Issue 15: Walking through Clouds—Summary, Contents & Editor’s Note

by on May 31, 2018

Summary

Issue 15: Walking through Clouds is a (mostly) micro- (yet double-sized!) issue featuring micropoetry, microprose, short videos, and micropoetry-related artwork from writers and artists around the world. It is also the last issue of Gnarled Oak.

Read online | Read the PDF (click to read online, right-click & save-as to download)

Contents

Poetry — Robin Turner

old friends — David He

Haiku for the Lost — Marie Craven

mosquitoes — Ben Groner III

night party — Blessed Ayeyame

Black ants carrying — Dennis Andrew S. Aguinaldo

Moth — Mary McCarthy

Leaves — Olivier Schopfer

That Great City — Grove Koger

on the edge of town — Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

Upside Down — Tiffany Shaw-Diaz

through my eyelids —Bill Waters

stormwater drain — Shrikaanth Krishnamurthy

we’re still expecting — Chibųìhè Obi

rainy afternoon — Praniti Gulyani

Fog — Meghan DePeau

fog blanket — Devin Harrison

summer’s end — Hifsa Ashraf

Coal Bucket — Gareth Culshaw

Crushed Bits — Jeff Bagato

the darkest — Jan Benson

Deprived — Daya Bhat

And still you remain — H. G. Warrender

Ice — Mike Gallagher

a bridge — Robert Witmer

solstice night — Debbie Strange

Spring Again — Fabrice Poussin

Solar Therapy — Marie Craven

Consider pigeons — Kris Lindbeck

Job 30:29b — Laura M. Kaminski

Missing birds — Steve Klepetar

birds feed off of me — Jamie O’Connell

two crows — Kris Lindbeck

Arr. for viola — Jean Morris

Through the Woods — Aliisa Hyslop

I end up at the same place — Chumki Sharma

Everything Ends With Amen — Laura M. Kaminski

Editor’s Note

Four years ago, when I was putting together the acknowledgements page for the collection that became Highway Sky, I was saddened to see that so many of the wonderful online journals that had published a fair number of those poems were no longer active. They had all done good work, but the editors had moved on.

I was eager to try to give something back to the online poetry community from which I had gotten so much when I started to write poetry seriously in 2009. And I had this site that wasn’t doing anything, so late in the summer of 2014, I started rebuilding the site. I didn’t do anything more original than just steal ideas I liked from various journals that had been gracious enough to publish my own work. 

Not sure anyone would submit, I sent emails out to writers and artists whose work I admired and to my surprise I got enough responses for the first issue. And then more and more over the years. At first, I think I knew most of the people who submitted but it wasn’t long before I started getting submissions—wonderful submissions—from writers and artists whose work was new to me.

I suppose I figured it would stay small, maybe last a year or so, but it grew and developed an international following. For four years, I have had the delight of having an inbox full of wonderful work, and the often painful and exhausting experience of having to return a lot of work that I liked.

The experience of editing a journal for the past four years, a true education in the four-year college of art and literature, has taught me so much. So much about the work that editors put into a journal that is above all a labor or love, but also a renewed appreciation for those who submit. It is to the individual writers and artists who entrust a particular journal with their work, who graciously allow an editor to publish their work that so much thanks should go.

And so I wish to thank in general all those who submitted to Gnarled Oak over the years and for those who gave me the distinct honor of publishing their work. Seriously, I am grateful because without you this never would have gotten off the ground.

Specifically, I would like to thank the following:

Angie Werren who kindly responded to my pleas for submissions to get the first issue going with so much fine work that really set the standard; 

Erica Goss who sent in the very first unsolicited submission—you made my day and gave me more confidence than you’ll know; 

Olivier Schopfer whose images have graced many a cover and even more issues;

Jean Morris for such a wonderful variety of work and for catching typos and errors, your close and careful reading has always been appreciated;

Laura M. Kaminski for your tireless support and promotion, I am truly grateful as well as for all the wonderful poems you let me publish;

and finally, 

Marie Craven and Debbie Strange, true frequent fliers, each of whom had work in nearly every issue right from the start. Thank you for considering this journal worthy of your work.

And to everyone who read Gnarled Oak on a regular basis, who retweeted and shared and liked and otherwise helped promote this journal, you have my thanks.

Gnarled Oak has been fun, and it has been an education, but at the end of the day, it’s time to move on. This has been a labor of love, but I am excited to get back into my own work for a while. And so a thank you to the writers and artists who helped make this last one so special. You’ve truly allowed me to wrap this up in fine style.

See you ‘round the ‘net.

With gratitude and thanks,

James Brush, editor
May 31, 2018

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Gnarled Oak — Issue 15: Walking through Clouds: Read onlineRead the PDF (right-click/save-as to download)

Everything Ends With Amen

by on May 10, 2018

Conversation is communion.
Pay attention: G-d is speaking.
Pay attention: someone’s praying.
Same with poems.
Everything ends with amen.

 


Laura M Kaminski grew up in Nigeria, went to school in New Orleans, and currently lives in rural Missouri. Her most recent collection, The Heretic’s Hymnal: 99 New and Selected Poems, is forthcoming from Babylon Books / Balkan Press in 2018. More about her poetry is available at The Ark of Identity.

I end up at the same place

by on May 9, 2018

I end up at the same place
where I had lost myself.
I call out to me, go looking to find
those bones I had set on fire,
traces of self I had left behind
into the ether as rising smoke.
How do you find old smoke?
How do you know where it travelled?
The kite skips into the sky.

 


Chumki Sharma is a poet from Calcutta, India. She is a 2017 semifinalist of the Vignette Collection Award from the Vine Leaves Press, Melbourne and her collection of poems Shape of Emptiness has been published by them in September 2017.

Through the Woods

by on May 8, 2018

 

23x23cms Acrylic on board


Aliisa Hyslop is a Finnish/Scottish artist, living and working in Edinburgh and the Scottish borders. She has exhibited her paintings in many solo and group shows, in UK and abroad, touching people from all walks of life, with their particular mixture of reality and imagination. Her works are visual expressions of a deeper experience, and with poetic imagery portray feelings, moods and emotions in a dreamlike and otherworldly way.

Arr. for viola

by on May 7, 2018

the cello suites
are unsurpassed

yet something
in the way this lands

familiar yet different
every note

a leaf eased early
from a tree

 


Jean Morris lives in London, writes, edits, translates, takes photos and is a guest contributor to the Via Negativa poetry blog. Another musically inspired poem of hers was recently published in Writers’ Cafe Magazine.

birds feed off of me

by on May 3, 2018

 

birds feed off of me:
break my eyes
& swallow the tide

 


Jamie O’Connell currently lives in the Bay Area, where she received her MFA in Writing at California College of the Arts. Her work has been featured in Menacing Hedge, Troop Zine, Newfound, and Forth Magazine, and exhibited in College Avenue Galleries in Oakland. She spends most of her time with her majestic zebra-striped dog, Daisy.

Missing birds

by on May 2, 2018

 

Missing birds –
echoes in the empty trees.

 


Steve Klepetar is relocating from Saint Cloud, Minnesota to the Berkshires in Massachusetts. His work has appeared widely and has received a number of nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, including two in 2017. The most recent of his eleven collections include A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press); Family Reunion (Big Table); and How Glass Shatters (One Sentence Poem Chapbooks).

Job 30:29b

by on May 1, 2018

after Iskandar Haggarty’s ‘Erasures’ in Moonchild Magazine

 

No angel-wings for me.
Instead, a barred owl’s.
I long to be able to move
through day and night
in silence.

 


Laura M Kaminski grew up in Nigeria, went to school in New Orleans, and currently lives in rural Missouri. Her most recent collection, The Heretic’s Hymnal: 99 New and Selected Poems, is forthcoming from Babylon Books / Balkan Press in 2018. More about her poetry is available at The Ark of Identity.

Consider pigeons

by on Apr 30, 2018

Consider pigeons
with their silly feet
and stoplight eyes
their feathers’ rainbow shine
like oil on a puddle . . .

Then suddenly
one flies
wheels and dips on silver wings
fine as any falcon

So, my poetry

 


Kris Lindbeck has been writing poems on Twitter, mostly haiku and tanka, for about eight years. A few are published in Bright Stars, An Organic Tanka Anthology, Bones, Prune Juice, and Skylark Tanka. You can see more @krislindbeck on Twitter and Haiku etc.