My Sunday School teacher says that one day

 

By Gale Acuff

 

when I’m dead and in Heaven I’ll look back

on life and maybe this very moment

and laugh, which might be true because she adds

that we get all-new bodies yonder and

I guess laughter’s possible, I think

that in Heaven folks cry except for joy

and maybe down in Hell if they can laugh

then they laugh at their unhappiness but

I’m not sure and don’t know how to tell her

that I’ll be going to Hell when I die

and not the Good Place but at least I’ll learn

if I’m right and the tragedy will be

I can’t see my way back to tell people

the truth they’re dying to know. And they should.

Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. Gale has taught tertiary English courses in the US, PR China, and Palestine.

 

Meditation on Active Volcanoes

 

By Diana woodcock

 

Surely the pilgrim can feel it here,
heaven under one’s feet –
olivine and lava flows –
as well as over our heads,*
so many rainbows,


the presence and power of
active volcanoes – fire and
molten lava, each eruption
a passage, beauty of the earth
giving birth. In their presence,


one’s thoughts turn to spirit
and transendence, to downward
flow (lava) and rock uplift (the split
ground) – Earth still being
created, volcanoes signifying


the totality of nature’s process.
If one would look directly
into essential nature, let her
stare down into the caldera,
descend into a crater and hike


across a hardened lava lake,
then enter a cave into which lava
flowed five hundred years ago.
Finally climb to the top
of a cinder cone to see once


and for all how everything
eventually flows back into the sea,
and to consider that maybe
it wouldn’t be a tragedy –
wouldn’t be the worst way to go –


to be buried alive
under a lava flow,
becoming at last
all flame beneath
the fiery rain.

*Henry David Thoreau

Diana Woodcock has authored seven chapbooks and five poetry collections, most recently Holy Sparks (2020 Paraclete Press Poetry Award finalist) and Facing Aridity (2020 Prism Prize for Climate Literature finalist). Recipient of the 2022 Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award, the 2011 Vernice Quebodeaux Pathways Poetry Prize for Women and three Pushcart Prize nominations, she teaches at VCUarts Qatar.

 

College Townie

 

By Andrew Zubiri

 

On my way on a Monday to the shuttle stop, the streets sound like a Sunday morning. Walking across the pedestrian stripes feels less threatening. On the sidewalk, I notice that my once long shadow has shrunk, playing peek-a-boo in and out of the studded shade on the ground. Trees puff their pollen. Are you following us on TikTok? The Jumbotron glares from the edge of the sports field facing the dormitories, asking no one in particular. The bus genuflects meekly and lets out a sigh of relief as the lone passenger gets onboard. The streetcar’s see-through belly slinks slightly slower. Today, its usual burdened whine is a happy hum. I’ve forgotten this treasure, the great urban emptying out, and rediscover it like a folded dollar bill in my jacket’s inside pocket. The revolving door of my building seems to resist my push, while the security almost ignores me as he waves me in. The bullpen, still dark, suddenly awakes. The hollowed-out hallways will remain so for the rest of the day, and the next weeks. But a final swarm will descend one weekend. From the bleachers, parents will watch hats fly on the field. A series of parties commence that I almost tolerate. A last hurrah followed by a fallow. A sustained rest from the cacophony. Hushed months of this city's siesta.

Andrew Zubiri is a Filipino writer whose essays have appeared in AGNI, Consequence, Atticus Review, and are forthcoming in Ninth Letter, World Literature Today, and The Threepenny Review. His writing explores identity and the tension between home and diaspora. A former global development professional, he now works in educational technology and lives in Boston.

 

Azovstal

 

By Tatiana Retivov

 

Disassociation begins

While you are negotiating

The roadblocks, you hover

As if above yourself

Flinching as cruise

Missiles interfere with

Your train of thought.

The road curves out

Of view, the emergency

Lane on the right is full

Of abandoned cars.

Do not stop, don’t

Look back, be not

Like Lot’s wife or

Euridyce. There is

No going back.

Or is there? You are under

The influence of a fugue,

One day all is well and

then cruise missiles fly

overhead crosshatching

the abandoned fields.

Tatiana Retivov received a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Montana and an M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literature from the University of Michihgan She has lived in Kyiv, Ukraine since 1994, where she runs an Art & Literature Salon and a small publishing press that publishes prose, poetry, and non-fiction in Ukraine

 

The Confluence

 

By Richard Jordan

 

Shadbush dangled over the bank, spicing

April air. White petals swirled in tight eddies

before a pool where pearl dace glittered

in the reeds. A perfect spot, I figured,

for fat rainbows. But an old-timer waved

me off, pointed into the distance, saying

the best trout were miles away, Up there,

where a tributary spilled into the river. So,

I waded swift, cold current, not knowing

the depth, while small, sharp stones slipped

into my boots. An hour, then more, until

the sky began to bleed sunset red. Still,

I finally found the confluence. And who was

already there but that old-timer? I marveled,

slack-jawed, at his loaded stringer, as he

measured me up then down, shook his head:

Ten minutes by truck, give or take.

A Ph.D. Mathematician by training, Richard Jordan's poems have appeared in Rattle (2022 Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist), Valparaiso Poetry Review, Sugar House Review, Atlanta Review, Little Patuxent Review, New York Quarterly, Rappahannock Review and elsewhere.

 

deep, deep sea

 

Image of the open deep sea

By Prosper C. Ìféányí

 

they are amputating the heads

of small trees & putting them

in small polythene bags. a truck

 

comes to get them at night

because that is the

best season for anomy. i see

 

men working in oil fields

or serving in the army—

chest propped into small coffins

 

& unanimated dolls. they

voyage the bottom sea with these

many heads in guise of trout

 

fishing; if the sea wasn't

so half-asleep, it would have

gifted them a home in the wrapping

 

of a blustery wind. the sun comes

clean to the window skeined

by the willow tree. sunstroke

 

ensconced on the eye of beholder.

dogs paddling in circles

for the return of their masters

 

the sea brings them home

in little gulps: boots first,

axe, then gunpowder, smoke pipes

 

bottleneck guitars, & blue sacks

of bodies. & they say

nature doesn't fight for its own.

Prosper C. Ìféányí writes from Nigeria. His works are featured or forthcoming in The Offing, The Westchester Review, Black Warrior Review, Salt Hill, Magma Poetry, The Fourth River, New Note Poetry Anthology, and elsewhere. His debut micro-chapbook, Sermon (Ghost City Press), appears in 2023. He has a B.A in English and Literary Studies from Delta State University.

 

Bloom

 

By Lauren Elaine Jeter

 

Everything was red once—

your bra propped behind the backseat, liquor

 

mixed into wine, poppies breathing out from the graves

that you’ve laid with your past, killing your demons

 

for your darling (and the pool of you that they pulled

him from one evening in May). New mother,

 

I was there, saw your skin unstitched, umbilical cord knitting

you to your son as they unraveled him from your body.

 

New mother, I’ll paint a picture of crape myrtle petals

raining around you. This is not to say all is clear air

 

and sunshine—I know that you are both stamen and pistil:

tired mother, tired father. But you are standing nectar-rich

 

and sure. New mother takes me to the lake in summer

the day before I marry. (Ophelia, last time you gathered a bouquet,

 

I feared your fate in water, but we are the third generation

to stand in this place and raise our arms

 

toward the water and the world—my grandfather brought

his children here.) New mother, we are knit into the strata

 

of this town. New mother, we are soulknit, tethered

to the strata of each other; I’ll swallow this Texas dirt with you

 

in a strange covenant if that’s what you need, best friend fearing

my move across the country (we get matching tattoos instead).

 

Best friend, there is nothing to fear now—your son is budding,

and you are every garden full, every butterfly flitting in. (Gardens

 

are more ancient than marriage or man.) You’ve already taught me

what it means to stay. I am every moth at your door.

Lauren Elaine Jeter has a BFA in Creative Writing from Stephen F. Austin State University. Her poems have appeared in Rust + Moth, San Pedro River Review, Crab Creek Review, the museum of americana, and elsewhere. She lives in the coastlands of North Carolina with her husband and chocolate lab.

 

Calling

 

By Deron Eckert

 

The satellite in what was your yard

brings questions to me from afar.

 

Are you the one sending them

from wherever it is you are?

 

Or am I merely asking myself

if an object so large can signal

 

you out there in what I call

the great unknown and you

 

knew simply as heaven above?

I ask you to send a message below

 

when I visit your humble grave,

but the dish on which I used to play

 

could not be less than five miles away.

And that’s much too far to have

 

any hope of using it to shout out

to you in the unknown or above.

 

So, I brush the grass beneath

my feet and at yours with my hand

 

as if it were your hair, and I feel

not as if you are still near

 

but as though I can hear

you telling me to appreciate

 

the beauty in this world

the way you did before

 

you got sick and not to be afraid

like you were at the end

 

but curious like you were until

the end because you’ll meet me

 

up there and alleviate my fear

of the unknown, which you know

 

to be simple now after you learned

none of us have to go it alone.

Deron Eckert is a writer who lives in Lexington, Kentucky. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Door is a Jar, Ghost City Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, Fahmidan Journal, and elsewhere. He is currently seeking publication for his Southern Gothic coming-of-age novel and his first collection of poetry.

 

Minnow

 

By Elizabeth Levinson

 

We were a summer of water,

flashing silver fish,

what minnow was a shiner,

a dace,

a chub,

a larval salmon

along the shoreline,

 we were loose limbed

in the waves,

on the sandbar,

knees planted

on shifting ground,

we were sun bruised cheeks

and love bruised thighs,

we were read eyes, redeyes. 

We were love slick

and love sick and soon,

before we knew it,

summer was over and

we were washed up,

bleached white and

picked clean,

bones cold to touch

in the autumn air

bones soon to be spread

by the icy tides

and winter hungers.

Elizabeth Joy Levinson is a high school teacher in Chicago. Her work has been published in Whale Road Review, SWWIM, Cobra Milk, Anti-Heroin Chic, and others. The author of two chapbooks, As Wild Animals (Dancing Girl Press) and Running Aground (Finishing Line Press), her first full length collection, Uncomfortable Ecologies, will be published in the summer of 2023 (Unsolicited Press).

 

Overwinter

 

by sarah fawn montgomery

 

Is it enough

to say I tried?

 

I could not leave

so I chose to hide.

 

Dug deep as claws

could bear, half-moon

 

black and stinking

as the rot of the fallen—

 

leaves, a hollowed

gourd, the weak

 

crow—and I know

to envy what is

 

still beating, escape

the encroaching cold

 

by building myself

a burial like the garden

 

beds, the way in summer

I remove the heads

 

to fool more flowers

but in winter I must will

 

myself mostly dead

in order to just survive.

Sarah Fawn Montgomery is the author of Halfway from Home (Split/Lip Press), Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir (The Ohio State University Press), and three poetry chapbooks. She is an Associate Professor at Bridgewater State University. You can follow her on Twitter at @SF_Montgomery.

 

The Willowish Hue of an Inverted Relief

 

David M. Alper

 

Of a midwinter sky, the smoke of a sauna,
the radiance of a midwinter night. Also here
we read of interconnection, we see both
being drawn together in the same breath:

A few misfortunes, I fear, that more than
offset the good I have done. The number of
misfortunes seems certain, as the adjectives
have their number and differ only by their

exponents, we will hear of them all.
In addition to these are the misfortunes that
are good, you can be sure that the willow
will endure this good, in order to indicate

this. I say that you can be sure of it, because
I believe that the willow has been watching
you, because the good occurs for all who
find delight in it.

David M. Alper's forthcoming poetry collection is Hush. His work appears in Variant Literature, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, Oxford Magazine, and elsewhere. He is an educator in New York City.

 

Weak Link

 

by tomra vecere

 

I open my eyes to see the pony rocking back, turning on its haunches, and vanishing into the swirling flash of horseflesh. Moments before, the gate had slipped from my seven-year-old hand and whooshed open. The metal creak and resounding clang alerted every horse to my blunder. They lift their heads from their perpetual grazing and curve their long necks to face me in unison, eyes wide and ears forward. No one ever lets the gate swing the full ninety degrees, windshield wiper-like. The horses smell my terror and my youth, but mostly they are yearning for the possibility through that gate. I stand frozen in the opening. I hold my ground, hesitantly. I was not supposed to let this happen. I had no instructions for what to do if it did. Had I acted quickly, swung my arms wide and yelled, I could have run them to the other side of the pasture. I might have retrieved the gate and avoided what happened next: our horses, the boarder’s horses, stampeding past me, closing in on the perilous highway we lived near.

I conjure myself as a horse in their herd, running flank-to-flank to Delsea Drive.  Would I steer us to the Delaware River or the Atlantic if I were leading? I wanted to hear the whisper that pricked their ears forward or back according to the source of sound or mood, to feel the involuntary quiver of skin on the withers that telepaths: Run. I coveted their secret language, desperate as I was for true communication and connection, belonging. I longed to be the confident leader they galloped blindly behind. Nothing was chasing them on that day, these prey animals—only confinement made them run for somewhere without fences, the open plains calling. Pure instinct.

After clearing the gate, the horses do not bolt for the highway. They serpentine and circle and their pounding hooves alert my parents almost immediately. My father assesses quickly and commands: human chain! I am the smallest, weakest link in this chain, this attempt at a living, moveable corral. Decades in the future, my father will apologize—I am sorry I was weak— in a note he leaves for us to find. My fingers reach for the fingers of the person on either side—my mother, my father. We spread out at first, only to move in slowly, deliberately, closing the circle. The horses run madly in front of us, wild and licking at freedom, they can taste it if they can only get past one of us. A Palamino pony charges me, and my father manages through the Red Man chew in his mouth: “Don’t you move!” With confidence I pretend to have because I was told to, I close my eyes and wave my arms forward, synchronizing my movements while yelling the guttural cowboy “Ha!”

Tomra Michelle Vecere lives in Gloucester Massachusetts with her husband, Newfoundland Enzo, and a rotation of Guiding Eyes for the Blind pups in training. She has been published in Creative Nonfiction Tiny Truths and International Women's Writing Guild (IWWG)’s Network magazine. Twitter @VecereT, Instagram @t.michelle.v

 

Ebullition of Spirits

 

by micah daniel mccrotty

 

for Jon, who said it.

 

Men came by the house near old Tanasi  

with polite stares hunting hooch and spring water,

their query sometimes the frost of panther

breath. Yet wary of popskull and rotgut,

they asked after corn squeezin’s and mountain

dew, shine or maybe banjo fuel when seeking

a rye smile, their various terms a mild

secrecy in reference to the maize

mixtures of Bloody Butcher, Neal’s Pay, or

Jimmy Red. Those bubbling worts mashed into

white lightening tasted of old and new wines.

Some men beat it then took their pull while others

held each jar like a lucky turtle foot

or Cherokee mortar in reverence

for the creek clear remains of native grains

filtered through immigrant stills, a likker

sought for its nearness to history and forgetting.

Micah Daniel McCrotty lives near Piedmont, Tennessee with his wife Katherine. His poetry has previously appeared in The Midwest Quarterly, Louisiana Literature, Spoon River Poetry Review, Sycamore Review, and The Hopper among others. 

 

the flight of crows

 

By danny solomon

 

I tell you that you can always know a crow by their laborious flight

that you can know them in the air because they pump their wings harder than it seems they should

and that they never get as far as their work promises.

 

Now you have some options:

One, you don’t or can’t know what I’m talking about because you’ve never seen a crow or you don’t look at birds.

Two, you’ve been there, beneath the bird, and you know the body of the crow in flight, or you’ve read something like this in Sibley’s Guide, so you agree or disagree.

Three, what I said is helpful to you because my words describe a world you’ve never pinned down, and now you can distinguish the hard-working silhouettes of crows against the sun.

Four, you didn’t hear me.

 

Five, you are a crow.

Six, you are the air.

Danny Solomon is an ethnographer and natural historian of settler descent living in the occupied Ohlone lands of the SF Peninsula. His recent work can be found in The Gravity of the Thing, Shirley Magazine, Dream Pop, Teleport, and Middle Planet, or at danielallensolomon.com. 

 

Rapture

 

By mary crockett hill

 

 

draw your thumb down the surface of this stone

knot and dent              thrum like bone

 

the knot of sky, the dent of lip—

where a river refuses to forget

the gravity that moves it

this is my body

given for you; do this and this and this—and if you do,

which will be forgiven, which erased?

which word gives the slip?

 

you did forget: i am the word. do this.

i’ve washed your enemy’s tongue with my own. 

 

i’ve washed your enemy. i am my own.

 

and that fleck of light on the broad side of the hill,

 

o light in a basket of light—

 

is this worth

my telling?      

 

will the sky wait for

my kiss? 

Mary Crocket Hill is the author of the poetry collections If You Return Home with Food and A Theory of Everything, and the novel How She Died, How I Lived.

 

I Wake Up & Deja Vu

 

By Idman Omar

 

Will I always be black,

Muslim and a woman in this country

reading faces

shield against shield

in the long, cheap working hours?

Will there always be

these awful months of fear

when I am foam of the sea

chewed skin and

a low, slow immigrant who

whispers the call to prayer?

Originally from Somalia, Idman Omar is a British freelance writer based in London, England. Her poetry has previously been published in Southbank Poetry, Guernica, Wild Court and Rattle amongst others. Idman is a MA Creative Writing graduate from Birkbeck, University of London.

 

Nowhere To Run

 

By Olumide Manuel

 

After a documentary with the same title by Yar'Adua Foundation Production

 

It is either the dying of a country or the country of bodies

Stacking an unrest to the molecules of nature, agitated

 

To a song of buckets, buckets of overflowing plunder.

In my mother's nightmare lake Chad waned to a battleline,

 

The migration of ploughing hands to the thighs of rifles,

The cruor we butter into ethnic tensions, how the North

 

Pours toward the Middlebelt with hunger and strife.

Benue man will say, the desert you run from has ran

 

Into my harvest basket, and now we run into eachother

With blames and knifes. Down South, the fish bellies

 

The crude oil, and a child smokes it for dinner. Now fire

Glares the evening skies of Niger delta, a testament

 

Of how the wreckage of creeks has made black dragons

Out of boys, black widows out of girls, and a stained

 

devastation out of cities struggling to breathe underwater.

A pregnant croc had swam into our store before she awoke

 

From the slumber of nightmare, the flood has blurred

The boundaries of where the sea ends, where the land begins.

 

Where do we go from here? How do we safe ourselves from

The slumber that eats our country into a graveyard, overridden

 

With debris, under claws, inside the silent lament of voices

 Crow-walking the high walls of a weakened green body.

Olumide Manuel, NGP IX, is a writer, a biology teacher and an environmentalist. He is a nominee of Pushcart Prize, and the winner of Aké Climate Change Poetry Prize 2022. His works have been published on Magma Poetry, Trampset, Uncanny Magazine, Agbowó Magazine, Up The Staircase Quarterly, Frontier Poetry, and elsewhere.

 

Mahsā

 

By Bhavika Sicka

 

Fold out the hems of history

as I emerge from its rolled edges

and I pass the priest who is a man

as he chants the prayers of men

and I pass the poet who is a man

as he pens the songs of men

and I ask the prophet who is a man

why he wrote a book for men

Fold out the hems of history

as I emerge from its rolled edges

and I offer my veil

to a fantailed

flame

Bhavika Sicka is a Kutchi Gujarati writer settled in Norfolk, Virginia. She has been a finalist for the Times of India's 'Write India' contest and a recipient of the Dickseski Fiction Prize awarded by Old Dominion University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hunger Mountain, Lunch Ticket, Pleiades, Waxwing, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly, among other journals.