Photo courtesy of and copyright ©2020 Ryn Holmes.

Welcome to Issue 16! We hope you have remained hale and healthy through this crazy time of year. Loaded with verbal endorphins, this issue should help you maintain your artistic and spiritual health. 

One thing we continue to learn is how permanent art is in our lives. Sometimes we overlook it; sometimes we misunderstand it; sometimes it moves us profoundly. With all the basic underpinnings of art and the human condition, expressions change, formats change, and so on. But what lies beneath the white spaces, the compositions, the rhythms and contours, is that eternal element of what it means to be alive. 

So whether today finds you up or down, ecstatic or forlorn, attentive or distracted, remember that the world of art, of human expression and interpretation, with all its crazy mutations and side tracks, will be with you always. 

Here’s a tiny utterance among the eternal voice, with thanks to our contributors, whose words breathe life into our days. 

Make it a great day. Stay healthy!

Best wishes,
Andrea, Jeff, and Ryn

Contents

#11 – Ann Pedone
After Crossing the International Date Line – K Roberts
As Kids Back Home –  Mark Madigan
Barroom Dust –  Ana M. Fores Tamayo
Bell the Cat – Emalee Long
Buckboard – Mary Anna Kruch
Calendar Pages Yellowing – Steve Gerson
Can You Download Whatsapp So We Can Text While I’m Here – Jimmy Fay
Cleaning Helga’s Grave – Kevin Ridgeway
Cream No Sugar – Michael Estabrook
Cyclic Convulsions – Casey Roland
Dawnlessness – Nancy K. Jentsch
Drama – Edward Kos
Eulogy – Joel Fishbane
Fall Dinner – Martina Reisz Newberry
Father’s Foreign Cars – Gabrielle Grilli
Fissure – Syd Shaw
Grandma’s Song – Irene Fick
The High Priestess – Sherre Vernon
His words are plump – Sabina Khan-Ibarra
The History of Emptiness – Jack Ritter
I love what you did with your eyeliner – Sambhranta Bashy
I Went West – Ben Mast
In the occasional contact with life – M. Ait Ali
Jerome – Sally Vogl
JiM “80” – Max Heinegg
Let My People Go – Mark Hammerschick
Letter to My Iranian Lover – Alicia Viguer-Espert
Marvelling Upon Your Rouge Halo –  Andrew LaFleche
Melody in Shades of Blue – Sophie Foster
moonlit eve – Victor Pambuccian
My dead father visits me on my birthday every year – Scott Ferry
My Window (Champaign, Illinois) – Gerald Friedman
Network Opportunity – Tobi Alfier
No Escape – Elya Braden
Old Man Winter on the Marsh – Stephen Scott Whitaker
On Reading “Skeleton Keys” by Brian Switek – Roberta Schultz
One hundred dollars – Michael Griffith
Orpheus Calls Their Bluff – Julian George
Penitence – Brigidh Duffey
Porcupine – Dave Gregory
post newtonian – Alan Gann
Prowl Me Gently – Sarah Pobuda
Robot Factory – Patrick T. Reardon
Sack and Hammer – Kristin Fullerton
The Sermon: First Baptist, 1988 – James Miller
Solanaceae Battles – Frank Babcock
Soundtrack – Gena Killion
Stealing – Michele Randall
This Flag Is Not Waving – Jack Mackey
Tongues of Fire – Ann Howells
Unwilling/Vacillating/Waiting – Scott Wiggerman
We could use poems right now – Hari Bhajan Khalsa
What Are You Glittering About? –  Marianne Lyon
What the Breeze Brings –  Steven Deutsch
Writing Night – Robert Nisbet
The Winding Road of Sunshine and Snow – Daniel Paton