Ode to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority

Subway, bus, or train,
surely the way to heaven
is run by the MTA.
Accursed network of rails and snarls,
spaghetti yards and sidetracks, cold
crowded platforms and broken air conditioning,
who else connects New Haven to Mott Haven,
Murray Hill, Manhattan, to Murray Hill, Queens,
Atlantic to Zerega, and every place in between?
We courted in high school, tied the knot at graduation,
ever together til death, or a transfer. 

We count our days by the paychecks,
the predawn breakfasts shared on deadline,
the nightcaps home with our Playbills in pockets.
Like any marriage, we’ve had rough times:
blizzards, strikes, fare hikes, 
yes, a mugging or two, missed connections
that changed my life, damn you:
lost a job, met a bad love, missed a plane.
Yet I chase after you like a schmuck,
and my heart still skips a beat 
when you come round the bend.

—Submitted on 09/26/2022

Bruce E. Whitacre is the author of The Elk in the Glade: The World of Pioneer and Painter Jennie Hicks (Crown Rock Media, 2022). His poems have appeared in American Journal of Poetry, Big City Lit, RFD, and other journals and anthologies. He holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. He is a native of Nebraska and lives in Forest Hills, Queens with his husband.

Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. Poems already in our Submittable queue that have simple non-flush-left formatting may be considered publication.

Weather Report for the April 12, 2021 KKK Rally in Huntington Beach, California


The clouds are broken.
California’s KKK Grand Dragon walks with a cane.
The police ride horses. 

The air quality is fair. 
“Fair” means the air is generally acceptable for most. 
However, sensitive groups may experience 
minor to moderate symptoms from long-term exposure.

The first person arrested is a Black man.

It is 64 degrees 
but the “real feel” is 74.
Wind gusts out of the south-southwest 
are clocked at 8 miles per hour.

The clouds remain broken.
There is only a one percent chance of rain
but it could rain.
It could.

—Submitted on 09/25/2022

Lisa Alvarez is a coeditor of Why to These Rocks: 50 Years of Poems from the Community of Writers (Heyday, 2021) and Orange County: A Literary Field Guide (Heyday, 2017). Her poem have appeared in Air/Light, Huizache, and Rise Up Review, among other journals. She holds an MFA in fiction from UC Irvine and co-directs the Writers Workshops at the Community of Writers in the Sierra Nevada.

Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. Poems already in our Submittable queue that have simple non-flush-left formatting may be considered publication.

House of Mirrors

in this house of mirrors look around you
all around you looks at you if you think

you are out of sight of stars remember
light itself is the mirror the stars 

made you the stars own you the stars 
constantly surveil you the sun

itself shines its light at you for hours
because it must know you will soon 

sin though you never believed in God 
the sun will whisper I am your sunshine 

your only sunshine and every other 
source of light will seem ninety-three

million miles away and in 
no rush to reach you

—Submitted on 09/25/2022

James Croal Jackson is the author of Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2022), Our Past Leaves (Kelsay Books, 2021), and The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights, 2017). Based in Pittsburgh, he works in film production and edits The Mantle Poetry.

Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. Poems already in our Submittable queue that have simple non-flush-left formatting may be considered publication.

Cancion Loquillo

Instead of sirens — glissando
of bells silvers sky’s vault.

The west darkens — There will be rain.

If you were a bird, what would they
name you? What song would you bring,
laced in bright ribbons, to my door?

Flamboyana trees shed their blossoms.

There is not enough room in this hour
to hold all the sounds of your sea.

—Submitted on 09/25/2022

W. Luther Jett the author of Watchman, What of the Night? (CW Books, 2022), Little Wars (Kelsay Books, 2021), Everyone Disappears (Finishing Line Press, 2020), Our Situation (Prolific Press, 2018), and Not Quite (Finishing Line Press, 2015). His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. A retired special educator, Jett lives in Washington Grove, Md.

Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left.

By Running Water

Say you’re this stream bed
framed by green willows
luscious with mud and trout fry;
channeling current through eelgrass,
tendrils, clusters of waterbug eggs.

Dream you’re the river
accepting this onrush
each blink each minute
open as love’s vast capacity.
One body pouring towards ocean,

weaving blue murmurs
from flint cliffs to sandbars 
flashing your twined 
ceaseless motion, 
your silver-coin flickers of hope.

—Submitted on 09/24/2022

Michael H. Levin is the author of Falcons (Finishing Line Press, 2020), Man Overboard (Finishing Line Press, 2018), and Watered Colors (Poetica Publishing, 2014). A lawyer and solar energy developer, Levin lives in Washington, DC.

Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left.

A Boat Made of Water

I’m not sure what I said standing in that lost decade’s doorway looking out at the train headed for San Francisco the rain cutting through the sparks lighting up the bay the sage brush torn out of the today’s news the crumbling cutouts of palm trees pomegranate trees I don’t want to forget what it’s like to die of a broken back broken life broken promises so much for last night’s handouts waiting for who’s next no more guns he said and wept her voice breaking over him and all those hunched in snow huddled around trash fires warming their hands barely able to hold the secrets I can never admit too many would be hurt by what I’ve become the falling sky and always the cold months dropping around me like the mystery itself like the dreams of the dead becoming alive or the scorched shadows limping across the warehouse floor the nightmare scenes sprayed across the leaning wall I can’t forget forgive me for hiding out in the junked Chrysler on blocks in the back yard spiders that never stop building their nests in the brittle hair of dolls and burnt skin help us help us she said why don’t you you’ve got nothing better to do that’s it then another funeral song that says goodbye good luck see you sometime the story of the crooked man the story nobody wanted to hear the story you carry in both hands your hopes piled on the street’s altar wild flowers bright as the summer field you once believed in cluster bombs at your finger tips James back from the war holding his three month old daughter Leslie over the swollen Skagit river to baptize her to cleanse her or set her adrift in a boat made of water wanting to watch her wave like a goddess from the other shore then turning away to lie against a cottonwood cradling her against his chest smiling at what might happen both of them sleeping now whatever it was that taught him just out of reach Katie singing dream a little dream and tell me you’ll miss me it’s the bartender ready to throw me out the third time this week ready to give in to whatever’s left it tastes I can’t resist tastes good god I want more to take me in like the river promised what I made up as beautiful as the loss of feeling as beautiful as we were beautiful

—Submitted on 09/25/2022

The poems of Thomas Brush first appeared in Poetry Northwest in 1970. He has received creative writing grants from the NEA, Washington State Arts Commission, and Artist Trust. His most recently books, from Lynx House Press, are God’s Laughter (2018), Open Heart (2015), and Last Night, winner of the Blue Lynx Prize (2012).

Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. 

Grand Canal

We tour the remnants, 
skirt the debris of petrified piles: 

oak and larch dislodged
from centuries-old beds 
of clay. Unmoored 

from silt and soil,
they sweep foundation,

pit and spall marble,
tear stucco, crumble wall.

What’s left of palaces 
lining the edges here, 

where cherubs ornamented ceilings 
and gold clocks kept time? 

Tide pays no homage 
to gilt furniture, fine fabric, 
stone-carved lions. 

It respects no threshold, 
plunders all. 

—Submitted on 09/25/2022

Poems by Anne Kenny have appeared in Equinox, South, Blue Dog Australian Poetry, Contemporary Haibun Online, and other journals. Along with co-authors Judith Dimond, Nicky Gould, Frances Knight, Gillian Moyes, Lyn White, and Vicky Wilson, Kenny’s work appears in Mirror Writing: An Anthology of Poetry by Common Room Poets (Categorical Books, 2009).

Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. 

The Dull Mad Fact

And what a divine relief it was when, with a tiny instrument resembling an elf's drumstick, the tender doctor removed from my eyeball the offending black atom! I wonder where that speck is now? The dull, mad fact is that it does exist somewhere.
—Vladimir Nabokov

The dull mad fact: it does exist somewhere:
the speck of soot in young Nabokov’s eye:
a billion-year-old ash of solar flare.

Somewhere a tortured cat screams out its terror,
unable to escape or to know why:			
this dull mad fact: it does exist somewhere.

Somewhere my father stands and grabs for air,
although his heart has beat its last goodbye
to billion-year-old spark of solar flare.

My brother lifeless in intensive care,
his lungs raped by a ventilator; my
dull maddening fact: it does exist somewhere.

My grandma fallen, helpless on the glare
of open radiator, heated by
the billion-year-old ash of solar flare.

Go where you will; say that you cannot bear
to think of it; say that you’d rather die.
The dull mad fact: it does exist somewhere,
lit by some distant planet’s solar flare.

—Submitted on 09/25/2022

Cheryl Caesar is the author of Flatman (independently published, 2020). Cheryl teaches writing at Michigan State University, serves on the board of the Lansing Poetry Club and the Michigan College English Association, and enjoys sketching in charcoal and painting in watercolors.

Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left revers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left.