April 2022 | poetry
Rub the callus
where the pencil rests
instead of the bare base
of your ring finger.
When you aren’t feeling
so much like yourself,
what is your relationship
to enough? The sea
that gives you sand, the foam
that gives you the spray
of algae floating toward river,
salt into a far off fresh?
Will you let the conches rest
with their oracles gestating
or beg they scream
bloody murder? Evenings
the pencil marks two
dimensionality like a dog
who sits and laps
at the edge of a mirage
called thirst.
At night the foam builds
without shine. If you don’t
bed a scientist, will you
never hear that
the existence of the surface is
more important than what
the surface contains
or your silence?
If dreams weren’t fluid,
they would answer
to day. Instead
they drown it.
Amy A. Whitcomb
Poetry and prose by Amy A. Whitcomb have recently appeared in Witness, Poet Lore, The Baltimore Review, Terrain.org, and other journals. She holds a Master of Science degree and a Master of Fine Arts degree, both from the University of Idaho. Her writing has been honored with a Pushcart Prize nomination and residencies with the Jentel Foundation, Playa, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. You can meet Amy at www.amyawhitcomb.com/artist.
April 2022 | poetry
appears among some clothes you are sorting
and the recipe you’d forgotten falls from
the pages of the cookbook you’re perusing
and the person who convinced herself
she must hate you for your differences
appears in a dream as a character to protect.
And the friendship once abandoned
is resumed, though only in spectral form,
in a familiar world you’ve never seen,
where garments are only imagined
to fit, and flavors are tasted
simply by reading ingredient lists,
but promises to cook it again
are never kept because it didn’t
taste that good in the first place.
Nancy Whitecar
Nancy Whitecar is a professional pianist and music teacher living in the Bay Area, California, who is making publication of her writing her third act. Her poetry has been published in “Stick Figure,” “Loud Coffee Press,” and “A&U Magazine,” which nominated her poem “Punch Line” for a Pushcart Prize. Her short stories have appeared in “The MacGuffin” and “Ember: A Journal of Luminous Things.” She’s listening to jazz or Beethoven at home when she’s not hiking and camping with her husband.
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.
