Baseball is the only game you can see on the radio.
           —Phil Hirsh, The Chicago Tribune, 1985


The door knob’s gone missing. There’s no leaving
today.  And tomorrow won’t miss you 
until cool sunrise charts its early path.
Get up. Draw your bath. Light will bleed through

what was once a lock. Wait for afternoon:
The radio proffers a task, a game
to carry sunlight through drawn drapes, false doors.
Hear Summer. No two plays are the same.



Mark J. Mitchell was born in Chicago and grew up in southern California. His latest poetry collection, Roshi San Francisco, was just published by Norfolk Publishing. Starting from Tu Fu   was recently published by Encircle Publications. A new collection and a novel are forthcoming. He is very fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Miles Davis, Kafka and Dante. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the activist and documentarian, Joan Juster, where he made his marginal living pointing out pretty things. Now, he works doing guy stuff, go figure. He has published 2 novels and three chapbooks and two full length collections so far. His first chapbook won the Negative Capability Award. Titles on request.
A meager online presence can be found at https://www.facebook.com/MarkJMitchellwriter/
A primitive web site now exists: https://www.mark-j-mitchell.square.site/
I sometimes tweet @Mark J Mitchell_Writer

​when dreaming of you i go home
what a treat, tonight 
tell me you can see
rippling stands of
creeping foxtail can’t
you hear their foot pads
hitting with force as if
they’re trouncing the 
swaying stems yet
all that happens is
quick sways in 
rapid succession 
forms outlined tell
me you can see them
one of many private deities
basis of my spirituality
known to me alone if
anyone’s reached similar
conclusions i have no interest
in sharing my myth 
with anyone who didn’t help
affirm that we’re all born with
a sliver of god in our heart
study of enlightenment shows
one of the hardest earthly 
attachments to let go is doubt
doubted that i’d ever dream
again & feel at home, when
i let go, saw the racing packs
numerous transparent wolves
suddenly i settled into theory
i thought my passion for anthro-
pomorphizing grassflows was a
pathology, now i see it was a howl
let out by infernal spirits yearning 
to bathe in moonlight 


Thomas Jackson is currently a Junior at North Carolina State University in the United States. Thomas self-published a poetry collection centered on his experiences with suicidal thoughts and nature titled "growth" through Amazon when he was seventeen years old. In February of 2020 delivered a spoken-word poem at TEDx NCState titled "I am so proud of you" which was shared to the official TEDx talks Youtube channel. His poem "afterparty" appeared in Issue 20 of Emerge Literary Journal. He received a first place prize for “The Big Mistake” and an honorable mention for “body parts” in two contests for the North Carolina Poetry Society’s Pinesong Awards. Most recently, his poems “Portrait” and “sacred sites on this planet are few & far between” in NC State University’s Windhover Literary Magazine. You can engage with his work further at www.thomasjwrites.com, www.instagram.com/jtommyj and www.twitter.com/tommybbyboy.

to be a bird.
i’ve navigated these lows
so long with the aching desire to soar.

in the low-country hills, in the wash of spring
a dead groundhog is splayed on the pavement:
his intestines a rosette of color on the algid gravel.

my tires barely miss him; i issue a prayer in the rear-view mirror, 
as i am certain my mother has done for me over the years,
watching me drag the baggage of myself across the verdant hillside of my home.

in the rush of city traffic, i shrink to my smallest
form, injured peregrine, white belly from months of isolation.
i dive into the backroads, back towards home.

the groundhog, having heard or not heard my prayer, still spills himself as an offering, a red-shouldered hawk perched atop his carcass,
trying unsuccessfully to carry him away.

and i wonder which one i am more like –
the hawk, given brilliant wings, but unable to fly,
or the groundhog, offering his insides to the world, and no one able to carry them.


Mela Blust is an award nominated poet whose work has appeared in various literary journals such as The Sierra Nevada Review, Rust & Moth, The Bitter Oleander, and many, many more. She has written two books of poetry with a third on the way, and can be followed on twitter as @melablust.

​This is not haiku.
You can’t tell me what to do
or how to rhyme schemes.

This is not haiku.
Pigeons in the sky high coo.
We know not bird speak.

This is not haiku.
It’s reverse psychology.
No hidden truths here.

This is not haiku.
Lepidopterology;
flower lamp is life.

This is not haiku.
Bowl of bone marrow broth stew;
dip at your own risk.

This is not haiku.
Why are we still reading this?
Just go outside, bitch.


Jamie Lee Knight is a super duper poet muppet hula hooper artist from the midwest living in Colorado. She planted too many tomato plants & now lives in a cherry tomato jungle gym. Send machete.

shopping for toothpicks
at The Frog Legs Superstore 
on East 79th St. 
my acne-ravaged shoulder blades 
flat against a wall
stocked with wi-fi juicers
air pots
panini grills 
& other kitchen ephemera
I’m reminded 
of stargazing in the Himalayas

or rather 
an inane desire 
to do so

someday.  

but what do I know 
of dreamers lost 
to the Hillary Step

bottomless crevasses

or dearth of oxygen  
in the icy glens of Nepal?



Julie Allyn Johnson, a sawyer's daughter – the eldest of six girls - from the American Midwest, loves long solo walks in the woods. She digs Halloween, photography, gravel-travel, art, poetry and haiku, reading and hiking in the Rocky Mountains.  Her current obsession is tackling the rough and tumble sport of quilting and the accumulation of fabric. Julie prefers black licorice over red, cigarette-length Tootsie Rolls and Hot Tamales, practically the perfect candy.  Her poetry can be found in various journals including Lyrical Iowa, The Briar Cliff Review, Phantom Kangaroo, The Disappointed Housewife,  Anti-Heroin Chic, Coffin Bell, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Better Than Starbucks and Chestnut Review.

I’m waiting for the pill whose pharmacological purpose
is to flood me warmly with the capillary wisdom
to pull my Honda off the road as the Rolling Stones spit out
"Can’t You Hear Me Knocking," and the clarity not to care
if I’m awake or dreaming courses through my bloodstream
as I watch some ducklings wobble through a sunlit garden,
past the beans and turnips, veering towards the pumpkins,
still green but thinking it over, taking their time and who can blame them
in their only summer, vines bowing earthward, prayerfully
towards the dirt, going beautifully nowhere.


Mark Jackley is a poet who lives in northwestern Virginia. His poems have appeared in Fifth Wednesday, Talking River, The Cape Rock, and elsewhere.

Where the ghost went, I followed,
through rooms and corridors 
of my own house, but all unfamiliar
as my footfalls trailed a spoor of silence.

Out into the full-moon night, we travelled,
across the mists of lawn, 
feeling less human with every step,
no mind, no body, no anything.

To the graveyard. Where else?
A stone sleeping in the soil. 
A name carved with no other purpose 
than to enlighten me.

A greeting from my own passing
hushed amid tall grasses.
No great welcome in those eyeless sockets.
A life unwilling but a death in charge.


John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.