ISSUE #10
Nabila Lovelace
Standard No. 2
grandfather shucked the leadhead
of no. 2’s to sharpen the point
when i handed him my broken pencil.
in the after his steady grip seared
my brain, his choice blade, his straight
arm a lowercase…
Megan Alyse
To the Mormon Marketing Department
and to the billboards along the highway telling
me to pray,
I want you to know my grandmother asks me
weekly
how I’ll teach my daughter the difference
between
right and wrong without The Church. When
people
in my town say The Church it only means one
thing:..
Gale Acuff
I’ve got nothing going on after church
and Sunday School today, I’ve got homework
but I’ll do that Monday morning, I could
play with the dog but I forget he’s dead,
run over three days ago, God damn it,…
Paula Harris
today an editor told me that what I write isn’t poetry and so maybe I don’t know how to write a poem but I was thinking about you and wanted to write something; so here is your something…
Lauren K. Carlson
Summer Solstice in Lac Qui Parle
Now at sunset: the children,
I mean their faces, part the light
and reflect a golden
glow, so for a moment though
prairie wind animates branches
and crests its grasses, while tractors
roar through the fields, causing dust…
Lucy Griffith
On Finding a Barrel of Agent Orange in a Dusty
Corner of the Barn
The barrel wants out of the shadows,
to be dusted and shined,
to remember sunlight and freedom,
his role as sturdy brush control,…
Joan Mazza
Rule of Three
You can survive three minutes in freezing water,
three minutes without air, three hours in a harsh
environment, three days without water, three
weeks without food. You have three seconds…
Colleen Abel
Elegy Written Beforehand
No one has died yet.
Or, not the man and the woman
who walk through the Garden
of Remembrance, with its
hyacinths legion in the new
spring, bronze swans lifting off…
Monica McAlpine
Specimen
Pale fins tipped with midnight
flutter against glass walls,
a cerulean torso glides,
flexes, glides. Your skin—suede
brushed to a velvet nap. And all is
blue answering to blue…
Ilene H. Rudman
Sleep
For years I don’t try. Round each
day stooped with the lack of it. Pillows
watch me not trying. Attitude matters
little. Prayer is useless. I know there are
decisions to be made….
.
Victoria Stitt
drinking tea on the corner of sixth and girard
forgiveness simmers under a forgotten
cast iron skillet
burning still traces of the last ten meals.
i haven’t eaten nor have i heard
the swallows’ chirps at this fall’s end.
i could conjure harsh no’s at my lover’s attempt…
Sarah Audsley
Broken Palette, All Yellow
There is the field I imagine & then the field I step into.
This bright study is more or less self-explanatory. If
the cave
painters knew viewers would wait in long lines
to see their work,…
Idris Anderson
Blue Bear
It must be abstract but with colors,
green for the magnolia, yellow for the finches
in the white cage. Blue is the bear I stitched for you
from velour and buttons and leaned on the fence of your bed…
Susan Carlisle
Flying Santa, 1961
The white-haired man who wrote
True Tales of Terrible Shipwrecks, who dove
from tops of lighthouses into the Atlantic,
dropped Christmas boxes from a little plane
to lighthouse keepers from Cape Cod to Maine,…
Charles Douthat
Grounds
And after draining water pipes for winter
and latching shutters closed, after strapping
suitcases to the station wagon’s rack
and taking up a basement shovel…
Sara Eddy
Goldilocks
I wanted always for Goldilocks
and Baby Bear to be the best
of friends, for BB to find her
in his bed and see the essential
good in her–and for Goldilocks
to live cozy in the bear’s house,…
Darren Demaree
Ohio Landscape (June 11, 2020)
I’ve never been afraid
of horses.
It’s the riders,
their skin
& limb, that move
in such awful concert…
Trish Reeves
Chicken Tavern
was where they went
after the oracles, pushing wide—
with extended wings—the twin doors,
harried after news from the sibyls
gathered at the cistern pump;…
Margaret Ray
Transmission Received from Penelope in Deep Space
We’ve been [ ] long enough
for my hair to grow past my shoulders.
[ ] pushed off without thinking, of course
[ ] no choice. Survival
at the cost of [ ]
[ ]. We’re a message in a bottle now,…
Hannah Silverstein
America Is a Cross Between
An apostrophe and a possession.
A retreat and a quarantine.
A meeting request and an ambush.
A screwdriver and a screw…
Laura Van Prooyen
A Year Like None Other
That year all elective surgeries were cancelled, and I
was the only patient. Once my appendix was gone,
my abdomen cleared of the spill, I was neither
sick nor well. Recovering, but alone…
Debasis Tripathy
Spring
Steel is not strong enough like steely nerves
until it is coiled and compressed and cured,
because to bounce back in life takes rigor.
You must rebound and restore, when trounced
to become a tight spring. The suppleness stays…
Katie Bowler Young
Twilight Walks
…and then through the narrow gate of a school,
where, near a fountain’s pool, there’s a mural
of a man, his open hands, with a woman, wide-eyed,
birds at her side and in her hair. I like our search…