2019

 

 

MARCH CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

 

Daniel Birnbaum, Judy Brackett, Yuan Chanming, Patrick Deeley,

Alexis Rhone Fancher, William Ogden Haynes, Michael Lee Johnson,

Brian Johnstone,Julie Maclean,Ronald Moran, Fiona Sinclair, Grant Tarbard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

DANIEL BIRNBAUM

 

Beauty at night

 

Night comes

now the land seems on its own

inhabited by strangeness

beauty lies somewhere

in the far away sounds

in the scents of the soil

in the stillness of the bodies

someone closes a blind

and it is as if the painting

went crashing on the ground.

 

Humming

 

The car

down in the street

is parked

but its engine is on

and humming

unabashedly breaking silence

as if it was in charge

of making this morning daylight

or gentle breeze

as if it was needed

to introduce a human factor

into what is simply given.

 

Coffee break 

 

She drinks coffee

at a table on the terrace

she believes it is a moment of rest

in a hectic day

she is wrong

all her thoughts come instantly

accompanied by worries

regrets disappointments

vexations and obsessions

yet for an unknown reason

she finds the coffee

not as bitter as it could be.

 

Daniel Birnbaum lives in France. Aside from French literary journals his poems have appeared in several magazines including Blue Heron Review, Chrysanthemum, Dragon Poet Review, Modern Haiku, One-Sentence Poems, Poetry Quarterly, Red Wolf Journal, Shot Glass Journal, Skylark, The Conclusion Mag, and Three Line Poetry. He has fourteen books published. 

 

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JUDY BRACKETT

 

Geographer, a Literal Woman

 

Geographer, a literal woman, writes

on rocks, scratches words in red dirt,

messages to explain the Earth

to itself, to explain herself

to herself, to apologize, to promise—

words like sincere, honor, sunrise,

moon, eternal, children,

chocolate, angel food...

words that change with wind

and rain and blind footsteps—

sin, rise, moo, tern, late, food.

Geographer tells the truth.

Deer, fox, coyote, raccoon also leave

messages along the path to the creek,

restoring the truth in hoof and paw

hieroglyphs, which go unread,

which change with wind

and rain and blind footsteps—

words like grass, water,

sunrise, family, today.

 

Judy Brackett lives in a small town in the California foothills of the northern Sierra Nevada. Her poems have appeared in Epoch, The Maine Review, Commonweal, Miramar, Subtropics, Crab Orchard Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry chapbook, Flat Water: Nebraska Poems, will be published by Finishing Line Press in February 2019.

 

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YUAN CHANGMING 

 

Creating

 

Towards the summer sky

I make a shape of heart

With my clumsy hands

This is the feel of life

I tell the season

 

This is to illuminate the dark

Dreamland like a search light

I tell the crow stalking behind

Like the spirit of my late

Father. This is to gather all

 

The positive energy in the world &

Send it to the future. I tell my

Unborn grandson. This is the cycle

Of life & the philosopher’s stone

 

I tell the skeletal copse. This is

The circle to fill in with cries

& laughs.

      I tell my other self

Beyond the cosmic wall, as if

To balance yin and yang

    In the whole universe

 

Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. Currently, Yuan lives in Vancouver, where he edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan. Credits include ten Pushcart nominations, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) and BestNewPoemsOnline among others. 

 

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PATRICK DEELEY

 

Fox

 

1

 

He lopes to within a foggy breath

of me, and I gather from

his stare that he feels entitled here,

given to his nightly ramble 

while I am a pretender, that the gap

in understanding between us

never will diminish – one creased

with over-thinking, the other

attuned to the living moment.

I speak softly but he swivels away 

through foliage, his brush 

trailing moths, raindrops, stars,

the big scene between us shrinking  

to a city garden, a potted cactus.

 

2

 

Where the dog once chewed bones,

the only bones now are the dead

dog’s own, under the richest

swathe of grass – which shows up

as a rough rectangle of shadow

in the neon of the laneway lamp.  

My children, whom the dog

chaperoned when they were small,

suddenly fall silent, as I do,

at how – though the dog appears

to rise in the night, to run

and dance – it’s neither the dog nor

the dog's ghost that returns,

but the fox, rooting for sustenance.

 

Patrick Deeley is from Galway.  Groundswell: New and Selected Poems, is the latest of his six collections with Dedalus Press.  His memoir, The Hurley Maker's Son, published in 2016 by Transworld, was shortlisted for non-fiction in the Irish Book Awards.

 

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ALEXIS RHONE FANCHER

 

Spreading My Legs For Someone (Posing For Pirelli)

 

The grey-suited Pirelli rep. sat behind the desk,

puffing on a cigarette. White smoke hung in the air

like surrender.

 

I slipped off my dress. 

Kept my stilettos. 

 

There was nothing on the agency man’s glass-topped 

brain but my nakedness. 

He wouldn’t meet my eye. 

 

“Jesus!” he exclaimed when I bent over 

to tighten an ankle strap. 

 

The photographer looked like Antonio Banderas.

“Sit down on the seamless,” he said, pointing to the

black backdrop that spilled onto the floor. 

 

He rolled the tire over to me, snapped on the lights. 

I sat, cross-legged, clutching the tire close. 

 

My naked breasts peeked through the center, 

the nipples erect. I laid my hot face along the tread.

 

The photographer pushed up his cashmere sleeves, 

picked up his Nikon.

 

The lights bore down like August; the cement

below the seamless bruised my ass. The two men

stared at me the way my stepfather did.

 

I pushed the damp strands of hair from my forehead.

Arched my back. Opened my thighs.

 

The suit lit another cigarette.

Antonio Banderas moved in for a close-up. 

 

“Is this what you want?” I asked. 

 

My feet poked out from the tire’s rubber frame 

like destiny.

 

Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry 2016, Verse Daily, Plume, Rattle, Nashville Review, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. She’s the author of four books of poetry, including Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018). A multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. “Spreading My Legs For Someone (Posing For Pirelli)” first published in 13 Myna Birds, 2015.  www.alexisrhonefancher.com

 

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WILLIAM OGDEN HAYNES

 

Close to Home

 

It’s almost winter here in the south. I walk the dog

down a quiet side street lined by bare trees. The

leaves that not long ago clung to branches, lie on the

 

asphalt awaiting the vacuum truck. The sky is gray

with winter clouds almost heavy enough to touch the

tree tops. I shiver and turn up my collar as I pass the

 

pond, its surface tousled by the wind, wrinkled as an

unironed shirt. Because the dog has arthritis, our

walk is slow, with many stops to mark a tree or bush,

 

sniff a food wrapper tossed from a passing car, or just

to rest. His territory, much like mine, is shrinking by

the day. Each block we walk farther from home makes

 

me wonder if we’ve gone too far to make it back in case

something happens to one of us. So we walk our short route,

turn toward home and retrace our steps, feeling better that

 

we’re headed back to the house. Such thoughts never occurred

to us when we were adventurous pups. I remember long ago

on this street, the dog straining at his leash to go farther and

 

faster, me occasionally breaking into a jog with no worries.

But that was when we were young and brave, not realizing then

that this same street could take us anywhere, or nowhere at all.

 

 

The Realist

 

He’s making a dresser as a present for his daughter. Slowly he draws the nipple

on the bottle of wood glue down the narrow, arrow-straight dado left by the router.

The workshop is one of his favorite places, down in the basement, smelling of

 

adhesive mixed with sawdust from the oak board just sliced by the table saw.

Soon these aromas will be combined with those of stain and Tung oil. The smells,

sounds and absence of people are unique to this place. As he tightens the pipe

 

clamp, he wonders what will become of this dresser. The workshop is a place

where he can control the quality of the build. But after the piece goes out the door,

he knows all bets are off. An abandoned water glass can leave a permanent ring.

 

With a change in humidity, drawers may begin to stick. A cat jumping up from

the floor can leave scratches. Drawer pulls may be lost, as they loosen with age.

And finally one day, his daughter might decide on a whim to get rid of the piece

 

that has become shabby over time. Life outside the workshop is not plumb and level.

Every decision is not dictated by miter gauges or calipers. Out in the real world we

don’t always have the time, or even the inclination, to measure twice and cut once.

 

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.  Over 175 of his poems and short stories have appeared in literary journals and his work is frequently anthologized. www.williamogdenhaynes.com

 

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MICHAEL LEE JOHNSON

 

Just Because, Bad Heart

 

Just because I am old

do not tumble me dry.

Toss me away with those unused

Wheat pennies, Buffalo nickels, and Mercury dimes

in those pickle jars in the basement.

Do not bleach my dark memories

Salvation Army my clothes

to the poor because I died.

Do not retire me leave me a factory pension

in dust to history alone.

Save my unfinished poems refuse to toss them

into the unpolished alleyways of exile rusty trash barrows

just outside my window, just because I am old.

Do not create more spare images, adverbs

or adjectives than you need to bury me with.

Do not stand over my grave, weep,

pouring a bottle of Old Crow

bourbon whiskey without asking permission

if it can go through your kidney’s first.

When under stone sod I shall rise and go out

in my soft slippers in cold rain

dread no danger, pick yellow daffodils,

learn to spit up echoes of words

bow fiddle me up a northern Spring storm.

Do you bad heart, see in pine box of wood,

just because I got old.

 

Michael Lee Johnson lived 10 years in Canada during the Vietnam era and is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada.  He has published in more than 1062 new publications and his poems have appeared in 38 countries. He has been nominated for 2 Pushcart Prize awards poetry 2015/1 Best of the Net 2016/2 Best of the Net 2017, 1 Best of the Net 2018.  178 poetry videos are now on YouTube    https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrymanusa/videos.

 

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BRIAN JOHNSTONE

 

Meaning

 

Just as rubbings have taken

the words we wrote as infants,

 

chalk dust the letters on slates

our grandparents laboured to shape,

 

so the lessening chill of the day,

the weakling sun of winter,

 

has warmed this pane just enough

to erase the message a child has left

 

for someone coming in on his wake

to stare through this window

 

at snow that’s beginning to melt;

the meaning he tried to impart

 

vanished, but for the ghost of a script

caught in the sheen of the glass,

 

only there when viewed at a slant,

but lost with the swab of a hand.

 

 

Township

 

You return to the township your family had dwelt in

                 for years. Years that brought changes

                     none would have imagined

 

even as house after house was closed up, doors locked,

                 keys trusted to neighbours who, in their turn,

                     did the same. So few left now

 

the language has withered away, the stories they told

                 have dissolved; there’s nothing to grasp

                     but the map, the web of relations

 

who lived in this place, gave some meaning and sense

                 to the stones. For that’s what remains:

                     four walls, if you’re lucky,

 

some rafters, a rotting of mortar and thatch, thresholds

                 you tread on, remembering those

                     that had dwelt here, and all

 

they recounted lifetimes ago, when you listened, a boy,

                 laid in store what no-one can take from you,

                     none can bring back to these stones.

 

Brian Johnstone’s poetry has appeared in Scotland and over 20 countries worldwide. He has published seven collections, most recently Dry Stone Work (Arc, 2014), Juke Box Jeopardy (Red Squirrel, 2018), and a prose memoir Double Exposure (Saraband, 2017). He is a founder and former Director of the StAnza Poetry Festival. www.brianjohnstonepoet.co.uk “Meaning” first published in Poetry Salzburg Review, April 2017, “Township” first published in Stand (USA), May 2016.

 

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JULIE MACLEAN

 

Demoiselle Cranes

 

It may have been

a solitary priest
 

I don't know his name
who saw a million wings

 

flagging

on their annual pilgrimage
 

to the warm
This skein of ragged cranes

 

over Rajasthan
who placed a handful of grain
 

on hungry land
who dug a shallow scrape
 

then placed a fish-eye lens
to spy or count

 

to spare
the fate of tired feathers

 

over Rajasthan
the fall

 

then clapped

to see them rise again

I can’t be sure

I think it was a man

 

perhaps a priest     a Jain
We know

 

there was a hand

some grain, a solitary idea

 

Julie Maclean is the author of five poetry collections—Lips That Did, 2017, To Have to Follow, 2016, Kiss of the Viking, 2014, You Love You Leave, 2014 and, as joint winner of the Geoff Stevens Poetry Prize, Indigo Dreams, When I saw Jimi, 2013.  www.juliemacleanwriter.com  

 

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RONALD MORAN

 

In a display cabinet

 

a flowered glass for iced tea,

a mug with I love my husband

etched in soft, red characters,

a glass for my once Becks

non-alcoholic beer.

 

Time now for diminutions,

as if a border is constricting,

drawing in like turtles

vanishing into shells,

or hermit crabs scratching,

digging for shelter,

 

and my dead father is saying,

self-pity stinks, and how, after

his mother died when he was five,

being farmed out to kin after kin,

the resonance of his long silences

broken by stutters, his sighting life

down on the inner rings of ball bearings.

 

O how he made those rings hum

his songs home to the firmament.

 

Ronald Moran lives in South Carolina. His poems have been published in Asheville Poetry Review, Commonweal, Connecticut Poetry Review, Louisiana Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Negative Capability, North American Review, Northwest Review, South Carolina Review, Southern Poetry Review, Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and in thirteen books/chapbooks of poetry. In 2017 he was inducted into Clemson University's inaugural AAH Hall of Fame.

 

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FIONA SINCLAIR

 

The Pleasures of Swearing

 

First time I discharge the F word,

a transgressive tingle like flashing my tits;

the guttural ck satisfying as spitting,

the vowel discharged like a bullet.

Bloody, bollocks, bastard, milder on my swearing Scoville scale,

but still lip- smacking especially when coupled with an obscenity.

Sometimes sophisticated lexis laced with a jigger

of scatological to create dirty martini malediction,

all served in a posh bird voice that adds a keener edge.

 

Initially reserved for errant partners, bullying colleagues, catty friends;

then traded as proxy punches with a couple disputing

disabled parking space in Windsor;

or hurled like grenades through the door

of an information booth at smirking Italian girls who mocked my accent.

But over time used promiscuously for car drivers

who carve me up, flimsy bags that spew shopping…

Slippery slope to the C word then.

Whilst friends spell out; mouth; see you next Tuesday euphemise;

I find its animal grunt gives relief from frustrations

at politicians, back stabbers, cancer…

Admit to only closet use though.

Only the N word is taboo to me.

Term that tastes bitter as sarin in my mouth.

That I cannot utter like some deep-rooted stammer

whose careless use as dog’s name in classic British war movie

makes me wince more than violence in a Tarantino film.

 

Nevertheless, need to guard against letting slip these verbal farts

at meetings, family dos, dinner parties

to startled faces of elderly relatives, acquaintance’s tuts,

when I must paint on a red face, and with a girly giggle So Sorry.

Aware too that their initial tang can diminish like over chewed gum,

so occasional abstinence required, when I only employ

chaste lexis of a vicar, WI member, librarian,

until these pent- up profanities strain at my tongue’s leash again.

However never entirely renounce,

because once you have the taste for-

 

Fiona Sinclair's first full collection of poetry, Ladies Who Lunch was published by Lapwing Press in September, 2014. A Talent for Hats (D & W Press) was published in April, 2017. She is the editor of the on-line poetry magazine Message in a Bottle.

 

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GRANT TARBARD

 

Whistle if You Want To

for my Grandfather

 

If I’m mourning, whistle if you want to,

sing with gusto to fill my blank spaces,

sing Frankie Lane’s ‘Cry of the Wild Goose’

and, as he’s not yet that far away, he

may hear you, a receding pinprick of

light smaller than my fingernail. If I

had a large enough telescope I’d wave

‘cheerio’ as he dwindles between radio waves

and worn folds in the map of lost places,

where home ebbs like a rocket spraining from

the Earth’s luminous pull, a house made up

for Christmas. And he must go where the wild

goose goes, with splitting nouns and soft kisses

between pale lips that whistle as they go.

 

 

The English Language

 

One; the tongue you use is not yours, it’s a

duo millennial union for rent:

a severed yodel, a transient vowel

hinges to a noun, stuffed in a suitcase

of advertising hoardings being used

as stretchers in the sick bag of evening,

as I scratch small gods on the paper. Two;

for people to recognise that language

is a stick-up, a convulsing mother,

not a virgin, liking it dirty for

nothing righteous is pure, coarsening

in the Babel of the pink unfolding

ambulance of the morning — fillings stuffed

with Latin, a grenade of Arabic

with the indigestion of Germanic,

air off the Greek with a cherry lozenge—

a throat amok, alive with swift menace.

Three; you can’t quilt language, wrapped in Sunday

best and mid-grey morning suits; language is

a pageantry of cunt and cock, language

is spectacular, close eyes, think thin, act

tough — English is a mongrel, take it in

and feed it fibrous meat, English is a

wolf howling out of the voice box, is a

coffer of foreign tongues, is many hands,

is a microcosm of the world in tune,

is a tangle of fanged ribbons, is the

rites of the dead locked in this grim land’s soil.

 

Grant Tarbard is an editorial assistant for Three Drops From A Cauldron who lives in Essex, UK. His collection Rosary of Ghosts (Indigo Dreams) is out now. 

 

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