The Thing of the World That I Love Most

April 2025 | poetry

Thank you for laughing each time

I aver, “Who is Samuel Pepys?” when

the Jeopardy category pings “Diarists.”

I thank grad school for resurfacings,

the tedious pages worth a chilly May,

Hampton Court morning around

the corner where some costumed King

Henry adjusts blue velvet cuffs, offers

guests winks, wisteria patches traipsing

purple along brick walls. You leave for real

tennis viewing while I warm in the Chapel,

a Royal steward my new mate who details

below floor Victorian heating flanking

Jane Seymour’s green gallbladder. No other

tourists around, he shifts

his head as if preparing to cross streets,

leans closer, then loud whispers a question

I’m sure he’s bottled for weeks:

You know Samuel Pepys?,

and before I can nod, he unbuttons the red

waistcoast, his Tudor Crest patch disappearing,

and I wonder if he’ll display rows of fake

watches like a shady tv character. No, I am

not scared or nervous when he produces

scissors, I think, smiling at me, them palmed

flat for high regard.

He had stones, bladder ones,

he informs, his hand rising with each word,

so pleased he seems to clarify “forceps,” as in

those used to remove Pepys’s pain. So many

questions clog my cords, my larynx, did he know

I’d be his audience today, and what do seventeenth

century tools go for on ebay these days?, still

he marvels at surgery without anesthesia, greets

your reentry, and I thank him for his time.

At the gift shop on our way out, I try on the Boleyn

stacking rings, how seamlessly the “B” fits into

pearled band, yet all I want is to run back, search

the gardens’ gravel borders and paths for any

cloudy or misshapen pieces in honor, homage, stones

rescued, revered not solely for Pepys’s pages,

but to etern on his chamber’s mantel.

Amy S Lerman

Amy Lerman, by way of Florida, Illinois, England, and Kansas, lives with her husband and very spoiled cats in the Arizona desert, where she is a residential English Faculty at Mesa Community College. Her chapbook, Orbital Debris (Choeofpleirn Press), won the 2022 Jonathan Holden Poetry Chapbook Contest. She has been a Pushcart nominee, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Passengers Journal, Atticus Review, Muleskinner, The Madison Review, Radar Poetry, Slippery Elm, Rattle, Smartish Pace, and other publications.

Amsterdam

April 2025 | poetry

Needles glittered on the streets in the soft Dutch dawn,
like shards of broken glass catching the light.
Children drifted in and out of narrow passageways,
their movements sluggish as the canals,
like something waiting to drown.

Behind the street where Anne Frank’s House stood,
a small, brown building crouched—
the hostel, ten bunks crowded into a room
heavy with the stench of dope and damp.
The showers sputtered when you forgot your coins,
cheap shampoo burning your eyes,
clouding the world into oily blurs.

Jakob, the owner, wore purple eyeshadow,
smoked maroon cigars that left the air thick and bitter.
Behind the front desk, a menorah stood,
its red candles unlit and melted,
wax globs like forgotten rubies.
On the opposite wall, a photograph:
a family, dark-eyed, arms crossed
in a field of sunflowers, waiting.
Each face marked with a bold red X,
sharp as a blade.
No one asked why.

Bill, the American boy who helped Jakob,
checked our passports, handed out keys,
cooked breakfast, inspected for bedbugs.
His face, a battlefield of purple acne,
flushed every time someone said thank you.
Five years ago, he checked in and never left,
becoming part of the place like the wallpaper.
Jakob adored him—
squeezing his shoulder, murmuring,
“Bill, Bill,”
as if speaking the name too loudly would make him vanish.

Bill wore long sleeves,
but the scars on his wrists, pale as ghosts,
were impossible to ignore.
One night, we missed curfew.
The bell rang, slicing the silence like a siren.
When Jakob answered, mascara smeared,
his bloodshot eyes wide,
a violet scarf unraveling from his neck,
he whispered,
“Bill is gone.”
His mouth opened and closed,
like words were too much to hold.
“Leave Amsterdam. Leave now.
It is the city of the dead.”

We ran upstairs,
locked our doors.

In the morning,
the hostel was empty.
Suitcases tumbled down the stairs
like forgotten promises.
I looked for Jakob, for Bill,
but the only thing left
was the photograph—
the family, the red Xs,
burning so bright
I had to close my eyes.

Penny Jackson

Penny Jackson is an award-winning writer who lives in New York City. Her books include Becoming The Butlers (Bantam Books) and a short story collection, L.A. Child and other stories (Untried Reads.) She won a Pushcart short fiction Prize and was a McDowell Colony Fellow. Penny is also a playwright with plays produced in New York, Los Angeles, Edinburgh, and Dublin. www.pennybrandtjackson.

Good Sins

April 2025 | poetry

Their fires have spread from sea to the mountains

Circle the wagons, our herds have fled

Night crackles like a fox

Is that a carriage, a hotel, charged with what?

The old country is filled with that morning light

We look for in paintings with one old tree

A clearing beside a road with one lone traveler

Golden bramble, homes made light

Smoke in whirlpools from the chimneys

Her cheek is your jewel, that map on the wall

Measures the radius of desire

That skull is your marital contract

That branch stretching from her crown

Is a symbol for solitude en plein air

And visible behind a lilac shade is a young prince

Fixing the queen’s long ochre pipe

The Good Solomonite fixes her tea

Some men live lives so voluminous

Their images profligate, disperse & are nothing

Better than all else to have the one thing

A flood, a crash, another tour somewhere

That might as well be ether: it is the one image

That will get us there

Listen, go down—go down then come back up

This is all one does, all one is

Soft train sounds

On a rainy day

Softer than rain

Sam Kerbel

Sam Kerbel was shortlisted for the 2024 Oxford Poetry Prize. His first chapbook, Can’t Beat the Price (2025), is available from Bottlecap Press. His poems are forthcoming from Eunoia Review and Libre.