2016

 

 

 

 

JANUARY CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

Judy Brackett, Anthony Dimatteo, Cat Dixon, Jane Frank, Tim Gavin, Lisa Higgs,

 Steve Klepetar, Glenda Lindsey-Hicks, Michael Mark, Maren O. Mitchell,

Nicky Phillips, Rhonda C. Poynter, Stuart Ross, Julie Sampson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

JUDY BRACKETT

 

Dreaming Awake

 

She wakes up dreaming, goes through the day somewhere

else, traipses through sleet and wind, cold sun now

and then, climbs up scree slopes,

over and around lichen-painted boulders

skyward to the saint’s aerie,

sheep and dog's musical notes

in the fields far below

 

          spreads cardboard, leaves, woodchips

          between the berry rows

          hint of berry scent in the breeze

          not really but there will be come August

 

walks the circuit from his alleged birthplace in town,

low ceilings, heavy timbers, to Mary Arden’s farm,

thatched roofs, brisk day, school children taking notes,

eating lunch—maybe that clever boy ran in these

his grandfather’s fields, maybe not

                  

          washes the windows of winter’s grime

          white vinegar crumpled newspaper

          back and forth outside and in

          wiping off damned spots

 

wades through high grasslands, waves away flies

and a black-haired boy on horseback who pleads,

“Come along, I can show you a cavern.

My father makes fine caps,”

plucks a bloody eagle feather from a sprig of edelweiss

 

          turns pages eyes skimming words

          through memory’s fog

          can’t remember what she’s read

          reads page nine

          nine times

 

watches a small, tan, one-legged bird hopping

on the deck beaking crumbs and tweedling

as the waves roll in, frangipani in the air

 

          chops onions crushes garlic scrubs carrots

          and blue potatoes flattens chicken breasts

          sprinkles herbs splashes white wine

 

wends her way up and around the squares and circles,

Borobudur temple, not praying exactly,

Merapi bubbling in the hazy distance,

Buddhas on pedestals, in niches everywhere,

peeks into a beehive stone-windowed stupa—

scores of sun-dappled Buddhas in shifting light,

stumbles upon a stone garden of Buddha parts,

hands and feet, takes photos and thinks

about form, formlessness, desire

 

          collects kindling picks the last

          berries the last

          green tomatoes

          gathers the first

          fallen linden leaves, hearts

          and the first

          fallen maple leaves, hands

 

eats Indian food takeout in musty Hereford B & B,

breakfast of tomatoes, beans, triangles of toast,

New Year’s Day morning, one child not there,

follows a rainbow to Hay—

books in the granary, the taverns, the castle,

Black Mountains calling

 

          Some days are like this, forth and back,

          neither there nor here, all confusion, fatigue,

          and desultory verve. What else to do but brew

          passion fruit tea, sigh, pick up the book,

          turn to page ten.

 

Judy Brackett has taught creative writing and English composition and literature at Sierra College. Born in Nebraska, she’s lived in the northern Sierra Nevada foothills of California for many years. Her stories and poems have appeared in journals and anthologies from About Place to The Untidy Season: An Anthology of Nebraska Women Poets.

 

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ANTHONY DIMATTEO

 

The Pelt

 

There at the back of the closet,

suitcase smug in zippered dust.

You swear it’s mine, loaded with a flock

of secrets waiting for daylight

to burst out of the silence of the past.

Burn or bury it?  Push it back deeper? 

 

I know it is not mine. We open it

and the extent of your mother’s

obsession becomes clear.  As if plucked

from your head by her dead fingers,

bagged locks of hair fall out, forty years old,

and every year thereafter until you married

 

your first husband, the one whose arms

she urged you to, longing to leave

your father, you the last child to go,

and when you did, she fled a thousand miles

from him, from all she knew, and now

we ponder her sad dream of your

 

eternal youth and how she longed

for it not to end as our fingers let go

and the strands fly off in the wind.       

 

 

Anthony DiMatteo's recent book is Beautiful Problems: Poems as well as a chapbook Greetings from Elysium. Forthcoming is In Defense of Puppets. He defends the mysteries of writing at the New York Institute of Technology where he is a professor of English.

 

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The Fourth Marriage

 

This was a mistake, but I silence my doubts with opening gifts.

Even without a registry, some felt so inclined to wrap presents,

send cards and well wishes. Marrying a scarecrow is strange,

but no one said a word as I dragged him up the aisle, then

propped him against the four-foot faux pillar. My bouquet, irises

and brown leaves, set the stage for the vows. The pastor

nodded the scarecrow’s head when appropriate. The kiss

left dust and hay in my mouth. At the reception

we danced to slow 80s love ballads and despite his floppiness

and weathered clothes, my new husband enjoyed himself.

His smile stitched by a farmer’s wife years ago never faltered.

I saved money by not buying him a ring;

instead, I purchased a new straw hat that tips

forward hiding his button eyes. Those eyes that stare,

never closing or blinking, those lips that stay silent—oh, this man

is a woman’s dream. He never questions my comings or

goings. Never argues about a thing. Yet, I feel now

as I finish breakfast across the table from him surrounded

by ripped silver wrapping paper and empty pretty gift bags that

something is missing. As with all the men I have married,

I must carry him around and I have grown too weak

or he has grown too heavy.

 

 

Cat Dixon is the author of Our End Has Brought the Spring (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and Too Heavy to Carry (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2014). She is the managing editor of The Backwaters Press, a nonprofit press in Omaha. She teaches creative writing at the University of Nebraska. Her poetry and reviews have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Sugar House Review, Midwest Quarterly Review, Coe Review, Eclectica, and Mid-American Review. Her website is www.catdix.com.

 

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JANE FRANK

 

Embroidered Map

attributed to Elizabeth Cook c. 1800. National Maritime Museum, Australia

 

I am measuring my own meridians

in linen, silk and kisses,

stitching along the Pacific routes

that sundered us for all those years.

My service to empire was our separation,

still is.

 

With no nautical almanac

I made my own calculations

as you stood with your sextant

night after velvet night

measuring the distance

of stars from the moon,

from the horizon,

from me.

 

They said you died on Valentine’s Day.

When they arrived with the ditty box

the sailors carved,

with your lock of hair and the tiny painting

of your brave Hawaiian death,

I put aside the waistcoat

of tapa cloth I was making you,

cried into hard black skirts.

 

You found your longitude

but I’ve been measuring distances

ever since, and I’m tired of

suturing loss and years and stars.

I will burn our letters:

there have been enough discoveries.

I will finish sewing the world you found,

and sail to you.

 

 

No Poem Today

 

It’s unlikely I can force a poem from today:

chance is ebbing with evening’s outline.

The sky is just a serial shade of dusk now,

a tinge of peach but not bruised or streaked,

the moon no longer blue.

The poincianas have a clipped reserve,

freshly pruned,

inhospitable to metaphors,

and when I listen there are no cicadas

or birds, or even distant traffic,

only the swish of palm fronds on the roof

and the scrape of the neighbour’s bin

being hauled to the street.

In desperation, I think of your breath as you sleep.

Sometimes that has led to poems about waves,

or love, or stony islands in grey seas

that remind me of hope,

but not today.

 

 

Jane Frank’s poems have appeared in Australian Poetry Journal, Westerly, Writ, Uneven Floor, Yellow Chair Review, Antiphon, The Lake and elsewhere. Jane teaches in the School of Humanities at Griffith University in south east Queensland.

 

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TIM GAVIN

 

Quench

 

Is there a certain power in mangos on sale on a roadside stand?

A young girl, somewhere in the Central Plateau, with hope

Piles them in a pyramid on a wooden table next

To a pitcher of water that will hydrate her for the day.

She banks on the trucks, carrying tons of limestone

From the mountains to Port-Au-Prince, kicking up a tornado

Of dust in their wakes, stopping

      and a driver will dismount

And approach her wiping sweat from his forehead, asking

How much for a mango?  She wonders will the mango’s

Sweetness and soft tissue pull the driver into its forbidden-ness

Or will it just look better as a still life piled high

Balancing upon other mangos that are somewhat bruised

And overripe among shadows. She fears the driver who stops

Will only desire a sip of water from the pitcher and ignore

The mangos and all the power they have to please and quench.

 

 

Dirt

 

The moon is rotting in the limbs of the banana tree

And Daphne howls into the night, which covers the deep

Bruise of her soul as she wrings her hands in the dirty bucket

To wash herself from the dirt of the day and the dirt of her lover

And the dirt of the horse she walked behind, coming up

The mountain from the market and the dirt of her children

Who suck her milk till it’s gone and the dirt of the foreign

Missionaries who believe because they say Jesus as Jezi,

then they are some how soul mates to Daphne and her kin.

She lifts the rag to the sky and sees the many holes which have

Filtered the dirt from her body to the air and into the river

Of her mother country where one mountain

Rises up after another ranging into infinity.

 

 

Tim Gavin is an Episcopal priest, serving as chaplain at The Episcopal Academy, located in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania. He oversees the school’s partnership program with St. Marc’s School in the Central Plateau of Haiti, which he visits three to four times a year. His poems have appeared in many journals and most recently in The Anglican Theological Review, About Place Journal, Digital Papercut, Screech Owl Review, HEArt On-Line Journal, and Blue Heron Review. He lives with his wife and sons in Havertown, Pennsylvania.

 

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LISA HIGGS

 

Hunger

 

your stirrings are my own

this cool morning of gray shades, necessary covers

 

like the dog, paw in his green bowl,

you are loud for food and walk

 

we pick the last raspberries of October

 

and the wind blows leaves around us

pretending at sunshine

as we pretend to speak all consonants,

then all vowels

 

your rest is also my own

when I turn pages, your eyelids flicker

 

lowering light wakes us

 

and we race honeybees to find dusky sweetness –

pine needles, broken leaves, grass, black dirt

 

but a mouse has died under the dining room table

from poison your father planted four days before

 

elsewhere, the earth swallows our venom

its stomach radiates great fires

 

on your red plate, thin slices of Honeycrisp,

avocado, sweet corn; the window,

full with half-ripe tomatoes, hot peppers

 

no one should have to die in pain, afraid

but that is death for the living

 

the quiet of your slumber settles stairs,

tables and chairs, sills and sofas

 

your father and I, too tired to untangle our limbs

 

 

Truth of a Kind

For A.H.

 

The girls listen to old-time Ella Fitz,

big band swagger a foreign dance, the bass

not dropped hip-hop electric, its pulsate beat

a sure sign they’ve arrived at the heart’s true flux.

I tell how you danced nights to trumpets, sax,

the brass shining in spotlights, though I break

to name your favorite song and can barely

hear the radio in your kitchen, the flash

to you playing solitaire too quick to fix

my childhood eye to fact. Fiction believed

is truth of a kind. I can say Count Basie

swung your hips; Artie Shaw, your soul. To ask,

the story you’ve shared is more the drive home,

you at the wheel, than a kiss stolen mid-hum.

 

Lisa Higgs’ second chapbook Unintentional Guide to the Big City was published by Red Bird Chapbooks in April 2015. Her work has been published widely and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards. Lisa is Poetry Editor for Quiddity International Literary Journal.

 

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STEVE KLEPETAR

 

Last Time I Checked

 

you had flown away over the rooftops,

said goodbye to wind and trees.

 

I remember seeing a note somewhere,

half written, half printed, with hollow

 

balls dancing over the lowercase i’s.

The ink burned red and I left it under

 

the sink. Maybe it was a song you wrote

for me, or was it your will? Your grandma

 

called seven times and I told her you

had driven out to Reno, to Fort Worth,

 

up to Montreal. It was cold and I don’t

remember what I said. She sent me

 

a thank you note with five dollars

folded in the card. I have it here with me,

 

carefully ironed and spread out on the table

where we ate peanut butter sandwiches for lunch

 

which left our throats dry and raw. If I

pour a glass of milk, maybe you’ll come back

 

with new stories to tell, with a torn coat,

with your soul throbbing, your beautiful hair aflame.

 

 

 

Prometheus

 

television groans

spitting blue light

 

into a room

where two dogs

 

lie belly down

by the hearth

 

listening to a man

dangling from rocks

 

explain the math

describing the length

 

of his arm

how his elbow

 

bends in angles

described only

 

by primes

something like that

 

how it’s part

of the secret

 

code of the universe

hexagons and bees

 

golden ratio

at the molecular level

 

if only we could

monetize that we’d

 

illuminate the world

for a million years

 

Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared widely, and several of his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto (Flutter Press) and Return of the Bride of Frankenstein (Kind of a Hurricane Press).

 

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GLENDA LINDSEY-HICKS

 

A Poem about Leaving

 

I’ve been wondering what it might be like to have a poem about leaving, to write to those who have left, those who have been left for reasons shifting from here-to-there. To speak of the inchoate rationales used to

 

vindicate the irrevocable place cursed words occupy. I’ve been thinking about repetition, the drawings on the walls at Lascaux, how I decided in France not to go, not wanting to live in a Disney lie where things we

 

think we can claim to have seen can’t be seen. I’ve been thinking about the absurdity of pretense, of fathers who aren’t, fathers who say, move on, as if the past were not etched more deeply than the chimerical beast

 

I’d like to have seen but can’t, knowing it’s there and not. I was in Dresden this summer watching women fall. I saw them fall. At the final descent, I stood in the distant door of the re-built opera house waiting for

 

the ambulance, worried it wouldn’t come, afraid I should have stayed. She was attended by a German man who knew what to do, so I left and stayed, as if there were some thing real in my concern. There was

 

something real in my concern. But I was talking of letters and leaving when I circled round to repetition. I think that it’s Barthes in Mythologies who talks of this. Then I think, no, it’s another French thinker. The

 

concierge at my hotel last summer in France searched him out after taking my book in hand, asking what I was reading, thinking I must want to talk to the person instead of settling for his printed word. He

 

found him, told me where he was and how to go. Actually, I’d done something very like this before in Barcelona when I myself ferreted out

Cirlot, found his address, and feeling a silly sort of groupie, considered

 

calling, going, knocking on Juan’s door to say, I don’t know what. Virilio. Of course. That’s his name. Paul. It seems suddenly there are so many Pauls important to me. But that’s another story within a story, repeating

 

other stories in other countries and towns. And I was in Dresden, not Damascus, thinking of women falling and things reproducing, reproduced after they’d been destroyed or re-produced so as not to be

 

destroyed and wondering why, why, why it was so important for the Germans to rebuild Dresden exactly as it had been before the war. I found myself in Germany this summer trying to talk myself out of the

 

dread I felt over what had been but was no more, fearing the past as if it could repeat, knowing it is repeating since there’s never anything that hasn’t already been done, thought, found, lost, and found again, re-

 

produced in spite of the fact that we value most the never before, as if that were possible, thinking it has to be possible as we loop back to the what was, hanging on as if Michelangelo weren’t a cubist. Now I wonder

 

what it was I set out to say. Something about letters and leaving, writing and reading, repeating as we go and stay, see, send, say. And here I am, again left, this time thinking of Freud and fathers, sons and mothers,

 

echoes and shadows, ribs and caves, thinking how this summer after a cold winter, it’s been unbearably hot.

 

Glenda Lindsey-Hicks is a professor at a small college where she writes in a community distant from her cultural, poetic, and political grounding. Her publications include Texas Review, RiverSedge, 13^th Moon, San Fernando Poetry, MacGuffin, Dandelion, Phoebe, Voices International, Global Tapestry, and a nomination for a Pushcart for “A Thin Line Marker,” in Javelin.

 

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MICHAEL MARK

 

He Delivers Beds

 

Last night I took my in-laws' bed apart

and moved it into their garage.

 

Now Pedro is at the door holding a clipboard,

wearing navy hospital scrubs

 

with his name in script,

the truck behind him, breathing hard.  

 

“Where do you want it?” are

his first words.

 

It takes an hour to set up the

serious contraption.

 

Pedro shows me how to work

the buttons. 

 

The head part can go up 90 degrees, 

the legs can be raised independently.

 

He hands me the control.

 

"He's going to die in that bed."

The thought escapes me. 

 

"I guess you hear that a lot."

Pedro points to the places to sign.

 

“Call this number when you don’t need it

any more,” are his last words.

 

 

Grandma Tillie’s Thimble

 

sits on a pale cushion of her bent finger

like a church on a hill in a European village.

There’s no bell, though, just a metal dome

that would make a clean and humble ring

if a little pearl were to hang inside

from a strand of her soft grey hair,

the hair she washes with a bar of soap,

poo-pooing shampoo for the privileged,

the silly New Worlders, not her,

the seventh child of Polish peasants

who put her on a boat, alone,

for England, that docked in America

where she made the clothes she wore

and us, stitch by stitch.

 

 

Michael Mark is a hospice volunteer. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Gargoyle Magazine, Paterson Literary Review, Poet Lore, Rattle, Scapegoat Review, Spillway, Sugar House Review, Tar River Poetry, The Lake. His poetry has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and the 2015 Best of the Net. www.michaeljmark.com

 

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MAREN O. MITCHELL

 

Raymond Duvall, Sleeper

for Ronald Moran

 

Once again I’m fired for excessive languor: showing up both

late and drowsy, siesta lunches, desk comas masquerading as naps.

 

That night I wake with the answer: I love to sleep—why not

sleep for those who can’t, for those who’d rather not?

 

Business is good. While you go about your life, I drift

into your bed, harvest your slumber, conjure your dreams.

 

Surrender to our planet’s pull, the mass of my need to doze

attracts the mass of your lack of repose: a palpable exchange.

 

I burn with perpetual spring fever, the sliding in and out

of the arms of Morpheus equally, if not more enjoyable

 

than the embrace. Retreat recurs in a dream—early fall

I saunter out of my house at dusk, thread a path into the forest,

 

find the same oak, toss my long thick tail up into the damp perfumes

of night, over and around a branch. I hang, softly swing, sleep.

 

 

Maren O. Mitchell’s poems have appeared in Iodine Poetry Journal, Appalachian Heritage, The South Carolina Review, Hotel Amerika, Southern Humanities Review, Town Creek Poetry and elsewhere. Work is forthcoming in Hotel Amerika. Her nonfiction book is Beat Chronic Pain, An Insider’s Guide (Line of Sight Press, 2012), available on Amazon. She lives in Appalachia, Georgia, U.S.

 

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NICKY PHILLIPS

 

Blackbird

 

He’s the feathered Frank Sinatra,  

a real show-starter, centre stage,  

holding mellow notes and tones.

Over and over from daybreak to dusk he sings,

 

doo-be-doo-be-doo, doo-be-doo-be-doo,

again, again, doo-be-doo-be-doo, wait,  

it’s that tune, you remember, the one

that six year old girls love to dance

 

and prance to, over and over, the one  

about a stick-thin plastic blonde and her  

muscular boyfriend. Sweet melodies

from the sycamore tree, the blackbird

 

never falters. Barbie Girl, note perfect,

G sharp, E, G sharp, C sharp, A, repeat,

doo-be-doo-be-doo, doo-be-doo-be-doo,

long after Barbie grows old.

 

 

Snooker Cue

 

Collecting it was a ceremony in itself:

12 noon at the Club, black tie, shining shoes.

William’s widow presented it to him –

flanked by eldest son, younger daughter –

in its case on a pewter salver, made,

 

generations back, for the purpose.

He took a taxi home, sat flint-faced,

shotgun straight, emotions shredded

by the weight of it. Declared himself unfit

to drive: responsibility, not alcohol.

 

That night, he lay it on the floor alongside

their king-size divan. Two weeks later,

his wife returned, weary, from a mercy visit

to her mother, discovered it down the centre

of the bed. Mondays, he’d take it from its case,

 

stroke the taper on its shaft of ash

with tender fingers, rub the ferrule with soft

muslin. He’d drop a cube of green chalk –

chosen so as not to discolour the baize – into

his silver holder, ready for the evening’s game.

 

 

Nicky Phillips lives in rural Hertfordshire. Her poems have appeared in The Cannon’s Mouth; Ink, Sweat and Tears; Brittle Star; South Bank Poetry; and anthologies, including ‘The Best of Every Day Poets Two’ (2012), ‘Heart Shoots’  (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2013) and ‘The Book of Love and Loss’ (Belgrave Press, 2014).

 

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RHONDA C. POYNTER

 

The Lady Sitting Next To Me At The Memory Clinic Asks Me Whether I Might Be Able To Tell Her Why She Is Here, In The First Place

 

I want to be helpful:

I want to drop my reputation as

Impatience because, God knows,

We're all in this together.

 

I want to answer as carefully as I

Check the house every

Night, now - she's a stove that I'll make certain is

Cool to the touch.

 

I want to be helpful:

Probably the same reason I'm here -

And then she nods and smiles, and goes back to her

Sewing, and

 

Bonnet ties trail her arms.

Lace is easy, for now, but

Outside the window, rain tap tap taps

Hurry, hurry.

 

 

Sister

 

I will forget the

Fat redheaded nurse who stole your

Ghiradelli chocolates,

 

And the doctor who paid for his

Porsche on your heartache and

Howls will be old mail:

 

Simply gone.

 

I will take the blackness that

Coiled in and out of your bones and

Cast it, pockets weighed down with

Stones, into the sea:

 

When I am old,

I will remember only

Your hand clasping mine, long ago.

I will remember that your fingers were

 

Steeples.

 

 

Rhonda C. Poynter has been published in Blue Bear Review, Triggerfish, Dark Matter, Misfits Journal, Red Fez, vox poetica, Sleet, Wilderness House Literary Review, Slant, Rio, here/there and numerous anthologies of poetry and essays. Her first collection, Start The Car was published by Warthog Press in 1998. “The Lady At The Memory Clinic...” was previously published in Sleet (2013) “Sister” was previously published in Freshwater (2010)

 

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STUART ROSS

 

Adul and The Magic Book

 

Young Adul is sitting in the field

reading a book. The book is about

a young boy who sits in a field

and reads a book. The sun is hot.

From somewhere in the village,

there is the faint sound of music.

Adul’s father plays a horn. Suddenly

the book goes dark. At first Adul

thinks he forgot to charge it

and it has run out of electricity.

Then he remembers the village

has no electricity and his books

are made of paper. Therefore

it is just that he has been oblit-

erated by a bomb that missed

the village. He knows the village

has survived because he still

hears the music. Adul flaps

his arms and rises into the air.

He passes some neighbouring

countries, then finds himself

over the ocean. Soon he is landing

in the United States of America.

There are big moving pictures

stuck on the sides of buildings

that are taller than the tallest

tree that Adul has ever seen. The

streets are filled with cars and

trucks. There are neither

animals nor plants. Children

travel by jetpacks and their

books run on batteries. Soon

Adul finds an armament factory.

He is so small that the man

at the door doesn’t see him

brush by his knees. Inside

a man is at a desk. Adul peers

up at him and says, “Can you

unmake the bomb you dropped

on me so I can finish reading

my book? Also, I have to clean

out the hens’ cage or my mother

will be unhappy.” To the man

behind the desk, Adul’s language

sounds like a crazy chimpan-

zee. In a country to the north

that Adul has never heard of

his language would sound like

a chimpanzed. I have placed

a cheap joke in a poem about

the death and misery caused

by Western imperialism. To

compensate, I will make Adul

alive again, sitting in his field,

reading his book to its very

end before he tends to

the hen droppings. He has

never flown. He has never

seen a building higher than

two stories. In the distance,

he hears the music of his

father’s horn. I open a beer.

Suddenly my beer goes dark.

 

 

Three in a Room

 

A hospital room.

Yellow walls, three brothers.

Mother in bed.

Her wiry hands.

Him, him, and I.

Our terror.

The blasting of TVs.

On Mother’s lips now, a smile.

Him fidgets, needs a smoke.

Tubes run from her arms, her thighs.

Machines beep and flicker.

Mother’s watering eyes.

Dark rings vanish.

Lips dry, teeth dull.

Lips open.

“All three of you here,” she says.

“In one room,” she says.

Her hair is thin.

Has she ever been so pleased?

Him scrapes his chair.

We say nothing.

Father paces the corridors.

 

 

Doxology

 

A sparrow came down resplendent

from a bunch of clouds a string

trailing from its beak and

a fireman below watched this

though he couldn’t see the string

from where he was the sparrow

came right toward him

where he stood in front of

the fire station the fireman

stood his ground as the sparrow

opened his beak and a piece

of string just a tiny piece of

white string came drifting down

the fireman opened his mouth

and the string sailed in it went

down his throat and into his

gullet as the sparrow winged

back into the sky resplendent

in the days that followed the

fireman didn’t notice anything

much different except that now

he was a fireman with a piece

of string inside him and the

sparrow had said unto him

he remembered the sparrow

saying they abide and they

endure carry a piece of their

nest within you don’t fuck

things up like you usually

do like how you wrecked

your family and the fireman

held out his palm and the sun

shone upon it and many

baby birds did there appear.

 

Stuart Ross is the author of ten full-length poetry collections — including A Hamburger in a Gallery (DC Books, 2015) and the forthcoming A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent (Wolsak and Wynn, 2016) — and scores of chapbooks. He lives in Cobourg, Canada, and blogs at www.bloggamooga.blogspot.ca

 

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JULIE SAMPSON

 

Lilies

 

This bloody garden is chock

  with weeds

and no flowers.

 

Your fork and hoe

jab deep roots -

 

early sun frames

  your thinning face

and those once tight denims

  flap around your legs.

 

Now,  late April

you return to work,

cuckoos still call.

 

  I write,

cats scratch and sleep by the wall,

tarot cards we used last week

lie dusty on the floor.

High Priestess tops the pile.

 

Later, I shall garden,

sow flowers, scents for summer;

tobacco-plants, night-scented stock,

 

thinking of wild-night drifts,

white Jasmine tendrils

swathing the summer-house wall

 

and how last week I put my hand on your arm –

  it held the trowel

     poised arrow,

        in air.

 

Stopped.

 Stopped you –

   you didn’t root

did not root out the bed of lily of the valley.

 

Julie Sampson's poems are widely published. She edited Mary Lady Chudleigh; Selected Poems (Shearsman, 2009) and her own collection Tessitura  (Shearsman) was published in 2013. She was shortlisted for the Impress Prize, in 2015. Visit Julie's website at  www.juliesampson.com
 

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