Two Poems by Mike Hall

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The Letting Go

Her tiny hand was swallowed in his own,
Intent to steady her unsteady gait,
Guiding and aiding until she’s more grown.
The letting go, for now, will have to wait.

The hand held the bike as she learned to ride,
Its grip, a hedge against her wobbly state,
Guiding her, helping her feel safe inside.
The letting go waits for a yet seen date.

The hand holds hers once again in his own.
Time for the letting go has come at last,
For the hand being given is now grown,
Trusting another as her hand is passed.

The letting go starts with a dose of fear,
But the hand remains poised, faithful, and near.

The tiny bundle in the hand was placed,
Its small size nearly engulfed in his own,
His heart swelling, a feeling fully graced.
The letting go, for now, he must postpone.

The hand holds tight to this new little one,
Recalling another long-ago date,
He, guiding the other, before they could run.
Oh, how the letting go needed to wait.

The hand has grown old with the march of time,
Other hands now guiding with love and care
The hand that served many well past its prime.
The letting go, for them, did not seem fair.

This final letting go is full of tears,
But smiles abound remembering the years.


A Stitch in Time

I looked at the old Singer in the corner,
dust covering it from the lack of use.
This had not always been the case.
Many hours had been spent using the machine
as garments were made – dresses, skirts, shirts, pajamas –
some of them into the late hours of the night,
the whir of the needle resonating as it performed its task,
attaching the pieces which had been carefully cut,
the fabric pinned together, awaiting their becoming one,
the two-dimensional puzzle becoming three-,
the result, more than an article of clothing.
It was an object of pride in craftsmanship mixed with love.
I can remember the smile on her face when she finished,
the joy on the faces of those receiving the gift buoying her spirit,
making the time she spent worthwhile,
but her art – this craft – is slowly dwindling away,
disappearing . . . one by one . . . with her generation,
memories fading . . . vanishing into the past . . .

I turned to leave but could not resist looking one last time.
Maybe it was a trick of the light or just my yearning.
As I looked, the dust particles floating in the light seemed to settle,
forming the outline of her sewing with needle and thread,
giving a faint glimmer – a diaphanous, dreamlike vision.
I smiled and timidly lifted my hand as an acknowledging gesture.
She looked up, returning my smile, then returned to work,
focused on the next stitch . . . intent on finishing,
trying to preserve and protect what once was,
repairing the fabric of time, connecting the past with the present
before the memory drifts away into the ether of bygone days.




Mike Hall is the author of two collections of poetry, Autumn’s Back Porch and Thinking Out Loud. His work is a call for us all to think of our place in this world and how we can be kinder and more respectful to each other. He and his wife, Cynthia, live in the Dallas, Texas, area.

“The Frog at Tinker Creek” by D. Marie Fitzgerald

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“It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.”
   — Annie Dillard, from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

His upper torso clings to the rock,
bottom half concealed beneath
the water’s surface,
mouth agape, body still.

He should be scurrying away by now,
instead, he is letting me come closer.

It is then I realize the violence
being played out below.

Giant water beetle approaches its
prey from behind, sucking out
the insides of the victim,

Therefore, the frog is not moving,
adheres to the rock with his spread-out hands,
horror on his face, mouth a silent scream,
the exhausted skin now opening and closing
like the petals of a wilting flower,
soft as shoe leather.

Finally, the emptied skin leaves nothing of the frog
except the awful gaping mouth, frozen eyes,
upper arms stretched out in a sort of last appeal
as he offers himself to this role he must endure
to its finality.

At long last the face sinks slowly down,
body deflated, face following,
surrender solidified on a frog’s face,

The body a parachute fluttering
slips soundlessly into the water

His acquiescence as serene
as death should be.

“The Frog at Tinker Creek” first appeared in Cholla Needles.




D. Marie Fitzgerald is a retired English and creative writing instructor. She is the author of six collections, and her work has appeared in several publications, most recently Down in the Dirt, Cholla Needles, and Academy of the Heart and Mind. She currently hosts a monthly featured readers series in Palm Springs, California, and runs a poetry critique group.

“The Killing” by Carol Lynn Grellas

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I squeeze the tick between my fingers—
blood stains the soft belly on my dog’s tender
skin. It spreads across her open sore

like a scarlet flower blooming beneath
the sun. Below my nails, deep down
to the quick, a tiny predator lies pulled

to bits. Inhumane in my removal, the savage
that I am, remnants of the unwanted trespasser
linger like an echo from far beyond, a distant

reminder, all creatures, great and small
are always feeding off others for the good
or bad, for the need or want, nothing will

ever be truer than this. And if I stop to listen,
take a silent pause of gratitude in the midst
of my own survival, I can almost hear the echo

after the trauma of one over another, feel
the wind exhale in sympathy—a whispering
rejoice in the celebration of victory or mourning

of a loss, the universe humming its
ongoing chant as my dog licks my finger,
and I apply salve on her wound.

“The Killing” first appeared in The Grey Sparrow.




Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas is a graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, MFA in Writing program. She is a thirteen-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a seven-time Best of the Net nominee. In 2012, she won the Red Ochre Chapbook Contest with her manuscript, Before I Go to Sleep. In 2018, her book, In the Making of Goodbyes was nominated for The CLMP Firecracker Award in Poetry, and her poem “A Mall in California” took 2nd place for the Jack Kerouac Poetry Prize. In 2019, her chapbook An Ode to Hope in the Midst of Pandemonium was a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards. In 2021, Her latest collection, Alice in Ruby Slippers, was short-listed for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize and awarded an honorable mention in the Poetry category.

Her work can be found online and in print and has been featured in Mezzo Cammin, Verse Daily, and many more. She is a former editor-in-chief for the Tule Review and The Orchards Poetry Journal. She is currently a member of the Board of Directors for Women’s Wisdom Art, an organization in Sacramento that supports women’s wellness through creativity in all forms. Her latest collections of poetry, Handful of Stallions at Twilight (Finishing Line Press) and A Shared and Sacred Space (Kelsay Books), were released in 2024.

Two Poems by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

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How Doth Professor Superstar

How doth Professor Superstar
Pursue his shining quest.
His glory awes us from afar.
He dwells atop the crest.

How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly wields his clout,
To welcome all his cronies in
And keep outsiders out.

“How Doth Professor Superstar” first appeared in The Providence Journal.


Anti-Biology Theology

We mustn’t improve our biology
Despite all its limits and pains.
If God had approved of technology,
He would have endowed us with brains.

“Anti-Biology Theology” first appeared in The New York Daily News.




Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had around 375 poems published in a wide range of places, including thirty in past issues of Sparks of Calliope.

Two Poems by D. R. James

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Recycling

When Dad had his easy operation
he quit smoking, cold turkey,
and Peggy and I traced and crayoned

the encyclopedia’s glossy plates.
I gave him a cardinal, a goldfinch,
a blue jay and still know those basic colors,

their cocked depictions. Today, near
blind, he’s ready to hand back over
whatever can’t be moved—some

’20s textbooks, Grandpa’s elaborate camera,
the table saw that hasn’t cut much in years and
years. And I’m trying my best to feel sad

about now but grope around another corner
instead: I see I should settle again,
start collecting for sons who, in another

thirty-five years, will need to help
clear out a house, haul away
quaint power tools, inlaid tables,

floor lamps, a love seat, an assortment
of dusty cup hooks and nails, and
several odd poems featuring birds.

“Recycling” first appeared in Oberon.


The Day I Got My Timing Down

It was in that phase of pure
sarcasm, midteens, when guys
work out an awkward stance,

work their pack’s patter
till they maybe have it. I don’t
really remember the day but

the single-moment wonder of hitting
my first come-back just right
by accident, then their free, true

laughter, my perfect follow-up,
the never-looking-back. From there
a career: from Senior Class Clown

to smooth talker in any crowd to
flip teacher spinning lit to wordsmith
chiseling chin-up come-backs

to the tin-clad sarcasms
every life dishes out as it
disarms or drops you or

leaves you hanging, slamming
its clanging locker door in your
gullible, stuttering face.

“The Day I Got My Timing Down” first appeared in Rattle.




D. R. James, retired now from nearly 40 years of teaching college writing, literature, and peace studies, lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020), and his prose and poems have appeared internationally in a wide variety of print and online anthologies and journals.

“My Bedtime Stories” by Kenton K. Yee

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“Space, the final frontier. These are the...”
I still hear them, the catchy theme songs
that turn evenings to light-years, islands
to civilizations, 3-hour tours to lifetimes.

Mary Ann, Ginger, or Mrs. Howell?
Lucy, Sally, or Olive Oil? I aimed to be
like Popeye or Thurston Howell the Third
but turned into a Gilligan answering to
an overbearing Skipper—but without
an eponymous island like TV’s Gilligan. 

I dreamed of cruising stars and starlets
like Kirk, but morphed into the Professor,
way too spacey to star in my own spin-off.
On my deserted island, only Kirk gets off.




Kenton K. Yee’s recent poems appear (or will soon) in Kenyon Review, Threepenny Review, Cincinnati Review, RHINO, Quarterly West, I-70 Review, Fairy Tale Review, and Rattle, among others. Kenton writes from Northern California.

Two Poems by Russell Rowland

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Angels Unawares

If all the most vibrant feathers soared together—
Bluebirds, Goldfinches, Cardinals,
additional primary colors—we’d get a rainbow.

I had a child tell me once, the sweetest songbirds
are angels in disguise.

I decided she must be one herself, to think that.

And I wondered if the seraphim
in Isaiah’s Temple might have been Goldfinches;
maybe two Bluebirds in the empty tomb;

a Cardinal flock, the twelve flames of Pentecost.

Now, whenever I hear a White-Throated Sparrow
sing on the summit ledges,

I reply, “Let it be to me according to your song.”


Interventionist

Wells went dry, grass crisped.
“Chance of showers” was all that meteorology
could offer us.

Upstairs under the roof at night,
windows wide to welcome the least rumor of rain,

we listened, sleepless—hopeful, but in vain.

It took intervention,
and the interventionist needed to act from a tree
at the edge of encircling woods,

wearing ceremonious barred apparel for the task.
He chanted his mantra,
“Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?”

And at that very moment, the rain began to fall.




Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire.  Recent work appears in Red Eft Review, Wilderness House, Bookends Review, and The Windhover. His latest poetry book, Magnificat, is available from Encircle Publications.  He is a trail maintainer for the Lakes Region Conservation Trust.

Two Poems by Lynn White

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An Alphabetical Error

We had a map,
of course we did!
And the names of the streets
were clearly written
in English.
The names on the streets
were also clearly written
but in Cyrillic Greek,
of course they were!
This was Athens in 1966
and we were struggling
to find the Folk Museum.

Then we had a stroke of luck!
We spied a grand building
with sentries in national dress
standing outside
and we knew we’d found it!
So we went inside
and wandered around for a bit.

It was unusually empty,
the rooms and corridors devoid
of the expected folk exhibits.
A smartly dressed woman
descended the stairs
carrying a file of paper.
We asked her if she had a Guide.
She threw us out!
Of course she did!
The Royal Palace was not open to tourists!

It was to be an unrepeatable incursion.
A few months later the colonels took power
and everything changed
except the alphabet.

“An Alphabetical Error” first appeared in Pure Slush, 25 Miles From Here Anthology.


Where Are They Now?

In 1967, I hitch-hiked to Belgrade.
My friend and I would take an overnight train
to stay with our Albanian friends
in what is now Kosovo.
Until then we had some hours to kill.

The local cafe culture called
and we ate a modest meal,
two great slabs
of the ubiquitous cheese puff pastry
washed down with colas.

We went to the counter to pay
but the Server refused our money.
He pointed to a table where some guys
were enjoying a few beers.
They had already paid, he said.

We were mystified.
They had made no contact with us
and we tried to tell them we could not accept.
They explained that
they wished to thank us
for the help Britain had given in WW2.

Fast forward to 1999
when the right to self-determination was all the rage.
and NATO bombs were falling on Belgrade.
I thought about them a lot back then.
I think of them now
when territorial integrity is all the rage
and the right to self-determination
a forgotten dream.

Yes, I think of them now
when the bombs
fall in Europe
once again.

But I still have my friend in Kosovo.
Sometimes we feel human,
sometimes not.

“Where Are They Now?” first appeared in Topical Poetry.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places, and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy, and reality. She has been nominated for Pushcarts, Best of the Net, and a Rhysling Award. You can find her on her blog or on Facebook.