The Mackinaw: a journal of prose poetry

Megan Merchant

3/9/2026

Self-Portrait as a Burned-Out Porch Light

A tree crammed with bluebirds, snow. A forklift slips from a hill. The neighbour shoots his rifle to avalanche. A taste of rust. It’s all a love poem. Even the owl’s grief—how it spoons the dark. The open mouth of cold. I wanted it to be wistful. Forgive me, I am not telling this well. I forgot where to place the beginning—how I broke on the back porch, never told a soul. His eyes—smoked herring and blue. I plugged them into a different life. Then, morning. Garbage men collecting bins of dead birds, fish scales like glitter. Wax paper. String. An orchestra of leaving. I could never make sense of the way the trees glow, are backlit by kitchen windows, the silhouettes of wives in the dulled-quiet, scraping, rinsing, where they end and I

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From Hortensia, in winter (New Amercian Press, 2024). First published in Barzakh Magazine, Spring 2021.

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Psithuris

It is said that Orpheus could silence the wind. This is a praise of abstraction. I am looking for a word that means the sound wind makes through the trees before it reaches my body. I stand in the night-yard wanting to be included in a definition, rattling language for what moves against my skin, the small constellation of scars along my arms. The Greeks call it psithuris, but even that falls short. Someone hung an oil painting in the bank lobby, gold-encrusted, large-scale, Hades depicted with a bird-tipped sceptre. A nightjar without star clusters to guide it. Stuck. It is said that Eurydice wasn’t angry because she felt loved. But wind is a distortion of sound. The further away, the slower it arrives. I can hear her, the way grief isn’t squalor or complacency, but cleaves into a body, leaves a woman wingless. Her hair shedding into nests that birds will never warm.

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They Promised That You Were Set Apart for Something Holy

Did you dream about oceans while you were mud-stuck in the Mississippi, something you couldn’t see the banks of, like faith? Salt, birdwing, a weekday sneak of sour wine. You were all scripture and scrub oak, miracles that profited man. On Sundays, I open the dictionary, look for words you might have hummed, words that will peel the generations between us. Are your eyes hazel, do they shift in the onslaught of spring? The blue of needing another body to remind you of your own? Did you feel desire but give it your husband’s name?

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From Hortensia, in winter ( New American Press, 2024) and first published in Birdcoat Quarterly, Spring 2023.)

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Helpmeet:

to make man “comfortable...to dress his food...be pleasing to his sight, and...be in all respects...entirely answerable to his...wants and wishes.” john gill, 18-century biblical scholar

There are days I feel porous. Drool paint through a tea strainer onto linen. Others, I walk the dog, plunge stones in the creek with insults. To be all things at once while still being yourself—isn’t that the goal? Hortensia, were you given the smallest room in the house of your own life? I am gifted a single window. Winter crammed in the way that only a cat could skuttle through. You are my periscope, the law of reflection at play, these poems—the surface. Teach me how to dismantle desire. The roots of it. De sidere, meaning from the stars. I hear deciduous--the dropping of a part that is no longer needed or useful. Chokecherry, lilac, maple. At the first bend of cold, I imagine the small flush of your garden plot in bloom, how such tedious keeping was meant to bring delight, only to wake each morning and find it flooded with flightless birds.

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From Hortensia, in winter (New American Press, 2024).

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Sealing

(for Hortensia Patrick Merchant, March 1824-April 1905)

silk sutures link us like marionettes / drips that freeze over bark before descending / you can’t hear the water’s urge unless it’s rushing / you are my flood subject now / I scrub a blue bowl in a chipped basin / drip my hair with lavender / dream about sterile rooms / a salpingectomy / slender trunk / how did you carry, was it low / a diviner whispered my daughter’s names into my palms / a pit from a sweet rotted fruit appeared under the juniper / I would like to have one of your early apples, you wrote / was that prayer / on the coldest days mountain lions grit their teeth outside my window / their chatter sounds like church bells / after a hard freeze , did you stand on the Mississippi and not think of drowning / your nightgown floating white and clean as wind / did you listen

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From Hortensia, in winter ( New American Press, 2024) and first published in Birdcoat Quarterly, Spring 2023.)

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Divining Rod

A hairline fracture. A lyre snake bedded in my underwear drawer. Curdled dream. Blade snapped from the handle. Hortensia, teach me how to read the signs—before dawn, I stumbled onto antlers shed well before March. They grew behind its body, closest to god. I know things and not—that honeycomb sealed in a jar can last a year, at best. That the river can run itself backwards. It takes a natural disaster. What would you do? Did you know that the stillest waters can secret whirlpools? The downdraft happens when bodies collide. A maelstrom. The way he cupped my chin—asked me to look— was not at, but through. As if there was a way out.

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From Hortensia, in winter (New American Press, 2024).

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Exodus

Milk froths over, feathery in a glazed mug. I watch a woodpecker forget the geography of air—churn in the invisible. Then flee. I feel silence to mean what’s missing, never shapeless. Some days love. Another round of snow arriving, another mistake I’ll settle into as understanding more about what I’ve become. I am looking for the word that falls between almost and touch. That consideration. It has its own airspace. The gap where the juniper was chopped is a frame now. If only the light would enter, I could trick myself into believing it was heat.

**

From Hortensia, in winter (New American Press, 2024). First published in CALYX, Summer/ Fall 2023.

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Subjects to Consider for Both Painting and Writing

Film on my teeth after eating a hard-boiled egg. Why anyone would call blood crimson. Chopping wood on a day you can see your breath. The clicking sound that Mahjong tiles make. The speed at which they are placed. A windchime strung with bones. The way winter light feels most earnest in the morning. His chin, as it pressed against my shoulder blade. The muscles of grief that cramp without warning. Why men are allowed to age—the absence of a societal tantrum. The Farmer’s Almanac that everyone in town is mumbling about. Radishes in a white bowl. Glue, hardened, on the window that looks like frost. Scratches on old records that are a kind of music. Gray hairs in the sink. How he unhooked the curtains and wrapped me, naked, in what light they still held.

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From Hortensia, in winter (New Amercian Press, 2024). First published in Psaltry & Lyre, December 2022.

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Consent Form

I spend days not sleeping in a sterile room contemplating the internal organs a surgeon has removed joking I'm shocked it wasn't some motel bathtub after a heavy night of whiskey & heat for black market organs. My skin zipped with fishing line and infection. Those were the horror stories of my teenage years. Waking with parts of me removed without consent. But now, it’s the uterus & tubes, one ovary, my cervix—organs that made me ripest. I'm in awe that I don’t feel shriveled the way society has pinned my age bracket and gender, and that there is any conversation that begins with I'm supposed to feel. I've signed more than a handful of consent forms, given permission each time a pill is presented, erased blame for human error. I'm navigating the loose ends of a twenty-year marriage where I did not do the same. In therapy, I've learned to accept an absence of control by repeating I do not love this. This way, it is not a loss. Instead, a silhouette. Right now, I do not love the bleeping cycle of sharps & IV drips. The abdominal binder. The internal stitches I'm afraid of tearing. The riddled pain that pills solve. But catch the way the flowers a man I can’t stop thinking about has sent to my room, how they greedily reopen when a nurse is kind enough to move the vase closest to the window, to recover what light has squared through.

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I have not yet met all of the people who will love me

I carve out tenderness with a hairpin made of bone. Little red fox in my brain-fog. I’d hack the weed sprouts below my knees to find you. Amongst ant hills and rabbit fur. Floozy sunflowers that line the ditch. I’ve turned stone after stone in my palm imagining the dip of your back. I’m growing weary of waiting whistling a banjo tune in the eye of the storm. As offering, I’ve left mason jars with two fingers of whiskey for you on the front porch. All wasp-flick and stink beetles. I imagine you as dusk, pressing your mouth to my shin. Saying, salt. Saying, aftermath. An equation I’m inventing just to solve you in. I am writing to you as cracks in the window. The mourning doves try to pierce their beaks through. A litany of cicada sheds piled underneath. Bodies unzipped. I’m waiting, needful as spoons that heavy in the drawer. Wanting to be taken out, to be glint and useful. To press cold against the small cut on your lip.

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First published in Rhino 2024.

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Megan Merchant (she/her) is author of six full-length poetry collections, a children’s book with Penguin Random House, and a handful of chapbooks. She is a board member for the Northern Arizona Book Festival, the owner of the editing, mentoring, and manuscript consultation business www.shiversong.com and holds an M.F.A. degree from UNLV. She is a visual artist and, most recently, won the New American Poetry Prize for her collection Hortensia, in winter. You can find her work at https://meganmerchant.wixsite.com/poet

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Jerrice J Baptiste

3/2/2026

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In Your Soul Hafiz

“Admit something: everyone you see, you say to them, ‘Love me.’”
Hafiz (1320-1389)

In your soul Hafiz there must have been a passionate lover of plumped purple figs, red ruby seeds of pomegranate, wine on lips welcoming a mauve dusk alone. You must have cried out of deep sorrow and known loss not just of the departed but of someone alive beneath the sun, where you could see her stroll hand in hand with another by a river. Her cheek brushed with a pink rose not one you offered; her smile beamed not by your romantic verses. You let her be, turned to the divine, and your soul sang.

**

Spring Hike

She travels light. A miniature emerald-coloured knapsack on her back holds a Ziplock bag of granola with red dried raspberries, sunflower seeds, and shaved almonds to eat when she reaches the mountaintop. A sixteen-ounce bottle of ice mint tea to sip, hanging on the pouch of the knapsack as she hikes. Scented lavender towelettes to wipe her armpits. A white t-shirt with three quarter sleeves to change into when the sweat has dripped down her spine to her coccyx bone. She travels light, smiling at birdsongs filtering through her eardrums, caressing her mind. Absorbing colours of yellow forsythia in early spring, goldenrods, daisies and Queen Ann’s lace growing on the side of the mountain. Buries her nose in purple lilac bushes in early June, she inhales their scent as their branches sway. She babbles with the brook as her eyes follow its path down the mountainside, singing its melody. She mimics the wings of the eagle, zig-zagging her arms in flight. A butterfly kissing fuchsia flower to flower. A bee suckling the nectar centre’s breast of a sunflower. She’s glowing sunlight in midst of a summer’s poem.

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Savour

It has been pouring for three days. Purple orchids, and pink hibiscus are gone with the island. Gone with harsh winds that tremble lips, skull and heart.  Where to take refuge?  I hear the news of flooding from uncle. Row boats needed to traverse from street to street. In my safe home in the US, I peel an orange in circular motion, zest tickle nostrils and I savor each segment as if it were my last. I can’t stop thinking of the famine in my country, and the sea that rises, the erosion of land, the trees sliding inches forward towards the final turquoise crystal of life. My abundance is a joy and a guilt. Red blood oranges becoming rare, disappearing in the daylight with rain drops on tin roofs, makeshift homes and cobalt blue tent slums blown by harsh winds.

My abundance is a joy and a guilt. The last time I visited the island, the disaster was an earthquake where bodies were buried under rubble. Partial living rooms and kitchens had collapsed. I could picture the neighbours sitting for their last meals of malanga, plantains, okra with mushroom, silky black rice perhaps a fried red snapper in creole sauce.  A stiff leg or and an arm jolted my heart under rubble as uncle and I walked the neighborhood looking for friends and peeking inside partial houses, the way you look inside a magenta doll house where the purple paisley couch still stands in the corner. Except, this wasn’t a play. One grey cloud hung over the city. It was a place of oat and mahogany-coloured coffins and funerals. One grey cloud hangs now with the hurricane. Uncle tells me, “Hurricanes will wash away the island. We can’t take any more.” I whisper a prayer and a blessing. I pick up another orange, peel it in circular motion & savour each segment.

**

When The Ruler Strikes

My spine elongates when she walks down the aisle with her wooden ruler in hand. The red chambers of my heart jolt when her shadow roams from the back of the third-grade classroom to arrive at the front.  Her lemon scent from the bottle of Jean-Naté permeates the air.  Hermance’s scent approaches my desk that squeaks. I quickly switch from writing with my left hand to writing with my right hand.  Her wooden yellow ruler smacks my hands. “You think I didn’t see you switch hands? Huh?” My shame for being caught lowers my gaze.  My heart jumps like a race horse over hurdles. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, Jean Baptiste.”  I pick up my head to see Hermance’s face protruding from her black and white veil.  Her light caramel-coloured skin seems to age each day without any compassion. Did she ever cry? Did she ever know loss, fear, suffering?

Near her eyes are crows’ feet resembling small pleats on my pink school uniform. Hermance strolls the aisles with pride that her skin color is better than my mocha skin tone. The school girls with light skin were not hit on their hands. Each night, I prayed for the awful school building to be torched by someone who carried the viridian green rage in their arthritic fingers.

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Black Summer Peach

I had fallen far from the peach tree. Washed by rain drops on a bed of green fervent summer leaves, carried by the wild wind. My stem and pit don’t resemble other peaches. They remain un-plucked by fingers; small toes have pointed unable to reach my twin.  You and I are not from the same branch, or the same family of flesh and seeds. I wait for the tumbling of your round body and you do not fall to join me in the grass. The soil from which we grew has given you all the pigmentation, and I pale and fuzzy, rinsed again by the rain, soak and shiver with morning dew drops. My complaint has only reached you from where you are, up high in the tree with the tenderness of a breeze.  Maybe, I will become the first black peach when the mud coats my uneven skin. Yours will glisten in the sun on a curved branch hanging over the ripples of the creek. The tourists sailing will capture your perfect circumference, peach colour and texture in their photographs. I would’ve been too far from the tree that birth us to be noticed. They will rave “Oh how beautiful, the shimmer of this perfect peach in sunlight.” Then, you will be placed in a pearl frame on a windowsill.  I would’ve been coated in dry mud and only rain boots crushing my body will free my feathered soul. At the sound of tourists dragging their feet, my segments will smear the ground of the orchard. Maybe, I will be noticed when one lifts up their foot to look in the grooves, asking, “What’s that?”

**

Jerrice J Baptiste is an artist, poet, author of nine books. Her most recent book titled, Coral in The Diaspora, was published by Abode Press (August 2024). She’s been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize by Jerry Jazz Musician 2024 & Abode Press 2025, and as Best of The Net in 2022 by Blue Stem. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Mantis, One Art: Poetry Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, The Write Launch, The Banyan Review, Ecotheo Review, The Yale Review, The Lake, Artemis Journal and hundreds of others. She facilitates poetry as a returning teaching artist at The Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. Her poems & collaborative songwriting are featured on the Grammy nominated album-Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti.

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David Harrison Horton

2/23/2026

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Model Answer (Advertising)

Hello. This isn’t my first go around this rodeo. I can hog-tie and give you a line, just like I got your attention. See, I could be an ad-man. You want one thing, and I offer anything else. It’s the ole switcheroo. But if I’m good, and I like to think that I am, you buy at least a part of it. Is this kid is selling me some BS, selling me a line? Is he 20% for real or 80%? Did he mention dead relatives? Is everyone in his hometown somehow afflicted with poverty related spiels? I haven’t given you any of that. Because you are golden, and you deserve a nice day.

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Model Answer (Food)

Food has a long history. People have always eaten food. When I was poor, I ate burritos from the taco truck on 50th and International. Now, I live somewhere else, and I can’t get a burrito worth a damn. The food is all wrong. It’s complex for all the wrong reasons. Do you need fifteen ways to make noodles from the same flour? And does it need to be so labor intensive? In a village in France, one guy gets up early and makes all the bread for all the families that day. Division of actual labour. One family is eating pork, the other cassoulet. But they are all eating bread. It’s a Henry Ford world.

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Model Answer (Travel)

When you spend time in airports, you watch a lot of sports you don’t care about. It’s an introduction to the culture. Airport bars always show the sports the locals pay the most attention to. Five screens of ping pong or NFL mark well exactly where you are. A layover that drives the point home is excruciating. You gain a vocabulary you don’t want to use, and talk with folk who won’t let it go. Who cares if you’re getting your big break on Broadway?

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Model Answer (Parks and Gardens)

Parks are romantic. Even someone like Bobby and Helen found love in Needle Park, and that place was sketch. That’s why I take my Nan to the park after work sometimes. They got some old folks playing ping pong and waltzing to drum machine polka. I tell her to take a look around, find a man, live a little. She says she’s happy feeding the birds.

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Model Answer (Changes)

First, it was the Elohim, then came the angels. By the 1920s it was all about UFOs and aliens. Brautigan said it was machines of loving grace, but he was probably joking — or high — or both. Now, we are in a Matrix-like simulation. Whichever way it plays, there are no good masters. So, go ask your boss for that raise you deserve.

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David Harrison Horton is a Beijing-based writer, artist, editor and curator. He is author of Necessary (Downingfield, 2025) and Maze Poems (Arteidolia, 2022). His latest chap, Model Answer, was released by CCCP Chapbooks/subpress in 2024. His work has recently appeared in The Belfast Review, Roi Fainéant, Verbal Art and Yolk, among others. He edits the poetry zine SAGINAW. davidharrisonhorton.com

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Kirk Lawson

2/16/2026

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sense memory

Waking without you, the dog and I head out for her morning walk. I squeeze the phone so tightly my ring finger bruises. Waiting, for the call about your surgery. Returning, still no word. I enter our bedroom and open your closet doors. Pants, shorts, shirts--stacked neatly by garment type and colour—confront me.

precision folds
your attention to detail
pieces of you

I cover my face with your pajama bottoms, inhale your light cedar scent, traces of our streamside sauna just one week ago.

Not knowing.

unleashed floods
waters rage
holding onto you

**

sheer beauty

rough and ready
clarity of the Sky Lakes
we swim with frogs

Acquiring our property upstate in 1990 secures our future salvation. Over time we adorn the house with classic Adirondack features to create our own “great camp.” We hike from it along nature’s trails, top the ridge, wind down to the Saunderskill stream and end up at our sauna.

a fork in the birch
deer and wild turkey
our nosy neighbours

I study you over time as you examine nature. Your fascination dates back to childhood when your oldest brother, high school science teacher and mycologist, lures you into the world of fungi and slime molds.  Our moist forested floor sends you back to an exciting, simpler time.

rich decay
your outdoor experiment
the cycle of life

With your accident—and with the COVID-19 pandemic brewing around us—images of woodlands become an even more sustaining reserve.

to stand with trees
mychorrizal networks
and glacial scratches

**

honour the front line

Walks to the hospital offer miles of mindful meditation. Time to reflect on our many years together. As I journey across town in an unfolding pandemic horror film, I pass through the theatre district, where we have together been entertained by live performance.

the drama of contagion
and marquees extinguished
Broadway shut tight

Each time I pass the entrance of the hospital, my eyes land on powerful multi-colored sentiments. Chalked on sidewalks by fans of healthcare workers, simple truths and uplifting calls to action:

behind each dark cloud
the sun waiting to break free

This intentional community of hope raises my spirits.

if you don’t see light, be light

At 7 pm each evening, NYC steps outside onto sidewalks, balconies, and terraces to herald healthcare workers who show up, take care of the ill and put themselves at risk. As New Yorkers clang pots, clap and shout, I think of you. My husband-doctor, now intensive care patient.

a call to heal
din of metal colanders
ad-hoc orchestra

**

Keeping Score

Has it all come down to this? After a lifetime of quantifying success against an arbitrary goal. To achieve, whatever the cost. A competitive nature, I prefer victory to failure.

Retired and sixty-six, I see my oncologist monthly. Just when I’d hoped to be free from success by someone else’s calculation, I’m checking for lab results in my electronic medical record to forecast the future.

Yesterday I learn that my numbers are climbing up.

heads or tails
win, lose or draw
the taste of sky

Today we enjoy a leisurely lunch at a trattoria on Restaurant Row in New York. Then stroll to our Broadway Matinee through a frenetic Times Square. A friend eagerly asks the question, one that feels more like an indictment.

Everything good with your cancer?

I shut down.

Don’t want to talk about it.

skimming stones
bounce across the surface
then sink

Even at this point in life, I am still not sure what counts.  In spite of illness, I refuse to be defined by it. I remind myself often that my husband and I have built a wonderful life together.

touched by rain drops
and mountain laurel blossoms
moss shifts underfoot

**

This poem was first published in Pulse Voices.

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I recount, we re-live

We acquire our upstate woodland property in 1990. As we meander with abandon through the forest, we grow through shared wonder. Discover local flora and fauna, as if walking through the lens of Ansel Adams. Our shoulders brush wispy white northern pines while moss-capped rocks point the way. Lulled by the percussive timpani of a woodpecker’s swift beat on a felled oak, we are cleansed by sounds of the Saunderskill streambed. Waters dance around rocks, down granite chutes and beckon us onwards. And often inwards.

We lose sight of each other. I turn to find you, on hands and knees, examining slime molds. Dangling a red newt, as if to lower its tail into your wide-open grin, eyeballs crossing. Or sniffing the wintergreen leaf you’ve just torn in two, making me a scented offering. You study a pink and chartreuse jack-in-the-pulpit and its champagne-flute contours.

As years pass, we grow wiser and older. Steep climbs, leaps and deep dives become careful steps along the path and toes into the water. Then your mountain bike accident, five years ago. Both of us stopped us in our tracks.

glacial scratches
up and down my spine
a lone eagle soaring

Our woods off-limits to you, I lose my bearings. Cannot or will not witness such wonder alone. It’s as though my senses for the cliffs, streambed, trails, wildlife have all been muted. I deny myself pleasure where you have lost feeling.

blinded
you urge me
to wander

Until we adopt a dog. Leo and I hike nearly each day. Spry and strong, he leaps and lurches, snapping me into right here, right now. Forces me to attend to branches that might scratch, roots that might trip.

I return with photos and videos to share. Our rediscovered joy.

together we find
     our place
on this earth

**

passing through

Our first day of vacation, we walk through the town to get to the trailhead. Past tiny street-side stores and family-run limoncello laboratori. Next, a thirteenth century paper mill, the first in Italy to produce hand-printed paper. The ascent to Ravello includes more than a kilometre of stone steps. Connected by paths through scented lemon and silvery olive groves. Each view offers Mediterranean cliffs, sea and shade from burning mid-day sun. Just past mid-point, we stop to complain of unexpected fatigue and are passed by a nonna forging up a long flight of stone steps. Carrying three bags of groceries, she offers buongiorno as she speeds by. Later we enjoy a good laugh and a glass wine at a trattoria in Ravello. For the return, a guilt-free taxi.

to trod
civilizations
we two
one step
at a time

The next day we walk down to the hotel’s spiaggia, which involves hundreds of steps winding through the terraced landscape. We pass flower gardens filled with blooming wisteria and oleander until we stumble upon the kitchen’s vegetable garden. Admiring tomatoes, spinaci, beans, lemon trees, our eyes land on the arugula. We pick a stem and seconds later hear “Bah.” A moment after that, “Baaaaaah.” As we proceed, we are greeted by two sturdy goats nestled in the rock, behind a rustic gate. To express our gratitude, we pick a few more leafy morsels, careful to leave enough for the pizza con rucola, mozzarella e prosciutto we intend to order for lunch later that day at the seaside al fresco trattoria.

to roam and forage
a la carte
each of us bleating

One calm, sunny morning at the port of Amalfi, we rent a boat with captain and cruise la costeria amalfitana. Speeding over Mediterranean seas, the motor’s blades spew and spit up a hearty wake on either side of its sleek hull. Our bodies rise and fall in syncopation as we glide over the choppy surface. We gaze in wonder at the coastline’s uninterrupted cliffs and recall our very own mountainous Shawangunk cliffs surrounding our country home. In both locales, prehistoric rock formed millions of years before us, the result of tectonic shifts. Almost imperceptibly, we become part of the landscape.

audacious
     the alchemy of geography
a life at sea

Our last day. Never mind its fancy shops, our interest in Capri was mainly the brisk walk from the Marina Grande to its southeastern corner, escaping glitz for beach. And our lunch stop, Trattoria da Luigi. In full view of i Faraglioni, three spurs of rock shooting up out of the sea. Like a massive whale that stands erect just before crashing down.

We descend our final stone pathway to Da Luigi, its own wonder awaiting. A beachside family enterprise going back decades. Seated outdoors, the beach and monolithic rocks just beyond reach, we will always remember Italiani promenading waist high in azure waters and Spaghetti alle Vongole with a glass of Vermentino.

to linger
in the company of seagulls
over time

**

Kirk Lawson lives Ulster County, New York, surrounded by the Shawangunk mountains.   He enjoys poetry as a creative outlet to enhance meaning in living. Published in Discretionary Love, Months to Years, Thorn and Bloom. Grateful to his husband Jim and dog Leo for all they teach him each day.

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Jessica Purdy

2/9/2026

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Pupa Dreaming

I put my ear to the monarch larva munching milkweed because it must be making noise the way it’s chomping—like a typewriter bangs out letters to make words, or like my grandfather would eat corn on the cob, butter dripping down his chin, flecks of yellow corn flying from his mouth and us grinning behind our hands. I get so close I can hear the little guy chewing. Is this its voice? The larva think we are so stupid with our imaginations and equations. Why would they need to talk? With each move, their sets of legs follow along. Look at them crawling upside down on the bottom of a leaf! Heads and tails nearly identical. They don’t know whether they’re coming or going. What bugs do have voices? What about crickets? Their song is a kind of voice but not from any mouth. Their legs the viola and bow singing love songs. And cicadas too, with their little horny tymbal membranes of desire. The monarch caterpillars work hard at being metaphors for poems and sermons. Growing faster than weeds and messing with our minds at transformation time. Do we believe it because it’s true or is it true because we believe it? They are really harping on their status as miracles. Now they’ve lost their skins and become little green pods hanging from the rafters like sleeping vampires. They dream of stained glass windows and the purple-gold taste of sugar, of sailing to the silence of Mexico for rekindling the aerial dance of their love.

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The Dream Act Explained

There is no somnolent village. The brain’s wires can turn against the somatic as well as the soul and torment the body of the afflicted. A lycanthrope is institutionalized when visions of demons cause violent acts. In my nightly visitations I feel sorrow and anger more fervently than when I am awake. The village in my vision is no fairy tale illustration. No church steeple. No quiet mattresses of homes or cypress trees spiralling toward the clouds. Souls I meet there are in airports needing care. I take on other strange shapes. My baby disappears when I drop her down a hole to a better life. There is no one that will help me locate her without revealing I do not belong. She was a “dreamer.” Her body fell through the air and shimmered and was gone. I had trusted she would be safe before I could follow. Women on the floors below wanted her for her black eyes. My body was too large to fit. Hair sprouted from my chin and I roared.

**

Gratitude List

At bedtime I make a list of ailments body parts that hurt at night I wake myself with a full body lunge away from the nightmare abductor coming at me through that thin dissolving membrane at dawn I wonder what color the sky is at ten I thought double digits at once I must combine all I’ve consumed and form it like clay at my desk I put my head down and sob at school my teacher would turn out the lights and make us put our heads down at school I longed at dinner at church at home was I ever in charge at all at times I was seven and scared at other times I was 18 and looking over my shoulder at bedtime I make a list of gratitudes stuff the headphones in my ears against anyone’s noises at my own noise the gears in my head at my friend’s house we listened to music and at the pond we smoked at lunch we gathered in the courtyard at bedtime I make a list of ailments at the top of my head at the bottom of my feet at no time am I ever at no time am I ever at once old and young and at bedtime I make a list of gratitudes leaking in like music that won’t die at the hooks that dig in and sing until I’m sick with it at night I leak like music at church at the dance at memory at all at all at all

**

I Dream My Daughter and I Are on Vacation

I tell her I will buy all the thrift shop dresses she loves. The ribbon dresses, the chiffon, and the denim. I tell her she can walk at night freely in transparent plum colours. She can slide down the cleft of a landslide into the ocean if she wants. She can click her heels down any aisle or forest path. She can fill her lungs with smoke or clean mountain air. Her teeth can grind the hardest diamonds into speech. Her tongue can taste, ingest, or detest wine. Still she will be safe. She will know her ideas are the changing sky we worship.

**

On A Morning White as Cotton Batting

I’m coming out of dreams of a before-life, belly crawling. My arms drag me over the dirt, legs trailing. Belongings held in caches along the way. I’m showing my son the bed I shared with his father. (Was this our room?) And my pregnancy belly up against the brick walls. What lighting! And I can’t remember if this was where we ate. What I thought was coming next. I’m telling my son this is where we slept, but the light is on, and there are no windows. What does he expect of his next steps? Our cat’s dying is when he first learned that death rests in mulch in the shadow of the house with flies in its eyes. What about your great grandma dying? He can only remember sitting on her lap and being afraid of her wattle. She was kind and quiet. You used to pretend to be her, I tell him. Shuffled along with her walker wearing her slippers. He asks, Is that when you knew your boy was gay? Were you disappointed when you found out? Of course not, I say. I was terrified for your safety. I am on the ground with my face in doll guts. Watching my breath. My heart sounds too close, gunning against the what-ifs.

**

concerned I might have a doubt about it my swan arranges a seance at the wedding

no weeding of geese // somnambulist trains // and nuances pertain to anything aware of ascots and veins protruding // as if blood dries like paint and the puddles form pearls of lists // as if the culprit is in the culvert with the bones of the child left wrapped in his blanket of lies // the blue of the soft felt against the wisp of his wishbone cheek // the satin edge deckled as paper in a lint of books // the lilt of lit fuses // also ranging as a motorbike // rattle and fart blast of air and mortgage of sunshine // only the masters can mediate // for all along the wall was art and music // much music of lies // of laughter and mores and morass // where all the bugs you could encounter // what was this beetle with the glass wings // what was this machine of dirt // where all that can be named is metaphor and brittle laughter // and enemies designing cheap concert tee shirts // all along the fevered walls the tomato bugs swarm // the ants and their armies // their black bodies glinting like guns // flint of lighter snicking from the wheel against the grain // the grind and gird of concrete and steel beams // the sun and how hot metal sears the skin that grazes it // even the fork // even the suit the spoon // the shine of a steer // of an iconoclast in sunglasses // ideas of heaven and earth that leave even the brightest smile a smirk // the landing of stairs twenty feet up // the bodies found there bludgeoned // their portraits above them hanging from nails

**

What Nobody Tells You About Sleep

It has common demons as far back as 2400 BC, incubi and succubi, witches, Liliths, Old Hags, and horned gods who sit on your chest to stop your breathing. Sleep paralysis – a witch who smirks at you while licking the mouth of another woman; it is a bat that lands on your petrified chest; it is the ghost of a boy who died by suicide. It has hypnagogic hallucinations as you are falling asleep – the plunge off a cliff which wakes you up with a jerk. Hypnopompic hallucinations in the transition to wakefulness – visions of black letters, of grainy footage, frottage. It has sleep misperception, aka paradoxical insomnia – you think you are awake all night, but really you were asleep. There are lucid dream vibrations – buzzing sounds; a feeling of hands curling into claws; an electric current running in the veins. If you dream of death you are undergoing a life transition. The part of your brain that deals with language shuts off when you sleep. Only poets can read words in their dreams.

**

Jessica Purdy is the author of STARLAND and Sleep in a Strange House (Nixes Mate, 2017 and 2018), The Adorable Knife (Grey Book Press, 2023), and You’re Never the Same (Seven Kitchens Press, 2023). Her poems and micro-fiction have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Spiritual Literature, Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and Best Micro-Fiction. Her poetry appears in The Ekphrastic Review, About Place, On the Seawall, Radar, SoFloPoJo, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere. She lives in Exeter, NH.

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ckSlack

2/2/2026

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You Know What’s Next

The sink fills with half-rinsed plates. Any spoken word is rationed like oxygen in a diver’s tank. Silence hovers, fat with unsaid. When the kettle whistles, no one moves. When glass breaks, no one flinches. When the dog whines at the door—that’s the only honest sound in the house. The regulated air between has hardened into amber. No we, no I, no you, as the bed grows wider—just a suitcase under, ready like a parachute. The refrigerator moans secrets. No one will say it. The mirror develops static. Not yet. Every doorknob is an oracle.

**

Heartbeat of Steel

The girls knot lightly together, laughter slicing through air, skirts hiked high like flags of defiance. Smoke curls from their lips, grey ribbons unraveling toward the West Virginia evening sky. One girl, with dark feathered hair, eyes set hard like cobblestone, leans against the dim street light. Dried black smudges under her lashes contrast her pallid cheeks. She flicks her cig, the filter end rimmed with Bliss You Berry. Without a glance you see her walk past 7-Eleven, past the red convertible stacked with whistling, booming boys. Pink scrunchie on her wrist, she shifts her hips, savouring the snug fit of her favourite jeans, months in the making. The other girls pull at their tiny crop tops, sheer without imagination. She doesn’t need to look—her steps say more than her story, the rhythm of her boot heels ask no permission. Stronger than the steel they shape at the factories, harder than the radiant black pavement, she cradles dreams. You could follow but no one could dance to the music crying in her head. Here, girls live small, take what they can, stuck in summer sweat, fight for that back seat between two boys. But this girl—takes more than they ever will. She moves through the smoke and heat, shard-sharp, ignoring their stares and hooting, as they pull away. Always weighed down, she stands near where the road spits fire.

**

Stitched in Solitude

I reach around to peel layers of hot sewn patchwork morphing. Husk tailored to each acquaintance unique, seemingly unending, blistering bubbling fabric drapes over stuck skin. Kaleidoscope threads clamor. Collar and yoke ornate with buttons of bone weigh down to paralyze muscles stretched. Thin sheath varnished chokes connecting and expanding, pulls out lingering gasps from the lungs. Sigh capes ceaseless lament. Vast inner pockets brush steel wool to satin flesh. Scars and scabs designed to be hidden and quiet become shifty and daring blow away then return in night through inflexible cobalt seams. Cloaked, frayed hemmed edges surrender. Torment sirens my solitary robe to bolt and release stoking this hateful pattern. Ashamed to reveal smoky familiar membranes, encased years unfurl as it envelops, fitting into cavernous holes. Grief pushes me small.

**

This was first published at Unleash Lit.

**

Here, Me Out

I wander among the corridors of belonging, the walls of which are both fortress and prison. Figures murmuring grey, brown and terracotta cluster behind locked doors. Echoes converse with me. Corpulent fog tumbles over lake water painting my day in the artistry of exclusion. There could be cold poetry in being unseen. Or beauty. Slivered spaces between the spoken and silent. Blow wildflower seeds. Respite in that small crack of forgotten wall winding to the damp shoreline. Milky morning tease shadows. Periwinkle blue whisper petals of longing. Dreaming vines rustle. Among the soft curved crackles of leafy memory - challenge the bristled voices buried beneath the din. It’s time to reclaim every last word as testament.

**

The Sky is Only a Ceiling If You Touch It

I’ve stared long enough to see steam form letters, ghostly alphabets rising from birthdays of broth. Soup becomes a séance, summoning scents of forgotten kitchens. Echo of wooden spoons scraping grief, stuck on the bottom. Flames beneath the pot flicker like a violin string plucked in an empty room—trembling, unresolved, searching for a song that is not yet written. My hands are clocks, ticking backward into wet clay of childhood, where the moon was a spoon and the stars sugar I poured too fast—too eager to sweeten skies before night collapsed into hunger. Steam curling like a ribbon around a gift I never mean to open. Lid rattles. Quiet panic—a secret trying to escape its own heat.

**

Ascent to Perfection

flying blind there she is grazing treetops guessing her route stumbles upon a boy man with hands like David certain Michelangelo sparked electric as he carved and smoothed tracing each static finger up to his dimple then to his open lip spilling out whispers listen he loves into eyes iris shades marble streaks dilating pupils peaking outlines and carving bodies out of block as the shadow of divine is sought throw heads back into high renaissance in this time of perfection

**

She Calls Me Civetta

Her love is not loud, but beckons, as hot skies hang weighted in July. Across the Ohio border, roads tangle with gravel beneath tires, clatterpinging against wheel wells. After climbing steep switchbacks, she will hold my hand at twilight, walking back acres along the creek, narrating her land spirit. Crank up the car windows as dust streams from the station wagon’s belly. We will find textures of ancient marine life within Indiana limestone: Trilobites and Brachiopods, outlining each baffling skeleton with our fingers. Whiffs of sweet, sunbaked hay mix with billows of metallic dust. One more turn to go, past weathered signs—Hilltop Farm, AKC Registered Collies. The swollen hill captivates, barely wide enough. Gritty rocks tumble left, as the car interior dapples darker under canopies of unspoiled trees. We will sit on scratchy woolen plaid blankets, tenderly shy, absorbing her sentience. No relief, sticking to my seat in pastel seersucker shorts. Until the very last bend, back wheel of the car slips, heart thumps right in my throat, sunshine strobes at the clearing, statuesque corn on one side, red brick farmhouse ahead. At the crest of the hill, long armed iron gates and a last hand-painted board that says Honk, igniting a chorus of barking and high-pitched yelps. Streaks of gold and white, black and white, behind gates that drag dirt in an arc, bolted onto worn gray barns. We come to the altar and will linger until lightening bugs hover, streaming Milky Way beams on us. Rolling down windows as freshly cut grass jumps in my nose, reaching hands to wave hello. Counting all life as a gathering of gifts—her constant canon like moon crescents gold. These are all God’s creatures. Gossip with breeze, leave apples where they fall, at dawn, the deer come.

**

This poem first appeared in Unleash Lit.

**

ckSlack is an emerging poet currently living in Pittsburgh, PA who began writing through her journals as a young woman with a life-long love of words, nature and Thanksgiving gatherings with her family. She is influenced by Renaissance and Surrealism art and inspired by classical and alternative music. She has been published in The Ravens Perch and Unleash Press.

1 Comment

Marcia Yudkin

1/26/2026

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All Hail the Conductor

Spring nights ring first with the shrill cacophony of the peepers, nature’s orchestra warming up in the highest registers.  Weeks later, the bullfrogs enter, deep bass strings, unseen: plomp plomp plomp.  As the slumbery days lengthen, a beaver’s furry slap on the water punctuates a silence.  The great blue heron takes off with a hard flap, then a honk.  Dark clouds gather and rumble in growls that crash, releasing a fizzy downpour.  Finally a lumbering bear splashes into the marsh.  It can swim!  Its paddling barely pings as wasps, bees and hummingbirds chitter a melody that promises fragrances and stings.

**

Encounter

Ahead of me as I run on our narrow road, a black blob a bit bigger than a bowling ball humps from asphalt onto a neighbour’s gravel drive.

As I near, the porcupine maintains its ponderous pace, but snaky-squiggly, as if woozy from drinking something it shouldn’t have.  It’s a walking weapon, capable of wounding a curious dog or mountain lion.

Close up, quills lay smooth on its furry exterior, glistening with silver.  The creature’s plump, rounded shape seems adorable as a waddling baby while it wanders into shin-high weeds and vanishes from sight.

So prickly, so cuddly – such a mixed-up apparition on a morning when the school buses, the fix-it trucks, the still sleepy drivers have rumbled away to their urgent business.

**

Drought

Forty days and forty nights now, we haven’t had what WTVV calls a “soaking rain.”  The spillway at the end of our lake glistens with a mere trickle in the middle, and fallen leaf heaps along the roadsides crackle, papery and brittle.

Our well goes 400 feet down to a rocky water table, so no worries for our faucets going dry.  But Red Flag warnings blink neon don’ts on town-line signs.  On our remote road, a not-snuffed cigarette tossed, like the drunk-up beer cans I round up, can spark apocalyptic havoc.

As cloudbursts, lightning storms and even drizzles stay away, I needn’t time my run by the weather forecast.  With tepid day and night-time temperatures, it feels like a Sun Belt holiday.  So long as it passes, is this parch so bad?  I watch for moose, deer and foxes wandering down the hill to drink what remains in the creek.

A ferocious plague or a mild reprieve: Like debaters arguing both sides of a room, delight and danger battle.

**

Threading the Pain

While he burned bacteria off the needle with matches, I shifted the sticks and leaves beneath me into a lumpy-carpet bed. What had my meditation teacher said?  Without thoughts, beliefs and expectations, pain doesn’t become suffering.  One-pointed attention – the now, now, only now – sounded then like a trick, a myth, a poof-it’s-gone sleight of mind.

As James bent over my mashed-arm wound, I shut my eyes and opened to the moment.  Amidst the prick, push, tug, I concentrated everything I had on steel, skin and thread.  Prick, push, tug, amidst a tuneless hum, an ashy smell, flames flaring on the screen of my closed lids.  Don’t resist!  Prick, push, tug.  Tug, tug.  At last, a blessed pause.

Opening out of the darkness, I saw the red-streaked stitching.  It throbbed, a pendulum clock striking the hours from under my surface.  James’s solemn, sorry face reverberated with that rhythm.  Had I vanquished pain?  Already I couldn’t remember.

**

The Killing Season

December’s first two weeks: where I live, the season of orange.  I wear a slippery blaze-bright vest outdoors.  It’s one-size-fits-all, but without the metal clip I add, it droops.  The vest keeps deer hunters from shooting me – for their sake and mine.  No hunting within 500 feet of a dwelling, say the rules.  No hunting within 150 feet of a public road.

It’s just two weeks, I tell myself.  Let them have their sport.

I’ve seen dead deer roped onto an SUV roof.  A fresh carcass hanging from a crosspiece between two trees.  A stranger with a shotgun stepping briskly into woods where I normally wander.  Pickup trucks parked along dirt roads where usually no one stops.

It’s meat for the rest of their year, I tell myself.  Let them have their sport.

Once during hunting season, my husband came home from a run. “A hunter shot a deer on our land.  They’re by the brook, halfway to Sam’s house.”  I grabbed my vest and strode righteously until I spotted the man, stroking a downed deer.  Just 50 feet from the road, above the brook.  “Hey,” I called down.  “You’re on our property.  And you’re way too close to houses.”

Stupid, stupid, I tell myself.  He has a gun.

On a bed of crinkled leaves, he stroked the deer, whispering to her, gentle as a mother.  “I shot her up the hill and followed her,” he finally said, not an ounce of belligerence in his voice.  “She was badly wounded, looking for water.  Half an hour and we’ll be gone.”  In his orange hat and jacket, he kept his gaze on the deer, murmuring and stroking.  I watched, an onlooker at a funeral.

He’s incredibly respectful, I tell myself.  Let them have their sport.

**

The author of fiction in Yankee, Writers Forum, Flash Fiction, Bright Flash Literary Review and New Stories from New England, Marcia Yudkin advocates for introverts through her newsletter, Introvert UpThink (https://www.introvertupthink.com/).  Her essays have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Ms., Next Avenue, Flash Boulevard and NPR.  She lives in Goshen, Massachusetts (population 960).

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Rita Maria Martinez

1/19/2026

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The Migraineur Watches X-Men Apocalypse

My younger self was adept at sleight of hand. Sought promise of relief nestled in my pocket. Surreptitiously popped blue capsules in class when nobody looked, let meds assuage left hemisphere. Onset of throbbing always a descent from grace into that scorching climate Dante describes so well. I rarely left home without abortives, fearful of atomic migraines mushrooming at ill-timed moments—like dinner at La Carreta when a medianoche sandwich drooped from my hands. Todd escorted me out as I spouted gibberish. Appeared a mess to onlookers: a sloppy drunk like LiLo, a Kardashian on a bender, or a piteous teenaged Scott Summers (aka Cyclops) in X-Men Apocalypse. Scott—a sweaty, bleary-eyed high schooler on the verge of mutanthood—rubs the bridge of his nose as severe pain engulfs one then both temples. Panic forces the future X-Man to bolt without a pass, seek refuge in uneasy quiet of hallway or boy’s room. Summers prays mounting discomfort subsides as he unknowingly confronts genetic destiny, ambushed by intolerable brightness bursting past both pupils, uncontrollable beams shooting from eyes he cannot close. Cyclops’s vision forever altered as iconic visor becomes permanent fixture—its ruby-infused lenses both subduing an incendiary vision and fine-tuning its immense power in a reality always irradiated and glowing, one my older self comprehends in the last row of Cinemark while wearing sunglasses.

**

This was first published at Monstering.

**

I Believe in Snuffleupagus*

I phone Mami to say I can’t visit. It rained earlier. The barometric pressure dip sparked a migraine. Mami, who’s never had a migraine in her life, thinks I’ve conjured up a fake headache. Accuses me of avoiding her. Summers it rains almost daily in Tamiami, more than in my parents’ Westchester neighborhood. Tia N lives only three blocks away. Says it didn't rain today, Mami pronounces in the same clipped tone Judge Judy uses on lying defendants. Tia N slept through Hurricane Andrew, I remind Mami. During this weather inquisition my frustration escalates to anger—much like when I watched Sesame Street as a kid, when not a soul believed Big Bird's repeated claims Mr. Snuffleupagus was real. I hadn't thought about Big Bird and Snuffy in years. In real life and on classic TV sitcoms like Bewitched, Three’s Company, and Happy Days friends and relatives often lie about having headaches to weasel out of work, sex, dating, or visiting in-laws—so people in our orbit are incredulous when migraineurs cancel plans. Convincing neurotypicals drains. I calmly tell Mami she can believe whatever she wants and hang up.

**

*I Believe in Snuffleupagus is a popular meme.

**

The Migraineur Watches Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

The Boy Who Lived destroys the penultimate horcrux hidden in a Ravenclaw diadem. I cringe whenever Harry stabs a horcrux with a basilisk fang. The action prompts a pain so sharp Potter can barely stand, so acute I expect the lightning-shaped scar on his forehead will burst into flame as nerves shriek a desperate SOS, a frequency known to those—mainly men—slammed with cluster headaches. Clusters detonate in rapid succession. Clusters make some weep or seek relief by smashing their heads against walls like my grandpa-in-law, Sal, did. Clusters forced Sal to leave the army with an honorable discharge. Our Gryffindor proceeds without luxury of a stay at the infirmary, without kind ministrations of Madam Pomfrey because Death Eaters don’t take days off.  Hermione and Ron watch their friend writhe, fear the invisible pain monster—a beast or demon not exorcized by simple incantation—will launch more surprise attacks on Harry in woods or dark corridors. Remember, there’s always one more horcrux to destroy—so like many mothers, caretakers, and soldiers—The Boy Who Lived winces, deposits his pain in an imaginary box, forges ahead.

**

Meeting Margot Kidder at the First Florida Supercon in 2007

The seminal Lois Lane brushes bangs aside and struts past me. Rocking a white three-piece suit and tortoise shell glasses, she owns the showroom, still embodies Metropolis’s indomitable ace reporter. Margot answers audience questions. Promotes the DVD release of Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut. Eight attend her panel. An adult Superman cosplayer asks, How do you feel about being spoofed on Family Guy? Though not a Trekkie, I imagine executing a Vulcan nerve pinch to render him unconscious. How should Kidder feel? Who enjoys being ridiculed on television after a public nervous breakdown? I’ve heard about the unflattering parody. Haven’t seen it. Don’t care to since I’m told it’s in poor taste, says Kidder in signature sandpaper voice. The star adjusts her glasses. Calls on someone else.

The Margot I remember poses for a picture with me free of charge, calls me Wonder Woman because I sport a blue, graphic tee with a big yellow W. The Margo I remember covers tasteful boudoir shots when children approach her booth. Chats and poses with parents and their little boy decked like Supes down to the S-shaped spit curl. She adjusts piles of photos from Superman: The Movie and The Amityville Horror. I buy an autographed black-and-white Warner Brothers glossy for my writing desk: Kidder holds the latest edition of The Daily Planet. Criminals Can Be Changed the headline promises as she gazes into the distance beyond newsprint.

The actress self-authored a Playboy article in 1975 where she revealed her teenage hang-ups: doorknob bellybutton, Brillo-pad pubic hair, pancake bottom. Divulged she’d worn a Hidden Fingers panty girdle. Applied Blush-On to muddy nipples. Electrocuted thighs with battery-operated rubber belts. A Playboy pictorial accompanies Kidder’s article but complies with her specifications—no spray tan—no airbrushing—no gauzy lingerie. Just a partially clad Kidder cartwheeling on a sandy beach. A pasty white chick with ruffled hair and freckled nose doing a high kick in her birthday suit.

The bipolar actress’s descent into the snake pit was precipitated by a computer crash erasing her memoir in 1996. Bizarre behavior begins: Margot goes missing. Chops her hair. Believes ex-husband and CIA plot to kill her. Loses some front teeth. Lives with a homeless man in a cardboard box. Recedes into fear for four days.Being pretty crazy while being chased by The National Enquirer is no good, says Kidder, post-recovery. I’m not bipolar. I’ve never tried to end my life as an adult or at 14 like Margot who swallowed a handful of codeine pills post break-up. But I share an on-again, off-again relationship with depression. I want Margot to make it. I want to see her at another con. I want to display solidarity and march with a bad-bitch posse that chants One of us! One of us! One of us!

**

The Greatest American Hero

Life was a comedy of errors the year after surgery. Maintaining a charged neurostimulator implant a magic trick. It’s disc-shaped charger housed in a clumsy fanny pack my programmer instructed I slide over shoulder. That stubborn sling rarely stayed put. An inevitable beep-beep-beep occurred, disc an inconsolable robotic baby undergoing separation anxiety when contact with skin was severed. Adhesive pads securing the whole shebang didn’t exist yet. This pre-sticky pad phase reminded me of sanitary napkins from earlier days. I’d read about belt, latches, myriad maneuvers to secure maxi-pads in Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret? A cumbersome, inefficient process. Nights I positioned disc near shoulder sans sling and slept face up. Mornings that damn disc appeared on floor, under bed, or hidden in sheets like an Easter egg. Sometimes I’d fall asleep before hitting the magic button and wake with zero bars and a whopper of a headache. I’d laugh, curse, sigh. Tech failures reminded me of the Greatest American Hero. I always sorta hated that guy. Considered him a lower life-form among superheroes as he crashed into trees or cars. After several seasons, he still hadn’t mastered the art of flying and landing with a modicum of dignity. The suit’s instruction manual forever lost or missing like the problematic disc my husband often helped find—plus misplaced eye- and sunglasses. Sometimes I wonder why my spouse puts up with me, much like I wonder why the Greatest American Hero’s intelligent and attractive lawyer girlfriend, Pam Davidson, was into him. Would you trust the Greatest American Hero with a condom? If pickings are slim, I’d rather play pelvic pinochle with the Six Million Dollar Man.

**

This was first published at Monstering.

**

Firestar and Iceman

-based on Marvel characters from the animated television series Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, which originally aired on NBC Saturday mornings beginning in 1981.

Firestar’s mask and gloves matched her glowing red hair. Yellow body suit and orange-cuffed boots exuded particles of atomic energy. Spider-Man and Iceman were her college chums, her crime-busting besties. The super trio shared quirky secrets others scarcely imagined: Iceman’s junior prom jitters triggered indoor snow, Web-Head walked on the wild side as a cage wrestler, Firestar rode thermal currents while microwaving popcorn in her palms.

A threesome. A strictly platonic relationship. But I always wondered what would happen if Spidey made himself scarce—if pesky Peter Parker ceased to function as a third wheel, as buffer between two polar extremes. Angelica Jones and Robert Drake: Fire and Frost. Aries and Pisces. Desire to protect innocents their only bond. Could they forge a relationship despite inherent differences? Her average body temperature 212 degrees Fahrenheit versus his absolute zero. Iceman intimidated by Firestar’s explosive temper. What if she lost her cool and fired a heat blast his way? What if his chilly reserve snuffed her like a candle?

Too many demands. Tough to squeeze romance into an already tight schedule. College kids by day, crime fighters by night. She crammed for exams. He scoured city streets for burning buildings. They fought an endless roster of villains: Shocker, Sandman, Scorpion, Chameleon, Kingpin, Loki, Electro, Doc Ock, Doctor Doom. They spent sleepless weeks trailing the Green Goblin who concocted a formula to convert New Yorkers into goblin groupies. But what if Firestar and Iceman could make it work? His chiseled cheeks ablaze, his cool hand like soothing aloe on her parched skin. Their energy efficient home a haven where neighbourhood children enjoy snow cones in summer, hot chocolate and smores in winter.

Yet, odds against a successful marriage would multiply like robot Sentinels. Annoying habits surface post-honeymoon: ice-crunching, chain-smoking, bickering over the thermostat. The power couple in therapy with Professor X because Bobby fantasized about fellow X-Men, because Angie buried a pair of web shooters in her lingerie drawer. The lovers about to quit the team until Peter delivers his spiel on great power and great responsibility. Until Peter initiates a huddle and the trio can’t help but high-five and cheer—Spider Friends, go for it! Firestar and Iceman would rekindle romance riding ice slides on moonlit nights. Firestar and Iceman would reconcile. They would recall how the pursuit of justice and liberty initially attracted them like moths to a light bulb, like sheer coalescence, like glacial combustion.

**

Davie, Florida: the Curse of Evergreen Place

My laptop, your pc, and the ac gave up the ghost in one week. Next, the bathroom window refused to open. The porch lock went on strike. Our Saturn was mangled by the corner car wash; it’s shredded paint adorn asphalt. Our neighbour Carol fell asleep with a lit cigarette and her porch caught fire. Fourth-floor tenant Ed decorated the building for Christmas and fractured his hip when he fell from the roof like a disgraced reindeer. When my father was airlifted to the hospital after falling off his roof in Miami, we worried about spreading bad karma around—the curse of Evergreen Place seeping into our lives like Slimer’s ectoplasm. Hurricanes, including Katrina, cropped up like an outbreak of zits.  Power outages reigned. Tenants lugged bucketfuls of pool water for toilet flushing. Our building elevator forever on the fritz. What had we done to incur The Almighty’s wrath? Like Old Testament Egyptians, we feared flooding and frog infestation. We doused our apartment with holy water, baptized each room several times—especially the bedroom before sleeping—because we had simultaneous nightmares once. But calamity was always close. Elderly tenant Ruth was fatally wounded at Publix and died the victim of a shopping cart homicide. Bunco-playing Susan got mugged outside our front door by a creep who kicked her stomach and snatched her purse. I considered buying garlic necklaces and gargoyles, purchasing a statue of St. Michael the Archangel with fiery sword upraised for slaughter. I contemplated wearing an azabache-encrusted necklace or brooch, hanging blessed rosaries in strategic spots. Instead, we ate like gluttonous Augustus Gloop from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We self-medicated with mocha shakes from Steak ’n Shake, Friday’s Brownie Obsession, Chocolate Suicide Sundaes from Jaxson’s Ice Cream Parlor. The obnoxious, including strangers, often asked if I was pregnant. I didn’t care. I pilgrimaged to Tasty Treats. Butter, my bestie. Cinnamon and nutmeg my beloved’s idols. He baked mounds of muffins. Saturdays we headed to the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino—mint and tiramisu gelatos in martini glasses from Tuscany Grill irresistible. Coolness escaping freezers enticed us; rows of fudge bars benevolently anticipated our arrival. Midnight runs to 7-11 rewarded us with patient uncles Ben & Jerry, who consoled and provided a brief respite from the curse.

**

Rita Maria Martinez is the daughter of Cuban immigrants. She writes about triumphs and challenges navigating life with chronic migraine. Rita’s Jane Eyre-inspired collection--The Jane and Bertha in Me (Kelsay Books)—was a finalist for the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. The poet’s work appears in The Best American Poetry Blog, Ploughshares, Pleiades, Tupelo Quarterly, Knee Brace Press, SWWIM, Wordgathering, Nine Mile Magazine, and elsewhere. Rita’s poetry is also featured in CLMP’s 2023 Disability Pride Month reading list. The poet earned an MFA from Florida International University. Follow Rita on Instagram @rita.maria.martinez.poet or visit her website at https://comeonhome.org/ritamartinez.

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Whitney Vale

1/12/2026

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Ode To My Black Slip

You growl from the back of the closet, rarely let out to roam, black panther skin, hugging hips on the prowl. Your black orchid scent hints at secrets, how once upon a time we danced, Aznavour crooning “Yesterday.” My body, a magic wand, you the shadowy incantation. O undergarment, petticoat, nylon Delilah! I raise my arms and your ink glides over my shoulders, sliding over breasts, easing over my waist, sloping over my buttocks, grazing just below my knees. I’m Anna Magnani in The Fugitive Kind standing in front of an ironing board. I’m a courtesan, an oracle, a goddess. I am a Supreme Court Justice in her sable authority, each fold in the material an article of truth. O charmeuse muse, I fold you in my arms walk into the almond fragrance of the wardrobe, dip you over a padded hanger and slip your form upon a rod, until the next time.

**

Excavations at La Brea Tar Pits

“Brea” is tar in Spanish, so I pace around the tar tar pits drinking water from a plastic bottle, take a few pictures of replicated animals caught in the malodorous pitch while the cerulean sky keeps on being untouchable. An active excavation is in process, ferreting out small mammals; memories bone deep, loss that fills the buckets tied to long ropes.

I meander the air-conditioned museum as young children peel off layers of their own short histories, a back pack spills out a comb laced with blonde hair, a notebook scrawled in pencil and dog-eared, a couple of copper coins hit the silence startling the mammoth skeleton, one can almost hear the blare of its condemnation: quiet, science at work.

Discovery: an American lion hunted here 36,000 years ago. He padded to the pits snatched at tiny limbs, which double doomed, cried black tears. Colored lines mark out the times of extinction for a variety of animals and I look for 2017 and Homo sapiens.

A long wall contains 400 hundred dire wolf skulls. The Stark family roams through my mind with their long winter. Slowly seeping in and bubbling up, an image of an old lover hovers in the empty socket of a wolf. Memories can hunt you down.

I return to the park following the tracks of love, my own time line, to where we picnicked 30 years ago. We held hands as the baby mammoth stepped asphalt mire. He continues to step in; I continue to step in, the asphalt puckers, sputters.

A friend and I drove through Laurel Canyon where I hear echoes of Joni Mitchell calling the ladies and their cats. Back at my rental I listen to a hypnosis tape for anxiety.

Worried that I have not paid diligent attention in this forensic study of my frayed mind, I drift to sleep visualizing a fossilized Monterey cypress, green fingers splayed in black pools.

**

Urban Coyote

A coyote stalked us in an urban park. One dog strained against his lead, tugging backwards. I turned and saw a slouching shadow; sunrise braised its tail in yellow sparks. Too surprised for fear, I said, scoot--its hunched form faded into a tumbled mesquite. A fragment of myth chanted through my mind with Dine lore: how Coyote flings a bag of beans into the night sky forming the Milky Way, scattering patterns; a thick stew of celestial whey. Loitering, loath to return to domesticity, tangled in story and leash, I jumbled songs into rhyme— thrilled to be followed by this old magic, the deep-down muscle of raw hunger. Nerves awakened; I stumbled across my desire to be free. What could carry me off? A hot air balloon glided into view, straight from Oz. I almost let go of the dogs, followed instinct, became outlaw. Had my feet morphed into paws? I sniffed the air, wild fancies drifted like cottonwood fiber. The balloon sailed on into clouds massing the horizon. The green buzz around me faded. One dog whined and tamed my nomadic instinct. The caliche underfoot sparkled with mica. I headed home at last, quiet as coyote, quiet as death slips through the orbit of stars.

**

A Bloodstone’s Story Regarding the Burial of a Cat

(Ground soft from drenching monsoon, I dig out dirt and place a bloodstone down beneath a white sparked sky. I cry. Set near the black body of our cat. I imagine the bloodstone dissolves into greens that surround this grave.)

Before you buried me you clutched me in your pale palm, stroking my dark moss colour with its red streak veining through the mound of me. I felt your desire to press me through your body bone to your heart.

Cat’s heart pierced by the vet’s needle, one gentle prick and gone. Cat tells me he would have died that night anyway. Cat felt your fear, forgives you, and forgives the car, the white coats, the needle, the pillowcase.

The night is long. I feel the weight of grief beneath the orange trees ready to bloom. I feel the weight of tree roots as they creep.

The dawn comes. Your hand scoops away mud. You hold me in your muddy palm and wash me. I struggle to recover the dreams of mineral and the dreams of cat. You hold me up to your ear to listen. I’m earth, put me in your mouth and swallow me.

**

Whitney Vale MFA Creative Non Fiction Ashland University. Poetry has appeared in Anti Heroin Chic, Rogue Agent, Crab Creek Review, Thimble Literary Arts, RockPaperPoem and others. A chapbook to be released in 2026 by Gnashing Teeth Press. Prose includes Black Fork Review and Lit Angels.

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Congrats, Kathleen McGookey!

1/9/2026

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A big congratulations to Kathleen McGookey.

Nominated by The Mackinaw, her prose poem, "Eight to Ten Inches by Nightfall," has been selected for the Best Microfiction 2026 anthology.

Best Microfiction was founded by Meg Pokrass and Gary Fincke to honour small form story writing including hybrid genres like prose poetry. The special guest editor this year was Diane Seuss.

Click on book cover above to visit Best Microfiction and view the list of selections.

Read Kathleen's poem again:

https://www.themackinaw.net/the-mackinaw/kathleen-mcgookey

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