This issue features
photograph by Pedroferreira,
poetry by Millicent Borges Accardi,
poetry by Robert Beveridge,
poetry by Michelle Hartman,
art by Irene Christensen,
poetry by Eileen Kennedy,
poetry by José Norono,
poetry by Kenneth Pobo,
photograph by Dmitriy Moroz, and
poetry by Kim Roberts
Pedroferreira
Oporto at Night, View of Oporto and Doura River
© by Pedroferreira
Millicent Borges Accardi
Oporto
Vines, sprouting purple
off Rua Escura, the rumbling
oh boy! of a train overhead,
made brighter by chortling
Portuguese fisherwomen underneath,
chewing salty pillows
of codfish, spit into wooden baskets,
their voices teasing men
in boiled wool get-up suits who face
the fat pleasure of sun, air and blue,
and grimace back at the women.
As the orange tram dusts by,
Each corner belies the next ivy
vine reaching up to those of the living,
The relics of the walk street abandoned
mansions. Once you leave
the downtown on your way to Douro,
along the rua to more mansions in ruin,
on the pathway to a window in front
of you, a stretched line above, half-clad
in blue striped pajamas with a body shape,
stretched between two window cut-outs,
you remember, then. You claim this
moment as the future, a misshapen idea,
underneath the Ponte Luís I bridge,
next to the bricks and concrete, a shared
intimate war of happiness delayed.
Copyright © 2024 by Millicent Borges Accardi.
About the Author
Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portuguese-American writer, is the author of four poetry collections, including Quarantine Highway (FlowerSong Press) and Only More So (Salmon Poetry, Ireland). Among her awards are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Fulbright, CantoMundo, Creative Capacity, California Arts Council, Foundation for Contemporary Arts (Covid grant), Fundação Luso-Americana (Portugal), and Barbara Deming Foundation. She's a Mentor in the AWP writer to writer program for 2024.
Robert Beveridge
Alt-Rights
It is time to put
away the hymnal,
get out the prayer
book, recite
the verses to St.
Francis of Dayquil,
patron saint
of stuffed noses
and bulk lumber.
We ask again
for the return
of the town’s cats,
bowls of mac
and cheese,
an abandoned
warehouse full
of quartz countertops,
Steely Dan’s Greatest
Hits. There
hasn’t been
an answer yet
but our faith
remains boundless
like the gas tanks
of the Vespas
we all drove
in high school
Copyright © by Robert Beveridge.
About the Author
Robert Beveridge makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry on unceded Mingo land (Akron, OH). He published his first poem in a non-vanity/non-school publication in November 1988. His work has appeared in Wales Haiku Journal, Shadowplay, and tiny frights, among others.
Michelle Hartman
Kinder
It is difficult for androids
to understand human
relationships with animals.
Sometimes we befriend them
to the point of insanity.
Often, we make things
out of them— like gloves and recliners—
after we feast on squishy bits.
Reincarnated, we may take the form
of animals. When we do
we are always kinder.
About the Author
Michelle Hartman is the author of four poetry books, four chapbooks, the most recent a winner of the John and Miriam Morris Memorial Chapbook Contest. Her work has appeared in Crannog, Galway Review, The Atlanta Review, Penumbra, Poem, Southwestern American Review, Carve and many more. She is the former editor of Red River Review, as well as the owner of Hungry Buzzard Press.
Irene Christensen
The Day Wavers Between Going and Staying
oil painting on canvas / 36”x24”
Copyright © 2024 by Irene Christensen.
About the Artist
Irene Christensen divides her time between New York City and Oslo, Norway producing her work in her studios. She has exhibited in Europe, Asia, South America and the United States. Her art has been shown in museums, art centers and galleries in the U.S., Costa Rica, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Brazil, Israel and Argentina. She showed an installation of nine accordion books at Palazzo Mora during the Venice Biennale. She has received many honorariums and awards both in Europe and the U.S. and is represented in many museums and personal collections. John Zeaman, art critic and writer, says: “Irene Christensen’s art is about painting as a magical act.”
Eileen P. Kennedy
The Day Wavers Between Going and Staying
the day does not know where to go
birds migrate from ocean to land
heads hover without permanence
water pushes into dense plants
sunset skirmishes with color
the day does not know where to go
sky exudes purple red warning
wind surprises the woman’s hair
land vanishes from waterlog cloud
beasts survey for safe landing
the day does not know where to go
birds flutter seeking to escape
earth cries to the overhead for help
fowls look for a place to put down
water courses flooding the land
the day does not know where to go
Copyright © 2024 by Eileen P. Kennedy.
About the Author
Eileen P. Kennedy is the author of two collections of poetry: Banshees (Flutter Press, 2015), which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and Touch My Head Softly (Finishing Line Press, 2021) which was a finalist for the International Book Awards in General Poetry. She is an environmental justice and union activist. Visit: EileenPKennedy.com.
José Norono
Warm Things That Go Well Together
The whirring of the machine is precious. I see
the warm amber liquid flow out of the tiny spouts
at the bottom of the portafilter. It pools within
my red cup, swirling as the whirring stops and
the coffee vein runs dry. I hear her giggle outside
my periphery. It makes me smile.
I tap the portafilter against the bin and the puck falls
out, dry of all it was good for. I lift the steam wand
and turn the knob, and all I hear now is the whistling
of steam releasing from the wand. Like a train
stuck in neutral, hopelessly accelerating out of my kitchen.
I put the wand inside the milk and the milk swirls too. It
bubbles and froths, spinning alongside the whistling
wand and the rhythmic shaking of the coffee machine.
The sound of drowning comes from the milk, as it spins
and warms, the bubbles disintegrating into froth.
I clean the machine and the wand, then pour the
milk into the coffee shot. I drop it all from on high, lowering
my hand as the cup begins to fill. I see the white swirl with
the amber, meeting in the middle to coalesce into light brown.
I resist the urge to draw a funny face using the foam. No
need to tell my coffee how to feel.
I bring my cup with me and finally sit next to her on the couch.
I see her drink from her red cup of coffee. It was more important,
so I made it first. Our arms and shoulders press together,
I feel warm and tender. I sink into the sweetness;
I drink from my cup.
I cannot feel more alive than in this moment.
Copyright © 2024 by José Norono.
About the Author
José Norono, is currently finishing my MFA in Creative Writing at the Florida International University, where he also works as a teaching assistant. He’s an international student whose first language is Spanish. At a very young age he was interested in linguistics and the silliness of wordplay.
Kenneth Pobo
Anne Boleyn and I
chat about gay rights.
She’s no longer concerned if
gay’s a sin or if it upsets
the King, either the one in Heaven
or the one in London. That all
seems distant now. She doesn’t
miss being alive—it only
gifted her with a severed neck.
Death can be as lonely as living.
Even the planets are lonely. I head
back to my own lonely time
where guns kill our kids
and demand our loyalty.
Copyright © 2024 by Kenneth Pobo.
Rowboat
In No-Fish Bay
minnows flash
beneath my boat.
The sun jumps
a yellow rope
that it drops
on a pine.
A pink
water lily
reaches up
like a sea monster
to eat a sunray.
I float by,
a loon, a cork
far from shore.
Copyright © 2024 by Kenneth Pobo.
About the Author
Kenneth Pobo (he/him) is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections. Recent books include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press), Loplop in a Red City (Circling Rivers), Lilac And Sawdust (Meadowlark Press) and Gold Bracelet in a Cave: Aunt Stokesia (Ethel Press). His work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Asheville Literary Review, Nimrod, Mudfish, Hawaii Review, and elsewhere.
Dmitriy Moroz
Portrait (fresco) of Sappho, Archaic Greek Poet from Lesbos
© by Dmitriy Moroz.
Kim Roberts
Giddyup
When we’re standing in the kitchen kissing,
me barefoot, you taller than I,
even taller in your shoes,
sometimes you’ll spread your legs wide,
a cowgirl astride an imaginary saddle
so our points align: lips, breasts, hipbones.
And I am made whole, made over.
How can you feel so integral?
Sappho wrote of the sweet apple
which reddens upon the topmost bough,
atop the topmost twig that none could get till now.
As long as we’re kissing
we’re a vertex. Keep riding
your conjured mustang, darling, over
the great linoleum, the sun angling off
the topmost tips of the switchgrass.
Copyright © 2024 by Kim Roberts.
Spelunker
I want to explore the dripstone cavern
of her heart, what doctors call the atrium,
survey her mouth with its ridged roof
and malleable tongue, and her vagina
with its ruffles and deep chasm.
When she says the word spelunker,
it sounds almost Yiddish,
like the word spatula; though I know
they have a different etymology,
I want to claim the words as mine.
I want to wander her fissures,
learn her speleology and follow
the hollows of her veins, from the Latin,
the inferior vena cava, the superior vena cava:
more caves, more tunnels of light.
Copyright © 2024 by Kim Roberts.
Ode to the Lips
I will start with the philtrum, a mouth-pleat
that allows for largesse, an opening or a smile.
Move down to the notch on the upper lip,
appropriately called a “Cupid’s bow.”
Then further, past the commissure
to the sensual rounding of the lower lip.
The way she shows her teeth slowly.
The parenthesis of skin at either edge.
The quickening pulse. The flush.
The ancient Romans divided kisses
into three types—the osculum,
a chaste greeting on the cheek or hand;
the basium, with lips closed, for friends;
the savium for lovers, with twining
of tongues. She opens the pleat wide
and my mouth is transformed:
a spirit bell, a psalm, moonlight,
a wishing well, an inauguration, a drenching,
a holy balm, a promise lascivibundus.
Basio, basio, my savior.
Copyright © 2024 by Kim Roberts.
It Only Took Me Sixty Years
Eventually I found you.
You hie to my hither.
You tilt to my kilter. You
shiver my sinews,
make my sap
seep. You unrue regret.
You chapel my tunnel,
forage my forest,
quicken my thicket. You
twitter my withers.
I melt in your swelter
as you sweeten sheets.
Look: you’re in the gloaming!
Honey, I’m homing.
Copyright © 2024 by Kim Roberts.
About the Author
Kim Roberts is the author of six books of poems, most recently Corona/Crown, a cross-disciplinary collaboration with photographer Robert Revere (WordTech Editions, 2023). Roberts edited By Broad Potomac’s Shore: Great Poems from the Early Days of our Nation’s Capital (University of Virginia Press, 2020), selected by the East Coast Centers for the Book to represent Washington, DC in the Route 1 Reads program. She is the author of the popular guidebook, A Literary Guide to Washington, DC: Walking in the Footsteps of American Writers from Francis Scott Key to Zora Neale Hurston (University of Virginia Press, 2018). Roberts co-curates DC Pride Poem-a-Day each June with filmmaker Jon Gann.
Visit: http://www.kimroberts.org