For Gilbert Torgersen Grimes, who immigrated to Newberg, Oregon
from Søndre Land, Oppland, Norway

I want to speak Norwegian,
to conjure frost and salt and juicy pieces
of white fish – Great-grandfather and his brow
resting on folded hands, suspenders stretched
under the wide warmth of his wool plaid –
Great-grandfather who built his house out of vinegar
and apples, out of a mule’s breath and
weathered fence planks and buckets of splintered dew
he gathered from depths of morning grass –
Great-grandfather who grew love from the silence
of the deer’s hooves that stitched dainty trails
through the wood ferns and from the dusty maps
worn on cow’s backs –
Great-grandfather who traveled here in a boat woven with birch
and willow and oak, who sang to us of smooth milky rocks
that fit in our palms and of leaning gravestones
with chiseled names softened by raindrops, snow and moss
and of pointed brown beaks tapping tiny odes
into the grooves of pine trunks –
Great-grandfather who still swings his scythe and feeds us
bread and filberts with his fingers and teaches us
(without words or voice)
to embrace røyk, tillit and gnagsår
(smoke, faith and blisters)
even though ocean waves and a star’s light
separate our births from his last breath.

i had anticipated
my decline into poverty
would be worse than is

typhoon of failure
washing over me
could disintegrate ability
stifling me
into almost non-existence

fortunately
i have found the contrary

from my financial decimation
associated shame
abandonment by some deemed near
and messy complication of nil self-worth
the splendid has emerged

on this empty beach
sheltering from winter
in tent and car i now call home
acceptance
nurtures me more each day

i embrace it
aware
this unwelcome lesson
in letting go
is a disguised gift
to be cherished
forever

privileged man i am
in silent reflection
by endless sea

alone
with nature
and self

finally free
from whatever i was
before

This poem, “self,” was commended in The Eyre Writing Awards and published in The Lincoln Times newspaper.

Stephen House has won two Awgie Awards (Australian Writers Guild), the Rhonda Jancovic Poetry Award for Social Justice, and the Goolwa Poetry Cup. He’s been shortlisted for the Overland Fair Australia Fiction Prize, Patrick White Playwright, Queensland Premier’s Drama, Tom Collins Poetry & Greenroom Acting Awards and many other writing prizes. He’s received international literary residencies to Canada, Ireland and the USA, and an Asialink literature residency to India. He’s been published and performed often and widely. Stephen continues to tour his acclaimed monologues. His chapbook of poetry, real and unreal, was recently published by ICOE Press Australia.

-Riffing Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese”

You do not have to be engaged.
You do not have to sit
in the front row
nodding your head
in approval,
affirmation
to the uninspired.
You only have to represent
the clickety-clack of your heart,
tap-dancing rain gutters,
solar panels.
Tell me where you’d rather be,
and I’ll draw an X
marking my spot, too.
Meanwhile, the day slugs on.
Meanwhile the sun rides the sky
in a hunched back slouch, filters
60 watts through alder leaves
hanging by a thread.
Whoever you once were,
or will yet become,
the world will bend
to your intensity.

Kersten Christianson is a raven-watching, moon-gazing Alaskan. When not exploring the summer lands and dark winter of the Yukon, she lives in Sitka, Alaska. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing (University of Alaska Anchorage).  Kersten is the author of two books of poetry:  What Caught Raven’s Eye (Petroglyph Press, 2018) and Something Yet to Be Named (Aldrich Press, 2017).  She is also the poetry editor of the quarterly journal, Alaska Women Speak.  www.kerstenchristianson.com

After García Lorca

A cool breeze – so welcome
after hot days in Andalucía
enters my body, helps
stretch the folded accordian

of my spine. I will look
the rose bush in its face
past all the obsessive gnats,
the bees bumping in orgiastic gratitude.

Why does a sepulcher
of the past haunt me even here?
The art of dying requires
heaps of human skulls

in the same way that the sky
assassinates itself over
and over again, somehow hoping
each time, it will be different.

Ray Ball grew up in a house full of snakes. She is a history professor, a Best of the Net and Pushcart-nominated poet, and an editor at Alaska Women Speak. Her chapbook Tithe of Salt came out with Louisiana Literature Press in the spring of 2019, and she has recent publications in Human/Kind Journal, Rivet, and SWWIM Every Day. You can find her in the classroom, in the archives, or on Twitter @ProfessorBall.

My mind is sharp, and oddly enough,
I can see in all directions at the same time.
People’s mouths move, but there is no sound.
I rather enjoy not having to breathe.
The air seems, well, cleaner somehow.

After all the illness and pain,
I’ve taken a turn for the better,
and I’m doing quite well.

My unblinking eyes are easy on the lenses.
The memory of what is overhead is fading rapidly.
I stroll through my thoughts;
my body chooses to remain still inside this vault.

Being dead is a solitary exercise,
and I do so relish my solitude.

The firmament becomes obscured,
and I repose in state happily ever after.

Linda Imbler is a Kansas-based Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Linda’s poetry and a listing of publications can be found at lindaspoetryblog.blogspot.com. She’s an avid reader, classical guitar player, and a practitioner of both Yoga and Tai Chi. In addition, she helps her husband, a Luthier, build acoustic guitars.  Linda enjoys her 200-gallon saltwater reef tank. Linda believes that poetry truly adds to the beauty of the world.  Much of this beauty she feels can be found in the night sky and, on warm nights, her telescope serves as inspiration for this belief.

The one with the slender body and easy eyes,
with a face carved from his darling mother,
whom you miss so, her skin resembling lace.

It was his laugh you miss most, him unable to
call out to you in those last moments and you
unable to go to him, hold him, relieve the pain.

You grip grief like a memento on the mantle.
I’ve seen it in your face, dark and gray. I watched
faith collide with events that sometimes befall small

boys, how you battled what came next, defying
the shadow that threatened to devour you without
a bite, reimagining a life in anger, the searing guilt that

no one could know, let alone understand – but you
never wanted understanding and you never wanted
anyone to know. So I sat you down and fed you because

food, I say, as though that is my answer when everything
else fails and you were not interested, but in time began
to pick at the dish I put before you as though you were

playing connect the dots. I asked you to tell me more about
the dream, how realistic it was, how you woke with a scream,
crushed under the weight of how real it seemed, until that scream

curdled the black blood that ran through me, how it poured out
of you, a blood that rent the tree canopy in two, unnerving
everything on land and in the ocean, rattling even the stars.

Michael Biegner has had poems published in Blooms, Poetry Storehouse, Silver Birch Press, Silkworm, WordPeace, and the Poets To Come anthology, in honor of Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday.  His prose poem, “When Walt Whitman Was A Little Girl,” was made into a video short by North Carolina filmmaker Jim Haverkamp, where it has competed at various film festivals around the world and is available for viewing on Vimeo. Michael was a finalist in the 2017 Northampton Arts Council Biennial Call To Artists.

the bees circle the withered roses
they crawl over sterile, sun bleached petals
then on to the leaves

they scrape a substance
from the green surfaces
whatever they can get

they gather what’s left, hoard it
before the cold, before the end
as we do likewise

Brian Rihlmann was born in New Jersey and currently resides in Reno, Nevada.  He writes free verse poetry, much of it on the confessional side.  He has been published in Blognostics, Red Eft Review, Spillwords, Synchronized Chaos, Cajun Mutt Press, The Rye Whiskey Review, and others.