The Children

artwork: carl larsson

The Children

by June Nirschl

A tribute to the children

 of Sandy Hook Elementary

I want to hear their names

the soft and hard sounds

enunciated by the mothers and fathers

who loved them

who planned for them

and now grieve their loss

let Noah    Olivia    Catherine     James

spill from their mouths again and again

let bereft voices groan with affection

for Avielle   Jack   Jessica    Emilie

champion the innocence and hope

each young life embodied

the dreams hovering at the ready

to ride a pony tease the neighbor save a life

let Benjamin    Dylan    Caroline    Josephine

be celebrated in prayer and rejoicing

I want to hear their names

spun like strands of silver across the winter sky

raised in celebration for the love they shared

and lifted    Madeleine    Allison   Daniel    Ana

let the names convey the beauty

these fragile children carried

human eyes of many hues hair of many shades

yet still the carols sound melodies embracing

Jesse    Chase    Charlotte    Grace

these children

our sorrow

~ first published in the Peninsula Pulse

Georgia On My Mind

watercolor detail: sharon auberle

Georgia On My Mind

by Estella Lauter

            After a painting of Georgia O’Keeffe by Sharon Auberle

She could be ninety in this painting
grey hair artfully covered
dark clothing, wrinkled skin
but she still made art and lived well.

Somewhere, behind the failing eyes
is a young woman who painted

in the nude on hot afternoons.
Somewhere, under the navy

jacket are brilliant canna petals.

Somewhere, above the curved lips
are delicious memories of love.
Somewhere, behind the strong jaw
are the artworld barriers she broke.

Somewhere, beyond the black scarf
are women of a certain age

who knew her as a pathfinder

climbing her own ladder to the moon.

Somewhere in this space 

is what we call inspiration

not daring to be too familiar

waiting for us to remove

the scarf that covers our hair.

~ first published in the Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar 

photoart from SAC photo

Luck

by Michael Kriesel

Standing in the doorway with a beer,

he always offered me a can

when I got home.

Ted was a retired navy chief

who lived next door

and drank alone,

but I’d been in the navy,

so we’d stand and shoot the shit

sometimes until the moths came out.

One time he told me how

he ran the war at night

when all the brass went home.

Ted was at the Pentagon during Vietnam.

Every night he’d get these giant photographs

from air reconnaissance to analyze.

Every night he’d tell

the pilots what to bomb.

I didn’t understand back then

the way he drank alone

with his own ghost,

though now I’m old enough

to just be glad I never

had the luck to kill someone—

much less whole photographs.

~ first published in Chiron Review

Fear Shrouds Me

artwork: ralph murre

Fear Shrouds Me

by KJ Hannah Greenberg

Grey veils of dismay drape my sight.

Also, fear shrouds me, so afraid you might

Reject my costume. Bright ways,

Otherwise illuminate stays, find clasps.

Until charm’s fabric will fully enfold me.

Cause my countenance to shine. See,

This robe glistens. Meanwhile, these plumes

Obstruct my vision, yield gloom’s misprision.

~ first published in ken*again

TO FRIENDS - on the first anniversary of RE / VERSE

ellen & mike

TO FRIENDS

by Michael Koehler

This is the time we have left.

These hours that we live, let us

walk a sun-dappled lane

or a summer city sidewalk.

My friends, let us walk a time together.

How is your life, and your happiness?

Please answer for me these most

important questions.

It sometimes seems our troubles

and the days and hours that contain them

overshadow those moments of stillness

where the quiet rings with the peace

of chapel bells that once announced

the approach of dusk, signaling time to

change pace    slow down.

Day is done   night comes.

Let us walk lightly

and we will find the footsteps shared

with friends are not counted against

the sums of our lives.

When we walk, the day stretches farther

than we can see, and when it is time

to leave—it is too soon.

This is the time we have left.

These hours that we live, let us love.

~ first published in Siftings

Driving Toward Snow

digital art: ralph murre

Driving Toward Snow                                                                             by Sarah Busse

Rapt in thinsulate, ankle-

deep in popcans, napkins,

we tunnel under night’s

thin and starry scrim

that’s tacked to the horizon;

we tow jumbled shadows:

snowmobiles, skis and poles,

skates, snowshoes, the bulky

accoutrements of winter,

tools of survival for this

loose caravan of dozens,

hundreds, headed North.

For weeks, maps in hand,

scanning Dopplar online,

we’ve planned vacation (escape) –

tonight, as one, we go,

a hushed migration, sealed

against our goal: the cold.

And emerge only at Kwik Trips,

Kum & Gos, Amocos, saying,

“We’ve come in search of snow.

Have you seen it? Do you expect it?

Do you have any coffee?” But no,

the last folks in got the last of it.

Back out, then, into silence.

Eyes grow used, then unused

to the night. Dark and light

shapes unfold, flickering

at the headlit, unlit periphery.

The mind begins to drift

like snow would drift, wordless,

unaccompanied forms

shift and flow, follow

the night’s wind, or whim,

so that I turn to you and ask,

What is Hawaii at night?

After umbrellas in the drinks

are folded and ice cubes melted,

the ocean’s calm and palmtrees

only whisper, do flowers lum-

inesce under a waxy moon?

Do vowels float in the dark?

And do Hawaiians ever think

of Minnesota? Do they know

about storm windows,

or the difference between twenty

above and twenty below?

Would they wonder (and snowflakes

blossom on the windshield, now;

the wipers begin their soft erasures),

would they wonder at this?

Dozens, hundreds, all of us

turned to the night, to the North,

all of us driving toward snow.

~ first published in SLANT

Those Poems, That Fire

artwork: ralph murre

Those Poems, That Fire

by Donal Mahoney

I stood in the alley, still

in pajamas, somebody’s shoes,

another man’s coat, my eyes

on the bronc of the hoses.

Squawed in the blankets of neighbors,

my wife and three children sipped

chocolate, stood orange and still.

Of the hundred or more I had stored

in a drawer, I could remember,

comma for comma, no more than four,

none of them final,

all of them fetal.

~ first published in Four Quarters Magazine

Traveling alone, she fell . . .

detail: michelangelo

Traveling alone, she fell in the Sistine Chapel –

by M.J. Iuppa

collapsed in a whirl, as if a gust of wind

struck her weak ankle and set her spinning–

her skirt inflated, but she did not rise

to bump her head beneath God’s fingertip,

nor did she push Adam aside.

Instead, she leaned into descent

like a scarf tossed in a dance,

and onto the marble floor

she puddled, still looking up . . .

A crowd gathered; then men

carrying a canvas litter

arrived with a knock

on floor:

              Avanti, she whispered,

and they lifted her up to their shoulders–

a marvelous blur moved beneath her–

and before her: God’s plan.

~ first published in the Bryant Literary Review

Nighthawk

digital art: ralph murre

Nighthawk

by Stephen Anderson

It’s 3 AM outside the 7-Eleven.

In the distance, approaching car headlights

Dot the blackness at this hour while

Inside a scrawny twenty-something sits

Behind the counter tracing a 9 mm under the

Counter with his fingers, surrounded by four lonely

Walls that contain items insomniacs seek

During black hours like these. All the cars

Pass silently except for one that booms by, its radio blasting—

A rolling boom box that shatters the still,

Vapid night air while the car’s occupants

Head to nowhere good, to their rendezvous

With the nothingness of this night rhythm

In the key of absurd loneliness.

They all seem to head toward what home

Might be, the place where eyes will later

Strain under desk lamp far into the night

Amid silver ghosts that shimmer in the dark blue

Shadows before sleep envelops them in a dream

Of star-sent angels light years from Edward Hopper’s

Nighthawks, while outside the night’s mist will soon start

To evaporate, as it will again and again . . .

        

 ~ previously published in Brawler

TORCHLIGHT TEARS

artwork: ralph murre

TORCHLIGHT TEARS

by Fiona Lovatt Davis

In the folds beneath his eyes,

glistening in the torch light,

there were tears (like silver).

He had coloured a horse black

and galloping across Niger

where his mother and father live

and all his family and his camels.

He rode that steed at full pace

feeling, again, her gait beneath him

and he laughed at the idea of oranges

balanced on his head at such a speed.

This boy, they told me he was deaf,

found words for hooves and mane and tail

and the pound and beat of driving power

and gave us laughter in that darkened hour,

when his own eyes were moist in memory

of the distant ones he loves so much

and can recall but cannot touch.

~ first published in the Nigerian Sentinel

Three from ~ row of pine ~

photo: ralph murre

Three from row of pine

By Jeffrey Winke

predawn snow

a tall pine

eases into the sky

row of pine

each in its own way

        an icy gray sky

winter moraine

silence of sumac . . .

the howl of wind

~ previously published in row of pine (Distant Thunder Press)

Dreaming No. 13

photoart: ralph murre

Dreaming No. 13

by Linda Newman Woito

She was in a flummery no a nunnery no

a ramshackle house someone forgot to burn

last century yes that's where she was in each

and every dream she remembered that week

and the farm was there in snow and the prairies

were there and Holstein cows were there needing

milking, and she was there in her high-wader

boots plowing through cow-dung, and isn't that

the way it is, isn't that the way.

~ first published in The Pen Woman

Ben's Poems - 17

stonecarver: unknown

Ben’s Poems – 17

by Tom Montag

It is,

Barely;

Shadow

& ash.

Empty

Husk.

Broken

Promise.

Spent

Love.

~ previously published in The Big Book of Ben Zen

   (MWPH Books)

So June Is Gone

public art - st. paul, mn

So June Is Gone

by Margot Peters

So June is gone a month whose every

hour I'd pledged to cradle in my eyes

and July's brass bands and scorching brats

what happened to August's sweaty

lakes--oh god not September too

those precious days I meant to spend abroad

but yes I'm raking up October against tomorrow's

snow and now December and small hope

I'll heed March's roaring lion bleating lamb

and that's the tragedy isn't it:

how we do let the twelve apostles of the sun

slip through our heedless fingers

day by day by day by day

~ first published in Free Verse

Contingency

photo: ralph murre

Contingency 

by Marilyn L. Taylor

MORPHINE:  Dosage: 200 milligrams, typically 14 light blue tablets

Timing: unconscious in 5 -15 minutes, death in 20-50.

--  Thanotogast’s Suicide Methods

As soon as the sun departs the house

At five in the afternoon

He deposits and seals in an amber jar

Another pale-blue moon.

He places the jar on the cabinet shelf

And swivels the handle tight;

Pockets the key in his terrycloth robe

And sits and waits for night.

He can hear the grandchildren crowing below,

Awash in their video games;

He tries for a time to assemble their faces,

And say a few of their names.

But he can’t recall how many he has,

Or what their small fantasies are,

Or why their mothers and fathers have come

To put his clothes in the car.

He careens on the edge of a desperate thought,

A glimmer from where he's been—

But he doesn’t remember the amber jar

Nor the moons crumbling within.

~ initially published in First Things

Three from Zen Rampage

photoart - ralph murre

Three from Zen Rampage

by Lester Smith

chill wind insistent

against my leathers; I twist

the throttle further

my shadow led west

all morning, then changed its mind

and led me back home

bold opossum lying

in the road

mindless of the crows

~ previously published in Zen Rampage (Popcorn Press)

GOING THROUGH DAYS ON TIPTOE

artwork: judith connor

GOING THROUGH DAYS ON TIPTOE

by Linda Back McKay

How the light is born in

morning, how it is trapped

in your bulb at night.

How you can’t win

if you don’t enter,

even if it means

standing in a line

that snakes around

the block, a conga,

but without the music.

How you are given

another chance,

even if it is just

a Monopoly card,

and you take it.

How you eat cottage

cheese on saltines

in honor of your father

and your mother’s

greasy gravy.

How the mirror

becomes philosophical

and you try to envision

a world of kindness while

you are completely, one

hundred percent alone.

How quiet things

are now, as a feather

makes landfall.

How you just never

know. You just

never know when

a light will go out.

~ first published in White Pelican Review

A DREAMLESS NIGHT

artwork: william marr

A DREAMLESS NIGHT

by William Marr

From every angle

I tried to capture your bright smiles

for a colorful dream

Overexposed

the images overlapped

and I had a sweet dark sleep

till dawn

~ previously published in Between Heaven and Earth

  (PublishAmerica)

Three Aspects of Desire

photo: w.e. lox (?)

Three Aspects of Desire

by F.J. Bergmann

I.  The Oscar Meyer Weinermobile:

            I incorporate the desires of the flesh, in all its senses.

            No picnic or parade is complete without me.

            See! I am shaped and colored like a penis grown monstrously large,

            with a pulsating engine and a steering mechanism.

            I am the waste parts of animals made savory

            for everyone to want and want and want.

            Devour me! Eat me!

II.  The cloisonné Chinese horse:

            I embody desire as well, but I serve the haunting needs of the spirit.

            Arabesques of colored love overlie the metal of the soul,

            which gleams through the glossy enamel in recurved ripples of gold,

            like fissures in rock showing the magma underneath,

            like a shuddering awareness of divine intervention.

III.  The soapstone coyote:

            I am the trickster, the messenger, the slippery one.

            I carry the purloined desires you let remain unvoiced,

            the unsent letter you forgot to burn and ransacked the house for.

            I race under snow-heavy boughs and across the frozen, wasted fields

            and cross the boundary between this world and the next.

            I make sure you get what you thought you wanted.

            I can talk to gods you would not dare to name.

~ first published in Malleable Jangle

In Each Other's Cross-hairs

In Each Other’s Cross-hairs

by Richard Swanson

I got this gun to save me

from my next door neighbor who

says I’m crazy and has all these guns,

which makes me crazy

and makes me buy guns.

I’m not crazy, it’s you,

I tell him you’re nuts for

having those guns,

but not if you’re neighbor, says he,

to someone like you with

all those guns, that’s . . .

~ previously published in Men in the Nude in Socks

   (Fireweed Press)