Poetry Issue #13: Animals & Health July 24th, 2023 Sage Brush Excursions by Ally Campanozzi Sage Brush Excursions   #1: Standing at the Trail Head It’s the first day, sentenced to the outback excursion. We’ll be roughing it, expected to get a grip on life, learn new things, adapt, find personal atonements. The time has come. It’s time to stop wearing maniac queen crowns. Stop spending all this time staring through rearview mirrors. Focus now, look deeper into windshield futures at the desert vacancies overhead. Head ...

Poetry Issue #13: Animals & Health July 24th, 2023 Six Poems by Darcy Smith Community Room Memorial 300 lbs of sinew, he collapsed on concrete, a sudden streak of blood on the sidewalk. No one knew what took him or what put him on the ward, a locked life didn’t suit him. He needed a field for his towering tai chi, his lumbering decorum, origami boxes, cranes, stars. We couldn’t name his demons but felt their whip and chase when his eyes dulled, when ...

Poetry Issue #13: Animals & Health July 24th, 2023 Two Poems by Judith Skillman God Knows Any sixteen-hand Paint can trample a man. That’s why you’ve got to be careful of a skittish horse. I walk behind my daughter, perched in all her glory on Sid, name my father adopted because he was teased for being Oscar. Oscar four eyes, Oscar four eyes. God knows I am not afraid of horses. Rode English when I was young. Turned out into a ...

Poetry Issue #13: Animals & Health July 24th, 2023 Car Cure by Joe Cottonwood Car Cure Blended with the floor boards, so we named him Oak. Stood like a sawhorse blocking a child from the street as if to say I will not let you die. A predator, ate teddy bears. More than anything loved to ride in our car. Stumbled one day groaning to the yard, collapsed on a bed of blooming lilies. In the house Rose discovered he’d eaten most of a braided ...

Poetry Issue #13: Animals & Health July 24th, 2023 Bobbi, I am Healing by Hadley Dion Bobbi, I am Healing You spend your last afternoon looking out the front screen door. Your kidneys practicing betrayal, your sophisticated stance, all bone and bloat. Hosting your own memorial. Neighborhood strays and patio spiders paying their respects. After euthanasia, the vet lets me take you home, your body wrapped in woven nap time blanket. I lay you on the living room table and drink prosecco until the sky swallows the ...

Poetry Issue #13: Animals & Health July 24th, 2023 Three Poems by Grace Downey Black Matte Nail Polish 1 Ink She asked me if I’d ever been manic. I said I’d swallowed a many-eyed spy so he could observe the function of my liver instead of my brain. I once considered ingesting the soft and oh so palatable ribcage of a paper wasp nest. It would be peppery yet sweet, like how lovers who smelled of bourbon should have been. 2 Break Room He touched my breasts. I thought ...

Poetry Issue #13: Animals & Health July 24th, 2023 Three Poems by Lucia Owen Barn Chores Whispers in soft syllables, coven of healing, they stand together around him, my old horse, the four young girls who help with barn chores, after they found him rolling, kicking in his paddock in the mud, not getting up, nipping at his flanks - Colic -  and they ran for help on such a hot stormy summer night, when they knew he could have twisted a gut and ...