“Drifting”

by Ivy Aloa Robb

God stopped me in a snow bank

At six in the morning to force me

To watch the sun’s shell-pink rising.

While I waited to be pulled out, I confessed 

To Him my sins and was bathed

In the light of the sun reflecting 

Off the snow drifts, where a single crow

Is watching me. The tufts around his eyes

Are wet, as though he had been crying,

As though he knows my plans, or that out of

This I would become nothing.

Ivy Aloa Robb is an emerging poet and artist living in northern Minnesota. Her poems can be found in Lindenwood Review, VampCat Journal, ELJ Edition, and more. She is also the founder and EIC of Magpie Lit. When she is not writing you can find her bird watching, working on a painting, or brewing tea. You can also find her on Twitter @ivaloaiv and Instagram @ialoar. 

“The First Gust of Special Relativity is Weightlessness”

by Alina Stefanescu

Did it begin 

when Einstein watched men

wash windows on tall buildings

&  imagined how falling felt?

The theorist borrows a silhouette's terror

to build his edifice. 

The sun is a man with big hands 

on the couch 

and the sky is his

origin. There is no duo

to local velocity. 

I write to you

from the Icarus 

in each of us, from the word 

for existing 

between aboveness 

and asphalt.

I mean light on the pillow hisses when bussed 

by a fan blade. 

I mean fog is how clouds tongue 

the ground.

The losing comes later, a night with no 

windows, the stained cup of 

lightspeed 

you left 

on the floor, 

all energy and mass, interchangeable—

Did it begin when 

the sun became a man

abandoning the idea

of distance

in a bed. The specificity of

sex with insignificant others

in a masochistic 

nocturne. 

I write to you 

from the sadist's secret

fretwork.

I have fallen 

to know 

how falling felt

& nothing grew from it. 

I have measured acceleration 

in altering tempo, 

the speed at which 

time expands when 

you leave 

me alone

there is nothing 

worth keeping

forever.

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her partner and several intense mammals. Recent books include a creative nonfiction chapbook, Ribald (Bull City Press Inch Series, Nov. 2020) and Dor, which won the Wandering Aengus Press Prize (September, 2021). Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize (April 2018). Alina's poems, essays, and fiction can be found in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, World Literature Today, Pleiades, Poetry, BOMB, Crab Creek Review, and others. She serves as poetry editor for several journals, reviewer and critic for others, and Co-Director of PEN America's Birmingham Chapter. She is currently working on a novel-like creature. More online at www.alinastefanescuwriter.com.

“That Madeleine Moment”

by Al McClimens

I think I can remember reading A La Recherche

du Temps Perdu, in twelve volumes, borrowed

over a lost festive season from the public library.

The staff congratulated me when I returned

the last book. But this was in another country

and a long, long time ago. 

                                               I’ve forgotten every

sentence now so it’s funny that a casual dropped

phrase can take me back, how the sunlight when

it catches the yellow tulips on the windowsill

on a day late in December can flip a synapse

until I’m standing on Circular Key, just off the ferry,

the bridge festooned with lights and the boat

churning the water, carol singers on the quayside

and the words snagged on the lump in my throat.

Al McClimens is a drain on the economy and a danger to the language. If you must read his poems wear gloves and self-isolate. That said his collection The Other Infidelities (Pindrop Press, 2021) is actually quite good and well worth a look. But see above.

“Snow Gives Only Shade”

by Carol Parris Krauss

In December, the water around these parts is brown. Dun.

There is no iridescent reflection, no flash of teal, emerald. 

You can not see the glint of the bluegill as it taps

and punctures the surface. Nor gaze the verdant spots

and stripes of the hustling dragonfly. Chapel window wings.

At the shoreline, crusty fingers tipped in ice, 

stab the water. Trying to draw blood ink. Script a name 

to the gunnel boat bumping against the dock. The trees

keep watch on the bank, throw only inky shadows. 

Dark whispers. Snow will fall when night stumbles

in, give a chalky blanket to this colorless scene. Cover

the uncolor knowing it holds all the hues. 

Give shade. 

Carol Parris Krauss enjoys using place/nature as theme vehicles. Her poetry can be found at Louisiana Literature(forthcoming), Scrawl Place(forthcoming), The Skinny Poetry Journal, Story South, the South Carolina Review, and Broadkill Review. She was honored to be recognized as a Best New Poet by the University of Virginia Press. In 2021, she won the Eastern Shore Writers Association Crossroads Contest and her chapbook, Just a Spit Down the Road, was published by Kelsay Books. 

“Glow On”

by Sante Matteo

Wednesday evening, 20 May 2020: A 20/20 Vision

Zoe noses the wet shrubs. Rain brings out fresh scents.

A light flashes to my left. I turn, see nothing.

Shooting star? No, the clouds hang low and dense.

Another flash; same direction: southward, over the road.

This year’s first lightning bug. Already? Too soon.

Out of season, too early to fly out of the pupa stage.

Out of place, too: hovering over the road, away from trees.

Flanking me, keeping pace; is it lured by my penlight,

Looking for a response, a welcome, an invitation?

Sorry, little bug, we're not what you're looking for.

A lone wavering speck twinkling alone in a chilly night:

Glowing off and on; now here, now there; on ... off ... on ... off.

Beaming eagerly, hopefully? Or desperately, uselessly?

A dance to an unheard melody? A code for an arcane message?

Beckoning beacon to a mate? Warning threat to a rival?

Or a solitary, futile quest in a world and a time not yet ready?

It flickers on, now there, now gone. But, no, not gone:

Still there, unseen in the dark, hovering, seeking, expecting.

Small as a sunflower seed, one five-millionth of my weight,

yet grand: an effulgent creator of light that pierces the darkness.

It flutters about on its new wings, seemingly haphazardly,

yet resolutely, unwaveringly toward some impellent end:

To locate and attract a mate, to engender and propagate life.

Another vagrant and resolute propagator lurks in this year's air:

Imperceptible to sight—two billion times smaller than my body,

smaller in relation to the firefly than the firefly is to me,

than I am to the Earth: a novel virus, minuscule and tremendous:

bearer of a planet-spanning scourge that infects, multiplies, kills:

Infinitesimal, immense agent of reproduction and destruction:

Myriad invisible invaders that hijack life and bestow death.

(Like another species that creates and exterminates life,

cultivates and destroys nature: builders and wreckers: us.)

And yet, and yet…  Here we are, and here we must go.

Zoe trots on, pauses to snuzzle and sniff her world amiably.

Leaves have sprouted. Flowers are blooming. Chicks hatch.

Mulberries will soon fill branches and fall to the ground.

In the backyard, a new generation of squirrels for Zoe to chase.

The spasmodic glow of fireflies will fill the summer nights;

myriad companions for tonight's lone stranger if it hangs on.

The chase continues, life continues, and it is good.

Sante Matteo emigrated to the United States from Italy as a child and maintained his ties to Italy as a professor of Italian Studies. In retirement, he has pursued creative writing. Recent memoirs, stories, and poetry have appeared in The Chaffin Journal, Dime Show Review, River River, Snapdragon, The New Southern Fugitives, Ovunque Siamo, and Kairos. 

“Easter Sunday”

by Saul Bennett

I went for a walk,

On that Easter Sunday

Afternoon,

As there was nothing better

to do.

I emerged through the trees,

To the path leading to the beautiful homes

and gardens.

A disheveled old man approached,

Showed me half an apple,

That he held in his hand,

In the other was an empty

bottle of lager.

“Is it much further,

To the lake,

At Ginhouse Lane?”

he asked,

As he wanted to collect water,

For the blue flowers,

Arranged in the nearby garden.

On that warm day,

On Easter Sunday.

Saul Bennett is a new poet from Rotherham in England. He holds a degree in Journalism from Leeds University. He began writing poetry on a regular basis during the first lockdown of 2020. He can be found on Twitter @SBennettpoet.

“your face has left my face”

by Jason Melvin

the mirror fails to hold a memory

for years     I watched you brush my teeth

you no longer live there

I am older than you     Father

your children stuck in childhood

men you cannot meet

I see reflected    an aging man

     salt and pepper chin

crow stomps marched around eyes

Your face      stayed young  

reduced to photographs

spotty memory

Jason Melvin is a father, husband, grandfather, high school soccer coach, and metals processing center supervisor, who lives just north of Pittsburgh. Most of his poems come to him while riding his lawnmower around the yard. His work has recently appeared in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Roi Faineant and others. He was nominated for Pushcarts by Outcast and Bullshit Lit.  He was named second runner up for the Heartwood Poetry Prize 2021. He can be found on Twitter @jason5melvin and on his website at www.jasonmelvinwords.weebly.com.

“close at hand”

by Debbie Robson

Stand here at the edge and take it

all in. The limitless close at hand, 

the flat surface that goes on forever

and we pass every day unseeing.

A dance of white horses or azure

tinsel hard enough to walk on.

So many visions beyond the cliff,

the parked cars and the track

winding down.        The sea. 

Always washing our shores, 

assuaging, pounding the fringes 

of our awareness. The sound loud 

at night, sometimes that we hear

faintly in our sleep.     Stop 

this time as you pass by. Wait 

if only for a moment to look out 

at the straight line that curves 

around the globe, that meets 

the sky and is further away 

than you think. The place of 

the sun’s first rays and across 

a continent, the dying light sets 

as you watch the waves roll in 

and neatly tie up all our days.

Debbie Robson loves to write fiction set in the first sixty years of the last century. She has had stories published in Storgy, Words and Whispers, The Birdseed and others and poetry in Blood Tree Literature, Banyan Review, Dwelling Literary, Wine Cellar Press and more. She tweets @lakelady2282.

“Mad Hatter’s Tea-party”

by Margaret Royall

She hears it in the night, the creaking floor,

the whispering on the stairs, muffled footsteps

in the attic.

She pulls the covers over her head, inserts

her earplugs, sings to herself, tra-la-la, la-di-da… 

diversion strategies that never work.

As someone forces open the bedroom door 

she curls up in a fetal ball, whimpers softly,

afraid of what’s to come. 

The light is switched on. She waits, breath held 

like fizz in a bottle of lemonade…and then

the stereo starts to play a marching tune.

She reaches for her favorite rabbit comforter, 

but he’s not there. She crosses herself…

A giant shadow throws back the curtains,

laughs at her as she trembles beneath the sheets.

“You silly girl, Alice, get up, get dressed, we’re late!

Today’s the annual Wonderland Party.

You’ve shrunk, I’ve grown, it’s time to take tea

with the Madhatter and me, your own White Rabbit!”

Margaret Royall’s work has featured in journals and anthologies in print and online, most recently Impspired, Dreich, Black Bough Poetry, and Sarasvati. She has five books of poetry to her name. She won one of Hedgehog Press’ collection competitions in May 2020 and ‘Where Flora Sings’ was subsequently nominated for the Laurel Prize. Her memoir ‘The Road To Cleethorpes Pier’ was published by Crumps Barn Studio in May 2020. She has won or been s/listed in several competitions and featured as a guest on acclaimed blogs. Her latest collection, ‘Immersed in Blue’, was published December 2021 by Impspired Press. A regular performer at open mic events, she leads a Nottinghamshire women’s poetry group and can be found on the following platforms: 

Website: https://margaretroyall.com/ 

Twitter:@RoyallMargaret

Instagram: @meggiepoet 

Author blog page: Facebook.com/margaretbrowningroyall

“Aspen Daisies”

by Krista Bergren-Walsh

Spring fights for purchase 

through melting snow on 

ancient mountains circled 

around a malachite green lake. 

From their remembered roots, 

purple and blue aspen daisies

grow, their bright tiny petals

unfurling for busy bumblebees

and colorful butterflies. 

Their yellow discs offering 

up nectar for green and pink

hummingbirds. Stumbling

in her big red snow boots, 

small fat fingers yanking

at their fresh hard stems, 

a young child tugs and pulls. 

She hopes to bring a 

fistful of flowers to her 

beloved mom, to be placed

in a small glass sparkling vase,

 later dried out and 

hung upside down from

the porch, pretending they 

are from the olden days. 

Aspen daisies smelling 

like the promise of summer,

the warmth of the sun and

fresh breezes dancing across

pine trees ripe with sap drizzling

down colorful bark. 

A raven calls out as 

the daisies bloom, coloring

yellow-green grass with 

the promise of joyful days. 

Krista Bergren-Walsh graduated from Creighton University in 2016 with a major in Creative Writing and Theatre Performance. While in college, she wrote a one-act play, "Diamonds in the Rough" performed for Creighton Theatre's 50th Anniversary and really fell in love with writing. In 2021 she was honored to win 6th place in Writers Digest 90th Annual Competition in the Script Category with her original comedy, "This Play is Utter B.S." She has been very thrilled to have two poems published by Wishbone Words. Krista is very excited to have "Aspen Daises" published by boats against the current. Krista currently lives in the (very cold) Midwest with her wonderful spouse, their four chaotic ferrets, and one very snuggly and clingy kitten. 

“Intruder”

by David Mihalyov

A grackle lands halfway up 

the steep edge of the roof

and slowly works its way down,

rotating its head in quick jerks

to see if anything objects

to its presence. A quick drop 

to a wire, and then a hop 

into the opening under the eaves

where a nest has been built.

A smaller black bird speeds 

from a nearby maple and enters the nest, 

the grackle hightailing it out; 

a trespasser, I suppose, looking 

for a home where the hard work 

had already been done.

David Mihalyov lives outside of Rochester, NY, with his wife, two daughters, and beagle. His poems and short fiction have appeared in several journals, including Concho River Review, Dunes Review, Free State Review, New Plains Review, and San Pedro River Review. His first collection, A Safe Distance, will be published by Main Street Rag Press in Spring 2022.

“small acts of rebellion”

by Hilary Otto

to let a train pass without boarding
to stand still on an emptying platform
to allow the rush to flow around you
to amble towards the jammed exit
and pass the barriers humming
to saunter out into the street
to tear your eyes from the light
in your palm and raise them briefly
past the walls looming on all sides
to find the small gap of blue above you
stretching right up to the edge
of the earth’s atmosphere
where the particles escape

Hilary Otto is an English poet based in Barcelona, where she reads regularly in both Spanish and English. Her work has featured in Ink, Sweat and Tears, Popshot, As It Ought To Be, and The Blue Nib, among other publications. She was longlisted for the Live Canon 2021 International Poetry Prize, and her first pamphlet is forthcoming from Hedgehog Press in 2022. She tweets at @hilaryotto.

“domesticus tranquilis”

by John Dorroh

I like towns whose streets are named for trees -

Elm, Olive, Cypress, their canopies spreading

tender clutch above the rooftops 

of homes that pulse with life: sleepy drivers

leaving protected carports before the sun infuses

its muted light through uncurtained windows.

Robust Colombian wafting through thumb-sized

holes in neglected corners that someone forgot to patch 

again last summer. The silent stuffed cheeks of the gray mouse

who just left her evidence in a torn bag of snacks,

potato chip crumbs strewn throughout the dresser drawer.

Squirrels tight-rope skidding across sagging utility lines

like gravity doesn’t matter. And teenagers waking up

like zombies in tattered, smelly nests from wee-hour escapades, 

praying it’s the weekend with a car of their own.

I like to drive down tree-lined streets and make-believe

that I am one of them, just for a day, looking up 

into naked branches at a gray-white sky, lifting my foot off the gas,

waiting for the fog to lift, for the other foot to drop.

It always does.

I like the way that some of them are labeled to let you know

what it is, its genus and species, always in Italics 

since everyone speaks Latin these days. Acer rubrum,

Quercus rubra, Picea pungens. It is paramount to be able

to classify things and put them in their places. Like leaves.

It gives us some sort of short-term power, a way to complicate

the uncomplicated. 

I like how the man on Sycamore Street is always grilling.

Except early in the morning when he’s probably at the market

selecting his meat of the day. The trees above his house 

are always yellow in the summer and are the first to fall

in August. Maybe they can’t breathe.

And when I go into the city it makes me sad to see trees

lined up against glass-and-chrome buildings, forced to grow

in chemical soil, where noise from the interstate never stops. 

They miss the rooftops and dogs that bark down the street in the fog, 

the sounds of the school bus opening its hungry mouth to swallow

children until 3 o’clock when once again it spits them out

at 254 Oak Avenue.

John Dorroh has never fallen into an active volcano or caught a hummingbird. However, he managed to bake bread with Austrian monks and drink a healthy portion of their beer. Two of his poems were nominated for Best of the Net. Others appeared in journals such as Feral, River Heron, and Selcouth Station. His first chapbook comes out in 2022.

“our best boy”

by Lorraine Murphy 

He died while we danced

on a drip while we drank.

Max. Four years old.

In a warm blanket

on a cold New Year's Day

we brought him home. 

Was something he ate

a poisoned mouse or bird.

The circle of death. 

Powerless to change. 

Both scorpion and frog he

died by the hunt. 

We'll bury him when

the torrential rain stops.

Living in Ireland, Lorraine Murphy is a member of the writing group Inklings for many years but is relatively new to the online world of writing. Wife to Brendan and mother to three taller people ranging in ages from 12 to 20, she is the 2022 winner of  Fiction Factory's flash fiction competition. She enjoys flash fiction, short poems and is currently working on her third novel.

“A Day’s Catch”

by Laura Bonazzoli

(After the photograph by Berenice Abbott)

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. 

–Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Is the day’s catch the herring, surfaced, 

frantic for the sweep of tides to swell

again their fallen gills? 

Is it the pleasure of the men, eyes intent, 

muscles flexed against the net, 

twisted and heavy with death?

Or perhaps the photograph itself, 

the culmination of your long 

and ardent morning’s labor— 

not this thin print—I mean that instant 

I’m imagining for you—for them—

of pure and frenzied light. 

Thoreau said every creature is better alive 

than dead, but you—and they—

are part of nature, too, 

swaying on narrow boats, squinting in 

the moment’s allocation of sun

at breathless herring.

Laura Bonazzoli’s poetry has appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Connecticut River Review, Northern New England Review, and Steam Ticket, as well as in four anthologies and on “Poems from Here” on Maine Public Radio. She has also published personal essays and fiction. Her collection of linked short stories, Consecration Pond, is forthcoming from Toad Hall Editions. She is online at laurabonazzoli.com.

2 poems

by Gillian Winn

The Siren

I saw her ride the ebbing tide,

As dawn began to break,

Her transport was a conch shell,

Her steed a water snake,

Her hair was dressed with bladderwrack,

Encrusted all with pearl,

Her dress a garb of water fern,

With verdant fronds a furl,

I watched her with a cautious air,

As she frolicked in the ocean,

Then turned away with sad regret,

With tears of pure emotion.

Stages

At first you will not listen,

You think that you know best,

Wrath then comes a knocking,

Hammering at your chest,

You would trade your life for theirs,

If there was a way,

Sadness envelopes your mind,

With melancholy grey,

As you travel through the hurt,

Your goal is there ahead,

Grief is but a journey long,

Before you, ever spread.

While Gillian Winn is relatively new to poetry, she worked as a nurse for 40 years and now has more time to devote to creative writing. She is passionate about the natural world and nature. She is currently completing a Creative Writing module with the Open University and believes that you are never too old to learn new skills. She is dubbed ‘Nannie Shakespeare’ by her granddaughter! 

“Technicolour Overtone”

by Ben Riddle

I dream in different colour to anything

I see before me -

In my dreams, your eyes are violent,

ultraviolet-like they can see something;

anything beyond the bloodstained

chalk-outlines crocheted across

the chequered sidewalks speaking

their stories, speaking

truth or abstinence,

speaking a tender rejection to this

casual complicity that we

bleed and beg and proffer to one another.

There are no stains on your teeth,

they refract

rainbow rivers

that remind me of hope.

In my dreams, my mother's wrinkles

become jigsaw scars like she put herself

back together so many times

she forgot to take out the sutures.

Mama kept saving for rainy days;

I think by the time it mattered,

she couldn't hear

the storms outside, or

she thought the raindrops were

the pitter patter of working feet

marching, marching back

to work

sick and tired until

that's all that industry ever was;

or she thought the rain on her face

was just sweat on her brow.

She doesn't look up,

anymore. Me? I try not to look forward.

I keep writing these budgets trying

to work out what I can give up

to get out; it keeps looking like

stop buying books for school, or

sell the last parts of

your body. What else do we have

left? Maybe the last thing

you have to give up

or sell is wanting to get out. Maybe

that's why people stay.

I dream in different colours to anything

I see before me -

The most interesting thing about Ben Riddle is that he is building a little library of all the contemporary poetry he can put his hands on. The voices of poets go still too soon. He is the Director of Perth Underground Press.

“Nature’s Night Games”

by Matt McGuirk

Driving roads by the pale yellows of headlights,

down paths that deserve no sign or pinned spot on google maps. 

Trails where trees reach out and touch the fresh paint of the car

like bony joints of skeletons or sharp claws of black cats. 

Roads where clipped fall leaves swoop like wings of a bat or crow

and wind slides through cracks in the stand 

making the car shiver against its draft. 

Fall wanes and soon winter will spit a 

spinning kaleidoscope of snow, 

just another trance thrown by nature’s night games. 

Matt McGuirk teaches and lives with his family in New Hampshire. BOTN 2021 nominee with words in various lit mags and a debut collection with Alien Buddha Press called Daydreams, Obsessions, Realities available on Amazon and linked on his website: http://linktr.ee/McGuirkMatthew 

“Ingrid”

by Constance Mello

I wonder if you sit 

by the pool, in the shade

with your jaw locked.

do you still see him?

out the window on the

right are the hydrangeas

i don’t remember whether 

they are blue or pink

he once took me fishing

but there was no hook

only little lumps of dough 

“get the fish to trust you” 

do you miss him

when the light catches the water

or when the water catches the light?

like diamonds 

like any other river life

flows like wine and 

the cabinet smells like him

like semolina 

the tears over the phone 

when I was ten years old 

you looked at his favorite tree 

and it whispered 

Constance Mello (she/her) is a Brazilian scholar, writer, and teacher. She graduated with a degree in Cultural Studies and Gender Studies from the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, and is currently pursuing a dual Master’s Degree in English and Creative Writing. Her writing has been published in The Ilanot Review, Fearless She Wrote, and The Ascent, and was a finalist in the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards. 

“Pre Cancer”

by Robin Keehn

My grandfather kept a tank of DDT

in his garage

in Wilmington, California,

even after the silent spring 

and all those dead birds

falling from the sky,

even after soft shells

crumbled under brown pelicans 

nesting for eons 

on the cliffs of Palos Verdes,

crumbled under bald eagles

nesting before America

on Catalina Island.

He unveiled the tank to me 

one day in 1972 when 

I asked about his orchids,

their amazing faces

mouths wide open 

unable to tell me

the secret to their success.

He rationed it out,

he said:

to his orchids

to his fruit trees

to his hydrangeas 

standing guard by 

the front door

flawless lavender

and white,

whispering nonsense, 

he said.

Robin Keehn lives in Encinitas, California.  She teaches literature and writing at Cal State University, San Marcos.  She holds a Ph.D. in English and American literature from the University of California, San Diego.