Poetry: “Quarks,” by Jim Krosschell

A poet I know lives on Noyes Street.
Not Dogma Drive
where what we see
is what we get,
but a neighborhood of wavicles, oscillations, uncertainties,

Poetry: “Periodic,” by Rebecca Myers

His final breaths
served as a reminder
that dying had been kept
from me all these years: Yes,
I wept, but more
because of the ecstatic
unbraiding that accompanied
the irregular pattern
of rapid gasps and
apnea

Poetry: “a black love,” by Richie George

innervates, selfsame bodies
half-built causeways birth still water
sunk the veiled North
Sea moss, our love: a cutlass sharpened
water-ice winnows visions of solemn service

Poetry: “The Tiger-eye Necklace,” by Lynn D. Gilbert

Really, the old guy impersonated
himself, the rolling eye and teeth-bared grimace
straight out of silent movies. He’d known
vaudeville too, and, in the old sense,
burlesque. Gestures from Yiddish theater—

Poetry: “Story,” by Giles Goodland

The unnamed narrator coats the stones like rain. He says: There is logos inside the logo, logic in the log, but watch the long-sleeved willow in autumn as it sways: willow, hold your suede over the colossus of loss, your shadow strides the forest seeking seeking. He says: Where the blackbirds fire songs a story […]

Poetry: “What You Say When You Die,” by J. R. Forman

you think of hot evenings watching cottontails scatter
at the yip of waking coyotes
you think of watching clouds of heat lightning
glimmer like pearly gates
you think of baseball fishing in the pond

Poetry: “Strange weather we’re having these last days,” by Jane Wiseman

Startled awake, I left my frayed brain
resting in its head-case as I floated away
up to the ceiling, out of the long window
into the northern hardy redbud just outside
beginning its flower, tight pink nodules

Poetry: “Eldest daughter’s first solo trip to New Jersey,” by Z. Z.

In Newark, spring opens its mouth, yawns
across the Manhattan skyline, like a promise.
Yesterday, I asked what love was beyond
laughter skipping on broken vinyls, hands
on the steering wheel, beyond umbrellas. I

Poetry: “Idyll of the Sipsey Wilderness,” by J.R. Forman

a broken arrowhead—its tip
cut off—depressed beneath the clay
five hundred years emerges after

summer’s heavy rain—I rinse
it in the basin carved in limestone

Poetry: “SUBURBIA, ON ANY GIVEN DAY,” by John Grey

Steve is comforted by the fact that humans are top of the food-chain.
His sister Keri’s greatest wish is for some cute guy
to stand beneath her window and sing Harry Styles songs to her.
If it’s the actual Harry Styles, so much the better.
To their mother, Harriet, everything is a matter of life and death.