Page 5 of 71

I Want to Be Kinder to Myself

1 July 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Arvilla Fee

less like frozen snow that crunches underfoot
more like tender purple blooms of crocus,
their heady scent perfuming sun-warmed air

less like bare branches scraping windowpanes
more like robins hopping through new grass,
red chests puffed out with sacred song

less like blue lips, shivering in winter’s shadow
more like buds bursting green from apple trees,
a kaleidoscope of tulips reflected in my eyes

Arvilla Fee lives in Ohio, edits poetry for October Hill Magazine, and runs her own online magazine, Soul Poetry, Prose & Arts Magazine. She is a widely published author and has three published poetry books available on Amazon. For more info: https://www.soulpoetry7.com.

Wonder Makes Me More Alive

1 July 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Carolyn Chilton Casas

How is it possible two juvenile
cottontails know how to play leapfrog?
Through the window, spellbound
I watch as they run back and forth
across our lawn jumping over each other.

On the other side of the road, young alpacas
are sporting first haircuts.
Like wet cats, these animals
look so thin without their plush,
camel-colored and chocolate brown fur.
They remind me of the bendable Gumbys
we played with in grade school.

And this morning, after an early rain,
I witness vultures perched
on the tops of telephone poles
and eucalyptus trees in the distance,
wings spread wide to dry their feathers.

I can’t remember a time when my body
didn’t vibrate with curiosity.
As a young girl the woods called to me
and despite being cautioned,
I was lured to explore,
gathering birds’ nests and walnut-sized,
broken blue shells left by their babies,
digging up arrowheads,
discovering flowers I’d never before seen.

My heart holds a tenderness for living things.

To exist on this fascinating Earth
without a full measure
of reverence and wonder
would surely be a life half full.

Carolyn Chilton Casas’ poetry has appeared in journals such as Braided Way, Grateful Living, and One Earth Sangha and in anthologies including The Wonder of Small Things and Thin Spaces & Sacred Spaces. Her website is www.carolynchiltoncasas.com, and her newest book of poetry is Under the Same Sky.

More than pretty wings

1 July 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Mackenzie Kelley

Often,
when the wheel beneath me spins
faster than I can run,
I think of the butterflies, the monarchs.

Born of earth and leaves,
stayed roots and hollow stalks,
no one could guess a destiny bound in the sky.
how limbs of silk and thread, tiny masters of physics,
would some day
take reign of winds.

Sometimes,
collapsed on the floor,
a ragdoll of tired limbs,
I think of planes that master air,
fragile wings that keep company with hawks,
how millions of snowflakes together can bend trees.

of what we could learn from butterflies
if only we admired more
than pretty wings.

Mackenzie Kelley is a Virginia-based writer with a love of nature, animals, and all things wild. When not writing, Mackenzie is hiking with her dog, baking something chocolate, or cozying up with a novel.

What the Dog Knows

1 July 2026 / Editor

Nonfiction by Pippa Storey

It’s a sunny midsummer’s day in New Rochelle, on the edge of Long Island Sound. A couple stroll into Hudson Park just ahead of me, their lanky white mutt prancing excitedly around them. They climb the flank of a promontory overlooking the bay, then separate and stand a ball’s throw apart.

Slowly, teasingly, the man draws back his arm, watching the dog quiver with anticipation. He pitches toward the woman, and the dog catapults in her direction. She catches his shot neatly with both hands, barely a pawbeat before the dog reaches her. Then, grinning down fondly, she returns an underarm lob, and the dog bolts off again.

Back and forth they throw, the dog racing eagerly between them. But there’s no ball! It’s all a charade. Nevertheless, the dog is completely enthralled, ears flapping in the wind as he gallops across the grass.

Just a conditioned response, my mother will later surmise. But I can see—from the adoration in the dog’s upturned face, the frenzied wagging of his tail, his rapturous joy in their laughter—that he understands: the game was never about the ball.

Pippa Storey grew up in New Zealand, studied in France, and now lives near Hudson Park in New Rochelle, New York, where this interaction occurred. For more of her writing, digital artwork and videos, please visit pippastorey.com.

In the Same Foggy Outline

1 July 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Eugene O’Connor

Dawn broke not early
but as usual, though the sun
will not shine today.

Some things merely
are unwilling to shine,
to glow, to experience
anything but hoary light

filtered through clouds
over gray water. But enough
for Matisse to have worked
day after day for years

painting the blocky spires
of Notre Dame, so recognizable
in the same foggy outline, each
of a slightly different color

as the day’s light changed
or else the artist’s vision
seemed to fail, but for
an inner sight or just a glimmer

of something else before night fell
which would scarcely be relieved
by the feeble street lamps
to create a different light.

Eugene O’Connor lives with his husband in Columbus, Ohio. His poems have appeared in the arlington literary journal, The Avocet, The Comstock Review, Connecticut River Review, Mead, OASIS Journal, Poetry Pacific, Pudding Magazine, and elsewhere. His chapbook “Wanderer at the World’s Edge” was published by Blue Light Press in 2022.

metal ladder leaning against wall with black shadow — Photo by Lance Grandahl on Unsplash

Ladder-Day Saint

1 July 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Brian C. Billings

He climbs the rungs with confidence—
the left hand clutching a paint-can handle,
the right one reaching up clawed, tense—
when he suddenly steps free of a sandal

and drops toward the prickly aloe leaves
curling toothily like lounging crocodiles.
In the middle of the tumble, he receives
religion never realized in the aisles

of his worn and musty Sunday church.
He flings the can on high in offering.
The placid black inside ascends to search
for signs along the nearby wall and bring

to life two splashed doves that pour
hosannas on their anointed author.

Brian C. Billings is a professor of drama and English at Texas A&M University-Texarkana. His work has appeared in such journals as Ancient Paths, The Bluebird Word, Confrontation, Evening Street Review, Glacial Hills Review, and Poems and Plays. Publishers for his scripts include Eldridge Publishing and Heuer Publishing.

framed artwork and frames leaning against wall — Photo by Jackie Hope on Unsplash

What remains after the walls are stripped bare before the whole house is painted after thirty years

1 July 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Susan Hodara

The nails that held the artwork
The holes left by nails that once held different artwork
The chipped plaster wounds around nails improperly but relentlessly pounded in
The narrow strips of glue that ensured the tiny print wouldn’t fall off the wall that now won’t come off the wall themselves
The never-resealed square opening in the basement stairwell where my husband had to cut through to retrieve a dropped wire, forgotten until the vintage metal Ambre Solaire advertising sign was removed
The thumbtack in the window frame where I dangled a ceramic angel

The cracks that slash from floor to ceiling
The crumbling plaster that has broken through the paint on the lower corners of so many windows
The yellow brush-stroked circle with yellow rays that my then-teenaged daughter painted up near her ceiling
The shard of masking tape from an unframed poster replaced long ago by something framed
The flaking paint everywhere

The smudges of dirt from this bump or that, a box rubbing, a suitcase banging
The black scrapes made by straightening the corners of canvases, a little up on the right, now down to the left
The stinkbugs that congregated, then died, along the top edge of the window in our bedroom
The phone jacks emitting wires that no longer lead anywhere
The dust that clings to the backs of bookshelves and paintings and dressers and furs the walls and moldings behind them, like dirty gray clouds

Susan Hodara is a memoirist, journalist, and teacher. Her work has been published in The New York Times and assorted literary journals. She has taught memoir writing for nearly two decades. She is co-author of Still Here Thinking of You: A Second Chance With Our Mothers (Big Table Publishing, 2013). Read more at susanhodara.com.

Tourbillion

28 June 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Carole Greenfield

And didn’t we spark, didn’t we spin in our different skies,
the first time we unearthed veins of gold and silver threading
the lines between us?

Didn’t we emit quantities of white light, dazzled the darkness,
and didn’t your laugh snake itself round my heart,
a lovely writhing?

Didn’t we say to ourselves, This is the one I’ve been searching for,
my whole life long? And didn’t I try not to listen to the voices
telling me,

This is the serpent in the garden,
this is the key to the puzzle,
the end to my peace,

the reason why I will never
know Heaven again?

[Author’s note: Tourbillion, another name for a serpent, is also a type of star that spins in the sky and gives off large quantities of gold, silver, or white light.]

Carole Greenfield grew up in Colombia and lives in New England, where she teaches multilingual learners at a public elementary school. Her work has appeared in Stone Poetry Quarterly, Sky Island Journal, The Plentitudes and other places. Her debut collection, Weathering Agents, was released by Beltway Editions.

Make a U-Turn

25 June 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Diana Raab

The morning’s alarm sounds,
your copper-colored poodle scratches
on glass door—
time for his morning pee.

With phone in pocket,
you sprint to kitchen,
a voice says, “make a U-turn.”

You giggle and wonder
if your phone spouts nonsense
or your universe messages.

You press your brain
for answers and can’t think
how you would
have done anything differently.

You step onto the past’s path,
think about when you rolled out
of your adolescent bed at thirteen,
face covered with pimples,
not a dime to your name
and how you stole a skirt from Bloomingdales.

You ponder Thoreau’s words
that to regret deeply is to live afresh.
You wonder how many
have regrets and want to start over,
like your 95-year-old mother
who hopes staying alive
will give her another chance
to erase mistakes.

The doorbell chimes.
It’s a reminder
to begin your day.

Diana Raab, MFA, PhD, is a memoirist, poet, workshop leader, thought-leader and award-winning author of 13 books and editor of three anthologies. Raab writes for Psychology Today, The Good Men Project, Sixty and Me, Medium, and is a guest writer for many others. Read more at dianaraab.com.

Sunflowers

22 June 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Natasha Abell-Cwietkow

The thing about the sunflowers
Sat on the shelf, the ones that gaze at the street
From their tall pink glass house,
When they start to wilt and they start to fade
They will still be sunflowers though they may not be the same.
They will still be yellow and still called the same name.
The thing about the sunflowers
Sat on the shelf, wilting and wanting
From their tall pink glass house,
When petals are falling from minutes to hours
They may not be living but they are still
Flowers.
They may not be mine, but they were once ours.

Natasha Abell-Cwietkow is a poet and self-acclaimed adjective lover from a rural town in England. Her work explores love, grief, loss, and the ways we endure and change through life. She writes openly and honestly, showing little restraint with raw emotion, wearing her heart on her sleeve.

The Bluebird Word

Page 5 of 71

I Want to Be Kinder to Myself

Wonder Makes Me More Alive

More than pretty wings

What the Dog Knows

In the Same Foggy Outline

Ladder-Day Saint

What remains after the walls are stripped bare before the whole house is painted after thirty years

Tourbillion

Make a U-Turn

Sunflowers

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories