by Janice Lobo Sapigao
A coleus plant will bloom flowers when it is stressed and nearing the end of its life cycle. The plant knows it will die if continued exposure to unfavorable conditions continues, so it blooms to produce seed.
by Grace Bauer
This time we’re in a city—
the Big Apple, let’s say, or some other metropolis
so brightly lit the sky loses all memory
of stars—except maybe the kind you might spot
getting out of a taxi or into a limo in front
of some swank hotel. Tonight, Ms. S
could be one of them in her little black something
so tight it’s almost nothing, almost skin, almost sin,
or the temptation to commit one. She loves
the slippery slope of social lubrication, glows
with the possibility of a room packed with bodies
pumped by music and an urge to be part of
this thing called crowd. It’s a sense of belonging
that goes beyond the group of friends she came with,
embraces every stranger who tilts their head
or waves a hand in animated small talk.
Ms. S feels her heart flood with a kind of affection
for the lot of them, the shaky enterprise of connection.
If she wanted, she knows she could find someone here
to spend the night with, but it’s the night
itself she decides she most desires.
She slips out the door—past the drinkers, the dancers,
the bouncers, the smokers huddled in a cloud
near the door, lets the music of the streets pull her forward—
block by block, with no place to arrive beyond motion.
Block after block: the steady whir
of traffic, the tap of her high heels on concrete,
the Are you kidding me’s? or then his boss said’s
of intermittent passersby, the occasional honk of horn.
Another block. And then a corner she turns—and suddenly
the moon is hanging bright as a disco ball between
two towering buildings. Full faced and shimmering.
Ms. S halts as if an invisible hand had grabbed her
at the nape. The upswept ‘do she’d secured with pins
and product shags around her shoulders, the fine hairs
on her arms thicken into pelt and the manicured nails
on her fingers and toes sharpen and curl into claws. She feels herself
coming alive inside the midnight of her body, the wilderness
of this city she claims as her turf. From far off,
she hears—is that a siren? Or an urgent call
from some pack that is beckoning her home?
What rises in her throat is beyond thought or language:
the wild that she is: calling back.
______________________________________________________________
Grace Bauer has published six collections of poems—most recently, Unholy Heart: New and Selected Poems (University of Nebraska/Backwaters Press, 2021). She is also co-editor of the anthology, Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse. Her poems, essays, and stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals.
by Marissa Glover
Marissa Glover lives in Florida, where she teaches at Saint Leo University and serves as co-editor of Orange Blossom Review and a senior editor at The Lascaux Review. Marissa’s creative work was most recently published in Rattle and her poem “The World Asks Too Much of Mothers,” first featured in Whale Road Review, is a 2020 Best of the Net Finalist. Her full-length poetry collection, Let Go of the Hands You Hold, was released by Mercer University Press on April 1, 2021. You can follow Marissa on Twitter and Instagram at _MarissaGlover_.
by Sanjana Nair
there were two birds
the dapper jay, the early robin
you were blue
I, fire-breasted
the day went haywire
I should have flown
you, loud with need
keeping me with the worms
the ground is not warm
this frosty, winter morning
the dirt
all I know
______________________________________________________________
Sanjana Nair is a tenured, full-time professor at the City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She taught previously at New York University and Miami University and served as the first Treasurer for the Asian American Poetry organization Kundiman. Her poetry has been published in various places such as Spoon River Poetry Review, Fence Magazine, JuxtaProse Literary Magazine, The Southampton Review, and others. Deeply invested in collaboration, her work has been performed in multiple Emotive Fruition shows New York City and her piece, "The Lady Apple," a collaboration between poet and composer, was performed at Tribeca’s Flea Theater and featured on National Public Radio’s Soundcheck. She has appeared at Barnes & Noble in Union Square, NYC’s Rubin Museum and others. She resides with her family in Brooklyn.
by Hannah Stephenson
You must be a Very Good Child
the florist at the grocery store pronounces
to the man standing before her
buying flowers for his mother
On Valentine’s Day all the customers clutch roses
as they shop It is as if there is a wedding
somewhere in here and we are all in it but
skipped rehearsal so we don’t know where
to stand Red and pink foil balloons sway and spin
under the AC’s breeze Is this enough baby’s breath
the florist asks That’s perfect the customer says
but I think she could go on adding more
fleshing out this armful of blooms with soapsud
with froth with gathered frost
In fact I want a dozen bouquets composed
solely of baby’s breath Tiny bits of snow at the tips
of the skinny green strands A constellation
of condensation collected from the exhalations
of infants and toddlers and children and tweens
and all their future progeny Generations of babies
and growing humans safely securely breathing in and out
Sighing Yawning Propelling responses across the yard
to the listener at the back door announcing
Time to come back inside If we saw flowers in the currency
of time these blooms would be seconds and carnations minutes
and tulips half hours and roses hours
I have rediscovered a love for filler flowers
fresh or flattened Please fill an entire cart with them
and sail it back toward me The wheels whirring
an ode to the exalted ordinary
I am trying so hard not to let this poem end
in death for once So here goes nothing
Today may you show a picture of a heart
to those you adore as paltry proof
May you adorn your hair with pink
and ribbons May your flowers taste rain
as you rush to the car and as they dream
their way into the big dark they were born
to become may they not be alone May they
carry with them the memory of light
______________________________________________________________
Hannah Stephenson is a poet and editor living in Northern Virginia. She is the author of Cadence and In the Kettle, the Shriek. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, 32 Poems, Vela, The Journal, and Poetry Daily. You can visit her online at The Storialist.
by .chisaraokwu.
only the morning women
& their blue-clean teeth remain
women stone-lit & moonshined
women erased from their belly laughs
pushing dead flowers
these unfashionable cotton spaces
we rest our tears upon
their white-green foundation / they
twice exiled dark-boned domestics
with a look in the eye & a war-cry
despite several home-goings
we debate rations
sullied hands pushing late evenings
& middays back
beneath the earth to wait.
______________________________________________________________
.chisaraokwu. (she/her) is an Igbo-American artist & healthcare futurist. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Glass, Obsidian, Tinderbox Poetry, Midnight & Indigo, and others. In 2020, she was awarded a Cave Canem Fellowship in poetry.
by Laura Sweeney
Over rows and rows of cornfields, the June blue sky
roils with road dust through my rolled down window
as I drive north towards the Quad Cities,
towards that sky I’ll do anything not to miss.
And when I cross the Mississippi, towards the white
clouds I’ve longed to see, I imagine the ghosts
thwarted by the Big Muddy while I’m tonicked like
the snow that made everything dormant and clean.
And while I’m thankful for the icicles that decorated
my patio this winter, thankful for the wildflowers
and redbuds, the dogwoods and Bradford pears blooming
this spring, still I prefer my clouds of Iowa-June, far
from the dark cloud of southern Illinois hovering over me,
which after two years I can’t name, though I’ve seen it
in the bare branches, spiked like spindles of a gasolier
whose candles burn out yet reach up, sick for light.
______________________________________________________________
Laura Sweeney facilitates Writers for Life in central Iowa. She represented the Iowa Arts Council at the First International Teaching Artist's Conference in Oslo, Norway. Her poems and prose appear in fifty-plus journals in the States, Canada, Britain, and China. Her recent awards include a residency at Sundress Publication's Firefly Farms, a scholarship to the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and participation in the Kaz Creative Nonfiction Conference. This winter she is reading for Water-Stone Review.
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.
______________________________________________________________
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