Category: Poetry

Two Poems by M. Brooke Wiese

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Cormorants Prepare for the End Times

A bullfrog harrumphs somewhere in the tall
grass along the edge of the reservoir.
A cormorant is fishing for his midday
meal; he stays under a long time

looking for plunder. When he pops up,
unsuccessful, he shrugs it off – a flash
of feet and he’s gone again. His wet feathers
iridesce in the sunlight like an abalone shell.

Up on a corner of North Pump House,
a mated pair of sleek cormorants puff
their chests and spread their wings to dry,
facing into the sun. The day is hazy,

the air is thick from the fires out West,
burning up the land from the Pacific
to the Mississippi. The birds flutter
their throats against the heat, a neat

trick to cool off in this man-made sauna,
a strategy never needed this far
north before, but we are in another
war, this time with the avifauna.

Last night, the moon rose luminous
above the reservoir, the color of
tangerines, a photo-op for social
media, unsettling all the same. Relief

is promised today, when sudden thunderstorms
will unleash monsoon rains, giant hail,
and wind shear strong enough to blow a house
down, and clear away the smoky air.


Memento Mori

In my kitchen, musing on Cézanne’s Still Life with Skull (1898)

Apples, oranges and pears fill the bowl,
bananas and grapes spill over its lip;
the footed bowl is cinnabar, jewel-
like against the black walnut tabletop
burnished by a hundred years of eating.
It is an uneventful scene, and ours
is a modest home. Life is fleeting.
Many days I hear Charon’s oars
thunk against the oarlocks as he slowly
rows dead souls across the River Styx,
their mouth-coins his recompense. Such folly
to think I can escape with either promises or tricks
when even luscious fruit, if forgotten,
shrivels, molders, leaks, and grows rotten.




M. Brooke Wiese’s work has appeared in numerous publications, most recently in The Raintown Review, Poem, and The Orchards. Her poems have also been published in Sparks of Calliope, Atlanta Review, Barrow Street, and Grand Street, and her chapbook, At the Edge of The World, was published by The Ledge Press in 1998. After a very long hiatus, she has again been writing furiously. She has worked in education and nonprofit social services.

Two Poems by Daniel Howard

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 2 Comments

II.

My lively passion’s death do I desire,
For if I cannot make its wildness tame,
I fear to be consumed within its flame,
And perish of my inner heat and fire;
For if she hates or loves me, both are dire:
Her hate my heart would much defile and shame,
Or if she said “I love” before my name,
I’d lose my life, when hers I would acquire;
Therefore I try steadfastly to resist
From looking longingly within her eye,
But even when I see her not nearby,
In each and every thought she does persist;
Thus I am like the fish who bit the bait,
Whose struggle cannot but secure his fate.


III.

If all the flesh and bone of which I’m wrought
Did not detain me on the earth I stand,
But let me reach beyond my outstretched hand
And fly away as if I were but thought;
No more the miles I’d mourn, now come to nought,
That kept us parted like the sky from land,
For I could summon you on my command,
Or think on where you are, and there be brought;
But flesh and bone I am; and though my mind
Can paint your pretty portrait in my brain,
Its pleasant mem’ry brings but present pain,
Such that I wish my inner eye were blind;
But if nor flesh nor thought will let me see
My love, then I would rather nothing be.




Daniel Joseph Howard studied law in his native Ireland before taking his MA in philosophy at King’s College London. He currently works in the European Commission.

Two Poems by Carole Greenfield

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

Convergence

I wish it were the other way round, evening hours (long stretching
darkness into deeper darkness) yours and morning hours (black to
gray to blue to gold) mine. Dawn has always been best, rising
of my own accord (no need for clocks) to meet my grandmother
at the pool, me swimming laps, she in her corner doing ballet, leaps,
turns, legs like a young girl’s, smile dazzling as the sun pouring
through floor-to-ceiling windows, drenching us both in light.

As long as I have known myself alive, I’ve loved the early morning
hours, cycling down quiet sleeping streets to my job at the bakery,
stocking trays, stirring oatmeal, salting grits, brewing coffee, opening
the door for customers lined up on the old porch, eager to enter,
place orders, find a perfect chair and table, settle in for the best part
of the day. Early hours. I can manage solitude in the morning.
That time of day never lonely, not for me. But late at night. Well.
Quite a different realm. A separate hemisphere. Not my true home.


Trace Fossils

Small children do not wait for pain
to make a lasting mark. They give fair warning;
we have time to wipe tears, mop trouble, kiss
a bruise, pronounce it healed.

But love leaves an impression that won’t
be kissed away; an imprint left in something soft
hardens and congeals. What passed through fire once
is tempered, then annealed.

Children trace fingers over fossils, guess
at what’s revealed: evidence of ridges, indentations,
life long over, heart’s rush sealed.




Carole Greenfield was raised in Colombia and now lives in New England. Her work has appeared in Red Dancefloor, Gulfstream, The Sow’s Ear, Women’s Words: Resolution, Arc, and is forthcoming in The Eunoia Review.

Two Poems by Miriam Manglani

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

Beach Days

I spent my childhood summers
listening to the sound of the ocean’s tongues
lap the shore’s sandy face,
the cries of gulls stirring the salty air.

Lying on a soggy towel,
holding a book over my head,
its words lifting me to other worlds.

Eating tuna sandwiches
while feeding the squawking gulls,
fighting like bickering lovers over scraps.

Hearing my parents and their loud friends from Egypt
clustered like a gaggle of Arabic speaking geese
sheltered in a group of umbrellas,
playing backgammon,
littering the sand with their peach pits
and pumpkin seed shells.

Floating on my back in the ocean
as I stared into a kite-speckled sky
teaming with white cotton candy.

Taking a shower and uncovering
a mini shore in my swim suit
of sand, rocks, and seaweed.

Going to bed and feeling the cozy warmth
of the day’s sun radiate from my reddened skin,
warming me in the cool night,
my mattress a big raft
floating in a sea of dreams, moonlight, and chirping crickets.


Homeless Village

And there it was.
Tucked under an edge
of the Charles River Bridge,
lit by the early morning light
reflected off the still river—
a homeless village.

With their colorful tents,
piles of empty tin cans
in rusting supermarket carts
waiting to be redeemed
for a few life-saving dollars,
salvaged mattresses
with their fluff spilling out
and poky springs,
empty, cracked vodka bottles,
and rusting propane tanks
for cooking whatever-scraps of food.

I stare at men emerging from tents,
as if they were beings from another world,
their waking arms yawning in the morning sun.




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 Poetry Quarterly, Rushing Thru the Dark, Vita Brevis, Cerasus Magazine, Sparks of Calliope, and Canyon Voices. Most recently, her poetry chapbook, Ordinary Wonders, was published by Prolific Press.

Two Poems by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

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

Light

My sweet-sixteen dress was yellow as the daffodils
In the seamstress’s cramped but spotless living room,
Yellow as the sweet lemon bars she made each Christmas
For the neighborhood children.
Mrs. Mueller lived at the end of our block
In a little stone cottage near a field of flowers,
Like a grandmother in a fairy tale.
She was old and poor and crippled
But always tidy, always smiling,
Even as the marshals took her away
After it came to light that, once upon a time,
She was a guard at Auschwitz.

“Light” first appeared in Free Inquiry


Irene and Beth

Irene has shining golden hair,
And fame and glory without end,
And greater wealth than even she
Could ever find a way to spend.
 
But Beth cannot afford to buy
What goes beyond her basic needs.
She must make do with what she has
And squeeze each penny till it bleeds.
 
Which woman hates her empty days?
Whose sadness makes her hard and mean?
Who yearns and yearns to change her life?
I’m sorry, but . . . it’s not Irene.

“Irene and Beth” first appeared in The Providence Journal




Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had over 220 poems published in a wide range of places, including eight in past issues of Sparks of Calliope.

Two Poems by John Tustin

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

Her Shoulder

And what about her shoulder?
How it looked as a soft mound, covered in a blanket,
Her sighing and asleep with her back to you
In the wan still glow of the moonlit dark.
Your shiver of excitement
When she turned over in her sleep
To face you, a look of consternation on her eyelids,
What was almost a secretive smile
Flirting at both corners of her mouth.

And what about her shoulder?
Once she turned over it shook loose
And stared at you, bare.
You looked at the gooseflesh that rose on it
And you put the blanket over it again,
Where it belonged
As she began to snore, right there beside you,
Where she belonged.


Pictures with Words

I am painting pictures with words.
I do it on most nights.
There need not be structure and the image combinations
Are limitless
So why will I write another poem
Where you will see a lone man feeling barely alive,
Prostrate on his bed and hiding from the sun?
I can paint anything:
I can paint birds in the sky,
Worms dancing tribal dances underneath the grass
But I don’t and I won’t.
Why is this?

Today a hawk flew ten feet from my face
And landed in a tree, so high up
He was difficult to see.
He didn’t look at me once.
It was a beautiful moment
But I had no desire to tell you about it –
I’m only telling you now to make my point.
I could paint a little rabbit in the bushes below
And I could write about the triumph of the hawk
Or the escape of the rabbit
And make you happy with either conclusion
But that’s not what I paint.

I won’t paint the light but I will paint the heat.
I won’t paint the growth but I will paint the dark.
I hear a noise and I know the noise must be me.
Even when I try to write a lovely day
It becomes the solemn pounding of a dirge.
The moon comes out of hiding
And I look up at it and it’s pockmarked and ugly.
I want to tell you it’s lovely but I can’t
And it’s not because I won’t lie to you,
No – it’s only because I can’t. I lie to you all the time.
I look in the mirror and I see my narrow hips,
A big gut that sluices over the sides like water
Shaking out of a bucket
And I’ll have to go to funeral after funeral
Until I get to the last one I’ll ever attend.




John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals in the last twelve years. His website contains links to his published poetry online.

Two Poems by Marc Darnell

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

Urban

Moving to the city, my red beard grew
to hide my boyish chin, and I lost weight,
enough to turn my sockets slightly blue–
adapting to a deader place and state

of being, or rather, not being, my tender hands
grew calluses from gripping wheels and brooms
that swept the refuse of a cluttered land
into heaps of cups and plastic spoons.

I became a stick who put on clothes
that fit the less the more that I went on
latching to the streets– a lonely moss
clinging in a fog that set the tone

for living in this borough full of blight
where faces turn away in failing light.


Exclusive Love

Save me from you, my love so strong
that if you left I wouldn’t live
past a day– that day so long
as if a year, so stay alive

near me, yet not near me. Strong
my pull is toward you, I could live
inside your grasp for hours long,
but do I need you, to be alive?

I shouldn’t, and if I did strike out
on my own, I’d feel such drought,
but I’d go on, finding out
the depth of pain beyond that drought,

but bleak– that if we lived forever
I’d have no other to pine for, ever.





Marc Darnell is an online tutor and lead custodian in Omaha, Nebraska, and has also been a phlebotomist, hotel supervisor, busboy, editorial assistant, farmhand, devout recluse, and incurable brooder.  He received his MFA from the University of Iowa and has published poems in The Lyric, Rue Scribe, Verse, Skidrow Penthouse, Shot Glass Journal, The HyperTexts, Candelabrum, The Road Not Taken, Aries, Ship of Fools, Open Minds Quarterly, The Fib Review, Verse-Virtual, Blue Unicorn, Ragazine, The Literary Nest, The Pangolin Review, and elsewhere.

Two Poems by Ben Jonson

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 1 Comment
Ben Jonson by Abraham Blyenberch, c. 1617

A contemporary of William Shakespeare, English poet Ben Jonson’s most successful period as a literary figure probably occurred from 1605 to 1620.

Jonson was known as much if not more so as a playwright than as a poet. Not only was Jonson in the same location at the same time doing the same thing as William Shakespeare, but Shakespeare actually acted in Every Man in His Humour, one of Jonson’s most famous plays. His poetry was notable as well, with Song of Celia and On My First Son being two poems often regarded among his best. Jonson died in August 1637 at the age of 65. Upon his death, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where his funeral was attended by nobility of the time.


On My First Son

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
      My sin was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy.
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
      Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

Oh, could I lose all father now! For why
      Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon ‘scaped world’s and flesh’s rage,
      And if no other misery, yet age!

Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say, Here doth lie
      Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such
      As what he loves may never like too much.


Song to Celia

Drink to me only with thine eyes,
      And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
      And I’ll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
      Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,
      I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
      Not so much honouring thee
As giving it a hope, that there
      It could not withered be.
But thou thereon didst only breathe,
      And sent’st it back to me;
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
      Not of itself, but thee.

Two Poems by Chris Sparks

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The Healing Wound

“View through a window may influence recovery from surgery.” –Roger S. Ulrich, Science. 1984 Apr 27

The healing wound
Cuts its dash
Forty stitches deep
To keep the hole of me
Together–against
My seething self’s calamitous urge
To corrupt–to disperse unordered to the fetid air
Unbreathable unbearable weighted with a worrying pain
Almost–except each everyday–exceptional–yet there
This view to steal the heart–wrap it in the cloth of fancy
The tidal sea–shear shifts of dazzle–slow and pewter smooth
Eight sly swans–all grace and killing under bare Benbulben’s bulk
A funky sulk teased–dappled by the silly sun–set solid scuffed unhurried
Still and sturdy under nimbus–cloudy clusters blue-grey grievous with slighting rains
Run rainbows to my boychild’s eye
Lightning strikes my glassy vision
All of this–and all and over
A daily blaze to raise me


I See You, Calliope

You’re so sharp–now a knife
Your shine of self–tough tempered steely to a razor’s edge
Sheer beauty–poised
To carve your noise into all this hard-edged worldly stuff
The stillborn stone
The granite grain
Carve your name–into the oldest ever tree
Swiftly so the sound sings down
Its old-aged gnarly-rooted trunk
Uproot it–I dare you
Send it over to me
So I can wonder at it
Softly brush a touch
of sound-scarred hexed-hard-wooded ends
Rune-run a spell–cast it so
Come-go!
My next beginning




Chris Sparks is quite an old person but new to creative writing. He comes from East London but has ended up in Sligo, Ireland. For many years he taught, researched, and published as a political theorist. Now he finds that (weirdly) every dark thing that once was theoretical seems to be becoming actual. So, for his sanity and soul, he has decided to come at things from another angle and this is why he writes poetry. His poems can be found in The Ekphrastic Review, The Cormorant, Scrimshaw, Poetry 24, and in one or two Irish online event recordings.

Two Poems by Lynn White

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The Purple Boat

The purple boat sank.
There was no explanation.
Our father made us three,
blue, green and purple,
from sheets of coloured paper,
blue, green and purple.
We thought they were hats
at first
and ran around
holding them
on our too large heads.
But he said they were boats
and showed us how to sail them,
pushing them from the side
with long twigs
until they made
a small bright flotilla,
blue, green and purple,
in the glass clear water.
And then the purple boat sank
leaving only
the blue and the green.
A sad flotilla,
of blue and green
in the glass clear water.
There was no explanation.
But I think, most likely,
it was spied by some creature below,
who,
loving the colour purple,
grasped it
and took it below
to make it her own.
But I don’t know.
Now
I have found
that life is often like that.

“The Purple Boat” first appeared in With Painted Words


Sister Millicent

The teapot was full catering size
perfect for the church function
where I first met Sister Millicent.
She was balancing it on her head.
Her eyes were uplifted
so were her lips.
It was her party trick.
I didn’t know nuns did such things.

“Sister Millicent” first appeared in The Drabble




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 and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud ‘War Poetry for Today’ competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/