by Laura Sweeney
Over rows and rows of cornfields, the June blue sky
by Lesley Wheeler
A man in a suit approached and touched my arm.
Would I pose in front of the merry-go-round?
I was thirteen, free for an hour, in the middle
of Paramus Park Mall, in America. I was America.
The man was leading a tour; the tourists spoke
no English. My English mother once said, Your sister
is beautiful, but you are reasonably attractive. She chose
my clothes, that day a blouse abuzz with tiny flowers,
a pink pleated skirt. Yes, I said, and sat on the bench.
Everybody smiled. My hair curled like orchid petals.
A malicious carousel horse whispered, Why
would they point their cameras at you? As if
you were pretty. This will be a story, I replied.
Of glass eyes, blind, that saw bloom in me.
______________________________________________________________
Lesley Wheeler’s newest books are The State She's In, her fifth poetry collection, and Unbecoming, her first novel. Her collection of hybrid essays, Taking Poetry Personally, will appear in 2021. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Massachusetts Review, Kenyon Review Online, Ecotone, Gettysburg Review, and other journals. Poetry Editor of Shenandoah, she lives in Virginia and blogs about poetry at lesleywheeler.org.
by Arminé Iknadossian
She would be sitting by the Mediterranean
at sundown, the sky as red as Campari,
singing, or maybe sharpening her cutlery
on a large stone. She would eat black olives
as she watched the burning sea, its lashes
opening and closing at her feet, its stories rising
into evening before pulling away its long skirt.
A hurricane lamp would cast shadows
on the sand with its bright flame. Some nights
she would talk to the flame, ask it probing
questions as if all flames were related.
Other days she would just laugh, shake her head,
whisper the names of her enemies
while collecting bits of sea glass to rub
between her thumb and forefinger, one for each
word God spoke to her. Green for “daughter”,
brown for “pity”, white for “Orleans”.
But most often, she would talk to the sea,
its curling fingers of foam, its fists of water
like a woman climbing out of ash and bone.
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Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Arminé Iknadossian’s family fled to California when she was four years old to escape the civil war. After graduating from UCLA, Iknadossian earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Antioch University. The author of All That Wasted Fruit (Main Street Rag), Iknadossian’s work is included in XLA Anthology, SWWIM, Whale Road Review, Southern Florida Poetry Journal, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and The American Journal of Poetry. She has received fellowships from Idyllwild Arts, The Los Angeles Writing Project and Otis College of Art and Design. Iknadossian offers writing workshops and manuscript consultations. Discover more at www.surprisetheline.com and www.armineiknadossian.com.
by Donna Vorreyer
I think of her as I wander from room to room in
my blue bathrobe, this anchoress who was always
alone. Now that I am home, her story lingers, one
I recited as I ushered visitors through her reproduced
cell. She survived the Black Death, its scourge and
stench, bore more than enough weight for one life.
I would think she would desire only sweetness—
green fields starred with thistle, spheres of milkweed
luring butterflies. Instead she chose a cell with no exit,
silence and stone. Three windows for her triune God.
At least she chose it.
Here at home, the weight of my own solitude spreads
like a yellow bruise. I haven’t showered for days, but
since she rarely bathed at all, I’m good. Authentic.
She penned pious revelations about the Lord while I
scribble lists and binge The Young Pope. Close enough.
I know she was revered as holy, as close to God as one
could get, but surely she missed the heat of touch, the lock
of fingers intertwined, the key of them unwinding. Surely
she wept each time the priest intoned Hoc est corpus
meum pro vobis—this is my body, given for you.
A body without touch cannot be certain it exists.
____________________________________________________________
Donna Vorreyer is the author of To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016), and A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. Her work has appeared in Rhino, Tinderbox Poetry, Poet Lore, Sugar House Review, Waxwing, and other journals, and she serves as an associate editor for Rhino Poetry. Recently retired from 36 years in public education, she can’t wait to see what happens next.
by Katherine Riegel
So much goes on in the country of my backyard
that I need a throne to oversee it all. Of course the dogs
spill out through the back door
into their favorite room. They squat and sniff,
chase toads, watch the neighbor’s border collie
spring up to try to see them over the fence.
Birds inhabit the air and the trees, call dibs
on the feeder, flee when the mourning doves
or the starlings come bumbling in like those old
chubby planes barely making the runway.
Hummingbirds ignore us all, distant as ballerinas.
The lilies I inherited from the previous owner
swell, about to open gaudy orange umbrellas
that will split and bend backwards like curious
octopi. Coreopsis presents buttons of green buds
in preparation for a festival of yellow. I should be
planting new flowers for the dogs to trample
but I have no energy for extra heartbreak, this month
last year the month of my sister’s diagnosis
and her gone before winter solstice. But I shouldn’t
forget the compost pile, all the vegetable detritus
and tea bags and egg cartons mixing into a rank
stew, the miracle of carbon breaking down
so in a few months I can remove the lower panel
and shovel out something better, richer,
the result of neglect and transformation in the dark.
Oh, believe me, I know,
the shadows of leaves sway and flutter
over the grass, a hundred hands waving,
and every time I breathe, I am waving back.
______________________________________________________________
Katherine Riegel is the author of Love Songs from the End of the World (Main Street Rag 2019), the chapbook, Letters to Colin Firth, and two more books of poetry. Her work has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Offing, Orion, Poets.org, Tin House, and elsewhere. She is co-founder and poetry editor for Sweet Lit. Find her at katherineriegel.com.
by Megan Merchant
“Form itself, even if completely abstract ... has its own inner sound.” ― Wassily Kandinsky
My teacher says, use whatever you have around.
Scream in a shard of glass.
Shriveled house plant, bent spoon, dried ink splotch under the coffee table.
Shadow side of morning. Cold.
Stack of spines never cracked, voicemail unanswered.
Lampshade. Salt lick. Creaky floorboard. I’m here but the world is closing in tight.
Feather I’ll find in a pocket years from now. Dip of paint.
Lipstick—burnt red. Pale dress. Paired with a saucer of warm milk.
A worry stone. A silk scarf. A scar.
It’s all out of tune. Even the refrigerator’s hum is wet.
Honeycomb. Hairbrush. Tangle of scotch tape.
There’s a song I knew. It lingered near the small of my back. It ached.
Rabbit’s foot. Windchime. Button unstitched.
It was full of possibility. Like grass before the snow.
Like lilac. Like shame.
Also like gunshots down the road that have no mouth,
but are negotiating an avalanche of dark.
______________________________________________________________
Megan Merchant lives in the tall pines of Prescott, AZ with her husband and two children. She holds an M.F.A. degree in International Creative Writing from UNLV and is the author of three full-length poetry collections with Glass Lyre Press: Gravel Ghosts (2016), The Dark’s Humming (2015 Lyrebird Award Winner, 2017), and Grief Flowers (2018), as well as four chapbooks and a children’s book, These Words I Shaped for You (Philomel Books). Her latest book, Before the Fevered Snow, was released in April 2020 with Stillhouse Press. She was awarded the 2016-2017 COG Literary Award, judged by Juan Felipe Herrera, the 2018 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize, second place in the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and most recently the Inaugural Michelle Boisseau Prize. She is an Editor at Pirene’s Fountain and The Comstock Review. See more at meganmerchant.wix.com/poet.
by KB
Multiple things can be true at once. Like me,
still messing up the title of this show & it being
the best thing I’ve witnessed in years. Like me,
being a survivor, still being scared to say
the word rape, & it being the defining
experience of my 20’s. Would you believe me if
I said there’s life to live after loss? Would it make
sense to be serious yet less sympathetic to shittiness
after a 40-minute episode you have to talk about
during this week’s session of therapy? Before
I was a survivor I couldn’t have been a woman. Before
a tree drops its first set of acorns, some are already considered
rotten. Before I had queerness I was a kid, waiting
on all restroom stalls to be vacant before exhaling.
I remember nothing but the feeling after that forced,
compliancy apology. Hurt people hurt people
is a really weird way to say rape. I remember ditching
the scene, humming the anxiety away with a song. Maybe
MAY I DESTROY YOU feels more accurate to the experience.
Maybe the song in my most haunted memories sounds like
better run / to the ark / before the rain starts.
_______________________________________________________________
KB is a Black queer nonbinary miracle. They are the author of the chapbook How to Identify Yourself with a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022), winner of the 2020 Saguaro Poetry Prize. Follow them online at @earthtokb.
by Susan Bruce
A couple of dogs
barking,
the same three stars
their bright
and dauntless
voices
dessert still
left on a plate
in the kitchen sink
trees
agreeably
one foot in the grave
a pile of clothes
like a boulder
at the foot of the bed
where I
stayed awake
and waited for you.
_______________________________________________________________
Susan Bruce's poems are in Love's Executive Order, Washington Square Review, Driftwood Press, Arcturus, Barrow Street, december, SWWIM, 805 Lit & Art, Regal House Publishing, Yes Yes Books, No Dear, Luna Luna, and other publications. Her chapbook, Body of Water, was published by Finishing Line Press. Susan has an MFA in Acting and was an actress for many years. She has studied poetry at The New School in NYC.
by Rebekah Denison Hewitt
But longing
for a place
you never quite knew,
the way tu me manque
means you are missing from me,
an uneasiness
of not finding
yourself
whole,
in one place
or another.
Whose past cities
do not haunt them
like a lover,
even a bland one,
easily left behind?
Waxy magnolia blooms
as big as a baby’s head
remind me of a home
I never claimed as such.
Too humid, wrong vernacular.
I couldn’t sense
how sweet it was
until the windows
shut for winter.
_______________________________________________________________
Rebekah Denison Hewitt earned an MFA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she held the Martha Meier Renk Graduate Fellowship. She is an assistant editor for Orison Books, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Narrative, Poetry Northwest, and The Rumpus. She lives in Wisconsin with her family and works as a librarian.
by Tina Mozelle Braziel
by Cynthia Atkins
by Elizabeth Ryan
This is the third summer since you left me with nothing but a playlist to remember you by & I still haven’t listened past the first song. Your anniversary approached & I thought I saw your face in a passing car, but you’re dead. Maybe when you played “The Reason,” it cut through the night like a siren—the guitar riding out the speakers while you sat in your still-running parked car & the Oxycontin kicked in. I turned up my radio dial while driving, let And so I have to say before I go, that I just want you to know, I’ve found a reason to be, trickle out & I don’t sing along, only take jagged breaths. When I want to feel closer to you, I lie down in the middle of the road at 2AM, streetlights splayed across me, June bugs crawling towards my warmth. They flip onto their backs, wiry legs scrambling towards heaven, moving fast until their bitter end. I gingerly pick them up, rise to my feet & carry them to the grass. Turning away, I tell myself I did enough, that they will walk on their own again.
______________________________________________________________
Elizabeth Ryan is a poet originating from Omaha, Nebraska. She is a graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she studied Psychology and English with an emphasis in Creative Writing. While at UNL, she worked with emerging student writers as an intern at the Young Writers Camp. In her free time, Elizabeth will most likely be found reading, writing and binging mid-2000s reality television shows.
by Anjuli Sherin
A hard sun lights
a whirl of life
Dust hardly settles
nor does smell or sound
Worn out engines back fire blasts
while horse drawn carts leave behind
steaming piles of dung and white capped
men headed from the mosque, with
scarf headed women on household rounds,
drag school worn children with one hand,
while the other carries naan,
newspaper wrapped & warm,
ready for afternoon lunch
Alhamdolillah.
Thank Allah, for these blessings.
She watches them,
haunches low on the ground
Brown desiccated body
leathered by the sun
One arm long, thin fingers outstretched,
while the other adjusts a scarf
white as the lanky strands
on her wizened head, while
a million lines crucifix her mouth,
four toothed, gaping wide,
a parched cry, calling out
Beta, ghareeb hoon. Kuch Khila do.
Allah tujhe sawab dega.
I am poor, son. Feed me.
Allah will bless you.
Their eyes so recently engaged with heaven,
fall to the ground,
accompanied by rupees,
more often with sound,
impatient, reluctant, indifferent, proud-
Maaf karein, Maaf Karein.
Sorry, Sorry.
Forgive us.
and
in the tightness of each heart
that meanest begging bowl
small coins clink out a
meager, persistent rhythm
not enough, not enough
it's not enough to
lift your hands up in prayer
starving they sit, sleep,
die on your stony ground
with eyes your same color
made deep with despair
O Believers, O Believers
this is not enough
to buy Allah's forgiveness.
______________________________________________________________
Anjuli Sherin is a Pakistani-American feminist poet and psychotherapist, with a love of sensual language and eastern poetry forms. She focuses primarily on spirituality, nature, politics, and the human condition in her creative work, and writes poetry that is meant to be read out loud. Her latest book, available through Penguin Random House, is Joyous Resilience: A path to individual healing and collective thriving. You can follow her on Instagram at anjulisherinmft or find her at www.anjulisherinmft.com.
by Jen Ryan Onken
for Nicole Chvatal
You on the telephone—I’m ready
to throw myself off a bridge. I’m losing it.
The snowmelt stretches out from gray
to blue. I know this tender bridge with its white
limpets and cement. The way your toes
grip the edge so hard it hurts. The grassy bank
all bare despite the leftover snow. Bald eagles
and their awful noise. What could inoculate
against this? The tidy nest waiting in the eaves,
the vernal pools, the purple tulips swelling
underground. The dog sniffing out the breathing
moles. Sister, shall we sink by land or sea?
Nothing floats. We laugh because all our brothers do
is beat us up at Hearts. They ignore our parents.
They’re always fucking around on boats.
______________________________________________________________
Jen Ryan Onken lives and teaches in southern Maine. Recent poems have appeared on Maine Public Radio, The Night Heron Barks, and Love's Executive Order. She was the Maine Poet's Society winner of their 2019 prize for previously unpublished poets. Her micro chapbook, That First Toss, was a finalist for the 2019 Washburn Prize at Harbor Review. Jen recently completed her MFA from Warren Wilson's Program for Writers.
by Nancy Reddy
by Jessica Freeman
the sunlight bowed down, and the lightning
bugs weren’t yet out. The city lights just on, we threw
our whiffle ball bats in the lush yard, and ran between this
world and that one, taking two steps at a time up to our
steamy back porch where last year a hummingbird had trapped
herself inside a plastic bucket of bleach left outside the door,
her green and purple wings shimmering and bent as she buzzed
inside the soppy solution next to a scrubbed rag made
from dad’s old underwear. On some nights like this one,
when we knew we were driving to the river house in the morning,
mom had us take turns in the bathtub. My brother went in first,
singing The Beatles in his blue bathrobe, a towel swinging from his hand.
A slush of water welled through the pipes, shaking the walls
as it nearly ran over the bathtubs edge. From the couch in the next
room I yelled and told him to shut the faucet off, afraid there wouldn’t
be more of that tepid-ness for me to run through
my mud-caked hair. This night, he emerged, a frightened look
on his face. I rushed around him to get to my Cinderella bath powder.
He said to tell Jesus hi. An instant, his words shrouded the room,
coloring the air, burning it and making everything smell electric.
I knew he believed what he was saying, I knew he was too old
to imagine it, I knew that here was yet another thing
that he knew well that I did not.
______________________________________________________________
Jessica Freeman has work published in Mississippi Review, The McNeese Review, Third Coast, Foothill Journal, UCity Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and has received an Honorable Mention from the Academy of American Poets. She is a former winner of the Joanne Hirschfield Memorial Poetry Prize and a Slattery Arts Award. Currently she teaches poetry at The Women's Center in Carbondale, IL,and English at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where she is an MFA candidate.
by Heather Bourbeau
We were smaller once.
Our bones thick, our breath heavy from hunts and hungers.
Still we distinguish the piss of humans from cats,
the mark of dogs from the musk of lovers.
In dreams, I smell brine and baleen, the slow drip of resin.
Mantis shrimp see more colors than any animal on earth.
We see blue and red and green, and call it a rainbow,
pity the dog with only yellow and blue.
Shadows play on the backs of our closed eyes.
There once were hippos and lions on Trafalgar Square.
Now the last male northern white rhino has died
under armed guard, unable to breed.
Marsh tits fly through a Paris airport, feast on our debris.
In Quedlinburg, a wooden house bears graffiti
“No Hope” and lovely cakes of six layers nearly hide
racist caricatures on antique coffee tins.
We marvel and mock the feathered dinosaur.
The browning camellia blossom, fallen mid-storm,
with folds of pink and ochre, long past prime,
calls my fingers to learn the geography and beauty in dying.
______________________________________________________________
Heather Bourbeau’s fiction and poetry have been published in 100 Word Story, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cleaver, Francis Ford Coppola Winery, Short Édition, The Cardiff Review, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, she is the winner of La Piccioletta Barca’s inaugural competition and Chapman University Flash Fiction competition. She has worked with various UN agencies, including the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia and UNICEF Somalia.
by Hannah Craig
For Bill
I dreamed of an earth in the body. Sky
pulling back into eyelids, adjourning.
Oh, those colors, the green aquarium
of how I come into the morning.
A girl, and mortal, and dumb
with sight. I wish I could keep this
sweet. That there was not ash sown
into the rust, into the water.
Into the leve green of breath,
the flight of birds away from the body,
home to the body. The first warm
night in so many. That I am tired
of dignity, that I have received so much
of it, more than my due,
and like the mourning dove, I now call
mostly from the bridge of the world's
black night. Untaught, I've lived.
Smoothed it out, like the lilac's
wild hair, like her high, high violet hat
and head. I wish that I could keep this sweet.
That, in her tender gray neck
there was not a buried burr,
a barb, a knot of wire, rusting.
That the borrowed sumac
was not poisoning the entire lawn,
casting his wide shadow of harm.
That we were not so hungry
all the time. Impatient with
one another. Burning one another,
wet branch by wet branch. The smoke
of one another lilting, covering
the valley, like a threadbare sheet
lofted over the bed. Christ, it's true.
I dreamed of the snuff-colored ground,
the burnished erosion, the neck
and harp and tension of the cords
in the voice. Its twang and century.
How, like a she-bear, I have licked
this language into shape, and now
the fat lies aside, white and leaved.
Now the body lies aside, for a moment.
Then lifts itself to go on working.
————————————————————————————————————-
Hannah Craig lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is the author of This History that Just Happened (Parlor Press, 2017). Her work has recently appeared in journals like Copper Nickel, Occulum, Mississippi Review, and the New England Review of Books. See hrcraig.com.
by Mara Jebsen
by Margaret Ray