Day 15 / Poem 15

Imbolc, 2025 / Joanna Grant

Get in your car and drive any direction
In these North Georgia hills, through the few
Remaining fields not yet swallowed up
By developments, and you will find them—
Stacks of old bricks in the middle of nothing,
Some burnt black with the soot of burned-out
Flame, some crisscrossed with the leafy green
Of kudzu vines, which I hear now can be eaten.

So much I learned when I was young
I’ve had to unlearn, relearn, a kind of pain
That feels clean. And I wonder what I
Might have been, could have been, if
All the lessons I’d learned back then,
If all the people I’d learned them from,
Hadn’t had their own share of scorch.

See the new houses. If I could trust these
New buildings I would, but what are they
Built on? We used to build with lead, with
Asbestos, and those were only some of our
Lesser poisons. These new homes’ flat white
Paint chills me to the blood, the bone.

I want to dig. Find a well driven down deep,
Deep enough into this blood-red dirt
To somehow get below the taint in this
Uncared-for ground. Saints of the old
Country, sweet, strong St. Brigid of the
Reed and the forge, take me down.
Wash me clean. Somehow, somehow,
Hear me now, hear my stumbling,
My stuttering, broken, amateur prayer.


Out-of-synch /  Judit Hollos

Set out to find the Wish-Granting Jewel,
but stuck in the sea kingdom for thousands of years,
hoping to set the world alight with my tail’s glow
only to end up in a fisherman’s net.
Straying on a hiking trail, eternally out of all seasons,
or perched on a swing etched in lunar dust,
a flowing lava of raw emotions cooled down
to small beads of primordial muttering,
deciphering infinite wisdom in long-dead languages,
only to exhale fractions of hollow word clusters.

He closes his eyes and briefly falls asleep, leaning on the wooden walking cane they used on their countless excursions as they were conquering the rocky wilderness without apps and phones. I sneer at the clock on the book shelf, ticking at the rythm of a late October afternoon. A final attempt in the zigzag of prefab buildings at recalling fragments of our shared memories from the bottom of long-lost decades. Of rust-eaten subway cars, birthday songs on cassette recorders and high-pitched winter vacations, all remembered just a tiny bit differently, as if we were instruments in a small ensemble approaching the final chords at different paces. In my dream, we are standing on the opposite sides of a crater filled with black and white gravel in front of the metro station. I don’t understand the words he is trying to utter and so we never manage to reach other.


Ode to a Toebiter / Zach Hauptman

many heels are dogged, or perhaps
a different term should suffice
for the stubborn tracking of a cat underfoot
at a quarter to three in the morning

swing legs out of bed (mistake 1)
there are claws and fangs beneath
the monsters under your bed
have nothing on a pet cat

stumble off to get a glass of water (mistake two)
forgotten glasses, gaze blurry but the way is clear
and a predator is waiting in the dark room
to sprint between moving legs

surely the bathroom is safe (mistake three)
no Hitchcockian killers
just familier tiles, smattering of mildew
the gleaming eyes of an animal from the open door

perhaps the return will be easier (mistake four)
pulling legs in and under a blanket
protect these vulnerable limbs, wiggling into place
but in a flash! attack!

wake up to examine new battle scars
and kiss awake the monster who left left them
while he demands
breakfast

vinny / Brice Maiurro

tender joy dancer warm wind no smoke mirror
your wordless legacy is made of forever dust

your eyes hold new constellations now
starry crickets chirp across the dark field

walk into the field of night dear friend
let go of the sacred pain you’ve carried

the great sky lions greet you at the threshold
of this immense & unimaginable wilderness

there beyond the edge of the last blue yonder
your great mane will reveal itself upon you

at the far end of your road 
there always has been a stark glimmer 

worthy of the most 
holy sweet abandon

worthy of pouncing into 
with all air with no gravity

“Wilderness Survival Guide ch 3–if you’ve  fallen and become injured”  / Kimberly O’Connor

Remember like language, that 
tree is a mirror. If you know 
the tree’s name, say it three 
times. If you don’t know  
the tree’s name, name it. Say  
the name three times. Notice  
the sky looks like cake batter. 
Remember the first time as  
a child when you saw that the sky 
was cake batter. Remember cakes: 
birthday, wedding. Call the dragonfly. 
Water your tree with tears for awhile. 
Contemplate illusion. Your left 
ankle is swelling. Take this time 
to finally and deeply rest. Contemplate 
funeral cake. Dream of rescue by fire 
ants. Dream of ice. Cry in your 
ice cream. Your tears become  
a mirror. Look into it. Name  
what you see three times. Wait. 
Watch your tree. Her leaves  
flash like a mirror. Wait.

After a Day of Working for my Uncle’s Landscaping Company   / Michael Schad

There is one Taco Bell 
close to where we live now,
Wheatley Heights. 
It’s on Deer Park Ave
a four lane road which stretches from Babylon to Dix Hills – 
North to South, busy with many stoplights, 
but it is a main drag filled with bakeries, 
pizza places, and bagel shops; 
it’s where my brother would go to race 
cars, or watch people race cars. 
We drive in his green Blazer, 
reciting, “Yo Quiero Taco Bell”
in the voice of that chihuahua. 
We order two family packs of soft tacos, 
and two mexican pizzas then drive home
while eating several tacos and sipping on Dr. Pepper, 
the sounds of movement all around.
All my sunburnt face needs is rest and more tacos.

33 Articulations   / Kashiana Singh

There are 33 joints in each foot—
hinges of flesh, bone, and bioelectric fire.
It began with Adam and Eve,

Fingers, those ten cephalic feelers,
mapped each other’s dermatomes—
a moist cartography,

They curled into prayers or fists or pleas,
their joints aching with remembered grip.

Ankles, those delicate gyroscopes,
tilted in communion,
bones rolling over sinew like tides over sand.

Heel, arch, ball, toe—
a sacred sequence of contact and release.

The feet, those twin archives of motion,
carried them through Eden’s loam,
through grit, through ash,

each step a gospel of nerve and nail.

Diagnosis: hallux valgus,
recommend surgical intervention.

Spring Snow / Elizabeth Wolf

The first few days in March
Brownlee and Mary were off at a show
and Brody was in Boston.

Sad Girl held the floor. She did
all her chores, methodically, checked
the fence lines every night, counted

every critter in the morning.
She did not leave the property.
During one afternoon break

she buckled into Mary’s cross-country skis
and set out to circle the meadow.
It was a gentle gray day, snowing, flakes

swirling, a soft shushing sound, a clean
smell with a sly hint of citrus, like an orange
snuggled deep in a Christmas stocking.

Sad Girl decided this was her new religion.