Dr. Matthias Ripp CC



Apostasy

The last year of my childhood
was spent bargaining with God.

On cold, dry days I would climb
this hill behind the houses –
getting higher, closer to the sky,
seemed to mean something.

I’d heckle, at first. Jeer and grumble,
pull up clumps of grass and scatter
it like ashes, like a reluctant sacrifice.

Then the bartering would begin.
My entrance exam, my sanity,
years of my life – just let him
say that he loves me, just once.

I was willing to trade it all
for someone who knew better,
but pretended not to.

The day I left for university,
I prayed for him. One last bargain.
Let him find the happiness he’s craving.

Six months later, I was diagnosed with
clinical depression.

My third night on mirtazapine,
fully dissociating, I was so aware
of my own consciousness
as I stared at myself in the mirror
that I knew there was no afterlife.

No begging this time, no covenant.
Instead, I called my grandmother.
She answered. 
​


​Bex Hainsworth (she/her) is a bisexual poet and teacher based in Leicester, UK. She won the Collection HQ Prize as part of the East Riding Festival of Words and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review, Ethel Zine, Atrium, Okay Donkey, Acropolis Journal, and Brave Voices Magazine. Her debut pamphlet of ecopoetry will be published by Black Cat Poetry Press in 2023. Find her on Twitter @PoetBex.

Adrien Millet CC




Poetry That Reminds Me

              Of being in my body                           to
              get out! of my own 

              way. Roe v. Wade overturned
              rage can be transmuted 
              into beautiful 
              poetry that reminds me of being 
              in my lines. A tiger

              tail twists, but doesn’t 
              trip. This body of water is 
              irreplaceable, traveling through me, 

              so I create 
              another world, scavenge it is 
              grounding, unlike
              land I float & sink, rinse & repeat.

              Poetry that reminds me of being
              in my body, which is a constant death
              like poetry, a channel, today we have

              contemporary slam poetry & others
              promoting poetry shamelessly on their 
              YouTube Channels. We need more of 
              this without capitalization.

              Poetry that reminds me that the body 
              is formeless, art 
              theory. A lyric  

              Writing is a constant line, but so is death 
              Periodt. Cycles. To be the egg
              that binds & bakes the cake. Repetition 
              reminds me of structure of 

              poetry that  
              reminds                             me to sigh. 
              Sometimes it’s necessary to break 

              friendships? I meant the silence 
              with increased
              intention, a physical reminder to write

              the sigh. Beat the egg, yolk
              out! So the reader can catch up, so I can 
              yank the narrative down to speed.

              Poetry that reminds me why                                    
              I write on               loose leaf  wayyyy out of                                            margins                  in the
              shower (best ideas)
                                breath, returning                                            an effortless                                     life 
              force. You don’t have                       to remind the body (think about that for a sec & get emo)
              to                                                             do that and yet some folks forget.     
              Sing to 

              the holy body like
              you would lay with a child in 
              their dreamscape. Read them 

              to that fluttering state, each palm line. 
              Plant body on 
              pillow, sing to the plant & it will 
              grow, sing to the body & it will become

              the plant. Your garden is doing fine,
              so you may breathe. You are too. All 
              cells can only go up from this acute 
              awareness. The body, a green vessel.




​Maria lives in Michigan and holds a BA in Creative Writing from Eastern Michigan University. The only “M(F)A” she has is in the first two letters of her first name. Maria’s latest writing has recently been published or is forthcoming in SIAMB!, Feral: A Journal of Poetry And Art, Wingless Dreamer, Ethel Zine, & Strange Horizons, among others. Her first hybrid chapbook, Real Water Tiger will be published by Ethel Zone’s Micro Press in December ‘23. Maria’s first full-length, an epistolary poetry book, is looking for a home. She writes for Detroitisit.com

Kai Schreiber CC




Dad

I was not the boy
you’d’ve liked for me to be.

That would be junior,
the point guard.

I recollect feeling singular
and valued on a day you took me
to the field adjacent to Sacred
Heart to catch a football.

I never did ask to join
a football team. Once,
watching my younger brother play
and watching me watch him,
you turned to me and said,
“you know, it’s not too late.”

You would have to have
inhabited your body or mine
in that moment, knowing
what you saw in my face
and what you meant for me
to understand, as I do now, 
that it was a gesture
of unfathomably gentle tenderness.




​
Recovery Room

Another guy had seen Dead & Co
at a different venue than me
and we talked about that afterwards.
Somebody said something positive
about seeing a psychiatrist for a long time
“after I got sober, when it was useful”
and thank God for once it wasn’t
get off those pills, they’re useless.
See, I take those pills, and I’ve taken
those pills, and I’ll take those pills,
in all likelihood, in perpetuity.
As prescribed only so don’t blow me shit.




Steve Henn wrote American Male, Guilty Prayer, Indiana Noble Sad Man of the Year, two previous books, and three previous chapbooks. He's in Indiana. Find out at therealstevehenn.com.

​Joe Lodge CC



Serenity

She’s never known air like it
filling her lungs with its potency
she hoovers up the natural beauty
contented, for the first time

The green in leaves, sweet birdsong
inner quiet, the blue of the sky
billowing clouds white as new washing
fresh from the line
white washing
white
fresh from the line
the line
white line
she could just have one line
have one line
go and score

Her peace shatters
flies off in fragments
this is rehab
and she has a long way to go.





Set the Scene
 
Let me set the scene:
wee tyke, berry-red cheeks, peppered freckles,
neglected, less respected, fettered.
She grew deterred, pre-teen rebel rejects precepts.
She felt pretend, never pretty, never perfect.
Gents v femmes? She settles between them,
hence defy the herd--get elsewhere, sheep!
 
Cement-grey sky, tenements edge the scheme.
We’re spry, keen mystery jets, perched fleets, fresh n’ zesty,
replete energy, shyness recedes--c’mere! Get wrecked!
Tennents, enmeshed exes,    weed          greener         spew everywhere
Creeps detect her, expect sex.
She repels them, yet they embezzle her flesh, shelled by three never gentle men.
 
We defend them
shh never tell
She regresses, keeps secrets twenty feet deep
              —delete scene.
 
Next she enters messy demented eves,
Men? Get! Bell-ends, leches, hedge every bet,
yesss, weekend bender let’s get e’s, speed,
sell few, spend plenty, then exceed every check.
Hyped jesters revel, we rhyme, we reel, we yell
HERE WE HERE WE HERE WE F BLEEP
flex step flex feet veer left melded by tech sets reverb
let’s see yer steel wheels DJ mm chh mm chh mm chh mm chh mm chh mm chh mm chh
 
Nether the sheen, her etched pelt frets,
stretched extremes emerge, they’re relentless.
Entrenched endless excess,
get sleep pellets, meds meze,
these severe cycles stem her reverses.
Self-esteem lessens, depressed spells lengthen.
 
Then she belts Led Zep, The Verve, My Chem,
screeches, vents her spleen, vehemence frenzy,
she expels the event, kneejerk beer sesh,
yesss these these them them, neck the dregs,
feed her, render her legless speechless less less
                —delete her, she pled.
 
Tense, terse, get the teenth, needle, meth
melted every sec, delve the depths, welter,
swelter, restless legs, neglect self,
fester, ebb, extended sentence,
she wept her eyes desert dry.
Her peeps deem--get expert help.
 
She flees the scene, perseveres,
rests, reflects, benches her meds,
defects the trenches, petty resentments, neggy effects,
leeches, the serpent spectres.
Feck dependence, she sets defences,
centres, gets better,
pens verse, lets secrets fly, she’ll never deny herself.
She deserves respect, feels effervescent:
she bested the system, hell ended,
she’s redeemed, she’s free
                 —scene ends.





Woke up this mornin

Woke up this mornin 
didn’t get myself a beer
or a bottle of vodka
or pills or a gun
or any other destructive substance.

Woke up this mornin
and I had a cup of tea,
the future’s uncertain
and the end is always near
but I don’t burst my head
worrying about it anymore.

Down at the Roadhouse,
they’ve got some bungalows,
but I no longer frequent roadhouses
or suffer hangovers.
I still love the Doors and their music,
but don’t want to end up like Jim.




​Jo Gilbert is a spoken word artist and writer based in Aberdeen, Scotland who writes in Doric and English. Jo has won multiple slams, performed all over Scotland and has been widely published in magazines and anthologies - Northwords Now, Causeway Magazine, Dreich and Beyond the Swelkie.

Jo’s work has featured on BBC Radio 4 show Tongue and Talk, Edinburgh International Book Festival 2022, and in several art exhibitions and short films. Past commissions and projects include Look Again Festival, StAnza Poetry Festival, Loud Poets, Ten Feet Tall Theatre Company, (un)mother project, Aberdeen Performing Arts and Across the Grain Festival.



​

               ​Adrien Millet CC



Rockfish Gap


Here, the mountains are as blue  
as the drunk who lives 
behind the south river. 
 
The white-tailed deer outnumber
the residents and hiking trails 
play the part of shopping malls. 
 
In November, the locals swarm schools, churches, and fire halls 
to mark their ballots in blood.  
  
From the parkway, local boys view 
faraway, distant places, some 
imagining a more prominent future. 
 
But when those boys leave to become poets, they soon wish they could return.  ​



Andrew R. Williams is a poet from Virginia, USA, and has been published in The BeZine Quarterly, Black Bough Poetry, Briefly Zine, Fevers of the Mind, Ink Sweat &Tears, Red Eft Review, Trouvaille Review, among others. He is also the editor of East Ridge Review and can be found on twitter @andrewraywill

​Adrien Millet CC




Eight Months Beyond      

                 - For Chris (1956-2017)

The sky kills me, its sunset blood-red,                        
each minute smearing a deeper pigment above
                     the mountains’ black tips.

Solo on this dock, not a boat nor soul near--
a rare chance to wail, Are you there? 

Two mallards drift by, parting
the sky reflected on the lake.    They hush me,
                the drake’s teal head glinting. 

A lone female appears
       then moves into the place
where last light has bruised the water purple-black. 





Bridge
    

Arching the blue Hiwassee River,
this structure over a depression, this means of transition 
takes me to the top of the dam where I can almost touch 
birds. They glide at my height, the lake’s islands
and slow-motion boats below.

Or a ship’s bridge, with its helm and wide-angle view 
cruising St. Lucia’s coast. I wrote in my journal, 
horizon of volcano peaks, jagged outline
drawn by the low sun.

In music, two bridges:
A piece of wood supporting gut strings
to transmit vibrations from Stradivarius
into my body, nearly dropping me to knees. 
And also, the link between parts of a song 
like George Harrison shifting to “I don’t know how,” 
then back again to his guitar gently weeping.  

All those bridges, you were for me 
when you lived. And also verb: 
bridging me over the chasm of divorce from half-ness 
to wholeness, and then after death, lessening the gap
from loss to certainty that love doesn’t stop.

Only with your help have I arrived at this cove.  
My new husband and I stand hand-in hand
in the last quarter of our lives.
Silvergrass waves. Our harmonics hum.
We watch fishers move their boats from favored shoal
to favored shoal. 

for Chris, 1956-2017
                and for Mark, 1951-



​
Karen Paul Holmes is a freelance business writer but poetry is her passion. She hosts The Side Door Poets in Atlanta, GA and a monthly open mic in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her poetry books are  No Such Thing as Distance (Terrapin, 2018) and Untying the Knot (Aldrich, 2014) and publications include Diode and Valparaiso Review. She’s the current “Poet Laura” for Tweetspeak Poetry. ​

​Dr. Matthias Ripp CC




not / holding

isn’t marriage / a corpus
       a body / to be warmed / by my own

                             not a ribcage / riven in the valley
                             not a felled tree / for someone / to straddle 
                                     for something / to wash over

isn’t tenderness / a libation / for skin’s / bedazzlement 
       a river’s / flanks to be grazed / by my own

                            not a bright / fish
                            not a crucible
                                    impossible / to hold





Self-Portrait as Seed, Plow, Prophecy

Because I do not know how to be feral,
sowing what can save the world

because I do not know how to feather
a nest or make a peace that will last.

I try to break open my mouth like first light.

Because I do not know how to honey
the storms or thistle off grief

because each day begins again
without cloud, without reprieve.

I let the throat be seed, plow, prophecy--

because I do not know how to unwind
the spell whispered in my ear.




​Sandra Fees has been published in SWWIM and Nimrod and has work forthcoming in Witness and Border Crossing. She is a 2022 contest finalist in Sweet: A Literary Confection and semifinalist in Crab Creek Review. The author of The Temporary Vase of Hands (Finishing Line Press, 2017), she lives in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Adrien Millet CC



Bargaining with a Dangerous Man’s Tattoo 
 
Your canvas, paroled last year, has a newborn daughter, one reason
I keep taking his calls besides the fact he’s flesh and blood.
She’s wriggling pink and darkly flushed like a worm
 
On a hook. Unlike her, or her father, your book is written, sir.
You’ll stay a death cult skull, no matter how much skin you cover.
Her father, me and him don’t always get the why
 
Of what each other says, but we always get the how –  
Politics, he says, is a cottonmouth with a hundred
Skins, and I get it. But when I say Snakes outgrow
 
Their skins, so why can’t you, he hoists one arm and points to you,
Mr. Prison Gang Totenkopf tattoo, and says you’re for life.
I’ll concede you’re a sentence he won’t cut short if you
Don’t rub off on his daughter, his daughter, his daughter.   
​


Michele Sharpe, a poet and essayist, is also a high school dropout, hepatitis C survivor, adoptee, and former trial attorney. Her essays appear in venues including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Poets & Writers. Poems are recently published or forthcoming in Sweet, The Mom Egg Review, Rogue Agent, and Salamander. She lives in North Florida.
​

Adrien Millet CC
Follow


​
Repartee

I.

Sawgrass. And the broken 
irrigation valve. There 
is a reason my father’s hands 

shake, here. The clutch slips 
when we hit this bend, 
less a curve on the trip 

to the parts store than the first 
panel in a triptych—we’ll 
end up in a different ditch 

than where we start. My father 
says to the parts man 
that he gave us the wrong part.

II.

My father’s cussing is 
symphonic. It rises
and descends in accordance

with the work task. Work
is good for a man to learn.
For what? I ask. In answer,

he grins, raises the hammer,
a mini-sledge, brings it down
again. And again. When the part 

breaks is the crescendo, 
involving several gods, fucks, 
and damns. The part is a bitch.

III.

A fucking bitch. The parts
man knew this fucking bitch
wouldn’t fit. My father’s

knowledge of all things
mechanical is perfect.
If there was a reason

it is extrasensory,
something unknowable
by conventional means.

When he slams the second
broken valve down 
on the parts store counter 
it becomes a mere variation 
on this theme.

​

Guiseppe Getto is a Zen Buddhist, a poet, and an Associate Professor of Technical Communication at Mercer University. His first chapbook is Familiar History with Finishing Line Press. His individual poems can be found in journals such as Sugarhouse Review, Reed, Eclectica, and Harpur Palate, among many others. Visit him online at: http://guiseppegetto.com/poetry.

​Randall Wick CC



​
Bragging Rights

I didn’t think to write you down.
Now, when I look for clues, I return
to the same old stories:
your Marlboro Reds and Mountain Dew.

You remember this one, don’t you, about
when you volunteered as my Girl Scout leader?
Instead of camping you took us to the Holiday Inn.

Sprung for cable and tuned the screen to soft-core porn.
You feigned surprise when another girl screamed from
the bathroom, the sight of your spent tampon casually
floating in the bowl too much for her to bear.

You answered all their questions, those girls. Crawled
under a blanket with everyone but me, giggles and
flashlights and your voice, rising above theirs to
shriek: Her jeans are bigger than mine!

What would I send you for Mother’s Day now?

Maybe the memory of how I sneaked away that night
to the hotel pool, comfy in my sweats and t-shirt, alone
until dawn when the manager found me asleep
on my library book. He thought I’d jumped the fence.

I had a better story for him. In that moment
I was your daughter. I think you might have been proud
though I don’t remember you ever saying those words--

--I’m proud of you--but before the day I didn’t say goodbye,
I remember you saying At least you have pretty hair. 




Lisa Allen’s poetry and essays have appeared in several print and online journals as well as three anthologies. She holds MFAs in Creative Nonfiction and Poetry, both from The Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program, where she was a Michael Steinberg Fellow. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is a co-founder, with Rebecca Connors, of the virtual creative space The Notebooks Collective, as well as a founding co-editor of the anthology series Maximum Tilt.