The Good Life Review
Her Shanghaied Sailors | Tarn Wilson
Tarn Wilson is the author of the books The Slow Farm, In Praise of Inadequate Gifts (Wandering Aengus Book Award), and 5-Minute Daily Writing Prompts. She is taking a break from prose and shamelessly flirting with poetry. She has recently been published in Only Poems, Pedestal, Potomac Review, Rattle, Sweet Lit, and more.
Valentine’s Night in County Clare
by Dan Thompson
Walking away from O’Connor’s pub
on a cold February night in Doolin,
each step further away from the music –
the same jigs and reels already here
two hundred years ago tonight
in this place of austere beauty,
the crashing Atlantic forever tackling
the rocks below the village –
it wasn’t the cold that froze me there
or anything else that might have prepared me
for what I saw when I looked up,
the crystals so thick against the black
I felt I could reach up and grab a handful
without any need for a getaway.
Transfixed,
I called out
Look up!
and just as I,
you stopped
in mid-stride.
A “Wow!” of wonder escaped your lips –
As Above, So Below –
your breath repeating a foot in front
the milky midnight way above.
There we stood,
Herd Boy and Weaving Maiden …
gazing forever across the sky
at all that is and might have been.
Dan Thompson (PhD) is a U.S. Army veteran and former editor-in-chief whose creative and critical work has appeared in a wide range of literary and scholarly journals, including, within the past year, issues of Feral, Canary, Eclectica, The Raven Review, Black Coffee Review, and Jerry Jazz Musician, among others. In an earlier life, he worked as a music producer for educational videos and as a DJ at a country music radio station.
8 Beautiful Things (About this Last Year) | Matt Mason
The way you used your car so little, the battery became a stone
that couldn’t spark even a speck in the overhead when
you opened the door, couldn’t make so much as a click
when you went to unlock the other doors with the switch.
The way you woke up
at 5am most mornings,
fully awake,
hoping there was good news.
The way, when the tree fell,
you cut a picnic
area from the emptiness
it cleared in your yard,
placed trunks and the widest
logs as stools, set yourself
there on summer afternoons
with a notebook and a cup of tea.
The way
cauliflower
is so surprising.
The way the dog smiles. The way he moves, room to room in the day:
to Sophia in Algebra class, to Lucia in Social Studies, you
in a flurry of emails and spreadsheets at the kitchen table,
your wife wrapping up teaching Composition to seventeen black squares on a computer screen; you, ma’am, he says knowingly, need to get outside,
take a walk.
The way of these cookies,
the recipe Lucia has been working
to get perfect.
The way there is at last a truce between days:
where Monday is essentially just one more Thursday,
Sunday another sort of Wednesday, the autonomy
of Tuesday’s declaration that it
is whatever it wishes to be.
The way of everything
you never imagined
you could miss
so much.
Matt Mason served as the Nebraska State Poet from 2019-2024 and has run poetry workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus for the U.S. State Department. His poetry has appeared in The New York Times, and Matt has received a Pushcart Prize as well as fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council. His work can be found in Rattle, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, and in hundreds of other publications. Mason’s 5th book, Rock Stars, was published by Button Poetry in 2023. Find more at: https://matt.midverse.com/
d’Arc | Rebecca Oliver
I’ve known who Joan was for as long as I can remember;
she is in the stitching of my mothers’ memories.
Joan loved the bells,
girls her age from Domremy
(now Domremy-la-Pucelle)
told the courts this.
Joan had custom clothes
(we think she loved her clothes)
with more than twice the usual cording
as a protection from her soldiers
and later from her guards.
Joan heard angels,
she heard Catherine and Margaret
(Katherine and Maggie were in my grade),
and they were her confidants
in courts that examined her privacy.
Joan died when she was 19, because she
liked the bells, because her friends were
Katie and Marge, because she liked
looking nice, because she cut her hair.
You can still visit Joan’s house.
It’s her world, and we’re all livin’ in it,
all us girls who stop, who tilt our faces to
the sun when we hear vespers.
Rebecca Oliver writes poems, teaches high school, and reads everything in Omaha. She also spends a lot of time begging students to join her school’s poetry club, which is tiny but mighty. She is still getting used to the Nebraska wind and trying to tame it into more poems alongside other untamable motifs like saints, teeth, and angles (yes, angles, not angels). She lives with her husband, Tony, and their orange-and-white cat, David Byrne.
wedged together we are flying | Reva Elise Johnson
There was someone on a plane when men
voted to let women vote. The spinning top
wants to twirl and fall, to lay its body down.
The spinning top is a tailbone
stuck upright, wrapped in broad swaths
of gluteus, squashed into the middle seat
of an airplane row that my favorite 9-year-old
would say smells exactly like a freezer full
of farts. We are wedged together; we are
flying. There was someone on a plane
when the divorce decree was stamped
and sealed. A muffled roaring, just a
white noise that swaddles me. The angles
of my joints are locking into place but
the neatest little protractors will measure
oscillation when I begin again to swing
through space. We are wedged together;
we are flying. There was someone on a plane
when the doctor pulled the twins
into this world. A metal seat frame shapes
my skeleton while the window shows me
glowing lights of unknown cities that perhaps
will be my home someday. We are wedged
together; we are flying. There was someone
on a plane when I realized I cannot reach
the beginning anymore, can no longer touch
my first impression, so wildly different
from how I see you now.
Reva Elise Johnson lives in northwestern Indiana, where the edges of Chicago meet the steel mills, Lake Michigan, and the Indiana Dunes. She is a writer and an engineer, exploring the interfaces between humans, nature, and technology through both her poetry and her research on prosthetics and assistive technology. Reva’s work integrates storytelling with engineering, appearing in publications ranging from Frontiers in Neuroscience to Moss Puppy Magazine. She teaches at Valparaiso University and serves as editor for the Assistive Technology journal.
The cure to all the maladies that ail us | Jonathan Greenhause
won’t be scooped from a ballot box, nor delivered on the wings
of a dodo. You may ask yourself
why seek what’s extinct? Why brush your filling-packed teeth
with Sriracha, then wonder why your gums
are a 5-alarm fire? Your skin’s a jellyfish armored
with translucence, the paleontology
of a fragile skeleton divined underneath. Your stapled stomach
aches for wide open spaces, but your hunger’s a mouse
embraced by the wrong side of a metal clasp,
your busted front door
draped by a For Sale sign & a rusted chain. Apache helicopters
lay waste to your neighbors hastily relabeled as terrorists,
a miracle of precise projectiles
erasing their presence. You’re aiming to recover secrets
scribbled upon mildewed index cards
in a desk drawer gifted to The Salvation Army;
but right now, thousands of miles away, someone sets it ablaze.
Jonathan Greenhause’s poetry collection, Cupping Our Palms (Meadowlark Press, 2022), won the 2022 Birdy Poetry Prize, and he was the winner of the 2025 Goldsmith Poetry Festival Competition and the 2024 Teignmouth Poetry Festival Open Competition. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins, Qu, Salamander, Slippery Elm, and subTerrain.
More People Die in the Winter | Caroline Sutphin
We’re huddled at the hilltop, defensive hunch against
January’s meander goodbye, still lingering in the doorway.
Each shiver reminds me of the run in my hose crackling
up my leg only just concealed by my skirt hem,
calling my hand like the tide to the shore with each
Please Rise and Please Be Seated, the anxious smoothing
to keep it hidden beneath black polyester. My gray gloves
bleed splotchy as I wipe my nose. Blue Ridge wind
rolls through my lungs and slashes my eyes for looking up
at the elder oak tree hanging over the grave.
And as its permanence arrests my gaze, holding me steady
like a single blade of grass coated in dawn frost,
the last dead leaf that held on through Thanksgiving
and Christmas and three snowfalls, snaps like a gunshot —
free on the cloud currents, raptured away to heaven
before I knew to miss it. My eyes drop in shame
for the great oak’s nakedness, for the spray of flowers
trembling on the coffin, for the elastic thread unravelled
up my thigh. Up here on the hill, all this flesh living and
dead is so, so terribly, exposed.
Caroline Sutphin is a poet currently living and writing in Boston. She grew up on a farm in Appalachia, and this experience informs much of her work. She received her MFA from Western Kentucky University and today works for a nonprofit while maintaining a YouTube channel (@CarolineSutphin) on all things literary. Her work has appeared in Prism Review, Rappahannock Review, Ponder Review, and Mount Hope, among other publications.
Callicarpa americana | Elizabeth Anguamea
The beautyberry’s fruit clings together
like a showy ball of cells. They leave
purple lacking, so bright their ripe bodies.
It is October, with highs in the nineties.
Everything sensible is dozing, deep in
summer dormancy, and I no longer feel
guilt for drinking my way through the
seasons end, cell-less womb yet empty
as the names I yearn to ascribe to you.
We watch military chinooks fly in asym-
metrical formation over the city, great
bodies slow as the bumblebees whose
lumbering grace at the yucca brings me
closest I’ve gotten to god in a while. We
sleep uncovered, ceiling fan ticks along.
You dream of flashes of light and I of buds
setting wild on the aster. An altogether
different sort of purple. Things will awaken
soon, life will climb up from her roots for
a final flourishing before toothed leaves
fall to the earth. Drupes will cling un-
abashed to beautyberry’s naked, arching
limbs. Chinooks will rumble languidly
over us at home while military aid rains
death on civilians abroad. Hurricanes
will tear inland as we choke down our
drought. It will be the hottest year on
record and I will be here, dormant as the
aster, trying to remember who we were
before they called us all purple.
Elizabeth Anguamea is a writer and educator born and based in Central Texas. She holds a B.A. in Anthropology and a Master of Education. She has translated two books of poetry from the Spanish, Jaguar Commissioner (Oralibrura, 2021) and Skin People (Gusanos de la Memoria, 2020). Her work has been previously published in The Hopper and Wild Roof Journal.
Routines | Rodrigo Toscano
Novella 14 | Rodrigo Toscano
The “good life” is Eudemonia. “Human flourishing”. Living a life that is deeply fulfilling, and true to your highest potential.
Rodrigo Toscano is the author of twelve books of poetry. His latest books are The Cut Point (Counterpath, 2023), The Charm & The Dread (Fence, 2022). Forthcoming is WHITMAN. CANNONBALL. PUEBLA (Omnidawn, 2025), a National Poetry Series finalist. His other books include, In Range, Explosion Rocks Springfield, Deck of Deeds, Collapsible Poetics Theater, To Leveling Swerve, Platform, Partisans, and The Disparities. His poetry has appeared in over 20 anthologies, including, Best American Poetry (2023, 2004), and Best American Experimental Poetry (BAX) His Collapsible Poetics Theater was a National Poetry Series selection. Toscano lives in New Orleans.
A brief Q&A with RT is available on The Buzz.
Low-key Midwest Girl Dad Vibes: My Wardrobe is Mostly Kohl’s Middle-Class Casual & My Skin Care Routine is $1.59 Men’s 2-in-1 Total Body Wash | Bob King
For Izzy
But once a month the soap is on sale for
a-buck-29 so I usually stock up in threes,
& only once it was Buy-One-Get-One
& yes, I still carry regrets that I didn’t
get more. When I think about it, my
college freshman & her friends use
low-key far too often & mostly incorrectly
because OMG, Tiffany, there’s nothing
low-key about having a drink thrown
right in your face. And Oh my god, Becky,
look at her butt has never bounced from
their boom boxes & that’s truly a low-key
tragedy. Most things are BOGO when you
stop & think about it. Nonbiodegradable
blue bags with every supermarket trip
& lingering regret is free with every pint
of Ben & Jerry’s. Cortisol with every cup
of coffee, which is weird because why
would you want to trigger a stress hormone
when you’re low-key trying to destress
from another restless night of sleep
spent overthinking all the things
you cannot control? Bro. That’s
a low-key bummer. With every
Amazon box that is set to arrive
on your front porch also arrives—
at no extra charge—anticipation.
Anticipation of, Did it come yet &
what’s the hold-up & wait this isn’t
the size or color or fit & I better low-key
hide this before a neighbor or loved-one
makes another comment about my
spending habits. Honey, I don’t think
the UPS man thinks about you, your
boxes, or what might be in your boxes
as much as you give him low-key credit for,
so that’s another part of the complex loyalty
rewards program, as if loyalty itself is ever
really rewarded in the noncommercial
sense. You really didn’t buy the house,
your bank did, & when you’re done paying
them back, they’ll pay their bank back, &
that bank will pay its bank, & eventually,
depending on your system of government
& afterlife, someone is paying, plastering
over, creating another layer for a future
archaeological excavation where a future
civilization is going to make wildly
complex & yet-also-incredibly-oversimplified
conclusions from inadequate evidence,
evidence that suggests cave art isn’t
cave art at all, but an early representation
of a stop sign, as in: Proceed no deeper
into the cavern because deeper is where
the bears sleep. Someone is paying
the piper & if not well then you’re gonna
have to hire that injury & malpractice
attorney with the billboards & commercials
all over town, because nothing says I’ll
make them pay like a baldpate & arched
eyebrow. Or as when that French philosopher
said, When you invent the ship, you also invent
the shipwreck; when you invent the plane
you also invent the plane crash; and when
you invent electricity, you invent electrocution.
Every technology carries its own negativity,
which is invented at the same time as technical
progress. Like when you bought the patriarchy,
you not only bought institutional misogyny,
but you also placed men in competition
with each other, perpetual cutthroats,
even as when a grandfather looked at
his adult grandson with an infant in his
arms, diaper bag slung over his shoulder,
drippy-nosed toddler hiding behind
his knee, & questioned what men had
become, just two generations removed
from what he thought stern reticence
could buy. Yes, when you save money
at one store, that enables you really
to splurge on things at other stores,
Girlmath you think, you think as you
cry, standing under the new Lowe’s
showerhead—maybe a Cure song
about boys not crying on the portable
speaker—a low-key power-washer,
epidermis-remover, an extravagance.
But, admittedly, this is only a low-key
understanding of how economics
or emotional intelligence might work.
+Inspired by Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher (2024), On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed (2021), “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-a-Lot (1992), Cave of Bones: A True Story of Discovery, Adventure, and Human Origins by Lee Berger & John Hawks (2023), & “Boys Don’t Cry” by the Cure (1979).
Bob King is a professor at Kent State University. His poetry collection And & And came out in August 2024. And/Or is forthcoming in September 2025. New work appears in Stanchion, CrayfishMag, Ink in Thirds, Anti-Heroin Chic, & Ink Sweat & Tears. He lives in Fairview Park, Ohio.