Issue 210

Robert L. Giron
Jun 1
9 min read

This issue features

photograph by Sorin Colac,
poetry by Jonathan Fletcher,
photograph by Ken Barnett,
poetry by Kathleen Hellen,
poetry by Hiram Larew,
photograph by Palex66,
poetry by Donna J. Gelagotis Lee,
poetry by Mike Maggio,
poetry by DS Maolalai,
poetry by Marge Piercy, and
poetry by Chaim Wachsberger

Sorin Colac

Machu Picchu, Peru

Jonathan Fletcher

Things Bingham Did Not “Discover” Besides Machu Picchu

B can stand for so many things:

birth, baby, Bible,

brown, Bingham, broken.

Must whiteness once again elevate

itself?

Must tall leather boots level

native ground?

Must my adoptive mom make another

racial microaggression?

I know it can take time

for skin to speak.

I know it can take time

to rebuild ruins.

In between Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu,

there are terraced fields,

fertile soil.

There is a barren woman,

her dark child.

And shade the shape of a mountain.

And a love more sloped than not.

About the Author

Jonathan Fletcher holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University School of the Arts. His work has been featured in numerous literary journals and magazines, and he has won or placed in various literary contests. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, he won Northwestern University Press’s Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize contest in 2023, for which he will have his debut chapbook, This is My Body, published in 2025. Currently, he serves as a Zoeglossia Fellow and lives in San Antonio, Texas.

Ken Barnett

Lady Slipper

About the Artist

Ken Barnett is a retired social worker who took up photography late in life. Endlessly fascinated by nature in both small and large scale he tries to capture and share wonder with his camera. You can see more of his work at https://kenbarnettphotography.com.

Kathleen Hellen

three-inch feet

heel crushed

flat against

toes broken

bound

in Song through Qing the most intimate

small

intensely erotic

About the Author

Kathleen Hellen is the recipient of the James Still Award, the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred, and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review. Her debut collection Umberto’s Night won the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Hellen is the author of The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, Meet Me at the Bottom, and two chapbooks.

Hiram Larew

Peg Leg

Trust me

Root causes are about as important as mops

or naps—

Yes you need them often

but so what

And if when you get a note from some baloney

That guffs all over creation

all about the deep downs

with that power of righteous

Don’t even bother to blink

Dig up your beginnings

In fact it turns out

History is just like a boat load of pirates

running rum

And really

Who cares about bandana swagers

and peg legs to boot

And while I’m at it

In this sweep of stuff that matters

Here’s the one thing that’s even grander—

Your best intentions were and still are

useless whatevers

twiddling thumbs

So yes because you asked—

My advice as far as the holy of holies go

Is to snore through today

In fact I’d say that the only thing

worth a polish right now

this very minute

is your Adam’s apple

That keeps going up and down

to nowhere

About the Author

Hiram Larew's seventh poetry collection, This Much Very, was published by Alien Buddha Press in 2025. Visit: www.HiramLarewPoetry.com and www.PoetryXHunger.com

Palex66

Ancient Olive Tree at Sunset and Mountains in the Horizon

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee

B’yachad, Záyit, and Eliés

Do the olive trees in Israel and Palestine sway somewhat

differently? Does the sun touch them in more or

lesser degrees? How far away is the sea and its mist and

how many times must I translate this? Why must

the dove fly from the hand of Abraham? Why does the oil

now show up in supermarket tins?

I’d never heard the word záyit, though I’m trying to remember

the Hebrew term for the circumstance that brings

two people together. Perhaps the words for olive branches are

like that, or záyit, or eliés, or olive trees—the olive bitter,

its branch long and reaching. Do you see the arms

of the olive trees twisting, their trunks gnarled, an overreach

of thousands of years? On the streets of Athens, the trees release

their drupes. There is something persistent in this throwing off,

this deliberateness. There is something sacred in their

tenaciousness, as if to say . . .

Night Walk

I taste a hunger in the night

though every breath’s a filtered blue

and all the birds have taken flight.

A threadbare limb holds on. In spite,

a tinkered moon, with eyes.

I taste a hunger in the night.

Stillness begs the leaf to move.

The grey-slate sky’s an empty tomb,

and all the birds have taken flight.

When was the last time I spoke with

you? The path is paved.

I taste a hunger in the night.

Eyes like glass mistake each star.

The silent trees are put to sleep.

And all the birds have taken flight.

I feel your hand slip into mine.

The evening’s peace is not your kind.

I taste a hunger in the night.

I long for song to fill the air.

I hear a distant hum in wings,

but all the birds have taken flight.

About the Author

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee is the author of two collections, Intersection on Neptune (The Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2019), winner of the Prize Americana for Poetry 2018, and On the Altar of Greece (Gival Press, 2006), winner of the Gival Press Poetry Award and recipient of a 2007 Eric Hoffer Book Award: Notable for Art Category. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals internationally, including Cimarron Review, Feminist Studies, The Massachusetts Review, Southern Humanities Review, and Women’s Studies Quarterly.

Visit: www.donnajgelagotislee.com.

Mike Maggio

No One Will Know

(for Gaza)

No one will know

when the telephone lines have been cut

when the satellite signals have been quickly quelled

when the internet has been silenced

when the news has been strictly described

No one will know

that a village once thrived here

that the men, tending their olive groves, laughed and cried

that children once played soccer in this dusty field

that the women, gripping their black hijabs, mourned daily for their fated young

No one will know

as lives are bombed and shattered

as heads are swiftly blown away

as bodies decay in the heedless sun

as children, clutching their trembling toys, search the abyss

No one will know

because the photographer will be banished

because the journalist will be murdered or maimed

because the TV station will be bombed or shuttered

because witness will have been perfectly undone

No one will know

that the soldiers plundered the village

that they tortured the husband and savaged the wife

that they danced in the roadway and rejoiced with the coveted key

that the children were forced to look on in silence

No one will know

because silence is the golden rule of war

because silence is a weapon no man can ban

because silence is merely silence

because silence is war’s most effective shield

No one will know because no one will know

About the Author

Mike Maggio’s publication credits include fiction, poetry, travel, and reviews in many local, national, and international publications including Potomac Review, The L.A. Weekly, The Washington CityPaper, and The Washington Independent Review of Books. His full-length publications include a novel, The Wizard and the White House (Little Feather Books, 2014), a novella, The Appointment (Vine Leaves Press, 2017), and a collection of short stories, Letters from Inside (Vine Leaves Press, 2019). His latest collection of poetry, Let’s Call It Paradise, was released by San Francisco Bay Press in 2022 and was awarded the International Book Award for contemporary poetry. Visit: www.mikemaggio.net.

DS Maolalai

The glass of soda

the air comes thick

and sellotape-

sticky; a patio

park picnic table

and a waspish and cold

glass of soda. light

getting everywhere,

pleasant as crawling-

legged insects.

buildings buckle,

tumbling summer heat,

which rocks them

and knocks them to pieces

and somebody drops

their sandwich, and ducks

amongst following

birds. smoke rises

over each litter bin.

it moves in the wind

like laundry,

and laundry

hangs on balconies

and steams

as it bleaches

and cracks.

cars sink on hot corners,

smoothly as lizards

on rocks.

someone drinks a glass

of warm soda, and looks

through their glass

at the sun.

About the Author

DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as "a cosmopolitan poet" and another as "prolific, bordering on incontinent". His work has been nominated thirteen times for BOTN, ten for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections; Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016), Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019) and Noble Rot (Turas Press, 2022)

Marge Piercy

Books gave me the world

In the beginning were picture

books with stories of animals

cartoon people, stars, moon.

Then squiggles became words.

Magically I could now enterstories not read to me.

There were schoolbooks, often

with previous kids’ notes

and scribbles. The library

at school and then the public

one offered excitement, mystery

other places, other worlds.

I could travel to distant countries.

I could enter so many lives.

Other times were given me.

My imagination stretched wide.

I rewrote unsatisfying endings

I created my own heroes, tales.

So it began: Now in a different

century I have shelves of books

I wrote and others read: what joy!

I became what I most wanted

to be and I have the progeny

I sought, in words and print.

Just like Wordsworth

The country is being driven

into chaos and ugliness, hatred

burning, uncontrolled wildfires

those in power ignore.

Torn from their homes, loved

ones, forced back to what

they fled, refugees haunt

haunt my sleepless nights.

I seek solace and find some

at breakfast when I look

out and see daffodils that

opened their trumpets last

night and it’s as if a sweet

melody played in my head.

What we haven’t yet killed

of nature still blossoms.

I watched the squirrels

scuttling up tree trunks,

running along branches

like acrobats and I smile.

What we haven’t destroyed:

still vibrant, holy. I long

to wrap myself in it, but

the fire rages on.

About the Author

Marge Piercy has published 20 poetry collections, most recently, On The Way Out, Turn Off the Light (Knopf); 17 novels including Sex Wars. PM Press reissued Vida, Dance the Eagle to Sleep; they brought out short stories The Cost of Lunch, Etc and My Body, My Life (essays, poems). She has read at over 575 venues here and abroad.

Chaim Wachsberger

The Refinery of Words

On a horn by the bay where tankers

park, pitch black on twinkling lines,

like aphorisms—abrupt, is where

great kettles bulge in silver vines.

When pumped to the initial drum

from ancient texts and other hoards,

from cuneiforms to the humdrum speech

in motor cars, the language pours

into the bulky vial from all

that has e’er been said or writ—

a black molasses. Smartly placed,

like a heart in a body, a great

steel rotary begins to stir

and the pulp of prose routinely bash;

the gravelly pits of common talk

will separate and fall; some mash,

once viscous, starts to rise and show

a gleaming ink. The variants

are siphoned off to other tanks—

where heat will split the sibilants

from vowels, will fraction fricatives

from affricates, and then impound

these products in their final drums,

while stripping meaning from all sound

to pipe into a tank of glass;

Aurora Borealis-like,

it shimmies there, a green and blue

that fades a grade with every tick-

ing of the clock. The product in

the metal hulks, distilled and aired,

is barrelled to be shipped to new

declaimants; and the meaning’s flared.”

About the Author

Chaim Washsberger is a student at the MFA program in Queens College, New York, focusing on writing poetry. Prior to joining the program, he had practiced law in New York for several decades. He lives in Manhattan with his wife. His children are sometimes in New York, but usually elsewhere.