Willawaw Journal

Online Poetry & Art

Journal

Mike Wilson

Directions to Canaan

Passports from other worlds
are used to travel this one
passports issued in foreign tongues
unheard by ordered understanding
whisper to sleepers in forgotten dreams.
Oh Holy Subconscious!
To Thee I bow,
Sustainer of the game, Your rules curving
out of reach, creating a miracle of trust,
each creature treading earth’s crust
a satellite of the center miles below.
Two poles and a swing between-–
a sign, if only we knew.

Light Behind a Blind

–in the manner of Emily Dickinson

Behind a blind a light switched on–
too dim for me to see
who stirred upstairs before the dawn
and rose invisibly.
Did the sleeper face the day
unwillingly, with dread–
or race past clock time, keen to say
the song inside her head?
Our parts are just our history
but–still–we read them cold.
Deep into this mystery–
what light could crack the mold?
Worm-wise warblers tweet and twerk
the news–pellucent Spring!
We fly by faith–it’s always worked–
like them, we flap our wings.

Mike Wilson, a writer living in Lexington, Kentucky, has had work published in small magazines including Appalachian Heritage, Solidago, Frogpond, Cagibi, Stoneboat, and The Aurorean.

Buff Whitman-Bradley

Looking for Chekhov

Somewhere near Odessa
In 1900, I think it was,
But possibly not,
You know how
In memory’s paper bag
Everything gets jumbled together
And when you smack it with a stick
It all comes spilling out
Willy-nilly and higgledy-piggledy.

 

Anyhow, somewhere near Odessa
In perhaps 1900 or thereabouts
I boarded a midnight train
My portmanteau stuffed
With collarless shirts
And shirtless collars
One silk neck scarf
And my fine wool suit.
I was hoping, as you might not
Be surprised to learn,
To run into dear old Anton Chekhov
Who, it was rumored,
Frequently frequented
The midnight train running every other day
Between somewhere near Odessa
And somewhere near Moscow
In the neighborhood of 1900-ish.

 

You see, I wanted to tell Antosha
(If I might be so bold)
How very much I admired
All of his writings
And in particular how the shocking moment
In his story “In the Ravine,”
Soon to be published
(If it was indeed 1900)
When Aksinya pours a bucket of boiling water
Over the infant Nikifor,
About how that soul-shattering moment
Exploded and expanded in my head
Like a hydrogen bomb and its mushroom cloud
Until it became the size
Of all space and time
And how it remains thus within me still.

 

With no sign of Anton Pavlovich anywhere
I did some asking around and learned
That 1: He spent very little time in Odessa
And 2: He never once traveled on the Gorky Express
Between somewhere near Odessa
And somewhere near Moscow.
Deeply disappointed
I sagged into my first-class berth
With a snifter of brandy
And watched forlornly out the window
As occasional lights in the vast countryside flashed by
And snow began to fall all over Russia.
Somewhere in Moscow
The carriage driver Iona Potapov
Was telling his passenger
About the death of his son
As snow flakes settled into his beard
And tears froze on his cheeks
While the passenger remained oblivious.
Somewhere in Moscow
The exhausted servant girl Varka
Was trying to calm a colicky baby
When finally, desperate for her own sleep
She strangled the infant
Then sank deep into slumber
On a dreamless Russian winter night.

 

Buff Whitman-Bradley’s poems have been published widely in both print and online journals.  His most recent book is Crows with Bad Writing.  His podcast of poems reflecting on aging, memory, and mortality, “Third Act Poems,” can be found here.

Johann Van der Walt

Disintegrate

 I step off onto the tarmac
And my identity evaporates into the rush of wind
The cogs and bolts that define me
Suddenly irrelevant in this place
My lungs are filled with my stories
Words this country doesn’t care to swallow
So I dream
I pretend that there are butterflies around me
They know what was left behind
A slab of concrete becomes the law
The uniform that approaches me is what I fear
From spending Christmas with my family
Watching willows weep into the wild rivers
Mountain winds whispering secrets into soil
To a city that never sleeps
I came here for a better life
than my minority blood
would have allowed back home
There is a cancer with my name on it
Violence and hatred call out to my kin
In me you see a refugee, an inconvenience
the stranger who disrupts your economy
And all I have are my memories
Losing myself completely along this journey
So I can smell flowers without blood
And walk in a park without the looming chants of war

 

Johann Van der Walt, a South African born citizen, has published poetry in journals locally and internationally. He is also the winner of the L’Art Poetique: Ingrid Jonker 2019 Poetry competition and has written two children’s books – Bhubesi & Frankie Learns To Fly. Van der Walt will make his American debut with a new chapbook, This Road Doesn’t Lead Home, forthcoming in 2020.

Don Thompson

Coffee Break

Her paleo grimace and a mummy’s differ
in degree, not kind.
Toothless for decades, but still not grizzled.
Her coarse hair’s dense as Tule mats,
and her frock must’ve been washed out
when she got it—cast off
polka dots that mean nothing to the blind.

Now a bewildered child guides her
to a farmhouse stoop
where she barters bay leaves
for coffee—not black,
but half sugar and thickened
with an embalmer’s dollop of cream.

 

Don Thompson has been writing about the San Joaquin Valley for over fifty years, including a dozen or so books and chapbooks. Recently he has been concentrating on the Yokuts, the indigenous people of the region. For more info and links to publishers, visit his website. 

Joanne Townsend

Somewhere Near Odessa, 1900

In the low light by the river
my grandparents, so young,
stand in shabby coats and worn shoes.
The bridge casts violet shadows on their fear,
on the pine trees and frigid cold,
the black rage of Russia
an underlying hiss.
He knows he will leave,
the spoken goodbyes harder than hunger,
the thirst deep in him.
He will work and save,
send for her and the children.
He sees her tears and turns away,
his restless mind already in flight,
his feet tapping, tracks
that will fade to memory.

On the way to America,
those cold damp nights on the Rotterdam,
he hears the fading colors of their voices,
diminishing wave lengths, the tossing ship
and the shock of the lonely dark.

Go to the Poet Laureate Prompts for a short bio. of Joanne Townsend.

Lynda Tavakoli

The Reach

He lays a map upon the table
fingering their long journey
from the smudge of home
and stabs red-lined borders
that thread like arteries over the creases.
He does not want his children to forget.

 

His touch finds the place
they should now call home–
this wound on the paper
where their healing can begin
and where every voyage taken
gives promise of a new life.

 

Yet his head harbors lists
reluctant to recede, grievances
as infinite as time passing in foreign tongues,
remembered losses that may still break him
and an ache for the land left hungry and alone,
withering into a sort of history.

 

This is their future now, reached
by the single span of a hand across a map.
He will pleat his sorrow into its folds,
pocketing the past in that place
where every road must surely lead
and only the persistent heart can finally know.

 

Lynda Tavakoli has the good fortune to spend half the year in Northern Ireland (where she was born) and the other half in the Middle East. She is author of two novels and a short story anthology but is presently working towards her debut poetry collection. Her poems have been widely published in Europe and further afield, having most recently been translated into Farsi, her husband’s native tongue.