April 2022 | poetry
Especially in winter
everyone knows coyotes
are tempted by lapdogs – on leash or off –
as much as by rabbits or mice.
Their wild eyes glow white like stars
in their dark dens. No coyote pup grows up
with Grandma’s yarn Shih Tzu gracing
its duvet. Or stays cute all its doggy years.
Better make yourself Big. Wave
your arms. Pretend to be wild
to protect little Gizmo who must
pretend to be human for you.
Paula Reed Nancarrow
Paula Reed Nancarrow is a Best of the Net- and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and winner of the Winter 2020 Sixfold Poetry Prize. Print publications include Sixfold, Artemis and Whistling Shade, with work forthcoming in Permafrost, Paterson Literary Review, The Avalon Literary Review, and Night Picnic. Find links to poems available online at paulareednancarrow.com.
April 2022 | poetry
The apple.
lightheaded, dizzy
and smoking
in the morning.
and I know
you don’t like
when I do this
so early, so I go
somewhere else
while I do.
bring my first
cup of coffee, my phone
or a book. and you come in;
you don’t mind – talk about
the coming workday
and ask me
would I like
an apple
for breakfast
to go with the coffee,
the cigarette. and I do;
not because
I want the apple
but I want you
to come back here
and to hear you
saying
more things
while you bring it to me.
Seeing the moon in daylight
it’s not uncommon,
but still is a thing
you might note. like birdsong.
a rock – the right rock reaching out
to your hand from a riverbed.
white rim asplinter;
a piece of white eggshell, sinking
so deep into blue. listen –
we were walking together.
the moon was there.
over the city. july
and the 5pm blue.
like pulling a rock
out of water –
the smooth feeling:
fingertip cold.
sometimes they reach
when you see them.
when they do
you do too – look at them.
put them in your pocket.
DS Maolalai
DS Maolalai has been nominated nine times for Best of the Net and seven times for the Pushcart Prize. He has released two collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016) and “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019). His third collection, “Noble Rot” is scheduled for release in April 2022.
April 2022 | poetry
for my mother
“Fill a saucepan, wash potatoes, peel, cook. Eat potatoes.”
Obey a different voice… how?
When it’s time, my own time.
Believe it, before the white page.
Can’t I obey a different voice than hers?
Turn, change, choose, transform?
Believe it, then show before the white page.
Set new tasks and wait for faith.
Turn, change, choose, transform.
When will it be time, my voice, in earnest?
Settle in faith and wait, and in the meantime:
fill a saucepan, wash potatoes, peel, cook. Eat potatoes.
When it comes my time, my own, will I know it?
She always shushed my well-earned voice: “too loud.”
Fill a saucepan, wash, peel, cook potatoes. Eat potatoes
I forged a self against her ways.
Now she has died across this poem–
I’ve no one to make a sound for.
I did forge a self as she aided and defied it.
I clasp her jewels, her furniture, her orphaned things.
I’ve no one to write of, or to, or to make a sound for.
Mystery of how she saw me went to her grave.
I have only the things she left, no direction.
And all I write is aloneness in our aloneness…
The mystery of how she saw me went with her
and the journey ahead, still unfound.
I have only the things she left me, no direction.
Fill a saucepan, wash, peel, cook potatoes. Eat potatoes.
Marilyn E. Johnston
Marilyn E. Johnston Is the author of two full collections of poetry published by Antrim House Books, Silk Fist Songs (2008) and Weight of the Angel (2009). Her chapbook, Against Disappearance, won publication as a Finalist for the 2001 poetry prize of Redgreene Press, Pittsburgh. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including MacGuffin, South Carolina Review, Poet Lore, Worcester Review, and Rattle and has garnered six Pushcart Prize nominations. She has enjoyed two consecutive long-term careers, one in Cigna corporation communications and one in public library work which included poetry programming for the public. She retired from the library in 2017.
April 2022 | poetry
We raged brilliant that October afternoon.
Colored cords and silver round our wrists,
aromas of sweet corn, cumin. The salted air.
A row of blackbirds balanced tentatively
on high tension wires. The boardwalk,
nearly empty. Subdued tides reclaimed shells
and beaten strands of seaweed as if determined
to obscure what lay broken.
We rarely understood what the other was thinking,
although we recognized what was easy, the tempos of the waters,
the old family stories, how closely our faces
resembled one another.
Who at the table could predict
your death come spring?
You, a flicker, like a bright speck
from a disappearing sun. A faded
hue atop wrinkled waters.
When that day drifts back, I wonder,
would you remember
how the sky opened?
The way the ocean’s pulse
slowed? How the rain
wouldn’t quit?
J. A. Lagana
J. A. Lagana is a writer, poet, and editor from Pennsylvania. Her poetry has previously appeared in Atlanta Review, Naugatuck River Review, the Paterson Literary Review, and elsewhere.
April 2022 | poetry
They pitch them to you on the job:
U.S Treasury Savings Bonds—
tiny bites from your paychecks
you won’t even notice,
a sound investment in your country,
plus a locked-in return after thirty years—
but they’re really hoping you’ll die
first, leaving those Series EEs unclaimed,
the original paper kind they don’t make anymore.
Or maybe it will slip your senescent mind
that they’re waiting in the metal mouth
of the safe deposit box, inching toward maturity
and oblivious to the passage of time,
keeping company with your birth certificate,
the title to the car you rarely drive
and the deed to the falling-down house
you’ve paid off.
Now it’s winter of the thirtieth year,
who would have thought,
so you bundle up and go to the bank
where everyone wears a mask and the P.A. system
plays “Jingle Bells” over and over.
From the sealed envelope
you retrieve those pristine bonds
still holding their deferred promise of profit
and you hold them to it. Though
unrecognizable, even to yourself,
as being the one who bought them,
you cash them in.
Ruth Holzer
Ruth Holzer is the author of eight chapbooks, most recently, “Living in Laconia” (Gyroscope Press) and “Among the Missing” (Kelsay Books). Her poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, Faultline, Slant, Poet Lore, Connecticut River Review and Plainsongs, among other journals and anthologies. She has received several Pushcart Prize nominations.
April 2022 | poetry
o my the pic-
nic bas-
don’t think I got kets of im-
this stuff on sale per-fec-tion
last week
it took men-ee
or cul-tiv- ya year
ate them some to find them
were excav-
ated with a knife
sniffing hog or or with the aid
old hound dog of a truffle-
others
by weaving were extrav-
gum wrappers aganted
the gum having
two in the plucked out a tooth or
process-
shun of my eyes
over now all over the
but the song pages it’s all
the drinking
the dented offender
oh this is apologies the tears
all I bring
but there I’m be-
ing ex-
or is it repre- pressive
sentative again again
or Sir Real again
but
keep bringing the big butt is I
more
or at least less
of it
of some
thing
each
again day
a gain
or no
Steve Fay
Steve Fay’s collection “what nature: Poems” was published by Northwestern University Press. A repeat winner of Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards and a Pushcart Prize nominee, his poetry has been published in Ascent, Beloit Poetry Journal, Field, Spoon River Poetry Review, TriQuarterly and several other journals and anthologies, and has recently appeared (or is forthcoming) in the “Hamilton Stone Review, Moving Force Journal, and the Comstock Review. He lives in Fulton County, Illinois.
