October - Poem 26

Super Natural Sestina ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

Super Natural Sestina
Herbivorous animals avoid the plant
due to its bitter taste. The Missouri Ironweed
is named after its tough stem and rusty blooms
the color of oxidized iron. But it was once
a vibrant hue, a purple magenta to be exact.
As summer ends, petals turn, pollinators cease to visit.

The thorny part of the diminished visits
is the need to be more than a plant.
More than a source of seeds to be exact.
On the fringe of the forest stands the Self-heals 
available for consumption from what was once
used for the restorative benefits of its blooms.

Steeped in a cup of steaming water, the blooms
release compounds that ward off a doctor’s visit.
Its usefulness is no longer measured once
it proves it is a hardworking plant.
Hardly ornamental, the potent Foxglove
was destined to save lives, hearts to be exact.

The best preparation wasn’t exact
when Native Americans made use of blooms
as in measuring the ounces of Echinacea
leaves one should brew when visited 
with a sore throat. Or the amount of plants
to smoke in order to cure a headache once

one sets in. People used trial and error once
in a while, since stories aren’t exact
instructions or microchips to plant
in a cranium in expectation of a bloom
of knowledge that perennially visits
like the almost indestructible day lily.

Like the contrarian Mary of rhymes, the carrion flower 
deters offenders but not with cockle shells. Once 
the living organism begins to resemble a visit
from the walking dead, its odor exactly 
mimics that of a decaying corpse. The morbid bloom
could be contrasted with the resurrection plant. 

To bloom where one is planted, is an exacting mandate for anyone. Visiting flowers in a garden just once is enough to prove their almost supernatural powers.

Greyhound / Kathryn Johnson

The Germans have a word for it. 

Schadenfruede: shameful joy 
Einstellung: obstacle for experts
Torschlusspanik: gate-shut panic 
Zettelkasten: note box 
Welttschmerz: world pain.

Once, in Germany, 
I took a walk with 
the dog my not-quite boyfriend 
was dog-sitting for his friends, when 
a small, perfectly German man, 
dressed in tweed and displaying 
little mustaches, stopped me to ask
Vos isch ze verd ver hund?

I gaped and asked, in my turn:
Dog?

Is there a word, in German or 
some other tongue, 
for this exchange?

What is the word for,
I flew to the other side of the world, 
far across the ocean and full 
of naïve hope, expecting 
to find a husband, a mate, 
only to return home, still alone?

Do the Germans have a word for it? 
I’ve looked. And 
I’m happy to report that 
no one does. Because 

I have found better words, 
better flights, better loves. 

On Morels / Kimberly McElhatten

The first morel of spring pops up
amid a mix of moss and locust—
its cap a map of inky cones and ridges.

A camouflaged topography
so hard to see in dawn’s slim light
among the brown and steely leaves,
an eye can barely find it twice.

Of all the mushrooms in the year,
it is surely most capricious
in where and when it unveils itself
to earnest foragers of May,
who oft set out at morning light
to find the first morel of spring. 

IT’S ONLY NATURAL  / H.T. Reynolds

after Disjointed Fidelity by Lilly Frank

 What’s so unnatural about a dead body
the inevitability after birth—
the result of accumulated stories

Despite the mode of departure,
we all leave for an unknown destination
clutching our ticket in the dark
unsure when to pack
where to stand
our last last goodbye

 when the train whistle bellows
and the clock strikes right,

 when we hold our eyes
and breath together

 lean into the withdrawing

 lean into her fingers beneath
our stone-cold chins chiseled human

 lean into how the air stings
as it passes through the throat

 finally understanding the sum of 21—
identical souls—perfectly seamless
holding one another down—
from drifting skyward—
into an unanswered question…

 the inevitability of death
no matter how unnatural
it may be

October - Poem 25

I Guess I Don’t Really Even Think About You Anymore [Derogatory]   / Lilly Frank

Love fossilized in the couch of your two-bedroom apartment. A relic of what once was, something you could pull out from between the cushions and feel for. Kept in your museum of regret, another token victim complexity, another reason to loathe yourself [completely justifiable]. The birds sing in the morning, the leaves get caught in the storm drain, the evenings become longer than the days. Something I have decided to no longer live with is the very thing that is eternally inscribed into your consciousness. I plead for someone to love me differently, you plead for someone to love you even a fraction of the same. How mortifying? No, really, tell someone [NOT ME] how mortifying. 

Ghazal for the New Day ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

The sunrise begins

to imitate the leaves 
or is it the other way around?

The sun acts as a sibling

rather than a mother 
not the other way around.

The weather vane attempts

to create disorientation 
and the other way around. 

The leaves are turning

against each other 
and the other way around.

The headlines are

painted in black and white
and the other way around. 

The new lines are dead 

to each other, rather 
than the other way around 

Will the daylight lie

prostrate to a king? Mother, 
pray for another way around.

Hippomane mancinella / Kathryn Johnson

Do not make the mistake of 
taking shelter under
the boughs of the manchineel tree. 
Do not be deceived;
the fruit of the manchineel tree
smells so sweet,
looks so sweet
with its fresh green 
and bright skin. 
Named for the manzanilla,
the little apple, manchineel 
is its formal name. 
It is better known
by its alias: manzanilla 
de la muerte. (Little death apples.)
Take caution. A little death may fall 
when rain sifts through the leaves and
limbs of the manchineel tree. 
It’s almost like the tree of death exists 
to let us reenact the first deaths, 
the first apples, stolen at great price. 

Summary Statement of Mrs. Harry Mayhugh, Wife of a Miner / Kimberly McElhatten

PEACEFULLY PASSING  / H.T. Reynolds

so you want to die
asleep, an abrupt end
to a dream— 

what about your lover—

your hands
like talons along their waist,
your warmth leeched
in the way they hold you,
your peaceful face a relic,
ghost-gray eyes hollowed out,
your body a slack portrait
they once recognized… 

the air ripened strange—
a stranger who went to sleep
as lover—peacefully passing

October - Poem 24

Limbo  / Lilly Frank

Oozing from the wound of shame, love comes out sloppily. All inhibitions of tenderness and trials of authenticity collapse beneath their weakening frame. The veil lifts itself from the face of a poet, in spite of her labored feet, she flees the alter as if it were a crime scene. The knife rusted with blood in between cold hands, she knows this feeling well, wickedness, but she can’t recall the details. To be loved is to transform, to lose love is to become completely and entirely alien to the person you once were. And worst of all, to be somewhere in between the two, every next step you take could lie a landmine underneath the brittle surface. 

A Haibun on the Origins ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

Under the heat lamps of nature life revises said Sir Darwin. But survival of the fittest was never his coinage. Years of toiling was boiled, twisted, wrung-out, misused. The can of condensed science was popularized. 

Pet watches over
the business of falling leaves.
Wild beasts mobilize. 

This One Memory / Kathryn Johnson

Because
I’m old enough to have been a babysitter when
it was still acceptable for the father of the family
to drive me home,
I have this one memory.

This one family lived in a house on a hill, with a long,
long driveway,
with only one weak streetlight
where it met the road.

This night, the father came to the end
of the drive and brought the truck to a full stop.
He didn’t turn to me when he said, Look at this.

I heard the headlights click off.

The field in front of us, across the road,
came alive.

Hundreds,
thousands,
a million
fireflies on display.
Little green
and yellow lights,
clicking off and on,
drifting softly
up on silent wings
unfurled from beetle shells.
This one memory
is a snapshot, a pure
and perfect moment from my youth. But

in my middle years, I find myself thinking more
about that father, the man who
must have sat in his truck,
in the dark,
at the end of the drive,
enough times
to discover the holy,
floating lights alone.
There are summer nights, when
a handful of fireflies appear in my yard,
I think about returning to that night,
so that I can ask him how long
he sat there and why
he chose me
to share this memory with him.

It’s likely best that I cannot.
The simple, sweet memory is enough.

IN THE HOUSE OF MY MOTHER  / H.T. Reynolds

God sobs in my arms…
—Agha Shahid Ali

Before I knew how to create a meal
with a hot stove, I knew how to treat seared skin,
how to hold a wilting mother upon your lap,
dislodge her encrusted hair from her open
wounds—how to purr from the throat,
calm her eyes closed without them flinching

Before I knew how to trust a door
lock, I knew how it becomes a microphone,
a loudspeaker vibrating my spine
like a centipede transcending to golden—
spiraling toward God—a green couch—

a pasture—a shepherd—a father—
a mother’s soiled smile scorching   

October - Poem 23

Disjointed Fidelity  / Lilly Frank

Heavily, my heart is so bitterly confused.
In flux with the understanding that this too,
will one day come to a conclusion
whether that be natural or not.
With this gun no longer in my hands
I am only left with my ears to hear the fire
and my feet to feel the ground beneath me
stir unnaturally.

Trust is either found, or undiscovered deep
within oneself. Usually founded upon
foolishness of believing the past, or
blinding foresight, it mangles itself between
monolithic or shadowy and indistinct.

Peering into the contemplations shared
between the brain and body (each proposing
themselves as gospel), it so happens to unravel
that both are a lie. Both are coincided, both are
unyielding, and both are entirely unconscious
of one another. I nudge myself in the
direction of whichever side tugs the rope
the hardest. And with that, I will never know
If the choice I had made was the one
sided with truth.

At the Old House ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

Hot oil in a pan

snaps. Drops scald your skin but you're

too busy to feel. 

In Defense of Forgetting / Kathryn Johnson

The day started with a piece 
of unpleasantness. Bad news 
by phone. I sat with it. Resented it. 
And then, a little miracle: 

I forgot. The bad news faded 
into the background of a busy day. 
Naturally, it reasserted itself 
this evening. I felt guilt and began 
to wrap it ‘round my shoulders, to wear 
the shame of not holding 
on tight all day to my grief. 

Then I remembered: forgetting
can serve a purpose. Forgetting 
can be restorative. It can be 
a blessing and a reprieve. 
It can be a gift. Trouble will wait 
while I embrace forgetfulness. 

Lesson Three from the Aborted Entoloma / Kimberly McElhatten

Just like discovering myself too late,
burning in a bed of stinging nettle—

it’s too easy to project my story [our story]
into what I see in these weird little mushrooms.

I suspect this is true of others: to see
what’s there and imagine themselves into it.

It’s there in the common name I use—
shrimp of the woods and in the others,
a ground plum, a hunter’s heart, a pig snout.

And in the names of other fungi—
old man of the woods,
chicken of the woods,
hen of the woods,
plums and custard,
dead man’s finger,
witches’ butter,
dryad's saddle,
devil’s urn,
elf ear.   

I want to speak of the lesson
I’m learning this foraging season—
the one the aborted entoloma offered.  

How the choice between two is oppression
and the choice between more is freedom—
and how the dichotomy of choice can

land me [us] in a flashpoint without
knowing how I [we] got there.

SPICULE  / H.T. Reynolds

babies are born with around 300 bones…
            by adulthood, they’ll have just over 200 bones.
—Healthline

A body can be broken
in three hundred different ways,
decreasing as our crowns ascend
toward heaven—our limbs
becoming battering rams
denting another’s mind—a pool
of do you remember when
you used to open the door without a key
without even turning the knob

I’d never heard wood snap like an arm before,
like stretching skin at the speed of sound—
they say a whip breaks
the sound’s barrier—
it’s what we hear          and I believe them,
anything with such fibrous tendrils
like a leathered squid’s praising arms,
could find God in the silence of a bedroom
heaving                        a door jamb splintering to sawdust
wicking up her blood—her tears,
scraped up and discarded
in the morning

My body can be broken
in three hundred different ways
and counting

October - Poem 22

Scrimmage / Lilly Frank

These bones, cut into the shape of love.

They attempt to hold the ruins of despair we had left in
our wake. A cinnamon and chamomile essence filling
the autumn wind chills. I wore your coat for months
until I realized it never quite suited my frame anyways.
And even then, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it.
The sentimental need for the strands left of you is not
something I am quite fond of anymore. The feeling
growing stale and exhausting, and with that, one
morning, when I had woken, it was almost as if we had
never even known each other.

These bodies, possessed by the religion of love.
These bodies, shedding cells to create an edition of me
that you have never known.
These bodies, no longer the ones we had shared.

Those bodies, I am so thankful to no longer know those
bodies.

A Font ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

You are cursive
at times
the slopes and curls
of tracks at a carnival.
But also 
the countless light bulbs 
the sound of balloons popping
and riders screaming, and
the smell of sugar and fat 
resting in mid-air.
And 
the darkness after
when all have left
where only the moon
can cast shadows
of the block letters:
enter here.  

Nelson’s Trash Collection / Kathryn Johnson

Brass knuckles nestle 
between pottery, statuary, and 
one old safety razor. 

On another table, 
you are confronted with 
an army of bobbleheads, 

who grin like they know 
something you don't. It's hard 
not to acknowledge that maybe 

they do, as you navigate a sea 
of side chairs and spy your reflection 
in a stack of cracked mirrors. 

Your gaze is flooded by so many 
choices, so many choice pieces 
of trash. Treasures once loved, 

once discarded, now retrieved 
and displayed with care. To teach us 
what? To buy less? To use more? 

To make better, wiser choices? 
I think the lesson is simple. It is this: 
Find beauty where you can.

Lesson Two from the Aborted Entoloma / Kimberly McElhatten

I read in one field guide the
armillaria aborts the entoloma,
and in another the
entoloma aborts the armillaria.

One field guide after
another contradicts the one before
when the truth is more
complicated than these two tribes
of scholarship.

The fact is, our need
to name and prove a thing
is limited by our attention to
right or left, north or south, this or that—
and in naming things as such,
makes the mushrooms [the world]
so simply understood by
dividing our thoughts into tribes
that we forget the thing
is
and that the truth breaths
between and outside of the two,
and in our weird mushroom
we find our true dilemma.

What is parasitic to what?
How can we know when
mutual destruction
promises such delight?

A CONVERSATION WITH MY YOUNGER SELF  / H.T. Reynolds

You know,
I never did figure out
what they did
with those buckets of milk.

By the time it was our turn,
they were half filled with brown and pink milk—
orange juice swirls with chunks of morning cereal
somehow still floating on each separate layer.

We spent too much time looking
at that oil-slicked slurry
trying to glimpse the bottom
like the sea floor beneath Ursula’s trident.

We’d carefully tip our unfinished half-pint,
followed by the apple juice
that’d sour our stomachs moments later
pretending the fall was endless—a bucket
of brittle bones becoming,
youth resistant to dairy posters—
milk mustaches.

Once, we lingered by the doorway
to the cafetorium as our class rippled
for the sunlight withheld from us for so long,

but the buckets remained seated in the old chair—
the pinnacle of behavior          while Virgil swept
our secrets spilled beneath the foldable tables,
pretending they were pulled to another dimension;

mother’s molasses cookies that’d stick
in Doug’s braces, the broccoli Whitney
assured us was her favorite vegetable,
the cinnamon loaf our mother cut
that morning    hardened by the days
left upon the soiled counter—
a thin sheet of wrinkled plastic as cover.

We imagined our kitchen mice
never figured out how to pull off the plastic,
the scrapes were from mother’s knife—
a stranger within the chipped bread flesh,
like Goliath’s claw marks in solid stone—

who could leave such a thing behind for a child…

Mrs. Menser caught us peeking,
like it had been her we were watching,
scolded us for our curious eyes—
directed us outside

October - Poem 21

Manufactured Dejection / Lilly Frank

Oozing with remorse
for the person I had
promised myself I’d
one day become.
Feeling foreign in
the skin of my own
skeleton, I slump into
the pillow laid on
the bed of someone
I promised myself a
beautiful future with.
Many times, promises
are not made in alignment
with reality. Instead,
we use them as a device,
a vessel for control.
If I give myself the
assurance that this will
deliver upon itself as
intended, so it shall
be. However, as time
grows you into sagging
skin and lost memory
you mature to grasp
that these very promises,
the ones you held close
to your chest, are the
very pitfalls of what
is bound to happen in
this time here that we
have. To promise
yourself a future affair
is strictly to promise
yourself an inevitable
let down. The shackles
that have embossed
themselves into your
frame are a self-inflicted
wound. Learning the
grueling lesson that
the future is unmanageable
will in time, save
you the burden of
staunch disappointment.

Saving Grace  ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

If you slit 
your stomach
to free your
soul, will you

be released

from the scorn
of those who
came to earth
before you

to avenge 

the unjust
deaths of those
who were killed
before them? 

What mammal
survives by
this practice
other than

a species
that’s willing 
to bring its 
own ending 

for the sake
of trading 
shame in life
for saving

grace in death?

Persephone sets the record straight / Kathryn Johnson

The little bees tend 
my grieving mother. It's good 
they have this new occupation. 
Her cries will cause the petals 
where they perched to fade. 
Her tears will stop the flow 
of nectar that they drink. I think 
she forgets her pain will hurt 
her handmaidens. I know 
she will not understand it does 
no good for me. I ate the pomegranate 
my bridegroom offered me 
on our wedding night. Can’t you see? 
Each of those juicy, red seeds 
was a choice. While the world will tell 
the story of my abduction, they will be 
as forgetful as my mother 
when it comes to this: A maiden 
making up her own damned mind.

Lesson One from the Aborted Entoloma / Kimberly McElhatten

Before Deep
Hollow Run
on Mountain View,
where the trail
turns back
on itself,
a discovery
of aborted
entoloma.

One guide
claims the
entoloma
aborts the
armillaria
while another
claims the
armillaria
aborts the
entoloma.

But none
of this is
on my mind
[or makes a difference]
on the first day
I spot them
on Mountain View
and drop
off trail
into the belly
of the honey hole
where I slice
one
from the earth,
dissect it, and
see the weird
mushroom folding
into a womb
of white
arrested
development
when urgent
hives
ignite
across
my
fingers
and
arms.

All around,
stinging
nettle
touches
my body
through my
clothes.

A mistake
I’m
too skilled
at making—
to lose my
surroundings
on the chase
for a choice
edible with the
nettle
there to
remind
me whose
house this is.

MARCESCENCE  / H.T. Reynolds

An unkindness of leaves clings to the fingertips of an old oak,
its bark, splotched mossen green.

They arrange themselves like a copper crown,
a rusted halo dissolving into rancid wine
convincing the elder it’s still September
convincing the elder the retiring sun
is premature, that the wind will settle again,
that the moon will no longer singe his hide
with its crystalline edges.

The elder oak sighs, tickles the thick soil
tucked in and heavy—refusing his request.

An impatient rain lashes at his knuckles,
cleaves down to his cuticles, pries the crowns free.

They shatter—fall like dazzling embers,
debris bowing at his feet, a murder
for the coming snow

October - Poem 20

Lingering Heat / Lilly Frank

Often longing over the plagued thought of, maybe in another lifetime. Sickeningly, I stir my coffee and swallow it down, choking on the reminder that this is the only lifetime that I truly have, tangibly at least. I feel time passing through me as if losing something that I was supposed to have; I feel myself keeping you at arm’s length to avoid the potential of losing you altogether. Everything I have ever loved has never truly been mine - accepting this like gripping the blade of a sword, I chew through my tongue.

You sit across from me unsuspecting of my genuine awe. It feels sappy, really, the way I wish I could spill my guts. The way I wish I could explain to you in every single detail why I feel life brought us together and made us whole humans to share this moment and every other. I could have been an oak tree, or a caterpillar. I could have been born in Rome or a small town in Scotland, but instead, I sit here with you on this couch and feel as if there was a reason I was put here.

Love transcends time. Love transcends this lifetime and the next if you really think about it, and in a way, I have found that more than anything, love is the purpose for moving forward through each of them.

Range  ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

The queens were dancing. 

The youth were playing football on the shore. 

The parents were home with their dog. 

The children were praying.

The teachers were doing their jobs. 

The family was sheltering. 

The executive was walking to work.

The influencer was speaking to his audience.

Blessed are they, full of sorrow. 

Blessed are they, the lowly ones.

Blessed are they, who show mercy.

The children were praying.

The parents were home with their dog.

Blessed are they, who hunger and thirst.

The family was sheltering. 

The queens were dancing. 

Blessed are they, full of sorrow. 

The youth were playing football on the shore. 

The teachers were doing their jobs.

The children were praying.

The influencer was speaking to his audience.

The executive was walking to work. 

Blessed are they, who show mercy. 

The family was home with their dog. 

Blessed are they, the lowly ones. 

The queens were dancing. The family was sheltering. 

Blessed are they, who hunger and thirst. 

The youth were playing football on the shore. 

Genus: Lymantria / Kathryn Johnson

I once found myself 

in the red light district of Denver 

during a sightseeing drive around Boulder. 

I possess a special talent for losing my way. 

I have enjoyed watching 

moths swarm the porch light. 

They are a little lost pilgrims, fumbling 

to find their way. With their powdery wings 

and furry stoles, I envy their style and 

have sympathized with what I thought was 

their inability to navigate when faced 

with a bright distraction. I was sad 

to learn that we are not the same. 

Moths perpetually orient themselves 

in an instinctual act. They go to the light, 

to the flame, as a ready substitute 

for the moon or the sun. It’s breathtaking really. 

They always know how to find their way. 

I want to find my own

light, a personal fire, 

that will let me do the same.

untitled / Kimberly McElhatten

Red and yellow flecks

eddy in the autumn wind—

artifacts of June. 

FORGIVE US MOTHER OF EXILES  / H.T. Reynolds

My God—what have they done to you…
—Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

she keeps the bullets between her
cheeks and her vacated teeth
like an initiation—
a passing

of a torch long extinguished
abandoned in the harbor,
coppered green and smoldering

when a tablet was a promise,
an invitation from the Mother
of Exiles before becoming
corroded stone—now reading
here lies America—

we once believed here.

October - Poem 19

I Regret the Things I Did for Love / Lilly Frank

Saunter into the room with a heavy apathy.
Consumed by thoughts of himself, he
forgets that I too, exist outside of whatever
ill-constructed version of me he has
created inside of his head. I fit into his
world in the way he contorts me into, and
for him, that is pleasing. For me, it grew
irritating. It grew into resentment, it grew
into frustration, it grew him into a stranger.
With little care or regard, he would come
and go on his own time. His watch must’ve
ticked a beat slower than mine, his timing
was always so off. Loved completely
through conditions, seen completely
through the lens of his own utopian vision
of the person I was. It is so soul sucking,
blood boiling, and gut wrenching to be
loved not for the person you show up as,
but for the person that best fits someone
else’s narrative. And the devastation leaves
me beside myself when I come to realize,
all I wanted was to be the person he loved.
At whatever cost of my autonomy, I would
have paid it all in suffocating torment even
for a moment of his approval.

Days of Summer  ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

My dog barks to indicate he wants to go outside. I open the door and see that it still hasn’t rained. I walk to the sidewalk and examine the hibiscus beside my mailbox. The leaves have become spotted and pale. A police car approaches and I watch as it slows to a stop in front of my home. The officer lowers his window and asks if I’m from this neighborhood. “This is my house,” I say. I call for my dog who comes running. 

Pausing at the doorsill, / Kathryn Johnson

the dried and folded body of 
a spider catches my eye when 
I step out to collect the mail. 

Its curled legs hold many 
possible horrors. Death, obviously, 
but also the phantom skittering 
of legs across the sleeping face. 
Or the shivering unpleasantness of 
walking through an invisible web. And 
certainly the image of any invader that fails 
to die at the door, be it spider, beast, or man. 

But what scares me most is the little corpse’s 
desiccation. It reminds me too starkly of 
myself today, when words are slow to come. 

In Youngstown October 2025, 7:30am / Kimberly McElhatten

A sunrise rainbow arcs behind the Mahoning County Court House—a shock of psychedelic pink behind the three copper statues at the top. Two women in flowing robes, Justice to the south, holding a fasces and to the north, Law with a rod. Between them, a man with a sword, Strength and Authority. Engraved at the base, A nation cannot outlive justice. Where law ends, tyranny begins. Later this day, long after the rainbow fades into the pastel of the sky, thousands [millions] will gather here [across the country] with signs. No thrones. No crowns. No kings. Power belongs to the people. Day of defiance. Reject tyranny. We the people. This isn't a protest. This is a revolution. I'd like you, dear reader, to know pink rainbows are rare–only in morning or evening and during a high-pressure system–a sign of blue skies and stability on their way. 

HPA AXIS  / H.T. Reynolds

When my body forgot how to breathe,
swapping my throat for a straw,
I learned how time can stretch—
a balloon in a bottle—strangulated.

When my body forgot about its legs,
I spent the winter memorizing its fiber
glass contours from tip of toe to thigh,
spread apart with a broomstick—immobilized.

When my body forgot to turn in its paperwork,
it delayed the regulator’s progress, all growth
stunted until the numbers could reconcile
my age, my body juvenilized—arrested.

But my lungs, my bones, my body can’t forget
the smell of mother’s cigarette.

October - Poem 18

The Apple Analogy (Flare for The Dramatic) / Lilly Frank

Core the apple and sit on the kitchen floor. You have your hands; you have this knife and this cutting board and this apple and your hands. Weapons of destruction and love, and the choice is entirely yours and yours alone. I am coring this apple for the person I love, yet, I am dismantling the apple. Somehow simultaneously, your hands find a way to manifest both, and at the same damn time. Yet, you likely only saw this as an act of love – you see, we usually only see the action of our intentions, not the action of reality of them. So, take the apple, in example. The apple is now your lover’s heart. Take the person you love for example, the person you love is now someone who needs a heart transplant. Do you use the knife to slice open the body of this other person in search of a heart, or do you let the heart rot so you can have a keepsake of what remains?

How do you use your hands?

Cells  ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

The inside of her cells contains a make-believe neighborhood made of Little People, with a castle and a camper. And her mother’s make-up samples that she kept in her own purse with a wooden handle. There’s a TV set with knobs, her sister’s Jackson Five ticket, tucked behind a mirror’s frame, and all the Little Debbie Snack Cakes that her classmates brought from home. Storage cubes are filled with dried corsages, cracked geodes, and mixed tapes. In the corner are milk crates of binders, lab coats, and textbooks with words highlighted in green. A maze of shelving holds a thermos from Harlem General Hospital, a pink winter coat, a purple Nokia, and neon lights. Also a brown bag for morning sickness, sidewalk smells, a subway card, a taxi cab beside a jogging stroller, forgotten in the park, a soft blue blanket, and stacks of books with hard pages. There’s a lawnmower, piles of recital programs, costumes from the mall, sand, tears, prayers, and unmatched athletic socks. And there’s a Chromebook, yellow notepads filled with notes, cracked smartphones, lists, and lines of poetry, suspended in the substance that keeps the membrane of each cell from caving in. 

The patio behind the bar / Kathryn Johnson

The grass here is fake,

but the evening is mild and

we are together. 

Untethered / Kimberly McElhatten

I’ve never been a crier, but as I sat on the toilet at a hotel this morning, my body yearned to cry. I reached for the toilet paper and thought, Who is this other woman in my body and in my head? This is not you. I don’t know her. Hold it together. But it wasn’t the crying that wasn’t me. It was the longingness to feel at home in my body—[again]. The longingness to stay in my PJs and forget to check out. I considered my options and what might happen if I gave in to the longingness—and the employee who’d have found me nestled into the white pillows and the duvet of room 712 of the DoubleTree, writing poems about the longingness and despair of who was me and not me; and how I'd had no option, but to wipe up the blood, stand on my achy legs, take a shower, and become the longingness of the woman who now stood outside of the body I once knew.

D_ _ _C_ A _ Y  / H.T. Reynolds

October - Poem 17

What is Left Here?  / Lilly Frank

Cold water degenerating into colder water. We had run out of
money to pay for more oil, so the house just became cold.
Pockets turned inside out of winter jackets, there was a
suspicious hush in the stagnant air filling the living room; the
sound of each seldomly passing car would slice the silence
like a knife.
The less you find yourself speaking is usually an indication of
how little good you have to speak of.

Untapping  ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

Far from 
the antelopes, 
tarantulas, orchids, 
narwhales, and 
phosphorescent ocean 
exchanges, are 
answers to 
questions you’ve 
asked since 
you were 
told to 
be patient 
while killing
time in 
single-file. You 
sought responses 
outside cubicles
and contracts
while tracing 
the shape
for infinity. 
But far 
from your 
roadless tracks 
are messages 
left unbottled.

October 17th / Kathryn Johnson

to NCJ

In the early hours after your birth, the moon 
snuck his way into your room. From his pocket, 
he took the loose end of a red thread and 
set to looping it around the little finger of your 
so small, so perfect left hand. He did the same for me. 

It was a long thread, one that stretched across 
decades and continents. It traveled with you 
below the surface of the ocean, which is how 
I know it was long and durable. I never felt 
the salty water wicked along its length.
 
It hid in the folds of my bedclothes and tangled
a bit in my pockets. It was a sneaky, sly companion
that never made its presence known. Imagine
my surprise, then, the moment it contracted,
snapping into snug place the day we met. That long thread 

spooled itself up, its work accomplished when, finally, 
we were no further apart than the depth of a threshold.
I never had the chance to admire its cheery, cherry red.
Never thought to miss it when it left. But today, I
thank the thread for its diligence and faithfulness.

A Poet’s Take on Things She Heard Her Mentors Say [In Italics] / Kimberly McElhatten

I get to do this. I get to wake up and write this poem. I get to arrange syntax like a puzzle box, working secret latches to unlock a poem’s true shape and to write a cardinal onto the page where it can sing and become more than a bird.

***

 Be all in. I get to be all in poems, say the word poem like I’m eating a juicy plum, sink into the flow of what happens when intention and attention align, trust where the breath goes, the mind follows, and let it be what carries me to the next and to the next and to the next.

***

There are two kinds of people. Today people and mañana-mañana people. People who write poems today and people who say tomorrow, tomorrow, I’ll write the poem. Which are you? I am both, but especially the tomorrow-tomorrow of always poems—always time, always poems, mañana-mañana.

ODE TO A BOY BECOMING  / H.T. Reynolds

ascared,
brood of mice,
parcel of flesh,
stubborned into stillness,
splinters burring into the folds
of your thinking—
beloved and shredded
paper separating flesh
with its edges, reading
about her from its surface
the next day—
how you bled out
but kept her secrets
despite their interrogation.
You’ve dragged the drain ditches,
collected their discarded trays
with her bite marks still in place,
discovered the ways whiskers can
grow a new cat if planted right
beneath a new moon,
beneath your picked scabs.
You once could fit
into a brown paper bag
without tearing,
without peeking through—
folded into itself,
creased and trembling.

October - Poem 16

The Gates Keeper   / Lilly Frank

Whether you are made of skin and godliness
or bones and sin,
death absorbs us all the same.
Chewing the crumbs of what remains of your skeletal frame,
there is no heaven or
hell, to be seen here.
You can absolve yourself of your guilt or let it swallow you,
to the naked eye,
it is all the same,
just guilt.
In our waking hours,
we may caress the face of
many different lovers.
For this, feel no shame.
Just as for guilt as it is for shame,
just shame.
Mistake after mistake,
we ingest our own truth as if a
poison suffocating the flames of our
passion, desires, and authenticity.
What a nonissue,
just a mistake.
Now coming home,
eyes swollen with the pollution
of salted tears. We perceive lost
love as a failure, a collapse of who
we are.

The very ground you walk is incidental.
How misguided to believe that
you, a speck on this dirt plane,
have crushed the meaning of
humanity, humanness, personhood, and purpose
with such pardonable consequences of living.
Because as it stands,
A life uncalloused is a life unlived.

You Were Named After a Flower  ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

You can’t help
walking in 

your dad’s shoes 

though it seems 
you’re anxious 

about what 

other men 
are saying 

about you.

You gaze in
a pool that 
seems as deep

and wide as
your ceiling
at night when

you feel there’s 
no one on

earth who will
hear you if 

you slip and 
fall into 

the endless
reflection.

You might not
have the breath

of those who
inspired you. 

You might not

reach the air.

If you do
you might not 
stay afloat 

when it’s your
duty to 

sail the ship

while fathers
have conquered 

open seas
before us.

Development of a Worker Bee / Kathryn Johnson

A honeybee’s transit
from egg to hatchling is
surprising and wise.
Her earliest days
are spent in an open cell,
being fed by her sisters.
These same sisters
cap her cell in time
for the soon-to-be-bee
to build her cocoon.
She changes in privacy.

A kindness we could learn to mimic.

This little gift of solitude
is all the more poignant when
we consider the bee’s lifespan.
Because the week of metamorphosis
represents a quarter of her life.
Food, quiet, and time are costly
when you live only a scant 40 days. Still,
she dedicates these dear resources
to readying the sisters who
will follow in her small footsteps.
The bee never denies its young.
Her very nature would cry out against it.

A wisdom we too could choose.

View from My Condo, Mid-October / Kimberly McElhatten

Impatiens, pink and leggy, bend toward the sun with seed pods like full bellies—remind me of my mother, how she taught me to plant, to water, to deadhead touch-me-nots into the shade of fall. On the bank where I scattered hen-of-the-woods last week, hopeful for next season, a sugar maple commands my consideration. Our neighbor Kevin jogs by, and across Ridge Run, more sugar maples mix with mountain laurel and fern and oak. Where the mountain drops to South Poplar Run, the

sun rides the leaves
trailing gold—hushed orange beyond,
on the next ridge east.

AT THE WITCHING HOUR  / H.T. Reynolds

at 3 each morning,
my feet find
the bedroom floor
my hands
the French press
in the kitchen
the swollen-box
tea-timer we keep
above the stove
to decide when
I’m ready—
watching me watch
the murky balloon
take in the cold air
outside
pressing frost against
my window
the deer family peeking
in, reminding me
to add cream
to the shopping list
I extend my body
upon the living room
couch
pretend to be resurrected,
the product of intention,
the circle of spices,
the incantations,
the blood-tipped knife,
the goblet of opaque fluids,
whispering tendrils
into the shadows—
a wheezing prayer
against a mother’s breast,
the grimoire splayed on her lap,
the incense framing the room,
the flickering heart in the corner—
my sire patiently awaiting his cue,
the stage lights to erupt,
the dolly at slow pan,
the focus pulling on his face—
a man,
a stationary body in the dark—
splayed open

October - Poem 15

Static Metamorphosis   / Lilly Frank

Slowly, you feel the tides inside of your bones shift into something far less malleable. You have a desire for more, something to slap the ruler down upon. You wake from a slumber and never return to the same type of REM. The change is infectious, beginning in the heart, extending to the mind, to the hands, to the vocalization of such feelings. Profound yet glossed over and polished, it is almost as if your body yearns for something that the brain has yet to conceptualize. More than likely, similar to stages of grief, you are stuck with a pang of anger. This frustration, all consuming, chomping down at your throat for each time you begin to speak in betrayal to this instinctual need. In honor of this, silence becomes a familiar comfort. Busy navigating the emotional landscape of which remains uncharted, the daydreaming of this reality grows maladaptive. Now losing a sense of self in between the lines of primal demand and ephemeral desire, you settle into bargaining. You’re making exchanges that align as a compromise of the two, neither feel satiated. If you flip the switch, you may never have the retrospective clarity that weighing your options may offer you. On the other hand, staying stagnant causes the blood in your veins to spoil. Let’s get to the point, you’re wasting time. Wasting days, months, years, etc., etc. sitting inside of a vacuum. How is one to know where authenticity is stored in the body? How is one to discern when circling the drain of your own marooned view?

Turn to Find Out  ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

Whose woods these are I don’t know 
but there’s a sign that says Trespassers 
will be shot on sight. And bullet holes 
embellish the metal plate as a show 

of forthrightness. So I decide to take the path 
that’s headed back to my Airbnb 
because I only need to be told once. Unless 
you say you’ll change and, going forward

you’d welcome trespassers. But 
this isn’t a joke so I’d consider the options
in case of the latter. It’s hot, dry, and I’m 
out of water. But a clear, blue spring 

is on your land and I haven’t skipped ahead 
in my borrowed Choose Your Own Adventure
which is now overdue at the Tesson Ferry Library
by forty-three years, if we’re all confessing. 

If I return it now I’ll owe seven-hundred fifty dollars
which is one thousand times the cost of the book
in 1982. I think I may have loved the book so much
that I didn’t want to bring it back and slide it through

the slot, to possibly never be seen again. Except
for on the second shelf below the fish tank
that bubbles soothingly in regular intervals. 
After months or years I might spot it again.

Adventures in the Amazon but it wouldn’t be mine. 
And by then I might be more intrigued by Where 
the Red Fern Grows. So I’m keeping it simple 
by keeping the Choose Your Own Adventure

Volume 64. I mean, who could let go of that 
exhilaration? So, do I return to my Airbnb 
or do I follow the road past the x-ed out 
Trespassers will be shot on sight sign? 

Thoughts upon receiving my grandmother’s ring / Kathryn Johnson

I fear our sense of object permanence has made us greedy. Ungrateful, we presume that what we can see, we can own. It’s wrong to assume, though, that when the glass of water beside me does not disappear if I step into the next room, that I somehow own the water. We do not truly possess anything. When I sip from the glass, I may consume the water, but its time with my tissues is a short stay. It, and the apple I ate this morning, are brief guests in the house of my body.

My grandmother understood this and taught me the lesson when she passed over her engagement ring in the days after Grandpa’s death. She told me that, after the fire that took their last shared home—their second total loss by flame—she’d found the ring, whole if tarnished, and put it in a dresser drawer. It surfaced again, right before her husband died, the black soot somehow gone, the gold softly shining again. She places the little band in my palm and tells me, “It was so nice just to have the chance to know these things and have them around.”

View from Summit Lodge at Blue Knob, August / Kimberly McElhatten

To the distant east, the mountain
ridges frame a blue skyline

with Round Knob summer emerald—
a cell tower, a trail map, a lift shack.

Under the lift towers, ski patrollers belay
from chairs, rehearsing rescue drills.

On the ground, two with a red rope
review an alpine block and tackle—  
backpacks dot the grass, against
a commotion of daisies and goldenrod.

MY MOTHER’S BOYFRIEND COMING HOME FROM THE BAR ON A FRIDAY NIGHT: A CALL AND RESPONSE POEM  / H.T. Reynolds

after “song” by Adrienne Rich &
“Self Portrait” by David Whyte

you’re wondering if I’m sober
if I returned the car keys to the little hook
next to the coffee pot with the shit-stain halo
that you insist won’t come clean

you’re wondering if I fed the dog
before I came inside, wondering if
I’d eaten wherever I was, what size bucket
you’ll need from beneath the bathroom sink
I didn’t get around to fixing yet—I was working
on the coffee pot like you were supposed to

you’re wondering if I still love you
wondering if I used protection tonight like
I promised—but you’re wondering wrong
look into my tomcat eyes—see that blazing
wreath you put there, taste that slurred speech
you leave me with each goddamn day
the way you parade around like you’re better
like you ain’t wondering how much it’ll take
in your bank account to leave—to take your kids
and split, leave me with the bills, the rent
haven’t wondered too far, though—each night
you’re here, sporting my t-shirt rag
cooking your slop, feeding your bastard children

you ever wonder where he is—why he couldn’t stay
wouldn’t stay, was unable to bear staying—huh
you ever wonder that miss queen majesty, holier
than thou mother—I wonder if you ever gave a shit
or if you just spread your legs for a home—hoping to
pop out another ball and chain—any way to keep a man

you’re wondering if I’m sober—
I’m wondering why I’m not drinking now

~~~

I’m not interested in the bullshit you call a story
not interested in the whore you found tonight
the tab you swear you’ll pay me back for
not interested in what time you strolled in
not interested in your ulcerated eyes
your venomous kiss—your agenda

I want to know if you’ll stay for them
and if you do, what kind of bullshit you’ll
put them through—will you bust them up
split open their lip when they turn it against you
will you hold them without breaking ribs
will you remember how he calls you dad
how he holds his hand to yours, measures the space
he longs to grow into—do you see the snuff can
in his six-year-old pocket, the coozy he hides beneath
his bed like the porno mags in your suitcase in the shed
did he ever tell you how he found them—panicked you
were leaving, too—asked questions I couldn’t answer
found your old t-shirt rag, brought it to me—this one
you recognize the stains—do they say you’re staying
if not for me—for him—I can take a punch, but he’s
taken far too many…

I’m not interested in your regrets—I want to know if
you give a shit about them—about him

October - Poem 14

House of Clay  / Lilly Frank

Zinnias and Salvias, both immature seedlings swallowing the soil's nutrients for when the rain decides to come around. In the Pennsylvania sunshine, the sprouts bask despite knowing a root chilling winter is ahead. Lending one another their wisdom, leaf intertwined with leaf, each integral to the growth of the other. Cut from the same garden tool, sharing the same oxygen from the same pot, yet their growth not linear. Worms wrap themselves around their stems, the bees circle the scent awaiting the pollen. With fortitude, cracking the seal of sun rotted dirt, the foundation building in spite of their yesteryear. Nearly coming to a head mid-August, the days begin to feel increasingly shorter. This unsuspecting demise almost never becomes easier to grapple with. The gardener has closed up shop for the season. Disappointed by the lack of fruition, the Zinnia and Salvia return to their seeded beginnings to hibernate in the clay and soil for another long winter. And somehow, Spring always arrives. There is more rain to be shed, there is more sun to be shown, and there is another flower in the very pot in which you have dwelled. Now rekindling their relationship with life and emergence, it is almost as if they had forgotten the time even passed at all.

Arsenal  ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

from Arabic dar as-sina'ah "workshop," literally "house of manufacture," from dar "house" + sina'ah"art, craft, skill," from sana'a "he made.” -Etymonline.com

“That was a push from behind! 
Call the foul, ref!” The drunk man 
was yelling about my child.

“No. It wasn’t!” I yell back 
from across the bleachers not knowing 
to whom I was yelling, other than 

toward the voice of a drunk older man. 
Then, I wonder if he’ll approach me. 
“The player tripped,” I think to myself. 

“I’d bet you a thousand dollars 
my kid didn’t put a hand on that player. 
I clearly saw what happened.” But maybe 

I should walk away. I decide to fold 
my thoughts into a napkin and shove them 
in my purse for another time.

For when people aren’t so angry about
my existence in this country. 
But I don’t know how long I’ll keep my words 

to myself. I’ll have to collect stacks of phrases.
They’ll fill my jean pockets by the end of a game. 
Overflow coffee cups by the end of a Zoom. 

I’ll have to keep them in cloth bins and Tupperware 
boxes with lids to prevent moth holes and mold 
inside the angles and curves of all those letters. 

I’ll become embarrassed by my hoarding. 
Keeping it all just in case some day 
I might need that retort. Or my niece might want 

that line when she’s older, for when a man approaches 
from across the bleachers, or the other side 
of a boardroom, or out of nowhere. 

I might polish the statements, brush off even
the swear words I learned in middle school 

and Filipino idioms I absorbed from my parents

and place them in a brown bag I saved 
from Borders or Left Bank Books. “Use these 
freely,” the card would say. “Love, Tita Anna” 

Twenty Answers  / Kathryn Johnson

The tick-clicking of the tea kettle.
The guaranteed comfort of wool socks.
The yielding crack of a new book’s spine.
The particular and aloof love of a house cat.
The proud foam crown atop a pint of dark beer.
The snapping quality of the darkest chocolate.
The cheeky wink of summer’s first fireflies.
The first bold red leaves on the sugar maple in fall.
The giddy freedom of canceled plans.
The tender promise of new friendship.
The specific solace of lasting friendship.
The caviar-like popping of a ripe blackberry.
The permissible smugness when winning at trivia.
The bubble of amusement when a loved one laughs.
The very existence of cheese.
The prize of satisfaction upon completing a chore.
The sweet moment of waking rested without an alarm.
The unearned triumph when a cat chooses your lap.
The little grief that comes at the close of a good book.
The warm welcome of your own front door.

View from Summit Lodge at Blue Knob, February/ Kimberly McElhatten

Heavy snow clouds drag
across a white, uncut sky

save for a soft black sliver
of Sproul Mountain in the distance—

north by northeast, two crows fly,
black specks against the tireless white—

trees shift from graphite to ash to white,
heavy in hoary frost and rime, and

at the summit, a lift chair
rolls around the bullwheel.

DRESS REHEARSAL  / H.T. Reynolds

after “Untitled” by Francesca Woodman, 1978

I wonder if they’d have listened
to the motion of your skin,
sat with your shared exposures

if you’d have come down softly,
your heels finding the Italian tile,
your bare leg the chair
were you merely rehearsing
your debut,
practicing becoming cold flesh
to compliment
their cold fingers
swapping your body for cash

but you landed twice—
as passing artists often do,
your body of work
hung up on museum walls,
emptied wallets too full
to see you then
when you shared it all—
before you let yourself down

I like to believe you’re defying
gravity, like a gymnast
becoming an iron cross,
a suspended ghost
materializing

October - Poem 13

Domesticated  / Lilly Frank

The housecat is unbothered by his own existence. Shamelessly, he leaps from windowsill to couch, and so on and so forth. Coming as he pleases, retreating at his leisure, he moves strictly in his own interest. With the intention to survive in comfort, the housecat acts in his own self-interest nearly all the time.

When a housecat senses himself dying, he retires himself to underneath of the bed, behind the closet door, anywhere he can find himself isolated. Self-preservation at its finest. Stillness and peace even in death, is something to not be forsaken by the housecat.

Morning Routine  ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

Do you remember observing 
heels and the hems of skirts swaying 
above the sidewalk, freshly rinsed
in the morning so pails of lilies, roses 
and pink and blue-dyed carnations 
could be placed in rows to be 
sold and brought home or to work 
to brighten a lunchroom table? 
The red and black graffiti embellishing 
the metal roll-up doors of the Loop
were tucked away, out of the sun
to reveal a relief of pastels. Even 
the middle-of-the-night elements 
appreciated the patina of day. 

All that’s nice / Kathryn Johnson

They say girls are made of sugar and spice. We both know that
is a lie. I remember making Barbie and Ken kiss 
while forcing his plastic hand to cup her fleshless breast. 
You lusted for the bottle, tiny and pink. You stole it 
from the girl next door, then closed your bedroom curtains tight.
You sat in a dark room so no one could spy as you played. 
And when the guilt grew so uncomfortable you could feel it 
like a lump, you buried the toy bottle in the backyard—
right at the property line, as close as you could 
bring yourself to returning it outright. You tell me this 
while we wait for your first treatment to begin. 
The lump has found the way to your breast, real flesh this time. 
The nurse brings you pills in a little plastic cup. 
So, I find myself wondering if they taste sweet on your tongue. 
Sweet like sugar or maybe sweet like crabmeat. How could I not? 
Today of all days, when we sit together in a bright room considering 
what we and our maladies are made of. Maybe the stories we share 
about our childish sins are a confession, an absolution to cleanse us 
while we pray for a cure. If it helps, I can bundle up our stories and 
carry them outside. This time, I will be the one to bury them 
deep in the yard, so that, come spring, we can watch them sprout 
and bloom with flowers I hope to have the chance to share with you. 

View from the Summit Lodge at Blue Knob, November / Kimberly McElhatten

Live edge hemlock fades
gray on a lift shack, and

down slope, above the snow guns,
lift chairs hang, their silver shapes

made plain by the black,
barren trees beyond—

a fading sun pushes magenta
into the western valleys—

at the horizon, the mountains fade,
cobalt to coral to rosy quartz—

to a dolomite sky.

APOPHENIA PT. I / H.T. Reynolds

This memory is pristine, exactly like
a scene captured in a snow globe.
~ “Little Senses” by Kathryn Johnson

my father fashioned me a boxer
at two my opponent,
my older brother—
he resisted the padded
gloves but I leaned in—
proud daddy
had a dollar on the underdog

so I broke my brother’s nose.

I smiled at my daddy—
felt his backhanded
coaching,
nobody told me
to hold back
wish he held back

the scar along my skull
rattled-brain
concussive love
he loved me— right

they said I took a tumble—
was lucky to be alive
to survive my father

He retired to his bedroom
left me
with his sister
to clean me up,
my blushing skin
she watches—
giggling hands

let me in, hush,
she found her way
in.
Let me in
to her secret
fear
man
he has the sharper
teeth
but woman
she was born softly
withdrawn claws
‘til they’re ready
‘til palm to palm
for prey—
she was ready—

I prayed

the snow fell all weekend
trapped us behind glass

through the window
through the window
God is through the window—
there—watching

pick me up, mother
this home is shaking

I am shaking
my brother is shaking

we are shaking…
snow collects along the pane
crystalline from the haze of the dark
freezes us together ‘til our morning rematch

October - Poem 12

To Love Religiously   / Lilly Frank

The confession of love is a prayer.
The continuation of love is a ritual.
And the ending of that very love, is exile.

 To lose love is not only a loss of
                       prayer
                       ritual
                        religion
but a loss of all faith.

Love becomes so integral to
our purpose. When we forfeit love,
we experience a rebirth.
                        A baptism of the soul.
                        A cleansing of the slate.

Arsenal  ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

from Arabic dar as-sina'ah "workshop," literally "house of manufacture," from dar "house" + sina'ah"art, craft, skill," from sana'a "he made.” -Etymonline.com

“That’s a push from behind! Call the foul, ref!” The drunk man was yelling about my child. “No. It wasn’t!” I yell from across the bleachers not knowing to whom I was yelling, other than toward the voice of a drunk older man. I then wonder if the man will approach me after the game. “He tripped,” I think to myself. “I’d bet you a thousand dollars my kid didn’t put a hand on that player. I clearly saw what happened.” But maybe I should walk away. I decide to fold my thoughts into a napkin and shove them in my purse for another time, when people aren’t so seemingly angry about my existence in this country. But I don’t know how long I’ll keep my words to myself. I’ll have to collect piles of words if I don’t hand them out. They’ll fill my jean pockets by the end of a soccer game. Overflow several coffee cups by the end of a Zoom meeting. I’ll have to keep them in cloth bins and giant Tupperware boxes with lids to prevent moth holes and mold inside the acute angles and open curves of all those letters. I’ll become embarrassed by my hoarding. Keeping it all just in case some day I might need that retort. Or my niece might want that line when she’s older, for when a man approaches from across the bleachers, or the other side of a boardroom, or out of nowhere, while she’s walking to her car. I might polish the statements, brush away the excessive swear words I learned in middle school and the Filipino idioms I absorbed from my parents, and place them in a reused gift bag I saved from Borders or Left Bank Books. “Use these freely,” the card would say. “Love, Tita Anna” 

little senses / Kathryn Johnson

I manufactured the memory
of this moment, constructed with
details from my mother's account:

The small child, perched on a radiator.
Handwashing, with the small, pink tongue
jutting from the child's mouth.
The predictable fall—
a slip and a slam.

The chin cracks against the sink.
Teeth close violently. The pink tongue
becomes red.

I can watch a movie of this moment
play through, but the details are as blurred
as the old scar crossing my tongue. I watch
from the hallway, an invisible third person,
as the young mother rushes in.
But I'm fully first person

in this memory, my first: I watch
my cold, red hands and, beyond them,
the snow falling on the dark blue figure of
my father in the yard. My mother,
that young mother, appears and
presents me with dry mittens.
This memory is pristine, exactly like
a scene captured in a snow globe.

I also remember the dark morning when
I decided to ride our dog like a horse.
She bucked just like a horse, and I fell
just like a snowflake. I think
my nightgown was green. I know
I laughed at the dog, at myself, at
the thrill of a bloodless fall in the hallway
that led to the bathroom where
I bit my tongue nearly in two.

My little senses, real,
remembered, and imagined,
make a colorful patchwork:

the white sink
the pink tongue
the red blood and
red hands against the white 
backdrop of snow with
the blue figure
the black dog
the warm blood
the cold snow

All of it, memory.

On Hilltop Lane in the Endless Mountains / Kimberly McElhatten

Asters at my feet
pale purple with yellow

changed by a western sun
diffused through clouds—

two teens bouncing a
basketball across the street—

long and short waves of
semis passing

amber and evergreen trees and
Bald Mountain beyond.

 CENSORED OF THE FIFTH / H.T. Reynolds

October - Poem 11

Mud  / Lilly Frank

I often find myself on the brink of something big, something spectacular, something electric. I’m teetering on the edge, and before the freefall, I am caught by the rotted rope of my past. With this noose now around my neck, I am dragged from the edge onto the dirt. Dirt covering my knees, palms, teeth. A dog on a leash, call it collar correction. The persistent reminder that no matter how far I run, how deep I dive, how uphill I pull, I will be tethered to this version of me as she demands I never leave her. Toxic and molded, I think love will remain etched with her hurt until the day I die. 

Riding on the Subway Late at Night with Murakami  ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

You file yourself away between the brown slats of a wild mushroom cap and relax in the dark. 

The deprivation of your senses is a relief until you see yourself in a glass of iced Cutty Sark. 

You wonder, “What am I doing at the bottom of this well with a baseball bat in one hand and in the other, a fork?” 

 The air is a cold sweat, which is healthy for a fungus, but you start to feel sick, a memory stopped by a cork.

“Where is the boy in the sheep-suit? This pixilation seems familiar.” A ride to Shinjuku is out of the question for the girl with the blue birthmark.

Elvis Presley Boulevard / Kathryn Johnson

We were riding with the King—
a framed photo of Elvis that I found
at The World’s Largest Indoor Flea Market.
A bargain at $5 and as much a delight
as the spur-of-the-moment stay
in Horse Cave, Kentucky, where we found
a restaurant-used-book-store,
enjoyed Turkey Hot Shot Platters,
and took in a community
theater production of Death of a Salesman.
I can’t make this up. Just like I can’t reproduce

the effervescent sensation of
being 24 and on the road.
It gilded every turn with possibility.
We didn’t party like it was 1999.
We partied because it was 1999.
We were the perfect age
for an adventure that took us
on an unironic pilgrimage
from the Ohio Valley to the Mid-South.
A trip that came with a ready-made anthem.

We were going to Graceland, after all.
Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee.
My traveling companions were a friend and
the anticipation of those white pillars
and the glorious Jungle Room.
We wore butterflies in our hair and
giddily savored hot and ready delights
at the Krispy Creme. A real celebration
of our youth. So, when I found myself

on a backboard in a Southern Methodist
emergency room, I was grateful to
the tired doctor who didn’t smirk when
I explained that it wasn’t windshield glass
covering me, but body glitter.
The car was a total loss, but
my Flea Market Elvis was unscathed and,
like the little scar on my wrist,
served as a reminder of the adventure and

 
the young women we were. We were girls, really, 
who, like the millennium, were on the cusp of
becoming something new.

For Margaret on an Autumn Afternoon / Kimberly McElhatten

In a yellow tutu whirled like an iris,
With your lips kissing bubbles to the wind—

In them, I see your face and mine for half a second
before they burst into a thousand rainbows
and fall to the grass. 

 Up!
Up!
Up!
Again, Nona—

The way you inflect the end, like an
hourglass and ampersand.

 DEAR MR censored / H.T. Reynolds

October - Poem 10

Younger Wisdom  / Lilly Frank

Fists cut in the shape of brass knuckles, storing the punch of gunpowder. I was a girl before I was a woman. I once was untainted by the fallacious, yet somehow accepted notion of inherent weakness found in women, found in girls, found in us.

She, the younger version of me, had every conviction to a science. Rationale detailed on the page and signed on the dotted line of every statement she had ever made. While yes, it was truth, I’d be damned if I didn’t have a litany of reasoning to act as a spine for it.

As a grown woman, you quickly come to learn that you will seldom ever be taken seriously for this same passion, emotion, feeling. Often undermined, feeble attempts of convincing that you’re all wrong.

As a child, the emotion can be seen as, “Cute.” As a grown woman, the emotion is seen as too much power in the wrong place. So, as most of us do, I retreated. I began to disclose less and less, until the space I took up was small enough to be seen again, as, “Cute.”

It was a Tuesday afternoon when this younger girl came to me underneath a pear tree on a fall day. She grabbed my hand, and by some sense of consolation, she wordlessly shared her wisdom with me.

The next day, I woke up with courage sitting inside of my stomach and words finally feeling free to part from my lips once more. So, I clenched my brass knuckle fist and braced for the impact. I wound up my arm with power settling deep into my bones,

The girl in me, sees the girl in you. The girl in me, sees the power in me.                                                                                                    And there is nothing more that she fears than the forgetfulness of that very fact.

Facebook Marketplace: Items for Sale  ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

the string section in unison 
palpable like grief

a letter handwritten 
on stationary, in ink

a painting that knows something 
that you never saw in yourself 

an ancient mosaic that makes 
you question the story of humankind

the relief of nothing transmitted 
to your eardrums or retinas

a portrait of a universe 
as a child 

poetry that invades 
the spaces between cells

On Effort / Kathryn Johnson

I am trying. And isn’t that
such a loaded word? Am I
making an attempt? Am I
putting myself to the test? Perhaps
this is a test of my endurance.
Or the act of rendering everything
to its purest state.

Rugby players score points on a try. I like that.
Still playing tug-o-war with perfectionism
at age fifty, I want to grant myself more
credit for my efforts. It has taken decades
to learn I can be pleased with progress.
What could I learn in another fifty years?
So much!

The lessons would be like
receding into a quiet corner or
relinquishing my tight hold
on being good and perfect.
Refining my knowledge of what
it means to live well. To be well.
to try.

Hatchlings Breathing in a Nest / Kimberly McElhatten

In May
among the dewy arborvitae
beside my condo
there are four hatchlings sleeping
in a nest

under the speckled shade
hey inhale—exhale—
almost together

resting their bare bodies
until mother lands

and morning
is the crisp sound of hunger
in spring.

DEATH OF THE FIRST / H.T. Reynolds

October - Poem 9

All Dogs Go to Heaven   / Lilly Frank

The suicidal dogs licked their chops. Hungry for the bloodshed before the end. Teeth cut and carved into spears, ears glued to the sides of their heads, a cautionary snarl. Signaling to begin the war that had been over before it had even started. Now lunging with confidence showing in the chin and shoulders, the leash had begun to feel as merely a suggestion. Git! A wrathful bark filled the thick Kentucky air. Git! Now! A bark, again, somehow, more feverous than the last. The man, despite his best efforts, had the gun vibrating between his hands. Prideful, arrogant, and crooked. As he lifted the barrel towards the beast, the fearlessness traced sweat along his brow. If he killed this dog, they would unload his closet. His offenses sprawled across the front lawn, then the local paper, and then, he would be the one staring down the sawed-off end of a shotgun.

But me, how could we forget the me… I’m still there, don't worry. Paws dig into the dried ground and dead grass. Feeling the breeze underneath a coat of fur. Feeling courage in the gut and anger in the heart. An unwavering bravery. As much as this was a spite worth living for, it was equally a cause worth dying for.

I stood there, day and night and day and night and day and night again. He was long gone, probably onto some other sorry bastard who had the misfortune of crossing his path. But that rabidness did not rehome itself. It stayed in my stomach; it stayed lodged in the side of my neck. I never slept again. Instinctual panic, eternal wariness.

The Drive  ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

She lives between her present life and the lives

living between her present and not-so-distant lives. 

Right this way/ Kathryn Johnson

Becoming is a roller coaster of a word, 
with its slopes and climbs and loop-de-loops. 
The thrills it promises beckon like a carnival barker, 
weaving a staccato enchantment, 
making you believe you have a chance, 
a choice. Like any of us do. Trust me, 
you will become. It's the only constant 
connecting the bookends of this life–

birth, becoming, death. Framed between 
two dramas, the birthing room and the deathbed. 
But here's a little piece of good news, 
so light and sweet it will melt 
like cotton candy on your tongue. 
It's a bit of sleight of hand really. 
You have no choice but to become. And yet. 
You can choose how you become 
what you become. 

And that's the real thrill ride. 
Trial and error. Glory and failure. 
Each choice, ratcheting you up the hill. 
Readying you for the drop. 
The shout. 
The weightless joy 
of being.

Wilmore Reservoir South, Late Evening with a Full Moon Rising / Kimberly McElhatten

My kayak cuts
the water across a
reservoir between
Rosebud Coal
Mine and the Eastern
Continental Di[vide].

Along an
amethyst and
carnelian
skyline, windmill
lights fracture the
constellations and flash
red — [&] — red — [&] — red — [&] — red.

Starboard,
sunfish jump
a flash of
opalescent
moon rising
behind
the hills.

A POEM IS / H.T. Reynolds

not a suicide note
isn’t a manifesto
or an apology
isn’t a map
or a birth certificate

it is the sensation of slipping from surgery
the pause before the overflowing tub
when our skin yearns for drowning
but there is no space to try
only convulsing,
a reminder we live hairless
dependent upon the soil

for life
or our life

for every fibrous grain
we fuse with our skin

a poem isn’t the stars
or a photograph
isn’t the rippling buzz
from our speakers

it is the bleeding fingers on guitar strings
the lung cancer adjacent to the darkroom,
the casserole carved up, expiring
on abandoned plates scattered between
rooms void of small laughter

a poem is not a suicide note
but it tries

October - Poem 8

Phantom Lover  / Lilly Frank

I am in the palm of your hand; spoon fed the promise of a different
tomorrow. The way the sentences had parted from your lips,
bewitching, enticing, and oh so disingenuous. And somehow, it fooled
me every time. This cycle gripped me by the throat. Paralyzed and
ardently in love, I stayed for the promise. I stayed in the desperate
hope to one day, embrace the man you could never become. In
retrospect, there was no heartbreak. Devastation, passion, sure.
Whatever you want to call it. But the man I had loved was not the one
in front of me, he was never in front of me. Phantom lover, I beckon, I
plead, I grovel. Palms and kneecaps soiled with the soot beneath the
plush of the carpet.

Theory  ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

From your bedroom
the entire world         is darkness 
 and you can be alone. 
We are     each alone
without the need to commune. 
Some day well    become        the flicker from our screen
a thousand light years from
 the next closest sign of a human being.
We won’t go outside to follow 
a flock when we can join a swarm 
of hash tags,     as they transform
into a unit    an illumination of our culture.
Did Homo Erectus see their own end? 
The evolution of their mind 
brought all life on earth on a ride
launching us forward as a species 
like a snap of hot oil from a pan.

intervals / Kathryn Johnson

We are timeless.
I don't mean eternal. Instead,
I see that we live our lives avoiding time.
We are willing tourists to the past,
painters and architects of the future,
and too often we turn from and
ignore our present.

Today is a rainy fall day,
with a low, heavy sky and
I am tempted
to imagine
that tomorrow may be
crisp, blue, and adorned
with little clouds.

Or rush forward
to the snow I hope will fall
in the last days of the year.
I could keep going–

racing into the spring and reliving
the humid, bright afternoons of an Ohio summer.
Only to find myself right back
in the middle of
a wet and cold October afternoon,
wrapped in a cardigan and unsure

where the time has gone,
how a year has passed.

What if I did different today?
I could stitch time
into the sleeves of my sweater,
an appliqué of minutes and hours. Instead
of living a timeless life, I could choose
to be time-full.

I could approach time
like a blushing bride,
not to keep it bound,
hand-fasted to me
but to be a helpmeet
and to make a life together.

How on Mother’s Day and After / Kimberly McElhatten

How on Mother’s Day, I dig three holes to plant three trees, and how the sun beats on my bare shoulders when I hear—chweep, chweep, chweep—the alert call of two eastern towhees and how I’m the danger and find their nest next to where I dig, and in it, four white eggs speckled brown and yet, I keep digging at the dirt and sandstone for three more hours because it’s Mother’s Day and I’m alone and have the time and how, though, I can hardly sleep that night, worried my tenacity may have killed those four babies left all those hours without a warm-bellied blanket while I dug in the dirt and planted trees.

How I check on the nest every day until they hatch into a miracle of naked bodies and big gray eyes and how for eight more mornings, I follow their progress, and on day six, I notice the nest sag between the branches under their growing weight, and how when I touch my hands to the bottom and shift it for a stronger purchase, they huddle close.

How too soon they’re downy and slim feathered flightless fledglings with mom and dad chweeping after their shy bodies tumbling across the grass, into the ferns, and through the woodland asters, and how I’ll hear chweep, chweep, chweep for days until shy becomes assured, and how too soon four and two become an empty nest in the arborvitae.

PICKLE POEM / H.T. Reynolds

a man bought a pickle—
brought it home for his wife

she was unimpressed,
asked him about the alligator
he said he took it to the vet,
waited for the receipt
but their fax machine
was broken
so they drew teeth,
and he lost,
wound up with a wallet
full of bills,
knew he needed
to bring home something—

the pickle

she was unimpressed
watched him peel himself—

the man’s flayed skin
falling like wet confetti

she took pleasure
in his ochre flesh
glistening slick curves
ligaments snapping
against his quivering
thumbs

she was unimpressed,
taking a bite of his pickle

October - Poem 7

A Call Coming from Inside The House  / Lilly Frank

It was a shocking discovery to find the mold on the undersides of her bones. Plagued fate, socially flawed, tortured inability, it all made sense now. The staleness of her crumbled into breadcrumbs, leading me back to the most familiar home I had known. Distance often becomes perspective. Perspective often becomes regret. Whether you chew the pill and taste the sour, or swallow it whole and choke on the size, the inevitable reality comes. You were familiar yet unkind. You were familiar yet calloused. A jaded reality parts from behind my eyes. A distorted kinship shatters into a stranger that you have seen undress themselves. A woman leaves the very home poisoning her, and would you imagine, the aches somehow went away? 

A Fool’s Villanelle  ​/ Anna Ojascastro Guzon

I pray, though what I pray for I do not know.
Permit me please to deny the fury I fear.
The fool on the hill shall cross a chasm of sorrow.

Or choose to recline on a shore of status quo.
How deep is the ocean? I won’t ask unless it’s clear.  
I pray, though what I pray for I do not know.

I have a hunch that the warm waters are shallow
A chambered nautilus whispered in my ear:
The fool on the hill shall cross a chasm of sorrow.

No matter how long she paces to and fro
Digging deep into a path from which she won’t veer 
I pray, though what I pray for I do not know.

A dive without a safety net below;
An acceptance that weathering is never fair
and the fool on the hill shall cross a chasm of sorrow.

Accustomed to the terrain, I learned alone
that rage against a loss won’t smooth from wear
The fool on the hill shall cross a chasm of sorrow.
I pray, though what I pray for I do not know.

Alice's Evidence / Kathryn Johnson

Who knew
that midlife would be such an adventure?

Is this why
I feel so much like the first girl
to fall down this particular rabbit hole?

Surely,
someone has been here before me.
There must have been
a series of other fallen girls. 

Who else
would leave the tonics and sweets,
so clearly labeled
for the next adventurer? 

Eat me.

Drink me. 

Were the pebbles I ate
like teacakes really a clue? 

The little door
that leads to the garden is open today,
and the sun glows where it shines on red roses.

I want to plant my own garden,
full of scruffy marigolds,
savory herbs, and
musty root vegetables.

A harvest
that can be made into
wines
and breads
and stews.

Delicacies
that I will package

and leave for the next girl.

i am / Kimberly McElhatten

of the blackberries in June, their bright-not-ripe-yet magenta and the temptation to pick the ones on the verge of ripeness that might turn my lips and fingertips bruised-knee purple

of the red-eyed vireos that come and go from a nest of hatchlings hung from a young ash, and of how they pass inchworms from each other to their chicks

of red clover on distant memory like an open field of my mother plucking one petal at a time, touching the nectar like clean honey to her tongue

of January skies laid out lapis and bluebird above Blue Knob with the touch of sun on my shoulders like a yellow hearth and soft snow spraying behind my skis

of peacocks with their necks strutting indigo and trailing viridescent eyes along the cornfields and cow pastures stretched between home and the longingness for somewhere else

of the green plateau that made me, of the plum mountains that remake me, and the burnt October sunsets of who i was & am becoming

EXPIRED LAMP BESIDE THE GOLDEN DOOR / H.T. Reynolds

A Golden Shovel after Emma Lazarus “The New Colossus”

Was it ever yours to give—
were any of us truly welcome
beyond the sea-washed gates—your
mild, commanding eyes growing tired
above your fragmented stone pedestal, your
baleful flame becoming solvent for the poor
bodies, the sacks of wind inflating with your
copper grin—the noxious tinge of green huddling
along walls, streets converging upon the masses
stripped bare and perpetually yearning.

Had no one told you there is no to-
gether, no tomorrow, no space to breathe
without the carcinogens, only the illusion of free
will, the inheritance of prescribed labor, the
roles assigned to us at birth by the wretched
percent who pollute our accords, then refuse
more your invitation, unleashing lightning—proof
this land no longer resembles your
promise, mother—a collection of walls teeming
with razor wire—blood and bones upon every shore.