A descendant of a lengthy lineage of simple creatures
So it’s no surprise I’ve made waves in their
Lives of smooth sailing and waist-deep wading while I
Dove to depths far over my head
I called to the preacher as he bellowed from his pulpit
Built of chestnut oak and ego and I
Softly but mightily asked questions which
Elicited nervous laughter from the congregation who had
Either never pondered such a whim, or they had
But never dared to ask it aloud
And when it came time to dance, I was out of step on the stage
I was a colonial girl frolicking about on the prairie like
The one in those books I wasn’t supposed to be reading yet and I
Threw my chin up to the sun and my arms out like the wings of the newly hatched and I simply
Flowed
Off beat but in presence
I wiped the lipstick from my mouth and painted over my skin
The face of a creature unseen
By the rest of them, anyways
Many nights, I called on Mama and Daddy to come and
Listen, that they might hear it, too
The wild world beyond the walls of our little house on the hill
Calling on me to come and join it so that I could
Run free
But they heard only my quickening breath, racing heart
Kissed my cheek and promised me that monsters aren’t real and that’s how I
Knew that only I could grasp the dialect in which Mother Earth spoke
So when the blue ridge beckoned to me from its highest peak
Yearning for me to return home so the stars could sing to me
Their holiest teachings, their humble praises
I kept their secrets safe with me

Abby Jordan is a young mother, aspiring writer, and recovering addict from South Carolina. Lover of all things magical, she teaches yoga and studies the stars because it allows her to find the sacred in the small things.

I’m writing this down only to remember
TFW
Showering doesn’t matter,
I wear sweat and coffee breath and leave my scalp oily.
Don’t need to get a run in.
My husband’s dillying at the farmer’s market doesn’t annoy me – I could debate over cherry tomatoes for days.
Sex is uncomplicated and not guilty.
Company comes over and I’m proud of our messy home–proud of exactly who we are with our folding chairs and sections of newspaper scattered on the crooked rug.
I’m not constantly hungry.
The volume of the music is just right.
I am home.
I know how my Dad must have felt, when he gave up his day job to start writing.
            Like something had been unlocked, or flooded with light.

Liz Stork is a civil rights lawyer and writer who lives in Brooklyn. She likes writing about the heavy stuff because it makes it easier to carry.

The River

The clear stream carried the morning sunlight to the bend
where it disappeared. I waded in and cast my line
to the shallows of the opposite bank, hoping to hook Walleye or Bass.
After an hour or two of casting and reeling, catching nothing but time,
I was ready to close my tackle box and call it a day,
when, from out of nowhere, a dragonfly landed on the tip of my rod.
Perched in a six-legged grip, it was a blue bloom at the end of a long stem.
The wings, glinting in sun, translucent, thin as a whisper, did not move,
resembling a biplane grounded. Its eyes looked like dark observatories.
Then, as quick as a blue-tipped match stuck to life,
the dragonfly lifted, hovering for a moment,
before disappearing into light, leaving me standing there,
the first catch of the day, shimmering in water.

Desert Menagerie

Hummingbirds are created when you blow out the flame
of a blue-headed match.
Blue jays come to life after a jazz saxophone riffs a solo.
Grackles are black bishops that have risen
from chess boards and flown away.
Tarantulas are born from the char of piñon trees
struck by lightning.
Lizards are desert hailstones that have melted and merged with sand.
A photographer left rolls of negatives in a dilating solution
and never returned to his house; after decades,
they developed into skunks.
Ravens took shape when the first question was asked.
Scorpions are made from rapiers clashing.
Bears and bees have the same mother, the honeyed sounds
of children laughing.
Some spiders enter existence when an asterisk is written,
others from shooting stars.
Coyotes are court jesters made by moonlight.
Any time there is a traffic jam, horned toads come into being.
Before there were petroglyphs, there were no foxes.
Hawks hatch from shafts of heat whenever ships unfurl their sails,
as sailors strike blue-headed matches to light their lanterns.

Keith Polette has returned to writing poetry after spending years in prose, and has been fortunate to have had his poetry published in both print and online journals. He currently lives and writes in El Paso, Texas.

Eli Schoppe-Fischer is an 18 year old male from Houston, Texas. This specific poem was written for a poetry competition where the topic was “Peace.”

Peace in my mind

Fine
Fine is a feeling I find myself feeling most of the time
But sometimes it leaves and with it, it takes my inner peace of mind
But I don’t want peace all the time
I just want to control what is mine
But sometimes I cant control who I am and that is not fine

It’s hard to deal with me
It’s hard to make you see
It’s hard to tell you, but please, please don’t leave me be

Sometimes my demons have a feast
A feast of my inner peace
A feast to tear me down
A feast to show me how

Unimportant I am

But I can’t let them win
I can’t let them in
I can’t let them feast
Feast on my inner peace

I crave that feeling of fine
I crave control of my mind
I want to be who I am
But I’m never sure if I can
Then finally

Peace

Let this feeling never cease
Let my thoughts of it increase
Only at that time will I feel fine
Only then will I have

Peace in my mind

Erin Floyd lives in Nashville, Tennessee and serves as a development editor of children’s curriculum and resources for a local publisher. In her free time, she enjoys journaling, taking walks, and trying new coffee shops.

take up space

You stumbled into your debut
An honest introduction
A prologue to your own imperfections
But remember
We journey from womb to worth
And my god are you worthy
So worthy
The world chose to make space just for you

Ben Boegehold lives in Portland, Maine, with his wife and dog. When he is not teaching high school English, he can be found in his backyard starting endless projects, or walking in the woods.

A Cure

My father tells me about the sunlight, measures
diminishment in vernal equivalent. When autumn

days grow raw and short, we plant before the frost.
In spring we count the shoots poking through the straw.

At solstice, we cut off the pungent green stalks.
Summer tilts toward fall. Now, a sharp sweetness

sparks a fire. Dull tines pierce papery skin.
Yellow leaves, brown hardneck, white roots –

I plunge my turning fork deeper into the clay,
uprooting purple bulbs below. The sweetness

Again – different from the thorny caned raspberries
and the viny peas of July. It lingers long after

I’ve gathered the bulbs in bunches of five
to dry and cure from the wooden rafters.

Erratics

An osprey shimmers above
chiselled granite and spruce.
Her piping cries echo
off tourmaline waves.
Over mountains a white sun
glinting on glacial castaways.
White shells on rocks below.
Rockweed reanimates.

Water recedes.
Water returns.

            Water caresses
            round stones by the
            shore – restless
            embrace of goodbye
            and hello.

Kamayani Sharma is a media history researcher and writer on visual culture. She lives in New Delhi and writes most of her poetry in the metro.

Knowing People

One of the profound pleasures of reading
is the odd recollection of someone
whom you vaguely know in a distant
two-streets-down-neighbourly way,
as a fuzzy figure with a random
attribute or two. It could be something
as bland as what they studied in college
or what happened to their marriage.
Or it could be
some incredibly accurate detail
about their private life
like what they were eating on the night they died
or what the afternoon sunlight looked like
lancing through their bedroom pane
and fanning out by the window
into a dust-filled geometric design
a shade lighter than the wall.
And the completely comfortable realisation,
a second later, that this acquaintance
is a fictional character.

Marilyn Humbert lives in Sydney NSW Australia, she has a connection with the land from her father and often writes poems about her childhood experiences. Marilyn’s tanka and haiku can be found in many international journals and online.

Muddy Water

north-west of today
lie my childhood plains
muddy water country

that man-made web of channels and drains
a purple lucerne sea ebbs and flows
my father calling his milking herd

halfway on a backroad home
the undulating landscape flattens
fences stark and black edge the horizon

the channels of my past still lick their banks
but thistles and burrs smother pastures
surrounding the sprawl of unused drains

small-acre dairy herds of yesterday
usurped –
conglomerates
sell cut-price supermarket milk

winds carry father’s soil
far away

The Loddon District, North-Central Victoria, Australia

Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives and works in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of five chapbooks and four books, most recently The Mercy of Traffic, (Unlikely Books, 2019) and On the Way to the Promised Land Zoo, CyberwitFor more information, check her web site at www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com.

Closets, a Quatorzain

These closets hide clothes for every weather—
oilskins and sheer cotton, spandex, Polartec,
short skirts to wriggle out of, velvet robes to throw off,
long-ago furs with their malodorous politics,

tucked away in cedar. Here are summer dresses
like migrating butterflies, now in the South America
upstairs, but ready to flit down at
the first Spring balm.

Choose your cover. Do not be troubled
by winter’s stiff-backed satins, sober twill.
Let Chiffon have its own wardrobe.

Each fabric has a code, inclines a lover to settle
an errant palm there or there, rough to smooth
over that luscious fabric
                                                        you.

Menu

You’re a bonbon, a
lamb roast, a steamy
thick soup, glistening
with all the oils I
now know to be so
bad for my heart. I’m
garlic. Let me rub
up against you. I’m
cardamom. Let me
season you. I’m no-
thing nourishing. With
you, I’m the hunger
and the emptiness
that follows behind.

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and The Tampa Review. Her newest poetry collections are In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), A Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), Folios of Dried Flowers and Pressed Birds (Cyberwit.net), Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), and Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing).

Flightless

The dove sits cupped in my hands, calm, I don’t know why.
I have never met this bird before, and I am so much bigger than it, this creature
whose little heart beats so fast against my palm.

I have learned to accept the trust of strange birds, no longer wonder
at the crows that follow me as I purposefully drop breakfast crumbs in my wake
trust I will be allowed to come within petting distance of Canada geese.
I don’t know why. I’m so much heavier, slower, bound to earth than they are
some jealous, lumbering beast that scrabbles to find
just a part of me in them.