Virginia Doré

October 2026 | poetry

The Auction

The house is not a home.

It takes takes takes.

It shakes the presumptuous hag stuck there

glued in place by poor decisions.

Strangles with antique trunks of keepsakes

she can’t keep for her sake,

the unused KitchenAid,

and the damn forsythia shrubs

that spitefully grow grow grow

when she needs this to stop.

The smiling dead framed on the walls

stare while she charges the trimmer.

They alone can see she’s too stoned to do it.

Moving out brings unclaimed heirlooms and ptsd.

Tripping past unshredded tax returns, warranties

to find Grandma’s unmatched Wedgewood.

To-do lists like little suicide notes.

Leaving demands

coughing out dust from a butter churn waiting for auction.

Tasting upholstery shampoo from the dining room chairs

that will sell for pennies.

It weathers her lungs.

The air has the poison of the family’s past.

She breathes down into her belly

to pack what tiny bits of life she can carry out,

to discard ghosts

the fantasy of an unencumbered self,

a new way to quiver.

I Subscribe to a Newsletter About Chronic Wasting Disease

and I don’t know why.

I recall the herd of elk

that wandered near Banff.

Three or four families together

slow purpose, watchful

side-eye to gormless tourists

who aim phones at wapiti targets.

The rangers arrive in pairs first

warn the crowd that filters

from the sulphur museum

where glory-day photos of bathers

hung in a hall cave of stench.

How did the rangers know?

Maybe the elk

texted their intention

or they trot this way often

to gawk at weird, unusual humans

like we flip through Vogue,

or people watch at the mall.

Maybe they demonstrate majesty

for lesser creatures

because I saw kings and queens

family

community

lives with purpose

on an ancient alpine trail

and I was jealous,

so jealous.

Virginia Doré

Virginia Doré lives on the traditional, unceded, and unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg peoples in Ontario, Canada. Her first chapbook, An Adult Child’s Garden of Toads, was shortlisted by Waxing & Waning for the 2026 Apogee award. Her poetry has appeared in Arkana, Hare Paw’s Literary Journal and RoughDiamond’s anthology, Reflections of the Mind: Mental Health Poetry. When she is not writing poetry, she argues with herself and enjoys walks with her dogs.

Gilbert Arzola

October 2026 | poetry

Quarters

at the elementary school for 25 cents a week

in 1959 they’d bring you a carton of milk every day at 2pm.

a mid-afternoon pick me up for twenty 2nd graders who sat dutifully at their

wooden desks between math and geography, taking the slow steps

to growing up. for a quarter a week every

afternoon gary, who died of aids fourteen years later wheeled a cart between five rows

and delivered the milk while scott, who became a carpenter because he

understood angles and how to measure things; marked off the

names in pencil with a crooked check mark and minded the names with

an X beside them who didn’t get milk because they hadn’t paid a quarter.

I kept my head down, pretending not to care. I cared, of course I cared.

but I had never paid, I never had a quarter. I was seven years old,

too young to have a quarter of my own.

And I didn’t want to ask. I knew no way to bring it up

to my father who sat worn thin as explanations every evening

smelling of black dirt and sweat.

with the eyes of a poor men, scooping frijoles from

cracked plates. there was never a sliver of opportunity for questions.

no room between bites for asking. I didn’t want to see

his face and how the sun would sink a little lower behind him

when he dug into his pockets and found them empty.

Gilbert Arzola

Winner of the 2019 Passager Poetry Contest and the 2021 Rattle Poetry Chapbook Contest, Gilbert Arzola has been nominated twice for Pushcart Awards. His book of poetry Prayers of Little Consequence was published in 2019 by Passager, and a chapbook, The Death of a Migrant Worker, was published in 2021 by Rattle. His work has appeared in Crosslimb, The Elysian Review, The Notre Dame Review, Palabra, The Tipton Review, Craft, Acentos Review, Two Cardinals, Flying Island, and Rattle, among others.