Poetry

Jade Wootton

Shallow breaths in my chest pulse like a hummingbird’s wings 

So I decide

I am going to walk the same route every morning without my phone 

I am going to watch the big brown dog jumping up the tree trying to catch the squirrel 

I am going to notice the neighbors that left their Christmas decorations up for months

I am going to remember the cat purring on my chest and the way my little gold earrings camouflage into the little gold bowl on the nightstand

I am going to wonder if CBD peach rings actually […]

Mary McCarthy

Don’t patronize

don’t tell me there are no rules

when I seem to have broken

most of them, enough to think

it would be wise to post a sign

“Rocks Falling,”  “No Guard Rails,”

I’ve kept both fire and laughter

close to hand, could smell

your lies before I saw you

rejoiced in kicking over buckets

of white paint, smashing glass,

defying regulations that kept

things too neat and civilized–

More than once I’ve been stopped,

locked up, confined, limited

to a small space without air

or sharp objects able to cut

cloth or rope or flesh-

all the signatures of prison

holding me back from breaking

all those nameless […]

Mary McCarthy

All teeth and tongue

stain the stolid morning

a still ocean white

as milk lapping

toes half hidden

in swallowing sand

hand me over your

clever heart split

scissoring past teeth

Ben Nardolilli

in your country

I wait

for a response:

“best regards

for more

information”

-if you are

willing to work

together

I am looking

to invest

in real estate-

About the Author

Ben Nardolilli currently an MFA candidate at Long Island University. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Danse Macabre, The 22 Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, The Northampton Review, Local Train Magazine, The Minetta Review, and Yes Poetry. He blogs at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is trying to publish his novels.

James Bradley

Though days of persecution be endless,

Though nature denude you, clown, of your art–

Fall back to the foxholes of nothingness.

The power that restrains Mind is mindless,

Fool, in your upside-down hanging take heart–

Though days of persecution be endless.

Though the river-hewn canyon be cleftless,

At the coming of erosion’s upstart–

Fall back to the foxholes of nothingness.

Limp flags from a dead tree hang motionless,

Awaiting the day far-off winds depart–

These days of persecution seem endless.

Mind is the law that rejects mindlessness.

Mind’s sole doctrine is to Mind’s law impart–

Fall back to the foxholes of nothingness.

Through a chink […]

Kate Stanner-Maxwell

yells the flashing neon font above my head, all caps

and all inevitable, goading me to skull slam into head-

rest, gasp a final breath of relatively fresh air before

the creep and clog of carbon monoxide fingers at the

flesh of my mouth, siphoning ghoulish kiss deep

into lungs with the thick […]

Olivia Thorne

Falling through

The shelves of school

I had been pushing against

Since I was as tall as the first plank

Pressing my ear

So as to hear

The world that lay hidden and ahead.

Now I am here

It’s not the speakeasy I had imagined

For easy is not the word.

Why didn’t you tell me

That some of us

Are not taught the chords

So cannot play our […]

Eli Coyle

Near me on the shore, a young woman presses her baby to her breast, a young man is a father and I am getting older on the edges of this lake. To think whatever is bigger sent me here to heal wounds once glued together, now divided—water and rock. This morning I woke to the sounds of my love leaving. Every morning she leaves, and I am left with the emptiness of autumn. It is a repetition in the body, a parting of lips perhaps with coffee. In the evenings […]

Diana Raab

orange painted metal

with equal sized holes

stood on our kitchen counter

beside the ceramic sink.

it collected old coffee grains,

orange peels, prune pits,

and dead flowers from the garden

she nurtured more than the little girl in me.

every few days she’d hold

each side by their handles

and rush to our compost heap

in the far end of the yard

near our grouchy neighbor’s fence.

once in a while he’d scream

that she attracts

the street’s rodents

and that the pile of shit

will not yield her better tasting vegetables.

she’d walk away, hands on hips,

muttering under her breath

as he yelled out that she

was a […]

Valerie Sopher

tomorrow is another day

we’ve seen before

another day of dodging exhales

the sun again falling and getting up

glowing horizons stretched thin with smoke

tomorrow is one more day of delta

breaches over sandbagged vaccines

a waiting room of doctors

who know no cure

tomorrow is another day

like today plodding along

like the day before that

confined to a book-lined room

where stories fail to fill wanderlust

where hope hides in an empty suitcase

with rusty hinges

tomorrow waits to […]