Darkness Shaping Light

For now it flickers,
the porchlight left on
for the return of our souls.

We fear the bulb may crack
in the weight of darkness,
and not that far away
the lighthouse pulse
grows dimmer,
its revolution slowing down,
ghost ships in the night
wailing blindly for shore,
the light from our eyes
not bright enough
to lead them home.

Robert S. King, Athens GA, is cofounder of FutureCycle Press. His poems appear widely, including Chariton Review, Kenyon Review, Midwest Quarterly, and Southern Poetry Review. He has published nine poetry collections, most recently Developing a Photograph of God (2014), Messages from Multiverses (2020), and Selected Poems (2023).

Tattoo Artist

He comes back from Japan
with a dragon tattoo, the artist
says give me some skin, sticks
his barb in with the colors
of choice, and sets to his back-
breaking work, graceful circles

are a good way to start, he tells
his canvas not to move, this
will hurt but stay still, there will
be blood, the needle burns
but you’ll get used to it,
even come to crave the pain,

beg the artist to go ape, which
is to say epic, on your body,
turn the skin into a text
that keeps on unscrolling—
the most gruesome images
make the biggest impression.

I write this poem because
I too work with ink.

William Heath has published four poetry books: The Walking Man, Steel Valley Elegy, Going Places, Alms for Oblivion; three chapbooks: Night Moves in Ohio, Leaving Seville, Inventing the Americas; three novels: The Children Bob Moses Led (winner of the Hackney Award), Devil Dancer, Blacksnake’s Path; a history, William Wells and the Struggle for the Old Northwest (winner of two Spur Awards and the Oliver Hazard Perry Award); a book of interviews, Conversations with Robert Stone. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Hiram College. He lives in Annapolis. www.williamheathbooks.com

waiting for the bus at the world’s edge 

i stand, rain tasting like unanswered prayers. behind, the station groans, its peeling paint a wound too ancient to mend. i wait, knowing the bus a lie. then, he arrives, a man assembled from some malignant elsewhere, his suit too clean for this squalor. cruel slits for eyes pierce the void. a stagnant puddle mirrors us. that’s when it sees me, and i it—the thousand-eyed, thousand-mouthed thing, clawing at a non-existent door. an impossibility made real. i try to scream, but silence, iron-heavy, chokes my voice. the man smiles, a chasm splitting the earth, a smile that bleeds the sky. he nods, not to me, but to the rising thing, its hunger primordial. he breathes dust, bone, the air before the world’s end. i watch. the thing emerges, slick skin pulling free like a lost nightmare, teeth gleaming in the gloom. i am paralyzed, mute. it grows, limbs elongated and warped. i blink. the puddle, the thing, the man—vanished. the street is empty. only the iron taste lingers, a swallowed secret. 

Marvin Smith is a poet from Ohio. He prefers to let his work speak louder than his bio. His poetry is inspired by the absurd, the uncanny, and silence.

I Know That My Redeemer Liveth

The hour is announced short,

Westminster Chimes missing
a middling B, ringing

in our heads, remembered,
duller, less loud,
than the struck G,F, and E

No one is fashionable today.
The count comes in too soon,
off-beat; vanities burn
out of time, in the difference,

smoke

the color of lungs
drying, sucking
raw air between buildings,

history breach born

before the first chime
of the series on a fixed scale
of what must be noon.

Matt Thomas is a smallholder farmer, engineer, and poet. His recent work can be found in Ponder Review, The Thieving Magpie, and Common House. Disappearing by the Math, a full-length collection, was published by Silver Bow in 2024. Cicada, Dog & Song, a second full-length collection, will be published by Serving House Books in 2026. He lives with his family in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.  

Hundred-Acre Brook

Its blue line on the map begins amid
close-together contour lines,
at 1900 feet, miles from any trail.

Must be a spring up there.
It’d be worth the bruises and scrapes
of bushwhacking to find out.

This one joins Shannon Brook
below the waterfalls. Afterward, it is all
Shannon Brook—like a wife

taking her husband’s last name,
though still herself.
One stream, then, down to the lake.

The goal of working backward
to its source would be
to know the brook, beginning to end:

its lifespan, so to speak.
(Except that it still keeps on coming.)
If I ever did locate the spring,

I would kneel to drink,
and return refreshed for whatever day
the sea will receive me.

Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, where he has judged high-school Poetry Out Loud competitions. His work appears in Except for Love: New England Poets Inspired by Donald Hall (Encircle Publications), and Covid Spring, Vol. 2 (Hobblebush Books). His own poetry books, Wooden Nutmegs and Magnificat, are available from Encircle Publications.

Thereafter Blues

At the crossroads between Claireview Street and Millshire Avenue, two men, by happenstance, met each other below the streetlight that shined a lonely beacon beside snow-covered fields, stretching into a darkness of blue. One man tipped his hat, though his face could not be spoken for, and the light above him shadowed his features as he reached into his pockets and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

“Lost?” He said to the wanderer and held out the open pack—only two were left, but he insisted: “It’s alright, take it,” he gestured to the hatless man. “I asked if you were lost.”

“I was just heading out of town,” the hatless man said, looking back the way he came.

“Out of town? With no proper footwear?” He asked with sincerity, pointing at the man’s lack of shoes, and the holes in his socks. The hatless man was utterly confused, but this confusion only mounted when he glanced down at his feet and saw he had no boots on at all.

There was a surprising jolt through his body in this realization, but it faded into numbness as he closed his eyes and recalled the moments before his meeting below the light: tires screeching themselves of rubber, the wailing of engines coming right at him.

Opening his eyes, the man was still holding the cigarette out to him when a rumble broke the silence between them. Headlights cut through the snowfall, and upon their entry, so too did the shrieks of terrified children, and the grinding of the battered vehicle against asphalt. As it came into their view, he could see then that the front end of the car had been crushed, and atop the shattered windshield sprawled a mangled figure without shoes.

Jesse Hamilton writes, “I am a writer from Michigan who enjoys dabbling in many genres and going wherever the ideas take me. I have only been writing prose for a few years, and have only been published in a few small publications, but I aim to keep finding my voice and experimenting with it.”

Pointing

motionless

staring at
the cemetery
she pointed
to each that
she once knew

one hand
to her chest
the other
to block the sun
as a gentle wind
slipped over
green leaves
touching her hair

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.

Noah Built the Ark

I’ve promoted the hustle
There’s blood in the streets
Lust and envy never tasted sweet
I run and duck for cover
Fame comes tomorrow
Dying just to get a name
I will kill for a nickel or dime
Many broken promises

Is it any wonder
Why the world’s still turning
I’m in need of a big hug
Too many cars on the highway
Hate comes soft and hazy
The candy that I need
Spending my life in hell
Wearing the best clothes
Get the slapping wherever I go

The water is rising
Spent some time on a lifeboat
I’ll see the fire next time
I’m always switching lanes
The water is rising
Spent some time on a lifeboat
I’ll see the fire next time
I’m always switching lanes

Jakima Davis has been writing for almost 25 years. She’s been published in underground publications such as “The PEN,” “Big Hammer,” “Marymark Press” and many more. She also been involved in mainstream publications such as “Hanging Loose,” “Trajectory,” and “Iconoclast.” She’s had poems translated in German, Portuguese, and Spanish; she’s posting her poems on Facebook to gain a fanbase.