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.

Jason Ryberg : Juanita

The moon, tonight, is                      

a bright street light, shining down

on a blanket made

of blue snow, and the

wind is a flurry of black

wings, one minute, and

a hushed whisper of

feathers, the next, and none of

the clocks in the house

can agree on the

time, and the radio is

hissing with the white

noise of the cosmos

(haunted with the sad ghost of

some long-dead Russian

composer), and the

phone has rung three times with three

different people, all

trying to reach some-

one named Juanita, and though

I don’t know any-

one named Juanita,

I sure do hope she’s alright

(wherever she is).

Jason Ryberg lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters. 

Edilson Afonso Ferreira: Fears, Feelings, and Desires

There are certain weekends and holidays

when I feel somewhat insecure.

I worry if walking ghosts have occupied 

the void of empty streets and closed doors,  

looking at me as an intruder or suspicious

on their walks.

I miss hearing the sound of hammers and

hoes, the strident come and go of saw blades, 

the brushing of pens on paper or keyboards 

being typed, throwing feelings to the world.  

I love the imprecations of painters and artists

when they can’t find the pure art they look for.

I love children screaming through the sidewalk,

running endless races only they are capable of.

I love the noise of people in the streets and alleys,

corners and places,

as they move to destinies only they are aware of,

struggling hard to make their lives a story.

I love hearing someone making something,

even if it is the buzzing of bees.

 

(Originally published in the March/April 2018 issue of Indiana Voice Journal)

A Brazilian poet, Edilson Afonso Ferreira, 82, writes in English rather than Portuguese. Largely published in international literary journals, he began writing at age 64, after he retired from a bank. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of ‘Lonely Sailor’ and ‘Joie de Vivre’. He is always updating his literary blog at www.edilsonmelofereira.com

Beth McDonough: This house has been far out at sea

(after Ted Hughes)

  

Night turns North Sea, flexes obsessive hours

towards an eclipse and its newest moon, glimpsed.

Night rides in wakes, night's waves rear.

 

We try to bale out morning, tidy

night's jetsam, all sheets fret in wind.

We gather our son into a comforting bath.

Night's prelude thrashes on. That coming storm

which he senses first. Lightning rod tall –

he tries to climb – then the convulsions start.

We try to move him, shuddering, then taut,

raise him over the vessel's lip, enact

some living deposition, but there is no

 

Pietà, just a desperate, held attempt

to find a safer place than this.

Carpeted, we wait, wait, wait until he calms,

 

flickering, his focus returns. Night

warned us, night conducted buzzed

currents, pushed us towards dawn's storm.

 

Scaling our way round this,

we form equations we cannot solve.

Outside the House of God, I write this down.

Beth McDonough is a Dundee-based poet and artist. Her pamphlet 'Lamping for Pickled Fish' is published by 4Word. Her shared poetry collection with Nikki Robson, and a hybrid project on outdoor swimming will be published in 2026. She co-hosts Platform Sessions in Fife.

Rebecca Gethin: Framework

Rebecca Gethin has written five poetry publications and two novels. She was a Hawthornden Fellow and a Poetry School tutor.  Her poems are widely published in various magazines and anthologies. She won the first Coast to Coast pamphlet competition with Messages.