2023

OCTOBER

Sarah Carleton, Lisa Delan, Julian Dobson, Erica Goss, Dianna MacKinnon Henning,

Tom Kelly, Karen Luke, Todd Mercer, Liu Nian, J. R. Solonche,

Sue Spiers, Thomas Reed Willemain.

SARAH CARLETON

Weeds

Their yellow petals are napped like carpet shag

but when the sun has stuffed them full

a white ball puffs where the flower should be

and families of fluff hang glide away.

I’ve heard dandelions came over on a ship

—just like my great-great-whatever—

and their roots can scrub a liver clean,

a big plus for those new-world transplants

who drank more beer than water.

The plants pop up everywhere—in sidewalk cracks

and tea and of course lawns, which they nourish

with minerals, making themselves useful

despite what your cranky neighbor thinks.

If I were sailing to America

I too would pack such seeds in my trunk

and raise a bed of lionesses when I hit land

because the leaves, jagged like a saw,

promise construction—a safe place to roar—

and have a fitting bitterness for those fleeing

to a place with rocky soil.

Sarah Carleton writes poetry, edits fiction, and plays the banjo in Tampa. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Nimrod, Tar River, and The Wild Word, and have received nominations for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Her first collection, Notes from the Girl Cave, was published in 2020.

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LISA DELAN

Another Turn Around the Sun

When I met the world on this day
(when my mother carried half 
the years I hold today),

my welcome was shaped 
by the fatal fall of Camelot,

its dreams taken to the sea on
the waves of pirate radio,

on the receding footfall that
had marched for freedom,

and the hard rain that would rend
a stone wall while fecund smoke gave 
rise to acres of swaying souls.

The whole of the world rested 
in my mother's arms with me
(I did not hear the songs of
half a million strong);

her arms sang to me of
only this moment where
promise is born -

later would be time enough
for the work of being human,
in which we are torn and meliorated 
and must find our way home.

Now that my mother's song has 
joined the wind, I understand that 
she did not hold the world for me -

she held me for the lost
and broken world, 
that on my way home I might 
lend my voice to hers,

lend my voice to
all the songs raised up
to mend the world.

Lisa Delan's work appears in American Writers Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Burningword Literary Journal, and other publications. She was nominated for a 2023 Pushcart Prize. When not writing, you can find the soprano, who records for the Pentatone label, singing songs on texts of many of her favorite poets. “Another Turn Around the Sun” was first published in The Pointed Circle, Summer 2022.

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JULIAN DOBSON

Watersedge

Eel or Jurassic snake, the swan’s neck curls

to preen the bulge under its wing. The gauzed lake

mirrors the stretch and sway, echoes slick

tentacularity as the white tube uncoils.

Reeds gossip softly behind fingers, nudge

neighbours with news coded in strokes and chinks

of reflected light, rumbles and clanks

of traffic hushed in the half-mile from the bridge.

A common darter pauses long enough

to check time in its flight, a larval mass

teeming below. The swan moves subtly as moss,

as if it could suspend the churn of life

at will. Under the lake, a barrier of clay,

then chemical waste. Above, the warming sky.

What I’d tell the man who planted the blackthorn

I could describe ripped yellow gloves, thorn javelins

piercing thumbs. Calculate neck-crane of each

year’s growth, backache of chop and trim.

I could weigh strength and girth of trunks, roots’ reach,

saplings’ march, their sneaky annexations.

I’d marvel at January’s fuzz of swelling buds,

white noise of opening petals, indigo October bloom,

the unexpected acid green of flesh. I could sugar

the tale with stories of sloe gin, its ember heaviness,

an incantation seeping into skin.

Mostly, though, I’d warn him: never turn your back,

not once. Wood cares nothing for us, remakes itself

despite us, and given half a chance,

will scrub the earth clean of us.

Julian Dobson lives in Sheffield. His poetry has appeared in various online and print journals, most recently in Atrium, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Pennine Platform.

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ERICA GOSS

The Color She Wears

I will never know

the names of the men

who loaded a car

with death and split

Mutanabbi Street open,

or the names of the men

who read poems

just before their bodies

deconstructed; yet

every man’s name

was first a word

that appeared

in his mother’s mind,

shaping her mouth

before she spoke,

lips pressed against

his damp, just-birthed

face.             

They say

the poets kept

coming, for days

they waded through

remnants of photographs,

paper, bones, glass

fragments, books

curled in damp fingers. 

Someone must have finally

shooed them away,

started sweeping – 

some man’s mother

robed in black,

the color she wears

every day.

In Front of the Reichstag

When he stood here in 1956

my father decided to set his life to music.

American jazz, the language of home.

To learn forgiveness, listen to the blues.

Fifty years later

I step across the mended street

to read about the girl

who bent herself into a quarter note

and escaped to the West,

wedged into a stereo cabinet,

her body twisted

like the fossil Archaeopteryx.

She was so small, a gamine –

airy as the swan-bone flute

dug up in the Hohle Fels cave

from which the oldest music comes.

Where else did the children hide –

crammed into cello cases, coiled into drums

as the little birds of Berlin

called out in tones of gold and mercy?

Erica Goss is the author of Night Court, winner of the 2017 Lyrebird Award from Glass Lyre Press. Recent and upcoming publications include The Colorado Review, The Georgia Review, Oregon Humanities, Creative Nonfiction, North Dakota Quarterly, Gargoyle, Spillway, A-Minor, Redactions, Consequence, The Sunlight Press, The Pedestal, San Pedro River Review, and Critical Read. Erica served as Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, California, from 2013-2016. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, where she teaches, writes and edits the newsletter Sticks & Stones. “In Front of the Reichstag” was first published in Lake Effect, 2011. “The Color She Wears” was first published in Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Anthology, 2008.

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DIANNA MACKINNON HENNING

Fish Hatchery

My but we were lovely, captives

and all. Each day the witch

would dress us up. She was keeping us

for herself. And we kept to the fish-

hatchery, where shadows stacked

their troubled hieroglyphs. We read

the ripples in water-filled tanks

where multitudes of fingerlings 

thinned to nearly nothing. Each

day the witch would dress us up, twist

our hair into ringlets, bangs pinched back

with plastic barrettes. Oh, we were lovely

until we held our own, asserting no more

taffeta dresses, no more ringlets,

our arms across our chests in defiance,

my foot booting the cat.

Dianna MacKinnon Henning taught through California Poets in the Schools, received several California Arts Council grants and taught poetry workshops through the William James Association’s Prison Arts Program and has run The Thompson Peak Writers’ Workshop in Lassen County. Publications, in part: Poet News, Sacramento; Worth More Standing, Poets and Activists Pay Homage to Trees; Voices; MacQueen’s Quinterly; Artemis Journal, 2021 & 2022 & 2023 forthcoming; The Adirondack Review; Memoir Magazine; The Plague Papers and New American Writing. 2021 Nomination by The Adirondack Review for a Pushcart Prize. MFA in Writing ’89, Vermont College. Fourth poetry book Camaraderie of the Marvelous published by Kelsay Books 2021. Seven-time Pushcart Nominee.

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TOM KELLY

Black Tie Snake

Searching for familiar faces

among strangers,

entangled in the past.

Scanning pews, backs of heads,

bald patches, grey as badgers,

until I meet the coffin,

a buffer before the altar rail.

The man beside me

gives me his hand and

the past appears.

The black tie in the back of my car

coils like a snake

moving through my life

not threatening

but something I cling onto

looking through the rear-view mirror.

Tom Kelly has had thirteen books of poetry, short stories and a play published in as many years. His most recent poetry collection This Small Patch, published by Red Squirrel Press was well-received and reprinted.

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KAREN LUKE

Wild and disorderly

When she said that she had to get back to her garden before it became too late to see what she was doing,

she meant that dusk would soon obscure her ability to count the number of sunflower

seeds in her hand,
 

and that the planting season was ending for the parsnips running to seed in her vegetable patch,

and that there were more years behind her now than there ever would be in front of her, although this wasn't a deterrent to the roses climbing the trellis below her bedroom window with the help of her pruning.

What she didn't mean was that soon raindrops would fall so thick and fast down in her valley that the river would turn her garden into an apocalypse and that she would outlive the art that she had created to apprehend the reality of what was on the other side.

Editing your garden 

The text I had copied and pasted read: "love my garden." 

It wasn't meant as an imperative. 

The subject was absent because my mouse had missed it. 

But I held back from dragging the cursor

over the abandoned pronoun. 

There was more pleasure to be had by

going in myself. 

I moved the pulsing indicator to the head of the sentence, 

found the right key with my finger 

and took the plunge. 

"I." There it was at last. "I love my garden." 

Although it was yours, inserting the "I" indulged me. 

I love my garden.

The sentence is now more than complete, overqualified even; like Eden 

with too many I's.

Karen Luke won the Judge's Choice award for her poem,” Dog's Bone”, at the inaugural Chesham Literary Festival 2023. She regularly reads at her local independent bookstore, Chapter Two, in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, where she lives with her husband and two daughters.

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TODD MERCER

The Blue Bridge Ashes Plan Sonnet

As a favor, dump me in the river

from the Blue Bridge or the Fulton crossing,

once I’m gone and can’t cross unless carried.

One of my wittier people could say

it had been real and fun, but not real fun.

I’m related to folks who say…um…stuff.

I’d like to get back to water, if/when

my flawed plan to live forever fails me.

Not to be more morbid than the next guy,

all that’s down the road, not planned for Tuesday.

I mean, I sure hope it isn’t real soon.

In the rosy present we can cross it

on our leg strength, the bridge over the Grand.

I’ll walk to where I hope they’ll let me go.

Found a Fiver

Not a lot of money, but I found a folded fiver

in a pants pocket. It was the perfect plus-sign

item needed to get the day rolling

in the right direction. A fiver can buy

five different items at a dollar store.

Dear Earlier Me, thanks for this

unexpected contribution, for the little bump.

The slightest outside input tends to nudge a person

off the neutral outlook and on over into

one mode of expectation, or else its opposite.

Once I found a crisp twenty, twenty American dollars,

on the sidewalk, when I was hungry. I looked

but saw no sign of the bill’s rightful owner

to return it to. No clear path to the noble act.

Sunbeams shone down from heaven

directly on it, as I put it in my pocket.

Maybe to spend on food, maybe to hide on myself

as a nice surprise to find another day.

Dear Unfortunate Stranger, sorry

and thank you. I was relentlessly upbeat

for a week, unflappable, a week and a half.

I felt forward momentum, possible progress.

For a while it carried me along.

Todd Mercer’s short collection, Ingenue, was a winner of the Celery City contest. His digital chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance is available free at Right Hand Pointing. Mercer has been nominated for Pushcarts and Best of the Net awards in Fiction and Poetry. Recent work appears in Literary Yard, MacQueen’s Quinterly and Spartan.

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LIU NIAN

To my son, Liu Yunfan

1

Suddenly thought

of arrangements when I die

so write a few words to my son.

Actually, cremation is the cleanest

but here's no it.

Don't hold a memorial service

here, no one understands my life.

No Taoist priests please

their dirge is really bad.

Let it go for three days.

I'm waiting for someone.

It's far away.

After three days, forget it.

Some people will always be missed.

In the coffin,

no need for more clothes.

In the soil, I should not

feel the coolness of the world.

2

I forgot to mention the monument.

Make a simple one.

And it's hard to carry.

You can pay them more.

On the monument, carve an epitaph.

Carve what? Let me think.

Let it be the "pain".

All my life, I've been holding my tongue.

When chiselling

tell the stonemason to be gentle.

 3

At the time of Ching Ming

if you are free, come and sit.

The wind here is not cold.

No need to burn paper money.

No need to hang up the green

I have no power to bless you.

You're on your own.

Tell me about family.

Tell me if the orchid has bloomed.

Tell me what you've read lately.

whether you've got a girlfriend.

Don't talk about the past

I haven't forgotten.

Look at the inscription

on the stone tablet.

It's carved so deep.

Don't talk about state affairs

I have already expected.

Look at the inscription

on the stone tablet.

It's carved so deep.

Translation by Bibeca

《写给儿子刘云帆》 作者：刘年

 1 突然想到了身后的事 写几句话给儿子 . 其实，火葬最干净 只是我们这里没有 . 不要开追悼会 这里，没有一个人懂得我的一生。 . 不要请道士 他们唱的实在不好听 . 放三天吧 我等一个人，很远 三天过后没来，就算了 有的人，永远都是错过 . 棺材里，不用装那么多衣服 土里，应该感觉不到人间的炎凉了。

2 忘记说碑的事了 弄一个最简单的和尚碑 . 抬碑的人辛苦 可以多给些工钱 . 碑上，刻个墓志铭 刻什么呢，我想一想 就刻个痛字吧 这一生，我一直忍着没有说出来 . 凿的时候 叫石匠师傅轻一点。

 3 清明时候 事情不多，就来坐一坐 这里的风不冷 . 不用烧纸钱 不用挂青 我没有能力保佑你 一切靠自己 . 说说家事 说说那盆兰花开了没有 说说最近看了什么书 交了女朋友没有 . 不要提往事 我没有忘记 你看石碑上的那个字 刻得那么深 . 不要提国事 我早已料到 你看看，石碑上的那个字 刻得那么深。

Liu Nian, real name Liu Daifu, born in December 1974 in Yongshun, Xiangxi. After graduating from Yongshun First Middle School, he was admitted to Hunan Province Building Materials Industry School, majoring in machinery manufacturing. He worked as a mechanic maintenance worker in Foshan Gao Ming City Cement Factory for 3 years, and after returning to his hometown in 1997, he worked as a peddler selling firewood, cotton, grain seeds, tobacco, medicinal herbs, etc. In 2010, he started to engage in literary work, and successively worked as an editor in Borderland Literature and Poetry Magazine. He is now engaged in writing and teaching poetry and prose.

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J. R. SOLONCHE

On The Road

On the road ahead of us,

a farmer sits on his tractor,

slower than the horse-drawn

wagon of his grandfather,

the enormous rubber wheels

the height of his tallest son,

turning slowly, too slowly

for the motorists behind us,

impatient as always to arrive at

their home lives, real or imagined,

which the farmer has no need to,

which the grandfather could not.

In The Liquor Store

I met one of the librarians

in the liquor store. We both

bought the same red wine.

Going back to work or are

you done for the day? I asked.

Oh, my day isn’t done until

six, she said. But it’s so sunny

out. So warm. You should go

to the park, sit on a bench,

I said. I wish I could, she said.

Sure you can. Wordsworth says

so, I said. Yes, he did say that,

didn’t he? Up! up! my Friend,

and quit your books; Or surely

you'll grow double: Up! up! my

Friend, and clear your looks;

Why all this toil and trouble?

she said. Can you recite all of

“The Tables Turned”?  I said.

Sure can. I memorized it in high

school, she said. I’m impressed,

I said. My boss isn’t. Enjoy the

wine, she said. You, too, I said.

Nominated for the National Book Award and twice-nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of twenty-six books of poetry and co-author of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.

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SUE SPIERS

All the cameras have gone to other wars

            After Wislawa Szymborska

Atrocities have numbed our responses.

     Where is that? Afghanistan or Israel?

Relentlessness is too much to witness.

     He was hosting Mastermind on Monday.

     Where is that? Serbia or the Ukraine?

The reporter flinches as sirens shriek.

     He was hosting Mastermind on Monday.

Blackened block of flats versus golden domes.

The reporter flinches as missiles land.

     They showed this at eight, same as yesterday.

A blackened block of flats with crumbling walls.

     Do you want another cup of coffee?

     They showed this at eight, same as tomorrow.

Stoic women queue at a borderline.

     Did you want another bowl of cornflakes?

Soldiers share their rations in a fox-hole.

Bewildered kids queue at a borderline

     Someone needs to put Putin in his place.

Soldiers share their stories from a fox-hole

     Switch the T.V. off to save the ‘leccy.

     Someone needs to put Hitler in his place.

Mass graves uncovered in retaken towns.

     Switch the T.V. over for something else.

Another conflict pumping fresher blood.

Mass graves discovered in retaken towns.

     Not another rehash of this sorrow

Another game of thrones and fresh bloodlust.

     Nothing but repeats, is there nothing new?

     Not another rehash of this anguish

Relentlessness is too much to witness.

     Nothing but repeats, I won’t watch again.

Atrocities have conquered our response.

Sue Spiers lives in Hampshire and works with Winchester Poetry Festival. Sue edits the annual anthology for the Open University Poetry Society. Her poems have appeared in Acumen, The North. Obsessed with Pipework and South magazines and on-line at The Lake and Ink, Sweat & Tears. Sue Tweets @spiropoetry

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THOMAS REED WILLEMAIN

The Crafty Dead

The dead excel at one thing:

They do absence

to a fare-thee-well.

You can look at them

and tell right away

that nobody’s home.

You don’t even need

to touch.

Ah, but do not

be deceived,

for the dead are

crafty

in their absence.

Sometimes,

you can call them

and they will still

politely tell you

to leave a message.

Sometimes,

they will send you

a misrouted

thank-you note

for all the concern you showed

when they were dying

not so many days ago.

For years,

they will wink at you

when you hear

their favorite song

or see somebody wearing

the same kind of hat.

If you listen closely

you might hear them whisper

to charge your phone,

buy some stamps,

write a famous poem

so that you too

can play peek-a-boo

when it’s your turn.

Webcam Artist

Some invisible guy

at the Tembe Elephant Park

gets to point the camera --

a low form of art

but still art.

Today I ignore the views

of beasts and birds

and think about that guy:

his job, his aesthetic.

I bet he’s instructed

to focus on anything

that could scare Americans

and keep them watching.

Maybe he gets a bonus if

he zooms on crocs or hippos.

But beyond that he might be free

to point at what appeals to him.

He seems to like trees,

the weirder the better.

He’s a bird guy too.

I figure he’s a free spirit

subverting his bosses

by showing only sleeping crocs

and wallowing hippos.

I bet he’s thinking

“Hey, American, here’s your killers.

Boring, no, my distant brother?”

“But look at this

ancient and beautiful

South African tree

holding two birds

you’ve never seen before.”

Dr. Thomas Reed Willemain is an academic, software entrepreneur and former intelligence officer. His poetry has appeared in Sheila-Na-Gig, Idle Ink, Dapped Things, Pigeon Pages and elsewhere. He is a former resident of the village of Lower Dolphinholme in Lancashire.

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