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Thimble Literary Magazine
Volume 5 . Number 3 . Winter 2022

Thimble Literary Magazine
Volume 5 . Number 3 . Winter 2022
Copyright © 2022 by Thimble Literary Group
Nadia Arioli Phil Cerroni Paul Koniecki
Editor in Chief Managing Editor Associate Editor
Justice Ferguson Colleen Ahern

Associate Editor Associate Editor
Cover art: Fall by Jessica Hills.
The Thimble Literary Magazine is based on the belief that poetry is like
armor. Like a thimble, it may be small and seem insignificant, but it will
protect us when we are most vulnerable.
The authors of this volume have asserted their rights in accordance with
Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the au-
thors of their respective works.
Brief Guidelines for Submission
The Thimble Literary Magazine is primarily a poetry journal but invites
submissions on related topics such as artwork, stories, and creative non-
fiction. We are not looking for anything in particular in terms of form or
style, but that it speaks to the reader or writer in some way. When select-
ing your poems or prose, please ask yourself, did this poem help me create
shelter? Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please notify us if the
work is accepted elsewhere. All material must be original and cannot have
appeared in another publication.
Poetry: Please send us three to four of your poems.
Short Stories: Please send a single work or around 1,000 words. It can be
fiction, creative non-fiction, or somewhere in between.
Art: Please send us three to five examples of your art, which can include
photographs and photographs of three-dimensional pieces.
Editor’s Note
by Nadia Arioli
Dear Readers,
By the time you are reading this, I will have already moved across the
country to New England. But I have not done so yet. Here are some
things I might say about my new digs:
It’s so nice having four, distinct seasons.
I love not being in 90-degree weather in the fall.
New Braintree.
Moving is a big deal. I avoid it at all costs. But it is a liminal time, a time
of doorways and hallways and great big means of transportation.
We have explored notions about thimbles as small shelters, but it occurs

to me that they are also portable shelters. It came to me in a flash: put-
ting a thimble on a slug to turn it into a snail, an animal which carries
its home on its back. (Of course, I would never actually do this.)
If I could, I would take my old house with me, with its acre of land and
funny poles that were fashionable in the 70’s. But it is as immobile as
Texas.
Autumn2022
Winter 2022 3
What I can take, though, fits in boxes and suitcases and in my pocket.
Friends have sent me quite a few thimbles over the years. Maybe I’ll
take one and thumb it for the flight. What I know I will take, though,
are these poems, these images, these stories. Home is a place you can
carry with you.
In my first letter from the editor, I wrote: “It’s dangerous to go alone.

Here, take this.” I wrote that for you. Now I’m writing this for me, but
you can have it just the same.
Thank you for giving me something I can carry with me. On my back
like a backpack, on my back like a thimble on slug.
Best,
Nadia Arioli
With Me by Jessica Hills
4 Thimble Literary Magazine

Temple Bell
by Will Cordeiro
a distant tone rings through the misty valley

one ripe plum drops into a pool
grass wrinkled by the water buffalo

full gutters treasure last night’s rain
in pink-gold light a spider levitates

each thing’s a threshold for another
Autumn2022
Winter 2022 5
Invitation to the Guts Party
by Charlie Glick
A friend of mine told me a story

he’d heard about someone’s friend
who was a logger. Out on the job
one of the other loggers swung round his chainsaw
and accidentally cut open this guy’s belly.
His guts shot right out onto the pine needles.
You know what he did then, this logger,
looking down at his insides?
He said NOT TODAY.
You know what he did after that?
He bent over and picked up his guts
and stuffed them back into his body.
Later at the hospital they rinsed him out,
removed the pine needles
and sewed him shut. He lived.
I wonder what I’d do if someone disemboweled me.

Probably faint from shock.
Give up. Die. Can you imagine?
Seeing your innards spill out like that?
But come to think of it,

I bet I’d remember the story of the logger
6 Winter 2022 Thimble Literary Magazine

and tell death: NOT TODAY.
And now maybe you’ll do the same
after having read this poem
should your guts ever pop out,
an event which, if we’ve learned anything lately,
shouldn’t surprise us. All of us,
survivors, saved by a legend,
the logger we never met.
We’ll throw a party before the end.

You’re all invited—
this is the invitation.
It’ll be summertime, we’ll stay outdoors.
We’ll lift our shirts around the fire,
compare scars.
We’ll look each other in the eyes,
make toasts to life and everything
we’ve lost, play some cornhole too, why not?
Some of us will go home early—
it’s okay, I’ve been that guy—
others will stumble off by 10,
but a few of us will hang on til late
when the embers flare like hearts
and the constellations emerge
and someone finds the North Star
using the Big Dipper, of course,
and someone else uncorks the whiskey,
because there’s still whiskey, and fun, and functioning
digestion, there’s still stars, a sense of direction,
in this future I’m imagining.
Autumn 2022 7
The Hunting Knife
by Kimberly Ann Priest
Its handle was polished antler,

a thick curved blade
sheathed in deer hide
and tasseled. I lifted it from
the bedside drawer
and held it reverently.
Never used to hunt, it was
the tool that gutted
an animal. Still
it was termed for hunting,
as if gutting were an act
of the kill. I knew it was imbued
with special meaning; a gift
from someone loved,
but who I could not
remember. We had
no other weapons in our home,
only this one
appointed to practical purpose,
and I had become
such a practical purpose
its edge could be
appointed to me, so

I stole its potential away
and gave it to a trusted friend
before issuing divorce.
My husband never went
to find it; all his threats to kill me,
empty. Instead,
he limped away like a wounded
soldier with paperwork designed
to disembowel the slain.
Autumn 2022 9
Archeology (2)
by Nate Maxson
Among the only proof of the first Chinese dynasty’s existence, the Xia,
are two bells found in a cave, one bronze and one clay
Did whoever found them, consider ringing them? If only with, a very
light touch?
I think not
All the potential of the past is coiled to sound
I hear it when the wind, blows, between and through the tall buildings,
like teeth or tuning forks humming in the winter daylight, the closest
thing to eternal presence that we’ll
When it’s cold one notices these things
It’s archaeology, what you build that survives

Not children but buildings, books, chimneys,
Empty rooms and hollow faberge eggs, imitations of great things
If we only had, one instrument, to make it out, float down the river in a
biblical escape
Ah
Here is a photograph “A Peasant Mother and her Twilight Sleep Boy”,
they’re dressed in what we now recognize as a faux ethnic get up
Since they’re probably American, it was never real
Twilight Sleep of course, was the phenomenon of drugging women in

labor with morphine and scopalamine
Not just so that they wouldn’t feel pain
But so they wouldn’t remember, feeling the pain at all
In effect the boy in the photograph, is closer to being a stranger is he
not?
Similarly, the anecdotal history would have us believe that, before

cinema, before photography, we dreamed in color, but afterwards, we
dreamed in black and white, until we finally reinvented color again
A whole generation in shadow, in white and silver
The doctors who did the deliveries noted that they women did actually,
scream like normal, but that they just didn’t remember it
The hospital maternity wards were not silent at all, they just discon-
nected themselves from keeping, the spark of it, close enough to burn
them
But that isn’t what survives, the empty buildings, parking garages and
lots piled high with rubble, landfills paved over and waste dumps
marked with warning sign
The instrument we would save, the news story about the violin player
who left his Stratavarius on an airplane
The point of stonehenge is not the light, but the air that flows over the
stone
The world is ringed with metal and sound

You have to hold
The listening device
Up just right to hear it breathing
Autumn 2022 11
Summer in the Orchard, Lancaster, Pa
by Pat Hanahoe-Dosch
The woman in a shapeless, pink dress

picks peaches, carrying them
in a large cardboard box. She reaches,
pulls, drops each fruit
in, one after the other,
moving slowly around the old tree
whose branches stretch beyond her view
when she stands beneath them.
Her hair is bound into a roll

the size and shape of a peach at the back
of her head. A small, white triangle
of lace perches on top. Her hands rise and fall,
gather and let go
with the grace of practice.
Some are too ripe. Some are too green.

Most are just right
and will be canned instead of boiled
into pie. Flies and gnats zip across skin
of the fruit and her arms. An occasional
wasp buzzes close, abandoning caution
for the love of sweet leftovers.

The woman stops, eats a ripe peach
because she is thirsty and temptation
is too much around. She moves on
to the next tree, and so on,
down the rows until the shadows
of trees and evening
swallow the peaches, branches,
insects, sweat and fruit stains
smearing her dress, her face, her hands.
Leaves tremble among the shrieking of cicadas.

Trees drop overripe fruit into the furrows
between them. Cells blossom,
ripening, piling upon each other,
become seeds and the sweet juice of
impermanent, fleeting delights.
Ella by Jessica Hills
Autumn 2022 13
Movement
by Hilary King
There is a company in New York City

that will rescue your couch
from the narrow hallway
between your old life and
a new one.
Poor old couch. Smushed against

the unwashed walls of a walkup
as you put your shoulder to hope
and push.
Optimism can’t always get you

around the corner.
Grit not only what shifts dreams
into action.
The company in New York City strips

furniture down to its core. Gone
the pretty covering, the fluffy filling,
the hidden hooks of memory and fear until
just the frame remains, as easy

to carry into an empty room or
a crowded one as
a vase before flowers.

Snow Day
by Cheryl A. Rice
If it is beautiful, it is because it’s transforming,

changing the look of the corner you turn on to go home,
bringing you around the steepest bend, because when
everything is white, nothing is clear.
If it is welcoming, it is because it’s engaging,
bringing your powers of suggestion to the forefront,
bringing the layers you’ve chosen to engage with the weather in
closer to the source of all that is you in this flesh.
If it is winter, it’s because despite everything,
the sun has managed to creep along its trail
to the next available season, done with scattering
the spent leaves of autumn, not yet convinced
we need any new ones. It’s the sun’s vacation,
relaxing as we should with a good book, fuzzy pants,
a cup of whatever tea we haven’t tried yet in this
age of home alert. If it’s snow, it’s because
the sun hasn’t the time or inclination to make it
otherwise. The plants make do with what little
entertainment ice provides. The sidewalks
bond with the crystalline intruders,
block the path from postal carriers and rabbits alike.
The squirrels perpetuate, their brains too
hollow to grasp the true meaning of a plow,
never minding where the nuts are buried,
sinking without fear into their logs of content.
Autumn2022
Winter 2022 15
Slender Pink Candles
by Michelle A. Wren
Because what I bring to the table is rich.

~Detra, from Humans Of New York
I guess I wanted it to be like the time I drove myself to Chicago with

nothing more than a backpack and my beloved bicycle. Chicago was
his city. But I loved it. He knew the streets. But I felt them. He knew
the rhythm of the stoplights. But my pulse knew them. He knew the el
and its tracks. But I knew its people. When I went alone for that first
time, I willed myself to have no fear. My resolution was to gather that
city for my own heart: the streets, the song of the el’s electric poppings,
the glittering shops and the fast cars, bottles of wine from the 7-11 and
sweets from the chocolatier. I was on my way, I could feel it, to reclaim-
ing myself as well.
Before I knew him, I was a free kind of woman. I danced through life,
but this, this was frightening. Everything I knew was a shrill bark.
My shoulders fell. My chin was in a constant state of quiver. I walked
with my hands in a constant wringing, a guiltless Lady Macbeth. At
the height of my divorce, which came with a side of pandemic, my
therapist gave me assignments to chunk. Buy eggs. Check. Go to the
PO. Check. Cry without shame. Check. I did them, but I did them
with my hands clasped. No more casual swinging at the hips. No more
dancing. I had lost my worth.

That week in Chicago, though, at dawn, I hopped on my bicycle and
joined the commuters. Just to be part of a pack with purpose. With
each revolution of The Loop, the lake on my right and the city to my
left, I gathered new reflections. New reflections of myself. At night, I
laced up my sneakers and walked. Just to walk. I bobbed myself in and
out of bars and restaurants. Just to see what the table had to offer.
I tested my mettle and liked its grit.
But let’s not get side-tracked with tales of a city. I’m jumping ahead of
the story. A couple of weeks ago, when I was shopping for a celebra-
tory dress, I told the salesperson I was concerned that I would have to
go braless and she exclaimed, like some sort of shaman, Then go braless.
Celebrate all of you. This young girl reminded me that every sidewalk
dip, every first blossom, even the corner where I got that nasty scar is
a marker of independence. That tough anniversaries are both anchor
and buoy at sea.
Sometimes when I drive past my lawyer’s office, my body remembers

the iron weight. But, when I starfish in bed, I remember the nautilus
nights. Oh, when I reminisce on lovers, oh. Think what you will, but
my Post Divorce Bucket List is:
1. Take a chance.
2. No regrets.
3. Love beautiful strangers.
He was young and beautiful. He adorned his fingers in silver and black
stones. He was unbuttoned to three and when I asked, Do you want to
kiss me? He lifted from his seat, placed his palms on the table, leaned
across the table, and did. Later that night when he entered my body
for the first time he looked me in the eyes. My whole body lifted to the
moonlight.
I love moonlight and all things beautiful, but sometimes the ugly has to
be sorted out. I have to sit and consider the weight. My therapist told
me, you’re going to have to sit in the shit sometimes. And I’m paying
Winter 2022 17
well, so I do.
As soon as I get out of that shit, though, I move forward, check in that
I’m not holding on to ineffectual sentiment. I no longer wanted his
bed. Sold. The chair he sat in to indulge his ego, on the curb. I no
longer wanted his name. Erased. I purposely and deliberately chose
and changed my name to one that suited my character – Wren. If you
don’t know me, I’m tiny. 4’11” but loud. I have many songs and I want
you to hear them all.
If you think I sing too loudly, speak too openly, swear with too much
audacity, then you should fucking move on. If you think my skirt
is too short, I will hike it. If you think my lipstick is too red, I will
brighten it. If you think my hair is too wild, I will unleash it. I am
a hot house flower, a screaming blue jay, a nap when work oughta be
done, a guitar that wails. Tell me to pipe down and I will get loud.
I kept waiting to get loud on this milestone day, the day I signed
divorce papers. I kept waiting on that Chicago epiphany to reappear.
But there was no sound. I wasn’t sure there would be music.
Still, I rallied. I put on my favorite dress, (braless, dear shaman), white

with embroidered fringe that sways at the knees, layered my most
intimate jewelry and let it glitter against my freckles. I walked to the
most decadent restaurant in town. My server, as a nicety, asked what
brings you in tonight? I knew I had arrived when I could say it aloud.
Each time a server or bartender skirted my table, they would one by

one, place a palm on my shoulder and whisper with shared glee, con-
gratulations. Each time a plate was placed before me, I would put my
hands on my cheeks and exclaim with a glance to the server that read
like: are you serious? Food so luxurious it was sinful to not recognize:
whipped goat cheese on grilled summer zucchini, pureed basil and
prosciutto, seared halibut with raspberry compote and golden raison
mostarda. Wine, so much glorious wine, I could taste sunlight.
But this is about more than food. It is about decadence and luxury
and and fully sensuous moments on the tongue. It is about being feral.

This is a living out loudness. This is wildness. This is responding to
the primal urge. This is what feral looks like. I don’t want to think. I
want to do.
I will not be tame. It is not enough.
I will eat delightful figs, sucking the seedy meat from the skin. No
apples for me. I will sleep with delicious men, strangers-become-
lovers, caress their long legs, the fur of their decadence. I will ask you
to walk me home and pilfer your guitar pick. I will copy your tattoos
with my index finger. I will sip the dew-tipped pink. I will stumble
into the moonlight. I will slumber under the stars.
I want to be startled by the beauty of it all. I refuse to be compliant

or agreeable. I will roam this world without apology. My chin and
shoulders will be a study in the classics. There will be no more wring-
ing. There will be no more wishing for an invitation to the table.
You see, I always knew candles were for wishing, but I thought they
were reserved for birthdays, certainly not divorce celebrations. At
the end of the night my server wove herself through the diners with a
slice of chocolate tart, dotted with crumb and strawberries, and yes, a
slender pink candle, melted to the plate itself. I will wish on slender
candles. I will wish for joy, sinuous experience, and passion. But, I
will bring riches. I am the riches.
Winter 2022 19
She’s Right Here With Me
by Cameron Gearen
Eddie always says, when I see him near his garage, that
he hasn’t slept for days, that he can’t be held responsible
for what he might do. He says the neighbor’s cat
walked all the way around the block at his heel. Eddie,
from grade school, lives here with his aging
parents, one brother in a divorce. Someone
has gutted the house to the south. The lot

is filled with gravel and dry wall. All day
the workers tote barrows. It’s like this all day,
Eddie says, shows me graffiti arcing the dumpster’s

side: EAZY. The noise flosses his brain which
was already unquiet. I don’t know why I’m telling you
about my neighbor Eddie. Today I found papers

from the day my daughter survived a drug OD,
the discharge report a sad technician
printed. Visit Summary of the worst day

of your life: the make-up of her blood,
how many IV bags they gave her, the words drug

overdose loud and thick. Follow up
with primary doctor. That day, her friend barged
past the nurses—pants sagging, neck loaded
with chains, a stereotype of himself. Everyone

takes a turn in this bed, he said. He died
two years later using heroin. My daughter
is alive and clean. She flips her FaceTime camera

toward her orange tabby–close up on his paws,
their granite pink. Tomorrow, I’ll tell her
the mountain of gravel as seen from my kitchen

slumps like snow in the dark. This summer
will make three years. She refused
to come with me on discharge. It would be two

months before she changed her mind. I can’t
tell you what it was like driving her to the ER
that searing July dawn, so I’m telling you

what Eddie said near his garage today, how
he hasn’t slept and doesn’t know what he’ll do.
Winter 2022 21
Hollow Place
by Savannah Cooper
No stained glass, just threadbare carpet

and stiff-backed pews. Warbling voices
on Easter. Songs with words so familiar,
I forget how ugly they sound, how slowly
they chip away at what remains of me.
Grape juice and chalky pale crackers—

a cheap version of blood and body,
watered-down salvation. Knees bent
at the altar, hands pressed to your spine.
Tell me once again that I am redeemed.
Sunday school rooms with peeling

paint and threadbare Bibles, sometimes
a dusty piano sitting in the corner out
of tune, a single window to watch
the congregants slip through the doors.
Sometimes I felt the verses in my soul,

words stuck in my throat, so close
to holy, so far from sacred. Sin between
my legs, meaning nestled in the space
above, a hole waiting to be filled.

Empty in every way that counts,
trespasses unforgiven. Vessel for life
but blaspheme to call myself creator.
You will know, they said, one day,
but all I see is shabby set pieces
and lines from a script, memorized,

twisted and beaten like metal to build
a gate that creaks with every entrance
and each scorned exit.
Winter 2022 23
Third Rail
by Beth Boylan
My mother texts to tell me her phone buzzed at 3 a.m., warning her

of a potential tornado, and it’s only then I remember jolting awake
to the same alert. It’s how we connect now. Texts of weather,
headlines—emojis to fill in the blanks. Once in a while,
I can’t picture a time before this. Like after a storm when the air
turns green and the sun spins prisms, and you think to yourself,
how in God’s name could I have just been afraid.
She would drive us around the reservoir and speak of its water,
deeper than houses, black as pitch. Nothing but darkness
to strangle you if you fell in. I prayed to be good.
Prayed for her to floor the gas and get it over with.
Crouched down in the backseat and braced for impact.
When Metro-North installed the third rail down in Croton Falls,
four firemen appeared at that week’s morning assembly in the gym.
The Super 8 projector spun gauzy images of plastic dummies burning
on the tracks—700 electric volts hissing and raging inside.
I pictured my mother smashing dishes in the sink.
I pictured the bowl of rainbow sherbet I’d left out on the stoop
and wondered what colors would melt out of me.

Elegy
by Eliza Dunn
When she was young my mother saw a boy drowning.

It was strange and slow, she tells me. When he fell,
heels clipping dock edge, the water rushed
from under his head so that for a moment he
looked like a saint, haloed and sinking. From above,
she could see all the details of him—mouth, cheekbones,
eyes suddenly dark, cavitied. I’ve heard the story
enough times to imagine I know the boy,
sometimes I am the boy: looking up at water
closing over my head like clouds, the silence sudden
and holy, even. I imagine myself from above—
floating, arms outstretched in some illusion of flight,
outline of me against shifting seawater.
My mother is somewhere on the shoreline,
listening to the ocean tell her something ancient and necessary
as it pulls the beach away from her. She pours sand
from hand to hand like coins, tilting her head as if weighing
its value—as if she knows with each palmful
it will weigh less and less until none.
Autumn2022
Winter 2022 25
Bitterroot*
by Alicia Elkort
*A small perennial herb that is able to regenerate from seemingly dead

roots.
I planted us like periwinkle,

intending many seasons
of bloom, faith in eternity

in return. O friendship O wild
woman, how you left me a brittle

bog, burning. What was sweet as honey,
now wormwood, horehound, & no one

to hear the sibilance ignited like fire.
Teach me then, how to fury, how

to be the ally you need.
I will teach you what I know of love.

You are a wounded child,
& that chimneys my heart,

with knees in fecund earth,

we collect dew on our tongues,
a useless attempt to slake thirst
when what we need is water

from the skies, a deluge of goddesses
who bless us. Please friend,

let us not succumb to darkness.
The world wants us to fail.

We must prevail, for our daughters
& sons. Rise up, take my hand.

Let the bitterroot bloom forgiveness.
Little Lakes Before Greater Waves by Jenn Martin
Winter 2022 27
Venting
by Lisa Ashley
We meet for lunch,

sound off about our husbands,
government corruption,
our various ailments.
We let loose over our sandwiches,
open doors crusted with rust,
wedged with torn and tired rags,
or newly lubricated with yesterday’s irritations.
We tell ourselves better to vent than to stuff.
Midmorning in summer the hen next door

intrudes with her Chinese water-torture call:
bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk—starts slow,
gets faster, louder—she’s venting too.
Her egg, wrapped in the tissue of her uterus,
moves through her vent, (yes, that’s what it’s called)
until she pushes it out of her body,
a kind of inside-out trick.
My egg attached to the wall of my uterus,

clung there for nine months,
zygote to egg to fetus to child.
I labored fourteen hours to shunt my son

down the birth canal, ten fingers, ten toes,
nearly turning myself inside out.
My child was twisted, shoulder first,
jammed against my backbone.
He needed freedom,
we both wanted release.
This baby—shrouded
in his torn blue caul
pulled through the cut across my body
mouth open, gulps new air.
Winter 2022 29
Low Country
by Holly Hinson
I am tethered to this place somewhere deep in my bones. Even the very

first time I came here, it felt familiar and like a homecoming. The low
country is a siren song so sweet it feels like a sin. I love this salt marsh
so purely it surpasses any human romance I have ever known. In the
halo of its embrace, I simply surrender to the joy of it.
The car thump-thumps its way onto the bridge that spans the inlet wa-
terways near Kiawah Island, about 20 miles south of Charleston. Like
every year, it overfills my heart and tears of beauty form in the corners
of my eyes at the first sight of the shimmering vista of salt marshes with
their tidy trimmed beards of grass. The canopy of trees on the narrow
two-lane highway shepherds us in with live oaks, palmettos, hibiscus. It
is exotic, exquisite, extraordinary to me. Unearthly in its spell, yet very
earthy in the intimate connection I feel to the land here. Somewhere
it feels like someone is scrubbing my sins. It is personal redemption.
And I need redemption, because I now know after traversing the pain-
ful path of this faltering marriage, that I am far more in love with this
island than the man who brings me here. And this is the last year I will
be coming here, certainly with him, but perhaps forever.
As we cross the bridge, I am writing in my journal, my face pressed

against the windshield, turned away from him as he steers us over the
span of gray water. He does not see the silent tears, perhaps pretending

not to but I think really he is just unaware. Perhaps he registers my mel-
ancholy, though as he pats my knee and says, “Hey, hon, we can go to
the Jasmine Porch tonight and get that one salmon you love so much.
Won’t that be nice?” He pauses when I don’t respond. “You know, once
we get settled in.” “Yes, nice,” I say blandly, my face wet and crumpled.
I have deluded myself that I can carry this weight; that I can continue
to re-assemble the broken pieces of this marriage again and again like
some puzzle master. I have not wanted to admit this, because I did not
want to fail. But being the only one present in this life I wanted, no I
needed, to share, is now a voice singing to itself inside a cave.
I am already anticipating the rush of my bare feet on the wooden

bridge and I will run until I clear the corner and can see the sea and it
will bring me up short. It is more than I can absorb, I am enthralled.
Goddamit, I do not want to give this up. It is everything to me – it is
resonant in my heart, it is purring in my veins. The white sunshine, the
musky smells, the lilting of the shrimping boats on the horizon – I tune
out all other reality to let this one sacred feeling bowl me over, drown
me. I am in silent communion, gratefully home inside my heart. I am
manifest. I am the sooty sand, I am the glint of beach umbrella. I am
inside the men fishing on the pier. I am hovering like an angel on the
wing of the pelican. I am in the toddler’s striped sun hat. I am wholly
animated in every sound, smell, sight, taste and touch of it. Knowing
I will not be back for a very long time, maybe ever, is a poison of woe
slowly leaking inside my body.
Last week, he handed me $80 and told me to go buy myself something

new for the upcoming trip. I probably could have been more grateful,
gracious. But I just stood there, mumbled okay, pasted on a smile that
didn’t reach my eyes, and walked out of the room. I guiltily tucked it
into my lingerie drawer in the secret stash place I was collecting for …
for what exactly? I knew but I couldn’t draw it yet. I felt myself spin-
ning, the axis of dread playing in my mind. My sons need a dad. Their
mom needs a life. What the hell are you thinking? – You don’t know the
first thing about how to make this work on your own if you walk out that
door. Well, it’s not exactly working now, is it? I’m hiding away from my
family, exhausted from school and work and the kids and the emotional
Winter 2022 31
wreckage my life has become. And I can’t even have a glass of wine,
because it gives him permission and makes me feel like I am condoning
his excesses somehow.
In the murky moonlight, I sit on the porch and listen to the dunes
quietly teem with life. I smell the crisp linen smell of the sea. I know
what I have to do. I knew it before I came on this trip but for this one
blessed moment, I am absolved, I am saved, I am whole, I am fierce.
Never mind what comes next – I am grabbing and holding this one
moment in my arms and I am alight with grace.

My Father’s Box
by Alison Hurwitz
My mother moves his resting place each day from room

to room. The ashes shift inside the wooden dove-tailed box,
mute as sleeping birds. I want to lift the silence up
and hold him, put him to my ear like that rare and
convoluted shell he found near Cape Perpetua.
(You will always find the ocean there.)
They say the waves we hear inside a shell are just the wash
and flow within the ear, our own unfathomed ocean. I keep breaking
on my father’s shore, wishing I could hear him drift past me
in a shift of sleep, could learn the language made of sift and dissolution.
I watch my mother with his ossuary, watch her carry him
(You will always find the ocean there.)
to where she’s going: kitchen table, hall, the Steinway in the living room.
Her fingers flotsam him to notes. I wonder if she hopes his motes will
stir, dreaming chords inside the bones of trees. If I could only hear
the part of him that lost his shell, I would tell the hours, the weight
of watching as she walks, each day waking one more time, alone.
(Always, you will find the ocean there.)
Winter 2022 33
Incantation
by Elizabeth Hill
I refuse to think of it.
We set up the hospital bed in the living room. I welcome its narrow
whiteness. It makes things simple.
I can hardly dial the phone to summon my children.

I suspect I was not a good mother, but
they swirl about me like

fireflies. Do I want to eat, to drink, to go to the bathroom?
I can no longer walk. They drag me there like a

dead fish. Shit is sliding down my leg and staining the carpet.
I can no longer talk. My daughter bosses

the hospice aide who massages my limbs.
I can’t open my eyes. My surgeon husband

sticks a catheter into
my nonurgent urethra. I resist with my waning will.

He wrestles me like a schoolboy and prevails.

I can feel his lemon guilt and
how the air holds him down, like the gathering night.
He sits by me and holds my hand, apologetic, dependable.

I beam at him through closed eyes.
I am barely conscious. I feel a sly needle slide into my arm.

Morphine takes my sloughing body. In the distance, I hear
my daughter ask the hospice aide to wake her when it’s

time. Every moment opens wide. I push narrow breath in
…and out. Time passes like ether. I faintly feel my husband

hold my wrist, touch my pulse. I can just hear my daughter
next to my ear: I love youPeter loves youSusannah loves you.

I love youPeter loves youSusannah loves you.
I love youPeter loves youSusannah loves you

I love youPeter loves youSu
Winter 2022 35
‘Tis a Consummation
by Ann Fisher-Wirthy
When my kids were tiny, all they wanted was to hang on me. Probably
my mom felt bereft when she came to visit, when after the first thrill of
her presence they would turn to me instead—as now I feel bereft when,
after the first thrill, my grandchildren turn to their mothers. There is
nothing like the idolatry of the child, that bodily adoration, no way
you can be close enough. The hand slipped into yours as you cross the
street, the body climbing over yours, sprawling and cuddling as you
read a story, the bone-breaking hugs. It’s everything.
One day long ago, while my kids and I were visiting, my mom and
stepfather drove us to the zoo. Tired, they waited outside while we went
to see the animals. When we emerged all sticky with cotton candy and
popcorn, they were lying on their sides in the grass, in the dappled sun,
softly talking to each other, and I thought, they are so trusting, as they
rest against the earth. Already the tumor that killed him had begun to
grow on his face. Soon the earth will open and they will slip into their
graves.
My love, my love, we too. Free from the chemicals of embalming, I will

be a natural woman, you will be a natural man. Death will wrap us in
its cloak, filthy with sticks and feathers. But then at last when our flesh
is gone to worms, if we are lucky our bones will mingle, and we will
become mud, grasses, mycorrhizae and springtails, bluets in spring, the
toothed dogwood tree. Our children will know where in the woods we
are buried, and maybe our children’s children will plant daffodils on
our graves.

Variations on the Word Mother
by Judith Mikesh McKenzie
(with thanks to Maragaret Atwood)
This is a word we use to hang our lives on.

It’s the right shape for the small curves of
our pain, the lonesome lines of our
failures, for those
loaf-shaped warm feelings –
airy – both substantial and not.
Wrap it in plastic and buy it once a
year: here, Mom, thanks for
my life.
I think.
We use this word to shake out our freedom

and to rattle our chains
We use this word to hold our daughters
When what we have really become is a
weight within their lives.
There are whole years filled with fear of

this word – trying not to be
what came before
slowly seeing how
Winter 2022 37
we are exactly that
Hoping that our daughters will be more
and seeing our own
fears in the gaze they
turn on us
Bumblebee in Cassia by Staci-lee Sherwood

In Memoria
by Elizabeth Kerlikowske
His past is lodged in an envelope sealed

since 1966. To open it would disturb its
gummed silence and free history, mystery
and facts, perhaps reveal too much.
A simple white envelope holding early
writing and animations, documents and
emanations from the other world where
his brother now lives. It’s tucked in an old
copy of Paradise Lost, illustrated by
William Blake. O little lamb, who made
thee seal and cram thy past away?
Winter 2022 39
Allowed
by Eben E. B. Bein
You would wish long and long … to sit by him in the boat that you
and he might touch each other ever so lightly … what is this then?
1.
Sometimes I binge gay movies

in bed until my neck cricks, bad ones
with no plot and women as abbreviated
as the first girl I dated—I’m so sorry
for them—as if no director had ever seen
a woman with actual eyebrows,
who can do anything other than
pull men into orbit around each other
but this white, this tall
this thankful-for-almost-all-
my-Y-gave-me gay
this world-forgets-it-wasn’t-made-for-me gay
this actually-it-was, this good boy
this don’t-all-boys-know-their-mother’s-
favorite-flower gay with the insatiable roots
sucks every scene dry.
I just want my mother to be spared.

I just want to be held
forgettable in this field
where I bring a bouquet of wild
boys to my lips like the only
flowers for miles and miles
are gay flowers and I
am as uneventful
as any blossom.
2.
Just off Mass Ave, by the gay crosswalks, my eyes turned on
to a young man, a curl locked to his forehead, the wind
mussing his fresh cut of lilacs, gray undergarments flashing

beneath their green Monroe skirts, a beauty exiting
the poem I found him in, despite trying to staple him down
like the receipt on my lunch bag, fluttering with luxury
and the scent of garlic, lilac, Nama Shoyu, magnolia

dropping their pink applause all over my poem
is more electric than yours because I’m allowed to want

to see him again, to spin a double-take right here on the sidewalk
with everything there is to inhale, to smell every smell of this moment,

smells enough for everyone, like the girl in the pink snapback, her
skateboard
eddying a puff of petals, who furrows an eyebrow at me, then him

then wrinkles her nose like a Blood hound about to howl
then rolls on
Winter 2022 41
Beloved
by Bunkong Tuon
for Joe Skerrett
His voice was smooth jazz

Swirling in the air.
He leaned back on his chair,
Hands resting on his big chest,
As we discussed Morrison’s Beloved.
A book about love, motherly love.
Real thick and heavy, the syrupy
Kind that sticks to your fingers,
Hands, and soul.
The question was simple:
How do you put a limit on the love a mother
Has for her children? And I wept
Like a child because I was that child:
In the dark without a mother’s voice
Singing him to bed.
My mother left this world and
Part of me had gone with her.
We became ghosts to each other.
She seeps into my poems and takes over the writing.
I do what any adoring child does:
I let my mother haunt me.

The Chaplain
by Lake Angela
The chaplain sighs before his congregation of plastic

chairs, a cartoon yellow Eucharist fixed above the pulpit,
a construction paper halo fading behind his grey head.
Soon the Lord’s guests will trail inside, goaded by nurses
and exhausted aides. As the patients have been restless,
it falls to him to deliver the sermon again—to reign in
the unruly spirits, urge them to perform a kindness
for their caretakers, take their meds and exercise patience:
heavenly freedom from mental constraints is a generous
reward. The chaplain no longer notices how the chairs
are affixed to the floor, that the hymn-books are protected
by supple covers. He feeds his audience Christ’s passion
in muted tones, God’s flesh the antidote to their demons.
One woman raises her hands skyward and an aide subdues
her before she can cry out. Another wants to ask a question
and is quietened. Thus rebuked, the patients stare through
the chaplain as their minds wander away to join the rootless
white clouds. Outside the sealed windows, they rejoice in shifting
shapes, transforming dandelion fluff to dolphins flipping
through feathered sky while the chaplain’s voice winds around
their legs like snakes.
Winter 2022 43
Lovliness
by Max Heinegg
When I return, she’s stitched

orchid redolent cloves into oranges,
dipped the perfumed circle in the violet
of orris root and tucked amber apples
in mountain laurel. It’s Christmas
and the humble orange is now pomander,
more than it was by adornment,
though less than once, that sought gift.
She remembers scents’ protection,

burns beeswax in a service of fire,
wards illness away with air. In her absence,
I’d lock the windows and rove bottles’
squalor, flop in a hopeless apartment.
Perhaps. I buy safflower for our rice,
hibiscus to color my brews and Elixir
guitar strings. Guilty pleasures escape
judgment when no one else judges.

Friends will say we’ve spent too much,
but Teasdale’s right: Spend all you have
for loveliness and never count the cost.
All of our debt has been delicious,

and all the magic I once doubted
of domestic alchemy, says, If you can,
cast the changes, never let the lead stay.
Honeybee Covered in Pollen by Staci-lee Sherwood
Winter 2022 45
Ghost of a Ghost
by J.L. Conrad
The bowl of the prairie.

Snowstarscatter.
All you needed was

to be embodied.
We had lived too long

alone, nothing weighting us.
Today, birds—
thick black crows
threading the air

with their dots and dashes.
The mouth opens

and closes. I keep losing
my thoughts but also

objects and intent.
All you needed was

a body to call your own.
I could not keep you together.

A cone of light funneling.

On the Son of a Postal Worker
by Nolan Meditz
You’d think he’d be more

reliable, but he’s always late,
never with what you asked for
and always an excuse. Forget
about when it’s raining, you won’t
see him for days; he’s far too
busy tending to his own express parcels,
sorting through his own first-class letters.
Everything he is given, he retains; he knows
how to disappear through transaction,
becoming less himself and more the message
he carries; he keeps to himself
things we’d rather see
in another’s hands.
Winter 2022 47
Carpe Folia
by Katie McKy
I was a prairie schoolmarm, teaching a few miles from where Laura

Ingalls Wilder lived. I would have looked familiar to Wilder, as I wore
practical, sturdy, blue jean jumpers with cargo pockets, cotton tights,
and brown, hook-and-eye boots. To encourage a former student to ap-
ply to Harvard, I applied as a ploy, was shockingly accepted, and went
from playing tag with second graders to crossing the Charles to reach
my new school.
I took an infamous class at the Kennedy School of Government, com-

monly known as Leadership, which gathered Big-A types: former may-
ors and presidents, diplomats, an aircraft carrier captain, and captains
of industry. It was a melee as the teaching staff didn’t fill the hours and
the whiteboard with words. They sat back, spoke rarely and cryptically,
and let us attempt to exercise leadership, i.e. try to helm the class and
take it in whatever direction we wanted. With so many accustomed
to power and podiums, it devolved on the first day into a scrum and
stayed that way for weeks.
One day, while walking the four miles to school, for a prairie school-
marm can’t afford Cambridge rent, I saw a superb sugar maple leaf on
the sidewalk. Now, you must understand something about a New Eng-
land fall. I was born on the West Coast and have lived in the Midwest,
upper Great Lakes region, and the South, as well as Massachusetts and

Maine, so trust me when I say that a New England fall isn’t oversold. It
delivers and it’s not just the sugar maples. The North Atlantic has been
sponging heat all summer, so all fall, it’s leaking heat, moderating day
after day. Plus, the humidity is low, so the air has a clarity that would
make a diamond grader grin.
The sugar maples were shedding their gold that day, so I stuck that
leaf into my top knot. After a block or two, I saw an even brighter one,
which also went up top. Block by block and mile after mile, I added
to my hoard, like a beachcomber dropping shells into their t-shirt.
The beachcomber reaches a realization when the shells have stretched
their t-shirt so far that it’s banging into their thighs. Only then do they
wonder where all those shells will go. I also had a realization when I
reached the Kennedy School and saw my reflection in the glass.
I had a crown. It was glorious, the best leaves of the best fall day of the
best fall region. Queen Elizabeth’s crown, the State Diadem, would pale
beside my fluttering flame. I considered yanking and scattering the
leaves, for I was about to enter Thunderdome, an MMA cage, the Coli-
seum, but shucking such beauty would be a secular sin. So, I stepped
into the pit having the best hair day of my life.
We warred that day like any other day, each trying to wrest the reins,
and then broke into small groups, where the discussion in all the small
groups save mine was…me. All had misassumed that I turned my head
into a sugar maple crown with leadership intent.
What did I mean by it?
Was it a metaphor?
A provocation?
Had the unending conflict in the class broken me?
I was oblivious to all the wondering.
Winter 2022 49
Two days later, the large group met again and I made some comments
that turned heads, not because I was fall-adorned again, but because
the consensus was that I was a leaf-wearing flake and my observations
with incongruent with that perspective. The next week, at the end of
class, a group of classmates herded me to an apartment.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” they said.
“Why are we going?” I also asked.
“You’ll see,” they said.
At the apartment, more classmates awaited. Turkish sausages were siz-

zling in the kitchen. Sliced baguettes awaited them. Untouched Belgian
chocolates were arrayed on a coffee table. They motioned for me to eat.
I did. Then, without any preamble, each shared how they’d misjudged
me because of the leaves, how they’d spent one small session dismiss-
ing me because of my crown and the next small session reflecting on
the poignancy of my observations in the next class.
At the end of the apologies, one of them asked, “If you don’t mind,
we’d love to hear what the leaves meant.”
I could have honestly said, “I’m a big kid. I love color. I put one in my
topknot and then another and another and another. It was a long walk
and I saw a lot of lovely leaves. I kept adding until I’d gathered more
than I could realize, as I couldn’t see my head and leaves are light.
Then, when I finally saw my reflection, I shrugged and went to class.”
Instead, I honestly said, “It was a case of carpe folia. We only get to
circle the Sun so many times. Then we’re worms’ meat. The falling
leaves remind me of that, how fleeting the beauty is. We must embrace
it. You know, ‘Seize the leaf.’”
I had read the room. Their satisfaction was clear in their shining eyes
However, I still wished I had shared the fuller truth, that I’m also,

simply a kid, but I was content too, with Turkish sausage and Belgian
chocolates in my belly.
Carpe cibus.
Seize the sausage.
The chocolates.
The apologies.
The leaves.
The day.
Winter 2022 51
In and Out of My Shadow
by Cordelia Hanemann
Nevertheless, I dislike/ The way the ants crawl/

In and out of my shadow. Wallace Stevens
Smash-scrunch-crunch-smash
again smash: 1-2-40-100-127,
a scattering of ant bodies
–the parade of ants creeping
no longer across my kitchen floor,
my guilt.
My heart is heavy as my hand.

All this death, yet I have
murdered no one, just the promise,
such a little promise, I had promised:
I tried to call, but there was no signal.
In the park, far away, where they are

camping out, my son and grandson
are waiting over breakfast
they are waiting after lunch
a promise is a promise
I did try to call but

couldn’t get through.
dining alone in the night

beside the campfire no longer waiting
in the dark in the park, where
I had assured them I would arrive
by 10 am. But I did not, could not.
Now, I, who am not waiting, dread

how they will see me, the breaker
of promises,
I, who killed 127 ants,
which, waiting for no invitation to dine
on the scatterings about my kitchen floor,
had come in the night. And–oh my–are yet
arriving.
Winter 2022 53
Bodies of Water
by A.M. Gwynn
Sixteen hours as the crow flies, between farmland and sea. The wind
whistles through open windows muffling radio news, sing-along,
conversation. The engine purrs as it gulps down the miles. There are
no thoughts to turn back, the coming shadow hovering outside the
periphery. Their souls leave no breadcrumbs between here and water.
Red sky at night. Red sky in the morning.
A boat ride at sunset—we would have warned them. We could have

pulled them back, before that barrel-chest, those gun-ship arms, before
their luggage was all that remained.
Red sky at night. Red sky in the morning.
On the farm, a man leans back in his recliner, thinks of his girls stroll-
ing seashores for seashells, the hotel pool deck―cokes and postcards. A
few more days, they would return with sunburns and souvenirs.
Two watch as one is bound, weighted down with stone, thrown over
the scratch of blue and white paint to the sea—alive. One watches as
the second enters the water, as the one before her. There is time for the
third to understand as the light at the farm turns off and she goes over.
Red sky at night. A sailor’s warning.

Wishful Thinking
by Julia Caroline Knowlton
If only I could touch you (dear reader)

your body without words,
empty as paper.
If only love didn’t turn on a dime

every time, or wings were made
of iron, not feathers or wax.
If only your shadow could teach

blue hope arriving soon—these lines
an animal in snow, leaving no tracks.
Winter 2022 55
Six Pitches for the TV Series About My
Life
by Andrea Camille D’Souza
It’s like Sex and the City, but instead of Carrie and her three best
friends, there are versions of me at four different ages who counsel each
other over cosmos and brunch.
It’s like How I Met Your Mother, but instead of the mother, there’s the
miniature Barbie my sister loved the most, and for nine long seasons,
you will follow me, seeking it, since the one time I held it when I
was just three, then adorned in Baby Gap and ignorant to treasure, I
dropped it from my stroller and lost it in the mall, and to my sister, the
potential of this new small person to bloom into a friend was never
quite the same.
It’s kind of like Jeopardy! but all of the questions are multiple choice
and based on my life, and one of the contestants is someone I know and
another is a stranger and another is a bot that has studied every photo
and message on my phone and can mimic the bark at the back of my
laugh, and at the end of every round, when the questions are answered
and our notions of intimacy are parched from the brawl, I will walk
from the podium to embrace first the friend, and then the unknown,
and then the machine.

It’s like any docudrama, starts with me in college, and I am sitting in
my dorm watching Season 4 of Glee, and the camera zooms in on the
screen of my laptop as Lea Michele sings “New York State of Mind,” and
for the next fifteen hours, the camera will remain there, and it will take
different viewers different quantities of time before they learn that the
show is not a docudrama but fifteen straight hours of Season 4 of Glee,
and when critics attack it, I’ll say it’s a comment on obsession or depres-
sion or the chapters of my life that I’ve lost entirely, making camp for a
promise that couldn’t spot me in a lineup, couldn’t tell you my name.
It’s like Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, but the shtick is I
meet with every man I’ve ever kissed, and instead of us driving in a car
hand-selected for the guest’s personality to a diner around the block, we
stay in the studio and meet with one child who I think, after interview-
ing thousands of children, is most like the child that we two would have
had if we touched that horizon that has never reached back, and we ask
the child questions like: “What’s your favorite song? What do you like
most about your kindergarten teacher? Do you believe in redemption?”
Then none of us speak as we wait as a group for the parents to return.
It’s like the Sex and the City reboot, but it’s you, not Che Diaz, who tells
me: “You don’t love me. You love you when with me.” And the version
of myself who hears that will listen. And the version of you lets go of
my hand.
Winter 2022 57
Death is Pornographic
by Peter Leight
Bleeding, Hector is softer to handle

Than he was when he set fire to our ship.
Ganymede, given the usual
Love gifts, a cock and hoop,
Bedded by a clumsy giant bird
That appears to have been nurtured
On Sesame Street, the oversize
Arm pushed out of its thighs
With a fist at the tip
Like a fucking scoop,
Softens like silk.
Leaving Corinth, we found

The sphinx on her stump
Her human breasts swollen with milk,
Reclined on her rump
With her wings flattened,
Bending over the bones
Of loved boys she’s thrown
On the sand.

Musings of a Fool
by Louisa Muniz
My body mellows as the bee population

disappears at an alarming rate. The wind squalls,
closes in on me. The invasive lantern fly mills around
the tomato plant growing out of a crack in the cement.
I’ve lived in pursuit of doing the right thing. It’s like this:
as a small boy you giddy-upped on a spring-coiled horse,
rocked a Stetson hat & cowboy boots & gnashed
your teeth like a wild thing. You once pleaded,
don’t ever give up on me. Give up on you?
I’ve saved your stick figure drawings, a lock
of your first haircut & bronzed your Stride Rite shoes.
Give up on you? I would as soon give up on the long shadows
of the oak or the wind burning the willow. Even now
as twilight splinters through the dark & the ruby-winged
lantern bugs thrive, I’m a fool for God’s handiwork. Am I a fool
for believing I did the best I could? It’s not the living, but more
the forgiving as I draw near the waistcoat of my years.
Winter 2022 59
Pluck
by Sara Ryan
I didn’t know I wanted anything until it stumbled into my 4am house

wooden floors creaking and aching as we pushed
against furniture in clusters of clumsy pressure. after he left,

I looked at my chest, where he had been kissing, eagerly,
the freckled milk there. I plucked what I hadn’t seen

before, what his hot mouth raked over, unaware of my excess.
I plucked, still, even as my body was re-sculpted in want.

in the dark of that night, I watched love unravel in diamonds
and red walls. in monstera leaves and slices of lime. I tripped

over my own feet as they bled. I yelled into the dawn and it yelled
back. I heard, as if from outside in my dust-heavy yard,

on the cobblestone street, words slur from my tongue in frantic
patterns.
I am so lonely spilled from my mouth and I felt no shame about it.

it was a fact, honest, the undeniable truth of a man in my house
where there once was not. as I corralled him out of my house and into

the night, we knelt against the floor and peered under my bed
at the glowing moons of my cat’s eyes,

my black dress pooling around me like a black hole.
Fiery Skipper Butterfly, Male by Staci-lee Sherwood
Winter 2022 61
Cache
by John Brantingham
The woodpeckers going at the palm trees

outside my window wake me today.
Someone told me that palms aren’t

true trees, but I don’t think the birds care.
Down the road, someone’s cache of fireworks

explodes all at once, killing some people,
taking out his house, sending the fire trucks

screaming down the road. The neighbors gather
outside to watch the smoke plume over the city.

The woodpeckers don’t seem to notice at all.

To Tell the Truth
by Tess Congo
Time is like headlights. We mistake it for stars.

Not wanting to tell you—I do. And nothing—
not the vodka on the plane, nor the sound
of my suitcase rolling me in
can seduce my shames
to silence.
On the roof you tell me

you could love me. Your hands
stretch my dress, that hot white lace.
Is this what it means to love you?

To smile for a week’s pleasure,
and submit to the long after,
a decade-long goodbye. At turns,

I want to throw myself
in front of the stars.
Winter 2022 63
Storm Windows
by Patrice M. Wilson
Chill became frost, green screens

that had let summer into the house–
its daytime breezes, its night time zephyrs–
became no hindrance to impending icy climate.
Dad brought down from the attic

tall hefty windows he had to balance,
bending through every bedroom pane
with each heavy load,
hooking them onto the outside
above each empty opening.
For the first floor he could use a ladder

on the lawn; for front porch and living
room, he could simply hook them on.
But not up here on the second floor,
where everyone slept cozier
for his precarious work.
Yet whatever of love he mixed with burden

I never knew as he heaved such weight
above three stories of wood and plaster and paint
where he had begotten three girls

who kept out of the way of his terse remarks,
harsh admonishings.
Dad. We have since moved so very far

from the circle of snowdrifts around the home
I never wanted to leave,
not knowing then, and you not knowing,
how thoroughly you were blocking out
so much more than the stark, stoic ravages
of bitter cold.
Winter 2022 65
How Does Love Enter the Body
by Janice Northerns
In all our years together, chicken soup

has never once been on the menu.
But the oncologist said nutrition,
said make it palatable. So I Google recipes
on your first day of chemo, as your Power Port—

so new the incision still puckers
under its Dermabond glaze—
waits like a docking station.
The nurse guides a needle into the port

and starts the flow, a killer cocktail
of FOLFOX 6, Oxaliplatin, and Avastin
streaming into the Vena Cava,
and from there, the headquarters,

your heart. Back home with a portable pump,
slow poison drips two days and nights. While you sleep,
I incant my own magic into a soup pot:
Ragged shreds of chicken torn

from the bone, ribbed celery, for the strength
of green sinews, carrots, unscraped,

clinging bits of good earth, plump egg noodles,
firm and chewy as love’s tongue. Thyme,

from the Greek Thymus, for courage,
and bay leaves—a laurel wreath of victory—
all steeped in a primordial brew.
I long to hijack the port, mainline soup

straight to the vein, but my cure must simmer
and seep before finding communion
in the vessels of your blood.
How does love enter the body?

In streams and rivulets
of drug and broth, a river mingling
with your ocean’s moon-guided tide,
each whooshing wave a mystic elixir

transmuting heart’s dark muscle, that thrumming
pump, into a gold perennial curled beneath
the cold, waiting for its cue to bloom.
Winter 2022 67
Henrietta
by Tina Barry
I tell Henrietta about my mother’s heartbeat
and how I heard it in her womb. I think I’m lying, but as I speak, I feel
it in my own chest, the bongBong of it, wavery through the saline sac.
My hand, a tiny shimmer of ghost beside my cheek. I hear my mother
first, then feel the doctor’s wand skidding through the puddle of gel on
my belly…no sound, no thud, the terror of that nothingness, until the
doctor twists the dial on the machine that brings my daughter’s life into
the room, her first insistent, pounding, I’m here.
Henrietta wants to know more about “the other place”
She means the apartment where we lived after my parents’ divorce.

I’ve described it—one of many brick boxes of four units, ours second
floor left. The rooms smelled thickly of cigarettes and cabbage, and we
turned sideways to pass each other in the hall. Outside, though, old
elms and maples made deep swags of shadow and pine trees scrubbed
the air. All night, gangs of feral cats stalked the grounds. Once, when
their shrieks woke my mother, she hurled a pot of freezing water out
the window. I hated her for that. So did a feline, one eye pused-shut,
that flung itself at her, nails first, as she left for work that morning.

I tell Henrietta why chinchilla is my favorite fur
The last dress my mother bought while we still had money, was gray
wool, tight to the knees, the hips circled in chinchilla. She wore it to
a wedding on a ship, a few fancy dinners, and when my father left, it
became her date dress. Later, it served as part of a suit for work: worn
under a jacket, as if she hid the animal beneath. When the seams
frayed, she cut the fur from its dying host, hung it in the back of the
closet. I’d sit in the airless dark, the pelt pressed to my face, inhaling its
memory of rodent musk, whiff of sea water, and a scent I thought of as
loneliness–the animal’s or Mother’s, I could never tell.
We talk about my mother’s life
I tell Henrietta how I walked in on an aide bathing my mother in the

nursing home. She was on her side, turned toward the window. The
aide had pulled a rolling table with soap and a big basin of water close
by, and washed my mother’s body, once wide as hawks wings, now a
deflated balloon. Lifting her arm, the aide dipped and wrung, moving
the warm cloth over her hands, her hips, between her legs. My mother’s
voice a near whisper; the aide’s, too. When my mother lived with
me, I brought soap and warm water to her bedside. “Don’t look!” she
screamed.
Winter 2022 69
Emotionally Fat
by Elizabeth A. Frank
I am tired of sucking in the gut

of my need and fear,
binding my heartaches close to my chest,
squeezing my sadness into skinny jeans.
I am emotionally fat.
I have rolls of grief around my stomach,
thighs thick with worry, a double chin of anxiety.
I will never be as thin as what I want them to see.
But I have rolls of joy

and arms plump with empathy.
My breasts are massive with love and desire.
I won’t shrink all this to fit their fashions.
If you want to be with me,

know this: there is nothing small
or pert about my feelings.
Be prepared for mass and bulk.
When I’m hurt, I lean hard,

but when I’m well, let me tell you:
my embrace is magnificent. I wrap your whole self
with my kaleidoscope heart.

Slick
by Marianne Worthington
after Kim Addonizio’s “Winter Solstice”
I can’t think about the black slick on the river or the deer
who doesn’t arise from the slick of its birth, the mother
licking her fawn’s wilting body. Does she hear the morning
waking around her, the red fox niggling near the den, the squeal
of the field mouse when clasped by the hawk? I can’t think
about another season of slicing cold as the days shorten and leaves
slick the ground while darkness seeps across the day like another
black slick back in the Gulf after yet another storm. Catastrophe
never disappears. Pearly mussels are gone from fresh waters

of Tennessee rivers, killed by men in suits who designed the dams
to power the paper mills and chemical plants whose filth slicked
more waters. I can’t think about the Tennessee pearls

gathered like shimmery tears on my mother’s necklace,
now boxed in black velvet, and which I will never wear.
Winter 2022 71
Things You Start
by Anne Panning
There are some things you start,

and then you finish,
like the day in May you sat overdue
on the couch eating an apple and felt a
ping inside like a plucked guitar
string. The next thing you knew,
you held a red, steaming infant in your
arms in a strange cold city known for its faded
lilacs and fiber optics and Erie Canal that
chugged right through it. You kept your eye on the canal
constantly for signs of your future. You were vigilant.
“Is it a girl?”” you asked your husband.
“Yes,” he said. “Are you sure?” you asked.
He checked. “I’m sure.”
There are some things you start,

and then you finish, like
the summer you were fourteen and
worked the sunflower fields in Minnesota
for $4.25 an hour. You rode in a pickup bed
with migrant workers and your brown lunch bag
full of Pop Tarts and potato chips and a thermos of red
Kool Aid your mom had plunked full of ice.

“Decapitate the females,” the crewman said.
He presented you with a curved blade on a long
stick. “Only the females.” He assigned each of you
a row and dropped you off at the end of them like
sacks of feed. The sunflowers were taller than you,
taller than your trailer house, taller than your town.
You took the females down by their green, hairy necks,
cleanly and without fanfare. Each broad sunny
face fell behind you with a thud,
and you never looked back.
Sonder by Jacqi Nix
Winter 2022 73
Papa’s coat, his moons
by Abby Basya Finkelstein
It is mine, now
your coat with the plaid collar stained.
When I put it on, you sit down
on a ledge between neurons
legs dangling off a box you moved for me three
apartments ago, shielded by kneepads that never
stopped your knees hurting
Aha – you burst out laughing
you keep on getting it, the punchline
to the problem, the joke
and oh in another room of my haunted sparks, your lips
tremble over god knows what conspiracy
god knows what wound
and elsewhere,
you float
in the warm shallows of a voltaic stream
of my calcium, my magnesium, inventing zippers
that will never get stuck.
You buried plastic ladles in the yard and could get

anything into the basement, the moon itself, if it might prove useful
and you could get nothing out.
Not the lightest cardboard box, not a single one.

You would build a contraption to turn the world inside out
for just about anyone who needed it and you
always asked for too much in return. More

than could ever be given – proof
certain the answer would be no
and I would have done anything
The moon in my head becomes full

as I walk the street, buried
in your coat below the full one
in the sky
mine, now
this minute. When this moonlight

renders visible the faces
of my multitudes
watching you from the rafters.
Winter 2022 75
As the Mist Lifts
by Jay Brecker
paint on bungalows after the rain
synesthesia in a minor key
foliage in sharp relief
wet macadam collects nests of needles
pinecones chewed to eggs
red mulch strangles the verge
soles of shoes gather the day’s dust
kites are shadows above the bridge
night and bats ascend
so too the throb of tree-cricket songs
frogs carol across the water
fireflies captured in a jar
loneliness illuminated
one child invents a lighthouse

Contributors’ Biographies
Lake Angela is a poet, translator, and dancer-choreographer who cre-

ates at the confluence of verbal language and movement. She holds a
PhD in the intersemiotic translation of Austrian Expressionist po-
etry into dance and has her MFA in poetry. She is a medieval mystic,
beguine, and nonhuman creature. Her full-length books of poetry,
Organblooms (2020) and Words for the Dead (2021), are available from
FutureCycle Press. Lake is poetry editor for the international literature
and arts journal Punt Volat and writes advocacy articles for the Swedish
publication Brainz Magazine. As director of the poetry-dance group
Companyia Lake Angela, she presents the value of schizophrenia spec-
trum creativity. You can visit her at www.lakeangeladance.com.
Nadia Arioli is the editor in chief of Thimble Literary Magazine.
Lisa Ashley, MDiv, is a Pushcart Prize nominee and descends from

survivors of the Armenian genocide. She has spent eight years compan-
ioning and providing safe space for incarcerated youth. Lisa navigates
her garden with physical limitations and unlimited imagination. Her
poems have appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly, Blue Heron Review,
The Healing Muse, Gyroscope, and Last Leaves Literary Review. She
writes in her log home among the firs on Bainbridge Island, WA, hav-
ing found her way there from rural New York by way of Montana and
Seattle.
Winter 2022 77
Tina Barry is the author of Beautiful Raft and Mall Flower. Her writing
can be found in The Best Small Fictions 2020 (spotlighted story) and
2016, The American Poetry Journal, Sky Island Journal, Lascaux Re-
view, the Nasty Women Poets anthology, Feckless Cunt anthology and
upcoming in Rattle. Tina has several Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net
nominations. She teaches at The Poetry Barn and Writers.com.
Eben Bein (he/they) is a high-school-biology-teacher-turned-climate-

justice-educator at the nonprofit Our Climate. He is a 2022 Fellow for
the “Writing By Writers Workshop,” winner of the 2022 Writers Rising
Up “Winter Variations” poetry contest, and has published poems in
Passenger’s Journal, Wild Roof Journal, and Meat For Tea. They are
currently completing their first collection “From the top of the sky”
which explores the weave of parent-child love and conflict. He cur-
rently lives on Pawtucket land (Cambridge, MA) with some ivy plants
that are not dead because his husband remembers to water them. FB/T/
IG @beinology
Originally from Westchester County, New York, Beth Boylan now lives
and teaches high school English near the ocean in New Jersey. She
holds an MA in Literature from Hunter College. Her poems appear
in a variety of journals, including Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Chrono-
gram, Whale Road Review, Peatsmoke, Two Hawks Quarterly, and the
anthology Pages Penned in Pandemic: A Collective. Her work has been
nominated for both a 2020 Pushcart Prize and 2021 Best of the Net,
and she can be found on Instagram at @bethiebookworm.
John Brantingham was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first
poet laureate. His work has been featured in hundreds of magazines.
He has nineteen books of poetry and fiction including his latest, Life:
Orange to Pear (Bamboo Dart Press). He lives in Jamestown, New York.
Jay Brecker works and writes in southern California. His poems are
forthcoming or have appeared in Rattle Poets Respond, Permafrost,
Lily Poetry Review, Ocean State Review, The Inflectionist Review,
South 85 Journal, I-70 Review, RHINO Poetry, and elsewhere. His
manuscript, A Ceiling is a Wall Seeking, was a semi-finalist for the 2020

Wheeler Prize for Poetry.
Tess Congo’s work has appeared in Publisher’s Weekly, PANK maga-

zine, Curlew Quarterly, Luna Luna Magazine, Bowery Gothic, and the
anthology Ripe (forthcoming). She’s been the recipient of the Freder-
ick Hyde Hibberd Scholarship, the Colie Hoffman Prize, and scholar-
ship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She earned her
MFA in poetry from Hunter College.
J.L. Conrad is the author of the full-length poetry collection A Cartog-

raphy of Birds (Louisiana State University Press), and the chapbooks
Recovery (winner of the 2022 Robert Phillips Chapbook Prize, forth-
coming from Texas Review Press) and NOT IF BUT WHEN (winner
of the third annual Dead Lake Chapbook Competition, Salt Hill). Her
poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pleiades, Jellyfish, Sugar
House Review, Salamander, Moon City Review, Beloit Poetry Journal,
and elsewhere. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
Savannah Cooper (she/her) is a leftist bisexual agnostic and a slow-

ripening disappointment to her Baptist parents. You can almost always
find her at home, reading a novel or cuddling with her dogs and
cat. A Pushcart Prize nominated poet, her work has been previously
published in Parentheses Journal, Midwestern Gothic, Mud Season
Review, and multiple other publications.
Will Cordeiro has work published in AGNI, Bennington Review,

Copper Nickel, The Threepenny Review, THRUSH, and elsewhere.
Will won the 2019 Able Muse Book Award for Trap Street. Will is also
co-author of Experimental Writing: A Writers’ Guide and Anthology,
forthcoming from Bloomsbury. Will co-edits Eggtooth Editions and
teaches in the Honors College at Northern Arizona University.
Winter 2022 79
Andrea Camille D’Souza is a graduate of Princeton University where
she studied Operations Research and Poetry. Her poems have been
published in Tilted House, Agapanthus Collective, Olney Magazine,
and elsewhere. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can visit
her on Twitter at @animalcamille.
Eliza Dunn is a sophomore at Dartmouth College, where she is

majoring in English and Creative Writing. She has been honored by
the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and her work has been
published in Magus Mabus magazine and The Stonefence Review. Last
spring, she received the Academy of American Poets Prize.
Alicia Elkort (she/her) has been nominated thrice for the Pushcart,
twice for Best of the Net and once for the Orisons Anthology. Her first
book of poetry, A Map of Every Undoing, was published in 2022 by
Stillhouse Press with George Mason University, and she has been pub-
lished in numerous journals and anthologies. She reads for Tinderbox
Poetry Journal and works as a Life Coach and as an editor with Shiver-
song LLC. Alicia lives in Santa Fe, NM. For more info or to watch her
two video poems: http://aliciaelkort.mystrikingly.com/
Ann Fisher-Wirth’s seventh book of poems is Paradise Is Jagged (Ter-

rapin Books, 2023). Her sixth is The Bones of Winter Birds (Terrapin
Books, 2019); her fifth, a poetry/photography collaboration with
Maude Schuyler Clay, is Mississippi (Wings Press, 2018). With Laura-
Gray Street, Ann coedited The Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity Uni-
versity Press, 2013; third printing 2020). A senior fellow of the Black
Earth Institute, she has had Fulbrights to Switzerland and Sweden, and
residencies at Storyknife, Djerassi, Hedgebrook, the Mesa Refuge, and
Camac/France, and was 2017 Poet in Residence at Randolph College.
Her poems and essays appear widely and have received numerous
awards, including a 2022-2023 Mississippi Arts Commission poetry
fellowship. She recently retired from the University of Mississippi.
Elizabeth A. Frank is a poet and artist who lives with her husband
and two daughters in the Boston area. She is drawn to the interplay
of written and visual arts, and feels most whole when creating or
walking in the woods. Her poems have appeared in Snapdragon: A
Journal of Art & Healing and This Present Former Glory: An Anthol-
ogy of Honest Spiritual Literature. She can be found on Instagram @

glint_into_fire.
Cameron Gearen‘s full-length poetry collection, Some Perfect Year,

came out from Shearsman Press in 2016. Her essays and poems have
appeared in The Washington Post, Hippocampus, Dame Magazine,
Pithead Chapel, Autofocus, The Antioch Review, Northwest Review,
Green Mountains Review, Fence, River Styx, and many other journals.
She has benefited from a Barbara Deming Money for Women grant.
Former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky selected her chapbook for
publication. She was the Hemingway Writer-in-Residence from 2017-
2019. She lives in River Forest, Illinois.
Charlie Glick is a writer and musician living in Port Townsend, WA.

Born in Delaware, he spent his 20s touring the US and Canada with
his band Sure Sure. Lately, he works on a farm and talks about the
weather. His non-fiction has appeared in Wilderness House Literary
Review.
A.M. Gwynn’s most recent work appears in Popshot Quarterly. Her

work has also appeared in War, Literature & The Arts, Grey Sparrow
Journal, The Thieving Magpie, Consequence Magazine, Five on The
Fifth, and other literary venues.
Pat Hanahoe-Dosch’s poems have been published in The Paterson Lit-

erary Review, Rattle, The Atticus Review, Panoplyzine, Confrontation,
Rust + Moth, American Literary Review, Apple Valley Review, The
Red River Review, San Pedro River Review, Apt, among many others.
Her books of poems, The Wrack Line, and Fleeing Back, can be found
on Amazon.com or the FutureCycle Press website. Her short stories
have been published in The Peacock Journal, In Posse Review, Sisy-
phus, Manzano Mountain Review, and the Schuylkill Valley Journal,
among others. Check out her website at https://pahanaho.wixsite.com/
pathanahoedosch and Twitter @PHanahoeDosch
Cordelia Hanemann, writer and artist, currently co-hosts Summer

Poets, a poetry critique group in Raleigh, NC. She has published in
Atlanta Review, Southwestern Review, and California Review; in
numerous anthologies including best-selling Poems for the Ukraine
and her chapbook. Her poems have been performed by the Strand
Winter 2022 81
Project, featured in select journals, won awards and been nominated
for Pushcarts. She is now working on a novel.
Max Heinegg is a high school English teacher in Medford, MA. His

first book, Good Harbor, won the inaugural Paul Nemser Prize from
Lily Poetry Review. His poems have appeared in 32 Poems, Thrush,
Nimrod, Borderlands, and Kestrel, among others. Find him on the
web at www.maxheinegg.com
Elizabeth Hill was a finalist in the 2022 Rattle Poetry Contest. Her
poetry has been/is soon to be published in 34 th Parallel Magazine,
Blue Lake Review, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, and I-70 Review, among
other journals. Hill is a retired Administrative Law Judge who decided
suits between learning disabled children and their school systems. Hill
lives in Harlem, NYC with her husband and two irascible cats.
Jessica Hills is an artist based in Carrollton, Texas. Her vibrantly dark

work contemplates mortality, often integrating the human body and
plant life. Originally from Abilene, Texas, she attended the University
of Dallas where she received a BA in Painting and a concentration in
Art History. You can find her art at jhillsart.com.
Holly Hinson is a writer and communications professional from

Louisville, KY. Her poetry has been published in Louisville’s Literary
Leo and in the literary anthology Calliope, and her journalism in the
Louisville Courier-Journal, Business First, New Albany Tribune and
Jewish Community Newspaper. She received an honorable mention
for her essay Red Balloon in the 2016 Big Brick Review Essay Contest.
Her website and blog are available at hollyhinson.com.
Alison Hurwitz’s recent publications include Global Poemic, Words

and Whispers Journal, Tiferet Journal, Writing in a Woman’s Voice,
A Book of Matches and Anti-Heroin Chic. Her work is forthcoming
from Rust and Moth, The Shore, and Amethyst Review. Alison lives
in North Carolina with her husband, sons and rescue dog. She is the
host of a free monthly poetry reading, Well-Versed Words. See more at
alisonhurwitz.com

Elizabeth Kerlikowske is the author of 8 chapbooks and the larger
book, “Art Speaks”, with painter Mary Hatch. Her latest chapbook is
The Vaudeville Horse. She is past president of Kalamazoo’s Friends
of Poetry and The Poetry Society of Michigan. She was awarded the
Community Medal for the Arts in 2017. She loves the deer and hates
the deer that frequent her Kalamazoo backyard.
Hilary King’s poems have appeared in Salamander, TAB, DMQ

Review, Fourth River, SWIMM, and other publications. Originally
from the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, she now lives in Northern
California with her family, a large dog, and a cat who withstand it all.
Julia Caroline Knowlton PhD MFA is a poet and Professor of French at

Agnes Scott College in Atlanta. As a young poet, she won an Academy
of American Poets Prize. In 2018 she was named a Georgia Author of
the Year. The author of five books, her poems have been published in
journals such as ONE ART, Trouvaille Review and Roanoke Review. In
2022, the GA Poet Laureate selected one of her poems for inclusion in
the GA Poetry in the Parks project.
Peter Leight has previously published poems in Paris Review, AGNI,

FIELD, Beloit Poetry Review, Raritan, Matter, and other magazines.
Jenn Martin is an artist from New York and is currently completing

her senior year of High School. She is an International Baccalaureate
student, with a love for learning English literature and Theatre. Jenn is
involved in multidimensional forms of self-expression, embracing her
cultural roots through performing arts, visual arts, and poetry.
Nate Maxson is a writer and performance artist living in Albuquerque,

New Mexico. He is the author of several collections of poetry.
Judith Mikesch McKenzie has traveled much of the world, but is

always drawn to the Rocky Mountains as one place that feeds her soul.
She loves change – new places, new people, new challenges, but writ-
ing is her home. Her poems have been published in Wild Roof Journal,
Halcyone Literary Review, Plainsongs Magazine, Elevation Review,
Scribblerus, Cathexis Northwest Press, Meat for Tea Valley Review,
and several others. She is a wee bit of an Irish curmudgeon, but her
friends seem to like that about her.
Winter 2022 83
Katie McKy writes profiles for business magazines, about gardening,
family, and fashion for women’s magazines, and travel stories for vari-
ous other magazines, but sometimes she finds time to tell the stories
she wants to tell, like “Carpe Folio.”
Nolan Meditz currently lives in Weatherford, OK, where he teaches

writing at Southwestern Oklahoma State University. His poems have
appeared in Plainsongs, In Parentheses, Red Earth Review, and else-
where. He holds an MFA from Hofstra University and a Ph.D. from
the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He is the current co-editor of
Westview and the poetry editor of The Mythic Circle
Louisa Muniz lives in Sayreville, N.J. She holds a Master’s in Curricu-

lum and Instruction from Kean University. Her work has appeared
in Tinderbox Journal, Palette Poetry, SWWIM, Menacing Hedge,
Poetry Quarterly, PANK Magazine, Jabberwock Review and elsewhere.
She won the Sheila-Na-Gig 2019 Spring Contest for her poem Stone
Turned Sand. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a
Pushcart Prize. Her debut chapbook, After Heavy Rains was released
in December, 2020.
Janice Northerns is the author of Some Electric Hum, (Lamar Univer-

sity Literary Press, 2020), winner of the Byron Caldwell Smith Book
Award from the University of Kansas, the Nelson Poetry Book Award,
and a WILLA Literary Award Finalist in Poetry. The author grew up
on a farm in Texas and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from
Texas Tech University, where she received the Robert S. Newton Cre-
ative Writing Award. Other honors include a Brush Creek Foundation
writing residency, a Tennessee Williams Scholarship to the Sewanee
Writers’ Conference, and numerous awards for individual poems. She
lives in Kansas.
Anne Panning is the author the memoir Dragonfly Notes: On Dis-

tance and Loss, as well as two short story collections and the novel
Butter. She has won The Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fic-
tion which was selected as a New York Times Editors’ Choice . She’s
currently working on her second memoir about her late father, a
barber and addict. She has published in places such as Brevity (5x),
The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, River Teeth,
etc. She teaches creative writing at SUNY-Brockport. Her website is

www.annepanning.com.
Kimberly Ann Priest is the author of Slaughter the One Bird, final-
ist in the American Best Book Awards, and chapbooks The Optimist
Shelters in Place, Parrot Flower, and Still Life. She is an associate po-
etry editor for Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry and
assistant professor at Michigan State University.
Cheryl A. Rice’s poems have appeared in Home Planet News, Misfit

Magazine, and Trailer Park Quarterly, among others. Recent books in-
clude Love’s Compass (Kung Fu Treachery Press), and Until the Words
Came (Post Traumatic Press), coauthored with Guy Reed. Her blog is
at: http://flyingmonkeyprods.blogspot.com/. Rice lives in New York’s
Hudson Valley.
Sara Ryan is the author of I Thought There Would Be More Wolves

(University of Alaska Press), as well as the chapbooks Never Leave the
Foot of an Animal Unskinned (Porkbelly Press) and Excellent Evi-
dence of Human Activity (The Cupboard Pamphlet). In 2018, she won
Grist’s Pro Forma Contest and Cutbank’s Big Sky, Small Prose Con-
test. Her work has been published in or is forthcoming from Brevity,
Kenyon Review, Diode, EcoTheo, and others. She is a PhD candidate at
Texas Tech University.
Staci-lee Sherwood is a lifelong preservationist, environmentalis, and

animal advocate. Writer, blogger, photography buff ,and poet. Her
travels and passion to make the world a better place inspires her writ-
ing. She’s also an avid hiker who calls the east coast home with her
rescue kitties.
Bunkong Tuon is a Cambodian-American writer and critic. He is

the author of Gruel, And So I Was Blessed (both published by NYQ
Books), The Doctor Will Fix It (Shabda Press), and Dead Tongue (Yes
Poetry). His prose and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in
New York Quarterly, Copper Nickel, The Lowell Review, Massachu-
setts Review, The American Journal of Poetry, carte blanche, Diode
Poetry Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Consequence, among others.
He teaches at Union College, in Schenectady, NY.
Born in Newark, NJ, Patrice M. Wilson has lived, studied and in NC,
Winter 2022 85
CT, MD, DC, VA and HI, where she now resides in Mililani on
Oahu. She has had three chapbooks with Finishing Line Press, and
one full-length book, Hues of Darkness, Hues of Light, with eLectio
Publishing. Her poetry has been published in several journals, and
has received recognition in several contests. She also enjoys mu-
sic of all kinds, crocheting, and making jewelry and greeting cards.
pmwilsonpoet.com
Marianne Worthington edits Still: The Journal, an online literary mag-

azine she co-founded in 2009. Her work appears in Oxford American,
Sweet: A Literary Confection, CALYX, and Chapter 16 among other
places. She co-edited Piano in a Sycamore: Writing Lessons from the
Appalachian Writers’ Workshop and is author of a poetry chapbook.
Her poetry collection is The Girl Singer (University Press of Kentucky,
2021), winner of the Weatherford Award for Poetry. She grew up in
Knoxville, Tennessee, and lives in southeast Kentucky.
Michelle A. Wren has called 7 states and 8 cities home. She’s just pur-
chased her first home, so maybe this is it for a while. She is a fan of a
cold one, coffee rings on favorite books, her new wings, and screaming
down the mean city streets on her bicycle, Ghita. Her favorite color
is yellow; she encourages bravery and authenticity, and stands by all
things #MCID
And a special congrats to artist Jacquelyn Nix! Jacquelyn is the broad-

side artist for Vol 5! Once a year, we have an artist collaborate with a
Thimble Poet. You can see the art in this issue, but to get the broadside
with Oisin Breen’s poem “To Linger Here in the Incomplete” (4.4),
you have to be a Patreon $10/month supporter. Check out our Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/thimblelitmag. Jacquelyn Nix is a Univer-
sity of Dallas alumni, a wife and mother of four, and an artist living in
South Texas. Her primary medium has historically been charcoal and
pencil sketch, which flourished during a semester in Rome as a way to
memorialize the experience. She recently taught herself and fell in love
with Watercolor as a new outlet of artistic expression. About paint-
ing she says, “Watercoloring reveals boundaries. The invisible is made
visible, often by what is left undone for a time. Inside of that time,
the painting is taking shape as an artifact of a dream that will become
tangible.”

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Thimble Literary Magazine

Volume 5 . Number 3 . Winter 2022

Justice Ferguson Colleen Ahern

Cover art: Fall by Jessica Hills.

It’s so nice having four, distinct seasons.

I love not being in 90-degree weather in the fall.

We have explored notions about thimbles as small shelters, but it occurs

In my first letter from the editor, I wrote: “It’s dangerous to go alone.

With Me by Jessica Hills

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a distant tone rings through the misty valley

grass wrinkled by the water buffalo

in pink-gold light a spider levitates

A friend of mine told me a story

I wonder what I’d do if someone disemboweled me.

But come to think of it,

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We’ll throw a party before the end.

Its handle was polished antler,

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It’s archaeology, what you build that survives

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Similarly, the anecdotal history would have us believe that, before

The world is ringed with metal and sound

The woman in a shapeless, pink dress

Her hair is bound into a roll

Some are too ripe. Some are too green.

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Leaves tremble among the shrieking of cicadas.

Ella by Jessica Hills

There is a company in New York City

Poor old couch. Smushed against

Optimism can’t always get you

The company in New York City strips

just the frame remains, as easy

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If it is beautiful, it is because it’s transforming,

Because what I bring to the table is rich.

I guess I wanted it to be like the time I drove myself to Chicago with

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I tested my mettle and liked its grit.

Sometimes when I drive past my lawyer’s office, my body remembers

Still, I rallied. I put on my favorite dress, (braless, dear shaman), white

Each time a server or bartender skirted my table, they would one by

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I will not be tame. It is not enough.

I want to be startled by the beauty of it all. I refuse to be compliant

has gutted the house to the south. The lot

Eddie says, shows me graffiti arcing the dumpster’s

about my neighbor Eddie. Today I found papers

printed. Visit Summary of the worst day

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with chains, a stereotype of himself. Everyone

is alive and clean. She flips her FaceTime camera

the mountain of gravel as seen from my kitchen

to come with me on discharge. It would be two

that searing July dawn, so I’m telling you

No stained glass, just threadbare carpet

Grape juice and chalky pale crackers—

Sunday school rooms with peeling

Sometimes I felt the verses in my soul,

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and lines from a script, memorized,