A Mountain Stream

disrupts its stones the way
a jaded player, throwing dice, makes

the same pass, 
continually. In ceaseless splash, the tossed 
stones buck and click, 

almost to fit
the same positions once again, almost, but 

not quite. I’ve walked a ways uphill
to find this source. Sunlight
refracts. Green plants 

trail fingers in the wash. I fall asleep and dream
it carries me

the same way it will take these stones, slowly
at first, then gathering
speed

headlong down the mountain’s side. And in
the tumult of its rush, I think

I hear, as I imagine they must, if a stone had
ears to claim, eventual ocean
call my name.

Susan Shafarzek‘s work has previously appeared in a number of publications, including Common Ground, The Broad River Review, The Denver Quarterly, Inkwell, and The Roanoke Review.

If Everything Is Fine

Then please 
explain to me how 
that blameless boy 
came to be allergic 
to his own blood

Taco Bell Bathroom Sutra

I drink 
from the same fountain as you trash
I take 
the well-guarded key
I see 
the toilet seat, and 
I pee, 
in total consciousness,
atop your careless pee

Deposit

A woman 
so poor and godly
that a dollar in a dodderer’s 
outstretched hat 
is a bank deposit

I didn’t think
the train goes 
to heaven   
I thought it goes 
to Queens

One of us 
misread 
the signs

Colin Dodds is a writer with several acclaimed novels and poetry collections to his name. He grew up in Massachusetts and lived in California briefly, before finishing his education in New York City. He’s made a living as a journalist, editor, copywriter and video producer. Colin also writes screenplays, has directed a short film, and built a twelve-foot-high pyramid out of PVC pipe, plywood and zip ties. He lives in New York City, with his wife and daughter. You can find more of his work at thecolindodds.com.

Dollars and Days

It’s the worst of times
When you find you lack
The dollars and the days
And nobody seems to love you
Except Kris Kristofferson in the song
You are listening to just now, clinging
To your desperate hope that he really, really means
It.

John Tustin is currently suffering in exile on Elba but hopes to return to you soon. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.

After Midnight

I love this city when darkness falls and takes the houses
hostage until morning.
The night here is different from the night
above the sea, it’s more civilized;
the small streetlamp outside
burns a hole in the flesh of the dark,
murmuring deep in its bones,
cradling it to sleep.
And then I live again;
the books on the shelves, hundreds
and hundreds of them, start to burn, just like this good
twilight in my room deserves,
every word I scribble in my notebook
starts to shine with a starry glow–
think of Van Gogh, think of Hopper–
and even if I drink a glass of water
it feels like it is full of promises for
a certain part of the night emptied of nightmares.
I look out the window and I see
a cab with squeamish passengers sleeping inside,
I see the dozing trees with their leaves
trembling slightly inside the wooden dreams
and I even can hear the music, coming from the sky,
where the night’s scraping on its anthracite
violin.
And then I see the first hints of daybreak coming
from the horizon.
That’s why I light a cigarette to force this horrible
darkness to take a step back.

Peycho Kanev is the author of 6 poetry collections and three chapbooks, published in the USA and Europe. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, such as: Rattle, Poetry Quarterly, Evergreen Review, Front Porch Review, Hawaii Review, Barrow Street, Sheepshead Review, Off the Coast, The Adirondack Review, Sierra Nevada Review, The Cleveland Review, and many others. His new chapbook titled Under Half-Empty Heaven was published in 2019 by Grey Book Press.

My vertical cowboy

They’ve continued to join this
landscape of art and revival
but sadly I slept through yours
having overindulged in cheap
wine and debauchery and the
suns of the lesser gods who led
me to bypass your scarlet soliloquy

your firework frills that now flash
dance the flower fields in their pink
panorama leaving the branch in
its home base of green, now that
your season’s eclipsed,

my dogwood, my cherry tree
my vertical cowboy

your descendants have come
but your blossoms still scatter
their afterthoughts.

where the weeds grow lonely

the comeback of calico
surreys down
indiscriminately, looping
the leaves to the sycamore

blues marry blondes in the
corresponding of colors
yellow belle annuals flower
up in the festival

and south of the symmetry
on the side road of secular
dwellers of dank anonymity

creviced and cracked, deep in
the psyche, this place where
the weeds grow the lonely.

Emalisa Rose is a poet, dollmaker, animal rescue volunteer. Living by a shore town has provided much of the inspiration that fuels her poetry and art. Her work has appeared in Poettree, Parrot Poems, and Echo. 

A Giraffe in My Back Yard

I often see deer and wild turkeys
in my back yard, but this morning
a nebbishy-looking giraffe appeared
with baleful eyes, a downcast mouth
and a plodding gait.
He looked like he might be an incarnation
of my old friend who was also very tall
and had the same gawky walk.
It must have escaped from the Bronx Zoo
and swam across the Hudson looking for me.
When we interned at Jacobi Hospital,
a paranoid patient once remarked:
“That Doctor looks like he never
had a gay day in his life.”
My friend had a depressed mother
who spent days in the bathtub—
requiring her son to keep checking
to make sure she hadn’t drowned.
My friend grew up across the street
from the Bronx Zoo and identified
with the loneliness of the giraffes.
We went hiking every weekend.
He loved to roast marinated shish-kabob
with chocolate-covered halvah for dessert.
When I fed the giraffe the same meal,
he smiled for the first time.

Milton P. Ehrlich Ph.D. is an 88-year-old psychologist and a veteran of the Korean War. He has published poems in The Antigonish Review, London Grip, Arc Poetry Magazine, Descant Literary Magazine, Wisconsin Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Christian Science Monitor, and The New York Times.

there’s a way to be an Indian woman

we are always told to respect our elders; ah they are
old, their perspectives obsolete.

perhaps you agree that we are meant to be
the homemakers: “make” children whenever best for man, because only they can be
the breadwinners: who “win” dowries as preliminary payments for
the “care”: the minimal pleasure with half thrust and lips distant from
the skin: they use to display their reproductive fitness.

i don’t like their rules but i am told to be small and obey now
that i am a woman: gold
bangles gifted to me when red stained the sheets and my body became
lush green. my garden is for
another to tend. that’s why they gave me beauty—seen when they decided, the men
without the “wo” I have.

_____why can’t we be touched first? after all,
_____they pick us for the way our saris outline our hips
_____(our breeding plumage). we must impress them…not even for love!
__________imagine if our bodies had never bled red. we wouldn’t be women.
_______________imagine if we never birthed a child. we wouldn’t be women.
____________________why must a woman be a mother?
_________________________or else just a weed in the lawn?
_______________why are transgender men who give birth still women
_________________________when they don’t want the “wo”?
 
there’s a way to be an Indian woman without me
defining our roles as mothers—by imagining
that they don’t care to patiently aerate our soil.

i have been taught that gender is a doing, so
i have fought to do shit: own my body                                 panathey!
the way all of us must till
we are no longer restricted like an orgasm.

Stuthi Iyer is a sophomore at the University of Pittsburgh and a young poet to the world of publication. This piece is an attempt at understanding her gender role in the context of her Indian lineage. Other work is forthcoming in the Better Than Starbucks poetry magazine.