Trees and Names

by on Aug 25, 2017

Trees are eating a road near Chernobyl.
They have rooted through asphalt like insanity
and hunger, and have cloned many more willows
full of birds. We hope all of this is the health,
the recovery, three times more like a new heaven
baptizing itself in the songs of wrens and kingfishers
at the edge of starlight. Yes, the trees feed
shadows to the nests, and a few stray tabbies
claw into the scents and voices, so we learn.
Yes an old woman follows us, and relinquishes
her name because it was carved into a small tree
by her first lover more than seventy autumns ago.
The name is illegible now inside her mind.

 

—
Clyde Kessler lives in Radford, VA with his wife Kendall and thier son Alan. Kendall illustrated a book of his poems that has just been published: Fiddling At Midnight’s Farmhouse (Cedar Creek Publishing).

Before We Stepped Outside

by on Aug 24, 2017

you
painted
my head
white

soft hands
planted roots
on my scalp
spring warmth

cherry blossoms
in your laugh

petals
on our tongues

 

—
James Croal Jackson’s poetry has appeared in The Bitter Oleander, Rust + Moth, Cosmonauts Avenue, and elsewhere. His first chapbook, The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017) is forthcoming. He is the 2016 William Redding Memorial Poetry Contest winner in his current city of Columbus, Ohio. Visit him at jimjakk.com.

Once Upon a Linear Time

by on Aug 23, 2017

i don’t believe in space wormholes, time travel, events unravelling counter-clockwise. what is becomes what was. time is an arrow. resurrection comes only in memory, the rising of the dead, the rolling back of the stone in mind and dream. this is the dimension of ghost where physical laws don’t rule and time isn’t an arrow shot from a bow. the constant struggle to keep from slipping into randomness. forces weakening until connections loosen like petals falling from the autumn flower. although once upon a linear time everything was as simple as leaping over a puddle in spring.

the lilac not yet
in full bloom and already
florets in decay

 

—
Marianne Paul is a Canadian poet and novelist. She won the 2016 Jane Reichhold Memorial Haiga Competition multi-media category, and the 2016 Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku International, Canadian division. To learn more of her work, visit mariannepaul.com and literarykayak.com.

first day of school

by on Aug 22, 2017

 

first day of school
the sun’s warmth
in my lunchbox

 

—
Anthony Q. Rabang finished his BS Biology at the University of the Philippines – Baguio in 2015. He started writing haiku, senryu, and haibun while soul-searching in January 2016. He has poems published in the Asahi Haikuist Network, The Mainichi Failed Haiku, World Haiku Review, Contemporary Haibun Online, Cattails, Wildplum, Akitsu Quarterly, Akisame, Makoto, Presence and Under the Basho. Website: Short Pauses.

Issue 13 Call for Submissions

by on Jun 18, 2017

This is the Official Call for Submissions for Issue 13 of Gnarled Oak, which will start in July and be an unthemed issue.

Gnarled Oak accepts poetry, prose, videos and artwork. I don’t impose rules on what is and isn’t acceptable (other than the no hate speech, no pornography one), but as a general guideline, I tend to favor shorter works, which for our purposes means poems of less than 20 lines, prose less than 1000 words, and videos less than 7 minutes long. Regarding form and style, I’m open to almost anything. Check out previous issues to get a sense of things.

I’ll be reading for Issue 13 through July 7 and will plan to start the week of July 24 August 14. Please visit the Submissions page for more in-depth guidelines. I look forward to seeing what comes this way, and I hope you’ll send something and help spread the word. Thank you.

Issue 12: Refuge—Summary, Contents & Editor’s Note

by on Jun 17, 2017

Summary

Issue 12: Refuge (Apr-May 2017) is an unthemed issue featuring poetry, prose, videos, and artwork from writers and artists around the world.

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

Contents

Lenting — Tiffany Grantom

i woke this morning — Neil Creighton

Avoidance — Mary McCarthy

Landmine in a Field of Flowers — Matt Mullins

snow angel — Tom Sacramona

The Island — Barbara Young

Look Both Ways — Jane Williams

The Two Ends — Shrikaanth Krishnamurthy

Song for Awe & Dread— Tommy Becker

long night moon — Deborah P. Kolodji

whiteout — Marianne Paul

Practice Makes Perfect — Elizabeth Vrenios

Enchant(ed) — Misha Penton

highway dusk — Malintha Perera

Sacred Stones — Lawrence Elliott

Trees — Olivier Schopfer

The Spoilt Season — Steve Klepetar

Ode to the Corner of the Drug House Down the
 Gravel Road Off the Two Lane Highway #51
 — Darren C. Demaree

The Stars Are All Dead and Have Fallen
 — Barbara Young

heel cups — Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

usual questions — Christina Sng

crow moon — Debbie Strange

Listen — Ken Poyner

Anatomy — Marie Craven

Refuge — Steve Klepetar

Editor’s Note

This week I took my son to the Bullock Museum of Texas History to check out the Stevie Ray Vaughn exhibit. They had his old Stratocaster under glass, beautiful and beaten to near ruin.

“Why does it look all messed up?” my son asked.

We turned and watched some footage of him performing “Pride and Joy” on Austin City Limits. “He could play like that,” I said, “because he practiced so much that his guitar wound up looking like that,” I said pointing back to the old Strat.

Maybe it’s true, or maybe he bought it already beat up. Still, there’s a good lesson there about practice, I think.

Later, I sat at the table to do a little reading and work out exactly what I would write here, cup of coffee topped with whipped cream on the table beside me. The fly that Simon the Cat has been too lazy to kill the past two days buzzed nearby and then I heard more intense buzzing, high pitched and fast. Desperate.

I glanced at my coffee cup just in time to see the fly disappear beneath the whipped cream to a hideous high-temperature doom, those buzzing notes still ringing in my ears.

Then after a moment of silence for the fly and a quick trip to the coffee pot for a fresh cup, I continued reading Fear of Music by Jonathan Lethem, an analysis of one of my favorite albums, Fear of Music by Talking Heads. That album, and their next one, Remain in Light, are the kinds of work that make me want to write until my computer and pen look like Stevie Ray’s guitar.

I’ve a suspicion that pens and computers of many of Gnarled Oak’s contributors must look pretty well-used too. How else does such fine work as appears here come about except through long practice and hard work. And coffee, too, perhaps.

* * *

This issue ended three weeks ago, and so my apologies for the tardiness. But here we are at last.

I especially liked this issue for the number of videos I was able to include (thanks to Dave Bonta at Moving Poems for a well-timed shout-out to Gnarled Oak that resulted in substantially more video submissions than usually come my way).

And, as always, thank you to all who submit to and read Gnarled Oak.

With gratitude and thanks,

James Brush, editor
Jun 2017

///

Gnarled Oak — Issue 12: Refuge: Read online | Read the PDF (right-click/save-as to download)

Refuge

by on May 26, 2017

If sky darkens on a day when you have roamed too far,
if wind picks up, trembling leaves on familiar trees,

if lightning carves its fiery veins above your head,
if thunder explodes, and a fury of rain drenches you,

if you stumble in this wet misery on a street
that all but disappears, I offer you an open door,

and at my table, an honored place. If power lines
lie sizzling and snaking on the wet ground, we will

find lanterns and candles, some crusty bread
and plenty of wine. Together we can ride it out,

this storm that rose so suddenly. Others have already
come, shaken and storm-cursed, but warm now, and dry

in this well-built house, where voices study the daunting
language of hope, and new songs braid and rise, until fear

is sealed away, and a new, quiet courage spreads around
us, a lake glimmering at sunset, or moonlight in the spring.

 

—
Steve Klepetar has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, including four in 2016. Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and The Li Bo Poems (both from Flutter Press). Family Reunion (Big Table) and A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press) were released in January, 2017.

Anatomy

by on May 25, 2017

(Watch Marie Craven’s video “Anatomy” on Vimeo)

Editor’s note: Poem by Dave Bonta can be read at Via Negativa. Full credits at Vimeo.

 

—
Marie Craven (Queensland, Australia) assembles short videos from poetry, music, voice, stills and moving images by various artists around the world. Created via the internet, the pieces are collaborative in a way that belongs to the 21st century, with open licensing and social networking key to the process. In 2016 her video ‘Dictionary Illustrations’ was awarded best film at the Ó Bhéal Poetry-Film Competition in Ireland. To see more: vimeo.com/mariecraven

Listen

by on May 24, 2017

I hear the voices of the water.  Not mermaid voices.  Not fish, nor cetacean, voices.  A civilization of voices.  The soft, careful voices of warriors plotting.  The bruised, back of the hand voices of lovers who believe for stern seconds that passion is prized more if it is endless.  The battleship-gray voices of mothers disowning their children.  The boastful voices of those who have accomplished nothing.  The red glowing barn voices of those scheming wealth out of poverty.  The gossamer voices of suppression.  One voice that believes there are no voices, shouting.  A voice hidden in a far off lagoon, lingering in the shallows like a rifle shot.  Brute voices and soft.  A community of voices, a society of voices, a civilization of voices, all with mouths at my ear united in one common, tentacled plea:  drown, drown.

 

—
Ken Poyner’s latest collection of short, wiry fiction, Constant Animals, and his latest collections of poetry—Victims of a Failed Civics and The Book of Robot—can be obtained from Barking Moose Press, or Sundial Books. He often serves as strange, bewildering eye-candy at his wife’s power lifting affairs.  His poetry of late has been sunning in Analog, Asimov’s, and Poet Lore, and his fiction has yowled in Spank the Carp, Café Irreal, and Bellows American Review.  Find him online at kpoyner.com.