Peggy Dobreer
Untrust With Songbirds

My room cartons in cardboard, string-sealed boxes
Death so close you could throw a stone home
 
            A stone like death that throws its song home
            My stance trembles with brown thrasher songs
 
Brown thrashers tremble in their wilderness of song
I turn trail and run from a faint field of sky 
 
            I am this faint field of sky and won’t turn or run
            I am a citadel of ghost prayer, a cranial prison
 
A cranial prison is a citadel of prayers and ghosts
I hear only one true sound—like a baby—laughing
 
            A baby laughing strikes one note only                
            Like lovers gasping to find their own salvation
 
I grasp at my lover to trust our found salvation
My room cartons in cardboard, string-sealed boxes

—Submitted on 08/24/2020

Peggy Dobreer is the author of Drop and Dazzle (Moon Tide Press, 2018) and In The Lake of Your Bones (Moon Tide Press, 2012). Her poems have appeared in The Los Angeles Press, Rise Up Review, Cultural Weekly, Poetic Diversity, The Juice Bar, and other journals. She lives in Southern California. 

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Simon Leonard
Out of Breath

Castro Urdiales, August 2020

We hoped for August the way you hope for a cure —
prayer we never got around to voicing.

From this bridge
between what was a fortress
and what is not quite a church,
now a lighthouse collecting spray,
in a normal summer, bronze daggers trust
into thrusting water,
burnished arms stretch roaring
to a buoy, at the end of air.

Treading tides
against the expanse of ocean, they turn,
to measure themselves
against the vertigo in their lungs,
the depth beneath, the weight within; the certainty
unless their arms and legs keep churning,
the bulk of their bodies will kill them,
back towards gaping sand.

From the bridge, this August,
you can just make out
stripped branches swaying by the shore —
so many unrecited prayers
for when breathing was a given.

—Submitted on 08/21/2020

Simon Leonard teaches secondary school in Germany and has a deep connection to Spain. His work has appeared in Envoi, Orbis, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Poetry Kit, and other journals.

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Carmelina Fernandes-Kock am Brink
“Half-breed,”

She called me, smiling, malice in her eyes,
The day I told her my story.
A term I thought she could only have learned
Growing up in the United States.
I returned the smile, though stunned and
Stung by the cruel misnomer,
Diametrically opposed to the true
Breeding of anyone blessed with more
Than merely one passport, one origin.
Those who learn early on to grasp
The nuances of
Each parent’s language who tread
Head high
On (un)familiar turf either side of
The Atlantic, or other waters, who do not jumble or falter
On etiquette but see the world as their
Oyster. Who do not endlessly complain
Compare and find WASP material the only
Readable guide.
As freely as the sap flows through the maple
Is diversity inscribed in the DNA
Of the nation
I hail from. So thoroughly bred into our
Bones, despite the cold of those endless
Winters,
Lies the assurance
That exponential
Growth stems from the blood rushing through
Veins of intertwined members on
Passionate nights of discovery. An Other
Body complete with baggage we accept to
Face carry embrace, make our own.
Histories remembered rekindled
Listened to. Applied knowledge that beauty
Appears like a rainbow arching across the
Grey zones.
How better equipped can one be to find
Out-of-the-box solutions
Than having grown up
On a mix of lentils frankfurters
Drunk feni, diluted
With coke, sampled poutine
On occasion
Yet truly Indulged in tourtière and cheered on
The only hockey team that ever really mattered?
Our street’s segregation ran across language lines and we kids,
Trilingual caramelized-skinned, came from a
Planet so odd our neighbours knew not
How to size us up and I felt I belonged only once I’d landed
At the downtown high school of
United nations,
Where every face every name
Became a melody, a heralding call of
Identities anchored in
Split-second decisions, risk, memory and
New beginnings.
On full moon nights gliding across the local ice rink
Or lying atop our mountain of snow piled high
By the plough, lights flashing, in
A moment of truce with the enemy
Gazing up at the stars
I could feel all the great
Worlds inside me
Converge. And
Imagine myself later on come spring
Striving to find
A certain blossom of blue
Coaxed into view solely by
Those born and bred
To make the long climb, see far and wide,
Take the time,
Recognize.
I’d pluck it out gently left hand shading petals,
Drink in all its glory, then gift it to a friend.
No halfway measures.

—Submitted on 08/21/2020

Carmelina Fernandes-Kock am Brink is of German-Indian background, grew up in Canada, and teaches English in Toulouse, France.

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Chad Parenteau
DNC Tankas

Bernie Sanders Jesus Tanka, Take Three

Say it one more time.
Bernie Sanders Jesus has
died. He has risen. 
He will never run again.
He will never run again. 


Obama Jesus Tanka

With all in awe and
hashtagging #mymessiah 
Obama Jesus
performs the same miracle
of simply not being worst. 


Joe Biden Jesus Tanka

Joe Biden Jesus
moved aside his own grave’s stone,
came into the light,
found himself a flaming sword,
hoped he knew how to use it.


AOC Jesus Tanka

AOC Jesus
only have seven stations
of the cr


Robert Trump Jesus Tanka

Robert Trump Jesus.
His cross has eighteen stations.
His older brother
played golf through each one of them,
left before the ascension. 

—Submitted on 08/21/2020

Chad Parenteau is the author of The Collapsed Bookshelf (Tell-Tale Chapbooks, 2020) and Patron Emeritus (FootHills Publishing, 2013). His poems have appeared in Résonancee, Boston Literary Magazine, Queen Mob’s Tea-House, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, and other journals. He is associate editor of Oddball Magazine and hosts the Stone Soup Poetry series in Boston. Online at chadparenteaupoetforhire.com.

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Susan Gubernat
Evening, Corona

Jasmine scents reach
the balcony in quarantine

as the children’s voices do—
knights and villains

flashes of a fake sword,
real threats of

dinner and bedtime.
A caged parakeet’s

shrill whistle ends
the games again and again

though no one listens.
Vega pierces the night sky,

pinhole to the infinite.
No more standing in line,

we plead, no more mumbling
behind masks.

And when I touch you
with a gloved finger

something warns me still—
it isn’t safe, isn’t safe.

—Submitted on 08/17/2020

Susan Gubernat is the author of The Zoo at Night (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), Analog House (Finishing Line Press, 2011), and Flesh (Helicon Nine Editions, 1999). Her poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, Crab Orchard Review, Gargoyle, Prairie Schooner, Pleiades, and other journals. Gubernat holds an MFA from the University of Iowa. A professor emerita of English at California State University, East Bay, she has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, the Millay Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Born in Newark, Gubernat lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Francis Fernandes
Cologne

The sun was less hot in the evening
so we went out to find something
to eat, in this two-thousand-year-old
city on the Rhine given its name
by the wife of a Roman emperor
and mother of the dark one
who burned for the arts and thought
nothing of committing a little
matricide. The grey-black stone cathedral
loomed over us, another reminder
of hundreds of years of toil and
craftsmanship, war and fire. We picked
Google’s brain and after some
meandering came to a small Italian
place hidden in the back alleys
where we ate very large pizzas and
drank Kölsch and Apfelschorle
by an open window. The whole week
was like a sauna, and now suddenly
the sky darkened and cracked, and the rain
poured down, flooding the streets as though
the Kölner Dom had opened a hatch
in the aft of its massive vessel and centuries
of rivulets coursed down the street
just four feet from our table, cyclists
pushing on, oblivious of the statues
and altar pieces, the crowns
and zucchettos bobbing over
the roiling cobblestones. The relics
of the Three Magi had broken free
from their fancy housing made of silver
and filigreed gold: I could tell
it was their bones, their tattered garments,
because I had taken a peek when
the guide had turned to leave and my
teenage daughter had followed the rest of
the devotees—with a Bluetooth bud in
one ear since she had agreed
to do the tour only if she could half
listen to her music. Which she had also
been doing here, in fact, at least until
the pizzas were in front of us,
between fork and knife, and the pretty
waitress had said Prego. Buon appetito.
She ate with relish, I was glad to see.
At least one thing I had done right.
I smiled and nodded towards the scattered
debris and the remains of wisdom
outside the window. They were taken
from Constantinople to Milan in three
hundred something and then eight
hundred years later stolen
by Frederick Barbarossa and brought
here. They built this huge
cathedral just so the three of them
would have a proper shrine. And now
look! She smiled back and said, Papa,
can you stop it finally! I was there, too,
remember? And then she pointed
to my pizza with her knife. Stop worrying
so much. Why don’t you just eat? This
crust is so amazing!

—Submitted on 08/21/2020

Francis Fernandes grew up in the US and Canada, and lives in Germany, where he writes and teaches.

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Eileen Cleary
Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV.

The earth tests each person,
like the Great Famine tested a woman
who inevitably succumbed. A man
later carved her image, having no camera,
into wood. I watch her story on a T.V.
that channels crowds of gasping people. No words

escape their chiseled throats. No words.
No proper nouns. No names to tell which person
might be the effigy on my T.V.,
and no markers to signal where this woman’s
bones might be. More femurs as the camera
pans a field to an ancient farmer, a man

who fled Ireland for America. In his diaspora, this man’s
tears, or mine, blur the screen. Picture, his words
beg, the pits they threw their bodies in. His inner camera
mutely records as each new person
perishes in a fresh death toll, conjuring this woman
as whole villages sicken and die on T.V.

Stockpiles of grain to fatten the cattle, the T.V.
anchor adds, for export. The old man
flinches. Fish just offshore. This woman
wasn’t felled by potato fungus but by words.
He explains, The contagion of each person
who spread them. The camera

in the man pings. So sensitive. His camera
sharpens through the T.V.
events we now witness in person,
a terrible gathering in the gut. The old man
scowls: Let this thin the herd were the words
the leaders levied against this woman.

The newly dead, like this woman,
carry their invisible lives away from the camera,
the wider orb never turning to their words:
I was here. Leaders stream on T.V.
rarely naming each person
as distinct and meaning it. One such man

was elected after boasting to every person who’d listen
on camera or T.V., about savaging a woman.
After aping a disabled man. I can barely speak these words.

—Submitted on 08/17/2020

Eileen Cleary is the author of Child Ward of the Commonwealth (Main Street Rag Press, 2019) and 2 A.M. With Keats (forthcoming from Nixes Mate, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Sugar House Review, West Texas Literary Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Solstice, Mom Egg Review, and other journals. Cleary founded the Lily Poetry Review and Lily Poetry Review Books, and curates the Lily Poetry Salon.

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Lori Bellamy
Personified

The old woman is here again
wearing her red pajamas.
She is talking rapidly,
holding herself up with her
elbows on two low canes.

There is a fence, she tells me, around a field
without sheep. No lambs kicking green.
No cows kissing grass. The earth eroded
so we see out the rift to the other side.

She is here alone, except
for me, sitting at the table
with an empty glass
in that shift from late to early
the sun rises
and throws a glare across the floor.

There is also a well that
stares back at the sky.
Echoes into you
when you sing down into it
when you try to fill it with song.

It is surprising how fast
she moves back into the other room
still talking,
calling out the names
of the newly dead.

—Submitted on 08/16/2020

Lori Bellamy is a math tutor living in Seattle.

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Lori Bellamy
May Day

A woman stabbed my husband at that party.
A glancing stab, a flabby stab, but still she spilled
his single malt almost on his coconuts. He lifted them away.
He was dressed as a palm tree, see? For the weekend,
with fronds in his hat splayed so they were dancing
round his head. For this every-year party we go to in May.

I was dressed as a parrot that May, I may
have had feathers, I did have a beak for the party.
Picture a palm tree and parrot in purple tights dancing.
His three coconuts tied round his neck so they spilled
bodaciously. Those coconuts thrilled him all weekend.
The lady dressed as Mata Hari? The stabber? She got away.

After the stabbing, Mata Hari stashed her weapon and got away.
The rest of us stayed in the kitchen to celebrate May,
which is the reason, the occasion for the weekend.
Our castle dwelling friend with the millionaire teeth throws a party
every May to celebrate how spring has spilled
to summer, with all the world and every creature dancing.

Velvet sofas slid away from glossy floors for dancing.
Platters of exotic morsels brought from far away.
The wide armed view, the bluff, the star spilled
sky. Music, singing, esoteric tipples, this is how we usher in the May.
It would have been today. Today is the day of the party.
I’d be practicing pre-emptive self-care to prepare for the weekend.

This weekend we’re protecting friends with weakened
immune systems. Keeping our droplets from dancing
into unprotected faces. The castle with its empty spaces. A party
of one. The good part is no stabbing, no sickness when we’re away
from one another. And look, the actual May
arrives. Birds fill the trees, the ground is flower spilled.

The grass is filled with green from all the rain that’s spilled.
I think back to January which was another weekend
party. The one in March was cancelled, just like the one in May.
But it’s okay. The air outside is dancing,
it’s wet, it’s clean with rain. It takes away
the quiet night. A raucous rooftop raindrop party.

May still spills her blossoms
in a party for the trees. Weekends
of dancing leaves, with all the people safely locked away.

—Submitted on 08/14/2020

Lori Bellamy is a math tutor living in Seattle.

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Linda Lowe
Congratulations

There were signs of congratulations on every door. Positive thinking was all the rage. If you said yes enough times, yes it was, yes sir. Or madam. No one was left out that way. You could be crossing the Mojave and everyone would wish you well. Maybe offer you a swig of water if it came to that. Point out that you might find a good pair of boots along the way. People were falling after all. How long could they be expected to stand? Their boots, please, have at them.Close their eyes, utter a few words, move on.

—Submitted on 08/13/2020

Linda Lowe is the author of the chapbook Karmic Negotiations (Sarasota Poetry Theatre Press, 2003), winner of the SPT National Poetry Competition. Her poems and stories have appeared in Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Outlook Springs, A Story in 100 Words, The New Verse News, Star 82 Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthology Weatherings (Future Cycle Press, 2015), edited by David Chorlton and Robert S. King. Lowe lives in Southern California with her husband.

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