Two Kinds
It was dusk
on a two-lane road
in deep East Texas
and we had not passed
a word for miles
when she said
there are two kinds
of people in the world.
Years later, the turtles
in my neighborhood
know nothing of
my friend’s philosophy.
Or how simply
some things boil down.
The red-eared slider at my feet,
flipped over and still but still here,
knew seasons.
She knew navigation
and the grass best for nesting.
Tenacity.
Now, spun senseless
to where the street met the curb,
she lay bloody, mud-baked legs
splayed flat and a gut-deep wound
cracked clean down her belly.
Turtles have inched their way
across hundreds of millions of years,
ducking one mass extinction
after another protected by nothing more
than the home on their back.
Today, the turkey vultures
working a squirrel
three blocks away
will catch wind
of this one at my feet,
an ancient traveler
felled handily enough
by steel on rubber
and the kind who
do not stop.
About the Author: Tina Williams is a former journalism instructor and advertising copywriter living in Austin, TX. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in the New Verse News, Amethyst, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and the Concho River Review.
Image Credit: Public domain image originally published in North American herpetology : Philadelphia, J. Dobson;1842. Courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library
you are my
cathedral of air
and hopefulness
in opening things
shades curtains
harnesses reins
buttons zippers morning
sky evening rain
flowers sun
a tube
of paint stiff lashes
bottomless eyes
blank
paper
packs of pens
errant as road trips
unruly as we are
reindeer ready to fly
the other 364 days a year
-for Reverie
About the Author: Paul Koniecki lives in Dallas, Texas. He was once chosen for the John Ashbery Home School Residency. His poems feature in Richard Bailey’s movie “One of the Rough” distributed by AVIFF Cannes. Paul proudly sits on the editorial board of Thimble Literary Magazine. His poems have appeared in Henniker Review, Chiron Review, Gasconade Review, As It Ought To Be Magazine, Trailer Park Review, Poetry Bay, and many more. Paul is currently finishing his MFA at VCFA.
I first noticed their absence when I put down my writing journal on my nightstand. They were supposed to be there. It was one of those heirlooms that anyone would cherish – which I did. These golden hoops with sapphire gems that my Nicaraguan grandma had kept all her life. “They’re Italian,” she said. Whenever she wanted to denote a worth on some person, place, or thing, she emphasized it was European. Remnants of colonization in a tiny gift box.
My first thought was to blame the other patient. I was at a rehab facility, a mental health one, and my new roommate was, well, unknown to me. She was an older lady with long grey hair, and a bad smoker’s cough. She said she hadn’t slept in five days. I don’t know how that’s possible, but that meant that she was probably awake the night before when I assumed her sleeping and mumbled to myself in my bed. No… it wasn’t her…
I could hear my grandma now, the way she would sigh of “throwing away all that money away” when I lost the pearl necklace or “all those years of taking care of something” when I lost the diamond tennis bracelet. I ought to cherish these things – which I did.
I thought to blame the technician who made the rounds every morning at 6am waking us up for vitals. The earrings could have gleamed in the night, and she could have snatched them. Then I thought to blame the cleaning lady who walked in without knocking and consistently saw me naked as I hurriedly slipped into something after shower time. I cringed; my classism was showing.
I could hear my grandmother now, the way she always blamed “the help” when she lost something. And it was always her misplacement. Why is it that our reflex is to judge others before we look at ourselves?
As I contemplated my moral discipline, a semblance of light illuminated my memory. Had I stored it somewhere before going to take my meds? Had I placed it in a jean pocket or a sweater or a jacket? Maybe I placed it in my denim jacket before I slipped it off at the pool?
I chased to the little mahogany closet to whip out my jacket. I dug my hand into the left pocket now. Oh! It was in the right-hand pocket. I unbuttoned it. Oh! My earrings.
I held them in the palm of my hand and fingered the clasp of the hoop, still sturdy after 50 years in an old vanity drawer. I put them on, inserted the stick in my ear hole and clasped in the gold bar. They were pristine and beautiful. I took them off. I wouldn’t dare wear them again.
For once I wouldn’t lose the Italian heirlooms. I tucked them into a cloth pocket and pulled the strings to enclose them in.
And then I realized how many centuries had come to land on this rapid-fire moment, when I realized I was no better than the ancestors before me – blaming others for my own shortcomings.
About the Author: Karina Castrillo is a freelance writer for Women’s Health Magazine, and a communications specialist at a labor union based in New Jersey. Born and raised in Miami, she speaks Spanglish, and enjoys Cuban pastelitos. You can find her vintage shopping in Brooklyn, at a picket line or a protest, or walking her chihuahua Enzo – who’s tiny but has a big bark.Instagram/Twitter: @Karinainthecity
Mucus Fishing
On hot summer days my granddad
would poke at his eyes with
an uncharacteristically garish
green silk hankie.
Asked what he was up to he’d smile
(his mouth at least, never his eyes),
and say,
“Gathering stale tears, my dear.
Too often we forget or neglect to cry
or hold onto our tears and years on,
well, they congeal and you need to
tease them out,”
or something of that ilk.
Like most old folk my grandfather
talked a lot of rot but he was sweet,
had the soul of a poet and the heart,
we learned (too late),
although it came as no surprise,
of a terminally-sad man.
My mother washed the handkerchief.
I was so mad at her.
About the Author: Jim grew up in the heart of Burns Country in Scotland. In fact his first poem was in butchered Scots. Poetry, for him, was about irrelevances—daffodils, vagabonds and babbling brooks—until one day in secondary school the teacher read Larkin’s ‘Mr Bleaney’ and he felt as if the proverbial scales had fallen from his eyes. How could something so… so unpoetic as far as he could tell be poetry? He’s been trying to answer that question for the past fifty years.
From This Height, Six Days before 9/11
The plane inches toward take-off.
I glance at family members,
waving us on to our destination,
Lawton, Oklahoma,
our son’s graduation
from basic training.
From the air, the ground
looks like Seurat painted it,
blue swimming pools,
green and brown fields,
more like quilt squares
than dots, nature’s ballroom,
enjoyment for the locals.
Seurat used conte crayons
on rough paper for sketches.
Our son’s diploma
will be on smooth paper,
cream with dark type,
his name large in the middle,
no conte crayons,
the worst roughness
lies ahead.
About the Author: Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in As it Ought to Be, Loch Raven Review, Spank the Carp, The New Verse News, Rat’s Ass Review, Bulb Culture Collective, Bindweed, One Art, Young Ravens Literary Review, Sanctuary, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her first chapbook, Ready or Not, was published by Finishing Line Press in October of 2020.
Image Credit:Georges Seurat “Poplars” (1883-1884) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee
TIME TRAVEL
On Saturday mornings when watching
“Land of the Lost,” I wished Sleestak,
the lizard-men with ebony globular eyes,
would decide to chase me. Then human
Will would save me. In my daydreams,
the young man, top shirt buttons always
undone, always did. So, Will and I would
be best friends in that time of dinosaurs
where his family was trapped, even though
I was just a boy. In the show credits, I saw
the actor’s name was Wesley, just Wesley.
On Saturday nights a few years later when
watching “Doctor Who” on the PBS station,
I’d note how Adric was cool with his alien
tunic oh so bright. Because we were both
teenage boys who relished mathematics
(he hailed from the planet Alzarius while
I came from the world of rural America),
we could talk and talk about my problems
from my earthbound classes as we waited
to see where the space-and-time-traveling
Doctor and his companions wound up next
in that ship masquerading as a police box.
Adric had no surname. He was just Adric.
It’s a Saturday past midnight in a new century.
A geeky shirtless suitor at the gay bar tells me
those actors whom I’d admired had grown up,
come out. I was a small-town boy in the 1970s,
introverted teen in the ’80s, so gays were even
more fictional to me than Adric or Will. Queer
was the one-word name I hid, unable to predict
its expansive future. Time travel stays elusive
except in television series, movies, short stories,
novels, comics, scientists’ heads, and my poems.
About the Author: Ronnie Sirmans is an Atlanta print newspaper digital editor whose poems have appeared in Tar River Poetry, Plainsongs, Atlanta Review, Fathom, and elsewhere.
Image Credit: Pawel Kadysz (untitled image) Public Domain image courtesy of Wikimedia. Creative Commons CC0
when pigs fly
maybe pigs will fly
take a running start down st nicolas
into the wind like early sons of aviation
before crashing into the monongahela
maybe they'll launch from wadell avenue
a doppler squeal lost in a mothball sky
in this valley of work anything is possible
even the great american dream
stan musial could flat out hit
from the back of the batters box
bat sweeping across the plate
ball bouncing off left field wall
he hustles into second
he worked off seasons
a freight checker at us steel
his wife set up housekeeping
a few blocks from where he was born
maybe the world was smaller then
they were off to st louis
when the inversion started
smog veils, this valley nightmare
gossamer sunsets
halloween gas masks
a weight that sits
suffocating on your chest
it was no surprise
people started to die
it was no surprise doom
settled this city in smog
musial collected his parents
sent them to enjoy their dotage
somewhere in suburban missouri
he didn't come back
not to sit on a jeep on thanksgiving
as parades death marched
from the sons of italy
past the rooming houses
down hills that lead
down river to forbes field
cardinals in traveling grays
musial sends bob friend’s fastball
on a right field richochet
clemente fields it cleanly
fires it home
musial at second
tips his hat as pigs fly by
the valley of work gasps for breath
the rich will always get richer
the air may recover or kill more slowly
really, it's more lottery than dream
About the Author: Jason Baldinger is a poet and photographer from Pittsburgh, PA. He’s penned fifteen books of poetry the newest of which include: A History of Backroads Misplaced: Selected Poems 2010-2020 (Kung Fu Treachery), and This Still Life (Kung Fu Treachery) with James Benger. His first book of photography, Lazarus, as well as two ekphrastic collaborations (with Rebecca Schumejda and Robert Dean) are forthcoming. His work has appeared across a wide variety of online sites and print journals. You can hear him from various books on Bandcamp and on lps by The Gotobeds and Theremonster. His etsy shop can be found under the tag la belle riviere.
Image Credit: Detroit Publishing Co “The Bleachers, Forbes Field, Pittsburgh, Pa.” Public domain image courtesy of the Library of Congress
Dragging His Beast Around
The habit was structured, controlled, modulated—
Architecture married to inspiration.
Never too much—it was always too much.
Gone in a stutter.
Chasing God.
You were not supposed to catch up.
The cliché too painful.
No choice but to be seen.
There is risk in being seen.
Beast seeping out by inches.
Like yellow jackets oozing
from the nest.
You didn’t have to wait until life
was not hard to be happy.
You were going to outlast
the buzz and swarming.
Two coasts—your face.
No ocean on either shore,
yet still an island.
Made lethargic by the needle.
You circled a thing that wasn’t there
until you forced it into existence.
You knew that killing it
would be a sin.
But you broached the firewall
and shrank to fit in a small place.
Belief leaks when you chase chaos.
And you can get caught up short.
About the Author: Rick Christiansen is a former corporate executive, stand-up comedian, actor and director. His work is published or forthcoming in MacQueen’s Quinterly, Oddball Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review, Stone Poetry Journal, The Raven’s Perch, The Rye Whiskey Review, As It Ought to Be Magazine, WINK Magazine and other journals, magazines and anthologies. He is the co-host of SpoFest and a member of The St. Louis Writers Guild. He lives in Missouri near his eight grandchildren.
The Strip Mall
At thirteen, on Friday night,
when the boy who smoked at eleven met us
near the strip mall plant sale
with bags of mulch piled in rows,
we ignored him when he made comments
about the girls at school.
When he raked his eyes over us,
we crumbled into a pile of leaves.
When he walked, we dampened
and pushed down into the cement.
Pretended not to hear when he spread that rumor
so thin it was a fingerprint that we didn’t try to wipe away.
When he called the cashier a slut,
we let the word float out the door like a balloon.
It rose up into the sky and kept going
until we could no longer distinguish
between bird and rubber.
At night, when we were home in our own beds,
we wondered how many balloons blanketed the sky.
How many girls were witnesses?
The adults in our lives would never
catch all the ways we slunk down.
They would miss the nights we came home
different.
And they would not get to see the way we sat frozen
in the bouncy, worn seat at the back
of the run-down theater
as the boy who took us to the movies that night
moved his hand up her leg.
They wouldn’t be able to see how a middle school girl
who doesn’t move is the stuffed head of a hunted animal.
Nailed into the wall like a worn painting.
Anyone who comes to visit is free to stare in awe and disgust,
and no matter how many necklaces and hands are hung on her,
she remains a piece of furniture.
A party favor.
She is the balloon and the sky and the blanket.
She is all of these things,
even when she doesn’t know
who she is.
About the Author: Alexandria Tannenbaum is a poet and twice National Board Certified educator working outside of Chicago, Illinois. She is pursuing a poetry MFA from Lindenwood University. Her poems are published in the journals Bluepepper and Across The Margin. Her poem “ars poetica” will be published in the fall issue of The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library.
Image Credit: John Margolies “Strip mall, Burlington, Iowa” (2003) Public domain image courtesy of the Library of Congress
The Floor
I saw, in a magazine, the floor
your miraculous feet deserved.
Laminate like a rich dark wood
to replace the carpet you hated.
And I, son of a carpenter,
swore I would give it to you.
For days I ripped and tore,
measured and sliced, until
I finally fit each piece in place.
Well, more or less.
The floor was there, thank God,
but I’d done a shoddy job.
Certainly nothing worthy
of your effusive gratitude
nor the way you kept grinning,
half teasing, half seducing,
as you called me a “man’s man.”
Eight years since the first plank
and our floor is still hanging on.
Every time you step over a gap
or stumble on a warped section,
it is as if you don’t even notice
all the ways I have failed you.
You have always understood
how real love requires us
to turn our heads away.
I am only just now learning
it should never be from shame.
About the Author: Justin Hamm is the author of four collections of poetry–Drinking Guinness With the Dead, The Inheritance, American Ephemeral, and Lessons in Ruin–as well as two poetry chapbooks and a book of photographs, Midwestern. His poems, stories, photos, and reviews have appeared in Nimrod, River Styx, Southern Indiana Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Sugar House Review, and a host of other publications. Justin is a 2022 Woody Guthrie Poet and 2014 Stanley Hanks Prize winner. His solo poetry/photography show Midwestern featured in numerous galleries in 2019 and early 2020. In 2022 he delivered a TEDx talk on poetry in the region, and in 2019 his poem “Goodbye, Sancho Panza” was studied by 50,000 students worldwide as part of the World Scholar’s Cup Curriculum.
As It Ought To Be 
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