Journal

The Last Gift

Two daughters,
cross-legged
on the hospital floor,
heads down
focused on their computers;
professors don’t wait
until your mother dies.

Neither will they.

Bedclothes barely
rise and fall,
her form
visibly shrunken,
eyelids closed
indicate
no awareness
of my presence.

It’s not about me.

Her husband
motions
to the empty
chair,
communicating
his wish
for me to sit
and stay a while longer.

He smiles as I comply.

Breaking
heavy silence,
I mention a tape
of peace songs
I’ve compiled.
My favorite, I say?
I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.

It doesn’t appear anyone is listening.

Then her husband
absentmindedly
hums the first line,
and, from the bed,
her small voice
joins in−
in perfect harmony.

The vibe in the room shifts.

The girls’ heads shoot up
from their computers,
as their mother holds the whole world
in her arms,
then they’re on their feet
standing at the side of her bed
as she opens her tired eyes
and keeps them company.

For the moment, smiles all around.

 

Elaine Sorrentino is the Communications Director at South Shore Conservatory in Hingham, MA, where she creates promotional and first-person content for press and for a blog called SSC Musings.  Her poetry has been published in Minerva Rising, The Writers Newsletter, Haiku Universe, Failed Haiku, and won the  August 2018 Wilda Morris poetry challenge.  Her non-fiction piece, “It’s All About Attitude,” took grand prize in the Write a DearReader Contest at reader advisory blog, DearReader.com.

 

Left of the Dial

     –The man on the radio says it is 5 am

You describe being intimate without the details: a loose thread
on a forearm, a tear in the driver’s seat, fresh paint on a canvas
stretched and primed. You want to forget the song you’ll never
meet, forget the: this-is the-last-stop-can’t-wait-to-see-you-I’m
-so -very-wet-for-you scene of the crime. If we were free it would
be the same crutch; another excuse, another story, another planet,
one more falling out. Look out your window. You can almost touch
the pockmarks in the street. Every last detail awash in fog and rain,
melted snow that clings to branches; unaware and unafraid.

 

Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis and has had poems published in numerous journals. His chapbook based on the last words of Texas Death Row inmates, Justice for all, is forthcoming from Conversation Paperpress (UK). Without Dorothy, There is No Going Home is also forthcoming from ELJ Publications. Most recent releases include an e-chapbook From an iPod found in Canal Park; Duluth, MN from Right Hand Pointing and John Berryman is Dead from White Sky e-books. He has been the recipient of five Pushcart nominations.

 

In Memory of Peter Sears

      (1937-2017) Poet, teacher, friend–
       I believe that when I hear a poem,
       I hear the silences between the words.
                                             —Peter Sears 

Auden said, “The death of the poet was kept
from his poems.” But he was wrong. When poets die,
their poems know and they grieve.

For Peter, there came the time when time had run
its course, when every breath he tried to take
was broken and he had no more distance left in him.
His poems knew he was dying. He kept no secrets
from his poems. The honesty of his poetry
had given them the strength to know the truth.

When Peter stepped from this life into his next,
his poems understood.  He had prepared them well
to be poems in a world without the poet.
They grieved, oh, they grieved, but did so
only in the silences between the words.

 

Doug Stone has written two poetry collections, The Season of Distress and Clarity and The Moon’s Soul Shimmering on the Water. His poems have been published in numerous journals and in the anthology, A Ritual To Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford. He lives in Albany, Oregon. 

Then

I am sorry for climbing the gray branches
of the bent fig, and for slamming the screen
door with the spring too heavy for my hands
on my way in or out to the green slatted bench,
its white cement sides stamped into the earth,
where we sat with our grape or orange sodas
in white spiraled wire planted into the ground
where you pulled a few weeds or patted dirt
around seedlings while we watched my father
climb up with spiked shoes and a rope
to saw limbs that needed pruned, or waited
for the boys to finish tilling a new patch
for the garden of tomatoes and string beans tied
to posts, radishes and peppers, three or four kinds,
where bees circle camellias whose scent was so wild
that I am sneezing even now and my eyes water
because I am so sorry I will cry thinking about
bringing salt out to the hot cherry tomatoes
we pulled straight off the vine and also of
the dark ivy that grew up to the first branches
around the front yard’s crab apple that ultimately failed
and that now, like all the rest, is good and gone.

 

Laura Lee Washburn,  Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University, is the author of This Good Warm Place (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize).  Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Cavalier Literary Couture, Carolina Quarterly, 9th Letter, The Sun, Red Rock Review, and Valparaiso Review.

How Trauma Dresses at Daybreak

I woke this morning in parts,
making coffee with crossed wires
and crying coconut milk.
Washed my body in two minds;
one mine, one a critical mother,
blood weeping from cracks in her breast bone.
A broken mirror watches
as clothes are chosen with baggy fit for comfort,
pulled on with careful movements,
for the world cannot know
of the war I wear in my chest
when I am missing whole pieces of woman.

 

Rosalind Weaver is a poet and spoken word performer from the North of England. She has been published in a number of journals and zines, including most recently with Yellow Arrow Journal, Paper and Ink, and Dear Damsels, as well as in three anthologies. In 2018, her work was displayed at the annual Rape Crisis UK Conference, as well being displayed and performed at two further exhibitions in London – “The Sunlight Project” and “Testimony.”

 

Too Far Out

Like Stevie’s young man,
I was too far out 
much too far out
and not waving
I didn’t want the attention
waving would draw
to my foolishness
or precociousness
or my stubbornness
when I’d gone too far,
wouldn’t want to be judged
on my waywardness.
But I wasn’t drowning.
I floundered a bit
frantically
before
I found I could float,
go with the flow
for a while
and then kick off against the current
in my own direction.
Sometimes I reached the safety
of the shore
and stayed close for a while
but only for a while,
only for a while
I stayed
too far out all my life
but not waving or drowning.

 

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud ‘War Poetry for Today’ competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Light Journal and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at LynnWhitePoetry.com