Jean Varda’s poetry has appeared in The Berkeley Poetry Review, Poetry Motel, Manzanita Poetry & Prose of the Mother Lode & Sierra, Avocet A Journal of Nature Poems,
Channeling Emily
by Jean Varda
Emily heard new oak leaves
unfurl barely making a sound
she heard the faint noise of
eggs hatching
tiny first throated cries
she strode through the fox gloves
her small feet left no print
she listened to the creek
till her ears filled with
tiny bells of her poetry
she looked up through the
heavy branches of a maple
at the wood thrush
Emily opened her small hands
over the meadow grass
and spoke softly of bees
she lay in her virgin bed
smelling of clean linen
and dreamt of warblers
indigo buntings and larks
###
Jean Varda’s poetry has appeared in The Berkeley Poetry Review, Poetry Motel, Manzanita Poetry & Prose of the Mother Lode & Sierra, Avocet A Journal of Nature Poems, California Quarterly and The Red River Review. Her poem “Naming Her”, published in River Poets Journal 2012 was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has taught poetry writing workshops,hosted a poetry radio show and sponsored poetry events at cafes. She presently lives in Grass Valley CA. Where she works as a nurse and is writing her memoirs.
Yuma Clark lives in New Jersey, where he has been teaching for 11 years. Outside the classroom, his loves are family, learning, and fixing things.
I’m Beat by Yuma Clark
I’m beat.
I’m tired of people moving
to other side of the sidewalk
when I walk my dog at night.
Hood down, smile real big, saccharin greeting
relax
I’m like you
I belong here,
too.
I’m tired of looks
assuming and presuming
guessing race, mood or intent.
The inevitable
“What are you anyway?”
Name’s no help–
Clark seems safe, though.
I am Yuma!
(Son of the Chief)
I scream inside my head.
But it comes out as the list.
“Russian, Italian, etc.”.
Why do I always start
with Russian and Italian?
not African?
I hate that I do that,
but do I pass?
I’m tired of remembering my roles.
To you, I’m brown enough
to be down.
And you, I’m from Fair Lawn,
light-skinned,
(most seasons)
speak well,
and will let your hate speech roll off me
like filthy rain.
Shedding most,
but always leaving an un-seeable stain,
face never showing anything.
Don’t rock the boat.
I don’t know any other.
My favorite role is me.
All me.
Just me.
But
it hasn’t been written yet.
Is the audience ready for it?
I’m tired of not knowing how/if to teach this camouflage to my sons.
(Will they need it?)
Will they yield to it?
I cry for the answer to be “no”,
but nature dictates
camouflage is adaptation
and adaptation is
survival.
I’m tired.
I guess I’m beat.
###
Yuma Clark lives in New Jersey, where he has been teaching for 11 years. Outside the classroom, his loves are family, learning, and fixing things.
I have recent and upcoming publications in Cold Mountain Review, Common Ground, Gingerbread House, Main Street Rag. Sacred Cow. U.S.1 Worksheet, Pontiac Review, Louisiana Literature, Abbey, 805, Poem, Third Wednesday, One Trick Pony, Plainsongs, O.V.S. Magazine, The Aurorean, The 3228 Review, Illya’s Honey,and others
Confessional Box for Those a Tad Off Plumb
by Carol Hamilton
Perhaps I heard 9:50 for 9:15.
We missed the express bus
to Kansas City, had to take a local,
all night, stops at every little Kansas
town. We stepped down
the narrow passage between seats
in darkness, settled into cushions
of grumpiness with nothing outside
to distract except shuffle-footed employees
bowing down to the gaped-open metal
mouth below our window.
So when the shadowy wraith entered,
stopped beside his elbow,
he quickly stood to lift her case
above our heads. “You’re a preacher,
aren’t you?” came the Cassandran
pronouncement from the shadows.
“I can always tell.”
Theology student might not
have lived up to her expectation,
but he was spooked.
Greyhound nights hold many voices
… a time for secrets … a place
for the slightly or wildly tetched.
The humming bullets slips
through prairie nights,
like Charon’s boat full
of truths hovering
somewhere between heaven and earth.
###
I have recent and upcoming publications in Cold Mountain Review, Common Ground, Gingerbread House, Main Street Rag. Sacred Cow. U.S.1 Worksheet, Pontiac Review, Louisiana Literature, Abbey, 805, Poem, Third Wednesday, One Trick Pony, Plainsongs, O.V.S. Magazine, The Aurorean, The 3228 Review, Illya’s Honey,and others. I have published 17 books: children’s novels, legends and poetry, most recently, SUCH DEATHS from Vac Press Purple Flag Series. I am a former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma and have been nominated seven times for a Pushcart Prize.
Larew’s poems have appeared most recently in Shot Glass, The Amsterdam Review and, Viator.
Chirp
by Hiram Larew
Be be my through into be sky
Take as me this as beginning see
Once in keen light is your so ever I
When by alive my new else is –
How then to make us as we are like this
When where we must be such might seeds –
O see this is most by also try need
Say then above as all time is –
Be be as clear
Be be as near
Be be as here as the why is.
###
Larew’s poems have appeared most recently in Shot Glass, The Amsterdam Review and, Viator. His third collection, Utmost, was published by I. Giraffe Press in 2016. Nominated several times for Pushcarts, he lives in Maryland and is a global food security specialist.
Mike Ambrose started writing poetry six years ago at the age of 48 and discovered that poetry provides a balance and perspective that has opened up a whole new way
An Indian Remedy
by Mike Ambrose
I have been told
that in this Ramayana world –
it is wherever it needs to be,
this queen of dusty spices,
an acquired acquaintance,
this pungent curry.
A dietary assassin
that sours
already sickened senses
but a necessary foe
to alien microbes
feasting in virgin viscera,
even still, I have also heard
that Polish vodka
is equally as efficacious.
###
Mike Ambrose started writing poetry six years ago at the age of 48 and discovered that poetry provides a balance and perspective that has opened up a whole new way to see the world. His poetry has been published in over 20 publications including Grey Sparrow Journal, Every Day Poems, Westward Quarterly, and The Boston Literary Magazine. Mike is a graduate of the University of New Haven and MIT. He was inducted into both the Athletic and Engineering Hall of Fames at the University of New Haven.
Robert Halleck is a hospice volunteer and retired banker who has published three collections of poetry. In recent years his poems have appeared in the San Diego Poetry Annual
Letters To Old Girl Friends
by Robert Halleck
He wrote letters to old
girlfriends, put them in envelopes
with no addresses and placed
them in a desk drawer.
It did not matter if they
were dead or alive.
The letters were simple.
I’m sorry, so sorry, so sorry.
###
Robert Halleck is a hospice volunteer and retired banker who has published three collections of poetry. In recent years his poems have appeared in the San Diego Poetry Annual, The Scapegoat Review, Rays Rats Ass Review, and a number of other interesting places that show up in a Google search.
i have never been a proper lady. my feet are too big
and my hands
are too calloused. i freely admit i am guilty
of my sins,
lost like a seagull who circles the bay
in winter
when nobody’s
there.
i am a perpetual winter evening
when the farmhouse lights extinguish
one by one,
an apparition ambling down
a lesser traveled highway
toward the broken-down buildings, the end
of the world.
i’m prone to wander. my prayers
do not float.
i’m a thousand year old city
lost
beneath the sea. my eyelids are heavy,
and sometimes i cry.
i have good intentions, my hands
just shake.
sometimes i hear my bones breaking apart, and
the nape of my neck smells like
funeral flowers. i love,
but i kill–
my mind is made up.
in a past life i may have been
a tree.
the loveliest sadness pursues me at night
when i hear the wind blow, and i’m
wild again– a danger perhaps
to myself most of all,
drawn like a moth to the last
burning candle
on earth.
forgive me if my speech is obscure. i talk
about ghosts in my sleep. i am one death away
from continuous flight
through the dark which pervaded the cosmos
before
there was light.
###
Lydia Wright is a serial dreamer, artist, and writer who resides in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Believing first and foremost in the power of the written word, Lydia attributes her passion for poetry to a single grade school poetry lesson which has served as the catalyst to a life she now devotes to translating personal experiences into poems that will resonate with others. On the rare occasion when her head is not in the clouds, Lydia can be found in the woods, haunting the dimly lit corners of various local coffee shops, and generally observing the world around her. Her writing often possesses a dream-like, romantic quality, incorporating visually and emotionally captivating language that aims to pluck the collective heartstrings of humanity. Lydia writes best with a cat on her lap.
Sonia Saikaley’s first book, The Lebanese Dishwasher, co-won the 2012 Ken Klonsky Novella Contest. Her first collection of poetry, Turkish Delight, Montreal Winter, was published in 2012
Spring in Northern Japan
by Sonia Saikaley
Futons now hang on metal bars
outside apartment windows in Shiogama.
Plastic clips grip the thick cotton, keep them
from falling on narrow streets.
I wander through alleys
of paper lanterns and indigo curtains
of sushi restaurants where
clotheslines do not hang through streets,
just those metal bars.
My washer gurgles and chokes
on my underwear, socks, shirts.
Bang, bang, bang,
it whimpers through soapsuds.
I press my hands on the machine,
murmur apologetic words.
###
Sonia Saikaley’s first book, The Lebanese Dishwasher, co-won the 2012 Ken Klonsky Novella Contest. Her first collection of poetry, Turkish Delight, Montreal Winter, was published in 2012 and a second collection, A Samurai’s Pink House, will be published in 2017 by Inanna Publications. She is currently working on a novel called Jasmine Season on Hamra Street, which was awarded an Ontario Arts Council grant. A graduate of the Humber School for Writers, she lives in her hometown of Ottawa, Canada. In the past, she worked as an English teacher in Japan. Visit her website at www.soniasaikaley.com
It’s your father you must come
really? she expects me to see him?
to travel two thousand miles to see
the man who sharp tongued me
straight to Chicago, the man who
told me & told me I was a dolt, a dope,
a staggering disappointment
my therapist chatters on & on
about closure, regret
she talks about forgiveness, not to condone
but to unload the anger I lug around
in a worn leather suitcase with two shiny locks
I barely listen
I arrive in time/a ventilator breathes his breath/
in long hissing sighs
monitors beep & bleep
ghostly lines zig & zag across the screens
plastic tubes snake from his starched sheets
one loops to a yellow pouch
what is left of my father lies on the bed
eyes shut, mouth hidden by a plastic mask
he can no longer talk/no longer hurt
I hear my mother’s voice/my therapist’s voice
pick up his swollen hand & kiss it
whisper you love him
& I do & I do &
then I reach behind his bed & grab a plug
the hissing stops
I walk out as September’s sun
slant-shadows the parking lot
I set the suitcase on the back seat
brass locks still glistening
###
Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her work has been accepted by the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Healing Muse and Vine Leaves Literary Journal among others. Her first book of poetry, Waiting to be Called, was published in 2015. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.
Sofia Kioroglou is a twice award-winning poet, author of two poetry books, flash fiction writer of ” Cubicle Coma” published by Books’ Journal & Planodion and prolific blogger from Greece.
Damascus in Syria before the war
by Sofia Kioroglou
I love spring
Whenever I look out the window
I see a riot of color.
Flowers of all forms and sizes
Blossoming in my garden
after being shrinking violets.
But Nigella damascena
is my favorite reminding me
of Damascus in Syria before the war
Reminding me that the Chaghoura,
the beautiful gazelle will protect me
from snipers, rapists and bombs
###
Sofia Kioroglou is a twice award-winning poet, author of two poetry books, flash fiction writer of ” Cubicle Coma” published by Books’ Journal & Planodion and prolific blogger from Greece. Her poems are included in many anthologies, including the Poetry Against Terror Anthology, the Poetry Against Inequality, Poetry for Refugees, By Land and By Seas among others, and a number of literary journals that include Verse-Virtual, The Blue Nib, The Galway Review, Lunaris Review, Writink Page, Silver Birch Press, Halkyon Days, Ashvamegh, Fractal.gr, and Winamop, Bonsaistories, I am Not a silent Poet to name but a few. She has work forthcoming for Poetic Diversity, Winamop and a new anthology project. She is a member of the Poets Unite Worldwide.To learn more about her, visit her blog at sofiakioroglou.wordpress.com
George Moore publications include The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, North American Review, Colorado Review, Antigonish, Blast, and Orion. After teaching literature
The Man Arriving
by George Moore
All you can do is assume
a great grandfather at the gunwale,
scouting the skyline coming into view
after more than a month at sea,
some century and a half before.
Seventeen. A tenant farmer
for whom the seas are always Irish
and holy. The first voyage
his last, arriving complete;
no need to move beyond Illinois.
Like weak tea, the image
needs a stronger kick to pilot it
into harbor. The gulls looking
for a feast, the black docks rising like
Neptune’s teeth, and no one
greeting you, only this memory,
could you steer it into its berth,
a chain of names
we haul at feverishly.
###
George Moore publications include The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, North American Review, Colorado Review, Antigonish, Blast, and Orion. After teaching literature and writing with the University of Colorado for many years, he is presently living with his wife, a Canadian poet, on the south shore of Nova Scotia. Among other collections his newest was out in September from FutureCycle PressSeptember, Saint Agnes Outside the Walls,
tmstringfellow (Tara Stringfellow) is a poet and an attorney living in Chicago, originally from Memphis, Tennessee and Okinawa, Japan. SThird World Press published her first collection of poetry
hot combs catfish crumbs and bad men
lent she’d send us out
come back with a basketful she’d call
my sister and i caught black tadpoles
with dark hands thrust into warm bogs
seeking, unafraid
my mother bent over cast iron skillet
read entrails in the hot oil
men will fail you more than the Lord
she swung a rosary over the stove
in a pendulum swinging north
my sister collected hair thick as a nest
from all the old combs in the house
buried it deep in red clay
daddy will come back she chanted
God can stay asleep
these women in my life are magic enuff
Originally appeared in Jet Fuel
###
tmstringfellow (Tara Stringfellow) is a poet and an attorney living in Chicago, originally from Memphis, Tennessee and Okinawa, Japan. SThird World Press published her first collection of poetry entitled More than Dancing in 2008. Her poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Transitions Magazine, Apogee Journal, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, decomp: a literary magazine, Voice and Vision: An African American Literary Magazine, Prompt, and North by Northwestern. Currently, the author is an MFA Candidate for both poetry and prose at Northwestern University.
Steve De France is a widely published poet, playwright and essayist both in America and in Great Britain. His work has appeared in literary publications in America,
Running for Home
by Steve De France
Rain in the harbor.
A fine mist falling from a high
sun streaked cloud bank, gentle rain
falling like folds being shaken from
a lacy curtain.
I hear water hissing
under car tires on Ocean Blvd.
A truck slides to a stop at the traffic signal.
Someone stands on a horn.
A siren shrills past my corner
and heads downtown. The rain picks up.
A cacophony of thunder surges toward me
from a coming black bank of clouds
at the edge of the horizon.
A storm’s coming, maybe a big one.
A sail at the mouth of the harbor,
just beyond the breakwater. I pick up
my binoculars & focus down.
Looks to be a twenty footer bobbing
in the swells. The current trying to push her into
the wall of rocks just by the lighthouse.
I make out the shape of a man dressed
out in yellow slicks.
He’s alone.
He’s hanging onto the tiller and riding his tack
for everything he’s worth.
I watch with excitement as he slides into
the mouth of the channel,
missing the grey rocks by only a boat length.
He stands up, swings the boom, his tiny craft
bucks over a wave, and changes direction.
He’s running for home.
As he gets closer to the beach,
I see his face.
He’s a man around my age.
He’s pouring something
hot from a thermos into a mug.
Smiling as if he was the luckiest guy
in the world, maybe he is.
He looks at the sky, then right up at me
and smiles. I watch him sail by pelted with rain.
What would it be like to be him.
To sail into the rain, and smile.
I’d sail to Catalina.
Sailing fish would follow my shadow,
dolphins would ride as high as my bow.
I begin to smile, too.
About this time the Harbor Patrol
siren & blue lights on, charge up next to him.
They throw a line & take him into tow.
dragging him toward the docks,
He slumps back into his seat.
Smile gone.
Civilization had him by the throat.
I sigh, stare at the bay in falling rain.
After a while. I decide to walk up the beach
in spite of the weather.
###
Steve De France is a widely published poet, playwright and essayist both in America and in Great Britain. His work has appeared in literary publications in America, England, Canada, France, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, India, Australia, and New Zealand. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry in both 2002 and 2003. Recent publications include The Wallace Stevens Journal, The Mid-American Poetry Review, Ambit, Atlantic, Clean Sheets, Poetrybay, Yellow Mama and The Sun. In England he won a Reader’s Award in Orbis Magazine for his poem “Hawks.” In the United States he won the Josh Samuels’ Annual Poetry Competition (2003) for his poem: “The Man Who Loved Mermaids.” His play THE KILLER had it’s world premier at the GARAGE THEATRE in Long Beach, California (Sept-October 2006). He has received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Chapman University for his writing. Most recently his poem “Gregor’s Wings” has been nominated for The Best of The Net by Poetic Diversity.
Brian Beatty’s poems and stories have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including The Bark, Conduit, Dark Mountain (England), The Evergreen Review
How I Discovered America
by Brian Beatty
East of downtown, Lake Michigan
was all it took for me (no native guides)
to orient myself by Chicago’s freshwater sea.
“You’re a young man going as far as you can,
constantly afraid you might drown” perfectly
describes my mid-twenties roaming the city.
More than one crowded sidewalk
I navigated with an orange life jacket
tugged over my everyday clothes.
###
Brian Beatty’s poems and stories have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including The Bark, Conduit, Dark Mountain (England), The Evergreen Review, Forklift Ohio, Gigantic, The Glasgow Review of Books (Scotland), Great Walks (Australia), Gulf Coast, Hobart, McSweeney’s, Midwestern Gothic, The Moth (Ireland), Opium, Paper Darts, Phoebe, The Quarterly, RHINO, Seventeen, Southern Poetry Review and The Sycamore Review.
Beatty is the author of the collections Coyotes I Couldn’t See (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016) and Brazil, Indiana (Kelsay Books/Aldrich Press, forthcoming).
Louis Gallo’s work has appeared or will shortly appear in Southern Literary Review, FictionFix, Glimmer Train, Hollins Critic, Rattle, Southern Quarterly, Litro, NewOrleans Review, Xavier Review
ANASTASIA
by Louis Gallo
I assume I’m finally getting somewhere
here at massive Midwest U where I’m grinding
toward a grad degree and teaching comp
which no one can really teach anyway or learn –
either you’ve got it or you don’t – and I’m taking
this useless class in Victorian Lit where right beside me
up front sits Anastasia, doing the same thing I’m doing,
trying to get somewhere, and she is freaking gorgeous
in an old-fashioned Debbie Reynolds way, modest, reserved, shy,
sweet, all those ancient virtues, and still the prettiest girl
in the entire Midwest (that I’ve seen anyway) but I spot
the wedding ring right off and that’s a bummer
but I’ve learned in my meager twenty-four years
that everyone is hungry, all the time, everyone craves,
everyone breaks the rules because rules disfigure the spirit,
so of course I flirt with her, and I do all the talking
in class (so much so that the lisping, rotund professor
takes me aside one day and in effect tells me to shut up)
and as we’re walking back to our cubicles she says
she’s impressed with my mind, imagine a beautiful woman
telling you that, it’s double-edged, I’d prefer body,
but mind’s ok though I have never thought much of mine
because I can’t come close to grasping math
of any kind and that’s where the real geniuses tread,
I even had to memorize the text book in calculus at Tulane
to pass the course . . . well, she is the one with mind, I swear,
and that makes it all the better, and I sometimes think
I must be afflicted with that Stendhal syndrome: beauty
inducing tremors, full body sweats, vertigo, panic . . .
because I feel them all when I see her, and we’re reading
in class Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came and it
stuns me as well, the emaciated horse, the absurd journey,
Childe tooting his paltry horn when he finally reaches the squat
dark tower, the desolation, the horror and futility,
and the professor tells us it’s an affirmative piece of work
and I shudder at his ignorance, but that’s all beside the point
because all the while I’m dreaming of Anastasia without clothes
and we go out for coffee a lot at the student union
and she tells me the sad story of her marriage to a guy
who five years before was injured in a trucking accident
that paralyzed him from the waist down and when I ask
if that means what I think it means she starts to cry and nods
and I see that this poor women is dreadfully unhappy
and wonder how she can always pull off the cheerful routine
which she does immaculately because with me I can’t hide it,
it erodes my face and spirit, it consumes me and there’s no way
to disguise it and I see no reason to . . .
so of course we start meeting at night
sometimes in dark empty classrooms on the third floor
of Arts & Sciences, sometimes in my car on the edge
of lonely mud roads and sometimes in the university’s
greenhouse at night when no one is around, its glass walls
awash with condensation, the sleepy plants effusing chlorophyll,
and believe me she is into it and always intense and I’m confused
because there must be some immorality going on here
and I wonder who’s the guiltier, so I just assume me
since I’m always guilty, which doesn’t ever stop me
because I can’t resist, I have no self-control, I’m low, man, low . . .
confusing me most is that Anastasia is so decent, ethical,
moral, god-fearing, good, reliable, punctual, faithful, etc.,
a succulent, sexy Betty Crocker, none of which tallies
with what we do in the greenhouse or the back seats of cars
or those empty classrooms . . . and I wonder too about
the paralyzed husband, what a lousy fucking break (literally),
and if Einstein asks right now “Is the universe friendly?”
I’ll kick him in his e=mc2 ass, friendly? to deprive a young man
of his splendid hormonal woman for a despoiler like me?
and oh yeah that lispy professor starts to call on me in class
because no one wants to discuss Childe Roland and I refuse
to say another word, and no one says another word, and the class
dies and he doesn’t get tenure and winds up selling insurance . . .
and in the end when I’m about to move back to the Deep South
and Anastasia and I must part, it’s not so smooth and she too
decides never to speak another word to me, and I don’t get it,
nobody’s talking to anybody, it’s silent as outer space . . .
and before that she once asked me why I didn’t call her Ana
which is what everybody calls me, and I say that I will never
call you Ana, only Anastasia, because you’re the lost Romanov,
the empire, the Faberge eggs, the heir – and just pray
another Lenin doesn’t come along or something worse than Lenin.
But then, that’s already happened.
###
Louis Gallo’s work has appeared or will shortly appear in Southern Literary Review, FictionFix, Glimmer Train, Hollins Critic, Rattle, Southern Quarterly, Litro, NewOrleans Review, Xavier Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Missouri Review,Mississippi Review, Texas Review, Baltimore Review, Pennsylvania LiteraryJournal, The Ledge, storySouth, HoustonLiterary Review, Tampa Review, Raving Dove, The Journal (Ohio), Greensboro Review,and many others. Chapbooks include The Truth Change, The Abominationof Fascination, Status Updates and The Ten Most Important Questions. He is the founding editor of the now defunct journals, The Barataria Review and Books: A New Orleans Review. He teaches at Radford University in Radford, Virginia.
