GROWTH By Roger Singer

I saw a fire

in the distance

like a burning

blue star

reminding me

of youth

 

a photo alive

releasing pages

of images

 

the child

the adult

the grave

 

 

Dr. Singer has had over 1,200 poems published on the internet, magazines and in books and is a Pushcart Award Nominee.  Some of the magazines that have accepted his poems for publication are:  Westward Quarterly, Jerry Jazz, SP Quill, Avocet, Underground Voices, Outlaw Poetry, Literary Fever, Dance of my Hands, Language & Culture, The Stray Branch, Tipton Poetry Indigo Rising, Down in the Dirt, Fullosia Press, Orbis, Penwood Review, Subtle Tea, Ambassador Poetry Award, Massachusetts State Poetry Society.  Louisiana State Poetry Society Award.  Readers Award Orbis Magazine 2019.  Arizona State Poetry Award 2020.

Mad Swirl Anthology 2018, 2019.

 

 

Life During Wartime By Keith Pearson

“Scientists have used video cameras to show how locusts’ wings change shape during flight…”

Francesca is writing songs again about the war down the road no one else can see. She believes the world is a roomful of old deaf men.

She sits on the marble bench in the center of her spare room and peels off the t-shirt marked with government slogans to show you the scar that runs down the center of her chest, a thick purple worm like the border of two countries that refuse to speak.

You bend to drink from the fountain of her breast but she turns away and curls upon the cool marble, arms crossed and her knees drawn up, her skin pale with dust like the piece of sculpture in that postcard from Rome.

With a sigh she rolls to her back and parts her thighs but instead you are captured by the sounds outside the window and leave her to press your cheek to the cold glass.

Cannons in the hills have fired without aim into the valley and the tall trees and the water tower are afire.

From along the ridge comes the echo of the cry of ghosts, soldiers in line with swords drawn raised and ready, their faces streaked with dirt and the lime thrown into their graves.

They await the command to charge from some fearless and unforgiving 

keith pearson was born and raised in new hampshire and works at a local high school in the math department.

Tempest By Alyssa Trivett

(Inspired by the band Driveways song “Tempest”)

As you rattle off or bed,

don’t dig up bones of our failures.

Be it with a plastic beach sand shovel or a plastic fork from the diner.

Let it go and it shall die.

And in Spring, it will bloom

into something new.

Kicking off any spiderwebs from my mind.

I may not be the same of whom I was

before I ran through this

and hell tried to drag me to it.

The tempest does not define me. It is only one “you are here” on life’s map, a temporary plot point, as a matter of fact.

I will emerge , unscathed.

I try to keep his ghost in the basement of my mind, of everything he and I had.

I drive away from Midwest air

to breathe the ocean line.

The tempest tries to draw near, and even when the memories rubberband retract on I always claw off and back to the present again.

Alyssa Trivett is a wandering soul from the Midwest. When not working two jobs, she chirps down coffee while scrawling lines. Her work has appeared in many places, but most recently at Ex Ex Lit, and Duane's PoeTree 

Veterans Day By Mark James Andrews

When my father just turned 17

he took to the sofa. 

The big tall boy wouldn’t get up

except to pee. 

That’s what my Babcia told me. 

That means grandma in Polish. 

She said he just laid there 

started losing weight. 

He quit going to school at St. Thomas. 

So what could me & Pa do 

except sign the papers for him to go.

He went to something called Boot Camp 

& then fresh out of that

they sent him somewhere else

for some gun training.

It was such a short time. 

Then straight to Japan. 

Straight to the fighting. 

He never got to wear the white hat 

& the dress blue suit that you see.

Such a beautiful suit 

but they never gave him one. 

So that’s Babcia’s story. 

I’ll skip my childhood story

growing up with my psycho Dad 

but my Mom had it worse.

He was a drinking man & dementia 

put him in a nursing home at 62. 

Korsakoff syndrome does that.

It comes when a drinking man 

doesn’t take time to eat. 

Shot & a beer & malnutrition 

is bad for the brain. 

The court appointed me 

his guardian & conservator 

because no one else would do it 

& he just wouldn’t die. 

He kept on rolling 

in his wheelchair & in his diaper

long after his fighting days 

& drinking days were over.

His legs & his bladder were ok.

The big tall boy just didn’t want 

to walk or get up to pee.

Mark James Andrews lives and writes in Metro Detroit. He is the author of five chapbooks, At the Ice Cow Queen on Mack (Alien Buddha Press), So I Lit a Fire for The Last Thanksgiving (Alien Buddha Press), Motor City is Burning & Other Rock & Roll Poems (Gimmick Press), Compendium 20/20 (Deadly Chaps) and Burning Trash (Pudding House Press), as well as a poetry recording Brylcreem Sandwich (Bandcamp).

Word Basket By Rita S. Spalding

I have a word basket where I save delicate thoughts.

Silver braided with a ribbon down the center, 

between beginnings and endings that were or were not.

Sometimes tied and tangled, at other times turned 

and angled into a wide bow. It is a little bit of Jerusalem today.

Beneath the shades of wistful grays, there is a pallid lightness

in my loss of words to comfort, holding my throat in all its weakness.

We smiled and said goodbye years ago, not knowing

it would be our first and last and only wrinkle in time.

It would be our silver ribbon curling at the edges.

Now there is a gathering of goddesses who sort through life’s pages.

We are peaking at left over love letters never meant to be seen.

Papers you wrote in pencil, unfinished sentences that are lost forever.

None of it matters any more. We find the remains of your colorful shirts 

and hold them high above our heads; they make us smile.

We wonder, where did you wear the embroidered purple one?

Did the feathered straw hat perch above its collar?

Your brown leather jacket wears creases on each side and sleeve.

We wonder, what are the memories buried in its folds?

Did the wind hush them in soft whispers?

Your heart led to other worlds, other places, across oceans.

We could not follow you there and dared not try.

I smelled the bottle of unopened bourbon hidden in your boot, 

the drink you carried followed in your journey,

and now rests in my hands.

This is my word basket, where braided silver hides.

I cry, shout, and wonder why, oh why, oh why.

Now here today, here today, oh here today, 

all of my wonderings belong to Jerusalem.

Rita S. Spalding studied in London and graduated summa cum laude from Murray State University in December 2024. She is recipient of the 2025 Murray State Outstanding Senior in Sociology Award. She has been published in 18 Calliope anthologies, National Library of Poetry, AX-POW Magazine, The Heartland Review, Kentucky Monthly Magazine, Keeping the Flame Alive, Fallen, Rebirth, The Rye Whiskey Review, Walden’s Poetry and Reviews, Poet-Tree Magazine and Kentucky Humanities. Her first book, Abstract Ribbons, was published in 1992 and her two most recent books, published in 2025, are What is Beauty, and The Eighth.

Rita was formerly director of Women Who Write, where in 2006 she helped to establish the annual Kentucky Women's Book Festival, and had the pleasure of meeting writer and activist bell hooks. She also served as panelist for the Dorothy Clay Norton Fellowships at the Mary Anderson Center, and was on the committee to nominate Maureen Morehead as the 2011-12 Kentucky poet laureate. 

Observations from a Holiday Season Nightshift By Joe Couture

He told me that he was a fixin’

to kill a prominent politician.

Wry smiles came from his fellow patrons

As he explained his deal with the ancients.

Jesus arranged the intricate details

along with the boys, a group of angels

Who set on a sum of many millions

they’d bill to world leaders for the killin.’

Christmas lights danced off the can in his hand

that waved as he weaved, unable to stand.

After his loud oration, he announced

the pay’d go in the “Pete loves beer account!”

in the bank of heaven.

As he laughed at the politician’s fate

regulars laughed in his sunken old face

I couldn’t help thinking

His first time swaying by lights and garland 

when the smiles of watchers weren't so hardened.

Joe Couture is a writer living in rural Nova Scotia. He writes for his health. If you want to connect with him, try here: @rjcouture.bsky.social

Learning About Romance at Jake’s, Explained Badly By Greg Clary

Standing in the TJ Maxx checkout line

fluorescent lights humming like cicadas,

I stare at a display of modern salvation:

sleep gummies, alertness pills,

“Stamina” powders, menstrual mercy,

gas relief,

all the physical poetry of being human,

alphabetized under SALE.

I turn to the young mother behind me,

her buggy stacked with frosted wreaths

and peppermint scented illusions.

I ask:

“You trust this stuff more than the gas station racks?”

She laughs without looking up:

“Honey, I barely trust gravity.”

And suddenly, 

I’m back at Jake’s Texaco in Greenbottom,

a kind of community safe house

for boys who liked Elvis,

pickup trucks,

and the idea that life 

was about to begin any day now.

And Jake, our local wizard of

life-skills wisdom and moral confusion,

kept the good stuff behind the counter:

rubbers, apple wine in Mason jars,

pint crocks of moonshine, 

Playboys ragged at the edges,

and one deck of French poker cards,

strictly medical, showing nekkid people

engaged in cardio activities 

unfamiliar to us. 

One hot July day, a buddy and I,

fueled by hope and ignorance, 

sent five dollars cash

to an ad from the back of Argosy Magazine

for a packet of Spanish Fly,

advertised as a romance enhancer,

but we would’ve been happy

if a girl simply nodded at us.

It never arrived.

We checked the mailbox every day

as if it cradled 

the future of our hearts. 

Sixty years later,

I see that same friend at funerals,

reunions, and campfires.

He always pauses and asks,

“Has it showed up yet?”

And I always answer,

“Yes, in a way.

Just not by mail.”

Greg Clary is a retired college professor who was born and raised in Turkey Creek, West Virginia. He now resides in the northern Appalachia Pennsylvania Wilds.

His photographs have appeared in The Sun Magazine, Looking at Appalachia, Rattle, Hole in the Head Review, Pine Mt Sand & Gravel, Tiny Seed Journal, Watershed Journal, About Place, Change Seven, Appalachian Lit, and many more.

His writing has been published in Rye Whiskey Review, The Bridge Literary Journal, Northern Appalachia Review, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Waccamaw Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Trailer Park Quarterly, Black Shamrock Magazine, Rust Belt Review, and Tobeco.

His new book of photographs and poetry, “The Vandalia in Me”, was published by Meraki Press and is available on-line at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.