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Better twenty in the seventies than seventy in the twenties He did her a favor, donating her fake-fur tiger-striped mini-dress to Goodwill. She tended to hang onto things like that, the scent of her memories still clinging to the fabric. The markings on the dress had faded, and the whole thing seemed to have withered in the back of the dark closet. Her husband pointed out, “You wore that dress fifty years ago─ you’ll never get into it now.” He was blunt that way, and she depended on him for objective truth, no matter how much it hurt. When a barista sashayed into Starbucks one day, wrapped in the tiger dress, he whistled at her. He was right again─ the dress was fierce as ever under the harsh light. Umwelt of a Fountain Pen It always crawled into his hand at the wrong time. He’d wrap his fist around it as if he was the only one enslaved. When the pen scratched the paper, it made a sound like fingernails on a chalkboard, a violin bow across cat-gut strings. A tickle, a twitch, a hiccup, an itch. To push the ravaging nib along the page stained everything─ fingers and thumb, paper, the grain of the desk─ with a fierce blue cruelty. When his work was finished, one of his muses said it was a revelation─ but of what she couldn’t say. The breath reconsiders death as it tumbles through these structures, past the lung-pinks and blood-reds, the vein-blues, bile-greens, and bone-beiges, knowing it may not make it; might not outrun the body’s disease. If it could speed up fast enough so time bends backward, the woman in the next bed would applaud and cheer. She’s always calling for her parents, as if they are not still dead, saying she wants her ticket home, too. Comfort comes from the idea we are skeletons made of stars, she whispers. When breath bursts from her mouth, it pops like champagne bubbles. We must always celebrate something, I tell her. Cheryl Snell is a poet, a fictionista, an aficionado of old music and new art, She is fluent in subtext, and is the author of several books, including the novels of her Bombay Trilogy. She has been published in five hundred literary journals and anthologies, including a Best of the Net. Look her up on Facebook. She'll keep a light on

I have cheated death, again and again; for punishment, I lose at love, again and again. we hike up New Hampshire’s Stinson Mountain on wooden snowshoes teardrop shape with curled lip open weave of lacquered deer hide lacing impress a waffle trail behind us we float on two feet of newly fallen soft snow foam of dream on waves of desire our assault on the granitic uplift wanders through the evergreen woods white pines red cedar Norway spruce around glacial boulders raising their muscular opposition through even deep drifts to our optimistic passage we seek possible route against gravity against the slope to the bald peak to view the forest panorama from the Timberland Owners fire lookout tower steel stilts thrusting caution into winter’s blanket of cloud waits unused for summer fire season the steps to the platform are chained off the stone railroad station squats waiting room empty closed cold boarded-up cracked windows debris and unplowed dirty snow, empty parking spaces, decommissioned aside Laconia’s once proud town center 6:00 in the January morning Boston and Maine’s final effort to provide rail service a single car self-propelled Budd liner engine running, untended, inside lights still off I have an hour to wait before departing I walk to the nearby railroad diner dimly lighted no welcome sign open exhaust aroma of unchanged cooking oil coffee frying bacon grease heated air unremoved garbage somewhere confront me the cook talks to the train engineer who sits on the counter stool farthest from the door I am the only other customer possibly the only passenger for the 7:00 departure I order coffee cook serves cream clotted toast cold conversation ends their silence verges on surrender the Budd car will run to Boston North Station’s grim hulk the postwar city worn out unrepaired at a dead end to visit you I want to be in Corfu I carry Durrell’s Black Book in my winter coat pocket not Catcher in the Rye before he escapes London his cold apartment the depressed friends rats foraging floors a skinny roommate with pimples staring into the small mirror with ripped black backing above the cold-water only sink Later I don’t understand his Quartet though engrossed by Alexandria’s culture of passion and cult but Justine teaches me love is onion-thick layers of deception and disappointment A yellow bulldozer with continuous cleated tracks heavy steel push-blade on hydraulic lifts tears a generation ago through the mountainside forest to carve out two logging skidways from ridge to hollow floor for century-old ash oak pine and locust logs to be dragged a half-mile to layup yard where a truck-mounted derrick with loading crane lifts them onto double-trailer trucks now are dedicated horse trails on our farm I trek on foot slowly with hand pruning shears removing clip by clip the overhanging veil of briars and willowy saplings and wind-torn branches already rotting from a wet winter of straggling snow drive our farm tractor using the bucket on the tilt-loader to push onto the slope of the creek below fallen trees with thick trunks and uptorn roots or mark work to be done by farm help identify deer tracks bear scat turkey hens and turkey toms that might startle horses you and your girlfriend’s ride trails to unfenced ridgetop hay fields across Cold Hollow Road to abandoned 150year-old farms with apple orchards gone to crab caved in houses out-building ruins fields reclaimed by thorny briars Bush Honeysuckles and Japanese Barberry then forest pines and poplars desolation is not fertile soil for reminiscence I am again at trailhead Poetry is about sadness for our mortality; we should rejoice we are not immortal. Ron Tobey grew up in north New Hampshire, USA, and attended the University of New Hampshire, Durham. He and his wife live in West Virginia, where they raise cattle and keep goats and horses. He is an imagist poet, grounding experiences and moods in concrete descriptions, including haiku, storytelling, recorded poetry, and in filmic interpretation. He occasionally uses the pseudonym, Turin Shroudedindoubt, for literary and artistic work. He has published in over 40 different digital and print literary magazines.

The Patron He’s sitting in the corner, side-part falling to the left, white napkin fluttering on his breast, soft pink hands armed with cutlery. He spears the Schweinshaxe, skillfully separates meat from bone, and forks it up, divebombing the pinkish blob down his savage gullet. “How is everything?” the waitress asks. He nods toward his beer. “Refill?” she asks. The question’s redundant. He goes back to his Schweinshaxe, spears it, slices it, divebombs it. Then looks about with tiny rapacious eyes, eyes that are blind to Bruegel, sonnets, the blue- breasted fairywren. But when the waitress leans over the next table to pick up a plate, those same eyes wash over her backside, giving it a shrewd and rapid-fire appraisal. Then it’s back to his dish, sliding the Schweinshaxe over a little, scooping up a forkful of sauerkraut and jamming it home. Fear and Loathing although I don’t or can’t or won’t I’ve come so close to letting everything go I feel like a day-old newspaper with a crow standing on it to keep the wind from carrying it away. The Tempest An angelfaced twentynothing Polish girl sitting Indianstyle at the Hermannplatz U-Bahn station, a big black poodle piled in her arms, tin cup for donations sitting between her legs. That was five years ago. She has since lost her dog and undergone an unfathomable Ovidian metamorphosis, her gleaming mass of chestnutcolored locks sheared into a crooked mohawk, her mouth a collection of broken stones, clothes soiled and frumpy, black electrical tape keeping one sole from dragging her into the earth. She now looks more like Caliban than she does Ariel, that soft broken beauty of just five years ago, tin cup banking with fire. M.P. Powers lives with one foot in Berlin and one in South Florida. Recent publications include the Columbia Review, Wrongdoing Magazine, Glitchwords, Mayday Magazine, and others. His artwork can be found on Instagram @mppowers113

Acerbic Assertions by Arrogant Affluent Alcoholic Blustering Boris Blabbering about Bombs and Brexit: the same thing? Certainties Cancelled and Children Crying Caring Conservative? Please! Pramod Subbaraman is a poet from India who lives and works in the UK. He started writing during the first COVID19 lockdown and has since been published in the UK, the USA and South Africa. He favours fixed forms.

This evening the sky craned itself into an immense tower of clouds. Its peak arched over my head to the horizon and still there was just enough room for the sun’s final sermon. Standing there alone, a captive audience of exquisite smallness, I felt the thread of shame slip its knot. Each stitch around my lungs loosened and fell into an absence that grew like a flame from my chest until even the sky caught fire and burned to black cinder and diamonds. Jesse grew up in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, but he is currently living in and exploring the woods of upstate New York. His work has been published or is forth coming in Hyacinth Review, the Montana Mouthful and the Field Guide Poetry Magazine. You can find him on twitter @suessjesse

This gift, bestowed to you in flashes of lightning upon brittle twigs. Your father’s fist in your mother’s womb, we gave you light for the first time. Children, you took this spark and ran with it. What started as two infants warming themselves beside the fire of Eden, erupted into a string of florescence that hide the heaven man once learned to count by. You drew a line between mother Earth and father Sky with a shield of stinging light, a golden fleece covering my body from his stare. And I haven’t seen the stars in years. I missed the way your father gazed at me, embedded me in a black comfort, even before I birthed you from my seas we haven’t touched in a millennium. But I still like to look to him once in a while, reflect his eye blue skies in crystal lakes you’ve yet to soil, count the stars he scattered into the letters of my name years ago. I never thought our children would push us so far apart. We never conceived as we cradled you from crib to crawl the tear that would come between our horizons. The first time we allowed you to stay up all night, reading by candlelight. You properly thanked us by charting nebula and plotting the position of planets. You wrote an ode to your mother, stung tinsel of gold around my belly, to radiate against the fall of opaque sky. but I am no longer the center of your universe. you grew past oedipal obsession. This gift, intended to shield you from the pitch, keep the monsters at bay, warm your feet, you manifested into a weapon. You tended a minor glow, fanned your flame into a storm across my body, unstoppable, until I can no longer be seen by father’s bedroom stare. Made an artificial day of my favorite midnight. Were you jealous of the way he touched me, the lightning jagged and curl that connected us for a split second? Or was it your fear of the darkness, of the unknown, of death, that made you wish away the night’s sky. That made you think you could battle it with 24-hour convenience stores and swing shifts and nightclubs. Distracted the view of Milky Way with glowing neon. You are destined for self-destruction, Now, I never sleep, and all my gentle warnings are wearing thin. I haven’t been able to see past you in years, you’ve seeped into every sky I’m ever known, infiltrated my blackest reserves. You are too damned bright. I thought you would fill the gap between us, I wasn’t expecting you to shield him from me completely. I search for him in deserted lands far from your touch, Africa, South America, Siberia, among the open plains and mountain tops, where the night still knows secrets. Where no synthetic light will keep me up or blind me from his constellations where I can still remember the name of the creatures he conjured for my entertainment. Children, there are good things that happen in the dark, and what this mother wouldn’t give to feel father’s embrace one more time. For one moment, stop pumping your fists against your father’s nocturnal mood. We all need some time in the away from the light once in a while. It is time to put these children to bed, so this mother earth can once again be enveloped in her father sky. Take a moment, slip into slumber and don’t turn to me when I slide into your room and turn off that light, reclaiming all I gave you.

Assistant Professor of Botany Dr. Sylvia Anderson woke me up at 2 AM and told me she had to get going. I lit a cigarette on my front step and only winced a little bit when she dinged my beat-up Civic with her truck. My mind was still too muddled up to care. Not because I was particularly drunk, but because I was confused and a bit surprised. A friend of mine once told me that the best sex of his life was a random encounter with the manager of a Cookout in Galax he had met driving back to Richmond. Said it was a complete surprise, but that man fucked like his life depended on it. I don’t know why I’m watching it snow in Laramie and thinking about two dumpy dudes getting their swerve on back in small-town Virginia. Not a whole lot in my life makes too much sense. I’ve got a busted top lip right now from a poorly-planned ice-climbing trip with some sketchy Alaskans in the Wind River range. A piece of ice hit me and banged up my grill. I was never too pretty to begin with, so this was just another one of those things. The Alaskans drove me to Riverton where the doctor stitched me up and told me I probably didn’t have any brain damage. I was just glad I didn’t break my front two fake teeth. They were the ones that Melissa, the girl I dated for a year in Philadelphia after I quit seminary, knocked out. I met her a week after I left, when I was living in a Motel 6 with only 20 bucks and the disapproval of the Blessed Mother to my name. I was charging the room to my brother’s Navy Federal card. She put me up in her house and got me a job at a record store and in the end almost broke my jaw. After that, I was too ashamed to go back to Roanoke, so I headed out west at age 21, scrawny and pale, with a job offer from the Bureau of Land Management and a vague plan that I was gonna live an interesting life. I met Lynn last season when she was hanging around the Lander office, doing research on sage ecosystems on a grant. I had just gotten back off a fire with the rest of the Rawlins helitack crew and I was sitting in the break room drinking a cup of instant coffee, half-asleep, wiping ash out of my nose, while this girl talked my ear off about bushes. Two of her undergrads eyed me nervously from the corner. One of them let off a little puff of air freshener. I liked her, but I really wished we could have run into each other about 18 hours later, when I didn’t feel like the living dead. “Where are you from, Hank?” “Southwest Virginia. Not south West Virginia, but the southwest part of regular Virginia.” “I haven't spent much time in Virginia, but I love the south. I really liked New Orleans.” “Most people do.” “The live oaks were my favorite part.” “They’re pretty neat.” “Do you do much plant identification when you’re out?” “Can’t say I do.” “That’s a shame.” “I’m just a caveman, I don't appreciate nature as much as I should.” “No, I meant maybe you could do some legwork for me. Save me some time.” She gave me her number later, when I was about to drive back and I saw her in the hallway. I kind of forgot about her, but I was living in Laramie for the winter, and I asked her if she wanted to grab a drink one day. I’m a good listener. It’s my saving grace because I’m pretty dumb. I listened to sermons growing up about the evils of the world. I listened to my priest who told all of us boys that if we really wanted to do God’s will we should forget about sex and the world and go to seminary. I listened to my roommate, who was from central Ohio, agonize about how he had kissed a boy and really liked it. I wanted to tell him that I had only kissed a girl a couple times in high school but I would pawn the chapel’s candlesticks to do it again, but I kept my mouth shut instead. I listened to Melissa kindly explain to me why I had the loss of my two teeth coming. I listen to briefings, the air attack channel, intra-crew, the division channel through the radio in my flight helmet or in the pickup. I scribble down the important parts in my Rite-In-The-Rain next to the dicks the rookies drew in there when I’ve been stupid enough to leave it lying around. I listen to waitresses bitch about work and drunk old men who want me to read them poetry at the bar. Lynn and I met at the Silver Dollar, a little dive, and she was a whole lot cooler than she had seemed in Lander. The product of sleep on both of our parts, maybe. She called me dude a lot. She was from Pennsylvania, but down in Pennsyltucky. I told her that I went to college there - a little liberal arts college around Philadelphia. I figured the whole seminary drop-out tale was a bit much for a first date. Plus, it all seemed like a life lived by another person. She told me she had just gotten out of a six-year relationship and wasn’t looking for anything serious, which bummed me out more than I expected it to. “Fighting with my fiance is really what I remember the most about New Orleans,” she said, after a couple beers. She told me I looked good with my lip split in half. She said that eventually she wanted to leave Wyoming and head somewhere less remote soon. California, maybe, or Texas. She heard Austin was cool. “I’m thinking of heading up north here sometime,” I said. “Where?” “Montana. Missoula, maybe. Got some buddies on a crew up there who want me. Better than Rawlins.” “Rawlins isn’t so bad.” “Spoken like someone who hasn’t spent much time in Rawlins.” “Montana’s cool. You ever read Lonesome Dove?” “Can’t say I have.” “It isn’t a happy book, anyway.” “I can deal with a sad book every now and then.” “Going to Montana doesn’t work out very well for them.” “Well, now you’ve ruined it.” “It’s been out for like 40 years. That’s on you.” “I meant going to Montana to escape my problems.” “Oh.” “The book, too. I’m slow on the uptake. I was a sheltered child.” “How sheltered?” “Like solidly-built double-wide sheltered.” She just laughed and we kept drinking and she started touching my leg under the bar and I knew we were getting on the road. We went back to my place. I remember her lying on my queen bed, the teenage-girl bed frame I had bought off my landlady with sheets I hadn’t changed in weeks and a dirty comforter. She looked like some sort of high plains orchid in the light filtering in from my neighbor’s house. Pale and naked with a bandana around her neck. I held her and slept until she woke me up and said she felt sober enough to drive, and then she left. I smoked my cigarette in the January cold. I went inside and felt the old loneliness, like it had never happened, except my sheets smelled like her and she left a pair of earrings on the dresser. I don’t go on many dates. I don’t talk to many people. As soon as she left I wanted her back, wanted her in the animal way that comes on too hot and too soon. Wanted to buy a house and settle down. Knew that she knew I would get too attached. Knew that this might be the last time I ever saw her. Knew that this wouldn’t work out. Knew it in my soul with the kind of fatalism that always comes over me when things go too well. Like the penultimate acts of old crime movies. That the money’s going to be gone and the cops’ll close in, or, as close as it gets, the main character is still going to bite it. But without the high stakes because this was just another white-trash hookup. But maybe the good things will actually happen. Maybe the next climbing trip won’t land me in the hospital. Maybe Missoula will make me feel less blue all the time. Maybe she won’t decide that she’s through with me in the morning. Who knows. Anything’s possible. But I doubt it. Sy Holmes is an author from western North Carolina. He lives in the mountain West with other people's dogs.

I wake up tired and sore and often soaked in sweat I don’t remember being awake or any dreams I may have had but I’m usually more tired then when I went to sleep They say it takes ten years and four rheumatologists to get a proper diagnosis it’s been twenty and five but who’s counting when I open my eyes I realize I can’t open my mouth without pain in my jaw What else could cause this other than a punch? The doctors take my blood and shrug their shoulders I’d shrug my shoulders too but it hurts when I try My legs are so sore I feel as if I was chasing or being chased My knuckles are swollen and it hurts to bend my fingers they offer pills that don’t work that make me more tired when I’m barely functioning There is one logical conclusion that really holds no logic at all but it gets me through the day After I close my eyes to sleep I fight crime or aliens or masterminded villains Slip into another dimension where I must be a goddamn superhero More Batman than Superman I doubt the man of steel wakes up sore plus, I hope I can’t fly If I can fly but don’t remember it that’s some royal bullshit It’s nice to know when I close my eyes I’m destined to hand out some vigilant justice makes the struggle a little bit more rewarding *sidenote* Considering, I wake every morning feeling as if I got my ass kicked, a friend points out there is a good possibility I’m the villain. Sadly There’s logic here By candlelight The wind stole out the light we pull the curtains to invite in the last of gray daylight we three wife, daughter and me play Rummy by candlelight Christmas Wish Christmas at the Beach Aromatic Evergreen infused with Orange You Had Me at Merlot candles placed throughout the living room my daughter says it smells like puke in here the game ends quickly they go to bed notebook on the table pen in hand I watch the candle wicks flicker You Had Me at Merlot cavorts spasmodically the flame moves swishes as if outside caught in the damaging winds I was caught once in a wind that stood still on a train bridge with a friend a train traveling south displaced us to the northbound tracks until a northbound train captured that space Twelve to fifteen feet between both trains traveling at a good clip The swirled wind made visible by t-shirts and hair dancing we felt nothing heard no sounds all sensation caught in a vacuum senses trapped twisted to feel the sound but not hear it see the wind but not feel it I bounced a fist-sized stone off the side of a boxcar Its silent voice echoed through us our faces twisted in surprise and laughter The wind outside is loud frightening and stole the light The candle flame dances and moves to a soundless music Rabbit the Rose of Sharon blooms closed shop for the night pink rolled-up tootsie rolls tonight every night You emerge from beneath its branches as my feet leave the pavement as they lick the damp grass You emerge repudiating instinct to scurry the sensible choice of your brethren your species In life you were a lion but a lion couldn’t live beneath the branches of an overgrown Rose of Sharon A lion would frighten a boy slightly fearful of the dark fearful of the life without his father I know it’s you I know it’s you

I must have that kind of face: everywhere I go people always stop me for directions I tell tourists how to get to Kensington Market for wild blueberry pie, vintage bags and ganja, workman’s clothes and secondhand guitars and the reggae, the djembe, the flaming gay parade and ugli fruit in the Marcus Garvey sweltering summer. I tell them it’s Spa-DYNA not Spa-DEENA and if anyone asks me 你能給我指路嗎? I can point the way I must look like someone who knows south from east and where the streetcars stop and where there’s a good place for cheap vegan lunch though I am detached, a hovering illusion watching over Augusta Ave like a billboard with floodlit smiles for a Vietnamese dental clinic because there’s nowhere else I come from and nowhere else to go When you’re lost inside there is no screaming red arrow on a map >>> YOU ARE HERE! When you’re a broken flower that’s lost its scent, nectar drained and pollen strewn, you no longer attract the honey bee, you pick through the fallen petals, crumpled, torn and purple bruised and maybe the remnants of trail will lead you back home

nobody ever got slapped over my alopecia punked on april fools day caught up in the monkeyshines of my aspirational barber joelinton’s barber i booked my appointment for the most anticipated haircut since my hair grew back from stress-induced alopecia still in recovery, me from the rudeness of strangers from inappropriate staring comments like ‘you need a better barber’ and ‘what kind of cancer is that, bro’ yes, it bothered me not enough to slap a man, tho truth be told maybe i’m the foolish one ‘cos this tidbit proper boils my piss at ten a.m. sharp, standing outside the barbershop ten thousand monkeys in my fist looking for a bitch to slap but the joke was me next time i will just let it fly I pulled my intercostal muscle pre-drinking for the football match over too-small margaritas with not enough tequila waiting on pork enchiladas from a too-slow kitchen. I considered my physical need to sneeze in a post-pandemic restaurant versus the social fallout of such a spectacle. I don’t even know these people, but they are human beings and deserve not to be sprayed at close range with someone else’s aerosols. the sneeze came on hard but I shut it down, sparing some nuns and their triple-cheese nachos a blast of sputum through no small feat of physical exertion. I am not a young man anymore. unable now to absorb the brute force of unrequited energy with my porous ribcage. the pain remains, sharp but tolerable. I feel it in the night when I’m sleeping or when I cough, or blow my nose that persistent throbbing deep in my core. when it’s healed I will still feel the ache like an echo in a warehouse, taking up the empty space. the less you know the better you sleep Vladimir Putin in judo bathrobe all smirk and tinkle riding on his high horse sidesaddle to Dresden because all roads lead to Dresden when all you read is Vonnegut you should be here now in this karaoke bar where the bright-eyed dictator sings blueberry hill to captive air-hostesses with veneered smiles hair in shellacked buns standby as we plunge headfirst into a new world order of Flipper songs in TV commercials Salvador Dali in a car chase on the San Marino freeway singing LIFE is the only thing worth living for and when nothing is left we find ourselves begging for an ounce of common decency J. Archer Avary once broke a hand in a hot tub accident. That’s all you need to know to understand the process behind his Pushcart nominated poetry. Twitter: @j_archer_avary

Broken Toys I blamed myself for every broken toy Back when I was a kid And now I find out how fucked up that was How a brain skewers a person As I attempt not to cry into the webcam. Way We’ve Always Been There is an ungraspable sting to seeing unloved personality traits in your children Knowing you’ve never figured out ways to dampen your impatience The beauty of their faces shines like beacons even through crowds of kids I wonder how their features will change figuring I’ll still see them this way For how many generations is this how we’ve behaved? Who were the wordsmiths among my ancestry? Immigrants two generations removed Earned the rights of restless natives now Facsimiles of people gone before with different last names and places to call home I call you two home Try as I might I can’t help but get frustrated that the attention lavished cannot meet the amount craved Know too well the time will come when I’m banished as nothing more than an embarassment. The Things Easily Forgotten Feel a hand Ripping at the base of your heart and the pit of your stomach The dozen of us asking The same unanswerable question What more we could’ve done for someone who didn’t want the help We drink to the best of us The sweetest and kindest Who yearned for the things we have Even when he possessed So much more than we could imagine Tonight, we are each other’s Emotional support peacocks Clinging with laughter and tears to the side of the cargo hold Remembering things easily forgotten Conjuring useless memories That we never wanted to keep No use for the internet Except endless trivial queries Carefully worded To navigate algorithms Steering us through a perceived life The beginning of a life Truly is the easy part Reconciling an end So bitter, so early Unwarranted the hardest part Forgiving yourself In the face of death Takes a lifetime to do. Scott Cumming unsuspectingly went to see Garden State wearing his Shins tee. He has been published at The Daily Drunk, Punk Noir Magazine, Versification, Mystery Tribune and Shotgun Honey. His poem, “Blood on Snow”, was voted the best of Outcast Press Poetry Things We Carry issue and nominated for a Pushcart. His collection, A Chapbook About Nothing, was released in December as part of Close to the Bone's First Cut series. Twitter: @tummidge Website: https://scottcummingwriter.wordpress.com/

The beauty of your peace, makes the boarders of the horizon recede into nothingness, and the mind crippled by its own weight is released into a deepening reverence with the stars made holy by a grief all too human. The evening with its melody sweet and tortuous swallows the burgeoning self and with fitful transcendence illuminates the worm besieged heart, voiceless and numb. Despair is alleviated by the steady current of your voice that carries birds and translucent clouds into the growing web of night, that heeds not boarder nor recognises name. Let senses be dumb, let eternity subdue with drops of quietness upon our brows. Let death be accepted; nurtured from the beginning and all our finite moments free from history’s engravings be glorified. David Hay is an English Teacher in the Northwest of England. He has written poetry and prose since the age of 18 when he discovered Virginia Woolf's The Waves and the poetry of John Keats. These and other artists encouraged him to seek his own poetic voice. He has currently been accepted for publication in Dreich, Abridged, Acumen, The Honest Ulsterman, The Dawntreader, Versification, The Babel Tower Notice Board, The Stone of Madness Press, The Fortnightly Review, The Lake, Selcouth Station, GreenInk Poetry, Dodging the Rain, Seventh Quarry and Expat-Press. His debut publication is the Brexit-inspired prose-poem Doctor Lazarus published by Alien Buddha Press 2021.