April 2025 | poetry
Going Strong
At eighty-one and seventy-eight, Mom and Dad
are still going strong. Halfway between twelve and thirteen,
Chance, our Beagle, is still going strong. Civilization,
at roughly seven-thousand years old, is still going strong.
In my dreams an asteroid is due to collide with America;
I announce, like a bored clerk at the DMV, that it’s four-thirty
and the sun is still going strong. Morning hits me like a slap in the face.
On the TV, a reporter predicts nationwide winter storms, snow and ice
and rain making travel treacherous. Stranded or delayed, our plans
are unchanged, for despite the carnage, the rubble, and the brutal cold,
life on Earth is going strong.
It Happened Here
In countless town squares, certain statues whose
antebellum lips have long been pursed in stone,
begin to smirk; still others, squirreled away in shame
to some macabre museum or mansion, seem to glow
in anticipation of the crane that will restore them
to their glory. Language too is being restored: disfavored
words, excised from public use, are forced into hiding;
mountains and bodies of water are renamed,
as though recently widowed; the gap between what
is said and what is meant is widened, until grammar
itself becomes incoherent; the sacred is made to be
profane and the profane is given sanction.
I observe a corpulent crow devour an Eagle, then
carry off its talons like a trophy. Covered in blood,
it lands in my yard and, briefly sated, preens its feathers
like a tyrant ironing his suit after a rape and pillage.
In my terror, I seem to hear him singing anthems,
making oaths, while all around his murder awaits
instruction. And throughout the land, the people,
knowing what they know about birds of prey,
having erected scarecrows and noise guns and
glimmering fences, stare in awe at the mutilated
livestock, the crops picked clean, as though
such violence couldn’t possibly visit them here.
Andy Posner
Andy Posner grew up in Los Angeles and earned an MA in Environmental Studies at Brown. While there, he founded Capital Good Fund, a nonprofit that provides financial services to low-income families. When not working, he enjoys reading, writing, watching documentaries, and ranting about the state of the world. His poetry has been published in several journals, including Burningword Literary Journal (which nominated his poem ‘The Machinery of the State’ for the Pushcart Poetry Prize), Noble/Gas Quarterly, and The Esthetic Apostle.
April 2025 | poetry, Pushcart nominee
In your kitchen, we find three long deep shelves filled
with dozens of jars of dill pickles, and in your
freezer a half dozen bricks of weed wrapped in cling
wrap and tied with string.
I think of standing next to you at that counter, a bowl
of flour and butter in front of us as you tried
vainly to show me how you make perfect pie crust
every time. You were also beside me in
my kitchen, both of us stoned and silly long before
it was legal, you grinning as I explained
my theory about BLTs as we made bread, mayo
and bacon sandwiches.
In your bathroom, I reach for your toothbrush and
can’t touch it, because I see you holding
the headshots a director had asked you to get and
murmur sadly “I’m all teeth…”
bemoaning your own wide bright smile. I leave
the toothbrush on the counter and go out
to your desk, where I find and begin packing your
journals, stopping once in a while to
read the entries you wrote as letters to me, and one
you wrote to your old friend, telling her
that I was “the one who always took care” of you.
I think how the letters to me were rehearsals
for calls to me you actually made, delivering to me
your rehearsed lines and monologues, and I
wish the lines about taking care had been rehearsed
for me instead of for her, giving me the cue
to speak the lines I should have, the lines that would
have been taking care of you, even if I’d
only been able to deliver them
in a stage whisper…
don’t go back don’t go back
don’t go back
to him
Judith Mikesch McKenzie
Judith Mikesch-McKenzie is a teacher, writer, actor, and producer living in the Pacific Northwest. She has traveled widely but is always drawn to the Rocky Mountains as one place that feeds her soul. Writing is her home. She has recently placed/published in two short-story contests, and her poems have been published or are upcoming in Calyx, Her Words, Plainsongs Magazine, Cirque, Wild Roof Journal, Clackamas Literary Review, and over 40 others. She is a wee bit of an Irish curmudgeon, but her friends seem to like that about her.
April 2025 | poetry
Thank you for laughing each time
I aver, “Who is Samuel Pepys?” when
the Jeopardy category pings “Diarists.”
I thank grad school for resurfacings,
the tedious pages worth a chilly May,
Hampton Court morning around
the corner where some costumed King
Henry adjusts blue velvet cuffs, offers
guests winks, wisteria patches traipsing
purple along brick walls. You leave for real
tennis viewing while I warm in the Chapel,
a Royal steward my new mate who details
below floor Victorian heating flanking
Jane Seymour’s green gallbladder. No other
tourists around, he shifts
his head as if preparing to cross streets,
leans closer, then loud whispers a question
I’m sure he’s bottled for weeks:
You know Samuel Pepys?,
and before I can nod, he unbuttons the red
waistcoast, his Tudor Crest patch disappearing,
and I wonder if he’ll display rows of fake
watches like a shady tv character. No, I am
not scared or nervous when he produces
scissors, I think, smiling at me, them palmed
flat for high regard.
He had stones, bladder ones,
he informs, his hand rising with each word,
so pleased he seems to clarify “forceps,” as in
those used to remove Pepys’s pain. So many
questions clog my cords, my larynx, did he know
I’d be his audience today, and what do seventeenth
century tools go for on ebay these days?, still
he marvels at surgery without anesthesia, greets
your reentry, and I thank him for his time.
At the gift shop on our way out, I try on the Boleyn
stacking rings, how seamlessly the “B” fits into
pearled band, yet all I want is to run back, search
the gardens’ gravel borders and paths for any
cloudy or misshapen pieces in honor, homage, stones
rescued, revered not solely for Pepys’s pages,
but to etern on his chamber’s mantel.
Amy S Lerman
Amy Lerman, by way of Florida, Illinois, England, and Kansas, lives with her husband and very spoiled cats in the Arizona desert, where she is a residential English Faculty at Mesa Community College. Her chapbook, Orbital Debris (Choeofpleirn Press), won the 2022 Jonathan Holden Poetry Chapbook Contest. She has been a Pushcart nominee, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Passengers Journal, Atticus Review, Muleskinner, The Madison Review, Radar Poetry, Slippery Elm, Rattle, Smartish Pace, and other publications.
April 2025 | poetry
Needles glittered on the streets in the soft Dutch dawn,
like shards of broken glass catching the light.
Children drifted in and out of narrow passageways,
their movements sluggish as the canals,
like something waiting to drown.
Behind the street where Anne Frank’s House stood,
a small, brown building crouched—
the hostel, ten bunks crowded into a room
heavy with the stench of dope and damp.
The showers sputtered when you forgot your coins,
cheap shampoo burning your eyes,
clouding the world into oily blurs.
Jakob, the owner, wore purple eyeshadow,
smoked maroon cigars that left the air thick and bitter.
Behind the front desk, a menorah stood,
its red candles unlit and melted,
wax globs like forgotten rubies.
On the opposite wall, a photograph:
a family, dark-eyed, arms crossed
in a field of sunflowers, waiting.
Each face marked with a bold red X,
sharp as a blade.
No one asked why.
Bill, the American boy who helped Jakob,
checked our passports, handed out keys,
cooked breakfast, inspected for bedbugs.
His face, a battlefield of purple acne,
flushed every time someone said thank you.
Five years ago, he checked in and never left,
becoming part of the place like the wallpaper.
Jakob adored him—
squeezing his shoulder, murmuring,
“Bill, Bill,”
as if speaking the name too loudly would make him vanish.
Bill wore long sleeves,
but the scars on his wrists, pale as ghosts,
were impossible to ignore.
One night, we missed curfew.
The bell rang, slicing the silence like a siren.
When Jakob answered, mascara smeared,
his bloodshot eyes wide,
a violet scarf unraveling from his neck,
he whispered,
“Bill is gone.”
His mouth opened and closed,
like words were too much to hold.
“Leave Amsterdam. Leave now.
It is the city of the dead.”
We ran upstairs,
locked our doors.
In the morning,
the hostel was empty.
Suitcases tumbled down the stairs
like forgotten promises.
I looked for Jakob, for Bill,
but the only thing left
was the photograph—
the family, the red Xs,
burning so bright
I had to close my eyes.
Penny Jackson
Penny Jackson is an award-winning writer who lives in New York City. Her books include Becoming The Butlers (Bantam Books) and a short story collection, L.A. Child and other stories (Untried Reads.) She won a Pushcart short fiction Prize and was a McDowell Colony Fellow. Penny is also a playwright with plays produced in New York, Los Angeles, Edinburgh, and Dublin. www.pennybrandtjackson.
April 2025 | poetry
Their fires have spread from sea to the mountains
Circle the wagons, our herds have fled
Night crackles like a fox
Is that a carriage, a hotel, charged with what?
The old country is filled with that morning light
We look for in paintings with one old tree
A clearing beside a road with one lone traveler
Golden bramble, homes made light
Smoke in whirlpools from the chimneys
Her cheek is your jewel, that map on the wall
Measures the radius of desire
That skull is your marital contract
That branch stretching from her crown
Is a symbol for solitude en plein air
And visible behind a lilac shade is a young prince
Fixing the queen’s long ochre pipe
The Good Solomonite fixes her tea
Some men live lives so voluminous
Their images profligate, disperse & are nothing
Better than all else to have the one thing
A flood, a crash, another tour somewhere
That might as well be ether: it is the one image
That will get us there
Listen, go down—go down then come back up
This is all one does, all one is
Soft train sounds
On a rainy day
Softer than rain
Sam Kerbel
Sam Kerbel was shortlisted for the 2024 Oxford Poetry Prize. His first chapbook, Can’t Beat the Price (2025), is available from Bottlecap Press. His poems are forthcoming from Eunoia Review and Libre.
April 2025 | poetry
Then I did my impression of a drag queen
impersonating Ed Sullivan singing T. Rex.
Unsurprisingly, it didn’t go over.
What a lousy Thanksgiving.
Everyone wanted to ‘do yoga.’
But asking Middle-Class white people
to take up space seems redundant.
Did I make it into the middle class? Nope.
I had to borrow money from them to declare bankruptcy.
If they approach you, keep everything but your tears.
We put on Ella Fitzgerald and the trees go wild.
Here even grass attacks (slowly).
I confess to worshipping the nightingale, among others.
At times all culture seems a pantomime fronting a great evil.
Physicists say that time in this universe is red.
Their cigars smell of dust.
The mystery of the kitchen is like the dream of an angel.
Some of these spices induce inactivity.
Some speak directly to the poisoned soul.
We catch a glimpse of the reality we are about to enter.
Everything looks like a cartoon but it’s the right place.
They say it’s easier if you have a teaspoon.
They say the machine restores itself.
Walk with me toward new prayer opportunities.
We are too high to find your coat.
It takes time to get comfortable with your minimum.
You’re doing great shrub by shrub.
It’s called ‘the partridge of meditating.’
The people on this street are as interesting as anyone.
Or we could just get in the Trans Am.
The path to god, whispers a little sparrow.
John Colburn
John Colburn is the author of Invisible Daughter (firthFORTH Books, 2013), Psychedelic Norway (Coffee House Press, 2013), dear corpse (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018), and unabandonment (Spuyten Duyvil, 2021) as well as four chapbooks of poetry. He lives in St. Paul, MN, and is one of the publishers/editors in the Spout Press collective.
