Journal

Morning Tableau

Petula’s morning meows
echo up the stairs, softly
awaken my mind, slowly
rouse my awareness.

Pierre curls close, gentle paws
pressed against me, as he falls
deeper into secret feline dreams.
His warmth lulls me back to sleep.

Petula sings a woeful
song of hunger, a dolorous
lament, a pitiable cry
for her morning meal.

Her insistent pleas, louder now,
do not compel me to rise,
though I stir, and sweet Pierre
begins to purr.

A full-throated aria
of ululant caterwauling
travels to the upper floor.
I sit up and orient myself

to this morning’s facts of life:
I’m divorced; we’ve sold the house;
this condo is the place I share
with two cats.

The climate is warming,
sea levels rising, the EU
breaking apart, and our mad
president believes he is king.

Life as we’ve known it is gone.
Yet the rosy light of dawn
opens my heart like a flower
adoring the new day.

 

Grace Richards grew up in the desert southwest, spent most of her life working in the TV and film industry in Los Angeles, and the last few most dramatic years teaching in Eugene, Oregon, where she has found her poetic voice. Her work has been published by SettingForth.org, Herstryblog.com, and in the anthology Magicking Language.

Eva Braun, 3:15pm, April 30, 1945

Sitting on the sofa in the Führerbunker study
about to bite into a cyanide capsule,

you are thinking about how just forty hours ago,
less than two full days, you married this man

next to you occupied now with loading his pistol.
As he drops a bullet on the floor, curses,

picks it up, inserts it into its chamber, you realize
yours is a minor walk-on part in a drama playing out

in his mind—the role of the loyal wife of the great
if fallen leader. If only it could have been more.

The gun loaded and ready, he glances up and nods.
The look on his face says it all:  It is time. You first.

 

Ben Sloan has recent poems in The Tishman Review, Pembroke Magazine, and Northampton Poetry Review. His review of The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner has just been published in Rain Taxi Review of Books. Living in Charlottesville, VA, he teaches at Piedmont Virginia Community College and at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women.

Dust

Mama’s vacuum echoes from church balcony
down to red carpet below. I push through
apex shadows. Spirits permeate my bones,
laugh into my eyes. The spectral sanctuary
air says, Remember, dust everything.

Moon streams through stained panes of glass.
I clutch a rag streaked grey as bone,
smooth it over the stiff shoulders
of pews, pass the cloth over
them. Dust collects again.

Mama, are you done yet? I glimpse a yellow
moonlike flash of glove scouring the toilet.
She wipes her forehead on her sleeve, bustles
us into brightly lit classrooms to read
until she’s finished mopping empty hallways.

She carries bags stretched full, heaves them
over, into giant dumpsters before we drive
south down the forehead of the moon
that follows, casting a map of ghost light
home. Although the moon’s only following

the 101 South, I imagine Mama’s following
the moon, that its lunar eyes and mouth
are leading us into space, that moon dust
replaces dirt in this place, that we will
feel with our hands the moon’s cratered face,

grasp handfuls of dust, and allow the fine
particles to sift through ungloved fingers
sparkling and luminescent as only
heavenly matter can be. On the moon, we
will examine the origins of our hands, our faces.

 

This is Alice Martin-Kunkle‘s favorite piece from the anagama firing as she was able to lay it on its side so that the wood ash is dripping sideways around the pot. You can also see impressions of shells which were embedded in clay wadding to lift the ware off the shelf during the firing. Newport’s For ArtSake Gallery (Nye Beach) is your best bet for encountering this northwest artist and more of her work in clay and photography. 

Another Battlefield

What happened here, already forgotten.
Did we win or lose?  I don’t know.
So many battles cloud the memory.

Scattered bones as far as I can see.
A brood of baby rabbits shiver in the rib cage
of a horse where his heart should be.

I wonder if the ghost of this war horse
feels that quiver of life in his chest
as he gallops across the fields of heaven.

 

Doug Stone lives in Albany, Oregon.   His chapbook, In the Season of Distress and Clarity (Finishing Line Press) came out in 2017.  His poems have been published in numerous journals and in the anthology, A Ritual To Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford.

The Young Wife Dreams

A black dog smaller than her own
sleeps nearby without licking her face
to wake her come morning.

A toddler plays quietly in a toy kitchen
then speaks in sentences
about making the family a picnic lunch
and wearing big boy pants.

Assorted mothers order her signature cakes
with intricately laced butter cream flowers
cascading layers during these wee hours
now ready for home delivery in glitter boxes.

The computer shames viruses
into remission and creates instant digital scrapbooks
ready for printing.

A beautician visits her house
to shape eyebrows and add foil highlights
to brunette tresses flung across the pillow.

The good fairy uses her wand
to fold baskets of clean clothes
and fly each piece to its drawer.

The camouflage clad husband returns from the hunt
with venison already packaged and labeled
for the freezer.

He prepares a breakfast of Belgian waffles
laden with strawberries and whipped cream
and takes the crepe myrtle to task
for not shading his young wife’s window.

 

Mary Ellen Talley’s poems have recently been published in Raven Chronicles, U City Review and Ekphrastic Review as well as in the anthologies, All We Can Hold and Ice Cream Poems. Her poetry has received two Pushcart Nominations.