Theme 06: "Bucolia"
Theme 06: “Bucolia” Highlights…
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"Bucolic Lover"
Poetry by Rachel Turney
“I am dancing with cows. / Surrendered to the night /filled with stars. / Pulling peaches from verdant trees. / Grooming difficult horses.”
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"Among the Dandelions"
Poetry by Jonathan Chernoff
“Here, among the dandelions, I take my stand, / and with a sharp stick uproot the corruption.”
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What the Tree Teaches: A Quiet Instruction
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.”
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"Scrolling" April 9, 2025"
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.”
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"Nukazuke"
CNF by Zary Fekete
“When the pickles are ready, they are sliced simply. No garnish. They accompany rice. They sit to the side. They sharpen everything else. Sour, salty, alive. They wake the mouth without demanding attention.”
Three Poems
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 fulfill each day, and hunting blurs the poverty line among households.”
On the Night in Question
Fiction by Patrick Johnston
“It was in the hours of darkness under the clear gibbous moon, that the old barn owl took for its prey a young mouse that scurried across the yard between the stables and the potting shed.”
But for the Nettles
Creative Nonfiction by Marshall Moore
“[Nettles] thrive in nitrogen-rich soil, leftover from human and animal waste. Not to put too fine a point on it, our shit outlasts our civilizations.”
Six Poems
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.”
Overseeing
Digital Art by Rachel Turney
Grace
Fiction by Randy Tierce
“I would often lie awake in that tiny country farmhouse just listening to the sounds of the night. The lamentations of the whippoorwills. The yipping of the coyotes. The complaints of northbound cattle trucks downshifting, their jake brakes blapping strong objections to slowing down.”
A Lucky House
Flash Fiction by Penny Nolte
“Over the door was one of Grandpa’s horseshoes. Still holding the luck in.”
Three Micros
Micro-Fiction by Mikki Aronoff
“The man with no eyes and ears who tunes pianos tap-tap-taps at our door at the creaky-crack of dawn and plunks his satchel of tools down next to the spinet.”
The Lobstermen
CNF by Thomas Belton
“The lobsterman, like his prey, is no less changeable and predatory in his behavior.”
Digital Art by Terry Brinkman
Four Poems
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.”
The Woods
Creative Nonfiction by Hazel McCorriston
“The air is crisp wet on my hair. My little dog zig zags beneath the trees, and I like to think he leaves a trail behind him as he forages across the world so much vaster and more real to him than it is to me. Richer, more at peace, something he walks within rather than past.“
The Fern that Fell
by John RC Potter
“Grandma had a green thumb and lovingly tended to her plants and flowers in the house…Grandma no doubt gave the same kind of devoted attention to all her greenery (both in the house and in her garden) as she did to her six children.”
Five Poems
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.”
Eden in the Ozarks
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?”
Hayfields
Creative Nonfiction by Tom Wade
“As we drove into a hayfield, I surrendered to the imminent undertaking. I climbed onto the truck bed, aware that the dirt and heat would soon enshroud me.”
Three Poems
Poetry by Justin Karcher
“So I sing of her the way / any Rust Belt boy should: full of regret / and sweating through another century.”
Two CNF Poems
Hybrid Poetry by Reed Venrick
“How to interpret four doves fluttering, / Growing not feathers but leaves from trees? / What is the intention? Signification? Do we witness / The fantasy of an artist remembering his ayahuasca / Trip? The memory of an psilocybin hallucination?”
Three Poems
Poetry by Dario Cvencek
“…let it ripen well / when it’s / ready to / silently / it will / fall into / your palm”
Six Poems
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…”
Featured Poetry…
“Three Poems” from Mirror Made of Words
by Dario Cvencek
“…let it ripen well / when it’s / ready to / silently / it will / fall into / your palm”