by B. Tyler Lee
—after watching Misty Copeland’s “Swans for Relief”
The freelance ballerina does not need your company. She doesn’t concern herself with the freshly shortened half-lives of your weeks’ complaints, but time falls quick and savage on her relevé.
by Gaia Rajan
by Janelle Cordero
Bob fell off the wagon again. We talked about it
no more than an hour ago. Now, we’re in the front yard
on this sunny day in January and Bob’s wife comes
outside. I’m leaving him, she says. How are you,
we say. I’m wonderful now that I’m leaving him,
she says. Let us know if you need any help, we say.
What does that mean? Nothing can be helped, not now.
They’ve been together a long time, Bob and his wife.
And all we know of their love is how far ahead of him
she always walks, and how she never looks back,
even when he stumbles, even when he falls.
_________________________________________________________________
Janelle Cordero is an interdisciplinary artist and educator living in the seventh most hipster city in the U.S. Her writing has been published in dozens of literary journals, including Harpur Palate, Hobart and The Louisville Review, while her paintings have been featured in venues throughout the Pacific Northwest. Janelle is the author of three books of poetry: Many Types of Wildflowers (V.A. Press, 2020), Woke to Birds (V.A. Press, 2019) and Two Cups of Tomatoes (P.W.P. Press, 2015). Stay connected with Janelle's work at www.janellecordero.com.
by Neysa King
Warm butter buttercream
Peanutbutterfudge
Peach cobbler pumpkinpie
Bananapuddingcup
Salt bagel stickybun
Cherrycreamcheeseflan
Cream puff heavycream
Poundcake cupcake cardamom
Toasted pastry puddingpop
Icecreamkeylimepie
Fun fetti lollipop
Rootbeercandy shoofly
Nosh nibble gobbleup
Wolfdown polishoff
Porkout peckat muscledown
Swallow gnaw nod-off
Brown Rice McDonald Clark
RosserGurleyGarner
Taylor Sterling Fonville Gray
BlakeMcDuffieMartin
Popo plainclothes M&P
Sauer M16
Rocke feller submachine
Stopandfrisk brutality
Water cannon grenadier
Rubber pepperball
Snatchsquad phalanx riotwhip
Lawdogs crowdcontrol
Tracking tapping highpolice
Viraldeepfakefeed
Gitmo blacksite holocausts
Ohsay canyousee
________________________________________________________________
Neysa King is a poet and essayist whose work has appeared in Slippery Elm Literary Journal, Chaleur Magazine, the San Antonio Review and others. She was a finalist for the 2019 Princemere Prize in Poetry and the recipient of the 2020 San Antonio Writers Guild Prize in Poetry. You can find her work on instagram @neysaking or at www.neysaking.com.
by Morgan Mullings
by Elizabeth Joy Levinson
by SK Grout
Why don’t you come
still hesitating
by the blackberry bush
Through the twilight I see the small parcels of pink and white blooms that wave between us. Berries
for later in the year. The bees have worked hard to propagate. You’re still hesitating.
Time should be for rearranging but we remain inside locked cabinets unalphabetically ordered. The
key was an oath, could be dreaming, might be gladdening. Right in this moment, it is mist.
Tonight in another time zone another city burns. Is it inevitable that a flame wants vengeance? Often
coloured for easier inspection, after ignition, comes reparation. A place remembers,
it follows you bearing cassia and bowers, caskets and dragons. What do you carry?
Does it taste like hope? Before
I rise and I dance
with my shadow
I sing
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
SK Grout (she/they) grew up in Aotearoa/New Zealand, has lived in Germany, and now splits her time as best she can between London and Auckland. She is the author of the micro-chapbook, to be female is to be interrogated (2018, the poetry annals). She holds a post-graduate degree in creative writing from City, University of London and is a Feedback Editor for Tinderbox Poetry. Her work also appears in Cordite Poetry Review, trampset, Banshee Lit, Parentheses Journal, Barren Magazine, and elsewhere. More information here: https://skgroutpoetry.wixsite.com/poetry
by Rita Maria Martinez
Amazonium, strongest metal on Earth, forged into
bullet-deflecting bracelets, shiny silver
cuffs inspiring confidence, helping me thwart
derisive bullies who openly threatened
extending their reign of terror beyond shouts of freak,
fea, perra, hound of Hades, eye
gunk of Giganta, chew toy of Cheetah, jock itch of Jor-El. Great
Hera! Athena knows I only possessed
imagination and daydreams of the invisible
jet whisking me away before obnoxious prima donnas
kicked my face in because they thought they had
license to make my benign and solitary existence
miserable, but Marston’s immortal maiden
never succumbed to imbeciles or threats,
openly defied those plotting to plunder
Paradise Island, place that sounded like abuela’s Cuba,
quiet Eden, uncharted isle where peace
reigned supreme and women enjoyed
sailing, fencing, and horseback riding.
Themyscira, I have longed for your refuge
under the full moon’s omniscient,
voluptuous light, desired to enter the sanctum of Diana’s
world, elusive, mysterious, impervious, never
X’d on man-made maps—
your beauty surpasses anything
Zeus could’ve ever imagined.
________________________________________________________________
Rita Maria Martinez’s poetry collection, The Jane and Bertha in Me (Kelsay Books), celebrates Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel Jane Eyre. Her poetry appears in the Notre Dame Review, Ploughshares, and The Best American Poetry Blog. Martinez’s work also appears in the textbook Three Genres: The Writing of Fiction/Literary Nonfiction, Poetry and Drama, and in the anthology Burnt Sugar, Caña Quemada: Contemporary Cuban Poetry in English and Spanish. Visit Martinez’s website at https://www.comeonhome.org/ritamartinez.
by Paula Harris
Medusa was sent dozens of them every day, men trying to prove their manliness by tempting, seducing and then fucking a monster. Fucking the sea god’s conquest! There’s something to tell your mates about. I know, you probably wouldn’t expect that, but that’s what some men are like. It didn’t work out for any of them, obviously.
They send them to Aphrodite too, but that’s no surprise. She’s changed her number dozens of times, but still the dick pics keep coming. Everyone wants the goddess of love to love their penis, to give it her seal of approval. Paris sent her a dick pic, which she hated, like she hates all of them, but she swallowed her nausea and sent him a reciprocal pic and got herself the Golden Apple. Narcissistic little prick. Helen of Troy was much more impressed by his dick pic, obviously.
It took eons before Athena got her first dick pic. Perhaps men were too afraid that she’d hack their dicks off in disgust. But she’s a visual person. Goddess of the arts, after all. She recognises beauty in many things. Including penises. If she had a husband, she definitely would ask him to send her dick pics if he was going away for extended periods of time. Postcards and dick pics, that’s what she’d ask for.
That first one was a masterpiece, just the introduction you want. A well-chosen angle. Excellent lighting, even if she suspected that was more accidental than intentional. A relaxed environment, although carefully curated. A truly beautiful penis, nicely proportioned, well filled out, definitely worthy of sharing. She spent an entire day looking at it. It made her feel warm inside, so that night she had to rub up against one of the columns at her temple at Acropolis. The roof crumbled a little. She never got around to fixing it.
More dick pics followed. There are pics with strap-ons sent too. Not all meet the standard set by that first one. Some she replies to with suggestions on how they could light things better, a more flattering angle, please don’t include your face in the photo, no one wants to see that. Some she deletes straight away and then goes back to that first one to help with purging the bad ones from her mind.
On Friday nights she and Apollo compare their best and worst of the week. Everyone wants their dick to be seen by the sun.
_______________________________________________________________
Paula Harris lives in Aotearoa/New Zealand, where she writes and sleeps in a lot, because that's what depression makes you do. She won the 2018 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize and the 2017 Lilian Ida Smith Award. Her writing has been published in various journals, including Hobart, Berfrois, Queen Mob's Teahouse, The Rialto, Barren, SWWIM, Diode, Glass, Aotearotica and The Spinoff. She is extremely fond of dark chocolate, shoes and hoarding fabric. website: www.paulaharris.co.nz | Twitter: @paulaoffkilter | Instagram: @paulaharris_poet | Facebook: @paulaharrispoet
by Maryann Corbett
A sonnenizio for the pandemic year
It is a beauteous evening, calm and free
in the land of the free, and we the beautiful people
are exercising freedom. Toned and tanned
in our athleisure wear, how free we are,
freed by the wonders of delivery service
and grocery shoppers, buy-one-get-one-free
our vespers hymn. Oh, how serenely free
we seem, free-sweating, heart rates pumped and primed,
each trainered foot aiming its freeform way
well clear of any dangerous free breathing.
Like birds, like air, so free, the way we sidestep
that free-range threat that waves its sign on the corner:
barefaced rogue actor, mask-free anarchy,
roaring as we thud past, You think you’re free?
________________________________________________________________
Maryann Corbett is the author of five books of poetry, most recently In Code from Able Muse Press. Her work has won the Richard Wilbur Book Award and the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize and has been published in venues like Southwest Review, Barrow Street, Rattle, River Styx, Atlanta Review, The Evansville Review, Measure, Literary Imagination, The Dark Horse, Subtropics, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, American Life in Poetry, The Poetry Foundation, and The Writer's Almanac, and in an assortment of anthologies including The Best American Poetry 2018.
by Mel Sherrer
My friends and I are downing dollar drinks
and gabbing about the possible
effects of lockdown on
symphony venues and
concert halls.
My attention keeps spilling over to a table nearby.
I am being called in by the baritones and
buttery tenors of the group of Black men sitting there.
Someone nudges me, asking about another round.
Someone mentions teaching classes online,
but I am drawn back to conversation
which bears no trace of the virus.
The men laugh into their plates,
forks still poised in their hands.
Each of them has something remarkable:
fists as big as coconuts,
a perfect plum of a knot in his tie,
an easy demeanor, leaning back in his chair,
intricate waves in his hair,
shoes with buckles,
a purple silk shirt.
I want to say to them all,
Come home with me and laugh as my father might have.
Teach me how to smile in my skin.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Mel Sherrer (She/Her) is a writer, editor and educator. She is a proponent of women’s learning institutions having received her B.F.A. from Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia and her M.F.A from Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. She is the Social Media Editor for South 85 Literary Journal, and she teaches Creative Writing and Performance Literature. A few of her recent publications appear in Recenter Press and Deep South Magazine. She has poetry forthcoming in MORIA Literary Journal and Headmistress Press. She currently resides in Las Vegas, Nevada.
by Lori Lasseter Hamilton
an orange
an open mouth
cerulean blue Faberge egg
scoop of ice cream
a spoon
a teardrop
baby’s pink rattle
a pillar candle
red balloon childhood promised
a pearl
a bath bomb
Ferris wheel
a glass paperweight
a stove’s eye
magnifying glass
eyeball with red squiggly lines
round wedding cake with 3 tiers
pressed powder compact with puff and mirror
a lollipop
alarm clock
the red tip of a match
a doll’s head
a red Dixie cup to get her drunk
a porthole window
rusted out barrel where the pearlescent pink button on a wife’s sweater pops off in the flame
a cotton ball
a gold wedding band
chicken pot pie
a Christmas wreath
the starlight mint that broke my teeth
bowl of cherries
the sewing tomato Mom’s needles were stuck in
a pink velvet pillow
a soccer ball
lavender-hued birth control pill dispenser
the dial on a rotary phone
Queen Elizabeth’s crown
King Jesus’ crown of thorns
the zero in 1980
the letter O
a communion chalice
Pilate’s handwashing bowl
a paper cup holding Welch’s grape juice
the slot for a cup on the back of a Baptist pew
the hazardous waste bin in UAB’s operating room
a Gobstopper
a Jawbreaker
a kaleidoscope
a snowball
the white parachute we’d hold above our heads in third grade gym
as the music played and half the kids tried to cross before the music stopped and the parachute fell
kindergarteners singing ring around the rosy holding hands in a circle
my rapist’s palms around my neck
the summer sun in Vacation Bible School as I stepped in an anthill wearing sandals
a moon pie
can of RC Cola
a portable compact disc player spinning The Smiths
my uterus pregnant with a 13-pound fibroid the size of a baby’s head
a hot air balloon I flew up in after a distant relative’s funeral
before stopping in an ice cream shop with cousins on my mother’s side
as Air Supply sang “I’m all out of love, I’m so lost without you” over the speakers
an egg
a pocket watch
an earring
a bracelet
a blueberry
a peach
a Coca-Cola can
a pink nipple
a clown’s red nose
Sweet Tarts
an offering plate holding my chump change
a charcoal grill where Dad grilled hamburgers and hot dogs on the Fourth of July
the ice cream maker Papa would pour Morton’s salt into to make the banana ice cream
my dog Domino would eat
the tennis ball Mom cut a round hold in to sneak toothpaste so Domino’s breath wouldn’t stink
and his teeth wouldn’t rot
the round hole in his heart the worms carved out
the face of the grandfather clock in Momommy and Papa’s living room
as it chimed doom doom doom
_________________________________________________________________
Lori Lasseter Hamilton is a 50-year-old breast cancer and rape survivor. She works as a medical records clerk in a local hospital. Lori has competed in Montevallo and Birmingham poetry slams, and was a member of Montevallo's poetry slam team that competed in Southern Fried Regionals in 2003, 2005, and 2013. She is a member of Sister City Connection, a collective of women poets, spoken word artists, and storytellers in Birmingham, Alabama. Some of Lori's poems have been published in Steel Toe Review, Birmingham Arts Journal, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry. One of her finest poetry slam moments is when she got to pet a bulldog named Bam-Bam between slam rounds at Eclipse Coffee in Montevallo.
by Alexandra Lytton Regalado
After Magritte’s The Tomb of the Wrestlers
Eyes in the roses you sent me, eyes in the roses you didn’t send.
We are in the moment before the breath or after the breath, but not
The breath. // These flowers wink and breathe;
Their plush mouths touch everything unsaid, vowels roll
Round their mouths, fringed petals surround the pupil
That speaks for us: what is white, what is yellow,
What is red. // Our love said and unsaid: rose petals floating in a bath
Of herbs and holy water to wash off the year, fistfuls of gardenias torn
Off a shrub and flung onto the sidewalk, daisies tossed
Midair gathering on a carpet and trampled underfoot, plumeria
Threaded into a necklace or crown, the tendril’s unfurling green,
And, other days, tulip buds wilting in a vase. // Years, all we planted pushed
Against soil and rose up. Was gathered, bound, wired and tied
With a ribbon, wrestled into a vessel. We tried our best. // Each day
The sun arcs across the sky, colors fade, smells wane, wrinkled
And brown, edges crimp, blooms limp, and shatter in one breath. // Now,
The flowers’ eyes are unblinking, a silence we wade into. Can we linger
Here, waist-deep, lean back and float beneath these clouds? My lips open
To receive you. // The rose marks a before and after, grows large,
Then larger, petals push against four walls, bears down on the floor, spreads
Across the ceiling, until there are no more words, no room
For us now but this blossoming.
________________________________________________________________
Alexandra Lytton Regalado is author of Matria, winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award (Black Lawrence Press, 2017). She is a CantoMundo fellow, winner of the Coniston Prize, and her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The Academy of American Poets, Narrative, Gulf Coast, and Creative Nonfiction among others. Co-founder of Kalina press, Alexandra is author, editor, and/or translator of more than ten Central American-themed books. www.alexandralyttonregalado.com
by Camille Carter
1.
What was true before
was always true
2.
[The Europeans report, Il n’y a pas de quoi]
A French tongue will
taste its own elitism.
3.
A waiting man shall don many masks.
4.
Were Rilke here, he’d have something
To say about your loneliness.
5.
To sanitize: pour a drink,
Dip your hands.
6.
When a woman mutters “animals” at the
Back of a grocery line, only then: exhausted hope.
7.
In the sick times
Will there also be singing?
There will also be singing
About the sick times.
8.
But that’s an epigram!
I’ve had it with proverbs,
I’m starting to get bored.
9.
To drown: pour a drink,
Dip your head. Don’t
Come up for air.
10.
No one cares about your dog.
11.
Torn toilet paper, torn-up heart.
12.
Sick man, poor man.
13.
Bourgeois wife, aggressive shopper.
14.
Historical analogies
Will not measure up.
15.
Build a house, wish you hadn’t.
16.
Were Rilke here – wait, is he here?
I thought that. Just checking.
17.
A masked-up mother mutters.
18.
You will soon have
Had your fill of
Uno and Parcheesi.
19.
Rilke might have something to say
About my loneliness.
But you, dear? You do not.
_____________________________________________________________
Camille Carter is a poet, writer, and traveler. Her poem “Torch Song” was featured in the most recent issue of Hotel Amerika. She has studied at Loyola University - New Orleans, the University of Chicago, and KU-Leuven. She currently lives and works in Harlem, Montana, where she teaches at Aaniiih Nakoda College on the Fort Belknap Reservation.
by Martha Silano
but now I know a mother can work in her garden for ten hours,
not know it’s her last day alive. Now I know
no one’s there to deadhead the zinnias
and the fever few. Even though the world is filled
with injured geese and gulls, millions of acres
of smoldering trees,
I still love cantaloupe, how it sits on the kitchen counter
waiting for my spoon to scoop its firm and juicy flesh.
Even after I saw a photo
of my mother’s casket draped with one of her mother’s quilts,
I still loved hearing about the field of white daisies
down the road from her grave.
The world is both the wheat plowed under to make way for strip malls,
and a sunset like spilled orange juice above a gray lake.
Joy resides in the mountains
of Styrofoam and Ziplocs, while sorrow suffuses my mother’s backyard,
its cardinals and finches, its hummingbird perched in a plum tree
that lost nearly all its branches in a terrible storm.
________________________________________________________________
Martha Silano is the author of five poetry books, including Gravity Assist, The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, and Reckless Lovely, all from Saturnalia Books. Co-author of The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice, Martha's poems have appeared in Paris Review, Poetry, New England Review, and American Poetry Review, among others. She teaches at Bellevue College and Seattle's Hugo House.
by Jennifer Poteet
She twiddles with the camera on her new Smartphone,
showing how much the undergrowth has overgrown.
Primrose, jasmine, and even rhododendron
bloom at night. Amy shares with everyone
a battered old basin that sinks to its lip in mud,
her garden, pummeled by an unexpected flood.
The steepled roof of the house angles down
like a brocaded, whale-ribbed wedding gown.
It’s not a husband whom Amy pines for
as she slips beneath the soffit in the downpour,
lights a fat Cohiba, seeking refuge from the showers.
Where is Ada, Madonna of the evening flowers?
_________________________________________________________________
Jennifer Poteet lives in Montclair, NJ. Her work has been published in The Cortland Review, Journal of New Jersey Poets, Paterson Literary Review, Clementine Unbound, Whale Road Review, and others. Her chapbook Sleepwalking Home was published in 2017 by Dancing Girl Press. Jennifer's website is jenniferpoteet.com.
by Anne Panning
Boys at eighteen grow cereal bowls full
Of loose change on their bedside tables.
Crumpled dollar bills tumbleweed into
Future haircuts, first and last months’ rent,
an education sealed under glass. Boys at
eighteen come and they go. They leave traces
of sleep on bed pillows. They whisper their
goodbyes in the tinkling of empty hangers in
abandoned closets. Their shoulders carry the
weight of XL. They drive borrowed cars to
the point of distraction. Their big shoes left
floating by the door like empty boats waiting
for high tide. Boys at eighteen leave gurgling
aquariums in the care of mothers and fathers
who feed consistently. Never once forgetting.
_________________________________________________________________
Anne Panning published her first memoir, Dragonfly Notes: On Distance and Loss (Stillhouse Press, 2018). She has also published a novel, Butter, as well as a short story collection, The Price of Eggs, and Super America, which won The Flannery O’Connor Award and was a New York Times Editor's Choice. She is currently working on a second memoir about her late father, a barber and addict. She teaches creative writing at SUNY-Brockport.
by Cindy Veach
When is leaving justified?
One-part eggshell to two-parts love?
Two-parts eggshell to one-part love?
None of the above?
My head is full of noise.
My head is a hung jury.
My head is a congregation
seated on hard wood benches
while outside the Chinese maple
is on fire and worth a sidelong glance.
Who can resist? The urge,
irresistible—
I cast my eyes knowing
I could not look back.
Those leaves escaping
the tree, sparking the air
made me think of lightning bugs
when I hadn’t thought
of lightning bugs
since Bloomington
since the rental on Bender Road.
I raced my sisters
across that dark yard.
I wanted to capture
all the light.
It wasn’t a secret.
There were people
who drove down our road at night
to dump unwanted puppies
from car windows.
How could they do that?
And yet.
How could I?
_______________________________________________________________
Cindy Veach is the author of Her Kind (CavanKerry Press, forthcoming 2021), Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press), named a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and a ‘Must Read’ by The Massachusetts Center for the Book, and the chapbook, Innocents (Nixes Mate). Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day Series, AGNI, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Michigan Quarterly Review and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Phillip Booth Poetry Prize and the Samuel Allen Washington Prize. Cindy is co-poetry editor of Mom Egg Review. www.cindyveach.com
by Therese Gleason
The abdominoplasty scar bisects my body: thin red equator feathery at my hips,
mottled rope above the pubic bone. Before motherhood, the world of my belly
was flat, a blank page. Now, its vellum is etched with ancient cartography:
scrawled stretch marks, evidence of the body’s wisdom—joints cranked open, sinew
softened, cartilage and bone expanding, ribs and pelvis making way for one, two,
three souls to grow in a saltwater globe, faces pressing the womb’s porthole.
My first, a girl, measured ten pounds on the ultrasound, just shy of nine at birth.
I cried when I heard c-section—what about my doula, prenatal yoga, marathoner’s
endurance, migraineur’s pain tolerance? My midwife great-great-grandmother
who, having borne eleven children, assisted the country doctor at her neighbors’
home births? My own mother, who delivered my sister and me, footling breech
twins, with no anesthesia? I wanted to surrender to instinct, the primal power
of the birthing body—but my cervix refused to dilate past a fingertip, my firstborn’s
head too large to pass narrow, novice hips. Three years later, I submitted to the scalpel
again: boy/girl twins who disintegrated my abdominal fascia, its gossamer no match
for two amniotic sacs, placentas, humans. After, my guts protruded through a ravine
between the rectus abdominis, bellybutton punched out. At the postpartum checkup,
baby feet poking the tender cavity of my deflated torso, the doctor said I can palpate
your aorta and your viscera have no protection. It made sense, this defenseless
underbelly, love having blown me wide open at my prime meridian—at times I wanted
to tuck my children back inside for safe-keeping but a mother can’t live with an abyss
at her core. So the surgeon sliced my belly hip to hip, tenting the flap of skin
to stitch me stem to sternum along the linea alba, fixing the umbilical hernia, sucking
fat from flanks, trimming a hemline of excess tissue and puncturing a button hole
for my newly crooked navel. For ten days, drains at my groin siphoned honey-colored fluid;
for four weeks I hunched like a crone; for more than a month I couldn’t cradle my babies’
sweet heft or cuddle my toddler, my thrice-cut incision bandaged and weeping,
but O blessed be my stomach’s scarred art, fleshy omphalos that parted
for three blood-streaked heads to dawn.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Therese Gleason, a Pushcart nominee, is author of Libation (2006), co-winner of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative’s Chapbook Competition. Her work has recently appeared/is forthcoming in The Worcester Review, America, New Ohio Review, San Pedro River Review, Literary Mama, Psaltery & Lyre, Halfway Down the Stairs, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Mass Poetry’s “Hard Work of Hope/Poem of the Moment” Series. A literacy teacher, she lives with her husband and three children in Worcester, MA.
by Jennifer Garfield