Thomas, old friend, I wish you doubted more.
I watch you through your great room window
across the street staring into your aquarium,
through tempered glass, pondering colored gravel,
plastic krill and three shimmering goldfish.

You consult a guide, you monitor their darting
motions, then fancy yourself a fisher of knowledge.
Thomas, you are a scientific man. You deal with
facts. But now you claim from this miniature sea
under glass that you finally grasp the Ocean!

Thomas, we live in desert! In your sixty-six years
on Earth you have never seen the sea, nor heard, nor
tasted. Yet you see through this glass darkly and claim
understanding of a force so vast it shapes the continents,
its dark depths falling fathoms to the pitch-black floor?

The sea, Thomas! Where the albatross was killed and
the white whale raged! Birthplace of tsunamis, of
storms, of life itself! A transparent tank and now you
know the placid dolphin, the preying shark, coral reefs,
the tortoise, the currents, the islands, fjords…!

The tide pools, the icebergs, beaches black and white…
How people sail and dive, dream and drown! You
claim mastery of shipwrecks, volcanoes and ancient
statues on the floor of the sea. But you are caught in the
shallows, bereft of the salt, the blood and the ineffable.

Thomas, put aside your certainty! Open your eyes,
your mind, your heart! What if I suggested to you
that from your home for three goldfish you dare not
judge all – neither plankton nor leviathan, nor the
Oceans’ population of three point five trillion fish?

How do I speak to you, Thomas, of infinity? That
your little aquarium is not even a metaphor? Care for
your goldfish, old friend. Love them if you can. But
weigh this if you would: in the Oceans of Vastness,
you truly do not know how much you do not know.

Brian Yapko practices law and writes poetry. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Grand Little Things, The Society of Classical Poets, Poetica, The Chained Muse, Garfield Lake Review, Tempered Runes Press and as a first-prize contest winner in The Abstract Elephant. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

It seemed in winter that farm girl Annie
was lying fallow. In school she was a quiet
nobody-much, content enough maybe,
but in spring and summer, woof.

“Annie’s in bloom again”, we’d think,
and she’d be barnstorming. She’d flirt,
she’d backchat, sing and yodel in the gym,
whistle in the physics lab. We laughed,
she laughed, and when Annie laughed,
it was a thing of gales and stitches.

Later, I went out with Annie, one November.
She was a gentle girl, good company.
Chastely, we kissed. G’night. G’night.

But Hicksy once, in August, went with Annie
on a day trip to Tenby. Came back teetering.
She’d nearly had his trousers off him on the bus,
he told me. (But just allow a little there
for Hicksy’s storytelling instincts).

But then when I’d meet her, in later years,
in the agricultural shows and markets,
winter and summer, our Annie seemed
to have somehow evened out. She’d be
selling country produce, honey, jams,
her selling line a pretty effervescence,
pattering, chattering, shooting the breeze.

Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet who has been published widely in Britain and the USA, where he has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Skate over the lake at the strike of midnight
It leads to my doorstep
My many-windowed house
Snowbound and pale as a winter rose
Through the glass I watch you like a fish
Unpeel yourself layer by layer 
Until you make of yourself only a figment
By this fire, this stone
This heated wall between us
You are thawing jaw by brow
Tooth to tail without your fur coat 
A sloppy mess on my swept floor
A wolf without the clothes 
To hide yourself, a story of arrogance
Affliction and resolution
Inscribed here in the moon’s own hand

Shannon Cuthbert is a writer and artist living in Brooklyn. Her poems have been nominated for three Pushcarts, and have appeared in several publications, including: Plum Tree Tavern, Bangor Literary Review, and The Oddville Press. Her work is forthcoming in The Metaworker, Big Windows Review, and EcoTheo Review, among other literary venues.

The digital
clock
reads

11:11
purely
coincidence or

tricks
played
by the

wind, the
same
on days

that
are the
same

for
a baby’s
birth

a
cousin’s
burial.

The
numbers
keep on

adding
up, the
brain

furtively
seeking the
connection

however
slight.

L. B. Sedlacek has had poetry and fiction appear in different journals and zines.  Her first short story collection came out on Leap Day 2020 entitled Four Thieves of Vinegar published by Alien Buddha Press.  Her latest poetry books are The Poet Next Door (Cyberwit), 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 co-hosted the podcast Coffee House to Go. L. B. also enjoys swimming, reading, and playing ukulele.

2021 Pushcart Prize Nominee

2021 Best of the Net Nominee

When I was a little girl,
My mother told me that pain was a woman’s gift.
I remembered then, she was baking bread.

Her hands fell soft, melodic
and as the flour wove through her fingers
She would hum little sounds that painted my world.

I could never figure her recipe,
but she said that I would know when I was older.
And I have tried and tried since then.

I would never forget the taste of it,
a brown smell and a salty comfort in my mouth
that lingered as I ran outside to play.

Years passed and the days have grown long in me
and many times, I have made her bread,
if only to feel that brown comfort again.

But life always colored mine with its flavors,
at times too light, and thrice too sweet to taste.
Heavy hands made it bitter, and biting to the tongue.

I felt like I would never know her secret,
But the need to feel that comfort, and curiosity,
would not leave my soul.

And so once more I made my mother’s bread,
But the salt of my tears and pain, of age
added to water, sugar, flour, yeast and eggs.

There it was – it finally tasted like my mother’s.

Dr. Chelsea Elizabeth Samson works in the field of health management and technology in the Philippines and advocates for human connections in the healthcare system. Alongside her primary functions, she pursues civic advocacies as a brand ambassador of Kandama indigenous weaves and as a Global Shaper under the World Economic Forum. She has been writing poetry since the age of 12 and has continued a love affair with arts through her painting and poetry. 

The night I died in my sleep last week
I woke up somehow in my old bedroom
With the Spider-man poster on the wall
And the room smelling like the worst of me
Because I always kept my door closed.

I was dizzy when I opened my eyes, lying face up in bed,
And my mother was standing to the left side of me.
I was so thin and straight-legged!
My stereo was right where I remembered it.

“Don’t drink so much or so often,” she said.
“Don’t do too many stupid things.
Follow your dreams, but look before you leap.
I know you hate school but no one cares.
They just care about that piece of paper.
Make sure a woman is good for you and to you before you marry her.
Be good to others. Be a good boy.
Now get up and brush your teeth.”

I closed my eyes again
And when I reopened them I was in this bed again, this room again:
Not a teenage boy but a man leaning toward old age.
I was alive again and my mother was not alive again.
“I’m glad I didn’t get the chance to tell her everything she just said
Was advice given much too late,”
I said to myself: alone in my apartment and wiggling my loose tooth.

John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals in the last twelve years. His website contains links to his published poetry online.

Together exultant
Through lens of gathered friends
Feathering your cap
You announced you wanted to go
Shooting.

Your predictable Canon creaking but ready
I, anticipating focal adjustments
Daily searched for desk full
Of steeping photographs rooting
Lines and depositing forms,
Glacial beginnings manifesting
Perspective from deep-set darkness,
Genesis of incandescent impressions…

One day you came in carrying a carcass.

Hacking and sawing at bone
Devoid of artistry
Disassembling life as if it were
a mechanical fixture alone.

Beneath the giblet and grit,
Pangs ran a gauntlet
Of proclamations,
Resounding as horizon lines, but
Executed, always, as fatal sentences.

Rosemary Lazier resides in Ontario, Canada, where she immerses herself in coffee, amphibian transformations, and shoreline life on the Ottawa River. She is a high school teacher of Special Education, and holds an MA in English Literature from Carleton University. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in North, In Words, and Eris & Eros journals.

The photos are old and faded now
like me
the face, familiar, nearly forgotten
the person I once was
and will never be again

She had wisdom tempered with naivete
the world unfolding
in a cloud of anticipation and despair
already battle worn
but fighting on

I look for her sometimes
hidden away in a remote corner
courageous but afraid
her spirit battered by time and expectations

Stay with me, I whisper to her
stay with me
we’ll give it one last try

Silently, wearily, she nods her head

Siri Espy is retired from the corporate world, where her writing included two books, numerous articles, and innumerable reports and bullet points. Her varied career included stints as a psychologist, market researcher, college instructor, consultant and health care planner and marketer. The mother of an awesome daughter, she lives in Greenville, North Carolina with her tolerant husband and three crazy cats. 

she has fine,
heavy hair
that slips from bands,
escapes from braids,
unwinds from buns,
needs putting back
and pinning
again and again,
and long-way-home eyes
that steady down on me,
lose their balance,
and slip off;

leave your hair undone,
steady your eyes,
and give your
fine, heavy,
undone heart
to me –
when it slips,
escapes,
unwinds,

I’ll put it back
again and again.