James Penha
Expat New Yorker James Penha (he/him 
) has lived for the past three decades in Indonesia. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry, his work is widely published in journals and anthologies. His newest chapbook of poems, American Daguerreotypes, is available for Kindle. Penha edits The New Verse News, an online journal of current-events poetry.
The following work is Copyright © 2025, and owned by James Penha and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Lost Sock
rainbow argyle
proud and flamboyant
worn the last day of his life
his feet were so cold
I wrapped him in the matching blanket
rainbow argyle
we bought in Century 21
near the new World Trade Center
we ate Krispy Kremes in the park
and he changed his white crew socks
for the rainbow argyles right there
in the park near the 9-11 Memorial
and rolled up his pant legs
to show them off
I laundered them with all his clothes
and the blanket
before they went to Goodwill
but the socks I kept
in my nightstand drawer
and just hold them
from time to time
or wear them like mittens but
I found only one in the sheets
this morning
I need to shadow our old poodle
who sleeps in the bed
and loved him too
Pen Holder
Just above the nib it rests
not on my middle finger but
in the gulley etched there
from decades of chirography.
The isosceles index finger
looks to ride bareback driving
the operation comforted
and secured by the soft pad
of my thumb. It has happened
automatically without thought
ever since I first learned how
to write until now formulating
this poem by hand.
Roses Are Red, Violets Are Too
I am painting the sea,
desiccating odoriferous French cheese.
I am expediting orgasms,
dying berries.
I am fogging the sky,
plucking the jays.
I am grinding lapis into sand,
camouflaging the whales.
I am distributing sunglasses,
plucking wood hyacinths.
I am blackening bruises,
selling the best stocks.
I am gilding suede shoes,
dressing cops in khaki.
I am prohibiting bayous, horizons,
heavens, and yonders.
I am asking Lady not to sing,
Miles to be kind.
I am busy eradicating the blues of the world,
waiting for you.
Laurinda Lind
Laurinda Lind lives in New York’s North Country, near the Canadian border. Some of her poems are in Atlanta Review, Blue Earth Review, The Cortland Review, The Heartland Review, The Inflectionist Review, New American Writing, Paterson Literary Review, Spillway, and Stand. Her first chapbook, Trials by Water, was released in summer 2024 (Orchard Street Press). She won first place in Keats-Shelley, Foley, Peggy Willis Lyles, and Northwind poetry competitions.
The following work is Copyright © 2025, and owned by Laurinda Lind and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
As They Bombed Appalachia
Up, up they came from deep inside,
miners with sooty sandwiches
and lungs, out of labyrinths they
made mountains take, maps like
brain folds in their minds where
they had stored against
collapse, where they collected
themselves while they still could.
When the bombing began and blew
holes in the horizon they filed
for unemployment and worker’s
comp while they sipped the slurry
water that sang through their
taps, and watched the afterlife
roll toward them ridge by ridge.
–Originally appeared in Kestrel
Conductor
Jean Thompson used to write Dylan lyrics
in her notebook during classes at Plattsburgh,
dense blocks of stanzas in smartass handscript
forty years ago, doors that gave her exits
right out onto the tracks. I couldn’t do that,
but I’m full of him anyway, we all were.
The enemy twin, the lover in the sewer,
the hard rain, the railroad gin. We couldn’t
help it, he was there early, ore for allegory,
moody watchtower trickster who made
new faces and mouths for the same dark
wild mind. I was too young to ride that train,
even when it came slow. When I saw him
in Syracuse he walked out late and looked
haunted, wandered the stage, was barely
there. My friend Lori said he did the same
that summer in Denver, said he looked like
he’d been rode hard and put away wet, yet,
yet, yet, I saw him, I saw him, and still today
he is alive under the same sky. He didn’t
have to be first or even best. He just had
to be the right live wire down the right
crack, and then the lightning could come.
–First appeared in Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan (New Rivers Press)
