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
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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.”
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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.
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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”
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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.”
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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”
three poems
by Joshua Martin
“between LaRkS: visions / repellent ontological / marching = [hoofs] / [ducks / silk TuNNeLs], / ; ; ; ; ; | ‘what soft embers strain like passenger / sublimity’ | ; ; ; ; ; = = = = = > combing JellY”
the antinomian fire this time
by Ron Whitehead
“The bone man dances circles / round the subterranean gloom”
milgrytoel
by Simon Collinson
“Who ittee naarvy bas lippings of jellied wellypelly and neepled litilats…”
the disappearance of the ginger tabby and the unraveling of mrs. macdonald
by Jordan Trethewey
“Sometime after her hard military man died, / the old widow next door began to lure / neighbourhood pets to her unused red barn.”
ressurection (upon an incident of dying birds, midwest usa, spring 2023)
by Keith Hoerner
“No lift / Force / No air - / Foil.”
six poems
by David L O’Nan
“I have tonight, the stars wounded in saltwater tongues / Can’t hear the whispering with the static of waves in constant battle.”
your brainstem at 4 a.m.
by Mark Belair
“uspecting
you’re an extra in your life / others play the leading roles / your credit at the end
will read / waiter #4”
four poems
by Chuck Kramer
“Entrepreneurs and businessmen / whose humanity was silenced / by ambition and empty wallets, / they took solace in devil whiskey…”
crow’s breakfast
by L. Ward Abel
“blood-red crows / gorge / on a shining / mid-air / breakfast.”
working two
by Thomas M. McDade
“Pregnant and tattooed / Apron full of bucks…”
now don't you feel base, or for coarser beauty
by Mark Parsons
“Beauty that makes you want to vomit like the smell of vomit makes you want to vomit…”
full circle
by Sanjeev Sethi
“serenity is my surround sound. / I have opted to go earless.”
dread hallelujah zombie love
by R.M. Engelhardt
“After the smoke / The clouds evaporate / The radiation descends / Upon the one & all / The rich & poor”
three poems
by Edward Lee
“I gave an opinion / to the gods of nothing, / their anger a bitter wind / that makes my eyes water…”
two poems
by Wayne Mason
“…and without / that flower of / hope / I am coils, cogs, and gears.”
two poems
by Bruce Greenhalgh
“Rain fell / It had no choice, / what with gravity and all that.”
in air and ear
by David P. Miller
“Alive most between rain and drop, the stays between one strike, the next, each with its ear-beat.”
boom-boom-boom
by Dario Cvencek
“the buzzing of the city – paused!
the chirping of the birds – paused!
the laughter of the children – paused!”
three poems
by M. Kelley Peach
“The chorus of Mr. Ford’s / Children sing a song of sorrow. / A dirge voiced in screeching rubber tones.”
three poems
by Brandon Shane
“I touch his cheek, / and he emerges after a decade / consuming the roots of his daydreams…”