WHAT WE GATHER FOR TOMORROW

CONTRIBUTORS:

Poets:
Yvette Viets Flaten * Cheryl Byler Keeler * Glenn Falacienski * Carol Alena Aronoff * Ronnie Hess * Annette Towler * Jackie Langetieg * Dianna MacKinnon Henning * James P Roberts * Cynthia McCain * Rachel Dacus * Diana Woodcock * Alison Hurwitz * Mary C Rowin * Anneliese Finke * Elizabeth McCarthy * Jenna Wysong Filbrun * Karen A VandenBos * Susan Martell * Sarah Sadie * Kathie Giorgio * Wendy Vardaman * Melissa Huff * Penny Harter * Tom Lagasse * Erik Richardson * Thomas A Thrun * Elisabeth Harrahy * Mary Dean Carter

Artists:
Michael Jeske (cover artist) * Karen A VandenBos * j lewis * Paula Lietz

YVETTE VIETS FLATEN

What a gift does for the soul

My husband made me a Little Free Library.
Painted it green, roofed it with cedar shakes.
Planted it beside the white pine in the corner
of the yard, where it’s become a fixture, just
like the bird feeder.

This morning, early, we had a juvenile Seeker,
hopping from one foot to the other, sorting through
the pickings of the latest refill. Red tufted pony tail
and wide white eyeglasses, the proverbial look of
a fledgling reader.

And even from inside the house, my ear caught
the young one’s exuberant call to its mother;
a bright, urgent, high-noted warble: Mom!
Look what I found. Mom! Look at my book!

Yvette Viets Flaten recently moved to her familial home in Colfax, WI, where she writes daily, either poetry, fiction, or journal. Recent publications include the current Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ Calendar and Moss Piglet. She and husband Daniel celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in November.

CHERYL BYLER KEELER

Grand Time

When I hold my newborn
grandson, belly to belly,

he slides slowly downwards,
his diapered bottom coming to land

on my legs. His cheek rests
on my right breast, burrowing

into the softness still there,
although my days of making milk

are over. I rock and hum,
as he fits himself into my contours,

rivers of contentment between us.

Cheryl Byler Keeler has taught preschool, elementary, college and life-long learning students; opened & managed a branch public library; earned an MEd and MFA; and writes poems that arrive line by line in quiet places. Some of these have been shared in The Courtship of Winds, Blue Heron Review, Pulse, and About Place Journal. Her newest adventure is becoming a grandmother.

GLENN FALACIENSKI

rainbow girl

The assignment
is to draw and color
a self-portrait

but you are too thorough—
perhaps you know yourself too well—
that your five-year-old fingers
can’t keep up with the pictures
swirling in your head

and I have been tasked
to help you.

Somewhere
between sunny yellow and midnight blue
you ask about the future.
I clarify: are you asking what it’s like
to be old like me?

No, you say, switching
to sunset orange. I want to know
what the future is like.

Cloudy grey
stains my fingers. I tell you: the future
is pretty uncertain right now.
No one really knows
what’s going to happen.

You keep coloring

so young I can hardly comprehend
how you are alive. You don’t remember
the fires, the storms, the screams
of words and winds. You don’t remember
how I marched for your rights
when I was still a kid myself.
All you know is now:

you and me
markers and crayons
and the girl on the page.

If I were a few years younger
I would promise her the future.

Now
all I have to give you
is a blank page
and the tools
to create it yourself.

Glenn Falacienski is a student at Colorado College. She has been published in Oddball Magazine, Vagabond City Literary Magazine, and Blue Marble Review, among other places. Her greatest talent is hula-hooping and reading at the same time.

CAROL ALENA ARONOFF

Just One Breath

One slow breath
and I am weightless
among stars;
the gravity of belief
has lost its hold,
opening me to infinite
possibility and awareness
wide as sky.

One glance at the rose
reclining near my door
and my heart
is cherry aspic quivering
with joy.
And the butterfly
sipping marigold nectar,
my muse.

Simple, small acts
to shift from shopping
list, consumer mind,
from the dumpster dive
of ordinary life to the
space where everything
is sacred. Just one breath,
one glance.

Carol Alena Aronoff’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She was twice nominated for a Pushcart, has published 4 chapbooks (Cornsilk, Going Nowhere in the Time of Corona, Tapestry of Secrets, A Time to Listen) and 6 full length poetry collections (The Nature of Music, Cornsilk, Her Soup Made the Moon Weep, Blessings From an Unseen World, Dreaming Earth’s Body, and The Gift of Not Finding: Poems for Meditation.) Her collection, Solitary Solitude Sanctuary, was recently published by Stone Compass Press (March, 2025). Carol resides in rural Hawaii.

RONNIE HESS

Cooking Lessons

Sometimes, living carries no weight, or rather
others hold the world up for you. They fold
you in their arms without invitation, but you
know they are embracing all that is good in you.
How easily joy becomes you, baffling, the egg
pudding unmolds without a break in its crown,
the caramel offers a base, refusing to crack.
To be overwhelmed is not enthusiasm
but kindness. The herbs release in your grip,
blend in salt cod soup. In Portugal, windows
bring the sea indoors, the air is gentle and smooth,
sunlight trembles along the surf, the clams served
on a plate. Each day feeds you more happiness
than you remember possible, or it’s a musical score
you follow in a language that cradles you.

Ronnie Hess is a poet and essayist, the author of seven poetry collections and two culinary travel guides. She lives in Madison, WI.

ANNETTE TOWLER

Offerings of Compassion

Winter in the cream city offers a mist so light that it
Dances on the lake
Ballerina whispers in your ear to soothe you with your sorrow
Gone too soon
It is the holiday season
Children are playing outside with dolls and candy cane
To dazzle the senses
Here you are in your grief
Trapped inside your body
You freeze at any mention of the past
The counselor whispers in your ear
Let me offer you my compassion
I am not your healer
I am your companion on the journey of the soul
It takes a while because time has stopped since
He left
It happens gradually and suddenly in a moment of clarity
You realize that your beloved rests within your beating pulse

Annette Towler was born in England and moved to the United States in the early 1990s. The author enjoys her job as a therapist and in her spare time she likes to run. She lives in an old house in Milwaukee and has a sweet cat called Marsha. She has written romance and mystery novels and poetry chapbooks. She has published her poetry in The Wise Owl, Verse-Virtual, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.

JACKIE LANGETIEG

A Winter’s Walk

A creek sketches icy water into caves of lace.
Pine trees kneel in heavy snow and make houses
for squirrels and juncos.
Here an open field is scraped flat by wind.
Sparrows and rabbits write stories
of communing with cold. We trudge home
through the thinness of a cold night.
On the porch, snow has sifted like flour
collected on chair arms and table tops.
Inside the warm house,
snow from boots and clothing drops
into puddles on the kitchen floor,
and stew bubbles on the stove,
aroma rich and savory.

Jackie Langetieg has written six books of poetry and a memoir. Her work has won awards such as the Jade Ring from WI Writers’ Association, as well as a Pushcart nomination. She’s had poems in journals such as Bramble, Blue Heron Review, Verse Wisconsin, and the WFOP calendars. Jackie lives with her son and two cats: Missy and Joey, her Muses.

DIANNA MACKINNON HENNING

Scent of Solitude

There was a doe that hobbled onto the front porch, her hoof mangled.
There was her fawn that followed.
Both ate from the cat’s bowl.
I was alone watching this,
sipping coffee by the window. Hunger followed both animals.

Their hunger howled like coyotes in moonlight.
The world stopped as they ate.
A scent of quiet just before things bloom.
The doe stepped back offering her fawn his fill.
She was dying inside herself.

There was a prayer she uttered as she watched her offspring.
A cadence that made the house bend towards her.

She was more than her body returning to the woods.
She burst into radiant being.

You could hear the gods beating their drums.
You could smell the scent of their solitude.

Dianna MacKinnon Henning taught through California Poets in the Schools, received several California Arts Council grants and taught poetry workshops through the William James Association’s Prison Arts Program, including Folsom Prison, and runs The Thompson Peak Writers’ Workshop. Publications, in part: The Power of the Feminine, Vol. II; One Art Poetry, 2024; Mocking Heart Review, 2024; Poet News, Sacramento; Worth More Standing, Poets and Activists Pay Homage to Trees; Voices; Artemis Journal, 2021 & 2022 & 2023; The Adirondack Review; Memoir Magazine; The Tule Review; The Lake, UK; California Quarterly; The Plague Papers; Blue Heron Review; and New American Writing. Nomination by The Adirondack Review for a Pushcart Prize, her seventh nomination. MFA in Writing ’89, Vermont College. She recently read with poet Lara Gularte, Poet Laureate Emeritus of El Dorado County. Recently nominated by Blue Heron Review for Best of the Net Anthology for her poem “In the Collage of my Mind/I’m a Simple Design.” She has a new book, Rucksacks for the Leaf Cat, accepted by Finishing Line Press. Nominated by Blue Heron Review (Nov. 2024) for a Pushcart Prize.

JAMES P ROBERTS

She Kisses the Rock

on a stony coast in Ireland
she kisses the fairy rock
eyes closed, rose lips pursed tight
in hope that this offering
will ease the hurt in her heart

her bones sing on this land
delving deep into the peaty earth
cool wind blows back wisps
of blonde hair, reddened cheeks
pressed against rough stone

I wish I knew her Gaelic name
I am sure the vowels would dance
off my tongue, grasp her slim hand
prance through mushroom circles
overhead, a round pagan moon

James P Roberts continues to explore the whys and wherewithal of transient curiosities from his cloud-covered eyrie in Madison, Wisconsin. A student of the will-o-wisp, flaneur of the ephemeral, repository of the brain’s flotsam, he contrives from this bric-a-brac what many consider to be poems. In his spare time, he elucidates prolegomena concerning the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, a river of enchantment with many tributaries. One may find him hosting gentle ghosts at the annual Winter Festival of Poetry during the months of January through March.

CYNTHIA MCCAIN

Holy ritual

we eat star flesh
and drink the shine of suns

actually, we do
every day
our bodies are built
of ash leftover from solar explosions
swept into tidy piles
tethered in orbits
that pass us through rains and winds
of pure energy
flung out of this one star

energy caught in a chemical web
by biological engines
absorbed by mobile processors
whom we in turn absorb
all this to serve
peanut butter sandwiches
with a glass of milk

just today
hold up your lunch to the heavens
and witness this
as a miracle
it is
it is a miracle
we are children of stars
we are nourished by stars

thus it is
I am a miracle
you are a miracle

Cynthia McCain lives in southwest New Mexico. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies including The Rumpus, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Blue Heron Review. Her chapbook, The Dream of Falling, was published in 2020.

RACHEL DACUS

O’clock

Because of the banging garbage truck
I wake up at God O’clock.
Too restless to doze again, I first sip
the words of saints on my phone’s
lighted screen as I snuggle
into the covers on a winter chill,
warm in the Divine unseen
Who’s now back-to-back with me.

His face is hidden but a generous breath
widens the air and lets me breathe
a truth: I have known so much love
in my life, and filled to overflowing,
all my small hands can do is release
it back to you; whatever you need,
this Ocean embrace flows only outward.

Rachel Dacus is the author of six novels and four poetry collections. Her poems appear in the anthology Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California. She lives in the San Francisco area with her architect husband and furry muse.

DIANA WOODCOCK

Avian Acts of Kindness

Now they say parrots—
African Greys—can practice acts
of kindness when there’s nothing

in it for them. I let the fact
of this sink in—absorb the sight,
the light of them, and pray

I’ll stay awake to look and see
the majesty and mystery
of all Creation, to be alive

with a sense of fascination
for my nonhuman kin,
to empty myself into

the form of one generous
African Grey parrot, to be
just so giving, so angelic,

to feel the warmth of acting
kindly, of showing loving
kindness, to let these parrots

invoke in my genes a new
longing for altruism. First,
I would be the giver,

feeling that warm glow.
Then, the receiver of the gift—
the token to exchange for a walnut—

my hunger sated while the one
who gave sits watching, in no
visible way compensated.

Diana Woodcock has authored seven poetry collections, most recently Reverent Flora ~ The Arabian Desert’s Botanical Bounty (Shanti Arts, 2025), Heaven Underfoot (2022 Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award), Holy Sparks (2020 Paraclete Press Poetry Award finalist), and Facing Aridity (2020 Prism Prize for Climate Literature finalist). A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and Best of the Net nominee, she received the 2011 Vernice Quebodeaux Pathways Poetry Prize for Women for her debut collection, Swaying on the Elephant’s Shoulders. Currently teaching at VCUarts Qatar, she holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University, where she researched poetry’s role in the search for an environmental ethic.

ALISON HURWITZ

To the Man Playing Bach for a Pair of Ducks

This is no day to linger in chill miserable damp.
My fingers have gone numb and white, and every thought’s slow
trickled. There’s no sign, as yet, of Spring. But you, musician
with your crocheted cut-off gloves, see the pair of mallard ducks
and sit down where the park bench marks a bend along the river, open
up your battered case, tune your violin, begin to play. I cannot keep
from watching. Soon, they’re drawn in, to waddle at your feet,
pause to scavenge notes like bread. You play to them gray cumulus,
the current in the river, those optimistic blades of bright green grass.
You play each variegated feather and its hollow quill, flight, the pull
of hunger and the will to keep on swimming. You play across a bridge,
descending accidental stairs, then arrive at resolution: cadence. Final notes
evaporate in misted breath. The ducks, jostled by the silence,
ruffle-stir and then return to water. You put away
your instrument, stand to shrug it over shoulder,
walk away. I want to tell you, stranger:
today, you have retuned the world.

Alison Hurwitz is a former cellist and dancer who now finds music in language. Her work has three times been nominated for Best of the Net and once for a Pushcart Prize. Alison is the founder/host of the monthly online reading, Well-Versed Words. Widely published, her work is forthcoming in River Heron Review, Westchester Review, and Poetry in Plain Sight. When not writing, Alison officiates weddings and memorial services, takes singing lessons, walks in the woods with her family, and dances in her kitchen. Find her at alisonhurwitz.com

MARY C ROWIN

What the Ponds Give Me

A paean to Tiedemann and Stricker Ponds
Middleton, Wisconsin

They are small kettle ponds
with no outlet, just rain
or no rain and yet to me
they are everything I need.

Alive in spring with bugling cranes
and migrating pelicans whose wings
beat an overhead rhythm and turtles
who lumber between ponds,

geese and mallards whose
broods waddle and swim
soon no longer distinguishable
from their parents and birthplace

of fireflies that sparkle in June,
where we sat to view the eclipse,
a surface for ice skaters, a sometimes
kayaker and memories gathered at sunset.

The ponds are where I go for solace and comfort.
To receive gifts from the place I claim as my own.

Mary C Rowin’s poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in a variety of publications such as Hummingbird, Panopoly, Passager, and Stoneboat. Mary lives in Middleton, Wisconsin between Tiedemann and Stricker Ponds.

ANNELIESE FINKE

If I had a little secret

I’d let you in, lifting up
the corner of my blanket fort,
scooting over to make room.

We’ll share a flashlight, casting
shadows like warpaint over our faces,
turning our grins terrible and fierce.

And we will be fearless, young
and fearless, and laugh
at the dark surrounding us.

Anneliese Finke’s style is a sort of literal surrealism or magical realism, and yet she believes strongly in clarity. If she could ask one thing of a reader or listener, it would be to really try to picture what she’s describing in her poetry. Like Chagall’s figures who float through the air, she is trying to capture a world that is both clear and real but also strange and magical—ordinary and extraordinary all at once—as though perhaps these two things are not as different as we assume. Her poetry has appeared in journals including Ruminate, The Georgetown Review, the 2025 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar, and the anthology, The Lake Is Mother to Us All. Find her online at https://anneliesefinkepoetry.com

ELIZABETH MCCARTHY

Simple Offerings

after Seamus Heaney, St. Francis and the Birds

We feed the birds in winter
and watch from the window

As they flit and flutter
in from the dark thicket

To the altar before them
plucking black sunflower seeds

Within their thin short beaks
then twirling off to perch

Upon a dormant brown branch
and dine in the silence of snow

For they do not sow or reap
but are free to fly on feathered wing

and sing of thanks for simple offerings

Elizabeth McCarthy lives in an old farmhouse in northern Vermont with her husband and cat. Retired from teaching, she began writing poetry when the world closed down in 2020. Elizabeth has four collections of poetry, The Old House (self-published), Winter Vole (Finishing Line Press, 2022), Hard Feelings (Finishing Line Press, 2024), and Wild Silence (Kelsay Books 2024).

JENNA WYSONG FILBRUN

I Try to Lay the Prayer of My Life on the House of What Lasts

“… this is the other part of knowing something, when
there is no proof, but neither is there any way
toward disbelief.”  —Mary Oliver

Maybe it is the frigid wind
over the field where the coyote

ran in the night, or, as dusk descends,
the way the inside seems darker

than the outside’s dark-tree, fence-line
silhouettes on the glowing snow.

The air is full
of something wild and good.

It is Christmas Eve.
I fly like the wind over each contour

of each print in the snow-tracked field
over the presence of this dog on my lap—

nearly constant these days
as his little body leaves him uncertain.

It raps on the door of his soul
until his feet twitch, trotting in sleep

like they’ve clicked at my side
down all the dark corridors of struggle.

He finds peace on my legs, so I sit
beneath his soft-breathing warmth

and learn to be this true,
this small, this entire.

It is my life’s work
to know the shape of us—

what I can’t, as this Oliver
also says, disbelieve.

We have no end.
It is inside out, like this light.

Jenna Wysong Filbrun is the author of the poetry collection, Away (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and have appeared in Amethyst Review, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, ONE ART, and other publications. She writes poetry as a form of prayer/connection and loves to spend time at home/in the wild with her husband, Mike, and their dogs, Oliver and Lewis. Find her on Instagram @jwfilbrun.

KAREN A VANDENBOS

A Jar Full of Offerings

I offer you clean socks, buttery
toast and a bed warmed with
flannel sheets.
I offer you wide open arms and
lips moist with kisses and the
good parts of my dreams.
I offer you a jar full of pennies
from thoughts we have shared
and give you a stone for your
worries.
In times of darkness I offer you
a flame and when you need kind
words, I offer you a poem.

Karen A VandenBos was born on a warm July morn in Kalamazoo, MI. She has a PhD in Holistic Health, where a course in shamanism taught her to travel between two worlds. She can be found unleashing her vivid imagination in two writing groups. A Best of the Net nominee, her writing has been published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Blue Heron Review, The Rye Whiskey Review, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Moss Piglet, Panoply, Feed the Holy, Peninsula Poets, and others.

SUSAN MARTELL

Funeral of a Beloved Aunt

you sink into the bathtub of grief and soak until your tears dry brittle bits of salt upon your wrinkled skin

you reach for the worn towel hanging sorrowfully as a bent head upon the metal hook and understand this night deserves its thinness

you fall into your bed with cool bamboo sheets not yet switched to winter flannel and feel the wave of cold air as it folds across your quilt

you swim with grief through the rivers of shivering dreams to wake with your pillow damp, your eyes sore, dry

you rise to be the arms that embrace your cousins
to be the person who gratefully falls into theirs

Susan Martell lives and writes in Mukwonago WI. Over the years, her poetry has been awarded two Jade Rings and she was the honored 2020 recipient of first prize for her poem “1967” with the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters. Her chapbooks can be found at Finishing Line Press and Kelsay Press.

SARAH SADIE

The Only Argument with Time That Wins

Four flowers for Roberta Condon’s 7 Flowers From My Son

1.
Stories told can morph and change and do,
art is a jam or pickle, a way out
of our predicament, preservation

2.
technique that saves something
back from time’s wreckage and spillover
all my little birds now flown away

3.
Here’s proof in a painting: rosebuds,
pursed ever fresh, swimming up to us
through sepia acrylic,

4.
unfaded. Beyond words, love is the action
of hands. Beyond hands, these words
will arrive, bloom open, never fade.

Sarah Sadie is a poet, writer, and creative visionary who lives on a continental divide in a small town in Wisconsin. Winner of the Lorine Niedecker Prize, the Posner Prize and a Pushcart Prize, and recently nominated for a Sunshine Blogger Award, she grows tomatoes in buckets and leads workshops and classes with the aim of helping creatives find their new stories and next steps. Her poetry has been published widely and collected into five books. Online, she can be found holding An Inviting Space on Substack where she shares reflections, invitations and prompts with her readers, and hosts an ever growing circle of creative practitioners, artists, and writers. https://aninvitingspace.substack.com   

KATHIE GIORGIO

Savor

I’ve become
the grandma with the candy dish
It sits on my piano
a white ceramic pumpkin with
Give Thanks in gold scroll
and inside, jewels of hard candy
root beer barrels
cinnamon disks
pink and white peppermint
green and white spearmint
butterscotch
and sometimes, sometimes
licorice squares
My Nana had a crystal candy bowl
on some furniture she called a buffet
My mother said to never take any
It was there for years and years, she said
Don’t touch!
I snuck some anyway, and while the
cellophane was stuck to the candy, it
still tasted good
My Grandma’s candy dish was her purse
She kept Halls Mentholyptus cough drops in there
which I begged for and ate like candy
They were the originals, square, in a wrapper like
lifesavers
They tasted like Vicks Mentholatum Rub, which she put
under my nose every night, and just a bit on my tongue,
when we shared a bedroom
until she died
I still always choose Halls Mentholyptus, and I put
Vicks in my nostrils every night
Now
I keep jewels in my candy dish on my piano
and tell my granddaughter to take not one, but
a handful
choose All the flavors
Savor
They’re from me.

Kathie Giorgio is the author of fifteen books: eight novels, two story collections, an essay collection, and four poetry collections. A sixteenth book, a collection of poetry, will be released in 2026. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in fiction and poetry and awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association, the Silver Pen Award for Literary Excellence, the Pencraft Award for Literary Excellence, and the Eric Hoffer Award In Fiction. Her work has been incorporated into many visual art and musical events. She is the director and founder of AllWriters’ Workplace & Workshop, LLC, an international creative writing studio.

WENDY VARDAMAN

barcelona. sagrada familia. 5.29.2017

it’s like the best exotic marigold hotel. everyone’s got their
story. pain. loss, etc. why else would we quibble
over the right synonym, latinate or anglo-
saxon. their discursive planes. where
to begin & end. numbering syllables not blows. looking for
bulls and oranges. look, I tell
myself, you were never a good communicator.
sorry, I tell the children, who got the short end of that stick.

we need to talk to each other as if we’d all
just gotten that message here in this temple to color—
the one sign I’ve been following like the magi for years.

or the darjeeling limited. how they go
looking for the mother, but she’s already
not there not giving them something they think they need

Wendy Vardaman (wendyvardaman.com), PhD, works as a web & digital media specialist. She is the author of four collections of poetry, including Reliquary of Debt (2015) and a forthcoming chapbook, thread me an exit. In addition to poetry, her creative practice has included editing, prose writing, illustration, printmaking, and design. She served as Madison, Wisconsin poet laureate from 2012 to 2015 and volunteers as a graphic designer.

MELISSA HUFF

Storehouse

As late summer flirts with early autumn,
Earth tries to feed us with her bounty

like an aproned grandmother—Here, have another helping,
you’re so thin, put some meat on those bones,

you must store enough excess to last the winter.
Excess what, I wonder.

What will I collect like acorns to bury
as my cache, what morsels will sustain me?

I store up ribbons of unstructured days that flow
like a river’s meander, strands of calm to weave

a cushion for my spirit, and pockets of patience
to stitch into the lining of my winter coat.

I gather the voices of dear friends to strengthen
my own, and enough words to speak to each day

in its own language. In fields of time
I harvest hours ripe for dancing,

and to light my way I wrap myself
in the golden shimmer of summer’s waning.

Melissa Huff, a Pushcart Prize nominee, feeds her poetry from the power and mystery of the natural world and the ways in which body, nature, and spirit intertwine. An advocate of the power of poetry presented out loud, she twice won awards in the BlackBerry Peach Prizes for Poetry: Spoken and Heard, sponsored by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. Recent and upcoming publishing credits include The Orchards Poetry Journal, Blue Heron Review, RockPaperPoem, East on Central, and Gyroscope Review. Melissa’s first full-length collection of poetry is expected in late 2025 from Kelsay Books. Learn more at www.melissahuff.com

PENNY HARTER

The Stars Are Moving

Last night, thanks to our newest space
telescope Gaia, I saw endless stars moving
on my television screen, whole galaxies
inexorably drawn to one another by gravity.

Gaia is mapping the web of dark matter that
holds it all, accurately measuring the distance
between stars and the movements of galaxies
throughout time, even back to their genesis.

I didn’t know that our neighbor Andromeda
was hurtling toward us at two-hundred and
fifty-thousand miles per second, bound to
merge with the Milky Way in billions of years.

How lovely to drift with the stars for a while,
to not drown in the torrent of horrific news,
or be swept away in rip-tides of vicious politics,
murderous attacks, natural calamities.

We don’t have our heads in the galactic
clouds enough, don’t even know where
we are, too caught up in the pity-party
scripts we’ve been writing for years.

Too often we blame something or someone
for the stumbles of our days, the sorrows of
our nights. Why can’t we remember where
we came from, and that we are here to love?

So I’m writing this sunrise poem to celebrate
the daily spin of our flotsam planet, the local
star that fuels it, and all of us born from stardust,
afloat in dark matter, bound together by light.

Penny Harter’s work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including American Life in Poetry. Recent full-length collections of her work are Keeping Time: Haibun for the Journey, Still-Water Days, and A Prayer the Body Makes (2023, 2021, 2020 / Kelsay Books). She has won three fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, as well as awards from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the Mary Carolyn Davies Award from the Poetry Society of America, and two fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). For more info, please visit: pennyharterpoet.com.

TOM LAGASSE

Abundance

What will you do, God, when I die?  —Rilke

The chickadees, blue jays, and sparrows
glide onto the bird feeder for a sun-
flower or a seed before flittering
away, only to return again and again.

In the backyard, I am their open palm
of generosity. How could I expect more
of a world where, like a god, I receive their song
and flight like prayers for the life they give me.

Tom Lagasse’s poetry has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies. He was a 2024 Artist in Residence at the Edwin Way Teale House at Trail Wood. He has received recognition for his poetry by the National Baseball Poetry Festival and was recently awarded the 2025 E. Ethelbert Miller Prize. He is the Poet Laureate of Bristol, CT.

ERIK RICHARDSON

sacrifices to Vayu—god of wind and breath

the wishes we shouted into the well
hiking past the forgotten farm
and the breath that caught
in my throat at the altar

sounds of laughter
mixed with summer campfire smoke
or swallowed by snow in sharp January air
all have been offered up

the soft gasp the first time
you held our baby
and the whispers on tiny fingers
as she touched your mouth

along with all the songs you ever sang
in church, or on car trips,
or sitting (so tired) there in the dark
as our toddler fought against sleep.

and as many of my future breaths
as the son of Vishnu would trade.
all wrapped with a ribbon of incense smoke
offered up every year for one more year.

Erik Richardson is a freelance writer & journalist living in a small town in Missouri with his wife, two dogs that seem like a whole pack, and a growing number of half-finished home repair projects. He has published numerous poems over the years and three chapbooks—the most recent was the tao of numbers by Kelsay Press (2023).

THOMAS A THRUN

Valentine’s Sonnet for Peggy

You ask me why I’ve never written you
a poem or song like all of those I penned
to other girls. You ask, Is our love true?

Oh, silly valentine! How can I send
in words what words cannot express, nor say?

The Silver Swan, the madrigalist wrote,
while living hath no note, no song to play
until … when death unlocked its silent throat.

So, too, you’ll get but few if any rhymes
from me which tell of what I’m thinking of,
of how I long to sing like bells and chimes,
proclaiming, Peggy is my one true love!

More noisy geese than silent swans now live;
More lose in words what silently we give.

Thomas A Thrun’s poems are influenced by the poetry of Robert Frost and his Wisconsin farming heritage, as well as by other present-day poets. His poetry can be found in the 2022 and 2024 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar (Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets) and Hunger: An Anthology (Transcendent Zero Press, Houston, TX, 2022), among other anthologies. Thrun, retired with his wife in Wauwatosa, WI, is a former editor of award-winning weekly newspapers in Wisconsin and Washington State. He enjoys spoiling his 9 and 10-year-old grandsons and working with wood, kindness, and empathy.

ELISABETH HARRAHY

Unearthed

In memory of Karen Wetterhahn (1948-1997)

I look at the photograph of you
on my PowerPoint slide,
of you looking back at me
as I prep for lecture.

I lean in, examine
your slight smile, pale blouse
with padded shoulders,
the way your hands grip your arms,
hold them folded across your chest,
as if guarding
some truth
I fail to discover each year
before I tell my students your story
and all we learned from your death—
about safety, the need for the right gloves,
what dimethylmercury does
to a body.

Sometimes I tell them about the award
I was given in your name,
how I got to go to Puerto Rico
to give a talk on my own metals research.

I don’t tell them about the luxury hotel
with its lobby wide open to the ocean,
the champagne and seafood buffet,
about dancing in the old, walled city—
I got to go to Puerto Rico
because you died.

I was young then.
Now your face is younger
than mine.

I lean back,
think what it must have been like
to be the world’s expert on mercury
only to accidentally poison yourself,
to know in excruciating detail
what was to come—
the falling down, inability to speak, coma sleep,
death.

If not for the two drops that penetrated
your gloved hand, you would now
be in your seventies, Professor Emeritus
in charge of some research center,
a big-name speaker at international conferences
who loves to play with her grandchildren
on weekends.

And I wonder,
as I do every year, before I give this lecture,
if I am a disappointment.
If you could see me now,
would you ask me to give back the award
for failing to stay on the cutting edge
of science?

I look down at my arms
folded across my chest,
notice the mud caked under my fingernails,
recall my morning teaching in a stream,
the crisp air, snow on the banks,
how the students donned waders
and jumped right in with their dip nets,
how I stood in the pool by the dried cattails
reaching down into the icy water
again and again to pull up stones
so I could show them how some things
still thrive, even in the dead of winter—
pointing out the caddisflies in their cases,
tiny mayflies tucked into crevices—
how I looked up at the sky
in silent gratitude to whoever
was watching.

I look back at you
still looking at me,
feel a slight smile rise
then smooth my thumbs over my dirty fingers
as though polishing an award
because now I know—
now I know
the truth.

Elisabeth Harrahy is an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, but in her spare time she likes to drive her 1967 Plymouth Satellite, search for stoneflies in cold-water streams, and pull all-nighters writing poems and short stories. Her work has appeared in Sky Island Journal, Wisconsin People & Ideas, Rust & Moth, Naugatuck River Review, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for Best of the Net.

MARY DEAN CARTER

Sacred Moment

We are all walking this earth path together
Relishing the small gestures of tenderness
When a stranger turns to you and offers
To pay for your coffee, acknowledging
Your presence with a smile that says
“I see you. I’m glad you are here.”
Then you look into her dark eyes, smile back,
Say ” thank you,” cherishing that sacred
Moment, knowing you are blessed.

Mary Dean Carter lives in Richmond, Virginia. She enjoys writing poetry and taking poetry classes, both online and locally. She has had poems published in Tipping the Scales Literary and Arts Journal.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

MICHAEL JESKE (cover artist) ~ Michael Jeske’s photography is inspired by his father who took photos of their family events and nature when he was young. He has been a serious photographer/artist since the early 1970s. Today, photographing nature is one of his greatest joys. His camera is his talisman to find beauty and wonder in nature and the world.

KAREN A VANDENBOS ~ Karen A VandenBos was born on a warm July morn in Kalamazoo, MI. She has a PhD in Holistic Health where a course in shamanism taught her to travel between two worlds. As a photographer she has captured close ups of nature and her photos have been published in Blue Heron Review. A Best of the Net nominee, her poetry has been published in multiple journals.

J LEWIS ~ j lewis is an amateur photographer who loves nothing more than seeing the next “perfect photo,” no matter where he is or what he is doing. He has a strong preference for outdoor photos, ranging from sweeping landscapes/seascapes to close up and intimate shots of flowers, birds, bugs, and anything else that catches his eye. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DT9QT5D6

PAULA LIETZ ~ Paula Lietz is an outsider artist and writer of various genres published worldwide. She resides with her husband at Sandy Lake, Manitoba, Canada.

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