Fugue of Vodka Light GS with lines & variation from Lorna De Cervantes’ “From the Bus to E.L. at Atascadero State Hospital” The woman screams I want Vodka now! InsteadI offer her more coffee, but tonight youKnow this won’t work. She is adamant—wereYou here you might be scared, hereWhere anger is a daily ruse. She balls her fists. WhereIs the Vodka? She’s in her fifties, delusional. TheWoman grew up in a closed factory town with its woundedMen. Bradford’s blue factory light. BlackbirdsOf men begging for bread. Coal trains warbleAlong the Allegheny River with their industrial jazzFed the furnaces of the Zippo plant. InA town where she was raised by her…

Religion Out walkingand I have the sudden desire to pass the churchat the bottom of the hill. I’m not religious—it reminds me of Europe, which has beauty.In Rome, the men lookingmade me want to pound my face on the pavement.I gave private tours to Americans. Once,I took a married couple through the Vatican museumsand at the end the man was surprised to be in the Sistine Chapel.I thought it was in Paris, he whispered.The church at the bottom of the hill has dozens of stepsup to heavy doors that are usually locked.For a year I went into every church I saw in Rome,sat in the quiet. I had time then.In…

Good Intentions i promised myself a better self than i could make & i will not forgive                                    —“After Vallejo” by A.B. Spellman At 5:00 a.m. Arthur Sze must be rising, brewing green tea,                then beginning to type his dream of mule deer grazing the chaparral and also wind turbines                slicing songbirds into puffs of feathers. Farther west I page through Sight Lines,                grateful for insomnia and San Francisco’s light-polluted sky, how they…

December Evening at Big Y the axle-bentcart swerves,stubborn, aimingfor anywhereI don’t want to gobut I am more obstinateyanking the handleharsh as the harsh lightecstatic song echoesin the pet food aisleheaven and nature singperfect companionsin the cart is my prisonertree, wrapped tightin green meshoutside: the grey rain Written in Winter traversing his endless palace the first emperornever slept in the same room twice for lack of spaceI had to cry in the car Martha McCollough is the author of Wolf Hat Iron Shoes (Lily Poetry Review Books 2022) and the chapbook Grandmother Mountain (Blue Lyra 2019) . Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pleiades, The Boiler, RadarPoetry, Bear Review,…

Lost …thoughts of a person in agesometimes grow sparer.                               —Jane Hirshfield When I take to dashing awayfrom my computer’s texts and demands, especially finding those codes to prove I’m me, I get lost, even in my own city where I’ve lived over half a century. I pay no attention to street names, so never ask for directions. Besides, I’m geographically challenged. Ask anyone who knows me. They’ll say, “Her? Oh, who knows where she is.” Now we’re talking about this, I find myself driftingthrough a forest of thoughts with quivering leavesleaving myself on the side of…

Small Losses The soupspoons disappeared first, one by onefollowed by knives, a few linen napkins,as if some being on the other sideof the veil was setting up house. I wonderedwho it was, and if they wore my lost sockson their cold feet, my missing glasses ontheir failing eyes. These small losses barelynoticed until later: the slow declineof spring frogs, the carefully worded bill,the quiet appointment of a judge, allthe thin slivers that we believed were ours,pared away like potato skin by thosewho now hold the knives, busy preparingsoup to be eaten only by those with spoons.  Lisa Shulman is a poet, children’s book author, and teacher. Her work has appeared…

Poem Ending with an Allusion to Issa   A pink scumble of cloudin the eastern quarter, brightening as the sunignites the horizon, and frost on grass and roofsrepeats the colour, faintly. Winter has already turnedtoward another Spring, so there must be stirringsdeep in the soil, seeds thawing, insects ticking as hintsof the fertile warmth find them. The gleam fades to a pale day,and in the same world where the great poets have lived,I feel about average. James Owens‘s newest book is Family Portrait with Scythe (Bottom Dog Press, 2020). His poems and translations appear widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming publications in Channel, Arc, Dalhousie Review, Queen’s Quarterly,…

My Book Club   Another member died before we finishedone of the great novels No one had wanted to readMoby Dick for fear of getting seasick Anna Karenina was acceptablea love story Everybody had seen the moviewe knew the ending We could waltzthrough eight hundred pages sip cognac      skip parts that didn’t touchthe lover’s hand As I recall     I said Let’s go slowLet’s close read As if the trainwasn’t pulling into the station JoAnna Scandiffio is a graduate gemologist living in San Francisco. Her poems are like bird nests, made with fragments randomly connected to hold the moment. She is like the old medieval monks who copied…

Before Everything   we wentonto the night roofoff limitsthis was beforeeverythingwas camera-edand alarmedsmoked a jointshared a tepid beerboth of usstinking of summerand beingyoung talkedabout jumpinghow you’d waveto all the lonelypeople ontheir balconiesas you fellas I fly you correctedand I wasovercomewith sadnessand held you and youlaughed and saidI’m only fuckingwith you, butto be clear, I’mfucking Alexand pulled awayand in that momentI didalmost jumpbut thought the brightawnings of thestreetside shopsmight breakmy fall likein the comicsand your nippleswere hardfrom evening chilland I still lovedmy lifeas I doand as I willfor no reasonbut tenacitytender as a vine Christopher Nelson is the author of Blood Aria (University of Wisconsin Press, 2021) and five chapbooks, including…

The Bite   Each time I pass by, I recall that August daywe biked up the gravel road — dust clouds swirling —scent of peach nectar rising from the farmstanddelicate as butterfly wings on the late morning heat. Between us we had just enough cash to buyone red-tinged globe, firm yet soft at once. Icradled its fuzzy heft in my palm, bit in. Juice randown my arm, pooled at my elbow, dripped on the road. You laughed when I handed you the peach. I thinkthat’s the instant I fell in love with you,just one sloppy bite and a laugh in a flashwe shared on a dust-covered road. But falling out…