David Hudson CC




After Mother’s Death

My mother never enters at the right
time, even in my dreams, 
It’s been that way since I’ve known her

She was asleep on my arrival
and had nothing to say for years
I had to love her—there are rules

that sit in the gut, how we love,
regurgitate, turn sour,
bile pushes against the flap

keeping it in place—that love
a dandy mess of our insides--
we can’t escape even when we’ve

grown old, you see when she died
(never say when in a poem--
it’s not an essay) there was a long

complicated grief and panic rising
there was no control in this body
that pushed hard against her a lifetime.





​Lost Wanna Die Moments

It’s a long road living with AIDS,
a constant surprise why I continue
when so many died. My body strong, 
not exhausted. I lived on the right

side of town, not like my friend next 
to a migrant worker building, drunken 
fights, bodies thrown out windows, 
bloody wounds late at night. 

I sat alone vomit spewing, pressured 
skull ache, over-the-toilet puking— 
years I took that cyclic birth control 
pill, each month a sour hell.

I prayed, not because I believed,
but a call of agony, take me please.
Then continued till the next wanna
die—that spiral with wretched

days, mood fluctuations, sleep
a wax, a wane, a wind-swept dame.
Shingles, like a lightning bolt--
nervous system fried—rapid

rupture, pierced eye made me cry,
please let me die. My body defied
calls for ease. Like Sisyphus
I trudged up mountains, ready

to fall down. Did you hear me god?
Your directions weren’t clear,
you said take the dirt road, watch
for the barn—used to be a barn

felled in a fire in 89—disappeared
like the too many gone. We live 
in a vanishing world: loves of our
life, languages, species, ice floes.

My favorite Kosher Deli—Covid
closed—piled pastrami sandwiches
with Russian dressing, gone. My
cries to die circle like clock hands,

the waning moon, a steady tick tock
metronome. Yet I stand, a miracle, 
on the road to the next mountain,
despite my near burnt down barn.

​

​
Julene Tripp Weaver, a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle is currently a Jack Straw Fellow. Her third poetry collection, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, won the Bisexual Book Award and four Human Relations Indie Book Awards. Her poems have been published in HEAL, Autumn Sky Poetry, The Seattle Review of Books, Poetry Super Highway, As it Ought To Be, Feels Blind; recent anthologies include I Sing the Salmon Home, and Rumors Secrets & Lies: Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion & Choice. @julenet.weaver & www.julenetrippweaver.com

Christian Collins CC




Small-Town Expressionism in Yellow

Small-town roads in Western Pennsylvania birth curves / surprises / a waddle of ducks / a webbed stampede. / Deer rest on tar beds / their tongues lick white-dotted fur / pause / ears perk at the screams of rubber. / A vehicle swerves / misses them by a hair / leaves a souvenir of burnt tracks. Strangers pass through / don’t brake / for the view. 

This place / a detour of orange signs / Amish buggies / dead animals / asphalt plucked potholes / construction crews / three-quarters of the year. /  The stall of winter / fixing freeze / won’t slow / impatient automobiles. /  Lackadaisical cops / only stop for donuts / the road expands / hibernates. Drivers bristle past / the broom-swept fields / our gilded Midwest / corn crops / houses abutted by two story barns. / Junk car rust / sprinkles the untrimmed grass.
 
Outside we look like Americana / the definition of blessed / a wildflower wave of memaws & papaws / their marigold doors / welcome the shrill of new grandbabies / every long-lost cousin to their lemonade stoops /  say can you smell what the neighbors are cooking? 

Who owns this story? / The 18-year-old girl? / The drive-by stop sign? / Her last ochre sunrise? / Her broken neck? / Her plug-pulled parents? 
The news coverage / a scantily clad story /a two-dimensional intersection/ attempt to make palatable / a t-boned teenager. 

She was survived / or not / by her mother &  father.  Her  death / a reunion with her older sister.  / Tragic pair / eternal adolescents / paint tattles the road / where nothing much happens / until something  happens.

I watch my mother / study the sculptured loss / on their mother’s face. / The art says what she cannot / goodbye / to her second /  then only /  daughter. The guttural why / a howl / opened toward the sky / her mouth / a hearse. /  The wail of lament / her arched back / face wide / painted grief / the  spilled acrylic / realistic journalism no mother wants to read about / much less live.

Their father tried to breathe / for them both. / His rescue breaths exhausted / their mother’s stridor sighs / for 20 years. Their mother’s  last beat/ on New Year’s Eve / a brake / a halt /an exhale / she expired / in the kitchen/ on the floor. / Her final / invitation / the same as her first / calls / for them to come / inside when it got dark.




Christie is a writer, poet, and freelance editor at Meraki Press. Her work explores themes of grief, growing up in Western Pennsylvania, and reconciliation. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, three sons, and two dogs. She has most recently been published in The Purposeful Mayo, and you can find more of her work on Instagram @TheHardWayPoems.
​

fiction of reality CC




UNTIL IT'S TIME TO FALL

Such as we try
to nevermind last year
or the one before that
when the moment arrives
to ponder what comes next
it's like calculating 
the exact amount of rain
from a storm
in the distance
we will stir from under
the shelter of the old tree 
in the yard of our youth
and catch the glint
of this golden season's
final falling leaf



​
Jeffrey Yamaguchi (jeffreyyamaguchi.com) creates projects with words, photos, and video as art explorations, as well as through his professional endeavors in the publishing industry. His work has been featured in publications such as Okay Donkey, Atticus Review, Kissing Dynamite, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Hyacinth Review, Boats Against the Current, Nightingale & Sparrow, Failed Haiku, Daily Haiga, Black Bough Poetry, Feral, and The Storms. Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeffyamaguchi Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hiddenexhibit/
​

fiction of reality CC



​
Plant flowers
 
in the
skulls of
your enemies
 
plant flowers
in the
whiskey bottle
you drank
from alone
 
plant flowers
in old shoes
in belated
birthday cards
 
plant flowers
in the city
dump in
bags of
groceries in
the box
your ex
returned your
stuff in
 
plant flowers
on the international
space station
on the deserts
of Afghanistan
on the White
House lawn
on the steps
of the Kremlin
in the rubble
of all
the burned
bombed buildings
of the Ukraine
 
plant flowers
on the battlefield
on the mountains
on the prairies
 
in the city
on your street
in the yard
of your
neighbor the
one who
has been
alone since
her husband
died plant
flowers just
plant flowers
 
it is a
small thing
a way to
not give
up a
way to
just keep
believing
plant flowers.




Matt Borczon has written 18 books of poetry. His latest Post Deployment is available through Dumpster Fire Press. Matt has been taught in major universities and online. His work has been nominated for a pushcart and best of the net. When not writing he is a practical nurse in Erie,Pa. He is married with 4 children​.
​

r. nial bradshaw CC




Just Talk 

I was taught
to swallow my pain
not to talk through it
not to talk it out
not to express it
but to hold it in
a blade made poison
not to make more waves
than the tsunamis already crashing 

ancestral DNA strands leave me stranded 
without a lifeline to cling to 
when it comes to conflict
to confrontation
to chaos

asian quiet subservience 
wanting to break free 
from
a history of martyrs
a lineage of sacrifice 
laurels of suffering 

pain does not bring holiness

mid-life
still
I run
like a mouse
hide like a child
in the repressed emotional state
that I still trigger slip into
hazardous cliff of psyche 
and I can so easily veer off track
dangerous unprocessed hole
and I am the rabbit swirling down down down

communication roots in commune 
to share one's intimate thoughts and feelings
with someone else
especially on a spiritual level
communication 
does not have to be scary, little girl

think of the weight lifted through voice
think of the sudden wings 

the elephant in the room
is my own bursting wide heart
waiting
to embrace womanhood
waiting 
to tell the child in me to speak
waiting 
to hold then release her
waiting 
to sing the music of our cells

I'm clutching onto stars
to find a way out of a biography of dark --

the light has been in my mouth all along. 





Kai Coggin (she/her) is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Hot Springs, AR, and author of four collections, most recently Mining for Stardust (FlowerSong Press 2021). She is a Certified Master Naturalist, a K-12 Teaching Artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, and host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. Recently awarded the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award, twice named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times (2020, 2023), her poetry has been nominated six times for The Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net 2016, 2018, 2021— awarded in 2022. Ten of Kai’s poems are going to the moon with the Lunar Codex project, and on earth they have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Best of the Net, Cultural Weekly, SOLSTICE, SWWIM, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, and elsewhere. She lives with her wife and their two dogs in Hot Springs National Park.   
​

breki74 CC




Another Round of Daylight Saving Time

As if light or time could be saved, vacuum-sealed
in a jar on a shelf with winter provisions, as if falling 
back wouldn’t break an unhealed bone, 

as if manipulating clocks could erase memory 
outrun ennui, crush the cocoon where
we relive the past, spin a future.

Trapped in twilight, asleep by dusk, unable to bear 
too much night, I burrow into hibernation. I’m hollow.
Sleep without ache, without hunger

and remember the panorama of you, Daddy.
I loved you through all that was unholy
in the volcanic vastness of my lost girlhood.

Your eruptions punished me to an underground
you thought would tame me. I learned to understand
your backwards love, germinated and grew

with nightshades, woke in wonder of crocuses,
daffodils, greening fields, birdsong. I unfurled,
crawled into dawn, abandoned old skin to dirt. 

I forgive you.




​
​Catherine Arra is the author of four full-length poetry collections and four chapbooks. Her newest work is Solitude, Tarot & the Corona Blues (Kelsay Books, 2022) A Pushcart nominee, Arra is a native of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, where she lives with wildlife and changing seasons until winter when she migrates to the Space Coast of Florida. Arra teaches part-time and facilitates local writing groups. Find her at www.catherinearra.com

r. nial bradshaw CC




real life


I'm ready for the world to stop spinning. I know right where it is.
I reach into the stream and this fresh cool water they tell me not to drink. Alive.
Falling from pinnacles, purchased under no obligation to the human kind. I laugh at them and they smile back willingly . Unfolded . . . Presently shaking and full of toxins I lay in a bed made in a factory. I hope to God something will come of this . .Left for compost, compost//this is yellow#5//////and all I can d/o/is//////////wavelength

I hear the shaking and it is closer to the earth(I undo my buttons)we drank wine as we laughed and took our clothes off by the stream while bikers looked back at us//platonic true love from a distance

our saucy legs:butwedidn'tknowthat:(((pretended)))
someone whose words stopped me but we were only just playing

Now I hide from moving water
These things seem so empty. This room is so empty. There are so many.

​

​
Chelsea Jones is a multimedia artist and musician from California's Central Valley. They have an MFA from UC Santa Cruz where they studied digital art, French horn performance, and electronic music. They have been published in Black Napkin Press, Abridged Magazine, Noctua Review, and others. More of their work can be found at chelseaejones.tumblr.com and chelseajones.bandcamp.com.

Flickr CC




​Morning Star

In winter dark,
ghost coyotes
chuckle behind
the border hedge.

I’d a rough night
and they knew it.
I need to walk
now to forget.

My headlamp beam
sweeps the sidewalk.
Rats and rabbits
bolt for brambles.

In the ghost park
the beam cautions
fellow humans
they’re not alone.

Venus dazzles,
low and aloof,
and draws my gaze
every turn.

Ghost coyotes
dash to the east,
drag lagging Dawn
into our world.

Their sharp fangs snag
her pearl-grey skirt,
skin and blood streak
the horizon.

Venus dangles,
forlorn and pale,
a ghost diamond
adrift in blue.

Raucous chorus,
black wings, coarse caws,
a louche squadron,
the crows arrive.

Venus dallies,
dim in daylight,
and this fey man 
favors her balm.

One crow hops close
to cadge a snack,
inflicts a look,
a cold hard look.

​

​
Doc Sigerson has been an editor at Red Fez Magazine for over a decade. He has published poems, fiction, essays, reviews, and translations. He frolics and romps in the Pacific Northwest. 

Flickr CC



​
Thoughts From the Smoking Gazebo

The indigo canvas of sky at dusk
is painted with Indian blanket colors;
flaming reds,
orange,
burnished rust-
as the fervent wishes,
soul bleeding,
fevered pleading,
of the addiction-addled
begins to rise up
from the dust.

Heads once hanging
dare to look up,
and through the clouds
of frozen menthol breath
and smoke
that surrounded
the gazebo
where we gathered between classes,
lectures,
group therapy-

we saw that the sky was sprinkled with
tiny twinkling miracles
of both faith and science,
luminaries we couldn't view before
through the smeared lens of misery.

We named these stars.
hope,
healing,
unity,
as we endeavored
with all our might-
to finally set ourselves free.

Forgiveness
was the brightest star
we longed to see.

Perhaps it was Venus,
bestowing the beauty we would learn to reclaim
when some of us
didn't  feel worthy
to look in a mirror
or even bathe.

And so it was
that we touched knuckles
and clasped hands~
some of which
were still trembling.

The frigid winds
in the hills of Pennsylvania
carried our heart's burdens upwards~
towards that which we didn't
fully know
but desperately wanted to .

For there is no more sincere
or simple prayer than
when forced to our knees
we utter
"Help me,
please".

We learned
that we *are*
still and always
the most precious children
of a universal Benevolence
and the bestowal
of Grace.

We were suffering souls
unified in that place;
fallen angels
getting back up
tentatively...
then more steadily-

with backs bent,
scarred arms,
wings weighed down
with the lead of defeat,
and the lie
called failure,
but we got back on our feet.

The sky heard us,
even more so when we
leaned in to hear
the whispered prayers of others
despite all our fears.

For there is no greater power
than to nod your head
at another's pain,

no star or sparkling planet
more lovely
than the glint of a tear
in an empathetic eye,

no music more lyrical~
than a "me too"
softly sighed.

We were harvested there;
a collective cornucopia...

our bruises
only made the fruit
of our faith
even sweeter.
​



Lisa O'Neil-Guerci is a poet and writer who hails from Putnam County, NY. She works as a professional caregiver and personal assistant within the homebound elderly community. Lisa is devoted to remaining sober and dedicated to being a mother and grandmother. She finds peace and inspiration in reading and writing poetry, cooking, music, and nature. Her debut book of poetry entitled Souldust, (Golden Dragonfly Press) is due to be released next month.