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