Issue #21

Photos in this issue by Joan Zachary

Joan Zachary was born in upstate New York and moved to Pennsylvania in 1974.  She has been intrigued by photography since childhood, and is also a musician and writer.  Currently Joan lives in Point Phillips, Pennsylvania with musician Randall Smith, and one very photogenic cat.

5 isn’t a big number, but when you break it down to 20 issues, or half a decade or 1,826 days, it’s pretty significant. Here we are at issue #21! We’ve made it past the 5 year mark and it certainly sounds like something to celebrate! I think we have a pretty great cast of characters usher us into year 6, with photos from Joan Zachary (who we’ve been itching to include for a while now) and repeat offenders like Jon Wesick, Joana Howson, Jamie Fortin, Michael Roque and Brian Builta. And, as always we welcome a number of new names we get to add to our list of contributors. We have done our best over the years to promote a diverse set of voices while still valuing our “regulars” here at Stick Figure Poetry Quarterly. Of course, we are deeply appreciative of all of our readers and contributors. You are what keeps us going.

I think i fixed depression
‘cuz my kid came downstairs 
and said he was sad and 
he didn’t know why

and he’s always worried 
because he doesn’t see
a future
with him in it

and he said, Dad
and he said,
I think I have depression
so I smiled 

and I said,
you’re not depressed;
you’re bored
and he went back upstairs

and he hasn’t been down
to complain since–
in fact, 
I haven’t heard 

anything
up there 
all 
night.

Randy Streu is a voice actor, writer, and audio dramatist. He lives in Wisconsin with his beloved wife, cherished children, and tolerated cats.


Flag of the so-called United States 
flutters over its own shadow 
like a woman, dead or asleep,
stretched out, huge as the Chihuahua desert.
fenced border of the thousand years.

You can nail old sneakers to a post
to make nests 
for the little wrens 
try to identify 
the stilt-legged black wading birds 
you can leave bottled water
in the desert for strangers
(but not if the authorities discover it).

The woman appears dead 
but can still lift one and 
fingers that used to command
moon and sun.

Gaze into a bowl of water—
see a future that
must always 
reflect the past.

Miriam Sagan is the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction, and memoir. She is a two-time winner of the New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards as well as a recipient of the City of Santa Fe Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and a New Mexico Literary Arts Gratitude Award. She has been a writer in residence in four national parks, Yaddo, MacDowell, Gullkistan in Iceland, Kura Studio in Japan, and a dozen more remote and interesting places. She works with text and sculptural installation as part of the mother/daughter creative team Maternal Mitochondria (with Isabel Winson-Sagan) in venues ranging from RV parks to galleries. She founded and directed the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College until her retirement. Her poetry was set to music for the Santa Fe Women’s Chorus, incised on stoneware for two haiku pathways, and projected as video inside an abandoned building during the pandemic under the auspices of Vital Spaces.

the wind does not have to stay anywhere it doesn’t want to be
stuck in the place where you left me
the wind explores with freedom pressed underneath its wings
fastest and most skilled at escaping the thin pressure of truth
cutting beneath the skin
it knows the convenience of sweeping beneath your eyelid
then losing itself like the luxury of touch without intimacy
never resting long enough to form a tight knot of emotion
if I were the wind I would not stay
killing your heart with a kiss
but I am not the wind

Margot Block has been writing since the age of fourteen and has been published in Zygote Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, Juice, Voices, the Collective Consciousness, Grub Street, Cholla Needles, the Black Scat Review, Blank Spaces, Bakwa Magazine, Impspired Magazine, North Dakota Quarterly, the Taj Mahal Review and the online journals BlazeVox, Kaleidoscope Online, Kritikos: A-Postmodern-Journal-of-Cultural-Sound-Text-&-Image, the Blotter Rag, Brief Wilderness, Scissors and Spackle: A-Journal-of-the-Written-Word, the Bombay Review, Oddball Magazine, the Big Windows Review, the American Diversity Report, Lothlorien Poetry Journal blog, Rusty Truck, Literary Yard, Cajun Mutt Press, the Poppy Road Review, Dark Winter Literary Magazine, Travel Artist Hub, Voices & Visions Literary Journal, Chrysalis Arts & Literature Journal, Breaking Ground, Quail Bell Magazine & the Write Launch. She participated in the high school mentorship program with the Manitoba Writer Guild, working with canadian poet, Carol Rose. She won first prize in a poetry contest with the Writers Collective and an honorable mention in a poetry contest with the Lake Winnipeg Writers Group.

a landscape inhabited, it gives and takes, 
                  needs and destroys,
more mountain than magpie, affected
                   by the movement of clouds
                   a chisel
it is
                   obscured by fog
still it is
                   tremendous and towering
my body is the forest, dense and tangled, but
                   after a small fire 
                   sunlight dapples the pine-needle duff
the river and its sea, the lake nearby
                  it craves
I cannot swallow enough

Luanne Castle’s Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions, and Best of the Net-nominated poetry and prose have appeared in Copper Nickel, Grist, Verse Daily, Saranac Review, Pleiades, Fourteen Hills, American Journal of Poetry, Bending Genres, The Ekphrastic Review, Thimble, MacQueen’s Quinterly, One Art, Lothlorien, South 85, Roi Fainéant, River Teeth, Flash Boulevard, Your Impossible Voice, Storyteller Poetry Journal, and is forthcoming in Moon City. She has published four award-winning poetry collections. Her hybrid memoir-in-flash will be published by ELJ Editions in 2026. Luanne lives with her husband and four cats in Arizona along a wash that wildlife use as a thoroughfare.

I had a one-night stand with a city.

We met on a travel app,
and I traipsed the curving streets,
ogled the unknown shops,
memorized its veins from a map,
learned its alleyways,
even found a favorite riverside park.

There were facades for feasting,
the butterflies of finding its main square
just as the lamplights flickered on at dusk.

It wasn’t my first metropolitan one-night stand,
probably won’t be my last.

It’s an intoxicating puppy-love
indescribable like air in the lungs,
its language on mine,
its arch-breaking hills
the only I want to climb.

Maybe this can’t last,
or maybe I’ll move here,
the question is never settled,
such heartbreaking discussions saved
for an unknown future.

But the here and now is what counts,
the coffee in the morning on a terrace shadowed by mountains,
the warmth of songs wrapping around
a once foreign body.

Dustin P Brown is a Michigan-born, Spain-based author of poetry and prose. He received his BA in Creative Writing from Western Michigan University and currently works as an editor and interpreter. He’s published poetry at dozens of journals including Borderless Journal, Bacopa Literary and Lit Shark as well as flash fiction at Falling Star Magazine.

It’s Behind You
Sometimes you just can’t see it
however closely you look,
a case of the wood hiding the trees
with the elephant there in the room. 
For safety’s sake you need to take a wider view
three hundred and sixty degrees
if there’s no audience to shout it out.
Get ready to run.

First published in Visual Verse, April 2021

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She has been nominated for Pushcarts, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

Planting seeds in soft soil
sprouts from earth
diverse fruits that nourish— 
assist from birth,
empowering bodies to flex and bewilder,
propelling minds to mount the moon,
dream beyond our prism— 
see through our toil.

Planting bullets—
blood in baked concrete,
sprouts from cracks
another blade in a blindsided back.
Morgues stuffed with mutilation
from blown buses, car rams,
An endless supply of stifled minds,
endless sets of feet stubbornly unmoved,
inhaling through nose decaying man
exhaling from mouth—
defeat.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Michael Roque discovered his love for poetry and prose amid friends on the bleachers of Pasadena City College. Now he currently lives in the Middle East and is being inspired by the world around him. His poems have been published by literary magazines like North Dakota Quarterly, Cholla Needles, The Literary Hatchet and others. 

The mellow flower of violet
is a fineness of the violet’s blossom in the moonlight
however the small eternity happens
in an enchanting woodland solitude
genus Viola is minor
but wonderful and subtle
so tranquil the last night was
when a sylvan dream was awakened
four butterflies landed
in the calyx of this violet
their elysian longing leaving
in the heart of the flower a diamond was created
from heart-like dreameries of butterflies
and from eternal power of starry night
and the moon shines on everything
I stay yet not far from that
in the phantasy – the violet so unfolded
intoxicated by charm and by home land
as well as by starlit night
full of the dreamy Erlking

Paweł Markiewicz was born 1983 in Siemiatycze in Poland. He is a poet who lives in Bielsk Podlaski and writes tender poems, haiku and long poems.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT!!??!!”
Rosie is far from nosy 
Serving as waitress at the restaurant
Chewing Bazooka bubble gum with a smile
Her raw radiance
Tightly fitting finely filled uniform
Compensates for her lack of style
Her glossy red cheeks speak abundantly
Strawberry Blossom –  exactly
My eyes tip toe over the menu
“I’m not sure”
“I’ve never been here before”
“Perhaps an extended metaphor?”
Rosie smiles savage and cunning
Sultry, sexually stunning
“Take it from me”
“Try a simile”
“The taste is nice”
“At an excellent price”
Confounded by a vague reference
Like a ship lost upon the sea
“Oh my” I cry suddenly
It’s the worst thing to say
At the Poet’s Cafe
A corny cliché 
So dead the corpse is but dust
Embarrassed like cuddling lovers discovered in lust
I surrender sorrowfully
“Just coffee for me”

John Kaniecki is a poet residing in Montclair, New Jersey. John believes in the power of words to change the world for the better. He is a traditional poet who likes to experiment and go all over the place from time to time. John also writes song lyrics, horror, science fiction, fantasy, and has his memoir “More Than The Madness.”. John suffers from bipolar disorder and is a de facto activist by his openness. John currently works as a math tutor. John is a Christian a member of the East Orange Church of Christ. His beloved wife Sylvia recently passed away after a courageous and arduous fight with dementia. Here is John’s Amazon page John Kaniecki: books, biography, latest update

I’ve stolen a muse.
Kept her in a glass case,
watched her beat against it til th hope left her
like leaving pandora’s box.
Far away from anything real.
Meanwhile I keep
a cabinet of curiosities.
Dead things, so encased
they look alive
when you cannot feel the hearts beating
but only imagine them.
A wax seal someone dropped
becomes obet d’art,
locked away behind money in a foreign country
its maker never heard the name of
or even the continent.
A mistake on the etching
preserved for all eternity.
Even the muse’s great men
sleep here.
Turns out Chopin liked to doodle
and had bad handwriting.
Fanny Mendelssohn’s
was much better and she let
her husband draw.
Famous enough that their small
memorabilia is no longer ordinary
but memorable,
something to come and see
for centuries upon centuries.

Joanna Howson is a student at Lafayette College and a member of the college English Club. She has written poetry for most of her life, but is only now starting to pursue publication.

Neighborhood dogs play against type. 
Labradors, all snarls and flashing teeth 
while pit bulls are lovable goofballs.

Viola, a big, smiling face on a weightlifter’s body
Reluctant to descend steps, she forgets aching joints 
when hearing the ground-floor girls.

Mason woofs, rests chin on my thigh, and whines. 
“Nobody pays attention to you. Do they, buddy?”

Xena, a bulldozer on four legs, drags 
her dog mom across the parking lot 
to make new friends. Auggie dashes
through my door. Zoe slips between my legs 
and circles, wrapping her leash around my ankles.

Achilles, the husky, too lazy to defeat Priam’s son, 
too lazy to walk. His servant carries him past the dumpster. 
“Woo! Woo!” I mimic a wolf to get Achilles to howl along. 
He deigns to sniff my wrist before cradled 
in his servant’s arms, he’s ferried indoors.

Poodles Brownie and Arjuna,
stand en pointe on hind legs 
to lick my hand

Hundreds of Jon Wesick’s works have appeared in journals such as the I-70 Review, New Verse News, Paterson Literary Review, Stick Figure Poetry, and Unlikely Stories. He is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual and host of the Gelato East Fiction Open Mic. His latest book, Reductio Ad Absurdum, is a collection of parodies. He lives in Manchester, New Hampshire and longs for gene editing to bring giant wombats back from extinction. http://jonwesick.com

I have always been trash 
But I like to keep my side of the street clean 
Such euphemisms we have for honesty and lies 
Danger and respite 

White picket fences may let in the sunlight, but they still cast a shadow
The well-mowed lawn surrounds a fortress of seemingly good intentions 
Freshly painted walls like an artificial smile
Layer after layer after layer 
Entrapped. Encased. 
Detergent and bleach smother the must, the dust, the rust
They burn their way in
In the quiet dim of cleanliness, the scream is deafening even inside your own mind

The dirt covers up, but it doesn’t lie
It blows in the breeze 
Empty plastic bags open like flowers
Cascading across a gum covered sidewalk you’d never touch with bare feet  
Broken needles jut out like warnings on pikes from gaps in the pavement 
“Don’t trod here,”
The sewage stinks so badly, it could be nothing but 
And in the haphazard chaos, your struggle need not bend or blend in
You are free simply to suffer and survive  

I may have always been trash 
But I keep my side of the street clean

Jaimie Fortin is a salon owner and stylist in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania who has been writing creatively for most of her life. Raised in rural New Hampshire, she now leads a team of single mothers who love helping and supporting their diverse community in Mt. Airy. She can be found on Instagram as @jaimie_does_hair or Tiktok as @jaimiedoeshair to follow more of her work.

I used to have this usefulness,
now frozen. An important page 
dog-eared then forgotten. 
Not often do you get to use a catafalque. 
Then there’s this shenanigan 
where I’m in the belly of a beast
waiting to be spat out on some shore
like a cheap tchotchke drenched
in irony no one wants to touch.
Mediocrity strikes! A lukewarm glory.
I mumble a manifesto, something to do
with a reprieve from crushing loneliness
and a reliable liquid counselor.
For the umpteenth time I’m
pulverized in the fetal position
waiting for the crash landing.
What comes to mind is yesterday’s sign
                   ROAD MAY FLOOD 
then the sweet fragrance inside the antelope
you have to rip open to smell.
Or is that cantaloupe? Anyway,
I’m being pulled toward the truth
that whaling is good for the abs. 
Or is that wailing? Anyway,
I get off my catafalque and drop my gin.
Tomorrow I’m going to feel this in my core.

Brian Builta lives in Arlington, Texas, and works at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. His poetry has been published most recently in Freshwater Literary Journal, Meridian, and Red Ogre Review. In first grade he won a blue ribbon for the 35-yard dash and in second grade he was Most Outstanding Student for the month of October. He is the author of A Thursday in June and Everyday Oblivion and more of his poetry can be found at brianbuilta.com.