Dear Reader

In the glare of Boylston Street the oscillations of our orbit seem exaggerated, warping skyscrapers to feint at each other like Olympians with epees. We walk as if the concrete sidewalk couldn’t possibly crack and drop us into the subway. We watch the skyscrapers duel with each other and the sky, and refrain from pointless irony. Summers in Boston always hurt with poignancies we rarely share. The gloss of shop windows scorches across our bodies as we pass, but that’s not the pain I respect for textual and historic depth. Maybe you recall the woman crying and smashing a bag of groceries on the gray façade of the building on St. Germain where we lay on the roof all night in the deepest part of summer. Boylston offers single point perspective we gladly employ to orient ourselves to the east. Walking with our naked selves held safely in trust, we impress footfall that overlaps footfall we laid down many years ago. The shuddering of the planet, however slight, acknowledges our presence, our...

Take me back to the solar system’s edge— I miss the ample flower buds in ice. My friend Peg went, got caught in a gas hedge, a sulphur smell.  It held her like a vice. She got free and insisted that I go— travel is always risky.  Live boldly. At first, I told her that I had zero gumption.  She screamed and looked at me coldly. I packed light, made it past funky Charon, my phone camera forgotten at home. Who needs pictures?  I tasted real moon pies, not missing Earth much, except for barren places where wildflowers burst out from loam on the first warm morning when winter dies. --- Kenneth Pobo won the 2019 chapbook contest from the State Poetry Society of Alabama for Your Place Or Mine.   They published it this May.   Forthcoming is a book from Assure Press called Uneven Steven.

Home scratches at her shingles with tree branch fingers, pulls the air conditioning unit close to her grimy aluminum siding, and keens an empty song of mourning. We found her wandering the tornado snarled wild three months ago, starved and lonely. She doesn’t know how to take care of herself, you see? We fed her shards of dining room tables, kindling for the fireplace, and cast iron bathtubs clawed feet first. She was slow to recover so we gutted her plumbing, ripped out her nerves, and rewired the electricity. She let the water in every time it rained so we put a new roof on her and let her out for regular walks around the wolf pen. Let her mingle with the vultures, I said, let her feel useful and clean up the dead but no one wanted to listen. We found rot an mold in her corners, infused her insulation with antibiotics, and quarantined her for two weeks while she belched ladderback chairs, sofa cushions, wind chimes, and broken bookcases. She still has her bad days. After feeding time...

(After Edward Hopper,  Cape Cod Morning,  1950) Eyes like crazed glass, she stares down the empty sun-swathed  avenue, conjuring his return. Her hands clench the table, manicured fingers transfer heat and sweat to antique mahogany. Sirens echo from the foreshore. Blood of someone’s small son seeps from his helmet, bicycle twisted,  under tangled limbs. All he wanted was an ice cream, to be a big boy,  alone, astride his bike. She paces the room, gazes at the clock, feels the tick of time. Her hands itch for purpose. Drawn again to the window, she stands to watch and wait. --- Sheena is Irish but has lived in Nottingham for almost forty years. Following retirement, she began writing and now has an MA in Creative Writing from Trent University. She has been published in The Beacon , Reach, Sarasvati, Dawntreader and Orbis .  Twitter: @weesheenanigan

Hard feelings make no difference. Subversion has no clue. I’m up on deck. What are tyrannies compared to acrobatics of the sea? Even a little cloud cover, can’t bring me down to grayness. Dolphins are rollicking all around, delight in my company, show off their leaps, their spins, their freedom. I’m told I need purpose. That I’d better make plans. To what? Blend in with surface light? Howl along with the pod?   Save me the lecture on how ends meet. Or what it’s like to be lost in the crowds. Or how the middle road is my best alternative. And if I don’t watch out, I’ll be taken down, I’m on the waters. A dolphin smiles up at me. I indulge in reciprocation. Two species bound.   --- John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Soundings East, Dalhousie Review and Connecticut River Review with work upcoming in West Trade Review, Willard and Maple and the MacGuffin.

She says I will be able to see Perseids tonight in her armpits,  just as I am worrying  that I cannot read binary. I assure myself I can Google it later hoping that the instructions will be simple. I plan to have a notebook  and pen ready. I know that joke about there being 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don’t. I tell her it would be great to see the meteors up close,  nuzzled right in. They don’t make your neck ache this way, she says, and you will be able to hear  the crackles of ancient fires it is all deep in there . I wonder if we will ever be  sociable again after this. How many people in the world  are hankering to see night skies in the armpits of lovers? --- Sue Finch  lives with her wife in North Wales. Her first published poem appeared in  A New Manchester Alphabet  in 2015 whilst studying for her MA with Manchester Metropolitan University. Her work has also appeared in  The In...

Serve soul cakes. Sprinkle dried green lettuce on salty crackers, plate up purple and orange macaroons, yellow too if it pleases you. Spear black olives onto cocktail sticks, put out far too many bottles of red wine. Spend an hour of your morning cracking  almonds into small bowls sweeping up the dust and debris with your hands. Let each fruit be a memory  (trust me they are not really nuts) but watch out for the bitter ones. Everything must fit mouths that are not hinged to be wide; that potential to be slipped in nonchalantly between tales that bring out hard laughter. Except apples; they will let you watch for who bites right in, who takes a knife to them, who puts two in their bag for later. If a soul cake remains on that table  at the end,  take it to the coast, await the interest of gulls then toss it decidedly upwards. Let the cries fill the air. --- Sue Finch  lives with her wife in North Wales. Her first published poem appeared in   A New Mancheste...