Jeffrey N. Johnson

Tramposo de Sevilla

Within white washed walls,
weathered stone and blue sky
the Gypsies arrived unseen.
I was green and little traveled,
planted on a bench with back turned,
abiding my time with Hemingway.
He approached with dirty bare feet
on herringbone brick and an open
linen blouse with little tears
in place of lost buttons.
His wedded his palms, held to heaven,
reminding me of our mutual friend,
and could I not share
a little of my good fortune?
He tightened and contorted his back
which would not work,
and gestured to his mate,
to misfortune and fate.
She sat nearby wailing,
swaying on hot stone,
her mosaic of rags flowing
with the four limp legs of her children,
starving, a boy and a girl,
one arched over each arm,
mouths open.
With Jake paused and Brett in mid-sentence
I shuttered and searched
and dug into myself,
putting pesetas into his palm,
wanting to return to my Fiesta.
He bowed in thanks
and limped away to beg
others of different tongues
before returning to his family.
With a bark of crisp dialect
the little ones sprang to life.
The boy wiped his nose
and the girl tugged her dress.
Mother gathered her rags and serenity,
giving each child a kiss.
Father hoisted the boy
to his sturdy shoulders
where he held on tight and starry eyed.
The little girl, walking on tip-toes,
pulled a flower from her pocket
and held it to the sun
as they disappeared
into the narrow streets.
A miracle to behold, I thought,
fingering my change,
or isn’t it pretty to think so?

Jeffrey N. Johnson’s poems have recently appeared in the Southern Poetry Anthology: Virginia, Birmingham Poetry Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Gargoyle, Midwest Quarterly, and Santa Clara Review. His story collection “Other Fine Gifts” won a regional Ippy Award, which included the Andrew Lytle Fiction Prize winner from The Sewanee Review, and his novel “The Hunger Artist” was a finalist for the Library of Virginia’s People’s Choice Award. His poetry film “One Old, One Young” has been an official selection in ten film festivals.

Jim Daniels

Half Days

My daughter, thirteen, pale shred of herself,
fought an unidentified infection in her spine
as it softened her discs into disappearance.

I’d unread that story if she were young and still
listened to lullabies. After she got discharged,
I set an alarm for two a.m. each night to shoot

antibiotics into her port while she slept,
her limp arm resting in my hand. Her return
to school: half days—follow my dotted line

smearing across months of sleepless breadcrumbs—
at noon I idled high, anxious in the school driveway
rattling off the latest test results in the zero gravity

of fear. She startled me with the brittle thunk
of the car door slam, then snapped at me for staring
at her friends as they strolled across the street

to the cafeteria, creeping them out, she said,
embarrassed by illness like hard acne
or a blooming hickey, wrong music

or flakey hair, or the tacky middle-school
jumper she no longer had to wear.
I was there to drive her to therapy.

They were teaching her to walk upright
again—forget stroll. My eyes clouded
with the toxic erasures of her MRI.

Was I staring at each teenager popping
the perfect gum of their bright young lives?
I’d have circled her bony wrists

with my tremble if she’d let me.
I shifted into drive. In the untranslatable
silence we shared, our breath in sync,

I pulled away, neither of us waving
to anyone.

Jim Daniels’ latest poetry collection, The Human Engine at Dawn, was published in December by Wolfson Press. The cover photo features his grandfather working on an engine at Packard Motor Car Company in Detroit. Forthcoming collections include The Luck of the Fall, fiction, Michigan State University Press, to be published later this year, and Comment Card, a chapbook of poems, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2024. A native of Detroit, he lives in Pittsburgh and teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA program.

Luke Johnson

The Swell, I Did Not Know

When I hit the hog
it ran a mile

through the thicket
and fell

in a foot of water
—drowned.

You hit it in the head
my daddy said,

the zombie effect. 
How the body

moves in death
                       a dance

and after
the dance

a knife
that grooves

                                    the bloated gut,
                                                                    gropes

like filthy men.
Believe me,

he continues:
even the innocent

eat, son,
throw themselves

                                          in acts
                                          of rage

and reach
for what the world

will offer them.
Later,

                                  the fire
                                  leaps

like magic
from his

fingers and a full
bottle

                              passed
                              like prayer.

I pretend to sip.
Spit to ward

the spirit, divination.
A warmth

the body
turns

                              to torment,
                              visions. My

daddy in the dark
wood

     asking where his
brother is

and why the lake
won’t cough him

                                back.
                                   The babies?

He cut
them clean.

Luke Johnson’s poems can be found at Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Narrative Magazine, Florida Review, Poetry Northwest, Frontier, Cortland Review and elsewhere. His manuscript in progress was recently named a finalist for the Jake Adam York Prize, The Levis through Four Way Press, The Vassar Miller Award and is forthcoming fall 2023 from Texas Review Press. You can connect on Twitter at @Lukesrant.  

Ted Jackins

After David Berman

Your acerbic wit,
Gift for tragic
Wordplay,
And lazy croon
Belied a broken heart,
One you shaped
To fit the frame
Of the country song,
Until eventually
It all became too much,
Your words whittled down
To razor sharp
Turns of phrase,
Your heart exposed
Wounds and all,
Suicide notes
In miniature,
And by the time
People took notice
You were gone

Ted Jackins is a poet and musician from North Carolina. Their work has previously appeared in Red Fez, Outlaw poetry, Museum of Poetry and Big Hammer. They are also the author of both Psych Ward Blues and Mercury, In Retrospect, both available via Alien Buddha Press.