Franchise

It’s 1914.
My grandmother is born
into an America
without universal suffrage.

It’s 1848.
Seneca Falls is abuzz with ideas.
There are grievances to declare,
signatures to collect.

It’s 2004.
This is my first time voting.
I have never lived in a world
where such a thing was impossible.

It’s 1920.
Finally, an amendment.
White women may vote.
Others—we’ll see.

It’s 1896.
Black women gather to no avail.
They will face poll taxes,
literacy tests. Violence.

It’s 2025.
We have twice failed
to elect a woman president.
Disenfranchisement is rampant.

It’s 1913.
Women march in Washington, D.C.
Their voices loud, hearty:
we believe we will vote someday.

Caitlin Johnson holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Lesley University. Their work has appeared in Dunes Review, The Magnolia Review, Pembroke Magazine, and Vagina: The Zine, among other outlets. Most recently, their poetry has been published as HELL, a chapbook from Luchador Press.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many mounds of snow.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Fixator Press, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.

Fear Nothing

Fear nothing.
Mad birds speak your language.
Paradise is lost.
It has taken flight on tattered wings.
See nothing.
Plucked eyes in the mouths of mad birds.
Fear nothing.
Darkness is the home you live in.

Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal was born in Mexico, lives in California, and works in Los Angeles. 
His poetry has appeared in Blue Collar Review, Fixator Press, Impspired, Mad Swirl, The Rye Whiskey Review,Unlikely Stories, and Yellow Mama Magazine. His most recent poems have appeared in Four Feathers Press.

fluvial

from dry soil
of the eye’s corner

wet warmth
surfacing a disguise of silence

& filling an invisible phial

when:

laughter of flowers
& phosphorus stars
are a threshold

minerals crawling to surface horizon
crashing against glass oxygen

their nutrients contained
flowing between her ten naked toes

draining into this wooden floor

to become long ago

Jonathan Hayes lives in Oakland, California with his wife and their cat.

A Loose Pendulum

a fear of flying
through windows
the human dream
pushing & yelling
through bloody feathers
& groggy slow birds
at the foot
of the bed
dreaming
one in a million
one in a million
in hundreds of ghosts
i am left with heaven
i am my hands
in the winged mountains
half fire
half draft dodger
i can translate
the dream
the dark part
of the leaf
the port authority is gone
my blue jacket resting
the poor are sound asleep
against each other.

John Dorsey is the former Poet Laureate of Belle, MO. He is the author of several collections of
poetry, including Which Way to the River: Selected Poems: 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020),
Sundown at the Redneck Carnival, (Spartan Press, 2022, Pocatello Wildflower, (Crisis
Chronicles Press, 2023) and Dead Photographs, (Stubborn Mule Press, 2024). He may be
reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

Stephen Jarrell Williams is always ready to write at any moment, always ready to let the words speak as they will.

OLD ROCKS

my vanity
remembers me,
sitting with introspection
on old rocks
that blocked
the sea-
choking insurrection.
i had bought claret wine,
but had to save it, for another time
that never came to me-
after nerves and mischief,
conspired with those divine
to hide the corkscrew
in a drawer’s cemetery.
at the bottom of belief,
our compound, compromised and withdrew
back into what it knew-
with old rocks,
and the tick-tock sound
of two invisible clocks,
sitting on the ground,
together,
but apart-
forever
in the same, silent, wishsongs heart.

Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, 
England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, and nominated for both the Pushcart Prize x4 and Best of the Net x3, his five published books of poetry  https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.

A Fundamental Pause

Trenches, teeth, and jagged witch’s hats march
In a red neon ribbon across the EKG screen.
Puffs of air ruffle the mustache
Grey lips open past a silent scream

I silence the beeping.
My thumb rests on the plunger’s plastic ridges.
I raise my eyebrows; he nods.

I press the plunger to the hilt,
Unscrew the empty, screw in the flush, press again.
Medicine courses from vein to liver to heart.

On screen
Trenches fill, teeth grind flat
Line from left to right

This is the moment God shows up

Then I let the monitor sound again

Krista Puttler has called many places home including the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii, Japan, and a stateroom on an aircraft carrier. Her writing has appeared in Under the Gum Tree, Cagibi, and Fixator Press, among others. She lives outside Naples, Italy with her husband and three daughters. More at kristaputtler.com

Lost

Words do not grow anymore
like cherry blossoms in spring.
They pour like tropical rain
on dense foliage and weep.

Wet vapours fog the forest.
The light has lost its sheen.
The wait for the mists to lift is
endless. Saudade serenades.

Songs disappear before
they can be heard. Antonyms
of siren songs lead words astray.
Nothing forms. No magic appears.

I wait endlessly for sunrises
that start at midday.

Mitali Chakravarty lives in a tropical island with her family. She has three books of poems and is widely published online and in anthologies. Her poems can be found in Daily Star (Bangladesh), Zest of Lemon (Volumes 3 & 4), Literary Yard, Medusa’s Kitchen, Lothlorien Journal among other places

frayed reins

The lengths of crossing loops are
a limiting factor that is becoming
more frequent & severe now that
all orders are processed in Denmark.
Network vulnerabilities arise. One
only has to read this year’s cyber
security report to see how easily
they can be exploited by a malicious

actor to compromise security. Else-
where the Sixers are building to-
wards their best as the finals race
heats up; but it seems that the 76ers’
fatal flaw, a brittle health, will again
threaten their championship chances.

Mark Young’s recently published books include Balance, from Neo-Mimeo Editions, Nualláin
House, Monte Rio, California & From the Cave’s jukebox, from Sandy Press, Santa Barbara,
California.