P. J. Szemanczky

October 2025 | poetry

Returning Home, Teachers

Dying swamp trees are irregularly spaced

by lynx’s cry answered indifferently well,

resigning itself to a natural Providence:

self-satisfied. It filled a belly with wild mice

several times more vigilant than dying trees,

clicking beneath with cricket frogs throats;

occasional ‘shrills’ at yellow unicorn mush-

room caps that appear to flutter somberly.

From a parked wagon a boy is shouting

at dogs out of hunting cages breaking free:

fall fragrant nostrils lighting a first sojourn

event: pairs of oval rhombic blotches

freed in homely patterns of loosestrife &

stripe brown rhythmic leaps pointing back

to inconspicuous silky, odd-waving origins.

Each rushing game in Ithaca stuck together.

Each knew that that funnel squeezed

nutrients out of stingy places. Seeds or

wood sticks, evidently, fed hungry rituals

meditating over oversounds of carcasses

spreading seed plants, risen to dominance.

Furious chases to scrap flesh fresh-cut,

(both human & animal) gifts shrewdest

for brain volume prospects in hostile years

of climate extremes followed by grayness.

Lastly, fierce cold nights left half have learnt

broken trunks cut gale winds, diminishingly.

Even chiming catkin thickets wave no oath

of range alarms to a lynx curled in a pocket

for breeding, nearby aquatic rodent tracks

which barely shake as hind feet webbed and

larger than forefeet: scramble; too, too late!

Winter’s last lash spoils all instruction heard

in the wrecked confines of pitied burrows.

J. Szemanczky

J. Szemanczky is the author of Metaphysically Yours, Immaterially Mine; The Apocalyx Angels of Earth Evolution; and Synthelytic Spacetime Motion, all f/l poetry collections. A member of the CT Poetry Society and formerly of the Maryland Poetry Society, he retired as an ABE/GED CT high school-equivalency teacher and master gouache landscape expressionist painter, guiding hundreds of students to graduate successfully with CT-GED diplomas through his classes. His paintings, along with his poems, essays, and news articles, can be found on the internet, published in Soundings East, The Ravens Perch, Sone Poetry Quarterly, Balance Magazine, Pace Literary Magazine, The Providence Cowl, and many other journals, as well as on “PSC-The Front Page” website* (2009-2013*) where he served as a weekly contributing columnist, editor, interviewer, and cinematographer of Tri-States-NYC Island Metro Productions L.I., NY.

Shyla Shehan

October 2025 | poetry

Because the moon is moving away

from Earth 1.5 inches each year

I know someday this will all be over.

The churning of the tide will soften

as her reliable waxing and waning

disappears. Infinite gravity governs

absolutely. Each action yields equal

and opposite reactions causing continents

to shift. Tectonic plates push and pull

their godlike weight in tug-of-war.

I agree to a road trip with my daughter.

She says there’s a place she trusts

to get the job done right. The notion

of getting a second earlobe piercing

makes me wince. To put my faith

in a stranger’s hands feels like an act

that goes against nature. My body

is void of ink. I haven’t ever gathered

fortitude enough for that commitment.

Nothing lasts a lifetime.

School. Friendships. Lovers.

Houses. Cars. Careers. Plates shift

inch by inch, seasons change.

Impermanence has become

a permanent fixture of my faith,

trusted as the sunrise each day.

But my daughter has also become

a trusted friend. Engaging in this act

of exposition honors that, however small

a show of hope that what has been born

of my body and raised by my hand

can withstand natural forces of change.

When the needle goes through my ear

that brief pinch of pain, I’ll say a prayer

to the moon.

Please don’t leave.

Shyla Shehan

Shyla Ann Shehan is an analytical Virgo from the US Midwest. She holds an MFA from the University of Nebraska, where she received an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work has been featured in The Pinch, Moon City Review, Midwest Quarterly, Anti-Heroin Chic, Drunk Monkeys, and elsewhere, and her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She is the co-founder and curator of The Good Life Review and lives in Omaha. For more, please visit shylashehan.com.