Issue #31.1 Mardi Gras Issue: Dan Alter, Susan Stiles, Dennis Formento, Samantha Terrell
A Poem by Dan Alter
[Donald Stone on the street]
Donald Stone on the street above also had no father, where were the fathers, mom sold bottles of something out of the trunk of a car which might, if hit, explode. Sat bathrobed & TV-lit eating potato chips that came in a can. Evel Kneivel of the broken bones in star-spangled
jumpsuit on a motorcycle over canyons would teach us how to be a man. Our ramps went up, we fell, we shredded plastic wheels of pretend choppers. Our bodies wheels, stones to skip: rack us up, knock us down like pins. A nice idea was boys should have men, so my mom signed up,
dropped me past the edge of town at Ed's house beside birch trees in dingy snow, wood fence giving in to weather. Rooms submerged in dog musk & smoke & aftertaste of one of the wars in Asia. Everyone seemed in a dim house to live alone, TV in the evening, more chips
from a can. Ed in his big brotherly love placing in my hands a gun. Happiness: toward empties on the fence my tiny shining bb flew.
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Dan Alter is the author of two collections of poetry: My Little Book of Exiles (Eyewear, 2002) winner of the Cowan Poetry Prize, and Hills Full of Holes (Fernwood, 2025). He is also the translator of Take a Breath, You’re Getting Excited (Ben Yehuda, 2024), from the Hebrew of Yakir Ben-Moshe. He works at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at UC Berkeley. https://danalter.net/
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Susan Stiles is a freelance writer living in Croatia. Her poetry has appeared in The Lake, The Dalhousie Review, Panorama, Innisfree, Slant, The Westchester Review, and elsewhere. Recently, she joined the team at Panorama as a reader and, occasionally, she writes a blog, “Letters from Rab,” on her website at susan-stiles.com.
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A Poem by Dennis Formento
Donepezil dream of such intensity I must have taken two by mistake
i
Cycling old Mid-city years ago—
my old neighborhood, on my bike—
wandering little dead-end streets
with magical decrepit houses
single shotgun gems with falling windows and peeling paint
small streets, tiny narrow neutral grounds
blue-black night-time scenes,
bright blue day!
Avoid that blue alligator
that crawled out of the bayou
crossing the street right after Dumaine
or maybe it’s DeSoto
two blocks over
where night falls, and somewhere
between Banks and Bienville
there’s a little place I’ve been to before
a coffee house of all the ages:
little families, hippies with kids
in costume, everybody’s in costume,
clowns and meatballs and mountebanks
courir de Mardi Gras ensembles
carrying little torches to light their feet
light the night.
Parents, poets
children and single people packed
into this coffeehouse
dizzying scene
the street almost tipping over
with hubbub.
But around the corner and down the bend,
police in droves on foot and horse
are rounding up the revelers,
humorless cops in black
policing the unruly electorate
after dark.
Shops,
little corner stores
packed up with friendly forces,
the street tips sideways
I lose my balance and fall—
golden rings dot the sky
and a group of someone’s friends appear:
Oh she wants me again
and she falls against me,
but the time is wrong
the sky has been dialed backwards
and she offers a gold-leaf disk called a “favor,”
marked like a solar calendar
from the Mayan-Mexican team
a psychopompic ride from one
elementary state to another.
ii
Gold rings and spheres
on blue shields
blue-gold squares
born by city marchers, swaying
thousands on Carrollton Avenue,
middle of the day and I’m flying
floating awake, amber light of sunset,
broad day looking for a place to go to school
to learn the trombone.
And I’m floating above this Uptown cinema 3-dimensional p.m.
mother picking up her son and daughters
adds to the traffic jam
and the parade
in front of schools, churches,
all these pleasant old buildings,
a synagogue or two,
kids boarding the street cars,
parades of maskers and
musketeers.
And here I am floating over the neighborhood
in an invisible vehicle,
circling the old Masonic hall,
now a music school,
and on every floor
crowds are rendering shuffle-time,
and the mass stands still while the band rewinds
patiently—a billboard in the distance
near the interstate has changed, it’s a movie,
and hovering over the building like a crow,
over the school to get a sense
of its suitability,
how could I know
watching a lanky 16-year-old
emerge from the old brick pile—
if I would be happy there?
There’s so much glittering gold in the street
an airplane shuffles by,
so many worlds to be known.
Memory is capacious
but incapable of recalling
all the surfaces
in this scene
that glitter and glow.
Sunday, 2-23-25 3:08 a.m.
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Dennis Formento: Books include Phaeton’s Wheels (Lavender Ink Press, 2024); Spirit Vessels and Looking for an Out Place (FootHills Publishing 2014/2010); Cineplex (Paper Press, 2012). Edited bioregional magazine, Mesechabe: The Journal of Surregionalism, 1991-2001; founded Surregional Press, publishing Darlene Fife’s memoir, Portraits from Memory: New Orleans in the Sixties (2000), John Sinclair’s Fattening Frogs for Snakes: Delta Sound Suite (2002), and Ungulations: Ten Waves (Under the Hoof) by A. di Michele and Amy Trussell, 2011. Founded 100,000 Poets for Change, New Orleans and Northshore chapters, a world-wide movement of poets and other artists for social change and ecological sanity, 2011/2015.
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Samantha Terrell is an American poet whose work has been widely anthologized, recently in Fulcrum Review, haus-a-rest, iamb poetry, and Locust Shells Journal. Her collections have been published by indie presses in the US & UK including Alien Buddha Press, JC STUDIO Press, Low Hanging Fruit Publishing, Vellum Publishing UK, and others. Terrell's poem “Nor Should We” was shortlisted for The Letter Review Prize (Summer 2025); she has been a Poets & Writers grant recipient; and she is the founding editor of SHINE international poetry series. Terrell resides with her family in New York State.
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Issue #31.2 A Triple Issue: Francesca Leader, Georgi Bargamian, Darren C. Demaree
A Poem by Francesca Leader
I Am Duck Phillips in Mad Men Season 3, Episode 12
Peggy’s at the door of Duck’s hotel room when they announce that JFK’s been shot, & Duck unplugs the TV, pulls Peggy inside & kisses her, & they have their nooner before either of them must face what’s happened, because I think Duck knows that the world has always been burning— that it was sabretooth tigers and gum-rot before it was plague and famine and war. I think Duck, like me, is long past stopping for any flame not fed on bliss.
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Francesca Leader’s poetry and CNF have been published in One Art, Pithead Chapel, Abyss & Apex, Broadkill Review.
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A Poem by Georgi Bargamian
Bruised fruit is sweetest
We laughed when you
announced that you’d eaten the
abandoned bruised pear:
one more food rescue
by a Depression-era kid. But now
I see your kinship with
broken enzymes and the
last fruits to be picked, the
tenderness in your rescue, the
ghost of you slicing
wounded flesh knowing
bruised fruit is sweetest when
eaten uninhibited and alone.
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Georgi Bargamian was a 2025 International Armenian Literary Alliance mentorship program mentee. Her poetry has been published in The Armenian Weekly, The Cincinnati Review, PoetTreeTownA2, The Songs of Summer poetry anthology (Waters Edge Press, 2025) and elsewhere. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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A Poem by Darren C. Demaree
Emily as She is Beautiful and She Laughs
We all spend teeth in the self-wolf economy. She kneels to smile
& I start a revolution. She sings to saint us. Nobody will ever know
she saved a world. Everyone will know why I try so hard to do the same.
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Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-four poetry collections, most recently “Now Flourish Northern Cardinal”, (Small Harbor Publishing, November 2025). He is the recipient of a Greater Columbus Arts Council Grant, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is currently working in the Columbus Metropolitan Library system.
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Issue #31.3 A Triple Issue: Riayn Spaero, Katie Kim, Shannon Guglielmo
Two Poems by Riayn Spaero
When I say tender skin, I mean
a blues guitar cover of “Lady Picture Show,” and En Vogue’s “Don’t Let Go,” spare and decadent as a hip bone carving a path in flesh, and “Mercy
of the Fallen,” lo-fi, only two presses— yours, mine—one master with all the rights,
all permissions. and, “The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get” without trepidation in fingering, strokes, or breath control for blessing a need progress spoiled to toxicity— pluck a little poison into me, sing until my walls reverb the hazard coded in your tone. an amplified
list of fine watches, culled to overwhelm but not pin down my wrist—break it down for me like I’m five, but don’t make me feel my five; life careened to a sparrow’s-eye view, all numb, everything and nothing’s bothering me without warning at five. a whisper to break the tie between which face sweetens
what I lost, ran out, and can’t make up.
a canceled appointment. a ditched flight. an ear. a lie
from goodness and mercy. a ride down Mulholland to head off panic’s rise in my chest, winding inside audible lines and crushed stones to catch breaths above dimmed stars and night- lights of a sleep I couldn’t dream hard enough.
a sternum to emboss the sinews tethering my shoulder blades.
an atonement bloodier than your offense.
my word before your flesh, blood, and water bodies, bodies, bodies.
the other ear.
Your rough patch, for my aloed hair; exit wounds, for my milkweed and honey, offering, pressure, release.
Apart from the Body
As told by vertebrae L4 and 5:
Senna, h r sentence, desire persists.
Else for what to expect of we remains of a wom n named High Witch, first, then Queen Mary between what swelled bosoms endow
and what drowns—blood’s erosion through its current’s rush against our collective. We tried to gasp, but could only twist 35⁰ off the center h r scapula and pelvis now feign
to straight up stand—oh, yes, we were where? Else for what to expect of our wom n, our whittled g rl, than to insist, Not I, the breach was his contact, his caterwaul, sucked teeth, fss-fss hiss to a pussy cat who’s cast and trampled her purr in sand?
What to expect of Most High Witch Queen Mary, but beg our strength to deliver his soul
to pocked asphalt, engine exhaust, kabob smoke, manly spit, drunken piss, pigeon shit, phlegm, and ingest
loss dislodging his face and gratitude’s quickened ex- hale for skidding tires, honked horns, curses and wails without impact.
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Riayn Spaero is a writer and performance artist. Her work appears or is forthcoming in CALYX Journal, Artemis Journal, Rogue Agent, Autofocus, the Under Review, New Feathers Anthology, LIGEIA, Major 7th, and The Believer. She's had the privilege of reading her work at The Elizabeth Street Garden & McNally Jackson Summer Poetry Reading series as well as the Frank Conroy Reading Room at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she recently attended their summer intensive. Spaero is still learning to embrace changes to her plan, while reconnecting with her culture's healing arts and languages and drawing upon the words and rituals of her grandmother.
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A Poem by Katie Kim
Hangul Abecedarian for Halmoni
after Franny Choi
Gone: the smoothness between the syllables of my name. Her fingers unbraid knots from the century she still lives in—a century of hanbok and yeot.
Dying legs folded beneath her, she’s stubborn as the baskets filled with laundry from Dad’s marathon. She sits beside me, close enough to smell my lice shampoo.
Most days she asks me, What you eat today? Every day, another photo of banchans on my plate. She worries the vegetables she sends home won’t fill me up.
Licorice stains the inside of her suitcase black, leftover from her trip. I think she’s forgotten I don’t leave Korea for four more days, mailing letters I’ll open when I return.
Germs! Halmoni says each time she scrubs my hands with hers, thumbs pressing circles of soap into my palms. In her eyes, I’m still five & struggling to reach the faucet.
Can you leave my room? I asked once. The words didn’t sound like mine, so I typed, I’m sorry, even though she still doesn’t know how to check Messages.
Pausing before I enter the kitchen, I rehearse: mi-yan-hae-yo. I see Halmoni smile as she places chopsticks beside the noodles she cooked for me, still warm.
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Katie Kim is a student attending Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts. As a writer, she is particularly interested in poetry and realistic fiction. Her work has previously appeared in Saranac Review, Little Patuxent Review, The Spotlong Review, and elsewhere. She is an alumna of the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference, the Juniper Institute for Young Writers, the Advanced Ellipsis Writing Workshop, and the Adroit Summer Mentorship Program. As well as creative writing, Katie enjoys visual art and playing the oboe.
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Two Poems by Shannon Guglielmo
Hüzün (4 weeks pregnant)
When I decided to procreate I realized I’d lost all my ancestral knowledge:
the moon & women cycles what to chew from the ground not to cramp how the mother spider’s silk is stronger than steel.
Underneath my brocade skin-womb I am in communion with Dinah & Leah. They help me live out this sadness-bellied hope
as I hunch by the mirror sink toilet the grief-joy of those two blue lines. I want to give birth to a birth giver
to be a sacred incubator & reconnect to sonder to undulate humanness. Trying to get pregnant
gives you permission to look people in the eye & ask What are you grieving?
Fulcrum-balanced waiting pining for redemption the amongness of my mother
& grandmother & Eve. We are tied together by this hüzün.
Carmela (32 weeks old)
After Lascaux Cave Paintings, Montignac, France ca 17,000 BC
There was a woman 19,000 years ago. Her baby cried in the night. She pulled the baby close & nursed her lest the beasts hear and draw near.
She was too tired. After midnight but before dawn’s eyelash streaked the sky with carmine she felt that limb & mouth clung to breast.
Her murmuring a language we’d never be able to speak but we could understand as:
For I alone am your mother for you alone are my soul this alone is my milk stained and soured like new grass & plum skin.
The edges of her were falling apart lately, fraying heel calluses cuticles black round the rim of the nail
back teeth grinding til they nip the lip and cheek eyes washed out to gray watching eroded bluff ants in cracks sun reflected in water.
This woman speaks to me now says, You won’t regret the sweet days of youth sucked from you to feed your baby’s soul.
Take my faith until you have time to believe.
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Shannon Guglielmo is a poet and math teacher in New York City. Her recent work is featured in Rogue Agent, Bombay Literary Magazine, Right Hand Pointing and Willows Wept Review. She is the founder and organizer of a no-fee poetry workshop that connects poets from New York and Massachusetts to strengthen their craft. She is a recipient of the Fund for Teachers Award and the Math for America Master Teacher Fellowship.
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Issue #31.4 A Triple Issue: Heather Truett, Salvatore Difalco, Russell Rowland
A Poem by Heather Truett
Viper
sank in fangs, then tried to flee, but I remember his name, his slit eyes, the flashing of a fast tongue that brought no pleasure. My blood boiled over. All his slithering came to naught, and I walk naked into the garden. I straddle Adam bathed in ash and apples.
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Heather Truett holds an MFA from the University of Memphis and is doing PhD work at FSU. Her debut novel, KISS AND REPEAT, was released from Macmillan in 2021. She has work in Hunger Mountain, Whale Road Review, and Appalachian Review. Heather serves as editor-in-chief of the Southeast Review. Find out more at www.heathertruett.com.
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A Poem by Salvatore Difalco
Game Seven
Going on in silence behind me matters to millions, it matters to me in passing, but I grind my teeth meanwhile, my armpits lather. I’d laugh if not alone, it always makes me feel a little sorry for myself when I laugh aloud by myself. But I hear cheers from next door or groans depending how the bats swing. And yes I’ll tango in the streets when and if the time comes. Who am I to keep my own council when victory unites the citizenry? Is it only triumph that we seek, or sportsmanship, that human feeling thing, that overcoming as a team? It matters how we frame the game. It matters and it doesn’t matter. But enough with the tiptoeing. Give me victory or give me death is the theme of this rap.
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Poet and Storyteller Salvatore Difalco lives in Toronto Canada. Recent work appears in Journal of Compressed Arts, E-ratio, and Cafe Irreal.
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A Poem by Russell Rowland
Nocturne in C Minor
This is the red fox’s time to see but not be seen; and the unblinking owl overhead; and the binocular moon above all. Since we do not have eyes
like theirs, we just go to bed. Still, it is an hour suitable for hindsight, back to dead-letter days, cold-case days, still on our consciences.
What was said and done we realize might have been said and done better. (Oh, the child’s teary face; the doors slammed on our apologies.)
Dark hour too of foresight: what we see coming, what form it takes once it arrives. Whether good is said of us, when we present accounts.
We do fall asleep, until morning breaks. Fox and moon slink away, owl flaps off into woods still shrouded. The sky, protective, hides its stars.
We dress for the forecast, put on our eyeglasses if we need them, decide which bills to pay— transpose to C Major, as long as it’s day.
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Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, where he has judged high-school Poetry Out Loud competitions. His poetry books, Wooden Nutmegs and Magnificat, are available from Encircle Publications. He is a trail maintainer for the Lakes Region (NH) Conservation Trust.
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