2018

 

 

 

NOVEMBER CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

Edilson Ferreira, Deirdre Hines, Mary Ann Honaker, Charles Rammelkamp, Angela Readman,

 J. R. Solonche, Tim Taylor, Sarah White, Noel Williams, Laura Winkelspecht, Katie Zychowski

 

 

 

EDILSON FERREIRA

 

Blessings.

 

Blessed be those 

who are opening paths without knowing if they will have

         the strength to conclude it;

who put themselves to the test without further ado than the love

         for a cause and the fervor to fight the good fight;

who believe that people are made to accomplish one

         for the other, performing generous a mankind;

who are full of projects for the next years even fearful

         by the ones of next week;

who fall in love and are not afraid to demonstrate it;  

who plant a tree fully aware never will reap its fruits 

         nor sit by its shadow, but fully contented for, 

         someday, it will serve for a fellow one,

         indebted to a past kindness.

 

A Brazilian poet, Edilson Ferreira, 74, writes in English rather than in Portuguese. Largely published in international journals in print and online, he began writing at age 67. His first Poetry Collection, Lonely Sailor, is coming soon, with one hundred poems. “Blessings” originally published in Indiana Voice Journal, February 2016 issue.

 

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DEIRDRE HINES

 

Eight for a Wish....

 

The journal of my imaginary lovers

is written in invisible ink on skin

with tracery of tongue. Friday's tongues

to be exact. Like all secret romances

it began with an image of the desired

culled from the monochrome of morning T.V.

swinging from vine to vine, a Him Tarzan

Me Jane kind of man minus the patented yell.

I live on a street that was once a wood.

Besides that, there's only so many ostrich

eggs one girl can eat. And as for that Cheeta.

No-one can compete with a man's best friend,

and tales of crocodile wrestling take their toll.

I lost the taste for vine-swinging men.

 

I lost the taste for vine-swinging men,

chose a cyborg instead. I needed galactic

or the closest thing to Steve Austin

(a.k.a. The very first Bionic Man).

Someone who'd really seen the galaxy,

who'd lived the T-Shirt. My secret agent

for The Office of Scientific Intelligence made

Fridays move like a Mata Hari fandance.

I live on a street that's out with collusion.

Besides it's hard to read the heartlines

through infrared. And as for pillow talk

' Am I still a man or a machine?'

Who can compete with identity confusion?

I erased that epistolary mistake.

 

I erased that epistolary mistake

rewrote the whole written in the stars instead.

Then like a face patterned from ice crystal

keening her name through my broken window

epic took form, and his shade fell into the room.

' Mr. Heathcliff?', but the object of this

desire looked past my loose white dress to dash

his head against my shaky hands and howl.

I live on a street owned by Linton clones.

Besides his long, black hair only Catherine

could caress dry skin, cavernous cartilage.

That was too last century. Roleplay carries

dangers. I cannot live as tormented muse.

The one that could have been belonged to Catherine.

 

The one that could have been belonged to Catherine.

The one that got away is still wanted,

buried beneath history, hidden in legend,

swallowed as myth, but never forgotten.

His face is palimpsest in every other.

Cinnamon, cassia-barked nest,

nectar rapture from honeyed lips

in golden and red dappled leafcoat.

I live on a street far from the eternal.

Besides his many different names

he was no con-artist, but one of a kind,

the last living incarnation; such gods do not

live on air, but by cardamon sap.

Fashion change brought this page to his climactic.

 

Fashion change brought this page to his climactic

in sheets blotted by spilled ink

of dried female cochineal bugs,

harvested from Zapotec nests on cacti,

Nopales, to be exact. A twist

within a twist on my honey trapping.

My hidden selves that lay on pages

had flights of angry female ghost co-authors.

I live on a street built on buried bones.

Besides the call to my inner vegan

let loose my hair, and annato bark rope

pulled me high into the lipstick tree's crown,

feather painted me in leaf and light and seed-

The codex of first love is carved on bark.

 

The codex of first love is carved on bark

of scyamore by Swiss Army steel blade,

belief of youth in the ever ever

desire despite imprinted first narration.

Did unhappy homes seed that virus

of lacebug nympetss undersigning

barkpeel, or is it lysine 4 on histone 3

changing oxytocin receptor gene?

I live on a street that hunts for highs.

Besides there's something in a tree

that encloses god, that offers breasts

to feed the dead, that's epigenetic.

The day we felled it, dryads cried.

That end erased species evolution.

 

That end erased species evolution

but my twelve petalled lotus needs flesh

to live, demands I find another

heart for pollination to drop as fruit.

The pages lay empty. No noun to name.

Only a glitter spattered cloaked sky,

dunes of duvet, ravers on repeat.

' To find your heart you have to let heart go...'

I live on a street haunted by ghost hearts.

Besides unless the dark wood's call is

answered grey walls will strangle hope.

He drank the blood from my cupped hands

and factual replaced fictional

on the last page of that journal of my imaginary lovers.

 

Deirdre Hines is an award-winning playwright and poet. Her play Howling Moons, Silent Sons won

The Stewart Parker Award for Best New Play. She has had plays produced by some of the leading Dublin

Theatre companies and has also written for schools. Her first book of poems The Language of Coats

includes the poems which won The Listowel Poetry Collection 2011 and was published by New Island

Books. She has been shortlisted for The Patrick Kavanagh Award in 2010. She is on the organisational

Committee of North West Words, and is their competition judge for the annual Children’s Fiction and

Poetry Competition. She reviews regularly for Sabotage. New poems have appeared in journals, and

Ezines in Ireland, the UK, India and America.

 

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MARY ANN HONAKER

 

Ars Poetica (Goldenrod)

 

All day from the open window of a car

I watched goldenrod slapping a field silly

 

goldenrod pouring down from highway overpass

goldenrod chiming like bells beside gas station

 

goldenrod interrupted by purple mistflower

scolded by towering milkweed leaning

 

down with its fabulous eighties hair

goldenrod tiptoeing down the divider

 

between eastbound and westbound bowing

solicitously to the passing motorists

 

if only there were nothing but goldenrod

punching through the pavement

 

waving its tassels dropping confetti

goldenrod when the tightening buzz

 

starts up in my limbs, nothing but empty

promises and dazzling fireworks

 

of goldenrod by the stopsign

instead of a desire to pace to and fro

 

to and fro in the dimlit house

instead of what ifs and should haves

 

let there be goldenrod congregating

on the hill whispering little tinkling notes

 

of pollen and tickling one another's chins

instead of me let there be more goldenrod

 

 

Ars Poetica  (Willow)

 

I wish I could help you see my willow tree.

No, see is the wrong word, otherwise I'd

snap a pic.  I wish I could help you live

with my willow tree, the way it wears

 

the burnished jewel of a crescent moon

in its black night hair; the mists that whiten

its many fingers as they stir the pot of morning.

There is a song that I can't hear and I wish

 

you could not hear it with me, when the wind

lifts the long tendrils tenderly and they sway,

sway, gently brushing the cracked driveway

where the willow's roots are breaking through,

 

and the way the yellowed leaves spiral down
the way a raindrop spirals down into the darkness

of a pond, ripples haloing it.  Once a flock

of starlings changed its one incomprehensible

 

mind and crashed like a wave from the tree's

tall crown, cascading over the billowed sky.

If you could meet my tree, it would save you,

as it has saved me, a thousand times.

 

 

Mary Ann Honaker is the author of It Will Happen Like This (YesNo Press, 2015). Her poems have appeared in 2 Bridges, Drunk Monkeys, Euphony, Juked, Off the Coast, Van Gogh’s Ear, and elsewhere. Mary Ann holds an MFA in poetry from Lesley University. She lives in Beckley, West Virginia.

 

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CHARLES RAMMELKAMP

 

Yellow

 

Death makes cowards of us all,

to paraphrase Hamlet,

though he called it “conscience,”

that fear of death.

 

Yet Doctor Reed told Jesse Lazear he was brave;

more than that, noble,

letting the mosquito bite him,

get its fill of blood,

all for the sake of science.

In less than two weeks

Doctor Lazear was dead.

 

Would it have been any consolation,

knowing he was behind

the first public health triumph

of the twentieth century?

The U.S. Army eradicated Cuba’s mosquitos,

having taken the island from Spain

just a year before;

only one death from Yellow Fever the next year,

Then they moved on to the American South

with similar results.

 

They say Jews don’t believe in an afterlife,

though who knows Doctor Jesse Lazear’s

private thoughts at the age of thirty-four.

Did he think he’d survive the insect?

Would you have done it,

even if you thought Heaven a certainty?

Who wouldn’t be scared?

 

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore, where he lives, and Reviews Editor for Adirondack Review. His most recent books include  American Zeitgeist(Apprentice House) and a chapbook, Jack Tar’s Lady Parts (Main Street Rag Press). Another poetry chapbook, Me and Sal Paradise, is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press.

 

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ANGELA READMAN

 

Dandelions

 

You look up knowing you won’t be picked,

blonde head scraggy as a drawing of sunshine

crayoned on a hurtling train. You’ll never make it

to a buttonhole, corsage or bouquet.

 

King of nothing, limping lion, girls won’t touch you.

Polished sandals skip over you deliberate as crosses

marking out dance steps on the church hall floor.

 

The problem is piss, kids scared to bruise you,

a volt of your crushed spit charging up a bare leg

can makes people wet the bed - everyone knows.

 

Other than the insects. September pulls the cloth

from the table and you lay out buttered bread.

In the dark, winemakers hold you, a sip of snowdrop

and burdock, a lamp lifted through the tarmac.

 

 

Sonnet to Slug

 

If there’s one thing I know I’ll meet again, it’s Slug.

Salt stain, puddle-gob, jizzsock, gluing an orgy

to the window, a swirling cleaner of algae.

Lino sailor, shell shedder, architect of planters,

ice clot reminding the wise to wear shoes.

Brushing against the surface won’t do, not for you,

nothing satisfies but the ooze, interrogator of nooks,

professor of shiver, bare foot and squelch. Jellied river,

creeping bruise, shifter of sodden lace, decorating

the world with glitter. Blackbird Bic Mac, I see you

stretching out after the downpour, a mantel of rain

muscling the wall. Just me and you, and you, and you,

a lit cigarette, and your snotwork, slow scribbler

of notes to insomniacs, a silversmith of nights.

 

Angela Readman's poetry has won the Mslexia Competition, The Charles Causley, & The Essex Poetry prize. Her collection The Book of Tides is published by Nine Arches.

 

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J. R. SOLONCHE

 

That Red Wheelbarrow

 

How disappointed I was

when I found out

that the story wasn’t true,

that he had noticed it

through the window

of the room of the sick

little girl he was called

to tend to, but that it

actually belonged

to an old black street

vendor in Rutherford.

Of course, so much did

depend on it regardless

of whose it was,

and the rain water

did still glisten on it,

and the white chickens

were still white and

were still going to get

their throats cut. So

perhaps it’s a good thing

it was the street vendor’s.

The little girl would

have given them names.

  

 

Writing About Writing About Plum Blossoms While Iill

By Ch’en Hsien-Chang While Ill

 

I am not ill, but If I were ill,

I would be lying in bed.

A pot of green tea on the bed table.

 

I would read "Writing About

Plum Blossoms While Ill"

by the philosopher Ch'en Hsien-chang.

 

A sentence. Then hang

my head a little to the side.

Then a sip of green tea.

 

Then look out the window.

Then close my eyes. Nod.

Then slowly swallow.

 

another sentence. Lift my head

a little. A sip of green tea.

Look at the invisible plum tree.

 

 

The Guide for the Perplexed

 

When I was nineteen or twenty,

I wanted to read The Guide

for the Perplexed by Moses

Maimonides. I soon realized

after a page or so that I needed

a guide for the Guide for

the Perplexed by Moses Maimonides.

Moses Maimonides should have supplied

pictures to accompany his guide,

pictures of flowers, say, like Disney’s

singing roses and dancing daisies.

Or a medieval Felix the Cat on a stool

pointing a medieval pointer toward

a medieval blackboard.

Or anything, anything at all

for me and my sort of perplexed

to get us from one page to the next.

Just a stick figure,

scratching its sticky head

with its sticky finger,

so simple, would have done.

But the one

and only picture in the whole book

The Guide for the Perplexed

by Moses Maimonides is

of Moses Maimonides

with a turban and a Mona Lisa look.

 

Professor Emeritus of English at SUNY Orange, J.R. Solonche has been publishing poems in magazines and anthologies (more than 400) since the early 70s. He is author of Beautiful Day (Deerbrook Editions), Won’t Be Long (Deerbrook Editions), Heart’s Content (chapbook from 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 & Yesterday (Deerbrook Editions), and coauthor of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). He lives in the Hudson Valley.

 

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TIM TAYLOR

 

Half-life

 

Within the earth

uranium is spitting out small pieces of itself

and, nucleus by nucleus

is turning, over aeons, into lead.

 

Inside his head

a random trigger trips, a cell winks out;

another dot, upon the ragged canvas of his life

is turning white.

 

It would be comforting to know

how much is left;

to calculate the hour, the day

by when the rest of him – or half of it –

is gone; to learn the calm

uncaring rhythm of decay.

 

Tim Taylor lives in Meltham, West Yorkshire, UK. Poems of his have appeared in various magazines (e.g. Orbis, Pulsar) and collections. He has also published two novels, Zeus of Ithome and Revolution Day, with Crooked Cat.  Tim also does part-time teaching and academic research in Ethics at Leeds University.   http://www.tetaylor.co.uk/

 

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SARAH WHITE

 

“The Prophet Bird”

 

            (after Schumann, Opus 82, no. 7)

 

When a thrush calls in these woods,

you hear an echo first,

then the song.

 

Before blossoms form in the stream,

the water bears

their reflections.

 

Long shadows cross the groves

where trees themselves

have yet to grow.

 

This is the wood

that foretells the past

and remembers the future.

 

A man at the grassy edge

hears a cry from deep within.

I’m going to go and see who it is.

 

Stay, says his wife: Let the sound

subside. With only the echoes

as guide, you could go astray.

                                                                    

 

Little One

 

I will have an unctuous priest 

smear the dust of penitence

on my agnostic face.

For you, Little One.

 

A hundred times, for you,

I will hail Mary and say “Pater Noster.”

 

In June, I’ll drive, with you in mind,

to where the pagans gather

and the bonfires glow.

I’ll dance, drum, burn,

and be tattooed. (Any word,

any image, on my chest

or on my bum. You choose.)

 

At dawn, I’ll stand one-legged

like a tree in a trance

while the hawk hones its talons

on my shoulder bones.

 

I’ll donate in your name an organ

good as new, still in use—

ventricle, pancreas, eyes. I have two.

One is astigmatic. I’ll get it fixed.

 

At summer’s end,

I’ll take my vows in a Carmelite

order—nuns high in the Alps 

without voice, without shoes.

 

I fear, Little One, the Mother Superior

won’t let you in. I’ll never

see you. Hell. I don’t see you now.

 

Oh, daughter of my son,

I’m a child of Jews

and Presbyterians, a student

of Spinoza and Voltaire, but I’ll pray

as if there were a Holy Ghost

 

that doesn’t want you lost.

 

Sarah White's most recent published collections are The Unknowing Muse (Dos Madres, 2014) and Wars Don't Happen Anymore (Deerbrook Editions, 2015) and to one who bends my time (Deerbrook Editions, 2017). She lives, writes, and paints in New York City.

 

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NOEL WILLIAMS

 

Open House

Scenting new grass three horses slop 
down the lane. Alan’s van brakes in the ruts.

 

Midday. Midsummer. A time to swap homes.
Air swells like a shell about to crack.

 

I touch our lily, sentinel. It leans to me 
from the wolfskin shadow of thatch. The scent of light.

 

On fired mud by the shed, they heap pushchair, a white guitar,
tea-chest, spades, a sketch of a lion.

 

They’ll bottle damsons, thread rag-rugs, brew nettle soup.
They’ll have these sibilant yews,

 

bramble swarming the sill, the long yellow lawn,
currant thick with thunderflies. They’ll probe

 

the blind chimney after they unpack hope. 
They’ll have the bed our first night broke.

 

We’ll have the smell of wallflower and soot.
Sky silvers the gate. We’ll have the road.

 

 

Bosnia afternoon

 

I think of the child wild inside me,
fingers against my drumming skin.

 

More come. If they leave the door like that
snow will blow in.

 

I think of our last hen
whose neck I wrung badly,
head loose like a broken thumb.

 

My shoulders are bare where they tear
the white dress I’ve worn for too long.
It needs to be rinsed in the river.

 

I think of the cabbage like a skull in the sink,
and the knife I’d be shredding it with.

 

Noel Williams is the author of Out of Breath (Cinnamon, 2014) and Point Me at the Stars (Indigo Dreams, 2017). He’s published quite widely. He's co-editor of Antiphon (antiphon.org.uk), Associate Editor for Orbis (www.orbisjournal.com), reviewer for The North and Envoi and an occasional writing mentor. Blog: https://noelwilliams.wordpress.com

 

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LAURA WINKELSPECHT

 

The Twirl

 

When she was young

a dress that twirled

 

was an invitation

to spin with abandon

 

arms out

head lifted to the sun

 

feeling the air

lick her legs

 

the grass

tickle her feet.

 

Eventually

the spinning stopped

 

as she donned pants

for practicality

 

and to keep boys

from looking up her skirt

 

but she became

a little less.

 

Now years later

in a full skirt

 

she remembers the twirl

and kicks off her shoes.

 

 

Grandpa’s Hands

 

Hands crisscrossed with blue

veins like tangled baling wire.

 

Hands made for work:

shoveling manure,

 

holding a wheelbarrow,

fixing a fencepost,

 

wiping a brow, sweaty

from the September sun.

 

Hands with skin

thin as corn silk

 

Hands that play

peekaboo and patty-cake.

 

Gentle hands

buttering toast.

 

Big hands

next to little hands.

 

Sturdy hands

alive with stories.

 

Hands folded

with rosary beads.

 

Hands holding.

Hands letting go. 

 

Laura Winkelspecht is a poet and writer who writes with the hope of finding some lightning among the lightning bugs. She has been published in One Sentence Poems, Clementine Poetry Journal, Millwork, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee.

 

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KATIE ZYCHOWSKI

 

Neighbors

When I lift a hand they scatter,
the rabbit and the hare,
making one loop ‘round the yard — memory biting at their heels.

Every afternoon and on Tuesdays after work
I watch the poor cowards from my window and make a list of their enemies;

          1. the thorns of rose bushes
          2. the dog digging at the fence
          3. the hemlock
          4. the brush stacked ready for fire
          5. the glove left near the shed
          6. the garden hose
          7. the shallow grave I dug for my retriever, Riley
          8. the broom when it falls and when it doesn’t.

Did their mothers carry panic?
Is their worry secondhand?

Once I saw them escape between the cedar planks and cinder-blocks
that separated us since the argument
and I followed them to your gate.

I can’t be sure what I had seen but I penciled in that —
all well and watched and simple —
you outstretched your palm and
they gathered at your feet.

 

Katie Zychowski is a fine art photographer living and working in Grand Rapids, MI (USA) who has exhibited her work nationally. Zychowski attended Kendall College of Art and Design (2007 - 2011) and graduated with honors. She has worked in the non-profit sector as an arts advocate for the past seven years and is concurrently working on a body of visual and written works.

 

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