Category: Poetry

Two Poems by John Tustin

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Forgotten

Forgotten
like the first kiss
with an almost-stranger
you only kissed one early morning,
years ago.
You told yourself
that you kissed her
just to pass a little time
and you’ve believed it
ever since.

You remember the bus station
and sitting there with her
at three A.M.,
just you and her
and an old man dozing
far off in the corner

and you remember
she said something to you
that made you cry
but you don’t remember what

and you don’t know
if she kissed you first
or you kissed her first
and you don’t remember
what it all felt like,
not really.

You just remember
that you liked it,
it felt good.

You wish you could do it again
and if you did
you’d remember her face this time:
her face, her hands,
the way she spoke,
the fluttering in your stomach,
the feeling of her body against yours
and her kisses,
especially her kisses.

You tell yourself
that you’d remember this time –
not like last time
when you forgot
her words, her eyes,
all that tingling,
the way you’ve forgotten almost everything.


I Am a Lake

I am a lake, hidden from the road by trees;
A dense thicket of trees meant to obscure me, meant to isolate me.
I am a lake, small and placid and very cold. No one knows I am here.
There is not much alive and swimming beneath my surface
But it is enough that if you dip in five tenuous toes
You may feel a slight swirl of life around your now frigid foot.

No one knows I am here. I can be your secret place.
Can you feel pleasure spreading out a blanket before my ambivalence
With just a book and a light lunch to bring you comfort and satiety?
It could be deep into the season before my water is warm enough
For you to take a swim. It could be that even the whole season could pass.
You might become frustrated and leave me alone here far from the road,

Obscured by trees. You maybe become impatient and gingerly wade on in.
If you do put both feet in, I implore you not to blame me If your body becomes
Immobile from the cold. I did not ask you
      to venture off the road or dip your toes.
I did not ask you
      to salve your curiosity from the road to beyond the trees to me.
I did not ask you to do anything the way I once begged the sun to more often
Shine upon me and now ask the sun again.




John Tustin has poetry forthcoming in The MacGuffin, Innisfree Poetry Journal, SOFTBLOW, and others. He is also a previous contributor to Sparks of Calliope. Find links to his poetry published online here.

Two Poems by Stephen Mead

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The Magpies Cry

Distinct black/white shapes of dignified elegance
in their stance on the bare branch tips
welcome some visitor coming,
in death or tidings good as their bellies
full and plump pipe indigo flint
from throats out and up.
That knife iridescence is amazing against
just a hint of the hazy evening star
dim as a far flashlight
behind gauze blue sky.
Darkness makes the presence prominent,
shadows coalescing so the silhouette’s edge
are penumbras of harkening lit in themselves.
What light through yonder
to ponder with longing and even that nostalgic
prescience for doom until medications juggled chemicals,
that serotonin reuptake tango, all brain juices
balanced. Ah, but the jaded find that laughable
so know indifference is the best defense as in
this too shall pass when the purveyors of pettiness
stir their pots, deaf to how echoes cannot be unsaid
to those left gutted by them again and again.
The wise magpies care for naught of that either,
having laid grass blades, leaves, twigs upon
and beside the fallen of their flock.
They are prepared, attuned as nature
for some sastrugi phenomenon, that art
of elements when wind and whiteness meet,
create waves of drifts to marvel at the marbling of
between the cold snow blinding veils
whipping and blanketing without any knowledge
of which supersedes which.
This is wisdom possibly during wars and epidemics
but our fallen stay inside us simply like persistence
might just be an instinct to grasp, go on and on
as if by accident, whether there is will or not.


Remembering Rain

Other shores, different seas
must travel these slanting expanses,
this sheet upon sheet of showering roars…

Perhaps I could sleep there
as an unperturbed shell
converting howls into whistles, my corridors
a song rearranged by will Weather accepts…

For several seasons, endurance has been
row, row
with occasional floating sweeping into
the drifts…

Sift, sift,
this pool, this puddle.
Let ripples trickle. Let the conductor be
the fluid fluency of silver mercury,
the oars, bright & multi-tongued…

Dip. Paddle. Slip scoops up—–
The waves breaking their refractions
in fountain cascades, in further concentricity…

Yes, born from such storm, the rocking
is still a berth. So I cast off, cast aloft,
hands as sails, face as rudder
to the memory of shelter

descending




Stephen Mead, a resident of New York, is an outsider multi-media artist and writer.  Since the 1990s, he’s been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online.  He is also grateful to have managed to keep various day jobs for the health insurance. In 2014, he began a web page to gather various links to his published poetry in one place.

Two Poems by Patricia Furstenberg

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 8 Comments

The Sheep’s Spring Butter Is Medicine

Genuflected in the circular sheepfold, beside a temple,
fir-trees the shepherd’s green church,
footprints and hooves build a mosaic underfoot
the artist, a keeper of time or maybe his sheep
turned kid.
Lock-free door,
‘we guard ‘gainst bears only up ‘ere’,
wind sings or hymns resound,
tea hums, brewed over dried-dung and pine-needle fire.
Time stands still.

Bread made of dew and husks,
baked over excited kindles
sweet steam embracing,
coiled on a stick with a fiery eye that pokes eternity.
The shepherd’s shadow dips smoked bacon in spring butter,
world’s wisdom drips from his fingers
making the fire speak.
‘The sheep’s spring butter ‘s med’cine’, he sounds more to the mutt by the door
who grunts, body asleep, soul and ears ever awake.
Heavy books told me what the shepherd knew, as his forefathers,
spring herbs are potent, filled with life’s juices and earth’s zing,
herbs scoured for spells, for sweet dreams, but gifted for butter and milk.

The sheep’s spring butter is medicine, for the sheep’s from God,
like this earth,
but the goat, the goat’s from the hinder side.
Yet that’s a tale for another time.


Hunger came first

Hunger came first
as day slashed the nightfall with its fiery dagger
and spirits still chased the lost souls.
One last pang
one last hope
Hunger came first.

The goat came next,
nimble on the first rays of sun, as sharp as hell,
a strand of grass sticking out of its mouth,
silvery horns arched backwards, night trailing behind.
The goat came next,
shrouded in its beastly scent–
the promise of a full tummy.

The poet came last,
a night’s last breath into the day,
shadowed existence,
ghostly appearance,
eyes sunken on wobbly feet.
Eyes burning with poetry.
And hunger.

Hunger came first,
The goat came next,
The poet crawled from his misery
The verse of how the goat was the devil’s,
as the lamb belonged to God,
looping through his ear.

Then hunger floated away
from the shadow that had once been a poet,
a poet who chased a goat away.

The hunger and the goat went first.
The poet remained.
For eternity.




Patricia Furstenberg, with a medical degree behind her, has authored 18 books imbued with history, folklore, and legends. The recurrent motives in her writing are unconditional love and war. Her essays and poetry have appeared in various online literary magazines. Romanian-born, she resides with her family in South Africa.

“Ancient Mounds” by Mark B. Hamilton

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Collins had found the hog, butchered and hung,
so we left early that morning with our rifles slung
to hunt the prairie fowl with shot, and to explore
Dubois River, hoping our slow and stealthy tour
might surprise a bear at dinner. Approaching near
we fell into a stalk, beneath the rise only to hear
loud caws from the carcass speckled with crows
having devoured the shreds to bone. Above the snow
all was ears, a mask attached to a spine, the thin
shadow of corpse hanging in the wind to spin
its yarn of dying for some hungry farmer’s larder.
So we kept our hunt southeastward, a bit farther
from the bottoms where we spotted prairie fowl
on roosting branches, like silhouettes for owl
as we fired one-by-one taking several, and more
at the foot of berry bushes, until we both wore
the grouse as Indians might wear feathered capes.
Continuing our trek toward some distant shapes
we imagined to be a group of ancient mounds,
the expanse in front was wide and not a sound
was heard as we approached in their field of fire.
Without the ice underfoot an attack would mire
down and deepen into failure, yet we strode in
across that level surface of the pond, frozen
enough to get us committed far into the middle.
Then, at 100 yards, all broke loose into a riddle
of children singing “fat piggies,” we in the moat
up to our thighs, rifles held high, unable to shoot.
The ancients knew well a defense against infantry
building on ground to weaken the attacking enemy.
We had to back out, and come far around south,
staying in the prairie stubble, out of the mouth
of that big frog, to approach their fortification
of 9 mounds in a round—a haven of protection,
an Indian fortress once encircled by a palisade
with whistling wings of two more mounds made
7 feet above the prairie. All were scattered with flint
and earthen ware. An entire safe and dry settlement
below a clearing sky. Northward an immense grave,
a Cahokian woodhenge, had once risen up to save
their loved ones by the sacred motion of the sun.
Returning at sunset, I found my feet well frozen
inside my shoes. My slave rubbed them with snow
and wrapped them both, and set them gently low
on the hearth, slowly to prevent the frost bite.
With westerly winds exceedingly cold that night
York brought firewood and plucked two hens.
“This ‘ill help, Massa. With good luck, and then
hot broth and God ta’ thaw out your feet again.”

History-based verse from: The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, Vol. 2, “Wintering at Camp Dubois.” Moulton, Gary E., editor. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1986: 153-54. (Previously published in About Place Journal)




Mark B. Hamilton is an environmental neo-structuralist, working in forms to transform content, adapting from both the Eastern and Western traditions. His second eco-poetry volume, OYO, The Beautiful River (Shanti Arts, 2020) explores the reciprocity between self, history, and the contemporary environment of the polluted Ohio River.  A third book, Lake, River, Mountain, is forthcoming from the University of Wisconsin, Cornerstone Press, 2023, and a third chapbook, UPSTREAM, will be published by Finishing Line Press, 2024. His recent work has appeared in such journals as: Blue Unicorn, Albatross, and History Magazine, as well as abroad in Urthona Journal, Amethyst Review, and Stand Magazine, UK. Find more of his work at MarkBHamilton.Wordpress.com.

Two Poems by Diane Webster

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Ancestor Twin

My twin smiles in the lake’s surface,
a mirror where a feisty kitten
peeks behind to find the intruder
speedy to sprint around the corner
no matter how fast one looks.

I duck down to shrink my target,
but as I sneak a look over the weeds,
I am visible again and again
like a prairie dog in a hole
wondering if an eagle still soars.

A trout breaches the façade
into shattering ripples
scattering ashore to dissipate
among the weeds tickling, luring
a moment in disturbance.

My twin smears a blur,
but if I squint, I see
the resemblance in the old photo
of an ancestor cousin
staring into the camera.


Sand Everyone

I feel like sand at the beach
wearing everyone’s footsteps
coming, going against
my grains depressed
by their passings.

I can’t wait for them to leave
taking all their disruptive shovels,
stabbing umbrella poles,
sand castle tumors.

I can’t wait for wind
and surf to rid me
of their ravage
so I can greet
the sunrise pure.




Diane Webster‘s goal is to remain open to poetry ideas in everyday life, nature or an overheard phrase and to write. Diane enjoys the challenge of transforming images into words to fit her poems. Her work has appeared in El Portal, North Dakota Quarterly, Eunoia Review and other literary magazines. She also had a micro-chap published by Origami Poetry Press.

Two Poems by Mid Walsh

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On my mother’s death

You, who rest in measureless space:
tell me this room, dark attic above
can be the living place for love,
a brief hospice of grace.
 
This indoor air, too still to cross,
the hall too dark, the stairs too worn,
the silences too deep, have born
too long this weight, our cost.
 
I don’t know how to mourn your death;
it empties the room of so much grieving.
I feel a loss in my life leaving,
lingering in the exhaled breath.
 
And whispering here of you, I seem
to be in the home of a child, where shame
stands at the door, calls my name;
I cannot ever be redeemed.
 
Your bones, dear timbers, fall apart,
your cavities collapse, tired eaves
among the stones and leaves
in the hollow of our heart.


On a pedestal

Of all my lover’s lovely limbs,
my favorite are her feet.
Not many are so generous;
they’re honeysuckle-sweet.

Beside the gentle hummock
where her instep swoons to toes
looms an outcrop tender as
a yellow blooming rose.

A stand of digits shades my thumb,
appendages of heaven
a boulevard of bonsai trees
a canopy of sevens.

Here she heeled a sea urchin
(she sang, as I plied lotion)
see, his dark fleck lingers still –
kiss it, you’ll smell the ocean.

Their softness beneath a sheet,
pressure behind my thighs
are by comparison, effete.
It is her sighs

when they’re held. They’re not angelic
or a she-wolf-moan;
but the soft sound of a soul touching ground
in my hand on its way home.




Mid Walsh is a poet, singer, athlete, husband, and grandfather living near the ocean. With an English BA from Yale University and an MBA, he has conducted careers as a carpenter, a hi-tech executive, and a yoga studio owner. His poetry renders his life experiences into the music of language. Mid’s poetry is forthcoming in or has appeared in The Road Not Taken, Nixes Mate Review, Blue Unicorn, Silkworm, and Lily Poetry Review.

“A New Spring for Poesy” by Steen W. Rasmussen

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There, it lay, after centuries
The once-wild beast, beaten
Humiliated and enslaved
Straitjacketed and imprisoned
Paraded around in a carnival cage
With evenly spaced iron bars
And an unpickable lock
Left, it was, in a state of putrefaction

This would have been its demise
Had the South not lost the war
Had New Orleans not had a port
Had a glut of Confederate drums
Not been pawned
Had free men and women
Not marched second line groove
Down to Congo Square
Where Dee Dee Chandler’s pedal bent
The prison bars
Freeing the beast
And with it, lifting poetry
From the bards
Their crime punished, the final sentence:
“Mortem ad rigidus poeta”

As well, the poem had to die
To be resurrected in the ragtime beat
The beat of jig
The beat of jass
Back beat, 4-beat
Rhythms growing in intensity
And eloquence

No longer confined to the mulish minds
Of despotic poets — instead, thriving
In the daring hands and feet
Of Baby Dodds and Earl the Metronome
The word returned to the people
For them to re-imagine
The singers, the dancers
The beaters of drums
The snares, the bass, the tom-toms
Rockin’ around the cell house bonfire
With clash, hi-hat, and splash

And would-be poets
A multitude
Understood
The medieval meter
Had run its course
And a New Spring
Of words set to music
Had sprung




Steen Rasmussen is a native of Denmark. His interest in writing, and writing in English specifically, is rooted in many years of songwriting – singing, playing and recording his material with various garage bands. He is a contributing member of ‘Woodside Writers’, a literary forum based in New York City, where he lives and works as a real estate consultant.

Two Poems by James B. Nicola

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 1 Comment

Stars

At dawn they start to disappear
but still there’s not a single one
not over me, and each a sun
    to subjects that live near.
 
What use are they? If gravity
obtains though they exist so far
away—and there is not one star
    not shining over me—
 
then each of them is drawing on
me, more or less—the close ones, more.
And likewise I draw on them for
    an imagination.
 
They twinkle as they talk, I think
like chatty souls of bygone love
who’ve cast each other there, above
    us. Look—another blink.
 
Personified as we invest
them, only, but what light they give!
And we’ve all day and night to live—
    Let stars have all the rest.


Scott Simon

On Saturdays I dial a faceless voice
on radio from eight a.m. to ten,
the host who bursts in laughter now and then
as free as the most innocent of boys.
Over the years there’ve been occasions when
I’d listen to an interview and pause,
his interest infectious, and because
the guest had flabbergasted him again,
contrary to our ordinary laws.
Surprises, as in love and turmoil, can
impede the voice, but also make the man
whose serendipities, like his guffaws,
seem humble. But as he’s an able host,
the pauses last but moments at the most.




James B. Nicola’s seven full-length poetry collections (2014-22) are Manhattan Plaza, Stage to Page: Poems from the Theater, Wind in the Cave, Out of Nothing: Poems of Art and Artists, Quickening: Poems from Before and Beyond, Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, and Turns & Twists. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice award. His work has received a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, Storyteller’s People’s Choice award, one Best of Net, one Rhysling, and ten Pushcart nominations—for which he feels both stunned and grateful.

Two Poems by Janice Canerdy

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It’s Almost Here

It’s almost here; it’s in the air—
that lovely time beyond compare,
when green clothes trees that once were bare
and kids have energy to spare.

Earth has awakened; life is new.
New blooms smell fragrant; skies are blue.
Who could resist this gorgeous view?
The end of winter’s overdue!

We welcome what the warm days bring
when trilling birds are on the wing;
then not just birds but people sing.
It’s just around the corner—SPRING!


Interesting

What do I mean when I employ this word?
Sometimes I mean you’ve truly captured my
attention and I’m wowed by what I’ve heard.
I love to say this—when it’s not a lie.

Sometimes–to spare your feelings, I confess–
I may say, “That’s so interesting,” though
I’m bored to numbness, hoping you won’t guess
the truth, which you might find a stunning blow.

Some think this word’s evasive, somewhat weak.
Though I agree, I’m sure you’d rather hear
it than some harsh indictment when you speak.
I feel the same. This mild term has no peer!

So in the future when I’m telling you
some rambling story and you’re praying I’ll
shut up, say, “That’s so interesting! Do
tell me some more.” I’ll blabber on a while.




Janice Canerdy is a retired high school English teacher from Potts Camp, Mississippi. She has been writing poetry since childhood, is the author of one book, Expressions of Faith (Christian Faith Publishing, 2016), and has had poems published in many magazines and anthologies. Janice enjoys church life and being involved in church activities and says her grandchildren play a key role in her life, as she does in theirs.

Two Poems by Diane Elayne Dees

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Two Women

I see two different women every day
in my mirror. One looks healthy, one looks weak;
one wants to run, the other wants to stay.

One’s put together, one’s in disarray;
one of them seems stable—one’s a freak.
I see two different women. Every day,

I wonder what their younger selves would say,
or would they be too terrified to speak?
One wants to run. The other wants to stay,

though she knows too well the price she’ll have to pay;
life has scarred her, left her landscape bleak.
I see two different women every day—

one’s very essence has begun to fray,
the other still looks vital, strong and chic.
One wants to run, the other wants to stay.

I wish that both of them would find a way
to come to terms with what it is they seek.
I see two different women every day;
one wants to run, the other wants to stay.


Life Cycle

There were storms, and there was Christmas.
The empty spruce, perfect in its bare elegance,
lies next to piles of cracked oak and pine limbs
shaken down by strong winds and relentless rains.
Their juxtaposition is startling. The empty tree—
still green—radiates some of the beauty denied it
by its recent burden of glittery cones, ornaments
and tiny white lights. Now it is just a tree,
tossed out to die and then be hauled away.

When I was a child, my father would chop down
a pine tree, dip pine cones and sweet gum balls
in bright red and green paint and attach them
to the tree to mingle with the glass ornaments.
Christmas was a violent, frightening affair,
but at least there was a tree—something
that represented life in the little house
near the woods where hope had already
relinquished its green potential and quietly died.

It would be decades before I would bring home
my own Christmas tree, an act that nudged me
out of the darkness of the past—
an organic testimony to the power of ritual,
a fragrant symbol of celebration,
my commitment to tribal comfort.
Now, years later, the cats who slept
under the Christmas tree are gone,
the husband who wanted nothing to do
with the Christmas tree is gone.

But I am still here, and my tree,
which may soon be mulch,
or protection for marshland,
gave me gifts of beauty and belonging,
and I honor its brief life.
All our lives are brief, as we struggle
to stay green, with or without decoration.
Like Christmas trees, we are cut down
again and again, exposed just as we are,
imperfect in our bare inelegance.




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 three Origami Poems Project microchaps, and her poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared 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.