2021

 

 

SEPTEMBER CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

John Cole, Robert G. Cowser, Hayley Mitchell Haugen, Tom Kelly, Don Narkevic,

Joyce Schmid, Kiriti Sengupta, J. R. Solonche, Ian Stuart,

Tineke Van der Eecken, Sarah White.

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN COLE

 

Trailblazing

 

I slowly traced the great network of interlacing trails

You made with your hands through the sand

On your knees in the park

 

Your last kingdom

This raw play of imagination

Moving your body through endless space

 

Now that the screens have claimed your attention

I miss cleaning the dirt from your knees

Smelling the fresh grass stains

 

And wonder what is lost in this forging of new trails

Through vast electronic fields

With you, immobile, staring into flat space

 

I've heard the cyber prophets say

Bodily play is falling away

With ever more to explore far from where we are

 

I’ll remember your face, utterly absorbed

Fulfilling innate earthly desire

Trailblazing

 

John Cole was trained as a composer having completed his music studies at the University of Victoria (1989) and Simon Fraser University’s School for Contemporary Arts (1993) in Canada. In 1999 he received a two-year Monbusho government scholarship to study under Jo Kondo at Elizabeth University of Music in Hiroshima (graduating 2006). He has made Japan his home and currently teaches contemporary music at the latter institution among other universities in Japan. He has been devoting more and more of his time to writing poetry which is often informed by his music practice.

 

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ROBERT G. COWSER

 

Walking with a Poem

 

A close experience to writing a poem

is walking to the post office from your house.

On a chilly morning you hesitate

when you first step outside;

maybe you’ll return to the heated room.

But you continue, and the sections

of the sidewalk become syllables,

some melding together like diphthongs.

The blocks are stanzas, irregular in length,

like the stanzas of many poems.

 

The rhythm in the motion of your feet

is the cadence of the poem—

sometimes as deliberate as a metronome.

You find yourself pausing at an intersection

near the post office. Suspecting an epilogue,

you, and later your reader, can take a breath here.

 

And strangely you become

your father walking from the house

to the barn on a frosty morning.

You are prepared, even eager,

to toss the blocks of lespedeza

in motions free of restraint

to the dun-colored cows,

their heads bobbing in iambic rhythm.

 

Robert G. Cowser is a native of Texas now living in Missouri.  He taught English classes in high school and college.  His poems have been published in numerous journals in the U.S., U.K. and in Chile.  Some of those published in Chile were written in Spanish.  He also writes fiction and short plays.

 

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HAYLEY MITCHELL HAUGEN

 

Sustainability 

(for Allie Caleb Rigsby 11/11/90 – 5/4/20) 

 

In Michigan, the Kirtland Warblers are singing again,  
the first song-bird ever removed from the endangered list, 

rejoicing in the jack pine seedlings restored to the Grayling sand. 

Relying on destruction to simply exist,

 
the first song-bird removed from the endangered list 

anticipates fire to open the jack pine’s cones and spread its seeds, 
trilling for ignition to simply exist, 
destruction fueling rebirth in time of need. 

 

Like anticipating fire to open a cone and spread its seeds, 
the young actor, too, is patient for new life, 

destroying the self, fueling new roles in time of need. 

Allie played Poe, dinner theatre biography full of strife, 

 
the young actor, patient for this new role in life, 

puffed up on stage, trilling like a yellow-chested warbler. 

Allie played Poe, concealing his shy boy’s angst, emotions rife 

with uncertainty – just what would he surrender?   

 

Returning each week to class, loyal as the Kirtland Warbler, 

Allie played the college student, writing memoirs 

with uncertainty – what angsts must he remember?   

And at my dining table, Allie played a Druid for hours, 

 

forgetting he was my college student writing memoirs, 

unknowing of the accident that would change his roles. 

Allie played the Druid, ruler of stones and birds and flowers, 

enchanting the hours to guide what the future holds. 

 

Planting a tree after the accident that would end his roles, 

we rejoice in the jack pine seedlings restored to the Grayling sand, 
enchanting the land to guide what the future holds, 

knowing in Michigan, the Kirtland Warblers are singing again. 

 

Hayley Mitchell Haugen is Professor of English at Ohio University Southern. Light & Shadow, Shadow & Light from Main Street Rag (2018) is her first full-length poetry collection, and her chapbook, What the Grimm Girl Looks Forward To is from Finishing Line Press (2016). She edits Sheila-Na-Gig online and Sheila-Na-Gig Editions.

 

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TOM KELLY

 

Walking Away From The Mercantile, Shipyard, Jarrow, Yesterday & In 1964

By the mid-1980’s shipbuilding and ship-repair was over south of the Tyne and by the middle of the 1990’s north of the Tyne.

 

Everyone is in shadow, charcoal sticks on a blue-black backdrop.

The Shell-Mex rail track criss-crosses the road, velvet in half-light.

A man stands at the gate of the Timber Yard, cigarette lingering from fingers,

stalling before his night shift. It is December.

The Don runs under this bridge. Bede’s monastery behind me.

I have just finished praying to ledgers in an office

fluorescent light lives all day.

 

The past is there, smacking against dock walls,

buoys clang, crack a warning. It was predicted: ‘Yard closures.’

Cars round the bend, shock me trundling down this bank,

lights waving to no-one. My memories run into a cul-de-sac

not allowing me to climb back into our past.

 

I see friends working away, on the dole, re-training

on telephones in offices of one-time shipyards, selling what-no-bugger wants.

 

I am wearing a heavy overcoat, fighting the-off-the- river wind.

There are no ready-made answers, even fifty-odd years later

other than keep your hopes,

place them carefully with your half-baked dreams and

allow them to wake your heart.

 

Tom Kelly is a north-east of England short story writer, poet, lyricist and playwright. His ninth poetry collection, This Small Patch, is from Red Squirrel Press, who also published his short story collection Behind the Wall.

www.tomkelly.org.uk

 

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DON NARKEVIC

 

From After the Lynching*

 

The News

When news spreads of a lynching,
them that knows better, stays home,

pulls down shades, turns out lights.
Me, I won't risk going outside
to hang laundry.

My younun begs to play
with the other children:

 

Hide and Go Seek

 

Stay in sight, chil’. You’re of age.

If the law catches you

in the wrong neck of the woods,

there’ll be no place for you to hide.

 

Drop the Handkerchief

 

If you leave a trace, Satan will track

with a howling pack of demons

straining at the leash, hellhounds

baying, Ah-woo, ah-woo-woo!

 

Jump Rope Rhyme

 

Swaying, swaying in the wind,

hanging by a thread.

Better keep your brown eyes skinned.

You just might end up dead.

 

Street Architecture

 

Listen, chil’, you stay

away from lampposts.

Take alleys.

Walk backroads.

Cut across fields.

 

Stay in shadows

when you walking home

late at night; well,

you got no business

to be, anyway.

 

If someone stop you,

asking questions,

you run, run faster

than lamplight

can reach ground.

 

Where there’s no poplar,

no sycamore, no oak,

there’s a lamppost.

People call a lighted street

a white way for reason.

 

And no angels dance

atop a lamppost,

only the devil do.

Listen, chil’, listen close:

don’t take the chance

evil will light on you.

 

Old News

 

Parents make sure children play

with their own kind, telling them

the lion will never lie down

with the fuzzy lamb.

 

House

 

As the birthday boy,

I am master of the plantation.

Other kids smear black shoe paste

on their faces and do my bidding:

shining my boots,

shoveling shit out of the barn,

girls dancing as boys sing:

“Ol’ massa tol’ de darkies

Pick a bale o’ cotton.

Ol’ massa tol’ de darkies

Pick a bale a day.”

Then we eat cake.

 

Cops and Robbers

 

On a moonlit night we stole

watermelon from that ole darkie,

Ruben, and sold them next day

to coloreds, mostly.

A cop demanded where we got ‘em.

I said, “From an ole coon.”

He laughed, tucked two under his arms

and waddled off with a warning,

“Some coons carry shotguns.”

With the money we made

I bought a pistol.

 

Jacks

 

To use as jacks, Granddaddy

gave me knucklebones

from the hand he cut off

a colored woman lynched

in 1908 for stealing a Bible.

He swears to God they’re lucky.

I believe.

 

* A novella of verse. The story follows what happens in a town in the Jim Crow South of the 1930’s after a black man is lynched.

 

Don Narkevic: Buckhannon, WV. MFA National University. Recent work appears in Rattle, Bindweed Magazine, and Solum Literary Press. A Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee with over 300 published poems. A third book of poetry, After the Lynching, will be published by Main Street Rag in Spring/Summer 2022. 

 

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JOYCE SCHMID

 

Der Isteiner Klotz

 

I’d been afraid to walk on German soil.

An old man told me if I stepped on it, the earth

would bleed. Don’t go there—I escaped from there. 

And yet the grass, the grapes, were innocent.

The children ran from hill to hill with messages.

An eight-year-old spoke English well enough

to translate, my half-year of German little use.

A rock formation loomed beside the town—

a mountain of Jurassic stone, combed over

with old weeds and nameless trees,

and we were taken for a climb.

We didn’t know that we were walking

over rooms and tunnels

deep inside the klotz,

that we were passing over hallways, stairways,

train tracks, iron doors

branded with the twisted cross.

Was anyone aware of what was there?

Dinner was a feast of home-grown wines

and firelight. An old man, drifting

to his capture by the British

in the First World War, opened up his eyes

and said, in English no one ever heard before,

I am very sleepy. Then he closed his eyes again,

and slept.

 

Joyce Schmid is a grandmother and psychotherapist living in Palo Alto, California, USA. Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Literary Imagination, Five Points, Poetry East, Northwest Review, La Piccioletta Barca, and other journals and anthologies

 

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KIRITI SENGUPTA

 

Line of Control

 

Strays recognize the regulars. 

Road-side tea stalls house a convey of canines.

They chump or chew as walk-ins stop by.

Owner of the kiosk discreetly suggests

the stuff the mutts cherish.

 

My stroll to the cha shop is routinely challenged.

Curs from the neighborhood march along.

Affray crams the air.

 

 

Boris Johnson in Isolation

The UK Prime Minister tests positive with Coronavirus and goes into self-isolation, reports The Guardian.

 

With newsflashes, we’re alerted—

policy warrants seclusion.

Kerfuffles over the microbe

leave us baffled: isn’t there

any limit to its influence?

 

Officials are unruffled:

famine is meatier than the virus.

Religion spawns decimation.

 

Resources pledge welfare,

as quarantine breaks sequence. 

Doesn’t inanition evade all control? 

 

Kiriti Sengupta, the 2018 Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize recipient,is a poet, editor, translator, and publisher. He has authored eleven books of poetry and prose; two books of translation and edited seven anthologies. Sengupta's poems have been published in The Common, The Florida Review Online (Aquifer), Headway Quarterly, Moria Online, Amethyst Review, Madras Courier, Ink Sweat and Tears, Mad Swirl, among other places. He is the founder and chief editor of the Ethos Literary Journal. Sengupta lives in New Delhi.

 

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J. R. SOLONCHE

 

The Poetry Reviewer Wanted To Know

 

The poetry reviewer wanted

to know what poets will do

when the outrage is over. “Will

they go back to writing about

flowers and moons?” he asked.

I can only speak for myself, but

 have never stopped writing

about flowers and moons.

The flowers have always been

there in rows around the outrage,

and the moons have always

overhung the outrage like the heads

of celestial roses. Yes, flowers

everywhere:  chrysanthemums

and irises, pansies and marigolds,

sunflowers and azaleas, clematis

and even a black satin petunia.

Yes, moons, too, mostly our own

in all her phases, from none to full

and back again, but also the moons

of Saturn and Jupiter, Mars. Uranus,

and Neptune, and even the one that

doesn’t exist, the moon that Venus

doesn’t have. Why is an astronomical

mystery. I’m a poet, not a polemicist.

Poor Venus, poor lonely Venus,

the only one moonless (Outrageous!),

poor lonely, lonely goddess.

 

J.R. Solonche has published poetry in more than 400 magazines, journals, and anthologies since the early 70s. He is the author of Beautiful Day (Deerbrook Editions), Won’t Be Long (Deerbrook Editions),  Heart’s Content (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 and Yesterday (Deerbrook Editions), True Enough  (Dos Madres Press), The Jewish Dancing Master (Ravenna Press), If You Should See Me Walking on the Road (Kelsay Books), In a Public Place (Dos Madres Press), To Say the Least (Dos Madres Press), The Time of Your Life (Adelaide Books), The Porch Poems (Deerbrook Editions), Enjoy Yourself  (Serving House Books), Piano Music (Serving House Books),  For All I Know (Kelsay Books), A Guide of the Perplexed (Serving House Books), The Moon Is the Capital of the World (Word Tech Communications), and co-author of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). He lives in the Hudson Valley.

 

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IAN STUART

 

Cezanne

 

He stands before the empty canvas, sees

sky fragile and faultless as a blown bubble,

a sea of crinkled cellophane

and a long, lost summer afternoon

smelling of grass, warm stone 

and pine needles.

 

Sunlight shifts and flickers

dappling cottage walls

as the trees nod in agreement

with the warm wind.

 

A path leads down past ragged outcrops

to the town, where roofs glow oven hot,

and cats lie stunned in alleyways

flat as their own shadow.

 

I stand before the picture, watching

it fade into the frame.

Footsteps. The gallery is closing.

 

Outside the air is sharp with rain

and petrol smells. I am immune.

My sky is blue and endless, and my soul

warmed by a distant sun,

 

Ian Stuart has been writing for over sixty years and is now getting the hang of it. He lives in York with his wife, and small, ferociously intelligent terrier. He has been widely published in various magazines and had some of his work was published in a small collection, Quantum Theory for Cats. Valley Press.

 

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TINEKE VAN DER EECKEN 

 

A ship waits to enter the dock

 

A ship approaches,

high in the water,

its belly hollow.

 

Phone in pocket, the captain

waits for his wife. Below

the water caresses the hull.

 

She doesn’t ring,

offers no mooring.

He whispers his ship

 

to the dock, anchors down.

He’ll sleep aboard,

wait again for cargo.

 

Tineke Van der Eecken considers Western Australia home and has Flemish-Australian multilingual heritage. Her memoir Traverse (Wild Weeds Press 2018) was shortlisted for the 2016 TAG Hungerford Award, and follows Café d'Afrique (Tineke Creations 2012). Her poems have appeared in Dreamcatcher, Going Down Swinging, and other journals. readtraverse.com Facebook: TinekeVanderEeckenAuthor

 

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SARAH WHITE

 

Sonnet Beginning in Walgreen’s Drug Store

 

“Customer assistance required in Beauty.”

Pity the soul surveying, unassisted,

the gallery of unfamiliar lotions,

oils for moistening the skin, although 

 

this customer may need a contrary

potion: essence of artichoke cologne

or blown petals of anemone.

Beauty is a subtle compromise

 

between spontaneity and artifice,

between intention and surprise.

Every Walgreen employee

 

ought to seek a Master’s or

a Ph.D. from Shangri La

University of Art and Beauty.

 

Sarah White's most recent publication is Iridescent Guest, (Deerbrook Editions, 2020).  Fledgling, a chapbook of sonnets, is forthcoming from Wordtech Publications. She lives in New York City and divides her time between poetry and painting.

 

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