Bio: L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in hundreds of journals (Rattle, Versal, The Reader, Worcester Review, Riverbed Review, others), including a recent nomination for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and he is the author of three full collections and ten chapbooks of poetry, including his latest collection, The Width of Here (Silver Bow, 2021).  He is a reformed lawyer, he writes and plays music, and he teaches literature. Abel resides in rural Georgia. 

 

Record of a Friend’s Voice 

            by   Heather Sager

 

On the highway, dusk driving,

or in a parking lot, ambling under

volcano-red clouds,

a male baritone brushes my ears

from a great distance…

 

Do you often recall

that person who haunts you— 

the glow of their eyes

coming at you

as if from the shadows,

or a certain word calls back

the lucidity of their personality.

 

What if someone could put on

a friend’s voice like a record

spin it even when the friend

is not there

hear their kindness, searching

like a Blue Note jazz LP.

 

Don’t forget how

a persistent mind

ripples, warm, 

unfurling in space,

a room with an ochre glow.

 

Bio: Heather Sager lives in Illinois. Her recent poetry appears in StepAway Magazine, Litbop, Magma,morphrog,

Creative Flight, Remington Review, The Rye Whiskey Review, ActiveMuse(Pushcart nomination), and more journals.

Her poetry also appears in anthologies, most recently Our Changing Earth Vol.1 from THE POET. Heather also writes fiction.

 

 

 

CHOCOLATE VOLCANO 

       by Michael Lewis-Beck

 

The candy maker in the Happy Moon 

molds molten chocolate with her warmth 

laden hands lifting pats like mud pies 

dark as dirt but not dirt and not milk 

chocolate either. Dark and 

 

heavy but lush and giving like lava 

in a lava lamp, though not afloat 

in a viscous syrup, 

instead being rolled by round fingers 

into balls the size of golf balls, 

 

smooth, though. Smooth as silk 

the glistening chocolate appears 

in its slow swirl. 

How not like Silly Putty. 

How like fingerpaints in grade school, 

 

the brown paint, rubbed round and round 

on freezer paper by my small hand 

not wanting to stop and wanting to  

taste it but knowing better than that. 

No finger licks! Roiled Beulah Goslee, 

 

my second grade teacher, not married, 

like Miss Hearn, my first grade teacher 

who also lived with a family while 

Beulah lived in a boarding house. 

In third grade I got caught passing a note.

 

Bio: Michael Lewis-Beck writes from Iowa City. He has pieces in American Journal of Poetry, Apalachee Review, Big Windows Review, Cortland Review, Chariton Review, Eastern Iowa Review, Guesthouse, Heavy Feather Review, Pennine Platform, Pilgrimage, Southword and Wapsipinicon Almanac. He has a book of poems, Rural Routes, with Alexandria Quarterly Press.

 

Conference

       by Steven Deutsch

They always

choose a resort

off season—

 

a ski chalet 

in August

or a pebbly beach

 

swept bare 

by the winds 

of February

 

for the robed

community

to gather—

 

students trailing

profs like goslings

for three days

 

of talk

and talk, and talk.

By the second

 

day we’ve all

run out of oxygen

and treat

 

our bottomless

headaches

with endless cups

 

of burnt coffee,

donuts,

and acetaminophen.

 

But, I like nothing more

than to walk

the beach in winter.

 

Picking my way

against a headwind

trying to blow me away.

 

My students present

in an hour

and are worried

 

I’ve forgotten.

But the surf

pounds

 

the beach

like a kettle drum

and the cold,

 

cold spray

is a work

of art.

 

Bio: Steve Deutsch is poetry editor of Centered Magazine and is poet in residence at the Bellefonte Art Museum. Steve was nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. His Chapbook, Perhaps You Can, was published in 2019 by Kelsay Press. His full length books,  Persistence of Memory and Going, Going, Gone, were published by Kelsay. Slipping Away will be published this spring. Brooklyn was awarded the Sinclair Poetry Prize from Evening Street Press and will also be published this spring.