On the Day of the Dead

There are skeletons in shop windows,
posing their papier-mache bodies
in the least frightening light.
Some wear cowboy hats, others crowns.
Not dangling, not shuddering,
but lolling about,
having a good old skeletal time.

More and more are out on the streets,
bouncing on springs,
limbs flailing
like the arms of drunkards.
They turn death into slapstick comedy.

These jangling jesters
are not the bags of bones
that flopped unexpectedly
out of closets
in those terrifying horror movies
of my childhood.

Or, more recently,
the human remains
laid out on the tables of forensic scientists
in TV cop shows.

And not the images
way deep in my mind
of the death camps,
real monsters at work this time,
bodies slopped on top of bodies
in chilling black and white footage.

These skeletons are friendly.
They stop to shake my hand.
It’s the day of the dead
but a celebration,
not a time for disgust and dread.

We are all bones when it comes down to it.
So I join in bones’ irresistible joy.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, City Brink, and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”,” Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Hawaii Pacific Review, Amazing Stories, and Cantos.

Thunderstorms

Rain patters the roof,
thunder like a baseball
hit out of the park.
Kids in the basement,
music turned up, dance
like the storm invited them.

Robin Wright’s work has appeared in One Art, As it Ought to Be, Subliminal Surgery, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Loch Raven Review, Rat’s Ass Review, The New Verse News, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her first chapbook, Ready or Not, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.

waking early

_____Dogs do speak, but only to those
_____who know how to listen.
_____–Orhan Pamuk

_what carries me
through blind day
_____and shuttered night –
cock-a-doo mornings
when I splinter incrementally:
_____two, four, sixteen?

little duffle, little keg
little stone lion –
rollicking swing-dance
_____at my knee
puma cries
skittering thru wet lawn
fringed prints across patio

_what lasts till velvet falls –
final scraps of hours
_____slip mind’s periphery?
his sun-warm body
_____silver & pewter
breathing slow rhythm
against my hip

Ann Howells edited Illya’s Honey for eighteen years. Recent books: So Long As We Speak Their Names (Kelsay Books, 2019) and Painting the Pinwheel Sky (Assure Press, 2020). Chapbooks Black Crow in Flight and Softly Beating Wings were published through contests. Ann’s work appears in Nimrod, Magma, and Crannog, among others.

Blether

There’s a stiff north wind, blowing down Candlemaker row tonight, 
and the grass-market still shows traces of last night’s fun.
The comedians that we see on panel shows, all six of them,
are laughing at the same jokes we think they improvise every night.
They become zombies after 2.00 in the morning,
living in an alcoholic fug that only Irn Bru can lift.

There are street performers playing with fire,
some throwing knives, and the same tired jokes as each other.
Nobody asks them to risk life and limb for a largely indifferent audience,
but they still turn out time after time,
their passive aggression showing that they would have been happier
working in an office.

Tourists look down Prince’s Street Gardens, 
from the safety of Scott’s Tower,
the atonal noise of traffic,
students selling their shows,
and bagpipers some distance away.
Across Carlton Hill, and Waverley the tourists
flash their cameras,
read their Rebus’s, and see only the tourist side.

Under the streets, the curious, with no fear
are shown around the more garish aspects of History,
from Deacon Brodie, and Burke and Hare,
warning that only the really brave,
ever come out of there.

And tomorrow, all the Candles on Candlemaker row will blow out, 
another group of teenagers will take moody selfies
outside the places where JK Rowling first cobbled Harry Potter together,
a few lucky people will perform in front of large audiences,
and a lot more will finish to silence.

Ben Macnair is an award-winning poet and playwright from Staffordshire in the United Kingdom. Follow him on Twitter @ benmacnair

Musings at Dusk

My wife is now dead.
Is there somewhere
the dead reside? Other than
a hole in the ground?
It’s a cold empty place,
bereft of love or grace.
The stars in the distant sky,
patiently wait, as they
burn to nothingness,
for their predetermined fate.
I feel foolish, that’s all,
and as dead leaves fall
into the flowing river,
a raven’s shrill laughter
mocks my musings,
and with the dying light,
he indifferently flies off,
into this eternal night.

***

Useless Regrets

Clouds black as death
spread across the sky.
I can barely see the lake,
as hail bounces off the roof.
A brutal wind rips leaves
from the trees. I’m not
drunk enough to sleep,
but too drunk to stay in bed.
A ferocious wind
like a specter from my past,
sweeps from the shore,
and hits me like a shower
of molten lead.
The sun is as absent,
as if he were bored,
or telling me I’m ignored.
It doesn’t help to put
a cold compress on
my miserable head.
This is where,
friends tell me,
my wasted life has led.

***

In Imitation of the Chinese Poet Li Shangyin

I watch a girl with golden hair
swing down the street,
her pretty nose in the air,
but we’ll never meet.
I’m too old for that.
Still, the flesh will stir,
as a blossom stirs,
but the unfolding is too long.
I stare at the trees,
as they lose their leaves.
It’s nature,
and it’s a fatal disease.
As if in heavy boots,
winter will soon stomp in.
I see the apples falling
from my trees.
The aroma is sweet.
I haven’t forgotten it,
but the apples are now rotten.

George Freek’s poetry appears in numerous Journals and Reviews. His poem “Written At Blue Lake” was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His collection Melancholia is published by Red Wolf Editions.

Delicate Song 

A gray-brown wren
no bigger than a shallot
lays sticks, leaves, grass, moss
between the discharge port
and the starter recoil of a lawnmower,
its spinning blades
and choking exhaust
idle for now.

On the red metal chassis
of this cutting machine,
a home now waits for offspring
to emerge from eggs
the size of marbles
that will face dangers
as great as the killer blades below.

This mother wren
will leave her nest
to hunt and gather
while predators lurk,
paws crush,
blades cut.

But her tiny beak
despite the raiding of her nest
or a labyrinth of other dangers
can free a larger currency
anywhere she goes
through the miracle
of the sweet notes
within her delicate song.

Marianne Brems is the author of the full length poetry collection Stepping Stones (2024) and three chapbooks. Her poems have also appeared in literary journals including The Bluebird Word, Front Porch Review, Remington Review, and Lavender Review. She is a nominee for the Eric Hoffer Book Award 2025. Favorite poets include Kay Ryan, Ellen Bass, and Naomi Shihab Nye. She lives, cycles, and swims in Northern California. Website: www.mariannebrems.com.

A Misdelivered Pizza

those who ordered it must be waiting desperately,
but it has already lost its way & arrived at my door.
it was a fate i could not turn away.

the day i was delivered to the world,
no one had placed an order for me either—
the house was empty.

when my father first looked down at me,
a cloud of sand descended,
building a burial mound over his heart.
the reddest i’d ever been since birth,
the souls of the wind greeted me:
hello, red box.

i walked deep into my own eyes,
spying on the attic cats giving birth.
when the black cat bore a speckled kitten,

my mother cried as though her sight was failing.
night &day tangled together,
wiping me clean, piece by piece.
the wind’s gaze greeted me:
hello, red fate.

ooh—my red hymns, called forth by the wind!

hello, you writhing wax-born flames,
hello, shadow within the trembling shadow.
hello, echoes of my tinnitus,
ringing again someday in cafés, theaters, on sunlit beaches.
hello, cursed words running blind in the dark.
i am the red box!

many times in my life,
i devoured pizzas i never ordered,
felt happy & fell asleep without a thought.

o misdelivered me!

Jennifer Choi is a passionate high school student. Her work has previously been published or is forthcoming in Altered Reality Magazine, Academy of Heart and Mind, and Culterate Magazine, among others.

When my bones shake off this spirit, bury me

When my bones shake off this spirit, bury me
in the Valley of the Kings! Let tomb robbers
anoint themselves egyptologists, drink
claret from my skull, eat caviar
from my kneecaps. To them remains the sun

in the sky, its fleet of swift-footed clouds
and itinerant condors. The rainbow
and the aurora, the sleet, hail and shower.
The star and streak of meteor.

Lay me under a tree root,
far below the timberline,
where the path has known only ever shade.

What is the whorl of a galaxy
but a thumbprint? I leave you mine.

J. L. Yocum holds a bachelor’s degree in English Composition, with a concentration in Poetry, from the University of North Texas. His poems have appeared in Albatross, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and ionosphere. He earns his keep working in a fine-art-adjacent industry, and lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their indolent marmalade tabby.

Grief is Crabgrass

with lanky-angled arms, as if she’s broken,
spear-sharp legs as if she’s seeded to infiltrate,
penetrate, to reach, leach and strangle—a demon

greedy to possess sun and soil.

Silky threads, verdant and windswept,
tufted seed pods, sweet clover crowns
locked in weed gallows.

Warrior dandelions with their single stubborn root,
crystal-cut foliage, winemaking, jelly-making,
bee-happy-yellow opulence, don’t stand a chance.

In frenzied crab furies, wired to outwit,
outgrow, steal back the theft, injustice,
the cinder and ash of loss,

she couldn’t stop running marathons, traveling
at light speeds, chasing bone-dry highs, spilling
herself on paper until words choked white

and the green spider web spun, done.

Catherine Arra lives in the Hudson Valley of upstate New York, where she teaches part-time, and facilitates local writing groups. She is the author of eight poetry collections. Recent work appears in San Pedro Review, Thimble Literary Magazine, Origami Poems Project, Stone Circle Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Unbroken, Impspired, and Unleashed Lit. Find her at www.catherinearra.com