Panini Maker

by Veronica A. Bettencourt

Panini Maker

It idles most days. Once onyx grooves
faded to ash gray, it hangs on.
Sometimes, it sputters as it grills,

as though it knows this could be the last time
its steel ribs cradle sourdough and
cheddar, energy rushing through

its iron veins, melting
all it touches. I remember the friend
who gave it to me all those years ago: boyish

face glowing in sea-salted breeze
as he handed me a flame-bowed box.
Unimaginable that it would outlast him.

I think of his mother making bone broth,
hoping he keeps it down. Watching him
wilt. Counting the hours he has left.

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Poet Veronica A. Bettencourt’s (she/her) poetry was selected by Rena Priest as one of the top 3 entries for the 2025 Crab Creek Review Prize, nominated for Best of the Net 2026, shortlisted for the 2025 Bridport Prize, and long-listed for the 2025 and 2024 Fish Poetry Prize Judged by Billy Collins. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Reed Magazine, Magma, Crab Orchard Review, and Crab Creek Review, among others. She studies with Mark Doty and is an MFA candidate at Pacific University. You can find her on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/vabettencourt.bsky.social and follow her on Instagram @vabettencourt.

Artist Van Lanigh (she/her) is a Russian artist based in the Netherlands. She had a tough childhood with abusive parents and made the first attempt to run from home when she was 7. Escaping from reality to the imaginary world assisted her to deal with anxiety. This developed into a strong spatial visualisation ability which helped her to become the youngest student in a local Art School. At sixteen she left home for the last time to start an artistic career and two years later moved to the Netherlands. Releasing her emotions into work connects realism and abstractionism through the lens of subconsciousness to achieve superconsciousness. Her work deals with continuous search to find peace in chaos. Abstract art is not enough to depict complexity of our world and mind. And beyond that psychological subjective perspective born metarealism. She defines Metarealism as the multi-dimensional perception of reality in the search for the feeling of subconscious happiness, which became the core idea of her work. You can find more of her work on her website: http://vanlanigh.com/ and follow her on Instagram @vanlanigh.