Ok, Hinge

Making these voyages to a benevolent somewhere
and looking for a student
of shared incidents so we can exchange notes later

Done with magnificent plunderers and sour darlings,
no lying agents need apply,
the days of relic hunting over, I’m secular towards love

Come partner, slide in front of me and send me a push,
Sit next to me and watch
This film called modern living all the way to the end

Ben Nardolilli is a MFA candidate at Long Island University. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Door Is a Jar, The Delmarva Review, Red Fez, The Oklahoma Review, Quail Bell Magazine, and Slab. Follow his publishing journey at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com.

Situation beggin for remedy

He loved DJ’in Saturday night bops, could play their favorite tunes and she’d just have to f*ckin dance or else cause a scene by not cuz he knew and she knew she’d caused enough of em already, hell just like him copyin him copyin her copyin him, ya see what I’m sayin, don’t nobody know which looked first to copy what – how even when they were an item all those months back before the baby and the fights really began like nothin they’d ever thought up before or since the grandkids tried to tell em, Y’all too old to dang dance DJ, fool fussin like that, granny gramps git on, but them two?, they just pointed confused twirls of their fingers into their own wizened, aged ears, raised their hands, twitched their shoulders, and kept on dancing, DJ’ing, jerking their wheelchairs, loving their own way until their own silent, sudden end. When they were missed from the moment and our real ruckus began, off-key but celebratory not celibate! celebratin’ new joy their old ways a future, continued, imagined moooves… to their melody, ageless their own watching unawares, only concern for the beat.

David A. Goodrum is the author of Vitals and Other Signs of Life (The Poetry Box) and Sparse Poetica (Audience Askew). Recent publications include Tar River Poetry, Gyroscope, San Antonio Review, I-70 Review, Cirque, Banyan Review, Tampa Review, among others. David lives in Corvallis, Oregon. See more at www.davidgoodrum.com.

East River

under a misty
overcast with
threatening rain
as waves slap
stained walls
while traffic
jams and jives
north, south
around
and over
with constant
over reaching
turbulent noise
broadcasting the
language of
a city breathing
in and out

Dr. Roger Singer is the Poet Laureate of Old Lyme, Connecticut. He has had over 1,000 poems published on the internet, magazines, and in books and is a 2017 Pushcart Prize Award Nominee. He is also the President of the Shoreline Chapter of the Connecticut Poetry Society.

An Opera of Silence

How can I forget my madness if I’m mad
How can I erase the daughters crying
in nighttime summer rain
after their fathers and uncles and lovers and brothers
are gunned down by five-o for hustling
8-balls beneath the El
to rich white bored boys from Scarsdale

How can I forget my madness if I’m mad
How can I erase Donna’s memory
so she’ll forget I smashed a beer bottle
through the picture plate window at Paradise Inn
pushed her too hard into the long grass
behind the Viking Boat Yard
held her tight to my chest as she shook
with sobs soft like river fog

How can I forget my madness if I’m mad
How can I erase words that scream
out they are poems
when the best verses hide
behind veiled remorse of fear and failure
at 183 rd and Tremont
the Hudson River
and alone in my room

How can I forget

William Teets is a writer born in Peekskill, New York, who has recently relocated to Southeast Michigan. He misses New York pizza, the Hudson River, and Fran, Remember the Good Times ‘68.  A collection of his poetry, After the Fall, was published by Cajun Mutt Press in February 2023.

A Park Bench in Marseilles

My grandmother and I sit waiting
for my mother to return from her

rendezvous with a waiter she met
at lunch. Somewhere between a

first course and last, an agreement
had been reached. My grandmother

is not happy as she sits with me
among beautiful flowers of a spring

day–their little heads bobbing in a
slight wind, they call children to

their games. The waiter is handsome,
tall, dark, well-built, black clothes

of his trade set off a sparkle in his
dark brown eyes. I wonder how

many times this week, perhaps this
month, he has met women in this

park. Is my mother the only who
has stirred his desire to leave the

restaurant early to meet a French-
American on holiday. Perhaps he

is taken by her accent, still French
but laced with confident American

English. She, taken by someone
French after living in the states

twenty years. That is how old I am,
twenty. She has asked me not to

call her mother, would I possibly
pretend she is my sister, and it is

no stretch for her to fill that role.
Funny how alike my mother and

grandmother are as I have heard
stories from my mother—how hurt

she was when her mother had
asked her to call her sister. Right

now I know my mother isn’t
remembering stories. Right now,

she is caught up in the headiness
of being desired.

When I Fell

Afterwards I was disoriented.
Everyone was very nice.
It took me a while to get up,
but then, it often does.
During that time I thought of monkeys,
a species with long arms, curved wrists,
who swing, apparently without effort,
from branch to branch, unfazed
when one breaks; swing higher,
at will, as easily,
then hang by one hand;
and laugh (as Nietzsche said) uproariously
when a human appears.

***

Death of a Minimalist

A corseted forest one drives through.
A little costly house on a crowded lake.
Money, a life’s bricolage.
The self-effacing boats of liberals.
The place is a stage-set,
secondary to the theme;
care, the road to the hospital, the hospital
poor beneath this Republican sky.
There is no theme. The note hangs,
and by the time one grasps
it had defeated time, time starts again.
It hangs, is absorbed at dusk
like the music of kids around the point
who deny themselves nothing or, perhaps,
with a vision of some sort of health,
everything but the music,
as their parents denied them vaccination.

The ensemble has room
beside the piano for early explorations.
Their performance won’t be till fall,
if the college survives.
The redhead finds in the repeated
arpeggios that follow that held A
a safe place; reaches toward
the brunette. But the boy snakes between them;
after discussion, doesn’t, just
exerts a subtle gravitation
from where he weaves alone. But he’s
not interested in her or me,
only himself, the redhead thinks, and leaps
this out, causing
a cough at the piano. When they resume,
the brunette stamps like a colt
from being desired. Where’s B-flat?
the redhead wonders. But it doesn’t come.

Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS (Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press), and four collections, A POVERTY OF WORDS (Prolific Press, 2015), LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), THE BEAUTIFUL LOSSES (Better Than Starbucks Books, 2023), and THE LIBERATOR (Survision Books, Ireland). Many other poems in print and online journals (Big Windows ’20, ’21, 1/24). Website: www.frederickpollack.com.

Floating Fears

Some days I wonder if I go to sleep if things will be different when I wake up the next day.

I don’t hate my life.

What I hate is that I don’t understand my life.

I was once told that anxiety is like a beach ball in a pool.

You can see that it’s there and if you focus on it long enough, you’ll have the urge to push the ball down, to try to remove it from the water.

But all that does is make a great big splash as it bounces up, hits you in the face or even worse, splashes you and hits someone else.

You’re supposed to get so used to the beach ball, not touch it.

You’re supposed to forget it’s there and suddenly it’s like you can relax in the beaming sun as you cool off in your refreshing pool.

Yet how can I forget it’s there when I’m awaiting an email I worked so hard for that could open so many doors for me?

How can I forget when the future is unknown? When I don’t know who will actually stay in my life five years down the road, if they’ll even be there for another five, let alone a lifetime.

How can I forget if things aren’t working out as I want them to so I put my every ounce into trying to make the circumstances somewhat controllable?

The list can just go on, getting even more tedious, so much so that if you’re not used to having lists like this, aren’t used to overthinking, I wouldn’t be surprised if your body just shut down.

I see the beach ball, have pushed it down countless times to still be in a sea of worry except it’s all the more frustrating.

I’ve pushed the beach ball down countless times, only for it to bounce back stronger.

I even tried throwing it out of the pool, but it just ended up on the grass, waiting for me.

I avoided the backyard for days, but the ball didn’t disappear. One day, while admiring the pool from the kitchen window, I saw a hawk swoop down and grab the ball.

I felt so free and was clueless on how to relax.

However, the hawk crashed into the window, dropping the deflated ball onto my face.

That’s the thing with anxiety, it never really leaves.

Anxiety is relentless. It always finds a way.

There are points in time where anxiety tends to act as a blanket because sometimes you’ll be comfortable with how it makes you feel and act.

It’s almost like you become comfortable in your discomfort. That’s why it can be hard to relax in moments it’s not constantly pestering you.

But just as anxiety can keep going, so can I.

Life might not be different when I wake up the next day but how I view and perceive it can be.

Julia Vellucci, a 21-year-old from Mississauga, Ontario, has published eight romance books, a fantasy novella, and an anthology with Ukiyoto Publishing. She also has a few short stories published. Additionally, as a social justice writer for CCFWE and a journalism student, her words aim to leave a mark.