• Jon Lavieri

    Here Lies a Poem that was never writtenabout the way a girlwith hair so darkit shone blue in the sunmade you look awayso she could slowlyundress in the arcane silenceof a rented roomwhile you watchedher shadow slipacross the walluntil her voiceturns into the heat of a mouthtouching your neckthe way the white noiseof traffic pulsingdown the boulevardtouches a dying afternoon     Jon Lavieri holds an MFA in writing from Western Michigan University. His poems have appeared in unlost, Stone Poetry Quarterly, New York Quarterly as well as other journals and the anthology, Night Out: Poems About Hotels, Motels, Restaurants and Bars. He currently lives in Rhode Island where he…

  • Keith Ekiss

    Child-Rearing In the days of first breath, the newborn breeds a rash and since the fact of parenthood is now permanent you phone your mother for advice, a gift you think you’re giving of her own expertise, a chance to take part, but when she claims she’s got no idea what to do, can’t recall that was nearly forty years ago, and if she could remember now what she did for your skin no doubt today the medicine would be different, totally opposed, even, to a cream she might have applied with such care, back then, leaning over the crib and no real grave concern.     Blam-Blam At the…

  • Fran Davis

    Indwelling This house and I have grown together the long familiarity of stasis blood and bone wood and plaster Each room known by feel the dark bedroom wall cool as my skin a stained glass round of flowers made by a friend, now gone friends leave us still the walls remain and the bedstead of ten thousand nights, sleepless or deeply lost At the window I stand in luna grayness looking up at spotlight moon from the place where I am thumbtacked to earth by gravity and custom the house holds a second shell grown inside cohabitants as wheat in chaff or stone in fruit     Fran Davis is…

  • Betsy Martin

    Ladies’ Wear There’s a character in a TV show I watch— she runs Ladies’ Wear in a glittering department store with strict grace, every glove and hat in place, sweaters neatly folded, her salesgirls’ posture perfect, as in a poem, after hours, she goes in secret to the warehouse, undresses, and throws herself on her lover, the guy who muscles the crates and trades in contraband cigarettes, her flame.     Betsy Martin’s chapbook, Whale’s Eye, was published by Presa Press in June 2019. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, The Briar Cliff Review, California Quarterly, Cloudbank, Crack the Spine, Diverse Voices Quarterly (Best of the…

  • George Drew

    Reading a Buddy’s Badass Book Reading a buddy’s badass book about his tour of Hellin Vietnam, a book of poems that drive the horror home,I find myself enjoying every poem, smiling sometimes,hip to his poetics, his often gut-gouging metaphors,his always straight-ahead truth telling. After the last poem, after the covers close on his galleryof grotesqueries, I go to bed, have bad dreams,and recalling them in the morning when dawn light isthe washed-out gray of all those faces, I write poems,the only atonement I have, the only deterrent.     George Drew is the author of nine poetry collections, including: Pastoral Habits: New and Selected Poems and The View from Jackass…

  • George Young

    Science and Poetry i They say a rainbow is only bright sunlight splintered by water droplets into the visible spectrum of colors. It’s really not there. But we also have Elizabeth Bishop’s rainbow bird from the narrow bevel of the empty mirror waiting to fly. Both, equally exquisite— a prismatic light, a lovely bird to the human eye. ii Here— a lesson in entropy: catch a falling snowflake on your tongue, bringing chaos to all those water molecules that had become (but alas, gone too soon) a perfectly designed, hexagonal crystal— unique in all the universe. iii One of the most famous photographs ever taken by the Hubble is of…

  • William Aarnes

    Ode: Age Spots On suspended platforms          outside the apartment building across the street, masons           move about in an order seemingly chosen by chance.           Two to a platform, they break open patchy sections of brick           and then mortar in replacements, the new bricks a tad darker—           haphazard but thorough work proceeding as if there’s no plan           to finish.                       Isn’t that how skin is— cells replaced by new ones      …

  • Sandra Hosking

    Strawberry I shot my grandmother, almostat the cabin in Strawberry,snow kissing its chestnut slatsand white scalloped trim.Two-year-old me upstairs, alonein the slanted bedroom,which smells like painted firewood.I inspect drawers and finda comb, a pencil, a .45I level the barrel at the dooras Gran appears,her mouth a perfect O.     Sandra Hosking is a Pushcart-nominated poet, playwright, and photographer based in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in Red Ogre Review, The Elevation Review, Havik, Black Lion Review, and more. She holds M.F.A. degrees in theatre and creative writing.

  • Lauren Camp

    Buttons Trains tuck into the stationthen resuscitate with resilient cadence.These days unlikeother days you know are an anatomyof sound and weather. Clamor, advance. It is enough of a purpose to move through—to concentrate on moist earth odors.Rain at the gate. Leavesdive from trees. Ringing bells. Inside white rooms insiston accurate measuremoving to proof. The doors are alllocked in this ongoing sequence. So you are loose on the path.The harbor licks the road, rolling up and along.Even as the fog flings out, ducks frock. Men fish in morning orange, thigh-deep,the rods continual. How finethe line until it tarps. Red-berried groundcherry buttons its coat.The sky is wild as goats.It is as if…

  • Jenny Lewis

    After the Mastectomy for Terry When my waking mind became rimed solidit only allowed me memories in dreams like when I dreamed I was trying on new clothesin an enclosed cubicle in a high street shop and someone parted the cubicle curtain – the shock!How fast and inexpertly I tried to cover myself. How fast the relief when I saw it was you,no threat, but only a sense of comfort. I woke up knowing the threat of waking upis to be once more connected to the truth. The truth is you have died and I feel pain again.It jolts like a horse with a hot-headed rider. The weight inside me…