Month: May 2024

Two Poems by Deborah Tobola

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All In

It’s a way of seeing, a way of being in the world. It’s a leap
into the void, stealing a night from another life,
it’s the hook, the snap of acid, soft clacks of the train,
memory raining its silver stories down. I am the daughter
of the Bohunk side of the family, where the men praise
the Teamsters, curse all pipefitters, pound their fists
on the table, pound their fists until the Berlin Wall comes down
and tanks roll out of Prague. I am the wife who forgot to come home.
I am the mother holding the son who shoots into
van Gogh’s cobalt revolt, the mother who scours the sea
in search of a lost blanket. I am the grandmother who is promised
a pirate ring. I am the daughter with the dropper of morphine,
the cancer patient with the bee tattoo and the blank fortune cookie.
I am the witness in the courthouse who sees the indentation
below the killer’s new crewcut, the woman in the hospice room
with owls, raccoons and fireflies. I am the bride in camouflage;
I ride into the wind, licked by the desert sun’s red tongue,
ride past Eppie’s Blue Spruce Bar, with its bright blue rebar,
ride toward the sea and the sea sighs like history or desire, ride, ride
to my pirate who will kiss the blue bruise that blossoms
beneath his hand—no, I am Alice falling, spinning, down
and down the dark hole of the new world. I am the red road
to Barstow and the widow and the widow’s tears. I am a sea bream.
I am Penelope, wed to beauty. I am a Fury.
I am Circe. I am Marie Curie.
I am a rain of birds. I am Persephone, aflame
with alchemical passion. I am an untamed river of light.
I am burning with the knowing. I am a poet.


Instructions to the Bride in Camouflage

“Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.” —Sylvia Plath

You come by horse. You ride into the wind across Rio Arriba, past
Eppie’s Blue Spruce Bar, with its bright blue rebar, and into
the village of Abiquiu. You see little mud houses and bleached
skeletons of automobiles. No white chickens beside a red
wheelbarrow. Not here. You are headed to Georgia’s sacred place
for a writing workshop with women. You want to know if you
should go all in. Your literary ancestors can tell you. But haven’t they
already? Didn’t Emily advise you to tell all the truth but tell it
slant? And didn’t Elizabeth proclaim that the art of losing
isn’t hard to master? Edna reminded you that love is not all
and Alice chided, be nobody’s darling. Normally you avoid
gatherings with people you don’t know. But you are hoping
these women’s poems will unfold like birds of paradise
and sing to you, tell you who you are. You dismount.
As twilight spreads like a deepening lavender bruise, you call
Ghost Ranch. Someone will come to show you the way.

An earlier version of “Instructions to the Bride in Camouflage” appeared in Conspire.




Deborah Tobola has received awards and recognition from the Academy of American Poets, Pushcart Prize, the National Writers Union, the California Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She earned a B.A. in English in 1988 from the University of Montana and an MFA in Creative Writing in 1990 from the University of Arizona. Her memoir, Hummingbird in Underworld: Teaching in a Men’s Prison (She Writes Press, 2019) garnered positive reviews in the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as winning awards in creative nonfiction, social justice, and social issues.

Two Poems by Sahand Farivar

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Dreamer

I was sixteen the first time it occurred
to me that things stand open. What I mean
is, ever since I saw that flower gird
itself in purple petals, I have been
convinced that each and every thing I sense
blooms inward. There I was alone beside
the lake but I was also falling in
the petals kind of like when true love rents
you from the world and tips you downward, tied
to those deep eyes in whom you turn and spin.

I didn’t think much of it then; in fact
I thought so little of it that to say
it never crossed my mind. Besides, abstract
ideas always seem to lead astray
our explanations. Still, today, it’s said
I’m like a dreamer, standing by and blank —
I’m always in my head, that’s how my brothers
have learned to view me. So, once up from bed
I like to go against the riverbank
and watch how each wave turns with all the others.

Then sometimes when the winds are blowing strong
a gull will come by riding on the gales,
thrown side to side but coursing hard along
the torquing gusts. He trusts his widened sails
to meet with chance and craft in it direction,
a dance the sky has asked him to. I love
those stymied mornings when I’m lost and flying
and time is gone. It comes as resurrection
when like the oak leaves tossed from high above
I land again and hear a far bird crying.


Basketball

We thought at first now here’s a kid gone crazy.
He’d come out to this hoop and shoot the ball
all day. We said he must be stupid, lazy
or spooked by life so much he had to stall
his youth in games. His whole mind in a loop,
an arc that carried from his hand a shot,
he’d spot up square or on a move regroup
so as to tarry with the tarmac lot.
But soon we’d come to watch. He had become
a citizen to that old court. He played
the sport as though he had gone blind or dumb
and something else were moving him. He’d made
of his own strange instinct a worldly bliss
where rules don’t change and new attempts don’t miss.




Sahand Farivar is a Canadian poet who lives on the north shore of Lake Superior. His work is forthcoming with Blue Unicorn and Cactus Press Poetry.

“Sonnet 64: The Barricades” by Marc Wiegand

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Sonnet 64: The Barricades

Behind the silent veils of mind,
electric barricades resist
the sensual evidence inclined
toward a vague and distant bliss
which found will fade by slow degree
to the density of night’s machine,
its silence and its sleep.
And when released from (wondering) dreams
that mind may write, but may not speak,
their text becomes the small device
of being (ruled by dark technique),
the arrhythmic beat that will not scan
the mortal clock that plays with dice,
that consciousness cannot command.




Marc Wiegand has attended a number of universities, among these the University of Texas at Austin and the British Institute for International and Comparative Law. He has been an Affiliate Fellow in visual arts at The Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbria, Italy. His poetry has appeared in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Blue Unicorn, The Penwood Review, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, Westward Quarterly, and, soon, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets. He is an international lawyer and exhibiting visual artist who lives and works in the Texas Hill Country.

Two Poems by Katherine Tencza

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A Nighttime Patter-Fall

The lovely lull of a parade of drops
cascading down in a staggered crop
of tuneful keystrokes singly played
in the waiting wood that dreams of day
sends lilting waves of calm to each
its downy touch extends to reach.

It steals into house-quiet, too,
and its melody, though muted, seeks out the hue
of a mind still alive with firework bursts
of delight and disturbance, distress and great mirth,
peopled with places and wonders of old,
arraying a painting of visions untold,
then tugged back to tremors’ and frettings’ thrall
in a struggle that threatens to topple it all –
but the rain finds it, and lays gentle hands
of sonorant cooling on these warring lands,
and soothed it is, to a resonant hush,
the deep-heaved sigh of utter contentment.

Yet why do the drops fall singly?
Would not efficiency demand a sheet?
But beside the need of room to breathe,
their separate specks serve to seek
each leaf, each twig, each flower furled tight,
and with its balm set the strain of striving aright.

And so too for the mind o’erteeming
with chafings of frustration and doubt;
for to each jagged insecurity, each rough-hewn pique;
every flaw, regret, recent hurt,
and wounds old and deep,
it assigns one of its myriads,
to smooth, to still, to keep.


Eternity

Ages endless – what better way to baffle
the else-matchless human brain?
That wondrous, yet time-bound
miraculous cosmic grain?

They multiply before us, extending
in exponential reach;
a stintless string unspooling
in terrifying reams

to the organ that beholds it –
master of all besides –
yet which reels at the immensity
in which it resides.

To avoid vertigo, some bury
their minds in the vise of “micro,”
exchanging the marvel of existence
for an infinitude of petty woes.

They obsess over messages,
unseat eyes in searing screens,
fixate on flickering images
that hold hostage the life they glean.

To them, a day is a litany
of grievances and gossip-gotten news;
an inconvenience is a disaster,
the weather an offense if a degree out of tune.

Yes, some trade in trivialities,
await tasks’ end and amusement’s numb;
But I have my eye on Eternity,
and speak to the ages to come.




Katherine Tencza has cherished reading and writing since childhood, finding poetry to be the most raw form of written expression. During high school and college, she actively contributed to the school literary magazine. For six years, she taught high school English, relishing the opportunity for profound literary discussions with her students. Currently, she is pursuing a Master’s in Creative Writing and Literature. Last summer, Katherine won the Jane Austen Society of North America’s essay contest.

Two Poems by Philip A. Lisi

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Order of Operations

First Tuesday of every month for six,
I drive you to the hospital.
You like riding high in my truck,
seeing everything, even as your legs,
skeletal parentheses in denim,
might not make the step up
after this latest round of chemotherapy.

Outside your house, I wait on your porch.
Always prompt, you appear at the door,
corners of your mouth accented with dried saliva,
math textbook tucked tightly under your arm,
the laminate peeling back from the edges,
no pocketbook, no cardigan
draped over your arm.
I suspect you know its precise dimensions
and calculated its weight
in proportion to your featherweight frame.

Inside the treatment room,
Rosen’s Discrete Mathematics Teacher’s Edition
holds your attention.
Perhaps, there is comfort in the familiarity–
brackets, square roots, variables,
old friends to polynomials, a fleeting balm,
one last attempt to solve,
the calculus of cancer.

Last night, on the eve of your final treatment,
I think about how I cried over the same tattered text
and endless algebraic equations,
sitting at your kitchen table, mind wandering,
wishing your oatmeal cookies
would somehow make the numbers make sense.
Now, abstract calculations take your mind away
from the discrete pain of the needle
and the drip that kills as it sustains.


Among the Hemlocks

Among the hemlocks,
on the shores of Lake Wallenpaupack,
a thick-pelted mink scampers
up and over lichen-coated granite
left dry on the banks,
just out of aqueous reach.

I marvel at her slinky deftness,
her effortless, oily movement among the stones,
her back flexing to match the gentle waves,
rippling astride her hop-dive-curl-stretch:
lovely syncopation in walnut brown.
Then, finally, in mid hop-curl,
she is gone.

My father has made it halfway down
the steep stone steps
that lead to the water’s edge.
From there, I take his hand
and help brace his body,
so fragile now I barely feel
its weight against my arm.

I take care he does not misstep—
a fall would surely mean a break,
the final hobbling of an already
failing frame.

Together, we reach level ground and pause.
We talk about the great blue heron
seen from the window early this morning–
how enormous they must be to take up
so much of the pane at a glance—
and at that distance!
I tell him of the wooly mink,
long and sleek and blink-swift.

My father says little—
A manifestation of his condition,
his neurologist tells me.
But I suspect he is thinking
about the mink with envy
as I offer my arm for ascension.




Philip A. Lisi lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he teaches English at his high school alma mater by day and writes poetry and flash fiction by night alongside his family and the ghost of their cantankerous Wichienmaat cat, Sela. His work has appeared in Sparks of Calliope, The Abbey Review, Litbreak Magazine, Rosette Maleficarum, and the Serious Flash Fiction anthology.

Two Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins

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Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1889

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), an English poet and Jesuit priest, was largely unrecognized for his poetic contributions during his lifetime. Posthumously, Hopkins has been celebrated for his innovative use of language and rhythm, as well as the deep spiritual and nature-oriented themes in his work.

Hopkins was profoundly influenced by his religious faith, which permeated much of his poetry. His critical view of the industrial revolution’s impact on nature, combined with his unique prosody—termed “sprung rhythm”—and vivid imagery, positioned him as a precursor to modernist poets. The fluctuating recognition of literary figures often reflects the evolving tastes and critical frameworks of successive generations rather than an objective measure of their work’s value within their own time.

The eldest of nine children, Hopkins was educated at Highgate School and Balliol College, Oxford. After converting to Catholicism under the influence of John Henry Newman, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1868. His commitment to his vocation led him to burn his early poems, only to be encouraged to write again later by his religious superiors. Hopkins’ poetry remained largely unpublished until after his death, with his friend Robert Bridges playing a significant role in bringing his works to public attention.

Hopkins’ most recognizable poems include “The Windhover” and “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child,” both of which are found below.


The Windhover

To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
    dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
    Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
    As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
    Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
       Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

       No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
       Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.


Spring and Fall

To a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.




The informational article above was composed in part by administering guided direction to ChatGPT. It was subsequently fact-checked, revised, and edited by the editor. The editor/publisher takes no authorship credit for this work and strongly encourages disclosure when using this or similar tools to create content. Sparks of Calliope prohibits submissions of poetry composed with the assistance of predictive AI.

Two Poems by Carl Palmer

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His Limbo Soliloquy

Actually, I like lockdown. I already was before COVID anyway,
but now I’ve got my privacy. No family feeling forced to visit
or hold vigil in my netherworld, he confides through the phone.

Both of us former Army soldiers placing us on common ground
made introductions easier with the usual “where were we when”
comparisons of duty assignments all military members embrace.

Though sharing multiple telephone calls these past seven months
since my assignment to be his companion as a hospice volunteer,
I have yet to meet him face-to-face due to pandemic restrictions.

Using his bedside number at the nursing home I can call anytime,
not worry about visiting hours. I ask if he’s busy, got time to talk.

His answer’s most always the same, Just busy here being alone,
too close to death to complain. Clicking me to speaker he begins
what he calls “me-memories from a time when when was when.”

Mostly musing of being anywhere but there, lost in an actual place,
blurring “what was with what is” behind and in front of his shadow,
recalling dreams as a younger man, of a future in past perfect tense.

And times talking of present times from his no man’s land outpost,
All days end as they begin in purgatory, today recopying yesterday,
cared for by hosts of faceless masked angels not letting me die alone.

Forgive me only thinking of myself, I just need you to hear I’m here.
Inside I’m your age, the two of us sharing a brew at the NCO club,
years ago and oceans away, comrades-in-arms talking of our day.

To me he’s the sergeant with permanent change of station orders
in transition for his final mission, ending his time on active service,
in hopes his God is religious and his terminal assignment is good.


November 21, 1963

He took the harmonica
from the bib pocket of his overalls
blew thru left to right, low to high
back and forth a couple times,
slapped it on his palm
like he’d tamp his cigarette,
one of those unfiltered camels
on his silver Zippo lighter,

He blew a quick riff up the scale,
inhaled it back down,
spun his harmonica around
slapped it a couple more times,
stopped as if thinking
about what he’d play
then smile that smile he’d smile
while looking at her,
start in on The Tennessee Waltz
watching her close her eyes,
hug herself, stand up and sway.

As he played he moved to her side
wrapping one arm around her waist,
she draped both arms on his shoulders
and they glided around the living room
in a world of their own
viewed by us six kids,
all of us grinning and smirking
and making kissy faces
watching mom and dad,
mom singing the words
motioning us all up to dance
that night before our president was killed.




Carl “Papa” Palmer of Old Mill Road in Ridgeway, Virginia, lives in University Place, Washington. He is retired from the military and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), enjoying life as “Papa” to his grand descendants and being a Franciscan Hospice volunteer.

And the winner is…

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Sparks of Calliope is pleased to announce its nomination of

“My Father Remembers” by Laurie Kuntz

has been selected for inclusion in Pushcart Prize XLIX (2025 edition).

Congratulations, Laurie!




Read “My Father Remembers” in Sparks of Calliope here.

In accordance with the contract provided by Pushcart Press, Sparks of Calliope and Ms. Laurie Kuntz will receive a copy of this edition of the anthology, and Ms. Kuntz will be appointed to the editorial board for all future editions.

Two Poems by Audrey Towns

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Stheno and Euryale’s Sister

There was a heckled birdsong through
the window this morning.
An aged peeled-back seal let in
the laughter. I can’t see
how they think it’s funny,
the way my bones
hang like autumn leaves,
and I don’t seem to soar
like I used to…head up up up,
in the crowd, red dress
smooth against tight
skin that could make you
a believer. The crowing, the singsong,
and there was nothing funny about it.
They told me to enjoy it; it goes fast.
But do the birds outside
enjoy flying more just because it
will be over one day, feather-plucked,
scales shed without the fresh body underneath?
So, fly as high as you wish.
No one’s laughing. No one would dare.
Touch the sun before the wax and water take your wings.
You’re immortal. Hydra.
I believe. I believe.
I believe.


Odyrmós

Even catacombs of cacti with broken bowels push daisies.
beaks nurse nectar from their verdant lobes cradled
near cracked areoles, cochineal youths entombed in
bony spines, a festoon of feathers hiraeth for hummingbird hearts,
the lacuna of drumming echoed in long-ago fluvial formed
barrancas of breached bellows, drowning in desiccated
desserts of stone where mortar and pestle grind
fresh herbs for Darwin’s feast of fitness, their children carmine
for foreign tapestries, a death whistle woven through the loom.

As brute beaks break their tender skin, what name do they beseech
when each trip around the sun equates transformation with consumption?
Morrigan? Mars? Apophis? Odin? They have beaks of their own,
feasting upon the slippery skin of Pelops.
          Such cycles make meals of our children,
small ivory shoulders heavy with Demeter’s distraction and Myrtilus’s
malevolence. Gone, the crimson cadence of their cores, lost
to the scorched seas of war, now tomb to the ill-fated dog, her bark
a breathless warning bloomed from parched blue lips, a sibyl
from frothed laurel-eating throats, poison turned to prophecies,
spreading like tendrils of yellow rot in empty stems, a nostrum of violence
quenched by the liquor of lament, torched eyes guiding
like a north star for travelers weary of revenge,
          navigating dark turbulent waters,
a tempest of tears their triumph.

Stars ascend and fall still wearing thick thorn crowns of ancient
cacti or the cochineal robes of conquest; unity is not all hymns of hope.
Grief, breaking and branching from polyped pores,
ribs yawning, callus ripened, not offered, but eaten, where finely formed
glochids pierce neighbor’s dominion, rash spreading, inflamed.

Those closest to the fires of Niflhel water roots with searing
cauldrons of grief, Pair Dadeni, reborn mute, intimate
prayers without alter, they weep ambrosia potions.
How good are tears, how sweet are dirges,
repatriation of splintered flesh, transformation without consumption,
Ι would rather sing dirges
than eat or drink.
 
Through throttled throats held tight, cries
rising, vibrating in the chasm
of their chests, tongue-splitting
siphons, rattling, raging
into a lore of lament
 
and protest




Audrey Towns, a literature and composition instructor in the heart of Fort Worth, Texas, dismantles the nature/culture binary in her prose and verse. New materialism is her muse, landscapes her canvas, and the connection between the human and nonhuman her essence. She has published in several places, including The Stone Poetry Quarterly, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, and You Might Need to Hear This.

“Someone Here” by Kathryn Ruth Stam

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Inspired by Rig Veda and poet Frank Gaspar

The brown bricks in the courtyard offer up their histories of clay and ash,
There is someone here who is the daughter of the moon.
She is awake, having gone where the sky is thin.
She has uncovered the edges of the horizon.

In Kamala’s house, the pressure cooker spins and spits streams of hot steam.
My right hand scoops the rice with my fingers,
My thumb, the trigger.
I did it the way they taught me, the rice and curry airborne.

Kamala told me that she and Narayan were lovers back in Nepal.
I asked her for how long. She said, “Always.”

Once, I saw a goose separate the milky ocean back into milk and water.
Milk is truth and water is not.
A smart human accepts the truth.

If you listen, I can tell you.
Once, Krishna painted the entire world on his thumbnail.
Once, I saw my son’s father hold our baby up in the air,
           the baby standing on his palm.

Trickster is not a common magician or horse thief.
Trickster is driven by appetite.
They know best the places where one must never walk.
When sunset is visible, the sun has already set below the horizon.

Trickster cooked lamb curry and made from it a vulva.
Trickster took squirrel kidneys and made from them a kiss.

What is the world is trying to say to us?
Sky and earth, Guard us from the monstrous abyss.




Kathryn Ruth Stam is a professor of cultural anthropology at the SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Utica, NY.  She writes about the people she has known in Thailand, Nepal, and Central New York, and the joys of getting to know the resettled refugees who are our newest neighbors and friends. Her creative non-fiction work has been published in Griffel, Exposition Review, the Santa Ana River Review, Wanderlust, Flumes, and the Write Launch. She was a finalist for the Nowhere 2020 Emerging Writers Contest with her story, “Elephant Crush.”