Category: Poetry

They drew a tree behind him

a purple tree

It bloomed each time I passed

his bronze bust

and a poem beneath it

a thousand Sunday bicycles

wheeling by

Roberta Gould  lives in the Hudson Valley and is a bird watcher.

Cottonwood

spins like a dervish

in this lonely road.

Cinched tunic,

the white funnel

skirt takes spherical

flight, a twister grounded

only by dancing feet,

by seed in the breeze.

Kersten Christianson is a raven-watching, moon-gazing, Alaskan. When not exploring the summer lands and dark winter of the Yukon, she lives in Sitka, Alaska. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing (University of Alaska Anchorage) and recently published her first collection of poetry Something Yet to Be Named (Aldrich Press, 2017).  Kersten is the poetry editor of the quarterly journal, Alaska Women Speak.  www.kerstenchristianson.com

Eating the fruit flipped a switch

for Adam and Eve—

a bite and then eyes wide open.

Not so for Eden.  For a long while

edges stayed neat, shapes trim,

grass even, and bushes pruned.

But cherubim don’t wield loppers.

Clover blows small at first, green always;

smartweed’s pink blossoms charm;

vines, branches, roots

stretch where they may

breathing  felix culpa

under the light of the moon and all the sin-filled day.

Floyd Cheung was born in Hong Kong and raised in Las Vegas. He is author of the chapbook Jazz at Manzanar (Finishing Line Press, 2014). He teaches the fierce, thoughtful, and creative students of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

From the Night’s Window

Bee balm & forget-me-nots,

lupine cluster bloom

by north’s long sun

Thin, white cuticle

of shape shifting moon

won’t be viewed

from this June mountain

of birch trees and burls

crinkled vellum, pregnant

belly knotted wood.

Pack up your magic & drive;

wander widely the pockmarked road.

Find the place where you think

you can translate the wind,

the silence.

Kersten Christianson is a raven-watching, moon-gazing, Alaskan. When not exploring the summer lands and dark winter of the Yukon, she lives in Sitka, Alaska. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing (University of Alaska Anchorage) and recently published her first collection of poetry Something Yet to Be Named (Aldrich Press, 2017).  Kersten is the poetry editor of the quarterly journal, Alaska Women Speak.  www.kerstenchristianson.com

Signs

Did I miss
the mile markers?
The signs? Dead
lilac bush in spring,

raspberry canes
stripped of verdancy,
their fat digit fruits
a memory from summer

past. Moss-tangled flower
beds, the wild Yukon rose
you gifted me, run amuk.
I’d give all the dandelions

pushing through hard ground,
coiled fiddleheads, the first
blush of rhododendron bloom
for one more fall with you.

Kersten Christianson is a raven-watching, moon-gazing, Alaskan. When not exploring the summer lands and dark winter of the Yukon, she lives in Sitka, Alaska. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing (University of Alaska Anchorage) and recently published her first collection of poetry Something Yet to Be Named (Aldrich Press, 2017). Kersten is the poetry editor of the quarterly journal, Alaska Women Speak www.kerstenchristianson.com

Oh — what did he say, Tamari?
Did he ask why
every new building cuts
his work in half?
Did he ask why
the roads are black and hard?
Did he ask why
the birds must swerve
in a feast of dust?

I wanted to understand —
his soiled hands, what they had fed, freed.
For, you know, who listens today?
— to the running of the land
and the river — unless it’s to change
its course. They say he speaks gibberish
now. But not me. I wanted to say
in his old language, “Please, sir,
show me all the differences,”

your efforts, your dreams in little plants
getting stepped on, this old space hanging
a bit longer in clouds of diesel and damned
youth docked in vogue and denim, no kiss
for dirt. For, old man, your flowers and ferns,
sweetly arranged like your earned smile, soon
must run to the unwanted mountains,
abandoned lands, and narrow valleys, a last
chance to flourish, to nurture wrinkles,
to grow in soil and spring old truths.

Timothy B. Dodd is from Mink Shoals, WV. His poetry has appeared in The Roanoke Review, Stonecoast Review, Ellipsis, Broad River Review, and elsewhere. He is currently in the MFA program at the University of Texas El Paso.

I’ve colonized your outer planets

deliberately

with grand expressions

and dark portals of insanity.

Mercifully, April prays uncontained

as the sun falls distinctly

in tremulous waves below the horizon

and your discrete aspects are revealed;

lithe hills of ebony, chiseled wings,

and weeping telescopes of imperfection.

You were the dirty child

wandering the boneyards of dead streets,

a shredded web of emptiness

generating the machinery of thought,

clutching fractions

as if they were flyaway moons

and given all that we’ve been

how can you say you’ll never cavort again

gathering figs around

this silent exultation of earth.

Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities. He lives in Crystal Lake, IL, USA with his wife, Vickie and daughter, Sage. He is a three-time Pushcart, Best of the Net and Best of the Web nominee whose work has appeared in more than a thousand publications.

Easy, this lake
sheds its bark
and each ripple

makes room :birdcalls
and the sky
almost raining

wider and wider
–a great tree
fallen on its roots

and each splash
leafs out dead
rids itself

and those same footsteps
passing you naked
taken away

as shadows and ice
weighted down
holding you back

–simple! you toss
and this tiny stone
is further and further

the deep breath
no longer choking
water and birdsong.

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge,Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Osiris Poemspublished by box of chalk, 2017. For more information, including free e-books, his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities”please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.