Monthly Archives: June 2023

Hiatus

I need interruption.  Hammers hamming
Nails jamming
Precision working against the coming gale force winds
The low country, so many contradictions.
Magnificent sunsets  
 
Clouds that pearl blue and white, iridescent
Streaks circling the Almighty
Gardenia blossoms and palmetto, herons
Gliding hawks, rainbows
Prehistoric marvels in their slow moving terror.
 
Summertime now, but fall is coming; crews hurrying
Before the oceans
Heat up; twisting sand dunes
Into wind tunnels  
The sensors working overtime
 
The rising tides a velvet hammer
Deconstructing the sameness.
Remembering, everything will be cast down 
Suddenly, I need this hiatus
To save my flowerpots, before the trees fly.
 

Keith Melton holds a Master’s Degree in City Planning from Georgia Tech and a BA in Economics and International Studies from the American University.  He previously has served as Director of Planning and Program Development for the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) Region IV Office; as well as VP of Development for both the Atlanta Economic Development Corp. and the DeKalb Chamber of Commerce (Metro Atlanta).  His poems have been published in numerous periodicals.

Thomas Ponder					

I call the old Doug Fir out back
Thomas Ponder.
Ever since the Valentine’s Day
ice storm took two branches,
others hang there like nursemaid elbows.

His spine is as straight 
as it can be, although his crown
leans toward my bedroom,
tilting his cap to my dreams.

When I hear him laugh some nights,
is he tossing old moons
over his shoulders
like spilled salt?
	
One Christmas, 
a charm of hummingbirds
shimmered his length, 
little carolers,
candles at the back door.

He’s also a flirt – that Thomas Ponder.
His northern branches stroke
the neighbor’s Blue Spruce,
southern branches
dingle dangle the red maple.
Eastern branches wink at the rising sun;
western branches blow kisses to the night hawk.

North winds lift his remnant of green 
like syncopated praise,
like call and response.
You’re a shimmery old holy roller,
that’s what you are, Thomas Ponder.

Colette Tennant is an English professor. She has two books of poems: Commotion of Wings and Eden and After. Her poems have won various awards and have been included in many journals, including Poetry Ireland Review, The Fish Anthology, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and others. In 2019, upon the request of a national press, she wrote Religion in The Handmaid’s Tale: a Brief Guide to coincide with Atwood’s publication of The Testaments. She has also taught art in Great Britain, Germany, and Italy.

If It Is Possible


Searching for sunrise this morning, east
through freckled patches of window screen.
A quiet yellow glow appears, mellow, serene, 
not heart-gripping dramatic pinks we’re sometimes shown, 
so arresting it feels that one could die happy now, 
complete, having been immersed in such a thing.
I switch to west, our back window view over the river, 
glistening like diamonds, and there comes a faint pink-purple 
blush, underlining the full Wolf Moon, vivid in this waking sky.
Small but powerful, our moon at its apogee, glowing at me 
like a round white grape lit bright from within.

If it is possible to pilot one’s way into a day, 
best way is with full moon above a river, color in the sky, 
and a root centered in openness; allowance for come-what-may, 
nimbly accepting, be it rough, easy, or arresting, 
received softly as massaging, hugging, holding your heart 
with the astonishment of wonder.

Marjorie Moorhead writes from the New England river valley border of NH/VT. She is the author of Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (Finishing Line Press 2019), Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books 2020), and has poems in many anthologies and literary journals. Marjorie’s first full collection, Every Small Breeze, is forthcoming, as well as a third chapbook, In My Locket. 

Places you can see my work

The Little Hours 


Mid-morn, noon, mid-afternoon,
paired doves dip and dab for seed 

where lawn meets hardtop and
the courting male coos.

Mottled feathers, blue-ringed eyes, 
mourning doves hunt and peck

during the hours known as 
terce, sext, none.

Minus the drama of dawn or dusk, 
times for stacked paperwork,

cups of tea. Value measured by
ticked to-do lists. Dollar time.

The twice-twelved day sliced fine,
needs thicker layers, a kinder pace.

Praise for eyes that stare off, 
soften focus. For deep sighs 

body releases from our first home
in the world. Thanks also 

for the doves who wing whistle
and like the hours flee. 

Rhett Watts is a member of the 4×4 poet and artist collaborative in Worcester and facilitates writing workshops in CT and MA. Her books are: Willing Suspension (Antrim House Books) and The Braiding (Kelsay Books). She won the Rane Arroyo chapbook contest for No Innocent Eye. Her work appears in Best Spiritual Writing 2000 and she has poems in journals including Canary, SWIMM, Spoon River Poetry, The Worcester Review, Sojourners Magazine, The Windhover, and many others.

Paradiso: The Empowered Vision
 
Brightness beyond all brilliance, rising
At speeds impossible to guess …
Within this hypervelocity,
Appears, as though unmasked, a blazing  —
White .. like comets alighting  in nests
Of meadow-flower infinity
 
Whose  colour and scent, whose twirling power                   
Becomes speed’s  stillness, the source of all
Light rays and every radiance
Reflected back from every flower.
In this, like plunged in a waterfall
Of pounding baptism, I danced
 
Until my blinded eyes were stretched
Out to a vision which encompassed
The whole of space-time and beyond,
And there I witnessed .. but words, snatched                      
From that light-torrent, are mere rumpus,
Cracked babble, stones placed onto a pond
 
And meant to float, but sinking .. I saw,                
Light’s music and speed’s stillness flower
In marriages of mathematical law,                  
My vision becoming somehow - empowered ..
I saw - though can’t tell what I saw ... 
 

Leo Aylen: Born KwaZulu, South Africa, 9 poetry collections (latest The Day The Grass Came “a triumph” Melvyn Bragg; “Stupendous” Simon Callow); 5 international prizes; 100 poems in anthologies, 50 in U.S.A. poetry journals, 100 broadcast. Recently published in Century; 100 Major Modern Poets; Agenda; Able  Muse;  Amethyst Review; Grand Little Things; Westward Quarterly; The Road Not Taken; Better Than Starbucks; Orchards Poetry Journal; Scarlet Leaf Review; Blue Unicorn; Sparks of Calliope; The Hypertexts.

Bodhicitta


Everything comes from the center.
As Moses diagnosed the 12 springs 
for the 12 tribes in exodus with his staff

let me defy gravity
let me drink of myself 
down through the heart of history 

to the place the pyramid 
wants to be planted.
When my heart weighs less 

than a feather I can survive
the scales of truth
my shape conveying my limits. 

Let me know the difference
between shape and form.
Let me be the halved string

doubled in octave
reaching higher with each loss.
Let me dance in the skin 

of who I intend to become  
making the faces of the spirits 
my own. Let me stand

aligned as odalisque. 
Let me build my house 
where the sheep lie down.
 

Sage Cohen is the author of five books including the poetry collection Like the Heart, the World and the poetry guides Writing the Life Poetic and Write a Poem a Day. She offers information and inspiration for poets and writers at sagecohen.com.

Everything Happening 


My roses are blooming, 
my yellow roses, and a child 

is dying of hunger 
or disease or a gunshot or grief, 

and someone is laughing 
and someone is crying,

and someone is lifting a cup, a star 
is exploding, a heart 

is breaking, the wind is blowing 
over a desert, over a forest,

over the sea, and it is morning 
and it is evening,

it is the first day and the last,
and every moment 

somewhere the Host is being 
raised in the air, 

in the air, in the air.

Chris Anderson is a Catholic deacon in Corvallis, Oregon, and everything he writes comes out of his experiences as a deacon and out of his experiences of faith, and doubt.  He is also an emeritus professor of English at Oregon State University.  He has published a number of books, poetry and prose.   Love Calls Us Here is forthcoming from Wildhouse Press.

Meditation for a Bicyclist


May your trail be long, open, and clear,
no matter if it’s made of earth or asphalt.

May your weather be cool and dry,
with the wind at your back, beckoning you forward.

May the air you breathe smell ripe with life—
early fall sky and sunlight, sparkling joy and resolve.

And should the pavement be cracked or breached by tree roots,
may you coast over them as if they are no hindrance.

And should your tires slip
and cause you to fall,

may you remember that you can always stand up,
get back on your bike, and continue onward.

May you always carry a knowing of the road forward
and your route back, and yet

may you always dare to veer off-path
into the forest undergrowth and make your own way.

May your legs muscles burn and hum, gifting you 
the momentum to push onward, mile after mile.

May there be a rushing of your heart, a melding
of hands and handlebars, feet and pedals,

until you and your machine are one, racing ahead
with spirit as teammate and freedom as destination.

May you always delight
in the journey

Sara Letourneau is a poet as well as the book coach, editor, and writing workshop instructor at Heart of the Story Editorial & Coaching Services. Her poetry has received first place in the Blue Institute’s Words on Water contest and has appeared in Full Mood Mag, Living Crue, Arlington Literary Journal, Mass Poetry’s Poem of the Moment and Hard Work of Hope, Muddy River Poetry Review, Soul-Lit, Amethyst Review, and Constellations, among others. Her manuscript for her first full-length poetry collection is on submission. You can learn more about working with Sara and read more of her work at https://heartofthestoryeditorial.com/.

Vanishing Point

Last night the creatures in my dreams were kind
and cordial. Men with jaws of wolf and hound
and gliding owl-winged women eased my mind,
my ushers to a slumber more profound.
I got the sense that they were dreaming too,
their round eyes, which at first looked so awake,
trained inward toward some feral privileged view
the demons who weave sleep craft for their sake.
The point that vanishes is still a point,
although there’s nothing there, or just a dot
of paint or wax a clay lamp might anoint
with unguent light, both of this world and not.
The world abides by time. Time stops for light.
Light winds itself inside itself at night. 

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). A selection of his poems was issued by the Ice Cube Press in July 2022: https://icecubepress.com/2021/10/01/a-playbill-for-sunset/

Turning Succulent


I share with friends my self-improvement fantasy of morphing 
Into a rather pithy succulent this summer. I tell them I want to 
Exchange my fleshy, thickened limbs for leaves & stems.

They laugh, of course, & order the appetizer without giving it
Another thought. I pull them back with my lasso of ingenuity until
Yes they finally see that I am serious & looking into it somehow.

You are wonderful in your human form, they abjure. It’s never been 
Done, the hummus-laden server catches on pretty quickly 
& concurs. But this is insane, they say, to which I agree:

Come June 21st, I sit on my back step hydrated, naked, face
To the sun, feeling rather ornamental. I have silently said good-bye
To my family & hello to my genera where now I am true.

Candice Kelsey [she/her] is a poet, educator, and activist currently living in Augusta, Georgia. She serves as a creative writing mentor with PEN America’s Prison & Justice Writing Program; her work appears in Grub Street, Poet Lore, Lumiere Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, and Slant among other journals. Recently, Candice was chosen as a finalist in Iowa Review’s Poetry Contest and Cutthroat’s Joy Harjo Poetry Prize. Her third book titled A Poet just released with Alien Buddha Press. Find her @candicekelsey1 and www.candicemkelseypoet.com.