kɑrtˌʰwil (cartwheel)

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Phoebe Reeves

One more Cassandra calls cities to herself.
Piles of casework tumble off her knees.


She sees Carthage, Cartagena, Casablanca
coming to her the way cartilage loosens


when the knife enters the joint.
No cartographer can control the coordinates his map carries.


The horse pulls the cart—cartons, casks, Casanova’s used condoms.
The carthorse’s sores make a Cartesian argument


across its withers, carved
in reflex down the flank.


Now you must make your case like Cassandra
seeing the edge of the world: wine


leaking from a cracked cask, the earth
lapping it up like any good Casanova would.


Author’s Statement: This poem is part of a book length project called The Lexicographer's Garden, which engages with the dictionary one page at a time, through the alphabet and back again. Each poem takes as many words from that one page as possible and incorporates them into its language. This began as an exercise I do with my beginning poetry students, and was so much fun that for two years, I did it myself every Sunday morning, loving all the forgotten words, strange coincidences, and musical engagement of alliteration. 

Phoebe Reeves earned her MFA in poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and now is Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. She has three chapbooks of poetry, most recently The Flame of Her Will (Milk & Cake), and her first full length collection, Helen of Bikini (Lily Poetry Review) was published in March, 2023. Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Best New Poets, Grist, Forklift OH, and The Chattahoochee Review, and she has been awarded fellowships by the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Vermont Studio Center. She lives in Cincinnati, OH with her husband Don Peteroy, amidst her unruly urban garden. 

Layman’s Guide to Jungle Living

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Nam Hoang Tran

Author’s Statement: 🏃🏻💨 __________ ❗️oh hell naw ❗️__________ 🐍   

Nam Hoang Tran is a multidisciplinary artist based in Orlando, FL. His work appears or is forthcoming in Posit, The Brooklyn Review, ANMLY, New Delta Review, Tagvverk, Always Crashing, and Diode, among others. With Henry Goldkamp, he co-edits TILT - a journal of intermedia poetics. Find him online @ www.namhtran.com. 

Got There: Warm and Cold Air

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Darren Demaree

Ribbons is a kinder, more playful
name for the tethers we’ve been
cutting loose. Look at how they dance
in front of those angry faces
that do not listen when we tell them
here, here is the cool water, warmed
by the air that travels, that does not
care about the names of places.
Naming is such a terribly calm violence.

Our skin cannot feel the larger map.
Run side by side into the tree-line.
Only the bombers can kiss angry
enough to chase us from there
& their governments have gone
broke turning us all into fractions.

Be with me as we burn the boats.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-one poetry collections, most recently “in defense of the goat as it continues to wander towards the certain doom of the cliff”, (forthcoming from April Gloaming, February 2024).  He is the recipient of a Greater Columbus Arts Council Grant, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal.  He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and the Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry.  He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

August, Time Stops in the Deep South

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Paul Freidinger

I desert the future, forest the past
with clouded memory, conquest the air,

I am getting used to mouthing heat index,
amulet of despair. My wife keeps saying

it sneaks up on you, dangerous the woods
with ticks, bugs, snakes, poison ivy. I tug

the black river, dense from tannic acid,
time stops here, torpor of illusion. August

stirs muggy into every morning as the sun
hangs like a dead man on the end of a rope,

ghosts taunt me with their stories curdling
through an infinite afternoon, cicada buzz

electric when I gaze through deep shade.
I sleep the hour, everything closes down,

ennui is my neighbor knocking the door,
muffled with deterrence. Do I answer,

do I answer? You are welcome, no one else,
no one else. In the lull, I contest the quest

to keep on living.

 

Author’s Bio: I grew up in farm country in central Illinois and have always been drawn to rural settings. I also have a long history in Edisto Island, SC, and sense some similarity to its own rural ecology. Still, it is different from the Midwest. The weight of history is heavy in the deep South. A friend of mine told me years ago that the best description for summer here was the word muggy. People slow down in the summer, they temper ambition, and limit too much talk. Around the island are sand roads, live oaks, palmettos, marshland, and tidal creeks, with plenty of open space. Sometimes those settings seem primordial as if nothing has touched them for a thousand years. I often stop while driving around, get out of the car, and observe the scene. The views are peace, beautiful, and bucolic. They are also stultifying, all the more so when considering how Edisto was settled by Europeans. At one time there were twenty-nine plantations here, ranging from five thousand to ten thousand acres. In those moments I feel the struggles people faced here and the challenges of the climate, how it shaped attitudes and behavior. As climate change becomes more of a factor on our lives here, it is impossible for me not to consider that the heat, the sea, and the land will have the final word.

Paul Freidinger is a poet residing in Edisto Beach, SC, where the ocean continues to rise. It keeps him awake at night. Thankfully, writing sustains him. Paul was raised in Illinois farm country, taught school in suburban Chicago, and now lives in South Carolina’s low country where he also has a long history. He has poems recently published or forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Florida Review, Grist, Harpur Palate, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Isthmus, Pacific Review, Portland Review, Reunion: The Brasilia Review, The Dallas Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, Triggerfish Critical Review, and William & Mary Review, among others.

Two Poems by Matthew Murrey

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Cassini’s End

What a finale, to go down in flames
all the while streaming
fresh details right to the end.
Twenty years was good enough.
They gave it one last loop
then sent it—foiled in gold—to burn.
Flare or stumble, may my last efforts
be so focused on my beloved
Earth, until I tumble and lose touch.
Brief pendant on a tether of smoke,
picture it blazing unseen high above Saturn’s
ferocious storms. Then radio silence forever.

Van Gogh’s Two Chairs

In the simple one his pipe and pouch
of tobacco. In his friend’s fine chair
two books and a lit candle. Oh,
to live and love like a small
flame. A book or smoke
can bring reverie
or bind you
to habits hard
to break. What breaks—
promises, the heart, the hold
on what’s real? Through cracks
in what seems whole, I find myself
seeking out a bit of joy—vivid colors
and swirls that some will always insist
are nothing but sky, lamplight, and stars.

Author’s Note: The seed of the Cassini poem was an animated video produced by NASA which showed the satellite burning up on its entry into Saturn's atmosphere. The image of it immediately brought to mind a bright pendant on a necklace. The online presentation can be found here: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/cassini/the-journey/the-grand-finale/. The Van Gogh poem took off for me when I learned that Vincent's painting of Gauguin's chair was kept from view for decades by Johanna Bonger who inherited the pair of paintings as the widow of  Vincent's brother Theo, but refused to loan out the one painting due to her dislike of Gauguin. People can read about that back story and see the paintings here: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/jun/18/revealed-van-gogh-empty-chair-paintings-gauguin 

Matthew Murrey’s poems have appeared widely, most recently in Poetry East, Jet Fuel Review, and Split Rock Review. He’s an NEA Fellowship recipient, and his collection, Bulletproof, was published in 2019 by Jacar Press. He was a public school librarian for over twenty years and lives in Urbana, Illinois. His website is at https://www.matthewmurrey.net/ and he is on Twitter and Instagram @mytwords. 

Lament of the Afflicted

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Deborah-Zenha Adams

In that year of subtle omens, all the irises
bloomed yellow, harbingers of passion and betrayal,
and we cut bouquets to fill a broken vase.

Next there came a wailing wind
even though the burdened air was stalled
and bamboo chimes hung stagnant.

Words you never spoke brushed like premonition
against my neck, a witching chill
that froze our tongues and sliced the truth.

Lightning flashed and thunder knocked
three times, an incantation calling out the demons
that cackle when we tiptoe past closed doors.

I’ve heard footsteps in the attic,
found a trail of black feathers on the stairs,
and tasted cold metal in my cheek.

Shades appear at the treeline between dark and day
crooking their fingers, beckoning, taunting.
Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine going there.

Did we break the seal of some pharaoh’s tomb,
defile a sacred cloth, cross a black cat’s path?
Isn’t there a counter spell to correct our sins?

What would I offer in trade to erase
the trail we’ve left? Can we unspin the wheel
and chance we’ll get it right the second time?

Never mind. I know better. There’s no stopping
the forward motion of a curse once
it learns the taste of your name.

 

Deborah-Zenha Adams is a seventh-generation Tennesseean. Her written work has appeared or will soon appear in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Sheila-na-gig, One, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and Waterwheel Review, among other places.