Nicholas_T CC




At the funeral of a semi-distant relative

I am thinking of my own father
at the end of the pew, his hair
a great white ocean wave,
like winter itself. When the wind blows,

it lifts like a great wing, and flattens
when he sleeps, into cirrus clouds,
the view he sees looking into 
his past. When we ask,

he pauses each time to see
if something will surface
like a dorsal fin, a fluke,
some sea spray hint of animal life,

then sighs— “three weeks
is about all my memory is good for.”
And I wonder which memories I’ll cling to
and which I’ll let go of when he’s gone,

why his absence might somehow
make it easier to choose—as if letting go
is a matter of will power
when the memories cling to you 

like burrs. I want to say I will miss 
my father the way, in winter, you miss 
the warmth of the sun 
until you are stifling in August’s 

thick cotton. Is it love to worship 
what someone never was, to burnish
their soot back to silver, like Aunt Blanche’s
best tureen, it’s bowl reflecting

some image of yourself you wouldn’t mind 
inheriting? Is there some nagging part of him
that knows the hours he’s spent 
tending every twig of the family tree

may not offset his younger self— 
the explosions of ceramic, the sudden
absences, the air for days 
serrated with ice?

If only the days we adored him
could claim us with the same
blue intensity: hot afternoons 
at the weedy racquetball court,

and cool gas-station slushies.
Windswept motorcycle rides,
clinging to his back. Wrestling matches 
on the living room floor. The nights

he’d invite us all to lie there in the dark
and watch the thunderstorm, 
to stare down the face of our fear
and name it, find that counting out 

its beats was a familiar kind 
of survival, that so much panoply
was merely a matter of music,
of distance, a way to learn

what resurrection must look like,
how lightning’s bright erasures
can bring you to the brink, and allow you, 
again and again, to start over.




​Elizabeth Cranford Garcia’s work has or will soon appear in journals such as Tar River Poetry, CALYX, Dialogist, SoFloPoJo, Mom Egg Review, Psaltery & Lyre, and SWWIM, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her chapbook, Stunt Double, was published in 2016 through Finishing Line Press. She is the current Poetry Editor for Dialogue: a Journal of Mormon Thought, a Georgia native and mother of three.
​

         michael mueller CC




If I Were To Recover

I’d learn to scale the champagne pyramid in stilettos, crack the wine stems
of my wrists and fall asleep on the familiar tightrope of Mom’s waist.

It’s not easy to beat the harvest, but you can
learn to speak without drinking. Crave
a pomegranate, spit the seeds.

Weld a perfect halo. Speak
without speaking. Mom knows
this. She teaches me to thread

a needle. Again. She’s hidden our rum. I am
a broken thread of lanterns between a cluster
of Sycamores. My hemline is a brook

and my vow is underwater. Mom
holds me  down until
I am eye level
silver minnows, an orchestra
of crickets: they know.
My petticoats are underwater

closets, I used to stock full
chardonnay, Bacardi, and grapefruit.
I keep wearing my craving like a feathered boa--

sit on a stone by the brook, whittling
away peels of fuchsia until the water runs clear. 

Mom says, I thought about a breathalyzer for the car.
But instead, we fashion a shawl from every ochre-stained
wine cork, we capture the halo from our campfire.


​

       ​ David Brossard CC



​
PASSING THROUGH

Loading up, I fear being caught in the storm. Casements rattle
in wind lifted off the river — below a gathering gloom. Hydraulics might as well
lift me into his cherry RAM. Tips of fishing poles dance off the back
with bobbers the color of twilight dipping into the catfish pond.
 
He’s laid back driving me through town Saturday mornings. We
usually only pass through — preferring pastoral views and
one another. We are all just passing through somewhere, he says.
 
At the carwash men slap oiled rags against shined tires.
Soldiers in olive drab bodies ornament Main Street.
Several lone gulls peck food droppings in parking lots. The feral colony
that gave us raven furred Luna, wails beyond the boxwoods at the Biscuitville.
The smell of Black & Mild’s reminds me of men I dated.
An Exxon marks the edge of town. Slapdash sign for bait and tackle hangs sideways.
Men stand around laughing, asking for a light, hollerin’ you a lie!
 
The sun hangs off the tin roof of All American Military Surplus.
Traffic fades into the four way. A sheriff in a crown vic
is perched behind a billboard for the Baptist church up the way.
Bridges with lost men tucked in the underpass
often stand beside plastic flowers placed at the light pole
bent around loss.
 
The old man with his cane salvaging a grill left on the roadside
lives out by us — up the dirt path. Past the soy beans
where the abandoned school bus sits tunneled in weeds. I always
wonder how it got there and if I too am destined
to disintegrate in thickets out on the land. I am not steel. Not for
the young to gaze at my bones rusting. They won’t
hide in me as runaways or pretend I am a ship to sail them away
passing them along to the next. I will be the soil. Earth.
Bluebonnets sprouting up fence lines
in a shaft of sunlight.
Living still.
Always passing through.





CHOOSE ME AGAIN

I spent a season contemplating the curve in your smile.
The way your eyes close half—moon when you
taste. Fingers that grasp me as if I were weeds
grown up overnight, choking the roses. You say
you can’t wait to get home to me.
I wonder what you’ll do
 
If it will be quick
or slow.
Will we touch like milk
in buttered bowls?
Or be wary of all that time
has taken as its hostage.
 
The long summer is upon us.
Toads are already croaking in last frost
as gnats swarm in light hung off the roof.
The cats bury crowns against stumps
covered in a breeze from the sea
as tufts of their shed lace the fields where the ponds
come to life. I kept the inner beatings of me close.
At times I thought I may turn to stone
and you would forget how to forge me back
to us. I tried to remain the girl you left
full of grief at the gates
 
though the more miles swept open between us
the more I found myself
and here we are
about to meet again
as we are now.





TAKING NOTES ON HOW TO EXIST

When did we become this 
Cynics wondering what's the point  
of talking about stars  
if we don't have proof posted  
of us intertwined in the field. 
What of tasting sweat on lips while kissing  
if the flavor is diluted by worries of how we look 
Still so unsatisfied with curvature 
as hands are full of chemically expanded hips 
What of dirt/rock/rain absorbed into our naked bodies 
if everything becomes to good to be true 
What of simple pleasures 
sun/sound/coffee brewing/falling/getting back up. 
What of barefoot and losing yourself  
in a moment 
what of us 
what of the masterpiece of living 
unattached to whatever the hell  
everyone else thinks 
but instead 
how we love ourselves ​



​
Leah S. Jones is an Italian-American writer who grew up in Durham, North Carolina. Although temporarily uprooted as a military spouse, she loves exploring new places with her husband and three children.  Leah writes both fiction and poetry. You can find recent works with Ghost City Press, Eunoia Review, The Line of Advance Journal, The New York Times, and forthcoming in Minerva Rising Press. She received the 2019 Editor’s Choice Award with ACHI Magazine for her debut novel Diving Horses. You can find her on Instagram at @leah.solari.jones

         Thomas CC




Everything’s broken

Grief sits at my dinner table every night and gorges on
stirfry and tacos and roasted potatoes
grief plays on the radio
every song
jazz and country
rock and roll most of all
Dylan and Louis Jordan and Little Richard
and the Ramones
I don’t switch it off
because that might make you retreat
or haunt someone else
but maybe that’s not how it works
maybe you stay around because I’m broken
maybe you’re trying to help maybe
you’re waiting to see
if I can pull it together
enough to mend what’s broken
I’d like to think you still have faith in me
still think (if you are capable of thought)
that if anyone can fix this, I can.
But this is unfixable
this thing is totaled
run off the rails
and if there is a “next”
                                            if there is an “after”
it will still have a huge gash, a crack
as deep and as dark as 4 AM
as deep as love
as dark as time
a new thing
developed out of shattered pieces
created from love and despair
maybe I’ll give it a name so it doesn’t feel bad
the poor misshapen lump
the freaky thing that crawls onto my lap
maybe I’ll feed it roasted potatoes and pet it sometimes
maybe it will turn its blind eyes to me
with something like love
like grace.
 
 



Contagious

It’s not contagious--
my dead son
won’t
corrupt your living children
your doe-eyed babies
my grief can’t wrap
itself around your perfect family
like invasive ivy
and pull you apart at the seams
the loss of mine
can’t twist its way in
to kick your door down
the damage is already done
and I am living proof that
no matter how much you want to die
your lungs keep filling with air
your legs keep walking
your heart, although missing and reported lost,
still continues to beat
even when you wish it would stop.
 
 



Until the End

I do not fear death
not anymore--
I fear boredom
without constant distraction
thoughts run amok
to places I don’t want to go
and I fear sleeplessness
night churning around me
stomach dissolving insomnia pills
into uselessness
and the way the light creeps around my bedroom
while Dad and dog snore
and I fear conflict
and anger and harsh words
but also unexpected kindnesses
both assaults that I don’t know what to do with.
 
I fear music--
every new song on the radio
a body blow to absorb
a memory bomb
that ticks while I fumble with the button
trying to find something innocuous.
But that doesn’t work either
because you always were the car DJ,
the music nazi,
clicking George Michael and Donna Summer off within one note,
giving me a look, a sigh.
 
I don’t fear death
but I fear old age’s
gentle onslaught of forgetfulness
and if I forget you--
who will remember the feel of your four-year-old hand
and who will keep the secrets only I know
the baby secrets the boy secrets
the buzz of you.
 
I’m a coward who wants it to be easy
go to sleep and not wake up
the way the gruesome little kid prayer says--
if I die before I wake--
but the broken pieces of me lay scattered
across Route 66
and there’s no one left to wear the glasses
that came in the mail on Friday
and who will remember Monday is garbage day
and who will fill out the paperwork
and who will remember Will’s shoe size
and Dad’s blood type
and what side the gas tank is on
 
And so the fear is life
and breath
and putting one foot in front of the other
it tastes like your favorite foods
the ones you’ll never eat again
it sounds like the Muddy Waters, the MC5 and
Dad screaming
in the backyard at 2am
it smells like candle wax, lilacs and musty old Converse
 
Fear lives here now
taunting us from the shadows
pokes us and jeers and teases us
we set a place for it at the table
we welcome it in every night
beg it to leave in the morning
 
I don’t fear death
but I do fear life
a life like this
going on like this
until the end.
​


Lisa McAllister is a poet and a mother. She lives in Grand Rapids, MI.

         Tim Vrtiska CC





Maybe It’s the Cicadas

So, she’s up and hit you again. 
Her fractured brain sparked 
by some random directive, or maybe
it’s the cicadas.             She throws her 

phone, the one in the protective case
that can’t protect you from its blow.
You turn, tired now. You know tears 
only incite more rage, so you stare up 

at the trees. Ancient maples gathering 
the breeze, cooling the clouds. You raise
your face, pray for something to unravel this
heat. This sorrow that boils beneath, engulfs

a whole day. Not sorrow. Anger. Dig 
deeper. Fear. Deeper. This molten 
sense of failure that consumes 
your ribcaged heart when all you want 

to do is love her back into 
herself and let her go. 





We Long to Name

your muscled misery, 
your panicked pain. Ghosts 
edging the stone walls we’ve built 
to keep you safe and healing. We dim 
the world for your shattered brain.
Fractaled sunlight, bright colours, sharp 
sounds. Our ambiguous grief. We hold 

it all in. Leave the rest out. Crack
an opening to test the elements.
Reckless derecho drowns 
your dreams. My salty tears 
number the losses, unnamed,
we have been holding for you. Still 

you rise. Tumbled, stumbling,
dendrites misfiring.
Looking for those open 
arms that say: It’s alright.
You’re here. You belong. 





My Jessie

she’s a full-blown tragedy but lives 
her life like a dream while I plump 
the clouds around her as she floats.
I am mother. Full of hope, wind. Blowing, 

blowing so her sails are full. Each stone 
thrown, picked up and mined for a vein 
of gold or a prism. Others hidden away. 
The stones will come, I say. The boulders too. 

But this is how you sail. Look 
here are the sirens. Here the earplugs. Let me 
tie you to the mast. This will pass. The seas 
are full of mythic creatures—scaled, exhaling 

fire. But it’s her own breath that burns 
the bindings, those that tie her 
to the world. She floats        
                                                                 away                 away.



​
Nancy Huggett is a settler descendant who writes, lives, and caregives in Ottawa, Canada on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg people. Thanks to Firefly Creative, Merritt Writers, and not-the-rodeo poets, she has work out/forthcoming in Citron Review, Literary Mama, The Forge, Prairie Fire, The New Quarterly, and Waterwheel Review. ​
​

         Andrew Seaman CC




The Paper Anniversary (2)


Paper gowns are not as soft as cloth gowns are not as soft
as dirt        this insidious hurt       and this and this and that

that and that and that         a rat on the grave of a spouse
a mouse           two mouses      so mice        so fuzzy dice

in a sky blue van         I should’ve been a man       and I wuz
and I wan and wane          am as sane as a sanitary

napkin adhered to your big fat beautiful forehead
bring me your dead         let them dance in my bed

let them swoon and spin and spin and tap tap
                                                               tap     






The Paper Anniversary (3)


Paper gowns are not as soft as cloth gowns are not as soft
as dust      the uncle who cussed       and threw bottles

his face of mottles       this pace of piecing        of piecemeal
quiet thrill     grown shrill        grown silent as a mole

on your spine       oh you’re divine      in your shame
this blame      your name is mud        in my eye      a chicken

thigh I licked       gnawed to the bone      this moan
a wishbone caught                        in my pale clean throat 






The Paper Anniversary (4)


Paper gowns are not as soft as cloth gowns are not as soft
as water     as the eyelashes of my daughter

who perhaps I’ve disappointed       certainly anointed
the oils and creams     the comb I’ve mouthed a thousand times

the dreams      what a mystery this sealed vessel
this meal for worms       o how we squirm        in the face

of disaster   a vase full of asters    it’s not love
I’m after         but after the after        after the aftermath

in which x approaches infinity       the serenity
see also:                               my affinity for pain


​

Nicole Callihan writes poems and stories. Her books include, This Strange Garment, forthcoming from Terrapin in 2023, as well as, SuperLoop, The Deeply Flawed Human, and ELSEWHERE (with Zoë Ryder White). Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Colorado Review, Conduit, The American Poetry Review, and as a Poem-a-Day selection from the Academy of American Poets. Find out more at www.nicolecallihan.com.
​

         ​Phoenix Wolf-Ray CC



​
nothing but the essentials: clothes, dishes, choked fears, and the dog 

Did you know that you can fit an entire mother’s fear into the chest of a nine year old?
I would’ve thought it’d be too big
but we made it work the day she clambered into my music class, wrapping me in a hug
and hushed, we’re going.
No goodbyes, no last looks, just thick air filled with fading off-beat maracas and triangles.
 
                My hand in hers, heavy with naivety. My sister in her arms, anchoring us to the ground. 
                The last of her abuse shrugged 
                down her spine 
                and off her wrists. 
                The entrance to the gravel driveway, no longer ours, 
                swallowed us whole. 

                Boxes. Like a macabre pet-rock collection.
                Holding years of good morning giggles and peewee soccer games.
                Eyeshots of Mr. Bear tucked paper-football-style 
                next to the green dish towels. 
                My sister playing a game of 20-questions with our life. 
                Are we coming back? Where will we sleep? Why is dad crying?
                The tears begin to fall and I am in 
                the After.

                                I would’ve done anything to lighten the load 
                                of her newfound single motherhood. 
                                I wanted to hold all those boxes. 
                                make a fort and build a tower around us. 
                                Fold the creases around our pain 
                                and stack them up high. 
                                Let the light filter through the cracks and wash us in its certainty.
                                Take a deep breath, inflate my ribcage, and make just a little more room for that fear.
                                Maybe then she’d look at me - the same way she did when we were in 
                                the Before.

                                 But I could only trade my art smock 
                                 and daydreams 
                                 in crab-apple trees 
                                 for the title of Eldest Child. 
                                 An honor. 
                                 A badge I’d wear into my late 20s before I realized 

                                                 It’s just trauma. 

                                                 A dusty chapter in a 25 cent garage sale book 
                                                 we would all keep on the bookshelves of our hearts.

       Andrew Seaman CC



Heaven
 
     
The dead, too, fall for scams, get DUIs
on roads that loop through rotaries, lose 
games of chance in luxury villas that can’t 
 
be found by satellites. My mother drives 
the Rolls Royce of golf carts. Her license 
never expires. Even in death, a Surfer Dude 
 
appears on the shoulder. He says she’s easy 
on the eye, flashes a mouthful of real teeth. 
No implants in the afterlife, no hearing aids. 
 
Brown butter in her copper pan never 
blackens, burns. What is the lesson here 
that God wants her to learn? She doesn’t love 
 
these gauzy clouds, misses the minerally 
earth, the kind of leaves that bruise and fall, 
that first Midwestern forsythia burst.

​


Hilary Sideris’s poems have appeared recently in The American Journal of Poetry, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, OneArt, Poetry Daily, Right Hand Pointing, Salamander, Sixth Finch, and Verse Daily. She is the author of Un Amore Veloce (Kelsay Books 2019), The Silent B (Dos Madres Press 2019), and Animals in English, poems after Temple Grandin (Dos Madres Press 2020). Liberty Laundry, her latest collection from Dos Madres, was recommended by Small Press Distribution. Sideris lives in Brooklyn and works as a professional developer for CUNY Start, a program for underserved and income-limited students at The City University of New York.
​

         Thomas CC



​
Change of Venue

After reading my little girl
to sleep, she lies
on her side, tiny hand
near slumber twitching.

We listen.
A friend’s music sends
her adrift. I am struck
by a new perfect moment.

A new contender—how
I want to leave this life
in my final moments.
She will be big.

I will be old.
We share a story,
her hand in mine
to send me adrift.

A scenario more realistic
than my aged spouse,
riding me like a cowboy
into heart attack sunset.





​Old Friends

As we grey,
I’m told pains
become familiar
like old friends,
no longer symptoms
to diagnose,
cater to.

We grow accustomed
to their many aspects,
tolerate eccentricities--
having tried all medical
means to banish them.

I hope my nagging,
uninvited aches
are not the kind to
always borrow a few bucks,
arrive at inconvenient hours,
abuse kindness,
or overstay their welcome.

My back aches--
I never turned it on anyone.
Perhaps this old friend remains
to remind me of the price
of never saying no.

​

​
​Fredericton Poet Laureate Jordan Trethewey lives in Nashwaaksis, with his wife, son, and daughter. Jordan writes poetry, drama, children’s literature, historical and short fiction. His writing appears in national and international journals…and in a lunar capsule on the Moon. He is an editor at the on-line literary journal Open Arts Forum. Some of his work is also translated in Vietnamese, Farsi, and French. Jordan’s recent books, “Spirits for Sale” (2019), and “Unexpected Mergers” (2021) are collaborations with Dutch artist Marcel Herms, and are available at AMAZON.com. For more info about why he does what he does, check out these Q&A’s with Wombwell Rainbow, Fishbowl Press Poetry, and Spillwords.

        Andrew Seaman CC



Hinges

Herman Melville had a sign by his desk
that read, “Remember the dreams
of thy youth.” I dreamed of a world
so bright and endless that I would never need
to find myself a place within it.
There would always be more. I could go on,
I thought, forever.

I built myself this way, for this world; 
made my skin hard like metal, and smooth 
enough that all ties would slip away. If we come
from love, I reasoned, we never need to move
towards it; it is always safely behind us. A beloved child
is free to be callus, to run, to let snowflakes
settle in its hair, to let its cheeks grow red and cold.

It was much later that I learned
that I did not come from love.

It was much later still that I learned that the world
gets brighter the closer we get to its end, 
every light rallying against the dark that gathers
at the edge of the park like wolves; and my skin
grew rough enough for the ties to stick,
but no softer, no less metallic.

​
​

Kaye Nash is a poet and teacher from Vancouver Island. She began her writing career while living and teaching just outside Taipei, but now lives with her family in Canada once again. She has had poetry published in Necro Magazine, The Literary Mark, Amethyst Review, Mookychick, Lunate, Nymphs, and Dear Reader Poet, as well as in anthology projects from The Bangor, Teen Belle and Castabout Lit. She is a regular contributor at Headline Poetry and Press. She can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter at @KStapletonNash. 
​