June Contributors

Ron Arbuckle, Olivia Bell, Katherine Breeden, Lachlan Brooks, Mackenzie Carignan, Kathi Crawford, Nick Crowley, Francis de Lima, Ryan di Francesco, Peter Donnelley, Bart Edelman, Mike Ferguson, Devon Fulford, Howie Good, Shannon Guglielmo, Samantha Hund, Kiran Josen, dee p.r. kay, Josh Lipson, Kes Maro, Garth Martens, Colin McGuire, Mike McHone, Natalie Nee, Clara No!, Mark Parsons, Emily Pavick, Abish Qamar, and John Repp

Poetry

May Highlights

swan story: ode to ambiguous pronouns

by John Repp
“…the delis & bookshops, / the cobblers & lectures & resettlement houses jostling / each block, all the free things penniless couples could do, / how they hid their Robeson records till McCarthy / was good and dead.”
domestic sentences 11

by Bill Neumire
“[Jesse] just got a senior lecturer position at Cornell and he gets to teach a class on happiness, which is a secular replacement for god.
it was a war, wasn't it?

by Crystal James
“Today, I celebrate my inner child / Her strength and resilience / Her messy hair and shy voice / Her dirty feet and fearless climb / Her vigilance / Her hope / Her love for red poppies in August”
puppet man

by Frank Haberle
“Come, children, the man standing on a box / In the center of the bridge yelled to us, / In Shakespeare. Let us shut up this box / And put away these puppets, for our play / Has been played.”
narcissus, repenting

by Hanna Webster
“I lick her palm, which tastes like mercy, her grooved heartline ensnared by the pathetic molecular boundary of her flesh. What a shame. I smell fear radiate from her hair like steam”

David Estringel 6/17/25 David Estringel 6/17/25

five poems

by Cody Cook

“Some take the blood as ink, / To write what they cannot know- / A grief they hold no claim to.”

David Estringel 6/16/25 David Estringel 6/16/25

grimso tale to outlast fear

by Zev Levinson

“Children bestride pulsation evernigh Slickening eyebeams betray such wonderfolk Tender this expedition innocent and scarred Outlasting fear as Echidius Stumple did”

David Estringel 6/15/25 David Estringel 6/15/25

three poems

by Stephen C. Middleton

“So, tonight we dance / In the town under the mountain / & tomorrow / …all fall down.”

David Estringel 6/14/25 David Estringel 6/14/25

two poems

by Strider Marcus Jones

“drinking absinthe together, hand rolling and smoking cigars- / being is, what it really is…”

David Estringel 6/14/25 David Estringel 6/14/25

a poet’s path

by Ron Whitehead

“Make love with thunder, / laugh with the roaring wind.”

David Estringel 6/14/25 David Estringel 6/14/25

smokestack

by Noll Griffin

“There’s a hollow in the sofa that can still support a shadow…”

David Estringel 6/13/25 David Estringel 6/13/25

five poems

by Conor Hultman

“…no shoes or socks at the scene / dense woods near interstate 65 / he is known to authorities as woody"

David Estringel 6/12/25 David Estringel 6/12/25

momma said be nice

by Chris Kads

“When the men retire / so do the rules / instilled by their mothers.”

David Estringel 6/12/25 David Estringel 6/12/25

sunday school poems

by Gale Acuff

“After Sunday School today I warned my teacher that she's going to burn because she said Hell and damn again and she says them a lot but she told me that she says them for instructional purposes only…”