Journal

My Lover’s in Texas

My lover’s in Texas–
Left with a white flag
and wet bones,
no luggage.
Said he was going for
a while–a while ago he
said he was going

to bring back monarchs
and bluebonnets–
the kind that never shift
direction once they’re planted.
Said he was going to
recreate the Alamo,
said he was going to
find a green horse.

It’s been a while since
he said he was going–
told me he’d be back
in a dream. I told him
he’s been by the Gulf a
hundred times or more
and still can’t concede
the rock from the sand;
the sea from the shore.

I found a picture of
us inside an old sweater;
connected the freckles on
his face that form like a
constellation after the
day blisters over.

So I counted them like I
count the years I’ve been
holding onto the tail end
of a kite. My lover’s in Texas –
found himself there tugging
on the seam of the sky.

Jodi Balas is a 35 year-old female, and poet-at-heart, who has been using her recent Autism Spectrum Condition as a catalyst to cultivate a ton of new work that she hopes will inspire many writers and readers. 

Autumn Song

In the trees a mad flurry of warblers –
Cape May, Tennessee, Black-and White, Chestnut-Sided–
spring colors gone drab for winter. Their beaks
work the last leaves. No singing now.

Cape May, Tennessee, Black-and White, Chestnut-Sided
dart here and there through grey branches
to work the last leaves. No singing now.
They come zigzagging down,

dart here and there through grey branches
like snowflakes already covering peaks in Wyoming.
They come zigzagging down,
whirling wings and brown feathers over the ground

like snowflakes already covering peaks in Wyoming.
I want to fly north where the world glitters white,
whirl wings and brown feathers over the ground
to hear fresh Arctic wind singing now.

I want to fly north where the world glitters white,
away from spring colors gone drab for winter,
to hear fresh Arctic wind singing now
in the trees like a flurry of warblers.

Louise Cary Barden’s poetry has won the Calyx Lois Cranston Prize, Oregon Poetry Association award, the Harperprints chapbook competition, and others. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Timberline, humana obscura and Cathexis Northwest. She is a self-avowed tree-hugger whose career indecisiveness has taken her from teaching college English to writing advertising and editorial copy and managing marketing programs. In 2017 she settled in Oregon after many years in North Carolina.

I Try Not to Think

Walking along the Squannacook River,
the dog eager, herding us
while the river, also eager, explores rocks
and stones, the sun stretched over the water
as a little white flower among the moss
stretches its thin stem

and I don’t think of the old man
fleeing from his country, his arms
enfolding his tiny wet cat,
the street black with smoke
and the uniformed young
with bully clubs and guns

and I don’t think of that guy in Maine,
his poodle in a leash that pulled its neck
whenever the guy jerked it up,
just walking with his family, jerking that leash up,
that neck up, neck up
while the dog quietly walked beside him

and now we arrive to where the path turns back
and I don’t think that this is where that teenage boy
drowned while swimming across the too-fast water
and I try not to think that death is everywhere,
while walking the dog with my eighteen year old son
who is ready for the world to last and last

Carol Berg’s poems are forthcoming or in Crab Creek Review (Poetry Finalist 2017), DMQ Review, Sou’wester, Radar Poetry, and Zone 3. She lives in Groton, Massachusetts.

The Gorilla Who Has Been Sitting

on my chest for the past three weeks asks me
how I feel about caramel, and specifically whether I believe
it makes for a good pizza topping. I have to pop
my inhaler before I answer. “If I say yes, will you
go into the kitchen and make us one?” He laughs.
“Never. You know I’m here as long as the virus is.”
He turns around, grabs the remote, dooms us both
to another house-flipping reality show marathon on HGTV.

 

The Prototypes Walked Out
of the Funding Meeting

There is a glitch in our contact
from Moscow. He has forgotten
how to do anything except say no.
This is not the impression we’d
like to make on billions of shareholders,
but when the ball is passed, you
take it down the field, no matter
how many spikes it has, how much coal
it’s filled with. There’s wine
in the carafes and disease in the air,
a thousand thousand hands, pencils
poised above pads, waiting to hear
what you think of all this. Make it count.

Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Cordite Poetry Review, Stardust Haiku, and GAS: Poetry, Art, and Music, among others.

Moving Furniture

We must displace what has been forgotten,
discarded: an old bed
on which no one has slept in a decade.

Down the stairs the mattress slides,
followed by box springs
as if on the run, as if escaping a lonely cell.

We search for the head- & footboards
in storage, their iron supports
already leaning against the wall like skis.

We grant sleep to someone who has none.
We offer sleep;
up to the recipient to accept.

Other items will follow another day:
a desk on which to record the saddest memories,
a chest of drawers where tangible

proofs of lust might be concealed.
For now, this is what we have to share:
the heaviness & enlightenment of rest.

Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021). His poems have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Mid-American Review, Harvard Review, River Styx, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where writes and tries to stay out of trouble.