Willawaw Journal

Ode to Night Poems

The many hands of possibility lift me from bed,
carry me out into the small hours as I rise and walk
to the back of the house, crack the window, let
night seep in, drop an orange extension cord out
onto stone pavings, hook a lamp under my elbow,
smell the cold night in the opened door
and walk out to the patio table.

I see the eyes of a sleepy cat under the azaleas,
plug in the lamp.  There’s a thrill to the body
in this time of quiet and solitude, world’s work
hours of noir detectives and burglars, where, here,
gentle shadows through tall pines in mist gowns
of moonlight suggest, only, a larger world — this
time before time, time of elective mutism of
birds, except the owl, his soft call to other owls
the only noise above my lampshade’s cone of light.

Where night’s invisible heart sits so still on the earth
no one could want the sun to come, kill the ceiling
of silent stars, certainly not a poet with pen who
can see the past, imagine the future while a sleeping
cat dreams at the edge of lamplight — until daybreak’s
laughter at the corner school bus stop, the starter’s
brrr jump in a neighbor’s old car.

Steven Croft lives happily on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia on a property with virgin pines, live oaks, magnolias, palm trees and varieties of ground vegetation, all home to various species of birds and animals. He has recent poems in Sky Island Journal, Poets Reading the News, So it Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, Third Wednesday, and San Pedro River Review.

The Mimosa

Every hurricane season, I wonder
why I bought a house with no basement.
If I’d followed advice, I’d pluck

my eyebrows, quit picking at scabs.
I’d take the same pew week after week,
bow my head for penitential prayers.

I’d root out my obstinate weed tree,
(the mimosa), change filters, and
be, as Dad advised, inner directed.

I wouldn’t go out on my red bike,
clutch a handlebar with one hand,
wave cheerfully with the other.

A cock crows at the edge of town
where houses edge toward open fields.
Stop that sniveling, I tell myself.

My weed tree stubbornly sprouts
from its cut stump. I bought
an orange blaze vest, a warning

to hunters. But this heat says wait
the storm out, peel clothes off,
take shelter, drink pink lemonade.

 

Barbara Daniels lives in New Jersey. Her Talk to the Lioness is forthcoming from Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.  Daniels’ poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. In 2020 she received her fourth fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

Origin Story

Whitney’s mother
didn’t watch us good
I knew this to be true
the day we saw the baby
gator in the canal

‌          Kicking feet beneath

          our inner tubes stilled,

          we watched and drifted

          as the lizard razored the water

We had been told
there should be a parent
coming along any minute, which
could sink one or both of us
to the river’s soft floor
and hold us there tightly
until we drowned

          and that knowledge

          was like a dare.

 

With the Sandhill Cranes

In outlet stores that smell haunted
by ghost tins of popcorn;

In sheets of rain that follow me down,
until I shelter in place,
a squall arriving in an inlet;

In a paper atlas my grandmother produces
for a rabbit-toothed cousin
with a geography project,
several natty pages in
a creased Soviet Union,
and no one says out loud
how some things here
have become useless—
for instance, the console tv
upon which sits another tv,
the space-age satellite dish,
dead-eyed on a stalk in the yard;

In the sprawl we wind in the truck,
braking for cranes in the road,
their beaks and legs clothes-hanging
the frocks of their bodies,
the cautious steps of old nomads,
pluckers of snakes from hot pavement,
on their way to the uncaged pool deck,
that past-swamp/future-swamp;

When I say I am never coming back here,
to this hopeless, shiftless,
this unfinished thought of a place,
I don’t mean it, because look
at the sugar sand, the squat palmetto,
the amber sinkhole where the kids swim
in shirts and shorts,
floating like sweet tea bags.

 

Shannon Finck earned her M.F.A. from Georgia College and her Ph.D. from Georgia State
University. She teaches writing at the University of West Georgia. Her critical and creative
work have appeared in such journals as Angelaki, Miranda, ASAP/J, Lammergeier, and
FUGUE. She is Poetry Editor of the independent literary journal, Birdcoat Quarterly, formerly
Muse/A. Originally and undeniably from the part of Florida with the most sulfuric smelling
tap water, she has made it no farther away than Atlanta, GA, where she currently lives with
an old dog and a young one.

Porcelain Meditation

The toilet keeps backing up and I’m tired
of thrusting the splintered plunger up and down,
tired of coaxing the noxious water to flow
again, tired of the suction, the waste.
Then I’m 17, on my knees, retching
vodka and OJ into Johnny Romano’s turquoise toilet
His thin-lipped mother comes home,
calls me trash, shrieks Get out! Get out! 
I loved that skinny, dark-haired Lothario.
I sang Johnny Angel over and over.
I think of this as I plunge–
press, release, press, release, up and down,
up and down. Our brittle, little romance
fractured into such tender pain,
I belted out The End of the World
just like Skeeter Davis
wondering why the sun went on shining,
why the sea rushed to shore,
since her man didn’t love her anymore.

 

Irene Fick’s second poetry collection, The Wild Side of the Window (Main Street Rag), received the first place award from the National Federation of Press Women as did her first, The Stories We Tell (The Broadkill Press).  Her poems have been published in such journals as Gargoyle, Poet Lore, The Broadkill Review, and Philadelphia Stories.  She lives in Lewes, Delaware.

Mapping the Sky

Sometimes I feel like I’m flying over Alaska
And can’t see anything
Or I’m a moose shot in the snow
Too deep for transport
My relatives seemed to serve
On military bases in Alaska, anonymously
Without talking about it
Not even with each other
Nothing top secret
Just the quiet which must
Settle on soldiers when it’s winter
My grandfather was like a co-pilot

Who watches the storm pass under us
And says nothing about it
Seems like the sky’s the limit in Alaska
And bald eagles walk around downtown
Waiting for dinner