We are children of a lower gear
Greased on chicken wings and beer
With shiny pants and rusted flies
Broken teeth and lacquered eyes

We are children of a lower gear
Where the child is free to steer
No more family no more grind
Flush the tears and nurse the wine

We are children of a lower gear
No longer engaged in fear
Of losing self or gaining hell
We jam the pump and drink the well

We are children of a lower gear
Deaf to what the clean lambs hear
But God’s Peterbilt pulls up near
Because we’re His children of a lower gear

​
Author Bio:
William Peck is a retired teacher and counselor of inner city children. He is also a lover of Dylan Thomas and E.E. Cummings. 

When the rain stuck
to the house, made
the black night slick,

she did as dogs do
and found a fat round
pillow, traced circles, 

then settled in to pay
attention: ears soft
triangles, eyes hushed

water-blue, still as creek
stones—as if there were
nothing of more urgency 

than dark drops making
maps on the pane—as if
the greatest insistence

was the symphony
just before her—rumbling,
electric, wild—as if metaphors 

never mattered, and there 
could be no string of words
more pressing than a storm 

singing over wet lilacs, no other 
answer beyond the full quiet 
of your own soft being.


Author Bio:
Emily Patterson is a writer and editor in Columbus, Ohio. She studied English and Music at Ohio Wesleyan University, where she was awarded the F.L. Hunt Prize for most promising creative writer and the Marie Drennan Prize for Poetry. Emily's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Spry Literary Journal, catheXis Northwest Press, Pinkley Press, Eunoia Review, and Harness Magazine Issue III: Poetry and Motherhood. Emily is currently pursuing an MA in Children's Literature at The Ohio State University.

In silence I’ll wait, 
I’ll watch you in my memories. 
So happy, so free. 
In person I don’t know you 
So distant, so untouchable 
Slipping through my fingers, I try to grasp 
But the more I grab the more it disappears in my hands. 
The funny thing is that I believed it all.
I listen, and I got lost 
In everything, 
in magic, 
in make belief, 
But I closed the book. 
Because I knew it wasn’t real 
But I’ll hold on to the memories 
Because they were real, 
To me. 

“She is older than the rocks among
which she sits; like the vampire, she
has been dead many times, and learned
 
the secrets of the grave . . .” Walter Pater
wrote in the 19th Century. “Are you warm,
are you real, Mona Lisa, or just a cold
 
and lonely lovely work of art?” Nat King
Cole sang in 1950, the arrangement by
Nelson Riddle. The recording, the B Side
 
to “The Greatest Inventor of Them All,”
made Number 1 on the Billboard chart.
In 1911 the poet Guillaume Apollinaire
 
was arrested for the painting’s theft
from the Louvre and implicated Picasso
though both were exonerated. Americans
 
bought six Mona Lisas but the original
was identified by Da Vinci’s fingerprints
in the oil. Her husband was Florentine
 
businessman Francesco del Giocondo,
likely involved in the trading of female
slaves. At the painter’s death in 1519
 
at the palace of the King of France
the portrait remained unfinished after
over 10 years of work. La Gioconda
 
died in a convent where she was found
innocent of sexual scandal. Da Vinci paid
a musician to play flute to set the right
 
mood though she is not the central subject
of the masterpiece. Her smile is the door
to the strange mountains in the distance.


Author Bio:
Nels Hanson grew up on a small raisin and tree fruit farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California, earned degrees from U.C. Santa Cruz and the U of Montana, and has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. His poems received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations. 

winter is already a memory
& I don’t understand time very well
I remember right now tomorrow, today,
and it scares me that I’m writing a memory.

transient:
peripheral craving
fogged and artificial
when a bite of cereal isn’t enough
when it’s cloudy and I’m still squinting
fingers digging toward marrow
because just laying together isn’t enough.

enduring:
deep hunger
longing for longing’s sake
(palm out, wide open)
aching — I know how it feels to be truly hungry.

cereal is already a memory
& the stomach ache of a full stomach
is far worse than the stomach ache
of an empty stomach
and it scares me that I’m eating a memory.


Author Bio:
Alisa Otte has been writing and journaling for as long as she can remember. She aims to write about what she doesn't understand, about those moments when she gets a pit in her stomach but can't figure out why. Writing is as essential to her as eating and breathing. She follows the modernist movement of poetry almost religiously, and draws on poets such as Rilke, Wallace Stevens, and Edna St. Vincent Millay for inspiration. Alisa is about to begin her final year of university at Colorado State University and is currently studying creative writing in New Zealand at Massey University. She has been previously published in The Tau, Momaya Press, and Cicada Creative Magazine.

​This is how it happened.

I was 11 years old.
Two girls in my class pretended to be my friends.
They stole my diary.
They picked the lock.
Spreading my secrets across the playground like jelly.

I wrote about boys,
how they didn't like me because I was fat.

I wrote about hating my mother, how crazy she was.

I wrote about hating my body.
Trying to lose weight, then
eating a half gallon of ice cream.

Those girls, picking the lock to my soul.
Opening it with a wrench,
a straightened paperclip,
a pair of pliers,
a jackhammer.
Blasting it open with a stick of dynamite.

Pages flying.
Screaming everything wrong about my life.

I never kept a diary again.
I learned to keep everything inside.
How I felt, what I needed,
who I liked,
all the sadness.

This is what I know. You can't trust anyone.
This is my motto.
I live by it.


Author Bio:
Eliza Mimski is 72 years old and lives in San Francisco. She is a retired English teacher and for many years she taught writing. She's always loved words and a few years ago began sending her poetry and prose out to literary magazines. It's been very rewarding for her seeing her work in print, both online and off. 

Throne of red bonnets remains to remind us of lust
Amidst fractures from Tinder’s white lies. 
Love wasn’t always on groupon next to shampoo that soothes
When sunrises shook irises from unpolluted moonlit skies 

we carved our names in the forest’s
bloomed dark glass which holds powder to portray what you saw-
Dahlia and soil growing rich in their dust
Hearts of courtship masked in slavery’s cries

Lifting plantation songs never stained, starving while 
Sweet gentry hide shredded feet behind roses
Southern life dead. Once flowering trellis, cracked thorns now pierce
Loves an abandoned culture of history’s

Living-minded figurines your fragile
History inked into your ancient skin as it melted with mine one last time


Author Bio:
Molly McGrane is from Chicago IL, and is currently a Batten Scholar at Culver Academy. Her work has been published in The Quill. 

Go on 
Be with yourself 

You will have lovers 
Men will come into your life as they always have...
But this life is about you for you 
So be with yourself 

That’s the partner you have to hold 
She’s the one you’ll undoubtably spend your last days with 
Make sure you like her
Make sure you can be with her 

You may find big love with another 
But even then there’s no guarantee 
So make love to you 
Fall deeply into yourself 

Find your inner truths 
Face your darkness 
Emerge from your own pain and access your internal joy 

Because that’s all there is in this life 
A reflection of the internal experience of you 
There’s everything within 
The greatest love you’ve ever known 
Spiritual connection through the center of your being 

There, in your stillness and solitude, you will find her 
And with her you are one with the eternal light of life 
Surging with boundless love 
Unthinkable amounts of compassion and peace radiate from that place 

You will never regret the choice 
The choice to choose yourself at every opportunity 
I love you - I’m right here 


Author Bio:
Dori Lewis is the owner and operator of Reflective Healing, LLC. in Fort Collins Colorado. She is on a quest for connection and spiritual wholeness. 

Jazz takes us through woods 
of music 
and lets us down 
in a jungle 
of sound.

Chords careen and slip 
sky high. 
The notes keep going 

till they turn 
and trip 
on a note.

It blends into the night and comes out 
the other end 
something new, 
a string of chords 
we follow.

Jon Hendricks leads us off 
the cliff of music 
into the sea 
of sound, 
and we get lost.


Author Bio:
Born and raised in Canada, Lily Iona MacKenzie was a high school dropout who has since earned two Masters’ degrees. She has published reviews, interviews, short fiction, poetry, travel pieces, and essays in over 155 American and Canadian venues. All This, a poetry collection, was published in 2011. Her novel Fling! was released in July 2015. Curva Peligrosa, another novel, was brought out in 2017. A third novel, Freefall: A Divine Comedy, was published on January 1, 2019. She teaches creative writing at the University of San Francisco’s Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning and blogs about writing and reading at lilyionamackenzie.com. Poetry keeps her sane!

From a high lanai on Maui
I spy this dignified white-haired woman 
in a long white dress 
traversing a narrow seawall, 
black rock and boiling surf below.

She plants each foot deliberately 
like a circus tightrope walker
but without the hesitation
they affect to build up drama.

How unusual for a woman
of that vintage to take such risks,
I muse as she moves slowly forward,
apparently oblivious to the danger. 

Some might call her foolhardy,
but I applaud this brave display;
her carriage, her courage inspire me
to disregard my own advancing years,
risk another hurried poem. 


Author Bio:
John Laue has edited Transfer, San Francisco Review and Monterey Poetry Review, and won awards for his writing beginning with the Ina Coolbrith Poetry Prize at The University of California, Berkeley. With six published poetry books and a prose tome that offers advice and assistance for people with mental health diagnoses, he presently coordinates the reading series of The Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium. Also a photographer, Laue had two shows of his photos last year and has several photos accepted by magazines and international on-line galleries.