By Rachel Armes-McLaughlin

I was sitting down to dinner
when you left this earth.

I had just bathed my daughter
and looked at the time.

I could smell the roasted vegetables.
Dinner was later than usual—

The chicken took forever,
and the cabbage burned.

The leftovers are in my fridge,
but I don’t think they’ll be eaten.

Maybe it’s silly, but I keep thinking
about how I cooked for you

and your daughter, 
long before mine was born.

You didn’t like to cook meat yourself, 
but I think you would have liked the chicken.

I wish you could have been here,
instead of where you were

and where you are now.

---

Rachel Armes-McLaughlin, a grant writer with the UAMS Institute for Digital Health and Innovation, has written poetry for over 20 years. Her work is published in Loblolly Press; Middle Mouse Press; Medicine and Meaning, where she reviews poetry; and a Central Arkansas Library System anthology, with one poem nominated for Best of the Net. Rachel lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, with her husband, daughter, and cats.

By Jacqueline Coleman-Fried

I expect he’ll come home
from the hospital—thin,

but still barrel-chested.
I’ll nurse him.

Buy boxes of Ensure.
Paper underwear.

Put out blue towels, flower
sheets on our queen bed.

Tisch, 17 West,
Room 15—

There are two stiff mattresses
close enough to kiss.

And through a large, clear window—
the black, black night.

Under a head light, I see
my husband’s lips
quiver when he snores.
Step close enough

to stroke his forehead, his neck.
To whisper words.

Will he hear?

This sterile hospital room
is our bedroom, where shared

sleep and darkness
are intimate as sex.

Morning. Still breathing.
I take the train home.

A hushed phone call
before sun the next day.

He’s hard as marble, soon
to be ash.

I wash the floral sheets, return
the blue towels to the closet.

Weeks later, I etch the night—
to fix it, to hold it.

---

Jacqueline Coleman-Fried is a poet who lives in Tuckahoe, New York. Her work has appeared in The Orchards Poetry Journal, Nixes Mate, Streetlight Magazine, New Verse News and Consequence.

By Rachel Greenberg

Nearing cronehood
I’ve had my share of trauma and tragedy.
Buried loved ones,
my own war wounds.
To those who seek healing,
now that I know what I know
I want to tell them this:
Don’t you know that your pain is metaphor
your loss, poetic
the horrors you’ve experienced, heroic?

Everything is a symbol of something else
like these leaves clinging
to their last vestiges of life
before they spin to earth,
like the cold darkness before dawn,
like the wild geese just outside my window.
They call to me
as you tell your story.

---

Rachel Greenberg is a therapist, poet, memoirist and storyteller who lives in bucolic Western Massachusetts. She has a private practice and her work as a therapist and love of wild spaces inform her writing. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in the Atlanta Review, the Elysium Review, Mama Stew, the Main Street Rag, and the Sun Magazine.

By Cynthia Bernard

He didn’t know where to stop
so he kept going, kept going,
excising strip after strip,
two millimeters at a time.
He wanted a clear margin,
he wanted, for her,
all of this to be over,
so he cut and he swabbed,
and he cut some more,
and he thought, well, just a bit more,
let’s be certain to get it all,
out, out, damn spot
and anything spreading
from the spot,
so he kept going,
cut, swab, cut, swab,
until it was all gone,
she had no skin left,
then he wrapped her
in parchment paper
to protect the furniture
and sent her home,
dripping, happily dripping,
so relieved—no skin,
no melanoma,
no worries anymore.

---

Cynthia Bernard is a woman in her early seventies, a long-time classroom teacher and an emerging writer of poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction. She lives and writes on a hill overlooking the ocean, about 25 miles south of San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Multiplicity Magazine, Passager, Verse-Virtual, Poetry Breakfast, The Seattle Star, and elsewhere. She was selected by Western Rivers Conservancy to serve as the Poet-Protector of Deer Creek Falls in the northern Sierra Nevada foothills.

By Kristen Alexander

The toxic one once told me he avoids me at all costs.
“I wouldn’t be at lunch with you if it wasn’t for our boss.”
Just weeks after I met him, he stormed out and slammed his door,
refused to talk it out and said that ‘fluff’s’ not what he’s for.
Said he’d do things how I’d asked, called it malicious compliance.
I never saw a day he lacked that kind of veiled defiance.
In meetings, if I questioned him, his face turned pink with rage.
Our leaders called me paranoid, likely blamed it on my age.
The team (except the leaders) all agreed he was a problem,
but no one had the guts to speak – it wasn’t their job to solve them.
With him, I always felt unsafe, so guarded and defenseless.
I’ve never had a colleague seem so angry and defensive.
The leaders will reward these men for their toxic behavior,
But when a woman acts with strength, they rarely show her favor.
He fed on praise and accolades, the leaders on him doted.
He sopped it up like bread with broth, and then he got promoted.

---

Kristen is an Arkansas native who has worked at UAMS for almost eight years. She earned her bachelor’s in English literature from the University of Central Arkansas and her dual master’s in public health and public service from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and the Clinton School of Public Service. Her typical artistic medium is textiles, such as quilts, knitting, and fabric collage. She competes in the annual SOMArdi Gras beard competition, and has been featured in “Art from the Heart”, the UAMS art show, for her homemade beards. Her 2025 beard took the “Best in Show” prize – the first time a woman won the entire contest! Kristen also sings, plays ukulele, and volunteers as a docent at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.

By Duane Anderson

They asked him if he was feeling okay
after having just donated a unit of blood,
being concerned with his well being
knowing that some bodies act differently
with a change of bodily fluids, especially
with the recent loss of a pint of blood.

He said that he thought so,
and then they went into their good cop,
bad cop routine with him,
responding that they would
soon know if he was lying
if his face began to turn pale,

or if he passed out on the donation bed.
It seemed you either felt fine, or you didn’t,
there wasn’t any in-between,
and their concern wasn’t meant to be
part of a guessing game with questions like
who’s on first, or what’s the meaning of life?

In the end, everything turned out well,
another happy ending,
walking out of the room without any assistance
into the lighted hallway to go back to his office,
later riding off into the sunset
as he went home that evening.

---

Duane Anderson currently lives in La Vista, Nebraska. He has had poems published in Fine Lines, Cholla Needles, Tipton Poetry Journal, and several other publications. He is the author of On the Corner of Walk and Don’t Walk, The Blood Drives: One Pint Down, Conquer the Mountains, and Family Portraits.

By Jeff Rawlings

Britney gloves up and wonders
if she has a taco seasoning packet
in her kitchen cabinet where she stores
her spices and her sanity while doing twelves
at the nursing home.

Britney rolls up the draw sheet
and tucks it under Mr. Cipriando’s left side,
to make it easier to pull it out from under him
when he’s rolled off the bedpan.
She remembers that there is no taco seasoning packet
in her kitchen cabinet.

Britney wishes all her residents were as nice
as Mr. Cipriando, who has never hit Britney on purpose.
Once, back when he was a little more verbal,
he complimented Britney on her tattoos.
She’ll stop at the market after work and get the seasoning.
She’ll bring Mr. Cipriando a bowl of her taco soup tomorrow,
but he won’t be there, and only a part of Britney will ever be there.

---

Jeff Rawlings is retired following a military stint, a long career in quality systems management, and a delightful four and a half years on the staff of the Donald W. Reynolds Library serving Baxter County. He is a 1972 U of A Fayetteville English Lit graduate, and he was most active in writing and publishing during the 1990s and early 2000s. In recent years, he has reclaimed his passion for the language and the written word. He was the poetry critic for the Poet’s Roundtable of Arkansas for the 2015-2016 term, and he is now connected with several local poets with whom he shares his scribblings and observations.