Death to Death-Transfigured

/

Sarah Klein

patterned on my psyche your mother dies after your mother dies that's my grandmother my echo
of my mother buried does death know I'm about to turn thirty-four does death mirror itself in eerie to
draw the curtain tighter or to release it anew does a mother become an auspice does love stay in the
blood does genetic memory bloom in me as aid or like botulism the hint of it easing the pain but too
much crashing the nervous system become unendurable drag me back what does synthesis or
metamorphosis mean on the eve of death of a single soul or an entire world or on the transparent
threads of care woven so firmly around us what now comes alive beneath my fingers what now
resurrects in my art what now is the imago death wears as it coalesces as emperor?

Author’s Statement:
The title is from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, and the inspiration for the work was the processing of the death of my maternal grandmother many years after the death of my mother, who I lost in childhood to an early-onset aggressive cancer.  The mirroring of the experience of losing my grandmother while I myself was around the age of my mother's diagnosis gave me a lot of powerful emotions to work through, which is the impetus of much of my work.  I had jotted down the title as a phrase I had particularly liked and thought it fit perfectly. 

Sarah Klein is a genderfluid poet and fiction author whose first chapbook, Mast Cell Mathematics, a Chronic Illness Calculus, was released with Querencia Press in June 2025. They were also a 2025 Best of the Net Nominee and have been published by myriad other publications including Lammergeier, fifth wheel press, and en*gendered. Free Palestine.

Al Chuiso

/

Christopher Stolle

I lock the bathroom door when no one’s home.
I know what it’s like to feel robbed—
What it’s like to lose something—
And if anyone’s going to come
Into our home when you’re gone,
I’d rather not lose myself.

My muscles tense and my eyes start sweating.
I can hear something moving around—
Something that might be human—
But I’m going to wait for silence
Because then I’ll hear their leaving
And I can wait for you to arrive.

I’ve known about silence for a long time.
I’ve even missed that quiet now and again—
Like the lost whispers of a tired echo—
But I enjoy your laughter too much
To ever want to go back to when
I lacked sound in my life.

I’d rather lose all my possessions
than for you to lose the noise of me.

Bio: Christopher Stolle has many roles: partner, uncle, son, music aficionado, baseball enthusiast, and, occasionally, writer. His writing has been published by Indiana University Press, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Coaches Choice, “Tipton Poetry Journal,” “Flying Island,” and “Plath Poetry Project,” among many others. He lives in Richmond, Indiana.

Self-portrait with Broom

/

Bradley Samore

I sweep what is now
only my apartment.

Your curly hairs catch
in the bristles.

Author’s Note: The scene in the poem never actually happened, but on multiple occasions, I've found a strand of someone's hair long after they've left, even after a deep cleaning of the space. In the poem, I imagine a speaker who has found a hair of someone who has either left a relationship or died. I wanted the imagery of the attempt to rid oneself of another's memory (the sweeping) yet the catching on the bristles to illustrate the complex feelings a loss can leave one with.

Bio: Bradley Samore currently works as a technical writer. His poems have appeared in The Florida Review, Carve, The Dewdrop, and other publications. He is a winner of the Creative Writing Ink Poetry Prize. www.BradleySamore.com.

Grandma's Potato Salad

/

Jennifer Newhouse

For things to last, you must be
meticulous. You must not over-season
or sweeten what is already sweet.
Even my grandmother never got it
quite to her liking –
her most requested dish
was boiled white potatoes, Hellman’s
mayonnaise, salt & pepper.
Diced onion to taste–not too much.
You people ruin what is already good.
Her favorite ice cream
was vanilla. The excessive flavors
(Reece’s, cookies and cream) irked her,
though occasionally I watched her
enjoy Turkey Hill’s Rocky Road
in a coffee cup. Widowed early,
wherever she was for these last
three or more decades–my life–
so was her potato salad
in its sturdy, ‘80s Tupperware container
& lid that burped the way
it’s supposed to when you seal it.
Heaven help the well-meaning
fool bringing it near a dishwasher.
Heaven help us for ruining it.

Author Statement:

I believe this poem was born out of a Daily Muse prompt (Two Sylvias Press). I am a married working mom of three young kids, so often, in order to actually write down the beginnings of a poem, I need to be truly inspired or have the right prompt, ideally a combination of the two. My grandmother passed away a few years ago, and there are times when I think about how she would advise me to handle certain things. She raised four children! For her, little caring details mattered because they added up to big things, but the trivial was nothing to worry about. Among family and friends, her potato salad (which had to be made with Hellman's mayonnaise), was always requested and needed to have just the right amount of diced onion. I am so happy to see this poem in print to honor her memory.

Bio: Jennifer Newhouse is a poet, writing professor, wife, and mother. She teaches at Rappahannock Community College, where she is an Associate Professor of English. Jennifer's poems have appeared in many journals, including Triquarterly, SAND, Blue Lyra, and Nimrod. Her chapbook, Labyrinth, was published in 2019 by Longleaf Press.

Neighborly Love

/

Chase Harker

I know that my neighbor hates me
But she would never admit it—
It’s the way she compliments
My flowerbeds that I know it,
The way she applauds my blooms
Every spring, the way she hums
Through my barberry’s thorns
When I am reading upon my back deck
Or working on some new assignment.
I have picked up her game, though,
Over the past couple of years—
Her plastic smile, her hyena laugh,
Her school girl eyes, her theatricality.
I have recently become one of her kind
And joined the neighborhood HOA.
Now, in the fall, before she gets a chance,
I rake my yard free of leaves and debris,
Weed all the beds, clear the gutters clean,
And wake up an hour earlier than her
Every Sunday in order to wash the dust
Of the previous week off of my truck.
Sometimes she comes out as I am drying
Spots off my hood or shining my tires;
Sometimes I startle her with a good morning
Before her old eyes can adjust to the sun;
Sometimes she holds her left hand above
Her heart and replies with a fake likewise
Then remarks how I am looking sharp today.
I know that my neighbor hates me—
I hate that wry, cackling bitch too.

Bio: Chase Harker is a poet from New Bern, North Carolina. He is currently an MFA student at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

March Begins

/

John Grey

February creeps into March.
Ground thaws but wind picks up the chill.
And drizzle is just snow in a gray disguise.

For birds, the mating season is dim memory.
Winter instincts preserve the current generation.
It’s not in them to propagate the next.

A homeless man curls up in the shelter
of an abandoned tenement’s stoop.
He’s wrapped in other’s donations
but neither the forlorn jacket
or moth-eaten sweater
looks like a kindness.

Winter colds linger on.
The sidewalks are a mix of slip and splash.
The walk by the river is the ghost of a summer stroll.
My hands plunge deep into my pockets.
They hold no other hand.

Author Statement:

The inspiration behind the poem is no more than the month of March itself.  TS Eliot may consider April to be the cruelest month but, to my mind, that dubious honor belongs to the third month. The second line is the key. The temperature slowly rises but the wind blows more fiercely so that it feels just as miserable as what preceded it.

Bio: John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, City Brink and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”,” Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, Amazing Stories and Cantos.

SEA-GUEST

/

Paul Holler

There is something about the sound
the crash of the waves off-shore
the roll and the roil
and the whisper of a wave’s ending
that draws the sea-guest to where the sea begins.

There is something about the way
the birds glide through the warp and weft
and the way the seals cross
from sea to sand and back again
working time in wide circles
and space in small elipses
that draws the sea-guest to where the sea begins

There is something about the way it looks
when he closes his eyes
and takes the birds’ woven sail in his hands
and hews a driftwood hull
and sets a tall and true mast
and crosses from sand to sea
and the birds soar on sails like his own
and a seal rises up with a face like his own
and dives and circles and soars
in a firmament like his own
and the waves beneath his feet
flow and pulse with his own heart.
.
And there is something about the quiet
when he opens his eyes
and the others are far away.

He stands unmoving
on the line where the sea begins
because the others are of the sea
and he is a mere guest.

Author’s Statement:
The poem was inspired by the Anglo-Saxon kenning, "brim-gyst," or "sea-guest." A while back, I was listening to a podcast called A Way with Words that mentioned this kenning. I began to think about people who would refer to a mariner as a guest of the sea and what it meant to be one. It suggested to me that the sea is not a place for human beings.  In order to live at sea, people must construct a place where they can live and move about on the water. This suggests a limitation on people, but it also highlights the human strength of imagination. The mariner in this poem can imagine a boat and a world inhabited by the "others." As far as we know, the others cannot imagine the world that he inhabits. Hopefully, I've given the readers of poem something to think about with regard to the relationship between people and the natural world.

It made sense to me to refer to Anglo-Saxon verse forms in this poem. I didn't want to directly emulate Anglo-Saxon verse, but I wanted the reader to hear some echoes of it. I looked back to translations I have of "The Seafarer" and J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lays of Beleriand to see how modern poets and translators have handled this verse form. I also took a course from the Great Courses catalog on the Anglo-Saxon language.

I decided to use two devices common to Anglo-Saxon verse. This verse form uses repeated phrases as a way making the lines scan correctly. It also uses alliteration heavily. I used both alliteration and repeated lines in a way that I found pleasing. For the most part, the lines fall into even metrical feet. But I tried not to be too rigorous with all of those things. Ultimately, I wanted a poem that would have a sound and rhythm that would please me, echo the sound of "The Seafaer," and draw the reader in. 

Like most kennings, brim-gyst has many layers of meaning. I hope this poem begins to explore them.

Bio: Paul Holler has been a writer of short stories, poems and articles for many years. His work has appeared in Flash, The MacGuffin. Ekphrastic Review, Write City Review, The Phare and other on-line and print publications.