Category: Poetry

“Misunderstandings” by Rosemary Lazier

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

Together exultant
Through lens of gathered friends
Feathering your cap
You announced you wanted to go
Shooting.

Your predictable Canon creaking but ready
I, anticipating focal adjustments
Daily searched for desk full
Of steeping photographs rooting
Lines and depositing forms,
Glacial beginnings manifesting
Perspective from deep-set darkness,
Genesis of incandescent impressions…

One day you came in carrying a carcass.

Hacking and sawing at bone
Devoid of artistry
Disassembling life as if it were
a mechanical fixture alone.

Beneath the giblet and grit,
Pangs ran a gauntlet
Of proclamations,
Resounding as horizon lines, but
Executed, always, as fatal sentences.




Rosemary Lazier resides in Ontario, Canada, where she immerses herself in coffee, amphibian transformations, and shoreline life on the Ottawa River. She is a high school teacher of Special Education, and holds an MA in English Literature from Carleton University. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in North, In Words, and Eris & Eros journals.

“The Lion’s Last Act” by Royal Rhodes

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

Transported in your caravan was fun —
adventures far removed from zoo to zoo,
remembering the grasslands I had run,
a cub when my captivity was new.
Within the center ring that filled the tent,
encircled by the nightly roaring crowd,
I saw the iron bars the strongman bent
and clowns whose frolics made them laugh so loud.
You trained me with a chair and snaking whip
to snarl and shake my Samson-tangled mane,
and placed a cigarette upon your lip,
so calm it drove the audience insane.
They gave a gasp when you spread wide my paws
and placed your head between my ready jaws.




Royal Rhodes is a retired professor who taught classes in global religions, the Classics, religion & the arts, and death & dying. His poetry has appeared online and in a series of art/poetry collaborations for The Catbird [on the Yadkin] Press in North Carolina. His current project is a poetry/photography collaboration on sacred sites in Italy.

“Ode to The Pastoral” Carol Lynn Grellas

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 1 Comment

Were I to alter what has been
amending days of life wherein
the years were stolen, love was lost
I’d follow him through icy frost

through verdant covered mountain tops
soft-kissed with snow on coral drops
of flowers swaying left to right
beneath each noble starlit night,

reclaim the path where rivers met
when shadows found each silhouette
together ambling hand in hand
the two of us throughout the land

with days we’d christen under stars
belonging to eternal hours.
Were I to alter Heaven’s clocks
as easily as changing frocks

I’d search the rolling countryside
where daffodils and love abide
then pick the blooms along the way–
and save them for our wedding day.




Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas is currently enrolled in the Vermont College of Fine Arts, MFA in Writing program. She is a ten-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a seven-time Best of the Net nominee. In 2012, she won the Red Ochre Chapbook Contest, with her manuscript, Before I Go to Sleep. In 2018, her book, In the Making of Goodbyes, was nominated for The CLMP Firecracker award in Poetry and her poem “A Mall in California” took 2nd place for the Jack Kerouac Poetry Prize. In 2019, her chapbook An Ode to Hope in the Midst of Pandemonium, was a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards. Her new book, Alice in Ruby Slippers, is forthcoming from Aldrich Press. Her work has most recently been published on Mezzo Cammin and Verse Daily. She is the former Co-Editor-in-Chief for the Tule Review the former Editor-in-Chief of The Orchards Poetry Journal. She is a recent member of the Sacramento Poetry Center Board of Directors.

“Resurrection” by Siri Espy

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

The photos are old and faded now
like me
the face, familiar, nearly forgotten
the person I once was
and will never be again

She had wisdom tempered with naivete
the world unfolding
in a cloud of anticipation and despair
already battle worn
but fighting on

I look for her sometimes
hidden away in a remote corner
courageous but afraid
her spirit battered by time and expectations

Stay with me, I whisper to her
stay with me
we’ll give it one last try

Silently, wearily, she nods her head




Siri Espy is retired from the corporate world, where her writing included two books, numerous articles, and innumerable reports and bullet points. Her varied career included stints as a psychologist, market researcher, college instructor, consultant and health care planner and marketer. The mother of an awesome daughter, she lives in Greenville, North Carolina with her tolerant husband and three crazy cats. 

“Bridal” by Greg Sendi

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

As when in summer fauns will peel
acanthus leaves and juniper for food
or crush new eucalyptus under heel
that earthward from each tender shoot

drop balms to scent the fleshy air,
so will the footfalls of the meadow bride,
compressing sage and jasmine, maidenhair
and sparrowgrass, the countryside

exhaling censers down the slope
when she arrives. And so will her advance
express a must of memory and hope
from us, as from the meadow plants,

like sacks of orient spices full
to bursting, cracking open as she comes,
no usury so ravenous but will
be glutted to delirium

when she appears, whose loveliness
itself the gentle liquor of the lands
delivers here in us as austere Pentheus
was ushered to the hilltop dance.

Still when she nears again we feel
what we already know: the world abides
forever, though corruption dance its reel,
there is a garden place inside

whose only holy canon tells
there is no law but love, whose ancient wells
and woodland paths obscure reveal the ways
that we are made of promises and days.




Greg Sendi is a Chicago writer and former fiction editor at Chicago Review. His stories and poetry have been published in a number of literary magazines and online outlets, including recent appearances in Apricity, CONSEQUENCE, Plume, Pulp Literature, upstreet, and in the ’emerging writers’ collection of The Masters Review.

“she comes, undone” by John Wiley

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

she has fine,
heavy hair
that slips from bands,
escapes from braids,
unwinds from buns,
needs putting back
and pinning
again and again,
and long-way-home eyes
that steady down on me,
lose their balance,
and slip off;

leave your hair undone,
steady your eyes,
and give your
fine, heavy,
undone heart
to me –
when it slips,
escapes,
unwinds,

I’ll put it back
again and again.

 

 

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.

“Deadlines” by Stephen Kingsnorth

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 1 Comment

Why do the bunches and bouquets
contain messages to the dead
and even nicknames, soubriquets,
as if a better hearing earned;
not sympathy to relatives
but too late words to be passed on?

In heaven’s name, calligraphy
where serif’s sing by putti wings,
as if the fonts of wisdom bring
fresh hope to fading daffodils;
is breaking down the gates of hell
achieved by biro-scripted tales?

Criss-crosses mark what lips would do
if only flesh and blood remained,
but even dust to dust has rained
on box laid down, brass plate engraved;
encomium on card relayed
lest eulogy did not suffice.

Near deadline pass, column obits
speak for the circle, dollar word,
where weighty terms in measured lines
dance to a tune unrecognized;
as wheat and tares together sown,
not to uproot till judgement day.

The coffin sank, plot waterlogged,
grave flooding, sodden sods on mound,
as Jesus plunged to hades world,
Gehenna, council rubbish dump;
the smoky hell, where embers burn,
who knows the temper, future world?

Unless the angels literate,
extinguishers in other place,
the writing will unread remain
and just a wish-list mourners frame;
but if I ask, why write the note,
not tell while living, we are loved?




Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales from ministry in the Methodist Church, has had over 180 pieces published by on-line poetry sites, including Sparks of Calliope, printed journals and anthologies.

https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/

“Butterflies” by Robert Nisbet

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 1 Comment

When he was five, he’d amble up the garden,
with Archie, the slow fat ginger cat,
wander through the rows of peas and beans,
listen to the rooks, watch the wheeling,
and love the butterflies, the bursts of colour,
the flickering in the sun.

But when he was ten, this other kid (posh school)
showed him his butterfly book. No way.
By now he loved the crashing things.
Dick Barton, Special Agent. Space. Rockets.

At fifteen they all liked Donegan and Elvis,
formed their own skiffle group, talked
of football, girls and heroes and intrigues.
They walked much less to the woodland now,
and he hankered sometimes for the summer fields,
the bushes, grass, the butterflies whirling.

The café was called The Crossroads, oddly,
and he sat there (he was forty now),
pondering the future, which way, which way,
musing on the solid, habitual things,
when spinning through the café garden
was a bright Red Admiral, moving
in darting, sudden and beautiful directions.




Robert Nisbet, a poet from Wales, UK, won the Prole Pamphlet Competition in Britain with Robeson, Fitzgerald and Other Heroes (2017), and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in the USA with “Cultivation” (2020).

“A Misgiving Feast” by Ken Gosse

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

Two birds stood by the dusty road,
and wond’ring whether both should cross
one took two steps, but as he strode,
though fearful of the other’s goad,
returned in dread of sudden loss.

There stood the other, acting brave,
and raising fluffed and feathered breast
as if to say, “You churlish knave,
so frightened, like a master’s slave;
I’ll prove to you that I’m the best.”

The bully coxswain scratched the earth,
its talon tossing stones and dust:
to prove its courage had no dearth
and validate its noble birth,
began its task with mighty thrust.

The farmer told this with a sigh
that somewhere, out there, now deceased,
their mighty gobbler reached the sky—
uplifted when a truck passed by—
so chicken’s their Thanksgiving feast.




Ken Gosse prefers writing short, rhymed verse with traditional meter, usually filled with whimsy and humor. First published in First Literary Review–East in November 2016, his poems are also in The Offbeat, Pure Slush, Parody, Home Planet News Online, Eclectica, and other publications. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife have lived in Mesa, AZ, over twenty years.

“This is the Place” by Abha Das Sarma

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

In memory of my dear friend Jayanthi

We climbed the dusty red, slipping, pulling
Into the hazy cracks, just as we did
When you were six. You won then,
You had said.
Children painted and drew,
No one saw us go, looking down you
Smiled, pretended to slide, come through the gap
Be on my side.
The music had stopped, all looked to leave
“Who spoke to me?” a voice rough and coarse leaped
Then continued, “I want to know…” “It is me…”
The answer was lost, suddenly.
The maid had begun
To serve the tea, sister-in-law too returned
With dresses Indian, bought just then
And for the keep.
As the voice’s fingers fumbled on way to her mouth
That would break into a smile anyhow
The sun sank, changing the hues
Inside the room.
The ashes lay boxed when I returned
The sun seemed to take time
And the incense too stayed
Longer than we could fathom,
Straight ahead from where we sat
Through the glass on a day
Of goodbyes to unfolding of a life
I could find, you once again.
This is the place where the stairs
Do not reach.
This is the place from my dreams,
And this is the place which is silent today.




Abha Das Sarma is an Indian writer with a blog of over 200 poems. An engineer and management consultant by profession, she is passionate about writing. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, and Journal of Expressive Writing. She also enjoys writing haikus and has contributed to weekly postings of Haiku in Action. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, currently she lives in Bangalore with her scientist husband.