Seasonal Memory

 

By Paul Ilechko

 

So many of my memories

     are tied to a specific season

perhaps as simple as a trip to the grocery store

unshakably linked to the coldness

     of the weather as we walked from the car

the young maple trees already nude

 

or a late spring day at the hospital

a day of intermittent clouds and sun

an IV improperly inserted into a vein

clots of blood on the torn away dressing

an old man in the room next door

     is unconscious

barely covered by his sheet

     his naked legs exposed

     his panic finally quietened

 

there are steps leading down to the wide river

     that separates New Jersey from Pennsylvania

where a boat sits on the flickering flame of sunlit water

you will leave beneath the spreading flowers of spring

     and arrive as the last leaves fall yellow

the ripples from your passage

     taking such a long time to dissipate.

Paul Ilechko is a British American poet and occasional songwriter who lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ. His work has appeared in many journals, including The Bennington Review, The Night Heron Barks, deLuge, Stirring, and The Inflectionist Review. He has also published several chapbooks. 

 

Suite for the Evening Herald

 

By Emily Murphy

 

“We saw a man eat pie for breakfast this morning.

Still, nothing happened.

Lots of unusual things occur and nothing happens.” The Evening Herald, Ottawa, Kansas, 9 June, 1904

 

1.

Pigeons lined the cornstalks again

fenceposts gray & wobbling in the breeze      late June & ragged lawn.

Clover came in thick last month          now dots

like the towering clouds           billow shade                 purple & pink blush

 

on spare trees & ripening fields & red-roof toyota

wedding ring tapping on driver's door

storm feathering the radio & rendered

in chorus crackling with scattered gravel.

 

Single plate of sheet glass in the sunglare like an icon

on brick like swollen fruit mounted & in the sweat

cool still air      carpet like piled wool—two footprints

down to floorboards molded   & compressor kicks to life

 

with ptang of gravel shot.         A few dozen smudges of gray & white

against dark clouds illumined like         shadows

stretched to asphalt shoulder grow deeper                  until

as though striking flint from a spent lighter

 

fireflies embellish the corn       dark as

wet earth on a warm night & there is no wind only

wake & watery music.              Some miles ahead

lightning & rainfall polish pine needles to emerald glow.

  

2.

where chainlink fence grew into an apple tree

the wind wedged wrappers into wire

            & what once was yellow now snaps

            the air              not quite still                only

                        live más & pottery jagged coyote cast rippling shade

 

scars like old footsteps polished away the grass

five summers now & still the level dirt

broken only by anthills & roots like a running river

Emily Murphy is a poet living and writing in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Manzano Mountain Review, Inklette, and Garbanzo, as well as a very talented pigeon delivering hand-rolled poems to upper story apartments. You can follow her on Twitter @weightsandmeans.

 

Casting Forest Nets

 

By Laine Derr and Carolina Torres

 

Raised on plantains and fish

we knew our way through rocks.

 

Days by the river until our hearts

swelled, belts loaded with loss –

intestines thrown back to the blue.

 

Breakfast: scales picked from teeth,

soup washed wild swimming in skin.

 

Stealing awake, we leave tobacco

for Mohan, a night singer, limbs

like currents – strong, dangerous.

 

A long-haired god, like us, lifting

forbidden life, grinning spirit

casting forest nets, bounties tasting

of little ones raised on life, on death.

Laine Derr holds an MFA from Northern Arizona University and has published interviews with Carl Phillips, Ross Gay, Ted Kooser, and Robert Pinsky. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming from Full Bleed + The Phillips Collection, ZYZZYVA, Portland Review, Chapter House, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere.

Carolina Torres is a Biologist and Public Health researcher who enjoys the arts and literature. As a scientific author, she has published in peer-reviewed journals within the biomedical field. Her writing, mostly prose, is a practice for spiritual reflection.

 

Todd from next door hoses off his boat,

 

By Carol Krauss

 

scrubs barnacles from the hull. Every Saturday from May to September

he hooks up the book trailer and heads out with his spaniel,

his girlfriend, and her daughter for a day of fishing and exploring

Virginia Beach tributaries, back bays. I watch him fill his cooler,

check the lifejackets, and pull out of his driveway.

Dad would wake us bright and early. Hurry down our dock

and ready the Chris Craft for skiing and exploring Lake Norman

coves, inlets. As a preteen, I spent many hours sitting

beside my Father, soaking up his sun. As I aged, I opted

for sleeping in or lengthy friend chats on the phone rather

than our Saturday ritual.

My father has been gone for three years now. When Todd

climbs up onto the bow of his boat, and waves to me,

I can see my Father waving as he pulls out of the cover.

Telling me goodbye years before he left.

Carol Parris Krauss was honored to be recognized as a Best New Poet by UVA. In 2021, Just a Spit Down the Road, was published by Kelsay. She has work in Louisiana Lit, One Art, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and Susurrus. she has been selected for Ghost City Press’ Micro-Chap Summer Series.

 

folding your laundry

 

By Brendan Walsh

 

if god is cruel, which they might be,

or god is merely the neutral arc

of the universe that bends towards

apathy, then the specific agony

of folding my laundry, piles & piles

of endless fabrics, makes cosmic

sense. but today, i fold your laundry,

left behind in the dryer on your way

out the door—let me not mention

the week we’ve had, both cars killed

in catastrophic flooding, two hours

trudging the waist-deep waters—,

the black pants which two nights ago

were soaked to the pockets with sewer

runoff, your pink pajamas which you wore

after our shower, before we collapsed

in the bed, our minds hurtling toward

the expensive, unknown future, little

socks which hug your little feet, silken

underwear, that cool afroed woman

graphic tee, her hair a bouquet of flowers;

i fold all of it. not once do i consider

the struggle, the devastation we own,

only that i love the things you wear.

Brendan Walsh has lived and taught in Laos, South Korea, and South Florida. He is the author of six poetry collections, including concussion fragment, winner of the 2022 Florida Book Award. He’s the cohost of Fat Guy, Jacked Guy, a podcast with Stef Rubino. He’s online at brendanwalshpoetry.com.

 

St. Andrews State Park, 1979

 

By Shelley Johansson

 

Old-school canvas tents scattered like children’s toys (don’t touch don’t touch in the rain, it’ll start to drip), smelling of oilcloth and dried leaves. A tarp my daddy rigged across the concrete picnic table, crisscrossing spider web of ropes draped with bathing suits and towels. Everything and everyone patched together improvised and coated with a light dusting of sand. We six cousins, three girls and three boys, slightly sunburned in a child’s paradise.

Cooler filled with cheap generic Chek sodas, ginger ale, cola, root beer, grape, orange (sure, you can have another one). Thick white goopy sunscreen (come here you’re getting red) on the soft white beach with the rhythm of the waves, riding the waves, do it again, salt in our eyes. Meeting the seagulls’ cold gaze. The unavoidable abrasive exfoliating grit of sand in everything, sunscreen sandwiches sleeping bags crunch crunch crunch (let me shake that out for you).

Flashlights flicking back and forth (turn that off, the battery will die). Insects in the bathhouses, moths swirling around the Coleman lanterns glowing with an ominous loud hiss. Possums sauntering through the campsite at night, raccoons in the garbage, salt breeze keeping the skeeters down. The firepit’s gentle crackles as flames like the wood (that’s enough s’mores, kids). Smoke making reality wavy, calling forth the monsters in the shadows, shadows everywhere, leaching from the branches of the long-needled pines.

We six cousins watched the monsters as they danced, safe in the warmth of the fire, our parents’ protection, our love for one another, safe in the ring of light we had created together.

We six cousins around the fire, innocent of the monsters we couldn’t see, the monsters yet to come, the monsters in ourselves that would have to be named, the monsters of the world we didn’t know.

Shelley Johansson lives, writes, and sews in western Pennsylvania. Her flash nonfiction has appeared in Pithead Chapel, the Prairie Schooner blog, Rejection Letters, Transformations, and Schuylkill Valley Journal Online, and her essay “Sewing Lessons” for Salvation South was an editor’s pick for Longreads. Twitter: @shelleyjohansso, or Instagram: @shelley_johansson.

 

Flathead Valley

 

By Angie O’neal

 

It’s not hard for me to believe

in things I can’t see.

In whatever tells

 

the beargrass it’s time to bloom.

That snowpack on the mountain,

the source from which

 

a river rises. This valley, where meltwater

rivers made a way through

mountains long ago.

 

Father, who died an old man,

they say I shouldn’t

                        mourn your long life.

 

But I still look for you in places

            you’ve been.

                         In headlights

 

bright as twin moons

            lighting up a dark road.

                        A map smoothed flat

 

across the kitchen table. The neon

needle in your transistor radio

            finding the right station.

 

In this world, you vanish—

            new moon, cirrus cloud, the end

                        of a straight Montana road.

 

But I see you like the river

trusts the way forward, scrambling

through rock toward open waters.

 

The way I see a poem before I

            find the right words.

 

How I know this valley is where

an ancient mountain

once stood. 

Angie Crea O'Neal’s poems have appeared in The Christian Century, the Cumberland River Review, Sycamore Review, among others. Her first full-length collection, This Persistent Gravity, was published by Finishing Line Press earlier this year. She teaches English at Shorter University in Rome, Georgia, where she lives with her teen daughters and three rescue dogs.

 

After the Lockdown: Dance Workshop

 

By Kathryn Kysar

 

We had not touched, seen faces up close

in fifteen months. We stand in a circle,

breathing in unison, our hands on each

other’s chests. Waves move through us.

In pairs, we open into each other’s eyes,

not the desperate online search for

meaning or message. Jose’s, deep brown,

tell of his journey north and north,

not forgotten or forlorn, just a bit sad.

We unfurl, like leaves, like the wind

in the birch. We ground our roots, lift

our legs high, point our fluttering arms.

Once, I was a dancer, tall and thin, stepping

to jazz on a worn wooden church floor,

no pews, only the worship of movement,

the chorus of bodies, my teenage

longing for expression, for connection.

Now we stand in a circle breathing,

our hands on our own expanding chests,

curating our internal dances, welcoming

our collective grief, our relief, our communion.

Kathryn Kysar is the author of two books of poetry, Dark Lake and Pretend the World, and editor of Riding Shotgun: Women Write about Their Mothers. Her work has recently appeared in Defunct, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Mollyhouse, and Voicemail Poems. She lives on Dakota land near the Mississippi. 

 

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.