Billie Dee
Pediatrics
Back in the day I’d pull double shifts at the County Hospital, then race home to my waiting lover,
shower, dress, dance all night in that smokey little dive off Sunset Boulevard—limp home, nap,
shower, dress, repeat. . .
my last day
in the Emergency Room
tooth marks
on an infant’s thigh
wide as her father’s grin
Billie Dee is the former Poet Laureate of the U.S. National Library Service. A retired health-care worker, she earned her doctorate from UC Irvine, did post-graduate training at UCSD and UCLA. A California native, she now lives in the Chihuahuan Desert with her family and a pack of strays. Billie publishes both online and off. www.billie-dee-haiku.blogspot.com
This poem first appeared in haikuKatha (2023).
Natasha Del Bianco
Trudeau meets Trump at Mar-a-Lago (circa 2024)
Found poem from O Canada (lyrics: Calixa Lavallée, Adolphe-Basile Routhier, Robert Stanley Weir), The Star Spangled Banner (lyrics: Francis Scott Key), and This Land is Your Land (lyrics: Woody Guthrie)
native land
command thee rise,
glorious
the perilous fight
the rockets
the bombs bursting
this land was made for me
that ribbon of highway
that endless skyway
that golden valley
a voice sounding—
a big, high wall
this land was made for me
Natasha Del Bianco lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is a queer mother, a legal writer, a part-time poet, and a full-time dreamer. With deep gratitude and respect, I am honoured to be learning and unlearning on the ancestral and unceded lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation) & səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh Nation).
Howie Good
2 Dead, 6 Wounded
Her name was Natalie. They called her Samantha. Natalie/Samantha was 15.
There’s talk she was bullied. She attended a private Christian academy,
Abundant Life. 2 killed, 6 wounded in Wisconsin school shooting,
the headlines said. Natalie/Samantha was dead but uncounted
in the tally of victims, excluded from our sympathy,
banished below. Even as I’m thinking these things
I’m debating if these are things I should be thinking.
Natalie/Samantha shot and killed a teacher and
a student and then herself. She brought the gun from home.
Investigators are looking for a possible motive.
Christmas was only just about a week away.
Howie Good is author of the poetry book, The Dark, available from Sacred Parasite, which will also publish his book, Akimbo, in 2025.
Alaina Hammond
Two Gentiles Discussing Hitler
“To understand all is to forgive all,”
he says, from the rocking chair he’s more than earned.
In response, I internally roll my eyes—
though outwardly, I’m polite.
Because I’m a philosophy major.
And I’m twenty.
So, I know everything.
But then I remember:
when he was eighteen,
a freshman at Harvard,
he dropped out of college to fight Hitler.
He was shot down over France.
His life saved by German soldiers—
not quite Nazis,
just men on the wrong side of a divided line,
still doing their duty for the burning enemy before them.
Shipped back to America,
he survived nearly a year of surgery.
At the end, adorned with a Purple Heart,
a weak apology for the dent in his forehead.
Barely anything left of his ears
Just a bit of cartilage remains,
to hug the holes.
“To understand all is to forgive all,”
he repeats with soft authority.
Hitler is the reason children gawk at him.
If he needs to forgive Hitler—
then who the fuck are you, at twenty,
to spit on his forgiveness?
I tell my uncle I hear his point,
even as I disagree.
He’s a lawyer and a soldier.
A hero in practice and on paper
he wouldn’t want me to lie.
Alaina Hammond is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and visual artist. @alainaheidelberger on Instagram.
Darrell Petska
Minding Snakes
The snakes we keep
wriggle and writhe
as if they want to be free,
and given a crack, a fissure
they’ll find it, slithering
into the wilds to hunt,
drawing us after their
devious scales we’ve named
according to their personalities:
Come, Invidious!
Greeneyes, show yourself!
Killer, best get on home!
True to their names, they’ll
bite perceived enemies, though
they’re wont to circle back
to our confining cages
where they thrived
on the vermin we fed them.
Darrell Petska is a retired university engineering editor and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. His poetry appears in Verse-Virtual, 3rd Wednesday Magazine, Midwest Zen, and widely elsewhere (conservancies.wordpress.com). Father of five and grandfather of seven, he lives near Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife of more than 50 years.
Arvilla Fee
Soldier Pieces
His hands shake
as I pass him the bowl,
his eyes darting
from side-to-side.
I speak gently to him,
like a negotiator
poised on a windowsill
coaxing a man
from the ledge.
He relaxes for a moment,
sucks in a deep breath,
releases it,
picks up his fork.
His face looks the same—
half shadows, half flame
from the candles I’d lit;
yet I know it isn’t.
There are worry lines
etched into his brow,
framing the corners
of his mouth,
his once bright smile.
There is a guardedness,
one I must accept
as I gather the pieces
to help make him whole.
Arvilla Fee lives in Dayton, Ohio with her husband, children, and two dogs. Her works have been widely published and appear most recently in Wilderness House Literary Review and others. Her books The Human Side and This is Life are available on Amazon. To learn more, visit http://www.soulpoetry7.com
Jane Biegun
Reparation
A poem, in my eyes, is a public document of experience
—meant to be shared …an invitation to think hard
about the human condition …. —Tim Seibles, PoemoftheWeek.com, October 5, 2007
I want to apologize for my mother’s Uncle Henry whom I overheard say “black plague” back in the mid-50s when I was nine or ten, escaping from Chicago heat to stay for the summer with Aunt Bern and him in their rural Wisconsin town, population still under 200. I thought he meant sickness, that plague that killed so many in Europe I read about in my textbook. Then a decade later his meaning came clear. So finally, here in this fast, spiraling new century … to George, Trayvon, Breonna, Sandra, Martin, always Martin, and every other soul whose name should be overheard by children everywhere, I grievously apologize for Uncle Henry’s violence—he the tall, skinny, gruff, white-haired farmer who held my small hand when I was four on special walks to the general store for vanilla cones, who ate runny eggs every morning and poured new honey on soft fresh bread, donned clean overalls for Sunday service and taught me how to crack hickory nuts on the anvil—he whose toothless grin and gentle twinkle I think I had loved.
Jean Biegun’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Her second chapbook Edge Effects was published in 2024 (Kelsay Books). Work recently has been published in Third Wednesday, As It Ought To Be, Right Hand Pointing, Unbroken, and Thin Places and Sacred Spaces: A Poetry Anthology, Amethyst Press.
Howie Good
The Trolley Problem
Three kids are playing on the trolley tracks,
oblivious to the trolley bearing down on them.
You can save the kids, but only by pushing
a really, really fat man with a job and a family
in front of the trolley to divert it from its path.
The surprised look in his eyes is like the cry of a bird.
You will understand when I show you.
Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose newest poetry book, The Dark, is available from Sacred Parasite, which will also publish his forthcoming book, Akimbo, in 2025.
Richard Fox
Facebook Birthday Note from My Cousin, 2016
for Maureen O’Donnell Bunting, in memoriam: 1963 – 2023
I’m sorry that I missed your Birthday,
I have been signing off FB for 2-3 days,
then checking in, & popping off again—
so tired of the angst & depression
this election is bringing.
I hope you had a wonderful meal,
a good wine, & fabulous dessert,
& your loved one to share it with you.
Love to you both.
Someday, I will show you a picture
of my best friend.
You will understand when I show you.
Richard Fox has been a regular contributor of poetry and visual art to online and print literary journals. Swagger & Remorse, his book of poetry, was published in 2007. A collage by Richard is on the main page of The Scarred Tree. A poet and visual artist, he holds a BFA in Photography from Temple University, Philadelphia. He lives in Salt Lake City, UT.
Dan Schwerin
Always
Always behind him with an ice cream
as he drags the mower.
In his dreams he hears her,
and the hay waits another cutting.
A bull bellows when the pastor
comes to this light in August.
Dan Schwerin’s poetry comes from life on a farm or making his rounds across thirty plus years as a pastor in Wisconsin, and now as the bishop of the Northern Illinois-Wisconsin Area of The United Methodist Church. His debut haiku collection, ORS, from red moon press, won the Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Award in 2016. His collection of American sijo, lightly, is available at red moon press. You can find him on Twitter @SchwerinDan.
Matthew Caretti
Synesthesia
So soon like children’s laughter perched
atop the carcass of a beached whale
or Christmas song harmonies sung
in the swelter of South Sea islands.
After all these swift years still
uncertain if the sea is more sound
and fury or the wrinkle I feel of a soft
blue sheet tucked into the horizon.
Hearing the waterfall I find a dry wall
of lava rock, where the blowhole ruptures
a seasalt tongue, angel terns glide
into thunder and the sated dog’s bay
becomes the moon. Suddenly no stench
from the chuckety-chuck of the cannery
nor the coral reef riffing at ebb tide
as the slow arch of pastel rainbows.
In this world on fire with figurative
innuendo red is all that makes sense,
a paroxysm of paradox ringing into
each false equivalency on the news.
Altar of Unrest
God has left us with nothing.
Where is my father? Dead
Now fifteen years. More. Not
Gone gentle. His questions
Beget further questions.
A garage full of boxes
And paradoxes of love. All
That his sons won inside.
Tarnished trophies and a first
Baseball mitt. Photos of forgotten
Worlds we once visited—
Station wagon stories with
Cigarette burns, the smoke
Thick with laughter and tears.
Where is my father now? God
Might know a thing or two about
Love for a son. But this father
Sacrificed himself on the altar of
Unrest, resting only in what
He could never know. No occasion
Though for the insoluble loss
Of time. Of wars at home
And abroad. Another ration
With smokes and rusted tins
To heal the wounded
Heart of a million lies. No
Not this. Not this ever
Again, the light of love lost
In some distant jungle. Too far
Away. I, …
I don’t know the way. Where
Is my father?
War Poem
For Victoria Amelina
Dandelions bloom atop
old graves, dander and
duft wetted by dewdrop
nights. Mars rising
with martial spirits
conjuring a volley
of harsh words
from Hardy’s old ghosts,
a firing into distant
channels quarried
ever closer.
Cyber tunnels
the latest hack
hacking heroes into
ones and zeroes
some returning home
to lose all over again.
Sitting on the street
corner an alone self-
medicated marine
burned by burn pits
anointed by those old ghosts.
No AV presentation
at the VA to save this
band of brothers.
The complexities of
a military industrial-
ized mistake warfare
for fairness that might
makes right. Injustices
juxtaposed with
conscientiously objecting
to the latitudes of pain
most often paid in poverty,
yet some move instead
on a gentler path.
The gift of finitude
delivered too soon
to objectify any losses
lost in the hot desert
or winter taiga. Only
an audacious few
find themselves
looking down a barrel
from the wrong end.
No flowers this time
to stuff inside
or planted graveside,
but add to this title
“anti-”
She made poetry
of missile defense
systems of loss. Batteries
of verse bringing back
the dead. Or almost
so. Again those old ghosts.
Trembling stars not seen
from the bunker. One
shining ever brighter,
burning away fear,
yet more distant
than 37 light years.
Matthew Caretti lives and teaches high school English in Pago Pago, American Samoa. His collections include Harvesting Stones (2017, winner of the Snapshot Press eChapbook Award), Africa, Buddha (2022, Red Moon Press) and Ukulele Drift: Poems from a Small Island (2023, Red Moon Press). His prose and poems appear regularly in Tiny Moments, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, contemporary haibun online, Cattails and several other journals. He is the recipient of a 2024 Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun presented by The Haiku Foundation.
John Ganshaw
Under the Tropical Sun
Under the Tropical Sun
The streets of the dusty tourist town were full of banter
locals gibbering back and forth. tourists lured by the
scents of ginger, lemongrass, and garlic; added to the
pork and chicken frying in the sinful yet delicious
oil. Frangipani blossomed in the trees, the scent
a reminder of heaven on earth. A cover for the
evil hidden from view. A world of trafficking that
no one speaks, young men owned by ex-pats
priced for the bidding. High on ICE to turn a
trick, beaten, and raped in the darkness of their
tormented lives. No one cares and all hope is lost
speak up and be sent to prison, to be killed, it was
their wish. The voice of a martyr and all for what?
to protect the innocent from what happened to you.
tears of shame become the smile of tomorrow.
see the pain on his face and the suffering on
his arms. write the stories of what was seen, and wish
for a day when all is not lost. To live in a world where
those who suffer can be free from the nightmare of a
living death.
John Ganshaw retired from banking to follow his dream of owning a hotel in Cambodia. He saw a world that changed his lens forever. John shares his experiences through poetry, essays, and a memoir in progress. John’s work has appeared in Dreich, Runamok Books/Growerly, Post Roe Alternatives, Fleas on the Dog, OMQ, Free the Verse, eMerge, Unapologetic, Wingless Dreamer, and others.
Alvaro Carrasquel Gomez
two senryū
Fallujah, 2003
the laments of mourners
for unearthed skeletons
sixty years later
he denounces
the renowned priest
Alvaro Carrasquel Gomez is a senryū poet, but he is also a short story writer of splatterpunk and extreme horror, and a cursed poet. From mid-2023, he has been passionately exploring senryū, haiku, haibun, and erotiku. His work has been published so far by Otoroshi Journal (as “Vampirlibido”), tsuri-dōrō—a small journal of haiku and senryu, Shadow Pond Journal, Cold Moon Journal, Failed Haiku, Poetry Pea, and Sakura Haiku Anthology. He lives in Santiago de los Caballeros de Mérida, Venezuela.
Richard L. Matta
The Mine Field
Inside my mind are countless flowers,
a trowel and soil in the wheelbarrow.
There’s a maze in front of me, a maze
of holes reaching to the darkness of souls.
A toddler was here, a farmer there.
A sunflower meadow, a field of wheat
burned and bulldozed. So many tactics
to fend off forces, so many strategies
to deplete innocents of subsistence.
The pressure triggers, the tripwires
sometimes even an alluring trove
of leftovers, or perhaps a shiny toy.
Experts say animals in Africa—
large and small—cower at the sound
of a human voice, that in its presence,
even the roar of a lion or tiger doesn’t
elicit the same fearful response.
Richard L. Matta is originally from New York’s rustic Hudson Valley. His work appears in Glint, Slipstream, Hole in the Head Review, Healing Muse, and elsewhere. He poetry was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023. He currently resides in San Diego, California.
Kelley White
Insouciant
the way you whipped
the hose out from under
the child’s feet, angered by something
so small—a break in your stride
as you watered your flowers—
literally swept her
off her feet, and she didn’t
skip a beat, just sat watching:
it was unimaginable that
you’d apologize
Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent collection is NO. HOPE STREET (Kelsay Books). She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.
Kelley White
altruism
my belief that
you actually want
the clothes I don’t want
on my back
Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent collection is NO. HOPE STREET (Kelsay Books). She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.