Paul Ilechko

Blood Blossoms

What kind of blooms are these
which linger into early winter

survive so many nights
of freezing temperature

still thriving in their brilliant scarlet
above the mahogany flame

of a stained wood deck
the first time we’ve had this

variety in their hanging baskets
I see them through

the splintering louvers
of the wooden blinds

and wonder if they will
survive into another year

*

from out of the kitchen
I hear a scream

where Linda is thinly slicing
cucumbers with the mandolin

a bunch of begonias spraying
from the wound

frozen into physical blossoms
arranged with careful greenery

displayed against
the sheen of a pewter vase

a silvering of slippery ice.

Paul Ilechko is the author of “Post Moby” (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2026) and “Fragmentation and Volta” (Gnashing Teeth, 2025). His work has also appeared in many journals, including The Bennington Review, Bear Review, Atlanta Review, Permafrost, and Laurel Review. He reads for Marrow Magazine

Jim Zola

Jesus Saves

The Indian market
and the gun shop
share a wall,
as if each were waiting
for the other
to explain itself.

Beyond the last houses,
the fields begin,
plowed under
for whatever comes next.

On the poles,
the signs

JESUS SAVES.

Someone
climbed there.

Perhaps he worked
after midnight,
hammer in one hand,
sign in the other,
stopping whenever
a car approached,
slipping back
into darkness.

I imagine him
moving
from pole to pole,
leaving behind
the same promise
again and again.

Waiting
for the sentence
to outlive
the man
who nailed it there.

Scott Ferry

7.

the black bird is on the sign
then it isn't

the sign still rocks as
proof

memory is silver chalk
identity a shrinking list

i am a thing reclaimed
from a box of scissor and song—

my self a dark wing
flashing

in the afternoon
lull.

Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as a RN in the Seattle area. He has two books birthing in 2026: Blood on the Map of Man from Luchador Press and Inheritance of Air with Aakriti Kuntal from Meat For Tea Press. More can be found @ ferrypoetry.com.

Jake Sheff

(originally published by Synchronized Chaos)

Blackguarding Merles

You mock a dahlia’s faith in rain
And March’s hieratic pain
In Wotan’s one good eye. I show
The only serious dog I know

The absence of a final task.
(His bark becomes so plateresque.)
Jocasta’s hardship melts the snow…
The only serious dog I know

Is on precocious wisdom’s trail.
Your apperception tugs his tail.
For Tiresias, you set aglow
The only serious dog I know.

Jake Sheff is a pediatrician and US Air Force veteran. He’s published a full-length collection of formal poetry, “A Kiss to Betray the Universe” (White Violet Press), along with three chapbooks: “Looting Versailles” (Alabaster Leaves Publishing), “The Rites of Tires” (SurVision) and “The Seagull’s First One Hundred Seguidillas” (Alien Buddha Press).

Jason Ryberg

1)Heavy Doth Hang the Head that Wears the Hubcap Diamond Star Halo


The Angel of Death
is a crow pecking at some-
thing in the gutter,

and the folds of the
wind’s black velvet curtains sweep
back and forth across

the sidewalks and streets,
shuffling a flood of dead leaves,
Styrofoam cups and

candy wrappers, here
and there, and the faint strains of
a mysterious

violin seem to
be following us through the
dark twists and turns of

this unfamiliar
city, and the full moon is
looking right through us

with its wide owl’s eye,
our every step jingling with
keys and spare change (though

there’s really no such
thing as spare change or spare time,
for that matter, and

the locks to all our
keys have been switched), and a spray-
painted piece of ply-

wood that’s boarding up
a broken window in an
old burned-out warehouse

reads heavy doth hang
the head that wears the hubcap
diamond star halo.

Jason Ryberg is the author of eighteen books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and, a couple of angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors. He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. 

Cecil Morris

A Second Wedding Vow for You


This was supposed to be my anchorage,
my safe harbor secure from sea tumult,
from wind and rage and wrack, a holy place.

I swore before the God you swear is real
and watching every sin, before the crowd
of saints and both our families, all our friends,

and you promised, too, made a pledge to keep.
I did not believe in your god but did
believe in you forever for always,

the sanctity of love, all its symbols,
the flowers bunched, the round of wedding ring,
the goddamn wedding dress yet in fashion.

What I promise you now, an oath I’ll keep:
to post on your Facebook page, your Linked-in,
everywhere someone might look for you

the most private letters you wrote to me,
thus rid myself of you and bring you shame.
And, of course, I’ll sell the dress and the ring.

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher, has poems appearing in 2River View, Common Ground Review, Lascaux Review, New Verse News, Rust + Moth, Sugar House Review, and elsewhere. Morris’s debut poetry collection, At Work in the Garden of Possibilities, came out from Main Street Rag in 2025.

Hiatus Finished!

Hi All--

I finally got access to the place where the sausage is made. Here.

Look for new content soon.

Rusty