1/30/2022 4 Comments Poetry by B. Fulton Jennes Flemming Munch CC
See A hummingbird hovers just outside the kitchen window, remembering the kindness of summers past; an alchemist bee darts home to the hive, hastening to translate pollen and sunshine into pure gold; a cut heals, leaving no scar; a lost dog finds its way home; a child forgives a mother’s unkindness; a book spurs us to weep; an artist breeds amazement out of a gray neuronic slurry; stars perforate the night sky; time pumices the jagged edges of grief; trees reach skyward, waves stroke the shore even when tugged by a jealous moon; hair transmutes to silver; eggs hatch like prize-filled bubbles from a gumball machine; hearts beat, unbidden; wheels, windows, sign language, skin-- We are half-asleep fairies, inhabiting an enchanted land. We bask in small miracles each moment of our small lives. We see them, touch them, breathe them in, unaware-- and when we exhale, the grit of our indifference polishes the world for those who see. The Poet Laureate of Ridgefield, Connecticut, B. Fulton Jennes serves as poet-in-residence for the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Her poems have or will appear in Anti-Heroin Chic, The Comstock Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Night Heron Barks, Connecticut River Journal, ArtAscent, Tar River Poetry, Stone Canoe, Naugatuck River Journal, Frost Meadow Review, and other publications, and her poem “Lessons of a Cruel Tide” was awarded first place in the Writer’s Digest Annual Competition in the rhyming poetry category. Jennes’s chapbook, Blinded Birds, is now available for preorder from Finishing Line Press. She is in her (blessed) 13th year of recovery; her daughter, now grateful for six years in recovery, recently completed graduate coursework in Addiction Counseling. There is hope.
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1/30/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Cecil Morris Matheus Bazzo CC
Persephone Comes Back When Persephone returns from death of drugs, she is the finch's black eye, the chip of night carried all day, all glint and shine but opaque even at noon. She is quartz hard but fracturing, laced with fault lines, occlusions cloudy, dense, like rough weather frozen forever in her, a storm's churn fixed. A tourist here now, our daughter drags dank tendrils behind her when she moves, wisps and curls of decay, of sun-dried September weeds fallen in crisscrossed thatch, in layers compacted under foot. She is doe's delicate forelegs, impossibly slender given the weight they carry, tentative, cautious, filled with latent flight, ready to spring off, like the finch's eyes that flick sideways when we try to see her. Three Years after a Daughter Overdoses Her ghost travels with us, silent, mostly hidden, almost out of mind, following us through mountains and over bridges, the water, our speed, the dark air we split, the doors we close, no impediments to her. She will appear suddenly, at any age (well, from birth to 39), and squeeze our hearts to tears. Like she did at 7 or 8, she loves to catch us unawares, a duty to be done but not and, as I said, hidden mostly, just as she was in life, a secret girl with a secret life. In the silent house, alone awake before the slow sun spills a new day, its tumble of to-dos to distract, I hear (I think) the sound of shuffling feet, the fridge opening gasp, the spoon and bowl, an auditory shadow play, her sneaking ice cream from my memory. Teenage metamorphosis, from daylight girl to midnight cockroach, a preview of life after life. I rise, of course, to check and find the kitchen empty, dawn still distant, the old day not quite done. When I return to bed, my wife says you heard her again, didn’t you. Cecil Morris, retired after 37 years of teaching high school English, devotes his days to reading and writing poetry, to exploring green spaces, and to indolence and reflection. He has poems appearing in 2River View, Cobalt Review, Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, Midwest Quarterly, Poem, Talking River Review, and other literary magazines. 1/30/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Mary Sexson Tristan Loper CC
In and Out Your son gave me a picture he had drawn today in art class, vivid blues and greens, in the upper left corner a simple “Erth”, made special with a big capital E. He wants me to send it to you, but I don’t know the address for “walked away from rehab”. There is no street name for “returned to abusive boyfriend”, and no zip code for the crack house you know downtown. We are there all over again, this time only a three-month respite, a brief lull in the din of your addiction. Your son thinks he will be visiting you, dear daughter, in the place where you are “getting well”, believes with all his heart you will both go roller skating. He is planning on holding your hand as you weave in and out of the pulsing lights. Mary Sexson is author of the award-winning book, 103 in the Light, Selected Poems 1996-2000 (Restoration Press), and co-author of Company of Women, New and Selected Poems (Chatter House Press). Her poetry has appeared in Tipton Poetry Journal, Laureate, Literary Journal of Arts for Lawrence, Flying Island, New Verse News, and Last Stanza Poetry Journal, among others. Sexson’s poems are also included in various anthologies. Her most recent work is in Reflections on Little Eagle Creek Anthology, and Anti-Heroin Chic (October 2021). Her newest work was just released in a new issue of Tipton Poetry Journal and is forthcoming in Issue #7 Last Stanza Poetry Journal. Her work is part of INverse Poetry Archives, for Hoosier Poets. 1/30/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Isis Hanna Paul VanDerWerf CC
on the car ride home I am quiet I dig a shark’s tooth the size of my thumb out of the sand before the waves can wash it away. the saltwater drops sting my eyes and my feet freeze in the early morning water, but the sun is starting to warm us up with its orange streaks that stretch from behind the long clouds on the horizon. I run a long way down the beach to show you my find. shell fragments dig into my heels as I run. I found the tooth using the ways you taught me as a kid. you’ll be proud. some sharks leave their offspring right after they are born, nothing but their instincts to protect them. sometimes I wish you would leave me on this beach to raise myself. I want to live by my own rules, make my home among the tides and sleep in the sand dunes. we need to learn the art of fossilization, how to pile and press the sediments of each good day onto the bad ones and forgive. instead, we toss them onto this beach, covered haphazardly by sand and shells, and we dig them up with our hands every once in a while. on the way home I’ll clutch my treasure, serrated edges digging into my skin. I remind myself that you are proud of me as you berate me, shaking the sand off of an old argument you dug up while we were there. I am already rehearsing my apology in my head. I don’t know why I am always the one who says I’m sorry when you are the one with all those teeth. reflections on the water and on family the moon is about 384,000 kilometers from earth. 9.6 times around the world, or nearly 120 round trips to each of our houses. that’s almost unbelievable, considering when we look up into the night sky, it seems as if a particularly tall building or especially skilled pilot could scratch the surface. and it’s the same distance no matter where you are on earth. when four people look up at the moon they are seeing past those same many miles and looking at the same gray monolith. our moon, god of the night skies. controller of the tides. it pulls the waves that we splashed through on the dark beach ten minutes from my house. there were four of us. half had never seen the beach at night before. the moon moved the water for us while we used its borrowed light to find shark’s teeth in the freezing sand. our lanterns barely light the beach. we search anyways, collecting shells in cheap plastic buckets. tomorrow they will be packed into suitcases and our little group will return to our corners of the country. we will hold each other tightly while the adults exchange hurried, cold goodbyes. for every thirteen times the moon makes its way around the earth, our family’s orbit falls more off-kilter and every goodbye feels more like forever. twice a year, the shadow cast by the earth eclipses the moonlight and for up to two hours, we are completely blind. in our collective fear of the dark, the whole family will join hands. we’ll guide each other when the time comes. for now, we can see and us four kids band together despite our parents’ differences. before departure, we all slip out onto the balcony of the beach condo. cold concrete stings my feet and I think “I should have worn socks” so I don’t have to think “I don’t want things to fall apart.”it is high tide down below us. the sky is pale blue and the moon is beginning to show its silhouette as it climbs. Isis Hanna is a 9th grade student studying creative writing at Charleston County School of the Arts. She is 15 years old. Her poems tend to include themes of childhood and family. 1/30/2022 2 Comments Poetry by Margaret Diehl Tristan Loper CC
AFTERMATH At twelve, I was crammed so tightly my contents fused. I feared I wasn’t human and had my reasons. Alien, Mechanical or one of those lumpy bundles fairies leave in the cradle. My mother says, I thought you didn’t like me. I thought she had flung me from her orbit like a rat found among the kittens. Once singled out by my dead-by-his-own-hand father for my rare-for-a-girl talent in mathematics, I beseeched my soul with logic. Your parents are human. Their faces resemble yours. You bleed from the vagina and speak in sentences crafted from vintage words you understand. You’re only mad-- —and saw myself straightjacketed in a room like an insect’s eye mouth stopped with white tape years cawing overhead. I kept my head down slowly growing old enough to hitch a ride on sex and more sex, concussive nights, shame greasing the inconspicuous hinges of my dungeon bracelets. * My mouth curves in a friendly smile among the humans. I’ve earned a wedding ring am praised and paid for work contributing my efforts to our fragile lattice of light against a darkness many billions of years old. Before I was born in the spring and early summer heat of Houston, Texas, 1954, my mother had a thought. You were planned, she says. The others weren’t. She pulled me from the deeps. Perhaps her voice with its southern pinks found the right song. Perhaps I was ready to be gone from the lightless place, its god and dog. Margaret Diehl has published a chapbook of poems it all stayed open (Red Glass Books, 2011), two novels and a memoir (Men, 1989, Me and You, 1990 and The Boy on the Green Bicycle, 1999, all from Soho Press) as well as poems, short stories, and essays in literary journals, including Kestrel, The Chattahoochie Review, Kenyon Review, The American Journal of Poetry, AMP, Cloudbank, The Adirondack Review, and Gargoyle. She lives in New York City. 1/30/2022 0 Comments Poetry by DeWitt Clinton Matheus Bazzo CC
Right as Rain Today, the longest day by the way, and thinking about all The days going way back, I’m not lonely, which of course Could be total denial, but all who do know me think that Too, but I’d like to believe I’m just alone, and I’m okay With that. Alone a lot. Sort of like an old tree, oak maybe, Though I’m not scheduled yet for death and destruction, But everyone else is talking about a possible trim at the Top, as a few dead branches have started to appear. But still, I’m standing, somewhat tall, taller really than All the others on the block, though we all know not For long. I’m also pretty much alone in the pool even if There’s two of us lapping back and forth, or worse, A third, and I’m standing or lying over in the corner In the yoga studio, and no one ever thinks of coming Over and getting into one’s space, unless something Needs correcting, and I’m corrected often, so someone Does come over and moves a foot just slightly, or an Arm or a hip, depending, of course. I’m eating alone Now, and dining still like the gentleman I hope I’ve been, Not gulping, like my cat always does, down in a flash. Movies now are mostly in the dark. Dreams are still In the dark, reclined and probably snoring loudly, And there’s no one to recognize but sometimes there’s You, who wants to drop in every now and then. No one reads over my shoulder the news, or reads Aloud a headline I’m not reading. No one answers The phone anymore, not even me, as I’ve given up On all the unidentified spams. You’re picking up A theme, right, and you’re worried I’m too alone, Even if that’s a preference, like Bartleby, but I see You all out there, but I’m just not going to come over And blab on for who knows how long with you, as I just couldn’t. But if I saw a hint of a smile, or a Totally unexpected hello there, okay, I’m right here, I’ll be right over. I’m okay, really, right as rain. DeWitt Clinton taught English, Creative Writing, and World of Ideas courses for over 30 years at the University of Wisconsin—Whitewater. His earlier collections of poetry include The Conquistador Dog Texts, The Coyot. Inca Texts, (New Rivers Press), At the End of the War (Kelsay Books, 2018), By A Lake Near A Moon: Fishing with the Chinese Masters (Is A Rose Press, 2020), and Hello There (Word Tech Communications, 2021). 1/30/2022 1 Comment Poetry by Mark Danowsky Josh Meek CC
The Cycle Nights away from you among tobacco fields instead of smoke still, the smell of chicken farms, soy fields lining the path to market or laundromat Marietta, where the Susquehanna comes together for a moment by broken town overtaken by mayflies A world of William Carlos Williams scenes audiences now cringe to consider too close Folks insist this is not my life but back with you, blackout drunk Me & the dog hiding in my home office bunker The dog pawing my knees us fearing for sleep or the next jagged broken bottle The glass of you leaning towards darkness having taken away nights without giving back days This is what giving in looks like-- An hour of reckoning Glitz mistaken for beauty Who could ever prepare? Now, on the other side, open wounds on display The way you tapped out — a plateau That one call that never came It is required I am worse for this Domestic When the police arrive you are passed out in the bathroom slumped up against the door I quietly unlock the front door to let the officers inside I whisper that you are passed out in the bathroom and ask them to be cautious I am afraid if they wake you in an astonished frenzy you might lash out I do not know the protocol I do not know their training I am afraid what may happen if the officers wake you The giant West Virginia cop enters our basement apartment followed by his backup The giant West Virginia cop says Are you ok? The cop asked me if I was ok Mark Danowsky is a Philadelphia poet, author of the poetry collection As Falls Trees (NightBallet Press), Managing Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal, and Editor of ONE ART poetry journal. 1/30/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Melissa Mulvihill DaLee_pl CC
How to Wake Up Feeling Dangerous In a clearing in the woods make a bed with moss for your head. Breathe in the willow leaves. Blacken your eyes, silence your ears, nevermind the red. That’s just the loss. In the dark you won’t notice it. Before you lie down to the banging of your arrhythmia begging, do you see me? sip from the creek nearby and tend to your tremors right there on the rocks then lift your eyes to behold a sky filled with wail and thirst and tell the world your skin is my skin and the body breathes when it breathes and not a second before. Drape yourself in the moon for warmth and feel the planets calling out to you saying, nothingness is not something you can fall into. Don’t be slumped at some altar talking to things with wings like you are of their flock. Walk on the grave of the times you would have done anything for a god. Dance across the roots of the tree with the branches of dissonance and scatter in powdered form the sorcery that told you to repent for everything and nothing at all. Fail to pluck out your heart and say, take this, please. Forget that nothing would have made you happier than to give a god your heart even though he would absolutely have said Yes, well, not yours. Not your heart. See that the ground is simply part of the planet on which we live and that our planet isn’t grounded on anything at all. Continue to gather your bits of dirt and dust and matter each growing in influence. Discard the old and useless unimpeachable principles that you occasionally dig up. Move freely through space orbiting your sun. Now lie in the wild and dirty night with worlds staring back at you and leave a trail of yourself behind in cardiac read outs and love. When you wake up scream in the face of the lion you were caged with just one more time for good measure. Maybe it will echo everywhere. Melissa writes creative non-fiction essays and poetry exploring rituals around living and dying and living with progressive illness. She has had essays published this year with Pangyrus Literary Magazine, HerStry, Anti-Heroin Chic Magazine, Months to Years Literary Magazine, and Tangled Locks Journal. She has a B.A. in psychology from Kenyon College and an M.A. in counseling from John Carroll University. Melissa is retired from homeschooling and from counseling. She lives with her husband, who is an attorney, in northeast Ohio. You can find her essays and poems at melissamulvihill.com. 1/30/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Carol Parris Krauss Tristan Loper CC
For Once I Imagine that with time, I will slide down from this mountain of grief. Unstrap my bindle of tears, unlash my brogans of sorrow. I will see the rose-breasted grosbeak. Her flash of red among the tallest pines. For many days, I will walk. Walk to the edge of the ocean, just as the Pisgah runs to the mighty Mississippi and then the Gulf. I will watch the tips of the waves as they roll in and retreat to return home. Wash this body of my constant epitaph. Actually see the dolphin as it breaks the water. Chirps and grunts along the shore. For once, I will step into the waters, and swim among the salt eddies with joy. Carol Parris Krauss is a poet from the Tidewater region of Virginia. She enjoys teaching, gardening, and college football. Her work can be found in online and print magazines such as Story South , New Verse News, Plainsongs, and the Amsterdam Quarterly. In 2018, she was recognized by the University of Virginia Press as a Best New Poet. More of her work can be found at https://www.carolparriskrausspoet.com/. 1/30/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Arden Hunter Matt Hance CC
I sat down to write a poem about drinking little flashes stand out falling down the embankment in the rain grass and mud spread all over my clothes the hinges of my glasses clogged with it disgust and disappointment broadcast from my pristine roommate crying hysterically to the doorman that I didn’t know where I lived having him show me on the map a five minute walk but still stopping to have another shot on the way missing a Thanksgiving dinner that I didn’t want to attend by drinking a bottle of whiskey and waking up on the floor of my friend’s bar elated I had the perfect excuse not to go a friend giving me an engraved flask for Christmas the word MEH glinting on the side then using it to sneak amaretto into my nephew’s Christening because life wasn’t going to be sweet enough without it I sat down to write about drinking but these things are all I can remember because the whole point was to erase an existence too appalling to be considered and to speed up the slide towards the exit I sat down to write stories about anything else but those things were impossible because to create a character out of yourself there needs to be a piece worth examining and if you erase all your memories then what can still be seen? I sat down to write poems about knowing yourself and cried sharp tears of disbelieving laughter at the naivety of a ghost trying to explain what living used to be like little flashes stand out that were only escapable through means of being unconscious or by standing back up and quitting it all quitting quitting and saying I will live this life I sat down to write a poem about drinking and three years later here it is here we are here I am Waiting when i drank i had a mission never knowing what it was just knock them back yes knock them back keep going on keep on the urgency the breath of doom some undefined nightmare was lurking watching knowing all keep back sweet dread keep back nothing that i wouldn’t do evade abscond escape but it was waiting there for me and never was it leaving drinking to oblivion shot by shot by shot i raced it home i lost my way i raced it and i lost only later finally i understood the waiting thing was me just waiting patiently i waited patiently Arden Hunter is an ND aroace agender writer, artist and performer. They have words, audio and art hosted and upcoming with Full House Literary Magazine, Fifth Wheel Press and Kissing Dynamite among other places. Find them on Twitter @hunterarden, Instagram @thegardenofarden and at ardenhunter.com. |
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