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Coronary Truth

My friend calls to tell me
he’s had a heart attack.
I pace with the phone,
and through my kitchen window,
I see the season’s first oriole,
darting along the lawn
as if nothing amiss has occurred.
I listen to my friend describe
the pain—the trip to the e.r., the fight
with the nurse—while a chickadee
checks out an abandoned bluebird
nest. Only this morning, I struggled
to ignore the heaving in my own chest—
the clenched fist tightened around my
broken heart that renders me breathless.
Outside, tiny hearts flutter as feathers
whir by my window, brown leaves
are thrashed, and seed falls to the ground.
My friend makes heart attack jokes,
but I know he’s afraid. I am afraid: for him,
and for our hearts, no longer protected
by pure being, but rendered fragile
as hummingbird eggs by a lifetime
of confinement in human cages.

Tortoise

What if you were sitting, folded forward,
your legs stretched out along the ground, arms splayed
beneath your thighs and wrapped around your waist,
fingers clasped behind your back, shoulders
clamped down by your legs, face down in
the dirt between your calves? If you find
it hard to breathe, relax. You’re no ordinary
tortoise. Even here at ocean’s bottom

you can bear the pressure, plus Mt. Meru
on your back, with ease—of course it burns;
those gods and demons yanking on the snake
coiled round the mountain, twirling it to churn
the seven seas—making the elixir
of eternal life—what if this is it?

John W. Steele is a psychologist, yoga teacher and recent graduate of the MFA Creative Writing / Poetry Program at Western Colorado University, where he studied with Julie Kane, Earnest Hilbert and David Rothman. His poetry has appeared in Blue Unicorn, The Lyric, Society of Classical Poets and Boulder Weekly. Blue Unicorn nominated his poem “My Grandpa Lost” for the 2017 Pushcart prize. His poem, “Ignis Fatuus,” won The Lyric’s Fall 2017 quarterly award.

Finitude

Night’s forced air leaves
fire to smolder in its pit
like sleep’s barter—
hidden prayer offered
in the veil of smoke
lifting— over-
head.

M.J. Iuppa ‘s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017).For the past  29 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.

History

Feeble words fill the room’s dark duty
Rain slams against the roof above their heads
As two friends engage in final whispers
One, immobile, placid, his face disfigured
By loss of energy, by approaching death,
The other, white haired, offensively fit.

They sit together, close, one last time
Reminiscing through bleary eyes
Over past epiphanies and small awakenings
Resist spinning the tongue like a wheel of fortune
To see where the arrow of thought lands, finally;
They know its direction, that nothing can be done
That any battles to be fought have already been won.

Julian Nangle is 70 years old, is married and has had 5 children, and now has 11 grand children. He is a poet, publisher (as Words Press), rare book dealer (as Words Etcetera) and psychotherapist. He has been writing poems since he was in his teens and published some in the little magazines during the 60’s and 70’s. He has produced 4 collections of poems, the last being ‘Windfalls’ in 2014. He is poetry editor for the magazine Self & Society. In September 2017 he lost his youngest daughter to cancer which has prompted many poems relating to grief and loss. The poem published here is just one of them.

Daily Bread

Inside the ache. Doused in the heat. The plastic Virgin won’t
address me, her eyes cast down.

I hear her sighs. I hear all the mother gods and idols sigh.
The Gaia, Ishtar, Ix-chel, Chang’E on high

draped in her nightgown.
Gravity pulls the blood from my body, the unborn

sinking fog, wending rivers, rustling greens;
so even the mountain will not last forever, fated to be swallowed

and drawn low. What to do
with all these elementals and goddesses then?

Every morning, I drink from a manufactured chalice,
sip the Earl Grey, the black Darjeeling, the Pekoe.

I navigate around the islands in my apartment, read the books
that imperfect but eager people sent into the future,

run my fingers over an unclean counter,
grasp a doorknob,

breathe. So where are
the holies and their likenesses,

where be their words in my daily doings?
Books of the dead, Abrahamic verses, the written words of pilgrims

pressed between bindings, grimoires, old folk songs
that refuse to dim;

how could I have ever hoped
to catch the new sermons spoken?

Merely, I envision their pillars, breasts of nectar, blue
shoals, eyes like dead fish, smiles from cut stone, hands wringing

out tree limbs, choking them barren, burnt colors
scarring my human skin; I guess somewhere,

in these lines, I might’ve unconsciously uttered
prayers.

Renwick Berchild is half literary critic, half poet. Her poems have appeared in Spillwords, Vita Brevis, The Stray Branch, Lunaris Review, Slink Chunk Press, Streetcake, and other e-zines, anthologies, and journals. She was born and raised on the angry northern shores of Lake Superior, and now lives in a micro-apartment in Seattle, WA. You can find her work and additional links at RenwickBerchild.com.

What the Pope Said

The Pope has said
that hell doesn’t exist–
souls only disappear.

But your beautiful creases
spread on mine; invisible
except in the right conditions
of temperature and light.

At night, I glow in the dark:
indelible patterns
from your breath
inked into my flesh,
the living map
of where we’ve been.

Sarah A. Etlinger is an English professor who resides in Milwaukee, WI, with her family. In addition to writing, hobbies include cooking, traveling, and learning to play piano. Look for her work in The Penwood Review, The Magnolia Review, Cliterature, and many others. Her chapbook, Never One For Promises, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2019.

Disappearance

I tell the family I’m going for a walk
up the beach
alone

breaths of fog steam under a limpid sun
the grey strand as wide as a soccer field
crumbly brown bluffs 30 feet high
painted in rust, eggplant, dark green
ice plants with purple flowers popping out
a toddler runs from his mother holding a string
and a parrot kite rises into the lavender mist
provoking squawks of delight from below

I find my legs have begun to run
past a lifeguard station surrounded
by blankets chairs umbrellas in more colors
than a rainbow can hold
a pair of black porpoises slice
the foaming Pacific on my left
accompanied by gasps on my right
I jog past a small dead gray whale
flung and twisted by the muscular waves
skin now coppery and mottled
with knuckle-sized white barnacles
lower jaw bone of the beast
bleached and upthrust toward the streaming sun
a stench of blubber rot follows me
on the rails of a breeze
but I outrun it

now I shut my eyes
and there’s nothing but the thud
of my feet on hard wet eons
a blended roar of water and wind
warm orange light on my eyelids
I feel myself

………………………lifted

…………………………………….on pelican wings

into a wild and rippling canopy
of blue

Scott Waters is a poet and songwriter living in Oakland, California, with his wife and son.  He graduated with an M.A. from the San Francisco State creative writing program, and has published previously in The Santa Clara Review, The Pangolin Review, Oblivion, and NatureWriting.

Naming the Trees

The mountain opens its mouth to speak.
No one but the wind is listening.
Guide books and maps open,
the tourists talk about
which mountain to climb and
where to eat breakfast. The mountain
closes, refusing to tell them anything.
Talks to the wind instead. No one
is listening other than an owner who
charges twenty-eight dollars
for breakfast.

Trees whisper and wave. The people
call them “beautiful”. They don’t
hear the whisper. Want to name the
nameless trees. They want to find
the nameless mountain on the map.
As if to name is to own in some way.
Nothing reveals its real name, Each one
must find their own true name
and hold it in their hearts .

The wind moves the tree
in a nameless dance, his mouth
on her ear. She hears her own name.
Her arm moves down his body
but he is gone. Her longing swells
beneath seed-laden branches,
drops down into her roots,
into the ground,
and she is free.

Coreen Hampson lives in Grants Pass, OR. She is a gardener and poet. Her first book of poetry, Growing Smaller, has recently been accepted by Flowstone Press.

Pink Lotus on Still Water

In my dream I battle water,
muddy-gray torrents
heaving fear
over my sunken bedroom.

I can’t swim, though I try.
The waves rise and thicken, the stalks
of my feet take root
in a swamp.

The wide-eyed baby
clasped to my chest
smiles. I am terrified
for his life.

No skills to swim but skills
to save, I tug my body
through viscous fluid,

each step an anvil—
I’m a shipwreck in bottomless night.

The baby
takes my hands
in his hands. His smile
pulls me upward.

Slowly, we ascend.
The flood recedes,
the smiling baby
drifts in cotton-soft air.

Silence.

I am light-made,
a pink-lotus floating
on still water.

I float. I bloom. I fold
into wholeness.

Marga Fripp is a Romanian-American women’s empowerment social entrepreneur and former journalist living in Geneva, Switzerland. Her poems like music long to be heard, danced with and set free. Her work has appeared in Ink and Voices and Offshoots 14: Writing from Geneva, Fall 2017.

The way the iris opens

Ventricle by ventricle,
releasing
an internal map

a propulsion from within
emerging
lavender and plum

The way the iris closes
is a reversal,
a recoiling

Slowly like a scroll
of parchment,
winding tight

gathering its corners until —
its veins visible —
it becomes itself.

Deborah Leipziger is an author, poet, professor, and mother. Her chapbook, Flower Map, was published by Finishing Line Press (2013). She is the co-founder of Soul-Lit, an on-line poetry magazine. Born in Brazil, Ms. Leipziger is the author of several books on human rights and sustainability. http://flowermap.net/