Journal

Birches in November

None have been swung here along route two
in the Berkshires. Maybe the boys all sit inside
not up to but on their own devices, and the girls
have never flipped and sunned their wet tresses
after shampoo but make do with blow dryers.

And yet we do see birches, are struck with seeing them,
standing so erect in stands, so bright white and slim,
so many skinny fingers reaching up at higher treetops.
Such a cold light they reflect, as does the Golden Eagle
on the hairpin turn, a U-ie so sharp, it’s a “V.”

I like to think then of when we rode the train
through Altoona and the conductor woke us
to see ourselves coming and going at the same time,
which is what we all are doing every minute,
what we do today, heading for a funeral in Fitchburg,

then turning around tonight, toward Youngstown for Thanksgiving.

 

After 40 years away, Diane Kendig has moved into the home her father built with his own hands in Canton, Ohio in 1947. She has published five poetry collections, most recently Prison Terms. Co-editor of In the Company of Russell Atkins, Kendig founded the prison writing program at Lima Correctional Institution and now curates a blog of 4,000 subscribers, “Read + Write: 30 Days of Poetry” for National Poetry Month. Her website is dianekendig.com

Delivery

Birds and shadows of birds cross the yard,
and the yard is everything now.
The wasps have moved in to build a nest
in the old picnic bench.
I like their busy work.

The buzz and sound of distant planes has become
the whirring of the earth.
I am aging myself with my face to the sun.
Warm cells decay and I will look more like my mother
every day. I did things today I’d meant for so long.

You are here, finally, coming up the walk to see
my unfinished ways, my animal appearance.
I will come halfway to meet you.

And you will drop your burden
just a few moments sooner than had I stayed
young inside the house.

 

Maude Lustig lives in Seattle and is a recent graduate of Whitman College. She was the humor editor for her college’s paper, The Wire, and published a personal essay on loneliness for their annual magazine, Circuit. This is the first time her poetry has been published. 

Grandmom

Do you remember that day in the garden
under the red elderberry tree?
We were digging worms for fishing, their bed fertile
with coffee grounds, and I wouldn’t quit throwing
more and more fistfuls of rich dirt into the rusted Maxwell can,
even when you said it was too much, until finally
you told Grandad I needed a whipping,
and he grunted his agreement.

You never laid a hand on me, but I couldn’t forgive you.
I thought I was your favorite, after all. You taught me
how to iron a man’s shirt, how to kill and pick a chicken.
You told me, “Ladies don’t show their teeth when they smile,”
and “Don’t play with Maria next door–she’s Mexican.”
You said someday I’d be a scientist, Susan just a clown.

When you came home for the last time and lay
in your hospital bed in the middle of the dining room,
your eyes big with black and yellow bruises,
I couldn’t go to you when you rang your bell.
I slipped silent out the back porch,
held the screen door so it wouldn’t slam,
pretended not to hear.

Mama didn’t make me go to your funeral.
Later all the people came over to stand in the dining room
and eat the food spread across the table, all your lady friends
in print dresses, stockings with straight, black seams, heavy shoes.
I ate some raspberry crumble, and it was dry in my mouth.

And I thought it so odd the next day, washing our clothes
at the Laundromat. Grandad came along, and there
between the washers and dryers, he started to play hopscotch,
a sad kind of smile on his face, jumping stiff and heavy
in boxes painted on the concrete floor.

 

Eleni Mays has lived in Western Oregon for four decades.  Her poetry has appeared in a number of journals including Willawaw Journal, Earth’s Daughters, and Plum Tree Tavern.  

 

Internal Combustion

There can be nothing
but these hands

fastened to the steering
wheel, these eyes

flickering from the
sheet metal

salmon upstream
to the rear-view mirror

in which I have lost
myself, feather

dust on the trigger finger.
In which I go

blind, snuffed out
completely. There can be

nothing else, nothing
spilled. No furtive

sip. No finger slip
even to silence

the alarm ringing
in my ears.

My spark plug sets fire
to the engine

over a hundred times
a second. Flinch,

flash, swerve. Arrive,
if driven, riven.

A part of you still in
the car is racing.

Cameron Morse lives with his wife, Lili, and two children in Independence, Missouri. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Baldy (Spartan Press, 2020). He holds an MFA from the University of Kansas City, Missouri and serves as a poetry editor at Harbor Review and the poetry editor at Harbor Editions.   

Squealing Garlic, Sacrificial Beans

Mid-sixties, north of Bangkok, midday heat.
I’m in third grade and trying to concentrate—
light-headed and lethargic, breathing in—
not understanding why we have to wait,
but waiting anyway. Mom’s the teacher,
so no fidgeting. And something tight
has settled in my chest—the sharpness of
a smell of strangeness, more than simple pangs
of hunger. Just next door, the drying skins
of freshly butchered hogs, tricycled in,
are being stacked by swearing, sweating men.
Mom hates the flies that batter on our screens.
Over the wooden transom, I can hear
the cleaver’s mighty judgment on the block,
and wonder if we’re having beef or pork.
In battle, with her metal spatula,
our energetic cook attacks the wok,
slashing through rising charcoal smoke and steam.
It seems I hear the garlic squeal in pain,
then leaping, hissing, sacrificial beans.
Outside and overhead, a hardened sun
has hammered tightly down a giant dome
that traps the town, the house, the wok and me.
Primordially, a single turgid fly
investigates my arm, and I “don’t have
the oomph,” as Mom would say, to wave or blow
this dirty little so-and-so away.
Then suddenly, the garlic and the beans
release some aromatic promises
that briefly overwhelm the tannery,
and it is time for lunch, and my release.
It’s taken fifty years to find the words—
but sounds and heat and pungency remain.

 

Dan Overgaard was born and raised in Thailand. He attended Westmont College, dropped out, moved to Seattle, became a transit operator, then managed transit technology projects and programs. He’s now retired, and his poems have appeared in The High Window, Canary Lit Mag, Stickman Review, Allegro Poetry, Triggerfish Critical Review and elsewhere. Read more at: danovergaard.com.