Category: Poetry

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Monody to the Murmuring Mountain, Clefting – Changming Yuan

Monody to the Murmuring Mountain

Twenty minimeters of pink petals.


Twenty minimetres of stretch and reach

Floral foil, twenty minimeters

Of soil, grass, dew, bush

Sitting in green meditation about

The balance between yin and yang

Myriad of leaves,

Falling down with mists

Of last night approaching – twenty minimeters


Of ethereal presence, kissing

The thick ridges – is the soul

The melody of equanimity?

Insects sloughing off


In chameleon-rhythms.

You stopped as you heard them


Twenty minimeters of dandelions rolling against

The vastness of sky and mountain

~~~

Clefting

Between two high notes

The melody gives a crack

Long enough

To allow my entire selfhood to enter

Like a fish jumping back

Into the night water


Both the fish and I leave no

Trace behind us, and the world

Remains undisturbed as we swim

Deeper and deeper in blue silence


Upon my return, I find the music

Still going on, while the fish has

Disappeared into the unknown

~~~

Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. Currently, Yuan lives in Vancouver, where he edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan. Credits include ten Pushcart nominations, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) and BestNewPoemsOnline among others.  

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Infinitival Infinities: A Sonnet in Fragments, My Crows – Changming Yuan

These two poems are the first of a series we received from Changming. We’ll be publishing the rest of our cache over the next few days. Enjoy!
~~~

Infinitival Infinities: A Sonnet in Fragments

To be   a matter when there’s no question

Or not to be  a question when nothing really matters

To sing  with a frog squatting straight

On a lotus leaf in the Honghu Lake  near Jingzhou

   To recollect  all the pasts, and mix them

Together like a glass of  cocktail

To build   a nest of meaning

Between two broken branches on  Ygdrasil

To strive  for deity

Longevity  and

Even happiness

To come  on and off line every other while

To compress  consciousness into a file, and upload it

    Onto a nomochip

           To be  dying, to   die

~~~

My Crows

1/

Still, still hidden

Behind old shirts and pants

Like an inflated sock

Hung on a slanting coat hanger


With a prophecy stuck in its throat

Probably too dark or ominous

To yaw, even to breathe


No one knows when or how

It will fly out of the closet, and call


2/

Like billions of dark butterflies  

Beating their wings  

Against nightmares, rather

Like myriads of  

Spirited coal-flakes

Spread from the sky  

Of another world

A heavy black snow  

Falls, falling, fallen  

Down towards the horizon

Of my mind, where a little crow

White as a lost patch

Of autumn fog

Is trying to fly, flapping   

From bough to bough

~~~


Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. Currently, Yuan lives in Vancouver, where he edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan. Credits include ten Pushcart nominations, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) and BestNewPoemsOnline among others.  

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Two Blue Pills – John Maurer

From breaking into the liquor cabinet

to breaking into the houses with better liquor cabinets

from a boarding school chimney by a checkered neck tie

to forty-ounce portioned freedom and swishers almost sweet enough

from burning cows into fornication with celebrities…allegedly

to probably still pouring accelerant on innocent animals…I hope not

but probably


I had to move on from everything to improve on everything

Having suppressed memories unearthed and asking the psychiatrist

Can you rebury that? At least for the week

I just already am dealing with so much

Dealing with being

Dealing with knowing I won’t

~~~

John Maurer is a 23-year-old writer from Pittsburgh that writes fiction, poetry, and everything in-between, but his work always strives to portray that what is true is beautiful. He has been previously published in Claudius Speaks, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Thought Catalog, and more than twenty others. @JohnPMaurer (johnpmaurer.com)

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June 26, 2015 – Andrea Gregory

Wooden beams lock me in

Old wonder long faded

Is God not love?

The words of hate reverberate

I can no longer belong

A thing like marriage isn’t meant for hate

This is a mold I cannot fit,

But one I cannot break.

~~~

Andrea Gregory is a Hagerstown Community College student. She likes hiking and spending her weekends surrounded by friends.

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Eon of Suns – Colleen Brohawn

Eons of Suns

All the scores of youthful lusts divide

Within the decadence of brilliant days.

I am rendered speechless, in the desperation the age brings forth;

Could it have been you who brought me here to waste along the wind?

Could it have been a garden night that so enraged me,

To take you, at once, my silent, loving bride?

To sever centuries is to deny the light of truths and fables.

What an unjust age can bring to an eon of suns,

Prejudices and mockeries that once sizzled and burned but never broke,

Now rise in the collective mind and thoughtless haze.

Beats that can’t understand the defiance of rhythm

Betray the eternal symphony: the sacred life and casts of memories, wounds unhealed.

~~~

Colleen lives in Hagerstown, Maryland and is a student at Hagerstown Community college, majoring in general studies. When she transfers, she will be majoring in journalism.

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Cedars-Sinai, Harpist – James Croal Jackson

Here’s two more from James:

___

Cedars-Sinai

Vital signs at zero, a squiggly line gone infinity–

guess what I’ve prepared for. An eternity of this

nothingness. I tossed the phone like a grappling

hook at your distance and it caught. You left it

hanging on the bricks, though, and moved to

California, where I used to sleep the streets in

my Ford Fiesta, the same car we drove to Melt:

a time bomb heart attack. How close we were

back then, each deep-fried grilled cheese bite

hushed the thrumming. Fingers greasy– wiped

on napkins, wiped and wiped and wiped.

Harpist

Every suburb needs a callous-

fingered harpist to bleed heaven

from her hands from her driveway,

to raindrop angels into puddles

after storms of indifference.

Imagine: lawns grow in

the pizzicato of days first plucked,

then plodding. Homes, once full

of promise, rot– bricks erode

to the sharp of strings

slowly falling from the sky.

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Boneless Wings, Cigs – James Croal Jackson

Welcome to May, everyone!

Though you are reading this from us, the Spring ’19 editors, you are reading it in absentia. Our time, though wonderful, is up in the Hedge Apple chair. As it says in the post pinned to the top of the site, we are closed for submissions until the next editors start their own journey.

Just because the Hedge Apple is, for now, untended doesn’t mean, however, we can’t bring you as many wonderful submissions as possible.

Here are a couple of poems from James Croal Jackson–the first is perhaps fitting for the wistfulness we feel over our, for the moment, empty chairs.

These also deserve, as any poem does, in every way to stand in their own light–to share their unique colors with the world.

Enjoy:

___

Boneless Wings

Following a trip to Vegas

in August heat, my skin itched

for good. I ended us.

No, you said. We were a done deal.

You would not leave my apartment.

We drank juice and vodka

to forget we had ever

talked about forever.

We rode a Lyft to BW3

at 2 P.M. on a Thursday

because a cheap happy hour

is a kind of grim reminder.

We ordered boneless wings at the bar.

The bartender told us ignition is cheap.

Beer stripped us to tender meat

and there was no more steam.  

Your skirt mushroomed in the breeze

when you stepped outside to smoke.  

We had locked ourselves out when

the clouds produced rain, not keys.

Cigs

we smoke

our paper

lungs

in the storm

then run

from your mom

to seek

an awning

to shield

the holes

in our chests

flames

tempered

by rain

clouds

scream

from our mouths

billowed gray

how it floats

above like

to warn us

forests need not

consume flame

___

James Croal Jackson swore he’d never work in film again after leaving L.A. He has a chapbook, The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017), and poems in Columbia Journal, Rattle, and Hobart. He edits The Mantle. Currently, he works in the film industry in Pittsburgh, PA. jimjakk.com

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POND Acrostics – John L. Stanizzi

Hey, all,

Here’s a beautiful set of short acrostics which Jon graciously provided to us from the experiences of his project.

We’ll let him explain:

“These are poems from a project called POND.  Every day, for one year, I will walk to our pond, jot a few notes, and take a photo or two.  Then I’ll write a 4-line acrostic using P, O, N, D as my first letters, with the extra caveat of never using the same first-word twice.  I began the book on November 9, 2018 – will finish November 9, 2019.
Grazie.

-John “

Thank you again, John.

Enjoy, everyone:

___

11.10.2018

10.06 a.m.

34 degrees

Pitchy dark where winter has just this moment arrived

out of the north hills; it crawls up under my shirt,

naturally and unfazed, as if it were trying to warm itself —

daguerrean-downstream rush of the brook gossips with its cold voice.


11.11.2018

3.11 p.m.

39 degrees

Ponds’ conflux – run-off from Fowler’s pond

overflows the small stone wall along with street run-off;

nozzling, they warble a crystal duet in the bird-less

dusk beginning to bear down on the half-buried bullheads sleeping.


11.13.2018

2.46 p.m.

39 degrees

Piety arrives with a female evening grosbeak.

Offed by chill wind, the leaves cover the wet forest ground.

Nearby, the look of running water

dazzles like a miniature Topajos, miniature Amazon.

11.24.18

8.33 a.m.

24 degrees

Peabody, Peabody, Peabody, Old Sam Peabody!

Oblique geometry here, mirror-smooth there, thick battered hem, gray

nuances of ice seal it all – those on the bottom – those in the bottom.

Determined white-throated sparrow searching for Sam, though I’m the only one here.


12.2.18

12.30 p.m.

45 degrees

Peaceful rain, steady all night, leaves the ground soppy

overshowered and spongy, and the confluence of springs

necks torrential, as the rain soaks the air,

dampening everything but falling so lightly that the pond is silent.

12.5.18

2.39 p.m.

35 degrees

…and your tears on the wings of the plane

where once again I cannot

reach to stop them

and they fall away behind

going with me


-W.S. Merwin

– …from Plane (The Carrier of Ladders)

Plane.  One of my very favorite poems

of W.S. Merwin’s.  He is our beloved

nobleman of the rees, with me

daily, a knot of sparrows tied to the cedar.

___

John L. Stanizzi is author of Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits – Fifty 50-Word Pieces, and Chants.  His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, The New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, The Cortland Review, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, Connecticut River Review, and many others.  Stanizzi has been translated into Italian and his poems have appeared in many journals in Italy. His translator is Angela D’Ambra.  Stanizzi teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, Connecticut, and lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry.

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Prediction, Faculty Drub – Phil Huffy

This is Phil’s second publication with Hedge Apple. His first, last semester, is also on our website.

Prediction is an honestly-described tale of recollection. Faculty Drub is a limerick–Phil’s seeming signature with us.

(It seems both we and our immediate predecessors appreciate limericks.)

Enjoy:

___

Prediction

He looked into the future

at the Corinth County Fair.

The cost of this? Two dollars,

promptly paid.


It seemed uniquely quiet

in the fortune teller’s lair.

The hoopla right outside went

unrelayed.


She took his hand quite firmly

and remarked about his palm

that a pleasing indication

was displayed


and told him there was something

from his past he’d soon enjoy,

to reassert a memory

long mislaid.

He headed for the midway

and the babble re-emerged

as he stepped into the sunlight

from the shade


and thought that he’d be foolish

to believe in such a tale,

yet felt the urge

to buy a lemonade.

~~~

Faculty Drub

A professor of eminent station

had been grading an English translation.

Although expertly made

it received a downgrade

for a comma outside a quotation.

___

Phil Huffy writes early and often at his kitchen table in upstate New York. He has been published frequently, with nearly 100 pieces finding homes in the last twelve months.


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Walking This Cemetery at the Edge of Town – Richard Luftig

Here is the last of three poems Richard sent us. This one stands by itself in attribute to the solitude it describes. Winter can make all places seem lonelier, but especially the one described here. We suppose annual breaks from the visitations of seasonal friends are just another part of the cycle.

Regardless,

Enjoy:

___

Walking This Cemetery at the Edge of Town

The winter rain drips

from the bare arms

of these sentry oaks

 

while the moon threads

its light through needles

of western pine.

 

These markers so old

that even the dates

have disappeared

 

like memories

the dead possess

for the living

 

that went on before

them. Why, like monks,

do the weeds overgrowing

 

the headstones maintain

their orders of silence?

Out here you’d like

 

to think that the lilies

on the far edge

of the untended pond

 

would resurrect

themselves into

spring and perhaps

 

crickets that linger

in afternoon heat

would have something

 

to say on the matter.

But nothing remains

save for these grave

 

stones and the dead

leaves, mute wherever

they have come to reside.

 

___

Richard is a former professor of educational psychology and special education at Miami University in Ohio now residing in California. His poems and stories have appeared in numerous literary journals in the United States and internationally in Canada, Australia, Europe, and Asia. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart prize and two poems recently appeared in Realms of the Mothers: The First Decade of Dos Madres Press. His latest book of poems will be forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2019. Richard’s webpage and blog may be found at richardluftig.com