Issue #41
Amanda McLeod
Evolution
(After Jericho Brown’s duplex form)
The world is changing; loss is the only constant.
Tears are shed for what we leave behind.
What we leave behind is not worth our tears;
Save those for what you love that stays with you.
What stays with you, that you love, and loves you back?
Fear roots us in one place, but love is freedom.
Love is freedom from the fear that binds us.
If you love something, release is kindest.
Release is the kindest act of love—
Memory is sweeter than imprisonment.
Let sweet memory carry you
As your loves are torn from you like thistledown.
Thistledown scatters, a genesis, rebirth.
The world is changing; loss is the only constant.
Amanda McLeod writes fiction and poetry in Australia. Her work has appeared in many places both in print and online, and she’s the Managing Editor of Animal Heart Press. When she’s not deep in words, she’s often covered in paint. Find out more at amandamcleodwrites.com
Susan Waters
Under a Shade Tree in North Carolina
We are clothed, divested of wings
after a long nuptial flight
in which I cried out, surprised,
at how deep opening is.
You tightly held me in recognition,
drawing back only once to watch.
Two cocoons under a nameless shade tree,
we nap in a September’s undecided air.
Insects drone as if it were the planet’s
last season, and I lightly tap your shoulder
hoping recognition beyond this ungainly ground
which, despite all its gravity, could not hold us down.
Susan C. Waters has an advanced degree from the writing program at George Mason University and is currently Professor Emeritus at New Mexico Junior College. Ms. Waters started out as a journalist covering hard news in upstate New York. Her chapbook Heat Lightning was published in 2017 by Orchard Street Press.
John Grey
WILDEBEEST
Though eyes skimming the surface
hold up a hand of warning,
I stumble down the bank
of the crocodile-infested river,
plunge into the waters,
as jaws snap all around me,
lose one leg, then another,
then so many, many more,
but I have enough
to struggle up the other side,
out of the swirling blood,
on the trail of the rain clouds,
and the savannah beyond.
At dusk, I rest,
stand in high grass
beneath high starry night,
amid grazing moonlight,
stamp gently in place,
mutter amongst myself.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Soundings East, Dalhousie Review (Spring 2019) and Connecticut River Review. Latest book “Leaves On Pages” is available through Amazon.
Babo Kamel
A GHAZAL ON ICE
Our shoes had holes when we reached the border
A man’s rough hands took me from Mother
I dreamt that morning would bring us together
The night is a knife, without your mother
To wake in a cage, I’ll remember forever
A boy said for weeks he had not seen his mother
Our hearts live in rooms that will never get warmer
We begin to forget that we once had a mother
A young girl exiled from the arms of her mother
Will never recover the loss of a mother
Forced from home you are always a stranger
When we left, I lost the idea of mother
An orphaned child will always be other
Locked outside the sweet language of mother
All lost mothers wander somewhere together
The birth of a child, forever a mother
I live in a poem with no answer
Sometimes I think the moon is my mother
Babo Kamel’s work is published in reviews such as Greensboro Review #63, Painted Bride Quarterly, Contemporary Verse 2, Poet Lore (v.114 #3/4), and most recently in Best Canadian Poetry 2020 (poem). She is a Best of Net nominee, and a six-time Pushcart nominee, Her chapbook, After, is published with Finishing Line Press. Find her at: babokamel.com
Joe Balaz
Chasin All Da Zeros
Look at him
wit dat smile on his face
feeling dat he just got away
wit someting
like wun juvenile
vaping in da boys restroom.
Tiny victories
foa tiny minds
equals tiny tiddlywinks.
All da world is wun fantasy
in da virtual presentation
dat keeps you running
like wun addictive rodent
on da giant hamster wheel.
Step right up
and leave physicality behind
as you disappear
inside da cyber network.
10,000 points is racked up
on da latest desensitized session
and da invisible trophy
is so incredibly shiny in da brain.
Well done
but I’d raddah have 10,000 bucks
as wun achievement
foa my time and effort.
Wats dat you say?
Computer games
are now extremely competitive
wit prize money foa da winners too?
Okay den
lets mix elements of gambling
wit heightened avenues of unreality
and everybody can try to become
rich superheroes
chasing all da zeros.
It’s just like wun mad scientist
filled wit calculated hype
wen surgically put chips
into wun huge audience
of receptive heads
to make lala-ville
twenty-four-seven
wit Vegas kine lights
sparkling up da days and nights.
Joe Balaz writes in Hawaiian Islands Pidgin (Hawai’i Creole English). He is the author of Pidgin Eye, a book of poetry. Pidgin Eye was featured in 2019 by NBC News for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month as one of the best new books to be written by a Pacific Islander.
Clarice Hare
Tundra Flowers
Here there’s a temptation
for colors to unroot themselves
from sanity, from
isolation. I smelled one
wildflower’s story that
suggested they went mad in a
world of true ice and hallucinatory
fire: self-tending in a wild
climate, their purple
cinders born of lunacy. They
grow frazzled, becoming easy
game for summer-fleeting thieves
who lick the juices of their seed
to carry to crystalline heights
their inch-striving hopes
are denied. Dead,
their scarlet furze and magenta fringe
succumbs to mummification—
crushing—sublimation to such
prismatic tints as no sentiently
wheeling eye will mark, save
to sift from them the quiver of prey
whose blossoming gore may
mark their grave.
Clarice Hare grew up in the rural Midwestern U.S. and bounced all around before settling in Florida, where she lives with various furry and scaly pets. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Datura, SurVision, South Florida Poetry Journal, Arsenika, Gone Lawn, Menacing Hedge, Ethel Zine (#7, forthcoming 2021), and elsewhere.
Cameron Morse
excerpt 4
Blueberry monster
demonstrates the pincer grasp
by picking up a wild
blueberry and pinching it
between forefinger and thumb.
She releases it. Plucks
another identical
berry from the gory tray.
Her pudgy wrists and dripping
chin wine
stained with the gore
of blueberries.
Cameron Morse lives with his wife Lili and two children in Independence, Missouri. He holds an MFA from the University of Kansas City—Missouri and serves as Senior Reviews editor at Harbor Review and Poetry editor at Harbor Editions. For more information, check out his Facebook page or website.
Kimberly Glanzman
yes, i’m wild
blame my mother
she taught me
flight
or I learned
it or I spun it
out of gold-
framed shadow
unattached
to my feet
or I won it
from a sparrow
who came unglued
in my heat
or I lulled it
to sleep
and as it dreamt
I hemmed it in-
to/under my skin
rose-patterned/uneven
black eye-
brow blend
or I earned it
eating crow-
flowers between
willow branches
singing indigo-
flavored dirges
or I wished for it
or I fished it
from a slate-dark
lake/cracked-
glass surface
or I missed
it as it pitched
toward me straight
or I cradled it
like wine or earth or
unturned pages or
I wound it
round my wrist
like wire
through my spine
like shame
retreated never
beneath the hammered-
silver gaze
became an angel’s
scarecrow
or I hung it
in the window
to remind me
how to witness
what’s below
but is it flight
or is it fleeing
if night
is a white-teeth
tango
over needles
am I wild/blind
or uncertain
is flight armor
or a red-gilt curtain
am I a new blue-
bird discovering
terror or a survivor
who unlatched
the lock/let hurt in-
side her yellow cage
without her
wings stitched on –
or I’m on trial
or I’m just
a girl who
sung
hummed
won
clung
built
spilled
spurned
loved.
Kimberly was a finalist for the 2019 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize, and a 2020 Pushcart Nominee. My work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sky Island Journal, Sleet Magazine, Stonecoast Review #11, Jet Fuel Review, Pretty Owl Poetry, South Dakota Review, Harpur Palate, Iron Horse Literary Review (forthcoming 22.3), and Electric Lit, among others.