A Poem by Abra Bertman

Smoke

 

When I gave you up I missed your fingers
like unfiltered cigarettes, brown as bourbon, long
as trains headed out of town. I kept seeing them move
 
the way some hammers move. Every day I reeled
my thoughts from the telephone, the cool receiver,
craving the short beige sounds you’d offer
before you pressed end. Air felt blank, just breathing.
 
I’m troubled by your music and the taste
of reverie, the hourly crackle of wild fire. Smoke
drifts west over miles of scorched sand.

 

 

 

Abra Bertman is a poet who lives and works in Amsterdam. Recent poems have appeared in Other Poetry, About Place Journal and the Midwest Literary Magazine. The poem "When the World Comes Home," the product of a long-standing collaboration with jazz pianist Franz VonChossy, appears in the liner notes of the CD of the same name.

A Poem by Shaquana Adams

To Cheating Ex Boyfriends

(inspired by Lucille Clifton)

 

I wish them endless nights of sadness and confusion,

I wish them the swirling internal pain of being cheated on,

I wish them bad headaches and loss of appetite,

I wish them a false hope of getting over it,

I wish them a weep-a-thon on a Monday and the last tissue.

 

Let them believe that they were right so that when they

have daughters, they will know that they were wrong.

 

 

 

Shaquana Adams is a graduate of Francis Marion University. Adams has been writing poetry since she was 12. She enjoys reading, crocheting, and yoga in her spare time.

A Poem by J.K. Durick

Moving Day

 

The movers will be here by eight

All the boxes are packed and piled

The furniture marked and labeled

Some go along, some into storage.

 

Now we walk through once more

Bedrooms, living room, and study

As if we might miss something

As if we had more to add to all this.

 

We have become these checklists

Inventories we can easily check off

This measure and weight of years

All that is left, worth bringing along.

 

There are times when things we have

Become more than possessions or symbols

They can speak to us, make claims on us

Become family pets, become our children.

 

We can call this, label it what we want

An end to one chapter and then the next

A door closing and a new one opening

A stage, a phase, just another passage.

 

We’ll leave behind the sounds we made

Our voices, the things we once said

The stories we told and lived through

Our familiar legends, our mythology.

 

And, we’ll leave behind all our ghosts

The ones that shadowed us, follow us

Even now through these empty rooms

Begging to go along or for us to stay.

 

The movers, we know, will be here soon

A truck on the lawn, a ramp up to the door

Emptying our house, rescuing what they can

As we look on and begin to understand.

 

 

 

J. K. Durick is a writing teacher at the Community College of Vermont and an online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Northern New England Review, Napalm and Novocaine, Third Wednesday, and Common Ground Review.

Two Poems by Martin Willitts, Jr.

Not Seeing Eye-to-Eye

  

Not seeing eye-to-eye, avoiding seeing

what is in front of us, when all we could see

was clear sailing. There is no boat in this story.

No oars to cling to. Only the drowining.

 

Not looking into the other’s eyes is a sign

of avoiding the obvious. What were we supposed to see?

The sign should have said: Danger ahead.

But we cruised as if the roads were speedways.

 

We ignored the turnoffs. We thought we knew

where we were going, and it did not matter

how we get there. We forgot to go together.

We could blame the maps. I could.

 

Now you are somewhere else. I got lost on my own.

I found another traveling companion.

When I look into her eyes, you are not hitchhiking.

 

 

 

After

   

No matter, burning darkness

or lack of indelible light, there are

always two kinds of unkind deaths.

Neither is silent restlessness,

nor noisy orchids.

 

This is echo and lack of echo,

guilty annexes

where heart refuses to listen.

Two dearth-whispers

from summoning.

 

Disorderly angels follow

banging soft gongs. What remains

is silence, sweltering silence.

Burnt once by loss, seared twice

by memory, flailed skin.

What goes away returns

lost in ruins.

 

 

 

Martin Willitts Jr has four full length poetry collections and over 20 chapbooks including recently, “Late All Night Sessions with Charlie “the Bird” Parker and the Members of Birdland, in Take-Three” (A Kind Of a Hurricane Press, ebook, 2013). His forthcoming poetry books include “Waiting For The Day To Open Its Wings” (UNBOUND Content, 2013), “Art Is the Impression of an Artist” (Edgar and Lenore's Publishing House, 2013), “City Of Tents” (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2013), "A Is for Aorta" (Seven Circles Press, e-book, 2013), "Swimming In the Ladle of Stars" (Kattywompus Press, 2013),  and he is the winner of the inaugural Wild Earth Poetry Contest for his full length collection “Searching For What Is Not There” (Hiraeth Press, 2013).

A Poem by Rick Hartwell

After the Talk

 

Morning’s first whiff, sun burnt pine,

Nostrils spiced and alert,

Better than fresh baked rolls.

 

Splashed water from pond fountain,

Syncopated waterfall backbeat,

Ears pricked to goldfish music.

 

Early breeze dislodges hair strands,

Whisked arm hairs tickle, tingle,

Water blowback chills her face.

 

Plucked and sucked dandelion stem,

Transports several decades,

Sweet as recalled childhood.

 

Mourning doves atop the ivied wall,

A third in the pine, shunned,

Sad laments from an empty bed.

 

 

 

Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school (remember the hormonally-challenged?) English teacher living in Moreno Valley, California. He believes in the succinct, that the small becomes large; and, like the Transcendentalists and William Blake, that the instant contains eternity. Given his “druthers,” if he’s not writing, Rick would rather still be tailing plywood in a mill in Oregon. He can be reached at rdhartwell@gmail.com.

Two Poems by Dawnell Harrison

Hemlock-headed

You poison everything

You touch like a

Hemlock-headed witch.

The night thickens and

Laments as the twined

Noise in the tar-colored

Night rides down
From the twisted oak

Trees.

I cannot hold your

Wretched hands.

I cannot trust that which

Is demonic.

I ride the waves of the

Moon’s light alone down

To the earth’s floor.
I must be an island.



Glisten

The stars glisten in the indigo sky
as the moon shows its bald luminescent

face in the cold hours of the night.
I wait for you in our icy bed to come

and melt the frost away.
I cling to my heart -

my soul lingers like a child wanting
some candy.

Dawnell Harrision has been published in over 100 magazines and journals including The Endicott Review, The Journal, Fowl Feathered Review, The Bitchin' Kitsch, Vox Poetica, The Tower Journal, Queen's Quarterly, and many others.

A Poem by Sharon Fedor

Perigee

You amble out,
celestial glob,
put on your pitted
smirky face,

And yet they kiss,
they laugh and touch,
they ramble on
in easy pace,

You practice more,
you snarl, bare teeth,
and wobble wide
a Western stance,

But they are loathe
to back away,
they find you still
at every chance,

They love you so,
they seek you out,
but you will not
stay dim, undaunted

You grow wild
in size and glow,
and then, aghast,
they tremble, haunted.

Sharon Fedor spends her days engaging students officially designated as fascinating and unique. She nudges them toward calm competence and creative expression. She promotes the joy of discovery. When she is not teaching, you may find her conjuring images of her own for her first collection of poetry, or walking her dog, Inga, amid the horses of Tree Tops Park in Davie, Florida, where she lives with her husband, Michael, and texts her daughter, Chloe Noelle, student of violin, in NYC.