By F. H. Thurmond

When they wheeled the gurney
where I lay half dying

through a cold dark corridor
toward luminescent light

I thought of thresholds—
intimations of mortality

in the undiscovered country
of lost dreams.

The end of the beginning
of the end of being

in one place then another
or none where the wind blows

across wasteland voids
of eternal Lethe

or the uncertain beat
of an open heart.

---

F. H. Thurmond is an author, filmmaker and musician from Little Rock. He currently teaches writing and literature at UA-Little Rock and UA-Pulaski Technical College

By Jordan James

On my midnight pallet lying,
full of dread and stars in my belly,
I count out all the bones
I had broken in my time:

a middle finger on the left hand,
perpetually flying the bird;
left arm: ulna, radius, clean break;
right arm: ulna, radius, cut through skin.

My bones were built with sugar
and electrolytes, sucked from a bottle
like a breast. The calcium dried
up once you discovered what lactose did

to my body. “I am so sorry,”
you told me, for what has been done
to my bones, and how you failed 
to prepare them for the world.

---

Jordan James has been published in Cagibi, Throats to the Sky, Product, and The Robert Frost Review, with work forthcoming in The Westchester Review. He is currently a graduate instructor at USM working on his Ph.D. in Creative Writing.

By John McPherson

The angled morning sun
reveals the grimy streaks
on the windows
as I wait for breakfast.

My view is another wing
across a small courtyard where 
patients can practice walking again.

My room-mate, ran over
by a pick-up while riding a bike,
moans softly in his sleep.
I try not to wake him when
I go to the bathroom.

The angle of the sun grows weaker,
more direct sunlight
washes out the grime and streaks
on the windows.

Breakfast arrives,
the coffee is tepid,
the eggs are runny,
the biscuit is cold.

Where is a sun for my window?

---

John McPherson started writing for contests in 2015 when he was in his mid-seventies. In addition to contests, his poems have appeared in The Avocet, a quarterly publication emphasizing poetry about nature; Post Scrip, an anthology of postcard poetry; and various other anthologies. His short stories have appeared in Del Garrett’s Vault of Terror, Volumes one, two, and three. He has served as President of White County Creative Writers, Gin Creek Poets, and Poets’ Roundtable of Arkansas. He currently lives in Searcy, Arkansas, just 20 miles from the small town he grew up in, having lived in Little Rock, and Russellville.

By Edgar Meyer

There you are beyond my reach,
Separated by space and barred
From my physical greeting.

What realities I imagine for you!
What trepidations I feel!
What anxiety in this silent stillness!

Are you alone in the world,
In this connected world without connection?
Are you barely hanging on?

Is that why your screen is black,
And there is only a name?
Is that why you do not answer back?

Is your occasional stoic stare
An earnest plea for help—
A guttural cue that all is not well?

How many of you have I missed
In this digital chasm?
How many of you have I let down?

Do you know that I love you—
That I hope and pray for your well being?
Do you know just how much I care?

Perhaps, these little boxes can’t convey
Just how anyone is really doing,
Unless they speak up and say:

“Enough is enough; I need a hand.
The best you can do is not the best for me.
I do not understand!”

This device is not a teacher; 
This link is not a classroom.
Is it just me, or can we all agree?

Can’t we all just stop, right this very moment,
Scream into a thousand pillows,
And not pretend as though we are all really here?

Can’t we all just admit, with no disgrace,
That we are the better versions of ourselves
When we learn and teach and practice face to face?

---

Edgar R. Meyer, M.A.T., Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor who serves as the Assistant Director of the Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences Program at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, School of Graduate Studies in the Health Sciences, with an appointment in the School of Medicine, Department of Neurobiology and Anatomical Sciences.

By Michal Mahgerefteh

Since midnight,
no place to sleep
just a coffee machine
with no sugar or cream.

My fear tightened,
I rushed to his room
through hallways that
smelled dry and sour.

With urgency, two nurses
led me to a wooden chair
by his bed, and I so wanted
to hold his tiny body;

so weak and tender like
a seedling soft and pliant
dressed in colorful tubes
and straps and needles.

I kissed him on his
lips and cried. I cried
so intensely I almost
burned in that cry.

Into his chest I leaned
my blood and wishes,
so truly  so lovingly
’til all my limbs idled.

---

Michal Mahgerefteh is an award-winning poet and artist from Virginia. She is the author of four poetry chapbooks, with two forthcoming in 2022. Michal is the managing editor of Poetica Magazine and Mizmor Anthology.

By Jeff Rawlings

How much of me is you,
And you, me?
When I remember the first of us,
It’s just a blur of becoming.

There we were: We, a new thing.
I did not know there were so many ways
To marry, to transfigure, to be astounded.
You and I settled each into the other’s bones.

Oil and water? Yes, but together a balm.
I like to think we wore ourselves out
Falling and rising and laughing back into the fray.
Oh, I hope you are filled now with rightful sleep.

Were we enough, love,
Now that we’re old, filling our listless hours
Between spoons and sleep
With idle talk of spoons and sleep?

I never had a grand plan, dearest.
I knew only where I’d gone for you
But not where we were taking ourselves.
But just this:  I always came home to you.

How shall we live?
You there, me here, and nowhere for us.
I will come play my guitar for you
And your lady friends in the drab hallway.

How shall we end, you and I, and us?
Let’s be in the same dream some night
Where you are singing the old songs
While I’m flying us away to anywhere together.

---

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 have reclaimed my 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.