Monthly Archives: July 2020

HUMMINGBIRD

We plant another god in our city
let lungs scarred breathe again –
for man’s sorrows are clearly
written on the broken heels of dying Pan.

Flights of birds – drifts in open space
blades of turpentine twist the wood;
soil erodes mouths of ancient tribes –
hummingbird remembers what was once home.

The woodland is bare & fox tunnels
are the blood on its surface – white roots of fern & oak
clamped with metal teeth – silver jaws;
locked on the ribcage of Artemis
her leaves once orange autumnal dustings.

Now dragon skins a coated season in mud
where birdsongs can no longer be heard
only a slight echo of what lingered in ears before.

The arc of our wealth is the trade –
burial of woodland a square of green
pied piper would come to our aid
wearing pinstripe suits and a clipboard;

one hand held long fingers of disappearing gold
in the other a reaping hook made from oils.
Where will the wild ones sleep tonight?

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Matt Duggan was born in Bristol 1971 and now lives in Newport, Wales with his partner Kelly. His poems have appeared in many journals including Potomac Review, Foxtrot Uniform, Dodging the Rain, Here Comes Everyone, Osiris Poetry Journal, The Blue Nib, The Poetry Village, The Journal, The Dawntreader, The High Window, The Ghost City Review, L’ Ephemere Review, Confluence, Marble and Polarity. In 2015, Matt won the Erbacce Prize for Poetry with his first full collection of poems Dystopia 38.10 (erbacce-press). Matt won the Into the Void Poetry Prize in 2017 with his poem, Elegy for Magdalene. Matt has previously published two chapbooks: One Million Tiny Cuts (Clare Song Birds Publishing House) and A Season in Another World (Thirty West Publishing House). In 2019 Matt was one of the winners of the Naji Naaman Literary Prize (Honours for Complete Works). His second full collection Woodworm (Hedgehog Poetry Press) was published in July 2019.  His latest chapbook collection “The Kingdom” (Maytree Press) came out on the 10^th April (2020). Matt is working on his third and last full collection ‘Lemminkainen’.

Limpidity

Hat in hand
I genuflect
to the All Powerful:
sifting for His presence
within my perimeter.

I burnish
His simulacrum
with my being.
When I waver
I notice His need.

I wish there were real ways
of realizing Him.
A word of honor
not the puff of texts.
I itch for His blacklist.

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Sanjeev Sethi is published in over 25 countries. He has more than 1200 poems printed or posted in venues around the world. Wrappings in Bespoke, is Winner of Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux organized by the Hedgehog Poetry Press UK. It’s his fourth book. It will be issued in 2020. He lives in Mumbai, India.

 

Canto II

In the earliest age of the gods, existence was born from non-existence (Rigveda X.LXXII.II )

Extended leg pistol squats, CCTV robberies —
Think oft’ truly well, the days before Anna and Olly
They made lemonade popsicles and fed waterfowl oats.

…………..Deep entombed, the austere was always subtle.
…………..Paint fence posts white and paint the barn doors — SOS.

Says it’s old and new.

…………..SHOWTUNES™ before predawn drill patience / cadence called
…………..to sing-song rhythm, the march of six feet locust. Un moment de faveurs idiotes.

No fear to beget.

Simply play in the sprinkler and pick tulips by the overpass.
Pass out lunch baggies: “Porque de tal manera amó Dios al mundo, que ha dado á su Hijo unigénito, para que todo aquel que en él cree, no se pierda, mas tenga vida eterna.”

Tire not, in trying-times to see a glowing.
For what it is —          silly fox, here is summer. There is spring.
Here was the henhouse; now see what you’ve done?
All the feathers —
scattered?

Lift the restriction on taboo interlocation. It is also a prescription against trying-times.
Na hanamacha caillte
 
Press to ground. Ear and eyes and matted hair in the amphitheater.

…………..So there was no relief in the mountain ranges or the desert landscapes?
…………..No — the air was too thick to manage.
…………..The grey clouds stayed for days.
…………..But underground some found refuge.

…………..Before the shovels hit granite, that is, there was no room left to bury.
…………..The sea was the next bet.

Here we find the captain, surely stable. Held-high himself,
gathered up a crew for the garish vessel.

Set sail for an open ocean mutiny.
Flying under a red flag —
…………..…………..…………..Nous mourons en Christ

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Andrew Hutto is originally from north Georgia but currently writes out of Kentucky. He recently graduated from the University of Louisville with a degree in English. His sonnet was selected for the Hands and Feet Poetry Derby at Churchill Downs. In the summer of 2019, he served as a preliminary judge for the Louisville Literary Arts Writer’s Block fiction prize. His poetry appears in Thrush and is forthcoming in Barnhouse and Eunoia Review. For more information visit www.andrewhutto.org

A Song for This Morning

I saw the baby Robins being fed
in their nest this morning.

Little head/beak shapes pointed skyward
and mother Robin depositing food there.

Upstretched yearning was met
with just what it needs. Just what it asks for.

And nothing expected in exchange.
No bargaining or requirements in payment.

Nothing expected in return except for growth
and development and a carrying-on of life

in the skies, on branches; just an eventual soaring
of wings on air. Feathers, nests, eggs, song.

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Marjorie Moorhead writes from a northern New England river valley, surrounded by mountains, and four season change. Happy to have found a voice and community in poetry, her work can be seen in many anthologies, literary sites, and two chapbooks. During the current pandemic, she relies on zoom to gather with poets and writers. She is watching a pair of Bluejays brood their young.

the space between us

for now we see through a glass dimly
but then we shall see face to face
so said a man called paul in holy writ

what manner of crystal ball did he peer into
and see how I wait today by a window to
glimpse like mottled koi beneath murky water

broken eyes familiar and strange
looking back at me through a glass dimly
that is me watching myself watch others

in a house of mirrors set in virtual rows
where I can touch my own face and
not feel a thing—but the space between us

and the tenderest of hopes that
for now we see through a glass dimly
but then we shall see face to face

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Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, NC. Her poems have been published by Amethyst Review, The New Verse News, Panoply, Poets Reading the News, and Writing in a Woman’s Voice.

After Reading a Poem Titled “The Entrance to Purgatory” by Iain Lonie

The architecture of isolation is something about air around everything, the way light encircles the first daffodils, encourages their singular golden opening with a bit of space between each of them on their hollow stems. The architecture of waiting is something about dropping down like a tap root, how to trust the deeper water, earth’s dark heartbeat, how to trust time as if it comes from a god who offers Purgatory as a resting place, a take-your-shoes-off-and-lie-down place while mistakes, oversights, sins, ordinary trouble can be sorted out elsewhere. And the architecture of forgiveness is the house with the soft bed where you rest for a time, safe. And alone.

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Lisa Zimmerman’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Florida Review, Poet Lore, Chiron Review, Trampset, Amethyst Review, SWWIM Every Day and other journals. Her first book won the Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award. Other collections include The Light at the Edge of Everything (Anhinga Press) and The Hours I Keep (Main Street Rag).

Vespers

Thunder over Ontario
echoes so deep that

no one hears rain, or
the silence before rain

dimples the lake that
mirrors a dark sky . . .

Standing there, on
the lip of sand, looking

up, or is it down—rain
fills the cup of my hands.

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 M.J. Iuppa’s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past 31 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.

Mystery

The second step we take in AA
is to believe in a power
greater than ourselves.
Newly sober, I tried to trust

in a peaceful alpine meadow,
then the love of the AA group itself;
later I embraced the eastern pantheon,
so different from the trinity

I had tried and failed to love.
I learned Sanskrit chants and poems.
But one day in meditation noticed
that no matter how many verses

I sang to the guru’s sandals,
it was always You who showed up,
looking like Charlton Heston
in The Ten Commandments,

and maybe a little like my dad:
tall, feet planted, eyes on the horizon,
the true man taking charge.
Though I am grateful to know

You at all, I would really like You
to show up as someone else:
Xena the Warrior Princess perhaps,
or Helen Mirren looking lovely—

a smart, strong woman in her 60’s.
But I seem to be stuck with You,
the right-wing guy with granite
tablets in one arm and a rifle

in the other. You are not a God
of compassion or comfort,
but You are the God that has kept
me sober all these years.

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Kali Lightfoot‘s poems and reviews of poetry have appeared in journals and anthologies, and been nominated twice for Pushcart, and once for Best of the Net. Her debut collection is forthcoming from CavanKerry Press in 2021. Kali earned an MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts, find her at kali-lightfoot.com.