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Issue 159
the night, possible
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The Note
Dear Readers,
Here's a story by Howie Good:
The tubby kid with the embarrassing bowl haircut in my Hebrew school class also sat behind me in homeroom at regular school. His name was Jerry Greenfield. We weren’t friends or anything – he was kind of nerdy – but we got along OK. As the Passover holiday approached, our Hebrew school teacher, Mrs. Pincus, a refugee from the Nazis, explained how the Jews who wandered in the desert for 40 years were sustained by an edible substance called manna. Every morning it covered the ground like frost. Mrs. Pincus said manna adapted to the taste of the individual. That is, it tasted sweet, tart, spicy, whatever the person who gathered it preferred. The whole thing sounded ridiculous to me even then. And to Jerry? Jerry grew up to be the Jerry of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream.
And another by Bill McCloud:
One of those family story type things my younger sister loves to tell is of the time in the 1960s when we were walking together to junior high school. We ran into a handful of boys who began yelling at my sister, making disparaging remarks about her weight. I walked over to them and quickly shut that stuff down. I wasn’t going to have anyone making fun of my sister. As we resumed our walk she turned to me and said, “Thank you, Billy.” According to her, I immediately responded, “Shut up, fatty!” I cringe at each retelling of the story though she has found a way to make that old chestnut sound more positive than not every time she tells it, and she loves to tell it. To her it's kind of a love story.
And this by F. John Sharp:
There is a sign by the side of the road on Interstate 71 between Medina and Mansfield, Ohio, announcing that we’ve left the Lake Erie watershed. This means that if we were to spill over the guard rail in a rain storm, we would, after some length, plop headlights-first into the Ohio River, where we would cruise past the Queen City, meet up with the Mississippi, and loll in the shadow of the Gateway Arch, before gliding into New Orleans, where we would navigate to a full stop. We've never been to New Orleans. We would need to rent a car.
My thanks to F. John Sharp, F. J. Bergmann, Steve Klepetar, Bill McCloud, Annie Stenzel, and Ina Roy-Faderman.
Thanks to all who contributed to this issue!
Love,
Dale
D. R. James
Cement Garden
It’s spring again, silvery buds on branches,
the garden violent with hydrangea sticks.
Grandma has wandered to her front-porch chair.
There, her toes barely touch the floor, her gown
screens her sighing knees, her newspaper masks
sink and cupboard undulating behind
her eyes. Apology’s necessary—
this is not her style: beyond the gate flash
lime and lemon groves along steep park lanes,
their peeled bone crash-glittering in her sleep.
Susan Michele Coronel
Ripe
Let the blueberry bear witness
to vanilla & lemonade. Let them exhale
into a long April aperture, create
a mixture from what’s borrowed, not bought,
pieces stitched to enable more surprise.
Turn your face to the west until it touches
California, where strawberries are always ripe.
Invite a neighbor into your kitchen
as you knead a batch of bread with salt
& bright Serrano pepper. Let the forks,
knives & spoons lean in the direction
of discovery. A pear is sliced down
the middle, tea in the kettle. The languid
morning sweetens the pucker in plum.
Cecil Morris
By Sorrow Hung
Winter here, gray flannel clouds
waterless, close, a lidded world,
and we anchored on Thursday
the day our daughter died.
We are Foucault’s pendulum
suspended from that day,
the earth rotating beneath us.
Our loss a Coriolis force
deflecting forward progress
and bending us always back.
The center holds the circle
here, centrifuge of despair.
Annabelle Taghinia
Concerts
Passionate
We shift into each other
To learn how to be that beautiful
We aren’t wolves
Who howl at the moon
But we’re howling anyways.
Did you see that?
When the light hit her just right
Through my phone’s camera
She became the sun
Dolo Diaz
Li Po
He haunts my dreams—
the Imperial poet,
banished to the remote mountains.
His drunken dive toward the moon:
Did he write his saddest verse
on her white papyrus?
Or did he wonder
if she was a well full of tenderness?
Years later—
You were at my door,
running your hand through your white hair,
as if sorrow itself were battering your soul.
Trish Saunders
Ode To A Pair Flung Into A Ditch
(after Jane Kenyon)
Walking through a posh neighborhood
to my beloved hovel
on a poorer street,
I spot an empty bottle
upturned in tall grass,
slender neck points
to sky; small douglas fir
beside it seems to offer comfort.
I would ask the poet,
Isn’t the possibility of love
always alive in spring grass,
even when the world
abandons us?
and she would
answer,
Yes.
Sean Whalen
Hubris, Effigy Mounds National Monument
We claim the Mounds
though we did not build them
Lay hands on the Earth
say we understand it
Declare we are Bears
marching down the ridgeline
Walk the coil of Snake
unafraid of the fangs
Pin down the wings of the Kite
presume to catch a ride
Stand in faint footprints
call the sunrise our own
Listen to the Mississippi River
laugh and then dismiss us
He Mows
weekly as he has for years,
drives the bladeless Deere around
and around and around the yard,
engine exhaust huffing dandelion
chaff and webworm moths into the breeze
blowing to the empty pasture where barn
swallows chase and dip and dance,
and though there is no longer any word
for them on the tip of his tongue he loves them
just the same, cheers at the blue spark that snaps
in mid-air at each capture, loves the moths
as well, so he cheers too for those that flutter
and juke before escaping by a feather’s breadth
into the tall grass.
Brian Builta
October 3
Tuesday
Mama’s right eye won’t open, her left eye is rolling back in her head. She is done and waits for her body to catch up. Every cell is stubborn. She holds my hand, squeezes with bone and vein. The grilled cheese and soup mock her from the rolling tray. She can barely speak. She weighs nothing but still enough for a whisper of a bed sore. A fall rainstorm is on the way. She rests for the moment.
Fall rain surges down
slanting sideways through the door
not even knocking
October 3
Tuesday (Still)
When I get to the death closet that night, the spirit behind her eyes is gone. Her arms are cold and her right hand is purple. The nurse says the extremities are the first to go, the brain is usually last. She has a clear tube of air under her nose and a cold half of a baked potato sits under its dome on the counter. I touch her tight forehead, cold, and whisper into her ear, I love you, mama. It’s time to go. She is laboring at breathing, breathing fast as at the end of a race. You are a brave woman. Let go. I hold her hand. I cannot let go. Her breathing slows over the next two hours, her eyes remain vacant. Ten minutes before midnight, it is done.
No light gets in
the closed windows, the dark sky,
the night, possible
Deborrah Corr
Coming Back to the Cabin He Built
I turn the doorknob.
There, on the stairs
to the loft, his shoes,
mud-caked, laces limp,
toes turned outward,
as if abandoned
in descent.
As if the rapture,
neither of us
believed in,
took him before
he reached the floor.
As if he could sit
on a rung above,
slip into them
and run on
in his pursuit
to stay alive
in spite of
everything.
Paula Reed Nancarrow
Osteoporosis
after Linda Pastan
when those bones
like houses settling into the earth
in their ribs, spine, hips
feel soft soil
may be safety.
when those bones
in their more porous wonder
ponder where
they might
finally fall.
Marina Richie
Juniper Jam
When times are tough, I turn to the old western junipers for their wisdom on how to be resilient. Embrace broken branches—perches for bluebirds. Invite a woodpecker to chisel a hole. If your heart feels hollow in sadness, know that you are making room for birds to nest within. Send roots deep and strong enough to crack rock and tap into the aquifer, lifting the precious drops to quench your thirst and those of your neighbors. Offer your powder-blue berries to the birds—give generously of your fruits so the next generation will seed, grow, and flourish. Conserve your energy. Show up every day no matter how frowsy you feel. Kiss the blue sky. Listen to raven talk.
Kelleigh Cram
The Man in My Yard
If the man in my yard stands in just the right spot, the smudge on the window will blur his face. With the features censored like that, I don’t have to feel guilty about not recognizing him.
A sound comes from somewhere in the house and I jump. A door? Doors are the worst, I never know when someone should be coming or going. The man is still in the yard, so it wasn’t him.
My hands sting and I look down to see them covered in soap.
Dishes, that’s right. I was doing dishes. I scrub, getting the sensation I have lost something, a thought that enveloped all of my attention as though digesting it. What was it? It must have been interesting.
I hear that sound again, turning to face an empty room. Glass shatters and I look down to see a pile of shards at my feet.
What did I break this time? I reach for one of the pieces, but someone calls my name. There is a stranger in my kitchen. He grabs a dustpan from the closet, sweeping up the mess. This stranger comes right up to me, kisses the top of my head while wrapping his arm around my shoulders in a firm but gentle grip.
He walks away to dispose of the glass, leaving them both a mystery.
Elly Katz
Not Nothing Again
About which you can do nothing,
do nothing
At the ledge
of the body’s night
two moons swell
The wind jolts the window
in the bright bruise before dawn
Marcus Silcock
Flogging
Colin’s parents were ancient. They had bones in their hair. They lived in the caravans. Colin always wanted to roll down the fresh hills together. Then one day they stopped rolling. I’ve a bone to pick with you, said Colin. They bent down into the small hole. Inside: gentle lashings, pool balls, pork pies. A miniature cowboy at the bar. He winked and lashed the air with his whip. Colin looked at him. So this is it, he thought, as the flogging came closer. I have fluffed many things in my life, but I have never found the bone.
Jim Tilley
You’d Be Happier
The sun had been playing hide-and-seek
all morning as I walked the long Blue Trail,
the path less traveled by the large dogs
and the people they own. The reservoir was
down at least ten feet, a lot of land having
surfaced from underwater. I wish I could do
the same. But my fear of dogs should keep me
away from this place where they run free,
tugging along people on invisible leashes.
As the sun broke through, I was met by two
goldens, soon after by a woman with sparkling
eyes that looked me over. She asked how
I was. “How are you?” I replied. She smiled
and said, “You’d be happier with a dog.”
Corey Mesler
Richard Brautigan is eating
Richard Brautigan is eating
a meal in a restaurant
in Shinjuku.
There’s a plastic cat at the
table next to him.
It might belong to the
young girl
eating rice with black chop-
sticks. Richard
Brautigan is concentrating
so hard on the
chopsticks he momentarily
forgets he is writing a poem.
Sitting Zazen
for Peter Coyote
Pete says when we sit
the whole world
sits with us.
And when I sleep the
others slip in,
leaving the door
slightly ajar. The door
lets in too much
light and I awaken.
The whole universe
is lit with the candles
of our collective stillness.
Michael C. Roberts
(Click on thumbnails)
Liina Koivula
Delayed Gratification
Everybody wanted to be like us, was what we liked to think. No one was as lucky as we were, rocking in our womb of a houseboat, done up in bits and bobs from an old, dismantled carousel, snips of bright paint that hadn’t flaked off, jungle of plants inside pressing against the windows and creeping out of wooden planters on our floating patio. Lenny had some money, quite a bit of it, but we lived frugally, as if we had nothing, so what we did have was the best of all worlds, the deliciousness of delayed gratification, with a safety net.
I knew what Lenny got paid for when he left Seattle for a few days, a week or two, when a guy took him to Las Vegas, Los Angeles. That was when I got my best work done, dyeing swaths of cotton on the deck. A boy who’d come around, smiling with big teeth under his dirty hair, called it my freak flag. At first, he’d crouch next to me as I worked, the sides of his feet poking through holes worn in his canvas shoes. Once he got comfortable, he tried to impress me with his electric bass, plugged into nothing, dispatching steel vibrations across the inlet. After we grew close, he helped me pin the fabric to the clothesline, snapping in the wind. When the cloth was ready, and it was raining, he sat cross legged on the floor, feeding the sewing machine as I worked.
Lenny came home, only able to keep his eyes open by raising his eyebrows. I sent him to bed and I sent the boy away with garments to sell at the May Fair. The boy was back too soon. We argued on the pier. I couldn’t help that his friends left for Oregon without him, that his dad kicked him out for coming in late, drunk. I didn’t have a place for him to stay. Lenny would be sleeping or sulking through the weekend, at least.
I love you, the boy told me.
I couldn’t help him with that.
He dumped the whole bundle of cotton in the bay. If I wouldn’t have him, he said, the navy would. I fished a few pieces out, let most of them sink.
I lived well above sea level, and Lenny was long gone, by the time the boy returned from Vietnam and looked me up. Through the window of the coffee shop where we’d agreed to meet, he scribbled on a napkin. The fullness of his beard and the absurdity of his biceps were more than I could handle. I crossed the street and walked on.
Brad Rose
Crypto
Mr. Marvelous tells me the scam industry is booming. To be fair, he is wearing a mask. The truth is, crypto currency, like a bank, is just a volume of empty space, filled with the idea of money. Back at the hovel, everything is groveling, including the linoleum. Apologies for my unorthodox and somewhat disheveled appearance. Where did I hide those damn bullets, anyway?
Jerry Dennis
Potato Poem
Pack your letters
in burlap bags and earthen jars
store them someplace cool and dry.
A cellar is good. So is a tower.
Bite a vowel and it is mostly air
or vacuum. It might shriek,
might moan away,
might spin around like a firefly.
Consonants you must dig from the earth—
bulbous tubers, dangling roots,
in a frost they heave up.
Stuff them in your mouth,
chew the grit, savor
the earthy underground, eat
to make yourself strong
for the days ahead will be hard.
Hilary Sideris
Rubies
Their deep red color comes
from chromium. They rank nine
on the Mohs scale of hardness,
making them suitable for daily wear.
On OK Cupid I’m wooed
by a Romanian gemologist
who wants to know my favorite
stone, what bling I own—a bot
programmed to tell me what
a scammer thinks I want to hear:
he misses cuddling when it rains,
the softness of an honest woman’s
touch. Although I checked the Atheist
box, he says our union is God’s plan,
then slips, calls me Roxanne.
I say no worries—please go on.
Joshua Michael Stewart
Coffee & Corn Muffins Before His Oncology Appointment
With its rose-red plumage,
a cardinal breaks up
the brown and evergreen.
A song spirals
from its citrus beak, cutting
through winter’s low-moan wind.
At the kitchen table, my father
sweeps crumbs and sunlight
into his hands.
Michael Tyrell
Song
A witch is sick of her neighbor getting sick on her roses. Transforming his stomach into the stomach of a bird’s, she knows the process will be irreversible. Several weeks later, holding his funeral prayer card, she hears something and looks out the window at her roses. There they are, the wild parrots who came here years ago from a warmer country. They stare and sing, the parrots, but more often than not lately they don’t sing a note but only stare. Like now, when she knows something is wrong not only with the songless parrots but with time itself: her roses haven’t broken apart yet. When did the world get cured of winter, says the witch, as if it were a sickness. This is the warmer country now, she says, this is the country.
Laureate
The old poet came to visit us the last year we were in school. She didn’t seem to mind that our rooms were on wheels. The books were already decades late at the library. Last call, the bus drivers were calling from the foliage, their vehicles always peaking. Why are you bothering that woman? Can’t you see she’s dead? Wait, I said. Look. A fog the color of her soft hair was filling the auditorium. The dais was rattling.
Ray Malone
Cinders 7
better to walk in thought, says Hokusai,
up mountains in your memory, or find a moon
between the trees for a first farewell to
loneliness, for love to find a breach in reason,
or in your mind to taste of every eye its offering,
of every flesh its appetite and sacrifice, or
from a height to reach horizons, step
to endless edges, set foot on infinite shores,
or dream of entering door after untold door
Contributors
Brian Builta lives in Arlington, Texas, and works at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. His poetry has been published most recently in The Avalon Literary Review, Beatnik Cowboy and yolk. He is frequently overdramatic and is currently experiencing a dark night of the soul. He is the author of A Thursday in June; and more of his poetry can be found at brianbuilta.com.
Susan Michele Coronel lives in New York City. Her first full-length collection, In the Needle, A Woman, won the 2024 Donna Wolf Palacio Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart nominee, she has had poems published in journals including MOM Egg Review, Spillway 29, Redivider, and One Art.
Deborrah Corr is the author of the chapbook Naked Rib, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared or will be appearing in Booth, Sunlight Press, Catamaran, The McNeese Review and others. She has received honorable mentions for her work from Connecticut River Review, and Streetlight Magazine.
Kelleigh Cram resides in a small town near Savannah, Georgia. Her work has been featured in Ponder Review.
Jerry Dennis lives between the woods and the water in northern Michigan. He writes books, essays, stories, poems and has been published in many fine places. His new book of poems is forthcoming from Deep Wood Press. Visit him at www.jerrydennis.net
Dolo Diaz is a poet and scientist whose work explores themes of memory, family, and identity with a blend of sharp storytelling and subtle humor.
D. R. James, retired from nearly 40 years of teaching college writing, literature, and peace studies, lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest of ten collections is Mobius Trip (Dos Madres Press).
At 27, while working on a doctorate at Harvard, Elly Katz had a brainstem stroke secondary to a physician’s needle misplacement during surgery, a tragedy which impacted her subsequent writing. Her work is published or is forthcoming in Stardust Review, Sacramento Literary Review, Amsterdam Review, and others and has won prizes, including first place for the 2025 Yeats Poetry Prize. Her first collection of creative nonfiction, From Scientist to Stroke Survivor: Life Redacted from Lived Places Publishing, became a best-seller on Amazon. Her first collection of poetry, Instructions for Selling-Off Grief, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books (2025). She is in the MFA program at Queens College. More at ellykatz.com.
Liina Koivula holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University and a BA from The Evergreen State College. Their fiction celebrates subcultures of the North American west and can be found in Puerto del Sol, Room Magazine, and The Spokesman Review.
Ray Malone is an Irish writer and artist living in Berlin, Germany, working on a series of projects based on various musical and/or literary models. Recently awarded Second Prize in the Gregory O’Donoghue Internationl Poetry Competition. He’s had work published in numerous journals in the US, UK and Ireland.
Corey Mesler has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Lunch Ticket, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published over 45 books of fiction and poetry. His new collection, The Sylvi Poems, is just out from Right Hand Pointing Press. With his wife he owns Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis.
Cecil Morris, a retired teacher, has poems appearing in The 2River View, Common Ground Review, Talking River Review, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection, At Work in the Garden of Possibilities, will come out from Main Street Rag in 2025.
Paula Reed Nancarrow’s poems have appeared in BlazeVox, Sugar House Review, and Ballast, among other journals. She lives in Minnesota. Find her online at paulareednancarrow.com.
Marina Richie is a tree hugger and writer of natural history prose and poetry. She's the author of Halcyon Journey, In Search of the Belted Kingfisher, winner of the John Burroughs Medal and a National Outdoor Book Award. She writes in Bend, Oregon.
Michael C. Roberts is a retired pediatric psychologist whose film and digital photographs have appeared in several literary magazines, including Right Hand Pointing. Although he often makes photographs in a range of color, objects, and format, the simple beauty of his current work reduces nature to its stark elements. His book of film photographs is available on Amazon: Imaging the World with Plastic Cameras: Diana and Holga. He remains hopeful for a renewed world.
Brad Rose was born and raised in Los Angeles and lives in Boston. He is the author of six collections of poetry and flash fiction: WordInEdgeWise, Lucky Animals, No. Wait. I Can Explain, Pink X-Ray, de/tonations, and Momentary Turbulence. His poetry collection I Wouldn’t Say That, Exactly, is forthcoming. His website is www.bradrosepoetry.com.
Trish Saunders is trying to learn automatic writing. She has poems published or forthcoming in Chiron Review, Eunoia Review, Off The Coast, among other places. She lives in Seattle, formerly, Honolulu, two cities with nothing in common but frequent rain.
Hilary Sideris has poems in recent issues of Anti-Heroin Chic, OneArt, Free State Review, North of Oxford, Rhino, and Right Hand Pointing. She is the author of The Silent B (Dos Madres Press 2019), Animals in English (Dos Madres Press 2020), and Liberty Laundry (Dos Madres Press 2022.) Her new collection, Calliope, is out from Broadstone Books. She grew up in Indiana and lives in Brooklyn.
Irish writer Marcus Silcock (who also writes under the name Marcus Slease) teaches English literature and creative writing at a high school in Barcelona. His poetry has been translated into Slovak, Turkish, Polish and Danish. Dream Dust, his latest book of prose poems, is available from Broken Sleep Books.
Joshua Michael Stewart is the author of four poetry collections. His work has appeared in the Massachusetts Review, Salamander, New Flash Fiction Review, and elsewhere. His latest book is, Welcome Home, Russell Edson—a graphic novel & prose poem hybrid created in collaboration with illustrators Bret M. Herholz and Aaron J. Krolikowski.
Annabelle Taghinia is an Iranian-American writer from New England. She is a junior in high school and spends her free time writing. Her work has been recognized by Scholastic Art and Writing, and has appeared or is forthcoming in BULL, Yellow Arrow Journal and Levitate.
Jim Tilley’s poetry is inspired by his love of the outdoors, particularly walks in the woods or along a lakeshore or seashore. He has published four full-length collections of poetry and a novel with Red Hen Press. His short memoir, The Elegant Solution, was published as a Ploughshares Solo. Five of his poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His most recent poetry collection, Ripples in the Fabric of the Universe: New & Selected Poems, was published in June 2024.
Michael Tyrell, author of three poetry collections and co-editor of an anthology, is the director of the International Writing Workshops at NYU. His poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Allium, BOMB, Pine Hills Review, and the San Pedro River Review.
Sean Whalen (retired) lives near Pilot Mound, Iowa, where he finds inspiration close to home. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Last Leaves, The Ocotillo Review, Unbroken, New Feathers, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Thimble, Assignment Magazine, MMOJ, The Avenue Journal, The Chiron Review, Songs of Eretz, and Steam Ticket.