I love the game more than ever.
I find pleasure among others.
We convene on courts under difficult circumstances.
We have families, jobs, withering cartilage.
We play here, made equal. Each game starts
love-to-love. In tennis, there is no zero.
Just courts, games, always
love-to-love.

Nick Godec writes poetry and short fiction, with works appearing in Brief Wilderness, Flights, Grey Sparrow, Hedge Apple, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Rue Scribe, Sierra Nevada Review, and Steam Ticket. He has a B.A. in history and an MBA from Columbia University and currently works in finance in New York City. Nick enjoys spending time with his wife Julia and their miniature pinscher, Emma.

Only dark the cocoon.
Waiting for wings.
In weight—an undeveloped brain,
In emptiness—a space to fill in.
Only choice—adhere to the wind,
To the rain,
To the sun,
To the belly of a shrew.
From inside hear a sigh—
Congestive body tattoo.
Wanting to look around awhile—
Curiosity, the essence of nature,
Embryonic, the need to express,
When silence is the only answer.
Cosmos share the same—
An advancing memorial light,
An untampered vamping void.
For that hush that is heard—
The phantom reticence,
Mind equal to matter,
Equal to the weight of the brain,
Equal to the stain of space.
So nothings really in the way.
Everywhere

W.D. Brown is a Dad, bluesman, teacher/coach, poet, work in progress from Kansas City. He performs songs he wrote throughout the Midwest and released his debut album “From A Child” in 2018. You can find his work at www.wadedbrownmusic.com, Spotify, iTunes, or wherever else you stream music.

all the teenage girls are huddled
around the kitchen island
telling secrets, shoulder to shoulder,
spooning leftovers into their mouths, loud
between bites, talking of boys,
bursting into barking
laughter, and I stand at a distance

and remember summer-
camp after eighth grade, the pretty girls
standing in the sunset on the wet
grass in a circle (just yesterday my six-
year-old son asked me: how many sides
does a circle have? I said: none?
he said: no, two, an inside and an outside)
seeing those girls in my kitchen, my daughter

the loudest, on the inside, I say
to my Heart, Heart!
Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted?

but already the girls have gone,
their scent lingering like the evening
wind on rugged rocks, their crumbs
like sand all over the counter, their half-
eaten apple slices turning brown

Maya Bernstein is a poet and co-directs Georgetown University’s Institute for Transformational Leadership’s Certificate in Facilitation. Her poetry grapples with how the past informs the present and the aching desire for connection. Her first collection is called There Is No Place Without You.

Let us visit Ithaka,
the blue waters and crystal
shores,

even the isles of Monaco,
swept in the beauty of the sea,
or the beaches at Waikiki,
sand, perfume between toes,
or streets of Paris, small cafes,
music from the Seine,

joys to relish,
the thrill of first looks

but like a cloak loses luster
after worn too long,
joy crumples, ink fades,
celluloid dries, the glance
that sparkled now dreary,
the underbelly appears,
soot blindsides the thrill,
the streets fill with trash,
homeless abound.

Instead of slouching toward
Bethlehem- that is
waiting for the second coming-
or for the lights to come back and
look the same,

keep the feet moving, well oiled.

Taste the fruit before it ripens,
see the lights before they fade,
know a place until it saddens,

the journey alone
the destination.

*Slouching Toward Bethlehem takes its title from the poem “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats, which is concerned with a budding revolution. It’s also the title of a book of essays about the ‘60s by Joan Didion.

Hazel Warlaumont is new to poetry after writing both fiction and non-fiction in her career. Her poetry speaks to personal and societal issues and concerns in contemporary society.

alone I walk in the forest deep
no given trek but just one foot
before the other falling
where they may in solitude

solitude yet alive with wind knocking
branches together with the addition
of bird song praising the day and
crunching of twigs beneath my feet

ahead is the dark shape of what was
once a home long ago burned by
tongues of bright yellow orange and
red changing gaily painted walls black

timbers stand and lie haphazardly
there is the remains of a dresser a
metal frame of a bed and there barely
seen now a messy pile of pearls

possibly once an heirloom now
turning green as the moss that has
grown all around changing starkness
and jaggedness to soft smoothness

nature has painted her soft colors of
daisys trillium and Indian paintbrushes
in patches amongst humans remaining
testament of once occupation soon

to become again but forest floor with
maple oak and pine struggling for
a foothold within the dark frame with
breaks in its once fluidity of walls

time continues but erases all but
the deepness of the forest dark
where only the stream babbles and
sings with the birds branches and wind

jsburl, MFA is a hemorrhagic stroke survivor who lives in Northern NY. She loves her family, the mountains, gardening, crocheting, writing poetry and stories, oil painting, dragons, and animals large and small. She lives with her dog Tippy, and has just finished her master’s degree in Creative Writing. She was inducted into Sigma Tau Delta International English Society, and The National Society of Leadership and Success. She has been a journalist and won state and US competitions, and has a children’s book slated for release in May/June of 2023. The stroke took her mobility, but not her creativity. Her favorite thing to tell people is “Make every day an extraordinary day.”

An empty black suitcase. Candles with
pearlescent white wicks. Untouched.

Pictureless picture frames. Books with folded
corners and broken spines.

Plates that once were spotless and silver
that have lost their sheen.

Mirrors missing the reflection of
a once familiar face. No longer

a need for it. Brown leather shoes in
size nine. Soles worn and abused.

Rows of neatly hung jeans like
denim skeletons absent of clinging flesh.

Grandpa’s favorite chair, now cold.
The scent of cigars still lingering between its cushions.

A gift for mom. Taken for granted and replaced
with something new, something better.

A memory that can never be relived. Forgotten.
A lamp in desperate need of a home to illuminate.

Amanda Sciandra is an undergraduate Creative Writing student at Stockton University, where she is a student of Stockton’s editing internship. She works as a high school substitute teacher and lives with her parents and ginormous dog. She is just beginning to send
work out for publication.

Share the best of yourself with others
Leave the crumbs for me
I’ll be your woman
Until I must concede
Your neglect makes me seethe
Left with my spiraling thoughts
While you shine so brightly

Sehrish Bari is a professional working in philanthropy and is based in New York City. Having published her first poem at the age of 12, Sehrish is now revisiting and sharing her favorites over recent years.

I was not the first place
you landed.
Further north, across the bay, where that spit of land
curls in on itself.
A primordial fist clawing
back at the sea.

Protective, yet fierce.
Protective yet—
fierce.

I was never meant to be—
here.
I am a glacial erratic.
Born of Gondwana, carried by Pangea;
A cruel whimsy of the epochs deposited me here—
elsewhere.
Waiting to be exposed.
I am glacial, erratic.

I was whole; for a time,
for millennia.
Laid bare but not yet trespassed upon.
Until you wrenched me from my foundations
of sand.

Paraded through the town, first riven in two and then slowly abraded.
One piece of me found its way into a home as a doorstop. A door,
stop.
Another to the Smithsonian, branded with the inscription “Broken off from the Mother Rock.”
Broken,
off from the mother.

I was never meant to be revealed, to be revered.
But you erected a baldaquin over me.
Not to enshrine but to entomb.
A mordant gate at my base keeps the sea from rushing in to engulf me.
To envelop me. To absolve me.

They were always meant to come.
To gaze down upon me, mouths slack-jawed in disappointment and regret.
“I came all this way for that?”

Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.

I came all this way—
for that.

Elizabeth Hashimura is a freelance translator living and working in rural Japan.

the moon’s a lost balloon
just hanging ’round to give
its touch of poignancy
to another featureless night;

the sun’s hell-bent on fun,
burned out by another day,
leaving us in the dark to play
our next hopeless home game;

our one and only superstar
almost saves the day,
carrying the team through
another acceptable loss;

the stars are mason jars
of summer lightning bugs,
twinkling for the sake of twinkling,
a wonder from where we sit—

on an isolated spit
of an ocean planet,
a galactic backwater,
where somewhere there’s

a dreamer, looking up
and wondering if time
is but a nursery rhyme
that haunts us when we sleep.

Born and raised in the New Orleans area, I live along Bayou Lacombe in southeast Louisiana. A graduate of LSU, I received my PhD in theoretical physics from Stony Brook University. I have lived and worked in New York, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and currently test rockets at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. Poetry credits include Big Muddy, Bindweed Magazine, Brushfire Literature and Arts Journal, The Cape Rock, Confrontation, Crack the Spine, decomP, Edison Literary Review, El Portal, Euphony, Evening Street Review, Grey Sparrow, Medicine and Meaning, Neologism Poetry Journal, The Oxford American, Pembroke Magazine, Pennsylvania English, The Phoenix, Plainsongs, Quiddity, Sheila-Na-Gig Online, SLAB, Steam Ticket, Whimperbang, Wild Violet, the Love Notes anthology (Vagabondage Press), and Down to the Dark River: An Anthology of Contemporary Poems about the Mississippi River (Louisiana Literature Press). Flash fiction credits include Infective Ink and Aspen Idea (2012 Aspen Writers’ Foundation/Esquire Short, Short Fiction Contest finalist).

“Hey, so—I don’t want you to get mad,” he started.

Tillie watched, high in her balcony box, as two sides of the red curtain chastely kissed at center stage. Wisps of blonde started to untangle themselves from the French braid her mother had woven her a few hours before. Her heart pounded, fresh off the cliffhanger that ended act one. She wondered where the lead actress went; what magnificent, bright dressing room she retreated to, filled with roses and peonies and Perrier. I could do that. I could sing those songs and act that part and everyone would watch me and wonder where I went and wait and wait and wait for me to come back. She swung her legs at the marvel.

            “You’ve got this one long hair,” he muttered, eyes slanted away, fixed on the stately older couple leaving their booth.

            I bet she’s dating two guys and I bet they’re both in the cast and they hate each other’s guts but she laughs all sparkly, like diamonds falling out of God’s hand and they don’t care; they just love her and want to kiss her. And she knows it. Oh, she knows it but she can’t quite decide who kisses best. “My braid is loose,” she said, reaching for her program. Her head jerked forward, suddenly.

            “It’s on your chin,” he said, and she realized he was tugging it now, and again, like a puppet. He released his grip and Tillie felt at her jawline, slowly, looking at him. “I just wanted you to be aware so you could take care of it…before anyone else sees, ok?” He stopped, trying to read her. “I’m gonna go get a drink. You want anything?” She didn’t respond. “Don’t be mad, now,” he chastised, eyes on the exit. The mouth of his chair flapped shut as he climbed up the stairs.

            Tillie glanced toward the empty stage. She could see the bright orange tape of spike marks now in the light. She took the program, carefully unfolding it on her skirt. She forced her eyes to turn an achingly slow arc around the entire theater, then cupped her chin with both hands and read every line of the actress’ biography. She read it twice, three times. She memorized it. She put her name in instead. She stared at the stage and spoke it aloud, letting her fingertips touch at her skin, reaching, smoothing, until the tape lines blurred and the tech crew disappeared and only, only the red velvet remained.

Christy Jones is a Minnesotan poet, singer, actress, and playwright. She completed her MFA in Creative Writing from Lindenwood University, and also holds degrees in Vocal Performance and Philosophy. She has an unabashed love for musical theater, linguistics, Columbo, and the superiority of Duck, Duck, Gray Duck to Duck, Duck, Goose.