hands

by Tyler Hurula

Her hands are dry – 

as if the crisp air 

had placed too many kisses 

into the soft bed of her palm.

I cradle her hand 

in mine and trace poetry 

shaped by the fate 

lined into her wanting 

palm. I imagine gods 

chiseling these pathways, 

carving each score, crafting 

with the same precision 

as Michelangelo 

when he painted

the Sistine chapel. 

I stroke the swirl 

at each fingertip, 

notice each divot 

and dip. I dance, dainty 

and delicate over 

the soft hill of a scar,

knowing no one can 

replicate her well

worn fingerprints. I want 

to swallow her whole

history, tangle up

in her bedsheets 

and traverse

the entire expanse 

of her hands.

Tyler Hurula (she/her) is a poet based in Denver, Colorado. She is queer and polyamorous, and is a cat mom to two fur babies and a plethora of plants. Her poems have been published previously in Anti-Heroin Chic and Aurum Journal. Her poems feature love, polyamory, family, growing up, and being queer. Her top three values are connection, authenticity, and vulnerability; she tries to encompass these values in her writing as well as everyday life. 

2 poems

by Nathan Lipps

singing, even now

Like anything

the foliage of the mind

drowning as the waters gently rise.

We become accustomed 

to this slow fading out

inevitably.

But we can yet walk 

along the streets and see

a face we love.

It’s more than a joy

that quick flashing

and gone.

It’s not postponing

the assault

of the body. 

It’s not leaving the hospital

after the cure

the bright day waiting.

It could be 

noticing that cigarette butt

white against the gray of the parking lot

ground down to its idea.

Knowing someone smoked it

with their wonderful lungs

that they arrived

at the end of a thing

successfully.

That they left it here.

That they were here

where you stand.

That they exist despite

their familiarity 

with living

as you do

alone

in none of it.

storm newly common

The sound as branches 

because the pressure is constant

leave behind the one thing

they’ve known.

Tonight ten thousand houses

will lose power. Standing outside 

shouting you will forget

the purpose of voice.

Some of the birds weather it

by existing tomorrow

the rest remain a song.

And tomorrow another storm.

Branches like potential children

deposited in a field. 

Nathan Lipps lives and works in the Midwest. He teaches at Central State University. His work can be found at North American Review, Colorado Review, TYPO, and elsewhere.

down harbor way

by Tobi Alfier

A virtual rainbow of sorts

no matter the weather or season.

Wide park fronting the bay—

its greens changing to golds, to white,

to greens again. The water always a version

of blue to black, quiet or boisterous, music

orchestrating the whole affair. Anchored

on one end by the Rose and Thorn Pub,

the other holds the ferry dock, taxi stand,

Joan’s groceries, and parking.

In-between, wide terraced steps, polished rock

and limestone brick welcome the residents

of butter-yellow houses from one end

to the other. White-framed windows

share the view of park and sea. Children

with nannies and grandparents hopscotch

from lunches of soup and bread, the odd whisky,

to groceries for dinners around large tables,

the picnickers having gone home to their own dinners.

Summers, finches sing in the trees. Winterbare branches

shadow inside walls like the open palms of beggars.

A blessed neighborhood, where families change

with the nature of all living, but never leave.

The circuit of steps bears their measure,

from first frost, to spring, to the darkened death

of winter, mute in the last of the breaking light.

Tobi Alfier is published nationally and internationally. Credits include War, Literature and the Arts, The American Journal of Poetry, KGB Bar Lit Mag, Cholla Needles, Galway Review, The Ogham Stone, Permafrost, Gargoyle, Arkansas Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, and others.  She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com).

metamorphic

by Alice Stainer

I have magma for my blood.

It boils through my body

on swelling currents,

searing frail channels,

searching for fissures,

spoiling for faults,

seeking the places 

my plates do not meet,

and then erupts.

My crust is molten rock 

and sombre ash.

It glows with the dark light 

of the deep places,

water hisses at my touch.

I am sheer inferno.

And so I retreat from heat

into coolness of birch. 

I am no longer igneous,

and will fear no more 

the blaze of the sun. I know 

a birch is figured moonshine,

reaching pearly fingers for 

its birthplace high above.

Now I will weep only

the sweetness of sap,

shed only silver curls;

dark diamonds my wounds,

wood-warts my scabs.

Swathed in silk-white wrappings

I will heal and grow.

As I walk now in this wood,

hot feet sizzling on soil,

I pick up this circlet of birch skin,

gauge the heft of my wrist

and slip it on.

Alice teaches English Literature to visiting students in Oxford, UK and is an active musician and dancer. The intersection of literature, music and dance is at the heart of her creative life. She has only recently found the confidence to share her work, which you can read in Green Ink Poetry, Steel Jackdaw, 192 Magazine, Atrium, a Marble Poetry Broadsheet and The Dirigible Balloon, amongst other places, and forthcoming in After Poetry, The Dawntreader and Corvid Queen. She tweets poetically @AliceStainer.

chesapeake bay august

by Jeffrey Alfier

I claim warm Virginia breezes as my true balm.

Footsteps inhabit windrows of sand, the shoreline

voluptuous with sunlight and the bright haze of spindrift.

To the relief of all, the lazy grace of rainshowers

stand off in the distance drawing their borders

on the surface of the tide. Ardent swimmers undulate —

breaststrokes, flips, and butterflies.

Shorebird calls are so distant and faint

they sound estranged from the sea.

Seaweed lies winnowed from the surf,

strewn like frayed garments of castaways.

Wildflowers run indigent among sea oats —

goldenrod, horsenettle — always something with thorns.

The stone grace of a breakwater grants solace

to vessels underway, to trawlermen weathered hard

like posters of the missing.

Quitting the shore in the late light,

my eyes follow a woman holding seashells

collected in a scarf that once hid her hair

She ascends the steps to her beachside cottage,

her shadow climbing the door

to the small room that means so much.

Jeffrey Alfier’s most recent book, The Shadow Field, was published by Louisiana Literature Journal & Press (2020). Journal credits include The Carolina Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Hotel Amerika, James Dickey Review, New York Quarterly, Penn Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Vassar Review. He is founder and co-editor of Blue Horse Press and San Pedro River Review.

your shadow twice as long

by Enna Horn

You scrape your fingers against the glass.  

A dull hope flickering within your ribcage,  

it illumines, reflects; a slice of light against the wall.  

Here, a gilded border, your shadow twice as long.  

A dull hope flickering within your ribcage,  

so a depression warps the image beside you.  

Here, a gilded border, your shadow twice as long,  

in the room with the yellow wallpaper, the crooked door.  

So a depression warps the image beside you,  

the phantom of the canary soul begs for release.  

In the room with the yellow wallpaper, the crooked door  

opening wide, baring sharp teeth to your apparition there.  

The phantom of the canary soul begs for release,  

as you observe yourself, observing yourself.  

Opening wide, baring sharp teeth to your apparition there,  

you scrape your fingers against the glass. 

Enna Horn is an author, poet, and polyglot living somewhere in midwestern America. If they don't have their hand to the pen, they can be found with their hand to the plough. Sometimes, they haunt Twitter @inkhallowed. Most times, though, they're just haunting your mirror.

I Cry in Front of Edward Hopper’s “Morning Sun” at the Columbus Museum of Art

by Ashley Kirkland

She stares out the window 

from the bed 

— whose bed?— , arms around 

her knees, longs

for something unknown 

to her or me or anyone 

beyond. I’m not sure 

if I envy her her solitude

or pity her her loneliness— 

the ambiguity constant 

on her face. Morning sun

splashes across her 

and the blankets, washes 

portions of the shadowed 

wall. What do the shadows  

tell you? They tell me about 

the sadness present & possible

in all of us. Or maybe 

I’m taking that too far. Maybe 

the shadows are just there 

to juxtapose the light, to remind us 

how warm & good it is 

to bathe in sunlight even if we are 

alone, even if the sadness

threatens to fold in on us 

like the shadows edging 

in all around her now. 

Ashley Kirkland teaches high school English and writes poems in Ohio, where she lives with her husband and sons. Her work can be found in 805 Lit+Art, 3 Elements Literary Review, Cordella Press, and failbetter. 

woodpecker speaks to me

by Beth Brooke

This 

is the utter winter of a field

starve-acre of chalk and flint in 

equal measure.

There are brown and yellow tattered shoots,

straggled lines that came too late, 

sprouted after the harvest cut

full of misplaced hope,

an irrational faith in September’s 

continuing warmth.

The footpath across is bare,

compacted by the trudge of feet 

determined 

to walk into Spring and  

its green stems of wheat.

From the stand of trees

on the southern edge

  a woodpecker

taps out a fanfare for 

the approaching equinox.

Beth Brooke is a retired teacher. She lives in Dorset. Her debut collection, A Landscape With Birds will be published by Hedgehog Press later this year.

2 poems

by Eloïse Bennigsen

hanover street 

In a curve of the road near the station a tree

hangs its vines down a steep wall and breathes

in.  

The sun is beginning to set and light breaks 

through gaps in the vines, 

over the railway bridge and the river 

and the shape of the metro in the water as it

moves across the bridge,  

breathing out. 

The water quivers. The vines shift, 

and then the water and the vines and the metro become

completely still as the road curves round and down and

round again. 

the bridge  

We move over the bridge and the shape of the bridge is two

hands pressed together at the fingerprints 

making a promise, or a prayer. 

We move over the bridge and our hands, in promise and prayer, wave

goodbye. 

We hear your voice on the phone without subtitles. We see

the breeze move the vines on the trees 

and lift a tear from your face, 

and our hands, pressed in promise, in prayer,  

fold to form the tracks as we travel,  

as we move into dying sunlight  

that fills gaps in the air and the space in the stairwell, between

each strand of your hair, between our fingers, pressed in

promise or a prayer. 

Eloïse Bennigsen is a UK-based poet, currently studying MA Creative Writing at Newcastle University. Her work covers a variety different topics, ranging from faith to politics to language. In early 2021, she had her first publication in a local anthology. When she is not writing, she can be found learning Korean and trying new recipes.

silere

by John Tessitore

There must be a science

of dreadful ambience.

In movies it is “presence,”

room tone, the distinct 

acoustics of place. For example,

we never experience silence

but the hush of air down dark

halls, through closed windows.

For example, we now know

there is no vacuum of space.

Even our bodies are unquiet,

all crackling joints and tinnitus.

But self is not the same 

as the white noise of loneliness

which is the shudder of time

like a room full of whispers,

a subtle inuendo, the sound 

of sound and song of mere

existence, of being without 

substance, primordial vacancy. 

The tremble of the first idea, 

every morning, 

before the birds sing.

John Tessitore has been a newspaper reporter, a magazine writer, and a biographer. He has taught British and American history and literature at colleges around Boston and has run national policy studies on education, civil justice, and cultural policy. Most recently, he has published poems in the American Journal of Poetry, Canary, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and forthcoming in Wild Roof and the Sunday Mornings at the River anthology. He has also published a chapbook, I Sit At This Desk and Dream: Notes from a Sunday Morning on Instagram.

alma

by Melody Rose

They say the ebb and flow of time can heal all. But here I am still missing you. I hold onto the beautiful moments and also onto the moments where I learned you were my real-life hero. Alma: means soul in my native tongue. The most beautiful soul, my tia, my auntie, no longer with me on this earth. I remember the time you took me skiing for the first time, before you got sick. You taught me that fearless does not mean the absence of fear, but rather taking steps forward despite the fear. As you held my hand, overlooking an endless sea of ponderosa pines, you said, “together, every step.” I know you were just trying to get me to try something new, but it felt like a promise, and trusting you’d keep it was easy. At every chemo appointment we went to together, I always brought you red vines and you’d hug me like it was the best gift ever. No matter the day, no matter the time, no matter how awful you felt, you approached the world with an openness and wonder. I watched as you asked the nurse how her daughter was doing, somehow remembering the details like what college her daughter was attending and what her name was. I sometimes wondered how you were real, how could someone be so beautiful? They say the ebb and flow of time can heal all. But here I am still missing you. 

Melody Rose’s passion is teaching and empowering others by sharing what she has learned. She helped launch an arts and crafts program at a children's hospital and also taught at San Quentin State Prison. Melody hopes to inspire youth to explore and expand their creativity through web development, writing, and art.

2 poems

by Pamela Nocerino

clam diggers

Hidden muscles fold and bend

like accordions 

to dig in mourning sand.

Dawn reveals stretched, wide belly creases

in briefly upright shore hunters

who decide what to keep and 

what to release - 

a bewitching sort

to witness - 

alike, in its way,

to memories 

locked tight and left buried

without heat 

to open and consume,

like mussels,

for tomorrow's bending. 

the hush

hush

hush

of rhythmic waves

uncover and bury

the shells of the lives I imagined

& the life I carry - 

the space between as vast and blurry

as the crepuscular horizon. 

Wet lines of tide mark

what was and what will be again. 

My faltering steps, 

a moment at best, 

fill with sea and retreat 

as I embrace the light dullness 

of essential insignificance. 

Pamela Nocerino is a ghostwriter and teacher who once helped build a giant troll in the Rocky Mountains. She enjoyed a brief career on stage in Denver until she needed health insurance. Then, she taught public school students for over 20 years while raising her sons. Two of her short plays were selected for staged readings, and she has poetry with Gyroscope Review, Plum Tree Tavern, Splintered Disorder Press, Third Estate Art's Quaranzine, Writing in a Woman's Voice, and Capsule Stories. Most recently, Pamela has a short story in Jerry Jazz Musician and a poem in the upcoming March issue of Minnow Literary Magazine. 

the long goodbye

by Kara Dunford

She forgets where she is,

calls out for parents long dead: 

trapped in a mind that makes her husband—

her companion in a love story written over sixty-five years—

a mere stranger. Watch as she fades before our eyes, 

the jewelry box of memory

now tarnished by a film of rust. Soon perhaps, 

even the most precious heirlooms,

the rich sentiments she robed herself in 

to feel beautiful in this world, 

will have lost their sparkle.

When “I love you, darling”

dulls to 

“Is it time for lunch?”

Kara Dunford is a writer and nonprofit communications professional living in Washington, DC. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Dalloway and Brave Voices Magazine. Find her on Twitter @kara_dunford.

heart of sunflower

by Marjorie Gowdy

Out this window, cerulean sky, no clouds, not even the humble cirrus.

Splashes of emerald on sapphire

arms of poplar point plaintively

a female grosbeak intent on furtive pecks, on pace for Naples.

Pane smudged where old bear leaned into the bricks last night.

The shepherd jumped, cried, then curled into her covers.

A large window into this fleeting visit

punctuated by guilt and beauty.

Powdered iron slips over the mountain draught now.

Flattened streams of smoked ham reach toward the vale.

Dusky juncos pepper the chill grass, here till spring.

Will they miss me.

Marjorie Gowdy writes at home in the Blue Ridge mountains of Callaway, VA. Gowdy was the Founding Executive Director of the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, MS, which she led for 18 years. Now retired, she worked in other fields that fed her love of writing, including as a grants writer. Her work is informed by the tumbled Virginia mountains as well as her time on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and along the coasts of Virginia and North Carolina. She is currently newsletter editor for the Poetry Society of Virginia.

jamais vu

by Michael Berton

the slow sift of sand

by the hour on the day

contemplation in forgetfulness

residue of years unlived 

curtains on windows

obscure the eyes

of a blind fortune teller

portal to the subconscious 

deciphering the wrinkles

of a palm reader

forecasting on eternity

Michael Berton has two poetry collections, Man! You Script the Mic. (2013) and No Shade in Aztlan (2015) both published by New Mitote Press. A third collection, The Spinning Globe will be published by Recto y Verso in the Fall of 2022. He has had poems appear in over 100 publications including Talking River Review, Ubu, El Portal,  Caesura, Fourteen Hills, Volt, The Opiate, Acentos Review, Cold Noon, And/Or, Otoliths, Pacific Review, Fireweed, and Hinchas de Poesia. He was nominated for the Touchstone Award for Poetry in 2021. He lives in Portland, Oregon. 

words they use in hospitals

by Annie Marhefka

comfort measures

I don’t hate the term as much

as I should, or as much

as I loathe other phrases

that embed in foreheads 

like initials in concrete.

It is softer than

do not resuscitate

silkier, kinder, more

humane, like a bed of 

autumn leaves and not

an intubation hose.

It is more fleeting than

advanced directives

unfinished, in motion, less 

final, like a hummingbird

that darts and hovers and not

a document signed at deathbedside.

It is more infinite than

end-of-life

stretching, lasting, not

bookended like a bamboo stalk

that climbs into ceiling-less sky and not

the cessation of breath.

comfort measures

like the steam from chicken noodle soup,

a brush of soft fingertip 

to shoulder blade,

a squeeze of a palm,

release.

Annie Marhefka is a writer in Baltimore, Maryland, where she spends her time writing, boating on the Chesapeake Bay, and hiking with her kiddos. Her creative nonfiction and poetry have been featured in Anti-Heroin Chic, Versification, Sledgehammer Lit, Remington Review, Coffee + Crumbs, and Capsule Stories, among others. Annie is the Executive Director at Yellow Arrow Publishing, a Baltimore-based nonprofit supporting and empowering women writers, and is working on a memoir about mother/daughter relationships. You can find Annie’s writing on Instagram @anniemarhefka, Twitter @charmcityannie, and at anniemarhefka.com. 

the only wedding that I desire

by Laxana Devaraj

I turn to damp petals

unfurling in the morning light, 

a flower ring on my finger. 

A perfect wedding with 

melancholy in silence. 

Past wounds unfold like 

black veils of a mourning bride; 

as stubborn as I am, they refuse to heal.

Laxana Devaraj is a recent law graduate living in Sri Lanka. She likes to write and read poetry. Her poetry is to be published in Ice Lolly Review.

3 poems

by William G. Gillespie

sunset in Guanacaste 

In the quietness of the peninsula 

I listen to the waves turn white 

against the cliffs 

against the sun brushing the porcelain sands with gold 

there is no sail in sight 

save the frigatebird

rising like an angel 

above the bay 

taken on a current 

I will one day know   

toward the mountain veils of green 

winter

I see the last of the plum leaves fall 

as a gust of wind whistles the end of autumn 

soon the shivering window hums 

with blue adumbrations of snow and solitude 

I chew my mandarin 

and listen—    

when I gather in my arms 

the cold winter winds

I rock to sleep 

the promise of spring

desire

The fisherman 

plucked a grape 

from the crown 

of a white wave 

but the grape 

round and sweet 

shriveled 

in the salt of his hand 

William G. Gillespie lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY. His poetry has appeared in Olney Magazine, Red Eft Review, and The Drunken Canal. 

carrying the weight

by Dylan Parkin

The sun-cracked snow,

A Grecian marble statue bent with light and time.

The sky’s a canvas flecked 

With dark and flying souls.

There’s freedom in the air

But still they weigh it down. 

Sleep is still unstirred, 

As the light is yet to reach

The splattered thoughts 

Of the day before.

But the rising of the sun’s the melting of a dream.

Another weight that finds its way.

Watercolours shape the world

And everything echoes another.

It’s seen in the pale frailties 

That pass between faces.

The sky is carried like a coffin.

No pity for the pallbearer.

Dylan Parkin (he/him) is an autistic creative currently based in Reading, UK. He can be found on Twitter @parkin1901.

adventure dog

by James Roach

Adventure Dog
loved being in the warm sun,
finding the perfect spot in the grass
or on the weathered wood of the deck,
splayed out like a frog
to soak in every ray.
She was a champion
adjuster of blankets for naps
on the light green couch
we got from a friend,
her husband’s back
no longer able to handle
the softening cushions.
But to Sage, it was perfect.
Adventure Dog
got me out of bed
with impatient whines
on the days my anxiety tried its best to keep me
hidden from the outside world.
She recognized the universe of my panic,
when my constellations were out of shape.
She learned the definition of divorce
when he never came back.
Adventure Dog
cared that I got home safe
from a night of drinking,
was always at the door,
greeting me with her forgiving eyes
and wagging tail.
She never knew there were so many times
my tires almost lost their grip on the road.
She never judged me
for the vomiting,
the hangovers,
the regret.
Adventure dog
has been gone since April 7, 2016.
Her eyes said she knew why the vet
had come the day she fell asleep on my bed
for the last time.
I gave her steak as a last meal
and cried into her brindle fur
while the sedative took effect. 
Adventure Dog
was made eternal in ashes
that now sit in a red wooden box
with her leash and collar,
that probably still smell like her,
on a shelf by the only window in my room.
When the sun is out
or when candles are lit,
she is surrounded by light.
Adventure Dog
isn’t here to witness me sober,
my joy for this new life.
Her snores are no longer the lullaby
I hear as I fall asleep.
Sometimes,
between wakefulness and sleep,
between my life here and wherever her spirit may wander,
I can feel her weight.
It is the heaviness
that will never leave me.

James Roach (he/him) is most creative between the hours of up-too-late and is it even worth going to bed? He dug up his midwest roots to live in Olympia, Wa., not too far from some sleepy volcanoes and beaches to write home about.