Lennie Hay: Surrender

Wetsuit. Strange name, since it keeps me dry

            and just warm enough 

                        when the gulf temperature drops to 65.

I fight my way into rubber sleeves and legs,

            wiggle to zip it up to my chin

                        until I’m a stuffed sausage.

As a child of the North I ran to the city pool

            when summer air reached 65

                        oblivious to cold needles of pain.

Water seeker needs no divining rod. This day I approach

            its acrobatics eager 

                        to merge with the vastness.

Soft surf insists. Draws me forward. Brushes ankles

            then knees, abdomen, chest—

                        I stride into its resistance.

Flexed arms pump for momentum.

            Chest-deep I follow the shoreline,

                        walk strong within its power.

Bare hands stiffen. It’s worth

            discomfort to have some skin slide

                        naked against the water.

Pelicans dive. Gulls follow.

            Revel in its pulse.

                        I join the parade.

When the wind changes, as it always does,

            aging legs and abs strain

                        against the edge of endurance.

An old woman, I portage water memory—

            Minnesota’s lakes, the broad Mississippi

                        abandoned sailboats, water skis, canoes.

Lennie Hay is a 2019 MFA graduate of Spalding University. She grew up between two cultures—Chinese immigrants and Ukrainian German farmers.  Lennie has been published in print and online journals and in two anthologies. Her book, Lost in America, will be published in June of 2024 by Broadstone Books.   

Laurie Kuntz: Husband Rebuilding the Engine

He does things like that.

Oiled bolts spread on a tarp.

In old military issue coveralls,

not camouflaging his own disasters

of stalls and spills,

nuts and springs clamor

onto the belly of the engine.

I want him to seek a mechanic,

but he needs to conquer

this jetsam and flotsam of steel.

I come out, hold the hood up,

turn the key, push the pedal to the floor.

He listens for the hum, that perfect pitch

He'll spend hours doing just this.

I call him for dinner,

I call him for a bath

I call him for love,

there is no time, but this time,

watching him under a single bulb

waiting for the motor to ignite,

rebuilding all that fails him

into something that turns over and runs.

[First appeared in the collection The Moon Over My Mother's House, and in Autumn Sky Journal.]

Laurie Kuntz’s books are: That Infinite Roar, Talking Me Off The Roof,  The Moon Over My Mother’s House,  Simple Gestures, Women at the Onsen, and Somewhere in the Telling. Nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and two BOTN Prizes, she won a Pushcart Prize in 2024.  
https://lauriekuntz.myportfolio.com/home-1

Randy Prunty: Comportment Sonnet

How

often

one

is

saved

from

confessing

ignorance

by

a

scrap

of

borrowed

fiction.

Randy Prunty lives in the SF Bay Area where he works as a bus driver. In 2022 BlazeVox published Test Camp, a collection of his poetry. Other work can be seen in Volt, Poemeleon, Fence, the tiny, and New American Writing.

Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue: Annus Horribilis

On my first date after M died, I met the woman –

a friend of a friend – and discovered we lived on

the same street in hell. This past year, her

ebbing parents' health forced her to arrange doctor appointments,

a senior living move, finally hospice,

and twin funerals. Then, wouldn't you know, in the

middle of it, her regularly scheduled breast exam

revealed The Big C – immediate chemotherapy

recommended. And, as if the woes of Job were not

enough, her doctor husband thought it the perfect time

to confess he was seeing a much younger woman.

My last year was bad enough. My wife dying after

a six months tour through hospitals/rehabs/hospice,

but compared to her . . .

Nice woman, but it didn't work out.

On the second date, underneath parking lot fluorescence,

I hugged her – felt her birdlike hollow ribs.

She was thin as my wife before she died.

I knew then, selfish bastard that I am,

I couldn't survive another woman dying on me.

Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue, a writer from Fort Worth, Texas, has had poems published in The Texas Observer, Concho River Review, Borderlands, California Quarterly, and two anthologies of Texas poetry.

Jacqueline Jules: The Worst Part of Being Past 65

It’s not the heating pad

and the NSAIDS I’ll need

after this long stroll

with Enid and Evelyn,

both past eighty, and leaning

over a wooden rail snapping pics

of the just-hatched life

we walked to the water to see.

Six baby swans paddle behind a majestic mother

leading with a long slender neck and bright orange beak

on a blue bay with boats in the background.

There are fluffy clouds in the sky

and the air is temperate, barely seventy—

that number I’m quickly approaching.

No, the worst part of being past 65

is also the best, knowing I don’t have

the leisure to sit home and wait

till next spring to coo at baby swans

with Enid and Evelyn, who’ve taught me

how to open my door and greet

each moment before it swims away.

Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021) and Itzhak Perlman's Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press, and Smoke at the Pentagon: Poems to Remember (Bushel & Peck, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications. Visit  www.jacquelinejules.com

Jim Murdoch: Not Everything Equals

Sometimes the questions are complicated

and the answers are simple ―Dr. Seuss

 

At the most basic level

a poem can be expressed as

a + b = 4

 

where the 4 is the poem

and all you have to do

is assign the variables.

 

Sadly, in reality

(bad choice of word),

the answer is usually √-1—

 

     since a poem is a

     product of the imagination—

and the sum ends up looking

 

more like alphabetti spaghetti

than Blackpool rock.

Jim Murdoch is a Scottish writer. As he's been writing for over fifty years his list of rejections is voluminous but he keeps at it. He's written most things over the years but he thinks of himself primarily as a poet and is currently producing poems at an unpresented pace.

Peter Mladinic: Afterglow

“He bought a flower that dances to music

for his cousin Bonita Portofino

expecting her first child,”

I wrote years before you were born.

I didn’t know her. She wasn’t my cousin.

He and she were only in my mind.

Then I woke this morning thinking of you,

and that flower a person

might set near an infant in a cradle

to fall asleep or wake

to that music. I’m wondering

are your eyes darker than your hair?

Peter Mladinic's most recent book of poems, The Homesick Mortician, is available from BlazeVOX books. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.

David Q. Hutcheson-Tipton: The little red fire engine

talented though it was, 

knew that no amount of 

“I think I can, I think I can” 

would get it anywhere, so

it flirted with despair until 

the boy said the Lincoln Log 

cabin was on fire & the engine 

had to be mobilized by fingers 

still greasy from a grilled cheese

sandwich to save the day.

David Q. Hutcheson-Tipton is a Colorado poet whose work has recently been curated in Willows Wept Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, dadakuku.com, and, earlier this year, Poem Alone. He has an MFA from Regis University. He was runner up for the Lighthouse Writers Workshop Lit Fest Veteran’s award in 2021.

Camille Norvaisas: Polaroid, July 1978

I’m mesmerized by the girl in the centre of the photo, even though it’s me I barely recognize her. Those long, blond, slept-in looking pigtails, three-quarter-sleeve navy cotton top,  a “what do you want,” look on her face after craning around to the sound of her father’s voice calling her name, then snapping the photo. Her right hand grips the front of the boy's 10-speed bike seat. In the background, a pink two-wheeler with trainers and a white banana seat sits idle, barely casting a shadow on this sunlit summer day. If pushed a few more feet it will be considered with the rest of the trash waiting by the road for pickup. Did the adults notice her arms are too long for that shirt? Her purposeful hand claiming the way-too-tall-for-her bike? The look of annoyance as her plan is interrupted? Later that night did someone give her a bubble bath, brush her knotted hair, kiss her scraped up knees and elbows, encourage her to try again tomorrow?

Little girl grows out
of her clothes. A turnip
pressing the soil away.

Camille Norvaisas lives in Pennsylvania, US, and believes imagery is a funnel by which life’s experiences are filtered into her poetry. She is currently working toward her MFA at Arcadia University and her first book is Rare As The Kotuku (Aldrich Press, 2015).

J.B.: well worn

 

Seattle poet J.B.’s influences include 70s punk music, Montana bars, and Japanese haiku. He has six books of poetry from Ravenna Press. He’s working on A History of Poetry Comics, and makes DIY zines, which he gives away for free. More at punkpoet.net.

Buff Whitman-Bradley: Witches

Heading to the bathroom at 2 AM

Black circle in the middle of my vision

A hex of old age

 

My creaky old body is full of witches

Doubling, doubling, toiling and troubling

Havoc in the extremities

The rains have subsided

But I cannot walk out the door 

Without being old

The black circle moves aside

I stare into the mirror

The witches keep brewing

Buff Whitman-Bradley’s latest book is And What Will We Sing? (Kelsay Books). He has another book coming in the fall, A Quiet Little Tavern Somewhere Near the Pleiades, from Finishing Line Press. He podcasts at thirdactpoems.podbean.com and lives in northern California with his wife, Cynthia.

K Weber: You Can Go Almost Anywhere

The ceiling drips a Hawaiian waterfall

as I sail this well-worn sofa and drift 

another orange day lit by TV glare or actual sun.

My windows are open and breathing in the sound 

of two dogs fighting for just as many hours; this 

happens as a train floats by then grinds the rail. 

I saw a boy on a skateboard Tuesday afternoon

and I am convinced he was leaving for a town 

where people ride skateboards midday.

I reset my pedometer before I go to sleep

in case I have adventures in my dreams

or I walk through my own blackout in pyjamas.

How much mileage will I get from these words?

K Weber has 10 self-published, online books of poetry. K writes independently and collaboratively, having created poems from words donated by more than 300 people since 2018. Much of K's work (free in PDF/some have audio!) and her publishing credits are at kweberandherwords.com

Penny Hackett-Evans: My Name Is Penny

and I am going to die.

Not today or this year.

(though one never knows)

But, I want to shake hands with death,

share a cup of tea with her.

I want to remember

she is always in the room,

and I want her to feel welcome.

I am not in a race with her.

She is not my enemy.

I’d like to comb her hair,

learn what kind of books she reads.

I’d like to know the music she prefers.

I want to ask her

what she fears and confess

my secret fear of her.

I want to listen

to her wisdom and to know

her real name.

My name is Penny

and I am going to die.

When he was poet laureate, Billy Collins said that everyone should write a poem every day. Penny Hackett-Evans took him at his word and has been at that task for several years now.  She writes to find out who she is. She's still searching. www.pennyhackettevans.com

Jessica Ratigan: Invasion

We scrolled through cyber light relentlessly

for news of the war across the ocean.

It came to us in real time on live feeds

so we knew seconds after it happened

when the soldier yelled go fuck yourself

before standing in the middle

of the bridge then blowing it up.

We reached for coffee, or apples, or clicked

a different tab, or clicked watch again.

We marvelled, or recoiled, or wept,

or never gave it a second thought,

or we thought about it all day long–

the wild resistance, the monument of smoke.

Jessica Ratigan is a poet, teacher, and mother. She received her MFA from New York University’s Creative Writing Program in 2007. Her work has appeared in Blackbird, McSweeney’s, and other journals. Most recently was selected to participate in "Poetry on the Trail,” a poetry installation along the Elizabeth River Trail in Norfolk, Virginia. She teaches English and Creative Writing in Hampton, Virginia.

Alison McCrossan: after grief at Inniscarra bridge

 after grief at Inniscarra bridge 
 
I cross the stone bridge, dash 
down the slip to the riverbank: so green I expect  
the sky to reflect grass and leaf.  
 
Sunlight sparks on velvet blue water, 
weeds bright as summer grass wave in the flow.  
A glorious scene. Let the sky fall.  
 
I shake my limbs until it hurts.  
Nothing works. Not the sweat from the run.  
Not tracing the river upstream through the eyes of the bridge.  
 
Strange dreams stalk my waking hours.  
I'd like to race the other way,  
pause for bitter coffee in a stop-by place, search  
 
for familiar quirks in the faces of strangers.  
A simple wish yet it gnaws at me  
like a hook in a fish.  
  
Under the arches of the bridge, water flows deep. 
If I leap 
feet first into the rush, plummet, and chasing breath,  
 
flounder back up, a gasp,  
a laugh,  
I’ll break this spell.  
 
I hold back,  
gaze the other way. There - off in the distance, like a question  
with many answers, ancient waters touch the sky, blur.

Alison McCrossan is from Cork. Publications include Southword, Stand, Orbis, The Honest Ulsterman, and Abridged. She was longlisted in The National Poetry Competition 2022, shortlisted in The Bridport Prize 2023, and was a finalist in The Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition (The Munster Literature Centre). She undertook a mentorship with Thomas McCarthy through The Munster Literature Centre.

Tobi Alfier: Aubade for Decks in Mountain Cabins

Upper right corner of the deck

I can see it now. Last light

flashes off the copper

chimney from the stove

one floor down and on up

through the roof above,

my hands cupping the warmth,

seeing my ghostly face 

wrapped around and struggling

to avoid the sundown coolness.

The sound of the brook

off the deck, clear water

over smooth stones, yellow

flowers growing on the banks.

I am a whore for yellow flowers

I don’t know why—they’re not

I love you flowers, not apology

flowers, and I have broken hearts

and had my heart broken

in many languages and many colours.

I just like yellow. I’m riffing

on the deck while you tend

the fire down below or maybe

you don’t, or you aren’t.

I finally come down to find

the empty gin bottle tumbled

in the sink, your jacket that I teased

you about, saying it was as if a serape

and a hammock had a baby,

that always claimed the same hook

by the door, gone—I never heard the growl

of your ancient Jeep saying goodbye.

Tobi Alfier is published nationally and internationally. Credits include War, Literature and the Arts, The American Journal of Poetry, KGB Bar Lit Mag, Washington Square Review, Cholla Needles, James Dickey Review, Gargoyle, Permafrost, Arkansas Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, and others.  She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com).

 

Archer Lundy: Ground Fog

after heavy rain, water

vapour

thick as a slur

geese drunk on something

that makes them bay like dogs

My mother

deep into her tipple

gave us ten

good years

the day after

we threw

our love in her face

If I were her

little duck, she was

my mother goose

How many miles to Babylon?

Can I get there by candlelight?

Barely a trace

of frost now

that the sun’s

over the yard arm

a good time

to harvest

the last

of the basil and sage

Archer Lundy (aka Anne Archer) lives on unceded Algonquin Territory north of Kingston, Ontario.  She is the author of three books of poetry including EMMALINE/EVANGELINE (Woodpecker Lane Press, 2023).  Her recent poems appear in Pinhole, In the Mood Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Devour.

David B. Prather: Unbelievable Pajama Bird

              —after a digitally altered photo circulated on Facebook

Red-hooded such as you’d encounter
in a French fairy tale, pure
white throat as though ready to be kissed
and sullied, this picture of a bird
looks genuine. The breast and belly are covered
in horizontal stripes
of alternating crimson and cotton. The beak, however,
resembles a talon, dark
and deadly. But the flaw that tells me
this image is not real
is the arthritic twig legs and spidery claws
which don’t even grip
the branch. Someone labelled this lie “Pyjama bird”
with two laugh-until-I-cry emojis
and followed that with, So amazing, and a scarlet heart.
Who would want to create
a false bird like this when there are so many
fantastical feathers already
aflutter among the trees? Isn’t the northern cardinal
enough to amaze?
Isn’t the firefinch fuel enough to kindle a bough?
If I’d created this creature,
I might have called it peppermint finch, or starlight
starling, or fancy
red-banded bunting. Who’s to say
it might not one day arise
from a genetic mutation? Maybe this digital pic is prediction,
not just some huckster’s prank,
or some bit of beauty designed to fool backyard birders.
If so, then why not
prophesy the human form evolved with wings
all orange, and purple,
and blue a-shimmer, unnecessarily long tail feathers
spread out to resemble an evening sky
complete with stars.  The first phoenix apparently burst forth
from an ancient volcano, every plume
a flare and glare of light that cooled a glowing red, then,
finally, an enduring cinder of myth.

David B. Prather is the author of three poetry collections: We Were Birds (Main Street Rag, 2019), Shouting at an Empty House (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023), and the forthcoming Bending Light with Bare Hands (Fernwood Press, 2024). He lives in Parkersburg, WV (USA).

Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt: Backstories

Even dandelions have backstories, 

if you think long enough about your

past. How when you were supple 

as their stems, your friend taught 

you how to pluck the right ones, 

close to the root, find a widened 

opening at the base, use your nail 

to split the tube in two, and peel.  

The first strips, especially if the plant

was more mature, sticky milk along 

the ridges already dried from summer,  

turned out stiff as ribbon. But newer  

buds, those that had not yet forgotten  

the earth and still held the acute hunger

things are born with, you tried those  

and saw first-hand the miracle: curls 

and springs ripe for independent play, 

fun, bouncy companions you could 

animate, even at an age when you were  

unfamiliar with yourself and didn’t know  

you had any creative power in you. Any

power in you at all. But even back then,  

you had empathy, you did not want  

them dying, these curly cues, as you  

dubbed them, a fresh revelation amid  

unkempt yards and nothing very much

uncommon. You put them in a bowl 

of cold water, watched them coil into 

themselves, tight lifetimes no longer  

bound to soil. And when they turned 

brown and your mother told you to 

throw them out, you returned them  

to the clovered patch they came    

from, some early romantic notion 

of reintroducing them to their family,  

their people, who themselves had  

grown different, more beautiful—

white puffs of wishes being made. 

Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt, M.Ed., is the author of 12 books and has been widely published in journals, magazines and anthologies since the early 1990s. She has won awards from Prince William County and Manassas Virginia, Poetry Society of Virginia, the Nonfiction Authors Association and numerous publications. Learn more at KatherineGotthardt.com.

Susan Delaney Spear: For Giulia, Who Doesn’t Like Straight Lines

            “How did you find me?”

            “On the Internet.”

I sit in Giulia’s chair. Above my head

two eager hummingbirds hover.

Today it’s all about my thin,

straight, hard-to-cut brown hair,

barometer of my anxiety.        

She runs her fingers through my hair. “I don’t

use comb or brush. Artists do not like

straight lines. Please, trust me? Okay?”

We stare into the mirror. I admire

her voluminous hair

and notice that her part is on a slant.

            “I come from Tuscany. Do you know it?”

            “I do. What brought you to Astoria?”

Her left hand lifts my hair. Her right hand

wields her savvy scissors. She visited

New York when she was just thirteen.

Singing, she clips and trims and shapes.

            “I studied cosmetology,

But, if I were blind, I could…cut hair.

And you? What do you do?”

            “I teach. And write.”

“You write? Oh, review me. What will you say?”

Later, I see my own reflection

in the glass at the bodega,

and I blush with pleasure.

A stranger stares then asks,

            “Excuse me. Who cuts your hair?”

            “Giulia on 31st Ave.

If she were blind, she could cut hair.”

Susan Delaney Spear is the author of two collections of poetry: Beyond All Bearing and On Earth...(Resource Publications). She is the co-author of Learning the Secrets of English Verse (with David J. Rothman, Springer). You can find her at www.susandelaneyspear.com

Jan Hassmann: At the gallery

after visiting Genko Genkov's 100th anniversary exhibition

 

Can't take the coffee, sorry,

you can leave it here.

 

Genkov's one hundredth year

at the city gallery.

 

Stark oily purples echo off spacious white walls,

drowning all whispers,

strokes of trees like sisters,

                                    dancing

and a red nude.

 

'He was nuts,' Tanya says,

but his art is sane.

 

He went to Paris with his wife

and opened his final exhibition two weeks before he died.

 

We point fingers at favourites

and the coffee's still warm.

 

Outside a cat, curled up

in the toddling sun.

Jan Hassmann earned his master's degree in English Literature from the University of Tübingen, Germany, and left immediately after to teach the very same at universities in Beijing and Kunming, China. Fifteen years later he returned to Europe, where he runs an amicable poetry club in Plovdiv, Bulgaria

Emma Lee: A Former Principal Ballerina Hears 'The Sleeping Beauty'

She is the gnarled paper crushed at the bottom of a bag

that once held something, a list, a draft, that was important.

Smudged with ink stains, what might have been coffee,

scribbled corrections, an unidentifiable stain, torn edges,

blotches, the writing lacks a Rosetta Stone to decipher.

Someone flicks on a classical radio station.

The strains of Tchaikovsky’s 'The Sleeping Beauty' begin,

the iPod can't replicate the expanse of an orchestra.

But something flickers, a corner unwraps, the paper ball

unfolds, stops mid-gesture like a stylus overcoming a scratch,

continues with a calligraphic flourish, words form a poem's lines

although some words are still obliterated and grease spots

prevent their replacement or new words being added,

she remembers her carriage, how she was once as pristine

as snow, flexible as a new sheet, ready to receive and interpret.

A conduit for impressions, strokes of a story. A hand,

that can no longer grip a pen, returns to her lap. She curls

back into the crumpled paper crushed at the bottom of a bag.

Emma Lee’s publications include “The Significance of a Dress” (Arachne, 2020) and "Ghosts in the Desert" (IDP, 2015). She co-edited “Over Land, Over Sea,” (Five Leaves, 2015), reviews for magazines and blogs at https://emmalee1.wordpress.com.

Kim Przybysz: I Choose This Life

after Sarah Russell

My old therapist used to call my now-husband

small town Joe, and told me I was making a mistake

marrying him. Ten years later, as our son naps,

I think of myself in an alternate universe,

one where I took that advice. I live in a 

brownstone apartment on the lower

east side, with a poet-forced-to-be-professor,

surrounded by books (organized by genre). 

We spend our Sunday mornings completing

the New York Times crossword 

over black coffee and farmer’s market 

blueberry scones. Hank Mobley’s

tenor sax croons from the record player,

lofting through the window and out 

into the neighbourhood, where someone

else’s kids play on the sidewalk– 

hopping, or skipping. 

The funny thing is, I dumped that therapist 

and married Joe. Our three-year-old is 

just one small (or, not-so-small) testament 

to all we have these days.

My carpenter husband dreams up 

poetic lines all day, comes home and says to me

I thought about tear-stained eyes today; 

you should use it in a poem. Joe, as I write, 

is building me a reading nook, surrounded by

shelved books (by genre), overlooking the creek

at sunset– all oranges and purples– in our 

new, forever home. We blast Grateful Dead 

on the weekends, cook bacon and eggs, 

dance in the kitchen and laugh

boisterously. Our own child cuts a rug,

slapping his knee and bouncing to the beat.

And if this isn’t some kind of kismet,

I don’t know what is– because I’d choose

this life, one hundred times over, 

again and again.

Kim Przybysz lives in Western, New York with her husband, son, and golden retriever. She earned her M.A. from the Bread Loaf School of English. An English teacher of over fifteen years, when she’s not teaching, Kim can be found writing. The solitude she cherishes is a roaring fire, birds at the feeder, and the sound of her dog sighing. Her work has been published in the English Journal, among other publications.