By C.Z. Heyward

My pecan brown mother raised me to fear only one thing

failure.

It wasn’t hard for me to understand this
hopscotching the needles and junkies painted along the sidewalks
like they belonged there and I was all wrong.

She sent me to my grandmother’s farm during the summer so I’d know what was right

in me.

As the curtain rose
on many a cerulean night
along the Bohicket River
the reverberations of crickets’ altos
beckoned a response from the bass
of the bullfrogs under our porch.

They were the old deacons giving their guttural approval for the release of my dreams.

The sound of the chorus ricocheted off
the pitch of night
bringing the stars closer.

James Brown was right

Black is Beautiful.

By morning I’d set free the frogs I’d caught
and placed in Mason jars.

They were replaced by

Dragonflies.

Red ants.

Black ants.

And fiddler crabs.

It didn’t come easy ’cause I got

Bit.

Stung.

Pinched.

And pissed on.

“Boy what you learn from all that chasin’?”

my grandmother Evelina would ask.

With bowed head I’d question her question with

“M’am?”

“You heard me boy.”

“Dreams don’t come easy,” I told her, “sometimes it hurts chasing them. Sometimes they die.”

“Come ya’. Have something to drink before you catch monkey next,” she’d chuckle. Her honey toned skin beaming.

As I sipped her too sweet red Kool Aid out of my Scooby Doo jelly jar

I smiled

thinking about what I was gonna chase next.

Squirrels.

Raccoons from grandma’s garden.

Hogs in my uncle’s pen.

It was my world to conquer

my choice to make

because pecans and honey

made it so.

C.Z. Heyward is a native of Harlem, New York, who cherishes his summers spent on the coastal isles of Charleston, South Carolina. His work has appeared in a variety of print and online journals. He has also presented his work at the Nuyorican Cafe in New York City, and the Art Links Festival in Athens, Greece.

By Jada Yee

Today, our words aren’t as thick
no matter the slice, they come from a loaf
that’s barely enriched.

Today, their words remain a concrete rain;
levels our heads and dishevels the hair on our arms.

Our words, today, live
only to be underlined
by a discernable red.
Aspiring to be bold,
but hardly authentic.
Guilty of plagiarism
long before
fingertips learn to
take their first steps.

Let us keep practicing to think before we speak.

Practice,
knowing we can’t touch them,
knowing we can’t thank them.
But, even when they were alive,
the knowing was mutual.

We are one and the same.

We are all waiting to feel like we made it.
In the end, hoping that the last thing we hear
is confirmation from the world,
telling us, that, out of every decade,
ours left the most lasting impression.

And, maybe we don’t stay long enough, while alive,
to hear what comes after polite applause.

Fearing there will be accusation and indifference,
the instinct is to abandon our hearts;
to abandon every part of the past.

Jada Yee says if she hadn’t been introduced to free verse poetry in high school, her voice might still be the quietest whisper. More of her work can be found in “Vine Leaves Literary Journal,” “Mad Swirl,” “Crack the Spine,” “The Write Place at the Write Time,” and others.

By Kirk Weixel

When I used to do it
it was stuff like
cigarettes and candy
or when I was smaller
candy cigarettes
girls on the rocks
not shaken but stirred
movies with Bogart or Bergman and
Winstons and whiskey and wine
things I was addicted to then
or would be later
forty days of learning how to sin
of loving a vice postponed
waiting for the devil to rise
a coffin nail in one hand
and something amber over ice
in the other as he grinned and said,
“We’ll always have Easter.”

Kirk Weixel is an English professor emeritus at Saint Francis University, Loretto, Pa., where he continues to teach courses in literature and creative writing. He and his wife, Mary Jeanne, a former reference librarian, have three children.

By Beth Boylan

Each Sunday they come at noon,
all four of them in a sharp line
marching up the stairs to my front door like soldiers —
clock hands, wound up and forced forward.

In the kitchen, she unearths the sandwiches from their containers
and sighs, digs out pickles from the fridge,
while the two little ones float to the corner, attached to their books and whispers.
Over lunch, they sneak each other smiles as I bend back the foil lid that seals the cake.

He and I resume position in matching worn-down chairs
and speak as though we are familiar,
circling the weather, the Church, the Times,
as though we have new things to say since last week.

I drift
on a bus to the city
a merry-go-round by the sea
the cracked volume of Arnold Bennett waiting upstairs.

My son rises, the same time as each Sunday before,
announcing their need to depart. And so I place the jar of candies
and two Ziplocs in front of his daughters, who exude feigned surprise
once more. They are well-rehearsed, these two little cadets.

I’m curious over their sad eyes and perfect little waves
back at this old stranger in the doorway. Is this what little girls do?
Or should it be a birthday party, a movie, hopscotch or dolls?
Something to ask him perhaps — tomorrow night during my 9:18 call.

Beth Boylan holds a B.A. in English from Elizabethtown College and an M.A. in literature from Hunter College. She teaches high school English and is also an adjunct professor at Brookdale Community College. She has published in journals including “Wilde” and “Sassafras.”

By Elise Malecki

We board the van, coolers in hand
to perform our modern ritual,
no mention of the soul.

Hers was troubled.
She took pills intending never to wake up.
We meet her in the OR.

She has padding for her pressure points,
tape for her eyelids,
supplied out of habit, I guess.

The anesthesiologist keeps the vitals stable;
the cardiac surgeon secures the vessels and liberates the heart.
They both bid us good evening.

We continue with the harvest:
liver, kidneys, no pancreas today.
I silently thank her and close the wound.

Our patients are waiting.

Elise Malecki is a gastroenterologist in upstate New York who enjoys removing polyps from colons and writing confessional poetry.