The Yesterday Review

Category: Issue II

  • Ragdoll & I don’t want to freak you out, but you’re loved

    Ragdoll & I don’t want to freak you out, but you’re loved

    Ragdoll

    When I die,

    I hope my soul

    is ragdolled

    by the good Lord

    across the earth

    of every step,

    route, run

    I’ve ever taken

    and I hope

    it writes a word

    I don’t want to freak you out, but you’re loved

    Flipping through the old beige address

    book, your Oakland apartment stared at

    me on the last page for the ‘S’ names.

    The other night all your old friends

    shared how much they miss you, wizard

    staffs in hand. I miss you too.

    We can only speculate where you’re living now,

    I hope you’re not dazing like we think

    you are. I hope you feel a new freedom

    in this unforgiving world ever since the

    beautiful twists of your brain drowned

    in the psychosis we watched happen.

    Laila Freeman is a writer from Southern California who received her MFA from Chapman University. Her poetry has been featured in Samfiftyfour Magazine, OyeDrum Magazine, Dissident Voice, and more. Freeman’s poem, “Genesis,” was among the winners of Vellichor Literary Magazine’s June 2025 poetry contest. Keep up with her latest writing endeavors on LinkedIn and Instagram @lailafreemann.












  • Inventory of the Body After Grief

    Inventory of the Body After Grief


    This is the mouth, filled with smoke, teeth struck on flint, tongue blistered,
    words breaking into sparks that do not catch, kisses tasting of soot and sorrow.

    This is the hand, carved into kindling, splinters blooming red along the lifeline,
    palms trembling as if they remember fire, fingers cracked open like prayer.

    This is the ribcage, bent into a prison, ghosts roosting where breath once lived,
    wings rattling bone-bars, hollow percussion, an empty choir feathering the lungs.

    This is the eye, waiting for fire, seeing only ash, burning inward,
    replaying the blaze that never arrived, light devouring itself in secret.

    This is the skin, parchment brittle, names written deep into scar and silence,
    pores exhaling dust like smoke, every scar an elegy curling shut.

    This is the spine, a question bent, vertebrae cracked like dry branches,
    each one whispering why into the marrow, each one bowing lower under silence.

    This is the heart, a matchbook struck, sulfur worn down to wound,
    every spark dissolving before flame, every beat a friction that bruises itself.

    This is the blood, blackened river, dragging its debris through narrow veins,
    a drowned hymn humming in the marrow, a tide that refuses to rise again.

    This is the lung, chimney of soot, exhalations lined with ash and ruin,
    smoke curling back to the throat, breath itself returning to fire.

    This is the body, brittle and waiting, stacked like wood against the dark,
    its shadow already smoldering, watching, always waiting for the match.


    Betty Stanton (she/her) is a Pushcart nominated writer who lives and works in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals and collections and has been included in various anthologies. She received her MFA from The University of Texas – El Paso and holds a doctorate in Educational Leadership.  She is currently on the editorial board of Ivo Review. @fadingbetty.bsky.social








  • dead dad, still dead

    dead dad, still dead


    You died like a rumor—
    too quiet to stop anything.
    Left me holding your half-built faith in both hands
    like it was mine to finish. You gave up first—
    couldn’t stand one more second watching us fuck it all up.

    What a small, cruel thing we did to you—
    turning your patience into a weapon,
    letting you rot inside your own decency.

    Did you pray?
    Did you pray to a god
    only for someone else to do the staying for you?

    Inside your silence,
    a second silence.
    Inside that, me.

    Let the world choke on its pious cowardice.
    I’m not noble. I’m not forgiving.
    And you’re not here to hear it.


    Shae is a queer, autistic goblin fascinated by speculative futures, the grotesque—why we flinch, what we cast out, and what it reveals about us. Interested in the intersection of accessibility, disability justice, and design, they are always circling back to one question— What does it mean to be held?







  • legally structured peasant 

    legally structured peasant 


    revolution in the air

    a courtroom sighs

    one too many times

    & the earth bemoans

    what is rightfully

    Hers.

    epilogue:

    heaven

    silent

    is not

    open

    for business

    today.


    david woodward aka un-known lives just south of Montreal with his wife and son. Some of his most recent work can be found in the engine(idling (poem nominated for Best of the Net), North Dakota Quarterly, Sunday Mornings at the River (“f**k the patriarchy” series), The Field Guide Poetry Magazine (Featured Poet), Sea to Sky Review, Wilderness House Review, and upcoming in The Universe Poetry Journal in the U.K.




  • Air 

    Air 

     (Thanks to Beth Muccio)

    Summer scent on the breeze & pushcart pretzels I think of,

    subway heat beneath NY snow or the damp salt of Cape

    blankets when the leaves outside seem to drip

    green upon the curling calendars that time in our fingers

    flip the photo blossoms of while our breath is a stamp,

    our flesh, just packages, the tape, the strings,

    the pungent, the brown, unwrapping any landscape’s

    familial face as a phoning friend, an in-transit lover

    between the pages of some scrapbook where fragrances wait

    to press upon, to seize.


     Resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, https://thestephenmeadchromamuseum.weebly.com/ ,Stephen Mead is a retiree whom, throughout all his pretty non-glamorous jobs still found time for writing poetry/essays and creating art.  Occasionally he even got paid of this. Currently he is trying to sell his 40-year backlog of unsold art before he pops his cogs, Art Collection from Stephen Mead



  • Yearning 

    Yearning 

     after Dylan Baker and Juna Barnes

                      this beautiful disease

                makes addicts who don’t care

                                                the cage ceiling is painted

                                                                                                     like the sky 

              drawn by the lone porch light 

                                                                            I feel alive in reminiscence 

                                                                                          the creaking loveseat rocking 

             the bonfire by the river

                                                                                               a yearning touch

                                                                         yearning   yearning not for me exactly

         I merely occupy a space and time

                                                                                                                       yearning to quell 

              the icy fire in her body        

                                       by pushing it into another fire

    yearning

                                                              to soothe the northern bird

                                                                                   that feathers a long cold wind


    Bobby Steve Baker is a Canadian/American writer/photographer/neuro-ophthalmologist living in Ontario and Orlando. He has recently published in Ink Nest, Fieldstone Review, The Soliloquist, Litmosphere, and Charlotte Lit. He has three books of poetry the latest book of poetry and photography the latest is This Crazy Urge to Live by Linnett’s Wings Press. 


  • Matryoshka

    Matryoshka

    for her

    to fit

    we all

    have to

    make room enough in the tiny

    wooden

    womb

    Julietta Bekker (she/they) is a writer, educator and illustrator who lives with her husband and child in Portland, Oregon. Her poetry has been published by Pile Press, Bitter Melon Review, 7th-Circle Pyrite, Seedlings and Querencia Press, and is forthcoming from The Dread Literary, Flat Ink Magazine, Gather, and Oyster River Pages. Her work incorporates elements of the natural world to explore political and societal themes through the lens of a queer parent. 


  • Oh Lonely Rock & Faces in the Dark

    Oh Lonely Rock & Faces in the Dark

    Oh Lonely Rock

    Cold water flutters in the mountain stream beneath the unearthly clarity of a starburst sky. Invisible frogs chirp like happy birds to the pure naked rock wall across the river. The noble passion between a perfect moment and eternity. Doors, windows, words, silent prayer, nor deep meditation could open wide enough to let us in, or out. For the first time I think I understand. A jealous God.

                         a leaf turning slowly past the pilgrim’s deep bow

    Faces in the Dark

    Wink at the ink and the ink winks backs. It is a strange relationship I have with the words I write. They come from different places: the words of others, the mysteries of the muse, the vast architecture of language, where holy music plays. They come to me as gifts. They are mine, though not exactly me. They keep a part of me growing older, still in the limbo of time, where life becomes stories. To fashion to remember what never might have been. Sunlight failing against a wall. What is left in these fragile monuments, these chapels where I venerate my other selves? Chapels built on the ruins of chapels. Ten thousand prayers for the dead, chanting words I need to know.

                                                                 night’s song

                                                                 scribbled in stars

                                                                 gravity’s nebula

     Robert Witmer has resided in Japan for the past 46 years. Now an emeritus professor, he has taught courses in poetry and short fiction not only at his home university in Tokyo but also in India. His poems have appeared in many print and online journals, including Lily Poetry Review, The Mean Street Rag, Bacopa Literary Review, New Verse News, Parody, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Bewildering Stories, The Opiate, and Moonday Mag.  He has also published two collections of poetry, Finding a Way (2016) and Serendipity (2023). A third book, Sunrise in a Rabbit Hole, will be published in 2025.

  • A Sister Thing

    A Sister Thing

    “Grieving is something you’re still doing,
    and something you don’t need a crow for.”
    ‘Grief Is the Thing with Feathers’ Max Porter

    She disappeared without even a trace left. Her books on the shelves, her diary on the desk, her undone bed – it all stayed the same. That’s how I remember it anyway. The next thing that I recall – she is again. The lights are flashing, techno music is banging on my eardrums and there’s a barricade of topless bodies between us but in the neon lights I see her. Her face looks like mine – it’s been almost sixteen years and her face looks like mine. 

    The night she disappeared wasn’t a nightmare one would expect it to be. Our parents were annoyed that she was late but too busy to bother. Then hours passed and she didn’t show up – and then a day – actual terror followed after that. The police, the investigators, relatives, friends, neighbors, the school. Police turned the whole house upside down; they confiscated her belongings – but her diaries I had hidden. I read those diaries years after and nothing in particular stood out to me. Don’t know what big reveal I was anticipating but those pages were no different from what I wrote when I was ten years old or so. The boys, the school, poorly described fears and naïve dreams. I’ve read it all through countless times and what hurt the most were the unused pages. And then, I started writing on them too – it was the only way to talk to her that I could come up with. 

    Hi.

    Hi, it’s me again.

    It was delusional – I knew – I know – that. 

    Hello, little [smeared with pen ink].

    You just disappeared. Why? I hate you for it, you know? I really, really, despise you for it. It wasn’t like you never were – because you were and you left a you-shaped hole in our lives. There is no excuse for a thing like that. 

    There was a rescue operation in the town. Volunteers searched through the woods, looking under every bush. Still, she was nowhere to be found. I remember the time, vaguely, more as an alien feeling than as an actual memory, when my sister’s portrait was hanging on every pillar and I couldn’t leave the house without seeing her face. And staying inside I kept hearing her name over and over and over again. The record got stuck. There was nowhere to run – she was there. And at the same time, she wasn’t anywhere at all. Hard to explain. It was the time I didn’t really exist. It was the closest I’ve ever been to my sister. 

    When I turned twenty one it dawned on me that I’ve spent more years of my life without her in it than I spent with her. And that hurt.

    I hope you never read this.

    I got my eyebrow pierced on my birthday that year despite our parent’s wishes. And a reckless irresponsible teenager I was, of course I didn’t bother enough to care for it, so naturally the wound festered. It stinged but I was also too stubborn and dissociated from my very body that I didn’t remove it. The ugly thing stayed on my face for a while. 

    Can’t stop thinking about how if you never went, they would never be against my piercing. They’ve changed after you’ve left. They became less fun. They became concerned. I get it, I really do – still.

    A few months after the disappearance, I found myself forgetting her face, bit by bit. The fear of not remembering my sister at all was insurmountable so I put a picture of her in the diary. Soon it became the only picture I recall her by. The funny part – it was the same image I saw on every pillar. The same one is on her gravestone now. She is smiling there, a kid in love with life, however, the longer you look, the uncannier the picture gets – her smile a little too wide to be real, the cruel spark in her eyes. Like she never existed at all. The most eerie thing for me when I really think about it is that to this day, I only remember her picture but they are not real her. It’s the photo – a graveyard of artistry. She is gone. I do not know her. 

    Rough edges of those days she left got smoother with the years passing. Now as I sometimes think back to them, I am not quite sure if she mattered that much to me, ever. The event of her dissolving was one of the determining parts of my life and of the life of my family. But as a person – I don’t think she really mattered to me. 

    That sounded cruel. I didn’t mean it to be. What I meant was that she is a sister, a photo, a diary. Those things defined me. But did she matter to me as a person? Being completely honest, I do not think that even my – our – parents can sincerely answer that question at this point. 

    [a page torn out]

    I feel your ghost over me at all times and I didn’t even know you. You were not old enough to be known properly. 

    My parents were in agonizing sharp pain and I was not allowed to feel it. That chronic dull pain that they bury inside themselves I am not allowed to feel either, because I didn’t quite live through those hideous days like our parents did. I can hardly recall that time, it’s just the shapes, and alien stories told to me afterwards. Then the house went silent and maybe, just maybe I was allowed to feel that it was better when there were cops and neighbors, when people were suspicious or pitying or both at the same time.

    [a page torn out] 

    [a page torn out]

    [a page torn out]

    I’m losing my mind I guess but that was you. I know it was you.

    She disappeared without a trace left. I’m pretty sure that it’s what happened at least and as coward-ish as it is I don’t wish to know more. 

    Darling, do it for you and for your sister. She would be very proud of you, our dad said. There is always this shadow over me. I know, our parents have always meant it as a support but it doesn’t always feel like it – more like a haunting. Our parents really wanted me to be happy – but at the same time, they wanted both of their daughters. Consequently, I had to become worth the two and it is as understandable as it is injurious. 

    Why did I not try to find her myself as I became older? It probably wouldn’t lead anywhere but that would be natural for me to at least try. A little detective girl. I do not know. There are some things that you do and you don’t do that you can’t fully explain. There are logical explanations, sure, but those decisions work on some subclinical level that one cannot fully understand oneself. I never attempted to understand, stubborn in my ignorance. Our parents gave up searching for her. She was never completely dead for us – it did never feel that way. As if she would ever come back. We all understood she would probably not. Sometimes hope is a knife piercing.

    Not dead and not alive – my sister got stuck in this eternal soulless purgatory. At some point in my childhood, I stopped answering yes to the question if I had siblings. 

    because you ain’t here.

    They never renovated my sister’s room but locked it – I remember the day. The act provided an illusion of us being ready to move on whereas in fact it was more of an act of cutting a tongue out. Or piercing it right through, nailing it to that door. There was a nightmare that I had frequently at the time – that she wakes up in that room, and it is the same as she never left, and she is the same as she was, she does not know what happened and how much time passed, she wants to leave but the door is shut. Despite fear I once stole the key and opened the door. No one was there. 

    You were not there.  

    The first time I brought my at-that-time boyfriend to meet my parents, I showed him around the house. What’s that room, he asked, pointing at the old wooden door. Oh. That is my sister’s room, I said. I almost forgot myself that it was there. You never told me you had a sister. He expected me to have an answer to that, but I didn’t find one. It was embarrassing. He asked about her afterwards, a few times. I told him that I didn’t want to talk about it. I dumped that urge emerged. 

    I am an adult. I don’t need to talk to you anymore.

    When I left for college, I didn’t bring the diaries with me, however, regretted it afterwards. It was empty without them – the jigsaw piece missing. I didn’t necessarily need to write in them or reread those pages but just the presence of them felt home, that shadow I couldn’t sleep without, that comforting stinging pain in my eyebrow. So, when I returned for holidays, I did grab those fat books from the shelves. I wrote rarely to save the pages. There are still a few left. There is still the same eerie picture of her smiley face inside. 

    You are not a real human person.

    [smeared with pen ink]

    Maybe I shouldn’t have drunk as much as I did that night. I vaguely recall vomiting in the dirty club toilet while a lady with awful mascara smears under her eyes and a stinky cigarette between her fingers was holding my hair. I don’t know her name, wouldn’t even recognize her face. I only remember two things from that night – my adult sister’s face and the streaks on the tile under my knees. They were dark yellow and brown. My hair caught on the eyebrow earring. My sister, it’s like a piercing – you stop noticing after some time. You even forget that it is there, even though your flesh was pierced, ripped apart and healed wrong. But as I touched what used to be an open wound it still stinged and smelled wrong. 

    I was drunk. It wasn’t you. It couldn’t be you.

    She saw me though – you did. We shared a long-lasting glance of recognition. Something confused and maybe a little cruel sparkled in her eyes, like she was about to run to me and simultaneously from me. Like she was mirroring my actions. And then someone hit me on the back of my head – don’t stand still on the dance floor, that’s an unspoken rule – and I lost her again. Then I could see her sparkling top, but not her face. I tried to follow it frantically, panicking, but eventually got lost in the crowd and found myself only as I was leaning on the wall by the restroom’s door. The nausea got overwhelming. Pulsing lights, pulsing head. If she was real, why wouldn’t she find us? What could have possibly happened throughout those sixteen years? A full life could have happened. But she recognized me – that’s how I saw it and that is how I am going to remember it. 

    After that I found her journal again – it was hidden on the shelf and covered in dust. I started writing. 

    I saw you today. I didn’t follow you – and I hate myself for it. I didn’t even try to do so. You were pretty – and in that one picture of yours too. Yeah. I could follow you – but I didn’t. Maybe I’ll imagine that I did later and reshape my memory – it always works with me. If I don’t even remember your face, if even your name feels alien, if you are not real, what else is there for me to do other than imagining you or tearing you out of my life? I could have shouted your name. That way I would know for sure – but I couldn’t say your name out loud. I barely remembered your name at that time. I barely recall it now. Where were you? Do you even remember your name yourself? Do you have a life? Did it hurt more for you than it did for me? 

    Were you at all?

    [a page torn out]

    [a page torn out]

    You are a sister-thing in my mind. Not quite a full-on sister.

    That is only how I remember it anyway.

    Vera Podell is a Russian-born writer and photo artist. She writes in three languages which are English, Russian and German. Vera tends to experiment a lot with her writing style, primarily focusing on the theme of memory and how it forms our identity. You can find her on Instagram as @verapodell.