Finnegan’s Wake

By Alex Stolis

᠅

At the resolution of a funeral
we decide to go to Frankie’s
on Ninth.

They’ve got the best tap beer,
Finnegan loves the juke & mostly—
Antigone the bartender.

There’s a running bet, is that her
real name or not—Finnegan doesn’t care.
She’s rail thin, hair to her waist.

Chain smokes Pall Malls & can
drink most of us under the table.
We pile in for the wake dressed

in our best. New jeans, shirts tucked
& all the manners we can muster
between us.

Antigone nods & starts setting up
drinks. She’s a machine.
Sexy-cool efficiency.

Finnegan pumps the juke full of silver.
Jocko racks the table.
Antigone sets up round two.

We raise our glasses & bottles
to toast the honored dead.
Hail & cheer & lie.

Finnegan looks at Antigone.
She looks back.
The room gets louder.

The two of them.
Still.
Quiet.

Antigone winks, slides
her number across the bar—
sets up another round.

᠅

Alex Stolis has had poems published in numerous journals. His chapbook, Postcards from the Knife-Thrower's Wife, was released by Louisiana Literature Press in 2024, RIP Winston Smith from Alien Buddha Press 2024, and The Hum of Geometry; The Music of Spheres, 2024 by Bottlecap Press. He lives in Hudson Valley of New York with his partner, poet Catherine Arra.

Reunion of Burnt Offerings

By Marilyn Close

᠅

At the resolution of a funeral
deafened by roar of fire between them
they sit cooking stew together –
feeding on proteins of mutual trauma.

Family tree roots burn to expose cinders.
A thousand twitching nerves like rope
once-shared blankets left dirty on the line.
Salt residue cracks in tear ducts.

᠅

Marilyn Close is an emerging poet and CNF writer with a limited but growing portfolio. Her poetry has previously appeared online with Chainmail Poetry and Off Topic Publishing. She volunteers with Tower Poetry Society (Canada) and has been printed in their anthologies.

Old Friends

By Charlotte Iannone

᠅

Eyes shut: Earth has unraveled into dreams.

I talk to you in all of them.

I tell the truth.

In the streets at night

I see a thousand twitching nerves like rope

roiling to a needle on the wall.

Then a thousand invisible snakes exploding out

across the continent, into trenches of sea.

My finger meets the needle—it bleeds.

Too many tomes of us—too many inken deeds.

The handwriting—all of a lowly writer—blurs

into mismemory.

Seawater has soaked the pages

(I omit the nights

I found you hovering over the basin,

dunking them. Some nights

it was me).

Perhaps we are beyond saving.

The shame of admitting it:

I will no longer climb

when you call,

if you have ever, like a child in the dark,

called out to me at all.

If it was not always

just a spiderweb of dreams.

᠅

Charlotte Iannone is an emerging writer whose work revolves around her upbringing on Long Island and the complicated nature of families. She just completed her first novel, a family epic centered around a real-life historical family that lived in East Williston, New York. At Bowdoin College, she was the Editor-in-Chief of The Bowdoin Review and Poet Laureate of the Peucinian Society. In her free time, she plays soccer competitively, reads classic novels, and serves her local community as a volunteer firefighter.

You're Named for a Saint

By Nick Hoffman

᠅

The fittingness of it: 

old language, old book

and always found 

on calf skin, pulled and dried

With that name, if anything bloody 

ever happened to you, 

it would mean something 

In the bathtub, they rub off easy

your wick-cut letters

and I’ve cleaned for now 

those etymologies and other daily dusts

The shame of admitting it:

I forget my own mother sometimes

how she made me and thought, “yes,

this one will be a gift-giver 

and bring storms to a whimper”

Eyes closed and my palms upward

I wonder fully, and I pray halfway

thinking of the feast days 

falling between March and harvest

But your name is the spring, 

and the spring is a numb chariot,

bursting forth in its senseless living

Its wheels scatter a planet 

of supplicant flies, thin hands

fingerless and busy, humming

vespers at the watermelon rinds

And I love to watch you

and the seeds swell over days

Ticks stuck in the pink flesh

᠅

Nicholas Hoffman is a medievalist and writer from the Hudson Valley. He lives outside Washington, DC, with his partner and any number of pet rats. His work has appeared in Chronogram, Night Picnic, and Eunoia Review.

Wanting

 By Kate Fetters-Walp

᠅

The world is an endless wheel of prizes
and look at me:
holding hands with my trepidatious mind
to dream of lands across a sea,
new and sparkling
(I'm afraid of water, barely learned to swim).

Sometimes I lay in bed and sing,
voice scratched up and hair a mess,
and in the box of my car, my voice may ring
but I never take the mic at karaoke
(I never do anything).

I wonder fully, and I pray halfway
and though I've seldom been religious,
in my morning haze, there are church bells,
tempting.

I saw it last night, for a moment:
the glimmer of a future
where I live and breathe
the kryptonite of my torment
but my hands weren't made to build bridges,
never were.

For what in the world have I ever done
except sleep and dream
and want
and want some more?

᠅

Kate Fetters-Walp is a high school senior with a passion for poetry and storytelling as a way of connecting to the human experience. She lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, and like many creatives, finds that her work flows more smoothly when she's in nature. Kate is excited to continue learning the craft of writing through working on novels and poems. She is also looking forward to submitting to more literary journals in the future.

List in my back pocket

By Alex Stolis

᠅

She wants an aquarium.
Can’t explain why.
Something about waves.
Some vision she had.
Her first kiss.
Billy, three years older.
He was 18, had a mustache.
It didn’t tickle.
She always felt landlocked.
Not quite pretty enough to be asked to the dance.
Not ugly enough to attract the mean girls.
Wore baggy clothes, covered herself like a bruise.
Failed math in 12th grade.
Almost missed graduation.
Stuffed a quarter ounce in her bra

when Billy took her to see Van Halen.
Billy so stoned he forgot where he was.
I took her home.
Didn’t even try to hold her hand.
Said she looked like Chrissie Hynde.
I think she liked the comparison.
Gave me her number and a peck on the cheek.
Billy never called her again.
Someone said he joined the Navy.
Someone else said he moved to LA.
I’m afraid of water, barely learned to swim.
She wants an aquarium.
Wants to quit smoking.
To sit for hours in a movie theater.
Wants me to write her a poem.
To stop being the answer to her questions.
I tell her I’ll carry her in my back pocket.
Wrapped in cellophane.
I tell her she looks like Kim Addonizio.
I think she likes the comparison.

᠅

Alex Stolis has had poems published in numerous journals. His chapbook, Postcards from the Knife-Thrower's Wife, was released by Louisiana Literature Press in 2024, RIP Winston Smith from Alien Buddha Press 2024, and The Hum of Geometry; The Music of Spheres, 2024 by Bottlecap Press. He lives in Hudson Valley New York with his partner, poet Catherine Arra.

The Smile

 By Lynn White

᠅

The picture fell.
Unharmed
she still smiled back.

The glass had broken
but uncut
she still smiled back.

I replaced her back
in the frame
that buckles precariously now,

making her smile is a little lop-sided,
but then,
so is the Mona Lisa’s.

I think she likes the comparison
as unabashed
she still smiles back.

᠅

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She has been nominated for Pushcarts, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/