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.
“I will bathe in memory and in loss.” - Mike James
In the tropical night, I wake, fiddle with my phone, see the news. You knew it was coming. My last submission. I did not expect it so soon.
I sit under a Banyan tree and study its aerial roots. I cannot remember what you wrote about trees.
On my laptop, I re-read our chats. I want to download and save them. As if that could keep you here.
At a deserted playground, monkeys scamper up and down the slide. They know nothing of poetry.
I copied lines from your poems, carried them as a talisman, taped them above my desk.
I wonder what you would have packed if you could have taken a suitcase. I hear the list in your voice.
It sounds as if you are reading one of your prose poems.
About the Author: Agnes Vojta grew up in Germany and now lives in Rolla, Missouri where she teaches physics at Missouri S&T and hikes the Ozarks. She is the author of Porous Land, The Eden of Perhaps, and A Coracle for Dreams, all published by Spartan Press. Together with eight other poets she collaborated on the book Wild Muse: Ozarks Nature Poetry (Cornerpost Press, 2022.) Her poems have appeared in a variety of magazines; you can read some of them on her website agnesvojta.com.
Image Credit: Carol M. Highsmith “Fort Myers, a small city on Florida’s southwest coast along the Gulf of Mexico calls itself the Palm City but its most iconic leafy specimens are the immense banyan trees downtown” Public domain image courtesy of the Library of Congress
Pope slams America, the headline said. It wasn’t necessary for me to read the story to know that frightful changes were afoot. First, a pod of orcas had rammed a fishing vessel in revenge for past depredations, and then the last of the Western deities crashed to Earth. For weeks afterwards, people would leave flowers and cards and stuffed animals at the spot. Even a police spy was forced to look away in embarrassment at the outpouring of emotion. My own sense of propriety probably derives from the self-sacrificing patriotism of the World War II movies I grew up watching on TV. Although long ago I forgot the titles and plots of the movies, I’ve always remembered one scene. A young soldier, sprawled on his back at the edge of a bomb crater, his face half sheared off, cries in a little boy’s voice, Mama! Mama! And all around, the war goes on.
About the Author: Howie Good’s newest poetry collection, Frowny Face, a mix of his prose poems and collages, is now available from Redhawk Publications He co-edits the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.
Image Credit:Herman Henstenburgh “Vanitas Still Life” Public domain image courtesy of Artvee.
The letter from his friend came inscribed With invisible ink. He pondered it, puzzled, Then remembered hearing once how To make such things viewable. He held it over a candle’s open flame. Just before it ignited, the words Appeared, but the paper immolated In his hand before he could read it.
How much more is there to be said? His friend is dead now, gone. Ashes stirring with the slightest breeze, drifting upward like grey snow run backwards and projected onto the future. Fertile memories to be reawakened in the shadows of dusk, harvested from the white fields holding words he left behind unsaid, unwritten.
About the Author: M.J. (Michael Joseph) Arcangelini was born 1952 in western Pennsylvania. He has resided in northern California since 1979. His work has been published in many magazines, online journals, over a dozen anthologies, & 6 collections, the most recent of which is “Pawning My Sins” from Luchador Press, 2022.
Image Credit: Paul Cézanne “The Artist’s Son Writing” (1887) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee.
neither drugs or sunglasses best parking lot halogen in sharonville men sleep in their cars heads groggy groundhog up as people pass
this cheap motel surrounded the other motel rustles behind the tree line the waffle house gives way to skyline chili, to fast food and big box chains without a compass there are no bearings just endless small towns swallowed by a shadow city
how would I know south of here american anarchism bloomed how would I know la belle riviere is a whisper trace
waffle house takes out the trash street cats shake out of a lilac bush skinny and skittery about to take over the night
there is a pound of cheddar in the plastic to go bag of the aforementioned skyline too lazy to head south toward the clang of the underground railroad I eat in my room with cigarettes and black mold
as a representative of wealth I lay out a shredded trail a dairy bar feast a transient gift a yellow orange supply to sustain a brood of hungry meows
consider it an offering a small good thing something that may bring the rain on while there’s still ohio to go
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 “Nightime view of the Cincinnati, Ohio, skyline” (2016). Public domain image courtesy of The Library of Congress
You’re balancing the tote of groceries in one hand while holding an open umbrella, rushing for the bus, trying not to slip on the water rushing down this hilly sidewalk.
An eccentric, effusive man bows, mumbles something in a language only he knows, sweeps an invisible path for you before dashing to tell the bus driver to wait, there’s another
rained-upon passenger. You thank him profusely, but your savior is already on his way to the back of the bus to do his impersonation of Little Richard, complete with elaborate
piano thumping, body gyrations, music on he can hear. You sigh, offer thanks to the bus gods, grateful for your quixotic helper’s effusive kindness, hopeful you can carry it forward.
About the Author: Diana Rosen is an essayist, poet, and flash writer whose first full-length hybrid book, “High Stakes & Expectations” is available from thetinypublisher.com She lives and works in Los Angeles where her “backyard” is the 4,200+ acre Griffith Park, the largest urban green space in the U.S. To read more of her work, please visit authory.com/dianarosen.
Image Credit: Harris & Ewing, photographer “Bus Transportation Driver” (1937). Public domain image courtesy of The Library of Congress
Between heaven and Earth is orange, binder I’ve been missing all my life. Only fish you catch can see in color, but the ones that can tend to stay on the right side of the bank. Reds around me, peevish, gregarious, shy away from the unmitigated optimism that is yellow. I see orange now as the missing link, mediator who can bring these disparate sides of my palette back to sanity, plum a distant cousin, aquamarine the troublesome hue that started all the fuss.
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: Public domain image originally from Our country’s fishes and how to know them London: Simpkin, Hamilton, Kent & Co.,[1902]. Image courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library
the kid behind the counter hesitantly asks what happened to my eye & i hold in my anger just long enough to remember that this is the only place in town to get a halfway decent hamburger where the coffee doesn’t taste like generational poverty even though the water comes from that very same river & i imagine his ancestors wearing coonskin caps wiping the dirt from his face & i wonder what happened to my eye too & all of the things it once saw wiped away like smudges of memory like the manners we rarely use anymore there are some questions we just shouldn’t ask.
About the Author: John Dorsey is the former poet laureate of Belle, Missouri and the author of Pocatello Wildflower. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.
Image Credit: Carol M. Highsmith “Modern diner, Pawtucket, Rhode Island” Public domain image courtesy of The Library of Congress
Getting a Haircut from the Only Woman in Monroe County, Mississippi, Who Was Willing to Go to Funeral Homes in the Middle of the Night and Style the Hair of Corpses
My scalp listened, her fingers' telling phone calls, 3 a.m., when the corpses were prepped. She’d wash and dress their hair– mom’s silvered pixie, granny’s blue helmet– . turn death into a Sunday nap, so visitors would walk softly, whisper what they’d left to say. Wash, rinse, wash, rinse. She styled by pictures left for her and aimed for open-casket— no surprises, but covering surprises. A gunshot to the temple might untoward the familiar, might demand nightmare comb-over; facial cruelties--slashes, crushed cheekbones--might be concealed by a Nora’s luxurious swoops, cascading locks.
I thought how the dead missed out on what her fingers said, the warmth of her body on the back of my neck, a flesh scent, almost floral, I’d recognize today.
She told me she was never scared. Indifferent to the opinions of the dead or just not superstitious, I didn’t know. I never asked if she talked to them the way she talked to me--if she passed on gossip, secrets, the way she’d pack a lunch.
I simply asked if she saw it as a sideline or a calling. “The dead are only customers,” she said and leaned me back to rinse my hair.
About the Author: Samuel Prestridge lives and works in Athens, Georgia. He has published work in numerous publications, including Literary Imagination, Style, The Arkansas Review, As It Ought To Be, Poetry Quarterly, Appalachian Quarterly, Paideuma, The Lullwater Review, Poem, Pedagogy, and The Southern Humanities Review.
“I write poetry, he says, “because there are matters that cannot be directly stated, but that are essential to the survival of whatever soul we can still have. Also, I’m no good at interpretive dance, which is the only other option that’s occurred to me.”
He is a post-aspirational man, and his children consider him an adequate father.
Image Credit: John Margolies “Barber pole, Canton, Illinois” (1980)
Ruminations of an Airplane Passenger Before the Flight Turned Around & Returned to its Departure Airport
Up thirty-five-thousand feet above the ground, going around and around and around in circles for more than an hour in this flying tin can, and far below, Rapid City is choked in mist to the point where you can't even see it, as if a sorcerer had cast a spell & hidden the town & perhaps the buildings are now toys in this conjurer's top hat, & looking down at that Emerald City of clouds is dizzying & the sickly yellow light of morning pains my eyes for I have had no sleep in twenty-eight hours & my parents are waiting for me at the airport to take me to my sister's wedding in the Black Hills, & all I can think about is what will happen to my computer files if we should somehow crash.
About the Author: G. M. H. Thompson enjoys golden sunsets with fine wine, taking long walks on the beach, & getting to know you better.
As It Ought To Be 