July 2025 | poetry
Zigzags
If I knew
Socrates told us
to question everything
I would have been better
equipped to tell my mother
why I disagreed with her
why I lacked her enthusiasm
for being born with curly hair
that went in every direction
off the top of my head
like a field of unruly weeds
why I was unable to hug
that hair-dyed uncle
who took the biggest pieces
of meat off his serving tray
before offering his guests
his seasoned bites of scorn
why I pointed out the bitter taste
of water coming through the pipes
even though it flowed from
the best reservoir in the country
why I wanted everyone
in our house to stop adoring
so many hot buffalo wings
and just swallow the sweet grapes
because there are
so many of them
still in the bag
promising to go bad
if they continue to be ignored
Susan Shea
Susan Shea is a retired school psychologist who grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and now lives in a forest in Pennsylvania. She returned to writing poetry two years ago. Since then, her poems have been published in or are now forthcoming in Chiron Review, ONE ART, Folio Literary Journal, Passager Journal, Radix Magazine, The RavensPerch, Cloudbank, Ekstasis, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Green Silk Journal, The Write Launch, Foreshadow, The Loch Raven Review, and others. Within the last few months, one of her poems was nominated for Best of the Net by Cosmic Daffodil, and three poems were nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Umbrella Factory Magazine.
July 2025 | poetry
The Pilosity of Memory
Although mindful to remember but unwilling
to commemorate, during our nation’s holidays,
during grade school, I carried our flag, hoping
it would end my parents’ wars.
That might be why I still gaze at armies
with suspicion, why peace is first the memory
of my mother returning her small suitcase
to the bottom of her bed, swearing to stay with us.
Juan Pablo Mobili
Juan Pablo Mobili was born in Buenos Aires, and adopted by New York. His poems appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Hanging Loose Magazine, Louisville Review, and The Worcester Review, among others, as well as publications in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Australia. He’s a recipient of multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations, and an Honorable Mention from the International Human Rights Art Festival. His chapbook, “Contraband,” was published in 2022, and in January of 2025, he was appointed Poet Laureate of Rockland County, New York.
July 2025 | poetry
Hee Haw
We walk where the blade talks
high wire of a divide
between schemes of dreams
and the certain verdict
in the capital trial called living
All walks punish with wishes
We wander dead ground
a travail through felled
trees of knowledge
The hee in the irony
of haw is we knew
all sides of the effects
but still stayed the course
Profits issue the orders
to disavow how this foul
and noxious handiwork
can level if not erase
our collective sense.
On the shoulders of hubris
we stand arms akimbo
assuring our final resting
place is disgrace
We think we’re invincible
too important to fail
too big to flail in our own stink
incapable of falling into oblivion
Until the fall we dismiss the mephitis
Telling ourselves it’s odorless
the perfect deflect to hasten
the end of our kind
joyously singing in acid rain
Timothy L. Rodriguez
Timothy L. Rodriguez has published in English and Spanish. Warren Publishing of Charlotte, NC, recently introduced his latest novel—Never is Now. His fiction and poems have appeared in over two dozen national and international publications, including Main Street Rag, Another Chicago Magazine, Stoneboat Literary Journal (2017 Pushcart nomination), The Raven’s Perch, and the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.
July 2025 | poetry
Bodies
We found them rolled together in a sack,
soaked by runoff at the bottom of a grass embankment.
Tossed from a car, no doubt. We peeled them apart
and laid them on a bare log in a skinny roadside copse
to dry. We were nine with little idea of what we beheld;
their pictured parts pierced by familiar appendages made
alien by size. Our mouths gaped like theirs as we stared.
We hid them in the hollow of a rotting stump
and went home to wonder at sisters and neighborhood
girls. All summer, we returned to our moldering hoard
to ogle and ahh and, later, laugh at and fight over
favorites. We were learning like any beasts.
Joseph Landi
Joseph Landi is a medical writer living in New York City. His poems have appeared in North American Review (NAR), The Southern Review, South Carolina Review, Midwest Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Rhino, Southern Poetry Review, and other journals. His work is also featured in the textbook “Elements of Creative Writing” published by NAR and the University of Northern Iowa.
July 2025 | poetry
I’ve Spent My Life Separated from Living
Separated by doors, windows, walls—
swallowed by digital throats, settled into a stomach
where I collected friends and hearts like stamps.
I’m not sure what I want on my gravestone, but I know
it’s not: Comfortable Suburbanite. Perpetually Online.
I’m interested in interruptions: how from a night sky
a lightning bolt sunders a solid oak or birch,
how an evening without electricity gathers us
like moths to the candlelight in each others’ eyes,
how eyes lock from across a busy train station,
how a train can usher a leaper or an accidental
dreamer into eternity. Eternity has already begun
and my life is a blip somewhere in its predawn.
In the predawn, my one job is to flash like a firefly,
to refuse to drown in the comfort of the dark.
Bethany Jarmul
Bethany Jarmul is an Appalachian writer, poet, writing coach, and workshop instructor. She’s the author of a poetry collection, Lightning is a Mother, and a memoir, Take Me Home. Her work has been published in more than 100 literary magazines, including Rattle, Brevity, and Salamander. Her writing was selected for Best Spiritual Literature and Best Small Fictions and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. She’s a grant recipient from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Connect with her at bethanyjarmul.com or on social media: @BethanyJarmul.
July 2025 | poetry
Grass and Marble
There’s a harmonica in my pocket, a spider crawling
out of my mouth and on my backside a lovely long tail
that’s been hiding, tucked in my pants. Instead of arms
I have wings lacy but strong. Out of my belly button
three or four babies spill out, waiting to be clipped
free. On my knees are pastel spongey knee pads
with funny messages in magic marker from
friends wishing me well.
And I will paint myself barefoot lying in a lawn chair—
watching dragon flies land on my chest and thighs,
their different colored stems deep red, navy, baby blue
and watching the sun go down behind tall trees holding
a rocks glass of iced tea with several squeezed lemon
wedges floating at the bottom with sugar not stirred in
properly, sprig of mint, the look on your face when you left.
Mary Dean Lee
Mary Dean Lee’s debut collection, Tidal, was published in April 2024 by Pine Row Press and was shortlisted for the Quebec Writers’ Federation 2024 A. M. Klein Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Best Canadian Poetry 2021, The Fiddlehead, Hamilton Stone Review, Ploughshares, Salvation South, Free State Review, and MicroLit. She grew up in Milledgeville, Georgia, studied theatre and literature at Duke University and Eckerd College, and received her PhD in organizational behavior at Yale before moving to Montreal to teach at McGill University.
