Poetry by Tukur Ridwan

“the fertile land and dense forests bestow fruition with food and fruits. here, coals and firewood make our kitchens—to farm is to fulfil each day, and hunting blurs the poverty line among households.”

Poetry by Keith Melton

“Now far lies horizon, slender and ever stoic, / tall pines trembling, live oaks, heroic / while buzzards fly on traces of wind, / to warn death comes, again; and again.”

Poetry by Bob McAfee

“Vines cover my body / over and under. / We are one and the same / as we inch along branches, / bear my weight upward / seeking the sunlight, / sinuous, sensuous.”

Poetry by Millicent Borges Accardi

“Bobcats prowl, leaves froth and cook, / Like eggs in a skillet. The residents /  Skulk in the new chilled and buttered mornings, / a flame here, a creek wavering there.”

Poetry by Andrew Careaga

“If God had put the Garden of Eden / in the Missouri Ozarks, would the serpent / have been a copperhead? A water moccasin? / Would a pawpaw have been the forbidden fruit?”

Poetry by Justin Karcher

“So I sing of her the way / any Rust Belt boy should: full of regret / and sweating through another century.”

Poetry by Rachel Burrows

“Because you are part of this community, / you must not be wild / and scream on this two-way street / of give and take…”

Poetry by Austin Alexis

“Where oh where did all the water go? We stare at the disappearance, the lack of bubbly motion, the absence of twinkling foam.”

by Joshua Lillie

“When you step by a millipede too closely it spirals / into a button for defense. That’s what this one did.”

Poetry by Jonathan Chernoff

“Here, among the dandelions, I take my stand, / and with a sharp stick uproot the corruption.”

Poetry by Kenneth Pobo

“I often take my phone camera / when I do my morning / garden stroll.  Flowers / are fleeting—I want / to remember as many / as I can.”

Poetry by J.M. Medeiros

“On some days, she hears echoes of her children’s laughter as they searched in vain for the five-dollar bill their father promised was hidden under one of those stones.”

Poetry by Pradeep R. Varadwaj

“Beneath old limbs, we pause, / breath caught like a moth in a web, / asking what memory offers— / from patience that asks nothing, / from shade that shelters all.”

Poetry by Sean Foster

“to become a vase / to hold all your wild / flowers / blue lupine, pepper and salt, columbine / in the spring.”

Poetry by Sharon Hoffman

“Rounded form, attractively recurved, extravagantly ruffled. / An apricot blush on the face of the flower. / Yellow halo. Striking chartreuse throat. / Lavender mid-ribs. Bold ruby heart.”

Poetry by Angela Arnold

“the trunk of heaven / and the yield of branches / the too ready fruit / being it all the way”

Poetry by Dee P. R. Kay

“the sun set on the Sierra del Carmen / blazing like a funeral pyre / the Rio Grande a watery grave”

Poetry by David Anson Lee

“Juniper shadows stretch / longer than the day deserves. / Sage releases its medicine / under the pressure of boots.”