2025

 

 

JUNE

 

 

Ian Clarke, Barbara Daniels, Lyudmyla Diadchenko, PM Flynn, Gabrielle Meadows,

 Sreeja Naskar, Tony Press, Hannah Stone, Jeanine Walker, Louise Worthington.

 

 

 

 

 

IAN CLARKE

 

Wisewoman

 

Old freckle blancher, old bone setter,

all wormwood and lavender,

mixing milt hard as pitch,

slack baking, sweating and gentling,

 

then smoothing spore thatched apples,

their sweet millions to worm,

to tame from the wild.

She was didicoys and hodnidods,

 

a shrapnel rattle to scare crows,

her whispered tease

shivering through barley,

her face a map of years

 

slicked by rain blind as sleet.

She was door-to-door with an armful of samphire,

potatoes lifted from black earth,

mushrooms moonlit ripe,

 

showing us corn dollies, trinkets,

heather for luck.

I can still see her walking home

past the pub’s salty gossip,

 

out to the lonely stretch,

where the land thaws back

to roofs of driftwood thatched with eelgrass,

where she lies, unmarked,

 

an ear to the ground

listening for sheep bells faint under trodden snow,

a holed stone to jinx the dark

clasped in her hand

 

Ian Clarke, Fenland poet living in North Yorkshire. Published widely in anthologies, in magazines and on-line, including The Poetry Village, Fenland Reed and Acumen. Latest collection Staying On published by Dempsey and Windle 2024. ianclarke25@btinternet.com

 

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BARBARA DANIELS

 

How to Stop Killing Your Houseplants

 

Start calling the yard a terrace

as if a new name makes it grand.

When night casts shadows

 

onto your bed again, use

the word ortstreue (place loyalty)

as if the shadows are loyal to you.

 

Late at night check on

your philodendron. At dawn

a gate opens the sky.

 

The sun shines orange at first,

but after a while drops gold

on your shoulders and hair.

 

It eases the chill that stiffens

your fingers. You know

what waits on your

 

kitchen table—aspidistras,

maidenhair ferns (what you

were given instead of children).

 

Your plants just want water.

And they would like to be

nudged toward the light.     

 

Idols

 

Let’s mock dogs that don’t have the wit

to be ironic, the prominent eyes

 

in their furry faces full of affection,

their dog toys wet with drool.

 

The idols I bought have been banished

to the back patio. The gold idol glitters.

 

The lead one looks down, its feet stuck

in leaf litter. The stone idol’s diligent,

 

eyeing me. It’s their nature to stand

through storms. Light shifts as if it can’t

 

find its true object—blank side

of an empty house, church spire

 

indexing clouds. Who stole the pears?

Who left the broken bits? The idols

 

are hands off. They allow birds to have

free will. Let’s mock the robins

 

that pull up worms. The dogs are

optimists. They think someone will throw

 

them a Star Trek Enterprise dog toy,

then bring out a wonderful bone.

 

Barbara Daniels’ most recent book, Talk to the Lioness, was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. Her poetry has appeared in Main Street Rag, Free State Review, Philadelphia Stories, and many other journals. She received four fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

 

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LYUDMYLA DIADCHENKO

 

Walking through Venice—where it’s not so deep—along

the canals and across

gathering dreams

gondolas bumping

a land with no sign

       of where the clouds gather to drip

and most importantly: how long this rain will last

it is now winter in your land

burrows dug into the sand

where the changes in weather, as in women—are notable.

it is time to light fires

with what flotsam

I can see

bobbing peacefully to shore.

Can a southern man know winter? frostbite in his fingers and toes?

     here, I have masks

     my own carnivals …

     but I am not even a gram

closer to you. I walk on submerged nets

and wave to gondoliers;

you call them, “boatmen.”

 

English translation by Padma Thornlyre

 

перейти Венецію—і щоб не дуже глибоко—уздовж

і поперек

           збираючи мрії

           збиваючи гондоли

земля де не видно

                              ізвідки й куди посипався дощ

а найголовніше: він тут звідколи

а в тебе тепер зима

            нори пориті пісками

            і зміна погоди як зміна жінок – помітна

багаття палити пора

                                  човнами й трісками

           що мирно пливуть до берега

           які нам видно

відома південній людині зима? і холод під нігті?

        тут маски

        й мої карнавали…

        і я ні на грам

до тебе не ближче. а йду під водою по сітях

і гондольєрам махаю.

                                     по-твоєму—човнярам

 

Dr. Lyudmyla Diadchenko's three Ukrainian titles—Fee for Access, A Hen for the Turkish Man, and Kedem—have all been honored in her homeland, and book-length translations of her work have appeared in Greek, Italian, Romanian and English. Individual poems have appeared in literary journals globally.

 

Padma Thornlyre has published 11 volumes of poetry, including the four-volume Anxiety Quartet and his translations of Diadchenko under the title, Magnetic Storms. In-progress projects include a new book of original poetry, WagJaw, his first novel, Baubo’s Beach, and a new collection of Diadchenko’s poetry, The Obedient Street.

 

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PM FLYNN

 

Black Water

 

“There is a path before each person that seems right,

but it ends in death.” Proverbs 14:12

 

Fancy foil paper wraps evening’s presence:

 

odd-sized tombs immersed, sprinkled or

white-washed by Sunday drive-thrus:

 

1. Night is a tomb for promises: politics choosing

life’s elastic strings to lord over more of the same.

Unable to believe anything they hear

they interlock one cardboard flap over the next.

 

2. With no clouds today I am blue water; a sky

of wind and flowers laying scrolling dead seas

at your feet. I become a calm, blank ocean

listening to more distance. I am a light burning

all day; hiding each memory until you’re asleep.

 

3. You are a river narrowing as a day’s heat

stalls overhead; blossoms falling on a dirt road

where animals run to living water.

 

4. Birds of prey wade through noon. I move closer.

They abandon their collapsed gifts at the last:

calcified snacks of chalky bones like leftovers

clear-wrapped before refrigeration.

 

5. Vultures scavenge moist soggy fur—submerged

carcasses drawn and quartered by pinching jaws

that tear every scabby edge of offending skin.

 

What’s passing will mulch beneath

the weighty grass under flattened curves

of all-night air, to drain moisture from every hand.

 

PM Flynn holds an English B.S. from East Carolina University. He roasts organic coffee for roanokeroasting.com and bakes cookies with his wife while being published in many fine online and print magazines. Resource Publications published his first book of poetry, Shadows on Moss.

 

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GABRIELLE MEADOWS

 

Snowdrops

 

As you draw breath from the mud

I wonder who is lying there

Bulbs between their toes

Cold fingers coiled with root.

I think you must be drinking their bone marrow

Or must have once,

Maybe that’s why you return

Year in year out

Wintering but not hiding no;

You rise

A great pale chorus

Masks align, you tilt your heads

But bowing always

Drooping beauty -

Lift your chin

Let me see your face!

Your coyness unnerves me,

Why do you come here

If not to look me in the eye?

Your stems a thousand broken necks,

Your whites that blind the dead.

 

Gabrielle Meadows lives in Norfolk and works in the arts. She has been published online with Atrium Poetry and Ink, Sweat & Tears.

 

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SREEJA NASKAR 

 

girls with keys tied to their wrists
           

 (not for doors)

they walked home      past
   the prayerless temples
and boys who folded themselves
     into unfinished poems
against rusted railings.

the keys clinked
         like loose teeth
             when they ran.
(toward or from—who can say anymore.)

      they weren’t for locks
these keys.
   they were for remembering
     how to leave.
            how not to belong.
how silence can clang
   against bone.

mother said:
     keep it on your wrist
think of it as a god you don’t believe in.
     just in case.
        just in case.

they scratched stories into notebook margins
              (bleeding ink;
wrists that leak wonder)
wrote poems that read like missing person reports.

every girl you knew
      carried a door in her throat
        and a key she never used
but always wore.

      the boys never heard
                how heavy
                the house could be
when it hung from your wrist.

we grew up
    with tendons aching from
                     holding
the door open
and still being told
    we didn’t know how to come home.

 

Sreeja Naskar is a poet from West Bengal, India. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poems India, Modern Literature, Gone Lawn, Eunoia Review, ONE ART, among other literary journals. She believes in the quiet power of language to unearth what lingers beneath silence.

 

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TONY PRESS

 

reckoning

 

rattlesnakes live here

it is something we forget

like the dry cleaning

or the name of that movie

or that we will die

 

vision

 

there is no limit

to what a hawk can tell you

about horizons

 

Tony Press tries to pay attention and sometimes he does. His short story collection, Crossing the Lines, was published in 2016 and his poetry chapbook, Equinox and Solstice, in 2022. He lives near the San Francisco Bay. "reckoning" and "vision" were published in 34th Parallel; June, 2009.

 

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HANNAH STONE

 

Whereas

 

At noon, on Sunday the 14^th September instant, the BODY of a FEMALE CHILD was found floating in the sea near East Pier at Whitby, wrapped in a Diaper cloth

 

A child was born on Monday on a migrant boat crossing from Africa to the Canary Islands

 

An open verdict was returned, the medical evidence was of opinion that the child was apparently three months old, was alive when placed in the water, and had been there more than 24 hours

 

‘The captain of the rescue boat said that they knew that there was a pregnant woman on board but were surprised to find a totally naked baby who had been born ten, fiteen, twenty minutes earlier’

 

The child was wearing a White Calicoe Day Gown with Embroidery round bottom. Embroidered Front, lined with Turkey Red, Long Sleeves Embroidered round hands and neck, a round neck and sleeves, and a scarlet Flannel Square (white Feather stitched) washed out and much worn

 

The mother lying on the floor of the packed raft is almost invisible beneath the outstretched arms of a dozen men, reaching out in supplication, jubilation, solidarity?

 

It is probable the child may have been cast into the water by someone on board a passing vessel, or may have been carried out to sea in a boat

 

‘It being Three Kings Days, this was the best gift we could have received,’ the commander of the helicopter told Reuters news agency

 

It is requested that every inquiry be made, and information given to Superintendent Ryder, North Riding Constabulary, Whitby, 16 September, 1879

 

(Found poem, drawing on Notice dated 1879, in Staithes Museum, and BBC News item dated 8^th January 2025)

 

Hannah Stone is the author of Lodestone (Stairwell Books, 2016), Missing Miles (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2017), Swn y Morloi (Maytree Press, 2019) and several collaborations, including Fit to Bust with Pamela Scobie (Runcible Spoon, 2020). She convenes the poets/composers forum for Leeds Leider, curates Nowt but Verse for Leeds Library, is poet theologian in Virtual Residence for Leeds Church Institute and editor of the literary journal Dream Catcher. Contact her on hannahstone14@hotmail.com for readings, workshops or book purchases.

 

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JEANINE WALKER

 

Art Is a Lesson

 

Some days, I think about how I might turn into a frog,

and things around me become very quiet. Today is such a day.

 

I am sitting in a room by myself and all of the lights are on

(overhead hanging bulb, desk lamp, nightlight).

 

Outside, two neighbors of mine perform some kind of ceremony.

Yes, I know I am being unspecific. I do not know the name of this ceremony.

 

One of the neighbors (who feels like a brother to me) sits with his back

turned toward the house, where the other neighbor (who feels like a sister)

 

stirs yellowed chicken in a pan. Is it good? I don’t know. Is it loving?

They are not related to each other and they don’t make love,

 

but they might be friends. His back is turned. She brings him

a painting. He takes a drag on a non-menthol cigarette, but the air

 

smells like mint. He does not sit up straight. His neck is red from the sun

and he wears a red shirt. His boots are scuffed on the side and the toe.

 

He smiles when the sister-like neighbor tells him to keep on looking

away from the house. He doesn’t know the painting is in

 

her hands, that the smell of chicken is a planned distraction

from the actual gift. He is hungry. Art is a lesson. Art is in the way

 

that neighbor puts all her weight on one leg when she stands. She’s wearing

an apron to keep the paint from her clothes. The smell of the chicken

 

is the cause of the mint. He smokes. From where I sit he could

be wearing anything, saying any kind of thank you or goodbye:

 

the sister-like neighbor is moving and the brother-like neighbor is staying behind.

They are not related. They don’t love each other. But from where I sit

 

turning into a thing that cannot love them, I know they both love me.

He shifts his body toward the house. She lays her hands on his shoulder.

 

A Question on a Standardized Test

 

Imagine this, children:

you raise your left foot to continue

walking the usual route to school,

and suddenly you are off Mars,

away from the dim rusty dust

of the Red Planet and hurling

through the surprising light sky

of outer space, past the green

rims of revolving moons

and the bright, whispered secrets

of growing stars.

You fly in the space, you swim

in it because you can,

because your feet are webbed like ducks

and your hands the well-structured

spidered-bones of bird wings.

You are free as can be

as you jet from Mars to Earth,

that cloudy, green-blue

blurry dot that becomes,

as you soar, closer and closer and closer.

You slice through

the atmosphere's outer layers,

through the cold of a snowman's belly

to arm-wrapping, enveloping heat,

and as you approach the surface

you see––surprisingly or not––

a child who looks like you,

who is, you know suddenly, actually you,

walking the usual route to school,

and you realize that, hurling so quickly,

you will have to crash

into yourself to break the fall.

So the question is, children,

and answer with consideration:

If you could choose between yourself

and yourself, who would get injured,

and which one would you save?

 

Jeanine Walker is the author of The Two of Them Might Outlast Me (GPP 2022) and has been recognized with a 2025 microgrant for translation from Seattle City of Literature. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Denver Quarterly, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She teaches poetry in Seattle.

 

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LOUISE WORTHINGTON

 

Selkie Wife

 

She wakes. Skin tight as a drum.

Her body slippery with moon-sweat.

A sea-thing, caught in sheets, thrashing.

The husband snores, his back a continent.

 

Her flesh shines like wet slate.

At dusk she had seemed human enough—

Now she flickers knife-silver,

A fish-self surfacing through woman.

 

He sleeps the death-sleep of land creatures

While she drowns in air, gills working.

Marriage bed: a shore where two kingdoms meet.

Her black eyes swivel, scanning for escape.

 

The man doesn't wake when she barks,

A bark ancient as seal-mothers calling

Across the North Sea's iron face.

His dreams root deep in soil and stone.

 

Salt cracks between her toes.

Her spine remembers its true curve.

If she could reach the window, launch

Into the night's cold pool of stars—

 

Selkie: a mythical creature that can change from a seal to a human by taking off its seal skin.

 

Pushcart Prize-nominated author Louise Worthington weaves haunting, psychological narratives and emotionally authentic poetry. https://louiseworthington.com/

 

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