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Half Way up Etna

“Mind is the spell which governs earth and heaven”

Empedocles on Etna, (Act 1, Scene 2)

Matthew Arnold

I’ve come this far, my mind is clear;
there’s nothing left to savour now,

and though a death in Etna’s fire
is fearful yet I’ve made my choice.

My many friends have counselled me
to think again and weigh their love,

so, do I really want to crack
life’s riddle here and not go back?

*

The tidy vineyards flecked with green
in pale spring sunlight spoke to me,

the forests filled with bird song, too,
reminded me of happier days,

but when I reached the lava fields
I recognised life’s transience

and what it must be like to flair
back into dust and fiery air.

*

But, at six thousand feet I sense
a second wind, have second thoughts.

The view is fine below, the land,
the olive farms, contented lives;

the flowers of April nearly break
my heart with thoughts of love and loss.

Perhaps I’ll rest and go back down:
the risk is being thought a clown.

Simon Fletcher is widely published and is currently a ‘Poet on Loan’ in West Midland Libraries (ACE-funded).  He runs monthly live literature events and also tutors for the Workers’ Educational Association.  Author of 4 full collections, his most recent, Close to Home, was published by Headland, 2015. (www.simonfletcher.net)

When Spring Happens

There are bluebells the colour of ink.
A dog stops and waits, head
over its shoulder, not really looking.
This is what I came for,
the dimmed light of the wood,
blurring of blue and brown
into green. God didn’t say much.
Something like, Remember
before it happens,
I told you it would.

Carolyn Oulton‘s poetry has been published in magazines including Orbis, The Frogmore Papers, iota, Seventh Quarry, Ariadne’s Thread, Envoi, New Walk, Upstreet, Acumen and Ink, Sweat and Tears. Her most recent collection Accidental Fruit is published by Worple Press. Her website is at carolynoulton.co.uk

Yew Trees at Overton

These ancient trees mark out a playing card
of shadowed space, some used to call God’s field.
Two dozen yews, or thereabouts, have stood
on guard for fifteen hundred years, a place
of rest, defining peace, defying flood.

What hermit/ local saint decided then
he needed these grim ones for company?
Or was the yew thought powerful in lore,
bit gloomy, yes, but here since time began,
and thus to be protection ever more?

We need some time to sit and think
To watch the guttering candle’s flame;
Some pause to ponder, contemplate
Our flash-by culture in its frame.

The trunks are reddish brown and fluted, shaped
like columns seen in medieval aisles;
the foliage evergreen and dark as wrath;
the toxic seeds are held in scarlet cups,
their few remains are scattered on the path.

The oldest tree needs props and chains to hold
it up, has seen millennial goings on,
but yet appears benign for all to see
on this damp, bitter-blowing winter’s day;
a comfort, raft above the river Dee.

We need some time to sit and think
To watch the guttering candle’s flame;
Some pause to ponder, contemplate
Our flash-by culture in its frame.

Simon Fletcher is widely published and is currently a ‘Poet on Loan’ in West Midland Libraries (ACE-funded).  He runs monthly live literature events and also tutors for the Workers’ Educational Association.  Author of 4 full collections, his most recent, Close to Home, was published by Headland, 2015. (www.simonfletcher.net)

Bathsheba

I washed myself on the roof,
shrouded by a haze of flowers—
not provocative, just charming
and plain in my nakedness.
You watched as I bent and dipped
my hair in the pool,
built with stones, clouded with green,
the pool that hid more skin
with each step I took.

I moved quietly with you,
surrounded by a sunken bed
and a night thick with heat and spices.
The bed threw our two bodies together—
yours lusting, mine compliant.
A child awoke in me.

When my husband died,
placed before the fight by you,
the man who needed me,
I imagined the death was slow,
that he dug his fingers into the ground
to stave off the pain,
that as the fog covered his eyes
he knew what I’d done.

I mourned dry-eyed,
torturing myself,
not wanting you to see my pain.
You married me quickly
to hide the truth,
long ago bored by my charms.

When the child died,
taken as your lesson,
I stood beneath the sky unprotected,
and raised my voice to a God
I had never dared to face.
I fell to the ground, raking the dirt.
I was left without the husband I needed,
without a child to love,
left with a king
who needed me no longer.

 

Rebecca Guess Cantor’s first book, Running Away, was published last year by Finishing Line Press and her second book, The Other Half: Poems on Women in the Bible, is forthcoming from White Violet Press. Her poetry has appeared in The Cresset, Mezzo Cammin, Anomaly, Two Words For, Whale Road Review, Anomaly Literary Journal, and The Lyric among other publications. Rebecca is the Assistant Provost at Azusa Pacific University and lives in Fullerton, California.

Numen

Inclemency turns on
the atmospheric pulse
to smudge the shift.
This is not a taint.

When stars bounce
you cannot bridle them.
At best you can alter
future spins.

Forlorn edges look for links.
Langue of a family stings.
In numbness of one’s inner self
fenestration oxygenates.

Sanjeev Sethi is the author of three books of poetry. His most recent collection is This Summer and That Summer (Bloomsbury, 2015). His poems are in venues around the world:  After the Pause, Spirit Fire Review, Soul-Lit, London Grip, M58, Otoliths, Postcolonial Text, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India.

Metaphysical Queries

Have you ever stopped to think of
the vibrational energy of your being?

How the naked human senses can
only see within a super-limited scope?
Hell, dogs sense more than us.

And then stop to think that maybe
you’re in more places than one
because of a potential multiverse?

I’m just sitting here thinking, where am I?
The possibility that my consciousness and
essence are actually connected to some
greater consciousness somewhere out in
the cosmos shocks me. And what of love?

Is love the highest vibration that
we humans can attain?

Is that why we all seek it?

 

Adam Levon Brown is an internationally published author, poet, amateur photographer. He is Founder, Owner, and editor in chief of Madness Muse Press. He has had poetry published hundreds of times in several languages, along with 2 full collections and 3 chapbooks. He also participates as an assistant editor at Caravel Literary Arts Journal.

Cardio Theater

This flock of birds feeds on willingness
to merge with others in a common flight
over our quantum terrain of meaning-
lessness, our perplexed transvection an
object for discussion or disdain or distant
mistrust, at least for as long as our fathers
are still around, seemingly always recited
in the King James translation, “who art”
&c., & who indeed, feeling like Geoffrey Hill
on a Monday afternoon, could be in heave-
n? & still a fixedness gets us, holds us in
arrears, tells me jokes but won’t help me
fix this tie or finish my eulogy, not mine but
one I’m meant to deliver, like fireworks or
cigarettes over a state border, a curve
these same birds traverse every day, some-
times even shitting on it, on the very idea
of separation, as their shifting cloud tight-
ens & then (at last) begins to disperse
into the reddish-pink of this finished day.

Tom Snarsky teaches mathematics at Malden High School in Malden, Massachusetts, USA

abandoned church

hardwood littered with candles and hymnal pages / feel my flesh crawl like cobweb brush, ghost finger caress / half inside half out like purgatory

false idol nightmare face painted above the altar / forever smirking at “til death do us part” / batshit crazy stir crazy Jesus / tired of haunting this place / wanted dead or alive / worship like ghost hunting

draw ouija board on torn out bible page / forgotten psalm

fill the cathedral with flashlight glow / inspect the dirty wound /each time you revisit this place you bleed / blood oath with the ghosts

imagine getting married here / spray painting your vows on the walls beside the bleeding signatures / steeple pigeons sing you down the aisle / wearing dusty tulle drapery as a veil / mummified

feel around in the dark for the secrets the night keeps / written in braille

Rebecca Kokitus is a part time resident of Media, PA just outside Philadelphia, and a part time resident of a small town in rural Schuylkill County, PA. She is an aspiring poet and is currently an undergraduate in the writing program at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. She has recent work in Rag Queen Periodical and Moonchild Magazine, and more work in other places. She tweets at @rxbxcca_anna.

Moving on Water

The wind coming down
is thrown into rock
by the sea’s fist
over and over.

This water is solid
to the touch,
wedge-shaped gulls
are rocking to its beat

and its veins run like a map
of the hand that
is always being punctured
and made whole again.

 

Carolyn Oulton‘s poetry has been published in magazines including Orbis, The Frogmore Papers, iota, Seventh Quarry, Ariadne’s Thread, Envoi, New Walk, Upstreet, Acumen and Ink, Sweat and Tears. Her most recent collection Accidental Fruit is published by Worple Press. Her website is at carolynoulton.co.uk

illumined absences: iii

there is an absolute calm beyond the
spreadsheets of my saudade; the songster
under-souls, I can hear their chirps

and rhythm of the absence

entwined with the sonic
multitude of my mundane contracts.

what can’t be said, must be passed over
in silence, wittgenstein said.

buddha did not utter a freaking word.

absolute silence is a myth, john cage
would have said.

I watch the fireflies coming into life
from the worm-holes of void. I never felt

so complete; so full of rainbowed lack.

 

Sudeep Adhikari is a structural engineer/Lecturer from
Kathmandu, Nepal.  His recent publications were with Beatnik Cowboys,
Chiron Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Midnight Lane Boutique, and
Occulum. Also a Pushcart Prize nominee for the year 2018, Sudeep
is currently working on his 4th poetry-book Hyper-Real Reboots.