Issue #80

David Banach

bit by bit

atom by atom
              railings and pews              wear
                                                            away
sidewalks and carpets
              blood stains                        fade
almost clean memorials
              Selma and the Lorraine
markets of Montgomery
              Rosa’s bus seat smoothed
                                                            shiny
King’s funeral cart
              wood still weathered
Birmingham jail cells
              nervous finger tracks still
                                                        visible
a little less each day   molecules carried
                                                                     off
on children’s fingers
              scraped into the very air
                                                            we breathe
what is Avogadro’s number for
                                                            hope
how many atoms of despair
              fill a liter of the air
we need to breathe
              how long to lighten
                                             the boot
against the throat
              but still the children
                                             come
little fingers one by one
                                             touching
something in them
              growing advancing by
                                             accretion
like the seed emerging out
              of darkness knowing
it has grown the right
                                  direction
cannot see justice
              feel the future
wears away
              building a remembering
                                                bit by bit
of what we are together.

missing in the applesauce aisle

at the supermarket
out of the rain

in the aisle where
my applesauce lives

an old man   small
sagging socks   plaid

shirt     baggy pants
staring     umbrella

in hand     dripping
at his feet     looks

and looks and looks
finally turns to see

me waiting: Every
time I come here

something new
is missing.

David Banach is a philosopher and poet in New Hampshire, where he tends chickens, keeps bees, and watches the sky. You can read some of his most recent poetry in Isele Magazine, Hooligan Magazine, Evocations Review, Amethyst Review, and Terse. He also does the Poetrycast podcast for Passengers Journal.

Stephanie V Sears

Gygis alba

This is why I climbed
this lustrous island thrust high
above the assaulting sea.

For though unsettled
in its avian ways,
the bird is paragon.

Fairy Tern vaulting valleys and bays
on messenger winds,
writes syllables of candor

with immaculate quill;
re-writing ruthless cliffs,
it spells freedom.

My gaze seeks night’s
star-scented salve
in those black Diva eyes.

Without nest or burrow,
just a branch for bed,
it purrs under sky.

Soaring beyond survival,
amending its aerial grade,
bidding for angel.

Stephanie V Sears is a French and American ethnologist (Doctorate EHESS, Paris 1993), free-lance journalist, essayist and poet whose poetry recently appeared in Clementine Unbound, The Non-Conformist Magazine, SORTES, Expanded Field, Lunaris, and Egophobia. Her first and second books of poetry: ‘The Strange Travels of Svinhilde Wilson’ (2020, Adelaide Books) and ‘Anaho‘ (2023, Arteidolia Press, NY).

Louise Wilford

At dusk

unravel the cold           find the sweet spot where
the world works           black wings thrash the air
till the pale sky is a paper lined with notes             a wire
of heat tasering your toes               a kind of restless fire
curled round your ankle bones           crows calling in the night
a feeling brined, preserved in readiness           a flight
of starlings, flashing oily black           the milk-white moon
air like the thought of Christmas           curtains furled too soon
air spiced and pined           the sacrificial lips of mistletoe
orange peel and lemon-scent           the hillsides richly iced with snow
find the fold where fireside moans against your skin
the tinkling kiss of bells           the goldenglow           fit yourself in
it smells of hope           despite the way the edges grind
like millstones           unseen hands will wind
the chill into a ball           and unheard voices swiftly race
while unfelt fingers brush the dregs of daytime from your face


Louise Wilford lives and works in Yorkshire, UK. Her work has been widely published, most recently in Allium (July 2024), Epistemic Literary, 805, Heartland Review, River and South, POTB, The Fieldstone Review, and Black Hare Press. She has a Masters in Creative Writing (Distinction, 2020). She is working on a fantasy novel.

William Doreski

Two Cherubs

Two cherubs painted on plaster
in a ruined summer house.
This outdated motif critiques
the close of a feckless year
so criminal that history texts
still unwritten are crumpling
their pages in verbal dismay
at war and corruption expanding
to include the oldest pensioner
and the newborn gladly nursing.

This summer house once belonged
to the estate of the man who devised
Clue and Monopoly, board games
that bored me right through puberty.
In deep snow there’s no evidence
of the formal garden that thrived
through a hundred winters to lilt
back to life each April, grinning
with crabapple blossoms and vines
as thick and tough as pythons.

No evidence but the wrecked
summer house where I shelter
from the northwest wind fumbling
for victims ripe for frostbite.
The cherubs bear between them
a banner no longer legible.
But their faces retain big smiles
against a background of pastel cloud.
Those smiles could sell anything.
The odor of seduction lingers

from drunken parties years ago
when the big house presided
over New England’s simple wealth.
Now converted to condos
the mansion cowers as if caught
naked with the hired help.
I wish I could take these cherubs home
but the plaster would crumble if touched,
leaving me undefended against
even the slightest warp in time.

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Venus, Jupiter (2023). His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals. .

R.C. Hong

SHARPS & FLATS

I swim through the purple darkness
like a mermaid with no upper body.
A drop of blood pearls at the tip

of a hypodermic needle: the
light at the end of the tunnel.
A spotlight beam falls with a crash

over me like a golden cage.
My red heels stand at the center
of a yellow pool of piss.

I slide down the beams of eighth
notes, the spiraling banisters
of my quivering throat,

like a pill, only much too large;
I choke.
R.C. Hong is a new writer from Rocklin, California.

David Mampel

The Greeting

On the cedar path
of a community garden,
fretful thoughts
blot out the morning sun.

A cold breeze
rattles dry corn stalks
where I pass.

Muttering stops.

I smile
at the flutter
of dead leaves
in winter.

David Mampel is a caregiver, former minister, semi-retired clown and artist. He writes fiction and poetry to bring a little sun to the rainy darkness of the Pacific Northwest. His work has appeared in Copperfield Review Quarterly, The Aurora Journal, The Remington Review and others.

Yuan Changming

Winter Wait

With their most tender touches, snowflakes
Have painted the whole night white
Including the darkest corner in sight
                  Even within a forgotten dream
Except the plum tree, standing alone there
              Under the eastern sky, whose
Flowers are blooming boldly against
The entire season, more vibrant than blood

Yuan Changming edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include 12 Pushcart nominations for poetry and 2 for fiction besides 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.

McKinley Johnson

A Man of Faith

The Church took that boy
and made him a man
of faith. Drained his

passion for play,
replaced love with
provision; holding

heaven warped his back,
turned his shoulders,
those his son once sat upon,

from seat to shelter.
Collapsed his chest,
did not allow him

the delicacy of
breath. Taught him
to be slow to anger:

showed him how to wait—
refused him
what he was waiting for,

and allowed
the floodwaters
their rise.

McKinley Johnson is a recent graduate from High Point University, and he currently writes and resides in North Carolina. His work has previously been published in Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Journal and Apogee Literary Magazine.

Jamie Brown

On the Banks of the Somne

Looking over your shoulder
in that half-dream state
occasioned by waking before the alarm
then drifting back into the enveloping
dark, to see if death is gaining
on you, wondering if you haven’t
lost a step or two, the unfinished
things begin to wake you, taking
on an importance you never
ascribed to them, the dreams of
childhood suddenly recalled with
a sense of the loss-of-the-self,
and was that your parent calling
or just the echo of their
voice in your own, remembered
as you called your own family into
dinner the night before, before you
struggled into bed, wrestling with sleep.

Jamie Brown earned an MFA from the American University, afterward teaching at George Washington University, Georgetown University, and the Smithsonian Institution. His poetry has been published in over forty literary publications. He was associate editor and editor for three lit mags, & a newspaper’s poetry critic.

Charlotte Porter

Esperanto

Published poet and award-winning short fiction author, Charlotte M. Porter lives and writes in an old citrus hamlet in north central Florida.

Jefferson Fortner

Within her domain #2

Magnificat monitors
Proper structures of
Acatalectic haiku—

Condemns use of bizarre sense—
Strained catachresis—
Hypercatalectic nonsense—

Condones haiku in plain sense—
Lines concatenate—
Nothing catalectic.

Her critique of offense—
Hacking up her thoughts—
Expresses catarrhal distain

“. . . [N]ow that you’ve found that life isn’t a farce, but something quite sensible and serious, what further obstacle is there to your happiness?”
-George Bernard Shaw. Arms and the Man. Act III.