Nada Gordon (Brooklyn NY)lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
+
Lydia Unsworth (Manchester UK)
when the reminder
when the junk mail piles
when the door’s a knockin
when it’s Monday
when the flowers breathe again
when the sound of trees in wind
when the flight gets cancelled
when the present can, in fact, be long
when the sun speaks out
when it snows so early
when there’s cops on every corner
when the metro is locked and guarded
when the escalator gets stuck mid-journey
when there’s another strike
when there’s banners out the windows
when I mean it this time
when the power goes out
when really
when you’re so late again
when the shining is the point
when feelings learn to fester
when the winter market opens
when wind so cold it burns the cheek
when your hair gets tussled
when the grinding labors you
Saturday, March 7, 5pm EST on Zoom: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/461603228
see the facebook event page here
Featuring Friends Reading and Reminiscing by:
Vincent Katz : Paul Hoover : Sheila Murphy : Dale Smith : Tony Trigilio : rob mclennan
With Lina Ramona Vitkauskas
Hosted by Jefrey Cyphers Wright
And the Lit Balm crew : Marc Vincenz, Cassandra Atherton, Jonathan Penton and Jon Wesick.
YUKI
for Angella KassubeThe Japanese word for snow, plus the name Angella gave her cat. When it snows in Minneapolis, the snow never completely fills the u in Yuki’s name. Nor the opening at the top of the Y. Both spaces are too vast, as is Yuki’s spirit, an immensity which animates her entire body and which Angella understands better than anyone when she looks into Yuki’s eyes.
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
cover photo by the author: “Half Moon Bay”
John Levy lives in Tucson. He is married to the painter Leslie Buchanan. His collection of poems, 54 poems: selected & new, was published by Shearsman Books in 2023.
This is Levy’s second chapbook with above/ground press, after To Assemble an Absence (2024).
To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com
Spilling Suns
First, a ghostly trace of head,
then stomach, then paintbrush tail,
emerging from the Atlantic,
an image sharpening like a Polaroid.
My father hauling in a 50-pounder,
big mama, old and fat, fabled.
The charm of her freckles, scorched
smudges in the light, her lateral lines, silver
arrows pointing to the sun.
She can lay out more eggs
than 28 smaller ones just like her.
Longlines, draggers couldn't hold
her back. For a quarter-century
she skirted past gillnets, box-shaped
traps, sharks, the cannibals
of her own kind, surviving below
pinkish shale crevices, the dense
gelatin of the deep rushing her on.
Then, the quickness
of the act: his haul.
The gaff.
(Oh, that sharp hook.)
Slide over, belly fat glistening.
The cut.
(Oh, the ready knife.)
Sun beats its fire into her round eye
for the first time. The whole of her
belly rich, roe-distended.
Back at the dock, we children cheer, clamour.
Mother gets the camera, makes us pose
with father as he holds her up by the hook,
knot-tight, two thumbs up next to the split form,
eggs spilling
and spilling
and spilling,
orange pricks of light.
