Mike Maggio

The Lemon Sky

The sound of my mom’s
sandals as they softly
click across the floor
on her way to fetch flour

to bake a lemony cake, 
and the sharpness of echoing time,
remembering her vitality.

A welcome treat where ingredients
went in haphazardly, no rhyme
nor reason at all

A smatter of salt she’d call out
singsong in her pantry
one pat of butter, an extra is better

I see this through my sorrow 
as memories creep in
for mother is no longer here

a revolving carousel of odds, 
bone pain, hospital stays,
diligence, cancer,

hopes that came and went
and with it our stolen future 

reinforced love in that eternity the echo
It doesn’t matter how much you…..

vanilla extract for flavor she emphasized
A dab of baking powder
now all was ready for the blender

childhood is restless
my childhood was in her heart,

looking out from her wheelchair 
at the San Jose skyline
bathed in sunrise hues
 
in silence, blessing me,
her face anticipating closure

leaving me behind

Duty falls to love, let me stand 
behind your chair and clasp 
your rounded shoulders again

Three egg whites folded in gently
a finishing touch to act

Necessity passes to humility
let me check your hands 
once more for fading black and blue

She’d chitter-chatter
while explaining,
lemon zest for icing

Her heart was tender
and purer than white sugar

Let me fold the blanket 
I laid across your knees 
with comfy slippers 
I settled on your feet

her sandals clicking
across the kitchen floor…

and place the memory 
of that bright lemon sky 
on a shelf of purity

Copyright 2025 by Liz Fortini

Bio:

Liz Fortini dabbles in writing poetry, and is involved in many activities. She lives in Northern California with her husband Ron, and in her leisure time likes to take walks.

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30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

Not Cancer

She was not felled
By the same scourge
As her husband
Gone 37 years

She endured being
An orphan of divorce
A handsy uncle then
Different high schools

She married once
A man with three kids
A vasectomy to reverse
Birthed him two more

She couldn’t tolerate
Her neighbor’s intrusions
On her children and those
Attempts to take her home

She did trip over
A bicycle in the garage
Leaned against a pool table
A bad leg ever since

She believed her
Homosexual daughter
Was going to Hell until
She became her caregiver 

She developed diabetes
From God knows where
Prepackaged American
Microwaved food

She also inherited
Her mother’s weak heart
Coupled with dementia
A final disease combo

She ended in a hospital
At 8:30 on a sunny morn
With prearranged orders
Do not resuscitate

She never trusted
Her eldest and only son
Whose interracial marriages
Wrote him out of the will

Copyright 2025 Don Kingfisher Campbell

Bio:

Don Kingfisher Campbell, MFA Antioch University L.A., taught at USC and Occidental College Upward Bound, board member California Poets In The Schools, publisher Four Feathers Press, host of the Saturday Afternoon Poetry reading and workshop series in Pasadena, California. For awards, features, and publication credits, please go to: http://dkc1031.blogspot.com

Donation Appeal:
To help victims of cancer and to help foster continuing research into this deadly disease, please consider donating to either The American Cancer Society or The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Thank you.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

As Far As I Can Be From It

Jib sheet clinking against the mast
In the hot sun and cool breeze,
We climb small waves 
Wondering what wonders await us—
Flying fish, 
Dolphins or whales 
Frolicking in the sea.
Aquamarine waters 
Splash against the white of our hull.
A young spouse steering,
My crew, My lover 
Out in the Pacific.
Clouds and storms far away,
No reason not to let the boat steer its way.

Later hours spent next to each other at the tiller, 
Feeling the width of the horizon,
The depth of the sea,
The height of the sky,
Till the sun's last glow,
Leaves us with the twinkling stars
Bright as our iridescent wake. 
The sails bring all these dimensions and forces 
Together,
As we 
Cross the universe,
One wave at a time.

Copyright 2025 Dennis Price

Bio:

Dennis Price
Lives in a sloppy house,
With his sloppy wife,
And two sloppy cats,
Who all sleep in a sloppy bed.
And eat sloppy joes for breakfast. 

He’s making a sloppy living as a handyman.
He can be found at his sloppy desk--
Surrounded by sloppy pictures 
Of his two sloppy adult kids--
Drawing with a sloppy sharpie,
Like the President of the sloppy United States.

When not playing sloppy pickleball,
In quiet sloppy moments
He writes sloppy poetry.

Donation Appeal:
To help victims of cancer and to help foster continuing research into this deadly disease, please consider donating to either The American Cancer Society or The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

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30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

To preserve formatting, this poem has been saved as a PDF. Please click on the link below to access it.

After His Wife’s Death

Bio:

Marion D Cohen has two new books, “A Lady of 80” (Alien Buddha Press) and “Reasons and Remedies for Insomnia” (dancing girl press). Her books total 36, with “Statements and Theories” forthcoming from Adaptive Press. She has taught a course she developed, “Math in Literature”, as well as “Societal Issues on the College Campus”, at Arcadia U and Drexel U’s Pennoni Honors College.

Donation Appeal:
To help victims of cancer and to help foster continuing research into this deadly disease, please consider donating to either The American Cancer Society or The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Thank you.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

Let’s Not Talk About Cancer
In memory of Gena Glicklich – 1942-1988

Rather let’s defy 
diminishment
embody the one-breasted 
warrior woman     as fierce
as the roaring inside her 

Let’s meet at the threshold      
of Hell’s Gate   
soothe one another’s 
battle-scarred bodies 
in steaming sulfurous mud

We’ll travel light   free of
the should haves and what ifs 
untethered 
as we ride out   expansive 
on the first and last 
silver-ferned breath

Copyright 2025 Emily Ferrara

Bio:

Emily Ferrara is the author of The Alchemy of Grief, winner of the Bordighera Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Borderlands, the Lowell Review, San Pedro River Review, POESY Magazine, Worcester Review, MiPOesias, and Sinister Wisdom.

Donation Appeal:
To help victims of cancer and to help foster continuing research into this deadly disease, please consider donating to either The American Cancer Society or The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Thank you.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

Das Quintett

The tiny musicians are poised
Ready to play the piece
Each has spent much of 
Their days, months, lives, practicing 
Rehearsing, a homage 

They are equally spaced, all five,
on a sturdy,  wooden,  plank,
teetering on the tip of a jagged rock
Jutting, out of the sea
The sky is a grey

The bow of a small sail boat
Can be seen to approach, 
carrying the cancer
You would not suspect it
While the music plays 

Each note carefully crafted
Like a scalpel 
cuts through the cool sea breeze 
To the wooden boat
Carrying the cancer

Copyright 2025 Suzann Heron

Bio:
Suzann Heron is a poet, multi media artist, and psychotherapist living in
Shutesbury Massachusetts


Donation Appeal:
To help victims of cancer and to help foster continuing research into this deadly disease, please consider donating to either The American Cancer Society or The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

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30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

My Good Side

I was seven when, sledding, I hit the car face-first.
Nine stitches in my right brow. 
I rolled my eyes up, watched the doctor sew.
My mother begged him: Be careful with her face!
Someday she has to find a man!

Fifty when I fell in the street 
on the way to a reading on the rich side of town.
Blood on my face, my white blouse, 
I hoped I looked a little renegade, a punk poet, 
and not like the low-class klutz I was, and am.

Sixty when I tripped on the living room rug, 
dropped the plate of hummus, heard the skitter of chips 
and the smack of my skull on hardwood, 
lay there, stunned, as my husband, unaware, bless him,
hurried to clean up the spilled food.

This is where the little carcinoma was, that same plane
on that same plain face. The right side, above my eye.
I’ve got so much character there you wouldn’t notice it. 

Like my other escapades, it was less about pain, 
more about fear. They got it all, they said. I hope.
As she prepped my face, the assistant chirped: 
If you have to have cancer, this is the one to get.

Copyright 2025 by Pamela Murray Winters

Bio:

Pamela Murray Winters lives and writes in Maryland. She encourages everyone to wear sunscreen and a hat.

Donation Appeal:
To help victims of cancer and to help foster continuing research into this deadly disease, please consider donating to either The American Cancer Society or The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

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30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

The Philosophy of Cancer in Six Quatrains: For Betty Lou Baker

                              1  
In biology class she had to draw
the parts of the cell in pen and ink:
Protoplasm, chromosomes, nucleus.
She labeled the parts with red ink.
 
                              2  
Somewhere inside, even then, waiting,
her own cells wanted to be feral, devouring,
wanted to send wrong messages
and explode madness from cell to cell,

                              3  
She felt the lump in her breast,
like the growing lump in her womb
when she was pregnant. Each birthed
from her the bloody tissue of her sex.
 
                              4  
When she looked at the sutures
in her chest, she wondered how
she could be unzipped so easily,
her breast removed like a worn jacket.
 
                              5  
She tries to imagine cells gone wild,
the tumors regrowing, like drawings
of cells in ink. She stands, strong, normal, 
except for the madness of her body.
 
                              6  
It is an odd way to die, she knows   
her body building itself insanely,
misreading its own diagrams,
turning itself into a lump that kills.

Copyright 2025 David Anthony Sam

Bio:

David Anthony Sam lives in Locust Grove, Virginia with his wife, Linda. His poetry has appeared in over 100 journals. Eight of his poetry collections are in print including Writing the Significant Soil (2023), winner of the Homebound Poetry Prize. A ninth, Geographies of the Dead, was published in 2024.

Donation Appeal:
To help victims of cancer and to help foster continuing research into this deadly disease, please consider donating to either The American Cancer Society or The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Thank you.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

To preserve formatting, this poem has been saved as  a PDF. Please click on the link below to access it. 

You’re Still Hung Up On Something That Happened in 1950?

Bio:
Marian Kaplun Shapiro, 85, is a practicing psychologist in Lexington, Mass.  Upbringing, her latest book of poems, was published by Plain View Press in 2023.

Donation Appeal:
To help victims of cancer and to help foster continuing research into this deadly disease, please consider donating to either The American Cancer Society or The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Thank you.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review