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.

let’s dance until the roof caves in

sometimes
those old days come back to me
and I see them there
smiling and brittle and waving:

days that turned into long nights
that turned into sleep at dawn
all-the-while
drinking
and smoking
and writing
bad poetry,
spinning until the rubber came off the rims
burning until the soul gave out
until the heart beat its last
and deflated
like a thick balloon.

what a time it was

what a ride

I still do all that now
but in moderation:

the drinks are fewer each night
the smokes are cheaper
and the poems are better for the most part
but ever fewer than the drinks

and I’m in bed hours before dawn

hell,
I actually write in the mornings now.

what a time it is

what a ride:

more responsible
but
less romantic. oh well.

nobody wants to know those kinds of poets anyway
if they want to know any at all.

now I change the tires on the regular
and make sure that I wick the candle

and I do what I can for the old ticker
to make sure that at least I can dance until the roof caves in.

No Sonnet Saturday or When You Just Gotta

I forget to bring them with me today,
these sonnets where I find you every morning
fourteen lines of you spiraling
out among the weeds,
dodging dust bunnies in the dark.
So what does that mean for you
or me? The answers come so quickly
I forget to breathe between them.
Only this, this moment, this day
where each of your bracelets
circles ‘round my wrists,
forms the chain between us
to feel a quickened pulse
that says, soon.

Audrey Howitt lives and writes poetry in the San Francisco Bay
Area. Ms. Howitt has been published in: Roi Fainéant Press, Academy
of the Heart and Mind, Purely Lit: Poetry Anthology, Washington Square
Review, Panoply, Muddy River Poetry Review, Total Eclipse Poetry and
Prose, Chiaroscuro-Darkness and Light, dVerse Poets Anthology, With
Painted Words, Algebra of Owls, and Lost Towers Publications.

Self Portrait Without Me

Start with a D minor chord in December branches
__before light can find any sparrows. Let an owl
__blow dawn’s voice out its crooked beak
__as it drops from a tree, strikes an arc across stars.
Coyote’s nails click against asphalt. Done with the night
__coyotes trot back to a den. A garbage truck drums
__up the street. Every morning a garbage truck
__drums up the street. Smells like that linger and cling.
A lot has been hauled away. The beloved dead
__enter with D minor, come like junkies
__like thieves, like coyotes to take whatever they can.
__More lays erased under snow and ice. All these losses
Have left the air jewel clear. Every day I go away from the poem.
The next morning, like a winter sky, it is more empty and more full.

Ed Ruzicka’s third book of poems, Squalls, was released in March. Ed’s poems have appeared in the Atlanta Review, the Chicago Literary Review, Rattle, Canary, and many other literary publications. Ed, who is also the president of the Poetry Society of Louisiana, lives with his wife, Renee, in Baton Rouge.

Green Leaves

Wind pushes the dried and crumbling remains of spring into streets.
Leaves them on lawns and porches, driveways.
Sometimes you are born with more trees than the rest.
Sometimes you plant your own and love them, letting them grow
Pushing them toward the sky by will and sweat.
Then, years later, enjoy the sight of the dry leaves
Filling the empty spaces on the grass.
And the sudden realization that a lifetime was spent in the pursuit of
Dry leaves
Which are blown from the yard and down the street.

Marc Janssen has been writing poems since around 1980. His verse can be found scattered around the world in places like Pinyon, Slant, Cirque Journal, Off the Coast, Poetry Salzburg; also in his book November Reconsidered. Janssen coordinates the Salem Poetry Project and was a nominee for Oregon Poet Laureate.

Mamma’s Kiss & Tell

you are invited to watch my undoing,
where you will hear stories about my
life and times, of my anger and resentment,
the shameless flirtations with random men.
you will know that during meals, i never sit
with the family because they morph into the
worst-case scenario that lives in my brain.
you will learn about afflictions that seem
permanent, that no one ever asks me
what it is like to be married because they
know i don’t consider myself so and only
see a slave, relegated to kitchen duty,
ready for their side stares and laughter.
they know me by a different name and
gather in hallways, whispering
‘simma down bitch’ so i hide my feelings
and offer cheerless congratulations for their
deadly stupidity and useless plans.
they erase me each day, and when they do,
i remember there is a serious thing i want
to do, which is exactly this: run alongside a
slow-moving, southbound train, get in and
be rocked to sleep in its empty hollows,
dreaming of flowers that grow in places
they aren’t supposed to.

Loukia Borrell is a first-generation American whose parents were born in Cyprus. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, with a journalism concentration, from Elon University. She is a former print reporter. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Pangyrus, Poetry Bus Magazine, Roi Faineant Press, One by Jacar Press, and elsewhere. 

To Paint Original Poems

I sit at a table of words
attempting to paint original poems
that might be remembered
for a mirrored moment
in someone’s life.

I leave my chair
and walk in pensive circles,
through pools of wet rainbow images,
splashing verbal colors in a room without walls,
an infinite room without closed doors.
The floor is over-crowded
with unlabeled museum exhibits of joy and pain.

I sit back down to continue writing.
Trying to weld iron images
that are firm, yet, untouchable.
Visual words that will float like dreams.
Deliberate words, enduring words
that will slowly step down
from the ladder leaning
on the open window of my closed eyes.

David Lipsitz has been writing poems for over fifty years. His poems have appeared in BIG WINDOWS REVIEW, CAPE ROCK, CHAFFIN JOURNAL, FROM THE DEPTHS, MAIN STREET RAG, UPPAGUS, WASHINGTON SQUARE REVIEW, and other literary publications. His chapbook, ILLUSIONS ON THE ROAD, was published by Bragdon Books. 

Spring River

Today, the snake of wind
found me counting my obsessions
on a bank near the river
that is not a river
but simply a confluence
of water and sky,
a simulacrum
of some ancient flowing.
That snake, with its white tongue
and delicate body,
fed on the gravity
I carried in my heart
until I too was a clear mirror,
a creature of uncertainty
losing its bearings
in the deep, violet rush
of light and petals.

Seth Jani is a poet, publisher and bartender in Seattle, WA. His work has appeared in The American Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, Ghost City Review, Rust+Moth, and Phantom Drift, among others. His most recent full-length collection, Field Music, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2023. Visit him at www.sethjani.com.