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equinox Volume 1 Autumn a hotpoet publication hotpoet Vol 1 2021 Editor Madeleine Castator a change in in the the Contest Judges weather Michael J Galko Georgina Key Brooks Summer Perry Darius Krause darius krs

Equinox A Change in The Weather This literary journal is a compilation of the creative works of writers and artists included in it Copyright 2021 by hotpoet Inc and the individual writers and artists All rights reserved ISBN 978 1 7367851 1 9 Editor Madeleine Castator Journal design by Madeleine Castator Cover design by Madeleine Castator Additional artistic enhancements obtained from Canva and Pexels Published online in September 2021 Publisher hotpoet Inc 6715 Wildwood Way Houston TX 77023 4023 hotpoet Ruin d Choirs Madeleine Castator

Contents listed alphabetically by last name Prose Poetry Mike Alexander Jerome Berglund Joe Blanda Terry Dawson David Fahl Lyman Grant John Hicks Saba Husain Cindy Huyser Kevin James Jen Karetnick Gabrielle Langley Ailana Larson T K Lee Elizabeth Kropf L A Merrill Haylee Milikan Christopher Riesco Luvon Roberson Bradley Samore Varsha Saraiya Shah Michael Shen Kumari de Silva Cassie Premo Steele Meghan Sterling Sandi Stromberg Chuck Taylor Jeffrey Taylor Loretta Walker Mary Wemple Scott Wiggerman Magic 8 Ball Poetry Workshop Drawing to a Close Suzette Reannunciation Dead Zone The Day I Sold Paris Cloudy Day Being Undocked After Inhabiting Spaces Where Nothing that Mattered Could Grow Balloon In the Last Instance Rain Calls Gas Crimson Dance Equinox HOSPITALITY What a Vulture Eats First Almost Summer 2019 Where do you put terrified on a Map Poplar BLACK GIRL JUNE MEMORIES DONE BEEN CHANGED A Line from the Local News Consolation Marrakesh Express Tracks of Our Years Have the Lost Word Return Back to Earth Loop Lein Silverback This is a letter to the Gumbo Earth Star From What is Given I Want to Dream of Peacocks and Ducks Forgiving as Shade Time Passes Same Vantage Point 28 14 24 28 22 9 16 6 13 25 12 21 31 27 23 25 15 10 5 8 18 5 30 10 11 7 27 15 20 22 26 19 20 16 29 Kathleen Cook Cindy Huyser Bruce MacDonald John Milkereit Luvon Roberson Margot Stutts Toombs Catherine Vance Fix the Damn Grid Snake Weather And now the Weather Jeanie s Story Sweet Yam Weather Tommy Frankie Silver December and July 1830 23 13 30 26 14 17 7 Ring 3 In the Last Instance The Wilting Petrochemical Sunset You Were With Me Last Harvest Untitled 1 Untitled 2 Untitled 3 1115 Covid C 17 12 24 9 29 19 23 31 31 11 Art Ellen Mary Hayes Kevin James Yolonda Movsessian Vanessa Zimmer Powell Varsha Saraiya Shah Harwood Taylor Cynthia Yatchman Judges Corner 32 Editor s Postcript 35

Contest Winners Judge Category Michael J Galko Georgina Key Brooks Summers Perry Poetry Prose Art Letter from the Editor Winner Meghan Sterling Silverback Luvon Roberson Sweet Yam Weather Vanessa Zimmer Powell You Were With Me Honorable Mentions Mary Wemple Forgiving as Shade Luvon Roberson BLACK GIRL JUNE MEMORIES DONE BEEN CHANGED Cindy Huyser Snake Weather Cynthia Yatchman 1115 Covid C There is a journey or a story somewhere in the making of Equinox Unluckily for me I am not sure what it is yet Luckily I have ample time to consider all the implications of this journal artistic moral cosmic mythic and otherwise I will let you know come spring For now It is finally here I am ecstatic to share it with you Thanks are in order First and foremost to Kelly Ann Ellis who came up with the idea of Equinox in the first place and its inaugural theme and then tirelessly assisted in its creation For all those edits mark ups discussions and picking up where I could not carry on Thank you Additionally Michael J Galko Georgia Key and Brooks Summers Perry graciously acted as our contest judges offering a new perspective on the works curated within Finally thanks to all who submitted This journal would be nothing without the creativity honesty bravery artisty and consideration of all who sent in their work We are honored by your trust and hope we have done your work justice Thanks for reading our first volume Equidistantly Madeleine Castator

A Line from the Local News Bradley Samore I telecommute ten hours at the kitchen table in blood orange light sliced by the blinds Sol draining through cheesecloth of wildfire smoke that has thickened to a pall blood orange sliced by plastic blinds every hour thinner across the carpet avoiding smoke that thickens and appalls I walk in the living room between clients Where do you put terrified on a map Haylee Milikan A forest fire I cannot see burns mountainside across the lake The flames illuminate a night only closing in to expose the stars every hour thinner across the carpet I look out over the hedge s new leaves on the living room walk between clients being outside is like smoking a pack of cigarettes Am I the smoke or am I inside it beyond the hedge s new leaves five year olds carrying off the neighborhood cat smoking a pack of cigarettes is like being outside Rosal a and Gwen in pink glitter jelly sandals Where do you put terrified down to rest when every surface is blanketed in darkness five year olds carrying on without facemasks twelve days without a fleck of blue sky Rosal a and Gwen run in pink glitter jelly sandals I order glasses that block blue light Light seeping out the sides a dark disk suspended Relief postponed until dawn what shade of blue is the sky a town 474 miles away is on fire I ordered glasses that block blue light what am I doing that really matters a town 38 miles away might soon be on fire I telecommute ten hours at the kitchen table what am I soul draining through cheesecloth July 2017 One million acres scorched in Montana

Being Undocked John Hicks From the wooden bench near the ferry dock at the gated end of Charoen Krung Alley I m watching coconuts roll in the current of the Chao Phraya and limp banana leaves floating by like thin green towels snaking over bumping wavelets I can t see Temple of the Dawn from here It s around the wide bend upriver across from the Weekend Market near the Boulevard Bridge soon to open I m glad I can t see the bridge A small tug tows rice barges downstream like beads following the clasp on a necklace The barge families watch from their decks as they pass between glass and concrete Bangkok and canal laced ancient Thonburi A few blocks from here we were married by the Nai Amphoe in a civil ceremony after you arrived two years ago And when my grandparents came to visit for them we married again this time in the Anglican Church on Sathorn Road The barge families are kin with the river like the old woman with creased complexion who smiles as she sculls her water taxi through river traffic standing in the stern of her single passenger boat Her mansardshaped rice field hat sits back on her head the faded print of her sarong worn thin where it rubs against the padded oar that she pushes right with her hip then leaning out pulls back with both arms I ve never been her passenger but she always waves at me anyway and when she gets closer laughs and pantomimes taking me for a ride and I act out empty pockets Less kin is the diesel passenger ferry that uses the same dock its pilot stiff in his white and gold button status When the new boulevard bridge is finished it will link the two cities and undock centuries of crossings taking their passenger business Last hot season we saw concrete footings poured in the river and watched unpainted girders hoisted high above the water We guessed at the spot where last rainy season lightning killed a farang worker When people begin crossing the bridge she ll start selling produce to former passengers living along the water He will find a ferry upcountry My government thinks I ve been away too long In my pocket orders for home

Frankie Silver December and July 1830 Catherine Vance Frankie Silver lived in Western North Carolina in the early 1800s She was eighteen years old and said to be a mighty likely little woman known for her skills carding and spinning thread She and her husband and baby had a cabin in the woods in high Mitchell County It was beautiful but lonely there Just before Christmas in 1830 Frankie took an ax and hacked her husband to death It would have been a cold cold day snowy with an icy crust Frankie tried to burn his body in the fireplace The fire didn t consume it completely so the crime looked horrific with leftover body parts and pools of blood They put Frankie Silver in jail for a while and then had a trial at which she was not allowed to speak in her own defense The sentence by an all male jury was death by hanging They built no gallows just strung her up on a huge oak tree where she hung until she was dead Before they did it she started to speak but her father called to her No Frankie die with it in ye Maybe he meant die without confessing to murder but I like to think he meant die knowing she did what she couldn t help doing that it was okay Her husband was said to have been unfaithful He was abusive he drank too much he hit her he left her abandoned with a hungry babe in arms Frankie must have been out of her mind but those were the days when women had no choices They don t hang women any more But they still put them in prison sometimes Victims of abuse domestic violence There but for the grace of God go I My husband didn t hit me but he cheated on me The anguish I felt was like nothing I d ever known I took a knife out of the kitchen drawer and I showed it to him with a ferocity beyond my nature I wanted to stab him but there was still a piece of my brain operating that said Don t That is not who you are So I put my own hand down on the counter and I stuck the point of the knife into the web between my thumb and index finger and I stood there weeping the knife pinning me down I just needed to draw blood and now I had Frankie s execution was done on a sweltering July day when the temperature was the opposite of when she had killed her husband She was tiny weighed barely 90 pounds Her body hung there for people to see for a day or two and then it started to decompose in the heat the way bodies do Her father had wanted to take her back home to her people for burial but the weather didn t allow it She is laid to rest just a few miles from where she died Return Back to Earth Cassie Premo Steele I am a snake that falls from red tailed hawks This is a fall like Eve s in reverse Return back to earth a survivor Infinity is gone now except for shouting I close my ears to the sound of species dying out Dive within my skin where blood still runs like the tides of the sea I am trying to find me There is a beach we cannot see It holds the plastics of the known world and between microwave dinner bowls and deodorant lie furled half open turtle eggs curled in death What brings the end of life is this cracking open of the secure shell It is the same for us now as we prepare to leave the new world and reenter something older We must have the wisdom to hold our shells against us without cracking them Knowledge without seeing Growth beyond being What we can do with our hands This is the story we want to hear in the night as living beings disappear and we wishing for someone to make sense of it all The snake the fall What dies our blood The beach the plastic the eggs Our own small hands What will become of the land And of us And us And us All of us

Poplar Christopher Riesco Some with leaves and some without in the sunlit turn of August to September the poplars stand thick on the hillside The younger trees are smooth and white They get old they get rough The bees have had their fill of sap this year and the nests are dying off the old monarch and the drones The next monarchs are hibernating underground The leaves fallen from the poplars almost come to the edge of the lake The light is like a very clear memory of July The grey water has a rhythm separate again not a tide but a slight current If you were a late visitor you could miss the tumble down house among the poplars beside the lake all the beams gone just the two angles of front and back the inside choked with leaves and rubble and flakes of plaster They call it La casa maldita and laugh They say Encu ntrame en los lamos En la casa maldita No vendr s Miedoso And here they are now appearing at the edge of the lake some with clothes some without Vodka sloshing in a bottle Camp chairs that fold out If you were a late visitor you would count the down hairs scattering of light on chestnut shoulders the little fake gems they all have in their belly piercings Miedoso They won t say whether the house is haunted or whether they really think it s haunted Who lived there A nasty old bitch who wore a sack No an old man with a peg leg Around the little fire they set a ring of chairs They pass round the bottle of mosquito cream as reverently as the bottle of vodka The sun is dropping Like the weight in your legs the sun is dropping late visitor Now they re smoking something So are you One of them already naked plonks down on your lap and leans their head back to talk in your ear You let your hands be taken in theirs and guided In the blackness of the August night six pairs of eyes around the fire study what you do late visitor

Petrochemical Sunset Vanessa Zimmer Powell The Day I Sold Paris David Fahl

Marrakesh Express Tracks of Our Years Michael Shen Who wasn t wafted up to that hazy state of Marrakesh Who didn t ride that Express on the notes of the time A pilgrimage of the age intended for the ages Strangely familiar Totally exotic like tooling through the Southwest New Mexico the dry pastel landscape long tracks of empty splendor ascending the towering Atlas Then the Sahara silent ships of the desert dromedary caravans appearing on the horizon and dropping out again A trip of the heart and spirit sounding in love and adventure where individual possibilities and the blue sky had no horizon Equality reasserted while cloudless skies prevailed But horizons loomed with time and the realities of age and livelihood Focus on self and family edged out fruiting of ideals and ideals without material equity bred resentment disillusionment The wheel rumbles over and on A new age will seek its Marrakesh and board its Express Almost Summer 2019 L A Merrill Despite a Deer Park chemical fire and other human disasters some Houston nights smelled of jasmine for weeks until today Two termites wake up in a Woodland Heights kitchen sink A bee slides into a coffee cup just south of Conroe A mosquito in a break room disappears into a trash can A dove gray as a Menil bungalow at noon stares down a housecat School s not out Vacations aren t booked Does last year s swimsuit fit Anoles are doing pushups in the sun We relish our patio dinners and we ll want more The season s first mosquito truck rolls through Webster Birds sing in the night again like people who don t mind slim pickings at last call The solstice is weeks away If you think that matters here you have not noticed the signs We better go outside now everyone else is trying to get in

1115 Covid C Cynthia Yatchman Have the Lost Word Kumari de Silva Hapax legomenon cause perplexity Complex zenith or apex of ecstasy Best educated guess based on placement still just an estimation Go with the simplest explanation Relationship to deity Faux animals now extinct Tax code of Hamurabi God knows with climate change we d be lucky to discover the last known speaker Willing to translate Her mouth around the Word does surprise us when we hear the unexpected pronunciation

In the Last Instance Kevin James philosophers wax poetic about determination in the last instance theirs not yours yours by definition will be radically different from theirs or mine novel unanticipated no reference points to cross check a thought suddenly appearing out of nowhere culmination of parallel planes exponentially branched from life s choices regrets its ultimate import lost on you the thought that will never reach paper YouTube or lips the imminent parting gift the last instance speck on an event horizon to an abysmal black hole infinitesimal mote motionless to onlookers from afar with big telescopes universal fluxes announcing singular exits and entrances mismatched correlates spotlighting your soliloquy for an audience of one fittingly you the evanescent star on stage beneath the rotted cord suspending Damocles sword at long last this one line unscripted known only to you by you yours alone infinite wisdom culled from all too short an eternity one eminent truth piercing virtual reality when everything you knew thought you knew are defrocked laid bare in a most intimate moment unlike any other your eyes have ever seen or ears have ever heard incommunicable succinctly ever so briefly a spirit a gentle breeze exiting Copper Canyon at nightfall when Coyote works his magic Kevin James

Snake Weather Cindy Huyser We d gotten to where we knew to expect them just another segment in the local forecast 20 chance of snakes moccasin migration copperhead surge And I d keep a pair of snake boots by each door pull them on before stepping into the yard s writhing leaves The snake boot industry was flourishing and I myself owned three pair Fang proof venomproof My favorites had a criss cross pattern that made me think of closed Roman sandals if I d had these as a kid I d have imagined myself a centurion Snakeskin gaiters were considered the ultimate fashion statement though with the snakes general level of aggression personally I wouldn t take the chance There were other bright spots export markets for snake proof pet doors and tents and bouncy houses growing by the day Then of course the usual scandals someone selling watered down antivenom some idiot with a petition to set up serpent curfews Ever see a snake front come through Like a slithering tide that won t give ground Let s just say you wouldn t cross town without boots or gaiters if you hadn t checked the forecast You could be stranded hours or more unable to step off the public conveyance And you d be crossing fingers toes anything you could find that the snake guards would hold After Inhabiting Spaces Where Nothing that Mattered Could Grow Saba Husain we walked in disbelief under the arrogance of the trees the inquiry of leaves hush of damp earth the wind between the rocks lichen and moss flecks of sun on fecund rock and the silence eavesdropping on our cowering breaths My daughters the narrow passage between the two rock walls where we hesitated at first then to the verdant stepping stones the spread of ferns on the forest floor such green rushing towards us

Sweet Yam Weather Luvon Roberson Hush don t wake im up y all Sienna whispers as she tucks Nicodemus her baby closer drawing the strips of burlap around his little body easing him to her left breast What you talkin bout Sienna you da one cutting up all dat racket I fuss back the welts on my side still achin me You gotta stands up to Sienna cause otherwise she gonna run over you she wanna run everything and every damn body Drawing to a Close Jerome Berglund things are thawing is this long hibernation at its end finally Well awright den I just don t want to mess up this here gatherin dat s all cause don t get too much sweet yam weather she says looking not at me but at everybody else their silent bruised bodies huddled round da fire Sparks starting to fly so we all back away just a little bit But not Sienna Holding Baby Nicodemus in her left arm she picks up a skinny branch with her right twisted hand leans toward the blazing fire red black embers glowing and sparks still flying from the pit to lift and then to turn over a few of the yams bottoms covered in black soot They top skin reddish nearly like Mississippi red clay soil starting to bubble at the tips like nipples sweet brown liquid oozes before releasing golden sweetness into the air Is they ready whispers Isaiah Sienna s eldest her three other boys reaching out one hand his four crooked fingers almost shimmering like onyx in the fire s glow daring to inch back close to da fire Silver gray smoke swirls upward from the sunken pit made for every sweet yam season carried slowly into the surrounding dark woods disappearing as if it too must whisper in this harbor You hush up Isaiah Won t be long now I say as I and all the others join him round the fire eyes smarting from the smoke eyes watching the yams already seeing they plump yellow red flesh inside Already fumbling to hold them fingers burning shifting the golden red prize from hand to hand finally scooping hot sweet pulp into ready mouths and eager tongues and throats that gulp but pause to savor then we swallow joy if only in this season

Lein Meghan Sterling There is truth in the way the sky glares its white eyes at the heat of us sends thunder that creeps behind the swinging doors of the barn the flag that half mast limps across air while we wait in stillness for something to happen There is truth in the way a mother holds her hands as if the child is still there weight of an apple a melon bag of flour standing on the porch in all her emptiness the air heavier for being lighter where once the hands were always holding There is a room behind a room where the photographs stare at poplar walls There is a sunflower seed pecked to shell by the beak of the blackbird There is a house my family may lose where the floor rattles its thunder with every step There is truth buried under the house my family may lose left in a box made of barn wood a medallion nested in the ashes of a beloved dog where the box is opened just as the wind picks up blowing the past out to dim the faces of the yarrow with the dead s bright dust What a Vulture Eats First Elizabeth Kropf what a vulture eats first brain lips anus the tender parts are most nutrient dense am I the easiest prey empathy overpowering self protection blood so close to skin or am I the bones licked clean bleached by Texas sun or am I the vulture hooked beak created to tear flesh talons created to separate tendons no mercy for onlooking children parents no burden of conscience death is only meat

Cloudy Day Lyman Grant It should have been easier to lift from the chair and walk the neighborhood today Stillness insisted that lives be at ease and almost I did not listen But once in the street descending from the house toward the park I felt the flannelled air of gray sky hug me enwrap and enrapt me steadying something very wobbly inside What if I had not seen my gardening friend Cathy kneeled in her front lawn kindly planting bulbs for the coming year had not heard the voices of young men playing basketball rise to enchant me in their sweetly masculine exuberance or couples laughing on a porch drinking wine playing an old folk tune on their guitars the rising minor key chiming the falling leaves carnelian gamboge and maroon How emptied would I have remained bereft of pots of xanthic mums alighting front steps or jagged toothed pumpkins smiling as I sauntered by giant maple leaves crusting and crackling under my feet Turning the final corner near home the neighbor s wild ageratum misted her lawn in wistful mauve starbursts And this was fifteen minutes I could have lost negligent when tender majesty was so close and beauty s comfort offered so free Forgiving as Shade Mary Wemple I no longer have a schedule I sit with the yard watch the sky breathe with the trees Watermelon vines rise East reaching for the morning sun They climb up to the edge of the trellis in a whisper of tendril clinging to each other Eggplant leaves big as hands curl over their cage Cucumbers hang from the twisting vine plummeting ornaments fattened swollen Their leaves wilt and sag midday Figs green for weeks now I wait for them as a girl waits for her chest to round and swell The sun arcs North I watch the shadows of the house change as the season descends I let go of even boxes of time I let go of the straight line I let go as the leaf lets go of the stem

Tommy can you hear me Can you feel me near you Tommy Margot Stutts Toombs Tommy can you see me It was a quiet evening after the U S Capitol insurrection of 2021 the cusp of a new year too young to live up to longings left over from 2020 When my head and heart were weary of talking heads and news videos I channel surfed too lazy to scroll through Netflix recommendations Baby Boomers used to channel surf when our brains needed a break mind numbing click click clicks until we saw something to pull us out of angst or ennui Maybe it was divine providence that night guiding me to stop on a new channel AXSTV 673 There on the big screen on my refrigerator was the rock opera Tommy performed in 2017 by the WHO at London s Royal Albert Hall Air rushed out of my lungs Goose flesh enveloped my body The concert held my senses hostage The voices of Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend had picked up some gravel over the decades but magic was still in the music It jolted me back to the birth of rock operas For a few hours my pacemaker could take a rest My heart pounded just fine on its own It s the late 60s in Houston s Market Square hippy wannabe heaven where clubs and shops sell anti Vietnam war posters and jewelry and incense The gem of Market Square is Love Street Light Circus and Feel Good Machine the temple on the hill bordering Buffalo Bayou downtown Vibrant scarves line the walls and hang from the ceiling surrounding screens that display images from plastic overlays splashed with oil and paint pulsating to the beats of live bands Patrons lie on pillows that carpet the floor and swoon to the groovy sounds and smell of patchouli Maybe a little pot Can I help to cheer you Oh oh oh oh Tommy Ring 3 Ellen Mary Hayes On Saturday nights my college thespian friends and I adorn our bodies with beads and bangles We wear costumes crafted from clothes found at Salvation Army After grabbing swallows of orange vodka in the car we drift into the square to absorb flashing lights incense cigarette smoke and the blaring music of Janis Joplin Jimmy Hendrix the Doors Sometimes we lounge on the hill and later on the pillows inside the Feel Good Machine Sometimes we wonder into clubs and sway like sexy elephants All of this is topped off by hot greasy Mexican food at an all night cafe Now in my kitchen I inflate my lungs Yell and sing Feel my body vibrate with music and memories Heaven Then the front door clicks The roommates return Back to 2021

BLACK GIRL JUNE MEMORIES DONE BEEN CHANGED Luvon Roberson Sun shinin all day long Wakin up Jumpin Double Dutch They dead Callin out Red Light Green Light 1 2 3 Ev ry time Hands clappin Next mornin Knees tappin They dead Arms swingin Ev ry time Fingers snappin They dead Singin in time Miz Mary Mack Mack Mack All dressed in black black black With silver buttons runnin down her back She asked her Mama Mama Mama Fo fifteen cent cent cent To see the ele phant ele phant ele phant Jump ovah da fence fence fence Dah June bugs They jar some kind a crystal ball Prognosticatin Double Dutch Double noose Po po stoppin you Don t matter Red Light nor Green Light Miz Mary Mack And chasin June bugs She sho nuff dressed in black And puttin dem in jelly jars And takin dem to bed And fallin sleep to dem Blinkin on off on off on off And Sun don t shine no mo do it

From What is Given Jeffrey Taylor At the University there is a ledge really no more than a misplaced form when the concrete was poured Birds have come perched deposited Leaf litter has fallen off the roof A tree is growing in this unlikely place a natural bonsai beautiful in its tenacious hold blown shaped by wind sun exposure fed by what is left behind or quietly taken from abundance Its shade throws a sundial it s quarter past the third bolt hole Look carefully the concrete is not as weathered in its shade Last Harvest Varsha Saraiya Shah

I Want to Dream of Peacocks and Ducks Loretta Walker Silverback Meghan Sterling Memories of my dreams rare like Tanzanite Three vivid as the violet stone The monster in the room tall as a door framed in wood Why did I want you here watching as I sleep Hurricane a tree yanked up by the trunk roots sprawled like a web of chaos a perfect round chasm left deep in the universe my voice the color of darkness I thought I could winnow mother out of my face prune father out of my teeth smooth my ancestors Arch an archway of doors light calls to me like a song I follow its melody my body pirouettes toward every beautiful thing that filled the trunk of my existence I cannot carry all of us changing like 100 words for snow all compelled by forces big as the rope that tethers the moon Faceless a baby in an incubator soft on its stomach its form a silhouette of mystery small hands clinched closed breath odorless I tap the glass it does not stir perhaps this is the way silence cries I draw a crescent moon in my hand chew my bottom lip as my nails sink into the frail cradle out of my hair grown wild as weeds Woman now I stand there growing in all the wrong directions How many times I have hoped I had arrived and was still at sea I tell myself I must submerge like Ophelia floating on flowers towards her fate I want to say mine will be different I want to say I will age like silver tarnishing gently but I feel the longing to fight wrestle force time to say uncle as it gasps on the floor The days that pass etch my skin like glass in the same troughs my mother displays burrowing like stones that wear holes in my pockets razing whole houses like the one we found deep in the woods making love on the crumbled foundation panties down around ankles Spanish moss draping like surrender over the wide arms of the oaks that stood in mute witness Finding an old mirror in the wreckage pieces of silver had vanished from the edges revealing stones grass dirt where my face was the face of a child seen from a cloud

Rain Calls Jen Karetnick Interrogating the tropical night I ask about the language of amphibians who hold this amphitheater floor with their snoring rasp their uh oh uh oh My clicks and chirps have nothing on their iambic feet their sticky trochaic toes that suction and bloodblister the cement of houses and lead pipes of secretive faulty plumbing Darkness answers in a downpour of jurisdictions sluices me out of this section of their choir Photo by Dasha Musohranova from Pexels

Dead Zone Terry Dawson hypoxic water the breadth of a New England state bleeds wide denying life in the Gulf or so they say and say as well that great white sharks now make themselves at home along Cape Cod summer not what it once was even summer Olympians sweating and peeking up at empty stands conjecture that seasonal change itself has changed flooding rain in the arid Southwest flames engulfing the wet Northwest the optimist suggests that fish like plants might learn to breath CO2 that sharks might just go vegan that seasons might grow gracefully meaningless but the realist asks how long can it last the dead zone floating alone and only at sea Sandi Stromberg for Bill This is a letter to the Gumbo Earth that holds our house A letter to February and the sudden frenzied freeze To the glassy stalactites hanging at the lip of our gutter To the surprised arms of the neighbor s prickly pear A memento mori to the lost crimson of their bottle brush tree This is a letter to our frost bitten grass in this semi tropical city sleeping soundly under snow To the dearth of shovels salt and sand that kept us sequestered To visits in nearby yards of carrot nosed snowmen and angels A memento mori to tiny black lizards caught unaware This is a letter to the stunted growth of milkweed birthing spot for monarchs eggs To the frozen bird bath down the street and birds fallen by our back door A memento mori to bats who lost their grip under a bridge This is a letter to our garden s frozen ground as incubator A letter to resilience To our first brisk walk Our sallow yellow grass transmogrified into glorious hues of green

Harwood Taylor Fix the Damn Grid Kathleen Cook A week after philodendrons froze inside kitchens after water turned to pipe crushing ice after we shivered in the dark and cold after pols refused to thaw us out after people died without power from hypothermia or oxygen tanks they couldn t power it warmed on a quick way to hot when we were then told to sweat it out man up bear the heat turn our thermostats up no need to wash dishes or clothes Brownouts and death from heat exhaustion Pols said we re in it together they said from their yachts they coolly crooned from corner offices in skyscrapers in other states where they ve always been singing for their supper supplied by our state s electric grid Equinox Ailana Larson Periwinkle evening sky Autmn s ushered in Summer long retreats It s gone Balance now holds sway Proclaiming equal dark and day

Suzette Jerome Berglund Let the batter sit refrigerated if you want things softened to the point of tenderness Most omit this critical step and regret it later The Wilting Yolonda Movsessian

HOSPITALITY T K Lee There are two of them Let s say It s a father and a son It isn t It is an uncle and his nephew 76 to 42 Such a distance hangs on every word Here are two men thrown a life of never quite knowing his place what to do with the curtains at night which chair at the table to sit in for instance Balloon Cindy Huyser After Adrienne Rich Hip to hip in a basket to be lifted by fire my crouched waiting no room for absence When we stood in the field of hundreds flames filling silk throats when we chased after the departed returned when I lost you listened in the crowd for notes of your flute as compass The burner roars and I and my companions rise as if weightless shadows and fields fall Borne by an envelope blue and white a happiness goes up inside me beyond the numerology of vital signs These men though appreciate that distance is measure not fate That it is it not a game of counting years leaving to years left In the back right corner at the window in the hallway that faces what s left of the silo the carpet loose came up on the back of a heel this time felled the uncle to his knees in broad daylight this time Their old dog and pony of how it s not the old what leave the young less dynamic For a moment the only worry is what will find its way back to the middle The point is there are two of them Let s say What finds its way back is a mess The uncle and the nephew both accept that little by little one takes the shape of a cog the other a spindle until they ve made the same faces about the same things They have come to make nothing but faces in fact It is that recognition which places each man unapologetically beside what he knew of loving Besides what he knows of loving now s scheduled appointments scheduling appointments a landline in the waiting room the nurse s name the other nurse s name the other nurse s name the other enough to keep each man in the make believe that soon They ll be back down to Gautier next summer next fall back in Chattanooga again We ll watch the first leaf turn Next summer next fall we ll go The Necessary Lie They both know the photo s brag won t speak of sand or boast of gossiping snow Should there even be a photo it wouldn t be but of one older old ing man and a younger man trying each with meaning smiles as they heart in Meridian prostate to Jackson lung at Tupelo These two Say like a father like a son Sleeping in their Sunday best each and every week Still playing house just like they did back when it was 36 to 3

Jeanie s Story John Milkereit Star Chuck Taylor for Joanie Whitebird I sit wait and sip black coffee She had wanted to send her story earlier for the Tuesday critique group and like a train her story doesn t arrive on time I m forced into the cold read Newspapers lay outside the Houston train station on a bench but with the wind I don t go outside A vending machine near the ticket counter carries my favorite candy bar Pay Day The wrapper is brighter because there is nothing else to see I ve finished comparing every object in the station to every part of the human condition I ve smoked my last cigarette Don t begin my God a poem with the word star in the title or in our days You re not thinking of Greta Garbo or John Wayne the first lines or any lines I mean how clich can you get what a They re stars but buried underground They re wormy I realize my smallest monetary bill is an Alex Hamilton I m a nickel short I had planned to carry paper in my luggage for writing but I forgot because I was hurried wanting to leave so I wouldn t miss the train but now I m early Holy jambalaya The only paper is an envelope for an unpaid bill The little window lines up perfectly and if I don t have that particular envelope for that particular bill then guess what I m screwed the world is screwed and did I remember to pack a plain white envelope for that bill just in case boring attempt at transcendence not to say we re against have flavor while stars close up tend to be hot and deadly transcendence but is it Venus you re talking about Alpha Centauri Now we could be getting some place Stars are not lone Writers need windows everywhere all the time Windows Mirrors And return address labels ornamented with chalices I left a thousand of them at home At least I own flashlights with fresh batteries of the wrong size I own gobs of overpriced wild crafted Douglas fir incense which smells like dead bark I could ve had all this eco friendly glacier forsaken country crap figured out by now Except for mailing the bill because I m in a train station not a post office Even if I beamed over to the nearby post office would the automated stamp machine have worked Sun or some distant spiral galaxy as big as our Milky Way spot lights in the sweeping wide night but bad role models Be specific Which star in which hemispheric sky for teenage youth You have superior mind and know An apple s tossed up off the earth for a while at least at their core stars aren t worth a fig though they grow us If you said apple not star you could put inside a worm We require cooler digs Clark Gable had false teeth This bill as well as her story is late I m hungry and jobless The scenery is looking a bit more like natural vegetable gum I will fall on the tracks before I see the thin glow of the Sunset Limited make a wormy transcendence more in accordance with

Too much dancing in this witches spell The ceaseless music no one else hears The smallest bones compressed in satin slippers Her Achilles tendon burns sizzles pops like chestnuts like bacon catching fire Soft tissue stripped from bone until a bright snow white skeleton is dancing in a red silk dress is twirling on the scent of burning leaves ld thy r n i e ed c n a Gabrielle Langley ale and t p c o ar n t i u l t ho s e o u h s Crimson Dance D The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen Loop Cassie Premo Steele Knitting and waiting for a hurricane And hearing about the deeper storm As if listening to the pundits might open Some tunnel underground for escape I confess I understand now how Germans May have prayed for bombs and liberation Because it feels too late as my fingers Touch each tender piece of this yarn A blanket I am making for my daughter To take with her when she leaves here As I try to make sense of quantum physics And the way if I traveled to the edge I would return here where I started With this yarn these needles and this bed And each quanta is a node that makes space But does not create but is this creation And time is also an approximation Of one thing to another and not constant Like the heartbeat of my daughter in me Even though she is not here And your heartbeat right beside me Matching my rhythm as I lie awake in fear

Reannunciation Joe Blanda Lousy wet weather the sound of its mousing on the perilously pitched roof of my poor poet s house This work of words this small plot of text vulnerable to robbers and weather alike every so often upheaves my life by letting in the weather unexpectedly From here I ll clear a path to heaven like a spirit bird lifted on infinity s wind to more clearly comprehend no beginning no end Magic 8 Ball Poetry Workshop Mike Alexander Your desktop cluttered with misbegotten drafts your eyes smoldering like morning s ashes your tongue tasting the midnight oil you stare your newest poem in the face These words are precious to you In the silence of the page you hear your own voice a small steel voice but words can lay a trap You know words have been known to lie Should you doubt your own omniscient narrator should you question the slant of your rhyme should you stumble over acatalectic feet should your catalogue passage feel incomplete reach for the poet s magic eight ball shake it turn it read Reply Hazy Try Again Ask it any question of technique or form bring your poem to the crossroads consult the poet s magic eight ball the infallible who says Edit All Modifiers Concretize Your Images Cut the First Stanza or I Wouldn t Change a Word

Time Passes Same Vantage Point Scott Wiggerman 1915 gusts with grit no roads no homes plenty of stars and wind and wind tumbleweeds sand and cacti a dusty trail no enclosures quick movement in the emptiness a flash of eyes a whimper 2015 new study empty new home windows open for air and skies new paint smell colorless walls desert heat unfiltered dust decisions where to place the desk how to fill space how to fit 2045 outages power water highway headlights coyote yelps where to step where to avoid moon as flashlight hands out ahead shapes shadows movement out windows somewhere out there lost spirits 2115 choking ash blistering heat lightning firestorms gray and more gray sands piled high where floorboards held window frames gone slivers glass shards gas flareups only the wind howls this desert blank sun unseen You Were With Me Vanessa Zimmer Powell

And now the Weather Bruce MacDonald One of the things I wonder about when reading a piece of narrative is the weather Not that there isn t usually an ample description of it often on the first page indeed in the first paragraph the first sentence No what intrigues me is how the ability to recall the specific temperature precipitation wind activity and amount of sunshine on any given day seems so essential to whatever else happened or is about to happen on that very same day Whether it is based on fact or fiction whenever a story is about to be told or is in the midst of being told the next thing you know here comes the weather report Excluding adventure tales about people lost at sea freezing in the arctic or struggling through the desert the presence of climate conditions in prose seems mostly about the reflexive need to mention them We step into a text as if into an elevator already primed to hear from a brief companion narrator or stranger what the weather has been up to and then we settle in for the ride However as it pertains to the description of emotional incident or plot development few will argue that the local climate in stories or in real life is the prime mover or culprit if you will If when discovering a dead man with a knife in his back someone exclaims that the wind did it or the sun I can promise you your would be detective is depending which stretch of fiction or reality the dead man was found upon either from the world of fantasy or delusion It must be something buried deep in collective human culture Reading various origin stories we see that the creation of the world by God gods or nature pick your preference is still largely just that descriptions of environmental conditions a k a the weather Maybe the endless litany of cloud and rain and sun and snow and wind and cold that crops up in text after text is the composite sketch of that perennial sum or one of spiritual power that we sometimes think hovers over everything Maybe our friend with the theory about the sun or the wind sending a knife into someone s back has a point Consolation Varsha Saraiya Shah A foxtail fern once pleasing verdant turned pale blonde as Polar vortex struck us midwinter Lilies puddles of pasty brown mustard Our creeper a perennial mural began crumbling in a matter of weeks Satsuma trees became a pile of dirty gold spud wafers Day after day sighting them I sighed doubting their survival Roses that pricked with thorns started sprouting fleshy buds from soft green leaves Such relief as if rewarded for how I struggled and took the bruises to tent them in stiff frost sheets the weekend before the Polar storm pummeled us Not giving up on azaleas either that showcased our gardens soon after blue bonnets blanketed countryside All this innate knowing another lesson in revival Change arrives like a carefree child that doesn t know how to stay put Isn t bothered by when or what is next Yet leaves some lasting imprints of the transient like early satsuma blossoms stuck frozen on flagstone for days So many fallen stars

Harwood Taylor Gas Jen Karetnick I always wanted to be older and bolder and colder than I was From the trampoline jump from the hopscotch from the skiprope I made flourishes with a crayon quiver asked my mother Is this a letter while she ironed similar shapes out of the bedsheets in front of her I drew a zodiac of symbols wanted to know Is this a word Each pass of steam was a hiss of impatience as she waited for me to turn five and exit my need for her Is this a story I d beg sheets of gibberish in untutored fingers nothing even close to phonics while we lingered in the summer Exxon line for hours to fill the reservoirs keeping our old vehicles going until they quit for other motives the world news one dire long crisis or rescue I couldn t quite figure out my own enzymes nourished with the books I d long to write those Junes or Julys humid hotbeds of princess hero I d spin versions of supervision around A decade later in January our home kept to nippy during the day heat turned off at night my room connected through a vent to the Viking homeland of our garage I d read about the quick growing hole in the ozone layer the lack of exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the ether over every jungle canopy like an argument no one cared to fight anymore The novel of my Anthropocene age had been penned long before my birth Harwood Taylor

Judges Corner the perception of fall from the edge of winter Michael J Galko October and the pine forest at the edge of the corn fields is deep red on deep green filled with cardinals singing an elegy for warmth or trading travel plans with their neighbors Winter s coming on and they gather before they move They gather and gathered sing The stubs of the cornstalks lie bent in the frosted dirt yellow lines on a gingerbread plane In several weeks the stalks will thump and whither further under the bottoms of sleds Muted drumbeats will replace chimes The children will not notice the change but they may feel it and shiver when they turn their reddened ears to the empty and silent woods whose evergreen memory of sound marks itself as a vague loneliness POETRY Michael J Galko is a scientist and poet and novelist who lives and works in Houston TX He was a 2019 Pushcart Award nominee and a finalist in the 2020 Naugatuck River Review narrative poetry contest His Haiku House in Houston is covered with several hundred original wood burned and painted haiku In the past year he has had poems published or accepted at Talking River Review Burningword Literary Journal Gargoyle Defunkt Magazine Broadkill Review and The Paterson Literary Review and other journals

ART Brooke Summers Perry shares her love of creativity critical thinking innovation emotional intelligence compassion and mindfulness through visual arts creative writing and integrative practices with her family students and seekers of all ages She works as an artist in residence developing and facilitating an integrated art curriculum in a Houston ISD Title I elementary school a creative writing facilitator for Writers in the Schools serving pediatric and young adult patients at MD Anderson a co founder of a community run partnership We Practice Life LLP facilitating practices and cross pollinating members expertise to offer branding web launch and community care for social activists She can be reached via email brookesp wepracticelife com or brooke summers perry com Ubuntu We Are Therefore I Am Brooks Summers Perry

Shiny Bits in Between excerpt Georgina Key Moonshine marked her way as Clementine rode the boat back to the other side There she found a dark dune and slept under the condemnation of the stars Only after the stars faded into submission did she continue her skin and hair stiff with sand and salt parched like the desert She d become a strange sea creature that had crawled from the ocean lying desiccated on the shore Her tracks marked the sand for him to follow so he could find her if she lost her way She stepped over the ocean s discarded innards tangled coils of rope like entrails viscera from the sea bleached vertebrae like ancient relics When night fell again she would follow the moon that sat low on the water the black tarp punctured by stars invisible seam between sea and sky The moon would show her the way if she asked She just had to look where it glinted on the water PROSE Georgina Key is a prize winning author and artist who currently lives in Houston Texas She graduated with an M A in English and has taught writing for over 30 years look for her fiction class at Grackle and Grackle this winter Georgina has published poems in various journals and her first novel Shiny Bits In Between was published in 2020 It is her love letter to Bolivar Peninsula on the Texas Gulf Coast She is currently working on her second novel which weaves vivid memories of her English childhood amidst a fictional story set in a grand manor house filled with secrets Georgina will soon be teaching a fiction class offered through Grackle and Grackle lyrical prose a subject close to her heart and one of her favorite styles in which to both write and read Interested writers should sign up soon to secure a spot class size is limited Lyrical Prose Workshop

Postscript from the Editor Thank you for reading Thank you for your trust This effort has been humbling rewarding and joyful in equal measure Not easy by any means nor especially tranquil but always and forever worth the time it took