Journal

Ranch House Days

Good bye main road.
You’re traffic was enthralling,
but I’ve got to think on my own
for once, I’ll see you later–which
seems right to me now.
Sometimes you have to look out from your own porch
even if at the time it seems like you are wasting time.

After she hit the jackpot at the casino
she looked back and wondered if this is as good as it gets.
Disappointment arrives in so many flavors
which keeps us on our toes:
the missive arrives about our oeuvre,
not meant to be harsh,
but then again. . .

And if I kept longing for you
after you moved away,
the distance having grown usual,
like a gargantuan silence that becomes
like a perfect friend, taking and not pushing back.
Can’t I finally get it right for once?

After my soiree in town
where I saw that fetching woman,
I could have asked for her number,
but thought “Why should I?”
I mean, it always ends in tragedy.

I come back to my place.
I like it here. I can mow fields,
paint rooms, find my way to the creek
where water held underground
springs into light.

Dale Cottingham is of mixed race, part Choctaw, part White. He is a Breadloafer, won the 2019 New Millennium Award for Poem of the Year and is a finalist in the 2021 Midwest Review Great American Poetry Contest. He lives in Edmond, Oklahoma.

Early Sunset

Another cold blast
dooms prolonged
fall hopes, chases me
indoors to toast
toes by wood stove’s
glow. My big dopey
dog remains outside,
sits and stares
across our open
fields. He waits
for summer sun,
long romps through
fields of hay. His
skin quivers
in expectation.
He knows nothing
of winter to come,
my hold on summer
a stick still grasped
in his slackening jaws.

Richard Dinges, Jr. lives and works by a pond among trees and grassland, along with his wife, one dog, three cats, and five chickens. SBLAAM, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Journal, millers pond, and Pulsar most recently accepted his poems for their publications.

Scandinavian Sausages and Bad Bank Cards

“This one’s from Norway,” she says, placing the platter under my nose. “It’s made from yak. And this one’s from Finland. Not sure what it is, but it tastes like blue pepper.” These are not made-for-breakfast sausages, although you could if you wanted. What’s keeping you from baking a batch of flaky buttermilk biscuits and stuffing them with Scandinavian sausages? What started as a cheese-of-the-month club morphed into sausages-of-the-world, shipped monthly in a double-layer cardboard box, three half-pound samples nestled like babies in small pillows of dry ice. Each arrival brings holidays and birthdays and  party-like atmospheres into the house. “If only the cheese and sausage would arrive on the same day,” she pines. “Do you think they can change delivery dates?” I take her to The Luscious Lemon for lunch, very girly-girly and everything’s for sale: cushions and ornately-painted powder boxes; lipsticks and exotic shampoos with ingredients from Madagascar that I can’t pronounce; high-end tablecloths and runners; tables scapes and soaps; porcelain birds, gnomes and mushrooms whose polished caps throw sunlight in our faces. It’s a trap. And the food is brunchy. She just loves this place. So much. It makes her talk more than she normally does. Like record floods, torrents of water tearing down village streets. She never wants wine but says it’s okay if I have one glass. “Don’t forget you’re driving.” The ATM spits out my green bank card as if it tastes bitter. There’s a line behind me. I try three times. The person behind me huffs and I give him a go-to-hell look. Two can play this game. The bank associate has gathered up her personal belongings to leave for the day. I show her the card. “Here’s the problem,” she says, pointing to a crimp on the side of the magnetic strip. “Order me a new one,” I say, “before you go home.” “There’s a fee for that.” “Since when?” “This week,” she says. “That really sucks,” I tell her. “How much?” “Ten dollars.” “Do it,” I say, “but you’re not getting any Scandinavian sausages or cheese. And you can forget about the biscuits.”

Thinking About Learning German While Making Myself a Grilled Cheese

Over there is a grater for re-purposing potatoes into sweet gluten-filled spackle, adding this and that to the sticky concoction, shaping them into three-inch patties, dropping them gently into medium-hot oil. The kiss as they lie down, give up the ghost, toast away into perfect scaffolding for sour cream and chives. So why am I telling you about this genetic aberration, one that she cannot escape, one for which there is no cure? She clasps her heritage with pewter talons, and clicks her heels together in perfect time, shoving the pumpernickel over the kitchen counter, and slapping three slices of muenster onto the carving board. “Now you can make your sandwich,” she says. I predicted this situation three years ago. It’s evening primrose popping from tightly wound whorls into lemon night. I understand in my own skin, how to cut it, roll it up, spread it across thick bread, with butter. I will not burn it to ash. I will not worship it. I will not claim to understand it like lightning. It is art in a cast iron skillet, short-lived and guttural, raw and demanding. It is time for me to earn points for learning her language.

Whether John Dorroh taught any secondary science is still being discussed. However, he managed to show up every morning at 6:45 for a couple of decades with at least two lesson plans and a thermos of robust Colombian. His poetry has appeared in about 75 journals, including Dime Show Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Os Pressan, Feral, Selcouth Station, and Red Dirt Forum/Press. He also writes short fiction and the occasional rant.

It Really is Just About the Maquillage,
I think

I loiter around my face
each stroke of a cosmetic pencil
redefining an eyebrow, an eyelash
a life
there is a morbid satisfaction
in this intimacy of self with self
to put on powders and mascara
a spell earmarked for internal dialogue
my own reflection as close as any lover
I don’t like my true face
but there is delight in this slow pace
the ownership of stolen time
the rote recipe
first the moisturizer
each brush with purpose even destination
a potential to reveal
anything at first not seen

Brewer’s or Grackle

Euphagus cyanocephalus or
Quiscalus  niger?

I’m always home, but wistfulness follows
me as tail feathers on a bird—a Brewer’s blackbird
they cluster on the wooden broken fence
near our reeds— males with their curious yellow eyes

that seem to shift lost crevices inside of me,
their iridescent heads —that purple shimmer
on oil stain green takes me back
to a childhood of tropical rain, Fichus trees,

and a plaza filled with the chinchilín song
of his cousin—an ecological equivalent—
the Antillean Grackle
Could I beg for a similar fortune?

If my wish were granted, the child in me would run
unabashed after that long tailed chango
the perfect name for a silly bird that shows off
his large family—a gatherer full of mischief,

but the Grackle is not here in this colder climate
here the aloof Brewer’s, secretive but for singing
his own cacophonous song to his immediate brood
I can sense he doesn’t feel the loss of home

unlike me, his home is home —where the nest rests
its twiggy cup near brothers and sisters
a loose colony of familiar ancestry—my jealousy
at least for this summer, for this breeding season

Amelia Díaz Ettinger is a ‘Mexi-Rican,’ born in México but raised in Puerto Rico. As a BIPOC poet and writer, she has two full-length poetry books published: Learning to Love a Western Sky by Airlie Press, and a bilingual poetry book, Speaking at a Time /Hablando a la Vez by Redbat Press. Also, a poetry chapbook, Fossils in a Red Flag by Finishing Line Press, 2021. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies.

On Digging, a Response
to Seamus Heaney

As I stoop to pluck
a stubborn weed root,
I hear the rough scratch
of pen tip against paper
through the upstairs window.

The soil gives way much easier
in this pensioner’s garden.
The reward for forty long years
of digging potatoes and peat farming.

I hear a pause above,
followed by the muffled shuffle to the window.
I bend to drive the spade again;
my son thinks I was not listening.

Go and pen your works, son.
I knew potato farming wasn’t in you.
But my secret is this:
I dug potatoes so you wouldn’t have to.

Jamie Gergen is a poet, author, and graduate student at George Mason University in Virginia. He has worked in poetry, non-fiction, and fiction genres with poetry being his most developed genre. His poetry and fiction have been published in The Front Porch Review and Volition Magazine.