Father Writes to Mother . . .

photo: ralph murre

Father Writes to Mother from California

by Jackie Langetieg

I remember Grandmother’s voice

and crickets clicking behind the radiator,

feasting on dust from fresh baked bread

while I lay on the window seat

watching her polish the mound of dough

                        pushing and turning it on its powdery board.

Looking over at me, she dropped

a small plastic doll into the mix

folded and smoothed it into a ball

while she told me of earthquakes

in San Francisco

and how the ground would open

like cut dough,

then fold over a small girl and her mother 

rolling, kneading and sealing them

into the bread of the earth, sent to the oven to bake,

disappearing beneath the cooling crust.

~ first published by the Wisconsin Academy of Arts, Science, and Letters

ITHAKA 2001 - 2008

ITHAKA  2001-2008                                                                                 

by Jim Barnes

                  Hope all your Ithakas are good ones.

                                              --Cavafy

Seems ages on the hill above the rocky point

I have kept my eyes on the horizon where sky

drops to sea. No sign of any ship I do not

recognize, just the ragtag wornout fishing fleet

about to sink. No single sail grabbing the wind

and fifty men at oars to tell us you are back.

This is no Ithaka now you would own up to,

your old wife mad, your queer son gone, your dog

years dead. The old men gathered here like the food

and wine, but do not give a hoot about the place.

You might as well have gone down in the fishy sea:

this is no Ithaka you would want to rule. Still we

hope for your long return, the foolish old friends of

the foolish king who went away to war for fear

of losing what we have lost anyway, although

you, somewhere landbound or adrift on the deep, still

may dream of coming back to stony Ithaka,

to a faithful wife and infant son. Wherever

you are, I send you these heavy words on a wind

that has treated us all badly: there is little

use for you to come back home old and mortified.

Ithaka is not the Ithaka it was. For god's

sake, be strong. We have grown even older hoping.

Perhaps you have found another Ithaka elsewhere

in the wide world, a soft and welcome country that

nourishes you in a way we never can again.

I wish you well, but I must keep on hoping that

you will come back again. You could teach us a way

at least to cope with the thing that has befallen

us. The tourist's shops and the garish touring boats

prosper, but they are in the hands of foreigners.

The breeding cattle prized by Philoitios, bankers

in Pylos hold for the debts Penelope incurred.

The suitors had no staying power when the booze

ran out. No one manned the presses nor tended vines.

Pirates from Samos got the last of goats and sheep

when we tried to take the herds across to Argive

lands. Hardly any of us are left who give a damn

about the state. I am here every day, though hope

runs thin. I know you will return sometime. It is

no Ithaka to brag about. Hope you will bring

our salvation in some form. Yellow gold would help

and medicine that would somehow cure all the pain

of mind and body. We are ill in Ithaka.

~ first published in The North American Review

To Junior

To Junior

by Wilda Morris

You swam in the cup of water our cousin Donn

said a person could drown in. You were the liquid

spotting grandmother’s pillow, Uncle Norman’s towel

that would not dry, the soundless wet circle

always on the dining room table.

You schooled me in fear of swimming holes, lakes

rivers, waves. When Mother took me to the city pool,

you dived from Donn’s cup, tried to pull me under.

Relinquish your power over me, Junior. I can no longer

live in the shadow of your swollen young body.

~ previously published in Encore: Prize Poems 2011

View From a Small Skyscraper

photoart: ralph murre

View From a Small Skyscraper

by David Scheler

An endless flow of headlights

snakes through city streets.

            Sub-atomic particles

            stream out from stars.

Riders stream to a London,

New York or Tokyo.

            Electron bonds with nucleus,

            electricity becomes composite.

The attraction atavistic;

a sense of grand potential.

            Stars spider galaxies.

            Sparks arc across neurons.

The snake of headlights

strings across spider galaxies.

            Genes snake across

            the spidered string of chromosomes.

In this equation, need is fleeting

while desire is a constant.

Chaos is its own precise pattern.

            In this equation,

            potential is the constant

            and the probable is fleeting.

~ previously published in Casting for Meteors

To Paint Forgetting

photoart: sharon auberle

To Paint Forgetting

by Barb Cranford

Gesso a long narrow canvas thickly

and embed a gaggle of dirty bits

of rag, shards of bone, illegible lists.

Smear it carelessly 

with pale tints of some color 

I do not like––ochre perhaps.

There must be a broken grid––

maze after maze leading

to empty rooms without doors.

Lurid bursts of yellow, orange

and red will flash and fade,

throwing fearsome shadows.

A few gray feathers will float down

from a strange bird beating its wings

against the frame, top left.

I wrote down these instructions once,

but I don't remember why.

~ first published in FAR FROM HERE

MASQUERADE

artwork: william marr

MASQUERADE

by William Marr

Walking in the streets

he suddenly realizes

last night’s masquerade

is still going on

Everywhere he turns

he sees a mask

fastened to a face

like a second skin

~ first published in Between Heaven and Earth (PublishAmerica)

Things My Grandmother Told Me

digital art: ralph murre

Things My Grandmother Told Me

by Julie C. Eger

Wash the walls with hot soapy water but rinse with cool and clear.
Don’t rub so hard the paint comes off or the paper peels up.
Wear a hat when you’re out in the sun.
Don’t look directly into the sun
or you’ll burn your corneas and go blind.
Add this much salt to the soup.
Turn away when a man looks at you.
If he bothers you, kick him in the knee.
If he keeps bothering you, kick higher.
Mind your manners at school, especially Sunday school.
Sing your song loud even if you’re off key.
Don’t mind the ones who are always on key,
they don’t know other things.
Pull weeds, not carrots.
This is the way to use a hoe.
This is the way to use a rake.
This is the way to stack wood.
This is the way to use a broom.
This is the way to carry bricks.
This is the way to wash a dish.
This is the way to a fold a towel.
This is the way to fold fitted sheets.
This is the way to make a bed.
This is the way to carry buckets of water.
This is the way to flip a pancake.
This is the way to make beef stew.
This is the way to open a jar.
This is the way to pin your blouse
in the middle where it gaps.
This is the way to pull back your hair
when you are working hard.
This is the way to pull back your hair
when you are working hard to attract a man.
This is the way a whore wears her hair.
This is the way a whore makes a bed.
This is the way to wear your hair
when you want to keep a man.
This is the way to mark your calendar.
This is the rhythm to follow when you don’t want a baby.
This is the rhythm to follow when you want a baby to come.
This is the way to make your bed,
especially when you are expected to lie in it.

And if I don’t want to lie in it?

Then you haven’t been listening.
We all have to lie in it.

~ first appeared on Poetry Dispatch

MONA LISA IMAGINES

artist: leonardo da vinci - mona leo juxtaposer: david r. tribble (?)

MONA LISA IMAGINES

by Karla Huston     

           

The virgins on the rocks were never

unhappy, yet you painted them twice. 

At least the twelve apostles could

gnaw meat off bones while they lingered

or leaned into a bit of gossip

or fingered silver coins.  Today

you want my hands folded just this way. 

Chiaroscuro, you call it,

a new way of seeing, but oh,

I am tired, wait like an unanswered

prayer or an angel condemned

to kneel forever, while you study

the slant of light and adjust shadows

with a thumb.  Today it’s your hair

that has me worried, flying out from

your head, your beard a silver nest

for insects and stray bits of food. 

And Leonardo, you have such nasty

habits: belching after every meal,

farting when you bend for a rag,

or scratching your balls and peeing

from the balcony into the lilies

below.  Now you could use a bath

and those nails clipped, but once

you might have been handsome. 

Maybe then you’d have painted me

younger, crowned with roses, my fingers

full of gold rings.  Why not ask me

about the scar on my arm or my crooked

little finger?  Will anyone remember

the smoky haze around my face,

the subtle shift of light and dark,

see how much it hurt to smile? 

~ first published in  Kalliope 

AT TABLE

photo: sharon auberle

 AT TABLE

by Michael Koehler

Chew on the gristle of these words.

Do they fill that hollow craving

that yawns just below the heart?

I sit at the table of my life,

plates loaded with all I desire,

heavy wine glistening in the flagrant candlelight.

My ghostly guests raise a toast to me, their host.

Old Loneliness stares into his cups,

mutters what could be a curse.

The Little Boy who was rewarded with snacks

eats all the greens on his plate out of fear.

Sadness picks at her food, goes hard on the Cabernet.

The Junkie has abandoned the table altogether

and sits now in the light of the refrigerator.

With one expansive gesture I ingest them all.

If there are skeletons in any of the closets of my heart

they are the bones of ancestors picked clean long ago.

~ first published in Fox Cry Review

Lost Legacy

photo: ellaraine lockie

Lost Legacy

by Ellaraine Lockie

Houses a hundred years old

with Alzheimer's

Abandoned in isolation wards

on western prairies

Where homesteads were settled

on small town sanity brinks

Mine long ago lost

to profit margins

on a minimal Montana farm

Hospice where I come to heal

from city assaults

My heart heavier

than the hard timber

turned driftwood soft

Decayed gray matter

that once supported ancestors

Who spun stories

about pet horses in the parlor

and vigilantes in the family tree

Our only valuable heirlooms

Tales vanished

through windows without panes

Into snow silent waste

Recycled in spring's

meadowlark music

John Deere's perennial plantings

And in sage scented memories

When orphaned cottontails

came home with little girls

Who grew up and come home

for foster care from a past

fading into oblivion

Where fragments of facts

atrophy into fiction

In the waste away

of what once was

~ first published in Arizona Literary Magazine 

Cash for Clunkers

artwork: ralph murre

Cash for Clunkers

by Richard Swanson

He’s never quite caught her right in the act,

             her eyes in a furtive head to toe scan

             but sometimes he questions if in fact

             his wife has an agenda, a plan.

             With his age and mileage, the wages of sin

             in his going-to-hell suspension,

             does she see him as a relic trade-in,

             eco salvage in a crushed compression?

             Is he onto clandestine musings,

             her needing something sans dings and dents?

             These imperfections aren’t of my choosing,

             a voice in his head pleads in defense.

             She pats his butt, him toiling at the kitchen sink.

             Can you see me as vintage classic, Hon’? he thinks.

             ~ previously published in Not Quite Eden (Fireweed Press)

On Being Eleven . . .

On Being Eleven in Florida

by Gail Goepfert

When you’re 11,

life is about the alligator

that cocked his head and swallowed

a needlefish in one gulp,

turtle, helmet-sized,

that halted a string of cars

until a driver hastened

its trip across the road,

the blue crab meat

devoured after hammering

the legs and claws to bits

on the brown paper tablecloth,

the dragon adventure,

on reserve at the library,

the last in the series,

consumed in less than a day,

pockets full of shells gathered,

lead sinkers and lures,

Boy Scout knife,

coins and candy wrappers,

and the prodding to say please,

pick up,  put away,

say thank you, remember

how to swallow life whole.

~ first published in Florida Review

Delicious

artwork: ralph murre

Delicious
by David Clowers

Since god expelled his first
two students for learning,
should we assume ignorance is
the only way to understand creation?
I’d still want to know
what the rain wants when it falls,
or what that dead fox—
lying by the side of the road—
wanted from the other side.

And those gulls—
flying like white missiles
across this morning’s sky—
what are they aiming for?
What is the meaning of clover
that smells like an Iowa field
almost forty years ago?
How did passion cool
to the ice that flowed
like a glacier across
the face of my wife?

And so, Eve, tell me—
how does this apple taste to you?

~ first published in the Peninsula Pulse

David Hominidae

sculpture: michelangelo     photoart: sharon auberle

David Hominidae

after Michelangelo

by Marjorie Stamm Rosenfeld

For stone that breaks the giant hold, for strength

I love you not, but love the languid length

Where right the slack and narrow arm now takes

A certain fortitude that weakness makes.

Then, after turbulence, I love your grace

At end, when grace is grace in rest.  Of rock

Your softness; yet no hardihood let mock

Your maleness, closed and petalled in its place.

I love for life, for so short days, for bud

Laid out on block, for chiselled pallor, blood--

More than the upward rising of the lines,

The deep dependence downward that defines

A homily to God by mortal strain,

The manly droop of marble

                                          And its vein.

            ~ first published in Southwest Review

The Price of Gravity

artwork: ralph murre

The Price of Gravity

by Ralph Murre

How much of this life do we own?

Payments are always coming due.

We are the ones who signed the papers,

but there’s something more,

there’s something that can’t be helped.

You and I look different

than we did in morning light.

Now we wade in lead boots 

and gather no speed

away from this dead center,

or toward something brighter.

Which is to say away from here,

where the embers have dwindled.

Which is to say we can fly only

with the creatures of dreams,

if we can fly at all.

The dreams will become family,

the dreams will become clan,

scattered like dust among stars

in the cages of our ribs,

in the cages of our cries,

in our breath in the night.

Sometimes the dreams may be of falling

and cold earth rushing to us,

but, travelers now,

they’ll call us travelers,

amid the dust

and the stars

where we’ve known the dark eclipse,

and we’ve flown with

those creatures of dreams

between galaxies.

We won’t be in lead boots

once we’ve started to dream.

We’ll no longer make payments

on things that hold us down.

This is not the end of this poem --

something pulls at us forever.

~ first published in Iconoclast

Some Days You Just Swim

digital art: ralph murre

Some Days You Just Swim

by Gillian Nevers

Slip into the pool  push off  legs straight

toes pointed.  Glide.  Slice water  with your right arm

then your left.   Kick.     Repeat steady strokes

your rhythm synchronized with the slightest churning

until            there is nothing     only a glimpse of green

feathered    against the sky

with each letting go   of breath    a web of light

wavering             along the bottom.

Swim

until words

strung together          like the coils of rope

that mark the lane              break free       trail

in a burst       of bubbles

 ~ first appeared in the WFOP Museletter

A Celebration for Whitman

A Celebration for Whitman

by Gary C. Busha

I celebrate fat bellied pike
and schools of minnows in cool water,
and the wolf on the run, I celebrate,
and the hunter and the hunted.

I celebrate fresh cut lumber and the smell of sawdust,
and the touch against skin
and the scrape of beechbark, I celebrate.

An unknown voice
and the thump in the dark, I celebrate,
and I celebrate butter-fried fish
and the scent of mustard,
and wet wood in autumn.

I celebrate people with beating hearts,
who keep time in rockers on wood porches.

I celebrate water falling endlessly
on rock and the taste
of field onions left drying on lines,
and the words I celebrate,
and the grass and sea and sky.

Myself I celebrate and you, Walt Whitman,
for changing and being the same.


~ first published in Mickle Street Journal