Casting the Current I waited hours on the bank while Dad kept trying for a couple browns. He was far downstream when the first big drops cratered the water. All afternoon, the dark bruise of a storm had been closing in over the hills, but he waded out farther with the rushing current, casting long, slow loops over the ripples, some lifted by breezes, others blown aside like a bird in a gust of wind. Cigarette dangling, he moved carefully, shifting his footing around slippery rocks, past slopes that fell away in darkness below, someone … Continue reading Casting the Current and What’s Forgotten, 2 poems by Ronald Stottlemyer→
Listening to Buckthorn “Although Wordsworth is [in the opening of The Prelude] describing the activity of composing aloud, of walking and talking, what the poetry reaches into is the activity of listening.”—Seamus Heaney I like the sound of a word in wood, of Wordsworth’s rhythm walking where the poem goes. A trail is there but muddied over. The way around crosses last fall’s soggy oak leaves. (Right sock soaked through.) Spring words shine like sun-baked bronze, and finally some signs of green: early shoots sound their syllables in a few lighted spots. It turns out … Continue reading Listening to Buckthorn and Rainbow Bridge, 2 poems by Daniel Fliegel→
……Gulls feast in freshly furrowed and sown Salinas fields early February, early warmth ……far from the cold Big Sur wind-thrashed waves beyond the Santa Lucias: …………………………………..or startle, confetti ……thrown in the blue sky before they settle again in Carmel River’s dune-protected mouth. ……How do they manage tonight when the wind turns Lear-mad and howls and tears at the eaves? ……I cannot sleep, although sleep smooths the lines of the woman I have grown old beside, beside me. ……All night the storm thrusts inland so morning bares a dust-brown day where gulls ……crouch between the … Continue reading Wings by Lance Lee→
The Engineer Boredom ricochets off the hard edge of a freight train carrying ethanol, carrying the wanton thoughts of a man gone too long without intimacy. A secure living is a railroad job, so you don’t upset the schedule for a woman encountered in a bar knowing it comes to nothing but embarrassment and a poor night’s sleep and the shame of breakfast sandwiches served in plastic. Freeze the graffiti in time and it may tell a story. The whistle sounds within a quarter-mile radius of a public grade school crossing. Two long wails, one … Continue reading Engineer and Sanitation Worker, 2 poems by Christy Prahl→
“Social distancing during Covid means no hugs.” —NBC News It was neither part of a protest nor a statement to the world. I simply put my arms around a tall oak and stood in embrace, our bodies juxtaposed. There was no swaying: her trunk, solid and true, felt like an ancestor, a pillar thick with years. Her bark scratched my skin if I moved, so I stayed still. It was a time to be calm and reflect on our presence together. To look up to the sky and fathom the height of my partner. To … Continue reading Hugging the Tree by Zeina Azzam→
Sam tells his wife and kids that when next Sunday rolls around, they’ll take that drive he’s been promising across the scenic Midwest. No feat to be sneezed at since they live in New Jersey. Sam figures Iowa and Nebraska should only take half the morning. The remainder will go by in a flash so be ready with those cameras! Sunday finally rolls around and in between Bird-in-Hand and Paradise, they stop for gas and for Jilly, Sam’s wife, some pork rinds. Jilly points with a greasy finger at a cornfield in the distance not … Continue reading Sunday Drive by Charles Springer→
On the last day of the world the children laugh. How can they know? They pick up stones, pockmarked, flat, dap them through rising waters, their voices littered with glee. On the last day of the world no one cries. The neighbor pulls out her cello, plays Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor from the rooftop until the dark pulls its covers over the strings. We look out the window. Count to ten. Forget what ten means. The month of May. How to read a clock. Wouldn’t you want it like this? Oblivion nothing but sweetness … Continue reading Looking Ahead by Julia Chiapella→
FOR FRIENDS WHO LOST BOTH CHILDREN ………………….God is so omnipresent. . . that God is an angel in an angel, ………………….and a stone in a stone, and a straw in a straw. . . ………………………….— John Donne, Sermon VII If you wake at early light, rise, go out, look toward the waning moon, toward the twin stars balanced there. Stand barefoot on newly greening grass; know that weariness of earth, of care, courses through you only, not the stars. If you wake at early light, rise, go out, harken to the echoes of nursery rhymes … Continue reading For Friends Who Lost Both Children and Lingering Over Coffee, 2 poems by Kevin Norwood→
Sneerwise, I’ve seen better Dearborn, without the metal I’d go on to abort you like any other paperweight hitchhiking across my belly and just that fast Grace Kelly has figured out the new math, I’m afraid and lordess, but you’re a strict equation Despite the munitions manifest under the crown of your abdication I just keep on loving you like caloric restriction and late-70s cocaine stretching myself out like St. Swithin’s Day across your salt lick whole oceans of Tawny Kitaen Ready for my Helen Reddy moment I’d sober up if I were you The … Continue reading MX-76 by Dana Miller→
you and I bedded down in the canyon the nine ply of heaven folded us in rain the next morning the firewood smoldered with dew as you bathed the stones in the springbed trembled like flowers seen through campsmoke then we parted like petalfall as the gibbous old man looked on still early without yet his companion our horses neighed as they turned away they too are old friends over this land of spines and cactus quills the sun and moon keep moving not finding anywhere a soft seat J.R. Forman’s work has appeared in … Continue reading Departing in McKittrick Canyon by J.R. Forman→
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