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Wisp

Bird

 

such a tight fist of letters

needing just a wisp of breath

to be heard

 

and when you see one,

at first

a brief wash of color,

music and motion

and then

in full focus

a wren

doing a fitful dance

on a porch railing

and singing

throat tilted up,

beak wide

you welcome

the thrust of energy

and the flow of liquid tones

yet also ponder

how ill-prepared

eyes, ears, mind and heart are

for the task

of taking it all in

 

but the bird

draws you back

and asks

that you unclench your mind

and relish,

while you can,

this puff of air,

this sketch

so deftly etched

and then,

just as swiftly,

swept away

Charlie McCurdy has been writing poetry for about 40 years. After graduating from Oberlin College with a double degree in English and Music, he taught high school English for about 10 years, practiced journalism for about 15 years as a music critic, reporter and editor for newspapers and magazines including the Philadelphia Inquirer and Chamber Music magazine, and worked in corporate communications for Merck & Co., Inc., Bristol Myers Squibb, Daiichi Sankyo, Inc., and Labcorp. He has lived in and near Philadelphia for 37 years with his wife, two daughters, one granddaughter and two dogs.

 

Schuylkill River Trail

To read “Schuylkill River Trail,” click HERE.

Anna Drasko is a writer from Pennsylvania. Their work appears or is forthcoming in Thimble Literary Magazine, San Pedro River Review, and elsewhere. They hold degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State. Find them on Instagram @annadrasko.

 

THE DOX THRASH MURAL*

To read “The Dox Thrash Mural,” click HERE.

Yvonne: Philadelphia born, raised, retired. First poetry editor at Ms. Some awards: NEA (poetry/1974/1984), Pushcart Prize (vol. 6), BRIO (1991), Leeway (fiction/2003). Recent print: A Black Philadelphia Reader (Penn State, 2024), The Hopkins Review (Summer 2023), POETRY (July/August 2022), Stronger Than Fear (CaveMoon, 2022). Website: www.iwilla.com

 

Making Humes Valley

After Harry Humes (1935-2025)

 

Write its history in teeth.

Make it part fox and songbird

settled on a sumac branch,

 

egg-stealing snout and a flash

of tail collaring the scree.

Shovel out the anthracite

 

and run hands on calloused cliffs,

spires of millet. Listen for

rock clicks. And don’t be afraid

 

to eat a little hill dirt.

Make it hard as tortoise shell

with the sure foot of a snake,

 

sacs of venom that vanish

into summer grass. Let it

open like an exit wound,

 

but give it the pleasing shape

of a peace sign. Fill its mouth

with a water break. Call it

 

Kashmir or Danube or Death

but don’t split the map in two.

Carve out its bottom for kings.

 

Make its memory hollow

like a broken milkweed pod

or the fleshy pink space that

 

hides within lungs. Then, dare it

to breathe, stand firm against wind,

all of the planet’s motion.

Robert Fillman is the author of The Melting Point (Broadstone, 2025), House Bird (Terrapin, 2022), and the chapbook November Weather Spell (Main Street Rag, 2019). Individual poems have appeared in  Poetry East, Salamander, Spoon River Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. He is an assistant professor at Kutztown University in eastern Pennsylvania and the poetry editor at Pennsylvania English.

 

God Save the Human Cannonball

To read “God Save the Human Cannonball,” click HERE.

Marko Capoferri is a poet, musician, occasional journalist, and former conservation worker based in Missoula, Montana. He was born in Camden, NJ, raised in the Pine Barrens, and has since lived and worked in eight US states. His work can be found in The Shore, Painted Bride Quarterly, Anti-Heroin Chic, Ekphrastic Review, and elsewhere.

 

RUBBINGS FROM GRAVESTONES

& when

Huge oil portraits of my parents

hung on the dining room walls

as though we lived in a museum and people

paid good money to wander through

only no one ever came

 

& although

Each night after the maids in white uniforms

passed plates of uninspired food

us four kids sat eyes down

on our silent steaks and potatoes or pushed

the Friday fish around with silver forks

 

& because

We didn’t want to see those eyes

watching us from the walls, eyes

that could see the lies, saying our mother

made big breakfasts no need to bring

turkey sandwiches to school

 

& while

My mother licked the butter balls

ignoring her dinner, slurping her scotch

my father in a coat and tie carefully carved his meat

into perfect squares before taking a bite

willing her to sanity

Claire Scott is an award-winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, and Healing Muse among other journals. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.

 

Flood Tide

She remembers watching the Rancocas rise

that year Belle slammed ashore

tearing siding and roof tiles from beach houses.

 

She recalls how the Mullica churned, a brown

foaming roil, sandy banks too weak to staunch

its uncharacteristic force.

 

How current unleashed itself from sluggish

shallow creekbeds. How the deadfall dams

re-routed its familiar flow.

 

The pine barrens sucked down eight

inches of rain in three hours and jetties

moved, the pilings cracked.

 

Mushrooms materialized on wooden stoops

and stair treads, roads dissolved,

the lights went out.

 

She and her mother sat at the table,

her mom’s face flickering in candle flame,

her dad standing at the bay window.

 

Loud. That’s how she remembers that

storm. And her father, young then, she recalls

his anxious observation of the creek—

 

calculating the crest, reckoning

the cost of abandonment vs. the risks

of stubbornness, attendant to the rain.

Ann E. Michael lives in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, where for many years she ran the writing center at DeSales University. Her latest poetry collection (2024) is Abundance/Diminishment. Her work has been appearing online and in print for many decades in numerous journals, anthologies, chapbooks, and two previous collections. She maintains a long-running blog at www.annemichael.blog

 

Pawpaw by the Lehigh

we find them low along the bank

mottled gray and yellow

dangling in late August

like forgotten lanterns

swaying in trees

 

I snap open my penknife

score the skin along its seam

fruit flares open

gold as a candle

flickering in church

 

seeds slide from pulp

slick as river stones

we both know

tomorrow you leave

where I cannot follow

 

I split the fruit

hand you half

juice runs bright

warm across your fingers

the last gift I can offer

 

the Lehigh drifts on

indifferent

while black seeds

cool in my palm

heavy as the silence between us

Baskin Cooper is an award-winning poet, visual artist, and multidisciplinary creator based in Chatham County, North Carolina. His work spans poetry, songwriting, sculpture, screenwriting, and voice acting, weaving together visual, narrative, and musical elements. He holds a PhD in psychology and previously lived in Cork, Ireland, experiences that often shape his explorations of folklore, lyricism, and personal history. His poems have appeared in Verse-Virtual, ONE ART: A Journal of Poetry, Ink & Oak Lit, and others. His debut collection, The Space Between Branches, is currently seeking publication.

 

Sniff

When my father failed

at frying an egg

on the occupational therapy stove,

 

forgetting to press in the knob

before turning it to medium-high,

 

then cracking the shell

too hard on the skillet’s rim

so half the white

dribbled down the outside

and onto the burner,

 

then struggling to reach a plate

from the nearby cupboard

on account of the plastic tubes

coiling out of his kidneys,

 

the pouches of urine

velcroed to his hips

like pistols in a holster,

 

the social worker suggested

he be discharged to a sniff

instead of going home.

 

And when I looked puzzled,

she clarified a sniff

is a skilled nursing facility,

commonly abbreviated

S-N-F, or sniff.

 

Sniff, I repeated, my mind

pondering that acronym

turned onomatopoeia

 

for the sound we make

to clear tears from our noses,

 

or the method by which

we detect the smell

of something suddenly burning.

Doug Fritock is a writer, husband, and father of 4, who was born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia, but now lives in Redondo Beach, California. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Prime Number Magazine, and Whale Road Review among others. He is an active member of Maya C. Popa’s Conscious Writers Collective. 

 

Visiting

On the walk to my grandmother’s grave,

my mother says she’d like to be buried in a cemetery

by a lake where the family could go to have picnics.

 

I nod, like I understand cemeteries. Like I understand

my mother’s need to visit and be visited, as if this is the only way

we can still talk to the dead (as if there are no poems).

 

Like I can imagine burying my mother, my husband,

myself. Like I can imagine my grave as anything

but grown over and haloed by vultures.

 

I’ve been told there’s a place prepared for me

with many rooms. No one in Heaven is going to look

for these bodies, forgotten like faded nightgowns.

 

A grave says nothing, remembers nothing.

There are so many stones grown over,

engraved names that fill with dirt and time.

 

A woman on the radio cried when she read a letter

found in an abandoned home from a dying woman

giving birth to a son no one knew about.

 

I worry about her, the radio woman said.

Abandonment is worse than death—it means

no one cares. I’m afraid of the clean slabs

 

ripped-down homes make, afraid of becoming one:

paved over, no one would know I was ever here

(isn’t that why there are poems?).

 

I pull back the grass. In my notebook,

I write down names

I’ve never heard before. Carry them

 

in my mouth as we drive home

like hard candies and whisper them

sweet under my breath.

Meg Eden Kuyatt teaches creative writing at colleges and writing centers. She is the author of the 2021 Towson Prize for Literature winning poetry collection “Drowning in the Floating World” and the forthcoming “obsolete hill” (Fernwood Press, 2026) and children’s novels including the Schneider Family Book Award Honor-winning “Good Different,” and “The Girl in the Walls” (Scholastic, 2025). Find her online at megedenbooks.com.