Away the Winter

photoart: ralph murre

Away the Winter

by Susan Tepper

As with the maple your leaves

come off in silent streams

Litter the bed and on the floor

crunching where you

meant to keep

away the winter

hiding behind curtains

crouched in the rafters

Have you heard the windows

gasp— cold and so dark 

surely they have died too.

~ previously published in ROPES

To Jimmy Santiago Baca . . .

To Jimmy Santiago Baca, In The House Tonight

by Albert De Genova

The open-mic graffiti poets posture

for the Buddha, master in the audience.

He listens, applauds, drinks

bourbon.

But tonight

words swirl around the writer’s head

like ice cubes in his glass, like

updrafts of circling snow outside.

He asks me to play,

play my saxophone

a song for his brother

the brother who died

just winter days ago.

"Play a song for me, play

a song for my brother

who was murdered.

Play a song because

there are things in a life

that you can’t get over.

My mother was murdered

my father was murdered

and now

my brother --

there are things in a life

that you cannot get over."

He closes his eyes to say this,

he kisses his hands held as in prayer.

"Faith in the Virgin of Guadeloupe,

better than the trigger I pulled

the cold blood I shed

angry lives ago."

My fingers find the keys, stumble

into Amazing Grace

and spiral into a freefall of blue notes

that is a dead brother.

There are things in a life

you cannot get over,

things

that make

this poet’s poems.

No burning need

for an open microphone

or polite applause

only the request

for a song

this January night--

there are things in a life

you cannot get over.

~ first published in Back Beat (Cross+Roads Press)

One of My Favorite Words

One of My Favorite Words

by Steve Tomasko

Would you be angry

if I called you crepuscular?

Such an earthy word—my deer,

my little mosquito—

so furtive and muscular.

Most active in the middling

between times, the dreamy

light of dawn and dusk

is what it means, my darling

nighthawk, my sweet platypus.

To parse it further,

my one and only bunny,

I can name creatures active

in the evening—vespertine.  

A hush of a word, don’t you agree,

my firefly? My little brown bat?

Then there are those who

prefer the morning hours.

Let’s call them matinal,

my fuzzy wuzzy bumblebee,

from Mātūta, Roman goddess

of the dawn. Early risers, they—

but even earlier to bed.

It doesn’t come up easy

in conversation, so

I hope you’ll excuse me,

my short-eared owl,

if I say you are the most,

the cream,

you are the twilight icing

on my crepuscular cake.

~ previously published in Corvus

Walking Near a Frozen Lake

photo: sharon auberle

Walking Near a Frozen Lake

by Jeanie Tomasko

There is no stillness anywhere

but in death and even then

how would I know

I didn’t even know until now

my heart was a muscle of water

under ice

~ photo and poem previously published

   in Sharp as Want (Little Eagle Press)

en Febrero

en Febrero

by Ralph Murre

What can St. Valentine have known about it,

having never met you ?

His notion of love incomplete,

his idea of dinner just a salad,

a small glass of Chablis.

What has a saint to say of love,

that he can remain saintly ?

I’ve known the meat,

the rich sauce,

the Burgundy dark of you,

the fruit, the sweet, the dessert of you.

I’ve snifted your brandy,

been warmed by your fire,

seen you in the light of green candles.

You diminish my chances of sainthood

and I shall dwell in the house of our love

forever and ever.

Goodness and mercy.

Amen.

~ previously published in Wind Where Music Was

   (Little Eagle Press)

The Space Between

digital photoart: ralph murre

The Space Between

by Robert Nordstrom

The hawk understands

in its ascending arc

the weight of the earth

and the attachments she defends

but the sky presents other problems

shifting currents…directionless expanses

like the space between your breasts

or the dreamy glaze of your eyes

as we ride these currents upward

tethered to the occasional posture of desire

to rise but not arrive

to fall but never land

the restless soul reaches for

release that will not come

and so we turn

a slight turn…barely perceptible

and are embraced by

the sacred monotony of breath itself

~ originally published in Peninsula Pulse

Great Expectations

artwork: ralph murre

Great Expectations

by Liz Dolan

It was always up to us, Sister said

lauding eleven-year-old

Beata Maria Goretti as a model,

slashed dead rather than surrender her purity.

As if we who wanted to be good

could guard the locks stemming floods

which would engulf us all.

On the Lexington Avenue Local

memorizing amo, amas, amat, 

while hugging steel poles,

we were crushed by fine-suited gents

who sought out trim navy blue virgins,

our elbows a pointless defense as trains

undulated to rhythms of the morning rush.

And how could we be expected to keep saying no

as our blue-tied reflection careened

through shadowy tunnels into Manhattan

when even Joltin’ Joe, La Bella Figura,

hooked up with Marilyn who never said no,

her vanilla skirt billowing like a parachute

pulling her towards heaven.

~ previously published in Token Entry:

   An Anthology of Subway Poems

Four for Mario

photo: ralph murre

Four for Mario

by Karl Elder

I.

Suddenly a poem seems dumb.

Maybe like you I’d rather perform:

I rehearsed a week to tell my son

of your death.  I learned by heart

how not to speak, to trust my tongue.

He waited till I was done.

He stared at me across the room

as I cradled my younger one.

He loves you, he said.

Even dead.

II.

The pictures didn’t turn out,

Though I can picture each frame:

Seth, your understudy, your “main

man” in your lap.

What a team of dreamers!

If only we had a script, you said,

there’d be money enough to keep him in Underoos

and us in booze

till hell froze over.

III.

It’s been a bitter winter.

We play the planet Hoth.

Seth is Luke, I’m Vader.

Once through my mask

I heard hint of your voice,

and once, stung by a gust,

I spun, sensing your form, your shadow

near snow packed high by the plows,

iced all over, glistening

like a huge granite boulder.

IV.

A man enters the shadow of rock

and the shadows are one.

Black is our shadow on the moon,

the shadow of earth,

which is the shadow of rock.

Black, which is the color

of every man’s shadow.

Black am I there who here am white.

Black like my brother,

you, who called me Brother.

~ previously published in A Man in Pieces (Prickly Pear Press)

artwork: ralph murre

The Husband Confesses

by CX Dillhunt

            State Street, Early February

I confess, I have spent the afternoon

wandering from bookstore to bookstore.

I confess, I have fallen in love again

with dead poets, some of them women.  

I confess, I am reading a poem while

walking down the street.   It is cold.

I have lost my hat.   I have no gloves on

because I cannot turn the pages if I do.

I jump from page to page, from book to

book.  I have gotten some of them on sale. 

I confess I do not know to whom I confess.

I confess I am now writing while walking.

I am not paying attention to time or manner

as I understand for a moment that the books

have forgotten they are books, that the street

has forgotten I am there as the words begin

to confess.  They have lost their way, they

are guilty they say of these purchases.

They confess they saw me coming, are glad

To have an afternoon walk and wouldn’t

I walk more slowly, tell them why I love,

speak softly, remind them of anything,

tell them who wrote them, and confess one

more time to every passerby how I know

books love and how I have fallen again,

taken time for this walk as I make my last

confession:  I can no longer feel these pages,

I do not know who is holding this open.

~ from Things I’ve Never Told Anyone  (Parallel Press)

Three Haiku

artwork: ralph murre

Three Haiku  by Jeffrey Winke

her glance…

I see it in her

the devil

thin light

a shiver of wind

defines her shape

by chance

she rubs an erect nipple

against my arm

~ Previously published in Ppigpenn

Blood Oranges

digitally re-imagined from photo found on-line

Blood Oranges

by Margaret Hasse

A woman came on board the bus today

carrying blood oranges in a string bag,

her lips like red cuffs on the sleeve of her throat.

People in heavy coats sit like spools of black and blue,

the shock of a Monday workday freezing our morning faces.

I envy her, wrapped in a woven shawl like a choir of crayons.

For months, I’ve tried to pull my heart up,

a stone from the well of disappointment.

Standing, she flirts with the driver in a language

that clicks like knitting needles.

Her voice filling the aisle could melt the blue slush on the floor mats.

Laughter opens her mouth to a diva’s O plucking a high C.

Down the aisle she floats by our plastic pews.

As if happiness has a hand on her breast, as if happiness

is taking her body apart in pieces of dazzled joy.

She is rickrack on a funeral dress,

a peacock’s tail fanned against a gray wall,

a handful of bright corn to feed the birds.

She smiles with a candle’s flame that doesn’t fade when it lights another.

The sun shoots golden arrows through the dirt-pocked windows.

Stopping the bus with a tug on the white cord,

I exit the accordion doors to a walkway through the snow.

~ previously published in Earth’s Appetite (Nodin Press)

Something for the Journey

photoart: sharon auberle

Something for the Journey

by Alice D’Alessio

Suppose, for instance,

this is the last morning.  You never know.

You wake to find a wet snow

has sneaked in after midnight

wrapping the branches

with an airy gauze, spangled with diamonds

so that every snarly twig and tendril

is an epiphany of white

etched against the purple-blue

of an undecided sky.

And you want to be sure to seize it,

store it in scented linens,

in carved and gilded coffers

along with last May’s poppies,

August sunlight spilling its motes and spores

among the pines and sandstone cliffs,

and a copy of your only perfect poem.

Because we must take something with us,

like the pharaohs.

~  previously published in Praise the Undaunted