Journal

Tide

I’m pulling back.
Goof slides! Clown bites! Wheels to roll wonderful me
to a finish line that some bastard deleted seven
centuries back. And forth. And back. Marching orders
makin’ whoopee in a cattle stack/how
they trickle down, leak their penalties… For?
Aktionismus? Catwalk strut – you so ugly? – Is how
the plot thickens? – Garden variety string (beans) my
journey in knots? Extraction negotiable if (1) your ticket
has not expired (though obviously, purchased in ’68,
it has) (2) by all accounts you are/are not/might be the nasty
piece of work you’re purported to be from which (work)
comes musk & mayhem & a mockery of much
that should in progress be soup, delicious, & it is if, as
promised, on Tuesday no dog (including yours, especially
yours) shall have its day on Wednesday I’ll come
to your party if Lucy doesn’t snub Hunky
meets Dory they make a wish the wish
is a Will to Power à la what’s-his-name, Nietzsche
that nag: Clown slides! Goof bites! I’m booking for nil,
for errata. I’m shy a shoe. I’d like to be true! What’s
Rudolf got that I don’t? Ditto Tom? Ditto them all!
Those miserable gossips. They’ve got it coming who dare
to label perfect me compunctious, punctilious, pugnacious,
a common swell scooting on runners, on a sled to Hell
loaded with gifts of frankincense & myrrh. Purr, I say,
& pitch them in sacks. Sink them in deep water. After
I bid adieu to the three Mabels there’s always seven more
demanding at the very least a peck on the cheek, the CAT
scan equivalent of a soiled bib, a husbandry all aflutter, a
mad fool’s mutter. Mothers McCree & McFib surely you
can understand why – Spoof rides! Circus fights! –
I’m pulling back.

Originally from Detroit, Philip Hammial has lived in Australia since 1972. He has had 37 poetry collections published by Penguin, Puncher & Wattmann, Island and others. He has represented Australia at 14 international poetry festivals.

Hot Water

–after Eavan Boland

Heat rises in ribbons from the street as an old crow
sits at the edge of a large black rock, looks
at the pool of water in the rock’s center.
He does not dip his wings to splash and cool
his corvid body. Perhaps the water is already too hot,

like the old Union Steam Baths, long closed now,
where we took our tired, wet bodies after days
of camping in the rain. How we sat on wooden benches
wrapped in thin towels, allowed clouds
to fill the room, laughing, disappearing in steam.

We had the baths to ourselves. We didn’t know
the last salmon cannery had just closed and the town
was in mourning. Years later, the boats
would bring back sardines, and when those
were overfished, anchovies, at least for a time.

The old crow pauses while his mate
shrieks at him from the telephone wire. He glances down
at his dry dusty feathers, then rises in flight
through the ribbons of heat to meet her,
to search together for cool water.

The Graduate

–after “What I Want to Remember” by Ada Limón

At four, how you hefted an imaginary bat,
feet planted in the dusty packed earth,
and swung and swung at those imaginary balls.

How you grew into your impossibly long arms and legs,
good-naturedly taking the dog for a walk,
taking out the garbage after just one more reminder.

You, in the kitchen, how you hug your mother
in that slightly embarrassed way,
your mother who has driven you to practices,

watched your games, cheered for you,
made you cheese sandwiches
when that was all you would eat.

You tilt your head over hers, your body
a kind of shelter while the sloppy and exquisite world
waits for you just outside the front door.

Born and raised in Indiana, Suzy Harris has lived her adult life in Portland, Oregon. This year she published a chapbook called Listening in the Dark (The Poetry Box) about her journey through hearing loss and learning to hear again with cochlear implants.

At Home on a Snowy Day

I remember last winter
a day of thick snow, a Saturday.
We didn’t have to go anywhere.
No scraping off the car windshield,
no stiff fingers on the steering wheel.
Holed up, cozy inside.
Car peaceful under a blanket of snow.
We left once because we wanted,
to the coffee house at the end of the street.
We fit our feet in the footsteps of strangers.
The frozen waves roiling down the block
reached as high as our knees.

Rosalie Hendon is an environmental planner living in Columbus, Ohio with her husband and many house plants. She started a virtual poetry group in 2020 during quarantine that has collectively written over 200 poems. Her work is published in Change Seven, Call Me [Brackets], Superpresent, Fleas on the Dog, and Red Eft, among others. Rosalie is inspired by ecology, relationships, and stories passed down through generations.

Country Table

country table is my grandfather country who,
his piety personified and sat next to me at dinner,
kissed prayers into the air that I’d recite from dust—

country table is my grandmother country’s surplussed
mashed potatoes and peas, country wrapped up in her
like cotton candy caught in chicken wire—

country table is my mother country who doesn’t use plates,
only ash trays, and beer can’s sweat country draws fate
in rings upon the surface, fallen cherry’s fire lights her own pyre—

country table is my father country and hunting hogs
in bright country bogs, tabling that country game and reduced
to the basest self, best self when the whiskey is loosed—

forget God’s country no country only my country augers
holes in my country skull, ribs; my country goddess raises
from cattails and whistles hymns through the pines

of fragile country, country table swells under my lifeline
and when I press down it splinters, soggy country debases,
false country, wrong country, I sit in rotten country chair

and it collapses, warped country, not my country, I long
to smell country table before the termites, mossy spawn,
forest fauna country, bury me country, I country, you country.

Addison Hoggard (he/him) is a writer and language teacher hailing from the rural inner-banks of North Carolina. He is currently based in the Aizu region of Japan. His writing has appeared in Wild Roof Journal, Cathexis Northwest, Miracle Monocle’s micro-anthology Queer, Rural, American, and elsewhere.

April Afternoon 1

April afternoon
Gnats alight in slanting light
A graceless spring dance
I touched your hand
I didn’t know why
Old oak trees creak back
To life, leaves open, breathing like
Tall ships leaving port
From the crutch of my soul
I touched your hand, clung to it
Maybe I can live
Like spring, where everything is
New, eternally

Marc Janssen has been writing poems since around 1980. Some people would say that was a long time but not a dinosaur. Early decrepitude has not slowed him down much; his verse can be found scattered around the world in places like Pinyon, Slant, Cirque Journal, Off the Coast and Poetry Salzburg also in his book November Reconsidered. Janssen coordinates the Salem Poetry Project–a weekly reading, the occasionally occurring Salem Poetry Festival, and was a nominee for Oregon Poet Laureate. For more information visit, marcjanssenpoet.com.