2021

 

 

AUGUST CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

 

Joe Balaz, Rachel Burns, Clive Donovan, George Franklin, Peter Grandbois, Nels Hanson, Sheila Jacob, Jennifer A. McGowan, Yvette Naden, Carlos Reyes, George Ryan.

 

 

 

 

 

JOE BALAZ

 

Cecilia Goes to Maryknoll

 

Cecilia goes to Maryknoll.

 

Her dream

is to get into wun good college

 

and eventually become

wun English professor.

 

 

Looks like she’s on her way

cause she’s racking up straight A’s.

 

Having grown up local dough

she knows dat da King’s language

 

is not always as pure

as the text in her study books.

 

 

Dat wen really help

in da emergency dat wen happen

 

wen she wuz walking home from school.

 

 

She found wun old man

gasping foa breath

 

and lying down on da sidewalk

wit nobody else around.

 

 

Before he wen pass out

he wen manage to say to Cecilia—

 

 

“I stay all funny kine

and I no feel so good.

 

Go kokua me, Sweetie.

 

My family stay mauka around da corner

in da pink house wit da ulu tree.”                                                                                                 

 

 

Aftah hearing dat

 

Cecilia wen quickly call foa help

on her smartphone.

 

 

Wen da cops arrived

she wuz able to tell dem

 

wheah da old man lived.

 

 

His relatives

made it to da hospital right away

 

and relayed to da doctors

wat kine medications

 

da old man wuz taking

foa his heart condition.

 

 

Da timely information

played wun big part

 

in his eventual recovery.

 

 

Good ting Cecilia

is just as proficient in Pidgin

 

as she is

in da maddah tongue of Shakespeare

 

cause wen communication

wuz necessary

 

both languages could tell you

wat you really needed to know.

 

 

kokua     To help.

mauka    Towards the mountains.

ulu          Breadfruit.

 

Joe Balaz wites in Hawaiian Islands Pidgin (Hawai’i Creole English) and American English. He the author of Pidgin Eye, a book of poetry. Balaz presently lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

 

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RACHEL BURNS

         

Burial ground at dusk

 

Once a long barren field

now planted with willow trees,

cleansing the former coalfield.

Saplings slow dance in the breeze. 

I hear they do woodland burials here.

Coffins made of English willow

and wildflowers sown to re-appear

year after year, like the swallows.

An elaborate weave of a pitman 

sits on the embankment. His knees

once a climbing frame for our children

toddlers, lightning sparks of energy.

Now it is just you and me,

walking through the newly sprung copse.

And it’s almost dark, we can hardly see.

I call to you, to slow down. You stop.

Look, there’s a deer, you say. A roe.

And I look, but all I see is a grey wolf

slinking into the undergrowth, sinking low,

as the saplings part between us, like a gulf.

 

Rachel Burns' debut pamphlet A Girl in a Blue Dress (reviewed May, 2020) is published by Vane Women Press. She was shortlisted in the Wolves Lit Fest Poetry Competition 2021. Tweets at Rachel Burns @RachelLBurnsme 

 

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CLIVE DONOVAN

 

Bill Cody and His Indians

 

Buffalo Bill's Wild West on tour

– a carnival of derring-do and spills –

Cody was a fair man sure, they say – better than most whites

and by his Indians regarded high

and he taught them how to whoop and fall from a horse and die

 

a thousand times over, eternally the baddies,

foolishly circling the fortresses of wagon trains

and log shacks of frontiersmen with virtuous daughters,

before heroic Cody stormed in with timely cowboys

and shot the savage action men to spectacular death.

 

The remnants of the tribes of Sioux Lakota,

selling their history short: Jack Eagle Star, Lone Bison,

Storm Dog Runs Far, Long Arrow, Hiding Moon, Grey River Song;

and the ancestor ghosts lamenting ever for the plains

and the Black Hills, reproaching, this is not how it was,

this is not exactly how it was...

 

Clive Donovan devotes himself full-time to poetry and has published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Agenda, Fenland Poetry Journal, Neon Lit. Journal, Prole, Sentinel Lit. Quarterly and Stand. He lives in Totnes, Devon, U.K. quite close to the river Dart. His debut collection will be published by Leaf by Leaf in November 2021.  

 

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GEORGE FRANKLIN

 

Angelus Novus

 

They were stopped on the Spanish side of the border,

Having crossed the mountains into Catalonia.

There were orders to return all refugees back to Vichy.

The police would be waiting, internment, then Germany,

If he wasn’t shot first.  That night he stared at the bottle

Of morphine on the bedtable, made certain his manuscript

Was in the suitcase, folded his shirts, and put his shoes

Outside the door, as though he were leaving them

To be cleaned and polished.  He would have liked

To have listened to music again, to read a few more

Books and write some letters.  There was always so much

More to say, to find out in the saying.  Hannah had

The essay on history.  She’d get it out, to England or

America.  He looked again at his visa permitting him

Entry to the promised land, the Statute of Liberty, survival.

Now, it was just a scrap of paper and meant nothing.

He remembered Klee’s painting of the Angelus Novus,

How the angel moved backwards into the future, eyes

Fixed on the utter wreck of the past.  You don’t look at

A painting like that, he thought.  It looks at you.

Soon, it would be time to turn off the light.

 

On September 26, 1940, in Portbou, Spain, Walter Benjamin was part of a group of refugees ordered by the Franco government to be returned to France. Benjamin, who had previously managed to elude the gestapo, committed suicide.

 

George Franklin is the author of Noise of the World, Traveling for No Good Reason, Among the Ruins / Entre las ruinas, and Travels of the Angel of Sorrow. He is the co-translator, along with the author, of Ximena Gómez's Último día/Last Day. He can be found at https://gsfranklin.com/.

 

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PETER GRANDBOIS

 

On explaining to my sixteen-year-old son why we need to go on after heartbreak

 

Because when we sleep the days alight and

          night like a weightless wasp and

                   this flight of skin an aria

Because nothing justifies the beauty of grainy cold

          in frail sunlight and the scent

                   of lilac rising from mute meadows

Because the manes of horses are tangled and need

          brushing and we know nothing

                   about why the thrush sings

                             with silt flushing its throat

Or why the forest exhales with the flute-like

          sound of blood

                   spun like rope

Or how easy it is to get drunk

          on the flood

                   of sunsets

And whispers of candle-smoke rise

          because the cries and prayers

                   of the faithful

                             have only so far to go

And we tremble with our passing

          through this second sky

                   and joy can fly so quickly

And we still have the first page to read

            And someone needs to listen

 

Peter Grandbois is the author of thirteen books. His work has appeared in over one hundred journals. His plays have been performed in St. Louis, Columbus, Los Angeles, and New York. He is poetry editor at Boulevard and teaches at Denison University in Ohio. You can find him at www.petergrandbois.com.

 

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NELS HANSON

 

Tu Fu 2021

 

Both the river and sky dragon turn

against me, for weeks the millet

and rice taste the same, peach wine

like vinegar. Who am I to deserve

escape or salvation? Before the last

yarrow stalks fall the I Ching says

the times split apart. When I gamble

dice tumble to one losing number.

Happy songs make me sadder, sad

ones sound naïve. There’s no one to

write a poem for. All day I watch

the rain slant straight as lute strings,

hear many silver ghosts. Mo Tzu

said once in the enduring kingdom

people love each other. Everything

past my window feels wrong, fear

and hate, those islands and castles,

flags with family legends running

like ink. Who cares grass is green

again? The weathercock’s bronze

carp spins halfway, east wind now

west. Higher than the Yangtze is

long a first wave casts its shadow

on the red sails just beyond sight.

 

Nels Hanson’s fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. His poems received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.

 

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SHEILA JACOB

 

Full Circle

 

 i.

Names pulse at the city’s heart.

Priory Queensway. Priory Square.

Old Square. The Minories.

 

I say them out loud,

spill them into the air like tossed coins.

 

Echoes spin me downward.

 

Trowel-scrape against brick walls.

Footfall on broken stone.

Bushels of bones shifting, clattering.

 

ii.

The Rea is a cloudy ripple

between swathes of farmland,

swells to a segment of tangerine sun

as the friars of St. Thomas’s Priory

chant the Office of Lauds.

 

Dominus regnavit,exsultet terra;       

laetentur insulae multae.   *   

 

Bees hum in the herbarium.

Dogs bark, cart wheels rumble

through the village.

The friars hurry to fields, kitchen,

library, infirmary,

will gather again to celebrate

Prime and Terce,Sext and None,

Vespers and Compline

until the hours turn full circle

and the Rea is a weave of silver

bathing the face of the moon.

 

*The Lord has reigned, let the earth rejoice, let many islands be glad.

 

Sheila Jacob lives in North East Wales with her husband. She was born and raised in Birmingham and finds her childhood and ancestry a source of inspiration. Her poems have been published in a number of U.K. magazines and Webzine

 

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JENNIFER A. MCGOWAN

 

Lily of the Lamplight

Monto, Dublin, 1920

 

There’s pretty, and then there’s Lily,

with her hair done up fine,

fancy gloves, sloe eyes searching

the men from under her street lamp.

 

She looks sideways, see,

never straight on. They have to

come to her. And she sings.

not loud, not like in theatre

or anything common as that.

Just to herself. Soft,

sweet, just like you dream of.

 

They say even the Prince

stopped to pass the time of day.

 

Eventually she vanished. All the girls

vanish eventually. Some

won’t stop screaming.

 

But they wrote a song about Lily, real nice,

though they added some name

from a fancypants manwoman

from the pictures.

 

All during the second war they sang it.

Us old enough to remember, we remember Lily,

our Lily, singing under her streetlight, tall and proud,

flicking her lighter, smoke wreathing

her favourite hat.

 

The New York Times, Europe edition, alleges “one half-remembered streetwalker, Lily of the Lamplight, used to sing to herself under the streetlight where she waited...her name passed...into the English version of a wartime German love song”, ‘Lili Marleen’. (15 January 2018, accessed 12 April 2021). Wikipedia contests this attribution.

 

Jennifer A. McGowan, despite (and to spite) her disability, took her PhD from the University of Wales. Last year she won the Prole pamphlet competition and Prole published the winning pamphlet, *Still Lives with Apocalypse*. She’s a Tudor re-enactor and lives in Oxford.

 

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YVETTE NADEN

 

Nantwich Church Hall

 

They run it out the back, in the shadow of the cross

It stretches over stone like a tongue, rolling

Out every Friday night, its pores lined with tins and

Packets of dried apricots.

 

Jesus would have to crane his neck, pulling at the

Nails, to get a good view. He’d have to beg the good

Reverend to take him down, or maybe ask

His weeping Mother to snap a quick photo.

 

Tables lined in graveyards, cheap laminate.

They’re packing boxes, stuffing bread into bags.

Through the stained-glass, people queue in droves —

Anyone would think a war was on.

 

She stands behind the boxes, handing out

Pasta and tomatoes on-the-vine.

Big-armed, a hairy chin – she’s here

Every week, at the Food Bank.

 

She tips a brow – her only crown –

And nudges Jesus’s bare foot

Wondering if one day he’ll animate

And make endless fish from soil and old shoes.

 

That tang of sweat mixing with

Five Spice like moist acrylic,

And then his pumps squeal on the

Flagstone floor – she sees his badge first.

 

A blue noose, but he’s happy to wear it.

He’s on the night shift, just

Heading out to work, holding the

Hands of the dead and the dying –

 

Nurse.

 

Yvette Naden was born in France in 2002 but now lives in York, England, where she works as a Private Tutor. When she isn't writing, she can be found trying to resuscitate her houseplants. In 2021, one of her poems won the Elmbridge Literary Prize. 

 

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CARLOS REYES

 

Marie Curie

 

The one dress she owns

is really a smock.

 

As she slips from the lab

to the ktichen to prepare a meal

 

you can hear test tubes

of radium tinkling

 

like small glass bells.

She never leaves the radium

 

it never leaves her, not for

a hundred years, awarding 

 

her a unique immortality.

Would we risk our lives

 

for art to that extent?

As poets allow our work unread

 

to be buried in lead caskets

untouchable its pages

 

in our precious notebooks.

Were that our only hope

 

of immortality with its ghostly

glowing light in human shape

 

for 1,500 years

hovering over our grave––

 

would we accept that

as Marie Salomea did?

 

Carlos Reyes travels widely and his poetry reflects that. He is the author of 12 volumes of verse. Recent poetry: Lament for Us All (2021), Sea Smoke to Ashes (2020), Two People in the Night Along a River.(2019), Along the Flaggy Shore, Poems from West Clare (2018). Guilt in Our Pockets, Poems from South India (2017), Pomegranate. Sister of the Heart (2012). Forthcoming: Wrestling the Mistral (2021) and Osage Elegy (2021). Recent translations: Poemas de amor y locura/Poems of Love and Madness, Selected Translations (2013), Sign of the Crow, Ignacio Ruiz Pérez (2011). Prose memoir: The Keys to the Cottage, Stories from the West of Ireland (2015). He lives in Portland, Oregon when not traveling.

 

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GEORGE RYAN

 

Vienna and Shanghai

 

In 1910 thirty Chinese nightingales

were released in the Stadtpark of Vienna

to make their home there and teach the native birds

the bird songs of the Celestial Empire. 

 

In 1918 the Viennese

Habsburg emperors were overthrown. 

 

During the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976

the Maoists denounced and banned Western music. 

 

Before the Shanghai Symphony’s conductor

was put to death in 1968,

he asked a cellmate to go someday

to Beethoven’s grave in Vienna

to tell him that his Chinese disciple

was humming the Missa solemnis

as he went to his execution. 

 

George Ryan was born in Ireland and graduated from University College Dublin. He is a ghostwriter in New York City. Elkhound published his Finding Americas in October 2019. His poems are nearly all about incidents that involve real people in real places and use little heightened language.  

 

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