Journal

Daughter, Driving at Night

‌             I slide into bed, turn toward the curtains.

Outside, a clear midnight sky,
moon and dippers wheeling across

‌             the galaxy. I begin to drift. A girl

shrieks, frenetic particles of sound,
her voice so piercing it might

‌             have cracked the window. The cry

shivers the air again. I shake
myself, scramble to the front door—

‌             silver dusting the silent walk,

stars’ bent ribs of light.
From the screened porch in back

‌             katydids chant, crickets trill,

a tranquil night. Inside, my phone
jars the table—you’ve driven miles

‌             beyond home, whisper of gas in the tank,

your signal too faint for digital maps,
and you can’t tell left from right

‌             without Google. Parked on an unlit shoulder

you shudder, marvel that your call jostled
me awake. You don’t know the quake

‌             of your need had already torn me from the sheets.

Annette Sisson lives and works in Nashville, TN. Her poems have appeared in Valparaiso PR, Birmingham PR, Glassworks, and Rust and Moth, among others. Her book Small Fish in High Branches was published in 2022 by Glass Lyre Press.

Paradise lost

She was born somewhere
That no longer exists
Well… it’s there, but no longer a known place.
Its tiny downtown absorbed by a larger metro area;
Its streets adopted into a growing sprawl.
Missing is the rural small town my grandma once knew,
My dad was also born in that nameless place,
That same Virginia town of Phoebus.
From the Greek for Apollo-
Light and radiant.
Imagine the hopefulness
Naming your tiny village as such.
A shining beacon of a little place
That one day will be swallowed
Off the map.
‌

Spirit Place

I grew up in the place that my spirit is from
A land of beautiful cracks and struggles
Where you’ll find a goofy little nothing town called Ishpeming
(Our people’s word for the heavens).
Here summers go forever
As little barefoot kids chase the sun
All the way down to meet the horizon.
Where deer often overwhelm agriculture,
And some of us, we cheer them softly on the sidelines.
Waawaashkisha (our word for deer)
It’s name also the sound
Deer make walking through tall grasses.
Here weather feels as expected,
Perfectly correct on your skin
Even while you complain about it being too cold or too hot.
Soft breezes blow and I know that I’m home
Because of the distinct perfume of leaves
In newness phase or rotting phase,
Or silent leaves compacted under winter’s crystalline waterbank.
My body feels belonging in this place.
The special way my feet snug into the earth here.
In the moccasins my parents made,
It’s home.

Derek R. Smith (he/him) is a public health professional, Anishinaabe two-spirit, wanderer, who finds it hard to not write poetry. Born and raised in the land now called Michigan, adulted in the Bay Area of California, now residing in small town Oregon. Some like their poetry elegant, academic, fancy. The proud Midwestern style herein shared is not as such, as any given poem was probably composed in a Denny’s booth. He has 2023 poems published in Great Lakes Review, ¡Pa’lante!, euphony, and Lucky Jefferson. There is no space for distance here, in poetry, and isn’t that a beautiful thing?

Where I’m From

I come from many places, and all of them
live in me still. Now I know that when you leave
a place, it doesn’t leave you.
California, Athens and Hamburg,
this shoreline I walk every day—

I am descended from a blue-eyed people—sturdy stock
who left their home so I could find mine.
Who sailed away willingly, without regret.
Their seascape belongs to me now—passed down
like a genetic geography, an ancestral visitation.

Here’s the family tree with names of those
I never knew—who died by suicide, alcohol;
or just wore out like unwound clocks.
Sometimes I shake the branches of that tree,
hoping to find a secret liaison, smoky love
in a Parisian cafe. But, I come from a country of women
who canned peaches and jam, pickled beets,
glued what was broken. Women who left
North Dakota, Idaho, and Saskatchewan
to follow their fathers, marry their husbands.
I carry the dust of those places, too.

I am the daughter, the granddaughter, the great-granddaughter
of women who never spoke of loss, who settled
into their lives wherever they were,
even if they wanted to leave.
Who moved on, even if they wanted to stay.

Connie Soper is a hiker, beach lover and poet who divides her time between Portland, and Manzanita, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in Ekphrastic Review, Catamaran, Cider Press Review, Gyroscope Review, and elsewhere. Her first full length book of poetry, A Story Interrupted, was published by Airlie Press in 2022. She is currently at work on her second collection.

Repetition

Tap once on a light switch
And the earthquake will wait –
Kiss a piece of wood, five times, and you won’t go crazy
Tell him you love him three times and he won’t leave you
Pray each time you think of cancer and he’ll beat it

But you are crazy, there is an earthquake, and he does die and leave you

And yet into the night I go
Tapping, kissing, confessing, avoiding, praying

Years ago a doctor asked me my biggest fear
And I said going crazy
He laughed and laughed and said, how do you not see, you’re already crazy

Which is true in the night as I tap, kiss, confess, avoid, and pray
Which is true in a Walmart when I touch each piece of laminate furniture
And at the bar where I have to mentally note each stool
Kissing planks until I have splinters

On the highway, remembering license plates
(Thank god that one’s gone)

I do try to laugh.

because
Tapping is funny. Kissing, funnier still.

How many times have I hidden a bottle cap
Walked through a doorway six times
Unplugged every cord in the rental house
Thrown out all the clocks
Hidden the knives

I don’t remember what it was like before
And sometimes I wonder if there ever was a before
Or was my life always this,

Tapping and kissing and confessing and avoiding and praying.

These days the moments that feel the most surreal aren’t the panic attacks, nor the tunnel vision, and
weirdly not the things I forgot to touch,

They’re a day I spent in the Schiphol airport, the nights in Sweden or Jakarta or even
Providence, Rhode Island. The job I had in Midtown. The bar I danced in on the lake.

The nights I didn’t unplug the toaster
And kiss the fear away

Jude Townsend is a writer, illustrator, and crossword constructor in the mountains.

Group Chat/Aurora Borealis

The moon rose, gibbous, gravid
and the pale aurora borealis gathered up
her faded skirts and slipped away.
That is what my brother, northern star-gazer, told us
(though the words are mine – he sent a video).

My southern sister answered immediately,
as she so often does, with the “cool” emoji –
that yellow round disembodied head in sunglasses,
sunny and cheerful, in nature like her.

Our other sister, the oldest, did not respond,
having died before the time of group chats and emojis,
but I am certain her answer would have been appreciative
but brief, unless she was moved to contribute
a technical comment – on solar activity, perhaps,
or the weather.

And I, as usual, am taking too long, lost in memory,
returned to that night on our childhood hilltop,
all of us standing together in the snow, the bitter cold,
our pale faces upturned, speechless beneath the miracle,
the sinuous swaying curtain of light, purple, green, and red,
the universe having come to tell us that the play was about to begin.

Pepper Trail’s poems have appeared in Willawaw, Rattle, Atlanta Review, Catamaran, Ascent and other publications, and have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net Awards. His collection, Cascade-Siskiyou: Poems, was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry. He writes and explores the world from his home in Ashland, Oregon.