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.

Walking the sudden firstfall frost
the late days of late summer
the early days of early autumn
he parts the brown high pasture
grass with serpentine strides
breaking time in unnatural segments
he has been here for such long
his longing turns with the pottery
wheel of seasons his life shaped
by decisions he has made been made
in mornings such as this one carrying
himself across same/different fields
where Mountain Run weaves ways
of tall trees grown now gray barked
flame and gilt topped in the moment
as old earth pulls down each leg
flesh sagging into grave futures
he thought he’d embrace with grace
her face his smile their distant haze
in cities made of South and rising
tides of sunshine burning tiger bright
inventing a diary of mornings
fogbound hoary coated ghosts
cold hands remembering the ancient
frostbite of his youth mistaken
blowing Roland horns of mist through
blue fingers writing white words
visible in glows of sunrise he will
count one less on this horizon now
firstfallen frost gold gray in time
he must at last grace fall all out of…


Author Bio:
Born in Pennsylvania, David Anthony Sam is the proud grandson of peasant immigrants from Poland and Syria. For much of his life, he lived and worked in the Detroit area, graduating from Eastern Michigan University (BA, MA) and Michigan State (Ph.D.). He lives now in Virginia with his wife and life partner, Linda. Sam’s poetry has appeared in over 90 journals and publications and his poem, “First and Last,” won the 2018 Rebecca Lard Award. He has five published collections including Final Inventory (Prolific Press 2018) and Finite to Fail: Poems after Dickinson, the 2016 Grand Prize winner of the GFT Press Chapbook Contest. He currently teaches creative writing at Germanna Community College, from where he retired as President in 2017. He serves on the Board of the Virginia Poetry Society. 

“You’re a fool,” his wife said as he stretched striped tights over muscled calves and jingled bells on his multicolored hat. “You can’t bring a child back.” 

He gathered his jokes and motley magic anyway.

The rooms smelled like bleach. The children, tethered to oxygen and saline, giggled, clapped. He promised he’d return.

​
Author Bio:
Nancy Jorgensen is a musician and writer. Her choral education books are published by Hal Leonard Corporation and Lorenz Corporation. Her 2019 memoir of daughter Gwen Jorgensen’s journey from CPA to Olympic Champion is published by Meyer & Meyer Sport. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Crack the Spine, Cagibi, Coffin Bell and elsewhere. 

Sheets tangled around lithe bodies, I am 
unbecome in this- read: drowning from this.
Once brings red flashes, twice brings muscles 
torn clean down the centre. Your face, screwed shut
in agony? ecstasy? never looked so alive in the eyes as when
you look at him. Call him a cheap fuck, 
gloryhole, a skin to slip on for the night like an evening gown.
An expert shrouded
in veils- the receipts, the pretty presents.
If you give me enough it makes up for what was lost.
Flush the ring down
the toilet, like too much alcohol winedrunk on this heady feeling
this is enough – am I enough? Drown in the sediments.
Reach inside my chest
fingers as spears, try to claw this out of me- if I use enough
bleach if I use enough ethanol if I use if I use if I use.
Time ossifies memories, like postcards to places I will 
never see. Printed on the back of eyelids. Learn how to
lean into this, the tension 
and the 
relief. 


Author Bio:
Eddie House is a 22-year-old genderqueer manic pixie daydream. In their free time, they love to write, especially poetry and short stories. They spend a lot of the time roller skating, mainlining energy drinks, and pretending to write to get their friends off their back. Can be most often found hiding in the university library near their home and trying to work before the staff can kick them out for not being a student. Their aim is for other queer young people to read their work and be inspired. They have had their heart broken more times than they can count and write about it at eddielhouse.tumblr.com. You can also find more of their work in Anatolios and Hustling Verse under their birth name. 

It has years to stand before we meet,
I have miles to go before I sleep.

The reality is crawling down my walls 
Like the hot wax from opium-scented candle.
On a good day, with bright sunlight,
I can peel some of its burnt skin off. 
Seems that someone had made a huge and ugly
Picture of the rotten world and stuck it 
To my window from outside long ago.
The colors faded away, the time does not forget
About any of us and anything around.
The tree for my coffin was planted 
Long before I was born, should be big by now.
Everything I love will eventually turn
To trash that my kids will get rid of,
As soon as I meet that mighty tree meant for me,
The tree I was promised to for eternity.
Today looks like at least the hundredth 
Groundhog Day I was meshed in and mashed in.
Winter turned the city into bare skeleton
Chilled to the back bones of skyscrapers.
The first snow this year was late, in mid-February.
I watched it from my bedroom window.
It was too cold to go outside or even out
Of the room or bed. I hope my tree was not cold,
Wherever it was or still is. I hope that it is 
Never alone. I hope it is still in the woods, 
Waiting for us to dance, standing firm and sound.


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.

Found a bird outside an icy 
storm on her way 
To die
She could no longer see so she used borrowed 
Eyes to touch the skies where she flew and flew
Now done with the protected light she went
Wild and blind in untraveled nights that 
Hid the next day’s heights

The bird met a bishop then
asked if she could see the lord
And have him hear her prayer
The bird danced around a question that was
Not meant to be there

For what god would give her
wings with this frost on them where
She was unable to fly outside in an icy storm
So, she kept her dreams and silent prayers
Unanswered because she was afraid to speak 


Author Bio:
Uzomah Ugwu is a poet and writer, that still hand writes everything including prose and essays. Uzomah is a political, social and cultural activist whose focus is on human rights, mental health, animal rights and rights of LBGTQ persons. 

Brown Skinned Genuine Magical
Legendary Intelligent Ambitious
Artistic Radiant Gallant
Confident Loyal Important 
Knowledgeable Charismatic


Author Bio:
Rukaya Williams is a student at Truman State University. She originally wrote this poem to express how she views black women. As she thought about it some more, she realized that she fit those adjectives also. She loves uplifting other black women and believes in positive self esteem boosts keep the soul happy. She hopes her poem gives a little light into another black woman's heart and soul as she reminds herself how AWESOME she is!

The strongest person I ever met could say "No"
A no to the world and all its gilded wonders
So that she may bask in the oceans of her own skin.

She would laugh, a wide smile full of pearls,
in the face of the rivers and streams
Who claim her depths are too dangerous to traverse.

I loved reading her private odyssey. You can
Find it on the coral reefs that have grown across her skin,
As mysterious and sad as the stars in their contestations.

I wish I could count every heart she’d stolen in her smile;
Every soul including mine turned to Jell-O by her touch. Instead,
I marvel at her world and wait for my vocabulary to grow.


Author Bio:
Sarah is a new writer hoping to share her work. She enjoys reading, writing, going to museums, and learning new perspectives.

The serpentine ageless liquid mercurial 
possessed snake eternally swallowed 
since beginning of time, one 
unquenchable thirst to gorge and 
slake slurping icy cold mountainous 
pebbly shake, yet fresh as zesty Irish spring 
using tongue o Gaelic spake then 
tumbling down into cavernous abyss 
subsequently carving, a deep criss 
cross patchwork across rock hard 
rugged topography like handiwork 
of invincible force commandeering 
humongous rake affixing legendary 
signature quasi-indelible grooves
only for indomitable chiseled masterpiece 
erased, twisted then wrenched
by natural landscape altering phenomena 
identified as an earthquake creating 
fresh tabula rasa to begin anew
inviting waters from on high to carve
from the ebbing and flowing 
millennial currents, which eventually find 
a more direct course beginning as trickling 
creek swells from winter rains
and thence in summer while sun doth bake,
when flora blooms and fauna 
prance firmament then abandons 
bent elbow oxbow lake
as former bend in the river.



Author Bio:
Despite hiatus sans countless years without formal ink come social security disability the linkedin source of monies direct deposited from main headquarters, which mention of unearned monies could be dumb of me, but this astute, destitute, and fruit full chap favors forthrightness hmm... no matter any chance for consideration might be nixed from an alum, asper hard school of knocks, where invisible contusions rapped this bummer - all throughout his public education, and absolutely nada one iota of gumshun detected, cuz no purpose driven life didst drive me to hum.