Northern Lights Lounge

by Doug Tanoury

Sadly, the bar where we first met
No longer exists. It was shuttered
When the Governor closed all the bars,
And it never opened again.

The small stage where Motown’s last
Living funk brother performed
Every Tuesday night is dark
And deeply silent.

The corner booth where she drank
Rum and coke and me draft lager’s
Is empty and the neon of primary colors
At the bar are all black.

I remember the light shimmering
On her sequin top and me knowing
And lamenting my weakness for
Sequins of any color.

The lights will always be on for me,
The music playing, and the unfading image
Of her shimmying to shake the sequins
That fully colored that night.

Doug Tanoury is a Detroit poet who has been published widely in print and on the Internet. He has written a number of chapbooks including Detroit Poems, Merida Poems, Getting Religion and Tolstoy’s Ghost. Sabiyha Prince is an anthropologist, artist, and author based in Washington, DC.  Her books and essays explore urban change and African American culture, and her paintings and photo collages grapple with memory, identity, kinship and inequality.

Stealing Visits

by Mary Grace van der Kroef

Can you feel warmth sent through panes of glass?

I cast them your way.

Do they bounce back?

Standing with the door just askew.

Only enough to hear words.

I see a smile hidden from sight.

It reaches eyes, crinkles edges bright.

Still a question,

Is two minutes enough?

Stealing visits with mailmen,

Is rough…

Mary Grace van der Kroef is a poet, writer, and artist from Ontario, Canada. She is a person of faith, a mental health warrior, and a lover of the simple things in life. She writes to bring light in to the world, and highlight those simple things she loves. Her work has appeared in various journals, including Dwelling Literary, Fahmidan Journal, and Hencroft Hub. Sabiyha Prince is an anthropologist, artist, and author based in Washington, DC.  Her books and essays explore urban change and African American culture, and her paintings and photo collages grapple with memory, identity, kinship and inequality.

Brood X Symphony (The 17-Year Cicadas)

by Jackie Oldham

May 23, 2021
9:05am

Sunday morning, 9am
and already 79 degrees.

Silence broken
by the one-note symphony
of cicadas singing from trees.

But there’s a soloist
whose song rises above the rest—
an urgent fifth – F to B flat

Waaay-oh,

repeating at steady intervals.

Is this the lucky cicada
who found his mate?

The world will never know.

In the end, the entire brood
will mate, lay eggs, and die,

leaving their exoskeleton carcasses
and their soft, red-eyed bodies to rot
on sidewalks and cars,
in grass.

Their progeny will rise up singing
in another 17 years.

Jackie Oldham is a writer from Baltimore, Maryland. She has read her work at local venues, for the Quintessential Listening: Poetry podcast (2019, 2020, and upcoming on February 10, 2021), and for the Black Poets Matter series, presented by Mad Mouth Poetry. Her essays have appeared as Editorials and Letters in the Baltimore Sun newspaper. Her first short story, “Age-isms,” was published in midnight & indigo, an online and print literary journal featuring Black Women writers. Three of her poems have been published: “Golem Emet” and “I Don’t Want to Play The ‘Capitol’ of Edition of Clue™” in Oddball Magazine and “Just Another Covid-19 Saturday” in Global Poemic. Sabiyha Prince is an anthropologist, artist, and author based in Washington, DC.  Her books and essays explore urban change and African American culture, and her paintings and photo collages grapple with memory, identity, kinship and inequality.

Untitled

by Jayanthi Sankar

Man, always a social animal
insists on 
social distancing 
now
the new man of the 
virtual world 
evolve
will the children born this year 
be intimidated to see the noses and mouths 
of the strangers on streets
when the world throws away masks 

Jayanthi Sankar has been in several international literary festivals, including the APWT 2018 at Gold coast. She loves reading fiction as much as experimenting with writing fiction. Her previous novel, Misplaced Heads, was on the Eyelands Book Awards 2020 final list in Greece. It made its mark – as an outstanding postmodern historical fiction of the decade. Her highly acclaimed work ‘Dangling Gandhi’ was the winner in fiction: short story in 2020 International Book Award American book fest. The Literary Titan award was another international award it also bagged apart from shortlists and nominations. She lives in Singapore. Sabiyha Prince is an anthropologist, artist, and author based in Washington, DC.  Her books and essays explore urban change and African American culture, and her paintings and photo collages grapple with memory, identity, kinship and inequality.

Observations

by Kim Klugh

I’ve been observing a robin nesting
in our juniper bush. I check on her again

while waiting for my daughter to arrive,
my June-born middle child, whom I’ve neither seen

nor heard much from in these many months. The early spring
temperatures recently plummeted and I worry

about the chicks’ survival should they hatch.
I wait all day for my self-reliant daughter to appear;

the pandemic has been hard on her and I wonder
where our conversation will wander. While

I’ve recently observed egg shell remains scattered
in the juniper branches–little empty cup halves

of pale blue–I’ve detected no evidence of new life in the nest.
My daughter arrives and we embrace without the need

of masks. It is good to see her face again;
she appears to be whole and intact. There isn’t much news,

given these many months filled with blank days;
she, who left the family nest early on, safeguards her independence,

and can be distant in more ways than merely miles.
We walk through the neighborhood and chat; she fills

the space between us with talk about her new job and condo.
She wants to be on the road before the traffic rush, and no,

she doesn’t need dinner, so we hug good-bye and I wave
as she smiles and drives away. After she is gone,

I spy an egg, fallen from the nest, seemingly whole
and undamaged (based solely on what I observe from its outer shell),

but then, what can I truly tell about the state of anyone’s survival 
when so much silence fills the space within?

Kim Klugh is an English/writing tutor. Her poetry has been published on Vox Poetica and Verse-Virtual. Several of her poems have appeared in two craft books edited by Diane Lockward and published by Terrapin Press: The Practicing Poet and The Crafty Poet II. Her haiku has been published by her local paper in Lancaster, PA. She was also a contributor to NPR’s Morning Edition community poem for Ahmaud Arbery, “Running for Your Life,” in May 2020. Sabiyha Prince is an anthropologist, artist, and author based in Washington, DC.  Her books and essays explore urban change and African American culture, and her paintings and photo collages grapple with memory, identity, kinship and inequality.

Two Weeks After My Second Moderna Shot

by Andrea Livingston

On my evening walk, a high-pitched sound swirls through
the pines, as if a windstorm were electrifying bare branches, 

as if their cones were clacking together like castanets.
But there is no wind tonight, only the bizarre buzz in the air. 

Could it be the roar of my neighbor’s lawn mower?
No, the shrill notes are falling from the highest limbs. 

Years ago, I heard a similar ruckus at a Day of the Dead
celebration. A couple were shaking their maracas so vigorously,

I feared their rattles would break, the beans
spill all over the street. But when they varied the rhythm, 

tapping the instruments lightly with their fingertips,
the vibrations rose into the night like hummingbird wings. 

I read billions of cicadas are returning to the East Coast
after 17 years underground where they’ve been busy 

digging tunnels, drinking sap from tree roots, preparing
to surface into sunlight to sing their seductive songs. 

Perhaps some have already decided to migrate to California
and sprout like crocuses from our fertile spring soil. 

Walking down the wooded path I’ve taken this long, silent year,
I imagine hearing their come-hither calls, reminding me it’s safe 

to inhale the evening air without fear of the blue-black vulture above.
I’ve learned there’s a time for silence, a time for song.

Andrea Livingston’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in MockingHeart Review, The MacGuffin, Rust + Moth, the 2020 Marin Poetry Center Anthology, Sky Island Journal, Rise Up Review, and elsewhere. Her poem “Paper Cranes” received honorable mention in the Barbara Mandigo Kelly Poetry Contest of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she works as a public policy editor and writer. Sabiyha Prince is an anthropologist, artist, and author based in Washington, DC.  Her books and essays explore urban change and African American culture, and her paintings and photo collages grapple with memory, identity, kinship and inequality.

Pandemic Graduation (May 2020)

by Shannon Donaghy

My college graduation arrives in a box
and I take it upstairs with me to my new apartment
along with a new litter box and different litter
because my cat is picky
and, as such, shit all over my carpet. So, me,
the new cat bathroom, and
my graduation go upstairs together,
all of us in boxes.

I sink to the floor, close to where my cat shit earlier,
and I open my graduation and I mourn for a moment.
All of the new things I am tasked with getting used to
swarm around me, land on my shoulders,
ask me to ignore the moments – past tense –
that deserve fanfare.
Here is a list of things I don’t know:
How a vaccine gets approved by the FDA.
How people can hear scientific fact
and, like it’s a boot cut jean or a new hairstyle,
decide that it just isn’t right for them.
How Atlas holds up the sky every goddamn day
(it would be so easy to let go).
How any of us can function at all, given the circumstances.
How my graduation knew my new address
and made it to my apartment, despite our strained relationship,
the unspoken and unfinished thing sitting between us,
making both of us decidedly unreal.
How my cat knew to imitate the theme of my day.

Here is a list of things I do know:
The sun will rise tomorrow, in the east, like it always does.
My cat probably will not shit on the floor again.
We are not all in the same boat,
we are all in the same storm. I am lucky to have the boat I have.
Even so, I am still allowed to be bothered by the rain.
Celebration does not have to look like
a cap and a gown on a person.
I have still graduated and received a degree,
even if my graduation sits in a little brown box
in the back of my closet to collect dust and age, maybe forever.

Shannon Donaghy is a queer poet and writer from South Jersey, currently residing in Philadelphia. She is a book publicist and has the pleasure of working with authors and books from all genres. Her poetry can be found in Plum Tree Tavern, Red Cedar Review, The Normal Review, and more. When she is not reading, writing, or writing about reading, she enjoys hiking, painting, and wood burning. Sabiyha Prince is an anthropologist, artist, and author based in Washington, DC.  Her books and essays explore urban change and African American culture, and her paintings and photo collages grapple with memory, identity, kinship and inequality.

The Wise Curse

by Patricia Walsh

We are there, waiting to be glossed over
Trapped by the formulaic for years to come
Historically deprived of joy, rooting through detritus
Cleaning under orders, loving sanitised heads
Exiled out of school, running home again,
Some disallowed goal frightens the common ground.

Running through coffee, response already given
The sleeping joke capitalises on a miserable sin,
Too upright to be spoiled, genuinely caring
Married off to the threatened, shot dead
Together as role models, grinding angles away
The stock clichés running into a glorified stasis.

The cassette tape in its bulk sings merrily down the stream,
Mature recollection watching on a parked grace,
Strong or weak, going through the unloved type
Jokes and their distance pummeling their usefulness
The useful puns gone away from all recognition
Roaring into submission, the day flying away.

Commissioned into another blame, asking for it
Not alone the funniest, of course he’s fine!
The destructive urge crashes on a wave of crime,
Inward as it seems, taking the year off
Recovering at a premium, not seeing the light,
Walking on three legs at night, the wise curse.

Patricia Walsh was born in the parish of Mourneabbey, in north Co Cork, and educated at University College Cork, graduating with an MA in Archaeology. Her poetry has been published in Stony Thursday, Southword, Narrator International, Trouvaille Review, Strukturrus, Seventh Quarry, Vox Galvia, The Quarryman, Brickplight, The Literatus, and Otherwise Engaged. She published a chapbook titled Continuity DeeErrors in 2010 and a novel, The Quest for Lost Éire, in 2014. A second collection of poetry, Citizens Arrest, was published online by Libretto in 2020. A further collection of poetry, Outstanding Balance, is scheduled for 2021. She was the featured poet in the inaugural edition of Fishbowl Magazine, and is a regular attendee at the O Bheal poetry night in Cork city. Sabiyha Prince is an anthropologist, artist, and author based in Washington, DC.  Her books and essays explore urban change and African American culture, and her paintings and photo collages grapple with memory, identity, kinship and inequality.

In the Time of Covid

by Yvonne Zipter

The stoniest of my nurses, but she’d said yes
that day. It was my anniversary. In the lobby,
my love looked up, brown eyes so familiar,

I could have cried. It’d been six days.
She looked up and then she looked away.
Gowned, masked, carrying a plastic box

like an ant farm tunneled with fluid
from my lung, the tube to my chest
invisible beneath my gown, I was

a stranger to her. I called her name.
Two layers of cloth separated our lips.
It was the sweetest kiss I’ve known.

Yvonne Zipter is the author of the poetry collections Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound, The Patience of Metal (a Lambda Literary Award Finalist), and Like Some Bookie God. She is also the author of two nonfiction books: Diamonds Are a Dyke’s Best Friend and Ransacking the Closet. Her Russian historical novel, Infraction, will be published June 1, 2021. She is retired from the University of Chicago Press, where she was a manuscript editor. Sabiyha Prince is an anthropologist, artist, and author based in Washington, DC.  Her books and essays explore urban change and African American culture, and her paintings and photo collages grapple with memory, identity, kinship and inequality.

Unspoken Truce

by Lisa Reynolds

Always so late in the day
you emerge
wearing the same crumpled khakis
and loose-fitting shirt.

While you stagger
through a sun-filled room,
eyes shielded by dark glasses,
I wait – spine straight in chair.

But your spirit doesn’t rise –         
cutting words don’t flow from your lips,
only a low sigh, followed by  
“Not today, Mom.”

And so, we sit and drink coffee
on opposite sides of thick walnut –  
an unspoken truce between us
an unnatural quiet settling in.

Lisa Reynolds is a Canadian writer of poetry and short stories whose works are published internationally in anthologies, literary journals, and magazines. She lives in a waterfront community east of Toronto, Ontario. Sabiyha Prince is an anthropologist, artist, and author based in Washington, DC.  Her books and essays explore urban change and African American culture, and her paintings and photo collages grapple with memory, identity, kinship and inequality.