When the Moon Is New

by Joan McNerney


Groping through darkness
knocking everything down.
Down into enormous night
where thoughts unravel.

Memories moan past us as
shadows quiver across walls.
We lie pinned to bed sheets
like captive butterflies.

Dry butterflies, our throats
are brittle, eyes turning
from light. Sore arms reach
for anything soft to hold.

Remembering seasons gone by.
So many lost promises.
This huge moment surrounding us.
Wide awake we wait for the new day.


* * * * *

Joan McNerney’s poetry is published worldwide in over thirty-five countries in numerous literary magazines. Four Best of the Net nominations have been awarded to her. The Muse in Miniature, Love Poems for Michael, and At Work are available on Amazon.com. A new title Light & Shadows has recently been released.

 

downstairs

by Tina Tocco


After Daddy’s head
drops for the night

and my brother and I
get to our knees

to mop the beer
with old factory shirts we keep

for this very thing—
and after we pin the sports section

out on the line
to dry the scores

dribbled with Ballantine—
and after we pull beans and cheese

off plastic plates
and poke it down the drain

because forks scrape—
and after we run water

slow and cold into the bath
so the pipes don’t knock

and stand watch for each other
while we bathe

just in case—

after this
we slip downstairs

and stroke Daddy’s shoulder
and ask,

the way Mom used to,
please

would he take the sports section
off the line

if he wakes up
for work

on account of Mrs. Walker
over the fence

who talks.


* * * * *

"Downstairs" was previously published in Inkwell, Fall 2007.

Tina Tocco is a Pushcart Prize nominee.  Her work has appeared in various journals, including New Ohio Review, River Styx, Crab Creek Review, Roanoke Review, Passages North, Potomac Review, Portland Review, and The Comstock Review. Her poetry was anthologized in Wild Dreams: The Best of Italian Americana (Fordham University Press, 2008) and the Italian-American women’s anthology #Me Too, Anch’io (Poets Wear Prada, 2020). Tina earned her MFA in creative writing from Manhattanville University, where she was editor-in-chief of Inkwell. She also writes flash fiction, teaches creative writing, and has recently completed her first middle grade novel.

When Did She Know

                       by Elaine Reardon


she was in trouble?
First time she was six,
they ran from her dad

late one night, stayed in the
small out of town motel room,
with hardly any traffic coming by.

Her dad burst into their motel
room, wild eyed and shouting,
threatened her mom, and
carried her sister out of their lives.

Was it later, when mom's new
boyfriend climbed into her room
through the porch window
saying shhhh, don't tell?


* * * * *

Elaine Reardon is a writer, herbalist, and artist and educator. Her first chapbook, The Heart is a Nursery For Hope, won first honors from Flutter Press in 2016, and her second chapbook, Look Behind You, was also published in late 2019 by Flutter Press. Most recently Elaine's work was published in The Common, Galway Review, Pensive Journal, and similar journals. A new chapbook, Stories Told in a Lost Tongue was published by Finishing Line Press in September 2024. www.elainereardon.wordpress.com. 

MISSING YOU IS HARD TO MASTER

by Caiti Quatmann


Unbeknownst to us, you vanished,
absent. Absent from lectures. Absent

from work. Absent from Thanksgiving.
The windshield wipers absent from your car

though winter reigned in Wisconsin.
Absent your coat. Absent your hair.

We overlooked the signs.
We missed the lies,

the absences you hid.
And I don’t know how to miss you

when absence still wears your silhouette.
It’s all that composes you now:

the empty chair at the dinner table;
the silence in the cold which

settles more forcefully each winter;
absent from phone calls

and the family group chat
(mom still sucks at texting btw);

absent from my wedding photos;
absent from your nephew’s life;

from holidays at mom and dad's
(well, grandma and grandpa now)

when we light the same-old firepit and
try not to speak about all that's missing.


* * * * *

Missing You Is Hard to Master" was previously published in Quatmann’s debut chapbook Yoke (MyrtleHaus 2024).

Caiti Quatmann (she/her) is a disabled poet. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Yoke (MyrtleHaus 2024) and Editor-in-Chief for HNDL Mag. Her poetry and personal essays have been published by Thread LitMag, The Closed Eye Open, and others. Caiti lives in St. Louis, Missouri, and teaches at a local Microschool. Find her on Instagram and Threads @CaitiTalks.

 

Eleven O’Clock

by Suzanne Allen


The church bells feel like rain drops off an awning, taste like coins flung into a fountain. Wishes. Charity wishes for nothing more than close attention, prefers to go slowly, balance the weight of herself, the heft of her thoughts as she not-quite lumbers and glides along, smell every sound. The sum of her love, more given than garnered. Her heart hums, more, more, more.


* * * * *

Suzanne Allen is a writing teacher and artist born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley near Los Angeles. She holds an MFA from California State University in Long Beach, where she still lives. In 2021, she published a full-length collection of mostly pandemic poems, We Wash Our Hands, and her collection of Paris poems, Awkward, was released in February, 2024. Others appear widely online and in print. The “Charity” sequence is part of a larger series of self-caricatures from her forthcoming collection, Attempts at Exhausting a Crush, to be released late spring, 2025.

 

Abandoned… Package

by Suzanne Allen


Line Twelve gasps to a stop at Trinité, just three stops before Charity’s stop. She listens three times to the tiled echo of the conductor’s instructions before she understands: colis abandonné à Pigalle, il faut descendre. There’s an abandoned package; she must get off the train. Riders trickle out into the bright but cloudy evening on Place d’Estienne d’Orves, as if destined. She pulls up her faith and hope, finds the taxi at the front of the line in front of l’Église de la Sainte Trinité; finally a sign that doesn’t say stop. La Cave Café isn’t far, but this doesn’t stop the driver from first grumbling about the traffic, le travaux, the impending J.O., les Jeux Olympiques. She hears the word, games, gathers herself and fastens her seatbelt; Charity can’t be rushed. She waits for a break in his clouds before asking his name, where he’s from. Haidi, he says, de la Tunisie, and Charity doesn’t miss a beat, says she makes couscous poulet every Easter, then watches him smile in the rearview mirror. My ex taught me, she confesses. He was from Tunisia, too. Then Haidi speaks of spices and lamb, his children, the sea, then he’s dropping her off on the Place Robert-Verdier, says, merci, bonne soirée, don’t give up; on’sait jamais.


* * * * *

Haidi: provider of guidance, leader.

Suzanne Allen is a writing teacher and artist born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley near Los Angeles. She holds an MFA from California State University in Long Beach, where she still lives. In 2021, she published a full-length collection of mostly pandemic poems, We Wash Our Hands, and her collection of Paris poems, Awkward, was released in February, 2024. Others appear widely online and in print. The "Charity" sequence is part of a larger series of self-caricatures from her forthcoming collection, Attempts at Exhausting a Crush, to be released late spring, 2025.

Hair

by Sarah Russell


1
It’s a woman’s crowning glory, Mother said, 
and she brushed my hair a hundred strokes 
at night, rolled it in rags so my long curls 
would bounce below the barrettes, wound them 
around her finger each morning. She pulled 
so hard my eyes watered. I hacked each curl 
off with kitchen shears when I turned twelve.

2
“Don’t ever cut it,” he said, and his hands 
were tender beside my face, then drifted
through, beyond. Mother’s mantra 
became my own. I brushed until it gleamed. 
Once he washed it for me like men do 
in Hallmark films. His fingers tangled, 
but I didn’t cry since women never cry 
in scenes like that.

3
The doctor said it would fall out, but the clumps 
in the shower drain startled me. I went to a salon
and told the girl to cut it off, right down 
to the scalp. She cried and I cried and she wouldn’t 
let me pay.


* * * * *

Sarah Russell’s poetry and fiction have been published in Rattle, Misfit Magazine, Third Wednesday, Poetry Breakfast, and many other journals and anthologies. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She has two poetry collections published by Kelsay Books, I lost summer somewhere and Today and Other Seasons. Her novella The Ballerina Swan Lake Mobile Homes Country Club Motel was published by Running Wild Press. She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net

What I Picked for the Journey

by Sarah Russell


A strong walking stick that fits my grasp. 
Oatmeal raisin cookies.
A few favorite poems.
A heart-shaped pebble for my pocket.

I’ll leave on a day that promises sun 
and breeze and animal-shaped clouds. 
I’ll find wild blueberries and spring water
pure as a child’s wonder.

I’ll pass the hours remembering
forsythia in April, the softness 
of a baby’s skin, campfires, the smell 
of bread fresh from the oven. I’ll sleep 
where the milky way tumbles 
through the night sky and trees whisper 
to the wind.


* * * * *

Sarah Russell’s poetry and fiction have been published in Rattle, Misfit Magazine, Third Wednesday, Poetry Breakfast, and many other journals and anthologies. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She has two poetry collections published by Kelsay Books, I lost summer somewhere and Today and Other Seasons. Her novella The Ballerina Swan Lake Mobile Homes Country Club Motel was published by Running Wild Press. She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net

Waiting

by Louella Lester


Press 1 if you know the extension of the person to whom you wish to speak. My best friend. My dead father. Maybe a lover. Press 2 if you don’t know the extension number. Press 1 to type in your 4 digit PIN. Press 2 if you don’t have a PIN. Press 1 to type in the account number found in the upper right corner. Of the street. Of my house. Of my face. Press 1 to set up a PIN. Press 1 to answer one of your authorization questions. Press 2 if you have not set up authorization questions. Press 1 to set up a series of authorization questions. Who is the actor who played Logan in Succession? What city were you born in? What is the meaning of life? Press 1 to connect to the front desk. The chair. The door. My co-workers. Press 1 to choose music. Press 1 for jazz. Press 2 for pop. Press 3 for silence. 


* * * * *

Louella Lester is a writer/photographer in Winnipeg, Canada, author of Glass Bricks (At Bay Press), a contributing editor at New Flash Fiction Review, and has a story included in Best Microfiction 2024. Her writing appears in a variety of journals/anthologies, including most recently: Roi Faineant, 50-Word Story, the Dribble Drabble Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Gooseberry Pie, Paragraph Planet, Hooghly Review, Bright Flash, Cult. Magazine, and SoFloPoJo.

Quick Change Slow

by Louella Lester


Layla takes off her sweater and settles it on top of her parka, which is squished into the chair between her and the older women sitting poker straight next to it, a cardigan draped neatly over her arm. They smile at one another before turning back, with hope, to face the medical receptionist’s desk. Layla swipes sweat from her forehead, removes her outer T-shirt, and drops it on top of the sweater. A minute later she shivers, pulls it back on, and says, “When does it end?” The older woman pats a hanky across her own brow. “I wouldn’t know.”  


* * * * *

Louella Lester is a writer/photographer in Winnipeg, Canada, author of Glass Bricks (At Bay Press), a contributing editor at New Flash Fiction Review, and has a story included in Best Microfiction 2024. Her writing appears in a variety of journals/anthologies, including most recently: Roi Faineant, 50-Word Story, the Dribble Drabble Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Gooseberry Pie, Paragraph Planet, Hooghly Review, Bright Flash, Cult. Magazine, and SoFloPoJo.

 

Not in My Backyard

by Lorri Ventura


The woven chaise lounge creaks its protest
As I shift my weight
While turning the page of the book I’m reading

The backyard offers a symphony
A Carolina wren serenades from its perch on a nearby deck rail
Chickadees excitedly announce their discovery of a full bird feeder
And mourning doves coo a conversation

Overhead, the sky is a graph of condensation trails
Transforming me into a vertex
For jets flying to and from
Boston and Providence

As I gaze up at the cerulean sky
Its puffy clouds part
And spotlight my sister in a migrant camp
Two days without food or water
Blistered lips and feet
Desiccating in scorching sun
Waiting, waiting, waiting
For a court date to hear her asylum petition

Peering past the dust at our nation’s border
I see a barefoot sister in Gaza
Stumbling through bombed-out ruins
Of the hospital where she delivered her firstborn
Just seven days earlier.
She cannot find her baby.

Further ahead the clouds reveal
A sister in Ukraine
Formerly a school teacher
She now works 14-hour days
As a boiler operator
Dreaming of the day 
When her school is rebuilt and reopened
And her husband is home from war.

From the comfort of my solitary paradise
Tears stagger down my cheeks
As I squint up at my sisters
I pray that the peace that caresses me in my backyard
Can somehow touch them.


* * * * *

Lorri Ventura is a retired special education administrator living in Massachusetts. Her poetry has been featured in AllPoetry, Mad Swirl, Parapraxis, Quabbin Quills, and Red Eft Review. She is a three-time winner of Writing in a Woman's Voice's Moon Prize.

Cecil Court, 1997

by Amy Soricelli


My mother's trip to London was a suitcase filled with books.
First, there was wine and small squares of cheese; 
she wrote on art postcards in her loopy language.
No one looks familiar here, she wrote across the top,
everyone looks so English.

In her rented room she would pull the curtains 
and count the people walking in pairs.
She didn't need friends for her short stay, only a table 
filled with fresh fruit or earrings that caught the light when she laughed. 
She never counted the children.

My mother's trip to London was the "Sunshine Annual of 1892"
with ads for polishing paste and Bird's Custard Powder. 
Here, she offered, this is where I was.
The book smelled of rain, footprints, and a skinny man with a stained tie,
asking her what the Bronx looks like.

* * * * *

Amy Soricelli has been published in numerous publications and anthologies including Remington Review, The Westchester Review, Deadbeats, Long Island Quarterly, Literati Magazine, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Pure Slush, Cider Press Review, Glimpse Poetry Magazine, and many others. That Plane is not a Star, 4/2024, Dancing Girl Press; Carmen has No Umbrella but Went for Cigarettes Anyway, Dancing Girl Press 9/2021; Sail Me Away, Dancing Girl Press, 10/2019. Nominations: Pushcart Prize, 2021, Best of the Net 2020, 2013. Nominated by Billy Collins for Aspen Words Emerging Writer's Fellowship/2019, Grace C. Croff Poetry Award, Herbert H Lehman College, 1975.

View of 116th and 2nd Avenue from the Bus on the Last Day of School

by Amy Soricelli

 
The streets are Mexican stone and red flowers
painted on bricks. The slippery wheels of the
food-cart balance the homeless man who shuffles
his steps in broken shoes. 
He's waiting for the crowd to clear so the lady with
the rough hands can make a plate for him.
The children on the edges dance in circles with
the last day of school fresh on their lips.
Abandoned books and their uniform pants cuffed
to the knees.
Gray clouds cover the group in a thin layer of 
worn down Wednesday, and families knee deep
in pastelitos gather napkins and count change. 
It's just another afternoon on this corner 
of remember when; the old men talk in small clips, 
the young girls yell into their phones.
The food-cart lady finishes with the crowd and 
offers a plate and a cold drink.
It's all he can do with this kindness;  
his small nod and the sign of the cross.


* * * * *

Amy Soricelli has been published in numerous publications and anthologies including Remington Review, The Westchester Review, Deadbeats, Long Island Quarterly, Literati Magazine, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Pure Slush, Cider Press Review, Glimpse Poetry Magazine, and many others. That Plane is not a Star, 4/2024, Dancing Girl Press; Carmen has No Umbrella but Went for Cigarettes Anyway, Dancing Girl Press 9/2021; Sail Me Away, Dancing Girl Press, 10/2019. Nominations: Pushcart Prize, 2021, Best of the Net 2020, 2013. Nominated by Billy Collins for Aspen Words Emerging Writer's Fellowship/2019, Grace C. Croff Poetry Award, Herbert H Lehman College, 1975

The Moments Before You

by Abigail Davis
 

One day
you will walk up to me,
and from one instant
to the next, everything
will change. From
that point on, never again
will I know a life
without you, and yet
all the moments
before you will have
suddenly made sense.


* * * * *

Abigail Davis is a preschool teacher living in North Carolina. Her poem, “Where Love Died,” can be found in One Page Poetry’s 2023 Anthology. She has a passion for expressing emotions through writing whether it be poetry, journaling, or short stories. Her joy is found in seeking solitude in nature, as well as witnessing the antics of her two beloved cats, Tylee and Azula. 

 

My Father’s Joy

by Abigail Davis

 
I had barely learned how to walk, how to talk,
how to share, how to play fair.
I was not yet old enough for the burden
you placed on me. Looking right
into the innocent blue eyes
of your three-year-old daughter, telling her
how she is the reason you are miserable.
I just wanted you to play with me.
I have spent my life beyond that point
believing myself to be nothing more
than a burden.
At best, a chore.
Never wanting to ask too much,
never wanting to be too much.
How ironic
my name means “My father’s joy.”


* * * * *

Abigail Davis is a preschool teacher living in North Carolina. Her poem, “Where Love Died,” can be found in One Page Poetry’s 2023 Anthology. She has a passion for expressing emotions through writing whether it be poetry, journaling, or short stories. Her joy is found in seeking solitude in nature, as well as witnessing the antics of her two beloved cats, Tylee and Azula. 

 

Enough

by Elaine Reardon


I wondered if it was the war
that made him so angry,
nights when he shook with
malaria, sheets soaked through.
He shouted through nightmares,
flung blankets and me off the bed.

Do you know
how many nights
I woke airborne,
then crashing?

Sudden changes in mood—
he'd scream that he'd leave
if I left him alone with the baby,
he'd leave her right there, in the crib.
And he did, when I walked to the corner
to buy a quart of milk.

I remember my Gramma saying
You make your bed, you lie in it
as she washed the linoleum floor,
limp apron tied around her.
How much do we swallow before
we know we've had enough?


* * * * *

Elaine Reardon is a writer, herbalist, and artist and educator. Her first chapbook, The Heart is a Nursery For Hope, won first honors from Flutter Press in 2016, and her second chapbook, Look Behind You, was also published in late 2019 by Flutter Press. Most recently Elaine's work was published in The Common, Galway Review, Pensive Journal, and similar journals. A new chapbook, Stories Told in a Lost Tongue was published by Finishing Line Press in September 2024. www.elainereardon.wordpress.com. 

So this is hope
                 After Ted Kooser

by Patricia Phillips-Batoma 


Lit by a single half-moon window,
a throng of disparate objects
lines every inch of garage shelf space.

Their indistinct shapes bear down on me
like the sound and fury
of a conclave of despots.
 
Is this clutter really what summons
the mournful strains
jabbing from the shadows?

Solving that riddle is like
trying to paint the shape
of gathering clouds.
 
A baggy piece of this puzzle
catches my eye. White, plastic, pillowy,
a sack of Asiatic lily bulbs.
 
After their delayed arrival last fall,
perhaps it was too late to plant.
Or was it that illness, other sirens,
 
one pursuit toppling another,
that caused them to drift
inside this debris field?

Between my fingers, they crackle and groan,
dare me to settle the question of whether
life still exists inside their papery hulls.

So this is hope. Here in a dingy space,
softly suggesting I might still find
flowers inside.

Its presence so unobtrusive until
it shoulders its way out of the cacophonic din,
unscathed from years of living
 
between war and peace,
thistles and lilies.


* * * * *

Patricia Phillips-Batoma is a writer and teacher who lives in Illinois. She has published poems in Skylight 47, An Capall Dorcha, The New Verse News, Off Course, Plants and Poetry and Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis.

 

Genesis and Embryogenesis

by Patricia Phillips-Batoma 

i
And so it was written that in seven days
God created the sun and the moon,
curled the clematis vine, periwinkled
its flowers blue and plumped coral
the petals of peonies. Light fell
on patterned butterfly wings, glossed
hummingbird bodies, and night moonlit
the feathered antennae of the moth.
Lizards basked in radiating desert sands
and beneath the waves,
cephalopods
swerved in and out of shadow.

ii
In seven or so real Earth days,
a woman’s body transforms an ovum
into an implanted blastocyst. We call this
embryogenesis.
But don’t say the egg
is fertilized     
by the sperm
as if she waits dreamily at the doorway
to the fallopian cavern musing
about distant possibilities. Of the millions of sperm
on their way up the river, she calls only
a couple hundred. And though we cling
to the tale of the speeding destrier
penetrating the fortress through sheer grit,
science now thinks the egg chooses
which one may enter her, if any,
then pulls him in through a window,
hidden from the light.


* * * * *

Patricia Phillips-Batoma is a writer and teacher who lives in Illinois. She has published poems in Skylight 47, An Capall Dorcha, The New Verse News, Off Course, Plants and Poetry and Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis.

LAVENDER SKIES

by Amy Ballard Rich


Under lavender skies she flew low;
she recently learned the art
of staying under the radar

Now more than ever
she will look before leaping
into any new company
she wants to keep

Close calls are everywhere;
better to memorize plants and herbs
than to rely on anyone
or anything else

Remembering how and where your roots are,
deeply buried for thousands of years,
will help you fix your gaze ever upward
to find hidden rainbows
behind
the tears clouds are shedding
as they watch a powerful few
try and choke our freedoms
out of us


* * * * *

Amy Ballard Rich is a retired preschool teacher, living in Berkeley, CA. When not writing she can be found hugging both trees and her chosen family. She is still waiting for her attempts to smash patriarchy to bear fruit.

 

Red

by Abigail Davis

 
As a little girl,
my mother did her best
to protect me from men.
 
Red became a color
I could not wear
on my lips,
on my nails.
“But why?” I persisted
as she struggled to explain
in a way that appeased
my tiny, growing brain.
 
“Provocative”
was the word
she was searching for:
a word
I could not understand at four.
 
“Why don’t you try pink?”
I did not want to try pink.
“Red is for grown women”
she’d say,
but what she meant was,
“If you wear it, men will see you as grown.”
 
Yet here I am
at 27,
a year of abstinence,
six weeks of unshaved legs,
divorce papers in the mail,
trauma within the confines of my heart,
and red staining my lips.
Tell me,
is this what provocative looks like?
 
 
* * * * *

Abigail Davis is a preschool teacher living in North Carolina. Her poem, “Where Love Died,” can be found in One Page Poetry’s 2023 Anthology. She has a passion for expressing emotions through writing whether it be poetry, journaling, or short stories. Her joy is found in seeking solitude in nature, as well as witnessing the antics of her two beloved cats, Tylee and Azula. 

Your Grip on Me

by Abigail Davis


Your grip on me
was not solid. Not steel
or iron or wood. But tendrils
of smoke that clung
to the innerworkings
of my soul, attaching themselves
to my patterns
of thought, blurring
my memories, suffocating
my hopes and dreams, and
hazing over my reality.
 
 
* * * * *

Abigail Davis is a preschool teacher living in North Carolina. Her poem, “Where Love Died,” can be found in One Page Poetry’s 2023 Anthology. She has a passion for expressing emotions through writing whether it be poetry, journaling, or short stories. Her joy is found in seeking solitude in nature, as well as witnessing the antics of her two beloved cats, Tylee and Azula. 

 

The Funeral

by Bhanusree S. Kumar


My aunt’s body
Lay on the porch
Beneath marigold wreaths
Left by guests and kin.
The crowd was sparse
As she bequeathed
Only chiffon sarees
And a plywood desk.
A few socialists
Carried the corpse
To the backyard pyre
To complete the rites.
Once her bitter son
Lit the wood,
The crowd dispersed
For tea and snacks.

The next morning,
A priest prepared
Ritual rice balls
For ravens to feast.
They were doused in ghee,
And served on plantain leaves,
With flecks of sesame
And rings of durva grass.
The ceremony ended
With the priest receiving
A scanty fee wrapped in
A crinkled betel leaf.
 
Meanwhile, the spirit
Relished sweet manna,
Free from onus,
Beyond galactic time.


* * * * *

Bhanusree S. Kumar is a writer from Kerala, India. Her poems have appeared in The Gorko Gazette, Topical Poetry, Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts, The New Indian Express, Lions’ Voice and Heart-Bytes. Besides writing, she enjoys listening to classical music and dabbling in watercolour painting.

A Troubling Memory

by Bhanusree S. Kumar


When the kettle whistled,
my mother jolted from her reverie
and hushed the flame
with a swift, anxious sweep.
In the living room,
guests awaited the festival's remnants—
sweetmeats arranged with precision
on ornate silverware.
Her hands, unsteady from neuropathy,
balanced a tray of katlis,
while daintily adjusting the shawl
that concealed the bruise on her neck
from the previous night’s scuffle.
But when the cloth slipped
and bared the wound,
the crowd took to pretence
and indulged her husband in
a discourse on highway traffic
as if violence were banality.
When the house quietened,
I rushed to bed,
hoping sleep would alchemize
the grim tableau
into art with gravitas.
When the world dissolved,
my lookalike appeared
with a red balloon,
only for a buffeting wind
to snatch it away
from her tender grip.


* * * * *

Bhanusree S. Kumar is a writer from Kerala, India. Her poems have appeared in The Gorko Gazette, Topical Poetry, Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts, The New Indian Express, Lions’ Voice and Heart-Bytes. Besides writing, she enjoys listening to classical music and dabbling in watercolour painting.

 

 

The Little Ballerina

by Susan Isla Tepper


who became an American, officially,
a few years back
went to visit her Mama
who still lives in Russia.
The little ballerina, adopting
American ways,
wasn’t easily deterred by
autocracy run amok
like the pigeons in New York City.
Americans can say things
out on the street
without fear of being arrested and
jailed. The little ballerina
was sent away
some 700 miles from the capitol.
She has one small window
in her cell, a sink
with cold water,
one cold shower a week.
The lights in her cell
turned up 24/7.
The little ballerina has days of hope
and days of despair, says
her boyfriend pleading on TV.
They gave her 20 years.
She seems all but forgotten.

* * * * *

"The Little Balllerina" was first published in Galway Review (April 2024) with illustration "Joy" by Judith A. Lawrence https://thegalwayreview.com/2024/04/08/susan-isla-tepper-judith-a-lawrence-the-little-ballerina/

Susan Isla Tepper is a widely published writer in all genres, and the author of twelve books and two stage plays currently in some form of production which changes periodically according to the covid stats. Her latest novel titled ‘Hair of a Fallen Angel’ was just published by Spuyten Duyvil Books (September 2024). www.susantepper.com

Judith A. Lawrence was the editor/publisher of Lilly Press and River Poets Journal for several decades. She is also a prolific painter, and writer of fiction, memoir, and poetry. Originally from Philadelphia, PA, she now resides in Florida. She has published five chapbooks of poems, written a volume of short stories, and a recent memoir titled “Point of Comfort.” She is currently completing a murder/mystery novel and a book of short poems containing her watercolors, under her nom de plume Juniper Rue.

Mending the World

by Sandra Kohler


Tikkun olam - to mend the world.

it is our duty, as prophets, rabbis, sages,
saintly teachers spelled out over years,
decades, centuries, to use ourselves,
our powers, our hearts and hands, to
heal the wounded world, and so to be
a part of its Creator's work, creation.

On this autumn afternoon, soaking rain
pouring down, dusk beginning to fall,
I come to my window, chair, to this
unearned blessing of a safe existence
in a world cruel, unyielding, barbarous,
and wonder what I should be doing

with my pen, words, my mind, fears,
my imagination to change this reality.
If we could imagine a better world...
we can, do - and yet we don't, can't.
We cannot make it exist by force of
will or mind, by heart or hopes.

I am sitting here in a chair built by
love, by the hands of a man who loves
me. I am safe only because of luck,
the good fortune of being who I am,
living where I do now, at this moment,
for this day. But as I am writing this,

in Gaza right now there is death and
suffering beyond my imagining being
inflicted in the name of the faith of
my ancestors on other inhabitants of
that land who have been cast beyond
the pale, the obligation of mending.

Over centuries, those ancestors were
both oppressors and oppressed. How
can we acknowledge a darkness we've
refused to see in ourselves, our past,
souls? Only by looking at it will we be
able to turn away, freed from its grasp.

I need to invent a prayer that can sustain
me, despite all I know of how I will not
be sustained. Sitting here now, I feel
the embrace of a love which I know can
not live forever, as the man who loves
me cannot, as I cannot, except in this

moment of being here, seeing this, of
writing this. It is not enough to mend
the world. It has to be. All I can do, here,
now, is mourn what I cannot mend.


* * * * *

"Mending the World" was first published in Dissident Voice,
https://dissidentvoice.org/2023/11/mending-the-world/, then The Raven's Perch
https://theravensperch.com/mending-the-world-by-sandra-kohler/

Sandra Kohler’s third collection of poems, Improbable Music (Word Press), appeared in May, 2011. Earlier collections are The Country of Women (Calyx, 1995) and The Ceremonies of Longing (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003). Her poems have appeared in journals, including The Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, and many others over the past 45 years. In 2018, a poem of hers was chosen to be part of Jenny Holzer’s permanent installation at the Comcast Technology Center in Philadelphia.

Letter from the Porch

by Anastasia Vassos


This morning’s mist coats
the air past the stairs, obscuring
the birch across the street, its outline
smudged against almost-gray —
say, unwashed silk & a chickadee’s
saffron streak rushes to rip
into the birch’s canopy. 
Storm clouds to the west.
Suddenly the wind picks them up
the sky a furious rush
a cataract in the drenched
eye of the world & all self-pity
washed clean in the deluge.
The chickadee lands
on the handrail
leading up to the porch.
A message, I think.
Our shared presence
that swells after the storm
in the sun’s radiant lip.

Today’s the day
you died five years ago—
I still feel the weight
of your absence, proportioned
to—what? Maybe to the idea
I can’t fix what we broke
when you were alive.
The wind a cool hand
a kind of augury
nudging my shoulder.
See, this street could be an ocean
how it shimmers after rain
& absorbs it. Sometimes grief
is my favorite color.
I wish you could have seen
the birch, the chickadee.


* * * * *

Anastasia Vassos is the author of Nostos (Kelsay Books, 2023) and Nike Adjusting Her Sandal (Nixes Mate, 2021). Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. Find her work in RHINO, Whale Road Review, Thrush, Lily Poetry Review, Comstock Review, Off the Grid, and elsewhere. She is a reader for Lily Poetry Review, speaks three languages, and lives in Boston.

Letter from Your Unwritten Poem

by Anastasia Vassos

  
I’m your last thought
your head on the pillow
your first breath
when you wake
having forgotten me—
 
the metaphor mislaid
when you’re lost in traffic
when you miss
the turn at the library.
Oh, I know—I vanish
 
if you don’t write me down
right away—that’s my magic.
I mean, you’re reading
this now, aren’t you?
I lurk
 
in the quiet shadow
behind your eyes
in Ratushinskaya’s
bars of soap,
the Gulag,
matchsticks carving
her words
before she washed
her hands—
 
in Emily’s
apron pocket
pencil stub
torn envelopes
at the ready.
 
Tell me what
you’re afraid of.
I am everywhere.
 
Find me in the sound
of waves stripping
the shore, the expanse
where grain fields bend
and groan in the wind.
 
I remember it all:
your parents
how they lived and died
the rhythms of your body
as you blossomed and aged
the time you drove drunk
the time you quit smoking
the day you got the diagnosis
those nights you gave up on me
nights you couldn’t sleep
worried about some bull shit.
 
Yes, don’t look at me like that
I know how to swear.


* * * * *

Anastasia Vassos is the author of Nostos (Kelsay Books, 2023) and Nike Adjusting Her Sandal (Nixes Mate, 2021). Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. Find her work in RHINO, Whale Road Review, Thrush, Lily Poetry Review, Comstock Review, Off the Grid, and elsewhere. She is a reader for Lily Poetry Review, speaks three languages, and lives in Boston.

Beyond the Reach of Time

by Ann Christine Tabaka


Black crow
          sings a song
unknown to man.
Forest awakes,
          answering back.

Vestiges of life
          fall from the sky           
like winter snow.
Existence comes into being.

Dawn bursts forth,
          day enters.
Stars blink their goodbyes.
So it is said, so it is done.

The guardian steps forth
          as light emerges.
Time lapses …
Burgeoning worlds converge.

The sky is alive.
          I hear his song.
Black crow flies off,
Beyond the reach of time.


* * * * *

"Beyond the Reach of Time" received the Third Place Award in Vita Brevis January 2018 Best Poem of the Month Contest

Ann Christine Tabaka was nominated for the 2017 & 2023 Pushcart Prize in Poetry; nominated for the 2023 Dwarf Stars award of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association; winner of Spillwords Press 2020 Publication of the Year; featured in the Who’s Who of Emerging Writers 2020 and 2021. Selected as a Judge for the Soundwaves Poetry Contest of Northern Ireland 2023. She is the author of 17 poetry books, and 1 short story book. Her most recent credits are: The Phoenix, Eclipse Lit, Carolina Muse, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Ephemeral Literary Review, The Elevation Review, North Dakota Quarterly.

Disorientation

by Ann Christine Tabaka


The whistle of a distant train pierces the night.
Loneliness swallows the darkness.
Unspoken words consume the mind.
Strange thoughts invade reality as walls close in.
Time painfully creeps by until almost at a standstill.
Slowly strangling the will of its ability to resist.
A disoriented half dream world,
where corners of the imagination
shatter into vibrant fragments,
in the eternal plight of sleeplessness.


* * * * *

"Disorientation" was previously published by Ariel Chart and nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize in Poetry.

Ann Christine Tabaka was nominated for the 2017 & 2023 Pushcart Prize in Poetry; nominated for the 2023 Dwarf Stars award of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association; winner of Spillwords Press 2020 Publication of the Year; featured in the Who’s Who of Emerging Writers 2020 and 2021. Selected as a Judge for the Soundwaves Poetry Contest of Northern Ireland 2023. She is the author of 17 poetry books, and 1 short story book. Her most recent credits are: The Phoenix; Eclipse Lit, Carolina Muse, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Ephemeral Literary Review, The Elevation Review, North Dakota Quarterly.

AUTUMN MELANCHOLY                                                 

by Brenda Mox


The sea works gently
at the shore,
its halo of waves
wash over her
barnacled rocks,
floating seaweed,
sun mottled sand
and soaked, fallen leaves.

As autumn’s pervasive melancholy
drips translucent veils
that few can see
on trees that hide
in the folds of the land
near the sand
where seagulls grieve.


* * * * *

Brenda Mox is a poet, visual artist and MFA graduate from Old Dominion University many moons ago. Her work has been published in Wingless Dreamer, Bewildering Stories, Blaze Vox, Ariel Chart, Down in the Dirt, Neo Poet, Discretionary Love, Corporeal, Heart and Mind, Edge of Humanity, Poetry Pacific, New Myths, Poetry for Mental Health journals, Eber and Wein Anthology. 

Autumn

by Laura Ann Reed


Beyond a window, a stone’s certain surfaces
are dark with shadow, and each of the three
white blossoms on a rhododendron stem
opens to the wind in a different direction.
From between gray clouds light shines
on a crow’s wing as I turn and turn
in October’s yellow weather.


* * * * *

"Autumn" was first published in ONE ART: a journal of poetry 2023.

Laura Ann Reed, a San Francisco Bay Area native, taught modern dance and ballet at the University of California, Berkeley before working as a leadership development trainer at the San Francisco headquarters of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the United States, Canada, and Britain. She is the author of the chapbook, Shadows Thrown (2023). Laura and her husband live in the Pacific Northwest.