On Our Poetry Deck...

  

Cover image from web

Luggage

It’s January:
the month that carries with her
the tundra heart of winter
in the Midwest

and the hope that this year—
this year—may run
smoother, better, than the last.

Then, a few more things
from her suitcase
not as fun to unpack:
There is no good time to lose

someone important.
There is no good time
to lose someone you love.

It doesn’t matter how old
you are, when a parent dies

it will wreck you.

 Colleen Alles is a native Michigander and award-winning writer. The author of three novels and two poetry collections, she is also a fiction editor with Barren Magazine and an MFA candidate at Spalding University. You can find her online at www.colleenalles.com

 

•

Cover design by author

 

little heart
little face
little voice
you have everything you need
at only seven pounds

 

daughter’s birth—
watching legally mandated
shaken baby videos
how my tears flowed!
how superior I thought I was!

 

Dennis Owen Frohlich is a professor at Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania – Bloomsburg in the Department of Communication Studies, Media and Journalism. Born and raised in North Dakota, he moved to Pennsylvania to begin the next chapter of his career. He's found that Bloomsburg is welcoming, the mountains are beautiful, and the people are kind. Visit his website: https://DennisFrohlich.com/

 

•

 

Cover image from web

OWL

 

The moon seems frozen in the winter sky.
Starlight skates across its sheen.
And brittle too. As if a break here on earth
would crack its rock as well.

An owl perched on a high oak branch
is on the lookout for a tremble in the shadows,
while its ears prod and poke in the grasses,
the cavities, like an old man with a stick.

A field mouse runs a gauntlet —the only
path it knows. The raptor pounces.
A squeal's back is broken before it has
a chance to be a scream.

Life is as good as it is pessimistic.
It's as stiff as ice and yet bends to a hungry will.
The hoots of the night are the chill's enticement.
The hoots of the night are gratefully cruel.

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, River And South and Flights. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Levitate, Writer’s Block and Trampoline.

 

•

Cover photo taken by author

 Bucephalus

 

The horse with the mark, one eye blue,
forehead star-blazed, forelock dark as coal.
Alexander ‘gentled him,’ the legend goes,
but what if, instead, the great king gazed
into that celestial eye, as into a moon’s orb,
saw himself reflected, so irresistible a sight,
he sank to his knees in obeisance?

 

M. Frost's work has appeared in American Poetry Journal, The Hopkins Review, Strange Horizons, and many other venues, with two chapbooks—Cow Poetry (Finishing Line Press) and The Women of Myth (Island of Wak-Wak)—plus a collaboration, Constellation (CreateSpace) with my artist-brother. She writes under the pen name M. Frost to differentiate her creative works from the non-fiction publications required for her job, work that informs this collection through her personal and research experience with horses and as a veterinarian.

 

•

Cover image: Unsplash.com

 

 

My Joy

After years of holding it close,
I decided to share it
secretly with kind strangers
on the gray and windy Prinsengracht,
and with sudden friends
in the noontime shadows
of rue Gît-le-Coeur
and finally with myself
in a bare room off the Edgware Road,
the sweet hidden fire that would always burn.

 

Ruth Holzer is the author of ten chapbooks, most recently, “On the Way to Man in Moon Passage” (dancing girl press) and “Float” (Kelsay Books). Her poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, California Quarterly, Freshwater, POEM, Slant and elsewhere. She is a multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee.

 

•

Prairie cover photo by author

 

  

PRAIRIE DRIVE

Taking little country roads,
the gravel ones,
beside the four-lane
to see the other side
than from the highway.
That one rock barn
has a wall fallen down
on the other side.
That tall house
has a porch other there
with roof collapsed.
That distant silo,
beyond the ridge,
has no house or barn,
only cement steps remain
and a chicken house.

Oh, what can been seen
off the highway!

 

Duane L. Herrmann, a reluctant carbon-based life-form, was surprised to find himself in 1951 on a farm in Kansas. He’s still trying to make sense of it but has grown fond of grass waving under wind, trees and moonlight. He aspires to be a hermit, but would miss his children, grandchildren and a few friends. He survived a traumatic, abusive childhood embellished with dyslexia, ADHD (both unknown at the time), cyclothymia, now, PTSD. He has several chapbooks including A Mixt Life, Family Plowing, Remnants of a Life, Praise the King of Glory, No Known Address, Gedichte aus Prairies of Possibilities, Zephers of the Heart, and Into the Wind (to be released summer 2024). And, coming soon a collection of short stories: Exaltation, stories of spiritual adventure. Individual work is published in Midwest Quarterly, Little Balkans review, Flint Hills Quarterly, Orison, Inscape and others in print and online. He has been the recipient of a Robert Hayden Poetry Fellowship: 1989 and the Ferguson Kansas History Book Award: 2007.

•

 January 2026

Cover: Woodland image from Pixabay 

 

Leaves

the breeze is light
the movement hushed

leaf still

first glance
no stirring at all

only deeper attention
reveals
even the smallest leaf
every leaf
even the largest

has kinesis of its own

 

Katy Z. Allen (she/her) is a lover of the more-than-human world, poet, retired rabbi of an outdoor congregation, former healthcare chaplain, co-founder of a Jewish climate organization, and eco-chaplain. She has been writing in one context or another all her life. Her poetry has appeared in New Verse News, The Jewish Poets Collective Poetry Journal, and 2025 Art on the Trails: Number 9, and is forthcoming in Bluebird Word. My poetic book, A Tree of Life: A Story in Word, Image, and Text was published by Strong Voices Publishing. Her work can be found online at www.katyzallen.com

 

•

Cover image from stock.adobe.com

Shadows Promise

 

Walking the bridge
bedazzled
in sunlight
pending the end
shrouded in shadows
promising continuous
or the world flat,
and I found
the edge.

 

Diane Webster lives in western Colorado. Her poetry has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One and other literary magazines. Her haiku/senryu have appeared in failed haiku, Kokako, Enchanted Garden Haiku. Diane has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart. She was a featured writer in Macrame Literary Journal and WestWard Quarterly. www.dianewebster.com

 

•

Cover image from internet 

A solemn sea
beneath the night-lit veil,
a shoal of fish
— hidden, glimmering —
the hush untouched
by waves,
only the fish,
and your eyes,
meeting.

 

Yucheng Tao is a Chinese poet and fiction writer based in Los Angeles, currently pursuing a B.A. in Songwriting at the Musicians Institute. He began writing poetry and fiction in 2024, and his work has since appeared in Wild Court (King’s College London), Red Ogre Review (UK), The Lake (UK), NonBinary Review, Apocalypse Confidential, The Rush Magazine (Mount Saint Mary’s University), The Arcanist, Cathexis Northwest Press, and over fifty other literary magazines. He was a Top 6 finalist for the Native Voice Award by Kinsman Quarterly . His debut chapbook was published by Alien Buddha Press, followed by his second from Bottlecap Press.

 

• 

Cover photo from internet

Early Morning

The day slips in—
a girl with her
party shoes

dangling by their sling
from her fingertip,
on her toes,
in her frock,

stealing through
the east-facing
kitchen door.

It’s too early to wake
the sleepers
under white covers.

 

Laura Hannett lives in Central New York with her wonderful family. While she loves winter, she is always relieved when spring shows up. Other poems can be found at Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, Neologism, Amethyst Review and The Bluebird Word.

•

 

Cover photo: ‘Second Camp’ by A.J. Campbell circa 1895

 

The O'Sullivans, Diggers

In rural Kenmore
where Irish lads
were semi-barbaric
too often too idle
a farmer left land
to the diligent eldest
a daughter married off
in her shamrock dress
the two younger sons
boarded a ship
to the gold mines of Australia.

It was 1854
when Edward O'Sullivan
and brother Flory
arrived in Victoria
to work as diggers
to live in tents
in the buggy mud
in the heat, cold, always
smothering, suffocating.

Some lives can ruin you.

 

Virginia Aronson is a poet, novelist, and textbook writer who lives in the lush, lurid tropics. Her poetry collections include Hikikomori, Itako, Tropical Diagnoses, Little Smiling Hooks, and Whiskey Straight Women. Her poetry has appeared in many literary journals and has been nominated for multiple awards.

 

•

Cover image from addictivephysics.blogspot.com

 

 

there is no are
there is no were
there is no is
the electron ambles on
round and lonely

where is everybody?

it grows weary of watching the entire history
of the black empty universe
unfold in timelapse directly over its tiny head
and there is no history
and time cannot lapse
and there is no slow motion
because there is no slow
there is no dark
there is no light
there is only empty endless
never beginning
and anyway the electron has no mass
so alas
no head 

 •

 

Pam Berkman has authored or co-authored five books of fiction from Simon & Schuster, and her poetry and flash fiction have been published by Loud Coffee Press and Devil’s Party Press. Her short story “The Falling Nun” appeared in Faultline and was a Pushcart Prize nominee. Pam works in educational publishing in the San Francisco Bay Area and also serves as managing editor at Bull City Press, an independent micropress in Durham, NC, specializing in poetry, flash fiction, chapbooks, and microchap books.

 •

November 2025

 

Cover image from internet

 

Oranges caught in
orange nets: hints that goldfish
swim tropical trees.

 

Milk will wait for you
to pick a cereal but
don’t take too long, kid.

 

Don’t blame me if your
teacup wasn’t washed. It lured
you back to blame me.

 

Terry Trowbridge writes with 5-7-5 haiku, because that is what is taught in Canadian public schools. He know that is not de rigeur, but considers it a vernacular form rather than true haiku. 5-7-5 is the Canadian common haiku. He’s not Basho, He’s not Issa, He’s a guy who went to school in Ontario. This is his second OPP microchap.

 

•

Cover: Red Phone Box Provided by author

 

Up Out Of The Catacombs

Down into another ‘Rabbit Hole’
to the very same Experience…
isn’t Adventure,
it’s Redundant and Futile.
I cockerel fresh mornings,
since slipping the Chains
of Toxic Repetition…
in a New part of the Map
I discovered outside of Addiction.

Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories and flash fiction published in many publications around the world, he yearns to tattoo porcelain bridesmaids instead of digging empty graves for innocence at midnight, this too may pass, yet. His novel Crazy Like Emotion, short story collection Kicking Back Drunk 'Round The Candletree Graves and full length poetry collection The Dark Side Of British Poetry are published by Close To The Bone Publishing.

 

•

David Milley - Figurines Pulled from Boxes of Tea 

The Wade Whimsies 

4. Raccoon

 

There is no mistaking this raccoon.
Caught mid-stride, it crouches,
ring-tail dragged behind.

The mournful bandit face stares at me,
ears perked, alert for a handout, or a trashcan,
or a garden.

A pale, raised ridge runs from its right foot,
up to its ears, along its back,
all the way down the rings of its tail.
This line betrays the maker’s mold.

Every summer, you set your traps.
When raccoons find your plantings,
you catch the critters, carry them
to woods you roamed when you were young,
so long ago.

Near the stream where you once swam,
they bolt into the brush.

 

David Milley's recent work appears in 3rd Wednesday, RFD Magazine, Friends Journal, The Amphibian, and Feral. David lives in New Jersey with his husband, Warren Davy, who's made his living as a farmer, woodcutter, nurseryman, auctioneer, beekeeper, and cook. These days, Warren tends his garden and keeps honeybees. David walks and writes.

 

•

Cover image from author

every morning
at this time: a robin
on the washing line

 

rhythm section
the drums and rattles
of a flicker’s call

 

Melissa Dennison is a writer of haiku, poetry and flash fiction. Her work emerges from the everyday and lived experience (in the main). Sometimes she is given to flights of fancy. Follow her on X (@MelissaDen95756)

 

• 

Cover from fubiz.net by Sebastião Selgado

At the Gielgud, Dame Judi:
lightning on a mountaintop,
up close.

 

Coffee and liquor pours
blanket plasma for
friends in fire and snow

 

Word/visual author Lance Mazmanian: once Random House distributed with Harlan Ellison, got a coffee as payment. Mazmanian was published 2025 by London Writers' Salon, Fiction On the Web UK, WILDsound Festival (TIFF; Canada), more. Leonard Cohen (RIP) thought he and Mazmanian should print a poetry chapbook together. Til the Scrapbook File. https://archive.org/details/@andromeda_snow_globe

 

•

Cover photo taken on Mackinac Island

Prayer to the Elements

 

Thank you, fire.
Lightening strikes, trees fall to ash.
Soil lush, fertile.

Thank you, water.
Filters through rocks,
quenches our thirst.

Thank you, earth.
Beauty abounds
yields fruit, grain, vegetables.

Thank you, air.
Fills our lungs
gives us life.

 

Becky Ventura grew up in Nebraska and now resides in Michigan, USA. She is a retired music teacher. In April 2019, she received the Dearborn Mayor’s Arts Educator Award with US Congressional Recognition. Ventura has two poetry collections: Radiant Jukebox (2021) and Quintessential Cubicles (2024) both published by Wild Rising Press. Her poems have been published in The Art of Listening, Poetry Pacific, Painted Pebbles and in in several Poetry Society of Michigan’s anthologies. Ventura has studied with Judyth Hill, Sarah Winn, and Jane Huffman. 

 

•

September 2025 

Cover photo - 'Okracoke'

Wedge

 

Island bugs gnaw away
my very soul

once enamored with loons
searching for food,
turtle nests hatching
glimpses of a summer sky.

When the hard lumps of chomps
wedged between my pantaloons

shrink

I’ll immerse in nature
once again.

 

Becky Parker is a Pushcart prize nominee who is published in Spirit Fire Review, Agape Review, Sweety Cat Press, Yellow Mama, Appalachia Bare, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, the Rye Whiskey Review, Pulse, the Green Shoe Sanctuary, Sequoyah Cherokee River Journal, Amaranth Journal, Spire Light, Avocet, Mackenzie’s Publication, Salvation South, Heart of Flesh, Mildred Haun Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and 10x10 Flash Fiction, and Penstricken. She is the founder of Briar Haus Writes.

•

Cover: Polar Bear in Svalbard,
Arctic Circle by Marcus Westberg

 

LIKE A RIVER

 

To reverence creation—
make of each new sunrise a celebration.
To let being not doing be my priority,
make silence my preference.
To keep ears attuned to suffering cries,
yet practice the peace of detachment.
To see with my heart the invisible,
believe the unbelievable.
So much is wrong – to sing a song
of thanksgiving for all that is right.
To keep still or pace with the snail
in spite of the world’s ceaseless spinning.
To make losing my goal –
possessions, obsessions –
finally realizing winning’s
not all it’s cracked up to be.
To be able to say, finally,
with rapt acceptance,
C'est la vie!

 

Diana Woodcock has authored seven poetry collections, most recently Reverent Flora ~ The Arabian Desert’s Botanical Bounty (Shanti Arts, 2025), Heaven Underfoot (2022 Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award), Holy Sparks (2020 Paraclete Press Poetry Award finalist), and Facing Aridity (2020 Prism Prize for Climate Literature finalist). A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and Best of the Net nominee, she received the 2011 Vernice Quebodeaux Pathways Poetry Prize for Women for her debut collection, Swaying on the Elephant’s Shoulders. Currently teaching at VCUarts Qatar, she holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University, where she researched poetry's role in the search for an environmental ethic.

 

•

August 2025 

Cover Photo by Author

 

Memorial Benches

 

Names and epitaphs reveal those who travelled
among these trees, below this sky, along these paths.
The birders, mentors, nature lovers, friends,
who walked amid the silence -- silence broken only
by birdsong, trickling water, rustling leaves.
They, who lingered here, came to know themelves,
as much as they did these woods, this land, this pond.

And now they rest, as they did when walking here,
upon these benches, always remembered, always loved.

.

Pat LaRose © 2025

 

Pat LaRose is a retired librarian, and former director of Moonlight Theater Company. Her poetry collection, "Poetry Stew" is available through blurb.com. She spends her time gardening, bird watching, swimming, reading, and walking the trails at Trustom Pond Wildlife Refuge.

 

•

Cover: Martha Silano

 

Saying Goodbye to a Poet
Martha Silano (1961-2025)

 

espalier tree climbs garage wall
where grief bears fruit
for the gone poet

rock climb entrance
for book launch to nosh
on a Jersey girl’s Northwest life

her poem about autocorrect
might call grief garden
a green arbor

wildflower sprigs
on tables in vases
family calls her mama

-

Mary Ellen Talley © 2025

 

Mary Ellen Talley's poems have been published in journals such as Banshee, Gyroscope, and Ekphrastic Review as well as in anthologies such as Raising Lilly Ledbetter and Sing the Salmon Home. Her poems have received three Pushcart nominations. A chapbook, “Postcards from the Lilac City” was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020 and a forthcoming collection will be published by Kelsay Press. - Enjoy her website here: maryellentalley.com

 

•

Peter Roberts - only passing through 

Cover design by author

play of light

beneath summer trees
sunlight seems to dance
in patches, patterns
of shifting brightness.

 

but it’s all illusion,
for truly, all through,
sunlight holds steady —
only the shadows move.

-

Peter Roberts © 2025

 

 Peter Roberts has had poems & stories published in a number of venues, including Better Than Starbucks, Sci Phi Journal, Illumen, Coffin Bell, Uppagus, LabLit.com, Meniscus, Haikuniverse, Shoreline of Infinity, Scifaikuest, Shot Glass Journal, The Chaffin Journal, Nature "Futures", Bitter Oleander, Lilliput Review, The Road Not Taken, Contemporary Verse 2, Poetry Salzburg Review, The South Carolina Review, Astropoetica, Café Irreal, Ars Medica, The Wisconsin Review, The William and Mary Review, New York Quarterly, & many more. Thank you, Peter Roberts 529 Stibbs St Wooster, OH 44691 Phone: 419-631-9454 Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Website: https://god-and-country.info/personal.html 

 

•

Cover Design by Author

 

The Weight of Remembrance

That you held me in your arms
the way I sit here cradling this box,
the way the universe sits waiting
to become, quietly, in the nether
of space & time. You remain
some ashen snuggle I lay gently
on my lap, curled in the warm
swim of my mostly quietest self.

I have so many questions for you,
you who are woven into my body,
tumbling, as you are, this second,
through the chambers of my heart,
the weight of you giving me no answer
a silent weight, a vessel of the soul—
this box a reminder a man lives—

for as long as we carry him inside us,
for as long as we carry his dreams,
for as long as we ourselves live.

 

Author's comment: 'I recently lost my father and journeyed his descent into death over the course of two weeks in a few poems. These are all I have to express what losing him meant. I am proud to share them with you.'

Ariana D. den Bleyker is a Pittsburgh native currently residing in New York’s Hudson Valley where she is a wife and mother of two. When she’s not writing, she’s spending time with her family and every once in a while sleeps. She is the author of three collections and twenty chapbooks, among others. She is the founder and publisher of ELJ Editions, Ltd., a 501(c)(3) literary nonprofit. She hopes you'll fall in love with her words.

 

 

•

 

Cover—’Lightning Clouds’ Stock Photo ‘free download’

Wind I Am More

Gray clouds advancing
across the sky
a gray armada,
like ships in the sky.

Lighting flashes,
across the sky are hurled.
you can almost see,
the ships sails unfurled
as they sail on across the world.

 

David Calhoun is retired and lives with his wife on the Coosa River in Hokes Bluff, AL. His debut chapbook “Mountain Memories” is forthcoming from Local Gems Press. His poems have been published in Joyfully Wondrous, Darkly Beautiful, Where in the World Literary Magazine, Swim Press, and Medusa's Kitchen.

 

•

Cover: '‘Enchanted’ by Julia Carrasquero

 

Wake up past the break of night’s dark sky
flaunting its band of stars across its brow.

Wake up to the whisper of water along the bay,
its light lacing through pearls of clouds.

Wake up, wake up to bells ringing in the day
as it flaps its sails in this breezy blue hour.

Wake up to a flutter of birds on the wing,
tumbling shadows across warm white sand.

Wake up to the beating heart inside
its cage of bones. We are not here for long.

 

Andrena Zawinski’s poems have received accolades for free verse, lyricism, spirituality, social concern and have appeared in Windward Review, Rattle, Santa Fe Review, Progressive Magazine, Evening Street Review, and others with work online at Women’s Voices for Change, Women Writing Nature, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She has published four full-length poetry books, several smaller editions, a collection of flash fiction. Her work is widely anthologized in Raising Lily Ledbetter, Crossing Class: The Invisible Wall, Light on the Wall of Life Ferlinghetti Tribute, and many more. Her most recent book of poetry is Born Under the Influence. Of Love & Wonder is her fifth collection of Origami Poems.

 

•

Cover created by AI:

''abstract monochrome image of a British landscape’

 

Week 1
Found on the day I turned 52

accepted
the lived past
eye
the inevitable end (of everything?)
stride
into the future
regardless

 

Sander de Kock is an aspiring poet. After taking part in writing courses and a poetry masterclass by Ella Frears on Brevity he got inspired and wrote a poem a week in 2024. In these poems he tried to capture the weeks events, sights, sounds, observations or the lack of these. In his other (working) life Sander works as an academic..

 

•

Cover: 'Funeral Sketch' by author

A Country Funeral (Nonet)

The steeple behind the hills respires.
Even the trees fly at half mast.
The birds pay no attention
to the people below.
A faint breeze is felt.
There is no shade.
We stand still,
heads bowed
down.

 

David Harrison Horton is a writer, artist, editor and curator. He is author of Maze Poems (Arteidolia, 2022) and Necessary (forthcoming from Downingfield Press in 2025). His latest chap, Model Answer, was released by CCCP Chapbooks/subpress in 2024. His work has recently appeared in The Belfast Review, Roi Fainéant, Verbal Art and Yolk, among others. He edits the poetry zine SAGINAW. davidharrisonhorton.com

 

•

Cover photo by author

Anonymous Bench

When I can I go to Trustom.
After walking the short or long walk
to either Otter or Osprey Point
I like to sit, let nature pull me in.

My time here is best when I am
no longer an intruder.
I can sit on a bench and wait
until that moment comes--

When bird or butterfly lands nearby,
when dragonfly or bee buzzes
over my head, doesn’t “sew up my mouth”
or sting me, as feared in childhood.

Today, I will wait on this bench
until nature accepts me as
part of this – this here, this now,
where I believe I belong.

  

Pat LaRose is a retired librarian, and former director of Moonlight Theater Company. Her poetry collection, "Poetry Stew" is available through blurb.com. She spends her time gardening, bird watching, swimming, reading, and walking the trails at Trustom Pond Wildlife Refuge. 

 

•

 

Cover: Royalty-free Stock photo from dreamstime.com

 

 

Oh Deere

While riding the lawnmower tractor
a patch of downy seeded dandelions
erupts in a nova of robust cloudlets
nebulously drifting across the farm
but I worry: Did I just
run over a fluffy rabbit?

 

Terry Trowbridge is a Canadian poet, essayist, fruit farmer and sociolegal researcher living on the south shore of Lake Ontario. His work has appeared in over 150 literary journals, zines, academic journals, and occasionally chapbooks. He is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for funding poetry during the polycrisis.

 

•

Ethar Hamid - I have access to a wealth of imprints on my mind 

Cover art by author

We are enough

Our hands and hearts form a circle, a singing chorus,
and a bright rhythm. When the patterns and laws faded,
we found hope in the chaos. We found hope in the colors;
jet black, blue-black, something like charcoal or ink or
glossy black paint; deep brown, like the bark of a tree;
reddish, like an acorn or a spice like cinnamon; golden,
like hay or autumn leaves.

•

 

Ethar Hamid is a beginning writer. She likes to write pieces that have themes of mental illness and recovery. She hopes that her writing one day serves as therapy for people suffering from mental health issues, whether as formal bibliotherapy or informal cathartic reading. Currently diagnosed with schizophrenia, she’d like to help others facing similar conditions. Ethar also writes pieces that reflect nuances in the human condition, experience, and struggle. She studied at George Mason Univ. and the University of Iowa, for undergrad.

She's currently enrolled in an MA in English literature with Eastern New Mexico University, ENMU online. She hopes to work in teaching, publishing, and nonprofits, after graduation--especially in alternative high schools, local community colleges, minority-serving colleges, socially-conscious presses, community development nonprofits, and literary and arts nonprofits.

Ethar has experience in after-school tutoring; teaching evening classes in ESL; behavior technician work; graphic design; food pantry support; and office support. She lived before in Sudan, the U.A.E., and Qatar. She now lives in Sterling, Virginia, as she has for most of her life. Her writings can be found at Finding a Peaceful Place: https://findingapeacefulplace.wordpress.com/about/

 

•

Cover by JanK

Genesis 3:2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat
of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

I do things that are not good for me, or good
for my everlasting soul. Think of her compact

and delicious body as the hum of geometry,
the music in spheres. My own private rosary

with its luminous mysteries of flesh and bone.
My throat is dry; her lips are moving, but not

to the words spoken. We hunger back
where we belong. We ask no forgiveness.

 

Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis; he has had poems published in numerous journals. Recent chapbooks include Justice for all, published by Conversation Paperpress (UK) based on the last words of Texas Death Row inmates. Also, Without Dorothy, There is No Going Home from ELJ Publications. Other releases include an e-chapbook, From an iPod found in Canal Park; Duluth, MN, from Right Hand Pointing and Left of the Dial from corrupt press. The full length collection, Postcards from the Knife Thrower, was runner up for the Moon City Poetry Prize in 2017. His chapbook, Perspectives on a Crime Scene, was recently released by Grey Border books and a full length collection, Pop. 1280 was published in 2021 by Cyberwit.net.

 

•

 

 

 

January thaw
white knuckle ice tightens
the Amoskeag Dam
 
  
through dark night
beside the freight train tracks
the river's black tongue

 

the word's headwaters
where the Pennacook
exalted "Merrah Awke"

-

 

Acknowledgements:
Earlier versions of 3 of these poems appeared in Akitsu Quarterly,
Pine Tree Tavern & Haiku Dialogue. I wish to thank the respective editors.

 

 

Ron Scully is a very retired bookseller. After half a lifetime on the road, a Willy Loman only funnier, he has settled into the Pacific Northwest to read and write. He practices haikai daily and has published widely in the short form journals. He has published a half dozen chapbooks, including Listening for Thirteen Blackbirds with the Origami Poetry Project in 2022. "Between the lines" is schedule to be published by Prolific Books in sometime in 2025. Otherwise he is working on a play and a sports literature anthology.
Occasionally he dallies in lyric verse but only when given. He is also a cancer survivor and a grandfather.

 

• 

John Grey - Here Plus 5 

Cover by JanK

THE ARCHER

He pulls back
on the arrow
until bow and string
stretch just short
of breaking point,
then releases his missile
and, within a breath’s time,
its sharp point
thumps into a target
sixty yards away.

Now try to imagine
what everyday tasks
such skills can be
applied to.

I can’t think of any.

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, River And South and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”,” Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, White Wall Review and Cantos.

• 

 

Cover: 'Cat at Plaza del Teatro' by author

 

 

I.
Before
the sky even
begins to lighten, bird
song echoes down the thin cobble
stone streets

 

II.
In a doorway
a plump woman sleeps
slumped on her stool
her bunches of flowers
soaking in the
morning’s damp sunlight

 

Lorraine Caputo is a documentary poet, translator and travel writer. Her works appear in over 400 journals on six continents; and 23 collections of poetry – including In The Jaguar Valley (dancing girl press, 2023) and Chaco Dreams (Origami Poems Project, 2022). She also authors travel narratives, articles and guidebooks. Her writing has been honored by the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada (2011) and has been thrice nominated for the Best of the Net. Caputo has done literary readings from Alaska to the Patagonia. She journeys through Latin America, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth.

 

•

 

#00119

Write a poem on the back of a kite
fly it as high as you can
ask a passerby to hold the string
just a minute
you have to go to the bathroom
you’ll be right back
never come back

•

 

Author’s Note: ‘a few of (these poems) are from long out-of-print volumes in Italian, Spanish, Macedonian and English.’

 

Craig Czury is a creator of poetry and poetry performances, a university lecturer, an author and publisher, an editor and translator, and an arts advocate who energizes communities and organizations through public poetry. Czury’s early adulthood was spent hitchhiking North America, working carnivals, warehouses, canneries, construction crews, restaurant kitchens, and organizing community poetry readings. It is from his childhood growing up in the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania, from his experiences during 15 years of hitchhiking, and from his continued travels all over the world that Czury’s indomitable spirit springs colorfully forth into his poetry. www.craigczury.com

 

•

Ihor Pidhainy - Snowball

Cover: 'Snowball' taken by author

Fooling Snowball with Canine Thunder

Rough, Rough, Rough,
Barked the dogs to spare the cat
My intention of being by myself.

Snowball fled up the stairs
To hide in her parents’ bedroom
Worried what those chompers might do.

Bark, snap, whine,
A second time to clear the room,
For a minute then two.

Snowball was unimpressed
To the ever-pressing question,
Is it live or Memorex? She knew.

 

Ihor Pidhainy is a teacher and writer who lives in the Atlanta region. His poetry has appeared in Washington Square Review, Litbop, Quarter Press, Scapegoat Review and other journals. Another Snowball poem has appeared in Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit.

•

Jennifer Met - Alterations

Cover: Denim image by Kat Valencia, Pinterest UK 

March 2025

 April-May 2019 Newsletter

 

♦ ♦ ♦

 September 2019

Six 100-word Prose Poems... all in one microchap!

 

♦ ♦ ♦

 

Who Owns these Trees? - Tom Pescatore

Cover art by Lauri Burke w/JKeough

 

Why I'm not Coyote he walk with belly face the ground hitch in step slant smile tongue wag long shag hair eyes to grind see road roll I've no story of Coyote man I got no place; no past. land had shackles before I crossed. only heart is here my own who knows from where I've come. Coyote is not Buddha but friend to Buddha man maybe I am not Coyote sure maybe I am Buddha then if Buddha were American maybe he'd be me too but then like Coyote say he could also be you

Who Owns These Trees?  I am not quite sure     who owns or manages these trees. they are nice.     I am not quite sure who manicures this forest     it was incorporated long ago. I am not quite sure     who has planted these seeds they are biologically engineered.     I am not quite sure who to thank     for the fences that surround them. • Tom Pescatore © 2019

 

 

Tom Pescatore can sometimes be seen wandering along the Walt Whitman bridge or down the sidewalks of Philadelphia's old Skid Row. He might have left a poem or two behind to mark his trail.  His first novel the Boxcar Bop is available now from RunAmok Press.  He blogs at A Magical Mistake.

 

·•·

 

June 2019 

 

First Star - Infinite Chi - Lauri Burke

Cover art by Lauri Burke

 

First Star - Infinite Chi   First star am I, crying dibs upon the night, surf surges with the moon seen full. Sol in decline, we celestials tune lapis tints to our own advantage, black, white, diamanté, we are evening’s formal tuxedo, our role to brake the overwhelming radiance of day, we don’t give a fig about how hard it is to maneuver with zip in the dark, the light we issue wags the tail of night, our matte dark painting shows arms and vanes of subtle bright, giddy radiance sent sparkling from suns eons away, quite alien to the present day. Oh! To be me! Tied to forces of infinite chi! · Note: Poem written from words in a Scrabble game. How many points?

Keeping Company with the Moon   Watercolor moon hesitates in sky, face streaked in cloudy purple brush stroke bands, though decorative, she can't make social plans, owns no boon companions I can see. I've learned she edges from us like shy child, mere inches only in each swooping year, I fear this faint reluctance to adhere, demonstrates a nature unreconciled. I'd like to coax moon home from firmament, invite her to roll lissome down my hall, but there Luna would scarcely be content, and then again, my house is much too small. Instead I'll go outside, put up my tent, peek through flap, keep company as she falls.

From Tales from the Button Drawer: Harold the Button  Harold was a large ivory button, a singleton, who lived in a button drawer with his many friends. Most were small families plucked from worn out sweaters, party dresses and outgrown coats whose fabrics had gone on to make up quilts and socks stored upstairs in the tall closets and dressers of the second floor. Harold’s companions ranged in size from tiny mother of pearl creations to a set of great, curved horn buttons who once strained mightily to fasten a woolen coat of loden green.  Though the horn family liked to toot of days gone by, hunting in the deep woods with Grandpa Swenson, all such adventures were long in their past. The pearl sisters, in turn, were always eager to talk about the high tea Grandma Swenson once put on for the elite of the neighborhood. They saw it all, in great detail, from their perch on her high-necked, ruffled dress. Even the shoe buttons were full of themselves, having covered a great deal of ground in their time. Harold, sad to say, came from the button shop one hole short, he had only three when he should have had four for thread to enter and secure. Yet, being made of ivory, in those frugal times, he wasn’t thrown away, simply tossed into the button drawer, there to stay, and stay... and stay. It was hard to have to listen for so many years to the adventures of others, and have none to share in return. • Lauri Burke © 2019

 

 

Lauri Burke grew up on the shores of Lake Michigan. She worked the better part of 40 years at the Barrington Public Library in Barrington, RI, where she had the great pleasure of continuing her education in the arts and humanities through her work designing and implementing cultural programming. Recently retired, Lauri looks forward to diving into the manifold joys of creativity with time to spare. Lauri is happily married to Jeff Burke, and is the proud mother of Flannery Burke. She has published poetry in a variety of little magazines, as well as three origami booklets ('Talking Back to Tales', 'Moving On: 5 Sonnets in Time' and 'Oh My Heads...') in the Origami Poems Project of RI. And visit Lauri Burke's Artist's page here.

 

·•·

 

bus stop bench - Glenn Ingersoll

Cover collage by JanK

propped by the door the electric scooter he kept telling me I wanted * reading bad news cat on my shoulder fussing * lighting the incense to contemplate higher odors

in the machine the clothes slosh labor-savingly * I have my mother’s hands my mother’s nose but bigger * she doesn’t look at me I don’t look at her bus stop bench • Glenn Ingersoll © 2019

 

Glenn Ingersoll works for the public library in Berkeley, California where he hosts Clearly Meant, a reading & interview series. He has two chapbooks, City Walks (broken boulder) and Fact (Avantacular). A multi-volume prose work, Thousand (MCTPub) is now available from Amazon.com; e-book at Smashwords. He keeps two blogs, LoveSettlement and Dare I Read. Recent work has appeared in bluepepper, concis, and brass bell. - Read more: http://dareiread.blogspot.com or http://lovesettlement.blogspot.com/

·•·

 

 

What She Kept in Her Wallet It was folded in thirds, a yellowed fraying bit of newsprint from a local paper that noted births, deaths and fiftieth anniversaries. I recognized the names, a couple my mother mentioned at holidays or when reminiscing about school days in Nebraska or when she was teaching, an old maid back then, scarred from a car accident. She married late, had me, late, and regarded her own fiftieth anniversary as her greatest accomplishment.

The Only Object I Pocketed Illegally I probably intended to label each stone, pebble and shell I brought home, from the first time I stepped into the Mediterranean to shells from Hatteras, Naples Beach, Pacific Grove, and stones from ruins in Rome, Petra, Delphi, now tossed into bowls, nestled in jars, who knows where from. The pottery shard from Mexico is unique, cannot be confused for anything but what it is. • Mary C. Rowin © 2019

 

Mary C. Rowin's poetry has appeared in publications such as Panopoly, Stoneboat, Hummingbird, Solitary Plover and Burningword Literary Journal.  Recent awards include poetry prizes from The Nebraska Writers Guild, and Journal from the Heartland. Mary’s poem “Centering,” published in the Winter 2018 issue of Blue Heron Review, was nominated for the Pushcart Press Anthology. 

·•·

 

Cover collage by JanK 

 

 

A Trip Back Home We’re only 19 - 7 years older than we should be and 7 years younger than we have to be. We don’t draw faces on the river banks anymore but tonight seems like the kind of night where we should race each other to my favorite creek (yes, of course I have a favorite creek) and reenact The Tale of Despereaux with some pebbles and mud. Let’s write an ode to the tadpoles afraid to grow into their slimy skin and ride our bikes to Steak ‘n Shake. We’ll split a Steakburger and pop and when we’re as bubbly as lightning bugs finding love without swimming in a cheap pool of spilled beer, you’ll look at me as if we could change the world with a well timed joke and I’ll show you the lakehouse on the moon I bought with credit when I was young enough to still see a mirror in screen doors.

Don’t thank me for a perfect night just yet. Don’t kiss me goodbye and call me on your way home. Don’t tell me the night isn’t a cloud for us to lay on and don’t build the next morning from newspaper scraps, sweat stains, and an alarm clock that reminds us that spending money is just spending the time it took to earn that money. Just close your eyes with your back turned to the setting sun. Sit with me in the middle of this green and gold cornfield and pray that our clock has a worse sense of direction than I do. Hold me tighter and tighter as our shadows come to life in a rain puddle of crows, stand up and stretch. That’s when we’ll know it’s another one of those quiet summer nights where we’re the only kids crazy enough to still slow dance in each other’s heartbeat. • Austin Davis © 2019 - Previously published by Bone & Ink Press

 

Austin Davis is a poet and student activist currently studying Creative Writing at ASU. Austin's writing has been widely published in dozens of literary journals and magazines including Pif Magazine, After the Pause, Philosophical Idiot, Soft Cartel, and Collective Unrest. Austin has also been featured in KJZZ’s “Word” podcast, and The East Valley Tribune. Austin’s first two books, “Cloudy Days, Still Nights” and “Second Civil War” were both published by Moran Press in 2018. Check out his website at austindavispoetry

·•·