by Patrick Bradshaw

They were moving the cooler
to make room for the bulk tank
when we found it.
Huge and dusty.
Big as my size 8 sneaker.
Squatting in grime
that hadn’t seen light since
grandpa installed the milking machines.
It seemed to be the consequence
of abandoning the dented milk cans
that had always been good enough.

Blinking only once
it waddled into the shadows
never to be seen again.

Despite the promise
of that stainless steel tank
we couldn’t keep the cows.
The barns sagged and fell
the fields grew into woods
whose trees have eaten
the barbed wire fences.
No straight lines left.
Just burdock and thistle
blocking the way
we thought we were going.

by joy

Why I Started Smoking Again
Your nicotine breath mixed with whiskey
was exciting at first, but became a heavy shroud
of all the reasons we needed to end things
The smoke lingered, slid into my lungs when
I stood by the ashtrays trying to penetrate
circles gathered outside every bar
It crawled under doors you hid behind, thinking
I wouldn’t smell it if you cracked a window
In the end, everything
was a cracked window
behind a closed door
When you started disappearing for days at a time,
I laid on all the floors of the house we bought
when we thought we were adults

I found an unopened red pouch of American Spirits
under our bed, the one I had been sleeping in alone lately,
and put it in my underwear drawer
At night I paced the sidewalk in front of our front door,
rolling cigarettes to pass the agonizing amounts of time
I spent flogging myself from the inside for having any hope
that you would come home.
When the tobacco dried out with my patience,
I started buying packs – yellow was my signature color

When you saw me flicking red embers with my thumb,
you had the same look on your face I had when I found out
you’d been getting vegetarian sushi with her for lunch –
Why now? Why not with me?

by Michael Cunningham

A poem is this:
A small blue egg: cracked
found on the ground this morning.
Its broken circumference
a treasure box of hope and sorrow:
for what has taken wing
for what has been lost
for what must be birthed again.

by Kristine Korman

Stuck and stalling
grinding and groaning
choking on gasoline
the rusty jalopy
tries to get going
its dull red body
pitches forward
rolls back defeated
its gears are weak
corroding from time.

The driver remembers
as he pushes the clutch
how this car jumped lights
with the squeal of speed
leaving rubber on the road
its canvas roof folded down
exposing the leather seats
filled with laughing friends
catching everyone’s eyes
as it sped by.

The driver pumps the gas pedal
to move the faded white wall tires
the windows are milky with age
stuffing bulges from brittle seats
the engine does not start
the old car capitulates
but the old man
refuses this fate
he rests his bald head
on his gnarled hands
grasping the steering wheel
as the night descends upon them.

by Matthew Dickerson

Weeding my way from the pea pods
to the wax beans, I catch a whiff
of decay. I remember a deer once hit
on 116 whose stench lingered for days,
and we could not let our dog off leash.

Weeks of rain have made rivers
of our trails. Mud fills the meadow,
slurps at my sneakers, and soaks
my socks when I head out to harvest
raspberries and black currants.

But the cat concerns me most —
the cat I buried in a cardboard box
late last winter, with the help of my son
who dug into the frozen earth. We later
planted flowers in the soft soil.

Looking at the small lake that
has spread around the cosmos,
and smelling that smell, I wonder
if we dug the hole
deep enough.

Honorable Mention in the 2025 Arthur Wallace Peach Memorial Award. Published in the 2025 Mountain Troubadour.

by CD Williams

“For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil” (Hamlet 3.1.66-67)

Last night I was cleaning up after supper and I was wondering—

Seven years before I was born my father’s father died at 57 from
tuberculous;
My mother’s father, my Pa whose name I carry, at 64 of cancer;
And my dad? My dad at 69 in the driveway, snowblower running on high throttle.

I know sons bury their fathers—I hadn’t seen it a pattern of life in good
order—
And learned fathers sometimes bury their children—I never understood
that curse until I faced it.

Last night I was cleaning up after supper and I was wondering—
What’s the purpose—my purpose—living more years than these who’ve
gone before?
Is my work in the world just not yet finished?
Maybe a challenge, a chance to try, to accomplish more—
Or a gift perhaps, a chance to laugh, to cry more.

I’m coming to understand there is neither gift nor challenge nor curse.
I carry sorrow without, as I’ve been told to feel, gratitude,
I carry sorrow without, as I’ve been told to seek, closure.
I carry sorrow beyond days of grief.
In that sorrow I carry memories.
And I endure. For now —

Eventually the mortal coil will slip from my shoulders—
The shroud, inevitable — I expect no grace in its dark folds.
Will the dreams that come include a reunion of souls or quiet, empty
nothing?

Last night I was cleaning up after supper and I was wondering and
I looked down in the dishwater and saw my father’s hands.
Surprised
I looked up and, reflected in the window over the sink, his eyes.

And that is, I suppose, enough.

by daithe’

Windswept Lake Eden:
A daguerreotype,
their figures outlined
in black against snow-blinding whiteness
and glassy etched ice.
Hunched over, leaning toward
the ever-gaping augered hole,
they sit upon their cooler,
a perfect pair.
Notice how Joseph,
freckle-faced and wide-eyed,
takes in Roy’s instructions–
how to hold the jig;
how to bob the line;
how to attach minnows,
or disattach perch eyes, for bait,
with the flick of a thumb.

Then, when to twitch the jig
or how to tend to the tip-up
when its flag flips high,
surrendering its orange nylon wing
to the hungry eyes of the fishermen,
like a raven plummeting and tumbling
against a piercing wind.

But most of all,
what it means to huddle and confer,
against the wintry slopes of time.

2025 Corrine Eastman Davis Memorial Award – Honorable Mention
Published in the 2025 Mountain Troubadour