Al Ortolani

high on Mt. Sneffels
hikers pass
in deep cloud cover —
no way up or down
without disappearing

poncho over my head
knees to chin
hail rattles the couloir
where I sit
with other stones

AL ORTOLANI’s poetry and reviews have appeared in journals such as Prairie Schooner, New Letters, Word Riot, and the New York Quarterly. His fifth collection of poems, Waving Mustard in Surrender, was released in 2014 from New York Quarterly Books. Currently, he is teaching English in the Kansas City area and serves on the Board of Directors of the Kansas City Writers Place.

Abra Deering Norton

reaching out to touch
not like the cattails back home
purple reeds with teeth

ABRA DEERING NORTON‘s recent work appeared in The Subterranean Quarterly and Eunoia Review. She has an MFA from UCLA. She’s written for the Los Angeles Times and her creative non-fiction has appeared in The Huffington Post and elsewhere. She’s originally from Minneapolis, lives in California and misses rain. She’s on twitter @adeerLA.

Kailey Tedesco

The cheshire-tooth simpers
away and the ferris wheel, empty,
persists against grey winds.

Broken glass skitters across
linoleum like dice on a table:
it peoples the abandoned casino.

The shore in its pure being:
square-scene polaroid
left to develop in the
November morning.

Huddled on a bench: we
exist with the warmth of
cheeseburgers, dazzled

by the bare horizon
bathing in the sun.

KAILEY TEDESCO‘s poetry aims to channel the viscerally piercing voices of Plath and Dickinson, while conveying the modern world in a disfiguring and bewildering lens. She is currently enrolled in Arcadia University’s creating writing-poetry MFA program. Her work has been featured in Lehigh Valley Vanguard and she is a poetry editor for Marathon Literary Review.