April 2023 | poetry
Dig down deep enough and you’ll find night blooms—
blue-dusked petals casting runes under forgotten
garden reaches, ink-black petals spooning clotted soil
into ever-shrouded stars, an ever-blackening sun
wheeling through dark spines and peat-stained teeth.
Lift dirt-caked, delicate slips. Lift mold and root.
Their voices promise neither clarity nor opacity,
offer only a clearing aside of what’s given, what’s
taken away. Their faces mirror each other and yet
are never themselves, never others buried further
down the road. Dig them up and take them home.
Sit on moon-filled porch steps cradling ochre and
vermillion pooling on your skin, and they’ll bloom
the simple hierarchies of heaven—untouched
and unseen, tasteless and silent, back to the deepest
shadow under the loam, back to the first still breath.
John Robert Harvey
John Harvey’s poems have appeared in Cleaver Magazine, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Gulf Coast, The 2River Review, Weave Magazine, and others. He received his doctorate in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston (UH) and taught in the UH English Department and Honors College. He lives near Stockholm, Sweden with his wife and son.
April 2023 | poetry, Pushcart nominee
I listen to U2
while the MRI machine clinks into action
and Bono croons
I still haven’t found what I’m looking for,
his voice muffled by the hygienic sleeves
covering the headphones,
his words far away,
poltergeist from the past.
Eyes closed,
I see myself riding in the Mercury Sable,
traveling from Bakersfield to the Bay Area,
Santa Ana winds whipping
my hair into a frenzied halo,
the setting sun gilding
the hills on Pacheco Pass–
their curves round as sea lion heads–
the highway a gash,
the murky reservoir just one of many
promises that won’t be kept.
The road ahead winds serpentine
as we sing
I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
out into the night,
my restlessness the persistent backbeat
pushing us away from here,
the only place
we’d ever really feel
was home.
I can tell you now
I’d never felt so free, so alive,
ignorant of all
I was leaving behind,
though the valley below flatlined,
and the Harris Ranch cows
lowed a mournful warning
I never fully understood until
much later:
don’t leave don’t leave don’t leave
Jennifer Randall Hotz
Jennifer Randall Hotz is a poet currently living in Pennsylvania. She holds an M.A. in English from San José State University.
April 2023 | poetry
I miss the black wrought iron fire escape with its steps
that rattled outside the kitchen window on its way
up to the tenement roof top.
I miss the twin bed next to the kitchen table, where
my mother slept and tried to convince me (and herself)
that it was just like the sleeping alcove in an old Irish cottage.
I miss the washing machine next to the sink
that she camouflaged with a pretty table runner
and a vase of plastic daisies whenever it wasn’t in use.
I miss the contact paper behind the stove that my mother changed
every now and then to convert the cracked plaster walls into
brickwork or wood grain depending on her mood and what was on sale.
I miss it all except the roaches. Not even through nostalgia’s
gauziest lens could I ever miss them. Even now, fifty years later,
I would still tell those roaches to go straight to hell.
Gloria Heffernan
Gloria Heffernan’s Exploring Poetry of Presence (Back Porch Productions) won the 2021 CNY Book Award for Nonfiction. She received the 2023 Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Prize. She is the author of the poetry collection, What the Gratitude List Said to the Bucket List, (New York Quarterly Books), and three chapbooks including “Peregrinatio: Poems for Antarctica” (Kelsay Books) which was a finalist for the 2021 Grayson Books Chapbook Prize. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, her work has appeared in over 100 publications including the anthology Poetry of Presence (vol. 2) and Without a Doubt: Poems Illuminating Faith.
