A Childhood Visit

A Childhood Visit

 by Marilyn Zelke-Windau

The Scotty dog, our only toy,

knew how to behave.

He, who stood stiff-legged,

closed-jawed,

black, in the corner,

under the window seat,

with perked ears,

listened.

He knew.

He had a red plaid collar.

He was stuffed, not allowed at table.

We were,

but not to speak.

Great Aunt Anna, with tight, grey

braid-pinned, circle hair,

who Mom, through family rights,

called Annie,

served us ham, and dill pickles

from a barrel

in the back yard

in Milwaukee.

We saw it.

It was wooden and had scum

on the brine surface

where the pickles bobbed.

I didn’t say a word.

I just threw up.

German was spoken.

The bathroom was tiled in black

and white. The towel was stiff

on my lip.

Courteous apologies were offered.

Come agains were proffered.

Dad drove home—

Mom’s usual journey.

A White Sox game voiced

balls, not strikes.

I slept in the back window shelf

of the Studebaker,

all the way to Chicago,

purged. 

~ first published at Brawlerlit.com

Mostly Basie with a Little Bach

digital artmerge: ralph murre

Mostly Basie with a Little Bach

by Donal Mahoney

Whenever I see a new woman, I know 

I should look at her hair and her eyes and her smile  

before I decide if she's worth the small talk

and the dinner later 

and whatever else she may require 

before she becomes taffy, 

pliant and smiling. 

But that never works for me.

Whenever I see a new woman, 

what matters to me is never 

her hair or her eyes or her smile;

what matters to me is her saunter 

as I stroll behind her.

If her moon comes over the mountain

and loops in languor, left to right, 

and then loops back again,

primed for another revolution, then

I introduce myself immediately

no matter where we are, 

in the stairwell or on the street

and that's when I see for the first time

her hair and her eyes and her smile  

but they are never a distraction since

I'm lost in the music of her saunter.

Years ago, tall and loping Carol Ann

took a train to Chicago, 

found a job and then one summer day 

walked ahead of me on Michigan Avenue 

while I surveyed her universe amid 

the cabs screeching, horns beeping, 

a driver's middle finger rising. 

Suddenly she turned and said hello 

and we shook hands and I saw her smile 

dart like a minnow and then disappear 

as she frowned and asked   

why was I walking behind her. 

I told her I was on my way to the noon Mass

at Holy Name Cathedral and she was welcome 

to come along. The sermon wouldn't be much, 

I said, but the coffee and bagels afterward 

would be plentiful, enough to cover lunch.

And Jesus Christ Himself would be there.

She didn't believe me, not at all, 

and she hasn't believed me since. 

That was thirty years ago and now

her smile is still a minnow

darting here and there but now 

it's more important than her saunter 

which is still a symphony, 

mostly Basie with a little Bach.

And I no longer traipse Michigan Avenue 

as I did years ago looking for new moons 

swirling in my universe. Instead, 

I take my lunch in a little bag 

on a long train from the suburbs

and I marvel at one fact:

It's been thirty years since I first heard 

the music in her saunter

and Carol Ann and I are 

still together, praise the Lord. 

Who can believe it? Not I. 

Carol Ann says she knew 

the ending from the start. 

Lord, Almighty. Fancy that.

~ first published in Eye on Life Magazine

MIRACLE ~ Little Eagle's RE / VERSE Post # 500

digital art: ralph murre

MIRACLE

by Sharon Auberle

  Though we have no wings to lift us up,

we have imaginations that will.”

-           Frans Lanting

Whatever you do in this life,

never ignore small miracles

like this flock of white pelicans

soaring in circles overhead,

their great bodies backlit

by the sun, radiance pouring

down through their wings

in waterfalls of light.

Consider there might be

angels among them,

but even if you don’t find angels,

know your heart has been softened

by these immense beings of grace.

Please do not dismiss such gifts,

for rarely are we so blessed.

And oh, don’t turn away

and resume your small life,

instead, rise up, for a little while

as if you had seven foot wings,

as if you realized, finally,

we are all made of light.

~  first published in The Nature of Door (Cross+Roads Press)

Book, Lamp, Tree

artwork: ralph murre

Book, Lamp, Tree

by Karen Stromberg

I’m going to give you three words,

the nurse told my mother,

which was a lie--a moment later

she asked for them back.

Mother couldn’t find them,

looked around the room, dipped

one hand in and out of her pocket.

The truth is it was my fault.

I had plucked them out of the air

and locked them in my mind,

just to see if I could.

~ first published in Wordgathering

My Daughters in New York

artwork: ralph murre

My Daughters in New York       

by James Reiss                                  

What streets, what taxis transport them

over bridges & speed bumps—my daughters swift

in pursuit of union? What suitors amuse them, what mazes

of avenues tilt & confuse them as pleasure, that pinball,

goes bouncing off light posts & lands in a pothole,

only to pop up & roll in the gutter? What footloose new

freedoms allow them to plow through all stop signs,

careening at corners, hell-bent for the road to blaze straight?

It’s 10 P.M. in the boonies. My children, I’m thinking

you’re thinking your children are waiting

for you to conceive them while you’re in a snarl

with my sons-in-law-to-be who want also to be

amazing explorers beguiled by these reckless night rides

that may God willing give way to ten thousand good mornings!

~ first published in The Atlantic Monthly

and subsequently in the Pulitzer-nominated

Ten Thousand Good Mornings (Carnegie Mellon University Press)

1942 Snapshot of my Father

artwork: ralph murre

1942 Snapshot of my Father

by Donna Hilbert

He could be my child,

this boy at seventeen,

centered in front of a palm tree

in the parkway

of his sister’s yard.

This motherless kid,

in a borrowed sports coat

and slacks that fold

too deeply over his shoes.

His curly hair is combed back.

His lips part in an almost grin.

I know the history of this picture:

how he came to California to find work.

How he dug ditches, riveted metal,

picked fruit,

returned to Oklahoma to marry his girl

before he turned eighteen.  Nothing

to remark about, given the war.

And I know the life that followed:

the guns hidden in chimneys, bruises

under scarves, how the half-smile

concealed a boozy rage.  Still,

it moves me:

how he glistens in this picture,

the deep crease of his slacks,

his boyish curls.

~ previously published in Mansions (Event Horizon Press)

Radium Girls, 1924

artwork: ralph murre

Radium Girls, 1924

Radium Dial Plant, Ottawa, Illinois

by Peg Bresnahan

The tips of their tongues moistened

the brushes that daubed the dials

of clocks with a glow they thought

would last forever, but

it was the same as any comet’s

kiss, too close, too long. They painted

their nails and skin with its salts,

combed their hair, brushed their teeth

with it for that razz-ma-tazz look.

Young and ready to shine,

they sipped phosphorous cocktails,

danced the Charleston, the shimmy

in shadowed nightclubs until dawn.

Wrapped in pure energy they glowed,

most beautiful in the dark.

~ Previously published in the

   2013 Press 53 Open Awards Anthology

Compline, Summer

photo: ralph murre

Compline, Summer     

by Jeanie Tomasko

1. Last light and the clouds are pink with it.  2. And the way

for a few breaths it turns the pines yellow.  3. And the way

the day lily  4. ends, and if  5. it is prayer to ask what color,

how long, when.  6. Sometimes the wind and the grapevine

feel like a prayer or  7. a want in me.  8. Late afternoon,

on the phone the nurse said we tell all our cardiac patients

to take their pills in the morning.  9. In the morning I was a nurse;

suddenly  10. I’m a heart and I’m wanting  11. a prairie

or a huge, forever, Wyoming sky.  12. Any edge will do.  13.  An old

friend emails to say: my heart, too  14. and, I watched a movie

and couldn’t stop crying, so I didn’t.

~ first published in The Midwest Quarterly

SUMMER STORM

artwork: ralph murre

SUMMER STORM

by Karla Huston

We clutched together in a screen tent,

nine of us lurching between

tent poles and gusts, watching

clouds gather up in the west,

the angry wave of them

hovered over the Mississippi River

bluffs like a black wall. 

Then the wind huffed down the face

of the limestone, threw clay

and trees onto highways

and shorelines.  We shivered

and while the sky slung bullets,

the old man reared back, spit mud

and clams and weeds.

The rain made sodden debris

of tents and sleeping bags

while under the plastic canopy

we passed the bourbon--an amber torch,

the burning liquor the only thing

that quenched the quarrel outside.

~ first published in Poet Lore: 2002

Breathe

BREATHE  

by Robert Lee Haycock

Nobody nearby was awake to see the neighborhood idiot standing bathrobed in his driveway gaping at the night.

The Sisters saw him.  Europa's Bull saw him.  Zeus saw him.  The Blind Hunter and Leda's Sons saw him there. 

Flags of cloud unfurled toward sunrise.  No more stars would fall.  He turned to the front door of his little house under the sky.

Just then a piece of Mr. Halley's wanderer rocketed into the sea of air overhead.  Ice dissolved in flame.

It made him smile to think that he would breathe it in and out someday along with the breath of Jesus and da Vinci and many another fool.

~ previously published in Medusa’s Kitchen