Poetry Contributor
Issa M. Lewis is the author of Infinite Collisions (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and Anchor (Aldrich Press, forthcoming in 2022). She is the 2013 recipient of the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize and a runner-up for the 2017 Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize. Her poems have previously appeared in The Banyan Review, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Split Rock Review, Panoply, and Naugatuck River Review, amongst others.
Creative Nonfiction Contributor
Lin Lentine is a queer poet whose work has been published in Noctua Review, The Fem, Picaroon, Dirty Chai, lady liberty lit, and elsewhere. She lives with her partner and two step-kids in Kansas City, and enjoys experimenting with watercolors in her spare time.
Poetry Contributor
Resolute Lee is an emerging writer who shares interpretations of the world through photography, poetry, and story. Resolute earned a Master of Arts Degree in Central East European Studies from LaSalle University; earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in History from Rowan University; and has completed crisis and leadership programs with Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government; and the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School. Recent or forthcoming publications of Resolute’s poetry and photography include the Moonstone Arts Center, The Havok Journal, LitStream Magazine, and Trouvaille Review. For more about Resolute Lee visit Instagram @Resolutelee; or visit the website ResoluteLee.com.
Lin Lentine
My daughter’s case worker sits with her by the old bathtub where we will plant our strawberries, explaining how to breathe. Cady is six, and rips fistfuls of grass from the ground around her.
Take a breath with each of your senses, the case worker says.
Count it down: five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.
What if I don’t have anything to taste, Cady wonders.
Imagine your favorite taste in the world, she replies.
Breathe.
One.
My daughter picks the new wild violets in the backyard, bringing individual flowers to my face to see the colors. Dark purple, light purple, white with purple streaks down the center, pure white.
Two.
Her eyes are hazel. Deep forest green speckled with golden sunlight. When she laughs, her face scrunches up with so much joy that they disappear.
Three.
I braid her honey-brown hair in the morning and tie it with a bright green scrunchie. It matches her shorts. She picks out a lilac shirt and tells me she looks like a flower today.
Four.
Cady draws a picture during her zoom class. A unicorn, all black, stenciled in thick crayon. She says it is a nightmare unicorn. She says her brain likes dark things, sometimes.
Five.
Together we create a calm space in her room, in the corner, next to the dresser. I put her round, pink pillow on the floor there. She hangs a drawing of a rainbow.
Breathe.
One.
When I get a package in the mail, we share the bubble wrap. I run my fingers across the smooth bumps and methodically snap them, while she crackles the plastic in both fists with madcap impulsivity.
Two.
I smooth a soft blanket over her at bedtime and tuck it under her feet. The other side of the blanket is fluffy and white, but she prefers the pink velvet against her skin.
Three.
A lockbox arrives from the case worker’s office. I put every cold knife from our kitchen inside and close the sharply cornered lid. The key is heavy as I push it into the lock.
Four.
Our hands in the damp soil, churning it up, making room for searching roots. Place the delicate thing and cover it, to protect the parts that are growing.
Breathe.
One.
Birds trilling, invisible in the still-bare trees by our house, chattering about the newness of spring, reassuring each other.
Two.
She says, Sometimes my brain just gets upset, and I have bad dreams, and I feel like I’m not safe.
Three.
Snow piles against us for three weeks. We go out on the first warm day, sick of inside voices, and decide to have a good yell. We turn our faces upward and scream, and Cady’s voice is the one that echoes.
Breathe.
One.
She brings the outdoors in with her: the sharp scent of mud on her boots, the violets wilting in a jar on her desk, the salty sweat dampening her braid after running back and forth between the porch and the big tree.
Two.
When we water the tender leaves and runners taking root in the old bathtub, they become fragrant, sweet and sharp. The tallest plant is just starting to bloom.
Breathe.
The strawberries we will harvest, as I imagine them: startlingly red against the leaves, firm, bursting with sweet juice on our tongues as we eat them warm from the stem, our toes in the dirt, messy and alive.
Sonia Beauchamp
Dreams awaken
hidden hollows
of sanctuary.
A body made of ice
softens to powdered
snow.
Wanton
& wanting
& waiting
for the thaw
to reveal
lavender
lower lips.
An iris exhales.
A quiver of arrows
unfurls into the universe.
Ruffled petals ruminate
the approaching sun;
not all flowers
bloom
when you expect
nor bulbs
take root.
I lose track
of years,
soften with age.
Zach Murphy
Charlie’s wistful heart tingles as he pulls up to 437 Wilton Street, the apartment building from his childhood. Everything is gone but the skeleton of a structure and the echoes of Charlie’s memories. You can board up the windows, but you can’t cross out the souls that once occupied the walls.
Every Saturday night, the entire block would light up with a Fourth of July jubilance. Dueling music speakers battled to steal the humid air at full volume. The Ramones shouted to the rooftop. Bruce Springsteen crooned to the moon. And Sam Cooke sang to the heavens.
Out in the street, Rich used to show off his candy red Mustang. Rich thought he was a lot cooler than he actually was. His hair grease looked like a mixture of egg yolks and cement. Charlie hasn’t forgotten the time that Rich revved up his ride in front of the whole neighborhood, only to blow the engine. As everybody laughed, Rich’s face blushed redder than his broken car.
Shawn was the tallest human that Charlie had ever seen. He dribbled the basketball on the bubblegum-stained concrete like he had the world in his hands. He never did make it to the pros, though. But he did become a pro of another kind. Charlie hadn’t heard about Shawn in years until the day a familiar voice spoke through the television. It was a commercial for a landscaping business — aptly named Shawn’s Professional Landscaping.
Charlie wished that he were older. Then, maybe he might’ve gotten noticed by his first crush, Henrietta. He’d often daydream about her curly hair, sparkly lip gloss, and mysterious eyes. Sometimes when Charlie passed by her door, he’d hear loud yelling and harsh bangs. Wherever she is now, he hopes that she’s safe and happy.
TJ always treated Charlie like a little brother. He’d even give him extra cash for snacks every single week. Charlie always admired TJ’s bright red Nike shoes. One day, TJ got arrested by the cops in front of Charlie’s very own eyes. It turned out that TJ was selling a certain kind of product, and it wasn’t chocolates.
Charlie’s grandma cooked the most delicious spaghetti. It smelled like love. The sauce was made from fresh tomatoes that she grew on the building’s rooftop. Charlie still thinks of her sweet smile with the missing front tooth, and the big, dark moles on her cheeks. The cancer eventually got to her. When she was put to rest, Charlie was forced to go into a new home. But it wasn’t really a home. The memories from that place are the ones that Charlie permanently boarded up in his mind.
After snapping out of his trance, Charlie picks up a decrepit brown brick from the building and sets it on the passenger side floor of his pristine Cadillac. When he arrives back at his quaint house in a quiet neighborhood, he places the brick in the soil of his tomato garden and smiles.
Madalena Daleziou
the sink is filled with coffee dirt
said my flatmate who never had a
sip, since the last school exam
so put two and two together
I run a sponge over stubborn
black specks the way I once ran it
on motherland dirt, wiping
my body clean—there’s none left
now, none of the dirt my people
impregnated with thyme, tomatoes,
and citrus trees—I touched my
cactus the day I moved in this
tenement and I should have seen
the aptness of the metaphor—
this is all I can grow; small and
thorny, few needs, no ties—
this is the only way I know to
grow roots: in coffee specks
unfiltered like mother dirt
the day I have strong black tea—
bag bathed 4 minutes—with milk
and a spoonful of sugar, I don’t
know if it’s an old home losing
ground or a new one gaining it
I crumble the paper-memory of the
balcony and the mosquito bites and
the tall glass of instant coffee-trash
with two sugar cubes and three ices
—telling myself tea is a spell my mother
would brew in our tealess country—
sugar tea feeds you after migraine
vomiting—telling myself my local
friends don’t have tea with any meal
so no need for me to see my
stretched pinkie finger as promise
and call it assimilation—telling
myself I grew in this land, not tall
but brave, not rootless but weaving
new roots planted in coffee dirt
Poetry Contributor
Gwyndolyn Hall is a dedicated teacher of teenagers, both at school and at home. She is currently going back for her MFA in poetry at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. She is interested in beautiful language and feels compelled to write her own.
