November - Poem 14

Scout, Our Rescue Dog  / Megan Bell

A contrafactum of Benjamin, Who Came From Who Knows Where by Mary Oliver 

Any advice? 
When I handle hangers 
    he blasts to the moon. 
When I invite friends to come inside
    he runs to hide. 
Then he's back, and we
    talk it out on the sofa. 
In his lean, athletic frame 
    I can feel his trembling stop, 
    his growling ease, his tension release. 
Then I softly whisper to him and 
    rub his muzzle
and nuzzle his curly, brown neck. 
His speckled left paw finds my open hand.  
    Scouty, I say, 
don't fret. Sometimes the past 
cast a long shadow over us all.  

When Death Comes / Alison Lake

Let it come
with soft cat’s paws.
Let it nestle
against my chest,
it’s purr vibrating
my very soul
out of a weary body,
to be caught
in Death’s whiskers,
as if it were drinking
cool water.
Let me let go,
let go into the hum
of a gentle, furred throat.
Let it take me off
with a tender bite
to the scruff of my neck
and carry me,
like a kitten,
into the next world.

to spare the minotaur/ Maya Cheav

there is a beast, 
bull-headed and big-bodied, 
at the center, 
of the labyrinth’s 
winding walls and sharp turns. 
the beast wields an axe 
and he is posed as 
keeper, protector, 
holding down the fort. 
he feasts on human flesh 
and he does as he is told. 
but he was born out of greed 
and wrath, 
a prisoner just as much. 
ariadne turns to forgiveness 
and unravels 
a loose thread 
in the fabric of the universe, 
and sets him free 
of his duty.

gratitude  / Jada D’Antignac

my heart beats calmly, my body has breath
i move effortlessly 
with no weight on my chest
i am grateful
i am blessed

the sun blows kisses
the moon looks down and glistens 
i wear silver and gold to reflect the tension
i am grateful
i am blessed

i’m wiping ink from my hands
but at least i'm not wiping tears
i long through my days 
but at least i’ve let go of fear

grateful and blessed
grateful and blessed
i am grateful 
i am blessed
i have no stress

How Many Times Do I Need to Ask?  /  D.C. Leach

There is no need to ask again
but I need you to ask. Well
I don’t need you to ask
so much as speak although speech
is less what I’m after so much as
watching your lips open and close 
like butterfly wings and your cool eyes
heap their earths upon me shovel
after shovel as your voice makes its nest
in my ear and when I say upon
I think I mean within because within
is where the bluebirds sing and the blue grasses
ripple and the blue sparks leap
as if between sheets and your hips emit
that blue light as they pose
such questions.

untitled sonnet series II. / Dawn McGuire

I.

Saturday night, the jukebox stuck on Springsteen.
On cracked leather barstools two women, 
drinking whiskey like it’s medicine.

TV tuned to the Shamrock Rovers, audio off.
The bartender lifts a polished glass to the light.
The whiskey burns on both sides of the silence.

I’m in boots that don’t belong to me.
I watch you. The straw between your teeth
chewed to confession. You pretend

not to watch me. Your body language all hurt
and hunger, shoulder angled toward escape.
The whiskey scalds my throat the same old way.

We meet in places strangers come to mend
where nothing begins well and most things end.

II.

The whiskey scalds my throat the same old way.
You tap your nails against your glass like code.
My offer: a half-smile—no teeth, no risk—

You briefly lift your chin, 
suspect I’m just another storm
when the whole weather system might be rigged.

I nod toward the bartender, then your drink.
Jameson’s — a gesture, or a treaty,
or ambivalence; the air between us fractured.

You raise the amber whiskey to your lips.
Your eyes aimed anywhere but my direction.
No one speaks. We’ve already not 

said all too much. This bar’s a bunker. 
Which one of us moves first, before we're drunker?

live photo / Samantha  Strong Murphey

down at the phone     down at the phone in the hand
in the hand      the child’s face       the face of the child
looking down     at the small toy car     the small toy car holding
his attention poorly    his attention     more fixed on the mother
looking also     at the magnificence    of the small toy car
the mother    looking also         at him         which she was
which I know     because in the photo     live in the phone
in her hand    his live eyes     look up                         look up

November - Poem 13

Ashes & Absolution  / Megan Bell

Red, raw, and wrathful as the January sky, 
The girl collapses, afraid and alone, in the ashes of her life.   
She is nursing delusions; she is seeking absolution. 

The village she clutches is, also, collapsing -
under the weight of too many crooked branches.
It rattles frozen houses where the girl lingers and lingers, aching for chances. 

This is degradation; this is debasement - 
The frozen sky, gray as her pain, spits cold rain, the torture is unending. 
She tries to stand tall; she suffers more attacks.

Yet, the teenager loves the village, still. 
Would stay in the hills, forever. Would bow to them, gladly.   
The hills look down on her like neighbors, but they are weeping, silently and wildly.

How Are You? / Alison Lake

“I’m fine…” Well, actually, I am currently taking three antianxiety medications, not sleeping through the night, having nightmares about the future, feeling stretched taut, like an unraveling tightrope, worrying every day about nothing I can actually control.  I panic at the sight of cut trees, garbage on the streets, MAGA signs, loud car horns.  I cannot even hear the president’s name without spiraling , I wonder what species we are going to kill off next, how many Palestinians and Ukrainians and Sudanese have to die before we stop fighting, wonder if my young daughter has the chance of a safe, healthy future on this planet, if her nightmare about dead kids lying in the hallways is clairvoyance or only a bad dream, wonder if she is going to be stolen, trafficked, raped, or killed, what she will say when she discovers the truth that there is pain, evil, corruption and dis-ease in this world. How can I be fine?  How can I be fine with everything spinning out of my head, flinging in every direction like the shrapnel from a grenade? How can any of us be fine?  “How are you?”

juno / Maya Cheav

she’s like the oceanus sculptures 
on the trevi fountain, 
beauty carved from stone 
leading from the aqua virgo. 
she’s like the tyrhennian sea,
a quiet power 
with an unwavering undercurrent 
of intensity. 
she’s like a pile of stars
trying to be human. 
one day, 
I’ll make her my june bride. 

highs and lows  / Jada D’Antignac

the lows may feel 
more impactful than the highs.

the time seems to swallow you whole,
slowly dragging you through the depths,
whereas a high doesn’t ever seem to last too long.

i think all of this is the point:
a drag of the depths,
a thrill of the heights. 

this is called feeling, i tell myself. 
this is apart of living. 

How Are You?  /  D.C. Leach

on the top floor of the smooth
alabaster building across the way a man
pushes the French windows open
with both arms looks down searching
presumably for a woman or his car maybe contemplating
the distance to earth just once more.
he looks longer. children holler. a trash truck
sings its song. the man spits. pigeons flit upward
and settle among the wire crosses and
terracotta chimneys like dreams
or sheet metal roofs.

I. / Dawn McGuire

Saturday night, the jukebox stuck on Springsteen.
On cracked leather barstools two women sit 
drinking whiskey like it’s medicine.

TV tuned to the Shamrock Rovers, audio off.
The bartender holds a polished glass up to the light.
The whiskey burns on both sides of the silence.

I’m in boots that don’t belong to me.
I watch you. The straw between your teeth
chewed to confession. You pretend

not to watch me. Your body language all hurt
and hunger, shoulder angled toward escape.
The whiskey scalds my throat the same old way.

We meet in places strangers come to mend
where nothing good begins and most things end.

Bluebird / Samantha  Strong Murphey

My younger brother tells me lifelong musical taste is formed
in adolescence. He says that in this, and every other hungered searching,
I should seriously stop. It will never get better than Better than Ezra,
White Stripes, Third Eye Blind—I’ve never been so alone and I’ve
 never been so alive. It’ll never get better than the songs
in his head. I know all the words. He tells me his dream—he walks
into a recording studio and there she is: elf-like, eyes like lakes.
And she’ll have a bluebird tattoo on her shoulder I add. That’s how
you’ll know she’s the one. I overhear him repeat this months later.
I’m always searching his face for signs of song. Was adolescence the
origin of our shared penchant for cosmic loneliness? I was drafted first
into this life. I couldn’t hear them call his name into the atmosphere.
I was already here, already driving through this dark and shifting city,
windows down, blaring overbearing light—

November - Poem 12

Writing a poem (or a lesson in aggravation)  / Megan Bell

I begin to wonder / will the words ever come? / Filling up my blank canvas with a pretty scene that stutters your heart / stills your tongue? /Granting me the privilege to be the one / to catch them / to share them with you./ If they appear, /will they stir up longings in your belly?  /Make you arrive at the moment you've been searching for? /Give you something to hold onto / to hang on your wall / to tuck in your book. /Personally, / I want the words to bring you to your knees. /I want them to kick you in your gut,/ steal your breath,/ blow your doors wide open. /I want you drunk on them. /I want them to destroy you in the best possible way,/ then build you back up / to rip a hole in your soul. /To tear and to mend. /I might seem sweet,/ but there is nothing I want more than to render you inept. /To write my way into your heart. /To take you down with my pen. /It's a lot to ask of the words. / Maybe it's why they don't always appear? 

Palimpset / Alison Lake

In this long story of our current days,
we rehash the same woes. We seem\
to fight the same fight again and again.
Over and over we mark the same marks.

Our days don’t feel fresh and clean,
like a new page waiting for what’s next,
just the same worn-out slip bearing all
the erased lines from the days before.

As I stare, I can see this lone sheet,
dog-eared, rubbed thin in some places,
but underneath it all, I can see faint indents,
a curve here, a line there, ghosts of a pen.

I close my already tired eyes, reach out
and press my sad fingers into this paper,
feeling, like reading a new kind of Braille,
what it was that we once wrote down.

I feel our love story; my hope, your patience,
the easy way we had with each other, of being
together, of finishing each other’s thoughts,
Our days progressing in a lovely, joyous script.

I am greedy to remember it all, write it
down, grab a new, empty page and begin
to transcribe everything onto it, give me
a way to start again and share it with you.

saint valentine / Maya Cheav

tell me, 
is it a crime? 
standing under the laurel archway 
to the sound of wedding bells.
all they’ve ever wanted 
is to be man and wife,
woman and wife, 
man and husband. 
in a world where it was once outlawed, 
and they could outlaw it again
in the not so distant future, 
you couldn’t pry their hands apart,
fingers in a deadlock. 
you will make martyrs out of them,
watch them  give up every ounce of blood 
coarsing inside their beating hearts,
before they ever let go. 

dazed  (antidepressants) / Jada D’Antignac

for four years i watched myself from the outside. in and out, disconnected and drifting. 

you know how rough it is to not feel like yourself for four years? you ever had to pinch your own skin to remind yourself you were still breathing? you ever been so numb you had to remind yourself you could still feel something? 

road trip, staring through the window—everything moves fast yet stands still. dazed. in a crowded room—everyone feeling so close but so far away. dazed. in my therapist’s office, feeling like i was sinking into the couch. dazed. unable to focus on the words spilling from her mouth. dazed. leaving her office, having no recollection of what we discussed. dazed. 

drifting further and further away, body disconnecting from mind. i didn't know how to find my way back to you or to myself. even when i let you inside to assist in the search, we’d always return empty handed. 

my brain, too immeasurable. i worried you might drown in my whirlwind. lose yourself in my confusion. rot away in my hands. i worried i might be too dazed to even notice. 

The Wind Is Blowing Trashcans Down the Alley Flipping Pages  /  D.C. Leach

of my journal to July 17, 2023—the fan is blowing low
this morning. still fasting. no break in the slow open
and close of eyelashes. cigarette butts a kind of pavement here,
conveying us to the foyer of something new. no A/C,
no daisy, nothing expected but the sweaty and holy epiphanies
of heat strokes. I remember three such instances,
three of everything really. the trinity never
leaving the corners of my mind, always shadows
on the periphery, cracks in the ceiling, little drops
of light falling through my faculties. attention. everything just needs
a little attention. a little break from the current pulling us
away from small details like eyelashes. eyelashes and toast crumbs.
whole bags of toast someone has made and lathered and put back
in the bag as if (and I can’t read the writing here) in case, maybe
in care. I’m afraid of not asking the right questions. of tension.
of dismissing tension. of removing dividers
between compartments. of not removing them. of being a fan like this
stuck on low.

Insomnia / Dawn McGuire

The Friend in my ear again
not like an angel, more like the neighbor
who calls when your dog’s loose
saying Give stuff away—casual, flat as tap water

So I haul my naked body
out to the garage
It’s a promiscuity of plastics—
jars of nails, Dad’s drill bits
a bin of sins I mistook for salvation
no wonder I can’t sleep

The truck from the place near the pawnshop
backs up
the high beams ricochet
off ten thousand surfaces
my eyes water

The Friend hands me a box:
Important Documents—
expired passports, certificates proving
I once mattered to some committee
love letters proving I once mattered

We load books with little fossils of thought
in the margins
conference banners
trophies for not making waves

A carton of microwave kettle corn
sweet enough to seal your teeth shut
hiding the actual hungry
the night’s incisors

The demo crew’s idling out front
crane arm poised like a gavel

Studs crack
sheetrock coughs up insulation

Certificates go last
all the initials after my name
go into the shredder’s grin-slit

What’s left hums
nothing is left
I hum back
lie down in the air where my name used to be
porous, vincible, ionizable
reusable

The Friend clears his throat
night folds its big paper wings
and I sleep.

Bathsheba / Samantha  Strong Murphey

The lambs grew up pretending to be sheep.
They called the sheep wolves in no clothing.
David was supposed to be at war. She didn’t know
he was there, much less watching. Her in her private
courtyard. Him in his palace, looking down. She wasn’t
beguiling, just cleansing. A ritual, after the blood.
No one can agree on her story. The songs all mourn
the king’s fall. Nothing lasts. Not one goddamn solitary
moment, not the water poured, not the sunlight
softly filtered through the screen, not the reprieve
from punishment granted when you birth a son,
not the son.

November - Poem 11

Sacred Spaces  / Megan Bell

Instead of...

Telling me you love me, hold my face in tender hands like a prayer, chant my name softly as you wipe tired tears from my happy, overwhelmed face, as you watch me reverently sweep our floors, as I hold our son in every fiber of my body still - even though he's fourteen with the voice of a man. Worship me at the altar of the kitchen sink by scrubbing another dinner from tired pans. Wash my hair, my feet, dote on me like we're brand new and I haven't already tied myself to you and this messy life.  

Instead of...

Telling me I'm the best friend you ever had, show up at my door with all your middle-aged horror stories. I'll make a sacred space for you. Tell me about the casserole you burnt, your paint selections for a worn out living room wall, how your house plants require more attention than you can give them. Tell me how you're thirsty for something you can't name, how you want to be tended and watered, spoken to softly while you flourish in a brand-new body with no loose skin. How sometimes it all too much even when waking up next to a man who loves your marriage bed as much as you.

Instead of...

Yelling, I hate you, and slamming your door when I ask you to empty the dishwasher, maybe you could just quietly curse me under your breath, with a smile on your face, and do your job like every good little woman bred for politeness.  You aren't polite, praise the heavens you aren't polite. You feel safe - slam doors daughter, shout daughter - you feel safe. 

The True Story of Medusa / Alison Lake

She ran in to my temple,
her breath ragged, gasping,
pulling open the doors
and trying to push them closed,
but the man was there.
He burst his way inside.
He was no god, for real gods
don’t force themselves
on anyone. He was merely
a man, but that was dangerous
enough to her.  She cried out
as his hot hands grasped
her ankles and I appeared.
A mere thought from me,
and his lust fled, flowing
away like his blood
as I castrated him, smiling.
The girl, so young, so fair,
knelt at my feet, her tears
dripping onto my robes.
He was one of many.
She asked for a form,
gruesome to behold,
that would keep her safe,
that could turn men’s
desire into stone. I agreed.
And so, she searched them
out, punishing those who
would desecrate a woman.
But mortals grow old, tired,
and these kinds of men grew
In number until she asked for rest.
I turned her spirit into a wingѐd
mare and set her free. Alas,
by now all the pens were held
by men, they killed the women
who dared to write, and so
twisted the story into one
that said only what they wanted.

these bodies are just vessels / Maya Cheav

and it is something to be known beyond flesh, / beyond body parts, / beyond chromosomes, / beyond what the world expects us to be. / it is but a case of pre-packaged bones and fascia  / to store my shade in. / a jar to hold the colors of my soul. / can you see me / beyond what’s to be seen with eyes alone? / do you take notice / of my shadow in my wolfly form? / do you take notice / of what I grow in the garden, / the endless fields of figs and pomegranates / that I’ll never eat? / I know this is just the way things are / but it’s not how it’s supposed to be. / I know this is just the way things are / but what if I want more than this?

safe / Jada D’Antignac

i need alone time, i say
i need space, i say
it helps me
it’s safer
i think i’m meant to be this way, i say
i'm fine, i say 
i'm okay
i just need space
i don't want anyone needing too much of me, i say
i’m selfish, i say
i enjoy my alone
alone, alone, alone
until lonely takes over
an uglier form
a more uncomfortable form
and all i really mean
all i have ever really meant
is come love me correctly
come love me safely

The Auburn Leaves Let Go Peacefully near Baltimore  /  D.C. Leach

The sun this morning moves so lightly it seems adrift from its shadows. Passing jets leave contrails that tether the early light to the tree line, behind the baseball field, across the street. Geese pass and scatter it. Two little girls screech and chase each other like squirrels around the base of a tree. The dust rising from their feet tethers a single cloud before drifting off with the voice of someone singing. The sun this morning moves so lightly I wonder if I am awake. I would rather this not a dream. That the warm light not take its children and geese, its voices and jets. That it not leave me, alone like this, by the dark window.

Jubilee and Jane / Dawn McGuire

I.

She set me on her pillow,
told me to mind the room,
then left with that look humans get 
when they’re off to change the world.

I wasn’t jealous.
I ended up with an excellent position—
top shelf, next to a copy of Tarzan,
where I could watch the dust navigate light.

I pictured her in sweltering Tanzania,
notebook in hand:
“Branch-clasp grooming behavior continues for 14 minutes,”
while a chimp beside her thinks,
This lady needs a nap.

I missed the green soap smell on her sleeve,
the hum she made when she read.

But we all have our assignments.

Sixty-five years—
a long time to sit and think
about the secret lives of corners,
the politics of flies.

I imagined her, sun-browned, lean-limbed,
teaching humans that chimps
share nearly every bit of DNA.
I already knew; every hug said so.

When she came home,
she’d brush a thumb over my muzzle,
groom my loose threads.

She’s a legend now,
and I’m in a travelling exhibit—
her first wonder, her first friend.
People peer in:
“The chimp that changed everything.”

I just kept her company. Maybe 
that’s the start of everything.

Out there in Gombe and beyond,
her work, nearly finished,
but not all the work she began.

May she come home soon to rest,
content to be groomed by sunlight.

II.

You would have loved Gombe, Jubilee.
Early mist and mischief,
afternoons when David Greybeard
would steal fruit from my bag
and give me that look that said,
Lighten up, Jane.

At conferences, as data deepens
creases in my brow,
I still catch myself tracking 
who sits beside whom,
who offers a banana first. 

And yes,
I might have turned a bit chimpanzee.

You warned me.
But there are worse things to become.
Chimps don’t rush.

Yes—they make war,
like us.
The ancient brain we share—
wired for rage and ruin.

I’ve seen the Gombe River 
bruise itself red, tasted the water’s 
bloody bite.

But look at you! A celeb in the museum!
Your lopsided smile still teaching 
how big hopes
start small.  

And don’t think I missed 
that whisper: It’s time
to put the notebook down, my friend.

Still looking out for me.
Still my keeper.

These days I scribble less, listen more,
especially to the young
putting their backs to the work.
They understand hope is a muscle 
that resistance makes stronger.

You’d like the new me, Jubilee—
fewer field notes, more field.
A speck in the vastness of the wild.

Jane

lucky / Samantha  Strong Murphey

for 20 minutes     i thought i had cancer
20 minutes is the perfect amount      the receptionist
never should have read me results        misread me the results
i could sue      i didn’t sue       i awoke
in your 20-year high school reunion      all these years i thought you
were full of shit      but there you were       in all the stories
you’ve lived on      everyone clambering to tell me      their view
of the fight club knock-out            in Billy Dong’s backyard        
you were radiant in every version     still standing      blood on your lip         
everyone treated me like i was lucky       and i lived harder        
for a few days      loved softer        for a few hours 

November - Poem 10

Our backyard, a song in spring  / Megan Bell

Suddenly, our backyard is a revival after a spring rain.
Geese waddle about in feathered finery, splashing water,
gossiping, telling God their troubles and offering thanks
for the glassy, preening puddles nearby.
I mean, what is life without a little admiration?

Robins gently bounce, seemingly at random, shaking wings,
pecking and checking for insects, all the while
whistling praise to the blue sky above
while whittling the brown earth below.
Has it ever occurred to you that a bird never sings out of tune?

Sandhill Cranes, grooming feathers, find marshy land to roost,
whooping loud and proud,
sounding like a thousand voices offering hello's to old and new friends.
After all, none of us are an island.

A butterfly, unaware of its grace, flits by
while peepers peep
long into the glittery, slippery night,
lulling kingdoms to sleep with their easy symphony.
Restoring, nature's wild, delicate song to our backyard. 

Things My Daughter Says To Which I Have Difficulty Replying / Alison Lake

I am going to New York, chugga chugga choo choo, on a train to see Lady Liberty. I love her. She lets everyone be free.

We were never enslaved because we are white, right? How come dark people were?  That’s not nice.

(After reading Phan’s Diary about a girl forced to leave Vietnam) I feel sorry for the Freedom Boat that sank and the person who drowned. Is this story true?

Why is _____ being so mean to me?  He should be kind.

Why do people throw trash on the side of the road.  It hurts the Earth.

Sometimes ______ doesn’t want to be my friend and I don’t like it.  She says mean things and I’m like “Why?”

Why does _____’s mom talk to her like that?  Why does she have a kid if she’s not going to treat them nice?

I wish I had a sibling to play with. Why did my brothers and sisters die in your belly?

Do strangers take kids like me because they don’t have children of their own?

someone get the bone saw / Maya Cheav

the beast in me is sleeping. 
the blight of a forest fire 
colors the world a shade of red.
my bones were taught 
to be afraid, 
to bite back with spittle and sharp canines
when prodded and provoked. 
I have to teach them again to be gentle,
to make my legs stop running,
despite the blisters and the bruising. 
do not forget my power, nor my strength. 
I could kill you with my bare hands—
just as I can make flowers bloom,
I can make hell snap. 
but I’m not here to destroy you. 

haiku for fall / Jada D’Antignac

a happening for 

live to be lived, but where does

change begin and end

Letter to Whoever Will Listen (Fingers Crossed Terrance Hayes) Cannibalized by a Failed Cocktail Recipe /  D.C. Leach

I’ve been watching videos online of people mixing cocktails. They shake their tin shakers overhead till a cold sweat appears. They stir with long and twisted spoons. Top with soda. I watch a few like this before mixing my own. “Tonight, we aim for sophistication,” I say to the camera. A cat in a tux sniffs at the lens. First, select a spirit that’s distinct without being too dominant, I say, unscrewing a bottle of aged Leach. “The more heart in the mash, the sweeter the spirit; the more mind—the drier and spicier.” The liquid looks like moonlight dripping off winter branches and slate roofs into your dreams. “Wait, no, first take your rocks glass,” I open my journal on the counter. “Cut an inch-and-a-half thick disk of Barnett—the peel will stand in for bitters and deepen the structure.” I hold drawings of baguettes and the universe falling apart to the camera. My nakedness is dead with the evening. “Leave a bit of the flesh on the rind to brighten the drink nicely. Muddle with 1 tsp of Rohrer questioning the last line. This will add viscosity to the cocktail and draw out some of the core’s aged characteristics. Now pour in the 2oz of Leach. Fill glass with cracked Lee, Wright, Ryzhy, Akhmatova, Glück, Vicuña, they’re spilling out of the glass, keep adding, keep scooping and adding, Ritsos, de Burgos, stir briefly. The cubes crack and sing. The Leach should be nice and chilled by now. Express Sealey over the drink and leave vertical in the mixture for strangeness.” In an outtake, I put my ear to the glass and open my mouth a gramophone. In another, the camera catches me just laying my head against the bookshelf—Murillo’s titles in the background, drawing on whiteboards, saying sweep up the mess, quick, before it melts.

Self Portrait as Kentucky Haibun #5 / Dawn McGuire

Hush

Diane says the shovel is Papaw’s,
It resists when she picks it up
like it’s still loaded.

Billy says rust is heavier than you think.
“No way would I sleep in the same room with it.”
Diane props it against the porch.

No one talks about why the ground behind the barn stays soft.
The plaster angel has grime lines down the wings.
I don’t mind.

I’m not even there, not like they say.
I just got quieter— like an engine 
after the key’s switched off.

I watched them bury all sorts of things:
a matchbox Corvette, a plastic clarinet, 
a carton of cigarettes, stuff they stole from the gas station.

“Until things cool off,”
Diane would say.

She says she never prays.
But I heard her. 

When the Buick groans
and the porch light flickers,
nobody thinks it’s me—
except Diane.

Sometimes when she hums Mama’s old song,
she doesn’t finish the last line.

“How come you always talk like she’s here?”
Billy asks.

Diane crushes her cigarette on the shovel blade.

“Because she is.”

sings into the mirror.
hush-- something
singing back.

Dauphine / Samantha  Strong Murphey

At 27, Marie Antionette had an artificial village built for herself
to play in at the far corner of Versailles—The Queen’s Hamlet.
Small storefronts with nothing inside, a fanciful footbridge adorning
a manmade pond. She dressed as a peasant girl. She wasn’t a child
but she skipped down the empty little street, plucking
Rose of Sharon from the climbing vines. This is not shocking.
It’s old as empire: rich girls pretending to be poor girls, poor girls
pretending to be queens. There is a history still thatched into the
useless roof, a soul stuck in the waterwheel. It was quaint,
never intended to work. Though, there were real things—
vegetables garnishing the rows. Lambs alive in the pen. I would never
question if the village had been fashioned exquisitely close
to reality. It’s just that the tomato plants were replaced 
each night, unnatural ripeness plucked into a basket each day. 
It’s that the lambs were ripped from their mothers. 
The lambs grew up pretending to be sheep.

November - Poem 9

Both Sides Now (in the key of Joni Mitchell) / Megan Bell

For Evie

Raised in Indiana on God and farmland, she rode horses, drank Starbucks, drove a Thunderbird - she was cool, carried her old soul casually, like a pair of great sunglasses or vintage purse. She traveled well, often - her eyes open, her heart curious. Young, she fell in love with the Caribbean, not knowing one day she would take her son back, bring friends along.  Her dreams were strong, sturdy, soaring - they were larger than everything appeared in side view mirrors - so she put Indiana in her rearview at twenty-two. In Coastal California, she shook hands with the shoreline, with living. This was a promise she could bet her life on. Staking her flag, she tacked her dreams to a stable wall. She was home.

Raising her son in California on grace and sand, she drove a convertible, rubbed elbows, wrote in long hand. Her rhythm was rock-solid - God knew where she lived. Relentless, Evie discovered she could be both a wife and a mother, a daughter and a friend, a sister and a writer. She could have the picture: Bob, Henry, her dogs, this glory land. On bended knees, split wide open, she vowed to not waste a moment. Rooted in love, winged in thanks, she was moored. 

Rising, always rising, like the morning sun, you could set your watch by her. She faltered only a moment, stopped to defeat cancer, to topple fear. Still, she landed in words and love, didn't lose herself to middle age or BRCA. Walked next to Bob, found she was built to break, inspired awe. Met God on her kitchen floor one night, wearing her best hoops and heels. Laid bare on cracked linoleum, she surrendered her breast, her hair, all her plans. She was tenacious. 

Risen in Solvang, renewed like spring, she's writing, still dreaming lofty dreams, still putting the top down, turning the radio up, hanging poems and pictures on her walls. Her scars, reminders - she's seen "Both Sides Now."  Most days, you'll find Evie down around the way, proudly driving H to school, with her holy coffee mug in hand, a sacred ritual between mother and son. They wave at strangers, laugh at life, say I love you right out loud.  

And as they drive, they sing, "Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels, The dizzy dancing way that you feel, As every fairy tale comes real, I've looked at love that way."

She is well.  

Old Hedgehogs / Alison Lake

    After Hedgehugs by Steve Wilson

They had been the best of friends,
had become husband and wife,
then troubles came, and sorrow too,
that soon upset their married life.

Soon each day was filled with prickles,
they rubbed each other the wrong way
and time after time their quills were sharp
when they both wanted rest and loving play

No sock was thick enough for them,
the softness of the fabric didn’t serve
to ease the pain of each other’s spikes;
when they touched they hit each nerve. 

They need to find a way to live
without bristling up in defense
to remember why they lived together,
to find a way to make amends.

For now, they circle quietly ‘round
and try to hold their spikes within
each hoping that the other one
recognizes the pain they’re in.

They had been the best of friends.
they had become husband and wife.
They will try each day to live with love
And put an end to their long strife.

faunalia rustica / Maya Cheav

autumn slouched towards winter 
as the forests and plains prepared for hibernation. 
the common folk made worship 
to the goat-legged king, 
in prayer and promise 
for the anemoi 
to be on their side, 
for the fields to brew 
fruitfully, so that 
their bellies could be full
come the cold season. 
they hoped their sacrifices 
of wine and goats 
would be enough to please 
the satyr, so that he 
would be so kind as to 
make the wildwoods 
tame. 

pillow talk / Jada D’Antignac

gripping my wine glass with one hand and twirling my hair with the other, i ask him what’s making him feel good these days. i ask him about his love for music, what led him to love it. still curious, i ask him to name his favorite r&b artists. the conversation pivots, no longer needing my random questioning. we talk hometowns and high schools. we talk split parents and its effect. we talk personal growth and how proud we are. he glows when he speaks about his, i smile with all of my teeth as i speak about mine. i mention how protective i’ve been of myself, not wanting anyone to create a mess of what has already been cleaned. he nods, assuring me that he’s attentive. the wine sneakily reminds me how it feels to be lightweight. my thoughts become less organized. i don’t tell him i like conversations better this way. he yawns and invites me to rest my head on his chest. we’ve touched with our minds, that’s enough to hold us over. 

*** / D.C. Leach

pouring my shadow into the oak's autumn dusk

A disjunctive, single-line haiku.

Kentucky Haibun #4: Ashland / Dawn McGuire

Diane finally lowers the hood.
10W-40, coolant, tire pump, a pack of spark plugs,
traded at O’Reilly’s for the hood diva.
Billy pries off the gas cap and pours in a couple of gallons.

“Stand the fuck back,” she says, as she hotwires the engine.

It grinds twice before it turns over.
Billy shouts, “Thank you, Jesus!” and points a finger to the sky
like Big Papi running the bases.

We climb in, me in the back
with the rusty toaster from the kitchen
scattering burnt crumbs.
The transmission thunks as Diane shifts into first.

Billy, high on triumph, asks, 
“How come you don’t pray, anyway?”

She lights a cigarette with the car lighter,
even though it barely heats up.

“You don’t know?”
She doesn’t look at him when she says it.
The ash falls in her lap.
“You let God know where you are,
then you get stalked.”

He squints like she just told him angels are actually drones.

“Last time I prayed was the night the house burned up.
Here we are, barefoot at the end of the driveway.
Fireman hands me Dawn.
Even the swing set was melting.

Who names a cleft-lip baby damn Dawn anyway?
Sorry, babe,” she says over her shoulder.
“I didn’t let you down. Seems like for days
I wouldn’t let you down.”

She stares out the window toward the broken water pump.

“Billy, don’t you remember Papaw coming to get us?
He threw our cat out the window.
You must have been asleep.
Wouldn’t let us stop to pee til Ashland.

Mom—you say you don’t remember, but you do—
had those bad scars. Dad wouldn’t touch her. God.
He split for the steel mill in Dayton.
Then she hooked up with that hypnotist with he eye patch.

But I don’t blame her now. I met him once.
At least they sent money every month.”

Billy reaches for the glovebox Bible.
She slaps his hand.
“Don’t go waking things up.”

The car idles at the bottom of the hill,
ticking, then missing, like a bad heart.
The sun is setting red as the engine warning light.

She says, “Billy, I know you need a car,
but this old Buick? It needs somebody
who can really save it.”

drive-by roadside chapel
door wide open
nothing left to steal 

role play / Samantha  Strong Murphey

the fridge light goes off       when the door closes
this too is an act     of faith       15 years in      we are forever
looking for water         just like capitalism, art      
can make good people          bad people         
the year had rolled to a stop
from the doorway      he said Annie
       (my name’s not Annie)      he said Annie
get your gun

November - Poem 8

Four Corners / Megan Bell

My husband asks me, How do you write a good poem?
I tell him, Hand to God, I don't know. It's not a math formula. 
What can I say other than begin with both eyes wide open, ear pressed to the door of nature, heart listening for lines that invade your sleep. 
If the words wake you and shake you, make space for them. 
Marry yourself to them. 
Like those smooth rocks we carried home from the shore in Michigan,
the ones Maggie loves.
Little things are big things. It all brings something to the table. 
I ask him, How do you build a strong house? 
He tells me the corners must be square.
I shrug my shoulders, say, This poem is out of level. Hand me your tools.

On What I Leave Behind / Alison Lake

I want what is left
to make those who come after
pause,
draw breath,
and realize they can never again look
the way they had before.

I want them to see
the world reflected in a dewdrop,
hanging from a spider’s web,
which in turn hangs
from the leaves of the overgrown boxwood,
nestled in the forgotten corner
of our yard.

Or maybe
see themselves there, tender and open,
seeking love and acknowledgement
and finding it.

I want them
to marvel
at the life of a worm,
be awed by the fungus and lichen
growing on the dying tree,
hear the skitter of insects
under the shagging bark,
hear the sap rise from roots to leaves.

I want the beauty of this place, this Earth, this Universe to rise like that and overflow
the edges of their hearts and fall to the ground,
in turn to grow more beauty.

versipellis//TURNSKIN / Maya Cheav

beheld inside the pages of the satryicon 
is a beast of odd pallor. 
one with fur like unkept wild grasses 
and claws like glinting pugios  
on the battlefields of carthage. 
one with fangs like the jagged ridges of the appenines
and eyes like yellowed amber 
with fossilized scorpions for pupils. 
there is an unceasing hunger
under the blood moon, 
a violent desire 
for carnage and catastrophe. 
if you excavate the shame 
buried in the crevices of your skin, 
you might find 
that a wrought monster, 
a wretched wolf, 
can be a beautiful thing.

coexist / Jada D’Antignac

giving love and never loving again can, 
ironically, coexist. she gives random 
“because i thought about you” gifts like money 
was never an issue. acts of service and 
gift giving compete for the number one spot 
as her love language. despite it all, she 
never learns to love again. she lets the snake 
seduce her with the apple. she lets the snake 
snatch the apple back. she lets him eat until 
she’s left with the rind. 

They Beat the Poor Horse in that Dream in Crime and Punishment / D.C. Leach

ask any Russian and most will deny
the connection between modern Russian’s nakazat’ (to punish)
and Church Slavonic’s nakazati (to instruct)
or the relation between otkryvat’/otkryt’ (to open, discover)
and otkrytka (a postcard) which I love secretly knowing
as an envoy of a small discovery but no they say
there’s no relation between
the coin behind their ear and the one that was
in my palm misdirection the key
to every good trick like verb
transitivity I’m saying nakazati
isn’t in the palm you think it is
and it wasn’t that the red octopus
in my dream last night was
in a tank on a shelf above countless
blue screens no or that the powdered
donuts lying there in the open paper box were stale
and their crumbs stale
and stale the rattling fluorescent light
overhead no
and it wasn’t so much
that when it escaped
or found the steak knives that it
slithered and slashed at all the calves
and heels it could find between
the vault doors of that windowless office
it was more
that when I pinned one of its tentacles
to the carpet tiles with the metal leg
of a chair, that in the moment
in the dream before I
stabbed it with a meat skewer, our eyes met,
and I saw
all of us reflected.

 
                        ~night mind spanning 6-7 Nov 2025,
                        wishing you were here,
                        <3 Dom

Philosophical Investigations (while unloading the dryer) / Dawn McGuire

I don’t know much about endings.
Or beginnings.
They always seem to arrive 
while I’m in the shower
or yelling at my keys.

But I get the middle part:
drip by drip, inconsistencies,
a slipshod paint job 
on the baseboard trim.

Like on the plane to Miami—
I’m trying to talk metaphysics across the aisle
to the guy in the basic gray suit.
He nods and then asks me to rate 
his Crypto pitch deck  

while Katie is talking basketball to a girl 
with a Valkyrie tattoo. She swears 
she’s an atheist, but we both notice 
she prays when the plane shakes.

The Crypto guy falls asleep.
I nudge Katie's knee, start in about how contradiction 
is what makes poetry possible.

She rolls her eyes and says it sounds like Keats
after three beers, or someone who’s never 
folded a single load of laundry.

In Miami, her friend Judith—God bless her—
finds meaning in everything:
IKEA instructions, lost socks, even the way
we talk past each other, 
Katie's Siri arguing with my Alexa
over the same left turn.

I just nod with the Obama bobblehead
in the rearview mirror.

She says math is the fingerprint of God.
I say God is just pigment with poor aim—
missed Adam by an inch 
on the Sistine ceiling, no?

Look, I know there’s probably a price 
on my head. Not much.
Maybe a coupon for carnitas from that taco truck
the health inspector missed.

Still, there’s a rhythm to loneliness. 
A three-beat waltz in orthopedic shoes.

So dance with me, Katie. 
Yes, I’m clumsy.
I hum out of tune.

Yes, I once wept
in front of a gas station sushi display
looking for my keys.

Dance with me anyway.

Don’t bring up your god, or mine.
Just move a little to the left
so I can catch your face
in the light.

Buckwild / Samantha  Strong Murphey

Be in the world but not of the world, a bad
paraphrase of John. John the Beloved or maybe
the other one. Which one had lines of yearners
watching his leg-sucked robes, soaked with
river water, all waiting their turn to go under? Which one
had his head on a pike? Freshman year, we had term
for the homeschooled kids set loose from their cage
—she’s buckwild. How quickly the moth, freshly twisted
from its crisp cocoon, burns to ash. I smoked 
my first cigarette at 37 in Paris, staged myself 
in a slip dress framed by a window under the moon. 
I thought it would be harder, all the teenagers 
coughing in movies. I watched myself 
watch myself in the glass. I was good
at being in the world—

November - Poem 7

Fourteen / Megan Bell

My coming of age was incinerated, at fourteen. She brought matches. He brought kerosene. With a flick of her wrist and fire in his eyes, they started a blaze that still burns. The flames of their destruction ate the darkness fueling our anxiety. We sped west trying to outrun the heat. I clung to you - believing you were a Phoenix, who would you rise from the ashes. Finally, whole, finally, everything I needed. But you were lost to his white, hot blaze. I started burning that day. I started mourning and never stopped. My body might have been in that car, but you left my soul on that hill.

My coming of age imploded, at fourteen. I was in a Chrysler fueled by fear, and police lights.  I watched my belongings scatter, my sanity shatter. I clung to your ghost. Broken down in Arizona, I held a funeral on the Navajo Indian Reservation. I buried the smoldering remains of our lives beneath red sand. A new person was born on that desert highway. Turns out, I was the Phoenix.  

My coming of age erupted, at fourteen.  A flame throwing bitch with a fiery tongue was my queen. She was tender arms and hateful words. She was scorched earth. I clung to my wits. I survived by slipping away. Curled up in the fetal position, with my head in your lap and one foot out the door, I didn’t know how to leave you to your choices. I walked through hell for you.  

My coming of age was fractured, at fourteen. Grieving, I watched good Indiana folk fan fading embers. I clung to their faith and my magic. Slowly, the ashes reassembled and I began to begin again. Board by board and nail by nail a frame took shape. No one else was going to rebuild this house and that was a bitch. All your debris dumped at my feet, and I had to be the one to spin gold. Yet, somehow, I did it. And survived my coming of age.  

Back then / Alison Lake

I carried my woundedness
like a shield, hoping someone
kind
would penetrate my armor.

As waves long for shore
I yearned for a touch
gentle
that would steady me.

Desperate, I latched
onto the only ones I saw

hard

bitter

broken

longing only to suck
the rest of my innocence.

It could have ended there,
with me joining those undead.

Instead,
I pulled the blood-lost
pieces of myself
back into my arms,
empty of the shield,
and began again.

CEREBRUS / Maya Cheav

there was a time
when you could fool me
with cheap words and bitter apologies, 
and even if I felt every inch of my body, 
every ounce of my blood 
knew you bore secrets 
and unkind things, 
I’d still believe you. 
there was a time
when I could not be strong
and even when you were cruel 
in all the ways there were to be, 
I would still be kind to you.  
but that was a century ago
and I have learned to be kinder 
to my body. 
you will need to come to understand 
that goodbye means you will no longer be awarded 
a patch of grass in the elysian fields. 
that goodbye means your shade will not be granted 
a boat ride across the river styx. 
that goodbye means that if you move in my direction, 
I will sick the hounds of hades on you.
that goodbye means the lemures of yesterday will ever haunt you
and that is no one’s responsibility other than your own. 
that goodbye means vale.

anatomy / Jada D’Antignac

mood swings and torturing cramps.
doctor appointments and prescriptions.
a body of beauty, a job of discomfort.

scrunching like a baby in a womb eases the pain
so i hold my abdomen 
the way pregnant women hold their bellies,

but when i look down
i don’t think pregnancy or children—i think agony, suffering. 

when i look down
i don't hope—i fear. 

excuse me for my pessimism.
should i relearn anatomy 
as a reminder to respect the process?
or should i travel to the garden
and beg eve to think of me?

early worminations: event parking shift / Laurie Fuhr

greetings from where the sun has not yet come up, and the sky, too warm for snow / not sad enough for rain, has knit a tight fog bats and insects stick to like fake Halloween webs left longer than the season.

the new young mayor of this city you've never heard of, baby faced and fresh playsuit, visits the pioneer park benevolent club. at five this morning I could barely wake; now I sit in a beat-up pickup truck, pickup a term first coined for grain trucks, but all I haul is bushels of tired.

I park beside the Mayor Mobile to ensure it isn't blocked-in, with its nose pointed out of the lot, getaway-style. with his squint-eyed smile and probable campaign dollars, he'll make a clean exit, his own security lead a skillful driver for flight from community events or crime scenes.

my yellow neon glows in the dark like a statue of Mary in another city, the rabbits and squirrels worship its glaring light by staying away. songbirds still sleep, the only sound is the bronk of hood fans exhausting breakfast steam into the hungry air.

I eat minimum wage for breakfast, the lowest in our country, I eat gas lamp glow but I'm Casual, no benefits, to stay flexible for music tours. telling others what to do for low pay: see how I'm free. cringing at impending six-month winter: see how I'm trapped in vulnerable flesh fabric, weather-rated for our shortest season.

two ravens perch atop the grain elevator, surveying the grey barn where fancy monkeys are meeting. monkeys being messy, the birds know something will be dropped, a piece of muffin, a shiny coin, and they alone will have something of substance from this late-Autumn day,

where the hands of trees reach for their stolen children, but hold only emptiness, and snow, soon to fill them, is only a wetter, whiter emptiness. everything but dairy barn HVAC cries for the weeping mothers of the world, and for the mothers too weak to weep,

so much of the Earth oblivious to the bleach-whitened smile of our newly-minted municipal leader, mini-figure with plastic hair driven off by his bodyguard into the sunrise of his next speaking engagement busy as the Earth is

making its lists of genocides, supervillains, pedophislanders, rape victims, sexist legislation, hate crimes, unconquered diseases, deathdeathdeathdeathdeaths, unclaimed bodies, mass graves,

banned books that warned us about all this, underpaid teachers, stunted children, the disappointment of every grown child raised on peaceful dreams, the first blizzard of the year melting on the hot black Percherons, their steaming, and all the necessary turncranks of dawn.

The Sun Is Setting / D.C. Leach

I’m drunk tonight your Tuesday
my Friday the porch light unsure
what to do with this in between
this orange and lilac sky I’m lighting or lit
candles all day that won’t burn
or would have had anyone come
the economy flickering or am I confusing
the porch light no the candles I didn’t
light it’s night here not on the floor
the floor? the restaurant I’m at home it’s night
in most of the house and glintering? glinting!
off the silver of this west coast all day
IPA can is t he klitchen fickering
the light fl— somewhere
in my childhood I’m flying on a plane
west the sun always still never stopping burning
the stewardess introducing me
to the pilots she’s eating Sunday
a sundae with me and I’ve stopped crying—
my mom is there.
the sun is bright.
she looks happy.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement / Dawn McGuire

I used to think
ice just made Coke colder,
a pond skatable,
my back teeth ache.

Black ice was my mother’s
favorite fear.
After I learned to drive,
she’d hide the car keys,

check the weather,
measure the tire tread twice,
watch out for slippery shadows
under streetlights.

My daughter is driving now,
but we live in a warmer state. 
One less worry, 
one less fear.

When a number flashes
with no name, 
my daughter's best friend
turns off her phone.

She tucks her green card
in her bra, 
won’t go near
the mall

She keeps a jug of water,
room temperature,
in the closet
where she sleeps sometimes.

Open Carry / Samantha  Strong Murphey

Holstered at eyeline. When you’re five your eyeline
is a belt. I swoop her toward me, plastic baggage on her
little body. Transparent backpacks are required, even for
kindergarten. It is November. Leaves in the schoolyard are
blown off the trees like snow, which never happens
here. This is Texas. I see it all tumbling
up the bus steps: the library books, lunches,
carefully folded fortune-tellers, passed notes. There is
a wisdom to this—misplaced, like keys. There are keys
jangling in the holster of some dark legion behind a door.
It is not our fault, and my our I mean what is still tiny
and untouched inside these unzipped frames.
We all strap things onto our bodies,
make things visible, think it will protect us.

November - Poem 6

Monthly Visitor / Megan Bell

Let me tell you about turning blue.
About turning moody and brooding, 
body split open like an overripe melon, insides spilling out.  
Back aching for something I can't name.

Voice slipping 
                down    
                    down            
                        down

my raw throat. I swallow hot thoughts with coffee and buttery bread.  
It's best not to speak. Words can cut and my tongue is a weapon. 

Sturdy timbers that house my insides flex and bend 
                               blown
                                   blown                                
                                      blown
about by the wind. My body reacts to the racket. I'm lit up. I'm let down. 

Scattered, rearranged, five senses shortchanged. 
Are my toes breathing? My nose dreaming? 
My hands fly open, begin screaming. My rhythm is off. I wonder whose body this is. 

For now, I must remember:
The carpets might be dirty, but our house is solid. 
There are four hearts beating within my chest. 
This too shall pass.  

Thoughts on Bonfire Night / Alison Lake

      “Remember, remember the fifth of November…”

bone
+ wood
+ flame
bonfire

Bones of the sacrifice
Wood of the trees
Sacrifice of the soul

Life sent up
in smoke
in gratitude

Blessings
given back

romulus & remus / Maya Cheav

floating down the tiber river 
in their basket trough, 
bundled together 
in cloths of wool and linen, 
the orphaned twins 
landed in a crook 
beside the fig tree. 
they went on crying 
for their mother, 
their bawling and fussing
calling the animals of rome
to their side. 
a woodpecker,
a dire wolf. 
lupa, the she-wolf,
took them into her care, 
suckling them, 
tending to them,
till they could be strong, 
for there was love 
beyond the body, 
love beyond species, 
and so the sons of mars,
the sons of rhea silvia,
cried no more. 

hindsight / Jada D’Antignac

anger on tongues,
passion in eyes.

dressing emotions in avoidance,
wearing selfishness in lies.

it was supposed to go differently.
how could you interrupt the plans?

i dont know how to miss you any other way,
any softer, without intensity.

maybe you are my harmful prayer.
maybe this is the way God warns me.

sometimes you never know how much you needed an out, 
until you’ve set yourself free.

Differently-Abled* Anaphoric Run / Laurie Fuhr

There is
a run on pontoons, 
a run on hoses, 
a run on walking, 
a run on noses, 

a run on blind faith in fake, an I Wanna 
Run to You Bryan Adams 
runtime, for tacos Make a
Run for the Border but watch the wall, 
Run DMC sing Walk This Way. of what may
 
run, I nearly crawl; if these genes didn't 
run in the family, could I win the bank 
run? markets go bust: blood
runs cold-to-icy. There was a 

run on fame and I did
run towards it; trade skates for a pen &
run towards the end of the page, my little
runaway Uniball rolls, 

run 
run
run 
run, run
runaway (hear 
run-on Musitron solo), still
running against ease, the wind, the crowd.

*The poet has double hip dysplasia and cannot run.

Resenting Feeling Clever and It’s Sleeting on November 22nd / D.C. Leach

Brilliance runs her fingers through my hair on occasion
the occasion being
her partner is in Greece
and my lips, she says,
pair nicely with an Argentine Malbec.

And in the morning when I wake alone
bed cold and the pillows
I pull in close to feel something make me feel
somehow colder, I walk
naked to the sunlit bathroom, decant
my voice in the mirror, take
clippers to my scalp
and watch as chestnut hair
falls like wine diamonds
to the tile floor—

Kentucky Haibun #3: Rust Theory / Dawn McGuire

Billy’s theory is that rust can remember things.
When the Buick’s front bumper
pings at dusk,
it’s “that possum that time.”

Diane says Billy needs a girlfriend or a prescription.

“Everything knows something,” he says, “even the timing chain.”

The driver’s side door groans when it opens like an old man getting up.

Inside, the vinyl seats are too hot to touch.
Billy reaches for a rusted lunch pail in the back and yells 
“Ow! fuck!” as his fingers burn.

“Fourth grade,” he says.

He sets it back down without opening it.
“I don’t want to know what’s inside. Just want it to know I’m here.”

          the Buick groans again
          something I should’ve said
          I should’ve said

Easy / Samantha  Strong Murphey

It is easy to fling the spool
once you’ve found the end of the string.

Frayed origin: sex is a cross
to slog up a hill, unless

you’re a man married virtuously.
Then birthright. Then blessing.

The therapist asked if I’d even considered
what I like for once—

unwound, string-bound wrists,
still spinning—she said you know,

sex is a lot of things. Turns out,
I like a lot of things—

November - Poem 5

Fringe of Paradise / Megan Bell

Listen, I'm here for springtime, 
emerald trees, abundant sunshine. 
If you need me, I'll be quietly tending my garden. 

Head bowed, hands filthy, yet, still folded in prayer. 
The earth's crust lodged under my nails, 
I seek God kneeling among tall vines and tangled weeds. 

My children's laughter echoes across the yard reminding
me why I sow myself into this soil. 

Our home, a fringe of paradise. 

The Winds of November / Alison Lake

She walks into November,
Amidst leaves
That have given up
All pretense
Of holding on.

The wind opens her,
Scours her,
And bits fly off
To join the milkweed seeds,
The tufts of cattail.

Bone appears, and blood,
Breaking off in the gusts,
Collecting against
The song of the crow
And cry of the goose.

She is less than the skeleton
Of a leaf lined with ice,
Frost shimmering
On brown, bent grass,
Tender and weeping.

She joins everything
windblown,
Humping against
the exposed roots
of the hemlock tree.

Swirling into a nest,
Letting in the beetle grub
And cicada larvae,
 The nose of a mole,
Forgotten owl pellets.

The wind roars on
Over top of what remains
The weak light shining,
Just enough
To reach inside.

 A weyward plant waiting for spring.

in the shadow of the fig tree / Maya Cheav

atticus laid flora’s body to rest. / they had grown up / together and now they would die / apart. flora at twenty / and atticus in who knows how many years. / in their youth, / he had come to enjoy her company, / twisting down along the tiber / with knucklebones and rolling hoops. / flora was a friend / and nothing more, / though both their parents had pleaded with them to get married / and their friends would tease them all the more. / now their parents were dead / from typhoid and antonine / and their friends were too / so atticus was the only one left / to attend to flora’s funeral. / he was too poor to pay for mourners, / or even a bier to tuck her body into, / and so all there was to do was dig a hole in the ground / and leave her there. / outside the city walls, / he made the fig tree’s shadow her personal necropolis. / he played the flute poorly above her grave and / in place of a feast, / he ate one overripe fig / that had fallen from the tree / many days ago. / he hoped and he prayed that it would be enough / so that her shade could cross / the river styx and leave / this earthly plane / into the underworld. 

 perspective / Jada D’Antignac

the view doesn't really change,
only the position.

now, having moved forward,
i see more clearly—

less anger,
more empathy.
less rage,
more patience.
less avoidance,
more consideration.

i’ve sprayed the window
wiped dust from the blinds
changed the curtains
sat plants on the sill.

my view hasn’t changed much, but
i wait for the sun 
instead of turning away from storms.

i water the plants as i wait.

ADHDefense V / Laurie Fuhr

there is a sacred place within
where the mind does not diverge-- 
strange and solitary, yes-- but 
if we allow solitude to differ 
from isolation, as it allows 
a rare self-connection,

if the locus of hyperfocus is locatable
on an internal GPS, it is a place
where bound duties cannot get in
and bother you, not even

the hundred faces & thousand ads
of socials, in a true Room of One's Own, 
a place beyond poverty,

a secret space to meditate
in search of both attainable
& inconceivable peace,
and finally find rest
while living,

a cloister to read or
write a book to share
what being you
is really like, and--

through stories gathered here--
finally let others in to see

   your altar of unusual talismen, 
   your secret smoking area,
   your room of childhood toys,

   your list of disappointments,
   your audiobook wish list,
   your unutterable triumphs and sins,

   the stressful, precious inner library
   of very personal stims,

   your personal ice cream shop
   of preferences, all those conflicting
   genres & interests coexisting,
   32 flavours and Ani Anise,

   and you, the pralines 
   and chocolate sprinkles,
   Skor bits and whipped cream,
   bananas and splits,
   one or both as you see fit,
   all the extra sweetness on top, 

even as in outer space, outer life
you forget the whole bowl
in the laundry room, 

don't find it until 
it's melted, 

drink ice cream 
soup.

Eros with Knife and Cast Iron / D.C. Leach

he chops ennui, sautés it
with potatoes and garlic,
peels frustration and rinses it
with the carrots, thinks to keep
his love away, tonight, from the blue
flame, but she slips behind him
in the galley kitchen, grips him
by the body like a wooden pepper mill, grinds
his night’s worries into the cast iron.
oh no!— he thinks—oh no! her pink lips are
coloring the night pink.

Kentucky Haibun #2 / Dawn McGuire

Once, long ago,
a very old garden gnome
fell in love with the flying goddess
hood ornament
on the ’72 Buick next door.

Her silver hair flowed over her shoulders.
Her gaze always faced east.

Once, he feared she winked
at the broken irrigation timer
on top of the compost heap.
He decided it was the sun in her eyes.

And once, her smile tilted ever so slightly
in his direction!
(When the front axle broke).

Even when the March winds
swept the moss from his ears,
and the spring rains made his bronze belt glisten,
she did not turn toward him.

And so it became his work,
his pain, his claim—
to compose each day
a small but reverent song.

For example, November 2:

Though she may not smile for me,
I shine my cap
in case she does.

On my 38th birthday / Samantha  Strong Murphey

he’s behind on his 4th grade moon observation journal. 
Last entry was five days ago. We look at the moon 
on a screen to catch up. There are years 
that went unnoticed, fallow fields mistaken for 
waste. It was now and Thursday and that September 
and I was quietly walking the neighborhood 
wondering how people manage to grow 
hydrangeas in Texas. Do wild hydrangeas exist? 
I’ve never seen it. One unobserved year, I laid my life
in a pasture. I lived as a dead horse, beating. 
Another, I lived as a cloud heavy with water. 
Here, can you just hold this for a minute I begged 
and begged of the ground. I hid the year I was nothing
but a grapefruit, scraped empty by a spoon with teeth. 
All I can tell you is that tonight, the moon looks full.
It’s too much to be asked which direction it’s going—
bigger, smaller.

November - Poem 4

Connie's Favorite Things / Megan Bell

This morning, the winter sky is a heap of clouds—
a milky blanket stretching for miles,
covering Indiana and my mood.
The brrr months hum their frozen tune, loud and true.

An ice cream cone drifts overhead;
I reach to catch it, wondering
if it tastes like ice cream, too.
It brushes my fingers—cool and soft—
and suddenly, I think of my mom.

Snowflakes melt
as they land on my upturned face.
I watch the clouds rolling by—
no trace of sun, no hint of grace.

I lift my nose to the cold December sky.
I think of Mom. I remember her why:
her love for family, for snow,
for ice cream—sweet, and cold, and forever.

The First Law Of Thermodynamics / Alison Lake

A neighbor of ours has removed half
the young trees from the adjacent vacant lot.
With a chainsaw, and apparently, little
plan, he sheared off each trunk haphazardly,
at all different levels and seeing it, I am reminded
of a forgotten graveyard with broken tombstones. I can almost
see the ghost of each tree, rising above its stum
and the disturbed earth, and I am reminded
that their spirits endure; their energy, passing
from branch to root to ground, filling the emptiness
with a new kind of life.  It is there in the deer
that forage amongst the drying brush,
and the flowers that grew once the light arrived.
Like a shining thread, a filament, it flows
the crows and kestrels into the sky,
then falls back to the earth with each rain.

VULCAN / Maya Cheav

we two dear men…”
gaius etched their names 
into the stones of the walls 
outside a bar in pompeii,
“...friends forever…”
his hands slaving away
for hours, to carve
themselves into existence. 
“...were here.” 
a perpetual one
that would outlive them 
sooner than they’d expect. 
“if you want to know our names…”
together, 
on that fateful day 
as the red floods came
“...they are gaius and aulus."
they clung to each other, 
with all that they had 
and all that they ever would. 
“whoever loves…”
their bodies,
fossilized under ash
and a layer of pumice.
“...let him flourish.”
their bones, 
encased in volcanic rock 
for utmost eternity.
“let him perish who knows not love.”

searching and waiting / Jada D’Antignac

where are the stories? 
where do they wait for me? 
do they wait for me? 
or are they searching for me too? 

will they come in the shine of the daylight? 
or in the darkness of the night? 
are they floating in the fall air? 
or standing in the summer heat that’s been left behind? 
are they waiting for me at the thanksgiving table? 
or at the tables in nice restaurants i plan to visit? 
are they wailing in a conversation i’ve been avoiding? 
or smiling in a sweet memory? 

do they live in my eagerness? 
in my anticipation? 
in my yearning? 

do i need to dissect my ins and outs?
come to myself again? 
step towards a mirror? 
pick up a pen first? 
or simply wait?

I’m Writing in the Margins / Dominic Leach

of that C. Barnett poem on baseball and Beckett—
b-b-b my heart beats—“parallel
construction or repeat assertion?”
but my r’s look more
like doodle birds than letters
in this book of questions
and hours; hours as questions?
our questions; are-are-are my birdies call,
am I what? outlines of clouds
or mashed potatoes form above them;
the clock falls an hour
back; geese pass overhead and call
to the r’s beating the #2 graphite of their wings
for liftoff; the green
and scarlet leaves on the oak and I
are standing in the yard waving,
our tears asking more questions like
whether doodle birds keep
to straight lines as they fly south;
the crows call out
a two-count from the roof or
I’m losing my rhythm again; I wish
all these a’s and v’s of my heart would
migrate too like this, head down to the Keys,
confusing not from with to in all this new
space-time, take
so well to the warmth there they
never come back. I hope
the r’s come back—I miss
our talks. they ask hard questions.

Mind–Body Problem / Dawn McGuire

To stay in the world
To keep the body close

Sometimes I’m walking beside
the body I left behind
its pulse percussing
under the thought of me

They still argue through scent--
a sewer exhales its hymn
a seeker leans down to reveal
skin after rain
green soap
the air tasting human

To love even what leaks
steady my hand
the diaper pin
the scalpel

Words for the distance
between thought and touch
dissolve on contact

Jorie says empathy 
begins in the fingertips

I touch the page to test this
It touches back

Jodie & Diane / Samantha Strong Murphey

In the southern way, they brought us cookies
when we moved in next door, just a thin strip
of driveway separating our walls. Arm around
D’s waist, J joked about the naked lady
statue in their backyard that we could see
from our kitchen window. Feel free to look
she chuckled, pointing to my husband.
So many games of pretend
my mom invented. My favorite was statue-maker.
You spin the child. They land. They freeze in a pose.
You press their nose like a button.
The child moves. You watch them move.
You guess who they are.
I do the dishes every night. I watch her
through the glass—stone woman, frozen mid-dance.
In the Dutch way, our lights are on, our windows
naked. I dance and dance in the kitchen, hoping
someone sees me, waiting for them
to tell me who I am—

November - Poem 3

Hello, Nice to Meet You / Megan Bell

There’s a monster in my belly,
when it roars, I write.
For years I tamed it, ignored it, stood on its throat -
it kept roaring. 
Guttural, it growled words, the whispers becoming shouts. 
Never sleeping, the monster woke me time and time again. 
I decided to unleash it.
The monster was tenacious:
snapping, snarling, ferocious.
Howling truths buried in my youth.
I shook hands with the monster,
I met myself.

On Being Ill / Alison Lake

I’m sick again,
for the third time
in as many weeks.
My body, always
the weakest, most
prone to illness,
gets worn down,
forcing me
to stop.
It’s not too bad
today really,
just a mild cold.
Everyone else
in my sphere
seems more resilient,
more able to cope.
It’s not just my body,
my mind and my heart
seem overburdened;
worry, sadness, fear
pressing
against each breath.
I can’t watch the news,
pass litter or roadkill,
take my daughter
to her school, without
clenching, hurting,
feeling sick.
It didn’t used to
be this bad,
but lately, it seems
I am always off,
always ailing,
waiting for the day
when I can be well.

love in the time of claudius II / Maya Cheav

GOTHICUS 
wants us devotees—
to give our lives to the cause, 
to live by the sword and to die by it. 
GOTHICUS
wants us with few earthly ties—
with no lovers 
and nothing to lose. 
saint valentine made it so 
love persists even under his reign, 
under threat of death and punishment.
saint valentine would wed us 
under the shadow of night, 
souls intertwined in holy matrimony. 
in spite of his decree,
I will not fight for his honor,
just to perish on the battlefield. 
I will fight to survive, 
to come home to my lover. 
I promise you, 
GOTHICUS,
you will not make a soldier out of me.

message from a stranger / Jada D’Antignac

to see someone is not only to open the eyes,
but the soul, mind, heart too.

sometimes, seeing someone is comforting their release of softness.
sometimes it’s sharing a story that ties their hardships to yours.
sometimes it’s a prayer, a thought, a message.

simply, it’s to notice and give attention to.
like the stranger who said,
“you appear to have gotten over what crushed you.”

she saw me beyond eyes.
she saw me with the soul, mind, heart too. 

ADHDefense III / Laurie Fuhr

Who engages in chronic 
phone calendar scheduling,
colour-coding every block
like a crazy quilt of time? 

Who commits serial monogamy 
with continually-unsuitable partners, 
goes to the thrift store to save money and spends her paycheque, or other strange dopamine-seeking addictions?

ADHD might really mean
As Does Her Dad, 
but Mom makes lists with more 
intensity than I do, never forgets 
an item that has just been 
disappeared from the fridge
by household magicians.

If she were writing a list for what 
ADHD could mean, she might write
Admitting Doesn't Hurt Dear
over and over, a mantra to protect
from the psychosomatic pain

of knowing one is clinical
but needing to sort out
cause-and-effect effectively:

what neurodiversity affects
from what chaos interjects
can no longer be discerned.

It Looks Like Happiness / D.C. Leach

After the Fall / Dawn McGuire

I learned this from my old oak

After years of drought
then torrents of storm
the hard ground shuts its mouth
tight as a fist in a pocket

Rain pools
unable to drain

The oak roots
spindly as the legs
of the frail librarian next door
finally swell and split

Hawk and owl who share 
its northernmost branches

Did they know
this was coming?

Did I?

Sometimes you can’t hold up
what is given to you to hold

Phloem and xylem
blood and lymph
through ravaged passages
slow

That great crash
heard over the neighborhood—
you, old friend

When the librarian huffed up
my steep driveway
to see if I was ok
she found me dazed
leaning against the blue studio

Your thigh-sized limbs pressed against it
but did not bring it down
or me, writing there

A hawk’s nest lay shredded at my feet

The beetles will feast
Hawk and owl will build their nests again
Their chicks will burst their chitin capsule 
and fledge

Nobody need grieve
Yet I grieve

juvenescence / Samantha  Strong Murphey

to her i say don’t tell grandma i let you have a boyfriend
to myself i say i’m protecting her from shame
there are a thousand ways to eclipse a face
to pluck a sunflower to its disk, 
to strangle youth from a neck
from the driver’s seat i say because i said so 
he quiets a while, changes the subject, asks
mom, do you think a whale can drown?
a whale is a warm-blooded mammal, a whale
needs the same air that we do, i say yes
when they die, that’s how they die
at the game, from the sidelines, i scream at him
i say dig deep i say look alive

November - Poem 2

Motherhood / Megan Bell

Motherhood is hard- scraps of your fingernails, your marriage, your pastimes, buried in a pile of dirty laundry until they are ten.

That’s when the rediscovery starts, recognizing weary bones have been crafting your family’s tapestry - the roots of their childhood and all your poetry.

It’s when you pick up your pen. 

It’s when you begin again.

Passing the Bay Mare / Alison Lake

Almost every day,
on my way to town,
I pass the bay mare
alone in her field.

Often she's eating,
cropping grass short,
tail twitching and flanks
trembling against flies.

In the heat, in the rain,
in cold or growing ice
she lives in her box
of electrified fence.

Horses are herd animals 
yet she is always alone,
having only her own shadow 
to curl against for comfort.

pomegranate flesh / Maya Cheav

goddess of the underworld, 
title granted to thee 
by the cult of mother and maiden—
she who returns spring 
at her sacrifice, at her expense.
shall we feast upon 
the pomegranate fruits? 
its bitter membranes,
its red arils? 
the lush taste of passion
does not take. 
there is a world 
in which she does not bite,
in which she does not eat the six seeds. 
there is a world 
where it is winter evermore, 
the ground barren, 
bitter, and bearing no fruit. 
there is a world 
where pluto does not take 
everything she had from her, 
does not pluck her from the world she knew and strip her of her body, 
of her life in the earthly plane. 
there is a life above the underworld 
waiting for her,
one of picking flowers in the meadows of sicily
and singing to herself in the plains. 
I will give it back to her, 
remove pluto’s claws from her back, 
no matter what the world shall rue. 
she has suffered long enough. 
may she ever prosper,
ever prosper. 

elegy for the attempt / Jada D’Antignac

1. sunrise 

you
eager at my feet
eyes sparkling like the stars above us
ready to take the love 
i cannot comprehend enough to give

our sun will rise
but only in a place 
where pain is nonexistent

2. gray cloud

life can bring darkness out of people.
did you know that? 
have you learned?

distance means time.
time; wonder.
wonder sparks emotion.

it’s all here for us.
we’ve arrived,
we may as well mix. 

i know how to create anything 
from nothing 
and still feel something.

you know it, right? 
haven’t you learned?
can you show me 
the darker side?
of you?

3. sunset

what i lacked then,
you lack now.

from never knowing us this way,
to exchanging everything we came with.
from standing in a place i felt was too dark for you,
to explaining how distant from that place i now am.

it’s no need to decipher the wrongs and rights,
we can let the moon greet the stars 
knowing that we tried.

ADHDefense II / Laurie Fuhr

My therapist says, Try ADHD meds
and you might not need depression 
meds anymore. Your life on the drug
that is ADHD may be depressing you,
its role in too many disappointments.
My doctor says, take them both.
Another therapist says, 
don't medicate yourself away.
Embrace what makes you you.
ADHD may be your superpower.
Then how to use it for good?
My first therapist gets jealous
that I'm seeing a second therapist
and leaves me. (There must be
a lot of psychology there).
It's so hard to embrace
the you that holds you back,
the you that won't let you be
someone easier to love, 
someone who can be on time, 
with edible cooking
and a tolerable house,
whose superpower doesn't make them
hoard books from Free Little Libraries,
get craft-beer-tipsy to Support Local,
or cry when they see babies
and be continually anxious,
drawn into hive psypocalypse
of too much wrong at once
instead of riding amphetamines 
into a Star Trek utopia 
in which to live long, prosper, and
manage to enjoy Earl Grey 
while still hot.

And Our Ghosts Come Home / D.C. Leach

most places I go fully clothed
sunglasses sometimes hoping not
to be seen how well I play
myself like someone else and in my memory
I go thus in trench coat
and fedora à la film noir denying
my name and at home I paste over
and repaint the cracks zigzagging
the plaster walls—

but in my journal I erase the clothes completely with my golden 
pencil and leave the cracks 
in the walls the white in my beard I go a bit
too far and erase the walls even and lie naked
and structureless like this
and our ghosts come home.

they say it’s warm here.
they’re not sure if they like it.

Kentucky Haibun / Dawn McGuire

We take the long road because the long one
peels the paint off memory.
Because Diane says suffering has better lighting at dusk.

She drives with one hand on the wheel,
cigarette behind her ear like a bone-handled blade,
ashes in her lap. I’m in the back
watching I Love Lucy reruns. Billy’s riding shotgun,
navigating with a 20-year-old atlas and a poetry degree.
His fingers are tracing the map like it’s a body.

He’s talking to himself, although he doesn’t seem to know it,
circling IHOPs along route 64 with a red pen.
He wants to stop for pie. And a waitress who calls him “sugar.”

We pass a Dollar General that shimmers like a mirage in the heat.
Billy asks if we should stop.
Diane says, “There’s nothing in there we didn’t already lose.”
So we don’t.

Her foot is on the gas until the old house rises
like a half-buried rib cage.
The porch slumps, the kitchen roof is peeling off like a scab.

Diane mutters, “Guess collapse takes too much commitment.”
Nobody else says a word.
We park next to the 70s bronze Buick on blocks.

My shoulder against the wood-rotted front door
opens it-- waves of mouse urine and mold.
Shelves sag with cloudy jars, the labels faded  
A mug says #1 Papaw.

Hungry Billy lifts a can of cling peaches
like a trophy and pretends to recite the label:
Repressed memories in heavy syrup, packaged
the summer we forgot we were loved. Best by?
Before the old drunk died and the house was sold.

Diane lights a joint and says,
“That’s the closest thing to scripture I’ve heard
since the ‘low fuel’ alert came on.”
We laugh too loud. Then not at all.

Outside, tiny wild strawberries crawl
across the crabgrass, red on green 
like blood on camouflage.
I put one on my tongue. Too bitter. Too soft.
Like it wants to rot in my mouth.

Around back, the barn is still lacework and shadow,
leaning like a drunk holding on to the bar.
Something is humming.
It sounds like Gray Grannie’s sewing song
turned into weather.

A red-tailed hawk shrieks and I flinch,
hearing the old man that time
he found Uncle Ray hanging—

“Stop,” Diane says, looking at me as if she hears it too.

We circle back to what’s left of the porch.
Why are we even here?

Billy pulls the lid off the cling peaches
and passes the can around. “Libations,”
he says.
“Botulism,” Diane says, taking the biggest swig.

The yellow jackets find us.
We leave the rest for them on the table.
Billy writes in the inch-thick dust:

wild strawberries
bleed on the tongue,
what to forget first

smoke machine / Samantha Strong Murphey

morning after and / everything is / deflated / the dead / are really dead / weight wandering down wet / sidewalks pulled by the dog / whose anxiety meds have worn / off / yes / i said anxiety / meds for the dog / wrappers in the cracks / the gutters / scraps of color / melted wax through the / faces / bones spread across the lawn / a ghost / hangs from a tree / a maniacal clown / on a stake / in the mulch / triggered by my / motion / laughs and I yank / the orange cord from the socket / the dog drags me up / the porch / into the house / the pieces no one wants are everywhere / the desirable / hidden away / ring of hair / dye round the tub / purple glow gone gray / I creep again to a cold / bed with a warm / body / close my eyes to the day / slip back to when / it was fun / to be / afraid

November - Poem 1

A Gift from Time / Megan Bell

The past is a whisper now. 
A creak of the screen door, the smell of love, ripples on a pool.
It’s the summer wind in my hair, an '80s song on the radio, my mom’s eyes staring back from my son’s face.
It’s softened what-ifs and quieted almost; it’s rounded edges. 
The sting is gone.
My mind rests easy within the walls of this home.
Nestled among heritage
and heartache was a box of
healing, wrapped up with a gold bow.
Look for it, you have one too. 
It's a gift from time.

After All Hallow's Eve / Alison Lake

The night is done,
the candles have burned down
leaving each pumpkin
blackened and empty.

What fruits remain 
in the frosted fields
belong now to the birds,
the beasts, and the fairies.

The wheel has turned,
the days going to bed,
bright leaves turn brown
to blanket the earth.

CHERUB / Maya Cheav

the honeysuckle is ripe
and our baskets are overflowing
with waterfalls of rich, red berries.
the earth is spilling over in abundance,
blooming a soil so fertile and lush,
it colors the ground a rainbow
with all that grows there—
briers of aster, plumes of calla lillies.
you tuck a pink carnation behind my ear,
plucked from the bushes
along the tiber river.
we run barefoot through its banks,
wading through the duckweed and floating hearts.
you teach me things I didn’t know I never knew—
the depth of softness on a sunday morning,
how tender two humans could be.
together,
we try to kiss the sky. 

A Lighter Hand (A Cento) / Jada D’Antignac

composed with lines from selected poems of Gwendolyn Brooks 

The summer ripeness rots. But not raggedly.
Shows the old personal art, the look,
with softness and slowness touched by that everlasting gold.

The dark hangs heavily.
In yourself you stretch, you are well
because sun stays and birds continue to sing.

A girl gets sick of a rose,
leaving her to release her heart.
She sits in a red room.
Her body is like summer earth.

That room and me, rejuvenate a past.
Lurk late. We
with the half-open mouth and the half-mad eyes.

How shall we greet him?
“Come back! Or “careful!” Look, and let him go.
Suddenly you know he knows too.

A note of alliance, an eloquence of pride.
Some specialness within.
Wind tangled among bells. There is spiritual laughter.

My taste will not have turned insensitive.
I want a peek at the back,
to touch things with a lighter hand.

It’s over and over and all. 

ADHDefense I / Laurie Fuhr

Maybe it stands for 
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
Or maybe it stands for
Apple Dumpling Handpie Delight?
Asteroid Displaying Handsome Dust?
Alot Does Happen Daily? Or,
Actually Doesn't Have Depression?
My therapist is having a field day
with my late-diagnosis adult ADHD,
so late as to be today.
She can spot a differently-abled mind
from 200 feet. 

A poster on her wall shows what I look like 
as a stick figure on a couch, 
so overwhelmed by number and variety 
of obligations that I can't even move.
ADHD Paralysis, the caption reads.
It's true that I am either
moving too much or too little
talking too much or too little
being too much or too little, but
never just enough.

I am the stick figure, yes,
surrounded by household clutter,
and the couch is too often my body,

heavy as hopeless misery,
comfortable and effacing
as daytime sleep.

Dependent Origination in Fall with Squirrel and Beer / D.C. Leach

A squirrel scampers with the evening light down 
and off the tree, looks at me, hops closer, peers 
into this notebook spread open on my lap, the froth
at the head of my ink-black beer. 

We sit like this a minute: me—leaned against
the rough bark at the base of the tree, he—
leaned against his peering. He looks
at my hands reaching into the grass.

Or I look at his. One of us brings an acorn
to their nose. Holds it in their teeth. No, Autumn
holds us softly in hers, carries us off this way, deeper
into the fading light. 

Ekphrastic as Stanley Plumly / Dawn McGuire

        After Ghirlandaio, “An Old Man and His Grandson”

Even in a suit
you are still an Ohio Valley
hobo, thumb pointing 
toward the next bruised town,
a pilgrim drawn to a wound.

Any reviewer who says
you turn the ordinary into beauty
“like turning a knob” is cause enough
for you to leave before signing
Regards, S. Plumly, on the flyleaf, 
even if he bought the hardcover.

Your nose is in fact a knob,
blood-bulged, shaped by pity, rosacea,
and a contempt I almost envy.

I usually treat rosacea with doxycycline--
but not yours—
yours is a banner, your brand.

Old heart, did you ever see
your nose in the Ghirlandaio
at the Louvre?

A mesmeric midface that eclipses 
the robe’s crimson pigment. 
At your knee, 
the golden boy, gazing up 
as at an enchanted beast.

You are that strange,
that loved—

Evolved to a peril:
the dangerous romance of seeing
through the stained lyric
of your own elegy.

The boy, transfixed
as if your face is the only proof 
the world allows,
will love poetry
past the point of safety.

Devotion will exact its full tithe.
You won’t warn him.
Neither will I.

Limerence / Samantha Strong Murphey

I have extracted myself from you.
It is October. I beat my pulp into a fist.
Once, I told you my daughter believes she can’t fall asleep
without music, insists the music must not have words.
Lyric—its push-pins, its wide-eyed springs that might keep her
from slipping under her mind’s soft folds. These days I clench every word
that might keep me from slipping between soft folds in my mind’s
deep bed. I choose a playlist for her: Instrumental Lullabies. These wordless
arrangements shape-shift down the stairwell. Familiar, just beyond
the tip. I know it—Ed Sheeren. The Shape of You is a lullaby that keeps
me awake. Only objectively is this funny. The oven is open, bleeding
heat into the kitchen. The envelope in the drawer was sealed
with your tongue. Once, I tried to move the piano alone. There’s still a dent
in the plank. I walk it, in the dark, feet bare in the now-quite house.
Love me. Sing something. Quote me to me.

October - Poem 31

I Saw Your Face and Mine / Kathryn Johnson

A Cento composed by Kathryn Johnson with lines contributed by and for Lilly Frank, Anna Ojascastro Guzon, Kathryn Johnson, Kimberly McElhatten, H.T. Reynolds

An unkindness of leaves clings
to the fingertips of an old oak
(for when the rain decides to come around).

You feel the tides inside
of your bones shift. You file yourself away
between the brown slats
of a wild mushroom cap.

You are made of skin and godliness
(or bones and sin?),
a stationary body in the dark.

When my body forgot how to breathe
(but long after I reminded my legs to walk),
I knew that beauty is the contrast.
I promised myself a beautiful future. Sometimes,
time doesn’t really matter at all.

The sun acts as a sibling: She taught me to plant,
to water, to deadhead a commotion of daisies and goldenrod.
I was sad to learn that we are not the same. It’s easy to forget
(a mistake I am too skilled at making)
that words are signs, indicators.

I decide to fold my thoughts
(the sweet-savory scent of rain)
(the smell of sugar and fat)
(the inside of the cheek as an apple to the teeth)
into a napkin, as one kneeling in prayer

I am dismantling the apple
(manzanilla, the little apple)
and plant seeds in a child’s heart—brief guests
in the house of my body (what carries me
to the next
and to the next and
to the next).

The world will tell the story.
(We all leave for an unknown destination,
clutching our tickets in the dark.
The door gaped open, like I was Alice.

October - Poem 30

Explain This to Me,  / Lilly Frank

We are shaped by the horrors of which we are exposed to. Completely unsuspecting of life itself, we’re tossed into a world full of dirty, dirty crimes [this world is indiscriminatory]. As products of our environment [this is a truth you cannot run from], we’re left with what we decide to make of these events. Do you heal this wound? Do you tear out the stitches? Do you light yourself on fire to feel bright? Who are you when it all goes dark? In the bottom of the early hour, alone [in company or not: alone] who do you become? 

When does it start to feel like I am not a sum of my parts, but instead, just whole? [Can I fix this?]

A Cento in Gratitude ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

Greater Mysteries / Kathryn Johnson

We, who are seated
between service and
mercy, no longer
fear death. We gather
the purple iris
and hyacinth while

we hear, we see, we

learn. We wait for our
fasting to be met
with a blessing, our
silence to welcome
wisdom, our grief to
usher in joy. Joy

like a rich robe
scattered with gold. 

In The Sky of This Season Where I Belong / Kimberly McElhatten

This evening
a yellow aspen leaf
drifted down from a white sky

and relaxed in
a heap outside
my condo door.

The fluted edges of the leaf like a
puzzle piece rested with
saffron and scarlet of

maple and oak
making an autumn
mosaic before it

lifted back into the sky of
this season where
I belong

where everything sooner or
later settles and takes
flight again.

GEOMETRIC MAGIC  / H.T. Reynolds

O halo of salt,
O delectable taste of enshrinement,
may you unburden this fool
from his fidgeting fingertips—
needlepoint tent stitch
holding her image
smeared in greasy reds,
lilac venous blues

a ring wedded to a body
to a wrist
to a palm,

a knuckle dragging
over forehead—licking open
tissue like a lover consorting
with formaldehyde—his heart
foaming—raving—furious glass
shards showering to the cellar floor
raising God, tracing his chin
before the dimming of the light

 O halo of salt,
O binding sanctum powder,
may you unburden this fool
from his fidgeting pulse—
his ragged dreaming

October - Poem 29

Fatale Fungi   / Lilly Frank

There exists so much to overwhelm.
Something new sprouting its head
from beneath my feet. I wish I knew
how to grapple with uncertainty
but all I have are these lousy hands.
I can never tell if my fingertips are
outstretching themselves to a meadow
mushroom or a death cap. Though, nearly
every time, I lift the fungi to
my lips and caress its surface.
Tempting it is to be taunted with
a single player Russian roulette.
It makes the overwhelm feel much
smaller.

Haystacks on a Foggy Morning ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

Once they’re infixed 
between your cells 
the ones responsible 
for keeping the glint 
in one’s eyes
and warmth 
in facial expressions,
they are inoperable, 
impossible to tweeze 
out. So much 
depends on them.

Kingdoms of Heaven and Earth / Kathryn Johnson

Stars thread the sky like Amanita
weaves through life on Earth

We are surrounded on all sides

By light
and blight
By day
and night

Astral and fungal
Our world made whole

Truffle Snuffling / Kimberly McElhatten

for Marguerite

When she visited today, my granddaughter  
pointed to the trees beyond the back
window and said,
Those woods are where
Nonna and I hunt for mushrooms.
That’s true. Last month, we
went truffle snuffling out
that back door, like
Tinker Bell in a movie she
loves, and we foraged
for black trumpets
and deer truffles so I could
bring a moment from a kid’s
movie to life in the woods
and plant seeds in a child’s
heart for Mother Nature—
like we did today, when we
rubbed puffs of wood aster
seeds in our palms and then
blew them into the trees
where they will sprout
somewhere, sometime,
but we won’t know
when or where—
just like she’ll eventually tell
black birch from cherry,
goldenrod from ironweed,   
blackberries from wineberries,
chanterelles from jacks,
because when she was three  
we went truffle snuffling
out the back door and
into the woods
like Tinker Bell.  

APORIA  / H.T. Reynolds

after “There is No Word” by Tony Hoagland

there wasn’t a word for the breaking
skin held along the razor-thin border
between the rusted steel trim of grandmother’s table
and the alluring thrum of morning’s invitation

there wasn’t a word for the crashing current
meant to be kept in like a secret—like a breath
through a tunnel, dancing body strapped to car seat
yearning for the arrival of the dusty sky’s breaking
along a concrete stomach—dislodging a wish
like an annual candle, sparkling eyes dazzle
in dim light, a chorus of fabricated smiles

there wasn’t a word for the space between his sore arm
and the snapping of nails to cuticle, the twitch splintering
to sawdust sopping up the collision he promised to keep
in this time—

there wasn’t a word for a boy upon the eve of his christening,
his molting lineage collected like expired shells, chips
from botched dental appointments, a cracked cassette case
with its missing tape—the J-card torn along its perforated edges
the collectible trading card inlay missing from the judge’s ruling    

October - Poem 28

So, I Have Learned,   / Lilly Frank  / Lilly Frank

Purpose to suffering is found inside of the heart (your or otherwise). Ending the cycle, putting a gap in the loop, pausing the world to spend a moment of this lifetime sharing myself with you.

The irony of being a poet. Hindsight and forethought usually craft my best linguistic response. However, stunned in surprise, I fumble over the meaning of what I truly intend to say.

There has never been a moment in a lifetime such as mine that has felt graced with such ardor. I want to reach my hand to yours and hope that is enough to show you the way that the lights flickered on behind my eyes.

If I could relive this moment in time for as long as I live, it would be enough. How lucky are we to know there awaits an abundance of this nestled inside of something cherished and parented.

Chop Suey ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

I've never tried chop suey before
I knew that beauty is the contrast
of shadows and light. The way it lands. 
It's unexpected. Walls bloom;
a lonely gaze. And hues convey a plot 
or a psychological ruse. Who can let go 
of those ochres juxtaposed with blue?
What is it that you cannot possibly get 
enough of? What luck if your reply is 
chop suey; leftovers, everything between 
what's contained and what you throw out. 

A Rough Ghazal for the Butterfly / Kathryn Johnson

Consider the butterfly – the little insect possessing 
so much beauty and imbued with the great weight of meaning.

Like when Grandfather died: one small cousin spied a butterfly. 
And what? Now that tall, gruff man’s spirit has a new dwelling?

We forget, when romanticizing the butterfly, that 
it becomes in a most unbecoming way: by dissolving.

The lowly caterpillar does not enter its cocoon 
to simply grow wings. Does it know? Would knowing change a thing?

Would any of us choose to melt away in this exchange 
if we knew what a horrible miracle was happening? 

Today, I think I would. I’ve been told that the belly is 
a cauldron. So, I will use it by choice for undoing.

And in my big belly cauldron, I am making a great 
mess of a potion. No butterfly is emerging. Just me.

Through Pennsylvania / Kimberly McElhatten

I live on
the ridge
of a mountain
and close to the sky,
just below the
clouds and
sometimes
above.
When I first
dropped over the
Allegheny Front
and the Appalachians
rolled out beyond the
highway, ridge by
ridge, I decided
this was
home.
People talk
about energy vortexes
as concentrated Qi—where
fault lines emit magnetic forces,
where the water heals, where the
rocks speak—and they imagine
traveling long distances
to Sedona or Mount
Fuji to find them,
when I felt one
while driving
east on I-80
through
Pennsylvania.

I HAD MY FLINTSTONES PUSH-UP  / H.T. Reynolds

my Spy Vs. Spy Mad Magazine
my mother with her post-nominals
my neighbor with his wheezing lungs
that’d crackle and burst into medical language
like a procedural alarm clock that accepted
ACCESS cards at midnight—scrubs
with stethoscopes determining an acceptable
degree of oxygen
hooked to his throat like a fuel pump,
but he never went anywhere—couldn’t
go anywhere—we had that in common

but long after I reminded my legs to walk
he’d discover how persistent his body could be,
his mother’s cancer claiming her before his own
his body still stuck where they planted him

October - Poem 27

American Tragedy   / Lilly Frank

Quietly, discontentment tickles the back of my neck.
Quickly, discontentment becomes a perpetual itch.
O’ suffocation, O’ loneliness. How the feeling
flooding over me is something I scorn.
I think these feelings.
            these feelings,
they make me a bad person.

With my hands in my hands in my head,
I forget how to pray.
With forgetting how to pray,
I feel so deeply, and unforgivably, incurable.  

Inspiration ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

He spots a fruiting body
gently heaving puffs of air
among the chemical scents
metal limbs and
stirring rods broken again. 
It expands within
the plastic dish which in
absently, he ashes.
Patient, controlled, it speaks
as one kneeling in prayer.
When he hears it
there is a destruction
of devils in flight.

Antipodes / Kathryn Johnson

What child hasn’t spent a full summer day 
with no other task than digging down 
through the Earth and out the other side? 
Why do children feel 
the pull to tunnel into the soil?
What do they hope to reach? Maybe 
they seek the connection the trees experience—
telegraphing news and greetings along unseen paths. 
It’s funny how mycelium and myelin echo each other.

The vast network beneath us.
The vast network within.

With each shovel full, the children reveal 
this path in themselves, one illuminated 
by the winking lights of thought. 

Dreaming of Winter in July/ Kimberly McElhatten

When my daughter was a teen,
she’d start talking skis and snow
in July—right about peak
heat—and she’d sing Christmas
songs and talk the play-by-plays
of our best memories on
the slopes, like the time we skied
a snow-belted nor’easter
and did not see the moguls
before we hit them—how
she tossed up her arms to the
falling flakes—how they waved up
and down and side to side like
conducting prestissimo
into the white sky with snow
falling so abundantly
that run after run after run after run
felt like first tracks, again and again and again—
and how that night, that winter,
all winters, she dreamed—still dreams—
is dreaming of winter in July. 

COWABUNGA  / H.T. Reynolds

I bet Michelangelo never had to pick the pepperoni his brother insisted on adding to the family pizza. Never had to add canned mushrooms they nuked in the microwave so the temperature would match, the texture wouldn’t be so jarring. I bet Leonardo would have been able to plead his case to his [mother], wouldn’t even need to pull rank, or pull a blade to get his way. Donatello would have synthesized a mushroom pizza from his brother’s leftover crust, void of the stink of smoked meat. But I was Ralphael—trenchcoat and temper—red-rager—disobedient son—bed-bound and immobile, content with the only compromise I could get. Michelangelo knew how to smile while buried beneath the city’s filth, glide along the curved concrete on a skateboard like Icarus with wheels—too cool for wings, never needing the lecture. I dragged my body from my bed in our living room—my swaddled legs in plaster shells clunking to the trailer floor—to my board with brakes, with handles—a chariot that barely fit within those walls—but I tried, like he would, screaming at the top of my lungs, “COWABUNGA,” before launching myself toward the front door. The door gaped open like I was Alice, like I was catapulting myself from building top to fire escape—from the Rat King to Shredder—from a wheelchair to walking. I bet Michelangelo never had to pick himself up off the floor, turn himself sideways like a beached capital A, drag himself around his chariot, toward the ocean—his bed—and hope not to suffer the indignity of a snagged sheet. I bet Leonardo would have had the respect for his own room. I bet Donatello would have invented proper clothes that fit—would have avoided the Velcro—the sweatpants—going commando. I bet Ralphael would have chewed off his own legs—carved out his hip bone and would play hockey with Casey Jones. With the capsized chariot wheel squeaking still, my bound legs—my entombed skin’s thrumming itch ignored—I took a bite of pizza, whispering, “cowabunga,” sharing a laugh and high five with my green brothers.   

October - Poem 26

Super Natural Sestina ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

Super Natural Sestina
Herbivorous animals avoid the plant
due to its bitter taste. The Missouri Ironweed
is named after its tough stem and rusty blooms
the color of oxidized iron. But it was once
a vibrant hue, a purple magenta to be exact.
As summer ends, petals turn, pollinators cease to visit.

The thorny part of the diminished visits
is the need to be more than a plant.
More than a source of seeds to be exact.
On the fringe of the forest stands the Self-heals 
available for consumption from what was once
used for the restorative benefits of its blooms.

Steeped in a cup of steaming water, the blooms
release compounds that ward off a doctor’s visit.
Its usefulness is no longer measured once
it proves it is a hardworking plant.
Hardly ornamental, the potent Foxglove
was destined to save lives, hearts to be exact.

The best preparation wasn’t exact
when Native Americans made use of blooms
as in measuring the ounces of Echinacea
leaves one should brew when visited 
with a sore throat. Or the amount of plants
to smoke in order to cure a headache once

one sets in. People used trial and error once
in a while, since stories aren’t exact
instructions or microchips to plant
in a cranium in expectation of a bloom
of knowledge that perennially visits
like the almost indestructible day lily.

Like the contrarian Mary of rhymes, the carrion flower 
deters offenders but not with cockle shells. Once 
the living organism begins to resemble a visit
from the walking dead, its odor exactly 
mimics that of a decaying corpse. The morbid bloom
could be contrasted with the resurrection plant. 

To bloom where one is planted, is an exacting mandate for anyone. Visiting flowers in a garden just once is enough to prove their almost supernatural powers.

Greyhound / Kathryn Johnson

The Germans have a word for it. 

Schadenfruede: shameful joy 
Einstellung: obstacle for experts
Torschlusspanik: gate-shut panic 
Zettelkasten: note box 
Welttschmerz: world pain.

Once, in Germany, 
I took a walk with 
the dog my not-quite boyfriend 
was dog-sitting for his friends, when 
a small, perfectly German man, 
dressed in tweed and displaying 
little mustaches, stopped me to ask
Vos isch ze verd ver hund?

I gaped and asked, in my turn:
Dog?

Is there a word, in German or 
some other tongue, 
for this exchange?

What is the word for,
I flew to the other side of the world, 
far across the ocean and full 
of naïve hope, expecting 
to find a husband, a mate, 
only to return home, still alone?

Do the Germans have a word for it? 
I’ve looked. And 
I’m happy to report that 
no one does. Because 

I have found better words, 
better flights, better loves. 

On Morels / Kimberly McElhatten

The first morel of spring pops up
amid a mix of moss and locust—
its cap a map of inky cones and ridges.

A camouflaged topography
so hard to see in dawn’s slim light
among the brown and steely leaves,
an eye can barely find it twice.

Of all the mushrooms in the year,
it is surely most capricious
in where and when it unveils itself
to earnest foragers of May,
who oft set out at morning light
to find the first morel of spring. 

IT’S ONLY NATURAL  / H.T. Reynolds

after Disjointed Fidelity by Lilly Frank

 What’s so unnatural about a dead body
the inevitability after birth—
the result of accumulated stories

Despite the mode of departure,
we all leave for an unknown destination
clutching our ticket in the dark
unsure when to pack
where to stand
our last last goodbye

 when the train whistle bellows
and the clock strikes right,

 when we hold our eyes
and breath together

 lean into the withdrawing

 lean into her fingers beneath
our stone-cold chins chiseled human

 lean into how the air stings
as it passes through the throat

 finally understanding the sum of 21—
identical souls—perfectly seamless
holding one another down—
from drifting skyward—
into an unanswered question…

 the inevitability of death
no matter how unnatural
it may be