Month: March 2024

Two Poems by Ali Rowland

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The Metaphor of Work

They say “She held down a steady job
for many years” as if it were a wrestling match:
the job floored (literally!) but fighting back,
refuses to submit, a sweating,
heavy body lying prone as someone
counts the seconds out, but very slowly,
for years, in fact, like an interminable
nightmare.

Or perhaps an arresting cop is astride
this occupation, yelling at it to put
its arms behind its back, cuffs at the ready,
jangling metal adding to the symphony
of the street, the crunch of boots on gravel,
the job face down, struggling not to taste the dirt
between its teeth, struggling to breathe at all.

In any case, it doesn’t sound quite right.
You almost start to feel sympathy for the job,
to empathise with its chafing wrists
or shoulders pinned down uncomfortably
on the ground. And the poor thing is steady too,
like your first reliable boyfriend,
or the progress of a large container ship,
or a lucky rock you cling on to
just on the point of drowning.

Something’s wrong, because it’s so often the job
that has you between its teeth, or on a short lead,
steady only in its domination,
always threatening to pitch you if you don’t behave,
whittling you down day by day and year by year
towards exhausted submission.

Better then to say: “It was a hefty job
that held her down for many years.”


Athena

Twice born: once from an insect and then
from your father’s head. It’s a strange start,
but when your pregnant mum was turned
into a beetle and consumed, then
you clearly needed to get birthed quick.

That must have been some journey from the swirling
gastric juices of Zeus to his complicated,
philandering grey matter. You made
some noise there, causing him a headache,
crashing your sword and shield together in his brain.
He called the blacksmith to axe his skull open
and there you were: full-grown and armoured,
ready to begin a life of strategy.

Despite all that, you were your dad’s favourite girl.
Protecting at first the hearth and home,
then diversifying into the arts of war,
but cleverly, not like that blood-thirsty Ares
with his shock and awe, you were far more canny.

No surprise then that you chose your favourites
carefully: Heracles who appreciated
help with thinking through his tasks; Jason favoured
with the Golden Fleece; Achilles who, after all,
despite the sulking, was so much more appealing
than Agamemnon; Odysseus with a cunning
to match your own; and the city, to which
you gave the silver-grey olive tree.

What a wise owl you turned out to be.




Ali Rowland is a poet and author from Northumberland. Her poetry is sometimes about her own mental health disability, and just as often about the world in general. She is assisted in her endeavours by a wonderful husband and a beautiful Border Terrier. Ali won the Hexham Poetry Competition in 2023 and was Runner Up in the Positive Images Poetry Competition. She has been published in Tabula Rasa: Poems by Women (Linen Press): Ten Poems of Kindness Vol. 2 (Candlestick Press), as well as a number of poetry magazines.

Two Poems by Jacqueline Jules

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Dear Son

Sorting through thirty years
of what to keep and what to toss,
I keep thinking of you, son,
three hundred miles away
in a busy house with three kids.

If I left all this for you,
you’d drive down without
your wife and sit for hours,
legs crossed on the carpet
sifting through receipts, searching
for items you remember, the faded
papers sticking to your fingers.

Your father was a hoarder, too.

All it took was a single photograph
hidden in a nest of dental bills
to declare a whole box must be saved.

Old maps from family trips,
my lesson plans from 1998,
a blue ribbon from a spelling bee.

You don’t need to haul them home,
store them in your attic the way
your father did when his mother died.

Each bag I remove from this house,
releases you from the grief of letting go.


Because Her Poodle Died

She says she met her husband
because her poodle died.

A Miniature. Cancer. Nine years old.

Dead. So no need to rush home
to fasten his rhinestone leash for a walk.

Her poodle died, and she couldn’t face
not seeing his wiggling white butt
when she opened the door, not hearing
the click of his nails on the tile.

So she went to a bar with that group
from the office who gathered
every Friday night at five.

And Marvin was there. At the next table.
Somehow, their eyes met.

An ordinary tale, she admits,
before going on to say
they just moved to the suburbs
with a baby and two Beagle puppies.




Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021) and Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press. Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications including The Sunlight Press, Gyroscope Review, One Art, and Amethyst Review. She is also the author of two poetry books for young readers, Tag Your Dreams: Poems of Play and Persistence. (Albert Whitman, 2020) and Smoke at the Pentagon: Poems to Remember (Bushel & Peck, 2023). Visit her at www.jacquelinejules.com.

Two Poems by Lynn White

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Stitching Together

There’s no fabric under the foot
and the machine isn’t plugged in.
It doesn’t need to be now.

She’s dreaming of her treadle
and the hand turned one.
Both dressed her
in her youth
cheaply
and sometimes
eccentrically.

She reads a note from the past
a piece of paper
a tiny fragment
but full of awakened dreams.

She thinks of that girl
sitting there sewing
then.
And now
stitching together
pieces
of a life
well lived
making
a patchwork
of her time.


Like Father Like Son

I wanted to be like my father,
to follow in his footsteps,
or rather,
his wheel-steps
as he drove his tram along the shiny rails.

We played the game constantly to give me practice
but I couldn’t quite get the hang of driving.
I was scared of crashing and tumbling on to the city streets.

So he bought me a Conductors uniform
and a bag for the money and tickets.
He drove and I sold the tickets.
It was a good compromise.

I think about it now as I look down on the city,
with its streets and green spaces
which no longer have trams.

“Like Father Like Son” first appeared in Verse Virtual.




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 a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Find her on her blog or on Facebook.

Two Poems by Miriam Maglani

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Paper Weight

They float in a perfect cube of clear resin,
a set of US mint coins from 1994.
He kept it on a dusty shelf
in his doctor’s office, next to the penguin
wearing a beret I sculpted for him.

We would take family trips to flea markets
so he could look for coins,
dollars, half dollars, nickels, pennies, silver, copper —

he felt their weight and contours
in his deft surgeon hands,
the coins preserved, frozen in time,
memories of a time long gone,

a reminder and remainder of him
and the unquantifiable weight of his loss.


Metal on Bone

When my mom’s friend Arthritis brewed
a storm in her knees,
the simple everyday task
of flushing the toilet made her fall.

She was found crumpled
on her bathroom floor
like balled up toilet paper.

X-rays and scans unearthed
her injury— a break in her femur.

She has metal in her now —
her organic existence compromised
with rods and screws that will join her
in her earthy grave.

Her family has faith in the skill of surgeons,
the fidelity of screws,
the strength of metal,
her mettle,
for the long journey to recovery
that stretches barren before her.

They pray she will be able to walk again,
metal on bone,
bone with mettle.




Miriam Manglani lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and three children. She works full-time as a Sr. Technical Training Manager. Her poems have been published in various magazines and journals including Red Eft Review, One Art, Glacial Hills Review, Paterson Literary Review, and Lothlorian Poetry Journal.

Two Poems by Joshua C. Frank

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Ode to the Cello

Fingered strings upon the cello
Vibrate by the moving bow.
Autumn tones in red and yellow
Echo from the to and fro
Through the eight-shaped box’s hollow,
Out the narrow, curving holes.
Oaken humming sounds must follow
Movements of the bow that rolls.

Violins sing high with tension,
Flutes all tweet like chirping birds,
Horn sounds bubble in suspension,
Clarinets speak notes like words,
Yet my ears prefer the cello
Over winds and higher strings.
None can sound as rich and mellow
As the notes the cello sings!

“Ode to the Cello” was first published by The Society of Classical Poets.


Story Time

The father, he sits on the couch with a book,
A child in each arm, and one more on his knees;
The mother, the same. All the other ones look
Content on the floor; he recites like a breeze.

He changes his voice for each character’s lines,
Whether child or lion or grandma or elf,
And changes his face as an actor designs
When quotation marks signal to be a new self.

As he acts, all the listeners picture the scenes
While the words are transporting them all many places.
The images show on their own mental screens:
The farmhouse, the castle, the characters’ faces.

These books are their movies, their history tome,
Their lessons in civics, religion, and right,
And bonding together with family at home.
Light fades while they’re listening, night after night.

After ten thousand nights touring narrative trails,
The decades have vanished, the children are grown,
And all look back fondly on a thousand great tales;
They continue the story-time nights with their own.

“Story Time” first appeared in New English Review.




Joshua C. Frank works in the field of statistics and lives in the American Heartland.  His poetry has been published in The Society of Classical Poets, Snakeskin, The Lyric, Sparks of Calliope, Westward Quarterly, New English Review, Atop the Cliffs, Our Day’s Encounter, The Creativity Webzine, Asses of Parnassus, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, All Your Poems, Verse Virtual, The Asahi Haikuist Network, LEAF Journal, and the anthology Whose Spirits Touch, and his short fiction has been published in New English Review, The Creativity Webzine, and Nanoism.

Two Poems by Beate Sigriddaughter

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Anticipation

She was born longing to sing, and it looked promising.
Anticipation curled like a blue mist over the future.
There would be princes and frogs, hope
and a handful of gummy bears. There would be
the scent of the ocean before she could even see it,
and billboards on the highway.

Later she learned all adventures are final,
and anticipation remains the one thing better than reality:
the flowers are still fresh behind her ear, every hair is still
in place, every kiss still in the future, the dreams still vivid
like sunbeams in a forest of glass, whirring maybe today.

Reality, like a successful rival, lurks around the corner,
offering a wobbly crutch on which to limp through paradise
with crippled confidence. She wants to decline. Sometimes
she finds it difficult to be so downright unimportant
while the edges of anticipation are filed down,
and everything is rendered harmless.

She is determined to stay brave in her shabby insignificance,
to not wade tamely in the shallows of indifference,
and to not be weakened with genteel obedience
in the wake of the rush of the world.

Sometimes she watches the last flames of winter and stays up
until the east turns red with anticipation.
On balance she prefers anticipation to reality,
though on occasion, with a kiss or a touch of a hand,
reality still takes her by surprise.


A Coming of Age Story

She cried.
Nobody came.
She stopped crying.




Beate Sigriddaughter lives in Silver City, New Mexico (Land of Enchantment), where she was poet laureate from 2017 to 2019. Her poetry and short prose are widely published in literary magazines. Recent book publications include a poetry collection, Wild Flowers, and a short story collection, Dona Nobis Pacem. In her blog, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, she publishes other women’s voices. You can find her on her website or on Facebook.

“The Knight’s Tale” by Jonathan Weinberg

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“Almost 40 children are being held hostage by militants in Gaza.”
– The Israeli Times, 22 November 2023

Come with me across the sea, to a place where east meets west;
And disparate cultures now converge like ripened grapes together pressed;
And ancient vice and knightly virtue, each one has a part to play;
Though much is taken from the past, this tale is taken from today.

There was a man from Syria, his father Greek with vast resources,
His Latin name was Theseus, who stabled winning teams of horses;
He turned the arid land to gold, by digging wells and dredging ditches;
His mother’s heart was steadfast, true; her soul not bought with worldly riches.

Well-read was he in Aristotle, engineering, architecture,
Also he possessed much skill, the living arts of agriculture;
In politics, he was astute, and in the face of tribal tensions,
Diplomacy he wielded-well to broker peace between the factions.

A special envoi to the crown, and much-admired in chivalrie,
He went to quell marauding hordes, armed with western armorie,
Which he discharged with awe and skill, earning both respect and fear,
His reputation quickly spread, this Theseus the Rocketeer.

He fought the cruel barbarian, and conquering a distant land,
Wed the daughter of the Queen, and all were in the Queen’s command;
And with his bride, Ippolyta, flanked by warring Amazons,
To his native land returned, and this is where our story dawns…

The Procession

Now I should here describe at length the clamor of the battle scene,
When Theseus expelled the horde, and wed the daughter of the Queen;
But I have many lines to plow, and weary oxen on my yoke,
So let me jump right to the chase, and when our gentle hero spoke.

Ahead he spies, upon the road, a group of women lined in pairs,
Their heartfelt moans were plainly heard, and from their knees they offered prayers;
A dour look upon each face; and cloaked in drab, ill-omened threads;
They clasped their sacred beads to heart, with darkened veils draped o’er their heads.

By pity was our hero moved, and as his tears began to flow;
Tenderly he met their gaze; his heart began to break in two;
And so he sighed, and said: “Dear women, why such sad and mournful cries?
Could it be the joyous song of my return you so despise?”

One by one the women ceased their requiems and facing East,
They turned again to Theseus, and gradually their sobbing ceased,
And then the foremost lady stood, her eyes half-swollen shut and red,
With bloodless face, she swooned a bit, and this is what that woman said:

“God forbid our tears drown out the joyful day of your return,
But our distress deserves account, so you might know and well-discern;
For while you conquered distant lands, and concord reigned in full supply,
Suddenly, above our walls, our foe descended from the sky.

“At once our men were overcome, for they were numbered just a few,
Then to the desert dogs of war, our husbands’ breathless bodies threw;
They carried off our children fair, and to their labyrinth retreated,
O, will you not avenge these crimes, and see this enemy defeated!”

The woman choked upon her tears, and fell upon her bended knee,
Inconsolable she was, and he was saddened by her plea;
He struggled to console her grief, and as she struggled to discuss;
He helped her to her feet again; she sighed and then continued thus:

“Yet two of them remain behind, they seem abandoned by their corps,
Despite our cries, they rummage through the remnants of our cellar store;
Depriving us of peace and all our precious food and wine they’re robbing,
Too cowardly to face our group of poor and lowly widows sobbing.”

Now Theseus, like lightning, speeds towards the dark and dismal hollows,
And then Ippolyta (as thunder after lightning always follows);
Ippolyta dismounts her steed, and with her strident, warring maids,
Launches heaven’s hell with several rounds of rocket-launched grenades.

Now Theseus moves on the scene, and in the rubble of the blast,
His memory dusts off a pair of faces from his childhood past,
Long ago, torn from their home… now both with bloody hands and head,
Beneath a pile of rubble lie; not quite living, not quite dead.

The Prisoners

Now, let us breath a grateful sigh, and with our story carry on,
Towards this wounded pair draw nigh, named Archibald and Palamon;
Now their accusers circle round, but things aren’t always as they seem,
So let’s not write them off too soon, nor judge them light, nor rashly deem.

For sparse is time to understand all the things which did forego,
Relating to their own abduction, suffered many years ago;
Now both appear to still possess their youth and saintly dispositions;
In time the truth will fully out, with much more at their depositions.

Escorted by Ippolyta, they’re taken to a vast estate,
Locked inside a prison cell, to face their fortune and their fate;
Come evening, through the window bars, there shone a vision in plain sight,
A maiden fairer than a rose, fairer than the morning light.

The sister of Ippolyta, named Emelye, the future Queen,
Praying on her Rosary, she strolls across the garden greene,
And while she prays each mystery, with every Ave beckoning,
The prisoners respond aloud, their Holy Mary echoing.

And what was lost is found again, ancient wounds have been restored,
The wasteland is a fertile ground, thanks to the Mercy of the Lord;
Hidden secrets are revealed, broken wings are now in flight;
The midnight path has been lit up, illumined by the starry night!

The Contest

Now Archibald and Palamon, entering Our Lady’s court,
Armed with arms in suits of armor, join the knights in knightly sport,
With silver from their helmet tops, to silver boots to guard their feet,
Each one with a horse to ride, each one ready to compete.

The courtly knights displayed such virtue: pietye and charitye,
With courtesye and chastitye, and also generositye;
That when they prayed at Holy Mass, and there before the altar knelt,
That never anyone would doubt if virtue in this low world dwelt.

They trained with sword and walked the beam and one-by-one their rivals oust,
And with a blaring trumpet blast, they meet in center court to joust,
With pointed lance in armor bright and inlaid cross of damascene,
In competition with the knights, to win the honor of the Queen.

Now Palamon and Archibald, their hearts were filled with puritye;
Their banners both are lifted high, before the eyes of Emelye;
Both unrivaled were the two, like metals forged in perfect mien:
But just one champ can be deserving of the blessing of the Queen.

The two face-off at fateful distance, on their horses in their armor,
Galloping at full-tilt, riding, clashing in a crash and clamor;
The lance of Palamon is shattered, in the thunderous collision,
Upon the heart of Archibald, where grisly grows a great contusion.

Now in the force and fray of jousting, Palamon falls hard to ground;
But Archibald stays on his mount, suffering his grievous wound;
So Lady Fortune first appeared to favor him and pledge her troth;
And so he rides to Emelye, to claim his prize, to take his oath.

As he approaches, to be knighted, with sacred promises to keepe,
Instead of gracefully dismounting, he falls into a bloodye heape;
The ladies in the gallery cry out in shock and deep remorse,
A raven circles overhead, above his most bewildered horse.

The early moon cries out in song, for he has given up the ghost,
Fallen from this world departed, lifted by the heavenly Host,
In Mercy Archibald will rest in peace with our immortal dead,
And, knighted, Palamon prepares for more foreboding things ahead.

The Sacrifice

Theseus and Palamon, to find the children hostages,
Face the desert winds of sand, in search of subtle vestiges,
A silver buckle, sharded lace, by the children left behind,
The entrance of the Labyrinth, and hidden caves, at last, to find.

Ippolyta has formed a line, and with her colored flagged unfurled,
The men have courage to engage the monsters of the netherworld;
And from the entrance of the cave, into the Labyrinth they grope,
And soon the blinding corridor is lit-up by a ray of Hope.

Armed with Faith invincible, but also with a spool of thread,
To help the men retrace their steps, and back to safety safely tread;
They walk down every corridor, but come upon the place they started,
For every passage always leads them back to where they first departed.

In the Chaos of the maze, when our hero turns around,
To reconnoiter with his friend, Palamon cannot be found;
Palamon has lost his way, like Sisyphus beneath the stone,
Or Icarus before the sun, so Theseus must go alone.

Seized by loneliness and dread, our hero tries not to despair,
But overshadowed are his prayers, by the thickness of the air,
And human bones that line the floor, and emanate their ghoulish smell,
Vanquishing all signs of hope, like Dante at the Gates of Hell.

And through his wanderings, alas, he’s come no further than before,
Then forming in the gloom ahead, there stands the dreaded Minotaur;
With razor teeth, and sharpened claw, and iron horns upon its head,
With breath of smoke, and eyes of fire, which flash to yellow, then to red.

Buckling at the knees, he falls, but deeply kindled by his ire,
He rises to his feet, to save the children is his sole desire;
He’s no match for the Minotaur, who’s gorged on many living things,
Including many humble men, sacrificed by selfish kings.

But just before the monster strikes, which would have been his certain end,
Palamon arrives, at last, just in time to save his friend,
He comes upon it from behind, and grabs it by its bushy tail,
And spears it through its sickened heart, the mortal evil to impale.

And for these two stouthearted men, we near the end of this tale too,
They’re off to find the children now, they bid the Minotaur adieu;
Then up ahead they hear the sound of children down the corridor,
Like daylight in the underworld, bursting through an open door.

Theseus the Warrior, guides them most effectively,
While from the rear, our Palamon, takes his stand most selflessly;
Yea, he makes his final stand, the Knight repels the rushing horde;
The children reach Ippolyta, and rest behind her flaming sword.

Palamon lays down his life, so that the other ones may live;
Indeed, of all the loves there are, there is no greater love to give;
So roll away the heavy stone, and let his soul rise from the grave;
And heed this tale of Theseus, and Palamon the good and brave!




Jonathan Weinberg studied literature at the University of Victoria, in British Columbia, Canada, and Rhetoric at the Catholic University of America, in Washington, DC. He currently live in the Kansas City area and works at the U.S. Treasury.

“our times” by Stephen House

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i know a guy
who presses leaves together
with heavy stone weights
to make trays
he piles up
on the veranda
of his small tin shack
that backs on to a railway line

sometimes i help him work
or just sit near
watching him with his big green leaves
keeping out the day-time heat
writing my travelling words down
into a notebook
or dozing on a grass mat
next to where he stacks the trays

as day slides to evening
by light of lamp
he packs the trays into cardboard boxes
ready for a dawn ride on his pushbike
to wherever he goes
to drop them off
and collect money

we don’t speak a language the same
but our times flow easily
we laugh
make noises with tongues
click fingers
smile warmly
touch each other lightly
affectionately

in the cool of the night
we sit out the front
of where he lives and works
and he goes inside and makes hot sugary chai
and we drink it on the veranda

together
in shared silence
as trains roar behind us
shaking the tin shack
and us

The poem “our times” first appeared in Feral Literary Journal.




Stephen House has won many awards and nominations as a poet, playwright, and actor. He’s had 20 plays produced with many published by Australian Plays Transform. He’s received several international literature residencies from The Australia Council for the Arts, and an Asialink India literature residency. He’s had two chapbooks published by ICOE Press Australia: ‘real and unreal’ poetry and ‘The Ajoona Guest House’ monologue. His next book drops soon. He performs his acclaimed monologues widely. Stephen’s play, ‘Johnny Chico,’ ran in Spain for 4 years.

Two Poems by Christopher Fried

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Old Devil

Most artists encourage themselves as ones
athwart the powers placed at chance, enthroned
to punch up as they claim to be most grown
in judgement while declaring what is fun
and morally correct, and smile to shun
those whose wrong thoughts have earned them the first stones
propelled at them, but right thoughts are just cloned
from the same powers from whom they take funds.
Though three decades have passed since he has died,
the more that one fat Englishman becomes
again as relevant and poignant when
a modern controversy roils those in
good grace, for he enjoyed a cultural scrum
against the literary mandarins’ pens
and stressed his loves—pop culture and mixed gins.


Sundown at Kenyon College

Bent down, he searches for names lost
among the scattered, weathered stones,
the tablets probing distant thoughts
when crouched above some poet’s bones.

Then there’s some noise at the site’s edge,
and eyes upwards, he notices
three huddled students laugh and tread
the graveyard with betraying bliss.

He thinks some sacrilege should be
declared for this cool nonchalance,
but then reflects, “If Crowe could see,
he’d say, ‘They know the meter’s dance.’”

And heading to the parking lot,
though not as glum, something’s not right
he reckons as he views the plot,
but no more time, there’s little light.




Christopher Fried lives in Richmond, VA and works as an ocean shipping logistics analyst. A poetry collection All Aboard the Timesphere was published in 2013. His novel Whole Lot of Hullabaloo: A Twenty-First Century Campus Phantasmagoria was published in 2020. Recently, he was an advisor on the 1980s science fiction film documentary In Search of Tomorrow (2022).

Two Poems by Terence Culleton

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The Nightingale’s a Literary Bird

. . . here there is no light,
Save what from Heav’n is on the breezes blown . . .
                    –John Keats

What other’s ever cozened poets quite
like this one—always elsewhere, scatting away
in thickets cast with gloom? Moon dark or bright,
they hear it and they call on it to stay,
decocting what-all of its old grief may
be left—as essence of a nighttime rose
unfolding for the Hippocrene-ic nose.
Sylph-like syllables compose a word
our warbler in and of itself bestows—
the nightingale’s a literary bird.

Songs are airs, and melodies take flight,
wheeling, light-wingéd hatchlings of mid-May,
on course without a beam of earthly light
through every verdurous winding mossy way.
Song’s light’s from heaven, rimesters like to say.
Songs string wild note-posies: poems pose
truths too liminal for boorish prose.
(This might be thought weak-minded or absurd,
but Philomel has heart-truths to disclose:
the nightingale’s a literary bird.)

Or a song’s a lusty flower, day or night,
and nighttime flowers sing again next day,
reverberating in the soul (it might
be said, if soul there is—or, anyway,
the heart) as, say, an ode or roundelay.
A song, just like a flower, blooms and grows.
It pulses, which is how its blooming goes—
a pulsing of the soul to heavenward
on suppliant wings. It’s true, we all suppose
the nightingale a literary bird

piping faerie anthems: heart-ache flows
and ebbs till chanticleer puffs up and crows.
It is a music every poet’s heard
at night, whereby he—or else she—but knows
the nightingale’s a literary bird.

“The Nightingale’s a Literary Bird” first appeared in Westward Quarterly.


Along the Shoulder

A buck’s dead here about eight hundred feet
from where that little girl died down the road
last year, shoulder-strapped into her seat
spooning a cone, or something à la mode
with whipped cream—sugar’d—strudel dough’d

—whatever you’d imagine—when the truck
hit them. Last night, I guess, this gorgeous buck
leapt out into the lane, mad for night air,
knowing nothing of what we call luck,
good or bad, or happiness . . . nightmare . . .

The dog applies her nose to it by way
of reading it, its death, its breathlessness,
having no other impulse but to stay
sedulously at it as the press
of traffic hurtles past—she doesn’t guess

at anything, breathes everything, so what
she knows is it alone—I think that, but
I also think its beauty, think the pain:
her little eyelids pressed three-quarters shut,
the gurney waiting in the turning lane.




Terence Culleton has published poems in a variety of journals, including Sparks of Calliope. He has appeared on TV and radio shows in Philadelphia and New York and several of his poems have been featured on NPR. Mr. Culleton’s third volume of poetry, a collection of sonnets entitled A Tree and Gone, is now out through Future Cycle Press and has been included in the New York Review of Books Independent Press “New Releases” list. It’s available at Amazon or through his website: terenceculletonpoetry.com, where you can also purchase his other two books, A Communion of Saints and Eternal Life.