Category: poetry

The Weight of His Chair  |  Sam Aureli

The Weight of His Chair
I sit in his chair—
leather cracked, spine-sprung,
still warm with memory.
It tilts, slightly off-balance,
as if even now unsure
how to hold me.

Around me, the room spills over—
sermons stacked in leaning towers,
paperclips rusting in jam jars,
receipts from decades ago
filed by no logic I can decipher.

Drawers bristle with broken pens,
old prescriptions, notes to himself
written in a hand growing looser,
like thoughts slipping their leash.

He always seemed so certain—
a man of answers,
of polished shoes and pointed truths.
But here, the clutter speaks louder:
the chaos he never let show,
the secrets he buried
under layers of order.

I sift through it all—
not to bring him back,
but to see if there was ever
anything softer
beneath the storm.

But nothing holds.
His gospel dissolves into post-it notes
faded to blank.

Still, I stay seated,
letting the silence fill in
what he never said.
The chair groans beneath me—
not in protest,
but in memory.

About the Author:

Sam Aureli, originally from Italy and now based in Boston, is a design and construction professional working in real estate development. When he’s not immersed in concrete and steel, he writes poetry rooted in the elemental textures of the world. He came to poetry later in life as a refuge from the noise, a way to pause and listen more closely to what the world quietly offers. His poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The Atlanta Review, Sontag Mag, Humana Obscura, Prosetrics The Magazine, Stanchion Magazine, Crow & Cross Keys, among other literary journals.

Isaac Newton reorders the rainbow | Lucinda Trew

            ordering things comes naturally
in quantum physics, equations, quartets
and kitchen drawers – it’s a question of symmetry
and sequence, the frequency of waves, echo
of violin strings, whisper of bat wings

            the perception of what belongs where –
an arrowhead of geese, the nesting of spoons
and the pinhole in Newton’s window shade,
pitching a blade of blond light onto wall,
the ricochet of refraction

            through a prism of glass, a reckless rainbow
in need of sorting to curve chaos into order
like the musical scale, symphonically spliced
and quartered, square peg, round hole
and a second blue – indigo

            for Newton knew the mysticism
of music and mathematics, the alchemy of seven
seven notes and seven wonders, seven sacred
luminaries circling a single sun, a kaleidoscope
of reason, with indigo blue shoehorned in

            the color of dusk and dream
songbirds with sky wings, a half note for harmony
and making order of things

About the Author:

Lucinda Trew lives and writes in Union County, North Carolina. Her work has been published in Susurrus Magazine, Burningword Literary Journal, The North Carolina Literary Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, storySouth, and other journals and anthologies. She is Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and recipient of Boulevard Magazine’s 2023 Poetry Contest for Emerging Poets. Her chapbook “What Falls to Ground” is forthcoming from Charlotte Lit Press.

yes, she did | Ashlie Hyer

somewhere, there’s still a girl on her bike, going to the corner store. it’s a vape store now, but when she rides her bike it’s the corner store, a cramped old five-and-ten, and she’s just a kid with her curly hair and a little plaid dress and glasses too big for her face. her father has given her change from the chicken eggs she cleaned for him, and she has a plan. she parks her bike and buys a bag of potato chips. she gets back on, crosses down to main street, to the ice cream place. it’s a jumble of fenced-in water pumps now, but when she walks up it’s the ice cream place, pink and white. she buys a vanilla cone, and she dips her potato chips in it and eats them together with sticky fingers, perched on her bike and looking out over the river. at least i think she looks. she used to tell me but i can’t ask her for specifics anymore. but i know she’s there, waiting to grow up. waiting to take me there, too.

About the Author:

Ashlie Hyer is a writer from New Jersey, and, to the bafflement of all involved, still lives there. Besides writing, she enjoys cats, baking, and trying to fistfight the concept of time.

On This Hill | Lin Marshall Brummels

The Appy was from a herd
of sixty wild horses
from a western Nebraska ranch
Hoss bought when he
and the horses were young and he
fancied himself a horse trader.
It was all before Hoss decided
to go to graduate school
and fell in love with science,
became a teacher and researcher.
We had an older Appaloosa, with matching
spots, took on the new horse, named
him Junior. He was always wary of people,
dangerous to walk behind
threw my husband,
a pretty good horseman, a few times.
We talked it over with friends,
decided to send Junior to slaughter.
Neil, another darn good horseman
offered to take the outlaw,
save him from the abattoir.
He couldn’t tame
wild from Junior either,
called him Lucky-to-be-Alive Spot,
kept him as a companion for Ghost,
his dependable mare.
Time passed as it will,
My husband left, Neil lost his pasture,
Ghost turned up lame; Lucky Spot stayed cagey.
I started boarding horses,
Kept Ghost and Lucky Spot alive
with my old horses
for another fifteen years.
Ghost at thirty-five was the first to go.
Independent to the last,
Lucky Spot selected his resting place
in my undulating pasture, fell, telling me,
as only a horse can, I will die on this hill.

About the Author:

Lin Marshall Brummels earned a BS from the University of Nebraska and a MS from Syracuse University. She is a licensed Nebraska counselor. Brummels has published poems in Poet Lore, San Pedro River Review, Concho River Review, Oakwood, Plainsong, Nebraska Life, and others. Her chapbooks by Finishing Line Press are “Cottonwood Strong” and “Hard Times,” a 2016 Nebraska Book Award winner. Books: “A Quilted Landscape,” Scurfpea Publishing. Forthcoming, The Last Yellow Rose, Sandhills Press.

Florida Fairgrounds | Liz Robbins

I watch the miniature donkeys eat hay.
The air, smelling of warm sugar, laughter,

manure. Edges already being chewed away.
I’ve said yes too often, then no too much.

I’m tired of being good a hundred different
ways. The donkeys fill my heart with light,

something about their eyes, the innocent
blinking. What I’d give to think less. Here

the steel ride is painted blue over rust, its
many arms symbolic of family. If we still

have people to love, does it matter the ones
fled or stolen? Somewhere near the Wheel

of Fortune lies an idea of fairness undone
and what scares us, maybe the thought that

money has bought a person unseen, paid all
night to watch, work the safety controls.

About the Author:

Liz Robbins’ fourth full-length collection, Night Swimming, won the 2023 Cold Mountain Press Annual Book Contest. Her third collection, Freaked, won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award; her second collection, Play Button, won the Cider Press Review Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Adroit Journal, Kenyon Review, Missouri Review, Salt Hill, and wildness; she received a Pushcart nomination from Fugue. She works as an editor—and a poetry screener for Ploughshares.