Issue #22.1 A Poem by Robert Allen
Westport, 2006
I went away because I was blue, but told friends it was an adventure, that I’d write a book. I house-sat near a sick sea in a small gray town and saw no one for a time.
8 months of no one is hard, like eating less food or losing day after day to nothing but loss–
unending chains of loss, a terrifying stillness where nothing ever happens.
Nothing except this hole blown in my chest by long sadness.
Nothing except for that.
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Robert Allen lives in Oakland, CA with his family where he writes poems, teaches poetry, and coaches poets in their craft. He has been published widely in online magazines and in print. www.robertallenpoet.com
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Issue #22.2 A Poem by Clara Burghelea
What moves me
The way the day promises to implode with affections, blooming tulips outside the narrow window, this body
ready to undo itself with kindness, a crooked thirteen-year-old smile behind the Huawei screen, mă ajuți la tema la română?
Truth is I left the other side of me in Vâlcea, learnt to carry within me the Drăgoești orchard, the storied steps in front
of the cottage, the skin of the fingertips aching to touch the air silhouette of a mother, grief curling itself under every crack,
this poem both willing to show and hide, a hunk of Dallas clouds, a brushstroke of sun, Clarita, sings the voice of the mother in this house,
ven aquí, los frigoles están listos, and I go, and spread the fried beans on a piece of bread, blame the green salsa for my moist eyes.
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Clara Burghelea is a Romanian-born poet with an MFA in Poetry from Adelphi University. Recipient of the Robert Muroff Poetry Award, her poems and translations appeared in Ambit, Waxwing, The Cortland Review and elsewhere. Her second poetry collection Praise the Unburied was published with Chaffinch Press in 2021. She is Review Editor of Ezra, An Online Journal of Translation.
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Issue #22.3 Two Poems by Howie Good
Law of Moses
I jolt awake at four in the morning, the coldest hour of the day. The darkness buzzes like a swarm of flies when I raise my head from the pillow. It’s as if once reliable physical laws are being mocked. Next thing we know trees will break loose of their roots and blast into space and the birds evicted from their nests by the upheaval die off. And there’ll be little I or anyone can do, maybe plant flowers in clay pots and old whiskey barrels to compensate while the Earth feels the same puzzlingly pain that the rock Moses struck with his staff felt.
Ludwig B
With his stormy temperament and sour face, he was a person best avoided. Even police spies kept their distance. Under the piano on which he composed, he’d tauntingly leave a reeking chamber pot for an unfortunate servant to discover. He harbored a particular hatred for rats. If he saw one in the kitchen, he’d chase it with a meat cleaver. The bite of a rat flea had infected him with the typhus that helped destroy his hearing, a loss akin to a cosmic event, our assumed abandonment by God, for example, or the unchained melody at the time of Creation.
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Howie Good's newest poetry collection, Heart-Shaped Hole, which also includes examples of his handmade collages, is available from Laughing Ronin Press.
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Issue #22.4 A Poem by Isaac James Richards
Snow Octopus
I awoke startled by the softness of silent snow— eighteen inches.
In the courtyard college students heave a boulder of dense water.
Not a snowman— white tentacles carved out below a bulbous brain.
Sunny out today, the courtyard all grass and yellow but for the squid.
Dappled darkly with dirt grime the whitish ‘pus stood stone still.
It’s leaning now wilting to the side from water made to earth return.
Novice sculptors! Ekphrastic muse! Merge land to sea mammal with fish.
Harden water to snow soften dirt to mud, nourish and destroy grass.
I too am part water part earth my home part water part earth.
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Isaac James Richards is an aspiring poet, current graduate student, and first-year writing instructor who has lived in northeast Idaho, south India, and Israel/Palestine. To date, he has won four poetry contest awards, and his most recent poems are forthcoming in Constellations, Amethyst Review, and The Volney Road Review. He is also a reader for Fourth Genre and a contributing editor at Wayfare. When he is not writing or teaching writing, he enjoys practicing Buddhist meditation. He can be reached via his website: https://www.isaacrichards.com/
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Issue #22.5 A Poem by Candice M. Kelsey
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CANDICE M. KELSEY [she/her] is a poet, essayist, and educator living in both Los Angeles and Georgia. A finalist for a Best Microfiction 2023, she is the author of seven books; her latest chapbook POSTCARDS from the MASTHEAD has just been released with boats against the current. She mentors an incarcerated writer through PEN America and reads for The Los Angeles Review. Please find her at https://www.candicemkelseypoet.com/.
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Issue #22.6 A Poem by Bethany Jarmul
When My Daughter Finally Starts Walking
I try to put my anxieties to rest, tuck them in with a kiss on their
crinkled foreheads—
images of her crawling to kindergarten, fifth grade, across a stage with graduation cap, down the aisle in lace.
Ankle pronation, the therapist says. Orthotics can straighten her out.
What type of brace or cast will straighten out my swirling, shattered, scattered thoughts?
Perhaps, a miracle drug for overproduction of mom guilt, a tablet sold next to the diet pills at CVS
with a bleached-smile woman promising parental perfection.
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Bethany Jarmul is an Appalachian writer and poet. She’s the author of two chapbooks and one poetry collection. Her work has been published in many magazines including Rattle, Brevity, Salamander, and One Art. Her writing was selected for Best Spiritual Literature 2023 and Best Small Fictions 2024, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf Top 50. Connect with her at bethanyjarmul.com or on social media: @BethanyJarmul.
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Issue #22.7 Two Poems by John Dorsey
Imagine You’re a Sunflower
3 months after cancer nearly swallowed you whole people want you to say things are great that the sun shines out of your ass just so they don’t have to feel guilty about not calling or visiting so they don’t have to think about themselves living in fear like you but all you can smell is blood on the water closing your remaining good eye & gently running your fingers along moby dick’s billowing spine so you imagine you’re a sunflower in front of your grandmother’s house years after she last called you in out of the rain wild & silent & free.
The Year I Was Born
linda ronstadt was a goddess floating across a dark stage a warm smile with eternal youth i dream about her now gliding on roller skates at studio 54 with andy warhol & truman capote each of them fighting to be the one to place a flower in her hair.
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John Dorsey is the former poet laureate of Belle, Missouri and the author of Pocatello Wildflower. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.
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Issue #22.8 Two Poems by J.D. Isip
Giraffe Tattoo
Did I leave them on her nightstand?
What I didn’t know would be the last day,
Mom handed me two sheets of college rule
paper, the frayed edges from the coil binding
losing bits like baby teeth.
In streaks of blue ballpoint ink, imprecise
lines that indicate this is only a draft, she’d
probably taken hours, days even to sketch
two pictures: a giraffe with palm trees and
Jesus looking just past the broken edges.
It had been a good day. She told me about
saving some money, maybe $50, for a home,
just a small apartment. She said you can move
in with me, baby. I didn’t say I’d rather die.
She’d given me this gold pendant of Jesus
that she’d bought for one of her ex-husbands,
or he’d bought it for her. I sold it for rent, or
a car repair. She weighed worth by what you gave.
I gave her an occasional Saturday afternoon.
With what was left of her right hand, she held
out a wad of $10 bills before I left. I’m not
getting no damn apartment, she said, I’ll die
here. I must have laid her art down to take
the money she had scrounged away. No, you
won’t I said, but she did. Mom, you’re gonna
live forever, drawing stuff, like this giraffe.
It’s your favorite animal, baby. I didn’t say
It wasn’t. Now, here’s my body, penance.
Order Dessert
At some point, you drop off the pretense
the “oh, I am too full” or thought you might
lose a pound or two of flesh by what, by way
of a slice of grapefruit you’d doused in table
sugar hoping the thirsty thing would soak it
all up and become what, sweeter, enough to
choke down like choking your real hunger
out into a “no, none for me”—
Imma tell you for your own good, if anyone
is still offering you a slice, a slab, a spoonful
and you have the what, audacity to turn up
your nose when you know you could take it
all and still be ready for another, you’d better
pray away that devil, “get behind me,” say yes
cause the door to that kitchen will stop sooner
than you’re prepared for cause you know—
you’re not prepared for shit, you have no idea
what real hunger is, what it’s like to long for
the scraps, crust of bread, aloof kiss, bored sex,
yeah you’ll someday think missionary ain’t bad,
ain’t as bad as lonely, ain’t as bad as the hollow
you can’t ever seem to fill these days, days spent
thinking on what feasts you sent back, days you
said, it astonishes you, “Enough”—
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J.D. Isip’s full-length poetry collections include Kissing the Wound (Moon Tide Press, 2023) and Pocketing Feathers (Sadie Girl Press, 2015). His third collection, tentatively titled I Wasn’t Finished, will be released by Moon Tide Press at the end of 2024 or early 2025. J.D. teaches in Texas, where he lives with his dogs, Ivy and Bucky.
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Issue #22.9 A Poem by Royal Rhodes
PULLING AGAINST FATE
The kitchen cupboard door needed a hard pull to open and shove to close. No matter how familiar this action caused surprise, teaching about resistance. Force gave a tug of failure. Inside, on an unlit shelf were the odd bottles of pills around which my heart beat and commanded: "Open Sesame!" to chambers that wanted to close. The dark stain at the back I had always thought was mold, a floral bloom on the paint. But looking deeper and longer after a dreamless night, I saw the faint silhouette of a luna moth, its wings outlined in dusty shadow, vaporized over time, leaving this trace behind. Orpheus had glanced for his wife, pulled from the dead, and the simple act of looking compelled her return to darkness. Or did she go on her own, resisting the old enclosure, stepping up to the light she saw in his looking back?
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Royal Rhodes is a retired educator who taught global religions for almost forty years at Kenyon College. His art and poetry collaborations have been published by The Catbird [on the Yadkin] Press.
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Issue #22.10 A Poem by Daniel Romo
Forget-me-nots
Living in someone’s shadow is a part of domesticity not to be confused with making your own bed and lying in it. One is a matter of feeling clean and snug under the comforter. The other is a matter of no one taking note of the subtleties in your crown molding. Feeling like a houseguest under the weight your own doormat is the literal Southernmost form of hospitality, and no amount of homemade mac and cheese can ease feelings of inadequacy. Because being overlooked is a hurt akin to being lost, and finding your way requires backtracking rooted in clearing bramble that still bears pieces of your flesh posing as flowers. Though who mentions the romanticism in leaving fertile parts of yourself in unassuming gardens? I walked through the Botanical Body Parts and pricked my finger on a thorn that I recognized as pieces of my fingernail. I know from experience— if you’ve ever been offered a bouquet comprised of a species that you can’t quite name, recall the bloom… absorb the scent… become the wilting.
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Daniel Romo is the author of Bum Knees and Grieving Sunsets (FlowerSong Press 2023), Moonlighting as an Avalanche (Tebot Bach 2021), Apologies in Reverse (FutureCycle Press 2019), and other books. His writing and photography can be found in The Los Angeles Review, Yemassee, Hotel Amerika, and elsewhere. He received an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, and he lives, teaches, and rides his bikes in Long Beach, CA. More at danieljromo.com.
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