Seeing clearly is not
as easy as it sounds.
A young man, strong and tensile
as a sapling, moved
along the path with
a walking stick. No—
a didgeridoo.
His playing echoed from
the ground in low,
surging waves, dense layers close to the
forest floor, firm,
unbroken
even as he raised it upwards
making sound into silk,
circular breathing keeping
the wild wide open.

We hiked miles, pausing
to see the way the river ran.
Then someone said, There are salmon!
There are salmon spawning!
as rocks turned into fish.
They were moving to stay
in place against the current,
males and females beaten
to white patches. They’d followed
their scent-compass to this stream,
circling all the way from Alaska,
back, called back to this
Oregon river bed where they were born.
Females flayed at the gravel,
then males rushed in,
sending white spumes over egg clusters,

and our breathing as we watched
became slow and deep, a quiet, forest music,
recalling the player and his didgeridoo.

 

 

Diane Averill‘s books, Branches Doubled Over With Fruit, published by the University of Florida Press, and Beautiful Obstacles, published by Blue Light Press of Iowa, were finalists for the Oregon Book Award in Poetry. She has had two other books and three chapbooks published since then. Her poems appear in literary magazines around the country and in Great Britain. Her work appears in magazines such as The Bitter Oleander, CALYX, Clackamas Review, CIRQUE, Poetry Northwest, and Talking River. Diane holds an M.F.A degree from The University of Oregon and taught at Clackamas Community College until her retirement.

a tired question
you ask
so I try to answer
love…
it’s an acorn my father gave me
thirty years ago, picked up
from the sidewalk outside
the church before mass
it’s the nuthatch at the feeder,
boundaries with doors,
the blue glow easing beneath
a curtain on a snowy morning
it’s water and breath, wheat and bone,
space and form, salt and fire,
borrowed and harnessed, broken and healed,
innate and grown, inarticulate and garnished
it’s listening to my mother retell stories,
my sister hum, my brothers calling
to their children as the moon
slides into place above the restless valley
it’s swallowing a rainbow
and allowing a cerebral infusion,
it’s a stepping forward and back,
the soft lapping of currents on stone
it’s a tucking in, a tough line drawn,
a soft shadow to cloak within,
a haven, a hole, a battle call,
the moment now and just passed, it’s coherence
it’s you next to me
asking me to define this matter
we hold in this very space
so invisible, so tangible, so light

 

 

Karen Shepherd lives in Portland, Oregon, where she enjoys walking in forests and listening to the rain. Her poetry and short fiction have been published in various online and print journals including most recently Elephants Never, Neologism Poetry Journal, Cirque Journal, and Mojave Heart Review. Follow her at https://twitter.com/karkarneenee.

Orcadian surplus, cement slab,
with barbed wire set for tensile strength,
wafer, wine for inner power,
like cutting fence, buried inside.

Staple fare, without the gun,
two Nissen huts to build from scratch,
from scrap, Italianate church.

Agnus Dei, Lamb Holm,
at the edge of the world,
from Cyrene’s Africa,
desert to winter Scapa Flow;
axis prisoners make the church,
day of Pentecost again,
different tongues, yet understand.

Car exhaust becomes the font,
light-holders and corned beef tins
with spare concrete, altar rails,
steps to alter, changing lives.

Christ in common when at mass,
barrier now is false façade,
but is the host, priest, a friend
or is Camp Sixty alien men?

This, their icon, still to show
someone inside could be set free;
after war, demolition team,
refused take this hope-sign down.

 

 

Stephen Kingsnorth, (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales from ministry in the Methodist Church, has had pieces accepted by a dozen on-line poetry sites, including Sparks of Calliope, Gold Dust, The Seventh Quarry, The Dawntreader, and Foxtrot Uniform. You can find more of his poetry at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/.

Look for Polaris — Arcturus — Vega
When you wish upon a star….

I dream of dying in the Arctic night.
There are people who have themselves frozen
When they die–
Like the soil in Labrador.
Encased in liquid nitrogen,
To be defrosted when their cure arrives.

Lakes in Labrador run North and South,
gouged out by fingers of receding glaciers.
Filled with the melt of ice and snow.

I told my children: when I get old–near dying,
Take me to Baffin Island, put me on a sledge,
Haul me out on the ice and yell to the bears
“Dinner!”

An old Inuit woman, her teeth worn down
Softening seal skin.

Let the stars speak to me while I wait.

 

 

Leslie Lippincott Hidley has been writing prose and poetry for her own amusement and that of her family and friends and others for most of her 73 years. And one of her ten grandchildren is named Kalliope. She has lived in Walla Walla, Washington; Frankfurt and Bremerhaven, Germany; Upper New York State; Enid, Oklahoma; Montgomery and Prattville, Alabama; Lubbock, Texas; Dover, Delaware; West Palm Beach, Florida; Goose Bay, Labrador; Washington, D.C.; Fairfield, California; Omaha, Nebraska; and now resides in Ojai (Nest-of-the-Moon), California, where she continues to write.

At the cake bazaar,
annual in the village hall —
Mrs Baker’s acid voice —
I stall to scan those sweetmeat plates.

The granulated cog biscuits,
as if surfaced breeze-swept snow,
fawn-mellow, flat,
centre-nippled, cherry-topped;
the scarlet shine thieves the eye,
stirs amylase from frenulum
to a painful point.

Without word, a finger point
tells Busty Baker what I want.
Only one? threat by voice and more,
clear accusatory tone,
insult when a dozen more,
pique, that her mountain not
scaled for more.

But base camp built of my cookie choice —
the tawny tone hints more mature —
Sherpa Baker stares, ice-pick tongs,
a moment carabiner caught,
feathered felt now helmet,
crampons, impasse,
first to withdraw?

Though Baker’s pride, my will-battle wins,
crevasse spanned with frost-bite grace,
wool wrapped cleavage to the fore,
she crevices her finger nails,
palming the peak, protect
from avalanche, and
bitter-sweet presents, almost
on bended knee,
my ruby ring.

 

 

 

Stephen Kingsnorth, (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales from ministry in the Methodist Church, has had pieces accepted by a dozen on-line poetry sites, including Sparks of Calliope, Gold Dust, The Seventh Quarry, The Dawntreader, and Foxtrot Uniform. You can find more of his poetry at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/.

Nonno’s portrait hangs above the sideboard.
No likeness of his helpmate is on display.
He presided at meals wearing his fedora.
You would play at swiping it off his head.
Before his death, you rolled the dough thin,
assured it would not break. You stood at table,
presented the pasta on his plate with care,
grated his preferred amount of Parmesan.
Today we sit in the shade along the house,
admire your roses, remember the fig tree.
You would coax him with the luscious fruit.
Later in a corner of the kitchen, darning socks,
you refuse to mention him, defying fate,
like Dido, your face Marpesian stone.

 

 

When she is not at Eastern Kentucky University, helping students write and produce plays, do stand-up, and edit their lit journal, Gaby Bedetti hikes, takes photos, and sings in a choir. Though Ringling is gone, she has stepped into Cirque du Soleil’s cabinet of curiosities and joined their Corteo parade. Recent poems have appeared in Frogpond, Asses of Parnassus, Italian Americana, and Still: The Journal. At present, she is co-translating Henri Meschonnic’s poems from the French.

I crept the three steps
to your room, which smelt
of musty aged breath
and butterfly panic.
Sandwiched between the glass
and a chink in the net curtains,
a Red Admiral, whose fluttering
mirrored my tiptoed approach.

I stumbled over slippers
to your jewelry box, fished out
pearls and the ruby ring that swam
off my finger and dropped back home
into knotty chains and clip-on earrings.
Brooches from another life
paid for, with dollars
to pin on collars of real fur.

Sparkles and hallmarks
piled up, a pyramid displaced
in this fisherman’s cottage.

You called me for lunch,
puffing upstairs, flapping by
in a flour cloud, your dentures clapping
a slow applause, making a tumble of your speech.
Waiting for the tart to cook as it bubbled under
with home grown apples, we sat impatient
as cinnamon, allspice, and cloves wafted in droves
from the little scullery.

You promised a tomorrow slice
as the Ford Orion arrived
early with your daughter,
to take me home.

 

A version of “Dressing Up” was previously published in The Honest Ulsterman (October 2015) and in From Doll House Windows.

 

Lorraine Carey is an Irish poet and artist. She is widely published in journals including Poetry Ireland Review, Orbis, Black Bough, The Honest Ulsterman, Willawaw, Prole, Smithereens, and on Poethead. Lorraine’s poems have been chosen for several anthologies. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her art and photography have featured in many journals. Her debut collection is From Doll House Windows (Revival Press).

 

 

In my dream I devise a mist
that if breathed for one whole day
cures even the rudest cancer.
Celebrities flock to inhale it.
Poor folks stand in line for hours.
Local politicians endorse it.
The most famous cancers shrivel
into pellets the body excretes.
The more subtle tumors regress
with tiny cries of dismay
and die of their disappointment.

The mist doesn’t smell or taste
medicinal. It’s a tang of pine
mingled with an effervescence
of orange sherbet and bourbon.
Even people without cancer
like bathing in the spa I’ve built
to house my miracle cure.
It’s only a shack I constructed
of lumber from the local landfill,
but it keeps rain from diluting
the mist and chilling the patients.

Although this cure makes me famous,
I worry that the side effects
of inhaling such a pleasant taste
will leave people dissatisfied
with their fragile little lives
and encourage public suicide
with colorful methods and modes.
Still, I collect my modest fees
and hope that the miracle lasts,
the taste of the mist so gentle
it lingers like a French kiss
impressed by a wanton child.

 

 

William Doreski has published three critical studies and several collections of poetry. His work has appeared in many print and online journals. He has taught at Emerson, Goddard, Boston University, and Keene State College. His most recent book is Train to Providence, a collaboration with photographer Rodger Kingston.

Last night, I stopped
at the local coffee shop;
you were sitting alone
writing poems in your journal
and muttering to yourself.
So I bought you a drink
and something to eat
before sitting at your table,
but you stood up
pouring your words
into my coffee cup,
leaving me the pumpkin scone
and crumbs of discarded rhymes.
Through the glass front door,
I saw you stumble once,
then turn and wave goodbye,
clutching your journal
to your chest as if it
were a small child,
or an unfinished
line at the end
of a poem.

 

 

Michael Minassian is a contributing editor for Verse-Virtual, an online magazine. His chapbooks include poetry: The Arboriculturist (2010); Chuncheon Journal (2019); and photography: Around the Bend (2017). For more information, visit: https://michaelminassian.com

The principal’s whisper was career tests,
sharp pencils and the perfect darkening
bubbles. There are no wrong answers
or astronauts among us. Brain surgeons
of the future can and should dream
of placing their hands on the warm
ticking insides of a Grand Am.

I thought of shoving pushpins into stolen autumn
eggplants. No one with a garden slept
in this town. The hospital on Halloween
offered to x-ray every last candy corn
for free, and no child escaped
without a vampire cape bandaged
in orange reflective tape.
We were all already
construction workers glowing
through a highway widening
project at sunset. I dulled
the pencils to scantron nothing
and waited for the answer.

 

 

Katie Berger holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama and lives in Nebraska. She is the author of Time Travel: Theory and Practice and Swans, both from Dancing Girl Press, as well as a number of poems, stories, and essays that have appeared or are forthcoming in Cherry Tree, Thimble, The Maynard, and others.