By Shawn R. Jones

Featured art: Untitled by Mariama Condé

The officer approaches. Keith keeps both hands
on the steering wheel. Clicks his tongue

against his teeth six times—
a tune of feigned assurance.

The trooper walks back to his car.
Keith takes his hands off the wheel.

I am the first to speak. I ask if he thinks
the cop is going to give us a ticket.

By Joe Woodward

Featured art: Soul Released From Captivity by Chloe McLaughlin

I had an aunt
From Apalachicola
Who retired from
The Kash n’ Karry

Her feet hurt and
Something about
Varicose veins
After that she just
Sang Jesus hymns

In the church choir
And worried about
Those fall storms
Coming up in the gulf

She believed in pairs
Of black cat glasses
Her hair curled
In half dollars

And particularly
The 4^th of July
When she told me
Once while we ate
Our fried chicken

Don’t write your
Whole life story
At the top of
The Ferris wheel Read More

By John Bargowski

Featured art: brittle decay by Zero Jansen

I found it grounded on the road edge
near the town ball fields where my old man

hit pop-ups to me in my little league years.
The bird hopping through snakeroot

and catchfly, dragging a skewed wing
maybe busted by a low dive into a pickup

headed into our burg on the county two-lane.
That hawk always a few steps ahead of me,

raised the hackles on its cocked neck,
turned a pain-crazed dark eye, then clicked

its beak and snissed, flexing talon-spiked
claws whenever I came close enough

to grab it from behind and clamp my hands
over both wings, the way my old man did

the times he slow-climbed the ladder
up to the loft after his shift at the D&J Bar

and culled his prized flock of homers.
Sometimes reaching inside the wire coop

at twilight for a blue ribbon winner
that wouldn’t leave home to wheel over

the ball fields and D&J with the rest
of the team on the day’s last stretch.

An old favorite, whose inner compass
age had scrambled, clutched in those nimble

calloused hands that taught me the gift
of the sacrifice, the grip of the curve.

By Jackie Craven

Featured art: look, quick by Emma Stefanoff

I am learning to bake curses
the way my mother did
with paprika and clotted cream.
Her recipe book lists fifteen steps
and she’s added three more,
her instructions scrawled
on pages brittle as phyllo dough. 
I trace my fingers over every word
and try to understand the significance
of Simmer on Low. I’ve heard
that if you heat a kettle gently,
a frog can’t feel the water boil. But
what to do about the grumble
from the dining room, the hungry command
to hurry up? Nothing my mother served
could please my father,
who poured Tabasco into a slow-cooked stifatho
and called her a stupid cow.
I lean against the round shoulders
of the old refrigerator and listen
to her murmur. I’m grown now
and married and need to know––
When is it time to whisk, when to fold,
when to toss with newts and toads?

By Bridget O’Bernstein

Featured art: Women in Groups by Jesse Lee Kercheval

As a child, I flew alone to California
to spend the summer with my mother’s three sisters.
Aunt Moe made a soup out of bones and covered me
with a canvas blanket in the rock garden.
I played with Aunt Sheila’s cat under the willow for hours.
She walked over with a brush in her hand and said,
You can speak to cats, too? I nodded.
Before I left, Aunt Kate gave me a green velvet book
into which she’d taped a stick of spearmint gum
for my plane ride home.
When I arrived in Brooklyn with my secret,
my father pouted when I wouldn’t share it.
And when I said, It’s private,
his face made a face of such hurt surprise,
like I’d cut him, that I immediately gave it away.
I said, I can speak to cats,
at which point he laughed and went out to the deck
with his coffee, shaking his head.
What a mistake!
To extend to my father
the wonder of my secret, like a rose,
for safekeeping.
I stood there afterward, shocked
at the way I’d invaded myself by sharing it.
Now I had nothing. Read More

By Riley Kross

Featured art: Jezebel’s Daughters by Chloe McLaughlin

– for Amy

The baby
finally sleeps

so she
paints her

toenails bright
red with

practiced strokes
so later

she can
see her

bare feet
pacing the

dark kitchen
and remember

while breastfeeding
again again

feet propped
remember how

small all
art begins Read More

Featured art: Untitled by Sue-Yeon Ryu

By Matthew Valades

Featured art: Sunflowers by Janet Braden

It became possible to say anything:
that was the delusion. A melting tree,
a painted deer—the books sat useless
as guides to understand such thoughts.

Holes at the elbows quickly drew
attention, but bothering to bother seemed
no longer worth the trouble. With walls
and brooms folks got better acquainted.

A summer of branches joining field
and sky swelled with lost promise.
It was good to stay, that’s how it felt.
People got older and younger. They’d sit

composing elaborate salad plans.
“Forget about tomorrow” became
a common phrase, but few took comfort
in what it meant. Distance fraught

with waiting, a blank consistency,
infused the hours as if each day
had been left on the table to fill the house,
rising through the rooms like steam. Read More

By Matthew J. Spireng

Featured Art: Persian Saddle Flask by Matthew J. Spireng

He had admired it, yes, because

it was beautiful. It was very beautiful, but

he had not admired it because he

wanted it. She had thought otherwise,

though, because as he admired it, he told her,

“Isn’t it beautiful.” Not a question.

And it was for sale. His birthday

was coming. So she thought he admired it

because he wanted it and she bought it

for him. What could he say? A question,

rhetorical. He had admired it, yes,

and still admired it, although now it was his. Read More