Contributor: Steve Isaak

- -
winter scarred deep:
our autumnal lovetumblings
your gut-true laughter
your off-the-cuff revelations
restructured, re-hued
my perceptions
(still does) –
everything that I imagined to be you
or of you,
dark, kind & light,
marked, marks our miraculous amity
my seasons


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Steve Isaak, a.k.a. Nikki Isaak and Chuck Lovepoe, is the author of several poetry anthologies.

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
Mind you, now, my brethren,
the Scriptures never claim
one day all whores will Magdalene
and disbelievers Paul

and you will never find in Scripture
a single verse that claims
one day all thieves will Dismas
outside the castle gate

while financiers Assisi
inside those castle walls,
their sharkskin suits in tatters,
their eyes, their tin cups up.


- - -
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Contributor: David Subacchi

- -
These girls have a real spark
Dressed in black they sway
From side to side
Shifting their weight
From one foot to another
As recorded music plays

Their dance leader
Dressed in the same way
And barely older
Alternates from bored
Expressions to giving
Directions I cannot follow

But the girls glow
With delight moving
Backwards and forwards
Side to side
Responding willingly
To each instruction

These girls have a real calm
Suddenly they sit cross legged
On the carpet tiled floor
To discuss their next moves
In lowered voices
Before standing again

And recommencing
Their synchronised
Ecstasy of movement
"You have to strut"
Calls out the leader
And as one, they strut.


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David Subacchi is a full time writer and poet born in Wales of Italian Roots. He is increasingly well published internationally.

Contributor: John Grey

- -
Maybe if my mother and father
had taken a deep breath
or a cold shower
or seen an accountant
who could have spelled out
the dire liabilities,
the shaky assets
in having a child.
If they could have been rational.
Not been passionate
but laughed instead.
Maybe if he'd worked late
or she endured the headache to end all headaches.
They could have even seen a fortune teller,
one who pulled no punches.
Or if only prospective life
came with weights and measures,
or so many bureaucratic forms
that only the most determined
could ever finish filling them out.
It was all too haphazard,
too many parts nonsense
to too few of sanity.
They could have planted a garden.
They'd be eating fresh tomatoes now.
They could have put in a pool.
Imagine cooling down
on the hottest of Summer days.
Listen to them.
Look at them.
She's complaining.
He's drinking.
They are all the reasons not to
but they did.


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John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Mudfish and Spindrift with work upcoming in South Carolina Review, Gargoyle, Sanskrit and Louisiana Literature.

Contributor: R. Lee Ubicwedas

- -
"The pen is mightier than the word."
—Dic Asburee Wel


The pen is at one's dangling finger tips. One picks it up,
and writes where one is at, beside a roll or bowl or cup.
One grasps the barrel carefully. Flushed, one drinks in the ink.
The words come st)r(eaming out. The letters form right at the brink.
One flops down on the seat, and plops, positioning one's pants,
the beauty of the moment struggling to get out and dance.
It is breathtaking. O, penned up, it simply hangs, and bangs
against the clothing that contains the angle it constrains.
Turned over, wondered, sideways, down, the pen is moving now;
its sonnet sits upon the age; its words are whorled round.


- - -
R. LEE UBICWEDAS is a poet interested in everything; his mind is as a fleeting dream that travels all about. His influences include eclecticists, like Aristotle, Vergil and Dante, among others.

Contributor: John Swain

- -
Swimming the river again
with the osprey, my sister,
as a bolt of deer fords the shallow.
The sun of summer light
belies the strength of the currents
turning me on a twisted line.
Delight of the water, her body
wet with mystery
before my giving surrender.
Longing of the formless
takes the shape of the drowned
in a blue confluence.
I want to be let go
freed to the indifferent deep,
knowing all she knows.


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John Swain lives in Louisville, Kentucky. Red Paint Hill published his collection, Ring the Sycamore Sky.

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
Families come
on Memorial Day
depending on the weather;
otherwise the Fourth of July,
if it’s not too hot.

You can hear them coming,
adults in the rear,
reminiscing and talking,
children who can read
announcing the names
on the stones until they
discover the right one.
Then they shout.

Adults bring flowers,
placing them softly
in front of the stones
near our heads.
Children stick little
flags from parades
in our waistlines.

Some ladies bring towels
and wipe down the stones;
others towelettes to remove
gunk from the lettering.

All mean well and we
appreciate the visit and wish
we could say something.
It’s a thrill to hear voices.
Otherwise it's lawn mowers,
leaf blowers, snow plows
the rest of the year.


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Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Contributor: Scott Thomas Outlar

- -
A woman
telling a
lovesick man
that she’s not right for him
but he’s a great guy
and he’ll certainly find
the right woman
one day
when the time is right
is like
Aquarius
coming down
from the stars
bearing his barrel
and meeting
a man
in the desert
who is dying of thirst
and telling him
he’s a really spiritual guy
and he definitely deserves a drink
but just not from this well
then pointing him
toward the next mirage


- - -
Scott Thomas Outlar flows and fluxes with the ever changing tide of the Tao River, laughing all the while at life's existential nature. His debut chapbook "A Black Wave Cometh" will be released in April 2015 by Dink Press.

Contributor: Steve Isaak

- -
Does your female demon
still possess,
make your hands shake
& your sex dampen
with complex, wrecking desire?

You were stunning,
afterlife beautiful
in spring window light,
your brown eyes laughing,
teasing,
street brass band
soundtracking
our non-coital communion,
closure, forgiveness,
something transcendent
something troubling
in our temporal
womb-like warmth.


- - -
Steve Isaak, a.k.a. Nikki Isaak and Chuck Lovepoe, is the author of several poetry anthologies.

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
Five kids, eight years.
And then one day my wife
shouts to me on the tractor
roaring in the field:

“I’ve had enough.”
And like a ballerina,
she rises on one foot, sole
of the other foot firm

against her knee
and with arms overhead
so fingertips kiss,
she smiles,

pirouettes,
and then like a helicopter
lifts into the air,
whirls over the garage

and keeps rising.
I can do nothing now
but curse
and be proud.

As if at the ballet,
I applaud from the tractor
and blink at the inferno
as she hits the sun.


- - -
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.