Driving Stick

____First thing in the morning she laid out her plan. She was going over to the East Bay to buy a used VW Beetle with a manual transmission. Even though she didn’t know how to use a manual transmission. The reason she needed a new car ASAP was because they repossessed her old one when she, inexplicably, and without telling me, failed to make payments. I was told my job, once I got dressed, was to be her chauffeur across the bridge, and to drive the Beetle back. Later I was to teach her how to drive stick, at least well enough that she didn’t leave the transmission as shredded metal in the road. I knew this car was a key part of her strategy for leaving me. Also, she knew that I knew, but nonetheless expected me to help in the destruction of my life.

_____Then, acting like she couldn’t help herself, she fucked me in the bathroom, me standing holding her up, like it was real. Yes, a part of me realized I was being manipulated. There was also a part of me that wasn’t so certain, a part that felt she might not really want to go, but instead wanted me to save her.

_____After the acrobatics she said, “We shouldn’t do that anymore, you have too much power over me.”

_____“What’s wrong with that?” I asked. “Isn’t that how it should be?” She ignored me.

_____All the mixed signals, me not knowing which ones to pay attention to, so I focused on all of them simultaneously. It made my head hurt as badly as my heart.

_____As we prepared to leave, I couldn’t keep it in any longer. I said, “This is crazy.”

_____“Don’t say that!” She spit it out with equal parts anger and anxiety. She sounded afraid.

_____She knows, I thought to myself. There’s enough of the old her in there, enough self-awareness, that she knows the damage she’s causing both of us. She knows she isn’t okay.

_____There wasn’t time to discuss it, however. There would never be time for that. Crazy be damned, we had to get over to Oakland to buy her a car she couldn’t drive.

James Irwin is a writer of stories real & unreal, also a media artist, arts critic, college professor, and communications pro. Awards include San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, National Endowment for the Humanities, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and Rockefeller Foundation. He lives in northern New Jersey.

Weightless Hitchhiker

Have you carried a heavy burden,
a bucket away from a flooded basement or
a bucket towards a grass fire?
I’ve carried light to heavy weight,
union card and jackhammer,
groceries for seniors, piggyback girlfriends.

Everyone’s borne the kind of weight
that can be weighed using a scale.
But consider the weightless, a tune carried,
measles hosted then evicted.
The body may seem victorious
but can carry regret, unspoken, to the grave.

I gave a ride today to the near-weightless
hitchhiker—a honeybee—landing
seeking some dew, some salt in the sweat
in the worry lines of my brow.
I was stung for a moment by some
nameless fear, but quickly brushed it aside.

Dave Seter is a poet and essayist. He is the author of Don’t Sing to Me of Electric Fences (Cherry Grove Collections, 2021) and Night Duty (Main Street Rag, 2010). Educated as a civil engineer, he writes about social and environmental issues, including the intersection of the built world and natural world. On Instagram: @daveseter_ecopoet       
More at: https://daveseter.com/

Fattening Frogs for Snakes

These are my younger days
The days I remember
These are my younger days
The days I remember
Hands in my pocket
It’s fifty below zero

My love’s all in vain
Good morning moonlight
My love’s all in vain
Good morning moonlight
My smile and a shake
Made too many mistakes

Take me to the sunshine
I’ve been born blind
Take me to the sunshine
I’ve been born blind
Taste that spoonful
The strangest customer

Jakima Davis lived in Charleston, SC, CT, NJ, the Bronx, and Queens before settling in Mount Vernon, NY at the age of seven. She’s been writing poetry since 2000. Published many Give-Out Sheets and a Broadside by Marymark Press. She also published a chapbook by Marymark Press in 2016. Davis published two more Chapbooks in early 2021. She’s waiting for more poetry to be published. As of now, she’s posting her poems on Facebook to gain a fanbase.

Vagabond Nights!

Shrouded in autumn fog, the clock tower …
Why does it feel too late when it’s not?
We exhale empty words of compassion
into our unpredictable pandemic world.
Vagabond nights, vagabond nights!

Clawing, clasping, climbing
up the tower to slow the hands
as we grieve the loss of time.
If we fail to touch the face of time, we lose.
Vagabond nights, vagabond nights!

Competing with time, capturing time,
pockets of time, mere moments of time,
we vow to fight the loss of time
as long as it takes, forever and ever.
Vagabond nights, vagabond nights!

Our masked quest to outwit time
gives us the courage to demand
the clock hands release their grasp on us
so we can search for happily ever after.
Vagabond nights, vagabond nights!

Roberta Beach Jacobson is drawn to the magic of words–poetry, song lyrics, flash fiction, puzzles, and stand-up comedy. Her latest book is Demitasse Fiction: One-Minute Reads for Busy People (Alien Buddha Press, 2023).

Reunion with God

_____I would not think to touch the sky with two arms — Sappho

I’d need a spade
for the family dinner, everything
kills so everything is
murderous, of course, half my days
I touch you with a speckle,
your body of a paring knife—
your vivid protected
body, infrared, pinks & yellows
& greens— I’d need a spade
for the family dinner, virgined
& brass, copper is
known for its bacteria killing
abilities, rots your skin. God
isn’t an all powerful
dude in which I place my body
like a cat snug in a drawer, &
he isn’t a man— nor
a dude in several ways, he
didn’t meet the criteria
& God didn’t make it molten,
those edenic women made it molten.
My tame palms are scrids
of an edenic bar: grass-grown
stools, human bodies
attached to convicted axes, &
mistresses. The berry blood serpent,
intelligent like females of a species—
operating / molting / rolling
/ peeling / stained at the
mouth, stubbornly hungry.

The Warmth of Words

(or, The Day I Helped My Husband Blow Cellulose Insulation Into the Attic)

I put words into a machine to keep our house warm.

They were covered in salt to keep from being flammable—
I guess that’s something we all do.

Torn and homeless, they were huddled together
so I tucked them into the spaces under our roof

fistfuls of them, so many words flying at my ears
I hoped not to become blind.

I wanted to help my husband keep the heat in our home
That he worked so hard to provide.

What a modern marvel that you
don’t have to burn a tree to heat your house. 
Wrap it in paper
then stuff confetti in your attic 
then breathe heavy until the warmth builds. 

The wolf moon howled at my neck to hurry.
The debris looked like a cotton harvest on the side of the road
as it blew out of my hands and down the mountain.

When I was done my hands were immune to fire
but even so, they burned 
and my shoes were covered in snow.

Svetlana Litvinchuk is a permaculture consultant and artist who holds BAs from the University of New Mexico. Her debut chapbook, Only a Season (Bottlecap Features, 2024) is now available, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Coffee Review, Eunoia Review, and Longhouse Press. She is a reader for ONLY POEMS. Originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, she now lives with her husband and daughter on their organic farm in the Arkansas Ozarks.

Canvassers

The old white van stops,
atremble, at an intersection,
in the snowy suburban
nightscape, hanging onto
its last breath, its driver
careful to keep the motor
running for fear that, once
turned off, it will not start
again, while one of the
people inside looks around
at other passengers with
a look of ironic solidarity
before sliding open the
door and bailing out into
hostile territory, armed
with nothing but a pen
and a clipboard full of
statements to support
saving baby harp seals
and fighting acid rain.

Blue Wonder

Pond full of thick texture
The wind blows, but its body stays still
The birds do not drink from it
Maybe they know it would be wrong
To cause ripples in its waters
But sit next to it little bird
Let the stillness of this moment
Soothe your aching wings
Blue wonder
The fire in your lungs is d
The pond knows you are weary, you have traveled far
So sit, little bird
Sit next to the sparrows and the crows,
The robins and the cranes
They are bathing in the peace this pond brings
They do not drink, they do not sing
But they are alive, there is a coolness on their eyelids
And tomorrow when they fly again
Their wings will be blue
and so will yours
So sit, little bird.
There is only this moment, nothing more

Joanna Alamillo is a twenty-one-year-old student from Sacramento, California. She is currently studying psychology with hopes of opening her own therapist branch someday. In her spare time, she enjoys writing poetry, reading, and spending time with her family.

The Black Dog

Technically, he was Gramp’s
Dog, but he was all of ours’,
aunts’, uncles’, cousins’—
an inheritance of sorts.

We called him Blackie.
Not very original, granted.
But it seemed right, since
Black was both his color
And his disposition.

There was clearly some
Lab in his lineage. His
Broad barrel chest,
Sturdy, low center
Of gravity. We could never
Know how he would appear
Each morning when, or if,
He would appear at all.

Too often bloodied, an ear
Ripped in the starry night
Or snout perforated
With a quick snap and nip
By some son of a bitch
Barking at the full moon.

All day he would lie about,
Brooding, a soft growl,
Doggedly rehearsing a dream
Of his next foray into the night.

___

Zayante at Dusk

Pitch-darkness comes first
to the shallow muck and stumble
where forsythia dims
its yellow lamplights.
Nighthawks dive, unnoticed
until shrieks separate dusk,
and dragonflies on last flight hover
over a backwater thinned by drought.
In the wind, wild blackberry
leaves turn silver undersides
as if displaying fruit
while hiding their thorns,
like Portuguese Man-O-War
with those uplifted flaps
leading them to safe harbor
with electric jolts trailing below—
and yet I pick, pop, chew,
gather scratches, itch.

Jeff Burt has contributed to Williwaw Journal, Red Wolf Journal, Modern Poetry Quarterly, and Sunlight Press. He has a digital chapbook available  Little Popple River from Red Wolf Editions  and a print chapbook A Filament Drawn so Thin from Red Bird Chapbooks.