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Dennis Mahagin

D’S BLUES The backyard was sun-kissed, better than death. a sun kissed lawn always better than death. and he came back on the way he had left. He came back in a way he had left. It was hard, but the sun was better in this yard. He came back, he came back the way he had left:to take the Kiss stay away from death. Dennis Mahagin is a writer from Washington state. Many of his poems have appeared online, and in print, via two published poetry collections: “Grand Mal,” and “Longshot & Ghazal,” Dennis also serves as the poetry editor for Frigg magazine.

Tohm Bakelas

something they call home For a few hours, white snow fell before nightfall; then rain came and washed it all away. The lone streetlight on this dead end street, the one that often makes the poems, makes me think of Weldon Kees and his porchlight coming on. My neighbor, a miserable man who never waves, whose name I will never know, called the electric company about the streetlight’s stutter, about its blinking off and on, from dusk to dawn. They came and fixed it when I was at work, when I wasn’t around. And now, it’s just a well-lit beacon, birthing brightness upon this street, guiding lost souls, wet from rain, towards something they call home. Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have been printed widely in journals, zines, and online publications all over the world. He has authored twenty-five chapbooks and several collections of poetry, including Cleaning the Gutte

Charles Rammelkamp

Doped with Religion, Sex and TV “ Working class hero, my foot,” Darleen spat. “Pampered British rock star’s more like it. He don’t know nothin’ about no working class,” she sneered, “and that Jap witch he married. She’s probly the one who put them ideas in his head.” Darleen and I worked on the assembly line at the Capitol Records plant, putting fresh-pressed LPs into sleeves, the packaged albums into cardboard boxes, the boxes onto pallets for the forklift guy to take them away to the loading dock. “I used to like some of them early songs. ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night,’ but you can have this stuff. Working class hero! Who does he think he’s kidding?” I stuffed my impulse to defend Lennon, point out his poverty in postwar Liverpool, the broken family, the absent sailor father; mainly offended by Doreen’s naked racism, pitying her for the misogyny she’d absorbed from generations of farmers on the prairie. I was a college student, workin

Daniel Edward Moore

John 1:1 In the beginning was the word and the word was tired, but even half-conscious I was seduced by the slurred speech of the holy. Oh, Christ the carbohydrate chased by twelve shots of whiskey, take me to thy church. Be gone from my lips, oh, demon expresso, oh, CPAP hose making love with my airway to keep my oxygen happy. If the word becomes flesh, something I can kiss, with a glassblower’s flaming tongue, summon me quick, so the dead in me may rise from the heart’s silent ruins. Daniel Edward Moore lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His poems have appeared in Phoebe, Southern Humanities Review and others. His work is forthcoming in Action Spectacle Magazine, The Meadow Journal, The Chiron Review and Delta Poetry Review. His book, “Waxing the Dents,” from Brick Road Poetry Press.

Paul Ilechko

Inheritance A lack of paperwork an emptiness of filing cabinets a distinct lack of manila envelopes he was born unwanted learning at a pre-verbal age to tolerate the hot-potato shuffle his budget plywood crib cheaply painted with angry rabbits following him from house to house the aunt with oversized teeth would peer for a time from above a severe absence of chin and the very next day the hairless uncle who lacked even eyebrows would fail to appear surprised he didn’t care much where he went as long as he was fed his taste in adults supremely inclusive but at some point in time the ball had to finally stop rolling and life then settled into an equilibrium but everything now is upside down again all interested parties reappearing as lawsuits drag anxiously on an inheritance contested the entire clan eagerly awaits to see how poor or rich he might be and every last one of them is prouder than they ever were before to be recognized as his kith and kin. Paul Ilechko is

Mike James

The River’s Architecture for Louis McKee, d. 11/21/11 The river has a shape you follow with your whole body: shoulder, footstep, and ear- those who know how to listen hear how river wind is like breath, alive in lung and line. Mike James makes his home in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He has published in hundreds of magazines, large and small, and has performed his poetry at universities and other venues throughout the country. He has published over 20 collections and has served as visiting writer at the University of Maine, Fort Kent. His recent new and selected poems, Portable Light: Poems 1991-2021, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His last collection, Back Alley Saints at the Tiki Bar, was published in April by Redhawk. He currently serves as the Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, TN.