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Category: Issue 4 Poetry

Don’t Fall in Love in a Physics Classroom

There are books thrown across the floor
and empty bottles at the foot of the bed
and clothes falling off of hangers
and it’s not because I’m lazy... it’s just
in science class we learned about entropy:
a clean room is more likely to become messier
than a messy room
so I’m just saving the universe some trouble.
If I start off loving you with a broken heart,
it’s nothing personal
it’s just efficient.
Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation states
that any two bodies in the universe attract each other
(so it’s no mystery how we got here).
Of course, what goes up must come down
(so it’s no mystery where we’re going).
I can’t save myself
but I can save myself some time.

Leeor Margalit

Leeor Margalit is a 23 year old Yemenite/Ashkenazi woman from southern California currently living in Israel. Her work has recently appeared in The Sutterville Review, As You Were: The Military Review, The Thing Itself, and Rigorous Magazine, among other publications. You can find her work on Instagram @leeormargalitpoems

Center Square Oblivion

We sat on your brown couch which used to be my brown couch in your fifth-floor apartment
overlooking the park which used to be my fifth-floor apartment overlooking the park. You
poured a torrent of Chardonnay and shook your bland Brad Pitt dirty blonde hair. The Park
lamps, which were supposed to look like wrought iron gaslights, washed circles of dog tracks
and boot prints in the blue snow. It was the beginning of a new year, but it was as if every living
thing had disappeared. You lied about your middle name, the color of your socks, and what you
had been doing on Lake Avenue the previous afternoon. The next day, as soon as it was dark,
you would be a gaunt tree beneath my window, and I would be looking down.

Ellen White Rook

Ellen White Rook is a poet, writer, and teacher of contemplative arts residing in upstate New York and southern Maine. She offers workshops on ikebana, Japanese flower arranging, and leads Sit, Walk, Write retreats that merge meditation, movement, and writing. Ellen is a recent graduate from the Master of Fine Arts program at Lindenwood University. Her work has been published in Montana Mouthful, New Verse News, Red Rock Review, and Trolley Literary Journal. In 2021, two of her poems were nominated for Pushcart Prize.

Ceviche and Bachelor’s Buttons

Dipping your toes
into foamy surf
your lips into salty ice

a satisfied
sandpiper
skipping along
the Atlantic Basin

Love unrequited
an apogee

The push and pull
of continental
shards

Pecking order
of the gods
Who nod out
while watching
our Truman shows

And miss
the good parts

Richard Peabody

Peabody is perhaps best known as one of the founding editors for Gargoyle Magazine, which he largely funded with his own income. He is also editor for the anthology series Mondo and runs a small press called Paycock Press. Paycock Press was originally established in 1976 to publish Gargoyle Magazine, but it also has released a number of anthologies and works by individual authors.

Peabody's own fiction and poetry is often set in Washington, D.C. and the surrounding region. It is often noted for strong influences from the Beat Generation and experimental authors of the 1960s like Ken Kesey.

During his writing and publishing career, Peabody has taught fiction writing for the University of Maryland, University of Virginia, Johns Hopkins University, and the Writer's Center. In addition, Peabody has taught creative writing courses and workshops at St. John's College, Writer's Center, Georgetown University, and University of Maryland.

How Was Your Day?

All I hear are low notes and misery.
Tell me instead of boats and clouds
of speed and sex and dreams and bad ideas.
Tell me without the clutter. Be impersonal.
Shocking. Off-kilter. Abduct me with a dangerous tale.
Tell me you like the way I hold my drink.
Touch my hand. Whisper something stirring.
Make me nervous. Be my stranger.
Just for tonight.

Pasquale Trozzolo

Pasquale Trozzolo is founder of one of the leading advertising and public relations firms in the Midwest. He also spent time as a racecar driver and grad school professor. Now with too much time on his hands, he continues to complicate his life by living out as many retirement clichés as possible. His poems have appeared in numerous journals including Sunspot Literary Journal, The Pangolin Review, What Rough Beast, 34th Parallel, From Whispers to Roars, The Dewdrop, Wingless Dreamer, Last Leaves and Tiny Seed Journal. The Poetry Box Press published his debut chapbook Before the Distance in December of 2020. He lives in Kansas with his wife, Joan. Follow him on Facebook @poetpasquale.

A Goodbye

Last night, I dreamt I kissed you on the cheek, and you cried.
As I waited for the bus later in the morning,
I saw a little boy wave goodbye to the sea.

Peter J. Houle

Peter J. Houle, MA is an 80s kid from Vermont, and has traveled a lot. He liked how Portuguese sounds and how Lisbon looks, so he unpacked his backpack there six years ago and even started planting seeds. Poems of his have appeared in Sandstorm Journal, In Parentheses, and in the Wingless Dreamer anthology The Book of Black. You can find him at the flea market selling things he finds on the street or makes himself. He likes cats, obviously

Credits for a Film about Missing People

Anya Trofimova

Anya Trofimova is a young poet from London, England. Her work has appeared in Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, Fly on the Wall Press and Chautauqua Literary Journal, among others, and has been recognised by the Erbacce Prize and FOYLE Young Poets of the Year Award.

Dow

Dusty sills of half-peeled fruit.
Phonebooks stir in subway draughts.
Paintings fade, the wall’s soft rippling.
A blanker page of acres turns.
What home’s rapport of flesh and glass
could last through such an acid age?
In the night street’s rich ellipsis,
your window darkens, one more dot.

Thomas Sorensen

Thomas Sorensen is currently enjoying a short interval between his Ph.D. and postdoctoral fellowship, both in English literature. His poetry is forthcoming or has previously appeared in Variant Lit, Concision, Angel Rust, filling Station, and The Dalhousie Review, among other venues.

Sibling

Open the moon: the ocean
is a yolk breaking
invisible in the grooves
of your hair. My fingers
trickle down your spine.
This is as close
as I can get
to telling you
I am still listening
for your next breath.

Cassady O’Reilly-Hahn

Cassady O’Reilly-Hahn is a poet with an MA from Claremont Graduate University. He is a
managing editor for Foothill: A Poetry Journal that highlights graduate student voices. He works for
AudioEyes, a company that describes TV and film for blind viewers. In his free time, Cassady writes
Haiku for his personal blog, orhawrites and his Instagram @cassady_orha. Cassady currently resides in
Claremont, California, where he can be found flipping through fantasy novels in a cozy recliner on the
weekends.

Unreliable

Maybe the poet killed someone and buried them on a night so dark she can’t find the spot, just

memories of stone on stone. Even the spade disappears in her driftwood hands, in the broken

laths, in the crumbling foundation cramped with rampant daffodils.

Maybe she killed the poet and swallowed shreds of yeast and tears. Maybe she was a whale of

oil-lit caverns, a palace for suffering biblical satisfaction. Maybe she birthed an orchard of

discarded cores.

The poet wrote letters on a scrap of paper, made a note with her phone, took a pen to her arm,

bought a shirt for a reading, then didn’t wear it.

The poet owns her well. She never tests for pH or E. coli. She drinks the water anyway. The

bucket is wood, the rope hemp, the handle, hand-hewn cuneiform.

Moss grows along the sides of the well. The water carries that smell of forest skin: soft,

discarded, green.

The poet is a broken nose in a fight that has never begun. The poet is a bloody nose. The poet is

no nose. The poet is running.

Running in jeans with artful slashes at the thigh, with knees torn out, and unmatched socks.

She swallows a fraternity of rain, bone drops in the ribs of dream.

She swallows a cat, the night, a nightingale, a thrush, a hummingbird.

The poet swallows them whole.

Ellen White Rook

Ellen White Rook is a poet, writer, and teacher of contemplative arts residing in upstate New York and southern Maine. She offers workshops on ikebana, Japanese flower arranging, and leads Sit, Walk, Write retreats that merge meditation, movement, and writing. Ellen is a recent graduate from the Master of Fine Arts program at Lindenwood University. Her work has been published in Montana Mouthful, New Verse News, Red Rock Review, and Trolley Literary Journal. In 2021, two of her poems were nominated for Pushcart Prize.

revisions to the catalogue of folktale types

410 needs to be revised:
“Once upon a time” needs to be once upon a time when you were
dormant (not a doormat...) when you passed out in the tragedy intrinsic to awakening,
when princes climbed the ladder princes think is manning like peyton quarterbacking,
more a habit of the Grimm than subtle magic ™ with the wand that does the trick
(shall I say it?)—of pleasuring. Why take chances

with happy ever after? With wicked exes? In-laws? Sisters? You have to wield the wand
yourself, when princes stay convicted for a minute (see Cosby), weaponize the spindles
with GHB or “roofies”—pricked again?

You have to tell the tale yourself: That sleep is when the anima reveal in little dresses ample
asses. In heels, well-toned calves. They have the banging bodies that you used to have, and
they’re disdainful. O, you again, they say, tired of this game in which you gin the dim
excuses. The hags appear at crossings (wink). Can you hear? they ask, in whispers. Princes
always sleep with someone else. THE END of happy ever after.

Kathleen Hellen

Kathleen Hellen’s latest poetry collection is The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin. Her credits include two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento, and her award-winning collection Umberto’s Night. Her work has appeared in Ascent, Barrow Street, The Carolina Quarterly, Colorado Review, Four Way Review, Grist, jubilat, New American Writing, New Letters, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, The Rumpus, Sewanee Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Subtropics, The Sycamore Review, Verse Daily, and West Branch, among others.

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