2024

 

 

OCTOBER

 

 

Carol Casey, Judy Brackett Crowe, J. H. Hill, Mary Makofske, Lauren K. Nixon,

 Kenneth Pobo, Lex Runciman, Fiona Sinclair, Susan Stiles, Tuyet Van Do.

 

 

 

 

 

CAROL CASEY

 

The Butterfly Holding the Day Together                                  

          After Jusef Komunyakaa

 

Mired in murky mists of mind,

I grasp a thread from the fabric

of the day and pull

like an angler landing

a sleek, silver salmon.

 

The fabric gathers in on itself.

like the folds of my brain

latching a memory,

Like a raindrop freeze-folding

into snow flake.

 

A monarch pops out,

struggles on the thread.

And we’re in a tug of war—

not thinking of consequences,

only the play of it.

 

I clench my broken end.

The butterfly rises,

a blinking jewel.

 

The day shatters like sheets

of coloured glass that break

dawn upon bleakness.

 

The butterfly tickles

a stray breeze.

 

I cut myself

on the day’s sharp edges.

 

Stream

 

There is no choosing,

no willing one to be the other.

There is no other. 

There is only one story,

one poem, one stream.

There is only being in

or being out of,

stepping into

or stepping out of,

standing, sitting, sleeping

on the bank,

skipping stones across,

splashing, minnows nibbling toes.

There is this much

and this only

and this is much

and only this much.

There is only yes,

yes and yes until

there is no other

that is not much.

 

Fishes flash in the depths.

Bubbles rise to the

surface.

 

Carol Casey lives in Blyth, Ontario, Canada. Her work has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies around the world. She recently published her first book of poems- What Can Happen: family and other raptures of imperfection.

 

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JUDY BRACKETT CROWE

 

Summer Boy

 

Born on the cusp of summer, the boy loves words,

loves stories. Listening. Telling. Writing.

Grew through and beyond Tintin,

Swallows and Amazons, the Grimms

and the not-so-grims. Shakespeare, even,

and Thurber—strange story-fellows.

 

Perhaps summer itself planted all of that in him—

tall tales, sea tales, picture stories,

—trailblazers, swashbucklers, clever pensive boys,

and tools and weapons of the writer’s trade

—pencils and paperclips, wide-nib pens, midnight-blue

          invisible ink, sticks in dirt, his name in sand

          washed away and etched again, qwerty,

          and always the heft and smell of bound blank paper

waiting for his words about moving things

—cars, arrows, bullets,

          planes, tall ships

          (he finds he “must down to the sea” of writing

          again and again, this summer/mountain boy).

 

Inspired by and steeped in

mountain air, sounds from the sea’s own face,

river’s rush and summer’s heat,

with winter years and years away,

the summer boy dreams and reads,

the summer boy writes.

 

Judy Brackett Crowe lives in the California foothills of the northern Sierra Nevada. Her poems have appeared in Oberon, Fish Anthology, Epoch, The Maine Review, The MacGuffin, Commonweal, Midwest Review, The Midwest Quarterly, West Marin Review, Cloudbank, Subtropics,, and elsewhere. She is a longtime member of the Community of Writers. Her chapbook, Flat Water: Nebraska Poems, was published by Finishing Line Press. Her poetry book, The Watching Sky, was recently published by Cornerstone Press.

 

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J. L. HILL

 

Monopoly on Death

 

Passing away implies a slowness, a gradual cascade like a cloud

moving past the sun or a hand dissolving a tear. 

 

Passing away is a kind lie told to mask the cold stone sitting in the stomach,

the hot glass bead lodged in the back of the throat threatening to burst.

 

“I’m sorry for your loss” is said as transient condolence with a meek handshake,

a perfectly somber downturned brow with a wondering eye toward the gruesome dessert table.   

 

“I’m sorry for your loss” is expected politeness and banal. It rips out all complexity.

 

Funerals are crude money pits. No one wants to stare at decaying bloated flesh in a box 

the price of a Tesla displayed like Havisham’s rancid bridal cake. 

 

Funerals molest the living and the dead. 

 

I read that some tribes would paint the face red, the color of life, and fold up the corpse in a tree. That seems like a much better way to return.

 

J. L. Hill is a Stockton University graduate, who received a degree in Literary Studies and Genocide & Holocaust Studies. In 2023, she won the Feyt/Armstrong Award for Best Critical Literary Essay “Surviving the Surrounding System of Violence.” Currently, she resides in New Jersey.

 

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MARY MAKOFSKE

 

Insomnia

 

What bird sings in the night to wake a sleeper

not yet ready to rejoin this life? Cries

fading into shadows when the clock appears,

its blurred and distant numbers like a sign

in a long dead language. Here, here it might

insist, or is it saying Rise, Think, Weep?

Bones will not find their place, flesh

sags and twists, a garment washed and wrung

too often, out of shape. A house designed

without a thought of rest. No place to place

the arms. Across the chest, they weight the breath.

Stretched wide, should hands face up or down?

Pinned beneath my side, an arm can fall

asleep, though I may not, shifting in my shift,

then pinioned by the ticking of the clock.

 

Nexus

 

In mountains, we may live by a volcano.

Beside the sea, we may live on a fault.

 

If we burn for energy, we must foul the air.

If we foul the air, our children still must breathe.

 

Living on a delta, we bear storms and floods.

Living in a desert, we drink stolen water.

 

Flying in darkness over cities bejeweled

with lights, we forget how they block the stars.

 

Mary Makofske's latest books are No Angels (Kelsay, 2023); The Gambler’s Daughter (chapbook, Orchard Street Press, 2022); World Enough, and Time (Kelsay, 2017); and Traction (Ashland Poetry, 2011), winner of the Richard Snyder Prize. Her poems have appeared in 75 journals and in 21 anthologies. www.marymakofske.com

 

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LAUREN K. NIXON

 

Atlantid, his shoulders broad, the sea wide

 

There is resilience in freckles and pale blue eyes;

ears I can pick out of any photograph;

crooked nose, twice broken; wide grin.

 

A sea of wood and metal, cordite, flashes of light.

 

Stocky knuckles, blunt fingers rifling through soil

for buried treasure and potatoes,

brushing shavings from freshly planed wood,

a gentle touch at Madge’s elbow when she loses her way.

 

A sea of growing things, reaching.

 

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

he says, but we never do, because

If it’s woth doin’ at aw, it’s woth doin’ reet.

 

A sea of sand gives way to a sea of ordinary things.

 

It’s a rainy Wednesday. This Atlantid stoops

plucks a leaf from the carpet in the hall,

humming Waltzing Matilda as he goes.

 

The sea parts and

I am six years old

crossing the road on my grandad’s shoulders,

stealing the feather from his favourite hat.

 

An ex-archaeologist who swapped the past for the present, Lauren K. Nixon is an indie author and poet. She is the author of numerous short stories and several novels, along with four volumes of poetry (Wild Daughter, Marry Your Chameleon, umbel. and Sing Madrigals) and two largely accidental plays.

 

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KENNETH POBO 

 

Forest Trees

                 Painting by Emily Carr

 

In Wisconsin we walk on trails

that wind through a forest. 

The trails are equations

solved by strangers in offices. 

 

We have no fear,

a bag of Fritos in our back pockets, 

see a few deer,

many chipmunks. Danger

must be sleeping or away

on vacation. I know this green,

 

its many shades, each a mask. 

Danger doesn’t sleep

and it works everyday. 

The trail is a mirage,

something to make us feel

that we’re “in nature.” 

The heartbeat of these trees

sounds faint. The claws

don’t show. Afterwards

 

we say “That was nice.” 

It’s like we hadn’t met

even one tree, heard

even one secret

kept by a stump.

 

Kenneth Pobo (he/him) is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections. Recent books include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press), Loplop in a Red City (Circling Rivers), Lilac And Sawdust (Meadowlark Press) and Gold Bracelet in a Cave: Aunt Stokesia (Ethel Press).  

 

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LEX RUNCIMAN

 

No Further Repairs

            for Clemens Starck (1937-2024)

 

Porch, chair, the hillside switchback,

maple, oak, the table, the book.

A perspective vanishes.

 

How do we not collide with such exits

as we walk any sidewalk, look in a mirror,

for the effortless air swirls with echoed

 

consonants and vowels, a six-note tune over

and over while the pen moves slower

than the mind provides.

 

All the dictionaries, all the fonts, every sky,

every encountered face goes

when the eyes close and the voice stills,

 

and the hammer and pliers, nails, lag bolts,

sandpapers, compass, saws and awls

make no further repairs, have no more to say.

 

Hush and vacancy, ache of loss,

as ever the unspoken lingers, echoes

with sad longing and invitation.

 

Lex Runciman has published seven collections of poems, including The Admirations, which won the Oregon Book Award, and most recently Unlooked For, from Salmon Poetry. His work has appeared widely, including in Ploughshares, Nimrod, Stand, and Poetry Ireland Review. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

 

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FIONA SINCLAIR

 

Wrong side

 

Length of the village street,

I wear the crepuscular light

like a cloak of invisibility.

Elizabethan, Georgian, Edwardian

windows are open goals to my gaze-

 

Some curtains have simply slipped

the mind, as dad knocks up Spag Bol,

whilst kids tackle homework, 

and mum sips red wine, scrolling Facebook’s

dispatches from other people’s days.

 

A few deliberately court the eye, 

flaunt swanky chandeliers,

plasma screens vast as an old masters,

vacant rooms Inferring families out

enjoying their blue-chip lives.

 

I know for many, work follows

them home like a stalker,

interest rates may soar like a temperature,

granddad’s mind frays in a body

good for a few years yet.

 

But passing each house

corner of the eye quick, 

these domestic scenes still seem

honied, soft focused, sparkling lit.

Their family ties delving tap root deep. 

 

No frisson of the voyeur then,

but in the shadows’ mourning black,

frost snapping like a terrier

I glimpse what it is to be permanently

on the wrong side of these windows.

 

Fiona Sinclair lives in Kent. Her new collection Second Wind is published by Dempsey and Windle press.

 

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SUSAN STILES

 

Still/Life

 

The picture frame has turned and points inward, at the edge

                        of the center shelf. The flowers, in succession,

drift over one side of the vase. Snow has gathered outside; icicles, too.

            The chill is reverent. The bottle of sweet vermouth has tucked itself away,

                                                            behind a cushion. Across the

                        room, the pill bottle sits open. The dog faces north,

                                                                                                her paws crossed.

 

The scene demands our attention, but why? What was the moment like before

            the moment that currently is? What is the moment to come? Who’s

ascendant? Who has regrets? Can there be a moral to the story?

 

The picture frame is set right again, and returned to the center of the center

            shelf. The flowers respond to the idle care of passing fingers. The snow

and the icicles fare poorly,

                                    in the afternoon sun. The sweet vermouth spoils a

splash of whiskey at about the same time that the pill bottle recaptures its lid.

                                                            Only the dog lies still. And one

                                                                                                dare not disturb her.

 

Susan Stiles is a freelance writer who currently lives in Croatia. Her poetry has appeared in The Dalhousie Review, Innisfree, Storyscape, Antiphon, and Red River Review as well as an anthology by Derailleur Press. She has given poetry readings in the Washington, D.C, area at The Writer’s Center and MosaicArts.

 

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TUYET VAN DO

 

Six Haiku

 

pickle mustard greens

in the mason jars

the sourness of life

 

waterfront

skyscrapers and neon lights

a painting

 

crowded restaurant

among the diners 

an old flame

 

drums playing

a young child watches

the dragon dance

 

beach outing

riding the roaring wave

a plastic bag

 

sparkling eyes

behind the plexiglass

a masked cashier

 

Tuyet Van Do lives in Australia.  Her work has appeared in Time Haiku, Pure Haiku, cattails, Synchronized Chaos, Scarlet Dragonfly Journal, Cold Moon Journal, Narrow Road, Triya Mag, FreeXpresSion, haikuNetra, haikuniverse, Poetry Super Highway, Take 5ive, The Bamboo Hut, Under The Basho, among others. She was nominated for the Touchstone Award for Individual Poems.   

 

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