Issue #49

Evalyn Lee

Low Tide

ruffles kelp beards shoals of minnows leap
a shower of raindrops in reverse an egret
waits its eternity to strike the dishes done
leftovers put away the dusk falls swallows
hop sparrows seaweed rocks squander
language wood meets water makes dock
mussels gulp open close open dark-gray
cloud wings horizon wide until banded
together a lighthouse moans deep heartbreak
here not here here not here here not

Evalyn Lee is a former CBS News producer currently living in London with her husband and two children. Over the years, she has produced television segments for 60 Minutes in New York and the BBC in London.

E. J. Evans

The Ceremony

Days on days then weeks in the silent house,
feeling loose and drifting from room to room,
looking through each window
as if it were a telescope,
seeing as if for the first time:
the light coming through the trees, a hill, a road.
Early spring and the grass just starting to turn green.
Was it something in the spring that called me out,
to walk out the back door, and on out into the woods?
Where I found a place just over a knoll,
and stood among trees and took off my ring, and buried it.
It felt then like dropping it into a central stillness
whose ripples would spread outward, without limit,
reaching out into the rest of my life.

E. J. Evans is the author of Conversations With the Horizon (Box Turtle Press) and Ghost Houses (Clare Songbirds, forthcoming), and the chapbook First Snow Coming (Kattywompus Press).

Joanne Durham

Traction

Rain slams against the glass faster than wipers
can open an eyehole, and we’re still going 80, deeper
into darkness on Route 378 out of Sumter, heading home.
I ask him to slow down, but his foot is heavy on the pedal
and my words are weightless. Then we spin a 360,
hydroplane across two lanes and head towards a thicket
of live oaks steep above a ravine. The last seconds
before we’ll crash widen like time’s dilated pupil. We reach
for each other’s hand, and I breathe my whole body
into our fingers’ steady lock. Then we hit the barrier
we couldn’t see in the downpour, bounce back
across the highway onto the wide grassy cushion
on the other side. A semi rumbles by,
but we’re bystanders now. We get out and walk
around our truck to look for damage, rain licking
our faces like a puppy delirious that we’re home.
I know this night’s going to lift us awhile,
above who won’t listen, who’s too quick to judge.
When we lost traction, when there was nothing
to guide us but the white flash of instinct,
all we wanted was to make it or not, together.

Joanne Durham is a retired educator living on the North Carolina coast. She was a finalist for the 2021 NC Poetry Society’s Laureate Award and the NC State Poetry Contest. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Gyroscope, Yellow Arrow, Love in the Time of COVID Chronicles, and other journals.

Robert Donohue

Charlie Sheen the Baptist

By pride sustained, and by delusions fed,
A meteor, he blazed through tabloid ink
To claim himself a genius, and to drink
The essence of a tiger he had bled.
You blindly cherished this outrage; instead
Of trusting in what sober people think
Within your heart with his you formed a link
And with his trespass you were comforted.

Yet he was only what our betters are:
Elite, aloof, disdainful and afar,
But you believed for you he took the blame
When fallen from his dwelling as a star
He moved among us briefly, like a flame,
However bright, exhausting all his fame.

Robert Donohue’s Poetry has appeared in Amethyst Review, Better Than Starbucks, and Grand Little Things, among others. He lives on Long Island, NY.