Journal

Return to the Chattooga River

I’ve measured the years in shades of grey.
Tonight’s sky is full of lamps. Up the river
bank, in scaffolds of apathy, rafters drift
into dreams of raging rapids. I sense
the smell of late spring prowling through
the night, skittering across random
peaks of river chop. The river’s muscle
flexes, builds as the stars sweep the sky.
Hope bids me to the water’s edge—for
a voice far downstream, in the ocean
perhaps—who said the river will test us,
strengthen us. A voice who knows I left
for land. In an eddy, the milky way swirls,
wet pincers lurch near my feet as I listen.

Richard L. Matta grew up in New York’s Hudson Valley, attended Notre Dame, practiced forensic science, and now lives in San Diego with his golden-doodle dog. Some of his work is found in Ancient Paths, Dewdrop, New Verse News, San Pedro River Review, and Healing Muse.

The dazzle of fireflies in the sticky Jersey night

the sour tang of mold tickling my nose
in cramped summer beach rentals.
Holding my breath as warm salty waves crash
and knock me over. Sand worming into my suit.

These memories like seeds inside.
Some, I plant and nurture. Some lost
until upturned by mental rummaging.

All of us with seeds, tucked tight—
dark and bitter, or luminous—
secreted inside; too many to share.
And when we’re planted, do they die too?
The prickly new sweaters, the rust-iron of a bitten lip—

where do all these fragments end up?
Seems as wasteful as a field of dandelions
whose seeds loft and float, catch
and land, random to all appearances.
Is there a pattern? Where do memories go?

Catherine McGuire is a Sweet Home, OR writer/artist with a deep concern for our planet’s future, with five decades of published poetry, six poetry chapbooks, a full-length poetry book, Elegy for the 21st Century, a SF novel, Lifeline, and book of short stories, The Dream Hunt and Other Tales. Find her at www.cathymcguire.com

Beau Soir

–after Claude Debussy

The sun is long settled and the sky
has been assembled then reassembled
by an artisan wind, hastily extracting,
polishing and reappointing stars across
the delicate drape and ruffled hem
of heaven when, exhausted, it falls
back upon lamp-lit porches while
woodsmoke rises like flak, dark and
directionless, and long streams of ice –
translucent strands of shagbark –
overflow wooden soffits destined
for foundations of slender stone and
I’m certain such moments of random
and broken beauty merit more than
a prayerful pause and a deep-seated
need to hold onto them then remembering
that soft-focused hour some days before
when, approaching dusk, a few starlings
had descended upon tiny branches
overlaid with snow, wanting to re-leaf
a late-turning elm as if all things in need
of mending in this life can easily be
repaired or made whole again as I
continued on, strangely elated and alone,
towards a shoreline I can smell but
cannot hear and a tideless strait that’s
as still and dark as a ledge of black ice.

John Muro, who is a resident of Connecticut and lover of all things chocolate, has authored two books of poems — In the Lilac Hour and Pastoral Suite — in 2020 and 2022, respectively. He is a three-time Pushcart nominee, a Best of the Net nominee and a recipient of a 2023 Grantchester Award. John’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Acumen, Barnstorm, Delmarva, Grey Sparrow, Sky Island, Valparaiso and Willawaw.

Sprang!

Tassel-head weeds toss in a fresh wind.
Stretch up over rye neighbors, hang out
Tap-dancing till they snatch the first drops
of April’s christening.

Through Amtrak’s window
two dark-eyed, little girls
gape at the onrush—
mottled homes, apartments,
fenced off lots containing semi-trailers
parked in rows like soldiers on parade.

Soon big rumble-mo flees the city, shoots out.
They wonder at boundless parks
with crowds of trees and yellow flowers.
Exclaiming, they spy floppy-eared cattle
wearing cinnamon skins, sporting big humps—

shouting, asking for chocolate milk
they bug their mother from her serenity.
She doesn’t get it
tells them to keep still,
and they can’t.

Someone’s taken the lid off.
Under clean blue skies
goose pimples crop up anytime.
Cool wind runs its finger along autos
driving people to speed, young couples to kiss.

There’s a hustle in this spring.

Neal Ostman’s poetry has appeared in various journals, anthologies and e-zines. Recent publications include: Book of Matches, Panoplyzine, Willawaw Journal, and WordFest Anthology 2022. His poetry readings have been well received at many venues in Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, and other cities in his travels. In addition to poetry, his published credits include humor and business articles. Neal is a member of The Poetry Society of Texas. He lives in Colleyville, Texas.

Just One More

It’s an old crabapple,
not pruned for years,
more thicket than tree.
I cut dead and diseased
limbs and branches,
little shoots on the trunk.
After an hour I’m
tired, but see just
one more limb
that beckons —
healthy
but crowded, going
the wrong direction.
I stand directly
under it, sawing,
wanting to be done.
When it breaks free
and falls I have one
second before it
hits me to consider,
this is how soup
is ruined, relation-
ships sunder,
wars start.

John Palen is the author of Distant Music and Open Communion: New and Selected Poems, both from Mayapple Press. His latest book, Riding With the Diaspora, won the 2021 Sheila-Na-Gig chapbook competition. He lives, writes, and gardens on the Illinois Grand Prairie.