Trader’s Gate
By Zack Davies
Summer. The tarmac bakes,
captive, dry and black.
Gnarled posts hang chains
beside the gangway track.
Who owns this land?
John Hawkins, reads the sign.
Here down to the low-tide sand,
John Hawkins, it is thine.
Shopping Cart
By Cruz Villarreal
Windshield wipers, back and forth,
back and forth,
a metronome of tidiness,
back and forth, back and forth.
Mechanical order—
makes it easy to see
despite the rain.
Autopilot behind the wheel, behind more wheels.
I look out the window to a common sight.
The Fading Garden
By Ali Ashhar
Daffodils and tulips in the garden
bloom with the essence of pride
yielded with sprinkles of sacrifice and blood
stemmed from the courage
of withstanding the storms and harsh weathers
cherished and nurtured
by the breeze of fraternity around.
Our Lungs
By Madeline McConico
I remember when dad had his hands
around my mother’s neck. Her back
pressed into the kitchen sink. The sound
of water running.
Wishing more than anything that if I
opened my mouth wide enough, and
breathed deeply, that I might be able to
pull air into both of our lungs—
Precautionary
By Stephen Mead
Keep headlights off in case of snipers
while hopefully the engine's hum blends with the summer cicada drone.
Those groves under moon could be the gothic beauty of vineyards still
mixed with bushes of sumac and other vegetable fields
of any Romania which could even be in Vermont now
that authoritarianism has gone global
where all-so-right religions claim that to be against Fascism
is traitorous every here where they said
the dystopian could not possibly ever happen.
