Jean O’Brien: Smoke and Mirrors

The magnifying mirror frames her face

holds tight its reflection, throws it back at her

bright and big. The lens takes her in,

rearranges her face. It is insistent;

a moon drowned in a lake.

It has no point of view, no alchemy except a true

reverse of what it sees. Words fly from her.

The lines on her forehead and at her eyes

are granite. Ogham notched on the sharp edge,

she has become her own memorial stone.

She sees the drowned young girl,

sees that terrible fish swimming towards her.

She steps back past the tideline

her face flips over, a rush of vertigo,

a different point of view flicks into place.

Above the silver arched interior

displaced air is too thin. She has passed

the concave mirror’s focal point.

Bell, book and candle cannot hold her.

Suddenly she is Alice, topsy turvy

vanished into a land of smoke and mirrors.

[Previously published in Lovely Legs, Salmon Publishing, 2009]

Jean O'Brien's last collection is Stars Burn Regardless (Salmon Publishing 2022). An award winning poet, she is a Kavanagh Fellow and was recently Poet in Residence in the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris (2021). She tutors in creative writing/poetry in the Irish Writers Centre and at University level.

J. K. Durick: Catch, Caught

It’s not the creature, that monster

that hid under your bed, haunting

the darkness, and it’s not a beast

out of the jungle of your day, some

giant being ready to pounce down

on you when you least expect it.

It’s nothing like that, it’s something

small, something that is in you and

waiting for just the right moment

to catch you unprepared, to start

the process, the journey we all will

take, a journey we all take alone

without some outside fiend or ogre

to blame – it’s just ourselves acting

out the selves we must admit to

and be

.

J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Black Coffee Review, Literary Yard, Sparks of Calliope, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, Journal of Expressive Writing, Lightwood, and Highland Park Poetry.

Barbara Simmons: Mom's Box Grater

After she died, I wanted, more than the cameo brooch she’d pin

to every lapel, her box grater, that precursor, of sorts,

of all food processors, the rectangular metal box that shared

four different ways of slicing up the world. Her deeply veined

hands would set the grater on the kitchen table, waxed paper spread

to catch the shredded, sliced, slivered pieces of whatever foods

had needed whittling down. Carrots disappeared before my eyes,

returning when the grater lifted, curled adornments for a salad,

stewing vegetables for the brisket mother’d boil until it fell apart.

Even with a size that never spoke of domination among the kitchen tools,

the box grater was what I’d been wary of. I’d seen my mother’s

fingers bruised after a bout with it, entering the ring of preparation,

anticipating minor wounds. It was a tool I’d graduate to, fluent

in its metaled Braille, knowing which opening—oval, half-moon, plank—

translated best the food to recipe. My first abraded fingers felt

as if I’d been awarded medals, understanding that my

taming foods was one of many ways Mom was preparing me

for life, fingers raw and chafed that still presented a full hand.

[Originally published in Your Daily Poem, Nov '21]

Barbara Simmons, a Bostonian now in California, Wellesley College alumna, with an MA in The Writing Seminars, Johns Hopkins. A retired educator, she savours language to celebrate, remember, mourn, and understand. Her publications include Hartskill Review, Boston Accent, NewVerse News, Soul-Lit, Writing it Real, and the Journal of Expressive Writing. Website: Barbara Simmons - Poet - Offertories

Tuyet Van Do: senryu

new work place 

a patient asks if I have 

an English name 

Tuyet Van Do lives in Australia. Her work has appeared in Time Haiku, Pure Haiku, cattails, Synchronized Chaos, Scarlet Dragonfly Journal, Cold Moon Journal, Narrow Road, Triya Mag, FreeXpresSion, haikuNetra, haikuniverse, Poetry Super Highway, Take 5ive, The Bamboo Hut, Under The Basho among others. She was nominated for the Touchstone Award for Individual Poems.  

Deborah-Zenha Adams: Use Your Words

“It is an unimaginable tragedy,”

says the woman fluent

in politics, but not

in the tongue

of our nation because

surely every parent

imagines it.

Every teacher,

every child

imagines it

expects it

prepares for it.

“This district has been very good

            in training...on active shooters.”

in classrooms and hallways

every day all over

the country where

unimaginable is our way

of life and death.

Not unimaginable, but inevitable,

nothing we can do because

            “it's too early to talk about policies

            that might need to change as a result of this."

If that seems

untrue, ask yourself

which

            “…uniquely American problem”

I’m writing about here.

[Originally published in Dissident Voice, 2021]

Deborah-Zenha Adams is an award-winning author of novels, short fiction, CNF, and poetry, and served as executive editor of Oconee Spirit Press for ten years. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Roanoke Review, WELL READ Magazine, Dead Mule, Persimmon Tree, and other journals. You're invited to visit her website: www.Deborah-Adams.com

Juanita Rey: Private Orchard

On a hot and steamy afternoon,

my friend Raisa fingers her tight dark curls,

says let’s pick quenepa

and so, in cutoffs and sunglasses,

we meander through Santo Domingo’s alleys

down side streets,

cross the baseball field,

to the old cemetery

where our secret grove

blooms with fruit among the headstones.

We pluck the ovoid green dupes,

prize them open with fingernails and thumbs

suck on the salmon-coloured flesh,

until the juice dripples down our throats,

sometimes sweet, sometimes tart.

We will grow older from here.

We will leave school, find jobs,

meet guys, have relationships,

maybe travel like I have done

or stay behind, in the same neighbourhood,

where Raisa will share a small apartment

not two blocks from her family home.

I’ll shop in food-stores

that don’t stock quenepa.

She’s sure to forget what those tiny fruit

ever tasted like.

No more orchard at the edge of the cemetery.

Our privacy will be ours alone.

Juanita Rey is a Dominican poet who has been in Rhode Island five years. Her work has been published in Mixed Mag, The Mantle and Lion & Lilac.

Lara Dolphin: SCOTUS Van Backs over Mary Richards’ Tam

If you’re a woman of a certain age

maybe you shouldn’t be standing in the middle

of a busy intersection tossing your hat in the air

maybe you should be home raising kids or knitting

maybe you’re at a crossroads in life

and aren’t so much celebrating

as serving things up to the fates

gravity has its way, of course,

and the cap lands on the frozen ground

also, why is the van going in reverse

when it should be going forward

and who is driving that thing anyway

ohhhhh, Justice Aliiiito!

it is almost as if he is aiming

there is nothing to do but muster your dignity

no one is going to commission a bronze statue

of you picking your belongings off the pavement

so you best get on with it and head to the office

wet hat dripping limply from your hand

there is work to be done

and, Girl, this time you’re all alone

[Originally published in Shot Glass Journal, Issue #38, September 2022]

A native of Pennsylvania, Lara Dolphin is an attorney, nurse, wife and mom of four amazing kids. Her chapbooks include In Search Of The Wondrous Whole, Chronicle Of Lost Moments, and At Last A Valley forthcoming from Blue Jade Press.  

Charles Rossiter: It Was Not a Tourist Kind of Blues Bar

The patrons wore farm clothes

and drank cheap beer.

The drummer had only

a snare, bass and high-hat.

The guitar man was a genius.

There were pickled meats

in jars behind the bar.

Pig snouts,

that sort of thing.

Charles Rossiter, NEA Fellowship recipient, has been featured on NPR, at the Chicago Blues Festival and at the Dodge Poetry Festival in NJ. Latest collections are Winter Poems, Lakeside Poems and Green Mountain Meditations all from Foothills Publishing. Publications in periodicals include Bennington Review, Paterson Literary Review, and Thema.

Bridget Gage-Dixon: They Never Told Me

How easy it is to become wicked,

how accustomed we become to disguising it

behind circumstance and clumsy grins.

How we travel endlessly away 

from understanding, but, like the sun,

it splits the horizon with its heat. 

That every great mistake we cannot remedy

might wake the demon we keep 

coiled in our bellies. 

In small towns it winds its way into the whispering 

mouths of women. In the city it seeps into the numbers, 

the tricky mathematics of greed.

Somehow, beauty steals inwards,

its hands knead stony hearts,

makes a luxury of madness.

What is good in us often retreats

to the outermost edges of our lives

but we are porous, our fortresses cannot hold. 

Most of us will do what matters:

Get up in the morning, adapt to narrow spaces,

empathise with monsters, hide our talents,

revel in the calamities of others.

Bridget Gage-Dixon grew up in Old Bridge, New Jersey in a large Irish Catholic family. Her love affair with language began at a very early age when she began to refashion the fairytales her mother read to her. She is still spinning circles with words today.

Keith David Parsons: Allée

Spring blood

rises in dark

bark of dog-

wood trees;

their crooked

fingers flex

at the warmth.

Knuckles crack,

fall off, off,

down to pile-

drive into mud

flash-frosted

with other 

such sticks.

Building grounds-

men rake

them into 

a mockery

of falls,

summers, stunned

by the volume.

Squirrels jump,

shake shattered

copses, scatter

un-hoarding seeds 

of September

with shivers

of March.

Keith David Parsons is a person who came from West Virginia, lives in Washington, DC and is less conflicted about it than you might think. Believes a poem without a message is like a big hole without spikes at the bottom—why would you dig it? Member of DC Poetry Collective; featured in iNK BLOTS Vols. 1, 2.