​Nathalie CC



Mom, will you sit still?
 
I’m trying to conjure you
from the near nothingness
you've become.
 
You flicker after
more than twenty years absence,
your voice slips
 
away, or is stuck on repeat-
always the same phrase,
a record skipping.
 
My fingers remember
your cool skin, the small expanse
of your back, your spine protruding.
 
Your scent quickly evaporating,
the clothes I kept, disintegrating,
 
your handwriting on paper,
silverfish baiting, remnants
of nail polish fading.
 
There is no one alive
who can fix you for me-
their memories failing
in their own degenerating.
 
So I ask you again: stop shifting
as I sift through photos, scraps,
your sheer Mom-ness drifting.
 
Come to me so I can flesh you out.
Beneath my graying temples,
in my brain’s blanketing folds
I hold you, still. ​



​
Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, a photographer, and publishes an occasional anthology through Kingly Street Press. She is an assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. Poetry publications include ONE ART, Anti-Heroin Chic, New Verse News, Sky Island, and Minyan. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. Betsy’s photos have been featured in RATTLE’s Ekphrastic Challenge, Spank the Carp, Praxis, and Redheaded Stepchild. She is the author of Alinea and co-author of In the Muddle of the Night with Alan Walowitz. 

                 Artwork: Sarah Bottini




And Then Where Did I Go?

A church basement
Styrofoam coffee cups and love I didn’t want
Or need I needed neurons and synapses equal to the world
And being well short of that I wanted none at all
Wanted numbness and a fast forward button
The quickness of pleasure and its immediate present
Save me from thought 
Drop me on a stool in the soft low light
Of my last evening melting into madness
But instead you brought me here
You who I know now only by silence
And by practice and never directly
But when I see you reflected or refracted
Against green moss or the idea of green
Against my quietest need met by hands 
That could touch anything else but touch me
Against coolness or warmth or the sharp edge
Of turning from the easy to the simple
Against unnecessary grace 
And the infinitely knowable, my dearest people

When I see you there for a moment I stay
In the basement of our quiet work

​
​

​
The Karner Blues

I’m taken by good things 
done quietly.
On the ocean floor microbes eat methane,
A silent consuming keeps the earth 
Cool, stable.

Meanwhile on the surface, 
the Thunderous
drain the pond of our own work 
for a new mall 
that sells progress and sneakers
so clean there’s no trace of the humans
who made them.
A plaque on the wall 
of the Karner Blue Butterflies killed 
reassures all 
we are kind.

Our Father Our CEO says
We do good by doing well.
Growth is also the lump on my breast.

Two eternal women steady a man 
Fallen on the hot street. 
A band unnamed only plays shelters
and no money gets you front row seats.
We dangle together unsheltered
On the hot street
In the shelter
In the front row
Remembering the Karner blues 
Hoping the ocean below.

               ​Andrew Kiss CC



Sestina on a Winter Night

I’m running out of time and can’t remember
a thing it was I thought I should be doing
with all this time I’m running out of. Maybe
I’ll see if I can try to write a poem.
It doesn't seem, so far, as if it’s helping.
But anyway I might as well keep going.
    
I ought to try to work out where it’s going,
but if I did, how long would I remember?
I can’t imagine how this can be helping-
there must be something else I should be doing
instead of counting words to write this poem.
I should have gone to bed already, maybe.

But even though I think this isn’t maybe
exactly how I thought this should be going,
the more I keep on working at this poem
the more I think I might somehow remember
whatever I had thought I should be doing.
I hope it works, since nothing else is helping.

It could be someone else this poem’s helping
and that’s why I should keep on writing, maybe;
it could be that I don’t know what I'm doing
and never will, but still I should keep going
to help somebody somewhere to remember
how anyone’s supposed to write a poem

or how they’re not supposed to write a poem.
I’m sure there’s no way else I could be helping
and if there ever was I don’t remember
and even though through all this time there may be
no way for me to tell how well it’s going
it’s still the thing I have to keep on doing.

So this is what I’ve been up all night doing-
I had to find a way to write this poem
before I start forgetting that it’s going
to be the only thing I’ve done that's helping--
it’s almost morning. I’m afraid that maybe
I’m running out of time and won’t remember-

Whatever I’ve been doing, whether helping
whether not, I wrote this poem—now maybe
there’s something someone’s going to remember.

​

​
Matthew King used to teach philosophy at York University in Toronto; he now lives in what Al Purdy called "the country north of Belleville", where he tries to grow things, counts birds, takes pictures of flowers with bugs on them, and walks a rope bridge between the neighbouring mountaintops of philosophy and poetry.

               ​Big Ben in Japan CC



El Paso
 
God, I can hear my dad
Whistling El Paso by Marty Robbins –
I believe the dead can whistle
Through a dead canyon
Summoning me back
Like Feleena did
And when I burst
Into the dead cantina
                 Dad suddenly stops –
 




pebble poem

if I slip unnoticed from your pocket
a forgotten pebble
it’s your pocket that’s empty
not mine


​

Tricia Marcella Cimera is a Midwestern poet with a worldview. She lives with her husband and family of animals in Illinois, in a town called St. Charles, by a river named Fox, with a Poetry Box in her front yard. 
​

                ​fiction of reality CC




medieval 70's

if i'm lucky i will catch it under early light
& combine it after it splinters under the impact of my grasp
(as crabs shells on shore through time)
& i'll bring it together with cardamom syrup.

mumbling with conviction for a construction that i'm wound taught to with twine
enigmatics slain under a pigmented stroke of citrine                         with sincere hope
                                                                                                         only kissed lightly of naivety.

lamp glow wanes into a silver crescent before preparing for bed
yawns with a murmur
& slips into silk-stockings
                                                                              & silver chain link (not even for the world)
held in a jasmine mist,
beneath a deep wool eve
as if it's a faith

& her name is Pereliese (a dream-vision siren) who sings in low caw
of quartz cliffs,                          the sharp squawks
of sea birds,                               & of waves that fray into foam
                                                                                                         where briney canopies rise into thunder.

the jig we sweep our skirts round to,
where the twirl perpetuates itself.

& what on this good earth is without a spot?
               the whisper-bruise on the fruit.
               thread of woes strung through centuries.
               the abstract ache.
               it's even the ink underneath my fingernail.





what i didn't mind & the elementary nature of cruelness

once, my entirety leaked right out of my nostril 
& rested as a warm thick petaled rose on the bridge

                                               who sat next to the break & the bruise
                                               & after getting comfortable, 
                                               they spoke amongst themselves of 
                                               the elementary nature of cruelness.

what's the good in holding sadness
                                                                                for 
                                               ones' own sadness? 
(like a dog keeping a pet of its own).

cold, & in a bloodless pale,
with stitches as a fashion
                                                                                  (too early for halloween but still worn as vogue)
                                               they


                                              decided on coffee 
                                              & paid in coins.
                                              turns out it's cheaper than tea
                                              & because drip & cigarettes are so easy to join at the hands.

the city tore the old bridge down a while back now
but the chill of the haunt hasn't left.
my mind isn't deleted into half-said nothings.
& it all holds true through time.

there is no game to play with sorrow. 
                                              as there is no chase.
the world will be ugly, wicked, deceiving even - as if it's childsplay.

& i don't know if getting better is the point.
i don't know the value in goodness.

i know 
                                              that the nature
of ease, & absolute tender kindness           is rich &
a much more slippery silk to hold than any sorrow.

i can invite the stubbornness of my fingers in the fight.

as i ran, the sun was glaring in a shocking lightness along the ice 
                                                                                     but i didn't mind.
& that seemed like a change,
& really, that was all i wanted 
& it's more than what i've had isn't it?
so maybe it's enough.


​
Al Jordan lives in Missoula, MT & works in a clothing boutique downtown. They are currently working on a body of work in reflection of four years of compiled journals following a roller skating accident which resulted in a traumatic brain injury. Their poetry is a means to regain a lost sense of self, joy, & catharsis.
​

                ​Nathalie CC



Room


Because the pillow with my name in pink 
is the same shape when I get home, and 
sticker stars and paper planets glow bright 
above my bed. Because on the other side 
of the wall, my sister is playing 
I come from a place that hurts on repeat. 
Because holes in the door frame 
hang beads. Because against the closet door, 
a hoop, and the bright orange ball bounces. 
Because Sunny Delight explodes against 
the front of the house and a hair-spray bottle 
shatters my sister’s window. Because on 
the living room couch is a yellow-knit throw 
thrown over my brother’s head. Because 
my legs shiver on the bathroom tile and they 
hung loose in the oak outside my window 
before the branches I could climb 
were chopped down. Some branches 
take up too much space, my mother says.

​

Lea McNeil is a bisexual American poet, mother, and mental health counselor living in Amsterdam.

                 ​The Grim Atheist CC




Smoke

The boys who smoked used Zippo lighters
we bought them, engraved special, so they
would know we loved them.

That one dusk I bought a pack at the corner
gas station, the cashier, a little woman still
taller than me, said with a sigh that I was so
pretty and too young, and I said they weren’t
for me but for him at home, and we locked in
a stare for a moment, trying to understand something.

The boys put out fires. The boys prayed for fires.
The boys put out the fires they prayed for. They
prayed for heat and sparks so they could drop 
what they were doing, so they could drive fast,
flash their lights, throw on heavy gear, and jump
into flames.

Our cars smelled like smoke
stale and old, seats stained, indented,
all grime. They had stains on their hands.
We held them, exchanged them among us,
shared secrets, compared what we’d found.

That one late night the one who was unattainable
who would never notice could never notice
why would he ever notice stood in front of me
on his basement stairs where he’d brought me
to show me something, unexpected and raw,
and then the next day, gone.

Then the next year, they were all gone. 
Then a passing by occurred here and there
at counters and from distances far enough
to be unsure.

Then two decades later when driving to pay a bill
far from cigarettes, ash, and cigars, the street becomes
familiar, the new car passes the old house. Off guard
the smoke floods back, but not the love. That never was.

​



Why Does Friday Seem So Long Ago

I gave up on
giving in-
a day turned into a different night
showed the bleaching of the world
with one quick fist.
A harrowed sky as synonym for memory,
winter warmth, and dead notebooks.
Paper layers peel back.
Fingernails curl under.
This time it all sticks together;
it’s a good sticking
the kind that clings from giving over
and getting through.
The erosion of memory
heals all wounds.

​

​Christina M. Rau is the author of the 2021 collection What We Do To Make Us Whole, the Elgin Award-winning Liberating the Astronauts, and the chapbooks WakeBreatheMove and For The Girls, I. Her work has also appeared in publications including fillingStation, The Disappointed Housewife, and Reader's Digest. When she's not writing, she's teaching yoga or watching the Game Show Network. www.christinamrau.com
​

                ​Gerry Dincher CC




Ollie Along the Frosted Night


& I drank the stars & the fireflies got me a halo & the abandoned strip of spent cigarettes & gas station soda cups wished me well & wished me joy & it was life & it was pain & it was centered ecstatic shock running in my soul & the wind just swooned along the faded farmhouse & ancient millstone that they keep out for the tourists that I'm now watching the night sky from & now the only light on the main drag of this high holy built on the foundation of callouses and early mornings on the dairy farms that now has me by the nape of my neck, resonating like a meditation bell where the slender dream with black nail polish & three rings on the top of his right ear & a stud with a skull on his nose left a love bite that left me catching my breath and my head swimming with the falling moon 

I dreamed of the one I wished to be

​


​Clem Flowers (They/ Them) is a poet, soft-spoken southern transplant, low rent aesthete, & dramatic tenor living in a mountain's shadow in Home of Truth, Utah.

Publication credits include: Olney Magazine, Blue River Review, The Madrigal, Pink Plastic House Journal, Bullshit Lit, Corporeal, Holyflea, Anti-Heroin Chic, & Warning Lines Magazine.

 Author of chapbooks Stoked & Thrashing (Alien Buddha Press) & Two Out of Three Falls (Bullshit Lit.)

Nb, bi, and queer as the day is long, living in a cozy apartment with their wonderful wife & sweet calico kitty. Found on Twitter @clem_flowers

             ​keka marzagao CC



​
Last Harvest
After Maurice Sendak’s interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air

                “And I look right now, as we speak together,
                out my window in my studio, and I see my trees
                and my beautiful, beautiful maples that are hundreds
                of years old, they’re beautiful. And you see, I can see
                how beautiful they are. It is a blessing to get old.”
                                                                         —Maurice Sendak

She reaches for the dial,
turns the volume up, just enough,
to escape from the restless stirrings
of her two children who fussed 
from the backseat after a long day at daycare.

The speaker’s words crackle in a dirge 
of ragged sobs and tremulous laughter.
The thin voice breaks and splits like old wood,
& she recognizes his name as the author
of several books she’s read to her children
on the nights when she had the strength
to hold a book between her overworked hands.  

It was usually after bath time & before 
she retired to the back porch with a beer
& sometimes a cigarette that she would 
predictably beat herself up for the next day. 

She steers the old Camry through a pocket 
of slow traffic, while he speaks
in his gentle manner about love and grief-
tenderly unfolding 83 years of memory 
& artistic vision, like thumbing through
an old photo album.

It’s just after dinnertime, and her thoughts are
already scrabbling over refrigerator leftovers 
& the pell-mell collection of bills 
that have papered the kitchen counter since last week.

Her eyes dip drowsily, nerves closely drawn,
but the lush acres of his words gather within her
 like a late summer harvest.

Live your life, live your life, live your life,
he softly chants.  

From the review mirror she glances at her children. 
Their small, obstreperous bodies securely
belted into the curve of the backseat.
Their faces smooth and glowing in the lilac light. 

She takes a deep breath, holds it within her lungs,
scowls as she searches for memories of her own mother-
if she had read to her, read his books to her. 
There weren’t many books or keepsakes to keep back then. 
They’d traveled light and moved often.  

Live your life, live your life, live your life.

The headlights are swallowed 
into the fading nebula of twilight,
and she squints to see a bent, ghostly figure 
thrusting a white cane at the encroaching darkness. 
The cane pendulates in tight, searching arcs, 
raking and stabbing the sidewalk-
hunting for hidden dangers.

She is reminded of her grandmother, 
who she once believed 
was an angel in a kitchen apron.
She died alone in her floral nightgown 
on the nursing home floor. 
The aquiline nose, that never looked down
on anyone, was broken.

Live your life, live your life, live your life,
he softly chants
                like the fading outro of a song-
the heart’s wild longings still being born, 
even as the body swings towards its final hours. 

She turns the sedan onto the street 
she and her children call home
and feels the locked paddock within her chest 
punch open.  & the tears she held in for so long,
slip down her rouged cheeks now. 

Like mayflies in spring, she swats them away,
but still they come with the author’s 
prophetic message suspended across
a shifting horizon of telephone lines
& billboard signs.  

She cries for him, and she cries with him
until the car is parked in the familiar driveway.
She turns to see her children, peaceful, fatherless,
asleep in their car seats, then looks through 
the dusty windshield into the deepening ink
of the numinous night.  

Her eyes fall on the craggy and mysterious trunk 
of a giant, old oak, & she can’t tell 
if it’s an oak or a maple or some other species,
but the trees, she wonders— 

when did she last look at the trees?




Beverly Hennessy Summa’s poems have appeared in Rust + Moth, Chiron Review, the New York Quarterly, Buddhist Poetry Review, Trailer Park Quarterly, Nerve Cowboy, Hobo Camp Review and others.  She has a BA in English and is a Pushcart nominee.  Beverly grew up in Yonkers, New York and New Hampshire and currently lives in South Salem, New York with her family.  

                ​Steven Pisano CC


​
​​Licking a Stamp in Charlottesville, VA

             I regret to inform you that love is exactly 
                                          what they said it would be.
                                                                                                 I am no longer a brain, or, 
                                                                                                 a raw nerve, processing these long strings of
                                moments that will one day end.
                           I have a heart, and I want to know
                                                                                                 how much it can feel. I have a body
                                                                                                 and I want to know how far I can push it.
                               As I understand it, all things die.
                              There's nothing like a little lurch
                                                                                                 of the organs to remind you that
                                                                                                 you're merely mortal. Is it really
              all that sacrilegious to think we could be
                         the first? This would be giving, and,
                                                                                                 the taking. The listening, and, the telling.
                                                                                                 Are you paying attention? I'll only say it once
                                                                               and then
                                                                                                  I'll be gone.





I Want a Brooklyn

After Zoe Leonard’s “I Want a President”

I want a Brooklyn for the artists, I want a Brooklyn for the pervs, I want a Brooklyn for the single parents, I want a Brooklyn for the immigrants, I want a Brooklyn for the birds, the birds, the birds. I want a Brooklyn for the people that Brooklyn originally belonged to, and for there to be a way to reconcile that version of Brooklyn with the Brooklyn full of people who have since started to call it home. I want a Brooklyn in which rent prices aren’t positively correlated with the number of trees on the block. I want a Brooklyn without Green Streets contests, simply because we wouldn’t have to rank the greenery if we hadn't turned it into a rarefied commodity in the first place. I want a Brooklyn where yelling at a cyclist that is doing nothing wrong is a crime, and no one is told they don’t deserve help by a white man in an ill-fitting suit. I want a Brooklyn where the word “future” contains the promise of greatness, of betterment, not the threat of doom. I want a Brooklyn where I can wear a see-through shirt and any man who dares speak a word in my direction gets exiled to garbage island. I want a Brooklyn without one of the highest Black mother and infant mortality rates in the country. I want a Brooklyn that doesn’t push out the poor in favor of basketball stadiums. I want a Brooklyn in which not having $2.75 isn’t punishable with a gun held to a temple. I want a Brooklyn that removes itself from the prison industrial complex, except when it comes to landlords that purposefully neglect their rent-stabilized properties with the goal of tearing them down just to charge triple the rent once they rebuild. I want a Brooklyn where we look at the blazing orange skies of California on our phone screens without the audacity to think we’re any better off. I want to know why Brooklyn got into the business of cutting the cherry blossoms down, and if the only response you have for me is capitalism, it’s my steel-toed boot up your ass. I want to know why we looked at other cities with all of these things and thought we couldn’t have the same. I want to know when and why we gave up on the infinite possibilities once available to us, and I want to know how we can look at ourselves in our mirrors and call ourselves anything other than ruinous.

​

​
​Arielle McManus is a dual Swedish-American citizen, learning as she goes and writing from a tiny, sunlit room in Brooklyn. She is an assistant editor at Atlas & Alice, and her writing has been published by a variety of literary publications including Hobart, Passages North, Entropy Magazine, and Tiny Molecules, among others. Twitter: @ariellemcmanus