Editors’ Choice, May 26 – June 2, “Isolde,” – by Jennifer LeBlanc
Sometimes love is an act of heroism. Fitting time (in the US) to commemorate and celebrate the spirit of freedom. Daring brings liberty. Enjoy this individual heroism as portrayed by Jennifer LeBlanc.
Isolde Giese and Hans Christian Cars met behind the Iron Curtain in 1965. To facilitate Giese’s escape and the couple’s subsequent marriage, Cars earned his pilot’s license and successfully flew her across the border.
Where white is surrender, red is come here,
a challenge, calling for the danger.
I will engage with your fury.
She was born to have a fire-bellied love,
Isolde, born to love across borders and walls.
Her scalpel cut a clean seam at the laboratory table,
but guarded maps are harder to parse.
He was not born to fly,
but the red scarf was fire enough to hold his eye
and she called him down,
standing in the wheat grass,
hair curled like a conch over each ear,
secured with a single brown barrette.
Come here.
Come toward danger, and I call you to me.
We will have no half measures of living.
Jennifer LeBlanc earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University. Her first full-length book, Descent, was published by Finishing Line Press (2020) and was named a Distinguished Favorite in Poetry (2021) by the Independent Press Award. Individual poems have been published or are forthcoming in journals such as Consequence, Solstice, Nixes Mate Review, San Pedro River Review, and The Main Street Rag. Jennifer is a poetry reader for Kitchen Table Quarterly. She was nominated for a 2013 Pushcart Prize and works in the English Department at Tufts University.
Issue 24, Spring 2023

Photo by Ryn Holmes, Copyright 2023 Ryn Holmes
Happy Spring, oh Northern Hemispherians! Happy Autumn, Down-Underers!
We hope many of you enjoyed all the festivities of National Poetry Month here in the ! Some of us participated in the regular prompts throughout the month. Thanks to those who provided the inspiration and forum. And we know that many of you attended AWP in Seattle.
Thanks to those who took time out to send us some lovely submissions. We’re proud to have completed our eighth full year by publishing Issue 24. This issue includes more flash prose than usual, which is fine with us. There’s some social consciousness and protest work in there as well, plus a little humor. Something for everyone, we hope!
Thanks for our contributors and to all who’ve submitted. We thank our readers and benefactors, as always.
Make it a great day!
Love,
Andrea, Clara, Jeff, and Ryn, Editors
Pray for Ukraine.
Contents
After the Feast– by Lorraine Caputo
another ode to the bees – by Chris Talbott
The Bedroom – by Robert Nisbet
Birches – by Marianne Tefft
Blind Terror – by Pavle Radonic
Blue – by Michael Minassian
Buried – by Kerry Trautman
Camping: Night – by Nolan Meditz
Delivery – by Tim Goldstone
A Different World in the Morning – by Barbra Nightingale
A Different Year – by Frances Koziar
The Earth – by Natalia Karel’skaya
The Education of a Lover – by Eric Braude
Grief is Metal – by Daniel Edward Moore
“Help Me Put on Those Black Boats,” She Says, – by Grey Held
Hutchinson, Kansas, Which is Not Really Hutchinson, Kansas: Dream IV – by Steve Brisendine
I love to walk alone on the peninsula – by Mid Walsh
If there was a junk drawer for life, what would we find in it? – by Amanda Valerie Judd
Impermanence – by David M. Harris
Isolde – by Jennifer LeBlanc
It Is the Erratic Path of Time We Trace* – by Jonathan Yungkans
Lacerations – by Renee Williams
Late Love – by Sharon Scholl
Mangoes on Fruitvale Avenue – by Connie Soper
May Come a Cat – by Bruce Robinson
My Choice – by Denise Sedman
My Father Remembers – by Laurie Kuntz
Not Everyone Can Be Seen Through the Cracks – by Audrey Howitt
The Nord Sea – by Neal Ostman
Northern Heading – by Elizabeth Coletti
Owning the Air – by Judy Kaber
The Pleasures of Nothing – by S. B. Merrow
Prom Night – by Alaro Basit
Rap Sheet – by Lyman Grant
Religion – by Carolyn Sperry
Remembrance – by Peter Witt
Ripened – by Rebecca Dempsey
Salty Prayers – by Marcelo Medone
Self-Portrait as Mailbox – by Merna Dyer Skinner
spring dawg walking – by Suzanne S. Rancourt
Subtle Shades of the Rust’s Translucence – by Scott Thomas Outlar
Sunrise Peak – by Sarette Danae
Talking About People We Know – by Kevin Ridgeway
Tear Out This Page in the Book of Lies – by Lois Roma-Deeley
Tell All My Friends I’m Coming Too – by Christine M. Benner Dixon
They Tried to Warn Us – by Lenny DellaRocca
Tokens from the Foundling Hospital, 18th c., London – by Susan Moorhead
The twilight’s last gleaming (January 22, 1973 – June 24, 2022): A Eulogy– by Albert Katz
What I Saw For Myself – by Margot Wizansky
White Night – by Bruce McRae
Why Monsters Live in Nightmares – by Patricia Nelson
Yelping the Mr. Fresh Drive-Thru Convenience Store – by Cal Freeman
Review of “Apprenticed to the Night,” by LindaAnn LoSchiavo
Apprenticed to the Night, by LindaAnn LoSchiavo
Published by Universe Press
87 pages
ISBN 978-1-915025-77-7 PB (paperback) £9.95
ISBN 978-1-915025-78-4 HB (hard cover) £19.95
Submitted by Andrea Walker, April 2023
In her collection of sixty-six works of poetry and prose, Apprenticed to the Night, LindaAnn LoSchiavo writes of life and death, before and after, with themes of childhood, trauma, family, and love. Included with a dash of Italian ancestry and told with the flavor of Italian culture, the occasional phrase spices up the poetry with gusto as the most important life issues are detailed.
Sharp imagery of night and owl draws the reader in for her lyrical poetry to take the reader on a winding path. Beginning with the speaker’s childhood, “Cassandra’s Curse” reveals several traumatic childhood events the speaker experienced: the sudden accidental death of a little girl, praying with her grandfather before he dies, and witnessing the arrest for murder of someone she once dated. Contradicted by attending adults who deny what’s happening along with her relationship to the events, her speaker is likened to Cassandra whom no one believes, adding yet more frustration. Another betrayal occurs in “Pajama Party” when parents are deceptive about staying in the hospital for a tonsillectomy.
Told with subtlety, family stories of activities are passed down through generations. The poet makes skillful use of internal rhyme in “Merletta (Lace),” the story of her grandmother making lace. “She shakes from pale silk its unwillingness to be superior” then asks the reader to “imagine what perfection she could coax from hiding out of me.” The poem pays homage to ancestors in the line “ancestral graces skip my generation.” Homage to ancestors continues in “Grandpa Umberto’s Fig Trees.” The speaker observes a kind of quiet desperation in the pruning and caring for trees that “will do just what they want” when he is gone.
“The Rite of Pummarola” bears an explosion of the senses in the cellar, draped in orange light, steam-kissed by four steel pots at constant boil, rattling, air thickening. Readers can taste the pureed tomatoes, sniff the aroma of herbs, hear the clang of the pestle and pot lids. The family’s work becomes a rhythmic dance to the percussion of bottle capping, teasing the appetite by the end of the poem.
A master of form, LoSchiavo crafts her work with detail as she continues the themes of family and childhood. Poems flow in loosely organized sets of father, uncle, mother and sister and address life’s frailties of abandonment, sickness, suffering, death and beyond.
The speaker’s story of her grandfather’s bone marrow transplant goes deep as bone as the father prepares to donate marrow to his father and the family eats bone soup, not in preparation but because they are poor. As a small child who is eventually not permitted to attend his funeral, the young speaker is left to her imagination, grief, and fear.
That writers write to understand is evident in the poems that follow about close family members. In “Wizard of Words,” her father is portrayed as a writer and storyteller, who learned to work within Italian and English, “paring down as he did the bad parts of fruit,” writing with sadness as well as humor. His tale continues in “Visiting Gemini” as he “grows a twin” and moves away to pursue writing and other mysteries. The reader learns what happens and its effects in “When Fathers Disappear” and a possible poetic justice in “The Bombardier.”
LoSchiavo shares youthful lessons of the ghosts of death’s lingering essence in several poems. The macabre is introduced in the fascinating prose “The Poltergeists of President’s Street.” With a hint of humor, her uncle tells the story of a long ago poker game and the mystery and emotions that linger. Several poems ensue developing the uncle and another ghostly memory. “On the Anniversary of His Death,” is so realistically and beautifully told it seems possible it could have happened.
Within this web of complexity, the poet provides a glimpse of comic relief, humorous metaphor, and Italian nuance in “Sticky Figs.” LoSchiavo writes with electricity—physical and emotional. For example, “Kinetic Kissing” describes a kiss worth experiencing. The romance in “Impatiens Budding” and “Invitation to a Kiss” sparks with subtle electricity.
Tones of spookiness and occasional horror mingle with tones of romance and fond remembrance. Sharing dark experiences with the intuitive reader, each poem is rich with LoSchiavo’s unique perspective and sensitivity. Death’s relevance, found within these pages, is dealt with equally among other relevant issues like family, religion, love and romance, and even social issues. The mystery and supernatural told in believable detail kept me turning pages as if they were experienced. Read and be surprised.
Editors’ Choice, February 24 – March 3, “October’s Last Facing the Pacific,” – by Alicia Viguer-Espert
Whimsy, nostalgia, and longing at the seaside, powerful forces all. Enjoy this fine poem as old as mankind has been wondering about the internal and external world.
I sit on a bench outside my cottage,
October’s last day sparks
as if to say, “match this,”
and I can with thousand days
at another cottage facing my sea’s
impossible blues diluted or darken
depending on season and hour.
A song flies over my head and I catch it
with dendrites of memories and clouds of nostalgia,
a childhood woven with threads of photographs,
feet in the water, a few crabs inside a pail,
a blazing line of color behind my back,
waves I tried to capture to my dismay
as they dissolved as the bubbles they were.
Adolescent walkers cross the view of the horizon,
their outlines, cut outs of darkness, avoid sea urchins
looking down through crimson sunsets, spumous surf,
evening light modestly thins itself out to compensate
its extravagant beauty rolling in front of my eyes
as ping pong balls hitting the floor. I inhale the aromas
of iodine and orange blossoms that nourished me.
I write a love letter every day
to us strolling the Mediterranean shore,
counting constellations between kisses,
a full moon admiring herself in water,
your shadow entering the port of my arms,
this hope that, like Odysseus, you’ll return
keeps me alive, while it has aged me twenty years.
Born and raised in Spain, Alicia Viguer-Espert lives in Los Angeles. Her chapbooks To Hold a Hummingbird and Out of the Blue Womb of the Sea concentrate on nature, identity, language, home, and soul. Her work has been published national and internationally and included in the Top 39 L.A. Poets of 2017,” one of Ten Poets to Watch on 2018, by Spectrum. Alicia is a 2019 and 2020 Pushcart nominee.
To view previous Editors’ Choices, please visit:
Clara Schumann – by Linda Scheller
i don’t know why i knew my coworker – by Scott Ferry
Solace – by Mary Anna Scenga Kruch
Lunch at the Library – by Robin Scofield
Keepsake – by Sherre Vernon
Issue 23 – Winter 2023

Copyright 2023 Ryn Holmes
Hello there, Panoply Readers!
Welcome to Issue 23. We sense a rush of and return to the muse, a revitalization of creativity. Thank Goodness, and thank you all. In a small sense, we consider Issue 23 a harbinger of better things, not only to come, but here now. Was it an exile that plagued us? (Some may still feel that way.) The human condition is marked, nearly defined by adjustment. We endure, even thrive because of our versatility and underlying force of will. As the year turns, as this Issue lives, we take great hope and comfort in our shared transcendence.
We’ve mentioned before that we observe organic motifs. We noticed two for Issue 23: long pieces and those with foreign-language passages. Have you been traveling again?! What liberty!
As always, we thank our submitters, contributors, readers, and benefactors. We cannot do it without you. Let’s make it a great year. Each of us!
All our love,
Andrea, Clara, Jeff, and Ryn, Editors
Pray for Ukraine.
Contents
An Anchor’s Rope – by Jeff Burt
The Anticipation – by Susannah Sheffer
Because We Are Made That Way – by Jim Ferguson
Bison – by Jeanne Julian
The Brief History of Love – by Smitha Sehgal
Briefly Opening the Piano – by David P. Miller
Calving Season – by Debbie Collins
A Carnival Mask Teeming With Skinks and Poppies and One Death’s Head Moth – by Jason Ryberg
Casualty – by Carolyn Martin
Clara Schumann – by Linda Scheller
Corporeal – by Meghan Sterling
Deaar – by Holly Joffe
Dead Satellites – by Nick Romeo
Don’t Let My Wrinkles Fool You – by Elaine Sorrentino
Dream Within a Dream – by Frank Babcock
An Early Flight – by George Franklin
Ending – by Fiona Sinclair
Epiphany – by Lorraine Carey
exercising my hands – by Kimbol Soques
The First Horn of Plenty – by Lynn Pattison
Fluid Dynamics – by Paul Ilechko
For Thunder, Emotional Support Alpaca – by Tania Runyan
from the launch his camper runs a generator for the a/c, there is a rattlesnake asleep on the rv mat – by Connie Bacchus
Ghazal – by Joshua Gage
Giving a Rat’s Ass About the Super Wal-Mart – by Brian Dickson
Hairdresser to the Dead – by Robbin Farr
haptic and the history of making glass – by Paul Koniecki
Holiday Remembered – by Aaron Williams
I Cannot Paint – by Jeremy Proehl
i don’t know why i knew my coworker – by Scott Ferry
In the Great Migration of Life – by Xiaoly Li
Keepsake – by Sherre Vernon
The Kohlrabi Polka – by Robert Okaji
Life With Picasso – by Greg Zeck
Looking to the Desert Mothers – Haylee Schwenk
Lunch at the Library – by Robin Scofield
Morning, Late February – by Jim Krosschell
My verdant poets, do not fear endings – by Karen W. Burton
night of a holiday – by Livio Farallo
October’s Last Facing the Pacific – by Alicia Viguer-Espert
Old Black Water – by Carol L. Deering
On Robert Mapplethorpe’s “Phillip Prioleau, 1979” – by Marie C Lecrivain
Polly Amorous – by Gregg Shapiro
Putting It Off – by Gus Peterson
Royalty of Rot – by Taylor Graham
Sex Education On a Summer Afternoon – by Michael Gigandet
Solace – by Mary Anna Scenga Kruch
Supernova – by Sam Barbee
Take a Seat – by Jeannie E. Roberts
Tess at Mt. Pollux – by Sara Eddy
There Comes a Time – by Nancy Smiler Levinson
To a Man Who Died the Year Before I Was Born – by Steve Nickman
Touchless Automatic – by Marci Rae Johnson
uncaged i unzip – by Jane Ayres
Vampire Moth – by David B. Prather
Waiting for Jell-O – by A. C. Bohleber
Water Bills in Detroit are Past Due – by Denise Sedman
What Hair? – by Kelly Fordon
When There Is No Light – by Federica Santini
Announcing Our Nominations for the 2022 Pushcart Prize!
Such a joy to celebrate the year’s finest work. Once again, we’re proud and privileged to announce our nominations for the 2022 Pushcart Prize. Please join in congratulating the nominees, all of our Editors’ Choices, and our wonderful contributors.
Thank you for thinking of Panoply. All our best wishes for the upcoming holiday season!
Love
Andrea, Clara, Jeff, and Ryn, Editors
Before This, The Occaneechi – Maura High
descriptors – by Lisa C. Krueger
What I Saw When Looking for my Bones at Lekki – by Ololade Akinlabi
Sand – by Alicia Viguer-Espert
Issue 22, Summer 2022

Copyright 2022 Ryn Holmes
Such a summer! Do you feel the Earth’s wobble around its axis these days? That centripetal force tugging on you? Same here.
We’re thankful that humanity continues to flourish with fine writing. We’re elated to share some with you. As we hurtle into autumn, hope fills our days, shorter as they trend.
As always, thank you for reading and supporting Panoply! To our contributors, we send our deep gratitude and admiration.
Love,
Andrea, Clara, Jeff, and Ryn, Editors
Contents
5/2 – by Scott Ferry
Agios Dimitrios – by Gary Kaiser
An Accidental Appalachian – by Bakul Banerjee
At the Whitman Show at the Morgan Library, July 2019 – by Julia Lisella
Bisbee Blue – by Cal Freeman
Brancusi’s birds above Breckenridge – by Marcy Rae Henry
British Columbia Beach Walk – by Isobel Cunningham
Carryall – by Mary Alice Williams
Chemo Limp – by Cameron Morse
Cirrus, Balsam, Jasper, Watch – by Samn Stockwell
daughter – by Lisa Reily
descriptors – by Lisa C. Krueger
Don’t Feed the Bears – by Don Noel
The Gatekeeper’s Correspondence – by James Walton
Going Down the Road* – by Betsy Mars
Golden Observation – by Thomas McDade
Great Blue – by Bill Griffin
Haste – by Allan Peterson
Hollowed Bodies – by Tara Prakash
I Dreamed of Dolphins – by Marianne Tefft
Irish Exit – by Steven Deutsch
Isn’t the Cat the Only Sensible Being in That Painting? – by Hedy Habra
The Lady of Shalott’s in Hot Water Again* – by Jonathan Yungkans
Last Trip to the Barber – by Joy Gaines-Friedler
(Man)hattan – by Denmark Laine
Near – by John Riley
The Night’s Unwilling to Explain: A Golden Shovel – by LindaAnn LoSchiavo
The Old Cure – by Joan Mazza
Once Upon a Threshold – by Sandi Stromberg
Police Call at Night – by Ann Howells
Revisiting the Bardo Museum in Tunisia 2019 – by Arturo Desimone
The Sage Says the Blue – by Max Heinegg
Seeing It – by Robert Nisbet
Self Portrait – by Bartholomew Barker
Seven Pieces of Advice for My Nieces, Post-Roe v. Wade – by Marie C. Lecrivain
Sex Shop Sestina – by Gene Twaronite
Shellfish – by Diana Donovan
Shots Fired at Heckscher Park – by Emily-Sue Sloane
Some Dummy – by Allan Lake
SPF Infinite – by Lawrence Miles
spider-silk lacework – by Louise Kim
Stack Wood to Let the Air In – by John Hicks
Synesthesia – by Ann E. Wallace
Take Rest – by Mary Anna Scenga Kruch
Totem – by Karen George
Vapor –by David Colodney
War Anthem – by Adele Evershed
Who am I Today – by Steve Gerson
Wolf Prince – by Catherine Arra
Yosemite – by Roberta Schultz
Issue 21, Spring 2022
Copyright 2022 Ryn Holmes
Hello Panoply-o-philes!
Who could imagine the events that presented themselves these last few months, particularly here in the US? Is this a rare compression or the new pace of life? We’ve managed to keep up, but this editor is pondering the depths and capacity of hope and faith.
We’re hopeful and faithful, though, due to the energy, commitment, and devotion contained here in these pages. Call it love. Sometimes, it’s tough love. Sometimes that is required, all we can muster, all with which we must reply. There’s some tough love contained herein. To that, we say, “Hurrah.” Sustain us all.
During WWII, Churchill was asked to cut funding for the arts. He replied, “Then what are we fighting for?’” Indeed. Read some Camus to learn about resistance and redemption.
To recognize the tragedy and horror in Ukraine, we’ve included a special section on war and peace, oppressor and oppressed, invasion and resistance. This editor is really impressed by the breadth and scope of the pieces included in the Special Section. They lift off from current events, brutal and dramatic as they are, to the timeless and universal. What a response!
As always, we thank our contributors and readers. Stay healthy. Make it a great day.
Pray for Ukraine.
Love,
Andrea, Clara, Jeff, and Ryn, Editors
Contents
Coming About – by Alan Perry
Cormorant – by Kathryn Jordan
Driving in Early Winter – by Renee Szostek
The embarrassment of Sierra Escumbre – by Lawrence Hopperton
February Vacation, Ft. Myers, Florida – by Kerry Trautman
The First Sign From My Dead Son – by Melanie Dunbar
The Glittering Girl – by Robert Nisbet
A Gratitude Stone – by Heidi Slettedahl
Horn – by Emma Neale
A Humble Bewilderment of Love – by Nelly Shulman
In the Absence Of Coffee – by George Franklin
In the Dolomites – by Lesley Carnus
Is This One of the Ways to Trap a Butterfly? – by Hedy Habra
jack kerouac goes to the beach – by Louise Kim
Jackpot Romance – by Kevin Ridgeway
Melville’s Whale – by Michael Igoe
The Migratory Bounty of Spring – by Jeannie Roberts
The Morning After – by Ramesh Dohan
Peeling a Tangelo – by Carol Edwards
Pindar – by Januario Esteves
Police Call at Night – by Ann Howells
Return to Florida – by Amanda Valerie Judd
Scaffolders – by Irene Cunningham
Seeing Red – by Simon A. Thalmann
Sonnet on a mote of hope – by William Joel
Stepping Outside My House on Elizabeth Place – by Abby Wheeler
stored in hives – by Corbett Buchly
Traces – by Lynn Lauber
Tyrian Purple – by Jeremy Proehl
Well, she was just seventeen/You know what I mean 2022 – by Lois Bassen
When You’re Done Reading This, I’ll Show You the Real Poem – by Traci McMickle
Who Done It – by Karla Linn Merrifield
The Woodcutter I Live With – by Katie Kalisz
Worker on a Rainy Saturday – by Mitch Roshannon
Special Section Contents
109 Empty Prams – by Andrea Vasile
And the Wolves in the Factory Paused – by Jon Yungkans
Bamboo Coda – by Jane Rosenberg LaForge
Boundaries – by Holly Guran
Calling the Soul – by Lorraine Caputo
During the Wartime – by Kushal Poddar
an encounter in Fredericton’s Old Burial Grounds (est. 1787) – by Albert Katz
Hopscotch – by Ken Farrell
Indictment – by Harold Ackerman
Ma’s Green Coat – by Lily Prigioniero
Mizocz Ghetto, October, 1942 – by Ken Meisel
Resistance – by Emily-Sue Sloane
The soul eater comes with no strap or boots, his fists tucked in his pockets – by Heather Haigh
Survived – by Toti O’Brien
What I Saw When Looking for my Bones at Lekki – by Ololade Akinlabi
Issue 20, Winter 2022
Artwork copyright Ryn Holmes 2022
How time flies! Internally, we’re marveling at our milestone of 20 issues. Issue 21 will complete our seventh year, quite a journey that began with outdoor coffee at dusk. Not quite a garage band or a garage business, but you get the idea!
2021 brought a great deal of personal disruption to this Team. (Join the club, right?) We’re fortunate to have each other and to be able to share the wonders laid before us. When physics hurts, go for metaphysics.
Issue 20 ushers in two poems about grief, two from women named Roberta and two from women named Chris, a Christmas ditty and a New Year’s welcome, high school memories, some very short pieces, some very long ones, artistic allusions galore, and more to delight and inspire.
As always, thank you submitters, contributors, readers, and benefactors. We derive great satisfaction from our little place in this expanding world of the written word and hope you do as well.
Let’s make it a great year!
Love,
Andrea, Jeff, and Ryn, Editors
Contents
#1 Poetoum – Laurie Byro
After Discovering Mother’s Passport – Tina Barry
After “Landscape and Jacaranda,”– Peter Mitchell
All Songs – Barry Peters
All Those Wildflowers – Renee Cronley
At the Back Fence – Karen Loeb
Before This, The Occaneechi – Maura High
Between Being and Not Being – Matthew Friday
Between the Moon and Me – William Reichard
Black Stones – Steve Gerson
Capnomancy – Chris Armstrong
Childhood Never Happens Again – Ryan Quinn Flanagan
Commentary L. Ward Abel
Diners – Rachel R. Baum
The First Stage of Grief – Jane Snyder
Grief
Gust – JC Niala
Happy New Year, San Miguel de Allende – John Milkereit
Indecent Exposure – Roberta Schultz
Jeanne d’Arc of the Suburbs – Laura Jan Shore
Kayak – Katherine Gotthardt
The Keepsake Diner – Don Pomerantz
Kinship – Chris Wood
La Mer – Roberta Brown
The Leaf Blowers – Judy Bolton-Fasman
The Lure – by Andrew Jeter
Math Game – Don Noel
Maundy Thursday – Emily Rose Proctor
Morningtide – Diana Dinverno
Musing On Auguste and William – Sharon Berg
A Nickel Short of Heaven – Audrey Howitt
Our Dalliance: Elegy – Linda Jackson Collins
Pandemic Barbie – Dustin Brookshire
Rivals – Charles Rammelkamp
Rural Sonnet – Paul Ilechko
Sand – Alicia Viguer-Espert
Sea Chanteys – Ann Howells
Seeing Life for What It Is – Jeannie Roberts
Sergei’s Hands – Jack Ritter
she had wine with gertrude stein’s widow – Connie Carmichael
Sitting in Bathwater at 1 am – John Casquarelli
Sometimes I Wonder – Scott Ferry
Swam with a whale shark again in 2021 – Sha Huang
Tables of Content – Bruce Robinson
Themes Unbecoming – Victor Pambuccian
Those Dead Shrimp Blues – Charlotte Hamrick
To the Boy with the Golden Hair – Ellen Austin-Li
To Our Executor (first draft) – Tom Barlow
Tonight is the Night I Break Jimmy Taylor’s Poor Heart – Francine Witte
Unexpected Epiphany – Marcelo Medone
A Visit from “The Florida Flash” – Karla Linn Merrifield
Was I Born Hollow – Stephen Douglas Wright
Whisky Hourglass – Hugh Anderson
Issue 19, Summer 2021

Photo by Ryn Holmes, Copyright 2021.
Welcome to Issue 19! We’re pleased to bring you more of the contemplations, wonders, journeys, and time travels of our fine contributors. This summer has been one of tumult and disruption for us here at Panoply, but our submitters’ dedication to the craft buoys us. We hope it propels you into a fine autumn! Stay safe and healthy, everyone.
Love,
Andrea, Jeff, and Ryn, Editors
Contents
Advice to a Wayward Girl – Barbra Nightingale
The Awakening of Hula – Lisa Creech Bledsoe
Bluegrass Baby – Mary Beth Hines
Breathe – Nate Maxson
Buttermilk and Popcorn – Carol Ellis
Class of Rebels – Linda C. Wisniewski
Cross Chest Carry – Roberta Schultz
Damaged Lily – Morgan Boyer
Evening With Lines From Whitman – Hilary Sallick
Every Condo in Toronto – Cole McInerney
For the First Time in 200 Years, a New Blue Pigment is Up for Sale – Lenny DellaRocca
A Grown City – Purbasha Roy
How the Light Escapes Us – Thomas Allbaugh
I Miss Philadelphia – Robert Beveridge
I Wish I Understood Love George Franklin
In the Blood – Michael Minassian
The Lost Hotel – Steve Klepetar
Meeting the Dire Wolf – Dana Sonnenschein
Night, Old Poet – John Riley
November –John Hart
Now, Then, Later – Margo Davis
Or Rather There Are No Lines in the Time – Jonathan Yungkans
Out of the Park – Daniel Edward Moore
Questioners – Abdulrosheed Fasasi
The Ranger – Robert Nisbet
Requiem for Twenty-Twenty – S.B. Merrow
Saturday – Michael Steffen
Sick of Love – John Grey
Spy Story – James Walton
The Stables on Solly Avenue – Mary Rohrer-Dann
Take Shelter – Akua Lezli Hope
That’s where it ends, the book – Samn Stockwell
Those big-boned, black-haired country boys – Pauletta Hansel
Towards a Nebulous Sun – Lorraine Caputo
A Tragedy’s Brewing – Susan Sonde
Two Girls From Queens Go To Manhattan – Faith Paulsen
Uncharted – Jan Seagrave
The Vulture – Max Heinegg
We Didn’t Cross the Ocean – Mary Anna Scenga Kruch
You ache for something you cannot name – Babo Kamel