The Bookends Review

The fall
has halted

for the
yellow maple

leaf, fresh
caught, bright,

casting a
tiny shadow

in the
porch corner

from the
spider’s web

in the
last light

of this
October day:

no escape,
no meal.

– John Beck

Note: This piece was previously published by LansingOnlineNews.com, a now defunct local news outlet, in 2012.…

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Sara Mae is a genderqueer writer raised on the Chesapeake Bay. Their work examines the surreal, the uncanny, body horror, and intimacy. They are a 2023 Big Ears Music Festival Artist Scholar, a 2022 Tin House Summer Workshops alum, a 2022 Open Mouth Attendee, and a 2021 Sewanee Writer’s Conference Scholar. Their work appears in or is forthcoming from POETRY, The Georgia Review, Muzzle, and elsewhere. They are a 2017 Individual World Poetry Slam, 2018 National Poetry Slam, and 2018 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational Competitor. Their first chapbook, Priestess of Tankinis, is out now via Game Over Books. Their second chapbook, Phantasmagossip, won the Vinyl45 chapbook competition and was released from YesYes Books in spring 2025.…

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after Remedios Varo’s “Astral Entity”

NOTES FOR THE BABYSITTER

1. You can reach me at 555-GET-AWAY or call the Get a Break bar on Vacation Blvd. and have them page me. I hope you don’t do that though.
2. She only answers to Astra, but if you have an emergency her name is Nora Boudeman and she’s six years old. She has no physical preexisting conditions.
3. She will only eat sugar water and rocket pops and dandelion salad. The salad is in a Tupperware in the fridge. She’s in a phase.
4. She has an “imaginary” friend. Just play along.
5. Don’t be alarmed. She’s just fooling around.
6. Humor her, no matter what, unless of course it’s dangerous. Then distract. I hope you know the fine art of distraction.

CHILD TO THE BABYSITTER

“Have you met my friend?…

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They gave us little yellow tickets and instructed us not to lose them.

Yellow like the flowers sprouting from the ground,
Wrestling blades of grass,
Growing up towards the sun, yellow and shiny,
Yellow teeth, dentist bills,

That week was full of “almost!” moments. I almost called out but came in begrudgingly. I almost left the event early to return to my office and work in solitude or just left early for the day, stealing a roll of toilet paper on my way out. I thought about all of those “almost!” moments, staring “almost!” comatose at the asphalt outside the hospital.…

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this heart of mine feels dull and lonely
aching for your love, only
             are you thinking of me where you are?
                         are you looking at the same stars ?
did the moon tell you i’ve been telling her stories about you?
and how every shade and every hue
is more vibrant next to you ?
carolina skies are nothing compared to your eyes
and my my my… i sure do miss my guy
the one who dons himself in paint
my patron saint
in         t e c h n i c o l o r
my dream of a lover
personified
just in time
to save my soul
was that your goal?
because now it’s yours
careful to treat it well, toujours
she’s a delicate little thing, this heart
but i’d sacrifice it all and call it art

– Madi Huffman…

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My fiancé does not like the smell of fast food, greasy paper bags or unrefined sugars. I like the scent, at times, more than the contents. Limp potato matchsticks with bits of potato skin left on make it seem more real. He scolds me when I come home with a Big Gulp in hand. He likes the gym and time management.

“Managing time.” He stresses, finger pointy, seeking to transfer his passion for precision from his nail bed to my wrinkled forehead.

Anyway, I knew this simply would not do. I did not like to manage my time. I enjoy getting soil between my fingers and recycling plastic spinach bins. He gifted me a pink plastic brush to scrub my filthy nails. He is averse to natural things, even the blood spot in my underwear one week out of the month.…

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Fresh from Parisian Phoenix Publishing as of July 2025, Mark Luebbers and Benjamin Goluboff’s latest poetry collection Group Portrait: Poems on a Photograph by Hermann Landshoff takes on the ambitious task of tasteful extrapolation; in their examination of Hermann Landshoff’s 1942 photograph “Artists in Exile,” Luebbers and Goluboff aim to highlight the human condition itself as a collaborative narrative composition, not unlike the carefully-ordered lineup of the artists in the picture.

Each of the collection’s fifteen poems balances research and speculation to transport the reader into the mind of a different artist arranged for the camera. Amidst the backdrop of World War II, the various thinkers’ day-to-day social conflicts reflect and foretell cultural concerns that extend far beyond the walls of Peggy Guggenheim’s New York City home, the setting of the portrait.…

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