Category: Poetry

“The Peach” by Martin Willitts, Jr.

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

On early October mornings, we’d slice peaches
into hot oatmeal while sparrows sang.
We’d forgotten that sudden attack of sweetness—
time and memory deceive like that.
Then, the next day, peaches jumped from a knife
to oatmeal, surprising us again—
slight moisture of fall, a dip in bird songs.

We would try to hold the hard pit of memory,
but, like bath water, memory slowly drained.
We would go on with everyday tasks,
the season pulling the curtains of night closer,
but in morning, peaches were in oatmeal,
birds excitedly exclaiming, memory bruising.

As October loomed towards November,
peaches were less fresh, still savored,
slices falling like autumn leaves.
Imagine the happy bowl
cupped hands offering sweetened memories.
Imagine sparrows dashing sugary music.

Then, alas, the time had unfortunately arrived,
and the peaches went wherever peaches go.
We mourned the loss, watched grey skies fall,
nights lasting and lingering longer.

We’d forgotten each season has its own sweetness.




Martin Willitts Jr, a Comstock Review editor, has 25 chapbooks including the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, The Wire Fence Holding Back the World (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 21 full-length collections including the Blue Light Award 2019, The Temporary World.  His forthcoming book is Harvest Time (Deerbrook Press, 2021).

“Libraries and Love” by Robert Nisbet

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 2 Comments

At nineteen years of age, he said to a girl,
I have two lodestars, libraries and love.
Love? .. well, girls and dances anyway.

Vacation weekdays now, he’d go to the library.
He knew and could define the word “repository”
so yes .. his town’s repository of knowledge.
They’d all of Steinbeck there, and Joyce
and Keats, John Clare and politics and art.

Saturdays, the dances and the thrill of sound,
as rock’n’roll was shading into Beatles,
and he started taking Clara home. They’d stop
at their bench behind the Parade and now
his hands would mooch just wheresoever
they were allowed to go.

The rest of the walk, to her parents’ house
on Merlin’s Hill, went past the library. And there
was his friend the storehouse of learning,
quiet and unperturbed the weekend through.
Some nights, flushed with the evening’s warmth,
he’d cast a wink at the library. See you Monday, pal.

And when the firework friendship fizzled out,
and through years and decades on, the library stood
through weekends, wars and noise and fluster,
its knowledge there and in repose.




Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet who has been published widely in Britain and the USA, where he has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

“The Three Point Five Trillion Names of God” by Brian Yapko

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

Thomas, old friend, I wish you doubted more.
I watch you through your great room window
across the street staring into your aquarium,
through tempered glass, pondering colored gravel,
plastic krill and three shimmering goldfish.

You consult a guide, you monitor their darting
motions, then fancy yourself a fisher of knowledge.
Thomas, you are a scientific man. You deal with
facts. But now you claim from this miniature sea
under glass that you finally grasp the Ocean!

Thomas, we live in desert! In your sixty-six years
on Earth you have never seen the sea, nor heard, nor
tasted. Yet you see through this glass darkly and claim
understanding of a force so vast it shapes the continents,
its dark depths falling fathoms to the pitch-black floor?

The sea, Thomas! Where the albatross was killed and
the white whale raged! Birthplace of tsunamis, of
storms, of life itself! A transparent tank and now you
know the placid dolphin, the preying shark, coral reefs,
the tortoise, the currents, the islands, fjords…!

The tide pools, the icebergs, beaches black and white…
How people sail and dive, dream and drown! You
claim mastery of shipwrecks, volcanoes and ancient
statues on the floor of the sea. But you are caught in the
shallows, bereft of the salt, the blood and the ineffable.

Thomas, put aside your certainty! Open your eyes,
your mind, your heart! What if I suggested to you
that from your home for three goldfish you dare not
judge all – neither plankton nor leviathan, nor the
Oceans’ population of three point five trillion fish?

How do I speak to you, Thomas, of infinity? That
your little aquarium is not even a metaphor? Care for
your goldfish, old friend. Love them if you can. But
weigh this if you would: in the Oceans of Vastness,
you truly do not know how much you do not know.




Brian Yapko practices law and writes poetry. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Grand Little Things, The Society of Classical Poets, Poetica, The Chained Muse, Garfield Lake Review, Tempered Runes Press and as a first-prize contest winner in The Abstract Elephant. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

“Kissing in Mamaloshen” by Leslie Neustadt

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After Kissing in Vietnamese by Ocean Vuong


Grandma Freda kisses as if she could
protect me with her crimson tattoo.

Lesincoo seals my ears with endearments.
She kisses my smooth hands, my fingers meant

to turn pages, not to labor in sweatshops.
She kisses as if each kiss were a kush fun lebn.

As if her kisses ensure I’ll be passed over
by plagues. No pogroms, no gas chambers

no yellow stars—if only she kisses me enough.
Her kisses like drops of honey for her shana madela.

You’re too skinny—Her kisses
put meat on my bones. Inoculate me

from sticks and stones, No Jews Allowed.
Her sugar cookies, apple cake, dill-scented

chicken soup are kisses, too. When Grandma
Freda kisses, she inhales my little girl scent,

makes me feel like sunlight. She sits in her pew
on Shabbas, kisses my cheek as I snuggle by.

I glint with her imprint. Grandma Freda kisses
with her full bosom, her skinny legs pulsing

rivers of blue. Her kisses a map to follow
when my body fades. Now, I paint my lips

crimson, leave red tattoos with my wrinkled
lips on the grandchildren bequeathed to me.

first published in The Jewish Writing Project 




Leslie Neustadt is a retired New York Assistant Attorney General, poet, visual artist, and the author of Bearing Fruit: A Poetic Journey. A board member of the International Women’s Writing Guild, Leslie’s work is illuminated by her Jewish upbringing and inspired by the beauty and power of the natural world, mortal joys and struggles, and an unwavering commitment to human and civil rights. Online at www.LeslieNeustadt.com.

“Enthusiast” by William J. Joel

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

This scene was something I would never have
expected, little old lady, thumbing through
a rack of comic books. It wasn’t that she dressed
outrageously, or gelled her hair in spikes,
or had twelve piercings in each ear, or showed
a tattoo of her mother when she rolled her sleeve.
She was simply middle-aged, a simple sweater,
shorts and sneakers, nothing one would notice
in a bookstore, let alone with Superman.
Which makes one wonder, what else do they
hide from us, these frail old women, unobtrusive
in their manner, smiling, slyly as we hold the door?
Are they listening to some rock song, heavy metal,
screaming through their brains, while planning for
the rally they’ll be riding in next weekend,
dirt bikes spewing mud and rock when mama
hits the turn, enthusiastic in her game?




William J. Joel has been teaching computer science since 1983 and has been a writer even longer. His works have appeared in The Blend International, Common Ground Review, DASH Literary Journal, Liminality, North Dakota Quarterly, and Trouvaille Review.

Three Poems by Peter J. King

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 2 Comments

Grow Old Along with Me

If I were kind then I should say
That you’re as youthful as the day
I met you, and I’d claim to find
From brow to chin your face unlined,
               If I were kind.

I’d salve the worry you display
About the worsening decay
Of your once sharp incisive mind,
               If I were kind.

And when you showed me your dismay
At what the scales insist you weigh,
At liver spots, at undefined
Complaints of an obstetric kind,
I’d tush and pish your fears away —
               If I were kind.

Alzheimer’s

What am I doing here, bewildered at the bottom of the stairs?
Was there some task I should perform, some object lost?
Time’s friction-flow my mind impairs.
What am I doing here?

              My intellect was clear, and yet the years I’ve crossed
                            Are being taken from me slowly, almost unawares,
              And like a standing stone I am becoming mossed.

Now on this chilly step I sit and try to gather my affairs;
I’ve outlived all my peers, but at too great a cost,
For there is no-one left who cares.
What am I doing here?

A Good Death

I wanted you to struggle,
dig your heels into existence
as the edge came into sight;
I wanted you to fasten
your frail hands on life,
and not give in without a fight.

But what I wanted
was beside the point that night,
for at the end it was your age
that helped to gently dim the light.




Peter J. King was born and brought up in Boston, Lincolnshire.  He was active on the London poetry scene in the 1970s, returning to poetry in 2013.  His work (including translations from modern Greek and German poetry) has since been widely published in magazines and anthologies.  His currently available collections are Adding Colours to the Chameleon (Wisdom’s Bottom Press) and All What Larkin (Albion Beatnik Press).

https://wisdomsbottompress.wordpress.com/

“Spaniel” by Allan Lake

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 1 Comment

There’d be someone lickable
to walk with, talk with along
life’s urine-sprinkled path,
someone to hold and protect me,
nuzzle and say,
You are the one, Honey.

I’d snooze on your bed, smelly
with love. You’d feed, pet, treat
and bathe me so I’d fetch your
tennis ball to make you happy,
lay it gently at your fragrant feet.
We’d be so into each other
if only I were a woof
and you weren’t so aloof.




Allan Lake, originally from Saskatchewan, has lived in Vancouver, Cape Breton I., Ibiza, Tasmania, and Melbourne. His first poetry collection was Sand in the Sole (Xlibris, 2014). Lake won Lost Tower Publications (UK) Comp 2017, Melbourne Spoken Word Poetry Fest 2018, and has been published in New Philosopher. His chapbook, My Photos of Sicily, was published by Ginninderra Press, 2020.

“Lorna” by Patrick Key

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

I liked how she reminded me of plastic
tablecloths, yellow stained ceilings, and
all-purpose flour. She was smiling, romantic.
In the moonlight with me, resting on the land.
Drinking in the shine distilled illegally.
The path of darkness ended and turned into the heat.
Her warmth gave me hope, because secretly
I saw the bloodstains. Heard her bleat.
There were no footsteps leading to the wood.
I hope. Unlike others before her time.
Wedding bells soon chimed. “I could
wear pastel pink.” I wanted it to be mine,
but such a hue was lost to all of those years.
Memory beckons, even when I blink away the tears.




Patrick Key started writing seriously later in life, thanks to the help of a poetry class during his undergraduate years. His works have appeared in Wine Cellar Press, The Daily Drunk, The Amethyst Review, among others. He is also the founding editor of Grand Little Things. More can be found at https://patrickkeywriter.com/

“Paint” by Jessica Renee Dawson

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 2 Comments

He baptizes His brush
within warm cadmium yellow
a touch of alizarin crimson
painting a sunset across my sky
my skin
as timber, bare of bark
bleached
all who walk by the waters
touch my silhouette
He plunges into phthalo blue
ultramarine, and a spot of white
the colour of my eyes
clouds, moving across a vast expanse
the autumn fields
sway with yellow ochre
His bristles
touch each head of grain
and clothe my crown
with fields of golden wheat
shading with burnt umber
though my hands are Naples yellow
my wood knotted, leaves fallen
he touches my sullen lips with red earth
parched branches,
an extension of my beauty
for those who walk by
to see what would have been breathed,
beheld, lived
had my bark not shed
my leaves not fallen

first appeared in Poetry Quarterly




Jessica Renee Dawson, lives on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. She has taken creative writing through North Island College, and has studied under notable poets, Lynne Knight, and Jan Zwicky. Dawson’s works have appeared in journals including: Poetry Quarterly, INK IN THIRDS, The Tulane Review, Wild Plum, and NonBinary Review.

“The morning after death” by Jeanette Willert

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           The sweeping up the heart,
           And putting love away
           We shall not want to use again
           Until eternity.
                —Emily Dickinson

You wonder, don’t you, why the sun rises
yet again, when your world is upside-down?
Yes, there was a “bustle In the house” this morning,
and death did come calling some hours before.

But, as to the “bustle”, vital to
placing us, the living, back into the natural
flow. Natural as in… nature, human nature,
the nature of life from birth to death:
nature as in day and night, the turn
of seasons, the certainty of stars.

We “bustle” not in denial, but affirmation,
not in disrespect but affiliation.
We, too, will be dead, but in the future…
but certainly dead as our forebears,
their stories now dead with them.

The earth goes on, morning bursts
beyond the stand of pines across the lake,
and evening descends like a filmy drape
over those same pliant pines.

Last night, a full moon cast light
across the lake, like a lady
laying a long white glove
atop a glass table.

I think of you;
I think of tomorrow.
I think of when no one
will remember us
and that must be okay.




Jeanette Willert was an Associate Professor of English Education at Canisius College and Director of the Western New York Writing Project. A recent Vice-President of the Alabama State Poetry Society, she was honored as their 2018 Poet of the Year. Her chapbook Appalachia, Amour won the Morris Chapbook Award (2017), Her poems have appeared in Goat’s Milk, WINK, Libretto, Crosswinds Poetry Journal and the 2020 Anthology of Appalachian Writers. Her first poetry book will be published by Negative Capability Press this year.