Diane Webster: Cliff Ledge Talk

You say, “Trust me.” I say, “Why?” You say,

“I have something to show you.” The whisper

of a waterfall echoes between your gaping edges.

“You’ll be amazed by how pretty it looks,” you say.

I step closer, still not far enough to catch a glimpse

of water tumbling down an eroded chute; a waterfall

plunging for decades through a path of least resistance

to carve the cliff apart from its other side.  You say,

“Come on. You’ll be safe. I won’t let you down.”

I study each footstep and so far, you’re right. Two feet

away from the edge I lean forward and catch the moment

of fall as water slides over. Two swallows jet from below

and whoosh over my head like pilots wanting to wow

the air-show crowd. And like the crowd I turn my head

to watch their departure and almost applaud their speed.

A spray of water sprinkles my face like a butterfly landing

briefly to see if I am a tasty flower. I remember Dad

holding me over the dam so I could look into the reservoir.

My stomach clenches. Vertigo wobbles my vision. I step

backward. My boot slides on loose cliff rock, and someone

grabs my foot. Like if I descended stairs to a blackened

basement and halfway down a hand under the stairs darts

out and pulls my momentum forward, down, a thumping fall.

But my hand clenches a stunted tree gnarling growth from a crack

on the cliff. My feet bicycle in open air. Dirt kicks up around

me, envelops me like a piss poor attempt at a smoke signal

imploring help, rescue, a save-the-day hand. Another and another

sheet of ledge slips from my hand and cascades down. Crash!

Smash! Thump! Then silence like the bottom is nowhere near.

The gash in the rock smiles. “You’ll be safe with me,” you say.

You relax, and the tree’s roots wiggle free from their search for dirt.

I fall, holding the tree like Lady Liberty holding her torch, but no

one sees. Should I die before I bone-crunch on the rubble below

and blow like a leaf into the water turmoil? Snatched into

a whirlpool and snagged on jagged cliff pieces. Forever staring

at the cliff ledge jutting out farther. “All the better to see you

with, my dear.” “You bastard!” as I fall until I fall no longer.

Diane Webster's work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One and other literary magazines. Five micro-chaps have been published by Origami Poetry Press. She was a featured writer in Macrame Literary Journal and WestWard Quarterly. Her website is: www.dianewebster.com

Russell Dupont: A Diagnosis

At this point, I can’t say

how long ago it was

when the doctor hinted

that, slowly, I was dying.

Hell, aren’t we all?

I thought. The body fails.

The heart stops

The soul drifts away.

His words,

“meandering 

towards

treatment . . .

stage II, 

stage III, 

stage IV,”

were a blur,

followed 

by months

of intrusions

that left

my right arm,

at the elbow’s bend,

dark and bruised,

like a Blues song

where deep purple

fades to a sad grey.

A lot

of years

have passed

and here I am,

still on the road,

heading for the

inevitable —

whatever colour

that may be.

Russell Dupont is the author of three novels; a short story collection; two collections of poetry and four chapbooks. His work has been published in numerous journals. He is also an artist whose works are in both public and private collections.

Owen Gallagher: Conscience Money

We stand in a doorway 

opposite a bakery, 

two boys, thin as breadsticks.

Our brains soft as dough.

‘You go first!’ ‘No! You go!’ 

We wait till the bakery clears 

of mothers who might wallop us

with their tongues.

Then goad each other

as to who’ll grab the cash 

in the till, who’ll bag 

the cakes and buns. 

Sixty years have passed, Gerry,

and we haven’t set eyes 

on each other since.

But we’re still bound 

like flour and water.

Today, I heard you had died

and I was back in the doorway. 

‘It’s your turn. Go!’ 

   I enter the bakery and leave 

      a twenty-pound note. 

Owen Gallagher's current collection ‘Clydebuilt,’ Smokestack Books, was shortlisted for the Scottish Poetry Book of the Year, 2021.

Michael Minassian: Cinéma Vérité

This morning, I look out my window

and think I see an old girlfriend

standing under a tree holding a gun.

Then realize it was the next-door neighbor

watering her lawn, aiming the nozzle

of the hose in my direction.

My ex, a psychiatric nurse, liked

to take a silver-plated pistol

out of her purse before we went to bed.

After I saw her for the last time,

she turned up at a friend’s wedding

and threatened to shoot her former husband.

Even though I felt sorry for her,

I didn’t want the added drama.

Let her be in someone else’s movie,

I thought, but often wonder

what happened to her, self-destructive,

unhappy, drinking wine at nine

in the morning when she gets home

from her night shift, her patients

still asleep in the cinema of her pain.

Michael Minassian is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual, His poetry collections Time is Not a River, Morning Calm, A Matter of Timing and Jack Pays a Visit, are all available on Amazon. His collection 1000 Pieces of Time was released October, 2025 by Sheila-Na-Gig. 

https://michaelminassian.com

Gus Peterson: Love Poem for the Terminally Online

I hearts. 

I likes like love, 

love instead of like 

whenever it’s allowed. 

I refresh. I feed. I watch 

the aortic, the ventricular, 

the four chambered all 

of it lift like a spark out

from under my thumb. 

I feed. I refresh. I block. 

I am needy, not a fool. 

No one like that has ever

requested the likes of 

me. Hashtag duck lips. 

Hashtag tropical setting, 

living your best bronzed

beach life. Still, I check. 

It’s a fact we’re never truly 

alone. That love can be

emoji-less, a secret admirer

construction cut from 

the most bloodshot paper, 

slipped onto your desk

some grey February day

after recess. Oh, my heart. 

Oh, scroll on. How, for weeks 

after in the halls, on the playground, 

I looked for clues. No google. 

No metaverse to guide. 

Only that programmed language 

of kindness. Its everlasting 

encryption. God, feed what’s left of me 

into the algorithm. Feed what’s left 

until this so-called world drowns 

beneath the red wave of 

its longing. 

Gus Peterson lives and writes in Maine. His work is forthcoming with Prairie Schooner, Hole in the Head Review, and locally. He decompresses by co-hosting a monthly poetry salon at his favourite bread/bookstore. His first book, Male Pattern, was published in 2025 by Finishing Line Press. 

Ojo Olumide Emmanuel: Shards

Bruises are measured with the pinch of a finger.

i crave your voice & a morgue came.

i have unearthed my heart for you

i search my ears for the last beep of your voice, your laugh.

this world is strange, but what's more strange is

how each passing moment drowns you in an elusive frenzy

of what could have worked.

i observed my feet, they ache.

ached from a journey i thought had ended.

& damning thought that what/who

you call home is only a steam in a kettle- it never stays

it leaps & distance keeps stretching itself

the first poem i wrote after you became a bird is that:

if you were a dove, you'd bear home on your back & return

but when the poem conjured an owl, i knew you had gripped

the night & night is a peevish hope-

it dribbles dawn even when it tries to flicker rays on dimples.

again, in my meditation, i saw a gale around a stream.

i was washing my weariness & i tried to hold you in my arms.

as i came nearer, you dissolved like a gust of glucose on the tongue.

i waited, stared at the nothingness you've become;

i prayed & prayed & prayed

& i went back to bathe my weariness a second time.

mum says, someday your wings will dust itself above my roof;

she exhorts that i feed my heart butter because

hope does get fat & when it is plump,

it morphs into faith. & yes, i have faith, but

i have never tried it on what's lost.

Ojo Olumide Emmanuel is a Nigerian Poet and Book Editor. He is the author of the Poetry Chapbook "How Flowers Pollinate Before the Arrival of Butterflies (Authorpaedia, 2022). He is the winner of the Nigerian Prize for Indigenous Language (Pidgin, 2025) and the WeNaija Literary Contest (Non-Fiction, 2023).

Jackie Chou: God Is the Best Timpani Player in the Universe

Circular ripples

punctuate

the wet pavement 

I open the glass door

stepping into 

the frigid air 

How quickly 

my hair dampens

in the outpouring!

I tilt toward 

my reflection 

in the puddle 

The music of rain 

has drummed

into my ears

How close 

I have come to 

tipping over

Jackie Chou is a poet from Southern California. Her work has recently appeared in Lee Herrick's Our California Project. She is the author of two collections of poetry, The Sorceress and Finding My Heart in Love and Loss (Cyberwit Press). 

May Garner: To Learn To Endure

Some things arrive without asking:

the tilt of a jaw,

the way silence settles in the chest.

I carry my family in my body –

every apology that went unspoken,

every night that taught us

how to swallow silence.

Some things arrive without asking:

the tilt of a jaw,

the way silence settles in the chest.

This is how we are passed down:

not in stories, but in what we learn

to endure.

May Garner is an author and poet residing in rural Ohio. She has been writing for nearly fifteen years and has been sharing her writing online for over a decade. She is the author of two poetry collections, Withered Rising (2023) and Melancholic Muse (2025). Find her work on Instagram (@crimson.hands).

Howie Good: AI Blues

It’s a cold, hard world – literally. The snow on the ground has crusted over. Walking the dogs or out to the car is as treacherous for someone with my old bones as wing walking in an aerial circus would be. Aging has broken me little by little, part by part, kind of like a slow-acting poison. My heart is chipped and dented, and my head crawling with monsters. No one knows the real me, including me. In the Book of Isiah an angel touches the lips of the prophet with a burning coal in a rite of purification. What can I help you with today? my AI copilot asks.

Howie Good is a widely published but little-known author.

Daniel Romo: Sequel

I’m uncertain if the man in the Target parking lot

is actually playing or if his clarinet is merely rigged

to the speaker welcoming tips and ignorance;

that’s how it goes until perception meets finality.

And when I recently sat next to my 20-something

son watching a movie about magicians, the sound-

track I played for myself was different than when

I sat next to my now 70-something dad a decade

ago and saw a movie in which a man killed a

Grizzly with only a knife and grit. These days

I’m filled with more answers than questions as

if I forgot to ask the basics such as, How was your

day, son? We either succumb to or strangle the

bears that appear before us, the way a dad shapes

or breaks a legacy with his bare hands, and at 52,

I’m only now beginning to examine the effect

my callouses have had on those whose hands

I’ve ever held. After the movie, I hugged my

son goodbye until the next time I flew in to

see him and I stepped into the center of the

subway car, my body balanced by a pole as if

propping up a man learning how to mend each

bad note he’s ever played.

Daniel Romo's latest book is American Manscape (Moon Tide Press 2026). More at danieljromo.com.