Magazine
Nadia Arioli: “Sam Insists Only Oak”
Jon Bennet: “Petty Dreams”
Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozábal: “Thoughts”
Sarah Carleton: “No, I would not like to ride”
Bart Edelman: “What Happens Here”
Marc Janssen: “Dog Days”
Linda Lerner: “Twenty-Four Hour Non-Stop News”
Anita Lerek: “Song for Blood Vibrato”
Jim Murdoch: “The Great Ledger in the Sky”
Timothy Tarkelly: “Long Night”
Robin Wright: “Nesting”
Early Morning
-After Cezanne’s Woman with Coffee Pot
She sits erect on her stool
next to the table. Her cup
filled with dark brew
rests on its saucer
beside the pot.
She drops two sugar cubes
into her coffee, stirs five times,
swirls sweetness into the liquid.
The coffee cools. She’s distracted
by a sense of foreboding,
handsome face in frown,
hands resting in her lap,
ready to be clasped in prayer
if needed.
About the Author: Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in As it Ought to Be, The Beatnik Cowboy, Loch Raven Review, One Art, Spank the Carp, The New Verse News, Rat’s Ass Review, Fevers of the Mind, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her first chapbook, Ready or Not, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.
Image Credit: Paul Cézanne “Woman With a Coffeepot” (1895) Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia.
Boarding House Bedroom - After Vincent van Gogh I tell the widowed landlady, I’m an artist, and she rents me the room cheap. The colors for this room must be both bright and tranquil for me to feel alive, work round the clock in a fever. I choose yellow for the bed and chairs. Violet for walls, green for the window frame, a fence encasing light that leads to a view of the public garden where men and women stroll the lane surrounded by blue pines. I immerse myself for days, weeks, months, until a voice, a train inside my brain, rumbles through, rattles the pictures on the wall.
About the Author: Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in The Beatnik Cowboy, As it Ought to Be, Loch Raven Review, Spank the Carp, The New Verse News, Rat’s Ass Review, Little Old Lady Comedy, Bindweed, Fevers of the Mind, One Art, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her first chapbook, Ready or Not, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.
Image Credit: Vincent Van Gogh “Bedroom in Arles” (1888)
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
On the Ledge 1. Minny reaches her arm out the open window, sets a glass of water next to me. Head stretched as far into the air as possible, she speaks but never says, Come back in, only talks about my kids, my cat, how the blues and grays of my rug swirl together like glass in a kaleidoscope, asks me what I use to clean it. She piles one small word upon another on that ledge, dissolves the ugly that pushed me out here. 2. Jimmy bends to slip through the open window, eyes wide, breath held until he sits next to me, What now, he whispers, reaches for my hand, waits for my answer. Silence wraps the air around us like a sweater. He squeezes my hand, looks at me, waits, sweaty palm holding tight, for a minute, an hour, a day until I decide.
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, One Art, Young Ravens Literary Review, Spank the Carp, The New Verse News, Bombfire Lit, Rat’s Ass Review, Muddy River Poetry 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: Jacek Malczewski “Sketch of a Woman in the Window” Public domain image courtesy of Artvee.
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Make-believe
When the sun rolled the rain away,
Mother, tired of sheets, blankets tossed
across chairs and couch for our fort,
shooed us outside to swing on a tire
held to the tree by rope.
She washed rainbows of cloth,
pinned them to the clothesline
with the same reverence
she showed in church,
hummed Amazing Grace as the sun
imbued freshness and new life.
We swung high, waited
until Mother headed inside,
slipped between the sheets
into a new existence
while the sun sprinkled light,
vowed to stay there
until the moon took over.
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About the Author: Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Rat’s Ass Review, Bombfire, Sledgehammer, Young Ravens Literary Review, Sanctuary, Ariel Chart, Spank the Carp, Panoply zine, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her first chapbook, Ready or Not, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.
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Image Credit: Arthur S. Siegel “Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Mrs. Fergusen putting a pole on the clothes line” (1943) The Library of Congress
As It Ought To Be 
