I Age (V2) Arthritis and aging make it hard, I walk gingerly, with a cane, and walk slow, bent forward, fear threats, falls, fear denouement─ I turn pages, my family albums become a task. But I can still bake and shake, sugar cookies, sweet potato, lemon meringue pies. Alone, most of my time, but never on Sundays, friends and communion, United Church of Canada. I chug a few down, love my Blonde Canadian Pale Ale, Copenhagen long cut a pinch of snuff. I can still dance the Boogie-woogie, Lindy Hop in my living room, with my nursing care home partner. Aging has left me with youthful dimples, but few long-term promises.
Crypt in the Sky (V2) Order me up, no one knows where this crypt in the sky like a condo on the 5th floor suite don’t sell me out over the years; please don’t bury me beneath this ground, don’t let me decay inside my time pine casket. Don’t let me burn to cremate skull last to turn to ashes. Treasure me high where no one goes, no arms reach, stretch. Building for the Centuries then just let it fall. These few precious dry bones preserved for you, sealed in the cloud no relocation is necessary, no flowers need to be planted, no dusting off that dust each year, no sinners can reach this high. Jesus’ heaven, Jesus’ sky. Note: Dedicated to the passing of beloved Katie Balaskas.
Priscilla, Let’s Dance (V2) Priscilla, Puerto Rican songbird, an island jungle dancer, Cuban heritage, rare parrot, a singer survivor near extinction. She sounds off on notes, music her vocals hearing background bongos, piano keys, Cuban horns. Quote the verse patterns, quilt the pieces skirt bleeds, then blend colors to light a tropical prism. Steamy Salsa, a little twist, cha-cha-cha dancing rhythms of passions, sacred these islands. Everything she has is movement tucked nice and tight but explosive. She mimics these ancient sounds showing her ribs, her naked body. Her ex-lovers remain nightmares pointed daggers, so criminal, so stereotyped. Priscilla purifies her dreams with repentance. She pours her heart out, everything condensed to the bone, petite boobies, cheap bras, flamboyant G-strings. Her vocabulary is that of sin and Catholicism. Island hurricanes form her own Jesus slants of hail, detonate thunder, the collapse of hell in her hands after midnight. Priscilla remains a background rabble-rouser, almost remorseful, no apologies to the counsel of Judas wherever he hangs.
Willow Tree Poem (V2) Wind dancers dancing to the willow wind, lance-shaped leaves swaying right to left all day long. I’m depressed. Birds hanging on- bleaching feathers out into the sun.
Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. Today he is a poet in the greater Chicagoland area, IL. He has 283 YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 44 countries, a song lyricist, has several published poetry books, has been nominated for 6 Pushcart Prize awards, and 6 Best of the Net nominations. He is editor-in-chief of 3 poetry anthologies, all available on Amazon, and has several poetry books and chapbooks. He has over 453 published poems. Michael is the administrator of 6 Facebook Poetry groups. Member Illinois State Poetry Society: http://www.illinoispoets.org/
Something
for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba
Something inescapable is lost—
lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,
vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars
immeasurable and void.
Something uncapturable is gone—
gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn,
scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass
and remembrance.
Something unforgettable is past—
blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less,
which finality has swept into a corner ... where it lies
in dust and cobwebs and silence.
Styx
Black waters—deep and dark and still.
All men have passed this way, or will.
Spring Was Delayed
Winter came early:
the driving snows,
the delicate frosts
that crystallize
all we forget
or refuse to know,
all we regret
that makes us wise.
Spring was delayed:
the nubile rose,
the tentative sun,
the wind’s soft sighs,
all we omit
or refuse to show,
whatever we shield
behind guarded eyes.
Infinity
for Beth
Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair?
Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air
that your soul sought its shell like a crab on a beach,
then scuttled inside to be safe, out of reach?
Might I lift you tonight from earth’s wreckage and damage
on these waves gently rising to pay the moon homage?
Or better, perhaps, let me say that I, too,
have dreamed of infinity . . . windswept and blue.
Hearthside
“When you are old and grey and full of sleep...” — W. B. Yeats
For all that we professed of love, we knew
this night would come, that we would bend alone
to tend wan fires’ dimming bars—the moan
of wind cruel as the Trumpet, gelid dew
an eerie presence on encrusted logs
we hoard like jewels, embrittled so ourselves.
The books that line these close, familiar shelves
loom down like dreary chaperones. Wild dogs,
too old for mates, cringe furtive in the park,
as, toothless now, I frame this parchment kiss.
I do not know the words for easy bliss
and so my shriveled fingers clutch this stark,
long-unenamored pen and will it: Move.
I loved you more than words, so let words prove.
Love Has a Southern Flavor
Love has a Southern flavor: honeydew,
ripe cantaloupe, the honeysuckle’s spout
we tilt to basking faces to breathe out
the ordinary, and inhale perfume ...
Love’s Dixieland-rambunctious: tangled vines,
wild clematis, the gold-brocaded leaves
that will not keep their order in the trees,
unmentionables that peek from dancing lines ...
Love cannot be contained, like Southern nights:
the constellations’ dying mysteries,
the fireflies that hum to light, each tree’s
resplendent autumn cape, a genteel sight ...
Love also is as wild, as sprawling-sweet,
as decadent as the wet leaves at our feet.
Remembering Not to Call
a villanelle permitting mourning, for my mother, Christine Ena Burch
The hardest thing of all,
after telling her everything,
is remembering not to call.
Now the phone hanging on the wall
will never announce her ring:
the hardest thing of all
for children, however tall.
And the hardest thing this spring
will be remembering not to call
the one who was everything.
That the songbirds will nevermore sing
is the hardest thing of all
for those who once listened, in thrall,
and welcomed the message they bring,
since they won’t remember to call.
And the hardest thing this fall
will be a number with no one to ring.
No, the hardest thing of all
is remembering not to call.
Sunset
for my grandfather, George Edwin Hurt Sr.
Between the prophecies of morning
and twilight’s revelations of wonder,
the sky is ripped asunder.
The moon lurks in the clouds,
waiting, as if to plunder
the dusk of its lilac iridescence,
The
and in the bright-tentacled sunset
we imagine a presence
full of the fury of lost innocence.
What we find within strange whorls of drifting flame,
brief patterns mauling winds deform and maim,
we recognize at once, but cannot name.
Michael R. Burch is an American poet who lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife Beth and two incredibly spoiled puppies. He has over 6,000 publications, including poems that have gone viral. His poems, translations, essays, articles, letters, epigrams, jokes and puns have been published by TIME, USA Today, BBC Radio 3, Writer’s Digest–The Year’s Best Writing and hundreds of literary journals. His poetry has been translated into 14 languages, taught in high schools and colleges, and set to music by 23 composers, including two potential operas if the money ever materializes. He also edits www.thehypertexts.com, has served as editor of international poetry and translations for Better Than Starbucks, is on the board of Borderless Journal, an international literary journal, and has judged a number of poetry contests over the years.
GIN RUMMIES
To find a friend one must close one eye.
To keep him—two.
—Norman Douglas
for Rodney Formon
Friday nights, a fry-cook,
arms scarred by sizzling fat,
Rodney bangs on my door.
We like to drink together,
shoot the breeze, and laugh.
Drunk enough, we sing!
It’s karaoke with CDs scattered
on the table, improvisational
shandygaffs and combinations
you can’t enjoy with your relations.
It’s good to have a drinking buddy.
I’ve used up two already—
one who fell down a flight of stairs
and one, who was much older,
who died of his warrior life.
But now I’ve got Rodney,
who is very different from the others.
The other two were quite and somewhat
intellectual, and where the one
could talk history or science, art,
music, or just about any subject
in just about any language and come back,
being polyglot, and polymath,
even polymorphic, after hooch;
the other was a man of action,
a war hero with many medals
tucked away in drawers locked
by indifference, but still would tell of
weapons, arms and the man, and such
with fervor—my Heraclitus—
and also with disgust, with
fatalism, believing nothing
changes in man’s fighting nature,
disposed to think the worst;
but enthusiastic over chess,
which he played in earnest
as if he were at war again.
But Rodney is another sort:
He knows I write but will not read
a word I write, nor much else either,
but likes the Internet so much
he slides crabwise in thought,
toward what depth of cyberspace
I often cannot fathom until zing
I see it for myself, or am I drunk?
I see with Rodney that the other two,
complimented first my young and then
my middle-aged delusions
of a deeper self-knowledge
than available to most. Yes, Rodney
shows me to myself, or shows me
to my youthful ghosts, as ego-fed,
but did and does this unintentionally,
whose wonderful indifference makes me shrink
like a cock in the cold, and chug my drink.
THE FIDDLER
An Appalachian Tale
Played the devil’s fiddle, stomping to it, shaking it out,
full of corned blood, his boot down down down!
Days before the corn, his old bitch Lucy lay by his piston heel.
Said later she smelled it, stayed by it, waiting
for the meaty bone; said later never done him no harm at all;
said later not even a ghost of evil but Lucy got it,
old bloodhound bitch like red clay, wrinkled old lady hanging
from her own bones—could make her moon-howl,
pointing his wild bow—do that at dances. Devil in a Baptist,
playing the fiddle. Gradual as the mountains,
he found out how the devil got in. Fiddle under his spiked,
gray chin, corn jug thumb-hooked and cradled on top
his elbow—capful for Lucy—then stomp stomp stomp: music
through Blue Ridge pines! Could choo choo it
so’s you see smoke and steam, hear that wheezy accordion whistle;
could conjure with it up a trainload of places
or turn you back home to the station of pines and blue smoke
mountains, bring musical rain, or put the devil
in your heart, winking and drinking and stomping. Everybody loved
him and his Lucy, including said devil, as the corn dropped
down into his right big toe. Said it hurt to stomp. But it don’t
stop the fiddler. Don’t nothing stop the fiddler! He was
one thing else than music; he was a man. Take more’n corn going
through, dropping down in my right big toe, says at
the May dance, everybody seeing him stomp, ouch ouch ouch on
his big red gray spiked old corned face. Devil
got in through the corn, slick as silk; got down in my boot,
but I’ll stomp him out; give old Satan a head-
ache—stomp stomp stomp! But that corn went to killing him.
His bow was flying! Went on like this, folks say,
a tad’s five year, him stomping the devil in the corn and the devil
stomping back. Said now he couldn’t play no more if
he don’t get rid o’ that old devil. Takes him a broad wood chisel
out back on a stump, sets his right foot up, sets
that chisel to his toe, and strikes down with a good hefty hammer.
When he pulls back his foot, that devil in the corned toe
stays on the stump, says looka me, I’m off! Has brought him
some fireplace soot and some gingham. Sticks that foot
in that black soot, to staunch the blood, and wraps it in gingham
rags. Said never done him no harm again, quiet as a bone,
and he goes back to stomping in peace, rid of the devil. But
first, he throws that old corned toe to Lucy. Says:
I knowed you always wanted it. Now mind the nail, Lucy; don’t let
the devil get you, you drunk old droop-skinned hound
bitch, cuz I love you. And Lucy goes to lickin’ that toe, pops
it in, and goes to grinding up that devil in her old ground down
chops. And next time we see them, the fiddler and his drunk bitch,
they both full of corn, and ready, now, for the dance!
Schorb’s work has appeared in Agenda (UK), The American Scholar, The Carolina Quarterly, The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, Stand (UK), The Sewanee Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The North American Review, Poetry Salzburg Review (AU), The Yale Review, and Oxford Poetry (UK), among others.
His collection, Murderer’s Day, was awarded the Verna Emery Poetry Prize and published by Purdue University Press, and a subsequent collection, Time and Fevers, was the recipient of the Writer’s Digest International Self-Published Award for Poetry and also an Eric Hoffer Award.
Most recently, his novel R&R a Sex Comedy was awarded the Beverly Hills Book Award for Humor.
the point being not every photo matters, and neither every memory. not to mention, they shape; they shift. like sands through the hourglass. these are the days of our lives. no semicolons. follow the rules. 9 i love homonyms [right this way.] (how much poetry is laziness, e.e. cummings?) the nine taking on significance suddenly. number nine. number nine. i went through a phase of thinking i was john lennon reincarnated. i guess that's probably not normal. i want to save this all for you, but there is nothing. nothing could possibly hold it all. what is this and what is all? the point being: salt of the earth i will make mountains, move mountains - all with my mind (i'd rather be crushed than wait) i'll pick the short stick. i'll wonder aloud at comprehensible ideas and miss the point. i'll stretch too thin and disappear--grasping/reaching/flailing beyond reforming out of place lavaseepingneversleeping i'll take everything with grains of salt fragile prisms of humanity created through brutality. [pay your taxes!] :) : ( pinnacle we've scrambled and strove. the trash mountain of our past accomplishments. it's growing fast and we can't keep up. and here we are, at the pinnacle, celebrating, teetering at the top freefall from our forte of falsity, fame, freedom, or whatever we want it to be in the metaverse. will we be free, then, from chronological misery, mr. musk? mr. zuckerberg? gentlemen, what are your thoughts?
Jessica Skyfield is currently a teacher. She has been a scientist, a mother, will always be a student, and worn other hats, too. Her poems seek to bring light to our struggle with our awareness of our humanity: the juxtaposition of the smallness of ourselves when viewed universally and yet the large impact each of our individual actions can have.
Teetering Toward Sattva My friend’s mother would tell him, I created you and I can destroy you, as though, like Parvati with Ganesh, she had literally made him from a mixture of earth and her perspiration, brought him to life with her breath. Śaivasampradāyaḥ believe Shiva is the creator, preserver, and destroyer of the cosmos. Does that mean mothers are his avatāra and children their miniature multiverses? I wouldn’t know. I’m not a mother. Mine may have been a god to me when I was little (it’s likely she was) but I remember her as my universe. One I destroyed over and over with the choices I made, huddled and weeping and bereft, my days-old sweat a blend of scotch and cigarettes and dirt from the alleys where I crouched for decades. Now those years have passed and so has she. Neither creator nor destroyer, she preserved her dreams for/in me and I live them with her hands, callused, dry-darkened at the knuckles, soft, cool. They wash away the grime so I can live for today. So I can live for us both. So I can live. Anteyesti to Anay Your body burns as your mother weeps her son into a letter. I read it, edges fluttering in the summer wind like wings, like the ashes we scatter in the canyon’s river. She asks why you wanted to melt into memory, fleeting desert snow beneath the sun of our hot grief. And in that brutal light, she begs for rain to swoop down and flood her cracked earth. (… As We Know It) Reset: Kritayuga Begins Again When the apocalypse comes what becomes of the astronaut who floats in the space station and sees the sun as it really is – a silvery white flare, incandescent as fireworks arching over our greening blue Earth?
Kalpita Pathak is an autistic poet, novelist, and advocate with a passion for research and sensory-rich details. Her work tends to explore the perseverance of hope in a sometimes despairing world, with a little dark humor and magic added to the mix. She received the James Michener Fellowship for her MFA in creative writing and has taught at both the college level and in school programs for kids from three to eighteen. She has recently been published in Mediterranean Poetry.
Sheep Dreams
My sheep stumble down the plank
and jump ship
crashing into waters whisking with every shark
that ever detected the drunken cologne
of my blood
PLACE SETTING
Where you live when you are not where you are living, and by living, I mean residing.
And by live, I’m referencing the space constructed of memory and curiosity. And by curiosity,
I speak of the galaxy where dead wishes can’t be piled like bodies. They float seamlessly,
snag your eyes with a twinkle of a wink. A location as unattainable as those aspirations you
gifted pulse and game plan. Then suffocated, ripped to portions, and ingested slowly. Well, shit.
The setting of a play, a place, the actors are not all actors, you are writer, director, knowing
it will never be produced.
FIN
Ghosted
I ghosted myself
or am I a ghost to myself?
Haunting my leftovers, haunted by what
I left over in a geography
without space or proof.
Hushing Heroes
I’ve been reading my heroes wrong
I’ve been reading my heroes bedtime stories
A collection of heroes
is a herd of one’s own insecurities
I’m rocking both to sleep
Bekah Steimel is an internationally published poetic person who was “mostly dead, slightly alive” on VV ECMO life support in 2019 from double lung failure (get your flu shot! And, COVID vaccine as well!). An artist reporting back from the other side. Developing Chance Books LLC. She can be found online at bekahsteimel.com and followed @BekahSteimel.
1] The Rain-Wet Rats She bathed in cold fire which softly sterilized Her fitful thoughts circling constantly Back to what gets lost, what set free, Gently startled, but not at all surprised. The cold front rattles in with peevish rain Concealed by darkness in the morning chill But nudging at the mind as hostile specters will, Cold drops rattling like a fatal chain. Can she be easy regulating the fates Of two dozen dirty peasants with staring eyes And rusty pitchforks, furious at lies, Shrieking in the rain outside her gates? Is risk or safety the best choice to make? The rain outside keeps rattling like a snake. The rafters of civilization broke that day, And all the rain-wet rats nimbly raced Away like greyhounds, all order displaced, And she ducked aside to hide out of the way. Thunder crashed, as it were, and she Smiled secretly and thought of my face Aping consternation ludicrously. 2] Symbolist Gunslinger Purges His Vocabulary Lovely ladies, decked with smiles and flowers, Dissolve all war and ugliness generously, Gently repudiating suspicion, hostility, Disarming all the cowboys’ macho powers. Let sunshine warm where desert heat once dried. Let kindness soothe the pain of outraged minds And cool the excessive heat that burns and blinds. Let understanding leave rough men satisfied. For this is a magic, a witchcraft you yield, Medea, Medusa, Miranda, Antigone, Criseyde, Duessa, at times ferociously, And Judith, and the fair witch I once met Upon the meads, whose ring I wear within My blood-curdled heart, and will wear when Chariots descend to collect my fatal debt. Lovely ladies, let the world spin away Its grief, let conflict fire our blessed sunlight, Let the right simplicity be ours today, And the right words bless our witless dreams tonight. 3] Jukebox Catullus Hums and Strums I can’t stop playing Banquo’s ghost, And blood runs everywhere each time I twitch, And somewhere my corpse is bleeding in a ditch, And you’re still indifferent to who loves you most Despite this commitment, this dramatic dedication Here on these boards where happy endings hide From murdered noblemen with broken hearts inside And no luck in erotic conversation. May I venture an aside, though I should leave the stage? Let no ghost be dishonored, or his staring eyes Will plunder your heart in midnight surprise. Enough. The mad Queen calms the murderer’s rage. The curtain never falls for the players in this trade; We wait to spring the traps the poet made. 4] The Right Reply for Second-Hand Fear “Now time’s Andromeda on this rock rude…” --Hopkins A delicate matter prevented her revenge: Madame Alving was, at that time, at least, (Delicious pause) Andromeda waiting for the beast, Long-legged bait a gate to unhinge, A passage of a champion of the stage, Sic semper tyrannis the cry of the day, Cooing doves flapping wings to fly away, And the old monster’s dilapidated rage, Bursts forth though in need of upholstery, Roaring his regrettably wheezy roar To remind us what monsters are onstage for, And everyone fake-quakes, all but she, For she smiles somewhat palely with that fire in her eyes, And waves a hand defensively without fear, For she knows who and what is scary here And what is God’s truth and what the Devil’s lies. That steady fire grows, its intensity stays, However much your maudlin monster weighs.
R. W. Haynes, Professor of English at Texas A&M International University, has published poetry in many journals in the United States and in other countries. As an academic scholar, he specializes in British Renaissance literature, and he has also taught extensively in such areas as medieval thought, Southern literature, classical poetry, and writing. Since 1992, he has offered regular graduate and undergraduate courses in Shakespeare, as well as seminars in Ibsen, Chaucer, Spenser, rhetoric, and other topics. In 2004, Haynes met Texas playwright/screenwriter Horton Foote and has since become a leading scholar of that author’s remarkable oeuvre, publishing a book on Foote’s plays in 2010 and editing a collection of essays on his works in 2016. Haynes also writes plays and fiction. In 2016, he received the SCMLA Poetry Award ($500) at the South Central Modern Language Association Conference In 2019, two collections of his poetry were published, Laredo Light (Cyberwit) and Let the Whales Escape (Finishing Line Press).