William Wiggins is an African American poet who is currently pursuing his Master’s in Psychology at the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has been writing poetry since July of 2022.

Dear Louise

I have nothing to report but this.

I feel dull
and the weather is belligerent.

Yet I still keep my eye out for bird-life.
Not just the bluebirds and the tanagers
but even the lowly sparrows.

I’m not so dead that I cannot dream.
And I regularly walk to the pond and back
despite the foul smell from the factories.

A breeze in my face
is the next best thing to a kiss.
But a strong wind
is not a breeze a hundredfold.
In truth, it diminishes me.

I can’t afford a sailing boat
and I cannot reach the clouds.

I do smile at strangers
but reciprocation is not expected.

I have enough clothes for one body
and, money-wise, I hover above the poverty line.

I suffer from some things and I’m ignorant of others.

I’ve tried self-improvement programs
and, though I’m still myself, I haven’t improved.

It’s beginning to rain.
That’s what I meant to tell you all along.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review, and Sheepshead Review. Latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert, and  Memory Outside The Head, are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, and California Quarterly.

Louise Bogan’s Journey Around the Calendula in Her Garden

To me, one silky flower is like another.
Most offer shameless buds of lust or pride.
These few flourish as well as any other.
Tame, like women, but with a wild side.

Most flowers offer buds of lust or pride.
For them there’s no growth beyond all reason.
Tame, like women, there is no wild side.
They are content to thrive confined.

For them, there’s no growth beyond all reason
or rows in summer gardens. It’s their season
to be content, to thrive confined,
to wait for rain, to open to the sun’s bright light

in rows in summer gardens. It’s their season.
For me, it is better to remain still,
to wait for rain, to open to the sun’s bright light,
to listen intently for that brazen bee.

For calendula, it’s better to remain still,
to flourish as well as any other,
to listen intently for that brazen bee.
To me, this silky flower is like no other.

Deborah H. Doolittle, having lived in lots of different places, now calls North Carolina home. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she is the author of Floribunda and three chapbooks, No Crazy Notions, That Echo, and Bogbound. Editor of Brillig: a micro lit mag, she shares a home with her husband, four housecats, and a backyard full of birds.

Nothing Happening Again and Again

Which is a reminder of not-love, of the
never-touched and unhoused, of withheld
sunlight. That crevice between syllable and
tooth, the one concealed to the south. Look:
the chrysanthemum nods in acquiescence
as thyme-scent and oregano-starred nights
drift from the terraced hills of decades past.
That was loneliness. Walking the road, thumb
out, no one slowing. Not speaking
the language, unable to say the right words.
Visibility’s curse. Life as it could be. But
wasn’t. And every long day, repeating.

The title is from a line in Jack Gilbert’s poem “How to Love the Dead.”

*

What is the Sound of the Cold Moon

Infiltrating the screen. The word for that bleakness
expelled as a blade enters the grapefruit’s
flesh. The fragrance of a burnt night in snow.
I recall shivering on the path between barn
and greenhouse, wondering how one moment
had mushroomed into slammed books and drunken
shouts, the cattle dog slinking at my knee. I
had never sought perfection, had always made
do. Now I question such practice. My body
was a wilderness in a country of yellow lights,
pleasure robbed of delights never shared. Again
and again we perfected loneliness. Later, sipping
tea solo in front of the fire, I heard a screech
owl’s trill. The embers grayed over before dawn.

*

Olive Oil Cake

I am plotting
the next cake
I will bake.
Olive oil and lemon.
Or orange.
Bright, not too sweet.
Simple but elegant,
topped with rosemary
whipped cream.
What about you
I ask. What
are you thinking?

Robert Okaji lives in Indiana among hundreds of books, with his wife, stepson, and cat. His most recent chapbook, Buddha’s Not Talking, won the 35th annual Slipstream Poetry Chapbook competition, and his work has recently appeared in Threepenny Review, Concho River Review, Samjoko Magazine, Evergreen Review, and other venues.

Altar

I take the weekend to remember the tree that lived
for 220 years, stood another five as physiographic totem
to how high a tree can grow, dropping branches yearly
until its trunk’s decay threatened neighboring houses.

On the last morning still itself, core of rings unrevealed,
the tree climber slingshots a silky yellow line skyward
through its last remaining V of top branches, ties a rope,
has two men on the ground pull him up year by year.

From the crook of the V he uncoils a yellow rope, drops
it down, calls out “Ninety feet.” From there he must see
the marsh over the cathedral of surrounding trees, the
nearby storage complex moored on the capped artesian lake.

This tree that my grandfather buzzed in his Piper Cub
in the 50s and 60s, back from jobs in Nashville, Pittsburgh,
signaling my grandmother to drive to the airport, never
guessing Irma’s winds would give it a swaybacked bend.

Like a reverse game of building block tower, decades
of cylinder fall away from what becomes memory hologram
of a once grand being, host to songs of various birds,
drone chant chirrs of cicadas, scampering darts of lizards.

Five days later the smell of sawdust still ripe, I walk down
the trail to the stump whose rings I’ve counted, recounted, to
the Jenga crash of toppled sections, the tessellated cloak
of bark kicked down into a carpet of Escher-like mudcracks.

On the trail I’ve overturned a grill top, girded it with bricks,
placed in sticks and dead-dry magnolia leaves, forsook bow
drill for Circle K cigarette lighter, but refuse to use accelerants
which would cheapen my method to send up a memorial.

I’ve waited for twilight to remember the tree’s centuries
of strength and stillness, without knowing real devotion means
great labor. The magnolia leaves light like flares, burn bright,
but won’t light the sticks. Vespers pass to Compline.

I work from my seat: a cut ring of top branch I could barely
lift and carry, flicking the lighter on stacks of wide dead leaves
under sticks, until finally embers become steady golden light,
and I add the shaved piece with its many Saturn rings of age.

A gibbous moon hangs above the tree’s absence as witness.
A gaze of raccoons bustles through the underbrush. I cup
the tree’s warmth as fire crackles and glows, rich smoke curls
up. Under, around me, worms and insects work their ministry.

Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. His most recent chapbook is At Home with the Dreamlike Earth (The Poetry Box, December 2023). His poems have appeared in print and online journals and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

A Little Time

It may take a little time to be thankful
for a dream that was so dutiful and so
unifying; so susceptible to your inner-
most yoga that frantic haste to embody
it woke you. Its sweetness having been

snatched from you, a bitterness seized
on your tongue, and you swore a bitter
oath. It may take a little time to admit
if you had accepted him for the vision
he was, you and that dark resplendent

buzz might have fulfilled the promises
your dream bodies made to that closed
room. It may take a little time to stop
feeling robbed, to give palpable thanks
for fleeting gifts, as every gift’s a ghost.

Timothy Robbins was born in Indiana in 1964. He has a B.A. in French and an M.A. in Applied Linguistics and has been teaching English as a Second language for three decades. He has published six volumes of poetry. He and his husband of 26 years live in Wisconsin.

Grace

Grace is a funny gal –
she’s on everybody’s mind
but she won’t wear anybody’s ring.
She’s hard to see –
a leprechaun without a pipe
a unicorn without a horn
but when light opens
behind the eye and in the chest
you know she’s in the room.
Feel the brush of her dress?
Look up and almost see her head
spiral to another world.

Mike Wilson’s work has appeared in magazines including Amsterdam Quarterly, Mud Season Review, The Pettigru Review, Still: The Journal, The Coachella Review, and in Mike’s book, Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic, (Rabbit House Press, 2020), political poetry for a post-truth world. He resides in Lexington, Kentucky, and can be found at mikewilsonwriter.com

Watching Your Step

The leashed dog tugs ahead, head low.
The future is right under his nose,
and he is not careful where he steps.

Perhaps what is ahead for me
is merely a matter of distance.
I look far beyond the stop sign
but maybe cannot see as far
as the dog can smell.

The mutt belongs to that smell.
Perhaps I belong to the mirage
of roses and scented flowers
and believe the future
always leaves a scent behind.