Matthew Schultz
One-Room Schoolhouse

This is how far we have come:
tumult upon the sofa, cairns
of variegated textbooks
and frayed flashcards,
perfunctory interlocutors
stacked upon the coffee table
where colored pencils skeeter
through the gloaming.

Out there, a disease
ravaged frontier organized
by increments of grave depth
marks our passage with
extravagant rallentando.
We worship soupçon silence––
a small, ephemeral pox upon
the prevailing cacophony.

From my desk, pressed against the
westward wall furthest from bedlam
but nearest the window where
our flatulent dog heralds
trespassers with the audacity to
traverse his stretch of sidewalk,
I brace for the bleating of childhood
boredom, insidious as Manifest Destiny.

—Submitted on 10/31/2020 to the erstwhile What Rough Beast series

Matthew Schultz is the author of the novels On Coventry (Harvard Square Editions, 2015) and We, The Wanted (Cosmic Egg Books, 2021). His poems have appeared in Thrush and Eunoia Review. Schultz’s essays on Irish literary history have appeared in Irish Studies Review, James Joyce Quarterly, Postcolonial Text, and  Literature & Aesthetics. He holds a BA and an MA in English from John Carroll University in Ohio, and a PhD in literature from Saint Louis University. Schultz lives in the Hudson Valley and directs the writing center at Vassar College.  

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Jessica Cohn
Blame the Moon

Chrome moon, set back in the aching black skull of night,
single-beam headlight. I see you, through sliding glass.
I see how you spotlight your milk-bright canvas,

the outdoor sofa, stage-ready on the deck.
I am too early for morning, the only one awake,
it would seem, anywhere. And so recall the

childhood self, so lonely, so afraid of spirits
wrapped in moonlight, how rubbed eyes conjured elves.
Searchlight moon, even now you imprint

your brightness to question what’s real.
A sleeping figure, half-dressed, draped on
moon-lit cushions, air, cooling her thin, bare arms.

No cloud cover to hide the phalanx of proud boys.
They are coming for us. And I am wearing that
gown of glow. The body follows me

wherever I go. And it’s been so much trouble.
Moonbeams, my liftoff, sickness and strength.
Let me be otherworldly. Let me be stronger

tonight. Maybe it’s morning. Clocks only tick. This
is a lifetime. And I ask the candle-bright moon to heal me,
to whisper, to please me, to get my permission, to lie.

—Submitted on 10/30/2020 to the erstwhile What Rough Beast series

Jessica Cohn‘s poems have appeared in Rattle, Split Rock Review, Monterey Poetry Review, phren-z, Sleet Magazine, and other journals, as well as in California Fire & Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology (Story Street Press, 2020) and other anthologies. She lives on California’s Central Coast and works as a reporter.

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Marjorie Gowdy
Three Poems

The Gates of Janus

Molten pathway paved in strife
Angry mules of men pushed past ragged survivors
Pressed fiery hatred into our veins, ignored our mothers’ pleas.

Temples of gold, rhinestone streets as crushed diamonds
Painted faces haunted each dusk
Trickery deceit loud voices kneaded ours, muffled, into the ground.

The gates opened for war. No rooftop. No sun.
Gales twisted screeching through crevice and alley.
False fey heroes in the blue forged light.

Sometimes the conquered win, with secret squares of patience
Stirred evenly among the waiting.
Cries swim through stone to find fresh streams of air.

The fakery ends today.
The gates of Janus close. Peace simmers as steam among the masses,
At dawn lifts up, embraces the silvered hope before us.

A Murmuration

A murmuration of gloss’d starlings sweeps in from southern foothills,
defies a western wind, circles downward gleefully
as turkey vultures hunch over their defeated prey, the king.

From the north runs a skulk of red fox toward the bloody field
through dry leaves and sycamore balls and twigs
left by scattered sparrows.

Men sought the king in silver winter, followed his kin, sent doe across
the cold and rocky ridge. Never found him, the clever regent,
who watched light leave their eyes beneath the low sky.

‘Tis not wit nor skill that keeps me alive, the king told the forest,
true, a certain wisdom brews with age
but ‘tis raw fortune that takes one and dispatches the other.

“If we are mark’d to die, we are enough,” the bard had quoted Henry.
A felled king on the valley floor breathed in the words
as his tired hooves bent into frosted forage.

Ravens wait atop the pines. The red-tailed hawk rides biting thermals
to clouds only to dive in waves
toward the widening stain below.

When they were wee, the fox and the king skipped among dry leaves.
Starlings and ravens watched a prince grow
into an image, a mighty issue, of his own.

In January, light stretches across a red ridge toward the monastery.
In January, red birds and black birds, bobcats and pasture mites
test the teasing air.

In January, brothers die and sisters fall in cold embrace.
Winter sits still among the dying.
Spring will bury the blood.

Last of the Blue Azures

Sit still. How many times I called out to that child. He had wings, and fins.
A whirly-gig of golden curls and mud-splattered shorts.
He chases his own child now.
He holds butterflies in a weathered hand and in her tender grace
tiny fingers float just above the trembling life.

Are you a spring azure or a summer-spring azure?
There’s a difference, did you know? Spring azure bubbles in clay at river’s edge
stretches its inch. Tumbles alongside friends as the sun rolls north.
Cousin summer-spring rises at solstice and stays till frost.
Lonesome mostly, a jumper, in soft country grass it skips righteously.

I save bugs now. The dog and I catch them in the kitchen at twilight, Tupperware-top
flung among tall phlox. At this age, after these sorrows, I believe everyone
gets a last chance. Why shouldn’t the garden spider return to its silk?
Why shouldn’t a trembling amber dragonfly be freed into mountain’s mist?
Chance pulled me back. Evening lingers before the eyes of Jupiter.

—Submitted on 01/04/2021

Marjorie Gowdy‘s poems have appeared in Roanoke Review, Artemis Journal, Valley Voices, and Visitant. She was the founding executive director of the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Miss., where she worked for 18 years. Gowdy hols a BA (summa cum laude) from Virginia Tech, and a master’s degree in liberal studies from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She lives in the Blue Ridge mountains of Callaway, Va. 

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Brendan Constantine
Three Poems

poem, December 31st 2020

the year hangs on the back of a door
moves a little when we speak       is also a pair of shoes
a bowl of blue apples       the cord to some electric
thing coiled in a drawer

is a lampshade turned yellow       turned to burn
a muddy turtle whose shell is God’s hand
cupped to one ear       the year is finally quiet
finally melted at the bottom

of its pretty glass
of all the times to ask a question like this
is twelve buttons down the front coming
undone       coming to bed

yes to everything       whatever way you like
to be carried       a handful of sugar or black ants
which are the same thing
has stopped moving to watch me work

watch me push the boat away from the jetty
and sit back with you       already shipwrecked
already drowned       still talking about the year
is a conversation for later

when the chairs are put back       the orderlies huddled
in a driveway       lifting their masks to smoke and
the smoke not fading       not going anywhere
you can’t make me       no one makes anyone

it’s all over but the overing
is tire tracks in snow       a little bread left
not much       is paralyzed from the waist up
one bell       now two bells       now three

is outside naked again and half awake
has learned to keep clothes in the car

Brink

Let it be the print of my pillow
on my cheek, a weight of leaves.
Let it be easy to pronounce. I go
from window to window, look
for hints in the sky or the birds,
the play of light. When a lull falls
over the street, I think, Let it be
this. Or rather, If this is it, I’m ready.
I’ve gotten good at savoring: salty
peanuts, the colors of night, how,
when I let my arms hang loose,
I can’t feel my fingers, can’t tell
how many there are. I know
a blind woman who says it isn’t
like closing your eyes, but like
closing only one. That absence.
That particular nothing. Let it be
glitter on my sleeve, or pollen,
a little alphabet soup. Linguists
say the only word common to every
language is Huh. And it always
means the same thing, a quandary,
means Who knew and I’ll be damned.
Let it be no bigger than that sound,
a mere breath of epiphany. One
you can utter in a cup, or cover
with another mouth. Let it prompt
kisses, missed buttons on a shirt,
a spider brought home on my shoe.

Captain Blood

This morning I woke without
my left arm. Somehow, I just
went with it and calmly searched
the blankets. I got on my knees,
dragged the bed from the wall,
then went through my clothes.
I must’ve had it last night;
I’d worn a shirt with buttons.
For some reason, I thought about
Prokofiev’s Cortege of the Sun
which ends with a musical
picture of dawn. It’s astounding
and always makes me cry or,
at least close my eyes. I had
a vision of my arm shining
like that, maybe floating. It was
cold so I threw on a coat, half
expecting to find it in the sleeve,
and went outside. Nothing there,
not in the garden or under
the cars. As I straightened,
I saw the woman from next
door, walking up my driveway.
She held out something long
and crooked. “Is this yours?”
she asked. I was embarrassed
and had formed the first word
of an excuse when I saw
she was holding a snake.
“No,” I answered, my face
suddenly warm. “No?”,
she pressed, “You’re sure?
But aren’t you a writer?”
“I try,” I said, “I’m just not
at that level.” I have no idea
what I meant by that. She
lifted the snake higher
and tried to meet eyes
with it. “Someone’s looking
for you, Satan. Yes, they
are! Yes, they are!” We
parted after this and I sat
at my computer, trying
to think of her name. Barbara
something. Something hard,
like a bookcase full of battles
at sea.

—Submitted on 01/04/2021

Brendan Constantine is the author of Bouncy Bounce (Blue Horse Press, 2018), Dementia, My Darling (Red Hen Press, 2016), and nine other books. His work has appeared in Poetry, Best American Poetry, Tin House, Poem-A-Day, Prairie Schooner, and other journals and anthologies. Constantine has received support and commissions from MOCA, the Getty Museum, James Irvine Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches creative writing at the Windward School in Los Angeles and develops poetry workshops for people with aphasia.

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Subhaga Crystal Bacon
Praise Song

In the dark times, will there also be singing?
               Yes, there will be singing.
               About the dark times.
                              —Bertolt Brecht

I want to sing about these dark times, call them fulsome—
	dark being all colors—the wood of the ebony tree, 
piano keys, children’s eyes. I want to sing a borrowed
Praise Song for those who sang the Middle Passage
who sang in Hush Harbors, who sang in message.
	My arms ropy and long want to 
	lift the shades on shuttered hearts.

Oh, great loss. Oh, deep fear; let your waters flow. 
I want to hold your beating, your beaten
hearts, your grieving and wronged hearts.
Come on down, let’s go down, down to the river to pray.
Let’s wash ourselves: no more of the good old way.
	I want to sing with the river the way
	rocks make sound from motion.

I want blood to run freely, new blood from old, 
	dark and rich with ancestors, world’s
	first people, the minerals, the star-gold
and soil; the clear, the raging, salt or sweet waters 
before they rose up in wood and canvas and bullets
	before they carried those lives away
	to all the ways of dying.

I want to sing about these dark times, call it fulsome—
	my song, a kind of crying—
	I want to weave a kind of Praise Song:
Oh, my kindred, oh, my brethren, all the old ways
to say beloved, family, familiar. I want to appease
	the killed and the killer. I want to redeem
	the bent knee, release the choke hold.

—Submitted on 01/01/2021

Subhaga Crystal Bacon is the author Blue Hunger (Methow Press, 2020) and Elegy with a Glass of Whisky (BOA Editions, 2004). Her poems have appeared in Bombay Review, River Heron Review, Lavender Review, Humana Obscura, Plum Recruit, and other journals, A cis-gender, queer-identified woman, Bacon lives in Twisp, Wash.

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Srinivas Mandavilli
Winter 2020

The mandevillas clutter
the porch, awkwardly
stand supported by a trellis,
waiting for history to happen.
They rest in pots of peat moss,
need shade like us, get burned
easily by harsh summer news.

We will bring them indoors this winter.
For now, they are happy making
dramatic gestures to the air outside,
waving glossy leaves, and ice pink
flowers announce with their trumpets,
proud of their blooming
in some high desert.

—Submitted on 12/31/2020

Srinivas Mandavilli is the author of Gods in the Foyer (Antrim House, 2016). His poems have appeared in Connecticut River Review, Caduceus, Long River Run, Drunken Boat, SNReview, and other journals. Mandavilli attended medical school in India and trained in oncologic pathology in the US. He is chief of pathology and laboratory medicine at Hartford Hospital, and lives in West Hartford with his wife and two daughters.

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Daniel Romo
Conceding

The day after the election votes are still being counted,
and the man walking ten feet to my right whose shoes
look like they’ve seen better decades
has a conversation with himself and with those
who appear to be all the men
he used to be.

Pundits are counting the sums of red and blue states
trying to cast a light the color of layman’s terms,
so we can be at ease with at least
accepting the fate
of our next four years.

The mumbling man says, Gotta’ do better,
and for a moment I wonder if he is speaking of himself
or the nation, and when he yells, To hell with it!
I know our country
is in danger.

There is talk the president won’t vacate his position if
defeated,
and sometimes force is the only way we learn
the control we think we have is a fleeting term
modeled by the manner in which we acquire
loss.

I’m drawn back to the man to my right,
the independent thinker with the size 11 soiled shoes
because our souls, too, bear the filth
of so much tread and mudslinging,
and I wonder if either candidate
will be able to help
any of us at all.

—Submitted on 12/29/2020

Daniel Romo is the author of Apologies in Reverse (FutureCycle Press, 2019), When Kerosene’s Involved (Mojave River Press, 2014), and Romancing Gravity (Silver Birch Press 2013). His poetry and photography can be found in The Los Angeles Review, PANK, Gargoyle, Yemassee, and other journals. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Queens University of Charlotte, and he lives and teaches in Long Beach, Calif. More at danielromo.wordpress.com.

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Evan Stephens
Three Poems

Carrying On

Soon, the bars will all close.
Soon, the restaurants will empty.

Yet this wild archery lawn,
these elephant bones,

this wild strawberry tree,
these rose benches where

we ate our bread and wine—
they will carry on.

Ten days green
in the quarantine,

as the numbers
combed upwards,

always upwards,
enough to make one

invoke Jeffers.
Sitting beside you

at spring tide
at Sandymount—

the sea will carry on.
The canal face,

blushed with swan,
it, too, will carry on.

And now you and I,
on the sunken patio,

in ruined deck chairs
sitting and watching

the sun splash in—
carrying on.

A Low

Things between us
have reached such a low
that I’m drunk at noon
on a Wednesday in October.

But what if I grabbed the sun
for you, shaking it free
from lacy palms of cloud,
and gave it to your greenness?

Would it be enough to fix it?
Or are all these drams
of Scotch just turning out
dreams in the early afternoon?

Little Rainings

The broken symmetries
of the night…
you move,
I move.

You were in the green hill,
chatting with clouds;
I kept a bar open,
wrote you a ditty.

There are little rainings
everywhere tonight.
They slip down into the graves
across the street. It sets the mood.

But I need to get out,
walk the block,
shake this umbilical glass,
join a blind fog.

The moon threatens
to escape its sweater
of noctilucent cloud,
but we’re not looking.

—Submitted on 12/29/2020

Evan Stephens holds a BA from the University of Maryland College Park, and a JD from the Columbus School of Law. An attorney, he splits his time between Washington, DC, and Dublin.

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Steve Wilson
Two Poems

On Uncertainty

Everywhere the weave
between us loosens,
weakens. Threads fray. This

morning, before light,
old fears, familiars—
windows rattled by

sudden thunder, sounds
shaped within darkness—
brought an odd comfort.

Who knows what, in doubt,
may carry us through?</p

Safety

After months of isolation
and fear, I have begun to

shy, instinctively, from friends,
people on the sidewalks,
from my own grown children

no longer welcome inside
the home where they were raised.

I have come to reckon my backyard
is a compound, my chain-link fence
protection from whatever menace

threatens invisible beyond. You
have to wonder, I muse

during another scant afternoon
with the lawn and the birds,
how long will you seek security

in such otherless, darkening,
echoes of space and silence.

—Submitted on 12/25/2020

Steve Wilson is the author of Lose to Find (Finishing Line Press, 2018), The Reaches (Finishing Line Press, 2019), and three other collections. His poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Commonweal, Georgetown Quarterly, Midwest Quarterly, New American Writing, and other journals, as well as in anthologies including O Taste and See: Food Poems (Bottom Dog Press, 2003), Visiting Frost: Poems Inspired by Robert Frost (University of Iowa, 2005), Is This Forever or What?: Poems and Paintings from Texas, (Greenwillow Books, 2004), and others. Wilson holds a BA from the University of Oklahoma, and an MFA in creative writing from Wichita State. He lives in San Marcos, Tex., where he is a professor of English at Texas State University.

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