womb

by Alana Rodriguez

I cannot run 

away from the grief. 

Waning away, 

I pity myself and feel sick. 

Conscious of my breathing 

so as to not disturb 

yours— take me with you 

one last time.

Alana Rodriguez is a creative from Chula Vista, CA. A first-generation graduate from San Diego State University, she holds a B.A. in English. When she’s not writing unfinished poems in her notes app, you can find her baking cookies for her family and doing crossword puzzles for herself. Find her forthcoming work in the San Diego Poetry Annual.

séidh

by Clara McShane

I often believe that the Irish for blow – Séidh 

speaks softly to the fragrant song of the breeze.

Séidh hushes fondly each cluster of trees.

Blow is a ruler, a faux-God, a brute.

Voluminous, mighty and red – 

Wind does not blow each clover bed.

Wind is a spirited force, 

and blow is human, hollow to the wistful ear.

Wind cannot blow what it does not fear.

When mighty gusts sweep over craggy fields of gorse,

secrets of the sídhe are scattered over sheets of yellow glow.

Whispers of faeries too wilful to blow.

Off the coast of Malin Head, somewhere in the starry sea,

a piece of driftwood is shunted along by the gentle breath of the fish.

Bí ag séideadh, cairde airgid, bí ag séideadh anois.

Sídhe – a supernatural race in Celtic mythology (an older form of sí).

Bí ag séideadh, cairde airgid, bí ag séideadh anois. – “Blow, silver friends, blow now.”

Clara McShane is an emerging writer from Dublin with a BA in Psychology. She has been writing for most of her life, and finds a sense of peace and balance from engaging with poetry and prose. Her work has been published in The Caterpillar Magazine and Drawn to the Light Press. 

our endangered rarity

by KG Newman

When the wheat grew tall enough 

to recall the moment we’d changed,

and we could finally admit it, 

was a few months after 

I drew a squiggly line in the sand 

to protect against the time goblins

and I kept re-drawing it 

each thirty seconds, after the sea

washed it away at our feet.

In this way the price of bullets

does correspond to our conflict,

as does the rising admission

at our favorite pumpkin patch which is 

destined to be burned soon, after 

steam from the funnel cake machine

wafts into the sky to take the form 

of various predators above us, 

first a tigress then a lion

then an anthropomorphic liger

begging us to hold our fire.

KG Newman is a sportswriter who covers the Broncos and Rockies for The Denver Post. His first three collections of poems are available on Amazon and he has been published in hundreds of literary journals worldwide. The Arizona State University alum is on Twitter @KyleNewmanDP and more info and writing can be found at kgnewman.com. He lives in Hidden Village, Colorado, with his wife and two kids.

the endless line of y-shaped lamp posts

by Ecem Yucel

A memory from when I was a little girl and could fit in the back seat of a car horizontally. Upside down, through the car window, I’d watch the lamp posts planted in the middle of a double road pass one by one, sometimes fast, and blurry, sometimes slower, sometimes counting,  sometimes just looking at them with a blank mind. Back then, so innocent, I could afford a tabula rasa. A light would burn for each arm of the Y, yet sometimes only one of them was lit, or both out, and it would bother me just like the pillow under my head, which belonged to my aunt, and was filled with real bird feathers that would stick out of the pillowcase and jab into my cheeks, making me hate bird-feathered pillows for the rest of my life. The posts went on and on, hypnotizing, never an end to them in sight. Embodying itself as an imaginary friend, fear would lay down next to me, crowding the back seat, and whisper in my ear that we would never arrive where we were going. Are we close yet? I’d ask my mom. Just a bit further, she’d always reply. The lamp posts would go on and on, sometimes illuminating, sometimes dead. Fear would tug the hems of my skirt, fidgeting, disturbing, and I’d whisper back, No, no, soon, we’ll be home somewhere. 

Ecem Yucel is an Ottawa-based Turkish writer, poet, and translator. She holds an MA in World Literatures and Cultures and is a Ph.D. candidate in Translation Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Cypress Poetry Journal, Wine Cellar Press, Alien Buddha Press, and Ayaskala Magazine. Her poetry book The Anguish of an Oyster is available on Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble. You can find her at www.ecemyucel.com or on Twitter @TheEcemYucel.

waiting for spring

by Burt Rashbaum

Crows and snow

a tethered world

monochromatic

static, white noise

of sight like floaters,

skittery images through

flakes the size of quarters,

and feathered balls of birds

sitting it out on sugared pines.

The lines of the telephone 

poles, disappearing,

six crows walking

in the parking lot, like

notes on a staff making

song, and then flight

to alight on a naked

aspen, awaiting spring,

to scare as one

and take off into a

distance that erases

itself with the brush

of falling snow.

Burt Rashbaum’s publications are Of the Carousel (The Poet’s Press, 2019), and Blue Pedals (Editura Pim, 2015, Bucharest). His poems have been anthologized in XY Files (Sherman Asher Publishing, 1997), The Cento (Red Hen Press, 2011), Art in the Time of Covid-19 (San Fedele Press, 2020), A 21st Century Plague: Poetry from a Pandemic (University Professors Press, 2021), American Writers Review: Turmoil and Recovery (San Fedele Press, 2021), and most recently, The Antonym literary review (2022). His fiction has appeared in Caesura, Meet Cute Press #2, and Typeslash Review.

saxon suite #6

by David Hay

Vivacious leaves wisp lonely

Over mountain high and regal.

Two stars pierced my eyes and in the blindness of saints

I worshipped with the humble terror the graveyard of each minute

But no longer will I soak my bones in sorrow,

So tantalising it touches the tongue with harmonic grace.

I shall break these egg-shell walls

And touch beauty, hold it like a new-born

In a countryside full of wolves

No more shall lives be written with only

With sorrows-long-limbed touches,

Instead the moon contends with the sun

In early morning

When each bird is a miracle of feathers

And I with grim-tied tongue shall with imaginary step

Walk clean into the centre of the field

Outside the gates of the hospital

And jump without hesitation into the grey of the lake

Mythical, made of tears and see how far down

I can swim into the darks of my heart,

Trailing light with each kick of disturbance.

David Hay has been published in Dreich, Abridged, Acumen, The Honest Ulsterman, The Dawntreader, Versification, The Babel Tower Notice Board, The Stone of Madness Press, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Fortnightly Review, The Lake, Selcouth Station, GreenInk Poetry, Dodging the Rain, Seventh Quarry and Expat-Press among others. His debut publication is the Brexit-inspired prose-poem Doctor Lazarus published by Alien Buddha Press 2021. 

she led us through forests of know

by Ren Pike

go there 

thick thickets

woody arms twined

no path, no path

go there

yes, there

pull back 

branches, careful

red welts rising, finding 

faintest hint of feet

lynx and hare

perhaps fox

perhaps 

there

a path

into the back 

back country of wispy beard lichens

spruce shadowed lambkill 

bursts of labrador tea softness

mosses and mosses

there

carpets

waxy leaved weavings

pale partridge berry bellies

bunches and bunches

blueberry haunches

there

bucket hand ready

picking 'round ant eaten

sun beaten, larix laricina 

fragrant and tilting 

earth crumbling brown 

sugar patch kings

rock basking

there

before it all

Ren Pike grew up in Newfoundland. Through sheer luck, she was born into a family who understood the exceptional value of a library card. Her work has appeared in Whale Road Review, Riddle Fence and Portmanteau LDN. When she is not writing, she wrangles data in Calgary, Canada.  http://rpike.mm.st/

words

by Robert Allen

I can speak from the knock of my boots,

crazily tapping the dust

and I do not stumble;

I spell our love there.

These letters leap up,

my voice rises with them

and my voice screams: joy.

Robert Allen lives with his family in Northern California where he writes poems, takes long walks, and looks at birds.  More at www.robertallenpoet.com

midnight walks in when it’s nearly thirty below zero

by Adam Chabot

White birches offer their bark 

as kindling. You were unprepared 

for that cold, prickly-like-soda, 

dry taste in the air. Crunches echo, 

breaths take ethereal shape but 

it’s so cold the air sucks that up, 

too, so all that’s left is what’s left to 

feel, to see, to hear within a world 

in which, maybe just for tonight, 

desires no such movement. Go 

to sleep, or at least, go inside. 

This isn’t meant for you.

Adam Chabot is the English Department Chair at Kents Hill School, a private, independent high school located in central Maine. His other poetry has been recently featured in rough diamond poetry, The Red Lemon Review, and FEED, among others. He can be found on Twitter @adam_chabot.

why to climb to pyramid point

by Matthew Miller

To seek seclusion in descent, to leave 

the dune’s peak crowded 

with fiddleheads and leeks. To step into 

your own shadow, unrolling 

a slow cascade of sand around your ankles. 

To know a place where ancients said 

earth and heaven overlap, where you leap 

from cliffs and land soft. To bury the apple skin 

within the unbarked branch, so that the wind 

must send waves in a blazing gradient. 

To sit on the ridge of the drift, dumping grains

like sugar across the violets at your toes.

Matthew Miller teaches social studies, swings tennis rackets, and writes poetry - all hoping to create home. He and his wife live beside a dilapidating orchard in Indiana, where he tries to shape dead trees into playhouses for his four boys. His poetry has been featured in Whale Road Review, River Mouth Review, EcoTheo Review and Ekstasis Magazine.

a girl in the woods goes reliably wild

by Kristin Garth

You are losing touch with humanity.

Scurry amidst the flat eyes, chittering teeth

until only in dreams do you even see 

any flesh resembling the silk underneath

the tangled dark mane no blade deigns to tame.

Follow a serpent three days as if it’s

a game, on your belly, without a shame 

forgotten a month ago when your dress rips

and the world grows too hot.  You rend

 it like the name a father gave without undue 

thought.  Syllables like chicory petals hide,

blue, in your teeth, swallowing speech you 

attempted as a miserable child. 

A girl in the woods goes reliably wild

Kristin Garth is a Pushcart, Rhysling nominated sonneteer and a Best of the Net finalist.  Her sonnets have stalked journals like Glass, Yes, Five:2:One, Luna Luna and more. She is the author of many books of poetry including The Stakes (Really Serious Literature) and a short story collection You Don’t Want This.  She is the editor of seven anthologies and the founder of Pink Plastic House a tiny journal and co-founder of Performance Anxiety, an online poetry reading series. Follow her on Twitter:  (@lolaandjolie) and her website kristingarth.com

3 poems

by Kelli Weldon

voyage

boat engine turning over

gulls in the wind

a song I have never heard.

Adventure beckons

the cold, dark thrill

the deep

wonders

seize the current, surprise my anchor.

“yes,” I am whispering before I can stop myself

“yes” to the storm that is brewing.

how to fall

slope alongside Sam Houston state park trails

dry Louisiana oak leaves crunch under age 8 weight

quiet cacophony as her little body rolls

quickly

down

then steadies

sun through the trees

a lightweight Sisyphus emerging.

that’s the right way to fall,

arms crossed over your heart to guard it.

just like it is, even now

when the ground gives out underneath

and you oblige

you have to hold on to yourself.

elevator

our time arrives

days stretch out within this minute

a raindrop suspended, teeming with microbes.

gravity tugs your heels to Earth,

you straighten your spine

cables and counterweights abide

a nod of recognition.

my stomach sinks, the eerie knot subsides.

maybe you knew me in another life.

down and down

and straight ahead

be careful

this is all we get.

Kelli Weldon was born and raised in Louisiana and now resides in Texas. She studied journalism and literature at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana, and served on the editorial board of its literary magazine, Argus. Find her poetry in publications including Eclectica Magazine and In Parentheses.

thursday afternoon

by Julie Allyn Johnson

seven words cycle

through random readings,

various collections of poetry

& rhyme, cable chyrons,

screen-bottom crawls,

daily newsprint:

wind / woke /

lilacs /

bivouac / articulate(d) /

inflation anxiety

I want to burrow

beneath a cranberry quilt

in a 4-season sunroom,

daybed strewn with pillows

a calico giraffe

paisley raccoon —

faithful cuddle companions

you’ll bring me my chai

a blend of chocolate & vanilla

together we’ll work out Sudoku

and chart the remainder of our days,

Charlie Parker jazz keeping us mellow

Julie Allyn Johnson, a sawyer's daughter – the eldest of six girls - from the American Midwest, savors long walks in the woods, any time of year.  She loves Halloween, photography, gravel-travel, art, poetry and haiku, reading, linocut printing and hiking in the Rocky Mountains.  Her current obsession is tackling the rough and tumble sport of quilting and the accumulation of fabric.  Julie's poetry can be found in various journals including Lyrical Iowa, The Briar Cliff Review, Phantom Kangaroo, The Disappointed Housewife, Anti-Heroin Chic, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Better Than Starbucks and Chestnut Review. 

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.