Marc Sheehan
Barn, Collapsed

It’s neither your barn
nor your collapse,
so why should you care

that the roof now covers
rubble neatly
as if a demolitions expert

planted perimeter charges
to implode it only
after the ghost of the gentle

poet Issa evacuated the last
owl, field mouse,
and litter of feral cats.

But say the barn is the country.
Then isn’t the barn yours,
as well as the collapse? No,

because then you’d have some say
in where the owls and mice
and cats and gentleness went. No,

only the caring is yours.

Marc J. Sheehan is the author of two full-length poetry collections —— Greatest Hits (New Issues Press) and Vengeful Hymns (Ashland Poetry Press), and a chapbook of poems, Limits to the Salutary Effects of Upper Midwestern Melancholy (Split Rock Review). He has published stories, poems, essays and reviews in numerous literary magazines including Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, and Michigan Quarterly Review. His flash fiction has been featured on NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction series as well as on the program Selected Shorts. He lives in Grand Haven, Michigan.

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Mike Nichols
What Comes aRound Goes Around

I told her, Practice
these words with me
and you will have enough
Spanish to find work
when we cross the
border into Mexico.

At the guard tower they fired
bullets at our feet and cried,
No hay trabajo aqui.

Mike L. Nichols is a graduate of Idaho State University and a recipient of the Ford Swetnam Poetry Prize. He lives and writes in Eastern Idaho. Look for his poetry in Rogue Agent, Scryptic Magazine, Ink&Nebula, Plainsongs Magazine, and elsewhere. Find more at mikenicholsauthor.com

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Marc Sheehan
Minor Late Empire Diversions

High bright cumulus clouds share the sky
with gulls, as in that painting by Constable,
hanging in this museum of the moment.

The plastic back-porch table,
pierced by a tropical-print umbrella,
keeps slanting Michigan sun at bay.

Shade shifts as daylight
achieves zenith. Croquet balls dot the lawn.
A sweaty gin and tonic is precisely

the right kind of late empire diversion –
the bottle sporting Victoria’s portrait,
quinine curing diseases creeping

a little closer to home every year.

Marc J. Sheehan is the author of two full-length poetry collections —— Greatest Hits (New Issues Press) and Vengeful Hymns (Ashland Poetry Press), and a chapbook of poems, Limits to the Salutary Effects of Upper Midwestern Melancholy (Split Rock Review). He has published stories, poems, essays and reviews in numerous literary magazines including Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, and Michigan Quarterly Review. His flash fiction has been featured on NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction series as well as on the program Selected Shorts. He lives in Grand Haven, Michigan.

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Susanna Donato
Sessions (a playlist)

In session,
woman reads woman
free exercise
of the vote
senator from Utah
picks
his nose

I shuffle:
whether
you’re Donald
Trump or
an anarchist

dent-bumpered
cars stock gutters
bent steel
sticker-plastered
scrapes

I shuffle:
girls are
someone to tell
my problems
to girls are
look at them where
is the
celebration?

a gutter-pumpkin
beneath a tire
not a pumpkin
a squirrel
so fat I laugh
fat as decapitation
pregnant squirrel
naked worm-babies
in fat squirrel-belly
squirrel compelled
to love them
not love
feed, guard, grow
helpless
we love
our own skin

I shuffle:
What is right
in my life
I get drunk
every night

I shuffle:
Rip her to shreds
She gets up
from all fours
Rip her up
She gets up

She gets up
 

Susanna Donato is a Denver-based writer whose poems have appeared in Entropy and Columbia, and essays have appeared in Proximity, Okey-Panky, Blue Earth Review, and elsewhere. Learn more at www.susannadonato.com or on Twitter @susannadonato.

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Julene Tripp Weaver
Nightmare Presidency

Our current president
with his team, terrorizes me.
What I say to soothe myself:
this too shall pass,
the tide will swing,
the children will grow up and vote.
I do my best to keep my hope, keep
faith in the nuances, the small hammers
with beating hearts. Let more of us refuse
to say his name, refuse the trauma,
recognize our imperative
to keep ourselves sane,
not collapse in vain.

Julene Tripp Weaver is a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle, WA. She has a chapbook and two full size collections. Her latest, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, published by Finishing Line Press, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards and won the Bisexual Book Award and four Human Relations Indie Book Awards. Her work is online at The Seattle Review of Books, HIV Here & Now, Voices in the Wind, Antinarrative Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, MadSwirl, and Writing in a Woman’s Voice, you can find more of her writing at www.julenetrippweaver.com.

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Margo Davis
Appropriate

I love the dodge, ruse, subterfuge,
the something of yours which will be mine.
Nothing personal, always business,
someone else’s, which quickens my pulse
like some employer rushing to deal
with a thief, this little thief,
my throbbing head jam-packed
with the best pilfered goodies I don’t need.
Well, the mind is overpowering.
Just tell yourself you have already
been in, your ticket misplaced.
Match the inviting smile, slow a bit, that’s
disarming. They advance only if
you speed through or tense up.
Glide and woo, it’s a shoe-in.
Claim the best seat in someone else’s
house. Heart. Pocketbook. Bank
account. Let them entertain you.

Margo‘s more recent poems have appeared in The Fourth River, Ekphrastic Review, Misfit, and Light, and the Houston Chronicle (Fall). Recent anthology publications include Enchantment of the Ordinary (December), Of Burgers and Ballrooms, Untameable City, numerous Texas Poetry Calendars, and Echoes of the Cordillera. A Pushcart nominee awash in Republican mindsets, Margo thrives on closely observing film, photos, and natural settings. She’s known for eavesdropping.

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Gregg Murray
VOTING SIGN

This guy slides the narrow rods
into the dirt, cocks his head.

He backs up startled, does he worry
someone will see him, someone

who disapproves of his message.
Once it’s in, he backs up a few steps,

looks it up & down like an ex
with whom he’s fucked things up

& now she looks good, feet
firmly in the ground. The red & blue

sign reeks of home job. His beard’s
a home job, dead sagebrush & red

& too full in the neck. Trucker hat,
home job taped along the bill.

STIHL, it says, lawn care equipment,
and she always made him eat

shit about his lawn job, made
him scrub out the grass smell before

he could touch her. She was often
too tired for his hands. Putting

make-up on strangers, she’d say,
the compliments you’ve got to give!

What do you say to make a gal buy
orange eyeshadow? But she could

sell shit to a shithead, a Wednesday
matinee for Schindler’s List.

Wendy Stevenson. He stopped
in his tracks about ten yards from

where he’d put the sign.
She was a goddam Republican

whose old man was a prick.
And it just wasn’t right. All the sign

says is VOTE but still, that woman’s
pops wouldn’t wander dead

into this neighborhood
and she don’t live here either.

Gregg Murray is associate professor of English at Georgia State University, editor-in-chief of Muse/A Journal, and executive editor of Real Pants. He has recent work in Pank, DIAGRAM, New South, Birmingham Poetry Review, Carolina Quarterly Review, and Pleiades. Gregg is a regular contributor to Huffington Post and Fanzine. He is the author of “Ceviche”.
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Megan Primrose
Eiderdown

A mist veil keeps the sorrow waiting
as the wind chill shivers the barley
under a starless, moonless, sky.

Tomorrow, a dawn not worth waking for:
the bread, stale, before it’s been proved,
the milk, sour, as it drips from the udder,
the earth parched, before the grassy dew is dry.

But for now, you who sleep slumber sleep
take peace for granted,
hold it as light as a secret
in the mouth of a child.

Megan Primrose is a welsh writer and artist based in Scotland, UK. She tweets @bookbeacon. Find out more: www.meganprimrose.co.uk

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Mike Nichols
Okay, Now Read the Bottom Line for Me

We never saw it coming with our
pupils like pinpricks in response
to the deluge of consumerism.
When the American façade
failed, forcing dilation like
a heartless optometrist,
it was too late.

‘Merica the serfdom snapped
open her eyes, came full awake.

Mike L. Nichols is a graduate of Idaho State University and a recipient of the Ford Swetnam Poetry Prize. He lives and writes in Eastern Idaho. Look for his poetry in Rogue Agent, Scryptic Magazine, Ink&Nebula, Plainsongs Magazine, and elsewhere. Find more at mikenicholsauthor.com

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Chad Parenteau
Brett Kavanaugh Jesus

Brett Kavanaugh Jesus
has a calendar to mark his time
from child to man,
performing no miracles.

Brett Kavanaugh Jesus
blames his inquisition
on Soros and Clinton.
#gomorrahgate

Brett Kavanaugh Jesus
demands Heaven’s kingdom
without all the stations.

Brett Kavanaugh Jesus
wants us to get started
on his rapturous return
before he ascends.

Brett Kavanaugh Jesus
wants every woman
to be a Virgin Mary.

Brett Kavanaugh Jesus
wants every man
an impregnating archangel.

Brett Kavanaugh Jesus
wants to return to earth
in less than 300 days,
not two-thousand years.

Brett Kavanaugh Jesus
has no time for confessions.

Chad Parenteau is the author of Patron Emeritus, released in 2013 by FootHills Publishing. His work has appeared in Tell-Tale Inklings, Queen Mob’s Tea House, What Rough Beast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Ibbetson Street, and Wilderness House Literary Review. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine. His second full-length collection, The Collapsed Bookshelf, is forthcoming.

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