—
Marianne Paul is a Canadian novelist and poet. In recent years, she has become fascinated with minimalist poetry, studying haiku, tanka, haiga, and haibun. Her work has been published in many contemporary journals, both online and in print. Learn more about Marianne’s writing at literarykayak.com and on twitter @mariannpaul.
you do not even enter
an empty courtroom
with a voice
you take it off
and let it wait for you
by the doorstep
like a footwear
you do not even enter
an empty page
with an opinion
about what makes
a poem
you take it off
and let it wait for you
at the side of the desk
like a dictionary
later, perhaps, will
be a time for voice
later to check up
on definitions,
grammar
but for now, you
are alone
between the lines:
let your ink be
barefoot, let it
dance
—
Saddiq Dzukogi is a Nigerian poet and the author of three poetry collections in English. He is also Poetry Editor for the online journal Expound.
Laura M Kaminski grew up in Nigeria, went to school in New Orleans, and currently lives in rural Missouri. She is an Associate Editor at Right Hand Pointing. More about her poetry is available in her interview with THE STRONG LETTERS.
This is just to say thanks for Patriarchs
and peregrines, for rock-carved skies
and angels landing in your clouds;
for hanging gardens climbing through
Navajo sandstone, for maidenhair
wreathing through your river’s writhe;
for staircases stepping down from Bryce:
a paradox of deserts, floods, droughts,
and terraces that end without a thought;
for prince’s plumes and penstemon,
for the checkerboard I scaled as aspen
jittered gold in this early frost;
and, most of all, for straightening my bent –
the hazard of my poet’s mind – to wrest
a narrative from your lyrical intent.
—
After forty years in the academic and business worlds, Carolyn Martin is blissfully retired in Clackamas, OR, where she gardens, writes, and plays with creative friends. Her poems have appeared in publications through the US and UK and her second collection, The Way a Woman Knows, was released by The Poetry Box, Portland, OR, in 2015. Since the only poem she wrote in high school was red-penciled “extremely maudlin,” she is still amazed she has continued to write.
Try to dig thorns from your own hands.
Now let someone use both of theirs
to clear the fester that’s too self
for The Self to maneuver.
What a challenge to disprove the value
of cooperation. May as well dog out
opposable thumbs. Thanks
for having my back. Glad to
cover yours. Get some shut-eye.
It’s crazy to go this world solo
and sit constant watch. I could worry
the wood and infection from my own fingers,
but not quickly, perhaps not extract
the complete prickers. They break to pieces.
Or I ask for assistance. I offer it to,
what help these two hands can manage.
We should be freer with it, faster
to see the case for interdependence.
Try lifting yourself completely off the ground.
When that doesn’t happen, call me over.
—
Todd Mercer won the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts Flash Fiction Award for 2015, the first Woodstock Writers Festival Flash Fiction Award, and two Kent County Dyer-Ives Poetry Prizes. His digital chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance appeared at Right Hand Pointing. Mercer’s recent poetry and fiction appear in Bartleby Snopes, Eunoia Review, Magnolia Review, The Lake, Literary Orphans, Main Street Rag Anthologies, SOFTLOW Journal and Two Cities Review.
Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.
– Walt Whitman
Dust kicked up of a summer afternoon.
A boy grounds one straight to shortstop,
Takes off running. A wild throw high
Over first base. The boy sprints for second,
Another high wild throw into outfield.
A man, an older man, potbellied, laughing
Behind third base fence. The man waving,
Shouting. The older man still laughing,
Lighting his pipe. Both would imagine
Benny Hill’s theme if they’d ever heard
Such a song. The ball with a mind of its own,
Rolling under the left fielder’s legs to lay
Like a fossil in fescue. Tying run home,
The boy rounds third. The older man’s
Laughter, sweet incense of pipe tobacco.
The man shouting Go! Go! The ball thrown
Wild from outfield. This boy sliding home
Kicking up dust of a summer afternoon.
—
Harold Whit Williams is guitarist for the Austin, Texas rock band Cotton Mather. Recipient of the 2014 Mississippi Review Poetry Prize and a featured poet in the 2014 University of North Texas Kraken Reading Series, his collection, Backmasking, was winner of the 2013 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize from Texas Review Press. His latest collection of poems, Lost in the Telling, is available from FutureCycle Press.
high
on the branch
the
snow-hearted
Sun
a l l p o m e g r a n a t e s s m i l e
—
Güliz Vural is museologist and classical philologist. She lives and works in Ankara, Turkey. She is a francophone poetess of six books and she has many literary prizes in France: Prize Renée Vivien 2011, Grand Prize of Francophone Writing 2012, Special Prize of Jean Aicard 2012 etc.
—
Debbie Strange is a widely published Canadian short form poet, haiga artist, and photographer. Her first collection, Warp and Weft, Tanka Threads, is available through atlaspoetica.org. She invites you to visit her archive at debbiemstrange.blogspot.ca.
The train’s grave whistle
ascends from every tree in the valley
spreads out in the sky everywhere at once
and I move quietly
through mansions of light
ascending along the clay road
dreaming all day
of impossible journeys
I’ve always done this
And as each light in each window pales
I wake and return
to the clay road
and a night sky full of holes
a reminder of what I chose
and what was chosen for me
as if they are somehow different
—
John L. Stanizzi — author of Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, and Hallelujah Time! His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, The New York Quarterly, Rattle, and others. He teaches English at Manchester Community College. Find him online at johnlstanizzi.com.
A pink house;
a child,
kneeling in the dirt.
Clods of mud
like lakes on maps
stuck to the road.
—
Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco lives in California’s Central Valley, where she works as a librarian. Her chapbook, Various Lies is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.
The afternoon sky had turned
All West Coast or something,
And summer was seeming to say
“Sorry for everything”
By way of breezes and gray clouds,
With a few teardrop pigeons
Falling from the Biology building,
Coming to rest or to roost
In some hedges I’d never noticed.
So I burrowed down deeper
Into the debtor’s prison
Of my day job, and I thought
Of all the songs I wish I’d written.
And I played a few of them
Inside my head at low volume,
So as not to disturb those voices
In their slumber. But several
Woke anyway, and one sang
A ballad to silence the rest.
It was heartland in its origin,
Full of working-class sadness.
I’ve counted ten thousand verses
With no sign of it stopping.
—
Harold Whit Williams is guitarist for the Austin, Texas rock band Cotton Mather. Recipient of the 2014 Mississippi Review Poetry Prize and a featured poet in the 2014 University of North Texas Kraken Reading Series, his collection, Backmasking, was winner of the 2013 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize from Texas Review Press. His latest collection of poems, Lost in the Telling, is available from FutureCycle Press.
