Poems for Persons of Interest

Elizabeth M. Johnson is a lawyer, poet, and transplanted Chicagoan living in Detroit.  She is the granddaughter of immigrants. Brood X Before you’re gone again, you’ll leave your mark: dirt burrows in the yard, the twig’s worn bark. The paw paw trees will lose their boughs. Cypress, willow, and ash. Just think how ravenous -- seventeen years! In vast numbers, you sing. You’re shock and awe, a mating call springing from a buckled rib, a hollow abdomen. You’ll leave your mark before you’re gone again. An ancient symbol of insouciance? To me, your wide eyes don’t say innocence. No lovely sibilance, no gentle hiss, instead continuous, cacophonous, your whirring cycles faster in the heat. I’m crunching carcasses under my feet. Abandoned exoskeletons remain: you leave your mark. And you will come again.

Steven Searcy is the author of  Below the Brightness  (Solum Press, 2024). His poems have appeared in  Southern Poetry Review ,  Commonweal ,  UCity Review ,  Autumn Sky Poetry Daily , and elsewhere. He lives with his wife and four sons in Georgia. The Spirit Makes Its Case The body begs with brash insistence to take the path of least resistance. The spirit, on its best day, yearns to go the way that chafes and burns, to seek the peak with sweeping views, to sweat and strain, to brave the bruise. The body pleads for rest and pleasure, uninterested in hidden treasure. The spirit looks into the future when every wound receives a suture, seeing how much there is to gain by bearing temporary pain. The body’s time is transitory— the spirit says memento mori and tries to teach the body how to look beyond the here and now.

Ethan McGuire is a healthcare cybersecurity professional and a writer of essays, fiction, poetry, reviews, and translations who lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana with his wife and their two children. Old Gods After Matthew Buckley Smith   God sits upon His throne, that golden height, And holds worlds in His palms, withholds His might.   The Muses by His side both come and go And whisper in our ears the good we know.   Old Satan rules the bowels of Earth’s black flame And wields his damned, wild reign, the King of Shame.   The Furies scour the land and boil men’s blood With coals—and with knives loose a crimson flood.   The Fates dispense and cut threads they contrive And make men meet mean ends or come alive.

Frances Boyle is a noted Canadian poet and fiction writer. Her poetry collections include Openwork and Limestone and Light-carved Passages . Gag Ordered                         The blank page awaits; it’s time for a poem I can read them, critique them, think that I know ’em   but the slippery old words slide just out of reach. Why won’t they fall in my hand like a low-hanging peach   not hide among brambles like the worst kind of berry? Is it hard to write humour?  You might say so. Very.   It’s not that I’m trying for a veritable saga or rhymes that will twine endlessly like a raga   just a snippet of verse with lines that ring true (oh, and something that’s funny, I need that part too).   So I give up and press save on this fine piece of doggerel ―just don’t mention, I beg you, that my dog is a mongrel.

Liv is an urban monk, a poet, a storyteller, and a student of Christian spirituality. When she’s not writing, Liv practices gardening, pipe-smoking, leather-working, and mischief. The Task While all creation held its breath, The young man’s hitched inside his chest. The knife raised up. The old man’s hand Stopped at its zenith, shaking and After a prayer, he let it fall While listening for some new call. No god worth following would ask Of him this vile and senseless task. Better to keep the gods of home Than with a faithless god to roam. ‘I thought you different,’ Abram prayed, Then turned to find the ram arrayed.

Felicity Teague features regularly in  The HyperTexts ,  Snakeskin , and elsewhere.  Her second collection,  Interruptus: A Poetry Year , is forthcoming in 2025. Rock Trio Ciao , all! I’m Gabbro and I’m igneous. The fiery type! I formed from mafic magma, hot as Satan’s own puff-pipe! With other rocks around me, I cooled slowly. We were snug! A group of grey guys gathered in a hot humongous hug.   Hola! I am Coquina. I’m a sedimentary sort. I’m made of shells. I love the beach. I’m not so fond of sport! For many years, I braved the waves and sailed the swirling seas. Now I can sunbathe with my friends, enjoy a life of ease.   Ah, Guten Tag . I’m Augen gneiss! A metamorphic make. My name means ‘eyes’. I seem to stare. I’m always wide awake! My birth involved high heat and pressure, two great strengths combined, to merge some granite and some feldspar. Now, let’s rock! Let’s grind!