May - Poem 17

At the Setting of the Sun  / Desirae Chacon

At the Setting of the Sun
we meet at the Grand Road
Bring (Divinity) الألوهية
your beloved
Akhal-Teke

And we’ll go to where you were wanting
all along 
i knew
you weren’t waiting in vain

In all the waiting 
were fabrications 
of your wishes
your dreams
your desires

Your humble heart
was remembered 
in your forlorn
purposed in your expectancy

Starry Starry Night   / Heather Frankland

I feel I should write
about the stars again—
they are beautiful—
I must remind myself.
I’d miss them
if I were no longer
in a place where I could
see them so clearly.
I’d lament not noticing,
call myself a bad poet—
someone who didn’t
take advantage of what
she had when she had it—
give myself some
mental punishment.
And now the stars
are no longer the stars
but mental failings,
flaws—they seem
heavy in that night sky,
no wonder I avoid them
when I walk outside. 

The Middle Man / John Hanright

This fencepost is very comfortable
Placed squarely and firmly against my rear
I’ll get to politics when I’m able

You ask me: “Am I mentally stable?”
Yes, of course! I am a centrist, my dear
The world is complex; I’m comfortable

“When will I put my cards on the table?”
You ask me frankly. Have no doubts or fear
I’ll take a stand someday, when I’m able

My views? Oh, well I don’t like to label
I tend to lean wherever the wind steers
And I like to leave folks comfortable

Why do you allege that I enable
Reactionaries to take over here?
I’ll quit this fence and fight when I’m able

Help! Help! I’m stuck in terrible trouble!
The government’s got me; that much is clear
Truly, this isn’t comfortable
Won’t someone help me, when they are able?

Surprise / Jillian Humphrey

You ask for a snake.
I give you a fish.

Suffer a demon — 
I send you some pigs.

Get sick and I wait.
Surprise, you die twice.

If you want to be
friends, this is the price.

Wrkaholic  / Shane Moran

> when i found u
4 all that you were
u’d already bn here 4 so long
in my <3. i knew that if i cld j show u pretty music
gemstones
an island
nd thoughtfulness
you’d luv me forever.

>> how thoughtless i’d bn
that i cld think my way into ur <3
that’d bn pumping like gd life-support 4 a grasping narcissistic flea
since i kicked u out of my sour </3 the first time. 

>>> it has been nice to c you again
yk
i used to wander in my own mind nd find those memories of u behind the due essays nd wonder if i may ever gt another one to distract me.

>>>> i’ve plenty reasons y i’m still here
nd so many reasons y i’m thanking u
so many that i’ve found myself willing to pretend i was ok with it— that somehow
i allowed it
welcomed it even 
that prolly i facilitated the whole thing
nd that i am responsible
but then i remember it was ur mouth on his mouth nd his neck nd his body. 

>>>>> nd it was my mfing eyes cryin to Hazza singin truth to me thru my own gd intuition that u were lying nd laying w/ your bloodsucker. 

>>>>>> nd yt i wait up all nite 4 u
j to hug u hello– c! 
i am responsible
look at the dirt left behind on my shoes nd the pain in my back
i’ve bn @ wrk making sure u always feel my Love. 

The Painting Of The Flower With No Name  / Christina Vagenius

I knew you would find me,
eventually — between the mess
of the pages, the unfinished
stacks stuck together. Your fingers,
foraging the bread crumb tracks
between brushstrokes, my silver
and gold, never could tell
the difference — between
what shined, what surveilled,
the pause and the fealty
she loved the most
when she looked at you.
See where her shore went soft,
dissolved before letting go.
The weight of her hand
subsumed by the chariot
of motherhood, the dried,
torn corners of gouache
I’d do anything to hold you again 
just add water.

Siren / Sonya Wohletz

My beach. The riptides recognize each other.
They swallow the sky. They swallow all that lives on the sky.
My beach. Algae pulsates like a sick harp.
It opens the shell of the song. It opens the shell of what eats the song.
My beach. Dark rocks erupt through the swollen sand.
They alone are language. They alone have promised the birds.
My beach. The seas have returned to me as driftwood.
They are the bones of sailors. They are the bones of all whom the sailors loved.

May - Poem 16

Body Horror: 3 and 4  / M. Anne Avera

2.

From the first time we are examined
under ultrasound glow
we are described, placed into categories,.
This is what allows us to be
turned from animal to person.

3.

I am not neutral to myself. I become
arbiter of each independent part of my functioning
whole. I am less of me and
more of the world when I permit myself to
look down, look across, look around,
at my body.

Past the Prime   / Heather Frankland

The murky water
of old flowers,
dried white buds,
still, a faint perfume—
Must I throw them out?

Chickadee / John Hanright

I land on the perch
– Exhausted –
Curl up in the box and sleep
With one eye open


Is a house a home –
If there is no one to share it with?


Home
A haven from the storm
A depository for dreamers


I settle down in my downy bed
Moss and feathers and empty eggs
Dreaming – in darkness – of slow time


Singing this song
Into an unhearing, deafening sky
Full of discordant chatter
And mating calls


My verses fling out
From my breast
With the ardor of a flower
– Unpollinated –
Must I live in darkness –
Forever?

Slow Drip / Jillian Humphrey

Eden is leaking
horses.
Leaking oceans
tall grass
honeysuckle
tendrils
baseball
back porch radio
naptime
blanket cocoon 
hammock in May
little buttercream writing desk
ice cream cone on the way to the park
new friend
old love
blue whale
mourning dove
singing
sun
brave brave hearts
sky and sky and sky
I am holding my sleepy puppy. The world is
filling up with soft things.

Haiku  / Shane Moran

Everyone thinks
they live in Los Angeles—
no one is looking.

Al-Anon In Room 217  / Christina Vagenius

the room full of women
time tucked into pockets
receipts with no returns,
inventory, laced-lined,
heels but no skirts.
Said there’s no one
to blame — but if it’s all
the same to you,
I’ll take the pamphlet
with the coffee ring
stained pain and plenty
our Father, I’m sorry -
too many days have
followed me here,
laid tracks to listen
for the rumble before
finding legs to stand
your addiction to resist-
and           to restraint
to solving the mirror
by opening the gate.

Keep coming back,
it works if you work it
your hands in a circle
right, left, middle
a single, a double
a smile,
if you’re able.

On the Banks of the Bíobío / Sonya Wohletz

On the banks of the Bíobío—moon feathering herself in fog, in smoke
Whispers radiate like dancers into the night,
Twisting near the edge of the flame, where memory first spoke. 


Her simple reflection upon those wide waters evokesS
ilver rains, odors of canelo—stringent and bright,
On the banks of the Bíobío—moon feathering herself in fog, in smoke. 


She gathers clean plants, menstrual bloods, and adorns her blue cloak
With petals, seeds, and feathers for flight,
Twisting at the edge of the flame, where memory first spoke. 


She summons secrets of her women, and with embers she stokes
A vision that mounts its symmetry to surreal heights,
Along the banks of the Bíobío—moon feathering herself in fog, in smoke. 


There is now clarity where once she illuminated broken
Forms, half-shadows—now brought fully into her pure light,
Twisting at the edge of the flame, where memory first spoke. 


Black-necked swans disperse her image with a single wing-stroke,
And with their fluid motions articulate an ancient delight,
On the banks of the Bíobío—moon feathering herself in fog, in smoke,
Twisting near the edge of the flame, where memory first spoke.

May - Poem 15

My Life Becomes...  / M. Anne Avera

Slow as syrup-drip and then landsliding together,
overflowing, my life becomes these things:

Letting our dogs in and out of doors,
and watching them patrol the backyard,
tiny, noisy dictators in the violent green.
Each of them are weary to cross the threshold
into the empty brown territory between
the neighbors and us—
I like to call it
no-man’s-land.

Watching your face glow, crest, fade
when you listen to your music so loud
I can hear it even though you’ve headphones.
Your face!
Like an open window, casting our scent
into the nighttime.
(The windows, which you keep open
for the cat, stay unraveled. I can’t bring
myself
to complain.)

Polyrhythmic circadian, the way I never
can make myself fall asleep at a normal hour,
or when you do.
So I make it my mission to count your breaths
and feel them
on my neck.
As if I could remind myself you’re here and
I’m here and this is all and this is everything.

Aching for a place next to you all the time.
If I could knit myself into your skin
it would never be
close enough.

Arrows above us  / Desirae Chacon

as flaming arrows soar overhead
we brace with vitality
never feeling more alive than in this moment
on the edge of the sword
on the edge of the realm of life & the eternal
River Styx is just an arm length away
breezes brush through the fields of Elysium

waiting for us

but not yet
theres still work to be done

theres still fights to be had

there is still 
this battle

Back Home When It Was Summer   / Heather Frankland

Normally, box fans everywhere
cracked windows that let in air
the sound of the cicadas and trains
lightning bugs—little lanterns
that made it never too dark,
like they were on their own
little-Red-Riding-Hood path
the dark forest, the wolf with the hot breath,
the promise to protect, the impossible escape.
Still too much city-like haze
to see the stars. I would count them
I counted five or seven, and often one
would be a planet or a plane—something
that’d struggle to carry a wish.

When it reached 100 degrees, only then
would Dad allow us to turn on
the window air conditioner,
the only one we had;
it was in the living room.
An old unit, we worried
that it wouldn’t work one day,
that this would be the summer
it decided to quit
we measured out its servings,
in teaspoons for 100-degree weather.

All the doors would be shut, windows, too,
we would cluster around that unit,
me, sitting on the floor, on the shag carpet,
sitting almost eye-level to its vent.
The sound, a lullaby—we should have told stories
all of us in one room, but the heat too much
to concentrate on anything other
than the feel of the cool air
or to remember how the weather lady
cracked an egg on the sidewalk
it sizzled on camera—seemed
a potential way to make breakfast.
Who wanted to use the stove
and the oven would be worse.

The only other thought in my young brain—
it’s hot, can I sleep here tonight?
Please let me sleep here tonight;
our room might
as well be on the moon
its stuffy self, a block of heat,
ghosts must be in Victorian high-neck shirts
the bunk bed could be a closet of tired dreams
my familiar nightmares, not their familiar selves,
even they would rather feel the cool air.
Too tired and too hot to really dream,
my thoughts circle on wanting Kool-Aid—
my brother made it— I saw it being made
he stirred it with Mom’s favorite wooden spoon,
the red color staining the wood.
It should be cold by now, in the fridge,
it would taste so good,
if only the fridge weren’t so far away,
little can make me move,
I need to stay by this
window air conditioner.
Here, for now, I plant my roots.

Star Sand / John Hanright

Okinawa holds
Billions of skeletons
The dregs of dead stars


Dead stars on the Earth
Submarine supernova
The reefs are dying


Dying from the heat
Are there no more witnesses?
Living sand answers


Answers to our prayers
Ecosystems stabilized
By calcified stars

Inside of Me / Jillian Humphrey

there’s a german and a party
inside me a butcher and a hog
that keeps slipping
his hands

half basket case half drunk
I’m the child of a minister
and a playboy
magazine under his mattress

every time I pop a wheelie
the chain skips
every time I’m born
they send the sirens
I can’t outrun
the feeling I’m always
one mistake away
from having a good time

here I come
from a long
dark alley
of embezzlers
and executioners

instead of working it out
between themselves
they’re working it out
inside of me

A Proposal  / Shane Moran

He just needed to be a little better
of a guy and he could have had me,
Daphne tells me on the patio—

And this is why the house no longer
has a hot tub, and this is why she wanted
a career. I can’t say I want won’t take 

my hot tub with me, but won’t you listen:
I will forsake all expectations for you,
and prune the hydrangeas once a year.

A Need In The Age Of Surrender.  / Christina Vagenius

It was a needless want, to be sure | silence finds the car door | I could beat necessity senseless | cut every last cord | but I bend for it | bandage the wound and ascend to it | are we there yet? | I have hummed the same song for a week | made a bed for all the lost notes | promised to sweep them into tidy jingles someday | what’s the word for a dance down the middle? | the serpentine crown with gold scratched just a little | there’s a chipped tooth shark beneath my ring finger | fist rising fast | kick start the old generator | to the last sunken moon | plan your night out better | no one wants to see | your light leave a mess for later | find the bed | close your eyes | disagree with the meter | the hole in your heart filling last | believe her | it was a needless want, to be sure | I’m going nowhere, fast | Hold on.

Thursday Observations / Sonya Wohletz

1. The zoom calls must always begin with a greeting—baring of teeth
a. (I think it is laughter? That can’t be accurate)
b. Followed by a demand. Who cares what kind
i. There is no room for bargaining
1. Let alone compromise
2. We go in circles
3. Someone make another spreadsheet, for god’s sake!
2. Lately my thinking is slipping backwards
a. Images on loop, technicolor halo
i. Robotic specters, LLMs
1. Wide eyes and improbable proportions
2. Unreality soaking in through the membranes
a. The generators grinding grinding
b. Dust muscling the turbines, the power grid
3. Today, a conversation with a friend:
a. Do we need a ritual to banish worry?
b. Don’t answer that email, don’t apologize
i. You did nothing wrong, honey
1. That gas won’t pay for itself
2. Do I need to write your boss’s name on papel cartucho and put it in my
freezer?
4. I sense it in the rain, the incongruencies:
a. The spirits are catching up to us
b. Planting seeds at the crossroads
i. Forks sprout like seedlings in all directions
1. But these badlands are so empty
2. There are no banquets, no guests
a. And the crops brewing in your eye, mutilated twigs—
i. Wink back—knowingly, uselessly

May - Poem 14

Body Horror: 1  / M. Anne Avera

There exists no neutral way to describe
the body. No thinking or speaking or writing.
There is no manner in which one can talk about the body
without connotation, glimpses of opinion, judgement call.
With every word comes a sentence—a cell block or
gallows’ knot.

Healing  / Desirae Chacon

Sometimes Healing is a long cold dark process
dark not in opposite of goodness
but dark as in frigid, isolate, lonely
awaiting sunrise after sunrise
feeling a little bit healed day 
after..

day

long as in pacing
checking the spiritual wristwatch 
on your arm
seeing if anything’s changed

mind buzzing with the cares of the world
but wait for a second

and just breath…

look again..
the second hand moved
and you feel lighter

joy, peace, happiness
are not a destination
but an already all enveloping location surrounding you
like the Sun behind stormy skies

light and easy
like birds 
behind shady clouds

healing is a journey
step by step
in gratitude
youll see change
youll see strength

I Tell Amy What the Mornings Were Like in Lima, Peru  / Heather Frankland

The first time I lived in Peru, I lived in a village
where the morning came slowly, steadily
the sounds of the roosters and donkeys,
of people waking up,
of women stirring fires to make breakfast,
of families mumbling their hellos
of men getting ready to go to the campo
to herd sheep or look for yierba—
the slow murmur of the day beginning,
and then—as always—so much to do.

Lima wasn’t like that.
The morning, a race, and me, a lap away,
I leap out of bed,
rush to the heated electric shower
chance the shock that happens
if I put my head or hands too close
to the shower head.
Dress quickly, take the purse that zips,
the one I wear crossed over my shoulder,
something ugly that no one
really wants to steal.
Grab the lunch made for me
by my host mom; I hope it’s her
quinoa soup or the garbanzos with spinach.

Run down the stairs. Run down the stairs.
Pass the floors with the primos, tias, y tios.
Say a quick, Buenos. Pass the beautiful
papelitos, their fuchsia flowers blooming.
On the street, see the friendly cat no one claims
and chance a pat on his dirty orange head.
Then rush, rush, but stop for the booth
with emoliente in a plastic bag and straw.
Worth the pause—the warm tea
gives more energy than coffee.
Drink it and cross the street to wait
for the bus; it’s almost there!

The bus, not full yet, I grab a seat,
the traffic on this road—intense
how close the bus gets to other buses
but never does more than a casual tap.
Pressed tight to other passengers,
I breathe, look out the window—
I made it. I won’t be late.
Then traffic jam, traffic jam—how many today?
Lima’s streets clog with morning traffic.

When I get close to the office,
I leave the bus early to walk many blocks,
the street parallel to the busy street,
the sound of traffic somehow muffled.
I find the panaderia that I like—
have a treat, and then write.
Only then do my shoulders relax
pleasure in this hidden treat,
before I have to turn back on.
With this sweet-treat breath, I walk
by Parque Ramon Castilla—
this park that still lives on aqueducts
made by the Incans. Fue peligroso
a friend told me, but it’s hard to imagine
this beautiful park where I sometimes work
as anything other than beautiful.
It’s hard to imagine that this Lima rhythm
can start to feel as natural
as the first time I lived in Peru
in a village that bloomed slowly, 
then all at once. The place where I could
see the stars dim into day. 

Giving Up the (Holy) Ghost / John Hanright

If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions,
does that mean that the road to Heaven is full of potholes,
with signs reading “Good Work Ahead” every five miles?
If so, would you drop me off at the next rest stop, please?

If the best trick Lucifer pulled was convincing everyone he doesn’t exist,
and if God created Lucifer to test humanity,
does that make God an illusionist?
If so, when will He make evil disappear?

If I am my brother’s keeper,
and if my sister was “born for a time of adversity,”
what does that make my nonbinary cousin?

If Saint Peter is holding the Key of Heaven,
and if Jesus is holding the Key of David,
who is holding the key to the Porsche?

If the Lord is my shepherd,
and if I am supposed to sow seeds of righteousness,
what does that make me, a farming sheep?

If humans are made in God’s image,
and if gender is not binary,
why is the state killing God’s children?

Ode to Shea (1992-2011) / Jillian Humphrey

  “I would prefer [poet] to be a word that was used on a 
  person’s death, that was sort of conferred like a title, 
      because the fact of making poetry doesn’t make one a
      poet, and a poet is a rare thing.” — Louise Glück

Shea, you are a poet.

A forty-year-old woman walking the edge of the sea, alone, reading memorial benches instead of looking at the waves,

I could not feel things in the way I was supposed to feel them for many months. I wrote, ‘Will I ever feel transcendent joy again?’ So when I felt your poem, I sobbed.

I cried because of a Mercy that filled me, and I cried because I could tell you knew what Mary meant when she said the world calls out to us. You knew an exuberant belonging, which I desperately wanted. Somehow, across time and space, you shared it with me.

You were a poet at eight. Louise is stingy on this, and though she is brilliant, we — The Poets — don’t allow her charge of the invitations. But about you, maybe she and I could agree: You are one of us.

When I read your poem, I remembered that I am one of us too. I read it over and over. I sat on your bench and looked at the sea. Then I went for a walk on the beach, where I recited the lines of your poem as I went, and at dinner I copied each line in my notebook until I learned your poem by heart, because I want to keep on remembering.

You are my pen pal, Shea. I will write back.

FALSE AUBADE  / Shane Moran

—for M

She has more in common with the moon
than I’d first thought—this flirty monk-
woman, turning discs for a listening room.

She knows what they want to hear: 
the songs she listened to alone on her bed, 
adolescent and kicking, thinking of the one 

from English 11, who she’s now fallen 
loyal to. Her fellow’s body, her only
fellow body. The one

she says, she’d turn away from for one night,
if he’d let her—like a werewolf, she said.
She would smell the outlawed sweat

on my wide back, and return before sunrise.
At the set’s end, she ran away, fell back 
to sleep with him or something like with

him—their faces tired under shrinking moonlight,
her body, cold against the wall. I held the same 
weight of an unsaid stay—heavy on my tongue.

I See Nothing But Lost Days  / Christina Vagenius

When I prune the hydrangeas, I whisper
I’m sorry for waiting too long, for not knowing
where to cut, for letting the blade get dull.
Maybe this will be the year I finally kill you, then
the sweet liquor spill of wild geranium
between the Beech, the heavy lid wake
of morning. A gulp of transom light
adorning the yellow belly throat,
the ramp’s green thumb hitching a ride,
screeches Not so fast.

Kurban / Sonya Wohletz

I dreamed the dogs again—dusty road, dissolving
under my tongue, pale wafer.
Sweet waters, salt skies. The roll-out bed.
Hospital. Too many mosquitoes. Exquisite things.
Flashback to a former deadline: the tumor board.
Nothing was saved. Seduction failed thrice.
A Zofran means we sue for peace. Night alarm.
How many wavelengths. Flour sacks loaded
like weapons: true
belief means dying or hunger.
The rams, could I but afford rams.
To distribute their meat among the least
fortunate. To save for my children—
the heart, the liver, the spleen.

May - Poem 13

Common Responses to Common Advice  / M. Anne Avera

“Yeah, I guess exercise helps.”

I punish my body, punitive in routine and
break myself down to the core. I stress myself
to the maxim, to find some other pain to feel,
to find some way to get out of this endless hole,

because if I can’t do twenty-five squats,
then I guess I don’t deserve to do anything
at all.

“The medicine has some side effects.”
I don’t recognize the mind these thoughts
come from, but I’ve gone so far beyond
what I used to be that I don’t see the point
in trying to remember her anymore.

Maybe there’s some personality left under
the sweat-damp, ugly mask covering my face,
leaving it unrecognizable, but I won’t take it off,
won’t take the chance of there being nothing there,
not a single thing left.

“Time feels more fluid these days.”
Time is liquid. Time is filling my throat.
Time is all over my hands and dripping
down my elbows and covering me in its
cold, cold current.

I have trench foot from time.
I will soon drown as time’s stream
and flow becomes a river mouth, becomes
an outlet to the ocean.

“I don’t think about it.”
It comes back to me in light-bursts, in star-
fragments, in moon-slivers so thin they look
like the fingernails I bite off. I will never
forget it because it is a part of my whole being.

The Way the Light Falls / Desirae Chacon

The way the light falls softly in your shoulders
cloaking you in golden satins
The Way the clouds soar over head
The way this ground feels so pristine 
yet held the footsteps of so many others
who trodden cross your forestscapes
who wondered at your beauty
who love what you put forth
in your effortless generosity
The way that everywhere I look
makes my eyes feel new
drenched in amazement
and saturated in a new hope
that roads await that have not yet been taken

for me

so 

As the light falls
i venture into the unknown
yet to be

A Long Semester  / Heather Frankland

I’d never understood
running on empty
until now—the analogy
of a car, that E
in red lights,
a slight smell of fumes,
turning the air conditioner off—
anything that seems
to make the car lag.
Go back to the basics
coasting, hoping
that you have enough
to get to the next gas station,
nervous how you go
up the hills—
will you make it?
Wishing for more
down hill drives
and worrying about full-stop
stopping at stop signs—
what if you can’t start up again?
You think to yourself—
how did it get so low?
Once, you always,
at least kept 
your tank at half.
Remember when you could
breathe more easily?
When you didn’t feel fumes
escaping from your
tired brain
when you didn’t
feel the flutter
of your anxious heart? 

Indefensive Mirrors / John Hanright

CW: body dysmorphia, fat shaming, sizeism

child in swim shirt
reflection in pool
fingers pointing
ugly

“you’re too thin”
“you’re so fat”
“put a little meat on your bones”
“getting big, aren’t you?”
fun house.
mirror – shifted shape
not mine

mirror –
a reflection, not a verdict
when will fat not warrant an apology?
stomachs should be fed

Sleeper / Jillian Humphrey

She’s such a good eater,
she’s such a good sleeper,
they’d say
if I were still a baby.

Shoulder (2)  / Shane Moran

Some nights, I found you again on the couch.
How am I supposed to let that not affect me?
Of all the things I asked you keep
Under control—it was your
Love for me.          Easy        to leave me—
Dream (alone)      the darkness      your friend,
Ever understanding and drank-in—a hug
Round the neck.     I didn’t want another body.

Inside This Flower  / Christina Vagenius

Maybe I could be one of Emily Dickinson’s flowers
pressed on a page, given a name like Trailing Arbutus

or Ox-eye Daisy, enduring the heat of the greenhouse.
The torrential tears of mispronunciation. Cold rain,

dried flat from the exhale. Color worn with how did I get here?
Shuttered petals giving way to the spiral vein, born

from the broken stem. Put me under glass, instead.
Let the sun bloom new life in me, lines submerged  

beneath a poet’s fingers. Turn me blue. Waxed,
remembered. A token treasure, opened up. Over

and over,  again — until one last breath, bookmarked
nourished, forever. 

Quetiapine 1 / Sonya Wohletz

Professor L orates the mercury mines at Huancavelica—
the political aims of Viceroy Toledo, administrative proceedings, census tracts.

A classmate offers a précis. It is full of commands.

At office hours again with a bruised neck.
Where others dispute subaltern identities,
hungry spirits follow in swift pursuit.

Clumps of hair clog the drain. Gas lantern above entryway—entrancing
as in an endless carnival. Slip of paper—
issuing warrant for a summary execution.

Another trip to the Emergency—

kindly observes the worms pullulating those mulberry brains.
Sinus infection perhaps.

One hemisphere short of complete defection, and still.
Souls drip like Spanish moss from live oak.

Now, soft—the sleep of silver.

The phone—ringing, ringing—
Hölderlin again. Of course you are melancholic. Of course you are beautiful.

Meanwhile the ores
are smelting—perfume the high village.

And within the richest hill, furtive figures
await a bride price they know will never be paid.

I, too, have loved her orphans.

May - Poem 12

Ghazal 003  / M. Anne Avera

I gave you my heart but you wanted my soul.
Though I tried to evade you, you hunted my soul.

In the garden, stark night, I crossed gazes with you.
Like a jay-bird I preened and I flaunted my soul.

Oh, lover. Oh, darling, Oh, helpmeet. Oh, thing.
You’ll breathe me to life if I grant you my soul.

Your blue eyes were acidic, your hands gripping me.
You could feel my heart beat as it blunted my soul.

I know not my name, not Meredith or Anne
for you threw it away when you swallowed my soul.

How sweet the taste, ripe saccharine feel
on your tongue as it haunted my soul.

You Met me in Fields / Desirae Chacon

You Met me in fields
under shifting skies
each chronometric moment
folding above us
unto a changing of days
bluebirds giving hope
through unfolding of seasons
doves blessing us with peace
winter came
but it only strengthened our love
it did not shake us
as your eyes held my gaze 
steady and assuring
loyal and intentional
of devotions 

If Only To Be. . .  / Heather Frankland

If only to be a raven
gliding in the wind

before a storm.

Rain cloud heavy,

still the raven

surfs the wind

allows itself

to be tousled

from wind-wave

to wind-wave,

not struggling

to work its wings

with weight

of daily grind,

no cares, no worries

no concerns

for the future

just gliding

as if time

didn’t matter

and change

of weather

didn’t make

one wary.

A storm coming?

The raven

doesn’t fear

any altered flight.

It sheds

the cloak

of the serious

and the profound,

and plays instead.

Such a show,

if only to be

like the raven—

to enjoy the wind

and learn to let go.  

Memory Lane / John Hanright

How does Memory Lane look nowadays?


Still full of trees and freshly mown lawns?
Still full of potholes and FORECLOSED signs?


Still a Private Way with an off-duty cop?
Still a Dead End policed every hour?


Still with the smell of fresh pies and petrichor?
Still suffused with exhaust and quiet strength?


Still made up of good-looking families splitting at the seams?
Still composed of good people in dire circumstances?


How does Memory Lane look nowadays?

Ada / Jillian Humphrey

I was eleven
when, in a hurry, I
took two left shoes
to school.
My best friends
laughed and named
me: Ada.
How quickly it came
to them: A dumb ass.

They let me know
my ponytail was crooked
and my jeans were too short.
I never thought of leaving.
I never thought they may not be
my friends.
I only thought I was a dumb ass.

I wish I could take that fearful child in my arms
and help her.
I can’t.
Instead I close my eyes.
I envision
some old woman
with my own name
holding me right now.

Out of Body  / Shane Moran

–after Mia Word–

I will swim
until my mind stops fishing.

Free strokes whisper: quiet.
I listen for the singing waves,

the same tune since
the first ship reached the James,

and the ones who did not dive,
who survived, 

who stood on blocks like gold
-medal winning swimmers—

sold.
Out of breath

I wait
wading
running, burning

nose, temples vibrating
me out of place

I see my body—a body

on the shore
escaping waves,

and waving
you must survive.

When Wandering Under The Trees Doesn't Work  / Christina Vagenius

Maybe the trees don't know you, yet.
Maybe when you beg for hello
what you really want is
I see your leaves starting to fall.
And the crisp moon hanging
from a thread when you look up,
when you ask
Can I have some light too?
Here, in the dark,
with your leaves plucked clean
from every crooked limb.
Another seed, you’ll call
alive.  

Husk / Sonya Wohletz

I want to link arms with god and go in woods—
his silky mane tickling my arm from time to time.
I want to lick harpoons and fear no injury,
and hunt what dawn escapes.
Cradle in my belly a soupçon of joy,
knowing no appliances presently dysfunction.
The car mechanic—no notes over $200.
Sometimes disappearing seems like the only choice.
Fatherlessness governs me.
Tomorrow, I razor my fingers into earth,
grasp its roots.
Become wormlike, oblivious to the darkness,
its enduring, damp pressures—
excluded by the raptures of assurance.
Here is my unauthorized dispensation
to interpret the cards for my fellow subterranean besties.
Come July the water marks
on our throats will bleach in the Aegean sun.
And what of stipulations, fine grained though they may be.
I tool mine like fine leather. I can be proud in private.
My mind—an ambidextrous coppice perchance.
A fealty bearing no sign of tyranny.
The dopamine troubadours singing
this masque into bloom. The lyre—
dispatching the arguments
through thin and vagrant aethers.

May - Poem 11

Thesus  / M. Anne Avera

I become human
Not consciousness, floating above
but sticky hands, bent knees—
each cell an own will. This being
you speak of is me.

And sometimes I see that picture
I gave you
and I wonder if that really was me—
if that moment still exists.

I believe it does. Because whittled
down to the raw form, I am whole
You can take me to pieces,
string them together,
add new parts and shapes and lines
just to see if you recognize me.

Where Your Hooves Lay / Desirae Chacon

where your hooves lay
that will be our way
to venture on
to further press
like a millstone on olives
anointing oils lay
so onto now
a sunrise beyond the sea
where sunrays peak
and graze upon the early grains of sand
where creeks run in mystery
and all undiscovered lays bare
where whispers became magnified
in the quiet breezes of this atmospheric air
and where salt and brine and waters of deep
lay upon the place of the seas
to where we’re going Horse
of Victory
A place forever lain in serenities of Peace x Glories

What I Would Do If I Lived Closer  / Heather Frankland

To Mom

Make you blueberry pancakes
for Mother’s Day—balance them
on that small tray you cram
in the back of the closet
or behind the cloth napkins
and Tupperware in the cabinet.
Carry them to your bedroom
let you begin your day
with pancakes and maple syrup.
 
When young, I could make toast,
and then later, French toast,
but now I can make you more.
Imagine a small plate
of blueberry pancakes
a mug of good coffee
a  small vase and a flower
I found on my morning walk
something common, yet pretty.

If I lived closer, I’d take you
for an afternoon drive
or to a movie theatre;
I’d buy the popcorn,
the frozen Cokes, all those
expensive treats that felt
luxurious when we let
ourselves afford them.
I’d take you to the store
to pick up wine—the sweet kind
that you like more than I,
but it’s your treat
because it’s your day.

If I lived closer, our conversation
would be different than a 30 minute phone call
where distracted, I am thinking of work
grades, dreading a late night of pretending
my body can take a late night easily.
I would pay more attention perhaps
talk of the past or the day-to-day.  

If I lived closer, I would make you
blueberry pancakes, coffee,
and anything else you desired
for this day you should be treated
like you’ve always treated us,
making pancakes
for special occasions
and seeing us, any of us kids,
marked a special occasion
we don’t live down the street
or in the neighborhood or in the state
we live too far away to make you pancakes
on Sunday mornings, although
if we lived closer, we would. 

Mother Dearest / John Hanright

Your screams of Thunder and Lightning
Are tempered by the wonder of Your singing


Your Cycles are timeless –
From baby’s entry out of Your canal
Giving birth to Consciousness
To Your loving Hands guiding us all
Back into Your mysterious Bowels –


Your sublime, star-capped summits transcend
The vanity of consonants and vowels


Your “Golden finger” admonishes and portends
Ruin to all those who cross Your Will – and still
You are the mildest Ruler
Governing with Equanimity and Equality ‘til
The final Breath of Time, Your brother


Your Friendship and fierce defense of all
Exalts You – never to betray Your affection
Loyal to Your children, who must heed Your Call
And defer to Your directions –
The tiny Chipmunk and mighty Elephant both obey
Your Advice – when to consent and when to defy
Where to go and where to stay
How to Live and how to Die –


Your Life is a Mystery wrapped in an unanswered Query
And yet we are still entrapped by theory

Primal / Jillian Humphrey

Like eating, touching, dancing,
poetry is what we do
before we’re enlightened
enough to write
an essay.
A moan, a whimper,
the guttural yowl
of the human — our animal language.
I wanted to be a novelist,
but all I can do is make sound.

PLAY FIRE  / Shane Moran

It was always Friday, 
when we played—
only underwear in the creek. 

They will not understand, 
it started with throwing a fire 
into the water. We slow-toed

to fetch the playboy that Timmy threw 
when he told us what Father Kevin says—
lust is a sin. 

In the woods we gawked
at naked women from the 80s,
pointing out all that surprised us.

How We Save Ourselves  / Christina Vagenius

I ask the poem who she is —
if she’s hungry, if she needs a nap
if the syllables sting when they pierce
the page, when I pound on the door,
press an eye to the drunken peephole,
you are
the sound of a cinched scream caught
by the nape of the neck, lingering in the air
too long as it billows past the critique’s
long arms, see see see
you there,
outside the window, past the panes
of smoky lore, a girl in a garden casting spells
over a mosaic bench bathed in light, fingers coiled
over cut glass, escaping the wound, tipped toes
pressed into night’s cold soil, reckoned
by the slip of the moon. 

Unmarked Grave / Sonya Wohletz

Sangre sacúdase—crust of late earth.
I trusted this, at least.

The milk of my mother, her opalescent sea.
Though these, too, evade.

Somnolent savior, please help. A picture.
Perhaps, a flagrant wound I
pin to my dreams.

My bones drill the days through
its heart, to grind
together its many skies
in the bowl of women,
their blood-lipped chalice,
their art as yet unfinished.

Always, it seems
the path appears the same:
North along the road to Taos.
West toward Tierra Amarilla.
South to Cuba, La Jara.
East through Gallina, Jémez.

The journey describes a return
or an opening,
one might conclude.

What kind of door
evokes two names?

And were I to speak
I would say
I remember only one.

May - Poem 10

Mother’s Day  / M. Anne Avera

i dislike touching my bare stomach touching the crater in the center
where i was once attached.

that was the only time i truly, molecularly touched someone
touched my mother through umbilical tie.

how it must have hurt her to rip me out how it must have
hurt

myself to be torn from her, never to cross atoms with anyone
ever again. i believe all things go back to 

her.
once,

i had a dream where i met a godhead with the face of my mother
the soft eyelids of my mother the weary hands of my mother

and she did not speak to me she only hummed.
she was electrified by moonlight current she was humming

the same five notes.
i saw her parts changing to knit together bone

from bone, flesh from flesh. she formed a newness of herself but it
was not quite 

herself.
and then i was filled as all children desire to be filled by comfort,

by thesus’ ship sailing ever forward, yet never quite
the same as it was before.

The Beauty of Life’s Elements / Desirae Chacon

As I sit back & ponder
Upon all of life’s great moments
a few elemental contributors come to mind

Light, Air, Water & Fire

Light

As i lift my eyes up to the hills 
I see coniferous sempervirentes
shaking hands with the Sun’s temperate 
Dawning palm 

Air 

feels like it has the ability to reset
responsive
sentient of
a configurative quality 
for making all things feel new

Water

the ideographic symbol for joy
a stream charts into its own purposed course
a sense of longing develops
knowing i will never see the same waters again
bittersweet
but taking comfort in knowing the same river is by my side

Fire

this comes to mind ultimately
because it feels like a primordial beginning
as gazing meets the primal glow
among flames
already present at the initiation of time
beginning with the end
& ending with a beginning

A Tiny Poem  / Heather Frankland

It is a tiny poem
one that can wrap
around your palm
twine between
your destiny lines
claim itself
the child
that one line
prophesized.
It is a tiny poem
a sponge that doubles
in size once wet
tears from joy or pain
will do.
It’ll grow
in your sleep
a green web
around your hand
pressing its mouth
to your finger
with the writer’s bump.
It has a heart now
and that heart glows
at every slow beat.
The tiny poem
becomes its own thing
with a trace
of you inside
--a seed—
and like a dandelion
when it’s ready
the wind will take
to soils just waiting
for a tiny poem
with a scroll inside
and a blossom
so bright
that it stains. 

Ode to a Birthday Candle / John Hanright

Flaming youth,
So soon does your wick burn,
But your soft light tells the truth
About life’s little joys and turns:
Illumine my laugh-lined face;
Warm the coldness in my heart;
Reveal each gray in my hair;
Remind me of each hint and trace
In the priceless years – from start
To end – and those wishes lost to the air.

Flaming youth,
So soon does your wick burn;
Trust I speak in sooth,
Each year’s wisdoms we earn –
This fragile flame, in whose care we’re charged,
Capable of surviving even the worst rains,
Just watch as it burns fast and slow,
Contracts and then is enlarged,
Makes pleasures into pains,
And brings to death’s abyss a boundless glow.

Flaming youth,
So soon does your wick burn –
For saying so, don’t think me uncouth;
My one wish is to return
Not to my past but to my memory,
Flickering like a fading flame.
I would say goodbye to youth’s bout,
But that would be
Like placing blame
On a candle waiting to be blown out.

Tenderness / Jillian Humphrey

After breakfast I return to bed,
one of the many comforts
of benign illness.
A head cold comes
with a permission slip.
I can put off work, laundry, writing
this poem. My brain slows,
feels almost childlike again —
floating and trusting.
My doctor listens carefully
to all that is happening
inside me.
She places her hand
on my back.
Deep breath.
Even the sound of Velcro,
the blood pressure cuff,
is like church bells to me.
Someone kind
will gently take my wrist,
ask nothing of me,
tell me good job
then send me home to sleep.

Pelham Bay, 1974  / Shane Moran

—from my grandfather

You gotta understand, 
my neighborhood was all white, 
and this black woman—

for some reason—knocked 
on our door to ask about her daughter, 
who was in the crash with Aria

Allegra and the drunk Ricci twins—
the lady wanted to know if she died 
on impact…or

Fire Starter  / Christina Vagenius

There is nothing frail about the woman
who uses the scalpel against her own heart,
revealing her own hurt, laying blankets down
for the wounded — a triage for the tired, restless
eyes of want rounded as she gathers, builds fires.
A fortress for what no longer waits for recruitment.
Just the stumble-drunk, lucky likeness
she calls love.

Can I turn you around? Hold your face
to the flame and say, you are the match,
we all need. The last ember doused
in your image, a polaroid pinched sideways,
leaking life onto what remains.

And your hands, pressed together
in a prayer more powerful than the mirror
you cracked a million times over. Seven years,
too long to recover, put back together with the ash
you smeared between seams, knowing what it takes
to ignite every lost dream. 

Mother’s Day Pantoum / Sonya Wohletz

Warm spring mornings replete with laughter and some robust chaos
Requests for more blueberry pancakes and melting butter
Sun reaching in through the kitchen window (it needs cleaning, of course)
As little legs zoom by— someone needing a band-aid for the second time today

And already requests for even more blueberry pancakes and melting butter
Time to get off Minecraft! So we can get ready and play outside
Look—the warm sun is beckoning through the window
Anticipation of the day’s newness, adventures (refill the diaper bag)

So it’s really time to get off Minecraft! For real this time! So we can head outside
There are fluffy dandelions in the garden waiting for us to wish upon
And adventure is blessing us away from routine (I’ll leave the laundry for later)
Two surprisingly strong children launch into my arms, sweet smell radiating from their heads

Like precious dandelions that I have wished upon and wished upon
While a warm and patient sun smiles through
My sweet children as they jump into my arms for another round of hugs
This warm spring morning—replete with robust laughter and just the right dose of chaos

May - Poem 9

Lines  / M. Anne Avera

im not afraid of anything at all/not the way the trees cast shadows in my bedroom/not the cockroaches along the floorboard/not the mattress squeaks or the benadryl sleep/i used to think there was bravery/in being scared/like if i was strong enough to admit it things would take a step back/far back/so far away they turn to pinpricks/and i can no longer see them/but the truth is theres nothing at all to be afraid of/theres power in the knowledge/theres growth within that thought/but maybe wishing for fear to go away completely/is a fear in and of itself

Sword of Victory / Desirae Chacon

You Victory comes like endless cavalries of barded horses
standing for the sunrise
ready forth to march on
& delivery justice
at its finest
like a shining sword
of reinforced steel
ignited with Silver
& Sovereignty of Vindication
Judgement does reign 
and Truth does stand everlasting
To every corner of the land
inlaid in every place
Forever these will always Stand. 

Energized. Exhausted.  / Heather Frankland

During track meets in high school
we would sit in the sun
wearing sweats and hope
that we could be batteries—
energy and warmth, warmth and energy.

Then there were the days
when we wanted discomfort
thin shorts and shirts
naked skin, no protection—
no sweats or sweatshirts.
The wind, cold and brutal and painful,
to be so exposed—it’ll make me run faster
we’d say or that shivering energizes me.
We needed to believe it
because that run in that cold air
always the worst on the last 100 meters
hurt our lungs, made our bodies feel heavier.

Then there were the days
that the rain made the track slick
and we worried about falling
or sliding and twisting an ankle.
We’d run two laps at the start
just to test the track—which parts
were dry, which were wet,
which were not safe.
We’d share the forecast.

Sometimes, I can’t believe I was
a runner, that I was mediocre-fast,
that my legs had muscles so hard
that I could tighten them almost
like a fist. I can’t believe
that I ran for fun with friends
telling stories before we
raced at the end. I can’t believe
I tolerated running;
it’s never been my favorite sport.
But I remember the pain, the reward,
the weight of my body
not fast like wind, not always steady
but still able to transform into something
worthy of a red ribbon—and sometimes blue
and sometimes white—and sometimes
just barely crossing the finish line
tired, yes, but staying in full stride. 

See You in the Funny Papers! / John Hanright

I don’t actually like lasagna.
I just pretend to eat it while the cartoonists are sketching my likeness.
As soon as they leave for their lunch break, I shove the plate off the table
And step out of the studio to light up a catnip pre-roll in the parking lot.
Jon hops out of his car and walks over,
Scolding me for smoking.
“Y’know, Jon, the best way to quit is to stop after the last one.”
He just shakes his head and goes inside. I take the paper from the newsstand
And flip to the funnies.
Hagar the Horrible, my favorite!
I pace around the parking lot
And drift in and out of myself. They say
A little piece of you goes into any artwork – however small the frame.
As my fur starts to go grey in my sight,
The paper jaundices in my paws,
And my story begins to fade out.
The dotted white lines on the road
Give way to my past, present, and future.
Staring into bright lights, I close my eyes.
The scream of tire against asphalt –
Suddenly thrown –
Seeing streaks of dusky sky flip over on itself before
All is in darkness.
No pain.
No flights of angels singing.
Nothing but the sound of car doors slamming and muffled voices.
My eyes open to the dusky sky again.
Lucidity, that’s not like what I’ve heard of the afterlife.
Why is there a man
Where my mangled body should be?
And why does that man look so much like Jon might look if he ever got himself –
That damn SOB gave his life
For me?

Honey / Jillian Humphrey

I put things in my mouth
that don’t belong there.
The past, a small marble — I turn it
over and over under my tongue.
Also a gun.
The gun is only imagined,
so don’t worry too much.
After a few days of playing pretend
God takes the marble.
The gun he turns into honey.

Shoulder  / Shane Moran

—After Deborah Landau & for Frank 

Should we try cropped tanks? We spoke on it the whole Waymo ride.
Heterosexuals, what good would our bellybuttons do
Out for everyone to see?  Well, we could invent new men,
Unless we’re chicken.     Oh.     We’re doing it again—
Look at us—the only ones in North Beach covered up,
Desperate to fuck a stranger.         Do I know the real you?
Eventually, we gotta let the party know how hard we train,
Risk a quick squeeze on our bare skin—risk a chill up the spine.

In This Season Of Migration  / Christina Vagenius

I want to marvel again,
at the whisper of birdsong - 
pileated and red-bellied.
The Merganser crowns
and catbird cries
that sound like newborns.

I have no time for petty mouths
or blame. The unhealed wounds 
and gilded shame. Tired, of excuses
charmed takes. Manufactured
frailty in its wake.

Instead, the marvel.
All downy and hooded
and double-breasted,
skimming the shallows
for depth. Give me
the fog-licked lake
and all her scorious
secrets. The Green Heron
and her certainty. The Loon’s
quiet descent into darkness.
I will wait on the owls,
barred and short-eared
forlorn as they go.
And the turtle
that never doubts her turn
in the sun. Hang tight,

you vultures and muskrats.
You fire-eyed opossums,
your carnivorous tongues.
Your time will come.

But for now, I wait
on the Wood Thrush.
No conspiracy between
her notes. The sound
of spring, early morning
taste of rain from a daffodil’s
swollen cup. What is there

left to know?

For Rubén Darío / Sonya Wohletz

] gauze netting
splitting fruit
yerba buena
near the porticozancudos shiver
the afternoon
sacred heart flames
parnassus and its
wild dogs ] león, nicaragua
head turned away
cinders drift
earth trembles
the zinc roofs
market empty
at noon ] from the pronaos
blue körfezptera in disarray
enemy sails
blue winds
blue winds ] the far peaks
suspended in blue
fragments
marble fragments
cloud bones
or kiss
of blessed tree ] dissolving
the symbols ] sorrow
crowns itself
in wisdom

May - Poem 8

Inventory  / M. Anne Avera

A middle finger.
Your hair, liberty-spiked, yet
still somehow soft and curly at the nape.
A carton of eggs, undone
across the summer asphalt.
Black shirts, black shoes, black pants,
and a neon yellow, silver-studded belt.
The Sharpie tattoos you gave yourself
in study hall and their smell,
chemical and cool.
Fourteen rolls of toilet paper
draped across the house by
the other boys,
the ones who play football—
how it settles in the wind
like giant anemone.
Another locker to be shoved into.
A hard world in which you are different.
And your sneer,
which shows both canine teeth and
makes you look as though you’re
older, so much older than you are.

Pale Light / Desirae Chacon

Pale light whispers into the doorway
as curtains braid with the breezes somewhere between cornflower & periwinkle dusk
faded memories aglow 
a pilot in the heart
like the light of a faint candle
descending into wax to forever oust the flame
A love once lost now buried and forgotten
just like these tombstones
embedded on grass & strolled by 
days after a day
lives remembered
lives forgotten
the day that all days dissolved ‘for me
time stood still like 
melted wax waxing cold 
a fragmentary moment of life in time
forever stilled
like ozone & petrichor before the rain
petrichor of sweet memories
ozone of piercing grief  
Electrostatic field of ionization 
arcing the mending of wounds 
easy to forget pain
once healing is suffused 
a burn no longer dangerous
but hard to remember
the details
like a well sought after dream
subsequent awakening
on the cusp of life whilst on another realm
the timbre of voice
dissonant aura of a somber day
the exact colour of eyes
how to remember 
one hard to forget
a love once thought as lost
was forever in my
hands
waning sorrows
& a heart forever full. 

The Golden Fish  / Heather Frankland

One golden fish
in one murky pond,
come on—let’s find her.
Lanterns and flashlights
and one box of matches
should be enough.
The pond sits at the far
end of the woods where the pets
are buried; the path changes
in daylight; only in darkness
does it reveal itself
when we are at our most desperate.

One golden fish
in one murky pond—
they say the fish sings
they say she laments
they say she once
had been a woman
who dreamed of youth
and beauty as her only currency.
She wanted her body
to be a penny, always lucky.
She dreamed of forever.
Some say she is the only fish
in this pond, but she always stays small.
She could be the size
of my hand or of my fingernail.
Still, she grants wishes,
and I need some luck in my life.

So come, let’s see if we
can find her.
Come, let’s see if she’ll
let herself be found.
We have dreams so high
we could use a little help.
I’m willing to believe
there is a golden fish
in a murky pond
deep in the woods
under the old trees
with their corpse hair
where the ticks drop
their hungry mouths.
I’m willing to believe
because I have to believe,
otherwise, we’d never
find a way out. 

Door Dash / Jillian Humphrey

If you’ve never returned
your Christmas gifts,
you don’t get a say,
and if you’ve never Door Dashed,
be quiet.
Have you cried on the phone
with your mechanic?
Have you recently used a laundromat?
No? Then you’re out.
If you have good insurance
with a low deductible,
if you go on a family vacation
every year — it’s not your turn.
Don’t speak.
I am not interested in your reply.

Money does buy happiness.
It’s greed that makes you miserable.

I’m sorry if you are rich
and unhappy.
There are many unhappinesses
money cannot cure.
But there are very few happinesses available
to those who have no money,
and there are many unhappinesses available
exclusively to the poor:
they are all cured with money.

Closed  / Shane Moran

After Leila Chatti

I love you, it doesn't make sense
that we don’t have a sanctuary 
to convene our bodies—to use them 

as transit to the spirit world, to kiss 
and erase our grief—to make heaven 
legible. Our hands. Our necks. Your face 

close enough to fill all my heart’s vacancies—
I’m jealous of how close you let that me 
of two months ago, at last—get to you.

People Who Rent Bikes In Big Cities  / Christina Vagenius

always look happy,
like they’re getting a deal
on laughter, fist pumps
high-five heck yeahs
an empty goodwill bag
caught in the wind
lifted between lanes
eventually, inevitably
lost to the front of a train
two shoes tied together
tossed over a telephone wire
dazzled by the view
of the girl at the café
with the phases of the moon
tattoo, half-bitten confetti
cupcake, all celebration,
whispers me too.

<You, too, can be a hypnotist!> <emoji> <emoji>  / Sonya Wohletz

Direct suggestion
You are <emoji> this
Indirect suggestion
You may start to notice how very easy it is to <emoji> this
Double bind
Would you prefer to <emoji> this now or in a few minutes?
Embedded Command
You can enjoy wondering whether you can <emoji> more with each breath in or each breath out
Tag Questions
If you follow my instructions, you will comfortably <emoji> this, and you know that you can follow instructions, don’t you?
Yes sets, pacing and leading
You’re sitting at that computer reading my words and beginning to <emoji> this more easily
Conversational Postulate
Can you imagine <emoji> this?
Confusional Language
Sometimes it’s confusing to think about how you’ll begin not to wonder when you’ll forget to remember that you’re <emoji> this
Negation Confusion
There’s no pressure here to <emoji> this, although it’s not impossible that you already <emoji> in ways you haven’t noticed
Utilization Language
You might be aware of the sounds of everyday tragedy going on around you, and that’s OK. You can <emoji> deeper with each awareness.
Linking Ideas
The more you notice each breath, the deeper you go into <emoji> this

 (Reference: Debbie Waller, Yorkshire Hypnotherapy Training 2025)

May - Poem 7

Ten short ways I got over it  / M. Anne Avera

Ten short ways I got over it

1. Tied my will to live to package deliveries.[1][2]
2. Never bothered trying to play guitar[3] again even though I could have[4].
3. Took my melting[5] more seriously.[6]
4. Paid some lady $125[7] an hour to talk about it.[8]
5. Got engaged and then unengaged[9], followed by a string of men.[10]
6. Avoided[11] the room where you were.[12][13]
7. Forgot[14] how to swim.[15]
8. Didn’t cry[16] while watching Die Hard[17] at Thanksgiving.[18]
9. Gave myself[19] multiple cavities[20] without dental insurance.[21]
10. Wrote[22] too much about you.[23]

[1] These come almost every day.
[2] Sorry for ruining the environment and also never using all the financial wisdom you taught me.
[3] The one you passed down, by the way.
[4] “Could’ve never could.”
[5] Weed gummies and ketamine therapy and Pink Floyd on repeat.
[6] It became my job. At work. At home. At the doctor’s office. In therapy. On the bed. On the floor.
[7] Again, I must apologize for the financial decisions.
[8] This didn’t help that much and I bet you could have guessed that.
[9] Don’t ask.
[10] REALLY don’t ask.
[11] Pass the hallway like a quarantine room.
[12] Where you died.
[13] Even after mom painted it Pepto Bismol pink.
[14] Forgot, here, really means I don’t try to pump my arms and legs like you taught me anymore.
[15] Now, I just flail in the water.
[16] I did cry after, though.
[17] We can’t watch Christmas Vacation anymore. I hope you don’t mind the new tradition.
[18] Mom calls it “Sad Thanksgiving” now.
[19] Didn’t give them to myself so much as I ended up with them.
[20] Ow.
[21] Bigger ow. And another hit to the finances.
[22] And cried and talked and thought.
[23] Sorry. You hated being the center of attention.

Exhaling (Part 4) / Desirae Chacon

i exhale..
& soon 
the smile begins to return to my lips
and the hope in my heart
begins to fulfill
loneliness leaves
departing me with you 
exchanging its company 
for everything i have ever dreamed of 

i exhale..
that person 
of somebody someday
finally meets me
as tears of relief
flow from our eyes
we meet the one
whom our souls 
longed for
is finally here

…we exhale..

Someday, I Can Write More  / Heather Frankland

This is the first time she’s seen the Milky Way, she tells me,
checking her phone to make sure
that it is the Milky Way
looking at an app that assures her,
texting her husband to tell him what she saw.

We are in my backyard, sitting on ribbon
lawn chairs that remind me of home,
our feet on the rocky ground
bats swoop near the loose power lines
their wings, jagged outlines.

She is there with me, and yet not.
She is outside, remembering to remember
the time she saw the Milky Way—amazed
that this little town could boast such a beauty,
documenting it for later.

I am glad that she isn’t bored
like she was in the movie theatre—laughing
at our one-screen, one-room theatre
with strange statues posed
like they had better places to go.

She doesn’t know why I am here,
and sometimes, I don’t either,
but we can acknowledge
that the Milky Way deserves
a moment of pause, silence, wonder.

She will continue to tell the tale
of the first time she saw
the Milky Way from my little backyard
in my little town
back when we were friends.

Someday, I can write more
about this decades-long friendship
the end that wasn’t exactly an end
the pain that feels like anguish, something to mourn
like a death, words that make me feel melodramatic.  

But for now, it’s this moment—I’m trying to remember
sitting in my backyard on lawn chairs
with the ribbons that remind me of home.
It’s almost cold in this memory, our legs cold,
we look at the night sky.

Soon, we’ll have to go
back inside; I’ll stumble over the stones
in old sandals and regain my balance
we’ll talk until too tired, promise to talk tomorrow
expecting all the tomorrows to always be there.

After Thought, or a Modern Romance / John Hanright

Day 1
Hey! (excitedly)
Hey! (equally excitedly)
Day 2
Hey there! (friendlily)
Hallo! (Germanically)
Day 3
Heyyy (flirtily)
Hewwo (cutely)
Day 4
Hello, cutie (boldly)
Hello, sweetie (mutually)
Day 5
Hey, sweetheart (hopefully)
Hi, darling (sweetly)
Day 6
Haiii (gayly)
Hai (queerly)
Day 7
Good morning! (smittenly)
Morning (undecidedly)
Day 8
Hello! (basically)
Yo (chillily)
Day 9
Bonjour! (kookily)
5 hours later…
Caio! (coldly)
Day 10
Howdy, partner! (jokingly)
8 hours later…
Hi (seriously)
Day 11
Hay! (goofily)
10 hours later…
hi (unamusedly)
Day 12
What’s new? (inquiringly)
Day 13
What’s up? (anxiously)
Day 14
Hey (hopelessly)

Golden Rule / Jillian Humphrey

My Mother knows the golden rule.
   She sees what I do.
She knows that’s what I’d want
   done for me too.

When I paint the bookshelves
   she paints the bookshelves.
When I plant roses
   she plants roses.

She fills the house
   with cotton and blues.
She opens the windows
   to let in the dusk.

Today she washed the sheets
because she remembers
I like soft clean things
and sleep.
She is making dinner
   because she saw me make dinner.
She thought it was a nice idea.

On the porch
with my head in her lap
    she rubs my back
with one hand as the other
    hand stitches a quilt
she’s been sewing for forty years.

She kisses me
   on top of the head,
and when she’s finished
   I’ll go to bed.

The Starlet  / Shane Moran

These are our sequins, 
stitched into a dress,
collected from a factory 
of tired women who keep 
the machines stamping. The
body of the last masterpiece of antique 
Greece made painting
upon a young actress from a city of
statues for war casualties, posing in the city of
rent—the body glimmers in the hand of a great 
light, like the quiet gems of the minds within 
us, carrying one silence to another. We watch 
and swallow a million sequins—we reach
for Milos. A breastplate, the birth 
of a scaly-winged butterfly, the face 
of a flirty elephant shrew—all held by grasping
seaweed and a quarter of gold. The dress
is the night the titans fell. Stitched
into the arms of Poseidon, marked 
by the sign of Zeus, she wears a chase 
of infinite colors. Strands of silk, tears 
of a rainbow, brush her legs. She steps
wearing the Goddess of Desire. 
She is worshipped.

—After Chase Infiniti wore a trompe l’oeil Thom Browne dress inspired by Venus de Milo Met Gala 2026

Secret Language  / Christina Vagenius

You skipped backwards
in the video like you knew
I couldn't watch you go. How
I’d want to see your face, still
so young, legs bent in wiry chaos.
Now you send me flat screen
photos, clouds doused in light.
Words scratched beside rivers,
your fingers finding stones,
the milled-mouth limbs of trees
made into homes. And those
same bent legs, bow to bargain
between the stay and the go,
your song at dusk, writing notes
to the sky in a language
even I                  can understand.

Bedtime Story / Sonya Wohletz

When does the future begin?
Tonight perhaps—that interstice
Of season or cutlass-berm, the posy—
Its slit stem, as you
Cradle it in crystal
A vessel—
This floating work of art—
Memory pouring in
Seawater through the gunwales

May - Poem 6

In Defense of Invasive Species  / M. Anne Avera

All hail the kudzu plant—that noxious weed, 
villain of the South. Impervious to pesticides 
and cattle that graze on its wide, fat leaves,
it creeps. Oh, how it creeps! Spreading wide
and impossible to kill, it coats the ground
in a glaze of verdant green, sucking sun from 
the plants of weaker constitutions. Their poor,
sodden bodies like a graveyard in the shade.

I sit sprawl-legged
on the road shoulder

and suck up the dust. 
I am cooled and protected and 
hidden from the gym coach
by kudzu and my own wit.
Never noticed it before,
but I take it in now—
how the wide, hungry leaves
blot out the sky.

More than anything else,
I am the worst at running the mile 
and the worst at being in middle school.

 No one would believe me 
if I lied about period cramps, so,
knowing I’ll be reported
for cutting out of class,
 I lay myself back
and curl into the weeds.

All bow to this prime bane of farmers, 
this roadside decoration. Oh, Kudzu, 
you fire-resistant beast, you foreign guest, 
I believe in you. You, who wants nothing more 
than survival and stretch and propagation 
beyond your soil.

Exhaling-(Part 3) / Desirae Chacon

i exhale..
if only…
hope it beginning to hurt

i exhale..
40 days later..

and that person
of all those collected
feelings, prayers and thoughts
enters this season
enters my life
walks past the clothesline
past the spring flowers 
crosses the road high to meet me
as autumnal evening rays begin to 
meet the grass 
as it lay 
among the flowers
rays 
like curtains in the sky

Cat to Mouse  / Heather Frankland

I’m supposed to eat you.
You’re supposed to run.
But let’s sit in the pool
of sunshine instead.
I’m tired and need a nap.
I need to dream
just a bit longer;
there’s something I was meant
to figure out, some quest maybe,
some greater mystery only seen
with my half-moon eyes.
I am not lazy; I’m dreaming.
It’s a lot of work.
See how I breathe so laboriously;
it’s not really a snore;
it’s like a deep sigh
of exhaustion and contentment
that got captured
in my wind pipes
in my nasal cavity.  
Sit near me, please,
I like the company,
but not too close—
the human might notice,
and we would never hear
the end of that—
I’d get demoted to—fat lazy cat;
you’d get demoted to—should-be-food.
We don’t have time;
we have too much dreaming to do.

Montages of Mortality: A Collection of Last Words/ John Hanright

Thomas Paine: “Taking a leap into the dark. O mystery!”
Richard Sheridan: “I am absolutely undone.”
Henrik Ibsen: “On the contrary!”
WWI Lieutenant Gordon Flowerdew: “We have won.”
Julia Ward Howe: “I am so tired.”
Henry James: “So here it is at last, the distinguished thing.”
James Baldwin: “I’m bored.”
Archduke Franz Ferdinand: “It is nothing…it is nothing…”
August Strindberg: “Everything is atoned for.”
Ben Travers: “This is where the fun starts.”
John Millington Synge: “It is no use fighting death any more.”
O. Henry: “Pull up the shades; I don’t want to go home in the dark.”
Osamu Tezuka: “I’m begging you, let me work!”
Paul Walker: “Hey, let’s go for a drive.”
Salvador Dali: “Where is my clock?”
Groucho Marx: “This is no way to live!”

Specimen / Jillian Humphrey

white woman, 40, Ohio
eating Chick-fil-A
in a minivan
beside the soccer fields
next to her, a golden retriever

You could pin me
to a display board,
fasten my wings in place,
and label me, correctly:
middle age middle class
middle western mother of 3
You’d be wrong.

I am crying because there are leaves on the trees again.
Write that down.
My grandfather had a talking parrot.
I fed a goat a chocolate chip cookie.
I do my cartwheels left handed.
Not every blue bird
is a bluebird.
I am a species
you’ve never observed,
a weird little bug
you know nothing about.

Cinco De Mayo  / Shane Moran

On TV, the president
is threatening another 
round of bombing in Iran. 

In La Puebla Mexicana, 
a round of shots for the five 
of us in sombreros

and singing Selena—sweat 
on the table. We pay 
our war taxes in exchange

for tacos, tequila, and corn on a stick. 
Margaritas! We ask the waitress,
flip from CNN to the Semifinals. 

Name a reason not to—
go numb, amigo

A Love Letter To The Hand On The Door  / Christina Vagenius

I plan a trip to Iceland on a day
when the overwhelm, the soon-to-be
voice of assertion begins his unruly
decent down the stairs, belt in hand
pulling at the open holes of adjustment,
accommodations, lost. My tip-toe tender
heartbeat heaving behind the door
that doesn't lock
waiting on the sound of my brother’s cry,
the wall cracking the whip, his searing
treaty. Brandished by the hand
that never heals.
I didn't know the fear would find a way
through the wood’s knotty pine that day,
follow me here
to the hardened sap place inside me
turning everything cold.

Self-Portrait: Reflection in a Sky Light  / Sonya Wohletz 

As viewed from below, experienced as from above:

Small card table, cards spread out before the figure
who is both me and not me—
a picture, maybe of a bird, or a saint.
Benedict perhaps, with his rule, his clarity,
among the disorganized scatterings, as though
gathering shiny fragments for his shrine,
or nest, depending on how urgent
the viewer’s appetite for mimesis.

In the image:

my head is covered, my gaze—insolent,
or is it something else my mother named for me,
some outdated adjective which I have since forgotten?

The scene is otherwise still—light bleeding through

in colors of the cold world, rearranging themselves
into discrete features of an interior. Let ritual
explain itself, it seems to say. Let ritual preside

This lone black bird—visible through the window on the left.

Observe how its beak scrapes

away at expectation, at your tired
preening. See it sharpen
grief into the vague horizon—the figure whom I call myself
daubing in blue greening: I am gazing
down or up the curve of her back. I catch myself here,
on the event horizon of recognition.

The reflection is the mirage—beyond it are the confused symbols

of circumstance, stretched beyond any prophet’s striving. Substance
traces no impression as it falls, falls—seals itself into stasis.

May - Poem 5

The Hunting Party  / M. Anne Avera

The sky is dark and circular and starlit
like the day before creation.
All is full-bodied shadow
and quiet.

They come before the world wakes up
on horses or mules or foot—
whether bare or hard-shod, each step still lands soft
on the rippled earth. Their tracks map
path upon path upon path.

Their hounds and pointers and mutts follow,
each bred testaments to the task at hand.
As they crowd out the tree line,
their eyes fix low and their hot breath froths in puffs,
harsh out of their twitching noses,
perking their ears when they hear,
“Good dog, good dog.”

Some wield angled spears or brass-plated guns
while others hoist sharpened arrows
and slingshots of shale and iron.
The stragglers carry nothing,
dragged along to trust in their bare hands
or to simply witness.

These faces, ever-changing.
These parts of a nameless whole.

Slowly, stars melt from the cloudless sky
as sun shatters the darkness.
It begins.

Exhaling-(Part 2) / Desirae Chacon

i exhale again 
someday i might see these feelings
in somebody someday 
somebody might meet me 
high on the road 
full of intention
of refined purity
full of love
kindness
goodness

a heart full
a full smile
a mutual gaze
of understanding
wordless
yet so full of meaning

Toddler Poem  / Heather Frankland

Strawberries! 1-2-3-4
Blueberries! 5-6-7-8
Puzzles, I love puzzles—
putting in that last piece.
My dog in the yard
my yard, my swing, dirt,
a butterfly—
look a butterfly!
Can I touch it?
No—
I want to touch it.
Why can’t I touch it?
No. I don’t want to see birds.
I want butterflies—
BUT-TER-FLIES.
What, a lady bug?
Where?
Luck?
I like luck.
What is luck?
Lucky me, 1-2-3.
I can count to 20.
Want to see?
I can see
20 good things out here
starting with you, Mom.
You are number—2.
But that butterfly
I couldn’t touch
was number 1.

A Shade of Red / John Hanright

After “Untitled (Heart of Heads), 1989” by Keith Haring

Effervescent heart
entwined with motion and mirth –

What a pleasure to meet
you in the interstice of oblivion and eternity –

Your art puts color into revolution –
‍ ‍
Radiating outward, screaming out
blood sweat and tears –

So many tears upon your heart –

If Van Gogh put his pain into his paintings
you wrote your manifesto in red upon a canvas –

Love – the inimitable mediator between art and life –

Your mind has diffused into the aether
to share space in the cosmos –

Your art endures – survives you –

How you would love the world as it is now
unshackled from Death’s greedy hands
constantly confining millions to early coffins and urns
yours among their number –

Our world is caught in the chasm
between utopia and dystopia –

A protopia built from the remains of dreams and nightmares –

Art can save us
Radiating outward, screaming out
silence equals death

ON THE DAY MY DAUGHTER’S FRIEND FOOD SHAMES HER, I FEED MY GRANDMA SNACK PACKS / Jillian Humphrey

my grandmother, dying, wanted
only lemon pudding
so I fed her
with the single plastic spoon
she kept unwashed
in her bedside table

she knew me but not
the day or hour
and she kept leaving us
between bites
to go somewhere like sleep

it’s possible after a life
of so much shame
she wanted finally
in the middle of her
a yellow luminous sweetness
cups of it

so when she asked for more
and more
like a baby bird
I fed her
all she wanted
and then she was gone

Caught in The Flood  / Shane Moran

Last night, the flood chased me in a glass, 
as I hunched to the bar late and tired. 
She is the one I have most desired, 
but I drowned alone in the deluge.

In the morning, I called her—wired.
Told her: not too much transpired. 
The catching up was good, until she asked: 
Why Kim texted her, she saw me at The Deluge?

I couldn’t tell her about the stalking flood,
just said I had a few ‘cause the Knicks had won. Why lie, Shane? You got drunk.

She can't see the flood that chases me,
how I’ll drown alone again tonight 
and lie again to her tomorrow.

The Passenger  / Christina Vagenius

You can control the temperature
if you do it quick, turn the knob

make it cold, push passenger side only
before he rolls the window down.

Tells you it's warm outside, tells you
to take your sweater off. But you like

the sweater. It's the one from your trip
to Ireland with the knit cuffs and the virgin

wool you bought in the shop from the woman
with your grandmother’s Easter eyes,

basket full of Hershey’s Minis, tucked
inside the plastic grass. Dark chocolate,

making your mouth pucker, your grandfather
laugh when she said, Oh, Frank. The words

dropped in a caldron for safe keeping. I told you
she doesn’t like it. Take your sweater off. But

I like the way the yarn feels
on my skin. Soft, incorrigible,

coaxed from under a spell.

May - Poem 4

Grandma died thinking that I believe in God  / M. Anne Avera

but I do believe in:

hand-sewn and smocked Sunday school dresses; peach cookies with water; paper cups; princess hats with tulle on the end; the mixolydian scale; a baby’s first tooth

jellybeans on a mountain that we dusted with salt; low blood sugar that shakes my hands up, puts sweat in my underarms; exhaustion on a stranger’s face; kudzu; the late-season yellow jacket

the first cigarette I ever smoked, crouched on my best friend’s back porch; her mother’s fake leather purse and her little brother that they nicknamed Cheese; the thing, shared, menthol rubbing its nose to our clothing

being from somewhere that considers covering trees with toilet paper a tradition; that pastor that paid my parking ticket for me; wishbones; mathematics and orgasms, which feel the same

hiding under the bushes at my house to know that someone would want to find me; studying the Bible for an essay; mountains made from molehills; the nice silverware, plates we never use

faith from a mustard seed; hot dogs and sparklers and wondering if something is worth celebrating; knowing that I found God with a capital G in that church choir I joined where there were only two other people; voices combined into one living thing, hanging in the air

that God is not just in beauty, but also in humanity.

Exhaling / Desirae Chacon

i crave connection 
the kind thats stable
the kind that i can dive into
the kind that has a
safety net of infinity
the kind that i never have to lose
like smoke…
through my fingertips
like dark matter 
its there
but i feel empty
i feel lonely
loneliness comes to sit beside me
like an old friend
im slightly uplifted inside from familiarity
but reluctant to say hello again
like another friend i may lose
like mist at the noon of day

i breathe
& exhale 
collective memories of nostalgia 
come flooding in
like water over 
a mosaic of tiles
there’s clarity
yet why is my heart always so heavy

i have no expectations 
just a pure genuine soul 
i can weave a tapestry with
for this life

somebody i can see in the next 

Instead of That Thing You Should Be Doing  / Heather Frankland

The rabbit holes of gardening tips—
Yes, you need to start your garden
with a special cell block tool;
it looks super easy. You can find it
on Amazon, and yes, you need
to learn how to dehydrate herbs.
You once tried hanging them up
by their stems on clothesline
over your sink, and only the thyme
turned out once or twice.
The rest—moldy leaves—
You’d never make
a good witch or herbalist.
Yes, what you need is a dehydrator
you hope you have the counterspace.

And then, what about those deer?
Not those that you warn your loved ones
about in the Midwest—a sign of pure love—
drive safely and watch out for the deer,
but those mule deer of the Southwest,
those stubborn squat deer with long ears
those deer who aren’t supposed
to like your green onions
but somehow do. The ones
that eat young tomato plants—those
impulse buys not even out
of their impulse-buy pots.
Study all of the plants that will naturally
deter them, and while you are at it—
study the plants that will naturally deter
ants and other unwanted pests—
you have the time!

And what about that one actress
you saw in that one show you liked—
you know the one, supposedly
she once was engaged to a man
who stood her up at the altar.
Imagine that! Beautiful, talented actress
stood up; that must’ve caused damage
never-mind the fact that she moved on
and that he moved on,
and that their careers moved on,
or that it happened over a decade ago
it’s important; you need to know!

While you are at it—maybe write a letter
to a friend or two; people love to get letters,
and you used to love writing them.
I mean you can’t be charming
because well, you are on a deadline.
But you can try to use clearer-than-your-normal
handwriting, and you can sign it
with a heart. Go ahead and color the heart—
after all you have markers, you should use them.

And then, only then, will you sit down again
to do what you are supposed to do—
that is, after making coffee, tea, popcorn,
wondering if you should make Kool-Aid
or open that bottle of wine that you are saving
for something special; surely, this day,
when you are avoiding what you are supposed to do
is that special day. How can it not be?
But maybe it would be best to drink
when done with this dreaded task
and not even thinking about this dreaded task,
and not even avoiding this dreaded task
that drains you; think about that for a while.
The clock ticks; night comes, your brain hums,
and slowly begins to focus on what needs to be done,
but first, there is one more thing you need to research.

I saw a seagull / John Hanright

I saw a seagull
Spearing a black-clawed crab
Today
I looked disgusted
Then I walked away
For there was nothing I could do
So speaks the wind.

Before the Guests / Jillian Humphrey

 after Kate Baer

In the end it’s who we loved —

and if they don’t love us back
we can get a dog
become a mystic
learn poetry
eat while we
look at our phones
live as an exile
on the Island of Patmos
or the internet
tell everybody
we are the beloved
recite it over and over
put it in the canon

after all — an angel
may come and ask us
to write something
down, something like
I am the one God sees
I am the one God hears
I am the one
on this lonely island
God loves

Mooneesha  / Shane Moran

Most Thursdays at Phoebe's,
I see her, hair straight—
sometimes dyed an unnatural color,
her make-up, dark and trad.

In mostly black—she wears
a bikini top with little shorts and stockings 
or a striped romper, or a striped crop top 
and mini skirt—always a leather jacket. 

When she finally notices me, her big lips—
lined—half-moon to reveal 
her gapped front teeth—she brings 

her hands to her chest, leans forward. 

If I ask her something, she responds 
in one of three ways—
a girlish nod—for a gift,
angry eyes—for an error

or a smile—and the touch of her hand 
on my shoulder—if I remember 
what she told me in the weeks before:
Her love for anime. Rock music.

How she dances for a living. How she left
everyone behind in Georgia—her parents,
her accent. How she wants me to lead her
through the busy bar—without touching.

She says she doesn’t do coke, but always wants 
to know if I have some. Alternative, she calls 
herself longing for the attention of white boys.
Her dark skin, well-lotioned, shines

in the yellow light of the back porch,
where she sits alone, and those boys seem
to ignore her, as her big brown eyes, marked
with stars, follow them—wet, alive.

Once, lost in new steel eyes, one hand 
on his pale neck, she swatted a shot out 
of my hand. When she felt the tequila 
splash on her uncovered skin, she turned

to me—she kissed my gold-brown cheek. 
Her fingers slipped from my face as I walked 
out. Calling a car back to the Bronx, I wiped 
away the bruise of her tar-pit black lipstick.

Resonance  / Christina Vagenius

I try to change the filter on the espresso machine
while the sun burns smoke signals inside my eyes, while

the robin throws herself against the window for the fourth time,
folds her mate within a wing, buried beneath a puddle of sky.

The rain stops coming, turns the dew into the surface of the moon, tears
like tiny craters frozen against the lying glass. I long for the unhurried,

the slow, molten pour of ancestors down my back when I ask, how’d you do it?
Across the field, a spray of lacquered feathers lifts from the quaked ground,

splits breath into pause, a pulse quickens somewhere.

Field Notes, Luhr Beach / Sonya Wohletz

5.3.2026

fir branches mewing in the breeze—eagles huddled on mudflats preening—carpets of algae pour into
Nisqually Reach—the tide turns its back again—glassy plumes of inland sea unroll and read out the sky
like a script—two police officers with tattoos and full gear search for a man they say is in
distress—somehow the word fulgent sneaks in along the margins—hazelnut branches clip the view into
neat angles—pear blossoms proud of the smooth bark—Oregon Grape flushing in the heat—two
students with a small machine to study photosynthesis—this other plant is Salal and it belongs here too
they explain—children with armfuls of dirt and bark chips—whirring of the lawn mower again—more
birds with glossy wings—answer me please if you love me says the screen—plane slowly ripping the
membrane of afternoon overhead—rabbit blasts through garden mesh—the world belongs on this side
of Sunday says one bird—prove it another responds—

May - Poem 3

anthem  / M. Anne Avera

my eulogies, my eulogies.
they sing to me. they whisper, wet against my lips, forked tongue flicking against mine.
taunting with what I will never hear.

they warm their frigid bellies on my back. come closer, come closer.
fingertips on their satin scales, pouring wine through their jaw.

they tell riddles that I know by heart. 
about the one who tells lies and the one who tells truth and
the woman who will die without tasting it all.

I am giving the life I never had back to the Earth. back to Her soft, white eggs.
I am coming home to the dog that only ever knew love from me 
and pressing my nose to her ribbon fur.

since birth, 
I have been my own witness.

Our Beautiful Lives / Desirae Chacon

You rise
uplifted on a new sunrise
pain bleeeeds..away

i rise
to stars
speckling the skies
glowing like radioactive radium

you pour
your favourite coffee
the filigree scrolls
unfolding
above your mug

i take a nightcap
bourbon neat
as a turn to look out the window
overlooking the night
a view to wherever you may be

you stretch and yawn
your beautiful eyes open
and are fresh
to the newly minted
rays of sunlight

you look out your window
a longing of solemnity parallel
with a warm hope for a new day

we miss each other
you go
i go
dawns rise
dusks settle
and time collects
as our hearts countdown
like clockwork
as every moment we have
brings us a day closer
to our reunion

For Amanda Schoenberg: Flowers and Politics  / Heather Frankland

Flower Child, I was nicknamed in high school
wearing my favorite tie-dye
every Halloween, wearing
Lennon-like sunglasses, letting
my long hair stay long and loose—
my forever costume I could pretend
I just happened to wear,
and it just happened
to be Halloween.

Or it could have been my politics, leaning left,
even more left than they are now.
I would get in debates
in high school hallways
over kitchen tables, on walks home
in playgrounds where we would go
to swing at night and pretend
we were old and wise
so much different
than the children who enjoyed
playgrounds in daylight.

Then Flower Child felt peaceful
like a field of daisies and no threat of poison ivy
like dandelion or clover chains
before they dried up and were thrown away;
it was being cautious in discussing politics
careful in who you let in, who got to see
the soil, and not just the pretty flower
that wouldn’t offend.

And decades later, Flower Child became Flor,
my forever-nickname in Peace Corps,
my identity for years—Flor, brave Flor
who made jokes in another language
who memorized cumbia songs
who listened to stories and politics
who felt alive at night, no playground in sight
just a bunch of people, sitting together
in the cool sand, laughing
and looking up at the full moon.  

The Bullet / John Hanright

In honor of the 54 slain at the Pulse and Club Q massacres

“If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.”
- Harvey Milk (1930-1978)

What is the trajectory of a bullet?
Made in the U.S.A., exports of our shores.
What is the trajectory of a bullet?
Shipped around the world, some circle back to our doors.
What is a human life worth?
Roughly 35 to 55 cents, or $500 for 1,000 rounds.
What is a human life worth?
A chocolate bar costs less per pound.
What is a closet like?
Inside: dark and dank, full of mothballs and regrets.
What is a closet like?
Outside: around 24” x 75” – fit for a casket.
What is the price of hatred?
A brief, tormented life.
What is the price of hatred?
Death, suffering, and strife.
What is the shape of Hope?
The size of lovers’ timeless shadows.
What is the shape of Hope?
Ask Harvey, he knows.
What is the aim of a dance club?
Community moving in time and space.
What is the aim of a dance club?
Eyes crowded with lust; hearts keeping pace.

Bear / Jillian Humphrey

On my birthday
I imagine
I am a brown bear
eating wild blueberries
in the sun
after playing in the river.

No one sees me.
Not a fish, not
a bird.
I leave no trace.
Just one bush
missing this summer’s berries, 
and a bit of river
sticking to my fur.

I return to an empty den,
sleep with a full belly.
I die having lived
a little life,
like a secret tv show
made only for God.

WILL WE EAT BEYONCE?  / Shane Moran

Still on their feet, the favorite
of millions working—
poor or over-worked rich.

Poor ones rubbing the feet
of the enemy of millions
or their oily bodies.

It is easy to confuse
a friend and an enemy
when you are hungry.

Watching dancing feet or lying
at their feet—both will fry
in the same grease

after the revolution. 
If we are imprecise with our tastes—
we will lose Beyonce.

DEVOTION  / Hali Sofala Jones

A cardinal
fell in love
with a red bird
in a cracked mirror,
abandoned
beside the barn.
She sang for days,
warbled face-to-face,
tapped her beak
against broken glass.
Waited in the hush
of a stooped tree,
its limbs stripped bare
by winter’s blade—
believing
she could coax
that silent thing
into flight.
What should we name
such an act of  return—
of calling beauty
to the ruin?
To the fractured face,
the shattered wing,
left for no one
in the wild—

A Mother Walking Home In The Dark  / Christina Vagenius

sounds like footprints in the sand
drained of the shore, two steps from
a tide turning back. Birds still singing
somewhere, cooing their babies
to sleep, wings levitating, leaving.
A star named for her transparency,
numbered by novelty, a catalogued card-
with sympathy. There, perched sideways,
dangling from the crumbling edge.
Even a dying star grows wings once
leaves me breathless,
every time. 

Transgressive Y.O.L.O.  / Sonya Wohletz

§ 1.1      Another milestone, another project finished—

And yet none the wiser, none the richer. My booty still jiggles though, wondering to itself where is my joy at? Got put off its perverse mission, perhaps. Now here I am stuck with the worst of contradictions, confusing it all with my “very cherished” dignity. No use wondering about it if you’re a single mother, poor, and part-time whore—and I happen to be [bless me] all three.

§ 1.2      Lacan, where you at during times like these?

Sliding between confusions like he knows how this will all end—my first guess. Or maybe intonando el canto sagrado de la Paquita, maldiciendo a los chumps that did her dirty—curing it all into pleasure with her throat, articulating a true thing of pearlified beauty. What a shame for you, inútil, she snarks—tres veces te engañé/tres veces te engañé/tres veces te engañé—I’m a goddamned goddess getting my glam on this Saturday night, and you can’t touch me.

§ 1.3      Today:

If I could hover myself over to the territory of the divine, I would seduce at least three people for breakfast, spew prophecies across the sky for lunch, and bathe in rosewater for dinner. I would dance down at the club and perhaps return in the early morning to crown myself in cactus flowers. Open new visions, sharpen strange implements.

§ 1.4      San Pedro, concédeme las llaves al cielo, alright?

Heavenly I think it would be to move through selves and into the gaze of anyone that ever beheld a real woman they’d underestimated and suffer the thirst of eros, of anyone who dared dance naked downtown in daylight, of anyone who claimed nothing in defense of their own failures, let alone insanity. Anyone who beheld the gatekeepers and knocked them with the swing of one luscious thigh to the other side of surrealism before clawing their way back into the delicate balance of

clean house—clean prayers—dirty delusions

May - Poem 2

baptismal  / M. Anne Avera

weather perfect, lake water clear, god in the cattails beside the shore.
he held the lamb up and, now, you can see the milky white in its eyes,
gone hollow from adam’s guilt still sleeping, waiting to lay waste.
but thy will be done, be filled, be overflowed. water flushes the body.
blood becomes water becomes wine as the soul is washed. a privilege,
to have this grace and goodness restored, for the hide to dry pearly white.
with the glory of the sunrise and the heartbeat of the hymn, we pray—
the parts of us that know better and the parts of us that want for more.

Weight of a Feather / Desirae Chacon

as i sleep 
with weight upon feathers
i am blanketed with life
awaiting my awakening 
this beautiful life surrounds
as sleep takes me 
on divine encounters
of dreams
birds 
call into the night
dusky songs
upon silky silhouettes 
streams like night-watchers
constantly marching into the 
mists of the ny3t
night fox and moonflowers 
arise subsequently following
four o’clocks last showing
a reposed slumber

falls upon the land
as my consciousness falls upon
weight of feathers
one more dream
as birds sing
till arising
awakens
to introduce
this dreaming life
to a new dawn

Southwestern Summer Days  / Heather Frankland

For days, a heavy cloud
promised rain, fat
drops to remind us
that there could be
a storm, that the heat
could be
chased away
that our garden
may not remain
dried out promises
of spring fantasies.

For days, that cloud lingered
the sun became bashful
my skin remembered
how it loved rain.
It remembered long summer storms
wet mouths of raindrops.
It felt so very alive
like it was more than skin
a leaf trembling, a tree dancing
roots thankful—deep  
in the ground
stretching out
and still growing. 

Elegy for a Playhouse / John Hanright

What an unceremonious end to an otherwise inspired play.
We really must get our money back.

…

What? Another mailer? Another fundraiser? What does this one say?

Dear valued patron:

We are drowning in debt. We can’t keep the stage lights on without your support. We need your
help. Please, give what you can. Become a subscriber. Every little bit helps.

Yours sincerely,
The Board

Throw it in the trash, dear, with all the other junk mail.

…

Oh, that’s the theater where they do all that social issue stuff. I’m not supporting some agenda.

…

Am I a season subscriber? No, I just came to see Brigadoon for the fifth time in my life.

…

I can’t wrap my head around it. How could a woman play [insert classic male role here]? It’s like
if a man played [insert classic female role here]. Can you imagine?

I don’t support the gender-bent casts they have had
lately either. What does the Met season look like this year?

…

Pay what you can? Can you make change for a ten?

…

Why am I gonna pay $30 for a production of Hairspray when I can see it for free on streaming?

…

Dear valued patron:

It is with a heavy heart that we must say goodbye to our beloved theater, who passed away last
night surrounded by family and friends.

The theater is survived by streaming platforms like Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Netflix, bad spinoff
series of originally good movies, and AI videos of people falling from infinity pools.

In lieu of flowers, for the love of everything good and beautiful in this world, please support live
theatre.

Yours in community,
The Board

Icon  / Jillian Humphrey

The hand ruins the brain
’s design. The image, made
real, is marred.

Mind resists; pleads
fidelity, not sloth.
An image is what it is.
Any tangible or legible
construction of that image
is no theophany,
only an icon.

Why insist on the incarnation
of a dream?
You’ll kill it.

But the body must make something.
With its gladness,
a pile of stones.
With its sadness,
drawn figures, shrunken heads
and hands too large
for their arms.

The body writes sentences
to record what it felt
but the mind
cannot resist
interfering. It assigns meaning
to narrative, interjects
cause where there is only effect.

Why this overgrown garden?
A figment is still a vision.
Without it the people perish.

Flower Moon  / Shane Moran

Something
holds me in this body
calling—come to me, come.

You see me shine,
but don’t try
pulling me down:

Do you really need 
to learn
the light is behind me—

touch my harsh skin, find
I am not
the body you dreamed of—

you agree, 
if you worship 
from a distance—

you only need 
your eyes—
O you of little faith.

Each month you look for me
and you can’t rest
until you’re drunk

spinning—
clouds pass
my face. I’m waning.

WATCHING HAROLD PERRINEAU AS MERCUTIO WHEN I WAS TWELVE  / Hali Sofala Jones

Wings.
Glitter.
Gun.
Black skin.
Shine.

Tell me of Mab.
Faster, faster—

No, nothing
can touch him.

Strobe
of sunlight—
a body full
of breath.

Barrel’s mouth—
choreography.
Laugh. Spin. Spin. Laugh.

Violence, theater.
Blade, prop.
The beach,
a fever dream—
The body,
a costume.

A scratch. A scratch. A scratch.

Where is the rattle—
in that laugh?

Tell me of Mab now.
Not worms.
Not plague.

Wake—

Gladiolas  / Christina Vagenius

My father tells me the story of hiding under the dining room table
when he was a boy. After his mother died, after his father made the bottle
his new bride. I don't think of this the night I hide from my boyfriend,
two weeks from turning 21, the studio off Goethe. With the southwest
thigh-high black lacquered vase I filled with turquoise sticks, felt sophisticated.
Walking past PJ Clark’s, a bent elbow brasserie keeping the Saturday gladiolas
perky, a wind-whipped sundress rising over the horizon of my knee, he’d say
was the reason his hand felt hard, hey, I’m talking to you. Honey colored neon
shadows, a ladder of blooms I’d watch wobble, then fall. Gladiola, ‘Imperial Mix’  
looks small, inside a puddle of water. Seeds born from a storied stem.
I see you under there. 

Meditation on a Russian icon and a moth flies through  / Sonya Wohletz

The moth interstices its way past the window—
smoke slips from a candle,
frame to its markings: stripes, ovoid. Morphemes
into the shrine of the saint’s forehead,
high and glaucous, indicating wisdom I suppose—
a certain elevating instinct, suspended
towards a god or the moon, who can
tell. Beautiful, isn’t it—what some people
can gloss their mistakes out of.

There is, for instance: a wing, or hand—raised
in blessing through this gospel of winter—
the saint’s eyes, antennae winking as if to
return the benediction or the place in time
where you realized I have no right I have no right
to occupy this language.

The recursive moment is the choice:
to maunder between, back and forth, up, down.
Voices drift like flakes of ash,
like a pilgrim deviating towards martyrdom
on the cold altar of ice along the Yenisei
in winter. In winter it is the embers
that are themselves alone,

smoldering in two palms. Their relic crease
warms to us and thermal blooms
of prayers lifting—wings into
the night air, fluttering like leaves of an old book
written in a language no one remembers
or cares to inhabit.

Is it the desire to understand again
that which imprisons or seals us upon itself?
Does the saint open mercy like a gate
and cleanse these hands,
cleanse my words of fire?

Free of the fire and of the vision free—
the bone moon, oh, it sometimes
relieves me at least of that.

May - Poem 1

First Poem  / M. Anne Avera

I write, now, and think of You.
The abstract, the royal, the heavy,
the You.

Yes, there You are:
my guest and my friend
and my thief and my lover.
You come without body or blessing
and Your presence remains,
regardless of my desires.

Do I want You to stay?
They say the learned doctor
secretly doubts the eternal soul
or the everlasting human will,
while these things lay
like a reservoir
beneath the poet.

Hand in Hand / Desirae Chacon

Hand in my hand
times behind 
and times ahead
centuries of bridging 
emotions
Melancholy with fury 
mixed with waters from the Seine
waters collected in my palm
feeling every single emotion
we’ve ever felt
every single tear you ever cried
falling from your eyes
most beautiful rain 
lashes like wings of a dove
when rain falls from them
your tears of the Seine
turned into these waters that
fall into my hand 
& tears from the fountains of laughter
when you smiled at me 
surrounding in light of the Sun
falling
warming
scintillating
breathtaking
a breathe is respirated 
cognitive reminiscence.. 
next
echoes of laughter 
permeating our souls
stitching every single pain we’ve ever felt
into purpose 
a balm for our solemnities
a salve for our sadness
a love for a reward
warm skies
dry grasses
balmy blue skies
of oil pastels in the middle of 
a hot June 
it was 1930
before the dust 
fleeting moments of this chapter
of our life 
of this life
of this time.

I Remember Little  / Heather Frankland

Mae—my great grandma’s name—
three letters to contain
a legacy of memories
given to me by others—
she never forgot
a birthday, she never forgot
a name, she never forgot
to make you
feel valued.


I remember little
me—shy with curly blond
hair from Midwestern
summer humidity,
horns I hadn’t learned yet
to be self-conscious about.

I remember little
me listening to Mom and Grandma insist
that my cousin and I join
Great Grandma on the screened-in porch,
insisting that we sat on her lap
to be read a story.

It was a green porch
or it could have been
green leaves seen
through the screen.
My cousin
more confident that I,
knew what to do
and I followed, trying to pay
close attention
to the story, to the lap
to my mom watching.

I remember sensing
how much this old woman
was loved by my mom and grandma
like it was armor, a block of kindness
like it was concrete bricks
my small hand could touch.

Maybe some of that magic
would flake off
on my palms, in my wild hair
on my quiet tongue—
for being loved that fiercely
must be magical
for being able to love that much
must be something beyond body.

Great Grandma was a magical being
to me, like the unicorns
I believed warded
off my nightmares
or the double rainbows
that promised good luck
or feeling valued even when 
you were small and too shy 
to say much at all. 

Remember, Shelley’s Heart Didn’t Burn! / John Hanright

In blessed memory of Neil Silberblatt
Melodies of Rachmaninoff
Repeat through the cottage –
Stifling a cough,
A poet flips the page
And busies himself with a piece,
This one is brand new,
And nothing will disturb his peace;
It must be brief yet ring true,
For it is his epitaph,
His greatest poem’s epigraph.

Run from that empty urn;
Take up a pen,
Which never lies,
Nor never dies;
And remember:
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!

Memories of the immortal bards
From yesteryear and today
Play in his mind’s yard
And then fly away,
Back to their home with the Muses;
But he catches some
And passing out his bon mots, amuses
His party guests, impressed by his aplomb.
Those days are all gone;
All that remains are dusk and dawn.

Run from that empty urn;
Take up a pen,
Which never lies,
Nor never dies;
And remember:
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!

Day and night are the same now,
His varicosed hands chill,
And damp sweat rests upon his brow,
But his soul and body are still
One – two nurses tend to his needs
While his love and friends tend to his heart –
The latter of which bleeds
Across the pages of his enchanted art:
“Full fathom five” and all that fine
“Shakespearean rag” and rhyme.

Run from that empty urn;
Take up a pen,
Which never lies,
Nor never dies;
And remember:
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!

What untold secrets reside
In that undiscovered country:
Where poets rest upon the divide
Between grass and tree,
One hand in now, the other yore;
Where sick and well are all in all,
Where kings sleep with the poor,
Where bitter tears never fall;
In that realm where beauty reigns –
Somewhere with no more pain.

Run from that empty urn;
Take up a pen,
Which never lies,
Nor never dies;
And remember:
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!

Marionette  / Jillian Humphrey

My mind marionettes.
When I swing my hands, she
walks. When I dance,
she dances.

When I knead dough,
I knead the mind.
And when I slide my trowel
into the garden, I dig —
my two marionette hands plant
something — in the brain.

Do you see how my hand hovers
over this page and my mind
is tied to it with a string
attached to a bucket
pulling ink from a well?

I can’t think unless I make
something. Striking a match
does less than washing the dishes.

I stand at the sink
for thirty minutes
noticing bits of food
and feeling water
run down my wrists
toward my elbows.

I look up to see my face shining
back — not in the drinking
glass — in the window pane.
There inside me, a flame.

UNCLE FATHER  / Shane Moran

There is howling in the morning, I listen 
to them breathe. Today, brushing their teeth, 
the girls told me I look like their father.
Another way to say, I love you.

These young ones explain my life to me. 
Show me as they squeeze their faces— 
love can land on the tips of their noses. 

Getting on the bus they wave goodbye,
and I miss their mother. I don’t forget.
Sometimes I go back in time. Sometimes

I yell. This is my work—to keep them 
out of a fire. I’ve made all my wishes 
upon these girls. I listen for the air breaks
from ten till two. At two, I’m waiting on the porch.

WHAT I MEAN WHEN I SAY DOWNTON ABBEY SAVED MY LIFE  / Hali Sofala Jones

“One thing we don’t want is a poet in the family.”
—The Dowager Countess of Grantham

There’s something sacred about the way
they hold grief with posture,
how even despair is draped in velvet.

I watched the same war end twelve times,
same telegram arrive in trembling hands,
same butler pour tea like nothing was burning.

My skin flared—red sprawling wherever it wanted—
but the screen stayed pale and British,
orderly as pressed napkins.
God, I needed the soft tyranny of it.

What was dying in me
didn’t matter at Downton.
Matthew still crashes the car.
Sybil still dies, lock-jawed in bed.

But nothing there is final.
Even now, with these hands,
I can return us—whole,
to the beginning.

Cereal  / Christina Vaagenius

I made a grocery list of all the ways I wanted to be loved.
Squeezed between the Wheat Thins and tender ripe limes.
Wondered if I'd find them tucked beside the condiments,
the chickpea pasta, the bone white bleached flour, always
escaping the battered seams. Or if I ‘d have to ask someone
for help finding the bread I like with the little seeds that turn
my teeth into piano keys. The cookies shaped like windmills
no one buys anymore, pushed into my 3rd grade pocket, turned
to crumbs by the time I remembered them. Toast-colored sand 
castles rising between fingers, swept out to sea. Or if the all ways 
I wanted to be loved
would be hidden at the bottom of a cereal box. Marshmallow shamrocks,
four-leaf clover good luck, my fingers digging for a prize shaped to fit
the palm of my own hand.  

Lithium 2  / Sonya Wohletz

If it cries—the mistake was involuntary.
What can I say, I am struggling still,
as though my abilities to human were in question;
though I am not—

I am not aching with the mistake of
gorgeous charity but raw
at the filing of stars through my ear root,
thick with the music of brain waves,
their deltas emptying into that peace,

that thankless peace that exists between old lovers.

How lucky, to be uncertain, and yet break
fast quietly at the table before dawn—

how lucky to know the hour
when you are called to recount your
sufferings, knowing they will be received
with suffuse laughter. The noble way, I guess
it opens concrete

certainties so therefore belie
the calculated movement of ancestors, whose
bones angle in such a way that we
may know them, and speak of them with reverence
and wish them safe returns.

I myself was like this—a stray projection
of those past failures, those past griefs,
all of which articulated and unnamed of
myself, simmered in the sliver of the pasture moon.

It will cost me so little to tell you:
(and would you have such patience as to absorb)
the pillared salts before and behind me, and
how now to take them in,
to ingest and hold steady the silent
messages, to steward such fresh image—
a zest, warm yellow separating
my palms from yours.

April - Poem 30

you’ll need to speak louder / A cento Composed by mk zariel

with lines by and from Maureen Alsop, Bob Bradshaw, Sarah Carson, Stan Galloway, Ava Hu, Sergiy Pustogarov, Nate Raum, Daniel Avery Weiss, and MK Zariel.

as though there were no terror.
i have always been able to allow myself to fail
i hope someone pieces me back together into something more beautiful.

pink peony snouts are breaching ground in the verge / the many-tailed surge
so what am i? says the inner voice / weeps at the disembodying chaos
i wonder if you miss the secret of us
But you can mitigate the spirit only so many times

Reinvigorate the meanings in a cloud 
Leaving me looking at the ruins.

Audrey Hepburn Searching for a Stray Cat[1] / Maureen Alsop

like soldiers on a crumbling castle wall,

Evergreen—[2]sun inside sun,[3]  

Handsof someone I knew[4]—April is the

monthof rising sap—[5] earth

waitingto crack open, to bloom, to

burn[6]and come alive in graphite on the page[7]

and somehow

that sometimes sends me   

into a tailspin.[8]

__________________________________________________________________

[1] April 22, 2026, “My Perfect Reader,” Bob Bradshaw

[2] April 26, 2026, “Picking Blackberries, Circa 1970,” Stan Galloway

[3] April 19, 2026, “Magnum Opus,” Ava Hu

[4] April 24, 2026 “I Blanked and Forgot the Meaning of Life in the Back Pocket of My Jeans Before Putting Them in the Wash.” Daniel Avery Weiss

[5] April 20, 2026 “On returning from Birdsong Nature Preserve,” Kirsten Miles

[6] April 15, 2026, “closure,” MK Zariel

[7] April 25, 2026,  “sonnet for syanna,” nat raum

[8] April 2, 2026, “untitled,” Sergiy Pustogarov

The Old Couple, The Washer And Dryer, Dance The Watusi  / Bob Bradshaw

  Whenever old videos
    of American Bandstand
    are playing,
    I’m inspired 
    to do laundry.

    Soon the washer's 
    boogying,
    throwing
    its heft around
    in slow, deliberate
    dance steps

    and as American Bandstand
    jacks up its volume
    the washer’s lid 
    starts popping up and down

    hurling clothes out
    like a stripper 
    flinging off 
    one piece of clothing
    after another!

    As she does this
    she rubs her hip
    gently at first
    against the dryer’s,
    then brazenly--

    swinging its hips
    left and right--
    the two banging
    each other 
    in a loud clamor,

    the house’s pipes
    clanging along
    joining in  
    this jubilant 
    moment

    knowing how life 
    is as short
    as a spin
    cycle—the timer
    unable to be
    reset.

April Ends / Stan Galloway

Iris buds have opened
on the back bank
feminine and frilly
after five years of
leafy show
a kind of second puberty
after planting tubers thinned
from the neighbor’s fenceline
a signal that beauty may lie
ahead

Afterlife / Ava Hu

*

Look at me urgent,
melodic, hypnotist.

Erase everything.
Call me by my name.

Dear wilderness,
without you
I am snow.

A house made of rising water 
before it floods the lungs.

Two hands 
become one.

The way you let go, 
I let go too.

Night birds sing 
all night long.

Your mind 
is a river.

We are the last 
two lines.

Until the world
enters your mouth.

Everything that reaches for you, 
everything that carries the light.

The world, the size 
of a hand closing around an apple.

It’s hard to hold on
to the language of birds

come morning.
Can we walk on water?

A looking glass,
ritual object,

mirror, transmission, 
you.

You slip under.
The water dreams you.

Shake leaves into essence,
a listening.

A lifeboat,
a song.

Is there still time 
to build an ark?

Their bodies press 
into flowers.

Put your hands 
over your ears.

Who will remember
the names of trees?

You must change 
your life.

Who will remember 
the names of trees?

How big are you 
compared to the moon?

You break open
a brush of light

across the purple 
mountain.

Who will be the water
who lifts the boat?

We are the black ribboned song 
of Orpheus descending, 

the ascent all depends 
on how you hear it.

*

While you enter hospice I host a poetry salon in which we discuss thresholds / Kirsten Miles

Through the front window Mount Angeles is obscured by clouds,
even Unicorn Point is a shadow

I dream we join your grandson, travel into Hang Va
another generation finding a future in a cave

seventeen poets are gathered under two hundred year old Turkish Hazelnut trees
the Stellar Jay kvells at the bounty while we write

I will invoke you every time my mouth is delighted by some amuse bouche
you so love to surprise your tongue

Behan, Heine, Wordsworth, your reserves,
my first poets on your bookshelf

the tide rises, the tide falls at Cape Flattery when you visit
look, how I have followed water as my source

there is an Emily Dickinson Coconut cake on the table,
little cucumber sandwiches fine enough for a high tea

in Brooklyn, a paintbrush in one hand, a slip of granite in the other
your bright bloom holds a piece of your heart, gently

on the west side of the house, four deer nestle in the yard under the window
below my room

the poppies are rising in Blacksburg, and
the lilacs are emerging, early flags before the day lilies and trillium

the floors creak under our feet, Gentle House walls full of poetry
and the footfalls of those whose love entered here, you are here

the poets have eaten Emily’s cake, written, shared their efforts
now the salon begins, a warm hum, conversation and laughter fill the air

a little girl again, I am listening to the flow of conversation below me
voices of your friends and students swirling up in the evening air excite my imagination

Danny is waiting for you for his next pet and your next walk
for he is, yes, your best boy

now, as the evening closes, there is a pearl in Black Mountain whose glow lights your way
and we will love her for all her days

the penumbra   / Sergiy Pustogarov

i belong just below the arc of the horizon,
glinting over your golden head,
casting rays that curve around buildings
through the reflections of your eyes.

i bask in the sunset aura
escaping over your forhead.
the peace flows through 
your fingertips,
and touches every particle 
in every atmosphere you inhabit.

i belong in the shadow of your being,
where schrodinger becomes the only one 
who can calculate my position, 
even then leaving half his calculations to 
guesswork.

i am an eclipse circling 
your presence,
only to return in a million years 
still shinning with the same light 
you sent me into orbit with. 

foiled orchards / nat raum

would that it were as simple as reaping exactly 
what i sow, but proverbs don’t account for

changes in the rain or the soil or the sun. i toss
seeds in tilled dirt with reckless abandon, harvest 

shriveled husks come the end of the season.
haters will say overwatered but really, the landscape

itself can warp, fertile fields now sapped, clouds
absent from the sky for weeks. fault probably

lies a little in column A, a bit in B—i’m trying 
to help, only dousing the vines who starve.

i do too much because everyone does too little.
who could blame me for trying to save it all?

Wing / Daniel Avery Weiss

There were still things that did not get said;
how his purple suit could be so dry cleaned,
how her pearl necklace could gather up its own pearls on the beach,
hitch them to its one twine spine,
how a man's ears cannot be pierced because
they're made of rock.

These things did not get said.
I did hear, however, about the economy
shipping options the poor use for goods
and bads and in betweens, each of which they settle
like a carbonated beverage
into accepting. The walls, the walls, they're
gold.

April - Poem 29

untitled / Maureen Alsop

If Only  / Bob Bradshaw

  I was 29 again.
    If only I could dial the sun down.
    If only I wasn’t shouting
    into a gale every time
    I ask the IRS
    for a break.
    If only this mass
    of flies would choose
    another old man
    to follow.
    If only the Neptune Society
    would stop  
    sending me ads…
    The boat’s waiting
    at the dock!
    If only my hopes
    weren’t tumbleweeds.
    If only love hadn’t proven
    to be another vault
    I couldn’t safe crack.
    If only I had you
    with me, babe,
    again.

Turn the Radio Up / Stan Galloway

Let it sing you away
to a night when love was new
recall a park, a beach, a quiet invitation
before the cup of hope was cracked
and love squeezed every raindrop
looking for a miracle.
Let the melody float you
on a raft of reminiscence
where the beating of the drum
foreshadows – stop!
Turn the radio up.
Let the long-ago song
block the ache
and lie to you again
that there will be no end.

Love Poem in Reverse Osmosis / Ava Hu

*

We sink like ships
beneath soil.

We flower-breathe.
We hold our breath

under the weight
of green.

What’s the use
in speaking about

the passage of light
through veins

when we are created
as one image?

We are pulled with violence
underground.

We calm fierce animals
by saying their names.

River snakes.  Yellow dust
of bees entering fruit.

Metal turns the mouth
to gold.

Praise water for taking
the form of its mate.

We are pulled by wind
we cannot explain.

Two moons tied
to each other’s wrists.

We are the milk
of ascension, milk

of the mother
constellation.

I call you my other half.
My swallowing mouth.

My moon
eat sun.

Look at me.
Look at me.

Look at me urgent,
melodic, hypnotist.

*

Is This Transgender Joy or Sorrow   / Sergiy Pustogarov

drawing 
lines 
across 
my 
chest.

dreams
dripping
down 
from 
my 
shoulders.

tracing 
hopes 
disappearance 
like 
chemtrails 
along 
these 
fateful 
curves.

figuring 
out 
where 
i 
belong

between 
the 
curves 
i 
chopped 
off.

and 
scars 
that 
i 
swim 
in 
the 
ocean 

proudly 
out. 

firefighting / nat raum

i once craved touch but luck would never bless me
with its presence, so i dashed fantasies of hands
on my waist. sometimes i think about the reasons

i’d rather be cold than hot—i can always layer up
but public nudity is frowned upon, and i hate to sweat.
in essence, i’d sooner freeze than burn the house down

again. i imagine the shapes i’ve forced myself into 
in the name of love, so intimidated by that which stands 
before me should i choose to walk these halls again. i lose 

control like kids of a certain age lose teeth. bones slip
loose from gums and i too sizzle like a lit fuse threatening
to blow—past a certain point, there’s no stopping it.

Wet Fur/ Daniel Avery Weiss

This spring, the blossoms unfolded
from their buds early.
I folded them and put them back.
It has been a spring of threats like that.
The river near my home is flooded already,
and still the sky appears congested:
clouds stumped by blue,
and then they get darker, grayblue
and then they get darker, black and grim,
and then they have floated away,
and the sidewalk is uncanny and dry.

We have dug for greater things than
existence, something fake and tacky.
I am real now, and like you,
will be nothing to me in a decade.
Memory kills me and spares few precious
moments to consider.
The clouds remain here,
floating like grief,
and drawing shade over
everything with feathers.
We have shivered for lesser things than
existence, something sticky, something
squalid.

Something swells from the treebark.
A tumor. A bubble. A knell.
The roads fold. The light at the
end of the tunnel is LED and bounces
off posters of dead bugs, which
block your way.

The sky dies.
From clouds I cannot see against
a backdrop of horrible night sky silence,
an orgasmic onslaught of rain
explodes into the earth. I saw a fox there,
there on the side of the road,
trotting past like the opposite
of symbols,
metaphor murdered
by the blight
of its pure, sopping tail.

a map of undoings / MK Zariel

you'll be one of that boy's harbingers of doom
my friend says, and i can't tell if she's talking about
you or an abstraction. i certainly aspire to bring down patriarchy
and yet i don't do myself any favors, scrolling through

a confirmed idiot's photos all because i wish
he could have been anything else. i loved you the way
i love an unfinished novel—full of promise yet always
fraying in the last couple pages, defaulting to the same

technicolor cover art & deeply straight stock phrases—
still i made erasure poetry from your canned jokes
your oft-repeated anxieties. i tried to get over you and so
had a brief fling with a vengeful ghost. it didn't last.
i tried to get you back and concluded

that, pathetically, i'd rather split my consciousness
into gleaming shards than ever understand yours.

April - Poem 28

untitled / Maureen Alsop

Riding The Grizzly  / Bob Bradshaw

    At 14
    I rode The Grizzly,
    a wooden roller coaster,
    known
    for its quick—
    stops—
    its—lurches
    ahead 
     
    but what I feared most
    were its tight 
    curves—

    at any moment about
    to fling me out 
    into space
    the way a skeet thrower
    catapults a clay pigeon 
    skyward—

    for its finale the roller coaster
    throwing itself
    off a waterfall,
    taking me,
    white-knuckled,
    with it,

    the water at the bottom
    flying up
    like wild 
    wings!

    Why do such
    a crazy thing?
    I hoped, hoped!
    to impress
    Cara!
         
    Over and over
    as she stood outside
    a railing,
    I would sit down 
    into a wooden crate
    of a seat,
    faking a smile

    like a stunt pilot
    at an air show
    getting into a rickety
    Fokker, a Nieuport 28,
    a Sopwith Camel.
    
    Did 
    she notice me?
    Or was she watching
    her friends
    in another
    car?

    Later I’d try
    writing poetry
    to impress Cheryl,
    but that was years
    away. 

    But that day
    The Grizzly
    was all  
    I had.. My heart
    even then 
    risking irreparable damage,
    against all odds,
    for love,

    —as it would do
    again and again
    and again.

Desire / Stan Galloway

It is no coincidence that
fire and desire rhyme.
Desire flaming high as a barn
brings the news reporter
when someone fails
in spectacular conflagration –
think imploding submersibles.
But some fires go unreported
serving to cook food
and warm rooms
the desire for creature comfort –
think grandma's quilt..
Failing desire clogs the lungs
of everyone around
all smoke, no heat
all negative attention –
think your last stalker.
And there is desire
no one notices at all
tucked beneath the ashes
of betrayal, rejection, callousness
an ember barely warming itself
tossed out in the ash bucket –
think my heart.

Pilgrimage / Ava Hu

*

The joints of one person
become the next.

Your breath,
the only lighthouse.

Fire makes light
but destroys its beloved:

a monk was discovered
sitting in lotus position

for 118 years,
if you just

let him be,
he could tell you

the secrets
of the universe.

Erase everything.
Call me by my name.

*

How To Build A Book Case   / Sergiy Pustogarov

i built a new book 
case. broke some oaken logs just
to shape them into twenty
plaintive shelves.

took nail gun and drill to 
work and made circles over circles,
shelves marching in line to the 
formation of a fibonacci spiral,
and i started wondering if 
i could reach the heavens.

i stacked my books in lines,
and columns,
calculating which cell could 
hold which width,
the dimensions betraying me just to 
see spines bursting through the 
seams of cavalcading nails. 

words spilled down the trellis of 
tanned posts at the edge of each shelf, lit 
brilliantly to shimmer in the 
afternoon glow.

i thought this should 
help me read better.

i woke up the next day 
and said i’m never writing again. 

self-portrait as kill-devil / nat raum

drunk words are sober thoughts and i’m quick 
to label a lie. sugar smooths everything over until 

it ferments, becomes fire down a bone-dry gullet.
this is to say i am doing everything in my power

to remain sweet, but chemistry foils me sometimes.
oh, holy saint of SNRIs, please find me some

substance that will at once keep me honest
and settle me. oh, how the juice sucks all the water

from my blitzed body, its sharp-edged molecules
sliding down my throat. same time tomorrow.

Kaolin / Daniel Avery Weiss

How swift, how
delightfully swift, that
the porcelain unspools
itself between my fingers,
as if melting at my touch,
as if my lowly, earthly body
could suede the clay into
something holier
than dirt.

I have buried it at a grave,
the line between kiln
and cremation
and kill
deathly tight.

a butch is a receptacle until told otherwise / MK Zariel

i rarely received your anger, your scorn, your untidy
perfect scrawls in the depths of your mind and notes app—
instead i was your brick wall, your easy target. cut me off
then suffer publicly, as if daring me to reach out
your hollowed-out face an engraved invitation
your collection of blank phrases echoing

like a ghost learning to network. i hate that i can't care for you
with your voice flattening to the shallow hum of a chatbot
and today i had a crisis of faith and pretended
it wasn't about you—because i apparently can't feel close to Eris
until i feel close to a repressed teenage guy with a martyr complex—
and that is the worst logic i have ever encountered, even in a faith
that prides itself on disorder. i found religion the night

you almost left me. i started to give a shit about it
the night you actually did. the first night it was 1am in Milwaukee.
riverwest was too aesthetic for its own good, as usual, and you were sharp
and curated, telling me i made you into a vessel, content only
to receive, to be held. i didn't understand at the time
why you didn't want that—and i wanted to entrance you—
and i wanted you to be my audience of one—and i wanted you

to believe me, for once, without my having to exaagerate
for your benefit, a habit that unfortunately stuck. you never could
believe much of anything—and neither can i, anymore. a month ago
i walked judgmentallythrough the historic third ward, and i didn't think
about you, and i almost passed out in public. i refuse to believe these two things
had to do with each other. i used to call you my life force and now
i settle for my unwilling muse, the person my internal monologue
is inevitably directed at. i hope you have one too.