Author: The Editors

Last Halloween,

a man wearing

a Santa costume

came to my porch

for trick-or-treating.

He had a big pack

on his shoulder.

The timing of his

visit surprised me.

It wasn’t close to

the merry season.

“Happy Halloween!”

I greeted him

and offered a bar

of dark chocolate.

“Thanks!” he said.

He took down

the pack and put

the treat away.

Rummaging, he

located something.

It was a snow globe

with a winter scene.

“Here’s your gift,”

the Santa explained.

He handed over

the snow globe.

The glass piece

must have come

from a store where

Christmas creep

had begun.

“How nice!”

I said, then shook

the flakes inside.

He closed the pack.

I watched him

arrange it neatly

on his shoulder.

The Santa said,

“I must hurry

on to distribute

gifts at homes

while calling out,

‘Merry Christmas!

Happy New Year!’”

He seemed thrilled

by the idea.

“You’re too early,”

I said, protesting.

“Not for America,

the land of malls!”

he replied. “Here,

we deck the halls

with merchandize

all through October!”

It wasn’t even

Thanksgiving;

the Santa meant

to cancel fall.

Sarah Henry is retired from a major newspaper. Her poems have appeared in over a hundred journals, including Founders Favourites, Jalmurra, Open Door Magazine and Trouvaille Review. She lives and writes in a small Pennsylvania town.

Darkness holds up its mirror. My harsh reflection

Accentuates how much the parting day conceals,

But evening, for all its stone-blindness, reveals;

The true face within, malevolent complexion

Suspended in ebony, a dire confection

Of harpy, leech, demon, monster, the grim ordeals

Of knowing the beast that I really am. It seals

My soul for foulness, predation and infection.

Dank air, gathering mist, nothing to reassure

Potential prey, whose unwitting presence completes

My nefarious task, my trail interwoven

With bat-wing flicker, spider web and serpent spoor

As I haunt the coarse bedraggled moonless back streets

With evil’s night eye and a foot part-way cloven.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.

Question:

if the tide is lured by the moon

why does it rise

twice

each day

if the moon

only circles us once?

Answer:

moonlight stirs the water it illuminates

into aching tongue-hanging

lapping against its shore

Earth too    is not immune

tugs the tether of its orbit if only

to be a moment closer    to her glow

but why does the sea

on Earth’s moon-dark side    also rise

when Moon is at her furthest?

imagine tasting moonlight

then watching her slip behind Earth

how could that flavor    ever escape you?

as Earth leans moonward

the seafloor drops like a swallowed heart

and in these depths we see “rising”

and so    there is nowhere on Earth

you could go    where I

could ignore the pull of you

Frederick Livingston plants seeds, grounded in experiential education and sustainable agriculture. He hopes to grow poems, peace, mangos and avocados. His work has appeared in numerous literary and scientific journals, public parks, and bathroom stalls. His first poetry collection, “The Moon and Other Fruits” is expected in early 2023 from Legacy Book Press.

– “Chinchin puipui” farm, Japan

What unsettled me most

was not the ubiquity of bead curtains,

the awkward hand-drawn dragons

crawling across walls

or the fuzzy pink toilet seat’s texture.

It was the way the clock menagerie

chimed separate senses of time

scattered throughout the hour.

Cuckoo chirps, then Charlie Brown

Christmas jingles, later grandfather

clock bellows on and on. Adrift in time

I lay my roots in wandering soil.

Laugh track wafts over empty playground

while child in idling van watches cartoons.

His mother and I pry our horihoris

(father stayed home getting stoned)

beside ragged rosettes liberating dandelions

from earth carefully as if each was a rare

and precious jewel. I too feel like a weed

sometimes, amenable to any bare ground

but feeling nowhere at home.

I wish someone would delight

in my common flowers

roast my roots, savor my bitter flavors.

Frederick Livingston plants seeds, grounded in experiential education and sustainable agriculture. He hopes to grow poems, peace, mangos and avocados. His work has appeared in numerous literary and scientific journals, public parks, and bathroom stalls. His first poetry collection, “The Moon and Other Fruits” is expected in early 2023 from Legacy Book Press.

I am a pretentious asshole, but I never craved this sensation

As I watch you gasp and prowl about your mind

Justifying your natural immunity between ragged breaths.

Vindication, for a self-righteous bitch like me, usually tastes sweet

But I wish I’d never known this flavor in my mouth,

This mouth that can still taste below the nose that can still smell.

I thought you’d remember the days you force fed me breakfast and understand

The words that tumbled from behind my mask wanted wellness for you

Instead you ingested the bitterness of this god forsaken January air.

I want to like the people I love

But right now I don’t even love myself

Because I never wanted to be this right.

“Tenacity looks good on you.”

Intended as an insult,

Uttered as a compliment,

The words of damnation

From my father’s lips fell:

Blood from a hunter’s teeth.

Characteristic I cannot shed,

Tenacity engulfs me.

Can I drown in fortitude?

Does courage saturate my lungs?

Tread along a little farther, child.

Suddenly upright, I feel the shore

Steady my faltering feet.

This new vantage I gain

Propels my body forward,

Suddenly separate

From the unseen current

Of patriarchal rip tides.

Balanced resilience dries on my skin,

Entrusting me with perpetual moxie

From an endlessly ebbing tide pool.

Laura Jeu lives in Pennsylvania with her dog, Scout. When not writing, she can be found trekking up and down mountains. Her gracious mom and considerate brothers provide helpful critiques, receiving the author’s chidings in return.

One

West Coast mountain range

Crawls across my neck and spine

Stabilizing home

—

Two

Red-crowned crane rises

From my arm to unify

The North and the South

—

Three

Appalachian range

Circled on my shoulder blade:

Weights of nostalgia

Laura Jeu lives in Pennsylvania with her dog, Scout. When not writing, she can be found trekking up and down mountains. Her gracious mom and considerate brothers provide helpful critiques, receiving the author’s chidings in return.

I’m washing  my daughter’s hair and she tells me there’s a boy

She likes in school, he’s nine years old, he says he doesn’t like her

He told her best friend he doesn’t like her, she’s upset now and I

Don’t know if I should laugh or cry. I carefully

Rinse the shampoo out of her hair and resist the urge

To wrap my arms around her tiny, bony chest and hold her

Like I did when she was tiny, she wants me to give her some sort of

Womanly, adult advice and I am not ready for this.

Holly Day’s writing has recently appeared in Analog SF, Earth’s Daughters, and Appalachian Journal, and her recent book publications include Music Composition for Dummies, The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body, and Bound in Ice. She teaches creative writing at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and Hugo House in Seattle.

the hand comes down

and pushes me down

and reminds me

that the wings that keep

trying to break through my skin

are not

to be trusted, that wings

are not for me. I let the hand

tear out

the feathers, the sinew

the brave new appendages

that would allow me to fly away

let the hand carefully bind

my broken skin

my bloodied back

in bandages that keep

new feathers from sprouting,

new wings from unfurling

overnight.

Holly Day’s writing has recently appeared in Analog SF, Earth’s Daughters, and Appalachian Journal, and her recent book publications include Music Composition for Dummies, The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body, and Bound in Ice. She teaches creative writing at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and Hugo House in Seattle.

A sailor lured to rocky shores

by love and sometimes loneliness

my ship has run your joyless embrace

run aground your cold neurotic flesh.

I stuff my ears against your song

eyes on a horizon away from gloom

heart heavy with jagged cliffs and whispered dreams

the ice in your voice when you speak of love.

Holly Day’s writing has recently appeared in Analog SF, Earth’s Daughters, and Appalachian Journal, and her recent book publications include Music Composition for Dummies, The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body, and Bound in Ice. She teaches creative writing at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and Hugo House in Seattle.