Poetry

Cathy Barber

Body

a golden shovel poem after William Carlos Williams’ “Between Walls”*

Sometimes, in the
dark evening, the back
side of the world wings
its way free of
discretion. The
baser side, hospital
ICU of existence, where
wounds pulse and nothing
answers the will
to move, to newly grow
and thrive. That lie
of glinting cinders
(bold metaphor) pops in
an instant in which
stark sun shine
is suddenly absurd and the
horrors of the broken
body, destroyed pieces
of muscle and bone, of
memories now, rely on a
drip, a binding, and a green
nurse with a bottle.

Cathy Barber has an MFA in Poetry, Vermont College of Fine Arts, and MA in English, CSU East Bay. Her work has been published in a wide range of journals including the SLAB, Slant and Kestrel and in anthologies, including Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, and The Cancer Poetry Project Vol 2. Her poetry has been nominated for a Best of the Net. Her chapbook (Dancing Girl Press) is titled Aardvarks, Bloodhounds, Catfish, Dingoes. “Body” is in Barber’s as yet unpublished collection of golden shovels. cathy.ann.barber@gmail.com.

*From The Collected Poems: Volume I: 1909-1939, copyright © 1938 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Rebecca Starks

The Other End of the Leash

The truth is I hate imposing constraint—
strapping toddlers in car seats, forcing pills
down a cat’s throat, opening the bedroom door
before a sleeper’s breath has fully risen—
on anyone but myself. No longer free
I wanted you to fly, possessed by nothing
but the bounding boundless joy we’d nearly lost,
cautious and calcifying on the sidelines.
So much for vicarious transcendence,
that one last fling—you’d be instead a mirror
of our hardships, evasions, and displacements.
From then on, whenever we watched you run,
all we could see was the pain—punishing,
unrequited—you tried so hard to run from.

Rebecca Starks

Misconception

From the moment I saw the double line
I was struck that I was body, a woman’s,
blind to how I identified as mind
intent on choosing how it was occupied,
admitting what its doubt could not dislodge.
Once I was pregnant, my mother thrilled to say,
everything I did was full of purpose—
eating, sleeping, nurturing the life within.
I was too ashamed to say I’d felt that way
about my mind, prepared to be a writer’s
and now deprived of any other aim
but keeping off things it had no hope to change,
only endure like a long illness, brooding
on that which hadn’t yet lived, yet hadn’t died.

Rebecca Starks is the author of the poetry collections Time Is Always Now, a finalist for the 2019 Able Muse Book Award, and Fetch, Muse (forthcoming from Able Muse Press), and is the recipient of Rattle’s 2018 Neil Postman Award for Metaphor. Her poems and short fiction have appeared in Baltimore Review, Crab Orchard Review, Ocean State Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Slice, and elsewhere. She has a Ph.D. in English and works as a freelance editor and workshop leader. She lives in Richmond, Vermont, and can be found at rebeccastarks.com.

James Miller

Last Arts

We walked every evening, all through our chill March.
So late, our shadows could rarely find a form. We heard
a few threads of TV dialogue from glowing bedrooms.
Raw lamps shaped porches to ovals like eyes. One night,

a neighbor was replacing his mailbox. The old post lay
lifeless on the grey grass, a halo of crumbling concrete hanging
round its browned root. His daughter helped to paint
the new box, with waxy whiteness. A heavy man

walked his bicycle with one hand—slowly, weighted
as if with alien gravity, ominous clouds of gas-giant methane.
Shards of magnetic storm rippled across his squashed shoulders. His lips
resembled sheets of mica, pressed deep underhill. We passed

a half-dozen guests lighted from an open garage. One said,
have a friend who works at Memorial, he says they’re dead, for real.
A tiny grill toasted tiny sausages. Old rutting songs, turned low: feel like,
feel like making, feel like making love. Do you remember,

our apple tarte tatain? The baker brought that beauty to our table,
withdrew and watched as we described every bite, in English. I could see
his face in the mirror behind you. He scrubbed spoons and plates,
scraped flakes and granules, their last sops of sugar. You ask

to hear the story again, what I saw in his hands at their washing,
the thing they knew, wrung out in Parisian soapsuds, dried in embrace
of cheap cloth towels. I want to say: they had only their next task
to consider, quick and sure in their ruthless art.

James Miller won the Connecticut Poet Award in 2020. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Cold Mountain Review, The Maine Review, Lunch Ticket, The Atlanta Review, Thin Air, The Inflectionist Review, A Minor, Typehouse, Eclectica, Rabid Oak, pioneertown, Natural Bridge, North Dakota Quarterly, Yemassee, Phoebe and elsewhere.

Eric W. Schramm

Self Portrait with Birds Around Me

The robin was my first
kill. Wing-wrecked
and jaw-crushed.
I chased our cat
around the yard until
she dropped her prey
and retreated
to a plot of ferns
to watch. My mother
handed me the shovel
for both the quick blow
and burial.
The pop
of the bones, a spurt
of breath to the dull thud
of the shovel head on the turf.
At 13, I became accomplice
to our clumsy killing:
birds hitting picture windows.
Squirrels run down, deer,
raccoons and opossum—a host
of corpses at our feet.
We forge a ravaging swath
of indiscriminate death
like no others species.
And birds—despite their
gorgeous escape—doomed
to muddle with us
for their food and scraps
for nests. There are days
when birds seem
to circle my way. Crows
grow comfortable
in my proximity. Sparrows
build homes in the eaves
of my house. And woodpeckers
warn me of disease
in the tree dangling above
our roof. I think they take
my foolish ways for a crown.
I apologize to any that might hear
for the lives I’ve taken. I step
more lightly through their world.
On no authority do I make
amends. I image the trust
St. Francis evoked
with his arms outstretched
for the feeding of birds,
not for anything else
than service to the world,
as I think about the desiccated
and broken bodies
of the many birds
Audubon killed to make
his Birds of America—
taking more.
Taking more than there is
to possibly give.

Eric W. Schramm lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan and works for the University of Michigan. His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Great Lakes Review, Gargoyle, Gyroscope Review, New Zoo Poetry Review, The Literary Review, The Louisville Review, The Potomac, and Wisconsin Review, among others.

Esther Sadoff

Making a Mess

I envied the command of others,
felt shame first during a clementine peeling contest.

We dumped clementines from their red netting,
piled peels into a tart conflagration,

tried to hide the evidence until our mouths
were burned by citrus.

I knew it again when we drew
on the walls of my grandparents' closet,

color streaming from our fingertips.
Where else could all that color go?

Today I spill grass seeds in a pile
instead of spraying them like chicken feed
to a yard of dusty birds.

I pour seeds in mounds and loops
like I’m learning to write my name.

A perfection of mess making.
I cross the t
and make the roundest o.

Esther Sadoff is a poet and teacher from Columbus, Ohio. She has a bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College where she studied literature as well as a Master of Education from The Ohio State University. Her poems have been featured or are forthcoming in SWWIM, Sunspot Literary Journal, West Trade Review, River Mouth Review, Penultimate Peanut, Iris Literary Review, as well as other publications.

A. Pikovsky

Soviet Time

twiddled in the “bread” line
& the rain
tapped on the fabric
of Soviet time
stretched over the bent, metal frame
another apparatus, traveled for comfort
etched, then sharpened
warm-lipped & partnered
interlocked, all
but strangers
masked & hooded,
standing flat & shocked;
pensive & lost between thoughts, i watched
the peasants separate agreeably as
they chewed on bitters loudly—
& i thought to myself:
matte is the tearing of childhood wanderings
on the silent island,
past the lard,
where my mother resides, by the
hanged terrors in death’s
backyard.

A. Pikovsky is a poet living in Philly who is the child of Soviet Jewish Immigrants.

Ashley M.P.

And here, I explain that it can happen again and again and again

The postpartum fat of my upper arms sprouted many mouths
approximately 24 hours after my daughter’s birth, to explain to me
that its bulk, a bolt of soft and flowing velvet, the color of peaches
clearly makes me an unfit mother

And so, even though I know exactly where their idle talk will take me
discharge papers are signed with a growling stomach
and I sing to the lamb gowned baby girl in the backseat
to drown out its noise

Her three-week-old blue eyes on me are so very unimpressed and disappointed
I stare back and plead silently for her to return to a deep sleep
away from her mother whose muscle memory feels the pain of labor, away from
an all-consumed-with mathematics-of-food-and-misery, type of mother

I continue my online grocery order and if online carts rolled their eyes
the whites would contrast against the welding of silver
heavy laden with proverbial cages constructed of 80 calorie tuna packets and
frozen meal, most carefully calculated to precision

suggesting the appearance of eating normally throughout the day
as if I could possibly succeed at fooling a therapist with
twenty years of eating disorders experience
guiltily, I add Fruit Loops for my breakfasts

For a second I marvel at the miracle she is and I
click delete
add to cart
click delete

Ashley M.P. is a Southerner who practices nursing but dreams more about publishing her full collection of poetry so that the world may better understand the unusually common intersection of marriage, motherhood, and recovery from childhood sexual abuse and eating disorders. Her pieces have been published by Awakened Voices Literary Magazine and Chaleur Magazine. She welcomes anyone interested in enquiring more about her work, or simply needing to have a conversation about their own experiences in recovery, to email her at ashleympwrites@gmail.com. 

Randy Lee White

Bone Dry, 1935

Three years now—no rain
crops failed last summer. Made Marsha
cry that much harder for Cal-i-forn-i-a
but Gilbert had spent too many years
turning soil. Eyes bloodshot, he
scans his legacy, rows of half-grown
dried corn stalks. Won’t feed no hogs
or cows, worthless bony hides.

A distant dark dust cloud boils on
the horizon. Gilbert spits out gritty
Nebraska topsoil and sips on coffee
tainted with silty Oklahoma. Sand
dunes drift across the main road. Marsha
baked a cherry pie yesterday, mud
in the filling made the cherries crunchy.
Kids never gave it no mind. Sucking dust

last few years didn’t suit Pa—got the
black lung, coughing up dark blood.
Couldn’t plug all the cracks in the walls
to stay the dirt. Buried him next to Ma
on Wednesday when the wind was down
had to pack tight his grave dirt—half that
flew away. Paper talks about soil conservation
rows this way, rows that way, tree line here
rows up there. Never heard of such nonsense,

Gilbert glares at the lead news banner: “Black
Blizzard Stretches from Chicago to New
York: Hits D.C.” Now they know how
we feel. His remark falls with the dust
settling on the smaller headliner, “A New
Day: A New Deal.” Hope so. Gilbert nods at his
wife, Marsha, and says, get to packing.

Randy Lee White earned a Master in Arts with a Major in English from UNC Charlotte in 2007. He enjoys fishing, golf, and camping with the grandchildren. He has had stories and poems published in The Monarch Review, Gambling the Aisle, Sanskrit, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Unlimited Literature, and The Helix Literary Magazine. A collection of his stories, “Yearnings: Rendezvous,” is available at Amazon.com. For further information, you will be able to visit randywhitenow.online in December of 2020.

Z.K. Parker

Extinct tribes and lost spirits

Fully furnished, the house sinks
into the bayou half an inch every
three or so years, so they bought it,
and left the living room empty except

for the fan, air moving in a void.
Her due date passed – amblosis,
to come to nothing. They locked
the newly painted room, bought
a new calendar, days for new debts

In the dark a fox screams – the echo
of his wife, a plaintive cry. A coyote lurches
from the sedge, yapping at the couple's
shadows on the glass, repelling each other.

He pulled into the driveway – late.
At the pond's edge: Could we keep
a child from slipping into the water?

She raised her voice again – a hymn,
a counter-tone, a Coushatta myth:
When Tiba told Nita: How could you
forget me? Leave, for I no longer know you.

He saved the dishes and bruised his finger
spinning the telephone dial. His father:
The apocalypse isn't the end
of the world, but revelation, hallucination.

She let the turntable's scratches fill
the house: This is the way our love goes.
On the porch a black bear rose, heavy,
its shoulders rolling back like paper burning.

They used a ruler's marks to age the earth
that devoured them. They pried up the wood
floor to board windows, to block any view
of the swamp's gas light – hovering, waiting.

Z.K. Parker’s work has appeared in Ruminate, FishFood Magazine, and The Heartland Review. He is the news editor at a newspaper in northern Louisiana where he lives with his wife and three children. He also owns a multimedia company and works as an editor at a small press.

Bryn Gribben

Dahlia

The last summer flower to bloom
is the dahlia, sassy as a French mob cap,
insistent as a harvest moon.

Dahlia of the botanist, Dahl, to wit
like lentils dished as soups, although
in Sanskrit, dal means to split,

the pulses counted into pairs,
then poured into portions,
feeding our heartbeats, food as prayers.

A Swede naming the native flower of Mexico—how strange!
What gave him the right to claim its petaled heft?
There it’s “Dalia,” without the “h,”

and that, in Lithuania, means “destiny” or “fate”
after the goddess, who distributes the dalis:
the proper share for everyone who waits.

But Dalia doesn’t decide. Dievas serves
our shares at birth, and she just backs him up,
doling out that which we deserve.

Woman, lamb, dog, swan, or duck, the schemer
gives us fodder for our lives, varied as dahlia varieties:
Fancy Pants, Trooper Dan, Bride to Be, Four Day Dreamer.

We each then are given a life, rallying
to live until the end with elegance and dignity,
commitment—the dahlia represents them all. No dallying,

then, rain-wrecked but sturdy, this dinner plate-sized white one,
wondrous head nodding outside my window, the last to go—
it’s living its portion out with vigor ‘til it’s really, truly done.

Bryn Gribben is a senior lecturer of English at Seattle University, teaching literature, creative non-fiction, and composition, but her SU students call her their steampunk fairy godmother. She has taught at the Richard Hugo House, was the co-editor of fiction for The Laurel Review, and is currently the creative non-fiction managing editor for Big Fiction Magazine. Bryn’s work can be found in Superstition Review, The Rappahannock Review, River River, the HCE Review, among others, and her poem “The Postmaster General Declares Lynching Postcards Unmailable” is included in the anthology Suitcase of Chrysanthemums, from great weather for MEDIA. Tilde nominated Bryn’s essay “Cabin” for a 2019 Pushcart Prize. Please feel free to find an agent for her manuscript, Amplified Heart: An Emotional Discography, a series of essays on intimacy and music.

Robert Brakeman

Husband

my only horse died last night
my drunken husband buried him in too shallow a grave and

coyotes made off with innocent flesh
while he slept past noon

the other night nurses drained a half
gallon of fluid from his abdomen

his liver no more porous
than a river stone

how long after a liver says let me die
does a man actually die

I was counting dead flowers
on a lonely windowsill when

he called down to me from the bathroom one day
blood splattered on the floor

coughed out from a dying throat
full of rust and lies

I walked this time slowly
up stairs too steep for any more tears

was my freedom eclipsed by the
top edge of the final stair where

a motionless body might lay
a last breath like smoke

escaping out a slightly open window with
summer’s breeze pulling it homeward,

please

Robert Brakeman lives in Monroe CT and is a graduate of Northfield Mount Hermon School and Gettysburg College. Other than high school journals, this is his first publication. Much of his poetry focuses on non-fiction traumas and events, typically fueled by  alcoholism and drug abuse, that have unfolded in his life or in the lives of those nearest him. Robert can be reached at rob.brakeman@gmail.com.