2023

 

 

MARCH

 

 

Jean Atkin, Jimmy R. Coleman, Sandra Hosking, Beth McDonough, Bruce McRea,

 Jeff Mock, Leah Mueller, Wren Tuatha, Susan Waters.

 

 

 

 

 

JEAN ATKIN

 

Dougie aged eight at Gutcher’s Isle

 

Nothing is accidental here.  At the edge
two roofless gables still endure the wind. 
The treading sea comes in through granite gates
and keeps a harbour for this steading.

You goat-leap down the slippery path
to where they once drew up a boat. 
The slabs rise round us, old as salt.

Their massive stacks bounce back your voice. 

Here we crash on mussel shells, look out
to sea through the slapping gate. 
You pass me treasures from under our feet –
wet black snailshell, wave of glass.
 
Above us, thrift heads thatch the granite,
swayed with bees they overlean the sides. 
You point to blue sky splashed in white –
a rising sail of butterflies. 

 

Holloway days

 

Chopped stalks, soft air, a reddened dock,

herb robert, campion, narrow track.

 

Here path hollows into hill.

I’m ten and the dog wags and pulls.

 

My feet run half-lost cobblestones

and sometimes there are shrines.

 

Here oaks have doors, and me

and the dog are far from home.

 

Jean Atkin’s latest publications are Fan-peckled (Fair Acre Press) and The Bicycles of Ice and Salt (Indigo reams). Recent work has been published in Pennine Platform, Raceme, Anthropocene, Finished Creatures, One Hand Clapping and Acumen. She works as a poet in education and community. “Dougie aged eight at Gutcher’s Isle” was originally published by Columba Poetry in 2019

 

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JIMMY R. COLEMAN

 

The Pyrite’acy of Truth

 

fool’s gold has been known to contain miniscule amounts of gold,

      not enough mind ya to make a fool a millionaire.

             lies have been known to contain an ounce or two of stretchable truth,

                   not enough mind ya to make one an honest Abe.

 

an otherwise rational person fed a glittering fluff and puff frequently enough,

      with scarcely a jot of truth passing in between heaven and earth,

            will soon find it difficult to differentiate the illusion of truth from reality,

                 catnip from cat litter.

                                        

a fool’s gold certitude left unchallenged starts sounding like the Gospel truth itself.

     beware those who depict evil as good and good as evil,

           darkness for light and light for darkness,

                 bitter as sweet and sweet as bitter.

 

fore you know it, an otherwise rational person will regurgitate what’s been spoon fed’em,                    

     jibber jabbering like they was a parrot,

         fervently sporting positions that had they tak’en time to put on their thinking cap,

               might have chosen a different path to travel in yonder yellow wood.

 

gotta pick a lot of cotton just to make one dress…

    gotta lift a lot of stones to bypass pockets of fool’s gold to get at the truth.

        sometimes the other person may be right…

             better to accept an uncomfortable truth even if it means burying a comfortable lie

 

Jimmy Coleman’s earlier years of his sojourn among his fellow mortals were expended during the tumultuous times of separate water fountains, segregated schools and the KKK.  A series of short stories and poems reflect the give and take of bygone days of Mr. Coleman’s writing.

 

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SANDRA HOSKING

 

Nothing Buried Can Stay

 

Tap tap tap
Rough hands engrave 
    A n n i e  L e v i e
    A m s t e r d a m
So much hope hammered
Into a small metal square.

 

Name tag pinned

To her wool coat,
It catches the sun
Through a crack
In the cattle car
Destination Sobibor.

 

250,000 souls lost

Until the prisoners rose

Some escaped

The rest interred

Buildings leveled
History razed
Pines planted
In their place.

 

In time, Truth rises

From the earth
In the form of tarnished tags.
Annie is among them.

 

History cannot stay buried
Even if roots try to hold it down.

 

Sandra Hosking is a Pushcart-nominated poet, playwright, and photographer in the Pacific Northwest. Her plays, poetry, and photography have appeared in Joey, Red Ogre Review, 3 Elements Review, West Texas Review, The Uncommon Grackle, Cirque Literary Journal, Edify Fiction and the book Along Southern Roads. Hosking holds an M.F.A.s in theatre and creative writing.

 

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BETH MCDONOUGH

 

Coriander

It's hard to define exactly where this plant is wild and where it only recently established itself
 

Grown for leaf, but as ever here,
running to seed, under some sunflower.
No matter. I gather their small green beads,
offering next year's plants and dried spice.

Coriander- after the Greek kóris.
Said to resemble bed bugs' scent.
Apparently. Who knows? Perhaps
Hellenic pests smell better anyway.
 

But here you are herb, and seed,
of so many traditions, on my fingertips,

a passing aromatic, savoury and sweet,
slipped for keeping into a scrumply bag.

Your name, and love of all the Greek things
I don't know choruses inside my mind.

 

Charming February

 

Let us firm bulbs into Novemberish mud,
ask the month to be more than bereft.
May we warm by the fizzing flare beech,
whisper Michaelmas daisies in spent fluff.
Let us track leaves' revolutions down swim
poured through a rose gold firth.

In frost's shrill give us
strange calendula, arming for winter,
to turn us surprised, crazed

by discovered nasturtiums in bud.
Let us touch greens, surely weeds,
but when rubbed, send out scent.
Few flowered leeks are arriving

for salads, and are minded to stay for a while.
Let us drift hope through the month.
 

Beth McDonough's poetry is widely anthologised and published. She reviews for DURA and elsewhere. Her first solo pamphlet Lamping for pickled fish is published by 4Word. Her site-specific poem has just been installed on the Corbenic Poetry Path. She was the 2022 Makar of the Federation of Writers(Scotland).

 

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BRUCE MCREA

 

A Word About Words

 

The past is a place in northern England

where the left-handed are gibble-fisted

or coochy-pawed or left-kaggy.

In another time and place, where freckles

were frentickles or branny-spackles.

When daddy long-legs were once called

harvest men or long-legged tailors.

Old words like yestermorn and overmorrow.

 

And new worlds and words, like lamestain,

hatewatch, flamebait, humblebrag;

cobbled together out of need and urgency.

And words I fail to understand –

seriatim, raillery, apotropaic.

Or words I fancy the sound of making –

belvedere, chromatopia, propinquity;

and how to fit them into conversations.

 

Though a dog would hear

the song of barbarous barking,

the human voice is of deeper value.

Words, the meaning of which increases reason.

And we speak of more than meaning.

We speak of ourselves.

 

Flowers Of The Field

 

They named the flowers purple wreath and prickly Moses.

They called the flowers sneezeweed, three birds flying, Spanish shawl.

Like Old Testament gods, the people placed names upon

plants ad flowers encountered in land and time.

Red cape tulip. Snowberry. Mothers of thousands.

They said rose of heaven and yellow adder’s tongue.

By any other name they planted estates of delight,

pollen wafting aloft, seed fluff adrift, the bee decidedly obliged.

 

                                      *

 

There are flowers also in hell, wrote Williams.

Temple bells. Sweet sultan. Stars of the veldt in the devil’s garden.

The dancing doll orchid. Spider lily. The Egyptian star cluster.

Colours punctuating dark green, summer infused with the sexually brazen.

Sun drops. Shell flowers. The Himalayan blue poppy.

Flowers to be milked. To delight the eye. There to be eaten.

 

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with poems published in hundreds of magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. The winner of the 2020 Libretto prize and author of four poetry collections and seven chapbooks, his poems have been performed and broadcast globally.

 

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JEFF MOCK   

 

Another Way of Thinking 

 

Even on a still day, the oak leaves 

In their high clusters tremble, each 

 

Leaf quivering so that the twig itself 

Rocks back and forth, and the twigs 

 

Above and below it on the branch so that 

The branch rocks so subtly that it 

 

Appears only to flicker, all its leaves 

Tilting, tipping, waving, one green 

 

Nodding to another and the other 

Nodding back, and again, and all 

 

Of the leaves of that branch mingle with 

And rock the leaves and twigs of a branch on 

 

The next oak, the next, the next, from 

Tree to tree through this stand of oaks, 

 

And the whole canopy trembles 

And rocks and shimmers imperceptibly, 

 

Green going to green, as if it was doing 

Nothing at all in the quiet utter calm.  

  

Transcendence Is More Often a Matter of Sublimation 

 

The weeping willow is strangely 

Happy.  Within its cavern 

 

Of leaves are the secrets children 

Keep beyond their remembering, 

 

There, in a moment ever- 

Present.  To be so 

 

Contained is to be held 

Within your secret, taken 

 

In and taken away. 

The willow leaves show 

 

One side to you 

And the other to the wind outside. 

 

Jeff Mock is the author of Ruthless.  His poems appear in American Poetry Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, New England Review, The North American Review, The Southern Review, and elsewhere.  He directs the MFA program at Southern Connecticut State University.

 

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LEAH MUELLER

 

How to be Happy Again

 

1  Forget everything you know. The sum of your resentments. Your sour, arms-crossed intransigence. The way your fangs gleam in the dark when you frighten yourself.

 

2  Go somewhere different. Stay in the nicest hotel. Order hot fudge sundaes from room                                         service and swim naked in the pool.

 

3  Re-arrange your emotional furniture. Throw away that roll of film you’ve kept in the bottom drawer of your unconscious for two decades. You will never get around to developing it.

 

4  Don’t look at your Blocked List on Facebook. Chances are good that you can’t even remember those people, let alone the reasons for your resentment. Their once-familiar names are stacked in a row like downed trees after a storm. Beyond the clouds, a flash of sun.

 

5  Watch Gene Kelly in a deluge, kicking water at the camera. A cop arrives, and Kelly apologizes, wanders sheepishly in the direction of home. Seconds later, he’s dancing again.

 

6  Cook your favorite meal. Light several candles. Wear your fanciest outfit. Sit beside yourself and profess undying devotion. Don’t forget dessert.

 

7  When Misery shows up (and he will), be polite. Give him a comfortable chair and a cup of coffee. Listen to his sob story and nod. Then, slip out your back door and walk as fast as you can in the opposite direction. He’ll catch up with you later, but at least you can enjoy the trees in the meantime.

 

Leah Mueller's work appears in Rattle, NonBinary Review, Citron Review, The Spectacle, New Flash Fiction Review, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She is a 2023 nominee for both Pushcart and Best of the Net. Her flash piece, "Land of Eternal Thirst" appears in the 2022 edition of Best Small Fictions. website: www.leahmueller.org.

 

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WREN TUATHA

 

Douglas on a Mountain in America

To live through the days sometimes you moan like a deer.

                                                         —Claudia Rankine

 

The Kenyan arrives, seeking what will come in a moment.

Warned of winter, he wraps small shoulders in a blanket from home.

 

He wants to meet American contacts; to fund his documentary.

Hosts worry he's too passive for American donors,

 

prod him on business cards, schedules, radio shows. 

He accepts each grain of rice, feeding the flow.

 

Ask for what you need, his hosts advise. Like the mountain,

the Kenyan abides. I will wait and see what happens.

 

He shelters in an RV along Sierra foothills. Winter wind

chats through the chinks. jetstream languages,

 

and unsought advice. He stirs ugali with the wooden spoon 

he brought, sips warm Ketepa Pride.

 

He walks his host dog among pines. She poings 

and kablams at deer. Each time, his shoulder complies.

 

The dog is named Cricket for a bug that broadcasts the news. 

The Kenyan speaks of the locust plague at home.

 

Tracing osmosis of the casual and the causal

from an American slope, he reads warnings of attacks in Nairobi,

 

remembers in his very fingers, filming responders 

at the Al-Shabaab bombing of Westgate Mall.

 

Will tethers of moments find him, pull him up the mountain

or down? Will he know the bob of the line, fishing for what will feed him?

 

Do the people hunt these deer, he asks. Three does and a stag

finish this bite of moment—manzanita, rumination and vigilance.

 

Wren Tuatha earned her MFA at Goddard College. Her first collection is Thistle and Brilliant (FLP). Her poetry has appeared in Silk Road, The Cafe Review, Kaleidoscope, Canary, Pirene’s Fountain, Sierra Nevada Review, Lavender Review, and others. She's founding editor at Califragile; formerly Artist-in-Residence at Heathcote Center. Wren and partner author/activist C.T. Butler herd rescue goats among the Finger Lakes of New York.

 

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SUSAN WATERS

 

The Orphan’s Blues

 

If it has a melody

it lost its way in the wind.

 

It’s a song no-one wants

to hear or know.

 

It’s not in a songbook

or even on paper; the notes slid

off the page and the ink melted

and disappeared.

 

It’s sung by the daughter,

the unhappy wife, the bullied,

the bruised face.

 

It’s the soldier abandoned

on the battlefield,

the old B-movie actor alone

in his room, with a bottle of whiskey,

cigarettes, and a bad mystery,

his bones crumbling from sadness.

 

It’s the fawn waiting, waiting, waiting

for its mother and then bleating, crying.

 

“Be on your game, “the hunting blog says,

“both doe and buck will come.”

 

Susan Waters started out as a journalist covering hard news in upstate New York and later was a magazine editor and writer. She has won 10 prizes in poetry and has been nominated twice for the Push Cart Prize in Poetry. Her chapbook Heat Lightning was published in 2017 by Orchard Street Press. Currently, She is Professor Emeritus at New Mexico Junior College.

 

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