Issue #25.1 A Double Issue: Glen Armstrong and Russell Rowland
A Poem by Glen Armstrong
Spider Legs and Churchgoers
The rain is unexpected though the talk of rain
is constant. Conversation, hell,
all human connection has overplayed its hand.
Most of the songs about hands and rain
are sung by children. Fingers turn into spider
legs and churchgoers. Rain makes progress
difficult. There are drainpipes
and marriages that never made sense.
There are children whose questions
go unanswered.
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Glen Armstrong (he/him) holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. His latest book is Night School: Selected Early Poems.
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A Poem by Russell Rowland
Percussionists
Not much birdsong nowadays from the hardwoods or evergreens; possibly little for birds to sing about—
mates and territories all settled for the season, choir reduced to soloists anyway.
Yet that woodpecker cohort— Pileated, Downy, Hairy, Flicker, Sapsucker— are still at it, up in the Ossipees,
so we hear percussion now, instead of arias and barcarolles,
tunes I could never carry. But while I’m no Flicker, Downy, or Hairy, I have their urge to hunt-and-peck,
their well-traveled aptitude for resonance, and a hammer for a head.
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Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire. Recent work appears in Red Eft Review, Wilderness House, Bookends Review, and The Windhover. His latest poetry book, Magnificat, is available from Encircle Publications. He is a trail maintainer for the Lakes Region (NH) Conservation Trust.
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Issue #25.2 A Double Issue: Dolapo Demuren and Ericka Clay
A Poem by Dolapo Demuren
Summer was Trayvon’s Body and Trayvon was Gone
—for Trayvon Martin
While I study abroad in Italy, I am ill with a feeling I brought across the sea. Everybody is hiding something; I try too. In the Uffizi, the hallway leads my class to Botticelli’s Birth of Venus– I study the other tourists— each one looking for something they’ve read, each marveling at the scale of the painting, each quiet—
swallowing: the giant pearl-white scallop shell carrying the deity to the island of Cyprus, the rose-pink floral cloak blown helpless over her right-side, her white breasts, the light caught in the thick net of her hair. But, her whole body is improbable— not because it is full-grown at birth or because her golden-ivory skin is too quiet—
it’s the posture of the goddess’ stance places too much weight on the left leg— she would tumble into the waters, pale her elongated neck, ruin the unnatural fall of her shoulders. Maybe that’s why white flowers dally at her left like spring snow, or why her body, and all the other ones in this quiet painted world, is without
a shadow. Only the scallop shell casts one, over the shivering waves. Only a few miles from here, onlookers pondered me near the Ponte Santa Trinita, like others who watched me at the Pallazo Strozzi and San Marco, who studied me like I was a shadow caught moving on camera, free of its master. Like I was without
Trayvon. Who was gone. Who knows the limp in my walk, the tired fists in my head, the fever of silence in my chest the heavy light of memory that summons a body drawn by heart– when I slip out of the exhibit
who notices the exit wounds.
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Dolapo Demuren is a Nigerian-American writer from the Washington D.C. area. He received his B.A. in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University, M.F.A. from Columbia University, and Ed.D from the University of Southern California. His honors include a fellowship from the Cave Canem Foundation and The Academy for Teachers, as well as scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. His poems and other writings are featured in the Adroit Journal, On the Seawall, Frogpond Journal, Prelude Magazine, and Small Orange Journal. He teaches creative writing at the University of Maryland College Park, where he is the associate director of the Jiménez-Porter Writers’ House and a lecturer for the College of Arts and Humanities.
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A Poem by Ericka Clay
I Can No Longer Hear the Music
It’s You, me, and nothing
But no noise and the silence
That comes from watching
Everything I can’t control.
I call it meditation,
My husband calls it “anxiety,”
My daily offer, my daily sacrifice
At Your feet. The fool I was,
Once young and in love with You,
And now I’m old and in love
With You, feeling out the nooks
And crannies of lifelong devotion
And skin rippled with my heart’s
Regret. But I don’t regret jumping
Into the only relationship
That has withstood my (un)doing
Because of everything You did,
and do, and will always do,
Even when I sit and wonder
Why I can no longer hear the music.
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Ericka Clay is a published novelist and poet. As a former atheist turned believer, she seeks to write raw, real, relatable books that have a heart for Jesus. She's been awarded several times by Writer's Digest for her short fiction pieces and has just published her fourth novel, A Bird Alone. She lives in Northwest Arkansas with her husband, daughter, and an insatiable need to push buttons, both figuratively and literally. You can learn more about Ericka at erickaclay.com.
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Issue #25.3 A Double Issue: Jennifer Klein and Tohm Bakelas
A Poem by Jennifer Klein
Jackfruits
Jackfruits take hold of my eyes like a glare But one I wield- like a lightsaber My mind finally at peace Neuron-deep In the mysticism of bubbleless gum
Vegan this, vegan that How could animal death lead me here? Cows crying, pigs squealing Future ghosts haunted my teeth To sink into plant ovaries year after year
There’s no way my own ovaries taste this good The teratoma that consumed one Might beg to differ But it was born into a jackfruitless existence And the poor thing didn’t even know it
This is a secret language Obscure fruits in the west Animal lovers are fluent in it A perfume to chase away Incessant doom attacking their nest
Sensitive, sensitive! Why do us soyfolk care so much? Blood and guts is what makes people tough But little does it know It can be ripped apart by love
Forbidden fruit is easy mode Rare ones love you while they can Jackfruits love you, animals love you Only one is killed to be ripped apart In your hands
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Jennifer Klein is a writer, musician, and artist. Poetry is one of her favorite ways to make social commentary and merge her inner and outer worlds. Her poems have been featured or are forthcoming in Hawai`i Pacific Review, Fahmidan Journal, Bombfire, Green Ink Poetry, and others. She received a bachelor’s degree in English with minors in Dutch Studies and Norwegian from Indiana University Bloomington.
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A Poem by Tohm Bakelas
“clarity”
Call it the Purkinje effect, but the leaves on Parks Road might as well have been painted by Van Gogh’s ghost this afternoon.
And perhaps that’s what makes grey days (such as this) favorable to poets—we’re forced to face the colors of life we desperately try avoiding.
As if those colors will somehow cause us to lose our allure to the shadows, like our fixation with death and darkness will somehow dissipate.
Tonight, dry your eyes by the fire. We need all the clarity we can get.
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Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a New Jersey psychiatric hospital. His poems have been printed widely in journals, zines, and online publications all over the world, including: Cardinal Sins Journal, Hiram Poetry Review, Ignatian Literary Journal, Mantis, Pinyon, Poetry South, Red Coyote, the Roanoke Review, and US 1 Worksheets. He is the author of “Cleaning the Gutters of Hell” (Zeitgeist Press, 2023) and “The Ants Crawl in Circles” (Bone Machine, Inc., 2024).
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Issue #25.4 A Double Issue: Ken Meisel and Rebecca Collins
A Poem by Ken Meisel
Love During War Time
She drove a rusted yellow 74’ Datsun 210 and wore a faux mink coat when she’d visit me. Sometimes she’d come over with nothing under the fake
mink coat. Sometimes she’d drive through the Devil’s Night Fires when Detroit burned its buildings down like so many structures clutched by rage.
She’d exclaim to me that the burning buildings, set to flame like Halloween castles, hurled hot black cinders down over the freeway. They bless me with
death, she’d say. I’d meet her at the gate, let her in and we’d light a bowl, hit the tequila and take the hard week to bed with us. She had a St. Barbara
statue glued to her dashboard. In the saint’s right hand, a goblet as the Holy Grail. And in her left hand, a sword. This is love during war time, she’d say.
Put that record on again. We need the Holy Grail and a sharp sword. Let’s get down and deep again because a city will fuck you and assassinate you at
the same time, at its own whim mind you, so put that record on again. And I would. Psycho Killer too. Don’t Worry About the Government. David
Byrne. That cool chick bass player, Tina Weymouth. What a band. I tried to tell myself I wasn’t falling in any kind of love with her – the woman in a
faux mink coat. She only loved ideas. And to boot she was an art school model. And mostly preferred hanging out with bands. You ought to know
better to stand near the window, she’d say to me afterwards. Gun shots, snipers, vapor trail bullets, whatever. This is love during war time. Her lips
were rouged. We’d just been kissing across the bed and my face was rouged too. She was laying across the bed, naked, the sheets half crossed over her
body so I could see the same vast nakedness a painter would see . . . and then ask her to model on a bed in a dirty studio. She laughed at the lipstick
on my face. Heard about Houston, heard about Detroit, heard about Pittsburgh, PA? she’d mouth as the record – Love During War Time by
Talking Heads – spun on. She’d light up a cigarette. I’d bring the empty tequila bottle over to her. Have her put the top of the bottle to her mouth
and sing the words into it. So that I could capture the fog of her voice in a bottle. She’s in the bottle. Get that voice in there like wet tequila. Blow it
deep down into the bottom of the bottle so I can watch it swirl like a hurricane in there. More gun shots, more ambulance squealing, more street
fights and call and response nonsense going on below. A testy couple outside the door quarreling over who had the keys to let them into their
apartment next door. We’d start kissing again and then fucking and then afterwards we’d cook up some spaghetti and then wrap ourselves in blankets
and watch Taxi Driver with Robert DeNiro and then catch some TV Bible show blazing out of Texas and then we’d start it up again –
it would be after midnight – for another round of hot love during war time.
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Ken Meisel is a poet and psychotherapist, a 2012 Kresge Arts Literary Fellow, a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of eight books of poetry. His most recent books are: Our Common Souls: New & Selected Poems of Detroit (Blue Horse Press: 2020) and Mortal Lullabies (FutureCycle Press: 2018). His latest book, Studies Inside the Consent of a Distance, was published in 2022 by Kelsay Books. Meisel has recent work in Concho River Review, I-70 Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Crab Creek Review and Trampoline.
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Three Poems by Rebecca Collins
Lavender Roses
Each petal I am layered into a lavender rose,
now drying, now fresh from that death,
my point of rising through the sweet merge of silk and water…
Cypresses
Tower-cones guard freedom,
eye-cones watch,
looseness harbors insides that could echo in caves
sending me out into all waves of existence…
Moths
We are moths,
one laying out cream-spotted brown, one fluttering red,
a surprising earth and sunrise equal in this moment.
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At age 44, Rebecca wrote in Italian and published her first book, Tre raccolte poetiche (Midgard Editrice, October 2022, reprints September 2023). Its free-form poems were mostly born in Perugia, Italia, where she lived on and off for almost one year. Since September 2023, she has been living in Sakartvelo (the country of Georgia), which has transformed her and therefore become home. Her poem "Fish" was published in Cosmic Daffodil Journal's ebook, Horoscopes. She also wrote the lyrics and tune for the Christian song "I Come to You", and one of Outside the Box’s poets, Shashanna Hummer, is writing the music.
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Issue #25.5 A Double Issue: Ed Ruzicka and A. A. Gunther
A Poem by Ed Ruzicka
Years Before He Broke Big
for Randolph Thomas
He was just a kerchiefed punk from Moab, UT when I saw him crushed down into chords as he plucked a pawn-shop resonator in the back Of a Twelfth Street bar nobody cared about. Banged, soft-soloed, wailed with enough soul to squeeze blood out of a beet. When you come from pain and go toward pain When you sleep in a Toyota from Moab to Fort Worth to Savannah and back again the hard way, some nights you might sing pure as a sedge wren beside morning glory On chain link fencing just before Dawn tops over the roof lines.
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The lightning-cracked pages of Ed Ruzicka’s third, full-length book of poems, "Squalls" (Kelsay Books), is due for a March release. Ed’s poems have appeared in the Atlanta Review, the Chicago Literary Review, Rattle, Canary and many other literary publications. Ed lives with his wife, Renee, in Baton Rouge, LA.
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A Poem by A. A. Gunther
Dry Drowning
We gave you everything that you could want,
And all we asked of you was not to hurt.
When did we falter? Where did we desert?
Pronounce the fatal words, that they may haunt
Us two that failed the only vital task
We ever in our folly undertook:
What in our blindness did we overlook?
What question did we ask, or fail to ask?
We were awake all night and every night,
Caulking each leak we found within the boat,
Until, all confident that we would float,
We fell asleep in dawn’s unwinding light,
And while, yet dreaming, to our children clung, The one lay dead of water in the lung.
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A. A. Gunther is a Manhattan legal writer by day and a Long Island poet by night. Her short fiction can be found in Dappled Things, while her poetry appears in Ekstasis, The Friday Poem, Mezzo Cammin, New Verse Review and ONE ART and is forthcoming in Merion West and elsewhere. She has eight younger siblings, at least two of whom can vouch for her character.
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Issue #25.6 A Double Issue: Gunilla T. Kester and Simon Ravenscroft
A Poem by Gunilla T. Kester
Better Not
Better not return to the old ways when we knew where we and others we met grew up by their pronounced or swallowed vowels, consonants, making them buzz, burr, brighten or zip our ears with a clang, or their manners, a certain hand gesture older than Alexander the Great and most of all the shoes, those old gossips.
At the grill bar by the train-station we laughed at the robust ugly shoes of the Americans yet gave them beer so they would talk to us: English, the gate and the port to out and away. At night we drove to the local airport and sat in the empty bleachers and waved at the planes, dreaming of America, large brown paper bags filled with food we saw and smelled in the movies.
Coming home, the sad drinking man had tripped on our doorstep again, was bloody and weeping. Better not feel again stones so old they grow like cold skin. Trees wrapped in furs. Clouds kissing windows and smoking on balconies. Copper roofs climbing slowly toward heaven. Grass locked under leaves, a hidden fugitive. Oh, City of Youth —in my mind you hold me still.
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Swedish-born Gunilla Theander Kester is an award-winning poet and the author of If I Were More Like Myself (The Writer's Den, 2015). Her two poetry chapbooks: Mysteries I-XXIII (2011) and Time of Sand and Teeth (2009) were published by Finishing Line Press. She was co-editor with Gary Earl Ross of The Still Empty Chair: More Writings Inspired by Flight 3407 (2011) and The Empty Chair: Love and Loss in the Wake of Flight 3407 (2010). Dr. Kester has published many poems in Swedish anthologies and magazines, including Bonniers Litterära Magasin. She lives near Buffalo, NY where she teaches classical guitar.
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A Poem by Simon Ravenscroft
The Waters of the Lower Palaeolithic
Found in situ: an ovate handaxe, a thinning flake, a scraper, a hammerstone and fragments, a retouched flint flake. Evidence suggests the prevalence in these parts of alder and pine, with areas of oak, elm, and hornbeam. Galingale, buttercup, and nettle made a home in the fen and the reedswamp, company for water-starwort, water lilies, bulrushes, and others. Chillier by 3° C. A million years, give or take, have slipped by.
Today the fields around Grantchester still flood from time to time. The meadows turn to glass and the sky is in them, like the past. All the light is changed. Tame dogs burst through the shallow floodwaters in chase of sticks. Photographers appear in waders, paparazzi for the egret and cormorant. We are told that cranes are returning, slowly, and the eagle of the white tail, seen even inland near St Edmundsbury. I am from the Vale of White Horse and miss those hills in this flat country but I love how the light plays on the sheets of watery glass when the flat land floods, making it into a mirror of heaven.
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Simon Ravenscroft lives in Cambridge, England, and teaches and writes in the arts and humanities. He is a Fellow of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge. He has published variously, and recent work has appeared at Meniscus, Red Ogre Review, Swifts & Slows quarterly, JAKE, Roi Fainéant, and Ink Sweat & Tears, among others.
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Issue #25.7 A Double Issue: Amit Majmudar and Daniel Fitzpatrick
A Poem by Amit Majmudar
Castrati
You will sing like an angel, the impresario with the scissors used to whisper, I promise. A boy eunuch voiced Vivaldi’s Beatus vir, mother-of-pearl voicebox full of grace notes, venom sac empty between his long, hairless thighs. Sometimes, in a touristy sacristy, the sunscreen smell and background noise go dim. I hear the svelte castrati of the mind in unison, their ballast cut free, silk ribbons endlessly unfurling from their open mouths. My shoulderblades ache, nostalgic for the wings they never were, evolutionary phantom pain. What sacrifices would I make for my art? Would I give my eyes, like Borges? My reason, like Holderlin? My art itself, like Gogol locking the second half of Dead Souls in the safe of his fireplace? When Parzival comes to the castle of the Grail, the king gets wheeled out to the dinner table. He has a groin wound. It is weeping. He is weeping. Still, the young knight, pure at heart, close to the holy goal, can’t bring himself to ask about that yeasty rose. What hurts? How can I help? He doesn’t want to seem effeminate. He doesn’t want to wound the man’s pride. Knight and king, not nurse and patient. But that was the test all along. Could he sever himself from the twin fruits of the body’s poison tree and voice his pity in a seraphic falsetto? Could he change his timber, make it tender, boylike, girllike, singing consolations as he snipped away the gauze?
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Amit Majmudar’s recent and forthcoming books include Twin A: A Memoir (Slant Books, 2023), The Great Game: Essays on Poetics (Acre Books, 2024), the hybrid work Three Metamorphoses (Orison Books, 2025), and a poetry collection, tentatively titled In the Mother Tongue (Knopf, 2026).
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Two Poems by Daniel Fitzpatrick
Good News
There, that twinge, that’s Barnard’s star stitching up my side. Last week it was the Crab Nebula in my ears. Can solar wind shake the hidden garden, let fall with all the cosmic flood beating upon our heads the seeds to ask again who are we to ask again who put the word in whose mouth? Show me the reindeer’s words. Let me see seeing. Stand outside the theory, then the theorizer, then see who’s laughing. Help me, Carl Sagan. You’re our only hope. As if the cosmic heart skipped every beat between the fire at Alexandria and the finger of Galileo. Thing: a walrus ivory carving of a man and bear wheeling arm in arm for death. Fact: this is a lie. Bear has always already won. Fact: bear leaves no monument to his defeat, no thing to ponder as salmon strips cure in the sun at the door of the cave. Chatter on in orbit. Admire these dyadic energies. And all the while who is that looking back from the window of that craft bound for Pluto?
The Angel of Lligat Comes to Tampa
There is bread in a basket and then a bear and a gazelle. I am angelic, inclined to help in quiet just to make the world a better place, you know, for my children’s children. I am awaiting a glimpse. Wait till she turns a little, just a little more to the right and I am a cormorant hulking at the peak of a gazebo. I swim with gators like a nightmare and the sun dries my wings. I turn my back on it, and my yellow charnel mouth is cracked, pointing to the jacarandas. I am of all most pitiable, of all most gosh darn magnificent. Yes, that’s true. Often I pretend to be a farmer but today I’ve mounted an especially violent assault on my frontal cortex, having just sent Benjy back the way he wants to go around the square. America is drooling happiness. America is up against it. America does not know what to say but that, of course, has never been the problem.
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Danny Fitzpatrick is the author of the collection Yonder in the Sun and the editor of Joie de Vivre.
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