Ruth Bavetta: The Hours of the Heated Day

Light that pulls itself against the leaning pine,

aligns itself with uninvited air.

My broken toe, my torn shirt,

my asymmetrical heartstrands twisting awry.

The porch stairs drawn up in sorrow,

stained by the invisible fingers of remorse.

Guardians of paths untaken, prayers against air,

and the ache of forgotten years.

Wind bends before the scent of geraniums

and the yeast of unmade bread. 

The dreams that were never there, the pennies

never spent, the pockets empty of surprise.

A ferret tunnels through the door, seeking

sanctuary inside the darkest closet, trembling

like a planet fallen out of orbit.

My footfalls in the unswept dust,

my hair caught in parentheses,

my lust for watches that run backwards.

Ruth Bavetta’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Nimrod, North American Review, Slant, Nerve Cowboy, Atlanta Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She likes the light on November afternoons, the music of Stravinsky, the smell of the ocean. She hates pretence, prejudice, and sauerkraut.

Frank Haberle: Gas Man Warned Us

Gas man told us not to walk out on the flats

At low tide because "every year we lose a visitor

Out there by the bend, they get all mesmerized

I guess when the water rushes out and that sand,

It glimmers like toothpaste, what with the mountains

All snowy in a ring round the bay, the sparkles

Shining in the still water puddles, the glass-lookey rocks

And the sea-plant glimmer green, they can’t help it.

They don’t know but we know, we know when the tide shifts

And starts coming in and you better get up quick

Because the thing is it ain’t the sand, it’s the mud

Beneath the sand and it sucks down your feet and that’s it man,

The tides rise eight feet and think of it, think of it;

They try to rescue them but they end up pulling

On limp arms. It’s like that. There’s a sign there.

Read the sign." Gas man told us this while pouring gas

From a faucet at the end of a rusting drum, then pouring

That gasoline into our car with a watering can. 

It was five bucks to fill it, it was always five bucks.

He took the bills and without looking at me,

Walked over to the beat-up diner with the picture window,

Ordered two cans of beer and sat there staring out

At the flats. We drove on following the mud road

Around the last arm and that’s where the wind first hit;

We pulled up onto a rise and the old Datsun, bald-tired,

Groaned itself asleep while we rushed to get the tent up,

Slapping fly and tent poles we buckled in as it rolled

Like a giant log, like a runaway pack of horse,

White foam and splashing, a brown surge of sea,

Wrapping around our bare little knoll, 

Dancing and laughing at all the terror it brought.

Frank Haberle is the author of two books: Shufflers (Flexible Press, Minneapolis, September 2021), a story of transients moving through minimum-wage jobs in the 1980s; and Downlanders (Flexible Press, November 2023), following five lost souls into a fictional wilderness. www.frankhaberle.com

Paul Edward Costa: Me Against Me, You Against You

I wonder if minds other than my own

occasionally consider

what exact moves they’d use

                  to beat the ever-living hell

                  out of their younger selves:

jabs, crosses,

hooks, uppercuts,

body shots, leg locks,

neck cranks, soccer kicks,

or hammer fists,

in some technical knockout

from combinations

           where God’s ref has to step in,

wave their arms and say,

That’s it, they’ve had enough;

this new version of you wins.

Paul Edward Costa (he/him) is a poet who directs Toronto's Outer Haven Poetry series and is a former Poet Laureate for Mississauga. He's published in many journals and has released books with Mosaic Press and DarkWinter Press. He has featured at multiple poetry events across Canada. www.instagram.com/paul.edward.costa

Meg Pokrass: Swimming Pool Boys

Easier to live in the shade with our dogs

than beneath the sun with the boys.

To sit in the sun and feel our skin crinkle.

Feel what it would be like to be old

and dappled by time, or

sad and alone like our mothers.

Boys clumped around swimming pools

with their haunted eyes, lolling their

white-coated tongues like cows,

stared at our nipples as if they had entered

a strange new living room.

These are mine, we learned to say

to the animals who lived in the sun.

Meg Pokrass is an expat American writer living in the Scottish Highlands. A two-time winner of the Blue Light Book Award, her work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including New England Review, Electric Literature, Five Points, waxwing, Plume, RATTLE,  Atrium, Cottonmouth, Unbroken and elsewhere. 

Irma Kurti: Petals

Tell me, did you touch these palm trees, Dad?

Did you look at the immense field of lilies?

Did you stop for an instant with the camera

in your hand to stare at the slice of sea that

appears in the space between the buildings?

Did you think of me in that instant, just as

you are now my fixed thought? Did you

marvel at the peace of the green trees? Did

you try to decipher at dawn the rustling of

leaves?

I gather fallen leaves from the ground and

hold flower petals in my hands. They are

the few and rare memories left from your

walks then.

Irma Kurti is a poet, writer, lyricist, journalist, and translator. She is a naturalized Italian and lives in Bergamo, Italy. Kurti has published 119 works, including books of poetry, fiction, and translations. She is one of the most translated and published Albanian poets. Her books have been published in 24 countries

Phil Wood: Snail Trails in the Rockery

Eyes, located on tentacles,

see light and dark, shadow.

No colour flowers their world,

no focus to see the details.

And yet the lower tentacles...

Touch will navigate their quest.

Crevices to cross, mountains

to ascend, moist leaves delight.

Intimacy is filigreed in silver.

Am I to resent their success?

Phil Wood was born in Wales. His lifestyle interests include learning German, watercolour painting, and chess. 

Holly Day: Da Capo

He’s too afraid to name the storm clouds

building up behind her eyes: it’s another migraine, it’s not,

it’s something worse, and they won’t give it a name,

this feeling, even with the ease

that classifying dangerous things sometimes brings.

Even with a name, it’s still cancer rotting her out,

even with a name, it’s hard to talk about

like an unwanted pregnancy, like an impending abortion,

like a dog you have to get rid of. If only they could talk about it,

if only we could talk about it, if, if. If.

Your hand brushes the spot in my breast

where the lump can’t be removed, the knot

that wells up bigger than our future, bigger than the two of us

could ever be together. In your sleep, you whimper

as your wrap your palm around my poisonous breast, pull me close;

this is as close as we will ever be

from this point on.

Holly Day’s writing has recently appeared in The NoSleep podcast, Talking River, and New Plains Review, and her published books include Music Theory for Dummies and Music Composition for Dummies. She currently teaches classes at The Loft Literary Center in  Minnesota, Hugo House in Washington, and the Indiana Writers Center.