Clouds

by Jeff Fearnside

When I was young, I wanted to climb

to the high places—

feeling life large in me,

in command of the views,

for the bodily satisfaction

of having climbed.

I’m now satisfied

to lie on the grass

and watch the clouds.

The distance from me to them

is exactly the same

as the distance from them to me.

Yet how insignificant I must seem

to them, and how astonishingly

grand they are to me.

Forms appear, morph:

now a loon, now a bat, now a flying monkey

from The Wizard of Oz.

A potato. A dog. A snail.

The Horsehead Nebula.

A ladies high-heeled boot.

They constantly move, change,

sometimes light, sometimes dark,

sometimes stretching their filaments

until they break

and disappear.

Yet even unseen

they’re still there,

dispersed, waiting

for the right conditions

to regroup and materialize.

A cloud is nothing

if not patient.

More forms appear.

Their shadows intermittently

engulf me.

Then they stitch themselves together

like cheesecloth over the sun,

straining its rays,

creating a single shadow

that engulfs everything.

To truly know

the immensity of things

one must be unafraid

to be small.

---

Jeff Fearnside is the author of two full-length books and two chapbooks of prose and poetry, most recently Ships in the Desert (SFWP,2022). His work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Paris Review, Story, The Pinch, Los Angeles Review, and The Sun.

Fresh As a Rose

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Translated By Aysel K. Basci

Fresh As a Rose

Its every moment fresh as a rose

Made of glimmer and ivory foams,

Sleepy, wuthering summer morns,

Southern winds, and back-to-back dreams.

Dissolving, as if tulle,

On the shoulders of timid waves,

Its secret hidden in the air,

This blast, this spring… Mad kisses

And smiles hiding coral glasses…

How many sunsets did I watch on this shore?

Within the faint-violet clouds

How many bloody suns agonized

With the anxiety of distant mossy gardens;

Voices, like unreachable horizons,

A boat, burning in treacherous tides,

Pigeons, flying from our palms,

Fate that never leaves our sides.

---

Bir Gül Tazeliği

Bir gül tazeliği içinde her an

Fildişi köpükten ve parıltıdan

Mahmur, uğultulu yaz sabahları,

O üst üste rüya, cenup rüzgârı.

Ürkek dalgaların omuzlarında

Tül tül dağılanlar, sırrı havada

Bu cümbüş, bu bahar... Çılgın öpüşler

Mercan kadehleri gizli gülüşler...

Kaç akşam seyrettim bu sahilde ben

Bulutların solgun menekşesinden

Kaç güneş çırpındı kanlar içinde,

Yosun bahçelerin uzak vehminde;

Sesler erişilmez ufuklar gibi

İmkânsız sularda tutuşan gemi,

Uçan güvercinler avucumuzdan

Ayrılmayan kader baş ucumuzdan.

---

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (1901-1962) was a prominent Turkish poet, novelist, literary scholar and essayist, widely regarded as one of the most important representatives of modernism in Turkish literature.

Aysel K. Basci’s translations appeared in The Common, Washington Square Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Los Angeles Review, Columbia Journal, Adroit Journal, and elsewhere.

The Egg

By Beth Hendrickson

The ocean spreads glistening white until it hits a circular limit. The white wave sizzles onto the black heat of its shoreline. It halts because there has only ever been one being of infinity, and this white ocean is not it. A sun rises like a biodome. Like an apricot. Like a golden boil. Around the sun, the wave’s white edges flutter like the loose cheeks of a 100-year-old nursing home resident who is rolled to the dining room, given a cake with a single candle representing a century of flames, and told to blow it out.  In the wheelchair, her body fills space to allotted limits. Her edges crisp, blacken, and crinkle in the searing heat of her finite being. Someone has brushed blush circles onto the white oceans of her downy cheeks. In the end, both are alike—the white ocean with a bulging sun now setting, cooking, in its middle, and the woman sitting in the wheelchair. Both will be consumed, when it is time.

---

Elizabeth has been a riverboat deckhand, violinist, rock climber, and middle school math teacher (in no particular order). She was long-listed for Jericho Writer’s 500 Novel contest and has received National Scholastic Writing Awards. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA with her husband, two daughters, and a strong-willed dachshund.

a Noite

by gerrie schrik

a noite

Você já viu a Noite? Bem-visto mesmo? Sim? Então você sabe que as vestes macias dela são cinzas e azuis. Que mudam com a lua, o tempo, as estações...

           Na hora dos grilos e sapos encontrei com ela, ela me pegou pela mão e andamos na mata. Ela estava vestida de primavera; um azul profundo, cheio de vagalumes. Não sei se pelos movimentos dela, pelo vento, ou pelo voo mesmo, mas era uma dança de luz. De algum esconderijo uma Mãe-da-Lua estava chamando. Um Curiango respondeu. E a mata respirava verde. Mariposas boiavam no perfume de flores pálidas. O tempo ficou líquido. Mas o que mais me lembro é aquele azul profundo cheio de vaga-lumes.

dama da noite -
o luar coberto
de perfume

---

Night

Have you ever seen the Night? Really seen her? Yes? Then you know that her soft garments are grey and blue. That they change with the moon, the weather, the seasons…

            At the time of crickets and frogs I met her, she took me by the hand and we walked in the woods. She was dressed in spring; a deep blue, full of fireflies. I don't know if for her movements, for the wind or even flight, but it was a dance of light. From some hiding place a Potoo was calling. A Nightjar answered. The woods were breathing green. Moths drifting on the perfume of pale flowers. Time became liquid. But what I remember best is that deep blue full of fireflies.

lady of the night - 
moonlight covered
with perfume

---

Gerrie Schrik is an educator and translator who received an award for the children's story 'the Colours of Flowers' and had poetry published in Portuguese. She loves hiking and birding and lives in a small food forest close to a stream in the Piracicaba River Watershed in Brazil. Honouring and acknowledging the Guarani and Kaingang, the traditional custodians of these lands and waters.

Sea Change

by Sarah Fawn Montgomery

I am no longer

a woman who can

breathe underwater,

tread rising tide,

trade my voice

for the chance

to walk on land

pretend to love

a man who doesn’t

understand the void

of a cold open sea

strongest abandoning

the surface to survive

further in fathoms

that would burst

a body from inside

vessels wrecked as ships

made myth simply

because they could not

persist and I do not

want pearls for eyes,

prefer to wade alone

towards death’s ferryman

without proper payment.

---

Sarah Fawn Montgomery is the author of Halfway from Home, Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir, and three poetry chapbooks. Nerve, a craft book on developing a disabled writing practice, is forthcoming with Sundress Publications, and Abbreviate, a short collection of flash nonfiction, is forthcoming with Harbor Editions.

Watch for the Small White Flowers

By Amie Potter

Should I teach my daughter how to forage–to spot, for example, 

the Pennsylvania bittercress that might spring up as hope

to nourish her after a nuclear winter? 

Look for the leaves. They’re pinnate. Watch for the small white flowers. 

That kind, too, you take. See the fine hairs on the stems? The red veining?

(Or would a good mother lend purpose to chaos?)

Here are the seeds from the milkweed. Feel them. They’re like the scales

of a silken fish. Keep them. If anything happens, it is your job

to bring the butterflies back.

---

Amie Potter is a writer, gardener, and overly enthusiastic community college English professor. Her poetry deals with nature, trauma, and the underbelly of the domestic. She has also been published in The Hopkins Review.