“after the fire”

by Morgan Harlow

looking for nails and

snakes on the driveway

charred scraps burnt

into the shapes of states

Minnesota, Wisconsin

never getting away

from the land of

smoke and snow.

Morgan Harlow's work has appeared in Blackbox Manifold, Ottawa Arts Review, Washington Square, The Moth, Seneca Review, and elsewhere and is forthcoming in Miramichi Flash and The Oakland Review. She lives in rural Wisconsin and is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Midwest Ritual Burning.

“taking on the color of procession”

by Jack C. Buck

the land slopes the light runs 

filling us below we shallow the sun

faces upward mouths open to the sky

rain comes drink up

you’re a pond

scoop up some dirt

hold it in your mouth

a flower sprouts

quickly, the sun is going 

behind the mountains

night comes

a fire is built

the hills beyond

awake the next morning

to the sound 

Jack C. Buck lives in Boise, Idaho. He is the author of the collections Deer Michigan and Gathering View, along with the chapbook will you let it send you out.

“lobsters”

by Bex Hainsworth

Cap Gris Nez, Nord-Pas-De-Calais

Bored with the bilingual chatter between courses,
my sister and I ask to see the lobsters.

We descend a staircase into the cellar;
the encroaching gloom makes us feel like we are
journeying, steadily, to the bottom of the sea.

And there, in a cube of captured saltwater,
is a dark, docile herd. We approach the murky chamber,
dimly lit by an otherworldly glow, like a mothership.

There is something uncomfortably alien about
their long antenna, reaching out for us
as we press our palms against the glass.

Their many legs clack against a sandless seabed.
We are too young to understand that bandaged claws,
clamped, clinical, are not raised in greeting.

The largest, clad in black barding like a war horse,
crawls closer to inspect our blurred faces.
There is a barnacle beauty spot on his hardened cheek. 

The others lurk in the shadows, aimless as spiders without webs.
We would like to stay longer, but my uncle is pulling
at our hands, offering an apologetic smile to the indifferent waiter.

My sister wonders aloud at their diet in this small aquarium.
Looking back, it is hard to remember our innocence,
our ignorance of mortality, of consequences.

Bex Hainsworth is a poet and teacher based in Leicester, UK. She won the Collection HQ Prize as part of the East Riding Festival of Words and her poetry has been published following commendations in the Welsh Poetry, Ware Poets and AUB Poetry competitions. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Lake, MONO., Atrium and Brave Voices Magazine. 

“frog poet”

by Lynda Skeen

He sits in a shallow pond,

croaking,

the vibrations moving out into 

the cool evening in 

smooth shining rings.

Just that.

Just his wet grey body 

sending out 

perfect concentric circles

of connection.

His breath 

ripples into the world

and back.

His lungs inflate,

release.

His luscious rough body

moves air

in

and

out

as he

sings to the night.

And even after so many 

unanswered songs,

he just keeps

singing

and singing

and singing.

Lynda Skeen lives in Ashland, Oregon.  She has been published in a variety of journals, including ONE ART, The Halcyone Literary Review, North American Review, Tiger’s Eye, Lucid Stone, Talking Leaves, Main Street Rag, and Poetry Motel.

2 poems

by Jared Povanda

Space Tastes of Raspberries and Smells Like Rum

The baker tells the viewers at home

all about this tiny miracle:

that science is prone to breaking 

minds like hot sugared glass

from sudden cold. 

That when he has to start over and

shards go in the bin,

he’s still left with raspberries halved 

and fragrant in the dark.

Trillions of drunk stars.

The Intimations of Songbirds 

He wakes to birdsong. Cheeps like spoons 

hinting secrets against weak porcelain.

He wakes to woodsmoke, even though

his fire has been banked for hours;

he’s not the one burning.

The stars are still out, gasping without sound—

and he’s glad he isn’t the one out of breath.

He tries to catch sight of a bird in the trees, 

a flash of sapphire or ruby as he walks,

but he doesn’t have any luck.

By the time he spreads her ashes 

in the river, eddies swirling

the dawn 

empties of everything but 

soft music in the air. 

Jared Povanda is a writer, poet, and freelance editor from upstate New York. He has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Microfiction, and his writing can be found in Cheap Pop, HAD, and Pidgeonholes, among many others. Find him @JaredPovanda, jaredpovandawriting.wordpress.com, and in the Poets & Writers Directory. 

“they are still there, can be again”

by Janna Grace

Try to sense the ghosts at your side—

trace the length of their disappearing spines

into windowpanes

alive only in the breath of frost

know their will to be again

can be yours when bed body

begins to rise, 

commandeer the impotent day

a cancer scare shouldn’t be

the only reason you watch the sea

creatures who spurt foam from blow

holes that populate your life

no,

know

night is the deepest ocean,

regenerate in its wintery grave

swim, lantern clad, among the snapped 

masts of shipwrecks, see

it is their will wrapping yours 

that hums in the wake you leave

beneath warming fingertips,

pull pulses through your shimmering 

shark skin—

electroreceptors are supernatural 

when you summon the ghosts,

sharpen 

your inherited claws.

Janna Grace is an autistic writer from New York. She has work published or forthcoming in The Bacopa Literary Review, Eunoia, and The Opiate, among others. Between teaching writing at Rutgers University, editing Lamplit Underground, and reading for Longleaf Review, she works as a freelance and travel writer. Her debut novel will be published through Quill Press in 2022 and her first micro-chapbook A Life in Times and Shells (Rinky Dink Press) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

“tomato plant”

by Adrienne Rozells

I don’t know much about gardening. 

The salesman at the nursery

Told me it would be easy  

To start off with a tomato plant. 

My family grew tomatoes 

When I was a child 

I want too-small gloves 

To play in the dirt again. 

Tomatoes start out green.

Flowers can be so many colors 

There’s a cacophony of petals

Every time I step outside. 

Life calls out to life

Sometimes when I’m in the earth 

Things crawl along the skin of my ears

I like to listen to them come and go. 

I don’t know how it happened. 

Now I hear them all the time 

Someone took the bees from the flowers  

And locked them up in the guest room. 

Adrienne Rozells (she/her) holds a BA in Creative Writing from Oberlin College. She currently teaches writing to kids and works as co-EIC at Catchwater Magazine. Her favorite things include strawberries, her dogs, and extrapolating wildly about the existence of Bigfoot. More of her work can be found on Twitter @arozells or Instagram @rozellswrites. 

“one”

by Susan Barry-Schulz

The lake dark and smooth for now

brings me back. We raced through packed

days craved the night air. Bare feet on cool 

sand. Far off storms. Were we in love or was 

it just the sum of heat plus time? Sick from 

too much beer you stayed close. Hand in hand 

on the porch steps your blue eyes shine. I miss 

the strength I had then. Your blue lined notes 

found me well. I took the bus to the toned 

curve of your calves. I could run 

for miles on those hills and I did. 

You cut life short. I went on for years 

flecked by the moon dark and smooth 

as a great lake for now.

Susan Barry-Schulz grew up just outside of Buffalo, New York. She is a licensed physical therapist living with chronic illness and an advocate for mental health and reducing stigma in IBD. Her poetry has appeared in The Wild World, New Verse News, SWWIM, Barrelhouse online, Nightingale & Sparrow, Shooter Literary Magazine, Kissing Dynamite, Bending Genres, Feral, Quartet and elsewhere.

“sister”

by Frances Koziar

Our faded laughter echoes

like voices in a grand hall, ripples

across time, across

our memories, which only I

hold now, and I

whisper back: asking questions

to which the only answer

is you.

Frances Koziar has published 50+ poems in over 30 different literary magazines. She is a young (disabled) retiree and a social justice advocate, and she lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Find her at: https://franceskoziar.wixsite.com/author. 

“holy resurrection monastery”

by Jacob Riyeff

—st. nazianz, wi 

the hall lined with cyrillic inscriptions 

i can’t begin to understand. and darkness 

reigns for now. the scuttling of monks 

and visitors is a song in the quiet before dawn. 

the icons demand kisses, and always 

more incense, the young deacon a whirling 

seraph, sash in hand. and now they’re clapping 

up and down the halls upstairs, 

the call to awaken, semantron pulses 

haunt the p.a., the call to prayer. 

dark figures moving in the dark. 

12-29-18 

Jacob Riyeff is a translator, teacher, and poet. His books include his translations and editions of Benedictine works from the early medieval through the modern periods, as well as his own poetry collection, Sunk in Your Shipwreck. Jacob lives in Milwaukee's East Village. Find him at:

web: jacobriyeff.com

blog: jacobriyeff.com/blog

twitter: @riyeff

2 poems

by Ashley Gilland

Boy Scouts

Like a clothesline left in darkness to a slow, passionless dry, 

children catch the rain like lily pads

as they stare up at the sky of tent, 

picking at straw 

that had clung to their frayed sweaters. 

Dew forms erratic designs on the netting above 

as clammy skin amasses remaining drips. 

A cricket scuttles up between a junction of limbs, 

whose tarry catches eye 

of the insomniac. 

Moonstruck curiosity follows its collusions

across canisters and fishing line, 

waiting for it to disappear in a dark corner, 

but the tent stretches on. 

Such netting holds back the clouds.

A Bus Window in Mankato, MN

Ice crystals form tiny mountain ranges above

condensation clouds of your breath.

You stare out the window that ruptures two foggy atmospheres: 

your soft exhalations 

and the biting whisper that lurks just outside

as your head tilts toward the latter

and rests on expectation

that glass will never shatter.

Wafers of frost,

tiny and proper

like sculpture gardens

and cake frosting spread artistically uneven.

Some bites are sweeter than others.

Sugar coated windowpanes,

narcotics sleep on glass terrains.

The crystal pillow carves grooves into the wilting canvas,

engraving his cheek with broken patterns -

A hieroglyphic dreamless sleep.

Ashley Gilland is a writer, musician, multimedia artist, and student from Missouri. Find her recent poetry in Currents. When not writing poetry and philosophical flash fiction, she also loves composing and recording music, embroidering mixed media art projects, and helping with the campus radio station. Find her music on Spotify and Bandcamp, her art on Instagram and Etsy (@pocketsnailart), and her tweets at @earlgreysnail. 

“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