The Wall Said
by Derek Sugamosto
The wall said …
by Derek Sugamosto
The wall said
“The Cloudy River Gang”
in red;
I’m certain of the color
but the words change when
I look back;
the first two words framed within
an otherwise unspoiled patch of wall,
a patch long preserved
by a newly absent fixture;
“River Gang” was passed over
by the shadow of a bobbing branch;
elsewhere in the same house,
I snap a picture of a shattered pink toilet,
then recline along the floor,
taking in the glue and nails, the joints
and tags that mark the underside
of furniture and cabinets and counters;
I disrupt and rearrange
the floor’s unaccountable grit
with each pivot of perspective;
as I drove away
to the next scheduled location
the windshield was crossed
into a sequence of spaces
that offered the day’s photos
for review; images accurate enough
to recall the negatives
slumbering in my camera
and transparent enough to reveal
the road rushing forward,
ecstatically aligned.
Derek Sugamosto was born and raised in Southeast Michigan. His work has previously appeared in apt, Wisconsin Review, Orange Coast Review, Coe Review, Dogwood, Sheepshead Review, Two Thirds North, Dewpoint, Qua, Paper Nautilus and Sugar House Review.
They Are Drawn Here in the Springtime
by Bruce Van Noy
Perhaps they were orchids, as if Theodore Roethke …
by Bruce Van Noy
For Mariel Hemingway
Perhaps they were orchids, as if Theodore Roethke
had been called here in the dead of night, drunk again
wandering into the yard through a broken fence, in darkness–
past the swing set, past the hammock, past the children’s
stray toys, past the plastic trays of daisies, and the small
carefully folded envelopes of wildflower seeds:
to the garden, planting orchids under the apple trees;
those loose, ghostly mouths: I am dreaming; she laughs, smiles.
My wife is planting flowers. But late that night, in the quiet
cool hours near dawn, smooth, delirious roses sing the delicate
dream of her skin to my lazy fingers; my hand touches orchids
in moonlight just dreamt, falling, and falling, and falling
through her long, long hair. “Orchids–”
“Yes–”
Bruce Van Noy was born in Seattle, raised in North California, educated in genetics and molecular biology at the University of California, Berkley. He studied poetry with Barney Childs at the University of Redlands. A former commercial fisherman in Alaska, and a professional ski instructor based in Ketchum, Idaho, he currently lives on Orcas Island, a few miles off the far north-western coast of Washington, and a stone’s throw across the water from Canada.
Song from Cadiz
by Zoe VanGunten
What do I care …
by Zoe VanGunten
What do I care
if one team wins?
If the night is warm and wet,
Let's hunt snails!
Let's live together!
tri li li, onward...
Come to my table, salt shaker,
don't hide, I've already seen you
a long ways back
I've got crystals and herbs
aye, lad
I have wax and it's from bees
marbles blown of glass
sheep skins and saltplenty of salt,
but these lines to Mirabras
are for you and you only
I started them
when
I saw you from afar
Zoe VanGunten reads and writes whenever and wherever luck strikes: Toledo, El Rito, Austin, Pamplona, Sevilla, Santa Fe—always on the bus at the last moment and happier nearer a window. This poem was written during a snowy Alamosa winter in the company of two very old German breed dogs and a tall bundled man faceting gemstones in the garage.
Tranquil
by Bryan Walpert
I’ll probably cut this line, …
by Bryan Walpert
I’ll probably cut this line,
maybe this one, too, and the next,
the one that describes the blanket—
it’s no good, you keep it,
the line, I mean, though you can have
the old blanket, too, whose rough wool
scratched us all winter on that couch
you’ve taken with the music and the Terrier,
leaving only a few unmatched dishes
and a memory I no longer want:
the day the snow surprised the city—
you at one end of the park,
me at the other, dog by your side,
the spot we were to meet in the middle
an objective correlative of all compromises
with which we would surely collude,
the whole silly city out shovelling,
the white world masquerading
as some sort of moment—take it all, crate it
up with the photos, pop it all in the boot
along with all that we once felt
for one another, take everything
but this poem you’ll never see
me cut line by line:
fold, spindle, mutilate—it’s going,
you’re in charge, my queen, my subject
no longer, once I’ve cut these last few
about the books we'd planned to read, the dog
I'll tell you now I hated, the day I can’t stop
thinking about, which ended with a blanket,
an old couch, and started with the snow
laid out between us like this cold, blank page.
Bryan Walpert is the author of three poetry collections—Etymology, A History of Glass, and Native Bird—as well as the fiction collection Ephraim’s Eyes and the scholarly monograph Resistance to Science in Contemporary American Poetry (Routledge). A defense of poetry, Poetry and Mindfulness, is forthcoming this year. He teaches Creative Writing as an Associate Professor in the School of English & Media Studies at Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand. Learn more at bryanwalpert.com.
Afternoons in and out of Paradise
by Julie Watts
the loose-throated peals …
by Julie Watts
the loose-throated peals
of children playing, float across
fences, and into everyone's afternoon.
I remember one like this
shouts, climbing walls
crawling through keyholes
leaping into sick rooms
where he lay, dragging
his boated chest
over the barnacled air
spat into jars
raged as best he could
his wintering world
his wife calling out
turn down the volume
of our play, our high time
to scream
the afternoon scuttling itself
images of white sheets
disgusting jars
life at the other end, looming
incomprehensible
yet enough to haunt the ignorance
of our greenest days
uncomfortable with our plucked
fruit, yet comfortable with the distance
such a distance, a forever –
breathe in and out
and it's gone –
that afternoon like this afternoon
with the high spirits of children
thrilling the autumn
trees
I think of him, long gone
and ungrasped
by the scattering pirates, boarding
their backyard ships.
Julie Watts is a Western Australian writer and Play Therapist. She has been published in various journals and anthologies including: Westerly, Cordite, Australian Poetry Anthology, Australian Love Poems 2013 and the Anthology of Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry. In 2016 she won The National Association of Loss and Grief Award and was short listed in the Newcastle Poetry Prize. Her first poetry collection, Honey and Hemlock, was published in 2013 by Sunline Press.
Song of the Water Lilies
by Abigail Wieser
Have you ever watched a Water Lily grow? …
by Abigail Wieser
Have you ever watched a Water Lily grow?
They are creatures of the light.
Slowly, they unfold their bodies and offer
their scented song to the world.
Light does that–gently pulls the music
out of you, rendering you (weightless) yet
full as a hive of raw, unadulterated honey.
I am standing at a cliff’s edge–
arms open wide like a man on a cross– ready
to be delivered from the weight of things.
Time has worn me like a favorite pair of jeans
and now there are more holes in me than songs,
more air in me than warmth.
I am cold always cold. My flesh has reached
its limit and now cries in the night for the clock to stop
his wielding of cruel hands.
Have you ever heard such a sad song? I look at the birds
and envy the confidence they hold in their own wings,
the joy they express in the finding of a grovelling worm.
But the pieces of my heart are steadfast still– they wait
for the wooing of the light. Soon, it will rise and pour
like a jar of honey over me and I will be covered–
resurrected–
in sweet sticky delight.
My holes will become holy and my cries
will blossom into songs of victory.
Have you ever tasted such a song?
Richer than King Solomon, fuller than the fiery bush
or the ancient land as it wept waters of destruction,
where only faithfulness could save you?
I am young I am weak but I am learning:
the song of the Water Lily only rises
after receiving the light.
Abigail Wieser is a recent graduate from Millikin University in Decateur, IL. She has had poetry appear in various places, including Stepping Stones Magazine and Millikin’s literary journal, The Collage. She is excited to get married this summer, work on her book of poems, and bless the community of Decateur with the River Coffee Company she and her fiancé are starting this fall.
Overture
by Karey Willan
By cock and bull, tooth and oxidized nail …
by Karey Willan
By cock and bull, tooth and oxidized nail
you will whistle like Harpo Marx
while I write La Symphonie de C’est Fini.
The notes ricochet off the crags of your heart
as magnetic North guides tall ships to breech the waves,
before the topple of sails, being swallowed by endless sea.
A certain lifeline for one, it was tidily hidden
in your back pocket when we were dry-docked.
I thrash and recall old dreams of porpoises,
know why I learnt to swim at four in the cold of Blackstone Lake,
one finger touching bottom before racing towards light.
You pointed it out with a laugh, liking the linguistics,
how “lover” without the “L” becomes “over”
until it rose like an overture, a watery muffle of music
to break hardened earth, as if for gentle burial.
I replied with “Over/kill.”
Overtures are the sly, impish passes you made
when your kitchen-handy wife reached low for the meat platter,
put x-ray vision on old Harris lines in her bones hidden by a long skirt
your sour/sweet mouth twitching over a Gilbey’s gin bottle
in a live commercial your friends watched without buying
Me, having the coin to try the package and susceptible
to the subliminal encased in extraterrestrial signs,
a figurine in a snow globe floating unanchored in a styrofoam sea.
By the buffet table you motioned to me like Marcel Marceau
with your palms miming the movement up a staircase
to show me your love in a familiar but locked place
and I glimpsed funhouse distortions in the vanity mirror
before you came down to whistle like Harpo.
Through cracks there plays a scrimmage between ritual,
the scissoring open of shrink-wrapped goods from Ikea and
being stuck like a bad investor in a bear market,
until the slight push of one domino against another, as it will at 29 files,
gains enough momentum to make the Empire State Building fall.
This is physics. It is all seasons. It is the invitation of spring
flourishing with dewy buds, showcasing into summery green,
eviscerating the leaves by autumn with the last blazing colour.
When winter comes, by the barren of its snowy landscape there is no shock,
the symphony of our own construct now lapping us to sleep.
Karey Willan has been stringing words together for much of her adult life, either through working as a verbatim shorthand reporter or chasing to light a skittish muse. Karey’s fascination with psychology propels her art. She is an adventurist of the mind and BC’s mountainous terrain. Karey holds a BFA (with distinction) from UVic in Visual Arts and a professional writing diploma from Douglas College, where she was a summer intern for Event Magazine.
My Ill-Omened, Mid-Life, First and Last, Southern Wedding
by Lauren Williams
I had a hunch it might happen while collecting our licence. …
by Lauren Williams
I had a hunch it might happen while collecting our licence.
Why else wear his boxer shorts beneath my blue dress
and new coat, Nana's ring on a finger that didn't count?
Glass window paperwork at City Hall — our mothers' first
and middle names the same. Unusual, said the clerk.
The judge is in. Would y'all like to do it now?
I ran outside in deep winter to pluck any bouquet,
returned with a sprig of holly berries, pricking,
praying myself blind to symbolism.
From a waiting room like some old dentist's,
a policeman delivered us to the judge. I hung
back. The officer la-la'd Here Comes the Bride.
It went like in the movies, but I stumbled at the part
about parting: To death do us part, more like a toast.
Wanting to believe not the same as believing.
Signed, stamped, embossed, entered. His mother's ring
loose on my finger. Are you saying my mom has big hands?
Into the car to a pizza bar for a guestless, giftless dinner.
Arriving, my left hand on the door — bare! Panicked
scrabble through foot-well trash, the sunset rush
back to City Hall's gutters, luckless muddy grass.
All that looking down instead of up. We tried a
better restaurant. A Georgia Peach, then I was served
the wrong meal; the right one late, lukewarm, lacklustre.
Across town to his buddy to beg weed and moonshine.
The wife, post-surgery wan, took our wedding photo
in the basement den, silhouettes against dim light.
Left to right: her unfaithful husband; mine grinning harder
than before or after; me, ringless; and, soon-to-be-dead,
the lodger — best man there, turns out — holding a shotgun.
Found the ring in the car next day, wore it on my thumb.
Left it behind in the bathroom when I flew home to Mum.
He lost his job and hocked it before a year was done
Lauren Williams was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia; she now resides in the historic country town of Maldon, central Victoria. She began writing poetry in the early 1980s, and has performed widely, nationally and internationally. Lauren’s sixth collection, Cleanskin Poems, was published by Island Press (Sydney) in 2016. She is also a prize-winning singer/songwriter.
Return of the Spider Mother
by David Mark Williams
You don’t have to be cloistered …
by David Mark Williams
after Louise Bourgeois
You don’t have to be cloistered
in a darkened room, crouched over a candle,
to summon her. You don’t have
to make a scene, smash crockery or draw
any attention to yourself.
Only allow your anxiety to grow,
spiralling out of you in lines
that cover the walls of white corridors,
and outside are skeins of a broken web
caught on a barbed wire fence.
She knows that you need her,
picked up on your distress signal,
her eyes snapping open,
head swivelling on its smooth gears.
You’ve waited long enough.
Listen out for her spiked heels
clacking over the flagstones towards you.
Be ready to hold out your arms. Together
you’ll rise as high as a steeple, steadied
on pincers locked into the pavement cracks.
She will come back. She’s on her way,
the good mother, the fierce mother.
With her needle and thread, she’ll repair
all that came undone,
the sky, your lacerated heart.
David Mark Williams lives in south west Scotland. He is widely published in magazines and anthologies and has won prizes for his poetry in the UK and New Zealand. His first full length collection of poetry, The Odd Sock Exchange, was published by Cinnamon Press in 2015.
Seasonal Affective Disorder
by Catriona Wright
I answer winter with Florida, ….
by Catriona Wright
I answer winter with Florida,
Blue Moon beermosas, swamp
pontoon rides, fishy pelican breath.
As good a place as any
to drink myself to death.
Clouds piss themselves, rain
slamming mint and lilac
motels, palms, plastic
surgery billboards asking,
Are your cups half empty?
Fearing falling coconuts, I pull over
and watch two gators make tender,
minimalistic love in a ditch. I imagine
my skin thickening to gator hide.
As good a gamble as any
to hide from the future,
to make my life continuous
prologue. Hibiscus open their dumb
fuchsia throats to the humidity.
Hungover, I eat cold noodles
out of a styrofoam clam.
I stroll on damp, gritty sand,
picturing the melancholy
and mystical sex lives inside
those rainbow sherbet houses
precarious on stilts.
Veering between the drunks
blasting beer and truck country
and the drunker drunks blasting
breakup country, I step on something
sharp. A clamshell, or part of one.
Ridged blush, cream, orange, tinged
with blood, as good a sunset
Catriona Wright is the author of Table Manners (Véhicule Press, 2017). Her poems have appeared in Prism International, Prairie Fire, Rusty Toque, Lemon Hound, The Best Canadian Poetry 2015, and elsewhere.