photoart: ralph murre

Married Life

by Candace Hennekens

My husband doesn’t want to move

from the front row at the tractor

pulling contest in the community park.

I feel like a picked dandelion

drooping in a juice glass.

I worry that my feet in sandals

will burn without sun block.

My scalp sweats under my cotton hat.

My lips feel dry, my throat parched.

I’m hotter than a desert rock in Death Valley.

He says I don’t need to sit there.

So, I beat a retreat to the beer tent

sit and relax at a table, comparing

notes with two old farmers about

how hot we are.  Suddenly I am hit

by a rush of feelings about being married.

I am inclined to like it.  After a while,

I buy chicken dinners, cold pops,

give my husband his and return

to my spot in the tent.  Eating

and drinking, I listen to the announcer

but I watch my husband, enjoying

our bond. Suddenly he stands up, comes

my way, saying we can leave anytime I want.

We meander past the tractor pull, stop

to watch a John Deere slowly without

drama pull the weight wagon all the way

to the end of the track.  That’s a winner,

my husband says.  Then we leave

to go back home where I can be cool.

~ first published in Rosebud

TRAPPED

TRAPPED

by Cathryn Cofell

You talk too much, your voice consumes the night.

It’s not your metaphors I want to have extended,

it’s your long legs on, over, around me like atoms,

it’s your work-stained hands igniting my atoms,

writing and re-writing the lines of my extended

body, not this language of the haunted and the night.

Your mouth has more important things to stir:

tongue me a haiku, tend me like a spring tree,

kiss me here and here to quiver, to burst.

Feel it?  I am a magnolia bud about to burst,

I am the ripe musk of a magnolia tree:

dig at my roots and all my branches will stir.

Enough with the words. Enough with the half names.

Don’t you know how wrong it is to call out other

loves in the dark naked clasp of my arms? This, yes,

is what brought us here—the patter, the meter, yes,

the recoil, but set them free outside now, another

prey wants ambush, begs you to pray my name.

~ first published in The Wisconsin Academy Review

Three from Frog on the Bay

by Gary C. Busha

Making book covers

from folded grocery bags

another school year starts.

The old man and I

grin or frown at each other:

communication.

Along the shoreline

seaweed surges in the rocks

 water ebbs and flows.

~ previously published in Frog on the Bay (Wolfsong Publications)

Flames,

photo: ed haskell

by Robert Walton

Flames,

Flickering, flaring

Between black pines'

Sawtooth shadows

Drew me.

Firelight,

Always brightest

After midnight,

Filled an empty circle,

For no faces

Leaned in,

No smiles shimmered

Like glass ornaments.

Stars,

Not eyes,

Gleamed upon a last

Sapphire breath

Of embers.

Only silence,

Deep as mountains,

Huddled close. 

~ previously in Song of the San Joaquin Journal

Living with Hephaestus

Living with Hephaestus

by Peg Bresnahan

Some say we attract

our nightmares,

like now, when I know

my husband is about to lift

part of a sculpture

weighing one hundred pounds.

Absurd to cheer him on

when I see what it takes

to create the shapes

blazing his mind.

Day after day, sparks

cascade around him

until the image behind his eyes

bends to a form I can touch.

I don’t know if it’s watching

the hoist lift and swing

great sheets of steel over his head,

or if it’s the fire I fear most. 

The time he walked through our door

face black, holes burned

through the three layers of clothing

his leather apron didn’t shield

when they caught the live end

of the welding torch.

He lowers his helmet

and strikes an arc.

Don’t look, he warns,

it can blind you.

A piece of sun tears loose

and the flame hisses

hunting for contact.

~ first published in Southern Poetry Review

In Labor

photoart: ralph murre

In Labor

by Ralph Murre

So, you’re still working, but they let you off for Labor Day, like the 4th, like Memorial Day, and you have a coupla beers and you char something on the Weber, maybe listen to a ballgame, your team still in the cellar. Your cousin Jimmy comes over with his face-lifted tit-lifted wife and the Gameboy twins.

He drives a new Infiniti. It's gray. Nobody talks about labor except that of delivering the twins and there's some talk of her working on her tan. Your dad was in the strike of '52. Also the big one in '56. All summer.

You pick some tomatoes and corn from the garden. Get salt and pepper. They talk about the food at Aquavit and Blu. Your grandpa rode the rails in '35 and '36, stole chickens. They have to go. Country Day School starts tomorrow. Your grandma was in labor in the back of a Ford in '38. There's a union man talking in the park just a block away. Nobody listening. A skateboard goes by. The plant will close in 3 weeks. You fall asleep in a plastic chair from China, juice of summer harvest on your chin, a few clouds gathering.

~ first appeared on the Arem Arvinson Log

You Come From a Long Line . . .

photo: ralph murre

You Come From a Long Line of Norwegian Fishermen

By Annie Parcels

You are more at ease on any boat

than in anybody’s living room, including your own.

But especially on your boat

where talk is laminate sails and Harken tackle.

Easy conversation.

No talk of how fishing ended on the bay.

No talk of mussels and lamprey

of limits too low to make a living.

No talk of how your dad died then

of drink and sadness.

On your boat it is easy conversation: courses and tactics.

Sometimes a small hint of pride trickles into the quiet of your voice,

lights the flecks of color in your eyes,

deepens the creases of their corners

when you speak of some specific Chicago-to-Mac,

never naming how you placed,

remembering being enough.

Out of the harbor you move with a swiftness that belies

your 6’4” frame, confident in the weight of the 1 ton keel,

in the God of sea and sky,

 a God known by you in sinew and muscle,

in the wisdom of thousands of miles of rising and falling.

Today you have offered to teach me more

of knots, wind, tackle and timing,

more technical nuance.

I in my life jacket, only remember the bowline,

need help with the trim. 

Complicated stuff.

But not nearly so complicated as when

your large hands move

to frame my face.

~ first published in Verse Wisconsin

What you remember

photoart: ralph murre

by Tom Montag

What you remember

Is less than

What was.  What was

Is less than

What could have been.

What you imagine

Is all there is.

~ previously published in The Big Book of Ben Zen

  (MWPH Books)

In August

photo: marilyn zelke-windau

In August

by Marilyn Zelke-Windau

Banshees don’t rise to the moon

on hot nights. Only weary women wait up,

wailing the heat.

Sweating out salt and ale-syrup

from pores relaxed,

men wander through watery dreams

open mouthed, wanting fruit.

Dogs, on swollen, gravel-grey pads,

circle, stirring the dust, and flop—

belly, chin, ear—

to sleep.

Foggy threads of spirit weft the air

with ripening scents.

Even the dying and dead

are not cold in August.

That month is a time of low pressed affronts,

when rain is no relief, and thunder

lightnings us into wakefulness.

~ previously published in Seems

The Day After I Die

hyundai for marilyn

The Day After I Die

by Marilyn L. Taylor

they will find the cure

for whatever got me,

and a unified theory

of physics will be announced

by a consortium

from M.I.T.

Following the funeral,

Earth will be contacted by

intelligent beings from

the Farquhar galaxy--

immediately after which

Hyundai will announce a car

that can run forever

on table scraps.

Within the week,

Abbott Labs will introduce

an age-reversing cream

on the very heels of

a morning-after diet pill

that tastes exactly

like a Cadbury’s Easter Egg.

Finally,

the woman they hire to clean

and fumigate my house

will come across a sheaf

of my old poems (tucked

optimistically inside a catalogue

from The Gap)

and turn them over to

her Thursday client, Billy Collins,

who (ignoring an infinitesimal twinge

of envy) will gallantly take charge

and see to everything--

including, of course,

any immortality.

~ first published in Shadows Like These  (Wm. Caxton)

POPULIST RAGE

artwork: ralph murre

POPULIST RAGE

by Arlene Zide

Everyone is suddenly angry.

Angry in concert.

They’ve identified the bad guys —

the corporations, the insurance companies and banks,

the venal

superrich, their vain wives and over-indulged children,

those  errant

gas-guzzling

husbands   who’d been cheating all along.

They all say they didn’t know. 

They say they were

innocent,   victims

of slick hotshots, those

self-absorbed moneymaking high fliers. 

They,

they’re  just the poor populace, the taxpayers, the American people,

innocent.

They don’t say,

how years ago they voted;  how they cheered

the stunned deer president they let

be swept right up into a lie of office,

they don’t say how they jeered

the claims

of torture, the doubts of any questioners, the opposition

caged, 

far from self-congratulatory conventions.

They don’t say,

how they

chose

not to see

the flimflam sleight

of hand,

the sneer of cunning.

~ first published in Reader Supported News

My Life and I

artwork: ralph murre

    My Life and I

     by Thomas R. Smith

     We are generous with each other,

     though it’s evident anything

     I love instantly becomes his.

     I never tire of his stories, which

     I know for a fact are all true.

     For his part, he listens

     without ridiculing my hopes.

     Where we meet is the moving balance-

     line between memories and plans.

     We make a complete circle, his

     looping behind, my sweeping ahead.

     How could I ever feel poor,

     knowing the note of each moment

     is backed by the gold

     ingots of those decades

     he is carrying for me safely

     in a satchel under his heart?

   ~ first published in The Foot of the Rainbow

     (Red Dragonfly Press)

NIGHT SWIM

artwork: ralph murre

NIGHT SWIM

by Karla Huston

After supper in hot August, and before

the mosquitoes began their feasting,

my father took us to Lake Neshonoc.

We spread towels on the sand  

and placed our shoes at the corners.

My brother and I stepped carefully into the water,

staying close to shore, while my mother

tucked pin curls into her tight bathing cap. 

My dad would barrel-ass down the bank,

slice the water, show up on the other side

of the safety ropes, grinning. 

Exactly three crawl strokes later,

he’d hoist himself onto the diving raft, shake

water from his blond hair and dive in again,

bringing up handfuls of mucky lake bottom,

laughing as worms of mud crawled down his arms. 

On the way home, if we were lucky, he’d stop

for rootbeers or curly topped cones. 

We’d sit on towels in his ‘57 Plymouth wagon,

and while my brother socked my arm,

my parents shared a smile that meant

more sweetness.  Falling asleep later,

the lake came back, the scent of muddy water

hugging my skin, my father’s face grinning

mischief, those waves rocking me to sleep.

~ previously published in Catch and Release

   (Marsh River Editions)

Mine Field

artwork: lidija ivanek

Mine Field

by Edward John DiMaio

I am darkness waiting in soil, crazed by

time and things too small to matter.

A plan, strategy, or lie set me in this

fertile field.  Those reasons shifted to other

lands.  Scared, crazed boys I laid for are

gone, old men with stories to tell.  Our

paths did not cross.

Shells of war no longer vibrate my

tenuous form.  Other kinds of vibrations

come to me now.  Some flow from hooves

of oxen pulling shiny plow blades

through fertile fields.  Your eyes

may catch a flash of sunlight off the

mirrored blades.

A flash waits within my rusty soul.

Near where I lay children play.  I feel

the light vibration of their toughened feet

running freely in the light of day.

Watching their exuberance you may see

sunlight flash bright in their eyes.

A flash waits within me.

Mine is a killing flash, that maims all in

its path.  I am the flash that would

splatter the farmer with bits of mangled

oxen.  I am the flash that would sever a

playing child.

When I flash, tension returns, war rages

once again.

Until that time I will wait here

among soft treading creatures of this

fertile field.

~ previously published in Sound, Scent & Light

   (The Face of May)

How to Make Blueberry Pie

photo: ralph murre

How to Make Blueberry Pie

by Peggy Trojan

Enter Quinton swamp at last year’s faded marker.

Keep up with Pa, in his eighties and leading.

Deep in woods, where berries hang like grapes,

powdery blue, warm, kneel.

Listen. “When I was six we took the horses….

water got warm and butter melted on the bread….”

Pretend you never heard of the 1918 fire.

“Dad put us eight kids in a circle in the field ….

My pet ram was killed because he was burned black…”

When your pail is full, blindly follow Pa

through brush slapping your face.  Have faith.

You come out right in front of the truck.

Admire the pickings. “By God, we did pretty good.”

Clean berries at picnic table under the pines.

Make crust while Pa makes filling.

Talk about how great berries were last year,

or was it the year before? “Man, it was just blue…..”

Let Pa slice it. “Gramma Uitto cut hers in four…..”

Put ice cream on your piece to cool it,

use a spoon for juice.  Smack your lips and laugh

when Pa scrapes his plate, says again,  “That’ll sell!”

~ first published in Wilda Morris Poetry Challenge

derived from a photo by ann engelman

DANCES WITH BUTTER KNIVES

by Charles P. Ries

They lost me in complexity.

The tribal leaders of poesy read on:

The obsidian blade cuts fog blue

blue whale, blue whale bone, blue sky,

blue eyes, blue island.

The obsidian blade cuts ragged edges

along riverbanks, in the outline

of drifting cotton thoughts.

Too many edges for me. Poets lost in

technique become dull butter knives.

Their spontaneity has turned into yawning

formations.

Soft hushed voices from the female readers.

Soft hushed voices from male readers.

Caressing their butter edged words.

I close my eyes. I follow them closely.

I open my eyes. I give them my all.

I fall asleep. I dream and see their words

wearing lead wings. Bad shoes to dance in.

I wonder, where’s their clown prince? The fool who

works at the car wash? The one who skipped his

PhD in literature and makes me feel lighter after I

bathe in his unwashed words.

~ first published by Concrete Meat Press

AT THE CLOCKSHOP

artwork: william Marr

AT THE CLOCKSHOP

by William Marr

Oblivious of time

the clocks on the wall

just keep ticking

busily going

their own

ways

~ previously published in Selected Poems of William Marr

 (Milky Way Publishing) 

Common Ground

artwork: ralph murre

Common Ground

by Pat Tompkins

We are mineral matter

calcium and sodium

refined into metals

precious and base:

tin ears and lead feet,

hearts of gold and silver tongues.

An iron stomach and nerves of steel

add to our mettle, tempered

by liquid: sweat, blood, and bile.

Ice in veins and watery eyes.

This malleable essence reigns

over bronze-skinned vessels,

which tarnish or rust, alkali

and earth, returning to dust.

~ originally appeared in flashquake