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