The Boxers

I’m sorry for punching a hole
in your head. I only meant to break
your nose, crumple it like a candy bar
wrapper on the street under foot traffic
and now I’ve taken out the part of your brain
responsible for speech, maybe even forgiveness.
But you got your licks in and here we are
fist-deep in one another and neither willing
to move, and I understand the intimacy
of that phrase fist-deep, which seems so coarse
and vulgar, but if I knew a better alternative
then you’ve throttled it out of me.
Maybe if we stand here then from the side
we’ll look like game show assistants
revealing a brand-new car or the secret
of living with holes in our chests
and how to go from a young man
angry at his shadow and throwing punches
at the air to something more steel,
something more solid, and I don’t know
if you complete me or only staunch
the bleeding, so intertwined that
maybe if we move again, we’ll die.

Andrew Christoforakis

Andrew Christoforakis studied economics at the University of Chicago before making a hard left turn toward writing poetry. He lives in Naperville, IL along with his misbehaved cat, and works a day job when he isn't writing.

The Girl with Her Face in Her Hand at the Luncheon of the Boating Party 
 
I was on the patio wearing the ochre and sienna 
as promised; you insisted on staying boys 
 
with those hats. By then there were places 
I’d lived inside so long, they’d textured me – 

you were one of them. The awning tripped 
in the wind. Everyone was talking at once. 
 
Hoots rose up from the shore. 
You predicted yourselves into the future – 

control looked so casual on you. 
Someone feigned rapture to stir a laugh.
 
There was no one we could not be together. 
Even the terrier was complicit. 
 
Nicole Burdick 
​
Nicole Burdick is a Language Arts educator living in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam where ants now make their way into her poems more often. Despite the fact that people bless her for doing it, facilitating a thinking-is-fun environment about literature for teenagers is actually a dream job. She also paints abstract stories, collages broken tile, and cooks like she is from everywhere. Her poems can be found in Fence and elsewhere.

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​Musings under the Orb of Night

Every day we should take a little trip
to the Caribbean or the patchwork hills
of Ireland—or to the rugged Pacific coast
with its rainforest of Douglas fir—just
to get away for a while inside our minds.
A little visit embellished by imaginings
 
of actually being there. Let’s pick a spot
never stepped upon before and search
for blooming native wildflowers, the ancient
 
beasts drawn on centuries-old explorer maps,
or that place’s singular hue of sunset.
You know it’s out there, different enough,
 
and even more so when it’s craved.
Budge, stir, yield, advance, then whirl
and circle if we must, but we must,
 
inching forward to undertake what’s new.
I’ll bring the checkered tablecloth.
You bring smoked kippers and a stinky
 
cheese neither of us has ever eaten.
Put on your kilt. I’ll wear a kimono,
and the tempo of the music will be swing.
 

​On an Armless Bench as Yellow as Ukraine’s Sunflower 

He squeezes his concertina and plays
for the sake of hidden crickets still
rubbing their crooked legs in the dark.
 
His craggy dog bellows to the full moon
blowing its jackal sorrows into the empty
blue of cosmic circling and poetic cold.
 
Look to the eyes—the hypnotic non-blink.
They stare past chilled passersby
strolling through their own midnights.
 
The city gate is broken. It keeps nothing
in or out. Not the red thread of snake.
Not its wriggling. Not the melancholy music
 
drifting, unsung beneath a leafless tree.
His head folds over like a dead man’s,
shoelaces untied—glissando unable to run.
 
D. Walsh Gilbert
​
Dual citizen of the United States and Ireland, D. Walsh Gilbert lives in Farmington, Connecticut on a former sheep farm at the foot of Talcott Mountain near the watershed of the Farmington River, previously the homelands of the Tunxis and Sukiaugk peoples. Her poetry collections include Ransom, imagine the small bones, and Finches in Kilmainham (all, Grayson Books), Once the Earth had Two Moons (Cerasus Poetry), [M]AR[Y] (Kelsay Books), Deirdre (Impspired), and Bleat & Prattle (Clare Songbirds Publishing House). She serves on the board of the Riverwood Poetry Series and as co-editor of the Connecticut River Review.

Why Caravaggio Painted Version II of Conversion on the Road to Damascus
 
When this was painted, everyone knew the story, Saul’s before
              and after, whereas I had to look it up, but how puzzled they must have been--
 
the old familiar angels are gone, and the odd ribbons
              of heavenly light, all the shorthand for telling stories
 
to the illiterati. Instead, we get that muscled horse
              that dominates the scene. Is he there to show us how small we are,
 
or what? So first, Saul before: a man who doesn’t like leaving people
              to their own gods—though his God must leave him
 
bare corners that he senses at night—a canting man who doesn’t mind a squabble,
              as long as he has a weapon in his hand.
 
But now, look at the state of him: he’s flung off his horse,
              landed, all at odd angles, quiet for once,
 
and even the damn horse knows he needs the light. But really, 
              so foreshortened and cramped, how will he ever get up?
 
He’s warding off, but also reaching out, and would take the hand
              of his somehow pitying servant, or the hand of some new god,
 
if it would help him get out from under that heavy right hoof, 
              right his senses in that over-bright space. It’s one thing to be chosen
 
but another to be so overcome by light, new voices, feel your parts
              are not in their right places. He will though, after the light has gone,
 
get ungracefully up, thinking, this is grace—and become Saul, after: another tangled man
              to make another tangled world, maybe too far from where he began,
 
but now with a sure belief, as sure as the one that came before, to insist
              on another new way, to begin, and to interpret the meaning 
 
at the end, thinking it will be possible to lie in a heap again on that ground, possible
             to re-capture his time in the light, that, for a moment, lit his dark corners up.
 
Em Guillaine
 
Em Guillaine believes poetry creates another time and place, using a savage alchemy that transmutes language and meaning until only self and not-self remain. When not writing poems, you’ll probably find her at work on her bonsai or rereading Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion. She lives in San Francisco amid the rough grandeur of the Pacific coastline. 
 
​

​View of Delphi with a Procession
​
The stars are lanterns this evening, excess 
is everywhere. It is the nature of the universe 
to expand, olam, world without end, forever 
and ever. Millions of choices; how many 
will ever lead to greatness? We walked the Sacred Way 
to Delphi this morning, the road steep and ill-defined, 
the views stunning. A civilization was found there, 
buried under centuries of landslides, a mountain temple 
where kings, philosophers and families once trekked, 
carrying questions for the oracle. We carried excess light 
to the temple, fearful of coming darkness, and the oracle 
told us to leave it, showing us our true size. 
In this evening’s excess of silence, the oracle’s directives 
hang in the still-darkening sky, difficult to ignore: 
The art of living is knowing what to leave. 
The only way to greatness is to become smaller.

James Lilliefors

James Lilliefors is a poet, journalist, and novelist, whose writing has appeared in various publications ranging from Ploughshares to the Washington Post to Runner's World. His first collection of poetry,  Sudden Shadows, will be published in 2025 by Finishing Line Press. 

Mujer saliendo del psicoanalista  (Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst)
 
Must you wear it, the cloak
that chokes your throat
and muffles your mouth?
Hemmed with lead,
it chafes what it hides
and trips your steps.
 
I too have worn that cloak.
What will melt your dark
wool wrap? Green as herbs
steeped in stagnant water, a drape
falls, revealing your second face
between folds that point
to the smoldering sky.
 
Linda Scheller

Linda Scheller is a retired California Central Valley educator with two published books of poetry, Fierce Light and Wind & Children. Her writing appears widely in publications including Slipstream, Colorado Review, and RockPaperPoem. Ms. Scheller serves as vice president of Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center and programs for KCBP Community Radio. Her website is lindascheller.com.

Tanka

a blood-stained linen
of aurora unfurls
in the summer sky
the locked memories
of a war-torn childhood
 
Judit Hollos

Judit Hollos is an emerging playwright, poet, essayist and journalist. Some of her short stories, poems, translations and articles have been featured in English and Swedish in literary magazines, periodicals and anthologies. She is the author of two chapbook collections of Japanese-style poetry and short prose. Her monologues and short plays were produced and received staged readings at theatres and festivals in Glasgow, San Francisco, London, Leicester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Kyiv.

​Booklover in a Mango Dress
                
Shy in life, she is intrepid as a reader. She is not troubled 
by foreign words or difficult themes, time travel 
 
or conflicting passions. A seeker of solitude 
far from the madding crowd, a new expression 
 
she has adopted after reading a book from England.
She is wearing sunlight in her hair, and a face full of serenity. 
 
Perhaps the book is Gone with the Wind,
or a Tale of Two Cities.  She might be chasing
 
a white rabbit through Wonderland, 
or rafting down the Mississippi River.
 
Wherever in the world of literature she is, she is content.
Sometimes a stunning sentence will stop her;
 
she must live with it a while before she can read on.
She collects quotations, keeps them in a Chinese
 
lacquered jewelry box: random slips of paper, divine
or witty quotations about books, readers, authors.
 
She has enough bookmarks to count as a collection, 
her favorites: a bright woven strip of cloth from Turkey, 
 
and a fragrant one of sandalwood.
Her memory is an encyclopedia of characters,
 
their generosity and their flaws, recklessness 
and fidelity, the tides and swirls of fate.
 
Does Winslow portray this pale bookworm in muted 
colors? On the contrary! Her hair is a red-gold halo,
 
and the color of her dress, delicious.
Let’s consider a new title for this painting:

Bookworm in Tangerine Marmalade 
Future Poet Dressed in Papaya
Blue-stocking in Marigold
 
Besides the gorgeous colour, there are details
on her dress easily overlooked, a black collar
 
and cuffs, and all those black buttons. 
If this were a mystery they would matter,
 
details that would lead us to the bird named  
Baltimore Oriole—orange and black, precise and tidy.
 
But there is no mystery here, except to the people who believe 
that ‘reading for pleasure’ is a contradiction in terms.
 
She has memorized The Lady of Shallot
in a kind of ecstasy, but recited it to no one,
 
at least not yet. She does not want a Lancelot,
a Heathcliff, or a young Prince Hal.
 
If she falls in love in waking life, it will be 
with a boy who also loves books,
 
and she will read aloud to him in green meadows, 
and in the shade of lemon-scented eucalyptus trees.
 
He too will enjoy the clean green fragrance 
of summer grass and Sweet Alyssum.
 
They will pause to enjoy the interruptions 
of ladybugs and the song of meadowlarks. 
 
They will read books aloud together every day, 
even when they are old,
 
cultivating a sensitivity to enchantment,
and the habit of surrender.

Nancee Cline
 
Nancee Cline is a lifetime lover of the written word. She holds a master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Humanities, with a specialty in literature.  She has tutored and taught most of her life, both in California and Hawaii. Today Cline lives with her husband near Kona on the Big Island (the one with the active volcano).  When not reading or writing, she dances hula, bakes peasant bread, and gardens her half acre of wild green.

Or Don’t You Ever Offer Yourself As A Main Course?
  
Wrapped in your finest muslins, long curls loose, you sit by the table set for two, decorated with the utmost care, the same care it took to apply blush and eye shadow. The wind blows rusty leaves through the open door, teases the flame of the flickering candle, its life half spent. The cat has been in and out, tirelessly chasing the leaves littering the hardwood floor. You think of the odds of writing a story in which he’d grow tall, take a seat, share your candlelight dinner.
 
Eyes wide open you stare at the flame, the only source of light, it seems to rise, stretch, and remain still at the same time, casting a golden glow over your dreams, dancing shadows all over the walls. Behind you, a hand emerges from the heavy folds of the wavering drapes, a hand, a replica of yours, reaches out, holds on firmly to your wrist. Fingertips burn your skin, warn you of the times you’ve waited in vain, wearing his favorite perfume. You hear your mother’s voice deafened by the distance, crossing that liminal space that fades away day by day.

Hedy Habra

This was first published by Gargoyle. It also appeared in Hedy Habra's award-winning book, Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53 2023).

Hedy Habra's latest poetry collection, Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? won the 2024 International Poetry Book Award and was a Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award and The USA Best Book Awards. The Taste of the Earth, won the Silver Nautilus Book Award and Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Book Award; Tea in Heliopolis won the Best Poetry Book Award and Under Brushstrokes was a finalist for the International Poetry Book Award. Her story collection, Flying Carpets, won the Arab American Book Award’s Honorable Mention and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. Her book of criticism is Mundos alternos y artísticos en Vargas Llosa, She is a twenty one-time-nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. https://www.hedyhabra.com/