Issue #102

Royal Rhodes

WINTER

It lasts at least nine months
in some places, even locations
without glaciers or mountain valleys
packed with the heavy weight of snow.
In these low hills and smooth farmland
it comes, predicted in the almanac
and by those who sense a dark atmosphere.
This season — the many deaths earth
has endured — is like a search for closure
that seeks a foothold, the brief space
between words we use with each other.
Winter comes to some slow release,
just when you thought it could not get worse.
It is white against the white stands of birch
and the fog forced from the starving soil,
in clouds the snowmelt harvests from the ice.
The immaculate surface is marred in spots
by the smudge of an animal’s needs,
seeking alone a safe place for dying,
and whose bones, a milk color, will be uncovered
in later dissolving light below the silent planets.
All of our subsequent life is couched in suspicion,
stricken by nature’s abiding, public rebuke.
And then an interrupting thaw — like the call
from someone you loved so many years ago,
phoning at midnight with a rambling speech,
telling you how you had let them down.
And then you attempt to drift back to sleep
after setting the receiver down on the nightstand.
Is there room in my life for some kind of hope?
Can I bear the cold from this knowledge of winter,
and dream of an Eden where I hand back the apple?

Royal Rhodes is a poet and retired educator who taught courses on global religions for almost forty years. He lives now in a small village in rural Ohio. He enjoys reading poetry, ancient and modern, and listening to classical music.

Cailín Frankland

fairways

granny’s house is full.

good china in the dining room,
cheap ceramic in the kitchen—the cupboard doors
barely close over the piles of plates, each one retrieved
with only the most careful of fingers. in the office,
boxes of old school reports, fading
photographs:
               our father at ten years old.
               our uncles, nine and seven.
a desk and chair are under there somewhere,
a mattress and bedside table with drawers long collapsed
under their own weight. they don’t open any more.

the bedroom has a wall of mirrors, sliding doors
over closets fit to burst with rows of coats and scarves
so old they feel brand new again.
               granny’s perfume on every breath.
so much makeup, half-used or untouched but always
expired, clearance stickers intact. children’s toys
in the corner—every doll and drum and model car we ever
picked up and put down and never picked up again.
all the rooms are like this. from the garage to the attic,
every nook and cranny and corner and crevice is
overflowing,
               jam-packed,
                              chock-a-block,
                                             full,
                                                            full,
                                                                           full.

grandad’s in the flower bed. there was nowhere else to put him.

Cailín Frankland (she/they) is a British-American writer and public health professional based in Baltimore, Maryland. Their cultural criticism, poetry, flash fiction, and short fiction have been featured in numerous print and online publications. You can find them on X as @cailin_sm.

Kathleen Serocki

November Wind

Brittle brown leaves blow in one direction,
Then quickly in another,
Brazenly rattling down the street,
Finding freedom in dryness.
The leaves really know how to let go,
Riotously laughing
At their quick reversals.

The wind rises wild and lifts,
Sweeps away another season,
More restless swirling,
Funnels of tattered leaves twirling,
Boldly scrape across the concrete.
Their earthy scent is haunting. As
Change chases me down the street,
Nature's reeling refuse follows.

Kathleen Serocki is a writer from Fairfield, Connecticut. She writes poetry and creative nonfiction and her work has appeared in Freshwater Literary Journal, Mused: BellaOnline, The Heartland Review, Writers’ Bloc (Rutgers), and others. She is a recipient of the Connecticut Poetry Society’s Al Savard Award.

William Ross

Driving Home

or at night a song sliding downhill
comes to rest in your ear
nudges a dream that melts
and then a buzzing fills the room

or by a tree when the air is still and
you forget how you came to be there
sunlight shifting lazy on the sand

or the flowers dance and
bees are riding them    they lift off
and hover    go on with their work
and you are still there watching

or once    you were driving home
and the sun warmed your face
you closed your eyes and sleep came

when you jerked awake    the car
driving itself    windshield glass
and metal hurtling homeward
the giant concrete footing

your undoing drifted past untouched
and you are still here    you are still there
you hover

William Ross is a Canadian writer and visual artist living in Toronto. His poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines in Australia, Canada, China, India, Northern Ireland, the UK, and the United States.

Sarp Sozdinler

Mapfinding for the Lighthouse

Suppose the map is missing its corners.
Edges curl like dry leaves, and the only road
ends at a fence painted years ago, yellow
flecked with green where lichen has made plans.

The lighthouse itself isn’t marked.
You have to look for it—some say
it hums a low note at dusk,
some say it’s only the sea pushing stones.

Between hedges, you count rabbits,
then lose count, their quickness
leaving a question in the grass.
At the beach, sand covers your footprints
before you can turn and check.

On some evenings, the air grows so clear
that the far-off wind turbines
seem to rotate in slow agreement.
Your phone has no signal here,
but a single feather falls at your feet,
white, barbed, faintly curved.

There’s no promise you will see the lighthouse.
You may walk until the clouds
lower themselves into fog,
and realize, standing on the rocks,
that the thing you sought
was only the habit of looking.


A Turkish writer, Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Masters Review, Trampset, JMWW, Normal School, and elsewhere. Their work has been selected or nominated for anthologies including the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. They are currently working on their first book.

Mervyn Seivwright

Our Eclipse of Sunset

When our tree-rings thin, when
white-peppered-hair caps get wispy, when
bones hold folds of loose skin, when

muscles are wrinkled, when
wrinkles carve skin-valley ripples, when
the voice mumbles, murmurs, when

we sit in family homes on aged settee, when
we sit in lazy-lay chair, sunken, shiftless, when
we sit in seasoned-life demising dwellings, when

our eyes are glassy, glaze in abyss, when
we gawk at our movie of memories, cerebrally, when
our gaze is penetrating walls, while

blinking at flash instants recalled, when
our eyes spark at fondly seen family, when
our head is recessed at vacant visits, when

we are awakened, dragged restless, when
we are lifted from fickle legs, when
we are shamefully stripped and showered, when

we are dressed, unlike we dressed ourselves, when
we are not exercised, jelly-casting cells, we
feel the frail brittle-bone hollowness, when

forks are a focused motion to mouth, when
face loosens, tongue twists tip to hum of sugar, when
this baby-state is stagnated, when

we feel like Raggedy Ann, froth flattened, when
we feel like Raggedy Andy on puppet strings, when
last breath feels like the grail, when

recollections wrestle experiences, when
rose petals wither, five minutes of now resets,
recycling the five minutes before, when

when—becomes now.

Mervyn Seivwright writes to balance social consciousness and poetry craft for humane growth. The Spalding MFA graduate, London-born Jamaican, appears in AGNI, Salamander, and 82 other journals in 13 countries, and a 2021/2023 Pushcart Nominee. His collection is “Stick, Hook, and a Pile of Yarn,” Broken Sleep Books.

Aranka Somogyi

crumb

translated by Ágnes Megyeri

Aranka Somogyi was born in 1959 in Budapest, Hungary, and has been living there ever since. She started writing poems in 2006 and has been publishing them in various Hungarian literary magazines since. She had her first book of poems, entitled Solid Geometry, published in 2016.

Azalea Aguilar

DIVE BAR DECEMBER

There’s a crossing in the forest
you spoke about

the night I found you
drunk and alone

mumbling to yourself
in the alleyway between

our favorite bar and my efficiency
a crossing you walked as a boy

watching trees sway in the breeze
I sang them songs and they danced for me

tears clearing paths down chalky cheeks
I cupped your icy hands in mine

took deep breaths, blew warmth onto them
you didn't have a coat

you begged me to let you stay the night
but we had been here before and I couldn’t

make my way back from the dead again
I hung my pink parka over your broad shoulders

you finally said you were sorry
I wished I could believe you

the yellow cab inched up slowly
as I helped you to your feet

you placed a kiss clumsy on my forehead
whispered in my ear

I named every tree that danced for me

Azalea Aguilar is a Chicana poet from South Texas, gulf scents and childhood memories linger in her work. Her poetry delves into complexities of motherhood, echoes of trauma, and resilience found in spaces shaped by survival. Her work has appeared in Angel City Review, The Skinny Poetry Journal, and The Acentos Review.

Maudie Bryant

Negative Space

I don’t do the math of it,
but I like to think—
of spin, of force,
of stars             held
in careful tension.
The mystery of 
                          restraint.

I imagine the body
of the universe
the way I do my own—
             dense
with things no one sees,
tied together
by prediction and pain,
             a long history
             of silence.

Science says most of it
is dark matter.
But dark—
that’s a trick of language.
A name for what scares us,
a shadow we cast
over the undefined.
Not evil. Not empty.
Just unknown.

Just             waiting.

Our galaxy
spins obediently
because of what cannot be seen.
Maybe that’s me too.
Maybe that’s all of us—
gathering existence
with our absence,
keeping everything from flying apart
by sheer force
of what we carry
alone.

Maudie Bryant is a Pushcart-nominated poet, multidisciplinary artist, and editor-in-chief of Audi Locus, an online poetry journal. A graduate of the University of Louisiana Monroe (M.A. in English), she writes from Shreveport, Louisiana, exploring memory, identity, and disquiet. She lives with her husband and two young sons.

Aden Thomas

Dog At The Screen Door

Watching his master through the front door screen
shoveling snow without him by his side
is barely more than he can stand to hide,
though instincts fight his territory’s lien.
He whines. He barks. He paces in between
the door frame’s compressed view. He leans to slide
with his weight on the glass to pull the door aside.
It is no use. He’s held inside this scene.

But then he spies the handle of the door
and ponders all the times he saw the man
pushing it down to execute some plan
of entering the winter’s chilly roar.
And this is how our evolution falls:
a dog on two hind legs, walking through the walls.

Aden has been published widely over the last two decades, and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His first book of poems, entitled What Those Light Years Carry, was published in 2017