issue nine
summer 2024
In Gratitude
Dwaine Rieves
For his steadfast support over the years
Poetry
Consider the Day
by Matt Thomas
A Sense of Being
by Maudie Bryant
The Hours That Rooted Me
by Courtney Justus
Harboring: from the Lowlives Series
by Joanna Grant
Monarchs
by Gregory Lobas
Bush Un-Rosed
by Maggie Rue Hess
If All Goes Well
by Molly O'Dell
Bees
by Matt Thomas
Our Fireflies
by Ronnie Sirmans
The Honey Locust
by Ronnie Sirmans
Below the Bough
by Sam Barbee
Psalm of a secular human
by Skinner Matthews
Internal Combustion: A Primer
by John Miller
Spring
by Sean Sexton
Earth Will Curve You to Its Orbit
by Annette Sisson
Punctuation, Accent, Marks
by Laura Cesarco Eglin
Nonfiction
Passing Time
by Deborah-Zenha Adams
Visiting my Twenty-Something Grandson in NYC
by Karen Luke Jackson
Going Back to Miami
by Gustavo Pérez Firmat
About the Photographer
Sean Sexton was born in Indian River County and grew up on his family's Treasure Hammock Ranch. He divides his time between managing a 700-acre cattle operation, painting, and writing. He is author of two chapbooks, and three full volumes of poetry: Blood Writing, Poems, Anhinga Press, 2009, and May Darkness Restore, Poems, Press 53, 2019, and Portals, Poems, Press 53, 2023. He performs regularly at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, NV, and is on the faculty of the 2024 Southeastern Writers Assn. Conference on St. Simon's Island, GA in June . He was nominated for a 2020 and 2021 Pushcart Prize and received a FL Individual Artist’s Fellowship in 2001. He's a board member of the Laura Riding Jackson Foundation and founding event chair of their Annual Poetry and Barbeque held each April, now in its fifteenth year. He also co-founded Poetry and Organ Advent and Lenten Concert Series at Community Church in Vero Beach, FL featuring nine concerts annually attracting poets from all over the US. He became inaugural Poet Laureate of Indian River County in 2016. Sean is also a visual artist who draws, paints, and has kept sketch and writing journals for more than fifty years. Recently he began to add photography to his ongoing discourse with the beloved landscape of his upbringing.