An Online Literary Journal for Poetry and Flash

Month: April 2025

Memory, a Satellite

Poetry by KB Ballentine

Oh, my grandmother’s hibiscus!
Her begonias were bright and beautiful,
but her hibiscus was magic. Sunbaked
and salt-sprayed, filaments and anthers
waving wild in Florida rain brewed an elixir
that made the hummingbirds chirp.
An instant brightness, that shocking red
(matching my skin one summer),
where bees hummed praises and nuzzled
into the honeyed hearts. Forget the oranges
bulging behind blossoms, hibiscus let me know
I was home—wherever I happened to be.


KB Ballentine’s latest collection All the Way Through was published in November 2024 from Sheila-Na-Gig Inc. Other books are published with Blue Light Press, Iris Press, Middle Creek Publishing, and Celtic Cat Publishing. Additional writing has been published in North Dakota Quarterly, Atlanta Review and Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal. Learn more at www.kbballentine.com.

Not Mary Oliver’s Linden

Poetry by Diane M. Williams

Mary Oliver drove through Linden,
Alabama, and wrote about hulking birds
of prey in a field outside of town.
I wonder what led her to that southern
town that I forsook years ago.
Now, years after her death,
it’s much too late to ask.

Yes, I remember black vultures
descending on rotting carcasses,
shiny summer grasses of field and roadside.
But my Linden, Alabama, is not
the detached visual image of Mary Oliver.

Girl, age twelve, brother and two sisters,
Damn Yankees from up north,
Dad trying to make a go
as a dairy farmer in the Alabama Black Belt,
Mom a hospital nurse.
We didn’t know to say yes ma’am no ma’am.

Summer whipped the sultry farmhouse,
tarantula mother birthed her babies on my bedroom wall,
black widows nested in abandoned buckets,
our home a tired reminder of neglect—
peeling paint and broken shutters,
our lawn a field of weeds,
Lombardy poplars loftily ringing the crescent driveway.

We sang wild dewberries into our pails
uncaring of copperheads and scorpions,
danced across meadows bringing cows in
for evening milking,
trudged gleefully two miles in sticky knee-high grass
brushing off ticks, sweat bees, grasshoppers
to the town swimming pool,
splashed away our poverty
with kids who didn’t know.

Girl, age twelve, I dreamed
the “Wayward Wind” with Gogi Grant
got kissed by a snot-nosed boy in a haystack
rocked with Elvis in the jailhouse on late-night radio
wept finding my dog dead in a roadside ditch
practiced French words with my Jersey heifer.

Passing through Linden, Mary did not know
that in that field where vultures
hovered and gorged themselves
lay the remains of my childhood,
the tattered fantasies
and memories of Girl, age twelve.

The forlorn house and tumble-down barn
long ago torn from the landscape,
now the ghosts of the Lombardy poplars
sing to the restless wind.


Diane M. Williams taught college French for many years, then joined the creative team at UT Knoxville as an editorial manager. Her poetry has appeared in One Trick Pony, Bluestem Magazine, Monterey Poetry Review, Black Moon Magazine, and The Avocet. Her poetry collection, Night in the Garden, appeared in 2020.

At the Dive Bar After Thanksgiving

Nonfiction by Olivia McGill

We were at a bar with my partner Sam’s friends. Cal showed up late in the night. I hadn’t seen him in a while but heard how things were going for him. His wife kicked him out for the sake of their seven-year-old daughter. He was crashing at his woodshop.

His dark hair was grown out and slicked back. He wore his normal outfit, basically an Ace Ventura getup with a Hawaiian shirt and teal pants. With his good looks, it used to seem quirky, almost cool. But now, the overall effect was nauseating. He was no longer parodying a slimeball. He was one. His shirt was unbuttoned halfway down his chest, and his normally tan, toned skin looked clammy.

Of course, the presence in people’s eyes is different when they’re on drugs. Distant. Wandering. But it was more than that. His eyes looked wider, slyer, his eyebrows more arched. I wasn’t shaken, per se, but had that subtle feeling that his arrival was doing something to my brain, somewhere deep in the engine room, where I couldn’t quite reach it.

“I like your sweater,” he said as he pulled at someone’s sleeve. “I love your hair,” he told me, his too-close gaze hooking into me as I tried to smile and turn away at the same time.

I tracked his movements as he hovered around the bar, bouncing from one group to the next, his unwantedness not registering for him. He slunk into the booth behind ours, and I tried to carry on a conversation but felt his presence above my head. He spilled a stranger’s drink. Then he slowly climbed over the booth wall, pried Sam and me apart, and sat in between us, his intense eye contact ping-ponging back and forth.

“Where’s your girlfriend?” Sam asked. Cal had a new girlfriend who looked like his wife but who was annoying. “She’s in Mass…,” Cal said wistfully, reminding me of my father. The self-pitying tone of the addict during the holidays. Just a few days before, my dad sent me a text asking, “what u doin for thanksgiving.” I knew it meant all his buddies were with their families.

I wanted to ask Cal about his daughter but didn’t, unsure of what it might trigger in him. I didn’t know how often he saw her. And anyway, it was clear that he was not identifying as a father at that moment. It was like I was watching a different angle of my dad’s life, the one where he parties and doesn’t think about his children. I was in the role of the friend instead of the daughter. It wasn’t happening to me. It was happening to another little girl. I thought of who the friends might have been. The ones who thought of me as they watched my dad stumble and wander.

I’ve been through a lot of therapy. Sam told me a while back that Cal’s wife is in AlAnon. That’s the one where you know an alcoholic or addict. I’m in the one for people who were raised by them. I wonder if their little girl will end up in the same program, working to undo all the damage being inflicted on her despite the efforts of the single mother.

The funny thing about having an addict for a father is you don’t usually have a clear picture of what you missed out on. And when you see it, fathers in white collars coming home at the same time every day, taking their girls on outings, talking with them lucidly, you think it’s “icky.” It’s “too tender.”

And then. After you’ve accepted what happened to you and grieved what you missed out on. After you’ve learned to stop expecting anything from him. After you’ve found your own source of stability, joy, and love and have seen a glimpse of who you are despite him. After all that, you end up at a bar and a friend shows up and it’s him. It’s your father, twenty-five years ago, woodshop and all. Just switch out the Hawaiian shirt for a cowboy hat.

And part of you can’t help but think, “Stop everything. We can’t let this happen again. There must be something we can do.” But everyone just shakes their heads and exchanges looks. And the daughter remains unmentioned. And you keep thinking, “Something should come of this.” And nothing does.


Olivia McGill is from Hell’s Kitchen and lives in Brooklyn. She writes for a consulting firm and volunteers with Showing Up for Racial Justice. You can read her work in Danse Macabre, Ant vs. Whale, and The Adult Children of Alcoholics blog. She is working on a book-length memoir.

Midnight Music

Poetry by Tracy Duffy

Like a…rat-a-tap-tap
from the drummers—drum
goes the night-time, in the forest
like the crickets—hum
Chiming in, the hooting
of the owl at night

set the tempo, set the tempo
to the music, midnight

Neon shiny stars
grant the stage, its light
the rattle—ssh, – rattle – ssh
of a sliding snake
and the dripdrop, dripdrop
of fish into the lake

set the tempo, set the tempo
like the drummers-drum
Hum…hum…hoo
Ssh…ssh…shey
Drip…drop…doo
Tempo Set


Tracy Duffy writes poetry while taking a gap year from a lifetime of work in medical cosmetology. Earned BS in Organizational Management while raising a family. Published in Bacopa, Writers Alliance Gainesville; P’AN KU, BCC Student Literary/Arts Magazine; Tiny Seed Literary Journal; Open Door Magazine Labyrinth; Anti-Herion Chic; Passage: The River.

The Sound of the Rain

Poetry by Steven Deutsch

My grandmother liked nothing
better than to walk in the rain.
On days when most were calculating
how best to stay dry while getting from A to B
she would don her old gray raincoat
and even older brown umbrella
and walk a few miles down Church Avenue
past a hundred store fronts
to nowhere in particular.

She never wore a watch
and I often wondered
how she knew to turn back
or if she always would.
It would not have been that hard,
it seemed to me,
to find a better place to live.
I watched for her,
as if the watching were a magnet
to draw her back home.

I only walked with her once.
At first, I blabbered and struggled
to keep up—my stride
half of hers.
But I soon settled, realizing
the sound of the rain
didn’t need the accompaniment of my voice.
That very wet March Day
she took me into one of the corner candy stores
that dotted our path
for a burger and vanilla malt.
Grandma had tea with milk and sugar.
The trip back was half as long
and twice as quiet—in the best way
I could imagine.


Steve Deutsch is editor of Centered Magazine. He has published six poetry books of which Brooklyn was awarded the Sinclair poetry prize by Evening Street Press. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and the Best of the Net.

Yokwe!

Nonfiction by Linda Petrucelli

I spot my friend Malia among a squadron of women wearing flowery muumuus, shooing flies off a table laden with breadfruit. She’s invited me to the groundbreaking for a Marshallese community center and my husband Gary and I have just arrived at their out-of-the-way patch of volcanic real estate. I had helped Malia find support to take over the property and I anticipate being welcomed as a VIP, Pacific Islander style.

When she sees me, she waves.

“Yokwe, Leenda!” She is small-boned, with hair to her waist, a Polynesian Munchkin.

Malia is part of an exodus from the Marshall Islands who have migrated to Hawaii, refugees of rising sea levels and the health impacts of US nuclear testing. “Yokwe, Malia!” I repeat, recognizing the greeting, but not exactly sure what it means. We meet under a popup canopy flying turquoise, white and orange balloons, the colors of the Marshallese flag.

Gary, who has accompanied me for moral support and chauffeur services, is quickly dispatched to the crowd of men setting up folding chairs. Then Malia shows me a bolt of cloth which she cradles like a baby.

“Put this on now.”

“Excuse me?” I take a step back.

“You put this on now.” She presents the folded fabric with two hands. “Marshallese dress. Beautiful.”

Even after twenty years, I’ve never felt comfortable wearing the flamboyant frocks of my adopted home. My standard dress code is a black tee and jeans. But there is no escaping my plight. To refuse this gift would be insulting, so I relinquish the last shred of my autonomy, step inside a makeshift lean-to where the bathroom is located, and lock the door behind me.

Wild panic surges and my tee sticks to my skin like damp carbon paper. I unfold the dress and hold it up against my body. The Mother Hubbard, hand-stitched in the vibrant colors of their flag, appears to be an XS, suitable for a woman my size twenty-five pounds ago.

I strip down to my sports bra and briefs, then poke my head into the neck opening, sans hook and eye, snap, or even a button, and pull down as hard as I can. The seam stretches a little and my skull pops through, turning my hair into a fright wig and scraping my prominent, non-Marshallese nose.

Right around this time, Gary has graduated from folding chairs and is now in charge of grilling the ribs which, for a vegetarian, is a challenge.

With the dress bunched around my neck, I bend over to locate the sleeves. I squeeze my limbs into the tight pathways, two freighters navigating the Suez Canal, and immediately cut off the blood supply to my arms. If I was reasonably assured that I could get my perspiring body out of the dress, I would have called it quits and returned the gift with profuse apologies. But the patriotic straitjacket leaves me no choice, and I begin tugging the fabric hipwards.

When I strain the cloth over my haole butt, the material is so taut, I have to cross one thigh over the other to inch it down. What should be a flowing shift, on me, has become a slightly obscene, skin-tight shroud. I look like a Beluga whale wearing teal and tangerine.

Gary, now concerned by my absence, texts me: They want me to sing with them. Where R U? But the message never arrives. No cell service.

When I finally emerge, I mince my way into the daylight, hoping I will be able to breathe soon. Applause greets me and a cadre of Marshallese women appear to salute the flag I’m wearing. Malia whispers, beautiful, and adorns my forehead with a cowrie shell head lei that, due to my cramped posture, drunkenly tilts toward my nose.

I wish I was able to get into the spirit of things and enjoy myself. But I nearly fell over when I posed for photographs shoveling ceremonial soil, the garment interfering with my balance. And then there was the problem of sitting down and attempting to consume any quantity of food or drink, especially liquids. I’m sorry not to have fully appreciated the Marshallese haunting, acapella voices, their massive hospitality and joy. But I find joviality difficult when I wear a tourniquet from the neck down.

I sit next to Malia under the shade of a monkeypod tree and lean against her shoulder. “Remind me what Yokwe means.”

“You are a rainbow.”

Later, as we’re about to drive home my husband tells me, “Hey—nice dress!” I lower my rear end onto the car seat, swing my hobbled legs inside, and reach for the seatbelt. A rip sounds from under my right armpit. He asks me, “Don’t you want to change first?”

Finally, Gary puts the key in the ignition and the motor roars to life. He looks over at me, grins, and says, “Yokwe!”

“Shut up and drive,” I tell him. “I’m so over the rainbow.”


Linda Petrucelli’s essays have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her work has appeared in Parhelion, Barren, and Permafrost, among others. She’s lived in Hawaii for the last twenty years. Read more at: https://lindapetrucelli.com

Baby Mama in Autumn

Poetry by Laurie Didesch

For my Mom

The radiant light intensifies the blue sky. It filters
down from on high. Baby Mama and I are walking
through the kaleidoscope of colors. Baby Mama

stops awestruck. With hand to mouth, she points
to a fiery maple tree and a sunburst locust with
golden leaves. Excited, she declares, I’ve never

seen such beauty. What has happened to these
trees?
The day is bright and clear in contrast to
her memory. But this moment offers a glimmer

of hope that all is not lost. Baby Mama can still
experience wonder—the pure simple joy of a
child in a moment of discovery. She reminds

me that regardless of our plight, we can still
celebrate life. We rarely stop to notice the new
in every moment. She sends a message despite

her dementia. We need only look with fresh
eyes to experience delight. However, I still
mourn her illness and it’s devastating effects.

Baby Mama and I head home. We both have
a skip in our steps knowing that the mist some
times lifts and gives us a glimpse of eternity.


Laurie Didesch has poetry appearing or forthcoming in Ibbetson Street, The Comstock Review, The MacGuffin, California Quarterly, Third Wednesday, Young Ravens Literary Review, The Ravens Perch, and Stone Poetry Quarterly, among others.

The Basket

Nonfiction by Bonnie Demerjian

has followed you everywhere, like a faithful dog, overfilled with things too useful to be filed where, perhaps, they’ll be forgotten, or thrown away to later regret. There are other things, fit for no category or home. Here is a slip of paper with the name of the plumber who’s not in the phone book. Who is anymore? The postal tracking slip for that package to your sister. You learned the hard way about keeping these. Raffle tickets bought in hope, expired, and baggage tags that traveled to La Paz one spring and Florence one fall. User’s manuals which will surely be consulted since everything breaks down sometime. There are vaccination records for cats and dogs long gone. You have their photos, but it’s so heartless to throw away these chronicles of their bodily care. Where else to keep her crayon drawing of a hummingbird once it’s migrated from the refrigerator door? At the bottom, a jumble of business cards for window glass, car repair, and a name tag on a string from your high school reunion. On it, a photo, you at seventeen to remind you of who you were. Are? Then, a penny, a bullet, and three keys to forgotten doors. It’s not big enough to contain a whole life, but what vessel could?


Bonnie Demerjian writes from her island home in Southeast Alaska in the Tongass National Forest on the land of the Lingit Aaní, a place that continually nourishes her writing. Her poetry has appeared in Tidal Echoes, Alaska Women Speak, Pure Slush, and Blue Heron Review, among others. Read some of her earlier work on The Bluebird Word, to include her flash nonfiction essay Three Scenes in Sunlight.

Sestina for a Beloved Son

Poetry by Alice Collinsworth

I start the journey to see him before dawn, a long stretch
of interstate highways and two-lane roads to follow,
traveling alone a long distance with only the voice
of my mapping app for company. I turn
on the radio for a while, looking for distraction, but time
passes slowly nonetheless. I turn it off again. Straight

ahead is the entrance ramp to I-35. “Drive straight
for 148 miles,” Google instructs me. This stretch
is well known, comfortable, traveled many times
to class reunions or family gatherings in Kansas. “Follow
the yellow brick road,” as they say there. I turn
my mind to autopilot and talk to myself, my voice

rising above the hum of the tires; the only voice
answering is the one in my head (not always on straight,
I admit, muddling conversations). I can turn
that inner voice off sometimes, but not today. It’s a stretch
to engage with it, honestly, but we reminisce together. I follow
a red Peterbilt to Wichita, making good time.

From there it’s a less-familiar route, traveled only a few times,
northeast to Kansas City to see my son. His voice
on the phone had sounded so earnest, beseeching – so I follow
the compass of my heart, though our relationship was never straight-
forward. There were years we barely spoke, long stretches
of distance and silence. He has reached out now, so it’s my turn

to make the effort, to reach back. We had issues, but he’s turned
out so very well, and I yearn to be there now. This time
I’m determined to connect, to build that bridge. I stop to stretch
my legs and buy coffee at a truck stop, where the cashier’s voice
reminds me of my own late mother – a strait-
laced woman if there ever was one, who followed

her Bible’s rules doggedly. One of the rare, true followers
of Christ, she called herself. “You must turn
from your evil ways,” she would admonish my son. “Strait
and narrow is the gate, you know.” She railed at him so many times
that we stopped going to her, stopped calling. I don’t want my own voice
to sound like hers. Love needs to bend, to expand, to stretch

and embrace. I follow the guidance of the GPS and not my mom this time,
turning onto the last highway that leads to the voice of my dear son,
heading straight to him, stretching out my arms.


Alice Collinsworth worked in journalism, writing and media relations during her career and is now happily retired with her cat, Cookie, to keep her company. Her poems and stories have appeared in several online journals and local collections. She has won numerous awards in regional contests. She lives in Oklahoma.

Good Night, Jasper

Poetry by Brian Christopher Giddens

At the end of the day, I go downstairs to where Jasper lays sprawled across the cushions of the couch he claimed ten years ago when he first arrived, shaking with fear, pressing himself into a corner against the armrest. But now he knows the nighttime ritual: he stretches his legs, rolling to the side to expose his white-fur chest. I perch on the edge of the couch, rubbing his belly, his eyes open, still not fully trusting, my touch gentle, slow, as Jasper doesn’t like surprises. One final rub and I move to the kitchen, the treat jar. With the clang of the pottery lid, he rouses from his bed for three small biscuits, gently taken one by one from my fingers. I walk to the stairs, stop on the landing, turning back to see him standing near his bed, watching me. “Good night, Jasper, be a good boy,” I say. His deep brown eyes stare back, as if he’s saying the same thing to me, making sure I’m on my way, before returning to his couch and an undisturbed slumber.


Brian Christopher Giddens writes fiction and poetry from his home in Seattle, where he lives with his husband, and Jasper the dog. Brian’s writing has been featured in Sequestrum, Litro, Roi Faineant, Raven’s Perch, Hyacinth Review, Rue Scribe, Glimpse and Evening Street Review. His work can be found on https://www.brianchristophergiddens.com/

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