Two Poems by Will Neuenfeldt

in

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.

"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.

"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

"ASH" by Elizabeth Benge

in

Do you remember the night you shattered?
The floor outside her room was littered
with debris—gloves and masks and empty
vials, remnants of the war you lost.
They took her body away and left you,
staring at your own hands. She was young and pregnant, you said,
as if that alone could summon her back,
as if that one fact could erase
the hours you spent inside that room,
chasing her heartbeat with desperate fingers
until there was nothing left to catch. The Delta surge had us all burning.
You were untouchable,
a stone in the storm, the doctor
we all looked to when our hands shook.
But you stood there hollow-eyed,
cracked open and emptied out.
And I saw how easily it could happen to me. The next morning, you were gone.
I kept waiting for you to come back,
to fill the eye at the center
of the chaos, but your pager lay silent
on the counter, and your name stayed dark
on the schedule, a hole that widened
with every shift. I didn’t want to be you.
But the patients kept coming,
their lungs filling like waterlogged boats,
their eyes searching for anyone
who could promise they'd float.
I stepped into your storm
one trembling foot at a time,
and the weight wrapped me
like a second skin. There was no time to wonder
if I was ready, if I could be
what they needed. I knew what
awaited me. I had watched it
erode in your hands, felt
its shadow cross my heart. This work is a quiet violence,
a tender, brutal unraveling.
To hold each life sacred,
to lose it anyway, and to keep going
with blood-stained sleeves,
knowing all too well
that one day, I might split open
just like you did. Still, I put on my mask,
my gloves, my shield. I steady
my hands, quiet the shaking,
stand at the bedside of the next
and the next, facing down the ghosts
that press like fog against the walls.

 

Lizzie Benge is a sleep medicine physician, first-year attending, and faculty member at Harvard Medical School. Lizzie writes about the intersection of medicine and humanity, capturing the quiet, powerful moments that reveal the resilience of patients and doctors alike.

"SANTA ANAS" by Kirby Wright

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Wind from the desert.
Trees bend in one direction

With sagebrush gusts.
They point to the ocean,

A dull blue with hollow waves.
Brush fire in Ventura

Expands to 20,000 acres.
Chainsaws gnaw suspect branches.

Smoke pretends to be clouds.
Stench of possessions burning.

Twilight wind howls—
Coyotes circling before the kill.

 

Kirby Michael Wright was born and raised in Hawaii. He lives beside the track in San Diego with his wife Darcy and a cat named Gatsby.

"Brookie" by Meredith Chester

in

Bright pink spots, a golden streak, the tiniest wild trout pops
through the net and slips away into the stream. It vanishes
before I can touch its pink specks; I’m compelled to cast again.

 

Meredith Chester holds a BA in creative writing from Florida State University. Her flash fiction and poetry has been published in the Wilderness House Literary Review and in La Piccioletta Barca. In her free time, she enjoys crafting and relaxing with her dog.

"The Barred Owl" by Meredith Chester

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When my friend says of my trees, they are HUNDREDS of years old, we
are giddy, laugh too loudly, forget the time, lose the sunlight,
the owl flies to its ANCIENT branch in rapid merry dark.

 

Meredith Chester holds a BA in creative writing from Florida State University. Her flash fiction and poetry has been published in the Wilderness House Literary Review and in La Piccioletta Barca. In her free time, she enjoys crafting and relaxing with her dog.