Journal

One Winter Night in Maine

We trudged up the hill to Malcolm’s field in our mittens, woolen coats,
scarves snugged at our throats, the cold a biting 10 degrees —
only the silhouettes of his dairy herd watching, tails slowly swishing
as if waiting for coming revelations,
the sky like a hammered tin lantern with the stars wheeling round and round
the blades of your ice skates, the pond circular, too, in the middle
of the Jersey herd, their dark, liquid eyes reflecting glimmers from above
and from below your whirling feet carving diamonds in the ice, your smile
drawing us in as you swooped and swirled.
We were transported by silence and light from a million finger tips
reflecting a horizon like black ocean, the air so brilliantly frozen
it hugged our very core, every minute sound revolving in hushed whispers,
in anticipation of a sort of holiness, the beauty of quiet, soft breaths
and no one else within our own private galaxy,
glistening like ice within the heavens.

Susan Woods Morse grew up in California and then moved to Maine in the early 1980’s. After thirty years of shoveling snow, she moved to the Willamette Valley in 2016 and loves it! Susan is currently a member of the OPA and of Mid Valley Poetry Society. She frequently participates in readings at the Salem Poetry Project. In the Hush, published by Finishing Line Press (2019), is her first chapbook, but individual poems have appeared in various journals such as Cream City Review, The Mom Egg, Sixfold, Amethyst Review, Willawaw Journal and Aji Magazine.

Moonlight

Moon’s a farrier affixing
Shoes to the underside of
Leaves, steel-bright, twirling
On shafts, fastened by wind,
Some steal away running
Barefoot towards gardens
And those that remain turn
And glisten, horse-shake
In mid-air, as if they were
Unharnessed and about to
Traverse and nick the upper
Boughs on their way towards
Heaven. Shadows cover the
Lower branches like a leather
Apron and stone walls and
Fields appear littered with
Discarded instruments of
Brightened metal, some
Half hidden by waves of
Uncombed grass flowing
Past the tilted teeth of fence-
Posts towards lower ground
Where they flicker before
Their silent pour into an
Open wound of water

A life-long resident of Connecticut, John Muro is a graduate of Trinity College, Wesleyan University, and the University of Connecticut. His first volume of poems, In the Lilac Hour, was published last fall by Antrim House and is available on Amazon. John’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in numerous literary journals, including Moria, Sheepshead, Euphony, River Heron, Clementine Unbound, Third Wednesday and The French Literary Review.

 

At My Door a Beggar

    Eyes asking for plenty,
seeing I have enough,
he stands in the doorway
‌    graceful in his rags.

‌    I have enough to share.
I face my abundance,
his gracefulness, his rags.
‌    Can I give what he asks

‌    from my abundance?
He’s unbroken in his silence,
asking me to give
‌    a morning no longer mine.

‌    I’m broken in the silence,
lean away, smell what is
no longer mine: morning,
‌    breakfast, tonight’s bed.

‌    I lean away, but he smells
like music, forgotten yet
familiar as breakfast, bedtime.
‌    Arms outstretched, he’s here

‌    with music unforgotten,
here to take nothing,
long arms outstretched
‌    inviting me to dance.

‌    He’s here to take nothing,
eyes asking for plenty,
inviting me to the dance.
‌    I stand in the doorway

 

Ione O’Hara has taught English as a Second Language at a local community college and at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She has facilitated poetry workshops, volunteered as a writing teacher in elementary schools, and has been awarded an Arts & Science Regional Artist Grant. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The title of her chapbook is A Passing Certainty.

Listening to the Katy Train

The back yard was where my mother
hung laundry out to dry between two crosses,
her homesickness and our shabby house;
where my father nursed his weariness alone
and hid the empties under the trash.

Between our lot and the Katy tracks,
tangled, scabby apple trees went feral.
That was where I found near-sightedness,
squinting through an air rifle’s notched iron,
the blurred distance closing in.

I was eleven the year Stalin died
in his own cramped quarters in the Kremlin.
Fixing supper, I heard the news on radio.
That night, beyond the ruined orchard,
the Katy train blared and rumbled out
to open country, shaking earth.

John Palen has poems forthcoming in Delmarva Review and Spoon River Poetry Review. A three-time Pushcart nominee, he recently received his first Best of the Net nomination from Sheila-Na-Gig. Mayapple Press brought out his most recent book, Distant Music, in 2017. He lives on the Illinois Grand Prairie.

Spessart Forest Near Fulda, 1977

–with a line drawn from Charles Swinbourne (Hendecasyllabics)

Last night I dreamed Hansel and Gretal knocked
on my door. They asked for water, for shelter.
In the month of the long decline of roses
I overcame my distrust. In their pink cheeks, their
blue eyes, I saw the ones I’d lost. In their blond
curls I remembered silky hair I’d caressed,
tied into long braids. I ushered them in, asked
their names, took their coats, served them broth, piled up straw
for their beds. Through the steam and the candle light
a trick of the eye lulled my fears. I thought I
glimpsed my own beloveds, now lost. I offered them
the dolls, the carved horse, the silver hoop. I showed
them the porcelain cup, the fur hats. I ignored
glinting eyes, sidelong glances, jabbing elbows.

The townsfolk thought I burned to death. That’s what I
heard the girl tell the boy after they pushed me
into the basement. I crawled through the coal cellar
trapdoor before the floors collapsed. I hid under
bracken and ferns, gathered branches and herbs, washed
in streams, patched my shoes with tree bark, ate berries, slept rough.

This morning I stand at the cottage door, wooden
spoon in hand. Becassine, our black Belgian shepherd
stretches out on the floor. A family of
wild boar dashes into the clearing, picks up
Becassine’s scent, turns tail. A woodpecker tap taps
high in a Douglas fir. I tie back my dark
curly hair, stir the stew, add garlic, pepper.

Thin high voices of children singing ride the
wind. They troop single file into the glade, settle
into a circle, unwrap sandwiches. Becassine
dozes on the stone threshold, her black ears point
toward the glade. After lunch, the children play catch.
They spot the cottage, sidle up to stare. Becassine
lifts her head, silent. The children crane necks, try
to peek inside. I retreat into the shadows.
My fingers tighten around the wooden spoon.
I am a dark curly-haired woman with a
black dog alone in Spessart forest near Fulda.

Vivienne Popperl lives in Portland, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in Clackamas Literary Review, Timberline Review, Cirque, Rain Magazine, Poeming Pigeon, and other publications. She was poetry co-editor for the Fall 2017 edition of VoiceCatcher. She received both second place and an honorable mention in the Willamette Writers 2021 Kay Snow Awards in poetry.