 Deserted Highway, Mojave Desert, photography by Alexis Rhone Fancher (USA) 2025 To Lend Her Own Eyes There’s always a kid in back, clicked quietly free of her seatbelt if there is one, up on her knees to watch the minutes recede in the rear window. She sees a reverse vista—the golden expanse of forsaken instants we didn’t note the mix of scents the wind blew in over our left arm in sun while we steered, sweet creosote’s particles whirling like stars into the black holes of our nostrils —without a word or a shout. The child shudders with an aloneness that bursts out like a thousand cactus wrens from the nest of her heart into the silver-black mountains above the haze. We’re useless to her or worse, except that we drive these hours between our nowheres, we stay in our lane, leave the radio on its AM Spanish romances strummed and tremolo’d through flurries of static snow, and maybe it’s better somehow we have no idea what beauty burgeons behind her brow as the light grows longer bronzing the scrub calling for her return to the burning dancefloor of fringe-toed lizards and sidewinders. So we’re blind but for the road, but for her eyes on the light we leave and leave the mountains our wind-carved tombstone. Do we somewhere inside us know she’ll come here again, passing under the shadows of lonely crucifix poles and their high-strung wires to whisper-cry to our souls, to wonder, grieve, to lend her own eyes in their deepened arroyos, to reckon slow how impossible it is to see a thing let alone one another as we drive and drive looking for home? Jed Myers Jed Myers is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Learning to Hold (Wandering Aengus Press, Editors’ Award, 2024), and previously The Marriage of Space and Time (MoonPath Press) and Watching the Perseids (Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award)—as well as six chapbooks. Recent honours include the Northwest Review Poetry Prize, the River Heron Poetry Prize, and the Sundress Chapbook Editor’s Choice. Poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Rattle, The Poetry Review, RHINO, Poetry Northwest, Southern Indiana Review, The Southeast Review, and elsewhere. Myers lives in Seattle, where he’s editor of Bracken. ** The Desert Road Has Thinned Down to This. The road knows it is now another star in a galaxy of stars gone empty, the heat rising like apology that buckles from the too-dry air. The air chokes and then slithers towards anything but here. The road has felt the small murder of a man ‘s foot, the crushing ego of a tire and knows how it is just a moment thing, like moonlight and mist and love. The road remembers how the desert pressed the breath out of the people who drove here, their cars sputtering, the hotslap air through the window cracks. And when the people got out and stretched and tried to cool themselves, their legs went stem, their arms flying, flightless. The sun above a pulse, a pulse. Francine Witte Francine Witte’s flash fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous journals. Most recently, her stories have been in Best Small Fictions and Flash Fiction America. Her latest flash fiction book is Radio Water (Roadside Press.) Her upcoming collection of poetry, Some Distant Pin of Light is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. She lives in NYC. Visit her website francinewitte.com ** Ragged Psalms “Awake. Shake dreams from your hair. My pretty child, my sweet one. Choose the day and choose the sign of your day.” Jim Morrison et al, “Ghost Song” 1. Riding shotgun, Crow’s face blank and bland against the open window like a dog’s, basking in the breeze. The road was wide and the road was empty and the road was endless ahead of them. Morrison’s uneasy melancholy from the speakers. Raggedy gnawed on her stubby fingertips again until Jill snapped at her hand. Rolled up the dregs from the crumpled packet of American Spirit and they all pulled at the nicotine teat. Sang along with Jim as the night drifted up behind them. 2. Raggedy didn’t quite trust the hitchers, or anyone really, but she was glad for company on the journey west. A peculiar couple. Crow didn’t speak at all. Jill said he was an old soul, spanning centuries with an eternal beating heart. Crushed velvet and pirate ruffles and a lingering perfume like an old church. An armload full of Byron and dusty old folklore from Transylvania. Before New Orleans, Raggedy would have laughed out loud, but now, she’ll believe anything. 3. She didn’t want to leave. The Crescent City. She’d grown used to the rhythms of the river, the way the boardwalk saxophones scratched their sigils into the night sky with sound. 4. She’d gotten used to the heavy lullaby of the blues. 5. And all the booze that was hers for the taking in a sea of plastic cups. She was a long way from Canada, but she liked the way she disappeared into the otherworld, a place of barefoot flower children, ragtag punks, and vampires. She blended in with all the gleaming hardware stuck to her body like a human pincushion. She had wanted to be far away, as far away as you could go from what you knew before. 6. Cacti bunched and scraggly, clawing their way up into the reefs of clouds. Green and purple beads roped over the rear-view mirror. Raggedy had felt so free, flashing her assets on Bourbon Street, sucking back strawberry booze from giant alien-faced bottles. In a humid bar that was once a Storyville brothel, lost in the music, she had cradled a small lost boy in her sticky arms, and cried with him over all the things he fled in Salt Lake City. When he had finally emptied of weeping, he wiped his face on her denim sleeves, pulled back, and said, why would you name yourself after a broken doll? 7. Crow still panting, open smile against the open window. Coltrane now, moody, complicated, serenading the falling night. Jill had to pee. Raggedy veered to the highway’s shoulder. Each of them emptied themselves to the darkness at the side of the road. 8. Raggedy had no idea what waited for them when the desert gave itself up for the ocean. She had never seen the cliffs and how they tumbled down to the coast, to the seam between here and forever. 9. Look, Jill said, when they finally pulled into a gas station under a flickering neon sign. Something like an Ed Ruscha painting, a dimly flashing promise: Najah Oasis. Just leave us here, okay? Crow’s hands raking packages of crisps and peanuts into his pockets. Raggedy wiped the windshield methodically, clearing her line of sight for the distance ahead. She watched the strangers walk across the lot, going anywhere, going nowhere, going gone. 10. Venice Beach, Los Angeles. A rusty orange cat perched on her fender, then her dashboard. He stayed a few days, and exited on Hollywood Boulevard. She felt the thrum of history in every new ghosting. She wound her way finally up to Vancouver. Stayed for near a year. 11. Her favourite place is the beach, and the gay nightclubs up the hill are a refuge. After sweating out all the martinis she could imbibe on the dancefloors at the circuit parties, Raggedy loves to go down to English Bay and listen to the sea. Watch the dawn being born anew. Sometimes she sleeps underneath the stars in the shadow of the totem poles. She feels safe there. She can feel their power. She cuts things out of rave flyers and discarded fashion magazines, out of old art books she digs out of dumpsters. She scribbles poems on them, arranges the images in unexpected ways, glues them into place. One day she will start to come together. One day, she will change back her name. Lorette C. Luzajic Lorette C. Luzajic is the founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review and The Mackinaw. She has published hundreds of ekphrastic prose poems and small fictions in journals and anthologies. She is also an award-winning visual artist with collectors in forty countries so far. ** The Empty Road The Mojave Desert astounds me It looks so much like the ceiling of the Brosnan Caves dusted with millet It doesn’t wear gloves because it’s too hot Its sky is a pail of water that spills into the ether It’s the gleam of a snail’s trail left on Aphrodite’s thigh that quenches the thirst of Mariantonietta Peru who walked across the Mojave after she walked across the Sahara and found no one at home Richard Modiano While a resident of New York City Richard Modiano became active in the literary community connected to the Poetry Project where he came to know Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, William S. Burroughs and Ted Berrigan. In 2001 he was a programmer at Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center, joined the Board of Trustees in 2006, and from 2010 to 2019, he served as Executive Director. The Huffington Post named him as one of 200 people doing the most to promote poetry in the United States. Modiano is the winner of the 2022 Joe Hill Prize for labour poetry and is a Pushcart Prize nominee. ** The Open Road At high noon, sunlight across cement. Mountains loom ahead, Baba in the driver's seat. I look for birds swift of wing, flat shrubs huddled under baby blue skies. We read the land without GPS or maps, and Mom marks time with her hands, stretching out her arm: departure, the top of her shoulder; arrival, the thin wristband of her watch. Hours pass, summer wind against my face. Where are we on your hand? my siblings and I ask, as we inch ever closer to the wrist watch, seeking the thin sliver of the sea. Elanur Williams Elanur Williams writes from New York City, where she lives with her husband and daughter. She wrote this poem inspired by the summer road trips she took with her family in Turkey, where she lived as a child. The image reminded her of the many juxtapositions of Turkey's structurally complex terrain-- a mosaic of plateaus, valleys, mountain ranges, and gorgeous coastal regions. ** The Way-Back My brother & I rode in the way-back, filmy glass rectangle framing our view like a curtain of mountain mist. Facing each other in leatherette jump seats, so far removed from the bulk of the station wagon we might have been strangers on a train, an invisible table jostling our knees while surreal Western scenes zipped backwards. Miles of tarmac and tumbleweed vanished in the fumes of cheap gas. We had seen this take before. We never would see it again. Heat shimmying over the road like ghostly dancers doing the Frug to the roar of surf music, hundreds of miles from blue shore. A lunar late-night-movie landscape-- loyal dog barking and doomed Bogart stumbling from the rocks to give himself away. In the shadows of High Sierra, we were let loose for feeding and watering at a bleached trading post. Waiting our turns for the lone bathroom. Peering into a cracked glass case—tangle of turquoise and nickel lighters and a beached ceramic mermaid with crooked curled Red Velvet lips, removable breasts for salt and pepper. Someone gunned her down, like any outlaw. Three nicks in one tit and the deathblow drilled into the lurid pink slab holding her heart. Angele Ellis Angele Ellis's work has appeared on a theater marquee, in museums, and in over ninety publications. Her first collection of poems, Arab on Radar (Six Gallery), won a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts for its poems on her Arab American heritage. She also is author of Spared (A Main Street Rag Editor's Choice Chapbook) and Under the Kaufmann's Clock (Six Gallery), a hybrid of poetry and short fiction inspired by her adopted city of Pittsburgh. ** California Dreaming Driving Borrego Springs Road at dusk feels like a lost highway dream. A set David Lynch could have used to film where monsters of our minds are metal sculptures of extinct species, mythic birds and beasts, are irradiated insects like rust colored scorpions poised to strike puny humans, in vehicles and out, or are fire spitting dragons that traverse two lanes and loom, their terrible aspects assaultive as moonrise in the desert, as the second coming of nightmares whose unknown origins make the shadows they cast come alive. Alan Catlin Alan Catlin has three books scheduled for this year: Landscape for Exiles (Dos Madres), The Naked City, short stories (Anxiety Press) and Work Anxiety Poems (Roadside Press.) His Still Life with Apocalypse is scheduled with Shelia Na Gig press in 2026, if we live long enough to see 2026. ** Snapshot of Dreamscape As in a dream, I’m driving nowhere on a nowhere road. I’m in the wrong lane, passing a shadow who lurks at my right, chasing me, wanting some trinket or trophy, though I never see his face. As in a dream drawn by advanced AI, I could erase amber desert scrub, substitute miles of rows of corn, replace the corn with trees-- same highway, destination, wide- angle lens. As in a dream, I focus on what’s in front of me: rockface daggering sky like a tooth. It’s not the place I’m bound, my notion of paradise, just a spot that exists, as in this same exhausting dream, at a point in the future I won’t reach before an alarm awakens me with my racing heartbeat in the dark. Ace Boggess Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy. His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes, watches Criterion films, and tries to stay out of trouble. His forthcoming books include poetry collections, My Pandemic / Gratitude List from Mōtus Audāx Press and Tell Us How to Live from Fernwood Press, and his first short-story collection, Always One Mistake, from Running Wild Press. ** A la Mode Pie David Lynch drives into a sunset of off kilter horizons toward that hard to reach place around the corner from Mulholland where all the crime is squeezed from romance and every femme fatale is just an angel in disguise because nothing is ever lost and all the highways lead to some lonely diner on the outskirts of Paradise where the underbelly isn’t always reaching for the sky and the pie is always a la mode with the jukebox playing all your favourites over and over like it’s reading your mind dan smith dan smith is the author of Crooked River and The Liquid of Her Skin, the Suns of Her Eyes. Widely published, he has had poems in or at The Rhysling Anthology, Deep Cleveland Junk Mail Oracle, Dwarf Stars, Sein und Werden and Gas Station Famous. Nominated for the 2025 Pushcart Prize, dan's most recent poems have been at Five Fleas Itchy Poetry, dadakuku, Jerry Jazz Musician, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and The Ekphrastic Review. ** Deserted Here, hope never dies, in spite of all evidence. Here is the graveyard of Howard Hughes ingenuity in rows of retired warplanes, moored metal sails flashing for miles. Not for nothing is the infamous town called Tombstone, yet still they came, hell-bent for leather. Trucks and horses are traded beneath willful thunderheads and dust devils. Here are many thieves, but rarely a moth has eaten, and never has rust destroyed. Godforsaken and accursed in blistering clarity, it stills you into a lizard on a rock, and you can wonder yourself to death, not at the why of it all, but the how of it all. The land of enchantment is harsh and stony and towering in its vastness, but with the most delicate and fragile survivals scattered across it, both ephemeral and timeless at once. The light falls over it mightily, an unblinking dare to show yourself. Lizbeth Leigh Jones Lizbeth Leigh Jones holds a degree in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. Her nonfiction and short fiction have been published in Compendium, Persona, and Bainbridge Island Magazine. Her poem “Apocalyptic Us” has been published in the current issue of Cagibi. She currently lives in Atlanta where she works as a freelance writer and editor and is a member of the Broadleaf Writers Association. ** Endless Velocity Consider that behind the intimidating glare of this hundred-and-eight degrees of desert heat is an arcade of stars banking through galaxies that we can only sort in our tiny minds by our frail human standards of understanding expressed in a language with a mere twenty-six letters to shape into the size of the truths that need to be told. I have a mind that sees dust rising in the distance and wants to describe a waterfall flowing skyward, a ridge of mountains calling to the lies one wants to stop living. I am captive in the turn of these wheels rumbling this stretch of nothing-to-see-of-ease here highway. I am obliged to keep moving one uncomfortable foot in front of the other. One turn at the place where there used to be a corner, a market, a home, a recognizable country, a standard of chivalry, an ounce of expected respectable behaviour. I am compelled toward silence. I once wrote speeches and sermons and lessons to deliver. Now, I am a lowered anchor in a pit of flailing venom. Peggy Dobreer Peggy Dobreer is the founder and curator of Slow Lightning Lit, and editor-in-chief of Slow Lightning: Lit anthologies, and a few “uncommon books of poetry.” Peggy is a Los Angeles based poet, choreographer and somatic practitioner. A four-time Pushcart nominee, she is author of three published collections: Forbidden Plums, 2021, Glass Lyre Press, Drop and Dazzle, 2018 and In the Lake of Your Bones, 2012, with Moon Tide Press. ** Two Worlds Lift your eyes up to the hills hewn out of blue granite, gabbo, tonalite, and quartz. Once, the earth’s core spilled over, raining boulders, a giant toddler stacked and disarranged these blocks. Two worlds, mountain and desert, neither hospitable to those with no fur or feathers that might shield, no claws to dig a hollow in the ground. This is just a place we pass, a vista from the window. We’re drawn to towns beyond the hills. Stop and stand among the cholla and the brittlebush. At first sight, you’ll be convinced that nothing much lives in this yellow desert, below a narrow belt of cloud. But look what’s camouflaged by brush, not evident unless you stand for hours bent on capturing the slightest movement of a lizard or jackrabbit. In the cool shade of prickly pear, the cactus wren has made its nest, blue eggs like fallen bits of sky. Soon you’ll see traces of a sidewinder, eyebrows etched in sand, impressions waves make at the ocean’s edge. You’ll learn by watching what seeds and fruits are good to eat, where water lies. Take this knowledge with you when you go, but only if your life depends on it. Robbi Nester Robbi Nester is a retired college educator and author of five books of poetry, the most recent of these being About to Disappear, an ekphrastic collection of poetry to be published by Shanti Arts. She has also edited three ekphrastic anthologies. Currently, Robbi curates and hosts two poetry reading series monthly on Zoom. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Vox Populi, SWWIM, One Art, and many other places, and will appear in forthcoming anthologies, A Golden State and Keystone: Poets of Pennsylvania. Learn more at http://www.robbinester.net. ** Silence of Silence I am lost and I’m driving alone Why did I think I was lost? When did violet rain exile? Death rises like smoke Lucky sunshine opens silence, leaving awe Wind blowing frees spirits whispering unlocks hearts Nature's touch of words, stillness melts in my heart My words disappear like dust but I write poetry with my language of sand No season changes who I am, the roots of trees Mojave desert, where I can love without worrying about tomorrow No fence can stop me from blooming Time has passed so quickly And get a cup of coffee 99 miles stop, gas station, must fill gas The joshua tree remembers my teardrops My heart aches if I look back I can always turn around If I am not ready The wind runs to me in yellow shoes Who knows what is on the other side I am not sweating to cross the mountain I am not looking for belonging nor destiny I left without knowing where I’m going It must be tuesday morning It’s better to drive alone I am lost Tanya Ko Hong Tanya (Hyonhye) Ko Hong (고현혜) is an internationally published poet, translator, and cultural-curator who champions bilingual poetry and poets. She is the author of five books, including The War Still Within (KYSO Flash Press, 2019). Her poetry appears in Rattle, Beloit Poetry Journal, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly (The Feminist Press), among others. Her segmented poem, “Comfort Woman,” received an honourable mention from the Women’s National Book Association. She holds an MFA degree from Antioch University, Los Angeles. ** If I Ever Got Married, It Would Be Like This Like that highway sparse Like each word that we ground out Like that blinding sun And like those vows we took Our hate will last forever Rose Menyon Heflin Originally from rural, southern Kentucky, Rose Menyon Heflin is a poet, writer, and visual artist living in Wisconsin. Her award-winning poetry has been published over 200 times in outlets spanning five continents, and she has published memoir and flash fiction pieces. She has had a free verse poem choreographed and danced, an ekphrastic memoir piece featured in a museum art exhibit, and two haiku put into a gumball machine. Among other venues, her poetry has appeared in Deep South Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, and San Antonio Review. An OCD sufferer since childhood, she strongly prefers hugging trees instead of people. ** Snowfall Concrete rises and falls with alluvial fans dry Cahuilla washes where road does not obey human engineering whimsies. In passenger seat between her knees she arranged her winter pack, sun caught dark hair with silvern strands which last night rested against my chest. Violinist’s brown eyes peered straight through the windshield read the line of lumbrous low clouds shrouding the mountain "Those clouds aren’t going anywhere soon." Scanning ahead it hit me. We were driving into a storm we should have turned back to the Hot Springs hotel connected by the desert highway where she told me in the shower she was sexually numb – fucked . by so many fake gurus during free love she put it. I continued to drive straight. Hypnotized by the rolling road. Lolled by memories of the touch of her lips on my cock, the taste of her cunt on my tongue. "Dreams are meant to come true" she said as we embraced and though I never entered her body we shared each other’s sex through the night. Clouds boiled up to 10,000 feet by the time we reached road’s end to join a group for winter snow camp. Up the Tramway we rose as the road reduced to ribbon, disembarked in a lost land at the trail head where the two of us made angels in the snow which amused the more experienced. When the blizzard struck we bedded down on the trail shared a down sleeping bag shivered through a night so cold it froze five gallons of water stiff. The next day, we made it back to the desert floor, separated like dips along the pavement she whistled the opening bars of the Kreutzer Sonata I heard her play with a philharmonic, entranced, though she was already gone when I dropped her in La Jolla no good bye, never to see her. Marc Petrie Marc Petrie has published three collections of poems and a novel. His work has appeared in City Lights Review, Book of Matches, and the American Poetry Review, among others. Mr. Petrie teaches math and lives in Orange County, California with his wife and dog. ** An Oasis for Elders “I am dry down there,” she tells me as we drive through the Mojave. “As long as I can remember, I have been moist. Hot and eager.” She puts her hand on my thigh. I smile, then look back at the highway. keep both hands on the wheel. You never know when you are going to have to keep control. “But life rearranges your body. Sags and creaks are part of the deal,” she sighs. Then she gestures towards the desert. “But now between my legs sometimes it feels like this. Moisture keeps getting harder to find.” She shrugs, and pulls from her purse a small bag of YES® lubricant applicators. She dangles them from her fingers. “Sometimes you have to pay to play,” she whispers, then slides her other hand even higher. “How far is the oasis?" Gary S. Rosin Gary S. Rosin is a Contributing Editor of MacQueen’s Quinterly. His poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in various literary reviews and anthologies, including Chaos Dive Reunion (Mutabilis Press 2023), Cold Moon Journal, Concho River Review, contemporary haibun, Texas Poetry Calendar, The Ekphrastic Review, and The Wild Word. Two of his ekphrastic poems appear in Silent Waters, photographs by George Digalakis (Athens, 2017). He has two chapbooks, Standing Inside the Web (Bear House Publishing 1990), and Fire and Shadows (Legal Studies Forum 2008). His poems “Viewing the Dead,” and “Black Dogs,” were nominated for Pushcart Prizes. His poem “Night Winds” was nominated for “Best of the Net 2024.” ** Your Point At what point will you slant sideways into the horizon of your memory At what point will you disappear from the you and me that once was us At what point will you unhook the imagining of tomorrow lose all memory of my kiss Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith dedicates these words to those caring for loved ones with Alzheimer's, especially her sister-in-law. ** Solitary Traveler The night he died he told her he would. No, you won’t, she said, though he knew what he knew and in fact did what he said. As we drove on Interstate 40 to the funeral, surrounded by mountains, we passed twisted Joshua trees, their branches like arms upraised in prayer. She looked down at her lap and told me her deepest regret would always be that she did not hold his hand as died. I just let him go alone, she wept. And I know I was supposed to say No, you did not. But she did. She did. Cheryl Snell Cheryl Snell’s books include several poetry collections and novels. Her most recent writing has or will appear in Midway, Rogue Agent, Blue Unicorn, 100 Word Story, and the Best Microfiction 2025 anthology.
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