Monthly Archives: April 2022

The Campanile


A knell will sound regardless of who hears
or if there’s no one left to hear. A storm
will toll the bell, a sexton with no tears
to shed, no semblance of a human form.
Or else the bell will hang there silently
until its yoke dissolves and down it flies,
the clapper blanging one last misery
in flight, one muffled drumbeat where it lies.
Unless there was no bell or tower, rope
to pull or sound to travel, from the start,
solidity a philosophic trope,
a substanceless creator’s term of art.
The campanile’s loyal. There it stands,
all readiness to heed the next commands.

Dan Campion‘s poems have appeared previously in Amethyst Review and in Light, Poetry, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. He is the author of Peter De Vries and Surrealism (Bucknell University Press) and coeditor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (Holy Cow! Press). Selections of his poems will be issued by the Ice Cube Press and the MadHat Press in 2022.

Tenderly, April


In the latitude of longitude
life is blinking in its cradle
of this peek-a-boo dream.

Flowers springing in the
womb of willow trees,

as April paints her branch
with optimist brush,

fingers crossed
behind her back

toes tip in the hush
of newborn celebration

within seconds clocked
following the final frost.

When not writing poetry, Emalisa Rose enjoys crafting and birding. She volunteers in animal rescue, helping to tend to a cat colony in the neighborhood. She lives by a beach town, which provides much of the inspiration for her art. Her latest collection of poetry is “On the whims of the crosscurrents,” published by Red Wolf Editions. 

April Morning
 
A pair of sparrows, shut-ins
Buried in the lower boughs,
Draw up-wards in giddy banter
To unzipper this day, giving
Way to earth’s slow yawn and
Easeful stretch into a yellow
Smock of light, while darkness
Scurries beneath the sodden
Stoops and sloped porches
Of houses just come back to
Life. The last vestiges of a
Moonless night have been
Folded and tucked into the
Inky wounds that sit between
The branches of conifers as
A drowsy wind, frost-chilled,
Meanders across an expanding
Pasture of sky before its fateful
Stumble, spilling from its heavy,
Ice-laden bucket more blue than
This day can possibly bear.

A resident of Connecticut, John Muro’s first volume of poems, In the Lilac Hour, was published in 2020 by Antrim House. His second volume, Pastoral Suite, will be published this spring by Antrim House, as well, and both are or will soon be available on Amazon. A two-time, 2021 Pushcart Prize nominee, John’s poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Barnstorm, Euphony, Grey Sparrow, Penumbra, River Heron and Sky Island.