Category: Poetry (Page 7 of 35)

The Big Dipper

1 September 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Lana Hechtman Ayers

This unseasonably tropic night in Oregon in June, fir and spruce trees
so thickly interwoven, barely enough space between branches
for shadow, let alone the glass teeth of stars, and I am orbited back
to one lime Jell-O and orange cream popsicle summer,
another unseasonable June, air thick as guttural slurs,
when everyone in all five boroughs flipped on their air conditioners
at once, sucking the power dry as thistle, lights dowsed in the great
28-hour black out, and New York City became a meadow again,
a pristine prairie, the streetlamp and skyscraper bruised sky
brighter than the red and green blinking signals of jet planes
that thunder-growled low over us from nearby JFK every night,
brighter than the scarce fireflies already flickering on extinction,
my daddy and me sweating and swatting mosquitoes
on the two-chair porch, he teaching me about the stars,
his hands spread above us thumb-to-thumb,
the rest of his fingers upright to frame the constellations,
and there he hung the Big Dipper for me,
the Big Dipper with its long ladle handle and rectangular bowl,
and perceiving this mystical silhouette for the first time
was a kind of epiphany, with my daddy retelling the many sagas
of the Great Bear Ursa Major from indigenous cultures
around the world, chronicling the true accounts
of how in our own nation this constellation
saved the lives of many slaves
who followed its stars north to freedom,
and I understood how our stories,
back to the beginning of man,
are made of such fragile connections,
dot to dot to dot, twinkling beacons of meaning,
how imagination is part dream,
part real-life experience,
that we can all slake our thirsts from this well,
dipperful by dipperful,
so that each time I spy the Big Dipper in the sky now
it is also the tender tale of a father and a daughter,
his patience and our laughter,
so much laughter I still feel its pulse
orbiting the fatherless galaxy of my heart.

Lana Hechtman Ayers, architect of the “Severed Sonnet,” has shepherded over a hundred poetry volumes into print in her role as managing editor for three small presses. Her work appears in Rattle, The London Reader, Peregrine, and elsewhere. Her ninth collection is The Autobiography of Rain (Fernwood Press, 2024).

green potted plant beside window — Photo by Gilberto Olimpio on Pexels.com

House Plants Lament

1 September 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Peter A. Witt

Potted I sit on the windowsill,
like a canvas painted with sunlight,
weaving patterns on my outstretched leaves,
it’s a good life, but I envy the vibrant
garden that grows outside, where
plants hear the twilling of house finches,
the buzzing of honey bees, and feel the cool
of early spring breezes, as arrowheads
of Sandhill Cranes migrate north
from their Texas winter homes.

Once my keeper carried my potted home
out to the patio on a rain-clouded day
where a gentle caress from nature’s hand
bathed the soil around my roots.

I drew the pure water into my stems,
it was refreshing after my usual diet
of salt-filled, chlorinated water drawn
from the kitchen tap. Alas, my roots
were never bathed this way again.

My owner thinks I’m happy; she sees
no bugs, no rot of my roots or mold,
no diseases, but she does not know
I feel like a prisoner in a gilded cage;
she thinks of me as nothing more
than a potted house plant with no
ambition to be something more.

Peter A. Witt is a poet, family history writer, active birder and photographer. Peter retired in 2015 from a 43-year university teaching and research career. He lives with his wife in Texas.

pile of books — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Hiding Behind a Book

1 September 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Jennifer Campbell

These days, you will be the odd one,
everyone else’s focus flickering
to the flow of a billion pixels,
attention ebbing and flowing,
the vastness of that ocean
knocking them off their feet
while your face is a changing map
of parchment, a 90-degree bend
where your nose should be,
eyebrow birds arched above the action,
and should one of them wonder
what lies behind an abstract painting,
Achilles’ empty gold helmet,
or a stark black tree,
it will be impossible to say,
your concentration popped
into the present yet needing time
to pry the words on the page
from the countless incantations
they stir in each reader,
none of which stop you
from knowing where your body is
in this glowing moment
and what they are missing.

Jennifer Campbell is a writing professor in Buffalo, NY, and a co-editor of Earth’s Daughters. Her most recent book, What Came First (Dancing Girl Press, 2021), contains reconstituted fairytale poems. Jennifer’s work has recently appeared in Slipstream, The Healing Muse, ArLiJo, and American Journal of Nursing.

pink carnation flower head in a swimming pool — Photo by Martin de Arriba on Pexels.com

Marilyn Monroe’s Lipstick

1 September 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Julie Evan Smith

She was good to me
Applying me with just the right amount of pressure
Never smearing me on in haste.
And when I disappeared in the act of kissing
It was always a sad farewell
As I liked the feel of her lips moving when she shaped words
And spoke in her soft voice.

Revlon retired my name after her death.
I am the last one of my kind
Collected after her passing
Along with receipts and gum wrappers
Furs and gowns and gloves
A frenzy of acquisition
By people greedy for the smallest part of her.

Author’s Note: According to www.juliensauctions.com, an item up for auction was one of Marilyn Monroe’s tubes of used Revlon lipstick in “Bachelor’s Carnation” dated 1947 and described as “a virtual time capsule of one of the star’s nights out on the town.”

Julie Evan Smith‘s work has been published online at On The Run Fiction and StreetLit. In addition to flash fiction and poetry she has performed personal essays at storytelling shows in Los Angeles and New York. She loves reading history, wearing boots, and eating candy corn.

How Light Travels

28 August 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Sheila Dietz

For Christina (1956-2017)

In this picture it’s Christmas morning
and we’re opening presents. Carl, five,
looks away from the camera at Mary
who is out of view. He holds a bag—
red fabric tied at one end
with gold ribbon. I, the oldest,
maybe ten, am trying to pull
a fat gold ribbon from a gift wrapped
in white froth. I wear a shy
smile for the camera
which has caught me in my pajamas—
the red ones with a hole in the heel.

And you, baby sister, your wild,
curly hair catching the light,
cozy in your faded red nightgown
with white buttons, are lifting your face
to the person taking the picture.

One hand is open in your lap,
fingers splayed, and still,
two of its fingers held fast
by the other hand—a nascent
reticence that has not yet reached
your mouth, which, open in a wide smile,
reveals pure joy while the light
in your gold flecked eyes
reflects a gold ornament
dangling from a nearby branch.

Oh, Christina,
how can it be that I did not see you
until just now?

Sheila Dietz also writes as Sheila Bonenberger. She holds an MFA from Vermont College, and poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Wrath-Bearing Tree, Denver Quarterly and The Massachusetts Review, among others. Most recently her work appeared in the 2023 One Page Poetry anthology.

Skipping

26 August 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Carolyn Jabs

The woman with the stethoscope
asks matter-of-factly,
“Has anyone mentioned
the pause in your heartbeat?”
I’m not one to worry,
but that night, in bed, I hold
my own hand and find the pulse.
No question, my heart
has taken up skipping.

All night I have uneasy dreams.
My heart pursues its syncopated ways,
as if to say don’t count on me,
things are not as certain as they seem.
At dawn I follow my heart’s direction—
skip over what was written
on the day’s agenda,
pause to listen to birds,
gossiping as the day breaks.

All morning my heart and I
are in cahoots. It sprints for a minute,
then hesitates like a toddler
seeing a dandelion for the first time.
I follow its lead. After a lifetime
of inattention, I want to know why
my heart hesitates, want to register
the moment it shakes off doubt
and decides we’ll live a little longer.

In her professional life, Carolyn Jabs contributed essays and articles to many publications including The New York Times, Newsweek, Working Mother, Self and Family PC. She is author of The Heirloom Gardener and co-author of Cooperative Wisdom, an award-winning book about an innovative approach to conflict resolution.

Sometimes the moon

22 August 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Jan Mordenski

cannot help himself.
Sometimes, with the next day
spread out before him like an azure flag,
and the golden glances of his brother—
the radiant rival on whom he so depends—
blazing across a bright tomorrow,
he cannot merely fade on cue
into his designated background
without comment, without query,
without—momentarily—
facing the morning throng
with a pale yet perceptible smile.

No, sometimes, with all the timidity,
all the temerity of a second son,
he feels he must, if only briefly,
hold his unsolid ground in that unfolding sky,
just to remind us how precious, how frail,
how necessary, is the belief in things unseen,
in persons unnoticed, in sentiments so deep,
so true yet unvoiced in those unabated moments
that are there, and then gone,
and then—hopefully—remembered
like the sighting of a summer’s moon
lingering in the morning sky.

Jan Mordenski, a trained folklorist and writing teacher, is from Detroit. Her poems have regularly appeared in print in Canada, Ireland, England, Australia, and the United States. Her poem “Crochet” was selected for the American Life in Poetry series. More of her poetry appears on Ravens Perch, and Quadra/Project.

After Hours (Guggenheim Museum, 1984)

16 August 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Nancy Nowak

Day in and
up, elevated to the first
piece held in its cell, swarms

of visitors graze on
to the next, descending
away from
Picasso’s late self-

portrait, his hungering gaze
you’d know, my love, if you could
close in.

No matter our rank, we workers
keep watch over
what at times feels ours, so

after the head guard
sends the last tourists spiraling
out and commandeers
the take from my Front Desk shift

like a bluff, beneficent
uncle, he sends me home

to collect you for a private viewing
proud to break
an unwritten rule
no curator would consider.

The Museum glows, evening-lit
as you unlock
tiers of meaning in each

figure and gesture, each tribute
to forebears in a history
Picasso became
as he painted
his final night’s work.

No one else ever
will know we were here
beyond the three of us
joined by the fourth.

Nancy Nowak’s poetry appeared most recently in The Comstock Review, Poeming Pigeon, Timberline Review, and Willows Wept Review. Previously published work is found at www.nancynowakpoetry.com. From 1994 – 2016, she was an Associate Professor of Humanities at Umpqua Community College. She lives in Winston, OR.

Going up Gorham

12 August 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Anne Rankin

Nature is an expression of intelligence and necessity.
PLATO

Here where mountain marries earth to the sea, I open like a prayer.
The climb begins with a sigh as I scour the trail for the wag of his tail.
Clouds form stepping stones into the horizon, and I wonder how
to find a way to tomorrow. Or if I even want to hear the silence that follows.
The spirit of the dog walks beside me;
his step keeps pace with my grief.

One year since. A cool morning then, just like today. A whisper
of early autumn air being polite, nothing more. One of those days you’re blind
to the darkness that’s coming. Gulls and ravens trade places
in the sky, but I’m resigned to the gray that lives between.
I’m in the kind of place where you can’t get there from here.
The way you sometimes need rain to move air.

A bird out of sight offers up its lone song, but all I can hear
is, Still gone, still gone. Far below, ocean keeps sending itself onto shore,
tending the earth’s wounds with waves. Above, the sun rises
over the trees, turning up the volume of the sky.
As the trail stretches skyward, I’m searching what’s near, seeking
what’s revealed in the rooms of the climb.

Autumn huckleberry bleeds into the surrounding hills,
but I’m tuned to the pitch of the path, the blazing red leaves
saying more than I can bear. My eye catches a common tern
sweeping the sea, and I hand myself from rock to rock,
finding solace in the scratch of shoe against granite. I struggle
to unlace the root-studded trail, only to find myself entwined instead.

On this mountain that hands land to sea, the breeze reminds me
of something worth knowing, and I breathe deep,
lungs grateful for all that salt air can relieve.
Ahead, a stand of scrub pine raises questions I can’t answer.
As views of Sand Beach keep turning my head, I’m wondering
what word the sea might offer for grace.

But further along the trail I spot a cairn
stacked in place by some fellow wanderer
who needed to assure me with something only stones can say:
You will find your way, even as the earth turns below your feet.
The spirit of the dog walks beside me;
his step keeps pace with my grief.

Anne Rankin‘s poems have appeared in The Healing Muse, The Poeming Pigeon, Hole in the Head Review, Passager, Scapegoat Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle (forthcoming), and elsewhere. Her poem “Small Primer on Loneliness” received Honorable Mention at the Belfast Poetry Festival 2021.

The Marimekko Dress

10 August 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Katharine Davis

My mother bought me a Marimekko dress,
a dress from Finland, a cool and distant land replete
with fjords, icebergs, wild reindeer and elk.
A dress to wear following my wedding at
my grandmother’s farm, a dress for going away.

All went as it should: a tent in the garden,
dahlias robust and in bloom on a blazing August afternoon,
with views of the covered bridge across the field.
A small gathering of family and friends,
my father in a blue blazer, my mother in gauzy watermelon pink.

Tea sandwiches followed by cake and French Champagne.
No music, no dancing, the scent of mown hay wafting in the white haze,
my sisters, flowers in their hair, sneaking cigarettes behind the barn.
After tossing the bouquet, I slipped on my Marimekko dress,
neatly pressed, blue and white, wavy horizontal stripes.

My Marimekko dress was cool against my skin. Expensive, well-made,
the perfect fit, just right for starting another life.
My mother died two years later. The farm was sold, and fifty years have passed.
But in my dreams, I see it still, a shirt-waist dress with silver buttons,
worn by me, but chosen by my mother.

Katharine Davis is the author of three novels: Capturing Paris (included in the New York Times suggestions for fiction set in Paris), East Hope (winner of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance 2010 award for fiction), and A Slender Thread.

Category: Poetry (Page 7 of 35)

The Big Dipper

House Plants Lament

Hiding Behind a Book

Marilyn Monroe’s Lipstick

How Light Travels

Skipping

Sometimes the moon

After Hours (Guggenheim Museum, 1984)

Going up Gorham

The Marimekko Dress

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