Issue #13.1 A Poem by Yuan Changming
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Yuan Changming edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include Pushcart nominations & chapbooks (most recently LIMERENCE) besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline & Poetry Daily, among others. Yuan was nominated, and served on the jury for Canada’s National Magazine Award (poetry category).
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Issue #13.2 A Poem by J.D. Isip
Shitty Superpowers
for Shannan
Honestly, we thought it was the chicken. Every time. Honestly, it pissed us off, too. Every time. Two decades of meals, sweat forming around your upper lip, the inconvenience of having to wait outside of the bathroom, thumbing through phone books when there were payphones, menus, apps, hours of our lives listening to you hurl, squeaking out an apology for each new round.
How could we have known? How could we have seen it rooted to your skull cap, its patient enlarging, more than our own petty dramas always so urgent for us? You didn’t want to say you don’t want to die because we’d make fun of you, which was true, we spent days calling each other, asking each other, because we didn’t want you to die either, and who was going to make fun of us if you did?
Two years and they’ve found another mass. We were eating again, celebrating the anniversary and the powers that came with it: you could slow time, make it glow, infuse the most insignificant gesture with meaning, levitate above it all sometimes as long as a week. You tried it there that day, but every new power has its limits, every once in a while we relapse into our humanity, feel sick, offer up the weakest incantation: I’m sorry.
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J.D. Isip published his first collection of poetry, Pocketing Feathers, with Sadie Girl Press (2015). His second collection, Number Our Days, is forthcoming from Moon Tide Press (2023). His works—including poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and plays— have appeared in many magazines and journals including Ethel Zine, Borderlands, Pilgrimage Press, Poetry Quarterly, and Sandpiper. He is a full-time English professor in Plano, Texas.
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Issue #13.3 A Poem by Tom Barlow
Wayward Fingers
I stab at the keyboard, misspellings appear again, and it occurs to me my fingers might have thoughts of their own they can no longer hold back.
Words like moud and laom and hleq and stu;e make no sense to me but perhaps are meant as harbingers of a world they long for,
where anarchy in language has taken hold and the dictionary is a tool of the devil. As I ponder the pronouncements of spell check,
I remember the tag on the overpass of I-71 at the Hudson Street exit in an alphabet I don't understand, with a message that clearly wasn't
meant for me and I wonder if a revolution is already taking place all around me and I just can't read a word of it.
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Tom Barlow is an Ohio author of poetry, short stories and novels. His writings have appeared in journals and anthologies including PlainSongs, Ekphrastic Review, Voicemail Poetry, Hobart, Tenemos, Redivider, Aji, The New York Quarterly, The Modern Poetry Quarterly, and many more. See more at tombarlowauthor.com.
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Issue #13.4 A Poem by Lynn Glicklich Cohen
SANCTITY
Either it is all important or nothing is.
My dog inexplicably assaults another, such fangs and viciousness.
My atoms split and I scream her name, not the way
I usually say it, vault toward her. She lets go, hackles remain. No blood is drawn,
but harm is done to my belief that others are safe around us.
I am nostalgic for when we were benign.
In parks citywide, hundreds of ash trees are chopped, their honey-colored stumps
evoke war, purges, famine, plague. I gather the severed branches,
stuffing them into paper bags to provide kindling, at least.
Now the sky blares like a hostile spotlight, exposing indecency, ignorance. Bad planning.
Then my favorite birch, an arabesque, disappears overnight, its black-dappled bark
strewn like debris after a midair collision, in which everyone on board perished.
Maybe hope and naivete are more closely related than I knew, the way fire brings warmth
and also poisons the air. ________________________________________________________________________________________
Lynn Glicklich Cohen lives in Milwaukee, WI, where she writes poetry, plays cello, feeds birds and squirrels, walks her dog, and mostly hopes, in spite of it all, for the best.
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Issue #13.5 Three Poems by John Dorsey
A Poster
a dead giveaway bombs fell on grape pickers & louis armstrong like it was jazz they didn’t get it they didn’t even cry.
Long Hair Funk
tricky dick’s crazed voice four winds of war one beauty rose sucking in our holy songs.
Our Child
used to dance on the hill shadow didn’t stop my country every boundary a shrine 1982 sagged with joy holding each other.
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John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw's Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Tombstone Factory, (Epic Rites Press, 2013), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015) Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016) and Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Poetry, 2017),Your Daughter's Country (Blue Horse Press, 2019), and Which Way to the River: Selected Poems 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020). His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and the Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Prize. He was the winner of the 2019 Terri Award given out at the Poetry Rendezvous. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.
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Issue #13.6 A Poem by Russell Rowland
A Way Out
Off in a corner of the Newington house near the floor was this little recess in one wall closed with a panel of slats removable
maybe access to some piping or just a cubby for storage but by the time I concluded it was there for the baby I had been to crawl inside and get back where he began
before all that pushing and gasping and sweat and the swat that got him breathing in this worst of possible worlds by the time
I realized that portal was my escape route I was too big to fit and had no choice but to grow up in this worst of all worlds that still had rainbows for us hopefuls
a puppy as naïve as I and a little girl two states away I would love someday and walk with in the woods counting chantarelles like blessings so in retrospect I could say
to whatever builder left a way out if I needed it Thank you very much anyway
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Seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, where he has judged high-school Poetry Out Loud competitions. His work appears in Except for Love: New England Poets Inspired by Donald Hall (Encircle Publications), and Covid Spring, Vol. 2 (Hobblebush Books). His latest poetry book, Wooden Nutmegs, is available from Encircle Publications.
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AJ Wolff is a queer single mother, feminist, poet (she/her/hers). Her work is published and forthcoming in Glass Poetry, Rust + Moth, Yes Poetry, Riggwelter, Menacing Hedge, Glint Literary Journal, and other generous presses.
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Issue #13.8 A Poem by dan raphael
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dan raphael's poetry collection Maps Menus Emanations was published by cyberwit June of '21; Out in the Wordshed should be out from Last Word Press. More recent poems appear in Unlikely Stories, Synchronized Chaos, Otoliths, Mad Swirl and Rasputin. Most Wednesdays dan writes and records a current events poem for The KBOO Evening News.
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Issue #13.9 A Poem by Matt Dennison
Flower Nazi
Summertime in New Orleans is quite hot
and I was glad to have the job in the flower shop.
It cooled me for the nights. The manager was
a pretty woman and the place always smelled
nice and fresh though the shop was in the
worst part of town. The work consisted of
picking up crate after crate of flowers,
opening the crates, separating the flowers
and then smashing their stalk ends
with a thick rubber hammer. I never understood
the purpose of this, but it beat standing in line
at the soup kitchen hoping no one you knew
would see you. Every day the owner
would come around at closing time
to pay off the day help. I made him
nervous around his mustache.
“Here's your money, now go away
with your eyes, you,” he would say
and thrust the money at me.
But in spite of this mutual dislike
one day he raged in screaming that a bum
had stolen a plant from the front of the store
and that we had to GO FIND THE PLANT.
And we did. Marched around to every bar on the row
until we found the old drunk sitting in the worst joint
surrounded by his buddies all seemingly exhilarated
by the weak green growth propped up between
them and bringing them together for a rare moment
of liveliness in the noonday heat. And we took away
his best and only toy before he could even
collect a drink for telling his tale of bravery
and theft as I felt a fresher and more
interesting loss.
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After a rather extended and varied second childhood in New Orleans (street musician,
psych tech, riverboat something-or-other, door-to-door poetry peddler, etc.), Matt
Dennison—the author of Kind Surgery, from Urtica Press (Fr.) and Waiting for
Better, from Main Street Rag Press— has had work published in Rattle, Bayou Magazine,
Redivider, Natural Bridge, The Spoon River Poetry Review and Cider Press Review,
among others. He has also made short films with Michael Dickes, Swoon, Marie Craven
and Jutta Pryor.
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Issue #13.10 A Poem by Ken Meisel
Contemplation on Covetousness & Love
Sometimes, walking alone, I see where the wind goes. Nothing moves in a straight line. Only our lies, & even that
is a lie. & once, a long time ago, when I was trying out for the circus, I dated the woman who swallowed knives
just to prove she was dangerous & stronger than her uncle & his bar room brawl friends. & we’d hang out, behind
the trailer where her costumes – bright-green bubble dresses, wedge & slip dresses & sequin dresses… & pillbox hats,
berets, cartwheels – lay spilled all over a table & we’d sip scotch & talk about Spanish poetry & the Ramones,
& we’d walk along a stream, holding hands, & that’s where I first saw where the wind goes. & across a heath, where
even the grass seemed purple, we saw how covetousness glistens as it clings to small plants &, in the shelterbelt,
where the trees formed a kind of wall, we watched her life go up in blaze & flame, like a vulnerable conifer on fire
& that’s because the wind-stream of life – & how it’s actually imparted – is infectious… & can I confess that I chased her?
her pine needles up in flame, on fire – & with a mug of water – just to put her out? & shortly thereafter, I bought a small hut
& we lived quietly there together, but she suffered in an hysterical state where she felt she’d lost both her hands,
& love is so inestimable… & it’s like a form of wealth & so I’d kiss the ghost spaces there, in her absent hands, because.
& I’d sing to her at night a small, favorite French pathetique, & garble the words just enough so she’d feel memorialized,
& loving-kindness is vivid prana, & it’s a type of song, & it is so brief, this life, like brandy: everything we do, is true.
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Ken Meisel is a poet and psychotherapist, a 2012 Kresge Arts Literary Fellow, a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of eight books of poetry. His most recent books are: Our Common Souls: New & Selected Poems of Detroit (Blue Horse Press: 2020) and Mortal Lullabies (FutureCycle Press: 2018). His new book, Studies Inside the Consent of a Distance, was published in 2022 by Kelsay Books. Meisel has recent work in Concho River Review, I-70 Review, San Pedro River Review, Crab Creek Review and Rabid Oak.
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