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. 

no periods exclamations or
questionable marks
let your life be a run
on sentence that never ends
maybe maybe allow
an ellipsis (if necessary)


Roy N. Mason has 41 years remaining until his death. Striving to make each day count, he documents his experiences. His observations and lessons-learned are documented in personal essays and poetry. A world-record holder at nothing, but a legendary Key Lime Pie cooker, he has the ability to remember mundane facts. He is an introspective storyteller touching on all the topics of the North American human experience.

Truman.
Grinnell.
Olivia.
Windsor.
Elizabeth.
Greene.
Duval.

I’ve walked them one...
I’ve walked them all.

Old friends,
I hate to see them go.

In these last few days,
​I’ll walk them slow.

And finish up where I always do…
At the bar of Sloppy Joe.


Written from the bar at Sloppy Joe's, Key West, Florida. September 7, 2021.

He’s having an Old Fashioned with rye,
One of his favorites,
Used to have a lot of them,
More recently he’s been going for other stuff,
Diving right in,
Not because a solid Rye Old Fashioned,
Tastes any less like heaven,
But because he’s been leaning,
On bottles and drinks,
That don’t remind him of her,
He’ll be moving to bourbon on the rocks,
Right after this drink.


Taylor Dibbert is a writer, journalist, and poet. He’s author of the Peace Corps memoir “Fiesta of Sunset,” and the forthcoming poetry collection “Home Again.”

​I am 
tender shoot
slow emergence
from deep sleep in roiling
black earth, patient longing
through damp dormant dreams
urgent pulsation of growth, persistent
pressing upward through layers of soil

I rise
lean into light
reawaken
promise unfurling
petal by petal
to full blossom
exquisite wild wonder.


Liz Kornelsen is a prairie poet from Winnipeg, Manitoba and the author of Arc of Light and Shadow: Poems with Art. Previous publications include Transition, Green Teacher, and The Whisky Blot. When not writing, she may be found skiing, dancing, or savoring the rich flavors of art galleries. 

Art: "And the Loveliest Plant in the World" by Ewa Tarsia, an internationally acclaimed artist whose innovative, versatile and prolific work demonstrates a unique sense of texture, design and expansive imagination. Follow on Instagram @ewatarsia.

Great grandma’s clock has ceased to tock,
that mantel piece of crude cut wood,
a case too large for inner works
where even dust just lost its way.
That alloy block on ramrod stick
founds its weight too much to sway.
Great grandad sat there by the peat,
sipped Bushmills from up the way,
admired his cutting from the moss.
She would have him up the stairs
but once the whisky had its way,
along with glowing from the grate
he was balanced on his seat,
content, the ticking of her talk
wafting, smoky, up the stack;
no matter words, straitjacket, Mum,
admonition of her tongue.
He piled bog slack from crumpled pail,
settled back, ignored the pain,
tasting time, port barrel stock.


Stephen Kingsnorth, 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.

The simple things of life bring me smiles,
like the bird house made of wood from an old red barn.
It sits atop a garden post
holding safe its second hatch—bluebird family--
     flashes of sapphire,
     zipping in and out, feeding their young.

The fledglings will soon find their own way into the big sky.
As did our daughters.

In spring, I sometimes walk the meadow,
see sunshine in daisy faces--
their centers innocent, happy,
their white petals holding the secret
that pre-teen girls
pursue by that fanciful plucking--
     “He loves me, 
     he loves me not.”

I need no daisy petals to tell me what love is.
We know each other long and well--
know the simple things that make each other happy.
     He builds me bird houses,
     hands me daisies from the meadow.

I, too, know what warms his heart, 
brings us near--
     simple things--
     a plate of barbeque, 
     a frosty mug of beer.

We were timeless
timeless as the moon.
Full
of ourselves
full 
of our opportunities
shining
like polished silver
in the dark.
We forgot about the tides
the cycles
the ebb and flow.
Forgot
we would be worn away
to a crescent.
We only remembered
the renewal
our chance
to do it all again.


Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/.

i was drinking tea with Dali
in an underworld cafe,
arguing down his table
on General Franco's hand-
when The Persistence Of Memory
that melts my pocket watch
made time less rigid-
so i fell with names and numbers
into old obsidian dreams-
where your long legs pointed
from six to twelve,
then nine to three
when you bent them-
for me to play and pleasure
each exotic segment
of your velvet tangerine.
Dali left the table
to meet Picasso in Paris,
while my benzedrine mind replaced-
the soft and spent infinity of your face.


Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry  https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. 
 
His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; and Dissident Voice.

While you’re driving cattle north
to the railhead at Kansas City,
I’m manning a barricade
in Paris during the Franco-
Prussian War. With mutual sighs
we lower our books and assume
the grim expression of incumbents.
Easier to read about the past
(with its shovel-shaped beards and crisp
fabrics stretched over hoop skirts,
battles and deposed emperors,
beheadings, coronations, hangings,
shuffling of national boundaries)
than to confess the cruel and petty
moments we live as if swimming
through a sea of spilled molasses.
In the age of Rimbaud the streets
bristled with rifles and pikes.
Slogans wrinkled daily discourse
while Rimbaud sampled women
as only a selfish boy could.
In your book, the muddy crossing
of the Red River marks a moment
of laughter and pride. In mine,
the commune poses a threat
crushed with thousands of futile deaths.
We should break for lunch and face,
if not the onrush of history,
our rapid aging, our crumpled hides
almost dry enough to nail
to the side of our neighbor’s barn.
We’re twice as old as Rimbaud
dying of gangrene. Instead
of trading in coffee and weapons,
he should have been a cowpoke
sporting the dust of the old West,
adorning the pages of your book.
Then he could have died a man’s death 
brawling in a ten-cent saloon, 
his poems blowing down the street,
defiantly scrawled in blood.


William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Dogs Don’t Care (2022).  His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.

​Hobbled
By a narrow
Stoic universe
Owing nothing
To anyone
Alone
On the cobbled stones
With an airy desperation
Firm in my pocket
And hidden
From everything
Worth hiding from
From anything
Unseen
Below the waterline
Along the swift
Swollen river
With the dark currents
Of old torments
And the windswept spaces
Beneath bridges
Pulling me helplessly
Into the sinewed arms
Of my Paris
As the copper sun
Sets


John is a social worker working in the field of disability management and holds degrees in social work, rehabilitation services, and psychology.  He is the author of four books of poetry: “March” (2019), “The Seasons of Us” (2019), New Days (2020), and Fragments (2021). His work has appeared widely in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies internationally. John is also a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and lives in Caledon Ontario, Canada with his wife and two children.

The apple 
juiced straight from Eden
delicious, intoxicating
clink of glasses
sips of crunchy red skin

how could she predict
the fleeting satiation
the insatiable desire
that she would bear the brunt
follow the serpentine path of exile


Liz Kornelsen is a prairie poet from Winnipeg, Manitoba and the author of Arc of Light and Shadow: Poems with Art. To dance lightly on the earth in solitude, with other humans, or with other forms of nature, is one of her greatest joys.

​
Once, I heard someone say, “You only take your date out to dinner
“if you can’t come up with anything more exciting.”
Yet, here we sit, in this restaurant, as if we had met only yesterday,

but some one hundred years ago,
and the place looks exactly like that:
modeled after a Philip Marlowe novel.

Cherry-oak tables, a bar made from what might be mahogany,
thick cushions. Expensive stuff. Even the light,
raining from the chandeliers in tiny crystals, seems special.

A guy with a fedora sips whisky at the bar, from behind which
an audience cheers for us, even though we drink
one from their midst, a bottle of cava,

solely for our pleasure,
because it tastes like a kept promise.
We feast on pimientos de padrón, where

you never know whether the one you take
will burn your tongue.
Burrata. Pasta al tartufo. More kept promises.

Outside, the trees that line the street
are already busy preparing a red carpet made from leaves
for the way back to what is now home.

When it’s time to leave, the waiter brings the bill: 98.50
in a foreign currency. A hundred and ten, with a tip.
And even though I give him the money, I don’t pay for the meal.


Maximilian Speicher (https://www.maxspeicher.com) is a designer who writes, mostly sitting on his balcony in Barcelona, watching his orange trees grow. Although he’s been writing poetry on and off for many years, he only recently started submitting it. His first published poems have appeared in Impspired and Otoliths Magazine, and more are forthcoming in The Avalon Literary Review and The Disappointed Housewife.

​
“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits.”—Ernest Hemingway: A Moveable Feast


Ocean waves wash gently along the beach, where
spanned between two sea⸗almonds hangs a hammock.
Pearl-white seashore. Paradise. It awaits but
          no-one is coming.

Parrots fly in circles around the island,
calling. Rose-ringed parakeets sit on branches,
dreaming. Earth’s most beautiful birds await but
          no-one is watching.

Under palm trees, quietly, stands a food cart,
empty. Piles of surfboards behind a straw hut.
Foamy waves yell eagerly. They await but
          no-one is surfing.

From the trees hang coconuts, mangos, star fruits,
figs, and pears; sapotes, pommes⸗cythère, papayas,
plums and limes. Earth’s tastiest food awaits but
          no-one is eating.

Inland, there’s a waterfall, just behind the
rusty Nissen hut overgrown by vines and
moss and orchids. Paradise. It is here but
          no-one is coming.


Maximilian Speicher (https://www.maxspeicher.com) is a designer who writes, mostly sitting on his balcony in Barcelona, watching his orange trees grow. Although he’s been writing poetry on and off for many years, he only recently started submitting it. His first published poems have appeared in Impspired and Otoliths Magazine, and more are forthcoming in The Avalon Literary Review and The Disappointed Housewife.

​a murder of crows
on a wire converse loudly
then fly, verdict reached


R.D. Ronstad writes mainly humor pieces and poetry. His work has appeared at Defenestration, Points in Case, Robot Butt, Bindweed Magazine, Lighten Up Online and many other online sites. A native Chicagoan, he currently lives in Phoenix, Az.

Some girls flit like fireflies,
Smiles that shimmer & shine,
Laughter like wind chimes,
Kisses like candy, 
Lift your heart like helium.
This girl,
She slinks like a panther,
Smile like smoky whiskey
Her laughter like jazz, 
Her kiss is dark chocolate dope,
And she holds your heart in velvet chains. 


J.S. Mueller (a pen name) has an urban core but resides on 34 acres in south-central Kentucky. They are kept amused by their husband of three decades, their 6 kids (half of whom are young adults who've not yet fled the nest), three cats, two ferrets, and a pit bull with an insect phobia. Their stories have appeared or are soon to be published in Red Fez, Mystery Tribune, Night Shift Radio, and Flash Fiction Magazine. 

The first carolers are intent on chasing sun out of bed.
She takes her time, stretching long limbs into the day.
Pink diaphanous morning wear streams across horizon,
crescendos to scarlet. Rising into her fierce power, she blazes 
a hole in silhouetted trees.

Birds alight!


​Liz Kornelsen is a prairie poet from Winnipeg, Manitoba and the author of Arc of Light and Shadow: Poems with Art. To dance lightly on the earth in solitude, with other humans, or with other forms of nature, is one of her greatest joys.

summer winds tickle
leaves into silver-rippled 
laughter, twinkling stars


​Liz Kornelsen is a prairie poet from Winnipeg, Manitoba and the author of Arc of Light and Shadow: Poems with Art. To dance lightly on the earth in solitude, with other humans, or with other forms of nature, is one of her greatest joys.

Cicadas Sing
cicadas singing
strong drink and a warmer night
summer, welcome home

Summer Ditty
crickets play a tune
outside the window, bright moon
Shining through the night


​Michelle Olivier is a registered nurse by day and a poet by night. When she's not saving lives, she has her nose in a book or a pen in her hand.  

I find myself in
again and again
ready to turn left
at the intersection
where I learned left turns
listening to a song
from those same late early years
singing along half wrong
learning or remembering
—remembering learning—the lyrics
as my car climbs a familiar road
my hands not so much steering
as rereading this hill: the sameness of the slope
and the humidity, as if seasons stay put
and we keep visiting them, as if melodies
and dashboards were time-travelling machines

in the silence between songs, I am here

at the stop sign (another left)
surrounded by green and memory
between the playground and the swim club
between the library and home
beneath the blue June sky
 
and despite the renovations
everything seems just as it was
only more so—the insects louder, the leaves denser
—the ghost breeze swaddling
all the years between then and then compressed
compressed in now, turning again

as I learn to remember learning
the way home, the way through
this growth and warmth, this summer


Ceridwen Hall is a poet and book coach. She helps poets and novelists plan, create, and revise compelling manuscripts with one-on-one coaching and inspiring feedback. She holds a PhD from the University of Utah and is the author of two chapbooks: Automotive (Finishing Line Press) and Excursions (Train Wreck Press). Her work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Pembroke Magazine, Tar River Poetry, The Cincinnati Review, and other journals. You can find her at www.ceridwenhall.com.

​now thunder rolls in, as well as birdsong
the rustling of wet leaves, a distant ambulance
the neighbors’ flute practice, traffic, a few stray moths--

all disrupting or becoming thoughts

memories and dreams, meanwhile, leak

out into the wide green world where horses run
in the dusk and geese land on ponds, where cars circle
the hill and deer rip new lettuce from gardens
and people pause in the warm dark before a storm

where summer insists on growth
and some of us call this hope


Ceridwen Hall is a poet and book coach. She helps poets and novelists plan, create, and revise compelling manuscripts with one-on-one coaching and inspiring feedback. She holds a PhD from the University of Utah and is the author of two chapbooks: Automotive (Finishing Line Press) and Excursions (Train Wreck Press). Her work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Pembroke Magazine, Tar River Poetry, The Cincinnati Review, and other journals. You can find her at www.ceridwenhall.com.

Dusk colors the sky;
a precocious preschooler. 
Look! It earned a star.

Art; life flat-lining.
Seventeen beats. Three straight lines.
Heart breaking. Yours. Mine.

Light/dark. Different? 
Two sides of the same thin coin. 
Dawn; like night and day.


Renate Wildermuth's poetry has been published by The Postcard Press, Poetry Jumps off the Shelf and the online journals Mannequin Envy and Literary Mama.  She is a freelance writer for The Albany Times Union. Her articles have also appeared in Adirondack Life Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Miami Herald, and The Charlotte Observer. She has been a commentator for North Country Public Radio and have appeared on New Hampshire Public Radio’s Word of Mouth program. Her creative nonfiction has been published by Syracuse University’s journal Stone Canoe. She teaches German at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.