This year’s Al-Khemia Poetica Pushcart Prize Best of the Small Press Nominees are:
Lorraine Caputo "An Andean Dawn" (poem)
Ann Huang’s"Aftermath" (poem)
Sarah Maclay’s "What the Trees Said" (poem)
Genie Nakano’s "Once and a While" (poem)
Jan Steckel’s "Kol Nidre"(poem)
Terry Wolverton’s "The moon showed up at my house this afternoon" (poem)
Good luck to you all, and congratulations!:)
© 2025 marie c lecrivain
Metamorphosis
In Memoriam: Joan Miller Bladden
where are you
dear sister
frozen bird
afraid to sing
in death
you open
your throat
fly
Ripped Path
sanctimonious
words drown me
fear drives a knife
into my heart
speak to me
of covert truth
Turn on Caesar’s Tables
Veni, Vidi, Vici. “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Attributed to Julius Caesar, 47 BC
I came, I saw, and I was conquered
beaten, burned, destroyed
And, like the Phoenix, I rose again
tempered by the fire
© 2025 Fay Loomis
Fay L. Loomis leads a quiet life in the woods in Kerhonkson, New York, USA. Member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers and the Rat's Ass Review Workshop, her poetry and prose appear in numerous publications, including five poetry anthologies. Fay is the author of Sunlit Wildness (Origami Poems Project, 2024) and Fragments of Myself, forthcoming from Porkbelly Press. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee.
Here are the 2024 Pushcart Prize nominees. I wish them well, and much success.:)
Lorraine Caputo "A Weekend Escape"” (poem)
Beverly Collins Beverly M. Collins's "Cost of Knowing" (prose)
Kitty Jospé's "Someone's Birthday is Someone Else's Death Day" (poem)
Fay L. Loomis's " Writing Poems While Asleep" (poem)
Lisa Marguerite Mora's "Afterwards the Moon"(poem)
LB Sedlacek's "One Hit Wonder"(poem)
One Hit Wonder
The corn stands tall
a deep grass green
brown decay on top
and I lean slowly
back in the chair
soft plaid, blue-green
waiting for my favorite
songs to play on
the old black rectangle
a radio that sits
on the dresser in
my parent’s green room
the shade lighter than
the green cornfield slaughtered
in fall stalks cut
down fresh fodder for
wild geese dining in
moonlight, the walking path
borders around the cornfield
laid bare walkers, bikers
exposed to the elements
and while the field
sleeps seeds are planted
anew in spring and
the corn leaps up
lashes out at sky
relishing its deep green
its hearty cycle of
repeating a popular tune.
© 2024 LB Sedlacek
Bio: LB Sedlacek is an award winning writer and poet. Her latest poetry book is Unresponsive Sky, published by Purple Unicorn Media. Her latest short stories book is The Renovator & Motor Addiction, published by Alien Buddha Press. She has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize both in poetry. Her mystery book, The Glass River, was nominated for the Thomas Wolfe memorial prize. She also enjoys swimming and reading.
Instagram: @lbsedlacek
Facebook: @lbsedlacekpoet
Twitter: @lbsedlacek
Afterwards the Moon (when my cat died)
It was a large white disk low in the sky. It didn't glow. It was cloud color. And kind of defiant about it. I stopped walking down the slant of hill and said, wow.
What are you supposed to do with the moon? In another time, another era, maybe I would have raised my arms, or genuflected or offered something to the fact it was there, rising as it always promises to do.
Something real and solid but still ephemeral. Mysterious, because while reliable you never know when you’ll see it or where. Or what it will look like. The moon is hard to pin down.
I resumed walking, but looked for it again between the buildings. I looked. But the clouds had shifted and were darkening to blue. It was no longer there. I’ll never see it like that again, that size, that color, framed in just that way. The moon was gone. A single granule of time.
These moments as they slip by are baffling. Not designed to be held. The heat of life pressed against my chest, as I tenderly cradled its bones and fur. And then the life is gone, slips into invisibility. My eyes cannot adjust. My eyes cannot stay wide enough to take it all in.
Yet still I search the skies.
© 2024 Lisa Marguerite Mora
Bio: Lisa Marguerite Mora has been published widely including in Chiron Review, Rattle, Literary Mama, Public Poetry Series, California Quarterly, Rebelle Society, Serving House Journal, semifinalist Tom Howard Poetry Contest, First Place winner Micro Fiction for Dandelion Press. Nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Her first novel is searching for a home while she writes a second.
Neutrals Don’t Suit Anyone
A one bed flat is hardly
likely to be kitted out
ready for a House Beautiful
photographer, but even here,
the run-down part of the city
smooth textiles in neutrals,
cover windows, except one.
A flash of gold, a brief sunny
spell picking up its glittery
strands. The sort of fabric
that could be a barely-there
dress which outshines
the outsized sequins
complementing the huge
hoop earrings, tall beehive,
platformed stilettoes
siren red smile, heavy kohl
worn by someone out
for a night of drowning
sorrows, a few hours
before tottering home
to a single bed. A kitchen
that would just about cope
with a hangover busting fry-up.
A shower to flatten hair
to accommodate a wireless
headset, an office suit, a smile
that never reaches the eyes.
© 2024 Emma Lee
Keep it Real
Slick suits and shades slide across a stage,
the singers’ mouths obscured by headset mics,
the choreographed moves muffle accents.
In a standing room only venue where the roadie kicks
the amp into action, the sound engineer compensates
for the quirks of a cobbled-together set-up. A broken
string could throw the rhythm, a spilt beer could
electrocute a guitarist, the crowd could drown the vocals.
The suits shimmy off stage and are ushered to a dressing
room where they wait to be bused to a hotel. Wash,
rinse, repeat. Every minute scheduled, accounted.
The men in jeans, faded tees, rough shirts step over
the sticky patches, taped wires, plug in, limber up.
There’s an hour’s workout ahead. Music thumps against
a ribcage, loosening the heart’s imagination before
it’s burnt by a stubbed cigarette, leaving smoke.
It’s too easy to say the suited choreographed
singer/dancers wouldn’t last five minutes in the bar.
Their lyrics an opaque gloss of unknown lives.
The bar band shy off stage, stamped applause
vibrates through the floor. This is their moment,
a hyped audience vibrant in the post-gig shadows,
band absent, music still thrumming through the amps,
kept alive by the memories of people now drifting home.
© 2024 Emma Lee
Emma Lee’s publications include The Significance of a Dress (Arachne, 2020) and Ghosts in the Desert (IDP, 2015). She co-edited Over Land, Over Sea, (Five Leaves, 2015), reviews for magazines and blogs at https://emmalee1.wordpress.com.
She Runs in Silver
She runs in silver like an arctic fox
(No, that’s not right)
She walks inside colors
Rains out games and lovers
(Still not quite it either)
She is not she or they or he or it
She is a nebula
(No, she isn’t)
She stands on my window
Invisible, a sylph, not a siren
Her secret, silent and just out of reach
© 2024 Annette Sugden
Annette Sugden is a poet whose work has appeared in poeticdiversity, Gentle Strength Quarterly,, and more. She’s lived in Seattle, London, and Los Angeles. Annette currently resides outside of Phoenix with her partner, Michael, their three dogs, and two cats.
Recently, my son, G3, called me to pick him up after school. We live only a half a mile away, close enough for him to walk, and most days he does walk because when I work, he has no other option. But I was off, and he felt like being lazy. I just missed the way things used to be, before I returned to teaching, and so I happily dropped what I was doing in order to get him. A block away from the school, as I saw him crossing the street, I pulled over to wait for him. The moment he yanked open the door, he asked me if we could detour to the Mini-Mart for him to get an Arizona Iced Tea. The kid eats enough sweets–he’s still got a bag full of candy from Halloween–so he certainly didn’t need more.Without giving it much thought, I shook my head “No.” A shadow of disappointment fell across his face, but surprisingly, he didn’t complain. He didn’t beg. Since he didn’t throw his usual snit, by the time I pulled into the driveway I started to reconsider. However, if I was going to get him an iced tea, he was going to have to walk. With me.
G3 is twelve, nearly thirteen, and he’s reached that stage where I’ve become an embarrassment to him. Okay, that might be a bit harsh and not completely true. I’m not an embarrassment, but being seen with me in public causes him a great deal of embarrassment. He’s too cool to go anywhere or do anything with his mother. I get it. I never went through that stage with my parents, at least I don’t think I did. I was always happy to have them show-up or be anywhere with me. But that was me. G3 is different. He has started to pull away, wanting more space and less time to interact and do mother and son activities. As for me, I’ve started to miss all the time we used to spend together, especially back in the days when I was a stay-at-home mom and all my free time was poured into him. Now, I’ve been reduced to scheming in order to find ways to get him to spend even five minutes with me. A walk to the mini-mart wasn’t much, but it was something. A few minutes during which we could talk and I could possibly find out about his day and what might be new in his life.
As I pulled the key out the ignition I turned to G3 and suggested, “If you’re up for a walk, we can go to the mini-mart and I’ll get you that iced tea.”
He started to grumble. His shoulders sagged, and I prepared myself for rejection. Instead, he bit down on his lower lip and slowly let out a lung full of air. “Fine,” he agreed, “but we can’t go now. All the kids from school will still be there. We’ll go in a half an hour.”
Trying not to smirk and let my excitement peek through, I opened my door and got out of the car. Back in the house, I resumed revising an essay while my son sat down to do his homework. At half past three, exactly a half hour after we had gotten home, I asked him if he still wanted the Arizona Iced Tea. He closed the screen of his Chromebook, smiled up at me, and headed out the front door.
We walked together, a good foot or two between us, but still close enough that we were able to match our strides. As we walked, I thought back to when he was just learning to walk, before he had complete command of his own legs. Every day that fall, regardless of how cold it was, I would take him outside to play. His tiny little hand would reach up and grab hold of my finger so that he didn’t fall. I walked slowly, letting him set the pace and he stopped constantly, examining everything. We never went far, just around the condo complex. Every time he came across a new treasure–a pebble, a feather, a flower–he called my attention to it. Pinecones were his favorite and he would pause to collect them, gathering up as many as his little arms could hold. They were like priceless gifts and he carried them as gingerly as if they were made of glass. Sometimes, he would hand them to me one at a time and I would count out loud, “One, two, three…” Oh how he loved the counting game. We’d pass the pinecones back and forth until he got tired of it. Back then, he was too little to talk so our conversations were often one-sided with me narrating the world–numbers, colors, names. Sometimes, I’d tell stories, enjoying the interested look on his little face.
Now he could talk just fine, but coaxing him into a conversation was getting harder and harder. I asked questions, “How was your day?” “What did you do?” “Did you learn anything interesting?” He answered in single syllables or shoulder shrugs.
About halfway to the store, he began frantically turning around to look up and down the street, as if he were a wanted criminal trying to evade capture. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“If you see any kids, they’re probably from my school, so you’ll have to walk three feet in front of me or let me get in front of you. Okay?”
No, that was not okay, not okay at all. He was totally tossing me aside, ready to pretend that I didn’t exist. But I didn’t complain. I didn’t object. These were his new rules, his new guidelines, that dictated our relationship in public. I could accept them or not, but if I didn’t, it would mean less time with him.
Not much further along, we turned a corner which brought us to the main road. There is always a great deal of traffic and a fair amount of foot traffic, especially during rush hour. No sooner did we cross the first street than my son noticed a group of six kids walking out of Dunkin Donuts. The second G3 spotted them, he sped up–really fast. My clue to drop back and play dead.
“Hey G3,” a voice called out and several hands raised in a wave. Even from an increasingly wide distance, I saw his shoulders stiffen. He’d give anything, at that moment, for me to disappear. This young man who once upon a time used to cry and throw temper tantrums in stores, this boy who used to say the most inappropriate things in front of company because children have absolutely no filter, this kid who as a toddler loved to pull his clothes off at the beach and run around naked, was embarrassed because I happened to be walking on the same street.
It hurt. I won’t pretend it didn’t, although I think I put on a good act. I dropped back far enough and walked on even when he turned into the Mini-Mart. I didn’t stop until I came to a store lawn-sign that was big enough for me to hide behind. From the safety of my perch, I looked back. The crowd of kids had turned up the block and were headed in the direction of the school. I circled back, pulled open the door to the Mini-Mart, and stealthily slipped some money to my son. I was gone before he even had time to open the refrigerator.
I walked alone until I could turn up off the main street. There, out of the way and in the shadows, I waited for my son.
“Thank you,” he said when he caught up to me, keeping his voice low and glancing over his shoulder to see if any of his other schoolmates were around. They were. Two older boys loomed ahead, their backs to us, but their presence was too much. “I’ll meet you at home,” my son declared, taking off at a rapid pace and leaving me to follow in his wake. I didn’t even know he could walk that fast.
© 2024 Elizabeth Jaeger
