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Dead Poets Society
Dead Poets Society ? No . I don’t mean that we are an army of dead poets , I just mean that maybe John Keating was right when he said poetry is what we stay alive for because tell me why only poets can understand the story of Medusa even though they were never victims of her wrath . I think that poetry is hope when there is barely any . I think that poetry is believing that you will make it through the next day with your heart drumming against your ribcage , while trying to stay afloat because y -
no reason to kill the horse
by Brian MosherHe was working over in Mansfield, and his wife was home alone when one of the cows got sick, or choked on an apple or something. She hitched the old horse to the wagon, drove over to where her husband was, full speed. By the time she arrived, the poor old horse was sweaty and breathless. She told him, ‘The cow is in trouble,’ and he said, ‘Well, that’s no reason to kill the horse.’ -
Banana Slug
I do not aspire to inspire— beauty excuse enough for any slug – no more required than to beam bright as a sun-ray. Look how I glisten, how I gleam among shadows cast by giants. Observe my stately progress, allowing admirers a chance to gaze upon me, wonder-lost. -
Paper Doll Summer
Through the screen doors at either end of the shotgun house, cool and sweet, a breeze creates a wind tunnel smelling of rain. In the sultry summer hours June Allyson, Liz Taylor, and Jane Powell flutter in the shifting currents of wind - paper dolls pinioned to the screen door by little hands, but not for long. Light quickens to a lurid scowl over the horizon and the hot suffocating wind catches and stills, breathless, awaiting the twister. No birds sing in this caesura. Footsteps hurry to th -
Mother Tongue
My mother tongue is my first country where white crows fly and black sheep graze on idioms, where proverbs hide like mushrooms growing in a maze of Karelian birches and pines, where needles sing the songs of my babulya’s hands her lullabies, her stitchwork freezing snows in threads, I had them framed for my mother’s American home, for our mysterious Russian soul which likes to wrap itself in floral shawls and enigmas hidden in a worn карта, которая меня находит, Я – неграмотный компас, a -
Edible Stone
by Erin McGraneThree tomatoes will never be enough. One mango could never suffice. Your toothpaste heart can’t brush away the sweater you left last season, the seasoning of you still the recipe for my disaster and still my favorite dish. You, little tomato fruit, pretending to be a vegetable more at home in the savory, salty pot but still a fruit, a seed, a fleshy heart. I bite your surprisingly protective skin not nearly as thin as it looks thinking of juice ripe as blood. You, sweet, simple mango, edible s -
The Golden Gate
by D. L. LangFrom her steel that traveled from Pennsylvania to the people who voted to fund her construction, she stands as a testament to cooperation— what we might yet build from imagination. But the glory goes to those brave workers who dared build the impossible bridge. Day and night they labored for four years. They risked plummeting into dark waters so that generations might easier cross her silvery, glistening waves to this very day. She is the great steel handshake uniting the people of this regi -
Dear Stranger
Letter to The Stranger I met in The Bus Today . Dear Stranger , I don’t know if it is okay to call you My stranger ,Or call you the girl with a pink cardigan ,who sat by the window with a pink journal on her hand and a plush sky-blue teddy bear hanging by her backpack .I noticed that today you were slightly agitated , I wondered if you still remembered me , stranger . I wondered if you remembered the red haired girl who shared a table with you on your first day in high school , but mostly I wo -
European Film
The drag of household always feels “sticky” as in being stuck. Family is a feeling to peel off, as demonstrated in European film when they introduce the children early, then drop them to get on with the real story because, unlike the pups whelped by Disney America, they are not the point. -
Scorpius on the Horizon
Standing sentinel in the shallows across the cove, the great blue heron eyed us discreetly as the motor grumbled and we drifted away from the dock moving into the main channel. The heat of the cloudless day softened as we floated over the lake, exploring bluffs and other coves. Later, we arranged our chairs for the view from the dock. The last reflections of the setting sun lighting up the water and the sky growing pale, then colorless, until it became a barely visible blank canvas. We -
Mickey Mantle and Chinaberry Trees
by Ron WallaceAs October descends like a feathering of dust in an empty room, the color of fireflies fades from my summer nights beneath a moon, alabaster white. This cooling of air this shortening of the sun has always bothered me. I remember being twelve, sitting in the shade of a chinaberry tree grown to the fence next to the house where my grandmother lived before she didn’t. Rubbing neatsfoot oil into the laces, the palm and pocket of my Rawlings glove, I pretended to hear country music, d -
(The Illusion of) Flight: (A Jade Poem)
by Bill McCloudThe illusion of flight has taken the Illusionist longer to perfect than anything else he’s ever done After having the design and working out the method of the effect what he still needed was the perfect Assistant to make it work To fly to actually fly and now he had her A male volunteer is brought up from the audience to place his hands along her shoulder blades then step back and command her to Fly Her wings grow into place and defying gravity she rises through the air with a graceful motion -
Illumination
Summer evenings ablaze with fireflies, lightning lanterns signaling in dew-tipped grass, we paraded our bare, rock-toughened feet up and down the mound of earth covering the storm cellar—brides or queens in procession. Then, in the distance, we would hear the whistle, track clatter of a passenger train imagining its way to a city, no stop near this one-stop- light town, shuttered when Route 66 shuddered to sleep. Inside the cars, silhouettes of diners, profiles behind drawn shades, a beacon on e -
The Portrait of a Champion
We were young, they say. We have died; remember us.~ Archibald MacLeish Sitting in the bleachers we used to count her laps as she “wrote the Australian crawl” into record books. Her elegant stroke modeled text-book form, elbows bent high, outlining a mountain peak, while determined hands paddled water towards her feet, strong like the motor on a hydroplane in a protected harbor, or when sailing wings caught the wind on a sunny day in the Paradise Bay. She was always swimming forward. Blessed w -
To a Further Blossoming
Along a narrow uneven trail in a clearing above a school, I heard in a creak a human cry. The tree was dead. A dead oak tree with a hollow halfway up, places where the rough gray bark looked eaten away, other places raw, lichen pale, spongy and bare. With broken limbs drawn upward. From a distance in the late light, it looked like a jaggedly splayed, coal-colored bouquet against the sky. A haunted, haunting thing. But up close, its pulp felt soft as velvet in my hand. It wasn’t so much a cry as -
Sanctuary
by Ron WallaceIndian grass is mingled among the Bermuda, not yet ready to mow. Round bales from an early cutting stand in the southern corner of the pasture where I am walking, seeking remnants of the old house. In my memory the ruins had lain just past a stand of blackjacks and bois d’arcs across a little creek on the edge of childhood. Moving parallel to the abandoned railroad track, west of the field I see the bright orange flame of Indian Paintbrush splitting coyote bones r -
Kindness in an L.A. Subway
4 million people call LA home. 4 million stories. 4 million voices… sometimes you just have to stop and listen to one, to hear something beautiful. LAPD HQ Pastel Grey Against the backdrop of the subway’s makeshift stage, her operatic voice blends into the walls of a busy day and exists but is taken for granted much like the avalanche of birds that descend, expected to be there in time to welcome the morning light. 'tho rarely thought worthy of stopping to feed, even as their songs feed the sp -
Back on Earth: Winter Solstice
The shortest day folds in on itself, an origami of fog and freeze erasing all color except the red shirt on the clothesline, bird in the cedars barely moving in the cold the dirt swallows. Waxwings crescent over the roof, showing us all is not angles or the momentary constructs we make out of time. Light exhales, pauses as the air thaws, inhales more length toward spring, a hard-to-believe notion on this dark side of the wall. Back on earth, I dream of canals bordered by cherry blossoms, one b -
Lightfoot Lives On
by D. L. LangHis voice floats across the airwaves, knowing no bounds. The Canadian bard’s lyrics journey across the world. A comforting melody surrounds your soul on long, lonely roads where the sun will never go down. Ships and trains forever carry stories from a mind only partially indexed, rolling down a highway of sound waves towards an eternity of light. -
New Orleans
by Ron Wallace(For Jane) You gave me this city thirty years ago bewitched me with iron-laced galleries above arcane streets, music and food drifting from French Quarter doorways. Every year since then, we have walked beneath antique oaks that witnessed duels fought over beauty such as yours. Here, I have seen the sky on fire above the Mississippi and often walked with your hand in mine the white light of a full moon pursuing us along black water waves as we stroll. But tonight we walk from the alley of pirat -
After the Emergency
You sit in a brown Adirondack chair on a steep slope looking east between the pines so tall they were surely here, large even, before you were born. The storm chased out the humidity and now, a month before autumn, and still in the heavy grasp of katydids and one insistent bird that changes trees too fast to see, you are safe. Free from the worst you imagine. In the distance, tourists with phones and not enough light still try to catch the old church’s round roof while one slim beetle that can -
“I wonder if Poe in His Most Extravagant Hallucinations…” - Paul Bowles
for Eva This is not a poem about moonlight but November shadows elongated around a house where inside seven cats have huddled for days awaiting their still mistress to feed them while the neighbors note the overflowing mail box and do nothing despite having an emergency contact, not wanting to miss the opening day of deer hunting. Minnesota nice. Through the long terrible hours the cats have waited, creeping in confusion around the body their hunger now a panic as the phone rings and rings and -
Alone
I no longer sleep alone. It is a strange feeling knowing that there is someone else in my bed. Two nights ago, she was playful. She planted a hickey on my thigh. Last night it was on my stomach. You see there is a spider in my bed. Woke up when she strolled across my face. I am her midnight snack. Murder on my mind. Solved by relocation to the backyard. Bat food – I hope. -
Today
by Woody BarlowToday, And every day since Vietnam I see the brown eyes Of a ten year old boy Staring through me… He was not crying Or blinking After we killed most of his Three generation family I couldn’t explain to him About mistakes… Or the fog of war As we carried dead family members Past where he sat He continued to stare Showing no emotion Fifty years later I wonder Where he is And if he has healed I have not. -
Two Spotify Walks After Patient Transport, July 16th, 2020
Part I. Dusk—Pink Floyd, “Wish You Were Here,” 1975 I grabbed Gatorade on a sunbaked return home to gawk groundward in a cloth chili pepper mask— and not toward Tulsa’s shrapnel within paling skyline, not to co-opt it for the sake of longing any longer. I stumbled over my doorstep’s first Amazon Solzhenitsyn novel— A Day in The Life of Anybody Not Doing All This, where if “You” just had to be somewhere, then not “Here” or even there, but away from all this, was all I’d “Wish” for still— but i -
Delta Summer
by Diane WienerDelta summer plays possum with Buddhist Sisyphus lessons a stray cat evening thunderstorm slows thoughts flash flood warnings notice sensations deep weather pushes Wednesday’s speechless noise do not drive unless it’s an emergency cherry pits falling on pistachio shells sound ready to compost the time echo tastes cold air turned hot like when you pee after iceskating when I sing for the boa the kittens trill why do I peel the tape off the book spine leaving it so sticky I have to retape -
My Dad Is Sick
I’m not saying – To all the followers, To all the friends, To all the subscribers– Anything about the terror That is holding me so still. So still I appear Perfect– So still I seem Weighted– So still I could be The soaking cold Night before Spring dawns. No. I am, not. Rather, Electric, I am, in hateful waiting. The stillness of An alligator jaw. -
Two Suns
by F.C. ShultzFalling off a cliff into the dirt gray morning, shuffling around until hot drink and the book sits beside as the gold hair of morning falls across the sky; glorious. Crossing the bad leg over the better one as the impressionist paints with last light, cold cup and mate beside until the paint fades back to gray, a rise and set in one day; divine. -
To the girl I’ve never talked to
We only felt the same breeze, stared at the same star, held the same bar–frigid. We never talked, nor even spoke a word. But in my head, everything in my world, there’s nothing you’ve never heard. -
I Hear of the Mockingbirds Songs No More
by Thadeus Emmanuel Where has the morning mockingbird gone with its songs— Those exciting rhythm and blues of melodious symphonies? For I hear no more of their mellowing whispers; that comes through my open window panes at every dawn, When the cooling gentle breeze of the morning blows. Or was it all a lonely wandering music maker; That has lost its home to the glooms of the day, And now left with the cold; that shows no mercy Even at its fluffing feathers to catch the warm? Or was it all a lon -
What Kind of House Are You Now?
I’m a bungalow with an airplane wing too hot to inhabit except in winter. Did I mention I could fly? I’m a rambling ranch going to town and back to the country again to plop myself down in a den of sunflowers, annuals with faces large as platters to face down the darkness until we all turn to sleep. I’m a Victorian in great disrepair on the edge of what was once a great dome of a city. It rains here, mostly drizzle now that we’ve lost our thunder, but in the flash of moon every October, my att -
Winter Solstice
by Ken WaldmanWhen the short days feel inexpressible. When nothing's left of fall. When the dark entry of winter makes each of us shrink. When relatives finally call. Some of us burrow. Some of us bake. Some of us leave the year behind. Some of us take. Some of us travel into the cold, ice, and snow—the moon's crescent reminding us to go easy. We've been here before. -
A Winter Morning
blue skies and winter sunshine moves me forward as I sit here framed in light bathed in morning’s warmth as full glass windows hold out the cold while also holding all of Lake Ann’s Bear Cove a blanket of diamond sparkles lights up the waters moving in quick time across the lake — seemingly, forever moving towards me in such a delightful dance pulling me straight up to blue skies, my spirit rises and I standing bare stark and naked pale against a winter sunshine if for only a moment free . . -
Tides for Sale
Static time Big old stupid city On the embankment of rug and tassel What could lap At a shore this old But pruned and petted candies Strings of sponge From tops of heads A boat rocks aside: a hand meets charge: a tide shifts: a mountain learns a new name Water doesn’t need to set aside time To say yes It laps it over and over again with nothing to count An ancient time can now be pixels But don’t forget to bring your enchanted gloves The water hurts but it must be bottled In line for s -
Counting Trees
The air is different here. My block in Royal Oak Township on Detroit’s border has become relatively bereft of trees. My block in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a mere forty-five minute drive away, is lousy with them. My husband Shawn cut down a healthy, old growth maple so he could better sun himself on the back deck. I still mourn the tree four years later. I can see ten mature trees through the narrow view from the windows of my office. Littleleaf Linden, Red Sunset Maple and Emerald Green Arborvitae tr -
You Can Change Your Life in Arkansas
by Ken WaldmanEspecially if you fly on Christmas, the hours in the air a meditation upon the months and year. You think salvation might be yours if only you shake your fist at some old slight, look ahead to this in-between state, a place of transition between east, west, north, south. It’s like fiction, you think, these strange and busy weeks. Success seems elusive. Yet isn’t it success to think freely, as you’re doing now, high above clouds, imagining how your art will sustain you. Colorado, Texas, Arkansas. -
Shadowleaves
I am colors on the outside I brush up against my insides rushing forward I trace myself back into life — living folded up against the world charting a course I am pressed like a grain of sand it’s crystal clear I’m cut off from my own sight imagine I am neither mix nor colors I find not a hue of myself only the spirit of shadowleaves -
There Is a Door
“At the end of my suffering, there was a door.” ~ Louise Gluck Always. Across the once-green expanse hilling the horizon edged with cedars leaning into each other in the sun right before the wind returns to clear us of all this humidity, the righteous angst of being human, which is not to say it was easy: we were lost here, like hurricanes stationed in place against their will to dissolve into oceans. We were afraid often of it never ending, pain so fluent in speaking the language of forever -
Perfumed Estrangement
It happened at the mall Like most of my formative experiences I was eight - maybe nine - years old Looking at the captivating perfume bottles in the cosmetics section The gilded liquids flooded with lights Mesmerized me When I looked up I saw an old lady And she was somehow familiar I tasted sublime terror for the first time It was my other Grandmother I don’t know How I knew who she was What level of my subconscious mind recognized her All I knew was the tension between feeling Like I knew he -
Untitled
Last breaths dilly dally like colorful fall leaves falling To the ground in reverse. They dilly dally upward Out of the building Into the sky Past the clouds Into space Into the universe Last breaths are kissed by the sun And land on stars Where they become light and energy Last breaths are what you see when you look up at the sky at night. Last breaths are what make the stars twinkle. When you see the twinkle of a star Your soul becomes one With the one You grieve And what stays between y -
Cold Shoulder
by C.D. WhiteYour memory scrabbles at my waking dreams sometimes like starving juncos in winter’s wind scratching at the snow for food. It seems you slipped away down some ice-bound North Slope of the mind, inexplicably charting a course beyond the hope of thaw. From there you wield your absence like a frozen whip of silence, meant to punish those you loved and will not name. I sadly feel the lashes cut then slice their cruel path back to you, disfiguring your image in the eyes of all who cannot see you. -
Anatomy and Physiology
by Dani KuntzWhen I die, I don’t want the cat’s papillae to tear me apart. I don’t want my flesh to be stripped from my bones. I don’t want the maggots that gather in Henry’s pocket to burrow into my orifices. I want the cat to smell the decay rising from my body. I want it to walk in its prints so as not to wake me up. I want it to pass through my skeleton wherever its head can fit. -
Wombs
How many molecular functions were swiped up by dust rags from behind the cookie jar, thesis statements spun around mixing bowls with room temperature butter and vanilla, legal challenges that couldn’t escape Monday’s mopping even tucked under the bottom edge of the cabinet, peace-talks threaded and stitched into new curtains, full minds swept the front porches before 8am each day, soothed teething infants while daydreaming in binary The spring I graduated college she took my hand in one of hers -
Kindness
Walking down the circular path to the vaulted room – Radiation treatment soon. Turning the corner, she looked up smiling at me. She just finished her treatment. Seven or eight, I think. Snuggled in her arm, she carried a Teddy Bear. “Does that help?” I asked. She smiled, “Yes.” The next day walking the path there he was, sitting on the hand rail – her Teddy Bear. “Oh no, look she forgot her bear.” “No, she didn’t.” I looked at my guide confused. “No, she left him for you.” My Dad always tol -
The Sirens of the Buffalo River
The androgynous sirens of the Buffalo River— they are not female destroying angels— appear to me in the full moon light around alternate bends in the river. They take the form of loose-limbed, fluid-dancing otters dressed in miles and miles of light-spangled, flowing black silk. Dip your hands into their essence, the water, warm as a sensory deprivation tank. But no sensory deprivation here, only full sensory immersion in holy water. Lower your whole body into their embrace and allow them to wr -
A Bone of Contention with the Ghost of John Lennon over Strawberry Fields Forever
last year I turned each unripe berry’s curve to the sun, creeping through a single row; their red hearts and green leaves dotted by starry blooms. they were few enough. there was time for such indulgent care and contemplation. this year with mother plants settled in rich soil, the unruly daughters run amok by the dozens, march-dancing fifty feet in and out of a quadruple-wide row, their leaves in mudras of ecstatic hand jive, declaring their wild passions. i crawl on hands and knees, between b -
The Rupture/The Silence
The classroom breathes warm vanilla sugar first chill of winter fogs the windows cloudy come for one of us, come for us all: a poster warns across the room a teacher asks for silence the students instead flouting wildflowers in a circle, the black girls outnumber the black boys who scatter to outnumber the brown boys who outnumber no one speaking Spanish to themselves some of the black girls sit pretty and neat some of the black girls sit wide and long and some curl tightly in a desk too small -
Ode to Parentheses
My words cupped in your soft hands. Suspended in anticipation of an exclamation I am frightened to put in fully fleshed ink. Holder of all unuttered phrases. Your sides glide in and out as forgiving as a womb. Amenable. Open ended in your rather precarious nature. You anchor me in your fluidity. -
Man vs. Nature vs. Self
by Dani KuntzIt is easy to sit yourself down and write about nature, because it is simple, but it is beautiful. Harder to explicate the spiral your mind takes nightly. I no longer try to explain it. But still, I sit still, and I remember. I don’t want to, but I do and so I do: Rushing waters break even in front and smile. Black sky, bursting light, I capture a maudlin moment. You say you love me. Restless black hair, tears of the mind swim around. Vows are made to be broken I think when they are broken. -
Pandemic Time
1 The dog goes out. The cat comes in. Daffodils! So early, and a day later, sleet clinging to their surprised ruffles. The ceiling fan spins. Redbuds vivid as the fire green of the undergrowth dissolve the prevernal into anticipation and rain. I sit up in my safe bed, unable to remember what I dreamt or why my girlhood chest trembles in its 60-year-old skin. Tomorrow, my skin and I will walk and bend low to where lily-of-the-valley finally matches time, which is not time as I knew or embellis -
The Disorderly Order of the Forest
I go for the birdsong, smell of pines, disorderly order of the forest it owns mysteries, miracles – trees – some reach a hundred feet to the sky some lay across the trail spawn a universe in their rotting trunk last week I drove to the trailhead a phalanx of shimmery women floated out of the forest chased by the fire which created them on trail silvery threads covered the ground soot stained shriveled tree branches; occasional bright green ferns preened among blackened pine cones I hiked ahe -
December and Everything After
You are in the savor of night’s tempted mouth open for swallowing dreams for I may not survive this wave any more than you have already swum but I am calling out – moon, may you release morning? light’s favor is what I need for tonight, is the end – the dead end I have been waiting for and you, I call you december for you are too winter to refuse and everything has already crystallized. you were the never-ending story I’d call out to for tales told/retold faintly true but my mercy has run d -
Death Sonnets
I Everyone gets a poet or a parrot to sit on their shoulders - Ruth Dickey The night you died was a season I couldn’t place, in some vague, half-remembered hour. You left me a tiny minotaur and some homoerotic art. I continue to write about your exit, although I don’t acquit you of desertion. You might have had one of those elegant Asian endings, a memorial in bamboo or dragonflies, or been vaporized. For me, you ended metaphysical. I prefer you physical. You put wow in my mouth. But you v -
A New Season
God’s light shines through nature, We walk the fields We walk the paths We walk the roads See Beauty surrounds us If we take time to see If we walk outside Listen Even in empty spaces Green grass still grows Beautiful flowers still bloom Love Reminding us that, yes, This new season shall pass too Hearts still grow! -
Where Monsters Wait
How deep was once the ocean? How perilous was once the sea? Unknown dangers graved the monstrous depth. From crow’s nests mates watched leviathans breech and deadly doldrums lie in wait, to snare mariners, take them hostage and bind them with skeins of fate. Explorers lost even as keels ground on an uncharted, unknown reef. My analyst could not comprehend; the pain of dreams and memories, my inward journey. Perhaps PTSD did not exist in his diagnostic manual. Sadly, his father had died when he -
BOOM!
I jumped straight up Outta my rollaway bed outside Our only bathroom. That wasn’t no .38 or 12 gauge. I could sleep right thru those reports by then Aware enough y’know, But, still clinging to whatever meager dreams… Naw, this was something else. Some crazy mf done gone and got hisself a cannon. N.E. 4th & Kelley. -
Compliance at a Roadside Detainment
by Bill McCloudThe young skinny black man placed his wrists behind his back and mumbled past the group of officers and out into the universe Do what you’re gonna do Do what you’re gonna do Just do what you’re gonna do Do what you were already gonna do Do what you always were gonna do -
The Last Light of the Year
In the house, the heat kicks on, the refrigerator hums a room steady. The last hedge apple on the tree rolls down the roof, and the cat jumps on the table. The friend you love is all ashes now waiting for you and others to scatter. The ideas you have about time or what's right are lighter than all that ash. See the budded ends of the cottonwood, months away from unfurling? It's like that, and also this: green-black etchings of cedars waver on the soft sky. Headlights from the crest of a hi -
The Promise of the Stellar Charm
for Lila on the occasion of turning 13 Before the rising of the stars there was the goddess, whose labor is marked by the milky pattern left when she flung herself into the fire from which you all come. Every one of you is a dying blaze and the light you see now, in things and in each other, long ago sputtered its last breath. Three times the goddess spoke my name, and on each of these occasions a star burst into flame. I carry the gifts on my belt that I might be the true shepherd, the prote -
Runways of Runaways
Smoke unfurls under a light, midnight Cowboys and Cowgirls stalk steady half-dressed streets, runways of runaways. They are unfinished manuscripts scattered around work desks of desperation. Discarded humans are here consumed at the pleasure of others. What happens when you are under a light, would you unfurl too? -
In the Middle of Cancer
I thought I wouldn't be myself anymore just on the edge of all that chemo, which I walked, step by infusion for months, scared but mostly tired, bored, thrashing in the tangle of small and large irritations. Unable to sleep at night, I sat up at 2 a.m., the sky swirling with tiny particles of light in the vast field of snow, voles and rabbits, later vanished in stray strands of sunlight. I turned to wait out pain in surprising bones, the abrupt reverse of drowning when coming out of anesthes -
A Poem (in explanation)
by Bill McCloudA poem worth killing for is less than a poem A poem worth dying for is more than a poem All else is a poem -
Sunday Coffee
Mama always brewed hot, black coffee on Sunday mornings We all wondered if that was the special Jesus potion to bring our Daddy back to us His whiskey-scorched eyes tried to meet my cornflower ones, but they could not Our danced-on, spilled-on hardwoods always got the best of Daddy’s eyes I missed him his wrinkled dollar bills he gave me to skip to the 7-11 for all the candy four quarters could buy I loved the bottle caps and candy cigarettes and how Daddy sometimes smoked with me his Winston -
Time Travel is More Complicated
When they were young, I read to my children every night, first together then separately, as their tastes and reading levels parted. I don’t know why. It’s what the experts said you should do. My Father’s Dragon, Charlie and his chocolate. Anne of Green Gables. I think they liked it. I know I did. If I could freeze time, preserve a single moment in amber, it would be that. If I could fly faster than the speed of light, it would be only to travel back to that bedroom, children clustered, reading -
Yarivah Eavesdrops by the Boys’ Bunkroom
after John Dryden and Miguel Antonio Caro Aeneid IX translations She leaned against the cabin sill—her calf love lost— While Foshie chickenscratched frenzy, sculpted lite scifi in a fettered jaundice folder (the cat’s paw to her rivulet thinking) near her beau’s bunk; and stopped to tarry, catch some writer unspool sudden lines. Plunged in his own moment’s razor gaze, he muttered: “When you a mortal can’t begin to comprehend its effects on your ordained action, the burden, all it is, all it co -
True Heroes
by Woody BarlowAs she settled uncomfortably On the linoleum floor Tired beyond words I gave an oath! She thought She had not seen her children in weeks In fear of spreading Covid-19 To her family Poor food Intermittent sleep Reused masks and PPE’s Death at every turn For doctors and nurses And other colleges Now just more covered bodies The less dedicated quit From frustration And fear And lack of support The struggle was real For those who remained As another patient flat lined Why fight for the next patie -
The Fine Art of Suspension
by Carolyn DahlHebe Watering Zeus Eagle: Johann Baptist Lampi A night shadow, bold and fringed, crosses the moon. Tamed by gravity, an eagle lands on a woman’s wrist, the flesh on her arm tender and tearable in beak and claws, if the bird so wished. The artist knows terrestrial touch is not a raptor’s domain, so one wing, the span of nightmares, stays raised, curved behind bare shoulders like a pinioned collar. In my backyard, I offer songbirds simple seeds, but uninvited, a hawk arrives to feast on fragile -
What Are Tears
What are tears but intimations? Gems are formed against the grain, Beauty born of desolation, The soul's response to a heart's repression, Lustrous pearl round seeds of pain. What are tears but intimations? Mountains thrive in deprivation But granite walls endure in vain, Beauty born of desolation. Zephyrs whisper Time's confession As fragile canyons are carved by rain. What are tears but intimations Of death's defeat by life's obsession, Erecting joy from grief's remains, Beauty born of des -
Remain in Mexico
there is the Rio Bravo, a green viper you could ride away from the tent city but for remembering Oscar’s failed swim baby girl tucked in his shirt, wriggling gulping, the scent of her fine hair dissolving the unseen currents pulling them down then up never enough up to keep breathing so you and a thousand like you remain in Mexico, alive in the plaza at the foot of the Gateway International Bridge your bed a yoga mat on the street the August sweat salts your skin spiders and flies gnaw it all n -
On Hà Nội Street
He was so tall; when I looked up at him, in his eyes I wanted to see the Statue of Liberty bathed in the sunlight of his homeland. Instead, sorrow rolled down his face, trembling on his cheeks. “Mỹ Lai,” he said, “I just visited Mỹ Lai.” Then in his eyes, the photos he’d seen there at the site of the massacre came back: a mother clutching her son in their deaths, bodies of barefoot women strewn across muddy paths, naked children, cold, and silent under the feet of American soldiers who stood an -
While I was at War…
My hair started turning white While God took a vacation Supposedly To work with Stephen Hawking On his second law of black hole dynamics Mrs God knew It was God’s way of saying He would be out chasing Jung women She was Jung once herself Me I had been sucked into a black hole where you could smell your hair turning white before you saw it Where both past and present flickered past like a star burst flare reflecting on a rice paddy
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star shine
by Shin Yu Paiin the search for signs of intelligent life, we are blinded by want of a twin we measure flux, gunned through a telescope, seeking the sun that comes right at us, to shine it’s light upon a distant world still unborn, but of the mind bathed in starlight in the search for signs of intelligent life, we are blinded by want of a twin her face turned towards you in resonance, we plot confirmation from the spheres that were there at birth, mapping the gap between cosmos to astrum revealing myste -
Salinger is Dead
by Bill McCloud(and the manned space program is ailing) 1965 high-school English class We’ve all read Holden and Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies Men were in space and we were racing to the moon But in the 2010 world Salinger dies at 91 having not published anything since 1965 and the Constellation program planned to replace the Space Shuttle is cancelled All our dreams all our dreams all our youthful dreams once defined now destined to come to fruition, never -
Gun Control
by Woody Barlow300 million guns Which one will he choose? Semi or full automatic Regardless, you lose. Will gun control save you From his disease? With a handful of dollars He can buy what he needs. What is the answer? We are unarmed you say Will we ever be safe? Or die in his rage. The Second Amendment Comes at a cost It will not change Until many are lost. Our right to bear arms Is an unprincipled freedom Guns are killing More than Mr. Lincoln. -
The Luck of the Child
Last night, my son set a leprechaun trap, a cardboard box held up on one side by a drumstick, the knobby wooden torso of the stick ready to pull the box over a small magical creature full of gold. My son says, if we catch him, we get to make three wishes. He sets a small red double decker bus under the box to play with, no cookies or food because of the dog, adds a plush toy to rest on, maybe to lure him in. Before my son falls asleep, he tiptoes in to see if the trap has been sprung, then to m -
Advice
By a lake shaped like a cartoon parrot We practiced the simple art. You were 17 and I was 19, two years between us and then I was twenty. This is the simple math. It was Florida in the Sixties and your aunt said, don’t grin honey, you don’t want to work your skin like that. She told me, one day you’ll be dead, but meanwhile put on some lipstick, wear a cute skirt. -
A Bird Flew By
A bird flew by And it carried my attention away… Into the endless blue sky. I gave it willingly. The fresh green mitten-shaped leaves Of a sassafras waved from among other trees And held my attention. I gave it freely. The dancing shadows of the dogwood Traveled through the window and onto the wall. How perfect they were. I accepted the gift gladly. The sorrow of loss can be great. I seek joy and solace in the abundant gifts Of friendship and art, music and nature. I notice the -
Are You OK?
by Bill McCloudAre you OK? I can’t tell you how many times over the years that family or close friends have asked me that question I always thought it was silly a dumb question Of course I am What are you talking about? Looking back now all these years later I’m thinking that when they were looking into my eyes they were seeing a future time A time like now when the question makes so much sense but no one’s asking (for my dad) -
Sarah Lawrence
by Bill McCloudGetting ready to lift off from Dong Tam he made sure the Army nurse was buckled in hooked up He said You doin’ okay? She said: I wanted to go to Sarah Lawrence He said hang on just hang on She said: I wanted to go to Sarah Lawrence He said I heard you did all that you could That no one could have done more She said: I wanted to go to Sarah Lawrence I should’ve gone to Sarah Lawrence ‘Sarah Lawrence’ can be found in Bill’s poetry book, The Smell of Light, taken from letters -
Bees
When Larry’s garden began the work of burgeoning, it had no more memory of last fall’s turned earth than smoke has of fire. It began to push and stretch with the smallest stem and no blossom. The bees worked the catnip in Larry’s garden, their work, the work of plant making, the work of hum, relational, unconditional. I imagine the harvest in Larry’s garden the way a river might imagine its future canyon. I imagine the catnip—a huge bush that when it’s flowered, will be pulled for the lions -
The Studio
(A love story written in 1983) The studio, just a gleam in our eyes when plans slipped out of our hands, scattered sending us frolicking. We staked out intentions changing blueprints as lust dissolved, and windows opened to our souls. Foundation – poured. For months, the sound of your voice, my muse. Our creation unfolded like magic barely tolerated by reality. The dungeon door, my idea, embraced our mystery. The loft, your idea, lifted us high on each other. The touch -
About the South
Polka dots go there to be reborn under a dry sky that relishes its deep knowledge of jay and a carcass on the verge associates with vultures under a storm of Kudzu vines, as barn cats writhe and posture according to their calendar. Polka dots go where corn knows the tribulation of becoming hominy, where scattered tinfoil draws a murder and its crows and mamma fries the Sunday chicken, peppered, dipped in egg and flour, as she sidesteps rumors of coon stew served with pone, the scr -
Subtext
In this distance-learning class I have sixteen students from seven separate schools and of those eager, energetic souls four are named Caitlyn (Kaitlyn/Kaitlin/Katelyn). Statistically speaking, this means 25% of the class is named Caitlyn. And each of them spells it differently. I am reduced to calling on Kaitlin from Guthrie, or Caitlyn in Choctaw. But in my mind I’m hearing Kaitlyn, the Amazon Warrior Caitlyn, Assassin of the Cult of the Red Scimitars Kaitlyn Who Must Be Obeyed, -
Undress
There’s no way to turn off the days’ lengthening, no way to stop the gnats gathering like dust against the backdoor or the late moths stacked around the porch light’s slanted shine. This is the season that loses night, an outgrown black sleeve showing off a pallid wrist. It arrives stinking of new weeds and frog spawn. You can't resist the bob and blow of its standard weathers, the breeze and shower that decorate its branches with dogwood blossom, its sodden soil with tulip and
A Petal In Arkansas
Intimation
Dead Poets Society
Anarchy
