Robert Carr
Robert Carr: is a Maine-based author of five collections, most recently, Blue Memento (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2025) and Phallus Sprouting Leaves, winner of the 2024 Rane Arroyo Chapbook Series (Seven Kitchens Press). Robert’s work has appeared in many journals including The Greensboro Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Shenandoah.
Michael Anania
Michael Anania: was born in Omaha and studied at the University of Nebraska and the University at Buffalo, where he founded and co-edited Audit/Poetry. He was literally editor of The Swallow Press and taught at Northwestern and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Recent books include Continuous Showings (2017), Nightsongs and Clamors (2018), and in Time (2024). A collection of essays on his work, From the Word to the Place, edited by Lea Graham, was published in 2022.
Mika Altidor
Leave Something
by Keith Walker
Near the end
of Thanksgiving dinner
you ask a simple question–
why did you leave
those last three pieces
of roasted vegetables
on the platter?
A guest proposes
maybe it’s a southern thing–
it’s impolite to take
the last piece of anything.
I let that rattle around
but it doesn’t quite fit
the shape of my silence
in the midst of our banter.
Staring at the delicate
tendrils on my mother’s china
that lives mostly in the attic now
I say no
I just don’t want it
all to be gone.