Magazine
Ruth Bavetta: “My Father’s Shirts”
Jacob Butlett: “Feeding Time at the Zoo”
John Compton: “the musical of the bell jar”
A.M. Hayden: “Ghost Leg”
Joshua Lillie: “What Becomes A Tumbleweed”
Joseph Mills: “Retinue”
J.R. Solonche: “The Ceiling”
Alicia Wright: “She doesn’t wish me dead”
James Benger: “Entrance”
Barbara Daniels: “White Horses”
Cal Freeman: “Always”
Mari Kitina: “Only the Rice Cries”
Michael Lauchlan: “Trout”
Richard Levine: “For Want of Care”
Dudley Stone: “Turbulence”
Meredith Wattle: “Erie Goliath”
Ann Weil: “Living Through”
Jean Biegun: “On Call”
Karina Castrillo: “I never wanted you to be like us”
John Grey: “Photographs”
Geoffrey Heptonstall: “Floating”
Andrea Horowitz: “Behind Midnight’s Curtain I Recompose Your Birth”
Leonard Kress: “A Night at the Opera”
Laurie Kuntz: “Sooner or Later”
Leigh Parsons: “Still Frozen”
Matthew Pritt: “Joseph F. Seaborn, 1898-1956, Mary B. Seaborn, 1906-“
William Taylor Jr.: “Poem for the New Year”
Rose Mary Boehm: “Boil them”
Rebecca Clifford: “Climatic Divinations”
Sam Hendrian: “Magazine Ads”
Paul Ilechko: “A Clock Is Ticking”
Tricia Knoll: “Next Time You Interview a Unicorn Prepare Better Questions”
H.K.G. Lowery: “Villa Diodati”
Samuel Prestridge: “Why I’ve Not Cut Down The Yes Ma’am Bush”
Tamarah Rockwood: “Persephone’s first day out”
Jason Ryberg: “No Great Hurry”
Matthew Ussia: “Home Improvement Advice for Anyone Owning a House More Than One Hundred Years Old”
Sue Blaustein: “A Song for Centipedes”
Felicia Clark: “Chrome Cheers”
john compton: “[we play scrabble—]”
Sam Culotta: “Voices in the Other Room”
Jenna K Funkhouser: “The House at the End of the Road”
Ken Gierke: “After the Rain”
Julia Hatch: “A Thoughtless Moment of Zen”
James Croal Jackson: “Drymouth”
Daniel Edward Moore: “From the Castle of Resentment”
Jimmy Pappas: “The Ineffable”
Jason Baldinger: “a time capsule of dust”
Stephen Barile: “Cedar Crest Cove”
Jane-Rebecca Cannarella: “Quilted Rainbows”
Lorraine Caputo: “And That Wind Twirls”
Rick Christiansen: “Borrowed Blood”
John Dorsey: “Jerry Garcia & German Root Beer”
Howie Good: “Uketopia”
John Grey: “Flower People”
Judy Lorenzen: “Anyway”
Tim Peeler: “Untitled”
LB Sedlacek: “Art vs Life (Dream 09/19/15)”
The Desert
arid scrubland where life flees the sun
water washes over color-stained rocks
but provides little relief or support
people trudge under sunhats,
quietly swiping away their sweat
but the lizards thrive and snakes
coil in drowsy satisfaction
a little is enough they seem to say
today is just another day
the flat horizon shimmers in waves
of light and dry heat
trucks roar along the interstate
loaded with boxes and crate,
the concerns of another world,
while the scorpions work
with the basics, ready
to kill and eat as darkness
falls and life slithers forward—
always forward, not to be denied
About the Author: Chuck Kramer’s poetry and fiction have appeared online and in print, most recently Lothlorien, The Raven’s Perch and The Good Men Project. He has also been a finalist in the Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Poetry Awards in 2017 and 2023. Memoir in Chicago Quarterly Review (a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2023), Sobotka, Evening Street Review. Journalism in Chicago Tribune, Sun-Times, Reader, Windy City Times and Gay Chicago Magazine.
Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Desert Exit” (2024)
Malverns
We start from the north end,
hearts and lungs weighted down
as we climb hard between scree,
emerge above low cloud
that smudges the backdrop
and recasts the landscape.
The curves of the hills
snake onwards in stately
perspective through the fog.
East, England’s farms
lie flat. Light mist rolls
like smoke on battlefields.
West, old mountains
are lost in fresh swirling
ranges built in the air.
Our footsteps skip
through the sky but two heavy
transport planes from Brize Norton
give bone perspective,
disturb birds. The tops of rooks’
heads and wings glide beneath us.
This new world – its fake mountains,
upside-down birds and smeared views –
thins our blood, drains our thoughts.
About the Author: Michael Hurst’s writing has been published by The Fiction Desk, Ellipsis Zine, Gemini, GWN and Stroud Short Stories. He lives in Gloucestershire with his wife and daughter.
Image Credit: Detroit Publishing Co. “Ivy Scar Rock, Malvern, England” Public domain image courtesy of the Library of Congress
Bird-banding at Camp
The counselors had no bands
that fit a hummingbird,
but should one get
caught in the mist net,
you rattled it between cupped hands
until it lay in your palm
(unhurt, we were assured)
with a quiet that seemed, except for its heartbeat, calm.
Then everyone who might
admired its smallness, red
enamel throat,
wings a green suitcoat,
but suddenly it took flight,
slid steeply up a ramp of air
full-powered, pivoted
in the leaves to a hopeful gap and sped out of there.
God! to feel
my head clear
for good, to recognize
the windy or waiting skies
are real,
to get out of here.
About the Author: Gerald Friedman grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, and now teaches physics and math in northern New Mexico. He has published poetry in various magazines, recently Rat’s Ass Review, The Daughter’s Grimoire, W-Poesis, and Cattails. You can read more of his work at https://jerryfriedman.wixsite.com/my-site-2
Image Credit: Public domain image originally from Histoire naturelle des oiseaux-mouches, ou, Colibris constituant la famille des trochilidés. Lyon: Au Bureau de la Société Linnéenne,1874-1877. Courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
The Names of Birds
My mother and the birds:
we watch them at the feeder.
I call out their names.
Look mom! The blue jay’s back!
That one! she says. That one!!
And the red-headed woodpecker–
Such a big…nose thing…
Yes, he has a long beak. And there are the
chickadees, the little nuthatches
and the turtledoves, grey and homely
their sound all the beauty they own.
Then the red-winged blackbird – Mom, look!
They’re a sign of spring.
That will never – she says….
Oh yes, my love. And the robin too. It will come. You will see it.
All the names she has forgotten
I recite like a litany: a prayer to the birds, distinct and various
as the language slipping away.
Good bye to wingéd words.
I say the names of birds; she does not repeat them.
Nor do I ever hear the name I own.
About the Author: Paula Reed Nancarrow’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ballast, Hole in the Head Review, and Book of Matches, among other journals. She is a past winner of the Sixfold Poetry Prize and her poems have been nominated for Sunrise Publications’ Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Find her at paulareednancarrow.com.
Image Credit: Public domain image originally from La galerie des oiseaux. Paris, Constant-Chantpie,1825-1826. Courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
As It Ought To Be 