Editor's Note

Dear Readers,

It has been an honor serving as the Harbor Review editor-in-chief this last year and a half. In the time that I have served, I’ve learned so much about the labor of love that happens behind the scenes–the countless hours and tremendous energy that our founder, volunteer readers, editors and art director put into every issue. This awe and gratitude have brought me much joy.

In addition to this, I have been considering the importance of being present on a daily basis and for the big things in my life. As I have a new book coming out this month and some major personal transitions, the time has come for me to make room with renewed energy and more space in my life. I will be resigning as editor-in-chief of Harbor Review with the publication of this "wondrous and miraculous" issue. I do so with complete confidence in the current team who have come together so beautifully to align with the magazine’s mission statement. They are visionaries, luminaries and curators of authenticity, wildness and astonishment.

Thank you for gifting us with your writing and with your readership. The team at Harbor Review, and all of you, will always be part of my beloved community. What better parting gift can I give but to present this thirteenth installment of our Harbor Review digital literary arts magazine, "Wondrous and Miraculous."

With love and gratitude,
Joan Kwon Glass
September 2024

BY ANY NAME THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN
by Barbara Schwartz

What if the ache
she knew & felt was not
a god-skull burning, battering her
cervix, but the immaculate orchestration
of her own fingers? What if she birthed not
a son to be strung up like an ornament, but the electric
perfection of sovereign pleasure? What if between her legs
came a flood so total, river & sea became tumult, torrent let loose
without murmurings, pawings of satyrs, martyrs? What if that blue, blue
water, a thousand tears of evil eyes, protected, bathed, blessed her

with comfort, tidings: a bliss no flag could fly in. Full stop spirit. What if
she was it, Miracle, Mother, Daughter, Lover, her knees ravaged
by war, but her freckled arms, her blue-veined hands, still
strong? Goddess who would not give up on joy, woman
who rid herself of captivity, impassivity, sunless
cavity fleshed from ire, stronger than any Iron-
dome, rocket, or locked safe room cooled in
such ever-lasting water that no
fire could burn it
down.

Esctacy Acry
by Maheshwar Sinha

One Wonderful Thing
by January O’Neil

The soft whir of a motorboat quakes the marsh at low tide.
No rain when rain was called for. Dawn and I trek through
the mud finding fragments: chipped clamshells, the legs
of a blue crab, blooms of late-season goldenrod.
Dawn says look for one wonderful thing. But today
everything is a wild surprise: brackish water smelling
like rotten eggs, reed grasses rustling above the chirp
of hidden crickets. Then she walks up to me with a slight smile
and a handful of what looks like thin, curly green beans.
Try this, she says. I do not hesitate. Salicornia, used by settlers
for pickling. Salty and intense, with a taste that burns the throat.
I search for my water bottle. This place is full of astonishments.
Is this what life wants from us, more life? How to choose?
We stand in the midst of neither here nor there, eating the marsh.

After Matisse
by Erin Schalk

Blush
by Yatchman Cynthia

My Acupuncturist Tells Me About the Bees
by Lisa Marie Oliver

A healer lures bees with honey and propolis, douses them
with water in the late afternoon heat
until they hover before his face stunned,
staggered, winglit air vibrating with sound.

He plucks the stingers from their bodies mid-flight–
inserts each barb into skin, venom
to pain channels, sorrow points. I’ll do
almost anything to feel better, static, needled,

grief-struck, recalling the processions in San Cristobal
where Saints emerge from puertas
de la catedral. Guadelupe’s porcelain hands,
her bare feet wilted with tiny flame orchids.

And El Señor, smoke-stained, carved wood body,
red pulcherrima seeping
from bee-clustered wounds. When the sting
is inserted, it still pulses in the flesh.

Your own dream at dawn . . .
by Irina Tall Novikova

A Seventies Picture in the Sun
by Mervyn Seivwright

It was something about seventies photos in England,

a slight copper-tint film,
making the sun feel sunnier,

the glow on our skin brighter,
my afro, puffier and browner,

slightly darker than the red bricks on Samuel Road
terrace homes. It was beaming enough to cringe

my eyebrows and show all my teeth, clumsily broken
two years later, flipping and falling in play. From this

aged picture, many of our pictures must have been
after Saturday Soup gatherings, a living room stretched

full of family, linked by main and side tables,
black and white TV on top of the broken television console

in the corner. Our table layered with hard food
and soup bowls, sucking surprise goat meat bones

marinated in a pumpkin base with potato, green banana,
white yam, and dumplings. Dumplings melting in mouths

with their hard, but gooey, bursting-soup juicy flavour.
Our stomachs stacked with happiness, transiting outside,

standing silly, holding my brother’s arm with our posh
dark tannish pants, matching blue sweater vests on

an Ipswich shiny-cool day. I wondered how many
ants and beetles we squashed with hard brown glossy,

squeaky shoes, stomping loudly against the cracks
betwixt sidewalks and bricks on road’s edge,

on the grates we played marbles on, pausing only
for the ladybugs in bright red. Maybe

my frothy romping is why my vest raced up, my canary
t-shirt showing behind my florescent maroon,

butterfly collar shirt top button—unbuttoned. The sun
shone on me from the imagery of smart mischief.

Childhood Memory on a Sunday Morning
by Tytti Heikkinen

In the parking lot of a Chinese restaurant
by Addie Tsai

the asphalt is as black as the night above

the site of your first rebellion, egg

ed on by a woman who matters so much

but whose face you could not pick out

of a new year’s party over hot pot, or even

your memory. What you do know,

now, only with age, is that the aunties saw

the wounds Baba wanted so much

to hide behind your forced deference, as un

marked as the skin he had nothing

to do with. It did not matter whether your eyes,

a blue reflecting pool made green

from the algae clouding the sky from its view,

looked down or dared to stare back.

The aunties always knew, just like Shirley, let’s go

with that name, because this was the 90s,

& it fit her fuchsia lip drawn outside the lines—what

ambition, matching the mouth she blotted

on my forehead as we snuck out while Baba

slept next to my siblings, missing the rarest pinches

of freedom. We pealed out toward the moon

black as her hair and her sweater and

my guilt, retrospectively. Shirley cackled—a bright

pink halo, as my ice cream dripped on her Volvo,

& my eyes dilated like a camera’s lens to light,

my skin collapsing without the sting.

The car carved its way to shapes

I had never imagined, much less with my

own body, my own engine. As we returned

to a different sense of the word captive, she tilted

the window (& her head) back, the wind flattening

her perm, releasing her candy wrappers into the open air.

They flew, just like I burned to.

She nudged my bony shoulder to join her,

& so I did, fingers trembling with delight, and fear

that Shirley was just an angel I dreamed up,

granting me a taste of magic, only to take it away.

Instantaneous as a Deepening Astonishment
by Bill Wolak

Bathtub Faith
by Willie Carver

Mom gathered us
like we were the godless crowd
like she bore the good news
like the sun was now shining
in light made of new colors,
and we convened, a throng of three,
crowding the public space
between the commode
and washing machine
in that singlewide trailer
as she kneeled before
a beaming white bathtub
transformed by cleaner
and her work.
I got out that old grime
scrubbed through soap scum
and just washed away
them wellwater iron stains.
Don’t it look brand new?
Unwilling to dirty her tub
with children’s words,
we simply stood
in witness.
Now if you young’uns
can just rinse around the rim
with some new hot water
and any old rag
after you wash yourselves
it will always look like this.
The multitude took leave.
The light grew faint.
The sun twisted.
Iron stains crept back.
Grime cleaved unto the ceramic.
Dirt and grot hovered and clung

beneath our bathwater.
Every month, a bathroom sermon.
The same faithful speaking in tongues
this time we would feel the spirit
this time we would keep it clean.
Y’all just gotta do your part
and starting today
and every day after
we’re gonna have a bright, clean tub
and I won’t have to work so hard.
But we never once ran new hot water
never once rinsed around the rim
never once wiped with any old rag.
And the sun set ten thousand times
between the oldest and youngest
on the little white ceramic tub
never helped her wash.
..
I am forty.
I take a bath.
I pull a plug.
I watch water
orbit its drain.
I run new hot water
over the same rag
that made me clean.
I anoint the rim
and rinse the scum
with the rag
just like you
always prayed
we would.

The Lengths We Go To
by Kate Kelleher

Open Heart Surgery
by Ping-Yi Yee

My heart is in seventeen pieces–
I cry it as I swim,
cold water holding the world at bay,
shielding me from the thunder,
calming me as the drops pelt down;
I nurse the pieces in here.

Seventeen unthinking cuts–
I stopped counting after the tenth–
nothing I did mattered;
matters were long decided.
I watch the sky boil as I breathe,
counting the minutes between the thunder.

Ploughing through water long vacated,
I gulp liquid nimbus with chlorine,
spit despair at blue tiles innocent.
The wind spews petals at me
while I ask my heart who broke it,
counting the seconds between the lightning.

This heart hurt itself
opening these veins to the world–
have I time yet? I pull myself
out of the pool into the downpour,
out of the hurt into a mending,
and embrace my heart.

Magic Never Weakened
by Liz Walker

If a tree falls and no one is around to hear it, do they care?¹
by Nicelle Davis

I’ve run to the bathroom between each bell. Cried in every stall.
There’s less graffiti in the teachers’ lounge, but still walls have things
to say. Hear someone, and here, and was. Nothing original, especially
heartbreak. Lately, students have been piling toilet paper on the floor
and shitting on it. A TikTok challenge: waste on fire. Smoke fills
the halls. TP drifts like snow. I look at my reflection and say, stop it.

¹Question/Title by Jeremy Ra

Anthropocentrick
by Ners Neonlumberjack

There Are Fifteen Theories of Heaven
by Lupita Eyde-Tucker

But here on Earth,
blue-footed booby couples
dance in Galapagos Islands, where Chinese
fleets gut seas
of fish, food from baby booby beaks.

Naïve birds, some
say dumb, boobies nest on rocks
on Isabella Island—mate for life. All
day, males flute
airy whistles, females kazoo back.

Present a twig, lift
a blue foot, boobies skypoint
bills and tails, and wed without veils. Their outstretched
wings and necks
say yes. How can their mirrored steps be

arbitrary?
They both feed and incubate,
turn a blind eye when one flirts with other mates, but
family
means more. Here, courtship isn't tired like an

old tourist boat
anchored in Tagus Cove. It's
a 24/7 cotillion of blue suede
shoes, preening
boobies dancing as if the world never ends.

Fish Scale
by Amanda Yskamp

A biracial Asian artist and writer, Addie Tsai (any/all) teaches at William & Mary. Addie collaborated with Dominic Walsh Dance Theater on Victor Frankenstein and Camille Claudel, among others. They are the author of Dear Twin and Unwieldy Creatures, which was a Shirley Jackson finalist for Best Novel. She is the features & reviews editor, as well as fiction co-editor, for Anomaly, and the founding editor in chief for just femme & dandy.

Amanda Yskamp is a writer and a collagist. Her artwork has appeared in such magazines as Black Rabbit, Riddled with Arrows, and Stoneboat. She is the poetry editor and frequent cover designer for WordRunner e-chapbooks. She lives on the 10-year flood plain of the Russian River, teaching writing from her online classroom and serving as a librarian at the local elementary school.

Barbara Schwartz is the author of three books of poetry: a chapbook Any Thriving Root (dancing girl press, 2017), the collaborative collection Nothing But Light (Circling Rivers, 2022), and the hybrid play What Survives is the Fire, forthcoming from Alternating Current Press in 2024.

Bill Wolak is a poet, collage artist, and photographer who has just published his eighteenth book of poetry entitled All the Wind’s Unfinished Kisses with Ekstasis Editions. His collages and photographs have appeared as cover art for such magazines as Phoebe, Harbinger Asylum, Baldhip Magazine, and Barfly Poetry Magazine.

Ehsan Ahmed Mehedi is interested in poetry, photography, and design, and he is currently involved in teaching. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Quarter(ly), Barzakh Magazine, Stonecoast Review, Peatsmoke Journal, and elsewhere. In his free time, he enjoys narrating audiobooks for Librivox. His photographs can be found on Instagram @ehsanesque

Erin Schalk is an award-winning poet and visual artist in Southern California. Publications include Writer’s Digest, Petigru Review, Willawaw Journal, Parentheses Journal, and others. Schalk serves on the board of California Writers Club and is the author of (quiet, space), a book that combines her visual art and poetry.

Erika, born and raised a Filipina, is a student at Amherst College. Her impressionist and colorful art using oil and watercolor are featured or will soon be featured in the *82Review, 3Elements Literary Review, and Quibble Lit. She also explores film and phone photography. Say hello at @bodeganierika.

Irina Tall (Novikova) is an artist, graphic artist, illustrator. She graduated from the State Academy of Slavic Cultures with a degree in art and also has a bachelor's degree in design. Her first personal exhibition, "My soul is like a wild hawk" (2002), was held in the museum of Maxim Bagdanovich.

January Gill O'Neil is the author of Glitter Road (2024), Rewilding (2018), Misery Islands (2014), and Underlife (2009), all published by CavanKerry Press. She is an associate professor at Salem State University and currently serves as the 2022-2024 board chair of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP).

Kate Kelleher is a self-taught freelance artist living in Asheville, NC with her dog, Journey. She is multifaceted, working in multiple mediums. Kate has been featured in galleries and publications locally and internationally, from Asheville’s River Arts District to New York City to even Le Louvre in Paris, France.

Lisa Marie Oliver is the author of Birthroot (forthcoming, Glass Lyre Press, 2024.) Her poems have recently appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, River Heron Review, and Parentheses. She lives and writes in Portland, Oregon.

Liz Walker is a freelance writer and artist in Minneapolis, MN. She can also be heard co-hosting the Unsolved Mysteries podcast Perhaps It's You.

Lupita Eyde-Tucker holds an MFA in Poetry from University of Florida, and her poems have recently appeared in Third Coast, Poem-a-Day, The Cortland Review, Ninth Letter, MER, and Anacapa Review. Her English translation of Oriette D'Angelo's poetry collection Homeland of Swarms was published in 2024 by co•im•press. Her website is www.NotEnoughPoetry.com

Maheshwar Sinha is a self-taught artist and author who graduated from Ranchi, Jharkhand, India. Nature and femininity have always been an inspiration. Paintings are shown in the country and across. Artworks are widely published in the country and overseas literary-art journals. Sinha also writes in Hindi and English (short stories, novels, and articles) and has been extensively published.

Mariam Saidan is a Specialist Advocate for Women’s Rights and has worked as a Children’s Rights Advocate, studied Human Rights Law at Nottingham Universality, and studied Creative Writing at Kent University. She was born in London and has lived in Iran, France, and the UK. She wrote her first journal at 8 years old in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war.

Mervyn Seivwright writes to balance social consciousness and poetry craft for humane growth. A Spalding MFA graduate and London-born Jamaican who appears in AGNI, Salamander, and 69 other journals in 11 countries, and a 2021/2023 Pushcart Nominee. His collection Stick, Hook, and a Pile of Yarn (Broken Sleep Books) was released in 2023. www.clippings.me/mervynseivwright

Ners Neonlumberjack was born in a tiny town in central Indiana in 1986. After graduating Herron School of Art and Design with degrees in Painting, Sculpture, and Art History in 2009, the longing for a sense of place and being conscious of the fragile nature of mortality has been a current within the works.

Nicelle Davis is a California poet, collaborator, and performance artist. Her poetry collections include The Walled Wife (Red Hen Press, 2016), In the Circus of You (Rose Metal Press, 2015), Becoming Judas (Red Hen Press, 2013), and Circe (Lowbrow Press, 2011). The Language of Fractions was recently released from Moon Tide Press. Her poetry film collaborations with Cheryl Gross have been shown across the world. She has taught poetry at Youth for Positive Change, an organization that promotes success for youth in secondary schools, MHA, Volunteers of America in their Homeless Youth Center, and with Red Hen’s WITS program. She is the creator of The Poetry Circus and collaborator on the Nevermore Poetry Festival. She currently teaches Middle School.

Ping-Yi writes poetry, travelogues and fiction, and he is in public service. His work has appeared in Litro (Editor’s Pick), London Grip, Dreich, Meniscus, La Piccioletta Barca, among others. Ping Yi is from Singapore and has also lived in Boston and Cambridge, UK.

Susie Oh is a Brooklyn-based illustrator and artist inspired by natural history, folklore, and Korean traditions. She studied illustration at Pratt Institute, animal drawing at the American Museum of Natural History, and urban ecology at the New York Botanical Garden.

Tytti Heikkinen is a Finnish visual artist graduated from Turku Art Academy. She has participated in exhibitions in Finland and Denmark. In the USA, her latest pieces will appear in Lumina Literary Journal, Miracle Monocle, Arkana, Mayday, The Ana, and Memezine. Heikkinen's works combine photographs, painting, and sculpture with the possibilities of Photoshop and other digital tools, such as vector graphic and animation programs.

Willie Carver Jr. is an minoritized youth advocate, Kentucky Teacher of the Year, author of Gay Poems for Red States, a Stonewall, American Library Association, Read Appalachia, and Book Riot award winning collection. He writes poetry and fiction from Appalachia. Willie believes everyone deserves to feel that they matter.