blue sky dream

by Yuan Changming

for Qi Hong

Behind the dance with no choreography 

I see the gracious steps and movements

Of your shapely figure in tune with 

An ascending spirit, where bees swarm

Into the spotlight as if to collect notes

Shaken off from your melody, and swirls

Sweeping through the grassland as if 

To emulate your postures in the distance

Beyond the horizon

It’s not my imagination

But in the dance I do see you painting a picture

With all the smoothness, tenderness and grace

Of your body in the heart of light 

As in the spotlight of my heart

Yuan Changming hails with Allen Yuan from poetrypacific.blogspot.ca. Credits include 12 Pushcart nominations & 15 chapbooks, most recently Sinosaure: Bilingual-Cultural Poems. Besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline, Poetry Daily and nearly 2,000 others,  Yuan served on the jury and was nominated for Canada’s National Magazine Awards (poetry category).

where are you now

by Alexander Etheridge

I keep hearing the gone 

are gone and don’t 

come back

Someone said what’s done 

joins what’s vanished

and in a pure dance

they fall into God’s tear

Meet me there

all you that were dear to me

you that flew up

into moonshadow

What will I do then

in my own last moment

Will I see it 

coming

and will we be apart

as we are now

or blended seamlessly

out there in Heaven’s

fields    Heaven’s 

winter fields

Maybe I’m already

falling or maybe

I’m a drifting grain

of pollen

Who’ll come to me

at the center of

the void

where snowfire blooms

Where is

the shoreless ocean

You told me death is

bone-close and woven

in every thought   

and that in time’s 

dark chapel

all our grief and 

all our joy are recalled

by an infinite mind

Find me there

after the last

morning

Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998. His poems have been featured in Scissors and Spackle, Ink Sac, Cerasus Journal, The Cafe Review, The Madrigal, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, Roi Faineant Press, and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999, and a finalist for the Kingdoms in the Wild Poetry Prize in 2022. 

“open the window, open the window and open it wide!” I say

by Bracha K. Sharp

And peering out at the downpour,
Speckles flung haphazardly on
Stone steps, trees flung in the rain,
Staccato taps a constant in the background —

Yes, this is the primeval that touches mundanity,
The skies pigeon-grey, the wind unfurling closed leaves —
And I, standing there,
Know only this loving prayer,

And like the leaves pirouetting in mist
And the birds crooning at the skies, I, too,
Lift up my arms and twirl in this
Edenic and aqueous world.

Bracha K. Sharp was published in the American Poetry Review, the Birmingham Arts Journal, Sky Island Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, and Wild Roof Journal, among others. She placed first in the national Hackney Literary Awards; the poem subsequently appeared in the Birmingham Arts Journal. She was a finalist in the New Millennium Writings Poetry Awards and received a 2019 Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards Silver Medal for her debut picture book. As her writing notebooks seem to end up finding their way into different rooms, she is always finding both old pieces to revisit and new inspirations to work with. She is a current reader for the Baltimore Review. You can find out more about her writing by visiting: www.brachaksharp.com 

never

by Mykyta Ryzhykh

The morning noise is gentle and supreme

And the soul of the body is fitted with whitewash

When the cherries ripen in the garden

Never

When the morning sun is at 

Wake up and it will be day again

Never

When the blood is warm and cold

Never

Never

Never

Never

Mykyta Ryzhykh (he\him) lives in Ukraine (Nova Kakhovka Citу). He is the winner of the international competition «Art Against Drugs», bronze medalist of the festival Chestnut House, laureate of the literary competition named after Tyutyunnik. Published in the journals “Dzvin,” “Ring A,” “Polutona,” “Rechport,” “Topos,” “Articulation,” “Formaslov,” “Colon,” “Literature Factory,” “Literary Chernihiv,” Tipton Poetry Journal , Stone Poetry Journal, Divot journal, dyst journal, Superpresent Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Alternate Route, Better Than Starbucks Poetry & Fiction Journal, Littoral Press,  on the portals “LitCentr” and “Soloneba”. He received a scholarship from the President of Ukraine for young authors.

a poem in the moment

by Sol Kim Cowell

smooth sun-bite upon my cheek, 

dappled green grove tattooed upon my

arms, i kiss the wet nose of the dachshund

and wipe the smushy drool from my lips

with the back of my hand. 

crisp croissants crumple beneath my fingers

real, real, i am in this moment — 

even the tickle of hair at the nape of my neck

and the fine crust of dirt beneath my nails

grounds me: real, real.

Sol Kim Cowell is a transmasc mixed British-Korean writer and local café regular. Through his writing, he seeks to embolden the whispers of the subconscious and to confront the ghosts of the past, with a view to tell stories that resonate across borders.  At his doljanchi, he picked up the pencil, and he hasn’t put it down since. 

ship of Theseus

by Ross Creason

This body is a vessel – 

               eroding, rolling, roaming             

borne on the sea, with brittle sails; 

the hull’s been strengthened, 

frayed out rigging swapped for 

sturdier lines. 

Sails patched, broader. 

New technology and navigation – 

               lessons learned laboring 

If the truth of me is in my veins, 

in my bones, my skin, my eyes, 

if my truth is in my body it’s gone now. 

Every seven years, 

every cell is exchanged, 

               dividing, duty-bound, decaying 

but there’s something that remains, 

the paradox of identity. 

After the close, after the lights 

               exit stage right, sans everything 

echoes in the waves, eternal 

as the ship of legend. 

               Tempest-toss’d, traveling. 

The story is the essence, and the truth 

of me is in the telling. 

Ross Creason is from the swamps of Northern VA where he is working towards an English degree. His work has been published in unstamatic, and he might be several possums, in a clever disguise.  

here in

by Lauren Suchenski

the silence of November, 

I tuck a little piece of my 

beating heart 

under a leaf; under a mushroom cap 

to let it ferment; 

maybe it will walk itself off, 

dizzy itself clean, wild itself new, 

maybe it will root itself pure 

And in the snow and tumbled ash 

of January, maybe it will curl around a seed; 

nugget itself into something 

that can grow; maybe my eyes 

will spin me around, 

and let me see the water run clear 

Tuck a cap full of acorns into 

my shoes and teach me how to 

float, a red leaf in the wind, tracing 

itself in the light that bounces 

off a telephone wire 

phoning home

Lauren Suchenski has a difficult relationship with punctuation. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and four times for The Best of the Net. Her chapbook “Full of Ears and Eyes Am I” (2017) is available from Finishing Line Press, and a full-length collection “All You Can Measure” as well as a chapbook “All Atmosphere” (Selcouth Station 2022) are forthcoming. You can find more of her writing on Instagram @lauren_suchenski or on Twitter @laurensuchenski.

proprioception

by Matthew Herskovitz

I learned today to tell an oriole

by the black on its beak, that arrowhead,

instead of any kind of orange chest

caged by black. Sat, rain treeing down, I told

what I now know to be a robin — oiled

head, yellow beak — how I can move my legs

without thinking. Rain came down through the leaves,

and she laughed birdsound, ruffled, stared at me,

drowned iris. Do you understand me? 

Rainwater poured into my lap. Wing flap. She

knew how I moved. Her head twitched, and grass blades

grew break heavy, darker green, whistled wind

when they smacked each other. She called this play,

jumped in the puddle, rainwater singing.

Matthew Herskovitz is a poet from Baltimore, Maryland. He is currently a senior studying English at the University of Maryland, College Park with plans to pursue an MFA in poetry in the fall. His works have been published in Red Lemon Review, Stylus, and Laurel Moon. He has upcoming work in The Shore.

cozy writer

by Ali Beauregard

I can hear the nib of your pen screeching

against the page. your pen exudes dark 

scrawls: the scratching of your pen 

breaking the tranquility of your mind.

yellowed pages, stained with drops of 

coffee. little magnolias and blossoms 

growing out of the white vase, paint

peeling off. and you grab for the tart, 

the sugar sinking into your hands as 

the viscous jam appears on the tip of

your rosy lips, dripping like clots of 

blood. then you grab for the fruit 

and viciously delight on its sweet flesh

as the seeds sprout new ideas, and sparks

your mind & you write once more: 

words flowing like the tributaries seen afar.

Ali Beauregard (they/them) is a queer creative based in the U.K. Their work tackles universal themes like heartbreak, teenage angst and pain, diaspora, and the erasure of BIPOC+ voices in history — through powerful, raw, and sacrilegious ways. Find more about their work here: songofali.carrd.co

a kitchen

by Sam Moe

There is a kitchen beneath my mattress, tucked

away over the years, there are pots of flavor and

silver mussels, gold minnows, cookies shaped 

like eyes, there are garlic hearts hanging from the

ceiling, cubes of thunder on the cutting board.

I am invited to prepare a phoenix heart, I am

unprepared for tenderness and the secrets, which

escape when I make the first cut, this is how you

recreate my universe. Someone’s telling me

not to ruin things this time, someone hands me

Verde artichoke hearts, crying tomatoes, reborn

leaves and a puffer fish, I am the saunter and the

sonder, I am losing to chocolate-covered lobster

shells, I learn to recreate my heart from scratch,

following a recipe etched on the dining room

table. 

Sam Moe (she/her) is a writer of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. She is pursuing a PhD in creative writing at Illinois State University. Her work has appeared in Overheard Lit Mag, Cypress Press, and others. She received an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing in June, 2021.

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.