My father was far short of 5-10,
but I thought he was tall enough
to take a slingshot to the sun if
it was too hot. That didn’t begin
to explain the blooming sweat spots
in the pits of his short-sleeved shirts
that moored paisley ties and pen clips.
 
My father could shoot down anything--
the stars, the sky, the whole Mason-Dixon
line with his Willy Loman Ball mason jar
in Grandmother’s backyard, seeking solace
in arguments about Gubner George Wallace
and upping the Blue Book value of school
busing for his audience under that pin oak.
 
He turned down a Miata deal, bought Renault,
and went broke. He bought Kaiser aluminum
cars made in Chile and Li’l Abner amusement
parks. But to the end of his salesman’s days
he remembered the hot haze of an Alabama
September night, not the inquisitions into
his business decisions. He remembers the gasped
derision of his peers that one time, that one time
with the pass blooming into a clear interception
that he batted down instead. He argued it out
for 40 years with himself, replaying his blown shot,
hearing the jeers at this lost chance, the whole field
his for a quick catch and a sauntering prance. This
looming regret in the air made him​.

​Author Bio:
Pamela Sumners is a constitutional and civil rights lawyer from Alabama. Her special interest in religion cases has given her an unwholesome familiarity with the hairlines of Judge Roy Moore, Bill Pryor, Jay Sekulow, and Alabama governors who dispute that the Bill of Rights applies to Alabama. She now lives in St. Louis with her wife, their son, and three rescue hounds who think eyeglasses are a food group.

I don't wipe my eyes when I cry
For fear of the mark it might leave
and I'm lying to you when I say, its over
I hope and I pray that you'll leave

Remember my face smiling at you 
remember the words that I said
and keep all the letters that I wrote to you 
all the memories in your head

I don't wipe my eyes when I cry
For fear of the mark it might leave
and I'm lying to you when I say, its over
I hope and I pray that you'll leave

You ask me if I'll stay with you
But its not quire right this time
I promise to hold these memories dear
but not everything happens to rhyme

I don't wipe my eyes when I cry
For fear of the mark it might leave
and I'm lying to you when I say, its over
I hope and I pray that you'll leave

​
Author Bio:
Caroline has been writing poetry and music for six years. She is a Sophomore in high school and hopes to presume nursing, graphic design and photography. In her free time Caroline likes to read, write, exercise and tend to her flock of 13 chickens. 

Slow trains crawl through town
so slow that migrants can hop on
in freezing winter to warmer places.
Slow trains rattle and whistle
at street crossings where cars idle.
 
I hear the slow trains rumbling at night
against the brickwork of abandoned
warehouses and industrial lots: the metal
thuds of slow trains marshaled
for thousands of board-feet of lumber
 
echo at dawn in the rail yard. Slow trains
linked to push east through the desert
to Winnemucca and Elko, stacked high
with doors and windows like eyes staring
up, open to the sky and frozen nights.
 
Slow trains sound through my sleep,
creeping past blank squatters shacks
without foundations that tremble
at the heavy steel of loaded carriages.
This town defined by tracks coming
 
and going, the rails cold with ice
the trains rattling, cars banging
whistles blaring six times a night.
Slow trains pass in the dark, cars
wait while the long trains crawl by.
 
​
Author Bio:
Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry, which she has written since college. Over 450 of her poems appear in a wide variety of online venues and in anthologies, in the U.S. and abroad. She is a Best of the Net and twice a Pushcart nominee. The natural world of the American West is generally her framework; she also considers the narratives of people and places around her. She is a retired teacher living in Oregon.

I live my life at a historic disadvantage
Though the color of my skin is not something I can manage
I hate to play the race card, but the reality is
I have to work harder to live where a white person lives
But that's only one disadvantage, as a matter of fact
Being a woman in this world also holds me back
But I don't give up, for I am not a fool
I try to change this world, that can be so cruel


Author Bio:
Alex is an 18-year-old college student at The University of Washington Tacoma. She hasn't done very much poetry in a traditional sense. She became interested in making music at a very young age and started writing raps. She started using the poetry as a way to make her raps more complex. However, she eventually branched off into making poems and raps separate. This poem will be her first official submission of any poem she's ever written.

When my bare feet
Step on the marble floor
Of any given temple
In any given country
To the south from China,
My husband says
‘You don’t know
All the people who were 
Here before you.
I will wait outside.’
I am holding the sandals
Swaying in my hand.
People pray there.
Sometimes they whisper.
Sometimes - sing.
But most often
They don’t even open lips.
I have never been
Of the church-type,
But temples do make me totally speechless, 
Then turn me into the storyteller, 
And finally - make me come back
To see the dawn breaking and getting scattered
On the white tiles lined with black.
‘Wanna get some breakfast?’ - he asks
Smiling, while I am fastening the sandal clasp.


Author Bio:
Yuliia Vereta is a young writer from Ukraine, who is creating essays, fiction, and poetry that comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comforted. Currently lives and works in China. Holds the Master of Arts in Translation. The majority of her works reveal sharp social issues, moral crimes, and emotional struggle.
Her other works were published in 2019 in Salmon Creek Literary Journal, Penultimate Peanut Magazine and Litro Magazine. She received the 2018 City of Rockingham Short Story Award for short fiction and became the finalist in 2019 Poetry Matters Project as well as 2019 Hessler Poetry Contest.

Just around back of the little yellow house,
The sun glistens on dew of green.
With bark standing straight
Taller and wiser than the dark, broken shingles to its right.
Branches drooping under the apple’s weight
Hang heavy like the arms of a willow.
We run faster than our feet can carry us
Where our past selves, round faced with short legs
Find the round and small rotting apples on the dirt.
Unlike our fresh cheeks, their skin feels of leather from age.
The leaves blow in the wind.
They fly as time travelers, making ripples that flood through time and space to now.
Loneliness nuzzled in recollection.
In memory I find myself,
Placing rotted apples in laundry baskets as I taste the fall gale.
In the backyard of the small plot,
The tree bows in recognition of the old lost and new gained. 
For she has watched me grow
And held my hand as I took my first steps
She is always bronze, strength exuding from her.
With broken branches, she smells of life.
Her grasp reaches far and wide to the heavens,
And her golden leaves fall slowly to the earth,
Letting us know she has given us her children
Until I remember
That the tree stands no longer.
What is past must stay there.
The apples have fallen their final fall.


Author Bio:
Sam Smiley is a writer from Racine, Wisconsin. They currently live in Chicago and study physics at DePaul University. Sam writes poetry and short fiction inspired by their experiences in the midwest and their year abroad in Thailand. They are non binary, use they/them pronouns, and can be found on Instagram @wordsflowlikewater. 

Home Finch, red head, fuzzy.
It’s back brown and white feathers spread to
A surprise of red. I gasp.
The plain bird accompanies in strips and plaid but
is too far away for sight or delight and definitely
not exotic purple or with turquoise plumage,
and this is not the Gulf of Mexico, Antiqua, The Borneo Islands,
or San Miguel, Mexico
But I still thrill seeing Home Finch
With the red head.

The waving trees 
reminds me of Mother 
taking me out in the world for
An adventure.
I climb into her red Chevy convertible
wearing a shocking pink, scaparelli topper.
Her smile next to mine makes it all possible.
Later, Eating the salty pretzel outside of the department store 
is the best part,
for in those days I did not need a boost,
of sighted iridescent feathers to give me strength,
as the joyous shopping trip culminated 
in our flight down the road.


Author Bio:
Thea Schiller, a New York Poet facilitates a poetry workshop at the Somers Library in Somers, N.Y. and holds a B.A. in creative writing from The City University of New York. Her poem, "Sarah" was the Orchard Poetry Prize winner in Furrow, University of Wisconsin. Recently, her poems have appeared in The San Diego Annual Poetry Review 2017-2018, Edify Fiction, The Ravens Perch, 4th & Sycamore, Lucent Dreaming, Hevria and many literary magazines in the past. When given the chance she follows her muse from Norway to Greece.

Fate blew a strong gust in my direction
It was cold and lonely but felt like home
High school was nothing close to perfection
But now it is time to go roam

On my own wandering like a lost soul
I do not know what tomorrow holds
Which makes me more excited for the whole
Knowing that it’s time to lose the blindfold

Now is the future, the future is now
Running head first into reality
Even though temptation is on the prowl
I will not let it run me up the tree

A caterpillar to a butterfly 
It’s time to spread my wings and say goodbye


Author Bio:
Kyra is an 18-year-old from Dallas, TX. She thoroughly enjoys reading, writing and playing soccer. She will be attending Texas Woman’s University in the fall as a nursing major.

Hearing is more than saying
In this green place of shattered light,
Long beaches bounded by cobalt seas.
land of the swimsuit, 
souvenir vendor, heated sands. 
I can see you, in that cold place,
working at your desk, next to a sunny window.
Your civil self, dedicated to chilly studies.
You are here, wall to wall in Puerto Plata,
Amidst the strong split shadows,
Tiled halls and all-inclusive drinks.
You come, between sounds of megaphones, 
noisy rapid-fire Spanish, 
hurled into the tropical evening, 
adventure here never stops,
except in the very early morning,
when the birds sing 
and the wind bends the palms. 


Author Bio:
Kathleen C. Johnson lives on the shores of Lake Superior and has been published in multiple small presses. Poetry is the driving force of her life. She believes poetry speaks and uncoils the mysteries we are all living and that it can allow us to see them and name them. 

Sometimes I feel like the moon
that every wolf howls to
 
Up here in the gables of the clouds
waxing my crescent to make it full
 
They all, with their ears pointed skyward
whine the lonesome destiny of want
 
And I fear that if I howl back
it will be a barren squawk in the forest
 
Indeed no moon ever
had done such a thing.
 
It is a refuge though, to find a curtain,
a tree;
an evergreen to settle the shiver
 
If indeed, the howling should ever become
to much
​

Author Bio:
Atalie Rachael originates from Detroit Michigan. Her love for poetry started at seven years of age, and progressed into a passion later on. Her work generally revolves around life observations and experiences wrapped up in a language of metaphors and words. She has been published in Leaves Of Ink, and AllPoetry. Her favorite hobbies include reading, exercising, and taking photo's of nature. She posts her work to Instagram, and currently edits a book of poems to be made ready for publishing.