“A Few Lines Composed while You were Talking”

by Robin Keehn

You have a question.

You need advice about poetry,

about being a poet.

You tell me you’re broke and need money.

I joke that you’ve already met the number one 

requirement of the profession.

And then you ask 

if I know where you might sell some of your poems.

I don’t know what to say.

I’m thinking you’re no Billy Collins.

I’m thinking I’ve never made a penny from poetry.

I’m thinking I’m no Billy Collins, either.

You are still talking, 

something about a transmission,

and your girlfriend, 

and your cell phone bill,

and your roommate 

who eats your food.

And as I nod my head, 

I begin to imagine you sporting a goatee,

a beret cocked to the side, dark black sunglasses,

a diaphanous peasant blouse, billowy, unbuttoned 

exposing your hairless chest.

You’re on a hot street corner in New York City,

slouching behind a table 

covered with a smart madras cloth 

complemented by a vase of black tulips

as Davis’s Bitches Brew wafts around you.

And when a stilettoed urbanite approaches, 

you hoist the heavy blue glass pitcher  

rattling with shards of ice

and offer a tall glass of fresh lemonade,

and a poem—an original—written by you.

All for only a dollar.                                                                        

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.

“the watermen: door county scenes”

by Jacob Riyeff

limestone, basalt 

wade under cypress 

over feldspar to shale 

we'll move earth 

like others, to make  

a space to walk 

* 

sheer, clear light  

fossils roll 

on the shore. curdles  

of water massage  

earth’s edge 

and we will live 

'til the sun sets 

we are trapped  

but the words are free— 

* 

claws on dirt  

children play  

with dead fish  

like pets and puppets 

* 

a barest trace  

of light splayed  

’cross miles of water 

jupiter delayed,  

hanging in the eye  

lightning bugs waft  

thru aspen leaves,  

beech logs burn 

tongue of flame  

asleep, slugs  

coiling green  

girth ’round toadstool  

stalks in darkness,  

mycelial volvae  

bursting moss,  

virginia wetleaf  

explodes stamens  

in the night, and still  

jupiter floods 

the sky slowly,  

slowly delayed 

* 

day cardinal chortles  

over emergent gemmed  

amanitas. play whist 

listen  

to waves 

in the dark— 

* 

fern-field branching  

for sun unimpeded 

sand-ringed swales  

of light, dappled  

caressing the base 

one dead aspen  

fern-flanked as i  

make my ablution 

squat on the wet  

sand, water  

gathered in hands 

* 

a glimpse of black  

boggy bottoms  

where trails don’t go 

and always the desire  

to take—thicket  

thrushes coupling, 

berate as i move  

by the bank, mosquitoes  

elated for a mammal 

stream rushing on  

pulling and shifting 

sand 

stone 

leaflitter— 

moss-burrow, new  

eyeline. we are off  

the trail now 

fern-bank underfoot  

enter creek-current  

cool water 

over rough sand 

*  

the proud, lone  

iris, standing  

trunks for beetles— 

must watch our step 

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.

web: jacobriyeff.com

blog: jacobriyeff.com/blog

@riyeff

“self portrait as the trembling giant”

by Daniel J Flosi

We stood together, my son and i, in that 130 acre park looking 

for descendants, for those who slashed through 

entire mountain ranges and populated outcroppings, 

those who meander like stoney walls 

over vast plains, who survive on butterfly wings and cry

milksalt tears into poppling streams, 

for those who span generations like moonshine, 

or who propagate not through seed but who clone 

through rootsprouts,  who i said crossed this continent 

just to get to him — his eyes tickled by trembling, 

then i asked him if he thought it was possible 

that there were some river, or song, some wave connecting 

us all and he assured me there wasn’t; i want 

to believe that i won’t fail him, so i told him 

that somewhere in colorado there’s an origin point 

to all this shaped like a heart in the earth, or like a hearth 

in a home, or like a home in a valley, shaped like us

standing here together and when i asked him if it were possible, 

he just shook his head no; i want to believe that he won’t let me go. 

Daniel J Flosi sometimes thinks they are an apparition living in a half-acre coffin within the V of the Mississippi and Rock Rivers. They are a poetry reader at Five South. Their work has appeared in many journals including recently/forthcoming in ELJ- Scissors & Spackle, Funicular Online, Inklette, The Good Life Review, and Zero Readers. Drop a line @muckermaffic

“night driving”

by Leela Raj-Sankar

Two in the morning, mid-December—

the crackling radio huffs out a song

you haven’t heard since you were fifteen,

hiding from your parents in your best friend’s

basement. A deer stands in the center of the

road, trapped in the bright beam of your headlights—

you watch yourself in its eyes, transfixed by

your own stiffness, hands rigid at

ten-and-two on the steering wheel, mouth set in a thin,

straight line. Your face at least ten years older

than the rest of you. Somehow, you are just as terrified-looking as the deer,

both frozen solid in the blue-tinged twilight; Alanis Morissette, half-drowned

in static, croons from the speakers, isn’t it ironic? 

An exhale, slow. Your breath visible, even with the car’s heater on full blast. The two-way

mirror only stares back at you, forever reflecting the rotting, year-old dreams 

that fog up your windshield. 

The song ends. The window shutters. The deer

darts off the road. In the distance,

a streetlight flickers once, twice, then

sighs into the darkness. Silently, you promise yourself,

for the thousandth time, that you are not going to die.

Leela Raj-Sankar is an Indian-American teenager from Arizona. Their work has appeared in Mixed Mag, Warning Lines, and Ghost Heart Lit, among others. In his spare time, he can usually be found doing math homework or taking long naps. Say hi to her on Twitter @sickgirlisms.

“the last poem”

by Neha Rayamajhi

Bodies are stubborn.

Sometimes they refuse to surrender 

even when you want them to.

Mine is rebellious like that –  

she holds grief like a mother holds a newborn. 

Last week I dropped to the kitchen floor 

in the middle of figuring out an alternative for basil.

The nurse said anxiety attack

I told him it was my body leading a rebellion;

she doesn't know how to let go. 

The summer he left the first time: 

I cried so much

my body convinced me 

we were an ocean.

Now when we are lonely, we pull

poems out of his empty section of the closet.

Review the pros and cons of 

saying goodbye

to a man who has left me more 

times than he has said he loves me. 

This body is stubborn.

She refuses to surrender even when I plead.

She holds grief. 

Like a mother latches onto a newborn,

so she holds onto you. 

Neha Rayamajhi (she/her) is a storyteller and a cultural worker who uses multidisciplinary art. She is passionate about creating spaces and art that revolve around decolonial politics, diasporic nostalgia, and the joys of reimagining anti-oppressive futures. Her work has appeared in the South Asia Journal, Chambers, La Lit Magazine and other online publications. Neha was born and raised in Nepal, and currently lives in Massachusetts. You can find more about her at neharayamajhi.com. 

“an exaltation”

by Jen Feroze

Two days in this place, and London 

is strange as moonscape.

The dirt track stretching

away over the hill;

the quiet after the morning’s joyous

exhale of church-bell rounds; 

bowls of sun-struck eggs

on the kitchen windowsills

and I think those are celandines

starring the grass like fallen coins.

There are eggs out here too, speckled

in little, leaf-lined hollows, 

hidden as we cross to the stile,

and protected by plump-feathered parents.

It’s almost lunchtime, and there’s 

the promise of warm bread.

We leave that field behind your mother’s house

with garlands of song around our ankles.

Jen Feroze lives by the sea in Essex, UK, with her husband and two small sleep thieves. She's inspired by the seemingly everyday, and likes to write with a stubborn upswing of hope in her work. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Madrigal, Capsule Stories, The 6ress and Hyacinth Review, among others. Her first collection, The Colour of Hope, was published in 2020. 

“roots”

by Safiya Cherfi

I live across the river from where you were born

I can see it from 

my living room window

Hundreds of miles from 

where I was born.

Funny that I should end up here because

it wasn’t deliberate

Landing a stone’s throw from 

my roots

I didn’t know that’s where you were born until 

I lived here.

Roots were pulling me back 

dragging me in

to the start

the heart of them

There’s no limit to how far roots 

can be stretched

No telling when they’ll start 

tugging at you

No knowing how strong 

the pull will be

Or how long you can 

bear the pull for.

Safiya Cherfi is a writer and book reviewer based in Scotland. She writes short stories, published in Gutter, Sundial Magazine, and Bandit Fiction, and is currently working on a novel. She is also an editor for Overtly Lit. 

“belonging”

by Helen Openshaw

I let the feeling sit beside me;

A strange companion on a train.

The edges ooze as I decide if I can

Take this journey, or slide,

Suffocating into its folds.

The energy in the room changes,

Crackles, fills.

I shift to accommodate it,

Lean in to the pillow warmth of it,

Let the percussion of chatter soothe.

Helen Openshaw is a Drama and English teacher, from Cumbria. She enjoys writing poetry and plays and inspiring her students to write. Helen has had a short monologue commissioned by Knock and Nash productions. Recently published and upcoming poetry work in Secret Chords by Folklore publishing, Green Ink Poetry magazine, Words and Whispers magazine, The Madrigal, Fragmented Voices, Loft Books and The Dirigible Balloon magazine.

“angry gods”

by Lisa Molina

For so long, 

I believed 

I somehow

angered the gods.

Otherwise, why would Zeus

thrust his shocking bolts

of blinding light, followed

by his inevitable bellowing

growl, or shocking shouts 

of fury?

Terrifying vibrations of 

the imminent unknown 

buzzed through the

gray matter of my

electrified brain

on/and/on/and/on/and/on/until

the earthquake from 

within my unstable 

core finally shattered 

open, dispersing 

shards of inner

stained glass as the

orange/yellow/blue/indigo/violet/

violent/red/bloody

explosion tore and 

ripped me apart from 

within,

with such

force and

magnitude

that 

Zeus himself

ceased

to

exist.

I never angered the gods.

Lisa Molina is a writer/educator in Austin, Texas. She has three chapbooks forthcoming in 2022, and her words can be found in numerous publications, including Bright Flash Literary Journal, Beyond Words Magazine, Sparked Literary Magazine, Neologism Poetry Journal, and The Ekphrastic Review. Molina enjoys writing, singing, playing the piano, and spending time with her family. She now works with high school students with special needs, and loves teaching them the joys of reading and writing.

“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.