Here 2021

Here

Issue 4

Jeff William Acosta Glen Armstrong John Bargowski Mohineet Boparai Tabitha Bozeman Caitlin Breen Helen R Broom

Lorraine Caputo Daniel P. Carey Jr. Eliza Carey Elynor Melly Carey Robert Claps Ken Cormier Linda M. Crate Sean Frederick Forbes Margaret Gibson Sitara Gnanaguru José B. González Robert Bernard Hass Harry Humes M.J. Iuppa Tan Tzy Jiun Mohamad Kebbewar Naomi Kim Richard Krohn Kristin R. Laudenslager John Long Paul Martin Steve Myers Cait O’Kane Julia Paul Lois Roma-Deeley Pegi Deitz Shea Donald G. Sheehy Joan Seliger Sidney Steve Straight Katherine Szpekman Elizabeth Tomanio

Here: a poetry journal

Contributors

$5

2021

Cover Art: Out and About by Hilary Opperman Collage

24” x 24” 2019 https://www.hilaryopperman.com/

ISSN: 2689-7547

a poetry journal Issue 4

2021

Here

a poetry journal

2021

Editor Daniel Donaghy, Professor of English Student Editors Rebecca Norman, Safiya Palmer, Sarah Poinelli, and Raven Vanderberg

Here a poetry journal Department of English Eastern Connecticut State University 83 Windham Street 225 Webb Hall Willimantic, CT 06226 herepoetry@easternct.edu www.easternct.edu/herepoetryjournal/ phone: (860) 465-4570 fax: (860) 465-4580

Follow us on social media!

Twitter: @here_poetry Instagram: @herepoetry Facebook: @herejournal

Cover Art Out and About by Hilary Opperman Collage 24” x 24” 2019 https://www.hilaryopperman.com/ Publication of this issue of Here was funded by a Curriculum Development Grant by Eastern Connecticut State University.

Submissions for the next issue of Here are welcome October 1 to November 30, 2021, through our Submittable link: https://herepoetryjournal.submittable.com/submit

ISSN 2689-7547 ©2021 Eastern Connecticut State University

• Table of Contents

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Julia Paul Margaret Gibson Naomi Kim Mohineet Boparai Glen Armstrong Tabitha Bozeman Caitlin Breen Katherine Szpekman Harry Humes Robert Claps Steve Myers José B. González Joan Seliger Sidney Richard Krohn Mohamad Kebbewar Cait O'Kane Steve Straight Elynor Melly Carey Daniel P. Carey Jr. Eliza Carey John Bargowski Ken Cormier Helen R Broom

Sean Frederick Forbes Jeff William Acosta Robert Bernard Hass

John Long Lois Roma-Deeley M.J. Iuppa Tan Tzy Jiun Donald G. Sheehy Elizabeth Tomanio Pegi Deitz Shea Lorraine Caputo Kristin R. Laudenslager Linda M. Crate Sitara Gnanaguru Paul Martin Contributors Notes

4 7 8 9 11 12 14 15 16 17 18 20 22 23 24 25 26 28 29 29 30 31 32 32 34 35 35 36 37 38 40 41 42 43 44 44 45 46 47

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Julia Paul

January Praise the ghost light of morning moon, host to this new year. Curse the old year for its cruel mouth. How it hissed death up and down fluorescent lit corridors.

Remember the loved ones trapped behind glass, turned to mist. Handprints whispering goodbye.

All those windows wearing cut-out hearts.

All the torn and broken hearts.

Every holiday drowned alone in the bathtub with only the maid to beg Don’t go.

We leave the year that finally overdosed on its own broken promises. The sky we looked up to, a blizzard of lies, the moon foaming at the mouth.

The year the Earth lit up, inhaled disease into its lungs. The year hope was pulled from the mouths of machines.

Behind our masks, we mutter prayers to the moon-faced god sliding down a pole in Times Square.

Another god has snapped the leash of time to our collars.

The new year arrives to a sky the color of bruise faded to the shades of yellow that linger after blood drains away. Swords drawn, we lop off the head of the year we declared enemy.

The moon rolls away, like a marble on a slanted floor.

Not gone. Just somewhere else, like yesterday.

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Small Narratives The friend you Narcanned to bring back to life twice says, as untimely as your death was, your life was perfectly timed.

I have nothing but the wealth of your history now.

Someone else remembers the chain-link vest you made in Metalsmithing class and your teenage fascination with Volkswagens.

Your life is broken into small narratives.

My son, I’ve fed you to the fire.

Your paintings live inside me.

I stole that line to give it new life.

Is the bird in the deep January tangle of branches fact or memory?

How many times did they press on your chest?

A neighbor recalls the cookies you baked for her that rainy day she gave you and Ryan a ride home.

In the pocket of your jeans I find crumpled papers with phone numbers and empty wax folds stamped with blue ink.

Another story: diving into the reservoir, the sky darkening, you and your buddies running for your lives, lightning bolts at your heels.

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The last day you woke up was a Friday.

You didn’t know that, did you?

Is the blinking neon light a detail I made up?

Can you hear me?

I said Kait has asked for your ashes.

I’ll wash your clothes, fold them and bag them.

Tell me, where do I put the pieces of these surfaced memories? How do I learn to speak the language of the dead? ◉

Dear Coroner, How Could You Know that he was articulate, and very, very, funny, that he once knew all the state capitals in alphabetic order, won a prize for metalsmithing in high school, loved reggae, Volkswagens, quesadillas with gorgonzola, snowboarding, reading Cormac McCarthy and that he loved how light fell through stained glass windows, his brothers, swing sets covered in snow, blank cavasses, the geometry of a pieced-together bowl, how sun sparked orange like matchsticks on concrete, that he loved to dawdle like he had time in his pocket, believed in ghosts, in not killing spiders, and forgave, forgave the haters, the suits and shoppers who brushed past him, muttering under their breath, but loud enough for him to hear, Fuck off, junkie.

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Margaret Gibson

Drawing the Line When I have fears that my grandchildren may be swept by the fires and floods my generation has made inevitable, and that neither music nor poetry nor art will give them joy and the outrageous courage to live, no matter what— I remember you, Anna Akmatova, outside with other women in the line of prison visitors, stamping your feet in the cold, just another one of those suffering beneath Stalin’s new tyranny.

Asked by the woman next to you in the line, “Can you describe this?” you replied, “Yes. I can.” And I love that yes, I hear it daily—only because you later wrote it down for anyone who would be left to read your poems, in secret if need be or out in the open—how could you know?

And I also sense what your poem does not describe, that imperceptible, that momentary hesitation, that pit-of-the-stomach emptiness that precedes the courage to commit language, break silence, risk death. And I want to tell my grandchildren

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how it’s in that interval between the query and your reply, that I feel your sharp intake of breath—each day I take it into my body, savor it, and only gradually let it go, as if drawing an invisible line all the way to the horizon, where again you whisper, “Yes, I can.”

A kind of signature, that yes— a life’s work entirely on the line. And because you could, I can claim my own fear and the courage to bear it—more than bear it, I can discover what joy may yet come unforeseen, saying, Yes. ◉ Naomi Kim

Roots (matrilineal) My great-grandmother is buried in the hills of South Korea.

I saw the grave just once, when I was a child. I remember a green grassy burial mound in summer, like a mother’s breast tenderly offered up from the earth.

I did not realize then that my great-grandmother’s grave

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is the only place I know of where I am rooted to the earth like this, the soil knit with my flesh: Here, my umbilical attachment.

But show me a map, and I could not point to the place.

It sleeps like a small seed somewhere in my memory, pregnant with promise.

I dream of blooms and awake in America. I don’t know where to go.

I remember so little: my mother, laughing and teary-eyed, emptying a paper cup of something (my memory cannot decide) over the grass for her grandmother. ◉ Mohineet Boparai

Innocence When father varnishes the bench in our lawn, strange birds give him company.

Their cacophony is mild as they look quietly, searching, searching, pecking at minuteness spread as seeds, and fidgeting with dry leaves.

What discoveries do they yearn?

Then slowly as they had come, they dissipate and the air has stiff starched holes of their absence.

Tomorrow father will weed the garden; the weeds will acquiesce with bowed heads, and the worms will slither out in the root-space, roiling in the weeds' slushy soul, reminding us how death creeps into life slow but determined.

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Years ago, he said “believe” on that rickety evening when I almost let go of the ships sailing in my head.

I worried myself stiff thinking about the dimming star in my soul stream, this fire running through the veins that had stopped cackling.

Under the blood is the garden where my dog is buried.

In between him and me is an ice cave running rivers of fire.

When father shows a rose that bloomed quietly in the night I imagine the dark weaving into it its scent.

Even as he pointed to it, his quietness filled up the garden and tumbled in hope. He is like a newborn foal learning to walk.

(I am learning too from what remains, learning to listen between the silences, and relearning sentence structure.)

Some years ago, I had his gait; before Bollywood undid mine.

One can see the jolts in his easeful walk, how the shoulders stutter, but the feet sway smoothly.

What he conceals is betrayed.

But when he is mending his lawn, his back to the sun, innocence settles around him like birds alighting onto the ground.

These wings cast a shade over us and sometimes we too begin to decipher the message this bird brings quietly, unabashedly, to this place— to the dim, dark caves gnawed into us—from an abyss away.

Its birdsong is stiff as a blizzard buried in its snow, but some winds rustle in the worn willows of our hearts telling us, there are still mornings lined up against every desert, where the oases patiently await in their spring.

The Poor Man Who Gave Basket Rides There are times the mountains move; at night they shift their weight and dance.

That man who lumbered up them, carrying strangers’ children in a basket on his back, knew this well, all too well; he’d seen the creases of Here: a poetry journal

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ridge and cliff rise and fall in the horizon of his window.

Every night as he lay his stiff shoulders on the day’s last breath the mountains moved farther and his little shack leaning on the valley let out a sigh.

Dreams were rare. Nights were rich.

And sometimes, if it had been a kind day, unbeknownst to himself, he smiled in his sleep.

The stranger who had, that day, innocently shared with him her food smiled too in hers, farther away, but in a leaning cabin, too.

And under the supple sky, the mountains held hands and sang a little rhyme, a lullaby to rock them as they slept silently through their nights. ◉ Glen Armstrong

Midwest Solstice In the evening, local children consider bats a sign all is well.

They are not allowed to touch the ironwork.

I am not allowed to touch it either.

A neighbor boy screams, “I love Rosie!” in the cornfields.

A pink layer of something hovers above the irrigation tank.

And Rosie asks if the sunflowers bite each other.

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Tomorrow is not a school day, so I promise extended bedtimes, root beer and marathon sessions of Hungry Hungry Hippos.

Tomorrow is uncertain, but the bats skitter about as this shortest night of the year takes hold, will always take hold. ◉ Tabitha Bozeman

Tasting Trick Pears I read them all at once, devoured like a slightly overripe fruit, some poems rediscovered on my shelf.

The moment I finish, my daughter climbs up the back of my upholstered dining-room-turned-desk chair, perches behind my neck, legs warm on my back, asking the day’s plans, what “syllabus” means, hopping down mid-explanation and disappearing out the same door my husband walks through, outlining his day to me.

His habit, my mmhhming–– I listen.

I think it must settle it for him: naming his tasks out loud to me.

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Little knees pressing into my back, lists voiced at just the moment I am reaching my pen down to a line on a page, impatiently eager to listen to the silence of pages written years ago by a poet I’ve just discovered in a book of poems I bought because of the title— Another little voice interrupts my silent thoughts, and, annoyed, I remember a line just swallowed whole, dripping its juice down my throat, scratchy peel rough in my mouth: Listening is love, too.

Chattanooga We pause where they stand, Their corrugated cardboard request for help, crooked, swings by a twist-tie on the side of her wheel chair.

Our children demand food, pulling at us in the cool, constant drizzle.

Motioning at the door, we invite them to break bread with us in the dry, warm inside. They accept, roll behind our noisy parade with quiet pride, sit self-consciously beside us.

She speaks of life before, of the granddaughter she sometimes sees during the day but never at night, when she sleeps in doorways beside her folded chair, knife in hand.

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Her hand rests on the table.

I watch as an ant crawls across without her noticing.

He quietly drinks a beer, his hope for a painless sleep.

He tells us of building Peyton Manning’s house, of its elegance.

A craftsman in a previous life, laying bricks day by day–– like the bricks he lies under most nights–– he now crafts his days a dime at a time on side streets and exit ramps. ◉ Caitlin Breen

On 95 North Woke up in the wrong room from a dream of cars whipping down the highway the wrong way. Forgot about it 'til morning, heading north on 95, Black Sabbath song on the radio. Something overlaid on the world like a drawing on clear plastic, and also like an angry child drew it in a tantrum howling that she wished she were never born, or had a different family, and then, blinking, found it to be true. “War Pigs” ends and is followed by something that doesn’t fit, an empty flatbed twitches toward the median in the wind, and in twenty miles I’ll exit the highway, blinking, into the bright, bleak world.

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Katherine Szpekman

Sitting by an Open Window Listening to Evening Descend An April snow fell overnight.

We awoke to find the arborvitae straining under the weight, and while just yesterday, the rhododendron bloomed, fluffed open, sticky stamen, emerging, the magenta blossoms laid sprinkled in the frozen white, like wads of bubble gum.

All day, the temperature rose, melting continued in drips and trickles.

Branches released in sun, grass reappeared in tufts, and the daffodils and narcissi trumpeted their undimmable yellow.

Now, as evening descends, I sit beside an open window, feel the cool New England air rush across my bare feet and wrists.

And with this last smell of snow, I close my eyes, remember the taste of maple syrup drizzled on snow balls we held between mittens, remember the sweet crunch of childhood, when time was something we could create or evade.

The sky begins to dim above the treetops.

Among the burst of green buds a faint bird call takes shape in the stillness, gains momentum, launches into a chatty melody that ends abruptly, leaving only the bassline of the rush of melting snow.

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Harry Humes

Song for Hollyhocks They sway in the breeze off Kohler's Hill, sometimes brushed by a cat or a hummingbird's wings.

Most are pink and white, but I like best the few black hollyhocks, reverential, bowing a little, a small choir with Mozart in its throat, resonant and grave, filling the naves and towers of this June evening. ◉

Late November Horse Big and beautiful, dark eyed, a white blaze on his face, he stomped the ground with a front hoof the way a deer will when not certain of things, but he calmed at my voice and allowed me to come close and rub that flat place between his eyes.

All around us the evening was gray and hard, a wash of red low in the west.

Suddenly, he turned and raced away up the field and over the crest and vanished, as if he'd found the one perfect opening to a place I wish I knew.

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Robert Claps

Vernal Equinox The brook out back, frozen a week ago, has unlocked, and now the first peepers, that chorus of tiny tree frogs, punctuate the dusk. Due east, a full moon sits on the horizon, bright as our brass floor lamp.

The Mayans built pyramids for this moment; druids and pagans gathered at Stonehenge; the Saxons held a feast for their goddess of fertility; my mother celebrated spring by scanning the sale racks at Bloomingdale’s for something to wear at Easter Mass.

Now, in our new millennium, a pyramid of plastic trash twice of the size of Texas floats in the Pacific, its great tangles of ghost nets ensnaring seals.

What else can we worry about?

Our school board is upgrading the building locks and installing metal detectors; wood smoke drifts across the yard of the house down the street where the town council woman with stage four cancer works on a playlist for her funeral.

Still, for a moment, standing out here between the brilliance and the song, everything we know falls away.

I won’t say we’re changed, but you almost feel the first green blades breaking through the loam.

Even our ancestors’ stone walls, crusted with lichens and running in all directions at once, cannot contain those peepers singing wildly at the edge of the woods.

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River Returning Every evening now, a great blue gliding down through the oaks just leafing out stands motionless on these banks, where growing up we threaded our way among bald tires, dead carp, leaking barrels of solvents the mills our fathers worked at dumped when no one was looking.

Wasn't the river ours to burn?

Three shifts a day with all the overtime you wanted turned the water green but even Uniroyal couldn't kill it and the river is growing young again: spawning shad find the ancient ruined channels and run upstream in numbers no one living remembers. Yet the oysters of Long Island Sound work overtime to filter out the particles of this century's plastic waste. How tenuous it all is.

Watch the infant oak leaves tremble as you move quietly, hoping to get closer, before the wings creak open and without moving the great blue is gone.

◉ Steve Myers

After Rain and Small Hail, I Walk out in Sunlight to the Flowering Kousa The emerald beetle killed the ash trees.

Len leveled the cherry, galled with black knot.

Age toppled the three once-supple poplars.

Sandy ripped out six spruces at the root.

Violent weather, always, everywhere now.

I am the old man planting seven white pines.

Len dead though I hear his chainsaw singing.

Wet light petals kousa’s ten thousand limbs.

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Currents The immigrant farmer who raised the Pennsylvania German forebay barn where Chestnut Hill meets Vera Cruz, a beauty when I first moved here some thirty years ago— fieldstone on timber, grass-banked on the north to the sliding doors, the overhang south—would be zerstört to see the back wall fallen, the roof sagging, a section of shingles gone.

His family’s played out, who might have mustered in the line troops against George III, or maybe foreswore all weapons, the last one departed from the home across the way.

When I called on him near the end, he spoke easily, prone beneath blankets on a sofa in the kitchen, a sweet man, happy for the company, open to me, though I was canvassing for Obama, evangel for a future that wasn’t his, we both knew it, corn crib collapsed out back; shed badly canting, windowless, electric orange-and-indigo swallows flitting in and out. Destroy a nest, your milkers give blood, he said.

Mad king, cowed court, the virus in our blood. Again today I’m out walking and find on the barn’s banked side, on its time-worn planking, a ten-by-ten banner: LEAVE YOUR HOME

GO TO WORK

OPEN YOUR BUSINESS #IMPEACHGOVERNORWOLFNOW Three buzzards hunker where the ridge beam’s exposed, hissing and grunting, incapable of song. Then they lift into the vivid blue, adrift on thermals, alert to the reek of roadkill— the too-slow, too-small, too-old, too-weak; the strayed housecat, wandered fawn, the rabbit, the snake—, fevered by nature to go to work on it, stuffing their nestlings with gobbets they regurgitate.

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José B. González

Even Then That Dog Even when that dog barked at midnight frosts, flexing its jaws and shaking his owner’s pillow, breaking the moon in two.

Its owner kissed that wet nose.

Even when it jumped over the cedar fence and chased after a wild rabbit, its feet stomping on tulips, its lips carrying a lucky foot.

Its owner kissed that wet nose.

Even when it chewed the new sofas, deshawling the fabric like it was the fur of a sheep, shredding scraps all over the carpet.

Its owner kissed that wet nose.

Even when its teeth, dug deep like sharp nails into the neighbor’s wrinkly arm, chewing it into pieces of memories.

Its owner kissed that wet nose.

And even when its nose dropped onto the ground from the puncture of a lethal needle.

Its owner kissed that wet nose.

Even then, even then. The child on the other side of the wall, dirty face and desert sand in his lungs, hungry worms in his belly.

Even then, the child who could still hear the chants of

BUILD THAT WALL. Even then, the child wished he had been given a chance at love, if only he had been born a dog.

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When They Were My Age Yes. I heard it from my mother and my father. At my age, they had worked in farms, fields, factories, to help their families.

They had

dropped out

of

school

at

2nd

grade.

I heard it

for the first time

on the first day

of first grade.

That’s when

I still thought

farms were just farms

fields were just fields

factories were just factories books were just books.

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Joan Seliger Sidney

Villanelle for Elie Wiesel I look back and see a world that used to be, Like Stryj and Zurawno, my family’s towns, Or Elie Wiesel’s beloved Sighet, Hungary.

In Night, he writes Moishe the Beadle’s story.

Moishe escaped a Nazi camp to tell what he found.

Look back and see a world that used to be.

Prisoners dug their grave, got shot, fell in a heap.

Left for dead with a wounded leg, he absconded Back to Wiesel’s beloved Sighet, Hungary.

They thought Moishe mad. No one could foresee The human cattle cars or where they were bound.

Look back and see a world that used to be, Sighet, Stryj, Zurawno. Instead of fleeing To Palestine, they believed the BBC’s promise: Better times ahead for Sighet, Hungary.

Too late we mourn six million Jews, gypsies, Gays, communists, anyone Hitler condemned.

Look back and see a world that used to be, Like Elie Wiesel’s beloved Sighet, Hungary.

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Richard Krohn

Seder 2021 At first it seemed the same, the washing of hands, our prayers and wine punctuated by slivers of horseradish that filled our nostrils with suffering, parsley to symbolize spring.

Again we broke unleavened bread and began to recite the age-old story, but that’s when it went off, Anne’s laments about slavery today and what it means to be captive, my pick for Moses, what I saw as Pharaoh, the history of plagues and who they aim to miss.

How hard must it be, she asked, to part an invisible Red Sea and wander, searching the sky for manna?

Our traditional meal, brisket and asparagus, in the center a roasted egg to celebrate birth, a shankbone for sacrifice, chopped nuts, apples and honey as mortar to hold our lives together.

But then the look across the table, our need for new answers, why this night indeed was different and why we could not recline, our ritual ending as we stared at vacant places, the empty chair for Elijah, the others for loved ones as if they’d been left in Egypt.

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Mohamad Kebbewar

Swimming “The pool is closed,” said the man at the sport center.

No fuel to heat the water.

It never occurred to me that I would crave a swim and not have it.

I remember the feeling of being in water so distant as fixing an antenna on an analogue TV. From my balcony I marvel at the light blue sky and the quiet hill. Three birds bounce at the far end of the railing. A male pigeon attracts a female on the electric wire. There’s the crow again on the lamp post, cawing.

Before long heavy missiles fired by both sides shake our home and the hill before us.

The sound of artillery heavy invades my senses. I am inches from death.

It seems so trivial to crave a swim, but that’s what my brain wants and what my body needs.

I listen to the sound of war and wonder about its banality.

Like the fuel that went missing to heat the water at the pool, Rows of double-parked cars wrapped around buildings that surround every gas station in Aleppo like a chain wrapped around a steel gate.

The cars go missing with the fuel.

I feel for taxi drivers whose livelihoods depend on gas.

I remember the liberty I felt when swimming at Killarney pool in Calgary.

I pushed my feet against the light blue tiles and paddled into ultimate freedom.

Every muscle in action.

I felt light and weightless.

A drop of chlorine water slips through my goggles reminds of my weakness.

I remove my goggles and take a deep breath.

Looked through the sunroof to see a lush green tree swing like a jazz dancer.

I sat in the Jacuzzi.

Sublime.

All my worries are far away.

Like the sound of shifting mountains, the sound of artillery still haunts me.

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Cait O’Kane

B Train mom fixed up the stroller rolled mom dipped out the el came the stroller rolled people shook mom the el came I couldn’t move people shook mom the stroller stopped I couldn’t move mom woke up the stroller stopped mom fixed up I couldn’t move the el came

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Quarantine to only go

to freely buy

to mostly laugh

to barely hear

to mostly touch

to rarely care

to slightly know

to rarely wish

to briefly see

to really breathe

to highly doubt

to really try

to only think

to only say

to rarely wait

to hardly see

to sadly wish

to hardly wait

to freely grieve

to really see

to barely say

to rarely learn

to slightly care

to rarely owe

to only doubt

to rarely laugh

to mostly watch

to only learn

to rarely own

to hardly move

to rarely touch

to sadly read

to really learn

to hardly change

to barely move

to briefly hope

to mostly hide

to scarcely care

to rarely try

to rarely say

to really watch

to mostly hate

to only wish

to scarcely think

to only dream

to barely breathe

to really grieve

to badly need

to hardly own

to really change

to rarely care

to barely see

to scarcely buy

to only watch

to rarely feel

to hardly see

to only wait

to really owe

to barely dream

to boldly touch

◉ Steve Straight

Security Pratt & Whitney Machine Tool

Three thirty p.m. and I step onto New Park Avenue at a break in the factory-shift traffic of 1974 and walk to a spot between the double yellow lines, the zipper of this four-lane road meant to be two, dressed in my polyester Wackenhut uniform with black clip-on tie, tuxedo stripes down the sides of the legs, a police hat with a silver badge that means nothing, another pinned to my shirt hidden under the bright orange vest three sizes too big, then raise one orange glove that stinks of the sweat of dozens of guards who’ve passed through this job, this spot, this hat, attempting to convince the drivers rushing home or to work to stop for this nickel-above-minimum sham of a cop so I can release the stream of workers pouring out of the lot Here: a poetry journal

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at the end of their shift, truck drivers especially hating me for making them grind through their gears all over again, more than one after the token blast of an air horn giving me two or three seconds to duck under the stiff side mirror as they ignore my glove.

The tool-and-die men didn’t like to be stopped either, eager to escape their tedious hours tending the jig borers and milling machines two stories high reaching into the dust-speckled light streaming in through the windows sixty feet up, men with dull eyes and plugged ears standing by their machines as I walked past on my clock round, curlicues of steel peeling off the blades onto the wood-brick floor soaked with decades of oil, all this explaining the popped trunks I pretended not to see as I toured the lots on their dinner breaks, exposing the big coolers of Schlitz.

The guards were another story, the weekly parade of new faces I tried to train, all of them at the bottom like me, a step above unemployment, excepting the gung-ho wannabes with their police scanners and salutes, most barely able to sign in the truckers, confounded by an eighty-key clock round that wound through the plant, making one quit the job mid-round, the Detex clock and his hat and tie found later in the maze of the plating rooms, one kid taking a good long look at me directing rush-hour traffic before shaking his head and leaving ten minutes into the shift.

This is what it meant to drop out of college back then, choosing the inside of the factory or the outside, pushing carriages through the snow at the local grocery, or reaching a paint brush over the gutter at the top of a wobbly ladder, or hauling bricks or shingles or lumber or copper pipes to someone with real skills, and so I put in my two years on the second shift until the darkening afternoon one winter day when the streets were slicked with ice, and as I held up my bright orange glove to stop traffic in one direction, a car trying to obey me went into a skid down the double yellow line right toward me and I had no choice but to step back blindly into the other side of traffic, stepping back into my future.

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Elynor Melly Carey

Left for Maureen

Ten years I’ve visited your grave once.

The day we stood in a circle surrounding the space where you were laid to rest.

The day that Luke lay flat stomach to the ground on the patch of grass the shape of your coffin.

He looked like a sleeping child or was it a boy wanting to be close to his mother.

It was your birthday and we each told stories about you.

We laughed.

I cried and felt sick to my stomach remembering that last month how often you said “Don’t forget me.”

How could I forget you?

We were the three girls.

Mary was my right arm and you my left.

That’s how it was since the day you were born.

How could I forget you?

Whispering in one ear about this boy or that and Mary in the other scheming up our next adventure.

I listened to your voices every day until I left home to live five minutes away from the right side of my mind and the left.

How could I ever forget you?

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that you left too soon.

I don’t need to visit that empty place.

You are the left side of my heart and every day of my life I remember you. ◉ Daniel P. Carey Jr.

Juxtaposition at Altitude Rocky Mountain State Park

Legs dangling, I inhale majesty carved across this land, quiet violence of small rivers winding through time like a slow-motion samurai's sword slicing the veil between heaven and earth and somewhere in that vast gap I feel the still space move me like a dying star’s dance across a cluttered sky. Here, I hold the universe’s spark and the hand of humanity. ◉ Eliza Carey

Home I dream of Irish jigs in a musty pub: The taste of yeast and hops tickles My tongue. At the strike of twelve, Sweat and screams fill a small room As a fiddler snaps a string And a roar shakes the floor.

Another stout, we say.

Another, once more.

We will all stumble home tonight Or cobblestones will welcome us to bed.

I can feel the River Liffey calling me Back to those chilled city streets.

Another stout, we say.

Another, once more.

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John Bargowski

Businessmen (D&J Bar, Jersey City)

Everybody knew he'd nearly killed a man in the ring, his fists lethal to anyone who dared go a few rounds with him in a semi-pro at the armory, the sight of Charlie pounding his gloves together, hovering above a punch-drunk opponent sprawled on the bloodied mat, chewing his mouth guard and waiting on the ref's count, burned in the booze-addled brains of the regulars at the D&J, so the joint would begin to sizzle with jabber when Charlie swung by in a tailored three piece, carrying a briefcase packed with discounts and monthly promos to offer my father when they swiveled their stools for a man-to-man at the far end of our family's bar and talked business, my old man caught in that iron grip for a few seconds when they shook on the deal for a shipment of booze they'd worked out, his gold tooth glinting in the neon bounce off the bar-back when Charlie, threw in a wall calendar and tickets to see him face a young up-and-comer in his next bout on the Friday night card at the armory.

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Ken Cormier

The Man Who Had Wept Openly into His Hat A man wept into his hat for several minutes before putting it back onto his head and leaving the store. Outside, on the sidewalk, he got down on his knees and looked up at the sky. He held his arms out, as if he were waiting for rain.

And it did rain. The man closed his eyes and began to laugh. His face became shiny and slick in the rain.

His hair became soaked. He laughed louder, and then louder. Finally, a police car rolled up, and a uniformed officer approached the man.

The officer said, in a quiet voice, “Sir, can I help you with something?” The man, with his eyes still shut, said, “Oh, yes.” Then the officer called his partner over, and the two of them forced the man roughly into the patrol car and sped off.

The store owner who had placed the call to the police watched the whole scene from behind his cash register. He was afraid of the police, but for some reason he had been even more afraid of the man who had wept openly into his hat.

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Helen R Broom

People Care So Much About Birds A woman rushes into the restaurant, a limp pigeon clutched in her hands, desperate for a bag to place the struck bird in, to cart it off to the vet.

On the online community chat people post again and again pictures of the same goose, an arrow stuck in its back, angry that someone would do such a thing, wondering why someone doesn’t just catch the poor bird, bring it to the wildlife rescue.

My neighbor rushes out, yells, demands the cat be put back indoors, before he stalks, catches and eats all the songbirds she feeds, cooing to them softly as she spreads seed in the feeder.

Oh how we love these feathered immigrants these homeless creatures sleeping in our parks these hungry babies begging to be fed. ◉ Sean Frederick Forbes

Promotional Modeling New York City, 1999

We wanted more; not crumbled dollar bills reeking of majmua attar oil and crotch funk; not sable mink hoodie jackets our closeted mobster boyfriends gifted us; not pink Ecstasy followed by the insipid sucking of pacifiers to control chattering

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stained teeth from too much coffee, cigarettes, meth bowls...

We wanted TracFones, to call back male and female business executives, high on coke, who partied every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night; many had blatantly offered us jobs: personal assistants, houseboys, fuckboys, anything sounded better than working as shot-boys, our glitter glistened bodies decked out in combat boots, jockstraps...

We wanted to be more than the families who disowned us; we hailed from Brooklyn, Duluth, Bogotá, Bangkok, Jalisco, Wichita, Compton, (the club owner fancied global exoticism)— we were whirling bright strobe lights, billowing dry ice, atmospheric goth music, frenetic techno jolts, as if being chased by sandstorms.

We questioned if it’s possible to rid our club kid stench as we enter our early twenties?

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Kahlonian Night For Frida

What happens to the painter’s sense of sight when the brush no longer bleeds aquamarine?

Or when the scar on your back scalds you from the inside out— the body’s betrayal—while you sip a glass of your own blood, black as night, smooth and rich like red velvet? I hope the exit is joyful...and I hope never to come back. ◉ Jeff William Acosta

Epiphany I am calling out the broken & withering leaves, soundlessly burying themselves into the ground & unheard, unspoken words lurking in shadows where it is safe to say: it’s the cleanest part of my body.

Consider this even though my ashes remain uncertain—incorruptible. Consider my bare bones at least, as an offering in shrines & rituals for symmetry when the impurity settles down and the darkest hues of the skin surrenders to the moonlight & the lulling waves of the ocean like me, like me in ceaseless persistence in finding a definite shape that can contain my obsession. Should it carry my swelling taste of salt to the shore, I’ll finally be allowed to rest on earth, where we are barely breathing.

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Robert Bernard Hass

I Hear America Singing My neighbor bought a Walther PPQ , His first gun (though he’ll soon turn 68).

Ask him why, he’ll say, “I couldn’t tell you.”

The show price nearly too good to be true, The dealer guaranteed it would shoot straight.

So my neighbor bought the Walther PPQ— Hard anodized, rimfire .22, Internal hammer, magazine, light weight.

Ask him why, he’ll say, “I couldn’t tell you.

It feels so good in hand. It’s gleaming hue, Cock strike and stopping power can’t be beat.”

My neighbor bought a Walther PPQ , And I’m afraid for what he might now do If his cork pops and frees his pent-up hate.

When I asked him why, he said: “I couldn’t tell you Why I lost my head. What else could I do?

The fucker shouldn’t have been out walking late.”

My neighbor bought a Walther PPQ. When I asked him why, he said, “I couldn’t tell you.” ◉ John Long

Living On Land A farmer dreams of space, his horizon stretches as far back as the last tree cut, the forest land bounded by a river he will follow downstream to ocean; a boat gone with the tide forgets land beyond the vanishing point: our rounded earth.

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Lois Roma-Deeley

How to Forgive If there were a chart or grid arranged in horizontal rows according to the ways and means of how we should forgive, would I close my eyes and point to any square like it’s a game of pin-the-tail on and of deep wounds, mine or yours?

Would I then open my eyes and say here is mercy, there is forbearance, and on this spot, tucked all the way at the corner of the page, the one framed by blame and spite— is absolution.

But isn’t forgiveness a way of letting go? the release of hurt into the still night air like a body giving up the ghost rises from its bones and, atom by atom, fuses star dust and soul.

Grateful For the drama of bread rising.

For the pomegranate waiting to be opened, and recklessly spill itself out into a glass bowl; and for its accomplice, the radio sitting on a shelf high above the kitchen window crackling sweetly because it knows something I don’t.

For the clearness of a blue night sky requiring nothing from us but to look up. For the great while as I remember the word meadow with its invitation of longing. For the day I found you standing in a field of dandelions, the winged seeds floating the long distance between then and now.

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Like This Story Become as sunlight traveling from deep space into the prism hanging on the back wall; separate the colors of want and need.

And when you manage to break free of this earth —and all those bastards dwelling on it— to leave behind the hungry eye refusing to be filled and greedy hands taking what they should not own, fly past the clouds. Then turn around, look back at this blue planet and count every imperfect being as your own. Wait there until love is the only thing that moves with and between and into this body once called you. ◉ M.J. Iuppa

Today’s Sympathy Howden Pond, Hamlin, NY

Dragonflies adrift in goldenrod purple asters’ bright eyes blink I could trip over my desire—dumbstruck, gazing at these glossy copper wings, each mirroring the other; even their tremors appear aloft in this autumn air, in this pause that holds no weight to speak of— on a sunny day, like this 2021

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Tan Tzy Jiun

The year mother disappeared for my sister

That year I couldn’t say grace or let out a sob. We were small, hadn’t become us, hadn’t found a land that wouldn’t find a way to desecrate what we had left. One morning, I found my favorite books torn by the hands that once loved them with forceful hunger. I found rage spilled over the bathroom floor, mildew and dog shit scattered like potpourri around the old house. You kept picking at the open wound on your wrist. It was your evidence against him, to show her when she comes back, if she comes back. Her absence was as damning as a diagnosis. Something terminal that approached us at the speed of light. Next thing we knew we were waiting for a plane that wouldn’t land.

We thought what made us cool was what we didn’t have: happy stomachs, caregivers, clear heads.

We were proud of our wretchedness, until you vomited a pool of amber and jade on her bed. Dear god, I have been living in a misty city for centuries, and I haven’t found myself out of the miasma.

Remember those hours we spent hiding behind barrels of rotting fruit, while our father punched our bedroom doors? I remember the forts we built out of months of unwashed linen. Pickled in ripe smells, we picked our superpowers— I wanted to disappear at will and you wanted to operate the machinery of time. I should have known then that I have a predisposition for silence, an even greater ability to transcend my mortal form when something violent happens. Then you really sped time up, fixed your broken teeth, found your seat in the salt-crusted ruins of an underground mob city. You are a doctor now.

I am still a door unhinged, a loose eye socket, wondering what if I held you closer, what if surviving was an achievement for eleven- and eight-year-olds stained by something indelible—the scratch marks inflicted by a man who saw woman and mother as synonymous words.

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Love poem My hummingbird loves the sky, loves the airplanes that fly in a sphere above ours.

Only clouds carrying the body back to earth. Above all, the promise of destination.

On our afternoon walks, when the low hum around us grows dense. A shifting pitch catches his head, face open like a bowl of hot noodles towards the wide porcelain blue, eyes squinting to catch the fleeting sight, the unrequited love of a going, flying machine. That’s the saying in the aviation industry, he explains, that the pilot still looks up every time he hears that familiar sound of a lover’s grunt. You hear it?

The control tower blinking like I’ve never seen before as your breath orbits around the room and my arms crawl for space.

And what if it gets boring?

Then we set the bed alight. Try insect meat as aphrodisiac.

Fabricate a new religion and seduce our neighbor with boxed-wine promises. Time will carry our bodies to term, wrinkle our foreheads and stiffen our lips. What is awe if not the peaceful embrace of my smallness, as I watch you, the earth-bound prophet who prays to godpowered engines. He who finds destination in the soft aching for flight, who makes me point to the sky like a believer. Look, look!

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Donald G. Sheehy

Ashes to Ashes The emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire) is a half-inch long metallic green beetle from Asia. The larvae feed on ash trees under the bark, killing them three to five years after infestation.

Late spring, and now beyond all doubt the last of the white ash are lost.

All through summer and well into fall, I’d watched them withering as I mowed but still found hope in every sucker, promise in every leafy cluster that clung to the upper branches— green through August, gold in autumn, gay crowns on grey skeletal trees.

The melting down of early spring revealed the winter damage done: tangled heaps of twigs and branches, massive limbs sheared off at the trunk.

And then with winter’s muffling gone, the sounds of deadfall have resounded to ruffle sleep like distant thunder or from the buzz and hum of days snap us to worried attention.

Once shade and shelter, now just danger, the dying ash would have to come down.

Not dying—dead—for so they were, though ivy vines and thriving lichen still wreathed the lower limbs in green.

In the early fall, we felled them all, and now through ever shorter evenings I cut and stack the wood for burning.

Ashes to ashes. The chainsaw clatters, and soon I am covered with dust. for Jack Hagstrom

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Elizabeth Tomanio

Stepping Aside Walking the densely-wooded path, deserted by the threat of rain from daunting clouds overhead, our steps are stalled by the appearance of a doe grazing in a flat field.

Unperturbed by our presence, she remains still.

We could be downwind, we whisper and decide to move forward.

She does not lift her gaze to meet ours, continues to search with her head and neck bowed toward the earth.

Nature appears unconcerned— spring prepares buds to bloom, rivers flow freely and full.

We wear coverings over our mouths and step to the side for others.

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Pegi Deitz Shea

Shovel in the Wood Beneath a heavy clotted sky, far from the main path, a bit off the trail to the cove, in the vee of a double-trunk birch stands a shovel blade without a shaft or handle, and without its triangular tip.

Rust the color of dried blood creeps down the blade and speaks of livings made, suggests lives lost:

a sucker in a land deal

a beloved beagle gone rabid

a hunter on the wrong end of a gun

a girl kidnapped and raped

a baby unplanned unwanted Whose fingerprints stained the missing handle?

Whose sweat and spittle slicked the shaft in the struggle between muscle and earth?

How deep was the glacial rock that mocked the metal tip?

And who placed the blade facing true north, a calling card, in the mossy crotch of this witness tree?

Whose history wants telling to spite its burial?

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Lorraine Caputo

Squalling I. The storm finally

erupts, torrents tumbling

down roofs into patios

streaming down the Street Lightning shreds the sky

immediate thunder, the rain

blowing in waves

across the Carib sky Quick currents rivers

rise in these calles

eddying with

leaves & trash Black waters strong & rancid

seep through wooden dikes

wedged in doorways

seep through tiled floors A dappled hackney pulls

a scrap-wood wagon

through hub-deep

water, still rising, still swirling & disappears into the

rain undecipherable from

solid grey clouds from

the churning sea II. After two hours the downpour

lessens, the booming

thunder further asea Pallid sunset bleeds

through a tear

in the clouds The river recedes, yet whirling

yet rushing towards the Caribbean III. & with this new night

a softer rain falls

first published on The Literary Nest (29 January 2021) https://theliterarynest.org/2021/01/29/lorraine-caputo

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Kristin R. Laudenslager

nice job, lady debriefing after the conference, he keeps touching the small of my back. his hand hovers near the curve of my hip, landing and lifting like a little bird unaware that my spine is a cobra poised to spit. ◉ Linda M. Crate

let the vultures destroy what i was "you better not be a lesbian" i was told not once but twice by my mother, and it bothers me because why does it matter? love is love. i am not a lesbian but i am also not straight, and i am going to let my queer little heart sparkle with her abundant light; without shame because i'm not ashamed to be any longer— once a song told me that mother stands for comfort, and i don't want to be without your love; but all i feel when i think about you is guilt and shame and inadequate like i am always letting you down simply by existing— it is exhausting to feel as if you're never going to measure up to some impossible standard, and i am beautiful and worthy of love as i am; i don't want to hide in the closet anymore let the vultures destroy what i was so i can begin again: as i am.

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Sitara Gnanaguru

Suburban Song Rhododendron bushes jiggle jubilant outside my window. Shrubs quiver from spring’s caress. Fuchsia flowers bob their bright heads to May music: tufted titmice trill, cardinals chipcheer, backyard brook gurgles with the abundance of yesterday-rain.

The neighbor’s weed whacker interrupts the melody for a stuttering solo—emboldened, the mailman crescendos around the cul-de-sac, hiccups to a halt.

Even this is an ensemble—however eclectic. Nature knows how to improvise.

The multitude of life flows into one. It’s all jazz.

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Paul Martin

The Snow Geese Pulling over, we joined cars at the side of the road, strangers gathered in common amazement to watch the brown field disappear under the flock of descending thousands.

“Beautiful, just beautiful,” we repeated, and, “Yesterday, did you see them yesterday?

They were coming down like snow off Coffeetown Road, never seen anything like it.” All we said insufficient, we stood in silence, listening to their loud, raucous sound.

Wherever we went that day, the store, the park, we heard them talked about, one person passing the news to another, people in yards and on porches looking up, taking photos, some with their children, as though we were being called from our dead lives into the biblical fields, a brief community of wonder. ◉

The Kingdom of Light In the soft light of late September, floating motes of dust ignite.

A slow burn begins in the maple.

Each blade of grass, each tiny fly in the hatch is illuminated.

The dull stone, all that goes unnoticed, rises into completion, aflame.

Even the dead press against the darkness and spring into new bodies, dancing.

Washed in forgiving light, let each of us be revealed to himself and changed.

Let our unburdened shoulders lift.

Let the smallest voices sing.

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Contributors Jeff William Acosta is a culinary student doubling up as a poet from Ilocos Sur, Philippines. His works have appeared in Vox Populi, Revolt Magazine, and Lumiere Review.

Glen Armstrong teaches writing at Oakland University. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has published three books of poems: Invisible Histories, The New Vaudeville, and Midsummer.

John Bargowski's first poetry collection, Driving West on the Pulaski Skyway, was selected for the Bordighera Prize. His new collection, American Chestnut, is forthcoming from Stephen F. Austin State University Press.

Mohineet Kaur Boparai is the author of three books and two chapbooks of poetry. She has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Tabitha Bozeman writes from northeast AL. She teaches writing and literature at the local community college, explores the area with her husband and children, and enjoys a good cup of tea.

Caitlin Breen graduated from Eastern Connecticut State University in 2014 with a BA in English and Elementary Education. She has published work in Eastern Exposure and Freshwater.

Helen R Broom has been published in over 100 online and print journals. She is the host and co-producer of the Poetry in the Bar Podcast and Open Mic series.

Lorraine Caputo is the author of fourteen chapbooks, including Caribbean Nights, Notes from the Patagonia, and On Galápagos Shores.

Elynor Melly Carey is a Marriage and Family Therapist living in Bozrah, CT. Her inspiration to begin writing poetry comes from her three adult children, who've shown her how to take risks and pursue dreams.

Daniel P. Carey Jr. studied English and poetry writing at Eastern Connecticut State University. A contributor to several past issues of Here, he lives in Manchester, CT, with his wife and daughter.

Eliza Carey is a poet and writer from CT. She has published in the University of Saint Joseph's Interpretations Literary Journal in addition to Here. Her writing reflects the adventure and beauty found in everyday life.

Robert Claps lives in East Hampton, CT, with his wife and rescue dogs. His book Casting, published by Antrim House Books, is available from the author (robertclaps@sbcglobal.net).

Ken Cormier directs the Creative Writing Program at Quinnipiac University and is the author of Balance Act and The Tragedy in My Neighborhood. More info at thebenjysection.com/kencormier.

Linda M. Crate is the author of three full-length poetry collections, six poetry chapbooks, and a novel entitled Phoenix Tears.

Sean Frederick Forbes is an Assistant Professor-in-Residence of English and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at UCONN. Providencia, his first book of poetry, was published in 2013.

Margaret Gibson is the author of twelve books of poems, most recently Not Hearing the Wood Thrush. A new poetry collection, The Glass Globe, is coming out later this year. She is also the editor of Waking Up to The Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis, which was just published by Grayson Books. She is currently Connecticut's Poet Laureate. https://margaretgibsonpoetry.com/ Sitara Gnanaguru is an Indian-American writer living in Connecticut and a proud alumna of the University of Connecticut, where she majored in English.

José B. González is the author of two poetry collections, When Love Was Reels, a Finalist for the Connecticut Book Award, and Toys Made of Rock an International Latino Book Award Finalist. He was born in San Salvador, El Salvador, and immigrated to New London, CT, at the age of eight. He knew no English and now holds a PhD in English. A Fulbright Scholar and the editor and founder of Latino Stories (latinostories.com), he teaches at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. https://www.josebgonzalez.com/ Robert Bernard Hass is the author of Going by Contraries: Robert Frost's Conflict with Science, which Choice selected as an Outstanding Academic Title, and the poetry collection Counting Thunder. He is a Professor of English at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania.

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Harry Humes's many poetry collections include August Evening with Trumpet, The Bottomland, The Way Winter Works, Ridge Music, Butterfly Effect, Winter Weeds, and, most recently, All Waters Are One. M.J. Iuppa is the Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program and Lecturer in Creative Writing at St. John Fisher College and a part-time lecturer in Creative Writing at The College at Brockport.

In 2017, she was awarded the New York State Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching.

She is the author of four full-length poetry collections and five chapbooks.

Tan Tzy Jiun is a Malaysian poet and theatre-maker based in Vienna, Austria. Her work is forthcoming in Fevers of the Mind, Stone of Madness Press and Second Chance Lit. You can follow her on Twitter: @tzyjiun_ Mohamad Kebbewar's writings have appeared in Iconoclast, Chautauqua, The New Quarterly, and Prism International. Recent poetry chapbooks include The Soap of Aleppo, Evacuate, and Children of War. Naomi Kim is a senior at Brown University studying English. who has published work in Lunch Ticket and Letters and has an essay forthcoming in Deep South Magazine.

Richard Krohn has spent most of his life in mid-Atlantic states, but he has also had two multi-year stays in Central America. He currently teaches Economics and Medical Spanish at Moravian College. In recent years, his poetry has appeared in Poet Lore, Tar River, Southern Poetry Review, I-70, and Rattle.

Kristin R. Laudenslager is a writer and artist. She works as a communications professional and adjunct instructor for DeSales University.

John Long is a poet, playwright, and writer/producer/director of video documentaries. His poetry has appeared in Connecticut River Review, Dark Horse, and The Hartford Courant.

Paul Martin has published two full-length poetry collections, Closing Distances and River Scar, and three prize-winning chapbooks.

Steve Myers been writing about his home state for the last four years. Sections of his Pennsylvania sequence have appeared in Callaloo, Here, New Ohio Review, The Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, Valley Voices, and others.

Cait O'Kane is a poet and musician from Philadelphia. Her debut poetry collection, A Brief History Of Burning, was just published by Belladonna Press.

Hilary Opperman, an Eastern Connecticut State University alum, is a mixed media artist interested in the healing capacity of art. She has exhibited at St. Paul the Apostle in NYC, the Mystic Museum of Art, Slater Memorial Museum, Marquee Gallery, The Yale Divinity School, MERZ Gallery in Sanquhar, Scotland, and at Art Zone 42 in Athens, Greece. Instagram: hilary_opperman_artist Facebook: facebook.com/hilaryoppermanartist or @hilaryoppermanartist Julia Paul’s poetry appears in numerous national and international literary journals and anthologies. She's the author of the poetry chapbook Staring Down the Tracks and the full-length collection Shook.

Lois Roma-Deeley's full-length poetry collection, The Short List of Certainties, won the Jacopone da Todi Poetry Book Prize.

Pegi Deitz Shea is the author of more than 450 poems, articles, and essays for adult readers and young readers. She is the Poet Laureate of Vernon, CT. Donald G. Sheehy is a retired professor of literature and the editor of The Letters of Robert Frost (Harvard UP). His poems have appeared in THE SHOp (Ireland) and Queen’s Quarterly (Canada). He is also a photographer. You can view some work at Take Five: A Photo Archive (https://dsheehy.myportfolio.com/) Joan Seliger Sidney is a second-generation Holocaust survivor. Her books, Body of Diminishing Motion and Bereft and Blessed, recount the survival stories of her parents and others. www.joanseligersidney.org.

Steve Straight’s books include The Almanac and The Water Carrier. He recently retired from his positions as Professor of English and Director of the Poetry Program at Manchester (CT) Community College.

Katherine Szpekman’s poetry has appeared in Juniper – A Poetry Journal, Waking up the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Crisis, Aromatica Poetica, Red Eft Review, Sky Island Journal, Chestnut Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Hiram Poetry Review, Rockvale Review, Connecticut Literary Anthology 2020, and others. She received Honorable Mention in the Connecticut River Review's 2019 Poetry Contest. She lives in Collinsville, CT, with her family.

Elizabeth Tomanio won first place in the Love Tanka Contest sponsored by West Hartford Libraries. Her work has appeared in Please See Me, Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing, and Caesura.

Here: a poetry journal