Issue #21.1 Two Poems by William Mohr
The Standing Fan of Mindful Breath
The air behind is replete in stillness
like a butterfly pivoting on milkweed in summer.
As the horizon twitches, and pink oozes into blue,
the air gushes far enough to calm two passersby, who sit
and breathe the pleasure of the passing air, each inhale
remembering the question from the day before: how can
one make the mind be quiet, and the exhale laughing
at the blur of the blades of any binary of interrogative
and response. Around the base of the standing fan, small candles
extinguish themselves long after we finally surrender, and sleep.
The Homily
The meditation master sighs as he says “solve the problem.” I’ve heard this reverberation before, the flow of some word's flaw exhaled in the way that clouds dissolve to reveal the empty sky of “clear mind.” This morning I can’t stop thinking about clouds and the enchantment of their shimmering greys as the morning chill revolves into tiny spirals of leaves within leaves, a peroration of silence emptied out into the gift of breathing until I know how it will be when I am being breathed by all that is still present in the stillness of non-breath.
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Bill Mohr’s literary archives were recently acquired by the Archive for New Poetry at the University of California, San Diego. He is currently working on a memoir about his years as the editor and publisher of Momentum Press. His poems, prose poems, and creative prose have appeared in a multitude of magazines, including Antioch Review, Blue Mesa Review, Caliban (on-line), Santa Monica Review, Skidrow Penthouse, Sonora Review, Upstreet, and ZYZZYVA, as well as in over a dozen anthologies.
Blog: www.billmohrpoet.com
Website: koankinship.com
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Issue #21.2 Two Poems by Rochelle Jewel Shapiro
Hunger
In childhood, my sisters, Mother and I were always hungry, not like Bubbie’s hunger in the Black Forest living on roots and berries with her five children who survived the pogrom, her four older sons murdered, not like when her chestnut hair fell out from malnutrition, carried by birds, strand by strand, to build nests in the pine trees,
but the hunger we created in the mid-1960s when women were supposed to be whittled to twigs. We drank Metrecal, a meal replacement, only 225 calories per can, four cans a day. Our stomachs swelled and burned like our ancestors before they reached The Land of Plenty.
Middle sister chewed Bazooka gum to dam the flood of her hunger. Oldest sister had a secret stash of M&M’s and Kit Kats, the wrappers sometimes bobbing up in the toilet. Mother drank black coffee between Metrecals and taught us how smoking Marlboros or Kents could stave off hunger. Once I sucked on buttons.
Rhododendron, Rose of Sharon, Loosestrife
Beneath the hummocks of snow, I see them in bloom. I memorized them so if my vision whitens and blurs like the sky where snowflakes are birthed, the flowers will be as clear to me as the face of John Milton’s first wife was to him, the woman he married while still sighted.
By the time he wrote Paradise Lost, there were no descriptions of the five rivers of Heaven nor the veins and articulations of the leaves of the Tree of Knowledge, but that apple, I taste it, as Eve, under the sway of the snake, offered it to Adam. I hear the snake’s hiss, like a lover’s breath on my neck. I sense it the way my brain fills in the missing and shadowy parts of my vision that macular necrosis has stolen, and opens to me the whole scene of the expulsion from the Land of the Sighted.
When John Milton, at Trinity, studied all night by the light of a taper, had his vision begun to taper, as mine is while I look out my window, imagining the heady blooms alive beneath the snow.
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Rochelle Jewel Shapiro is the author Miriam the Medium (Simon & Schuster, 2004). She's published essays in NYT (Lives) and Newsweek. Her short stories, poetry, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in many literary magazines such as The Midwest Quarterly, Packingtown Review, Westview, The Iowa Review, Stone Path Review, and Frontier Poetry. Her poems have been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and once for The Best of the Net. Death, Please Wait, her poetry collection, is forthcoming from Box Turtle Press, Inc. Currently, she teaches writing at UCLA Extension. https://rochellejshapiro.com/ @rjshapiro
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Issue #21.3 Two Poems by Carol Ellis
Flower Moon
High and off to my left: Spring as a moon, blooming and my dislike of you grows in the spring, even when I immerse myself in water, you are chatting to my right—directions matter when I’m always lost in a familiar place and an unfamiliar place, not wanting to ask for directions, which direction, once I was a child crossing West Texas and my fiery dad was getting angry at the man who overfilled our car’s gas tank while I bravely walked between them to put a glass pop bottle in a wooden case divided inside into squares, I picked one as they began to shout behind me and I knew I had to walk back bravely between them, so I did and stood by the dripping car in the old days when I was young and such things existed, like the moon I’m looking at after swimming a long distance it seemed like in the water today, rather walked a long distance, maybe back to Texas, but I don’t think so, and the man my father fought, what happened to him after he stood up and brushed the dirt off his clothes from being on the ground. is he still alive to look at this moon, this cold glass of wonder, this drink in the sky.
Cornbread
Don’t overcook your cornbread for cornbread salad, a woman tells me on Monday morning when the time has changed and there is no reason to keep on living, except for hot coffee sitting in a cup with free refills and toast on the side hovering like a constant desert, although I like to slather on butter and jam that sits there like new spring buds, a swath of raspberry, a sweet dream held in the heart of a night, or found again during the day on a walk outside in this constant rain telling no one about anything, even the dogs sleep. Although the streets look slick and unreliable I choose to walk to the store to buy cornbread flour and a candy bar, but someone has stolen the gray trash bin, so I can’t throw anything away and outside only a blue recycling bin sits crazy like a cut tree, stumped by any mention of sanity, planning to never speak again and they never do, but they wish you were here to stand with them in the rain, although Jerry needs to put on a jacket, unless he wants to become set and sullen, earth sprouting on the roof where birds go to dream, to watch in tired company on Monday, cornbread salad like a silly dream dreaming in a dish, but not really here, the dishes empty, no one really here.
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Carol Ellis lives in Portland, Oregon and is a two time nominee of the Pushcart Prize. Her books include the full length Lost and Local (Pacific Coast Poetry Series, 2019), HELLO (Two Plum Press, 2018), and I Want A Job (Finishing Line Press, 2014). Her publications include JAMA, Comstock Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Trampoline, ZYZZYVA, and The Cincinnati Review.
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Issue #21.4 A Poem by Tony Wallin-Sato
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Tony Wallin-Sato is a Japanese American who works with formerly/currently incarcerated individuals in higher education as the Program Director for Project Rebound at Cal Poly Humboldt and is a lecturer in the critical race gender and sexuality studies department at Cal Poly Humboldt. He holds an MFA in Poetry and is the Co-Chair for the Boundless Freedom Project and an Advisory Board Member for the American Prison Newspaper Project. His first chapbook of poems, Hyouhakusha: Desolate Travels of a Junkie on the Road, was published in 2021 through Cold River Press. His first book of poems, Bamboo on the Tracks: Sakura Snow and Colt Peacemaker, was selected by John Yau for the 2022 Robert Creeley Memorial Award and is forthcoming through Finishing Line Press June 2024. His second book of poems, Okaerinasai, is forthcoming from Wet Cement Press October 2024. His work is featured in or forthcoming in the 2024 Asian American and Pacific Islander Anthology, We Gathered Heat, from Haymarket Books; Cultural Daily; The Asian American Writers Workshop: The Margins; Neon Door; Another Chicago Magazine; LIT magazine; and New Delta Review. Wallin-Sato's work comes out of the periphery and supports the uplifting of voices usually spoken in the shadows. All he wants is to see his community's thoughts, ideas and emotions freely shared and expressed.
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Issue #21.5 A Poem by James H Duncan
Pioneer
antecedent legends and points on maps folded by hands unknown small creases in history, moments unspoken when it all went south
or sometimes west to warmer climes, east to precursor enlightenment, but we whisper away north, stars unfading, guiding with assurance
that this world knows more than any human heart about the beating rhythms of the universe, and if you’re true and quiet — elucidation
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James H Duncan is the editor of Hobo Camp Review and the author of Proper Etiquette in the Slaughterhouse Line, Both Ways Home, Tributaries, and We Are All Terminal But This Exit Is Mine, among other books of poetry and fiction. He resides in upstate New York and writes reviews of indie bookshops for his blog, The Bookshop Hunter. For more, visit www.jameshduncan.com.
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Issue #21.6 Two Poems by LC Gutierrez
From My Obituary
Where he went, he wasn’t always was. We could start at the beginning, but there he wasn’t long. And where he was it went so fast that when he was, there was always somewhere else he had to go.
And he went 6 years without going for a haircut. Another 60 without falling for a punch, as he went and went and went without a drink. Wept while going soft in his wild oats, and kept on growing a little tougher too.
It wasn’t that he wasn't with us long, but for so long that he was with us he really wasn’t. But when he learned to be where he really was, it wasn’t long before he was gone.
Little League
Wearing your tattered teaching garments, bitter coins jingling in the last coat pocket, what would you give for some parsed knowledge now, if it could be appraised; held up to an honest light?
How will you explain a world made this way? Even planets consumed by their suns, like children chewed up by a filicidal Saturn. Chuckle along if you might. Pick your teeth in the maw
of the dugout. Grip the bat loosely when you’re up. Toss a ball with the kids til you’re dizzy with the to and fro. Wonder at how a fish feels in hand, still dancing
on its hook. Or the speckled egg of a bird whose nest you’ve climbed to poke at bids you leave it rest. All this nature giving you the chance to let it carry on.
While your misgivings gather round a soft fontanelle. Your hand, undecided as to fist or form a soft receiving cup. What kind of father does that make you? That you still haven’t grasped the way of letting go.
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LC Gutierrez is a product of many places in the South and the Caribbean. An erstwhile academic, he now writes, teaches and plays trombone in Madrid, Spain. His work is published or forthcoming in Notre Dame Review, Autofocus, Hobart, Rogue Agent, Peauxdunque Review, and other wonderful journals.
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Issue #21.7 A Poem by Jessamyn Rains
Carnival Season: A Memoir
The man in the ripped up t-shirt dark mustache bushy armpit hair holds his handful of darts toward me;
his voice rings out, drones on; behind him a wall of wilted balloons wait limply framed by stiff teddy bears and glass
likenesses of rock stars in full makeup and leather, hair billowing like the cotton candy I’m shoving
into my mouth. Cotton candy becomes air on my tongue, leaves room for the corn
dog dripping mustard and the funnel cake smothered in cherry pie filling. I wipe my greasy hands
on my stonewashed jean shorts and suck in my stomach, Bon Jovi blaring as the tilt a whirl
rises and falls, the gritty Ferris wheel cranking (I drain a can of Coke
for my upset stomach) where the bored- looking man takes tickets. It is a gray and sultry day; I’m sweating
in my turquoise tank top and little white shoes, my lonely eyes searching restlessly for kids
from school, for the boy I secretly like, for anyone who looks like someone I might want to know.
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Jessamyn Rains is a mom to four young children who writes and makes music. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in various publications, including Reformed Journal, Clayjar Review, and Bearings Online. You can hear her music at https://jessamyn.bandcamp.com/track/start-anew.
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Issue #21.8 Two Poems by Matthew King
On Watching the Birds for Evidence of Things Not Seen
Flocking finches pay close attention to each other and not much else, it seems. This means that most learn nothing of the world but whatever their neighbours think they know. They never learn like chickadees that they have nothing to fear from me, that I’m the one who brings them their seeds; they always fly like I’ve come to kill them for their seeds.
Chickadees, moving in their circles, not together, not apart, don’t flock but watch to see what each other is watching. Each waits its turn, takes a seed from feeder to willow where it picks the seed apart. The other chickadees leave it to eat in peace, as if they know there’s enough—the finches won’t see this; they never know.
The finches will leave once any sees the seeds run out, the same as they left where they were before they were here: the first to go pulled with it all the helpless others, as it will again when they leave where they’ve gone from here. The chickadees stay to seek out food as yet unseen, sustained by faith, as we’ve heard it said, as some have seen.
Ghost Grape
Look back to the point where she sits on the shore all alone with a bunch of red grapes she was eating that fall when she couldn’t see how she could stay and
find the grape
fading there stuck in that crack in that rock where the water seeps in and seeps out like a clock that counts days and counts years as the lake is falling
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Matthew King used to teach philosophy at York University in Toronto, Canada; he now lives in what Al Purdy called "the country north of Belleville," where he tries to grow things, counts birds, takes pictures of flowers with bugs on them, and walks a rope bridge between the neighbouring mountaintops of philosophy and poetry. His photos and links to his poems can be found at birdsandbeesandblooms.com.
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Issue #21.9 A Poem by Kevin Grauke
The Sacrilege of Misfiling Bird
after Diner
She just wants to listen to what makes her feel better, is that so wrong? Of course not. But how could she not remember what was playing when I came through the door and saw her for the first time? After that, how could Fats Domino ever be the same? How else can we survive on this bulb of ice, rushing nowhere, unless we chafe its spiritless air with our sweetest crepitations? I asked her this too, though differently. To keep myself away from other words, I drove off. On the radio, Frogman Henry croaked about having no home; it was a harsh truth sent to me through the ether instead of joyous carols fit for this season of blessedness and grace. Down the street, in the manger at Saint Agnes, the plastic child has gone missing. In its straw slumps a drunken ass in nothing but jockey shorts braying “O Little Town” to the moon. He’s lost every last one of its words. Meanwhile, the wise men, mute as wood, offer no help, so I stop to join him, to help him find each word and put them all where they belong.
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Kevin Grauke has published work in such places as The Threepenny Review, The Southern Review, Quarterly West, Cimarron Review, and Ninth Letter. He’s the author of the short story collection Shadows of Men (Queen’s Ferry), winner of the Steven Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. He teaches at La Salle University in Philadelphia.
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Issue #21.10 A Poem by Gale Acuff
Someday when I'm dead I'll look back on
this moment, whatever it was, not that it was this one in particular and say I remember when I was writing something about remembering a day when I was writing something about re -membering a day and it certainly was memorable and then my Sunday School teacher laughed but suddenly she be -gan to cry, in the Bible it's called weep -ing and she surely wept, you would've thought that I was the crucified son of her and God but that she was in tears because God put her through all this, forget that she's serene in Heaven. Or was. Or will be.
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Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in over a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. His poems have appeared in Ascent, Reed, Arkansas Review, Poem, Slant, Aethlon, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, Roanoke Danse Macabre, Ohio Journal, Sou'wester, South Dakota Review, North Dakota Quarterly, New Texas, Midwest Quarterly, Poetry Midwest, Adirondack Review, Worcester Review, Adirondack Review, Connecticut River Review, Delmarva Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Maryland Literary Review, George Washington Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ann Arbor Review, Plainsongs, Chiron Review, George Washington Review, McNeese Review, Weber, War, Literature & the Arts, Poet Lore, Able Muse, The Font, Fine Lines, Teach.Write., Oracle, Hamilton Stone Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, Cardiff Review, Tokyo Review, Indian Review, Muse India, Bombay Review, Westerly, and many other journals.
Gale has taught tertiary English courses in the US, PR China, and Palestine.
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Issue #21.11 A Poem by LeeAnna Callon
Hard Consonant
you are a hard consonant
like teeth
against teeth
articulating yourself
with the back of your tongue
you are melancholy girls
with guitars
on the radio
voices like shards of glass
you are Indian takeout
at my kitchen table
blistering my mouth
vindaloo and whole milk
you are a dial tone
funneled for eternity
through the plastic receiver
cradled uselessly
in my sweaty palm
you are the silent treatment
for a solid week
after a boy’s name
tumbled carelessly
from my mouth
but you are also
the ragged red flannel
i wear as a nightgown
on too-warm nights
you call me to come over
because you hear nymphs
in your wall
our bodies concave
in your twin bed
we fit together like
a pair of teaspoons
our lips are bookends
my fingers in your hair
oars breaking
a lake’s halcyon surface
i fall asleep
to the hush
like the shuddering
of leaves
of you
shedding
your exoskeleton
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L. Callon (she/her) is a Mississippi native but has called New Orleans home for over a decade. By day, she manages a local independent bookstore. By night, she sleeps. Her interests include reading books, collecting books, immortality, haunted dolls, and writing the occasional poem. Her poetry has appeared in the Tilted House Review, Nurture, Lucky Jefferson, Lit.202, and Ghost Girls Zine. Her poem Reverie was featured as a broadside by Lucky Bean Press in March 2022.
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