Suzanne Underwood Rhodes

Roses from Susan and a christening 
into what I have no idea of. 
Blanched and christened. White 
polo shirt heavy on the slumping
sacred body. Keys to the kingdom
in his lost pocket. Still  
I hold him, pietà, my hymn, 
body still warm 
in the death that shirks this life,
the darling they said dead I said
risen. I said.

Suzanne Underwood Rhodes is Arkansas’s eighth poet laureate. She is the author of Flying Yellow: New and Selected Poems, named a semi-finalist in the 2022 North American Book Award of the Poetry Society of Virginia. Other books are What a Light Thing, This Stone; two chapbooks, Hungry Foxes and Weather of the House, and two books of lyrical prose, A Welcome Shore and Sketches of Home. Her poems have appeared in many journals, books, and anthologies such as Mid/South Anthology, Slant, Shenandoah, Image, Alaska Quarterly Review, Christian Century, Words and Quilts, and others. Awards include nominations for the Pushcart prize, first place in the Dr. Lily Peter Memorial Award, first place in the Virginia Highlands Creative Writing Contest, and others. A retired college professor, she lives in Fayetteville and teaches virtual poetry workshops through the Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, Virginia.

Jessiela Roberts

On Terminal Disease Square, at the intersection of Doubt and Despair, live the Benders of time, 

Shape Shifters, specialized in contorting time by manipulating disease states with magical elixirs, heroic measures, and gadgets capable of delaying the inevitable.

Time, unimpressed with the trickery and smoke screens slips by slowly, undisturbed.

At the corner of, No More Options live the cerebral demigods, 
twisting facts with statistics, peddling hope to appeal to the unmet expectations for a cure, 
in an attempt to sell the promise of time with one more treatment.

Fear, guilt and defeat tap dance on patrons’ conscience, 
How can we give up without a fight they say?
Sadly they agree to barter quality of time in lieu of quantity of days, 
“All bets are off the table” and “money is no object”, except for those who lack. 

They place their bets on the odds that Science will once again defeat death, while dignity is lost at all cost.

In a game of Russian Roulette the healers take their best shot, 
Successful! 
Life hangs suspended between eternity and purgatory, 
Destiny paused temporarily!

Two paths lie ahead at a fork in the road, 
The Keepers of Time summoned urgently to offer guidance and comfort along the way,
To trade time for the certainty of quality and comfort is the path most feared,
To preserve dignity one must choose to redefine hope and accept death as a normal path of life’s journey. 

Death though deferred can never be denied, 
Time sold can never be retrieved, 
Time planned can always be cherished.

Jessiela Roberts, M.D., is a Family Medicine Specialist in Fort Smith, AR. She is a graduate of Trinity School of Medicine.

Dana Robbins

Midnight. Sleep eludes me. 
As hours pass, my brain is full 
of the usual black dogs: worry 

about my children in this time 
of covid; climate change; fear 
that democracy is on its last legs. 

From the 18th floor, I hear a late train 
rumble along the river down the hill 
and, in the distance, a faint chorus 

of barks and howls, domestic dogs 
communing or a pack of wild dogs 
or even coyotes that come out 

at night to wander the woods by 
the tracks. Do the barks foretell 
the decline of our civilization?  

Will someday the Bronx, my home 
that seems so solid, revert to a state 
of nature; the forest grown up around 

the brick apartments, the way 
the jungle closed in on Mayan 
ruins in the rain forest? 

Or are they simply announcing listen,
I am dog? The barks grow fainter as 
I drift off to sleep. 

After a long career as a lawyer, Dana Robbins obtained an MFA from the Stonecoast Writers Program of the University of Southern Maine. Dana’s books of poetry, The Left Side of My Life and After the Parade, were published by Moon Pie Press of Westbrook, Maine, in 2015 and 2020, respectively. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals or anthologies, including DASH Literary Journal, Door Is A Jar Magazine, Edison Literary Review, Euphony Journal, Evening Street Review, Existere Journal, Paterson Literary Review, California Quarterly, Calyx, The Cape Rock, Edison Literary Review, Ignatian Literary Magazine, The Magnolia Review, Mount Hope Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review, Pennsylvania English, Poetica Magazine, Moth Magazine, Neologism Poetry Journal, Poydras Review, SLAB, Steam Ticket, Visitant, and Zone 3. Her poem “To My Daughter Teaching Science” was featured by Garrison Keillor on the Writers Almanac in November 2015.

Her work received first prize in the Musehouse Poem of Hope Contest, third prize in the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award for Jewish Poetry in 2018, as well as an honorable mention in 2017, and an honorable mention in the Fish Poetry Contest. In 2020 she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by Moon Pie Press. Dana has attended the Curlew Writers Conference, the Bay Path Writers Conference, the Stonecoast Summer Writers’ Conference, and the Wellfleet Writers with Marge Piercy. Recently, she was featured as Poetica Magazine’s poet of the week.

Mary Ann Dimand

Snowflakes wide

as white hens. Amaranth

bleeds scarlet on the snow.

.   .   .

While the hemlock bends 

to watch, a phoebe flies backward

through a hush of falling snow.

.   .   .

The trees were bending,

their leaves weeping. Fortunately,

it was a smaller sorrow. 

It did not break them.

.   .   .

Robins are stoic.

Why shouldn’t it snow?

No cold can quench 

their bold, red bellies.

Mary Ann Dimand was born in Southern Illinois where Union North met Confederate South, and her work is shaped by kinships and conflicts: economics and theology, farming and feminism and history. Dimand holds an M.A. in economics from Carleton University, an M.Phil. from Yale University, and an M.Div. from Iliff School of Theology. Some of her previous publication credits include: The History of Game Theory Volume I: From the Beginnings to 1945; The Foundations of Game Theory; and Women of Value: Feminist Essays on the History of Women in Economics,among others. Her work is published or forthcoming in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Agave Magazine, Apricity Magazine, The Birds We Piled Loosely, Bitterzoet Magazine, The Borfski Press, The Broken Plate, Chapter House Journal, Euphony Journal, Faultline, FRiGG Magazine, From Sac, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Hungry Chimera, Isacoustic, The MacGuffin, Mantis, Misfit Magazine, Mount Hope Magazine, Nixes Mate Review, Oddville Press, Pennsylvania English, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Penumbra, Plainsongs, RAW Journal of the Arts, Scarlet Leaf Review, Slab, Sweet Tree Review, THINK: A Journal of Poetry, Fiction, and Essays, Tulane Review, Visitant Lit, and Wrath-Bearing Tree.

Barbara Weatherby

I laugh when others laugh,

            but offer naught to conversation;

                                    standing still against a shaded wall

                                                observing without participation.

Music flows all around me, 

            an invitation to let go and dance.

                        I  decline for I might look foolish;

                                    probably best to not take the chance.

Everyone around me seems 

            smarter, cleverer, unafraid;

                        their lives bright with opportunities

                                    while my dreams slowly fade.

I wish I were a Phoenix,

            reborn an indomitable spirit

                        with wings to test the winds

                                    and the courage to commit.

But wishes are only imagination,

            vaporous thoughts with no subsistence.

                        It takes resolve to risk being noticed

                                    and action to bring into existence.

Yet, how can I move forward

            when filled with trepidation?

                        Can I fit in if I think I don’t belong?

                                    Am I ever to remain the shy chameleon?

Barbara Weatherby lived most of her life as a shy introvert and always had difficulty communicating with others. It was only when she and her husband and moved to the Ozarks of Arkansas that her life changed. She became so enchanted with the beauty of nature surrounding her that she wanted to express her feelings. She decided if she could not verbalize them, she would write. She then discovered that sharing her poetry was a pathway to connecting with people.

Erin Bennett

In the beginning there is chaos.
Alarms and running and pressured orders. 
A conglomerate of people with a shared goal.
Tireless efforts to revive and restore the previous harmony
Of life. 
Hurried conversations of what might have been, of what could be. 
Old remedies and new technologies discussed and employed.
Persistent efforts to revive and restore the previous harmony
Of life. 

A pause.

Look into the face of Death.
Pain. Surrender. Peace. 
The words hang like ice crystals – fragile and mysterious. 
Death is an enigma.
Death can be a welcome visitor or a tremendous foe. 
Its unexpected nature almost always comes like a force.
One can prepare for Death, but not really. 
One can try to understand Death, but it still stings. 
Death can bring comfort and agony, separate or simultaneously. 
It can equally connect and disconnect people. 
Grief comes, or maybe it has been there for awhile.
Look into the face of Death. 
Pain. Surrender. Peace. 

Eleanore Lee

They still call it that
Even though now it’s all just screen time
Of course it is day
Definitely.
That glitter of sunlight
Streams through the front windows
Blurring my screens
Making me look gutted and washed out.

Now back into the Zoom Room.
How do I feel about all those tech people
Staring into my bedroom?
Can you read that woman’s book titles
Hanging behind her?
They look most scholarly.

(I’d better get rid of those old beer cans.)

Takes a lot of patience to adjust and tweak—
To work this way, day after day
Takes the patience of that old prophet.
Yes
That was his name:
Job
(Rhymes with globe and probe)

And wasn’t that one of our century’s
Great creators? Plural, of course.
Rhymes with blobs and sobs.

Eleanore Lee has been writing fiction and poetry for many years in addition to her regular job as a legislative analyst for the University of California system. Her work has appeared in a range of journals, including Alabama Literary Review, Atlanta Review, Avatar Literary Review, Carbon Culture Review, Existere Journal, Flumes Literary Journal, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Portland Review, and Tampa Review. She was selected as an International Merit Award Winner in Atlanta Review’s 2008 International Poetry Competition. She also won first place in the November 2009 California State Poetry Society contest.

Alison Hicks

I could have used the set of traveling colors,
the brush with its barrel of water.
Winter hues: 
ice-covered shallows, 
dry stalks, ragged heads of phragmites,
sparrows that flew back and forth in the grove.
Plank bridge across the neck
where ice gave way to deeper water.
Quiet, considering the highway, 
the train tracks, the airport, 
walking here after drop-off.
Squares of color arrayed, 
shifting with sunset,
paper holding the rinse.

Alison Hick’s third book of poems, Knowing Is a Branching Trail, received the 2021 Birdy Prize from Meadowlark Books. Previous books include two full-length collections of poems, You Who Took the Boat Out (Unsolicited Press, 2017) and Kiss (PS Books, 2011); a chapbook, Falling Dreams (Finishing Line Press, 2006); and a novella, Love: A Story of Images(AWA Press, 2004), a finalist in the 1999 Quarterly West Novella Competition. Her work has appeared in Eclipse, Fifth Wednesday, Gargoyle, Louisville Review, Permafrost, Poet Lore, and other journals. She was named a finalist for the 2021 Beullah Rose Prize from Smartish Pace, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Green Hills Literary Lantern. Other awards include the 2011 Philadelphia City Paper Poetry Prize and two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowships. She is the founder of Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio, which offers community-based writing workshops.

Sam Byrd

Under the dresser
a small plastic button
uncovered as if 
all of the sudden,

Uncovering thoughts
of your burgundy sweater
wrung and pressed, to make   
it seem better,

Uncovering dreams
of planes next to this
with sweaters untouched
no buttons amiss.
Alas, on this day
as sun fades to taper
so I fear memories become
evanescent vapor

Samuel Byrd is a medical student at UAMS.

Howard Kuenning

We’re all Gatsby, always have been, standing lonely on our own pier, 
Looking for the certain future, rich as Croesus, really, in this world, 
Food, rent, man, and printed books online. It’s all on line!
Which line? Not really sure, when just a click in is a false fantasy 
Self-policed by Keanu Reeves algorithmic goggle-eyed, Google-eyed, 
Dr. Octo surge machines running their traps along the frozen tracks of 
Our pitiless dreams—Me. Mine. My thirst. My hunger. 
Feed this Dream, the American Dream, 
Hydrogen clouds of nano-fission uncontrolled accelerants 
Seeded and harvested in simultaneous and decayed extinction 
Beyond the reach of any kind of Archeology on this campus, 
This field, opposing teams faced off in this early moment of
A new Age of Hope, Build Back Better. Back, where? 
To some pre-pandemic Eden that rudely shoves our 
Rotten American Dream of white privilege back in line 
With the failed Utopias of dreamless sleep, where nightmares lurk, 
Ready to devour hope and promise, the staggering beauty of 
Young hearts and minds dropped like unarmed victims into a 
Turf battle for Truth, the flipped coin of Both Sides Now, 
Yes, Joni, now, Both Sides? Neither looks quite right, does it? 
No, it doesn’t. Yet we stand in this relative quiet, the Global Blowhard 
Silenced by a click out, his scuttling parasites panicked by deafening silence, 
Parched tongues thirsty for deception, unslaked. How does it feel? 
The great alibi turned out to have vacuum for a soul, and the deal is a Con, 
A Great Lie the bedrock on which all deals fail. At some level 
We’re all jugglers and clowns, and the tricks we turn don’t matter 
When we discover that he really wasn’t where it’s at, 
After he took all that he could steal. In fact, there is no where, here. 
It’s over there, marked in every domicile of hope and sanctuary by 
The bright green gleam off Gatsby’s dock, the pitiless alien router eye of a 
Vast Matrix monster gazing from a billion feeds into our hopeless spaces, 
Only a click away. Go to him, now, you can’t refuse. You’ve got nothing to lose, 
Now you’ve lost it all. Invisible, no secrets, concealed.

After decades living as an expatriate in Europe, Rick Kuenning lives in western North Carolina.

Rick Kuenning translates lifelong writing and teaching experience into poems informed by a quick and innovative sensibility. His work reflects a keen interest in nature, art, culture, and religious studies. It also draws on a long career in international relations and national policy. He writes with depth and variety; cultural criticism and political censure are leavened with whimsical reflection and lyrical meditations on the natural world. He is stirred by rich language; words formed into beautiful phrases allow us to see in new ways and better understand ourselves. His poems seek to provoke and inspire!

His creativity is often sparked by dialogue with other poems. He is awed by nature, angered by injustice, and moved by the stories of those whose voices are not heard. Rick Kuenning is a versatile, caring, domestic man. He reads widely, enjoys cooking, and listens to classical and popular music. His poems are forthcoming in Perceptions Magazine, Slab, and Variant.

Boring Creds: B.S. United States Military Academy, M.A. (English) Duke University, ABD (English) University of Maryland; English and Philosophy Instructor at the United States Military Academy, English Instructor at the United States Naval Academy.