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Somnolence

by on Jan 27, 2016

A boat shaped autumnal leaf knocks the evening window. I open the pane and inhale lungfuls of the crisp breeze.

With each season of the ochre yellows I have begun to resemble the old oak: the parchment skin and sharp increase in the number of grey hair. Earlier, I used to keep a count of those greys, but now they have proliferated beyond the self-undertaken census stage. All the same the grey cells of my brain are functioning like unlubricated cogs, rusty with the monotony of a drab routine.

The other day, I put oil in the wok on a high flame of the gas burner for deep frying and left the kitchen to answer the phone. A few minutes later the pungent smell of smoke fills the house. The flames from the wok were licking the ceiling. I tried to scrub clean whatever could be washed but the white wall putty soaked up the stubborn soot. Deeper it penetrated the surface, the more I attempted to remove it.

I feel aghast each time I enter the black-grey kitchen. In a few days time, perhaps I will get used to it just as one gets used to the lack of love.

wedding ring…
the white mark it leaves
on my finger

 

—
Yesha Shah lives in Surat, India with her family. Poetry has long since been her passion. She started writing Haiku and allied genres about two years back. Her verses have found place in various online and print journals.

Wyvern

by on Jan 25, 2016

the bird inside me flaps tight beneath my skin, scratches
with tiny claws at my insides, tells me that the only reason
I’m not a sack of deflated skin lying empty by the side of the street
is that it’s just too small and tired to break free. I take a deep breath
force the thing inside me still with the pressure of my inflated lungs.

sometimes at night, I can feel the wings of the tiny bird inside me
slipping into place just behind my shoulder blades, feel pinfeathers
stretch all the way down the front of my arms, and I whisper
no, you can’t have me yet. I hold the wings and claws and feet and pointed beaks
tight and still and quiet inside me, murmur promises of a day
when I’m so old and tired myself

that there’ll be nothing left to hold it all in.

 

—
Holly Day has taught writing classes at the Loft Literary Center in Minnesota, since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Oyez Review, SLAB, and Gargoyle, while her newest poetry book, Ugly Girl, just came out from Shoe Music Press.

Chesapeake Beach in October

by on Jan 20, 2016

fields of dried queen anne’s lace
& ripe corn along the empty highway

butterfly weed pods split apart
pulling their stalks down

chokeberries shriveled
tangle of dusty roots

gray clapboard barns
filled with hands of tobacco

roadside stands
with pumpkins, green tomatoes

& baskets of gourds
on splintered gray tables

smell of burning leaves & brine
as we approach Chesapeake bay

& the running tide
leaving mermaid’s purse & sea walnut,

moon jellies with sunfish in their tentacles
high up on the beach,

oystercatchers & laughing gulls
swooping across the breakers
in the cool moonlight

& past midnight
as we unpack the car

we smell rain
heading in our direction

 

—
Andrea Wyatt writes poetry and fiction and is the author of three poetry collections and co-editor of Selected Poems by Larry Eigner, Collected Poems by Max Douglas, and The Brooklyn Reader. Her work appears or is forthcoming in BY&BY, The Copperfield Review, Gargoyle, Hanging Loose and Blast Furnace.

Memories

by on Jan 19, 2016

A friend brings me two books about India from his mother’s house and two small brass candlesticks with a swastika at their base. He also brings a bottle of her homemade mango chutney. The talk revolves around the significance of the swastika in India, Japan and Germany. I have come full circle with the Indian meal I have cooked for my host family in Plattsburg.

overcast sky
a pale sun quivers through
a rabbit’s  ears

 

///

Author’s note: The word swastika came from the Sanskrit meaning any lucky or auspicious object

 

—
An eye surgeon by profession, Angelee Deodhar is a haiku poet, translator and artist from India. Her haiku, haibun and haiga have been published internationally in various books, journals and on the internet. Reviews of Journeys 2015, an anthology of International Haibun edited by Angelee Deodhar, can be read here and here.

Cosmology

by on Jan 15, 2016

When I was small, my world was flat
and the night sky was a basket, woven
from stripped leaves, uprooted grasses,

placed inverted over every space my
feet remembered at the end of day,

creating dark in which to sleep. But
I had my secret: I would peek through
this thatched lid, through small spaces

where fibers shifted, have my glimpse
of the beyond, the realm outside where

it was always daylight, always sunlit,
ever bright. I was too young yet to live
upon a globe, did not believe in what

my elders called the stars.

 

—
Laura M Kaminski grew up in northern Nigeria, went to school in New Orleans, and currently lives in rural Missouri. She is an Associate Editor of Right Hand Pointing, and the author of several poetry collections, most recently Dance Here (Origami Books, an imprint of Parrésia Press Ltd, Lagos, Nigeria, 2015).

Frost Flowers

by on Jan 13, 2016

They break when touched –

so delicate and temporary
we only harvest them with our eyes.

Hairline cracks in weeds seep
an aura of bluish ice

like miniature glaciers inching
against the frozen grass.

Our breath is a curtain
we hide behind. In this field,

our suffering is white and hollow,
bitter in the space between us.

All night the world evolved
and we just sat there, waiting

for crownbeard and ironweed
to wind some brittle shard

of memory out of the sky
and spool it back upon itself.

Stems burst and ice pours out
in petals. Slowly, over the hours

we count the morning
and think ourselves lucky

as we stand in the curling dawn.
It really did

take this long.

 

—
Sandy Coomer is a poet, mixed media artist and endurance athlete. Her poems have most recently been published or are forthcoming in Clementine Poetry Journal, Apeiron Review, and Hypertrophic Literary Magazine, among others. She is the author of two poetry collections: Continuum, a chapbook published by Finishing Line Press, and The Presence of Absence, which won the 2014 Janice Keck Literary Award for Poetry. Visit her website at sandycoomer.com.

Mountains Will Break Your Heart, If You Let Them

by on Nov 20, 2015

Go, little one, stake your tent in temple grass.
Tread ruthlessly on hominid bones
ground to powder eons ago,
fine as the cornsilk compacts
of your grandmothers.

Scrape your sandals on fragile flowers
that cover the lava fields,
smothering bones of the iiwi,
alala and o’o birds.

Their age is finished.
They know it.
Trample now, while you still have time.

 

—
Trish Saunders divides her time between Honolulu and Seattle. Her poems have been published in Gnarled Oak, Silver Birch Press, Off the Coast and Right Hand Pointing.

Nightswimmer’s Purgatorial

by on Nov 19, 2015

Not drowning in regrets, but he’s out too far,
where the rip-tide waylays him. He swallows
a lung-full. It proves easier to drift
even further lake-ward rather than swim in
to his clothes and keys. Go with the current,
he figures. He reaches an island’s beach strip,
it’s a couple acres, unpopulated. He spits
out the lake, then waits for morning light
to make an attempt at the mainland.
Strength can renew with a few hours’ rest.
He’ll try, if no boaters pass sooner.
There could be a search, if a beachcomber
stumbles on his shirt and shoes
by the high-line where the tide turns.
The Nightswimmer, weakened, winded,
doesn’t know how this will resolve,
but he isn’t drowning, yet.

 

—
Todd Mercer, a middle-brow writer, won the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts Flash Fiction Award for 2015. His digital chapbook Life-wish Maintenance appeared at Right Hand Pointing. Recent poetry and fiction appear in Eunoia Review, Kentucky Review, The Legendary, Literary Orphans, Lost Coast Review and Softblow Journal.

across the open sea

by on Nov 18, 2015

–for Laura, in response to an admonition not to count the waves

sailing is not my profession
but i understand the metaphors
the talk of wind and waves
of safe harbors and clear skies
of trusting the captain who
has prepared and knows
every port along the way

but i am so long robbed
of the sight of land
of blossomed trees and
golden sand between my toes
that i cannot rest until
i see the captain’s charts
know at the very least
how far until next port
and something under my feet
not in constant motion

what good-hearted captain
would leave me swabbing a deck
deny me a glimpse at the maps
when one look in my eyes
one look into my soul
would tell him how close
how very close i have come
to losing hope on this
wide
tumultuous
open sea

 

—
j.lewis is an internationally published poet, musician, and nurse practitioner. His poetry and music reflect the difficulty and joy of human interactions, sometimes drawing inspiration from his decades of experience in healthcare. When he is not writing, composing, or diagnosing, he is likely on a kayak, exploring and photographing the waterways near his home in California.