by Cyndie Randall

Look down. See me on
the subway platform. Say
hello. Pick me up, undress me,
put me in your mouth. I taste
good and it's surprising, like
peaches and summer in your childhood
swing. Tuck me between lip
and gum. Say hold on,
we're going for a ride. Feel
young again. Climb aboard
the electric flash. Pucker your face
and suck more me out of me.
Bob your head and whistle. Whisper
I'm glad I found you.
Tell me I'll always be
with you. Swallow. Miss me.
Tongue the raw of your cheek.



____

Cyndie Randall’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Frontier Poetry, DIAGRAM, Crab Creek Review, Longleaf Review, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, Pithead Chapel, The Pinch, and others. She works as a therapist in a small town near Lake Michigan and is also a poetry contributing editor at Barren Magazine. Find her on Twitter @CyndieRandall or at cyndierandall.com.

by Beth Gordon

praise all future near misses:

meteor shower: study group: windshield crack: sparrow bones: smoke detector: detonator: backyard  
swimming pool: 

flying tire: funhouse gunshot: 

              starlight earthquake: 

frog invasion: flood plain 
wasp nest: manhole cover: 

              local time of error: praise:

praise the preacher on endless loop:

praise all neighbors with ambrosia salad: praise the china plate:

                         recite her morning: cricket chatter: cricket light pole: cricket   
                         hop scotch: cricket cabaret: praise her handprint: hold her
                         raindrops: lemon snail: mud pond sailboat: hermit crab: jump 

the sidewalk: jump the mousetrap:
praise the lonely dog/			          praise the broken chain:



____

Beth Gordon is a poet, mother and grandmother currently living in Asheville, NC. Her poetry has been published in Passages North, EcoTheo Review, SWWIM, Into the Void, Pidgeonholes, Barren, Pithead Chapel, and others. She is the author of two published chapbooks and her full-length collection, This Small Machine of Prayer, is forthcoming in 2021. She is Managing Editor of Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, and Assistant Editor of Animal Heart Press.

by Beth Gordon

The easy bake oven covered in soot.
Battery-powered and uninformed. What
can be wound can be rewound and finger
printed. 		                Please place this doll into the crib	    (exactly)
as you did your child. Ignore the police
officers who dial back your thermostat: they are sweating and homesick for mother’s
icebox lemon pie. Do not memorize
badge numbers. Gather her seahorse her comb
her shoestrings her unflustered purple bear.
							                                   Howl.
Coyotes and neighborhood dogs will arrive and dig holes to the moon. Bury
broken radio parts that will never 
be unburied. Translate all transmissions.



____

Beth Gordon is a poet, mother and grandmother currently living in Asheville, NC. Her poetry has been published in Passages North, EcoTheo Review, SWWIM, Into the Void, Pidgeonholes, Barren, Pithead Chapel, and others. She is the author of two published chapbooks and her full-length collection, This Small Machine of Prayer, is forthcoming in 2021. She is Managing Editor of Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, and Assistant Editor of Animal Heart Press.