I’ve searched high and low for you,
But to my disappointment,
You never showed.
Though I cannot be surprised.
You hide all the time, I know.
I always seem to find you
In the worst possible places;
The shallowest of gutters
And in tight, careless spaces
But, I've looked there
And I cannot seem to figure
Just where else you might be. 
In counterfeit corners
And basements, maybe.
Maybe, behind friendship
And prior embraces
And behind lying eyes
On smiling faces.
I seem to have lost my keys.
Can you help me?
They must have dropped me somewhere.
I think there were three. 
I wonder why I continue to look for you
Even after changing the locks.
I guess, for some reason,
I still seem to think you fit.
Though those jagged, illusive key wards
Caused my masochistic lock to split.
I used to carry you close;
Inside of wallets, purses and
College book backpacks
So, if you ever needed me to open doors,
I was only a handhold away.
No need to unpack that extra baggage
I held on my shoulder;
That backpack got heavier as I got older,
But I had just enough strength to carry us both.
No matter the size of your fraudulent growth,
I always kept you inside...
Because I thought, without you,
How would I get home?



Author Bio:
Erin-Elizabeth Carkhuff discovered her passion for writing as an elementary school student, following in the footsteps of her grandfather. She comes from a diverse family and prides herself on her ability to look at things from different perspectives. Writing gives her the freedom of self-expression, which she feels is the greatest gift she has been given. Her work is influenced by personal experiences with love and relationships, mental-health and substance abuse. 

*for Caitlyn

Yellow, bright as a rain jacket--
and the gray shiny rain.
Time, a game of Pico, Fermi, Bagel
but at such a speed

like that bus that never stopped
and then how you held numbers
in your hands, tiny
fingers multiplying among stars--

And those in-betweens, the dance
like everything we ever said.
Words, as breath itself.
I thought of April snow and the sky

as a shimmering screen
where everything is saved,
first days, first steps, first words--
in the calculus of stretching space. 


Author Bio:
David Wyman’s first collection of poems, Proletariat Sunrise, was published in 2017 by Kelsay Books. His poems have appeared in The Voices Project, the Aurorean, BlazeVOX, Clockwise Cat, A Certain Slant, The Wallace Stevens Journal, Old Crow Review, Spout and Green Hills Literary Lantern and other publications. His poetry is intent on exploring the ways that commodification influences and determines our choices and identities. 

Every tear wrung from the son’s eyes
blinked in disbelief and in need of relief.
He concentrated on the distant stars,
recalled what his father told him:
They were orderly bodies.
The stars were unearthed, though.
With cloud cover now, no thoughts, no sorting
A blanket statement to sleep---
and the stars needed their modesty again.

In an unassuming move, that soldier’s candle flipped
up and attacked, exactly
as the cold fires a lacerated lip.
It was ignited by a star’s shame;
an incendiary claim against character---
that there is no air in this lonely space,
and, therefore, is no room for growth.

The Light Warrior sang a battle hymn
as sweet as voices uplifted by Mercy.

“Weak sleeps.
Dawn fawns a new day
Aimlessly,
Pensive motions made to totter,
Fleeting tears to carry,
Because some loves are made to tarry.
Never make a loose ending
From a bad beginning.”



Author Bio:
Sarah Kersey's beginnings as a poet was slow. It began at 12 with a poem about her parents' divorce. At 15, she competed in her first poetry slam. At 18, she tied for third place in a different poetry slam. At 20, her poetry was published for the first time in Columbia University's literary blog Catch & Release.

Though she wanted to become an English teacher, she had to readjust due to changed circumstances. Sarah went to x-ray school instead, and she fell in love with it. Being an x-ray tech has informed her poetry. In 2018, she became an associate editor for South Florida Poetry Journal, and for The Fictional Café. Kersey is hard at work on her first chapbook, which hopefully be completed by the end of this calendar year. Her blog can be found at sarahkerseypoetry.wordpress.com. A list of her publication credits can be found there, as well as announcements and reviews of poetry collections she has read. Sarah tweets @sk__poet.

There is my mother and there is 
the woman in the nursing home. 
I recognize the woman in the nursing home,
the one who was once my mother.
Her voice has been lost.
It has gone from smooth talking sarcasm,
to slowly stuttering, to echolalia, 
repeating intently whatever is heard.
That voice, the one I heard all my life,
went from garbled gibberish 
to breathy whispering, to soft syllables
without any breath to propel them
floating like empty bubbles.

I have no way of knowing if
the words are launched by thoughts
or are just a fading reflex,
a remembrance of a time
when a thinking person was alive 
inside that human shell 
drooping in the wheel chair. 
Without words, what remains?
A tongue that licks the hand
of a visitor, a glint that passes 
too fast behind a glazed over eye,
a gesture with a thumb, 
a breeze, a little bit of wind.


Author Bio:
Madlynn Haber is a writer living in Northampton, Massachusetts. Her work has been published in the anthologies Letters to Fathers from Daughters and Word of Mouth Volume Two, in Anchor Magazine and on the websites A Gathering of the Tribes and BoomSpeak. Writing since her childhood in Brooklyn through a career in human services, her work explores the human condition from multiple perspectives.