2022

 

 

 

MARCH CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

 

Joe Balaz, Sekhar Banerjee, Ric Cheyney, John Dorroh, Alex Josephy,

Casey Killingsworth, Carolyn Oulton, Marc Isaac Potter, Robert Rothman,

Fiona Sinclair, J. R. Solonche.

 

 

 

 

 

JOE BALAZ

 

Watevah

 

Everybody has dere own agenda,

dere own values,

 

dere own version of being.

 

It’s just dat wen arrogance,

pride, and wun sense of entitlement

 

enters da frame,

 

downright viciousness

is easy to culture.

 

Mirror, mirror, on da wall—

Who is da one dat deserves it all?

 

Bend da facts, tell lies,

make up stories to justify your greed,

 

watevah.

 

Fate and da accumulation of days

wen turn you into wun wretched old hag           

 

angry and vindictive

 

and falsely propped up

by your dark fairy tales.

 

Some people would even say

 

dat you are lower

den wun eel’s anus

 

in da Marianas Trench.

 

 

Deah seems to be wun ring of truth

in dat assessment

 

so go ahead and wear

your pitiful self-importance

 

like da poison badge dat it is.

 

 

Oh, well,

in da summation

 

wat is deah really to say?

 

All dat you are worth

is wun shrug

 

and wun good riddance aloha.

 

Your throne of scorpion bones

is crumbling around you.

 

Someday soon

you will be wrapped and buried

 

in da deceitful kapa cloth

dat took you years of spite

 

to eventually make

into wun papery fabric.

 

It will be

wun appropriate shroud

 

foa da occasion.                   

 

aloha                 Goodbye.

kapa cloth         Papery fabric made from tree bark.

 

Joe Balaz writes in Hawaiian Islands Pidgin (HIP). He is the author of Pidgin Eye, a book of poetry.  Balaz is an avid supporter of Hawaiian Islands Pidgin writing and art in the expanding context of World literature.  He presently lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

 

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SEKHAR BANERJEE 

 

An Ordinary Morning

 

This morning is pure yellow

and charcoal when winter boils in a kettle, the scent of steam

and tea leaves fill up every inch

of the broken silhouette of the sun

and you think of old things that you could have done

in other ways

 

Sun has a tendency to draw all what it sees in amber

and tar; you look out of the window

with usual black/white , right/wrong first thoughts

in the morning

when you treat life

just like a fellow human being, say, an indulgent friend, a lover,

a city court judge, a curious tourist

You still do not know all the answers

 

The newspaper boy, a morning cherub, nets a world

into the balcony flooded with raw dust of the sun;

a small world lands in its Calcutta orbit

with a thud

Though this morning’s unassuming vastness

does not have a proper climax anywhere. It slowly fills up

the floor of the universe

 

Sekhar Banerjee is a Pushcart Award nominated poet for 2021.  The Fern-gatherers’ Association (Red River, 2021) is his latest collection of poems. He has been published in Indian Literature, The Bitter Oleander, Ink Sweat and Tears, Muse India, Kitaab, Better Than Starbucks, Thimble Literary Magazine, The Tiger Moth Review and elsewhere. He lives in Kolkata, India.

 

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RIC CHEYNEY

 

The  Boy

for  Calvin

 

Look at him now, cusping:

early teens edging into guarded permissions,

lingering with sweetness still.

 

Brung up right, he’ll hold his course,

gentle guardian to small sisters,

roadbuilding while finding his own way,

as many lives as worlds to live them in.

 

Dazzled and lamed by devices, of course,

century twenty–one,

he has much scree to scramble up,

wreckage to walk away from,

fears to face down.

 

His home has never held

an absence of love,

so hard bumps await him

from those less tutored therein

 

but right now, doorway framed,

(mind your head, giraffe child)

foundry molten but forge fixed,

anvil bound but fire bright,

observe his standing.

 

It is good,

as are his chances.

 

Ric Cheyney is a pre-modernist agrarian misanthrope, writer, critic and woodland gardener living in north west Wales. His collection, In Praise Of Nahum Tate, can be ordered through your usual bookseller.  Website: https://woodminster.net/

 

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JOHN DORROH

 

Why I Court the Boomerang

 

the neighborhood kids bring their dogs

who chase my fluorescent boomerangs

 

like flat flying bones. “Show me how

to throw that thing,” and “How do you

 

hold it?” So I give them lessons but they

are not patient. They want instant success

 

like their heroes on TV and Xbox.

One must know the wind and how

 

to lick it with wet tongue, to hold

one’s teeth just right. It’s all in the grip.

 

I keep a template in my workshop and

tweak it every year. Wood grains matter

 

and how each species responds to the touch

of the tools. It’s a delicate art that almost

 

no one knows these days. Like taming

a ghost whose whereabouts are not

 

public record. As wood flies through

air, I pray for forceful release, gentle

 

return.

 

John Dorroh has never fallen into an active volcano or caught a hummingbird. However, he's baked bread with Austrian monks and drunk their beer. Two of his poems were nominated for Best of the Net.  His first chapbook comes out in 2022.

 

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ALEX JOSEPHY

 

An Angel, For Courage

 

Although you don’t exist,

guard the foot 

of her bed. Make her sleep 

flat as clay; save her 

from wishful dreams.

 

Shield her ears 

from birdsong. 

Raise a morning 

made out of nothing 

but slow light. 

 

Remind her wrists 

of warm water, 

how transparently 

it touches, 

how it trickles away.

 

Veil the mirror.

Count the strokes 

of her brush. Deal 

with the tall cupboard:

which shoes, what next.

 

Answer the phone. Speak

to her friend. Endure 

his sympathy.

 

Alex Josephy lives in East London and Italy. Her 2020 collection, Naked Since Faversham, was published by Pindrop Press. Her poems have won the McLellan and Battered Moons prizes, and have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the UK, Italy and India. Website: www.alexjosephy.net

 

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CASEY KILLINGSWORTH

 

199 words for 29 people who were not on the Edmund Fitzgerald

 

The day the big ship went down a boy died while 

on vacation. He was asleep in the back of his 

parents’ pickup camper when a rock with his name 

on it rolled down the mountain and killed him.

 

Except for his parents, who probably died years 

ago, probably of grief, I’m the only one who thinks 

about how a rock could have anybody’s name on it. 

And why. And why he hasn’t been counted over time. 

 

And how do you count the dead anyway; are they

one or zero, the ones who don’t make it into songs,

the ones who never make it onto milk cartons,

are they only placeholders until a new baby is born 

and the kid in the truck becomes just a remainder?

 

But this isn’t about that kid or his rock; it’s about 

numbers, about quantities, about who gets counted

in the world and how history is made in boardrooms 

and music studios but not factories, because

 

maybe when we live there is a part that’s bigger than 

who gets to own a shiny legacy; it has to do with

the dreams that kid never dreamed, it has to do

with looking for a rock with your name on it.

 

 

Etiquette for when an asshole dies

 

Today I lay to rest the guy from 

the unemployment office

who schooled me on how to

fill out my paperwork.

 

I’m sure there weren’t too many 

people at his funeral, if or when 

he died, so maybe I can say a few 

words on his behalf. 

 

I didn’t know him or if he had 

a wife or kids but I do remember 

he let me have it for not using 

dashes on the questions 

 

that didn’t require answers, 

as if there are right answers 

on an unemployment form. 

 

This is to let you know that

all that happened forty years

ago and I’m over it now.

I’m over him now.

 

Casey Killingsworth has work in The American Journal of Poetry, Two Thirds North, and other journals. His first book, A Handbook for Water, was published by Cranberry Press in 1995 and he has a new book out, A nest blew down. Casey has a degree from Reed College.

 

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CAROLYN OULTON

 

I’ve just realised that couple in their sixties

 

Left over from last night’s rain,

a few shapes hunched along the window

like used curl papers, dragging their weight.

 

Last year only a handful of boys

– the radio says – I think it was

five, were called Nigel.

 

In a field near here

is a footpath, where I was confronted

yesterday by an oddly belligerent sheep.

 

That couple on the bench are new.

Intent on each other’s profile,

barely an inch from his shoulder to hers.

 

Carolyn Oulton is Professor of Victorian Literature and Director of the International Centre for Victorian Women Writers at Canterbury Christ Church University. She teaches on the Creative and Professional Writing BA and is Project Lead for https://kent-maps.online/ in collaboration with JSTOR Labs. Her most recent collection is Accidental Fruit (Worple).

 

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MARC ISAAC POTTER

 

Looking

 

The huge blades of a house plant,

Just barely touch the silence

Like an image touches the

The surface of water.

 

Dad lights another smoke

And sees, straight ahead

The images of World War Two

His job as a Staff Sergeant,

An Ambulance Driver.

 

And he sees diapers

And shirts and holy

Men's underwear

Staring at him from

under the window.

 

I, standing tall in my crib

Gawking at the bright colors

Everywhere

Of Mom’s funeral Flowers.

 

Dad lights another smoke

And drives around the corner

Of bombed out buildings

Looking for survivors.

 

 

 Apples

 

You get to the apples.

Friday night the super market

Is jammed.

 

One apple.

 

Some how

It shines more,

Or it is lying there in such a

Presentable way.

 

You notice.

 

You reach for it.

You pick it up, purposefully.

 

And that purposefulness

Leads to another apple,

And another,

Until

You have as many as you need.

 

Marc Isaac Potter (they/them) is a differently-abled writer living in the SF Bay Area. Marc’s interests include blogging by email and Zen. His poems have been published in Fiery Scribe Review, Feral A Journal of Poetry and Art, Poetic Sun Poetry, and Provenance Journal.  Twitter: @marcisaacpotter. 

 

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ROBERT ROTHMAN

 

Altar

 

There they are, beyond the outdoor seating at the Mexican

restaurant with its planted umbrella poles providing

 

a green canopy from the sun, removed from the

clinking of margarita glasses rimmed with salt,

 

alone against a wood fence, forty or more

photographs of those who died, young and old, struck down

 

indiscriminately by a virus that only knows the soft flesh

it needs to survive, the photographs placed in

 

picture frames Mateo, the owner, stacked in a box

next to the long rough-wooded plank that serves as an

 

informal altar. Flowers, in small vases, or laid down,

as at a gravesite, are interspersed with votive

 

candles that burn and gutter out while patrons

shimmy and dance to the live music. And when

 

the restaurant closes, after everyone is gone

into the night with its waxing or waning

 

or invisible moon, sometimes someone will come by

and kneel and light a candle that will last into

 

the next day. It is a sight to see when you

are out early, walking by: that lit candle.

 

Robert Rothman lives in Northern California, near extensive trails and open space, with the Pacific Ocean over the hill. His work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Tampa Review, Willow Review, and over ninety other literary journals in the United States, Canada, Wales, Ireland, and Australia. Please see his website (www.robertrothmanpoet.com) for more information about him and his work.

 

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FIONA SINCLAIR 

  

Why I don’t write about refugees

 

No doubt it’s well meant but their Dachau dark stories

are beyond even our fecund imagination,

so, attempts at writing them are mere ventriloquism.

As exploitative perhaps, as the traffickers

who sell promises at premium rates. 

Our duty is to bear the rub of our own impotence,

watching from sofas the squalor of camps where inmates

with empty faces live in the awful limbo of now.

And as the TV news dishes up with dinner, the shocking

scramble for boats designed for pleasure, not plight,

it should be too much for our conscience to swallow.

Better to wait for their voices to be restored

and memories recovered so they can tell their own tales,

albeit in a borrowed tongue.

 

Fiona Sinclair lived in Kent. Her new collection Second Wind will be published by Dempsey and Windle press in April 2022.

 

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J. R. SOLONCHE

 

Black Satin Petunias

 

I bought black flowers today.

Black Satin petunias.

And they really are black.

Like the shadows of petunias.

My wife says I bought them

because I’m in love with death.

I say I bought them because

they’re unusual, and we’ve never

had black flowers before.

Besides black is my favorite

color and has been since I was

a kid, since I asked my Russian

grandfather what his favorite

color was, and he said it was black

because black was God’s favorite color.

He said even after God created light

and all the colors of the rainbow

along with the light and divided

the light from the darkness,

he still needed black the other

half of the time to keep from being

blinded by his own creation.

So my wife may be on to something

after all. I might be half in love with death.

 

                                                                                               

Mirror Ghazal

 

There are many superstitions associated with mirrors.

My favorite is that vampires are not reflected in a mirror.

 

W.H. Auden said that a culture is known by its woods.

I say a culture can just as well be known by its mirrors.

 

Perhaps Narcissus did not love himself after all.

Perhaps he merely was fascinated by the physics of mirrors.

 

Emily Dickinson wrote one-thousand-seven-hundred-seventy-five poems.

Not one of them is about looking in a mirror.

 

In the beginning, God did not know what he looked like.

He created the universe to see himself, his full-length funhouse mirrors.

 

I’ve never understood the poetry of John Ashbery.

Especially obscure is Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror.

 

            So, do you have any reflections on this poem, Solonche?

            Just don’t let on that it’s all nothing but smoke and mirrors.

 

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.

 

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