—
Mary Kendall can often be found in her Chapel Hill, North Carolina garden, tending plants, feeding birds, watching dragonflies and playing with her dog. She meditates and writes there as well. Mary is the author of Erasing the Doubt (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and blogs at A Poet in Time.
While out on the boat we see an eagle
sliding over still water, hunting fish.
She flies with grace and skill: daring, regal.
The Wisconsin morning lolls, almost full-
y open, water lilies yellowish.
While out on the boat we see an eagle
glide. Feathered lightning, she drops down to pull
up her late breakfast, a favorite dish.
She flies with grace and skill, daring, regal,
to the upper part of a pine, watchful—
a breeze stirs branches, some lazy reeds swish.
While out on the boat we see an eagle—
they had almost disappeared. We’re grateful
enough survived, their journey not finished.
She flies with grace and skill: daring, regal.
Love, you look so relaxed, it’s wonderful.
We had hoped to see raptors, got our wish.
While out on the boat we see an eagle—
she flies with grace and skill: daring, regal.
—
Kenneth Pobo has a book forthcoming from Blue Light Press called Bend Of Quiet. His recent work has been in: Weber: The Contemporary West, Floating Bridge, The Queer South (anthology), and elsewhere.
When I was a teenager, my parents took us to Wisconsin.
There was a dock, we have a picture
of my grandmother before her funeral and the glassy-eyed lake
eating the remnants of youth.
My brother was shorter, and fat, and he sat in the boat next to me.
Quiet and angry like a round fly.
I was tall and thin and hated my hair.
Fragile; white egg of adolescence.
I am a beekeeper of years.
I forget details
my grandmother’s face, her favorite shoes
how she sounded coming up the stairs
so many blue winters.
So many families like camels,
mothers retaining children. Nursing homes,
the clink of spoon in tea,
sugared donuts, a jewelry shop down the street.
Men pass in and out buying rings.
Women say yes, women say no.
We age and the lake forgets our names, if she ever knew them.
Year of glass.
—
A native of Oregon, Katie Gleason lives in Arizona with her husband and two rescued greyhounds. She is a graduate of Portland State University. She has been a social worker for ten years, and she is a student of The Writers Studio.
My shoes
still smell like lake water,
humped like buried
rocks
by the front door.
On the boat we’d call
them shoal, those drowning
rocks:
ragged teeth
jawing weakly
underwater.
Now the lake has all gone
dry: forgotten
summers heaped like shells
along its edge. Broken
sunglasses
and bottles. Plastic
knives like thin flat
bones.
I walk for hours
to find
the inlet where
we swam, staining our fingers
with new berries
while the clouds
dissolved above us
like spent rain.
—
Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco lives in California’s Central Valley. She spends much of her time staring at the sky, which is almost incessantly beautiful.
—
Debbie Strange is a published tanka and haiku poet and an avid photographer. She enjoys creating haiga and tanshi (small poem) art. You are invited to see more of her work on Twitter @Debbie_Strange.
spring breeze
the saree slides down
her shoulder
—
Neck deep in haiku, her face barely visible, Kala Ramesh, an award winning poet has been instrumental in bringing school kids and college youth into haiku. Her latest obsession: to paint city walls with haiku, to weave a pause, a breather into our hectic lives!
The old dog sits close;
thunderstorms and nostalgia
have us held up
in the back of the house—
each seeking shelter
from our own fears.
—
Rachel Nix is a native of Northwest Alabama. She likes coffee in the morning and bourbon at night but rarely knows what time it is otherwise. Her work has most recently appeared in Words Dance, Melancholy Hyperbole, and Bop Dead City. Rachel is the Poetry Editor at cahoodaloodaling and Associate Editor at Pankhearst; more of her poetry can be found at: chasingthegrey.com
read-letter day
the cold, stone touch
of my coffee cup
—
David Kelly lives and works in Dublin, Ireland. He started writing haiku in 2007 and has been learning more about the spirit of Japanese short forms ever since. He has been published in a number of print and online journals.
And if I turn back
to the more familiar
places I was used to,
what will keep me
from getting lost again?
And if I fall
unable to find the small
ridges and crevices
that would let me cling
to this sheer rock,
will there be anything
left to pick up
and sew back together?
Up here my head spins,
and my nose bleeds;
the air is so thin
it’s work just breathing
and standing still.
But I will try and stay
here for you
as long as I can.
Maybe I’ll get used to it,
we are so close to heaven
and so far
from where we started.
—
Mary McCarthy grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, studied art and literature but spent most of her working life as a Registered Nurse. She has always been a writer. She has great hopes for the future despite the horrors reported endlessly in the daily news.
To earn a couple of yuan to buy some
Kerosene oil for our lamp in the house
I followed my neighbor, an older boy
To catch frogs in the middle of night
It was always a sure thing to do: where-
Ever we heard a frog sing, we would
Stealthily approach it, illuminate it
With torchlight, and pick it up with
All the ease we could enjoy. Sometimes
I did feel sorry for the frog: its eyes were
Shining bright under the summer stars
But why did it fail to escape from danger?
Early next morning, we would skin our catch
And went to the nearest town, shouting aloud
‘Fresh frog meat !’ like the frogs singing at the
Top of their voice, after dusk, in the rice fields
—
Yuan Changming, 8-time Pushcart nominee and author of 5 chapbooks, grew up in rural China, became an ESL student at 19, and published monographs on translation before moving to Canada. With a PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver, and has poetry appearing in Best Canadian Poetry (2009,12,14), BestNewPoemsOnline, Threepenny Review and 1089 others across 37 countries.
