Visual Art Contributor
Maggie Krebs graduated from Miami University with a major in Psychology and a minor in 2D Art. She has been painting since graduation through custom Etsy orders, but this will be the first collection of her own design.
Poetry Contributor
Yvette Viets Flaten, Eau Claire, WI, writes fiction and poetry. Growing up in a military family, she learned French and Spanish overseas, and continued to study language and history at university. She writes everyday, following Sinclair Lewis’ advice to: “Make black marks on white paper.”
Poetry Contributor
Marie-Louise received her MFA from Manchester Writing School in 2020. In 2021 she was a winner in the Poetry News “lesser loss” competition. Poems also in Stand (2022), Agenda, Portland Review, The Poet’s Republic (2022), and competition anthologies for the Bridport (2019 highly commended), Live Canon (2019, shortlist) and Ginkgo AONB (2020 highly commended) prizes.
Poetry Contributor
Patricia Davis-Muffett (she/her) holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota. Her work has won numerous honors including honorable mention in the 2021 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award, and first honorable mention in the 2021 Outermost poetry contest, judged by Marge Piercy. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Pretty Owl Poetry, Quartet Journal and Comstock Review, among others. She lives in Rockville, Maryland, and makes her living in technology marketing.
Poetry Contributor
Eve Croskery lives in Auckland, New Zealand with her partner and two young children, who are the inspiration for much of her writing. She is a primary school teacher who loves sharing the powerful nature of the written word with her students. She finds joy exploring the great outdoors; hiking, camping, trail running and puddle jumping. You can read more of her work on Instagram @evepoetry_
Annie Marhefka
At the lake house, we skip flat rocks on flatter liquid surfaces, laugh when the wrist launch goes awry and the rocks skip upwards instead of outwards, kerplunk into the lake’s stomach. We lay flannel blankets on grass and pick at singular blades to see if the others notice one’s been plucked from the fused fabric of their field. We take the boat out and cut the motor. We can hear the slap of the lake’s tongue flicking against the hull. We sip champagne and rock gently, side to side. We tug woolen sweaters over shoulders when the sun dips behind the swaying reeds and the frogs start their throaty croaking. We toss kindling into the firepit and watch the steady swirl of the flames as they churn through our offerings. We press graham crackers into sandwiches and drip marshmallow goo onto fingers and chocolate onto tongues. We dip bare toes into the blackness of water, fishing for a change in temperature, a warmth. We whisper secrets to the trees, tell them we love them, that they’re different from the trees back home. Tell them to remember us when we leave.
Karen Sadler
I spend winters gulping candlelight,
let the flames singe my tongue,
wicks hissing in distress.
My throat, coated in wax,
and my lips ringed with ash,
keep the frigid air out.
They give my blood a fighting chance.
But this warmth is fleeting
so I spend nights awake,
ears pricked to the scream
of sirens and I run, then,
starved and panting
through ice-packed streets,
catch the smoke in my nose
and lunge.
I crouch at the base of
burning houses,
the blazing wood a feast.
Let me lick the smoking
bannister, let me drink
the melting hinge.
I would swallow the stars
if I could, in winter.
I would eat the sun,
then beg for more.
Yvette Viets Flaten
My father arrived stateside from Thailand
in 1969, just before Thanksgiving.
That night I could hear my parents talking
together all night long, her high giddy laugh
and his burr coming through the gypsum
plaster of our old rented house.
My dad died twenty years ago, my mom
two months ago, during the warmest January
on record. with so little frost in the ground
that opening the grave was hardly work.
Some will credit climate change for loosening
the ground, but I know better. He was waiting,
expectant, happy, when her casket sank against
the shoulder of his.
All I could think was that the ground was softened
by reason of their love; no more wars, no more
oceans, no separations. I imagine they have not
quit talking yet.
Marie-Louise Eyres
In a house of animals, blind dogs, a three-legged cat,
salamanders posed like statues in a tank,
a couple of kids and a mynah bird who all talk back,
she follows strict Buddhist rules, like never squash an insect.
All along the bookshelves, golden art-deco dancers
bare-breasted, double up as candlesticks.
Cigarettes twirl thick incense from an alabaster dish.
A table is peppered with glasses inked in port.
Baking takes place in bold, red loaves,
purple buns that contrast well with marmalade.
But then there’s the bright green, braided bread
that none of us will touch for thoughts of mould.
Sometimes she re-paints the walls, the paving stones out back
with giant snakes and ladders, hopscotch,
creatures muraled under a brick-dark sea.
Her cottage is thatch-roofed, deep in the country.
Fen violet and greater celandine skirt the old fence
by an open field of defiant, red eye poppies
where dogs and us kids gambol afternoons.
When we reach cacophony, she meditates an hour or two
inside an upstairs room. I peep through the keyhole,
see tie-dyed legs crossed on an Afghan rug.
She drags on her long thin smoke
beside a stick of frankincense burning in a pot.
I just close my eyes, plan to wait for her.
But as I breathe the thick air through the latch,
I rise up from the landing then float downstairs
where I find my cousins curled asleep into the patchwork couch.
The candlesticks begin to sway, a gilded chorus-line
while an octopus slides in from the painted patio
and flops itself across the kitchen floor.
Then the dogs are tangoing on their back legs with the cat
who’s eye-balling the bird that hasn’t said a word all day,
while a single salamander, no longer in his tank,
is circling in perfect figure of eights around the ashtray and a cup,
as he turns a slightly paler shade of grey.
