Journal

It’s not impolite to stare at a tree

Even a tree winter
naked. A tree that didn’t glory
in spare, sculptural nakedness
would never agree to be
deciduous, step from a gown
of leaves and be bare for so
long you’d think last year
was the last year. Dead, now

cast of lead. An oak, to take
an example, stubborn against
insistent Spring. Sap rises and once
invisible buds redden, swell
and the tree begins to glow,
like the hint of first light.

We don’t know if the pink swell
is pain or pleasure or
both in one, a pain you’d choose
again and again like February.

Twenty-eight Twelve Cesar Chavez Avenue

Alone, like an oil stain in the night street,
you sit drunk, sure east is north
‌                                                          and your
house just ahead under the reach of trees
you should know better.
‌                                             Your compass
spins. Your gyroscope junk. I can’t leave
you the dumb helpless I’ve been after my times
of too much, when I walked into a ditch
of blackberries, the runnel of water so cold
it stung,
‌               into a barbed wire fence instead

of the path, and once the road home
led instead to graveyard. I held out
against the cold against a headstone for first

light. Tell me your address, which I will barely
believe, and lean your greater weight
on my right shoulder,
‌                                        and I’ll carry
your Chinese take-out gone cold
in my left hand and we will forget

our fathers and become for a half
hour one man more bulbous and grotesque
than Saint Quasimodo,
‌                                          a chump
in a story with a goat and a woman
‌by the water,
and we will find
your house if it’s there. When your belt
slips below your hip, we’ll have to stop,
stymie any momentum, even
the bored moon then a little anxious
as you reel and hike up
your trousers.
‌                          Twice, you too fumble
fingered, I will have to wrench
them up for you, twice as one might reach

down into a barrel
‌                                 of foul water and look away,
the intimate stink too much. And you will
tell me how you had to poison
the entire city of rats tunneled beneath
an ancient backyard cherry stump. Dead
everywhere. And you will stumble
‌                                                              a half dozen

times but topple only once and I will wish
without hope for a winch or pulley
or a brother to help
‌                                    hoist you
to your seesaw feet and we’ll turn
and take the steps to your porch
as I end a charity that flakes
no sins from my spine
‌                                         to where
a slender woman ignores me, gathers
you like a bulky, wet great coat. Eases you inside.

John C. Morrison‘s most recent book, Monkey Island, was published by redbat books. His work has appeared previously in Willawaw Journal, as well as in numerous other journals such as Poetry Northwest and Rhino. A long time resident of Portland, Oregon, he teaches at the Attic Institute and is a guest editor for the Comstock Review.

Early Morning: March

Past porchlight, the barn sleeps still,
huddled beneath the snow-bound
trees, while a worm moon of oriental
gold glazes fence-posts and the frozen ground.
Galvanized buckets laced with frost,
each to each dimly burns,
perhaps in search of a season lost
or one that’s yet to come.
Now, though, is the hour of the halting heart
when time seems to slow and memories
and misgivings emerge and then depart
like breaths outside the body.
Yet, at this cold hour, only darkness stirs
and spreads like a burial shroud
across the earth; somewhere a bird’s
futile call, neither soft nor loud,
spills to ear while weary eyes
know how day will end: a fervent blue
blissfully rising and meager clouds dyed
like peace flags unfurling in pastel hue.

A resident of Connecticut and a lover of all things chocolate, John Muro has published two volumes of poems: In the Lilac Hour and Pastoral Suite, in 2020 and 2022, respectively. He is also a three-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, a Best of the Net nominee and, more recently, he was a 2023 recipient of a Grantchester Award. John’s poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Acumen, Barnstorm, Connecticut River, Sky Island, WIllawaw, and the Valparaiso Review. Instagram: @johntmuro.

Nested Blizzard Books a la Hedi Kyle. Papers: Shizen, paste, origami, chiyogami, decorative.  6”x 20”.

Welcome to Our Hill

Sandals are fine:
it’s a mild, 10-minute climb.
From the top, looking west,
you’ll see fields of corn,
wheat, and alfalfa.
Its grassy eastern slope
descends to a housing development.
The patch of gravel at the south base
never fills with cars—
and from the north can waft the scent
of a hog farm the field of wind turbines
beyond doesn’t actually send our way.

Scattered oaks, prairie grass,
turkeys, rabbits, squirrels—unpretentious,
yet we locals troop regularly to the top
with its wooden platform and bench
where we cuddle our loves, mull our debts,
or eat sandwiches.

Coming here, you’re likely content
with the ordinary, foregoing Everest
style thrills and chills for the grounded
silence of Native Americans interred
in the bird mound near the hill’s summit.

A hill like ours can’t be boastful:
time and the elements keep paring it
down. Still, what good fortune
to have a hill because, sometimes,
a body feels the need to climb one.

Darrell Petska is a retired university engineering editor and two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. His work appears in Verse-Virtual, 3rd Wednesday Magazine, San Antonio Review, Amethyst Review, and widely elsewhere (conservancies.wordpress.com). Father of five and grandfather of seven, he lives near Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife of more than 50 years.

Fine China

My parents’ wedding china was Honiton Green—
gifted by my grandparents, dainty Honiton Green.

Delicate porcelain by appointment to the Queen,
teacups, saucers, side plates, platters, all Honiton Green.

Four settings made it down the years to me,
I keep them behind glass doors, the Honiton Green.

I remember winter afternoons when my family took four o’clock tea,
sunlight glinted and gleamed on Honiton Green.

Things are made to be used says my mother in my dream,
but I’m afraid I’ll break them, the Honiton Green.

You can fill teacups with hot black tea, stir in sugar and cream,
clink edges with a silver spoon, tough Honiton Green.

Creamers and sugar bowls, lacy gold borders, green filigree,
garlands of flowers, looping and scooping, all Honiton Green.

I yearn for that elegance, that riotous glee,
but I can’t bring myself to use, I can’t bear to lose, the Honiton Green

On The Umpqua

Smoke roils the valley air
hangs brown in the sky
weakens the sun
to an orange rheumy eye.
Afraid to breathe, we are grateful
for the yurt’s shelter.

Semi trucks shudder
down the highway
juddering brakes rat-a-tat
the night.

Early morning we flee
past an elk stag guarding
his sleeping harem, speed
to the ocean where west winds
battle the smokey east, push
the sky clear.

But that motionless stag,
protective, remains
in his green meadow,
the curtain of smoke
silently drifting down.

Vivienne Popperl lives in Portland, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in Clackamas Literary Review, Timberline Review, Cirque, Willawaw, About Place Journal, and other publications. She was poetry co-editor for the Fall 2017 edition of VoiceCatcher. She received both second place and an honorable mention in the 2021 Kay Snow awards poetry category by Willamette Writers and second place in the Oregon Poetry Association’s Spring 2022 contest “Members Only” category. Her first collection, A Nest in the Heart, was published by The Poetry Box in April, 2022.

Ghazal: Earth: Hear, Here

–-after Ronald Johnson (EarthEarthEarth) and thinking of Kirschen, Russolo, and Schafer

Sound is personal. A lonely vibration finds its emplacement in the ear; th
e cozy conception of the space a wave makes of the place for the ear. Th

e Futurists were celebrated for having an ear for the noise of the machine.
[To hear] pure sound… now fails to arouse [the heart]. Perhaps ancient noise —
rustlings, grumblings, cracking wood, sobbing hearts — to placate the ear. Th

e sounds of planes and cars today, they say, vibrate as a kind of heartbeat.
Transmuting stores of sun into the sounds that play Coltrane to the ear. Th

e deep-earth sounds that we seldom hear have been translated through sound art.
(Behold the new orchestra: the sonic universe!) The repeal of a predicted deafness —
the Krakatoan concession — that could arouse an evolved placentation of the ear. Th

e screams from the Kola borehole were faked, and so Hell did not await us.
But hadal deep spoke to Lotte Geeven. A thundered plea to charge the ear. Th

e lover notices the life within earthly pleasures or, as Hass writes, the other shock /
of the singular lived life. The tandem redundancy; the heart notes the burden of life
in another. He hears hoofbeats. The faithfulness of a pulse, plainly coddling the ear. Th

e spiders of Issa’s house, growing indifferent to the methods and the murmurs
of man. Sweeping whispers of community like plagal calmatives to the ear. Th

e murder flew silently by, though the one crow forever laughing in the linden tree —
No, Lindsay, do not mistake the placid cadence of tiny surges in the February lake —
I’m here, I’m here, her clicks proclaim, and her presence plying the caves of my ear-Th

Lindsay Sears writes as a way to practice attentiveness. Good days always include birdsong and times of discovery with her human and feline companions. Her poems have appeared in Still Point Arts Quarterly, Green Ink Poetry, and Poetry Pea Journal. She has worked as a high school science teacher and mental health nurse. She is currently a graduate student in liberal arts at Auburn University, Montgomery, Alabama.