Terri Kirby Erickson: When My Father Died in Hospice

The mortician who came for my father was too big

for his suit. Young and fit, the muscles

in his arms bulged beneath the fabric like beans

inside their pods. The top of his head was glossy

as a waxed apple, his expression grave.

This is a solemn moment, after all, the removal

of the dead. Please be gentle, I told him as he lifted

my father’s still-warm body as if he was lighter

than a sleeping child. I promise you, he said,

we’ll take care of him like family, and I believed

him. Mercifully, I’ve lost the memory of my

dad being sealed like a letter in that body-sized bag,

though I tell myself he didn’t know it and wasn’t

afraid. But my father never liked feeling closed in.

So I kept my hand on the gurney

as we rolled down the long hallway of rooms where

thousands of loved ones have died—watched

as this sombre young man slid Dad’s body

into a hearse as easy as air leaving a lung, then drive

slowly away—until there was nothing left to see

of my father but the future without him.

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven collections of poetry, including A Sun Inside My Chest (Press 53), winner of the International Book Award for Poetry. Her work has won numerous awards and has appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, ONE ART, Rattle, The SUN, and many other publications.

Adam Beardsworth : The Poet in His Youth

We set sail on a barf bucket with vinyl

seats because I'd read a book about

loneliness and wanted to check the address,

and you were not otherwise indisposed,

checked in at the Compass Rose which

in hindsight seems an apt portent for

wayward youth except in every direction

it pointed to bedspreads crocheted with

seaweed, to a convenience store/Pizza

Shack combo, to drunk teens popping

wheelies on ATVs, to the ocean pinching

the island's chubby cheeks. So naturally

I wriggled away like a kid from a fat aunt,

drove us to the end of the island where

we were figures in a Friedrich painting

watching the sunset as finbacks spread

across the water like the path of a skipped

stone, and I thought that must be the way

to the real island. I will follow it home.

Adam Beardsworth is the author of No Place Like (Gaspereau, 2023) and the critical book Confessional Poetry in the Cold War (Palgrave 2022). He is the general editor of Horseshoe Literary Magazine, and teaches literature at Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Grenfell Campus.

Christopher Woods: in the old days

we travelled by foot,

horse and wagon,

waiting for a promise

of great machines

to deliver us

into the future.

 

the machines came,

too many of them,

each with problems

and a price.

the air turned foul

and the sky unnatural.

 

long ago,

when I was a kid,

we watched the ghost trains

carrying the last of the dinosaurs.

they came to our town

once a year or so.

 

now the trains pass through

empty towns and cities

once a year or so

carrying relics of humans

no one is left

alive to see.

Christopher Woods is a writer and photographer who lives in Texas. His monologues have been performed most recently at Equity Library Theatre in NYC, The Invisible Theatre in Tucson and the Pro English Theatre in Kiev, Ukraine. Gallery: christopherwoods.zenfolio.com/f861509283

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.