Safe and Dry in the Cave 

by CLS Sandoval

 
Boulders jut toward the sky 
little caves formed between 
 
When the mist transforms  
to drops pulled by gravity  
that’s where I hide 
 
Gray clouds make the tall grasses  
and vines of spiky wild cucumber  
look even greener  
 
I love Saturdays and school breaks  
for days like this with rain 
when I get to wander the large yard  
of my childhood home in Green Valley 
 
I’ll wait out the brief rain  
in the warmth of this tiny cave  
near my home 
 
I wondered if my mother was looking out the window for me  


* * * * *

CLS Sandoval, PhD (she/her) is a pushcart nominated writer and communication professor with accolades in film, academia, and creative writing who speaks, signs, acts, publishes, sings, performs, writes, paints, teaches and rarely relaxes. She’s a flash fiction and poetry editor for Dark Onus Lit. She’s presented at communication conferences, published 15 academic articles, two academic books, three full-length literary collections, three chapbooks, as well as flash and poetry pieces in literary journals, recently including Opiate Magazine, The Journal of Magical Wonder, and A Moon of One’s Own. She is raising her daughter and dog with her husband in Alhambra, CA.  

My Tree Trunk 

by CLS Sandoval

 
When the boy sits on the tree’s stump at the end of the Giving Tree, I used to think it was sad because they had both lived their lives and been used up. Then, I grew into a woman and became a mother. I have despised my trunk, abused my trunk, expected it to stay 16 or 20. But, just as the trunk of real trees grow stronger and more sturdy as they add rings, so I expanded with age, strength, and wisdom. I have become a waif no more. I am willing to give my daughter anything she needs; my apples, my leaves, my branches, even my trunk. But now, as I read Shel Silverstein’s story to her, and watch the boy haul off what is left of the tree’s body, I pray my daughter would never demand that I be reduced to a stump, just so that she might sail away. 
 

* * * * *

CLS Sandoval, PhD (she/her) is a pushcart nominated writer and communication professor with accolades in film, academia, and creative writing who speaks, signs, acts, publishes, sings, performs, writes, paints, teaches and rarely relaxes. She’s a flash fiction and poetry editor for Dark Onus Lit. She’s presented at communication conferences, published 15 academic articles, two academic books, three full-length literary collections, three chapbooks, as well as flash and poetry pieces in literary journals, recently including Opiate Magazine, The Journal of Magical Wonder, and A Moon of One’s Own. She is raising her daughter and dog with her husband in Alhambra, CA.  

Still Here

by Kelly Vance


in the sterile 6-foot radius, the saving distance, the songs
I catch myself singing to the dog and sometimes to myself,

the COVID spring, silent streets, emerging germinations,
the sneezes of suspicion and a million memes of doubt.

in an empty grocery aisle echoing anger against a wall of fear,
hiding stockpiles of toilet paper and hand sanitizer

in an apocalyptic media of murder hornets,
stinging and stingy and singing 

hallelujahs of we-told-you-so and this-is-the-end,
heralds of closed signs, furloughs, everybody stays-at-home.

in riots of wings beating against their own far right, far left,
and statues commemorating horror pulled to the ground, burning.

And…

in a honeysuckle swoon that will not
surrender, nascent flies clinging

to sun-warmed screens and steaming piles, the verdant
sweat-sweetened musk of upturned earth,

the morning walk of daily sunrise, of seasons
stubbornly returning, of rain and thunder,

in everyday squirrels hiding and finding
their walnuts again.


* * * * *

Kelly Vance earned her MFA from Eastern Kentucky University, where she received the Emerging Writers Award for poetry in 2021. In selecting Vance for this award, Jen Currin wrote, “Vance’s voice is at turns humorous, tender, elegiac.” In addition to writing poetry, Kelly has a passion for encouraging young poets and is the Chair of Kentucky State Poetry Society's Annual Student Poetry Contest (2019-2023). In 2019, she completed the Conscious Feminine Leadership Academy affiliated with Women Writing for (a) Change, Cincinnati, and incorporates many conscious leadership concepts into her writing, mentorship, and professional work as a psychiatrist.

I Talk to Myself After Turning Off the Evening News

by Brooke Herter James

 
The war will end. In the spring 
the wild plums will blossom. 
The bees will return. Next fall, 
the olives will need harvesting
once more. But the boy in the street,  
pulling his suitcase behind him?
He will find his way to a place
with a bed and a window and someone
who will close the window when it’s cold.
But he is all alone. You don’t know.
Maybe his mother is just out of sight. 
I am a mother. I see his face. I know.


* * * * *
 
Brooke Herter James is the author of several poetry chapbooks and one children’s picture book. She lives in Vermont with her husband, two donkeys, a mess of chickens and a dog.

HELL’S KITCHEN                                                                                       

by Kelly White Arnold


Bitter as burnt biscuits
copperhead kinda mean
mouth drawn in a thin
prim tight line
corners always turned down
nose stuck uppity up like
her shit don’t stink
but yours sure do.

Collectively, we suffer through judgment
served up with Sunday dinner each week;
nestled on the table alongside collard greens cooked with
fatback, fried cornbread and
cucumbers bathed in vinegar, we find
servings of side eye,
dished out when she deems your
behind too fast,
plates of prejudice for anyone who
might not look exactly like her.

As we say grace,
her way is the highway,
her clasped hands
a direct line to white Jesus
Himself, her words, His will.
We bow our heads both
as deference to the good Lord
and a means of avoiding her simmering gaze.

She calls Mama after evening service
on Sundays, cuts her with
words, bile and anger sent
long distance courtesy of Ma Bell.
Mama cries after, closed up tight
in her room, radio on loud
(Guns N Roses, “Sweet Child O’ Mine”),
cigarette smell wafting under the door,
but faithfully drags us all
to dinner after church the next week.

Grandmama, did you ever learn
all the cruelty on God’s green earth won’t
armor you against loss and grief,
won’t shield you from your husband’s
American flag draped coffin
or your daughter’s ashes in a small black box?

Let me leave you this:
you can take all your pain and rage
bake it with buttermilk and
White Lily flour, spread all the
preserves in the larder on top,
serve it on your best china
with a linen napkin and
an ocean of sweet tea
but you still can’t make
me swallow it. 


* * * * *

Kelly White Arnold is a mom, writer, high school English teacher, and lover of yoga. When she's not scribbling in notebooks or wrangling teenagers, she's planning her next tattoo and daydreaming about traveling the world. 

Surreality 

by Nancy K. Jentsch

 
A butterfly day hovers, first gauzy 
as ghost clouds passing in front 
of stars, then slips, breathless 
from its chrysalis. It billows— 
a ballroom dress of windblown scarlet 
leaves whose clatter is the dance’s 
snare-drum beat and whose scent 
at once feathers and grounds. 
 
A fire day is a white dress day’s 
opposite. Smeared with soot, 
it reeks of ash—a day to flee 
starward onto enchantment’s kite, 
strings pulled taut by wood nymphs,  
angel wings, fritillaries. 


* * * * *

"Surrealiy" was inspired by the art of Christian Schloe.

Nancy K. Jentsch’s chapbook Authorized Visitors and the collaborative ekphrastic chapbook Frame and Mount the Sky, in which her poetry appears, were published in 2017. Her collection Between the Rows debuted in 2022. Since she began to write in 2008, her work has appeared in journals such as Amethyst Review, Crowstep Poetry Journal, Tiferet Journal, and Zingara Poetry Review. In 2020, she received an Artist Enrichment Grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Retired after 37 years of teaching, she finds a bounty of inspiration in her family and her rural home. More information is available on her website: https://jentsch8.wixsite.com/my-site.

 

HELLEBORE

by Kelly White Arnold
                                                                       

Today I strike out,
Today I set forth
under a clearing snow-sky
into a landscape of white.
Today I begin.
Each tree stands in
knife-sharp contrast
against the dawning
blue of the heavens,
thrusting up from the soil
that birthed it,
reaching skyward.
Today I grow,
cold air awakening senses,
quickening pulse.
Today I let go–
realizing that affect
is more precious than object,
that nothing is mine to control.
Today,
in the dead of winter,
amid the ashes of Christmas,
in the wake of a blizzard,
Today I bloom. 


* * * * *

"Hellebore" was previously published in the Old Mountain Press anthology To All A Good Night.

Kelly White Arnold is a mom, writer, high school English teacher, and lover of yoga. When she's not scribbling in notebooks or wrangling teenagers, she's planning her next tattoo and daydreaming about traveling the world.