A Spiders Web By Mary Bone

 Purple was the color

of an intricate web,

perfectly embroidered.

A talented spider worked all morning

hoping to inject venom

Into a helpless victim.

A child blowing bubbles, saw them captured

Inside the hanging masterpiece.

The colors were vibrant and clung to

the web for a while, dissipating into

a rainbow’s burst.

His mom captured this moment on camera.

The spider had never seen such beauty.

Mary Bone has been writing poetry and short stories since childhood. She has written two books of poetry.

Some of her poems have been published at The Poetry Catalog, Active Muse journal, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and upcoming at Highland Park Poetry and The Academy of the Heart and Mind.

They Wish I Wrote About Flowers By Chad Parenteau

They’d rather

I report on 

backyards,

not protests,

trade politics,

for pollen,

record tinier 

genocides.

Just until

they can

finally say

I’m crazy

when petals

fail to rise one 

sunstroked 

summer,

gaslight me

under blazing

gaslit eye,

all saying

there were

never any

hydrangeas

at my house,

no lilacs 

ever grazed

my mother’s 

old bushes,

dismiss all 

my photos

as deepfakes,

dismiss me,

horticultural

has been 

hoarding 

dandelion wine.

They’ll tell

family, friends,  

cast memories

in plot hole.

You’re wrong

Chad never

ever wrote

about flowers. 

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston’s long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Pocket Lint, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, The New Verse News, dadakuku, Nixes Mate Review and The Ugly Monster. He has also been published in anthologies such as French Connections, Sounds of Wind, Reimagine America, and The Vagabond Lunar Collection. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine and co-organizer of the annual Boston Poetry Marathon. He lives and works in Boston.

 

Halloween and Neo Paganism at the Library By Mark James Andrews

I am researching plywood 

at my library drone desk 

for mild diversion

my obsession 

with problematic lamination 

of abstract cores.  

I am distracted by the parade 

of toddlers as princesses 

and pirates in the arms 

of women and the occasional man.

  

All passing my Adult Reference desk 

for the noontime preschool lap-sit 

holiday story time 

in the Children’s Department.

One babe in arms is mummy wrapped 

in white gauze a revelation for me

as yesterday my subject search 

focus was duct tape

pressure sensitive in my mind 

to lift the warts off 

the derma of a gone world.  

The next kid wobbles by in red pajamas 

with the inscription I’m a Little Devil. 

There appears to be no adult supervision 

but then a woman rushes over 

looking vaguely like Taylor Swift

red lips with a mixed blonde wig 

with bangs shoulder length.

 

Suddenly a tatted-up woman 

snakes up to me with a rivulet of blood 

coursing down from a forehead projectile. 

On closer inspection 

she has an open safety pin pushed 

in her mid-forehead centered 

on a line above her nose and red striping 

down to her nose tip, lips, chin

 

then down to a spreading bulls-eye 

on her white t-shirt bust line slightly left

for me to view the near perfect 

nipple centered bullseye

a process I speculate 

that was tested and practiced 

in the restroom mirror to max 

the freak out factor.

  

DO YOU HAVE BOOKS ON WITCHCRAFT?

YES. I DO. FOLLOW ME.

Pin woman with blood bullseye 

on left breast bird-dogs me 

on my heels too close 

as I hop on down 

the Dewey Decimal trail 

to top shelf 299.94 

and she begins howling.

EEEEOOOOWWWW!

Then pin woman hops up 

on a step stool on casters

surfing up to the top shelf

teetering, fingering out spine tops

extracting her prize wide eyed.

WHAT’S NEO PAGANISM?  

OH MY GOD! YES! YES! 

THIS IS WHAT I NEED!

Mark James Andrews lives and writes in Metro Detroit. He is the author of five chapbooks. The latest is At The Ice Cow Queen On Mack from Alien Buddha Press. His poetry has appeared in Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Hiram Poetry Review, Slipstream, Respect: The Poetry of Detroit Music, Rye Whiskey Review and many other spots.

 

if you really must know By keith pearson

without asking i know

it is the solitude

i remember most.

after a good meal.

after a storm has passed.

after our argument

about the poetry of

wallace stevens.

after sex.

and how the solitude

born in the intensity

of the moment

ran down like some

antique clock wound tight

and put aside to slowly

tick the quiet time down.

to when words once again

became necessary whether

we wanted to speak them

or not or even needed to.

but they were just words

and meant nothing.

why else are they the thing

i do not remember.

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

Driving Down NASCAR Lane I Notice the Empty Lot Where our Rented Trailer Sat for Many Years By jim bourey

I did the best I could cleaning

the rented trailer. It was old, dirty,

full of pet hair and beer cans,

sad prints of beautiful places

in cheap frames hanging at odd angles. 

The stove (my god that stove) was a sure 

source of disease. I got it mostly clean.

Then I drove the 500 miles north

in the piano store delivery truck

to get our stuff.

She had everything packed,

ready to go. But she was still

angry. At least the kids 

were excited. So, we drove 

back south, me in the truck 

with the oldest, her in the beater brown

Nova with the little one. We stopped 

more often than we should have.

I might have been purposely delaying

our arrival. She wasn’t going to like it,

this old green mobile home in the run down

park, on NASCAR Lane, for god’s sake.

We got to the trailer on that hot summer day in 1980.

She walked through the place, glancing 

around, tight lipped. 

I showed the girls their rooms. 

When I looked back down the hall

to the kitchen, she was kneeling in front of the stove,

sponge and Easy-Off Oven Cleaner 

in her rubber-gloved hands. 

At least she wasn’t sobbing. 

She was just trying to clean up my mess.

jim bourey is an old poet who lives on the edge of the Adirondacks. His books include Out There and Back Again and The Distance Between Us, both from Cold River Press. He also co-wrote Season of Harvest with poet Linda Blaskey, published by Pond Road Press. His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies. He can often be found reading aloud in dimly lit rooms. jim lives in Dickinson Center, NY with his wife Linda.

Curt’s Leg By Trish Saunders

Finally, you come to the reason for your visit: 

Whatever happened to Cousin Curt? 

I'll tell you, but first a stiff bourbon, no ice, and no questions after. 

Curt gave up his diet of Fatso’s Fried Chicken; coke, booze and ecstasy;

 5-Hour Energy Shakes; and a crazy ex-wife who shot holes 

in his leather jacket. But losing his Harley after losing his license— 

that knocked the heart out of him, silenced his merry baritone belting out,

"Mississippi moon, won’t you keep on shining.” 

If our cousin phoned someone in his final hour, after a copperhead

snuck into his tent in the Arizona White Mountains, 

sank its fangs into Curt's left calf, 

I don’t know who he would have called. God, maybe.

Curt had found religion at last. I’m sure he sent out prayers that night, 

and who can say they went unanswered.

Trish Saunders writes poems and short fiction from Seattle and Honolulu. She has work in The American Journal of Poetry, The Rye Whiskey Review, Pacifica Poetry Review, and Silver Birch Press, and other places.    

 

Why I Hate Election Years By Leah Mueller

I have already tried in a tiny room to see a larger one but there is no space left can you understand this can it even be done without a hula hoop or a piece of pie or a poodle mohawk no one knows and I am not anyone the last time somebody trifled with me I pushed them they pushed me and then I ran and hid inside a fish floating beside a plate the bottle remained on the shelf without a glass it looked like stars it looked like shooting it came after me despite my attempts to conceal what I was thinking sometimes my thoughts are like worms in shoes the confusion comes and goes in red waves and blue waves and everyone slamming their fists on the table of their mind a bottle of thoughts a bottle of rage shaken by an invisible hand a tornado of carbonation a Bible in one glove and a gun in the other why do I keep wandering across the land looking for corners when there are only cul-de-sacs filled with cats whose teeth are bared oh America you have not disappointed me you are exactly what I expected stretched out on a hospital bed with your tub of fluids clock beating in time with your frail heart the center of which turns like a kaleidoscope of fury I will love you again on the condition that you love me back your handles grasp me even as I try to take hold of them again and again and again it can’t be long now I wish it would stop it never stops your field still holds me captive and my mother is in her trailer my mother is crazy and my brother is a criminal we are all criminals and we are all saints like traffic lights turning red then green then yellow just keep going the same speed to be on the safe side but there is no safety in the desert no safety in the ocean no safety in your mind just you America 

Leah Mueller is a Tulsa-based poet and prose writer. Her work is published in Rattle, NonBinary Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Citron Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Does It Have Pockets, Outlook Springs, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She has received several nominations for Pushcart and Best of the Net. One of her short stories appears in the 2022 edition of Best Small Fictions. She has been featured in numerous venues, including the New York Poetry Festival, Creative Colloquy in Tacoma, WA, and Everett Poetry Night in Everett, WA. Leah is a freelance arts journalist for the Sierra Vista Herald/Review. Her fourteenth book, "Stealing Buddha" was published by Anxiety Press in 2024. Website: http://www.leahmueller.org.