July 2024 | poetry, Pushcart nominee
Elect
Toast with choice wine the elect.
Toast the vampires, bad boys, hyenas,
stone-cold demons and assholes
strolling the halls of heaven,
side by saintly side with hermits and virgins,
stumbled apostles, unwed social justice mothers,
preachers-to-the-animals,
preacher dragged to the fire,
girl soldier dragged to the fire,
mothers, fathers, babies unbaptized,
founders of monastic communities,
fallen archbishops, Juan Diego,
the poor and unsightly, the troubled rich
— which is to say, every one of wealth —
robbers who love their father,
lost tribes of angels,
archdeacons who don’t get along with each other,
holy men wrestling with Satan,
the innocent old, Job, the inside traders,
the cashing-in and the cashiered,
holy men wrestling with an angel
or a Deity maybe,
break the rib, dislocate the hip.
Collect the elect
— the hell-raisers and hell-preachers,
the abject, reject, object,
subject to pride,
subject to anxiousness, empty echoed terror.
Toast with Diet Coke the McDonald’s regulars,
the cathedral regulars,
the Mozarts, the Manets, bankrupt Vermeer,
the pulsing maters, the buttermilk cups,
open arms, open legs,
the bell ringers and the rung bells,
the sleek-bodied, the weighted,
the glide and slide and blithe,
the large and loud and meek.
Round up the elect for the trains.
Lift the incense.
Light the tall candles,
the Easter candle before the tabernacle.
The mystery of faith.
Lift the morning sun through the rose window
and the saints with green halos
and the virgin with blue halo
and the baby with the halo of red.
Gather in the plaza the elect
for goats-and-sheep time,
each then by a different path to the same pasture.
Hymn the bricks and marble,
the dark basement, the ceiling, cracks,
the space like another cosmos.
Whither shall I go?
Count sins. Record errors and malignancies.
Keep track humanity.
Serve the chalice of soup-kitchen soup.
Break day-old bread, a leg unwell knit.
Mark each word.
Dog in the sanctuary.
Armor at the church door.
Turnips growing in rows under the pews.
Much barking at the altar.
Wake up, baby!
Open your eyes to the morning snow,
sunlight on the white city, a joyful demand,
on the streets and sidewalks,
factories and tattoo shops,
police cars and hearses.
Climb the column.
Sit on top and pray alone
for a novena of novenas,
eighty times eight.
The aroused, the aloud, the bowed
and unbowed, the cowed, the aground,
the bound and unbound.
Soon and very soon.
Let the barrio close you in awkward embrace
— smell the rot, touch the frail wood,
feel the play of texture in the ugly wood,
listen to the wind across the wood face.
Let us as elect wash the feet.
Let us chop up pews for firewood.
Let us recalibrate the statues
and the paintings and the hymnals.
Let us go out each morning as elect,
each noon, at night.
Let us go out and among
and in and with.
Toast with strong coffee
out and among and in and with,
sacred prepositions.
Holy grammar. Holy word.
Holy embrace, elect.
Patrick T. Reardon
Patrick T. Reardon, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, is the author of six poetry collections, including Salt of the Earth: Doubts and Faith and Puddin’: The Autobiography of a Baby, A Memoir in Prose Poems. His poetry has been featured in numerous journals such as America, Rhino, After Hours, Heart of Flesh, Autumn Sky, Silver Birch, Burningword Literary Journal, The Write Launch, Poetry East, The Galway Review, and Under a Warm Green Linden. In addition to his poetry, he has also written a history book titled The Loop: The ‘L’ Tracks That Shaped and Saved Chicago, which was published in 2020 by Southern Illinois University Press.
July 2024 | poetry
the fireworks are cracking open the air
and I’ve had just about enough of America
after serving people hot
dogs all day and watching
people eat them on TV so I march
into the woods into the mud into
the pond into my salamander
skin. I bury myself in the clag
until everything is wet,
hushed and warm.
I did this once before
ten years ago or so
when life had gotten noisy
I staggered through California’s redwoods
crawled under a fern, became
a newt, tried to swallow a banana
slug but got in way over
my head and had to stop speaking
for a while, digesting
its girth billowing
from my mouth.
When it was finished
I grew my human legs back
then belly, arms and the rest
and walked back into my life
working at the coffee shop
and having a girlfriend,
a brother and a best friend
like a woman can do.
It was alright for all those years
but now in the mud again
I don’t know how long I’ll be here
but I suspect if I sing Amazing Grace
into the gurgling water the frogs
will chime in then the birds
and rodents and cicadas
until it all sounds
like one sound.
Maybe then it will be time
to slide from the cooing muck
my body and go home.
Elise Ball
Elise Ball is an artist and writer from the San Francisco Bay Area, currently living in Southern Appalachia. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte, and her work has been published or is forthcoming in publications such as TulipTree Review, Flyway, and Arc Poetry.
April 2024 | poetry
after Joy Harjo
Clear a space for yourself. This includes time.
No thinking, no ideas, no answers, no logic, no reasons.
Stand against productivity.
Don’t be afraid to put the needs of others out of your mind.
The light, predawn or evening, works its private magic. This counts.
Collect materials. Watch sidewalks for doll parts or rusted washers.
Go to flea markets. Buy dusty, moldy, chipped, beaten, time-worn pieces.
All junk has potential.
Don’t forget the odd family scraps; you don’t even know how you ended up with them. (A banknote from Venezuela for Dos Mil Bolivares or a moldy photograph with “Turku, Finland” penned on the back?) Let their hidden stories prance on without you.
Indulge in setting up. Admire your tools: Scissors. Paper. Water. Glue.
You can love simple things here.
Do not tamp down your excitement.
Your paint brushes are a group, a chorus. All different heights and haircuts, they applaud you.
Here there is no shame. You do not have to know anything.
Your hands and eyes know everything.
Begin.
When you don’t have a plan, the options are infinite and equal.
Glinda’s sparkling wand or Lana Turner’s head? Make your choice.
Glue it down. Bam!
You have created a point in the universe.
As you peruse your materials looking for that pterodactyl, you will often find something else. The perfect blue circle. Let it in.
There are no mistakes. Things just turn out different.
You are free to crack yourself up.
Respect the messiness: the gluey edges, the crooked cut.
Become lost. Nothing matches.
Kim Farrar is a writer and collagist. Her poetry collection, The Impossible Physics of the Hummingbird, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2025. Her chapbooks, The Familiar and The Brief Clear are available from Finishing Line Press. Her poetry has been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, New Ohio Review, and other literary journals. Her essays and creative non-fiction have been published in Midwest Review, Illness & Grace, Voices of Autism, and Reflections. She was a semi-finalist in the Grayson Books Poetry Contest in 2022 and 2021. Her chapbook of poems and collages was a semi-finalist in the 2022 New Women’s Voices contest. She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee.
Kim Farrar
April 2024 | poetry
Humming like a subterranean network sized computer is a fear
that if I ever meet my creator, They will not resemble me –
only appear as an abstract painting, less resolution than myself
and I will look at Them, and They, unthinkingly will stare through me
and, I will find myself to be the one more alive. Our virtual creations
won’t make me question if their bytes are analogous to my experiences.
Those perfect, idealized pixels will remain dead. Then,
I will have to keep living, having extravagant celebrations,
quadruple tiered wedding cakes, bouquets of tulips,
chocolate rabbits. Which is all to say, great tragedies can be a moment.
Elias Diakolios holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia University where he served as Poetry Editor for Columbia Journal 59. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in New Notes Poetry, Pidgeonholes, Epiphany Magazine, Bookends Review, Juked, and others. Currently, he teaches in the Writing Department at Montclair State University and works on linocuts in his spare time.
Elias Diakolios
April 2024 | poetry
This ash-gray mouse asleep in my pocket,
this miserable list crumpled in my pocket,
this comet rattling around in there,
in the cluttered pocket,
unable to escape.
No squeaks—shy twitching of gray wire whiskers,
no pencil or ink—tea stains on tissue,
no flight—burnt afterimage of circling gulls
mocking the eagles, mocking the sea.
At high tide, the mouse nibbles biscuits and jam,
at low tide, miseries tangle long black tresses
in kelp. The wrongs that are hidden, north and south,
east and west, fill the ever-rolling waves, toss
the coffins of crabs up on the sand.
Every morning the comet
hurls itself into the salty
bay and
disappears.
There’s a man washing dishes in my pocket,
There’s a woman longing to hear the owl’s flute secluded
in the cedars. In their own bed of percale
and sea grass, this man, this woman flash like comets.
Their arms and legs like ribbons
of lightning, burst through the clouds.
The slight, silver hairs of their souls rise like paddles,
moving the canoe out on the tide.
Diane Hueter served as the librarian for Texas Tech University’s The Sowell Family Collection in Literature, Community and the Natural World until her retirement in 2022. She now divides her time between Lubbock and the Olympic Peninsula. Her poetry has appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, Nelle, Western Humanities Review, and SWWIM. Her book After the Tornado appeared in 2013. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her poem, The Stranger at the Door, received 3rd place in The Connecticut Poetry Award (2023).
Diane Hueter
April 2024 | poetry
After I share my secrets, I’ll remind you to
Burn them in a pyre when my body’s ash.
Carry my regret, silence in stone. Feel the weight.
Deny my mysteries. The loudest plead for light.
Euphemisms are hallucinations of language.
Forget what I tell you. No. Remember. But first
Give me time to collect my words before I go.
Hide them, shove them through the shredder.
If I said I never wanted to be a mother, would you
Juxtapose that with my pride in my child–
Known only to me. Time within time, waving away.
Love for a child unexpected. At 23, how did I?
Mothering, an obligation my body accepted.
Nature or nurture, the argument goes. I have no
Original answer. Unclear, I forced myself to think.
Perhaps, I thought too much. Or did I do enough?
Quit listening to me ramble. I’m in a frantic state.
Reality is outside my unsecured front door. Lock it.
Soon, I’ll write my story–the truth, and the slant.
Too much to unspool. I unravel, mostly at night.
Usually, I see my cracks inside your curiosities,
Vagaries, moods, quirks, like those rickety rides,
Whipping me around. My rag doll head lacks support.
Xerox my musings. Pursue my words across the page.
Yowling, I let my utterance, a long mournful cry, go.
Z is for Zebra. It’s understood it can’t change its stripes.
Linda Laderman is a Michigan poet and writer. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Argyle Literary Magazine, SWWIM, ONE ART, Thimble Literary Magazine, The Scapegoat Review, Rust &Moth, Minyan Magazine, 3rd Wednesday, and Mom Egg Review. She has work forthcoming from Action, Spectacle, Quartet, and One Art. She is the 2023 recipient of Harbor Review’s Jewish Women’s Prize and was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her mini-chapbook, What I Didn’t Know I Didn’t Know, can be found online at https://www.harbor-review.com/what-i-didnt-know-i-didnt-know. Find her at lindaladerman.com.
Linda Laderman
