Poetry – sinking city

Ghost

n. The outward and visible sign of an inward fear

—Ambrose Bierce

Grief-drunk girl taught to swallow the silt
of her leafy dread, spoon-fed like most kids

a diet of small deaths—cats and granddads, a
missed hemstitch—but then the hammer-squash

in sophomore year of dead best friend.
On a grainy 80s phone line, I learn of last

rites, last efforts, surgical teams, an accidental
mix of medicines, shuffled blame that

couldn’t undo the bulbous bloom of a teen
girl’s yellow and black heart, unwitting propeller

of poisoned brew. That’s when
he first shared them, Dad’s two rules:

Rule #1—life is never fair.
Rule #2—you can’t change Rule #1.

I’d lived with them for twenty years
by the afternoon the social worker

leaned against the granite-topped vanity
said she worried I was crying too much

as I lay, ordered still, in a hospital room
across from the one where, not a year

ago, I lost a son. I don’t tell her about the dreams
a second ghost child pushed out of me. Instead

I endure her advice: try to be positive, don’t stress
and remember, because one child didn’t live

doesn’t mean it will happen again.

Jill Michelle is the author of Underwater (Riot in Your Throat, 2025) and Shuffle Play (Bottlecap, 2024) and winner of the 2023 NORward Prize for Poetry. Her newest work is forthcoming in The Florida Review, The Indianapolis Review, Pangyrus Lit Mag and Yellow Arrow Journal. She teaches at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. Find more at byjillmichelle.com.

ON WALDEN POND

by Thom Hawkins

I call Thoreau Walden and he calls me Walden, too

And together we’re convinced that Walden the Pond
used to be Walden the Man—
a man so unconvinced of demands on his person
that he ceased to be one—
he melted against the landscape
with the only evidence of his human form
a slight ripple when he laughs

(Walden and I spend hours chucking punchlines to see who can get the bigger splash)

Walden is jealous of Walden the Pond, and I’m jealous that he pays so much attention to him.
When I catch him immersed to his whiskers, I wish that I was the Walden he was immersed in.

And when Walden’s away
I try to convince Walden the Pond to change back into Walden the Man
and let me take his place—
but Walden just ripples at the suggestion and doesn’t move
and I can’t even convince myself to slouch
let alone accomplish what he has

Yes, yes,
there’s love here, too, on Walden Pond—
but we had to change its name to Walden

Thom Hawkins is a writer and artist based in Maryland. His work has appeared or is scheduled to appear in Oyez Review, Gargoyle, The Fieldstone Review, Poetry Box, Linked Verse, and Uncensored Ink's Banned Books Anthology. His video art and drawings have been displayed at exhibitions or in performances in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. Thom has also appeared with the Baltimore Improv Group, Ignite Baltimore, and on The Stoop Storytelling podcast.

Cienfuegos

Abuela calls me hot tempered,
while also referring to me
as a man of 100 fires.

Abuela calls me Camilo,
anytime I let my beard grow
out, my hair grow wild.
Camilo Cienfuegos,
the champion of the people, killed.

US says Cuba
Cuba says US
But he’s dead, memorialized
saying Vas bien, Fidel,
which you can’t help but wonder
about the insincerity, insecurity
of having to tell yourself that,
in public for eternity,
in the police state you built.

Abuela always calls me Camilo
when my hair grows out,
as if she’s worried that
untethered,
I’ll become like him;
used, killed, by someone trying
to get away with using, killing,
solely for themself.
As if I were too precious to
have that happen to me,
even if Camilo was clearly too precious,
for us.

Camilo, the hero from the campo,
not the prestigious school boy
married into the other dictator’s family,
who inherited that claim that all dictators have
of another’s home.
Camilo, the one who actually knows what
an empty stomach grumbles.

Abuela always calls me Camilo, who Abuelo drove
side by side with in celebration,
Havana taken over by campesinos y colegios
y congresos, and for a moment, not by anything else.
When he gets excited that I travel, he’s happy I’ve seen
the world. But he has apprehension of what comes next
of me using what I saw, to try to make the world better.
Tonto Útil. He’s afraid of seeing me drive side by side
with him, celebrating, only to never be seen again.

Vas Bien, my father remembers that differently.
How Camilo was talking and how he asked
that as a question to Fidel. Vas bien, Fidel?
Is it ok that I keep going? Am I doing right
by our people, our island, our home,
our vision for a free and better Cuba?

Castro y Che
knew how to talk to the US press,
Camilo talked for the people,
for us.

Vas Bien, Fidel?
Sure, for me, but maybe not
for us.
Abuela calls me hot tempered,
while also referring to me
as a man of 100 fires.

For Abuelo, Abuela, Pops and Moms
all worried about me disappearing,
to flame out like 100 fires at once.
But I am not afraid of being the one,
destined to disappear.
But I am afraid of being the one,
cursed to stay on the road, alone,
wondering where my friends,
my family, my youth,
my loves, my dreams
of finding
home, went.

For nothing is as cold as the ashes
from 100 fires that have been
extinguished, quickly, then slowly,
for eternity,
for us.

Christopher Louis Romaguera is a Cuban-American writer who was born in Hialeah, Florida, and graduated from Florida International University in Miami, Florida. He has an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of New Orleans. Romaguera has been published in Passages North, Catapult, Massachusetts Review, Islandia Journal, Latino Book Review and other publications. He is a VONA alum and Romaguera was a 2023 Periplus Fellow. He is currently working on a full-length poetry manuscript describing the trips he has taken to Cuba, where his father was born.

Weatherman (CW: allusion to physical violence)

by Shiksha Dheda

His face rained today
-much contrast to
the rainbow smile

of yesterday

The droplets began
uneasily and

paced themselves to a
rhythm-less tempo

They erupted
in a hailstorm -
complete with the heavy
stones of heartache

The thunder came
-suddenly-

- quietly-

with a low note of howling

Later – unexpectedly-

came the bolt of burning, bright lightning

His face returned to
the genuine colourful
burst of rainbow-
after the insincere rainfall

Sunlight shone amiably,
whilst I held the ashy remnants of his lightning
to my cheek.

Shiksha Dheda is a South African of Indian descent. She uses writing to express her OCD and depression roller-coaster ventures. Sometimes, she dabbles in photography, painting, and baking lopsided layered cakes. Her writing has been featured(on/forthcoming) in Brittle Paper, Daily Drunk Magazine, Door is a jar, Luna Luna Mag and Versification, amongst others. She is the Pushcart nominated author of Washed Away (Alien Buddha Press, 2021) She rambles annoyingly at Twitter: @ShikshaWrites. You can find (or ignore her) at https://shikshadheda.wixsite.com/writing/poetry

What Really Happened That Night in Bedford Falls (after It’s a Wonderful Life)

by Kevin Grauke

The angel, flightless as a penguin, shows him a world where his brother died beneath skate-scored ice and his wife, a virgin married to books, desiccates in a library: a gray world with no hero to save them from their horrid fates. Standing on the snow-muffled bridge a second time, bleeding from his lip yet again, he is meant to see that life is wonderful, but wait, isn’t his uncle still a yarn-fingered old fool? And isn’t the money still gone? Yes. And yes.

Such old news, this. Yesterday’s hero: today’s failure. Why? Because this land was made for you and me and What have you done for me lately? There above the icy water, he knows nothing of the basket of money making its slow way to save the day; he knows only that Christmas brought nothing but bankruptcy with its guiding light, and prison too, not peace and joy; he knows only that he’s worth less breathing than not, and so, no, he does not run through that snow-globe town joyously screaming—no, he jumps and he drowns, freezing another tiny bell’s clapper before it can swing. Family and friends will cry and say goodbye at his funeral and then mourn into the next year’s second month, but by March they’ll return fully to their own pressing troubles—house payments, food missing from the forks of their children—all the while thinking of him less and less and still less, until one green Monday in May they’ll notice having not thought of the man in weeks, the man who has lain cold in the town cemetery since just after Christmas, the man in whose pocket his daughter’s flower petals have long since disintegrated.

Kevin Grauke is the author of Shadows of Men (Queen's Ferry Press), winner of the Steven Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared (or are forthcoming) in journals such as The Threepenny Review, Bayou, The Southern Review, Fiction, Quarterly West, and Columbia Journal. He’s a Contributing Editor at Story, and he teaches at La Salle University in Philadelphia. Twitter: @kevingrauke

Bahía Solano

by Benjamin Faro

Geography
isn't the only thing
that separates us.
Sometimes it is dancing.
Sometimes, like when we
were playing dominoes by
the ocean, listening to Ozuna
among French tourists on coke
and colorful amphibians, as the
whole equator listened in, understanding
everything that was said and left unsaid,
you joke with locals and decide not
to let me in.

Perhaps it is unconscious.

You forget who I am,

becoming driftwood while
the water leans a little closer. The
jungle eavesdrops, just devouring your words,
this carnal opera; and when you direct the melody,
the world happily takes part, and for just a moment, I
see it in your eye—that wishing that I could keep up, that
my ears were ripe for harmony, or maybe that
you could stay here when I leave, having found your home,
or at least for the next six months, sitting in the sand waiting for the whales’
migration, when they come singing in July.

Benjamin Faro is a green-thumbed writer and educator living in Asunción, Paraguay, on stolen Guaraní lands. He is currently pursuing his MFA at Queens University of Charlotte, and his prose and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in EcoTheo, Portland Review, Atlanta Review, Invisible City, and elsewhere.

For Fear

by E. Bowers

in 1996, all the turkey vultures died in ohio / and, for fear of repercussions, we took their place / sat in what should have been the cool shade of trees crowding the asphalt of unmarked roads to wait / the waiting was hard / air a sausage skin around us, swooping in between our tank tops and bug bites and filling our belly buttons, so we could never forget it was there / and the waiting was hard / until one too many things walked in front of wheels that wouldn’t stop / then the moving was hard / because animals became daubs of paint / we swirled red and grey together, watching as they turned blacker by each day, developing on our fingertips / and every day we returned / cracked open the hard cast on top of our masterpiece to see what colors waited within/ we crooned to them / the waiting – it’s hard / consolations / and spread them only two inches higher up our wrists each day

E. Bowers is a writer from Enon, Ohio. She has a B.A. in English, Creative Writing, from Wright State University. Bowers interned as Managing Editor for Mad River Review from 2018 – 2019. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Mock Turtle Zine, Rogue Agent & ActiveMuse.

The Pinery Provincial Park Dance Company

by DM O'Connor

Leaping from roof to deck rail was easy. The sneak
home more complicated, especially in frost. At first

I’d lug a cassette player until batteries became
a drag and costly so I decided to dance to the woods.

In winter slushy thuds kept the tap in the toe.
Autumn was a poly-hued dead leaf soft shoe shuffle.

Hear that sandpaper rub. Spring all vault to branch creak
heels rarely hitting earth. Nut-cheeked summer squirrel

beady eyed with envy, poison ivy rash below tan line.
Proof I’d been birthday-suiting up to no good again.

I can’t name the birds that performed. Nor remember
the trunks hugged. Loved each bud and left them.

Moves mastered not from basement-TVs nor recorded
live-studio-audience, each snake groove top secret.

We grew out of seasons, build a shack, abducted a generator,
CDs, kegs, schnapps, pot, brawling, sex. Rock, other people.

We slammed the front door at all hours came and went at pleasure
too self-drunk to care who saw and who swung to what promise

DM O'Connor is a contributing reviewer for Rhino Poetry and fiction editor at Bending Genres. He is the recipient of the 2021 Cuirt International Award for Fiction, Tom Gallon Short Story Award, and is the current writer-in-residence at the Kerouac House Project, Orlando. He is grateful for the support of the Arts Council of Ireland and Words Ireland.

Stella Maris

by Lorelei Bacht

I am the girl in red riding
the crest, my presence
a warning, a sign

*

of tsunami: wave upon
wave of foam waiting

for birds, for mud, for businesses.

I am the change you call
and regret having called, the cold,
cold hand of growth

undercut.

I am weather.

*

You watch me drive my eyes
into your homes, make room

for silts, for my darkened
transparencies –

it is too late when you see me coming.

*

A clock, a clock, nothing.

*

Those of you who survive
up on the hills will farm
the land remade:

my gift of sediments.

*****

Lorelei Bacht (she/they) is currently running out of ways to define herself, and would like to reside in a tranquil, quiet form of uncertainty for a while. Her recent work has appeared and/or are forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic, Visitant, The Wondrous Real, Abridged, Odd Magazine, Postscript, PROEM, SWWIM, Strukturriss, The Inflectionist Review, Hecate, and elsewhere. She is also on Instagram: @lorelei.bacht.writer and on Twitter: @bachtlorelei

Lines from Billy Collins, Robert Browning, and Script from Legally Blonde (Exquisite Cento Project)

by Andrew Beckett Gibson and Zebulon Huset

Valor lies in bed listening to the rain
as we wind through a flock of abstract, silky, golden strands
then a mile of warm sea-scented beach
that made up the miniature town.

The card goes one way, being signed, as the drinks go the other
                                thinning away to nothing,
                                            a salad bowl filled with cash—
                 think of an egg, the letter A,
                                                 with shrieking and squeaking.

You are the rapids, the propeller, the kerosene lamp
(The reporters laugh as they snap pictures)
you are the dove-soft train whistle in the night
hugging her knees and cowering in a wretched little ball.

He swims in candlelight for all to see,
                                (a cop stands guard at the door)
his death had pages, a dark leather cover, an index,
                                                                  with milky admiration
                (no wonder I find him in the pale morning)
                                                and blue spurt of a lighted match.

You are Jean de Brébeuf with his martyr’s necklace of hatchet heads.

Outside was all noon and the burning blue,
eating popcorn and drinking red wine.

Something is always missing:
his twenty-seven year old daughter and the pool boy.

                 But—all the world's coarse.                Thumb
exercise gives you endorphins, endorphins make you happy
                                in his hybrid creole accent.
His dead body                         with a bullet in it
                                              with a beauty queen smile in place.
                 It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen,
a hook in the slow industrial canal below.

Andrew Beckett Gibson studied creative writing at North Carolina Central University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming at The Collidescope, The Bookends Review, Random Sample, Always Crashing, and Heartwood Literary Magazine.

Zebulon Huset is a teacher, writer and photographer living in San Diego. He won the Gulf Stream 2020 Summer Poetry Contest and his writing has appeared in Meridian, The Southern Review, Fence, Atlanta Review, & Texas Review, among others. He publishes the writing blog Notebooking Daily, edits the journals Coastal Shelf and Sparked, and recommends literary journals at TheSubmissionWizard.com.