They said I should have loved a crane wife, her bleeding
out in snow, onto ivory ice, I would give her my cloak and
she would be the female Christ, her blood stain my kimono,
and as I carried her home to rice paper walls, on bent back,
she would sing the sister stars down, and those souls departed
would flock around me, and I would know something of the afterlife,
offering up my pain and beauty to death, and as her wings married
my mind and marred my pain stains into something quixotic, I would
quicken, and Hell would have no place in my palace, and I would make
a thousand like her, all for one wish of peace, after Hiroshima bombed
me quite starstruck and desolate, and the grave of the fireflies wept.

They say I should have loved a crane wife instead.
But I became the bank of winter she drowned in, you see.
And I would never steal feathers or clip the wings off a bird.

We let our greatest potential go, and in that, grow.

Love is not the answer. The answer is a frozen rose.

Hope is not my delight. No, it is sacrifice.

And as the crane flies free, I am left flying kites,
looking up at the clouds, and dreaming of redemption
found at bitter beak and angel lips, and a thousand
other

impossible

things.


Allister Nelson is a poet and author whose work has appeared in Apex Magazine, The Showbear Family Circus, Eternal Haunted Summer, SENTIDOS: Revistas Amazonicas, Black Sheep: Unique Tales of Terror and Wonder, FunDead Publications Gothic Anthology, and many other venues. Her most recent publication, "The Tobias Problem," was just nominated for a Pushcart Prize at Freedom Fiction.

Sunlit ocean waves break
on seaweed covered granite.
Sea birds dive in surf foam for a meal.
Cars bring weekenders.
Good companions bring joy
They trudge unimpaired
strolling alongside shore.
I can no longer walk far 
(the price of inactivity and years).
Still, I am older 
than my father ever got to be.
What day is like this in all of history?!
The sun’s yellow ball 
burns in the blue sky.
I cannot think of the words.
Instead I make notes 
hoping to remember later 
how to convey my elation.
I have lived through psychosis 
and thoughts of  suicide, 
lived to see a day like this.
I want to remember the smell of its sunshine
as I pass through bleak days ahead.
I want to show you its fervid energy
with words,
but my hand lies limp as I sit 
at a bar and drink my Virgin Mary.


Ed Krizek holds a BA and MS from University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA and MPH from Columbia University.  For over thirty years Ed has been studying and writing poetry.  He is the author of six books of poetry:  Threshold, Longwood Poems, What Lies Ahead, Swimming With Words, The Pure Land, and This Will Pass All are available on Amazon.com.  Ed writes for the reader who is not necessarily an initiate into the poetry community.  He likes to connect with his readers on a personal level.

A moment in time and a brief memory,
whispered words softly spoken in a darkened room.
The dust rising in a cloud in some distant desert,
sunlight shining through the ashes of all our yesterdays. 

We live many lives wearing many masks,
we love too much and too often or not enough or not at all. 
We spend our lives fearing death,
while we let love die before our eyes. 

Our bones will one day be but dust
as we find our last resting place;
or our bodies will become mere ashes
in the final fire of our lives.  
Death is not always at the end
and it is not always an ending:
through love we sometimes die a deeper death
than that which eternal sleep can bring. 

I have walked in the dust of yesterday
and left footprints the wind won’t touch;
I have risen from the ashes of love gone bad
and found peace flying above and beyond. 
          I have seen the Phoenix and will follow its flight:
          rising out of the ashes, flying through the dust. 


John RC Potter is an international educator (currently university counsellor, previously principal & teacher) and gay man from Canada, living in Istanbul.  He has experienced a revolution (Indonesia), air strikes (Israel), earthquakes (Turkey), boredom (UAE), and blinding snow blizzards (Canada), the last being the subject of his story, “Snowbound in the House of God” (Memoirist, May 2023). His poems and stories have been published in a range of magazines and journals, most recently in Blank Spaces, (“In Search of Alice Munro”, June 2023),  Literary Yard (“She Got What She Deserved”, June 2023) & Freedom Fiction (“The Mystery of the Dead-as-a-Doornail Author”, July 2023). It was recently announced that "She Got What She Deserved" has been named as one of the Top 100 Projects in the 7th Annual Launch Pad Prose Competition. Learn more at author-blog.org and https://twitter.com/JohnRCPotter. 

we went fishing that one time
Dad and I
used these little strips of lead

you could twist them into all kinds of shapes
weigh down the line
so it didn’t float on the surface in the sun
​
innocuous, commonplace
toxicity dismissed out of hand


Patricia Wentzel lives at the confluence of two rivers which may explain why she sometimes writes work that stirs the silt of social conventions especially around mental health. She has been previously published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the Light Ekphrastic, Right Hand Pointing, and has work forthcoming in the Cutbow Quarterly, the Tule Review and the Monterey Poetry Journal.

Drunk at noon in the city 
of Baudelaire, I am back at my hotel, deprived 
of sleep, 
here for an afternoon nap. 

I yank the curtains shut, lie down on the bed, 
think about all the ghosts 
who’ve occupied 
this space 
before me. Ghosts. 

I can almost see them gliding 
across the carpet, laughing, arguing,
making love in the milky 
maundering moonlit
hours. 

This hotel is ancient. It’s at least 200 
years old.
I can hear a strange occasional 
clicking
inside the walls. I can hear the floors 
groaning. 

I can feel the heavy rumble 
of the metro 
as it passes 
underneath the building. 

I fold the pillow around my 
skull, throw the duvet 
over me. 

But after about 10 minutes, 
it becomes clear – I’m too wired to sleep. 

How can you sleep in bright liquid 
August 
in the city 
of Picasso, Cendrars, Hemingway? 

I ponder the question for a bit, 
though I know the answer. So, 
I climb out of bed - I too 
am a ghost 
in this hotel’s memory - pulling 
up 
my trousers, lacing my shoes. 

I grab my wallet off the dresser 
and, 
remembering 
I am in the city 
of Villon, remove bank card
licenses Deutschland Ticket
everything 
but €30
and head up to Montmartre.


M.P. Powers is the author of The Initiate (Anxiety Press, Fall, 2023). Recent publications include the Columbia Review, Black Stone/White Stone, Mayday Magazine, and others. His artwork can be found on Instagram @mppowers1132.

English language lamentation:
mighty vocab notwithstanding!
Clunky linear equations – 
imbued pathos not commanding.

Romance linguists venire boldly;
spry phonemics rattle-patter…
Latin phrases comfort coldly;
verbum ordo doesn’t matter.

Syntaxe française quite dynamic:
morphemic déclinaisons flounce.
Bellas frases panoramic:
Spanish dicción diphthongs pronounce.

Modern word choice can constrict one,
forcing language leaps to craft puns.


Christopher Capri (he/him) is a poet and fiction author whose work focuses on the experiences of his LGBTQ+ community; while completing an MFA in Poetry at Lindenwood University, he is a Fiber Artist and educator, Editorial Board Member of Cicada Creative Magazine, and member of Worcester Writers’ Collective. Chris’ work has been featured in Drip Literary Magazine, Graphic Violence Lit, and Fifth Wheel Press’ upcoming Dreamland. Find out more at christophications.com.

There are three ways to go
over, under, across the center
knot, it all starts with the slip

watch your master’s hands
as he executes the twists and turns,
motions smooth, too quick to follow –
blacksmith hammer on the anvil

 if you don’t pick it up today,
tomorrow brings another task,
new loads to secure.  Checkerboard
moves made, no shades of gray – 
battles won, fortunes lost.  Breathe deep, 
clear your mind, begin again –


STEVE SIBRA grew up on a small wheat farm in North Central Montana, near the town of Big Sandy (population approximately 800 people).  His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, magazines and newspapers over the past 3 decades, including Chiron Review, Jellyfish Review, Jersey Devil, Flint Hills Review and others.  His full length book of poetry, Shoes For Baby, was published in 2022 by Swallow Publishing.  Steve resides in the Seattle area.

Already knew it,
Long before I did.
When told you left me,
They managed to nod.
Kept watching the ballgame.
Spoke as little as possible--
Except to order more whisky;
On my tab, of course.

Can’t say I blamed the boys.
Would have done the same,
If they met a similar fate.
Warned me, again and again,
Claimed you were out of my league.
Should have listened to them.
Saved my folding money
For more nights like these.


Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack, Under Damaris’ Dress, The Alphabet of Love, The Gentle Man, The Last Mojito, The Geographer’s Wife, Whistling to Trick the Wind, and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023, forthcoming from Meadowlark Press.  He has taught at Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal, and, most recently, in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles.  His work has been widely anthologized in textbooks published by City Lights Books, Etruscan Press, Fountainhead Press, Harcourt Brace, Longman, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, Simon & Schuster, Thomson/Heinle, the University of Iowa Press, Wadsworth, and others. He lives in Pasadena, California.

It sits off an alley
that winds off an alley
halfway up the hill
you climb from Akasaka
to Ropponggi, cursing the layout
of the subway at the end
of a too long day of meetings.
There are no plastic samples
in a glass case outside the door
just a t-shirt and beer mug, for
ribs and fires don’t translate well
to polystyrene and the loud
oldies rock that engulfs you
says it all anyway.
Around the back, down still
another alley, where the neon fades
to partially blinding, the chef
at Spago sucks on his Lucky Seven
and stares at the Hard Rock Café
and dreams he is Elvis.
A splotch of Heinz ketchup
a bit of veggie burger 
falls on my white cotton shirt
sleeves rolled mid-forearm, while
the waitress refills my Sapporo
and giggles her way into the kitchen.


Louis Faber’s His work has appeared widely in the U.S., Europe and Asia, including in Arena Magazine (Australia), Whisky Blot, Glimpse, South Carolina Review, Rattle, Pearl, Dreich (Scotland), Alchemy Stone (U.K.), and Flora Fiction, Defenestration, Constellations, Jimson Weed and Atlanta Review, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

On the side of Blackrock Village
Where nursed flowers adorn the square
See visitors enjoy the spectacle
Of Cork rowers on the pier.

When sky is bruised and silent
Up Old Blackrock Road
Hear oars displace the quiet
With such grace they shift their load.

Olympians or enthusiasts
The thrill is just the same
Watch the shells fly towards Blackrock Castle
And see them fly back again.


Owen O’Sullivan has studied both Film Making and Photography at St. John’s Central College, Cork. His love for the Arts comes from his father who would sing the songs of Van Morrison while walking with his children around Blackrock Castle. He has been writing poetry for twelve years and has been published in Ireland, U.K., and U.S.A. He graduated from University College Cork in 2021 after studying Youth and Community and is currently coordinator for Mahon Meals on Wheels. He lives in Blackrock, Cork.

​One is ironing his habit
carefully, nosing the hot tip
of the iron into gathers
frowning in the off-white fabric.

There is a method here, a dance
implicit in the movements made, 
stepped into many times before –
hand-lift and footfall surely done.

Skill focussed on the task in hand,
it has the comeliness of calm
performance like fruit ripening,
a steady coming to the full.

He parks the iron to cool down,
leaving all as neat as before.
Carrying the alb across his arms
it looks like a limp pietà.


Jim Friedman has been published online and in anthologies. He had his first collection published in 2022. He is working on a second collection.

Fly you rebel, you charlatan,
for who other than a trickster
could feel lightness in such times as these?

Although you circle and swoop, we know 
the world is broken. And the tears we cry 
at that knowledge forever stain our cheeks.

Don’t shimmer in the golden glow of daybreak,
don’t bring another dawn if it cannot 
be better than those we have already seen.

I see you as you want us to – 
benevolent, generous – but the
sheen blinds us from the truth.

Yet, you touch me, and the sting
of gratification inoculates my doubts, 
makes me want to trust.

But tell me, how can we soar, how 
do we survive when each day
whittles away our resolve.

How do we overcome the burdens
handed us, the holes that can’t be filled
with 10,000 shovelfuls of dirt.

No, even you can’t pretend that all 
will be well. You rise higher, 
but at some point, the wax will melt.


David Mihalyov lives near Lake Ontario in Webster, NY, with his wife, two daughters, and beagle. His poems and short fiction have appeared in Ocean State Review, Dunes Review, Free State Review, New Plains Review, San Pedro River Review, and other journals. His first poetry collection, A Safe Distance, was published by Main Street Rag Press in 2022.

I want to slam the steel tracks
and bomb the railcar 
that’s scheduled to 
take you away from me.
I become hard like you
but not in a hotel way.
The stabbing below my waist
is the hate I start to have
for the things I love:
 your five o’clock shadow,
 your David body,
 your Joker laugh,
 your addicting affirmations,
your stare 
from green eyes
we both share.
all because I am not there,
on the steel tracks
in the railcar
with you.


Nancy Byrne Iannucci is a poet from Long Island, New York who currently lives in Troy, NY with her two cats: Nash and Emily Dickinson.  San Pedro River Review, 34 Orchard, Defenestration, Hobo Camp Review, Bending Genres, The Mantle, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Glass: a Poetry Journal are some of the places you will find her. She is the author of three chapbooks, Temptation of Wood (Nixes Mate Review, 2018), Goblin Fruit (Impspired, 2021), and Primitive Prayer (Plan B Press, fall 2022). Visit her at www.nancybyrneiannucci.com  Instagram: @nancybyrneiannucci

i. 
I bowed to the crows
when I realized your presence 
turned my eyes to tongues.
Mind led where body
resisted. But how could I 
scare something so rare?

ii. 
Alone with you, time 
held a match to my belly 
and rusted my spine.
Time was a deep sea 
oil spill when I had you 
I hemorrhaged you. 

iii. 
A lone sisserou
choosing my shoulder would coo
as it pleased while I’d 
cower, memorize
its weight; wait for the talon 
in the collarbone.

iv.
You flew off before
the gentle bleach of habit
falling like first snow. 
But weren’t there others 
in need of technicolor
and a way back home?


Lindsay Clark is a resident physician living in California with her family. 

The formal fashion of an ode,
reflection of emotive style
embraces only what I know,
my heart, mind, soul combined to show
a sole commitment, chosen goal.
Holistic, mindful, common wealth,
well-being in community,
these I can raise, praiseworthy whole,
but ill-defined when general,
an ode to everything is null,
a jack of all, master of none,
like prayer of child that all be blest.

But poets seek to garner verse,
as anglers on a sea of words,
the fisherman’s hope, she or he,
from depths, swirl eddies, current flow.
With net or rod, can it be hooked,
some darting silver, flying fish,
or is it shark fin, tuna tin?
To catch a Water-God, old rope,
detritus or the pearl, great price,
the selkie, mermaid, siren call,
must rise before the squall capsize;
but will it suit their palate taste?


Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Whisky Blot.  He has, like so many, been a nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/. 

​
Walking through a small grove
of bamboo, the breeze evokes
a creaking until you need to look
to insure the tall spindles
are not about to collapse on you.

A small child seeing you knows
what you are thinking, smiles
and says “they are just saying
hello, so you should say hello back.”

Her parents appear flustered, whether
because she is talking to strangers
or for fear that she is bothering you,
but of course it is neither, for the girl
is a Buddha dragging you into
this fragile moment, so you say hello
and both the bamboo and girl giggle.


Louis Faber is a poet living in Florida. His work has appeared widely in the U.S., Europe and Asia, including in the Whisky Blot, Glimpse, South Carolina Review, Rattle, Pearl, Dreich (Scotland), Alchemy Stone (U.K.), and Flora Fiction, Defenestration, Constellations, Jimson Weed and Atlanta Review, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  

So long as I’m
in the river,
it doesn’t matter
where I flow.


Zhihua Wang’s poems have appeared in Aji, Last Leaves, Across the Margin, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere. She received her MFA in Poetry from the University of Central Arkansas and will be a doctoral student in creative writing at the University of Rhode Island this fall. 

​I spent a pleasant morning walking
quietly around the grounds, searching
for them diligently, but as on most days

they again remained hidden from sight.
I did see several cattle egrets staring
deeply into the foliage, knowing

that breakfast lay hidden deep within,
and a flock of ibis pecking life
from the still wet, just watered lawns.

Today I even saw a Great Blue Heron
admiring herself in the still surface
of the pond across the road, and

a snowy egret and a little green heron
engaged in a silent conversation
to which I would never be privy,

but in the glare of the morning sun,
despite my careful search, not
a single poem showed itself,  leaving

me to hope that tomorrow would
bring better luck, or as least a cinquain
or a ballade, not my pantoum of failure.


Louis Faber is a poet living in Florida. His work has appeared widely in the U.S., Europe and Asia, including in the Whisky Blot, Glimpse, South Carolina Review, Rattle, Pearl, Dreich (Scotland), Alchemy Stone (U.K.), and Flora Fiction, Defenestration, Constellations, Jimson Weed and Atlanta Review, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.      

To hell with deejays, 
live bands, crowded 
dance floors. On lonely nights, 
bourbon in hand,

I still love to hunker, 
over wide-bellied jukeboxes
tucked into dark corners
of back street bars, 

their squat legs perched 
on sawdust strewn floors,  
their gap-toothed grin, 
like a fat man waiting to be fed.

I flip through metal pages
in search of songs 
from the past—downbeat 
Doo-wop of the fifties,

Frankie Lyman wailing 
on that ancient question 
—why do fools fall in love--
the Platters, rumbling 

with the rhythm of sex, 
and Elvis, the king, 
high gloss, down dirty, singing, 
sobbing, turning us weak 

with desire, we wanted 
to be there, to live  
in that mysterious hotel 
called Heartbreak, 

to walk its bleak, 
seedy corridors until 
we learned it was not a place  
to reside forever.


Elizabeth Burk is a semi-retired psychologist and a native New Yorker who divides her time between her family in New York and a home and husband in southwest Louisiana. She is the author of three collections: Learning to Love Louisiana, Louisiana Purchase, and Duet: Poet & Photographer, a collaboration with her photographer husband. Her poems, prose pieces, and reviews have been published in various journals and anthologies including Atlanta Review, Rattle, Southern Poetry Anthology, Louisiana Literature, Passager, Pithead Chapel, PANK, One Art, and elsewhere. Her first full-length manuscript will be published in September 2024, by Texas Review Press.

How calmly the cubes settle
in the tumbler where twilight ambers.
The antidote to memory
Lights the body's furnace,
Banishes the cold.
Once at a fetish street fair
a man-sized latex egg,
and in it, an alien.
The barrier of skin dissolving.
a wet hand digs through
a breech to signal safe.
I take that hand in mine.
I won't let go.


Darren Black resides on Massachusetts North Shore. He continues to hone his poetic skills in workshops and has studied in Vermont College's MFA program. His first publication appeared in the fall 2019 issue of the Muddy River Poetry Review.  Recent poems explore disability and his own experiences living with blindness.

​
The men hold their sticks,
chalked at the tips, smashing
balls against one another, ordering 

Mich Ultras & Budweisers
& my phone number, tipping
me when they remember as they tip

glass bottles to their chapped, thirsty 
lips, puckered like the assholes they are
after the sixth beer settles in their guts. 


Jessica Cory teaches at Western Carolina University and is a PhD candidate in English at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She is the editor of Mountains Piled upon Mountains: Appalachian Nature Writing in the Anthropocene (WVU Press, 2019) and the co-editor (with Laura Wright) of Appalachian Ecocriticism and the Paradox of Place (UGA Press, 2023). Her creative and scholarly writings have been published in the North Carolina Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Northern Appalachia Review, and other fine publications. Originally from southeastern Ohio, she currently lives in Sylva, North Carolina.

It is raining
               and I am listening to Jazz Noir
The heavy rain comes down
               the whisky spills into my glass

                         The sky is dark
                         the dram tints the crystal amber

                         Rain and whisky
                         soothe the dry places parched by drought

It is no longer raining
               I am still listening to Jazz Noir and I feel it
The whisky pours into my glass
               I drink it again and I feel it too


Shane Huey (editor) writes from his home in America's most ancient city. When he is not working, he can often be found on top of a mountain in Colorado or seated on his favorite barstool in Key West.