Michelle Ortega: Picnic

I’ve only eaten figs 

at Thanksgiving, dried, 

so I have no idea 

how delicate the skin, 

how unexpected when 

I lift a purple jewel 

with greedy, careless 

fingers    and it splits, 

exposing the magenta 

false-flesh, tiny blooms––

nectar drips through 

my fingers before 

I inhale the first,

the sweetest bite.

Michelle Ortega’s writing has been published at Tweetspeak Poetry, Tiferet Journal, Exit 13, Snapdragon: A Journal of Healing, Platform Review, Shot Glass Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Rust + Moth, Humana Obscura, Stillwater Review and in various anthologies. Her microchapbook Tissue Memory (Porkbelly Press) was released in February 2022.  www.michelleortegawrites.com

David Harrison Horton: Cassius Clay v Sonny Liston (February 25, 1964) Round 6

The ensemble plays a lament 

that carries on through the halls, 

slowing, then picking up, 

the pace.

The shot pans wide, for no 

apparent reason.

The work is in the detail,

a practiced precision.

Dandelion florets disperse in a breeze

that disturbs very little

of the tableau.

A man in a suit, thick lapels, skinny tie, shouts 

something

that should not be repeated.

David Harrison Horton is a Beijing-based writer, artist, editor and curator. He is author of Maze Poems (Arteidolia) and his chap Model Answers is forthcoming from CCCP Chapbooks. He edits the poetry zine SAGINAW. davidharrisonhorton.com

Patrick Cotter: Pig Factory

Among the honking, snorting throng, some child’s

pet - a banbh, bottled-reared and brow-stroked

whose widening grin and happy waddle

were cuddled until the day came to be prodded

into pork. Portioned and packaged in the factory

in the city where often a leering Camas moon

arced over the hill. There, a line of clattering

hooves whose honks turned to the squeals

of rusty hinges, hundreds in a chorus.

And the squeals turned to screeches of terror

and the screeches turned to screams of excruciation.

And in the houses next to the factory, people too poor

to move away paid no more heed to the squeals

than they would to the high-pitched chatter

of children in a schoolyard at breaktime.

And the screeches blended in their ears

with the screeches of gulls by the weir

where a culvert spewed into the river bits

and blood the rats and mullet scrambled for too.

Blood beyond the congealing of drisheen,

beyond the Pollack-like streaks on the walls

visible when first-floor doors were ajar on hot

days and the wafting scents of scraps made

the local moggies yawn at their privilege.

All this I know and yet that banbh I eat

albeit without its grin and the ears that wiggle

no more, dressing centre-table at the dinner parties

of well-earning, slumming gourmands.

Patrick Cotter lives in Cork. His poems have appeared in the Financial Times, London Review of Books, POETRY and Poetry Review. His latest collection is Sonic White Poise (Dedalus, 2021), More at www.patrickcotter.ie

 

Katerina Stoykova: untitled

They say

you work to live. They say

you live to work. They say

life is work,

work is life.

Without work, life is not life.

They don’t say that,

but you’ve worked

your way up

to that understanding.

Katerina Stoykova is the author of Between a Bird Cage and a Bird House (University Press of Kentucky) and The Poet's Guide to Publishing: How to Conceive, Arrange, Edit, Publish and Market a Book of Poetry (McFarland). Katerina is the founder and senior editor of Accents Publishing.

Laura Daniels: Shades of Pink

What to hold?                                     What to free?

unusual questions                                this routine Wednesday

I want to hold                                      I want to hold

warm dryness                                      quiet rocks

I want to hold air                                 I want to hold it all

through cold breath                             and desire it now

I want shades of pink                          I want flowing scarves

when grey abounds                             when breezes billow

I want words to flow                           I want the last bite

when prompted                                   to be as good as the first

I want the first sip                               the alcoholic swallow

to quench my thirst                             that’s never quenchable

The glass shapes                                 The glamorous sensation

the day’s hour                                     the sophisticated moment

An addictive thirst                              An unhealthy thirst

a troubling thirst                                 a sickening thirst

A diseased thirst                                  unable to terminate

May the craving cease                        May the vessel fill                                                      

to hold                                                 the thirst

Laura Daniels (she/her) is a multi-genre writer and founder of the Facebook blog The Fringe 999. Curated in NJ Bards Anthology, Silver Birch Press, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She resides with her partner in Mt Arlington, NJ, where she crafts colourful musings. Follow her at: https://lauradanielswriter.wordpress.com

Lauren O’Donovan: and she flew

With plastic teardrops on soft fingertips, 

we hot-glue multicoloured craft feathers

to a cut-out frame. I stick and she snips

semiplumes to lay, each slightly longer 

until it is time for ones washed and dried:

snowy seagull contour and flight feathers

we collected together at low-tide

along with mottled plumes from the plover. 

Nearly there, we bend them in a gentle

curve to look like the wings of a real bird,  

and use glitter duct-tape guided by pencil

marks to attach braided straps to matboard.

She raises one arm up, then the other —

Unaware, I fasten wings on my child’s shoulders 

[First Published: Not The Time To Be Silent Anthology, 2022]

Lauren O’Donovan is an Irish writer. In 2023, she won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award, the Cúirt New Writing Prize, and was runner-up for Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition and the Listowel Writers’ Week Collection Award. She is fortunate to have her work published often in journals and anthologies. https://twitter.com/LaurenODonovanW https://www.facebook.com/laurenodonovanw

Hanna Yerushalmi: Reluctant Light—Nir Oz

The birds chirp a high pitched 

mourning song in rounds,

and the cat winds around my leg, 

so eager for any kind of touch.

The lemon tree is full of fruit, 

next to it, the lonely trampoline 

is reduced to a burnt metal frame.

Inside the house, once rich with 

warmth and laughter and comfort, 

a sippy cup lies on its side

no longer holding any milk 

and men’s clothes hang

in closets waiting patiently, endlessly 

and dry, cracked soap sits in a dish 

next to towels parched from disuse 

and bullet holes in windows 

let the reluctant light in.

There is soot on the ground 

and on the walls of the houses, 

and the cat lies on the gravel, 

her white fur grey with ash.

Hanna Yerushalmi grew up in the Midwest, where kindness is a priority and listening is the first step in a relationship. An ordained liberal rabbi, Hanna works as a couples therapist and along with her husband, is raising four children by teaching them about kindness and the value of listening.

Emily Young: Cellular Phoenixes

Someone once told me

every seven years, our cells turnover –

tendons, organs, skin, blood.

Inaccurate, to be sure, but therein lies some truth.

We are cellular phoenixes, every one of us.

I met you eight years ago,

Befriended you seven years, nine months ago.

Fell for you seven years, five months ago.

Became yours exactly seven years ago.

So now I wonder:

Are any parts of me left that once touched you?

Does your skin still remember my skin?

Or are my lips as foreign to yours

as ash is to wings?

Emily Young was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, holds a master’s degree, and works as a full time health care provider. She is a member of the Redmond Association of Spoken Poetry and Prose, a loving wife, and a proud dog mom.

Lynne Knight: Bedtime Story

Finding it hard to communicate,

they began to speak through

stuffed animals. Ms. Bear would love

an evening without loud music

or Morgan thinks the pasta would taste

a little better with less hysteria.

For a while the bear and gorilla

sufficed, but soon it was clear

they too had trouble mentioning

the delicate. Love, for example.

So two small rabbits appeared,

pink-eared, tender, contemplative.

They had high-pitched voices,

Elmer Fudd accents, anagrammatic

names. They were adorable. Things

became more tender and defined,

an interlude, and might have gone on

like that, but one day Morgan introduced

a hippopotamus. So much for interlude.

For one thing, M Hippo took up

an entire chair and insisted on speaking

in the most pedantic tone, like some

tight-buckled classics professor.

Worse, he used the regal plural.

We note and We hesitate and We should like.

After a few days of this, Ms. Bear

sat down at dinner one night

and refused to say anything but

What’s with this asshole.

Morgan stared at the floor,

yawning, affecting restraint.

The rabbits imitated being caught

in a trap and made horrible

squealing noises. M Hippo

(pronounced in the Gallic way)

kept asking for more pasta,

but without that abominable house sauce

we believe you call hysteria.

Well, he got it right where.

There was shouting, breakage, a mess.

Then silence. The two-legged animals

going in and out with sponges, brooms,

resolute jaws of The End.

Lynne Knight has published six chapbooks and six full-length poetry collections, most recently The Language of Forgetting (Sixteen Rivers Press). Her poems have appeared in many journals; among her awards are ia Poetry Society of America Award, a RATTLE Poetry Prize, and a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship. She lives on Vancouver Island.        

Gillian Freebody: The Thaw

You come to listen to the swamp’s thaw,

water rushing up in hushed whispers

from the frozen ground over 

the jagged stones wedged in your throat. You

have held this shotgun-in-the-mouth silence for too long.

Each beneath-the-leaves rustle, each witch-fingered web 

of tree roots unearths a silent gasp.

You imagine your stand-off with the lone buck means something, 

each budding antler rolling in a carpet of fresh moss,

a blanket of only beginning.

This is the place where toppled trees

with rotten centres become homes 

to your unborn. This is where

each wide-winged shadow of the hawk’s hunt

paints a latticework of movement

in a world inhabited only by ghosts.

Each curve in the path bends like the belly of a spoon,

cradling breath, the gentle echo of a woodpecker.

Loose bark dusts in your fingers, blows out like ashes 

in each pull of the vice unstrapping in your chest.

Each branched scaffold offers a toehold. 

Later you will remember each humped turtle shell

clambered upon the driftwood lodged in the pond. 

You will remember the sun’s diamond streamers 

waked and rippling along the surface,

the heat of the red dirt beneath your hands.

A teacher of writing for 25 years, Gillian Freebody never tires of the riches life has to offer. As Simone Weil once said, “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” After a long hiatus from writing spent teaching and raising two children as a single mother, Ms. Freebody is thrilled to discover her love of writing poetry once again. It is through writing that she has rediscovered herself and the great “generosity” of poetry after many years of “sourcing out.” 

Darlene P. Campos: My Mother’s Voice

My mother's voice broke all volume rules.

The phrases “speak softly” or “lower your tone”

were never, ever taken seriously.

There were so many times when I could hear her,

especially down the hallways of her workplace

and I would follow the words, the pitch, and the melody

until I found her and then I would remind her to please use

her inside voice because, goodness, Mom,

people in outer space can hear you.

But now my mother's voice is much lower and she tells

me it's only temporary and her doctor echoes the

same message. She needs to exercise those vocal

cords more and more to regain their strength.

One day, she says with hoarse and strained speech,

this too shall pass.

Yet as I walk down empty hallways, I pretend I hear

her signature voice and it's booming and loud, like she’s

an impatient sports coach or a passionate drill sergeant.

“Those people in outer space, Mom,” I whisper to the silence,

“They want to hear you again.”

Darlene P. Campos earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Texas at El Paso. When she's not writing, she enjoys reading, exercising, and going to museums. She is Ecuadorian-American and lives in Houston, TX with her husband and their eight rescue cats. Visit her website at www.darlenepcampos.com

Walter Worden: Morning Music

What is worth more than a quiet morning

when first bird has yet to sing

and leafy trees 

are full of the low susurrus

of their own song,

where top limbs hold a few high notes of brilliant sun,

as you, still abed in your easing reluctance,

breathe along.

Walter Worden’s poetry has appeared in numerous publications such as, Home Planet News, Chronogram, The First Literary Gazette, and has been featured on the Huffington Post and the Passionate Justice podcast. Worden has published two collections of poems and is about to publish another book in the fall of 2024.

Michael Penny: Losing Citizenship

My thoughts require no passport

to return to my first home.

The only ticketing is that moment

that turns me to memory and birth.

And I am there, convinced

of a belonging citizenship denies.

A bureaucracy that demands

documents I cannot get 

and politics I never supported

have exiled me to mere visitor,

but whatever’s lost is only cover

for the memories indexed

by place and time that finally

are everything of what I am.

Michael Penny lives on an island near Vancouver, BC. He pursues his interest in sustainable development as chair of his island’s Advisory Planning Commission. He has published five books and in over forty journals.

Nancy Lubarsky: Flats and Hills

Each day our group pedals

single file on cobbled, country roads,

along miles of stone fence built

with ancient hands, past olive trees

lined with nets. The olives let go

one by one when they are ready.

In October, these beach-edged towns

are empty except for an aging Italian

farmer who shouts, Grazi, Americani,

—his rescue, 60 years before, fixed

in his memory. Another time a goat

herd spills from the fields, interrupts

our journey, so we wait to continue.

I catch you in my mirror—your familiar

wisps of grey in the breeze. You stay

behind on the flats. You muse and chat

with slower riders, in no hurry like

the rest of us who push forward. Then

the unexpected—a long rise in the road.

As my bike moves ahead, its gears sputter

with doubt. Somehow you hear it and

accelerate—past the overconfident,

the athletic, the ambitious—reaching me

in one steady sprint. You tell me how to

adjust, to breathe, to keep pace. I manage

to make it over, catch up with the group.

But just when the trail levels, you

slip back again behind the others.

Nancy Lubarsky, a retired educator, holds a doctorate in English Education. Her work appeared in Exit 13, Lips, Tiferet, Stillwater Review and Paterson Literary Review. She’s published two books: Tattoos (Finishing Line) and The Only Proof (Kelsay Press), her latest, Truth to the Rumors, a 2023 Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award finalist, will be published in Fall, 2024 (Kelsay Press). 

James Griffin: clean up on aisle 12

there is so much love

spilling out of her

it falls on the cats

turning them

sideways elongated

stretching

to receive it

i trip over it when trying to

get some coffee

falling face first

into it

surprised and a little better

for it

there is so much love

spilling out of her

it surrounds our

sons

buoyed and bobbing

warm and comforted

they float through

a world that is

filled with it

never to

not

know it

there is so much love

spilling out of her

the dogs cannot

drink enough

she is a wet willy

water bug spraying

all over their lives

belly rubs

rolled eyes

and afternoon naps

they dance and tumble

drenched in her love

there has to be some

trick

to all this love

i keep watching for it

trying to catch her

out

filling up

restocking the stores

instead

she's doing laundry

or

nuzzling a good boy

or

laughing at a 6th grade joke

or

looking through lego

for hours

or

calling the insurance company

or

gently humming a

song as she sits next to

me

there is so much love

spilling out of her

i am awed by its

volume and form

i have been so

covered by her love

it has filled me up

to bursting

and by some

strange turn

love is now

leaking out

of me in small

drips

forming puddles

that might catch

you too

if you're not careful

Raised in the river valleys and open fields of central Illinois, James Griffin has roamed and rambled from coast to coast and beyond. A punk rock poseur, and armchair anarchist, reaching for the roof he has landed here.

Gerry Grubbs: Safe Word

I have been thinking

maybe you and I 

need a safe word,

so when I wander off

and start talking

to the stars in a language

they understand, you know

in starlight you can

whisper it in my ear

and bring me back

down to earth.

Gerry Grubbs has poems appearing in Haikuniverse, Journal Of Expressive Writing and others. He has a book recently published by Dos Madres Press.

Gus Peterson: On Believing Strawberry the Only Fruit With its Seeds on the Outside

as if to say here, let’s just get it over with, the sloppiness 

of procreation: its chewing, the lying between teeth, the grind and slurp. 

This long slipshod journey, its brief throats of light. So much for 

the orange, its zest for foreplay, the slow undressing. How the grapefruit 

spits in your eye. All that acid consuming enamel, looking for the last 

raw nerve. Then the coconut leaves, crossing oceans on its mission, 

hard as a chastity belt. The soft white meat within, you once thought, 

key to salvation. Its oil sacred, its milk a sacrament pressed to tongue. 

Give me shortcake crumbled beneath a mudslide, thick and clotted 

as blood. Red, colour of stop. Red, colour of after caution. You do not 

desire this, says the signage of stinging insect. Berries bunched, 

bittersweet off vine. Only the strawberry, dangled like a pulsating 

heart in its chest. Take it, one says, pulling apart its button 

down shirt. Take it all. 

Gus Peterson lives and writes in Maine. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming with Frost Meadow Review, Poeming Pigeon, and Pirene’s Fountain. A debut full length collection, Male Pattern, will be published in 2025 by Finishing Line Press.

Lillian Nećakov: What My Father Wrote, He Wrote On My Brother’s Skin

The world ended where our driveway met the daffodils. I remember years of darkness, barely a light bulb or two, dirty laundry and my brother setting botched fires.  

Sometimes my father’s ache was a fist, sometimes a Chevrolet. My brother, the river he bled and I, just a tiny hollow-boned sparrow, unable to call out for mercy.

A broken mouth - the moment sound scattered - my father busting out of himself, jawbone, kidney, breathe, oil, puddles of milk, a life before this life, cancer, everything I can’t tell you. 

Maybe that’s how history is made. Maybe the house grew into a memory hole, an entry wound that swallowed back all our orphaned parts.

Maybe nothing was far fetched, maybe by spell or by song a church could grow between the stitches, maybe the body could hex itself out of heredity.

We counted it in dog years, one – much less harrowing than seven – the length of time she tried with magic too weak to save us.  

The sad steps of my ghost-mother as she moved from room to room gifting us honey, coins, water and a pair of finches-- bantam ruby hearts, one each, with which to begin again.

[Originally published in the collection 'Midnight Glossolalia', Meat for Tea Press, USA, 2023]

Lillian Nećakov is the author 8 full-length poetry collections including il virus (Anvil Press), Polaroids (Coach House Books) Midnight Glossolalia, a collaboration with Lauren Scharhag and Scott Ferry (Meat for Tea Press), and Duck Eats Yeast, Quacks, Explodes; Man Loses eye with Gary Barwin (Guernica Editions). She lives in Toronto, Canada.

Johanna Zomers: Rebel Eldest

Inspired by Alan Fox

They were at the mart in Rotterdam” she says,

“A whole table of them for one euro”

My mother smooths the polyester florals,

interred in tissue paper.

The morning of my father’s funeral.

she wants me to wear it, along with her

second best black raincoat. I plan on my Parisian

leather jacket, biker chic.

“It doesn’t go with my coat” I say.

She has given me few gifts—

a baby doll, a travel alarm, my first typewriter, 

the gift of the long-lived genes of her

frugal family, urged upon me

her immigrant distaste for being singled out.

An hour before before my father’s funeral she

holds it out again. “Pa always liked this scarf.”

“It will look good with the raincoat.”

“They’re calling for sun by noon” I say, fastening my

half dozen zippers and buckles.

I wish I had worn it. 

Johanna Zomers is an eternally optimistic Canadian writer in her seventh decade. 

John McMahon: Little White Lies

Some swipe shit under heavy rugs.

Men beat in mania, corruption and

disruption.

Secrets are the way of the earth - 

Little fragments of ourselves are 

held back from a world already in

so much pain. 

John McMahon is a poet who lives with his wife and daughter in Scotland in sunny Dumbarton. He has been writing for about 20 years; he has bipolar and it is his main source of therapy. He has been published in a few magazines and anthologies and won a couple of competitions.