Wayne Burke

$20

Some cock and bull story from a guy in the park about his car out of gas stranded and with a pregnant girlfriend at home says if I loan him something he will pay me back double ha ha

"pretty good story," I say. "It is true," he says. I ask what make of car, and he tells me.

Where is it at?

Burke - 99

How will he get gas into it? He has the answers, maybe had them memorized, who knows?

I reach for my wallet, peek inside.

Just my luck: nothing but twenties.

Oh well smoking dogs

I give him one and watch him walk off.

I kiss that sawbuck goodbye.

101 - Kohut & Spahr-Summers

Brownstein

My Mother's Bucket List

My mother danced with the stars

Thursday nights sitting on her quilted couch, her second husband or was it her fourth resting beside her, pencil and notebook in hand, taking notes.

Once a week they ballroom danced in the large dining area of Aging Best and every two weeks they competed in their age group or with anyone over sixty. They won quite often, dancing in the stars of applause and compliments.

She glorified every moment, sent videos of their wins to the TV show never hearing from them. No matter. She danced knowing in the language of star and her husband basked in the applause every intricate step she took gathering enough shooting stars to satisfy everyone.

A Winter of No Content

21 degrees below in Fairbanks I can’t conceive when your breath could explode here in Portland we worry in the teens when pipes can freeze or a little warmer when the rain becomes ice on impact taking trees and power lines to the ground what of my inner weather the winter of my life my 70 plus circuit around the sun of existence billions of existential suns obscured and subservient to the planetary rhythm trying to keep up with our sun chasing

Raphael - 105 who knows what hunger, as if that could be just science, the sun may not show today the clouds that hide me could be latent emotional precipitation or thunder nowhere near the surface, or that I have no reason to let out, get out, no means to enter another’s solar system where our lights are almost as faint as our gravities taking us places that are darker now than when light was less precious. What’s the cost of traveling in an age that doesn’t believe in age or time? Bend a little. Stretch a lot. Just don’t expect returns in that place to place the seed and flow. That stand of content. That there.

Dilemmas

Feeling choices atop the protruding bone of each shoulder primal and ferly inching closer to the rising light of all fears that is nothing more than transition traversing momentum without the rudder’s consent.

Bringing in the Wood

One full breath and the air swims into you, cold as a silver fish. Skidding on the steps, you pile the logs first this way, then that, weaving a wooden blanket. Chopping, splitting, stacking, carrying, banging your boots to shake snow from your treads. So much goes into building a fire.

But so much goes into many things that come to nothing. That tree house started last summer, the rowing machine that never hits the imaginary lake, finishing that novel. Many things don’t get done. And what of things that do? A four layer cake that listed left, grown child that won’t call back, books that were completed. The thing about bringing in the wood, fingers dry and split as the logs being hauled, the long muscle on your right side tugging on you like a tired child, this wood will be laid on the iron grate, flue opened, popcorn balls of newsprint and sticks of kindling tucked inside the tee-pee of lumber, a match set to the structure. And after all of that, there will be fire.

See me Now I like to look and see nothing remembering all the broken themes, things of relearningpretending or portending, as I wallow in scenes reality too strong, stark, & bright. Organized screams

Orchestrated daydreams sifting sorting sadness.

I’m zoned out here in the endzone

Alone in la-la-land & I can’t hear you because it’s too loud here.

Oh Lewis, you’d never know the parsimonious parsing of reality.

I’ve learned the same lessons over and over But my memory’s bad so it’s deja vu every fucking second of my life. Now at least, as I seek, to be, finally in the right place at the right time.

Dearth

Blonde she was on the boulevard, in moonlight, in crescent of moon-grin; golden hairs white as Lear’s under moonlight; the old power coming easy as Paris faring through the tie-o-rama

Skyfield - 115 -Spahr-Summers

Harvey - 116

The moon, flat as a cookie, sails higher; wreaths of smoke lie fallow in space.

But blonde on a bicycle goes fast and quiet; the ripple of her passing disturbs all of us, wandering on the foreshore of no adventure.

Home, Palinurus; turn the rudder and home.

Harvey - 117

No blondes heave to in the moonlight; things left unfinished, of what things have come to,

I find ways to listen to the cacophony of love playing deep inside your chest like battered, un-tuned music. maybe if I hold you close enough and let the resonance in repetition be let the repetition of your heart,

Nation - 119 of the seasons that pass be I can fix the broken strings that hold the instrument of you together. when they are cured, replaced with unbreakable golden twine, I can play them like a guitar with soft, unscarred fingers and gain a quiet melody out of you that no one else will know.

Nation - 120

Breakfast

Sip on Bloody Marys made of cheap vodka and V8s and pick the strings of celery soaking up red juice.

Drag them out of their stalks like hangnails down skin.

A headache that never seems to leave: the braying sound of children in an empty, echoey space; your ex-wife’s crinkled forehead looking like worry-canyons; the scan she gives you when you crumble on the porch, a man of six foot five a mass of booze and speckled hair.

Sip on Bloody Marys like it could be an elixir of life and pick the strings of celery like they could be an extension of your body.

Drag them out of you like that hedonistic presence she says you hold.

Something that never seems to leave: Her.

Like a spasm in your back. Like a claw on your throat. Her.

And her freckles and too-pale skin and big nose like yours. Her.

Like a sad seraph with an exposed, wounded back. Her.

A reminder of loss. A reminder of ruin. A reminder of defeat.

Sip on Bloody Marys like sweet medicine that never asks you for anything, that lets you take, still, despite this.

Nation - 122

Vyacheslav Konoval

Devastated Hearts

Traction bridge crossings, engine compartment and blade turbines, flower salad destroyed the hydroelectric power station, water poured from the dam into the floodplain, the seawater now stinks of a stagnant pond.

The city of Kherson is without electricity, and with it the city of Kakhovka, swamps in the villages and hamlets, the Russians brought trouble to our home in the South.

The water is coming closer to the houses, evacuation from bombs and water, one after another such a carousel of life.

What kind of brave act is this? Ecocide or terrorism?

Oh, how wonderful everything is, humans loudly celebrate despotism in Russia.

Glorious Day of the Russian Language in such a noble institution as the UN, Putin's propaganda will spit in your eyes and laugh.

Contributors

Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. His latest book is Night School: Selected Early Poems.

Brian Barnett is the author of the middle grade novellas Graveyard Scavenger Hunt and Chaos at the Carnival. He has over three hundred publishing credits in dozens of magazines and anthologies such as the Lovecraft eZine, Spaceports & Spidersilk, Scifaikuest, and Three Line Poetry.

Dennis J. Bernstein is an award-winning poet. His previous volume, Five Oceans in a Teaspoon, won the 2020 IPPY Gold Medal Award for Poetry and the 2020 Best Book Award for Poetry by the American Bookfest, and was a finalist in 2020 Best Book Award, Poetry International Book Awards. Bernstein’s previous collection, Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom, won the 2012 Artists Embassy International Literary Cultural Award. (cut save for the inside of book?) His poetry has appeared in The New York Quarterly, Bat City Review, Texas Observer, ZYZZYVA, and numerous other journals. Bernstein’s artists’ books/plays French Fries and GRRRHHHH: a study of social patterns, co-authored with Warren Lehrer, are considered seminal works in the genre, and are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Georges Pompidou Centre, and other museums around the world.

Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have appeared in Lion and Lilac, Shorts Magazine, and Assignment Magazine. Poems are forthcoming in Gargoyle, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, samfiftyfour, and Ekphrastic Review.

Michael H. Brownstein's latest volumes of poetry, A Slipknot to Somewhere Else (2018) and How Do We Create Love (2019) were both published by Cholla Needles Press. In addition, he has appeared in Last Stanza, Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com and others. He has nine poetry chapbooks including A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), Firestorm: A Rendering of Torah (Camel Saloon Press, 2012), The Possibility of Sky and Hell: From My Suicide Book (White Knuckle Press, 2013) and The Katy Trail, Mid-Missouri, 100 Degrees Outside and Other Poems (Kind of Hurricane Press, 2013). He was the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011).

Wayne F. Burke's poetry has been widely published in print and online. He is author of eight published poetry collections and one book of short stories. Poems of his have recently appeared in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Red Eft Review, Dissident Voice, The Flying Dodo, Five Fleas, The Rye Whiskey Review, Beatnik Cowboy, and Ephemeral Elegies. He lives in Vermont (USA).

Yuan Changming edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include 12 Pushcart nominations, 15 chapbooks (most recently Sinosaure) and appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline and 2019 other literary outlets worldwide. A poetry judge at Canada's 2021 National Magazine Awards, Yuan began writing and publishing fiction in 2022.

David Dephy is an American award-winning poet and novelist. The founder of Poetry Orchestra, a 2023 Pushcart Prize nominee for Brownstone Poets, an author of full-length poetry collection Eastern Star (Adelaide Books, NYC, 2020), and A Double Meaning, also a fulllength poetry collection with co-author Joshua Corwin, (Adelaide Books, NYC, 2022). His poem, A Senses of Purpose, is going to the moon in 2024 by The Lunar Codex, NASA, Space X, and Brick Street Poetry. He lives and works in New York City.

Lara Dolphin, a native of Pennsylvania, is an attorney, nurse, wife and mom of four amazing kids. Her first chapbook, In Search Of The Wondrous Whole, was published by Alien Buddha Press. Her most recent chapbook, Chronicle Of Lost Moments, is available from Dancing Girl Press.

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Dogs Don’t Care (2022). His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.

Mark DuCharme’s sixth full-length book of poetry is Here, Which Is Also a Place, new from Unlikely Books. Also new is his chapbook Scorpion Letters from Ethel. Other recent publications include his work of poet’s theater, We, the Monstrous: Script for an Unrealizable Film, published by The Operating System. His poetry has appeared widely in such venues as BlazeVOX, Blazing Stadium, Caliban Online, Colorado Review, Eratio, First Intensity, Indefinite Space, New American Writing, Noon, Otoliths, Shiny, Talisman, Unlikely Stories, Word/ for Word, and Poetics for the More-Than-Human World: An Anthology of Poetry and Commentary. A recipient of the Neodata Endowment in Literature and the Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry, he lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA.

Eric Raanan Fischman is an MFA graduate of Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Colorado. He has taught free workshops for Beyond Academia Free Skool in Nederland, the Firehouse Art Center in Longmont, and Mi Chantli in Boulder. His work has appeared in the Boulder Weekly, Bombay Gin, Twenty Bellows, New Feathers Anthology, and the debut issue of Jasper’s Folly Poetry Journal, as well as in community fundraising anthologies from South Broadway Ghost Society and Punch Drunk Press. He curates the Boulder/Denver area poetry calendar at boulderpoetryscene.com and is a regular contributor to the blog. His first book, Mordy Gets Enlightened, was published through The Little Door in 2017. For more, visit ericraananfischman.com.

Wendy Freborg is a retired social worker whose work has appeared in Right Hand Pointing, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Rat’s Ass Review, and WestWard Quarterly. Her life includes one husband, one son, two grandchildren, enough friends, too many doctors and not enough dogs. Her pleasures are her family, crossword puzzles, learning new things, and remembering old times.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Rathalla Review. His latest books Covert, Memory Outside the Head, and Guest of Myself are available through Amazon. He has work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and Open Ceilings.

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and elsewhere. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired. His book, Mark the Dwarf is available on Kindle.

Geoffrey Heptonstall’s third collection of poetry, The Wicken Bird, was published byCyberwit November 2022. His first collection, The Rites of Paradise, received critical acclaim when first published by Cyberwit in 2020. Sappho’s Moon followed. A new volume, A Whispering, is in preparation. A novel, Heaven’s Invention, was published by Black Wolf in 2016. A number of plays and monologues have been workshopped, staged, broadcast and/or published. He is also a prolific short fiction writer, essayist and reviewer.

Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 44 countries, a song lyricist, has several published poetry books and anthologies, and has been nominated for 6 Pushcart Prize awards and 6 Best of the Net nominations. Over 285 YouTube poetry videos as of 04-2023.

Joseph Kenyon is the author of one novel, All the Living and the Dead (Mill City Press, 2016), as well as short stories and poetry. When not writing, he teaches the craft at The Community College of Philadelphia and spends time studying the myriad ways light shifts moment to moment, in and around us.

Amy Kohut is a visual artist living & working in far-east Boulder County, Colorado. She has a BFA in fine arts from University of Denver, studied a semester in Provence w/ the Cleveland School of Arts, yet has never received a more potent art lesson than that given to her from her grandpa as a young child. “Amy, don’t draw what you think you see, only draw what you actually see”.

Vyacheslav Konoval is a Ukrainian poet whose work is devoted to the most pressing social problems of our time, such as poverty, ecology, relations between the people and the government, and war. His poems have appeared in many magazines, including Anarchy Anthology Archive, International Poetry Anthology, Literary Waves Publishing, Sparks of Kaliopa, Reach of the Song 2022, Diogenes for Culture Journal, «Scars of my heart from the war», «Poetry for Ukraine», «Rhyming», «La page Blanche», Vyacheslav's poems have been translated into Spanish, French, Scottish, Italian, and Polish languages. His poems also have been read at meetings of various poetry groups, including Newman Poetry Group, Never Talk Innocence, Voicing Art Poetry Reading for Ukraine, Worcester County Poetry, Brussels Writer's Circle, Poets Anonymous May Middle-Met, Brett Show by Andrea, the Manx Bard group, Allinghman Art Festival, Versopolis Poetry Expo 2023, poetry readings «Poetry of Struggle and Solidarity», «Poetic Voices», Coal Literary Journal's Eve. He is a member of the Federation of Scottish Writers.

Hiram Larew, As founder of Poetry X Hunger, brings the world of poetry to the anti-hunger cause. His poems appear in Poetry South, Contemporary American Voices, Best Poetry Online, Honest Ulsterman, San Antonio Review and elsewhere. www.PoetryXHunger.com and www.HiramLarewPoetry.com

Corey Mesler has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South.Hehas publishedover25 books offictionandpoetry. His newest novel, Cock-a-Hoop, is from Whiskey Tit. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On, which won The Memphis Film Prize in 2017. With his wife he runs Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis.

Terry Jude Miller is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet from Houston. He received the 2018 Catherine Case Lubbe Manuscript Prize for his book, The Drawn Cat’s Dream. His work has been published in the Southern Poetry Anthology, The Lily Poetry Review, The Comstock Review, and The Oakland Review and in scores of other publications. He serves as 1st Vice Chancellor for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies.

Melissa E. Mishcon’s fiction and poetry has been published in: The G.W. Review, The Arkansan Review, Aaduna, Blue Unicorn, Boston Literary Magazine, The Literary Nest, Girls Gone 50, The Berkshire Review, Tiny Seed Literary Journal and Urthona. Her essays have appeared in The Women’s Times, The Artful Mind, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Albany Times Union, The Berkshire Edge, among others. Her novel, Just Between Us, won first prize from Birmingham Southern University’s Hackney Award. Her work has also been noted for commendation by Serpentine (1st Prize), and New Millennium. She is a practicing psychotherapist, and lives in The Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts.

Veronica Nation is a Colorado-based poet and artist. Her work has been featured in Hive Avenue Literary Journal, Scapegoat Review, Capsule Stories, and other literary journals. Veronica enjoys writing about the intricacies of grief, love, and loss, largely influenced by nature and lived experiences. Her writing can be found on her website at www.veronicanation.com.

Garrett Okenka wrote his first Runawaynote to his mother at the age of twelve. Though he didn’t get far, he has continued running and writing since. Currently living in Boulder, Colorado but from all parts East. His poems have been published in Boulder Weekly, Spit Poet Zine, and Grains of Sand (a Poetry Anthology). He has performed alongside the ever popular Black Market Translation in the chaos known as Punketry.

Agnieszka Pokojska is a Krakow-based literary translator, mainly from English into Polish. Her most recent work includes two volumes of essays by Margaret Atwood (forthcoming, 2021). She has been translating Grzegorz Wróblewski’s poetry since the late 1990s and her translations have been published in book form Let's Go Back to the Mainland, (Červená Barva Press, 2014), in literary magazines and online.

Dan Raphael's poetry collection In the Wordshed was published by Last Word press last December. More recent poems appear in Bindweed,Fireweed, North Dakota Review, Mad Swirl and Subjectiv. Most Wednesdays Dan writes and records a current events poem for The KBOO Evening News.

Gerard Sarnat won San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, Poetry in Arts First Place Award/Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of Pushcarts/Best of Net Awards. Gerry’s widely published including in Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, LA Review, and NY Times as well as by Harvard, Stanford, Chicago and Columbia presses. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry’s a physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor/healthcare CEO. Currently he’s devoting energy/resources to deal with climate justice, and serves on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids/six grandsons, and is looking forward to future granddaughters.

Jessica P. Skyfield struggles to balance herself in this world and finds some solace in writing poetry as she grapples with the gravity of life, not just hers but all of our collective dreams, desires, and designs as they're played out time and time again.

Jeffrey Spahr-Summers is a native of Colorado. He began exploring art mediums as a teenager while in South Africa during the 1970’s, quickly settling on photography and poetry. A commercial photographer in Chicago in the early 1990’s, he was active in the saloon poetry and publishing scene. Jeff’s poetry and photos have appeared in numerous print, online magazines and anthologies. He is the former publisher of Poetry Victims (2004

2014) and Snapping Twig (2013 – 2015) online magazines. He has published 19 books. He currently writes and publishes poetry, flash fiction, memoirs, and historical articles. Jeff is the founder of Cherry Publications, and Jasper’s Folly Poetry Journal.

Sarah Vendetti lives in Massachusetts with her young son and husband. She is a middle school science teacher who enjoys exploring the north woods of New England and hiking the White Mountains. She is a seeker of outdoor adventure in our nations National Parks, from desert to mountain to coast.

Christian Ward is a UK-based writer who has recently appeared in Dodging the Rain, Blue Unicorn, The Seventh Quarry, Bluepepper, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Amazine and Rye Whiskey Review.

Jennifer Watkins is new to the publishing world and is excited that it has finally begun after years of dedication. She studied creative writing at the University of Iowa, where she was immersed in the writing scene. She began writing in third grade and put together her first book. She assembled her second book in sixth grade. By the time she was in high school at Iowa City West High, she was receiving high honors from English and writing teachers. She strives to be the best at what she does. She works hard to come up with innovative ideas and creative prose. Her writing is imaginative and unique and writing will always be a passion of hers.

MT Williams lives in the cornfields of Southwestern Ontario with his wife, daughter and far too many animals. He's been featured on Fleas Of The Dog, Agony Opera and Better Than Starbucks. He can be found on Twitter @emptywill or at emptywill.com.

Grzegorz Wróblewski was born in 1962 in Gdańsk and grew up in Warsaw. Since 1985 he has been living in Copenhagen. He is the author of many books of poetry, drama and other writings. As a visual artist, he has exhibited his paintings in various galleries in Denmark, Germany, England and Poland. English translations of his work are available in Our Flying Objects (trans. Joel Leonard Katz, Rod Mengham, Malcolm Sinclair, Adam Zdrodowski, Equipage, 2007), A Marzipan Factory (trans. Adam Zdrodowski, Otoliths, 2010), Kopenhaga (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Zephyr Press, 2013), Let's Go Back to the Mainland (trans. Agnieszka Pokojska, Červená Barva Press, 2014) and Zero