My world is drunk
With memory

But behind
The dank green
Of its fallen leaves

The heart always sobers

With no roof up above
And no love down below
These thoughts are but stars
To leave to their wheel

Walking onwards alone
I laugh at nothing

Eternity circles

Cleave yonder from blue

J H Martin is from London, England but has no fixed abode. His writing has appeared in a number of places in Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Website: acoatforamonkey.wordpress.com

Trudging home on a Friday, he calls
to report on his day at the office.

He walks forty-five minutes
to work rather than ride the metro.

From his desk by the president’s
glassed-in office, he anticipates praise

for organizing the entire marketing
closet and contemplates his résumé.

He chronicles a trip to Capitol Hill,
to deliver newly published books,

observes grapes cost $2.50 a pound
at the D.C. Whole Foods,

wears the same three outfits
out of his carry-on suitcase.

He realizes microwave meals, a banana
and granola bar can only do so much.

His haircut shines like the full moon
over the capitol. If funds permit,

he will visit the animals at the zoo,
with a girl he met in the rotunda.

He slogs to his sublease in weather
And looks forward to a frozen burrito.

His housemates are on vacation to Italy.
The bathroom, at least, is his for a week.

When she is not at Eastern Kentucky University, helping students write and produce plays, do stand-up, and edit their journal, Gaby Bedetti hikes, takes photos, and sings in a choir. Though Ringling Bros. is gone, she has stepped into Cirque du Soleil’s cabinet of curiosities and joined their Corteo parade.

Maa knows
the world is soundless
and noise. She mouths
sutras while brother and bhabhi
laugh like spring hatchlings, as Father’s
name fogs the back window.
My husband’s eyes swing,
like a directionless wind,
between us. I cannot answer
his wordless question.
I perseverate on the plastic
a/c vent hanging limp from
the limo’s ceiling,
swinging at the will
of every turn.
We balance Father’s
“18×24” gently smiling
semi-glossed portrait
framed in Mahogany.
Each of our hands
are knowing, yet unsteady.
We allow the other
the comfort of a limbless cry
but will not allow
the wood to crack.
On our procession to the funeral,
pious statues of weeping
cherry blossoms and crabapples
bury branched hands in reverence.
There are those of us
who still pray,
like Maa.

Preeti Shah serves as Associate Director of Communications for the online magazine, YJPerspectives. She is a finalist for the Fall 2019 Brooklyn Poets Fellowship. She has received her B.A. in Fine Arts, specializing in Music. Currently she rehabs the geriatric population through physical therapy. Preeti resides in Queens, NY.

When everything is quiet
except for the soft scrape and shuffle
of Thursday’s quizzes,
I wonder if
somewhere
on a distant planet,
across eons
sprinkled with stars
like so many decorated cupcakes,
perhaps
another teacher
is also finishing her corrections
past midnight—
or whatever they call
this soggy-boned hour of reckoning.

Molly Lynde is originally from Sonoma County, California. She teaches modern and medieval French in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and serves as editor-in-chief of Transference, a literary journal featuring poetry in translation (https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/transference/).

Bridge to infinity.
You point straight up, but
you are content to exist on the edge.
Lovers write their graffiti on you,
a living talisman of their wager
that love will last.

Molly Lynde is originally from Sonoma County, California. She teaches modern and medieval French in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and serves as editor-in-chief of Transference, a literary journal featuring poetry in translation (https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/transference/).

A park bench,
Rusted with bad weather,
It must have ended somewhere.
Full pine tree
Young
Tender look;
Blue bike on a kickstand
Sprinkled with sand.
Stacks of books,
Scattered old photos
And the door from before
They must have ended somewhere.
Yesterday’s sun is gone
Along with energy
And the road that was fresh by the fence
Ended with cracks and rubble
With words left unspoken

Stephen Cecchini is an MSA student at Loyola University Chicago. During his free time, he likes to write in his imagery journal for experimentation purposes. He is also an editorial staff member at Diminuendo & Cadence – Loyola’s premier student-run literary magazine, published bi-annually.

What is this sound
That breaks me
But I listen still
Inside my wrists
Can it be forgotten
Like the slamming door
On my last breath
Or do I succumb
To its trickery

Is it lost
Without end
Or without death
Do I train my ear
To read the spell
Or lay my hand in the sky
And listen like braille

Even pain has a sound
Though it shakes
Turns on its own kind
Deep and shuttering
And worn like a dog

When I was young
I had depth of purpose
Now my hands are stiff tired
No tuning to my bones
I can’t reach the octave
Fingers twist
Darkness reverberates

Daniel Haskin is a Buffalo NY based poet, writer, musician, visual artist, and illustrator. His chapbooks of poetry include “Amnesia”, “Past Life Invisible”, “The Shallow Sea”, and his newly published work “Picture Book: Love, Death Time, and Assorted Ekphrasis”. He has also been published in various newspapers, and national journals.

The beauty of life are trees
That turn as sleepy as death
Knocking on hungry doors
Creaking amongst the clouds
That rise above the weather

They sing but refuse to listen
To the turnings of the clock
Bouncing like swift shrapnel
Through rains stream and flow
Longing for Fall’s sparrowed skin

Their leaves roll and crackle
Like a mirage of slivered ghosts
That die on weary windshields
While the Autumn song simmers
Broiling in the red starry night

Daniel Haskin is a Buffalo NY based poet, writer, musician, visual artist, and illustrator. His chapbooks of poetry include “Amnesia”, “Past Life Invisible”, “The Shallow Sea”, and his newly published work “Picture Book: Love, Death Time, and Assorted Ekphrasis”. He has also been published in various newspapers, and national journals.

a raindrop

caught in the upturned collar
of the trench coat worn
by a thin man walking
the midnight beat
in a detective novel

needle-sharp
not poisoned but
chilling all the same
to the lonely lonely bone

Suzanne Verrall lives in Adelaide, Australia. To read more of her work go to www.suzanneverrall.com.

The sky comes down
To the bare edge of rock

Profane and atheist. And all around
Filled with weather,

Soaring clouds, and cool breezes.
At the verge of a U-shaped canyon,
A stone-amphitheater

Sheer, sculpted cliffs
From a curved ridge of debris,

Towering over a broad lumbered valley And miscellany of boulders.

In the magic of bracken and grass, Hidden in the woods dense and dark,

Ponderosa, Lodgepole pines, and Douglas fir,
Dead-wood and downed-timber,

Tree-hanging lichen flourishes.
Tangled, elongated masses
Of green threads,

Long drapes—in yellow to ochre
Wrought from coyote hair,

Signify the burial-ground
In a sanctuary of bones For the first people.

Whirlwinds follow gusty squalls, Funnel in thunderstorms And fire from lightning strikes.
The resulting conflagration
Burns until lamenting ends

—so, the dead may sleep undisturbed—

As winter storms
And summer droughts
Wash over the forest like a sea,

And the salmon return To spawn at Mono Hot-Springs.

Stephen Barile, a Fresno, California native, was educated in the public schools, and attended Fresno City College, (AA) Fresno Pacific University, (BA), and California State University, Fresno (MFA). He is the former chairman of the William Saroyan Society, and a long-time member of the Fresno Poet’s Association. Mr. Barile taught writing at Madera Center Community College, lives and writes in Fresno. His poems have been published extensively, including The Heartland Review, Rio Grande Review, The Packinghouse Review, Undercurrents, The Broad River Review, The San Joaquin Review, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Beginnings, Pharos, and Flies, Cockroaches, and Poets.