Jared Pearce
We’re all brothers & sisters.

She told me she was concerned
we were hacking that tree
without chainsaws, but how
else teach the boys the axe,
hatchet, bow saw unless they
have a body to teach them
about trees and woods and work,
duty and compassion in the city.

We students were reverent coming
to the cadavers, careful to keep
them clean, readable. We’d lift
the skin, trace the rings, find
where a cut or vein is making
its way. The dead are fine teachers.

Jared Pearce is the author of The Annotated Murder of One (Aubade Publishing, 2018). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Coachella Review, Xavier Review, Breadcrumbs, BlazeVOX, and Panoplyzine, among other journals.  Online at jaredpearcepoetry.weebly.com.

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Lynn McGee
Crush, 3

I clear the gap between the subway’s gliding
doors and platform’s yellow rubber ledge,
find a space on the plastic contoured bench
and cross my legs, flash the silver straps
of my sandals. We rise aboveground, level
with black tar roofs sunken at their centers,
pools of water mirroring clouds. Sunlight streams
through windows frosted with the residue
of winter. I squint and curl spiderlike on my seat.
I disembark and walk past the park, branches
beaded with buds. Last night, I sent you a photo,
feet crossed on the ottoman, the faintly-veined,
ambitious arch. A blister on the back of my heel
sings out now, with each step.

Lynn McGee is the author of Tracks (Broadstone Books, 2019) and Sober Cooking (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016), as well as two  award-winning poetry chapbooks, Heirloom Bulldog (Bright Hill Press, 2015) and Bonanza (Slapering Hol Press, 1996). Here poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Southern Poetry Review, Ontario Review, Phoebe, Painted Bride Quarterly, Sun Magazine, and The New Guard, among other journals, as well as in the anthology Stonewall’s Legacy (Local Gems Press, 2019), edited by Rusty Rose and Marc Rosen. With José Pelauz, McGee wrote the children’s book Starting Over in Sunset Park (Tilbury House Publishers, 2020). She serves on the advisory board of the Hudson Valley Writers Center and co-curates the Lunar Walk Poetry Series with Gerry LaFemina and Madeleine Barnes. Online at lynnmcgee.com.

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Marjorie Moorhead
Vape

Watching small birds at the feeder
swooping through a mix of rain and snow

Worrying about my son
still a teenager, and so

visiting home from school;
his first year away.

Left a cartridge on the tv room table
last night. “VGOD” “Iced Mango Bomb”.

Nicotine hovers, like vulture in flight, draping
darkness over a young body so able.

This vaping device invites him to suck poison into lungs
we shared, housed in my womb’s warm burgundy fluids.

Now, he breathes in an icy mist. Mango Bomb.
Didn’t those vape business suits have a Mom?!

What are they thinking? To damage a whole generation!
Leading sheep to slaughter. It boils down to greed.

Shareholders making money, while mothers hearts
of herded teens, addicted now, bleed.

Marjorie Moorhead is the author of Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books, 2020). Her poems have appeared in HIV Here & Now, Rising Phoenix Review, and Sheila-Na-Gig Online, Porter House Review, Tiny Lit Seed, and other journals, as well as in several anthologies, including Planet in Peril (Fly on the Wall, 2019), edited by Isabelle Kenyon; From The Ashes (Animal Heart, 2019), Amanda McLeod & Mela Blust; Birchsong: Poetry Centered in VT. Vol. II (The Blueline, 2018), edited by Northshire Poets Alice Wolf Gilborn, Carol Cone, David Mook, Marcia Angermann, Peter Bradley and Monica Stillman; and others. She received an Indolent Books scholarship to attend a summer 2019 workshop at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Moorhead writes from the NH/VT border.

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Stephen Gibson
A Brief History at Cotton Mather’s Tomb in Copp’s Hill Burying Ground in Boston

From Salem, not his grave in this cemetery,
you could almost hear the witches nearby
in Danvers village being hanged from trees—

nothing they could say would convince a jury
they weren’t screwing sleeping men as succubi—
we visited Salem; now, his grave in this cemetery.

They never had a “third nipple” on their bodies—
for their “devil’s teat”—but how do you deny
what’s not there? They got hanged from trees.

Cotton repeats this “evidence,” which he believes
and doesn’t really want to question—or even try:
Salem’s deaths belong in his grave in this cemetery.

Cotton would later be accused of witchcraft when he
urged smallpox inoculation for Boston—and the country
(remember, decades before, witches hanged from trees)—

claiming a small dose of disease prevented worse disease:
his African slave explained his pox scar, and he didn’t die.
Black lives mattered, even back to a grave in this cemetery
where a born-again white guy justified hangings in trees.

Stephen Gibson is the author of Self-Portrait in a Door-Length Mirror (University of Arkansas Press, 2017) winner of the Miller Williams Prize. His previous collections include The Garden of Earthly Delights Book of Ghazals (Texas Review Press, 2016); Rorschach Art Too (Story Line Press, 2014), winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize sponsored by the Iris N. Spencer Poetry Awards of the West Chester University Poetry Center; Paradise (University of Arkansas Press, 2011), a finalist for the Miller Williams prize; Frescoes (Lost Horse Press, 2011); Masaccio’s Expulsion (MARGIE/IntuiT House, 2008), selected and introduced by Andrew Hudgins; and Rorschach Art (Red Hen Press, 2001). His poems have appeared in Agni, Barrow Street, Bellevue Literary Review, The Paris Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, The Sewanee Review, and The Yale Review, and other publications. He lives in West Palm Beach, Florida.

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Michael H. Levin
Telling Tales

It’s narrative we live in.
Early. Late. Here only
do we ride a voice that canters forth
to listeners bound to hear.
Here finally do we slip beyond
obsessive selves toward rites
that vest our tales
with freighted memory.

Those big-browed hairy faces
by a cave-fire while the ice cracks
are the grist of us—rapt at
hand-signed stories of the hunt,
the kill, the spirit marks that signal
feasts at close.

Gaunt figures in gray treatment chairs
slumped bonelessly or hypnotized
by globules in their chemo drips
grow radiant at the chance to share
their disregarded histories.

Crass insults on a tiny screen
coiled snarls beneath the turkey-talk
at family rendezvous recede
where sheltering connections
masked as anecdotes surprise.

Through tales
each soul is recognized; endorsed
to feel; can compass buried griefs.

Perhaps rise to community.
Perhaps in some sense heal.

Michael H. Levin is the author of the poetry collections Man Overboard (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Watered Colors (Poetica Publishing, 2014). His work has appeared in Gargoyle Magazine, Adirondack Review, and Crosswinds, among other journals and anthologies. Levin works as an environmental lawyer and solar energy developer, and lives in Washington DC. Online at michaellevinpoetry.com and twopianosplayingforlife.org.

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Rikki Santer
Abracadabra Abecedarian

Archetype of these times, the theater swathed in inky
black velvet, the gyre of dwelling in the prestidigital age,
cat & mouse of it, gallery of creased brows that lend virtuosity in
deviance with each deal, no end to
enthrall to mesmerism, just feast on the
fusillade of his growling tweets, firehose of a flame that just can’t clear its
goosenecked throat & leaves us
handcuffed like Houdini; how to expose that formula of
invisibility when illusionists try to get as much as possible from a
jackdaw of props; he thinks he is the King
Kong of cards, knowing how the trick is done but not how to do it,
levitating the taproot of daily news;
mirrors ripple in their angles of incidence,
newsfeed seance, stage doors first slightly propped
open, then gummed shut, as he
palms the next head floating; the dove from his top hat
quacking partisan facts wrinkled & rough &
ready to rise from his teetering
sarcophagus, each syllable rumbling MAGA MAGA MAGA, his
trick with a title that’s
utterly realistic but not real & could
vanish like the smoke puff of tenuous success so we
watch like an audience who yearns to believe in a good witch not a
xenophobic witch of the west & we turn the channel, the cheek & struggle to loosen the
yoke of media obsession & pray that when our sight lines finally
zigzag across stage, they’ll settle on an empty cabinet where the elephant has vanished.

Rikki Santer is the author In Pearl Broth (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019) as well as six previous poetry collections. Her work has appeared in Ms. Magazine, Poetry East, Margie, Hotel Amerika, The American Journal of Poetry, Slab, Crab Orchard Review, RHINO, Grimm, Slipstream, Midwest Review and The Main Street Rag, among other publications. Santer lives in Columbus, Ohio. Learn more online at rikkisanter.com.

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Chad Parenteau
Resistance Tankas, Reel 9

John Bolton Jesus Tanka

John Bolton Jesus,
once subpoenaed, will perform
his first miracle,
walk Iran’s grounds, burned to glass,
claim he stands atop water.

World War Three Jesus Tanka

World War Three Jesus,
thought to have died in eighties,
is hanging in wait,
waiting for right temperament
to ascend him with the clouds.

#ToiletTrump Jesus Tanka, #TakeTwo

#ToiletTrump Jesus
just wants to go down, at last,
but he keeps rising!
A new parable, a metaphor…
Why can’t he just stop rising?!?

Hawkish Jesus Tanka

Wish hawkish Jesus
he needs all twelve disciples
before he ascends.
Another four are drafted.
Needs just one to blog scripture.

New York Times Jesus Tanka

New York Times Jesus
asked if he’s the King of Jews.
New York Times Jesus
only replies, Wow. You’re smart.
Advantage is clearly theirs.

Return Fire Jesus Tanka

The congregation
of Return Fire Jesus
takes in his sermon
between reloads. Turn one cheek,
make other conceal carry.

Whistleblower Jesus Tanka, Take Three

Prez washes his hands
of Whistleblower Jesus
over and over,
hopes to find blood in water,
wonders when the blood will come.

Chad Parenteau is the author of Patron Emeritus (FootHills Publishing, 2013). His work has appeared in Tell-Tale Inklings, Queen Mob’s Tea House, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Ibbetson Street, and Wilderness House Literary Review. He serves as associate editor of Oddball Magazine. His second full-length collection, The Collapsed Bookshelf, is forthcoming.

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William Heath
Urban Renewal in Detroit

GM wanted land in Detroit
for a central industrial park
to employ six-thousand workers—
Poletown was the target.
Graffiti appeared on the walls
of demolished buildings,
“Death to Arsonists, Thieves,
and GM.” Proud people
refused to leave, city services
declined, then disappeared,
crime was on the rise.
A SWAT team drove the last
protesting squatters out
of Immaculate Conception,
which was taken down in days.

In place of Poletown the city
built the world’s largest
resource recovery plant,
in other words it burned
a hell of a lot of trash,
turning it into energy.
It seemed like a good idea.
The problem was pollutants
poured out of the stacks,
spreading carcinogens
across the neighborhood.
“We all live downwind,”
was the protestors’ slogan.
When the plant failed
to show a profit the city
sold it to Philip Morris,
who supposedly promised
to deal with the problem
of smoke causing cancer.

William Heath is the author of the poetry collections Night Moves in Ohio (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and The Walking Man (Icarus Press, 1994); the novels Devil Dancer (Somondoco Press, 2013), Blacksnake’s Path: The True Adventures of William Wells (Heritage Books, 2008), and The Children Bob Moses Led (Milkweed Editions, 1995), winner of the Hackney Literary Award. His history text, William Wells and the Struggle for the Old Northwest (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017), won Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America for best historical nonfiction book and best first nonfiction book. He is also the author of Conversations with Robert Stone (University Press of Mississippi, 2016), a collection of interviews. His poems have appeared in The Cortland Review, Kenyon Review, Massachusetts Review, South Carolina Review,  and Southern Review, among other publications. The William Heath Award is given annually to the best creative writer at Mount St. Mary’s University, where Heath is a professor emeritus of English. He lives in Frederick, Md.

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Catherine Gigante-Brown
Belly Laugh

My son’s first belly laugh happened
in the most unsuspecting place.
It was in a very poor country,
which some might call a shithole
but it is rich in warm memories for me.

David was only five months old
when I stood in the buffet line
at a small hotel
in San Jose, Santo Domingo,
trying to balance my baby
on my shoulder
as I navigated breakfast.

Suddenly,
I felt sure, gentle hands
lifting my child
from my shoulder;
it wasn’t my husband
but a stranger.
The woman who worked
at the reception desk
had seen my balancing act
and came to my rescue.
Although she said, “Permisso”
it was more a statement
than a question
as she took my baby from me.
Grateful for her small act of compassion,
I ate breakfast with my husband in peace
then went to check on my child.

Even before I arrived,
I heard their laughter.
Behind the front desk,
the kind hotel receptionist
was tossing my child
high into the air,
catching him
and laughing herself.
She did this
over and over again.
The higher David flew,
the more he laughed.
My baby was giggling
uncontrollably
from deep in his belly
with someone he didn’t know.

I almost wept at my son’s pure joy
and from being able to eat a meal
uninterrupted
for the first time since David was born.

Sometimes you find
beauty and kindness
in the most unexpected places.
Sometimes they may look
broken and battered
from the outside
but are so exquisite
within.

Catherine Gigante-Brown is the author of the novels The El (2012), The Bells of Brooklyn (2017), Different Drummer (2015), and Better than Sisters (2019), all published by Volossal. Her poems have appeared in Ravishly, Art & Understanding, and Downtown Express, among other journals, as well as in the anthologies Eternal Snow: A Worldwide Anthology of One Hundred Twenty Five Poetic Intersections with Himalayan Poet Yuyutsu RD Sharma (Nirala Publications, 2017), edited by David B. Austell and Kathleen D. Gallagher, and the Brownstone Poets 2018 Anthology (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018), edited by Patricia Carragon. Gigante-Brown is a current and lifelong Brooklynite. 

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Ed McManis
Death in a Red Hat

He says, after hearing about
the imminent war, turning
off Fox News.
“I wouldn’t mind
dying in Paris
or Belgium,”
continues babbling
about his tongue pleasured
numb by chocolate and
thick summer air
sweet with waffles.

“Death in a foreign
country or desert
any time of year,”
And how he’d make friends
with Allies and foreigners
digging plots
deep with hometown
longing, graves sprinkled
with the immortality
of American baubles
and trinkets and

that little flag curled
quaintly into itself like
a day old raspberry croissant,
bag-pipers cresting the hill,
Uncle Sam leading the color guard
with songs of triumph whistled
down the years into edited books

written by survivors with edged
lawns, safe sons and the misery
of what was spilled across
the centuries, packed
into someone else’s gun,
someone else’s funeral.

Ed McManis’s poems have appeared widely. With his wife, Linda, he is the publisher of McMania Publishing. He runs a small school in San Francisco for students who learn differently. Ed and Linda have two grown sons.

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