as the morning d.j. plays something sad from two centuries ago
i hear a stray cat crying outside
opening the window i search for him in the moody dawn
but i have no clue why
we can offer each other no solace today
but just this strange cold misery
that sometimes touches every living thing.
About the Author: John Grochalski is the author of five poetry collections, three novels, and the novella Wolves of Berlin Headline Amateur Night at the Flute and Fiddle Pub (Alien Buddha Press 2024). He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Image Credit:Egon Schiele “Landscape with Raven” (1911) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee
Most people would laugh at the notion that I loved you long before we met.
They wouldn’t understand how your deceased partner sent me to you
or how on our first date, you talked to my late husband in the Starbuck’s bathroom
and promised him you would take care of me– most people would have run, not walked, run.
But I knew, the explanation was in how we were both able to rise up from muddy water
and bloom despite our struggles. Most people would not be able to trace her angelic face
memoralized on your arm or her name tattooed above your heart while making love.
They wouldn’t be able to admire the half-finished painting of her, sitting on an easel in your living room.
Most people would not appreciate the constellations you discovered on my thigh, how I watched you
point out the Big Dipper, Orion’s Belt, and saw what you saw, and saw you. Most people
wouldn’t understand how after you pushed into me for the first time I went to my house, and put
a picture of my late husband back up, not because I wanted him back, because I do, I always will,
but because you turned that door knob, a lotus flower, pushed in through and past the murky waters,
held me tightly as I let out a deep sigh of relief after this long journey to you, and welcomed me home.
About the Author: Rebecca Schumejda is the author of several full-length collections including Falling Forward (sunnyoutside press), Cadillac Men (NYQ Books), Waiting at the Dead End Diner (Bottom Dog Press), Our One-Way Street (NYQ Books) Something Like Forgiveness, a single epic poem accompanied by collage art by Hosho McCreesh (Stubborn Mule Press) and her new collection Sentenced (NYQ Books). She is the co-editor at Trailer Park Quarterly. She received her MA in Poetics from San Francisco State University and her BA from SUNY New Paltz. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family. You can find her online at: rebecca-schumejda.com
Image Credit: Image originally from Flore des serres et des jardins de l’Europe. A Gand: chez Louis van Houtte, eÌditeur,1845-1880. Image courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library
They line the walls on sagging lumber beyond the five-foot shelf of classics. Dog-eared paperbacks, debris depicting what the demi-monde contains within their shop-worn boards, tomes we saved from e-Bay culls that could have paid the urgent rent. They stand like towers from a city tinted in Morocco red, a mystical mandala with a text to read for souls in flames. A row of narrow townhouses lining the banks of a Dutch canal. Beside them stacks of common fiction, whose words would not improve on silence. Here a history of life the sea surrendered smells like tidal pools, its pages soft and curled in waves. In some we think a firewall divides the character and author; in some the writer is transformed. A few of even those we love were books that someone closely read before they called authorities, reporting on their hunted neighbors for crimes against conformity.
Other volumes, spare and slim, help to lip-read what my heart is saying. Everyone it seems knows the standard temperature at which the printed paper burns. But what about the low degree that makes such standard pages freeze? For there are books I have not sold or tossed that press me down to death. They stand and watch me from the shelf. In those you gave as gifts a hundred paper cuts await my blood.
About the Author: Royal Rhodes, who was trained in the Classics, is a retired educator who taught classes in global religions and Death & Dying for almost forty years. His poems have appeared in: Ekstasis Poetry, Snakeskin Poetry, The Montreal Review, The Cafe Review, and other places. His poetry/art collaborations have been published with The Catbird [on the Yadkin] Press in North Carolina.
Image Credit: John Frederick Peto “Still Life with Books, Inkpot, and Candlestick” Public domain image courtesy of Artvee.
Crow Will Never Carry A Star Across the Sky -for MJ
“It’s not my job to carry a self-sufficient body from dawn to dawn. I’ve got enough on my mind, what with gathering foodstuffs to tide me over, making a nest sturdy enough to withstand kith and kin, raw eggs, new babies. Stars live lives beyond all that, provide the only possible light in that seamless backdrop.
It’s not a matter of choice, no choice about it at all. Check with Blue Jay, busy bullying inbred Sparrows, or Cardinal, flitting like a match head from bush to bush, playing the family man so well you can almost see a station wagon full of chicks behind him. Goldfinch, Red-Headed Stranger, elusive Bluebird of Happiness— maybe one of them has time to cart a star around there like some aged queen.
I’ve got my own agenda, make my own rounds without help from a creature subject to laws of gravity. Leave me be. I’ve got a Douglass fir to investigate. Something is shining on that uppermost branch that calls to me, seems to be spelling my name in semaphoric signs.”
About the Author: Twice a Best of the Net nominee, Cheryl A. Rice’s books include Dressing for the Unbearable (Flying Monkey Press), Until the Words Came (Post Traumatic Press), and Love’s Compass (Kung Fu Treachery Press). Her monthly column, The Flying Monkey, can be found at https://hvwg.org/, while her occasional blog, Flying Monkey Productions, is at http://flyingmonkeyprods.blogspot.com. Rice can be reached at dorothyy62@yahoo.com.
Image Credit:Kazimierz Stabrowski “Crows- Council of Seniors” (1923) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee
camped on a helipad after small town carnivore lights I could spend my night at rural king or listening to I-70 lights roar across this nowhere june tundra instead I crawl into a corona
carla limes them salts bottleneck professional bartender gauntlet she's been at this for centuries I count the hayseeds think about nicotine time stamped into the grass skirts that may be the last vestige of tiki left in this motel lounge
she left this town for philly as soon as she grew wings bounced around holiday inns with private dancer as soundtrack acquired all the merit badges service time affords she's been rubies and diamonds she's been gold club
but the city will wear on a heart the service industry takes what it will so she left it and a no good man to come back home bought in on unincorporated land dark skies and nowhere far enough from the ghost of her memories
she keeps company with a man from another small town somewhere dusty like oklahoma where they only drink tomato juice and budwiser sometimes both if the devil found his way for a visit recently
tonight it's everyone's birthday off kilter and out of key if it were friday or saturday a band of shitkickers might stir it up nothing personal just frustration
kentucky comes next dipsy doodle foothills dots of towns wade forgotten more inventories of years ravaged years of appalachia left for dead
I cash out after I hit my limit tip amounts to the check carla and I wish each other luck
back to the helipad roar of interstate in my hair I’ll sleep deeply tonight wrapped in the red of wildflower smoke
About the Author: Jason Baldinger is a poet and photographer from Pittsburgh, PA. He is the co-editor of Trailer Park Quarterly and co-runs The Odd-Month Reading Series. He’s penned fifteen books of poetry the newest of which include: A History of Backroads Misplaced: Selected Poems 2010-2020 (Kung Fu Treachery), American Aorta (OAC Books) and This Still Life (Kung Fu Treachery) with James Benger. His first book of photography, Lazarus, was just released. He has two ekphrastic collaborations (with poets Rebecca Schumejda and Robert Dean) forthcoming. His work has appeared across a wide variety of online sites and print journals. You can hear him read from various books on Bandcamp and on lps by The Gotobeds and Theremonster.
Image Credit: Carol M. Highsmith “A rather sublime-looking tiki head stands outside the gift shop of the old Ranchero Motel in the tiny settlement of Anteres, Arizona, in Mohave County along U.S. Highway 66” (2018)
on this shortest day of the year my grief is long just four days since you transitioned from this world to realm of sweet angels & revered poets passed
now more than ever i picture you as marlena in pink no longer needing to maintain the burly john wayne façade to appease employer & bigots alike
you were my brother-sister-confidante you’d say there’s your TMI for the day i’d insist there’s no such thing & treasure your confidence it was a privilege being your ally a pleasure your chosen family
there’s a seat for you now at the table of your cherished ghosts— marlene dietrich robert lowell james dickey ezra pound hemingway warhol haring rocky brando & wayne as great as they were your legacy is secure
most magnificent is the hopeful certainty you’re with your dearest grandmother again— first ally first cheerleader first force for good the first to really see you for you
About the Author: Leslie M. Rupracht has poems in Asheville Poetry Review, As It Ought To Be Magazine, Aeolian Harp, Chiron Review, K’in, The Ekphrastic Review, Gargoyle, Anti-Heroin Chic, Kakalak, a chapbook, Splintered Memories (Main Street Rag), and elsewhere. She completed her first full-length poetry manuscript in 2023 and hopes to find it a good home. An editor, poet, writer, visual artist, and rescued pit bull mama, Leslie is co-founder and host of the monthly reading series, Waterbean Poetry Night at the Mic, in Huntersville, North Carolina.
The clouds just join till rain’s a melody, I hear the words pitched in every drop, something’s in the song the lyricist should steal, the vocals are tense as strings of harps, the flood just a concert unconcealed.
About the Author: Jason Visconti has attended both group and private poetry workshops. His work has appeared in various journals, including “Blazevox”, “Valley Voices”, and “The American Journal of Poetry”. He especially enjoys the poetry of Pablo Neruda and Billy Collins.
Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Rain Clouds at Night” (2021)
Braindead, all the doctors agreed, throughout the day each asked me if I was ready. Brahms lullaby played a half-dozen times while I waited for a sign. Both keeping you alive and letting you go seemed somehow selfish. On another floor, in another unit, new mothers cradled lifetimes of possibilities.
After I agreed to extubation and all of the machines were wheeled away, I could have run my fingers along your cracked lips or leaned in to feel your breath against my cheek but instead I anxiously hovered over you, my Saint Peregrine pendant, swinging above that frail body of impossibility.
When our oldest called to see when I was coming home, I asked both of our daughters to say goodnight. I put the phone on speaker and held it close. Our six-year-old shouted, Daddy, sleep for a long time, see you tomorrow! as I twirled your last breath and my waning faith around a silver chain.
About the Author: Rebecca Schumejda is the author of several full-length collections including Falling Forward (sunnyoutside press), Cadillac Men (NYQ Books), Waiting at the Dead End Diner (Bottom Dog Press), Our One-Way Street (NYQ Books) Something Like Forgiveness, a single epic poem accompanied by collage art by Hosho McCreesh (Stubborn Mule Press) and her new collection Sentenced (NYQ Books). She is the co-editor at Trailer Park Quarterly. She received her MA in Poetics from San Francisco State University and her BA from SUNY New Paltz. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family. You can find her online at: rebecca-schumejda.com
Image Credit: Giacomo Zampa “San Pellegrino” Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia
“Rabbit, Rabbit! Pinch Punch! First of the month. White Rabbit, No Return.” --for Good Luck, said on the first day each month.
April Fools’ Day – In All Good Fun
You can’t believe a thing you read today, at least not entirely. There may be a grain of truth, but you’ll have to sift it out yourself. A friend reminded me of an old date night spoof to take an ugly girl out to dance—a one-night stand. She was that girl for some but now she has become swan to duck as compared to them—a silk purse to their ear of pig. Another friend met the fellow of her dreams out on a date on this day years ago. They’ve been married ever since and every single year she says she’d do it all again. I never could’ve, though. I joked once that I was pregnant, then vowed never to again, because so many wanted me to be. My neighbor was born on this day, and there are those whose work I know, born today that I’ve never met. Take Anne McCaffrey, for example: the first woman for a lot of things science fiction and fantasy, in real life won a Hugo. Still, reports say she struggled to be taken seriously. Often asked how she found time to write, like a boss, she would say: “You’ve got that wrong— how do I find time for housework with all my writing!” I know some Aprils who were born in May or June. Go figure. Yes, and it’s the month to celebrate poems. Regarding lines, you have given me one or two. If mine are worth stealing, that sounds like a boon for us both. I say, “Good luck, my friend!” I do mean it.
About the Author: Geraldine Cannon is a poet, scholar, and editor, also working as a Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, under her married name–Becker. She has been published in various journals and anthologies. She published Glad Wilderness (Plain View Press, 2008).. She has been helping others publish, and had stopped sending her own material out, but she was encouraged to do so again, and most recently has a new poem in the Winter issue, Gate of Dawn (Monroe House Press, 2024).
Image Credit: David de Coninck “Two Rabbits” Public domain image courtesy of Artvee.
We don’t have that much land and we forget the vastness
of the ocean, but it does not forget us, angry and sacred,
swirling our waste in a rage and hurling it back. Earth
wants to reclaim the Earth. We burn it for fuel;
soon we will be fuel. We are fools, dinosaurs–
but they die by a star, and we, by our fire.
About the Author: James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet who works in film production. His latest chapbooks are A God You Believed In (Pinhole Poetry, 2023) and Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2022). Recent poems are in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Little Patuxent Review, and The Round. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (jamescroaljackson.com)
Image Credit:Marcus Larson “Steamer in Flames” Public domain image courtesy of Artvee.
As It Ought To Be 