Given the choice
of never needing to
eat, with the resultant
suffering no greater
than mild curiosity,
boredom, or a slight
distaste as one watched
the others going through
the motions of feeding
the beast that, once roused
through sensual pleasure
will not lie down until
death, I would have to think
long and hard. But, oh!—
how the aroma of garlic
and onions sizzling in butter
makes the whole house sing!

Matt Dennison is the author of Kind Surgery, from Urtica Press (Fr.) His work has appeared in Rattle, Bayou Magazine, Redivider, Natural Bridge, The Spoon River Poetry Review and Cider Press Review, among others. He has also made short films with Michael Dickes, Swoon, Marie Craven and Jutta Pryor.

Cylindrical drinking vessels shout
indignation over brown ringed stains.
A memory of warmed hands,
a sip of rich lava down a yawning mouth.
Generous helpings scraped noisily
passed from smallest graceful hand,
clumsy as a fresh hatchling,
to the firm grasp of weathered experience.
Left to soak after a morning meal,
frenzied stacks of plates argue
the latest political maneuverings.
Small forks whine in distress,
soothed by exhausted dinner forks
longing for the solace of a frothy pool.
Gossiping spoons whisper of secrets
gathered at the mouths of matriarchs,
dispatched with unsolicited advice.
Pots and pans sullenly soak,
desperate for the family vacation.
Pruning hands bring blissful exfoliation,
bemoan the endless accumulation.
Fluttering sighs hover over neatly
stacked pristine cupboards, shrouded
in anticipation of the next meal.

Alexandra Chapa-Kunz is a graduate student at CSU Bakersfield working toward a teaching credential and Masters in English. She lives in Bakersfield with her son and their spoiled pit-bull named after a velociraptor. She is an avid reader and loves to find new and upcoming authors to support with her reading habits. Her “to be read” pile is a constant evolving mountain she aims to conquer.

Three years ago,
I made a disastrous,
ill-fated mistake;
I planted two tomato seeds.

Little did I know,
those two seeds made a promise,
or perhaps a pact,
to carry out a cruel legacy upon my garden.

The following year,
I planted bell peppers.
They never saw the light of day –
the tomatoes had survived the winter and the frost.

Their monarchy established,
they choked out sprouts before they could bloom;
their army of vines
forced strawberries to surrender.

Now,
they’ve claimed divine right to the sun,
any plant that suggests they share
shrivels and fades in the shade.

I know that once I’m buried deep under,
looking up at my radishes from below,
those tyrants will continue to have their way,
and they will make sure the radishes rot with me.

Cora Hyatt is a poet, student, and Indiana transplant presently living in Portland, Oregon. If delivering flowers, send red carnations.

About suffering they were never wrong,
those poets of old, masters
of the quill. How intensely they understood
the human condition towards conformity,
hexameters, spondee after dactyl, anceps to wrap up the mind
neatly. Sphragis for a ribbon tied round. We still love praising
ourselves.
And how much they thought of
women, it seems, with distorted faces towards empty seas,
deserted shores and wretched kin. Lion-hearted and spouted
from Scylla and Charybdis and howling for pity,
miserere nobis was their cry, if you could manage to feel any
pity for an artificial plurality. Women were not rules,
they were the exception, the bastardised, the barbarianised,
othered even still on a funeral pyre.
Burning burning burning burning.
Betray a brother and you shall have no fleece to keep you warm.
Beating of breasts and ripping of hair, a mother’s cry can set a whole town
alight. It can end a whole Book of strife.
Masters know how to observe art. A Bacchant Brawl.
Poets can pile on detail, loosening of dress, fleck in cheek, gloss of eye, but they cannot forget
that women must sacrifice, must suffer. And we must feel for them, when no one else
does — immemor are those men, mindful are we.
You, you! they can cry, perfide! in desperation, rage, sorrow, in letters, laments, accusations, but
recusatio and rhetoric will not help them,
when their girlish feet get stuck in the sand.

Kiana Rezakhanlou is an Upper 6 student from London, hoping to embark on the next stage of her academic journey at Oxford University, come October, whether by Zoom or amidst the colleges themselves. She is interested in all things linguistic, literary, classical and philological, and can often be found waxing lyrical about the poets Goethe or Ovid, sometimes within one sentence of each other.

For Val Healey

Val sees me in the garden
and dangling her rubber snake
Mr.Squiggles, in her gnarled hands
asks me for the twenty second time
in the four years that we’ve been neighbours
if I am afraid of snakes
and I tell her that I most certainly am
even the fake ones creep me out
like her Mr.Squiggles here

and then I know it’s coming –
I’m listening to her story again
which I now know scene for scene
but always make it a point
to look interested
like I’m hearing it for the very first time –
that story of Val aged eight
somewhere up in the Blue Mountains
picking vanilla lilies in the summer
when an irate tiger snake
lunges for her heel in the bushes

Val being nimble-footed and badass
swiftly snatches it by its tail
lassoes it around in the air
and flings it far into the undergrowth
and the snake is briefly cock-eyed
scramble-brained and nauseous
like its Biblical predecessor
on the day it was caught mischief-making
messing around in Eden
and eight year old Val stands arms akimbo
watching the critter slither away
more draconian in scare tactics
than good ol’ God of the Old Testament
then blowing me a kiss
laughs and wiggles Mr.Squiggles
and ambles back to her unit.

Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is a Sydney artist, poet, and pianist, of Indian heritage. She holds a Masters in English and is a member of Sydney’s North Shore Poetry Project and Authora Australis. Her recent poems have been published in several print and online literary journals and anthologies. She likes to write about everyday experiences. Her superpower is making people laugh. She has a terrible weakness for chocolate, and is obsessed with painting magpies. www.poetry.oormila.com

    (after Georges Mathieu’s Le Duc Charles épouse la Duchesse de Bourgogne)

now a hawk’s eye, now a
falcon’s nest:

nine royal days, blue
and bold in

union, palm read
swirls begun in

urgent defense
against a king’s

own challenge
more brash than

bridled, more swap
(land/point/power)

than sweeping
anyone anywhere

meeting in the
middle (her) stooping

for a kiss and still
geography, with

its elbowed strokes
on his side, hers

feather-tipped
and fading

they rise, reveal:
they reel and rise

Meryl McQueen is a global nomad, space science geek and tree-hugging polyglot with a PhD in linguistics. She believes in creative community solutions to intractable problems, civic social responsibility, and systematic acts of kindness.

calypso, kaiso, ringbang, soca

merge horns into morning cock crows
tingle pan, pound bass

wuk up your waistline
in a giggle first, then

a sweaty laugh

Lynda V. E. Crawford is a poet who has lived in the USA longer than her childhood home Barbados, a fact that sways and punctuates her writing. She’s let go of journalism, copywriting, website management, and email marketing. Poetry won’t let go of her.

when the word is spoken
it files the teeth to a sharp edge
butters the tongue
like morning news
almost always not as sweet
looks at you with doe eyes
a fawn in your arms
until it kicks its way free
an uninvited guest that won’t leave
until it has drained you of all you can say
all that you can imagine is out there
on the table like lines of coke that must
be snorted
all we can do is breathe deep and smell
the rotted with the too sweet
and listen to the drone in the ear
until it has finished speaking

Kevin lives in South Shore Kentucky. His poems have been found at The Lakes, Appalachian Heritage, Praxis magazine, Rockvale Review, The Rye Whiskey Review, Birmingham Arts Journal, Plainsongs ad Coe Review.
He has had recent work published in Dragon Poet Review, Pangolin Review, Constellations and Inkwell Journal and work forthcoming in The Bookends Review and Heartwood Literary Review. Kevin was a finalist for the Mahogany Red Lit Prize.
His work in “Rubicon: Words and art inspired by Oscar Wildes De Profundis” was nominated for a Pushcart prize.

My son liked sea chanties
And my daughter liked Neil Young’s Harvest album
And Ennio Morricone.
They both liked Tom Waits.
In the limited time I had with them
I crammed all the learning about the finer things
That I could.

Someday in the future their significant others will ask them about me
And they’ll hear a song off of Bob Dylan’s Desire in their heads
Before they respond.

Whatever they say about me,
They better say I taught them well.

John Tustin is currently suffering in exile on the island of Elba but hopes to return to you soon. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.

I know everyone hates the bradford pear
but there’s a cluster of them blooming
on the road to work
and when I saw them
for the first time this morning
I praised God
because when the bradford pear dies
it does so in a brilliant fire of red and orange
that flails madly
in the september wind
before, with a softness,
it stops breathing
and stands crucified for months
offering only sticks and debris for kindling
until one day you wake up
to the most pungent odor
as the white flowers open to the sun
which by Easter will be replaced with
plumes of green, thick green
and death overcome

Matthew Tyson is an English teacher, avid hiker, and family man from Alabama.