WHEN YOU ARRIVE

You have wandered this road for a long time.  You have left versions of yourself along the way, like sluffed off skins of earlier snakes. There are times when longing pulls you back to examine the scraps of tissue paper skin that hint at the nature of these other selves. Read more

Katherine West

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, Writers Resist, Feminine Collective and Southwest Word Fiesta. New Verse News nominated her poem And Then the Sky for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico, the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado, and the Tombaugh Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She is also an artist.

Loneliness Looks Like Hunger

For a while, you lived in a room without a TV Or a garbage disposal, and it was so quiet You heard the refrigerator moan, two dogs  Barking at each other in the alley, somebody  On the roof watering. You’ve been alone all day Except for 10 minutes when the Read more

Cynthia Good

Cynthia Good is an award-winning poet, journalist, former TV news anchor, and author of the chapbook, What We Do with Our Hand published last fall by Finishing Line Press. She has written seven books and launched two magazines. Her poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in numerous journals including Tupelo Quarterly, Terminus Magazine, Waxing and Waning. Her full-length manuscript, In The Thaw of Day, has just been accepted for publication.

A Love Deserved

Sebastian points to the letter T, alone in the center of the child-sized magnetic white board. T for Tyler. T for tired. I sit criss-cross applesauce next to my four-year-old charge, who is excited and proud he’s found the letter that’s been missing from the set for days, and glance Read more

Lindsay N Marshall

Lindsay N Marshall is a student pursuing her MFA in Fiction at Arcadia University. She helps care for children with special needs by day, and writes about women who fight back by night. Currently querying her first novel, she’s previously written pop culture features and personal essays for newspapers and online magazines. When not writing, she’s often found rewatching Supernatural or crowdsurfing at a punk show.

Shapeshifting

The shape of heavy tears streaking down, earthwards, journeying to find our loved ones faces, again The shape of trembling lips the very moment we recall their forevermore absence as we write the date, on this day their birthday The shape of the book on the shelf in the store, Read more

Judith Staff

Judith Staff’s background is in teaching and early years education. She still teaches occasionally, though now her main focus is in child welfare and safeguarding children. Her work includes delivering training, presenting at conferences, and engaging in collaborative projects with schools around child abuse awareness and sexual violence prevention. She enjoys writing blogs and poetry on topics she feels passionate about. Judith loves running, gym classes and karate. She is married to an art lecturer and they live in Northamptonshire, England with their three free-spirited children, a 12- year-old son, and daughters aged 11 and 9.

Lessons in Healing From the Aisles of Target

August 2016             I’m kneeling in the aisle like a worshipper dropping tears into the white ceramic shell of an armadillo.             What else would you do on your inaugural Target run in a new town you thought you would love but don’t even like? Read more

Summer Hammond

Summer Hammond grew up in rural Iowa and Missouri. After parting ways with her faith, she went on to earn a BA in Literature, teach ninth grade reading, and achieve her MFA from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. She is the author of three unpublished novels. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Sonora Review, StoryQuarterly, Moon City Review, and Tahoma Review. She is the winner of the 2023 New Letters Conger Beasley Jr. Award for Nonfiction.

FLEDGLING

When I was born, my mother clipped my wings. Just the red ones. I flapped and tapped on my incubator for six weeks until they released me into her arms, a pink infant in knots and a woman with scissors up her sleeve. Life as a cardstock canary, a polymer Read more

Angel Rosen

Angel Rosen is a poet living near Pittsburgh. She can be found at open mic nights, drag shows or writing poetry in the dark. She is passionate about mental health, queer friendship, and Amanda Palmer's art community. Her writing can be found at angelrosen.com.

ARMED

I didn’t want to raise an unarmed saint after seeing my mother wear that role, always waiting for some relief like an unsheared sheep, she walked her muddy field alone until she fell from the weight of her own worsted wool, unable to feed herself. I was powerless then but Read more

Susan Shea

Susan Shea is a retired school psychologist who was born in New York City, and now lives in a forest in Pennsylvania. She feels like she is coming alive again, able to return to writing poetry. Susan has been published in Plainsongs, Pudding, The Bluebird Word, and The Agape Review. Recently Susan has had poems accepted for Last Stanza Poetry Journal, The Bookends Review, Exstasis, Poetry Breakfast, and four anthologies by The Moonstone Arts Center:The Weight of Motherhood, by Wingless Dreamer: Darkness Within Me, by Pure Slush Books: Lifespan Series:Achievement, and by Poet’s Choice: Nostalgia.

Late Night

“You look tired.” Yeah. “Late night?”  No….no, it’s not that. I’m tired of trying change; of trying to heal from the trauma; of trying to discover a plateau of self-acceptance; of trying to be an adequate person, and better wife; of trying to worry less about being a good mother. Read more

Judith Staff

Judith Staff’s background is in teaching and early years education. She still teaches occasionally, though now her main focus is in child welfare and safeguarding children. Her work includes delivering training, presenting at conferences, and engaging in collaborative projects with schools around child abuse awareness and sexual violence prevention. She enjoys writing blogs and poetry on topics she feels passionate about. Judith loves running, gym classes and karate. She is married to an art lecturer and they live in Northamptonshire, England with their three free-spirited children, a 12- year-old son, and daughters aged 11 and 9.