April - Poem 7

The Peace / Maureen Alsop

A ceaseless salve, the river’s light, a holy 
spoken name—the sun’s
acidic touch.

At daybreak 
the sea is an open mouth. Surf—
another language. 

Ashlyn!   / Bob Bradshaw

 The moment I shuffle 
    out of this YMCA
    I see Ashlyn
    sprinting to me,

    and my heart’s doors 
    start popping open!
  
    My heart tosses aside
    its keys. My arms
    fly open like shutters
    to take in 
    the morning sun 
    that is my granddaughter
    once again.

Distillery / Stan Galloway

When we become fine wine
through ageing and confinement
our spirits strong as oak barrels
with mint or coriander splashed across us
the bitter almond of forsaken amaretto clinging
the sweet-sour rot in a strawberry daiquiri’s aftertaste
the aroma of the morning beside you,
then I know we have survived
life’s hangover
two hundred proof.

Forest / Ava Hu

The Amazon forest is nearly gone.

*

This is the burning season.

What once streamed runs dry.

Trees cut down

and raised as churches.

A man survives

with two hearts.  

Spirits. Smoke.

Forgotten gods.

The hum of chainsaws

and gunshots keeps rising.

God comes

with mud.

God comes

as an outlaw.

Does God open

a seed in ash?  

Who will remember

the names of trees?

*

Ode to a sun dog / Kirsten Miles

diamond dust flickers
suspended to the left
of a low hung sun
shattered rays slung
round her phantom halo

unbidden color a
smeared blur of ice filaments
flickers through leaves
yaws across the gloam 
as Route 20 winds down
towards the James River

black lab wedged  hard
and hot on the floorboard
brown eye rolls up
waiting for the mouth feel
of a stoney creek

The way his torso leans
head cocked gaze 
holding me fast
as if knowing that wheel 
can lure us into
a final curve

untethered

bright rays curtain across
the windshield 

that time we turned into a 
grassy hill sailed across 
yellow tickseed

                           rolled
rolled                                         rolled    

each                                    floating 

                          object       

A loose texture of
rarer bodies
In the blue air

Down by the Meadow  / Sergiy Pustogarov

we danced        through             a meadow
down                            by the creek--
acting
like not a          single care
could affect this 
teenage heart.

we fished for                 minnows
thinking 
our crackers 
would turn into             their favorite food
the second        they bit our hooks. 

we danced                    shirtless 
among
the twigs           and       rocks.
teasing              one another 
if we would                   dare jump 
in the freezing waters.. 

we were            happy               together 
searching for                 fish that never 
saw our 
bareback strokes,
or dared to        bite our clothesline 
fishing poles. 

that never happened:
but i dreamt it after
i cried myself to sleep
every night in the basement.

what a catch / nat raum

After “What A Catch, Donnie” by Fall Out Boy

my thoughts are nightmare fuel, metacognition
for insanity’s sake, and my self-esteem paints
itself the same shade. i am forced to believe i am

the protagonist, eventually—my raisined ego
resists it, but there is no other excuse to explain
the way in which things are constantly happening.

my body breaks down lactic acid, double-time. cracks 
groan in the meat of my neck and shoulders. shhhh.
i goad myself to unlock my jaw, push posture

straighter than the parenthesis of early kyphosis.
it all adds up over time in the sense that nothing 
is actively coming for me—it is already here. i don’t 

do the therapy work during sessions. it happens 
on the outside, day by day, convincing myself that soon, 
things will be different. someone will see i am a catch.

Of my student's second class in pottery / Daniel Avery Weiss

Yes, sweetheart. I am really bald.
No, I have not always been bald.
Oh—yes, I am really—yes, very bald.
Yes, I can help you center. Can you try to do it yourself first?
That's okay. Effort is optional. No, I am not going to put my hat back on.
Yes! Excellent. The walls are great. Looking good.
Position your hands like this. Pressure between.
Slow the wheel down. Good.
Yes! I mean, what would you do if I said no? What if I simply said, “No, I'm not bald, actually.”
Touchè.
Pressure from the bottom of your hand.
Forward. Lean in. Yes! Yes!
No. I am not.

win condition / MK Zariel

gender is a TTRPG and i’m the problem player, says a meme—
and in some twisted way i find it accurate. i am transmasc as in
late on a weekly basis, as in responding to every conflict with some
version of well, actually. butch as in optimized, except when i’m not,
as in overwhelming and quiet all at once. i’m here to tell a story

until i break down and decide to troll everyone instead. to be trans\
is to never have had a gender role model beyond caricature
to be unmoored, unaligned, a changeling in human form—
bilateral dysphoria creeping like foreshadowing like an aura
like a warning. gender is a video game and i am a glitch in the system

ask me to make a character and i’ll choose
the pixelated edge of the screen. the three genders are
boy, girl, and NPC—and I have been all of the above—
and i have tried to flirt with all of the above—and i have never

broken character when i need to. i have minmaxed my pronouns
to hell and back, and still never found the one that feels
like a critical success. will someone make a name generator
for those whose genders are a mystery even to them?

April - Poem 6

The Bridge / Maureen Alsop

Everywhere are clouds and currawongs, pale rockeries
hung with pine shadow. The wind thickens the sky,
forgets winter. You speak as ally—she was lovely you said.
Openness Alma, the sun—a mutilated rose, galactic purple
at the seam—you bury the sky
in water, in bloodwood, in ironbark.
Or stringybark or grey.
The bridge collapses in purple fuzzweed, rosella and musk okra. It is not
in your time now. Sleep’s infused regalia, your fortress—
also gone. Your identity is exposed in this space
in crossing and uncrossing. And now
the force of the sun is a bridge
You are only figuring out its power, the pressure held between spaces—
continuous, fused. Sequestered sun
wreathed in blanched roses, Shakespearean sun—sweet, sagacious, tragic.

Why I Want To Be A Painter In My Next Life   / Bob Bradshaw

  What poet has a studio
    bathed in sunlight?
    Or canvases
    lying about?
  
    A poet’s murky room 
    offers what?
    A gooseneck lamp?
 
    Who wants to watch
    a poet write? 
    But a painter?
    Now we’re talking!
      
    Isn’t it always the painter  
    who gets the Jill Clayburgh,
    the Elsa Zylberstein?
   
    Why shouldn’t I love
    a Salma Hayek?

    Pollock couldn’t draw, 
    or so his mentor
    Thomas Hart Benton
    claimed.  
    I can’t draw either!
    But I can pour paint 
    and splatter it!
    
    Like Manet’s Olympia 
    my favorite model will wear only
    a red hibiscus.
        
    Maybe I should frame
    my poems, hanging them
    on my walls? 

    Then would a painter—  
    or a poet like Frank O’Hara—
    wander in to comment?

    “This one…
    could use some color…
    orange maybe? 
    Or maybe add
    SARDINES
    to it!”
  
    Thanks, I’ll say,
    I’ll fix that. But, say,
    do you know 
    a dark-haired waitress
    or a can-can dancer looking
    for extra pay? 
    All they’d have to do
    is lie on that couch.
    Naked, of course.
    “Of course."

Night Hike  / Stan Galloway

I turned the page and the river opened. –Maureen Alsop

When I read breadcrumbs dropped along the trail
I knew someone was crying out:
I can’t, alone!
crumbs shining bright enough by moonlight
for me to follow intermittently
until a perturbation of pigeons
probably as dusk fell
swallowed up that voice
and now lay sleeping in a spruce line
stomachs talking to each other.
I tried intuition – where would I have gone next?
guessed where each step felt sound
and listened for the whisper
unsure whether I now led or followed.
When I saw glimmers,
made out come join me between branches
smelled distant rain, I quickened to the riverbank
and heard my own voice echo.

untitled / Ava Hu

Humpback whales breach
the shoreline.

Turn toward your god.
Call the waves.

Humpback whales breach
the shoreline.

The sea recedes.
The sea races forward.

Humpback whales breach
the shoreline.

Underlined,
dog-eared pages:

you must change your life.

Driving to Hurricane Ridge contd / Kirsten Miles

Blue-black drupelets shine across
the peninsula Himalayan blackberries thrust 
past native plants through every crevice swelling
drought ripened bounty pronounce
July in every vacant lot

moss and mycorrhizae sweep 
brilliant greens fan
across lawns and rooftops
loam the throat
traces of rainforest once
a moist blanket caressing this hill  

no to the silence of dust 
clouds from the inside out
feathering our nostrils
flaked across fawns and hazelnuts
and lilyponds and spotted rabbits 
under the truck on E street
next to the house whose yard has
disappeared into a sea of lavender

Icarus’s Reward  / Sergiy Pustogarov

the sun reminds me that icarus never got his reward 
for flying away from the rest of his brothers.
a pomegranate bleeds only when its home is ripped apart,
its siblings split across the dishes in my fridge. 

maybe he should have tasted something first, 
staining his face with an already broken family, 
before lifting his wings into the sun.  

the containers in my house sit 
unopened 
everything i save for hope
learns to rot. 

i have neither pomegranate seeds 
nor waxed wings. 

let’s play a love game / nat raum

in the sense that i have never known
anything but pushing pawns around,

the morning after as my goal, and queenly
i am not. it’s all strategy—risk directly

proportionate to reward. i have never
claimed to be a saint. my voice rasps

at the first sign of spring and that’s when
i haven’t dragged an errant cigarette.

i’ll be lucky if i can breathe tomorrow
but that’s not the point. i’m the pawn.

i’m the embodiment of divided by zero,
so much nothing i am become void,

destroyer of romance. (if you keep pressing 
the same buttons, they’ll go numb eventually.)

O / Daniel Avery Weiss

k so it's 9
pm right and the lights
just died, be

cause of the storm, they
went to light heaven it's like
heaven plus or like
heaven lite the

free version or

something so the candles are
out you know and we
swear

like truckers when there is a
leak later but any

way he's in the dirt and a rock
has his name on it the wet's
got the urn all
wet

running on the process / MK Zariel

an erasure poem of college marketing emails

April - Poem 5

The Sun's Uneven Rays / Maureen Alsop

When I Was Your Age / Bob Bradshaw

my college was a Mustang,
and its radio schooled me 
in surf music:

The Rip Chords, The Surfaris,
Ronny and the Daytonas,
The Astronauts,

The Rivieras,
The Breakers,
The Ventures!

In my beach town
romances collapsed  
quickly, 

the way a wave 
knocks you off
your board.

A new kind of dance
popped up 
every week: 

The Jerk, 
The Frug,
The Watusi!

Guys and girls 
lined up--
in front of cafes

and surf shops—
like 45s on the jukebox  
waiting to play 

when I was your age.
Music was never
loud enough.

And like Louie Louie 
love was in the air
everywhere.

There was no need
for a calendar;
summer was never ending,

sure to replace fall
winter, spring--
when I was
your age

Signature  / Stan Galloway

And in my dream I practice cursive writing
as if I were in second grade again
but I am not because in dreams life whorls
instead of marching linear –
each S in uppercase stretched higher
as if growing into puberty
seeing girls trying out their B’s
new letters none of us had known
every letter hooking to the next
until a magic spark enlivened ignored places
mixing up our P’s and O’s in strange but pleasant ways
and suddenly I sign my name across the mortgage
knowing I will pay for this throughout my life.

Ceremony / Ava Hu

*

Holder of ceremony.  
Cloud swallower.

Wielder of swords.
Eater of black oil.

You burn the grass
beneath our feet.

The memory of the sea
recedes.

The earth will turn
with or without you.

Do you know how to call
the spirits?

Barnacles crack open.
Mussels loosen from the rock.

The memory of the sea
recedes.

Do you know how to call
the spirits?

Who will remember
the names of trees?

*

Driving to Hurricane Ridge contd / Kirsten Miles

above the Juan de Fuca strait
otters dip in the curve of Ediz Hook and
the girl at Tongue Point sleuths
tide pools for  orange and purple sea urchins
crimson sea stars, blackberry stains 
on her hands her aunt pointing out tentacles 
anemone reaching inside a mussel 

on the high ridge
in the lower parking lot
faces turned to the star studded sky
the boy on his blanket slightly bored
between each Perseid streaking 
between the screen of sky and void
Soft cries rising around him with each new spark 
wondering which will open a world
he recognizes
or which he doesn’t recognize but falls
flaming from his lap

Simulation Garden Party  / Sergiy Pustogarov

- After the showcase Simulation Garden by Anna Huff 

crystal shatters.
boulders crack.
clay breaks.
insects burrow.
rotting smells.
nostrils furrow.
churches mourn.


blessings fail, 
still chant,
hold hands,
walk softly,
to light. 


the crystal flower
held in your hand 
gives simple decadence in a solemn day. 


the stars 
no longer 
blossom.
we 
broken people 
cast veils
over shaking 
ancient shrines.
letting bugs 
burrow into  
cursed blessings.


in the back 
computers clack.
games buzz buzz 
simulation garden 
hosted by the gods. 

.

afterwards i sat in the grass 
let does dig to grass and into soil.
let flies dance on my arms,
and a drone fly above.


i still didn’t know what to call 
this deity i had stood within.

sprung / nat raum

we all surround the bradford pear spittoon 
of pollen vomit and watch ochre dust percolate 
while horseflies emerge from hides. this is to say

it’s april, and my eyes itch. i’ve decided i want
to be the movie theater popcorn machine—
seems like a good life to me. i’d like to be doused

in butter and grease and change kernels to fluff
at will, say this must be how jesus felt. instead, 
i take Ls the way i used to down chilled shots

of tequila. let’s get one thing absolutely clear:
you’re in their dms. i’m pissing in a pitchblack
bar bathroom. we are not the same.

Doggy Dementia / Daniel Avery Weiss

to be seen / MK Zariel

i almost passed out in public today and looked
desperately awkward doing it. blurred spots, distorted faces,
and still i mostly wondered what everyone would remember of it.
the spots were blue-green like the inside of my eyes, pulsating
like a heat map. i thought i was going to die
for absolutely no reason—and that would be a weird way to go
passing out in the middle of a crowded indie bookstore
in a city to be loved and discarded. sometimes i feel like
one of the many worn-looking pins on the zine rack—
easily taken, easily lost—like a flyer for a punk show
that nobody actually went to, in the end. i didn’t realize
anarchists were regular people until i was one. i didn’t
realize i could stand normally until i was being told quietly
insistently to focus my eyes. what comes next is underwhelming:
a text chain, a flyer on a wall, a conversation over food, a series
of unspoken questions. there’s nothing so precarious as multiple
flavors of Midwest Nice converging. i’m too polite to ask for help
and you’re too polite to ignore me when you see that i need it.

April - Poem 4

The Day - contd / Maureen Alsop

The twilight is an abstract char in the mind of the sentinel.

Our Mission, Babe / Bob Bradshaw

I long for a future 
as optimistic
as those early Sixties,


Alan Shepard 
climbing into his
Mercury capsule
--and history.


Remember, babe,
how we watched
his capsule drop 
by parachute  
into waters off the Bahamas?


I wish we could book ourselves
on a Time Machine,
dropping back
into our early life
together, the splash
we made!


Watching old videos of us
I wonder how 
our world 
could have changed  
so much in so short
a time? 


Wasn’t love always 
our life's mission?
Isn’t it still?


What’s the urgency?
Won’t our lives, babe,
soon pass too


into history--
like Shepard’s
15 minute
flight? 

Helen Advises Infant Hermione  / Stan Galloway

Sleep now
Ignore the swords of men clanging
against each other in one hallway
after the next
Men think swords rule
But here’s the secret –
that little tickle where you pee –
that has more power than
the Harpe of Perseus
than great Xiphos swinging in Achilles’ hand,
or any dozen swords together here in Sparta.
Men will cross oceans for what you hold,
slay harpies, change themselves into
another man or
woman or
beast or
coin just to taste
the pleasure you hold
 between your thighs.
Such is the blessing and curse of
being born a woman.
Don’t let it trip you.
Use it to turn men like a top and leave them
dizzy      laughing      crying out for more.
Remember, it belongs to no one
but yourself.
Pay attention as you grow.
I’ll show you how it works.

Revelation / Ava Hu

From mid-February through early April about a million migrating sandhill cranes stop at the Platte River.

*

Path, revelation,
embodiment.

When sea ice melts
we lose reflectivity.

The sandhill crane moves north 
at the onset of spring.

Dogwood, star-faced,
cherry in bloom.

When the ice melts
we can no longer reflect.

They lean in wetlands, 
one leg, then two.

We lose reflectivity,
the ability to let go.

Some turn their heads 
or tuck them beneath a wing.  

Some stand in a creek 
while they sleep.

No compass.  
No path.

Changes in sea ice 
become extreme weather.

Lilacs loosen
and sway.

Some birds wander
or settle on the ground.

How big are you 
compared to the moon?

 *

Driving to Hurricane Ridge - cntd / Kirsten Miles

Her
young crown
cones upward ninety feet
an evergreen furrow into pale blue skies
shallow roots slip twenty feet across the street
to a curb edging an immaculate manicured lawn where
in a chair on a porch underneath thickly forested mountains

His slow drawl finds my ear a receptacle for nostalgia 
reminiscing at seventy nine —there  were no jobs 
when I graduated here from high school
I was afraid to go into the forest. People
didn’t come back, most people didn’t want to send
their boys to work in logging, so many deaths in the trees—

At the library, three local women from the 
Lower Elwah Sklallam tribe rise before us to debut 
a book celebrating  the cedar forests of the park
share their first  fishing trip to the river since 
the dam came down, their children 
dip cedar canoes in tribal rivers
for the first time in their lives 
their deep radiance and joy
drawing water from
all our
eyes





sonnet beginning with a line by 3OH!3 / nat raum

just another girl alone at the bar 
is my actual gender; stop the tape.
it is thursday and i’m genderless,

sexless—still better than fridays in love.
and lust takes me places i wouldn’t go 
with a gun. i am back where i started
without even a fraction of my youthful

glow, and still i expect history not to 
repeat itself. i think of the owens’ suitors
in practical magic (1995), doomed

to something sinister. i think there must
be a version of the same curse placed
on me, where i am the cause of death 
every time. test it at your own risk.

Search of a Mole Rat / Sergiy Pustogarov

no one understood why she crawled
with her head buried in the sand,
snorting like an anteater 
after every five steps.
constantly gazing forward,
just under the cusp of the living.

she went on for years like this,
forgetting life kept going.
the feet of a thousand people above
stomped all over the tunnels
she had created to bypass 
boundaries made by others.

crack went the sticks under their feet,
pop went the soil around her,
until there was no more movement 
underneath their feet.
no more air pockets formed 
in the wake of her journey.

she had fallen still that day.
her face buried in the dirt,
bones eroding into dust.
she had never quit the search.
never stopped mourning
until her body sank into her lover. 

Sub / Daniel Avery Weiss

The backpacks trundle in packs of mom-kid-mom-kid.
Eyes meander to the steel manufactory, the windows,
the brown drips of essenced age, all the things
that silently mythologize life in the context of steel.
Oil swims in pools of yesterday’s rainfall in the parking lot,
separating into ribbons of chrome rainbow,
and an ambiguous imports warehouse assures
Donde importamos nostalgia
and by that they mean
there is no there there.

In class, they throw pencils and tease the sub and,
as if bespectacled, steal glimpses of knowledge.
There is one flag in the room, sore with
the total stillness of the air. Oppressive.
They sneak little loves through snickers at the
pledge of their silly, no uproariously funny, allegiance.
There is so, so much here here. The children steel themselves.
O, how a flag weeps at the disembodying chaos
of a paper airplane
flying right there,
right past it,
right there and beyond.

self-portrait as a preschool art project / MK Zariel

paint me in cut-out yarn for people who can't yet
use glue without spilling something. i am a crushed & battered
yet meticulously folded piece of cardboard here. i have
no small parts, sharp edges, inherent hazards—just monochromatic neon
and the as-yet-unknown. i had an identity in the way a plastic gem does:
a self-in-quotes, a radiance in the sun, a gleam
that dulls, that falls, affixed to a shaky foundation—fabric scraps
from someone's unused napkins, recycled cardboard, wasted time,
elaborate masks. i am an origami swan with charred edges. i am the
prettiest goddamn modeling clay you've ever seen. i am a medical
incident waiting to happen when somebody swallows nonfood—i don't know how i feel
about medical help anymore. i don't know if i am who i was
when i was five. they say life is what you pay attention to, but it might be closer
to what you consume, what you deny.

April - Poem 3

The Day contd / Maureen Alsop

I turned the page and the river opened. Thin pages, subaqueous and fetid, a
continuum. The eye of the storm crosses the bay at midday.

The trees remain unsettled. Buttercup blue waters collect beneath the roving papers, 

an inconclusive thesis. The tyrant sun. A revolting sun. Navigation itself is research, 

trial and error, a means of breaking and returning. 

A cloud is a misappropriation of desire, a subtext and sometimes a desire. 

The spirits here were woeful. Absolutely woeful. The reflection of ideas rather than
choices.

I am writing a series of postcards to you. A mindless compass without stamps,
seriously, I am getting these together.

Kidney Stone Blues / Bob Bradshaw

My CT shows a stone
teetering on the edge
of my uretha canal.

I obsess over it.
Like a monster in a fairy tale,
it grows bigger,
--every night-- till it’s a boulder
rolled down from a glacier, 
stuck in a ditch.

“It can be painful—
like giving birth,”
my doctor says.

So, shouldn’t my wife
be the one carrying
this damn stone? I ask.

“You’re funny.
Women must love you,”
my doctor says.

What do you mean? I ask.
“You have a tiny stone. 

Yet the thought of it 
wandering down
your uretha
inflicting pain
keeps you 
from sleeping!

But your wife
is looking at pushing
a boulder
out a straw
when she delivers!
When she screams
what will you 
advise her?
To man up?“

My urologist 
shakes her head. 
“If you feel pain,
you can’t bear,

maybe you should
ask your wife
what she would do.

Don’t be surprised  
if she offers
helpful words like
Push!
Push!”

Tenth Birthday  / Stan Galloway

Sunday nights we’d race home from church
to catch the end of It’s About Time,
or Land of the Giants
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
or Time Tunnel –
shows about astronauts and science
in a topsy-turvy world.

At 10, it was no different than at 9 or 8,
except my birthday was a Sunday,
and Apollo put a module on the moon.
Human history hit a high-water mark
and I was blowing out ten rocket engines
on a cake that lasted maybe for a day.

The Mountain / Ava Hu

*

Quickly, a bobcat darts.
Mist closes after it.

Everything broken 
mends

if your mind believes
there is no mind. 

Do you become invisible
in the mist?

Do you hold 
what disappears?

The evening star
breaks open.

You break open
a brush of light

across the purple
mountain.

*

Driving to Hurricane Ridge / Kirsten Miles

I

4:00am, immersed, posting a poem by an interpreter
for asylum cases, still lingering in warm sheets
hygge rising around pattering fingers
a wooden crack breaking the hush

under the window a yearling spike
rubs felt off his finger-
sized horn on a fallen
branch under the pear tree
a watchful six point tries to lock
racks then wanders off 
unable to get a purchase on the 
one slight point 

A doe and her twin fawns seek shade 
under the cave of the western red cedar 
boughs draping a massive sward around 
the picket fence, just past the mailbox
one lone root gently lifting 
a ridge on West 11th street

Morning News / Sergiy Pustogarov

in the morning dew drops kiss my feet as i dance with the golden butterflies.

in the morning 
            i dance with 
                        dew drops 

my feet 
            kiss                  
golden butterflies

dew drops 
kiss
                   butterflies

i am not a monsoon, but a summer storm / nat raum

ire takes over dusk. bruise-grey
clouds replace chalked orange

skyscape. this is a fraction

of what surges veins, anger
spiking adrenaline like lightning

zips its way through a cloud.

i’m a cliché. disrespect marked 
my forehead, bastard child of ash

wednesday and carrie (1976).

i no longer believe in honorable
shades of grey. you either bleed

or you’re dead.

The Raccoon / Daniel Avery Weiss

The headlights unfurl from the blackness
one thick, suspicious glare. Pupilless and very near to rabies
not being a metaphor. I have seen them

wild and hungry, clawing at each other,
a scattered family in a marsh on the Gulf, snapping turtles clad
in a zebra's disposition. This is

not that: this is in the garbage,
equal parts frozen and furious,
and bewitched by my sad, untrashed life on this earth.

You are right.
There is more trash than I know what to do with.
I eat it every day. Do share.

They skitter away, spitting
primal squeal and swearing vengeance against
every wall and all the grass. Perhaps I will join.

fluctuations / MK Zariel

a text message poem

my anarchism stems in part from a hatred of imposed order.
i hope this wasn't too weird to talk about.

she kept getting flustered when i complimented her
he is on the board of a fucking startup. it is terrifying.

i've gotten to the point of asking everyone i know if they know people in milwaukee.
we all have our contributions.

this may sound strange but you're really good at explaining this stuff
can i send you a poem?

i love being your resident anarchist friend
this is less about logic and more about how my bodymind responds to things.

your fight scene was iconic
i know casting decisions are final, it just worries me.

he wrote it in 3 minutes and didn't care
i could create a homebrew flashback condition

the discord is nuts right now
i hope you get chosen

April - Poem 2

The Day ctd / Maureen Alsop

Below the equator above the 26th parallel and the Brisbane Line[1], I live in a space of my own choosing.

I’m working through a “third state”[2] of consciousness, organically seeking subtext, solitude. Working between image and experimentation. I expose myself. In this, I expose betrayal. 

An anatomy with

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

[1] The Brisbane Line was a division designed in WW2 wherein the whole of the northern region of Australia would be abandoned in the face of catastrophic attack. Comforting for one living in Far North Queensland right?! I don’t want so plainly to announce my who and where, but suffice it, I am both American and Australian. Though in both countries, I’m confident, I would be most obviously considered as an American. I will try not to judge this. To introduce myself to one “why” I am here in this situation of 30/30, I’d like to thank Tupelo for their support. Tupelo kindly published some visual poems some years ago:

https://www.tupeloquarterly.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Alsop-Witness.compressed-copy.pdf

I like to support those who support me. I’ll leave it at that for now.

[2] The idea of a “third state,”  here described through a found reference to a war ship; “war ship” and “worship” are two continuums of American heritage. To me, the “third state” is better defined by the theta, or dream state, also possibly that momentary decomposition shortly after death. At the moment, as at every moment, there are many destructions afoot. I am human, thus wounded, let’s go with that, hey?

My Father Shaves / Bob Bradshaw

An early memory of my father?
A towel around his waist, 
he holds a shaving brush,
as he stands in front
of the bathroom mirror.

The walls crawl
with droplets of water.
And Dad’s cheeks? 
They are slopes
lathered in clouds
of foam. 

With his brush he dabs
a dollop of cloud-stuff
on my left cheek,
then stands back, like an artist admiring
his morning’s work.

His index finger 
draws a cloud-trail of foam
down my right cheek.
Shall I shave you, son?

I nod, yes! And carefully
(blade closed) he scrapes
the cloud-surf from my face
with his blade.

Go show your mom.
She’ll be proud to see 
how much you’ve grown up!
and I race off with
the good news.

One Sock  / Stan Galloway

between washer
and dryer
lies unfound
for weeks
missed but
looked for
in wrong places
mate set aside
unable to cry out
also lost
because alone. 

The Widening Field / Ava Hu

Make it stand out

*

Who am I
a witness

to green entering
everything

dervish of myth
and pollen

we fingerprnt canyons
dust climbing light

we fngerprint the bruise
of rain on white jasmine

belly of a cloud
expanding with breath

which line unsettles
the field?

Who will be the water
who lifts the boat?

*

untitled / Sergiy Pustogarov

i have started planning my morning around my time on the toilet.
i know it will take me anywhere from five to thirty minutes
every morning when i get up to do my business,
and so i wake up thirty minutes earlier than i want to;

just because i know that my body doesn’t always love me, and somewhere 
inside my bosom, the gears are not completely turning in synchrony.
i know this isn’t normal, and every two years i know it will get much worse--
throwing me into a housebound fit of nausea and constant pain, but it’s life.

and i’m too scared to go to the doctor to figure out what could be wrong 
with me, and my anxiety is too high to get the tests they want of my insides,
just to be able to say what’s wrong, and what my final verdict will be. what medication 
they say that i should shove down my throat to let me get up thirty minutes later in the day.

so i just tell myself that it must be ibs, because it’s a magical little thing that 
cannot be easily identified; and it kind of fits all the symptoms that i’m having;
and it’s not as bad as colon cancer. well, wait it could be that, i guess.
and i’m sorry, but i have so many issues running through my mind.

you see the thing i didn’t tell you at the beginning is that i am a medical student--
i know more things that could go wrong with your body than the average person.
and somehow that sometimes sends me into a tailspin, wondering what i’m struggling 
with today when i wake up thirty minutes earlier, just to sit on a cold porcelain throne.

and i guess it could be colon cancer, because i do vape-- and there have been a hundred
different studies that show the tobacco i’m slowly inhaling into my lungs 
is somehow connected to the rest of my cells; causing them to turn all beserk,
and never really know what they are doing inside my body 

it could also be some other disease like crohns, making every meal i eat a dance 
with the devil. never knowing how it will affect the rest of my day, and how long 
i will be sent back to the seat of durge, to pay my respects for simply eating.
but i’m still too scared to get that colonoscopy that in the end could show nothing. 

so today i end the day by telling myself it’s ibs all along,
and plan to get up thirty minutes earlier tomorrow. 

--this is ibs—

blacking out at my first phillies game/nat raum

scarlet and powder blue are now phanatic-shaped 
blurs in the back of my retinae. surfside tastes

like stevia so i stomach the whole can in sacrifice.
i know i’m a good friend—that’s not the point.

i giggle from behind the phils’ dugout and pray
they dig themselves out from five runs down

despite my loyalty to baltimore’s baseball birds.
we take the train back up broad, take fishtown

iced teas to the face and shots of beef broth 
to boot. sometimes i still don’t believe myself

when i run it all back, and i’m not just talking
about this afternoon, chilly but sunspeckled,

shitfaced in a way that doesn’t burn the house
down. i watch thereal housewives of new york 

and everyone says ramona’s an angry drunk.
i watch southern charm and they say craig’s problem

is not the booze, but the fury which lies closer
to the surface than most of us are comfortable

with. i also mean myself, my own disdains
and demons once gasping like goldfish, begging

for their fair share of oxygen. the last oracle card
i bought said dance with your shadows; they are a part

of you.  i sip dirty martinis with mine now, certain
dark and light are close enough to hold each

others’ hair back, if it came to it. i smoke mystery
blunts outside the bar. i come to bent over a toilet,

more mess than pillar, but still alive. sometimes
i have to remind myself that i am still alive.

Bison Gallivanting in South Dakota / Daniel Avery Weiss

He is as breath
on fire
a sort of fan
a shovel into some
thing seeking
a soul
oh,
what dirt

reconcile / MK Zariel

i’ll leave it to you to see me

in the cold yet glowing light of a Wisconsin winter,

in the reflections we ignore, in the way

neither of us feel a single thing without

questioning it first. come and make small talk


at the edge of a cliff with me—update me

on your transition goals while we watch the world burn—

make me wonder if we have original characters

or just shadow selves. you feel like safety

and home to me, a person for whom safety

and home are mixed bags at best. i can’t decide



how to feel about that. i’ll extend a casual

invitation, a shy smile, nothing more than an

ill fated event and a gossip session after,

soft light, quirky memes, the infinity of time.

you don’t like to talk about the future. you don’t

talk about things you don’t respect. i’ll move on


or pretend to—watch your smile like a curated

cottagecore aesthetic, watch your selfhood like

a beautiful fortress, watch you build walls

made of desires as-yet-noticed. you once told me

i was your only real friend, and i was equal parts

horrified and impressed.

April - Poem 1

 The Day / Maureen Alsop

the dream cut into the heart of her belonging, she entered the
lagoon, welcoming a rose—blossoming at the ocean’s depth—

she entered the sea and survived the dockyard hands /the dockyard men /the hands of
men

her sister survived by war paint

seen to be unseen

My Black-capped Chickadee / Bob Bradshaw

She’s more welcome  
than the Golden Oldies 
flying from a radio
into my yard.    

A little scholar
she sports 
a black cap
as if she’s 
graduating today
from kindergarten.

Put out a box 
of wood shavings
and she’s happy 
like a toddler
discovering
LEGO.

And she’s always
ready to snack,
her black bib
tucked under
her white 
cheeks.  
I leave a seed
by the bird bath.

Like my daughter
she watches,
cocks her head
 as if I’m tutoring her
in French.
Voila! 
I say to her and her heart
flutters wildly 
in a burst 
of wind 
and she’s off!
singing 
“Hey Sweetie!” “Hey Sweetie!”
—as if even
at her
young age
she knows life
is short!

Batu Khan  / Stan Galloway

ancient voice
beside the Dnipro
soughs through
silver birch
insists this dirt
this rain
each breath
is hexed
always will be
coveted by
outsiders.

*Batu Khan led the siege of Kyiv in 1240.

Revisit / Ava Hu

*

The earth shakes her memories 
into the shapes of falling flowers:

folded wing of chrysanthemum,
hooded iris unfurls.

The dark universe 
we open and close

the burn of wildflowers,
the glacier melt. 

We are the black-ribboned 
song of Orpheus descending, 

the ascent all depends 
on how you hear it.

A Day for Fools Like Me in April. / Sergiy Pustogarov

I close the front gate,
The warm wind cajoling around my shoulders.
It’s ninety degrees outside
With blazing sun.
The summer crock of toads meets my ears
As the world sheds its winter coat 
And leaves start to peer around the doors. 
April fools!
Tomorrow will be thirty degrees again.

A lizard runs out in front of my foot,
I pounce to grab it and admire all its beauty.
The tail comes off,
He keeps running.
April fools!
The mystery always seems to get away. 

I get in the car,
Turn on the racket under the hood 
And start driving.
I turn onto the freeway
And past the sparkling water,
Its glisten reflecting back through my eye.
A spark of hope finally awakening,
The world will finally keep on healing,
And the light will keep on shining.
April fools!
We started another war today. 

Ahead I see a puddle 
A reminder of the soft raindrops 
That watered the earth the morning before
Granting passage to this beauty now 
April fools!
It’s just a mirage on a hot day.

It just keeps going on,
Every day a new horror.
The world somehow isn’t awakening in joy,
It’s still in pain like all along. 
April fools!
I thought humanity would do better, 
It seems we never learn. 

instructions for fortification via upcycling the body / nat raum

A haibun after Sadee Bee

bloat lungs like steaming balloons which float through the late
summer skyscape. tie esophagus at the top and allow to collapse
inward. wipe crusted sleep from corners of eye sockets; cut feet at
the ankles and replace with wheels. submerge fingers in the gristle
of grey matter. begin to sculpt. cast a spell across the night, stars
shuddering in both anticipation and supernova. smolder brighter,
soar higher.

the city can only
see you before you’re about
to die, recycle into dust.

The Kidney Stone / Daniel Avery Weiss

I consulted my dog yesterday about the weather.
In his old age, his legs have shifted

purpose: no longer for walking, now only for the ache
of incoming rain, premonitions of petrichor

twitching his inky black knob of a nose. He will not go outside now
if the great oracle of his musculature simmers

clouds into raindrops. How very omnipotent, I wonder,
that perhaps his legs themselves demand rain, a gift earned with age

and so exhausting to wield that he can only spend his days
lounging, unmoving, on the couch. Gods need their rest, after all

is said and done, what remains is a drenched backyard, grass
like wilted spinach, the life cycle of dirt to mud made manifest,

and he is right. My dog is right, and I, too, feel futures
in my gut, each step closer to them less premonition

and more kidney stone assassinating its way through
me—oh, to be Merlin, missileless mut, blind, deaf, head in the sand

by virtue of age alone—is this his superpower? Flight
from it all? Stupefying glare of his mortality

holding him fast and hard to whatever home, home,
home this is? Something rotten haunts

our days, you and I, whose bones we
frantically teethe.

How our bodies hurt that we face a future
that faces us, looking back at its dismal birth and howling,

How did we ever let that happen? It was in our bones, we
poor dogs, and we could not stay inside.

My dog—he has cataracts, eyes like frosted glass—and
when our eyes meet, uncertainty flails between us

until something bites—he looks away, or huffs, or I hear the news.
To tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, glaring steadfast at the blood and iron,

Hello.
My name is Daniel, and my world is ending.

Shake my hand.
Let's talk.

a politician posted on Bluesky / MK Zariel

for Trans Day Of Visibility. i was supposed to feel seen,
i think, but i shrugged and kept scrolling.
i don’t feel visible so much as in-progress, a forgotten footnote
in the drafts folder of my brain. social media screams out
a resonance for trans survival, for the way we will likely all venmo one another
the same tired chunk of money, for the mutual aid graphics, for the
pithy quotes, for nobody, for the small talk

we’ll make with a well-meaning cis friend, asking
what they can do to support us. it’s grey and desperate
here in the midwest, the sky changing hues like the pronouns
in my bio—snow melting and reforming only to blossom
into a short-lived false spring. today i reached out to an ex
asking if she felt visible yet. she didn’t respond. today i woke up
feeling resolutely normal. today i was trans, but i wasn’t

entirely sure what that meant anymore. since when did the simple fact
of having never felt like a girl create a void to be filled
with labels, with litanies, with the question of whether i should just
be the first person alive to transition in both directions at once.
transmasculine lesbian fits like the new outfit you buy
at the peak of summer, wondering if maybe you’ll feel
like a different person. being visible makes it hard
to be anything else.

March - Poem 31

IF WE KISSED, WE COULD TAKE OUT THE PAST FROM EACH OTHER’S TONGUES / A Cento composed by Susan Hankla

With lines from and by Kathleen Bednarek, Myoma Bibi, Susan Hankla, Amy Haworth, Christina McCleanhan, Elizabeth McGraw, and Alexis Wolfe.

The shades are drawn on the work,
after trying on the silver of a night.

I'm sat in my little kid closet;
the dog's barking begs a long story.

Poverty chickens squawk; by all accounts 
there were no worms anymore.

Awake at the spark, my friends always talk of tomorrow
What does yesterday melt into?

There's a line of ladies released from lies.
Was the sunset that spotless like really pure peach,

when the sea is filled with wrappers glinting in the light?
I miss keeping company with cleanliness, unbuttoned cuff

holding snot. I am all mouth stuffed with sky, and hardtack prayer.
There is rarely applause for the girl who colors her cat blue.

I'll make of you a sorryfish, a photo of a ripped photo;
grass painted in shades of prozak, I'll sing the scripture of my grief.

Think about something else: I'll put peas in the orzo.
I am from bridesmaids' dresses. Shalimar on pure cotton cloth.

I am a monkey near the out-of-tune piano.
Rewild your soul: there is a prayer between your thighs.

We are mountains, my lips in your hair: A taste of the feast that was promised.
It's not about what you wear, but how. Dandyism is a thing, Y'all.

I used to walk into a new city, feet clad in jelly shoes, but now I carry 
a wicker basket of hot pepper jellies, the only one to take the story with me.

March - Poem 30

A Closing Prayer / Kathleen Bednarek

Prayer survives in the mouth. 
It survives despite the book 
being partially burned. 
And blooms back in muddy ash 
from a mistake of fallen tears.

A patchwork of pages, 
known by its ply 
of edges and shadows. 
Words spoken in.

A hand upon the cover— 
peace—you are beloved. 
Incantations pressed 
by repetition upon sand 
from the Indian Ocean.

All I can give you is finite.
Grains of continent flung back 
to the emptiness of space. 

This hymn of a star’s collapse.
Shared with time, 
desire falling in on itself. 

Encouraging our passage
to be sung, let us complete 
silence taken in, heard through 
a window in the heart. 

Black Grief  / Mymona Bibi

I'm at that stage of grief
where black lakes spill
out into black land
on black days and under black moons.
Once upon a time 
there was a line between sky
and water - I remember wading
through blue bodies.
Now the world is darkened
with ravens and sinking 
is easier,
my voice is dying,
becoming another black sound.
As loud as the last time
I sobbed in the back
of a taxi,
as loud as the dog 
barking at the rising tides.
I want what he wants.
To make art from swallowed pride.
To find stars in the black sky

Every few years I make a list of jobs / Susan Hankla

people have that no one would ever imagine existed.

1. The people hired to carry the trains of heavy designer gowns 
at such places as the Met Gala, or on the Red Carpet the night of Academy Awards.

2. The people who wash all the cat and dog dishes at SPCA.

3. The person or persons who assemble things you buy online:
such as the under-the-desk printer caddy, or the teak shower bench
which weighs close to three-hundred pounds. 

4. The person or persons who knits sweaters for Teddy bears for Etsy.

It's time for the dance-break for words: whoever invented this phrase deserves a medal:
"You can't dance to every record." It's a real stress-reliever to hear it.

An ekphrastic for poems that are classics, such as "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop,
or E.D.’s "Because I Could Not Stop for Death."

A public service announcement: stop using the word "iconic". Please just stop using it.
Certainly, everything can't be iconic. A couple years earlier, in overuse was the word, "ironic."

And FYI: Dandyism is a thing, y'all. Look it up. Try it on if you are male identified.
We women need to smile.

A poioumenon is a written work that tells the story of its own making, such as
"I May Destroy You" by Michaela Coel.

I'll keep you posted when I think of more things I think you need to know.

Conclusion   / Amy Haworth

(A cento from my March poetry)

A boy on his bike
won’t be shut down, torn down, talked down
by majority votes won

I weep for the girls 
healed
with shadowed lines

And I realize how easy it could have been to say
“I see what you are, you rodeo clown”
rolling it over, tasting it, teaching my mouth to say it

I am from sea shore and man 'o war
when I was your everything 

Today could go either way
but the spring, when it comes, tastes like sunshine

We were made to forge trails
immersed in beauty so loud
you’ll notice it tickle your back
                 Gen       tle
Ghosts or angels — who would know?

I hope you live next door,
(No one here will I know in a year)

As if I knew,
Mother of Good,
the ladders are being burned.

Here's What Makes Sense to Me / Christina McCleanhan

Grief sleeps in the throat.

rouses…peeks…
ragged breath passing—
a golden witness turning darkness

Joy lives in the eyes.

Self as writing prompt / Alexis Wolfe

imagine you are falling
place a penny under your furred tongue
marry a liberal Jeep Cherokee at the local courthouse
sing Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart into a spinning 
orbital sander, shatter your grandmother’s Churchill china  watch
their baby blue rosettes fly, spit cherry jello down a goose’s 
throat, kitefly a tumbleweed on your bichon frisé leash,
crawl on hands and knees the reeking leek fields
adjacent the Auvers-sur-Oise cemetery,
vandalize red the grand canyon
change your tax-filing status to Derelict
ding-dong-ditch Marina Abramović

March - Poem 29

Lyric to Goodbye #1 / Kathleen Bednarek

It sounds like spy code, 
but here’s how the song went: 

Yellow mailbox, this is redrose bush.
& these are your blue eyes 
& your idea about tomorrow. 

I have a surprise, it's behind my back. 
They’re closed tomorrow 
& yesterday. 
So I can’t remember 
how to return it.

Where there's a surprise, there’s something 
completely unknown—
what is it? 

I’ve returned the outline of that moment.
In the shape of what you 
could only make—

(Tape ends)

By accident / Mymona Bibi

I left the door unlocked and the keys
on the floor by accident.

I thought we were free with our
toes in the water, free from accidents.

There is a scar you forgot to touch
and a story I forgot to tell about that accident.

This birth between the night and day
was to be a miracle, always an accident.

I slipped in a puddle and saw your face
in the clouds, all by accident.

A fear of drowning is a fear of playing
and these fears were not built by accident.

Let us kiss beneath stars until they fall and burn
my skin, we are not the last accident.

FROM THEIR JOURNEYS  / Susan Hankla

World tilts on its axis   / Amy Haworth

Second world war could have gone either way 
A matter of days, hours of difference 

Today could go either way
A matter of decisions, powers of difference.

Yesterday was currents of people 
marching as one, a

Calibrating force 
A matter of unity, none cower in deference.

In Longing, I Root / Christina McCleanhan

Poetry is juiced from the orneriness of our gut.

Today, I drove a road I learned to miss yesterday…Kinniconick was pooled at the place where March always visits... hands on the wheel… air softened by old bark and dried leaves…I drove by instinct… I went to my grandmother’s cemetery… sat on her tombstone, to be close to her plot of earth. I willed her to speak… scold my disrespect…waited for her to claim me as her own…cleared sticks, stepped on soft ground…it’s good the ticks are not hungry this early in the season...I forgot to wear socks.  

Our history got caught in the river tide.

On the way, I passed through my grandfather’s town…there was no music…at the four-way stop, I found a voicemail…played it until the tires bounced onto the railroad tracks. His death made my bones ache… for the first time in six years, the summoning to visit ghosts was louder than my fatigue…I was prepared to sit in silence…Instead, I spoke to the one who designs my days. I asked Him to love me…let me be useful…show me what to build with the sorrow I hold…His answer was a symphony of lawnmower, birds, and wind.

In silence, what is carried rests. 

March - Poem 28

Feel vs. am / Kathleen Bednarek

Everything is changing. 
The tangerine is softening.
The tangerine is softening there.  
Pulling from the waxed light of its porous 
           surface so much like still life. Pulling 
           moisture reserves inward, 
           into the cellular structure of its white 
           threads and pith. 
Fibrous, elsewhere split apart 
by the teeth of expressive monkeys 
and a separate catbird. 
Taken in 
and cast aside, the bitter rind 
rolled in dust 
skin up.

FOUR INSTANCES OF CELESTIAL INTERVENTION / Susan Hankla

On that flight to the manuscript conference
in the Berkshires, the red sweater
featured on the cover of my poetry book 
sits down and flies beside me. We arrive 
to see Yankee Candle's HQ, "The Scenter 
of the Universe."

Christmas one year after Mother died,
on December 26 I call suicide hotline 
just to talk, but no one answers, so I call 
the number for vets, and Dreama picks up. 
Hearing her Appalachian voice slows 
my racing pulse.

When I see the male lead's distinctively thick
mustache in the movie Chicken with Plums,
I email Lincoln Labs at MIT and my lover
answers it after forty years. A connection never 
broken, because of the red thread that binds us.

Waiting outside an Italian restaurant,
in a downpour in Littleton, our first sunset 
at Frost Place, like the magician's dollar bill 
centered in an orange, folded typing paper in a bush
catches my eye; it's the poem I've been looking for
so very long. Eight poets gather to eat, each served 
one at a time, as if there's but 1 plate, 1 fork, 
1 knife, 1 spoon.

Broken Sleep / Christina McCleanhan

Raise a glass of milk,
cry out, “here here,”
go to bed.
She was taught to barter by
strangers seeking commodities
sculpted by her personality and flesh.
In the beginning, lived her smile.
In her smile lived the truth.
As she ran, the panting wind
left her parched.
Good water left by tepid people
trailed sediment along her throat.
Once, twice, she coughed.
When her throat did not clear,
their hands were still
out of reach.
She understood.
Ugliness made them
feel helpless. What is
seen in the dark is not often
forgotten in the light.
Can I be enough, she thought.
Stay calm, stay still
have the wisdom 
to wait.

I still can't speak for the wreck / Alexis Wolfe

I still can’t speak for the wreck / windless field /  closed window against worn sky —

I want to lick creek bed 
after creek bed after creek 
bed dry, until

little red flowers sprouting    
into brightness 

March - Poem 27

Preparing for the Gala / Kathleen Bednarek

Believe me and I do. I do speak of restoration, of apokatastasis, rather than apocalypse. I believe and I
act through the distribution of genuine care exacted in small acts of kindness, holding a brass
candelabra picking up the refuse of a history that haunts us, trudging, jabbing the cold ground of its 

mistakes and treachery so others may attain comfort rather than receiving the fast food bag of no
choice, only apathy, or other poor roping mechanisms terrorized by their faces looking into doom
mirrors. We need each other just to open the cellophane on a pack of cupcakes or gather the 

measurements of the sprinkler system greening the desert. It’s wonderful the systems mostly work
seamlessly—the streetlights determining the timing of the fish market delivery truck. The snapper’s
fresh, thin, pink halo eyes on ice stored in cardboard looking up sideways at us who they will now 

enter though never understand, nor us them, though by saline sensation fed into our bodies formed by
millennia of ocean. Delicate flesh to go with the wine. We who wander in parties of preferences who
are thrown into finite lives pointing to count attendance. We enter and stream like shiny naked ghosts.

Come heal me with your deadest cells/ Mymona Bibi

golden shovel after Candace Lin’s g/hosti exhibition

The street is full of our regret until the trains come
to pick us up and hold us, our knees bump as we try to heal
our wounds from the arrow of time. you and me
watch the tunnel close in, we’ve never breathed with 
our eyes open so the darkness is home, damp is your
memory. we burst out the ground and our bodies are the deadest
after mutating and clutching the differences in our cells.

The Painter  / Susan Hankla

had easels stationed

all over her house 
and at each one
ice cream bowl-sized ashtrays 
full
of her cigarette butts 
bearing lipstick kisses, 
briar rose.
After she was gone 
tours
of her house  still went on, 
except now she no longer 
could give hugs 
to greet us. 

Nobody 
dared empty
her ashtrays, 
even then.

in memory of Nancy Witt

82   / Amy Haworth

My dad on his e-Bike 
is eight years young
I drive his car
    slow 
mid-morning light,
mom and son in the car
10 minutes earlier, he made his own plan
called it
"I'll meet you there",

Wind and joy 
     alchemizing aging
Now
    feels the creep of a car
Steals a glance to assess,
his eyes on the road,
My smile rises, its genesis 
in heart's canyons
birthplace to the most extraordinary
lightness and love
Please—my joy pains in his purity—
can I always have
    this moment in time,
see it in frames
freeze it forever.
If the world answers prayers
let me never forget
how happy he is
just
   A boy on his bike.

Something to Consider / Christina McCleanhan

The only roof worth the dime it costs is made of tin.
Down the rain slides, and sound is carried
throughout the waiting rooms below.
Volent thrashings from pelting rain- the roof
shelters man from nature’s temperament.

The roof exists in a place of repetition,
and on occasion, a pause.                                 

Rust-rimmed bolts, dry, caked dirt live a quiet existence
near the missing edges, birds nest around the gapped soffit.

Summer is told through expanding beams,
through winter as harsh air settles into the corner stillness.                                              

The roof, sturdy and competent, intact or in pieces,
protects the chair, the bed, the family without cessation
until broken by an angry element—
water, fire, wind.

Renewal is dependent, resting in the hands of its owner.
Courage is irrelevant—collapse is anticipated.

There is a crack, a loose nail,
and a leak traveling to a box of photographs.
The subjects -soon to be forgotten.
What can be used to repair the loss? Not the roof.

A tiny human cries for peace, for understanding, and

who will bring comfort? Not the roof.

But unroll a cot, seek refuge from a damning heat,
a blistering sun, and you will be shaded
by its commitment.

The rain does not ask the roof what it remembers.
The roof would not hear the rain if it did.
The roof lives in a space of bracing, shielding, and rest.

Disappointed, lately keep telling myself / Alexis Wolfe

tilt lobe / open gullet 

featherling awaiting slackblue-black

jagged confetti swirls out 
instead

forgive me the party, it was 
unintended

my ears   burning red

you thinking
of me again?

March - Poem 26

Feeding the Goats / Kathleen Bednarek

Nothing that can ever be accessed 
is being disposed of at its center 
through your life

Like the sunlight known only by darkness
People have said various things to me 
to escape their own confusion

I give them my shoelaces & 
somehow they have found a hunger for 
candy

Live and Die / Mymona Bibi

We live with all our passions,
desires, memories,
exponentially changing
begging for consistency.
We ask so much of each other
so that we can blame all this
disappointment on something 
that breathes.

Let's not mix our life with our world. 
Those two that hold each other
from different bodies.
Skies are emptier when we forget
the places of those two
in our minds and souls,
like the street in 2020.
We both looked out-
life and world fused together.

Now, we're lucky if our skin
sags-
gravity is nothing but time passed.

Let's stop it all for a second.
Let's float.

People Invisible to History  / Susan Hankla

can still have a good time.
Their music, played in kitchens after work
in the late hours, going all night
in their improvisational juke joints, 
they make make-ups: lyrics thought up
on the spot, fresh songs and adding on.

You'd think I know all about this, firsthand, 
but it's from meeting someone who wrote a book 
on Mississippi delta blues. The man most focused on, 
a gravedigger, made clay skulls with flash-cube eye sockets

and field corn teeth. Said, they're ashtrays.

His skulls live in collections
in American Folk Art museums. 
The live music is what I want to witness.
Only one white man so far has accessed
–he's good people and he's written down 
the "make-ups", mostly filthy.

It puts me in the clouds, said
James Son Ford Thomas, 
Music is judged by feelings,
not by faith.

For Bill Ferris,
         who introduced me to what is hidden

Broken  / Amy Haworth

The x-ray showed
your shattered bones
healed
with shadowed lines
And I knew 
       one day
we'd come back to this
        to mine
hope that a heart
broken
in 1000 pieces
will also 
return
    full
        range
              of
                  motion.

When We Art / Christina McCleanhan

plant your feet in play—
release the honest note
simple but exact

The thing no one ever tells you about being creative is how red hot your heart and loins and breast and muscles feel when you plant your feet and write the truth in simple but exact terms, and release fire in play between yourself and another actor.

The thing no one ever tells you about being creative is how everything is really about fitting circles into squares-a white elephant seated at a table crowded with personality and greed.

The thing that no one ever tells you about being creative is that the finish isn’t scary—the completion is exhilarating—it is the fear that you will be too dumb or distracted to catch the purpose of the next idea or that its intensity will be inconvenient and in reaching for the uncomplicated you may lose the most previous gift of all, but it is also having faith that whatever we acknowledge or respond to, agree to peel, will come from the poetry often buried deep within the ordinary and mundane.

                whatever we acknowledge
                agree to peel—buried deep
                the ordinary mundane

Singularity  / Elizabeth McGraw

It’s 3am and I can’t sleep. You’re up making coffee back home and I toss and turn now with notepad in hand.  I read recently that writing comes back into vogue because AI can read it so well it’s easily transcribed and stored digitally. He takes his dozens of moleskins and scans it all in and discovers he’s even more findable. I wish I could scan myself. Hit control F and find what I’m looking for.          

Disappointed, lately keep telling myself / Alexis Wolfe   

Disappointed, lately. Keep telling myself 
branch out, believing I’ve eaten all 
the branches. Little tricks to makebelieve I’m younger—
hold my forehead taut and stick my tongue out 
while I drive. Living east, I cursed Snowplow Days 
and now I miss them—that is how these things go. 
In a moment it will look like summer again—I’ll complain 
about the salt stains on my camouflage hat and disappear
into some backcountry byway or another. It’s easy
to think you’re the only one sleeping 
near an open window. I can’t name a single friend 
with health insurance. Keep your extremities inside 
the ride at all times. Years and years—that’s how much 
time passes. But the moment will take care
of itself—incredible, how we bear alone. 
Maybe you, too, are in search of salvation.                                                   

March - Poem 25

Poem for Friend Request / Kathleen Bednarek

The last I saw you was fifteen years ago.
We were in a bar on Locust Street. I could barely hear you.
You were with your boyfriend, now husband. 
I want to say
we were talking about Philotes, the goddess of friendship,
how her mother is Nyx, the goddess of night. Talking about 
how your dad was the first in our neighborhood 
to get the internet. Prodigy. How we rounded up 
instant messages along the Oregon trail, fetched tokens 
sitting cross legged, eating sweetened fruit pressed onto paper 
we unrolled while you fantasized about boys. 
I sat up in bed. Your face set against a background, a field of tall grass. 
I want to say 
I ran over to you but I think you saw me first. We were giggling so much 
we couldn’t breathe. We were kicked out of the movie theater 
while seeing Little Women. We ran away for no apparent reason 
from Girl Scout camp, feigning endless hunger and strife.

Does anyone stay on the phone all night anymore? 
I type your name. I include the image of a heart which is now 
traveling across           a space     somehow   
but not literally, like.

My / Mymona Bibi

hand-holding
heart-pounding
litter-throwing
wall-punching
teeth-kissing
new-kissing
self-hating
self-changing
time-eating
day-dreaming
glitter-spraying
care-rejecting
risk-chasing
night-maring
feet-pacing
city-craving
tongue-cutting
liquor-tasting
friend-finding
bus-taking
street-sleeping
stone-throwing
not-waiting
rough-asking
lie-binding
all-seeing
us-keeping
self-healing
moon-facing
world-making
baby

There are sparkling moments during great sadness:  / Susan Hankla

 

two white-tailed deer

                                  leapt in front of his mother's Hearse

on the way to her funeral.

                                So cold that December in Greencastle,

in tall grasses, ice encased each blade, and made its blinding

                               spectacle so that we arrived in a Damascus,

changed.

Geological Chart  / Amy Haworth

Born alive on dusty trails
embraced by wrinkled rocks
elite in their impatience for weakness
and fools
floating
in a raft, my rodeo
bronco
S  
    n  
 a
        K
    I
       n
g
the Snake River
until I was bucked off
hauled in
saucer eyed
parents’ horrified faces
while (another) bald eagle glided
sheriff of the skies
must’ve been dug from
ancient soil and arrowheads
gold flecks
and thrown by the wheel of
first settlers and log schoolhouses
big bell ringing
in a catacomb of wild things
bare feet blocks in a mountain lake
my chart in the house of Shoshone land
and ascendent wildflowers
immersed in beauty so loud
I lived awestruck ever since.

Peace / Christina McCleanhan

When sleep has gone off to
play in everyone’s bed but mine,
I open the window that serves as
a headboard.
Rain drips down
into clumps of
leaves lying brittle
-forgotten, but gathered-  in
 graves beneath the eaves.

And. Here I am. Still.
Amidst the poking, wet air- I live.
And. There you are, hushed.                                                                                                                                                                               
                                          Amidst the calm, waiting air- you breathe. 

On a Long Road    / Elizabeth McGraw

I hate to stay. I hate to go. 
It’s a longing and a loathing at the same time.
Is this what’s meant when they describe being an adult? I’m sure an adult would be 30% less bothered. Taken in stride. 

Could the news be worse? Long lines at the airport. Repaving the road in. It’s all a promise for tedium. Go early and you engage with it more. Go late and there’s an entirely new gift in store. 

Tuesday is the longest day of the week. It’s my favorite you said at the bus stop. Travel like this makes everything Tuesday. Too far in to turn back but not yet at the turn in the bend. 

I’ll take your position that it’s full of hope.  Wish me luck on this Tuesday!

Armageddon is an era / Alexis Wolfe

    Anyway how’s your heart? a friend 
asks my android  Fine covered in dust 
i always reply—Armageddon is an era 
not an event 
even the moon moves away
from the earth at an inch and a half per year
splintering light disperses in fractals
 creates repeating patterns   
At least life will be easy soon   J texts
from his grounded flight in Qatar  
he is always boarding grounded flights
chasing the ocean like it left him
i am always putting on my work pants,
eyes cut by the sun. there are truths
 we find to be self-evident: all of this 
was a gift, how I keep forgetting

March - Poem 24

Smoke Ring Ghazal — An Imperfect Ghazal / Kathleen Bednarek

Tears soak through the filter of your cigarette. You try—exhale.
Don’t answer the door if the police come. Fake sleep, lie, exhale.

A total liar. I allow myself to say I don’t know. 
Disembark the planet. Vodka. Breathe a stinking driver side exhale.

Under some stars, the car in a snowbank. A mechanically fucked angle.
The solution, rather than the problem. I am alive. Exhale.

Now I want peace under a large breaking sky, completed by doubt.
My face upward, rain falling onto the lids of my eyes —exhale.

I stopped before I ever learned how to blow a smoke ring. 
Parting with illusions, I learn to go without, let time exhale.

Saying I don’t know transforms and opens our present future.
I love you Kathy. You too, sister. Forgive each moment. Exhale.

Bibi Garlic / Mymona Bibi

My Sestina  / Susan Hankla

After Elizabeth Bishop's "Early Sorrow"

I'm staying up in here, I'm not leaving this house, 
b/c this's where I commune best with Grandmother.
I've stayed indoors quite a bit, even as a child,
Her house was lit; she had her dressing table by the stove.
And the piano was against the wall on the other side, like my tears.
What's missing is a copy of the 1954 Farmer's Almanac.

Is this what you want me to do, Grandmother?
I'm afraid I'm not grown up enough, so call me a child.
I just can't get it out of my head how you cried tears
whenever I wanted to go outside in pine needles by your house.
You said you needed to read to me from the Farmer's Almanac.
I've misplaced it carefully, and darkly inside the cold stove.

You say you think it's in the sewing box I've loved since a child.
I think you know I am wicked enough to hide it in your house,
because Mother says I am spoiled, then fall real falling tears
of mine; she's fierce, unlike you best-out-of-two Grandmother!
I really like you & your three-hole notebook kept by the stove,
in the chewed, flaky antique secretary's bookcase, beside the Almanac.

Somebody ill-informed like a cop, would say I'm in a mouse-house.
I roll out molasses-spiced dough and leave it to cook in the stove. 
The recipe for gingerbread biscuits we serve policemen who shed tears:
"Those cookies are so good we could throw them up and eat them again, Child!"
But I don't acknowledge appreciation because I'm reading the farmer's Almanac.
She stands near me, sliding out more trays of cookies, my lovely grandmother.

I just had a flashback from literature; shall I push her inside the stove?
Uh oh, can't stop thinking that thought, but that's why books live in this house.
We are educated women, ahead of our time; in that sense I was never a child.
It's probably because I hold reverence for her husband's farmer's Almanac.
William knew when to plant the asparagus, and greens for Grandmother.
Too bad he died the good death in his roses, but that didn't stop our tears.

I can only remember his arms in white sleeves reading the bles-sed Almanac.
I remember he taught me to like sardines and saltines, holding me, a tiny child.
He read for the crop settings, & the storehouse of facts: how to polish a stove.
He handed Grandmother his paycheck; she balanced the 7-daughter household.
I wanted to be Mother's sister, why can't I, I cried salty hot stupid tears?
Yet I wanted to be the 8th daughter; sew me white dresses like theirs, Grandmother!

It's time to make that don't rhyme with corsets, Grandmother'schild!
Here's a house that will live in my tears, in my 5 senses, out of the lovely stove.
But in the end, you know I'll bake her with the Almanac for kindling & live to tell.

Wisdom  / Amy Haworth

Who are we when we forget to listen
Not to hear, but commit to listen.

We’re burly bullies when we know it all
Arrogance, the absence of knowing how to listen.

Talked over, interrupted, disregarded
When I’ve been taught it’s best to listen.

Won’t be shut down, torn down, talked down
I’ll speak up, but first -- I’ll listen.

Years it took to have enough to say
Now, mon ami, I see you’re ready to listen.

Assessment / Christina McCleanhan

Of course, there will be chicken, it is Tuesday.
the room, mirror, tabletop trinkets are familiar
enough
hairspray and vanilla musk
linger
between the funeral plans and walking the dog,
pantyhose was rolled down into thick ankle doughnuts,
mourning dress, pearls, and
travel bag tossed on the bed.

I will kiss you as if the brilliance of
sunshine travels on your breath.
I will lift the shades to peer at the
people walking below who
do not care that you prefer a medium-well steak.
You will notice the woman's pinched brow as she
delivers an extra blanket and hope she makes time to
shave and soak away her appetite.
We wait for room service, and imagine how long it takes to
fold towels with new nails.

What is my pillow chocolate worth? Less than three blocks to
a pint of red-skinned potato salad.
Turn up that Charles Mingus jazz, so I know how to
dress myself if the room gets crowded.
Don't come looking for me, either, if I'm wearing sneakers.

So, this is temperature-controlled ambition. 

Japanese? Maple?    / Elizabeth McGraw

The neighbors’s cherry blossom bloomed loudly last night.  It’s crossed the threshold and is telling the rest of us to catch up. That’s you too temperature but don’t turn it up too much. We like a little bristle in our walk these mornings and a whiff of rain as the climate rolls across the earth. The dandelions are taking root ready to be rooted out.  The peonies begin their peaks breaking through burgundy against the soil and early clover.  In back where we face the north a rolling spring arrives. Tight bursts on the eastern redbud tell a native story of resiliency.  Edison lights hang in the maple tree. Bare for all to see. Will the hostas reappear? Will the azaleas bloom? Remember at the native nursery and you asked if the species was local and she replied slowly. Japanese? Maple?  Made us laugh. Still. 

To Elliot   /  Alexis Wolfe

scintillating progress
dusted wind
blank window weaves a  forgotten memory
what your heart was:  dustmote
what your heart was: swollen thumb

tyranny of bedrock
scintillating tomb
make of me a martyred ____
you can be the expanded thing

to witness the tendril       alone
shining web  whistling  alone

tiny  wet  web    alone

to witness

to witness     splitting 

to witness alone
frozen horsemane     shining moss
frost-turning-water    tiny web witnessed   alone

   mist of air 
cat’s cry    knotted pine
  asterisk    

March - Poem 23

Tanka  / Kathleen Bednarek

A pear tree reaches
Higher than my tipping toes
Your hands lifting me 
My fingertips weigh the air
Capturing soft fruit

Snapping against your
Arm—you steady this body
The waving sheets
Lower me—my arms are wide
                        Sky—floating with two pears

This was not the way I drew it up in my Coloring Book of Revelations; / Susan Hankla

when bent over it, filling it in with paints,
I feel I am right with the Almighty, 
and then when I stop coloring, I'm 
losing my way again. No one can color 
all day except Leonardo de V, his puffy
shirt glued by his sweat to the scaffolding.
                               But is it unseemly for a girl to do like that? I ask and hear a voice that says do it anyway.

Planting Season  / Amy Haworth

today’s pause at the kitchen sink
peeled my eyes to the out back
imagining how someone would see it
if
they stopped by for sugar or an egg
might be surprised to find
a hot reflection bouncing
corrugated steel
filled with fickle soil that loves carrots -- 
but the spring, when it comes, tastes like sunshine.

Here in Consolationville / Christina McCleanhan

The unspent laments of vertebrates and fishers’ grief live in
the hollowed timber of vulnerable shorelines after receding
waters deposit their haul on consignment until the next
storm swells the limits of its compassion.

Lines that live in faith,
Lines that live in courage,
Lines that dance with maracas and failed dreams and
acceptance and resistance, and tympanic precision that
directs the balancing spin between what has been and what will be.

On a quiet walk, toward the blue cottage, notice how 
shadows hang from leaves. Consider resting
near the snowball bush; the old, black cat’s ghost will follow.

Us, without words, we do understand each other.

Us, who are the missing
socks, useless bottle openers, slim phone books, forgotten
leftovers, empty ice trays, and worn treads of
circumstance, will sing willingness louder
than the ticket-takers care to listen. 

Places I’d Rather Be   / Elizabeth McGraw

It’s Spielberg, no wait, Richard Cunningham. 

You emerge from the barn having brought a new calf into the world. Wipe your hands on the apron that’s been worn all night long. Your hair is frizzled and relief shines all over your face. You’ve met life at the moment it starts to walk. My god. The moment it’s been given movement and the gift of survival and discovery. 

You are greeted by an outsider asking why you aren’t more in.  Your holiday over, you shake his hand. 

When mail comes I drop it / Alexis Wolfe

Smurf tells me he’s been recommended for
another six months in solitary    but sends dreams soft
as the backs of hands—once I came to him talons tied 
with blue ribbon once I was an owl nesting brown 
on his shoulder  when awake he is cold and I am cellless  
I am cells   driving my car complaining about peanut butter 
additives  the leak in my coolant reservoir days running hot
smurf signs his letters to beyond 
the gates  teaches me creole but forgets the seasons
pledges allegiance to Selena  remembers my birthday
and works for greeting cards   one call per x week 
what x week is it? more than five hundred and forty
have passed   he tells me he is Miami   finds hope
 and utility in birds  this my alarm   this  my radio
sometimes says Him  believes in Unlucky
doesn’t say sparrow says sak pase 
has always wanted a Kawasaki
  last month his sister flew in from Japan
they didn’t like her dress, wouldn’t let her through—
now tell me, what is usual and uncruel?

March - Poem 22

Humility  / Kathleen Bednarek

The pulp of Delaware watermelon.  The continuous search of sparrows. A puppy licking my ankle is cordial. Friends talking fast under umbrellas, holding each other up as they pass. Silently stirring a pot adding some water now foaming with beans. Now, isn’t it? Your breath unwavering as you speak. What it takes to regenerate bone. To watch someone be moved to regenerate. In all honesty.
Used auto parts of shame discarded to the rain storm.
My knees. I put a bunting and a banner around the interior of the hall for your get together.
Welcome them into the light of your face. 

Out in the distance,  / Susan Hankla

I am the only one made
to take the story with me, 
this particular
mystery.

But I try to re-enter it, and find I need props,
Shalimar on pure cotton cloth.

You can walk with us  / Amy Haworth

When you walk with us, the wind will brush your skin like a baby’s warm breath and you’ll notice it tickle your back. You’ll wave about 50 yards before we meet with a hug and a smile that etches the lines a bit deeper at the creases that tell joy’s story. We’ll briefly exchange our surprises about the weather, and I’ll shed warm clothes, knotting empty arms at my waist. We’ll turn north and then east, drawn to a new path amongst throngs of young families and old locals. Someone will know to ask us to take their picture “over here, under the sign” and won’t stop talking about how many people and that they knew we weren’t tourists because they’re from Delray and Boca. We’ll talk about farmer’s markets, sobriety, removing data from the web, the difference between being a serious person and taking yourself seriously. We’ll get yelled at by a security camera for walking on the other side of the street but too close to the fortress and we walk further just so we don’t have to double-back and be chastised again. We’ll banter about what we make for dinner on repeat, and contemplate what’s for dinner tonight. Because of our walk, I’ll put peas in the orzo and it will make me happy. We’ll interstitially wonder where exactly we are but it won’t matter because the only direction is forward.

Nightstruck / Christina McCleanhan

Is your forgiveness soft? Does it lean into the curves of sweetness you prefer? Your gut, your bowels- does the release assuage your guilt? Look up, my wilderness, and see the half- moon's face from the swing on our front porch. Does it remind you of how I wear my apologies with resting acceptance, a cardigan that covers the careless stain on a never-worn, party-dress chiffon? And the others? Strangers who rush crosswalks with beep-beep speed, do they feel sorry for the violets crushed beneath their anxious feet? Watch the hornets shaken from their nest—stroked heat, burning anger quick. I could stomp my feet, clap the blackbirds away, but maybe they tire of backyard maples, spruce, and elm like wedding rings make me sigh. Mud tracks on a concrete floor, sweep them wide while the dogs bark and the neighbors watch. When rain falls hard on your tin roof, is love a lightning strike that writhes in agony through corn field luck, or water meant to clean the sins from a poor man's hands? How can forgiveness be soft?  

Neighborhood Library   / Elizabeth McGraw

All these comings and goings clog up the street.

You’re wandering and crossing where you’re not permitted to pass.

Hands full of books likely long overdue.

In the rain.
In the snow.
In the spring.

Arriving by foot.
By bike.
By car.

My god you’re old.
Good grief you’re young.
You’re meeting in pairs.
You’ve come alone.

You come and you come and you come.

And they want to close it. 

i'll die like this / Alexis Wolfe

dog smudged mud across
printed page and i almost raged 
at it—stick chomp stick chomp
stick after careful printing 
sorting
  arranging  cut  pages
earlier i watched a worm disappear
its neck  mashed my fingers 
through wet earth searching
its revival—the flowers slime 
like the worm slimes like we do—
dog bites head off yellow 
blooms all afternoon 
presents stick with longing 
cow eyes here look what i made
i’ll die like this

March - Poem 21

Persona Poem   / Kathleen Bednarek

Poems that start with titles 
end in poems titled “Poem.”
Fallen to earth in the land of the living 
a sign from a number sequence,
this poem’s lines are a paper cut, 
a 99 cent origami after the penny 
has been retired.
A blender gifted to a stranger. 
Nah, give it to a traitor, since it was won 
at a 50/50 raffle. 
Beauty is just symmetry. 
The structure of flowers that fit 
to the rods and cones in the eyes of invasive species.
I need a key cut to get into vaudeville.
Whoever lost money wiping windshields 
and selling oranges to buy more
used this poem to even the score in an informal economy.
It was used to fill in the gap in the toe of too big shoes, 
then was pressed too small by midnight 
your heel slipped.
Sprayed with itching glitter, 
flustered by strobe lights, 
given its blessing to exist as a mirror,
it hooked on a feeling that wouldn’t quit, 
then wandered over… 
Tossed a magazine aside. People.

Red Name / Mymona Bibi

after Emily Skaja’s black lake, black boat
red rain, red raid,
streets know us better
than we know each other
red sky, red sun,
catch us in existence
in the fog, in the crowd 
of foes
flash red, speak red,
tongue cherry, flavoured red,
clutching the flyers 
in your pocket
red doors, red yards,
know your rights,
red writes, red wrongs,
don’t let them pour
your brothers blood
into your cup
red bins, red buses,
bodies cover bodies
hidden body 
behind body,
red docs, red doxx,
the city is listening
‘that’s my name in its mouth’. 

The eyes of the stove / Susan Hankla

have read and reread The Coloring Book of Revelation, because beyond its vivid colors
it is worded. In the dark at 4AM, after cooking over a hot stove all day long, cooking up
something art-reverent the eyes can't leave the olde cookstove all day long, unless the stove 
is moved into a museum of has-been-appliances in the warehouse a stones' throw from 
the Telephone Museum, our favorite stop.

The stove is still good, it functions better with use, even though it's an apartment sized,
even if a pound cake must be hand-rotated, lest it be raw on one side due to the floor here 
in this house being uneven, even slanted. Yes, we know to turn our cakes and exactly when. 
There's always something cooking up in here. We've got out the pressure cooker about to consecrate 
jars for the grape juice of sacrifice to be drinked with the now-rising, Bread of Life. The prettiest 
tea towel with tiny strawberries embroidered on it is draped over the rising dough in the tunnel 
pan on the silver radiator in the sewing room.

Outside, the Mulberry tree keeps us in purple ink so we can keep ahold of newly created
recipes, which are harder to write than most poetic forms, because of the no gray areas
which their intricate chemistry demands. We have made a swinging desk to hang from our ink 
pen tree, to swing in when we are falling-down in the spirit and need to be lifted-up from the dust
on the tent revival floor.

The Coloring Book of Revelation comes along, & we want to thank those who have financially 
contributed to its construction. And also those who have demonstrated their faith in us.

Letterbox  / Amy Haworth

Opened a drawer
and crossed into heaven.
How can it be
your words are here
on a card
when your soul is in heaven?

Somehow you knew
cursive swirls
carry your embrace
from everywhere
and nowhere.

Your thoughts
and encouragement
— now stars —
of your constellation.
Arranged as a life cut short

by a needle and relief.

A voice recorded
by your hand
and saved in the drawer
As if I knew.

For the Girl with the Wooden Cart / Christina McCleanhan

I have searched beneath layers of
rotted leaves from
harvests long scattered by
springs and snows for
daffodils and hope.

And I have lingered in the desire to rest.

I have twirled into rooms
filled with professed love, empty love, social love
and walked away with
one hand clutching at safety
while the other reaches for
a tree with limbs that
prepare for nesting birds and warm rain.

And I am amazed that life continues to feed me.

I will conquer the mosquito army 
by the stagnating overflow...one day. 

Not Easy  / Elizabeth McGraw

It slides into the week 
a day of rest 
but rest is not so easy.

The week’s not yet done 
but the shades are drawn on the work 
that is not yet complete.

Roll into the weekend 
and come with your list. 
It won’t finish itself 
you know this. 

Close your eyes and wake once again to a day like another and wonder where is that day of rest we were promised? 

RETIRED SHEPHARD DREAM ANALYSIS / Alexis Wolfe

been running on E like buzz buzz blap
earlier walked over to C’s studio sat beneath 
treeshade  told me about this dream his friend
spun jungian I’m sat in my little kid closet again
same one where I floorflat I can see the Christmas
lights  all my toys same place I hid porn and H calls me
I’m knee begging her back and she says certain STOP 
SHEPHARDING ME and I woke fast and we laugh 
saying retired shepherd and ex-herder and Flock Off 
these sorts of things then chirp his med change / walking around
in sleepstate  three years never choosing
the person you’re choosing and sorrow that some lifelong
version of love is only ever winner / loser / winner / loser 
N says it’s inability to integrate the feminine
aspect of self    communication without sight
  the closet is key  a shepherd tends but wants control 
it's biblical I tell him  desire to keep flock is older 
than the flock   to know yourself a powerless animal 
and bury this truth—amass amass amass hooves to trample it

March - Poem 20

Stars   / Kathleen Bednarek

There is fired chaos
And with a jagged eye 
It is cut to likeness—

Soften the gaze  
Don’t break…

It is possible to reach all sides
Even though you cannot see us
In an afternoon 

West of spider and swan

For the inside of how you touch
Is formed wholly 
Of what happened to make light

Even the fly 
Without a wide mind
Has taken off

The dark distance 
In its eyes

Threat at the border / Mymona Bibi

there is a difference between border and boundary 
when we touch your border softens 
melts into mine
not everyone has learnt to blur that way 
kissing you is a lesson 
in silence and borderless belonging 
not every body has found 
yet here I am searching
pulling open the flesh of a date
checking for pests in the dark fibres
between us.
I never find anything 
listing boundaries 
not knowing I’m standing
right at the border
this formation is not an accident.
yet here I am searching 
fingers tracing foreign scars
like a wandering drunk 
after midnight
both threatening 
                       to find
                                  to love
                                              to lose 

The Coach and the Gym Teacher’s Baby / Susan Hankla

After school 
I always walked
from Richlands High 
to Gateway 
Shopping Center
across a strip of land
to Gateway
Drug Company, 
where Dad 
filled
prescriptions.
And see
their baby 
in a carrier
in the shade 
in the 
navy blue 
Fiat 
in the parking lot. 
Coach Jones 
and Sandy, 
his wife,
the gym teacher, 
talked about the baby.
I knew it was their car.
No one else in the mountain town
owned a Fiat.
A Fiat is an Italian car.

What we need to remember  / Amy Haworth

What this country has done
Makes my blood boil
Makes me recoil
What this country has done.

Makes my blood boil
Memorials torn down
By self-appointed crown
Makes my blood boil.

Memorials torn down
Erasing what we need to remember
Will the world exist in September?
Memorials torn down.

Erasing what we need to remember
What this country has done
By majority votes won
Erasing what we need to remember.

What this country has done
Makes my blood boil
Makes me recoil
What this country has done.

I Want to Become this Woman / Christina McCleanhan

Last night i dreamt
i was
        squishing blackberries
between pointer and thumb
dirt, seed, fragrance
childhood

       thawing as
spring berries burst
through last season’s
broken promises

i long to marry the earth

Deadline  / Elizabeth McGraw

I lean in and turn on seeking to Devine the creative spark.

Coffee in hand and daylight high I am overwhelmed with my choices and seek a routine.

It’s go time and I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. 

Waiting for applause or the silent eyes looking back at me.

JoJo / Alexis Wolfe

got to thinking about jojo his whole face a tattoo how when I made him and kindred dippy eggs their golden disks flying he said I could never do that eyes like balloon animals every time they fought or I brought home coffee   we corralled nubian goats stalking Japanese knotweed across townish city sidewalks we lived for free took an RV just to pick up pizzas and skip rocks where the Monongahela ran thin / I never saw him again   heard he got picked up for arson in West Virginia  asked for a shot after close bartender called him crazy  said here's crazy flipped a match behind their backs caught the dumpster on fire I mean half the building   got caught speeding near Wheeling but heard he got out  heard he wore horsehair to the Louisiana derby  tye dyed T-shirts at his brother's birthday party started howling in Vermont sang ditties with some boundless jason ended up back where he came from

March - Poem 19

Barking   / Kathleen Bednarek

The dog’s barking begs a long story. 
It echoes and transforms beyond 
chain link. It remembers its mother, 
and maybe its father. The father was 
what gave it the muscly chest 
and upper body, the mother, 
its overall size and ears. It knew 
the back of the cage for a while 
and didn’t want to be noticed. 
Once it was noticed, my neighbor wanted 
its soft believing eyes, 
its black and tan genesis, 
a togetherfuture.
The dog wags its tail so much 
the kids are afraid it will snap off 
and fly from its body. They say 
it will slingshot to Jupiter 
and become one of its moons. 
The dog seems to listen to this. It is 
a tangent of love to watch a being adored. 
It is a ritual to return staying with my hands.

red kite haikus / Mymona Bibi

Red Kite: heard.

every meeting, new
call of curiosity,
‘play,’ answers the wake.

Red Kite: seen.

speck of red-brown, speed-
less, threat to soar down and greet.
necks crane for life’s firsts.

untitled / Susan Hankla

Bit what was your allure?
I weatch butterflies at flowers and still I don’t know.
your voice? Your texts? Your approval of my flesh?
Thank you for my love of sorrow, because it rhymes with a lot of things.
But your temper, jealousy, no sense of humor when your brutish ways were like Heathcliff on the Moors.
So, Go on, Git!

Pitfall  / Amy Haworth

We fell into the hole
Been trapped down here
Playacting hope in the system
While, above ground
the ladders are being burned.

Commonalities / Christina McCleanhan

poverty chickens squawk 
in the dirt yard on the corner-
but eggs are eggs-
they cluck despite their dusty feathers
they eat and sleep, sleep and eat
on plastic drums, metal sheeting
                                        small breast, scrawny thighs do not 
                                        predict their running speed
wealthy chickens preen
two streets away in 
wooden boxes painted like barns-
but eggs are eggs-
they peck their owner for breakfast
they eat and sleep, sleep and eat
on new straw, beneath heat lamps
                                       large breasts, thick thighs do not
                                       impress their KFC cousins

liar liar poet on fire / Alexis Wolfe

i like a poem that lies
  leans back and burps  asks me to take
its waterlogged raincoat  drips a river in my hallway 
doesn’t say thank you  never sorries  stretches its legs 
long and sighs i like my poem pathological 
sticks to the facts straight as a kaleidoscope still as 
a merry-go-round hiccups like a horse lockkneed in mid-
gallop laughs like Austin Powers says shag me
says lightning pop never sets an alarm buries clocks
in its front yard reminds me a prophet has never stared
directly into the face of god and knows no one’s reading this