Wanda Morrow Clevenger: the same week my mother-in-law passed

at the cusp

of midwest coronavirus

inside the Carlinville Walmart

was a lady

trussed in surgical mask

our eyes locked

for a few seconds

as our carts rolled

past each other

in total silence

at a perceived safe

six foot distance

the associates seemed

more polite than usual

as though they knew

the funeral was on hold

Wanda Morrow Clevenger lives in Hettick, Illinois, population 200, give or take.  Her seven published chapbooks can be found on Amazon.

Samuel Louis Spencer: Sourdough #12

You called me. You called me and maybe

you ran out of bread, perhaps you need

another loaf left at your doorstep.

You called me and said you found more

of my belongings, said I should come and

get them. You called so I’m driving

over, loaf of bread resting in the backseat

like the child we never had.

Samuel Louis Spencer is a poet and journalist based in Tampa, Florida. His work has appeared in The Decadent Review, Scapegoat Magazine, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Inlandia, Third Wednesday, Barzakh Magazine, and others. 

Damaris West: From Pillar to Post

I rarely had to push him.

Mostly he propelled himself

along the Corridors of Power,

the gleaming, neutral-coloured,

slippery waterways

of hospitals with that

special smell.

It was the closest he could get

to paddling his own canoe.

But I felt him disappearing.

Get yourself a red trilby,

something brash,

and earrings

to sharpen your face.

He chose an Australian slouch

hat of genuine kangaroo

leather and clip-on hoops – bronze,

silver or gold to suit his mood.

Even then they talked

over his head.

He scanned my face

to know if there was any hope

(although he said he hated hope)

and I could hardly bear to see,

belying all that buccaneer panache,

the slight wince in his blue eyes

at the thud of yet another disappointment.

Damaris West lives near the sea in Scotland. Her poetry has appeared widely in such publications as Snakeskin, The Lake, Dreich, Blue Unicorn, Ink, Sweat & Tears, and The Friday Poem, and has been placed in several competitions. Her debut pamphlet is due to appear next year with Yaffle Press. damariswest.site123.me

Gloria Heffernan: Good News is No News

Eight billion people woke up

on Earth this morning.

Of those, let’s make

a conservative estimate

that 80 million of them—

let’s call them something catchy

like, “the one percent” –

did something wonderful.

 

Some planted trees.

Some taught children to read.

Some baked bread.

Some prayed for peace.

Some performed brain surgery.

Some even wrote poems.

 

You may want more specific

details – the who what, when,

where, why and how.

But I can’t answer those questions

because stories like that, well, 

they just don’t sell newspapers.

 

They are simply the stories you

have to search for on your own,

because they’re the stories

that make all the news

that’s fit to print,

bearable.

Gloria Heffernan’s Exploring Poetry of Presence (Back Porch Productions) won the CNY Book Award for Nonfiction. Her collection Fused will be published by Shanti Arts Books in 2025. She wrote the collections, What the Gratitude List Said to the Bucket List, (NYQ Books) and Peregrinatio: Poems for Antarctica (Kelsay Books).

William Derge: Stuck

Teenage ingenue,

poodle skirt and pony tail,

fallen into the web of a giant spider.

The type of movie we used

as an acceptable excuse to heavy pet.

Anyone who cared, maybe

one or two, knew she’d get through

in time, saved not by her boyfriend,

way too cool, and dumb as a brick,

but by the high school science teacher,

a Christ figure in a cardigan, whose gift

of omniscience could calculate

the exact amount of DDT it takes

to stun a spider the size of your house.

He’ll get her out. And Mother,

lacey apron, pearls, and heels, will  

forgive her for crawling into that

cave to look for Dad, as long as she    

does all her homework and goes

straight to bed. Don’t worry about Dad.

He’ll be back when his bender wears off.

Outside, the spider’s on the loose,

the pesticide’s all worn off—

So much for science and omniscience— 

The sheriff issues some fatherly advice,

Shelter in Place, though

real estate values are falling fast

under eight hairy legs.

The price for taking risks isn’t

falling into a sticky net;

it’s the humiliation of having to be rescued 

through the combined efforts of

every Tom, Dick, and Fred in town,

firemen, policemen, power workers 

and Terminix.  They’re in cahoots

to restore the community

to its God-given state of normalcy. 

In the end,

she’ll graduate cum laude

and marry her boyfriend—

dumb as he is—

He’ll take over his father’s 

Maytag distributorship,

They’ll have a mess of kids.

and forget all about

the big arachnid, and Dad,

dead, sucked dry in the cave.

William Derge’s poems have appeared in Negative Capability, The Bridge, Artful Dodge, Bellingham Review, and many other publications. He is the winner of the $1000 2010 Knightsbridge Prize judged by Donald Hall and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is a winner of the Rainmaker Award judged by Marge Piercy. 

Stephanie Ross: Epitastic

after Mary Oliver’s The Sun

 

slide out of blackness

        slip into greyness

        away from nimbostratus

but not quite there yet

        saunter into rising hills

        away from drifting fog 

but not quite seeing the crest

        skip along that mountain ridge

        toward the viewpoint

but not quite there yet

        glide into sunshine

        toward that epitastic vision

but not quite feeling that peak

        until Shen and Universe coalesce

        expanding your clarity

        that fantastic epiphany 

        under your skin

Stephanie Ross (she/her) is a Ren Xue Yuan Qigong teacher and Vancouver Island poet. Her writing has appeared in Surging Tide, Passionfruit Review, RXA Qiblog, Quail Bell, Roses & Wildflowers, and The 2023 Poetry Marathon Anthology. Her life cultivation practice inspires her writing. Connect with her: www.stephanierossauthor.com

J.K. Durick: Banking

It’s all a matter of

accounts and cards

checking and savings

credit and debit

numbers in

and numbers out.

It’s almost like magic

entries appearing

and vanishing

earnings, spending,

spending, spent,

never enough,

never too much.

There’s a running

total online and

a paper summary

once a month

if you request it.

There isn’t a fat wallet

waiting for you

or a pocketful of change.

This is banking

direct deposit, online bills

quietly paid

money becomes

almost invisible, weightless

pending today and

it will be gone tomorrow.

J.K. Durick is a retired teacher, taught for years at Trinity College of Vermont and after that for many years at the Community College of Vermont. He and a friend started following the pandemic by writing a poem for every day – "we now have run out of pandemic and have written 1629 and plan to continue till we run out."

Marguerite Doyle: Bag of Cats

Sam’s folks were always going at each

other, but her father was like an uncle

to me; good fun, a kind of hero.

One hot summer we drove to a fair

and he won the big plush toys

and gave them to us like trophies.

Simon and Garfunkel sang Bridge

Over Troubled Waters

on the radio, and I wound down

the window while they argued.

Between the static I heard a sound,

low and soft. We stopped

and I stepped on wet leaves

and caught him up, just as he flung

the rock-filled sack in the river,

where the current was strongest.

I can still see the arc it made

in the air, the thud,

the flow of the river snatching it.

Going home he smoked a Marlboro

and bought more ice-cream for us.

Marguerite Doyle's publication credits include The Storms, The Honest Ulsterman, Skylight 47, The Wexford Bohemian and The Waxed Lemon. In 2024 she was the winner of the Mill Cove Gallery's Poets Meet Painters Competition. Marguerite lives in Dublin.

Jean O'Brien: The Year I Turned Fifteen

When I placed my eight-year-old hand

over the painted wood, I felt

and heard the deep thrum of the hive,

the bees were about their business.

Grandmother’s garden was peopled

with hollyhocks that grew higher

than my shoulders. I pushed a path

through their silent, scentless bells

and came to where the bees were boxed.

I listened to the drowsy stir

of an engine idling as

the hive settled for the evening,

and saw late stragglers, legs swollen

with pollen as they flew home.

They never stung.

She would tell me to go in as the blue sky

turned navy, while she talked to the bees

telling them her news, counting off

on her fingers, who had died, who been born,

about her troubled daughter,

and whose harvest was lost.

Grandmother died the year I turned

fifteen, she was old and ill,

no longer running her fingers in a trill over

the piano keys, no longer attending the hive.

That year I shot up past the hollyhocks,

and that same summer

a handful of pills killed my mother.

And I started telling the bees.

 

In Celtic mythology there was a custom of ‘telling the bees’ who would pass on messages to people who had died.

[Previously published in Stars Burn Regardless, reproduced with permission from Salmon Publishing.]

Jean O'Brien has published 6 collections of poetry with Salmon Publishing Ireland, her latest being Stars Burn Regardless in 2022. She has won prizes for her work and tutors in creative writing/poetry in places such as the IWC (Irish Writers' Centre) and at Post Graduate level. www.jeanobrienpoet.ie

Jean L. Kreiling: The Full Moon and the Lighthouse

The full moon boasts that it delivers all
the night-time brilliance anyone might need;
impersonating daylight, its beams fall
on seekers crossing sea and land, who read
their route or fortune in once-monthly splendor.
The lighthouse blinks its eye, tonight redundant
though steadfast as a chivalrous defender;   
with moonglow so unblinking and abundant,
its man-made flash looks pale.  But it maintains
the rhythm of a song Sirens might sing,
and punctuates the tide’s moon-governed gains
and losses. Winking at its glimmering
competitor, the lighthouse waits its turn;
one night its faithful light alone will burn.

Jean L. Kreiling is the author of three collections of poems; her fourth will be published in late 2024.  Her work has been awarded the Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Prize, the Rhina Espaillat Poetry Prize, and the Frost Farm Prize, among other honours; she lives on the coast of Massachusetts.