Month: January 2025

“3 of Hearts” by Royal Rhodes

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

Foolish heart, the tell-tale signs that show
discordant tempo: what was cordial, pumping
back and forth, constricting, then a slow
relaxing, fail in flushing blood. The thumping,
twitching quickly, like contrition late,
stops, a flat line, not a rhythmic wave.
Structured in a diamond pattern, plate
by plate of muscle died. It could not save
itself. For years, like cannibals who eat
their victim’s heart, I gorged upon my own.
Sad, resigned, abandoned to defeat,
the hardened heart had closed to be alone.
And then that rigor mortis ended. Life
began, as love became the surgeon’s knife.

Riven heart, the driver killed today,
crushed by steel, required “jaws of life”
to fight the jaws of death. They found a way
to extricate a heart, and someone’s wife
became a widow, as they scissored clothes
with shears, honed to cut through skin and bone,
to find that heart, and — cutting — then dispose
of mine, the broken one, the vessel grown
deficient in its task, a vital symbol
linked to all that life had come to lack,
badly patched by needle, thread, and thimble.
While naked, I was stretched upon my back.
 From cavity to cavity the soul
filled me with the fractured life I stole.

A rococo box, built of glass and gilt,
exposes on dusty velvet a dried-out heart,
with linen strips on which its blood was spilt
and sopped. Police let a fervent crowd depart,
that had joined when executioners dismembered
the rebel whose death was later termed a miracle,
but whose metric lines were burned, and none remembered.
 From the gallows the dying eye, wide and spherical,
imprinted the faces of men and angels upon
the blood that sealed the heart, and later found
inside its sheltered chambers, like the fawn
who bore a lost child’s name when run to ground.
And when I kiss your sleeping heart, that kiss
raises blood, a relic from our bliss.




Royal Rhodes is a retired educator who lives in a village in the midst of farmland in Ohio. His poems have appeared in: Sparks of Calliope, Last Stanza, Ekstasis, Ekphrastic Review, Club Plum, and others.

Two Poems by Joshua C. Frank

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

Peter Pan’s Soliloquy

In Never Land, each sunrise brings anew
A day of play and laughter to pursue.
I meet the mermaids, swim in their lagoon,
And dance with Indians beneath the moon.
I once fed Captain Hook to Crocodile!
Still every time I think of it, I smile.

Yet sometimes, when I lie awake in bed,
The Milky Way in glory overhead,
A little voice within says, “Peter Pan,
Would life be more fulfilling as a man?
To grow in Wendy’s world, to take a wife,
With whom to join to make and raise new life?”

The fairies died; some new ones came along,
Continuing to troll their endless song.
I’ve played in Never Land two hundred years,
From simple hide-and-seek to dodging spears,
And yet, I’ve never aged a single day.
Am I a creature solely made for play?

My friends abandoned me. I live alone.
They all moved in with Wendy, soon were grown,
And one ran off, with Wendy as his bride.
They soon had children, then grew old and died.
Time massacred them all, but me, he spared
So I could see him murder all who cared.

I played with Wendy’s daughter, but she grew
And then forsook me for a man she knew.
Thus, even I, who never have to grow,
Must stay behind and watch my friends all go.
How dear the price to live this life of ease,
To fly, to play, just doing as I please!

I stare back up, as changeless as the stars.
Leave Never Land for realms of men and cars?
To slave away each day, no time for play?
I can’t. I have no choice. I have to stay.
Yet still, I ask: would it be best for me
To go, to be a better kind of free?


First Dealings with Death

The schoolchildren skipped and scampered at play.
One girl stood gravely, gazing down,
Holding out hands, where a hidden thing lay.
I went to see why she wore such a frown.
A fallen pre-fledgeling! She’d found a bird,
Hatched on high, now wholly perished.
She stood like a statue and stared, not a word,
At the bare little bird she blindly cherished.

I stood beside the schoolgirl of five
And mused and mentioned: no more could we do.
She kissed it to cause it to come alive
And wake (for this worked in Snow White, she knew)—
No definite dealings with death before.
She finally stopped fighting its fate: it had died.
When the recess bell rang, she roosted no more;
She buried the bird, said goodbye, walked inside.

“Peter Pan’s Soliloquy” and “First Dealings With Death” were first published by The Society of Classical Poets.




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 anthologyWhose Spirits Touch, and his short fiction has been published in New English Review, The Creativity Webzine, and Nanoism.

Two Poems by Richard West

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

Requiem for a Sunset

The desert sky is shot with such a red – born of dust and fire –
that creatures pause, the plants submit, and earth itself is awed.
Vermillion is the evening’s gown and crimson glows its edge –
the rocks themselves reflect that light,
the clouds are dressed in it.

Small wonder then, that praise erupts across the desert floor
and from cathedral-canyon depths and mighty mesa spires.
Praise! the white coyote howls, and Praise! the eagle cries,
Praise the Spirit in the sky,
for wonders such that live to die.

And as the livid fire recedes and light and color dim,
choirs of faithful insects still fervent rise and sing.
But I am left to muse beneath that shattered stained-glass sky –
How can beauty be so brief,
that praise itself near turns to grief?


The Worst of Times?

We think the times in which we live
unique – or worse, that pain is ours alone.
But was ever there a time not so?
Has every age not seen the scourge of plagues
and spite of wars through endless years
when kingdoms rose and fell like waves
and empires spread like surging tides,
when religions, creeds, and schemes were born
and half the world went after them?
And what of unforeseen events –
of floods and storms and all earth’s shaking rage
as when Vesuvius spilled its awful fire
and mighty Krakatoa roared
(a shock felt round the world).
Were those times any different then?
Each age has had its own surprise
since that eon long ago
when great reptilian eyes beheld
a meteor falling through the skies –
the day the very oceans fled
and unsuspected, hell from heaven fell.




Richard West was Regents’ Professor of Classics in a large public university for a number of years. He has published numerous books, and many articles and poems under his own name or “Richard West” and other pen names.  He lives with his wife Anna in the beautiful American Southwest, where he enjoys cooking and trying to add flavor to his poems.

Two Poems by Paul Gerard Dalton

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

The Painter’s Eye

By spangled copse, grubbed out delves
past bosky stands
to the sound of distant bells
cross weeded streams
where Ophelia dreamed
sunlight makes its swaggering way
to light the stippled trunks
of youthful silver birches.

All this passed in blurring tones
thumbed in careless smirches.
The painter would have spent an hour
to dab a knife upon the smudges
scything colour from colours,
smearing them to get the changing hue.
The mood of light built up
like thoughts piling despair on loss.

Other pictures intervene.
Spattering rain upon the windscreen
stretches colours into different tensions
hard to tell the woodsman from the trees.
We see the gleaner’s grain
sheaved stalks and forked carts of corn
the horse its load across the field.
Now a lone tractor harvests the land

driver’s music clamped round his ears.
Then bonneted workers in shady groups
all talking with cooling jugs of beer
resting from the race
to get the crop before the rain
moonlight harvesting beneath the circling bats
the chasing of the rabbits and the rats.
Now we drive through Dedham Vale

speeding while the spider spins
missing where the wild things hale:
the shaggy ink cap, the ruddy darter,
hunting, skulking, lurking.
We could benefit to muse for half an hour
imagine Millais on the Hogsmill river
and on the River Stour
be arrested by Constable’s way of working.


Control

Waves turn and turn away.
Fingered water rattles pebbles
like rosaries in hallowed hands
sieving fizz through stones
that freeze and burn.
Day breaks on an empty beach.

There’s a flush on the horizon
a sculptor squeezing clay
reforming the world.
Local artists manifestos
pinned like Luther’s theses
fluttering on a church door.

Indulgent patient patrons
askance at rampant colours
in the swirling tide
try shoring up coasting artists
defying the curfew
on the town’s limits.




Paul Gerard Dalton is based in Southwest London, UK. His first selection of poetry ‘Fielding Memories, Poems and Other Recalls’ was published in April 2024. He is a singer songwriter guitarist and has two solo music albums available online at: paulgerarddalton.bandcamp.com. Recently he has turned to recording spoken word accompanied by tunes he has composed. His Facebook page is titled ‘Poems For The Many’ where he places early versions of unfinished work. In 2024, his poems have been published in The Cannon’s Mouth and The Crank.

Two Poems by Diane Elayne Dees

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

A Final Offering

(an ekphrastic interpretation of George Rodrigue’s The Last Novena for Gabriel)

She kneels before the grave,
her hair in braids, a bouquet
of roses in her hand, and recalls
her wedding day. Sometimes,
she can still feel the brute pressure
on her arms as the red-coated men
pulled her out of the little church.
There was no blessing, no vows
were said. She was forced to sail
to a place called New England;
Gabriel, she heard, was in a place
called Louisiana—a land of giant
oaks and majestic birds
that skimmed the calm waters.
Evangeline searched for him
for years, crossing rivers and bayous,
only to encounter endless strands
of moss hanging from the trees
like scarves of mourning.
And now she has found his final
resting place, a simple grave
under a massive oak. The moss
hangs low over dark, foreboding
branches, forming a sacred arch
to enclose the final prayer—
her last gift to Gabriel, her love.


Le Grand Dérangement

(an ekphrastic interpretation of George Rodrigue’s A Final Look at Acadie)

Four women in long black skirts
and white-brimmed bonnets
stand on a wooden pier,
just a few feet away from a boat
that will take them to Britain,
New York, Massachusetts—
somewhere foreign—somewhere
they have never seen or imagined.
Their husbands, parents, cousins,
are scattered throughout the world.
Some made it to a place called
Louisiana, some drowned, some
were lost at sea, some died
from the ravages of winter
before they ever saw land.

Four women stand resigned,
as the dark sky behind them
foretells a fate that will change
their lives forever. Banished
from Acadie, they have already
met a kind of death. They take
one last look at the only home
that they have ever known,
and prepare to face the whims
of the rolling waves, the terror
of the unknown, the shame
of banishment. Now they must
say farewell and board the boat,
though they do not know why.




Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbooks, Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books), The Last Time I Saw You (Finishing Line Press), and The Wild Parrots of Marigny (Querencia Press). She is also the author of four Origami Poems Project microchaps, and her poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction have been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world. Her author blog is Diane Elayne Dees: Poet and Writer-at-Large.

Two Poems by John Grey

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

That Fire of Long Ago

Flutter of curtain at night,
descendent of ancient flame

when the house that once stood here
was destroyed by fire
a hundred years ago –

that’s why,
within the gentle rustle,
there are shrieks to be heard

and as I slip slowly into sleep,
all around me
shadows throw themselves
against the windows
in a desperate struggle to escape –

flutter of breath at night,
my body fully rested,

though always with the caveat
that it could wake up as ashes.


The Surviving Side of the Family

Where is Mark?
At the beach rubbing oil into Janet’s fine skin.
And Marcus?
He’s from the extinct side of the family.
He has no blond, American grandchildren.

And Dinah?
She’s buttering the corn.
But Magda looked back like Lot’s wife.
And Lot and his missus have no place
on these rolling Cape Cod dunes.

Not everybody gets to be a snapshot
taken by a cell phone,
send from laptop to laptop
so much faster than the speed of history.

The water is light and salted
and filtered through years of suburban living.
There are no flashes of Jeramiah.
Everyone here can touch their nose
and raise their right hand at the same time.
The family tree may be bare on one side
but, on the other, even the third cousins
are accounted for.

What of Donna?
She’s a painter.
And Cassandra?
She’s married and has children.
The genes are in good hands.
They’re spread across the northeast.
Some have even ventured to the Midwest.
And Chloe’s scrambling eggs.
And Jake has travelled widely.
He’s even been to the old country.
No one there knew it was him.




John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Tenth Muse. His latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert, and Memory Outside The Head, are available through Amazon. His work is upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa, and Shot Glass Journal.

Two Poems by J. A. Wagner

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

Visitors

visitors come, all through the day,
when the sun is here, and I am away,
soft September, days are mellow,
bright brown eyes, lashes yellow,
over the woods, to the west explore,
maybe a mile, likely more,
what nectar now, where to go?
daisies gone, hay cut low,
milkweed blowing, ragweed bent,
but one sweet source heaven-sent,
oh yes, still here, far from done,
shyly drooped, flowers of sun.


Next Summer

sweet summer zinnias,
alas, no more,
of those still colored,
maybe four,
all the rest,
though standing brave,
are dry and brown,
too gone to save–
time to pluck,
time to pull,
and gather seeds
till jars are full.




J. A. Wagner holds a Ph.D. in history from Arizona State University and has taught classes in British and American history at Arizona State and Phoenix College. A retired editor, he has written and published a dozen reference works in English and European history. His poems have appeared in Sparks of Calliope, Your Daily Poem, Blue Unicorn, WestWard Quarterly, and in the 2025 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar. He splits his time between Wisconsin and Arizona.

Two Poems by Christopher Fried

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

To The Nation’s Credit

Before he sought the presidential spot
three times, (a losing gesture manifest
in all accounts), he railed against the plots
of slavocracy that had driven the test
of the states, if they should remain. His brother,
at one point, pushed to madness, (what newsmen
had said), knew that men made to rise must suffer
the meting out that causes most to give in.

His friend Fred Douglass knew that service must
be handled with responsibility.
Dear God, Not Mr. Blaine! This antitrust
legislation, the public voice agrees.

Kind words received then helped to face the hushed
retirement, where he sat dull dinners and teas.


Longstreet’s Postbellum Letters

“Bob Lee, you should’ve gone round to the right,
outflanking them that fearsome second day
as then I saw depart from those eyes light
that flickered when came back the wounded gray,
withdrawing from the charge that cracked the south’s
last hope. I knew your stolid heart was bound
with honor for the fallen men. Proud mouths
now closed, the rested were interred in grounds
too many miles from southern soil. Good sir,
I’m still “Old Pete,” your warhorse at command.
Why do they speak as if I lost the war
when only in thought did I countermand
those orders given? ’Cause I sprung my plans
for fostering the brotherhood of man?”




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 by Alabaster Leaves/Kelsay Books. 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). His recent poetry has been published in Society of Classical Poets, Snakeskin, and WestWard Quarterly, and a new collection, Analog Synthesis, is planned for publication by White Violet Press/Kelsay Books in Spring 2025.