by Susannah W. Simpson
The Fountainhead Studios, May 2013
by L. Shapley Bassen
“…looking at tattoo biopsies under the microscope, scientists saw macrophages laden with ink globules, and the story of tattoos became one of the immune system."
-New York Times
It’s ancient, likely prehistoric,
your skin hieroglyphics,
as unwelcome in the human body
as baryonic matter in the universe
where we are altogether graffiti.
Was the Beginning then a Big Tattoo,
a signal bugle of sound, not light?
Matter becomes mind we don’t know how.
Nevertheless, the scrawl that appalls
macrophages who engulf, engorge,
but are eventually replaced themselves,
echoes your tattoo. I lack kinky ink
myself. I’m penned with scars.
______________________________________________________________________
L. Shapley Bassen’s grandmother was a telegrapher on Wall Street a century ago who taught her to read and tapped messages to her in Morse Code on the wooden arm of a chair. She sees the world bi-focally through science and art. A New Yorker living in Rhode Island, she is a multi-published & prize-winning author of fiction, poetry, & drama. She is an editor at Craft Literary. See more at lsbassen.com.
by Claudia M. Reder
It is said that marriage becomes a third character in a relationship.
The one I think of as an ibis.
The long curvature of its bill
plucks sorrow from mud.
Its long neck,
slender spoon of a beak
serves us freshly made chicken soup with greens.
White wings edged
with black like an elegant dress
skim the surface of the waters
with other marriage birds, such as the blue heron.
One night by accident, we shut the door on you, mid-flight.
Your wing cape bristled.
Beneath your favorite olive tree
I toss bird seed. Weeks go by. Or is it five days
when I spot you,
the white noise like a heartbeat.
We curve around our favorite reading couch
under the dining room window,
the one where the red Maple marbles our afternoons.
These days, I hear you
as part of the Pacific, its long tongues of salt,
the plumed head of each wave
hit with sand, crab droppings.
I pass through the stench: half-eaten
oysters that drop into a gull’s mouth;
pass the terse arguing among terns.
A sea lion sprawled on the wood pilings
bites the pelican’s beak who shakes him off.
I kneel to gather that odd bit of shell,
watch the crackled glass of sunlight on the water.
______________________________________________________________________
Claudia M. Reder is the author of How to Disappear, a poetic memoir, (Blue Light Press, 2019). Uncertain Earth (Finishing Line Press), and My Father & Miro (Bright Hill Press). How to Disappear was awarded first prize in the Pinnacle and Feathered Quill awards. She was awarded the Charlotte Newberger Poetry Prize from Lilith Magazine, and two literary fellowships from the Pennsylvania Arts Council. She recently retired from teaching at California State University at Channel Islands. For many years she has been a poet/storyteller in the Schools. Publications include Alaska Quarterly Review, Nimrod, and Healing Muse.
by Elizabeth Cranford Garcia
please, to honor our dearly departed
dinner, this slick pink mess which was once
a chicken. Let us honor what skill was lost
with granny, who could clean and cleave
the whole bird, could butcher with the best.
And let us mourn the passing of that word’s meaning:
the fumbled punchline, the aria off-key, these
insult the butcher, who, prophet-like, can part
the fascial sheath, the silver skin like ribbon;
divine invisible lines of Hereford, of Sea Bass,
culling shapes, naming—the loin,
the sirloin flap, the clod heart. Can pop
the socket, peel the keel, avoid the coracoid—
oh priest! Approach the infinite!
Divide, divide, divide!
You are never left with nothing.
______________________________________________________________________
Elizabeth Cranford Garcia’s work has appeared in publications such as Boxcar Poetry Review, SoFloPoJo, Mom Egg Review, Psaltery & Lyre, several anthologies, and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart prize. She is the current Poetry Editor for Dialogue: a Journal of Mormon Thought. Her first chapbook, Stunt Double, was published in 2015 through Finishing Line Press. She’s a SAHM of three in Acworth, Georgia. Read more of her work at elizabethcgarcia.wordpress.com.
by Robbi Nester
After Brendan Constantine
From an antique rug beater to a flamingo
We have never met, but I want you to know how much
I envy your feathers, pink as a cloud at sunrise, nearly
weightless, with their hollow shafts, capable of carrying
you great distances. For myself, I go nowhere except
out into the dusty yard, where the maid channels
her resentment by smacking the master’s Persian
carpet till it yields years of ground in sand, blown in
from the beach. I am all knots, woven of bamboo,
while you arc in one tapered sweep, your neck
and wings, your beak, curved as a church key,
streamlined and graceful. I stay at home alone
and dream, while you travel yearly with extended
family, noisy but amiable, through skies of seamless
blue, landscapes of cloud, knowing beyond question
the exact location of the beach in Tunisia where you
were hatched. I would love to ride on your back,
tucked between your wings, though I am afraid
to lose my job, beating the world clean, a task
we have great need of these days, but if you ever
wish to come out of the cold and damp, to dry
between your toes, I invite you to stand with me
by the fire, each of us balancing on one long leg.
______________________________________________________________________
Robbi Nester is the author of four books of poetry, the most recent being Narrow Bridge (Main Street Rag, 2019) and editor of three anthologies, including The Plague Papers. Her poems, reviews, articles and essays have been widely published. Most recently, they have appeared in Sheila-Na-Gig, Verse-Virtual, North of Oxford, Inflectionist Review, and are forthcoming in Spillway, Tampa Review, and Gargoyle.
by Ellen Austin-Li
This palette of oak grows
with a marbling of pale green
lichen to frame its pain.
Sculpted on a trunk, two swirling burls,
a bulging body and a face
with the tough skin of bark.
A dappling of color to offset despair.
And what of the ivy that twines
towards this sight? An Almighty mind-
shift against survival of the fittest?
The unseen hand scrapes beauty
out of wounds, injury as medium,
near-death the instrument of the master.
The features poised uppermost
on the tree express wonder broken-free
of the soil at her feet, eyes half-closed
in reverie, mouth open in an “O”—
Oh, I’ve known this sort of wonder,
metal staples holding together the skin
of life, this scar I wear on my torso.
______________________________________________________________________
Ellen Austin-Li’s work has appeared in Artemis, Thimble Literary Magazine, The Maine Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Rust + Moth, and other places. Her first chapbook, Firefly, was published by Finishing Line Press (2019); her second chapbook, Lockdown: Scenes From Early in the Pandemic, is forthcoming (FLP 2021). A recipient of the Martin B. Bernstein Fellowship in Poetry, she is an MFA candidate at the Solstice Low-Residency Program. Ellen lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.
by Diane Hueter
Cicadas sing—
thrum and wheeze
from the mulberry trees,
a row of knotted trunks hugging the fence
between pole beans and dandelion lawn,
the highest, greenest leaves dusty from weeks
of our passing back and forth on the gravel drive.
I stand on our unpainted, sagging porch,
holding the baby's cup and her dress,
clean and crisp as Chinese poppies
flaming in a summer portrait.
Cicadas begin their song again
as if they had stopped
when the screen door slammed,
stopped and breathed in,
their eyes like orange beads
and their wings like chaff.
They sing even within the walls
of my human chest, they sing
in the rooms of my eyes and lungs,
in the struggling chambers of my heart,
and the trembling of the blood in my wrists.
When I stand in the sweet humid air
holding a cup of water and a red dress,
I foresee their bodies’ husks
emptied, clinging to the trees,
shells of lace,
I wonder what it will be
for my fragile daughter and me
to shrug our dresses, our skin,
like linen from our shoulders,
confused or blessed by music of our own.
______________________________________________________________________
Diane Hueter is a Seattle native now living in Lubbock,Texas—a place with very blue skies and very little rain. Her poetry has appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and Iron Horse Review. Her book After the Tornado (2013) was published by Stephen F. Austin University Press. Diane attended the Community of Writers poetry workshop (a truly transformative experience) and her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
by Bonnie Jill Emanuel
by Joanna Solfrian
Mid-breath I think of her and whether she’d consider my mothering well done.
Mid-breath there’s a hitch and I debate crying, just to get rid of the hitch.
Mid-evening and—just to fuck with the mid-breath—I shove out a sigh.
It is still mid-evening’s deciding point: Google forms or dishes?
Mid-evening and sex is off the table: cramps and barbed synaptic fangs.
Everything is failure. Mid-poem and I know nothing.
Mid-poem and I think of breasts, mine mashed into a sports bra,
a friend’s replaced, another friend’s grazed with my lips for show, like the cigarette—
it’s all just an original wanting, isn’t it? The bleak midwinter is both the fore-
and background of wanting. Monday: snow on snow, and mid-pandemic I
leave the apartment with my bagged heart. A gift for a stranger, for anyone
who’ll take the gutted beating thing and pat it, saying,
there there, it’s not so bad.
______________________________________________________________________
Solfrian’s first collection, Visible Heavens, received the Wick First Book Poetry Prize, judged by Naomi Shihab Nye. Her second collection, The Mud Room, came out last year from MadHat Press. She has also published a chapbook of ghazals with Finishing Line Press called The Second Perfect Number. Solfrian lives and works in New York City.
by Ashley Somwaru
by Emilee Kinney
by Jenica Lodde
You’re forty years old
if you haven’t accomplished something by now
you probably won’t ever
if your husband dies now
you’d flounder in the water
if you died now
your mother-in-law
would do a fine job taking over
better in fact
she makes pies
you never should have had that breakdown in college
or after the babies were born
your daughter is right
all you have are Facebook friends
this house
these floors
this neighborhood
this lawn
is like some magical flower
that bloomed
in spite of your bad—everything
everything. Bad
you won’t write anything good
that’s for sure
and even if you do
it won’t sell well
your fault
too many hours in a daze
too much overthinking
not enough deep thinking
not enough education
not enough real-life experience
not enough reading
who are you kidding
when was the last time you were able to focus
through a new article
that’s your husband’s territory
the logical everything in its place
the greased cogs the solid black lines
the
make your bed in the morning
husband
the nobody will ever want to read what you write
husband
the
if it was so bad why are you writing about it?
husband
the sturdy hull
that
keeps me from sinking
husband
he’s right
you shouldn’t get so offended when he
says you should start a laundry service
something that people actually need
you’re forty
if you haven’t accomplished something by now
you won’t ever
get in the boat of practicality
let the strong engine
carry you forward
______________________________________________________________________
Jenica Lodde is a human much of the time. Other times she is a bank of fog clawing her way across an ocean of dreams. Her poems have appeared in: io, River and South Review, Third Wednesday, Gravel, The Scop, Windows Facing Windows, Word Fountain, and others. Her chapbook, Emotional States, was published by Finishing Line Press (2020). When not writing, Jenica is daydreaming about repurposing all of her juice bottles and milk jugs into a supremely satisfying and useful work of perfection. Instagram and Twitter: @JenicaLodde.
by Sandra Fees
by Suzanne Honda
I came here hoping to find water;
and in it, some prior-to-unknown truth,
some gospel in the stench of a headless fish
hidden beneath the weeds.
Instead, the fishermen in their boats bob on the waves
and the trilling blackbird with its red wing picks at the fish flies
already-dead, their dry bodies hollow on the concrete,
what remains of their cathedral wings
a refracted summer light.
That something so small could be holy
and, in consuming it, the papist bird made holy also,
a wholly sacred holy-making wherein men with nets
ducking their heads towards unseen fish
partake in an unspoken prayer—seeing this, I think
of how some of us are made to listen and some to speak.
The lucky get both: fish for words, scales for song,
fins in place of silent flight, however fleeting.
Above me, a lone gull soars.
Already the sun’s absence is an ache.
______________________________________________________________________
Suzanne Honda (she/her) is a poet and teaching artist based in Michigan, where she lives with her partner and their two cats. When she is not writing, she is either curating her wildflower garden, making playlists for friends, or experimenting in her kitchen. Suzanne is published in Bear River Review.
by Katherine Hagopian Berry
by Janine Certo
by Marjorie Thomsen
To get lost is to learn the way—
printed sun-yellow on my apron.
I didn’t tell the man get lost when he said
“Me Too! I’d like to have you in bed.”
He’d been drinking beers in the hottest sun
but I listened and listened to how he’s lost
and a little broken about mortality, its cost.
Perhaps stuck at age eleven when his mother died.
To get lost is to learn the way
eventually. The man is almost sixty.
Because I’m afraid to make sunchoke soup, my apron’s not gritty
and years ago I played it safe when I should have been alive
in a beloved’s bed getting lost
to learn the way.
To get lost is to learn the way—
printed sun-yellow on my apron.
I didn’t tell the man get lost when he said
“Me Too! I’d like to have you in bed.”
He’d been drinking beers in the hottest sun
but I listened and listened to how he’s lost
and a little broken about mortality, its cost.
Perhaps stuck at age eleven when his mother died.
To get lost is to learn the way
eventually. The man is almost sixty.
Because I’m afraid to make sunchoke soup, my apron’s not gritty
and years ago I played it safe when I should have been alive
in a beloved’s bed getting lost
to learn the way.
______________________________________________________________________
Marjorie Thomsen loves teaching others how to play with words and live more poetically in the world. She is the author of Pretty Things Please (Turning Point, 2016). Two poems from this collection were read on The Writer’s Almanac. One of Marjorie’s poems about hiking in a dress and high heels was made into a short animated film. She has been nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She is the recipient of poetry awards from the University of Iowa School of Social Work, Poetica Magazine, and others. Publications include Pangyrus, Rattle, SWWIM Every Day, and Tupelo Quarterly. Marjorie has been a Poet-in-Residence in schools throughout New England. She is a psychotherapist and instructor at Boston University’s School of Social Work.
by Gail Thomas
It wasn’t the ring-necked pheasants strutting across
the yard, lumbering ground hogs or deer splayed bloody
next to every road that told me it was time
to leave. Sprawled on Hawk Mountain boulders
I counted kestrels above dry quilts of corn
spread next to brick hotels, general stores,
stone farm houses, red barns with hearts
and horses. I played ring toss in every country bar
lined with jars of pickled eggs and jerky, shopped
farmer’s market stalls tended by pink-cheeked
Amish girls in white aprons, hair pulled tight
and braided under capped buns. They sold
stacks of scrapple and cheese, apple butter, pretzels
and pig stomach while horse drawn wagons waited
for bearded men and black-brimmed boys to drive
them home to Paradise, Virginville, Intercourse, bed
sheets flapping in the manure rich air. Inside my thick-
walled house, beams stained with ox blood, tradition
echoed in red ware pottery, pierced tin cupboards,
blue and white crocks with stiff-necked plump Dutch
birds, but there were no women like me.
Lured down highways splattered with billboards,
past the sprawl of malls and smoke stacks, I searched
for them in bookstores and meetings, women
who lived in disguise, a man’s wife kissing another
man’s wife. Let me be clear about this yearning,
its embers stoked by more than a juicy bite,
more than feminist books devoured like bread,
more than the company of other mothers alone
at night, their men working late. Body
and mind yoked to this cultivated garden
of my own sowing, I chose wilderness.
When I packed up my babies to leave,
fear came too, but I was never kicked out.
______________________________________________________________________
Gail Thomas’ books are Odd Mercy, Waving Back, No Simple Wilderness, and Finding the Bear. Her poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies. Awards include the Charlotte Mew Prize from Headmistress Press, Narrative Poetry Prize from Naugatuck River Review, and the Massachusetts Center for the Book’s “Must Read.” She is an editor and teacher who lives in Northampton, MA. See gailthomaspoet.com.
by Lynn McGee
His father cracked an ice tray in the sink and poured
another shot of vodka, kitchen table orange as lava,
placemats sticky, curtains snapping in the breeze.
I was twelve, my friend fourteen.
He tucked his hair behind his ears, which pulsed with red.
His father swayed, then slammed our glasses
on the table: Drink your milk. I looked away, inhaled
the scent of cigarettes and hickory sauce, and caught
the glance my young friend snuck me, prisoner smarter
than his guard. The big drunk lurched, and we both
twitched. He thrust his arm across our plates—it grazed
my face. He shoved the glass, a muzzle now,
on my friend’s mouth. Milk draped his chin. I chewed
my burger, wearily. My friend reached out
with shaking hands, to take the almost-empty cup.
I sipped from mine, to ease his shame.
______________________________________________________________________
Lynn McGee is the author of the poetry collections Tracks (Broadstone Books, 2019) and Sober Cooking (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016), as well as two award-winning poetry chapbooks: Heirloom Bulldog (Bright Hill Press, 2015) and Bonanza (Slapering Hol Press, 1997). Lynn's first children's book, Starting Over in Sunset Park, co-written with José Pelauz, came out in 2021 from Tilbury House Publishers.
by Dion O'Reilly