Lennie Hay: Surrender

Wetsuit. Strange name, since it keeps me dry

            and just warm enough 

                        when the gulf temperature drops to 65.

I fight my way into rubber sleeves and legs,

            wiggle to zip it up to my chin

                        until I’m a stuffed sausage.

As a child of the North I ran to the city pool

            when summer air reached 65

                        oblivious to cold needles of pain.

Water seeker needs no divining rod. This day I approach

            its acrobatics eager 

                        to merge with the vastness.

Soft surf insists. Draws me forward. Brushes ankles

            then knees, abdomen, chest—

                        I stride into its resistance.

Flexed arms pump for momentum.

            Chest-deep I follow the shoreline,

                        walk strong within its power.

Bare hands stiffen. It’s worth

            discomfort to have some skin slide

                        naked against the water.

Pelicans dive. Gulls follow.

            Revel in its pulse.

                        I join the parade.

When the wind changes, as it always does,

            aging legs and abs strain

                        against the edge of endurance.

An old woman, I portage water memory—

            Minnesota’s lakes, the broad Mississippi

                        abandoned sailboats, water skis, canoes.

Lennie Hay is a 2019 MFA graduate of Spalding University. She grew up between two cultures—Chinese immigrants and Ukrainian German farmers.  Lennie has been published in print and online journals and in two anthologies. Her book, Lost in America, will be published in June of 2024 by Broadstone Books.   

Laurie Kuntz: Husband Rebuilding the Engine

He does things like that.

Oiled bolts spread on a tarp.

In old military issue coveralls,

not camouflaging his own disasters

of stalls and spills,

nuts and springs clamor

onto the belly of the engine.

I want him to seek a mechanic,

but he needs to conquer

this jetsam and flotsam of steel.

I come out, hold the hood up,

turn the key, push the pedal to the floor.

He listens for the hum, that perfect pitch

He'll spend hours doing just this.

I call him for dinner,

I call him for a bath

I call him for love,

there is no time, but this time,

watching him under a single bulb

waiting for the motor to ignite,

rebuilding all that fails him

into something that turns over and runs.

[First appeared in the collection The Moon Over My Mother's House, and in Autumn Sky Journal.]

Laurie Kuntz’s books are: That Infinite Roar, Talking Me Off The Roof,  The Moon Over My Mother’s House,  Simple Gestures, Women at the Onsen, and Somewhere in the Telling. Nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and two BOTN Prizes, she won a Pushcart Prize in 2024.  
https://lauriekuntz.myportfolio.com/home-1

Randy Prunty: Comportment Sonnet

How

often

one

is

saved

from

confessing

ignorance

by

a

scrap

of

borrowed

fiction.

Randy Prunty lives in the SF Bay Area where he works as a bus driver. In 2022 BlazeVox published Test Camp, a collection of his poetry. Other work can be seen in Volt, Poemeleon, Fence, the tiny, and New American Writing.

Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue: Annus Horribilis

On my first date after M died, I met the woman –

a friend of a friend – and discovered we lived on

the same street in hell. This past year, her

ebbing parents' health forced her to arrange doctor appointments,

a senior living move, finally hospice,

and twin funerals. Then, wouldn't you know, in the

middle of it, her regularly scheduled breast exam

revealed The Big C – immediate chemotherapy

recommended. And, as if the woes of Job were not

enough, her doctor husband thought it the perfect time

to confess he was seeing a much younger woman.

My last year was bad enough. My wife dying after

a six months tour through hospitals/rehabs/hospice,

but compared to her . . .

Nice woman, but it didn't work out.

On the second date, underneath parking lot fluorescence,

I hugged her – felt her birdlike hollow ribs.

She was thin as my wife before she died.

I knew then, selfish bastard that I am,

I couldn't survive another woman dying on me.

Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue, a writer from Fort Worth, Texas, has had poems published in The Texas Observer, Concho River Review, Borderlands, California Quarterly, and two anthologies of Texas poetry.

Jacqueline Jules: The Worst Part of Being Past 65

It’s not the heating pad

and the NSAIDS I’ll need

after this long stroll

with Enid and Evelyn,

both past eighty, and leaning

over a wooden rail snapping pics

of the just-hatched life

we walked to the water to see.

Six baby swans paddle behind a majestic mother

leading with a long slender neck and bright orange beak

on a blue bay with boats in the background.

There are fluffy clouds in the sky

and the air is temperate, barely seventy—

that number I’m quickly approaching.

No, the worst part of being past 65

is also the best, knowing I don’t have

the leisure to sit home and wait

till next spring to coo at baby swans

with Enid and Evelyn, who’ve taught me

how to open my door and greet

each moment before it swims away.

Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021) and 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 publications. Visit  www.jacquelinejules.com

Jim Murdoch: Not Everything Equals

Sometimes the questions are complicated

and the answers are simple ―Dr. Seuss

 

At the most basic level

a poem can be expressed as

a + b = 4

 

where the 4 is the poem

and all you have to do

is assign the variables.

 

Sadly, in reality

(bad choice of word),

the answer is usually √-1—

 

     since a poem is a

     product of the imagination—

and the sum ends up looking

 

more like alphabetti spaghetti

than Blackpool rock.

Jim Murdoch is a Scottish writer. As he's been writing for over fifty years his list of rejections is voluminous but he keeps at it. He's written most things over the years but he thinks of himself primarily as a poet and is currently producing poems at an unpresented pace.

Peter Mladinic: Afterglow

“He bought a flower that dances to music

for his cousin Bonita Portofino

expecting her first child,”

I wrote years before you were born.

I didn’t know her. She wasn’t my cousin.

He and she were only in my mind.

Then I woke this morning thinking of you,

and that flower a person

might set near an infant in a cradle

to fall asleep or wake

to that music. I’m wondering

are your eyes darker than your hair?

Peter Mladinic's most recent book of poems, The Homesick Mortician, is available from BlazeVOX books. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.

David Q. Hutcheson-Tipton: The little red fire engine

talented though it was, 

knew that no amount of 

“I think I can, I think I can” 

would get it anywhere, so

it flirted with despair until 

the boy said the Lincoln Log 

cabin was on fire & the engine 

had to be mobilized by fingers 

still greasy from a grilled cheese

sandwich to save the day.

David Q. Hutcheson-Tipton is a Colorado poet whose work has recently been curated in Willows Wept Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, dadakuku.com, and, earlier this year, Poem Alone. He has an MFA from Regis University. He was runner up for the Lighthouse Writers Workshop Lit Fest Veteran’s award in 2021.

Camille Norvaisas: Polaroid, July 1978

I’m mesmerized by the girl in the centre of the photo, even though it’s me I barely recognize her. Those long, blond, slept-in looking pigtails, three-quarter-sleeve navy cotton top,  a “what do you want,” look on her face after craning around to the sound of her father’s voice calling her name, then snapping the photo. Her right hand grips the front of the boy's 10-speed bike seat. In the background, a pink two-wheeler with trainers and a white banana seat sits idle, barely casting a shadow on this sunlit summer day. If pushed a few more feet it will be considered with the rest of the trash waiting by the road for pickup. Did the adults notice her arms are too long for that shirt? Her purposeful hand claiming the way-too-tall-for-her bike? The look of annoyance as her plan is interrupted? Later that night did someone give her a bubble bath, brush her knotted hair, kiss her scraped up knees and elbows, encourage her to try again tomorrow?

Little girl grows out
of her clothes. A turnip
pressing the soil away.

Camille Norvaisas lives in Pennsylvania, US, and believes imagery is a funnel by which life’s experiences are filtered into her poetry. She is currently working toward her MFA at Arcadia University and her first book is Rare As The Kotuku (Aldrich Press, 2015).

J.B.: well worn

 

Seattle poet J.B.’s influences include 70s punk music, Montana bars, and Japanese haiku. He has six books of poetry from Ravenna Press. He’s working on A History of Poetry Comics, and makes DIY zines, which he gives away for free. More at punkpoet.net.