Home Poetry

STORIES

by Elizabeth Morse


They make up stories for each other like children,
drinking tea and leaning together over the couch.
Their laughter crackles through the rooms.
Heat fills the midnight windows while each tale
bounces and glows. Even the electrical storm
beginning outside cannot shock them apart.


ESCAPE


It’s hazardous outside.
I’m double locking the door to protect you.
I’m your mother and I want to keep you safe.
You’re escaping? They’ll eat you alive.
Don’t you know they all have knives, guns?
They stick up banks and pawn shops.
Supermarkets, too. Watch yourself.

Why are you running away?
You never had much common sense,
never return books on time to the library
Do you think you can just leave?
Your father and I are so concerned.
You can’t just live on the sidewalk
or under the trees in the park.
You’d be reckless enough
to eat a pigeon.


IN THE DEPTHS

In memory of Zach Harris


My cousin died in the coal mines on his twenty-seventh birthday
in the highlands of West Virginia. He dreamed of the Milky Way,
that walkway of stars. Biscuits and gravy for breakfast,
then work. That afternoon, he fell into a lost mine,
cavern of nightmares, stepping on the paper-thin edge of sky.
Accident in the coal fields, the news reports announced.

Every song about the coal mines is a dark ballad,
a room without windows. The mines take and don’t return.
So many think they are secure from the depths of earth.
My cousin died in the coal mines on his twenty-seventh birthday,
expecting his days to be the same, counting on it in ways he couldn’t,
dreams reaching upward, away from the deep that killed him.

 

BIO

Elizabeth Morse values the quirky, the darkly humorous. She is hard-wired to be a night-owl and writes exclusively after 9 PM. Her work has been published in literary magazines such as Ginosko, Survision, and Kestrel. Her poetry chapbook, “The Color Between the Hours,” is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in late 2023. She was a finalist in the Blue Light Press full-length poetry collection contest and has her MFA from Brooklyn College. A job in information technology supports her writing.









Old Man Winter

By Annette Gagliardi


Snow whiffs from branches—
no thaw in sight

the white slick of January
cold enough for unseen flames

heats the blistering cold,         leaping
across space like Jack Frost

etching my window
silent scratches, making light years

string time — broken chrysalis
and webbed wonder

a caravan of long-lashed camels searching
for warmth like finding water

in the blazing desert
thread the days with a meager

wisp of transformation
smell the sweat of winter’s chill

sizeable piles of relaxing snow
let old man winter die a dawdling death



Partial Eclipse


Grey-brown creeps
                        over the horizon
on its way to sundown,
                        shading the bridges,

ridges of trees and hills and buildings
            as it gathers the troops of night

for a full-scale
            assault on the lightness
of midday, offering another brand
            of illumination

that supplies shadow by the bucketful,
            adds nuances to all the silhouettes

not seen in the brightness
                        and chases
the clarity of day away.
            “I surrender.” I say

in my most
            mysterious voice.
Like a lover, shadows oblige my request
            embracing daylight     and me with it.

We are the penumbra
            cocooned
 in the gathered gloaming.




BIO



Annette Gagliardi looks at the dimly, tinted shadows and morphed illusions that becomes life and finds illumination. She sees what others do not and grasps the fruit hiding there, then squeezes all the juice that life has to offer and serves it up as poetry – or jelly, depending on the day. Her work has appeared in many literary journals in Canada, England and the USA. Gagliardi’s first poetry collection, titled: A Short Supply of Viability, and her first historical fiction, titled: Ponderosa Pines: Days of the Deadwood Forest Fire were both published in 2022. Visit her author website at: https://annette-gagliardi.com







The Preterite

by Frederick Pollack


You’ve been called in to construct
a language. You should feel flattered,
perhaps honored, that they chose you
despite your amateurism. What worries you
is theirs: vital texts
are missing from shelves and computer.
Meals are slow and cold.
The girl assigned to help you is eager
when there, but never there. You wonder if
she loathes you. With the instincts imparted
by age and marginality, you wonder
if you were selected simply
to get language and/or you out of the way.
But that’s upsetting; you immerse yourself
in the advantages and disadvantages
of agglutinative, fusional … Zamenhof
was eurocentric; you want to bring in
that Japanese noun for the sound of a pencil
rolling across a table, a Warrumungu expression
for thirst that brought you to tears, once …
What’s worst is they never told you
whether they want something ideal
or pragmatic, mere trade-talk. Given
your nature and the effects
of solitude you tend towards the ideal:
that harmony Leibniz convinced himself
the West would achieve by imitating
Mandarin. Your notebooks fill
with ideograms, vast melded radiating
concepts. All seem based
on reddened eyes, a haunted spotted hand.



Plein Air

Raying along the short blocks
beneath the usual big cloud
(like the belly, I think, of a boar),
the westering light creates
a Wagner-effect that is almost
too much. The rubble-slides
twinkle from glass;
I’ll omit most of that
and the rays, but retain,
inevitably, the upended, somehow
embarrassed vehicles,
the crater ponds.

Some trace in the air affects
my oils, but this adds
an aleatoric kick. And I’m never
quite sure what I’m seeing through
the mask. At Times Square,
all paper posters
are torn (they’ve been done), but
the looming Black Squares
that used to throb with ads lend
a focus, can be made to have
poignance, as if longing for
an image, any image.



Eye of the Denier


The years, high double digit, are
a weight, a block – what can you do
with that? But the days
were many; it’s easy enough
to multiply, and then you have
such a wealth! You could even
obtain a blank set
of calendars, from an environmental
NGO, spread them over
a floor and discover the animals
mysteriously linked to
your months, some gone now.

And from the little empty squares, like a mole
peering out, a bird who nests in earth,
a mouse among rocks or a small or
large cat, the true
protagonist of those days
would emerge – you could peer down at him
making love
and money, successfully striking
foes and poses,
disdainful of your gaze and the flat white world.



The Harbor Cruise


Half a kilometer past
the marina, the boat turns east,
and as it parallels the shore, the lights
that gild the walls of hotels, casinos,
seafront mansions, and those
of looming inland office buildings
go on more or less at once. Overwhelming
tourists aboard with magic:
the calm sea calmer, air cooler with dusk, the boat
turning, the lights – all for them! While older
locals, here to rekindle whatever,
applaud a successful expensive effect.
The captain, alert to his radar, avoids
yachts entering and leaving, heedlessly,
the harbor, a cruise ship’s wake. Young
guests, mostly rich and native,
perceive the lights as a signal for something,
though unsure what it is besides drinking.

And as all crowd the bar and table,
the distinction between those wearing
tuxedos and those in shorts and T-shirts
increasingly galls the old, diverts
the young who notice. Holding
glasses and plates, the groups separate,
tourists distinct in each; but in
the romantic darkness all are merely
shapes, with the lights of the city reaching
for them across the water. Seeing
bits of the young, the nicer old
attempt to forgive their laughter. Seeing
them, the young at most recall
superiors to get around.
Some figures, outfits, and the sea are noted.
One of the old remembers
lighting a cigarette in darkness; thinks,
If I could do that now I would be real.



BIO

Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press. Three collections of shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS, (Prolific Press, 2015), LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), and THE BEAUTIFUL LOSSES (Better Than Starbucks Books, September 2023). Pollack has appeared in Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Magma (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum, Chiron Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, etc. Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire Review, Mudlark, Rat’s Ass Review, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, etc. Website: www.frederickpollack.com





THE GROUND BREEDS TREES

By Lawrence Bridges

The ground breeds trees with an itch for air beneath our armor of atmosphere. The sea’s restless swaying so seldom visits land it thinks land’s a beast, a fish so large its scales are windows where my pocket square reflects, flowers on weapons, born to tame, upholding the best of all tides. The soaring thunderheads of smell eclipse rain, snow pebbles, and crunching road under turning tire. We proposed an opera here and built if for the deaf to know the depth of music, to spike frozen notes into rocky ground, to freshen spring of our next year.



NO ONE BOTHERS ME

No one bothers me. I’m not accountable to anyone. I’m forgotten and happy, not centuries dead but alive, today! I pass unnoticed, driving next to you. I stand on your sidewalk admiring your walnut tree, cataloging the pleasures I never miss while enjoying them. I’m nobody’s somebody, loafing in each day’s summer parts, in a coat with binoculars, on an ocean voyage, with wings. I’m unproductive, never make things, march with bands, hurl morning papers, read in a park, everybody’s nobody.



WHEN I TRIED TO SLEEP

When I tried to sleep, I slept for a year. When I tried indolence, I withered to sticks, anxious that I could never return to rigor, knowing my notion of work made me a loafer. I disappeared, no forehead, hands, stomach, or nose, no seat for chairs, elbows for desks, feet for floors. I just clawed the air in silence around you. I am your breeze, bird at your window, your morning temblor.



THAT BERG OF AIR

That berg of air out the train window flies south with all my cares. It’s crosswind you don’t hear until you’re in the next lane. Relinquishment, then a forgotten verb. Choose one. Remembers. Reminds. Reprieves. Restores. R is for red. Roar past emotions like shredded paper that doesn’t cling. No wake wallowing. Wait a few days and you’ll have forgotten.






BIO

Lawrence Bridges’ poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Tampa Review. He has published three volumes of poetry: Horses on Drums (Red Hen Press, 2006), Flip Days (Red Hen Press, 2009), and Brownwood (Tupelo Press, 2016). You can find him on IG: @larrybridges







a girl shaves her legs for the first time

by Charlotte Suttee


the razor chokes
on spider-leg hair,
roils cold water,
and coughs again,
to erase bit by bit
her body thicket.

her thighs crack
like moth wings
cornered and dry
for the dustpan
(weeping).




Hat Trick


The climbing gym’s closed so we watch
the Chicago Bears draft a defensive back
from Washington. We pick a scab on our chin
clean off. We don’t get sad this time when
the frat boys talk about the girl’s deadlifting
ass and can still enjoy the same sunshine.
What else do we do? We don’t reply to Nana’s
text: “I want you to be in heaven with me.
Please respond.” She would love to see us
come home with one of these hairless men
strutting to the door in greasy gym shorts
who headline their Instagram profiles with
1# God 2# Family 3# Football. She would
clap her hands together and weep, the perv.
We stretch out one leg. We forget to stretch
the other. We watch the Dolphins pick next.
We wonder what to do with Freedom and freedom,
if we can get away without seeing another snow
and ski on banana leaves until the knees give
in then mercury tremors finish us. Papa made lots
of money calculating bullet trajectories and
cut off his gay son. We don’t know the gay son’s
name but we know he rides motorcycles. We love
our grandparents, their bone spurs, cancers, and other
Freedoms. Nana taught us how to glue anything
to anything else and this is our most precious
talent. Papa taught us how to wrestle for our life.
We pull love out for them like hares from a magic
hat. Jeff Goldblum tries to get us to bet on our
favorite sports team in an app. The gym closes
early on Friday because there are better things to
do, like following the trail of frat boys to
their drinking games posted in dirt backyards,
then waking up in time for church on Sunday.




We will always betray ourselves


moving as fast as we do
through embracing arms
we go so fast with a force so loud
we must wonder
if we heard a             snap
we must wonder
if we could have finally been held



Madrigal (as a type of bird)


    i am a teenager and wish
i could be smart enough to draw
     as poorly as them
the ones with a place
     threaded through their fingerbones
i made my hills rounder
     than they come
because childhood is learning
     how not to see.
i only know how to draw the
     birds
with hands pieced together from graves
     it’s so dead this me now
the bird on its head a
     deliberate accident
but creating is throwing
     a piece of broccoli
over family thanksgiving
     into the fat laughing mouths
of people who set house alarms
     like violence.
creation opposes birds on their feet
     but the wings disturb  God
the tears from nana’s eyes





BIO

Charlotte Suttee’s poetry is published in a handful of Colorado magazines and her experimental speculative fiction novel “Weather and Beasts and Growing Things” is available through Lethe Press. She howls, cooks, and explores with her husband in Minas Gerais, Brazil.







Lost Thought

By Duane Anderson


Something finally showed up
after a too long of time,
knocking at the door to my mind,
a thought, patiently waiting
for me to open it up
before disappearing,
lost and forgotten,
like the many before it,
but once again, not quick enough.


WAOFTMM

(WHISKEY ALPHA ZERO FOX TROT MIKE MIKE)


We do not talk any more.
I do not understand his language.
Dots and dashes,
dashes and dots.
I have no antenna
or radio
to receive his messages.
He speaks in Morse code.
He may as well speak
the language of the apes.



BIO

Duane Anderson currently lives in La Vista, NE. He has had poems published in Fine Lines, Cholla Needles, Tipton Poetry Journal, and several other publications. He is the author of ‘On the Corner of Walk and Don’t Walk,’ The Blood Drives: One Pint Down,’ and ‘Conquer the Mountains.’











East of Emmaus

By Michał Zieliński


All flows together, even if so painfully slow.
The baptized & the doves tweet in bursts,
Johnny got the back of his neck Brazilian waxed,
but he ain’t gonna spoil none for Leif & Chris,
& I talk too much, so we’re just being cute & innocent ab it.

Then Josh comes by, like “Hey, wanna see a trick?”
So he makes Jordan run with Bud Light & turns pebbles into chips.
The air went putrid, the poisoned tilapia floating about,
but it was then that me & the Messiah turned friends for life
& I felt a glowing ribbon emerging from my hair whorl.

1 night, Josh tells me to split myself in 2 to go
both beyond the pillars of Hercules & north of Danube.
“What the heck man? What is there for me to do?
I’m too old to be a rapper, too young to be a millennial!”
But before I replied he was already making out with Jude.

When they took him down, I left the town, once sweet like the wine
of quarter-term night, now gross like the pukes the morning after.
So under this onion-cutting sky of steel it’s just me & a homez of mine,
& half of a cig we’ll pass till it gets so short it burns our fingers
& just drops on the stony road. Your story ends here. Ours didn’t.




homeric Oregano

FNAP! it’s summertime,         it’s Oregano time.       purple
flowers,           torches in the daylight,           spades of green,
leaves with peach hair.           i came to talk, perennial
son of the basin.          between us the roaring vacuum of time,

the abyss of white       peering from between letters,
the silence       between nondescript syllables.
NOOOOOOO!            the brightness of the mountain
is the sole common     waypoint. we will never be lovelier

than we are now.         get it offa me! Time! i can’t stand it,
i can accept only not too hot summers           before i’m old again.
YEAH             opposite leaves           follow the burning,
cracking into murmurs            i struggle to transcribe into

straw circles.   faces carry what’s lost.            LE’S GOOO!  Yin —
there is            the heat of Love,         irresistible.                 Yang —
the cold lemonade       gulped from below,     running down
soft stones.      the beverage is a matchmaker, our bumblebee.

eyes locked, we swerve.         though it’s a thing of the past,
gone Soon after constant laws                        like the ice cubes melting,
watering down the ambrosia.              taste the pain! bless
the inflorescence, late but still!          cheer before the Ulp!




Baby Car

                                    One newborn car tried to
                                    carry me into the air in its bout,
                                             for a glimpse at grander perspective,
                                             for a fleeting touch of Death,
                                             for a cliffhanger,
                                             for a moment of uncertainty.

     James is gonna save them.
                                                            I murmured in the dark,
                                                teetering on the twin sharp points
                                                of solitary orchid scissors.
                                                This means they’re frozen until the next episode,
                                                            screaming in the corner,
                                                                                                   but safe.

                                    Cats are born blind & deaf, but into mother’s warmth.
                                    Cars are born complete, but cast alone into cold superposition
          dormant
                                                                                                                                       volant
                                    meant to viciously race each other since infancy.

                                  This driver was mad his brand new ride
                                  got scratched. I tried my best not to yell.
                                                It was a baby car after all.




Frank OHara Eyes on My Wings

I recognized a lamp, started flap after flap,
charcoal trace from the trunk to the nose, a thread of a rod
to the fresco, like the settling ashes — still warm & nameless.
Half-words come thru giggles, a great psalm in this space of interruptions.

I let it drip, the teary sand in some hourglass, even if
time & time again I mourn the years gone where
what’s real history is a mystery & all the truth drowned
the moment a moment is no longer now. Just like this one.

Me? I’m no witness, just a passerby. Don’t you worry, paddle on
to the lake’s apple, where the moon likes to swing doubled,
where the sand regroups & lovers’ sweet words soften
further into the abyss, under the algae powerhouses regime.

Up & down, here I go, no note taken,
just a postcard to be eased between unread pages,
erroneous navigation due to no fault of mine,
a little out-of-character irony to smile at — once by the light.




Hell Parade at Szczeliniec

Backpacks against chests,
sponges of sweat, jammed
between dried seas. A weekend

trip down the walls that
speak but can’t hear. Made
in their shape, for our times,

ever so slowly, down that
throat, where tomfoolery
is mass murder, we tiptoe.




BIO

Michał Zieliński lives in Poland’s Lower Silesia. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Metaworker, Wayward & Upward anthology, The River, and elsewhere.







ON THE WAY HOME FROM THE CANCER SUPPORT GROUP

by Elizabeth Crowell


She tries to forget the discussion of human suffering,
the side effect to tongue or to the heart, which can burn too.
She listens to NPR to remember her stance (liberal) and the world (screwed).

A sudden orchard comes and goes, its steely branches, barb-wired in winter sun. Months back,
the doctors gaped in their white coats
as if they’ve heard the wrong joke. The diagnosis is preposterous.

She tries to think of better times, but what are those?
The children’s tiny coats and boots, a crazy night in Troy, NY?
What do you go back to when you are afraid of dying?

She thinks of all her misplaced conviction,
like how she bothers to correct people who use who instead of whom.
And now, for God’s sake, a flock of wild turkeys make her lurch.

A dozen or so of them, their red and brown paisley, stocky bodies
awkward as suitcases, their branch-thin legs strut
their reaching, stiff-necked gait across the road.

Two dozen eyes glare at her with a so what?
No pity there, just their tweaking bodies,
moving like old comedians in silent movies.



PEONIES AND WINGS


I did not know these were peonies,
these heavy-headed, tight, thick blossoms

layers dozens of pink petals,
blooming right now on the side of the house.

I have seen them painted in a still-life
by Manet, a postcard I thumbtacked to a wall,

two white peonies, lying on a wooden table,
picked, doomed, extraordinarily open.

More than once, I have asked myself,
how can you not recognize the world?

When I was a child, an aunt and I
walked in those same New Hampshire woods.

She bent at nearly every plant and said aloud,
skunk cabbage, cinnamon fern, trillium,

virgin bowercreeper, boneset, bunchberry. She called them
rough-fruited or common, tall, wild, almost extinct.

It was like a dream language, those words
like the shadows of clouds on a moonlit lake.

I dreaded the flash of a fish at the end of a line,
silver-belly glint, fanned fins, a parent’s question

What kind of fish is it? Did I make a deal,
a decision not to know, or did I think

in time I would come to simply know
the way we do with love and loss?

I am leaving sooner than I thought,
Though whoever thinks of leaving

once they have arrived, wet and bodied?
Today I see a dusty-feather bird, a bit of blue color.

It flies, tight-winged, from my black fence to the sky,
then stays on the pitch of the barn.

Its distinct call must be recognizable,
but I don’t recognize it, even in the shadows,

where our senses deepen like small tribes,
waiting to ambush the unknown.





BIO

Elizabeth Crowell grew up in northern New Jersey and has a B.A. from Smith College in English Literature and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing/Poetry from Columbia University. She taught college and high school English for many years. Her work has been published in such journals as Bellevue Literary Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Paterson Literary Review, and others. One of her poems was nominated for a Pushcart Poetry Prize and originally published in the Tipton Review. She lives outside of Boston with her wife and teenage children.







Toads, Viruses, and Climate Change

by Cynthia Pratt


Tell me about tomorrow or the next.
How it reaches into your belly,
reminds us we are going extinct.
I try to caulk over gaps and the
heat, too hot actually. Try to adjust
to sickness or death. Not me yet
but of course it could be.
Those others die without any
visual knowledge of me knowing them.
The heat is oppressive and the weather
dry like a toad’s back.

The wives’ tale about not rubbing it’s back
is still a memory. What else can reach
as far down as sad moments allow?
My hand warts up as a reminder
that I once believed. I smother the lump
with clear fingernail polish, a treatment
handed down from generations,
as if heat, and the unbreathing skin
will choke all viruses, cure that which
rocks out of kilter.



I Almost Sent You This Postcard


Have you seen a sting-ray
skeleton? The bones
fan out like a geisha’s
accoutrement, cooling
her painted skin,
but here, it moves through
film of liquid atmosphere.

The skeleton splays out,
too beautiful to sting,
but that is the deception
of beauty, isn’t it?
The bruise after the
violent, full-lipped kiss.



The Visit


I’m visiting the sister with such bad luck:
bad husband, bad job, kids that were not easy.

Slender and neat, she chatters about San Diego,
her daughter, granddaughter, the granddaughter’s husband,
how large cities are difficult.
Asks questions but the space for answering
grows shorter and shorter.

I’m visiting my sister, the beauty queen whom
photographers begged for a pose for their portfolios,
the sister who convinced me I was privileged to
polish her shoes when I was 10.

The sister who had her younger sister
screen the men at the door, to see
if she was available.

Still, she is lovely, even now,
even when she has given up hennaing her hair,
gone to a softer pale red, or
maybe not, maybe giving up the tremendous
work of it, letting those thick natural curls go
entirely to what they want to be.

I’m visiting and I’m giving her advice
between the breaths that are mistaken for short pauses:
            Try riding the bus to get to know the city;
            see if the library has part-time work.

Me, the kid, who begged to try on her crinoline skirts,
suggesting a plan of action
and thinking of all those boys turned away.



Fall, Falling


If I knew it was the right time,
I would find fall
beckoning, the bark
course against my hand stroke.
I watch time ticking in circles.
I mind the waiting for the coming season.

Knots tick past me. I am a currach,
moored in an inlet, watching.
Write, please write.
Crows fall from the sky.
I know it’s food they are after,
my stomach knots.

Names hang onto sharp, thorned roses.
Even still, the boat, my mind,
drifts up and down with each leave-
taking, the bed between us a crumpled leaf.
I can’t make it right.
From shore, you wave.

I think it’s goodbye.
Roses dry in the vase you gave me,
dry strokes against my hand.
It is too late to face the fall.
I hear the crows caw
from my bed.

I cannot rise.
Under the nightstand a damselfly is dying.





BIO

Cynthia Pratt is one of the founding members of the Olympia Poetry Network’s board which has been in existence for over 30 years. Her poems have appeared in Crab Creek Review, Raven Chronicles, Bellingham Review, Quill & Parchment, Feminist Theology Poetry, The Raven’s Perch and other publications, and in the anthologies, Tattoos on Cedar (2006), Godiva Speaks (2011), two anthologies by the Fusion Collective, Dancing on the Edges (2017) and Garden of the Covid Museum (2021), Hidden in Childhood anthology and the anthology by Washington Humanities and Empty Bowl Press, I Sing the Salmon Home (2023). Her manuscript, Celestial Drift¸ was published in 2017. She is a former Fish and Wildlife biologist having graduated from Humboldt State University in Science and The Evergreen State University in the Master’s of Environmental Studies program. She was a former Lacey Councilmember and the Deputy Mayor of the City of Lacey for the last 12 years, with her term ending in December 2021. She is the first Poet Laureate of Lacey as of 2022.







Favorite

by Wayne-Daniel Berard


I have a feeling that each
of us lives in their favorite
scene the backdrop the
default setting of our lives
Me, I sit at an arched window
my first night in the magic
I look over the moon-pathed
lake (who cares if it’s spotlight
over backyard pool) I stroke
snowy owl beside me who is
actually Albee our cat and I’m
home
your son (but mine too)
and his girlfriend upstairs your
mom (my bestie) watching late
Red Sox from Oracle Park, across
the breezeway your sister and
her husband in barn renovated
against all ill winds
and you
who moves through every picture
every scene opening all the doors
password “Kiss me good night”
I just did
they’re all my house-mates
but tomorrow and tomorrow
and tomorrow you
teach me flight.



until finally


I don’t know where
the manna comes from
I don’t know how
the quail appear
I thought it was
just a story but
here here here
they are every
morning every
day I should
have starved
by now throat
closed like a
cockroach prayer
but the water is
as sweet and
everywhere as
air fresh air
the freshest air
and the eagles
came for frodo
and harry woke
up in the arms
of giant and I,
I shall not want.
Oh Hero of the
Realm! Lumos
yourself like
sunflower at
night prayer,
shema shema
shema until
ears unpop
depressurize,
wrestle yourself
through the dark
gate that opens
enfin on today’s
dunkies with cream
that you sip beside
the tree-lily
yellow pink and real
as lore
repeating itself until
we get it right



BIO

Wayne-Daniel Berard, PhD, is an educator, poet, writer, shaman, sage, and Gryffindor. An adoptee and former Franciscan seminarian, his adoption search led to the discovery and embrace of his Jewishness. Wayne-Daniel is a Peace Chaplain, an interfaith clergy person and former college chaplain. He is the author of 12 published books, including Little Ghosts on Castle Floors, Poems Informed by the Potterverse (Kelsay Books 2022). He lives in Mansfield, MA, with his wife, The Lovely Christine and their cats, Harry and Albus.





SONG

by J. R. Solonche


Old English sang, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch zang and German Sang.
Male hedonistic pleasures are summarized as wine, women, and song.

Speaking of pleasures, in my time I’ve heard many a siren song.
I’ll write a song and dance ghazal next, but in this one I have to say “a dance and a song.”

I can’t think of anything I’ve bought or sold for a song.
Rolling Stone Magazine ranks Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” the #1 song.

Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” is ranked the #1 pop song.
W.C. Handy’s “Memphis Blue” is the greatest blues song.

“Hoochie Coochie Man” by Muddy Waters is the greatest blues song.
B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone” is the greatest blues song.

“I’d Rather Go Blind” by Etta James is the greatest blues song.
Howlin Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightning” is the greatest blues song.

         So, Solonche, you do know that you need one more song?
         Yes, I do know I need one more song, so here is my swan song.



DANCE


Middle English: from Old French dancer (verb), dance (noun), of unknown origin.
Terpsichore (the most beautiful of the nine) is the Greek muse of dance.

As I promised, now I can quote the correct idiom of a song and a dance.
I never went to my high school prom because I didn’t know how to dance.

One of the biggest hit songs (The Bee Gees) is “You Should Be Dancing.”
The debut (2008) single (Grammy nominated 2009) by Lady Gaga was “Just Dance.”

The samba of Brazil is the world’s most popular folk dance.
Baladi is a form of Egyptian belly dance, a truly hypnotic dance.

The hora is a popular Israeli circle dance.
Popular in South Africa is the gumboot (they wear Wellingtons) dance.

Clogging is the official Kentucky and North Carolina state dance.
Minnesota is the only state that has no official state dance.

          So, Solonche, will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance?
          Oh, someday, one day, maybe Sunday, I may, I mean, I might join the dance.



HOLY


Old English hālig, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch and German heilig.
William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well: “Love is holy.”

In the first season (1966) of Batman, Robin said 356 phrases with holy.
The room in a synagogue where only the rabbi may enter is the holy of holies.

The exclamation used by Captain Marvel to mean Wow! is Holy Moley!
The trademark expression of Yankee broadcaster Phil Rizzuto (1917-2007) was Holy cow!

In the New Testament, “set apart” is the definition of holiness.
In the Old Testament, connection to God’s perfection was holiness.

Sapta (seven) Puri (town) are the seven cities in India considered the most holy.
In Buddhism, Bodh Gaya (where Buddha attained Enlightenment) is the holiest.

In the Shinto religion of Japan, The Grand Shrine of Ise is considered the most holy.
Of the sacred sites for Muslims, The Ka’ba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, is the most holy.

          So, Solonche, you atheist, what, if anything, do you consider holy?
          Like the other atheist above said, “Love is holy.”





BIO

Professor Emeritus of English at SUNY Orange, J.R. Solonche has published poetry in more than 500 magazines, journals, and anthologies since the early 70s, including The New Criterion, The New York Times, The Threepenny Review, The American Scholar, The Progressive, Poetry Northwest, Salmagundi, The Literary Review, The Sun, The American Journal of Poetry, Poet Lore, Poetry East, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and Free Verse. His poems have been read on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac and other radio shows and have been translated into Portuguese, Italian, German, and Korean. He is the author of Beautiful Day (Deerbrook Editions), Won’t Be Long (Deerbrook Editions), Heart’s Content (Five Oaks Press), Invisible (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize by Five Oaks Press), The Black Birch (Kelsay Books), I, Emily Dickinson & Other Found Poems (Deerbrook Editions), In Short Order (Kelsay Books), Tomorrow, Today and Yesterday (Deerbrook Editions), True Enough  (Dos Madres Press), The Jewish Dancing Master (Ravenna Press), If You Should See Me Walking on the Road (Kelsay Books), In a Public Place (Dos Madres Press), To Say the Least (Dos Madres Press), The Time of Your Life (Adelaide Books), The Porch Poems (Deerbrook Editions , 2020 Shelf Unbound Notable Indie Book), Enjoy Yourself  (Serving House Books), Piano Music (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize by Serving House Books), For All I Know (Kelsay Books), A Guide of the Perplexed (Serving House Books), The Moon Is the Capital of the World (Word Tech Communications), Years Later (Adelaide Books), The Dust (Dos Madres Press), Selected Poems 2002-2021 (nominated for the National Book Award by Serving House Books), Life-Size (Kelsay Books), The Five Notebooks of Zhao Li (Adelaide Books), Coming To (Word Tech Communications/David Robert Books), The Lost Notebook of Zhao Li (Dos Madres Press, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize), Around Here (Kelsay Books), It’s About Time (Deerbrook Editions), The Book of a Small Fisherman (Shanti Arts Publishing), Leda (Dos Madres Press), The Dreams of the Gods (Kelsay Books), Alone (David Robert Books), The Eglantine (Shanti Arts Publishing), and coauthor with his wife Joan I. Siegel of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). He lives in the Hudson Valley.







The Change I Never Expected

by CLS Sandoval


No safe place to land—only distractions from the inevitable
Everything most sacred thrown to the fire
I was careless, selfish
I failed
Ignorance was bliss
That belief that I was invincible
I was wrong but I felt so safe
So impenetrable
Now just vulnerable
Unheard
Undervalued
It doesn’t matter
But she does
We are reclaiming the forgotten
We are writing ourselves into our own history
We are bodies with bodies performing
Disorientation of loss
Once we go into
Mourning
We never come out
We are never ready for death
Even when it’s a relief
Our art
Our craft
Our life’s blood and beat
Destabilizing
Exploring
Return to the mundane
Return to tradition
The massage of the message
Literary
Speak
Reframe pains, betrayals
Transformation



the pebble


it started with a pebble
she took it as a favor
no problem on her shoulders
she just wanted to offer help
and others learned she was willing to shoulder a pebble
word spread quickly
they formed lines
requesting she take another pebble
pebbles became rocks
then a little bigger
then boulders
requests became statements
demands
then people just silently dumped their burdens
she knew this was on her
no complaints allowed
the baggage had piled up so gradually
she expected nothing to change



Waiting


Full speed ahead.
Always.
Do something productive.
Don’t just spin wheels.
Make progress forward.
We were ready to go.
We had been ready for months.
Finally ready to tell those closest to us.
Tight lipped, but selecting our important people to know.
Then they told everyone.
Everyone we know was the way they explained it.
And we had to take it back.
Stop mid race.
Undo.
Stop planning.
Cancel orders.
Call everyone.
We know to announce the feet.
It’s empty.
It’s isolating.
It’s no longer.
Must remember, it’s no tragedy.
The baby didn’t die.
Nothing bad happened to the mother.
She just made a different choice.
A choice that no longer includes us.
 “Don’t worry, Mommy,” my six-year-old says. There are lots of babies. There’s a birth mommy who will need us someone will pick us.”





BIO

CLS Sandoval, PhD (she/her) is a pushcart nominated writer and communication professor with accolades in film, academia, and creative writing who speaks, signs, acts, publishes, sings, performs, writes, paints, teaches and rarely relaxes. She’s a flash fiction and poetry editor for Dark Onus Lit. She has presented over 50 times at communication conferences, published 15 academic articles, two academic books, three full-length literary collections, three chapbooks, as well as flash and poetry pieces in several literary journals, recently including Opiate Magazine, The Journal of Magical Wonder, and A Moon of One’s Own. She is raising her daughter and dog with her husband in Alhambra, CA.















Black

by James Iovino


The rain here splashes
air into nothing—
Maggie said this to me once, that
maybe when we die there is a nothing
like the black nothing before we were born.
A tiny egg of time in a vast
and tiding black ocean.

A glance out of the window tonight
leaves everything this dark:
black as black darkness in the bottom cave,
the quilted black, bobbing
in the endless seas between galaxies.
The black when we close our eyes in front of a casket.

She said her father died,
and now he was nowhere,
and not being that close to death
it struck me as kind of odd.
My grandfather died before I was born,
and I see this black in my father—
stares across the Christmas dinner table
to an empty seat, conversing over bills
with the air by the fireplace.
The time he packed me in the car
on a moist August day and cried at the gravestone,
in front of his restless son.

She asked me, How do we exist
in this black? I think
we bury our dead alive.



Divorce, September 4, 1985


Two cantaloupes lay outside,
tipped up on the patio between the deck and lawn.
A giant crescent cut out of the larger one
exposes the rich orange of melon
and as I walk closer to the bay window,
ants scurry along the lacerated fruit
like chocolate sprinkles on ice cream.
One ant is alone, confused.
He is running around the melon
like an equator. He hasn’t learned
he cannot burrow under the thick corded shell,
that this is what it’s for—
so the ant zips away
without a snip of melon, just the cordage
of the melon-skin rasp on his legs.
I swing around to the woman on the stairs—
sleek hair and shoes shrugged off,
looking plainly to the wall behind me,
over my shoulder like a suspension bridge.
As I leave out the front door,
I am no better than the smallest ant
engaging for the first time, a pulpy mass
who hides its fruit like a rind.



Planting Trees on an Easel


Touch the rough cord of the canvas.
Run fingertips across it like you would
a lover’s chin: from corner to corner,
a hand tickles doughy flesh.

The palette is freckled with fat splotches
to rinse the surface with sable hair, or knife.
Berries thick—black, red hybrids
squinched off oil branches
drying like blood on concrete.

Watch as a tree’s roots
web inside the soil of canvas.
When there are too many trees,
build a cabin of wood. If a cold lake
gleams a motionless, porcelain dish—
the ripples of water over a jetty of rocks.
Place a foot in the happy grass, comb
your toes through the scalp of grain.

When I walk to class,
after mornings of planting trees on an easel,
the grind and mash of gravel beneath my feet,
I sometimes think of anti-matter,
inter-stellar clouds, life coming down
from a hasp of space,
rinses a fallow field, lichen spreads
like the green oxidation of copper.
The lifeblood lines along the throat—
Much like a carefree stroke of brush,
a sifting of paint on the canvas.




BIO

James Iovino was educated at St. Andrews and Oxford and has master’s degrees in medieval history, international relations, and theology. He enjoys training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, traditional American and Japanese tattoo art, horology, and cutlery. His poetry has appeared in the Mankato Poetry Review. Originally from Long Island, New York, and still in possession of a considerable accent, he lives with his wife and six kids in Spotsylvania County, Virginia.







The Gathering of the Waters

by Scott Waller



Incandescent crimson tips
of dawn-sauntering icebergs
make drift afar
in the foreseeing eye
of the airborne creature
shards of soothingness.
Sublime swans
take flight in song.

O sea-dunes, with your fading grandeur,
godly bearers of tightened moisture,
ancient store of ephemeral flakes,
flotillas of our shame,
echoes of a sleepwalk
towards a mutual grave,
stir spirits in our disparate souls,
prod the snoring, sorry beast
wallowing in its own dirt
to awake, arise, emerge!



At Beach



sighing, sated, the sea’s foam-rimmed drape slips
down, revealing dark lugworm adventure
in squirming pores on flushing sand
panting with life’s echoes and
ancient trinkets scattered
overspread with sadness
after flight’s rapture,
till the mind finds
clear fresh air;
calm, still,
eerie,
eerie,
till

lifting
muscular curl,
stretch upward thrust,
gathering protean brawn-heave,
mustering dense shard-army of proud and godly might
raised, rising colossal strain to euphoric renovation swell of ephemeral hope peak.
Then, it curves, stoops, the fine line of its own ecstatic masochistic blade
tumbles in sorrow-furrow with bang of phoenix water-fire shatter,
slashes, bites skinless self, exploding suicidal gargling laughter,
as words-bones-shells-stones grind in throat-thunder glee;
sea-veins slit open and burst forth salty froth flow;
splash, climactic spittle, shower suds wink and,
hiss; silk slides back tired down slope;
while burrowing squiggles grope,
to meaning in dark hope,
ground-bound through
smooth, naked sand-
hide stripped again
of sky-shimmer,
in sand blush;
littered with
sea-debris
at peace
easy
easy
till




Three Sounds, Six Colours


I. A Bell

Through munificent air
the magnetic clang,
the bang of iron thunder
draws me closer:
it swings this way.
That way.
Slow.
Sway.
Its song smithereens
into a chaos choral throng of mini-sounds.
You can glimpse its deafening mercury stagger, swirl,
now juddering, now sluggishly:
the wavy potion of clamour swishes
round the inside of the caldron’s bulk.
You feel a world emerging from overflowing liquid;
something carried, like the young, firm green
of a fragrant branch
clinched in a white courier’s beak,
over the misty passageways
between noise and music.

II. Land and Sky

Like the dying man’s arid throat
the baked, dusty mountains round Almería
distort the shriek-thudding of metal on metal.

By the time it reaches your ears
the greedy mountains have hammered out on it
their stamps of sound and private sense,
so you’re not sure whether you have dreamed
the beating arms of distant workmen
or whether, after all,
the gods were here
where the savage, ruddy land serration
cuts clean across the pure blue sheet.

III. The Invisible Jazz Drummer

Without noticing, he’s been lifted
from the moment.
as the washing machine spins,
the buttons of a beige shirt
tap a tempo on the inner chrome drum.

He listens to the rhythm-rattle till
it effaces its beginning and its end
and accomplishes transition:

his stretching out of memory,
beyond the miserly air
of a musty laundrette,
to a better hour brings ease;
the musing of a musical moment,
when he was being in completion.

Still the buttons keep rap-tapping
tacked onto the rock’s up-rolling
to the very peak of paradise,
tied to the spinning whoosh
way, way down again
to new and hard beginnings.



If I told you what the spring evening said


If I told you what the spring evening said,
Through the warm window
Of aches, hopes, and tiptopoloftical chatter,
You would thrust into my hand the visa to that place
Where marsh creatures slink reptilian and bronze
Trapped inside a sweltering stupa and the high grass wails
Because it doesn’t understand
‘The circuitry of sympathy.’

Transitions that require you to fully be there
Require your pain for their accomplishment.

Behold the gambler clambering on the plinth;
Its whitewashed bricks of calculated pleasure!
They once hid behind the trellis
As the craftsmen were hung to dry.
Despair kneaded by events to
A forgotten password that gets lost inside
Ice hanging forests with winds sending off a girl
To fetch autumn fruits scattered among the willows.



BIO

Scott Waller is a teacher in the Paris area where he participates in literary writing groups and public performances. He has published articles and poems, including a collection of prose poems entitled Starlays (2020). His novel, Dystopian Triptych, was published in 2020.







I’m Tall

by Ron Riekki


so tall
that I get asked how tall I am
every day,

so tall
that children point at me
in supermarkets
and their super-mothers
tell them in super-language
that it’s not polite to do that,

so tall
that it’s my turn
to attack the village,
so I march across the forest
crunching trees with every step
and when I get there
they have all their pitchforks
ready
and their torches
aflame
and they wait for me to make the next move
so I tell them
to please
look,
to please do the research
and you’ll find
that all those people killed by police

were tall
and, yes,
I know they’re minorities too,
but they’re

also tall.
All of them.
I know.
I always look up their height
after I find out someone was murdered by the police
and over and over again
they’re guilty
of having a large body,
one that must be stopped
by any means necessary
even if they are just
peacefully
walking
through a park.



I Have the Same Birthday as L. Frank Baum


and I look like the Scarecrow too,
walk like a scarecrow with
 my 50% disabled veteran body,
my tremors
where I shake

like it’s the cusp
of the tornado
 and I write too,
except I’m unknown,
stuffed with straw,

hanging there
for all the world
 to discover me,
take me down,
take me to the castle

where all of my dreams
will be given to me
 only to discover
that they were always right there,
stuffed inside my straw-hearted chest.



I Listen to Blonde Redhead’s “Silently” for the Tenth Time in a Row


and when Kazu dances
it makes me remember when I could dance
and when Kazu dances
it makes me remember when I could walk
and when Kazu dances
it makes me remember when I was loved
and it was good,
like a song,
that love,
how she kissed me at the sink
and we fell to the floor,
my hands all wet,
her laughing carmine lips,
her intense love of God,
and how she left me,
a year later,
because, she said, I didn’t love God enough,
and I remember
all the hollowness that came
after she was gone
and this revelation:
now.

So simple:
Now.

Now.

Now.



Chronic Pain


I look at the abandoned building.
It looks like it just got out of prison,
like the building had just spent its tenth year inside another building.
Its glass-shattered front window with a couple of remaining hanging shards that look like teeth
and the window moves, the building speaking to me, asking if I have a chimney,
if I have a spare chimney it could have,
but I tell it I gave up smoking years ago,

and inside I can see its carpet looking so thirsty.
I don’t know what to do.
So I stand there
and talk to the building.
We talk about our pain,
how bad our lungs and living rooms hurt
and the heat that radiates in my head and in its kitchen

and the window yawns
because it’s getting late,
and I walk away
and it hurts to walk,
but I’m thankful for my legs
and it’s thankful for its roof
and we’re blessed with gratitude.



She Said We Shouldn’t Have to Say ‘I Love You’ (for Amélie)


so she didn’t.
She said it was in our actions.
So I tried to see her love
when she turned off the lamp
at night
and I tried to see her love
in the strange way
that she would fall asleep
with her cell phone in her hand,
the light glowing
like it was coming from her angelic
center.



BIO

Ron Riekki’s books include Blood/Not Blood Then the Gates (Middle West Press, poetry), My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction (Loyola University Maryland’s Apprentice House Press, hybrid), Posttraumatic (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle, nonfiction), and U.P. (Ghost Road Press, fiction). Right now, Riekki’s listening to Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer.”







A Pair of Sparrows Brawling on the Sidewalk

by George Capaccio



Like liquored up brutes spilling out of a bar
with fists flying over some misconstrued remark
and bruised egos ready to unleash Armageddon,
the two birds are having one hell of a fight
with no holds barred and feathers flying

as they take turns pinning each other down
in a fury of wings and jabbing beaks,
till one lay panting on the pavement
forced to admit defeat.
Then the champ, briefly distracted,

releases his hold. Too bad!
His rival recovers his strength
and with a sudden bolt
leaps to his feet
ready to peck and claw his way to the top

of their rough and tumble brawl.
Two featherweight fighters
in hot pursuit of each other
soar skyward, wings pumping
rapid fire.

Someone more fable-minded
might draw a moral from this clash of avian brawn
about the nature of man and his reliance on force
when some cocky interloper
threatens his perch and whatever crumbs

he claims are his. But as for me
all I see is a mad scramble for dominance
and final control of natural resources
before the planet goes up in flames
and the moon falls into the sea.



Danse de l’Esprit


Perfectly blended bodies
No blemishes
No wrinkles
No frown lines
Thick lustrous hair
The sort you see in commercials
For some new miracle shampoo

Dancers
Young, dazzling in their youth
And fiery quest for fame and adulation
They are after all artists
Their bodies the very birthplace of glory, grace, and wonder
As they twist, turn, spin, leap, slide, vanquish
Age and all its imperfections
Rapture in their every movement
The ease with which they shape time and space
Into the most exquisite patterns of light

I who am not young
I who am not lithe nor slim nor perfectly attuned
To the tempo of my own rapidly passing time
I who am falling further and further away
From whatever promises I swore to keep
I lift one foot then the other
Dragging behind me the weight of years
The heaviness I have come to equate
With the measure of growing old

Still, the silence of my ways
And the music that plays when I am most alone
Beget a style of dance, a kind of turning and turning about,
Perfectly balanced, arms thrust out



Blackbird Autumn


Was it a blackbird that spoke to me before I had even opened my eyes for the very first time, and did he tell me the way it would be in my life and how autumn would be that time of year when my soul feels most at home in the world, especially as the sky begins to darken, and the trees against the falling light become sheer silhouettes, and the silence that surrounds me replicates the absence I feel when I am alone?

Almost palpable, that feeling is. As if when the last scrap of light is gone from the sky, my death will approach with the tact and deference of a true gentleman and tell me what I have always known.

Look, there is a solitary star shining through the branches of a tree. It appears so suddenly, so succinctly, almost the way an unintended tear will form in the corner of someone’s eye followed by another and then another the way the stars are shining now.



BIO



George Capaccio, a native New Englander, now lives in North Carolina. He rose to prominence in his twenties with a series of dead-end jobs while writing on the side—poems, mostly. In his thirties, he added storytelling and acting to his résumé while still writing—poems, mostly. To date, he has written over 30 books of fiction and nonfiction for educational publishers. His book-length poetry collection—While the Light Still Trembles—took first prize in peace writing from the University of Arkansas. George is currently touring his one-person performance as Albert Einstein. You can learn a bit more about him at https://www.georgecapaccio.com

There is nothing in the museum of words but the Father of Christ
Dream sporangia reach intuitively for granular sunlight
The world is already ready to eat
Everything in the world has already happened and been said

The olive of hearts turns to thorns
Meat and fish become flesh
The intonations of silence thicken
Molecules and atoms play in motion
Every second

Every second someone dies instead of me on the cross





Clouds, grass, parents’ sleds, a rusty shovel, worn-out sandals, an arbor, a fat neighbor’s code, grandmother’s screams – there is no way to convey the feeling of a home that no longer exists.





the bird accidentally dropped the heart and broke it on the rocks

heaven turned inside out and swallowed the rain
~
my mother did not return from work and became a seagull in the eyes of the beholder
±
the house turned into a horse and blew away and commotion
.
a lot has changed since the beginning of the last war






Someone covered the tracks with snow
Someone inappropriate is out of sight
The eyes pretend to be a bird flying into the unknown
The path is the essence of the bird’s path
Death and birth of grass
Every person is grass
Every person is an animal
Snow fangs bite travelers
Where did the travelers go?
A trip to a fairy tale is like a trip to Kafka
The boy stimulates the imagination with caresses
The girl mentally turns into a mermaid
The impregnable stone sings an ode to silence
Delimiters are converted to spaces
Ragged shirts of syntax envelop the syncopations
A little man is looking for happiness
A small person plays with happiness
The dwarfs look at Snow White to rape her
Wolves feed us minced meat from grandma
Babysitters pretend to be adults
A boy stimulates a girl’s prostate
The girl becomes a thought
Torn skin shirts envelop a heart lost in bones
The eyes are looking for a mirror
The lips silently repeat the same thing:
Please





The knot on the neck of the rope is compressed
The crunch of bones that cannot be filled with any passion

Someone in a golden gaze mask stands by a silver fire
Someone pours semen on the mint from which we were born

The latex of the night sky puckers at the hips
A casual smile puffs with mystery

The heather rises up like a phallus
The clouds part in front of a couple in love with life





BIO

Mykyta Ryzhykh: Winner of the international competition «Art Against Drugs», bronze medalist of the festival Chestnut House, laureate of the literary competition named after Tyutyunnik. Nominated for Pushcart Prize. Published in the journals “Dzvin”, “Ring A”, “Polutona”, “Rechport”, “Topos”, “Articulation”, “Formaslov”, “Colon”, “Literature Factory”, “Literary Chernihiv”, Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Divot journal, dyst journal, Superpresent Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Alternate Route, Better Than Starbucks Poetry & Fiction Journal, Littoral Press, Book of Matches, on the portals “Literary Center” and “Soloneba”, in the “Ukrainian literary newspaper”, Ice Floe Press.











When You Find Selma in the Bare Branches

by Beatrice Feng


‘Selma was deeply thoughtful rather than talkative, and her silence was a kind of music that carried onto a world of dreams and made him listen to the throbbing of his heart and see the ghosts of his thoughts and feelings standing before him, looking him in the eyes.’
—Kahlil Gibran, Broken Wings


Summer has taken her shower
and turned off the heater, abandoning

the bare branches that are knotted threads
of her lost hair to the yet undissolved white steam
of clouds and blue shampoo vapours of the sky.

‘Ghostly notes of flowers withered, leaves fallen,
birds departed and their songs evaporated, still linger
in the intricate net of branches. They were from

Summer’s conditioner. When the branches are exiled
from her and consequently take a life of their own,
the faint notes become crystallised as their memories.

And are memories not weavers and conjurers
of soul? The notes are inseparable from the branches
as smoke from a pipe.

If you smoke a branch, you can preserve
a copy of the notes in your lungs,
a manuscript of its soul.

Let the brisk air you just inhaled
and warmed with your body temperature
incarnate that manuscript,

and let your every breath
be a memoir of a forgotten branch
before all your breath
is returned to the air, when it would be the time

for the branches to write your memoir:
an aria of flowers blooming, leaves flickering,
birds nestling and singing.’
Selma’s silence rustles in your trachea.


The Lighthouse of St Blanche

‘BLANCHE: […] And I’ll be buried at sea sewn up in a clean white sack and dropped overboard–at noon—in the blaze of summer—and into an ocean as blue as
[Chimes again]
my first lover’s eyes!’
—Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire


…and Blanche Dubois’s dying
wish is fulfilled. She’s turned
into an abandoned lighthouse.

The trauma haunted her human life
refuses to abandon her now. It comes
as myriad mirrors of raindrops capturing
the beautiful world and showing it to her.

Then, as always, the mirrors crash
down on her without rhyme or reason,
as if only to smash that lovely picture
they just promised.

And the cold and clear music
of the mirrors’ shattering
washes the pristine snow of her skin,
tarnishing it over time.

And the mirrors’ sharp fragments
glitter in the red scars
they’ve cut into the pale birthday cake
she has gradually become.

Yet she, kneeling
on the harsh edges of rocks,
keeps praying
to the clouded crystal of the sea.

Would it grant her three wishes
like the angel did Dwynwen?

No. Her faith lies not in God, but buried
deep in her beloved, sinful one
who had destroyed the beauty of her world.

Instead of imprisoning his image in ice
for his crime, she makes his eyes
the origin of ocean with all her magic
at the expense of her whole life and soul.

The sky is grey and cloudy,
but the crepuscular rays have descended,
that holy passage waiting
for the bride who has drunk the divine poison:
her scars red as fresh lips,
her frail white skin an ethereal wedding dress.


La Petite Mort

‘She smiled a bright hot smile which was forgetful of time or place or anything but the memory of his mouth on hers.’
—Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind


The sweets cast
their variegated glance at you
from the glass case.
What? Do you call them art?
You know how frail
their allure is, a phantom tower
whose only support
columns are but fantastic shapes
and dreamlike patterns.
If you look into its windows, you will
not see anything
deeper or richer than a seductive ratio
of clarity and intensity.
It’s the most crude and basic form of fairy
tale: creamy basketballs,
green jade chess, sunflower cameos,
miniature peaches
and magnified cocoa beans, chocolate keyboards
insinuating their thirst
for fingers and the melody sealed in them,
a dainty raspberry storm
fueled by dark pink fragments of a mysterious flower
happening on the summit
of a cupcake. Streams of magical hair
sprouting from a fudge violet, 
somehow finds a heart as hair clip, and somehow
ends up being a lovespoon.

After caressing them all with the childish
love bite of your eyes, you go
for the prettiest one.
That elderflower picasso. It’s half a planet,
nebula blue with rivers of cirrus
and a flower of blood.
Though the planet is not the hemisphere
you’ve bought, but only
the paint on it.
This blue world is thinner than sequin,
the rivers have no depth, the flower
is no more than a red dot.
But you will live here
for this moment,
will you not?
You will fall in love
with the story
the deep blue runestone and snow white inscription
tell you about the sanguine blossom:
when the Countess of Nosferatu
bleeds for the first
and last time,
she looks at her own blood
with awed fascination.
Realises what
she is composed of, and what
she could express.
Shattering the cold porcelain cups
of life and death,
she lets the magical red fluid escape
from the prison of her
cadaverous
skin.
Yet the spilled blood, doomed by its former dwelling
in the frail chamber of her heart,
cannot become anything
else. So it instantly blooms
into this bleeding heart
flower here.
Look! The balmy heart spreads the velvet wings
of its petals
and a graceful teardrop descends
from its core. Come
closer. Can you see another heart
enveloped
in this teardrop as if sitting in a glass
capsule of a Ferris wheel,
watching sunsets
concentrated in the flight of the petals?
Doesn’t it look exactly
like your heart?
You cannot deny. But it is truly absurd
that you have lived without a heart
for so long
and you shall find it in a sweet shop.
Is that why you are not bleeding
even if the little vibrant world
you are eating is as thin as the blade
of a knife and the cut it makes.
And certainly as sharp.
But wait! Its blade has cut
through your whole
being.
It’s so sweet…you scream, groan, weep
The world, it’s really so sweet
underneath its nonchalance
and your heart is, in fact,
oh how can it be…
so sweet.



BIO


Beatrice Feng studies Creative Writing at Lancaster University. They are an aspiring writer.







To Devour Heaven

by Syndey Fisher


It’s a familiar taste upon my tongue–
The flesh and blood of my flesh and blood

I bite and chew and grind and suck
Yet my hunger…. It lingers

This instinct, it gnaws at me, making my stomach gurgle and kick like a memory inside of me–
Like elbows slamming into my ribcage and muffled screams obscured by muscle and sinew

From where you stand it is a quiet affair.
The squelching is minimal- its jaw unhinges and he swallows the body whole.

“I see you,” his eyes say to you.
“You can’t look away,” the tiny body begs- as if that will change anything at all.

It’ll be your turn next, you know?
And it’ll be his turn forever.



The Cartographer


Every breath adds a fresh mark on the map
Every sigh forms a new landmark in remembrance
Every stumble leaves a scuff in its wake- a frowny face here, a scowling skull there
My inkwell is full and ready to touch fresh parchment

Sometimes I meet another cartographer in my wanderings
We compare our maps and let our quills touch each other’s hearts
Beware the deadends, the dark alleys, and the precarious ledges
Stay here if you’re ever in town, talk to this person if you are blessed with the opportunity

Sometimes when I don’t like what I see before me I look to my map
My map has changed so much since the day I first shakily dragged a quill across its surface
I can’t help but sigh and say, ‘But look how far I’ve already come.



BIO

Sydney Fisher is currently getting her undergraduate degree in English at Azusa Pacific University and plans to get her master’s degree in Library Science. She also is pursuing minors in Screenwriting and Biblical Studies due to being a queer Christian artist with a love for all things cartoon. 






grain of sand

by Scott Taylor


i’ve gotten myself
screwed up somehow.
i sit here on the floor in the dark
with music playing,
and pangs of loneliness
conflict with
a vague revulsion
that would prohibit
anyone
from being here
right now.
a little bit of cocaine
and suddenly i am terrified,
needy,
a pilgrim fawn,
i am living a life
unsupported and unsustained,
no one here
but perhaps that is
because
i don’t want them here.
i listen to notes
like raindrops
and wonder why mine
don’t sound like that,
i wish my thoughts
could be beautiful,
i wish i
could be beautiful.
like a dead end
in hell,
i frown in the dark
with a mind and a dick
that just won’t work right,
and still pine
for the women
that i don’t want
anymore.



call to arms


O malcontents who hide in computers and books,
perk up your ears and harken to me,
turn off the TV and unite under a new flag.
we can band together like worker ants,
no uniforms or handbooks will
point the way for us.
O collection of ragtags,
heed the call,
the earth will one day take us all,
your routine is the disease
and you are the cure,
each of us a universe
in defiance of
a collective nothing,
fuck macdonalds and the prom
and the new york yankees,
beauty is found in second-hand stores
and genius in the babblings
of lunatics in chains.
O cellar denizens,
creep out from the sewers
and reclaim what is ours,
everyone’s,
i repeat,
EVERYONE’S,
not just for the politicians,
not just for the bankers,
not just for the inherited wealthy,
not just for the supermodels,
you’ve been told what to like,
you’ve been shown your place,
you’ve been told what to be satisfied with,
now decide
just once
for yourselves.



there’s a death in their eyes


there’s a death in their eyes, deeper and darker than any pit
if ever there was light there
it is gone now forever,
the world has won
and there is no going back.

there is a pain in their smiles
that chills me to the bone,
the heads bob and the mouths work
but they can’t mask the scent
of their fear.

i watch them on television
and on the sidewalks,
in bars and in checkout lines,
all agenda and ambition,
praying for the American Dream
and only finding
the universal nightmare,
confused and angry
but always
coming back for
more.

the spirit wanes
until only survival remains,
it is understandable
and tragic,
childhoods forgotten,
replaced long ago
by some murderous job,
now you accept the lie
because you have to,
it’s too late to object,
might as well go out to dinner
with the wife tonight
and plan this spring’s
vacation.



BIO

Scott Taylor is 49 years old, and hails from Raleigh, North Carolina. He is a writer and a musician, and an avid world traveler.







STAY IN TOUCH