He is sixteen in front of the television.
But no game pad this time.

No kingdom of buttons.
No left move right shoot.

No aliens no battalions no dinosaurs
only a girl beside him.

His tongue’s a knot
his nerves between a quake and a wobble.

She is not pixels. Not circuitry.
She’s another human being.

What do I do he asks himself.
No answer.

Girls are so remote.
And they don’t come with one.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, who likes to collect early editions of Mad Magazine and arts books and still reads an actual newspaper on a daily basis.

For every hot dog eaten, 36 minutes are subtracted from the diner’s lifespan.

It was Monday evening in Ed and Edna’s. kitchen. Ed sat in his recliner, a beer on the table next to him.

“What’s for dinner?”

“Do you mean after you finish your cigarette and that bottle, Ed?”

Naturally he meant after his first course.

“I boiled a hot dog for you. You can have mine too, and I’m adding an extra one for the pot.”

Edna frowned as the steam reached her face.

“So, I’ll have three?”

“I can save one for the morning… You know, after you’ve had your cigarettes and coffee.”

A left-over morning dog?

What were another 36 minutes off Ed’s life, if it could be called that?

“I’m going to have a P&J myself.”

“With grape jelly?”

“Yeah, grape, Ed.”

“Grape, huh?”

Some people, such as Ed, use grape jelly in place of barbecue sauce on hotdogs and sausages.

Edna reached for a knife from the silverware drawer to spread her peanut butter.

Interestingly, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich adds 33 minutes to a person’s life.

David Sydney is a physician who writes fiction in and out of the EHR (Electronic Health Record).

Ed and Otto were at the counter of AL’S DINER that Wednesday morning, Ed with his eggs over, Otto with the usual lumpy oatmeal. Of course, they each had coffee. What would breakfast be without it?

Grimacing, Ed studied his cup.

“Otto, look there…”

He pointed with his spoon.

“Are those two flies in my coffee?”

Otto had recently been to his ophthalmologist, so he was a good person to ask. He examined the contents with his newly-refracted lenses.

“It’s only one fly, Ed. You must’ve broken it in half with your spoon… See, there’s the head.”

And its body, with several legs missing, floated on the surface a few inches away.

“One, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks, Otto… You know, I’d hate to be drinking two flies.”

David Sydney is a physician who writes fiction in and out of the EHR (Electronic Health Record).

Like Rilke says, “Don’t write about love!”

So I write about not writing about love.
While I’m at it may I say, some days
I think Tina’s got it: fraught
though her pronouncement may be,
that love has nothing to do with it.

My friend said, “But didn’t you say
that love was life’s answer?”
I deny it, I replied (but maybe lied,
trying diligently not to
write about love?).

“Too trite” Rilke said,
to write about love and besides,
those way above you
have occupied the field and wield
far greater talents than you;

a shame to waste the space
and reader’s time
with your puerile words
and absurd thoughts
about love, he implied.

(I lied. I write about love.)

Ann Grogan is a joyful octogenarian, pianophile, and retired lawyer living in San Francisco, CA. Her writing promotes the unequivocal permission to pursue one’s passions at any age, especially music. Her poems have appeared in Rue Scribe, Querencia, Amethyst Review, Whims of the Wilderness, The Prairie Review, New Verse News, Dissident Voice, and Writers Resist, among others. She was named a semifinalist for The Writing Salon’s 2025 Jane Underwood Poetry Prize and for Leftie Blondie’s chapbook competition. Find her at rhapsodydmb.com.

favorite color
favorite bird
indigo bunting

Jennifer Gurney lives in Colorado where she teaches, paints, writes and hikes. Her poetry is widely published, two of her poems have won international contests and one was turned into a choral piece. Jennifer has 11 books of poetry. Her heart belongs to her friends and family and her cat, Adeline. But it also belongs to the mountains, the first spring rain, falling stars and sunsets on Lake Michigan. She has a freckle on the back of her hand, in the spot of her hometown, Kalamazoo. She longs for world peace, justice for those wronged and equality. Although she has written her whole life, at 62, she has finally known enough joy and enough sorrow to write a half-way decent poem, on occasion.

In lush counties the ripening sky’s a house
for hope; as gather billowed, clouded wings
on the crown of dusk, so night’s vessel brings
its black despair. I’ve seen John Eli house
them both; I’ve seen him clip his wings of grief
where set upon the patient morning’s vein,
his flighted creatures worry ‘round the flame.
Thereon he flints the torch that lights his grief
by daily footed shore; it beats its wings,
wet lung ebbing at his feet. Burn the pond
wherein she drowned; so goes the madman’s song.
The tired flame in ritual drowns and sings,
on and on, for twenty years; his purpose
hefted, burdenlike – his love the purer,
mine the less – forever to endure her,
of his obstinance bereft. Wind and wing;
I know the aviary of his mind,
for what is lost to him was also mine.

Kataryna Zharkovna is a poet born in Serbia, grown in Canada, and honed in Siberia. She holds a hard-won English Specialist’s degree from the University of Toronto, and her work can befound or forthcoming in magazines such as Sundial, Neologism, The Astorian, Mindfork and others. When not agonizing over giving form to the formless, shespends time befriending swans and taking care of two puckishly charming children.

[written in impossibly fine print beside the commissioner’s signature on LOT #642a]

To Tommy,

who deflected this foul ball–which would have ended Game 6–from my glove into his own.

Let this ball, which you will forget about in a week, but later remember as an adult and sell for modest profit, stand as a reminder that your “dream” was more important than mine. That even though I survived an abusive father, two knee surgeries, and a broken marriage, you got to catch a baseball in the stands of a team that has never won a title, captained by a player who will almost certainly be remembered as the right fielder who let a child rob the joy from a city that deserved it.

Take pride in this ball. To you, it’s a moment of your young life arising from privilege, and destined to melt into a puddle called childhood—that I’ll see everyday as an oasis I can never reach, as I wander the outfield, wondering if my knees will ever stop hurting.

Vin Berardi is a NYC-based writer specializing in dark, strange, and comic pieces—often at the same time. An acting teacher for 30 years, he hosts The Trilogy Podcast, has a wife named Amy, and a dog named Louise. He reads his stuff out loud to his friends, who respond by telling him to get a haircut.

I sit all alone in this faculty lounge and consider how
my life’s been spent till now and question where
I went awry and ponder darkly just what
I’ve become implies and wonder if I’m not whom (or who?)
I could or should have been, too, and I forget why
I even try to do this job, and rue which
roads not taken, etc., etc., when
the bell tolls for me and I must slog away to Period 3, where
I will gamely face my class, who (or whom?)
I’m paid to teach (and dearly love, I do) but whose
faces often only bear a bland or bored “Whatever.”
But then there are times when we connect, when
epiphanies spark in our eyes, and when
that lightning strikes, then I remember why.

Bruce Ickes worked as a steel erector, a newspaper editor and more recently as a public high school English teacher for 32 years. Occasionally he bestirs himself and attempts to write something that might be of interest to others.

Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life.
– Vincent van Gogh

I plunge my script pen into green ink:

Chlorophyll flows through my veins
and tints each sentence. In sunlight
I photosynthesize. Fertility. Freshness.
Vincent brushed “Roses” in hues of
moss, lime, and olive greens. I recall
an olive grove two millennia ago.
I build Oz’s Emerald City

facet by facet.

Why do I see you through green eyes?

The writer has written secular and sacred verse for many decades. He’s appeared in Third Wednesday, THEMA, Prairie Messenger, The Christian Century, The Merton Seasonal, The Raven’s Perch, Kakalak, and forthcoming, The Orchards Poetry Journal. He is a septuagenarian, happily married, “Poppy” to two granddaughters, and volunteers at a prison camp. He is at petercvenable.wordpress.com

Unlike prose,
poems don’t stretch
from one side of the page
to the other.

Lines stop where they do
for balance,
for rhythm,
or for emphasis
or because if they don’t
then the finished product
won’t look like a poem.

For what poetry
lacks in popularity
it makes up for in shape.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, who likes to collect early editions of Mad Magazine and arts books and still reads an actual newspaper on a daily basis.