Maraschino Marco says the pool boy quotes Cioran between laps I’m stirring negronis with menace, an aperitif for the impending apocalypse. Delphine keeps her sunglasses on through the eulogy because she says fun is photographed better with a rainbow lens The yacht is named Persephone, which feels on the nose for a woman who spends… Read More Maraschino ~ poetry by Sarp Sozdinler

Whack-A-Mole I am old, near death, with questions. I dig for answers. Mole-sized, I scuttle over the lawn, dig a hole and enter. A twitchy nosed mole rounds a corner and mocks me. With outsized claws she continues to relentlessly dig, tunneling ahead like a manic bucktoothed bulldozer. Moving dirt, eating earthworms like I suck… Read More Whack-A-Mole ~ poetry by Mac McLeod

GIRLHOOD AS AN APOCALYPSE #1 Born to die, we feel it in our bones End of the first act And we’re a bunch of unknowns Our time on earth is not our own Didn’t sign the contract Born to die, we feel it in our bones Wishing we were clones Our ideologies are abstract And… Read More Three Bastardized Villanelles ~ poetry by Kendra Augustin

                        Jill Crammond is the author of the chapbook Handbook for Unwell Mothers (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Asterales, Shame(LESS) Anthology, Made from Midnight: Delirium (Poets in the Pines Press), Mom Egg Review, Bending Genres, Sheila-Na-Gig, Slipstream, and elsewhere. A two-time Pushcart Prize and Best… Read More The First Grave Mistake ~ poetry by Jill Crammond

Creek Bed Meditations #24 Is it so simple as to be if we touch the world the world can no longer exist in the same way? I have to really think to remember we have a natural history as well. The East light can be a tide, but what will it take with it? We… Read More Creek Bed Meditations #24 ~ poetry by Darren C. Demaree

Christine Jackson is retired from her day job, three decades of teaching literature and creative writing at a South Florida university.  She continues to clock in on a life-long night shift writing poetry.  Her work has been published in an array of online journals, including The Ekphrastic Review, Verse-Virtual, South Florida Poetry Journal, and Chameleon… Read More Seven Randos Share a Wooden Pew ~ poetry by Christine Jackson

Whatever Happened To Baby J I remember that black circle spanning two pages of the TV Guide. The question was about falling into a hole that small, or it may have been a statement. Either way unfathomable. And also, what kind of well was that anyway? All my well knowledge involved a circular brick structure,… Read More Whatever Happened to Baby J ~ poetry by Christina M. Rau

Young Gannet I’m tired of crows and their death banquets. Really —lighten up, Ted. Do you keep your glasses on during sex? School is over. It’s parrot season and there’s a gold rush in Cuzco. Sure, the flesh is sad and I haven’t read Hesse since New Paltz. Rachel, that bird girl, loved the mystery… Read More Young Gannet ~ poetry by Damon Hubbs

Objects in the Fairfield Inn Lobby Currently Nudging Me Into Psychosis  drum lampshades in barely varying shades of taupe porcelain asterisk accessory (bludgeoning weight) menu for an 80s-themed pizza joint where absolutely zero items have pun names thermostat in a locked case, case only partially screwed to wall map to a local weather museum endorsed… Read More Objects in the Fairfield Inn Lobby Currently Nudging Me Into Psychosis ~ poetry by Erica Reid

Haircuts after “Beneath the Layers” (below) ~ Kurt Reynolds Lined up, wiped clean, eldest to the baby, sons are screwed to a gilded frame. Ferrules are paint-caked, brushing scenes of horror on shot-pocked alley walls. Abstract, outlines of girl’s breasts— no girls left, but brothers are bristle brushes with a taste for mannequin. Fiberglass flesh… Read More Haircuts ~ poetry by Robert Carr

P.H. Coleman looks out a window full of forest and its denizens, dogs and people, and writes. With help from  Sze, Harjo, Pardlo, Jackson, Duhamel (whether they knew it or not), he’s appeared in Eunoia Review, Trouvaille Review, Quail Bell Magazine, Dillydoun Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Dodging the Rain, Hyacinth Review, Ink In Thirds, etc.

Victoria Nordlund is the Poet Laureate of Glastonbury, CT, and lead master teaching artist of The Nook Farm Writers Collaborative at The Mark Twain House & Museum. Her poetry collections Wine-Dark Sea and Binge Watching Winter on Mute are published by Main Street Rag. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize Nominee,… Read More While looking at the Hermann Grid Illusion ~ poetry by Victoria Nordlund

To Do List Take on the load of the burdened. Picture cutting the baby’s cord with your teeth & cremate the fetus in your eyeballs for the rest of the ultrasound examination. Observe the next woman’s follicles (after separating ovaries from bowel) & figure out why her (breast) ducts are dilated with no baby in… Read More To Do List ~ poetry by Kataru Yahya

Manon After Alexander Agadzhanov, Marianela Nuñez & Federico Bonelli Not too far. Yes slowly, yeah. LIFT. A little bit late. AWAY more! Come closer close— Go go go go— That’s enough, enough. Bourrée bourrée bourréebourréebourrée… HOLD it. That’s enough, enough—come back to him. HOOOLD. That’s right. Okay, okay. Not—you okay? Not bad at all. Just… Read More Manon ~ poetry by Ellie Snyder

Daltokki’s Time-Lapse of a Noni [00:00:00] With enough work, I pass for beautiful. In the mirror, my talced face mouths: —Daltokki: Aren’t most girls plain to start? Her paws dusted white, still grinding—more, never stopping. [03:00:00] At the mall kiosk, a woman hands me a glossy flyer: BEFORE / AFTER, jawlines sharpened into crescents. Tape… Read More Daltokki’s Time-Lapse of a Noni ~ poetry by Kimmy Chang

Burn Nitro Say prayers Say vitamins Eat, eat, eat These are the demandments, brother. Terry Bollea lied and we let him back into our hearts. The New World Order is for life, brother, repeated like a mantra every Monday night. But he changed costumes, and we suspended every ounce of disbelief, so the entirety of… Read More Three Poems ~ poetry by Chris Dolan

Marlowe’s guayabera sticks to his skin like ocean salt, toes peeking over the edge of a kidney bean dredged in soft cyan. He hates the valley. Tells me it’s a man-made lake of pure beige stocked with confidence men and carnal women. Some ruby-headed cutie with curves like a candy cane queries the crowd for… Read More philip marlowe is invited to a beginners improv graduation party in van nuys ~ prose poem by Ben Starr

Sun Box after Joseph Cornell’s “Suzy’s Sun”  In the beginning on a bench beside a river, currents like moissanite facets jumping crests, we were two old souls that only the sun could know, hot blazing pillars of photons through water vapor and dust illuminating us like a spotlight— not white godspot, but a free-range egg… Read More Sun Box ~ poetry by Kristen Keckler

In the Southwest in Mid-September (a Nuit Blanche poem, after Amy Lowell’s “Nuit Blanche”) The chirping of crickets in the night is not found in the desert. Two hours from Albuquerque, not much is. In Socorro, I stop to get gas, lunch, and a room for later that night. Then I head out, driving dusty… Read More In the Southwest in Mid-September ~ poetry by Mary Christine Delea

There Are No Wild Dogs In Brooklyn Heights A skyline of wonders with a phantasmal attraction. The soapy comfort of store-bought flowers. Too pink, too sweet. Fragments in the sky on a day you’re brazen enough to look up. And they’re running. Just like you. Waiting to be shot down. Head back to Ainslie Avenue.… Read More There Are No Wild Dogs In Brooklyn Heights ~ poetry by Tessa McHattie

Burning Chocolat Mademoiselle likes her brioche with crème fraîche, Maupassant and a tasse de chocolat. I like her way of nonchalantly feigning I do not exist. Makes me feel like Camus smoking a Gauloises and struggling to pen the Myth of Sisyphus. She tells me all one needs is love but un peu de chocolat… Read More Burning Chocolat ~ poetry by Salvatore Difalco

Eternal Frat Boys So, this is who you’d rather spend time with? Does their obnoxious behavior compensate for my shyness? Does you saying you’re not like them, explicate your blindness? Or, are you just really that numb to my kindness? So much so, that these new friends are (not men, but) Eternal Frat Boys who… Read More Eternal Frat Boys ~ poetry by Jenna Mabus

Look at This Two wild pears from a tree near the train tracks, on a windowsill facing ten p.m. neighborhood backyards. Each would fit in one palm. Almost everything else lies on one table. A round pill box, brewpub restaurant coaster pasted to the lid, blue behind a red heart. My wife’s glasses: black bows,… Read More Look at This ~ poetry by David P. Miller

The 101 Uses of a Cravat The “Before” picture of a necktie. A bandage to staunch the blood. If it’s black, an armband for mourning. If it’s red, an armband for war. To welcome the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe to inhabit your body as his host. A lobster bib. A tourniquet. To appear epicurean… Read More The 101 Uses of a Cravat ~ poetry by E.R. Davis

Self-Portrait as a Miniature Donkey Dew-grass. Groomed. Sing sweet hee- haw for saltlick treat. If sad, sagged ears, mossy eyes. If sad, so? Sing. Be silver, small. Fat velvet muzzle: be led by. Crowd. Blue ribbons prick. Best soft. Best good. Look, it’s smiling. See: teeth. Only stablehand smell grimy breath. Only stablehand scraped by… Read More Self-Portrait as a Miniature Donkey ~ poetry by Annie Przypyszny

Chronic Pain          “The cure for pain is in the pain” – Rumi The tink of the gold band tumbling down a shower drain. Finding the unposed photograph of your mother at seventeen, falling in love with her, knowing you will never know that girl. The bleary-eyed stare of the goat in… Read More Chronic Pain ~ poetry by Colleen S. Harris

The Father of Minimalism I couldn’t sleep, so I poured myself a glass of water in the kitchen. That was when American composer Philip Glass walked through the door, a keyboard tucked under his arm. Why are you here, I asked. He opened his mouth but no sound came out. Instead, I heard the murmur… Read More The Father of Minimalism ~ poetry by Elena Zhang

My Daddy’s Accordion My daddy’s accordion was his second set of lungs. The first was for breathing, He played it every night between Jeopardy and his bedtime medicine. He named it “Darla.” Said it was the only lady who never done him wrong or maxed out his credit card. Only thing that never judged him… Read More My Daddy’s Accordion ~ poetry by Tom Busillo

Bullet Pudding After taking a strong sleeping potion I left my bed, and the four of us spent the day playing badminton. Chloe says I have eyes like errant cabbages. Lately she’s been obsessed with luxury communism fully automated. Because we haven’t been thinking big enough, because badminton before it was badminton was known as… Read More Bullet Pudding ~ poetry by Damon Hubbs

demise the la fires wolf down homes and buildings in the palisades – 0% containment. i walk outside my home 40 miles away and swallow a chunk of dust and debris that wind carries and deposits into my mouth. my yard looks like the aftermath of the storm in the wizard of oz. i walk… Read More demise ~ poetry by Ken Kakareka

Thanksgiving SOS Grandpa’s vodka watered down, the only potatoes served. Raised eyebrows & cocked heads after cocktail hour, guns with infinite woundability. Signs passed like cranberries over clicks of Morse code cutlery. Deep-fried turkey fireball a flare signal for help. The kids at the adult table a mere thirty- plus three major tantrums.   Divorce… Read More Three Poems ~ poetry by Jennifer Ruth Jackson

The Lament of Curley’s Wife He said I was a natural for the pitchers and he would write me when he got back to Hollywood. That starlight smile he had. Coulda been in the movies. Coulda had nice clothes and sat in them big hotels. He saw I was a natural. Coulda worn a white… Read More The Lament of Curley’s Wife ~ poetry by Ruth Lexton

Torch Song His normal identity: Johnny Storm.1 I tell him: Now that’s a hero’s name. The Human Torch? That’s every man2 I’ve dated, who’ll burn you every time after making promises. Doesn’t matter if he’s a hot-headed superhero3 or not. When you don’t have a secret identity, why do you even need an alter ego? But… Read More Torch Song ~ poetry by Ronnie Sirmans

VII. Mother never mentions my brother.  She keeps him in a box.  He is endless but divided by even perforations.  He has so many ears.  Mother lets him out when she studies biology and anatomy.  I can’t hear whether he volunteers to help mother summarize the key steps in post-surgery infection prevention.  A dot matrix… Read More Three Poems ~ poetry by Jason Fraley

It was the time I could and couldn’t (a villanelle) You know how this goes. You knew this was coming. Soon, evening and the filly is in the dirt pit. And my feelings are spiraling out of control I thought I wasn’t my father’s daughter until I disappointed you again. I think I will wear… Read More It was the time I could and couldn’t (a villanelle) ~ poetry by Samantha Moe

Alright, Listen SCENARIO I We’re naked and playing guitar, writing love songs that don’t quite rhyme while we drink to all the ghosts who haunt our lives. SCENARIO II I heard a rumor you were selfish and self-consumed, suffocating on the leather gags of your own ego. I crave the peanut butter way you lie… Read More Alright, Listen ~ poetry by Hillary Smith-Maddern

or, The Modern Prometheus I see myself, waving at the window, raving with Victor Frankenstein, I see myself, drunk as all hell, me drunk, Victor drunk, Victor ready to sin his way into heaven, I see myself, staggering baby-like towards the operating table, fun fact it was never lightning that brought the beast to life,… Read More or, The Modern Prometheus ~ poetry by Jennifer Jantzen

The Blob (1958, dir. Irvin Yeaworth) It falls to earth. It starts to grow & grow & grow. It eats poor Barney and then Kate and then it eats the stuff inside the doctor’s office then it eats the doctor’s car and then it eats the doctor too before heading downtown and this whole time… Read More The Blob (1958, dir. Irvin Yeaworth) ~ poetry by Rosalind Shoopmann

Self-Preservation 101 I was told to never eat while standing, to leave the wood floor hungry. The mop would hunt the crumbs of childhood and the cheese noodles shaped like cartoons. I’d squint to catch autumn’s eye, gathering the ruched orange war. In the backyard I’d make bones out of wine glasses to separate the… Read More Self-Preservation 101 ~ poetry by Nicole F. Kimball

Insomnia on a Theme From Brecht My bedroom isn’t big enough. It’s full of archangels                                                                                                            —Bertolt Brecht                                                                    First Psalm They hover—bright, voiceless shapes hunting names. No sleep will take him now. Afraid of dreams that drop simple, small clues. When they first came he asked them to stay. He’d keep his bed clean… Read More Insomnia on a Theme From Brecht ~ poetry by Mark J. Mitchell