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6/28/2026 0 Comments Poetry By Alise Versella Don O'Brien CC
Grand Funk Railroad Covers the Locomotion My father used to sit on his wooden stool Show us how he could blow smoke rings with his cigar I remain fascinated by this smoker’s trick The smell of tobacco comforting and nostalgic Lingering like memory every time I enter dad’s garage The cool and smooth concrete floor All the tools like sharp teeth Don’t touch, and don’t walk in here without shoes on your feet As I grew older, I was pleased To have my own shelf for turpentine stained brushes A workspace shared Begrudgingly of course My father would sit on his stool and watch us Teach us how to criss-cross the jump rope Pump compressed air before we took off down Cedar on our bikes What a hassle he made it seem To roll out the machine Such a pain in the ass That’s the way my dad does everything, begrudgingly Huff and puff but do it anyway Now it’s all turned against him The sharp tools, clawing monsters toppling over Toppling him Blood stains busted eye Shattering the illusion of “I can work like this forever” Quit smoking cigars for fear of mouth cancer What can we do but watch our parents age And all their anger deflate Like a bike tire Rolled out from the backyard barn To hook up to a machine that breathes My grandfather needed an oxygen tank his last years I was terrified when he asked me to switch it on My body balking from the sound of its otherworldly hum Thinking I’d step on the tubing, do it wrong What I think I miss most is the sound of the compressor Working in the garage The sounds of tinkering, Grand Funk, the clinging smoke Wrapping its way across band posters, blacklight posters, Kinski and her serpant The sound of the garage door opening While he watched us play in the driveway With our neighbor Sara and her Skip-It Sara moved away Now, so have we My father does less tinkering The only sounds of the locomotion being The rumble of table trains St. Vincent For Vinnie Geressy My first image of man Black beards and tan Skin. Soft brown eyes Callused hands: Grease stained Orange GoJo scent It’s the straining veins Working Over steel pots of ditalini Pizza stones dusted with cornmeal Overhead kitchen bulbs crowning them Like renaissance gods paint light Caravaggio’s saints come to life Cutting weeds back from the houses built For gardens and flowerbeds These houses they made, marble laid floors Orchards of fruit Swing-sets and a child calling out, “Lookie, look” Higher and higher up her little legs push forth Chickens run around these yards of toil Where fireworks get set off We eat Tootsie Rolls from the corner store We ask for more and are never denied He never tried Retiring, continued to work on cars You were forced to, didn’t realize that was even a choice Because my first idea of man is a man who does not rest Who does not allow himself to rest Until the heart says stop Says perish Did you enjoy it enough? Life When your best friend dies before their time do you lament That maybe you broke your back and for what? Or do you look around at the yard filled with the echo of little girls And think I did it for them and it was worth The busted knuckles and hands that have “trouble holding the knife,” We joke at dinner time You once complained “Miggy’s been dying for 20 years” and then he finally did You are the last man standing in the remaining yard of toil And the kitchen bulbs crown you like a crown of laurel The great masters “saw the angel in the marble and carved until he was set free” Saint of car mechanics Saint of DIY and never stop Saint of pride in this plot that’s mine Hard work Father Friend You are not a martyr, this is not quite the end This is where you let the brush and chisel rest Take a step back Look at the chiaroscuro Balance of the dark and light The way you are so alive The angel free from his prison of marble Alise Versella is twice nominated for the Pushcart, a Best of the Net nominee and the International Impact Book award winner for her latest collection Inaccurate Histories (Golden Dragonfly Press, 2025). She has been longlisted for the Sappho Prize and Shortlisted for Glossy Planet Magazine's theme challenge. Published widely online and in print she was a panelist at the IASA conference and guest speaker at Trenton High school. She can be found with a gin and tonic and a good book or at www.aliseversella.com.
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6/28/2026 0 Comments Poetry By Sonya Wohletz WaferBoard CC
Poem for all my stripper selves Purse first, ass last—that’s how the saying goes. I had plenty of the latter, still waiting for the former to manifest itself in rhinestone glory. I’d carry it around proudly, flashing it under the candy-orange glow of these bad American streetlights, looking fly with my good shoes, my good vines. Now all I can think about is time I wasted. What I needed was a good rundown of the game, a learning in pimpology. A certain science that I was too dense to receive. The Broca’s area of the brain-- that is what failed me ultimately, and all these stripper selves—well, they could hardly make up for my defects, hanging out in the coat room, the bathroom, touching up their makeup, sharing cigarettes, shots of vodka, hair spray, lotion, etc. I gotta keep them off the other stuff, especially girl #1, my bottom—she’s bipolar and if she gets a hold of any blow she’ll be manic for centuries. I picked her up at the old man’s bar in Gretna, LA, just across the river from New Orleans-- she was so pretty I know she could’ve made bands on Bourbon, but I was only passing through. She mesmerized me: the way she languored around the bar, lazily flirting. The madams (I am told) had to pick her up and drive her around. And she would only give lap dances to guys she liked. In Gretna turns out those were far and few in between. I liked her best twisted up on booze and the silk straps of her lingerie slipping down her long arm. High breasts and ass dimpled like summer-warm cantaloupe. My second: I found her in Quito, Ecuador, on the North side of the city where all the businessmen sneak away to get some extra at their lunch hour—un buen tigrillo. That girl liked to party, and she was a good dancer. I remember once we drove up to my friend’s estancia in Cotocollao, and she tried to get me to go to the mushroom lady. I told her, I wouldn’t do that with her—no way I’d send for a vision with a woman that could already read minds. Just sitting with her I felt like I was in ceremony. And even my father, the old astrologer, confirmed that she was gifted in a strange and frightening way. She since has given up trying to please me and has decided to finally go for her MFA. Needless to say, she doesn’t bring any money in these days. Now I’ve got this tired female who dances in Lakewood, WA for $20s—she’s a single mom and she has had it with men and maybe with life, but she’s got no choice but to keep on dancing. She is faithful, doesn’t complain, and always turns over 90% of her C-notes, just like I ask. She’s lost some of her sparkle, but she doesn’t have to try hard either-- these old soldiers here don’t seem to ask for much and they are all scared of the law. And though she hasn’t made me rich, I have to thank her, this last one—who by day works the scales at the garbage dump North of town for to keep the four of us steady—steady, that’s a word I haven’t said out loud in a long time, as in: Steady these four directions, Steady pulse, steady on the trigger, steady and humid like a Greyhound headed southbound in July ‘til you hit I-5 before heading East back home. Steady as in: Keep it steady, keep it steady, let it slide, let it slide a little further, honey—who knows, maybe you’ll be a star someday. Sonya Wohletz (she/hers) is a poet whose work has appeared in Latin American Literary Review, Blue Unicorn, Neologism, Aftershock Review, and many others. Her first book, Bir Sıra Sonra/One Row After, was published in 2022 by First Matter Press, and her second book, +Milklings+, is currently on pre-order with South Broadway Press. She now serves as the Poet Laureate of Lacey, Washington. 6/28/2026 0 Comments Poetry By John Burke Joseph Gage CC
Ode to a Buttered Roll, Consumed at a Texas Roadhouse in a State of Fervor I’ve been told that you are worse for the human body than heroin but I have eaten much of both and can confirm this to only be partially true. You have arrived in a red plastic basket, tossed like a paper airplane by our waitress Deb, who did not have a gun tucked into her waistband merely a pad of paper for our orders, and I can tell you what she writes there is only a formality, because I have come here for one reason-- I have come here for you. You, of the zero nutritional value. You, of the butterbeard, that cinnamon goop which is surely just cake frosting. It will never cease to amaze me that you are ferried free of charge to the copy-paper placemats of a thousand liplicking strangers, all of them clutching their joyous paunches in wet, anticipatory palms. They shake those bellies with the violence of oxytocin. They shake them in preparation for the labors they must perform. You will be soaring down a thousand gullets tonight and children will rip you to shreds with their unbelievably tiny fingers, their nails so comically small I can’t help but laugh because what purpose could they possibly serve? They are wrenching on crayons and drawing in places where they were never intended to draw. I remember when we were encouraged to throw peanut shells on the fucking floor of this place. They wanted us to become animals again. And we did. We covered ourselves in mud. We became trough-fed. I believe we should return there once more. Allow us to become piggies allow us to become elephants. Grant us permission to rollick in mud and flap our big ears like oversized American flags outside of car dealerships as we speak unspeakable elephant words in our secret elephant tongues. We will wrap our trunks around our young. We will hurl them into the sky. Listen for the calf’s chirp of laughter as she reaches the apex of flight before landing softly in her booster seat, begging us to do it again please just one more time. You, white bread, are the mud of nothing-vitamins, and while I am sure you are some slow form of poison, you are no heroin. When I ate heroin, I did so alone in the back of a $400 Honda Accord or lying on the itchy carpet of an unfurnished apartment in West Palm but here, I am just one of a thousand rumbling bellies, basking in this abomination of what is now considered country music seated in bench seats our guts are folded into smiles red cheeked yellow toothy grins spinach wedged in them fucking joyous they are. Here, I am chubby of soul. I am unable to speak as my mouth is so full, but if I could, I would sing for this room full of strangers as we eat the happy plaque of a thousand clogging arteries, all feeding one beating heart. John Burke is a butcher based out of New Hampshire who holds a BA in English and Creative Writing and is currently a graduate student at Salem State University. His work has been featured in The Sandy River Review, Writ Magazine and Incessant Pipe. 6/28/2026 0 Comments Poetry By James Finnegan Joseph Gage CC
Amen Street The stripped skeleton of a bike frame left chained to a signpost that doesn’t even say Amen Street. No one claims address on Amen Street. The only church on Amen Street is a burnt-out hulk of limestone, a plywood lid nailed over its rose window, it sees no evil. Amen Street runs all the way down to the wharfs, at a certain point you must get out of the car and walk as though at gunpoint right to the end of a pier. The water below green-gray with no visible bottom. Staring down into the murk I recall the year of a drought in St. Louis. The park lake drawn down to the lowest point anyone could remember. One could walk out on the dried mudflat that ringed its wind-chopped surface. Out on the flat, my brother and I found a boot embedded in concrete, half-buried in the lakebed. We tried to dislodge it but it wouldn’t budge. When we told the adults at the picnic, they laughed, exchanged sly looks, told us we should leave things alone. Never expect answers on Amen Street. James Finnegan has published poems in Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, as well as in the anthologies: Good Poems: American Places edited by Garrison Keillor; Laureates of Connecticut; Shadows of Unfinished Things; Waking Up to the Earth; and Of Hartford in Many Lights. He posts aphoristic ars poetica on the blog ursprache: https://ursprache.blogspot.com/ 6/28/2026 0 Comments Poetry By Ilyse Simon Anders Pearson CC
Mondays at Noon In this room they like me. With every insane thing I’ve said each profanity screamed mortifying behavior exposed they offer me an embrace. They must be crazy too. To laugh at broken windows tales of cops in my driveway jumps from moving cars They also come home to Federal Agents on their living room couch sandwiched between their two elementary school children or memories of running barefoot to the Bronx They must also feel shame. They don’t look at me with disbelief or pity. They don’t avoid me at PTA events. They cross the street towards me to say hello. How do they know I don’t really want to die I just want to feel less pain. I’m in a scratchy straitjacket and they tell me to notice the gingko tree in bloom. They are odd and loving accepting and challenged compassionate hopeful and wise. I am not alone on this island of chaos and joy they are my silent investors my secret co-parents my adopted guardians. They are my nation. Dirt Prayer Dear God Great Spirit Weeping Willow help me be different today not pull into the same parking space routinized nor let my eyes seek the unchanged billboard every single day I know what it says. Lead me to divergent discomforts that can prompt joy if I’m alert Aid me out of the grooves well-worn by age and repetition furrows more like trenches Help me not help. Focus my wand of change inward paint me with hues of morning and sunset the perfume of the Japanese Andromeda Wash me in the dew collected on my tall grass coat me with senses come alive in the blazing light of noon so that I can watch a square inch of dirt and be mesmerized Ilyse Simon saw the total eclipse in 2024 and began to write on the back of a crumpled napkin while stuck in traffic. She writes because her sanity depends on it. After a quarter century of marriage she’s now a single mom to two neurodivergent kids. Parenting for her looks like the last days of Hunger Games. In her salad days she dropped out of college and walked across the country, twice, for peace. 6/28/2026 0 Comments Poetry By Catherine Fahey Warren LeMay CC
There’s often a woman in fairytales who lives in a house, in the heart of the woods, deep in the kingdom; there’s often a woman who watches over lost children and runaway brides, who hides from hunters and travelers alike, who speaks in creeks, who hears through hawks, who opens or closes the road depending on who walks upon it. There’s often a woman in the woods with no shoes who has run out in the middle of the night with no other choice. There’s often a fairytale about a woman who lives in the woods, who once lived in town; and doesn’t care now what the townsfolk think -- that’s what she says and knows the lie — she cares so deeply so given the choice she gives her hair to the forest crown and her feet to mycelia. She encircles the town. She gave her heart to the bees; she keeps up with the news. Often in the woods there are stories of an old woman who lived there years ago. That clump of rocks is called Witches’ Cauldron, which is atop Hag’s Hill, which is next to Maiden’s Leap, near The Devil’s Gash, which is a gate to hell. Or maybe it was a root cellar. There’s often a woman who lives in the woods, who’s been run out of town — for not following the path, for twirling at night, and cutting her hair; there’s often a woman whose cattle are better, (they’re not her cattle anymore) whose house is larger (it’s not her house anymore); The woman in the woods did not start out there. The woman in the woods is sick of this shit. She is other: world wise and weary. She does not share her location. Catherine Fahey is a poet & librarian from Salem, Massachusetts. Her work appears in Gargoyle, Corvid Queen, Coffin Bell, and other journals.You can read more of her work at www.magpiepoems.com 6/28/2026 0 Comments Poetry By Cathryn Cofell Anders Pearson CC
A Monster Describes Itself I see pinpoints of red, a tunnel I can’t crawl, a cave no canary could thread. I have forgotten the sound of my voice but am drawn to the creek of other people’s words. You want to believe I am misunderstood, beautiful on the inside, but if you believe in heaven, isn’t there also a hell? I want to believe I abandoned beauty long ago, but is it abandon if it was never mine? I long for blood orange, peanut brittle, hard boiled eggs, to crack open the shells, to excavate the sweet ugly. Alone, I am a water ballet, dance of pines, steam of moss. With you, I am desire, devastation, dread. How can a mouth describe its own tongue? How can a body recoil at its own pulse, all boil and pump? You may choose to hunt me, corner me, fell me like a redwood, but after, there will be sadness, guilt, an unimaginable loss. Cathryn Cofell is Appleton, Wisconsin's first poet laureate, a platform to help foster a community that is more literate, more compassionate, more connected, and more mentally healthy. She coordinates Poetry Unlocked, a monthly poetry reading series and volunteers her time with several nonprofit organizations, including the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and NAMI Fox Valley. Cofell is the author of eight books of poetry, including “Stick Figure With Skirt,” winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Award. 6/28/2026 0 Comments Poetry By Debora Lidov William Alden CC
Cave I squeeze through the eye of the needle, enter the ancient cave. Here in the ancient cave, the chorus ancient-wails, “There’s only one brother. We’re all in love with the brother.” My enemies enemies forever, I enter. Complaining. Deranged. Will I find the fentanyl system that fentanyl- killed him? Fentanyl King, laced the hapless hit. Fentanyl pawns, left him to die, left us, in love, to find him. Enemy basement, cave where he lay. Enemy stairway. Enemy stairs. Infinite enemy stairs. Door One of us dreamed the dream. That one called the other. The dream took place in the suburb of the city where we’d lived as kids in a red brick bungalow. The side of that house had a small square cupboard called a “milk door,” where milkmen once left fresh bottled milk. But we in the nineteen seventies, used the door for keeping our ring of emergency spare keys. Then decades later, in twenty twenty-one just a few weeks maybe days before he’d die so suddenly, one of us dreamed the door and called up the other to ask if that door and spare keys were figments or actual memory. “Actual memory,” answered the other and made it real. Debora Lidov’s poems have appeared in New York Quarterly, Paris Review, Plume, Salamander, Tarpaulin Sky, The Yale Review, and other journals and anthologies. She is the author of Trance (FLP), and she lives in Brooklyn, NY. 6/28/2026 0 Comments Poetry By Suri Deering Anders Pearson CC
Death Spiral Sonnet After Diane Seuss My sister despises ants. Especially the ones that bite, the ants that have the foresight to come inside when it’s cold. She told me that the number of times she was a nonconsenting sexual partner outnumbers her consensual count. Anxious thoughts slice through her psyche like the scars on her thigh, where the trauma coagulates in her veins and damns the flow to her amygdala. Now she reflects on the times she was raped and, is she remembering wrong? What if she was the rapist? A rapist a rapist a rapist a rapist rapist rapist rapist. A brain can only self-flagellate so much until the intrusive thoughts become an abusive un - reality. Thoughts of these assaults keep her up at night. I pray that with each of these ant-men join the Ouroboros ant parade, the death spiral, the inevitable consequence of a single “mistake.” I wonder how vile men are attracted to her like ants to sweet, sugary nectar–but nectar is intentional. Next time my sister will be rife with intention; she will be the fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis sensu lato, and she will take over the ant brain of every man who displeases her and force their demise. I imagine a world where every heinous villain who made my sister believe herself as evil becomes a knurl on a pole, fungus protruding from their skull in the shape of a girl. Suri Deering is an MFA student at UMKC. She lives in Kansas with her fiancé, two cats, and an overly-anxious dog. She has one research publication, but is currently working on creative projects. She enjoys reading, being outside, watching movies, and occasionally, writing. 6/28/2026 1 Comment Poetry By Scott Ferry Kevin Rutherford CC
today i photograph sun and wind on water-- a code in the percussion of photons and as i focus—every spark— mitochondria splices-- solar core fuses-- all lights the same light all languages a combustion in god’s throat of coral and coal in our carbon limbs—unblistered and clean! Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as a RN in the Seattle area. He has two books birthing in 2026: Blood on the Map of Man from Luchador Press and Inheritance of Air with Aakriti Kuntal from Meat For Tea Press. More can be found @ ferrypoetry.com. |
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