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Kristin in the Light Café



I match my handlebar to your handlebar      our tires	
riot up forsythia    pussy willow    luscious mud 
    sprays our vernal wakes    the lake ice booms    the buds thrum 
so green and full     the insides of things too 

the desire in the boys’ eyes     the intent in the exact cobalts 
and fleeces of their shirts     which are only shirts  	which we know	 
  yet gardens glimmer anyway     you dance with me      you 
thunder with me a storm of leaps of flight on the pier on the lake 

in the everything silver moon glow glittering fish flee to far lilac coves 
owls scold      you laugh me up from gravity breathless
  you     whose brain excised     exquisite     awaits a microscope
catalpa seeds fly now 	  my night helicopter churns the leaden water now

and you meet me at a table in the light café	
you meet me     where crystal fans spin prisms into filigreed mirrors 		
  apricot prosecco fizzes before you     and your arms of peace 
embrace me in the always Just-spring air      
	

Elizabeth Kuelbs writes at the edge of a Los Angeles canyon. Her work appears in Psalms of Cinder & Silt, Poets Reading the News, The Timberline Review and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is the author of the poetry chapbook Little Victory (2021). 

Lifting the prayers of the earth

Spring has sprung, eagerly 
reaching out to the sun before
enough rain has come. 

Stubs of corn crouch ghostly 
gold and dandelion seeds 
fly like autumn midges. 

A beech-shadowed chalk stream 
chants clear and reflects dancing 
clouds, suffused by the sun.

A broken trunk revives, restored 
as seven, roots bared, steps down 
to water, serving animal thirsts.

Streams spring down banks too steep 
to support weaker trees, their flow 
blending with the water’s song.

Water meadows meander on the other side, 
keeping some balance in these seasons, 
of which we are uncertain what we know. 
    
Kites circle, surveying the scene 
for signs of flaws in the scheme, 
when they will hover and swoop as

crows call from nests at the tops of trees 
closest to the sky… as our human souls 
intertwine, lifting the prayers of the earth.

M. Anne Alexander’s poetry generally explores restorative relationships with Nature, especially in landscapes with spiritual, historical and contemporary significance. Her background is as a lecturer in English and teacher of Music. She began writing poetry as an outcome of counselling. Poems are published regularly in the Bury Free Press and in Poetry Space, including in their recent Locked Down Anthology. Other poems are to appear in the August and September issues of Dreich. She is also author of Thomas Hardy: the “dream-country” of his fiction – a study of the creative process (Vision Press/Barnes & Noble).

Black-capped Chickadee 

Parus atricapillus


its daintiness is deceiving
with looks so frail, and yet

they suffer winter storms 
in these brutal mountains—a banditry

after a blizzard. They speckle
the blinding snow with dee-dee-dee

a song reminiscent of spring 
in the death of frost

maybe that is why I think of her— Emilia
when I see these tiny nearly tame acrobats

foraging in naked branches finding
morsels where I see none

—perhaps


I was late to meet her, her warmth
the way she blanketed 

my shoulders in a hug
how she gave me tidbits for decades lost

in this tiny bird’s industrious energy, I see
her paused steps among the Mexican streets 

she shared with the family she nurtured
as formidable as a chickadee

— my mother

Amelia Díaz Ettinger is a ‘Mexi-Rican,’ born in México but raised in Puerto Rico. As a BIPOC poet and writer, she has two full-length poetry books published; Learning to Love a Western Sky by Airlie Press, and a bilingual poetry book, Speaking at a Time /Hablando a  la Vez by Redbat Press, and a poetry chapbook, Fossils in a Red Flag by Finishing Line Press. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies.

Anticipating life


She's claiming her spot
on the sycamore as I watch
from the window view.

She waits for the winds
to reverse, then circling south
she carries a gathering back with her

red
curled
triangular

She weaves the loose leaves along
with the twigs and the pine needles
with both skill and with artistry, as

She's knitting a nest for the baby birds.

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. 

		Aubade



		The birds are raising happy hell
                - Frederick Eckman



March 1st, 6:00 A.M., a sparrow
starts his racket on the sill
nearby our bed.  No subtlety,
but from the start, insistent, shrill,

a one-man-band that soon will grow
as more and more performers come,
approximating music.  Things
devolve to an unruly scrum

instead of orchestra, each male 
demanding to be soloist
with alternating repertoires --
To rivals, Beat it! Scram! Get lost,

and stay the hell away! To females,
Baby, Baby, Baby, please!
The winner struts upon the ledge
as losers scold from nearby trees.

His song will change when a mate is found
and a nest is filled with eggs to brood,
the noise gaining a treble note
as hungry chicks demand their food.

Their lives will be uncertain, tracked
by wily predators that stalk
their daily errands: feral cats,
the ever-lurking Cooper’s Hawk,

or else torrential rains may sweep
their nest from off the sill, put paid
to fond parental labors, leaving
scattered twigs with nestlings dead.

For now, however, they are safe,
and every morning, earlier on,
we hear their boast, Our tiny lives
have made it to another dawn.

Awakened from a shortened sleep,
as chirps and flutterings begin,
you pull the blanket past your head
to stuff your ears against the din

and groan in protest, Stupid birds!
Give it a rest!  Oblivious,
they sing their matins heartlessly,
indifferent to plea or curse.

And like the birds’, our humble lives
must meet what fate has got in store.
One day, this bed will lie unused;
this home, our place, know us no more.

Across that empty spot will fall
the shadow of a raptor’s wing,
but now the morning light breaks forth.
Wake up, my love.  Arise and sing.

Reagan Upshaw lives in a town on the Hudson River 60 miles north of New York City and makes a living as an art appraiser, while gardening and keeping bees.

Beach Glass
 
 
We traverse the park, grass shy
green, cowslip replacing muddy
tracks, air bright with spring—
welcome respite from quarantine.
 
Masked and cautious, we loosen
the dogs, who amble freely, chase
winter’s leaves, clutch broken
branches like buried bones,
oblivious to Covid counts
and fever chills.
 
*
 
Along the edges of summer freedom,
we search for meaning in crinoid
            rings, spiny sea amulets
            from another age.
           
Splashes of glass, manmade,
catch us mid-stride
as we reach with childish glee
            the rare find-
 
sharp edges smoothed by water’s
urging, shaped by time and motion.
 
Chance the currents pushed it
shoreline, luck we spot its
satiny surface—turquoise, pearl
moss or amber.
 
Chance we live in troubling times
luck we persevere.

Nancy L. Davis has published poetry in Cutthroat, The Orchards Poetry Review, Evening Street Review (forthcoming), The Dewdrop, From the Depths, and Best of Philadelphia Stories, among others. Her work has been awarded with a Puschart Prize Nomination, First Place in the Sandy Crimmins National Poetry Contest, Finalist in the Joy Harjo Poetry Contest, and Semi-Finalist in TulipTree Publishing’s Stories That Must Be Told anthology competition. Ghosts, her chapbook, was published July 2019 by Finishing Line Press.

Via Negativa in the Town Park, Late February 

The geese grazing tarnished yellow grass 
are nonchalant, and rightly so.
When some benighted dog dashes to catch them
they, at home in each dimension, lift away into the gray sky
and settle gently upon the river, and calmly float there,
indifferent again, easeful, directionless.

Children run from the river’s edge to the playground
bearing their prizes, pieces of driftwood, mostly,
or small river stones that fill their pockets, or a gray goose feather.
On this cold day the swings hang motionless,
the jungle-gym a dark iron grid, flat, empty,
the slide a downward path from sky to earth, untaken.

Along the path along the river
a woman in a long dark coat stands still, looking up at 
the dark forked branches of an old tree
then sits on a bench and looks at the river,
which doesn’t look back. A man with a yellow dog
passes two women who walk together, one hatless.

Two more men walk along the path, 
looking for Pokémon creatures who lurk 
in the old trees and rise up immaterial
from the gray river, then slip away again
to hide somewhere else. Three young
men confer near a clump of marsh reeds, gravely. 

The men are walking slowly now, in single file
along the river path, heads bowed,
holding their phones in front of them,
a short procession of choristers holding hymnals
or young monks lifting up empty bowls, 
tilting them toward the sky.

Anne Yarbrough‘s debut collection, Refinery, was chosen by Hayden Saunier for the 2021 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize and published by Broadkill River Press. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poet Lore, Delmarva Review, Philadelphia Stories, Gargoyle Magazine, CALYX Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in an observation post along the lower Delaware River with a husband and a dog.

St Tredwell


Into your  keeping
take these curved  forms 
one dying the other weary.

Let me ride the miniature sledge 
on runners of horn. 
I pay with my pin of bone, its human face. 

When she is ripe cut round the moon.
For her and for you I have gathered the remains of a chapel. 
The path there awkward, a stone trail edged with star grass. 

Assist me to reach  
through silence, 
each word the weight of a goldcrest. 

I have worked without speaking. 
I have worked every day. 
Mostly I have been standing in one place.

Hard to believe the shimmer isn’t you

Lydia Harris lives in the Orkney island of Westray. She held a Scottish Book Trust New Writer’s Award in 2017. Her fourth pamphlet A Small Space is due from Paper Swans this year. Her first full collection, Objects for Private Devotion is due from Pindrop Press in 2022.

When I Listen To The Nay 


I become the sea. The sea when it is nearly still,
the sea when a seagull comes close to its surface,
hardly touching the waves to catch fish, 
before flying off again. 
I become the sea and its ancient sailors, 
those who looked to the stars for when to leave, 
when to return. 
I become the sea when the sun generously spills onto it, 
turning its water into a shattered boulder of sapphire, 
each piece as precious as the other. All the lost parts of our self, 
here, when I listen to the nay, this thousands-year old 
wind instrument, and I become the sea, its suffering, 
if suffering were seen for what it is: one of the layers of life. 
I listen to the nay to become the sea, the heart of it, 
the blue fish almost a hundred meters beneath my surface, 
the black drum, the eels and kelp, 
even the midnight zone where sunlight cannot reach. 
Friend in despair and in hope, sit by me in this cold,
tell me, how to handle such depth—
such near-collapse.

Nur Turkmani is a Lebanese-Syrian researcher and writer in Beirut. Her poetry has been published in The Adroit Journal, London Poetry, ECLECTICA, and others. Her poem “Body Parts” was selected as a runner-up for the Barjeel Poetry Prize. She is the Managing Editor of Rusted Radishes: Beirut’s Art and Literary Journal and is currently completing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford.

Lifting

This life is made of fence and brick;
warped and crumbling.

The late February sky, malaise-packed with heavy clouds,
has finally cracked.

Trees are worn, satchel brown, licked with ochre and rust,
by nature's wonder-burnt tongue.

The musky scent of wet wood, permeating.
The red-orange flare of a robin, flickering.

But look, lilac crocuses, 
petal pincers, sprouting in clusters,

like tiny feet,
magic circling tree roots,

their amber stamens,
spring's fireworks, 

waiting 
to ignite.

David Hanlon is a welsh poet living in Cardiff. He is a Best of the Net nominee. You can find his work online in over 50 magazines, including Rust & Moth, Icefloe Press & Mineral Lit Mag. His first chapbook Spectrum of Flight is available for purchase now at Animal Heart Press. You can follow him on twitter @davidhanlon13 and Instagram @welshpoetd