Grace hit the city, ready for roses.
She’d seen all the films; knew all the poses.
Without fear of traps or any entanglement,
She came for the glitter, and maybe a gentleman.

Small towns and small people had all had their day,
Now there was nothing to stand in her way.
With a slinky black dress and open toed shoeses,
She put on a smile and practiced her ruses.

At a posh corner bar, brass and mahogany,
Lousy with lawyers, bored with monogamy,
She stationed herself at a small corner table,
Playing her part in this little fable.

Tony’s not one you’d take for a sucker.
Streetwise and charming, almost a huckster,
He knew what he wanted, and just how to get it;
There wasn’t much he’d ever regretted.

From out on the street, he glimpsed her within –
Beautiful hair, exquisite skin.
Changing his plans, he walked on inside,
And up to the bar without breaking his stride.

Louie the barman was there at the ready.
They were old friends, come up in the city.
Scotch on the rocks, Tony’s regular drink,
Slid ’cross the bar with a welcoming wink.

“Who’s that over there?” Tony asked his old friend.
Lou chuckled a bit before he began,
“Don’t have a clue; she looks mighty classy,
I hope you’re not thinking of trying that lassie.”

“No disrespect Lou, but what do you know?”
Tony replied while he pulled out his dough.
Heading for Grace after paying his bill,
Tony swooped in, like a hawk to the kill.

Swirling his ice cubes, he coolly sat down,
Playing his part like some man of renown,
While our lady Grace tried not to reveal
Whether her interest was feigned or for real.

Bright conversation was one of his charms,
But something about him set off alarms.
Tony’s not one to hide what he felt,
But Grace never showed the cards that she held.

Tony’s smooth banter assailed her gates,
But nothing impressed our cool lady Grace.
She’d seen this scene in movies at home.
Tony soon knew he was leaving alone.

But Grace knew this hustler might help her to find
The highlife and city seen in her mind.
So she coyly suggested touring the park
Next Saturday, sometime well before dark.

They met in the park, come Saturday noon,
Strolled past the boathouse and on to the zoo.
Cool as her ice cream, she asked him point blank,
“Just how much cash have you got in the bank?”

“Hold on girl,” he said, “Just what do you mean?
I’m here for fun, not the ’merican dream.”
“That’s what I thought,” she replied in a snit,
“I’ve got places to go and a big life to live.”

Taken aback, he paused to consider,
While Grace explained the thought that had hit her.
“How about if we just work together,
So in the end we each get what we’re after?”

“Tony you’re cute, but you can be a jerk.
And that’s what I need, if this thing’s to work,
‘Cause the Belmont Stakes are on for next week,
And that’s where I’ll find the people I seek.”

“High rollers and big money all will be there.
We will be too, as a quarreling pair.”
Grace laid out her plan, she had it all set,
She even promised she’d pay Tony to bet.

So Saturday came; they went to the race.
Lines were rehearsed, and things were in place.
Tony placed bets and was playing his part –
A gambler breaking his poor lover’s heart.

Just for the yuppies standing beside them,
Grace added more to this scene of mayhem.
“You’re wasting our savings,” she wailed aloud;
“What will I tell Grandma?” she cried for the crowd.

Tony then cursed and pushed her down roughly.
She fell to her knees while he turned abruptly.
Deaf to her cries, he stomped away madly.
The yuppies all gasped as she whimpered sadly.

Quick as a flash, Rex was there with a hand
Helping poor Grace to a wobbling stand.
“Forget that crude bastard,” kindly said he
While offering her his initialed hankie.

With tears in her eyes, she stifled her smiles,
Seeing the payoff from all of her wiles.
“What will I do now? I’m so all alone.
I’ve nowhere to go,” she pitifully moaned.

Later, by months, while out from the loft,
Where living with Rexxie is boring but soft,
Grace finds herself outside Lou’s corner bar
So inside she goes, to check her co-star.

Lou’s tending bar and recalls her quite well,
Says “Tony’s in Rome, he’s doing just swell.
He told me about your thing at the track,
But he’s never said just when he’ll be back.”

“He didn’t tell you; one ticket you bought,
A trifecta pick, oh boy was it hot!
He travels a lot now, with bucks in the bank.
Says in his postcards ‘It’s you he should thank.’”

The point of this ditty is whether our Grace
Picked the wrong horse when she went to the race.
Sometimes we get all the things we go after,
But then in the background, all we hear is laughter.

Jack Wallick is a retired engineer, tech writer, and microbiologist. He started writing poetry forty some years ago and today writes in a wide variety of formats – traditional rhyming and metric poetry, memoirs from his time as a draftee in Vietnam, fiction, and essay. Up to this point he is unpublished, likely the result of not being an MFA from an expensive midwestern liberal arts school.

This started out as a novel,
a major work of fiction.
Nothing less than 100,000 words would do.

Not even close.

Bother.

Bruce Greenhalgh lives in Adelaide, South Australia where, amongst other things, he reads, writes and recites poetry. His work has appeared in anthologies, journals and online… He is yet to master being ‘fashionably late’ or being ‘the life of the party’. Some things are just beyond him.

i’ve never understood the people who
gently toast their marshmallows to golden
perfection. but sometimes i envy them –
going ever-so-slowly, patiently waiting.

i’m always rushing right into the fire,
welcoming the heat, mesmerized
by dark edges, with no regard for the
scorched and sticky consequences…
hoping to make something delicious from
burnt sugar and smoldering remains.

Julie Clark is an attorney and mixed media artist who is currently pursuing her MFA at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Asheville, North Carolina. (She’s still trying to figure out what she wants to be when she grows up but, in the meantime, writing poetry makes her very happy.)

I’m a bucket-traveler,
a bread-on-bread mate,
like a hobo
with breath-crushing-gypsy-gas,
a yeasty timberland (just look around),
a flinty nugget and hardworking-slouch,
a knitted skeleton,
a cord-clotting emergency.

Later I’ll be blood fodder for bugs and webs.
O, the places I have traveled!
And God wrote on the bread wrapper:
“Tell me your story.”
And thus, always an obedient root,
I have.

Suzanne O’Connell’s recently published work can be found in Brushfire, Delmarva Review, El Portal, Flights, Midwest Quarterly, The Opiate, Pine Hills Review, Tulsa Review, Visitant Lit, Wrath-Bearing Tree, and others. Her two poetry collections, A Prayer For Torn Stockings and What Luck, were published by Garden Oak Press.

You, a tree, in me,
over time.
If it dread, if it darken, if fall
to ruin, you will do, this too,
the next thing…over time.
Now one foot now the other. Now
late, even. I am keeper of undermined,
you are patient.
All of us, any of us, you said, I wasn’t born
this way.
I, unbuilt.
See how the thickening clouds yield light snow.
Why am I unseasonably cool?
Friend of my mind:
We restore ancient things, sweet, salt, &
bitter. We bring things back and back.
The dark is big.
I met you in the district of rain, the tears
of things. Later than we might have known,
but both still vivid.
I am in the habit of you, and sometimes
able to, my soft parts, tenderly.
Things that have to do with enlargement.
What had been required of you.
If I had not submitted, nowhere.
Also, what you yourself went through affects
interpenetration:
We investigate each other’s bearings.
Things come up between us, wide.
I am glad this journey with you, you said.
Sometimes, with you, I luminate.
Abiding.

Sarah Stemp is a poet and psychologist/psychoanalyst in New York City. She has published poetry on various topics related to the role of grief and mourning in the creation of something new.

a stone come to rest
fashioned with loving hands
It is a harmony of sea and wind
In a woman’s shape

It’s as if the artist knew the woman without touching her
without seeing her naked
just imagining

Dorothy Johnson-Laird is a poet, social worker, and activist who lives in New York City. She received an M.F.A in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Dorothy also has a passion for African music and has published music journalism with www.afropop.org and www.worldmusiccentral.org. Of late, she has been intrigued by the small in writing, making a powerful statement in just a few lines.

Structure chisels
piety from chaos
sacred from clay.

Children so alive corrected
for uniform educated
knee-bending.

Fve-year-olds fidget
bodies cry out for sanctuary
on the other side of the door.

I should pull them out
and put them in trees
to sleep the afternoon with cardinals

and dreams of carnivals, screeching or silent as the sky determines.

I have not obstructed water when it should run.
I have not extinguished a flame when it ought to burn.

But I leave them there
for fear of what this world does
to children who live in trees.

Jessica Tilley Hodgman is a writer and historian living near where she was born in Roswell, Georgia. She studied history and world religions to consider the various myths we create so we can look at our pasts, make some sense of our present, and not be so afraid of the future.
Her essays, short stories, and poetry draw on childhood experiences in the rural South and adult experiences in the urban South.
She is currently collaborating on a collection of essays on the long-term immigrant experienced in metro Atlanta. Also—a short story about a lovable septuagenarian murderer.

Despite intimidation it has its way.
Still, from a closet with a one-way
window, you scrutinize that self—
helpless, though reluctant to crack
the door, peel off into that space,
fisticuff that thief into submission,
some admission, since if you did,
there’d always be a next you, back
in the dark, seizing the emptied seat
opposing the pane of introspection.

D. R. James’s latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020), and his prose and poems have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and journals. Recently retired from college teaching, James lives with his wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. https://www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage

I’m the Bride of Frankenstein’s mechanic.
She drives a Toyota Echo.
It’s been a good little car.
I can’t recall doing any major repairs to it.
I asked her how it was for room,
What with her husband, the monster, being a big guy.
She said it was fine, no worries,
But then added, with a sparkle in her eye,
That it might be different when there’s a little Frankie.
I asked her about the gearbox.
She said it was hard finding reverse sometimes.
‘It’s a fault with that model’, I replied.

We could talk about a lot of things:
Life, death, marriage, body parts…
But I stick to cars.
It’s what I know best.
She’s been talking about getting an electric car.
Says it’s the way to go –
Electricity.
I guess it’s what she knows best.

Bruce Greenhalgh lives in Adelaide, South Australia where, amongst other things, he reads, writes and recites poetry. His work has appeared in anthologies, journals and online… He is yet to master being ‘fashionably late’ or being ‘the life of the party’. Some things are just beyond him.

The hillsides hang, coral-stained,
their heavy drapery this simple
space enfolds, inverts the coppery
moonrise skies and softly gathers dust.

Quietly, the ragged ridge advances
on my clamorous quiet, invests this
place, encroaches on each instant’s
insubstantial, its inviolate defenses.

We are made earth, made stone,
made skin in this approximation:
made self, made place by the outside-
in that each inviolable self unselves.

DB Jonas is an orchardist living in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico. Born in California in 1951, raised in Japan and Mexico, he has returned to poems after a long hiatus in business and the sciences. His work has appeared in numerous journals.