Melissa Eleftherion

 swallow erasure

flashing white underparts

the violet swallows

the tree dark breast

of diagnostic

erratic abundant

all rump and face

all hard for the flight itself

perch of

throat & siren

Melissa Eleftherion (she/they) is a cis queer human, a writer, a librarian, and a visual artist. She is the author of field guide to autobiography (The Operating System, 2018), & numerous chapbooks, including little ditch (above/ground press, 2018) & trauma suture (above/ground press, 2020). Born & raised in Brooklyn, Melissa created, developed, and co-curates The SFSU Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange with Elise Ficarra. She now lives in Northern California where she manages the Ukiah Library, teaches creative writing, & curates the LOBA Reading Series. Recent work is available at www.apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.

Timothy Gager

New York Confession

New York was hard to find
only if I pealed the onion,
I can pray for sleep to overtake

the stumble, into place
and stumble out, never saw
what’s in front of my face:

Life’s jugglers, clowns, the beat
masters of three card monte, I
won then the stakes got higher

in a city of nightmares,
morning, afternoon, night
feel like different places
unless troubled, they merged
into one, I was awake through all
waiting for the city to let me go

forced to sing myself to supper
by climbing the highest mountains
the trees in The Village.

On 2nd street, and Avenue C
I was lost, even with obvious
nomenclature of the corner

smack in the middle in the intersection,
my arms stretched out, Jesus,
4 AM, begging for crucifixion.

Timothy Gager is the author of fifteen books of fiction and poetry. His latest, Spreading Like Wild Flowers,is his eighth of poetry. Timothy hosted the successful Dire Literary Series in was the co-founder of The Somerville News Writers Festival. He has had over 600 works of fiction and poetry published, of which seventeen have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work also has been nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award, The Best of the Web, The Best Small Fictions Anthology and has been read on National Public Radio. Timothy is the Fiction Editor of The Wilderness House Literary Review, and the founding co-editor of The Heat City Literary Review. A graduate of the University of Delaware, Timothy lives in Dedham, Massachusetts with some fish and two rabbits, and he is employed as a social worker. He is currently seeking representation for his third novel, Joe the Salamander, a semi-finalist for The Holland Prize.

Jeff Weddle

And So It Goes

Naked and forgetting
the safety of sheets
she stands by
a dirty window
of dead flies
and open curtains

gazing at
the half-empty
parking lot.

A young man
walking to his car
fails to notice
her accidental gift
of beauty

his mind caught
on the one
he has abandoned
in a different room

while her puzzled lover
asks again
why she has left the bed

and the young man
starts his car
and pulls away

with no idea
where the night
will take him

and she says aloud
she is not sure
why she was
ever there
at all.

Visiting Home 

On the church steps
with grey and purple clouds
and the night songs
of animals
cars going somewhere
with their lights and noise
fireflies and a man running
as my father
back at the house
is caught
in a failing body
barely able to move
in his ancient black recliner
and my mother watches him
for signs of need
but seeing none
settles on
cleaning his denture
in this last
bit of smoke
when we are all
still alive
trying to understand
each mystery
except
how lonely
the end can be

Jeff Weddle is a poet and writer living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He won the 2007 Welty Prize for Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press, and has also received honors for his fiction and poetry. Jeff teaches in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama.