Journal

August Ghazal

‌     Corn is universal,
‌ ‌    so like a Roman senator.
‌              —Ruth Stone

County fairs: 4-H barns of piglets and paper boats of roasted butter-slathered corn.
At dinner, my mother offers a choice: large kernels or small on our cob of corn.

Abundance: fields and fields of young girls dancing—
country roads between acres of waving tasseled corn.

What makes me feel old? Not ten for a dollar,
but more than a dollar for a single ear of corn.

My daughter rolls her eyes when her aunt and I show up
with our haul from the market—watermelon and a dozen ears of corn.

Corn Mother, Demeter, Grandmother Selu—beloved matriarchs
who brought us this golden goodness we call corn.

Michael Pollan was the first to teach me this lesson:
we are not the cultivators—we are cultivated by corn

Solstice

–after Carlos De Andrade’s “Corona” (tr. by Elizabeth Bishop)

Early summer eats all the green, leaving
scattered windfall, leaving strawberries

picked clean, leaving wild fires too close.
Time is different now, more baked in and

mutable at the same time. Energy,
too, starts strong, fades by mid-afternoon.

During the day, we love each other by
chopping vegetables and heating water.

We sleep restlessly then burrow like small
mammals when morning light breaks. I wake,

unbroken, to a day so cool autumn lurks,
blooming summer days already too short.

We stand as if on a train, watching
green flash through the open window.

Suzy Harris lives in Portland, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in Calyx, Clackamas Literary Review, Switchgrass Review and Williwaw Journal among other journals and anthologies. Her poetry chapbook Listening in the Dark, about living with hearing loss and learning to hear again with cochlear implants, was published by The Poetry Box in 2023. Born and raised in Indiana, she was an Oregon special education attorney for many years and is happy to call the Pacific Northwest home. She enjoys making soup, walking among big trees, and watercolor journaling.

Bushwack

No trail. A compass reading.
We can’t walk a straight line. Blowdowns
force us into detours, we climb
over massive trunks, the stream meanders.
Not clear how the topo aligns
with rises and valleys. We could be
anywhere, do not have the vision
of the raptor banking above.

The land shifts and groans over time,
turning in sleep. It doesn’t tell
its dreams, a language we can’t decipher,
intimate as we are, crawling through underbrush,
scaling boulders in the dry creekbed.

We might remember when we arrive,
wherever that is: raw feet, scraped knees, thirst.
What traces have we left?
Should we blaze the trail, melt into trees?
Feel them, even now, watching us.

Alison Hicks was awarded the 2021 Birdy Prize from Meadowlark Press for Knowing Is a Branching Trail. A new collection, Homing, is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in November, 2024. Her work has appeared in Eclipse, Gargoyle, Permafrost, and Poet Lore. She was finalist for the 2021 Beullah Rose prize from Smartish Pace, an Editor’s Choice selection for the 2024 Philadelphia Stories National Poetry Prize, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Green Hills Literary Lantern, Quartet Journal, and Nude Bruce Review. She is founder of Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio, which offers community-based writing workshops.

Bees for Marie. Double Zhen Xian Bao with decorative papers, recycled posters. 12”x 26″

Can You Hear the Whistle?

It’s the sound you hear when the kettle starts to sing
or the deep desire when Midnight Star would sing.

A haunting ancient sound over the city of Beijing
from a reed fastened to the end of pigeon wings;

14th and Penn, cars block the box
send orange-jacket arms waving.

Wind strikes the edge of branches
and the air starts oscillating.

A politician speaks in code
of banks and forced busing.

Construction workers call a cat,
and I hope my Jeans don’t cling.

Jean Janicke writes, dances, and works in Washington, DC. Her work has appeared in Passionfruit, Paper Dragon, and The Last Stanza.

Good Enough

The proud mother, behind the child’s painting, urged blood
red for the seesaw. The little girl stopped– good enough

She kept ten boxes for all her stuff
littering the garage full of dust– good enough

The old man drew a matrix for staining their deck
in quadrants, his wife rebelled in stripes good enough

Half the ingredients for chicken piccata were missing
from the shelf when she sizzled up the garlic good enough

He tried to make the spider’s web into a glove
and the spider ran away, disposed of good enough

The lady scrubbed and scrubbed her tub
but silverfish slid in and holed up good enough

The editor ditched simplistic fluff
about 10 ways to lose 10 pounds good enough

The camper’s beef jerky, miles from camp, was tough
and salty, hard on teeth good enough

The psychiatrist drinks spiced up rum,
leaves out the butter and the hot good enough

The towels drying on the laundry line are rough
but smell of wind, sun and summer good enough

This girl makes lists of how she fails at simple acts of love
hugging, kissing, and backing in good enough.

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet. She has nine published books in print. Wild Apples (Fernwood Press, 2024) highlights downsizing, moving 3,000 miles from Oregon to Vermont. The Unknown Daughter contains 27 persona poems — people reacting to the Tomb of the Unknown Daughter. Website: triciaknoll.com

Full English Breakfast

is our waking to the wind biting broken teeth
into black clouds, rafters, drafts, handfuls
of wake-up hail thrown against the window.

He’s sullen, reluctant. One of us always is,
a turned lump turned away in a smothering
sauce of blankets. Somewhere, creaks

of the landlady—she warned us of the streets,
especially a lassie alone, a gentleman might
approach such a lassie, told us of her long-lost

channel crossing and the Moulin Rouge
like a dream that tugged her back to bed
to linger there, eyes closed. But we’re up

and packing, collapsible cups, single bar
of soap we share, plastic ponchos on top.
So bored with our own clothes washed over

and over in sinks, tent city of clean, that today
he wears mine, I wear his. Out the window,
pewter streets reflecting iron clouds,

a street sweeper clatters his cart of brooms.
Downstairs to that muscular bacon,
a wrinkled warm tomato.

Letter

If there is a lake, I hope you’re floating on it stoned
and pain is a sharp little star you wrote into your book

and shut. The last time I saw you, your body was so
thin. I hurried by. May I always taste that sour old coin

in the mouth. I hope your feet find balance in the bottom
of the kayak. May the bungees in the truckbed

snake their colors in the sun. May you rise from the trip
undizzied, reaching for the rail of the dock,

and journey home warm to wherever you will rest
or drink or seethe over everyone who didn’t call.

I keep writing you these letters.
I keep sending them like money.

Amy Miller is the author of Astronauts (Beloit Poetry Journal Press), which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, and The Trouble with New England Girls (Concrete Wolf Press). Her work has appeared in Copper Nickel, The Missouri Review, and ZYZZYVA, and she received a 2021 Oregon Literary Fellowship. She lives in southern Oregon, where she works as a communications editor for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. https://writers-island.blogspot.com/