national grief quotient experiences exponential growth

by Sharon Denmark

Would it be with copper spoons unnestled, 

or a glass cup with red hash marks, the handle 

warming quickly in your hand, if we could 

measure grief? Or would it take rooms, whole house, 

grief seeping into the sheetrock, staining 

the ceiling, pushing against the windows?

I couldn’t close my eyes but they were already 

closed. I dreamt I was packing to move but 

I had just opened the last cardboard box 

and it was full of handwritten letters 

and I taped it shut again. We can read 

this long list of names out loud. Our voices 

would grow hoarse, whittled down to whimper 

and whisper. Choose your own tragedy.

There’s a long list to pick from. 

And there are names

no one has ever written down. 

Sharon Denmark is an artist and writer living in Virginia. She spends her days managing a hospice thrift shop, sorting through life’s leftovers. Her artwork can be seen at www.460arts.com.

everywhere at once

by Thad DeVassie

– after Mark Strand

To outsiders and onlookers, it is called indecisiveness. 

But this affliction has a proper name:

The Creative Death Spiral. She says 

“Maybe I should paint the sky, not write about it...” 

She abandons words for paint, gazing at a blank canvas. 

“Perhaps I should just write about the sky instead...”

She resumes staring at a blank page until stumbling 

upon a death spiral hack where she goes outside, looks up  

at the sky, and sees poetry and art intermingling, 

all of it and herself, everywhere at once. 

Thad DeVassie is a multi-genre writer and painter who creates from the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio. He was awarded the James Tate International Poetry Prize in 2020 for his collection, SPLENDID IRRATIONALITIES (SurVision Books). Find his words and paintings online @thaddevassie.

2 poems

by Frances Boyle

touches

wind, stirring strands of hair, a long

brush against cheek

a lift, apparently effortless, the dancer has

ascended

warmth of mouth on mouth, bodies

aligning

solace, arms containing

the child’s bewildered sorrow

a resist, ring bruise on wrist

the singling-out shoulder tap, that

clutch of fear

brush to canvas, pen to paper,

a commencement

thaw

frozen food that must keep two hundred miles

― Gary Fincke “This” in The Fire Landscape

We don’t talk about the package 

sweating in the back seat,

the woman who made it 

or why she felt compelled to press

a tinfoil-clad meal on us at the door

as we kissed her soft wrinkled cheek.

Bright awareness, alert for the drive.

Crystals already furring the inside

of the foil.

The journey slowly melts its heart.

We race time, speed along highway 

until the lasagna, layered in the pan

and cooked two months ago,

is hustled, driveway to front hall 

to oven. Vegetables, noodles, sauce.

Smells good you say.

We should phone 

I say, let her know 

we’re home.

Frances Boyle lives in Ottawa, Canada. Her most recent book is the poetry collection, Openwork and Limestone, published by Frontenac House in fall 2022. In addition to two earlier books of poetry, she is also the author of an award-winning short story collection, and a novella. Frances’s writing has been selected for the Best Canadian Poetry series, nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and appeared throughout North America and internationally. Recent publications include work in Blackbird, Resurrection Magazine, Paris Lit Up, After… and The New Quarterly.

2 poems

by Daniel A. Rabuzzi

returning

An earring falls into a drain,

A pearl returns to the sea.

A flounder ingests some mud,

A trawler scoops up the fish.

A fisher slits,

A pearl unbellies,

A jeweler refashions,

An earring anew.

A hand moves to affix

A lock stray, undone.

An earring falls into a drain.

always back to the table

The egg of the world split open,

Yolk became the ocean,

Albumen the sheath of the sky.

At the hatching, 

A shard of shell

Flew into God’s eye, stuck there, 

reminding her every time she 

blinked,

To remember us,

To mind us,

To help us,

For God’s sake too.

Daniel A. Rabuzzi has had two novels, five short stories and ten poems published since 2006 (www.danielarabuzzi.com). He lived eight years in Norway, Germany and France. He has degrees in the study of folklore and mythology, international relations, and European history. He lives in New York City with his artistic partner & spouse, the woodcarver Deborah A. Mills (http://www.deborahmillswoodcarving.com), and the requisite cat. Tweets @TheChoirBoats

paintings by Deborah A. Mills

mother

by Stephanie Buesinger

I kept the pearls —

they were most like 

her, a polished surface betraying 

a fragile core

a life of being 

compelled to do what others had expected —

didn’t they make pearls like that 

forcing a grain of sand, a sliver of shell

onto the raw, shiny innards of an 

oyster, its innocence concedes to the inevitable 

puncture of flesh, resistance worn 

down, disappointment forming concentric layers

until, inevitably, it gives birth to the 

incandescent. 

Stephanie Buesinger is a writer and illustrator. She writes short fiction and children's literature. Current projects include a Young Adult (YA) novel and several picture books. Stephanie has degrees from Wellesley College and the University of Texas at Austin. Following a career in finance and economic consulting she decided to follow her creative pursuits. She is the Photo and Blog editor for Literary Mama. 

gifts

by Meghan Sterling

I sit at this table, the crumbs fallen

from my grandmother mouth

decorate the wood with its dry lace,

the empty jars stacked in the pantry

borrowed from my grandmother fear

that everything of use must be kept

as a talisman against poverty,

the drawers full of costume jewelry

in soft silky bags hedged from my 

grandmother desire for beauty at any cost

as long as it’s cheap, rhinestone glamour, 

satin bosom, patent leather shoes 

with buckles, hearing the call of the trains 

with my grandmother dread in the smoke 

that falls up into a sky like a flat white stone, 

like rows and rows of flat white stones, 

like a guard against the past, like the past

that’s only allowed to visit in dreams. 

Meghan Sterling’s work has been nominated for 4 Pushcart Prizes in 2021 and has been published or is forthcoming in Rattle, Colorado Review, Idaho Review, Radar Poetry, The West Review, West Trestle Review, River Heron Review, SWIMM, Pinch Journal, and many others. She is the Associate Poetry Editor of the Maine Review. Her first full-length collection These Few Seeds (Terrapin Books) came out in 2021. Her chapbook, Self Portrait with Ghosts of the Diaspora (Harbor Editions) will be out in 2023.  Read her work at meghansterling.com.

photograph, farm wife, circa 1930

by Doug Stone

She lives her life close to the earth, 

close to the certainty of the seasons, 

always afraid of distances 

beyond the edge of the fields. 

When a glance to the horizon startles her, 

she looks down to the firm comfort 

of the ground and waits to take her next step 

until the spin of the earth feels just right again.

Doug Stone lives in Western Oregon. He has written three collections of poetry, The Season of Distress and Clarity, The Moon’s Soul Shimmering on the Water, and Sitting in Powell’s Watching Burnside Dissolve in Rain.

practical jokes enacted by the universe

by Ellen Clayton

I

Grandad loved snow

and solitude.

On the day of his funeral

I imagined his wry smile

as the thickest snow I’d ever seen

blanketed the earth.

The only people able to get to the

service were those of us 

close enough to brave the journey,

amidst December’s icy hush 

and deadly 

quiet roads. 

I saw a robin, proud

and unruffled

I felt its significance

shepherding our sombre

band of mourners (all descendants)

to safety. 

The service was less populated

than he deserved

but more stately somehow —

a beauty and dignity appropriate 

to the 90 years he graced earth 

with. 

It was a fitting end. 

II

There was a power cut in the 

hospital, while my Dad was

in surgery having a 

triple heart bypass. 

Our tense, interminable wait 

suddenly had an added edge

of peril. While emergency

lights flashed around the room 

and alarms blared 

my sisters and I stared

at each other in shock

Wondering how to hold

the frayed edges of Mum 

together with this farcical,

frightening 

twist of fate. 

I mumbled about back-up 

generators but felt I was 

exacerbating the panic —

instead we sat in silence

staring about the room

watching staff members

rushing and conducting 

strained, hushed 

conversations.

A doomed montage played

on loop in my brain

Then

after a few minutes

my sister noticed  

the alarm only seemed to be

in our particular section

of the building:

an epicentre of anxiety.

We left our chosen waiting spot

emerged 

to discover

a steady, persistent light.

The scales of fate tipped back

in Dad’s favour; 

our family’s flame 

could not be extinguished 

so easily. 

Ellen Clayton is a poet from Suffolk, England, where she lives with her husband and three young children. Her poetry has been published in various online and print publications, including Capsule Stories, Nightingale & Sparrow and Anti-Heroin Chic. She has work forthcoming with Brave Voices magazine and Gutslut Press and her debut chapbook, Home-Baked, will be published in April 2022 by Bent Key Publishing. More of her work can be found on Instagram @ellen_writes_poems. 

lune

by Ariane Lauren

Meteorites,

Ever gladdened; cratering – 

Our world to pieces.

Ash settles, scarring appears,

Dotting all extremities.

Ariane Lauren considers herself a Northern Southerner; due to being raised in Connecticut as a child and living in North Carolina since she was a teenager. Many think her to be mischievous due to her secretive nature, and they might be right.

fish hooks & cut paper

by Leah C. Stetson

The windows were broken to eat you alive.
      Slicked with ink and thin paper, my hands,
            Under-appreciated, unhinged — even thrived
                  Despite the lackluster smidgen of damp sand.

I am at the beach, plump with rainwater, lobster-carnage
      This cool foggy summer — the island, laughing, Pristine?
            It stays true to that cold hardiness, a coastal colláge
                    In rescuing the wild form, a soft mossy sea green.

That said, a spiny siren records her catches: a hummingbird,
      Spring break engineering majors, monsoon storms, a queen
            Flown, thrown and blown through cut paper latches
                    Burn off their spines, it is not that damage-repair thing.

Poised to scream out lots of terrible bare-tree lines
      Because he was suffering in private gardens,
            Clad in welding gloves, a fish hook thought of a tongue
                    Like a sermon of my father’s, to dig up tender globes,

I re-imagined my artichoke romance in a green-muraled dining room, l
      Living proof that their purple-blue thistle havens were worth the effort
            Licking fingers and lovers along the edges of a slip-covered coast
                    Without shells or throw pillows or souvenirs.

The vivid art of dreaming pins a spooky piece
    I kept trying to save Saturn or Uranus, those cruel outer planets
            Hoping for a robust shape-shifter scientist to save the dying seas;
                    It’s not a giant ball of recycled gyotaku doused with kerosene.

Leah C. Stetson writes poetry with an eco-bent. She is currently on a quest to study the deep, dark-Romantic ecology of marshes & estuarine systems, as a graduate student in the Interdisciplinary PhD program at University of Maine. Leah swims in open water five months out of the year in the Gulf of Maine – without a wetsuit. Find her posts @StrangeWetlands on Twitter. 

lingyin temple

by Nicole Callräm

each stone step touched – the 

plants decomposing swelling warm 

every drop of blood is light 

infused. you stayed back eyes on 

incense thick forests quiet as the 

carved wood – cool red dirt right 

below your still feet, I drop your hand 

go higher up my soul by my side 

a soothing secret sense of 

smoky solitude I think of your 

slumber blissed face 

heated waters of the 

dream pools moss light 

tree bark cool damp on 

my palm – leaf colored fish swirl in the 

seafoam waters the Buddha’s 

half smile resting on my eyelids

Golden shovel from Jean Valentine’s “Happiness (3)”

Nicole Callräm (she/her/她) is a nomadic bureaucrat and disciple of existence in each of its confusing manifestations. She adores rideshare bikes, red wine, and Osmanthus flowers (preferably a mix of the three...all at once). Nicole has been published in Full House Literary, Anti-Heroin Chic, Kissing Dynamite, and Rat's Ass Review. You can find her on Twitter at @YiminNicole.

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.