moments

window beside desk
rumble of evening
a day’s leftovers as
blood and ink mix
writing my presence
naming my deities

——

You and I

Have been. Will be. Are.

——

The pattering wings of
late night snow across an
almost empty street

Walking unnoticed among the flakes
as if an oceans cold, hushed depths

Boots shuffling along the sidewalk
Faint glimmer of our porch-light…

——

close, sultry afternoon
a windmill daydreams of its
rain-bowed multi-winged hero
flitting, scrabbling dragonfly

——

window left open
the city still quiet
Spring…
morning rain

——

rapacious hawk in sunlight-
as if a veil is
suddenly removed,
an archangel soaring
closer to the divine…
humbled, and suddenly
stuffed full with grace

——

deleting another poem
I’m without words for. . .
power squandered,
my laptop
sighs
_____ turns
___________itself
________________off

ayaz daryl nielsen, veteran, hospice nurse, ex-roughneck (as on oil rigs) lives in Longmont, Colorado, USA. Editor of bear creek haiku (30+ years/140+ issues) with poetry published worldwide (and deeply appreciated), he is online at: https://bearcreekhaiku.blogspot.com

Perhaps this poem….

opens the red and orange berries

___of the bittersweet vine to cedar waxwings

______that pluck and pass as they line up in a row

spills over its margins like the rose-breasted

___grosbeak’s stream of whistles that crowd

______the cedar waxwings off the vine

huddles alone in a dying pine quiet

___except for the hulk of the ivory-billed woodpecker

______that doffs his flaming crest in vain and fades

Donna O’Connell-Gilmore, poet and psychotherapist, moved to Cape Cod In 2000 to focus more seriously on poetry. She published the chapbook Africa Is the Mother Who Lies in the Grass in 2015 (Sandheap Press). Donna’s poetry has appeared in Willow Springs, Blueline, The Hopper, Off the Coast, and Glassworks.

Cavignac, France

The din of the rain, the shear of cars as they cut past on wet streets | like my early years in France.

Renaults and Citroens painted soft shades of gray | sky-blue windows, tinted | and wipers that
::slapped
::slapped
from the top of windshields | like hands wiping tears from their eyes.

Why did I feel so melancholy then? I was no more than four ::I still feel that weariness as I drive down rain-swept streets today | I watch passersby in felt fedoras, huddled underneath umbrellas.

But, wait! the nostalgic twinge of a jazz number whispers on the radio | the cymbals—cars whizzing by | the rat-tat-tat of the drums—the rain on the roof | it brings me back there, to Cavignac.

Pablo Cuzco is an American writer of poetry and short stories. He spent his early years in France and Germany with his family. In his teens, he traveled across America, guitar in hand, writing songs and jotting memories along the way. Now living in the Southwest with his wife, he has time to reflect and share those stories. His work currently appears at Underfoot Poetry and Pablo Cuzco …in My Mind’s Eye

If You Asked, I Would Say

My back strikes the wall as I watch
your roots tendril taut
around my spine deep
enough to prevent me
from scattering my own seeds—
I’ve been waiting to flower
since I discovered

how to spell love. You train
my etch-a-sketch heart
that three lefts make a right
decision, that my left hand

is shaped to hold
only calluses, that my bruised
smile gives you permission
to seize the bold parts of me

and rewrite them in italics.
You’re a safety blanket
with a hole I am

reaching through.

You do not want me
whole-heartedly. You consume me broken.

When my backbone slams the wall,
it hangs there. I remember
to forget the feeling of wind
leaving my body: a backhanded breath
I catch later.

Allison DeRose is an English/Creative Writing graduate student at The College at Brockport in Western New York. At the college, she has received several scholarships for her poetry and is currently a writing tutor on campus. Allison is constantly being inspired by words and also enjoys taking photos of nature. 

Private Eye

There’s been no rain.
People wait
before the Hall of Justice—
not waiting for justice, no reign.

First guess. A protest, Chavez country.
No, just a line, a snake dance
for driver’s licenses
or child support payments.

Seven am and the sky a burnt blue.
They wait, haggard now, a Bible
Banger saying God gave them Freedom
Of Choice and won’t take it back…

A young fella, farm shoulders—
no shirt—bums a light for his smoke,
throws the lady her matches back, doesn’t take the light.
The lady says, What that mother Okie crazy do that?
 
The Bible Banger walks, checks
his red cell, his grey meter, his beat-up
Chevelle wagon, California plates, blue on white.
I pencil out the number, since maybe it’s him.

Seven-thirty am. The hall doors open.

Mike Lewis-Beck writes and works in Iowa City. He has pieces in Alexandria Quarterly, Apalachee Review, Cortland Review, Chariton Review, Pilgrimage, Iowa Review, Rootstalk, Seminary Ridge Review, Taos Journal of International Poetry and Art, and Wapsipinicon Almanac, among other venues. His short story, “Delivery in Göteborg,” received a Finalist prize from Chariton Review, 2015. His essay, “My Cherry Orchard in Iowa,” received recognition as one of the “Notable Essays” in Best American Essays of 2011. His poetry book manuscript, Wry Encounters, was a Finalist for the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award 2016.

Falling Leaves

Quiet creeps down through old elms
now open to the clear autumn sky.
I stand before my childhood home
and the scent of burning leaves
loosens the grip of time.

In bushes near an iron gate
a concrete angel watches, a teacher.
She’s long awaited my homecoming.
She parts hazy curtains, welcoming
me to the clapboard house.
She returns the slatted swing to the porch
and the gazing ball to the lawn
near the sapling my father and I planted
before he went to war.

This lofty tree marks decades
and I’ve grown old and stiff.
yet under its spread
I take on the body of my youthful days
that rolled in piles of leaves
like a forest troll with twig-tangled hair.

A red orange leaf takes flight
and drifts aimlessly down to the lawn
where I stand with leaves from another time
still clinging to me.

Tony Gorry‘s essays, memoir, and poetry have appeared in The Journal of the American Medical Association, The Chronicle Review, The Examined Life Journal, The New Atlantis, The Fiddleback, Cleaver Magazine, and Belle Rêve Literary Journal. His essay in War, Literature and the Arts was cited as Notable in 100 Best American Essays 2012. His book, Memory’s Encouragement, was published by Paul Dry Books in April 2017.

Legalese     

Too early in autumn for leaves to turn,
and boats are still on mum harbor waters.
I feel the warmth of an unencumbered sun
as it massages my back and shoulder blades.

Here at the waterfront retaining wall
that bends and curves its way from the head
of bustling Fisherman’s Wharf,
general contentment rules the day.

From the railing I scan down a few yards
to the beach where a little boy, all alone,
is building a mound from wet sand.
With every handful he shapes and pats
his private little Mount Everest.

But his cause is lost, for the law of erosion
is absolute. And as if to demonstrate
the veracity of this law, the tide
continues to build, rising with every
incoming wavelet. Those wavelets
wash the mound away at a faster pace
than the boy can replenish it.
And so he gives up in defeat,
walking away dejectedly.

A hippie guitar player blissfully strums
and sings to the pleasure of passersby.

Then along comes the spunky Park Ranger
all decked out in an official uniform.
He extends his hand in mock friendship
mandating that the musician move on.

Meanwhile a ways down the stone seawall
a harmonica player carries on uncontested.
He bums a cigarette from a skateboarder
then continues blowing his harp, confident
no law could make him trim his scraggly beard.

Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly and Pushcart Prize nominee. His poetry and interviews have appeared in literary journals internationally, including Nimrod, Florida English Journal, Cream City Review, Mandala Journal, Poetry Salzburg, Poetry Quarterly, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, and Boston Poetry Magazine. He has published a travel book, Best Choices In Northern California, and Time Lines, a book of poems.

Walden, Brookside Apartments, Jackson Street

Love your sooty, sullied hearth. It is your own.

Love the copper ash sighing in the rubbish bin.

Love the raindrops winking in your empty pane, tracing the dying geranium’s tallow arms.

Love the hunchback hippie-nun in 3B, who swears she taught Hemingway the art of drinking.

Love the spirit of the madwoman in your cupboard, whetting her lone candle stub with secrets whispered in the rain.

Love the damp cracks in your ceiling, through which you’ll rise to meet the goddess of your choosing.

Love the leaping kettle’s humming in your veins. It is your own.

Corfu

Distant mountains
lie barren and stony,
still as the dead.

Closer to the eye,
towering rock cliffs
come alive
with soaring peregrine falcons.

Among the almond and walnut trees,
lungs inhale and appreciate
air that sweeps in from the ocean,
salty and sharp.

Fresh water’s not forgotten here.
It spurts from red and gray rocks,
clear and clean,
with no instructions bar sipping.

Myrtle grows thick and wild,
its flowers like spiders of snow.
A strawberry bush
overflows with fruit
and a battalion of
a two-tailed pasha butterflies.

But the olive tree is king,
five centuries old in some places
and bent and arthritic to prove it.
Resilience, fertility and regeneration,
gnarled and twisted like a Van Gogh painting –
such is the pitted, ungainly trunk of life.

The sand dunes are my true asylum.
Salt marshes on one side,
lapping Mediterranean waves on the other.
I stroll between acres of creaking rustling bamboo
and foaming whitecaps.
A minor event
as cures often are to other people.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Examined Life Journal, Evening Street Review, and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Poetry East, and Midwest Quarterly.

Monument Valley

Heading south on 191
Cars slip away like magic
As we head closer to the reservation
As if a 40 percent poverty rate might
Stick to the skin like a bad rash
Instead of an opportunity to serve
Another point of view

Purple sage, rich red sand, black
Apache tears under vast white clouds
Dropped onto an eggshell blue sky,
Cracked backdrop of spiritual enlightenment
Crass commercialism and cinematic dreams
John Wayne’s ghost battling with
A simpler way of life

Raised in Chicago and residing in Nashville, Doug Hoekstra’s short stories, essays, and poems have appeared in numerous literary journals.  He has two book-length collections to his name The Tenth Inning (2015) and  Bothering the Coffee Drinkers (2007 Independent Publisher Award finalist) and as a singer-songwriter, released eight CDS on U.S. and European labels, touring extensively throughout the US and Europe In support.    https://doughoekstra.wordpress.com/