Journal

Corvid

Crows, they say, know more than we do
about what we’re like when we think
no one is watching. A gliding shadow
that barely registers on the rim of our consciousness,
they observe us from above
with passive, alien minds.
Unlike most birds, who are driven
to the sky as trees are reassembled
into houses, crows thrive off our presence.
They raid our trash cans and build
their nests on telephone poles. They love to watch
our heads through windows and mutter secrets
about the things we throw away.
At night, we sleep underneath the patter-scratch
of claws on rooftop shingles
as they supervise our dreams, as they catalog
all these imprints of a life
we don’t even know we’re making.

Benediction

Chuck used to be a principal,
thinks I am his student. He folds
the daily newspaper in perfect
right angles. He squeezes my shoulder
and tells me I’ve done well today,
his voice steeped in certainty.
Flo is roaming in her wheelchair;
failing eyes blur as she halts
before each door, searching for one
that leads back to her summer beach house,
before the sea moved in. She turns to ask
if I know the way.
Jim’s weathered mouth lifts as he watches
young caregivers hurry from room to room.
He stands up tall as his mind takes him back
to days spent carousing in streetside brothels,
calls, Come and get me, ladies;
I’m ready, I’m waiting for you.
Celeste’s voice quavers through an empty doorway.
Help me, I’m sick. I’m sick. I don’t know
what to do. No long-dead parent
murmurs comfort at her bedside.
Bob peers from his room, clad in a nightshirt
tucked perfectly into his Depends. No wrinkles.
God bless you, his taut lips fumble
the familiar refrain. God bless you all;
God bless you and keep you in His mercy,
God bless you and goodnight.

Amanda Hiland grew up hiking through old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. She teaches Special Education by day and is a major astronomy enthusiast at night. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Passengers, Epiphany, Cathexis, New Plains Review, and Timberline Review. She can often be found sipping chai tea at the intersection of art and science, and her poetry reflects and embraces this duality.

A Memory of Dublin Upon Hearing
of the Death of Seamus Heaney

Heaney is dead
and the Irish will
write the epilogue as is
right and fitting for so
great a man.

Upon the news that I saw
in The Times today I
recalled a word or two
of his that brought me
back to the Dublin of one
long fall ago while first
walking up O’Connell Street,
then turning to the bank of
the downstream flow of
the Liffey.

Seeing there the Monks,
brown Franciscans, they were
ladling the morning oats while
handing out their thick bread
along with the fantasy that is
eternity into the mouths of
the terribly poor.

Not the modern Ireland
then, there literally was a
tinker that morning exposing
her breast to me,
with a tiny one clinging
there, and begging alms
on St Stephens Green as I
thought they may have done on
Bloomsday or even on that far
more distant day when that bright
copy of the Book of Kells first
came to Trinity.

In 1972 it was still an ancient Catholic
place, without the charm of Rome,
and the rage was on then to kill,
in some quarters, a random English
soldier up north.

That drunken night,
in the hotel bar on
Denmark Street, around the
corner from the Sinn Fein,
I heard the rage and justification
for acts so foul that I lost
all illusions about the transcendent
beauty of their language and saw
everything there was to see of
their other side.

I heard the drum and smelled the
body paint of a primitive, most
primitive, tribe.

Being Ireland of course
it wasn’t all
that way.
In the same bar
where the death
threats flew and my life
was seemingly at risk for
suggesting that bombing pubs
was criminal, was Bridget,
who tended bar but looked
too young to do so,
And lovely lady that she was, she
Told me that they were “Just Drunk”,
“Didn’t Mean It”, and would forget
all about it come morning.

Late, quite unexpectedly,
the very next night
when, after dealing with my
hangover, I closed the place
down yet again, she ever so
sweetly grabbed my hand and
walked me across the street to a
tiny top floor flat,
smiling broadly, whispering softly
as we went up those stairs,
“Now, you promise not to make
me pregnant now boy,
don’t you.”

Heaney has died and the Liffey flows
as generations know that, in truth, that
the simplest word is sometimes best,
as the convolutions of one time
sire the next.

After a long hiatus and residence overseas, John Huey returned the United States and to writing in 2011. Since then, he has appeared in numerous online and print journals as well as three anthologies. A fourth anthologized piece will appear soon. His full-length collection, The Moscow Poetry File, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2017. www.john-huey.com 

Luckiamute August

‌     You are a mirror
‌     Marbled refractions waver the underside
Trees are flashed with green sun
‌     You are a log
‌     Yawning suddenly beneath the surface then are gone
In the trench deeper than dreams
‌     You hum a line into the shadow’s morning water
‌     Patiently wait for us
Beneath the taciturn bridge’s occasional whispers

 

Marc Janssen lives in a house with a wife who likes him and a cat who loathes him. Regardless of that turmoil, his poetry can be found scattered around the world in places like Penumbra, Slant, Cirque Journal, Off the Coast and Poetry Salzburg. Janssen also coordinates the Salem Poetry Project, a weekly reading, the annual Salem Poetry Festival, and was a 2020 nominee for Oregon Poet Laureate.

After the Memorial

From files of past lives, the smell
of mouse-urined letters, I hear again
the lassos of ornery laughs looping
the living room circle, the dusty rug,
the dusty antlered head pegged
into the wall. An attendance
of old vanities, thrashings of old ales
and laws. I feel again the tension
in the stones of the dry irrigation ditch,
the crunch of alabaster gravel, recall
how I swallowed the knots, hiked
the switches along a delicate divide
between cliff ridge and gravity.

Memil

Let’s climb back on the Metro bus
in front of your house
on Bloomington Avenue South,
ride downtown,

buy me another
white paper sack of lemon drops
from Dayton’s candy counter,
come back for pepperkakor

in your kitchen, and show me now,
since I didn’t ask you then,
how you roll the ginger dough
so thin,

spread butter on lefse
with your white hands,
bake your raisin cake, yulekake,
Swedish sausage.

And while uncles watch a Twins game
on Saturday afternoon,
their cigar smoke rings wavering
across your twilit living room,

teach me again at your baby grand
about the tonic and dominant,
MacDowell’s “To a Wild Rose”,
Mozart’s childhood.

Let’s plant more peonies
behind your kitchen door
near Oscar’s garden,
the pink ones perfuming the air.

And feed me another spoonful of honey
along the white staircase
where rain-watered violets
reflect your face.

Karen Jones is a teacher, poet, and life-long learner from Corvallis, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in a number of publications, most recently in Windfall, Cirque, and The Poeming Pigeon’s “Pop Culture”. Her chapbook, Seasons of Earth and Sky (Finishing Line Press), was published in 2020.

For the Pulp Fiction Writer of the Forties
Who Published under Pseudonyms

–in memory of Don James

The stars could have told me when you died
but so many flashed half-facts and lies.
None of your friends said a word of truth
and to them it seemed forgivable.

So many flashes of half-facts and lies:
the newspapers did what they always do
and to some it seemed forgivable.
Had I known, I would have cried that night.

The newspapers did what they always do–
they forgot your novels and your stories.
Had I known, I could have cried that night–
losing you meant more to me than stargazing.

Everyone forgot about your novels and your stories
and later told silly anecdotes about your mistress.
Losing you meant more to me than stargazing
but the cold stars moved on and away.

Later your friends told silly anecdotes
without a word of truth.
The cold stars moved on and away–
they should have told me when you died.

 

Each Loss

announces itself like a tsunami
slamming rice paper and wood riven

from angry sea scapes
before the outgoing tide

or the green-sky musky tornado
rains flay the most elegant oak

and then comes day after day
that low drip of vitality

that robs the sunny day of gleam
to turn it harsh and naked,

erodes a familiar path
you thought you walked.

Once or twice you forget
the leaks until some stretch

after–then you remember what
you had that brought you joy.

 

Tricia Knoll moved to Vermont from Oregon three years ago. Her work appears widely in journals and anthologies. Her recent chapbook Checkered Mates is now available from Kelsay Books. Website: triciaknoll.com