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8/31/2026 1 Comment September Issue - 2026 Cover Art: "I Would Not Trade This Life For Any Other" By James Diaz
Poetry: Marsha Lewis Lucia Angileri Linda Parsons Ruby Hansen Murray Joanne Esser Christine Higgins Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal Lucy Rattner Sarah Redfield Tracy Corey Ed Gaudet Jess Burnquist Brian Christopher Giddens Meredith DePalma-Fernandez Faeryn Baldwin Samantha Ashe Angie Blake-Moore Lesle Lewis Patrick T. Reardon Lisa Marie Farver Lucinda Trew Isabel Riley Mark Feltham Sheila E. Murphy Robert McDonald Meghann Williams Dan Murphy Brittany Jividen Connie Amoroso Sharon Coleman Penni Klein Bree Bailey Clara Angeline Smith Nicole Henares Al Ortolani Erin Lorandos LC Gutierrez River Knoblach Chris Butters Susan Musgrave Rufus Wright Stevie Edwards Christina Hauck Lewis Dimmick Janette Schafer Loren Crawford Angelique Johnston Brooks Thomas Beck Anson Patricia Aya Williams John Miller Alex Dawson Leah Wellbaum Sarah Carleton Michael DuBon Fiction: Eirene Gentle Brigid M. Hughes Cassidy Primm Phoenix Alaska JWGoll Jess McColl Eirene Gentle Joseph LaBine Luna Vallejo Essays: Cindy Cain Evangeline Holtz-Schramek Mary Guiney Loren Crawford Michelle Lee Aguilar C.J. Springacre Ashley Olien Artwork/Photography: Shelley Novotny Ethan Wood Ashley L. Gnar Randy Calderone Marsha Lewis Vianne Bozza Coner Segren Lauren Davies Michele Menard William Taylor Jr. Elizabeth S. Gunn wolfe ze Arvilla Fee Norman J. Olson Luanne Castle Kip Knott Ruslan Garrey Sandy Beach Mollye Miller Sabina Aran-Dinsmoor Hybrid: Loren Crawford rachel fiske reynolds
1 Comment
8/30/2026 0 Comments Poetry By Marsha Lewis Tim J Keegan CC
For Emily Yesterday, my cousin sang in a laundromat in Kensington, her amber guitar returned to her, sang “I’m back and better than ever,” while machines spun her dirty clothes clean. My second cousin, once removed... Many times removed, from under the overpass at Allegheny with her orange tent and cart, back to the years in Spring City when she was bitten by a deer tick but did not know. My grandmother’s sister’s granddaughter. We came from saintly matriarchs, gentle, laughing grandmas, devout and healthy as horses, their yards open and flowery and lush. When we visited, she played Radiohead songs in our hotel room, fingers deft, throat trilling out haunted tones across the balcony, me half-in the door, half-out, on the painted stairwell, Pennyslvania summer as green as my envy. II She fell faint and dizzy from the tiny brown tick, bitten in summer’s long grasses. Weakness spread through her legs. Doctors puzzled, confounded, but refused to admit their unknowing and again a woman was taken to an institution because they had no names for her aching (but no, she wasn’t a woman, she was twelve). I’ll ask her, tomorrow, what warm plant’s medicine infused her veins on july nights in that white bed, our grandmothers hovering like light above her hospital departure. Hair dyed unicorn-pink now, arms a map of healed scars, she’s playing Amy Winehouse “Back to Black,” - - “i died a hundred times--” a little crowd gathered around her, cheering her on. III Amid a row of crackhouses, her roommates carry out crates and make a table for our take-out of Jamaican oxtail. They sit on the steps while we eat, the two men, sharing their own stories of injury and prescription, of pain released in an opioid’s slow haze. Carpenter, construction worker, muscles pulled. I think of Robert, back in Virginia, the five miles he walked to get to work, how he soaked his sore hands in ice water after hanging poultry on the line for hours. How the labourer’s pain is the foundation of civilization. The shelter kicked him out when he quit. On this cool evening, spring breaks above crumbling pavement, broke-down cars. Emily sings into the polluted air. She refills my water bottle, brings out doughnuts to send home with me. We sit on the crates past dark. Through torn curtains, the lights in the busted-out houses shine like stars. Marsha Lewis was born & raised in South Florida. After years of traveling as a seasonal farmworker, she settled in the Philadelphia region, where she manages a small farm for the community, and in the winter, assists people with disabilities. She is currently in a liminal space in her home state, writing again and eating avocados off the tree. Her poems have appeared in Apricity, Red Weather, Gyroscope, Black Fox Literary Review, and Lily Poetry Review. Her first chapbook, Scattered Branches, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2024. 8/30/2026 0 Comments Poetry By Lucia Angileri Chaim Dönnewal CC
Hot June Lately I am running late to my own arrival. Can’t seem to cry or come. You can see in my eyes that I am somewhere else. 2011 or 2017 or that wet hot June when I called everyone baby. Drank my weight in rum. When all I wanted was more. Sure, I was an unreliable narrator. Forgive me. I was trying to find what was promised to us in being. About what holds us. People, terraces, grief. Vintage suede. The croon of a stranger. An old friend. Someone you once knew or slept with. Someone you will sleep with. About how someone can only be new once and then never again. How you could go back to that June and nothing would be there. Love Poem on Calle 66 On the stoop of a Mayan pub with Marlboro Gold’s and a knack for sadness, tallying every time you shared a cigarette or a life. How surreal! How you’ve walked out of parties and jobs, apartments & dives, on people you loved or didn’t. Feel that desire surfacing now, that desire to walk down the avenue screaming I LOVE YOU CAN’T YOU HEAR ME I LOVE YOU But what good would it do? There are more urgent things to attend to. Like your mouth parting to say my name or your tragic hands reaching under a spill of white sheets. Lucia Angileri is a Canadian poet of Mexican descent based in Windsor, Ontario. Her work appears in several literary magazines across the U.S. 8/30/2026 0 Comments Poetry By Linda Parsons chumlee10 CC
LEARNER’S PERMIT Not so different from a Tennessee backroad: grasses feathered to summer’s call, mid-June, already hitting high heat. This road slinks into woods and centuried-chinked walls, my remote retreat near a medieval village. Another road, the crooked way past memory, winds white with dust to an overripe kitchen, sliced peaches, two high-strung girls in a country diner. Your grandmother sets us to the supper pies: thumbs wrapped against the blade, a mountain of furred peels weeps on aproned laps. As hot then as now, only a fan for relief. The close air, sugared and salted, barely stirs. We wash off the slippery hours, beg and wear down your mother, high on her powder-blue Fairlane. We say whatever it takes to sieve our own juice and sweat, to lay down the dust, down to the River Breeze Drive-In, to the boys under the floodlights, the bats’ skitter across our sunburned shoulders. Never mind that we stuck to the seats, drove blind with no license—our fruit yearned so to be picked. The irony of Rosemary’s road to perdition, swaddling her wild-eyed baby, was not lost on me, even at fifteen. How many dark cars lay ahead, flashing high beams like moths to the flame, how many nights parked without forethought before the road turned to lush undergrowth, sparked by desire alone? You might say butter wouldn’t melt in our mouths, no matter who or what we fought off in the dead heat of reckoning. Linda Parsons is the Poet Laureate of Knoxville, Tennessee. She is also the poetry editor for Madville Publishing and the copy editor for Chapter 16, the literary website of Humanities Tennessee. She is published in such journals as The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, Terrain, The Chattahoochee Review, Shenandoah, and many others. Her sixth collection is Valediction: Poems and Prose. Five of her plays have been produced by Flying Anvil Theatre in Knoxville. 8/30/2026 0 Comments Poetry By Ruby Hansen Murray Chumlee10 CC
The Woodland Bottoms Above Bone Pile Farm clouds of starlings twist above bare fields. Unnamed islands cut by sloughs, fields of wapato arrowhead flags. A swinging railroad bridge, trailers on dirt in the bend at Burke’s Slough, a dragon fly. Blueberry fields bursting fruit, mechanical pickers. Hispanic men in orange t-shirts, yellow hard hats line up to sign off skills among Cats and cranes on the sandy bank. East into the foothills of St. Helens, black semi-automatic weapons on a white flag. Large houses overlook mown meadows, fir-covered ridges. Chartreuse light from a moss-covered tree, the green of maple leaves beyond. Early afternoon, a couple in their sixties on the porch of a small cabin. The wife’s blue shirt, her husband beige, the narrow porch. Ruby Hansen Murray is a citizen of the Osage and Cherokee Nations, and the regular culture columnist for the Osage News. Her essays have won The Iowa Review and Montana Nonfiction Prizes and Notable Best American Essay 2025. “On Sunny Sands” published by Red Bird Chapbooks is forthcoming. 8/30/2026 0 Comments Poetry By Joanne Esser John Buie CC
CHERRIES Those mornings you wake alone in wrestled sheets and tell yourself your longing, especially in the light of day, is too sad, and because it’s real and you know it, you can barely open your eyes, you keep the shades pulled. It may be true, but it’s not all that’s true. You’ve tried daily Mass, once upon a time, and podcast meditations, cardio boot camp and yoga; you’ve flown to the Himalayas, climbed a mountain so high you could hardly breathe the air. You want to find the one and only key that unlocks the secret. I was there, too. I have seen that same aching sky, looked for a hint of the heaven they taught us was up somewhere beyond our sight. I’ve held so tight to the last straw, my knuckles white from clutching. I swallowed my pride, my voice, put on the expected face until they praised my calm and collected poise in any public situation. Hide it, they said, and you do, sometimes well, but I see how your eyes reflect the glare on mornings like this one. We’ve all been broken, no matter what they post on Instagram, what awards, what degrees, what salary. From one broken person to another: Come over to my place. I’ll make coffee. We can eat cherries, spit out the pits. You tell me your nightmare, I’ll tell you mine. Our words will evaporate them in the heat of the sun here on my porch. Rock in my rickety chair until your body comes to rest. Until we are beyond words, where we figure out how to bear that undying light. Joanne Esser is the author of the poetry collections All We Can Do Is Name Them, Humming At The Dinner Table, and the chapbook I Have Always Wanted Lightning. Her new book of poems, Nothing Is Stationary, was released by Holy Cow! Press in June 2026. Recent work appears in Great Lakes Review, Humana Obscura, I-70 Review, and Dunes Review, among other journals. She earned an MFA from Hamline University and lives in Eagan, Minnesot 8/30/2026 0 Comments Poetry By Christine Higgins Forest Wander CC
Why My Daughter Chose Me She knew I could embrace the idea that just because I gave birth to her, she didn’t belong to me. She knew that for the longest time I didn’t want to have a child, afraid I would screw it up. So it made perfect sense for her to be so wild, a sparkler, a Christmas cracker, a firework you can’t contain. Conceived in love-- a product of hot desire. I was an artist, and so she figured I would let her be one, too. She could glue things to her bedroom walls-- rattail combs, album covers—and paint pink stars on the ceiling. She knew I was smart in the way she needed me to be— to intervene, to mediate, to save her from falling. I had lived a whole life before her. She knew I would survive, she knew I had guts. She could teach me about letting go. Take A Tour of Treatment Welcome to the program. That’s what our patients say-- I’m on my way to the program. They mean this clinic or another one where nurses dispense methadone. It’s called methadone maintenance-- people are here to maintain abstinence. It’s not easy when you’re hit up on every corner to try something free-- oxy, 512s, black beauties, skittles. Dealers want their customers back. Methadone is an agonist, that is: against the effect of heroin. It doesn’t make you high. So, If you see someone on the sidewalk listing like a rowboat at low tide, it may be from using additional substances. Did you happen to notice the marigolds in the tree wells when you came inside? Our patients planted them, hoping to make the street a bit more cheerful. Old Joe volunteers to sweep away the cigarette butts that litter the sidewalk. We consider everyone to be in some stage of recovery even if it’s not going well. Just like taking medicine for other chronic diseases—high blood pressure or diabetes-- you need to stick to a routine. Some of our patients you won’t see today. They reported here early this morning. They have full-time jobs—accountant, hair stylist, store owner. Fathers and mothers who who care for parents, siblings, their own children. Ah, you’re in luck, here’s Barry, our longest-running counselor. He’s been in recovery for 25 years. Later today, his AA group will sit around a long table and tearfully admit to each other You guys are my family. Choose Silence Instructions for running a therapy group for people with substance use disorders Try to say as little as possible You don’t need to educate, admonish, advise or even sympathize. The best you can do is listen listen listen Your ears should be so open, they tingle. Take in every syllable of pain, of regret. You can repeat what is said, Using drugs was the norm in your family. No new thoughts No direction. No correction. Try not to disturb the delicate balance. Just as, in meditation, you welcome thoughts, allow several different responses to come and then let them go. Wait to hear the wisdom of the group-- it will come more easily if you are quiet. Christine Higgins is the author of Hallow, published in Spring, 2020 by Cherry Grove Press. She is the co-author of In the Margins, A Conversation in Poetry (Cherry Grove, 2017). Her chapbook, Hello Darling, won second place in the Poetry Box competition in 2019. She has been supported by the Maryland State Arts Council for her work in fiction and non-fiction. Lately, she has become interested in creating collages and art installations. Her collage work has appeared in the journal, Ranger. 8/30/2026 0 Comments Poetry By Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal trekkie313 CC
white trash after he marries his second wife, my father moves us from the duplex on navarro street to a trailer outside town there’s a metal bin rusted with holes like a machine gun behind a pile of brush and saturdays my father burns trash as though it’s become ritual inside the bin he builds an altar of stained furniture and discarded wood then he adds layers of paper and old books and appliances too cheap to work anymore sometimes a star trek action figure in mint condition he anoints it using gasoline from the lawnmower’s supply and with a young firefighter’s disregard for safety lights a match and sacrifices a few of his bristled arm hairs the way he moves is funny as though he narrowly escapes self-immolation because it’s just a step too far in what he is willing to give up on a saturday morning between the dew steaming and the smoke ascending i look for the face of a promised god to rescue me from our mildewed home as the flames extend their arms in molten praise, my father flees into his cardboard home to spit tobacco inside a paper-lined cup and i watching a plastic jean-luc picard melt under heat and pressure suddenly realize the pile of garbage outside our trailer will never burn as hot as the trash inside Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal (they/them) writes queer, working-class stories, essays, and poems. Their work has been supported by Community of Writers, MASS MoCA, Vermont Studio Center, Sundress Academy for the Arts, and Tin House. Winner of the Plaza Short Story Prize and Finalist for the AWP Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, their creative work can be found in Story, Third Coast, The Masters Review, Fairy Tale Review, F(r)iction, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Other writing appears in the Rumpus, Barrelhouse, New Ohio Review, and additional journals. They are the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology. 8/30/2026 0 Comments Poetry By Lucy Rattner Aurélien Adoue CC
Tercets Screaming in some guy’s attic, not old enough to be drunk, just young enough to be high on the sob-story of your friends breaking up when you’re sixteen and love seems impossible. Everyone here is looking at you. There’s two other girls in the room, and you’re the only one who knows how to touch yourself. Everyone can tell. You would split open on a lightning rod if you could climb High enough. Someone is taking a video of you. You are crazy, love. Scruffy nobodies who would grow up to fuck your friends play the piano. You made a painting for your best guy friend And you weren’t brave enough to give it to him. But now you are something. That counts, doesn’t it? Letting every impulse win, laughing like you aren’t about to let your own world end, push of a button, detonate that shit, It will take centuries to rebuild, baby. For now, you are screaming in some guy’s attic, unaware of the snow falling on his rooftop. Climb up there. Take those pants off. That’s prayer. The Yoga Class That I Keep Booking and Cancelling Taught by a woman who is a small thing and can bend herself in ways that challenge my perception of myself Which is fine because I can do the splits but I don’t tell guys that because their minds wander Being flexible was never about sexual viability for me It was simply a way to control one part of me One small part of me If I go to yoga When I go to yoga The room will be red and sticky with sweat because they roast us like poultry Like when my friends and I go Out And we rub bronzing oil on our sweet chests It’s oil or sweat or cum or whatever We are more beautiful under the red dive bar glow bent over playing pool thong peeking out Their minds wander When I do yoga at home no one cares if I tap out In Revolved Chair or weep in Savasana When I go to yoga they will touch me If my shoulders are not square with my hips I don’t want to be touched Anymore Do you know how hard it is to be Touched today when the world is waiting for the right moment to end when the reason you are doing yoga is to forget you were ever Touched in the first place Lucy Rattner is a 22-year-old poet from right outside of New York City. Her work has been published in Vagabond City Lit, Pinky Thinker Press, and upcoming in North Dakota Quarterly. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her poem "Girlhood" published by Viewless Wings. She publishes essays on her Substack, Girls Gone Feral, as well. She adores the sublime, the surreal, and the sentimental. 8/30/2026 0 Comments Poetry By Sarah Redfield Paul Sableman CC
Paid on Credit Why am I here? Not at Göbekli Tepe, like Atiye in The Gift, on Netflix-- living in lush mystery, looking for a startling symbol linking me to the ancients. Instead, slouching down aisles looking for the time before loss, scattered like receipts and sticky wrappers on the floor of the car, I stand-- 7 Eleven on 3rd, under fluorescent tubes at the coffee bar. I do the whole works as two road crew guys weave in, grab cups, pump coffee, I weave out around their bruised arms, press the lid down, overwhelmed with untethered. I side-eye quick the tall one’s hands, blistered fingers pinch and tear three sugars at once. I wonder: how much weight can he carry? How long, for a lifetime? Staring into homes I was born in, brick, flowerless, empty doorways-- I figured out weight can be returned. Without anger, or forgiveness, dumped at the feet of the original owner. Dead. Or alive. I took a sip, grabbed a maple bar, colors of the desert at Göbekli Tepe— paid on credit, not sure if I’d ever return. Outside, Vivaldi played from a parked car; a homeless guy stood, feet dancing side to side, under the overhang. He held out his hands catching the rain, forecast to flood last year’s burn scars by midnight. Sarah Redfield's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Limberlost Review 2026, The North American Review, ACM, and Poets & Writers, She was awarded a Literary Arts Fellowship. Her novel-in-verse, Pictures of the Floating World, is currently seeking publication. Redfield lives on a working hay farm in central Oregon. |
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