Listening to Astral Weeks & Emailing Russell Thorburn

& Van Morrison is wailing about the fragile dancer
& telling her
to spread her ballerina wings
for if she doesn’t, the wind, the wild air,
will simply whisk her away
where she will then become glued, like seal wax,
to the rippling olive-tinted water
wiggling just behind a factory where they bake soap
& sell it to hotel chains outside the city,
& so she’d be stolen down stream and written
into another’s love song, the ballerina.
& the strings on Ballerina tell us just a bit about a song,
especially that it is an unfixed shape, a dancer
on a trapeze wire & the I withdraws into beauty,
it has to surrender to it
because the trace of the shape of the ballerina
is liminal, it’s barely there,
& it’s so transient that it could fall into another’s
pocket, into another’s love ballades poem,

& so Morrison, right there in the studio, grabs it,
the song & not the ballerina
because she’s already gone, is just a trace
of herself as Levinas would say – she’s emanation –
& she’s just a little eyelash hair on my paper,
& so I email Russ just to tell him
I’ve found it right here, the eyelash, the emanation,
& I put it on this poem, for him.

Ken Meisel is a poet and psychotherapist from the Detroit area. He is a 2012 Kresge Arts Literary Fellow, Pushcart Prize nominee, best of the net nominee, winner of the Liakoura Prize and the author of nine poetry collections. His new book, The Light Most Glad of All, was published in 2023 by Kelsay Press. It was reviewed by Tipton Poetry Journal and Trampoline Magazine. Other collections include: Studies Inside the Consent of a Distance (Kelsay Books: 2022) and Our Common Souls: New & Selected Poems of Detroit (Blue Horse Press: 2020). He has work in Crab Creek Review, Concho River Review, San Pedro River Review, Panapoly, Sheila-Na-Gig, and The MacGuffin.

Mum

I keep hiding my pen
from myself
which means
I must want to hide
from what
I’m trying to say.
But if I hid my pen
intending the pen
to keep mum,
to hold onto
what shouldn’t be said,
if I asked it
in that fashion
to refrain from revealing
such secrets
as would shame me,
hurt me,
I don’t know,
what’s to read
in my so quickly
finding it?

Glenn Ingersoll works for the public library in Berkeley, California. Videos of his poetry reading & interview series Clearly Meant can be found on the Berkeley Public Library YouTube channel. Ingersoll’s prose poem epic, Thousand, is available from bookshop.org and as an ebook from Smashwords. Autobiography of a Book came out this year from AC Books. He keeps two blogs, LoveSettlement and Dare I Read, and in 2023 began a Substack newsletter, Heart Demons. Ingersoll’s poem, “You have come to a certain place,” appeared in Big Windows Review, October 2019.

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From Our Beach Hotel Room

The sea is angry.
Waves crash against rocks,
splatter along the shore.

You are not beautiful
when you crash against rocks,
splatter along the shore,
but these splendid waters
get a free pass
when it comes to
crashing and splattering.

That’s their beauty.
Your beauty is in your calmness,
your even surface.

“Here, come to the window,” I say.
“Look at this.”
The violence, the vehemence,
is palpable.

Yes, the sheer raw power of nature
has its place.
But as astonishment,
not an inspiration.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly, and Lost Pilots. Latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert, and  Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa, and Shot Glass Journal.

Wind in the Pines

she sought wisdom in the pines
when her mother took her there
and her aunties sang the old songs
her cousins stripped the kindling
her uncles kept the fire in the breeze

she found comfort in the needles
combed her hair in the wind
warm tea in a cup beside her
drums steady in the distance
her dreams whispered in the trees

she matured in the north woods
and made her home among the pines
land and water provided food
her companions four-legged shared
warmth from the wind in the pines

Mona Mehas (she/her) writes poetry and prose from the perspective of a retired disabled teacher in Indiana USA. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in over 70 journals, anthologies, and online museums. Her poetry chapbooks, Questions I Didn’t Know I’d Asked and Hand-Me-Downs were published by LJMcD Communications in 2024 and available from their website and Amazon. Two of Mona’s poems received first place honors in the 2023 Poetry Society of Indiana Fall contest. She is writing her second novel while querying the first. Tweets @Patienc77732097  

Anything of Value

do you believe
___they ask
______me

I know
___I must work to pay taxes
______so I believe in vacations

I rent space in my head
___to unknown poets
______who may or may not
_________believe in anything

~~

Weather or Not

our marriage has endured
tornado watches

but
today
the weather radio beeps
a warning

now what?

~~

Differing

I’m pro / he’s con
Enmeshed
our views compete on the spectrum
until the next
issue emerges
like a brood of anxious cicadas

Roberta Beach Jacobson (she/her) is drawn to the magic of words–poetry, song lyrics, flash fiction, puzzles, and stand-up comedy. Her latest book is Demitasse Fiction: One-Minute Reads for Busy People (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). She lives in Iowa (USA) with her husband and three cats. https://linktr.ee/roberta_beach_jacobson

Posthumous Anonymous

I’m lost in yesterday
All about my business
Lost in my dreams
The blood’s sucked up
All dry and all bare
Turn the car around

Blaze a mic on fire
I need water to put it out
One heartbreaker
I’m so fresh and so clean
I’m so flossing
Put my gift in a jar

My game is warfare
Neighborhood’s on fire
Call the fireman
I run loose like a dog
While falling to pieces
Still making love

Ready to get loose
I need to say it right
Scream in a paper cup
My million dollars
Spent on building coffins
Martians in the sky

Jakima Davis has published four chapbooks: one in 2016, two in 2021, and one this last June. She’s been published in many underground publications. She’s expecting more publications to come in the next year. As of now, she’s posting her poems on Facebook to gain a fanbase.

Remembering the Grape Pickers

You won’t remember, but mother
never agreed to stop buying table
grapes—I didn’t know the issue
or the reasoning—but isn’t it all
and always about profit over people
—treating others as you will treat
them—so in Chavez’s day—you
weren’t there—but you can light
the candles now—make way
for the party—be the communion
of folks just wanting to be, to be
treated, to be treated as more—
to be treated as more than equal
to an apple, a grape, a nectarine.
If we had known—really—I think
mother would have agreed.

Jan Wiezorek writes from Michigan. His chapbook Forests of Woundedness is forthcoming this fall from Seven Kitchens Press. Wiezorek’s poetry appears, or is forthcoming, in The London Magazine, The Westchester Review, and Lucky Jefferson. He taught writing at St. Augustine College, Chicago, and authored Awesome Art Projects That Spark Super Writing (Scholastic, 2011). 

Barn Panes

Barn window reflects
wheat fields waving with wind
below skies streaked
in strata of light and dark clouds
as thunder rattles panes
into trembling portrait.

Diane Webster’s work has appeared in Old Red Kimono, North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One and other literary magazines. She had micro-chaps published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022, 2023 and 2024. One of Diane’s poems was nominated for Best of the Net in 2022. Her website is: www.dianewebster.com

Erosion

His jacket hangs on shoulders
as if in a closet
on a wire hanger

his torso thinned
by age, chest
now a flat drawer,

stomach not a muscle
but the location
he cinches a belt.

The erosion of aging
has brought to sight again
his scrappy scapulae

that have been missing
since he turned twenty.
I like how they jut out.

to touch them when I hug,
feel the long history of his lifting
me, still, the nubs of angel wings.

Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California, with his wife. He has contributed to Willows Wept Review, Heartwood, and Williwaw Journal.