After rain
the earth has forgotten
where it keeps you.
But I disturb my pocket
and retrieve a flute
from the dark hollow
I have dug with greedy fingers.
Bone-white,
for it is bone—
your bone—
that I have carved
to go deedle deedle dee.
Day to day
I sit under a tree,
its branches tangled
leaves overhanging and shielding,
and cast my voice
through this porcelain reed:
our past replaying.
Round and round
the song breathes
lives as my blown needles
scrape and leak
each spinning memory.
And yet
I wonder
will there be anyone
to play a tune
for me?
###
Born in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, Konstantin studies British & American Literature and Creative Writing at The University of Kent in Canterbury, England. He has been published by The Claremont Review, Four Ties Lit Review, AOM, and has won the ZO Magazine Silver Prize for Poetry, and is currently a Review Assistant for Newfound. His poems are Asexual/Bi-romantic and neo-modernist, which revives the Modernist innovations of subverting traditional gender authority and narrative and making the personal universal.
Please take off my watch
I won’t need time beyond the moment any longer
Followed by my earrings
There will be no one’s eye to catch,
No partner to impress
Slip off my shoes
Let me put my bare feet in the grass
One last time
Set my glasses for reading on the piles of books I’ll never get to
But stack my favorites near me
For they are among my closest friends
Wrap me in a sweater
In remembrance of those perfect chilly fall days
And take me outside
Let me feel the morning sun on my face
Unbutton my collar
Loosen my cuffs
That damn bra
I’ll need help with the clasp behind my back
Take off my belt
Lay all of these instruments of restraint aside
I will be restrained no longer
Why did I wait so long?
###
Gayle Kellner is a writer, an artist, a poet, and an educator. Her essays and poems have appeared in Utne Magazine, Orion Magazine, The Loop, The Beachcomber, and The Nature of an Island. She is currently a regular guest on Voice of Vashon’s community radio program The Brown Briefly hosted by retired reporter and editor of Time Magazine Brian Brown. Gayle also works as a professional artist. Her paintings have been shown on Vashon Island at the Blue Heron Center for the Arts and the Barnworks. Her work in stone has been shown at the International Museum of the Horse in Lexington Kentucky.
Gayle currently lives on Vashon Island where she is pursuing her continued interests in writing and art. She spends her days now rising with the sun; to write, read poetry and history, tend her chickens and her garden, paint in her boathouse studio, and walk the shores and woodlands that surround her island home.
In the early eighties
when we still believed in the coming Ice Age
as much as we trusted in Pac-Man’s ghostkilling capabilities,
frigid Great Lakes winters were the norm,
with Himalayas of snow sloping onto
sinister ice patches where you could
slip and split your Jordaches,
if not your head.
Plunging wind chills be damned,
recess was still held outside
while our unseen teacher likely cradled
a much-needed cigarette
between mittened fingers.
One Thursday afternoon,
between king-of-the-mountain challenges,
Traci-
the girl-with-the-pixie-cut-and-the-runny-nose-and-the-Garfield-backpack-
invited me to follow her
past the shivering Jennifers exhaling
hopscotch hymns through
chattering teeth
and under obscenely naked maples
to an outdoor crawlspace
between the scratchy red brick of
the weatherbeaten school façade and
a big khaki-colored mechanical thinggummy
that radiated heat.
Here in this gap
was the world’s smallest microclimate,
with thaw rather than Thule,
and pointing to the preposterous purple flowers
among tenacious tufts of grass,
Traci concluded, “it’s spring here.”
I don’t remember whether Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow that year,
but I was convinced I knew
where the seasons changed.
###
Adrian Slonaker works as a copywriter and copy editor in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. Adrian’s work has appeared in Aberration Labyrinth, Squawk Back, The Bohemyth, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Pangolin Review and others.
Your days fall into grass and fallen suns,
no man as broken and careless as you.
So many days I felt burnt and done,
while stars stood in place and the moon ensued
its sinking truth. Autumn strips the land
of green and geese, body defeated earth.
On the shore children mold turtles out of sand
from fire you flung from skies to melt and birth
the glass that only I can break. My hips
a red hum and the garden sleeps, rests
its weary ghost, while I trace red, your lips
to build a castle, where I reach up to wrest
the weapon from your large, loud embrace,
your fallow fingers, your sun’s shattered face.
###
Kika Dorsey is a poet in Boulder, Colorado, and lives with her two children, husband, and Border Collie. She wakes up every morning and crafts poetry out of dreams, myths, her body, and her travels. While finishing her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature in Seattle, Washington, she performed her poetry with musicians and artists. Her poems have been published in The Denver Quarterly, The Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Comstock Review, Freshwater,The Columbia Review, among numerous other journals and books. . Her collection of poems, Beside Herself , was published by Flutter Press. Her full-length collection, Rust, came out with Word Tech Editions in 2016. Her forthcoming book, Coming Up For Air, comes out in 2018. She is an adjunct instructor of English at Front Range Community College. When not writing or teaching, she taxis her teenagers to activities, swims miles in pools, and runs and hikes in the open space of Colorado’s mountains and plains.
Something created. Does the creator think ahead
or spill a storm. Rain happens. We supply the
reasons. Evaporation of water collecting over
huge expanses, condensed and pushed as clouds
over the land. We say it makes us sad or depressed.
We want to cry.
You describe the America you know and if you
are ashamed of yourself for what you see, you lie.
Or don’t look. Loud noises of automobiles and
fumes. Today in Riverside Park, leaning on a rail,
the dead leaves and snow reminded me how far
from nature and life I am. The snow blew
in from the west. People passed in a smooth
slow line in front of me. Dogs trailing one
another. People hiding until crises bring them
out. Their dog smells another dog between the legs.
The master runs over to stop him. Maybe he
thinks they’re going to fight. Doesn’t want his
big German shepherd to hurt her dachshund.
Guy runs past in gray sweats on his tip-toes.
Glances at me. Another passes in blue sweats. Looks
longer. They think I’m a mugger. They are not
sexually attracted. I’m an opponent. I want something
they have. I look surly. Why aren’t I out
running, disciplining myself, making myself healthy,
doing something. What brings you out here. You’re not
doing anything but watching us and staring at the ground.
Walking down Broadway I realized I’ve never lived here and still don’t. Two women
window shopping is strange to me. They talk about the clothes. They are friends. I slow down, I
don’t feel so cold. Stroll, looking at people is like a sunny day and it’s a carnival. Streets
different in different weather. Rainy nights are good. Cold rainy nights. Bars filled and warm.
Streets empty and cold. People pass and look as members of a fraternity. They need someone and
don’t hide it. They will try anyone out for one night. They have tea together. They go for a drink
in some neutral place. They go straight to bed in the dark. They can’t see the face.
###
Robert Ronnow’s most recent poetry collections are New & Selected Poems: 1975-2005 (Barnwood Press, 2007) and Communicating the Bird (Broken Publications, 2012). Visit his web site at www.ronnowpoetry.com.
O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up–for you the flag is flung for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.
When out on the lawn there rose such a clatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter,
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon, on the breast of the new-fallen snow,
Gave a lustre of mid-day to objects below;
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
“Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Dunder and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall!
Now, dash away, dash away, dash away all!”
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,
So, up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With a sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.
And then in a twinkling I heard on the roof,
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack;
His eyes how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry;
His droll little month was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face, and a little round belly
That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.
He was chubby and plump’a right jolly old elf;
And I laughed when I saw him in spite of myself.
A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle;
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”
This poem was originally titled A Visit From St. Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore. It is considered the quintessential poem about Christmas and Santa Claus.
The last folk singer steps out onto the stage.
He carries his guitar and an old banjo.
They say he learned to sing from a
Jew in Kansas City but I know for a fact
he learned while in prison in the State of Utah.
They don’t call him a folk singer because
of his broken teeth. They don’t praise his looks
or his buckskin jacket. The last folk singer can barely walk,
and when he talks you can see his stained teeth. His voice
stands out and so does his ugly nose. But when he sings,
he makes grown men and women cry. They bawl.
When the last folk singer was young, the ladies held their breath.
He’d just wink and they’d fall out, as their friends screamed
and carried on, begging for more. He looks a hell of a lot like Pete Seeger,
but has had white hair from 30. He looks a little like Johnny Winter
and a whole lot like Andy Warhol.
People can remember him so well from when he was young.
He had long hair and never wore a shirt. They say he got his tattoos
while in state prison and he was sent there for stabbing his sister.
He croons and strums, hollers and cries; he plays his guitar real loud;
then he’ll get mad and storm out over nothing.
Furry Lewis who hailed from Memphis was said to have been
a friend but not his neighbor B. B. King, who didn’t like him one bit.
Rumor had it he came from Alabama, but Furry swore
he was born in a shit hole somewhere south of Jackson.
The happiest time of his life was the summer his tomatoes grew
the size of his wife’s favorite dinner plates. They were gigantic
and he took them with him to church in a basket to give away.
This went on for what seemed like forever, and he never forgot it.
The rest of the garden was fine, but when he thinks of those tomatoes he smiles.
The last folk singer began to lose his balance. His body began
to fail. At last, they wheeled him out in a special chair, a golden
throne on casters. He sat through most of his songs, but he always
stood for the Star-Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful.
The last folk singer hasn’t long to live. He’s given away most of his prized
possessions, including his Stetson and his Gibson guitar. Last week he sold me
his red boots and his silver buckle. He’s down on his luck. As he lay dying,
his manager, Burt Cole, waited for his final words. Even the doctor leaned in
and everyone hushed: “I never sing about nothing I didn’t know;
I never sing about love.”
David Lohrey grew up in Memphis. He graduated from U.C., Berkeley. His plays have appeared in the UK, Switzerland, Croatia and, most recently, in Estonia. They are available online at Proplay (CA). His poetry can be found internationally in Softblow (Shanghai), Cecile’s Writers’ Magazine(The Hague) and Otoliths (Australia). In the US, recent poems have appeared in Apogee, Abstract Magazine and Poetry Circle. Several have been anthologized by the University of Alabama (Dewpoint), Illinois State University (Obsidian) and Michigan State University (The Offbeat). His fiction can be read in Dodging theRain and Literally Stories. His study of 20th century literature, ‘The Other Is Oneself‘, was published last year in Germany. Machiavelli’s Backyard, David’s first collection of poetry, appeared in August, 2017. David is a member of the Sudden Denouement Literary Collective. He lives in Tokyo.
I’m sitting alone in the corner of a room-
darkness all around, but light above-
from somewhere it comes, that little bit,
from somewhere unseen, the light emits.
It must, and so
I’m sitting alone in the corner of a dark room
with the edges of the white walls pinching together over my head
like a squinting eye
It stares right down at me, pinning me to the floor
like a worm,
squashed by the tip-toe of a boot,
that wriggles and convulses,
pinned down to the floor by its own impatient guts.
Where was I in such a hurry to?
I don’t remember now.
I look up to the ceiling and wonder how
the room does continue on.
Is the further wall just as white?
Will some horrid converse come to light
with the slowly creeping dawn?
Creeping like a little worm- all impatient guts and goo,
crying, “Don’t let them see me!
“Don’t let them know!
“Don’t let them come!
“There footfall sounds in unalterable ranks!
“I hear them, hear them,
“nearly see them now,
“and with the dawn, they come creeping and coyly entreating.”
“So will the chasm, too, come to yawn.”
In time, in time;
I am waiting
for the dawn to come illuminating the further wall,
for the boots to come as unalterable law.
In time, in due time;
I am waiting.
I stretch my arms over my head,
the tired sound escaping from my mouth,
and falling out into the darkness of the room,
where the light is dead-
Dead
Dead
Dead
and splattered out into the room like impatient, wormy guts
squirming, squishing, anxious to presume,
to perceive
The careful tip-toe boot,
The careful tip-toeing of the unalterable sound,
that rings against the further wall,
as all around
the darkness closes in
like an eye squinting on high,
like the eye that squishes me down, closing the darkness down,
until the darkness is all,
is all around.
The stalls of Italian markets
display four different
types of octopus and five
sizes of squids
with glassy eyes –
piteous nautilus
from Hokusai’s erotica.
I learned with practice how to
extract their entrails
without piercing the ink sac,
how to cut the cuttlefish’s
mantle to get the pen,
proud gladius raised against me.
I am not the fisherman’s wife
disarmed kraken,
there’s no need to resist
with your sharp beak
and your toy tentacles.
I discovered the squeeze
when one squishes the skin,
its plasticity once peeled –
What a strange appeal!
An opal ghost floats in the basin.
###
Julie Irigaray’s work has appeared in various international publications such as Southword, Banshee (Ireland), Shearsman, Mslexia, Tears in the Fence, Envoi (UK) and The Ofi Press (Mexico), among others. She recently won third prize in the 2017 Winchester Writers’ Festival Poetry Competition and was shortlisted for The Yeovil Poetry Prize 2017 and The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2016 (UK). After living in the south-west of France, Ireland, England and Italy, she is back to Paris.
I poured out my heart and it spilled onto the floor.
We stood
looking at it for a while.
Eventually,
I wiped it up with paper towels
as she watched.
Every visit after that
We both remembered the mess
I’d made on the floor.
But she never mentioned it.
She didn’t want to be rude.
###
Tara Rigg writes about the complexities, joys, and misunderstandings of grief. She gratefully breathes in the mountain air surrounding her home in Bozeman, Montana where she lives with her husband and three young daughters. Her son, Beau, was stillborn in 2014. Find more at www.TaraRigg.com.
A mindful seven-year-old
(which is all seven-year-olds)
does not sit still and focus
on her breath; she instead
roams outside and follows
a trail of ants to nowhere,
climbs a hill of grass only to
roll her way back down,
or rakes a pile of leaves just to
fall forward and let the world
swallow her whole
###
Taylor Winchell was born and raised in San Diego, California. He received a BS from UC Berkeley and an MS from CU Boulder. He currently works as a water resources engineer, focusing on development planning in the Southeast Asia region. His poetry and writing has appeared in Nature Writing, KQED Public Radio, The Jetset Times, and The Boulder Weekly.
to the bird who flew into my screen door and begged me to end its life,
by Ralph Bousquet
my wicked glass
broke your fall &
your welcome,
& you’re welcome, &
your neckbone,
white & wet against your
blue & black feathers, &
i’m sorry, &
your eyes fixed in fury
on me asking
you got what it takes? &,
forgive me, but
###
Ralph Bousquet is a poet and musician from Cape Cod, Massachusetts. His poems have been published in Ponder Review and The Reader. He attends New York University and lives in Brooklyn.
If Aaron falls from the low crux,
he breaks a leg, but higher will have
the reapers exulting.
He cruises passes the crux,
traverses diagonally up the rock,
commits to the steep arête.
Josie, watching from the base,
asks her bloke one last time to accept
a safety rope, like a sane climber.
But why, he muses – the sandstone
is caressing his fingers,
his head is in the zone.
Nearing the summit,
Aaron stretches for a pivotal hold,
but misses by a fingernail.
He backs off and rests by alternating his feet
on a hold the size of a domino.
A dreaded tremor starts up in one leg
and the reapers get word.
They rock up, whooping,
pile out of their hearse and undertake
to cajole Aaron into their car.
Last time Aaron had reached the summit
of a solo climb, the dog had slunk off,
the endorphins shimmied and he’d hoped
for sky-drenched love with Josie,
but she recoiled and gave him the ultimatum.
Sweat now beads his temples.
The reapers lick the soles of his Sportivas
and flirt with his fingertips.
The trees on the ground appear tiny,
Josie too, arms folded, not looking.
Must get the feet higher, Aaron whispers,
breathing deep. The rock exudes
a warm, gun-powdery scent,
strangely uplifting.
His breathing steadies. The tremor stops.
Now his hands and feet work
in concert through the final moves.
The reapers, jeering, pile back
into their vehicle and drive away.
Aaron lies on the rocky platform
at the top, open to heaven,
waiting for celestial bands to play,
dancers to sashay in.
Nothing.
He moves to the edge and scans
the drop. No Josie at the bottom.
Then Aaron sees her:
soloing the pathway out.
###
I have been an avid writer of short stories and poems for many years. In 2005, I completed an MA in fiction with honours at Macquarie University, Sydney.
A number of my stories and poems have won awards and been published in Australia and overseas.
Reading and writing poetry and fiction is my lifeblood.
When not writing poems and stories or reading those of other writers, I teach English at The University of Sydney, enjoy the company of my two boys, and the natural wonders of the Blue Mountains near Sydney.
