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Infinity curve, with cheesesteak

My brother looks me in the eye when we

talk – always. Even driving through Philly

at rush hour after the airport. He drives

with his left knee, both hands going up

with questions, out for emphasis, pointing

at landmarks – like the cheesesteak

place we passed at 70 miles an hour,

the c and the e in the neon sign dark

because, bullets. He plays drums at Temple

and works with street kids and stuffs himself

with all the life he can find. The sketchier,

the better, he says. He’s still going on about

cheesesteaks, wants me to know how good

food works. If you’re not running scared

to the counter and back to your car, you’re

eating average at best. I’ll take my chances.

I’m not here forever. Have you called mom?

He means he won’t live in Philly for long

but suddenly my stomach feels him gone,

sees my own hands white knuckling

the wheel, turning down the safest streets

with a broken heart and a hungry mouth

that wants another hundred miles of American

cheese and sautéed onions, driving so fast

you’d think God was tapping his foot, talking

about everything out loud as if our lives

depended on it, because they did.

Stacey Forbes is the author of Little Thistles, a poetry chapbook published by Finishing Line Press as the winner of their 2023 New Women’s Voices competition. Stacey’s work appears in some of the publications she loves, including Beloit Poetry Journal, New Ohio Review, Terrain.org, and Split Rock Review. Born in Pennsylvania, Stacey now lives and writes in Tucson, Arizona.

 

Divine Property: Tin Cup

I watched the blind beggar drag his body

into the shadow of Broad and Samson,
his hands like ash, his face half-covered

by an old hat he treats like an heirloom.

His cup was there, waiting like an open mouth,

the faint sound of coins bouncing against

its tin skin, each ping like a cracked bell

calling for something bigger.

He could tell a nickel from a dime by the way it settled,
its spinning stopped cold, and he must have felt
the difference between mercy and mockery—
the penny tossed by a man with rings on all his fingers,
the same man who spat once and crossed the street.
And the sign beside him, “Love Your Neighbor,”
written in some shaking hand, curling at the edges,
greasy with fingerprints by a friend in exile
bent away and ashamed of this kingdom.

I think about the weight of his bag, the bottle tucked
under his coat, warm against his ribs—his only comfort—
and I wonder about the composer of that sign, if he believed it,
if he too sat here once, holding out his hands.
He knows the sound of justice, the ache of an empty cup,
the slow, careful way hope folds itself into a corner
and waits for someone who knows its name.

And I want to ask him if he remembers
a song or a prayer, or if he only listens now
to the shuffle of shoes, the endless clicking
of heels on pavement, the city moving past him,
never stopping. Would he recognize my breath
if I knelt and dropped a quarter wrapped in a twenty
or would I become just another sound,
another dull thud in the cup’s wide-open mouth?

Tim Gavin is an Episcopal priest. In addition to his most recent publication, A Radical Beginning (Olympia Publishers, 2023), he is the author of Lyrics from the Central Plateau, a chapbook of poems released by Prolific Press in November 2018. His articles, essays, and poems have appeared in The Anglican Theological Review, Barrow Street Review, Blue Heron Review, Blue Mountain Review, Cape Rock, Chiron Review, The Cresset, Grow Christians, Digital Papercut, Evening Street Review, Library Journal, Magma, Poetry Quarterly, Poetry South, Poetry Super Highway, and Spectrum. He lives with his wife, Joyce, in Newtown Square.

 

For the Bride in my DNA

Village shuttered against night, clay stove fired up, the kettle steaming

in the damp. Her position set, the old Dutch-German requires it, a cook

to bank the fires to prepare the meals. His bed? She has her own, a right

to refuse the man; she made him sign his mark upon the deed she’s folded up,

squared in her belongings, a quilt she patched with her mother, a bronze knife,

a single coin to pay her funeral. The bride could be called young in polite nations,

here she is the cook, a lover if she permits it. There is no church, no dowry,

not even a dress beyond what she made on her last name day, stitched like her

comfort depended on it, the dress, a sturdy enough coat against cold, rain,

the haymaking weather she will cook in, every day, for the rest of her days,

with a man who agreed to pay her, shelter her, and fuck her with child, in her

own time, or his own time, should he drink or take to anger, as men do.

She is given flowers to cover her from evil, a bit of dirt from her father’s house,

a bit of ash from her mother’s hearth. She doesn’t believe evil is darkness,

she understands darkness divides evil into shadow, nothing can be trusted

with the eye. When the old man picks her up he whispers, I’ll keep demon’s fingers

from your ankles, and carries her into the house, and puts her down

like a basket of beets. He salts the stoop, strikes candles against the known.

They eat a stew with bread. He drinks to shatter her place. She hears the crack

of the whisky cask and tumbles into a well of worry. He visits her in those first hours

of darkness, the journey hardly off her, to keep you safe from it, from the evil 

that would take you right outside the door. She knows she has no choice

in the matter, she’s  heard her mother’s bed clatter;  the demon is in the gaps

between spirit and man, how often he lifts it to his lip, how often he puts it away.

Cassandra Whitaker (she/they) is trans writer living in rural Virginia. Whit’s work has been published in Michigan Quarterly Review, Conjunctions, The Mississippi Review, Lamba Literary Review and other places. They are a member of the National Book Critics Circle and an educator. Wolf Devouring A Wolf Devouring A Wolf is forthcoming from Jackleg Press in 2025. wolfs-den.page

 

Solidarity

When protesters lie on the ground

it is called a die-in

and this is the tactic used

by my blue blotch pansies

when I’ve absentmindedly deprived them

of water. Before misting,

I try to pick out the ones

just taking a knee. I know

there must be at least one

who has gotten plenty of water,

in fact, is drunk on it:

thick roots, muscular petals;

the water having pooled

in his little side of the pot. He,

who is not even thirsty,

but lies down anyway

because his neighbors’ suffering is his own.

John Wojtowicz grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery and still lives in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed “nowhere Zen New Jersey.” Currently, he teaches social work at Rowan College South Jersey. Recent or forthcoming publications include: Rattle, New Ohio Review, Sonora Review, and The Ekphrastic Review. He is the author of the chapbook, Roadside Attractions: a Poetic Guide to American Oddities. Find out more at: www.johnwojtowicz.com.

 

Street Impressions

Chester Avenue, Southwest Philadelphia, early 1960s

 

As on a children’s show,

the green-and-cream trolley

with wide windows for eyes,

an emblem above the headlight

like a little mustache,

would come into view—

its doors hissing open, then closed

before it went hiccupping

over the cobblestone tracks.

 

And down the back alley

past Rusty the Boxer

and Bunky the Beagle,

stirred up along the hairpin fences,

the songs of hucksters

carrying splintered baskets

of freestone peaches

and Jersey tomatoes;

the neighborly chatter

of clothes on the lines.

 

And the characters we’d meet

along the avenue:

Alex the shoe shiner

and John the milkman;

palsied Mr. Packer

with his handcart of Schmidt’s.

The older boys, who with sycamore pods

they gathered from the curbs

to chalk their lessons—

scrawled in cursive

on the slates of our necks.

Joseph Chelius is the author of two collections of poems with WordTech Communications: The Art of Acquiescence.

 

Gentradelphia

I see whiteness, lightness; is it righteousness?

I feel invisible, a little miserable.

Few Black women, more Black men.

White women and men and dogs galore.

I abhor the fact, the lack of colorful faces

in places where there used to be more.

The city is nicer on the surface,

but to what purpose? Who for?

The scene is pretty but lacks an underscore.

Sore, sore, sore of a space. Sore of a place.

Bandaged to heal, but when you peel—rip—it off

a scar covers up what was unsure.

And you can’t always remember the original lore.

Shaleia Rogers-Lee is an emerging poet. She grew up in Delaware County and currently lives in Philadelphia. She writes about Philadelphia, women’s experiences, being Black in America, fairy tales, and anything she wants to explore. Shaleia has an MA in Writing Studies and a BA in English.

 

Seance

The world of direct marketing

is a medium reaching out to you,

dearly departed first wife.

Three decades since our divorce

and as many changes of address,

Progressive still wants you to know

you can save when you bundle your insurance.

No tarot cards, no crystal ball, just an algorithm

that believes we’re still together,

that believes you’re still alive.

One flier seems to say

Give us a sign. Show us

you’re interested in Viking cruises.

And now, eight months since you died,

in the inbox of a seldom used email,

they want to know, dear dead one,

who you plan to vote for in the fall.

Of course, you never left me,

haunted me long before you actually died,

but I’m the only one who should know

you’re there in the guilty way I go on breathing,

the way I venerate the only photo of you I kept

like an icon of a long lost saint.

Now, Facebook necromantically

conjures your picture, tells me

you’re someone I might know.

The veil is thin in cyberspace.

I click on your image, make you my friend.

A friend is better than a ghost.

Isn’t it? Give me a sign.

R. G. Evans is a New Jersey-based poet, writer, and songwriter. His books include Overtipping the Ferryman, The Holy Both, and Imagine Sisyphus Happy. His albums of original songs, Sweet Old Life and Kid Yesterday Calling Tomorrow Man, are available on most streaming sites.

 

Flying Over Western PA

Allegheny hills flatten on ascent

carlights below I press my nose against

airplane glass as we bank I think the hillsides

rise just a bit just like breath before I left

Dad filled my washer fluid, Armor-alled the dash

I didn’t ask for Windex blue he is a man of few words

and many solvents. I packed last items glitter dress

satin heels he cleared snow off my windshield

started the ignition but listen: this is what a father does

he scrapes, wind blows because he hasn’t let her go

just yet she will live across the state and trace a path

engine ever humming bootbrush hills winter ever coming

leaving home it’s sunny second time this year

but the turnpike route, the windshield–both are clear.

Jessica Whipple writes for adults and children. She published two children’s picture books in 2023: Enough Is… (Tilbury House, illus. by Nicole Wong) and I Think I Think a Lot (Free Spirit Publishing, illus. by Josée Bisaillon). Her poetry has been published recently in Funicular, ONE ART, Pine Hills Review, and Identity Theory. Jessica’s poem “Broken Strings” (appearing in Door Is a Jar) received a Best of the Net and a Pushcart nomination. You can find her on Twitter/X @JessicaWhippl17.

 

Contrary to Popular Belief, or, My Parents Debate Religion Over Coffee

My father doesn’t believe in God the way

he thinks he should. There will always be

barriers between the holy and the tangible,

and today, it’s Big Bang vs Genesis. I think

this world will never have the answers for

bare feet on the water’s surface. But still,

he is suffering, too. My mother believes

the moonlit garden where we were born

is pure. My father sees the other half. God

is not limited to beauty; the world he built

is far from perfection. It is blossoming with

faith thin as the broken breath between

sips of coffee gone cold. Tension tethers to

our living room gilded by dawn. My father

 

 my mother believes, but when he sees her,

stained glass and baptismal waters shifting

between what is known and what is felt,

he feels obligated to choose. Worries that

resurrection, water deepening to wine, and

sin cannot be explained. If God is salvation,

he is Monet’s lily pads, each lotus sunset,

and the earth we are buried in. For her, this

answers everything, creates all. But divinity

encompasses heartbreak, hatred, death,

ignorance and childhood leukemia and

trigger fingers. My father rests, takes

my mother’s hands, and silence swaths

doubts. Much like God asks, though, he

 

believes in being good, no matter what follows death. I’m not sure there’s a difference.

Annabelle Smith is a student at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. She has received national recognition for her work in poetry from Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. More of her work can be found in Spotlong Review, Potomac Review, Black Coffee Review, and other journals.

 

Oxygen Destroyer

As long as I’m alive, who can say I wouldn’t be coerced into using it again? – Dr. Serizawa (Gojira, 1954)

 

Brackish water detonates, stickleback failing

to squirm from the kingfisher’s bill.

 

Swept into the branches, what remains:

smash the spine, suck bladder from bone.

 

Pistol-mouthed sun edging the lips

of the river. Last night, I fired

 

upright in bed, struck by a moonbeam of panic:

Twelve years on, you’ve somehow escaped,

 

survived by a stream of electrons,

mourning notes, your candle’s animation

 

frozen on my laptop’s open window.

I almost titled this Open Window

 

to bear witness to not just your death

but the power of air, the advantage of height,

 

the threshold you once threatened

for my murder. Still your tremors

 

haul me, flailing on my side

in your mouth, from the boiling surface,

 

each eye fixed on its own dimension,

talon and water and sky. Here, the air

 

I can’t respire. The delta shrugs, pulls again

its body to its neck, forgets the waves,

 

the trace scales floating. Sleeps.

Surely you are not the last lizard

 

to crawl from this ocean.

If we keep testing this weapon,

 

you may yet rise again. If our atoms touch,

our bodies will explode.

Dan Schall is a poet and teacher based in Pennsylvania. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Willows Wept Review, Anthropocene Literary Journal, Arboreal Literary Magazine, Merion West, Cartridge Lit, Thimble Literary Magazine, The Shore, The Light Ekphrastic, Right Hand Pointing and many other journals.