July 1-3, 1863, American Civil War

Three days under clear skies in the lush courses of
Shenandoah Valley, General Lee’s forces
struck Northern lands cross the Susquehanna River.
Over ten roads they marched and rode to deliver
a crushing blow to General Meade’s Union jacks
surrounding Gettysburg and prepared for attacks.

Forests and farmlands, ruined rolling hills and pastures,
rocked with cannon fire, mortars, muskets, and fractures.
Wild animals fled, farm animals under yoke,
birds in the sky receded into distant smoke.
North against South, toddler nation blood-divided,
brothers against brothers, families blindsided.

Gettysburg —the bloodiest battle of the war
death from mortars, cannonballs, acres of horror
wounded, casualties, lying on a grassy crypt.
Afterward medics walked the battlefield and tripped
on numerous muskets unfired, atop shoulders.
Just four of every hundred died because soldiers
saw men facing them, didn’t shoot, just paused the strife.
Humanity hesitates to kill when faced with life.

Linda (Stormyfalls) lives in a world where ERA is the 28th amendment to the Constitution, Black Lives Matter, democracy thrives, climate change is taken seriously, and walls are built only to decorate not divide.

i have four white walls
with scattered pictures
and i am alone. again.

every time i let a breath out
after holding it in so long
i am told that it was wasted.

someone new leaves
and i am left gasping
at the fact o don’t know why.

i don’t know relief
but I like to think i’ll adjust
to the altitude. again.

and therapy won’t be
a weekly rescue breath
from an albuterol inhaler.

and maybe next time i find
someone i breath easily with,
i’ll be their fresh air too.

and we can sigh with ease
knowing we don’t have to
hold our breath alone. again.

Maggie is a newer poet, who is continuously trying to find her voice through her poems. She likes to play around with her style, but generally her work focuses on vulnerable feelings and intimate moments.

Never an apostle,
just a high priestess of algae,
but the sea of minnows parted
as I stepped into the lake to
the rhythm of the distant guitar guy
playing pretty Jesus tunes
as he stood hip deep in Devil’s Lake

Why this lake?
Had they thought this one through?
Baptism of Defiance?
Water of enlightened particulates?
Immersion, affusion, or aspersion?
I didn’t wait to see,
but in my own aspersion and immersion,
pondered transitions
and gathered the diluted blessings as
I swam away and back towards
a moving ceremony of
my own

Australian-born Katrin Talbot is a violist, photographer, poet and often combines these three existences to streamline her life. Her ‘Wrong Number’ is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press, ‘Attached: Poetry of Suffix’ was just released from dancing girl press and she has five other chapbooks. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, and she has two Pushcart Prize nominations and quite a few chickens. www.katrintalbot.com

Could it be something in the water,
maybe something in the air?
I don’t know exactly what is the matter,
but there’s a whole lot of “crazy” out there.
There’s lunatics on the loose,
and it seems like they’re everywhere.
Maybe some more looney bins we should introduce.
It seems complete insanity,
to just let them out there roaming free.

Coming in all shapes and sizes,
with all kinds of problems their therapist analyzes.
They say they’re as sane as you or me,
then why are they still in therapy?
They’re going all around talking crazy talk everywhere,
it’s starting to get on my nerves, I’m starting to feel a little fear.
I know that they say they have a vision that they want to share,
I just want them to get out of my life, because I don’t care.
I just wanted to warn you, there’s lunatics on the loose, so beware.

Call them what you will, lunatics, looney tunes, nutjobs, or some other crazy name,
they’ve all got mental problems and they can be dangerous all the same.
It seems they’re multiplying at an alarming rate,
they’re infecting the population with this insanity and it’s not going to turn out great.
They want you to buy into their version of Utopia and how wonderful it will be,
if you look at it closely it won’t be any Shangri-la for you and me.
The worse of all is where you’ll find a large number of them to be,
a lot of the lunatics on the loose are in the capitol, Washington, D.C.

After a successful career as a Senior Engineering Designer working with international mining companies all over the world. William David is retired and living with his wife Diane of 37 years, in Tucson, Az. He is now devoted to his passion: writing and reviewing poetry.

White dust under soil
a headstone plot, the final
address for us all

Susan Wilson lives in East London and began writing poetry following the death of her mother in 2017. That loss opened the door to inspiration. Her poems have been published by Lucy Writers, Snakeskin, The Runcible Spoon, Dreich and Areopagus. Prior to the pandemic she was a regular performer at “Spineless Authors”, a local open mic event. Her debut chapbook is “I Couldn’t Write to Save Her Life” (Dreich, 2021).

A simple movement to intertwine —
intention, spells, and the divine.
Released from my lips like a caged glow
in a story penned a long time ago.
I stroll through the glade —
witches reunite, September fades.
October adorns the sky
with its paranormal lullabies.

Raquel Dionísio Abrantes is a Portuguese writer who loves rainy days. She can be found at her desk, libraries, mountains, museums, and vintage cafés. Tea is her favourite beverage.

My friends are a mess,
We are broken and scarred by the past and the world,
And the horrible, horrible thoughts that we think
When we think of ourselves.

We are queer, we are sad,
And the pain is so fierce that we should just be dead.
Yet we burn with disorganised love,
A cacophony of unsure affection.

A bond with no name, a bond with no box,
But we are cocooned, cosy and warm,
In an amorphous vessel shaped just for us,
It is here we exist when we feel that we fit.

Tumbleweed sleepy safe limbs on our caving-in couch,
A hand on a back, arms on shoulders, knee on a thigh.
In this it is clear that we love them so much,
And will love them so much, all for free.

Just needing them to be happy,
And to know without saying or questioning,
That we will remake their world,
One joy at a time.

Soothing voice on a midnight phone,
When life is too painful and savage to live.
We don’t need written vows to know,
That we are infinitely each other’s. Obviously.

Conversations are scattered,
Two hours on Sunday, then nothing for days,
Then 38 memes cascade through before bed,
38 “saw this and thought of you”s.

Tell me this isn’t the whollest of loves.

We don’t play by the rules,
Set by people and time.
They’ve never been kind, so no,
Thanks very much.

Thanks very much,
To a family chosen, adopted friends,
The platonic loves of my life.

We make sense of a world,
Will make sense of a world,
In which we make no sense at all.

Emily Aine is a recent physics graduate from the northwest of Ireland. She lives and works in Dublin, and loves spending time in nature, having late-night chats with her closest friends, and enjoying cosy evenings with her girlfriend (and occasionally her cat!). She has recently rediscovered her passion for writing and uses it to focus on joy, friendship, and seeing the beauty in the everyday.

You will never know.

You’ll never hear of the sleepless nights, concoctions of thoughts brewed in memories. Poured into ink, staining sheets, finger tips tinged black by contemplation.
Sleep shrouded by worry, unwanted guest. Exiled by questions, careful patter of rain on rooftops.
And my ponderings stretch, are you okay?
Are you lying in your bed at night, are you asleep.

The clock cruelly jeers, it’s late I should rest.
Bestial and callous, a monument of time lost. I see you behind fluttering lids, like birds, wings streaked heavy by splitting heavens.
Tears.
The questions swallowed back -Flu medicine.
My finger tips reach out to trace inky promises down your jaw.
But you’re not there, I’m suffocated by silk and satin and loss.

You will realize I know.
A day where you open up your eyes to the dawning truth. That I’m not enough.
Verve of the sun, boundless galaxies contrived, a prince .
Cracked vase, pensive questions brimming, a girl.
A journey and a stop along the way.
But how long will you stay?
And when you’ll leave you’ll take all the stars and dust the sun out of existence
and I’ll be left with barren skies and crushed lungs.

Don’t go, I want to plead, but how can I be so selfish?
The sun does not yield to commands of a stalk of grass, when it can illuminate a meadow.
Oceans poured for you and mountains stooped low in bows by your presence.
All I can give are the contractions of my heart,
promises of borrowed happiness from future memories.

So I’ll close my eyes and hope, that never will a day be so cursed, to open them and see your fingers slipped through mine.
Shifting sand.
Distant memory.

Kornelija Gruodyte is a Lithuanian and Irish poet. Through her work, she delves into the unseemly, slowly unravelling the uncomfortable realities of existence. She likes to probe things that are often constrained, bringing them to life under the glaring gaze of a fresh perspective.