rummaging through junk
by John Grey
I come upon a typewriter, an Olivetti.
My sister typed on it
back when her teeth were crooked.
I’d toss it out
but I’d feel as if
I was throwing away my sister
and her earliest attempts
at writing a poem about a boy.
So I hold onto it,
along with the bronze shoes,
the matchboxes, the key rings,
the postcards, the crude watercolors.
Anything that’s not a photograph.
Anything that may as well be.
John Grey is Australian born short storywriter, poet, playwright, musician, Providence RI resident. Has been published in numerous magazines including South Carolina Review, Christian Science Monitor, Greensboro Poetry Review, Slipstream, Agni, Poet Lore and That. Has had plays produced in Los Angeles and off-off Broadway in New York. Winner of Rhysling Award for short genre poetry in 1999.
richmond
by Ace Boggess
Street-art metalwork origami
folded from paperclips & wire:
quarter-sized scorpions, spiders.
Guy tries to make a buck,
survive another humid Richmond night.
A visitor here, I want to help
but am employed by poetry,
de minimis wage, benefits
counted less in dollar signs
than sighs, laughter, knowing nodding.
I give what I have: a cigarette,
fire, conversation shared with a woman
smoking, too, outside the angle of view
of the table where her friends eat dinner.
Not the pleasure that comes with coins,
offered or received—at least
none of us die alone tonight.
Ace Boggess is author of five books of poems, most recently Misadventure (Cyberwit, 2020) and I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So (Unsolicited Press, 2018), and two novels. His poems appear in Harvard Review, Notre Dame Review, River Styx, Rhino, and North Dakota Quarterly. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
field notes
for trayvon martin 1995-2012
by Sharon Pretti
The sound of leaving is what I remember.
I tried counting their bodies. The wind
the geese made shivered the surface of the pond,
its edge where I was standing. I thought
their flight was a measure of danger.
I tried leaving. The sound of their bodies
is what I counted. The wind remembered
their shapes flared against the sky. No shots
ruptured the air that day, no spoil of flesh,
the immature and downy necks.
I remember the bodies. Their leaving counts.
The sound of the wind is what I tried
to capture, my hands wide to the cold.
I wanted to inhabit the world the way a bird
or boy does. Without armor,
all that surprise escaping their throats.
Sharon Pretti’s work has appeared in Spillway, Calyx, JAMA, The Bellevue Literary Review and is forthcoming in the Jet Fuel Review. She is also an award-winning haiku poet and a frequent contributor to haiku journals including Modern Haiku and Frogpond. She works as a medical social worker at a large county hospital where she also leads poetry groups for seniors and disabled adults.
nineteen geese
by Jack Chielli
Clamoring like raucous bells across the evening sky
nineteen geese flew over the fallow brown fields
searching for a patch of sky to splash into
As they flew toward the Catoctin Mountains,
necks outstretched with intention,
the sun glinted off their white tail feathers
They settled in the ruins of the corn field
their clonking fading as stars reclaimed the sky.
It wasn’t until morning brushed away the aging darkness
that I saw through the green-hued frost of the earliest light
a way of being at peace on the spinning earth
and witnessed the peace of still wings tucked in tight.
Jack J. Chielli is a writer living in Frederick, Maryland, where he is vice president of enrollment management, marketing and communications for Mount St. Mary’s University. He has worked as a newspaper journalist, magazine editor, political communications director, and higher education communications and marketing professional. He holds an MA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University, Pennsylvania, a BA in Writing from Roger Williams University, Rhode island, and served as editor of his collegiate literary magazine.
lemon tree haiku
by Mary Jo LoBello Jerome
A thin, thorned sapling,
a green gift for Father’s Day,
abundant in buds.
Star-pointed flowers,
fragrant, waxy, wanton throats,
profuse, thick blossoms.
The potted plant blooms,
self pollinates without bees,
lush near the window.
Such heady flowers,
generous enough bounty
from the stick-thin form.
Grateful, uncertain,
we water, keep the shades high,
wipe scale from the leaves.
A December snow
but inside the house, lemons
yellow and ripen.
January ice.
Curled citrus peels in the drinks.
The sun in our mouths.
Mary Jo LoBello Jerome is the 2019 Poet Laureate of Bucks County. Her poems and stories have been published in The Stillwater Review, River Heron Review, SVJ, US1 Worksheets, Little Patuxent Review, Short Story, and other journals. She has written for numerous publications including The New York Times and Scholastic Inc. Mary Jo holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is currently working on a collection of poems.