Journal

Underground Gardens

Legend was,
After a quarrel with his father,
He left Sicily behind
And immigrated to America.
That he left a woman in Filari
To whom he vowed to return and marry.
No one knew but he,
Of his experience tunneling.
In Boston he worked as a tunnel-digger.
New York City, he excavated
For the subway leading to New Jersey.
His secretly held a dream
Of growing his own citrus,
Orange, lemon and grapefruit trees.
Seeking a Mediterranean climate
He came to Fresno, California.
Working as a farm laborer
In local vineyards
He saved his money,
Buying a parcel of land
Sight unseen.
Under a veneer of dirt
Was impervious sedimentary rock,
Ill-suited for farming.
In scorching Fresno heat
As high as 120-degree afternoons,
He dug a cellar to escape.
Then carved out adjacent rooms
In the hardpan sediment,
Inspired by ancient catacombs
He marveled in Filari, Sicily.
His subterranean villa,
A far-reaching underground world
Nearly one-hundred chambers,
Passages, courts, and patios
Dug with instinct and memory.
He worked at night,
Labored with a hand-pick,
Shovel, wheelbarrow,
And Fresno-scraper
Pulled by a single mule.
There was a kitchen, bath,
Bedchamber, library, and chapel,
And masonry archways he built.
Fruit-bearing trees were planted
below ground, extending above
The terrain through openings.
The woman he left in Filari?
She refused to live
In the world of his making,
Underground in hole.
He became a recluse,
Completely alone thereafter.

Stephen Barile, a Fresno, California native, attended Fresno City College, Fresno Pacific University, and California State University, Fresno. He is a long-time member of the Fresno Poet’s Association. Stephen Barile lives and writes in Fresno. His poems have been published extensively.

Their fair share

We turn at the band stand because you say it’s getting dark.
It’s still grey in the sky when we’re one road away from your house,
me walking a little behind you with the dog as we laugh about something from work,
proof to me that we share memories of life,
that events are connected.
I smile at your voice and then a twig from a bush tugs through my hair,
And I see my corpse pulled apart by the foxes, and moss is as much my flesh
as the muscle is.
I see everyone taking their fair share, the birds making party favours of my eyes,
the earth wrapping me warmly for the worms to squirm through one into the other,
a little less of me
each time their tender pink bodies double back on themselves.
I see the burning light of whatever part of me is able to see this, laughing now
with you,
unmeshed from my body and bounding across the ground into some other thing
born blind in its burrow.
As we turn round the last road, your dog scurries forward in excitement for home.

Llewynn Brown is a writer living by the sea in Cornwall, England. They write a large amount of personal experiences given an artistic tinge, or led off completely into fantasy.

Graveyard Shift

A drought all of April,
I’d left the windows open,
but overnight, May thunderstorms
wettened the toile curtains
and made them limp, and left stains
on half-rolled window shades
I knew I’d never get out,
old, yellowed, and crinkly
hard paper that they were.

I found comfort when children
wailed their first morning cries
and dying newspapers slapped
driveways of houses down the street.
Swallows that used an old
irrigation pipe to raise their young
circled looking for insects.
Ravens that the day before
raised one foot at a time
on the asphalt now danced
in four-four time and lolled
in puddles formed in potholes.

As I look from the driveway, I know
someday you and I will dance like this,
when pumps are tapped but dry.
You will greet me from the graveyard shift
and we will pour my remaining water
still cool in the steel-clad thermos
into the tin metal basin on the porch
and rinse our feet while the ravens soar.

Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California, spending the seasons dodging fires, floods, earth-shaking, and all the other scrambling life-initiatives. He has contributed to Heartwood, Tiny Seeds Journal, Vita Poetica, and Willows Wept Review. He has a chapbook for free download at Red Wolf Editions and a second chapbook available from Red Bird Chapbooks.

How to Get to the Sky

At the head of any trail, I find myself
giving in to their call, this one along the West Fork of the Wallowa. It says ever
forward, ever higher, ever green. I used to like to think
I don’t give up easily, but this once
endless desire now lips a river shore that no longer seems mine. You see, my feet
don’t stay long enough in places to give
names, so I’ve been wondering what the Nez Perce word is for
everything.
Would their words tumble down this canyon a different story? This morning is
wild, all berry clutter and slate water rushing, runnels fray
like yarn ends, reaching for the lake’s quiet
exhale. Until then, they just want to be heard. I do wonder by who.
I start to holler, “Hey, Bear, Hey,” it sounds like dawn, new and never heard
before. My own voice listened to. Here’s the thing, I am
not afraid of bears, nor coming rain. I am afraid of wordlessness. Of silent,
unpronounceable things, unheard but in the heart, a muscle not unlike
the tongue, which you can teach to twist and bend like a trail, or talk.
Last night, I heard stories of the world’s richest man launching himself into space.
We said wicked, we said waste. But stories of a girl who tried
to touch the moon? Darling, even daring, her dreams. I’ve always followed
the call to the top, to the point, beyond the bend, to the
end. Once there, the land asks, But where did you come from? It will always
matter—the words used on the way back down. I assume this cascading
water yearns for the lap of the lake, but perhaps, some of it
routes into roots, slips earthward, along the way. Perhaps it gets to the sky
through the leaves.

Claire Cella grew up in the wilds of New York’s Catskill Mountains before moving west to become a graphic designer for a conservation nonprofit in a small Wyoming town. She likes to write poetry very early in the morning—a habit she developed many years ago as an undergraduate English student. Her poetry has appeared in Pilgrimage and Gleam, is forthcoming in Cream City Review and Deep Wild Journal, and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2023. Among other things, she runs trails and lives in a tiny house.

Last night it started raining

‌     —After CMarie Fuhrman

I paddle my canoe out from the shoreline
‌     in weakening daylight. Mayflies shimmy
their Mobius mating flight. Molten gold evening
‌     darkens to aubergine. Eddies echo a single loon’s
wild call flowing on air currents.

The lone bird, waterborne, trusts what to me
‌     is terrifying night—the lake’s surface
only a reflection of the universe—my canoe’s
‌     weight slight as a milkweed pod, my body
the leftover floss of eons of nighttimes.

Rain, at first a few patters, begins a samba—
‌     tip-toeing, delicate as a water insect’s touchdown.
Deep below our earth turns—spinning down
‌     and lower down to the ruddy core.

My sisters and I dance the ecstatic dance of our youth.
‌     From four sharp compass points we sway in unison—
‌Atlantic and Pacific shushing waves our chorus.
‌    ‌Kelp forests undulate with our aging bodies
sea creatures blossom in deep-sea canyons.

Night becomes us. Bathed in starlight, we harbor
‌     inland, our mother still with us. How will it end,
‌this dream of forever? A few more nights of wonder—
‌     a miracle to circle back into each other’s arms.

‌Rain, a torrent now, beats its drum in time to washed stars.
‌     Even in this deluge, I float on water
dark as licorice night and my quiet canoe drifts
‌     toward the opposite shore.

Dale Champlin is an Oregon poet with an MFA in fine art. Many of her poems have appeared in The Opiate, Timberline Review, Willawaw, CatheXis, and other publications. Her poetry collections are: The Barbie Diaries, Callie Comes of Age, Isadora, and Andromina: A Stranger in America.