Issue #100
Candace Rex
bird of parallax
|
with two minds i watch a bird dying in the sun i weep a heavy praise rearrange his wings until they spell a melody |
i divide my gaze writhe within a parking lot an onslaught of perpetual tears silence illuminates the cosmic distances a broken ladder teach me a foreign word an elegy |
feathers bent splintered rib cage he expires in scattered light his bones break gently the unscarred places let me slip inside a beggar’s riddle a prayer spoken |
by prying fingers dimorphic slivers of night i am unprepared whisper by the refuse heap let us go deep into haunted moon no mercy here for living reverently |
Candace Rex is a writer, musician, and social justice advocate. She lives and works in Albuquerque, New Mexico with her two cats.
Jennifer Mills Kerr
Untitled
Poem created from one page of poems from Zen poets:
Hakugai (1343-1414)
Nanei (1363-1438)
Kodo (1370-1433)
Bokuo (1384-1455)
Ikkyu (1394-1481)
From Zen: Poems, Prayers, Sermons, Anecdotes, Interviews, Edited & translated by
Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto
Jennifer Mills Kerr is an educator, poet, and writer who lives in Northern California. She has been recently published The Inflectionist Review and SWWIM. You can read more of her work at https://jennifermillskerr.carrd.co or connect with her substack @JenniferMillsKerr.
Douglas Cole
Putting on Airs
You're nothing literally more or less
depending on the moment
A bit of smoke rising through the trees
ocean waves whispering we'll see
In the green room we're all nerves
and chatter trying on characters
We go out one by one as if performing
miracles instead of comedy routines
Yet off book and out of costume you think
funny how the wind sounds like applause
Douglas Cole has published eight poetry collections, including The Cabin at the End of the World, winner of the Best Book Award in Urban Poetry and the International Impact Book Award. His work has appeared in journals such as The Lake, Solstice Lit, Triggerfish Critical Review, and Diagram.
Allison Davis
Pilgrimage
The flat sky bears down
unyielding, no tree or hill
to break the view, no place
to hide. Shallow breath, chest
tight, I drive straight squares
by fields of corn and beans
through the aching, open plains.
Just past the piercing steeple
the Grotto twists: pillars and
alcoves formed by priest’s trowel
as testimony, calcite and quartz
shaped to praise. I wander the maze,
rough edges prick my palms as I drag
through — always toward you at the center.
The archangel looms over the gift shop
where I buy polished candy rocks
that crunch, sharp on my gums, sticking
to my teeth, the cellophane wrapper slick
and shiny as an icon. Here is the street
where you wept. Here is the aisle where I
carried the gifts, the censer swinging ahead,
its chain echoing the smooth-clacked
beads of the rosary. Here is the empty
space, no more now than a divot in the field,
the great blank where the barn once stood,
where you held a new lamb close and kissed
its eyes, the bleating gone to silence.
I take what’s left — your sharp, shocked gaze
carved into my mind. Here where the earth
is turned and tilled over, I will begin.
Hymn for My Mother
In the middle days, when she could no
longer walk but still knew how to speak,
my mother opened her mouth wide,
began to weep.
Not the gentle sighs of pride, eyes full
of unshed tears, or the soft secreted cries
of why when my father met another woman,
disappeared.
No, as the tremors seized her, shook her legs
and cramped her hands, she moaned and
screamed, my God, my God, I just don’t
understand.
The doctors murmured depression, gave her
drugs for sleep. But still she wept and
screamed for days and days, then weeks
and weeks.
Suddenly, one evening when I went
to tuck her in, instead of crying, I found
her singing whispery lines, an old
church hymn.
Is this what the Apostle meant when he said
to bring a sacrifice of praise? That when the cost
is highest, when God has razed us, when all we
know is pain,
that it’s then we must choose
to sing his name? The cup of suffering
never lifted. She never walked again and then
her words stopped too —
no goodbye in the end. Rejoice in the Lord always,
he wrote, but Christ wept too — first for Lazurus,
then for himself, in the garden,
when he knew.
Allison Davis lives in Georgia, where she teaches literature and writing at Kennesaw State University. She writes poetry and creative nonfiction and is a collage artist. Recent work has appeared in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken, and Still Points Arts Quarterly.
Chris Bullard
Talking Turnips
Turnips are difficult to harvest because they have such soothing voices. Before you can pull them out, they start to ask you about your folks and offer you condolences for all your terrible. losses. Before long, they coax you to lie down and dip your toes in the topsoil. At this point, any chance of escape becomes problematic. The dirt covers you like a quilt on a cold evening. The sun tickles your bald head. You come to appreciate the congeniality of the neatly planted rows. Rain or shine, you gaze at the sky and feel contented. Your skull is spiked with green as you wait languidly for the next gardener to come along so you can strike up a conversation and talk him into lying down beside you in this lovely, nourishing, cheerful grave that you never knew would fit you so well.
Chris Bullard is a retired judge and Pushcart Prize nominee who lives in Philadelphia, PA. His chapbooks include Florida Man (Main Street Rag, 2022), The Rainclouds of y (Moonstone Press, 2022), and Lungs (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming). His work will appear in Keystone: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, this May.
Sabine Chu
Neue Galerie
elegiac plaques by hardened curators
commemorate nude sisters of schiele
their mother was lost to syphilis
self portraits wink heft into his gaze
he leads two fingers through bluejay curls
wrists silk-supple and dead young
pinholing german junes with his brush
he is thin and amused and inevitable
his black eyes codpiece time
hornrimmed radiators of noise
these periphery my nacre heart
Sabine Chu is originally from New York City and now lives in Boston, where she studies math and urban planning. Her work is forthcoming in Eunoia Review.
Mark Smith
Grunts
saying anything like creek's icy cramps,
sonnet of a silo, aging curve of wave
is no longer ritual but a wound
ossifying since my birth. inward skin
worn to shale. mind faded flint.
whatever spirit there was crept hard
then left. i still wait for its ache back.
maybe this time it will stay but
spoken words from a shaky mouth
never make nags of chatter better.
no raking phrase flays thought's
winter skitter. & it's always worse
on nights with a waning moon.
like tonight. i stuck on why utterances
don't calm, don't cease while
light softly brightens a far field.
& only animals know what heals there.
but saying doesn't heal. it's now
a grinding gyre. an antsy buzz.
grunts that rapid all my panic.
Mark Smith’s work has been published in Acorn, Modern Haiku, Contemporary Haibun, The Red Moon Anthology, and other journals. He resides in Keyser, WV.
Barbara Daniels
Palmer
Leaves as they fall are lovely
making their final movements
like women who step into air
from burning buildings, arms
wide, skirts flaring. What’s
in the shadows, foul-smelling,
slow? Forget the struggle
of figure and ground in the red
linoleum, the cup’s victory,
then the old woman’s. Put on
the soft hood of sleep. Breathe in
and out with its supple leather.
Enter the ease of dreams,
nothing to fear at their centers—
citrus gardens, fragrant air.
Holy palmer, you walk barefoot
to a great city through the tick
and hiss of drizzle. You gain
a vast continent of well-being,
the scent of lemons on your hands.
Barbara Daniels’ most recent book, Talk to the Lioness, was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. Her poetry has appeared in Cider Press Review, The Shore Poetry, Open, Ghost City, Packingtown Review, and many other journals. She received four fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Jerrice Baptiste
Threat
I dreamt of you hiding in the conch shell for forty-three years. I recall softness of your lips, bloomed from chin to neck and collar bones. Summer breeze at our backs we stood under a pomegranate tree. Heat drenched your clothes and I saw your angelic silhouette in the glare of the sun. Soon, came the voice who shamed us, shouting at our pleasure. Pulled by our pony tails, and dragged inside the beach house. Forbidden to see the sun together again. I’m going to tell on you both, the voice threatened our souls. Our heartbeats sped up each day. We begged for the index finger of a tyrant to stop shaking in our faces. Our innocence retreated inside hard shells. In last night’s dream, Artemis dressed in sheer white climbed up the blossoming tree of our youth with a bow and arrow. She reassured, No one will ever tell on you.
Craig Dobson
Last Captain
And the saddest, set fair for nothing
in the breeze he knows means North and nowhere,
to bring home what he dreamt was left to his nets —
little really, just sludge and the stuff that lives thereon;
his father’s fathers took the rest — but still he goes,
to be where being there once meant more than all a sea could hold.
It calls him back, abandoning the harbour wall and light,
leaving behind the wife whose waiting trust came and went in tides,
whose song was never seagull cry or water lapping at her name in paint,
but all the ways complaint made good its ancient loss.
Storms since, he cuts his hull in greatest deep and waits.
Love’s other, is it, then, maid of myth and scale, whose echoes
grace her coldly tempting skin, stealing him from hearth and sheet,
sealing his return from what’s lit fathoms back for him to find,
the streets awash with patient nets mending its once-men?
Or, broken-backed from hauling in another empty catch,
is it the skippers from whom his line descends — those men
who left him little more than time to wait the waters for,
starving on their dreams of shoals that never end?
Craig’s had poetry and short fiction published in magazines in the US, Canada, Europe and Asia. He lives in the UK.