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