I’m throwing out a pair of old jeans
but not my efforts to be a good person,
I’m trying to answer all of your questions,
truthfully, not like a cloud of vapor,
who I am, where I come from,
feel like they’re standing before you for the first time –
yes, I’m feeling a little storm-tossed,
because I’m not sure my life can measure up to yours –
I’m also tossing the black t-shirt with a band on it
because I’m not twenty-one anymore
and hoping I can cast some light
on everything everybody ever did to me –
whatever I say, it’s as much to educate me
as you – at least, it’s my effort
to make sense of this moment in time
by stepping out of it –
so I remember the first person who broke my heart,
the first person who discouraged me;
but they’re fleeting, serve little purpose,
shadows of shadows –
high school crush? what is that?
girl in the coffee shop? who is she?
girl who asked me to grow my hair out
who was half way to being you –
I still have these teenage poems,
would have been better off burning them,
wherever these women are now,
I hope they’ve done well,
and their kids are healthy –
of course, in the din of a crowd
ignoring them would be better,
for remembering can be a little bit like dying:
compartmentalizing the brain
like cleaning and packing my clothes neatly
so some shelter will take them – it’s raining,
or maybe I’m imagining it,
can’t recall most people,
not even the damage we might have done to each other,
but know that somewhere in my brain,
lingering in a corner,
is every word I ever heard,
every face I ever saw,
not even the universe is as big as this –
then there’s my father who died.
who must feel the same,
my mother who thinks that
I should have been something other
than what I became,
and there’s the names I changed
to protect the nerds –
you’re saying something,
I’m not sure I hear you,
I don’t know how much you know,
like the days on Block Island
when I finally discovered
what manhood is all about,
and those walks in the woods
where my spirit got a good going over,
caught in a powerful storm,
stuck in some church youth group –
those were other days, other people,
Daggie and Luke, tender Marie,
and lectures on God and the Devil,
times of silence I could actually feel,
like the spaces between notes in a song –
the thing is, you never run out of room in your head –
you tell me it must be
some kind of therapeutic exercise
but a few of those people were pretty okay –
at least they must have been –
sometimes I can smell the past,
sometimes I can taste it,
it doesn’t always gel neatly,
and the ones I miss and those I don’t
confuse me, confuse each other,
or appear so clear, so precise,
more than I could ever hope for
and I even thank my brain for showing them to me –
did you know I had a best friend in kindergarten,
I suffered the indignity of a first kiss,
I never did move to my dream city,
my fourth-grade teacher encouraged me –
now look at me,
I have a wife, a house, a garden,
I know what it’s like to change,
I’ve drifted alone,
I’ve made plans together.
I’ve been present when the truth came out,
and I’ve sometimes wondered
where will we all end up,
and am I the man you think I am,
and who’s that driving away in the distance –
well it isn’t me
and you shouldn’t be surprised by that.

 

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. He was recently published in Transcend, Dalhousie Review, and Qwerty, with work upcoming in Blueline, Hawaii Pacific Review, and Clade Song.

2021 Pushcart Prize Nominee
2020 Best of the Net Nominee

Your neighborhood grew hilly
in my absence, the houses
clinging to unruly slopes.

You redecorated to suggest
an Art Deco version
of the Panama Canal but

that drippy neighbor squatting
at your dining room table quotes
Coleridge and George Herbert to prove

how culturally advantaged she is.
I should have stayed home but
wanted to watch the workers

resurrecting the old railroad
that before the latest earthquake
trundled through your back yard

with container-loads from China.
Piecing together their language
of grunts and groans I learn that

a coppery autumn discontent
has settled over this city,
wrenching men from needed sleep

and drying up the mother’s milk
that fuels your future leaders.
After resetting and polishing

miles of rail, the workers burn
their favorite tools with ritual
prayers to invoke the moon.

In response it rises, a full moon
veiled by pumpkin-colored mist.
You’ve said nothing about the cries

of blackbirds parsing funerals,
of delinquents breaking into
storage sheds where militias

store their nuclear weapons.
You neighbor quotes her last quotation
and gusts through the back door

with a gesture of sweeping disdain.
I claim the chair she warmed,
and pretend to admire the carpet

you laid, Panama gray
with a fringe of jungle. Your smile
is ravenous. The day declines

toward a stainless climax no one
who hasn’t savored your small talk
can fully perceive or admire.

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.

Our wits had fled
on tiptoe.
It was morning,

though, the butterscotch
sun swirled among
clouds, when we

first noticed.  Pain splashed
vibrant and ugly,
a Christmas sweater of black

cats.  It was spring.
Not like now, winter’s bite
leaves teeth marks

on our bones.  We bang
our heads and search
scrambled brains.

We remember meeting you,
the synapse-snap
audible, pleasant, like

castanets and margaritas
trickling in tongues, ears.
You were worth it

to us.

 

 

Jennifer Ruth Jackson is an award-winning poet and fiction writer whose work has appeared in Red Earth Review, Banshee, and more.  She runs a blog for disabled and/or neurodivergent writers called The Handy, Uncapped Pen from an apartment she shares with her husband. Follow her on Twitter @jenruthjackson.

i am the monster you told me i was
someone else experienced
what i did,
the violation of trust
between parent and child;
when they read
their diary—
she said it was a trauma,
and i think she’s right;
because i still have feelings about
how wrong it was
for you to have done that—
especially since you punished and belittled me
for how i felt,
and maybe i was wrong sometimes;
but you could’ve encouraged conversations
that were meaningful and included me
reassuring me my fears were simply nightmares
my head conjured—
instead you bullied, belittled, and wounded me
further than you already did simply by being you;
and so i have learned to keep everything
locked inside—
everyone wants behind the windows of my eyes,
but i keep them locked outside;
cannot trust anyone because i’m afraid they’ll
rip me apart like you did—
and i am no longer that shaking rabbit,
i am the damphyr who wants her blood;
full of rage and pain and fury i’ll rip them apart instead,
and i don’t want to be the monsters that broke me.

 

 

 

Linda M. Crate is a writer whose works have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies both online and in print. She is the author of six poetry chapbooks, the latest of which is: More Than Bone Music (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, March 2019). She is also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (Czykmate Books, June 2018). She is the author of one full-length poetry collection entitled Vampire Daughter (Dark Gatekeeper Gaming, February 2020) and has a forthcoming second full-length collection entitled The Sweetest Blood (Cyberwit).

I pretended I was water
etching the canyon wall. Indigo,
the purples, the blacks
and flashed upon a constellation of mica
broken mirrors of
complicated lovers, and then over
stone-turning-to-monument, monument-
to-stone, and burled, grooved, eroded my way
into the mildewed cribs,
along leather city soles, away from
misunderstood asphalt.

I pretended I was water etching clean
the canyon wall
a rapacious vein ordained
to cleave a nation, a push
without substance, without mercy.
As gravity bid, without recourse, I opened
gashes, lacerations revealing
marble.

I pretended I was water etching white
the canyon wall, etching will
to fate, heroism to wisdom.

And I drank the minerals of my going
and gratefully ate the grains sloughed
by the weakest stars.

 

 

Michael C. Smith is the author of Writing Dangerous Poetry (McGraw-Hill) and the coauthor of another book on creative writing, Everyday Creative Writing: Panning for Gold in the Kitchen Sink (McGraw-Hill).  His work has appeared in several journals, including Iowa Review, Seneca Review, Northwest Review, and other publications. Recently his meta-fictional story, “Bass Weather,” published originally by Gemini Magazine, was included in the 2017 Best Small Fictions anthology, edited by Amy Hempel, and including works by Joy Williams and Brian Doyle. Michael lives in Pomona, CA, and is a proud graduate of the MFA program at the University of Arizona.

The moon swallowed the sun.
What a splendid way
to start my day!
She munched him for five long days—
or were they nights?—
then caught the stars
one after the other,
with a crisp,
chameleonic tongue.
Two weeks for the job.
I watched her, thrilled,
from behind my pink curtains.

Perverse and plump,
the moon unrooted some pine trees
to pick her golden teeth,
crashing big chunks
of the North Star
over my garden.
Too bad for my lilies…
But she wasn’t full, no!
She ate all the planets:
Mars, Neptune, Venus—
vanished
into her visceral mouth.

Then, fat and tired—
much, much fatter than my aunt Suzy—
she burped a comet—almost hitting my roof,
and took a nap in the sky’s smoky armpit.
She snored for months…
“Give me a break!” I shouted,
but she didn’t care, no! shamelessly shaking
the sky’s skinny chest.

Huge, hot, and harsh,
she woke up with a start—a nightmare, I hope!
and thought it was time to have a drink:
the Milky Way! Like a new-born, she giggled—
what a joy to suck from your mother’s breast
at four point five billion years old!
She scratched her obese belly,
hungry still.

Galaxy after galaxy she gobbled—
like my uncle Mark, red
mullets. Meteorites stuck to her sweaty
skin like fireflies,
so in a foggy nebula, she showered.
Patient, I polished my poem,
then my nails, and put on eyeshadow
in the moonlight.

 

 

Adriana Morgan completed a Ph.D. in French Literature at the University of Letters in Nantes, France. She is fluent in six languages and worked as a translator and terminologist at the European Commission in Luxembourg and the United Nations in New York. She taught French at the University of Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi, India, the French Alliance and the Universities of Valparaiso and Vina del Mar, Chile. She currently works as a multi-dimensional artist: painter, poet, and children’s picture books writer and illustrator. She is the first prize winner of the Midnight Mozaic Fiction (Medium, 2019), one of the selected winners of the Canadian poetry contest—Quebec and the Francophony, and second prize winner of the Daniil Pashkoff International Poetry Contest, 2018, Germany.

Seven Cherokee tribes
the first human inhabitants along
the Appalachia stretch from Tennessee
to North Carolina
hills flowing with rivers,
streams and magical pools,
forests home to deer, black bear,
elk
all magical too
sacred
mountains
a magical place
blue clouds
low
and swirling
named shaconage by
the Cherokee
— land of the blue smoke
(the Great Smoky Mountains)
(the Blue Ridge Mountains).

The smoke
the blue
its source:
breathing vegetation
volatile organic compounds
from shrubs, ferns, vines, trees
tiny gaseous molecules
combining to form particles
scattering blue light from the sky
and with the sunlight chasing
the sky, the humidity and
rainfall, air and elevation
it all makes natural blue.

 

 

L.B. Sedlacek is an award winning poet and author with poetry and fiction appearing in many different journals and zines.  Her latest poetry books are The Adventures of Stick People on Cars (Alien Buddha Press), The Architect of French Fries (Presa Press) and Words and Bones (Finishing Line Press.)  She is a former Poetry Editor for ESC! Magazine and also co-hosted the podcast for the small press, Coffee House to Go, for several years.  She teaches poetry at local elementary and middle schools and publishes a free resource for poets, The Poetry Market Ezine.  In her free time, L.B. enjoys swimming, reading, and taking guitar lessons.

Place your fussy mind in a top drawer. Hear the closing click.
Hang a favorite and weighty item. You don’t need a key.
Listen for the jostling and grumbling inside. Say, “STAY!”

Put on your happy shoes and saunter out the door.
Let nature intrigue with its winter delights.
Trees will have shed their leaves but evergreens prevail.

Feel grateful release from tendrils of mind.
Go into your heart to flee into sensory experiences.

Discover your neighborhood: fireplace smoke,
a lingering rose, fresh earth, a gush of wind.
Breathe a drift of lavender. Hear a phoebe or crow’s call.

Wander until you have forgotten your mind.
Just take your time. No need to rush.
Energize the spirit and play.

When you return, open the drawer
to a renewal of friendship.

 

 

Penny Wilkes, MFA served as a science editor, travel and nature writer and columnist. Along with short stories, her features on humor and animal behavior have appeared in a variety of publications. An award-winning writer and poet, she has published a collection of short stories, Seven Smooth Stones. Her published poetry collections include: Whispers from the Land, In Spite of War, and Flying Lessons. Her blog on The Write Life features life skills, creativity, and writing.