​Class Clown
 
Back when life was butt-dull, class clown was the only label to name his antics. 
As thwarter-in-chief dispensing hokey-jokey verbal volleys from the back seat, 
he’d have us peeing in our pants. As he penciled the same cartoon figure, 
hand forever in motion; fodder for colorful comments was not limited to burps, 
belches, farts. Even stoic-faced Hardiman might smirk the odd backhand: 
“Fitz, if you learn to bottle that, you’ll be a rich man!” 
 
Once, a tad competitive for laughs, our principal, nick-named Joe Moon, 
dusty chalk imprinted all over his soutane, foot-in-mouth lobbed, 
“Pythagoras had a lovely theorem. Lads, you’ll like this one. With me, Fitz?” 
“Yes, Brother!” 
“The squaw (square) on the hippopotamus (hypotenuse) is equal to the sum 
of the squaws (squares) on the other two sides!”
 
And before all of us, Fitz sprouted sideburns. His baritone voice powered 
beyond comedic one-liners. Last I heard, he’d learned Japanese and was working 
for a car manufacturer, overseas.

Philip Byrne

​Philip Byrne, a Dubliner, is a retired teacher living in Westchester, New York. He was a poetry editor for Inkwell Magazine during the aughts. He enjoys identifying birdsong on Merlin, marvels at spiders catching spotted lanternflies, and watches too much soccer. In poems about love, loss, and the quotidian, he often finds sustenance, humour and perspective.   

​On the Cusp of Tomorrow

Bright, colourful leaves
dry and rigid with age
cling tightly to
what they know.

Change is coming as
cold sets in, prying
ideals away from
beliefs formerly held firm.

Denial is defiance,
fighting against the
turning of the season,
with similar results.

Water swirls and flows
Between rocks and 
Crevices, gushing along
unbowed.

Branches of faith
will be laid bare,
stripped of ornament
and artifice.

A final moment of peace,
sun warming the air
and sparkling back from
the ebullient waters.

One leaf falls, then another,
floating down to the
rushing river of change, 
transformed.

Brydon Caldwell

Brydon is a long time teacher and emerging writer from the western edge of the Canadian Shield. He has always had a fascination with both the Group of Seven and the power of the written word. His poetry can be found in the Ekphrastic Review Challenge and The Fib Review.

Poems Pretty as a Picture, 
a Conversation Between Psalm 23 and Tanner

The poem I need is the chiaroscuro
of something dirgey, perhaps a lament
 
or an elegy. More Carravaggio than Fragonard 
of frothy French landscape. Goya is great
 
in a museum, but wears badly over the sofa. 
Give me H.O. Tanner’s Good Shepherd
 
on a blue hillside lurking in moon’s shadows
with watchful eyes for wolves. Why did the psalmist
 
add after the syrupy twenty-third, a few poems later
something about dashing enemies’ babes on stones
 
a scandal even then, I hope? If that shepherd’s rest 
was a remembered longing, it surely 
 
became a pastoral in his palace of sleepless intrigue.
So give me no songs of pain or cries 
 
for justice not possible here. Pain breaks 
its promise by midnight, and weeds of injustice sow 
 
more seeds of despair. Anger, too, is passing relief,
the hungry soul feeding on itself. I choose

the taste of honeycomb, chewed into a ball,
dawn’s lone cloud reflecting the sun’s colors
 
like Rubens. Its bubblegum sweetness 
on my tongue exactly sentimental enough
 
to live through another day, longing again 
for night’s peace, dark hope the only poem I seek. ​

Scott LaMascus
​
Scott LaMascus is a writer in Oklahoma City and his MFA is from Antioch University in Los Angeles. His 2025 poetry chapbook, The Edited Tongue, concerns ALS or Lou Gerhig's disease, following the diagnosis and death of his father. The poems have been selected by medical-humanities journals in the UK, US and Canada and used by a top-5 hospital system in the US as part of ALS Awareness month. His debut poetry collection, Let Other Hounds, breaks silence fifty years after boyhood sexual abuse and is forthcoming in May 2026, from Fernwood Press, Newberg, Ore.

Sonnet for Unsaid Things

for now, again, I’ve made peace with my god
smooth sailing, cold lip, beside the low-sky
window. my skin, glass lions make. pride, trod

lucky. midnite blue, sudden blue. young, I
took the lives of bugs, took one breath-fat sip,
took another. inkspot, snow. our fathers

left us leaning over great, bonsai’d rifts
of unclaimed sins. in every behavior,
if memory serves, is a prayer. young, we

looked the other way, wrote lemmas in crayon.
here we are again - healing, measuring
up, tangled up in liturgy. again, 

berry red, zeta zeros, lamping. fine
again, clouding… on that critical line.

Elliott Schwebach

Ben Tellie is an abstract artist, educator, consultant, and scholar whose artwork investigates inner emotional states and socially traumatic histories and topics. He teaches visual art high school electives at Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, MD. He recently obtained his Ed.D. at The George Washington University.

Elliott Schwebach is a writer, educator, and friend. From Baltimore to Albuquerque to Tacoma to Fort Collins to Wenzhou, he has moved around a lot these last few years. He adores good espresso, kava and 12/8 ballads, and his friends call him “crocodile.”

We Are Shaped to Hold

​A lump of clay rests on the wheel,
steady, silent, unformed.
The turns of the motor begin,
a low hum that sets the body’s pace.
Composed hands slick with cool water,
anchoring the clay to its center.
Push too hard, and it collapses.
Too soft, and it drifts off balance.
There is an exchange here:
the hand shaping,
the clay resisting,
both adjusting.
Slowly, walls rise where there was only a mass.
The vessel remembers each touch,
a record of pressure and release.
Held steady by confident, caring hands,
we are pressed gently, yet firmly, finding balance.
We find our shape in them.
 
Now the form has weight and shape,
yearning to be finished.
The wheel turns again, slower.
Metal meets the clay’s skin,
deliberately revealing the base,
giving the vessel a place to stand.
Thin curls fall to the floor,
spirals of what the pot no longer needs.
This is subtraction as creation:
we keep what is necessary,
release what is not,
and in letting go of the excess,
uncover our true self.
To reveal strength.
To let the form breathe.
 
Later, when the clay is dry,
it waits for its final skin.
The potter dips, brushes, pours-
liquid glass covering fragile walls.
The glaze looks dull, like dust,
a muted promise of colour.
But in the kiln, fire transforms it.
Heat moves through the minerals,
unlocking colour from stone and ash.
Iron drifts into rust-red,
cobalt awakens into deep blue,
ash unravels into flowing rivers of green.
The vessel becomes more
than the sleeping earth it once was:
It holds the memory of touch,
the mark of fire,
the long pause of cooling.
We too are a muted promise
until the fire finds us. 
Such is the heat
revealing the colours inside.
 
The pot is lifted from the kiln,
warm, solid, awake in the hands.
A piece of earth, reshaped.
A record of labour, of mistakes, of patience
meant to hold water,
or flowers,
or air.
We are shaped to hold:
holding burdens, 
holding joy,
holding lessons learned;
we are forever emerging.

Sidh Jaddu

Sidh Jaddu is a rising high school senior in Virginia whose primary focus is ceramics. Working on the pottery wheel and through hand-built alteration, he explores how clay responds to pressure and heat. He is drawn to both the science of how clay behaves and the meaning a form can carry, using his work to open dialogue rather than provide answers. His ceramic pieces have been recognized nationally, including exhibition at NCECA and honours from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. He occasionally writes poetry as an extension of his pottery, reflecting on similar ideas of transformation.

​
Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Consider Leaving Hallelujah Land

Heaven is gray with fluffy clouds above their heads, rising forever and ever. Only the razor-sharp needles of the trees may reach up from the ground to touch it. The horizon holds surveillance from the other side of the camp, peering over the sea. The Wilsons bow their heads over their work, satisfied. Lizziegirl waters the garden, hoping for beans. Jojo prepares his sinker and bait, happy with his long rod. 

Every morning at 9:30, steady as steady can be, Jojo says: “I can’t believe the hoopla them folks made about that whatchamacallit supposed to blow us all over.” That’s when Lizziegirl sets her watch, saying: “Yep. Tryin’ to sell us their old Arma-Geddin. More like a car parade, just with no hot dogs for sale.” Then he says, “Yyyyep . . . ” and sucks his tongue along his teeth. 

And so all the talking for the day is finished. 

In the evening, Birdie in the Cage chirps to Birdie in the Garden. Lizzie and Jojo record every trill carefully in their steno books. After dinner they strike a match, light their little lamp, and compare what they heard. They're no fools, they know it's important to keep up with the news. 

Then Jojo comes to find himself unsettled. In the afternoons, he's taken to asking, “Lizziegirl, you hear that sorta whirring noise?” But she’ll only say, “Jojo, you slept wrong, that’s all.” And she’ll keep watering the ground gone bare, collecting dead needles from the trees. “I tell you my Lizzie, this place don’t feel right no more. Better be gettin’ gone from here soon, I think.” For a long time before the very end, all Lizziegirl will say is, “Now hold on there, Jojo. Let’s see what Garden Birdie says, now that Cage Birdie’s up and gone.”

Kalliopy Paleos

Kalliopy Paleos studied contemporary American poetry at SUNY Brockport. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize as well as Best Microfiction for 2026 and completed her third full-length novel translation from Greek. Poetry and prose publications include 10 by 10 Flash Fiction, ERGON Magazine for Greek-American Arts and Letters, and Flash Boulevard. She is currently trying to improve her cooking, but it’s not going well. Her favourite place for time travel is the 18th century.

Self-Portrait in Blue
 
I watch with amazement how blue dusk
transforms what exists by day
into its own language.
 
At dusk, sunlight shadows
take on their own life,
cloak of tree branches
cast mysterious shapes.
 
Scrambling to see before darkness
overtakes, I try to name
the children in the distance:
angels, dancers?
 
A thousand guesses,
racing against time
against the gathering dark.
 
The pools of blue darkness become
deeper until they disappear.
 
I am most myself 
when I vanish.
​
​Lynne Kemen

​Lynne Kemen lives in Upstate New York. Her full-length book of poetry, Shoes for Lucy, was published by the SCE Press in 2023. Her chapbook, More Than a Handful was published in 2020. Her work is anthologized in Seeing Things (2020) and What We See on Our Journeys (2021), The Memory Palace: an ekphrastic anthology (2024), and Seeing Things, 2 (2024). Lynne is the President of the Board of Bright Hill Press. She is also an editor for the Blue Mountain Review and a lifetime member of The Southern Collective Experience; she is a board member of The Southern Collective Community Outreach and of The Franklin Free Library.

​Jacksonpollocking

She’s orange drive electron with a praying mantis rhythm
Karate’s firethrow in voracious hitchhike gasp
While bats spread wings with Stravinsky sonar.

It’s free jazz meets the dojo 
White polka dots hang lunar
With a dizzy flatness bang. 

Taste the pizzazz grumble of a late night tiger
Exploding kicks with trapeze manic sighs: 
Red is a verb. Chair is a verb. Everyth-ing’s a verb. 

Orli Cotel 

Orli Cotel is a writer and painter who lives in California with her family. Her writing has appeared in Lilith Magazine, Sierra Magazine, CNN.com, and more. Her watercolours have been exhibited in juried group shows with the California Watercolor Association and the Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society.

Monsters of Somnolence

And so I sleep. The monsters come at night: serpents slip out from silk sheets, piling onto the floor and slithering up the posts of my bed; spiders burst from the webbed corners of my room, scuttling across the weathered wooden floor; owls observe from the oak trees looming outside my window, casting long shadows. In these darker places there is no light: laughter becomes brittle cries, love turns to lust for the lost calm and quiet of the night. 

And so I sleep. Yet my dreams are plagued with spiraling despair, and tortured memories of times long since passed. Things that can never be undone, nor forgotten. Shut eyes merely keep me blind to that which gathers and swells in swirls of darkness around me. My ignorance banishes nothing but my peace. I am suffocating in a prison of my own making. Trapped in a restless, unending trance of ephialtes.

And so I sleep. The snakes wind around my ankles, while spiders spin their spools of silk into my hair and over my mouth. The owls, the wisest of us beasts, have flown away: iron talons loosen on the dry branches, the wood crackling as wide wings unfurl and take flight under the gaze of a pale and crooked moon. A single spotted feather drifts down from the midnight sky to rest on the window’s ledge. The breeze rhythmically taps at the frosted glass, seeking entry. 

And so I sleep. I wince as fangs sink into flesh, and hundreds of tiny clawed feet scratch stinging skin. Suddenly, broken from my trance, I lurch upright into the crescent’s golden embrace. I scoop up the spiders in my hair, and watch them pool and spill over my palms. A flood of tiny obsidian specks scatter into the shadows, shimmering stars illuminating the dark. I wrangle the serpents in my fists and squeeze. Their slimy, slick bodies writhe in my grip, pink tongues thrashing at my knuckles, as they melt into bubbling chartreuse puddles. My now open eyes scan the silence. Fluttering wings whistle away the wind, and the yellow-eyed owl returns to its perch.

Katharine Lennon ​

Katharine Lennon ​ is a writer studying literature, philosophy, and classics. Her work draws on visual art, myth, and personal experience, with attention to symbolism, image, and atmosphere. She is especially drawn to ekphrasis as a space where image and language meet. Inspired equally by the visual and historical context of paintings and sculptures in museums, as well as the cycles of the natural world and social relationships, she writes with attention to what she sees, remembers, and feels.