2018

 

 

AUGUST CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

 

Jude Brigley, Seth Crook, Beth McDonough, Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco,

Sharon Phillips, J. R. Solonche, Ruth Stacey, Phillip Sterling, Katy Wareham-Morris, Sarah White.

 

 

 

 

 

JUDE BRIGLEY

 

Immaterial

 

Then one summer they did not come:

the park had decked itself with greenery

 

and held its breath to no avail;

the sea’s habitual slate sparkled

 

in shades of blue, enough to shame

a paint store with its nuances.

 

The road to Llangynwyd sprouted

wild flowers and waited for applause.

 

The path to Dunraven baked itself

To cracking points; the sandstone

 

walls were golden to a crisp.

And the cultivated daisies turned

 

their faces to the warm sun.

The walled garden opened up

 

its arched door to view the sea,

as if a poster on a brochure’s

 

pages, and the river, ready

for stones, gurgled alone

 

in its reedy bed, tumbling

through woods as birds sang.

 

It was a summer to be relished

but unperceived it shrivelled up.

They did not come.

 

The bracken caught fire,

burning itself to autumn.

 

Jude Brigley has been a teacher, a coach, an editor and a performance poet. She is now writing more for the page. Her web-site is JudeBrigley.co.uk. She has edited several poetry books and her poetry chapbook, Labours was published in 2015. 

 

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SETH CROOK

 

The Lifeboat from The Arondara Star,

Knockvologan, Mull

 

No single shoe.

Some say a bewildered cat,

a future ancestor of ginger, local kittens.

The boat is almost buried in the sand,

apart from metal poles:

stern and bow.

Some things become their own monuments.

 

From here, swim to Heron Island,

but no further.

The drag is too strong.

Be realistic.

With the sea, be smuggler wise.

Splash by the shore.

Dodge stray Maiden's Tresses.

Be aware of a visible distance between

your feet and the bottom.

Hope for the curiosity of local seals.

 

I say, tame Poseidon.

I say, spurn Brittania.

There is no King of the Seals.

Opt for the easy sensations of a beach float. 

Be still, with your toes and stomach pointing up,

like an island tribute act.

Just don't go.

People think they can manage,

tra-la-la, but then they notice:

there is nothing you can do to stop diminishing out to sea. Dot.

 

The poles wait at high-tide point,

where the water meets a plateau of dune grass

like a mini White Cliffs of Dover,

like a boat that arrives but never lands.

 

Seth Crook loves puffins, has taught philosophy at various universities, rarely leaves Mull. His poems have recently appeared in such places as The Rialto, Magma, Envoi, The Interpreter's House, Northwords Now, Poetry Scotland, Antiphon, numerous anthologies.

 

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VICKI IORIO

 

Lives of Saints

 

In a shop on Yale Street in Pomona, California, in a tea party store— a

coronation of lace and plaid, patchouli oil, Billie Holiday, Her Majesty

the Queen and Scottish shortbread, I find the lives of saints.

 

Close the door on desert heat. The air in here is as cold as the gem

stones calling to me from their showcases. A leather-bound book

with gilt-edged pages, illustrates gold standard saints plucking out

eye balls, slicing virgin cunts, feeding them to soulless dogs.

 

They do it all for Jesus. My sister’s favorite saint is Teresa of Avila,

a believer in holy water. My sister is a believer in wine. Santa Teresa

inflicted torture upon herself. My sister beats herself daily with hoola

hoops and fasting.

 

I didn’t buy these lives, a hologram of my heart, a riddle for my salvation.

Alive somewhere in the twilight zone, they cannot be found on any manifest,

unknown on Amazon, I ask my sister to gyrate her hips for Saint Anthony,

the finder of lost things.

 

 

My Mother Has a Breakdown

 

When I came home from second grade

a man was taking my mother away in an ambulance

 

Gladys, my next-door neighbor, hid me

in the flab of her fat perfumed arms

 

My father was on a business trip

I stayed with Gladys

 

My mother needed an adjustment

she came home with burn marks on her

 

hairline, her kisses were metallic from

then on, until I stopped kissing her

 

I made my mother a card telling her I loved her

She said that made her happy

 

Good. I said, thinking that would end

her sadness

 

Vicki Iorio is the author of Poems from the Dirty Couch and the chapbook Send Me a Letter. The chapbook, Something Fishy will be published this August by Finishing Line Press. Her poetry has appeared in numerous print and on-line journals including The Painted Bride Quarterly, Rattle, poets respond on line, and The Fem Lit Magazine.

 

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BETH MCDONOUGH

 

Firth of Lorn
 

Sometimes Mull is a closed throat
gripping her glen. Sometimes Mull
tightens between lochs, seals
all the road down the Ross. Sometimes
Mull glitters too fiercely in Fionnphort’s red.
Some days Mull casts off
all her inexplicable islets
to fringe your trimmed horizons
and sometimes
Mull has aged with you for too long.

On those days
you must take your tide
beyond Gallanach,
call across the sound,
board Kerrera’s tiny ferry,
walk through bracken
to whatever you love of its castle.

 

Jettisoned

A slug-liver fawn high tide possets
buckets, boxes, coughs up
wires now gnarled into weed.

How much can it strand
at high water mark?
What will it need to claw back?

No wet-suits, no seals. No clarity to tell
angry gulls beating of meetings of saithe.
Nothing more is being absorbed.

 

Beth McDonough’s poetry appears in Agenda, Causeway, Interpreter’s House and elsewhere; she reviews inDURA. Handfast (2016, with Ruth Aylett) explores family experiences – Aylett’s of dementia. and McDonough’s of autism. She was recently Writer in Residence at Dundee Contemporary Arts.

 

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ELIZABETH MCMUNN-TETANGCO

 

Tropical Ken Finds the Ocean

 

What did you 

 think, as the water

 found the joints

 of everything, and foamed

 and churned: sand wave then sand

 fusing together

 and the sounds became the ocean

 and the fish

 tossed like bright

 capes, and then the little boy

 who’d held you

 was a doll, too small

 too see.

 

 

Measuring

 

How much

of my father

was his drive

home every night

the burr

of radio, the sun

held beneath

buildings,

and the road

he never looked at

spinning

carefully

away?

 

Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco lives in California's Central Valley and works as a librarian. Her chapbooks, Various Lies and Lion Hunt are available from Finishing Line Press and Plan B Press, respectively.

 

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SHARON PHILLIPS

 

In the quiet zone 

 

The man beside me

on the train

 

spouted so loud 

I couldn’t read -

 

pay & success

cricket & Brexit -

 

his big pink hands

like spider crabs

 

each one nipped

the other’s back

 

the wife’s got 

weeks to live

 

scabs and bruises 

on his hands.

 

Sharon Phillips is a retired college principal, who lives on the Isle of Portland, in Dorset. She spends her time cooking, reading and writing poems, some of which have been published or are forthcoming in Ink Sweat and Tears, Atrium, The High Window, and Snakeskin, among others. 

 

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J.R. SOLONCHE

 

Memorial Service for a Potter

 

Your spirit was there with us he said.

And I agreed that your spirit was there with us.

As the spirit of the deceased is always there with them.

But where exactly was that, I wondered.

Was your spirit in the bumblebee bumping around the tent?

Was your spirit in the big black beetle crawling on his shoulder,

while he was telling us that he was chosen because he was the only one

who could do it without weeping?

Was your spirit in the woodpecker hammering overhead?

Was your spirit in the river below us down the slope of lawn,

beyond the trees and the railroad tracks?

Tell the truth. Your spirit was in the ceramic cup you made,

the one with the hole, the one that leaked white wine

on his lap because he said he could do it without weeping.

   

  

Sermon on the Balcony

 

Blessed are the children in the parking lot,

for they shall pick up leaves for their fathers.

 

Blessed are the dogs on the leashes,

for they shall save us from loneliness in old age.

 

Blessed are the housekeepers,

for they shall prepare the way for our dreaming.

 

Blessed are the chefs in the kitchens,

for they shall prepare us a feast with the sweat of their brow.

 

Blessed are the conductors on the trains,

for they shall prepare us the way with names.

 

Blessed are the drivers of the trains,

for they shall deliver us to where we are going.

 

Blessed are the twentysomething employees of Starbucks,

for they shall think abbotancostello is an Italian roast they do not have.

 

Blessed are the fliers of the kites on the rise of the park,

for they shall make us feel like children again who wonder at the wind.

 

Blessed are the fishermen who are hungry in spirit only,

for they in their mercy shall throw back the catch to the water of the bay.

 

Blessed are the homeless,

for they shall reawaken the spirit of our sympathy from its slumber.

Blessed are the personal trainers,

for they shall prepare our body for a ripe  old age.

 

Blessed are the therapists,

for they shall prepare our mind for dementia in our ripe old age.

 

Blessed are the swift bicyclists,

for they shall leave the coruscating spokes in the sunshine of their wake.

 

Blessed are the tenders of the bars,

for they shall prepare the way of our daydreams and laugh at our jokes and nod at our complaints.

 

Blessed are the poets,

for they shall inherit the Word and keep it holy.     

 

J.R. Solonche is author of Beautiful Day (Deerbrook Editions), Won’t Be Long (Deerbrook Editions), Heart’s Content (Five Oaks Press), Invisible (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize by Five Oaks Press), The Black Birch (Kelsay Books), I, Emily Dickinson & Other Found Poems (Deerbrook Editions), In Short Order (forthcoming in April from Kelsay Books), 110 Poems (forthcoming from Deerbrook Editions), and co-author of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). He lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.

 

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PHILLIP STERLING

 

The Moving Dunes

 

make it impossible for the boy

hiking to Lake Michigan over

the top of Sleeping Bear to step

in the same place as he did

the first time he’d hiked it

with his brothers and cousins

fiftysome years before, not

unlike the “ever flowing river”

of Heraclitus, despite what

he’d heard on the car radio

driving to the Dune Climb

—that research has proven it

statistically possible for

an individual at a particular

moment in his life to breathe in

a microbe that every person

on the planet has already

breathed in . . .

                            

                   And yet the boy

has hiked the very same path

frequently in fiftysome years

which would, he thinks, increase

the probability of a single speck

of sand (encompassing, some

say, a world of its own) to come

into contact with the same

bare feet a second time, or third.

Think how extreme the odds are

that life—in a universe as

vast as ours—has evolved into

knowledge of itself on this one

planet alone (if you get my drift),

not to mention how air may be

the long distance athlete of

elements, while sand’s merely

the sprinter . . .

                  

                   And then there

may be the chance—for theorists

and scientists don’t always agree—

that sand has a kind of memory

of its own, one far superior

to ours—not unlike the river

the boy has also stepped into

repeatedly, so when the water

finally reaches Lake Michigan

it would relate to the sturgeon

stories of sawmills and discharge

and of the boy’s imperceptible

resolve, his extravagance and folly.

 

Phillip Sterling’s most recent collection of poetry, And Then Snow, was published by Main Street Rag in 2017 (https://mainstreetragbookstore.com/product/and-then-life/). New poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in The Georgia Review, Dunes Review, The MacGuffin, and I-70 Review. He has served as artist-in-residence for both Isle Royale National Park and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan.

 

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Two poems from Inheritance, reviewed in this month’s issue.

 

1887

The Certainty

 

Describe it to me, you say: tell.

What? How I would pull rushes

Until my palms oozed crimson

To build a raft, if that was what

She needed. That I would sleep

With a man for money if my baby

Was starving; that I would sell

My long hair to a richer, vainer lady.

That I know I would fight Death

Next time he comes to collect:

I would take my body and shield

My baby from his scythe. Truth

Fills my mind with the colour blue.

Mothering is a brutal kind of work,

Bodies merged together with blood.

Is that what you want me to tell?

Do not fret, love. Doubtless,

Times will never be that grim.

 

Ruth Stacey

 

 

2016

Disciples

 

Together in the bath for the first time:

both babes learning the soft and sharp

of water. My boy is exciting us all

with his gummy clownish grin. His life spills

into the water with every kick. Everyone

is baptised. Our worship is the stroke

of a soapy sponge and the wash of

a few hairs. His newborn scales

flake away, his birth dissolves

in the same silky liquid that gave

him up three months prior. We offer him

the ducks and make them quack.

He emerges from the suds, his top lip

teasing his left cheek. He laughs.

Her reverence is marked when she says,

‘Brother’.

 

Katy Wareham-Morris

 

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SARAH WHITE

“They used to sit in it. I miss them.”

Shadows are all there is
of the crows that sat and joked

on her Kentucky Coffee Tree.
She climbed the hollow trunk, saw

dust, debris, and insect skeletons—
reasons why a tree-man’s saw

must fell the whole.
Having seen, she let her own limbs

fall to the ground.
Her hollow bones, wounded

to the marrow, lay sore so long that when she looked
again, birds, limbs, leaves, and trunk were gone,

though—where her tree
had been—the crows’ shadows

lay like toys
thrown on the lawn.


Grandmother’s Dirge

No more do my brown-haired boys
come home. Rather, I have visitors
disguised as graying father, bearded uncle
of grown girls I knew as tots in ruffles.

Gone the bunk beds—carted to Goodwill.
Gone, the ruckuses as we discovered,
over and over, Where the Wild Things Were.

Gone, our rabbit, Seymour the Destroyer,
the allergenic guinea pigs, the snake
we called the snake, while, in our litters,

every kitten got a name—Midnight,
whose daughter was Isolde, whose son
was Pinky Lee, who ran away.
 

The Overhearing

It’s noon. On his side of the Plexiglas,

my turbaned taxi driver listens to his radio, set low—
spoken verses interspersed
with sinuous responses from a tenor voice.
The melody sounds medieval.

I like that song.
Where’s it coming from?

Pakistan.
It’s not a song.

I don’t understand
these calls and answers
If I did,
he wouldn’t let me listen.
 

Sarah White's most recent published collections are The Unknowing Muse (Dos Madres, 2014) and Wars Don't Happen Anymore (Deerbrook Editions, 2015) and to one who bends my time (Deerbrook Editions, 2017). She lives, writes, and paints in New York City.

 

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