Last hour, last day before break, alone in an empty classroom, is when
I hear them, sleigh bells, silver jangling in the air, then steady thudding.
Before I can leave my chair, a line of children gallop by, shaking
handbells. By the time I reach the doorway, they are past me, heading down
the corridor. No one sees me watching, not even the child at the
end, my Alejandro. Alejandro, who tries to speak English, gets
embarrassed, says, “Forget it,” folds his arms and closes up his face.
Alejandro, whose sudden smiles I can count on one hand and still have
a finger or two left to hope on. Alejandro, a skeptic at
seven, if not yet a confirmed cynic. This same person brandishes
his bell on high, proclaims to the world, “I like!” and leaps twice in the air,
rounds the corner, vanishes from view. I stare at the space that held him,
bells, echoes of clear joy resounding, reminding me of secret hearts
that try to reach the surface no matter how much weight we make them bear.
upwelling: the rising of deep, cold waters to shallower depths in response to reduced surface pressures
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.
Letters to My Younger Self: A Brief Evolution in Time
Some nights were hard Cheeks wet with perennial tears A sickening test of my ability to face my fears Chest tight, lungs constricted As if strangling my throat Till each last drop of breath ran out And I was left trembling Shivering Shaking Swimming in pools of sweat Head racing with incoherent thoughts Each one fiercely competing for my attention Out of touch with the world around me An unsettling feeling of being untethered from reality Pleading forgiveness for whatever sin I may have committed For surely I wasn’t being punished for the mere sake of it Screaming without a sound, till my whispers turned hoarse Begging for the ghost of a chance that someone might just hear And free me from the prison that was my mind A thought that I visualized as immediate relief Though calling it impossible would be gracious to its attainability. (For a man in pain knows nothing of rationality nor cares for it, Rationality is but trivial in the face of a suffering man)
At last, the aftereffects would seep in While I lay benumbed as bare whitewashed walls, Mind devoid of thought or emotion, Whispering the same few words under my breath Like a simple truth spoken in echoic repetition: “I’m sorry to my younger self’ “I’m sorry to my younger self” “I’m sorry to my younger self.” Filled with shame and guilt and sorrow That I failed to be the version of myself she had in her head That each day I strayed further And further away.
Today I am older. Some nights are still hard But I truly believe with all my heart That my younger self would be proud than ashamed of me For the smallest victories that add feathers to my cap, For waking up not entirely dreading what is to come, For staying clean for the longest I ever have, For choosing to survive every single day, For making it through every single day. Perhaps what I failed to realise back then Was that each time I swung further,
I swung back a little closer than before Today I am older Some nights are still hard I whisper the same few words under my breath Like a simple truth spoken in echoic repetition: “I forgive you” “I forgive you” “I forgive you.”
Here Lies
Your memories stain the walls of my mind That I built on the grave of your demise. What stands in place is the ghost of a man; A stranger whose heart from gold turned ice.
How does one grieve the death of a man still living When in sight it is but the shell of the man I once knew? The dearth of your presence like an ever-present void; An imprint of light from a life snatched too soon.
Your eyes seem devoid of even a mere flicker of recognition And that pains me, For I would accept even coldness, contempt, disdain Than a lack thereof, shrouded in bare nothingness. For if hollowness was what I was truly after, I’d simply listen to the haunt of your lingering laughter.
Bits of your past live on as plaguing remnants As do the reminders of all those departed. The tormenting nature of ghosts is not unheard of, But I often wonder if those left behind too haunt the dead,
If in afterlife my reminders harrow you just the same, Or if you have severed the last of your mortal ties. How am I to keep you anchored to hallowed ground When your memorial was built upon infernal lies?
For a man who swears he does not know my name, It is only fitting To leave his tombstone unnamed.
Kashvi Dikshit is a poet and writer based out of Bangalore, India. Her work has been featured in various literary journals and anthologies around the world. Outside of the publishing world, Kashvi likes to perform spoken word at local fundraisers to support social causes. As a professionally trained singer and dancer, Kashvi adds a unique flair to her poetry through lyrical flow and rhythm that deeply reflects the traditional roots of poetry.
My heart and lungs, pumps of word generators floating up a tube, but I won´t stop to take a breath so the words get jammed on their way up the tube, like sausages, that spill out, in a tangled line on a string and then split open down their middle, threading all thrown open fleshy middle belly up words come out wrong: soul exposed.
Call Center Operator
You pick up the call, “I´m here to serve you.” And just five words unleash a rage. You know so little, but in this cage, you have no defense, I snatch my chance to deploy my beast.
I have an audience I´ll never meet and here, it pops: spleen in the air, a stomping, simmering sense of unfair and: a paperwork issue, that´s all.
If anyone were listening They´d think I´d been kidnapped maybe injured a limb or misplaced a child; I picture you, trembling, your mild ways trampled;
My throat, a surge of steel, inside it, a gun, hankering to shoot, this is my moment to scream it out, blurt out the shit, retrieve the doubt and then–
We hang up, no solution was found no bomb went off, you make a note to file, I examine the ground for shrapnel but only my shame was lying around.
Madeleine Penman lives in Mexico City. She is a researcher at an international human rights organization and writes poetry as a way to find refuge from a world of politics, opinions, and beliefs.
She came to me as a hand-fed squab, soft, silk feathers the color of snow. We kept her in a large screened cage fastened to our bedroom wall, where she perched and cooed and rearranged her lovely white wings that clapped in the air with a soft whistling whenever I let her fly about the living room, which was every day. We named her Snow White, needless to say the Disney in me still nested in my heart like a little dove egg. She had small feet, red as a rose, with tiny toes sporting delicate nails that pattered lightly against the gravel sprinkled on the paper lining the bottom of the cage. Her eyes, two bright anthracite beads, sparkled with delight each time I’d reach inside her home and gently nudge below her breast with the edge of my open hand, offering her a nest of palm and fingers. She loved when I ran my forefinger down the back of her head and between her folded wings. She’d fan her tail and nestle down, close her eyes softly and dream whatever doves dream. One morning, just three years from the day we brought her home, I found her lying on the floor of her cage. She lay on her side, her rose-red feet clenched as if ready to fly, her wings slightly separated from her sides, her tail feathers snapped shut like Venetian blinds, and her little coal-colored eyes, closed as if sleeping. I lifted her up, cradling the stiff body in my hands, the downy neck and elegant head dangled to one side as I pressed her feathered breast to my lips,
giving her one last mournful kiss.
But I had no princely power to lift death’s curse,
to awaken beauty.
I had only sorrow and the magic of verse to speak
about ever after.
P. C. Scheponik has published four collections of poems: Psalms to Padre Pio (National Centre for Padre Pio, INC), A Storm by Any Other Name and Songs the Sea has Sung in Me (PS Books, a division of Philadelphia Stories), And the Sun Still Dared to Shine (Mazo Publishers), and Stained-Glass Faith (Alien Buddha Press). A 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee, his work has appeared in numerous literary journals and fared well in multiple competitions. His newest collection, Seeing, Believing, and Other Things, is scheduled for publication by Adelaide Books in Spring 2021.
You like patina on the wood, its aging through the tears, with blood, sweat, oils of handy use, its story, tales ingrained. But I want coating too, of rust, the oxides, oxygen; that moisture of the air we breathe, an episode as well. So weather mist, or mizzle dress are part holistic soul of earth, its seven ages span from birth, oblivion. What turn of years to vintage, kitsch, or antique within reach? The attic find, shard pot of Greece, poor price, contrasted art. If aeon loan, the grain of sand, knew time alone was priced, sea shelves, gold bars of strand, sure lines were banks of wealth themselves. Our iron filings, record cards, list tools, that ancient phase. That one alone could claim the name proves heavy, claim to fame. So somewhere in the past are stored the myths of human roots, those courses antecedents walked, through wisdom, folly, choice. The proud stand clear above the smooth, like nails on crosspiece tree, and flaking metal, hammer, spear, tell, as aside, a piece of what can be, in deepest soil, our commonwealth on earth. There is a fruit, patina, rust, our legend, planet earth.
Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales from ministry in the Methodist Church, has had some 350 pieces published by online poetry sites, including Sparks of Calliope, printed journals, and anthologies. Find more about Stephen at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com.
Welling up from ditches
like caretakers of loss,
they ride thermals
with large eye-lashes
for wings and long-
stemmed fingers
delicate as coal dust;
relishing the idle drift
into black kettles of air,
travelling half asleep
for miles in search of
food using only wind
for lift. Disciples of decay,
they nest with death
and indulge a life of
dark leisure, as meals
arrive without effort,
wind dispersing the
curious odors of carrion
and neglect from farther
fields, back roads or dumps.
Roosting in barren trees,
their naked heads appear
like enflamed gullets,
drowned in the colors
of garnet red or weather-
worn brick, stripped of
both feathers and flesh,
like the lives that still
follow them, weight-
less, up into alien air.
Apparition
Disheveled autumn’s deftly
side-stepped winter’s grasp,
carrying in wide, blousy
pockets slumbering bees, brittle
nests and the easy currency of
pungent musk lifted from tea-
brown pools of leaf-rot and
acres of decay. Arrives poorly
attired in a worn, tweed cap
and thinning hair, mud-caked
shoes and a shawl of drab-scarlet
woven from wool, blithely
traipses through the well-worn
paths of woodlands, dank ruts
of orchard and rain-glazed
pasture, and, bojangle-brazen,
turns wind-ward and pivots
on his crooked walking stick
as he nimbly rises and entwines
with phantom light, pauses amid
the mottled luster of leaf-scatter,
drinks in the bright applause
of interloper crows and then
bows meekly before sauntering
off into the upsweep of gray
gusts like a happy grief.
John Muro is a resident of Connecticut and a two-time 2021 Pushcart Prize nominee. His first volume of poems, In the Lilac Hour, was published by Antrim House (2020) and is available on Amazon. John’s poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Barnstorm, Euphony, Grey Sparrow, Moria, Sky Island and Sparks of Calliope. Pastoral Suite, John’s second volume of poems will be published this spring. You can contact John via Instagram @johntmuro.
Best known as a father of free verse, American poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892) famously wrote impressively in both free verse and more traditional style about his feelings and experiences during the American Civil War. His occupations famously included volunteer service as a nurse during the war, which gave him much inspiration in his literary and journalistic career, which resumed thereafter. His observations and experiences both as a nurse and a Union sympathizer inspired some of his most widely known and admired poems. “O Captain, My Captain!” and “Beat! Beat! Drums!,” are two such pieces.
O Captain! My Captain!
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Beat! Beat! Drums!
Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows—through doors—burst like a ruthless force,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,
Into the school where the scholar is studying,
Leave not the bridegroom quiet—
no happiness must he have now with his bride,
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his grain,
So fierce you whirr and pound you drums—so shrill you bugles blow.
Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Over the traffic of cities—over the rumble of wheels in the streets;
Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses?
no sleepers must sleep in those beds,
No bargainers’ bargains by day—no brokers or speculators—
would they continue?
Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?
Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?
Then rattle quicker, heavier drums—you bugles wilder blow.
Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Make no parley—stop for no expostulation,
Mind not the timid—mind not the weeper or prayer,
Mind not the old man beseeching the young man,
Let not the child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s entreaties,
Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the hearses,
So strong you thump O terrible drums—so loud you bugles blow.
There is a dream we have; we see it with
The children – teachers mark uninspired books
And yet even with language in full cliché
There comes across, through repetition, “Look!”
Our world would be a better place – if only
Some simple rules and all of them followed;
Like, if everyone were friends, or better,
No wars existed. Oh, Father! Hallowed
Be Thy Name, but how much “Hello” sounds
Hollow when “Goodbye” to all agreement
Beckons and eyes are only strapped to grounds
For seeing flatness which is only meant
To be and nothing else. A dream we have
And nothing else: children evaporate
Into adulthood, forgetting, like old men,
The smell of milk from breasts, for empty plates.
James Sale, a 2022 Pushcart Prize nominee, has had poetry and literary works published in Hong Kong, the USA, and the UK. His work has appeared in The Society of Classical Poets, The Epoch Times, The Times Educational Supplement, The Hong Kong Review, The Anglo-Theological Review, The St Austin Review, and many others. An international and award-winning poet, he currently is one of two judges for the Society of Classical Poets’ 100 Days of Dante poetry competition. For more information about the author and about his own Dante project, visit https://englishcantos.home.blog.
Ordered to take on holy orders by the king, British poet John Donne (1572-1631) actually wore many hats in his lifetime. In addition to his position as Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Donne was a poet, scholar, secretary, soldier, and member of Parliament. His prolific volume of literary work includes everything from sonnets to sermons. His metaphysical poetry sometimes touches on profound questions of religious faith while at other times can be surprisingly erotic and sensual. “Death Be Not Proud” and “The Good-Morrow,” are two of his most celebrated works.
Death Be Not Proud
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow, And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery. Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
The Good-Morrow
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest; Where can we find two better hemispheres, Without sharp north, without declining west? Whatever dies, was not mixed equally; If our two loves be one, or, thou and I Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
When the tall lanky millennial who just bought land up the road tells me his girlfriend looks just like me and has my mannerisms, I am skeptical but curious.
But when the twenty-something schoolteacher walks through the door with a pixie cut, saucer eyes dominating an elfin face, giggling, fingers fluttering, I feel like I am in a time capsule, watching my twenty-something self.
You look just like Goldie Hawn, I say like everyone said to me when I was her age. Of course, she has no idea who I am talking about. She points to my younger photos plastering the wall. Is that Goldie Hawn? she asks.
When all the neighbors file in with their casserole dishes and salads, they tell her: You look just like your mom. If I doubt she exists, all I do is look at the wall and there we stand two golden goddesses with identical cheekbones and smiles.
Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist who lives in Arizona. She has published several poetry books including My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields (Flutter Press 2014) and What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Say and Trials & Tribulations of Sports Bob (Kelsay Books 2021) and Survivors, Saints, and Sinners forthcoming by Cyberwit. Her work has also appeared in Black Coffee Review, Terror House Review, Trouvaille Review, ONE ART, Mad Swirl, The Drabble, Gleam, Spillwords, Muddy River Review, Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, Red Eft Review, The Five-Two, and The Song Is…
