Photography
By Aryn Marsh

Years ago, everything was like a Polaroid snapshot.
Beautiful moments captured; the instant gratification of
printing happiness in vivid color
time and time again
expensive film running out quickly
immediately replenished,
the expense justified by the pleasure of love and beauty.
Spoiled by our spoils, time lapsed between purchases;
excuses mutually habituated for not continuing the game:
too expensive, too laborious, too monotonous.
Shelved collecting dust
while we went on to experience the world
unable to capture harmony in the same way
starving for the click and shutter
by the hand of the other, knowing the impossibility of recreating
conjoined snowflakes that have melted into cold soil.
Fighting over what had once brought us immediate joy
smashed on cold stone, wide cracks though the lens like lightning bolts.
Not willing to let go, we found ourselves in a dark room
learning to develop in a different way.
The art more refined,
the process infinitely more satisfying.

 

Aryn Marsh is the creator of www.powerembodied.com, and the owner and operator of Live Juice, a restaurant and juice bar in downtown Concord, NH. She has previously worked as a high school English teacher in Southern Connecticut. She graduated with honors in English at the University of Pennsylvania and holds a Masters Degree in English Literature from University of York in England. Her work has appeared in ​The Timberline Review. Areas of personal interest include Eastern religious ritual, and ways in which movement, sound, and language intersect.  

​

​

* * *

​

God Chair
By Katie Quinnelly

Nature is taking back the recliner, the wooden stakes
in the bottom are to be put back with the trees,
the salmon-colored upholstery is to be put back
in the river.
 
I look at the chair and it looks at me.
On the side of the road. Like I can help.
 
Its holes are filled with squirrel
gear. It’s wet from the rain.
 
I say: Listen here, lazy boy! You only manifested
from my needs. This is your destiny.
 
The recliner just sits there. A bird lands
nearby.
 
You've fulfilled your purpose, I say.
I needed a seat, I created one.
 
The chair wallows in its misery.
 
I say: Fine, I'll admit it. I knew you were praying.
No, I couldn't hear you. I don't speak
chair. But I know about your desires. Oh
to be sat on again, or to die a dead shape.
 

Katie Quinnelly is a climbing instructor living in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Her work has appeared in Fluent Magazine and Sans Merci. She regularly reads her poetry to unwilling listeners in local bars.​

 

* * *

 

Give Gram a Hug for Me
By Seth Ruderman

Give Gram a Hug For Me
is how I ended every letter to Gramps
faithfully written on the personalized stationary
he gave me for my fifth birthday
when he asked me to be his pen pal.
 
Early on those six words were written
out of habit
out of obligation 
out of a desire to take up another line on the page
and finish the letter
my Mom assured me he started waiting for
the second he dropped his note in the Floridian mailbox
destined for my home in Jersey.
 
And so it went
month after month
year after year
I learned the stories
of his time in the Army
of his days as a butcher
of my Mom (his granddaughter)
spending summer days with him by the shore
of the day he met my Gram…
his Sweetie.
 
I called Gram and Gramps
on the last night of third grade
while my bags sat in the minivan’s trunk
packed with everything needed for camp departure
and spoke to Gramps who promised to write
but not Gram
who was too tired to come to the phone again
but loved me more than I could know he told me
before talking to my mom in the hushed tones
their conversations had become.
 
When his first letter arrived in my bunk
I noticed that he ended it
with a message that Gram loved me
instead of the usual few lines
in her perfect script.
 
Under my blanket
on my top bunk
by flashlight I wrote back
and finished my letter
just to get to the most important six words on the page.
​
Seth Ruderman lives in Wayne, NJ with his wife and two children. He is a winner of the 2016 RhymeZone Poetry Prize and has had work published in Birds Piled Loosely, Gravel Lit Mag, The Bitchin' Kitsch, Lighten Up Online and other literary journals. Please visit his website here for more information.

 

* * *

 

For You I Swim
(In Memory of Richard Samore, 1952-2008)
By Bradley Samore

Staring into the river
I think of you
how you would jump right in
and I am ashamed of my fear
 
I remove my clothes and step
first onto the shallow stones
then into the icy current
the sting of ten thousand needles
 
I slow my breathing
each step deeper each breath
deeper until I am swimming
here where I was scared to go
 
and I realize you are still here
teaching me courage and
the joy of swimming in the wild
the water flowing with your presence
 

Bradley Samore currently lives in North Carolina and is a high school English teacher. In 2016, he was chosen as Beginning Teacher-of-the-Year in Palm Beach County, Florida. Bradley previously worked for the Spanish Ministry of Education as a culture and language assistant in Asturias, Spain. He has been published in Avalon Literary Review, Star 82 Review, and Words Apart.

 

* * *

 

Two Poems 
By Ann Schlotzhauer

Parade
 
A Parade of Rivers
Cascade across the forest floor
Cutting lines in the verdant ground
Ever deeper
Dripping, splashing, churning waves
They frolic amongst the trees
Expertly avoiding obstacles while creating new ones
They yearn for more space
But embark on their quest alone
A drip, a drop
A tiny bubble of water
Its own world
Bursts upon the scene
Coming from nowhere
Going everywhere
Life has begun
Travel is slow
It must sneak from A to B
Silently, haltingly
It makes its way
Greeting more and more old friends along the path
Soon there’s an army
Every revolution starts small
A thimble, a glass, a bucket
Bigger, better things
The trickle has grown
A stream to a creek
Blink and there’s a river
Rivers have a system
Order worth admiring
They work together while apart
Alone in location, they share one mind
This is telecommuting at its finest
They tread and trudge
Unstoppable til they meet
And then their power’s greater
Rushing to the sea
They’ll meet together in a grand reunion
Nothing can touch them
Nothing can slow them
These newborn, ancient drops
The sea is their religion
And their pilgrimage never ends 
 
Coming Rains
 
Here
the world threatens impotently to rain
I urge it
casting aspersions and whispering sweet encouragements
but neither seems to work
The wind that comes with the rainless storm knocks crumpled hulls of leaves from their perches
They tremble
for only a moment
before disconnecting and drifting down toward a more final destination
Thunder rumbles quietly but almost constantly
as the dry rainstorm raises more and more hope
It is only June and the earth is
scorched
and
cracking
Each once-green leaf
so recently renewed by the spring
struggles endlessly to survive
As with anything
it is the very young
and the very old
who die first
Saplings dry up
their young root systems unable to provide for them
The blights that battle the old gain footing and traction.

Lightning cracks nearby
rending the sky briefly, but violently, in two
There is the sound of shattering glass
then the impossibly low rumble that travels outward
 ripples on a pond
Another bolt follows its brother’s path
And my hopes
against my better judgment
rise further
But in the silence that follows the second, I hear birds tittering nearby
They appreciate the showmanship but see right through it,
knowing something I obviously cannot.

The sky is white then
Purely so
like a backlit sheet of paper
I can make out individual leaves against it as though set out on an examining plate.

The water that eventually comes
is aggressive in its ineffectiveness
Large drops sent down with a vengeance, perhaps to spite me
But they are
few and far between
and can leave no lasting impression
Even where the shadows of their spent lives are visible on pavement
there are so few spots as to suggest they may just be permanent stains.

 

​Ann Schlotzhauer is in her final year at the University of Tulsa, studying English, Spanish, and Psychology. She feels compelled to create and fiction and poetry are her preferred methods.
 

* * *

​

Why Me: A Modern Day Resume

by Christopher Slomiak

​ 
Because this proves to me
the true intricacy of destiny and fate
how microscopic paths, bobbing and weaving
through a vast and multicolored universe,
can intertwine at a single point,
seconds within eons,
and coalesce.
 
Because I know what it is to squeeze and grind,
to scoop snow cones for the families I didn’t have
to buy mine.
 
Because I take what I learned to save lives,
little pops and little shops, only to be
hammered by fists that ask,
“how much more?”
 
Because everyday, with a calculator in hand,
I click through, page after page,
to sweat for a future of my own.
A place, cozy and personal,
without greed, without crime.
Somewhere away from the noise,
away from the city-cages
where green isn’t the same green
from a cedar or a pine.
 
Because this is my dream
To offer peace and warmth as experience.
To introduce someone new to what I do.
 
Because after meeting the person that holds my hand,
it’s the second time I’ve felt the words:
“Meant to be.”
 
So,
how can you not pick me?

 

After graduating from Boston University with a degree in English Education, Christopher Slomiak became a full-time hotelier by day and aspiring writer by night. Although he has never published a poem before this, his first short story, “Untouchable” was published in Heart & Mind Zine and was given the Judge's Choice Award for the issue.

​

* * *

​

Looking Back
By Stephen Ullom

​Wild dreams of primeval forests, draped
with long green vines and dappled with ancient sun spots,
run through with compacted dirt (that is older than dirt)
are paths that wind from the mind over ancient steppes.
 
My steps.
 
It’s the roots we stumble over, not looking down,
but looking ahead, or to the side in response to some crack
of stick, or thud from something dropping to the floor.
It could have been a branch somewhere to the side, perhaps.
Moving, walking, searching but never finding the heart of the forest
where the spring babbles forth before it forms the creek.
 
When the last stand is cut, the paths will lead nowhere,
and we will be bricked up, in an odd sense, like Amontillado,
in the city.

​

Steve Ullom lives, works, and writes in a small Midwestern city, accompanied by his family and two dogs. His works have appeared in Quail Bell Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Scribd, and the anthology Colours of Refuge.

 

* * *

​

While Eating an Apple

by Elizabeth Kirkpatrick Vrenlos


I envy all the men who lie
in their shaded hammocks, guiltless,
listening to the leaves recite poetry.
 
They are the laureled ones
who discover sonnets, gravity, geometry,
lightning rods, microwaves.
 
And Mrs. Plato - where was she, 
bending over the washtub
beating his undergarments with stones? 
 
Was Mrs. Edison's stew praised?
Was she thanked for the endless
wicks she trimmed to keep the candles lit?
 
Did it matter that Mrs. Freud
made the bed carefully each day
and kept the kitchen floor clean? 
 
Was there no guilt in Newton's mind,
perhaps a hidden equation of inequality
that didn't add up?
 
Who smoothed the wrinkles of Newton's robe
in the evening
after he sat all day before the crowds
 
proving the existence of God,
meting out theories
that fell from his lips like apples? 

Elizabeth's poetry has been featured in Clementine, Kentucky Review, Scissors and Spackle, and in issues of Poeming Pidgeon, Stories of Music and The Edison Review. Her prize winning chapbook, Special Delivery, was published by Yellow Chair Press in 2016. A Professor Emerita from American University, she has been a singing artist across Europe and the United States.

 

* * *

​

The Clean Up
By Bhikshuni Weisbrot

​Books, paper plates and utensils, 
crayons and counterpart drawings, 
hair dryer, brushes, doodads and curlers, 
a banana peel carelessly jettied to the headboard. All 
this and more my lifestyle, 
all this and more in my bed.

At times my mother threatened,
then took to the stairs as if chaos had an aroma,
abandoning herself like a Sufi in ecstatic dance, 
our howls of protest unheeded
as she dumped dresser drawers into the derangement’s core.

In the aftermath we waited,
surfaced when she, the eye and
the storm had moved on, 
our room a miracle of survival 
where everything is uprooted but one small tree
and the cat alive on the branch.
Like rescue workers first at the site of disaster, we
were there to rebuild. 

Bhikshuni Weisbrot is President of the United Nations SRC Society of Writers, a U.N. based organization of writers, poets, journalists, diplomats and supporters of the written arts. She is a co-editor of Happiness The Delight-Tree, An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry (2015), and the author of A Sense of Place.
 

​

​