Basketball

November 18, 2025.Reading time 2 minutes.

By Christopher Shipman

Mark was two years younger.
He was 10 to my 12. But Mark had a hoop
with a chain net, the post
planted right in his backyard, its slick metal
gleaming among his mother’s azaleas
and lilyturfs. It didn’t matter
that on our block two years meant
two lifetimes. We were fast friends anyway.
Had to be. The park wasn’t
too far but it was farther than I wanted.
Besides, his mother made the best
sweet tea and gave us all we could swallow.
That summer I honed my skills.
I’d finally have the chops
to take Jimmy Blake to the hole
the next season. That was my only thought
at the top of the key. Then the next
season started and I was 42
and living in another state, married
for going on 13 years, father to a daughter
who just celebrated her 10^th birthday,
her smile gleaming among
three bouquets of assorted flowers adorning
the dining room for the occasion.
I can’t even remember what Jimmy Blake
looked like. The new season
will start up soon with or without him.
With no Mark nearby, I’ll air up an old ball
in the shed, head for the park.

Covenant

November 18, 2024.Reading time 2 minutes.

By Baylina Pu

We were making mojitos
in the kitchen when we found
a  mortar and pestle made of

Marble. With them, I crushed mint leaves
and later, slices of lime
four or five at a time. My friend

Mixed in sugar, the water
we’d carbonated ourselves, and
white rum with a wooden spoon

In a stainless-steel bowl.
That evening, the sun was
setting through the Japanese maple

By the porch, and leaves
had slid down the car windshield
like paper cut-outs. I felt

Grown up, a real woman. At dinner,
there were eleven of us crowded
around the table, beside

A glass door which looked out
over the lake, still unfrozen
even in November. We licked brown

Sugar off the rims of our glasses.
My hands could still feel the weight
of that marble mortar, an invention of

The Stone Age. Even as early
as then, happiness had already
been discovered: simple movements of

Grinding and stirring. Somewhere, desire
was calling, but we were so deep
in the woods nobody heard it.

Just

July 19, 2024.Reading time 1 minute.

By Charlene Fix

I don’t remember her name.
It was Adrienne.
She lived with her parents
in an apartment on Cedar,
the road that split school districts.
So when she threw a party,
she invited kids from both.
Feeling shy in her crowded
living room, I sat on Mark
Shore’s lap while he sat on
the lap of a comfy chair.
We laughed and laughed,
my giddiness netting me
two new boyfriends I didn’t
want or seek and whose interest
waned anyway as soon as they
found I was fun only when
perched on Mark Shore’s lap.
I loved abstractly then, all in
my head, divorced romantically
from anyone real. Mark and I
were just friends, with all of
just’s implications. So we remain,
though he passed away a while ago.
That night I felt protected on his lap
where I could gaze upon the social sea
secure, even when he worked
his arm up the back of my blouse,
until his hand emerged at my collar
waving to those in the room
and, in this ebb-time, to you.

Miraculous

March 27, 2024.Reading time 2 minutes.

By Pam Baggett

Featured Art by Eliza Scott

Switch on the car radio, music falls out of the air
into my ears: James Brown, Joni Mitchell,
Jim Croce. Old gold. Plus, when I got in my car,
it cranked like it does every time, so many miracles
in that I can’t even count them. Traffic lights
that help us get along with one another,
scent of roast chicken rising from my grocery bag,
which also contains the most delicious bread,
whole wheat with flax, sesame and a hint
of cherries. That someone thought to turn wheat
into bread, miraculous. Yeah, I know, I just
had to start on a heart pill, but it’s nothing,
a little electrical nuisance, no effect
on longevity. And yeah, my best friend
has a hurt so deep and wide whole oceans
pour through it, and her story’s not mine to tell
but jeez, what a soul-shatterer. Yet even she
watches bumblebees. She swears they’re her favorite
miracle. So aerodynamically complicated
in the way they get off the ground you’d think
they never would—flapping their wings
back and forth, not up and down—yet up they go.
She says if they can beat gravity she can too,
and I gotta tell you that to see her dressed
and laughing, hear her singing with that voice
that sounds like water tumbling over rocks
in some ancient river, water that’s passed through
some murky cavernous places but has emerged
into the stunning light of day, to hear her sing again
is one big fat black-and-yellow buzzing miracle.

The Nigels

November 15, 2023.Reading time 1 minute.

By Linda Bamber

I used to have no name-mates
but I never took my birth name back and now
two other Linda Bambers
sometimes get my mail. Texas and Kansas, I call them

to tell them apart. One is the author of a perennially best-selling textbook
on accounting; the other
wears crossed pink ribbons
in images online. I trust them both and plan
to be in touch.

If all 8 billion of us had one name
would no one ever start another war?

Nigel Smith, a pub owner in Worcestershire, England
once threw a ‘Nigel night’
expecting maybe half a dozen name-mates.
Four hundred thirty four showed up, he exulted,
including one from Colorado
crowd-sourced for the trip.

Ni GEL, Ni GEL, Ni GEL
they all shouted
when they’d had enough beer.

All these Nigels, crowed the host,
were really keen to talk and share their lives
and come together in a kind of Nigel community.

I’m saying . . .
could you scale that up?

The Arachnologist

November 6, 2020.Reading time 2 minutes.

By Benjamin Gucciardi

Featured Art: Untitled (Hourglass) by Mary Vaux Walcott

When he told me his teeth felt too heavy
to study history, I excused him.
I knew he was headed for the aqueduct,

or the boarded-up houses choked
by trumpet vine where he found them.
Martel collected spiders with the discipline of a surgeon.

He kept them in empty soda bottles
under his bed. On his way into sixth period,
he touched my fist with his fist,

announced the genus of his catch,
Latrodectus, and his total, that’s nine this week!
Through this tally of arachnids captured

in sugary plastic, we learned to trust each other
the way men on tankers far out at sea
confide reluctantly in gray rippling water.

When his best friend broke the news,
they found Martel last night, her voice quavering,
stray bullet off International,

I went to his house to adopt a spider.
I imagined the red hourglass
on the female’s abdomen emptying itself

slowly, her segmented body imprisoned
in the glow of the green-tinted bottle,
but no one was home. Now when I hear

the old women gathering cans at dawn,
half-swallowed by blue waste bins,
I think of Martel finding containers

to bring to the canyon, Martel
inspecting stones, placing his fingers
delicately around the thorax,

the eight legs angry at the morning
as he lifts the arrowhead orb weaver
toward the sun, offering

what he loved to the old, hungry light.

One Night

June 17, 2020.Reading time 1 minute.

By Jeff Knorr

Featured Art: Sarina’s Flowers by Sarina Winner, Nancy Dick, Wendy Minor Viny

But not just any night,

on the 26^th floor of the New Otani Hotel

the night of your aunt’s wedding

your new uncle and I threw centerpieces,

beautiful flowers in glass volleyball-sized

vases out of the window of their hotel room

in downtown L.A. We dropped them, in

amazement, the air flattening petals of roses,

the baby’s breath. They blew out

like cannon balls on the sidewalk—

flowers, soil, Styrofoam, glass. Ten times

we could have killed someone with one of those

centerpieces, our drunkenness—

it could have been over as soon as it started.

Your aunt’s anger flared hot as a brand.

We could be wearing the same prison orange.

I escaped some wild death, manslaughter

by wind, by stupid luck, but you on the other hand

drive the car through our neighborhood,

stop for a cigarette with friends, have brown skin–

you ride, get pulled over, the cops

looking for you and your brothers.

As Always

June 13, 2020.Reading time 4 minutes.

By Robert Lynn

on the first not quite warm day of March the park filled with the delusion of spring

our friends napped by the half dozen against a tree dogs gathered loose

bikini tops from sunbathers made maenads by 53 degrees we gave time away

in handfuls to the ducks pairs of men emerged from winter to wave lures

at the water an excuse to love each other without looking I read your

cheekbones’ anger at how I got more time than you before the good earth was

over fed you grapes the closest I could get to an apology for something I didn’t

choose someone sitting at our tree and very high asked Is this the Golden

Hour? and the light answered with yellow silence the way it does all questions

so obvious later walking you home I told a story how my parents fell in love

first drunk then again sober only after I existed I didn’t think you were

listening until the moment you stopped mid path mid sentence a way of making

me turn around you told me There isn’t time to do anything twice How

come? you let the light give its yellow reply I don’t want the world to end

you said when it does I will remember it this way the sun picking mulch from

your backlit hair your fresh burnt shoulders making the gesture for All this?

and I give up at the same time this last first day before the good earth was done

Henry’s Horses

September 10, 2016.Reading time 4 minutes.

Winner, New Ohio Review Poetry Contest
selected by Tony Hoagland

By Michael Pearce

Featured Art: In the Valley of Wyoming, Pennsylvania (Interior of a Coal Mine, Susquehanna) by Thomas Addison Richards, 1852

The old barrel warehouse across the street
had a ceiling so high there was weather inside.
Henry Gutierrez lived there—they said
he’d been there since before the war,
though they never said which war.
He worked at Anger’s garage all day
rebuilding engines, then came home
and slept a few hours, and when
he woke up after dark he’d knock back
a bowl of cereal and a couple beers.

If you looked over there at midnight you’d see
brilliant flashes coming from inside,
silent explosions, like lightning
trapped in a thunderless cage.
But it was only Henry’s arc welder,
he worked all night fusing together
sheets and scraps of steel until
they seemed to breathe and shake
and prance and strike a noble pose.
He built animals, mostly horses,
and he said he knew he’d finished one
when he found himself talking to it.

One time Uncle Jack, my father’s brother,
invited Henry to his church, the one
where they forgive you for anything
as long as you let Jesus into your heart
and drop a twenty in the basket.
But Henry knew there was no forgiving
his sins, and it made him sick
to talk about the people he’d injured
then listen to the other craven souls
tell him he was absolved. He said
he had his own way of atoning that
was mostly about wrestling with steel.

Dialing The Dead

October 14, 2014.Reading time 1 minute.

By Mark Kraushaar

I’d never call.
First of all, I’d be intruding, and besides
I can see my dead friend with all his dead friends
even now, translucent, weightless, winging
through a cloud or sitting in a circle
on some creaky, folding chairs—
Hello, my name is Peter and I’ve
been dead ten years, car wreck.
Hello my name is Edith and I’ve
been dead a week, pneumonia.
Hello, my name is Frank and I’ve been . . . .

Oh, I know they’d all be friendly but even
dialing later when I guess he’d be alone
I’d have too many questions:
If you’re nowhere now and nothing
is this the same as everywhere and everything?
And, Peter, do you sleep in heaven?
Do you eat up there?
What’s the weather anyway?
And that tenderness of heart we try so hard
to keep a secret: in heaven we’re
wide open, aren’t we?
Stay in touch.
No, don’t.

A Discreet Charm

November 19, 2009.Reading time 3 minutes.

By Stephen Dunn

Featured Art: Luncheon Still Life by John F. Francis

Our good friends are with us, Jack and Jen,
old lefties with whom we now and then share
what we don’t call our wealth. We clink our
wine glasses, and I say, Let’s drink to privilege . . .

the privilege of evenings like this.
All our words have a radical past, and Jack
is famous for wanting the cog to fit the wheel,
and for the wheel to go straight

down some good-cause road. But he says
No, let’s drink to an evening as solemn
as Eugene Debs demanding fair wages—
his smile the bent arrow only the best men

can point at themselves. I serve the salad
Barbara has made with pine nuts, fennel,
and fine, stinky cheese. It’s too beautiful to eat,
Jen says, but means it only as a compliment.

At the Dinner Party

November 26, 2008.Reading time 2 minutes.

By Stephen Dunn

Featured Art: A Family Meal by Evert Pieters

As usual, we were trying to please each other,

so Ryan told a story about a water buffalo,

a lion, and a crocodile, which reminded

Julie about a coyote and a groundhog, and

I could not help but offer my favorite of

this kind—involving the tarantula

and its natural enemy the digger wasp. The

problem was that each story was true,

therefore that much more difficult to tell,

and each had in it an element of the fabulous,

and therefore the promise of a moral.

Linda, the contrarian, asked us if we had heard

the one about the priest and the rabbi,

but was booed, and kept quiet for a while.

In each story an animal was in danger, one

always slightly more sympathetic

than another. The water buffalo rescued

her injured calf from first the crocodile

then the lion, the coyote got bored

with the groundhog and returned to the woods,

and the tarantula just stood there, frozen, while

the digger wasp dug its grave.

Ryan and Julie selected their details well,

paced and arranged them, as I hope I did,

and it wasn’t that our intent was to avoid

a moral, but that there was none to be had,

this being nature we were talking about

with its choiceless whims and atrocities.

Linda, of course, said she forgave none of it.