Monday, 22 September 2025

Brian O'Sullivan: Song in the Aftermath

After "Never Let Me Go", a painting by Jenifer Follman


There is a bard at the end of the world
who is made of sand that swirls and swirls,
out there at the lonely beach at time’s end.
He plays a song that none can ken—
this bard at the end of the world.
I thought of him when your flag unfurled
over my land of tears and peril—
may my wailing not offend
the bard at the end of the world.
And when all the yarn of the fates has been twirled,
may all the spears and arrows we’ve hurled
dissolve in the song of foe and friend,
in the cordial sand that must ascend—
the song at the end of the world.


Brian O'Sullivan teaches literature and rhetoric at St. Mary's College of Maryland. His poems have appeared in Rattle, HOWL New Irish Writing, ONE ART, contemporary haibun online and other journals. 

Friday, 19 September 2025

B.A. Brittingham: Tenacity #2

for Lorraine Oman Hanover


On the receding back porch (where I no
longer go for fear of falling through) sits
a plastic pot from my gardening days. It
has long been allowed to go its own way,
absorbing any and all manner of naughty
Feral seeds blown upon it by the wild winds
of Michigan. But this year, after the passing
of the autumnal equinox, when the hours of
daylight were quickly ebbing away and
the balance of this season’s blooms were on
a flight path to dishevelment, I saw what
could only be described as the last hurrah of
warm weather: a defiant, small white trumpet
shaped flower. A morning glory? Where there
had been only a strange green item growing
all summer (sans any bud) there came a solitary
blossom as though waving a colourless
handkerchief at the departing season.

A smile and sadness rendered all at once.


B.A. Brittingham writes both poetry and fiction. She has published three novels and two chapbooks. Poetry has appeared in Kitchen Sink Magazine, the ocean waves, Words for the Earth, the Crone’s Words, Green Shoe Sanctuary, Halcyon Days, The Emblazoned Soul Literary Review, Dear You-Poems Through the Heart, Culture Cult, About Time Anthology, and The Writers’ Journal.

Thursday, 18 September 2025

Leonore Wilson: Soft Gesture

He drew me to him gingerly
telling me to walk as if I were a doe
leaving only ink drops of hoof marks;
the air in late November crisp, smooth,
a tea-coloured loveliness, and he was kneeling
as if in blessing to the small mound
of duff and matter, the leaves of madrone
and oak filtering the dawn shingles of mist;
there he brushed the deep sea
of dirt away like the oldest mystery,
as if not to awake pain, as if apologetic
or assuaging guilt; and since I knew
that he was out looking for wild mushrooms
I had anticipated a palpable find,
but there was a calm befitting
the most sublimated spirit—an ancient
dome prophetic as those of Eastern cathedrals—
and the creature was resting, its eyes
somewhere lost in its girdled skin,
its shell carved amazingly by wind and age,
as the hawk cry was heard
near the grove’s threshold, so then he immediately
covered up the beast who had forged
its own grave, temporary tomb,
as he had done for me
so often in those early hours
before leaving for work—
scooting the blankets back
over my head, his wife assailed by
her familiar depression, hibernating
each morning from the effulgence of light.


Leonore Wilson is a college English and creative writing instructor from Northern California. She is on the MFA Board at St Mary's College of California. Her work has been featured in such places as Quarterly West, Third Coast, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Taos Poetry Review, and Poets Against the War.

Wednesday, 17 September 2025

Elle Becker: Unfinished

You were on page 72.
I tried to read it for you but
I couldn't get past that dog-eared page.
Plus your clothes were still in the dryer.
I couldn't wash them again for a long time after that no matter
how much I wore them.
There’s a hair on the soap in the shower,
how could your hair be there when you're gone?
Then there’s your toothbrush.
It was brand new, and everyone knows you keep a toothbrush
for three months, so how could a toothbrush
outlive you?
I can't understand
why you didn't fix the towel rack,
the one that we knocked down when
we made love up against the wall and
after we finished
you started your new book but
you only got to page 72.


Elle Becker is a writer and speaker. Published in Prevention magazine, ACPA’s The Chronicle, Five on the Fifth, Twenty-Two Twenty-Eight, The Mighty, and other literary publications. She writes essays, humour, poetry, articles, and fiction. She loves all dogs, good books, cheese, and nice humans, in that order.

Wednesday, 10 September 2025

Bruce McRae: What Makes The Forest Dark?

 We do.
We make the forest dark,
a child crying for her mother,
wolves singing of their loneliness,
owls asking their impertinent question.

We imagine a forest, and there it is,
an ocean of trees, the little girl shivering
as another darkness falls, another winter evening.

We make a fire out of moss and sticks
and this casts no light or shadow.
We stumble over ourselves in a dream,
babes in the woods, runaway children,
all kinds of seven darknesses
shading the trail and hushing the fire.

We invent a forest in our image,
a doe made drunk on wilderness,
a bear in the comforts of a growl,
the first stars showing through the branches,
the little girl a character in a storybook,
a tale of the unspoken and unthinkable.

A jagged moon rises in our mind.
Because we say it is so, it is so,
voices in the distance calling a name.
The child asleep, she does not answer.


Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with poems published
in hundreds of magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. The winner 
of the 2020 Libretto prize and author of four poetry collections and seven chapbooks, his next book,
'Boxing In The Bone Orchard' is coming out in the Spring of 2025 via Frontenac House.

Monday, 8 September 2025

Bella Melardi: Bedsheets

I’m allowed to make love with my bedsheets
The mattress the earth
The outline of my body the horizon line
That bleeds into my fleshy sky

Maybe it’s the bed roots
That cut into my skin
Or maybe it’s the world
Telling me I have to get up

But when you’re sick
Oh when you’re sick
Sometimes the bed
Is what you need

Don’t let the world tell you
You can’t rest
Because resting is being human


Bella Melardi is a poet and author. She attends OCAD University. She writes about social justice issues and mental health.

Friday, 5 September 2025

Elana Wolff: Sea Level

Now for the first time we see the grey waves of the North Sea
slapping the distance beyond the ship, the sound, if you will,
of slate. God in the fog and listing, the misting mime-

white horizon and sheep. Rubbing their wool-thick
shoulders with others on the slopes at Nordfjord.
Touch one, says the man, and be switched.

There’s nothing wretched in being anonymous,
nothing disgraceful in being, as speedwell,
just one of a low-rising other. The long straight light-

lines curve, the waves send no lone gull up,
no puffin. The vista’s complicit, ice-
water a primer—a leveller, says the man. The lower I am,

the truer my place. We gather on the upper deck at midnight,
tip our faces skyward—waiting to be amazed
by solar wind & swirling shimmer.


Elana Wolff writes from the ancestral land of the Haudenosaunee and Huron-Wendat First Nations in Ontario, Canada. Her Kafka-quest work, Faithfully Seeking Franz, received the 2024 Canadian Jewish Literary Award in the category of Jewish Thought and Culture. Her poetry collection, Everybody Knows a Ghost, is forthcoming in 2026.

Wednesday, 3 September 2025

Israel Allen: Skyline Drive, Fall

Brown leaves warble
across the blacktop,
crackling like the voices
of an elderly choir,
Scottish hymns
breaking in their throats.

Grey oaks drone
a Highlands dirge,
chords shaped by the bowing
of branch on trunk,
limbs too bare to rustle.

Cool wind whistles,
like the lonesome kestrel,
lamenting another autumn,
the earth once again
falling out with the sun.


Israel Allen writes and teaches poetry, fiction, and drama. His work includes the plays Ask Me Anything and The Emerald Heist and the novels Ian Baker’s .45 and Bibles and Ball Bats (writing as Chris Allen).

Monday, 1 September 2025

Rebecca Clifford: Fin

This’ll be the end.
I can see it coming.
Like those camphor-scented spinsters in the cinema
who make you mad
fumbling for gloves
elbowing themselves into coats,
buttoning up –
Such a final snapping shut of handbags
the moment it’s all over but the change of mood and music.

So you demand response, do you?
Right to the bitter end, you like to see the credits roll?

I’m off.


Rebecca Clifford's poetry and prose appear in Canadian and international anthologies and e-zines. She lives in rural Ontario, gardens with intention and a backhoe, planting as many sunflowers as the ground will hold.  She is supported in her endeavours by her long-suffering husband and a disdainful cat of questionable parentage.