Issue Nine – November 2022

November 2022

Letter from the Editor

This issue is our second one back from hiatus. We doubled submissions in all categories. This was great, but it also made the choices as to which pieces to publish even harder. You, dear submitters, don’t make it easy for us! Your writing inspires and challenges us to think deeper and broader, to push past good into the realm of excellence. We’ve always asked you to move us with your writing, to make us feel something beyond a nod to “good writing.” The whole concept of being bold and vulnerable is that the writing must be two-fold – both hard-edged and soft-centered, sharp and still able to be held in the hands. These 24 poems, 3 short fiction pieces, and 3 creative nonfiction pieces do just that. They push at us and punch, and then they find the cradle which makes all good writing tinder for the heart.

We hope you enjoy Issue Nine. Celebrate it with us on social media and with your fellow writers. And catch us in early 2023 for Issue Ten. The reading period opens on January 1, 2023.

Until then, blessings,

Sandy


Poetry:

Rebound – by Deborah Adelman

Twenty-two – by Devon Borkowski

Aeolian Geomorphology – by Rohan Buettel

Lopez Park Raven – by John Davis Jr.

Concluded: Six Weeks Bed-ridden – by Mary Christine Delea

Ode to the College Poem Where I Compared the Tillamook Burn to My Love – by Merridawn Duckler

Snow-covered Road Winding Through Trees – by Keith Erickson

Evanescent – by Nadir Feroz

The Weeping Chamber – by David Galloway

To a Spider in its Web – by D. Walsh Gilbert

Crossing – by Malcolm Glass

The Little Girl Who Danced in the Graveyard – by Ken Hines

Mission Station – by William LaPage

Mother Tongue – by Andi Myles

Rage – by Andi Myles

Tiresias – by Patricia Nelson

Trying to Read the Signs – by Jeff Newberry

As a Doctor My First Duty Is to Do No Harm – by Steve Nickman

November Mourning – by Sherry Poff

Journal Entry: A Drop in Barometric Pressure – by David B. Prather

Impromptu – by Sharon Scholl

Galloping in Darkness – by Annette Sisson

Eternity – by Wilson R. M. Taylor

When They Come – by Walter Weinschenk


Short Fiction:

Shelter Rock – by Paul Cassidy

Stretch – by Frank Diamond

Incipient – by Liz Rosen


Creative Nonfiction:

Fisherman – by Joshua Beggs

North of Waking – by Phocas

Five Aspects of Cultural Violence – by Joshua Thusat


Featured Artist: Elizabeth Marrero

Click HERE to view Elizabeth’s art and read the Artist’s Statement