DS Maolalai recently returned to Ireland after four years away, now spending his days working maintenance dispatch for a bank and his nights looking out the window and wishing he had a view. His first collection, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden, was published in 2016 by the Encircle Press. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

An indictment of the craft.

if you’ve been to a poetry reading lately
and pictured
any of those guys
trying
to eat
a plate of spaghetti
without getting sauce on their shirt
you’ll know
what kind of
state
their “art”
is really in.

Complacency.

watching tv
in the morning
while you make coffee
and put jam on the toast –

like going out
in a new shirt
on a fresh
and perfumed day,
stopping by a garden
and reaching out
to break the stem

Liz Kelso lives in New York City. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The College of New Rochelle. Her writing can be found or is forthcoming in The Phoenix Literary & Arts Magazine, HerStory and Breadcrumbs.

Keys

She practiced on air
Invisible keys clacked silent
Her fingers formed the machine
She knew where every Z was
Invisible return bar brought her back
He walked away but her fingers
One by one healed her
Each click said I can do it
Every clack cried without you
Keys danced in rhythm
Like machine gun fire
She attacked poverty and beat
off welfare with each stroke
The tap-tap-tap kept her alive
Until the ribbon ran out.

Bailey attended the West Virginia Governor’s School for the Arts in 2015 and the West Virginia Governor’s Honors Academy in 2016 where she studied creative writing in short forms–flash fiction, sonnets, villanelles, and other short forms of writing.  Bailey’s stories can be found in Ghost City Review and Whetstone. When she’s not writing, Bailey can almost always be found drinking tea, running while listening to audio books and podcasts, or hiking in the woods with her dogs.

April Showers

Only three days into April,
and we are already cleansing
the sins of winter with the rain.
Dew droplets of water collect,
cling to the hairs like spiders’ webs
that fill the space between eyebrows,
decorating refreshed faces
with aqueous diamonds of spring.

I always wear these jewels with pride,
carrying Nature’s messages
that it is time for a reset
and the Earth is being reborn
in pools of run-off that collect
where sidewalks finally give in
to the persuasion of tree roots.

Following Trails

Not a cloud brushes the sky,
deceptive, but it’s a good sign.
At last unobscured,
the sun whispers promises
that spring is sure to follow
the breadcrumb trails that the wind,
running westwards, leaves behind.

I have already seen some green,
dotted with a tinge of pink—
prettied by dogwoods’ precious petals
that light upon branches
like kisses on fingers.

Frosts still freeze the mountains at night,
and my skin aches each navy morning
for the warmth of the Easter tree
(Forsythia suspensa)
highlighting cliffs and crevices
of the sandstone faces of Route 19.

When I spot the first burst
of forsythia’s rays, I will follow
their trails to find spring.

I Found Them, Keats

Songs of spring played on my windowsill
by the delicate fingers of March rain.
Each drop mans a different instrument,
ensuring the orchestra is complete.

One taps on timpani
the pace of approaching spring.

One strums the harp
as it splashes into the stream.

One draws a sigh from the violin,
the wind directing the storm.

Their compositions breathe life into spring,
resuscitating reluctant hibernators
with improvised electric melodies
even when the sun doesn’t shine.

Night Rider

I reject the glare of my watch,
insisting it is only 6 o’clock;
it feels like I am at the end of time.

The golden halo of the sun dove
behind layers of rose and amethyst clouds
compounded and crystallized
by the pressure of the sky.

Tail lights of cars, low-hanging lanterns,
engulfed me in traffic
before they found themselves weak embers
amidst the ashes of the day.
Each one pulsed, waiting to receive
a sigh strong enough
to breathe them into a blaze
that could replace the sun in night.

When these embers died into the soot,
I was left alone, one intrepid mouse
navigating the labyrinth posed by
the mountain roads at twilight.

Graham Duncan is an alumnus of Lander University in Greenwood, South Carolina, and a graduate student at Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. While at Lander, he was awarded the 2017 Margaret M. Bryant Award, and his poetry was recently featured in “South Carolina’s Best Emerging Poets.” He currently serves as a staff writer and editorial assistant for Lander’s alumni magazine, and can be reached at ghduncan001@converse.edu

Familiar Tunes

My music teacher,
during class changes,
would quietly hum a tune
to herself and passersby—

or whistle it through
her nose, rather.

A familiar one,
though I still can’t
think of where
I’ve heard it before.

I have a song stuck
in my head.
How do I get it out?

“Well, that depends,”
she said.

“Do you like it?”

Stains Incurred from our National Pastime

Enjoying a ballgame one
sunny Saturday afternoon,
I take a bite of my hot dog
being careful not to
drip mustard onto my
new white shirt, while

a heavy-set lady
seated behind me
leans forward and
whispers into my ear
“Mitt Romney hates women.”

Robert Beveridge makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Savant-Garde, Other People’s Flowers, and The Indiana Horror Review, among others.

Arsonist’s Prayer

a stowaway
a house in flames
arms outstretched
to embrace the sins
of the conflagration

I feel you whisper
your divine absolution

you who only could
know my need for fire

for the surprise
the pleasure of the burn

Chapter 7

You knew things weren’t well
when your lawyer slipped you the tongue.
His chihuahua humped your leg.
You looked down and noticed
that the dog’s spot pattern resembled
the Cayman Islands.

I Will Always Associate Almonds with You

the feel of peach
blossoms under my fingers
I caress your skin.
The fragrance of almonds
alerts me, my body reacts
without a thought I kiss you
and I am better for that act

Laconic

I sit here
beside you
and not scream
at the world
how the merest
flick of your pen
over paper
makes me want
to kiss the back
of your neck
while I read
the words
I’m sure are about
someone else

Quail

Last night, a backbird flew
over my grave

The Sandman Screws Up Again

Third time this week.

Tonight I fly
and below me
worms stand at attention
half out of the ground
and wave, ripe, in the wind.

Boy, do they look good.

Tremor

your hand on my cheek

a drop of rain
moves to the edge of the leaf
gathers, falls

Niles Reddick is author of the novel Pulitzer nominated Drifting too far from the Shore, a collection Road Kill Art and Other Oddities, and a novella Lead Me Home. His work has been featured in eleven anthologies/collections and in over a hundred and fifty literary magazines all over the world including PIF, Drunk Monkeys, Spelk, Cheap Pop, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Slice of Life, Faircloth Review, among many others. His new collection Reading the Coffee Grounds was just released. His website is www.nilesreddick.com

Symphony

for Gloria

When the Hospice nurse left Sam’s room, she told Iris, “You can go in now. He’s still awake.”

“Thank you,” Iris replied, adding, “for everything.”

The nurse smiled, walked down the hall to collect her purse and coat from the rack.

“Sam?” Iris called, pushing the door open. “You awake?”

“Sure, I’m awake.” His eyes were closed, but he opened them wide, turned his head, and glared at Iris. “I’ve already had a bath,” he told her.

“Yes, I know,” she said.

“Then, what do you want?”

“I thought I’d sit with you a while. We can talk or I could read the newspaper to you.”

“I can read,” he said. “What do you want to talk about?”

“We can talk about whatever you want to,” she said. She remembered how she’d done all the talking when he was stationed in New Jersey and they met at Atlantic Beach on the boardwalk. They’d had a hot dog at the stand, drank Cokes, and held hands. She was captivated by his Southern drawl, his yes mams, and couldn’t imagine moving South, where it wasn’t the heat that was so bad, but the humidity and insects.

“I don’t mind talking to you, but I see you’re wearing a ring,” Sam said. “Don’t you think your husband might get jealous?”

Iris thought he was lucid, that he was playing with her as he’d always done. “Oh, come on.” She touched his hand. “You’re my husband.”

“No, I’m not,” he said. He pulled his hand up toward him. “I don’t even know you.” Sam closed his eyes, and before Iris could stand and walk to the bedroom door, he was snoring.

Tears welled in Iris’ eyes, she pulled the door closed, and scurried to the living room, sat on the sofa, and bawled.  Iris knew it was the Alzheimer’s eating his memory, but the diagnosis and realization didn’t erase the pain she felt about losing him, of him not even knowing who she was. Even her believing he was between worlds, partly here and partly there on the other side in an afterlife, and that they would someday be together again, didn’t really help take away the feelings she had when he didn’t know her.

She walked over to the stereo. She was wearing a house dress and bedroom slippers. She turned on the best of Diana Ross and the Supremes, and as their harmony, music, and back-up played gently, she danced slowly, sliding her slippers across the wooden floor, imagining and remembering their dancing in this very spot draped in each other’s arms when they first bought the cottage sixty years ago, then just outside of town. Now, the town had sprawled and their neighborhood was considered a historical district, and even though Sam is in the other room moving closer and closer toward the exit door, she feels him, smells Old Spice, and hears the symphony she once felt.

Barbara A Meier teaches kindergarten in Gold Beach, OR, where she continually frets over how to get five-year-olds to start a sentence with an uppercase letter, end with a period, and make sense. In her spare time, she looks for agates, petrified wood, and fossils on the beautiful Southern Oregon beaches. She has been published in The Poeming Pigeon, Cacti Fur, Highland Park Poetry, and Poetry Pacific.https://basicallybarbmeier.wordpress.com/

Alcohol Seas and Opiate Skies

Under the alcohol seas and opiate skies,
He fell asleep last night.
didn’t know I was checking
to see if he was breathing.

There’s a curl on his forehead he hates.
I brush it lightly to feel if his skin is warm.
He wakes with a gasp and mumbles something
in his sleep.

“Are you alive?”

He grunts yes, never remembering
he spoke.

If I could crawl down into his brain
I’d make him remember
and he’d care once more for me.

I’d whisper to him

“If you are lost out at sea,
I’d tell you to swim parallel to me.”

But you drift out to sea in a filmy haze,
never remembering the shore or the breeze
and the crabs dine on what’s left of you and me.

A Little Death in Methow Valley

The moon through the clothesline wire.
Framing the river sheen and dusky leaves.
The coarse soil beneath my thighs
embeds the pain just a little deeper.

I hold my arms to the wire,
grasping the moon between my hands.
Wrapping the Emperor’s clothes around my breasts,
the silk buttons, the lacy neckline, the wire.

I am alone in the cold diamond light.
My tears, pearls dripping down the sky,
catching strands of snot in my hair,
rocking to the sobs of the Cicadas.

I wear the night, velvet on my shoulders.
Squatting to urinate in vintage lilacs,
while you masturbate on rubber vinyl.

What’s left of us grows slack between backyard and basement.
I weave the moonlight to cover what falls to the ground,
mindlessly chanting,

“How can I stay?
But how do I go?”

We fooled ourselves with our fantasies of brocade
that were really only polyester lies, linen fabrications,
and fairytales of silk.

I am alone with the Emperor’s moon,
naked in the diamond light.

Senescence

To lie with the forest floor,
Pine needles stabbing from back to heart.
One hand on the litterfall, digging to the O layer,
filling my fingernails with the fecal dead,
the other on the scabrous pine,
prying the puzzle pieces adding
to the L-organic horizon.

The 4 o’clock breeze rustles down the mountain,
scattering the canopy litter,
blanketing my body in duff.
I become one with the detritus:
a home for worm, beetle, leafhopper, millipede,
wood sorrel, trillium, salamander, shaggy mane, morel.

I settle.

Settle into the senescence of you?
Composting with the creatures and litter?
Or go with the new growth of Dodecatheon poeticum,
pushing up from the humus of my mind?

I am rich in death and decay.

Sam Waszkelewcicz is a writer and door to door salesman living in West Hartford Connecticut. His work has appeared only on scrap pieces of paper and notebooks that he tucks away in the back pocket of his Levi’s.

Twin Bed

You me and the dog
Crammed together in our twin bed
Us spooning
And the dog nestled in between our feet
Neither of us able to move
I always slept perfectly however
The type of sleep one dreams of having
And Now that the two of you are gone
I cannot sleep
For there’s far too much room
In this ocean of a tiny bed
That was once all ours
And is now
just mine

What a Juxtaposition

One day
Sitting in a chair
I straddled
The two realms of
the earths skin

To the right
It was lost long ago
Lost to the first butthole
Fucked in the city
Forgotten in a cubby hole of a bar
Where last call never comes

And to the left
I hear
I am the king of the house
I am the king of my dreams
I am kevin
Pizza!
As the swing goes higher and higher

We yearn for
The swing, to stay
With filtered eyes
And that purity
But at some point we all get up
And walk towards the black hole

Leaving all of that
School house stuff
Behind

Lottery

My space is nothing
but a hand ticking
A white walled straight jacket
There’s movement
In peripheral
But to touch
Or speak
Are a lottery away
Have you ever seen the odds
Of winning?
Please play
Responsibly

Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in The Literary Nest, Rune Bear, Event Horizon Magazine, Another Way Round, Ariel Chart, Bindweed Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review, Indiana Voice Journal, Peacock Journal, Rat’s Ass Review, and others. Two of her poems were published in the University of Southern Indiana’s 50th anniversary anthology, Time Present, Time Past. She was a finalist in Poetry Matters’ contest for the Spring Robinson/Mahogany Red Literary Prize.

Cinderella 2018

She slides a plastic bag over the dress
worn to the ball when she won the prince.
The kids play with it now, pretend they sweep
ash from floors, sing a song with doves,
wait for fairy god-mother to tap her wand.

They have torn the lace and stained the satin,
shattered the glass slippers long ago. Cindy,
as she prefers to be called, rakes her face
across her sleeve. She has nowhere to go or to be.
Her hubby king out all day and many of his nights,
tending his crop of illustrious kingdom.

Her sisters now sweep and weep in her employ.
She hears them plot against her. They want
her husband and her life. Some days she wants
to let them have it and run into the arms
of the sea.

Little Red Riding Hood 2018

She sits on a stump, tosses her backpack
onto the ground. Her grandmother made
this red velvet cape, not knowing her favorite
is actually blue. Though alliteration in her story title
speaks to her sense of poetic pride.

She unzips the bag, pushes away Plath, Sexton, and dreams.
Some think she’s living a high fine life, immortalized
for cobwebs of children to come. But she had to don
this red velvet cape, pull its hood snug over orange curled locks,
escape bright flashes from eager paparazzi.

She pulls out her tablet to rewrite her story. Her cape will match
the shade of her heart, Plath’s heart, Sexton’s heart.
Her grandmother will drive a brand new Corvette,
won’t be stuck in the woods waiting for her
to bring cakes and wine. Oh, yes, a wolf will appear,
the uncle who molested her.

Goldilocks 2018

She tap, tap, taps on the door,
leans against the frame, pulls off
a second-hand Skecher, turns it,
dumps a pebble, arches to relieve pain
that wails like an infant. Her day
spent scouring for berries and bending
to scoop hands for a drink from the creek.

Her stomach grumbles the same old tune
as a window pane shows bags
alive under her eyes. No one comes
to the door. She knows who lives here.
Papa Bear and Baby Bear play ball
in the yard until Mama Bear calls them in.

Goldilocks knows they stashed a key
under the mat that spells Welcome
in letters large enough to mean it.

Inside, the smell of roast catches her
in a net, a pot filled with mac and cheese,
pulls her straight into a land
where heroes and villains
eat straight from pans.

She’ll beg to sleep here, hope Papa Bear’s heart
is not too hard, that Mama Bear can soften him
or Baby Bear will say it’s the right thing to do.
She’ll tell them her time in the woods
made her late for a bed at the shelter.

Julia Watson is a poet from Atlanta, Georgia and coins her poetry as Millennial Southern Gothic. She holds an undergraduate degree in Creative Writing from Florida State University. When not writing, she spends her time cooking veggie-lover meals with her old grumpy sidekick, her dog Annie.

Terminal Dinner with a Side of Mac

She told me over mushroom stroganoff that it’s an incurable disease
in which the central nervous system attacks itself. It can be caused
by a multitude of things such as stress but do not worry, my love,
it is not always genetic and at that I ask if she’ll die before I’m thirty.
She shrugs yes and no but thirty is the last birthday until I’m pinning
calendars upside down and counting backwards instead of forwards
so its best she is gone by then anyhow. So we resume our meal as “Dreams”
plays in the background and Stevie Nicks asks me have I any dreams I’d like
to sell. She offered to join Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers somewhere
around 1981 but Petty turned her down saying “No Girls Allowed” and Nicks
went on to create Bella Donna and the two remained good friends despite the
rejection. And of course, he is dead long past thirty and Stevie is alive
for now so we clink wine glasses and wash up before my mom ties
her arm with a tourniquet like some heroin addict and injects this medicine
that will not save her tonight or ever so I set my alarm
and dream the way I was told to and in nine years when it rings,
I grab my late mother’s tourniquet and suffocate the clock
until it shatters like thunder

the rain soon follows.

You Ask to Write of Origin and I Present You with Cinder

it is thinning wall   it is chipped
furnace   it is spiral staircase screaming
with every touch

it is confederate trench   it is piss
stains from 1980   it is a Christmas
tree spine hunched

it is nursery   it was closet
it is cat and eight litters   it is summer
roaches

it is winter possums   it is ghost
with rifle   it is cries muffled
in dirty washcloth

it is brimming   it is barren
and I am only here
to take

and explode.

Mother Weeps

I love when it rains while the sun is shining
and the smell of fountain water on a hot day—

I love her passion, her healing, how
she loves everything and nothing
all at once.

Where I’m from, they say it’s the devil
beating his wife

but I would like to think
she had just heard Beethoven,
his Sonata No.14 “Moonlight,”
and could not help herself.