Cover image: "Antler" by Holly Willis
Gallery 1
First Stretch Upon Waking
Alex Stanley
Wretched Dove
The ocean swells are winter’s dunes, and they fly so high
that they’ll land when they’re north. A shadow flicks its flame
in my periphery—I’d say so long to it, but it’s already left.
I’m trying to leave behind the reckless summer that lurks
behind these letters, the very name I carry with me.
It doesn’t feel like I should be here, the light soaking from
shutters lets out. How did I get here? The ocean was my escape
from glacial rivers, ice and death, all our layers of filth
and blood we’ve left wading in drops by the bottom of the banks.
I don’t know what this is. The sand turned to stone, the weeds to frost.
I saw a figure rise beneath a lake of ice, Aeschylus, can you hear me?
Darkstruck
We could live forever at this age, and never
bring the time we have to rhythms of memory,
the finger-tapping beginning to slip.
The symbols of night take a blurred form:
skyscrapers a few blocks away like monarchs,
spare gold in office windows like moonlight,
overcoats huddled together like buffalo hides.
The evening offers us decidedly less,
the emptiness we spend our days running from
is here now to run through, to scream,
to travel the tunnel beneath the sleeping overpass.
It’s only our echo, it’s only our trail of breath,
lingering behind this concrete mask,
making for idyllic impossibilities.
The other herds knock their knees together
on stoops and atop pony walls, waiting for their cars.
It’s the season to look for what’s been missing,
this time spent waiting when I only wanted you.
I hold you for all your warmth.
Each train tramples the ground beneath it, still
I can hear nothing of tonight, only your lips.
They whisper of the cold, parting just long enough
to meet mine, to meet my eyes, kissing them closed.
Alex Stanley is a graduate of Boston College, and he received his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of California, Irvine. He is a former sports journalist, and his sports writing has been featured in Sports Illustrated. His published poems have appeared in American Poets Magazine, HCE Review, Poets’ Choice, Helix Magazine, Sunspot Literary Journal, RockPaperPoem, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Wingless Dreamer, Clepsydra Literary and Art Magazine, The Closed Eye Open, Duck Lake Journal, The Write Launch, Doozine, and Hare’s Paw Literary Journal. He is a recipient of the 2021 Academy of American Poets Award. He resides in Costa Mesa, CA.
Esther Loopstra
Waves
i wonder what you would think
of my time beneath the waves
sucking saltwater like it was
a never-ending conversation
whirling against the defensive
hand of the swell
the finality of this short life
washing over me
water, always a fragment,
then becoming everything
i wonder what you would think
of my time beneath the waves
Esther Loopstra is a painter and writer living in Seattle. In 2007, she received her BFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design; she had a prolific career as an illustrator until she turned her attention to fine art and writing. She now creates mixed media paintings and writes poetry, exploring ideas around the interconnectedness of our bodies, the environment, and the mystery of the infinite. She uses various textures, collage, and mediums in an intuitive way to convey the interrelation to living structures that support us on a biological and energetic level and incorporate her stream-of-consciousness writing into the artwork. Esther has taught art for over 10 years at Kent State University and Cornish College of the Arts and now works as a creative speaker and mentor. She also co-hosts the Flow into Authenticity podcast.
D. R. James
Whenever Geese in a Scraggly Double-V
Skim the Short Swells Just Off-Shore,
you turn to the comedy
by nature, not to join it or
consider their destination
but to ogle, to attune their bugle
to your own inner ear, their
careening, their wacky flapping,
their exchanging of places, that
ever-changing intermingling
of shape, sound, sense, and
nonsense. Meanwhile, what’s
roving that word realm you call
your brain, that wetland habitat
of theory and blood? How often
it doesn’t seem to matter, doesn’t
seem to be matter, just flocks
of terms, odd ducks that don’t
appear to do you any damned
clear good. Grateful, though,
you suppose, you come and go
in it, oblivious, adept, as if
it were the easiest thing—
easier: as if it were gods,
gaggles of jabbering gods.
Recently retired from nearly 40 years of teaching college writing, literature, and peace studies, D. R. James lives, writes, bird-watches, and cycles with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020), and his prose and poems have appeared internationally in a wide variety of print and online anthologies and journals, including Wild Roof Journal. Website: www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage
Warren Agee
Warren Agee is a fine art photographer and writer living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has been composing images and words for 30+ years, yet has only recently discovered that by combining the two, he can finally ask the questions which haunt him. You can find him at www.warrenagee.com and @warrenageephoto on Instagram.
Beth Dulin
Baptism
It was a cattle trough. A corrugated metal cattle trough. Just like they used on the farm to water the cows. That was one of her chores. To fill it up with a hose every night. Sometimes she would stare off into space, forget it was running, and it would overflow. She looked down at the trough, about two-thirds full. Still enough to drown her in if he held her down long enough. She told him, Now remember, I can’t swim. He smiled, I’ve done hundreds of these and I’ve never drowned anyone yet. She was naked beneath a white choir robe. Barefoot. No jewelry. Her friend stood behind her, holding her possessions. He asked her if she was ready. She nodded and stepped down into the trough. The water was lukewarm. The robe swirled and spread out around her, billowing outward on the surface of the water. She crouched down and he moved closer and put his left hand up to her forehead. She closed her eyes. He told her: He forgives you. This water is washing you clean of all your sins. She was thinking about everything awful that she’d ever done, even the things she’d never told anyone. Her mind was racing. She wanted him to wait. Everything awful was becoming a film loop in her head. She thought about opening her eyes. He tipped her backward under the water and up again in one swift movement. Water was dripping down her face. She stopped thinking. She stood motionless, shocked. In the car on the way home, her friend asked her if she felt any different. She closed her eyes, trying to remember before, took a long drag from her cigarette, and shrugged.
Beth Dulin lives on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. She is a graduate of The New School’s Eugene Lang College. Her writing has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Atlanta Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Gargoyle, New York Quarterly, and Wigleaf, among others. Her poetry has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, and she was Yes, Poetry’s Poet of the Month in March 2021. She is the author and co-creator of Truce, a limited-edition artists’ book, in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Modern Art. Visit her online at www.bethdulin.com.
Sammi Yamashiro
I Preserved My Own Life, I Did
My prayer’s been answered—
I cannot recall the last time
I wanted to die
For winter always sweeps its bladed dust
When I am not ready. My mouth would widen at the sight
Of a new hydration source. The storm saw me, too—
And said, A dustpan! So, it fed me
The kicks,
The throw-around-
The-throw-away. Since age twelve,
I lugged around the swollen callous. Most days,
I even lived inside it. O skin-thin igloo,
You could derail the tumult only for a bit.
Death’s Arctic anger would bash against my dermis wall.
Persistent knocking. Door ripped out. Pelt-down.
I would rebuild again
& again.
How do I continue on like this? I resorted to a slow decay,
But even that worked me to my bone.
This time, I huddle in a better hiding spot. Underground,
Away from the storm, I unfurl my cabbage leaves. O giant green head,
In this form you die early; you cannot survive the snow havoc above us.
Allow me.
I wash you in tart bathwater.
Fish sauce, scallions, daikon—
More of that sort. The brine shields you with its high shine & grind.
The red vinegar, your new blood. Nothing sweet remains.
Well, I am not meant to be that way. I chose something better—
To be more like kimchi, renewing my inner fibers and out,
Glazing a vinegary layer over my body. I appear here,
Nearly immortal!—
Death cannot penetrate my new form!
To permeate whatever space I enter with a memorable pungence.
To redden my bland sweat & sprinkle gochugaru on the blizzard’s tongue
Like raining confetti. How the flakes dance
To Life’s beating drums, this ode to reclamation!
Death, can your mouth’s cold muscle handle
This foreign invasion, your polar opposite?
Does it make you go Hot, hot!?
I, the Death Evader. No, no—
I did not stop for Death.
I, the Life Remaker.
For Life was what I had before &
It is what I have now: enjoying a reset,
A fresh first stretch upon waking.
Sammi Yamashiro is an Okinawan and Black-American poet. She is the author of The Peach Pit Mask: A Poetry Collection. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Free Verse Revolution, The Rising Phoenix Review, Calla Press, Sunday Mornings at the River, and others. Read her work on Instagram @sammiyamashiro or visit her website at www.sammiyamashiro.com.
Shannon Vare Christine
How to Repot a (Rootbound) Plant
eventually all containers / all homes / run out of space / tightly packed /
no room to / wiggle to / move / claustrophobic quarters / tangled roots
grip / latch / suffocating / pushing outward / reaching / coiled in /
around spiraled / primary / secondary / all clinging for life /
use one hand to support the vessel / the other cradles the crop /
barely holds on / enough to coax / to loosen / to guide /
the plant holds / tighter /
flip the pot to / the side / slow and gentle / steady / steady /
the plant grips / tighter /
encourage her freedom / feel her release / she slides outward /
reborn / the plant sighs / deeper / deep breaths / gulping air
sunlight droplets / roots u n f u r l i n g /
refusing to break / to drown /
to choke / to wither / respite / the plant accepts /
dust away the excess dirt clumps / soil stuck / tethered in the roots /
the plant grieves / place in a larger container / nestle the earth
around the base / feed and water / provide light / latitude /
time / / to settle in and grow /
/ room to spread /
When not writing, Shannon Vare Christine devotes her time to teaching High School English in Bucks County, PA. For the last 24 years, she has brought her passion for poetry to her students and is now hosting an Annual Student Open Mic Night. Her work has been featured in Moonstone Press, Ambient Heights, Eclipse Lit, and DogBowl Zine. Last summer she wrote and learned alongside fellow poets at The Community of Writers Poetry Intensive residency, where she also served on the Editorial Board for the newly-published Written from Here Anthology. In April 2022, she was one of ten poets accepted into the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project. Those poems jumpstarted a second chapbook, which she refined during the Tupelo Press Manuscript Conference. You can read a forthcoming poem, “Somnus Consented,” published in The Closed Eye Open’s Fall/Winter 2022 Journal. Follow her adventures and give her Poetic Pause newsletter a read at www.shannonvarechristine.com and on Instagram @smvarewrites.
Veronica Michelle Barker-Barzel
Veronica Michelle Barker-Barzel is a painter and printmaker. There is a strong connection and interplay between her paintings and her printmaking works. Her style is often reflective of places she has experienced and stimulated by her personal background. Her work resonates with a bit of Eastern European folklore and Greek mythology, occasionally fused with her own version of urban surrealism. Her formal art training included a Post-Baccalaureate program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). She has been actively involved with the artist community in Northern VA, Del Ray Artisans, and with the Torpedo Factory, and has curated and juried multiple themed shows. In 2021 she joined the Loft Gallery of Occoquan. Website: www.behance.net/VeroBarkerBarzel / Instagram: @jewfroart
Elizabeth Bolz
The Man in Amherst
He was a bookkeeper working in a single-room bookstore. His name? Well, I will never know. I walked into this quaint little store and immediately felt at peace, so I asked the man for a job. He said no.
I was a student living in Amherst, Massachusetts on the college campus of Wellinghouse College. I was taking the class “How to Read a Poem.” How does one correctly read a poem? For now, I don’t know because I never got to take that class. In fact, I was only a Wellinghouse student for twelve days. Twelve single days.
It was the eleventh day of September. On this day my life would change. Did I know it then? No, not at all. One must be enslaved to know that they are finally free.
He was in his early to mid-sixties, white hair and all. He wore spectacles that fit his face just right, how a true librarian should sport the pair.
I walked into his store, Read Well Books. I watched as the college student who walked into the store moments before me asked for a job. The man said, “I’m sorry, we’re not hiring.”
I thought to myself how the student was inadequate in his presentation. I would get the job with my charm and politeness. I stuck out my hand for him to shake, told him my name, and asked him for a job. He replied, “I’m sorry, we are not hiring.”
I was in a rush. My hair was disheveled, and I carried a forty-pound book bag on my back that had all my important belongings in it.
He seemed a bit taken aback by my presence. In my ways, I felt the need to explain myself. I said I was from outside of Philadelphia, and around Philly most people introduce themselves and they can land the job.
Twelve days of freedom, twelve days of enslavement. The hospital, enslavement. Twelve single days of college. Each day having its own certain significance, but simply no actual significance at all. Where every moment of every day held so much meaning, but then any sign or symbol that would have meant anything was forgotten once the next symbol appeared.
I told him thank you anyway and asked him where I could find my book for class. He told me to take my book bag off and place it on one of the velvet chairs against the wall of many vertical bookshelves. He then said to rest for a bit and then to get my book, which I would find downstairs. I was skeptical of his ways but agreed to let my guard down for a brief moment. I noticed a few people watching me. I walked across the small store and placed my bag down on a nearby couch, as instructed. I decided not to take his advice and rest, but rather get my book for class and be on my way, for I had class in less than an hour. I shuffled my way downstairs to gather my book. Little did I know there were no more copies of the book I needed for class. It was like he was tricking me.
You had freedom in your hands. The freedom you so longed for. It was so easily given to you, but so easily taken away. That eight dollars you spent on Pad See Ew would go to waste. Your last eight dollars. A storm was brewing.
I left the store. I hadn’t much time to catch my bus. I thought to myself maybe it was in my presentation. If I would go back there, maybe I could show the man my dedication and I could work there.
I went back. Still, the man said no. Of course, I had faced rejection before, but for some reason, rejection had never felt so alive. Consequently, despite my haste, a book caught my eye. Two actually. Portraits and Observations, Truman Capote, and The Story of a New Name, Elena Ferrante. The man was standing at the front desk; I walked up to the counter to check out. He took my books, made notice of the titles, nodded approvingly and proceeded to check out my order. I said thank you and left the store, disappointed I was not also able to walk out of the bookstore with a job.
With my forty-pound bag and not much time to spare, I walked with my head down and I was quick to move. I saw my bus from across the street and ran so fast that my Pad See Ew flew out of its box, and I saw my last eight dollars fly into thin air. The bus driver clearly noticed me, but even at the stoplight could not let me on because he was past the official stop. I knocked on the window, angrily, but he still would not open the doors.
I am from outside of Philadelphia, and I was in a small rural town where people were not used to such aggressiveness.
I paced back and forth. A sign I was losing my mind. To my left I saw a father and a young four-year-old daughter. I missed my father. I just kept pacing around that tree; the more I paced, the angrier I became. I had come out with no job, no textbook, and spent my last fifty-four dollars on literature and Pad See Ew. The father shielded his daughter and held her close, covering her face with the palm of his hand. I rummaged for my phone. No phone.
I bombarded my way into the store and accused the man. “I trusted you,” I said, trembling, “and I placed my bag down; now my phone is gone!”
He paused. “I am sorry, miss, but this is not in my control.” His lips were shocked, but his eyes somehow filled with mist.
Rejuvenation. The rain.
Twenty minutes had passed, and I was standing right back where I was last seen pacing. I found my phone just where I had left it. At the bottom of my bag.
I did the only thing I knew was right. I went back to the store to apologize to the man. I looked to my left and saw the book titled The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown. I told the man how I owned this book, but never have read it. He looked at me. My eyes filled up with tears. I flipped to a random page and read a quote aloud to him, “People are afraid of change.” He didn’t know what to say. I shook his hand, said my goodbye, and left. I left Amherst on the twelfth day. September 12th.
On my fourteenth day back at home it rained. It was God’s time, not my time. Rejuvenation. I felt so free: free to cry, free to be stoic, to be free of change. Free of constraints, free of relentlessly spending superfluous money, free to have my time back, and free to dream.
*
Nine years later, I write to you: I know God had my back those days. I could have been in serious trouble…and in some ways I was. It was as if God said, “Hey, Elizabeth, I sent you a butterfly on the softball that you kept chucking against the horseshoe-toss backboard at Wellinghouse, but you didn’t stop to notice. I sent you a dragonfly on the hammock last summer, but you didn’t appreciate it. These were signs to slow down and stop this behavior.”
The day I Face-Timed my old friend while in the hospital was the day I didn’t even know what or really where I had found myself. I had never heard of psychosis before, and it was like I was living in a fogged fantasy world that consisted of a love-hate exchange with the patient next to me playing tennis on Wii as he insulted or flirted with me, while an old hippie was hazily convinced that I was the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary.
The truth is, I was free of commitments during that time at home, but that did not mean I was free of new constraints, like the inability to smoke pot or the fact I was given heavy psychotropics and had a long way to go, as I didn’t really know how to live.
What I can tell you today is that recovery is possible, and it’s the choices, like the people or substances we insert into our lives, that dictate how successful or unsuccessful we really are. Maybe I haven’t read as much as the man in Amherst, but what I do know is if he was here for the whole journey, the bookkeeper I knew for one day would say, “That’s one hell of a story.”
Elizabeth Bolz is a resident of Buffalo, NY with a Bachelor of Science from SUNY Brockport in Recreation and Leisure Studies. She loves to hike at high altitudes and enjoys using her film camera, oil paint, and oil pastels to depict people and the natural environment. “The Man in Amherst” is her first prose publication.
Lisa Delan
Re-creation
Still there is language / clattering of tongues / plaiting baskets to hold
days / sort nights / porous vessels / for everything most important.
At night I cut and tuck my words / start-and-stop weave / sliding them
into the hollow core / to ensure nothing is lost / nothing is taken / when I
close my eyes.
My fingers nick notches / scratching the sides / strands catch in my nails
I cannot bear to feel fissures / so I pray.
Orisons wrap around / everything the moon’s shadow dims / where the
sheen of faith is all I have / to find rest.
This morning I felt / where I had lain / cupped my words / stained and
aged in my hands / afraid to find what the moon stole / when my lids
were sealed.
When I speak / I start anew / in the weave brake I sift silence / fertile in
the light / I teach myself / to create more.
Soprano Lisa Delan can be heard singing settings of a broad range of American poetry on Apple Music, Spotify, and other streaming platforms. Her own poetry has been featured or is forthcoming in American Writers Review (San Fedele Press 2022), Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Burningword Literary Journal, Cathexis Northwest Press, Drunk Monkeys, Lone Mountain Literary Society, Mill Valley Literary Review, Poets’ Choice, The Pointed Circle, Tangled Locks, Treehouse Literary Review, Viewless Wings, and Wingless Dreamer.
Liam Day
Antiquing
I’m not quite sure how
the brimming barn’s
four floors of buckling boards
support all the beds and tables,
bureaus and divans.
In one corner leans a portrait of
a son of rural gentry,
nascent widow’s peak
like two rows of hoed earth
already encroaching on
the young heir’s smooth forehead,
painting and the rest
now just carrion
for scavenging birds who,
before they fly off to feather
their brick and hardwood nests,
pick over what the dead left.
Liam Day has been at times a teacher, a coach, a school administrator, a non-profit leader, a magazine editor, a political campaign manager, a public policy analyst, and a professional basketball player. He currently serves as the Interim Executive Director of a non-profit in the San Francisco Bay Area. His poems, essays, and op-eds have appeared in Analemma, Apt, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, The Boston Globe, Boston Herald, and Wilderness House Literary Review. His first collection of poetry, Afforded Permanence, was selected by the Massachusetts Book Awards as a Best Read of 2015. He has just finished the manuscript of his second collection.
Holly Willis
Holly Willis is a Los Angeles-based writer, photographer, and filmmaker whose work tends toward the experimental, from handmade feminist film projects to experiments in poetry and typography. Her writing spans arts journalism, creative nonfiction, and more scholarly forms; she wrote the essays that comprise the catalog Björk Digital, as well as Fast Forward: The Future(s) of the Cinematic Arts and New Digital Cinema: Reinventing the Moving Image. Her creative nonfiction has been published in River Teeth, New Delta Review, The Normal School, and carte blanche, and her image-based work explores alternative film and photography practices, from cyanotypes and phytograms to animation and experiments in video and 3D.
Justine Payton
Do Leaves Hurt When They Fall?
Abscission — the natural detachment of parts of a plant; a cyclical process that transforms summer into autumn; a harbinger of wonder and grief.
<><><>
He grips one finger as we walk. It’s all that he can hold in his small hand, the knuckles barely visible beneath a chubby layer of baby fat his two-year-old self has yet to shake. He looks around with an occasional misstep, head tilted towards the sky. He is mesmerized by the world we have entered — an alleyway between homes in Rittenhouse Square, where trees taller than the four-story townhouses stretch across the cement expanse. The late October winds swirl falling red, orange and yellow leaves in whimsical arabesques around us. The nipping gusts are cold against my cheeks. His cheeks have turned a cardinal red from their kisses.
His face suddenly shifts from wonder to sadness, saying something that I can’t hear above the symphonic cacophony of wind and rattling branches. Kneeling down, I look him in the eyes.
“What is it, Harry?”
“Do leaves hurt when they fall?” His lips are trembling as tears pool in the corners of his cherubic brown eyes, searching mine for an answer.
I lift him up into my arms, pulling the weight of his tiny body into mine.
“I don’t know, darling,” I whisper, twirling us around so that he begins to laugh. “But see? The leaves are dancing on the way down.”
<><><>
Later that night, after Harry’s parents returned home, the 21 bus carries me back to West Philadelphia. The days are shorter now. The luminescence of storefronts, cars and streetlamps cast shadows on busy streets as people cower underneath scarves and hoods, only their fingers left exposed by a supposed necessity to click immediate responses on their phones.
Harry’s words play over and over again in my head.
Do leaves hurt when they fall?
Holding his tiny hand in my own, carrying his small form in my arms, how could I tell him the truth?
That the entire Earth is hurting. That we — human beings — have catalyzed a catastrophic geological age fueled by industrialization, greed and exploitation. That forests are weeping as their trees are felled and invasive species proliferate. That the oceans are moaning as their waters heat, their fish are stolen, and their coral die off. That mountains tremble in nakedness, having lost the nourishing cover of snowfall. That animals scream in terror, abused and used in industrial complexes and made extinct by our relentless expansion into their wild realms. That children inhale fumes and exhale disease. That the light of the fireflies is gradually diminishing into darkness.
Meanwhile, the bus I ride coughs out around 0.64 lbs of CO2 per mile as it bounces over the city’s ubiquitous potholes. It’s better than a car, far worse than a bike. It’ll cost the Earth 1.92 lbs of CO2 emissions to carry me home. Wind whistles against the glass. The fluorescent lighting is as harsh as reality.
<><><>
In answer to Harry’s question, the realm of science provides little. Plants, lacking a central nervous system, are denied the possibility of pleasure and pain. While many Eastern and indigenous spiritual beliefs proclaim the inherent divinity of all life forms, the Judeo-Christian philosophies that dominate the West condemn the natural world as inferior, bereft of a conscious soul. Freed from guilt by a calculated indifference, we carve names into bark and sever inconvenient limbs. We ensconce trees in cement cages to accommodate impractical shoes and to proliferate the aesthetic of control and straight lines. We uproot forests to satisfy insatiable carnivorous demands, and like animals encaged in CAFO facilities, we plant rows of saplings in commercial forests with illusory benevolence — not for the trees’ edification, but for our own indulgence.
Ignoring science and prevalent beliefs, I wonder about a reality where leaves hurt when they fall, forced to leave the embrace of their tree’s branching and interconnected limbs. Do they forgive the tree, knowing that abscission is a natural form of self-protection, a way to remove unproductive appendages in order to survive the harsh winter? Do they let go in selfless surrender, knowing that sacrifice is often needed for new beginnings to take root?
If they depart with consciousness, perhaps they do dance on their way down, celebrating — as few do — an awareness of their purpose and meaning in the greater matrix of life.
Once nestled on the cold ground, I wonder if they reminisce about their time above. When, by the potency of their own being, they transformed sunlight into life. When their countless trichomes quivered in ecstasy over the caress of a summer rainfall, and they exchanged secrets with the susurrous wind, passing messages from branch to branch and tree to tree. When the hum of cicadas vibrated their green petioles in a vibrant celebration of life, and they gazed each night at passing constellations, making wishes on shooting stars that humans missed.
What love is lost between the leaves and the tree when autumn comes?
I imagine the leaves must feel the pain of separation when they are swept away down city rain gutters or into black bags as trash, denied their natural reabsorption as organic content into the soil that feeds their home tree. The tree and leaves must both think it is a temporary separation, knowing that with time and patience they will connect again, deeper, at the root of existence. Maybe this is why the trees howl so loudly in the city’s winters, bellowing a song of separation and grief over lost love. Their voices tell the story: humans are the villain in this tragedy.
<><><>
To write with anthropomorphic themes is an accepted literary tool. To live by anthropomorphic beliefs is deemed archaic, unscientific, possibly pagan. And yet, how different the world would be if we allowed ourselves to see through the eyes of two-year-old Harry. A world where falling leaves can hurt and the natural world around us is alive with emotion and relationships. A world lived by the dictums of wonder and imagination, inspiring us to delve into unexplored depths of interspecies empathy and compassion, emotional experiences unreadable and unteachable by scientific tools or theorems. A world where we live in eagerness to hear the varied cadences of the wind, and relish raindrops falling onto our upturned and euphoric faces. A world where the beauty of autumn’s pigmented brilliance and cascading leaves reminds us of the reciprocal love between the tree and its leaves, as apparent as the intimacy we share with those whom we love.
Justine Payton is an intersectional writer whose work often explores the relationships between humans and the natural world, as well as seeks to amplify the voices of the earth’s ubiquitous, non-human lives that are too often viewed as silent or devoid of conscious life. Apart from writing, she is an avid hiker and reader, and loves to write songs with her ukulele.
Eben Bein
Mother Study
I am awake on my mom’s half of her bed,
tired of watching her empty house, but can’t sleep
knowing there is a mosquito mama humming somewhere
in the dark she’s driving down the Virginia coast,
off to find the wild horses of Chincoteague
She sleeps poorly & I am a good boy, so I squirm
like her until my feet are trapped in the sheets
Eb, could you just … pull that straight? Ah, you do love me.
Yes, I’m wide open, thinking, listening,
studying her being
gone
Isn’t this exciting! she said while driving me to the SAT
I was all tangled until You get to see all the things you learned!
Then it was joy & now I am itching
in her sheets, contemplating her
words & where I might find them
like the index card she covets where her mother
penned each ingredient for X-MAS COOKIES
in her distinctive ballpoint block
there’s a buzz in my ear & how could I possibly
cram all my notes onto such a tiny
cheat sheet for the test of
who she is?
I click the light,
check myself for signs of her
best student—yes, professor,
I can recreate the life-cycle diagram:
She is lying where I am,
back propped against the triangle pillow
I sit by her feet, feel them press
through the untucked duvet
against my knee. She hands me
the book of Bishop, closes her eyes, asks me
to read it again, asks me How
does it make you feel?
Eben Bein is a high-school-biology-teacher-turned-education-manager at the nonprofit Our Climate. He earned an M.S. in Science Writing from MIT, was recently selected by Carl Phillips as a Fellow for the Writing By Writers Workshop, and won the January 2022 Writers Rising Up “Winter in Variations” poetry contest. Their poems have been published in Passengers Journal, Wild Roof Journal, and Meat for Tea. His first forthcoming collection, From the top of the sky, explores the contemporary weave of love and conflict between parents and children. They currently live with their husband on Pawtucket land (Cambridge, MA). Facebook/Twitter/Instagram: @beinology
Char Gardner
A life-long visual artist and CNF writer, Char Gardner worked with her husband, Rob Gardner, for thirty years making documentary films internationally. Now retired, she lives in the Green Mountains of Vermont, where she is at work on a memoir.
Emma Conally-Barklem
Dun, Beach Hawker
Dun like a dung beetle, scratched feet mark European beaches and his head a sundial casts brass shadow on rosed torsos stretched on flags of material
He walks on, as if selling paste beads and plastic could be a relief map back to his hart-lam, who sings his name amongst floating rags
The song he sings is glassed flattery, peeling away, glottal, hopeful to the holidaymakers sprawled glowering in their good fortune.
His feet dun, numb to scorched sand pass indecent thighs and eyes averted as he humps fabrics and knickknacks in midday heat
Steaming weight of expectations thwarted;
if she bought the whole pile,
it would still be a while before his daughter would wind cotton around his finger and remind him
love can linger and exist
beyond transaction
Emma Conally-Barklem is a yogi, writer and poet based in North Yorkshire, England. She writes on nature, mental health, grief, social justice, family, and wellbeing. Emma recently had a summer residency at the Bronte Parsonage Museum and was named New Northern Poet at Ilkley Poetry festival. Her first collection, The Ridings, has been accepted for traditional chapbook publication by Bent Key Publishing in March 2023. Her yoga and grief memoir You Can’t Hug a Butterfly: Love, Loss & Yoga has been accepted for traditional publication by Quillkeepers Press in 2024.
