2020

 

 

MAY CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

Jerrice J. Baptiste, Zoe Brooks, Holly Day, George Franklin, Nels Hanson,

Jennifer A. McGowan, Warren Mortimer, Leah Mueller, Samuel Prince,

Elaine Reardon, David Mark Williams, Rodney Wood, Abigail Ardelle Zammit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

JERRICE J. BAPTISTE

 

Pink Skies and The Pandemic

 

My eyes gaze
on vibrant branches
an abundance of forsythia
I worry about the change
the park without the children 
my niece's voice saying,
" Let's go on the swings, aunty."
She took my hand
I followed her.

 

Tomorrow, there will be
more bloom and visions
of feet swinging
reaching pink skies.

 

Jerrice J. Baptiste is a poet and author of eight books.  Her writing has also been published in The Yale Review, The Crucible, The Minetta Review, Autism Parenting Magazine, Kosmos Journal and many others. Jerrice lives in NY where she teaches poetry writing.

 

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ZOE BROOKS

 

The Lost Daughter

 

The female body is 55% water, the rest is dust.

The fullness in the throat will not be cleared.

Deep in the night,

when the farm dogs clamour at the moon,

the throat tightens and contracts.

Under the floorboards

the dark heaves and swells.

This fullness, this emptiness.

You clear your throat,

and still the dark swells.

You have dust in your throat.

Whose dust?

Whose dust rises in moonlight?

Whose dust lies upon lungs,

clogs veins, fills your head with fears?

There are so many images

that in the night sidle between the sheets.

In the day perhaps they can be put aside,

wiped from the window like condensation.

You rise and rinse her out of your throat.

But then the dust gathers again

and the panes mist over.

The drops join and begin to flow.

 

Zoe Brooks’ first collection Owl Unbound will be published by Indigo Dreams Publishing in 2020. She has been published by many magazines, including Dreamcatcher, Prole, Obsessed With Pipework, Fenland Reed, and The Rialto. 

 

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HOLLY DAY

 

Motes of Sparkling Glass

 

You can teach brine shrimp to dance

by shining a flashlight into their tank

and moving it back and forth. They will follow the light

like a scarf of sparkling dust mites

like a swarm of swallows alighting for the night

like a cloud of gnats discovering a piece of rotted fruit

like a pulse of transparent blood vessels traveling along a vein.

 

What they don’t tell you

in the manual that comes with the tank

that says shining a light into the tank will teach them to dance

is that you’re really just tricking the tiny shrimp into thinking

that their hiding place been suddenly exposed to sunlight

and sometimes it kills them

and sometimes it forces them to change sex

and sometimes it makes them spontaneously reproduce

and sometimes it does nothing at all, because this whole time

the tiny specks of dust you shook into the water of your sea monkey tank

 

weren’t actually brine shrimp eggs at all

but just bits of sand gathered from the shore of some faraway beach,

some beautiful, warm, tropical place

that you will never get to see for yourself.

 

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review. Her newest poetry collections are Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), and The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press).

 

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GEORGE FRANKLIN

 

Pieter Bruegel the Elder Looks at Two Monkeys

 

The monkeys know better than to move.

They squat in the window with rounded

 

Backs, one stares, ignoring the painter.

The other’s face turns down and away.

 

Iron clamps by their hips attach to

Chains.  If they climbed African tree limbs

 

Once, they don’t remember.  The river

Behind them is brown and busy with

 

Commerce, ships coming and going like

Birds diving through mist.  In the distance

 

Antwerp spreads its sea-green towers.  The

Monkeys don’t appreciate the view.

 

Auden tells us the old masters were

Never wrong about suffering, how

 

The world goes about its business and

Ignores torture, murder of children.

 

The monkeys know this instinctively.

They have not been tied to the rack or

 

Their small teeth extracted with pliers.

On the hierarchy of crimes, their chains

 

Do not merit notice.  In return,

They refuse to acknowledge Antwerp

 

With its towers, ships, and swooping birds.

They will not even acknowledge the

 

Painter who draws their delicate black

Hands and feet, the rich grain of their fur.

 

The painter’s hand moves as he sketches,

But the monkeys refuse to notice.

 

 

Quarantine Days

 

In 1918, my grandfather

Caught Spanish Flu and barricaded

Himself on the sleeping porch before

 

Collapsing.  Later, he agreed to let

In the doctor, but no one else, not

My grandmother, who was pregnant, or

 

My great-aunt who wasn’t married and

Kept house for them.  He sweated it out

Shivering, fever waking him up

 

And then driving him back into sleep. 

The night air drifted through the window

Screens.  He could hear the neighbors, horses,

 

Cars rolling noisily down the street. 

In the afternoon, sunlight angled

Across his face.  He believed he was

 

Dying, and it seemed better for him

To do that by himself, without the

Disturbance of mourners or people

 

Fussing over him.  But, fate dislikes

That kind of drama, and one day he

Got out of bed, moved the furniture,

 

And quietly unlocked the porch door.

 

George Franklin is the author of two poetry collections: Traveling for No Good Reason (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions) and a bilingual collection, Among the Ruins / Entre las ruinas, translated by Ximena Gómez (Katakana Editores).  He practices law in Miami and teaches poetry workshops in Florida prisons.

 

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NELS HANSON

 

First Taste

 

From Shah Jahan’s marble cell

across the smoky populous city

 

his Taj looks far as heaven. A video

of white figures passing in a line

 

through trees to Gettysburg isn’t

fake a scientist said. Someone tell

 

the ghosts the war is over, you lose

until at last you win. After the long

 

day you turn at the neon Welcome

Traveler flashing to Journey’s End

 

as you sign for free. There it’s spring,

the mourning dove builds her nest

 

in the dry channel for rain at the red

tiles’ eave. Your family and friends

 

at the bar, together they raise their

three glasses. First taste it all comes

 

back. I was always here, waiting for

them, and now they’re greeting me.

 

The Animals

 

At the windows of our houses

we notice the animals returning –

first the rabbits arrive to graze

uncut lawns, luring silent hawks,

the owl in the ash tree. Finches

and waxwings at the sills stare

past reflections of eyes and beak

into our cages. In the backyard

a bobcat’s kittens wrestle just off

the patio. Shy deer browse hedges

with ears rising as a mountain lion

pads the avenue. At night the same

opossums and raccoons we knew

so well safely walk the white line.

A wide shadow darkens the toys

on the sidewalk, row of parked

cars. Like ghosts of Indians we

watch a great condor saved from

extinction cross the morning sun.

 

Nels Hanson grew up on a small raisin and tree fruit farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California, earned degrees from U.C. Santa Cruz and the U of Montana, and has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. His poems received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.

 

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JENNIFER A. MCGOWAN

 

Disunion

 

When at last she came back to life again,

sounds hit her first: birdsong, tree frogs,

crickets. She had forgotten sound,

turned it this way and that to savour it.

Next, it was the light, so much of it

she blinked and sneezed. Then came

feeling her body again—arms, legs, fingers—

that obeyed her will, not his, functioned bruiseless

and whole. Lastly, her self. 

 

It took a while, deciding what to keep

and what to jettison; to remember who

she had been, before. Finally one morning

she put her body on at rakish tilt,

walked out her door into the woods,

just kept walking.

 

 

Close Quarters

 

You were a small boy I’d not recognise

covered in invisible bruises from

your parents, some still purpling.

 

You and your brother retaliated

yourselves into the sanctified violence 

of American football and rugby.

 

When you understood the military’s 

depth of betrayal, you went

back to school, to heal.

 

I asked your first memories.

The loud one: handgun fire in close quarters.

The silent one: running away.

 

Jennifer A. McGowan loves words. She got her first rejection slip from a kids’ magazine aged five, and has just kept going! Winner of the Prole pamphlet competition this year, her next book, Still Lives with Apocalypse, is due out soon.

 

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WARREN MORTIMER

 

Lillian Hughes, Pregnant, Watching BBC News

 

The Earth in labour

is craving puckery goods,

 

stockpiling pickles

from egg to eggplant to whelk.

 

The world is a jar.

Satellites are mustard seeds.

 

Cucumbers are split,

asparagus spears are massed.

 

Lune canal’s banks burst.

Vinegar extends lifespans.

 

Epidemic: salt

of amniotic fluid.

 

The lid is twisted

or levered with a teaspoon.

 

Death tolls are rising,

the dish-clothed hand is prising

 

a glass world ajar.

The news is a vacuumed pop.

 

It is hard to say

who’s died/who is being born.

 

Warren Mortimer is currently studying for a creative writing PhD at Lancaster University. He has recently been published by Magma, Stand, and Orbis magazines. He won first prize at the Lanercost Short Story Festival in 2016. At present, he is compiling a collection based around Norse Mythology and elegy.

 

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LEAH MUELLER

 

Hide and Seek

 

Can you fool Death

if you pretend

to be dead already?

 

Curl up tight

in a fetal ball

underneath your bed,

pray he doesn’t hear

your shallow exhalations.

 

Breath always sounds

louder when you hide:

lungs overflow with stifled air,

oxygen held several

minutes too long.

 

Lie immobile on your floor,

peer at his boots

through the narrow crack:

hide your body inside the light,

even as the glow threatens

to give you away.

 

Watch his furious search

grow more desperate, as

he rips pillows in half

and sinks his claws deep

into upholstery holes.

 

Death turns on his heels

and storms away to

a different room, but you

can bet everything you own

that he’ll return later.

 

Next time, Death will look

harder and longer,

until he finally discovers

your hiding place.

 

Leah Mueller's most recent books, Misguided Behavior, Tales of Poor Life Choices (Czykmate Press), Death and Heartbreak (Weasel Press), and Cocktails at Denny's (Alien Buddha Press) were released in 2019. Her work appears in Blunderbuss, Citron Review, The Spectacle, Outlook Springs, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, and elsewhere.

 

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SAMUEL PRINCE

 

Unwrap My Hands

 

My cutman, cornerman, wring the sponge,

let’s finish it now with weave and tape

scissored off, cotton buds pressured to stung,

 

and dented temples, my carotids are in flux,

pumping overtime as you swab my lips

and make supple each finger. Love redux.

 

This is what it means to contain a brain

that has been flogged like an octopus

against a wall, spit molars, feel the sprain

 

wrist-lifted to my knees, to beat the count,

take the towel from my neck and force a look

through, each boxed-puff eye sporting a mouse.

 

 

Sauna Born

 

Ladles hoik water from the pinewood bucket

to set seething the stone pyre in the stove.

 

Breathless, puce, nude as porpoise, we laze

on the tiered benches, cross thighs, sit forward

 

in the posture of the accused fretting bad news,

a drip-fed cremation in this panelled kiln.

 

Slug-trail stickiness laminates and glisters

torsos, our backs secrete rum gunk,

 

muculent creatures, sheathed in honey,

all skins repent, so that we might swelter

 

in this panelled kiln to a gloop to mop and slop

across the chemical treated floor and be no more.

 

So, let’s then resculpt this mess of ourselves

with potter’s caresses, masseur’s kneading

 

until we crawl on clay hands, toddle on toeless

feet, harden and set when we stumble-walk

 

from the cabin to dash along on the pontoon,

but crumble before we attempt flap then flight

 

over the icefield - the glacial-still lid of the Loch. 

 

Samuel Prince’s poems have been published in journals including Atticus Review, The Fenland Reed and Orbis, as well as anthologies including Lives Beyond Us (Sidekick Books) and The Emma Press Anthology of Love (Emma Press). He won the 2018 Café Writers Competition.

 

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ELAINE REARDON

 

Convent in Primavera Mexico

 

She examines the eyes
to make her prognosis, assesses the whole person makes her pronouncement.

 

Todavia esta toxica—everything is toxic.

She bundles three packages,
labels written in her hand,
herbs gathered on hillside and forest.

She knows I won't stay here.
I know behind adobe doors there are women who have traveled far, all over Mexico

and the Southwest.

The convent fills with grace and prayer. She feeds us from her garden,
prepares herbs gathered on the hill.

This wise old abbess, alchemist
of fire, earth, air, and water,
the beginning and ending for so many.

 

 

Primavera Forest / Bosque La Primavera

 

This forest holds my heart

Este bosque sostiene mi corazón

Rio Caliente shimmers below us
a waterfall tumble with clouds of heat

we climb and scramble carefully
over rocks as we cross the heated mist

sharp scent of pine and mesquite crackle under our feet as the sun heats the hillside

below us the convent is tucked into a curve of river where women come to heal
they are washed by the river

it arrives in their innermost places as the nun muy vieja brings vegetables herbs and prayer

the nun will look into your eyes to consider your chances and her resources

este bosque sostiene mi corazón

this river flows through my heart

 

* muy vieja -very old

* Rio Caliente -Hot River

 

Elaine Reardon is a writer and herbalist. Her first chapbook, The Heart is a Nursery For Hope, won first honors from Flutter Press in 2016. Her newest poetry book, Look Behind You, was published by Flutter Press in September 2019. Most recently Elaine’s poetry has been published by UCLA Journal, Naugatuck Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Henniker Review, and similar journals. Elaine has been a feature on Dublin Ireland radio and local television, and she was recently nominated for the Push Cart Prize. Visit her website at www.elainereardon.wordpress.com.

 

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DAVID MARK WILLIAMS

 

The Silence Machine

 

Someone must have left it on all night,

silence spreading like smoke

curling under doors, down corridors,

and when it had massed, streaming out

from windows in thick clouds.

 

Smoke stacks of silence on the skyline

unstitching birdsong, muffling traffic,

the yells of homeward revellers.

 

All we could know of a baby’s distress

the squashed red face, the o of a screaming mouth.

What remained of a thumping bass,

a tremor under our feet.

 

We’d gone as silent as chairs.

All we could do was sit and wait

until normal service resumed.

 

Perhaps we’d got used to it.

When the sound came back on

all that babble and clamour crowding our ears,

 

we felt like building a silence machine of our own,

firing it up, letting it loose

to drown that clamour out, aligned with what

in the world is most silent,

clouds, rocks and trees, oceans of microbes.

 

 

The Slug Room

 

It’s their room now,

these damp walls of collapsed plaster,

stripped down, cold as a crypt.

 

They have made a maze

of lunar trails, tracks of glistening rime,

from their obdurate roaming.

 

The dark ellipses proliferate,

hump backed islands,

lenticular clouds on a swept sky.

 

They roll over the waves they create,

hauling their keels behind them.

 

Their antennae swivel and probe,

sensing light, sniffing the air.

 

What draws them in we do not know.

 

There’s nothing for them here

except the spores damp and decay emit

or the dead bodies of their own kind.

 

Some will sleep through the winter,

others make an autumn death.

 

We seal up cracks but they still appear.

 

Salt would see them off soon enough.

We’d watch them rear up as if on fire,

but we let them be, keep the door shut.

 

David Mark Williams writes poetry and short fiction. He has been shortlisted for the Montreal Poetry Prize and won Second Prize in the New Zealand Poetry Society International Competition. Two collections of his poetry have been published: The Odd Sock Exchange, Cinnamon, 2015 and Papaya Fantasia, Hedgehog, 2018.

 

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RODNEY WOOD

 

Uk High Streets Suffer Worst August Sales In Three Years

 

The Black Death put a cap on growth, killing about a third of Europe’s population in just a few years. At the same time, a series of devastating wars further disrupted trade & the economy.

 

 

pressure on traditional physical retailers / little money to spend on fashion or happiness

rising interest rates / subdued wage growth / pressure on traditional physical retailers

rising interest rates / subdued wage growth / little money to spend on fashion or happiness

 

there was less disposable income / with inflation continuing to bite into the weekly shop

stars were melting in the coffee / there was less disposable income

stars were melting in the coffee / with inflation continuing to bite into the weekly shop

 

consumers spent heavily in supermarkets / because of good weather / the World Cup

there was a small fall in retail sales in July / consumers spent heavily in supermarkets

there was a small fall in retail sales in July / because of good weather / the World Cup

 

high-street sales had fallen for 7 months / rise in online sales / Pilate washed his hands

town centres hit by a wave of retail closures / high-street sales have fallen for 7 months

town centres hit by a wave of retail closures / rise in online sales / Pilate washed his hands

 

 

Schools Braced For Head Lice Invasion

 

The Black Death’s “preference for poor over affluent.” David Routt

 

that can be repeatedly used by a family / that are more effective than other treatments

GPs prescribe nit & louse combs / that can be repeatedly used by a family

GPs prescribe nit & louse combs / that are more effective than other treatments

 

each cost-cutting measure worse than the last / means head lice infestation will increase

there’s a change in NHS guidance / each cost-cutting measure worse than the last

there’s a change in NHS guidance / means head lice infestation will increase

 

sell more expensive treatments / along with own untested combs

head lice are big business / it’s all about profit / sell more expensive treatments

head lice are big business / it’s all about profit / along with their own untested combs

 

will never rise above their poverty / will be looked down on by their lords

children cannot afford the treatment / will never rise above their poverty

children cannot afford the treatment / will be looked down on by their lords

 

 

Rodney Wood worked in London and Guildford before retiring. His poems have appeared recently in The High Window, Orbis, Magma (where he was Selected Poet in the deaf issue) and Envoi.  His debut pamphlet, Dante Called You Beatrice, appeared in 2017.  You can find more information about Rodney and his work at rodneywoodpoet.wordpress.com   

 

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ABIGAIL ARDELLE ZAMMIT

 

Justice Village, Guatemala

 

The wind, first, brushing the flames

eastwards towards the city, the green dust

of traffic and dying chameleons.

 

I haven’t seen their faces, but I can smell

burnt hair by standing at the blue corner shop

selling Granada bars and cheap shampoo.

 

The girls in uniforms still like owls

on a starless night, their siblings puking,

covering eyes which won’t close again.

 

What’s there to learn? Starve, but don’t steal.

The stench of dying men is rancid pork

in the square, the toes melting, blackened.

 

There never were greens and reds and purples

except this tree upon which they hang,

two thieves, flaming and fuming.

 

The crowd is a torchlight of anger glowing 

when the night is out, when there are no stars.

The tree, still burning, reeks of something human.

 

Abigail Ardelle Zammit is from the island of Malta. She has published two collections of poetry, Voices from the Land of Trees (Smokestack, 2007), and Portrait of a Woman with Sea Urchin (SPM, 2015), which won second prize in the Sentinel Poetry Book Competition. “Justice Village, Guatemala” was winner of the Tools for Solidarity poetry competition 2017.

 

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