Issue #25

Michael Prihoda

wide is the way, easy is the footstep

Author’s note: This poem was inspired by Guantanamo Diary, written by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who was unfairly detained in Guantanamo Bay for more than a decade. His experiences and the US political climate of the past 20 years informed the creation of this poem.

you proceed down a series of still, doorless hallways.
just as you believe the end approaches you see a sign

                                                 reading

                                                “Danger.”

            that should make you

            pause

but doesn’t.                                        and as you continue

it becomes a cycle,                 the plodding past a lack of doors or exits

ad infinitum                or                    nauseum,

but never ad whatever-the-Latin-word-for-conscience-happens-to-be.

and every time

            the sign repeats

the font                                  seems

                                    that much                                                             smaller.



Michael Prihoda lives in central Indiana. He is the founding editor of After the Pause, an experimental literary magazine and small press. His work has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net Anthology and he is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently Out of the Sky (Hester Glock, 2019).

Kyla Houbolt

A Wounded Hawk

This morning
a light wind was blowing.
Last night’s storm clouds lay
atop the horizon’s green tree crowns,
all frothy pearly cream—
a perfect confection under the clear sun.
Mist rose in rays.
I could breathe here,
I thought,
and did.

Going to be hot soon.
I wonder about
that wounded hawk
or maybe it was just
too full of small bird
breakfast to move
when it saw us see it.

But I’ve not heard the hawk
cry where I used to hear it
every day.

One never really knows
unless the evidence is
right there in the path: bones,
body parts, a limp form. The places
we don’t see are still
far bigger than the ones we do.

Beyond where I can see
the wounded hawk
is flying or not, live or dead,
according to some wild law
I do not yet know
how to read
and may never.


Kyla Houbolt lives and writes in Gastonia, NC. She has work in Black Bough Poetry, Barren Magazine, Juke Joint Magazine, forthcoming in The Hellebore, Mojave Heart Review, and other places. She can most often be found gazing off into space, or into treetops if there are any around. You can follow her on Twitter @luaz_poet.

DS Maolalaí

the three things

thing 1:
the trouble –
is coming back at all.

trouble;
coming back
and seeing
all these people who never left
and stayed on instead
to insist
on being successful.
one friend of mine is the country’s foremost expert
on extinct animals now.
another
a well publicized novelist.

there’s 2:
the luck;
coming back
after a long time away
and getting a job pretty quick, an easy job
with not much to it
and a boss who doesn’t mind
as long as the work gets done.

3: the glory –
being easy with girls, meeting them
easily
and dropping them easily,
with pain going to no-one,
opening like a sunflower
and slipping
like a tiger between the trees, relaxed
as a canalboat at tether.

the trouble
though,
again,
is that none of it matters
while you can still look
at mountains ahead
and see people you don’t respect up there
laid out
sunbathing
and not even bothering to break the road.

fuck everyone’s success
except mine.


DS Maolalai has been nominated for Best of the Web and twice for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016) and “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019).

Greg Scheiber

Sacred Trees Part II

for Steve & Liz

Later that year,
At a near-surprise marriage
On an abandoned Christmas tree farm in Little Compton,
The few witnesses followed the groom
And hiked back into the grove,
Refrigerator-cool on July Friday.
The men in black dress shoes
And the women in flats and heels
Stood atop an inches-thick carpet
Of years’ accumulation, needles
Lapping at trunks like tides.
The pines in rows on either side
Extended forever into the sky,
Mystic as coniferous mallorns—
The moment held under the canopy like Masses
                                                                                          under domes.

The bride and groom read their individual vows
Off slips of paper folded in his jacket pocket
And they held hands and slipped rings
At the command and invitation
Of the Hawaiian shirt-clad elopement justice
While his girlfriend-photographer
Moved among us and the trees,
Snapping photos through long lens.


Greg Scheiber is currently pursuing his MFA in poetry at Eastern Washington University. His work has previously appeared in Poetry Quarterly, Nomadic Journal, and Oddball.

Sarah Etlinger

If I Told You I Loved You, It Would Be the Wrong Thing to Say

You came in from slaughtering the chickens,
your hand still spattered
with blood drops; and your eyes
had that quiet I’ve come to accept
on days like today—

where we’re aware of the order
of things, of the fact that
the same hands that hold the chickens’ necks,
slowly swinging them above your head
before carrying them, upside down,
into the killing cone
for the final cut

are the same hands
that coax me to love, the same
tender fingers I’ve come to expect
just as much as the sunrise in the morning,
its blush on the day
rosy as your skin after a shower
before you slide into bed with me.

You stand in the doorway,
a white towel in your hands.
You smile at me with your quiet smile
(the one I’ve come to expect, to want)
as you take your place on the pillow
and, arms akimbo behind your head,
your eyes blink, close, sleep.


Sarah A. Etlinger is an English professor who resides in Milwaukee, WI, with her family. Her first chapbook, Never One for Promises, is forthcoming in August 2019 from Alabaster Leaves; other work can be found at The Magnolia Review, Little Rose Magazine, and Brine (poet of the month), among others. In addition to poetry, interests include traveling, cooking, and learning to play piano.