Introduction by Heather Sellers Ciara Renaud is attracted to spare lines, lists, overhead bits of conversations, and simple, searing images from daily life. She is gifted collagist. Her pieces bristle with juxtaposition. Often, her work is strikingly humorous, though here, in these pieces, there is an emphasis on the strangeness of grief—the loss of a beloved grandparent, the end of childhood. Always, I appreciate Renaud’s dedication to precision, simplicity, concision, and clarity. In placing high value on close observation and the weirdness of the human experience, she often reminds me of Lee Upton and Dorianne Laux. At Kemptville Union Cemetery Winter Monopoly set on the kitchen table overlookingThe barren snowy…

An Exaltation Running errands this morning,I took my grief with me,carried it into the UPS store,waited in line with it at the bank,brought it to the recycling center,where it sat in the car as I hoistedmy cardboard and glass bottles.We drove home in silence,flat brown fields rushing by us,nothing ahead but more days like this,and then, as if I had asked for help,the cloud-blown sky swept me up,not the part of me holding the wheel,but the person, the predicament,and just like that, my grim rider was goneand in the vanishing time of my lifehaving loved you was enough. Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in coastal Alabama. She is the…

Prison Legal Clinic As a law student I learned quickly there was almost nothing we could do for our clients besides file hopeless appeals arrange transfers to other prisons they thought would be better and wouldn’t listen helplessly to complaints about mean guards, rotgut food slow mail service, inadequate yard time Many lied to us more than a few told me they loved me one bought me an elaborate, fold out Valentine’s card at the inmate commissary Our Love is our Destiny sad story there Vietnam vet who howled crouched childlike in a corner when overhead a helicopter whirled its blades That card smelled like burnt macaroni and cheese the…

When I Find Out I Have Cancer I am at work and my least favoritecoworker comes to console me first.I cry into her secondhand smokesweatshirt, think this is who I haveat the worst point in my life? I leaveearly for the day. When I find out I have cancerI grab my chest, rub my collarbones,feel that I still have edges and lines,remind myself that I am more thana round mass without end,that I am a skeleton holding multitudesof fear and undigested piecesof chocolate croissant. When I find out I have cancerI question my response. Was Isad enough? Were my tearsauthentic? Why did I gasplike that? I trust my bodyso little…

Regrets of the Witch At home, the witch stirs her winter soup of clippings and bones, then waits for lost children to knock on the door. It has been a long time since aimless visitors sought shelter from snow and wind. Lonely for the hum of human voices, the witch now regrets eating that last meal and the lingering bitter taste the boy left on her tongue. Maureen Sherbondy‘s forthcoming book is The Body Remembers. Her work has appeared in Calyx, Upstreet, New York Quarterly, and other journals. Maureen lives in Durham, NC. www.maureensherbondy.com

What the Wind Knows It’s said tobacco is the bringer of knowledge, so I’ll sit here smoking between planets till something only known to the wind comes my way. The moon is full. She’s eaten all the stars and is heavy and dripping of silver while the horizon still bleeds. I wait on the wind, but the wind says nothing. I stare at the sky, but the sky stays silent. There is no stillness in this quiet dusk; only darkness roosts in these trees. All light has gone underground, taken root in earth till spring. Settle in, wind says. Wait, sky says. The morning takes time. Haley Hodge is a…

Reflection The flicker in the red maple—speckled breast, black mark on the head—at first I thought, meadowlark!That would have been more inspiring.There were things about youI wanted to change,the only music you were moved by,Ravel’s Bolero.Now the poem wants to knowif I failed you at all.I look out my sad windowat the jays in the linden.The window is kinderthan the mirror in the hall. Steve Nickman‘s poetry collection, To Sleep with Bears is now available from Wordtech (2022). He is a psychiatrist who works mainly with kids, teenagers and young adults. He has a strong interest in the experiences and dilemmas of adoptees and their families. Steve’s poetry has recently…

Scar Tissue We cut the top off the mountain to betterreach its entrails. This is how we show love—through destruction. A cool glass of iced teasweats beautiful beads, but I can’t bringmyself to lift it to my lips. How can a lifewoven warp to woof ever learn to wag?There are pills for that! says the phone.I stir in some honey, make a storm witha swirling spoon, then peel back the gauzeto sterilize the lesion with saline, seawater’sbriny twin. It takes weeks, but the woundeventually closes like an eye slowly drifting off,dreaming it was once clean, innocent,and so full of hope it couldn’t stop weeping. Ode to the Cicada Like Persephone…

Without the Needle of Pain There Is No Healing The day’s shining mitten picks me uplike a doll, and I feel my stitching;what I thought was muscle,is only soft, aching stuffing.My fingers convulsed for a second in another’s.I am nowhere near the gradual silk of love.Death is when the envelope is opened,the letter unfolded, the reading shinesthrough translucent wordsto explain what is fragile, tattered.Sometimes a dark bearded face turns, hearing,no matter to whom the prayer is addressed,eyes shadowed with an old passion.Deep is the wound that speaks to wound. Mary Elizabeth Birnbaum was born, raised, and educated in New York City. Mary’s translation of the Haitian poet Felix Morisseau-Leroy has…

The Speed of Light “and the air we could not hold had come to be there all the time for us”—W.S. Merwin Half dream-boy, half downy frigate—I loosed him to solar wind. From the cliffsI watched his wings make fistsagainst my wanting. At first his figure pitched through clouds and balanced there—his indecision beautiful on air,Then the flare— his body sparkedand lurched— his fingers jellyfishing air— his bluish knees, his heels like gannetsdiving for sardines or forgiveness.Where did he go, that final noto all we should have been— broken body—I will never recover. Jane Ann Fuller’s Half-Life (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions) was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence Awards. A Best…