2020

 

 

APRIL CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

Yuan Changming, Orla Fay, Hilary Hares, M. J. Iuppa, Tom Montag, Ronald Moran,

 David Punter, Hilary Sideris, Fiona Sinclair, Selina Whiteley.

 

 

 

 

 

YUAN CHANGMING

 

By Definition of Preposition

 

Better not to end a sentence with a prep like ‘of’

I don’t remember when this rule I learned of

 

But since then I have become keenly aware of

The need to pay close attention to the grammar of

 

Every sentence I write in English, a language of

Choice over birth, which I did not begin until at age of

 

Nineteen to learn among heavily accented versions of

Mandarin practised on a Shanghai campus, a city of

 

Romantic or rhapsodic adventures. Yes, by definition of

Preposition, it is a function word expressing a relationship of

 

A name with another in most cases, & as the most common of

All preps, of denotes origin or cause with the shape of

 

O like a vagina to f-- into, the two letters as the theme of

This poem, which has many other concerns or lack thereof 

 

Yuan Changming currently works part-time as a produce clerk and edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include ten Pushcart nominations, eight chapbooks & publications in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) & BestNewPoemsOnline, among 1659 others across 44 counntries. 

 

Back to POETRY ARCHIVE

 

 

ORLA FAY

 

John Keats’ Ghost

 

“I have an habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am leading a posthumous existence.” – Keats’ last letter to Charles Armitage Brown, 30/11/1820

 

John Keats’ ghost came to me

as I watched the sun set on the April day

unspooling itself in a glory of yellow.

It was strange to see him, but he said

that he remembered me from when I was

fifteen, when I recited Ode to a Nightingale

and those other poems in the anthology

we read for the curriculum; Bright Star,

La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Ode to a Grecian Urn

and On the Sea. He had been looking over my shoulder

when I wrote notes in pencil on the side of the page,

something about art being able to overcome

the transience of life. He said he liked that

because, look at him now, a pale spectre,

while his poetry is still renowned.

Keats resembled a black and white photograph,

except he held a brimming, purple glass of wine

as he reclined against the windowsill.

I told him that I thought it was sad

that he had died so young.

He recounted his final year, the arterial blood

of tuberculosis, the stormy journey across the Med

to Naples, the reaching of Rome too late,

the warm weather being gone and his chance to live.

I said to him when he had finished,

“John I’m sorry, it was a cruel blow,

I mean you were only twenty-five, right?

But like you said your work lives on,

your words touch and influence people.”

At that he looked up and grinned.

It was a lovely grin, wide and hopeful.

He seemed to find some peace in himself

and he turned his back to me and walked

right out into the sky, into the last flares

of the sun, tapering out like a black, burnt

piece of paper. I was glad to meet him,

claimed the first silver star for us,

and wished that I always be haunted by beauty.

 

 

Little Hercules Under the Blossoms

Exploding on Mount Fuji

 

England will play South Africa as I eat breakfast,

9 am Greenwich Mean Time, in Tokyo 6 pm (GMT+9),

in Japan of the cherry blossoms, brave blossoms

of this rugby world cup, Sakuras of the haiku.

The Land of the Rising Sun, orb emblazoned on the flag,

Hinomaru they name it, ‘circle of the sun',

where ‘little boy' and ‘fat man' bombs

detonated on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

where Spielberg's boy gets lost in Empire of the Sun.

 

What would Basho and Issa make of this passing of a ball,

oval, not round as the full moon that Matsuo

was waiting since it had been a crescent for,

that Kobayashi imagined a snail stripped to the waist under?

They would be dumbfounded by TMO,

the advancement in technology since the 1700s

and they might be amazed at how the Springboks

could leave apartheid behind, admire Mandela.

I wonder would they too see,

 

the poetry in the flick of Faf de Klerk’s hair?

 

*Faf de Klerk is a South African rugby player nicknamed ‘mini Hercules’ because of his 5ft 7in stature

 

Orla Fay edits Boyne Berries. Recently her work has appeared in Dodging the Rain, Atrium Poetry, Tales from the Forest, The Pickled Body and Crannóg. She was shortlisted for The Cúirt New Writing Prize 2019 and highly commended in The Francis Ledwidge Poetry Award 2019. Her debut poetry collection Word Skin is forthcoming from Salmon in the spring of 2023.  http://orlafay.blogspot.com  Twitter@FayOrla   

 

Back to POETRY ARCHIVE

 

 

HILARY HARES

Those Old Mothers

 

who call across eight leagues and more with the sound

of a balloon that has learned to hold its nose.

 

As vast and diverse as Atlantis, they glide like barnacled starships

through realms of ink lit up by galaxies of krill.

 

They still leap to heights as if they’d been fired from a barrel

and plummet back with the grace and straight of a ladder.

 

They’re born with all the choices of the seas inside and swim with

geriatric sons at their flanks for decades, waiting

 

for their daughters’ blood to cool to teach them what it is to be

old, what it is to be mother.

 

Hilary Hares’ poems have found homes online, in print and in anthologies. She has a Poetry MA from MMU and has achieved success in a number of competitions. Her collection, A Butterfly Lands on the Moon supports Loose Muse, Winchester and Red Queen is available from Marble Poetry. “Those Old Mothers” Previously self-published in A Butterfly Lands on the Moon, 2017  www.hilaryhares.com

 

Back to POETRY ARCHIVE

 

 

M. J. IUPPA

 

In an Instant Comes a Gust of Whiteness

 

Walking into the orchard, a foot of fresh snow

conceals the rutted path that will no doubt catch

 

my toe or heel and throw me off-course as if my

balance were nothing more than an acquaintance

 

I’ve forgotten. Even birds are tucked away in

evergreens. I feel their eyes watching me stagger

 

forward with my shadow leading the way in

this futile exercise.

 

                                    What is my wish? Is it

to prove that I’m still alive as a Winter after-

 

noon unfolds?

 

Someone says that he watched me in the orchard.

He says that I was strangely recovered & dancing

 

on tip-toes— palms against an opaque sky—

dress billowing in the rush of lake air.

 

He says this in passing in the Post Office to

my husband who knew I was sleeping.

 

M.J. Iuppa’s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past 31 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.

 

Back to POETRY ARCHIVE

 

 

TOM MONTAG

 

After Han-Shan's Poem #67

 

It is heaving cold
here in the mountains,

 

not just this year
but all of them.

 

The jagged ridges are
always snowed in.

 

The dark woods keep
breathing out mist.

 

Grass doesn't grow
before the solstice.

 

Leaves start to fall
by the end of August.

 

The lost wanderer
stands here confused

 

and looking, and still
he can't see the sky.

 

 

After Han-Shan's Poem #68

 

A hermit in the mountains
burdened by sadness,

 

I grieve the passing years.
I gather my medicines,

 

my mushrooms and thistles.
Can these make me immortal?

 

Now the clouds disappear.
The moon comes bright and full.

 

Why haven't I gone back home?
A cinnamon tree keeps me here.

 

Tom Montag's books of poetry include: Making Hay & Other Poems; Middle Ground; The Big Book of Ben Zen; In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013; This Wrecked World; The Miles No One Wants; Imagination's Place; Love Poems; and Seventy at Seventy. His poem 'Lecturing My Daughter in Her First Fall Rain' has been permanently incorporated into the design of the Milwaukee Convention Center. He blogs at The Middlewesterner. With David Graham he recently co-edited Local News: Poetry About Small Towns

 

Back to POETRY ARCHIVE

 

 

RONALD MORAN

 

I see her only

 

in the half-light

of early mornings.

 

In every visit,

she stands still,

beyond the end

of my bed.

 

When I try

talking to her,

she turns to air.

 

My voice drifts,

like a log in a cool

and brilliant

spring-fed pool.

 

 

A Kiss of Water

 

I'm sitting in my daughter's living room

waiting for someone to bring me a JB

on the rocks, with a kiss of water, and I'm

 

baffled, not by the absence this moment

of my family, but by my saying kiss of water

to mean a splash of water, not a sloppy kiss

 

or kiss of any kind, and I think of the guy

on cable TV who declares on every show,

Say what you mean and do what you must,

 

and even though I've never seen or heard him,

I try to honor his pronouncements, but I fail

like the voices of my poems, when, whoa, all

 

the members of my family return to the room,

but no one hears my drink request, just as

a grandchild sits on the chair I think I am

 

occupying. I want to say, What about my drink?

as silence obtains and I stop hearing my voice.

 

Ronald Moran has published 13 books/chapbooks of poetry and has poems coming out soon in Tar River Poetry and The South Carolina Review.  His work is archived in two university libraries.

 

Back to POETRY ARCHIVE

 

 

DAVID PUNTER

 

The Wild Mendip

The earliest lead ‘pig’ in Britain was produced at Charterhouse

 

The wild Mendip is right behind my shoulder

from Baltonborough through to Burnt House Farm

the mists obscure the sight of something older.

 

Gold days are spread; though the fear of something colder

is written in the owl’s wing, mere hint of harm.

The wild Mendip is right behind my shoulder.

 

Everywhere’s mined; the trapdoors rot and moulder,

we trip and glimpse, we write off every qualm -

the mists obscure the sight of something older.

 

Lead kills; farms burn; but our ignorance is bolder

and so we tread the tracks, we chant the psalm

though the wild Mendip is right behind my shoulder.

 

A chart of place-names in a cardboard folder -

Smitham Chimney, Wavering Down - but no alarm.

The mists obscure the sight of something older.

 

For miners know above all things to be calm

and now we find the gorse moors full of charm.

The mists obscure the sight of something older.

The wild Mendip is right behind my shoulder.

 

David Punter is a writer, poet and critic; his last post was as Professor of Poetry at the University of Bristol. He has published poems in a wide variety of magazines on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as six small poetry pamphlets. His next, Those Other Fields, is due out from Palewell Press this Spring.

 

Back to POETRY ARCHIVE

 

 

HILARY SIDERIS

 

Diary

 

My brother Al broke

my flowered book’s lock,

 

passed it around. I mowed

three lawns to get it back.

 

What did we want to be,

Mr. Flak asked. I want to write,

 

I wrote. So did two other kids,

Kyle & Kim Brown. He took us

 

on career day to a plant where

books were printed, bound.

 

Catalogues, actually. Chemical

reek of glue & ink. I learned

 

to teach. I’m trained by cops

with plastic bullets in active

 

shooter drills. They say to kneel.

To make it real they fire. 

 

 

Anabelle’s Bite

after Temple Grandin

 

It’s rendered like

fine wine, never

 

in haste or rage—

the anger circuits

 

don’t light up at all—

no fate to curse,

 

no one to love or hate.

The pet we let out

 

kills with grace.

Calm jaws clamp

 

prey then shake

methodically.

 

Hilary Sideris has recently published poems in The American Journal of Poetry, Bellevue Literary Review, Free State Review, Gravel, The Lake, Main Street Rag, Rhino, Salamander, and Southern Poetry Review. She is the author of Most Likely to Die (Poets Wear Prada 2014), The Inclination to Make Waves (Big Wonderful 2016), Un Amore Veloce (Kelsay 2019) and The Silent B (Dos Madres 2019).

 

Back to POETRY ARCHIVE

 

 

FIONA SINCLAIR

 

Luck

 

For centuries we put it down

to our stars, precipitating us

like the play of a giant pinball machine.

Or the gods of course,

polytheistic, monotheistic,

made no difference, we still

courted or beseeched for the happiness

we believed lay in their gift. 

 

Of course, it can be rationalised now

by physics or maths-

and I get the law of polarity:

good and bad, light and dark, winners and losers…

but it’s no comfort to know, that in me,

the natural order of things is redressed,

that I am in effect paying for your good fortune.

 

And despite realising it’s nothing personal, 

my inner child still wails Not fair

but into a void now, and being at the mercy

of randomness feels more helpless

than being at the whim of some capricious deity,

because there’s no right to appeal now

or the promise of redress in an after-life.

 

Sometimes looking at your lifetime of flukes,

as you shrug and grin, Born Lucky,

it’s like you are not sharing a lottery win with me,

And when you qualify with your personal creed,

Anyway, you make your own luck,

I shake my head, realising that being unlucky

is as impossible for you to imagine as being female -

 

But I do wonder if you have the ability

to tune into some universal frequency that guides

you to the right place, right time, right move-

No wonder then that we losers

still resort to tarot, witchcraft, psychics…

to get some purchase on fate,

that in my experience, is as

uncontrollable as the weather- 

   

Fiona Sinclair's new collection Time Traveller's Picnic was published by Dempsey and Windle in March 2019. She is the editor of the on-line poetry magazine From the edge.

 

Back to POETRY ARCHIVE

 

 

SELINA WHITELEY

 

Ode to Black Holes in B Flat

 

At Ringdown,

when two black holes collide

like drunken opera divas

after a long performance,

singing that same resounding B Flat

 

for billions of years,

57 octaves below middle C,

they subsume each other

until both shake like a struck bell.

 

They emit short-lived shrieks

through elliptical clusters of galaxies.

Then overtones,

those reincarnate vocalists, 

are loud with unheard purple sounds.

 

From their violent births,

they have been all Dasein:

being toward decay,    

become dizzying again

                              in soprano spin.

 

Selina Whiteley is currently studying for her fourth degree. She has an undergraduate degree in Creative Writing from the University of Glamorgan and is currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Teeside. She has worked as a teacher for over fifteen years and has a strong interest in social, political and environmental questions.

 

Back to POETRY ARCHIVE