Paradise

/

High tide, tide of a moonless
push and pull, of a foamy tug-
of-war growing slowly through

the afternoon. The sharp and salt-
scented waves are glazed like a sheet
of wrinkled cellophane, like endless

bubble wrap popping softly on the shore.
I rake my naked feet through wet consonants
of sand, through washed-up rinds

of seaweed, scattered shards of ash-
white seashells I used to tongue-tie
myself into repeating, repeating,

blurting out these playground games
of memory. Now, I’ve learned to let
the gulf speak for itself, to listen

to the wind slap the rainbowed
and unraveled flaps of umbrellas,
scrape the maze of shirtless bodies,

the perfect rows of hotels and beach
chairs, the hordes of squawking gulls
impersonating vultures, as they hover

for their share of leftover sandwiches,
spilled bags of potato chips, or a sip
from the blue, hand-crushed cans

my father plants around his ice-chest,
that aluminum Stonehenge he quickly
adds to, collects. In paradise, all vision

is panoramic, and as much as I think
I’m walking closer, enlarging the glossy
postcard around him, he is still just another


tourist, a man seated next to a woman,
who in the swollen weekend sun
has become a different version

of my mother, a wife unclasping
the black straps of her one-piece bathing
suit, lying face down, and airing out

her skin the way she allows herself to
every year, the way she doesn’t mind
the salted light crawling on her large

and stretch-marked shoulders, unfolding
her spine like a black and white spread,
while off to the side, with a plastic shovel

in hand, I see myself carving out a contradiction,
building another place to live, a farm
or fortress where I envision winter—

that fabled season—smeared like broken
chalk across acres of hibernating fields,
and where I can frame my family into

a portrait of smiling snowmen, standing
on the porch, watching as I stretch my legs
and arms into the world’s largest angel.

Author's Note: Every summer, my parents would take my sister and I to South Padre Island for a couple of days. The stress of the work, of raising two children, of trying to stay afloat financially in the world, appeared to disappear the moment my father and mother sprawled our cooler, beach towels, and lawn chairs onto the sand. We claimed our spot for the next few hours. We dug our toes into the paradise we’d been craving all year.

Bio: Esteban Rodríguez is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently Lotería (Texas Review Press, 2023), and the essay collection Before the Earth Devours Us (Split/Lip Press, 2021). He lives with his family in south Texas.

love story in five acts

/

Jen Hallaman


i.

from opposite ends
of the dark
& crowded booth
we converge

glossy smiles
glossy laughs
play it so so cool

the way you play it cool
when you’re twenty-two
& dying
to hide
the weight of life’s
weightlessness

beneath the table:
our knees’ first kiss

ii.

you ask to drive me
north, away from this
cigarette-smoke city

we thought we’d swim
but early spring
the lake is liquid gold

shore-side we drop
our slick facades
to trade secrets

ignorant to raw sun
eavesdropping
binding our images
to turbid tarn

iii.

immortal, we
watch summer unfurl

by now,
we love each other
& the blue

mountain light
unravels us

water gently spools us
back together

iv.

time drags us to a place
more jagged & expansive
than our youth

but oh, how soon we miss
our far-off waters

we visit reservoirs,
public pools, alpine lakes
sparkling like ice in june

we burn in unobscured sun
freeze in mountain runoff
fight

through crowds
for one glimpse
of a white cascade

we drive and drive
without a map
searching for a place to swim

but nowhere
that we land
reflects

who
we have been

v.

if we never make it back –

was it worth it?
to permit those shadows
of our souls
escape

or should

we forget them
altogether

should

we look
only ahead

as though

their love-
story doesn’t matter.



Author’s Note: This piece was inspired by the North Georgia mountains, where my husband and I spent our earliest days together. During the summer, we'd drive up from Atlanta to cool off in a beautiful mountain lake, which we often had all to ourselves. We left Georgia long ago and are still searching for an equally perfect place to swim. 

Jen Hallaman writes poetry and creative nonfiction. She lives with her husband and baby daughter in Northeast Ohio, where you can find her baking strawberry pie, hiking, and exploring local bookstores. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, Peauxdunque Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Creative Loafing Atlanta, and others. You can read more of her work at www.jenhallaman.com







What I Love About Spoons

/

Nora Curry

the possible
smallness or enveloping
wideness, the curve in—
to warm oats, the stir into
hot tea, the nourish—
ment, the making, gui—
dance through different
forms, liquid to

thickening, the absolute
possible smallness—scooping
of potato, sweet—the holding,
the lift, the moment in
air—the pause—the sweet
holding

Author’s Statement: Sometimes I write a poem and struggle to find an appropriate title, but in this case, the poem began with the title and is in some ways very simply a riff on this idea of loving an everyday object. At its core is an idea that the simple things we interact daily perhaps deserve their own odes and an attentiveness that we don't always give them. Maybe there's a reason something seemingly small carries so much weight in our lives, by threading its way through so many of our moments, and I wanted to explore that idea here, in a short piece of verse.

Nora Curry is a librarian and poet hailing from New York and finding refuge in Maine. She is a poetry and creative nonfiction reader for Wild Roof Journal, Kitchen Table Quarterly, and the Maine Review. Nora's work has been published in Bennington Review, Cimarron Review, the Aurorean, The Field Guide Poetry Magazine, and deLuge Journal, and often grapples with nature, sense of place, and intergenerational relationships.

Snow Globes

/

Joseph Geskey

Snow globes of nostalgia
Gifted by children and grandchildren
Commemorating the stability of home,
The ceramic domicile serenely encased
Under a white plastic dome,
Seeing the water, oil, glycol,
And the light dusting of salt crystals
Being turned upside down
By excited hands and the resultant squall
Before slipping, crashing, and breaking
Over the hardwood floor,
Thinking of us years ago
Sitting in a restaurant
For a work-related meal,
Watching you vigorously shake salt
In your hands letting it bounce
And settle on the meat, its natural juices
Like saliva from a wolf’s grin
Before the feral hunt, and then
Both of us moving on from those
Left behind and abandoned, living
According to the survival of the fittest.

Author’s Statement: Snow Globes was motivated by contrasting what appears to be an idyllic, contemporary elderly couple’s relationship that began years ago when their previous hidebound lives were upended due to meeting one another. Slantwise, it is meant to disturb the impression that as we age we renounce passion.

Joseph Geskey is a physician who lives in Dublin, OH. His first book of poetry, Alms for the Ravens, will be published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in Summer 2024. Individual poems are forthcoming from Tar River Poetry, Poetry East, Cloudbank, and others.

Rooted Star

/

DL Pravda


Planted the tulip poplar four feet from the fence
I would guess in 2005. 7 feet tall. 79 dollars.
From the Suffolk nursery that no longer exists.
Drove her through the tunnel with her head out the window.
Dug the hole with the short spade from Lynndale.
Watered her once. Now she's 30
feet tall, easy, with a wide canopy of two-tone
green leaves and orange flowers open wide
like mouths of baby birds. Coronated by clouds
and serenaded by wind, she commands the holly,
magnolia, camelias and azaleas. She dreams
she will be the tallest tree in the world.

Author’s Statement: Planting the tulip poplar, a native tree, in my backyard almost 20 years ago is one of the best things I have ever done. Not only have I blocked out the neighbor, I have watched the tree take over the yard and sky. My yard as a whole is a mini tree sanctuary in the middle of a centuries-old neighborhood. The trees attract birds, squirrels and other critters, and, on occasion, I sit and wait with my pen and notebook for poems to fly into the yard.

Bio: DL Pravda tries to keep it together either by jamming distorted reverb juice in his ears or by driving to the country and disappearing into the woodsfarm dimension. Recent work appears in Bookends Review, The Meadow, Poetry Quarterly, Rockvale Review and South 85. He also appeared on the Library of Congress podcast "The Poet and the Poem” with Maryland laureate Grace Cavalieri in 2023. Pravda teaches at Norfolk State University.

Five Card Stud

/

Jonathan B. Aibel

I try to teach myself poker,
deal five hands all to myself.

My bluffs fail, my tells give
me away and I lose my pants

to the house, sent to the kitchen
to wash other peoples' food off dishes

for my debt, a hard bargain I struck,
disappointed with myself I guess

I should not have tried
to cheat, or not have done it so poorly
that I caught myself.

Author’s Statement: In this piece, I reflect on being a lonely child, playing games by myself, while my parents hosted fancy cocktail parties.

Jonathan B. Aibel is a recovering software engineer who lives in Concord, MA, traditional homelands of the Nipmuc.  His poems have been published, or will soon appear, in pacificREVIEW, Chautauqua, Pangyrus, Lily Poetry Review, Cider Press Review,and elsewhere. http://www.jbaibelpoet.com.

The Best Poem You Ever Wrote

/

Andrew Chapman

was about that kid our age who
fell in a Wyoming hot spring and
dissolved before the park rangers
could find which hole he’d made.

Remember kissing you at the
thrill of my discovery, like I just met
the girl I’d been living with, like our
place was waitlisted for historical

placards, twice-daily tours, a modest
gift shop. So I had the thing laminated,
pinned it above our wobbly white IKEA
desk. While your twenty-dollar printer

pushed ticker tape poems around our
room the Best Poem You Ever Wrote
hung in adoration between wedding
photos, silly polaroids. Found myself

frowning reading it aloud, appraising it
against your new stuff, making note to
show you more teen tragedy articles.
Still, I celebrated with friends, even

strangers, read them your hot-spring
poem instead of showing your picture,
and long after your earthly belongings
were carried off in a Hyundai Elantra

the Best Poem You Ever Wrote stayed
up on the corkboard, a prize I’d won.
Your other pieces had all dissolved
before I could find the hole I’d made.

Bio: I moved to Roanoke from Lafayette, Indiana after hiking the Appalachian Trail in 2021. I am an infrequent poet. My poem is autobiographical.

Caw

/

Erin Ratigan

They came to the garden
looking for the peanuts
I have tucked away
in a place where the squirrels
won’t see them,

and upon their arrival
my mother cheers
and quietly
sneaks out to join them
in their revelry

calling to them
in something as close
to their language
as witches can approximate.
She jokes that she is crazy

but how dull it would be
not to try to commune
with the corvids, their
feathers shining like her spirit
as she smiles to the sky.

Author’s Statement: In writing "Caw" I sought to share my observation of nature through a child's eyes –– namely, how I grew up watching my mother speak to the crows in our front garden. Seeing her commune with nature by attempting to speak their language (albeit through mimicry) I am reminded of old-world traditions and the association between crows and witches. The moments she shares with the crows, therefor, speak of the magic present in everyday life when we seek to share something special with others. Even if those others are not of our own species. 

Erin Ratigan is a freelance writer and journalist with a focus on long form and narrative news features. Her poetry has appeared in multiple publications including Door is a Jar Literary Magazine and POETiCA REViEW, and in the nature anthology Echoes of the Wild. She lives in North Texas.

Sycamores

/

Thomas Strunk

The other day when I felt the weight
of the roof hanging low over me,
the ceiling sinking onto my shoulders,
I cut out of there and rushed
into the sunlight, into the forest
where walnuts and sycamores arched
their canopy high above me until
I wanted to stretch my arms until
I could touch the bark and grasp
the young leaves.
And I thought of you
then. How you floated away from me
and no matter how I fought to hold on,
you wormed free of every embrace,
slipped through my fingers, disappearing
over the days and decades until I
discovered you once more, a ghost,
first in my fingertips, and then through
the soles of my feet, pulling you
back down to earth.

Author’s Statement: "Sycamores" is a poem that came to me as I walked through the woods near my home in Cincinnati. I felt that day a connection between my emotions and the shape of the trees around me. In the poem, I am trying to describe the power nature has to revive our spirits and possibly heal us.

Thomas E. Strunk is the author of the poetry collection Transfigurations (Main Street Rag 2023). His literary work has appeared in The RavensPerch, Pensive, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and East Fork Journal among others. He is the author of History after Liberty and The Fall of the Roman Republic: Lessons for the American People. He lives in Cincinnati, where he teaches classical literature and history. Thomas is currently enrolled in the M.F.A. program in Creative Writing at Wilkes University.

kɑrtˌʰwil (cartwheel)

/

Phoebe Reeves

One more Cassandra calls cities to herself.
Piles of casework tumble off her knees.


She sees Carthage, Cartagena, Casablanca
coming to her the way cartilage loosens


when the knife enters the joint.
No cartographer can control the coordinates his map carries.


The horse pulls the cart—cartons, casks, Casanova’s used condoms.
The carthorse’s sores make a Cartesian argument


across its withers, carved
in reflex down the flank.


Now you must make your case like Cassandra
seeing the edge of the world: wine


leaking from a cracked cask, the earth
lapping it up like any good Casanova would.


Author’s Statement: This poem is part of a book length project called The Lexicographer's Garden, which engages with the dictionary one page at a time, through the alphabet and back again. Each poem takes as many words from that one page as possible and incorporates them into its language. This began as an exercise I do with my beginning poetry students, and was so much fun that for two years, I did it myself every Sunday morning, loving all the forgotten words, strange coincidences, and musical engagement of alliteration. 

Phoebe Reeves earned her MFA in poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and now is Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. She has three chapbooks of poetry, most recently The Flame of Her Will (Milk & Cake), and her first full length collection, Helen of Bikini (Lily Poetry Review) was published in March, 2023. Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Best New Poets, Grist, Forklift OH, and The Chattahoochee Review, and she has been awarded fellowships by the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Vermont Studio Center. She lives in Cincinnati, OH with her husband Don Peteroy, amidst her unruly urban garden. 

Two Poems by Cara Losier Chanoine

/

Ergo Sum

My therapist thinks that running
is a metaphorically resonant
part of my life,
as though the physical act
were an analog for avoidance.
I think she had a tired imagination.

I have enough
metaphors.
I have shingled my life in them;
I have to peel them back
just to see the bones.

I am running down a street
that is every street
because I need to remind myself that my brain
is housed in a body,
and my laces are double knotted,
and my limbs move in syncopation
with my threadbare breath,
and I am not running to or from
I am just running
I am just
I am

In Lieu of Flowers

Sometimes,
I trawl the obituaries
from my hometown
to see if anyone I know
has died.
Maybe
it’s not accurate
to say that I know them
anymore.
I could not really tell you
who these people are
beyond the basic facts
the newspaper sees fit to print:
son of…
spouse of…
survived by…


The sight of a familiar name
triggers a type of dread I cannot classify.
It brings death closer
than I would like,
with the rot of its breath
on my neck.
It places a claw on my cheek
like a lover.
I cannot break its gaze.

I don’t know why
I keep returning to this well of used up names
that culture bile in my gut.
Sometimes,
I wonder
if I am training
for the gut punch
of a death that matters
to me,
or if such a thing
is even possible.

Cara Losier Chanoine is a New England writer and college professor. Her most recent poetry collection, Philosopher Kings, was released by Silver Bow Publishing in January 2023. Her creative work has most recently appeared in Reedy Branch Review, Book of Matches, and The Lake.



“midnight, dawn, dusk”

/

Tohm Bakelas

1.

Downtown, after midnight,
along Broadway, under
artificial light, past benches
the clocktower, and empty
parking lots, there are ghosts
that walk again. They are the
lost ones, the forgotten ones,
the ones without names. They
are the ones we locked out of
ourselves because we are alive.

2.

At dawn, in the cemetery, where
tombstones look like grey heads
protruding from beneath blankets
of powdered white snow, the sun,
blinded by its own radiance, was
naïve to autumn’s dying breath.
And winter’s bitter beauty cracked
its cold whip across the faces of
the living while the world was
frozen in glass-like frost.

3.

As if we could rewrite history,
as if we could turn back time,
we romanticize death by chasing
ghosts in the bottom of bottles.
These autumn days are numbered,
marked by crumbling daylight
that reflects in broken shards of
green glass beneath blue dusk.
We, who are forever cursed,
accept the night as our sun.

Author’s Note: Shortly before midnight I found myself on an inebriated journey, leaving my local watering hole, heading for my hometown. I decided to kick around my sanity while stumbling through the streets of my youth, past ghosts and memories I long forgot about until I eventually hit the cemetery. I thought about life and death and how it’s all one big fucking mess. After spending some time there, I checked the time and knew the sun would be arriving shortly, so I decided to go home. 

Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have been printed widely in journals, zines, and online publications all over the world. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including “Cleaning the Gutters of Hell” (Zeitgeist Press, 2023) and “The Ants Crawl in Circles” (Bone Machine, Inc., 2024). He runs Between Shadows Press. 

Layman’s Guide to Jungle Living

/

Nam Hoang Tran

Author’s Statement: 🏃🏻💨 __________ ❗️oh hell naw ❗️__________ 🐍   

Nam Hoang Tran is a multidisciplinary artist based in Orlando, FL. His work appears or is forthcoming in Posit, The Brooklyn Review, ANMLY, New Delta Review, Tagvverk, Always Crashing, and Diode, among others. With Henry Goldkamp, he co-edits TILT - a journal of intermedia poetics. Find him online @ www.namhtran.com. 

Got There: Warm and Cold Air

/

Darren Demaree

Ribbons is a kinder, more playful
name for the tethers we’ve been
cutting loose. Look at how they dance
in front of those angry faces
that do not listen when we tell them
here, here is the cool water, warmed
by the air that travels, that does not
care about the names of places.
Naming is such a terribly calm violence.

Our skin cannot feel the larger map.
Run side by side into the tree-line.
Only the bombers can kiss angry
enough to chase us from there
& their governments have gone
broke turning us all into fractions.

Be with me as we burn the boats.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-one poetry collections, most recently “in defense of the goat as it continues to wander towards the certain doom of the cliff”, (forthcoming from April Gloaming, February 2024).  He is the recipient of a Greater Columbus Arts Council Grant, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal.  He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and the Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry.  He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

Star City

/

Charissa Roberson

Charissa Roberson is a life-long writer and reader from Lake Linganore, Maryland, and a current MFA candidate at Hollins University in Virginia. Her previous work has appeared in several places in print and online, including Running Wild Anthology of Short Stories Vol. 6, River and South Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine, 45th Parallel, and others.   

August, Time Stops in the Deep South

/

Paul Freidinger

I desert the future, forest the past
with clouded memory, conquest the air,

I am getting used to mouthing heat index,
amulet of despair. My wife keeps saying

it sneaks up on you, dangerous the woods
with ticks, bugs, snakes, poison ivy. I tug

the black river, dense from tannic acid,
time stops here, torpor of illusion. August

stirs muggy into every morning as the sun
hangs like a dead man on the end of a rope,

ghosts taunt me with their stories curdling
through an infinite afternoon, cicada buzz

electric when I gaze through deep shade.
I sleep the hour, everything closes down,

ennui is my neighbor knocking the door,
muffled with deterrence. Do I answer,

do I answer? You are welcome, no one else,
no one else. In the lull, I contest the quest

to keep on living.

 

Author’s Bio: I grew up in farm country in central Illinois and have always been drawn to rural settings. I also have a long history in Edisto Island, SC, and sense some similarity to its own rural ecology. Still, it is different from the Midwest. The weight of history is heavy in the deep South. A friend of mine told me years ago that the best description for summer here was the word muggy. People slow down in the summer, they temper ambition, and limit too much talk. Around the island are sand roads, live oaks, palmettos, marshland, and tidal creeks, with plenty of open space. Sometimes those settings seem primordial as if nothing has touched them for a thousand years. I often stop while driving around, get out of the car, and observe the scene. The views are peace, beautiful, and bucolic. They are also stultifying, all the more so when considering how Edisto was settled by Europeans. At one time there were twenty-nine plantations here, ranging from five thousand to ten thousand acres. In those moments I feel the struggles people faced here and the challenges of the climate, how it shaped attitudes and behavior. As climate change becomes more of a factor on our lives here, it is impossible for me not to consider that the heat, the sea, and the land will have the final word.

Paul Freidinger is a poet residing in Edisto Beach, SC, where the ocean continues to rise. It keeps him awake at night. Thankfully, writing sustains him. Paul was raised in Illinois farm country, taught school in suburban Chicago, and now lives in South Carolina’s low country where he also has a long history. He has poems recently published or forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Florida Review, Grist, Harpur Palate, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Isthmus, Pacific Review, Portland Review, Reunion: The Brasilia Review, The Dallas Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, Triggerfish Critical Review, and William & Mary Review, among others.

The man and the other

/

D.A. Rivera

The night had begun to descend low. Streaks of cool oranges and arid purples were sent
scraping across the sky. The colors draped as a fading contrast to the darkening waves of sand,
terraced steppes, and plumes of stone in the surrounding desert. A babbler, readying itself to
roost for the night, connected the horizon in its search. In its beak it carried what little it
scavenged from the day. Overhead, a fan-tailed raven scanned the landscape, fighting the night
searching for its closing meal. It set itself down having failed to find what it was looking for. The
babbler saw it, turned, and hopped to the raven before gently setting on the ground the only seed
it had collected from the day. The babbler raised its bill and quickly preened its belly’s feathers,
softening its features. The raven glanced at it, piloerected its feathers, and flew off into the night,
leaving the seed behind. Instead of returning to nest, the babbler remained nestled against the
seed, awaiting the raven’s unknowable return.
And as all else prepared for sleep, the man continued to sit.
He sat. Straight back, leaning forward, forearms on his thighs. You could tell he was
hungry, starving even. His face stared at the small fire he ignited but moments ago. Dry eyes
peered over sand spattered cheeks and flaking skin. He shivered as he prodded the flame with a
stick taken from a tamarisk tree he had long since passed. The saltbush that had shared its soil
now provided the kindling that fueled the wisp before him. The little yellow of the flame held
against the night’s impending darkness.
“If you insist on sticking around the least you could provide is your conversation.” The
man said while looking up. The warm beard on his face and shoulder-length hair paled in
comparison to the warmth of his smile. That softly curved smile somehow continued to linger as
he turned back to the flame and again, gently prodded it with a stick.
“I had thought after offering you the world you would find our conversation exhausted.”
The other replied, his eyebrow arcing in response. The other stood on the outskirts. He stood tall,
defined, and profound. His chest was a boulder, his shoulders rose as mountains. Despite the
other’s prominence the darkness around blended with him. His form flickered with the shadows
of sleeping shrubbery and nestled rocks. They followed along in chorus to his melody; his form
the conductor to their harmony
“That saltbush you burn. You do know you could eat that, correct?” The other followed
with a nudge of a nod towards the leaves the man had now tossed into the flame.
“I am well aware.” The man replied pruning the last of the leaves before using the stick to
knead the flame. When the leaves caught, he stopped his prodding and turned his face to the
other, returning to the conversation at large. “But if our conversation truly was exhausted, then
why do you remain? Surely it is not merely to jest?”
Alabaster teeth shown bright against darkening features. As he smiled in response, the
etching of the other’s face sharpened with the night’s increasing presence. “Quite.” His arms
then rose quickly in an open gesture. They resembled the same cascading shadows of distant
dunes that flooded to overtake the land abandoned by the setting sun. “However, you would not
imagine me one to relent so easily now, would you?”
“I suppose not.” The man returned to the fire, but not before a single chuckle escaped his
nose. “Persistence is a quality that suits you. And patience is a virtue.”
“Bah.” The other replied, slapping the air with his hand. His foot pierced the veil between
the darkness in which he had stood and the light of the fire. The light rose from the surface as he
stepped forward and he became defined from his surroundings. The flame bent and reeled as the
other approached. It grasped the shriveling shrubbery below and gripped its benediction,
swelling and rising in defiance. The other’s form took full shape as the small flame fought to
illuminate him. He walked to a round stone and resting easily on it, allowed the light to reach
him. He tilted his head, looking down on the light. Without lifting his eyes from the flame, he
smiled wryly. “Virtue does not suit me.”
“And yet, here you sit, forty days later accompanied by a man with whom you hold such
contempt.” The man chuckled to himself before placing the stick down, rubbing his hands, and
exposing his palms to the flame. “If that is not a paragon of patience, I do not know what is.” He
reciprocated a wry smile back at the other before grabbing the stick again and holding it in his
hand. The fire’s light soaked into the brown of the man’s skin while reflecting in the pool of
brown in his eyes; they flickered in tune with the light.
The other scoffed. “You forget, forty days is but mere moments to me.” He leaned
forward, allowing his head to sag to the side sardonically. “Patience does not compel me.
Necessity does.”
“Compulsions. Necessities. The words used by one who has claimed to transcend such
failings.” The man shrugged. “You offer the world and yet succumb to its weaknesses? I would
have thought you stronger than that.” His eyes returned to the flame; his gaze remained fixed on
the other.
The air held still; the flame froze in place. A rumbling emanated from the other, pebbles
and sand vibrated as they fell from the surface of the very stone they had smoothed. “Do not test
me.”
The man’s gaze joined his eyes and he kept his attention towards the fire, his gentle
features undisturbed. “No test, for that is what you are for, is it not?”
The other’s shoulders eased and he allowed his forearms to rest casually on his thighs, his
hands hanging loosely between. “You are simple. A minor evocation from me and you perceive
to have me played.”
“I do not wish to play.” The man tossed the tamarisk in the fire having observed the fire’s
fading light and the stick’s hardened, blackened end. He watched the fire lap at the stick, its
flame strengthening while consuming the tempered form. The stick lost itself within the flame,
no longer resembling itself. It grew with the fire, becoming beautiful brooding reds, swirling
oranges, and invigorating yellows, fulfilling its proclivity for more. The man sat back, extending
his arms behind him and placing his weight on his hands.
“Play is for children with hearts so full and minds so empty.” The man continued as he
lifted his hand, brushed some sand off the surface of the stone, and placed it back graciously. “I
merely wish to converse. An activity for one such as you with a mind so full and a heart so
empty.”
“You believe so?” The other tilted his head.
“It matters not what I believe.” The man stated, pushing himself up straight as he quickly
slid his hands against one another, brushing the few grains of sand from them. “It matters what
you believe.”
“You speak of faith. I thought that was a quality reserved for your father.” The other
rolled his lips in defiantly.
“Faith is permitted for oneself, as long as there is recognition.” The man choked slightly
as he spoke, catching himself in a response that came to him faster than even he expected.
A rush of air expelled from the other’s nostrils as he shook his head. “Your father is a
selfish one.”
“It could be perceived that way.” The man conceded.
“Why place faith in one with such vanity?” The other said as his eyes thinned.
“Well...” The man paused, allowing space between his words. “Why place faith in one
with such vanity?” The man repeated, waiting in silence for a response.
The night’s breeze flowed over them, the flame dancing in its wake with a renewed vigor.
The cool air surfing over their skin mixed with the heat of the fire creating a warmth that glowed
and embraced. The other clenched his jaw, tightening in its defiance.
The man spoke quietly. “You loved him once too you know.”
The other threw his gaze away, his voice growing slightly louder. “Love. You speak of it
as if you know it implicitly, but it transcends even your comprehension.”
The man made no response. He merely sat quietly, patiently.
“You sit there believing you to have some superior knowledge.” The other’s hand
tightened. “But how little you truly know. I know that of which you do not.”
“And what is that?” The man asked.
“Love fails.”
The flame fluttered as the two remained silent. After a moment of eternity, the man
spoke.
“Do you truly believe that?” The man asked softly.
“Yes. You will be tossed aside just as I—” The other choked.
The man took his time in response, allowing himself and the other a few simple breaths.
He spoke back quietly. “Have you once known love?”
“Enough. I tire of such trivialities.” The other replied regaining his composure, although
keeping his gaze away from the man.
“Then you could know it once again.” The man said, his tone as smooth as the rocks on
which they sat. “In fact, you may have not forgotten it. And perhaps...” The man let an air of a
moment hang before finishing. “...it never forgot you.”
The other’s eyes dropped to the ground at his feet. Each grain of sand settled beneath
him, and he felt the grinding and crunching as he dug his feet deeper. As he dug, he felt the
subtle settling, the resting of each grain filling each gap and joining their counterparts. His eyes
began to pull away. They surfed across the surface of each grain to the sand beneath his feet, to
the sand around his form, to the sand beneath the sky. The stars shone down; the sand stared up.
The stars dried; the sand twinkled. The stars fell and filled each gap, the sand settled and
accepted each star. Together, they created the landscape. Together, they thrived.
The other brought his gaze back. His eyes stared at the man and the man’s shone back.
He looked down at the tamarisk in the fire, noticing the back end of the stick had yet been
consumed. It stood erect, pointedly individual against the flame. The other saw the end that was
consumed by flame, having lost itself amidst the unification. He brought his eyes back to the
other side, where the stick retained its identity. The other looked up at the man and spoke firmly.
“Congratulations,” the other stated, his tone flat. “You have won your forty days in the
desert,” he finished before pushing himself to stand. “Let us be on our separate ways.” He turned
and began to walk away.
The man stood up, his brows quickly furrowing in succession. The desert of his eyes
flooded with an ocean of countenance. “He still loves you.”
The other paused, the flame’s light tugging like a child at the seam of his form; the
darkness before him inviting and distinct.
“You are still..loved.” The man said in two breaths, the wavering of tears quivering his
chest.
“Love for me died the day you all were born.”
The man then watched the other merge fully with the darkness, his form seeming to surge
and subside. A single tear fell to the desert floor, the grains of sand accepting it as another grain.

Author’s Note: Growing up Catholic you learn there’s a lot you don’t understand, a lot you think you believe, and a lot that you need to figure out for yourself. Being religious, particularly Catholic, comes with its guilt and can create a lot of cognitive dissonance when you want to do your best in the world but are constantly questioning your ability to ever be “good enough.” I’ve had to learn to reconcile with that and come to a reality that the world is not so black-and-white, not so right vs. wrong. This has allowed me to see and respect new perspectives while learning that everyone tries their best, and at some point, everyone has lost. I was always curious about stories in the Bible that were short, abrupt, and unclear; stories that were never fully told. One such story was that of Jesus in the desert, and particularly his companion. I always wondered what that must have been like for Jesus, but also, what that was like for the devil, an individual who once experienced what Jesus had but no longer. This story was my way of understanding that and the reality that we never truly know, but that it does not mean we cannot still appreciate it and find whatever hope is in it for us. 

D. A. Rivera is a Puerto Rican clinical therapist who provides mental health treatment in the city of Boston, Massachusetts. He first started writing with a creative writing course at the University of New Hampshire while acquiring his bachelor’s in psychology. He later received his master’s in social work from Boston College and has continued writing in his spare time. He has a passion for writing unique perspectives and finds inspiration through music, illustrations, and particularly spirituality. His work has recently appeared in the literary journal Welter and he’s hoping to continue his luck by publishing more stories in the future. 

Two Poems by Tara Willoughby

/

La Niña

We brought the girls to the reserve to see how
full the river is. You can hear the ancient beast roar before you see it.
The bottom of the path is gone
underneath the swirling tea-coloured water.
There is no sandy strand of beach here now. And yet,
even where we stand clumped together and aimless
on a trail to nowhere, I can see where the water pressed its flanks
even higher. It swept across the grass and bushes and weeds
laying them down flat and parallel like a seagrass mat.


The kids look out at the clumps of trees
stranded and surrounded by the torrent, bending with the current.
They know this is big, it's wild, but the significance slips
through their fingers like eels.
What is a river to a girl? They haven't yet learned
to hold its course in their minds.
From the tears that fell unceasing in the hills and
hidden valleys, to the sodden ground
that can't hold a single drop more, to this
thundering enormity before us that rolls cold and
deep and full of lost branches into an endless sea.


It's too much for them to think all at once.
They get bored with the disjointed pieces. They clamber
across the matted plants and slick clay, looking for flowers and
interesting rocks shaped like noses.
When a snake shims from between some boulders,
the visit is done. We'll come back to the scoured gullies another day.


The water will rise and fall. Next time
a girl might be able to hold just a little more of it in her mind,
wade so that she can feel it around her ankles, without falling.
Without being swept away.

Making Waves

across the water
gently rolling
her reflection slides


an oil slick of long limbs and
seal skin wavering splits and reforms
on the glossy green surface of the vast Pacific


the surfer sits behind the beach break
for a time she’s watching waiting
breathing salt and algae


moments
pass
so slowly


everything is in its proper
place the fish the woman the kelp
moving together under an enamel blue sky


on shore she may feel shaky, may be seen
as less, as small. but her reflection
grins briny the water churns


she paddles strong
waves swell
sweet


she glides
behind the distant cry
of the seagulls on the wind

Author’s Note: I started writing La Niña thinking about a particularly adventurous picnic I once took a group of Girl Guides on, and their reactions when we came across the overflowing Murrumbidgee River. Making Waves was first inspired by a news article I read about champion surfer Lucy Small, and her efforts to promote gender equality in the sport. 

Tara lives in Canberra with her spouse and their cockatiel, Pooface. She has too many houseplants and years of education, and not nearly enough books. Her work has previously appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, Cicerone Journal, The Bookends Review, Melbourne Culture Corner, and others. You can find links to more of her work here. 



To All the Books Retired from Public Circulation

/

Abbie Doll

i salute you.

for your dedicated service,
your loose weathered pages,
& curated collection
of mystery blemishes,
i salute you.

for your war-torn weary spines,
cracked with age and all-too-frequent use,
we salute your faded facades,
your handicapped masses
again. ~&~ again. ~&~ again.

thank you.

for embracing vulnerability,
sharing yourself with so many.
such admirable devotion—
permitting us to poke & prod
your textual guts, penetrating what’s written.

now, please allow me to pamper you.

savor the solitude,
the sanctitude, &
rejoice in this shamrock pasture
of a well-earned retirement
resting atop a well-dusted sturdy shelf.

Author’s Note: I buy a lot of used books, many of which were once library books and have very clearly been through the wringer. In this poem, I considered the trajectory of their "lives" of servitude, added a bit of a Veterans Day spin, and voilà!

Abbie Doll is a writer residing in Columbus, OH, with an MFA from Lindenwood University and is a fiction editor at Identity Theory. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Door Is a Jar Magazine, Full House Literary, and The Bitchin’ Kitsch, among others. Connect on socials @AbbieDollWrites.



This Body Will Not Carry

/

Annie Cigic

I go on long drives, childless-
a loud peace. An empty backseat,


ignoring seatbelts & airbags. No bodies
traveling at the same speed as mine.


No questions about the sky-why the clouds hang
low & heavy some days. No one to count


the broken white lines or ask why the roads light up
at dark. From city to shoreline to mountain, I drive until I see


barren landscapes-hurricanes won’t touch
this wasteland.

Author’s Note: To be completely honest, this poem came to existence after an abusive ex-partner told me he wished I had twins. I was trying to form a new relationship with my body at the time because so much emphasis was placed on my body and using it to have children, as if that was its sole purpose. In the poem, the speaker is at peace with an absence that still weighs heavy in certain moments. The peace is an ear-splitting silence—it announces itself. The body is being juxtaposed with nature, and at some points in the poem, the body is being disregarded, representing a sense of disappointment. The poem itself is a moment of peace interrupted by what can slip through the cracks. 

Annie Cigic is a Ph.D. candidate in the Rhetoric and Writing Studies Program at BGSU in Ohio. Her work can be found in Into the Void, Gordon Square Review, Driftwood Press, Rappahannock Review, and elsewhere. Her poems "Afterlife of a Dumped Body" and "An Exploited Body" were nominated for a 2021 and 2022 Pushcart Prize.