Issue #90

M. Benjamin Thorne

Unspoken

Over the many long years
it attained shape, a small
form nestled between bodies
when we lay in bed,
like a young child, this
distance between us

M. Benjamin Thorne (He/him) is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. His poems appear in Sky Island Journal, Cathexis Northwest, Griffel, The Westchester Review, FERAL, and Gyroscope Review. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, NC.

William Ross

Self-portrait with Land Legs

Here am I, hobble
  and stumble in the bobbing
waves, slack of eye and foggy
  of brain, Rimbaud’s damned rowboat
slipping the boards from a
  firm foot, flailing
the liquid fishes to laugh, the
  silver moon sings round and round
shooting the stars, gone
  cock-eyed and switched places
on me. I see you, rum-doused,
  grizzle-bearded sailor
adrift in a pool of sleeping
  water, still as a dead man.
How then does this boat
  lurch and jagger so?

William Ross is a Canadian writer and visual artist living in Toronto. His poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines in Australia, Canada, China, India, the UK, and the United States.

Annie Stenzel

When I say I owe my life to dead poets, I really mean it (Part I)

And I’m not just talking about Hopkins, either
although maybe he’s the best place to start. After all,
there was that one year in Paris when only daily
and fervent applications of God’s Grandeur kept me

away from the abyss. Again and again, even though
I’m quite agnostic, he reminded me the world
is charged with that grandeur, which does flame out
like the shining he describes. Over and over, I needed

his reassurance about the last lights; I needed the gasp-worthy
rhyme and the glorious sprung rhythm; I needed the smudge,
the smell, the soil. In that freezing winter, bleak as all get-out,

with my heart a cave of fear, I needed the Oh, the ah!
and the morning poised to spring. I needed even a Ghost’s
warm breast. For certain, I required bright wings.


Annie Stenzel (she/her) is a lesbian poet whose work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Chestnut Review, Kestrel, Lily Poetry Review, Night Heron Barks, On the Seawall, rust + moth, Saranac review, Thimble, UCity Review, and elsewhere. She lives on unceded Ohlone land within walking distance of the San Francisco Bay.

Patricia Nelson

The Devil Speaks

They come here without color.
Shadows from the flowering world.

They recall looking upward. Air
that dropped light and water on them.

All the things they knew or wished.
The thoughts that made them who they were.

Perhaps, for them,
a tale better left unfolded.

No one will hear their wishing now,
or care, and only I am near.

Patricia Nelson works within the “Activist” group of poets in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her newest book, Monster Monologues, is due out from Fernwood Press in December 2024.

David P. Miller

Unaccomplished

Our backyard birch, early in its transplanted life,
began a swerve toward the neighbor’s yard.
Self-swung birch, its height reached sideways
as it escaped the cover of other, unintended,
trees. Slivers of circumstance put the plan askew,
though its bent trunk is a sparrow haven.

How I failed my plan, that final high school year,
to support Angolan rebels against Portugal:
at one pole stood the German college freshman,
sharp and radical, who loaded me with pamphlets
in his dorm room. At the other, jargon had a habit
of getting out from under me, intended activist
who couldn’t paraphrase the politics.

Have you heard? Bodhisattvas don’t intend,
although their vows imply
a big benevolence bucket list. No:
between circumstance and act, there isn’t
the least opening for thinking “my good deed.”
As I don’t make a plan to crumple forward
when tripping on an upward step. It simply happens.

The students I never had can be grateful
that I never faced them, throat like plaster dust,
overprepared, in an Intro lecture hall.
At one pole, I planned myself a life
of academic theater, capped at retirement
with loving testimonials. At the other, I fouled
the credentials, qualified myself
for the part-time treadmill only.
So I retreated, and the youth were spared.

To act without forethought: this becomes
a good deal less cerebral when I ask
what shard of David Miller, what mote
in my I, stopped my hand from reaching
for my father’s in his last conscious minutes?
Or after, in his final hour of breath?
I must have been thinking of a next intention,
while waiting for the nurse to say It’s done.

David P. Miller’s Bend in the Stair was published by Lily Poetry Review Books in 2021. Sprawled Asleep was published by Nixes Mate Books in 2019. His poems have appeared in Meat for Tea, Lily Poetry Review, Reed Magazine, Solstice, Salamander, Nixes Mate Review, and Tar River Poetry, among others.

Sophia Carroll

Poly Holiday

Unwrap the cranberry, pumpkin, and cream
colored sweaters,
the midnight stockings,
balsam from amber
bottles, mascara
you scrape from the crust
like the last bit of pie.
Bring wine
and poinsettias,
their blooms like wounds,
gift bags rasping with paper
the cousins will dig & dig through
for the things you buried
only for them to find,
and cards for the elders
with heartfelt gratitude
because you owe them your life—
But who will you bring with you?
The one they like
who was an Eagle Scout
and looks like your father
with green eyes?
Or the one they don’t know
who left home at thirteen
who looks more like you than anyone in your family
whom, when your parents ask about pictures
on your refrigerator and dresser,
you call a friend
Because there are some things you hide
that no one wants to dig for,
and you may owe them your life
but not what you do with it
Just know that when they say the whole family is together,
you will feel the absence
Water the wounds.
Straighten your sweater.
Come out of the bathroom.
Everything is fine
You’ve brought your tube of mascara
And wine, wine, wine

Sophia Carroll (she/they) is an analytical chemist and writer. Her writing appears in Rust & Moth, SmokeLong Quarterly, Tiny Frights, The Metaworker, and elsewhere. She is currently working on her second novel. Find her Substack at Torpor Chamber.

Cameron Carvalho

Sift III

Some wait
tables, others

lie. Some of
the money is

for the people,
most of it

is for the wind.

Cameron Carvalho has been awarded multiple honors from The Alliance for Young Artists and Writers. You can find his work in print and online journals such as Eunoia Review, Ink in Thirds, Cold Moon Journal, Ghudsavar, and Failed Haiku among others, and can be found on Twitter @CameronCarvalh9.

Gary Lemco

Another Minute

Another minute:
What can I say?
What to do?
Just another minute—
I’ll get together soon,
In a minute,
A minute more; —
Oh, yes,
I forgot myself
For a minute,
Another minute!
I’m going,
In a minute,
Of life
To death:
Is it some uncanny dawn
That calls us apart?
Who knows,
A minute, a minute
And all will be clear.
Is it some hidden veil
Of day’s breaking,
Or a shroud of
Solitude’s lonely calling?
A minute
Will reveal it,
Will tell it all,
Another minute
Of your time
Will do it,
A minute:
Another minute; —
I go now,
And I’m gone:
For
A minute,
Another minute.

Gary Lemco is a former teacher of AP English and college humanities. He currently resides in San Jose, CA, where he contributes reviews on classical music for Audiophile Audition and hosts a radio program on KZSU-FM, Stanford University.