Hardness of floor, housemaid’s knee prayer
Hidden under long robes a woman’s body
Obedience, your lover, punishes
This is sweet, makes you alive
You turn a cheek
He bounces a football off it
Every time

The parish newsletter says you wanted
To be a mother of six
You had wonderful parents
On the train platform your pleasant smile
Ominous with longing
Looms our way; you pat my daughter on
The head too long
I’m glad our train arrives
My daughter says, “She makes me
Feel shy.”


Author Bio:
I write and teach in Germany. My work has appeared in Undergroundbooks.org (The Kitchen Poet), Aberration-Labyrinth and NonBinary Review.

I just got back into writing and really love it. I write a blog:http://www.thecriticalmom.com

They call it diastema, the dentist said an easy fix,
But fix it I could never do. Unique perfection,

Should never be altered. How could I take such joy away?
A device to be treasured, not structured like a picket fence.

You’ve pushed potatoes and sometimes pudding through it,
you’ve whistled like a dark-eyed Junco making passersby search the sky with it.

Without the space divided is a world within all others, not a place for you.


Author Bio:
Sonya Groves is a teacher of English and History in San Antonio. She has published a short story in the Abydos Education Journal and been a conference presenter at the East Carolina University Multi-Cultural Literature Review Conference. Currently she is pursuing her Master’s degree in English at Our Lady of the Lake University.

You are the cold feeling
That grasps my body when I’m alone
Hair stands up on my arms
And I am the only person in the world
I become small like an ant
Strangely I wish you were here.  Your spot next to me is now cold
Emptiness erupts from inside; I miss you
We are similar but not the same
You are the emptiness
Of not wanting to get out of bed in the morning
That makes people what they are
You are that guy
Standing against the wall at a school dance
You are the wind that gusts through people
Letting them know they are alive
I try to find you
Because you are the only one there for me
You and I are lost
Connecting only in times of sadness or grief
I am small     
You are large
I am large      
You are small
The only way to be happy
Is by killing loneliness


Author Bio:
Brandon Bock is currently a creative writing student.

After chemotherapy she was
Remembering that she was remembering
A waterfall of ringlets.
Luminance flowed like a charcoal
Wolf pelt down her neck.
How it framed her wide-set eyes.
Sensuality magnified a million times
When touched by fingertips.
Who received the greater gift?
The touched or the one touching?
Then it was shaved
To minimize the mistakes
Made in life.
Mirrors, always a post-it note reminder.
At night: an unexpected 2 minutes:
Black hues, rustle under the pillow
And answer the wind
Like the call from a friend
On the fire escape.
Blackness sprouts wings
Rushes out to meet the moon.
A ravenous raven with no head to claim.
Into two dimensions, three dimensions.
The shape holds the sky
If nothing else.


Author Bio:
Jennifer MacBain-Stephens first attempts into writing began when she wrote notes to her mother from her room when she was mad. (Dear mom, I do not think it is fair that I cannot watch the scary movie with Sean. I am sure that I am old enough. Please write back. Love, Jenny) She loves writing and poetry because she still uses it to make sense of her thoughts and feelings and she also has a short attention span. She is influenced by girly things, science, scary forests, and then mixing all of that together sometimes. She went to NYU but now considers the Midwest home. She has been published in such places as: Superstition Review, Emerge Literary Journal, Red Savina Review, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Burningwood Literary Journal, The Apeiron Review, Star 82 Review, Thirteen Myna Birds, Rufous City Review, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Gravel Magazine, Sein und Werden, The New Poet, Menacing Hedge, Sassafras Literary Magazine, The Missing Slate, Iowa City’s 2013 Poetry in Public Project and others. She was recently nominated for Best of the Net. She likes cooking new dishes and then forcing people to eat them and she also likes getting dirty outside in various capacities.

“Were you raped?”

R-A-P-E-D.
The five little letters
in the question
I fixated on.

I gawked at the therapist,
thinking,
This session will
H-A-U-N-T me forever.

Why couldn’t those
five little letters be
L-O-V-E-D
instead?

Confused,
all I could manage to respond was,

“M-A-Y-B-E.”


Author Bio:
Brenda E. Suhan is a college student and poet from Nashotah, Wisconsin. Her work has been published in The Kiln Project at Saint Louis University, Milwaukee Public Museum’s “Objects and Artifacts - The Poetry of the Museum’s Collections,” Creative Communication, and the EPA’s “Sense of Wonder” competition. She loves the way that words can transform experiences, connect people from all backgrounds, and transcend time. 

I did not know Muse could be magicked away.
Evil spell or wicked witch, but I learned this truth.
Muse whispered to me all the years since my birth.
Herbs' bitter juices silenced her voice. I loved

that joy, the power of  Muse. 
Herbs marinated me....

inside antique drawers, how long could
I pretend, before someone discovered the awful truth?
I stood deaf, mute. Wrapped in poison's cocoon.
Numb. Tongue not cut out, just stuck
to the roof of my mouth. It was sinful.

Someone saw me there, on my knees by the river. 
Noticed tears, music leaking. Lent a hand. We unwrapped 
the cocoon, unraveled it behind me like nightmare's tail. 
"Dip your fingers in the water." advised this poetry-lover.

I did. I did. Pain, lightning, thunder, hurricane.
Sweet silky slip of silver sliding up my fingertips.
Woke my heart. Pulsed bitter herbs into waters'
roil. Muse carried it all, with me, back to the sea.


Author Bio:
Rachael Ikins grew up wandering the woods and fields and lakeshores of the Fingerlakes region. While searching for mushrooms and the faeries that dwell beneath them, Rachael discovered the poet within. She is releasing her fifth chapbook of prize winning poetry this month. She lives in a balcony apartment with rafts of house plants or lights blooming from its railing depending on the time of year. She travels more often than she used to, this time to read from her collected works in a castle in Ireland. For one who writes of dragons this seems fitting indeed. She has just returned from Cape Cod.

Rachael is also an accomplished visual artist. Her works are currently displayed throughout CNY galleries. For more about her, find her on Facebook and Twitter and at www.rachaelikins.com

my bones feel separated,
disconnected. The way the leg
tears away from a rotisserie chicken,
easily. Cartilage pops and gives up.
Without much sound or resistance,
the joint just snaps.
Thumbs stick under ribs, remove
flesh from bone,
skin from flesh,
wings from breast.


Author Bio:
Recently nominated for two Pushcart prizes, April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania where she lives with her husband and two sons. She is currently working on a memoir on raising a child with autism and several collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in journals such as Convergence, Ascent Aspirations, The Camel Saloon, Centrifugal Eye, Deadsnakes, Visceral Uterus, Salome, Poetry Quarterly, Writing Tomorrow and Rattle. The author also serves as co-editor at Kind of a Hurricane Press (www.kindofahurricanepress.com).

At the Dead Sea Spa sit groups of Arab women
wearing dark colors and head scarves,
their bodies hidden, ungraceful, fat,
as if they never knew the sensation of sweet sensuality
They watch the others, like groups of hawks, hunched together,
opening to a new reality .
I do not know where they come from, Jerusalem or Jordan or the West Bank?
They are not much different from the Jewish orthodox women, also dressed in heavy clothes, also afraid of their beauty.
When they enter the water in their bathing suits they unleash secrets that were under their skin.
An expression of slight embarrassment appears on their faces.
Then they leave, like flocks of black birds.

Author Bio:
Dana Negev grew up in Israel and has been a peace worker for many years. She brought together Israelis and Palestinians in a poetry show in Tel Aviv (2005) and in Berkeley, Calif. (2013). Her poems appeared in the anthology "Before We Have Nowhere to Stand" by Lost Horse Press . Dana was a member of Women in Black for many years, seeing the role of women as essential in speaking out against injustice. She is also a performance poet. She lives in New Mexico, works in schools and is

Passionate about speaking against racism and oppression. She hopes that art and poetry can help touch people in this way.

The lantern flickers.
And burns out when seen.
Lost hope unchanged,
Beckons me.

Through the door frame,
Waiting for something.
Hoping for meaning,
But finding nothing.

The lantern is there
But not in plain sight.
Looking harder and harder
I find no light.

A black hole of emptiness
Going unseen.
Unfathomable imagery
Surrounding me.

The simple door behind,
Meaning very little
Leading to the past,
To an open riddle.

Expectations and desires
That so easily vanish.
If you lose it in sight
Everything will banish.

To go back to before
When everything was easy,
I take a step forward
And start to feel queasy.

The turning of the knob
Is the temptation of going back,
But I cannot find it,
Everything is black.

The light begins to glow,
Once again light appears,
For the lantern full of hope
Won’t disappear. 


Author Bio:
I am an 18-year-old living in Papillion, NE and have just graduated high school. Writing poetry sets me free because what I write has no boundaries. It is based on how I felt during the day or the experiences I have encountered. I translate others perceptions of the word through my own eyes, for I believe that anything can be relevant and applied to my own life.

*for you gran’ma

throwing the unfixed highchair down the apartment stairs
was more than a warning to her husband
out late again with union buddies

jack crying from the anger his mother displayed
on another night of cabbage stew and corn bread
and the well-package cigars stoking the furnace fire

some women complain about a round of golf
and she dealt out a square of dice hidden
in the left vest pocket of his smoking jacket

unafraid     she called a locksmith
wrote out a check that would bounce
marched to the lawyers early next day

with jack licking his last sucker


Author Bio:
First and foremost, I’m a woman. I was a wife, and will be again in time (hoping by the end of this year—marrying my best friend). I have three living children out of five—Dunstan was lost three months before birth, Vincent recently passed after 2 ½ years battling the rare cancer PNET. He was 24. I have a BGS and an MA. The credentials did not make me a writer. I’ve been writing since I could take pen or pencil to a paper, even if the lines weren’t letters at the time. Gran’ma Ginny (an oral storyteller, keeping up with her Indian heritage) and I shared stories all the time. She was my inspiration. Today, I try to put her stories onto the paper. It is a difficult task.

I’ve had work appear online in Diagram and EWR, and in printed form in Confluence. A piece of my work has been performed by the Dance Collective of Fort Wayne, Indiana. I have done several readings on the campus of Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne and at the Three Rivers Coop of Fort Wayne in a series called First Fridays.