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Jaguar Erasure

by Suzette Bishop



As they got closer, the Jaguar sharpened his claws on the rock   wall off the last jaguar migration paths       bulldoze Arizona’s Sky Island mountains   Maria felt sad to die so far under the earth

More than 8,200 comments     opposing Trump’s waiver   immediate halt to wall construction

spectacular Sky Island mountains   the hard red body and obsidian eyes    a death sentence for jaguars in the United States    Trump’s disastrous border wall

hummingbirds passed, rushing towards the voice ripping this beautiful region apart

remote, mountainous terrain      Bird, Snake, Goddess corridors jaguars use    93 threatened and endangered species   there She sat, all the colours of the rainbow and full of the little windows with faces looking out

along the 2,000-mile border Bird Snake Mother shot a tongue of fire out of her mouth     without regard for 65 laws    They will return to Earth, on Being called Quetzalcoatl    miles of new construction      remote Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge, Tinajas Atlas Mountains and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument     there are animal gods                cutting off vital pathways

to reach food, water, and mates               ending the recovery of iconic species such as jaguar and ocelots in the U.S. speed border-wall construction from the Pacific Ocean to the Rio Grande Valley       

                               there are micro gods of all the subatomic worlds


Note: Erasure poem is constructed from Leonora Carrington’s story, “A Mexican Fairy Tale,” an interview with Leonora Carrington, and from the article, “Trump’s Border Wall Would End Jaguar Recovery, Bulldoze Sky Island Mountains.”


Sparkling Ice Plains *



One friend on the forum
can tell his ex-wife broke in
and poisoned his cats.

She’s messed with his truck, too.
We urge him, get cameras,
get security,

get a restraining order,
get the locks changed.
I learn the lingo,

psychopath, flying monkeys,
gaslighting,
how we loved,

and they just played us.

We take it seriously,
what the heart needs,
what the soul needs.

After such harm,
there are times
we keep each other from suicide

or returning,
having any contact,
checking their Facebook page.

Sometimes, I wonder if we were abused
by the same one.
Our avatars are beautiful,

the horse finding his footing in a murky stream.

*    2024 Longlisted, Montage of Misfortunes Contest, Black Fox Literary Magazine
Forthcoming in Eyes of Some Robbers (Dancing Girl Press & Studio)


Note: The title is a quote from “Little Robber-Girl,” The Snow Queen in Seven Stories by Hans Christian Anderson, 2006/09/25, http://hca.gilead.org.il/snow_que.html



Empty of You

Dedicated to patients who volunteer for ME/CFS research and clinical trials

offered her illness to science when I want my body to close with sleep, it lies open had a very active life wilting like a flower she began feeling faint the forest floor blanketed with pine needles she couldn’t hold herself upright paths leading us further from the stream had to carry her to urgent care

began her fight with myalgic encephalomyelitis glimmering between the pine trunks has largely been ignored light reaching through the pines fingered it bravely volunteered to participate in the research I trusted you would return us home doctors could not explain her symptoms the glass jar I place over it enlargement of her liver and spleen knows the ways to escape her daily function

pull me into the attic exhausted from sitting up to read leaving me with the ghosts not being able to interact with others in the reddish afternoon light she could barely speak with them twisting through the oval window she had to get herself up and moving suddenly in the aisle of the grocery store one of her daughters put up a chalkboard where she wrote down everything when I am without pen and paper so compromised I couldn’t even hear the birds sing my black shirt whispers to me able to start speaking with her family on the phone again

empty of you she could run basic errands such as going to the grocery store scream beneath my poems days of tests that carried significant risks beneath the ocean in a way that could undo all her progress smoothing and rounding us into small shells this could be the last exercise you’re able to do then spew us in different directions I felt like it was worth everything I find myself washed ashore to build the study’s database tightly curled, the sheet drawn back in waves



Note: Sections in italics are from “She suffered extreme fatigue for years. So she offered her illness to science.” By Leana S. Wen, The Washington Post, March 19, 2024.

BIO

Suzette Bishop has published three poetry books and two chapbooks. Her newest chapbooks, Eyes of Some Robbers and Unbecoming, are forthcoming. She has an MFA from the University of Virginia and a Doctorate of Arts from the State University at Albany. Her poems have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies and been finalists in the Northwind Writing Award and contests at Black Fox Literary Magazine and So to Speak. One poem earned an Honorable Mention in the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities Contest and another, First Place in the Spoon River Poetry Review Editors’ Prize. She has the invisible disabilities of ME/CFS and fibromyalgia and lives in Laredo, Texas.








Night Game

by Peycho Kanev


On some nights
sleep just won’t come.
Maybe because the cat
won’t stop darting through the dark,
chasing things only
she can see,
or because the moon above is painfully
round and menacing,
or because the brain decides
at that exact moment
to replay every mistake and
blunder from recent memory,
or maybe it’s because
death is standing outside
the window, waiting patiently…
Then, somewhere in the distance, in the city’s gut,
something explodes loudly—I lift my head,
the woman beside me is sound asleep,
and I glance into the darkness at the phosphorescent
hands of the clock.
It’s too early or too late
for anything, and yet somehow
I manage to let go and fall asleep,
along with the rest of the people in the city,
while death keeps standing
outside the window, waiting patiently.



In the End


I sit here at night and drink,
and the clock shows 2:37,
and Hemingway is in Idaho, talking about bullfights, war,
and hot Spanish women under the blazing sun,
until morning comes and he puts the barrel in his mouth.
The clock shows…
oh, I sit here at night and drink,
and Van Gogh is slowly losing his mind in the fields
of Arles, while painting the beautiful yellow world,
and I sit here at night and drink.
The clock shows 3:58,
and they shot Lorca with a few bullets
in the back and a few in the ass, because he was
a homosexual.
Bach sits in the radio, and every single note
is like a particle from the eyes of God,
and I sit here at night and drink,
while dark clouds chase each other through the tar-black sky,
and everything pours into my mouth and sinks deep
into this grave inside me.
And I can no longer see the clock, and the strings
of the night ring like sirens.
The calendar on the wall begins to burn—
I keep sitting here and drinking into the night.
The moon is the color of a coffee stain.
Silent magpies perch across the rooftops.
All the women are sleeping in their beds somewhere out there.
Cops wander the empty streets.
In the end, I drink the last glass
and open the window toward the light.



BIO

Peycho Kanev is the author of twelve poetry collections and three chapbooks, published in the USA and Europe. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, such as: Rattle, Poetry Quarterly, Evergreen Review, Front Porch Review, Hawaii Review, Barrow Street, Sheepshead Review, Off the Coast, The Adirondack Review, Sierra Nevada Review, The Cleveland Review and many others.









Wild Turkeys

by Jennifer Lagier



Feathery Ichabod Cranes on the lam
emerge onto city streets from oak savanna.
Lanky explorers mosey down sidewalks
into front yards where they decimate lavender vinca.

When spooked, they flap awkward wings,
crash land atop a neighbor’s shingled roof,
peer over redwood fence
into empty golf course and fair grounds.

I watch turkey triumvirate
swivel reptilian heads, shake droopy wattles,
gobble impatiently at one another as they
debate the best escape to avoid dinner platter.



Wetland Quadrille



Along winding, willow-fringed trail,
dog walkers do-si-do
with anger-inflated gander
who unfolds, then shakes
four-foot, muscular wings.

Bufflehead duck and cormorant couples
cluster among mudflats and tules,
bob and pirouette,
perform mating ritual choreography.

Sea gulls circle limp potato chips,
squawk at rude crow invaders,
squabble during lopsided tug of war
for a wilting spiral of orange peel.

Against zen background of whispering surf,
distant foghorn, clanking boat tackle,
shearwaters dance through broken shells,
pencil-legged formations of jittery curlews.



Super Moon



Luminosity lasers through shaggy redwoods,
outshines a spattering of glittery stars,
ascends to hang against celestial ceiling.

Fluffy ageratum floats below ebony sky.
Super moon transforms shadowy rose garden
into fragrant pink and yellow pinpoints.

Unable to submerge into stupor,
I abandon bedroom, join nocturnal foragers,
bathe bare skin within lunar light.



BIO

Jennifer Lagier lives a block from the stage where Bob Dylan performed with Joan Baez and Jimi Hendrix torched his guitar during the Monterey Pop Festival. She edits the Monterey Review and helps publicize Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium reading series events. Jennifer has published twenty-four  books, most recently Postcards from Paradise (Blue Light Press), Illuminations (Kelsay Books), Reelin’ In the Years (Cyberwit). Forthcoming: When You Don’t See It (Kelsay Books).

Website: jlagier.net

Facebook: www.facebook.com/JenniferLagier/









Youth

by Richard Dinges, Jr.



Stripped of leaves,
whipped by fierce wind,
naked skeletons
crack an empty sky.
Old trees moan,
drop limbs in storms,
scattered at the feet
of young saplings
that bend their opinions
yet unformed.
Thin tendrils reach
up through a way
cleared for their growth
when a bright warm
sun returns.



Geese Before Dawn



Canadian geese crank out
atonal cries beyond
trees that ring pond’s
shore. Out of darkness
they cackle in alarm
at what I cannot see.
Before dawn in this vast
shadow, I awaken
from warm dreams into
a world distressed
by what lies hidden.
What bursts out
of the darkness?
What is not dispelled
when I turn on the lights?



Nickels and Dimes



Seasons repeat, a blend
of clouds sun.
Heat burns us dry.
Wind descends from
polar vortices, prepares
to blow us all south,
and then sucks it all
back again. A minor
star fuels a constant
respiration. Fattened
by our rare abundance
of water, we complain
about our inability
to believe in forecasts
 of what will happen next.
All we need to do
is walk out the door
and watch and wait.


January Ice Storm



The trees have nothing
more to say, their
wind whispered voices
and veins encased in ice.
A white world reflects
light, returns sunrays
back to a dark universe,
another eternal
promise unfulfilled.
Wind raises a brief
Thrill. Tree limbs dance
in ecstasy to shake off
winter’s prison. And then
all settles back into a cold,
wide spread and empty
grasp at a dry sky
still in hope.



BIO



Richard Dinges, Jr. works on his homestead beside a drying pond, surrounded by trees and grassland, with his wife, two dogs, one cat, and twelve chickens. Hurricane Review, Ellipsis, Blue Lake Review, Cardinal Sins, and Avalon Literary Review most recently accepted his words for their publications.







Somewhere in the World it’s Now O’clock

by Jim Murdoch



Somewhere it’s raining.
I suppose.
I suppose somewhere it’s Tuesday too
or at least Tuesday’s been there.

Perhaps one of those Tuesdays it rained.
A rainy Tuesday, yes. Say in May.
I wonder when the first Tuesday was.
I could’ve been a Wednesday.

It won’t rain forever. Of course not, no,
nor will it be Tuesday forever or May
and for some people it will never rain
or be Tuesday or May again. Ever.

I feel something going on here,
something vaguely poetic.
I’m just not getting it.
Are you getting it?

Maybe we should wait until May
to do this and pray for rain.
It might make more sense then. Or some.
What if we read it in the rain?

Now that sounds like a plan.



Synergy Pie



These words are for you.
I cannot return the ones you gave me—
      they’ve been savoured away to nothing—
but I do hope these will do.
“A balanced mix of nouns, verbs, adverbs,
adjectives and popular conjunctions.”

Either way it’s not what words say or said—
      they can be made to say about anything—
or even what they meant or came to mean—
      meaning, like seasoning, favours a light touch—
it’s that they were (in the then)
and we are aware (in the now) of their… of their…

A recipe is not a formula—
      a pinch of x and a dash of y—
nor is it a road map or a rubric.
Sometimes we get it so right, so right,
and othertimes we bake ourselves into a corner.



Boring Poem



I meant to bring my anger to this poem
but by mistake I let my boredom in and
by the time I realised it was too late,
I’d begun writing this.

I have tried palming him off on others but
they’ve enough with their own boredoms.
Boredoms bond for life as you know and
mine is especially clingy.

That aside he’s your bog-standard boredom.
I did once try to teach him ennui but he just
rolled over and played dead, his party trick
often topped off with a fart.

Since this was to be his first time in a poem
I asked him to “at least try to feign interest.
I mean,” I said, “it’s one soddin’ step up from
pretending to be dead.”

So, no surprises how that played out.
We have a… complicated relationship but I
wouldn’t be without him. He’s like my spleen.
I’ve no idea what it does

but I wouldn’t have one if I didn’t need one.



BIO

Jim Murdoch has been writing poetry for fifty years and has graced the pages of many now-defunct—and a few non-defunct—literary magazines and websites. For ten years he ran the literary blog The Truth About Lies but now lives quietly in Scotland with his wife and, whenever the mood takes him, next door’s cat. He has published two books of poetry, a short story collection and four novels: Jim, not the cat.









Pregnant Pauses

by Tammy Smith



Words are potent place-setters. Verbs like “kissing” can indicate inappropriate actions. Adjectives loom more significant than the nouns they modify. Dangerous Daddies. Be cautious of the hidden dangers people conceal in unexpected places. Possessions often reveal possessiveness.

Oh, the places you will go if you hold your breath long enough to hit “return” and press the home key firmly. Memorize all the shortcuts. Remember, it is far worse to control than to delete, so use the “shift” key often.

A true sign of grace is letting go of default settings. Adjust your margins for more space, and don’t forget to double-space your text. Insert quotation marks when necessary and use proper punctuation consistently. Run-on sentences can feel lazy.

I love Daddy, but when he holds me, squeezes me, and places me in awkward positions, I often forget to capitalize on those indirect objects that can change tenses. Missed periods can lead to erratic question marks, and a chapter may conclude with a contraction.




Rooted

You tell me that your father used to lock you inside his bedroom closet. Sprawled on my office couch, you thump a pillow with your fist, wiggling your stubby fingers between blows. I’m struck by how skillfully our bodies conceal secrets, each sigh a silent scream waiting to be heard. When you lick your dry lips, I can almost taste your fear. It reminds me of my first memory—crying in a crib, sticking my thumb through thick wooden bars. What if I get stuck reaching for what I can’t touch? It’s hard to understand parents turning away from their children. You squeeze your red-rimmed eyes shut, murmuring, I miss my dad. It’s enough for today. Grief seeks sleep. Sometimes it’s kinder to tuck pain away than to keep unpacking it. You need more time to trust I can carry the weight of your secrets. Our most meaningful sessions happen when I accept that I don’t need to know everything. As you reach for another tissue, I lean forward to listen—without memory or desire.

dig deep
for loose change
scattered between cushions




BIO

Tammy Smith, a poet and licensed clinical social worker from New Jersey, writes at the intersection of creativity and mental health. Her work appears in ONE ART, New Verse News, Grand Little Things, Platform Review, and elsewhere.









My Dad Hikes

by Michael Penny



He’s over ninety now,
and his walk is limited,

every second day, half a kilometer,
guided and safe with the staff

from the aged care home.
Along a river where the parrots complain

and once they encountered a snake, avoided
and an eastern water dragon, admired.

But Dad says he repeats the walk
he did when he was twenty

from Rawson’s Station to Arkaroola,
through Wilpena Pound and Edeowi Gorge.

I checked the internet’s map
and see he’s conflated two hikes,

but geography does not matter
when memory makes its own history.

He re-lives every step
and the hike still ends

in an opening up to a vast desert,
empty of all but his future.



A Night Sleep Sequence



None, too much, poorly, poorly,
as body and clock disagree

when the planet assigns its hours
to day and sleepless night.

The astronomical doesn’t acknowledge
my need for sleep

The stars are always awake
or merely dreaming;

we’ll never know.



Disputing a Charge



The credit card statement said
$27.71, converted currency
but we didn’t buy from that stranger.

I press numbers through the menu
of inedible options, until
a bank person a continent away

checked who I was until
“OK, I’ll look into it.”
Several transfers of my patience

and I get to tell my story
to a critic who questions plot
and character development

until suspended belief finally lands,
and truth makes a note that
some thing recorded was not.



BIO

Michael Penny was born in Australia, but his family moved to Canada when he was young. He now lives and writes on an island near Vancouver, BC, and has published five books and previously appeared in The Writing Disorder.









Setting Sun

by Cynthia Pratt



Time as it turns into,
what, a noose, a lock
with no key?  Here,
a list: braggart, turnstile,
a shopping list with missing
items, family, no family.

What do you want when
time creeps in through
shadow doors and there
you are; you turned into
a doorknob that never
opens.  Let me explain.
This age thing we fell up
against flattened you
into the soil that once
was my life.  Now,

it’s my turn, soon
because the sun moves
across the sky drawing
me into longer, thinner
shadows—first my legs
stretch out, then my torso.
My arms lean down to
the earth; my head extends
like a rod reaching for
the horizon.  I surprise
myself when each morning
I awake, thinner and thinner
but breathing steadily
into an unknown sunset.



Defining Want



Think of the intransitive,
that of being needy or destitute,
to feel need, to desire to come,
or go or be. Think of where to,
where from, of what, in this
definition. Or maybe to fail to
possess, the ardent yearning
to covet. Oh, my hunger,
I pine, salivate, lust for this
sin, this ache more now
then ever in my youth,
that time so many years ago.



BIO

Cynthia Pratt is one of the founding members of the Olympia Poetry Network’s board which has been in existence for 35 years. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Raven Chronicles, Feminist Theology Poetry, The RavensPerch, The Last Stanza Poetry Journal, 3rd Wednesday Magazine, Humana Obscura, Kestrel Journal, Sad Girl Diaries, among other publications, and in six anthologies, including Washington Humanities and Empty Bowl Press, I Sing the Salmon Home (2023). She also has poems in three other upcoming anthologies, including Bird Brains: A Lyrical Guide to Washington State Birds. Her manuscript, Celestial Drift¸ was published in 2016. Her manuscript, That Wild Knocking, is forthcoming in 2026 through Finishing Line Press. She is a former Lacey Councilmember and Deputy Mayor of the City of Lacey. She is the first Poet Laureate of Lacey as of 2022. She reads too many murder mysteries and talks to birds.

Website: Cynthia-pratt-poet.net







This is What the Moon Whispers at Midnight

by Erika Seshadri



I am
betrothed to the tide
through darkness and light
in consequence of
eras, epochs
eons

Over millennia
I’ve watched the argosy
sail forth in brine and solitude
brimming bow to stern
with hiraeth

I’ve witnessed
this century’s secrets
flow like water through gills of
ancient Greenland sharks
to be buried ever
deeper

I move
stony-faced, inured
as ruthless hundred-year storms
rage in succession—
one right after
another

You’ve prayed
for withering waves
among this contrition for decades
but you won’t find
forgiveness
in the sea

Though its rising
is of no concern to me,
I must say, it looks like you could be in trouble now



How Far They’ve Come



when the refugees arrive
let us wash their feet
tenderly
so we can know
how far they’ve come
to stand where we stand,
each tremulous soul.
let us place around their necks
lockets grown from
softness, bursting
with heartbeats
yours, mine, theirs

like brothers and sisters,
mothers and fathers

then we will
flatten our feet
and refuse to become soldiers
until our voices wither
and we become un-



BIO

Erika Seshadri lives in Lamy, NM. She is a 2025 Best of the Net nominee. Her first book, HIMALAYAN TSUNAMI (Memoir; Austin Macauley Publishers; Erika & Niranjan Seshadri), won a 2024 BookFest Award and is currently being adapted for film.







The Marine Biologist

by Kevin Dwyer


for Adan Quinn


“And they said, is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said no, life is that which gives meaning to life.”
—Donald Barthelme, “The School”



I remember vividly the humidity
my skin soaked like sugar cane

the dollar twenty-five I gave the ice cream lady in quarters

how I managed my way ‘round the truck
how I readied myself to cross

the split second screech

the woman in the car
rattling her hands

our screen door

I remember my mother sprinting
sobbing in a Spanish dialect that was not yet accustomed to speaking English

her eyes filled with tears that seemed to run for eternity

telling her I dropped my ice cream in the street
the comfort of her suffocating love

I remember running to and from the public library a couple blocks from home

my white soles blackened by asphalt
reading book after book about the depths of our oceans

knowing only three-fourths of the words

my nose pressed against the pages
the smell of mothballs

I remember the pressure in my ears when I swam deeper down in my pool

reflecting on the hidden planet inside our own
its embryonic peacefulness

how we’ve had yet to reach its bottom

I remember running outside after it rained
studying puddles of murk rainwater

what seemed to be galaxies of tadpoles

filling a mason jar to the rim
running to the bayou

dumping them with the universe of others

infinite amounts of tadpoles
repeating that for hours

the exact steps

‘til my mother’s voice echoed through the oak trees
blood orange sun reflected off the bayou

every puddle was empty



Valhalla 2/3/15


“What we have here is: we have a mosaic” –
National Transportation Safety Board Vice Chairman Robert Sumwalt



nobody knows why
that gate
that arm
those caution lights at the crossing
those lights caution flashing
39 seconds
those seconds flashing
flashing seconds
flashing
that arm
that gate
lowering
later
seconds
later
late
pressed on the back
on back
back
of her car
between the track and the other side

but not on the track

she got out and looked at what was holding her back
touched that gate
how calm she was
she
that gate
touching
she did not panic
she did not hurry
how calm she was
even though both gates were down

she looked directly at me
directly
and me
I motioned her to come back
I don’t know if she could see me
my headlights on
flashing
on
those seconds
flashing
instead she got back inside
she got back inside
got back inside
back inside
inside
instead
and pulled forward
onto the track

perhaps she thought she had more time

but what about the horn,
no louder than a blender
or someone shouting
then suddenly
louder than an ambulance
sounding
seconds
sounding
more
sounding
more
seconds

perhaps she thought she had more time

he doesn’t remember hearing the horn or the bells of that train
though he did see the flashing
those bright whites piercing through the red
the panting
that gate
that arm
sounding

a terrible crunching,
terrible
crunching
crunch
sounding

and just like that,
the car was gone,

was
there was no way she could have known what hit her
just like that
gone
the car
back
sounding
then an explosion
fireball
was
sounding
flames
just like that
from the train
from the front
fuel-fumed
flaming

holding his head in his hands
she was there
then she was gone
there and gone
there and
there
there and gone
and gone
gone
was
in an instant
she
gone
was
gone
sounding

he did everything he could,

perhaps she thought she had more time




The Linstock Castle ring[1]



restless hoofs
the rise and fall of music
sweet journey adornment

the rise and fall of music
dancing as freezing water

fierce horns in combat
comfort each decree

the day ruptures luminous
an atom discharge of men
in troops of water

sweet journey adornment
the rise and fall of music
dancing as freezing water

rest at ease among the immeasurable
an atom discharge of men
in troops of water

blowing sorrow
in troops of water
restless hoofs
rowing endless across the land

over a misty passage
restless hoofs

splendid applause unbroken
an atom discharge of men
over a misty passage
restless hoofs

narrow heart in time
an atom discharge of men
in troops of water




A bone amulet carved in the shape of a rib from Lindholm, Skane, Sweden[2]



restless discourse of hoofs  lightning livid  restless discourse of hoofs  riding beyond  a miry place  long enduring tossing troops  divine mouth  seizing wounded swans within the marsh  divine mouth  [eating affliction]  a miry place  long enduring tossing troops  divine mouth  sustenance of exiles  divine mouth  seizing wounded swans within the marsh  wrapping storms  divine mouth  night-cloud covenant  restless discourse of hoofs  lightning livid  divine mouth  :

[3]divine mouth, divine mouth  divine mouth  divine mouth  divine mouth  divine mouth  divine mouth  divine mouth  seizing wounded swans within the marsh  seizing wounded swans within the marsh  seizing wounded swans within the marsh  seizing wounded swans within the marsh  hearken the hearts of our offspring  hearken the hearts of our offspring  hearken the hearts of our offspring  reaching up to touch a crown of boughs  giving themselves up to the deserted maw  glorious trumpet  night-cloud covenant  night-cloud covenant  night-cloud covenant  :  divine mouth  long enduring tossing troops  glorious trumpet  :

[1] Ring made of agate. Page takes the inscription to be a corrupt version of the engraving on the Kingmoor and Bramham Moor rings (An Introduction to English Runes (2nd ed) 112). The location where this ring was found is unrecorded, but Page suggests that it is identical to a ring found at Linstock Castle in 1773 (112).

[2]Found in 1840 in Skåne, Sweden, while cutting peat from a bog. This cut the bone in half and resulted in the destruction of one rune in the second line of text. The sequence in the second line contains a magical string of runes.

[3] The runes here mirror the runes of the first stanza.



BIO

Kevin Dwyer is a Catholic high school educator, inspiring his students to read and write passionately. He earned his Honors BA from Saint Louis University, MA from Fordham University, and is completing his PhD at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, Kevin’s chapbook, broadsides, and poems can be found at Yellow Flag Press and MockingHeart Review.

You can connect with Kevin on Instagram at instagram.com/Kdwizzle







A BELONGING

by Juanita Rey



It’s windy outside
just the way the rattling trash cans like it.
Curtains shake.
Window rattles.
A pen rolls off the table,
onto the floor.
The noise startles me.
But it’s not about fear.
Just the dubious nature of my life here.

Mice scamper through the walls.
Spiders crisscross the ceiling.
Shadows steal half the floor,
then my leg up to the knee.
A friend I have not seen in years
appears to me in this kitchen
of all places.
It’s amazing how creative
light and dust can get
when they have my memories
as a model.
But, of course, it will be totally dark soon.
She cannot stay.

I’m reading a book in English.
I feel proud of that for some reason.
But it makes me a little less Dominican
and no more American than I was before.

Then my neighbor from the apartment below
knocks on my door.
She says she thought
she heard somebody home.
That’s not altogether encouraging
but it’s a start.




THE TAINO MOON



The sun sinks into the sea
but the moon is another kind of rising,
like the lilt of a song but without the sound,
a drum-less palo, a choir of departing gulls.
It has the air, the breezy cadence of a fateful moment
but, as I head towards home, it turns perfect.

The lights ahead are a human constellation,
the public eyes of the ones who make do,
most inside now, concluding this day
in the manner of all days, the light
nudged westward, the dark overseer,
and the old moon of the Taino,
held over for these times.




POEM TO THE WORD “NO”



Why is someone’s tongue
forcing its way into my mouth?

My legs are curled up
so I push back with my hands.

How many ways can I say “No.”
If the word’s not heard,
it must get physical.
Thankfully, “No” has muscle.

I want to believe
that life is about the choices I make –
good or bad –
and not what other people want of me.

Thankfully, he leaves –
first, out of my mouth
then through the door.



BIO

Juanita Rey is a Dominican poet, US resident. Her work has been published in Mixed Mag, The Mantle, The Lincoln Review, Lion and Lilac, amongst others.







ADIRONDACKS IN FALL

by John Grey



The great bird forest
sheds its red and gold feathers;
on the trail through the woodland
they alight
as soft as palms patting
the heads of babies;
across the pond
where a few leaves float
like crinkled lily-pads,
a beaver slips
from shore to dam
with kindling in its teeth;
the breeze blows cool
and the dead descend,
from a sun
now even farther afield,
light pulling away
from weary trees
grown tired of growth;
free of civilization,
I needn’t recognize
a single aspect of myself.




TUBES TIED



She had her tubes tied at 35.
Too many failed pregnancies.
Too much anticipation
bleeding on the kitchen floor.
She confessed it to the priest.

His response was garbled.
She retreated into a dozen
half-hearted “hail Marys”,
and fingers wrapped tight
around rosary beads.

But her body would
never fool her again.
It would be the provenance
of sickness and disease
and nothing more.

No more exhaustion by hope.
None of that doptone
on her stomach
listening for ghosts.

From now on,
if she isn’t feeling good,
the reason’s simple.
There is no good to feel.



HAWK


So the bird you feed
is killed by the hawk you didn’t see coming.

You put the seed on the tray.
You hung it from the oh so visible branch.
You watched as birds descended in their numbers.
You took advantage of their hunger.
You invited the victims in.

And then you stared in horror
as the huge predator dropped down
and gripped a startled starling in its talons,
snapped its neck,
flew up to a rooftop,
and devoured its flesh,
spit out the feathers and bone.

But you still feed the birds.
You watch their antics from your window.
And they still sing between mouthfuls,
get in their thanks
before your return as a hawk.




DEGREES OF SEPARATION ANYONE?



For me to be with Angela,
I had to meet a man
who introduced me to his cousin
whose best friend worked
at a bookstore I was unaware existed
which I began to frequent
on a regular basis
where I found myself
one Tuesday evening
side by side with a
young woman in the
“American History” section
who invited me to
a gathering of herself
and a number of like-minds
at a nearby coffee shop
where I began chatting
to another young woman
who, after a date or two,
felt like it wouldn’t work
between us but that
her younger sister and myself
were a much more likely couple.
And, here we are, years later,
and I run into that man
I met way back,
and I neither thank him
nor blame the guy
for my current situation
because it would be
too complicated,
too convoluted to explain,
and, as for the younger sister
of the woman I dated
who was part of gathering
of like-minds
in a coffee shop
that I became temporarily
involved with
thanks to another woman
I met in the “American History”
section of a bookstore
where worked this best friend
of the cousin of the guy
I met way back
and had just run into
for the first time in years –
her name wasn’t Angela.
No, Angela was the lovely woman
the man is out walking with.
This is where my story
really begins.



BIO

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, River And South and The Alembic. Latest books, Bittersweet, Subject Matters, and Between Two Fires are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Rush, White Wall Review, and Flights.







no hallelujahs anywhere

by Allen Seward



I’m sorry to say that I
have no hallelujahs for you
and I haven’t had a single one
since
my high school days
those strange days

back then
in those days
like that

there were hallelujahs everywhere
you couldn’t step outside without
seeing one
or getting hit by one

you couldn’t back out of the driveway
without running one over

but that was way back then

in that strange past
when I was trained for just that
to see hallelujahs everywhere

but that was way back then

and I haven’t seen any since,

thank
God.



no more words



no more bit fingertips,
no more cut wrists.

if these rivers wish to be free
then I
will piss them out
and smile as I flush it all down the drain.

it is time for a great change.

this has done me no good
and frankly I can’t stand it.
I wish to put it all away
and never look at it again.

there you have it.

no more.

no more words. it is finished. kaput.
let the silence and empty space take me.
so be it.

no more fingertips. no more wrists.
no more rivers. no more words.



poking the happy side of life



ready yourself for the barrage
of stone
of glass
of arrow
of bullet
of knife,

ready-or-not, they do not care,

the order has come down
and you have been found guilty
or near-enough to be guilty,
adjacent, parallel,

it does not matter,

the balloon will pop
and no longer be a balloon
and spill everywhere
and not be cleaned up
and scraps will blow with the wind
and the rest will dry,

ready yourself,

you have been adjacent to meaning
for your entire life, parallel to it,
near-enough but not touching,
you have intersected with nothing,
and yet here it comes,

summer is over,

ready yourself.



complex



it has not been made clear and no one asked
so (technically) no one has told a lie
but the truth of the matter is that something is missing
that was once here but no one got a good look at it
or heard it make a sound so it cannot be identified
though it can be missed (the whole world felt it
at least for an instant) so we bowed ourselves to it
subjecting entirely and then we denied it
swearing up-and-down it did not exist (and never did)
until finally we resigned ourselves to accepting
that things gone stay gone and we
will never know absolutely everything there is to know
or even a fraction of it (at least that is
what I would like to say but if you’ve ever spoken to
another person then you know we are still clawing
at our flesh and killing each other over
interpretations of something we’ve never known).



BIO

Allen Seward is a poet from the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. His work has appeared in Scapegoat Review, Bitter Melon Review, and Chewers, among others. He currently resides in WV with his partner and five cats.

@AllenSeward1 on Twitter, @allenseward0 on Instagram 







The Day Begins When…

by Daniel Damiano



the bed is made,
            the shades are pulled up full mast,
                        the wind chimes are awakened
                                    by semi-conscious knuckles,
            the coffee is brewed,
the cat is fed,
            the birds on the fire escape have their seeds
and their iced-over water bowls
are doused with warmth,
            the showerhead spews
                        and the bathroom steams
and the coffee is sipped
            while the cat eats,
                        while the birds eat,
and the chimes have gone back
                                                to sleep.




Mother & Daughter on the R Train at 9:45pm on a Wednesday


They sit
side by side
blankly gazing
at the passing
stations
with the same
auburn eyes,
the same
pointed nose,
the same
chiseled cheekbones
and dimpled chin,
before the daughter
leans her
similarly oblong
head
against her mother’s
chest,
hears the same heartbeat,
then sits up
as their destination
approaches,
before they look at each other,
as if
by ritual;
the mother
seeing herself,
the daughter
seeing her mother.



Their Marriage Was a Pending Divorce


He would arrive
on occasion;
a cameo appearance
reminding us
that he still lived there;
even then I could tell
she was ignored,
as if we resided there in secret
to his other life.
There were no conversations
between them
that I can recall,
only exclamations,
and sometimes I looked
through the words
they spit at each other
and saw another child;
         a silhouette of myself,
with flailing limbs,
screaming for silence.



Signs of Aging


When
you begin to wonder
how old you were
when certain childhood
movies
came out,
or the embryonic
stage you were
at
during the Apollo 11
mission,
and if you were even a gleam
in anyone’s eye
when Armstrong
sauntered
onto the lunar surface
and stole Aldren’s
thunder.



BIO

Daniel Damiano is an Award-winning Playwright, Pushcart-nominated Poet, acclaimed Novelist and Actor based in Brooklyn, NY. He is the recent recipient of the 2024 David A. Einhorn Playwriting Prize, presented by Untitled Theater Company No. 61 in NYC. He has thus far published two books of poetry, 104 Days of the Pandemic (2021, fandango 4 Art House) and, most recently, The Concrete Jungle and the Surrounding Areas (2024, Bottlecap Press), along with three novels, The Woman in the Sun Hat (2021), Graphic Nature (2022) and, most recently, Advice from a Cat (2024), all from fandango 4 Art House. His acclaimed play Day of the Dog is published by Broadway Play Publishing. His poems have thus far been published in the MacGuffin, Four Tulips, Gyroscope Review, Philly Poetry Chapbook Review, Curlew Quarterly, Quagmire Magazine, Crooked Teeth Literary Magazine, Newtown Literary Journal, Cloudbank, New Voices Anthology and HotMetal Press.







Brushstrokes, Museum Piece

by Cleo Griffith


Neither the jade in the closed cabinet
nor the kimono on the wall caught his attention
but the word upon the side of the Chinese screen,
a lovely black brush-stroke word on the pale wood 
of the folding screen which was covered with scarlet fabric
and embroidered golden dragons of fearsome features,
none of which he noticed, so taken was he with the word.

Surely, he thought, something that beautiful
must be profound, must hold
one of the secrets of life within an ebony flourish.

No, he was told, it is only the name of the man
who made the screen. Disappointed, he left, wondering
why it should strike such a chord in him,
merely the name of the craftsman. Only the name
of the creator.



It’s been a long time since I’ve swung a machete


Had it been a box of candy,
a bag of seedless tangerines,
I might have taken a teeny taste,
at least a sample, before sending out
enquiries, but green coconuts?

Had it been a gift of strawberries
or other yummy produce from nearby
I might have made a shortcake
with only casual questions
regarding those responsible.

So I took a coconut in hand,
checked with neighbors
“had this carton been delivered
that was meant for them?” but
no one knew why anyone would leave
coconut juice still inside its original containers
on the porch of an elderly couple.

Had it been a gift of two strong men
to wash the windows, clean the gutters,
even clowns with balloons to entertain
would have pleased, we’re easy.

Had I been younger by a lot of years
I might have been tempted to take a whack
and see what the juice was all about
but it’s been a long time since I swung a machete
so I passed them off to the teenager next door.



Of Course Life is a Path of Metaphors


Sun slants in and lightens corners,
daffodils rise from winter’s chill,
flotsam of the flood refigures landscapes,
broken man learns to trust again.

Monday through the blindman’s eyes,
ruby sunrise the day after you have died,
smiles from those you never met,
storms slap-slash across imagined seas.

Mockingbird repeats in December,
bare soles interpret Summer’s heat,
inner child meets inner witch,
both weep.



Old Familiar


This is not a cute pet of a dragon,
no fluttery feminine eyelashes,
no gentle whispery breath,
this is the fire-breather of old,
the glassy-eyed, ravaged with fury,
green and gory dragon
aroused deep within that calm appearance.
It hates, it drools, it spits fire and nails,
lashes and slashes,
denigrates and insults,
beats down and tears up,
shatters and pulverizes,
eats out your insides,
becomes greener
with age,
dies never
               of
                    its envy.



BIO



Cleo Griffith has been widely published in such journals as Main Street Rag, Lothlorien and Straylight. She has been on the Editorial Board of the poetry quarterly, Song of the San Joaquin, since it began in 2003.







DD

by Emma Johnson-Rivard



Consider the universe contained
in a glass. This is a metaphor, a tool
worked on all levels, as the poets do.
The process creates an individual, aimed to
understand some shade of our reality. Something
beyond the self. I’ve been asked if I drink. It’s assumed
I drink. I come from a family of artists and alcoholics, the path
splintered. We didn’t mean to go so strange. This is the
paradox. I think about these things. The question remains.
Their nature assumed. Sobriety written in DNA to avoid
inevitability, or yet another metaphor. Actually, they’re
not. This is as literal as it gets but their nature assumes
an exception. The idea falls within. Don’t mistake the point.
I’m talking about a brink now, the looming, the heritage of
biology and nurture. A friend asked me. She already knew, but
I told her again. The telling is a powerful addition, repeated
time after time. What happened next was metaphor, too,
so to speak. A mirror inside both of us, our journey. We
know what we could be.



A Weak Heart


Do you ever feel anxious?

Science argues that every emotion,
any instrument, can be used
to great effect. The human body
makes this effortless. Allow me
to demonstrate. If you can’t,
then you must be deficient
somehow. This will be going
in your chart.

When feeling anxious, I have learned to begin
by focusing on my hands and the reality
of known threats rather the weight of my
weak heart. This is the lesson learned. You
wanted monsters and so I focus.
I grab the throat
I begin.



Sea Glass, or The Poet Reads Opinion Pieces


I have been bitten. A mouth angles,
focused on the crux. I don’t care for
a kiss these days. Nonetheless, we,

royal, dream of monsters as the waves crash
and break. The beach bleeds glass,
always shining upon our era. So it goes.

Suffer beautiful and stoic, please,
as the reels demand. Otherwise,
you might seem ungrateful.

Have you made a wish, my dear?
I collect them now, beloved
among my scars. I cannot name the
ending, this is beyond me. But

define power for me, please. I would
like to know how it goes. At the end,
we are enduring great pain, we

would like to know the cost
was worth the words.



BIO

Emma Johnson-Rivard is a doctoral student in fiction at the University of Cincinnati. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Coffin Bell, Red Flag Poetry, and others. She can be found at Bluesky at @blackcattales and at emmajohnson-rivard.com.







Walking the Dogs in the Morning

by Charles Grosel



The tug of leashes, the sting of the morning sun,
halos of spray sizzling on the speckled sidewalk, heat-heaved,
canting us toward each other as the recurring numbness
crackles up my legs, a deadness between feet and thigh,
between us, you willing to hold me up, me too tempted to let you.
I hand you the leather loop instead, careen to the stop sign, leaden,
unbalanced, grabbing hold of the metal post and stomping my legs back to life.
The prickle of feeling returns, the shadow of something else recedes
for now. Keep walking, I urge you, and you do, a quick glance back,
the dogs eagerly nosing the green blades of yucca lining the path.



Time’s Hard Lesson


When I was about eight, at the end of the summer we moved near
a new development in a small city known for its apple orchards. Our
southern colonial with its four pillars and faux black shutters was not
part of the development, technically, though built at the same time.
Our house sat between two of the original farmhouses whose families
had sold the orchards and the not-yet-completely bulldozed woods
surrounding them. Lanes and Trails and Circles had already been paved
in concrete, demarcated by their rounded curbs, but when we arrived,
only a few houses had been built, their green sod squares brightly
artificial against the churned-up earth. The streets emptied into woods.

Three prune trees lined our front yard, the fruit tasty when ripe, effective
projectiles when green or soft with rot. The two neighbors kept dozens
of apple trees in what remained of their yards. The man to the west
sprayed the trees for pests and sold the apples in baskets arranged neatly
on the lawn. The man to the east, whose land my father had bought to
build his dream house, let his apples go to worm. In his workshop he
kept a cider press he showed me how to use that fall. You dewormed
the apples with a pocketknife, passed them through a hand-cranked
grinder into a wooden bucket, then screw-pressed the mash to drain into
a plastic container and funneled the result into dusty moonshine jugs.
You could taste the golden scent of the apple spray in the afternoon sun.

I walked alone in what was left of the woods wearing rubber boots
against the mud, a temporary hermit, a pilgrim, a contemplative
shut into my head by the slurp and slosh of my steps, then, as winter
came, by the crackle of iced-over puddles and bulldozer tracks. I don’t
remember what I did on those walks. Walked. Thought about things.
I was not a junior botanist or geologist sorting rocks. I walked, my
breath hardening in my chest, the slap of branches on my arms. I was
there and not there. Not observing myself, exactly. Settling into myself.

For children everything will be as it is until they learn the hard lesson
of time. When the ice thawed into mud that spring, then dried enough to
hold the backhoes clawing out basements in the pegged-off lots, the split
level castles sprang up, their chimneys’ lining the streets, devouring
the woods that had likely earned the name only in my imagination.


So, You’re Dead


So, you’re dead. Have been for years, and I didn’t
even know it, which gives lie to what you
told me over and again, how we had
a connection, something about the soul,
you said, but it wasn’t the soul you were after,
and wouldn’t I have felt the thread snap?

So, you’re dead. What do you want me to say?
That I’ll miss you? That the “seduction,” as you
liked to call it, was on me because I
was privileged white and never learned no, that
I was thirsty for—something—but not that,
though you always claimed to know me better.

So, you’re dead. What do I call you, now? Dear
departed? Old friend? Mentor? Seducer?
Worse? We are running the train on names here
through a hole in the donut of memory,
when even now I’m not sure. The drugs? Or
is that another thing I invented?

So, you’re dead. And out of my life so long
you can’t put that on me, though back then
you tried to convince me that only my
touch could ease the migraines, that only I
stood between you and your father’s rusty
revolver. I must have believed you.

So, you’re dead. Where are the books
you promised me, the library in the attic
of your parents’ home, smooth pine boards
lining the walls, your early death held out
before me like a beacon or a goad.
Am I more to blame if I still want them?

So, you’re dead. But not so early. I’d say
you can’t hurt me now, but follow the trail
of words. I suppose I should thank you. What else
would I write about? You’re dead, though what
you did to me isn’t, yet, no matter
how many times I take a pen to it.



BIO

Charles Grosel is an editor, writer, and poet living in Arizona. He has published stories in Western Humanities Review, Fiction Southeast, Water-Stone, and The MacGuffin and poems in Nimrod, The Threepenny Review, Kestrel, Cream City Review, and Harpur Palate, among others. His chapbook of poems is The Sound of Rain Without Water.

See more at www.write4success.net







Honeycrisp Hand Grenade

by J. Scott Lewis



The one with the brown rotting bruise
circling a pinprick hole. That is where the fuse goes.
It’s where little flies feast, sucking
tongues against fermented flesh.

They are of no consequence,

easily dispersed with a wave of a hand.

I could cut it away, dig into clean ivory tissue
remove the carbuncle from the core
find out how far the fuse descends below the crust
but what good would that do?

Once the fuse is lit there is no going back.

You cannot disarm what wants to explode.

Trapping a fly between my teeth,
I tear into foul flesh, softness oozing
into gums, sour rancid shape swirling
across my tongue like mud gliding downhill.

Red flak explodes against my tongue

shattering reverie into a million bites.



Still Life


Mosquito parades along my wall,
licking blue gray paint, high
step strutting peering into cracks.
It pauses on a grease stain that
resembles abraham lincoln opening a
can of sardines. I don’t remember
how it got there; I just recall that
it is old. Mosquito (pretend
art critic) ponders the portrait,
nods approval. I am sure his
review will create quite a buzz.

In no mood for art
I smash it against the
sardine can, framing it
against the key
adding its print to
my museum of melancholy.



BIO

J. Scott Lewis earned a B.A. in English from Bethany College, WV. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in Sociology from Bowling Green State University. He is the author of a textbook as well as numerous academic papers and book chapters. His creative writing has been published in Poetalk, The Harbinger, and the Eastern PA Poetry Review. He is a winner of the Writer’s Garret Common Language Project. His poem “Egret” is on display at the Detroit Lakes, MN, Poetry Walk from June through September 2025. He lives with his family in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Photo by Graham Lewis Photography







ENVY

by Alexandra Disabella



Vines are persuasion –
the way they invade,
envelope limbs,
extremities locked
in awkward embrace,
coiling around the warmest parts
possessing pulsating stalks,
rudimentary cotyledon
stifling cordate leaves,
deoxygenated,
infested by mere weed.



A Stone’s Throw from County Jail


The only time my aunt came to visit
was when uncle Mike was thrown in County Jail.
            “He didn’t do it”
                        she said.
But we knew otherwise …
having a penchant for bending boundaries
AND as runt of the dysfunctional bunch
we knew his tendency to take what was not offered
would resurface

like the way the onions from the corner store at the end of the block
marinated the sidewalks and hanging planters
so that with each blowing breeze and insufferable heat
the odor would bake,
ferment.

Uncle Mike was like that, too –
digging his way back into our lives
lingering –
never trying to show up on purpose.

Petty theft, I guess, was his way in
to be as close as stone walls,
barbed wire,
and cuffs would allow.

When the screams would lift through my open window at night,
I’d often try to pick out his voice –
he sounded like suspicion and the pull of a cigarette
breathy,
cautious,
capable of convincing me to set him free.

But mom knew the pattern
the gentle way in which weasels inch into gaping holes,
never self-aware enough to know
they didn’t need saving.



If Raskolnikov was a 16-year-old Girl


It wasn’t my fault.
            She wouldn’t give me what I wanted –
                        20 rubles for mother’s gold cross
                        I needed money,
                        quick
                        no time to invest
                        sweat
                        tears
                        blood …
There was so much blood
            dripping from the temple and slight dip of the frown,
                        falling
            in         and      out of wrinkles
                                                            as the red sludge pooled on worn brown wood.

Shit, shit shit …
Chipped black nails rested over the soft flesh at the base of the jaw

no pulse.

Shit, shit shit …
Scuffed trainers squeaking back and forth,
tendrils knotted,
framing frantic eyes
searching for the way out.

Footsteps mirroring the sound of her pounding chest
echoing the thwack of the bat
as it cracked against a crepe paper covered skull.

She hadn’t even intended it –
the deft way her hand wrapped around the handle
and swung with precision.

She hadn’t even thought to cause harm
until the shopkeeper’s derisive sneer
hung above the left incisor.

I need to get the hell out of here.
Grabbing the bat,
wrapping it inside the left panel of her sweater,
turning toward the slightly ajar door

huuuhh!
                                    Pocketbook thudding to the ground
hands pressed into aged cheeks
as screams rippled down frail frame

thwack

Thud

Boom!
The lock clicked into place,
muted steps raced down the hall
as another red river ran to fill
the bloody pool.



BIO

Alexandra Disabella is an educator and writer based in Pennsylvania. After recently completing her MFA from Wilkes University, she has spent time drafting poetry, memoir, and fiction. An avid baker, she spends countless hours in the kitchen developing new recipes. When she isn’t lesson planning, writing, or baking, she spends time with her husband, cat, and two dogs. Find her at https://www.alexandradisabella.com/







Small Time

by Chuck Rybak



Come morning      you play in the ocean with a child
speaking in waves through the waves
the undertow pulls on the limbs of generations
asks you to come out further      closer to the message

The present collapses under the weight
of nothing      our species wilts
beneath the specter of our conclusion      we order
from Amazon just to have something to look forward to

We must be the shade for the trees
build our ribs into bird nests and lairs
concentrate on slowing ourselves into ice
there’s no time like the past

The world shrinking so fast      small lifetime
with no connection to a star outside chronology
our own yards reveal new trees
unnoticed      like the snow that never came

Perhaps an estuary will grant you permission to look closely
with only your skin      at life unrivaled
living equations of origin and future
each number in its place and without voice

The stump in the yard is still wet
roots sending water to a ringed altar
the accumulated years
still spelling out what we cannot read



Invasive


She says almost nothing on this far island
is native      nearly every species invasive
this      you have to work at

You have to bring the body
as I have      across the ocean’s horizon
Nothing can just blow here on the wind
Nothing came to aid those already at home      the indigenous
The exotic will come      inexorable      the exotic will leave

What was home is a museum
What was home is thirty species of palm
on a dead poet’s property      seeded from his dead wife’s shed
Maybe here off the main road in a town
that sounds like a poem      Haiku, Hawaii
is where native lives

I believe my knowledge makes me welcome here
different from the tourists
who come from home
invasive species in print shirts
who see everything as the same kind of pretty



Clichés to End the Lies


A chip off the old lie.
Kill two birds with one lie.

This little liar went to market,
This little liar stayed home.

I took the lie less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.

The third time is a lie.
It’s just a hop, skip, and a lie.

This little liar had roast beef,
This little liar had none.

Good things come to those who lie.
The art of lying isn’t hard to master.

The early bird catches the lie.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the lies
Like a patient etherized upon a table.

And this little liar went wee wee wee all the way home.



BIO

Chuck Rybak lives in Wisconsin and is a Professor of English, Writing, and Humanities at the University of Wisconsin—Green Bay, where he coordinates their prison education initiative. He is the author of two chapbooks and two full-length collections of poetry. Chuck also writes on Substack as The Declining Academic.







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