Three Poems by Karen Neuberg

 

Sidetracked

I start with the intention to peel

the potatoes for a bubbly scallop

when I suddenly find myself

thinking they'd make better fries

only to quickly envision them

as hash browns for next day's breakfast.

It's like that with my writing -- an idea

comes to me in a way that feels

as if I'm channeling finger to finger

when suddenly "be more wild"

hurtles out of me as though it located

a path through a dense forest and I'm 

in the forest, measuring trunk sizes,

thinking about sentient life and looking

up at light patterns through leaves

while surrounded by sounds of birds

and scuttling creatures and breath.

I'm alive in breath. I want to pull it all

into myself.  Want to share it with the quick

of this world.  I don't want to waste

time or breath on worry.  But, there it is,

always pecking at me.  My liver aches

but I'm not chained to any mountain,

no eagle in a loop to tear my side.

Instead, I'm here with the potatoes

and my latest plan to keep their skins

and bake them, then split and slather them

with butter, sour cream, a dash of pepper.

Somewhere and Elsewhere and Everywhere

Agency of weather.  Of virus.  Of unrest.

Contingency planning, disaster planning.

History bleating, bleeding, bloating into the future into our eyes

crumbling into our bones.

Wind and rain rattling our doorways:

hurricane, tornado, downburst, cyclone, monsoon, derecho . . . 

Somewhere nothing remains upright.

Elsewhere, tremendous hours of watching

what's approaching.  And everywhere, everyone

knowing what's already arrived.

Just a Handkerchief of Thought

Just a handkerchief of thought -- there,

in its corner, the girl on a swing

is me.  My skirt lifts above my knees

& shrieks of joy carry through the years

past the moon and back,

through the waves, at the shore, around

the playhouse, into the kitchen, platter of sandwiches,

bowl of cut melon, my mother, still

young, holding out her arms to give a hug.

How I want to step in, step up

and introduce her to these two boys

whose hands I hold -- her great grandsons.

Karen Neuberg is the author of the full-length poetry collection,  PURSUIT (Kelsay Press) and the chapbook the elephants are asking (Glass Lyre).  Recent poems can be found in Big  City Lit, Nixes Mate, and MAINTENANT 16.  She is the associate editor of the online journal First Literary Review - East.

Three Poems by Robert Cooperman

 

Good Neighbors

They never robbed in the neighborhood,

but would return at 2 a.m. or so, and silent

as a cloaking fog, unload TVs from their truck,

piled them high as Stonehenge in their living room,

and always polite as refugees afraid to say

or do anything to upset their American neighbors.

Once, the family patriarch offered you a monster

system bigger than your living room wall.

You thanked him, but said your son

had already bought you a very nice one.

He tipped his battered fedora, and sauntered

back to his house, with its buzz-cut front lawn.

Hours later, their pick-up rumbled off,

on another foraging mission:  washing machines,

from factory outlets, appliance stores, or private homes?

Discourteous for a church-going lady to ask.

The Lies We Tell

These are the lies we tell

to comfort a friend

whose small, skittish Sheltie

vanished during an evening

of sorcerer-dry thunderstorms:

"She'll make her way back,

just search the neighborhood

and call her name.

"The chance that a fox

or coyote took her

is more remote than venom

from a cobra

in our safe Denver streets.

"Someone found her

and will call any second,

telling you to forget

the reward you posted

on every tree and telephone pole

within two miles of your house,

and he'll bring her around

in a minute or two.

"And of course, the biggest,

most comforting lie of all:

you'll open your back door--

the door she always returned to,

when you let her into the yard--

and there she'll be, wagging

her elegant, impatient tail,

wondering what took you so long."

A Lesson in Gambling

Once, watching on TV with a friend

and his old man, as the anathema Yankees

played the Tigers, I gloated:  Dean Chance

was striking out Yank after Yank.

"They can't touch this guy."

Freddy's dad, who smoked cigars

bigger than Babe Ruth's bat, got fed great,

bloody steaks by his run-off-her-feet wife,

and had guys dropping off paper bags,

and whose mugs I'd seen on post office walls,

smirked,

"Blomber'll hit one out,

and the Yanks'll win the game."

Before I could reach into my first wallet,

Freddy gripped my arm and shook his head.

On the next pitch, Blomberg parked one over

the right-field fence, so short I could've put one

into the stands if I pulled it right down the line.

I sat fuming, not so much for the Yankees winning,

but that they needed to cheat, like the dumbbell-rocks

who threatened they'd make me bleed everywhere,

if I didn't let them see my math answers.

Robert Cooperman's latest collection is GO PLAY OUTSIDE ( Apprentice House). Forthcoming from Kelsay Books is A NIGHTMARE ON HORSEBACK.

Two Poems by Kelley White

 

Pandamonium 

It's a black and white world.  Papa

and Gran.  Momma and Dad.  Skin

that looks gray and purple and red.

You know those old jokes:  Black

and white and red all over.  A newspaper?

A nun chewing on a razor blade.

Lick your finger after you run your 

test strip.  Sweet?  That metallic tingle.

Yes, of course, sweet blood.  Name

the sweetest of them all?  Candy Kane?

Sugar Cookie?  Daddy Sweetums?

Here we are, alone and sour.  Camden

across the river with His Master's Voice.

I have a tuxedo cat.  You have a dog

in formal wear.  So polite, these pets.

'My dog is more popular than I am.'

He got a dozen valentines.  I got none.

The Elite Hunger of Belonging and I'm 

alone.  Along for the ride and he's dangling

his tongue out the window.  I'll finish all

the vegetables on my plate, especially

the peas.  Call me Lima Bean.  Green

is the color of my blood.  Ichor.  Ah,

serum of the Gods.  Tomorrow we may

all twitch and stutter to the beat

of a spoiled neuron.  It's a white

and black world.  You know the jokes.

Phila/delphia

The children have made a new game.

Peacemaker.  One child sits cross legged

atom the slide platform and dispenses

wisdom to the others.  Until she gets bored

and slides down the woodchips.

Another takes a turn.  Perhaps he closes

his eyes, hums.  This is after all, a Quaker school.

Questions are asked.  Advice is given.

Then a quick slide down.  And another climb

up.  They sit atop their world and play at truth.

And Liberty and Justice play together

on the swing.  And a See-Saw for all.

Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner-city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire.  Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA.  Her most recent collection is A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press).  She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant and is currently Poet in Residence at Drexel University College of Medicine.  Her newest collection,  NO HOPE STREET,  has just been published by Kelsay Books.

Three Poems by Ray Greenblatt

 

Play Time

Once our skin was golden too,

as sleek and agile

        as river otters

nosing and grinning

        in and out of the river

sunning on the bank--

        moist bodies tingling

our tongues were fragrant

        saliva heady

our fingers, our members

        explored new lands--

who knows what moments

        we will remember

as our Eldorados,

our kisses then

        were not hollow

wrapped round moral lapses

those sighs did not

        yet croon blue songs.

Daylight Savings

The train sighed to a stop

          2 AM

darkness stretched in all directions.

Couple of distant lights twinked,

lost stars fallen to earth.

I hoped most people were tucked

         in their beds,

not twisted in tragic moments.

Those on the train snored through the time.

An hour given back, in a way,

a golden hour!

What had I done with it.

What had I done

          with all the golden hours.

What would I do?

An engine turned on,

          the train lurched

and we continued down the track.

I Swam at Walden Pond

Surface sparkling

mottled shadows of leaves

          float on the water

bottom silted and warm.

You were all around, Henry,

tramping, taking measurements

and observing . . . observing.

What would you think of all

          the people?

All the development?

The Fitchburg Railway upset

         you enough.

But life must go on

and things always change,

you'd agree readily

         to that.

However, what you wrote

indelible as Testaments

still aids in pointing the way

limning the verities.

Ray Greenblatt is an editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal and teaches a poetry course at Temple University in Philadelphia.  His most recent book of poetry is Until the First Light (Parnilis Media, 2020). He has also written book reviews for the Dylan Thomas Society, John Updike Society and Joseph Conrad Today.

Three Poems by Rose Mary Boehm

 

Counting Sheep

I am trying to recite my mantra:

'aum mani padme hum'.  It's just long enough

to force some concentration and cheat my

brain into believing that getting it right

is all it needs to agonize about.  I sleep

until that aging bladder wants to be emptied,

and after feet on cold floor, broadening hips knocking

the chest of drawers again, I worry that

I might have woken my partner, but daring

to look in his direction I cannot make out movement

or accusation.  My brain lights up and gets to work,

making lists of everything that might be useful

for a little panic.  Will I remember that first line

of my just conceived poem tomorrow? Did I put

some beers in the fridge to be cold tomorrow?

Perhaps I ought to write to my bank first thing or they

block my account! Where will my friend and I have lunch

tomorrow?  (Why on earth should that make me worry . . .)

If the lift doesn't work, I'll have to climb six floors tomorrow.

When was that funeral -- should I have gone?

Do we have onions?

Sleep finally finds me again 15 minutes before

my body knows it's time to make breakfast.

I always love you, life

You have showered me with riches.  You have hurt me beyond

measure.  But I am getting tired now.  I started the battle

early, and the warrior woman's arm is lowering her bow.

I wore a coat of many colours, became what the world

wanted me to be.  Claimed my freedom by melting

into walls.  Sometimes you could see the fissures.

I did what I needed to do in the anonymity of plain sight.

I lusted after the steppes of my mother's forebears,

my long mane blowing in the wind.

My DNA remembered that I honoured the goddess,

cared for the land, herded and told the stories of old.

Didn't know what it means to belong.

But I always was a quick learner,

my deceit well practiced.

You never quite found me out as not of your pack.

About Bread.  Germany, 1944

I can see myself.  A small girl.  White vest, black, ballooning

shorts, handmade. She stands on a milestone, giving her the height

to overlook the wheatfield, trying to see the wave.

In the distance a coocoo calls.

The children have finished picking out the

potato beetles and their larvae by turning over each leaf,

walking slowly through the field where row after row

of the potato green thrives, ready for August.  I see the girl

in front of the big farmer's wife, her apron a sea of colours,

here and there slightly soiled.  The woman presses

the big round loaf against her swelling belly,

cuts it in half and hands her a slice as long

as two of her hands after spreading some lard.

The girl is walking home from the bakery.

The baker lady cut out two coupons from the ration

card. Under the child's left arm a big, crusty loaf.

With her right hand, and an experienced finger, she hollows

the bread through the crust from the exposed end.

At this moment she doesn't think about consequences.

They picked up the last wheat from farmer Braun's

field after he finished the harvesting.  Mother

carried it home in a bag she'd brought.  Left the stalks

to dry on the windowsill, beat out the grains.

She sits, the coffee mill between her legs,

her dress sagging between her thighs.

If we find enough firewood, we'll have

a small fresh loaf tomorrow.

If the train doesn't get bombed,

Father will arrive just in time.

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as six poetry collections.  Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print).  She was twice nominated for a Pushcart.  DO OCEANS HAVE UNDERWATER BORDERS? (Kelsay Books July 2022) and WHISTLING IN THE DARK (Taj Mahal Publishing House July 2022), are both available on Amazon.  https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com?

One Poem by Rebecca Behar

 

Puppets and Pain

Tears for bones fragments

From Ground Zero

Tears for thousands of photos

And one disaster, layers of memory

The Merry Widow takes a gamble

Rewind: back to the 90's, the 70's

The fashion in the 80's was the 50's

I love Radio days, etcetera, I just saw

The Adicts mummified at the MacBa

Linking Park's still good on line

"Waiting for a light never comes"

I just mumble my own life

At odds with my recollections

While the parrot of the retro clock

Squawks "what's new, what's new"?

Rebecca Behar is a French writer, poet and slam performer.  She has published children stories and short stories, CDs of poetry and music, philosophy and literary criticism.

Three Poems by Taylor Graham

 

How They Got Where They're Going

Early memories jammed into 

projects, poolrooms, suburban split-

levels -- what outlaw habits, or one

bad choice, brought them to this place?

Their present bonds are of the psyche

as much as prison bars.

But you come here voluntarily, once

a week, to give theme men a voice,

unchain their thoughts through 

metaphor.  You bring the generosity

of words. Poetry. Your reward:

to see metamorphosis in their eyes.

A Scotty-Dream

Beam me up

to a space I've never seen

and never heard of,

not a tourist attraction nor at war;

some place that's suffered

no human contact

since pre-Industrial Revolution;

out of human time.

I'd wander among plants and animals

left to themselves,

who won't regard me as an enemy;

some place I can't identify

by name or position

on a geo-political map

and -- waking --

can't return to again,

to see how we've changed it

already

in my lifetime.

Letter to You in the Other Seat

Our trip yesterday up the mountain --

you should have been driving, corner of one

eye on the road while you appraised ridges

and canyons -- miles of skeleton pine and cedar.

You'd tell me about the forest coming back

after fires you fought when you were younger,

when you could still pass the step-test.

You'd tell me how this fire was hotter, more

unpredictable, born of climate change.

You'd point to small green coming back --

deer brush, bear clover.  But you're far away

in the passenger seat, while I drive

and tell you what the landscape looks like now;

if you could remember how it used to be --

hardpan forest roads we'd drive, wondering

where they went; their names on wooden signs

burned away now like your eyesight

and your memory.  I'd wait for you to tell me

the forest will come back.  And I'd believe it, if you'd come back too.

Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler and served as El Dorado County's inaugural Poet Laureate.  She's included in California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present; California Fire & Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology, and elsewhere.  Her latest collection is Windows of Time and Place (Cold River Press, 2019).

Three Poems by Michael Estabrook

 

Earth Day 2021

     . . . gale-force winds brought down two

     large trees snapped them right over

     along with a clutter of branches and twigs . . . 

I'm at the Lexus dealership

in Northborough Massachusetts waiting

for my car's first oil change when Otis Redding's

Sitting on the Dock of the Bay comes on the radio

immediately dropping me back 51 years

to Earth Day 1970 --

I'm on the Wagner College campus a month

before graduation and I'm with my brother Kerry

and we're planting a tree

in honor of Earth Day, the very first Earth Day.

My brother's dead now all these years later

cold in the ground but I hope

the tree is still alive thriving in the sun

he'd like that too.

Autumn

     . . . some things are worse

     than retirement you know

     I wanted to remind her  . . .

"Now that you're retired

I'd counsel you

to change the overall mix

of stocks and bonds

in your portfolio from 70/30

to a more conservative 60/40

in order to help ameliorate

the vicissitudes

of an ever more unpredictable

stock market" Danielle

my pretty young

financial advisor advises me adding

"You're in that season

of your life after all."

Ain't Diets Grand

     . . . trying hard to lose weight

     but that blueberry pie

     has my name written all over it . . . 

So I have to pick up

the grandkids after school

make an excuse to my wife

about needing to leave early

for some errands stope off

at Dunkin' Donuts for a half dozen

scarf down two in the parking lot

with my cup of coffee

while waiting for the kids.

At least I'm not hiding booze

in the medicine cabinet

or in my sock drawer

or out behind the garage not that

I've ever done any of that.

Michael Estabrook has been publishing his poetry in the small press since the 1980s.  He has published over 30 collections, a recent one being Controlling Chaos: A Hybrid Poem (Atmosphere Press, 2022). He lives in Action, Massachusetts.  https://michaelestabrook.org/

Three Poems by Karla Linn Merrifield

 

Frolic with the Doctor

He, my first, probably only, molecular biologist

(one who never studied human anatomy)

recommends L'Oreal Collagen Moisture Filler/

Combleur Hydratent; twice? thrice? he smoothed

fragrance-free/sans parfum cream into my face/

mon visage! Oh, divine moisturizer!

He instructed me to use it with -- ta da! --

hyroleuric acid. (Started the ones you gave me,

order placed for more, arriving tomorrow).

He applied his fingertips to my flesh,

across skin and the many bones below:

Femur of a foal

femur of a tiny dance

delicate/sturdy femur

of my beautiful legs' thighs --

smackkissdive

Watch out! I've got

their muscles in spades:

vasus madialis

gracilis

rectus memoris

vastus leteralis

The squeeze is on.

Somehow I don't think you'd mind

if I wrapped my tibia and fibula

around the seven cervical bones of your neck.

C1 to C7, easy-peasy!

A beautiful view

to complete this brief portfolio

of my beautiful legs.

(You said so first)

Now I'm even more shameless.

And the maxilla of my upper teeth

conspire with mandible below

to support my smile when you fuck me.

And before and/or aft,

nipbitenibble thee.

He lectured on the topic

of the intestinal biome;

together we blessed the bacterial

balance of my belly and lady parts,

not without minutiae of mitochondria,

kabillions of cells powering flesh and bone.

Later, I conferred with him about nights

of foot/leg cramps, rude awakenings

despite potassium these past two months:

More hydration necessary, he advised.

Yes, I will get my bone density scan

after I migrate north.  Other appointments

booked: mammo, PCP, gyno, derma, dentist.

One last bone I know is metaphorical,

colloquial, not boned but where blood

rises and -- voila! -- your beautiful boner

between my beautiful legs.

#65: Amana

I rubbed the lamp

of my imagination

and a proverbial genie emerged

in my mind with the notion

of granting my words their wishes thrice.

My words dream

of an Arabian stallion.

Scion out of Al Shaqab --

fine-boned, fleet, proud.

But a dashing young man

appeared from Al-Salt, Jordan --

sleek, slender, muscular, taut --

wielding his proverbial phallus

in this face of this infidel.  Am I?

My words conjure

boundaries dissolved between

our ages, nations and religions,

our culture, languages and literatures.

We are only all flesh, all soul.

My words desire desires,

so I mount my virile malēk,

take his thick equine length

within me, and ride him

hard across the finish line to bliss.

An angel earns his wings.

And the come-true poem has us

entering the sacred Kingdom of Trust.

#64: Tri-fer

My Serbian sommelier

slipped into my suite unobserved,

bearing a sweating bottle of Sancerre

to skip through the preliminaries

of my undressing him from waistcoat

to cravat to crisp white shirt,

bent on below the belt.

My plush virgin-white bathrobe

opened easily to age-gap eroticism

in etrmis:  forty-three years.

There's something to be said

for such a youthful member.  Thrice!

Once upon an ocean liner's balcony,

I knelt between muscular thighs, believing.

Karla Linn Merrifield has had 1000+ poems appearing dozens of journals and anthologies.  She has 16 books to her credit.  Following her 2018 Psyche's Scroll (Poetry Box Select) is the full-length book Athabaskan Fractal: Poems of the Far North from Cirque Press.  Her newest poetry collection, My Body the Guitar, recently nominated for the National Book Award, was inspired by famous guitarists and their guitars and published in December 2021 by Before Your Quiet Eyes Publications Holograph Series (Rochester, NY). She is a frequent contributor to The Songs of Eretz Poetry Review.  Web site: https://www.karlalinnmerrifield.org/; blog at https://karlalinnmerrifield.wordpress.com/; Tweet @LinnMerrifield; https://www.facebook.com/karlalinn.merrifield.

Three Poems by J.K. Durick

 

Crows

I'm sure I could learn all about them

Their situation, their behaviors, and

Their place in the greater scheme of

The bird world, but I like the mystery

Of them, these crows look the part

They can play in my imaging.  Their

Coloring seems sinister, their cawing

Puzzling, as if they are complaining

Or making a claim on whatever it is

They are going after.  The three I see

Every day on my walk seem to have

This neighborhood as their own.  One

Day on a lawn on Greening sharing

Whatever they have to eat, another

Day on a roof on Duchess, huddled

As if planning their next move.  They

Spend their day moving around, but

Join the others at night, seems like

Hundreds who gather in a tree or two

Not far from here.  They seem sinister

Almost dangerous, like all the birds in

That Hitchcock movie getting ready to

Chase Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren

Down the street.  I watch them carefully

And they are watching me.

Walking a Mile

My feet march to the beat of

a difficult drummer

mis-stepped, mis-shapen

draft-dodger glat

bunioned and broken

with the large toe lapsing over

the others

rubbing while I walk.

Sneakers and sandals crowd

and scrape them

as they complain, protest

almost too much.

Then my diabetes doctor

checks them, warns me

with advice I can't follow

off-balanced the way my feet

make me

out of step, always hoping

a cure might happen --

a feet transplant or an entire

person transplant,

the one about walking a mile

in someone else's shoes

but instead in someone else's

feet.

Walking to This

Someone is still in bed, wrapped up

tied up in the blankets.

His head buried face-first in

the crushed pillow.

It's been a bad night, but this is worse,

the day he faces

the stinking mess of the morning

the snake-pit of an afternoon

the numb nothing of the evening and

then another night of off and on

dreaming, waking, and then this.

He rolls over, tries to see the ceiling

as sky enough, the night-light all

the stars he needs

his bedside lamp sufficient sun

just enough moon.

Watches his sky, feels his sun

then gets up to face what's left of

his day,

the part he plays in it --

that is so much like our own.

J.K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor.  His recent poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Black Coffee Review, Literary Yard, Sparks of Calliope, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, Journal of Expressive Writing, Lightwood, and Highland Park Poetry.

One Poem by Edward Lee

 

Bones Speaking with Hard Tongues

Last night I heard

my bones whispering

to each other

in a language I couldn't understand

or even identify,

hard sounds colliding

like stone against stone.

I realized too

that this was not the first time

I had heard them,

all previous whispering

categorized by my brain

as the mutterings

of my own mind,

my thought-processes

with no off-switch,

not even when sleep beckoned

to the point of necessity.

Some nights I would fear

my chemically unbalanced brain

was mutating its depression

into some blunter madness.

But no, it has only ever been

my bones speaking

with their hard tongues,

whispering about things

I might never know.

My bones whispering incessantly,

keeping me awake.

I wish I could either decipher

their colliding words

or they would cease

for a night or three.

Whichever is easier

for them, either works

for me, truly, either

works for me.

Edward Lee's poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England, and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, The Blue Nib, and Poetry Wales.  His play, "Wall", received a rehearsed reading as part of Druid Theatre's Druid Debuts 2020.  He also makes musical noise under the names of Ayahuasca Collective, Orson Carroll, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Bov.  His blog/website can be found at https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com

One Poem by Frank Joussen

 

Checking Out When Checking In

more and more people's lives

in our own Western world

have come to resemble,

amazingly quite obviously,

bourgeois one-night stands

in middle-class hotels,

in rooms with a view

not looked at:

checking out when checking in,

small talk given for small change

with not so much as a 

sideward glance at your 

'I'm-not-really-fortyish-looking'

partner in petty crime,

moving on before truly getting there

leaving nothing but anonymous stains behind.

Frank Joussen is a German teacher and writer.  His publications include two selections of his poetry, one of them being a bilingual collaboration with Romanian poet Ana Cicio.  He has co-edited two international anthologies of poetry/fiction in India and one of short stories in Germany.  His poems and short stories have also been published in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies in Australia, the Republic of Ireland, Germany, Romania, Malta, the USA, Canada, India, China, Thailand and Japan; some of them have been translated into German, Romanian, Hindi and Chinese.  His latest publications include Pulsar (G.B.),  Poetry Pacific (Canada), FreeXpresSion (Australia), Verbal Art (India), and Word City Literature (International).

Three Poems by John F. Keane

 

The Haze of a Sweet Afternoon

Slow moments clad in flame dance between

dormant memories.  Coverts of yearning

stroll sun-slashed afternoon alleyways like

bechoning streetwalkers murmuring with

honey-slick voices.  This is the time, this

is the time to make eternal experience

they say, in the haze of a sweet afternoon

too perfect to endure, and never to return

slow moments clad in flame dance between

dormant memories.  The blazing instant 

lost, the brimming goblet spilt, the afternoon

that might have been discarded in the trash.

Incel in the Rain

outside rain pelts from grey

I ask my Stacylite friend if she

will share her umbrella with

me to the station she agrees

but anxiously checks if people

are mistaking us for a couple

she says the rain has slowed

she must hurry home fast

because Chad is waiting

she cannot endure walking

beside an incel subhuman

with people looking at us

I reach the station soaked

forlorn to the freezing skin

for the homebound train.

The Consolations of Philosophy

Always strive to make the maxim of

your action a universal law because

if you don't then everything we admire

will come to an ignominious and futile

end like a former rock star in a nursing

home, leaving nothing whatsoever of

interest to anyone as the earth spins

through the void towards eternity.

If no one bothered to have any kids

(which is a dirty job though some poor

bastard has to do it) then civilization

and all the achievements of our species

would crumble to dust and be forgotten

leaving vultures and grizzlies crapping

all over the White House floor and

bats roosting in the Bodleian library.

If no one ever bothered to go to work

(even if almost everyone hates their job

except famous athletes and performers

or professional beer and wine tasters)

then society would grind to a halt and

humans would devolve into illiterate

hunter-gatherers with no mobile

phones, coffee shops or hospitals.

Don't tell malevolent lies or practice

fraud because it will erode trust values

turning all communities into debased

and violent autocracies with oppressive

police forces and corrupt government

with everyone being even more hostile

to each other than they already are

(if such a thing were actually possible).

Above all, don't take hard drugs because

if everyone was high on crack cocaine

or crystal meth or even strong skunk

then trains would never run on time and

there would be loads of car crashes and

apps would not work properly because

software developers would not know

their asses from their elbows.

So there it is, ignoring the categorical

imperative and not making the maxim of

your action a universal law will result in

corrosive chaos with ostriches, crocodiles

termites and other low IQ, uncultured

lifeforms knowing jack shit about anything

inheriting the earth, never composing or 

reading poems and being utterly boring.

John F. Keane lives in Manchester, in the UK.  A software developer and securities trader, he has published poems in a number of British anthologies and publications.  These include the Live from Worktown Anthology 5 (2018), the Poetry from the Platform Anthology (2021), Prole (2010), Best of Manchester Poets Volume 3 (2013) and The Bread and Roses Award Anthology (2018).  In addition, he has published poems in a number of international publications including Analog, the American speculative fiction magazine and Jubilat, literary journal of the University of Massachusetts.  He also won Bolton Station's Community Partnership contest in 2020 and the 2021 Ekphrastic Poetry Contest sponsored by the Friendswood Public Library, Texas.

Two Poems by Bradford Middleton

 

A Small Family Reunion (As That Is All That Remain)

I sit here in my room in

This town, my adopted home,

And realize to the north lay

Responsibility and all that

Other adult stuff whilst to my

South, I can hear it on a stormy day,

Is the sea that I occasionally

Dream of riding a dingy to

Freedom over towards the wonders

Of beautiful France and a 

Glorious family reunion.

Newly Normal Kinda Saturday

Another Saturday comes around as slowly

Life returns to some kind of new normal, a

Time when we hope the death of loved ones as

Well as forgotten ones becomes a rare &

Tragic occurrence, as today I sit here with

My radio keeping me updated on all things

Football and the words tumbling from my

Fingers onto this page as with ten minutes to

Kick-off the triumphant roar is yet to come

Screaming from within & right now, beyond

A bit of herb, and the idea of some biscuits &

Tea there ain't much else to do on this, a newly

Normal kinda Saturday . . . 

Bradford Middleton lives in Brighton, UK.  His poems and stories are dotted all over the internet as well as in journals, anthologies, zines and four individual chapbooks.  He is currently looking to sell his latest novel to the highest bidder.  Get in touch @BradfordMiddle5 on Twitter if interested.

Three poems by j.lewis

 

mother macduff

she stands her ground

in somber royal blue

confronted by a coalescence

of coals and smoking sulfur

waits for him to speak

waits until the hissing steam

dissipates away from yellow eyes

lips move and in her mind she hears

nothing she wants, everything she fears

accusations and prophecies

of pain, of trials, of early death

his words shadow the promises made

around this child who swells

beneath her golden waist-chain

who turns, then stills

he will untimely come

but he will not come yet

not for babylon

i watched him sit and weep

there by the river

and i thought that certainly

he was remembering babylon

of egypt's flesh pots

maybe the day the manna stopped

what i could not see

through my preconception

was that he cared nothing

for biblical trials

hanging gardens

or divine sustenance

he only knew his pain

and pitiful impotence

against nature's indiscriminate fury

that made a river rise

to swallow his family

in front of his helpless eyes

only for you

there is violence involved

in existing only for you

a tearing away from others

present

past

and future,

burying alive

memories that will not die

not of their own volition

memories that breathe

seduction and betrayal into dreams

if i am not violent

how can i confront

confound and conquer

the inevitable distractions

the dalilah deceptions

that would strip me of the strength

that binds me to you

despite your best objections

love is and must be violent

there is no gentle victory

in this battle that i wage

to love only you

j.lewis is an internationally published poet, musician, nurse practitioner, and Editor of Verse-Virtual, an online journal and community.  When he is not otherwise occupied, he is often on a kayah, exploring and photographing the waterways near his home in California.  He is the author of four full length collections and several chapbooks.  More information can be found at https://www.jlewisweb.com/books.asp

Three Poems by J.B. Hogan

 

Prescient Vision

Eleven, weak and sickly, burning,

eyes watery, head aching,

breathing shallow, labored,

as when infant, then saved

by loving hands and whiskey

on cloth, now older, alone, feverish,

legs stretched tightly for fleeting

moment without pain, suddenly an

image, clear, undeniable;

prescient vision laid clear in sight,

add sixty-four, another bed, another time,

same fire, same pain, one difference --

the end at seventy-five, the

last time-flickering like film,

maybe just bad delirium, or

self-fulfilling prophecy, best shunned,

delayed, stayed some while more

from final, inescapable truth.

Panic Mode

Sets in at different times, but

mostly later, when there's snow

on the roof or when the shingles

have mostly fallen off.

Things start to speed up and

there's this feeling that time

is running out and you're not

going to reach that goal

that has been your calling

since you were quite young.

You're driven to finish, to

work harder, faster, to leave a 

legacy for somebody to build on, for

somebody to maybe just notice.

Up ahead you see that end date, the

last one, the sunset you won't see, the

sunrise without you, when there are

no more jobs to do, no more tasks to

accomplish, no more time.

And you push too hard, you

jump the gun, you say things

you shouldn't, like I 

love you or I hate you when

you were just trying to shorten the

time it takes to be those things, do

those things, live to the fullest, 

one last time.

But that's all it is -- panic mode.

Ease back, let up on the throttle,

try to live in regular time, as if

these were lots of it left, as if

you didn't know what was ahead.

And calm yourself, relax,

take in the fading sunset

as if it were the first sunrise,

as if there were infinitely

more to come, and that you 

would see every last one of them.

Phases

At first waxing, like the moon,

new into hopeful sliver,

joyful crescent to quarter,

slowly brightening, slowly growing,

waxing gibbous, light shining brighter,

all full, complete, known,

all felt, seen, with perpetual

hope in the light --

yet with time, change,

no permanency brooked,

no lengthy stay permitted,

waning then, no longer full,

slowly dimming, slowing declining,

waning gibbous, at partial shine,

to the waning sliver, the 

final darkness of the black

new moon, this cycle

not repeating, not returning,

the back side of the moon broached,

lightless night, unchanging,

in permanent darkness.

J.B. Hogan has published over 280 stories and poems and eleven books, including Bar Harbor, Bounty Riders, Time and Time Again, Mexican Skies, Tin Hollow, Living Behind Time, Losing Cotton, The Rubicon, Fallen, The Apostate, and Angels' in the Ozarks (nonfiction, local professional baseball history).  He lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

A Poem by Robert Lee Frazier

 

Venus in the Woods

We are the lovers in the wood,

Searching out the secret places

Venus is among us.

Alive, in the speckled sunlight & shady groves

Moving through the trees.

Is there ever really a place

To truly be alone?

We'll let these cool brooks,

And mid-day siestas fill up with our passions.

And hope Venus will lead us

Further on,

To sacred groves

Where love and time may last forever.

Robert Lee Frazier is a two-time Pushcart Prize Nominee.  His poetry has been published in The Houston Literary Review, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal,  and Red River Review.  Robert lives in Hagerstown, MD.

A Poem by Sy Roth

 The Lincoln Continental

Saturdays like clockwork

The gold-colored Lincoln Continental

Stood ready like a behaved dog, ready for grooming.

Sometimes the sky clouded over like a sad groom

Whose bride escaped before the nuptials.

Sometimes a blue sky greeted it

Like a resplendent ocean bursting at the seams with life.

Sometimes the sky was a mixed bag of tricks

Playful children playing hide and go seek.

Rainouts had to wait an extra day

Until the matador was ready as a picador to dispel the week of dirt.

He came out shorted and sandled ready to do battle

While the neighbors marveled with their dark glasses on at an impending nova.

The Lincoln Continental purred with anticipation

Clad only in the thin layer of soot and green tree powder

He attacked it with gusto.

Water cascaded over its sides like a delicious fountain

a Trevi of water and bubbled soap laved the errant child.

The artist at work until the Lincoln shined like a fount of words

Cascading from gleeful rubicund lips and neighbors cheering.

Week after week, when finally the Lincoln stood alone

Outside gathering its weekly dust.

He made a sweeping effort once in a while

And then he vanished into an urn swept up into a sea of his own cleanliness.

The Lincoln was sold

He was forgotten.

Sy Roth looks at both sides now and finds that there is humor on the other side.  The world is a sprightly nymph so he keeps up with the bouncing ball and out comes a song.

A Poem by Diane Webster

 

At Rest

The old woman sits on the park bench.

Her wide-brimmed garden hat

shades her face from sunshine

now too late to prevent wrinkles.

Her cane leans against one leg;

a can of pop chills her hand

resting against her other knee.

She stares at the ground

as a parade of ants scurry

in frantic scavenger hunt.

The woman contemplates

stomping her shoe to smash

as many ants as possible

or playing pool with her cane

to shoot ants into death's pocket

or splash a bit of cola

causing a stampede

to the sweet puddle.

Diane Webster's goal is to remain open to poetry ideas in everyday life, nature or an overheard phrase and to write.  Diane enjoys the challenge of transforming images into words to fit her poems.  Her work has appeared in "El Portal," "North Dakota Quarterly," "Eunoia Review" and other literary magazines.

Three Poems by Ralph Monday

 Book of Tree

She would climb in a white

dress

through feathers of smoke

to watch the rain

through

smoldered eyes

one day the tree lay

amputated

her grandmother

from

the Old World

who

saw light and dreams

in tea leaves 

told

her be not worried

for this is a harbinger

of the dusk of all things

a tree leaves you like

a son, a daughter, a wife,

a mother

these

bruises she taught were

blisters

scrying up like winged

doves through billows of leaf

smoke where the girl

could see all the

sepia and beige evenings

her tongue caught by

a bitter theocracy

The Old Ways

Have been diminished by tiny screens,

where people now look down, the time gone

when most looked up to the heavens.

This is diminishment of mind, of soul, the

spirit dancing in the wind, of flying and

crawling and chittering things replaced by

meaningless text scrawling across lighted

screens like ants walking in file.

The Old Folk in Appalachian hollers

knew how to read the skytext, like now

the moon an upturned bowl gathering

moisture to spill out,

encircled by a one-day ring for the

coming storm that will coat the world in

white after a single turn of the earth.

The Spearhead

The drive to the mountains is alwasy

short.  The return home is brief and my

brother gave me a spearhead, chpped

black flint that he found under a cliff

overhand.

I held it with reverence, awe, at the

artistic skill of how the stone had been

flaked away, most likely by an antler bone,

slow stroke by stroke.

The stone was an earth necromancer

that brought up drums like the creator's

heartbeat faded away down the past's

tunnel.

Stone and bone.

How many times had

the spear been tipped by an animal's 

blood, or another person?

Stone and bone.

The mountains were the blue smoked back

of a sounding whale.

Stone and bone.

All this blood my own.  My future is my

past.  And held the flint to my ear, heard it

talking

talking

Ralph Monday is Professor of English at Roane State Community College in Harriman, TN.  He is widely published in journals.  Books include All American Girl and Other Poems, 2014. Empty House and American Renditions, 2015. Narcissus the Sorcerer, 2015. Bergman's Island & Other Poems, 2021. The Book of Appalachia (forthcoming), and a humanities text, published by Kendall/Hunt, 2018. Vol 2 of the humanities text is expected in 2022.  Twitter @RalphMonday Poets&Writers https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/ralph_monday

Two Poems by Erren Kelly

 

Gumbo

Verity is from the roux, made from flour, spices and ingredients

burned into a color dark as me, no other color which holds truth

Verity is in sausages, which hogs sacrificed themselves, which

artful cajuns and black people made, with spices that sing of the bayou

Verity is from the chicken, I once chased around in my grandmother's yard

which brings the flavor of the south, into a joyful evanescence

Verity is from the oysters, that can hold the pearls of dreams

I open one and zydeco songs cry out to me

Verity is from the okra, green and slimy, yet hold worlds

of flavor, a good cook/magician can conjure out

Verity lies in the shrimps, the jewels of the sea

that nets caught, filled to bursting, as fisherman thanked god for mana

Verity lies in the crabs, my birth sign and spirit animal

always hungry, always hunting, always seeking more

Verity lies in Tony Chachere's seasonings, and Tobasco, which

run thick and red as my own blood, running true

Let this be my doxology, my praise song, I dip my

French bread into, dear heavenly father, give me food of life

your mercy and your love I praise

That I may continue to know the joy of you

all my life long days . . . 

The Soprano Warms Up

and the world becomes an inferno

and all of Italy comes out of her mouth

like Maria Callas, her beauty is captured

in a moment

yet, she becomes infinity

her c note like Renee Fleming

soothes like a cold compress

across the brow

she sings and the world stops

all lace and storms and dreams and

daylight, comes out of her mouth

Caro Mio Bein . . .

and a nation stops raging and notices

how a woman stands alone on stage

fragile as a flower

but holds in her voice, the power of armies . . .