Journeying Fall 2020 Issue 17

Red Wolf Journal

Fall 2020

Journeying

Irene Toh, Editor

Contributors retain copyright on their own poems.

Cover artwork: John William Waterhouse, Ulysses and the Sirens, 1891

No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews giving due credit to the authors.

Journeying

Is it lack of imagination that makes us come to imagined places, not just stay at home? Or could Pascal have been not entirely right about just sitting quietly in one's room?

Continent, city, country, society: the choice is never wide and never free. And here, or there... No. Should we have stayed at home, wherever that may be?

—Elizabeth Bishop

Ah…the lure of seeing the world. A cornucopia of sights, sounds and tastes for one’s senses awaits the traveler. Beyond the sensory experiences does travel change the traveler? What is its romance? What are the experiences that translate to pleasure, or discomfort?

There’re many journey stories. In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy travels to the magical land of Oz, before returning to Kansas after a magical adventure; in Journey to the West, a Buddhist monk travelled to the western regions of Central Asia and India to obtain the sutras. Accompanied by his three colorful disciples, he encountered many demons who covetted his flesh in exchange for immortality; in the end the monk and his disciples succeeded in their quest; in The Odyssey, Odysseus had taken 10 years to get home to Ithaca, surviving the Lotus-eaters, the Cyclops, the witch goddess Circe, the Sirens, the six-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis and finally a shipwreck. These epic journeys were filled with trials and tribulations. They are about transformations, a test of character and the creation of identity.

Then there’re the road trips. One of the most definitive is Jack Kerouac’s On The Road — a lyrical, trippy stream of consciousness. There’s Thelma & Louise, a feminist fantasy movie bar none. In the Gilmore Girls (I binge watched it on Netflix recently!) there’s a part of the storyline where Lorelai Gilmore decided to hit the Pacific Crest Trail after reading Cheryl Strayed’s Wild. Just like the protagonist in the book, she had hit a rough spot in her personal life and decided to go on the trip (like plenty of other women too apparently) and it was there that she received a moment of clarity. She knew what she had to do, which was to call her mother to mend the mother-daughter rift and to marry her long-time partner, Luke. The best road trips are about growth, illumination and awakening.

Often to sort out one’s self a physical journey is taken. Seamus Heaney’s poem, “The Peninsula”, is on point.

When you have nothing more to say, just drive For a day all round the peninsula. The sky is tall as over a runway, The land without marks, so you will not arrive

But pass through, though always skirting landfall. At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill, The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable And you're in the dark again. Now recall

The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log, That rock where breakers shredded into rags, The leggy birds stilted on their own legs, Islands riding themselves out into the fog,

And drive back home, still with nothing to say Except that now you will uncode all landscapes By this: things founded clean on their own shapes, Water and ground in their extremity.

Wherever you go, you can’t help but be inside yourself, and what rules the inside but your heart. In Matthew Dickman’s poem, “The Mysterious Human Heart”, the landscape the protagonist describes is of a produce market in New York, yet the external world is always subject to the internal workings of one’s heart.

On Monday morning I will walk down to the market with my heart inside me, mysterious something I will never get to hold in my hands, something I will never understand. Not like the apricots and potatoes, the albino asparagus wrapped in damp paper towels, their tips like the spark of a match, the bunch of daisies, almost more a weed than a flower, the clementine, the sausage links and chicken hung in the window, facing the street where my heart is president of the Association for Random Desire, a series of complex yeas and nays, where I pick up the plantain, the ginger root, the sprig of cilantro that makes me human, makes me a citizen with the right to vote, to bear arms, the right to assemble and fall in love.

In this issue of poetry, the journeying can be a kind of wandering. But need not be. The journeying is really inside yourself. And it is all about feelings and emotions. Why? Because ultimately it’s about your soul’s journey. All these journeys are part of that one. All these journeys are experiences that are designed to make you feel and when you come out of a journey, in whatever form, you are changed in some way. You are moving towards the goal of becoming yourself. Just like Odysseus, you are trying to get home, to feel more and more your destiny, to come to peace with it. Life itself is a series of transformations. Outside the world seems still the same, but inside you’re not the same.

Your poems about journeying would be about any moment to moment experiences I imagine. Anything really, as long as there’s an emotional current, as long as from point A to point B there has been a transformation within.

On their way home from Troy, Odysseus and his men were captured by the Cyclops and he had told Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon, his name was “Nobody” and in that way had escaped his captor. In truth in making his epic journey, by the time he got home the journey had made him who he was – Odysseus. The homecoming completed his story. Your journey is your story of becoming who you are. As the poet Li-Young Lee had once said, “We’re all versions of Odysseus trying to get home.” It takes time and effort. It takes courage and will-power. It takes everything you’ve got to overcome whatever had come up to delay and prevent you from getting home. You, meaning the protagonist in your poem.

First you need to go on a journey. The journey is some sort of quest, a getting to know yourself quest. How else will you know yourself? Your journey is into the unknown. Having journeyed, you will then know, and tell your story. So when you say your name, your name would mean something. When Odysseus’s men ate the lotus in the land of the Lotus-eaters, they became oblivious and forgot about wanting to be home. The state of not doing anything is perhaps the equivalent of becoming a bum. Unless you consciously want to be a bum. Else you’re a nothing.

Let’s get trippy! Good writing.

Irene Toh Editor Fall 2020

The only journey is the one within.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

Contents

Misky Braendeholm, Of Home 10

Paula Bonnell, Florida Haiku 11

Paula Bonnell, In The Hot Sun, By A Deserted Barn 12

Corbett Buchly, hollowed light 13

Corbett Buchly, the long cry settling on dust 14

Jeff Burt, I Walk with Nietzsche on Saddle Mountain 15

Alan Cohen, Travel 17

Carolyn Clark, Arrival CDG – 2014 18

Barbara Daniels, The Rainbow Coat 19

Barbara Daniels, The Rome Notebook 20

Mark Danowsky, Tragedy 21

Holly Day, Out in the Wild 22

Holly Day, Safe 23

Holly Day, Out 24

Edilson Ferreira, Stayed by the Way 25

Edilson Ferreira, Fellow Walkers 26

Peter Goodwin, Return To The Grand Canyon 27

Peter Goodwin, After A Squall 28

Peter Goodwin, English Lessons in Bangkok 29

John Grey, If In Doubt, Remember 30

John Grey, From One Place To Another 31

John Grey, That Storm At The Lake 32

Diane Jackman, Against the Rules 33

Gurupreet K. Khalsa, The Samosa Man 34

Ron. Lavalette, The Quest 35

Ron. Lavalette, Altered Itinerary 36

Lori Levy, Coughing Coyotes 37

Lori Levy, A Table Among The Weeds 38

Marie C Lecrivain, The Weaver’s Tale 39

Karla Linn Merrifield, Thinking It Over 40

Karla Linn Merrifield, Ars Poetica 41

Shelly Narang, A Guided Heart Tour 42

Shelly Narang, Napkin in the Café 43

Akshaya Pawaskar, In the Enthralling Buddhist Land 44

Akshaya Pawaskar, Origins 46

John D Robinson, The Taste 47

Judith Sanders, Backwards, Before 48

Judith Sanders, Night Journey 50

Judith Sanders, Traveling Woman Takes Out the Trash 52

Emil Sinclair, Traces 54

Emil Sinclair, No Heroics, Please 56

Emil Sinclair, There’s No Time 58

Elizabeth Spencer Spragins, High Trails 60

Elizabeth Spencer Spragins, In the Pueblo 61

Greg Stidham, The Kansas I remember 62

Greg Stidham, At A Campground In Nebraska In Spring 63

Greg Stidham, October, East-bound On I-80 64

Ivor Steven, The Universe and My Backyard 65

Ivor Steven, The Chalice of Champagne 66

Debi Swim, Shouns, Tennessee 1961 67

Debi Swim, Life Is A Journey 68

Alan Toltzis, Unfamiliar Terrain 69

Alan Toltzis, Texas 70

Mark Tulin, Journey’s Breath 71

Mark Tulin, El Paso Travelers 72

Mark Tulin, Walking In Sand 73

Elise Woods, San Lucas Mission 74

Mantz York, End Of The Line, Southport 75

Mantz York, Schrödinger’s Train 76

Of Home by Misky Braendeholm

Mum embroidered us into a picturesque past. Companions. Bookends. Sisters. She took to the ramparts, and set us girls on summer steps to read. A coming of words over dulled weeks, like sucking thumbs for loss of time, counting clouds until it rained. We were little bunting children sitting on steps. And we knew invincibility, until we left home.

Misky’s work is regularly published in monthly issues of Waterways Poetry in the Mainstream, Ten Penny Players, and most recently Right Hand Pointing.

Florida Haiku by Paula Bonnell

The wind in the trees . . . a wind chime – These parts are inhabited!

The sound of a motorcycle – the call of a mourning dove – the trailer park

Evening star, palm tree Illuminated swimming pool crescent moon

Summer night: within the hurtling along the tracks, an invisible train –

In The Hot Sun, By A Deserted Barn by Paula Bonnell

The barn gone grey, silvery grey, and here in its side, one board of many and in it, many vertical lines which thread it from end to end, bending as they go – leaning this way and that with the lilt that makes a move a dance. They are fibers, each of them; joined, they make wood. Cut, they are grain, and the knots they sway past were the arms of branches, which reached and elongated as they emerged from the trunk to stretch, to sieve air through manifold twigs and unfurling leaves while these rising paths, these filaments, lifted and carried water to the cresting top of the tree.

Paula Bonnell’s writing has appeared in four collections of poems, including “Airs & Voice”, chosen for a Ciardi Prize by Mark Jarman, been heard on The Writer’s Almanac, and a short story selected for a PEN Syndicated Fiction Prize and published in newspapers.

hollowed light by Corbett Buchly through the neighborhood woods we rode I on violet Schwinn banana seat crowned over roots through cobwebs racing for the other side where light spilled at last through the opening in the trees of someone else’s backyard the sanctity of the sun on asphalt a few yards beyond one Saturday we chanced upon teens’ vacant hideout discarded aluminum beer cans lay crumpled, their labels worn away amid the dirt trampled by too much laying this hollowed out space in the thicket held the light differently impossible yellow beams of light mixed with dust an odor lingered that made me remember how imagined beasts could hide for years in hall closets and among the piers beneath the house my bike propped against a tree ready to take flight I stepped lightly to the edge of this strange dimension but I knew we had arrived too soon the tremors in the light pushed me back into the ring of boys back onto the worn trail where anyone might trespass in the natural shadow

the long cry settling on dust by Corbett Buchly the boy whined without end that his legs were weary burning like the center of a neutron star that his belly was empty like the silent vacuum that hung between planets that his skin burned blistered like the earth’s crust pockmarked by humanity his mother soothed with song crooning the soft twitter of a painted bunting biding her time among the pines but his father was absent lost to the savagery of the maras and the cheap bullet that sung his final note like his words, unknown and violent but the boy did not calm going on with his ceaseless lament the others that marched grew angry chided him to end his grating grievance the boy only lowered his voice grumbled his pains in chant without end digging like spurs into the travelers at the border the two soldiers emerged rising from the scrubland itself rifles in hand turn away! they shouted, brandishing black steel that glinted like carapace in the shadow of dark cells all stood stunned as the boy continued into America his litany of sorrow drumming like the pulsing fusion that powers our sun the rifles rang out against earth and sky two sharp barks of protest that echoed only twice but the boy’s voice thrummed on running like a river up the Chisos mountains out over the Texas plains and at last spreading like fire across the sky an angry prayer that tattooed the land like comets or stardust falling upon our heads forever

Corbett Buchly’s work was published in Barrow Street and North Dakota Quarterly. He studied English literature and writing at both University of Southern California and Texas Christian University (Masters and B.A., respectively).

I Walk with Nietzsche on Saddle Mountain by Jeff Burt

We climbed in a light dark enough to die in. I felt the bark of the oak branch buzz with the electric scraping random granite. The mountains formed a dull terrain, the purple majesty faded to gray. Child-fancy thrust off like an undersized jacket, wonder and worship ruined and ravaged by the ramming and rutting of intellect, no day remained love in itself: horses ridden to lather and tremors, lilac-scented air gathered in draughts, yet still the sun set quickly.

Nietzsche said that night was not truth: the wind blew, oaks swayed, but despair could not fathom and search one’s depths, failing to ring and thrill like a familiar parental kiss. I strode up the gravel grade in the dark the embodiment of my rending purity and peace. I had found nothing worse than the erosion of purpose by the intrusion of nonsense. What was left but to pluck a black banjo, moan bucolic ditties, move cups about the checkered table like bishops on a chessboard, polish spots on the floor with old socks? Even language was nothing more than a lengthening fish between the stubby fingers of a man. At best the transfer of thought from one to another was crude and imperfect, of emotion exiguous. To speak meant to fail.

Each orator uttering words into the gutter of the world was chained like Sisyphus to failure. But early in my life I had given up incoherence to take up language. If later language with cyclonic twists had taken me to the heights of a cosmopolitan disorder,

I could not desert the city for laconic pastorals. The sparks of stars had started flames of song, and sound had never failed me.

We sat at last on the top of the mountain watching lightning pinpointing ships out at sea, and up the coast a lighthouse sweeping. I knew, then, the event of my being. Across the valleys of my incoherence I spoke from the summit, and though misunderstood the word had a form and a sound, and the sound was the flash of a mirror, the signal to send the runner to speak of the flash, to utter the signal, for I knew I had entered the world as sound and had turned it into physicality, following language, living its cadence. So I spoke and kept on speaking frenzied words about the sea, for if I had no meaning it was because the meaning lacked my experience.

Process Note: After graduating from college I packed up my car and moved 2000 miles to a place where I knew no one and had no work. But I had philosophers and poets constantly speaking to me in conversation from their books. I carried them with me wherever I went. This poem is about a particular night after reading Nietzsche, and both feeling charged up during the hike and sorry for his demise.

Jeff Burt lives in California with his wife and a July abundance of plums. He has work in Tar River Poetry, Williwaw Journal, Kestrel Journal, and Eclectica. He won the 2019 Heart Poetry Prize.

Travel by Alan Cohen

This early morning When things were not yet quite themselves Some fuzz of the infinite still on them Birds threw themselves from cliffs like lovers And found themselves flying Cows paced their yards like troubled princes Churches and watchtowers halted and stared Bakery doors opened, releasing a night’s accumulated pheromones And a flock of dogs, barking, bounded along a cactus fence Then started up the hill toward breakfast

But once the gray fields had turned yellow or red or brown And the last city light faded on the horizon Sun climbing out of its nightdress of clouds The cows were back to huddling again Bending together, chewing Birds once more perched on eaves, rooftops, churchtowers Making short purposeful flights The dog pack broke up to prowl the narrow streets And a few rocks on the hillside, sheep moments ago Relapsed into stone. Spain, despite the commanding view Just a familiar place Like home

Alan Cohen, poet first, then PCMD, teacher, manager, wrote an average of three poems a month for 60 years, and is beginning now to share some of his poems. He’s married to Anita and lives in Eugene, Oregon.

Arrival CDG – 2014 by Carolyn Clark for Sean and Caroline

Our white mare follows me even across oceans: transported inadvertently past la douane one white horsehair on my jacket, brand “Avalanche.”

This level crossing of la banlieue the Blue line at first glance so similar to Rockville’s Red line: above ground, green and below… but – Sycamores – here there are more of them, Isis’ gift, and ubiquitous graffiti.

Similarities abound, parallels to Tribeca, trains of NY.

Yet here these trees adapt, hang on. And graffiti? Why try to erase that which cannot be (erased). A deeper history here relives the pain of centuries as if it were yesterday.

I’m crossing towards Paris, past crumbled buildings and crumpled litter that stills swirl in place, yet today the early light, and hope, slices of fresh shade, cool in summer, put on a fresh face.

Carolyn Clark, Ph.D., is a devoted teacher and a personal trainer. Indebted to teachers at Cornell University, Brown University, and The Johns Hopkins University for degrees in Classics-related fields, she enjoys riding, writing woodlands lyric poetry, and finding mythology everywhere.

The Rainbow Coat by Barbara Daniels

A silver line follows the train I’m on. Birds claim places up on a cell phone tower. Vultures? Crows? Color them black in the half light. Deep cloudcover turns the sky charcoal. I’m dressed in red, pink, blue, lavender, chartreuse, yellow.

I’m no Joseph in a coat that’s striped or embroidered or covered with pictures, then dipped in goat’s blood.

But something is calling me. I see as I pass a stark pale building with green-tinted windows.

It’s quiet all day on a Sunday, one car in the lot, somebody’s day at a desk or checking locks, watching screens, smoking cigarettes. I’m in the train in my threadbare rainbow coat, old woman, green reflected onto my skin.

The Rome Notebook by Barbara Daniels

Cherubim fall from golden cupolas, gilded niches, sham ceiling ribs, false circle of sky. Galatea turns in wind, red scarf arcing above her, move, countermove fading already in honeyed light. Is it perfection—blood oranges squeezed into tall glasses, tuna, tomatoes, fennel, corn? The day moves deep into blurs of bare shoulders— your children who swim to your arms

Barbara Daniels’s Talk to the Lioness was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press in 2020. Her poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. Barbara Daniels received a 2020 fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

Tragedy by Mark Danowsky

I could have sworn you told me disaster struck when least expected as it always is in the dead of a cheery mid- Spring afternoon when nothing is supposed to even whisper worry

Mark Danowsky is a Philadelphia poet, author of the poetry collection As Falls Trees (NightBallet Press), Managing Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal, and Editor of ONE ART poetry journal.

Out in the Wild by Holly Day

We drive up to the old house and you promise me we won’t go crazy living out here, all alone, with no neighbors nearby. We’ll fill the house with babies, and that’ll be more than enough company for either of us more than enough conversation for a whole world.

We fill our summer by pouring concrete into molds to insulate the foundation and replacing the broken glass with great, clear panes trucked in from town. You build me a new kitchen with a big enough stove to fix food for all these babies we’re going to raise out here and a sink big enough for two or three kids to line up at to wash all those dishes I’m going to need help with.

Sometime during these dreams, I find myself walking out to the barn out back in the middle of the night, not just once, and almost as soon as you fall asleep find solace in the soft, warm bodies of the family of cats nesting in the hay in the smell of the livestock you say we’re going to eat someday. I pretend that this is my family, out here, these tiny quiet cries in the dark the goats bumping up against my thigh as I push past their pen the soft clucking of the rooster, disturbed by my entrance.

You promise me I won’t get lonesome out here surrounded by fields of purple and yellow wildflowers hordes of butterflies as big as my small, white hand I promise you I will try my best to fill this house with children and song that I won’t try to run away.

Safe by Holly Day

If you need to keep snakes out of your house stretch a length of rope out under any open windows, in front of your door, in front of any cracks or access spaces a rattlesnake might wriggle its way through. This is what we did before we had glass in the windows, before the doors fit tight when we lived out in the country.

Now, the old outhouse and the chicken coop are filled with flowers their roofs poked through with holes to let the sunlight in. The barn has a ceiling glittering with stars, where a million tiny holes let light into the dark, illuminating the rusted old tractor still in the corner the coiled shape of something lethal sighing in the shadows.

Out by Holly Day

The spaceman slips out of bed in the middle of the night, determined not to wake up the woman sleeping in the spot next to him. He slips out the front door and into the dark, quietly closing the door behind him the house is still quiet, no one’s heard him go.

There are stars waiting for him, millions of them, spread out in a canopy a panoply overhead. He has left a note behind explaining that he has to go off to do space things, he’s a space man, it’s a short note, enough for a gullible child to read with excitement and wonder over breakfast his mother, thin-lipped with anger, unable to crush the child’s excitement with the truth.

Years later, the child tells an audience of this day, when he first decided that he, too, had to reach the stars to join his father, this was the impetus, this note he kept in his pocket right up until the day he learned it was all a lie.

Holly Day has taught writing classes at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, since 2000. Her poetry has appeared in Big Muddy, The Cape Rock, New Ohio Review, and Gargoyle, and her published books include Walking Twin Cities, Music Theory for Dummies, Ugly Girl, and The Yellow Dot of a Daisy. She has been a featured presenter at Write On, Door County (WI), North Coast Redwoods Writers’ Conference (CA), and the Spirit Lake Poetry Series (MN). Her poetry collections are A Perfect Day for Semaphore (Finishing Line Press) and I’m in a Place Where Reason Went Missing (Main Street Rag Publishing Co.).

Stayed by the Way by Edilson Ferreira

Sometimes a well-intentioned soul calls up, or even comes to me personally, claiming to have found, in improper and improbable place, references or things that certainly belonged to me. I answer I do not need them, I do not miss that, keep them where they were found. They are pieces of myself that I had to leave by the paths I have travelled in my life, penalties imposed by my fellow ones, by sudden, irrepressible and irrefutable passions, born in a simple, loving and thoughtless heart. Pieces that proved I did not refuse not even a little of the portion I must share in my human condition: I lived, suffered, loved; left my journey well marked.

Fellow Walkers by Edilson Ferreira

Sitting by the road’s edge, I watch life go by. I see men, women, old and young people, companions on our journey, the pilgrimage we have embarked on, since forgotten ages. They carry in their faces their realities and, beyond, I try to imagine what really lead them to move on, but cannot be seen: their well-kept secrets and desires, their high esteem, their own motto, their ego. They are striving to be individuals, rather than simply one more. Sometimes I see even myself, mixed in the crowd, perhaps a little lost, but firmly believing to be on the walk too. I feel we are all connected in an invisible web and hope we will reach, each at their own time, that promised and dreamed land, where happiness dwells, milk and honey spill, and evil never finds shelter.

Mr. Ferreira, 76 years, is a Brazilian poet who writes in English rather than in Portuguese. Widely published in international journals in print and online, he began writing at age 67, after retiring as a bank employee. Since then, he counts 147 poems published, in 223 different publications, (all originally written in English), in 44 selected literary reviews. He lives in a small country town (Formiga, Minas Gerais state), with wife, three sons and a granddaughter. Nominated for The Pushcart Prize 2017, his first Poetry Collection, Lonely Sailor, One Hundred Poems, was launched in London in November of 2018. He is always updating his works at http://www.edilsonmeloferreira.com.

Return To The Grand Canyon by Peter Goodwin

We came here so many years ago when we are just learning to live with each other discovering the wonder of this great gash traveling along the southern rim every view a vision. Hotels, campgrounds full, closed to casual visitors so we left and camped elsewhere…I don’t remember where We might have fought that night We had quite a few that trip while discovering this harsh and magnificent western land, and how to work and live together… we always wanted to return.

Now I have… but without you down in the womb of this canyon on its river in small boats how you would have drunk in every twist and opening of this great canyon though perhaps uncomfortable at first, sitting in these beautiful but unstable craft as we rowed, floated, drifted, bounced and flew through the rapids of this exhilarating river— just as you were uncomfortable, at first, when we bought a sailboat uneasy with its tilt and a little unsure, with its swaying, swinging and leaning movements eventually learning to love that intimacy with water and vista— you would have settled easily into the rhythm of the boats and this unpredictable and dynamic river drinking in every challenge and change of view but your life took turns unplanned your journey ended too early, incomplete and I make this river trip alone though not completely.

After A Squall by Peter Goodwin

The evening sky clears, the red, pink, and purple clouds echo on the river’s surface. A gray water tower pushes into the multi-colored sky. The water still and sweet; a large white fishing boat is tied to the dock of an ancient crab shack, its cracked white paint peeling, its walls worn and weak, its tin roof a bright scorched white.

We ignore the cool autumn air, enjoying this tight cove, protected by its tall trees, with their many shades of green, yellow, red. The grey worn skeleton of a dead tree lies on the water, its twisted branches stark and bare, a rust stained work boat, with its high bow and graceful stern sits at its dock as still as the water.

A blue heron glides silently past, landing in silence, wading in the shallows, in silence, searching for sustenance; sometimes the silence is disturbed by a fish jumping, ripples echoing across the water, reflections shimmering. The light, the water, our eyes illuminating this small space, bathing it, beguiled by simplicity.

English Lessons In Bangkok by Peter Goodwin

Having little money for English lessons they offered to feed me. Three times a week, I was nourished by three sisters, whose food looked as sexy and as spicy as it tasted, we drank cool sweet water infused with aromatic flowers, we talked and smiled in their small house with floors and walls of teak built above a lazy, lethargic almost motionless canal.

Sometimes the mosquitoes were as ravenous as I, but the sisters would never swat or spray them, instead they directed a fan to blow them away. They lived their Buddhism.

Today, when we all seem so angry I remember those gentle sisters and smile.

Teacher, traveller, playwright, poet, single or not and points in between, Peter Goodwin was raised and educated in USA and UK, settled in New York City enjoying its vibrant clutter until priced out of the City and now lives mostly near the Chesapeake Bay, becoming a reluctant provider to squirrels, deer, raccoons, birds and mosquitoes, etc. Poems published in the chapbook, No Sense Of History; and anthologies: September eleven; Maryland Voices; Listening to The Water: The Susquehanna Water Anthology; Alternatives To Surrender; Wild Things–Domestic and Otherwise; The Coming Storm as well as in various journals including Rattle, Memoir(and), River Poets Journal, Delaware Poetry Review, Yellow Medicine Review, Main Street Rag, Poeming Pigeon, LockRaven Review, Sliver of Stone, Literary Nest, Greensilk Review. Peterdgoodwin.net

If In Doubt, Remember by John Grey

Strange how a sentimental mood wipes clean all recent details. Ten years of hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, vanished like my last breath. Such a sense of utter solitude. Do people even speak anymore? Do they draw near? All is remote, events seem dimly, but how aware, the half-conscious. I’m in a lost, forgotten corner of the earth journeying to a lost, forgotten corner of my mind. As existence moves away, I can slip out, stay increasingly behind. The present is the illusion here. I have that feeling about me now of a long time ago. Mankind has left in its boats. I’m the shore, the last memory.

From One Place To Another by John Grey

How did I ever come by this sense of dread when all I’m doing is moving from one town to the next? Why does everyone I drive by seem so content in these places where they live, even when they obviously rent. Why do they all look as if they’ve been there forever, as if their bones, their skin, are just part of the house’s carapace along with the windows and the shingles and the shutters.

Why is my heart pumping like a dozen of these hearts? I look in the eyes of a woman in a garden. They are blue and broad and making a stand there. An army of moving vans would not budge her from her roses.

So why do I move so easily through the streets? Why, even when I’m driving, does it feel as if the wind is blowing me? I feel like a traitor to that first house we ever bought. If this neighborhood had its way, it’d line me up against a white-paneled fence and shoot me.

Miles ahead of me, another house awaits, its family of ten years on a journey as weird, incomprehensible as mine. We may even cross each other’s paths, a look of fear, of understanding, flashing between us. They may be heading for a house sold cheaply because the last of its occupants passed on. It makes me think of the dead and the reluctant moving they must do.

That Storm At The Lake by John Grey

There was something about that feeling as if oppression and heat had followed us to the lake, as if that same thunderhead linked this solitary spot to the city. We sat back on the banks and watched the dark sky move in, felt that sag in the way of things and then heard that rumble from somewhere off like the distant guns must have sounded in Paris. All that journey and we hadn’t gone anywhere. But then lightning ignited the sky and a crack of thunder boomed so loud it shook the distant mountains and rain started to come down so hard we thought we’d drown in it. We sat there, didn’t move. If we were in the city, we would have scattered, raced for shelter. We were drenched to the skin just so we could be some place we were.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Sin Fronteras, Dalhousie Review and Qwerty with work upcoming in Blueline, Willard and Maple and Red Coyote.

Against the Rules by Diane Jackman

I make this journey today when we have laid you in the ground. I cannot sit in an empty house and so I drive through the rules of pandemic to the place where we were happy last, the ruins of the leper hospital falling into the northern sea. Though I am confined to the car,

I gaze through the broken arch where still the Portland sheep and rust-coated cattle graze, survivors, with me, of that remembered day.

I drive home strangely comforted.

Diane Jackman’s poetry has appeared in small press magazines and anthologies, and has won or placed in several competition. Starting as a children’s writer she now concentrates on poetry. She is passionately interested in medieval rabbit warrens and Anglo-Saxon literature. She runs a poetry café in Brandon in the heart of the Breckland, England’s desert.

The Samosa Man by Gurupreet K. Khalsa

In the early morning the samosa man steps to the edge of the platform and we exchange, my rupees for a hot pastry through the bars of the train window. In the distance, brief dawn glimpses of lives, fields of sugar cane or bright green fields, carts rumble along rutted paths, laundry hangs on strings, chickens peck in dusty yards.

I glance at the life and go on.

Gurupreet K. Khalsa is a current resident of Mobile, Alabama, having lived previously in Ohio, Washington State, India, New Mexico, and California. She received her Ph.D. in Instructional Design from the University of South Alabama. Her research focused on underprepared college writers in developmental courses. Dr. Khalsa taught middle and high school English classes, emphasizing poetry writing, for over 20 years and was active in the California Writing Project’s initiative to improve student academic writing skills. Currently she is a part time online instructor in graduate programs at the University of South Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

The Quest by Ron. Lavalette

I’ve circled this damned planet a gazillion times already, just trying to wake up where the sun comes up, just trying to find that spot. No matter how far east I travel, I go to bed confident that, this time, I’ve finally found my Mecca; that the sun will rise at the foot of my bed. No dice. Ever. Every day’s the same. One time I saw it come up just behind a Brooklyn high-rise. Not much later it was the Eiffel Tower. Yeah, right. Maybe I should change my ways; maybe start chasing the sunset instead. I’m older now. Maybe I should be wiser. I’m pretty sure it sets just west of here.

Altered Itinerary by Ron. Lavalette

He drives an hour north to Montgomery’s famous scones; decides to limit himself to a single scone and a coffee because, even as he settles in, he thinks about the bar at Positive Pie down in Hardwick, remembers they have Switchback on tap, remembers how dark and cool one end of the bar can be; how conducive to journal work that — somehow, some time later — ends up published. He drives an hour south and drives another hour south.

Ron. Lavalette is a very widely published poet living on the Canadian border in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. His premier chapbook, Fallen Away, is now available from Finishing Line Press. His poetry and short prose has appeared extensively in journals, reviews, and anthologies ranging alphabetically from Able Muse and the Anthology of New England Poets through the World Haiku Review. A reasonable sample of his published work can be viewed at EGGS OVER TOKYO: http://eggsovertokyo.blogspot.com

Coughing Coyotes by Lori Levy

I try to hold it in, but I can’t stop laughing in these crazy Corona times when a neighbor complains on the Nextdoor site that her order, when it finally arrives after ten long days, is missing the essentials, stripped down to what the store had available: no milk or bread or eggs for her, just ten cans of cat food. The cat, she can’t help adding, is a stray. A friend who wants to bake orders parchment paper for her pan. The delivery boy brings paper bags. Excuse me again when I hear my brother’s story about his walk in the woods with his wife and dog— a respite from Corona news, or so they thought, until they noticed, back home, that their dog had a tick and realized they’d forgotten to worry about ticks. I wash my hands all day in case the virus is camping out in the newspaper, the mail, the food we have delivered, and now a new worry: coyotes have been spotted in L.A. suburbia, including, says my son-in-law, outside our gate one night. I’m afraid to venture out for my morning walk around the block. Afraid of coyotes. Don’t worry, says my brother. Just beware, he warns, of coughing coyotes. I laugh because it’s funny. Or it’s not, but that’s what erupts from me. Even now when a walk around the block becomes a game of dodge the mouths—in case one coughs. Or bites. Or just smiles when I pass.

A Table Among the Weeds by Lori Levy

I could focus on the negative, how bad it is to celebrate a birthday in Corona times. Stuck at home, separated from one son and his family. Backyard a junkyard of boxes and bags: merchandise my husband brought home when he closed his business. Front yard a carpet of weeds.

But the weeds are as green as grass, and when I look closer, I see they’re sprouting tiny purple flowers, and these gems— because unexpected, nearly hidden—are more beautiful, to my eyes, than a bouquet of roses. Still brimming from a morning of phone calls full of birthday love, I am ready to celebrate. We set a table outside, among the weeds, yes, and patches of dry ground, but a white tablecloth, I discover, makes all the difference. We are missing some family, but the others, part of our household, gather with my husband and me under a bright blue sky to have coffee, cake, ice cream: our daughter and her husband, our two grandchildren, our son and his fiancee— who brings a treat to the table, a sweet potato cake with apple slices on top, something new she’s made, and new, for me, means better, more valued than the same old chocolate cake I make all the time, though I’ve made that, too. Our grandchildren follow, thrilled, behind their dad when he gets up to feed crumbs of cake to a squirrel that’s come by, joining the party.

Later I receive a video from my daughter-in-law, a message from the missing ones, my granddaughters, four and two-years-old, the younger one copying, repeating after her older sister: Happy birthday, Savta. I miss you so much. I love you so much. I watch the video again and again, like a favorite movie that never gets boring, the way my grandson binges on Star Wars.

Lori Levy’s poems have been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Rattle, Nimrod, Poetry East, Paterson Literary Review, and Mom Egg Review, as well as in medical humanities journals. Her family and she live in Los Angeles, but “home” has also been Vermont and Israel.

The Weaver’s Tale by Marie C Lecrivain

Now you have told the story of our bed the secret no other mortal knows – The Odyssey (*)

Perhaps you knew, with every stone you laid, post you carved, and strap you tied, the waiting, for me – was inevitable. In our bed, I steered through a score of lonely years, while the tether between us held fast to the olive tree I watered with my tears.

My bittersweet dreams sank into the soil, mingled with roots that spread far and wide like the rumors of your conquests and exploits. I didn’t mind – for the most part – except for when Dawn came through the window to fill the empty space beside me. Mornings spent in your strong arms, my ear pressed against your chest, soothed by steady beat of your heart, replaced by dust motes and silence – this was my true test; the possibility of our golden mean unraveling, strand by slow strand, while downstairs, in the great hall, waited a press of suitors with eager hands and rising ambitions to lay claim to what’s not rightfully theirs.

This was always the moment I grasped the ends of my resolve, wove them together, and held onto hope for one more day.

Marie C Lecrivain is a poet, publisher of poeticdiversity: the litzine of Los Angeles, and ordained priestess in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the ecclesiastical arm of Ordo Templi Orientis. Her work has been published in Nonbinary Review, Orbis, Pirene’s Fountain, and many other journals. She’s the author of several books of poetry and fiction, and recent editor of Gondal Heights: A Bronte Tribute Anthology (copyright 2019 Sybaritic Press, http://www.sybpress.com).

Thinking It Over by Karla Linn Merrifield

Your thoughts are wild-winged things like a storm petrel’s skimming ocean swells, beating, beating, steady on, soundlessly profound. Your every thought feathers my dreams, no twitch, but a tickling of synapses, no twinge, but a teasing of neurons until my brain’s waves alter course and force in flight to mind’s desire.

I awaken, your final thought alit upon my lips like a sea bird’s kiss: an eternal ephemerality.

Ars Poetica by Karla Linn Merrifield

Here is dark morph northern fulmar, one among fifty thousand I will see, precisely as many as my thoughts on the average human day, eight percent of them but echoes of an original— we think, rethink. I have an idea: I wish to be a seabird, then invent the doppelgänger image. I wish to glide far and wide above the Bering Sea as does the archetypal specimen of Fulmaris glacialis who flies into this doubling line to complete the closing couplet.

Karla Linn Merrifield has had 800+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 14 books to her credit. Following her 2018 Psyche’s Scroll (Poetry Box Select) is the 2019 full- length book Athabaskan Fractal: Poems of the Far North from Cirque Press. In early 2021, her Half a World of Kisses will be published by Truth Serum Press (Australia) under its new Lindauer Poets imprint. She is currently at work on a poetry collection, My Body the Guitar, inspired by famous guitarists and their guitars; the book is slated to be published in December 2021 by Before Your Quiet Eyes Publications Holograph Series (Rochester, NY).

A Guided Heart Tour by Shelly Narang

This morning it woke in the darkrooms Between past and the waterway, This morning it beats differently shifts shape of its own accord from bird to the budded branch. It rolls over in the chest, Like sounds of intense gurgles in hotel rooms, a sagged old man groggy with winter, And later skips like a child at the shops Staring at those glowing sites of desire. Sometimes stopping suddenly in the shade, When things and people get inside too deep Else an empty room where the ghosts of the dead wait, tuning through moments. Sometimes it gets bored too, Sometimes elated too easily, Delighting in the sight of cyan orchids, From the room window Or the smell of burned toast It has a few terminals too, They call them chambers, Infinite hallways of longing The arrivals and departures go on and on, Inside the conveyer belt never halts Sending out perpetual luggage, Filled with dreams and a thousand lies. Then someday when someone leaves the heart closes its doors, And locks all its gates too becomes smoke, a wispy lie, curls like a worm and forgets its life, makes a few wrong turns. Heart sits with its hands folded in its lap For hours in gardens and streets Witnessing blue parting in the silk of sky, It does what it wants, takes what it needs, Alive till the flights come and go

Napkin in the Cafe by Shelly Narang

I reached the resort last evening Braided with wild grass and flowers, Notes of music drift through the hills and Here I sit with my thoughts And some residual coffee. I hold its small, hot hand I don’t say, shh! I don’t say, it’s okay. I will wait until I’m done having feelings. The grinder croons heavy on my ears, Crushing coffee beans and pushing Aside some heavy sighs. The girl behind the counter Is making some design with the coffee froth That I cannot fathom. A friend had told me, last night on the phone, those with too many thoughts travel the world more clearly, have a more accurate view of this bizarre world. But days like today, I concede, I’m lost. I spend more time adrift in my mind than cars stuck in traffic in this alchemical winter rain. So, I’m writing this down on a napkin, this little rambling by the cafe. We creak through doors Splash water on our faces. Drink espresso as quietly as we can watching car after car on the road. We’re all looking for someplace to go.

Shelly Narang is a citizen of Chandigarh, India. She is an academic and a poet. She attended Department of English and Cultural studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh for her Masters Program and finished it with top honours. Later she wrote her thesis on South Asian Women Writing for her Doctoral Degree. She was also shortlisted for a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship at University of Texas, Austin, USA in 2008. She was the editor and contributing author of the bilingual poetry collection Resonating Strings (Authors press, 2015). Her poems have appeared in numerous international anthologies and journals, notably The Muse, Indian Literature and several others. She has been working as an Assistant Professor in Chandigarh for a decade and has taught courses like British Poetry and Applied Linguistics

In the Enthralling Buddhist Land by Akshaya Pawaskar

I am a cat with nine lives, for three I play, for three I stray, for last three I stay. In my previous life I must have been a Buddhist as I sit here lost in landlocked Himalayas staring at the Himalayas half dazed and lulled by the incantations in the thinning air of the monastery with The ornate prayer wheels swirling and my knowledge of sanskrit limited to one mantra of ‘om mani padme hum’. Twiddling the concept of Gross national happiness in my fuzzy brain inhaling the fog I feel as unmoving as the log. I see a fly and see it fly without swatting, I must borrow the sense of Dharma at least for now, how could I not in this mystical abode? Its wall running along the cliff, falling down to nothing, a void. Where the Buddhist master meditated for three years, three months, three weeks three days and three hours. And I have been here three minutes inhaling the remnants of his breath to purify my own. Then I think of him, again while I am suspended over a male river Pochu swaying on the horizontal scaffolding draped with prayer flags blessing in red and green. Stiffened with fright, clutching my phone with fear of Returning cycle of samsara- Life, death, rebirth and my karma flashing like pendulum along with oscillations of the Punakha bridge. I think again of how the revered Guru flew on the back of a tigress and crossed the ragged yet overwhelmingly beautiful lands of Bhutan? My vertigo builds slowly But surely as I walk. I feel the weight of the Ashtmangala lucky charm locket around my neck and it reminds me of the strength and vitality of dragon portrayed in their symbol of ‘Druk’ and for reasons unknown even the phalluses painted on their white washed houses and I cross over to the other side where the spicy Ema datshi with its chili peppers and cheese waits.

Sometimes it is all about starting with conquering the small fears before going for the big kill.

Origins by Akshaya Pawaskar

I am the green planet. My figure has been traced with a carbon paper lying beneath me. And all these copies are walking besides me orbiting. Once we thought world revolved around us. Ptolemy must have made us believe so and we didn’t question. Until one day I woke up to feel I am a nonentity I exist as an illusion, smoke form eventually to Be Snuffed out. Heliocentric world as Copernicus propounded Humbled me. Every day I get up in a different bed now, sometimes cozy with electric blankets At times my pores breaking out with the saline water Battening bed bugs. I eat duck’s tongue, lotus stems, and mopane worms. Houses fold and unfold inside my orbital sockets as planes wade in air like shark Watched by radars. Vagrant I cram up my rucksack, an extension of my backbone Like a tumor parasitic It whittles me down to components Of primordial soup from Where it all began. We are all related by blood and birth The songbird, the algae, the weed, the tree, the lion and the skunk And when the Noah’s ark Will float we will be in the same boat. In search of new lands Columbus in us beckoning. We are all nomads at heart. Aren’t we once again moving, searching, hunting, Killing? Utterly primal, utterly lost Mere atoms in a continent Sized matter.

Akshaya Pawaskar is a doctor practicing in India and poetry is her passion. Her poems have been published in Tipton Poetry journal, Indian ruminations, The blue nib, North of oxford, Rock and sling, shards, Awake in the world anthology by Riverfeet press. She had been chosen as ‘Poet of the week’ on Poetry superhighway in 2019, featured writer in Wordweavers poetry contest and second place winner of Blue nib chapbook contest( 2018).

The Taste by John D Robinson

‘You kiss me now and you kiss me forever’ she said: I really didn’t know what the fuck she meant but I said ‘Alright’: I know now of her words, I can taste them, feel the moistness, the sensuousness, the gentleness, it was no kiss of deceit but of truth and surrendering, of merging and she gave herself to me and I to her: that kiss is here now, sleeping across our lips like a car-crash early on a foggy morning hi-way.

John D Robinson is a UK based poet. His poems have appeared online and in print — several poetry chapbooks and a handful of collections. His latest publications are The Sounds Of Samsara (Cyberwit Publishing: India), Sharks and Butterflies (Cajun Mutt Press: USA) and a forthcoming collection, Red Dance, which will be published by Uncollected Press, USA.

Backwards, Before by Judith Sanders

That first evening we were very old. We remembered too much. We knew how vast the emptiness. How crushing its granite weight. So we wailed through toothless gums. Our little limbs flapped.

By afternoon we began to forget. The darkness dropped from us. Our steps lightened. Our hair sprouted, curly and lustrous. We noticed orchids, potato chips, chocolate kisses. The feathery fingers of clouds tickled our fancies. We could shake our hips. We could slash briars. We could light fires.

By morning we lost our way in the milky light. Shapes loomed and melted. We had forgotten everything. Cobwebs dangled and we shuddered.

By dawn we lay in ferns in moonlight. At last we understood the empty language of waves. Birds sang toura-loura and we slept.

Back at twilight everything glowed blue. In dimming mists, edges

blurred. We could not tell a firefly from a star.

Night Journey by Judith Sanders

We clustered in the hotel lobby, dim under distant chandeliers. Friends I hadn’t seen in years. Some were babies again tended by brazen mothers who rolled their diapers into balls. We sang the evening prayers with our eyes closed. Everyone swayed, even the skeptics. How good it is to know the words by heart. Then the wall clock bong-bong-bonged. The widower and I drove off. Rocks jutted among gullies. You’ll like it here, I promised. He brooded as the roadway unspooled in the headlights. Was he recalling her quicksilver gestures while I, plump and tingling, waited?

II.

The lady lawyers invited me to dine on beans aux fines herbes. But I had fled to another house. Down the corridor of blackened particleboard. The family milled and murmured in Spanish. The dark-haired girl put down the baby and led me in a slow tango. You’ll come back and see me, she whispered, her eyes black wine. I could still feel the press of her hips as she melted into the crowded shadows. Then I spotted him, my lost love, loping through the parking lot, his ponytail swinging like a noose. I piloted my white convertible beside him but could not attract his attention. At the asphalt’s crumpled edge, through the jittery willow fronds, he was fleeing his own demon.

III.

At last we arrived at the turquoise bazaar. Racks of gauzy skirts and scarves, all in that lovely Caribbean blue. We sat in the same armchair and talked sweetly of bygone days. But his massive jaw, stubbled like a bandit’s, intruded into the conversation.

IV.

My dear husband sat in a booth of glass and iron. He lifted the pass-through to sell me a ticket and a shot of Island rum. But I had left something on the back burner. I ran and lifted the pot’s charred dome. From the lump beneath, white as an animal brain, maggots wriggled. Ach, too late, again

Traveling Woman Takes Out the Trash by Judith Sanders then hops into the treetops and lobs acorns at stop signs.

Traveling Woman relaxes in a bubble bath in a fountain in Central Park.

Traveling Woman shoplifts a cupcake and donates it to a policeman.

Traveling Woman lobs a cream pie at a copper general on his horse.

Traveling Woman liberates canaries from their pet store prisons.

Traveling Woman cuts the cards with a cleaver.

Traveling Woman plucks clothespins so sheets can escape into the sky.

Traveling Woman passes the morning complimenting clouds.

Traveling Woman orders everything, the pu pu platter and the crepes flambé.

Traveling Woman steals a surfboard and catches the curl in a three-piece suit.

Traveling Woman scrambles up sequoias like a tiger, paw over paw.

Traveling Woman inspects the birds’ nests and chirps architectural advice.

Traveling Woman builds castles in the Sahara and laments the shortage of sand.

Traveling Woman never packs a suitcase. She lives on berries and dew.

Traveling Woman back-flips on every trampoline in the neighborhood.

Traveling Woman ties balloons to phone poles and streamers to the parking meters.

Traveling Woman whistles, and children and dogs flock to her parade.

Traveling Woman jumps onto a float and gyrates the Jerk and the Swim.

Traveling Woman roars at jokes and tap-dances on the furniture.

Traveling Woman stretches on the sidewalk and reads aloud from her latest novel.

Traveling Woman declaims from rooftops about the merits of stinky cheeses.

Traveling Woman stuffs bonbons into tenement mailboxes.

Traveling Woman crashes a wedding, snarfs canapés and smooches the bride.

Traveling Woman yawns in the lecture, then leaps onstage with her bongos.

Traveling Woman is home now catching up on beauty sleep.

Nobody knows when she’ll go traveling again.

Judith Sanders’ work has appeared in journals such as The American Scholar, Light, The Poet, and Calyx, and on the websites Vox Populi and Full Grown People. Her poems won the Hart Crane and Wergle Flomp Humor prizes. She taught English at universities and independent schools, and in France on a Fulbright Fellowship. She lives in Pittsburgh.

Traces by Emil Sinclair

“You would not find the boundaries of soul, even by travelling along every path, so deep a measure does it have.” —Heraclitus of Ephesus

I have searched myself. Gone down every damn highway, back road, country lane and city street; from wide avenues and posh boulevards to grimy back alleys; hiked every forest path and steep mountain trail of my soul, hoping to find you not there.

But everywhere I’ve been, you’ve left traces behind. Like the canyon paintings of some lost native tribe, vanished into a dream. Or the papyrus fragments of old Gnostic secrets, buried in the desert, sealed in ancient jars, dug up by accidental fools robbing graves. Memories of you still etched in solid rock, or seeping up through the groundwater that flows beneath, fire neurons long dormant and forgotten.

I am a reluctant archaeologist of my own psyche excavating down to prehistoric layers of geological strata, hunting stray artifacts untouched by your passage,

or the fossilized remains of some prelapsarian garden of bliss, not cursed with inedible forbidden fruit— not poisoned at the source.

Yet, no matter how far I have ventured, I see no evidence of your absence; nor can I even recall why it was that you left. I keep searching, but I find no traces of myself without you.

Process notes: The first line that came to me is the first line of the poem, “I have searched myself,” which is fr. 8 of Heraclitus’ Cosmic Fragments. The epigraph is fr. 42. For literary detectives, there is another borrowed line in the poem, this one from John Gardner’s novel, Mickelsson’s Ghosts.

No Heroics, Please by Emil Sinclair

No heroics, please. I do not yearn to go on a quest to save the world, a people, an idea, or even myself. I have no desire to fight battles, slay dragons, have visions, or return from an adventure with boons to bestow.

I have no wish to conquer anyone or anything; to venture forth into mysteries, merely in order to solve them. I refuse to steal the ambrosia of immortality from arrogant gods or lethargic giants, too lazy or foolish to guard their own dearest treasure. Pass the holy grail to someone else, and let them take the hero’s journey.

No, I would rather invite the dragon to my house for high tea, served in the parlor. We will share the Victorian loveseat, sip Earl Grey from fine bone china cups, and feast on hot buttered scones and watercress

finger sandwiches. We will discuss my looming death, and how she might incinerate the cancer of my self-regard, with but a single blast of her fiery breath, in due preparation for my final metamorphosis.

If she should reciprocate and invite me to her lair, I will go down into the darkness, where the shadow lives in ashes, dust, and grief. I will go as a suppliant, bearing gifts of fine wines— sauternes and tawny ports— smoked meats and fishes, dried fruits and baguettes. I will bring with me no torch to light the way; only a single candle, so easily extinguished.

Process notes: When the first line came to me, I recognized it as the title of a poem by Raymond Carver, which appeared in a collection of his posthuma, also titled, No Heroics, Please. My other chief inspiration is Joseph Campbell, especially his seminal work, The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

There’s No Time by Emil Sinclair

There’s no time like the present to make amends for the past; to stop lying to the face in the mirror. I no longer shave my beard each day, but I still shave so much truth, to keep myself hidden from me.

If character is really destiny, then I wish I were a bullfrog, singing harmony in the rushes by the pond. Or a robin, digging worms in soft, dark earth moistened by a light spring rain.

Their beauty is their nature; feathers and frog skin, their poetry. Even chameleons cannot help but change their colors. There is no subterfuge, no lie in the soul— the root of all evil, said Plato.

If I could only be like them, I would fly, swim, or crawl

to you, through the rubble of now, without delay. I would find you in no time, wherever you are, to beg your forgiveness, and the gentle mercy of one sweet kiss, to turn me into a fat, happy frog, now and forever.

Emil Sinclair is the pseudonym of a sometime poet and a longtime philosophy professor in New York City

High Trails by Elizabeth Spencer Spragins as thunder thickens storm clouds stalk a fallen sun— footprints of the rain rest upon unwrinkled roads and sink into their softness

~Taos, New Mexico

In the Pueblo by Elizabeth Spencer Spragins doors of weathered wood sag on hinges red with rust as the darkness groans sandals limp behind a cane into soft adobe light

~Taos, New Mexico

Elizabeth Spencer Spragins is a poet and writer who taught in community colleges for more than a decade. Her work has been published extensively in Europe, Asia, and North America. She is the author of With No Bridle for the Breeze: Ungrounded Verse (Shanti Arts Publishing) and The Language of Bones: American Journeys Through Bardic Verse (Kelsay Books).

The Kansas I remember by Greg Stidham is one of rolling hayfields on both sides of I-135 north, from Wichita to Salina, gold grass as far as the eye can see, all the way west to the horizon. A dark drape hangs there, over the earth’s end, though the air smells of sweet mown grass, punctuated only once by the stench of fresh manure fertilizer. And later, the pure clean smell of ozone, creeping over the hayfields, as dusk falls too quickly, and the hairs on my arms bristle before the first explosion of lightning, the drumbeat of hail on the roof preceding even the thunder.

At A Campground In Nebraska In Spring by Greg Stidham

Nothing seems stale, but nothing seems new. I look at everything through a hazy hue, a fog that makes everything unclear. To the west I see a sun setting rustily and quietly, over bare tops of wheat stalks. To the sides, north and south, skies are mostly dark, though no stars are quite ready to glow. Behind, I don’t want to look. It’s all black already, with only highway haze to remind me that there is still light.

October, East-bound On I-80 by Greg Stidham

Brisk Nebraska winds whip colorful early brittling leaves, swirling in circles round the gas pumping into the camper-pulling car. The wind’s warmth belies the onset of autumn’s coming frosts, and the ghosts and goblins come begging on the Eve of All Hallows. Later the western horizon’s gold and rose hues at sunset create a calm camper-bound evening before an early morning merger back onto the frenetic interstate traffic heading home.

Greg Stidham is a retired pediatric intensivist (ICU physician) currently living in Kingston, Ontario, with his wife Pam and their two foundling “canine kids.” Greg’s passion for medicine has yielded in retirement to his other lifelong passions—literature and creative writing.

The Universe and My Backyard by Ivor Steven

Outside alone, stoically I stand Old toes gripping into cold sand Here my lawn cover is sparse But I see the universe in a blade of grass

Under my feet I feel our planet’s ground Above I see a grey sky swirling around As the sun hides behind trees and clouds And my backyard garden grows lush and proud

Inside, I’m surrounded by a world of sound Old fingers typing a rhyme of words yet to be found As the studio rhythm inspires my pen to speak And my writers haven is where dreams flow vivid and sweet

A Chalice of Champagne by Ivor Steven

Once upon a time In the days of rhyme When learning to climb I saw my neon sign Slowly die by design

An angel’s teardrop fell Ringing the church bell And filling my empty well From the tower of song, I wanted to yell But life doesn’t let you dwell

During the monsoon rains I trekked over flooded plains Avoiding delta swamps of pain Scaling the same old mountain again Searching for that chalice of champagne

Ivor Steven was formerly an Industrial Chemist, then a Plumber, and has been writing poetry for 19 years. He has had numerous poems published in on-line magazines. He is an active member of the Geelong Writers Inc.(Australia), and is a team member/barista with the on-line magazine Go Dog Go Cafe (America

Shouns, Tennessee 1961 by Debi Swim

I wish you and I could both be ten again, visiting the house where I grew up on a particular day that piled snow almost halfway to the bottom of the windows. We’d make a snowball and roll and roll till it was as big as we. I would run into the kitchen and sneak out grandma’s old butcher knife and wield it like a lightsaber cutting the round shape into an armchair, then sit down like the Snow Queen. You’d come forward as though to bend in obeisance but instead kiss me on the cheek then touch it with your tongue. I’d be completely shocked and ask why you did that. You’d say you wanted to see if it would stick like on a metal flag pole. I would hurl myself at you in mock outrage and we’d roll around in the snow, clumps sticking to us like frosting. But our cheeks would betray the lie of icy hearts with their cheery pinkness. And, you’d be my Kai and I’d be your Gerda, friends forever.

Friends first make the best lovers in this lonely world You, Kai and me, Gerta

Process note: My sister, brother and I did this once, made a huge snowball and cut it into an armchair style throne. I was thinking about this today in a fit of nostalgia and the idea of sharing it with my husband.

Life Is A Journey by Debi Swim

I can make it sound redundant cause it has been done before. I can make it sound necessary cause people must be born. I can make it sound inadequate cause humanity doesn’t change. I guess I could call it lots of things but it’s been going on so long…

Adam, look around you and help me understand the expedience of life. I heard it’s all about the journey and a destination at the end. But, the question still remains is this journey only labor pains?

Debi Swim poems in West Virginia mostly to prompts from around the net. https://poetrybydebi.wordpress.com/

Unfamiliar Terrain by Alan Toltzis

Driving a new car, in a new town, in grinding traffic, switching lanes, not knowing their curves or my blind spots, fumbling for controls— nothing’s where it should be. The radio grates off-kilter rhythms. The GPS displays the wrong destination.

But it’s not long before that same music plays near the ground meat in the supermarket aisle. Blood pools where cellophane meets Styrofoam.

I look up some night and think it’s morning because the moon is full again, its craters staring me down in bed.

Process Notes: Visiting or moving to a new area can be disorienting and feel surreal. I was trying to capture that experience in this poem.

Texas by Alan Toltzis

I flew into the west Texas sunset, miles of brown-grey plains rigged and pumping under me. The day deepened like love, the way orange paint dies back two shades as it dries.

Process Notes: Sometimes, I carry images around with me for decades before they work their way into a poem. That’s the case here. Once, I watched miles and miles of oil wells as I was flying to the West coast. About 30 years later, after I had painted a door the same shade as that sunset, I was reminded of the view from the window of the plane and wrote the poem.

Alan Toltzis is the author of 49 Aspects of Human Emotion, The Last Commandment, and Nature Lessons. A two-time Pushcart nominee, he has published in numerous print and online journals including, Grey Sparrow, The Wax Paper, Black Bough Poetry, Eye Flash Poetry, and Poetry NI. Find him online at alantoltzis.com and follow him @ToltzisAlan.

Journey’s Breath by Mark Tulin

The old man could hardly breathe, and needed to rest on a stoop His wheezy lungs echo like the sea in a seashell All his friends are gone, feeling hopeless as the winter chill, waiting patiently for an elusive breath

He wonders how long his journey will last, as he ventures home from the market, two puffs of the inhaler go into his chest Life doesn’t have any resiliency left Clogged lungs and sour breath, a place where the beginning meets the end, hoping to catch one final breath.

El Paso Travelers by Mark Tulin

In El Paso, the wall divides one from the other, life from death, the rich from poor, progress from regression

The wall celebrates the division of innocent souls, hungry travelers of fading hopes and dreams

As they journey over one thorny bush to another, eluding the border patrol, they wait for freedom’s angels to carry them over, the last obstacle.

Walking in Sand by Mark Tulin

I slowly walk in different textures of sand during low and high tide puncturing holes in the damp earth with each step

My bare feet land at various angles on both ends of the beach with each wave that breaks and recedes in each moment I feel free.

Mark Tulin is a former psychotherapist who lives in California with his wife, Alice. He has two poetry books, Magical Yogis and Awkward Grace. The Asthmatic Kid and Other Stories is available at Madville Publishing. He’s been featured in Still Point Journal, The Writing Disorder, New Readers Magazine, among others. Mark’s website is Crow On The Wire.

San Lucas Mission by Elise Woods

I first heard about San Lucas when I studied abroad. I was told by a middle-aged professor named Gordon that I should really consider going.

During the week of Semana Santa, it was customary to reflect. Colorful carpets called alfombras were made out of flowers; everyone was quiet during a somber parade.

Tuesday was Market day: All the vendors would gather to sell fruits, vegetables, and crafts. They would sell whatever they could pass off for a reasonable sum.

The children I worked with at the biblioteca Would brush their teeth at school and smile through foam. I stayed five months before yearning for home.

Elise Woods is an assistant tutoring coordinator at Jefferson Community & Technical College. Her work has appeared in The Avenue, The Learning Assistance Review, and SpreeBeez magazine.

End of the Line, Southport by Mantz Yorke

The Pacer 142 – a two-car bus on rails, a decade and more beyond its intended life – bucks, bumps and thumps across the flat farmland until its wheels squeal round the long slow curve into the terminus.

Thirteen platforms were needed once for day-trippers, holiday-makers and people who came to town for work. The day-trippers still come (today, mainly by car) to enjoy the funfair, the air display and the flower show – and, when sun and sea are right, for the wide strand where children can splash and build sandcastles that’ll last as long as a drying wind and returning tide allow.

Now people jet to brochures’ sun: fewer stay here, as I did at the age of nine. No need for all those platforms, so seven are now car parks: of the remaining six, only the ends are used by trains.

This damp grey morning I pace out the length of Platform 5, curious to calculate how many carriages would fit. Roughly half way, beyond the canopy, the stone flags are lichenous and slippery: a long time since passengers’ feet trod these slabs. Per carriage, eighteen paces: I reckon the platform is a dozen carriages long. Now almost invisible at the line’s end, the Pacer is about to depart, not before time.

Schrödinger’s Train by Mantz York

The 11.41 to Liverpool will arrive, on time, at Platform 2. The 11.41 to Liverpool has been cancelled.

So, simultaneously, says the display at the station. I photograph the display, thinking I’ll send the pic to New Scientist. Later, I drop the phone: the back flies off, the battery falls out. I put the phone together: my contacts still exist but Schrödinger’s train has gone.

Mantz Yorke is a former science teacher and researcher living in Manchester, England. His poems have appeared in print magazines, anthologies and e-magazines in the UK, Ireland, The Netherlands, Israel, Canada, the US, Australia and Hong Kong. His collection, Voyager, is published by Dempsey & Windle.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself. It is not far, it is within reach, Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know, Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land. . —Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”