2023

 

 

DECEMBER

 

 

Beatriu Delaveda, Chris Dornon, Alexanda Etheridge, Tim Fellows, Willian Ogden Haynes, Mary Beth Hines, David James, Carolyn Martin, Sandra Noel, Ian Parks,

Frances Sackett, J. R. Solonche.

 

 

 

 

BEATRIU DELAVEDA

 

All These Lies

 

White noise

is never white

just as

the blues

aren’t ever blue

but instead

a shocking

shade of pink.

 

I am

in no way

green with envy

(try brown)

and my brother

is by no means

a flawless golden boy

but more like the palest lavender.

 

The black market

isn’t black

nor is any

blacklist,

anymore than

white lies

should be white,

opting instead

 for a

lackadaisical

shade of maroon.

 

Agent orange

isn’t orange

(it’s colorless)

and no one

I know

has witnessed

a bolt from the blue

or the green

for that matter.

 

A pink slip can

 assume

any color

it covets

and even if

roses are red,

how can violets

be blue?

 

They’re violet, right?

 

 

Most of the interesting art

 

 

 

Most of the interesting

art of our time

is

boring

said Susan Sontag.

 

But that does not mean that most of the

boring

art of our time

is interesting or that most of the uninteresting

art of our time

is not

boring.

 

It does mean that some of the interesting

art of our time

must be

boring.

 

And it probably means that some of the

boring

art of our time

is interesting

though it’s unlikely that some of the uninteresting

art of our time

is not

boring.

 

We can rule out the prospect that none of the interesting

art of our time

is

boring

though there’s a microscopic chance that none of the

boring

art of our time

is interesting

or that none of the uninteresting

art of our time

is not

boring.

 

There’s a 100% chance that most of the

art of our time

(and any time)

is

boring,

which everyone knows even if they’re not

Susan Sontag

(who was often quite

boring.)

 

Beatriu Delaveda is the pseudonym of a former resident of Chester who has written five books as well as two chapbooks of visual poetry. The poetry, fiction, and non-fiction of BD have been published in, among others, the Guardian, Atlantic, New York Times, McSweeney’s, Sugar House, Orbis, fleeting, Mobius, 3 am, Mudlark, Paterson Literary Review, Pennine Platform, streetcake, Plume, Storm Cellar, Mercurius, morphrog, mono, Tupelo Quarterly, The Bamboo Hut and Clapboard House, where they won a short story prize.

 

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CHRIS DORNIN

 

A back ward in the Governor Powell Building                                                            

 

I dress a grown man in a naked room.

He calls me his daddy. His light comes

from windows near the ceiling. He is wasting his gifts.

 

His throne is a stained bench. His children

are rags. His family never visits.  

His lord is the room itself. His friends

 

fear each other. They follow plain 

commands. They eat their oatmeal in a hurry. 

If they talk, they say little. If they sing, they sing

 

to themselves. One hides in a shower

reading the tiles with his hands. His back

is a secret. He is everyone's fault. One breaks

 

fingers with the spokes of his wheelchair when the ward

is unattended and the palms on the floor open 

to unreachable light. David has broken

 

his numb legs seven times

to make the world ward obey him. 

We do.  One whispers, "Pray for you.”

 

Let’s hope he does. Few others

pray for few others. Let him sing,

"Pray for you,” when the horsemen converge

 

at the end of the earth. Let the hooves of their wrath

climb the stairways of dormitories named

for governors who hang in marble halls together.

 

Let sleepers rise from sealed rooms 

and cry in the coming night of angels,

“Pray for you, for you, for you, for you."   

 

Louella

                                                                                                         

The obituary in Louella’s file

eulogizes her late mother

as a cellist and philanthropist.

 

Louella turns when we change 

her position to keep her skin

smooth. A halo brace

 

screws to her skull, aligning

vertebrae, but Louella’s limbs

twist themselves into static symmetry.

 

She has tricks. She gags on food. 

She turns gray and spits in your face. 

She pants in false seizures.

 

Her trance mimics a woman

giving birth, but Louella 

is chaste. I aim her eyes 

 

during Holy Mass at the wounds 

in stained glass. She copies 

the fists of the Christ, nailed

 

to wood and testing the nails. 

They dare Louella’s fingers 

to sing on strings with her mother’s 

 

skill. Louella screamed

an injured howl.  A frail

man was dangling from his bedrails.

 

The night nurse woke

too late to save him,

but Louella sure tried.

 

Chris Dornin has won 22 New England and New Hampshire press association awards and a New Hampshire Arts Council fellowship in poetry. His poetry chapbook was a finalist for the 2023 Swan Scythe contest. "A back ward in the Governor Powell Building" was first published in Wellspring. “Louella” was first published in Cathartic.

 

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ALEXANDER ETHERIDGE

 

The Bloodstone

 

A green rocky creek runs beside it,

the ancient stone with something like

the face of a man, its strange features

of brutal centuries—Ice and fire, slow nights

 

under a witches’ moon.  You can see it all

turning in the stone’s deep geographies—

Rugged paths through a forest, snakes under

an ocean, crow-calls echoing in a huge valley

 

at twilight.  The stone cracks but never

moves, as if it grew powerful roots down

into the cellar of the earth.  The stone forgets

nothing, and its dreams become your own.

 

The Orchardist

   —for Olav H. Hauge

 

You worked in your apple trees

for a long time

through scarcity and drought,

 

floodwaters and ice storms.

 

You were born a dawnlight cultivator.

Your farmhouse is small and

sturdy—From oakwood

 

you made your spoons, table,

 

and reading chair.  You turn

a page of Inferno,

or Narrow Road to the Interior,

 

then step outside to watch snow

 

falling on your fruit trees.

You think of your first

poem, those transparent lines

 

you wrote to make peace

 

with the earth, you the farmer

of silences, of opening

nights—your few words finding

 

their place among silverblue

 

stars.  Now we step out into our own 

dark, and look into the tilting

skies to read

 

the promises you left for us.

 

Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998.  His poems have been featured in The Potomac Review, Scissors and Spackle, Ink Sac, Cerasus Journal, The Cafe Review, The Madrigal, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, Roi Faineant Press, and many others.  He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999, and a finalist for the Kingdoms in the Wild Poetry Prize in 2022.  He is the author of, God Said Fire, and the forthcoming, Snowfire and Home.   

 

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TIM FELLOWS

 

Beached: 1677

 

A whale washed up

in the cold estuary.

Stuck in the shifting silt

it heaved and strained

to no effect. A pamphlet

reached the capital

and hundreds came to view

the Monster of the Deep

until its carcass was butchered.

 

They built a bank to stop the tide;

let the grasses grow, took the land.

Earth became concrete;

grass became fairway. No whale

suffers on the thirteenth tee,

no fish flap and gasp in the sandy

bunkers. The rising sea

pounds against the wall, eager to fight

for the ground it had lost.

 

May Romance

translated from 'Romancillo de Mayo' by Miguel Hernandez

 

At last green May has come.

Bindweed and basil

adorn the village entrance

and the thresholds of windows.

 

Seeing it, guitars wear

ribbons of love,

their pegs are jealous of love,

their strings knot with rage,

and they snort impatiently

to go serenading.

 

In the warm stables

where love smells of straw,

honest dung and milk,

there is a cacophony of cows

who fall in love alone

and alone they ruminate and bellow.

 

The goat changes its hair,

the sheep changes its wool,

the wolf changes colour

and the grass changes its roots.

 

The young have new ideas in their heads,

new words in their mouths.

Jacks pine loudly for their jennies.

With moon and birds, the nights

are pure clear glass;

the evenings pure green,

pure blue, emeralds;

pure silver, the dawns

appear pure white

and the mornings are pure

with honey and gold.

Loving May roams the fields;

love prowls round sheepfolds,

round stables and shepherds,

round doors, round beds,

round wenches at the dance

and swirls in the air around skirts.

 

Tim Fellows is a writer from Chesterfield whose poetry has been influenced by his upbringing in a mining community. His first pamphlet was published in 2019 and he has had other poems in magazines and anthologies. He is currently working on translations by the Spanish poet Miguel Hernandez.

 

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WILLIAM OGDEN HAYNES

What the Rain Leaves Behind

 

As a girl on the farm, she always knew when it was about to rain.

The clouds would turn dark and thunder echoed in the distance.

The wind raised and lowered the meadow grass, undulating the

fronds like ocean waves across the field, as trees bent to the will

 

of strong gusts. The cows would move under the shelter of trees,

and on those rainy days, her grandfather would go into the barn

to work on his carpentry. In the barn there were smells of hay,

manure, horses and the curly fresh shavings of pine from her

 

grandfather’s plane. The man himself exuded the odor of sweat

and sweet pipe tobacco. But being with him in the barn during a

rain, was always special, because they could talk, and he would

show her how to use things. From the time she was little, he showed

 

her pitchforks, feed scoops, saddles, buckets, stalls and horse blankets.

They climbed the ladder to the hayloft, where they could look down

on feed grain, tools, horses and the old tractor. And when they looked

up, they could see the white faces of two roosting barn owls. Today,

 

she lives in the suburbs, with a postage stamp back yard, complete

with a patio and charcoal grill. She sits outside after the rain, beneath

the dreary underbellies of clouds, because she still has a fondness for

stormy weather, as it reminds her of lessons learned from her grandfather

 

in the barn. Now, a grandmother herself, she sits on a swing with her

three-year-old grandson, wondering what rainy memories she can pass

on to him, having only a back yard to work with. She shows him how the

flagstone becomes darker after soaking up moisture, while the wooden

 

picnic table is beaded with drops of water, thanks to a recent coat of sealer.

She points to a slow safari of ants in an s-shaped line, carrying crumbs

from beneath the picnic table to their hill. They watch a skirmish of

hummingbirds by the hydrangeas as they compete for nectar, and a floating

 

cloud of gnats that always congregates after a shower. They feel moisture

in the air, and smell the fragrance of the yellow woodbine climbing the back

fence. She hopes the boy remembers these things when it rains, but in her heart,

she knows they are no match for lessons she learned in the barn, so long ago.

 

Tending

Our children are the living messengers we send

to a future we will never see. Elijah Cummings

 

In the years before, the old woman took pride in tending things,

like a garden, a stew on the stove, or a fire. She would kneel among

 

the rows of carrots and lettuce, tucking new roots to bed in the rich

Mississippi earth and pulling out dead plants. She did this, even

 

knowing she may not have time left to see the harvest. Likewise,

she tended her daughter through childhood and the grandchildren

 

in their youth. And even with her daughter and the children, she

knew she would never live to see what they would finally become.

 

At ninety, she finally had to stay in bed, her face wrinkled like

tree bark, body frail as an empty dress. And, in that last year, it was

 

her daughter who did the tending, as if the old woman was her

final baby doll. The daughter knew that those sent into the future,

 

must pause to tend to those who are left behind. That night, as she

hugged her children, she realized that one day they would tend to her,

 

and the process would go on and on. We are all here for only a short

time, just borrowed dust in this life, playing our roles in endless cycles.

 

William Ogden Haynes is a poet and author of short fiction from Alabama who was born in Michigan. He has published ten collections of poetry and one book of short stories all available on Amazon.com.  Over two hundred and thirty of his poems and short stories have appeared in literary journals and his work is frequently anthologized. http://www.williamogdenhaynes.com

 

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MARY BETH HINES

 

Ode to Queendom

 

We watched her dominion bloom, orbed, swelling

city of masticated pulpwood, deep palaces, combs,

drones, and hundreds of humming women warriors,

wet nurses flying out of the castle mouth, perfect O,

to guzzle nectar, return with half-digested insects

to feed the queen’s larvae curled inside cells like infant

nuns, sealing their own hexagonal doors to molt alone.

 

Her queendom, that bald-faced, burgeoning citadel

dangled a promise like every other, even after it fell,

furious piñata, at the hands of our rebel

neighbor’s son, practicing power with the blunt end

of a spade and stung to defeat, a successor nest

soon blossoming on a nearby branch, rag pulp bulb

to cloth-swathed head, silver, helmeted skull.

 

Dazzle

 

A fox, the neighborhood frothed

as we watched her long, silk-stockinged

legs slide from the Pontiac Firebird.

 

Stiletto heels, red dress, diamond-

bright earrings flashed in the sun

like meteorites limning before and after.

 

She spun toward us at Luke’s low whistle.

Took off her Jackie O’s, defied the glare.

Grinned at Matt till his dull braces sparkled.

 

Even the cracked asphalt’s dandelions

glittered. Our dead-end gleamed

after Ms. Lorelei moved in there.

 

Sparklers and fireflies ignited sultry

evenings. Dads washed and waxed their Fords

April through November. Women’s wispy

 

negligees bedazzled lines in daylight.

Kids struck flint, lit secret far-flung fires.

Sweet tarts exploded on pyrotechnic tongues.

 

Mary Beth Hines writes poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction. Her work appears, or will soon appear, in The Lake, Lily Poetry Review, SWWIM, Valparaiso, and elsewhere. Her poetry collection, Winter at a Summer House, was published by Kelsay Press. Connect at www.marybethhines.com.

 

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DAVID JAMES

 

Letter To Sheehan From Linden

(after Richard Hugo)

 

Marcus, the past will always stay put

whether you think about it or not,

whether you dream about it or let it dissolve

and disappear from your memory bank. It’s there,

in black and white, holding a gun to your temple.

But you decide whether it’s loaded, whether

it’s made of chocolate, whether it’s full of water

instead of bullets. You get to decide when

or if the past holds any power over you.

In general, I say fuck it. If it’s helpful

to remember something from 1981, then keep it.

If it’s painful, leave it buried under the gray matter.

Every road leads somewhere. When you want to start

a new life, head down a different road

and keep your eyes open and ready. All you need

and want is out there for the picking.

But our time is thin on this earth, so we have to grab

whatever joy we can, stand out in the sunlight,

drink that scotch on the rocks and forgive ourselves

since, even at this age, we don’t know

what the hell we’re doing. Love.

 

The Mighty Big Fuck

for A.S. and others

 

sometimes [& I mean every time]

it doesn’t matter how well you take care of yourself

[working out/swimming/watching those excess pounds]

you can get screwed

out of the blue [big time fucked by god/fate//

          genetics/chance]

 

maybe it’s radiation in the air

maybe it’s toxic chemicals in the soil

maybe it’s nature humbling us

 

[whatever it is/it swats us around like flies/this kid,

          cancer of the eyes/that man, lymphoma/this

          teacher, liver disease/that woman, an artery

          90% blocked]

 

sure, we all go down in the end [crucified/struck//

          wasted away] but it’s so random/so blatant

one day, you’re playing golf

with your grandson and the next, you’re lying

face first on the floor/your heart exploding [& nothing

helps—money/prestige/religion/ethnicity]

 

          death’s one eyeball/bloodshot/points

in one direction:

down

 

and sometimes [& I mean every single time]

it makes no sense

who get fucked in a bizarre car accident/in a

fall off a kitchen chair/hanging Christmas ornaments//

in the brain of a young dancer

[who suddenly has grown a tumor the size of a hardball]

 

your time/my time/their time

could be any time [& I mean tonight

or tomorrow or seven minutes before

the new year begins]

 

no one knows

no one wants to know

 

when death’s lousy eyeball turns toward you

say goodbye [kiss your loved ones]

and try to remember everything

that went well in your life

that brought you or others some happiness

that made your heart glow

 

          [that made this journey worth

              such a fucking short ride]

 

Born and raised on the third coast, Michigan, David James has published seven books and has had more than thirty one-act plays produced throughout the country.

 

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CAROLYN MARTIN

 

Beneath

 

if it were only    

callous April snow

choking pink-proud quince    

or the before-melt    

bowing bleeding hearts

and crocuses

or expectant squills groaning

to claim their space    

if only    

we could bear    

the wait but when    

we learned    

decades-dormant scraps    

of poems lay

frozen in Auschwitz ash

we understood    

the beneath of things    

like words left    

by death-bound souls   

unrepentant Spring

swells and heaves  

patiently    

unbowed under    

any cruelty

 

From associate professor of English to management trainer to retiree, Carolyn Martin is a lover of gardening and snorkeling, feral cats and backyard birds, writing and photography. Her poems have appeared in more than 175 journals throughout North America, Australia, and the UK. For more, go to www.carolynmartinpoet.com.

 

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SANDRA NOEL

 

Flammable regret                                      

 

Black shadows huff the shed roof,

taunt branches of the night trees,

toe-creep kitchen tiles.

 

I close curtains to shut out coal-dark,

light candles in corners,

curl in blankets by the stove.

 

Flames haunt me back thirty years

to next door’s gas hob fire.

 

Still they scream for help.

 

His wife’s prescription sits on the passenger seat with two eclairs

 

The policeman’s face will be set

like the old woman's hair.

He’ll make her sweet tea in the wrong china cup,

tell her the girl was driving too fast;

caught the curb on the bend.

The collision was head on.

 

My car spasms.

The man’s Ford swerves,

stops thirty metres up the road. 

 

Sweaty neurones sprout a tangle of shoots. 

 

 Sandra Noel is a poet from Jersey enjoying writing about the ordinary in unusual ways. She has poems online and in print magazines and anthologies and has been longlisted, shortlisted and highly commended in competitions. Sandra’s first collection will be published in 2024 by Yaffle Press.

 

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IAN PARKS

 

Lesbos

 

There are life-jackets on the beach.

They float in on the tide,

washed up by its endless push and pull.

Each one brought an immigrant

who came ashore or died,

rearing a wall across the bay.

Sometimes they make a pile of them

and put them to the torch.

The black smoke rises in the air.

The gods must know about it

but the gods themselves are sleeping

or have gone elsewhere,

There are life-jackets on the beach

because the sea is full.

 

Ian Parks is the editor of Versions of the North: Contemporary Yorkshire Poetry and the Selected Poems of Harold Massingham. His translations of the modern Greek poet Constantine Cavafy were a Poetry Book Society Choice. His Selected Poems 1983-2023 are published by Calder Valley Poetry. 

 

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FRANCES SACKETT

 

Gravediggers of Oimyakon

 

They light bonfires, work for twenty minutes each,

dig through frozen ground,

soften the ground with fire.

 

In this Siberian hamlet

temperature dictates;

all winter fire must never die.

 

The easy way would be

to have a funeral pyre -

consume the finished life to ash.

 

And yet the fires are built,

a pit prepared in frozen earth,

the frozen body lowered down.

 

They watch the sky like hawks

to keep their lungs from shredding,

stop their flesh from welding onto metal.

 

Bound up in fur and wool

they move in shadow-play,

silent spectres round the gaping pit.

 

Frances Sackett has been published widely in poetry magazines and journals. Her most recent collection is House with the Mansard Roof from Valley Press. This year it made the longlist of 25 for the International Poetry Book Awards. She lives between Manchester and the wonderful Peak District.

 

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J. R. SOLONCHE

 

Fifteen Poems Beginning with Lines by Emily Dickinson

 

1.

I do not care – why should I care

about what they – The They –

are doing there – The There –

and what they say – The Say?

 

2.

I had no cause to be awake.

The universe entire was in my sleep.

One part I dreamt for dreaming sake.

The other was a secret for all dreams to keep.

 

3.

Impossibility like wine

improves with age until

it’s ripest, which is when

impossibility’s most possible.

 

4.

Meeting by accident

you said, “Hello.” Well,

so did I but really meant,

“Oh, hell.”

 

5.

So much summer

in just one day today.

Hot, hot, hot, hey

nonny, what a bummer.

 

6.

If I’m lost now

just wait to see

an hour go by and how

an hour’s more lost I’ll be.

 

7.

My cocoon tightens – Colors teaze.

Mine does, too, but only moth gray.

(You didn’t rhyme here, either,

Ms Dickinson, by the way.)

 

8.

A day! Help! Help!

Oh, night, I call your aid.

Come stars, come moon.

Help! I am afraid.

 

9.

How news must feel when travelling

I cannot rightly divine.

Please go to her who will sing

it all in thirteen seventy-nine.

 

10.

Trust in the unexpected.

It has earned it over years,

unlike the expected

those false back-stabbing dears.

 

11.

How well I knew her not,

Carol, the head librarian,

for thinking when I asked her out

she would not be contrarian.

 

12.

It was not death, for I stood up.

I walked. I ate. Or so it seemed.

I read. I wrote. I took a nap.

Who’s to say it wasn’t all dreamed?

 

13.

We never know we go when we are going.

We only know we’ve gone when we are there.

And even then, there is no use in knowing

since we come from and go to everywhere.

 

14.

To own a Susan of my own,

no, to know this Susan is my own

is all my heart’s desirous of,

she, no other Susan, in double freedom’s love.

 

15.

To own a Susan of my own

was what my universe had shown

me, but she threw the first own in its face.

You see, in her own there simply was no place.

 

Nominated for the National Book Award and twice-nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of twenty-six books of poetry and co-author of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.

 

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