Missing Father This morning being too wintryfor a walk, I think of my father,trudging to the bus stop at dawn in allweathers, to juggle numbers on paperacross the George Washington Bridge. My twin sister and Iwould toddle to the front door,our pajamas hanging on uslike wilted petunias, snortingback our tears, wailing,Where’s Daddy?

Elsa Peretti Cuff This isn’t a gift but a bribe, An inducement to—please— Keep out of my head (At least while I sleep) So instead of contriving to trick My hippocampus Into finding your lips In my slack cotton sheets I can just close my eyes, Impervious to Time’s dispassionate tick Till I next touch your cheek. Jason Schwartz is a crypto tax lawyer. His work has appeared in Toasted Cheese. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife and daughter.

Be Done I have never learned to knit, so trying to get the stitches of my will and Thy will all lined up in neat rows to form my life jacket has been my greatest blundering making it apparent for anyone who looks at me to see I have no opening to let out the fullness of my second arm, so I just look idle…

stripped of our wholeness, we feel no grief You brought yourself in handfulsto me. Your pieces splayed across our bedlike scraps of cloth. I marveled at the aggregatescattered there, all of you offered upin soft, folded stars. I gathered you up; love, gathered with fistscallused and weary with wanting. I held you,all of you flat against me, stitched you there,

Wintergone Wind & spitting rain washed away the last of this week’s winter. I am twisted up into white sheets feeling emptied under drifts, homeless, discarded face down, curled up in an oak’s last snow. There’s shame having clean, full, warm, safe, but no voice speaking. Even an empty pitcher holds utility, a promise to carry & serve & give.

The Etymology of Loneliness Snow is falling sideways. Given the title, one might assume I’m in crisis, identifying with the weather as a cry for help. That I have a disorder of loneliness and I’m spiraling downward like the snow. But the snow is gorgeous, born of unhuman hands, its sudden arrival a white mirage. Now a single black fly on the liminal windowpane.

Christmas Tree Scarring the neighbors’ son wanted to hang himself but couldn’t no one taught him how so only a bulbless lamp swings every evening from the ceiling death’s afraid to enter the apartment christmas tree scars sprouting in shadow Mykyta Ryzhykh has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and published widely, including in journals such as The Tiger Moth Review, Monterey Poetry Review, and The Moth.

Dead Letter So, that’s done, dusted for another year. Another snowless, so-called holy day devoid of joy, festivity, or light, packed away, without ceremony. Like yours, my high-arched foot arthritic, cramps, and I resent the stamps I can’t afford, bemoan the hats I’ve lost, file photos old, fold messages in pie crusts, unforward. Address unknown. No suitcase filled with dead…

Our Christmas Turkey was a nine-pounderfrom Grandad Mick in Longford,whose right leg was severedin a motorcycle crash. Plucked from the backof the green post van,its box wrapped in a skinof brown paper tied with string—his yearly gift heralded Christmas. Propped up by prosthesis,he leaned on his cane and hobbledall the way to the post office…

This is the place We stopped, somewhere in time, looked around, the country bizarre, the landscape mutating, the muted people making signs in our direction. Night came and even the gestures receded, the voices hid behind doors; our senses, we saved for our own use, huddled together as often as we breathed. Life seemed fixed by then – it would…

Writers need journals to accept their work to generate momentum. Here are eight steps to take when submitting your writing for publication. 1: Research opportunities Start by researching which publ…

Nothing Compares to a Real Holiday (After TUI’s ‘Nothing compares to a real holiday,’ 2020) The snow has lain three days the street is frozen roofs luminous in a pre-dawn light sky already faded from deep, star-sprinkled black to this stern uncompromising blue I have a poem to write something about overheard conversations or advertising slogans But my imagination is no match…

Sonnet for Jack Spicer Your head looks like a half-eaten bowl Of chili, warm and soothing to eat. How it must feel to be picked apart By a life that left you for dead. Your nudity may be a hymn Should the rhinestones and geese Get their act together. Dead or not There’s little left. Our kitchen is a carnival…

The Moon Before Yule I rise, bringing the gift of natural light to the city. High above the chimney pots, department stores and roads, I turn my gaze upon them. I observe their preparations, despair that they name this ritual harm ‘festivities.’ My eyes smart from the twinkling of a billion light bulbs, big and small, that adorn buildings, facsimiles of trees, and something they call Christmas jumpers.

Silence Evening sun folds shadows into frozen ground. Expressionless crowds remind me of my father, his silvered hair always ending in silence. There are words I remember with blood and water inside. In the silence under clouds there is winter and promised winds blowing through forests. Evening answers with rain or darkness. His eye half-opened, a half-moon of lingering sounds that look away…

Relics Box The day after my Grandma Sandra died in December 1985, I saw INXS at the Agora Ballroom with a few friends. (I don’t remember their names.) Mom told me to go & enjoy myself. Thank God I already put the Christmas tree up—this is the last one I will ever trim. I ignored this declaration because this was always her favorite holiday.

I SWEAR, I WASN’T THAT SAD The bee sting you got running barefoot one summer through a meadow so green it hummed, so wide it must have thought it was forever. That sting now rings the church bells, plays the organ softly before Sunday sermon. It trims the shrubs out front, paints the fence white as a hymn, rinses the windows…

responsible clinician i never say hello to anyone i have no time for politetudes as far as i can see that's all nonsense i just ignore patients who greet me on the wards if the nurses or godforbid someone’s lawyer emails me, i have a stock response it says, please do not email me at this address i manage and treat, amongst other people, psychopaths.

a falling leaf a leaf fallsin gold, dancesto the earth,crisp, clasps nothing.breeze tender,barbets singgoodbye. grateful to the lightwhich kept her alivethat she may nurture;crush her waythrough the mundane.to give, what a wayto die.   Kamakshi Lekshmanan holds an MA in Wild Writing from the University of Essex. Her memories became…

At the Party You come up to me and speak, lean in close, dark curls and eyes like theirs, the two big girls who stopped me, not to play. My little arms and legs a jumble. Drowning without the water. Some memories leave scars so pale and thin they’re almost invisible. Like little crescent moons. Was it fingers? Was it…

The Cartography of Leaving You learned to bleed in perfect strokes at fourteen—a spider-lily bloomed in the margins, sharpening her red pen."Too much heart," she warned, "ruins the form."(You folded your pulse into origami birds,let them nest in the hollow of your ribs.) Then, a storm in a schoolgirl’s skin—she laughed like wind chimes in monsoon rain,

Molly In defence of Molly Malone Leave Molly alone. What's she ever done to you? What about those songs she sings for you? From the gentlest rippling finger-taps to those glories when there seems to be just one thunderous heartbeat that should be terrifying. And you're not sure why, maybe that's your problem, you're not sure why or how or what…

PLENTY sometimes i gaze out west at the Rockiesi imagine myself going up in the mountainslearning to foragegoing out and finding flowers to brew into meadmushrooms jutting from bark and peeking from under wet leavesthere would be alliums growing just out of sight from the roadssomewhere there would be an abandoned temple finding new life…