2019

 

 

 

SEPTEMBER CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

Kitty Coles, Mike Dillon, Robert Ford, Mori Glaser, Michael A. Griffith, Jack Houston, Hilary Mellon, Yvonne Morris, Chris Pellizzari, Roddy Williams.

 

 

 

 

 

 

KITTY COLES

 

Flask Said to Contain A Witch

Exhibit in the Spellbound exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

 

They say you are in here,

sealed into this glass flask,

which is lined with silver as coffins

are lined with lead, the curve

of it shining smugly as a bulb,

a plug of red wax stopping the narrow neck.

 

If so, you are shrunken,

grown small, like a child’s fist,

and you dry and crouch

inside that airless globe,

your head drawn down to your knees,

a parchment lady.

 

I wonder how you got small

and how you got in,

whether someone drew you and lured you,

as wasps are drawn

by a smear of jam

congealing in a jar,

 

or whether you chose

to shrink yourself, to crawl in

the way that cats crawl off

to die unseen,

their instinct to be secret overruling

any desire for comfort or assistance.

 

Kitty Coles’ poems have been widely published in magazines and anthologies and have been nominated for the Forward Prize and Best of the Net. She was joint winner of the Indigo Dreams Pamphlet Prize 2016 and her debut pamphlet, Seal Wife, was published in 2017. www.kittyrcoles.com

 

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MIKE DILLON

 

Out in the Foyer After Giving a Reading

 

The crowd drifts outside into sunshine

while her blue eyes track me down.

 

 “Your poem about St. Francis,”

she half-whispers. “You got it right.”

 

Late seventies. Paper white. 

Marble-blue eyes locked into mine.

 

“Write about the wolf of Gubbio.

“How he tamed the wolf down.” 

 

This, like an insider’s tip for the race track.

“Someday,” I mutter. “I might.”

 

“We all have a wolf in us.” 

And a knowing, un-grandmotherly smile

 

leaves behind a dark crevasse in the tile floor 

as she evanesces through the sun-filled door.

 

Mike Dillon lives in Indianola, Washington, a small town on Puget Sound northwest of Seattle. His most recent book is Departures: Poetry and Prose on the Removal of Bainbridge Island’s Japanese Americans After Pearl Harbor. from Unsolicited Press.

 

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ROBERT FORD

 

Calling my grandfather in from his workshop at lunchtime

 

As if lowered in prayer,

his head sank over the wheel-rim

like a broken moon,

iron-grey hair bristling back

from around the temples,

ivy-shoot fingers groping around

amongst the mandala of spokes,

the skin of his knuckles weeping,

blackened with Three-In-One.

I’m six years old, I think,

carrying my balloon head

full of fresh, soft clay,

ready for impressions

to be scarred in.

 

 

Blossom

 

In our current climate, spring is a delicate round

of negotiations, a glacial shift of threat and promise.

The lengthening hour is an irrelevance. With only

a punctured light on offer, the mute sky beseeches

the sea for any crumbs of colour. We are born into it

fractiously, delicate as pins, loath to cease hibernating.

My eyes are like pumice, yours unhealed wounds.

With few choices, we planted our apple tree into

the rubble, bare-handed, under a gaunt moon,

while we thought no-one was watching, where any

passing cars could spit on it, the local birds defile it.

A decade later, it survives, proudly showing off a

gargoyle scar of canker looped around its throat,

as if it were a medal, not a fist. Just like all the others,

this year’s gush of candy-stripe blossom is whispering

of itself through the windows into our cold room, of a

future harvest, still so many uncounted months away.

 

Robert Ford's poetry has appeared in both print and online publications, including The Interpreter's House, Brittle Star, Butcher's Dog and San Pedro River Review. More of his work can be found at https://wezzlehead.wordpress.com/

 

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MORI GLASER

 

Surface Tension

Surface tension holds innards in place       reflects other surfaces     floats ships

conceals unfathomed streams

 

Take Hedy Lamarr    whose flawless skin      swayed serene on the big screen

while neurons charged       her world war II brain    with music until    

she hopped frequencies       saw how to signal and deflect torpedoes    to save sailors

 

naval men     blinded by her skin her lips ooh her legs   

sent her to sell war bonds    with a kiss    

only movies reeled her name                  

two wars later     the navy understood her    deflected torpedoes     saved sailors

 

a new millennium     her patent expired    she lived to see wifi and Bluetooth

in everyone's pocket or purse

her surface already passed  Hedy Lamarr entered      the inventor’s hall of fame

 

Mori Glaser has blogged and written for non-profits. Since age 60, her poetry and flash have appeared in various magazines including Eclectica; Eunoia Review; Unbroken; Akashic Books web series Thursdaze; Vine Leaves coffee table collection of vignettes; Molotov Cocktail’s 2017 Shadow Award (3^rd prize). 

 

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MICHAEL A. GRIFFITH

 

Denim                                                                                                                       

 

The most vibrant woman in my world

at that moment of her leaving—

Godiva's hair, St. Joan's confidence, the Mona Lisa's smile

and her own unique laugh,

all in denim, with heavy backpack slung.

 

I would have gone over, stopped her,

made possessive love to her

had other faces not seen us,

other voices not owned us,

other hands not held ours.

 

She was saying some over-the-shoulder comment

I've since forgotten but would now pay blood to recall.

The moment's movement plays on,

loops, with only a din.

Her words are now gone.

 

They might have been nothing more than “late for class”

or they might reveal the reason

why her life is as it is now:

hair cut short, not so confident, a less-famous smile,

and a more common laugh.

 

Michael A. Griffith began writing poetry after a disability-causing injury. His chapbooks Bloodline and Exposed were released in fall 2018. Mike was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in October 2018. He teaches at Raritan Valley Community College in NJ and is Poetry Editor (USA & Canada) for The Blue Nib. 

 

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JACK HOUSTON

 

Your responsibility

 

is not toward what the poem will become, but to see

it is given a safe space within yourself to grow

while you try to keep calm, maybe do some yoga,

make sure you, and therefore it, are getting at least

five daily portions of fresh fruit and vegetables a day.

 

Be aware of where you are when you birth it,

pushing at a bus stop may lead you to mislay

pieces of your baby. Once born, care for it

like any parent would, feed it, brush its teeth,

make sure its clothes are clean, not let it meet

 

the wrong sort. It will, and soon, have to make its way

into the world. Do not hover. Let go. It will be soon

that you’ll find yourself in the prison visiting room,

your poem sullenly filing in wearing a hi-vis bib,

and you realising you’re the only one who still visits.

 

Jack Houston has had poems published in Blackbox Manifold, Brittle Star, Stand and forthcoming in The North and The Result Is What You See Today (Poetry Business).

 

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HILARY MELLON

 

Obsession

 

The cinema is dark, it’s where I dream

I tear your clothes and tie you to the bed.

Each night I rip your image from the screen.

 

I make a list of where you’ll next be seen.

I file it, like those films, inside my head.

The cinema is dark, it’s where I dream.

 

I stiffen in my seat each time you scream.

I wish that I could frighten you instead.

Each night I rip your image from the screen.

 

I’d like to kill those men who get the cream.

They touch your skin, your lips. I want them dead.

The cinema is dark, it’s where I dream.

 

I watch dust dance in each projector’s beam.

That’s how I’ll end up too, but feel no dread.

Each night I rip your image from the screen.

 

I trail you like a shadow, long and lean.

I watch you till my eyes are burning red.

The cinema is dark, it’s where I dream.

Each night I rip your image from the screen.

 

Hilary Mellon has been involved in the poetry scene for many years, read at venues all around the country and judged several poetry competitions. Her work has been published in over ninety different magazines and anthologies, four pamphlet books and one full length collection. She runs writing workshops in Norwich, UK.

 

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YVONNE MORRIS

 

No reason to get up but get up

 

I’ve been reading the pretty, suicidal poets--

hallowed and hollowed, richly bred for pain--

Anne and Sylvia shared a New York taxi in the rain,

discussed therapy and where they’d left their latest lipstick stains.

 

On a Sunday in January, I can’t leave the gas running freely

in the kitchen, I’ve only got cats hungry as fleas--

in the garage, four wheels await escape from a dusty TV.

 

You see, I’m in awe of those women whose fine hands loaded

their pockets with stones, who staggered in the sun,

whose blue veins were exposed

because I’m only green willow, vine and shoot—alive.

 

No taste in my mouth compares to the sweetness of berries.

My heart doesn’t break with a thought, an awareness,

as fatal as some fairytales would end.

 

I’ll pick up some ice cream instead.

So I struggle into my jacket and out the door,

choosing to leave regrets—like the bed—unmade,

slipping by the black dog that drags its chain.

 

Yvonne Morris works as a Writing Instructional Specialist at a community and technical college in the U.S. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Mother was a Sweater Girl (The Heartland Review Press, 2016), available from Amazon.com  “No reason to get up but get up” was previously published in Mother was a Sweater Girl.

 

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CHRIS PELLIZZARI

 

Buddy Holly

 

The Texas gunfighter on the Stratocaster, 

down-stroking three strings before the other man draws,

locked wrist and perfect aim.

 

Plane shaking with the turbulence of the following decade,

“today will be the day” he whispers from frozen ground

 to his pregnant wife

sitting next to the phone in New York.

 

Iowa winter winds tear through February womb,

holding his never-born child and decade.

 

She cannot carry herself to his funeral in Lubbock,

where rowdy boys from England serve as pallbearers.

 

And now the seasons change and

Lubbock desert winds carry

his dust across oceans.

 

Lubbock storms emanate

from static radio in Liverpool.

 

“We should adopt his Peggy Sue. She’s too young

to be brought up without a father,” John says to Paul.

 

John locks his wrist and draws three strings before Paul can shoot.

 

“Buddy Holly wore glasses so John Lennon could see the world,” Paul says.

 

Chris Pellizzari is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including The Awakenings Review, BoomerLitMag, Good Works Review, COUNTERCLOCK, Amarillo Bay, The Literary Nest, Ink in Thirds, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Eunoia Review, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, Misery Tourism, and Allegro Poetry Magazine. He is a member of The Society of Midland Authors and is assistant editor at The Awakenings Review. 

 

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RODDY WILLIAMS

 

Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground

croaks Blind Willie Johnson

grinding his words on a quick wheel

black as most everything he could see

 

The question like an autumn bee

creeps behind the lid into the open skull

groping in the night

 

He could sense time passing in trucks or

the vacuum hearts of tumbleweed

perhaps may have gleaned

whispered speculation of black holes from the wireless

Empty eye sockets

so black no one will ever see them

where time is swallowed like pride in a food bank

or runs strangely

dragging riffs out for weeks

 

He will reach one eventually

maybe when all souls have perished

into fiction or extinction

He may wave an hour hand

singing slowly

dripping blues to the gravity well

 

He is merely growling through the Oort cloud now

as I gravel his words through the ear's riddle

hauling the voice off track from the event horizon

 

“Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” by Blind Willie Johnson was one of 27 tracks included on the Voyager Golden Record, launched into space in 1977 to represent the diversity of life on Earth.

 

 

Originally from North Wales, Roddy Williams lives and works in London. His poetry has appeared in Magma, Ink, Sweat & Tears, The Frogmore Papers, The Rialto, South Bank Poetry, Stand; and other magazines and anthologies. He is a keen surrealist photographer, printmaker and painter.

 

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