2021

 

 

FEBRUARY CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

 

Edward Alport, Holly Day, Mike Dillon, William Ogden Haynes, Katherine Hoerth,

Paul McDonald, Gordon Meade, Jill Sharp, J. R. Solonche, John L. Stanizzi, J. S. Watts, Emma Wells, Sarah White.

 

 

 

 

EDWARD ALPORT

A Thorn in Winter

 

Winter takes the form of an old man with a sack

Complaining his way down the road beneath the trees.

Leaves, shivered off by his approach, swirl

Around my ears and brush my knees.

 

Winter mutters on his way, totting up

All the grievances of the year in one reckoning.

Flicking his frosts over the roses in a careless gesture;

Untouchable. Brittle with resentment.

 

Every petal is rimed with rhinestones.

Every thorn a jewel, ruby with my blood.

I nursed this rose. Told it stories of roses past; their triumphs,

Their glories. But still it rips my finger.

 

It was born to rip. And though the petals are long since compost,

Though the winter sags and wheezes over the hills,

Though I bustle in my gardenery ways,

The thorn has one purpose, which it fulfils.

The Dancefloor

 

There is a pillbox, not too far away,

Down where the river and the estuary

Curl a surly finger to the sea.

 

A silent spot, redolent with ghosts,

Though no-one ever died there, that I’ve heard

In the invasion for which the chance was lost.

 

A peaceful spot, but where I used to roar

Machine-gun noises at the enemy: where I used to trace

Psychedelic patterns on its flat expanse:

 

Where I once waltzed with my one true love

To the music of a cracked transistor radio.

 

I still go down to see, and witness how the sands

Creep up the walls, how the concrete stands

Thigh deep now in tide and shingle shells,

 

How the weight of dancers, picnics, dogs and memories

Will heap a barrow dune over its bulk

How the geometry of war is losing out to peace.

 

Not long now, I calculate, before the shingle wins

And the memories of warfare disappear

Under the scatter of stones, plastic and sea-kale.

 

I reckon it will still, just, outlast me

Before it sinks into archaeology.

 

Edward Alport is a retired teacher and proud Essex Boy. He occupies his time as a poet, gardener and writer for children. He has had poetry, stories and articles published in a variety of webzines and magazines. When he has nothing better to do he posts snarky micropoems on Twitter as @cross_mouse. He moderated the monthly @ThePoetryFloor poetry events on Twitter.

 

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HOLLY DAY

 

Uptown

 

The newspaper makes me angry and I prepare myself

for a day of punching Nazis. I read about the local museum

being infiltrated by white supremacists and so I plan my day

around a visit uptown. My daughter asks me where we’re going and I tell her

we’re going to fuck some shit up.

 

I keep my eyes peeled for guys with shaved heads and swastika pins

combat boots and iron crosses but I don’t see any. Someone says

something kind of racist on the bus next to me and I look at them

but then they shut up as if they know what’s in my head.

 

Genesis

 

We’ll just assume it was all construed by men in suits

pointing at scrawled-over blackboards with long wooden sticks, we’ll assume

they knew what they were doing because men in suits

always claim responsibility for these things.

There is always a plan and a chain of command.

 

Let’s pretend that there were no women yet, that these men

who created the universe could also make their own tea

take their own notes, and were truly responsible for all of their claims

and that this cruel joke that keeps women hidden in the shadows

as great things happen around them, completely excludes them

was something that happened overnight, an accident

some side effect of the universe exploding.

 

March

 

The first ants of the season are spilling out onto the sidewalk

Warmed by the unexpected sunshine. There are so many of them

They look like upturned earth, like someone took a stick

And carefully scraped dirt onto the sidewalk in a pile

So thickly spread you can’t see the pavement beneath.

My daughter asks me if they’re fire ants, wonders

If she would be stripped to the bone like a cow she saw on TV

If she stood in the middle of the pile and let them swarm over her.

I tell her no, but stay away anyway,

There’s too many there to know for sure what they’ll do.

 

Holly Day (hollylday.blogspot.com) has been a writing instructor at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review, and her newest books are The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press), Book of Beasts (Weasel Press), and Music Composition for Dummies (Wiley).

 

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MIKE DILLON

 

Found

    I can’t go on. I’ll go on.

    Samuel Beckett

   

Sunlight, shadow stroke the mud-banked Chinook. 

The forge of its skyward gill works 

   the September afternoon.

 

Old age grew the walking stick in my hand.

It’s what I use to edge the salmon back 

   into its natal stream and tryst with death.

 

The salmon pauses. The salmon fights the current,

the salmon is lost among the others thrashing 

 towards the place of cedar shade and gravel.

 

I pause for a quiet breath. And go on my way. 

We do go on, don’t we fish?

   Because we do.

 

Mike Dillon lives in Indianola, Washington, USA, a small town on Puget Sound northwest of Seattle. His most recent book is Departures, from Unsolicited Press (2019). A chapbook of his poems, The Return, will be published by Finishing Line Press in March 2021.

 

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WILLIAM OGDEN HAYNES

 

The Last Valentine

 

He relaxes in the quiet of his car in the Walmart parking lot. And when he gets

up the nerve, he’ll open the door to the cacophonous clatter of late shoppers

in search of last minute valentine greetings. But for now, he watches the Boy

Scout, the grandmother, the fat man with his hat on backwards and the pregnant

 

woman herding two children, all headed for the automatic doors. They’re on their way

to buy cards, heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, candy hearts with messages,

red helium balloons, and flowers. Later, he joins the crowd in the greeting

card section, elbowing close to the rack to buy one of the few remaining cards.

 

He can reach only a few, and for the rest, he reads stale sentiments over the

shoulders of other shoppers. He has a desperate desire to find just the right

words, words wet with love and lust, wonderful words for his wife that tell

her how he feels, how they feel. But finally, he realizes that these valentine

 

cards written by strangers, could never contain what he wants to say, and

would not capture the wonder of her, of them. So, he buys a card, but ends up

dropping it in the trash at the store exit. No greeting card describes him arriving

home and putting away the groceries, then finding her in the laundry room,

 

kneeling in front of the dryer, singing a song they used to dance to years before.

No card portrays her flirty smile, as she folds his jeans, warm as fresh baked bread.

Nowhere is it written down, that she stands up, humming that tune again, and puts

her arms around his neck, as they slow-dance down the hall toward the bedroom.

 

William Ogden Haynes is a poet and author of short fiction from Alabama who was born in Michigan. He has published seven collections of poetry (Points of Interest, Uncommon Pursuits, Remnants, Stories in Stained Glass, Carvings, Going South and Contemplations) and one book of short stories (Youthful Indiscretions) all available on Amazon.com.  Approximately 200 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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KATHERINE HOERTH

 

Hope Like Wildflowers

 

I count my hope like wildflowers

on my patio in Baytown,

where I believe the wilderness

 

is coming back in riotous

flashes of color against the sky’s

hue of haze—the beebalm’s pink,

 

a smile in a hopeless place,

the sage’s blushing red, the sunrise,

not the sunset, shade of firewheel.

 

I plant these in clay pots—

It’s all I have. The cross vines wend

through the iron railing to create

 

a wall of green and tangerine

flowers, a slip of paradise

in dreary smokestack landscape

 

for the starving hummingbirds,

the last kaleidoscopes of monarchs,

and the lizards who come here

 

to my garden with a remnant

of a distant memory

of how this land once bloomed like dewlaps

 

at their throats in spring. Once,

my housecat caught one in his mouth.

Its tail flailed between his lips.

 

I grasped it from the maw of death,

released it to the pots, its body

heaving from a scarlet gash

 

on its belly. Did it die?

you ask. I tell you, absolutely

not. It was breathing, yes—

 

it was hanging on to life.

I believe, today, it lives,

laying eggs and eating bugs

 

amongst the wildflowers, cement,

pollen and smog—the wilderness

returning to this dreary city.

 

Katherine Hoerth is the author of three poetry collections, including Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots, which won the Helen C. Smith Prize for the best book of poetry in Texas in 2015. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Lamar University and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Lamar University Literary Press. 

 

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PAUL MCDONALD
 

Van Gogh at Arles

Before you paint

you must set aside your easel, 

match your shape 

 

to the contour of your shadow, 

prone beneath the parched sky.

Despite the sun, refuse to blink

 

for fear of what you'll miss.

Stroke the soil instead, 

take fistfuls for the feel of it, 

 

pour it from your palm 

onto your face; feel it powder down, 

grit the eyes and mouth, 

 

crunch like berry seeds 

between your teeth,

pattern mottled sweat. 

 

Breathe it in - air made real

in a gagging throat;

an eye that pans for gold alone

 

always misses this: 

the earth's caress, 

a world reborn in otherness. 

 

Paul McDonald taught at the University of Wolverhampton for twenty five years, where he ran the Creative Writing Programme. He took early retirement in 2020 to write full time. He is the author of twenty books, which cover fiction, poetry, and scholarship. His work has won a number of prizes including the Ottakars/Faber and Faber Poetry Competition, The John Clare Poetry Prize, and the Sentinel Poetry Prize. His most recent book is Allen Ginsberg: Cosmopolitan Comic (2020)

 

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GORDON MEADE

 

Mekong Giant Catfish

 

Having managed to live

through both the Vietnam War

and the rise and fall of the Khmer Rouge,

I am determined to survive

 

my most recent trials

and tribulations whatever

the cost. Habitat loss is just another

way of saying 'refugee',

 

and I have always been

a nomad at heart. In spite

of the overfishing and the damming

of my river, I still intend

 

to be around long

enough to be able to watch

the sun going down behind the ruined

temples of Angkor Wat.

 

Sumatran Orangutan

 

What happens to the original Wild Man

of the Woods when the woods themselves

are in the process of being chopped down

for flat-pack furniture? I will end up in a place

 

like this, a wildlife sanctuary, where I will

be seen by some as a sort of sage, the kind

that never speaks, one whose messages you

must learn to discern just by gazing into my eyes.

 

Gordon Meade is a Scottish poet based in the East Neuk of Fife. His tenth collection, Zoospeak, a collaboration between himself and the Canadian photographer and animal activist, Jo-Anne McArthur, was published in 2020 by Enthusiastic Press in London.

 

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JILL SHARP

 

Shelf Life

 

Immured, like a genie, in a casket 

of ash, awaiting her release

beside the Dart, my grandmother

found herself stowed for some months

in my brothers’ wardrobe. What she made

of navels picked clean with penknives,

projectiles moulded from toe jam, her mute

presence behind those stacks of Y-fronts

did not disclose. But my father - to whom

all talk of afterlife was poppycock - sitting

alone one evening with the crossword,

heard his mother’s familiar rasping intake

of breath from the chair beside him,

as if she were about to speak her mind.

 

 

Persephone opens his fridge

 

Her soft tug releases

an odour. The light flicks on...

 

Along the top rack lies

a tube of puree, twisted, missing

its lid. A streaky rasher dangles

between the rails. What

was once lettuce drips

onto a ripped-open empty package

and a bruised wedge of cheese.

Stuck in the bars, dried halves

of onion, rings shrunk apart, lose

their skins over a closed container holding

nothing but sprouting spuds and an egg-box,

its sole sticky occupant cracked...

 

She’s already eaten his meal, but now pulls free

the Eiffel Tower souvenir magnet and leaves

beneath it a brief note in lipstick

on a white unfolded serviette.

 

Dada

 

I remember my father rising early

to fish for pike on some distant misty pond

though mostly I don’t remember him at all.

Either way, I made up my mind

to recreate him from a photograph

of Harold MacMillan and an old raincoat

I found in a charity shop. He owned a pipe rack,

shoe trees, stacked naughty magazines

at the back of his wardrobe, till it occurred

to me that in order to have a father like him

I’d need to be fifty at least when in fact

I’m just nine, so probably my dad

sits staring at his mobile phone, vapes

secretly in the downstairs toilet and

picks his nose when he’s stuck in traffic.

I’d remember a dad like that.

 

Jill Sharp's poems have appeared most recently in Acumen, Envoi, Prole, Stand and Under the Radar. She was placed joint-second in the 2020 Keats-Shelley Prize. “Shelf Life” was previously published in The Frogmore Papers, 2018, “Persephone opens his fridge” was previously published in Ye Gods, Indigo Dreams, 2015, “Dada” was previously published in Vilndication, Arachne Press, 2018.

 

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J. R. SOLONCHE

 

Utilities

 

I called the utility company.

I had an issue I needed taken care of.

Alex answered the phone.

He asked for my account number.

I told him I didn’t know my account number.

I told him I throw away the bills after I pay them.

I told him I could give him any other information.

I gave him my phone number.

I gave him my street address.

I gave him my mailing address.

I gave him my Social Security number,

I gave him my mother’s maiden name, Karp.

He laughed.

He had a sense of humor.

I like that.

He said he didn’t need that.

He said at least it wasn’t carp as in the fish.

I told him I once caught a carp.

I caught it in my lake.

It must have weighed 20 pounds.

I caught it on 8 pound test.

It was too heavy to get into the boat.

I asked him if he fished at all.

He said he did.

He said he preferred fly fishing.

He said he goes up to the Catskills to fish for trout.

I told him I tried fly casting once.

I couldn’t do it.

I asked him if he likes beer.

He said he does.

I asked him if he had ever been to Trout Town Brewery.

It’s in Roscoe, a famous trout fishing spot.

He said he was.

He said that’s his favorite place for trout fishing followed by beer.

We spent the next 15 minutes talking about beer.

I said it was great talking to him.

He said it was great talking to me.

We hung up.

I realized I hadn’t taken care of my issue.

I called the utility company again.

I took care of my issue with Melissa.

 

 J.R. Solonche has published poetry in more than 400 magazines, journals, and anthologies since the early 70s. He is the 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 (Kelsay Books), Tomorrow, Today and Yesterday (Deerbrook Editions), True Enough  (Dos Madres Press), The Jewish Dancing Master (Ravenna Press), If You Should See Me Walking on the Road (Kelsay Books), In a Public Place (Dos Madres Press), To Say the Least (Dos Madres Press), The Time of Your Life (Adelaide Books), The Porch Poems (Deerbrook Editions), Enjoy Yourself  (Serving House Books), Piano Music (Serving House Books),  For All I Know (Kelsay Books), A Guide of the Perplexed (Serving House Books), The Moon Is the Capital of the World (Word Tech Communications), and coauthor of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). He lives in the Hudson Valley.

 

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JOHN L. STANIZZI

 

Glassworks (Coventry, Connecticut)

 

“Glassblowing is an animal unto itself. It requires skill, knowledge, physical strength and respect.”  William Morris. ( William Morris was born in Carmel, California in 1957. He is an American glass artist who has been able to change the history of ar twithin his lifetime.)

 

They followed the Skungamaug, with names like

                   Stebbins and Root,

looking for some land that might suit

a glassworks shop on the Boston Turnpike; 

 

a glass factory where they would fashion

                   inkstands and flasks.

The glassblowers had many tasks;

“Portrait flasks” were many gaffer’s passion.

 

1813 to 1845 --

                   they melted glass

into small bottles with faces.

Buried around the shop, some still survive.

 

Marquis de Lafayette may be found there

                   beneath the dirt,

a commemorative flask of worth,

proud of his U.S. stop, this debonair.

 

Eventually the Coventry shop

                   closed because of

the scarcity of wood, above

all, the thing needed most to make their “crop.”

 

So after thirty-some-odd years they closed,

                   the furnaces

left to cool off in the barest

factory, where heat once rose and flames flowed.

 

It’s kids these days who are out there striving

                   on the unplowed

grounds beneath the breakers of clouds,

for gems in the undertow of living.

 

John L. Stanizzi’s books; Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits, Chants, Sundowning, POND.  Besides The Lake, John has been in Prairie Schooner, Cortland Review, American Life in Poetry, others.  Nonfiction in Stone Coast Review, Ovunque Siamo, Literature and Belief, others. 

 

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J. S. WATTS

 

I Want An Eastern Seaboard American Accent

 

My ear hears something in the distinct intonation and tone

that gifts every word slow weight and brilliance.

Each precise gem shines with its own bright warmth,

sinks smoothly into the tree-dark wetness of an eastern lake

leaving ever-fading rings of significant hush

like painted coral lips forming moist Os

as they pronounce gently sloping vowels.

As someone on the opposite side of the pond

I cannot detect the accent’s precise home

the geographical location of its linguistic waters:

Massachusetts, New Hampshire, maybe even landlocked Vermont,

somewhere where our tongues once met and were intimate.

I know, though, that the accent is made for poetry.

Women’s voices echo in its depths,

their presence solid, quietly confident.

I am here. Hear

these words. They are mine

fresh, yet loaded with legacy.

They smile through the mouth

but know their own worth,

their literary heft.

Sink into this calm fluidity

rest on softly uttered words

full with the intensity of their belief

thousands of miles from their once upon a time

but secure in the home of themselves,

their subtle suggestions.

 

J.S.Watts is a UK poet and novelist. She has published seven books: four of poetry, Cats and Other Myths, Songs of Steelyad Sue, Years Ago You Coloured Me, and The Submerged Sea and three novels, A Darker Moon, Witchlight”, and Old Light. See www.jswatts.co.uk for more information.

 

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EMMA WELLS

 

No.78

 

I peer longingly,

hoping for recognition:

sitting daintily;

squarely turned out

like a wedding napkin.

My eyelids flutter, widening -

a limited, blinkered view.

My grey hair lacks lustre,

curls have fallen weightlessly,

yet no one sees. Knows. Cares.

 

79 stopped looking –

a few weeks back,

afraid of leaking desperation.

Not acknowledging

will save guilt,

so consciousness rewinds

seen footage, sullies the tape.

I am erased memories.

 

They’ve added Venetian blinds:

keep them down, closed

like blinded war veterans.

What is not seen, can’t exist.

This is their mantra.

 

77 have a newborn:

c-section,

breech.

Baby girl, she smiles at the sky.

Once, she looked at me.

We mirrored –

I clutched to mothering reflections,

now wobbly with tears,

wavering with faded time

as a water-filled mirror.

 

I watch cars leave

across the street,

note the time,

number of passengers,

are they late? Running to time?

School kids dart

to opening pavements -

relish in being fragmentally free,

before mums shout “Come on”

in belligerent voices,

sanitised to the nth degree.

 

School bags bob

as households form

socially distant lines,

like a modern Noah’s ark:

two by two -

Stop the virus.

Space. Hands. Face.

Save the NHS.

 

I am a curtain twitcher:

a honed professional,

it’s an art form like ballet

learnt through countless study.

I teeter on tippy toe,

progressing to wooden pointes,

seeing higher, wider…

 

Yet I still crane —

yearning discursive eyes,

like mine,

which long to speak through glass,

to connect like wi-if,

in my cordless mind.

 

Emma Wells is an English teacher and a mother to a six year old daughter. She writes poetry and short stories as she enjoys the creative freedom that it allows. She has been writing creatively for nearly two years. She has poetry printed in The World’s Greatest Anthology, a short story published in Aurora & Blooms Creative Arts Journal and a selection of poems published in Dreich Magazine. 

 

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SARAH WHITE

 

Bullet Couplets

 

I sing the bullet that struck a soldier in the eye.

I sing the soldier, who would “instantly and painlessly” die 

 

for France according to a letter written 

by his captain from a German prison.

 

The soldier was my cousin. I was four.

I didn’t know him though I knew there was a war.

 

Eighty years have passed. I often read the note in which the captain

tells a mother what has happened

 

to her only son: He was shot for France’s sake,

slept suddenly, and would never wake,

 

never be captured or imprisoned, never know

that France surrendered and began a long collaboration  

 

with the enemy.  I sing a mother and a son—

she, inconsolable, he, the lucky one.

 

Sarah White's most recent publication is Iridescent Guest, (Deerbrook Editions, 2020).  Fledgling, a chapbook of sonnets, is forthcoming from Wordtech Publications. She lives in New York City and divides her time between poetry and painting.

 

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