Ann Weil

Post Break-up Souvenir Shopping, Naples

 

No to the limoncello, liquid sunshine in hand-painted glass bottles.

No to the porcelain-handled pizza cutters poised to slice a pie.

Nope to the floral-print tablecloth/napkin sets, nope to Deruta pottery blue-rimmed with lemons.

No to the prayer candles, neither Madonna and Child nor Madonna Ciccone.

No to the mother-of-pearl music boxes tinkling That’s Amore.

No to a Sexy Priests 12-month calendar— but Father August is devilishly hot!

Nope to Quentin Tarantino prayer candles— enough already.

No to Mount Vesuvius snow globes, though the ashes are quite fitting.

But to the wicker baskets brimming with little clay heads— I say Yes!

and pay three euros for the one that looks like yours.

 

 

Dreaming of the Jersey Shore

 

The Muffin Man woke at 4 a.m., turned on

the lights at Drury Lane. He gathered ingredients: lemons,

flour, eggs, sugar, poppy seeds, baking powder, milk, butter, salt.

 

It was Tuesday, a lemon-poppy seed bake.

Everyone knew The Muffin Man. Or thought they did.

In the solitude of pre-dawn, he was not above smoking a cigarette

 

while he stirred, flicking an ash or two into the batter.

And it wasn’t even Ash Wednesday. People didn’t know him,

only that Thursday was cherry chocolate, Friday was blueberry crumble.

 

Muffins weren’t the only thing crumbling.

For years now, The Muffin Man dreamed of a different life—

one where he braised osso buco at a seaside café.

 

Where he worked side by side with a soulmate wife

while the kids played underfoot, and his friends—  those guys

he should have stayed tight with since high school—

 

came around on Saturday nights for a plate of oysters

and a bottle of pinot gris. Things hadn’t turned out the way he’d hoped.

He took another drag on the cigarette, greased the muffin tins.

 

“After the morning rush,” he said aloud to no one but himself,

“I’m going to post my profile on one of those dating sites— Binge,

or Yes, Chef, or maybe FreshCatch.com.” But The Muffin Man knew

 

he was all flour dust, no yeast.

He’d spend another afternoon in the safe embrace

of Zillow: commercial zone, large oven, ocean view.

 

Ann Weil

Ann Weil is the author of Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman (Yellow Arrow Publishing, 2023) and Blue Dog Road Trip (Gnashing Teeth Publishing, October 2024). Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Pedestal Magazine, RHINO, Chestnut Review, DMQ Review, Maudlin House, 3Elements Review, and elsewhere. Her poem, “Moon Child,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Burningword Literary Journal and selected for inclusion in the 2024 Edition of Best New Poets. She earned her doctorate at the University of Michigan and lives with her husband and soul-dog in Ann Arbor, MI, and Key West, FL.

untethered

my mother dreams of taking off

in a hot air balloon, not exactly flying

but rising, a slow-motion escape

fueled by the hiss of flame

parachute silk and her breath-

held longing to be lifted

from ground

 

she collects postcards and prints

of antique airships and dirigibles

turn-of-the-century flying machines

captained by men in waistcoats

and bowler hats – she has a flight

plan of her own, a Magritte fantasy

to disappear

 

from suburbia to surreal

in a swirl of sun and fringed scarf

glinting spyglass held to her eye

she will launch in a basket

packed up like a picnic

rainbow canopy overhead

she will ascend            with a whoosh

 

and a wave      from bumpy field

tedium to aerial parade – high-stepping

above trees and cow leas into clouds

as the earth below grows as small

as she knows it to be

grasslands and cul-de-sac

homes, cars ferrying families

to church, bridge games

and laundry days, blackberry

bushes to pluck, gardens to weed –

 

and we three

watching her float in the gondola

of a full-moon balloon, circled by birds

bon voyage cries and those on the ground

clapping leaping reaching –

‘til all that remains is shadow

big and round as a basilica crown

 

Lucinda Trew

Lucinda Trew lives and writes in North Carolina with her jazz musician husband, two dogs, one cat, and far too many (or never enough?) books to count. Her work has been featured in Bloodroot Literary Magazine, Cathexis Northwest, Mockingheart Review, storySouth, Eastern Iowa Review, and other journals and anthologies. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Best of the Net nominee, and Boulevard’s 2023 Emerging Poet Award recipient.

Retcon

The day as white as snow reversed

The gash in the boy’s chin-flesh reknit

The starling sucks its song back into its head

 

The fire net door quiets to static nothing

The moth rises from dust toward the turncoat beacon

A spark flies away

 

Alto notes return to brass the bell replaced in its glass

And the phone calling from the next room cuts out

Like a false alarm the clock windmills counterclockwise

 

Days grow long

Father walks through the door with his back turned

In every direction the family waits for him to come home.

 

Nick Visconti

Nick Visconti is a writer living in Brooklyn with an artist and a cat. He plays softball most weekends.

Chatterbox

Bells clanging      clang clang,

crunching rocks      underneath these feet,

chirping      birds

chirping      crickets,

silence masks its own noise,      a white noise,

hostile      eggshell      cream colored-noise

 

There are       so many subjects

that are      Difficult to talk about.

 

Focus on the sunrise shining,      glinting off

diamond rings,      trespassing through windows,

windows of houses,      quiet, early, early like

the railroad workers,      the airline service desk,

screaming babies,      diner cooks

 

Different people      will find some subjects

more difficult to talk about      than others.

 

And our edges are      eventually eroded by the

onslaught of      unpredictable weather patterns

and we all eventually      disappear,

though we never entirely leave      our guises

behind,      our treasure troves six feet under

the ground and      thousands of feet above

 

All that I care about      is the memories.

 

Samantha Moya

Samantha Moya is a data specialist with a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Colorado Boulder. She does her own writing and arts on the side. Her work has been featured in Serotonin Poetry, The Raven Review, Epoch Press, Tension Literary, and The Poetry Question. She is originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico and currently resides in Denver, Colorado with her husband and two dogs. She can be found at Twitter/X and Instagram @samanthalmoya.

When Was Takes Over Your Life

You mourn yesterday’s bare branches when

not a single cherry blossom was

on them. The silent neighbor who takes

slow walks, where is he? You can’t get over

their absence, how they settled into your

invisible calendar, tracked life

 

so you didn’t have to ponder life’s

unanswerable questions when

3:00 in the morning haunts and acts your

nag. There is no present, only was.

You don’t want to know this play is over

so decades of scenes come back, take

 

you on journeys the future would take

you on, if you believed in it. You guess life’s

mysteries have answered themselves over

time—Who are your loves? Your friends? When

your brother-in-law died young–wasn’t

that day the most tragic? A late baby–your

 

happiest? Done. You walk past the house your

mother lived in, relive all the outtakes

of the movie that starred only you, was

boys, tears, edge-of-your-seat drama, life

that was always about to happen when

the sun rose. She watched. And it’s over.

 

Even your father’s judgments are over.

That report card he frowned at, that boy you’re

still wild about, the career you’d start when

you got real, the money he’d say it takes

to survive in the world, make a full life.

You didn’t know all those strictures were

 

your spine. You Google old boyfriends, always

a bad idea. Most are dead and over

you. Actors alive during your whole life

slip away. Why do you care? But losing your

touchstones means finding new ones. That takes

an open heart. Living backwards started when?

 

 

Dreams are no better. They take over

where the day left off, flashing their childhood

pictures when your life was going to be.

 

Rosanne Singer

Rosanne Singer is a poet and memoirist living in Baltimore and just about to finish an MFA at the University of Baltimore. For 25 years, she was a teaching artist in the Maryland schools and also part of small arts teams working with wounded warriors and their families at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD, and with pediatric patients at Georgetown Hospital in Washington, DC. Her recent poetry appears in Allium Journal and 1-70 Review, and her recent memoir appears in The Baltimore Fishbowl and Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine.

Claire Scott

Keeping Score

 

The score 983 to 735

he’s quite a bit ahead

(as you can see)

46 points for washing my car

52 for buying me flowers

minus 10 because slightly wilted

I lost 66 points when I called him fuck face

after he watched four hours of women’s

beach volleyball, focused on barely-there bikinis

and 358 when I dropped our tax return in the toilet

but wait, just in

579 points for fixing his phlegmatic computer

saving us a small fortune

I gloat and glee around the room

eternally grateful to You Tube

the god of Fixing All Things

I love this game

but the score suddenly shifts

I lose 937 points for flouncing & swaggering

I collapse on the sofa & swig straight gin

(lose 88 more points)

who cares

stupid ledger

stupid game

 

 

Cutting Onions

 

My husband is cutting an onion with a spoon,

an almost impossible task. I notice

there’s a lock on the drawer with knives,

the first drawer on the left, under the counter.

Is he slow-sliding into dementia? Our kids

 

are long gone, no need to hide knives, especially

since I just sharpened my Kyoku carving knife

to slice tonight’s roast chicken. What of the row

of wine bottles lined up like empty soldiers?

Did he pour out all that expensive chardonnay?

 

And where is the thick cotton clothes line

that just arrived from Amazon,

the god of Good Things? I watched

a YouTube video on how to make a clove hitch

that won’t come untied, even under the weight of wet sheets.

 

Is it time to call Dr. Campbell? Am I losing my husband

to a one-way disease? Could Aricept help?

What of coconut oil or Coral calcium

or maybe twenty jumping jacks a day?

The onion is reduced to a soggy goo.

 

My husband frowns and tosses it in the trash.

For sure a call to Dr. Campbell first thing in the morning.

Tonight I will drive across the Golden Gate Bridge

and gaze down at the currents of swirling water.

If only I could find my car keys.

 

 

Claire Scott

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 others. 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.