Burlesque “The doctor told meI have a beautiful bosom,”Memere announces at 80.My sister and I exchange glances,but not surprised.She always tells us, “wear a braeven when you sleep–you will havethe bosoms of a young womanfor the rest of your life!” In the mornings, her bra entersthe kitchen before the rest of her,stiff and pointed like ancient pyramids. Memere’s claim is, once upon a timeshe was in burlesque.Like many of Memere’s stories,we are not sure if it is true.It’s possible. She performswhile she vacuums, swerving, beltingout songs loud like Ethel Merman.My sister Karen and I call her“Ethel Memere.” Memere crochets and fishes.“It teaches you patience,” she says,and teaches me to clean…

At Home …terribly nervous when I sang…. You just have to love performing, and I happen to be an introvert.—Annette Hanshaw, early-twentieth-century jazz singer Some animals belongto land. Some to water. Some to the inbetween: an alley cat swimming, a fish flunginto orbit. Reader, where do you belong? My late greataunt stood under the stage lights and despised it—secondby second, year by year. Is shein the wind? Is she super annuated, beautifulor gone? I find my dog asleep on the couch. I easein beside her, close my eyes. Margaret Hanshaw is a poet and writer from Sudbury, Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, New American Writing, West…

High Crossing This part is true.Somewhere right now,a man stands in a car lot, confused.His hands hang unused at his sidesand the sun declines across the highway.He does not understandwhy he is here.The car lot is already closed.Fields of pavementare swallowing the approach of night.The man looks down the frontage roadthen up at the quilted blanket of sky.From here he can see the highway.He can picture himselffloating away on its stream of lightsas sirens echo on the wind.Across the road, the hotel signglows with memoriesbut does not reassure him.He has no knife,no matches, no kindling.Without a fire, he could perishin the talons of creaturesthat come hunting in the night.He climbs…

Vase Behold the vase upon its plinth. A tight carapaceof sang de boeuf reflectsthe light, warding offthe gaze. The narrow neck closely guardsthe ample base, admittingnothing. Only where the lip flares outto reveal the naked ivory throatdoes it allow that once, perhaps, there was a pouring in or out. Suzanne Osborne—after an early career in theater, a stint in academia, and too many years as a legal secretary—now lives in Forest Hills, NY, and writes poetry. Her work has appeared in New Plains Review, Oddville Press, and Indolent Books’ The Second Coming series, among others, and is forthcoming in Southern Poetry Review.

Cold April I read Gregerson’s “Archival”and standing in the brilliant chill of her concluding linesI thought I’d have no further words. For weeks my meagre thoughts—I did have them— had no possibilities.I wasn’t interested in them. This is what we call resourcelessness. Why this does not happen moreoften is a mystery, given that so much of what I readis enviably good. I’d rather not admit to envy; of all the human features—no, not that. Shale or limestone, make me one of them.Call it admiration, then, which it surely also is.So instead: that trespass of violets, the glad slope of them, flockedand beside themselves with we know not how little knowledgeof…

Another Day Like This A day like this? she asksThat’s all I need; another day like this. Wet chairs on the front porch. Her voice dripping on each syllablewith berry, wine-slurred lips. Glass-blue puddles in black-brown mud. The only ark that could have savedtwo wave-worn souls like us left this port days agowhile we got drunk in a waterfront cafe. I take it all back – what I saidabout rain, about floods, about that cemetery sky. A full ashtray, a plate of olives,another day like this; Good God. Scott Repass is novelist, poet, educator, and bar owner He has an MFA in fiction from the Creative Writing Program at the…

Fruit Fresh Joe says back when he sold cocaine, he cut it with Fruit Fresh. There were bins of it at the buffethe worked at. Joe scooped it up by handfuls. Joe says Fruit Fresh has antioxidants and vitamin Cand shit, so fuck the money, he was looking out for them. We light up another cigarette. He’s inmarketing but wants a change, so he’s cutting back on weed. I once did coke with my poetryprofessor. I wanted to be cool. I wanted to be a poet. I didn’t feel antioxidized. Bathroom sink.Mirror. I wanted to fit in. I tell Joe my cocaine story. I don’t tell him my professor cheated…

In December, creative force Patrice Vecchione organized and hosted “The Power of Her Voice,” a benefit reading by poets featured in Women in a Golden State: California Poets at 60 and Beyond (Gunpowder Press, 2025). George Yatchisin and I drove from Santa Barbara to attend. The auditorium was full, buzzing with energy. When Patrice gave her introduction, the room felt galvanized by the power of poets and healers, a collective push back against an Administration that seems determined to strip so much away from our communities. She generously gave permission for her introduction to be reprinted here (edited for context). To the power of poetry! —Chryss Yost The Power of…

Magdalene Purity songs are absent from this placewhere I am newly awake and infans, pre-verbal, body ringing with the echo of anight sitting up, before the morning call from county jail. Your eyelids flutter in sleep, now innocens,non-harming, before you wake to realize who you are, or what they say you are.Are these the right words? What right have I to call you back to life,from a sleep that graces you with lawless anonymity. Purity songs are absent from this place,the morning after a long night in a deep wood. But they are longed for,when life sounds like scripture: He went to work.He sat with a dozen friends. He traveled…

Come October The dry spell ended by deluge, my husbandis mowing the lawn again. Through the cross hatchof the screen door, he’s a kinetic mosaic of manand push mower. The red Briggs and Stratton,a Walmart special we’d bought togetherfor our first home, he’d heaved it offthe highest shelf in the garden department,buckled it into the backseat, and carried itover the threshold like our new bride.To make him laugh, while we put it togetheron the living room rug I had named it MurrayBerkowitz and squealed every time he tighteneda bolt. Now we’re showing our age, wheezingfor stabilizer and catching in stump ruts.I raise my hand, flat palmed in a frozen waveand…