grandma’s garden on sundays

by Sarah Robin

Creased, aged hands grasp the watering can with hers, contrastingly small yet strong 

With youth, lifting the weight of the water before letting it drip down onto the earth;

Feeding the seeds that will grow and produce; a creation of new life.

Patience, love and care provides results before long;

Balls of green brightens the soil, the colour of hope and the birth 

Of flowers for all to enjoy, for us and the wildlife.

Every Sunday the grandchildren visit they see inches of new growth. Excitement, 

Joy and wonder bursts out of the girls, crowding around in awe and pride. 

Their work and dedication materialise steadily, buds start to form

And hints of colour give some indication of the beauty to come, anticipation heightened. 

A week later the children kneel on the ground, lean over to take a closer look, eyes wide. 

The flowers now fully open, smudges of red, yellow and orange, the colours warm. 

Bees bury themselves into the silk cups, buzzing back and forth, weaving between 

Bushes and over fences, returning for more. Butterflies circle in the air, momentarily 

Landing in various places, wings like a painting without a frame; as if the paint could 

Run off their wings into the depths of the green, green

Grass below. Spiders weave webs between the plants, silvery 

Threads intertwined in intricate designs. Worms dig down into the mud. 

Grandma brings out jelly and ice-cream - a classic favourite. Different generations

Bask in the sun, calm and contented; silent in joint appreciation of their surroundings

And good company, just the sound of spoons hitting the bottom of bowls amongst the sway

Of the branches in the gentle breeze - nobody could wish for a better location. 

Spending valuable time with family creating precious memories all year round;

There’s nowhere I’d rather be than in Grandma’s garden on Sundays. 

Sarah Robin is a new writer from Bolton in northwest England, only starting her writing journey during the coronavirus pandemic. She uses past and present experiences as inspiration for her work and likes to focus on conveying emotion and being ‘in the moment’. Robin has had several pieces of work published in anthologies and online literary magazines as well as being a competition winner for both short fiction and poetry. She is also the Secretary of the Lancashire Authors’ Association. 

what you built

by Alayna VanDoeselaar

paint on the wall

a color you picked quickly

I pick at it with fingers

that wiped my tears

you tear the picture of us all

frame it and hang it on the wall

do you tell her about – 

the miles crossed and flies on the wall

do you tell her what they saw

the sounds falling through your hands

does she see what you built

what was torn down

this smell of new carpet is not the 

same as new beginnings

you reach out an olive branch but 

I’m on my own now

it’s okay

I know

Alayna VanDoeselaar is an emerging writer who enjoys creating poetry and fiction in many forms. Born and raised in Michigan, she is now attending Michigan State University, studying English in hopes of pursuing her writing passions as a career. 

already far at sea

by Peter J. Dellolio

Already far at sea

there

was

something

askew

a clog in the make-up

        of the valor mandate

        all sands

        cauldron

        flecks of time came

        towards the scepter in

        its cage.

Peter J. Dellolio was born in 1956 in NYC. New York University 1978: BA Cinema Studies/BFA Film Production; poetry, fiction, short plays, art work, and critical essays published in literary magazines and journals.  Poetry collections “A Box Of Crazy Toys” published 2018 by Xenos Books/Chelsea Editions; “Bloodstream Is An Illusion Of Rubies Counting Fireplaces” published February 2023 and “Roller Coasters Made Of Dream Space” published November 2023 by Cyberwit/Rochak Publishing. 

the animal eats

by Kristin Lueke

some evenings on earth an even darker wolf wins.

the body, god help it, can bear more than the mind.

while i plead after goodness, the meat of me tenders. 

i could scream. we both know i won’t stop. 

i have an angel i hate. they won’t shut up about grace.

i have a heart & it howls for blood. 

who am i to say what is mine to feed? 

the moon wanes. the animal eats. 

Kristin Lueke is a Chicana poet living in northern New Mexico. She is the author of the chapbook (in)different math, published by Dancing Girl Press. Her work has appeared in Wildness, HAD, Anti-Heroin Chic, Hooligan, the Santa Fe Reporter, and elsewhere.

I remember the cold

by Nazaret Ranea

I remember the cold

I remember throwing up

Sugar

And something else.

I remember how you looked

At me with eyes

Full of disgust.

And I remember the door

As it slapped behind your

Steps

It was the brightest blue

I've ever seen.

Born in 1999 in Malaga, Spain, now residing in Edinburgh, Scotland, Nazaret Ranea is an emerging poet recognized as one of Scotland's Next Generation Young Makars. Nazaret is the author of the zine My Men, and is currently working on her debut anthology. She frequently participates in many spoken work events in Scotland, and debuted at the 2023 Fringe festival. You can find out more about Nazaret's work on www.nazaretranea.com

animal

by Livio Farallo

there is that reason

              that sugar in time

              that sweetens dawn

              to let you drink it down

and now

                there is nothing for fog to do

                but crack the atmosphere

                letting moisture whistle away

and now

               a rock is the dirt the dirt is a tree

               a tree is a rooted mountain

               i’ve never seen.

up the road

out of stifling topography

drenched in thin rain,

we have a conversation

about the regardless air.

it’s what we talk about

no matter what we say:

                                           breathed in

                                           breathed out.

                                           breathed air

furring every word.

Livio Farallo is co-editor of Slipstream and Professor of Biology at Niagara County Community College in Sanborn, New York. His work has appeared in The Cardiff Review, The Cordite Review, Triggerfish, Roi Faineant, Ranger, Straylight, and elsewhere.

point of view

by Diane Webster

Blurred reflection

of colorful houses

shatters as a boy

jumps in the puddle.

Melted crayons

between sheets

of wax paper

on the sidewalk

mimic stained-glass

windows of a church.

Hot pavement

steams fog

after a rogue

August storm

T-bones the highway.

Diane Webster’s work has appeared in El Portal, North Dakota Quarterly, Verdad, and other literary magazines. She had micro-chaps published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022 and 2023 and was nominated for Best of the Net in 2022.

3 poems

by Mykyta Ryzhykh

The bush is devoid of all berries

Autumn is now stripping off the leaves too

The future is uncertain

By dying like the first time you teach me to feel sorry for you

A cry torn off by the wind is carried away leaving a silent emptiness

I don’t know how to feel sorry for you because you are indifferent to my regrets

Death is just a surprise box that you finally gave me

This is your first gift to me

This is the last gift

I grab the tree but its branches don't care

I'm walking through the cemetery looking for life

I cry about the living because the 

dead are indifferent to everything

I don't find anyone alive anywhere in this world

Only photographs on graves speak to me of love

Mykyta Ryzhykh has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and published in Dzvin, Dnipro, Bukovinian magazine, Polutona, Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, and others. 

reed canes

by Tempest Miller

Weed him out in the reed canes.

Fashion a jousting stick of diesel-black.

Things need to be reeded out, worked out,

fleshed.

I say this because I have worked with trawls,

and my wife was a physician who would sketch biology.

And I would stand and stare

in the doors and halls

with mirrors

with houses with faces with vacuums and holes,

mouths.

It takes a lot of destruction to create the world,

I believe this,

and there is a life of destruction to realise it.

My wife and I, we are twelve-year-olds in the broken places.

We are poultry in the broken places.

Children, dogs lying on each other like hills,

sprawled footpaths.

In my dreams,

I see the reed canes

and mad cowboys with broken bones

riding over them, black and molten,

let down in fire

the size of a shopping centre.

A space carved out,

and even a cough can be beautiful,

even arrogance can make me wince.

Tempest Miller (he/him, twitter: @ectoplasmphanta) is an LGBTQ+ writer from the UK. His work has appeared in Swamp Pink and JAKE, and is forthcoming in the Chiron Review. His debut chapbook, “England 2K State Insekt”, was released in February 2024. He lives between a building and a lake surrounded by green trees.

when I grow up

by Rory Baskin

become the fresh summer air playing on your skin

(become the gnawing in your gut every time you look away into emptiness)

become the brilliant leaves floating to the ground before you

(become the wonderings and wishing about what comes after this)

become the sunset-simple warmth flooding your cheeks

(become the irresistible pull of a fire that’s growing every moment)

become all the everyday pleasures

and only the forgettable pains

before they become the end of you

Rory Baskin is a high school student in California with a passion for creative writing. Her work is published in Trouvaille Review, Cathartic Literary Magazine, Petrichor Magazine, and Dream Noir Magazine. She is also an editor for Flare Journal. 

disco ball

by Lexi Pelle

The disco ball has become domesticated 

like a lion that can lick a face without 

eating it, sidled up beside houseplants

and framed photos of another Disneyland 

vacation. Gone the voracious nights, 

strobed spots, bell bottoms ringing out in the church 

of bodies. Consciousness is a planet 

of mirrors: the Gods of my childhood 

shine, reflect, refract

when I get too close. 

Gourd which guards us against 

solemnity. Atom of a dwindling audaciousness. 

We electric-slid from the seventies to settle 

it here, sparkling among the white 

wire covers and throw pillows.

It still does what it does.

When was the last time I prayed 

for the sake of praying? I’m tired 

of pleas and promises decorating 

the next dimension with desperation: 

Let the lump mean nothing;

the prettier poet not win 

another prize; his eyes, 

stop them from lingering too long. 

How can I be true in my devotion 

to the sliver of light shifting

between the curtains—

I can’t feel it, though I see 

ghost stars dancing up the wall.

Lexi Pelle was the winner of the 2022 Jack McCarthy Book prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Ninth Letter, One Art, Abandon Journal, and 3Elements Review. Her debut book, Let Go With The Lights On, will be released in May.

everyone smiles but the clown

by Arvilla Fee

“Because no retreat from the world

 can mask what is in your face.”

― Gregory Maguire, Wicked

Always part of the circus,

juggling a thousand pins

beneath the big top.

White-hot spotlights cast

a golden glow upon a face blurred

beneath charisma and paint. 

The audience roars as he trips over

his too-big feet. He’s up in an instant,

bowing, enticing the crowd to eat 

his antics like popcorn. They don’t see

sweat circles under his arms, don’t feel

the jagged edges of his scarred heart.

He’s a performer—and has the cash

to prove it, but as the lights go down,

and the laughter fades, and he slips 

like a phantom into his dressing room,

he alone can battle the demons

behind the looking glass. 

Arvilla Fee teaches English Composition for Clark State College and is the poetry editor for the San Antonio Review. She has published poetry, photography, and short stories in numerous presses, and her poetry book, The Human Side, is available on Amazon. For Arvilla, writing produces the greatest joy when it connects us to each other.

If I ever go back to confession, I’ll say

by Angela Rona Estavillo

when Rage makes her way 

to my door, I ask her how she 

likes her coffee. Not as bitter as

you would expect. In fact,

a glut of muscovado in the

stippled mug. I oblige such a 

gracious guest. Offer her

tsinelas when she takes off her 

shoes. She compliments the granitic

countertop, spots the hushed garnet, 

remembers it is my sister’s 

birthstone. Says of course your mother’s 

pandesal isn’t too dry. I think she 

must be lying—but she would 

know better than I do. Unlike me

Rage has known my mother since

she was a little girl. To speak of 

girlhood: the mired carabao, 

bellowing. A craterlike scar on the shin 

left by a splinter without a home. Know 

that a foreign body will always find 

its way out. Know that my mother does 

not believe in confession. Tell me my 

penance for when I do not listen 

to her. Tell me my penance for when I 

do. 

Born on Te Āti Awa land (Wellington, New Zealand), Angela Rona Estavillo is a Filipino-American writer working primarily in poetry and creative nonfiction. She holds a B.S. in English from Towson University, where she was also a Writing Fellow. She served as an assistant nonfiction editor for volume 71 of Grub Street. 

2 poems

by Wendy Freborg

bermuda buttercups 

Bermuda buttercups have taken root

among my gardenias. 

They are weeds but they are so yellow,

I find them bright and welcome in February.

Valuing their yellowness, 

ignoring the garden book’s instructions,

I let them grow.

I am generous, benignly tolerant,

arrogantly neglecting

to ask the gardenias their opinion.

measuring my life in pills

I sometimes measure my life in pills, 

watching my days elapse

a  dose at a time, three times a day. 

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Pill case half empty

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

another week gone.

Another week closer to …

don’t say it

If my stock of days is dwindling,

let me mark their passage 

in things accomplished

time with the ones I love,

hours with children

poetry written

humor appreciated

letters to friends

books I’ve read

If my time is running out,

on Saturday, when the pill case is empty,

let me refill it and say, 

“Here’s to another week.”

Wendy Freborg is a retired social worker whose work has appeared in Rat’s Ass Review, Right Hand Pointing, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Misfit, and WestWard Quarterly. Her life includes one husband, one son, two grandchildren, enough friends, too many doctors and not enough dogs. Her pleasures are her family, crossword puzzles, learning new things, and remembering old times.

puddle

by Christopher Phelps

Originally diminutive
of ditch, it clung

to lagoons and pools

as well, which,

to me, is a happy,

humble hold:

this little lake

a pond,

a luke-cold puddle
to ponder on—or in,

water, a nervous waiter.
Water, I know you

stagnate without moving

through peoples and pebbles,

through the glimmer of springs

and the glamour of worms,

through drafts and drifts through

the valves and vaults of Earth,

the salt and sedge of Earth,

the wide-eyed sky of Earth.

Airth, I start to hear it as;
start to want to call it.

After days of rain,
who knows

why words cease
and wrens sing

and prayer bows
from the preposter

all the way to us,
just now, rinsing off

time’s line—turns to fill

a hole into a shape

of water—whole
as any other.

Christopher Phelps is a queer, neurodivergent poet living in Santa Fe where he teaches math, creative problem-solving, and letteral arts. He is searching for others who think poetry can be equal parts vulnerable and subversive communication. His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Palette Poetry, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Kenyon Review, Zoeglossia, and The Nation. A chapbook, Tremblem, was privately printed in 2018. Details can be found at www.christopher-phelps.com/poetry.

on the lake

by Paul Ilechko

They asked us to choose

between cherries and grapes

but I went with acorns

and the way in which the fog rested

so delicately on the surface

of the lake in the early morning

I paddled a kayak wearing only

a pair of borrowed shorts 

when we took off from the narrow

beach and headed to the far bank

people who grew up locally

think the lake is small

but that’s because they are comparing 

it to the immensity it had 

when they were children

there are more mosquitoes now

and the undergrowth is denser

and I worry what will happen to this place

as the century proceeds 

later I will call you on the phone

we will talk of my day and your day

all of the things we might have done

if we had been together

and I’ll tell you about the texture 

of the fog and the colors exposed

by the rippling waters 

as the sun rose over the eastern hills. 

Paul Ilechko is a British American poet and occasional songwriter who lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ. His work has appeared in many journals, including The Bennington Review, The Night Heron Barks, deLuge, Stirring, and The Inflectionist Review. He has also published several chapbooks.

all he knows

by Holly Day

as they pause from playing games

feet

soil slicks past me as

will drag them under

cilia around their warm ankles

the bright shards of crystal spires

the world of bright sunlight, blue water

I will come down from the trees to rest bare

on the solid ground. wet

the sunlight, new flesh. I

wrap long tendrils of hunger

pull them down to where I live

far below

family picnics, thick tree roots.

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Slipstream, Penumbric, and Maintenant. She is the co-author of the books, Music Theory for Dummies and Music Composition for Dummies and currently works as an instructor at The Richard Hugo Center in Seattle and at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. 

moonlight

by Breia Gore

Ocean Isle, South Carolina

In June, we stayed at a beach 

scattered with nests for local science

with a marine life museum down the street, 

where I cried at the informational video 

showing baby turtles dying and racing. 

Only one in a thousand hatchlings

make it to adulthood. They emerge 

from the dark place and the predators start. 

Breia Gore is an Asian-American artist from the south. A Pushcart Prize Nominee, her work has appeared in G-Mob Mag, Pink Apple Press, and Corporeal Literary, amongst others. Follow her @breiagore. 

2 poems

by Claire Gunner

an altar

This afternoon my mother bisque fired then glazed and fired again

an altar, ready for someone’s incense, prayer candle, fetish. 

I always take the object of worship for the thing that conveys it–

the queen for the sedan, the golden calf for the desert.

For the longest time I thought the tabernacle was a microwave,

that other purifying fire:

nuke my body for two and a half minutes at fifty percent power.

Now my body has hot spots. Ready for redemption.

Eat it.

On my mother’s glazed altar I place a wedge of clay, 

a tobacco tin filled with sewing needles, four wooden spoons.

I turn my back.

accidental renaissance

On Thursday, I sat in the middle-left

as the 102 bus slowed at 96th Street.

I watched a hatted figure, jacket-clad

(not on the 102 bus)

cross the February street in front of traffic

extend his hand, palm up, fingers forward

and graze its emblazoned side panel

as if he were God, or Adam

as if he were not of this world

but becoming it.

Claire Gunner lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two cats. She works as a staff attorney for a legal services nonprofit in New York City. Her work appears in The Cardiff Review and Paddler Press.

courses

by Susan Shea

Face in the sun eating heat 

like a pansy in a greenhouse 

I only want to be here

warm in provision until

it is too loafing hot

then I miss being cool 

so I’ll hide here in grey

working on a plan of

my own making

being industrious

until I’ve had enough 

of this alone time 

I want to drive to a talking place

take in all their make believes

their feats their foes 

their families

feed their shadows 

with tastes

from my sunshine

wait in vain for one 

to want to know 

how my life is going

‘til I want to go again

to my next stop

I could use 

a bounce in my step

right now to 

a place that calls me out

to play among 

my portions

Susan Shea is a retired school psychologist who was raised in New York City, and is now living in a forest in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.  Since she has returned to writing poetry this year, her poems have been accepted in a few dozen publications, including Feminine Collective,  Ekstasis, Persimmon Tree Literary Magazine, Military Experience and the Arts, and the Avalon Literary Review.