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After Taking My Clothes off in Public~ By Ben Westlie

8/6/2020

I’m floating in the bathtub
my nose like a buoy,
air flowing through its tip.
The water so still, I’m expecting a fog.
I want to be a ghost. I say out loud.
I don’t want to die, just hover
outside the sanctuary that is the body.
Humans are always searching for ways to fly.
I stay in the water until it’s icy.
My body begins to shiver.
I cry, the tears becoming the bathwater.
I cry, like anyone who has lost a secret.

Author Bio:
Ben Westlie holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. He is the author of four chapbooks of poems, most recently UNDER YOUR INFLUENCE all published by Finishing Line Press. His poems have appeared in the anthology Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25 selected and edited by Naomi Shihab Nye and in the journals The Fourth River, Third Coast, Atlas and Alice, The Talking Stick, the tiny journal, Trampset and ArLiJo (Arlington Literary Journal).

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Unloved (for Steve Irwin)~ By t.m. thomson

8/5/2020

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You were a lovely giant
of a man—wide blue eyes
sincere as the ocean
is unexplored
& always amazed
as if seeing really seeing
the sliced azure of a papilio ulysses
for the first time
as it dipped & shivered
in a dance with your fingers.

You loved the skin of crocs--
their plates & the horn on top
like that of turtle shell
& bird feet its ridges
resembling eggs
or raindrops or tears
sometimes black-scorched-golden
& others with lines
of moss stitched by sun
& water.

You wrestled crocs to safety
& you could have wrestled the men
who laughed at the idea
of wearing their skin
on human feet
yet you wept
because all you knew
was compassion
even for the creature called human.

You praised the slimy the dripping
those with teeth stained brown
& ancient coming at us
through murky nightmares
those banded sea snakes
deadlier than a King
cobra as they writhe
through waves
the riparian
the beasts

You left this world
doing what you were meant
to do—you knew
you would—swimming
in the dark with the dark
as it fluttered smooth
fins under spangles
of sun striving
to break the unloved
out of our nightmares

Author Bio:
t.m. thomson has been in love with poetry since she was very young; her first poem was about colors. She draws much of her poetic inspiration from nature and art, both reality and artifice. Often poems occur to her while she takes walks or while her hands are immersed in soil. She refers to herself not as a “gardener,” but rather as a “player in mud.” Her work has most recently appeared in Wild Roof Journal and Whispering Prairie Press: Kansas City Voices and will be featured in Blue Ash Review and mutiny! magazine in the upcoming months. Three of her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Awards, and she is the co-author of Frame and Mount the Sky, a book of ekphrastic poetry, and author of Strum and Lull (2019) and The Profusion (2019). She has a writer’s page at https://www.facebook.com/TaunjaThomsonWrite

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Wild Pitch~ By Gale Acuff

8/4/2020

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Sunday means school, too, Sunday School it means,
and Miss Hooker, our teacher but more mine
than my classmates' because I love her like
I'm in love with her, which I am, and she with
me, though she probably isn't but I
pretend she is and pretend in dreams, too
--last night she died in my sleep, she got run

over crossing the street to fetch the ball
that I threw easily enough for her
to catch but she muffed it, put her glove down
when she should've turned it up, a sinker's
what I was aiming to throw. I didn't
see her get smashed--I had my eyes closed, kind
of bat-blind and the Hell of it was I
was the hurler. I ran into the street
and got run over myself, that's justice

and later maybe mercy because I
dragged my broken self, broken heart and all,
over into her lane just in time to
apply the tag of my lips to her lips
and hear her moan I think that was a passed
ball and to say to her, Maybe not, wait
until we wake up dead, we'll know for sure
then, God being the Official Scorer.
But today in Sunday School Miss Hooker's

back in one piece--I can't say the same for
me, how busted-up I am about her
all dying like that in last night's dream and
I woke before we went to Heaven, if
we did. I'll bet she did but as for me
here I am in Hell again even in
Sunday School class. Miss Hooker died for me
and there she stands. It's a damn miracle.

Author Bio:
Gale Acuff, Ph.D. has had poetry published in Ascent, Chiron Review, McNeese Review, Adirondack Review, Weber, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, Arkansas Review, Poem, South Dakota Review, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008).

Dr. Acuff has taught university English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.

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My Gray Child (excerpt)~ By John McCluskey

8/3/2020

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i prefer snow
on easters in march
nice to think
of colored eggs
in last nest
of winter’s white womb
what better reason
to miss a family holiday
   then again

snow might have made
our hospital trip
dangerous passage…

and we did
need to leave
our specimen
(our child)

to identify
which wind
shook fresh fruit
from our tree
   as if a miscarriage
   would excuse me
had i decided it was too soon
anyway to fall in love
with    this child

Author Bio:
John McCluskey is a writer and photographer living in Connecticut.  John had his first novel,  A Moment of Fireflies, published in 2017 by New Plains Press and has had poetry, short fiction, and photography published in numerous international literary journals and anthologies over the years, including Light, New Plains Review, Jerry Jazz Musician, Sonic Boom, 3 rdWednesday, The RavensPerch, Quill & Parchment (featured poet June 2013), The Red Booth Review, Otoliths, London Photo Festival, One For The Road (anthology), and  Cradle Songs: an Anthology of Poems on Motherhood (2013 International Book Award winner and one of 4 finalists for the NIEA). John’s poem “My Gray Child” from  Cradle Songs was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, resides in the public and private collection of the Boston Public Library, and was read at a poetry reading in Taos, New Mexico by actor Tony Huston.The poem appears in full in John’s poetry book published in 2019,  I Will Listen If You Tell Me Who I Am.

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After Taking My Clothes off in Public~ By Ben Westlie

Unloved (for Steve Irwin)~ By t.m. thomson

Wild Pitch~ By Gale Acuff

My Gray Child (excerpt)~ By ​John McCluskey

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My Gray Child (excerpt)~ By John McCluskey