Two Poems by Will Neuenfeldt

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Content warning: suicide and death

“Relocation”

I prefer to say

he took his own life.

 

To where exactly?

I like to think either

 

Fourth of July weekend

on Gull Lake or

 

the bachelor party trip

to Denver where

he enjoys restaurants

we didn’t have time for

 

and hikes those

Rainbow Mountains

 

we admired

yet never had time to climb.

 

Better yet,

he moved there for work,

 

growing old with kids

alongside the Rockies.

 

He would come back

on Christmas but only

 

to visit family because

he should be with them,

 

not alone in a pine box.


 

“St. Thomas on the Pines Cemetery”

I walk around the locked gate onto wet grass

in search of his face on headstones,

following bumblebees to fresh bouquets

but even they don’t have his name.

I text friends for directions, only mosquitos buzz by,

as gnats dance in light between oak trees

and ants read brass plates one letter at a time.

Before any local calls me out for trespassing,

I pace back to the lone car in the parking lot

with tennis shoe prints not far behind,

scratching red notifications I can’t answer back.

 

Will Neuenfeldt studied English at Gustavus Adolphus College and his poems are published in Capsule Stories, Months to Years, and Red Flag Poetry. He lives in Cottage Grove, MN, home of the dude who played Steven Stifler in those American Pie movies and a house Teddy Roosevelt slept in.

"Flower Trees from Cherry Hill" by Dominic Dimapilis

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The calm early-August breeze made its way through the screen windows of my Nanay’s deck as we sat on her swing admiring the crape myrtles in her backyard. We sat directly in front of a big, rich flower tree with bubblegum-pink blossoms. To its right was a slightly smaller one with bone-white blossoms and to the left, a much smaller one with blossoms of red. They were beautiful. The trees rustled in the weak wind, accompanied by the chitter-chatter of squirrels and songbirds. The swing creaked softly as we rocked back and forth.

“Nanay is the only one in the neighborhood with flower trees in her backyard.” She always referred to herself in third person.

“They’re so beautiful, Nanay. How come none of the neighbors have any?”

A smile grew on her face. “Tatay brought them here when we moved from Cherry Hill. They were still so small.”

I smiled.

“He built the fence too. And the deck. And the shed”

My Tatay passed away nearly a decade ago. 

“He sure took good care of you huh, Nanay?”

“Oh yes honey, Tatay took such good care of Nanay.”

“He loved you so much, Nanay.”

She didn’t respond, but nostalgia glowed in her eyes. The birds continued chirping and leaves rustled. A beetle droned by. The crisp afternoon wind was refreshing against our skin. I delicately put my hand over hers. It felt like latex over bone.

She looked at me with surprised delight. “Oh, hi Dominic!”

“Hi, Nanay! It’s so nice out here, huh?”

She kept smiling. “Nanay is the only one with flower trees in her backyard.”

“Which one is your favorite, Nanay?”

“The pink one. Tatay brought that one here when we moved from Cherry Hill. The white one, too.”

I forced a smile. “What about the red one?”

“Tatay’s boss gave us the red one. We planted all the trees ourselves when we moved here”

“Really?”

“Yeah! And he built all of this – the fence and the deck and the shed.”

“Wow, he really took good care of you, huh Nanay?”

“Oh, he took such good care of Nanay.”

The leaves still rustled. The songbirds still twittered. The deck swing creaked. A dove cooed. Her hand still in mine, I rubbed a thumb across her hand. Her skin moved in a way I feared would rip. She looked at me and smiled.

“Nanay is the only one with flower trees in her backyard.”

“They’re beautiful, Nanay.”

“They’re so big now. Tatay brought them over from Cherry Hill when they were still small.”

“Really? Which one’s your favorite?”

“The pink one. It was the smallest when we planted it, but now it's the biggest.”

Golden sunspots began glowing through the treetops. The wind stopped. Flecks of dust floated in suspense in the rays.

“Do you want to go inside, Nanay? The sun is in your face.”

“It's okay honey. I like to be out here.”

She sat quietly in the warm sun and closed her eyes.

 

Dominic Dimapilis is a writer and aspiring memoirist from Murrieta, California. He is currently attending his senior year at San Jose State University where he is majoring in creative writing and minoring in psychology. He intends to pursue his MFA at San Jose State specializing in creative nonfiction with a secondary in poetry. He focuses on essays that traverse the psychological aspects of the human condition and how the world around us molds our psyches. He has work forthcoming in The Oakland Arts Review.

"When You Are Cold, Take a Bath" by Gabriela Záborszky

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When you're cold, 

take a bath.

Let the white foam cover the dirt 

left behind your fingernails from yesterday.

 

The bare truth is always harder, 

but hot water can fool the pain.

Pour yourself some wine, 

the cheap stuff that tastes like ashes.

Leave the empty bottle by the door, 

where it will mix with the ash from your cigarettes.

 

Turn on the radio. 

Something between jazz and crying. 

Pleasantly shitty, like the memory of someone.., 

who broke your ribs laughing

and then disappeared. 

 

You sit in the water, 

that's cooling down so fast

that your body can't even warm it up. 

You close your eyes, 

wondering if someone is going to stroke you,

or at least rinse you off, 

as the whole tub turns into a river of time.

 

Gabriela Záborszky, born in Košice on September 9, 1984, is a writer and poet. She is the author of poems that focus on the unique perspective of a woman and a mother. Her work comes from a deep understanding and empathy for the life experiences of women and mothers. Through her poems she is able to express the joy, love, fears and challenges associated with motherhood and women's lives. Gabriela Záborszky is the voice of the female experience, shedding light on various aspects of motherhood and female identity through the beauty of poetry.

"Death" by Mary Alice Holmes

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I practice dying when I can
I let myself die a bit when a show ends
I've let food die on the counter
I've let whole days die around me while I laid in bed
I let my potted plants die


When my twin died,
I let my plans for the future die with her


I've let all the leaves on trees die
In fact
In the winter
I've watched everything die
And done nothing

 

Mary Alice Holmes was born and raised in Columbus Ohio. She attended The Ohio State University where she studied philosophy. She moved to Madison Wisconsin to pursue a career in hospital IT. She writes poetry primarily on the topics of grief, death, mental health, and the natural world. In addition to poetry, she does a variety of art including glass mosaics and doodling mini-comics. She lives with her partner Alex and their dog Winnie.

"The Well" by Elan Maier

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The moment they let me walk the farm alone
I screamed it in the well.
I had a dog then, a long brown haired dog, who
brought mud through the foyer and sunroom and den.
On summer mornings we’d walk with him, Barky.
I could kick pebbles with my hard and tough barefeet
as the sun rose over the tufts of grandmother elk and
maple, announcing the day on my forehead.
Barky’s nose in the rivulets, the smell of drying fruit
through that honeyed monthlessness, yearlessness, breath.
Unlamenting, without compare, away from the alley
through which I now side-step, wedged between back then
and maybe later.


We’d run to the well after tumblers of juice
drained to drops except for the pulp, specks
instabaked to the plastic pink silos, the eastborne
summer sun torilla’d through the carrot curtains.
Remember when Javi broke his beaver tooth on the
stone wall of the well? Could you believe it? The
first time any of us ever tripped in our lives
thwack
just like that, perfect. Blood through too many fingers
as he howled the whole way home. How they sat us
on the checkered sofa which used to fit all five
and said “no more— no more races— couldn’t we see—
trying to get yourselves killed?” But, ha, there we were
sprinting like always, Javi smiling through his swollen lip.


When I could rent a car, years later,
I drove out to the well.
My hope: smudges of farm dirt on the linen of a suit
I no longer wanted. Setting eyes on the spread of pink house
I’d hear the faraway bell of voices now gone or changed.
In the clean cabin of the car along that ghostly road
I steeled myself to see condos or commercial limbs
or an expanse of faceless industry where the well once stood.
There’d be no more house or back shed or rolling rugs of crop;
cabbage and grape, cherry and lime.
But I needn’t have tried, for I couldn’t find
the farm at all. I’d forgotten the names. I was like
the black birds swimming above, circling nothing,
knowing it lay around the corner but never finding it there,
as the minutes clicked and gas eeked towards empty.

 

Though Elan Maier hails from the mean streets of Silicon Valley, he currently lives in New York City. His writing has been published in the Appalachian Review, Darling Records, and BoomPowSplat. He earned his masters in creative writing from Oxford University and his first novel was a finalist for the Screencraft Cinematic Book competition.

"Killdeer" by Robert Wilson

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Two killdeer nest on the river stones circling a rusty storm drain. She flattens her wings and
head as I walk by as if she were ashamed of living in poverty at the bottom of a hill. Her mate
comes close and flashes his orange tail feathers, then rows away, a broken oar hanging over the
gunnel of his body, tempting me to follow. Both birds wear black collars above their tan and
white bodies, and from the summer solstice until Ashura take turns nesting or pretending at
broken bones. Somewhere from the trail that lifts to the summit I hear a voice say, “I can’t love
you the way you need to be loved.” The words drop clearly in my direction like gravity’s ashes
telling me I am inadequate and at fault for being alone.

In four weeks, four eggs will awaken and stones will appear to shed their skins. When the chicks hatch, the parents remove the shells far from the birthing site. Killdeer are named after their two note trill, a treaty signed with deceit to keep their little ones safe. Lavender, which is a spring bloom, grows wild along the trail that lifts to the summit of the hill near the nest. Each afternoon I like to walk to the top and break open fallow ends, surprised each time that I can still smell purple even while I am out of breath.

 

Robert Wilson is a writer whose poems have most recently appeared in Welter and SoFLoPoJo. His poem Dolphin Tour was nominated for Best of the Net in 2023 and his poem Spring Tide was the 2024 winner of the Water to Words contest sponsored by the Seneca (New York) Park Zoo Society. He lives beside the ocean in Cape Haze, Florida.

"Margaret" by Robert Wilson

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I wait in the pickup/drop off area listening for the warning bell from the South Shore Limited
from Chicago. Small birds the color of clouds balance on the rails, rust collecting on their toes,
three pointing forward, one pointing back. The birds startle as the train floats to a stop like a
funeral procession for momentum, then commuters, scholarship Catholics, and my daughter,
descend. She carries a Fair Trade Bag and wears a pewter Christmas necklace made of two
crossed swords, and sat facing the wrong way so all she could see was the past. My mother died
three late nights and one dawn after my daughter was born. They are both named—one, then the
next—Margaret. A woman of that same name lived inside a dragon seven hundred years ago and became one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. Most railroad crossings are uncontrolled, a matter of chance for all who pass. We should be grateful to have a limited body, like mine, like yours.

 

Robert Wilson is a writer whose poems have most recently appeared in Welter and SoFLoPoJo. His poem Dolphin Tour was nominated for Best of the Net in 2023 and his poem Spring Tide was the 2024 winner of the Water to Words contest sponsored by the Seneca (New York) Park Zoo Society. He lives beside the ocean in Cape Haze, Florida.

"Sarai" by Robert Wilson

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As we age, the language thief steals
our important words.
God is an important word.
So is Serophene, three rings
of nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen
supported by a carbon backbone
that creates underlying conditions
and risks of complications.

Tonight, the clouds are filled
with young rain wrapped in ice,
the desert soundscape moves between
the exchange surfaces inside and outside
your mind.
Your tongue rides high to find
the letter N.
The laughing thrush, the old world sparrows
form a bursting star pattern against
the permeable sky.

 

Robert Wilson is a writer whose poems have most recently appeared in Welter and SoFLoPoJo. His poem Dolphin Tour was nominated for Best of the Net in 2023 and his poem Spring Tide was the 2024 winner of the Water to Words contest sponsored by the Seneca (New York) Park Zoo Society. He lives beside the ocean in Cape Haze, Florida.

"The Cat Speaks on Graves" by Emma Johnson-Rivard

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Recent trail footage caught a ghost contemplating the stars,
a cougar walking alone. This one appears solitary.
She found a bone, then ground her claws upon it.
The marrow was long gone. She had no kitten,
no mate to share it with. Alone, she steeled herself
to the road. They say animals forget, but
we know better.

 

Emma Johnson-Rivard is a midwestern writer of poetry and weird fiction. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Coffin Bell, Moon City Review, and others. She can be found at Bluesky at @badcattales and at emmajohnson-rivard.com