2024

 

 

SEPTEMBER

 

 

Ian Badcoe, Mark Belair, David Capps, Charlotte Cosgrove, Clive Donovan, Arvilla Fee,

Lesley Caroline Friedman, Ann Heath, Chris Kinsey, Claire Scott, J. R. Solonche,

 Jeffery Allen Tobin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

IAN BADCOE

 

Copenhagen

All things to all men the wave-function coming
and she is sitting, plain blue dresses on bentwood chairs,
every weekday for seven years...
inspecting such light as passes,
sipping gloss coffee, black from cups,
sipping flesh orange chilled juice from glasses—
in summer/winter, day/night according;
the features of a world which comes and goes

but lies and says it's real for all of that.
The notepad by her hand
is spiral, tattered, feint-lined, closed—
she filled these pages with maths so long ago
and pressed them all to heart.  She does not read
reminders of whole lives' obsessing
each sheet pressed flat through a glass clearly
to the eyes of mind. Inhaling brown coffee pheromones, she finds

a choice of landscapes from those
who trod this way before.  Heisenberg: all things
to things which are not looking,
and Schrödinger who makes the functions wave
but not to choose which way to go—
until they suddenly do. Which inspires

Max Born to pronounce that everything's a chance,
that probabilities will dance around the dice,
and Einstein to scowl and mutter something Germanic.

And thus goes her life, until one afternoon a clarity,
a glimpse and... and... barely daring to breathe,
she sidles, oblique, through systems
of huge mathematical brackets,
unzipping reality's jeans, easing it out of its jacket,
sliding one hand towards the hint,
the suggestion; all the while
drinking one last black coffee —v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y—
and finally she smiles the smile.

It took time, but here she is
at the very heart of the very edge.
She writes a line of symbols
on the cover of the book.
Underlines it.
Twice.
Then drops the empty orange glass on the table
pays with Euros/Kroner/Schillings/Marks
and artfully carved squares of bone; decides to go home,
party,
to keep it secret, tell literally everyone she knows;
and leaves in all directions.

 

Ian Badcoe is a nonbinary poet living in Sheffield.  He writes poems exploring the spaces between gender, progressive politics, science, technology and fiction--especially science fiction.  He has a songwriting collaboration with German Indie Singer/Composer Hallam London and after a decade, they have released an album.

 

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MARK BELAIR

 

Waiting

 

Three men in dark suits

sit chatting on the stone wall

that rims a funeral home sign

set before a large, white, Victorian house

shaded by elms, a house

bearing the body and mourners

these hired drivers await.

 

Just down the small-town street,

a white-bearded monk

in a long, hooded, white robe

paces in waiting

before the open doors

of his dark, empty church, its pews

splashed by stained-glass window light.

 

The road to the cemetery

crosses train tracks

that pass an open-air station

where a gaggle of travelers stand by.

 

Then an unseen

train, from a distance,

sounds its warning of approach

and the waiting

drivers and monk and travelers

all turn toward

this heavy, solemn, slowing

force.

 

Author of seven collections of poems, Mark Belair’s most recent books are two works of fiction: Stonehaven (Turning Point, 2020) and its sequel, Edgewood (Turning Point, 2022). He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize multiple times, as well as for a Best of the Net Award. Please visit http://www.markbelair.com

 

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DAVIE CAPPS

 

Middle Age

 

Well then, let it be

green as night,

and Walmart bags

piled by the bus stop,

not something

initiative can’t solve.

 

That’s Middle Age

speaking.

 

Youth gets on with youth,

and old with old,

while Middle Age

seeks to clarify

to itself

the innumerable

expressions

arising

out of its depths

 

like the infamous

hula hooper

who walks down

to the platform

on Chapel

she calls her house,

eschewing

romanticism

with a swivel

of her hips

as though by manner

of speaking,

thinking,

what you said

last might have

changed

 

had changed

 

her legs casting

a shadow

wherever you look.

 

David Capps is a philosophy professor and writer based in New Haven, CT.

 

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CHARLOTTE COSGROVE

 

A wet day in August isn’t always a bad thing

 

Infant hearts are driven by dark summers

To rise from muddied grass -

Come inside

Bathe in the milky light of the kitchen

Be unsure, uncertain

Of what the day ahead wants

To acquire the precious stone of boredom.

 

There is fruit in the bowl. The fire is on.

But they’re unsettled, stuck in this house

Everything they were going to do

Becoming wetter outside.

 

In their separate rooms

Sooner or later

They’ll dig into the bottom of their minds

Find something to do

Figure out what they’re really about.

 

The hardest job     

 

When we were babies we saw things.

Mothers crying in bathrooms

Water gushing from taps to suffocate noise.

Fathers using homes like doctor’s waiting rooms

Mothers grieving from their eyes

Toddler’s knee sores weeping

Something is always coming out of one of us.

 

She cried on birthdays when we opened our presents

We asked her if she was happy.

The next year with dry eyes

She didn’t answer

We wanted the bathroom to flood, wash over us,

For the taps to suffocate the noise again.

 

The cure for your bad breath

 

Clean your teeth before bed

Before your saliva rots into a damp silt

In the oyster of your mouth.

Before scum settles around the corners of your lips

A morning adhesive, white and gluey.

 

I don’t turn my head away

And with that comes the wisdom -

This, this is what love is.

 

Charlotte Cosgrove is a poet from Liverpool, England. She has published two poetry collections and is the editor of Rough Diamond poetry journal. You can find her on Twitter @CharleyAustin89

 

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CLIVE DONOVAN

 

Hourglass

 

The contents once seemed plenteous;

that thrilling jostle of its grains,

each one valuable as a diamond

uncut, sharp or totally rough—it didn't matter,

for mostly they lie useless now, in pit below;

occasional sparkles from that mini-rubble sends up

shudders of pain, regret and embarrassment...

 

All I had to do was step up and play the game,

within my allotted hours, irreversible,

as they trickle smoothly through that choke point where I dwell.

But often I had one eye held transfixed

by the mystery of great hills of dunes out there,

shapeshifting on familiar wind off an ocean near,

hearing a tune sometimes calling beyond this thin glass wall... 

 

Clive Donovan is the author of two poetry collections, The Taste of Glass [Cinnamon Press 2021] and Wound Up With Love [Lapwing 2022] and is published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Agenda, Crannog, The Lake, Popshot, Prole and Stand. He lives in Totnes, Devon, UK. He was a Pushcart and Forward Prize nominee for 2022’s best individual poems.

 

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ARVILLA FEE

 

Words

 

words find their way

into each crack;

 

they are dust motes

seen in the light;

 

words ride the waves

of blue-green seas,

 

wash up on shores

disguised as shells;

 

words are old bells

rung in town squares;

 

they are caskets,

grief for the lost;

 

words are the blood

in artists’ veins,

 

permanent ink

for humankind.

 

Arvilla Fee has published poetry and short stories in numerous presses, including North of Oxford, Rat’s Ass Review, Mudlark, and others. Her poetry books, The Human Side and This is Life, are available on Amazon. Arvilla loves traveling and never leaves home without a snack. To learn more, visit her website: https://soulpoetry7.com/

 

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LISA CAROLINE FRIEDMAN

 

My Father’s Phone

 

My father’s phone is a container, filled A-Z with names disconnected from faces. It holds texts starting Dear Lisa, ending Love, Dad.

 

My father’s phone is missing again—it hides in his back pocket or sleeps in the charger by the bed. Sometimes, it’s lost and found later, in the dark of a drawer, a closet. 

 

My father’s phone is a friend named Wikipedia, available to answer questions 24-7.

 

My father’s phone is a friend named Solitaire, available to play 24-7.

 

My father’s phone is a shapeshifter, a mischief-maker, secreting passwords inside a leaky vault.

 

My father’s phone is not a friend because a friend wouldn’t steal, asking for personal information which he gives because 1) these are facts he remembers 2) the phone is his friend.

 

My father’s phone is stolen, a punishment for signing up for a fitness app for $9.99 per month or a calorie counter app for $209 per year. My mother hides it where he can’t find it.

 

My father’s phone is a puzzle that can’t be solved. He asks, Where are my Contacts? What is Gmail? 

 

My father’s phone is a ghost ship banging against the currents of lost understanding.

 

Lisa Caroline Friedman lives and works in Palo Alto, California. Her poems have been published in Boats Against the Current, Rat’s Ass Review, San Pedro River Review, and Unbroken. She graduated with a BA in English from Stanford University and is currently an MFA student in poetry at Antioch University.

 

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ANN HEATH

 

Imaginary tea

 

My brother fights the War.

I make tea. 

 

He has built a Lancaster

out of cushions.

 

My tea set sits

on the bomb bay doors

which are pink doll blankets

which are my table cloth. 

 

His joy stick is a toy spade

stuck with Blackpool mud

and as he steers us

down the landing to Dresden,

the mud flakes on the carpet

which is also cockpit floor

and also crisp night air

and also distant patterns

of blacked-out enemies.

 

There is so much distance

it makes my toes curl. 

I pour him a cup

because tea makes everything better. 

 

He says nothing.

He says “Man the turret, Jerry’s coming”

 

So I leap to the gun,

which is also the bicycle pump,

and for once we play together,

 

killing people who died

before we were born,

before the house was built,

before the spade ever went to Blackpool,

before the War was won

and he had missed it,

 

left alone forever in a world

of cushions, 

sisters,

imaginary tea.

 

Ann Heath lives and works in York.  She has been published in Dreamcatcher, Atrium and Ink, Sweat and Tears among others, and in various anthologies.

 

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CHRIS KINSEY

 

October night on The Fron

 

Though the room chills with moonspill

I don’t want to close the curtains

on night’s star-cloud show.

 

Tonight, the swelling Hunter’s moon flares

through a halo the colours of an old bruise

casting town roofs quicksilver.

 

Our hounds insist on sniffing out darkness.

All nose and eyes, they seek other creatures’

eyeshine - my headtorch finds their silver stares.

 

The night’s lingering warmth stalls hibernation.

Leftover summer wafts in spent lavender and

fading buddleia. A young tawny’s close cry startles.

 

Shadows tilt and turn membranous.

Bats strafe a streetlight’s moth-lure beam.

Leash-strain             lunge              strike.     

 

Next door’s waste caddy topples

and a hedgehog cannons across the path

all hackles to the prickling stars.

 

And Jupiter dots the eye of our moon

beaconing to Ganymede, Callisto

and Europa bladed with ice.

 

Morning Walk

 

We’re walking past the heron

standing in a pool with no ripples.

 

It holds its reflection still

like a stick stuck in rock.

 

No dipper, wagtail, or full-on stare

disturbs it.

 

The greyhounds are on leashed alert

for squirrel script, twig scribble

 

and I am walking the poem home

to clear a page from desk clutter

 

and transcribe the flow.

 

Chris Kinsey has had five collections of poetry published. From Rowan Ridge was commissioned by Fair Acre Press https://fairacrepress.co.uk/tag/chris-kinsey/ New poems have appeared in Spelt, Ink Sweat & Tears, Obsessed with the Pipework, Finished Creatures, Fenland Poetry Journal, Black Nore Review and The National Trust Book of Nature Poems.

 

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CLAIRE SCOTT

 

My Son Has Dystonia

          quotes are from the Mayo Clinic website

 

A long-ago car ran a light

a woman late for work                                    

                                      Significant head trauma is a well-recognized

                                      precipitating factor in dystonia.

         

body folded like an old man

hunched over a walker

                                      A movement disorder that causes

                                      the muscles to contract involuntarily.

 

limping from Percoset to OxyContin

in a desperate pas de deux

                                      Pain and fatigue due to constant

                                      contraction of muscles.                                   

                                     

days in bed, after walking to Rite Aid

for refills that are never ready       

                                      Symptoms can be worse with stress,

                                      fatigue or anxiety.

                            

doctors, drugs, Botox, Ketamine, CBD

and still he is slipping

                                      Symptoms can be more noticeable

                                      over time.

 

losing him in pieces like a calving iceberg

and at times I turn away

                                     

then he gives me another T shirt

with the name of a band I’ve never heard of

          Ramones, Metallica, Misfits

 

a familiar smile on his face

hallowed memories I tuck in my heart

                                      There is no cure for dystonia.

 

Claire Scott is an award-winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. 

 

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J. R. SOLONCHE

 

Door

 

Once on its hinges, free to swing

far enough for us to pass

from hall to room, from room to hall again,

then swing back to seal the opening,

the wall of privacy, or of anticipating privacy,

we will not think of it as individual,

this thing separate from the house,

but we will knock on it once, softly,

grasp the knob and enter, saying, "Are you

all right?" or three times each time louder,

saying, "Open the door," or slam it shut,

saying nothing, that saying more anger,

more disappointment than all our words.

But now it leans against the wall,

this simple wood, no hardware anywhere,

taking my paint, taking my thoughts, solid,

stolid, almost free of me, almost free of me.

 

After Reading Chekhov I Go for a Walk In Town

 

Knowing almost all, I put the book

in the pocket of my jacket. I feel

them slap, Lady with Lapdog and Other Stories

against my thigh and hip as I walk

 

in the light. I feel light of heart.

I feel light-headed as if just given

a clean bill of health by my physician.

I pass the men and women in the street

 

who stop to look in the glass

of shop windows, the men and women

who stop at corners for the light to change,

while the men and women with business

 

more urgent than mine pass me.

They walk with haste, go secretly to meet

their lovers in dark, airless restaurants.

I recognize them now, yet I still need to see

 

the terrible denial of the known

in the clearest of eyes before I pause

to look in the mirror of the bookshop window,

to look at failure in the face, before I walk on.

 

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

 

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JEFFERY ALLEN TOBIN​

 

Cedar Door

 

At the end of the hall—

that faint smell of cedar,

a reminder of autumns past,

crisp air lingering

like a memory caught in the grain.

 

The knob turns with a creak,

not of protest, but of celebration,

as if the door knew the hand

that shaped it, held it firm,

through seasons of opening

and closing, opening again.

 

Beyond—

a room half-lit,

morning sun filtered

through lace curtains,

dust particles suspended

in the stillness, waiting

for the day to begin.

 

A chair, wooden and worn,

sits by the window,

its seat molded to a form

long since gone—

and the floorboards beneath

remember each step,

each pause, every departure.

 

The door swings shut,

not with finality, but with purpose,

a quiet statement

that nothing ends here—

only a pause,

a breath held

before the next passage.

 

Jeffery Allen Tobin is a political scientist and researcher based in South Florida. His extensive body of work primarily explores U.S. foreign policy, democracy, national security, and migration. He has been writing poetry and prose for more than 30 years.

 

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