This issue features
photograph by Jakub Gojda,
Winner of the Gival Press Oscar Wilde Award and Finalists,
photograph by Bing Bing Zhu,
poetry by Deborah H. Doolittle,
photograph by Daniel Sanders,
poetry by John Grey,
poetry by Thomas Piekarski,
poetry by Gerard Sarnat, and
poetry by Cary B. Ziter
Jakub Gojda
Champion Golden Trophy
© Jakub Gojda.
Jendi Reiter
Winner of the 23rd Annual Gival Press Oscar Wilde Award-2024
Vita Sackville-West Wins the Golden Wedding Award
at the Cummington Fair
An optimistic alto covers Gentle on My Mind
in the bandshell by the chicken barn.
Her calves chunk-chunk in floral-stitched boots.
Is the idea of a woman less demanding than her pussy?
Twinned oxen yoked to concrete
blocks pull through dust
to cheers. Desire anything
because it's in front of you,
soap, mortgages, and dyed quartz flowers
sold from white wooden stalls
at the bottom of the hill. Ideas don't tire,
rub themselves to rash, or bleed like roast beef dinner
that's promised as a prize over the loudspeaker
to the best couple fifty-plus years wed.
Man and woman is understood
by the burlap-faced leaders of the two-step, gently
resting their chins on their wives' tucked curls.
Slow, slow. The alto swings
long molasses hair back from her cheeky face
singing that not-like-other-girls song.
The oxen win a ribbon. The boy who hits
the bell with the hammer wins a ticket to do it again.
His mother sticks her face into a cream puff
the way Vita would have
tongued Virginia Woolf's cunt. To be pleasant
memory, to be covered in art,
don't cry at leavings. Blame
is a trash barrel of single-use knives.
Ideas are insatiable. Vita and Harold died
one anniversary short of golden,
she with her tea cakes, he with his Persian boys.
And Virginia, when she weighed down her pockets
with tickets for the final carousel,
what vows held her up so long?
Copyright 2024 by Jendi Reiter.
Finalists for the 23rd Annual Gival Press
Oscar Wilde Award-2024
Jendi Reiter
Why the Sunrise Is Trans
wake up, I say to him,
and hold my hand.
this liminal cotton
candy pink threaded through blue
is thin where the day rubs
against last night,
one of so many
in our years.
his broad
soft back tolerates
my leaning
briefly, but I'm unsteadying
the phone he raises
with both hands to capture
the clouds' mouth spilling gold light
like a monstrance.
what if we forget
this, would it matter?
people love sunrises and want me dead.
not me, I exaggerate
how sorry the sky should feel
for fallen leaves.
but consider autumn,
another gorgeous transition
burning. it's so popular.
he's dissatisfied
with the screen.
colors not true. look at me
forgetting this already
for his sake.
he fucks me typically
from behind
since I've changed
to blue like the morning that's starting
to blow
the clouds' rosy embers out.
he's getting dressed and soon I will
put on my boring pants
in the same size he wears.
I used
to powder-pink my cheeks, a fool
who could've blushed quite
enough naked.
the sky is photographed
as if that means
we understand it.
by myself
standing longer at the window.
a plane chalking its contrail
implacably straight-angled
lets itself be erased by going higher.
Copyright © 2024 by Jendi Reiter.
About the Author
Jendi Reiter is the author of the novels Origin Story (2024) and Two Natures (2016), both from Saddle Road Press; five poetry books and chapbooks, most recently Made Man (Little Red Tree, 2022); and the story collection An Incomplete List of My Wishes (Sunshot Press/New Millennium Writings, 2016). Origin Story was a finalist for the Black Lawrence Press Big Moose Prize and Two Natures won the Rainbow Award for Best Gay Contemporary Fiction. They are the editor of the writing resource site WinningWriters.com.
Vanessa Haley
The Golden Shovel
Of course, yes, it is “her age,” and you do not want
to give her a stoke just imagining you burning in hell,
forever slipping on Satan’s slick surfaces, the rave and rant
of TV evangelists full volume in elevators, fallen or fell
the only floor options. You take her arm, and she leans
heavily as you inch towards the slow-motion conversation
about the tulip bed, the blight that overtook the pole beans
withering on their vines, the seventeen-year resurrection
of cicadas, their varnished shells small sculptures of one life
abandoned for the Rapture, and who can blame
them for wanting to fly, for letting go of all the strife
tunneling through a larval eternity of pale, soft shame
laid bare in summer light until they understood how to harden
themselves, clinging to trees and telephone poles? I am the she-devil
saving coffee grounds for the compost heap in Bosch’s garden,
half-bird, half-woman, temptation a silver funnel, a golden shovel.
Copyright © 2024 by Vanessa Haley.
About the Author
Vanessa Haley’s poems have appeared in literary magazines such as The Grove Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry, Rhino, Southern Poetry Review and The Gettysburg Review. The Logic of Wings, (Cherry-Grove Collections, 2004) was a finalist in the Lyre Prize. Her work is reprinted in several anthologies, most recently in Storms of the Inland Sea: Poems of Alzheimer’s and Dementia Caregiving (Shanti Arts Publishing, (2022). She is one of sixteen poets with an essay in POETS ON PROZAC: Mental Illness, Treatment, and the Creative Process (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). Formerly an Associate Professor of English at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia, she has practiced psychotherapy in Delaware for the past 25 years and is now retired.
Brent Schaeffer
Quarantine Season: I Still Love You, But
We can’t go on meeting like this—
past Pinehurst Dental and the taqueria
where the orange extension cord
lights the marquee sandwich board:
Puposas. I didn’t leave the house Monday
or Tuesday. Wednesday I decamped on little errands.
The crows in the parking lot fought,
picking at children’s fingers (or was it shrimp
a woman tossed from a take-out box?).
Our life is smaller than we thought. Now
a man in drugstore headscarf and thick eyeliner
sweeps the leaves and spring grass
at the corner of Northgate and Fifteenth.
Citizens catch the empty bus. The police hide
in all of us—even our sweetpeas
and honeybuns. And me,
braving people, all their hazards,
can’t remember my own zip code:
the faint, green light on my knuckles
at the service station so near home.
Copyright © 2024 by Brent Schaeffer.
About the Author
Brent Schaeffer’s poetry has been published, or is forthcoming, in Cutbank, Rattle, LIT and Poet Lore, among others. He was the runner-up for the 2024 Patricia Goedicke Poetry Prize, a joint winner of the Letter Review Prize for Poetry 2023, and a finalist for the 2023 Tucson Festival of Books Poetry award. Brent writes in Anchorage, Alaska.
Elliott Kurta
Fear
To my mother, who learned to be still and silent.
To my father, who learned to be loud.
It’s funny. They call it boy scouts, but what they don’t tell you about is the girls. That’s all they talk about—when the fire, red as lust, burns itself alive before you, the boys unbuckle their voices and peel away courtesies. They talk of girls: what they want to do to them, how they want to be with them. And they look to you, waiting for you to stain your tongue with dirt, spit up gristle so they can chew the fat. But your voice only lodges in your throat. Because even if you could speak like a boy, what would you say? But girls aren’t what pace the halls of your mind—you see broad-shouldered figures, voices stern and deep, square jaws flecked with shadow. So you make needles of your words. With each sentence, you push metal through pink muscle, wind threads tight against your arms until your fingertips fade to blue. Push the brightest parts of yourself into shadow. You learn that the only thing that hurts more than daring to peel back your skin is stitching yourself into someone else’s.
Even sealed beneath this hard mask, your eyes catch every detail. You fixate on how the wood curls under the gleaming blade of his pocketknife, the feral edge to their laughter. There is a tremble in your step as you walk the tightrope between sleep, for the first time afraid to surrender to the fall, to risk the hours of stillness. When you were little, you wondered why your mother took your hand in hers before you crossed the river of asphalt, flanked by snarling steel beasts; why she saw razorblades underneath shiny candy wrappers; why her voice sank and disappeared as your father’s words exploded. Now, alone in the woods, you can finally name that feeling that makes monsters of men, gnaws at edges of your nerves, pulls you just into paranoia. Alone in the woods, you understand fear.
Copyright © 2024 by Elliott Kurta.
About the Author
Elliott Kurta is a writer, poet, and bibliophile. He currently lives in Charlotte, NC with his dog and a forest of houseplants. When not working on his upcoming debut novel, he enjoys running, cooking, and practicing the piano and guitar. His poetry is forthcoming in Oprelle’s “Matter” anthology.
Bing Bing Zhu
Blooming Yellow Flowers on Sassafras Tree
© Bing Bing Zhu.
Deborah H. Doolittle
William Carlos Williams on Saxifrage
sharp as daggers
to the heart
of the matter. No wallflower,
the earth’s its terra
cotta flower
pot. Cement, concrete,
highway pavement can
not contain. It
splits them up and spits them
out. Like sarsaparilla,
sassafras, savory
in summer, it launches frugal
blossoms like random
afterthoughts,
like jazz notes
played on someone
else’s sax.
Copyright © 2024 by Deborah H. Doolittle.
Eating the Plum
after William Carlos Williams
Eating the plum is an exercise
of restraint. There seems one less
in the bowl every time I look.
I like the darker ones best, with skin
so bruise-stained, the flesh beneath it
stuns me and makes me think of
broken eggs, rising suns, and the time
you ate the last plum and said so.
Copyright © 2024 by Deborah H. Doolittle.
The Wine Dark Sea
Now, that’s something I’d like to see.
The sun, like an enemy ship,
half-sunk behind that horizon
line that divides one endless blue
from another. All that water
thumping the hull, rocking the ship,
causing the wood to creak, lanyards
to slap the masts. The sky half black
behind us. I know such moments
are rare. I know that one must be
prepared for it, having absorbed
an endless stream of typical,
tropical sunsets with islands
slipping under the distant waves
like desert oases. The storms,
the scorching heat, and the doldrums,
let’s not forget them. All must be
endured seemingly without
end, repeated tediously.
And then it rolls out before our
unsurprised eyes as if someone
had just then uncorked and poured it,
like wine so fine it defies its
being classified. Suddenly
clarifying the crest of each
wave quavering in our own wake.
Copyright © 2024 by Deborah H. Doolittle.
About the Author
Deborah H. Doolittle has lived in lots of different places (including the United Kingdom and Japan), but now calls North Carolina home. An AWP Intro Award winner and Pushcart Prize nominee, she is the author of Floribunda and three chapbooks, No Crazy Notions, That Echo, and Bogbound. When not writing or reading or editing BRILLIG: a micro lit mag, she is training for running road races, or practicing yoga, while sharing a house with her husband, six housecats, and a backyard full of birds.
John Grey
Poem for the Brother You Never Had
You' re out there on a rock somewhere, imagining the brother that might have been. There was no abortion, no miscarriage, just the rock with you on it, the water splashing its gray sides. They were too poor for another kid, too poor to do anything but lead you to this river, he to show you how to fish, she with solemn instructions on the stripping of the scales.
But maybe there was a brother and he taught you to walk out into the stream, to ignore the tug on your legs, the dampness of your jeans. He said, sit on the rock and I'll be by for you. And all the time nothing but the water lapping, a constant senseless sound, like the brother you never had speaking to the brother you never were.
Copyright © 2024 by John Grey.
About the Author
John Grey is an Australian- born poet, playwright, musician. US resident since late 70's. His latest book is What Else Is There from Main Street Rag. His work appears in Fox Cry Review, The Great American Poetry Show and Spitball.
Thomas Piekarski
Family Affair
I must ask you a question, kind sir, about your parenting.
Wouldn’t it be awful were you to chance upon a fishbowl
in which your only daughter morphs into some mermaid?
How would you go about rescuing her? Would rescue be
worth the pursuit? She would swim there freely in denial
with dragons breathing flames of retribution, punishment
for the sin of non compliance, having failed in the model
scripture set out for her. Oh how dare she swim liberated!
You would counsel the poor dear, blow bubbles and horn,
shake the bowl in order to disrupt those swirling currents
that allow her to discover what wonders exist in quest of
common kin. Imagine the process in which tides identify
for her traditions inside caverns yet to be explored. She
moans, unable to give birth, and no death on the horizon,
exempt from any earthly authority, but you needn’t weep.
She isn’t lost to you yet. There might be a time and place
you merge, reunite with a formative being that spawned
many centuries before this one. Or perhaps she’ll drown
in the end. Maybe you shake the cataclysm of doubt that
lingers like a stillborn. It’s a testament to her tremendous
health, that stoutest will of hers, disavowing flaccid gods
that at present time only represent a briefest resurgence to
the surface of a virtually voided world. Now then, is your
wife invited to the scene? Your son? No reason for worry
since they too have come to judgements, from their starts
designed to carry out the orders handed down minus any
decrees slipping into a convoluted consciousness. So pray
if you like. Make sacrifices. Slay bulls, revere cows, yank
hearts out of the chests of Aztec warriors and feed them to
those dragons thrashing water in the fishbowl, their flames
opaque like divine wrath pouring out and devouring a self.
Copyright © by Thomas Piekarski.
Daniel Sanders
Foggy Harbor and Sailboats
© Daniel Sanders.
Zeitgeist
For those minus purpose
the world is a circus,
heads down the throats
of hypothetical lions
wherein they watch
harlequins vying
for fame and sailing
from fiery trapezes
through breezes,
gliding on thoughts
that cannot pierce
the firmament
nor manifest in
any blithe spirit or
significant invention.
Living in service
of a higher order
flowers take their place
along with those objects
that populate the planet,
animals, people, granite,
endure twang and sting,
laud glistening dawns
while science rules over
what’s certifiable,
doesn’t recognize
the phony leviathan
supposedly trampling
forest and fawn.
To watch phantom ships
collide in morning fog
spurs great satisfaction
for the mythical satyrs
who slip into dreams
through bloody curtains
where criminals wail
for release from jails
of penury and pain,
whose ire builds
like lions chained
in gilded cages.
Copyright © by Thomas Piekarski.
About the Author
Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His poetry has appeared in such publications as The Journal, Poetry Salzburg, Modern Literature, The Museum of Americana, South African Literary Journal, and Home Planet News. His books of poetry are Ballad of Billy the Kid, Monterey Bay Adventures, Mercurial World, Aurora California, and Opus Borealis.
Gerard Sarnat
Organic Or Too G.M.O. Rancid Mousy Mealy-Mouthed?
Slight of hands
On the one digit
Our three kids each
Volunteer or at least
Admit given the choice
Oy that each would keep
Their set of parents rather
Than have traded either/both
In for those seen during sleep
Overs there at friends’ houses.
However now counting another
Finger all of them (plus spouses)
Raise total of six children way diff
With much more discipline/ hovering
From mothers well as fathers: I dunno
Exactly why but assume at least U.S.A.
Has-–unsure if better or worse—changed
Down to granular details crap we feed ‘em…
Does above perhaps jibe with your post hippy experiences?
Copyright © 2024 by Gerard Sarnat.
About the Author
Gerard Sarnat has won prizes and is a multiple Pushcart/Best of Net Award nominee. His work has been widely published, including four collections. Work has appeared in Brooklyn Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Gargoyle, New Delta Review, Buddhist Review, New York Times; Oberlin, Northwestern, Yale, Pomona, Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Brown, North Dakota, McMaster, Maine, British Columbia/Toronto/Chicago and Virginia university presses. He’s a Harvard College/Medical School-trained physician, Stanford professor, and healthcare CEO. Currently he’s devoting energy/resources to deal with climate justice serving on Climate Action Now’s board. He’s been married since 1969 and has three kids/six grandsons, looking forward to future granddaughters. Visit: gerardsarnat.com
Cary B. Ziter
Back to Bed
the sun falls out of the sky and across my mattress and I am sure I have slept for three days at least I hope so, since the daffodils have withered and the umbrellas are permanently wet and the chimes wobble and playoff-key and the half-light of twilight hiccups madly and for breakfast there is only limp lettuce, plastic water, a can of flat beer and a piece of stale bread I see in the corner of my dry eye. staring blearily at the clock I know only one thing:
in this spastic moment, it’s time to go back to bed.
Copyright © 2024 by Cary B. Ziter.
About the Author
Cary B. Ziter is the author of several published books for young readers. Prior to his retirement he worked for the New York State Tax Department, Exxon and IBM, including long-term assignments in Paris and Hong Kong. He earned a degree in journalism from Morrisville Agricultural and Technical College and his master’s in literature from Bennington College. His poetry has appeared in Blueline, the Front Range Review, California Quarterly, Oracle and elsewhere. He and his wife, Jozi, live in New York’s Hudson Valley region. Visit: carybziter@gmail.com