Monday, 16 June 2025

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

Friday, 13 June 2025

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

Wednesday, 11 June 2025

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.

Monday, 9 June 2025

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.

Friday, 6 June 2025

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).

Wednesday, 4 June 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.

Monday, 2 June 2025

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.

Wednesday, 28 May 2025

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.

Monday, 26 May 2025

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.

Friday, 23 May 2025

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).