Jennifer Ruth Jackson
She weeps, waters the cornfield while cackling
pilots swoop stalks for citrine pebbles. She will
not move as beaks graze her broom-stiff hair.
White dress crunches like footsteps on gravel,
flakes of age and blood pelt her legs. Feathers
festoon her shoulders, unnoticed. Her head
rests in slender hands held at chest level.
She awaits the workers in the mid-day sun.
JENNIFER RUTH JACKSON writes about reality’s weirdness and the plausibility of the fantastic. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Star*Line, Apex Magazine, and more. She runs a blog for disabled and neurodivergent creatives called The Handy, Uncapped Pen from an apartment she shares with her husband. Visit her on Twitter: @jenruthjackson.
Gale Acuff
except my parents and my dog and my
favorite professional sports teams and
favorite wrestler, Ricky “the Dragon”
Steamboat, and Batman comics and pizza
puffs and my dog—oh, I mentioned him—and
I guess my sister and dinosaurs and
the new bike I’ll get for Christmas and
clams with mashed potatoes and coleslaw and
when we have corn dogs in the school lunchroom
and that Phantom movie that nobody
else ever saw, Hell, it wasn’t that bad,
and monster truck rallies and skateboarders
falling on their butts—that’s pretty funny
and they always rise again anyway.
GALE ACUFF has published hundreds of poems in over a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. He has taught university English in the US, China, and Palestine.
Joe Bishop
Your keen wakes goldfish.
Your voice picks my ossicles,
Octaves purple with lupins.
You pitch banker’s lamp
At my dodging noggin.
I fear for the alarm clock.
Watching Wheel of Fortune,
I howl mad guesses
Just to make you laugh.
You wear your mermaid gown,
Clutch a bunch of black roses,
Your freckles powdered,
In a photo on the mantle,
Protected behind glass.
JOE BISHOP’s work has appeared in journals such as The New Quarterly, Plenitude Magazine, Tar River Poetry, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and Riddle Fence and is featured on the League of Canadian Poets’ website. He is a recipient of a Newfoundland & Labrador Arts & Letters award for poetry. His first chapbook of poetry, Dissociative Songs, was published in 2021 by Frog Hollow Press. Joe has poems forthcoming in The Puritan.
