Eric Auld

---

You

When it’s three o’clock in the morning
and the only two sounds I hear
are the cats kathumping across the carpet
and the occasional vrum of the boiler far below,

but then I get up from my lonely position
to turn down the heat (since it’s far too stuffy),
and the vruming eventually stops,
and the cats dramatically pause to stare in confusion,

and I slowly collapse back down to bed—
an Alaskan frontier of queen-sized mattress—

that’s one of a thousand points in the day 

when I’m thinking of you.

---

Eric K. Auld is a writer, musician, and performer in Upstate NY. His work has been featured in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Thought Catalog, Defenestration, and Grammar for Grown-ups. Follow him on Twitter: @erickauld.

Barbara Presnell

---

At the Butterfly Garden

We have just come through the double
entry doors when a scalloped lacewing
settles on my son’s shoulder and pauses,
his wings opening and closing like hello.
My son laughs, offers his thumb as a stoop,
but the lacewing lifts into the bougainvillea,
circles among pink blossoms, and is lost
in the ordinariness of this extraordinary enclosure.
I have come for the long weekend to the Florida home
my son shares with the woman he loves, their affection
made strong by distance and years and now
the constancy of every day. After a breakfast
of eggs and red oranges, we idle here among
teal and yellow finches, palm-sized hummingbirds
with beaks the size of fingers, lorikeets
that land on our arms and feed from our hands.
Tigers, blue morphos, zebras, daggerwings,
and swallowtails crisscross in soft threads.
We witness the emergence of a red piano key
from his crusty pupa, damp wings unfolding.
There is no hurry here in the gardens. Other families
visiting this tropical world weave easily along paths,
as amazed as we are by small miracles
of transformation. When I slow to study
the passion flowers, my son walks ahead,
his arm at her waist, sometimes brushing
a cheek, a misplaced hair, sometimes glancing 

back to where I follow at a distance.

---

Barbara Presnell’s poetry collection, Piece Work, won the 2006 Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s First Book Prize, was published by CSU in 2007, and adapted to stage by the Touring Theatre of North Carolina. She’s published poems in Connotation Press, storySouth, The Southern Review, Cimarron Review, Laurel Review, and other journals and anthologies.

Darren C. Demaree

---

Wednesday Morning #19

Muddy, my un-innocence
is without honey, without

a buzz. Sober, I claim
these sounds as nectar.

*

Wednesday Morning #20

I want the crumbling
meat of stars

to roll my hands in,
show you hope exists.

*

Wednesday Morning #21

How righteous
it feels
to linger
in the ecstatic?

More cloud
than lightning,
you should
endeavor.

---

Darren C. Demaree is the author of As We Refer to Our Bodies (8th House, 2013), Temporary Champions (Main Street Rag, 2014), and Not For Art For Prayer (8th House, 2015). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife and children.

Stella Vinitchi Radulescu

---

les noctambules

down down someone
in the grass
is playing the flute how sweet
your hands are touching mine

a creek behind the house follows the sounds

footsteps in the sky

how childish you among those giants
look back at me and smile

---

Stella Vinitchi Radulescu, Ph.D. in French Language & Literature, is the author of several collections of poetry published in the United States, Romania and France, including Insomnia in Flowers (2008), All Seeds & Blues (2011), I Was Afraid of Vowels (bilingual, Luke Hankins translator, 2011). She writes poetry in English, French and Romanian, and her poems have appeared in Laurel Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Wallace Stevens Journal, Seneca Review, Pleiades, Rhino, Louisville Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, among others, as well as in a variety of literary magazines in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Québec and Romania. She is a two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and the winner of several International Poetry Prizes awarded for her books published in France.

Kyle Solomon

---

Late August

The pink urban sound of cars
stall in rush-hour traffic.
The crickets don’t mind
they just tune-up and harmonize
with the humming-highways.

Those dark and quiet houses
across the street wait for a friend.
Miss Pot-of-Flowers,
Miss Peaceful-Summer,
What do people do when they close their doors at night?

These dwindling hours are white-bone church coffers
and the mourners of the sun stand in the dark
tossing coins at the sleepingcorpse of Lazareth.

---

Kyle Solomon is a proud Baltimorean and fresh graduate of Towson University. He was a former intern with the magazine and reading series Artichoke Haircut, and was also a recently featured poet at the Projection Speaker Series. He has previously published work by Indigo Rising Magazine, with forthcoming publication in the Free State Review.

Lisa Zimmerman

---

The Visiting Poet Said Words Forget How to Mean

The tangerine he set on the desk unpeels
its orange spool and that means the sun also

unpeeling each morning so I can wake up
and witness the yard take form—the way

empty birdfeeders swing on branches of trees
that forgot all winter how to unpeel into green,

how to unburden their emptiness.
All we need from the sweet tang of the orange fruit

is singing backwards now to a Florida grove
where blossoms breathe sea air from far away

and wait for the meaningful bees to arrive.

---

Lisa Zimmerman’s poetry and short stories have appeared in Natural Bridge, River Styx, Colorado Review, Poet Lore, Cave Wall, Redbook and other journals. She has published five poetry collections, most recently The Light at the Edge of Everything (Anhinga Press, 2008) and Snack Size: Poems (Mello Press, 2012). Her poems have been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. Lisa is an associate professor at the University of Northern Colorado and lives with her family in Fort Collins.

Van G. Garrett

---

Frankie vs. Lionel

My barber knows more about sports

Than most players.

Clicking stats and facts
Like a set of 1930’s clippers—accurate and loud,

He leans over my partially-shaven face.
Rose-colored glasses, he swears

He knows more about musicians
Than most.

Cutting comments about Lionel Richie
Making more money than Frankie Beverly.

Remarking about how Lionel has more money
Than he knows what to do with.

Frankie’s having more hits
Than most professional baseball teams.

I recline in the chair.
He reaches for this month’s issue of Jet.

Gripping the cover, pointing out
His chosen crooner’s hair is jet black at 60.

Curls, a mound underfoot
Like tree-fallen Spanish moss,

I can tell he wants to sing
A song.

But doesn’t want to sacrifice
The cut.

---

Van G. Garrett appreciates boxing, photographing hummingbirds in Tuscany, and the trumpeted sounds of Miles Davis. A watch aficionado, Van is the author of Songs in Blue Negritude (poetry), ZURI: Selected Love Songs (poetry), and The Iron Legs in the Trees (fiction). His updates and appearances can be found at vanggarrettpoet.com.