I’d like to be dead for a few minutes
and then alive again and report what
I saw or if I’m not allowed that then
keep to myself the truth of the life to
come although I’m not sure what to do with
that information, maybe I’ll write poems
about it or, even better, books or
even even better screenplays because
there’s a lot of money in those and when

I die I might as well die rich, was it
Jack Benny who said that if he couldn’t
take it with him then he wasn’t going?
Father liked that one a lot, on his death-
bed repeated it over and over
until he fell asleep for the final
time, the sleep of death I think it’s called though
if sleep’s death then waking in the morning’s

resurrection – but I take it back, there
was Father’s death-rattle in the throat and
to me by his beside and sleepy as
Hell that’s exactly what it sounded like,
a rattle but a baby rattle, my
baby rattle, I guess it was a sign
or a signal, by the time I figure
it out I’ll be rattling off my own, then
greeting Father again in the After-

life, which will be like life but an echo
like the son to the father and death to
life and day to night and Benny funny.

 

 

Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Chiron Review, McNeese Review, Adirondack Review, Weber, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, Arkansas Review, Poem, South Dakota Review, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008). Gale has taught university English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.

when it is quiet like this
I wander around down here
just walk and do not touch anything
look at each object as if it is an exhibit
in a gallery or a museum

I start from the lift –
pause and sit in my usual chair
examine the other green and yellow chairs – two each
take in the curve-sided coffee table
that always has the same magazines
that could rapidly become museum pieces
the cracks in the paintwork of the sliding door
a form of instant art – Pollock or Dada
I call this The Basement School
that includes the artificial pot plant –
when I turn a corner
there is a picture on a wall of boats on a shoreline
placed so the people who sit underneath cannot see it –
this I instantly name The Unseen School

the futuristic scanner in its own room
becomes a sculpture called the white donut –
satisfied I sit down again in my usual chair
name it yellow chair one and the others
yellow chair two and yellow chair three
and go on like this with the two green chairs

 

 

James Bell is Scottish and now lives in France where he contributes non-fiction to an English language journal. He has published two poetry collections the just vanished place (2008) and fishing for beginners (2010) and continues to publish widely and regularly with ekphrastic journals such as Nine Muses Poetry and Visual Verse. His short fiction, like his poetry, appears in print and online.

Thanks for sharing my canoe.
Yes, I drift around the pond
all day, reading and trusting
what I read, tasting the onset
of colder weather, aching for
the affection of migrating birds.

I’m glad to have you examine
notes I’ve taken on the poems
of Wallace Stevens. So many
secrets to set me blinking and wise,
so much texture to smooth me.

You with your decided flesh
offer coffee custom brewed
to seduce me into a lower case
version of myself. Why bother
with the niceties of literature
when the pond exhumes itself
in stink of leaf decay and fish?

Here comes rain to impress
its wax seal on everything sweet.
Refreshing with fragrance of stone,
revising the last unfallen leaves.
You fold my pages into yourself
and look homeward or shoreward
with the slightest tinge of fear.

We should always be this subtle,
leaving only the faintest ripples
as the canoe I refuse to paddle
sketches a simple hieroglyph
only the pond itself can read.

 

 

William Doreski has published three critical studies and several collections of poetry. His work has appeared in many print and online journals. He has taught at Emerson, Goddard, Boston University, and Keene State College. His most recent book is Train to Providence, a collaboration with photographer Rodger Kingston.

Twice past the Naval estate, past the Racecourse,
past Palmerston Farm, the cricket club, the Lane.
Close to four miles, while the family sank to evening.

The Olympics had done it, Grand Prix, gold,
the family rapt by the flickering fulfillment.
Inspiration, aspiration, puff and blow.

The first half-mile was the purest, always,
the calves’ vibrancy, the sweet straight breath.
The gasping, rasping later he attuned to.

The family meanwhile slobbed on TV news,
domestic Masterminds overseeing all,
earnest and dazzled and enraged by turns.

Winter, he kept laps going, maverick man,
ever more excluded, lonely, as the streetlights
flickered thinly in November murk.

 

 

Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet who lives about 30 miles down the coast from Dylan Thomas’s boathouse. His poems have been published widely and in roughly equal measures in Britain and the USA, where he is a regular in SanPedro River Review, Jerry Jazz Musician and Panoply. Robert is a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee for his poem “Cultivation.”

The homeless filter in and out of Starbucks—a motley crew of discarded
Grandes and Ventis who order free ice water, charge their old phones, and

spend an excessive amount of time cleaning up in bathrooms the baristas
frown upon entering because they’re forced to mop what’s left of a mess

from the newest residents. I sit in an uncomfortable wooden chair in the
corner and watch a Netflix show in which a man confined to a wheelchair,

for the first time, faces the man who shot him, paralyzing him from the waist
down and I recall when I sat across from my ex-wife in the coffeeshop and

apologized for every shot I ever fired at her during our marriage, leaving her
paralyzed, herself, because I’m sorry was a bullet she’d never been struck with.

Sometimes humility and forgiveness are the same shade of grace, different hues
of blue that mold into the same background of clouds that weren’t there to hide

your view of a world you thought you had to have, but existed to protect you
from the effects of its harmful rays. Today I think about how I always tell my

girlfriend not to text while she’s driving and she tells me she’s learning how
to navigate my stubbornness, and together we travel down our beautiful open

road of iPhones and irony. The Uber Eats driver picks up an order of lattes and
coffee cake and will deliver them to someone who has chosen convenience over

extra fees, and it’s amazing how advanced technology has made us, the way our
food can be passed directly from provider to driver to consumer which goes to
show

just how hungry we are.

 

 

 

Daniel Romo is the author of Apologies in Reverse (FutureCycle Press 2019), When Kerosene’s Involved (Mojave River Press, 2014), and Romancing Gravity (Silver Birch Press, 2013). His poetry can be found in The Los Angeles Review, PANK, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere. He has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte, and he is an Associate Poetry Editor at Backbone Press. He lives and teaches in Long Beach, CA.