Georgann Prochaska
Down the Water Slide

Maggie and Tommy stomp and splash
in knee-deep water
while Jimmy’s dad starts up the generator,
and children down the street
laugh at a motor boat
putt-putting in the flooded road.

Molly sings, “No school!”
as her dad sheers through feet of snow,
hacking and slashing with a shovel
to open the front door.

Pammy’s nose wrinkles at the news
“A cyclone bomb? What’s that?”

Georgie and his mother hit the ditch
face down.
Tornado winds roar in their ears
as their trailer twists into sculpture,
again.

“Why can’t we go to the beach?”
“Dead fish,” Danny’s grandmother says,
“Thousands of pounds of dead fish.”

Bridget fears her dad and hides.
His fist punches a hole in the wall.
Another year of crops rot in the field.

While two fields away Benny
stops speaking, eyes glazed. Lightning strikes fall
like spears, kill this year’s cattle.

Too hot for Chrissy to play outside.
Candy misses butterflies.
Charlie swats killer mosquitos.
And Chad stuffs an emergency backpack,
ready for sweeping mudslides or fire.

Pulsing whop-whop of chopper rescue
brings Jackie new terrors.
Will Goldie be left behind?

Ana rides on her father’s back
listening to the tramping feet of
a steady stream of hundreds
with nowhere to go.
Homes washed away.

And a polar cub
feels the warmth of his mother’s body
Disappear.

Because icebergs weep.

Georgann Prochaska is the author of Murder Comes to Grindstone (Outskirts Press, 2019), the fifth installment in her Snoopypuss Mystery series. Her poetry has appeared in Gravel. Prochaska grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, studied literature at Illinois State University, and had a long career teaching high school.

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Susan Craig
January Jumbo Blueberries

Plump, blue-black,
near-cartoon iterations, you
fill the container like a family unit.
I’m suspicious as I pry back
the plastic top, label saying
Product of Mexico.
Are you safe? Are you sweet, lush,
approved like American-grown?

Sometimes I go picking in June,
rural blueberry farm with my friend.
We wear buckets strapped at
our waists, reach our hands into
sequestered niches to nab clusters
of near-bursting berries. We pop
them in mouths, searching row after
row walled by blueberry bushes.
In winter we reach

for our imports: Honduran bananas,
Peruvian asparagus, Chilean grapes
fat and seedless. How we love
you handpicked and delivered
to our grocery, our tables.
How we don’t want your faces
amongst us; even your littlest, most
tender, not quite dear enough
for American tastes.

Poems by Susan Craig have appeared in Kakalak, Mom Egg Review, The Collective I, Fall Lines, and Jasper, among other publications. A graphic designer by trade, she lives in Columbia, South Carolina. 

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Ute Carson
Over the Green Divide

A man stands, arms tightly clenched across his chest,
and the child retreats.
The man opens his arms wide like wings,
and the child jumps into his embrace.
A woman shears the hedge between backyards
as a neighbor ambles up on the other side.
Their words pass easefully over the green divide.
When a boy throws a rock hard against a wall,
it boomerangs back and hits him.
When he skips a flat stone across a shallow creek,
droplets lightly sprinkle the water’s surface.
A girl from here meets a boy from there
on a bridge spanning a great river.
They talk and laugh and touch,
surprised at how much they have in common
and enchanted by their differences.

Ute Carson is the author of the poetry collections Just A Few Feathers (PlainView Press, 2011), Folding Washing (Willet Press, 2013) and Reflections: New and Selected Poems (Plain View Press, 2018), as well as novels and numerous stories and essays. Born in the Polish city of Koszalin, Carson fled her native city during World War II, settling in Germany before coming to the United States in 1962. She lives in Austin, Texas with her husband. They have three daughters, six grandchildren, a horse and a number of cats.

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Erin Lynn Marsh
The drunken birds of Gilbert, MN have made it

into The New York Times. Berries fermented
due to an early spring are balloons of booze

robins and waxwings ingest. The unchecked birds
crash into windows and cars, leaving them stunned.

An expert suggests placing the drunkards in a box
located in a dark, quiet space where they can sleep

it off. I tell a friend about the birds and we laugh
at them unwittingly eating plump, candy-colored

spirits. When alone, I ask God to keep them safe—
then realize He has more important matters to worry

about. Now I know the winged inebriates are exactly
what God concerns himself with: their disorientation

and confusion as distressing as any human broken heart.

Erin Lynn Marsh is the author of the poetry collection Disability Isn’t Sexy (Jules’ Poetry Playhouse Publications, 2019). Her poems have appeared in Post Road Magazine, Sugar House Review, Paper Darts, Emrys Journal, and the anthology Hers: Poets Speak (while we still can), Vol. 2 (Beatlick Press and Jules’ Poetry Playhouse Publications, 2017), edited by Jules Nyquist. She lives and works in Bemidji, MN.

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J.P. White
See You Tomorrow

En route to Columbia I pass this blind man
without legs who crouches on a wooden cart
with silver wheels that could be a river boat
for how nimble his cart rides the rapids
of foot traffic and I glance
into his cup where the tireless jawbones hold court
on the sundering rush at 94th & Broadway.
Sometimes he and I exchange a word,
but mostly I rattle his cup
and push on past professors, nuns, policemen,
incandescent youth and bewildered age,
then I veer to Absolute Bagels
and this cream cheese concoction
spiked with raisins and walnuts that help battle any headwind.
Just knowing I carry this delight,
makes me believe the world’s problems could be softened
by the Chinese family who are the masters
of their bagel craft and always offer the same message
before I leave, See you tomorrow,
and so that is what I tell the man on the wooden cart
and he nods like we have made an agreement
that contains the great and hidden things Jeremiah will
receive if only he will call out to God from prison.
So much of what goes on here,
like trying to hold onto light once glimpsed
at the bottom of a river tumbling into a lawless valley
without bridges where our intrepid family lives one day to the morrow.

J.P. White is the author of the poetry collections The Sleeper at the Party (Defined Providence Press, 2001), The Salt Hour (The University of Illinois Press, 2001), The Pomegranate Tree Speaks from the Dictator’s Garden, (Holy Cow Press, 1988), and In Pursuit of Wings (Panache Books, 1978). His essays, articles, fiction, reviews, interviews and poetry have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, American Poetry Review, Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, and many other journals and anthologies. He holds a BA from New College (1973), an MA from Colorado State University (1977), and an MFA from Vermont College (1990). He lives on Lake Minnetonka near Minneapolis.

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Anastasia Vassos
Do These Earrings Make My Ass Look Fat?

Are my tits too big.
My bra too small.
My hair too short.
My arms too hairy.
Is my nose too wide. Should I dye
my eyelashes. Lose weight.
Are my thighs too wide.
Should I close my eyes.

Is my tone too shrill.
Does it pierce your ear.
Is my stride too long.
Should I stop insisting.
Why don’t you trust me.
Where should I sit.
How high is the ceiling.
How low do I stoop.
Why must I wait.

Will I live in a shoe.
Should I eat small children.
Whose body is it.
What does my body.
And when does my body.
Do you hear the heartbeat.
Did you hear me say no.
Which way is safe. When will it stop.
How long is too long.
What is my fault.

What stands in my way.
What came out of nowhere.
Why should I care. Do I care.
Do I, do I, do I.
Why do I stutter.
What is your point.
How long will I listen.
Don’t point that thing at me.
Shut the fuck up.

The poems of Anastasia Vassos have appeared or are forthcoming in Gravel Mag, Blast Furnace, Haibun Today, Literary Bohemian, Lily Poetry Review, and Comstock Review, among others. She was born in Cleveland, Ohio and currently lives, writes, and teaches in Boston. She was a BreadLoaf General Contributor in Poetry. In 2017, her poem “Tinos, August 2012” was named Poem Of The Moment on MassPoetry.org. She is a long-distance cyclist.

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Harriet Marquis
Therapy II

The clatter of her walker in the hall
heralds her arrival.
Her breathing’s hard, more of a gasp.

No way today, I think,
she’ll take the stairs
down to my basement office.

“Come on along then,” I say.
“We’ll meet upstairs here in my study.
It’s a bit chaotic but will serve.
Will the sofa do?
It’s old but strong.”
(Like you) I think.

In the session she recalls
her drunken father leaving,
and her mother working nights
to give her brilliant daughter
a better chance in life.

Last night she dreamed about the time
she took her French beginners
on a trip to Paris.

But the night before
a dream reminded her
of a bitter fight with administration
for a teachers’ union.

Later on we speak of the hip replacement
she’s had done, the slow recovery,
compared to one five years ago
when her husband was alive.

She could see his dementia settling in,
his puzzled frown, the unkempt clothes,
his frazzled hair and wariness of strangers.

“He had a fear of falling down.
And did—five times,” she said.
“I couldn’t pick him up, and in the end,
I had to put him in that place he dreaded so.

“We were almost strangers
when he died. Funny,
I don’t think I miss him.
Why is that, I wonder?

“I’m just lonely now.

“Last week my daughter came.
She’s tired from chemo,
but a bright spot all the same.

“I guess my time is almost up.
I’ll be going then. I see May Sarton
on your shelf. Such a fine poet!
It’s been a while since I’ve thought of her.

“I’d like to get back to my writing.
I will in Spring,
when my daughter
comes again.”

Harriet Marquis is a retired psychoanalyst and former English teacher, currently living in Charlotte, NC. Her work has appeared in the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, the Journal of New Jersey Poets, and Open Minds Quarterly.

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Anastasia Jill
a Man is a Ham Radio
WC: 284

He built me a bomb /
a brain full of wires; some blue, some white, all red /
He cork and screws me full of knowledge
/ my box is the wonder, he grabs my world of antennas

/ I AM STARING AT HIS BUILD
/ I DIDN’T MEAN TO
/ HE IS TRYING TO WORK
/ AND A WOMAN CANNOT UNDERSTAND HIS WORK /

^

He is dismissive / plucks me from his field of vision
/ the protruding bone gets pulled from the fillet
/ and like a rat / gets tossed to the sewer drain
/ This is him
/ a jerk
/ and this is me
/ WOMAN

^

/ AM I A WOMAN TO ANNOY him or IS IT COMPULSORY

I promise him I’m not trying /
/ and he wonders what happened to me
/ WHAT ARE YOU DOING
/ HUH? BABE?
/ WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

He hears all my thoughts and I relent
/ I’M WATCHING YOU BUILDING A BOMB

/ he says HE IS THE BOMB
/ I think he is joking
/ call him A HAM

/ A MAN IS A HAM AND A MAN IS A HAM
/ my nursery rhyme ain’t a crime

/ until he detonates / and he tells me /
/ A WOMAN IS SPINELESS

^

Making myself into a bloated sandwich /

I sit in his mouth and try to see his world /

/ a small frequency comes in, a titter of jazz music of static, and a voice / an explosion

/ ARE YOU THERE?
/ ARE YOU THERE?
/ TELL ME WOMAN
/ ARE
/ YOU

/ THERE ????

Anastasia Jill is a lesbian writer living in the South. Her work has appeared in Lunch Ticket, FIVE:2:ONE, apt, Anomaly Literary Journal, 2River, Gertrude, Minola Review, Sheila-Na-Gig online, Rise Up Review, Blakelight, The Writing Disorder, The Bookends Review, and other journals.

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Alana Hayes
Alana in America

Did someone order the offering?
Sweet thing on the table?
Do you eat much like me?
Dessert. Deadly Delicious.
Always cooked flambé, I end in fire.
Where do you go?
And no it’s not the “good kind,”
it’s always been destructive in here.
I am a chopped down tree,
if I scream, and no one will listen,
did I make a sound?
When you burn me do your taste buds come to life?
Is it like religion was born in your mouth?
Does all that power feel good,
or did it singe your tongue on the way out?
Did God speak there when you decided it was okay to take things from me?
Call my body, not my body,
not mine to know what’s best to do with,
big brother knows better.
Sweet Street Meat
whistle my way
because this dress means I want it.
Catcall me
“Damn, baby!”
because These Jeans Means I want it.
And we’re still arguing about my body like it’s up for auction,
but when has it ever been?
I was never asked if I wanted to be put on display and argued over.
Fair enough to fetch a price,
so fair we offer her up to King Kong,
because what’s the difference between what an ape the size of Godzilla,
and a man will do to you, sweetie?
Either way, you’re the dinner plate,
and he’s preying on you tonight.
So cut me into pieces Sweeney Todd style, and call me candy,
these people don’t even know they’re consuming a corrupted image of womanhood.
Sweetheart, you’ll never be this perfect, and that
is how we keep you in line, so fall there.
And if you scream, and no one is listening,
did you make a sound?

Alana Hayes has a poem forthcoming in Night Music. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she received a BA in English Literature and another in Women and Gender Studies. Her poetry revolves around themes of Judaism, feminism, and social justice issues. Follow her on Instagram @womanasriot.

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Yuan Changming
Refugeeing

walking around
around the corner of a back lane
I used to carry my dark identity
as carefully as if it were a big piece
of sunglass, through which I could see
others or myself, only if I chose
to do so, but on a hasty afternoon
I tripped down, &
smashed it into hundreds of
small & sharp pieces; since then
my shredded selfhood has become a big
public nuisance, a traffic hazard
as it glistens glaringly under the sun, cutting
tires or human feet, from time to time

Yuan Changming is the author of the poetry collection Chansons of a Chinaman (Leaf Garden Press, 2009), and the critical monograph Politics and Poetics: A Comparative Study of John Keats and Li He (LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2010). His poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Literary Review of Canada, London Magazine, Paris/Atlantic, Poetry Salzburg Review, SAND, Taj Mahal Review, The Threepenny Review, Two Thirds North, and many other journals, as well as in The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2009 (Tightrope Books, 2009), edited by A. F. Moritz and Molly Peacock, and The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2012 (Tightrope Books, 2012), edited by Carmine Starnino and Molly Peacock. Born and raised in Songzi, China, Yuan holds a PhD in English from the University of Saskatchewan, and lives in Vancouver, BC, where he edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan.

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