“Words Left Unspoken” by Stephen Cecchini


A park bench,
Rusted with bad weather,
It must have ended somewhere.
Full pine tree
Young
Tender look;
Blue bike on a kickstand
Sprinkled with sand.
Stacks of books,
Scattered old photos
And the door from before
They must have ended somewhere.
Yesterday’s sun is gone
Along with energy
And the road that was fresh by the fence
Ended with cracks and rubble
With words left unspoken


Stephen Cecchini is an MSA student at Loyola University Chicago. During his free time, he likes to write in his imagery journal for experimentation purposes. He is also an editorial staff member at Diminuendo & Cadence – Loyola’s premier student-run literary magazine, published bi-annually.

“The Octave” by Daniel Haskin


What is this sound
That breaks me
But I listen still
Inside my wrists
Can it be forgotten
Like the slamming door
On my last breath
Or do I succumb
To its trickery

Is it lost
Without end
Or without death
Do I train my ear
To read the spell
Or lay my hand in the sky
And listen like braille

Even pain has a sound
Though it shakes
Turns on its own kind
Deep and shuttering
And worn like a dog

When I was young
I had depth of purpose
Now my hands are stiff tired
No tuning to my bones
I can’t reach the octave
Fingers twist
Darkness reverberates


Daniel Haskin is a Buffalo NY based poet, writer, musician, visual artist, and illustrator. His chapbooks of poetry include “Amnesia”, “Past Life Invisible”, “The Shallow Sea”, and his newly published work “Picture Book: Love, Death Time, and Assorted Ekphrasis”. He has also been published in various newspapers, and national journals.

“When Trees Dream” by Daniel Haskin


The beauty of life are trees
That turn as sleepy as death
Knocking on hungry doors
Creaking amongst the clouds
That rise above the weather

They sing but refuse to listen
To the turnings of the clock
Bouncing like swift shrapnel
Through rains stream and flow
Longing for Fall’s sparrowed skin

Their leaves roll and crackle
Like a mirage of slivered ghosts
That die on weary windshields
While the Autumn song simmers
Broiling in the red starry night


Daniel Haskin is a Buffalo NY based poet, writer, musician, visual artist, and illustrator. His chapbooks of poetry include “Amnesia”, “Past Life Invisible”, “The Shallow Sea”, and his newly published work “Picture Book: Love, Death Time, and Assorted Ekphrasis”. He has also been published in various newspapers, and national journals.

“Holding Thanks” by Yash Seyedbagheri


Older sister Nancy and I make our own Thanksgiving. We finagle a turkey, just like Mother did. Of course, we burn it. Same with the biscuits, which fall apart, like homes. Empires.

Next we try to arrange the table, Mother and Dad’s chairs. Empty, yet elegant.

When we try to give thanks, words won’t form, emptiness stuck in our throats. The world’s demanded bills, seduced parents with wanderlust. Forced us to survive when we should live.

We laugh at the idiocy of it. Mother and Dad would, if they were here.

Of course, mentioning them, laughter turns to tears.

Nothing holds.


Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction. His story “Soon,” was nominated for a Pushcart and he has also had work nominated for The Best Small Fictions. Yash’s work is forthcoming or has been published in journals such as 50 Word Stories, Silent Auctions, City. River. Tree. and Ariel Chart.

“In Search of Beauty” by Sandy Benitez


Harold arrived at the front door dressed in death, the soles of his tobacco, suede hunting boots wrapped in grass and sticky mud.  Sweat trickled down the sides of his face, leaving a trail of oily dew on his wife’s memory. 

Myrna shook her head in disgust, knowing the weekly ritual had begun.  Out came the thumbtacks and corkboards. 

“So, how many flies did you catch today?” 

Pollen infested eyes cut through her sarcasm; she covered her wounds with a crochet sweater. 

As he laid the net down, she saw one butterfly trapped inside.  Its moss-brown wings lay lifeless like a swatch of silk that she wanted to caress and stow away for safekeeping.

“Why must you kill something so beautiful?” 

Harold told her to hush and pinned the creature to its grave. “It’s just a butterfly,” he groaned. 

“And you’re just plain ugly,” she snapped as she stomped upstairs to the bedroom. 

He shrugged his shoulders and grinned, admiring the specimen on display. 

Myrna sat on the bed and wept, hot tears falling like Summer rain. She glanced at the bedroom walls, eyeing dozens of butterflies in dead repose.  Their glass coffins coated in dust and death. She sprinted to the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet. The bottle of sleeping pills a beacon in a sea of medication.

She rushed downstairs to the kitchen and prepared a glass of lemonade, dropping half the bottle of sleeping pills inside. Hurry up and dissolve. She peeked towards the living room. He was stretched out on the recliner, one hand lost inside his shorts.

“Harold, I don’t know what came over me earlier.  You must be so tired from the hunt. I’ve brought you a refreshing glass of lemonade,” she smiled.

He looked at her suspiciously. 

“Go on. It’s not going to bite you.”

He took the lemonade and quickly gulped it down. “Bring me another glass. You know I hate those dainty looking glasses you insist on using. Bring me a man-size glass.”

“Of course, Harold. You just rest and I’ll be back in a second.” She prepared another glass, dropped more sleeping pills. Then, dashed back to the kitchen and waited.

An hour later, snoring emanated from the recliner. Myrna knew what she had to do. With all the strength she could muster, she dragged his body onto a large piece of plywood that had been hidden behind the buffet for months.

Out came the hammer and some nails. The sound of pounding and screaming echoed throughout the house.

Wiping bloodied hands on her apron, Myrna frowned, then shrugged her shoulders. “Tsk. Tsk. So much for beauty. You’ve got to be the ugliest butterfly I’ve ever seen. You won’t do to display. My only option is the basement. You can discuss beauty with the spiders and roaches…for eternity.”


Sandy Benitez writes lyrical poetry and short fiction, sometimes dark, magical, or mysterious. Her most recent poetry chapbooks include Cherry Blossom Days and Petal Storm.  Sandy currently resides in Southern California with her husband and two children. She can be reached at https://sandysbenitez.blogspot.com or on Goodreads.

“Hanging Lichen” by Stephen Barile


The sky comes down
To the bare edge of rock

Profane and atheist. And all around
Filled with weather,

Soaring clouds, and cool breezes.
At the verge of a U-shaped canyon,
A stone-amphitheater

Sheer, sculpted cliffs
From a curved ridge of debris,

Towering over a broad lumbered valley And miscellany of boulders.

In the magic of bracken and grass, Hidden in the woods dense and dark,

Ponderosa, Lodgepole pines, and Douglas fir,
Dead-wood and downed-timber,

Tree-hanging lichen flourishes.
Tangled, elongated masses
Of green threads,

Long drapes—in yellow to ochre
Wrought from coyote hair,

Signify the burial-ground
In a sanctuary of bones For the first people.

Whirlwinds follow gusty squalls, Funnel in thunderstorms And fire from lightning strikes.
The resulting conflagration
Burns until lamenting ends

—so, the dead may sleep undisturbed—

As winter storms
And summer droughts
Wash over the forest like a sea,

And the salmon return To spawn at Mono Hot-Springs.


Stephen Barile, a Fresno, California native, was educated in the public schools, and attended Fresno City College, (AA) Fresno Pacific University, (BA), and California State University, Fresno (MFA). He is the former chairman of the William Saroyan Society, and a long-time member of the Fresno Poet’s Association. Mr. Barile taught writing at Madera Center Community College, lives and writes in Fresno. His poems have been published extensively, including The Heartland Review, Rio Grande Review, The Packinghouse Review, Undercurrents, The Broad River Review, The San Joaquin Review, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Beginnings, Pharos, and Flies, Cockroaches, and Poets.

“Cathedral of Santa Marta” by Stephen Barile


Santa Marta, Colombia

In the province of Magdalena, Santa Marta,
A port city, Colombia’s oldest surviving

City, in the last two centuries faced fires,
Floods, earthquakes, and calamity.

Repeatedly ransacked, and burned, destroyed
by the fury of nature, and attacks by pirates.

Next to the main-plaza at the civic center,
Whitewashed bell-tower of the Cathedral of Santa Marta.

The central-square shaded by Banyon trees, no escape
In afternoon heat and humidity of a weekday.

A blind beggar with an empty palm stands in the shade,
Receiving little attention.

Near the chapel door, a widow with three small children
Sells Chicklets among the coffee and candy vendors.

Around the hallow, inner-recesses of the Cathedral,
Among the chandeliers, heavy white arches and domes,

Each station of the cross, allegation to crucifixion
Mark the narrow path from through the side-door.

Below the marble floor and under a metal plaque,
Are the sacred remains of Simón Bolívar.

The heart of the “Liberator of Latin America.”
A sign of respect for history he shared,

When emissaries of Venezuela came to Santa Marta
To take Bolívar’s remains to his native land,

Left his heart and entrails in the church,
Sharing the rest of him with Venezuela.

If his heart were to thump from deep inside
The velvet-lined box, would his heartbeat

Answer every prayer from every sinner
In the immaculate church against the blue sky?

Would the church bring them closer to God, or
Waste time in the heat, and be futile?

With nowhere left to turn, life of the city
Unfolds, we light candles, and pray.

Faith becomes a vital element of existence,
The Cathedral is the only reliable witness.


Stephen Barile, a Fresno, California native, was educated in the public schools, and attended Fresno City College, (AA) Fresno Pacific University, (BA), and California State University, Fresno (MFA). He is the former chairman of the William Saroyan Society, and a long-time member of the Fresno Poet’s Association. Mr. Barile taught writing at Madera Center Community College, lives and writes in Fresno. His poems have been published extensively, including The Heartland Review, Rio Grande Review, The Packinghouse Review, Undercurrents, The Broad River Review, The San Joaquin Review, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Beginnings, Pharos, and Flies, Cockroaches, and Poets.

“Aurora Borealis” by Jane Snyder


The way I remembered it my father woke me in the night. “I’ve got something to show you,” he said and I was wide awake at once, hearing the excitement in his voice. I was a big girl, could have walked, but he wrapped me in blankets and carried me, holding me close, out to the sidewalk in front of our house.

All week the air had been heavy with unfallen snow. Too cold to snow, the TV weatherman said. When my father and I looked up there was no loft to the sky. We couldn’t see past the street lights, couldn’t see the moon and stars glittering cold in the dark.

The moisture in the air had frozen and formed crystals. When the light from the street lamps came through them the crystals became prisms reflecting tiny rainbows, as far as we could see, the lovely colors spilling into each other, over and over. Neither of us had seen the Northern Lights and we thought that was what we saw. “It’s as if the sky came down,” I said to my father who held me closer, asked me if I was warm enough.

I was. The cold, like the shimmering lights, was just out of reach. I told my father it made me think of Moses, how the Lord had allowed him to look upon the Promised Land but never let him go there. “That’s so sad, sweetheart,” my father said, smiling because I’d said something clever.

He took me back inside when the lights faded in the early dawn. When I woke again he was calling us down for breakfast, confusing me. In sleep, I’d thought I was still safe in his arms.

But it was my mother who took me out in the night, not my father. She’d seen the rainbows when she took the dog out, she told me later, and came up to get us, my younger sister Suzie and me. We were in bed but we hadn’t fallen asleep yet and we put our boots and coats on over our pajamas and went out holding her hands.


Jane Snyder’s stories have appeared in The Writing Disorder, X-Ray Lit, and Manque. She lives in Spokane.

“Personal Poem #29” by Dimitrios Kalantzis


dear nicole, it’s 10:07 a.m. in Chicago and the Sunday New
York Times is bringing me down! Debbie Harry’s first apartment, four
rooms on St. Marks Place, rented for $67 in 19-
65. Finn Wittrock (I don’t know who that is!) went to
Julliard and drank beers at Malachy’s on West
72nd Street. Some people can never agree on how to split the
cost of a fancy trip but I would never want to go on one so
what do I care? It’s true we can plan all we want but
what happens in the future is completely up to fate don’t
you agree? Never! Me neither. My plan therefore is
this: Finish the coffee I just made, thank you for getting
cream this morning, battle Lazarus for supreme control over
the universe, love you a little, and read For Better Or For
Worse The Lockhorns Mister Boffo and maybe Hägar the Horrible.


Dimitrios Kalantzis is a journalist and former newspaper editor. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY and studied poetry at Binghamton University. He remains inspired by the New York School of Poets, specifically Frank O’Hara, Ted Berrigan, and Paul Blackburn. He lives in Chicago, IL with his wife and son.