Salisbury Bridge
george l stein is a photographer living in northern new jersey and focused on art, street, decay, portraiture, and surreal genres. George has been published in a number of literary magazines such as the Toho Journal, Midwestern Gothic, After Hours, Wrongdoing Magazine, and Fatal Flaw, among others, and had work shown at several galleries, including Praxis (Minneapolis) this month. Online, insta @steincapitalmgmt and at www.georgelstein.com.
& just like that aggrieved
or not thrust flush
against metal
the all of abandoned farm machinery
& all but barn of a house
nettled/ in shambles
of razor grass/ rooted/ my feet
stumbling close enough
to peace for breath/ waist high
to the ground/ the all of green caterpillar
& algae towers/ peaked up
in cicadas’ buzzing
make for rest
supine back against dock rust/ lake lap
& grass hungering for legs
leaving me for just a moment lying
back in black brilliants’ flame/ bursting
swallowing whole
in my dreaming sleep the all of everything
Mara Adamitz Scrupe’s publications include four full collections. BEAST (2014 Stevens Manuscript Publication Prize, National Federation of State Poetry Societies, U.S), in the bare bones house of was (2019 Brighthorse Books Prize in Poetry), Eat The Marrow (2019 erbacce-press Poetry Book Prize UK; shortlisted 2020 Rubery Book Award UK), and REAP a flora (2023 Shipwreckt Books). She has selections in generational anthologies by Southword/ Munster Literature, Stony Thursday, and 64 Best Poets/ Black Mountain Press, and poems in key UK and US journals including The London Magazine, Mslexia, Magma, Abridged, and The Poetry Business/ Smith Doorstop. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry, she has won or been shortlisted for significant literary awards including Arts University Bournemouth International Poetry Prize, Magma Pamphlet Publication Award, Gregory O’Donohugh International Poetry Prize, Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize and National Poetry Society UK. She serves concurrently as Lance Williams Resident Artist in the Arts & Sciences, University of Kansas, and Dean and Professor Emerita, School of Art, University of the Arts Philadelphia.
Reading poetry online takes me
down the rabbit hole of the next poem
and the next, and oh, I like this poet
and how did they even come up
with gold leaf or orange sweat.
Outside, Spring is in the world.
My husband’s down the hall
drawing machinery on his computer.
He says he’s not an artist,
but those clear, concise lines
are strong enough to swing on.
Lay down your mouse, my beloved.
Look! The pine tree across the way
has released a cloud of golden pollen.
Patricia L. Scruggs is the author of one poetry collection, Forget the Moon. Born in Colorado, she spent ten formative years in Alberta, Canada before taking root in Southern California. Her work has appeared in Burningword, McQueen’s Quinterly, Inlandia, ONTHEBUS, Spillway, Rattle, Rip Rap, Cultural Weekly, Crab Creek Review, as well as the anthologies l3 Los Angeles Poets, So Luminous the Wildflowers and Beyond the Lyric Moment. A recent Pushcart Prize nominee, Patricia is a retired art teacher who earned her MFA at the California State University, Fullerton. She and her husband of over 60 years are parents of two and grandparents of three.
We drove by William S. Burroughs’s house
to see if we could feel his
aura from the street. We were confused about
why he lived in Kansas, of all places—
because we’d only ever prayed to leave it.
I was young and dumb and didn’t know
half the story behind this cynosure
who looked like my grandpa.
But I knew how I felt after reading Naked Lunch:
Stoned, mostly. And a bit revolted.
You, though, were smitten
with the wasteland of his words.
Obsessed, really—
keeping his books, dog-eared and disguised
from your mother’s eyes (or so you thought).
I watched you leave Kansas as a
high school dropout turned
stripper turned
drug addict turned
prostitute.
And I started to wonder where it all
went wrong.
I ran into your mom at the store a while back.
Through tears, she claimed it was those
damn books.
I thought back to your childhood:
No dad.
No sugar.
No skirts.
No boys.
No fun.
No anything.
Except taking care of your little brother
while your mom got tanked.
So I said to her,
“I don’t think it was the books.”
Erika Seshadri lives on an animal rescue ranch with her family. When not caring for tame ritters or feral children, she can be found writing.
In the video, you’re riding a brown horse around a dusty cement arena somewhere in Mexico, the place you told me not to visit because you were enjoying your solitude, so I didn’t bother learning the city’s name. The horse trots and you bounce like a child on his uncle’s knee. As the horse makes its rounds, jogging you up and down, you laugh – a laugh I know well enough to know it isn’t from joy but to mask your lower back pain from an old skateboarding injury.
Anyone else watching this video would think you’re having fun, but as grainy as the video is, I see suffering. In November, just seven months ago, I drove you to the hospital in Tuscaloosa at dawn, sat in the waiting room for hours for your outpatient lumbar surgery. When the nurse called my name to meet you, I was in the bathroom. You were afraid I’d left. Call her again, you slurred, heavy-lidded from anesthesia, not realizing I’d walked in behind you. Two days shy of your 44th birthday, you slouched in a wheelchair, sipping apple juice from a Styrofoam cup. Your relief when I said, I’m here, mirrored my own elation decades earlier when I was a sobbing child separated from my mother in JCPenney, just to realize she’d been behind me the whole time.
When we got back to your apartment, I helped you into bed, then tucked myself in beside you. You curled your arm around my waist and said your biggest fear was my cancer coming back. I whispered, That’s my fear to have, not yours. As you shuddered into sleep, you said you loved me for the first time. You didn’t remember it the next day.
Seven months ago. That’s not so long.
In the video, your sunglasses hide your grimace, but as the horse speeds up, your mouth opens slightly and you let out a sound I’ve heard before, halfway between a laugh and a cry, and my own spine throbs. Your groan is not unlike the sound you made so often in bed, the soft moan as you turned me on my side after sex, staying inside me, our bodies slick with each other’s sweat.
You post this video on Facebook after three days of radio silence. After nearly a year of daily communication. After hundreds of messages claiming I am everything you ever wanted.
In the video, someone is offscreen, recording. A woman. She giggles each time you trot by. In her giggle, I hear everything you haven’t told me—why you didn’t want me to buy a plane ticket, the precise way you have been enjoying your solitude. You post this video three days before sending me an email you didn’t have to send. The video is enough. Still, you feel compelled to tell me: I’ve met someone special.
Sara Pirkle is a Southern poet, an identical twin, a breast cancer survivor, and a board game enthusiast. Her first book, The Disappearing Act (Mercer University Press, 2018), won the Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry. She also dabbles in songwriting and co-wrote a song on Remy Le Boeuf’s album, Architecture of Storms, which was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY in the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album category. She is an Associate Director of Creative Writing at The University of Alabama.
