You think you see it
And it is there.
But life plays tricks.

The vision you seek
Does not appear
Here or anywhere.

Tell yourself
“There is nothing.”
Nothing is there.
 

Eric Beidel has written hundreds of poems, stories, and essays he kept private until now. He has worked as a reporter, night janitor, editor-for-hire, speechwriter, and bureaucrat. He still uses pencils and the hand-me-down typewriter he got when he was 12. A native Midwesterner, Eric now lives in the shadow of the Santa Catalina Mountains in Tucson, Arizona, where he watches baseball and sunsets.

You cast out a line on an empty green pond,
or was it a taut cord across
the gorge of spurious fancy,
or wires flooded with every word
except the ones you need?

They’ll sway no doubt in patience
waiting for the bite, the scramble,
the comfort they might give old men
on a second gin and tonic
in empty afternoons.

You cast out a line to see what would bite
but the bait was too late
to hook the catch of memories.
So you return to meditating,
to plumbing desire.

Sitting on this bank, smelling this stream,
where a floodtide once robbed
the meadow down ways of virtue—
the meadow where you once lay,
the place where you once prayed.

G Naz attended Yale Drama School and NYU School of Business. He tried to be useful. Still trying.

“What do you think of Kurt Cobain?” I ask.

Jerry stuffs his mouth with pancakes.

“Why do you ask?”

I pick up my empty glass and shake it in the air.

“I think he might be immortal.”

“That’s stupid,”—Jerry talks with his mouth full—“like, he didn’t die or something?”

I reply, “Not exactly,” still shaking my glass. When I see the waitress crossing the diner towards us, I repeat, “Not exactly.”

“They say Courtney did it. And you know what he was listening to? On his Walkman.”

“Can I get more—thanks.”

“REM.”

“What song?”

“I don’t remember. What a band. . . .”

Jerry then asks for more pancake, more syrup, before turning back to me.

“Wait, why did you ask again?”

“I’ve been thinking about immortality,” I say. “I’ve been thinking about nirvana.”

Author, poet, translator, and doctoral student in Spanish Creative Writing at the University of Houston. Iván Brave lives in his hometown of Houston, Texas, with his wife and son. His vision is to see the next generation of Houstonians create, read more, and thrive. Humor, love, and the humanities are the themes closest to his heart.

Moments hand picked on high
Plopped like marbles sunken deep
Bespeckled with reflections of honey moments

Each tear torn from a cloud unaffected by their loss
They glide away to their places,
Designated to remain afar in the water below.

In desperate attempts to reach once more,
They fight, hurling themselves up towards her once again.
Billowing and thinning in a frantic pirouette
First they pull and then they reach until
Collapsing exhausted but elated
For the brief moments they without legs stood closer to their beloved.

As my sorrows fade
Contentedly I sit in the shade
And think how nice it is
To enjoy all this delicious lemonade
That I alone bravely made
With some giant lemons

Sliced with my own pains sharp blade
Sweetened with hard-earned lessons
Water from the fountain of my youth
Tastes like wisdom, sparkles like truth

I want no more lemons
But what I want is moot
If I get more lemons anyway
Lemonade recipe mastered
I will most certainly be okay.

Shreya works in the tech industry and is a 1st generation immigrant from India. She used to be a child poet once upon a time but stopped writing for decades until one fine day in 2020, she started writing poems again! She writes to process her feelings and to celebrate the highs, lows, and surprises of everyday life. It brings her much joy. She lives in South Philadelphia.

coffee air woke me
I had been there
before

the memories hung
full and rich
in the air

each time before
Coalescing
as one

Shimmering
In the still-dark
morning

as my feet
drew me
downstairs

to pour a cup of hope
and take the first sip
of this new day

Jennifer Gurney lives in Colorado where she teaches, paints, writes and hikes. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals, including The Rue Scribe, The Ravens Perch, HaikUniverse, Haiku Corner, Cold Moon Journal, Scarlet Dragonfly and The Haiku Foundation.

Does everyone have to look down on someone else? Why are the slightest differences seized upon negatively? Must there be a worldwide pecking order?

Rattus: I’m never eating in that place again.

Ed: Why not?

Rattus: I can’t believe who else was there.

Ed: You mean, in the dumpster?

When it comes to putdowns, rats are no different from anyone else. And isn’t this a world of rats? There are 7 billion of them, a number equal to that of human beings. Ed and Rattus were two of the 7 billion. They were in a dead-end alley northeast of Philadelphia. By a dumpster.

Rattus: Of course, I mean in the dumpster. Do you think I’m talking about that pawnshop over there? I wouldn’t be caught dead in that place.

Ed: I don’t want to be caught dead in any place. But what’s with the dumpster?

Rattus: Sewer rats.

Ed and Rattus were two alley rats and, at times, greasy-kitchen rats. They were perfectly adapted to Philadelphia.

Ed: Sewer rats?

Rattus: I’m not kidding. I’m sure that’s what they were.

Ed: The wet sewer? And sewer rats? That’s disgusting.

Rattus: Exactly.

David Sydney is a physician from Pennsylvania. He writes fiction in and out of the EHR (Electronic Health Record).

Owls shriek
and the sky fades,
youth gives way
to the tightened temples of age
and the dim mystery of willows stirred
by the clash of night and day.

All that’s happening
feels as if it’s coming back to me,
wringing with wind,
dressed in the costume of shadows.
alerting me to your voice
and the sound of errant tapdancing.

Sun clamps its vizor shut.
Surface thoughts recline,
Moonlight slips inside closed eyes.
amaranths bloom,
sleep enfolds them
deeper down,
beyond death,
into blood sparkling.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, California Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Isotrope Literary Journal, Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad.

The wind dies, and the forest’s ragged sprawl
rights itself in a spell of calm. No sound
louder than dwindling dew’s snail-noiseless crawl,
than button-heavy acorns hitting ground.

A nuthatch prying pleats of oak bark loose
peppers my crackling quilt. Dreamy, I waken
as heaped in leaves as Rip Van Winkle, whose
rags bore the weight of twenty autumns shaken.

As I browse a folded paperback, a herd of
gray-bellied thought-clouds jostle, building volt
in a mind too blank blue to bear one word of…
—crack! One charged line ejects a soundless bolt!

My brain reels, fused and smoking! Seared with wonder,
I rise, electrified, and feel the thunder.

Carey Jobe is a retired attorney who most recently worked as a federal administrative law judge. Prior to starting his legal career, he was a classical student specializing in Latin and Greek literature. He served in the army for three years in Germany and has traveled widely. He attributes his love for writing poetry to drinking from the Castalian Spring at Delphi during a trip to Greece.

His name was Trotsky.
He landed on
the edge of my dinner plate,
figured whatever was mine
was also his.
I stabbed him in the back
with a toothpick.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, California Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Isotrope Literary Journal, Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad.