This issue features
photo by Barbara Anderson Chase,
photo by Margaret Scrymser,
photos by Max St-Jacques,
photos by Leah Oates,
poetry by Richard Block,
poetry by David Breeden,
poetry by Charles Brice,
poetry by Frank John Edwards,
poetry by R. L. Farr,
poetry by Dhiraj Gaurh,
poetry by Alisha Goldblatt,
poetry by Jon Tilley, and
poetry by Mervyn Seivwright
Barbara Anderson Chase
Sunrise from Rawley Point
Copyright © 2021 by Barbara Anderson Chase.
About the Artist
Barbara Anderson Chase has discovered her creativity with her nifty iPhone camera. She lives in Wisconsin with her husband and yellow lab.
Richard Block
[losing the blue, azure]
losing the blue, azure
swirls into creases of crushed dark
and loosens. flayed remembrances silhouetted
atop the buoyant dream.
in time moving and removing,
the dream distends:
bottle, shell, and wave, almost
a peninsula,
a reach of islands cerulean
against the rust torpor and pales suddenly:
the shape of parting lovers the touch
of separate blue.
Copyright © 2022 by Richard Block.
[secretly towards a world i do not know]
secretly towards a world i do not know
crawling into nowhere…
the sun has burned itself out here
which means it is laughing:
“blessed art thou, thee or i
only by lies.”
alive i suffocate amid the splendor
or is it windy despair?
do I admit the truth
drown once again and be one?
to pretend just once:
faith, unfreeze your glance!
i sing your silly song tonight
but at death’s eve you sing mine.
Copyright © 2022 by Richard Block.
[night falls?]
night falls?
emptiness surrounds.
the sound of nothing helps me remember my name.
it’s changed. i am called many things by many people.
often i respond. often i do not.
i’m changing, too.
who notes the change or drafts its course?
what wind urges me on—
what star would i follow?
when night falls, the night is already gone.
the perfect blankness of the sky settles on me;
a wash on all things, on all names.
i’ve stopped looking for stars—
how i miss the night?
Copyright © 2022 by Richard Block.
About the Author
Richard Block is a professor of German Studies at the University of Washington where he also teaches film and global literatures. He is the author of 2 books, The Spell of Italy: Vacation, Magic, and the Spell of Goethe and Echoes of a Queer Messianic: From Frankenstein to Brokeback Mountain. He has also authored more than 25 critical essays, including most recently, “Mourning Becomes Electric: AIDS’ Disappearing Act.
Margaret Scrymser
Fire in the Sky
Copyright © 2022 by Margaret Scrymser.
About the Artist
Margaret Scrymser has been taking a series of photographs from her Northern Virginia balcony in an effort to retain some semblance of sanity during the covid-19 pandemic.
David Breeden
Napoleon in Moscow: the Emperor’s Difficult Reading
Napoleon, it’s said, collapsed
into a chaise longue as Moscow
burned. He could only read
a novel to take his mind off
the madness of burning a city
rather than gutting up and giving
it to him, like everybody else.
How could they be so selfish?
Napoleon asked, collapsed in
a funk from the blow. So hard,
even to focus on a narrative
when there were such monsters
in the world. Arsonists. Cheaters
at the game. Sore losers. Why?
Napoleon kept asking from his
chaise longue, wicker as it
happened. Inflammable. Nothing
like cooling your heels as the last
warm days tick by. Nothing like
losing an army to those who won’t
play by the rules, Napoleon
said as the embers spread and
defeat sank in. How could they
go so far out of the story? It
made the reading so difficult
as Moscow burned and the
winter tensed for a lunge.
Copyright © 2022 by David Breeden.
About the Author
David Breeden has an MFA from The Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, a Ph.D. from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi, with additional study at Breadloaf and in writing and Buddhism at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. He also has a Master of Divinity from Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago.
Charlie Brice
Craft Talk
It really is true that
less is more.
In fact, I really didn’t need
that first line
or the “really” in the first
or third line.
You must kill your darlings,
even the ones you think
are killer words like
incandescent, penumbra,
inchoate, and sublime—
especially sublime.
You must watch out
for needless repetition
as in repeating “sublime” above.
I really shouldn’t have done that.
Whoops! There I go using
that worthless word “really” again.
If you’re writing about something that exists,
it’s already really real, isn’t it?
You must determine beforehand whether
your lines will be primarily
trochaic or iambic or some combination
of the two. Also consider how many
beats per line and whether you’ll use
couplets, tercets, or quatrains.
Or maybe not. Figuring all that out
before you write might
demoralize you so thoroughly
that you’ll become paralyzed
and never start the poem. Just forget
what I said about prefiguring form
before you begin. You can always do that
after the first draft.
By the way, you shouldn’t use
the word “just” more than
once in a poem. Just ignore my
repetition of that useless word
in lines 31, 36, and 37 above
(and line 66 below).
I don’t know what got into me!
Now, let’s talk about enjambment.
I love it, but others
hate it. Still, it gets you to
go onto the next
line or even the next
stanza, so I recommend
it.
You must avoid using the second
person. Imagine if Hopkins
had written, “You, are you grieving
over Goldengrove’s unleaving?”
Where would we be without Margaret?
Also, the amorphous “you” puts
the reader on the spot. Are you implying
that he or she is responsible for
something while merely reading your poem?
Oh, and avoid words of more than two
syllables—words like “implying”
and “responsible,” because they interfere
with the natural rhythm of a line.
Clearly, I became momentarily insane
when I used those words
in the stanza above.
Finally, try not to make your poem too
prosy. Just rely on your intuitive
or native (yes, the word “native”
is more poetic) sense of rhythm
and sound. Let it guide you while you work.
Good luck and happy writing!
Copyright © 2022 by Charlie Brice.
The Truth About Alaskan Air
with thanks to James Brown, Michael Dickman, and Ryan Walsh
you’re a sex machine
a brand-new bag
the hardest working man in the breathing industry
every time you flex a muscle an earth quakes
jet across the stage on one foot
it’s a breeze
salmon air
halibut air
grisly air
deer breath
you will spawn
you’ll feel good like you knew you would
igloos make you hot
no need for air conditioning or Xanax
your will to power a war on your will
please please please please
(please please) baby don’t go
Copyright © 2022 by Charlie Brice.
Tough Luck
The ice was too thin
no one could help
the swan its foot caught
in ice on Walloon
All we could do is watch
or not watch
as I chose to do
It was an eagle
my neighbor said
that finished it off
Copyright © 2022 by Charlie Brice.
About the Author
Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His chapbook, All the Songs Sung (Angel Flight Press), and his fourth poetry collection, The Broad Grin of Eternity (WordTech Editions) arrived in 2021. His poetry has been nominated twice for the Best of Net Anthology and three times for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Chiron Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, The Paterson Literary Review, Impspired Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review, and elsewhere.
Frank John Edwards
Spuds - 1975
I left Chihuahua in a blazing late morning
For the town of El Paso six hours away.
But halfway to El Paso
In a desert called Terra Blanca
My intestines went rogue.
I pulled off and ran behind a dune,
Beyond fear of rattlesnakes,
And I will not describe what ensued,
Except to say
That back in the Beetle
When I released the clutch
There arose a whine
Then a growl of gears
Gnashing themselves to bits.
I walked a couple hours to a crossroads town
And caught the Juarez bus just after dusk.
My seatmate was about my age
And spoke no more English
Than I his native tongue.
I felt his eyes roam me
And when he suddenly reached for his pocket,
I braced.
It was his wallet.
He flipped through plastic photo holders
Then handed me a Polaroid.
Montana, he says.
He stands in a field smiling.
In his hands—
Raised against the peaks
And the big blue sky at his back—
Two magnificent
Potatoes.
Copyright © 2022 by Frank John Edwards.
Nocturne
I linger on the lakeshore
As the pulse of this autumn day grows faint.
Cloud underbellies,
Dune-rippled like a desert inverted on high,
Soak up pink and ochre from the west
And spit out rays of gold.
As the solar sarcophagus sinks,
Stars appear, shy at first but growing bold,
Like distant kin at a wake.
My cat joins me on the shore,
Crouches to watch a chipmunk
Scuttle into the gaping body bag of night.
Copyright © 2022 by Frank John Edwards.
Last Days of Kerouac
Living in a small house in Florida with his mother,
Addicted to alcohol, obsessed with baseball,
His looks and strength long gone,
The last days of Jack Kerouac
Haunt me this afternoon
As I sit in a coffee shop
Where good music plays,
Sponging up whatever comes.
Charlie Parker lets a solo rip
Like a cyclone coaster through
How High the Moon
In the style of bebop badinage
That Kerouac pumped into prose.
At the table close to mine,
Two girls talk of pregnancy –
Rather, the afflicted one listens while the other
Riffs on the theme of
Everything’s going to be okay.
And I want so much to believe her.
Copyright © 2022 by Frank John Edwards.
About the Author
Frank John Edwards is a writer and physician living in rural New York State with his spouse, an emergency nurse. He entered the US Army after high school and served as a combat helicopter pilot in Southeast Asia. He has published two medical books, two novels, and a collection of stories and poems. He earned an MFA in writing from Warren Wilson College.
R. L. Farr
The Weight of Pears Held in the Palm
We choose our words
like we chose
this morning’s pears.
Deliberately.
To speak of affection
we hide behind
our hands (the effect
of clearing the voice).
The unsaid waits.
Yet never of the other
desires. Those the body’s
science urges
toward completion.
The core remains.
We’ve pressed
our thumbs
into the flesh,
tested its initial reluctance
to surrender the blush
ripeness to the hand.
Copyright © 2022 by R. L. Farr.
About the Author
R.L. Farr, poet and sometimes bookbinder, lives and writes in Doylestown, PA. She is a founder and co-editor of River Heron Review, an online poetry journal, publishing and supporting poets from across the globe. When not writing poetry or editing, you will find Robbin volunteering for her county arts council where she, not surprisingly, writes much of its content. Her poetry has been published in various journals and anthologies. Visit robbinfarr.com.
Max St-Jacques
Max St-Jacques, NYC 2020-2021, color photography.
Max St-Jacques, NYC 2020-2021, color photography.
About the Artist Max St-Jacques is a photographer, actor and model who has acted in A Gathering of Shifts shot in New York City in 2021. Max’s photos recently were shown at Usagi NY Project Space Gallery in Brooklyn, NY and at Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery in Florida. His work has been featured in Up North Literary Magazine and in The Lunch Break Zine in 2021 and in Stone Soup Magazine in 2015. Max is a Canadian American and he lives between Brooklyn, NYC and Toronto, Ontario. Visit: https://www.usaginy.com/copy-of-architype-exhibition https://upnorthlit.org/max-st-jacques https://heyzine.com/flip-book/5310fd9d4e.html#page/13 https://stonesoup.com/article/halifax-nova-scotia-canada-2015/
Dhiraj Gaurh
The Last Ritual
Step follows each step
In exactly the same ritual.
Careful to avoid missteps
With age, being habitual.
The same ritual took place
Countless millennia past.
The same spirit ablaze
In words that last.
All the generations bygone,
Connected with the spell so cast.
With my ancestors' bones,
I am connected at last.
I now see them chant,
In that ancient native land.
Beginning a soul's lament,
Under King Vikram's hand.
And I see King Vikram enthroned
As I close my eyes to smoke,
Hidden memories invoked.
King Vikram still rules in memory
As the shlokas have foretold.
Copyright © 2022 by Dhiraj Gaurh.
Inside
After months locked in
Finding safety in the house.
Every joyous thing seems inside
It is difficult to venture out.
A strange world lies outside
A world not ours.
With it we don't identify
There lies nothing to find.
Fear and unease rule there
Better is the comfort inside.
Our thoughts turned in
Ethereal entertainment to find.
Forgotten and unknown
Lies the open road.
Old thoughts of travel
We no longer hold.
For caged birds do not fly
If they have their perch
And a new toy to try.
Bars of gold do muffle cries.
Copyright © 2022 by Dhiraj Gaurh.
About the Author
Dhiraj Gaurh, is a reclusive computer engineer whose life did not change much during the frequent lockdowns. He has been writing poetry in the traditional way with fountain pens on paper throughout the forced isolation of the pandemic. He lives in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India.
Alish Goldblatt
Tooth Dreams
When our teeth hang by their roots,
or sit askew in their gum-chairs,
jagged, wiggling, then part of us knows
it’s just a dream. But the mirror still winks.
Tongue-fence gone, we run haphazardly into the
fields, tossing those words that should have been
corralled. They worm into the soil, implanting
the ideas of their forebears.
In Islam, if you gather fallen teeth in a dream
then infertility strikes, your cupped hand a vessel
of potential missing children. They nestle
at home in the palm, leaning against the lifeline.
The lost teeth are the final straw in Jewish dreams:
your sons and daughters have died. In your grief
you lose the will to eat, so there’s no need for teeth.
Always practical, we are, finding meaning in the bite.
Copyright © 2022 by Alisha Goldblatt.
Oath of Office
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of
the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend
the Constitution of the United States.
He, because that’s still a guarantee,
can always choose to swear.
After all, the earth is his footstool,
gold brocade, the enemies humbled.
But if he’s somewhat non-committal, an affirmation will do.
His load is heavy this term around:
A virus that varies on a whim and splinters the world
separatism races through our bloodstreams
The market’s pendulum is erratic and then staid
Our spaces alternately burn and flood
To fully execute the office is to know that
river mussels are coming up dead and no
one can figure out the cause. Their innards
have turned; their edges are a rusty, putrid murk.
Without them, there is no filtration system,
and water just runs through the boneless,
leaving nothing behind, rushing
into the sea with flame retardants,
ecoli and feces all safely encased.
It’s no job for the uncoordinated,
wading around
the coin shaped corpses.
Those mussels are turning
by the hundreds, just one
small cog in the species’ wheel.
Preserve
Protect
Defend
Copyright © 2022 by Alisha Goldblatt.
Repudiation
And so
he swore off those
friendships, one quick cut, razed
them from his feeds judiciously.
Excised.
Platforms
where we can write
bold on those righteous steeds,
our armor, our people, our words.
Gaslight
burns in
even the rain.
You know the cruelest heart.
When it staggers with bigotry,
you know.
But all?
Every last one?
What if it were your son,
or your parents, devoted, blind,
who fear?
Because
at the flame is
terror, the burnt stench
of loss, the faith in a system
broken.
I’m not
convinced your cut
answers our holed-in world.
Do we mute, retreat, or can we
burn too?
Copyright © 2022 by Alisha Goldblatt.
About the Author
Alisha Goldblatt is an English teacher and writer living in Portland, Maine with her two wonderful children and one lovely husband. She has published poems in the Common Ground Review, Literary Mama, River Heron Review, Burningword Literary Journal, and many others, and essays in Stonecoast Review, Wisconsin Review, and MothersAlwaysWrite. Alisha writes whenever she can and gets published when she’s lucky.
Jon Tilly
The Wheel
"Think of people," the woman told me
"as spokes on a wheel:
the closer they are to the center
the closer they are to God."
Is God then a hub
and religion the shiny hubcap
The wheel turns and turns
on eternity
But didn't reason invent the wheel
and ingenuity and hard work
smelt the metal to form the spokes
The wheel turns and turns
on eternity
transporting us with manmade comfort
into a future of manmade designs
into a future when flight will one day
do away with wheels
and freedom from the rutted road
will free us of hubcaps
and their shiny distorting images
Copyright © 2022 by Jon Tilly.
Hoping for Music
They were hoping for magic
the children in this Land of the Broken
They were hoping for elves and fairies
clad in daffodils
But no magic came
because carnivorous reality devoured it
No fairies or elves
to prance before wide-eyed children
They were hoping for otherworldly beauty
light shows of aurorae borealis
They were hoping for perfume in the air
and days of fragrant breezes
But there were no light shows
No spectral beauty electrified the air
And only the choking dust of suffering
filled the children’s lungs
Please the children pleaded
show us simple rainbows
Show us beauty in this ugly world
Show us hope in this place of hopelessness
They were hoping for music
sweet language and lyrical oceans
They were hoping for harmony
in this place of dissonance
Copyright © 2022 by Jon Tilly.
About the Author
Jon Tilly has a master's degree in Library Science and work at a public library, where he sees more homeless people than actual book readers. He’s been writing and reading poetry for years. His favorite poets are Theodore Roethke, Rainer Rilke and Sharon Olds.
Mervyn Seivwright
Each Time I Was Pulled Over
as a teen, I kept my credentials
and dependent ID close enough
to limit movements. My brown hands
stayed in plain sight, shifting
slowly when asked for registration,
shifting my eyes for empathy
without awareness of my fault.
Maybe to allow pity to a child
of a military man, increasing
my status or worth. A hostage
is told to humanized themselves
to a captor, be a softer skinned victim.
I softly said yes sir, kept my eyes
submissive, was thankful
for the ticket for not stopping
at the stop-sign, where
I had earlier stopped my car.
Copyright © 2022 by Mervyn Seivwright.
First Time in Jamaica
When I went to my mother’s home,
it was the first time I touched Jamaican soil.
At nineteen, I went to bury my grandfather
in the town of Bath. On this mountain
woven with trees of breadfruit, banana,
ackee, ambarella, plantain, pineapple,
pomegranate, guava, tamarind, coconut,
lychee, mango. Flavours my mummy would
climb for in her youth along the two-mile
walk of a rocky dirt road where driven
cars could not go. We knew the family
homes were not far, hearing dominos
slamming, shaking tables, voices blending,
country dialect combing in chorus
this first day of Nine Nights. A slow
gathering of friends and family,
in nine nights to celebrate life of lost.
Copyright © 2022 by Mervyn Seivwright.
About the Author
Mervyn Seivwright writes to bring social consciousness and poetry craft together for humane growth. He is from a Jamaican family born in London. He has appeared in AGNI Literary Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, Salamander Literary Journal, I-70 Review Literary Magazine, African American Review, and 37 other journals in six countries. He was a 2021 Pushcart Nominee, Cutbank 2021 Contest Poetry Finalist, and Mount Island’s Lucy Terry Prince Poetry Contest Second Runner-Up. Mervyn currently lives in Schopp, Germany.
Leah Oates
Transitory Space, Toronto, Ontario, 2018 - 2019, color photography.
Transitory Space, Toronto, Ontario, 2018 - 2019, color photography.
About the Artist Leah Oates has a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design, an M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a Fulbright Fellow for study at Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland. Oates has had solo shows in Toronto at Black Cat Artspace and in the NYC area at Susan Eley Fine Art, The Central Park Arsenal Gallery, The Center for Book Arts, Real Art Ways, The Brooklyn Public Library and at the MTA Arts and Design Lightbox Project. She was in group shows in Toronto at the Gladstone Hotel, John. Aird Gallery, Gallery 1313, Propeller Gallery, Wychwood Barns Community Gallery, Arta Gallery and at Papermill Gallery. Oates has been in numerous group shows in NYC at Wave Hill, Edward Hopper House, Metaphor Contemporary Art, Denise Bibro Fine Art, Nurture Art Gallery and The Pen and Brush Gallery. Article about her work has appeared in Art Toronto, Al-Tiba9 Contemporary Art Magazine, Magazine 43, dArt Magazine, The Tulane Review, Blue Mesa Review, NUNUM Journal, Friends of the Artist, GASHER Journal, and the 805 Lit + Art Journal. Visit: http://leahoates.com