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My son says the garden is dying.

Every August, it’s the same.

The cucumbers, which had clambered

so fiercely up the lattice

and across half our garden square,

begin to yellow and wilt.

The peppers brown.  They soften.

Tomatoes explode across their vines, manic –

they bear more fruit than the days can hold.

Look there, I tell him, see that space?

Next year’s garden is already growing.

Seeds are in the ground,

gift of the fallen.

We could do nothing

and, by June, there would be more tomatoes.

He sees, I am certain, in only two dimensions

– what is before him, and what he remembers.

We could do nothing.  Nearby, my mother

dies in slow motion, surrounded

by four walls, a window

she doesn’t look through,

cut flowers.  All her words

from these last, long months

wouldn’t bend a blade of grass.

We could do

nothing.  My son and I

uproot the cucumber plants,

the peppers.  I wish I were strong.

Eyes will open to the green and new.

I try to picture

the garden to come.

Joseph Cilluffo has had over 100 poems published. In addition to Philadelphia Stories, his poems have appeared in journals such as The Schuylkill Valley Journal, Apiary, and Philadelphia Poets. He was the Featured Poet for the Fall 2014 Edition of the SVJ, which nominated his poem, “Light”, for the Pushcart Prize. Joe’s first book of poetry, Always in the Wrong Season, was recently published by Kelsay Books and is available on Amazon.com.

If you find yourself at the bar alone

Sitting late for a quick beer

Before catching the train home

Surrounded by transparent young people,

Good-looking, but simple,

Half staring at their phones,

Half talking to each other,

Ignoring the aged drinkers, most stoned,

All unaware the digital impostor of a jukebox

Is silent, the TV turned down,

The incessant babble of the infantile

Like a rainstorm, the room’s only sound,

Play the Stones’ “Midnight Rambler,”

Live version. One dollar never goes farther.

Joe Samuel Starnes is a native southerner who has lived in the Philadelphia area for eleven years—five in Fishtown and the last six in Haddon Township, New Jersey. His novels are Red Dirt (2015); Fall Line (2011); and Calling (2005). He also has published poetry, short stories, essays, and journalism in publications as varied as the New York Times and the blogazine Fried Chicken and Coffee. His website is www.joesamuelstarnes.com

So some of his friends made

it out for his last, weathered

the late March rain, thin and soaking

as wave crests on a prow. Better

to have scattered him off

of Newfoundland, says one. Another,

He hated Scottish pipes. But again,

it was the best his widow could do:

Cape May, near the lighthouse, near

where the cold water smacks the sand

and froths mightily, exaggeratedly. And we

two onlookers sit perched beneath

a frayed umbrella on the beach, still

warm from breakfast and soon to set

out shelling, imagine him thus: bookish

more than bawdy, but grown full of tales.

Even the conchs we find later, blue-bleached

ocean bones strewn in halves and quarters,

know no better.

Gwen Wille lives and works in West Chester, PA. She studied writing at the University of New Mexico. Her work has appeared in San Pedro River Review, Philadelphia Stories, and Crow Toes Quarterly, among others. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time in the woods with her son, husband, and high-spirited spaniel.

Years and years ago when I was six, and there were four of us kids always fighting, when my mother stayed in bed the entire year, bottles under blankets, orange vials on the floor, when us kids made bologna and mayonnaise sandwiches for supper, combed each other’s gritty hair in the morning, pulling and tugging, untangling knots of nightmares, although we skipped hair ribbons and barrettes, forgot to brush our teeth and wore wrinkled dresses to school with our only-one-pair-each scuffed brown shoes, before my mother was taken away, sirens splitting the night, before my father stayed home and made sodden pancakes, when my best friend Emily brought her new red patent leather shoes to school, I stole them from her locker.

Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her work has been accepted by the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and the co-author of Unfolding in Light.

Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her work has been accepted by the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and the co-author of Unfolding in Light.