bespoke (a pantoum)

by Amrita V. Nair

There is a life out there. 

I will know it when I see it. 

And I will step into it;

And it will fit me perfectly.

I will know it when I see it.

I will not hesitate, not for a minute.

And you will see that it will fit me perfectly; 

Maybe you will even be happy for me.

I will not hesitate, not for a minute.

Even if this life here is softer.

Maybe you will even be happy for me.

Even if the new one is out of fashion, scratchier.

Even if this life here is softer,

There is a life out there.

Even if the new one is out of fashion, scratchier.

I will step into it. 

Amrita V. Nair (she/her) is a poet from Kerala, who currently lives in the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples (Vancouver, Canada). Her writing has appeared in Okay Donkey, Yuzu Press, Litmora, and elsewhere, and was included in the Bloomsbury Anthology of Great Indian Poems. Website: www.amritanair.com. Twitter: @amritanairv

2 poems

by Jerome Berglund

frog’s toe

      gifts become burdens 

obligations, chores, distractions 

      right quick – grown puppy 

      King James’ version

or the Gideon’s

      take your pick, choice of translation’s yours 

      holds a lit taper 

when his heart gives out, 

      takes whole construction with him 

      manacles or straight jacket, 

severance package options 

      for family business 

      make a body, 

least have decency 

      stick around for cleanup 

bolt

haiga collaboration, photo by Theresa Berglund

Jerome Berglund, nominated last year for the Touchstone awards and Pushcart Prize, has many haiku, senryu and tanka exhibited and forthcoming online and in print, most recently in the Asahi Shimbun, Bottle Rockets, Frogpond, and Modern Haiku. His first full-length collection of poetry Bathtub Poems was just released by Setu Press.

2 poems

by Yuu Ikeda

a wingless bird

Morbid intensity

gives her wings

to be free

from disappointment.

nobody knows

her loneliness is always lethargic,

and immature.

so she wears sunglasses to hide her emptiness,

then wanders in people who embrace

ripe loneliness.

Yuu Ikeda (she/they) is a Japan based poet, writer.

She writes poetry on her website.

https://poetryandcoffeedays.wordpress.com/

Her first essay “DROPOUT”

was published in MORIA Literary Magazine.

And her latest poetry chapbook

“Phantasmal Flowers in The Eden

Where Only I Know”

was published by Black Sunflowers Poetry Press.

One of her big dreams is to write while traveling around the world.

You can find her on Twitter and Instagram :

@yuunnnn77

my body for yours

by Vikki C.

On some train journey, I have known you. The carriage window a living watercolor shifting in the artist's mind. It is hard to keep up — a field of barley, then maize or flax, a sameness blurring past my concentration span. I'm waiting for a break in the scene, soft greens and fists of blue cornflower.

I want to frame them for my daughter to say When I traveled alone today, I saw summer through your eyes. That rush of finery that comes unplanned, the palette only four basic colors. Like the washed-out hospice room when you visited with a bouquet. How the scarlet poppies changed the air I breathed while looking out in rehabilitation. And here I am, doing it all again, but just in motion. Waiting for a better portrait. Something worth showing for all the time spent watching these crops of labor. Beige miles moving past, my own reflection in the glass – unspectacular.

Yet today, Van Gogh made me look twice. Seeing you running across those clichéd wheatfields chasing a red kite as it quivered in the gusty breeze, slowly evaporating – reminding me how blood itself can be so light.

Vikki C. is a British-born author, poet, and musician from London whose literary works are inspired by science, existentialism, ecology, and the human condition. She is the author of The Art of Glass Houses (Alien Buddha Press, 2022) – a chapbook of prose poems exploring threads of human entanglement through constructs of memory, heritage, art, and the metaphysical. While London is home, Vikki has lived and worked as an expatriate in Asia and attributes her artistic perspectives to these diverse cross-cultural influences.

serum sickness

by Candice M. Kelsey

Throat closing

fire pythoning these joints

lymph nodes rolling

broad net of spots capturing skin

as my immune system rejects

antibiotics swimming

into the cove of my body

like the annual hunts

called grindadráp in the Faroes

anyone can participate

in black-suited sprints down

gritty shores of Bøur & Tórshavn

toward horror’s netherworld 

roping and lancing pilot whales

hundreds stranded

no contest for men proud

in an archipelago of gore

weeks later I recover

run hands soft over my thighs

slick bulbous melons

of flesh at the shore of me

a fading remnant of hives

like blood-stained brows

Candice M. Kelsey [she/her] is a poet, educator, activist, and essayist from Ohio and living bicoastally in L.A. and Georgia. Her work appears in Passengers Journal, Variant Literature, and The Laurel Review among others. A finalist for a Best Microfiction 2023, she is the author of six books. Candice also serves as a poetry reader for The Los Angeles Review. Find her @candice-kelsey-7 @candicekelsey1 and www.candicemkelseypoet.com.

from the garden

by Aarani Diana

Drunken sailor in the wind 

pink flowers falling away 

from home. In the 

flick of a butterfly’s 

wing there is a story I want to tell 

you — I want to give life to words and 

create worlds for you. 

There’s ash and 

dust in my body. A 

weariness from beyond my time. 

Sweet lipped bougainvillea, 

my bitter mouth. 

Cracked porcelain pots 

left in the dirt. 

When does a body become a 

home — and do I grow a 

garden there?

Aarani Diana is a writer and poet from Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. Her work has appeared in Orange Blush Zine and  Journal of Erato, and she is a staff writer for Love Letters and the Incognito Press. She also publishes her own blog, sparkoftheflames.com.  

2 poems

by Peter Hamlin

the foam

at Imperial Beach

I walked back from the end of the wooden pier
watching a wave run gently below
I saw that
the waves are not water
they are the waves, and the water is a medium
until they break and they are both foam
somersaulting into the sand

Reaching the sand I looked back and could see only the foam

summer

You do not have to remember 

the soft itch of summer

backlit by the workday and the roaches

you stomped

back again from winter

their lives as large

as fragile

the stroke of a lover and the still

sweat of the bed

the fan in the heat

You do not have to remember

the way your life 

goes and turns around

the soles overhead, stomping

the stroke of a lover

Peter Hamlin is a writer, artist, and engineer. His work ranges from poetry to mixed media kinetic art. He is currently based in San Diego, California. You can find him on Instagram @peter.hamlin.

the coast

by Sarah Phillips

Atop a dune and drunken grasses 

Lazy sway fingered in slow circles 

Indulgent golden earth stretched beneath my soles 

From my perch a muted battleground 

Even gods shot down discover contentment here  

Perhaps I should have known

That the land, hot oppressive sky

Would be too much for everyone

With their bodies bared to the bright summer 

Slow collapse sunny striped anarchy 

There they were, spread at the edge of the sea

Out to beyond the proud horizon immune to time

Bodies laid out and baking 

As I watched I knew

That the horrible heat was

Sinking through skins, bleeding into cuticles sockets and cavities

To pulse like a disease this evening

Drifting off in bed, but a snake descends

Tender and red against the sheets hissing 

Drunk on sunlight 

Too hot to breathe or feel final quiet 

As I turn back, I know

I will die in cold black water

Far from that horrible heat 

Sarah Phillips is a rising senior at Conestoga High School.  She is passionate about exploring the interactions between the natural and social sciences, and is especially fascinated by the relationship between neuroscience and psychology; it is one of her favorite hobbies to pursue those interests through writing.  She has also published her creative writing in Teen Ink. 

late afternoon

by Robin Keehn

May I talk to you?

About the girl we met 

today on our walk?

You know,

the one who remarked

that you reminded her

of her long line of beloved 

hamsters?

You heard her say 

you were cute, heard 

her ask your age

before she pointed 

to your grey face

to the grey

taking over your head,

creeping down your back,

scattering across your chest.

No doubt

you heard her say

that eventually grey 

will take over your 

entire body

like it did her hamsters,

all of them,

who started going grey

and suddenly turned all 

grey right before

they died.

Did it bother you at all

that she gave out this information

with a lilt, a toss of her 

13-year-old head,

her cherry red hair

shimmering like a halo, 

before she skipped 

away down the street?

When I looked down at you

and you up at me,

I swear I could 

see you turn away,

hear you whisper something

about the grey at 

my temples,

the streaks (what I like to

call highlights) 

that seem to be infiltrating 

my head.

I know you wanted to say 

that I do not remind you 

of any hamster you have ever seen,

certainly not one 

stuck in a dumb cage

on a dumb wheel, owned by a dumb 

red-headed girl.

No, you wanted to say

that I have many, many 

more walks ahead of me,

many, many more

poems to write.   

Robin Keehn is a writer living in Encinitas, California.

2 poems

by Lulu Liu

the snow that came in October

was not impossible but not expected.

The city had not salted the roads.

There could have easily been

another crop of tomatoes.

We woke to a strange sight:

ice slumping leaf-heavy branches

all the way to the ground,

the begonias dead 

in a shocked, bloody heap –

the perimeters of our lives

having closed a notch tighter –

and stored those among 

other images of this year,

all out of order.

- October 2020

to the woman who stayed

The dogwood's been chewed on     

again     it won't bloom this year either     

yet at the first

breath of spring     you'll bear

the old shovel to its branches

break     the frost-sealed ground

and work a mound of compost

into the     exhale

There's much to do

to tender the     roots

of a human life

and you     have steeped

your tea of     discontent

long enough     too long really

day after lonely     day     over

and over     ducked

the swinging anvil of your 

anger     and you're glad to be

past all that     finally

This is the calm that

decision brings

the pain that is the     deep

ripening     has dulled

(an old well     grown over in

the meadow)     leaving 

just    a sutured    hollow   

Besides    there is always the

pleasure     of the night sky

always     sleep

in his gentle arms     always

the next life

Lulu Liu is a writer and physicist, who lives between Arlington, Massachusetts, and Parsonsfield, Maine. Her writing has appeared in the Technology Review and Sacramento Bee, among others, and recently her poetry in Apple Valley Review, and Thimble. She’s grateful to be nominated for Best of the Net 2023.

2 poems

by R Hamilton

draw

When your betraying back seizes up again,

your soft lead pencil falls to the floor

and the hard Future steps, embarrassed,

quickly outside for a smoke

to let you navigate the pain in private

until you can regain the pencil

and your art resumes —

its point whole,

its line flowing,

its poetry unbroken —

at least for a while, until it cannot;

at least for a while, until the baths

no longer keep the Berliner kalt at bay.

flat-wound vs round-wound

The shadows have grown

long enough to reach

around your waist, pull

you closer, kiss you softly;

yet still the guitar

is too cold to play

without any strings snapping

to lash like unexpected goodbyes.

R Hamilton’s poetry first appeared in their 1970 high school literary magazine, followed by a fifty-year backstage career in performing arts ending with retirement and the pandemic. Their next “published” piece was included in City Lights Theater’s 2020 Halloween podcast, an unintentionally round number of years and/or decades. Since then, Hamilton’s work has been included in collections by Caesura, Oprelle Press, and Boats Against the Current. 

cicadas

by Morris McLennan

The cicadas bloom and I know it’s going to get colder soon.
They whisper in engine hums beside my window,
under my bed,
inside of my left ear. 

I can see the first tinted leaf.
Once they scatter, they’ll make the hills seem
like piles of rotting lunchmeat
if you drive past them too quickly. 

That’s what I thought of on the school bus one day.
Cicadas, hiding, never found.
Shells, pressed into my palm. 

Going home and being a child and getting unwrapped,
layers of coats and scarves and hats and gloves and boots and socks.

All ochre toned. All sepia. 

Then being old again and looking out a different window and feeling different and being different.
And the sights are the same but the colors have more red in them.
Or maybe they don’t.

Maybe it’s just me. 

Alone in my room. Listening to the engine sounds.
With translucent shells stuck on every desk, every shelf, every surface.
Glowing golden in the evening light. 

I, too, know how to glow golden. 

Morris McLennan is a writer from Chicago, Illinois. His plays have been workshopped with the support of DePaul University and Shattered Globe Theater. He has a BFA in Playwriting from DePaul University, where he was the recipient of the Zach Helm Endowed Playwriting Scholarship and the Bundschu Award. Currently, he interns for Fruit Bat Press while working on his upcoming play, debut novel, and his Chicago restaurant review zine series.

the rule of thirds

by Darci Schummer

Amongst your many things

your father discovers

undeveloped film
“I think this is

actually yours,” he writes
on a note folded into a plastic case

holding the disc onto which 

another life of mine has been digitized.

In the pictures my young legs

stretch out from a pink bathrobe

I put on shimmering eye makeup

I wear my red winter coat 

the one with a faux fur collar

and too-short sleeves.

I smile, laugh, purse my lips

“Stop taking my picture,” my face says

as the camera watches me

your eye behind it capturing the bones of our love. 

For days I don’t stop looking and looking.

You taught me the rule of thirds 

how to compose a photo just so.

But now I know 

to account for what lies beyond the frame.

Darci Schummer is the author of the story collection Six Months in the Midwest (Unsolicited Press), co-author of the poetry/prose collaboration Hinge (broadcraft press), and author of the forthcoming novel The Ballad of Two Sisters (Unsolicited Press). Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Ninth Letter, Folio, Jet Fuel Review, MAYDAY, Matchbook, Necessary Fiction, Sundog Lit, and Pithead Chapel, among many other places. She teaches at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College where she serves as faculty editor of The Thunderbird Review.

high water

by Cheryl A. Ossola

When you said you wanted to see Venice 

in the acqua alta you didn’t bargain 

on slogging a mile to the train station,

suitcase held high, lactic acid burning, 

past trapped traghetti bobbing at bridges,

floating in the liminal space between 

piazza and canal where turquoise color shifts 

opaque to transparent, begging you to walk

(in the way heights dare you to jump) 

that shimmering edge, risk

slipping beneath the surface.

Instead you slog far from the edge, 

past shops kitted with pumps and doorway dams, 

shopkeepers whose faces say life goes on.

Water grabs at your feet, sucks at your knees, 

urging you to give in,

reminding you how desirable it is to stay grounded.

With each step you break free, 

contemplating alternatives,

destinations romantic, transitional, dead-end.

You want them all.

On the platform, water pools at your feet. 

You like the chill dampness, the clutch of fabric

like a lover’s embrace.

The trains wait. You are expected 

somewhere, sometime. Does it matter? 

You think only of depths, of possibilities.

Cheryl A. Ossola lives in a 15th-century ex-convent in Italy with her dog and too many books. Her work appears in boats against the current, Fourteen Hills, Switchback, Writers Digest, After the Pause, and the anthology Speak and Speak Again, among other publications. Her Nautilus Award-winning debut novel, The Wild Impossibility (Regal House Publishing), came out in 2019. More at italicus.substack.com and cherylaossola.com.

terrarium nights

by Richard M. Ankers

We look up. We always look up

to the diffuse stars gleaming

through our world of glass.

Inexact, these cosmic entities

dare the human eye to defy

their right to exist, as we exist,

hanging where clouds disprove

as opposed to our walls, roofs, 

and impromptu posturing. 

They look cold up there,

while we are warm, too warm 

in our managed overheating,

minimal even, but only at night. 

The day remains beyond perception, 

too loud, too in our face, hot, 

while the trees and the cacti 

and the flowers bloom

in kaleidoscopic starbursts, 

desperately pretending 

for their children’s sakes

to like it.

Richard M. Ankers is the English author of The Eternals Series and Britannia Unleashed. Richard has featured in Expanded Field Journal, Love Letters To Poe, Spillwords, and feels privileged to have appeared in many more. Richard lives to write.

the moon tonight is a large purple dragon

by Jonah Meyer

1

i want to bury deep into the world.

up to my nose in grass-leaves, earth roaring awful inside my belly, a tapestry 

of slow-falling raindrops to savor the splendor of smile upon lips.

2

what can be seen through such 

tender, generous eyes?

how is the song sung by wind on

her glorious foreverflow journey?

when night falls, the sun is

simply playing 

hide-and-seek.

3

rhyme of the sea makes a poet.

sweet wine on the breath, a poet.

never a sentient being whose

innermost delicious thoughts

were not

(in fact)

poems.

4

the moon tonight is a 

large purple dragon.

yes our moon tonight, that brave 

lonely traveler, 

how she hang-glides amongst the stars,

spilling answers to questions of 

the ages ...

the poet tonight snug tight in her room, hair curling out into wondrous constellation, such incandescent waterflow flowing forth forever free.

the poet breathes in silence, but is 

not alone.

the poet tonight sips red wine,

chats it up in animation with 

the nightsky,

dreams connection.

5

the poet’s hands are rose petals,

deep orange silk.

her mind reveals small childplay.

somewhere, on a mountain, smashing poems eternal softly against such fantastic heavenly blue.

Jonah Meyer is a poet, writer and copyeditor based in North Carolina. His poetry and creative nonfiction has been published widely. Poetry Editor of Mud Season Review and Random Sample Review, Jonah seeks and celebrates the poetry of mountains and sea.

after our daughter’s birth

by Claudia M. Reder

for months I was ill 

from Staph. We lived 

in bed clothes, you nursing and napping, 

and sitting up once in a while.

Months for me to put back together 

the foreign words, ‘mother’

with ‘daughter.’  

Remembering the two of us years ago

seeking the green leaves 

that fed the windows

where we slept, I wasn’t sure

how long I would carry words

for depression or pain,

shadings of language 

misfiring in my mouth.

I had to learn to love you again. 

The warbles and timpani 

of the ocean power my heart,

I set out among the dunes,

the ragged orange of roughened grasses,

mock heather shredding.

Claudia M. Reder is the author of How to Disappear, a poetic memoir, (Blue Light Press, 2019). Uncertain Earth (Finishing Line Press), and My Father & Miro (Bright Hill Press). How to Disappear was awarded first prize in the Pinnacle and Feathered Quill awards.  She was awarded the Charlotte Newberger Poetry Prize from Lilith Magazine, and two literary fellowships from the Pennsylvania Arts Council. She attended Millay Colony, NAPA Writer’s Conference and The Valley. She recently retired from teaching at California State University, Channel Islands. Her poetry manuscript Appointment with Worry was a finalist for the Inlandia Institute Hillary Gravendyk Prize. 

time flies when you’re escaping reality

by Jowell Tan

i want to lie in orange light; 

bathe my books in sunset's glow. 

time to slip past me unnoticed; 

i don’t want to know how long it has been.  

i want to swim in sky-blue seas; 

trace my name under quiet waves. 

time to slip past me unnoticed; 

i don’t want to know how long it has been. 

i want to walk amongst green gardens; 

feel the flowers brush against my skin. 

time to slip past me unnoticed; 

i don’t want to know how long it has been. 

i want to float inside an infinite black; 

drift through darkness with no end in sight. 

time to slip past me unnoticed; 

i don’t want to know how long it has been. 

i want Time to lie, to swim, to float beside me; 

to hold my hand while i breathe in this air. 

Time to keep still, not a tick nor a squeak; 

allow me to stay for as long as i need.

Jowell Tan writes. He thanks you for reading, and he appreciates your time.

footnote

by Kelli Simpson

I’m a lesser Bible
verse – you
are a blackbird.
I am haunted –
you’re the homicide
that happened here.
Books of witching
wither my nightstand.
Your book of Lorca
bruises the floor.
I’m a headstone.
You’re a footnote.
Nothing more.

Kelli Simpson is a poet and former teacher based in Norman, Oklahoma. Her work has appeared in Lamplit Underground, Green Ink Poetry, One Art Poetry Journal, The MockingHeart Review, and elsewhere. 

beach trip

by Victoria Turner

The sea spills out before me.

I watch as the sky blurs into waves, waiting

as the water washes away and returns

again, lapping quietly at my toes.

The girl who brought me here

calls from dry sand.

A distant gull sings in tune with her soft cadence,

her mouth curving into something recognizable,

almost. A water-stained photograph

washed clean in all the wrong places.

I return to her.

Loose sand clings to my damp feet.

The rest falls away, back to the beach,

back to the sea.

She reaches for me, smooth fingers

wrapped around a leathery palm,

tugging gentle as a forgotten memory.

As we watch the waves roll, she tells me

we have been here before. 

Victoria Turner is a writer and substitute teacher interested in the intersection of art and memory. She holds a Bachelor’s in English Literature from the University of California, Davis, and lives in Northern California with her dog.