Ashton Hicks: The Strength to Surrender

I used to be the wave.

The wave

that thought rising

was my strength.

I’d build myself up,

pulled by the moon —

swelling,

aching,

just to hold on a little longer.

A wave 

can only be 

a wave 

for so long

before it collapses

under its own weight.

It surrenders.

Crashes,

and becomes still water 

once again.

Is letting go the same as giving up?

This crash —

It’s not defeat.

It’s arrival.

Ashton Hicks is a writer and film photographer based in Chicago, IL, whose work centres on the beauty of the everyday and the art of noticing

Jacqueline Jules: Guard at the Gate

In my mind, there’s a guard

at the gate wearing a tall fur hat

and a thick strap on his chin.

Unsmiling, he raises his hand

and warns me not to pass,

to turn around before I see

empty slippers in the closet.

To keep the TV silent rather than watch

the next season of the series we loved.

To leave our favorite ice cream in the freezer.

Like Buckingham Palace,

there’s a guard blocking entry

to a large ornate building

with many beautiful rooms

I’m not ready to visit again.

Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021), Itzhak Perlman's Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press, and Smoke at the Pentagon: Poems to Remember (Bushel & Peck, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in over 100 journals. Visit her online at www.jacquelinejules.com

Michael Penny: My Refrigerator

My refrigerator gets too full

with ambitious recipes

and my fear of running out.

 

Fruit piles on butter

and wine lays down cool,

all ready as eggs to use.

 

I plan meal systems

and clear the shelves 

for cleaning and order

 

in life and provision,

until the next supermarket 

hunt and gather.

 

My packed fridge lives

for diminishment, 

a life of full and using up

Michael Penny was born in Australia but his family moved him to Canada when he was a teenager. Since then he has published five books and in numerous literary journals.

Harrison Fisher: Carnivorous Squirrels

Biologists were stunned in 2024

after California ground squirrels were

captured on film killing

and eating voles,

a big surprise from this cousin

of our familiar lawn-worker,

burier of acorns, not

field mice,

but I remember well

walking on my block one day

and seeing a squirrel’s flattened body

in the street,

and one

persistent crow

coming to pick at it

every time traffic cleared. 

Then, a week later, same quiet block,

I saw a crow’s body crushed

on the same stretch

of asphalt,

and a squirrel pushing down on it

with its forepaws, pulling up

black feathers and more

in its teeth.

Harrison Fisher has published twelve collections of poems, most recently Poematics of the Hyperbloody Real.  In 2025, he has new work in Amsterdam Review, eMerge, Metachrosis, Panoplyzine, Trampoline, Uppagus, and several other magazines.

rob mclennan: from 'Fair bodies of unseen prose,'

and years bent over a horizontally placed womb.

 

Practice, if you could. Land, worthy. A vanished garden. Secret. Simultaneous, as were. As if. As then. Though problems. Arise, inflection. Then. Across the Atlantic, finally. Across the St. Lawrence. Across the Ottawa, Rideau, Castor. Raisin. Every torso of water. Every limb. What, to complete. The moment, born and scathing. Wet, heart. A body of blood. You do not wish to. Quiet, and the lung’s deep. Disregarded. Airport, shuttle. Let me know. No logical objection, I can muster. Stand in plain sight.

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. His most recent titles include On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024), the poetry collections Snow day (Spuyten Duyvil, 2025) and the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025).

Jacquie Bryson: Bloods

We appreciate the gestures: the orange and fuchsia

Chairs, the free tea, arm touches of soft solidarity.

Once we saw a woman sob into her mother’s arms while

The room dropped its head in courteous, paperback calm.

I whisper, ‘Silver fox!’ just to see him half laugh then turn                         

To me.  I see our sons in his eyes. We scan the clinic

For people we recognise or can build stories upon

As we all await the benevolent taking of bloods.

Today the consultant is hesitant.  To paraphrase:

The chemo could kill him.  The cancer will kill him. In time.

Her words cut kindly.  They’re running out of plans.  We understand

That the medical team will reconvene after more scans.

 

While waiting, he will seek God’s voice in the mountains

While I will listen through birdsong prayer at dawn and at dusk.

We will attune to the earth’s groaning, green liturgy,

Waltzing twirls in the kitchen to our first dance melody.

Jacquie Bryson lives in the hills outside Belfast with her family.  She has worked in education and community relations.  She began writing poetry during lockdown and has been published in A New Ulster and Poem Alone.

Howie Good: Factory

My mom almost gave birth to me

in the backseat of a taxi on the way

to the hospital. My dad, per usual,

was at work. He worked in the factory

six days a week, 10, 12 hours a day,

throughout my growing up. He was

at work when I got up to go to school

and still not home when I went to bed.

Although he lived to be 96, he would

remain a stranger to me. There are people –

you may even know some – who think

that what can’t be easily understood

isn’t worth the effort to understand.

Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose poetry collections include The Dark and Akimbo, available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher. Sacred Parasite is scheduled to publish his newest collection, Dead Heroes, in 2026.

Jean L. Kreiling: Musicians of Spain

i. The Dulcimer Player (Toledo)

 

The tune, unknown to me, must have been old—

its phrases answering each other neatly,

its contours those of well-known stories told

with native confidence. She was completely

absorbed in it, seemed unaware of those

who paused to listen, her eyes on the strings

from which she plucked bright highs and dulcet lows

as piously as priest or cantor sings.

The grand cathedral only steps away

held precious crosses, statues, mysteries;

her poor man's harp moved some of us to pray

with gratitude for earthly victories.

And some heard solace, lilting antidotes

for grief, in her devoutly summoned notes.

 

 

ii. The Street Violinist (Madrid)

 

You don’t make much dinero there, she said,

with vino-tinto-slurred exasperation,

but he picked up the small black case and fled

toward downtown—and not much remuneration.

He knew that if he played there for a while,

the passers-by would listen, gratefully,

and some of them would nod or leave a smile

along with coins, and then just let him be.

They wouldn't see the flaws that she deplored—

his lack of wit and shrewdness and ambition;

there on the street he might not be adored,

but he'd be heard, and thanked without condition.

Years past the last time love lit up her face,

he finds more warmth outside the tapas place.

 

 

iii. The Guitarist (The Albaicín, Granada)

 

At dusk, just through that keyhole arch, he stands,

head bowed and back against the wall—alone,

but not quite: wood and string in his strong hands

respond to his embrace with blood-warm tone.

And now the evening knows how to begin:

the air can cool and learn again to float,

the fading sun can yield to its mild twin,

and calm can reclaim souls with every note.

The man plays Spanish music—heart-bent sighs

that fill the gaps between the cobblestones

and soften whitewashed walls and fill some eyes

with grateful tears and settle some tired bones.

The man just through that keyhole arch unseals

the secrets with which evening soothes and heals.

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

Cheryl Snell: Genealogy

The sofa in the funeral parlour

breaks away and I am a bird

forever blinking in the gloom.

At this banquet of death, I eat

the endings of my ancestors.

Their toxic genes garble my cells,

my misaligned synapses. Their ends

are keys to my beginning: brain bleeds

and disorganized hips ambling down

through generations. If you read

my cards, you’d stop believing in luck. 

It’s one way to hide from the truth─

there are no good deaths in this family.

My grandfather’s naked body sent

to one wife by the other, my sister

too contagious to kiss goodbye.

Cheryl Snell’s books include several poetry collections and novels. Her most recent writing has or will appear in Flash Boulevard, 100 Word Story, Bending Genres, On the Seawall, Midway, Blue Unicorn, and the Best Microfiction 2025 anthology. A classical pianist, she lives in Maryland with her husband, a mathematical engineer.

Jackie Chou: Far From the Balcony Gate

I had to get away 

though I knew 

you wanted me to stay

You don't know how

the jangle of your keys

makes me flinch 

Or the clang of your heels

heavy like a stone bell's toll 

My tongue freezes 

at the tip of a hello 

And I dream of becoming 

the shrinking dot

of a raven in the sky

Jackie Chou is a poet from Southern California. Her poems have 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).