Last spring, I walked with you to the lilac trees.

We took home contraband branches of shadow

and scent as if we were the finest magicians

conjuring perfumes from tiny blossoms

that the Victorian women planted

to mark the loss of a child or a miscarriage.

I choose not to love you and so the globes

remained just broken remnants of minerals,

skeletons leftover from the latest skirmish.

Please don’t ask me to explain the Dictionary

of Obscure Sorrows. I couldn’t if I wanted to

but I know there’s an entry here for me—

something about the long hallways of

dormitories once the students depart

or the afterhours drinking in amusement parks

where you catch the shellacked eye

of the carousel horse and nod hello.

I’ve always desired a different life than the one I am living.

It’s an invisible cloak I wear like a fog-lit figure

in a Bergman film or maybe I’m more like the goat’s

cello in the off-center village of a Chagall painting

that tells me with blue certainty, you’re not alone.

---

SUSAN RICH is the author of seven books: Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry) and Demystifying the Manuscript: Essays and Interviews on Creating a Book of Poems (with Kelli Russell Agodon, Two Sylvias Press) are her most recent books as well as Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, Cures Include Travel and The Cartographer’s Tongue /Poems of the World (White Pine Press). Her poems have garnered awards from the Fulbright Foundation, PEN USA, and the Times Literary Supplement (London). Individual poems appear in Harvard Review, New England Review, O Magazine and Poetry Ireland Review among other places. Rich’s new collection, Blue Atlas, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. She is the director of Poets on the Coast: A Writing Retreat for Women. Visit her at http://poetsusanrich.com

I had a cousin named Betty May.

The joke punctuated the drama:

Betty May, but Barbara Will.

The sisters, born of red dirt and sand plums,

beautiful and young, so tan I would come home and

butter my body with handfuls of Crisco.

Their brown a true glistening bronze,

Shimmering like rugged angels.

They knew things that I didn’t, couldn’t.

They knew the feel of cotton bolls,

worn fingertips from the harried picking,

the respite—a glass of sweet tea in the shade.

Magic they made from burning leaves

and sharing words between one another,

perhaps truths? Who could tell.

They always won at Monopoly, all board games,

cheaters, snatching bologna from sandwiches.

And their future suicidal brother, Lord Bless Him.

We spent Fridays in that house screaming

You mother-fuckers owe me hotel money.

Pennies thrown from thread-bare pockets,

I remember those moments like yesterday,

even years later I was locked up in my own life

reading an article about one of their babies,

Daddy shook it cruel like an Oklahoma twister,

My heart broke and stomach– churned.

All those hot days and wistful summers

flooded back, my Monopoly shoe and hat

lost across America, the feeling of

pure hot shame, fury even,

I came to know much later in my life.

It flashed on Barbara’s face years before.

How could anyone have known?

Betty May, but Barbara Will,

yet no one ever asked me.

---

MELISSA WABNITZ PUMAYUGRA is a Texas writer and professor. She began her career as a small-town journalist and has recently dabbled in poetry, memoirs, and creative fiction. Her writing and photography can be found in Emergent Lit, Emerson Review, Roi Faineant Press, Vox Poetica, and in more. Follow her on twitter: Mel_the_puma.

Redundant, distant, the night

ocean appears in the skull: 

ink-spot, slow roar to wide black.

It is the year of the black water tiger!

At last, you don’t look, you feel- deep within 

Magritte’s massive, finalized egg

How its shell nears the brass of the small birdcage—

---

MARA JEBSEN teaches at New York University. She received her MFA from NYU and BA from Duke University. Mara holds a New York Foundation for the Arts award in poetry and her book, ‘The White Year’ was a finalist for the Jake Adam York prize with Milkweed Editions.  Mara’s work can be found in the American Poetry Review, Hanging Loose Press, jubilat, Sixth Finch and in other journals. She was raised in Lome and in Philadelphia.

---

DONIA MOUNSEF grew up in Beirut, Lebanon. She is an award winning, Pushcart nominated Canadian-Lebanese poet, playwright and dramaturg. She splits her time on either side of the Canadian Shield, between Toronto and Edmonton where she teaches theatre and poetry at the University of Alberta. She is the author of a poetry collection: “Plimsoll Lines” (Urban Farmhouse, 2018), and two chapbooks: “so why not cut the whole” (Olive Series, 2018) and “Slant of Arils” (Damaged Goods, 2015), reviewed in Fruita Pulp, http://www.fruitapulp.com/2015/07/06/review-slant-of-arils-by-donia-mounsef/ Her writing has been published and anthologized in print and online in Cordite, Poet Lore, Mortar Magazine, Matter, Pacific Review, Harpoon Review, Rabid Oak, La Vague, Toronto Quarterly, Yes Poetry, Poetry Quarterly, Lavender Review, Linden Avenue, Bookends Review, Gravel Magazine, Skin 2 Skin, Iris Brown, etc.

after Divyasri Krishnan’s ‘Girl as an animal of regret’

in a perfect world, i am ageless. 

chrysanthemums stay in bloom. 

chai leaves swirl down as spring 

rain. milky mists rise from the earth, 

frothing. in the mornings, my father 

wishes me a good day, his hand on my 

mother’s far shoulder as i leave. his 

hand still normal. his irises not 

bleeding. his brain    not    bleeding. 

but in this real world, red poppies 

fill the garden. fill the yard. fill his 

mouth. when he speaks, scarlet petals 

peel off his tongue like a scab. bandaids 

don’t heal wounds. i am disheartened 

and unlearning hope the way a shovel 

conceals graves. and in this real world, 

he is in that grave, and i am the shovel,

spilling my regrets from the lips, 

down the walls, onto a glorified box. 

i can live because he died. 

in the mornings, i drink tea by myself,

reminded of how now weeds grow 

in place of my body. how the air 

stinks of 1 part guilt, 1 part shame. 

i will die eventually, just like my father,

alone with my thoughts, answering to

an unrelenting gust of bitter leaves falling 

into stained cups like my childhood dreams. 

remind me again of the everlasting chrysanthemums. 

remind me again why i dream at all

---

k.p.fen (she/her) is a Filipina-American who resides in New Jersey with her loving husband and cat. She tries not to define herself by occupation or her mental illness, but recognizes they continue to shape her life. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Post Grad Journal, In Her Space Journal, and New Note Poetry. You can find her reading at open mics throughout the state and on Instagram at @inkdroplets.

Let me stop you right there—see how my love revolves around you?

This is the day of the bird, & I always bring birdsong on a warship.

            Hear the worship twittering in the eaves:

            Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.

No, it’s time for all good men to come to the foot of the family.

Let the warriors come home unarmed.

            Let the worriers come home unharmed.

            May the lessons of the colonel not harden your heart.

May I lessen the kernel of doubt in your heart?

I learned my son was born across the prime meridian.

            Learn that my love is like the sun: primordial, quotidian.

            You were born from war, riots; your first cries were a protest.

You always wore my chin & nose as a birthright; don’t protest.

Stop right there, let my love absolve you.

---

OLIVER J. BROOKS is studying creative writing at Florida State University and is the current poetry editor of The Kudzu Review. His work has appeared in Antithesis Journal, Beyond Thought Journal, Cantilevers Journal of the Arts, and elsewhere. Find him at oliverbrooks.weebly.com or @OBrooksBooks on Twitter.

Today I will watch you hold the violin

bow so delicately, and every harsh word

I’ve said will become the shrill

sound of learning

how to place the hair between the

bridge and the fingerboard.

Your face becomes the muscle

memory I will tap out on the

tablecloth when everything else

is forgotten.

---

ALIX KLINGENBERG is a poet, artist, and Unitarian Universalist spiritual director. Her forthcoming collection Bread Sex Trees will be published with Central Avenue Publishing in October of 2023. Alix lives near Boston, MA with her family. She is queer and polyamorous and writes on themes of love & loss, sex & commitment, healing and family dynamics.