Some grew the fruit, some paint it. Some grew the fruit. Some eat it.
Hard at work with the harsh sun at their back, the workers toil.
The painter at his workplace or her workplace, paints away.
The hungry with the money to afford it, enjoy it.
The going gets tough and the worker applies his and her
skill to make the fruit grow and gathers it for consumption.
The painter takes a brush to the canvas and makes it live,
the fruit from the fields, from the vine; anoints it with colour.
The consumer buys it at the price that he or she can
afford. The fruit is sweet and delicious, and filling.
Poetry is like fruit. It can rot on the page or be
the nourishment the soul needs. It satisfies and provides.
Keep Your Balance
You try to keep your balance as you are faltering between vertigo and confusion as a shower of light washes out your eyes. The day becomes night, you remain clouded in your mind. You see no clarity in the darkness that rests in your soul. You seek out the sun and the sweetness of fruit. You keep your balance tethering on the head of a pin. You pray the year brings good luck. You are daydreaming. You are coming out of the abyss. You believe the fortune cookie and the wise words it chose just for you. You are the river. You are the chosen one. You are like the tree with the sweetest fruit.
Hammer, Nail, and Wood
While we sleep the hammer is at play, nail and wood, the hammering sounds, a house is being built.
Early in the morning, the sun is still asleep, the hammer does what hammers do, pounds away.
Wooden and metal handle, steelhead, hammer, nail, and wood. Walls, windows, doors and fences being built.
I called you angel Almost from the beginning. You were No angel, The winds through the trees Have whispered to me, You Dirty devil soul Driving me to the brink Of abdicating Some of My most tender dreams.
I try to think of the Possibilities of the new her And smile But I can’t because You stole that ability Along with my dignity And the bulk of my faith, My heart Shattered
And now bloodless, Sitting slumped At the foot of What was once Our bed.
I will go home tonight, Her voice on the phone So fleet, so tender and so weary Of the world. Her cadence Still in my mind, I will
Open bottle after bottle And imagine her body pressed to mine, Her lips pursed and thirsty for mine, Her ears opened and hungry For the aural dance of my words. I won’t think of you for more than a dry rustling Moment.
Her eyes are there when I close them And I suffer knowing I am Without much hope, Admitting my meritless existence Would only erode her heart Eventually Like water on a stone But maybe Just maybe it’s different This time.
Different than every Other Time.
I contemplate that And I pretend her And I smile But because of you It’s a smaller smile And when I see it in the mirror I call myself A no good Willful Liar.
The Freedom of Dreams
Just in from the rain, Hair dripping down, Popping open a beer And sitting in front of the window, The darkened sky staring back, Wet and tired In a home that does not belong to me.
Beard wet with rain and sadness, The night stalks on. I close the blinds And turn on the music, Hoping the room will vibrate With the clicking of the keyboard, The filling of the virtual page On the computer screen, Knowing it probably won’t But hoping anyway.
Begging for your love Like a beggar begs for coins, A waif begs for bread, A homeless cur begs To see another sun As he shivers through another night On the street.
Your love is a viola From the hallway. Your love is vines of crisp black hair Pulling me toward the light. Your love is tears on the page, Blood on the cage, The freedom of dreams, The vast expanse of fantastical imagining. Your love is your legs stretched out along the bed As I caress them from top to bottom, Knowing I have wanted them before I knew You existed.
My heart bursts in the air In spirals of sparks and colours When you love me. When you love me. But now I am alone.
The rain picks up as the night carries on. The beer is gone. I fall naked to the bed With my snarling mind And my broken feet, My hair dry now, No music in my ears, The words unwritten
As I wait for your eyes to meet my eyes When I close them Until the morning.
I am only free In the dreams I make But cannot remember. Somehow I know You are there In these unremembered dreams And you are holding me And we are safe and home And that is why I am free there And want to stay there Even when another morning Comes.
So Cold Here and There
It’s so cold here And I cannot afford to turn up the heat So I shiver and open another bottle of beer While listening to Caruso sing Je Crois Entendre Encore in Italian then in French And thinking about your own loneliness And how cold you must be Huddled in your bed with small dogs and your Casual loneliness As a wind so much colder Than the wind that freezes my feet hits you As I drink and type, Not knowing what Caruso is singing But liking it as much As I like imagining Your open legs And open smile Even though you’re so cold right now Where you are, Without me.
Your Flanks
Now you are here With your flanks in my bed I imagine While William Bell sings “You Don’t Miss Your Water”. I listen while I vomit, Waiting to finish so I can drink a little bit more.
All this American music coming from the church Or from avoiding church And the Louvin Brothers might have thought That Satan is real But I know better
As I hang upside down Listening to The Christian Life And knowing that, at most, Jesus was a good guy
And I imagine that you are here, Naked and wonderful, Your flanks in my bed And half as beautiful as Parsons and McGuinn harmonizing
In a mere moment Before life does not matter much again For 8 hours
Two reasons to avoid pronouns: First, inclusiveness, Something preachers have learned: God has God’s plan for God’s people. Second, liability. Legal makes you spell things out: Do not take Zoltoff If you are allergic to Zoltoff Or to the ingredients in Zoltoff.
But then new uses for familiar words, A way of saying who you are: She, her, he, him, they, them.
The school association was meeting In Chattanooga. This was 1960. The Latin teachers were packed Into a tiny hotel room To hear a paper on some obscure grammar. A man about 40, a priest, I think, Turned to the group, smiling As if to reveal a monstrous secret: You know the trouble With the relative pronoun, Don’t you: They don’t always agree.
Basket Weave
Memory, that persistent puff of lint Caught on the edge of the kitchen counter, Preserved to no good use: At the supermarket I lurk While my wife considers cleansers, Idly eyeing a shelf of White plastic waste baskets. Where in the world, a clerk once asked, Did you find that beautiful basket-weave? This was 40 years past, In a discount store long since Gone belly up, Many towns and houses ago, Along Route One, Strip malls bulldozed out for condos, Maybe just inside Fairfax County. What has become of the Basket-weave waste can We bought that day And the woman who sold it to us, Remembered out of so much not, How many check-out lines stood in, How many white waste baskets yet to buy?
Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders published in 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems have received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club. He is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Bob’s poems have appeared in over 150 periodicals including Cold Mountain Review and Louisville Review.
Chadwick’s neutron, Fleming’s penicillin and Dalton’s law of multiple proportion was a GLS BC/B22 Opal Energizer lightbulb moment.
Orville and Wilbur Wright’s petrol-driven aeroplane, Daimler’s petrol-driven car and Becquerel discovering the principles of photo-electric cells was a JCB LED Built To Last instant start lightbulb moment.
Cartwright’s power loom, Davy’s safety lamp and Newton discovering the laws of gravity was a Halogen linear instant full light 240 watt lightbulb moment.
The invention of the lightbulb by Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan was an incandescent tungsten filament lightbulb moment.
This poem is a white wax sentinel night light with eight hours to burn.
Unslaked Summer
Punch-drunk in Rio you want the first breeze that comes along to sweep you off your feet; whirlwind love in the eye of the storm- that burning testament of human endeavour that opens windows on a man and a woman who are in the territory of the deeply-loved will outlast all ends.
Lapa
Dangerous in daylight you stray into Lapa. It’s just to look at the Arches built in the time of the Viceroys- to stand and behold the narrow gauge streetcars rumbling above but it straddles a haven for muggers; hop-heads, filchers; land-rats; drunks so you spend the day jumping at shadows: learn to live in terror back pinned to the wall.
On The Forlorn Apathy of Summer Air
You never get used to this weather the sort that says what’s the point of tightening up those isobars then throwing away the spanner… even the weather girl has run out of passion she leaves you thirsting for rainy day showers Jacuzzi skies the hip-hop sparkle of wave water careening into the Bay.
Neil Leadbeater is an author, essayist, poet and critic living in Edinburgh, Scotland. His short stories, articles and poems have been published widely in anthologies and journals both at home and abroad. His publications include Librettos for the Black Madonna (White Adder Press, Scotland, 2011); The Worcester Fragments (Original Plus Press, England, 2013); The Loveliest Vein of Our Lives (Poetry Space, England, 2014), Sleeve Notes (Editura Pim, Iaşi, Romania, 2016) Finding the River Horse (Littoral Press, 2017) and Penn Fields (Littoral Press, 2019). His work has been translated into several languages including Dutch, French, Romanian, Spanish and Swedish.
We point out all the different birds to each other like teenagers naming constellations: anhinga, gold finch, chickadee tiny juncos entranced by the influx of new life along the river summoned by the melting ice.
The air is filled with their tiny songs of joy as clouds of insects rise from thawing mud as though they had been frozen in just that spot dormant and sleeping all winter long.
Diane
When I was 13, my best friend was a rock. I used to carry it with me everywhere small and round in my hand, dream of having the courage to hurl it at people who said nasty things about me. My palm polished it to a near-reflective point, I could almost see myself in its surface see myself the way I wanted everyone else to see me or really, not see me at all.
If I had been cooler, my best friend would have been a rock but I’m just lying, because really, it was just another girl who didn’t actually like me, got me into all sorts of trouble things she could walk away from but I couldn’t. If I had had a rock for a friend instead of that girl, the one who ruined everything things would have ended up differently. It would have been better. I would have been better. I know I would.
When They Go
I open my arms and call my children to me, remind them that nothing bad ever happens so long as I’m holding them. My daughter wrinkles her nose at me and rolls her eyes, my son just ignores me and walks away. I am no longer regarded as sanctuary a bulwark against precocious misery and frustration, they don’t need me at all. I close my arms, wrap myself in an empty embrace
dream of being the sort of mother children flock to unquestioningly a fish mother who opens her maw to engulf hordes of trusting fry a scorpion mother carrying her ravenous children across the hot desert a snake mother nested in a knot of wriggling coils of tiny tails and teeth all of these things but what I am: incomplete without a tiny hand in mine a sweaty head pressed against my chest, the constant need that only I can fulfil.
The Chemical Fire
they found the dead janitor in the back of the warehouse curled around himself as if against the cold. His skin came off in handfuls of ash when they tried to move him
black, greasy ash that would not wash off.
the two boys who first found him had gone through his pockets only to have what remained of clothes, his wallet, disintegrate as well dried out past leather, his face was barely recognisable as human
mouth stretched out in a forever scream.
The Next Day
The alarm went off and we found that the world hadn’t ended, that all the ramblings of the church elders weren’t true. My husband sighed and rolled out of bed found there were only dirty clothes left for him to wear sighed again, dressed, went to work.
I could hear birds chirping in the yard a squirrel on the roof, cars passing on the road out front. I held onto my dreams of apocalypse for a few moments longer, savouring vision of the angels, the devastation that could still be waiting just outside the door.
Holly
Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science
Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review. Her newest poetry
collections are Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds
Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), Cross
Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), and The
Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary
Press).
the dreamed red sun of the morning – thus I get tender letters. On wings of the morning glow – I fly into lands of butterfly-like hearts. In my vans – the poesy is indeed fulfilled. I am looking at starry starlit moonlit night – each starlets enchanting me on ways into ontology. The silvery fantasy – heralds my ways to the dreamiest moon. I am seeking the brightest star – the philosophical as well as druidically poetical. I will become blissful and Apollonian. A meek elf showing me the moon full of comet dust – the ambrosia for dreaming souls. Long live my auntie – the sibyl with propitiously weird magic!
Paweł Markiewicz was born 1983 in Poland (Siemiatycze). His English haikus and short poems are published by Ginyu (Tokyo), Atlas Poetica (USA), The Cherita (UK), Tajmahal Review (India) and Better Than Starbucks (USA). More of Paweł ’s work can be found on Blog Nostics.
I have too much to eat I take food from the mouths of children from all over the globe I am gleeful as I fatten
I’m a trust fund baby so I don’t have to work I take up silly hobbies as past-times
I watch all the food shows on TV I am a virtual glutton I lick the screen clean
I masturbate to images of the food and the food show hosts
I like the chubby, spicy Sicilians I venture into homosexuality with the male chefs
I have too much to eat but I don’t eat it all A lot of it I throw out I get carnal pleasure from tossing food into the garbage I have servants to dispose of it but I like making expeditions into the alley to dispose of it myself I call this “Adventure Travel”
Glue
As a teenager in his bedroom retreat he built model airplanes got lightheaded on the glue listened to Odetta while he built listened to Ledbelly Muddy Waters
His schizophrenic sister skulked in the hall Her complexion was pitted and she wore thick glasses with black rims but I found her attractive an older woman with secret knowledge I feared I would never have
I wanted to be misled I wanted to be detoured by someone whose life was a detour I wanted to get high on airplane glue without ever building an airplane
God Created Fledglings
The neighbours across the street have seen the woman with the dead eyes in the tree and have called the police again How many times has it been this year the woman asks her husband He shrugs
They think she’s dangerous to herself or others They’re less concerned about her and more concerned about the others: them
The police stroll through the house of the woman with the dead eyes as if they have the right
The woman with the dead eyes doesn’t mind because she has a fantasy that she is having a threesome with these police officers They are so tough and virile
The red-headed officer sees the fledglings five of them laid on a board across her bed He says: What’s that?
Those are birds, she says God created them
What are you doing with them?
Teaching them, she says, indoctrinating them into the new morality leading them into the next stage of their evolution
In fact, she’s going to decapitate them because it will give her a thrill and make her feel better The neighbours don’t know that but they are afraid that she is dangerous to herself and others especially others: them
Winds of Santa Ana
The Santa Ana winds shaped me Their power snatched the cigarette from my fingers and drove it deep into dry chaparral The resulting fire was preordained I could have lived in Hoboken NJ and the fire still would have been preordained still my fault
The western winds overwhelmed me They blew my garage open sucked my tuba out into the pebbly road dragged it down the street Sparks flew from its brass I was trying to teach myself to play it so I could join a Mariachi band with my friends Pollo Murillo and Hector Delgadillo
My father was a half-Jewish Rumanian but passed as Mexican He knew all the love songs all the songs that started with Mi Amor and ended with Mi Corazon He never sang them to my mother I knew he was not singing to her though she was his wife She was as beautiful and upright as a statue of a Madonna carved from pinyon wood by a Colonial sculptor
When she was around, he shut his lips tight or twisted them like a bad ventriloquist
He sang his songs to someone else someone in a different country he hadn’t met yet someone he was preparing for like preparing for the Second Coming
My mother was a Christian woman though she didn’t love Jesus It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in Him She was merely indifferent
My cap flew from my head My grandfather’s fedora blew off his dead head his head a block of grey clay awaiting the pinching of my fingers to truncate the seven generations of suffering deemed necessary
by the Holy Book to wear down sin
I’d take it down to maybe four
My grandmother reclined on a tree limb holding a Russian ukulele and the eternal flame of youth It glowed orange like the eyes of a tabby cat The wind blew her out of her tree
The wind blew carom boards down Topanga Boulevard out to the ocean They skimmed across the surface like plywood torn from houses in a hurricane
I didn’t understand the meaning of youth or age All I understood was the wind
The wind would blow everything away everything of value or lacking value It would all end up stuck on the branches of some bush
I didn’t need to go to high school The wind was my teacher The wind was the wisest teacher The wind would get fiercer every year All human life would disappear
The wind blew like it never did in Patterson New Jersey like Dr. Poet William Carlos Williams never experienced But Dr. Williams kept his wooden tongue depressors locked in a glass jar anyway He never knew what might be coming
The wind blew out the windows of our stucco shanty the one Old Man Dengler allowed us to live in
The Electrical Engineer had come from New Jersey to remake the San Fernando Valley in the image of a Diode had come to cast Aerospace in the image of the Aztec gods with hordes of his self-replicating spawn who enrolled in my school and looked down on me
This engineer sat at his desk and the wind sucked open his drawers scattered his papers financial papers technical papers He had no idea wind could blow like that Those papers were his life
The wind turned coffee beans into bullets The Santa Ana winds stripped tomatoes from their vines the grapes from theirs
Italians and Jews cried together Tumbleweeds are weapons of mass destruction
In the future recreational marijuana would be legal in Colorado but in the meantime I was going to prison
where I could not be touched by the powerful destructive wind I can’t say I wasn’t grateful
Janice M.
I wear a crown of spark plugs crash a wedding party
I am bald and my head shines like fresh chrome on the grill of a classic Buick
The bride will have to work hard tonight to prove to her beau that he made the right choice
and I will uplift my tits as the Governor of California mounts his white horse and comes to rescue me
Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over fourteen-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for numerous prizes, and was awarded the 2017 Booranga Writers’ Centre (Australia) Prize for Fiction. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, is based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. His new poetry collection was published in 2019, The Arrest of Mr Kissy Face. He lives in Denver, Colorado, USA.
I’m blessed with eyes that look inwards, that see the departed and joys to come, that sifts the beauty that’s foiled with smog, that keeps a gallery of lakes and fjords.
I’m blessed with ears that vie with shells for capacity to echo the wanton waves, to resonate to the whistles of roaming whales, to capture the breaths of slumbering pearls.
My nostrils dilate to the hidden scent that stone exudes and inanimate gems, that stars transmute to ethereal winds, that words transfuse with the warmth of a friend.
My skin vibrates to the water-drop’s silk to the velvet of petals, to the lace of trees, to the fluff of clouds that seep into veins, to the texture of flames that penetrates.
Interlocking
My mind interlocks with that of the tree of a thousand rings and thirty-three, with that of a falcon who grieves at night for having kidnapped the sacred trout.
My fingers interlock with those of the wind who shrieks the pain that dwells within, with those of a lingering, pensive cloud who contemplates the cerulean skies.
My teeth interlock with those of thorns who have impaled all types of scorn, with those of a squirrel who loves to crack the nuts of wisdom on aprons of grass.
My eyes interlock with the halos of stars an agglomeration of cosmic lights, with the rays of Helios when he departs the spheres of the earth in his orange ark.
Solemnity
An Englishman’s home is his fort, a law established by Sir Edward Coke to emphasize the sanctuary of one’s abode. The assimilation to a castle had struck a chord – when I was only thirteen years old – in someone whose house was like a port accommodating galleys, ships, and boats.
There were always visitors around to probe the deepest abyss of inmost thoughts, prying, interrupting, and disrupting discourse.
I always sought the furthest room when the kitchen congested with drink and food, with preparations for a banquet that would conform to the social etiquette of being a host.
The bustle and babel created discord. The aromas of strangers who chattered and fumed would linger for hours on eves and morns.
There were always people around the house, neighbours, relatives, acquaintances and bores, fingering the solemnity of my private world with greasy fingers that relish the sauce.
Heritage
Before me lies a kingdom, submerged in the ugliest form of camouflage. The castle is a mill and the mill has ash and every nearby stone is draped with trash.
I walk the narrow lanes, each roofed with an arch. It feels like roaming the heart of an ark. I look for traces of submerged stonework amongst a vineyard of pots and pans.
The din of transactions is maddening my mind. There’s no way of silencing the gaping mouth that craves for profit from the merchandise that usurped the throne of scripts and chants.
On the top of a hill, a temple perches whose walls had withstood all types of archers, whose star was erased from stone by scratches, but whose winding stairs attest to its heritage.
Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with a Ph.D. on the work of D.H. Lawrence. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in multiple venues including Adelaide Literary Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, A New Ulster, Crossways, The Curlew, The Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Ink Pantry, Mad Swirl, Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine, and Down in the Dirt.
Thinking now Of the barbaric rites Of our young days, Fraternity rush at Chapel Hill, A kind of ritual mutilation: Invited, I suppose, because I’d been to Boarding school, but quickly turned away, Not at all like them, tailored heirs of Planters, silver flasks, Harris Tweed sports coats at football games, Kinston, Goldsboro, Rocky Mount, The place that would have me— Frame house without Ionic columns— Refuge for northern boys Come south to school. A year later I was the brother who escorted Two or three baffled freshmen to the porch To explain we had not gotten To know them well enough. I am ashamed of that And much else besides. Have only been back two or three times since. Once a young man found our picture From fifty years before. Is this you, he asked. I had to say it was. I still keep up with two or three of them; With one, a neighbour now at Golden Pines, I share a glass of port And rue the passage of time.
Knowledge
People come to the cottage now To help us with different things, Fix the computer, cut down trees, Cost of being seventy-two. The computer guy brings no special tools, No Allen wrench with which to probe The hard drive’s dark insides, Except for which I might leave My brain to science, Only keystrokes, clicks of the mouse, Things some do for themselves.
The cottage next door is for sale, Realtor’s sign incongruous on our dirt road. My parents’ friends, also long gone, Left it to four children who have reached That tired, timed impasse of heirs: Those who would keep it can’t afford to And vice versa. So there are grandchildren Who will not know These New Hampshire woods, this pond.
Still I would protect them and us From the dead white pine By the turtle rock— I remember the storm that took its life, Years ago, Lightning running up and down the bark In a silver-black night. The woodsman, of course, does have special tools— Bobcat, chainsaw. More than that, he knows Exactly where the tree will fall.
Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders published in 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems have received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club. He is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Bob’s poems have appeared in over 150 periodicals including Cold Mountain Review and Louisville Review.
