is still.

 

Two squirrels clatter across the roof

and leap into the olive tree.

A crow watches from the dying pine.

Across the street a flag hangs limp.

The delivery truck heads into the curves

at 60 miles an hour.

Ruth Bavetta’s poems have appeared in North American Review, Nimrod, Rattle, Slant, Atlanta Review, Tar River Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies. Her books are Fugitive Pigments, What’s Left Over, Embers on the Stairs, Selected Poems, and Flour, Water, Salt. She likes the light on November afternoons, the music of Stravinsky, the smell of the ocean. She hates pretence, prejudice, and sauerkraut.

Diane Webster: Old Woman Feeds Crows

 I will be an old woman

who feeds crows.

Speak to them as if to friends

held long in my memory.

I will toss wiener chunks

in a softball underhand

pitch to rookies landing

to watch their elders sidle

in, snatch and return.

 

I will be an old woman

who raises her arms

like scarecrow limbs

outstretched as a perch

inviting crows to land

and eat out of her open palms.

 

I will be the old woman

who welcomes crows

to walk behind in

mourner black

down cobblestone paths

then leap in the sky

like confetti caught

in a rising vortex.

Diane Webster lives in western Colorado. Her poetry has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One, Jimson Weed, and elsewhere. Five micro-chaps have been published by Origami Poetry Press. She was a featured writer in Macrame Literary Journal and WestWard Quarterly. www.dianewebster.com

Muskan Singh: The Sky of Loneliness

The sky is wide enough

for every bird,

every cloud,

every wandering dream.

It stretches endlessly,

offering room

for every breath.

Yet loneliness follows

different laws.

A single absence

can shrink the world.

A single name

can turn open spaces

into narrow walls.

The sky may remain infinite,

but inside the suffocating loneliness

of one forgotten heart,

even eternity

can feel too small.

Muskan Singh is an emerging poet from India whose work explores memory, silence, longing, and human connection. Her poetry is forthcoming in Academy of the Heart and Mind, The B'K Magazine, and Spillwords.

Valerie Frost: Off the Record

you don’t enter rooms

you adjourn them,

quietly

soft-voiced, spine straight,

as if composure were something

you tailored yourself 

between depositions

and whatever you refuse to name.

there’s a discipline to you

that borders on disappearance.

i’ve watched you

tilt your head

just enough to listen

just enough to measure

never enough

to be read back into evidence.

your kindness is exacting,

footnoted,

without precedent.

we speak in margins

briefs kept brief,

a chat box flicker

filed under nothing to disclose.

you keep the record narrow.

i keep the excess

off the page.

still—

there are moments

that almost overrule themselves,

then don’t.

 

so we proceed

as if that’s the point

signal without statement,

precision without proof,

a case built carefully

on what neither of us

moves to admit—

or dismiss.

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.

Dave Wakely: The Morning Campaign

Along the southern perimeter, the dawn street sounds alarm

as a robin whistles its tits off in the evergreen magnolia. Northward,

foreign maples crouch in the house’s shadow, true colours

camouflaged by its brick and mortar eclipse. A platoon

of prescription pills and potions stand bedside sentry, awaiting

the reveille of our organ recital: a cataloguing fugue of aches,

of pains, of inconveniences. Our ears strain to pick out

the kickover of distant engines, of motorbikes clearing their

night-clogged throats, and the clicking of kettle switches

as staccato as the cocking of pistols. Supine together

in the curtained haze, we commence the daily ritual

of equipment presentation: senses activated in the protocol’d order,

our arsenal of remaining parts checked and correct,. Someone,

I know, must lead. Shake a leg, number two, I mutter, stubble-throated.

We go again.

Dave Wakely’s writing has been shortlisted for the Manchester Fiction, the Cambridge and Bath Short Story awards, and poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Online Programme Manager for Milton Keynes Literary Festival,  he lives in Buckinghamshire with his husband.

Jennifer Mills Kerr: The Orphaned Page

The words my father never said:

his lost country. In early morning 

dark, I adjust the lamp so no shadow 

obscures the page, pen scratching 

like mice beneath the porch at night, 

my words like refugees sprinting 

barren fields–urgent to nest, to 

safeguard my father’s silences. 

Most of his life I learned from 

his obituary, facts that now scaffold

a vacant lot of parched weeds and 

dandelions, yellow shivers inside dust– 

maybe promise, maybe hope catches 

at my throat, pulling words like father 

and loss, a homesickness that provides

a temporary shelter for us. 

[Originally published in Blaze Vox, October 2025]

Jennifer Mills Kerr lives in Northern California. Her poetry has been recently published in the South Florida Poetry Journal, Thimble, & Pictura. An educator for thirty years, Jennifer leads poetry workshops online and curates poems on the Poetry-Inspired Substack. Learn more at www.JenniferMillsKerrPoet.com.

Isabela Basombrío Hoban: The Library In Castlebar

5000 years ago or maybe last year, she wrote a book that some people borrow from the library in Castlebar

The book is returned with an unspoken history that deepens with each lend

A new tea stain

An old tear stain

Both made worse by the reader's vigorous drying attempts

A mysterious numerical sum scribbled on the margin

A receipt for Main Street parking

And the inevitable underlined verses, an authority imposed by the previous reader

When I borrowed the book

And opened it like a creaking door

I found a pressed flower, a note and a photograph

The photograph fell to the floor

The pressed flower disintegrated leaving a morbid shadow

And the note stuck to page 48

Everything was faded

Page 48 started with the words "It's strange how a place of so many words is so silent"

The note said: "Forgive me for not having been able to find the words"

Page 48 again (underlined twice) "We are breathing in the same page"

She was 80 years old when the photograph was taken

Dreaming books

Spilling tea

Losing parking tickets

Finding words

Isabela Basombrío Hoban is an award-winning bilingual poet. Originally from Peru, she lives in Ireland. Her recent books are "Nothing belongs to everyone", "Rain Love Death Poets" and “Another type of abbreviation”. Isabela's poetry has been translated into several languages including Irish, Portuguese, Polish, and Bengali.

Mitzi Dorton: Concrete

What takes me to tar-patched cracks on a tree lined street?

I know how the concrete looks,

Brown and aging like an old map,

Black roads that lead to what is no longer there,

I want to hold my palm on its warmth

When we talk about childhood,

You mention your chemo,

Stunning me with your calm

Poolside, wet towel over concrete,

We still share eight-year-old faces,

Inching forward, feeling the heat

Not able to save that injured bird,

From the parking lot waystation,

The pastor’s wife, aghast, a turn-away, 

We set it down, as she demands, for the other world

Squatted besties, roaming the neighbourhood,

examining fresh sidewalk pours,

Whose initials are these, brazen?

It feels far out of bounds,

For well-behaved children,

We wish for this immortality ourselves

Rosebushes dripping bubblegum-coloured petals

We stick them on as pretend fingernails

Never realizing with all the time 

In a summer day,

It might be impossible,

To return again

Old concrete begging for an inscription,

Now miles and eons away in time

So, I add your name, Susan, a substitute

Some sixty years later, in verse.

Mitzi Dorton has poetry in Rattle, Apofenie, Poetry South, Appalachian Places, Shadowplay, Constellations, Arachne Press and many others. A multi-genre writer, she is author of the book, "Chief Corn Tassel," Finishing Line Press, and former associate editor with Fiction on the Web.

Olusegun Ajayi: New Year’s Resolution

Today, I choose to plant words

    that will bloom tomorrow.

Not just the soothing–fleeting feeling

     of a new season. 

I want it slow & steady,

    the stubborn glow of healing 

                                             in my brittle body.

Say, season greetings. But I’m not interested

    in this thundering noise

        of fake promises, prophecies & fanfares.

I’m not impressed by these fireworks;

    I want the fire that works

        its way through my blood,

        through my bones, marrows & joints,

    to re-baptize my firelit tongue

        & write repair on these bruises.

It’s January again—& What Is New

    About The New Year?  Say, sizzling greetings! I mean;

    It's still a sizzling season instead of harmattan. I mean;

    somebody somewhere is smiling in suffering. I mean;

    somebody somewhere is renaming an old wound, here,

        in the city of open fractures. A child & his bandage

                   are learning the grammar of false hope

  & we call it New Year’s Resolution?

Olusegun Ajayi is a Nigerian bilingual poet. Shortlisted for the 2026 Kalanithi Writing Awards & Poetry Mine (2026), longlisted for the 2026 Verse & Voice Competition, & 2025 JAY Lit Awards. His work has appeared/forthcoming in Radon Journal, Book of Matches, AUIS Journal, Journal of Africa Youth Literature & elsewhere.