April 2023 | poetry
For Ellie
You say you caught yourself wondering if
the world would be
when you were gone.
Rumpled bed sheets rumpled bedsheets.
The sound of a small brass bell to ring for help
the sound of a small brass bell.
Hair comb in hand at the ready
to fix the damage from hands patting your head.
I wonder why
the vase of ranunculus and baby’s breath
sits on the kitchen counter.
You ask about images of a woman
floating behind me.
We spend the hour reciting small histories.
I ask about the light. What color.
Gold, you say,
pointing at the carpet of gingko leaves
falling throughout the day.
Grateful we don’t rake them up.
Joan M. White
Joan White lives in Vermont where she spends her time with plants and language. Her work has been published in American Journal of Poetry, Cider Press Review, Abstract Magazine, NPR’s On Being Blog, among others.
April 2023 | poetry
I thought this poem might be
about children, but I found
Maxine Cumin’s collection Nurture
as I sifted through piles of books,
the title which implies children
but isn’t about children at all
and anyway, I keep calling the book Nature
because I do that. I see a word
and read it as another,
change one letter in my mind,
superimpose what’s not there,
and let’s be honest, what’s not
in the title is here as I sit
on a deck that overlooks
the St. Vrain River, the sound
of water caught somewhere
between its potential of thunderous
rushing and the quick patter
of rain falling from the edge of the eaves,
the latter the only sound of water
this girl might really know,
and I do believe I must have changed
one letter somewhere, must have
superimposed this place over cracked
pavement, superimposed the dogleg
bend in the river, over water that flows
around curbs into storm sewers,
and while this all seems real enough,
a black plastic bag is caught
in a nearby tree. It hangs,
expanding and contracting
like a loose lung.
Cristina Trapani-Scott
Cristina Trapani-Scott is a writer and artist who lives in the foothills of the Colorado Rocky Mountains with her partner. Her work has been published in the Paterson Literary Review, Hip Mama Magazine, Cleaver Magazine, and Orca: A Literary Journal, among others. She also holds an MFA in writing from the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University. In addition, she teaches creative writing online and serves on the leadership team of the Writing Heights Writers Association. She also is a contributing editor at the Good River Review.
April 2023 | poetry
I killed the boar above the low rise with strewn sagebrush.
The breath in his punctured lungs continuing to wheeze out
as his feet kicked into the earth looking for an escape.
A tidy murder. Clean, they said, not bad for a first time.
They tore into our bellies with a buck handle knife.
Fistfuls of tacky fat dumped on the dirty scrub. Bloody meat
produced from the cavity. Membrane and muscle cut away.
The knife occasionally glancing off my ribs as they cut away
the last parts of me.
Villaraigosa looks over to me, blood specks like fine pins
tattooing his face and he asks how I’m feeling…
How can I tell him that I have ascended a stairway,
making sure not to look back to the landing
below that is being consumed by the pillar of fire.
Paul Macomber
Paul Macomber earned his BA in Literature from Cal State San Bernardino and his MA in Management from the University of Redlands. He currently teaches at a public high school in Redlands, California. Outside of the classroom, he loves to travel with his wife anywhere that has buildings older than the ones in California. His poetry has previously been published in The Pacific Review.
April 2023 | poetry
It rains and rains and rains.
Bodies and tea pots, couches and beds, hammers and dishes
washing up in town. When it stops, I’m busy drying out,
busy shoveling out, busy salvaging what I can. So busy
I don’t notice, at first, my kids’ long absences from home.
I think they’re afraid to stay indoors, afraid they’ll again
be trapped by water, that they don’t want to linger in a house
where so much was lost. Books, games, stuffed lovies,
the dog, two cats—all gone, swept away by flood waters.
I follow the kids down the dirt road, across the bridge,
up the ravine still muddy from the storms. I can’t see them,
but their voices carry through the woods. They stop in a clearing
and I creep across a felled tree, drop to my knees and crawl
closer and closer to peek through the leaves. The children
are circled around a stump, focused on a green mossy nest
of miniature babies, maybe four or five of them,
three-inch wriggling squeaking tiny human beings swaddled
in torn bits of blankets from our linen closet. My kids
are holding and shushing and rocking. I feel dizzy, afraid
they’ll see me, afraid they’ll turn to me for help, afraid
they’ll ask to keep them, and I stumble back over the log
and I run, and I run, and I run.
Victoria Melekian
Victoria Melekian lives in Carlsbad, California. Her stories and poems have been published in print and online anthologies. She’s twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. For more, visit her website: https://victoriamelekian.com
April 2023 | Best of Net nominee, poetry
Blind in One Eye, Can’t See Out of the Other
according to her story / a woman, blind in one eye / didn’t tell her parents / she couldn’t see / until she was twelve. / Horrifying, but / she made it funny / and tragic because / obviously. / Got me thinking / what I’d kept quiet / not as cool as a blind eye / but a good story / like Dad’s wooden leg / trophy of a motorcycle crash / one he never talked about / not even at the dinner table / us kids quiet and still / not rapt, terrified / because wrong moves went noticed / no one wanted to be guinea pig / for whatever reproach / Dad delivered that day / eyes fixed on our plates / eating dinner with his gun / to our heads. / He could have said grace / could have bared his teeth in smile / could have seen us / two good eyes and all.
Instructions for a Life
unfurl the gravel road as a tablecloth, a bedsheet
drifting low towards horizon, stars spiriting upward
into the gloam. tug on the string of night, open
the door of birds blown from muddy fingers
their songs like sermons, like recipes. suds
buds bulging knots on limbs, massage
into being with fingertips dipped in wine. you
are halfway there. now comes the wait
weight of it all, trucks ticking time along
the highway hauling burdens to & fro
in shutter-speed time.
sleep. when the breadbox of morning lifts
it’s time to water the grave, excited as you’ll be
to untangle the fathomless frog of your throat
in the cattail bog harboring fairies in the marsh.
Cyn Kitchen
Cyn is an Associate Professor of English at Knox College where she teaches creative writing and literature. She is the author of Ten Tongues, a collection of short stories and also writes nonfiction and poems, some of which appear in such places as Still, Fourth River, American Writers Review and Poetry South. Cyn makes her home in Forgottonia, a downstate region on the Illinois prairie.
