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2025
$15.00
80 pages
"Strange Days" theme issue
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Featured in this Issue:
Poetry by: Richard Schiffman, Stone Scryer, Kelly Talbot, John Dorsey, Mehrul Bari, Ed Gaudet, Sonja Vitow, James K. Zimmerman, Kenton K. Yee, Natalie Eckl,
Sara Barnett, Robert Cooperman, Jonathan Travelstead, Stark Hunter, Jon Bennett, Matthew J. Spireng, KG Newman, Alison Stone, Rachel Guvenc, Kelli Rule, Lenny DellaRocca, Kathleen Helen, Mary Anne Griffiths, Alan Catlin, John Cullen, Gunilla T. Kester, Robert L. Penick, Jason Ryberg, Keith Gorman, Mather Schneider, Pepper Trail, Kurt Cole Eidsvig, Verena Raban, Adriana Stimola, David Chorlton, Troy Schoultz, Maureen Clark, Colleen M. Salisbury, Bruce Whitacre, Claire Scott, Jennifer Campbell, Robert Perchan, Richard Weaver, Stephan Gibson, Charles Elin, Rebecca Coles, Donna Davis, Michael Catherwood, Michelle Lynch, Darren C. Demaree, Cecil Sayre, Charles Rammelkamp, Liz Mariani, Kelly Arnold, Millicent Borges Accardi, Geo. Staley, Donald L. Pasmore, Richard O'Brien, Ed Taylor, C. John Graham, Livio Farallo, James B. Nicola, Fred Pelka, Harrison Fisher, and Chris Bullard. Artwork by Tonya Young and Jonathan Borthwick.
Front Cover: by Robert Borgatti
Back Cover: by Mateo Omar
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Sample Poems from Issue 45
Brutal Night by Robert L. Penick
Neil DeGrasse Tyson Falling off the Flat Earth by Kurt Cole Eidsvig
Apocalyptic by Jennifer Campbell
Night Train by Cecil Sayre
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"High Gravity Days"
Tanya Young
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"Hangman"
Jonathan Borthwick
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Brutal Night
by Robert L. Penick
Count the people hemmed into a fringe tonight.
Number the souls having bitter tea with the dark.
There is a vast force of lone soldiers bloated
with an emptiness that somehow consumes.
How many stare at ceilings, then heave covers aside
to walk pre-dawn streets, umbrella in hand, to put
something into their mind that isn't grief.
Dawn will pursue them back to their hole.
Forget about sickness and aging for a moment.
It is the thousand-pound nothing that will crush you.
© 2025 Robert L. Penick
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson Falling off the Flat Earth
by Kurt Cole Eidsvig
Explain the top-of-spine clutching
sound of screaming
if no noise exists in black-ink
outer space. The Doppler Effect
speaks up as flailing gets louder
and then dwindles far away. Nothing
feels as good as angels opening
mouths to impossible fish-jawed
breaths and realizing they will never
learn a word for fear. Our ledges loom
everywhere as hedged bets crumble
beyond belief. Bask in the gasping:
Everyone we don't believe in
will die anyway, someday.
© 2025 Kurt Cole Eidsvig
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Apocalyptic
by Jennifer Campbell
A bird flies furiously into the wind
and is blown backwards anyway
This winter we are all Dorothys,
the centre cannot hold:
we are born again and again,
spewed forth in a drenching arc of detritus
raw as a white chicken bone,
as a paper cup full of meds
and before the spinning has dulled
even a little, playback begins
Snow nets the sky, the river surges
below, referee wind steps in
with the only constant answer: chaos
© 2025 Jennifer Campbell
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Night Train
Night,
tucked into my bed,
afraid of my sleep,
afraid of the monsters
my parents became
when I dreamed,
I'd insist on my door
being left slightly open
so I could still see
my father's legs and
hands unchanged
as he sat rocking
in his easy chair,
but he would rise
to go to his sleep,
always stopping first
at my room and
closing my door,
surrendering me
to unanswering
darkness.
Every night,
trains screamed
past our house,
rattling the windows
like shaking the bones
of a child.
© 2025 Cecil Sayre
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