poetry
poor room for a sonnet
a poem by Matthew Nisinson
by Matthew Nisinson
by Ivan Albright, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago
No, I am going to make my endless world
in a confined space. No time, no end, no today
no yesterday, no tomorrow. Now my world
will be flatness on flatness, layered forever
and forever and forever without end. No room
for depth, for nuance, for insight. Flat. No, you
will just have to gaze. Flat hands, flat feet, no
room for pain, no room for the absence
of pain. No room for absence, only flat now.
Everything here, everywhen, always and contin-
uous. No order to it. No disorder to it. At once
and always. Poor room, we press on. Flat forever
and forever and forever flat. We are. We both just are.
Matthew Nisinson (he/him) is a proud New Yorker living in Queens with his wife and daughter and their two cats. He has a JD, and a BA in Latin. Each summer he grows chili peppers. By day he is a bureaucrat. His poetry has appeared in en*gendered, Hyacinth Review, and Milk Press, among others. You can find him on Instagram or Threads @lepidum_novum_libellum and on Twitter and Bluesky @mnisinson.
sloth at the Cincinnati zoo
a poem by Ashley Kirkland
by Ashley Kirkland
Maybe
it’s the temperature,
but I can’t
be rushed; I like
to take my time, take it
slow. Clawed fist over
clawed fist, branch
to branch. It can be
so lonely in winter
– so few visitors
that time of year. Not like
the summer when the kids flock
for summer camp
to spend their days among
the trees and those of us
hiding in them.
I play this game
– it takes all night–
where I find a new hide-out
in the greenhouse and the children
try to find me in the morning.
There’s nothing quite like
the sound of a child
squealing with joy, calling
his friends to
come here.
Ashley Kirkland writes in Ohio where she lives with her husband and sons. Her work can most recently be found in The Naugatuck River Review, The Light Ekphrastic, and boats against the current.
I wasn’t going to tell you, but
a poem by Lisa MacKenzie
by Lisa MacKenzie
I put the avocados,
which were in the fridge,
back out on the counter to ripen.
You wanted to make guacamole
for dinner tomorrow
with these stones.
I don’t mind if you’re mad,
but they won’t taste good.
Like you,
no softness,
no yielding.
Lisa MacKenzie is enjoying the free time of retirement in which to write poetry. Her work has appeared in boats against the current, Visual Verse and Literary North. She lives in Maryland with her husband and two entertaining cats.
Note: The title of this poem is inspired by This Is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams
daybreak and the little moon in the sky
a poem by Charlene Langfur
by Charlene Langfur
The sky is a sweet, deep, dark blue before the light breaks.
The little moon, an arc over the tall fan palms.
A single star glowing over a hot planet.
This is a birthday poem in the Sonoran Desert.
The poem tracking where we are, marking it safely.
I think this is what the poem does now. Saves us.
Reminds of the best we can do, remembering the miracle
of stopping to see what was around us all along.
Fan palm leaves alive, green, deep green, swaying,
in a place of sand and scraggly wild grass.
Mesquite covered with small pods all over it,
cactus on fire with yellow flowers and red fruit.
What goes on living no matter what. I follow along
after what lives, what goes for more where there is less.
I think, why not grow older along with the universe,
eat cupcakes with lemon icing, blow out the candles on top,
on a planet of bombs and threats, a pandemic
that does not quit. And I keep going back to the poem and the sky,
my rescued dog’s wild kisses, the idea nothing’s amiss even if it is,
and I open up the day this way, all in, agog with the new, exactly who
and where I am in the desert in the pandemic in the recession
at the beginning of earth changes.
Charlene Langfur is an LGBTQ and green writer, an organic gardener with many publications in Room, Weber, The Stone Canoe, most recently in The Hiram Poetry Review, Poetry East, Acumen, an essay in Still Point Arts Quarterly, and a short story “The Force of Atoms in an Imperfect World” highlighted on the Hudson Valley Writer’s Guild website.
today is Rilke’s birthday
a poem by Justin Karcher
by Justin Karcher
and the café’s busier than usual. The guy
sitting at the table next to me loudly recalling
drunken heroics. Like the time he swam across
the Niagara River. His friend’s absolutely
in awe. There’s a very fine line
between being a hero and having your little life
come crashing down. A torso cut off from the whole
worried you’ve wasted it all. Everything blooming
most recklessly. How it starts in your bedroom.
The loneliness is fever-pitched before it unravels
into syringed hands and barefoot candles.
Thousand echoes you want to gently push
in front of a moving car. But that’s where it needs to end.
Justin Karcher (Twitter: @justin_karcher, Bluesky: justinkarcher.bsky.social) is a Best of the Net- and Pushcart-nominated poet and playwright born and raised in Buffalo, NY. He is the author of several books, including Tailgating at the Gates of Hell (Ghost City Press, 2015). Recent playwriting credits include The Birth of Santa (American Repertory Theater of WNY) and “The Trick Is to Spill Your Guts Faster Than the Snow Falls” (Alleyway Theatre).
convergence
a poem by Kristen Mitchell
by Kristen Mitchell
for Sage
in the small of the light
a private conference of toads
do not touch this pool
we are growing here
the trees hang onto sound
acoustic players of the night
I can’t sleep
shut the window
my brain washes itself on
8hrs of sleep
kissing
jumping spider
looking for the smaller flies
the killer mosquito
but the old toad who didn’t care
for that dream you were having
caught it
with a sticky tongue
Kristen Mitchell is a queer/ disabled writer living in Michigan. They are the author of The Wound (Alien Buddha Press) and their work has been published in Witchcraft Mag, Wanting to Die Poetry Club, Door Is a Jar Magazine, and others.
outside of the seven
a poem by Daniel Lockeridge
by Daniel Lockeridge
A lake lends its balanced levitation
to another duck that sang like Saturn,
and the driving morning — more midnight —
is suddenly having to make room for planetary poesy.
I let it grow like a ring in the sun,
till it almost sounds, like the trillion wings
that split water only because you remember the air
and tell me to stop imagining your planet-sunned hum.
The lake rises as the earth cares for its revolution,
and in the extra rush I indulge your singing stares;
I hold the ducks like deservedness, while they soar.
I may not find another muse among the seven
remaining decades of fluttering, precise destruction
left by the ballpoint-sound whose slowness soaks the mind.
Daniel Lockeridge is a twenty-nine-year-old Australian who has self-published two collections of poetry as well as a collection of meditative reminders. His Instagram page – @danlovepoetry – has allowed him to expand on his love for writing free verse, especially romantic poetry interlaced with nature themes. His poetry has been published in Reverie Magazine, The Winged Moon Magazine and Free Verse Revolution. Currently, he is focusing on completing novels as well as additional poetry and spiritual books.
2 poems
by Bo Rahm
by Bo Rahm
the sinking ship
They are gentlemen
Top hats skin tight
Reservoir tipped.
The ocean plots to
Be filled and won’t
Stop until fully satisfied.
All the men in slobbering saucer eyed amazement
Take off their hats
Before jumping in.
looking at my niece’s painting
It is
The way a leaf is...
The way Jupiter is...
Everything has been said before,
Frightfully before. She says,
“All the colors of a clown
Are all the colors of the universe.”
And that is
It.
Bo Rahm’s favorite Poets include Theodore Roethke, Frank O’Hara, and Japanese Haiku poets. Bo has earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing. He is the latest bloomer in any group of people he finds himself in.
proposal
a poem by Bart Edelman
by Bart Edelman
There’s a voice in the ocean,
Calling out to you,
And you can faintly hear it.
It’s intended just for you—
Of this you’re quite certain.
You visit the shore each day,
Waiting on the water’s edge,
Watching the waves roll back and forth,
Straining for the proposal—
Buoyed by its presence.
Friends begin to worry,
Wonder where you reside
In this silent life you lead.
But you have a secret,
And intend to keep it,
Until the current sets you free,
Answers any remaining question,
Before you marry the sea.
Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack, Under Damaris’ Dress, The Alphabet of Love, The Gentle Man, The Last Mojito, The Geographer’s Wife, Whistling to Trick the Wind, and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023, forthcoming from Meadowlark Press. He has taught at Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal, and, most recently, in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. His work has been widely anthologized in textbooks published by City Lights Books, Etruscan Press, Fountainhead Press, Harcourt Brace, Longman, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, Simon & Schuster, Thomson/Heinle, the University of Iowa Press, Wadsworth, and others. He lives in Pasadena, California.
on understanding daisy jones & billy dunne
a poem by Melanie H. Manuel
by Melanie H. Manuel
there’s a man & woman
in a hospital church, waiting
for news, where they talk about
god & what it means to come
together. they sit there, side
by side, only a breath
away from touching skin.
i think about last week
when we talked about seeing
each other. how we’ve always
done this, looked past persons
standing beside us, as if those
bodies could stop this moment—
an intersection of lines, etched
by time & chance, to believe
in this: the lingering, a kind of
holding beyond hands, rather
bodies—your chest pressed firm
into mine, warm, steady, like
a weight that brings my knees
to kiss ground, you’re there
to tether me to the expanse of this
apartment. we hold ourselves
pressed flush together underneath
the technicolor lights & muted
instrumentals to some song forgotten
in darkness, another kind of falling.
how in that is slick skin on slick
skin, a melting between our
bodies in an unbothered crowd. i dig
my nails into your forearm after
the second wave of unmooring.
feel you tighten around my ribcage.
watch you hold the light, the
only one, pull me, back to center.
Melanie H. Manuel is a Filipina American poet. She obtained her BA in Asian American Studies and English from UC Davis and is currently attending SDSU for her MFA in poetry. She has been published twice by Third Iris Zine. She has been awarded the Prebys Creative Writing Scholarship, the Master’s Research Fellowship, and most recently, the Sarah B. Marsh-Rebelo Scholarship. She is currently the Production Editor for PIOnline and teaches in the RWS program.
after the storm, silver and green (vault sky)
a poem by Jesse Curran
Arthur Dove, 1923
by Jesse Curran
We must remember he lived on a boat.
We must imagine what it feels like to sway.
We must recall the sea is never still, even when still.
We should reminisce that we were once embryos
then tiny people, sheltered in amniotic warmth.
We should try to see the sound as a mattress, a watery bed
a soothing expanse of undulating rhythm.
We might then sense that for Arthur Dove, the bay itself
was a berth with a view.
We might image how it looked after the storm
the clouds clearing and the moon’s reflection
cascading across the Cow Harbor Bay.
We might then learn that metallic paint offers a shine
not otherwise possible with the standard earthy oils.
When we behold the painting, we might see ourselves.
We might stare out on our seas and feel safe and at ease.
We too might feel ourselves being gently rocked.
We too might remember that water
draws away
half of our pain.
Jesse Curran is a poet, essayist, scholar, and teacher who lives in Northport, NY. Her essays and poems have appeared in a number of literary journals including About Place, Ruminate, After the Art, Allium, Blueline, and Still Point Arts Quarterly. She teaches in the Department of English at SUNY Old Westbury. www.jesseleecurran.com
3 poems
by Chrissy Stegman
by Chrissy Stegman
dear pine trees,
I have this desire to cut down the roses I see
through my library window. The feminine urge to burn it.
Rip every last blossom off the branches & tatter
the pink into worthlessness.
dear PTBGK,
My right hand stopped working yesterday.
Today is better.
I do feel alive. I know I am consuming a starry sky
drop of poison
after poison after poison I wake
alive inside
a poison &
each morning, comments arrive in my mind:
Stop, stop, stop. Not another drop. Tick tock.
dear II,
My brother sent me a song.
The title was let our names be forgotten but
I will forever remember our middle names.
Chrissy Stegman is a poet/writer who lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Her work has been featured in various journals, most recently Rejection Letters and Gone Lawn with work forthcoming in Gargoyle Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, Red Ogre Review, Stone Circle Review, and Fictive Dream. She is the recipient of the 2022 Patricia Bibby Idyllwild Arts scholarship for poetry and placed second for the 2022 Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize. She is a 2023 Best of the Net Nominee.
you could never get my nose right
a poem by by Samantha Kelly
by Samantha Kelly
A monument to your potential,
squandered.
Like the bottles of claret spilt on the floor.
I suppose red was never your color.
Dust covers everything,
causing the light to scatter.
It is a deficiency of humanity to only
see things in contrast.
Paint drips toward the easel
in the center. The heart – your heart.
With the canvas atop it like autopsy.
It’s not a bad likeness of me,
aside from all the cuts.
Samantha Kelly is a student of the Warwick Writing Programme. Her poetry has been featured in Along Harrowed Trails, a recent Timber Ghost Press anthology. She was born and raised in a city with a lack of water and an abundance of cathedrals.
father/firefly
a poem by Nikita Kohring
by Nikita Kohring
I have never seen a firefly in person I would like to
hold one and watch it light a candle on its face
wince and flicker a sweet bug, molded with wax
its body will warp in time stomach cut open, sick
with leftover mistakes. my mistake for thinking you could change
me, a path of bruises into someone good
good and gold and Godlike. my father hates boys more than
he hates me or himself because he once was one and look how that turned out
he’s not mad at me, he just wanted to hold the world and he has only me
he’s mad at blue light bathrooms and he watches you, boy-bug, repeat the cycle of
me, loving me. our history, that of blue gray girls and matchstick boys.
we love each other but we don’t know how to love each other,
just like how I know what fireflies look like but not how one would feel in my palm.
Nikita Kohring is from South Florida. She edits for her school's literary magazine, Seeds in the Black Earth, in which she also has two pieces. She is featured in Bullshit Lit's second anthology and has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. You can find her @ratglrl on Instagram.
2 poems
by Heather Ann Pulido
by Heather Ann Pulido
together at sea
Waves unclenched like dragon claws
Lightning cracked like spits of fire
Still, we braved the midnight:
Two paper boats
the kite to the tree
Seize me, gingerly
Cradle my wind-chilled body
Plant me in your bones
I glided above the seas
To dive into you, agape
Heather Ann Pulido is an indigenous bisexual author from Baguio City, Philippines. A longtime freelance journalist and content writer, she is a returning artist. Her poetry is in Yuzu Press and Sage Cigarettes. She has a BOTN-nominated poem published by JAKE. When she's supposed to be writing, she's on Twitter (@heather_tries).
farmer’s market
a poem by Luís Costa
by Luís Costa
instead of allowing myself to be happy I keep trying
to find you exploring the tight curves of bell peppers,
your laugh echoing within the crunch of sourdough,
a smile lingering as the sharpness of sheep’s cheese,
hiding melancholia inside green olives’ salty brines,
ghosts tucked so tightly in the shadows of fig leaves,
hesitantly pacing between the honeys and the jams,
lavender bunches chosen to mask a grey loneliness.
I used to love you on Saturday mornings – now I go
to the farmer’s market and pretend you’re still around.
Luís Costa (he/they) is an anxious queer poet featured multiple times in Visual Verse, Stone of Madness and Queerlings, as well as in Inksounds, Farside Review and FEED. Longlisted for the Out-Spoken Prize for Poetry in 2022, his debut pamphlet Two Dying Lovers Holding A Cat was published by Fourteen Poems in November 2023. He holds a PhD in Psychology from Goldsmiths and lives in London with his cat Pierożek. You can find him on Twitter @captainiberia
2 poems
by Caitlin Upshall
by Caitlin Upshall
peanut butter & jelly
On days when my grief is too loud, I put in ear plugs and roll away from her in bed but she finds me anyway and I wake up with a hand across my chest that makes it hard to breathe and when she refuses to leave, I decided to spend the day with my grief; see, they say you should feed a cold and starve a fever, but I don’t know which one she is so, instead, I make her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich but I leave the crusts on and we go to a park but she pulls a shadow from the trees and I feed the ducks but she wails a swan song and I don’t want to invite her to my favorite places but she leads the way, knowing each one better than I do and eventually, when the sun has set and we are home, I fall asleep on the couch, a small hand resting on my chest, making each breath difficult and each one something to be thankful for.
flat
there are no mountains there
my Oregonian mother spends
months trapped in a paper picture
searching up
for heights left unconquerable
any perch for the gods
years after she leaves the paper picture
Washington breaks loudly atop a geological conversation
and my Oxfordian father understands
why we do not yell
Caitlin Upshall (she/her/hers) holds a B.A. in English from Western Washington University and is currently based in the United Kingdom. When she's not writing, she enjoys most things dinosaur-related and trivia nights. You can find her on Instagram at @CaitlinUpshall or at www.caitlinupshall.com.
if a bird would sing
a poem by Caroline LaNoce
by Caroline LaNoce
If a bird would sing,
amongst the terror and rage,
it was my sign to go
I have thought about this many times you see –
running away
as fast as my feet would allow
Not considering the sweltering heat in early July,
Not envisioning the plump blisters on my course skin,
splitting open and bleeding out,
cherry red, my favorite color
Not sealing my eyes shut and standing still,
hearing the sound of my own heart palpitations bang like a drum
pounding violently against my leathery chest
And I think to myself –
Oh how I think and think and think
If only a bird would have sang earlier,
perched gently in its tree
High up from the madness,
the Northern Mockingbird watching destruction unfold,
singing his sweet song,
the lullaby I never received
Watching me closely, and with purpose,
the endearing eye contact that failed to ever exist –
I hear that song
And I go
Caroline LaNoce attended Saint Joseph’s University where she graduated Magna Cum Laude in the Spring of 2023 with her Bachelor of Arts in English, Writing, and Literature. She is continuing her education at Saint Joseph’s and is pursuing her Masters of Arts in Writing where she hopes to expand her writing skills, both professionally and creatively.
distant stars illuminate nothing
a poem by Tohm Bakelas
by Tohm Bakelas
It is September, no October,
and for three days the rain
hasn’t slowed. Except now,
now it has stopped, when
just before it was steady.
You can see the river has
risen, far higher than it had
been all summer. And
summer, a season now gone,
is a place you no longer wish
to remember — too many losses,
too many heartbreaks. Summer
grows shorter as you grow older.
But here in this autumn, you
hear crickets talking amongst
themselves, talking about things
you will never understand. You
wonder where all the birds have
flown, is it to some place south,
some place tropical where the
sun always shines? You wonder
why you were not invited, but then
you remember you are not a bird.
And tonight, outside your window,
you will watch the moon disappear
behind grey clouds in the inky sky
as distant stars illuminate nothing.
Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have been printed widely in journals, zines, and online publications all over the world. He is the author of twenty-six chapbooks and several collections of poetry, including “Cleaning the Gutters of Hell” (Zeitgeist Press, 2023). He is the editor of Between Shadows Press.
the cloud
a poem by Virginia Lake
by Virginia Lake
My computer tutor tells me
My poems are in the cloud
I guess that means
With everyone else’s poems
Rent receipts
Grocery lists
Etcetera
Thomas Aquinas
Father of moral philosophy
Who was canonized in 1308
First asked
How many angels can dance
On the head of a pin?
That is a famous subject
Of theological debate.
I worry about the angels
Who dance
On the head of a pin
In the clouds
Where the angels live
How large is that pin?
Will there be enough
Room for my poems?
And the tutor has
Yet to explain
What about the rain?
Virginia Lake is a senior auditor at Portland State University. She audits literature and writing classes. In 2022 she published two poems in Old Pal Magazine. She was 77 years old. That was her first publication.