Issue #15

One crow on the last 
limb of a lone, dead tree, up
on a hill over-

looking on over-
grown old cemetery full
of tombstones that lean

this way and that in
murmured, hush-hush discussion
of the latest news

and gossip, beneath
an over-cast sky full of
the whole wide spectrum

assortment of grays,
and of course, this arch-gothic
scenario is

destined to be the
grand theatrical backdrop
of my dreams for weeks.

Jason Ryberg is the author of eighteen books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and countless love letters, never sent. He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection of poems is “Fence Post Blues (River Dog Press, 2023).” He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.

Are you dead?

Is yours the first body
that comes to mind
when I stand here on the banks
of the lazy river?
The earth is soft and wet.
But I don’t sink deep.

Seems like we’re all dead
after hours
when the drugstore’s shuttered,
the dogs are done barking
and there are no planes overhead.

As dead as the animal pound
or the bar,
even when it has customers
and the movie theater,
closed these past ten years,
and still no one’s found 
another use for it.

Not everything bothers
to drown itself.
Most await the inevitable.
Like wheatfields that don’t want to be strip malls –
what can they do about it?

Even the famous die.
Fame outlasts some of them.
But posterity’s not for living. 

I hear some lapping
below me in the dark,
the kind of inhuman whispers
that go with memory and regret.

The river’s telling me
that, eventually, we all join each other
in that great morass of nothing.
Some with mud in their mouth.
Others with mud wedged 
in the soles of their shoes.  

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and  “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad.

It’s that kind of tired when… 

your eyes are too heavy to close. 
your head doesn’t trust the pillow. 
your body gives in to the covers, but your head floats with chatter. 
your eyes have lost its soul. 
your face hurts from forgetting what it was like to smile. 
your hands ache from holding your weight. 
your heart has taken its last break. 
your legs feel zig-zagged while standing. 
your mind makes too many familiar mistakes. 

it’s that kind of tired when you know there’s a better way, 
but you’re too tired to get there. 

Andrea R. Freeman is an Intuitive Guidance Coach and has authored two books, one on grieving: Messages From My Grandparents in Heaven; How You Can Keep Contact With Yours & her poetry book, And Everything in-Between; Poetry for Reconnecting, Releasing & Reclaiming Parts of Self. Her poem “Extensions” was selected  & published in the 2023 Pennsylvania Bards Eastern PA Poetry Book Review, and her poem “Never Enough” was selected for the 2024 Pennsylvania Bards Poetry Book. Andrea has been a featured poet in the Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania. She also teaches creative writing classes, conducts Angel Card Readings & Intuitive Guidance Coaching Sessions.  Andrea is currently working on card decks & journals for writers, along with scrapbook art featuring her poetry.  You can stay connected with Andrea by following her on Instagram @Soul_to_Page

Shattering the stratosphere with a scream that spreads
news of Earth’s plight throughout the recess of the universe,
raining acid and anguish upon the glaciers that melt into the sea,
drowning the polar bears too exhausted to swim to shore,
to shore, to shore.
Her searing volcanic sister, strewn with hellish storms 
looks on and, weeping, shakes her magnificent head.
Where are the ice floes that brought the mothers
to their cubs, not leaving them orphaned with uncertainty
and an injustice too cruel to ever reconcile with nature?
Ripping away the unborn curled inside their mothers’ wombs
not safe, not sheltered from a poison even the infants
who have never lived, never frolicked in the blistering sun
nor shivered in the silver-white cold of a glistening snow
can escape, as birds with tattered wings fall from the sky
and into extinction within the fields where insects 
burn like firecrackers and animals shriek in outraged protest 
inside the searing heat of a nuclear curse,
too horrific to be wrought by God’s rage, 
it could only have been shaped by the wanton and
vain carelessness of man.
They dance in the icy hot throes of anguish, a macabre
worship of the goddess of the wicked and greedy,
soon to be fossilized forever within
the destruction of innocence and purity—
powerful, yet utterly ugly, unforgivable cruelty.
What does the fiery sky leave behind
except to destroy the minds, bodies, and faith
of the fields, flowers, foxes, and people,
the ocean waves and budding life born
within the animals’ dens,
the cubs, the babes, the innocent,
too close to its perilous venom to run run run
until foam seeps from their panting mouths,
hearts pounding with hysterical fear,
it’s no use—
there is no escape,
there is no escape.

Lisa Lahey’s short stories and poems have been published in 34^th Parallel Magazine, Spaceports and 15 Spidersilk, Altered Reality Magazine, Why Vandalism? Suddenly, and Without Warning, Five on the Fifth, Ariel Chart Magazine, Vita Poetica, and Literally Stories. Her work has also been accepted by Same Faces Collection, Piker Press, Epater, Bindweed, The Pink Hydra, and Creepy Podcast.

The tug of the string,
the kite high up, near clouds.
is like the tug anglers feel
on the line in water,
only mine, above a field,
wavered like a scale’s needle.

When a bicycle chain breaks,
the rider gets greasy hands.
When a smoker pulls a red ribbon
off a pack
of Lucky Strikes, 
cellophane lifts from paper.

I liked the feel of the spool
when the line went taut,
but not enough
to get another kite to fly
as mine flew,
out of my hands. 

Peter Mladinic’s most recent book of poems, Voices from the Past, is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications.  An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.

Blue skies fade out 
like a blood letting

grey consuming all
the winter will not go.

Ghosts ride the wings
of ancestral winds

The drummers war
dance pounds my

temples and my head 
catches fire at the frontal

lobe.

Winds gathering gallop 
momentum and thrust

through the barren trees
trees shimmy and sway

mesmerized and through
the blinds I can see

everything unfurling, like 
a vision, cascading down.

Wayne Russell is a creative jack of all trades, master of none. Poet, rhythm guitar player, singer, artist, photographer, and author of the poetry books “Where Angels Fear” via Guerilla Genius Press, and the newly released “Splinter of the Moon” via Silver Bow Publishing, they are both available for purchase on Amazon.

Leaves flap in a riot
as wind whips through
the aspen tree limbs.
A flock of butterflies
cling as their wings
flutter against the gale.
As wind calms,
the scene relaxes
its sleight of hand.

Diane Webster’s work has appeared in El Portal, North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Verdad and other literary magazines. She had micro-chaps published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022, 2023 and 2024. One of Diane’s poems was nominated for Best of the Net in 2022. Diane retired in 2022 after 40 years in the newspaper industry.