Anniversary Dinner

April 2025 | poetry

Because sweetheart, this life
is a born escape artist,
a migrating fever,
a convict tattooed in invisible ink,
without mercy or nostalgia. – Tony Hoagland

 

Dear, you tell me you hope

for another 25 years together.

 

You, who used to skew toward ballerina-looking

lawyers with nary a hair nor argument astray.

 

You, the noisy admirer of stoicism

waving toward my shoes in admonishment

 

about the impracticality of carpeting

the world, you wrapped in a blanket

 

of hermeneutic suspicion, who nonetheless

equates any minor flaw with loss of full humanity−

 

you tell me I should just shoot you if

you ever 1) limp or 2) go mildly deaf−

 

you and your paradoxes are infinite:

confusing, amusing as kittens.

 

Because, let me tell you, such flaws

will grow, will overpopulate like tribbles,

 

like haystacks of books

and grain siloes of clothes:

 

a humiliation of abundance,

the digging out of which

 

could well result in the burial

of the digger. Meanwhile,

 

the losses peck away their

own claims until it is hard

 

to recognize−like something moldy

overlooked in the refrigerator−what’s left.

 

I told you when we met how I hated

the pressure of the term          soulmate,

 

and capitalistic compulsions of Valentine

or Sweetest Days, let alone the big white dress,

 

like a coconut cake impersonating a woman

or a Christmas tree flocked with chemical toxins.

 

Because I never expect a lack of trouble;

tennis-hop to be ready for disaster, I request

 

you wear a helmet in the car, to prevent

head trauma, prompting your eyeroll.

 

I told Kathy, when she asked

if we’d ever make things

 

permanent, that permanence,

like perfection, is 1) not a thing

 

and 2) if it were, we’d only

notice once it was not,

 

say if I choked on a chunk

of delicious crusty bread

 

at Osteria Via Stato and

our union and myself alike

 

pronounced impermanent in retrospect.

 

But at least she died doing what she loved

with the one she loved.

 

Julie Benesh

Julie Benesh is the author of the poetry collection Initial Conditions and the poetry chapbook About Time. Her work has been published in Tin House, Another Chicago Magazine, Florida Review, and many other places. She earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College and received an Illinois Arts Council Grant. She lives in Chicago and holds a PhD in human and organizational systems.

Jim Ross

April 2025 | visual art

Bird of Paradise

Pink Digitalis

Philippine Orchid

Pink Bearded Iris

 

Jim Ross jumped into creative pursuits in 2015 after a rewarding career in public health research. With a graduate degree from Howard University, he has published nonfiction, fiction, poetry, photography, hybrids, interviews, and plays in nearly 200 journals across five continents over the last nine years. His photo publications include 3Elements, Alchemy Spoon, Burningword, Camas, Feral, Invisible City, Orion, and Phoebe, as well as Stonecoast. His photo-essays have appeared in DASH, Kestrel, Litro, NWW, Paperbark, Pilgrimage, Sweet, and Typehouse. Recently nominated for Best of the Net in Nonfiction and Art, he also wrote and acted in a one-act play and appeared in a documentary limited series broadcast internationally. Jim’s family splits their time between the city and the mountains.

Luck with an F

January 2025 | poetry

When my children ask me who won

the world, fear grabs all 78 places

American women used to think of as

autonomous. Here in Spain, the news

 

corners me from 5000 miles away,

its claws sharp but intangible—

a lucky escape, friends say. Luck,

that four-letter misnomer, swaggering

 

as if clad in tuxedo and bow tie.

Charlatan in a gentleman´s getup,

raping my tongue for days.

What is luck if not unpredictable?

 

I can´t tell them which natural

disaster he has up his cuffs next.

The number of people who will suffer

or die as he rattles our planet, lunging

 

for loose change. How many countries´

pendulums have swung perilously

to the right, even ours? The chain

dolls my children made for Halloween

 

break my gaze, like a bullet through

an eye—if I sketched an oppressor´s face

on each one, they´d stretch the length

of our home, all frown line and sneer,

 

creepier than ghosts and goblins.

Is anything bad going to happen?

they ask. I say, L and F aren´t so

different, with their rigid right angles.

 

Their fiery exclamation.

 

 

Julie Weiss

Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection published by Kelsay Books, and two chapbooks, The Jolt and Breath Ablaze: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, Volumes I and II, published by Bottlecap Press. Her second collection, Rooming with Elephants, is forthcoming in 2025 with Kelsay Books. “Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children” was selected as a 2023 finalist for Best of the Net. She won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award for “Cumbre Vieja,” was named a finalist for the 2022 Saguaro Prize, and was shortlisted for Kissing Dynamite´s 2021 Microchap Series. Her work appears in Chesnut Review, ONE ART, Rust + Moth, Sky Island Journal, and others. Originally from California, she lives with her wife and children in Spain. You can find her at https://www.julieweisspoet.com/.

Minseo Jung

January 2025 | visual art

Stacked

 

Minseo Jung is a junior at Seoul Scholars International Art and Design, and her work primarily focuses on identity and the exploration of self. She understands herself by expressing her personal experiences and emotions through art. Using creative ideas and unique approaches, her work reflects the ongoing exploration of her identity, inviting the viewer to connect with their own experiences. For me, art is an important tool for self-expression, and through her work, she aims to create moments where people can reflect on themselves and feel a sense of connection with others.

Night Drive

January 2025 | nonfiction

Steam rises in swirls, wisps, moves like a candle snuffed out, then smoke curling. This road on a Wednesday night in the middle of Italy is dark except for the headlights that cut through the fog, barely, and the city of Macerata in the distance. I know this land. I left an entire country for it and now I have it mapped on my palm, penned out in ink, twenty years — the up and down, the hills that move, shift, medieval towns that cluster and roll to the Adriatic Sea. The soft grain, fields of sunflowers like matches lit, crimson poppies that carry the wind on June afternoons. It is a homeland perhaps, and for years now I’ve been pretending it’s mine.

But tonight the road is unrecognizable. On the drive from Ancona, where sunset strikes at 6 o’clock and you can watch ships sail into harbor, see the sky go blue, my American friend Ruth is still in the hospital, one more night and then she’ll go home to her Italian town  — I am not myself. I didn’t know these years would pass so quickly. I didn’t know the waiting for home would turn to wonder, turn to this shape shifting, these fields like blankets on my own made bed. What if it’s time to get out of here, to leave this place behind, opt for Lesley Avenue, Washington Street, the Taco Bell on the corner of Arlington and 10th? What if I should have left years before, back when the maps were still open, unfolded, brand new? Would I know how to get home, if I needed to? Would I recognize myself, twenty years later, on the front porch of my city? Or will I live and die right here insead? I take one turn, then another. The radio off, silence beats as softly as a newborn heart. A cat huddles on the roadside. Power lines catch the light – a swooping pterodactyl. The night shivers, goes dead. A porcupine, pale and prickly, crosses quickly just as I start to drive by.

Jacqueline Goyette

Jacqueline Goyette is a writer from Indianapolis, Indiana. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and has appeared in both print and online journals, including The Forge Literary Magazine, trampset, JMWW, Lost Balloon, The Citron Review, and Heimat Review. She currently lives in the town of Macerata, Italy with her husband Antonello and her cat Cardamom.