• Poems

    Dan Schwerin: “Always”

    Dan Schwerin

    Always

    Always behind him with an ice cream
    as he drags the mower.
    In his dreams he hears her,
    and the hay waits another cutting.
    A bull bellows when the pastor
    comes to this light in August.


    Dan Schwerin’s poetry comes from life on a farm or making his rounds across thirty plus years as a pastor in Wisconsin, and now as the bishop of the Northern Illinois-Wisconsin Area of The United Methodist Church. His debut haiku collection, ORS, from red moon press, won the Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Award in 2016. His collection of American sijo, lightly, is available at red moon press. You can find him on Twitter @SchwerinDan.

  • Poems

    Matthew Caretti: 3 poems

    Matthew Caretti

    Synesthesia

    So soon like children’s laughter perched
    atop the carcass of a beached whale
    or Christmas song harmonies sung
    in the swelter of South Sea islands.

    After all these swift years still
    uncertain if the sea is more sound
    and fury or the wrinkle I feel of a soft
    blue sheet tucked into the horizon.

    Hearing the waterfall I find a dry wall
    of lava rock, where the blowhole ruptures
    a seasalt tongue, angel terns glide
    into thunder and the sated dog’s bay

    becomes the moon. Suddenly no stench
    from the chuckety-chuck of the cannery
    nor the coral reef riffing at ebb tide
    as the slow arch of pastel rainbows.

    In this world on fire with figurative
    innuendo red is all that makes sense,
    a paroxysm of paradox ringing into
    each false equivalency on the news.


     

    Altar of Unrest

    God has left us with nothing.
    Where is my father? Dead
    Now fifteen years. More. Not
    Gone gentle. His questions
    Beget further questions.
    A garage full of boxes
    And paradoxes of love. All
    That his sons won inside.
    Tarnished trophies and a first
    Baseball mitt. Photos of forgotten
    Worlds we once visited—
    Station wagon stories with
    Cigarette burns, the smoke
    Thick with laughter and tears.
    Where is my father now? God
    Might know a thing or two about
    Love for a son. But this father
    Sacrificed himself on the altar of
    Unrest, resting only in what
    He could never know. No occasion
    Though for the insoluble loss
    Of time. Of wars at home
    And abroad. Another ration
    With smokes and rusted tins
    To heal the wounded
    Heart of a million lies. No
    Not this. Not this ever
    Again, the light of love lost
    In some distant jungle. Too far
    Away. I, …
    I don’t know the way. Where
    Is my father?

     


    War Poem


    For Victoria Amelina

    Dandelions bloom atop
    old graves, dander and
    duft wetted by dewdrop
    nights. Mars rising
    with martial spirits
    conjuring a volley
    of harsh words
    from Hardy’s old ghosts,
    a firing into distant
    channels quarried
    ever closer.

    Cyber tunnels
    the latest hack
    hacking heroes into
    ones and zeroes
    some returning home
    to lose all over again.
    Sitting on the street
    corner an alone self-
    medicated marine
    burned by burn pits
    anointed by those old ghosts.
    No AV presentation
    at the VA to save this
    band of brothers.

    The complexities of
    a military industrial-
    ized mistake warfare
    for fairness that might
    makes right. Injustices
    juxtaposed with
    conscientiously objecting
    to the latitudes of pain
    most often paid in poverty,
    yet some move instead
    on a gentler path.

    The gift of finitude
    delivered too soon
    to objectify any losses
    lost in the hot desert
    or winter taiga. Only
    an audacious few
    find themselves
    looking down a barrel
    from the wrong end.
    No flowers this time
    to stuff inside
    or planted graveside,
    but add to this title
    “anti-”

    She made poetry
    of missile defense
    systems of loss. Batteries
    of verse bringing back
    the dead. Or almost
    so. Again those old ghosts.
    Trembling stars not seen
    from the bunker. One
    shining ever brighter,
    burning away fear,
    yet more distant
    than 37 light years.

     


    Matthew Caretti lives and teaches high school English in Pago Pago, American Samoa. His collections include Harvesting Stones (2017, winner of the Snapshot Press eChapbook Award), Africa, Buddha (2022, Red Moon Press) and Ukulele Drift: Poems from a Small Island (2023, Red Moon Press). His prose and poems appear regularly in Tiny Moments, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, contemporary haibun online, Cattails and several other journals. He is the recipient of a 2024 Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun presented by The Haiku Foundation.

  • Poems

    John Ganshaw: Under the Tropical Sun

    John Ganshaw

    Under the Tropical Sun


    Under the Tropical Sun
    The streets of the dusty tourist town were full of banter
    locals gibbering back and forth. tourists lured by the
    scents of ginger, lemongrass, and garlic; added to the
    pork and chicken frying in the sinful yet delicious
    oil. Frangipani blossomed in the trees, the scent
    a reminder of heaven on earth. A cover for the
    evil hidden from view. A world of trafficking that
    no one speaks, young men owned by ex-pats
    priced for the bidding. High on ICE to turn a
    trick, beaten, and raped in the darkness of their
    tormented lives. No one cares and all hope is lost
    speak up and be sent to prison, to be killed, it was
    their wish. The voice of a martyr and all for what?
    to protect the innocent from what happened to you.
    tears of shame become the smile of tomorrow.
    see the pain on his face and the suffering on
    his arms. write the stories of what was seen, and wish
    for a day when all is not lost. To live in a world where
    those who suffer can be free from the nightmare of a
    living death.

     


    John Ganshaw retired from banking to follow his dream of owning a hotel in Cambodia. He saw a world that changed his lens forever. John shares his experiences through poetry, essays, and a memoir in progress. John’s work has appeared in Dreich, Runamok Books/Growerly, Post Roe Alternatives, Fleas on the Dog, OMQ, Free the Verse, eMerge, Unapologetic, Wingless Dreamer, and others.

  • Poems

    Alvaro Carrasquel Gomez: two senryū

    Alvaro Carrasquel Gomez

    two senryū

     

    Fallujah, 2003
    the laments of mourners
    for unearthed skeletons

     


     

    sixty years later
    he denounces
    the renowned priest

     


    Alvaro Carrasquel Gomez is a senryū poet, but he is also a short story writer of splatterpunk and extreme horror, and a cursed poet. From mid-2023, he has been passionately exploring senryū, haiku, haibun, and erotiku. His work has been published so far by Otoroshi Journal (as “Vampirlibido”), tsuri-dōrō—a small journal of haiku and senryu, Shadow Pond Journal, Cold Moon Journal, Failed Haiku, Poetry Pea, and Sakura Haiku Anthology. He lives in Santiago de los Caballeros de Mérida, Venezuela.

  • Poems

    Richard L. Matta: The Mine Field

    Richard L. Matta

    The Mine Field


    Inside my mind are countless flowers,
    a trowel and soil in the wheelbarrow.
    There’s a maze in front of me, a maze
    of holes reaching to the darkness of souls.
    A toddler was here, a farmer there.
    A sunflower meadow, a field of wheat
    burned and bulldozed. So many tactics
    to fend off forces, so many strategies
    to deplete innocents of subsistence.
    The pressure triggers, the tripwires
    sometimes even an alluring trove
    of leftovers, or perhaps a shiny toy.
    Experts say animals in Africa—
    large and small—cower at the sound
    of a human voice, that in its presence,
    even the roar of a lion or tiger doesn’t
    elicit the same fearful response.

     


    Richard L. Matta is originally from New York’s rustic Hudson Valley. His work appears in Glint, Slipstream, Hole in the Head Review, Healing Muse, and elsewhere. He poetry was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023. He currently resides in San Diego, California.

  • Poems

    Kelley White: Insouciant

    Kelley White

    Insouciant

    the way you whipped
    the hose out from under
    the child’s feet, angered by something
    so small—a break in your stride
    as you watered your flowers—
    literally swept her
    off her feet, and she didn’t
    skip a beat, just sat watching:
    it was unimaginable that
    you’d apologize

     


    Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent collection is NO. HOPE STREET (Kelsay Books). She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.

  • Poems

    Kelley White: “altruism…”

    Kelley White

    altruism
    my belief that
    you actually want
    the clothes I don’t want
    on my back


    Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent collection is NO. HOPE STREET (Kelsay Books). She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.

  • Poems

    Howie Good: Story of an Angel

    Howie Good

    Story of an Angel

    He introduces himself over the phone as Nathan, my Imerman Angel. Imerman Angels are cancer survivors who provide emotional support for current cancer patients. Suicidally depressed one day, I signed up online to be matched with a mentor, or angel. Nathan starts off by telling me his story. In 2017 surgeons removed a preposterous 10-pound tumor from his abdomen. He has had no less than seven surgeries since. His latest operation was six weeks ago, to amputate a toe that had turned gangrenous. “Jesus,” I say in reaction. Next week he is flying to Denmark to undergo an experimental procedure. He has already been to Mexico and Chile for other novel treatments. All that strikes me as stupid, not because of the expense, but because of its obvious futility. I wish Nathan luck in Denmark. He says goodbye with what sounds like genuine warmth. Suffering the usual stabs of pain, I struggle out of the chair where I had been sitting and listening for a good half-hour. He never did get around to asking me my story. The only angel is the angel of death.


    Howie Good is a writer living on Cape Cod. His new poetry book, The Dark, is available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.

  • Poems

    P M F Johnson: a senryu

    P M F Johnson: a senryu

    refugee–
    where to bury
    his child

     

    P M F Johnson has placed poems with Evansville Review, Nimrod, North American Review, Poetry East, Threepenny Review, and others. He has won The Brady Senryu Award from The Haiku Society of America, been a Finalist in The Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest, and been shortlisted for a Touchstone Award. He lives in Minnesota with his wife, the writer Sandra Rector.

  • Poems

    Ave Jeanne Ventresca: SELF PORTAIT / reading between the lines

    Ave Jeanne Ventresca

    SELF PORTAIT / reading between the lines

    in the background, rainy day people
    walk through abundant sorrows. have
    learned how to balance through early
    morning wind, between thick cracks
    of concrete and kicked cans of red.
    feeling sad, heart in this noisy gutter,
    another life lost to a sharp blade
    in his back and
    friends that failed
    to understand. deciding not to report
    what he witnessed, was a decision
    he would live with, wear like a badge
    on his denim jacket. hoping others
    wouldn’t see. he attempts to read minds

    of others, empathize with threadbare children
    who are all alone. notice their shadows upon
    the shoreline, like a novel with corrupt
    antagonists, they shuffle across dusty roads.
    durable survivors, all of them. whose entrance
    and exist is of vital importance to read.

     


    Ave Jeanne Ventresca (aka: ave jeanne) is an American/Italian poet, who delves into social and environmental concerns across nine poetry chapbooks. With a notable editorial background, she edited Black Bear Review and served as publisher of Black Bear Publications (USA) for two decades. A poem  from her latest collection, Noticing The Color of Ordinary, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2019. Look for her poetry in lHRAM’s Literary Magazine.

  • Poems

    Arvilla Fee: The Ballad of Returning Soldiers

    Arvilla Fee

    The Ballad of Returning Soldiers

    If you look into my eyes
    you might see a shade of blue;
    I hope you notice in your hurry
    that I still shed tears too.

    Just because I’ve fought in wars
    doesn’t mean I’m granted grace;
    turns out when they send you home
    you can lose your safest space.

    Dead men often come a-knocking,
    pounding on the door of dreams;
    when I’m face-down on the hardwood,
    I can hear their fetid screams.

    I know you probably look at me,
    a grizzly man with cardboard sign
    and entertain a fleeting thought
    before I vanish from your mind.

    I truly cannot cast the blame,
    for I was once like you,
    things to do, things to see;
    the day was mine to choose.

    I guess the hardest part of all
    is knowing I’m still here
    while all others have forgotten
    as though I have disappeared.

     


    Arvilla Fee teaches English and is the managing editor for the San Antonio Review. She has published poetry, photography, and short stories in numerous presses, including Calliope, North of Oxford, Rat’s Ass Review, Mudlark, and many others. Her poetry books, The Human Side and This is Life, are available on Amazon. Arvilla loves writing, photography and traveling, and she never leaves home without a snack and water (just in case of an apocalypse). For Arvilla, writing produces the greatest joy when it connects us to each other. To learn more about her work, you can visit her website: https://soulpoetry7.com/

  • Poems

    Gil Hoy: You Wouldn’t Know

    Gil Hoy

    You Wouldn’t Know

    he was my father.

    I never knew him
    very well
    because he wasn’t around
    when I was born.

    You wouldn’t know
    he married my mother
    when she was just 16. That he
    took my sister to the park
    most Sunday mornings
    so my mother
    could sleep in.

    You wouldn’t know
    a lot about any of that.

    That he was passionate
    about lifting up the weak
    and the poor
    that he believed America
    is a great Country.

    You wouldn’t know
    much about any of that.

    You wouldn’t know
    that he began to question
    why we were there
    before he died

    that he forgave his enemy
    who planted the mine
    that blew off his leg
    on a faraway field.

    You wouldn’t know
    anything about any of that.

    I’ll never forgive
    those who sent him there,

    I can’t.

    I know his small, rectangular
    white marble marker
    because it bears his name.

     


    Gil Hoy is a Best of the Net nominated Tucson, Arizona poet and writer who studied fiction and poetry at The Writers Studio in Tucson, Arizona and at Boston University. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He finished in second place in the New England University Wrestling Championship while at BU at 177 lbs. Hoy is a semi-retired trial lawyer. His poetry and fiction have previously appeared in Right Hand Pointing, Third Wednesday, Tipton Poetry Journal, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Chiron Review, One Sentence Poems, Rusty Truck, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, The Penmen Review, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Bewildering Stories, Literally Stories, The New Verse News and elsewhere.

  • Poems

    Micky Shorr: Changing the Narrative

    Micky Shorr

    Changing the Narrative

     

    This is one of the stories she told. I was almost four, and got angry at her. I decided to run away from home. Mother would explain how she helped me pack. Wished me good luck. Amused at the cuteness of her version.

    What I remember… My feelings have been hurt. I’m voicing my objections. Mother suggests maybe I’d like to run away, could live on the next street with Aunt Lilly. Despite some reluctance I take up the challenge. Tell her yes, I want to do that.

    Excited, she picks out some clothes and a snack. Wraps the items in a kerchief, ties them to a stick, hands it to the little girl I am. Imagines me some hobo in a Mark Twain adventure. She opens the door to the staircase that leads outside, cheerfully wishes me good fortune. Waits while I take a few steps down before she shuts it.

    There I am in that dark hallway, backed into a corner but refusing to back down. I’m working hard to figure it out. How to save myself, not seem weak, but not have to leave.  A solution comes to me, it’s one I can live with. I turn around, climb up the stairs to remind her. I’m not allowed to go into the gutter so I can’t cross the street by myself.

    Years later, my little boy at a similar age, he’s expressing dislike for something I have or haven’t done. I find myself driven to offer him a similar choice  . To run away, live somewhere else. He says yes and for a minute I think I’ll have to keep on with it, have to help him pack and leave.

    Instead I come to my senses. Save myself again. Say that I’m sorry, tell him “I don’t want you to leave”. Tell him “I love you, please live here with me”.

     


    Micky Shorr is a retired school social worker/psychotherapist. Micky lived in the Hudson Valley, NY for several decades, and facilitated a monthly poetry reading, had some of her work read on public radio, and was a featured reader at local venues, and in the metropolitan area. Micky returned to Brooklyn recently, still misses her garden, but loves getting to see firsthand her grandson becoming himself. Her poetry has been published in Poetrybay, Trailer Park Quarterly, and soon in Wordpeace. Work also appeared in the award–winning anthology A Slant of Life and in Walt Whitman 205 anthology.

  • Poems

    Mark Danowsky: Flashback at the ER

    Mark Danowsky

    Flashback at The ER

    I could have tried harder

    to force you to go

    after I held you drenched

    in the downpour

    after I left work

    in a focused panic

    after you finally admitting severity

    no police you insisted  

    me searching the bridge for you

    under the bridge

    finally finding you

    quaking drenched

    holding a soaked tote bag

    containing your favorite books

    your long terrible sobs 

    no 302 you begged 

    a psych visit already scheduled 

    apologies & assurances  

    before I left you huddled on the porch 

    with your new guardian

    a man who it turned out did not comprehend 

    the scope & imminent danger

    just as when I backed away

    I said, I need you to let me go

    but it was only meant for days 

    just for those few days

    to attend a wedding 

    I needed to be there for

    & still missed  

    & I tell myself I cannot have known

    how a so-called accident 

    waiting to happen

    does not hit home as accident

    the gut punch you never see coming

    is the hit you convince yourself

    you are tensed up

    prepared to take

     


    Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry. He is the author
    of four poetry books. His latest poetry collection is Meatless (Plan B Press). Take Care is forthcoming from Moon Tide Press in 2025.

  • Poems

    Jianqing Zheng: Four Poems

    Jianqing Zheng

    The Chained Woman

    A case of human trafficking and ill-treatment exposed to light in 2022 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xuzhou_chained_woman_incident)

    What must be chained
    to the neck & locked
    in that dirty hut
    are devils of cruelty,
    barren fields of moral illiteracy,
    cold faces of idiocy,
    & dumb heads of vacuity
    that show human apathy
    in a land with a long history
    of civilization.

     

    The World Has Changed

    Give an eye

    to the breathing sun & moon,
    to the hugging sky & earth,
    to the shifting continents,
    to the creeping magma & lava,
    to the gazing stars & ghosts,

    to the tugging war & peace,
    to the dying children & the savaging killers,
    to the crying sympathy & the smirking absurdity,
    to the silent desperation & the exploding bombshells,
    to the dream never realized & the reality never dreamed.

    Give an eye & see
    the change is turning desperately
    like a gyre.

     

     

    The Apron Blues

    after Eudora Welty’s photograph “A Slave’s Apron Showing Souls in Progress to Heaven or Hell”

    O, Lord, we have been working
    all our lives from sunup to sundown
    in planters’ kitchens and cotton fields.

    O, Lord, our pains and sufferings
    have sharpened our eyes, coarsened
    our hands and strengthened our legs.

    O, Lord, our souls are faithful,
    voices graceful and dreams beautiful,
    and we work hard for nothing bagful.

    O, Lord, where shall our souls go?
    To heaven or hell? Will the journey
    be too long to overcome?

    O, Lord, are you listening silently
    to our quest for the promised land?

     

    Scar

    Grandpa was beaten to death when the Cultural Revolution broke out. After his remains were cremated, Dad brought home the urn and placed it before Grandpa’s serious-looking portrait. We bowed and sobbed. Grandpa was a history teacher, denounced as a reactionary for disloyalty to Chairman Mao because he refused to group dance for the great helmsman’s longevity.

    autumn gust
    memories spiral up
    into choking dust

    Grandpa was locked in a dank cell at his school and often taken to the rallies where insane radicals, colleagues, and Red Guards raised their fists and shouted hysterically, “Down with him!” Those Red Guards, who were his students, pressed his head down before the Mao poster, punched him in the chest, kicked his legs to make him kneel, and forced him to say he was an anti, but he clenched his teeth. Beaten for two hours by the savage beasts, Grandpa fell to death, face deformed and ribs all broken. No one was blamed, no one was arrested, no one was guilty about what they did in the lawless time.

    violent death
    a yellow leaf falls
    on the wet ground
    covered soon
    by the darkness

    Yesterday was Grandpa’s death day. I went to see him—his grave looked stoic in autumn wind. Kneeling before his stone, I burned incense, wishing the ruthless age would never return like a rough beast to suck the blood of civilization. I never forget his death day because it’s like a scar remaining thick.

    heat mirage
    Mao’s mausoleum
    a rocking cradle

     


    Jianqing Zheng‘s poetry has recently appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, Mississippi Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, and New World Writing Quarterly. His poetry awards include artist fellowships from Mississippi Arts Commission and Gerald Cable Book Prize.

  • Poems

    Norman Abjorensen: Two Poems

    Norman Abjorensen

    Old Woman, Cambodia

    I died long ago,
    I die every day,
    every hour, every minute.
    My life is constant death,
    I am always dying,
    I do not live.
    I am become death.

    These eyes have seen too much.
    The horror has no name.
    An empty darkness there,
    beyond all measure;
    an impenetrable zone of negation.

    Not mute, but silent:
    in such a world laid bare,
    words have no meaning.

    There is no one left.
    All memory is obliterated,
    the past erased.

    Only an interminable present,
    a time outside of time,
    a moment lived again and again,
    a present that is always there.

    I cannot die, but I am dead.
    I cannot remember, but I cannot forget.
    I am the darkness that fears itself.
    I am the end that never ends.

     

    Killing Fields, Cheung Ek

    The hen and her chicks
    are pecking over the mounds,
    dipping into the shallow pits.

    Outside the wire fences,
    peasant children from the paddies
    beg for change.

    Silent visitors file through
    awed into disbelief
    at the history of this tranquil scene.

    Glass cases display bones and rags,
    all that remain of those
    who drew their last breath here.

    Yet life goes on in this terrible place,
    as the chicks peck and the children play.

    Outside the gates
    mine victims minus limbs
    rattle their tins.

    The rattle of dead men’s bones,
    the rattle of the death trucks.
    The rattle of weapons reloading,
    the rattle of gunfire.
    The rattle of metal on skull,
    the rattle of fear in the heart.
    The rattle of the ebbing pulse,
    the rattle in a dying man’s throat.
    The rattle in the tail of the viper,
    the rattle of forlorn hope.
    The rattle of frozen desire trapped forever.

    The rattle of something small
    lost and tumbling in vastness.

    The rattle of something in nothingness.

    The rattle of your soundless scream
    echoing forever.

     


    Norman Abjorensen is an Australian poet and playwright.