Elegy for an Abandoned Kitten by Jason Ray Carney

 

Image / Hiếu Trọng

Elegy for an Abandoned Kitten

It is dark at the pavilion.
I hear you crying, plaintive, anger Mixed with fear,
Calling for your mother who cannot find you, Or is dead.
I follow the sound to a dark knot of grass,
And there shine the light:
A small orange kitten, hissing, spitting at The alien glow.
They have tried to feed you, But you do not eat solid food.
The tin can of food is untouched, Fly-blown nearby.
When I turn off my light, your hisses become A plaintive cry again,
As if you cannot decide if the darkness Is safer,
And your mother can hear you as long as You are in shadow.
I listen to you cry, hoarse, mewling,
And think about your short life,
Perhaps bathed by your mother’s tongue Just a month ago.
As I drive home at 80 miles per hour
Through the must halo of my rental car's low beams, On Route 36, I try to call my wife to tell her I am afraid:

I had drunk a few beers, I am in an unfamiliar state On an unfamiliar road, and drowsy— Keep me awake. Talk to me.
But I am lying.
I am thinking of you, and of the darkness, And of the serpent Coiled across the field, who can hear Your plaintive calls,
And I am thinking of our cosmic darkness, On 36, all around, And my desperate need for my wife To pick up the phone. © Jason Ray Carney

Jason Ray Carney

Jason Ray Carney is a Senior Lecturer in Literature at Christopher Newport University. He is the author of Weird Tales of Modernity (McFarland, 2019) and a contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books.

A Monday Morning Poem for Scooter by Carolyn S. Mahnke

 

Image/ Rufina Rusakova

A Monday Morning Poem for Scooter

This frog princess sniffs the delphinium,

while she listens to the deaf silence of the room.

Millennial monsters feed on

the impending demise of her moonlight.

Frightened, this small sleepy creature leaps

to pause above the pond of stagnant wisdom.

 Whimsical doubt lingers beneath the surface of

an ordinary dream…She reaches for coffee.

 

Yes coffee, butterscotch in color, in a green mug

with flowers of lavender, crocus and Queen Anne’s lace.

 As the last drop spills down the gullet, hazel eyes grasp

what is written in the bottom of the cup,  ‘Bee Kind’.

 

Her tongue flickers out to taste this message

…rolls it in the mouth and relays it to the mind in bullfrog

fashion, ribbet, ribbet, be kind to the old dog.

Yes, lead her out to pee and poo, in to drink and eat .

 

Before she goes back to sleep, massage the sweet

spot beneath her neck and the white one behind her

 coffee-colored ears, while giving drops she hates,

but the vet says she needs, one in each eye.

 

Wait 5 minutes for the antibiotic one, just in the right.

Whisper and croon words she understands through

touch and smell of kindness, though she does not hear

or see anything but light and darkness.

 

Thirteen trips around the sun, ninety-one, in dog years,

she stumbles to her pallet bed. Hunkering her head

in cushioned repose, she collapses and

sinks, totally relaxed in canine release.

 

Should I join her? Shall I follow her lead?

Or proceed with my week on this Monday

in June…too soon, but not soon enough for

touch and smell of kindness.

© Carolyn S. Mahnke

Carolyn S. Mahnke

Carolyn S. Mahnke is a registered nurse and retired Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialist, living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She loves gardening, mothering, “grand mothering”, quilting, walking, swimming, and writing. She has written and published four poetry books: Howl at the Moon and Tell Outrageous Truth, Howl from the Center of Being,  Howling from Senior Moments, and Second Story View. She enters her 80th decade with energy and enthusiasm, nourished and encouraged by friends and family, especially by Nadia Colburn’s online writing community.

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As Blue Fades by Robert Okaji

 

Image/ Chris Munnik

As Blue Fades

Which defines you best, a creaking lid or the light-turned flower?

The coffee’s steam or smoke wafting from your hand.

Your bowls color my shelves; I touch them daily.

Sound fills their bodies with memory.

The lighter’s click invokes your name.

And the stepping stones to nowhere, your current address.

If the moon could breathe would its breath flavor our nights?

I picture a separate one above your clouded island.

The dissipating blue in filtered light.

Above the coral. Above the space your ashes should share.

Where the boats rise and fall, like chests, like the waning years.

Like a tide carrying me towards yesterday’s reef.

Or the black-tailed gull spinning in the updraft.

Originally published in Underfoot, and included in Okaji's first full-length collection, Our Loveliest Bruises (3: A Taos Press, 2025)

© Robert Okaji

Robert Okaji

Two years ago, Robert Okaji was diagnosed with late-stage metastatic lung cancer, which he found annoying. But thanks to modern science, he's still living in Indianapolis with his wife, poet Stephanie L. Harper, stepson, cat, and dog. Recent publications include Our Loveliest Bruises (3: A Taos Press, 2025) and His Windblown Self (Broadstone Books, 2025).

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LIGHT, LIGHT, AND MORE LIGHT by Rose Anna Higashi

 

Image / Johannes Plenio

LIGHT, LIGHT, AND MORE LIGHT

How clean, how pure the moon and stars are,

Shining against the darkness,

Glimmering on the ocean

And gently moving the clouds away

When the wind tries to obscure their lovely light.

On the land, they illuminate the harvesters deep into the night,

And on the sea, they are always with us,

Guiding the tides, 

Leading the wayfarers

Who sail after sunset in their outriggers

From island to island through the tranquil black waves,

And gleaming even to the sacred sea’s deep bottom

Where the octopus sleeps safe in the dim rooms of the coral world.

The sun too, daytime’s glory, golden and warm,

Does her holy work, feeding the sparrows with seeds,

Raising the tall yellow corn from the deep, generous dirt

And the rice from the clean green waters.

How perfectly the stars, the moon and the healing sun

Have cared for us since the first breath of the pines,

Since the first dove flew over the life-giving waters,

Since the first human lifted her arms in gratitude to the kind sky.

© Rose Anna Higashi

Rose Anna Higashi

Rose Anna Higashi is a retired professor of English Literature, Japanese Literature, and Poetry who lives in Honolulu with her husband, Wayne. She writes a haiku every day and publishes a monthly blog, “Tea and Travels” on her website, myteaplanner.com. Her poems appear in a variety of online and print media, including Poets Online, whose editors nominated her for the Pushcart Prize. Kelsay Books is scheduled to publish her third volume of poetry, Searching in Circles, in 2025.

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GHAZAL FOR EARTH by Mary Ann Honaker

 

Image / Irina Iriser

GHAZAL FOR EARTH

We return our dead piously to earth.

Everyday we walk across crowded earth.

Clover, sun lily, cornflower, sweet pea:

The shouts of flowers are the shouts of earth.

In West Virginia, they bore into our Mother.

They undress her shamelessly, sacred earth.

Everyone mows their grass on Sunday.

We want to control what grows out of earth.

I'm tired, my body grows so heavy.

May I lay myself down on holy earth.

The worms are under our feet, tunneling.

They dine on and enrich Mother Earth.

We've done nothing right.  We've broken your laws. Yet in the winter hour receive us, Earth! 

© Mary Ann Honaker

Mary Ann Honaker

Mary Ann Honaker is the author of Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019), Whichever Way the Moon (Main Street Rag, 2023), and the forthcoming Night is Another Realm Altogether (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2026). Her poems have appeared in Bear Review, DIAGRAM, JMWW, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Rattle.com, Solstice, Sweet Tree Review, Tuskegee Review, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Beckley, West Virginia.

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Poetry by Mykyta Ryzhykh

 

Image / Samanwaya Bhattacharya

A girl with four fingers

a girl with four fingers plays with a doll

and incredulously asks her mother

why the toy doll has five fingers

Reprint from Star 82 review

The cemetery under the bed

The cemetery under the bed opens at the first request

Once upon a time in childhood we were taught to make little men from matches

Today we are taught to burn

My mother says that life was better under the Soviet Union

Someday the future will come, but not now

Today we are taught the word "later"

Reprint from Star 82 review

Who among us

Who among us has not fallen in love 

with a young Justin Bieber in his youth?

Icons with saints and a poster with pop stars are torn off the walls of a collapsed house

Reprint from Star 82 review

© Mykyta Ryzhykh

Mykyta Ryzhykh

Mykyta Ryzhykh, an author from Ukraine, now lives in Tromsø, Norway. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023 and 2024. He’s published in many literary magazines іn Ukrainian and English: Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, Shot Glass Journal, QLRS, The Crank, Chronogram, The Antonym, Monterey Poetry Review, Five Fleas Itchy Poetry, and many others.

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The Grapes by Matthew James Friday

 

Image / Henri Guérin

The Grapes

 

Standing in Safeway, staring

at grapes, a man approaches.

I heard him talk to his sons

 

with a soft, operatic Spanish.

Inspired by our indecision

he teaches us about the fruit

 

which ones are sweet and soft,

the ones that crunch - his son’s

favorites. He is from Chile,

 

works in agriculture - grapes,

green and red. Those ones.

Recommends with a smile.

 

Later we eat grapes and thank

life for the small, sweet gifts.

 

© Matthew James Friday

Matthew James Friday

Matthew James Friday is a British-born writer and teacher. He has had many poems published in the US and international journals. His first chapbook, ‘The Residents,’ was published by Finishing Line Press in the summer of 2024. His second chapbook, ‘The Be-All and the End-All,’ was published by Bottlecap Press in autumn 2024. He has published numerous micro-chapbooks with the Origami Poems Project. Matthew is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet. Visit his website at http://matthewfriday.weebly.com.

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