Author: Randal A. Burd, Jr.

Randal A. Burd, Jr. is the editor of Sparks of Calliope. A Pushcart Prize nominee, his 2nd collection was "Memoirs of a Witness Tree" (Kelsay Books, 2020). Randal has published poetry in numerous literary journals, both online and in print. Follow him on X: @colonelrandal.

“Names” by Sathya Narayana

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment
They’re names, mere graven names on hidden rooms.
They cannot breathe, can’t see, nor feel their skins.
They’re fluid letters on tombs, discharging spumes
of false compassion, over interred sins.
 
Suffixed were some by noble epithets.
Some names were brands and some synonymous
to crime. Some odd, some bad, some funny sobriquets;
some famed, some strange and few pseudonymous!
 
The warmth of palms touching the frozen stone
and myriad scents of vivid flowers placed
on tombs, those names, alas, can never own.
They’re wailing souls by worldly scents still laced.
 
They’re quiet in wait, under the weight of tombs;
frantic to gain fresh names through nascent wombs!
 
 
 
 
 
Sathya Narayana has been published in a number of print and web magazines, including The Society of Classical Poets, Westward Quarterly, Metverse Muse Journal, Poets International, Saptagiri, Rock Pebbles, Scarlet Leaf Review, and Better than Starbucks. She resides in India.

“Meadow Stalks” by Terence Culleton

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

They point away from where I’m jogging to
as I lean head down straight into the gale
as if against it. Just exactly who
I think I am, they seem to know, these frail
cat stalks and blades, cotton-pods, shreds
and tufts of which, kachooed across the path,
bank along neglected flower beds.
Pushing on in all this aftermath
of hot green afternoons that now survive
as memories of grass and sun and song
and everything unthinkingly alive,
this is my one way left of being strong
and I will argue it against the wind
in stride, and striving, and undisciplined.

 

 

Terence Culleton is a former Bucks County (PA) Poet Laureate, a 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee, and recipient of First Honorable Mention in the 2019 Helen Schaible International Traditional Sonnet Contest. Terence has published two collections of formally crafted narrative and lyric poems, A Communion of Saints (2011) and Eternal Life (2015), both with Anaphora Literary Press. Poems from his forthcoming collection of sonnets, A Tree and Gone (FutureCycle Press), have recently appeared in Antiphon, The Lyric, The Eclectic Muse, Innisfree, The Road Not Taken (including Feature Poem), Blue Unicorn Review, and Raintown Review. 

“The Weight of Glory” by Stephen Kingsnorth

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 1 Comment

The crossroad, not spun golden sun,
unwelcome choice when others bathe,
reflected in the glitz and shine,
opaque this ruby, jewel of crown.
That glisten, spikes, where droplets fall,
hung iridescent rolling pearls,
orb sign tells claim, as kingdom ruled,
but gate to splendour, throne or tree?

This game of thrones, of monarchy,
the question posed, where glory lies,
under the heavy weight of state –
as nation, wealth – or sacrifice?
We wait to find willed testament,
inheritance of judgments made;
what revelations will we face,
reign auric son, resplendent, death?




Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales from ministry in the Methodist Church, has had over 150 pieces published by online poetry sites, including Sparks of Calliope, printed journals and anthologies. https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/

“A Brief Epitaph” by Satyananda Sarangi

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

His days are done and nights have claimed his breath,
As crickets lull truncated lives to rest;
His fragile dreams now fled were never blessed
But may he find eternal life in death.

The flowers grow and wither year by year,
And thorny stalks then grace this ground in awe;
Whose deep endearment dare invite the thaw?
Where every bead of snow’s a frozen tear.

The gravestone reads, ‘The songs of heart will die,
The feelings come to mould, and love to dust;
A sole, unwilling sigh to bid goodbye
Can wreck my pleasant sleep beneath the crust.

If someone’s loss reminds him, words betray,
Unread his book of fame can’t add a page;
My dormant lines won’t ever let him stray,
And soothe the blows of fortune’s deadly rage.’

There lies his tombstone marred by disregard,
While dappled moonlight shines upon the bard.

 

 

Satyananda Sarangi is a young civil servant by profession. A graduate in electrical engineering from IGIT Sarang, his works have been featured in The Society of Classical Poets, Snakeskin, Page & Spine, Glass: Facets of Poetry, WestWard Quarterly, The GreenSilk Journal and elsewhere. Currently, he resides in Odisha, India.

“Hope of Heaven” by John Wiley

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

I wash my face in coldest water,
drawn from the well of her absence,
haunted by her warmth,
her felt, bodiless presence…

she’s warm on my back,
shining before me in simple things,
a dense, amber light,
vanishing as I turn to look for her.

She gathers me in,
but my heart drops like a stone.
She takes my hands in her smaller ones.
Her hands are strong;

she’s done hard work.
Our hands have the immediate,
unconscious fit of familiar tools.
Then her eyes crystallize before mine,

warm, clear, impossibly deep –
I have no idea what she sees –
and she grants me the benediction
I will never hear on this earth:

I know you.

My eyes close,
her forehead touches mine,
she takes my face in her hands,
and dissolves.

 

 

John Wiley started as a ballet dancer and turned to poetry when his knees finally gave out for good.  His work has appeared in Terror House Magazine, grand little things, and The Writing Disorder among other publications.  He lives in a California beach town, teaches English online, and is the editor of Unpublishable Poetry, a new online magazine coming out soon.

“White-Breasted Nuthatch” by Charles Weld

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

Agile as a yogi, and with a squirrel’s ability
to run head first down the trunk of a tree,
this over-dressed bird—white tie and gray cutaway—
doesn’t let spruceness get in the way
of continual snacking which usually means snatching
a seed from a tray, retreating to a branch
to wedge it in a crevice, and dispatch it
there by hacking or hatching with a bill like a hatchet.
I’ve heard that nuthatches are also good at catching
falling mast in midair, a handy talent in nut avalanche
years. Their yank yank has the clarity of a coxswain’s
command, calling us, as autumn begins
its work on the woodland, to pull hard, not numb
or otherwise try to escape from what we know is to come.

 

 

Charles Weld has appeared in many literary magazines: Snakeskin, Southern Poetry Review, The Evansville Review, Worcester Review, Tampa Review, CT Review, Friends Journal, Vita Brevis, Better Than Starbucks, etc. Pudding House published a chapbook of his poems, Country I Would Settle In, in 2004. Kattywompus Press published another chapbook, Who Cooks For You? in 2012. His poems were included in FootHills Publishing’s anthology Birdsong in 2017. A retired mental health counselor/administrator now working part-time in an agency treating youth, Charles lives in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.

“Parkinson’s, Stage Four” by Celine Low

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

Beside my bed an old black and white picture: she, veiled
white against my black suit, we stand
back against the world.

I gave her my world. She was not afraid
to take it. She made it
hers. I seeded her garden and grow

reversed, sinking
into earth, limbs sick
with black spots.

Sometimes the head shakes, cries
against my will. I will
be dead soon. When I began

to wet the bed she began
to need her own space.
On the bed I’m still

leaving a hole
for her in the crook
of where my arm was.

 

first appeared in Literary Yard

 

 

Celine Low is a nomad writer, painter, dancer and bathroom-singer. She holds an MA in English Literature, and her writing is either published or forthcoming in the Muddy River Poetry Review, Fifty Word Stories, One Sentence Poems, BALLOONS Literary Journal, and 9Tales from Elsewhere, among others. You can find her on Instagram @_ckye.

“The College Boys” by Robert Nisbet

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

We courted manhood, ten years on
from urchinhood, and that wide
green playing field sloping down
from Barn Street Primary for Boys.
We wore cords now, sometimes smoked pipes,
graced cafés with our suave mid-
morning selves. The future, like a
ripening nut, was still to be, to be.
But progress, high degree, were all.
My stories, when I talked of them,
lay in a pool of puzzlement.
And then, years on, my stories drew
first breath. Now, these last few
months, I’ve met two of those boys,
who’ve really had (and I’m glad for them,
glad for them) success and high degree.
But my stories they knew too (mothers

and sisters had sent them on, of course).
They talked of them with affection,
with the pleasure people seem to feel
when a boyhood friend has cheeked
the beak, has cracked a conker on
the swot’s knuckles, in some way kept
the faith, the faith of urchinhood
remembered – and that wide green field

 

 

Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet who once read for an American President, when ex-President and poet Jimmy Carter was guest of honour at the opening of the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea in 1995. Nisbet is a Pushcart Prize nominee for “Cultivation” (Sparks of Calliope, 2019).

“A Girl Left Behind” by Madlynn Haber

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

A crow’s feather lands on the path I walk
calling for me to write about my father,
to play with pain, poking an old wound,
watching it bleed, again.

That wound oozes a sticky sweet sadness.
He was my lonely soul’s romantic calling.
I am tears and clenched fists.

On nights when the moon is covered
by translucent clouds, I remember
his leaving in a yellow taxi.

I weep for the girl I was.
The one left behind.

 

 

Madlynn Haber lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.  Her work has been published in the anthology Letters to Fathers from Daughters, in Anchor Magazine, Exit 13 Magazine and on websites including: A Gathering of the Tribes, The Voices Project, The Jewish Writing Project, Quail Bell Magazine, Mused Literary Review, Hevria, Right Hand Pointing, Mothers Always Write, Mum Life Stories, Random Sample, and Club Plum Literary Journal. You can view her work at www.madlynnwrites.com

“The Geography of Age” by Maurice O’Sullivan

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 1 Comment

We age with grit and sometimes grace.
As time and wisdom forge our face,
We rest assured that it will show
A life well lived on earth’s plateau.
But when I see the mirror’s truth,
That lost geography of youth,
With East and West now shifting South,
And tighter lines around my mouth,
A Northern pole of thinning hair—
Recalling Prufrock’s unasked dare—
I know that image staring back
Cannot be me. No, not that wrack.
No topographical relief
Can shake my firmly held belief
That no tectonic shift that vast
Could so unterraform my past.

I know my zenith lies ahead
Beyond those fault zones I now dread.
Perhaps some glowing distant star
Will offer me an avatar.
My molecules transmogrified,
My mind now free to be my guide,
I’ll soar, defying time and space,
My ashes resting in their vase.

 

Maurice O’Sullivan, a former teamster, jail guard and pub owner, is an award-winning teacher, editor, columnist, and film maker who lives in Orlando, Florida. His most recent book, Have You Not Hard of Floryda, is a survey of 300 years of Florida’s colonial literature.