Journal

Graveyard Shift

A drought all of April,
I’d left the windows open,
but overnight, May thunderstorms
wettened the toile curtains
and made them limp, and left stains
on half-rolled window shades
I knew I’d never get out,
old, yellowed, and crinkly
hard paper that they were.

I found comfort when children
wailed their first morning cries
and dying newspapers slapped
driveways of houses down the street.
Swallows that used an old
irrigation pipe to raise their young
circled looking for insects.
Ravens that the day before
raised one foot at a time
on the asphalt now danced
in four-four time and lolled
in puddles formed in potholes.

As I look from the driveway, I know
someday you and I will dance like this,
when pumps are tapped but dry.
You will greet me from the graveyard shift
and we will pour my remaining water
still cool in the steel-clad thermos
into the tin metal basin on the porch
and rinse our feet while the ravens soar.

Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California, spending the seasons dodging fires, floods, earth-shaking, and all the other scrambling life-initiatives. He has contributed to Heartwood, Tiny Seeds Journal, Vita Poetica, and Willows Wept Review. He has a chapbook for free download at Red Wolf Editions and a second chapbook available from Red Bird Chapbooks.

How to Get to the Sky

At the head of any trail, I find myself
giving in to their call, this one along the West Fork of the Wallowa. It says ever
forward, ever higher, ever green. I used to like to think
I don’t give up easily, but this once
endless desire now lips a river shore that no longer seems mine. You see, my feet
don’t stay long enough in places to give
names, so I’ve been wondering what the Nez Perce word is for
everything.
Would their words tumble down this canyon a different story? This morning is
wild, all berry clutter and slate water rushing, runnels fray
like yarn ends, reaching for the lake’s quiet
exhale. Until then, they just want to be heard. I do wonder by who.
I start to holler, “Hey, Bear, Hey,” it sounds like dawn, new and never heard
before. My own voice listened to. Here’s the thing, I am
not afraid of bears, nor coming rain. I am afraid of wordlessness. Of silent,
unpronounceable things, unheard but in the heart, a muscle not unlike
the tongue, which you can teach to twist and bend like a trail, or talk.
Last night, I heard stories of the world’s richest man launching himself into space.
We said wicked, we said waste. But stories of a girl who tried
to touch the moon? Darling, even daring, her dreams. I’ve always followed
the call to the top, to the point, beyond the bend, to the
end. Once there, the land asks, But where did you come from? It will always
matter—the words used on the way back down. I assume this cascading
water yearns for the lap of the lake, but perhaps, some of it
routes into roots, slips earthward, along the way. Perhaps it gets to the sky
through the leaves.

Claire Cella grew up in the wilds of New York’s Catskill Mountains before moving west to become a graphic designer for a conservation nonprofit in a small Wyoming town. She likes to write poetry very early in the morning—a habit she developed many years ago as an undergraduate English student. Her poetry has appeared in Pilgrimage and Gleam, is forthcoming in Cream City Review and Deep Wild Journal, and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2023. Among other things, she runs trails and lives in a tiny house.

Last night it started raining

‌     —After CMarie Fuhrman

I paddle my canoe out from the shoreline
‌     in weakening daylight. Mayflies shimmy
their Mobius mating flight. Molten gold evening
‌     darkens to aubergine. Eddies echo a single loon’s
wild call flowing on air currents.

The lone bird, waterborne, trusts what to me
‌     is terrifying night—the lake’s surface
only a reflection of the universe—my canoe’s
‌     weight slight as a milkweed pod, my body
the leftover floss of eons of nighttimes.

Rain, at first a few patters, begins a samba—
‌     tip-toeing, delicate as a water insect’s touchdown.
Deep below our earth turns—spinning down
‌     and lower down to the ruddy core.

My sisters and I dance the ecstatic dance of our youth.
‌     From four sharp compass points we sway in unison—
‌Atlantic and Pacific shushing waves our chorus.
‌    ‌Kelp forests undulate with our aging bodies
sea creatures blossom in deep-sea canyons.

Night becomes us. Bathed in starlight, we harbor
‌     inland, our mother still with us. How will it end,
‌this dream of forever? A few more nights of wonder—
‌     a miracle to circle back into each other’s arms.

‌Rain, a torrent now, beats its drum in time to washed stars.
‌     Even in this deluge, I float on water
dark as licorice night and my quiet canoe drifts
‌     toward the opposite shore.

Dale Champlin is an Oregon poet with an MFA in fine art. Many of her poems have appeared in The Opiate, Timberline Review, Willawaw, CatheXis, and other publications. Her poetry collections are: The Barbie Diaries, Callie Comes of Age, Isadora, and Andromina: A Stranger in America.

Dreaming of Eucalyptus

‌          Send me a postcard when you get there
‌          Give me a ring when you get back.

Come spring we’ll get away from all this
and find some old island of sun and rock
in the loose weave of a hammock breeze
until we feel summer embalming us
‌          and dream of eucalyptus.

You’ll be fragrant as a peach split by the sun
I’ll be pale shade for black island sand.
Stripped of our secrets and calm pretenses
we’ll dive deep and startle the Cycladean sea
‌          and dream of eucalyptus.

Because you love the full moon God would
screw in a new lightbulb every night,
learn to speak Greek again, give up
modern ethics for ancient aesthetics
‌          and dream of eucalyptus.

Promise never to forget yourself again
or the days when you were my next of sin.
I’ll remind myself you can never be mine,
and rebody myself from time to time
‌          and dream only of you.

Richard Collins is a Zen monk who lives in Sewanee, Tennessee. Born in Eugene, he graduated in English from the University of Oregon. He has taught at universities in the US, Wales, Romania, and Bulgaria. His recent poetry appears in MockingHeart Review, Northridge Review, Shō Poetry Journal, Think, and Urthona. His books include No Fear Zen (Hohm Press, 2015) and a translation of Taisen Deshimaru’s Autobiography of a Zen Monk (Hohm Press, 2022).

Baby Demerol Gets Set Adrift

As I kicked, punched, and swam in amniotic fluid
The nurse asked my mother, do you need Demerol?
First child, extra-long labor, pain—yes, YES! All this shit?
It’d better be a boy. She calmed; her brain broke for lunch
But delusions confused and muddled her name quest

At Big G, Boyle Heights, 1951.
Rayon reminded her of fabric; Kingsford sounded
Like charcoal. It’d better be a boy. Girls are
So, so—Nameless for months, she summoned Ronnie
From the depths of a movie memory.
‌                                                                   Ronnie

Is leaf blade-shaped, leafstalk, stipules, photosynthesis,
Maybe a Hebrew joy or future Scottish king.
Dowell is Irish for son of the dark stranger,
Perhaps a slave master’s nanny and concubine.

There’s no Congo, Bantu, or Cameroon Ronnies,
Some Kofis.
‌                                       Dowells populate Tennessee.

My name is to die for, bless my soul. Mother’s joy.
My name is Watts, like Towers. My name is Compton,
Like troubled. My name is Palm Lane Public Housing
Fused to explode on the border between the two.|

Lee, my middle name, asked the first and last
How in hell did I get stuck between two fuck ups?
People always mispronounce Dowell—Do well—Dial
Doughwell——never Ronald, once Ronnie, I’m now Ron,
which sounds sexy when murmured or whispered naked.

Lil Black, RD, Red Devil, and Ron-Ron; better
Nicknames than Pootchie, Hickey, Spot, Skillet, or boy.
Ron renamed—reinvented, and evolutionary.

Ron L. Dowell floats like a verse in cyberspace.

Ron L. Dowell wrote Watts UpRise, a poetry collection released by World Stage Press in 2022. A very public love letter to Watts, Los Angeles, the collection honors its most notable artistic landmark, the Watts Towers, and its creator, Sabato Rodia. Watts UpRise is a finalist for the 2022 Press 53 Award for Poetry, and a featured poem, “Compton, An Energy-Fueled Dark Star,” was nominated for a 2021 Pushcart Prize. Ron’s poetry resides in Penumbra, Writers Resist, Oyster Rivers Pages, North Dakota Quarterly, The Wax Paper, Kallisto Gaia Press, The Penmen Review, Packingtown Review-Journal, and The Poeming Pigeon.