Monday 14 October 2024

William Derge: Stuck

Teenage ingenue,
poodle skirt and pony tail,
fallen into the web of a giant spider.
The type of movie we used
as an acceptable excuse to heavy pet.
Anyone who cared, maybe
one or two, knew she’d get through
in time, saved not by her boyfriend,
way too cool, and dumb as a brick,
but by the high school science teacher,
a Christ figure in a cardigan, whose gift
of omniscience could calculate
the exact amount of DDT it takes
to stun a spider the size of your house.
He’ll get her out. And Mother,
lacey apron, pearls, and heels, will  
forgive her for crawling into that
cave to look for Dad, as long as she    
does all her homework and goes
straight to bed. Don’t worry about Dad.
He’ll be back when his bender wears off.

Outside, the spider’s on the loose,
the pesticide’s all worn off—
So much for science and omniscience— 
The sheriff issues some fatherly advice,
Shelter in Place, though
real estate values are falling fast
under eight hairy legs.

The price for taking risks isn’t
falling into a sticky net;
it’s the humiliation of having to be rescued 
through the combined efforts of
every Tom, Dick, and Fred in town,
firemen, policemen, power workers 
and Terminix.  They’re in cahoots
to restore the community
to its God-given state of normalcy. 

In the end,
she’ll graduate cum laude
and marry her boyfriend—
dumb as he is—
He’ll take over his father’s 
Maytag distributorship,
They’ll have a mess of kids.
and forget all about
the big arachnid, and Dad,
dead, sucked dry in the cave.


William Derge’s poems have appeared in Negative Capability, The Bridge, Artful Dodge, Bellingham Review, and many other publications. He is the winner of the $1000 2010 Knightsbridge Prize judged by Donald Hall and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is a winner of the Rainmaker Award judged by Marge Piercy. 

Saturday 12 October 2024

Stephanie Ross: Epitastic

after Mary Oliver’s The Sun

 

slide out of blackness

        slip into greyness
        away from nimbostratus

but not quite there yet

        saunter into rising hills
        away from drifting fog 

but not quite seeing the crest

        skip along that mountain ridge
        toward the viewpoint

but not quite there yet

        glide into sunshine
        toward that epitastic vision

but not quite feeling that peak

        until Shen and Universe coalesce
        expanding your clarity

        that fantastic epiphany 
        under your skin


Stephanie Ross (she/her) is a Ren Xue Yuan Qigong teacher and Vancouver Island poet. Her writing has appeared in Surging Tide, Passionfruit Review, RXA Qiblog, Quail Bell, Roses & Wildflowers, and The 2023 Poetry Marathon Anthology. Her life cultivation practice inspires her writing. Connect with her: www.stephanierossauthor.com

Friday 11 October 2024

J.K. Durick: Banking

It’s all a matter of
accounts and cards
checking and savings
credit and debit
numbers in
and numbers out.
It’s almost like magic
entries appearing
and vanishing
earnings, spending,
spending, spent,
never enough,
never too much.
There’s a running
total online and
a paper summary
once a month
if you request it.
There isn’t a fat wallet
waiting for you
or a pocketful of change.
This is banking
direct deposit, online bills
quietly paid
money becomes
almost invisible, weightless
pending today and
it will be gone tomorrow.


J.K. Durick is a retired teacher, taught for years at Trinity College of Vermont and after that for many years at the Community College of Vermont. He and a friend started following the pandemic by writing a poem for every day – "we now have run out of pandemic and have written 1629 and plan to continue till we run out."

Wednesday 9 October 2024

Marguerite Doyle: Bag of Cats

Sam’s folks were always going at each
other, but her father was like an uncle
to me; good fun, a kind of hero.

One hot summer we drove to a fair
and he won the big plush toys
and gave them to us like trophies.

Simon and Garfunkel sang Bridge
Over Troubled Waters
on the radio, and I wound down
the window while they argued.

Between the static I heard a sound,
low and soft. We stopped
and I stepped on wet leaves
and caught him up, just as he flung

the rock-filled sack in the river,
where the current was strongest.

I can still see the arc it made
in the air, the thud,
the flow of the river snatching it.

Going home he smoked a Marlboro
and bought more ice-cream for us.


Marguerite Doyle's publication credits include The Storms, The Honest Ulsterman, Skylight 47, The Wexford Bohemian and The Waxed Lemon. In 2024 she was the winner of the Mill Cove Gallery's Poets Meet Painters Competition. Marguerite lives in Dublin.

Monday 7 October 2024

Jean O'Brien: The Year I Turned Fifteen

When I placed my eight-year-old hand
over the painted wood, I felt
and heard the deep thrum of the hive,
the bees were about their business.
Grandmother’s garden was peopled
with hollyhocks that grew higher
than my shoulders. I pushed a path
through their silent, scentless bells
and came to where the bees were boxed.

I listened to the drowsy stir
of an engine idling as
the hive settled for the evening,
and saw late stragglers, legs swollen
with pollen as they flew home.
They never stung.

She would tell me to go in as the blue sky
turned navy, while she talked to the bees
telling them her news, counting off
on her fingers, who had died, who been born,
about her troubled daughter,
and whose harvest was lost.

Grandmother died the year I turned
fifteen, she was old and ill,
no longer running her fingers in a trill over
the piano keys, no longer attending the hive.
That year I shot up past the hollyhocks,
and that same summer
a handful of pills killed my mother.
And I started telling the bees.
 

In Celtic mythology there was a custom of ‘telling the bees’ who would pass on messages to people who had died.

[Previously published in Stars Burn Regardless, reproduced with permission from Salmon Publishing.]


Jean O'Brien has published 6 collections of poetry with Salmon Publishing Ireland, her latest being Stars Burn Regardless in 2022. She has won prizes for her work and tutors in creative writing/poetry in places such as the IWC (Irish Writers' Centre) and at Post Graduate level. www.jeanobrienpoet.ie

Saturday 5 October 2024

Jean L. Kreiling: The Full Moon and the Lighthouse

The full moon boasts that it delivers all
the night-time brilliance anyone might need;
impersonating daylight, its beams fall
on seekers crossing sea and land, who read
their route or fortune in once-monthly splendor.
The lighthouse blinks its eye, tonight redundant
though steadfast as a chivalrous defender;   
with moonglow so unblinking and abundant,
its man-made flash looks pale.  But it maintains
the rhythm of a song Sirens might sing,
and punctuates the tide’s moon-governed gains
and losses. Winking at its glimmering
competitor, the lighthouse waits its turn;
one night its faithful light alone will burn.


Jean L. Kreiling is the author of three collections of poems; her fourth will be published in late 2024.  Her work has been awarded the Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Prize, the Rhina Espaillat Poetry Prize, and the Frost Farm Prize, among other honours; she lives on the coast of Massachusetts.

Saturday 14 September 2024

Howie Good: Guns of August

Dee, our across-the-parking-lot neighbour, is lavishly watering the pots of zinnias that decorate her stoop. Although it’s only seven-thirty in the morning, it’s already hot, in the mid-eighties and climbing, and I am all the ages I have been. Once a long time ago I locked eyes with celebrated author Philip Roth on a street in Woodstock, New York. He was waiting for someone or something outside a store that sold newspapers and sundries. I occasionally wonder if I made a mistake by just walking past him. The sun has moved up the sky. Dee notices me and waves. She is wearing a man’s oversized T-shirt that says “Protect Gun Rights” in red, white, and blue. It isn’t clear that she intends the shirt ironically, but I can hope. All her flowers are alight.


Howie Good is a writer living on Cape Cod. His newest book, The Dark, is available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.

Friday 13 September 2024

Kevin Stuart Brodie: Tremors

He braces his shoulder
against the cold plaster wall
to steady himself.
Shuts his eyes 
to focus.
 
His hand trembles,
a frantic cardiograph
driven by blood weaving
through his brain, where 
dopamine starved neurons
will pulsate, whither.
 
The envelope flaps like
an old baseball card
wedged into his bicycle spokes
on days he used to race down
the Highland Avenue hill.
The bike with the handlebars
he couldn’t always grip
and the pedals 
his feet sometimes missed.
 
Cursing, he tries again
but the mail slot
is too thin for him now.
Last week, she had to
tie his shoelaces. 
He remembers the fragrance
of cucumber and spice
when he leaned over 
to kiss her on the head.
 
He wonders when his
muscles will harden,
no longer able to pry
his mouth open for the pills--
the new ones the doctor said
probably wouldn’t work
but were still worth a try.


Kevin Stuart Brodie has had four plays produced and two screenplays have been optioned by production companies. He has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize in poetry.  He was also a 2020 Writer-in-Residence at the historic home of Edwin Way Teale, and at Millay Arts in 2021 and 2023. www.kevinstuartbrodie.com

Wednesday 11 September 2024

Ellie Rose McKee: Hello, My Name is God

My name is Son.
                           Is Spirit.
Is lost and found in a thousand
tongues of men.

My name is what you used
to cry in the night. In the days
of destruction. Back, back!

History is in my veins.
Is tattoos on your flesh.

I am the colour white.
A prism of scarred skin.
Blood-red rainbow running

deep underneath and
behind. A reflection only
as real as the object being

viewed. The thing
you look at and no

longer name.
Always see through, now.

My name is Ghost.
Don’t you recall? 


Ellie Rose McKee is a published poet, short story writer, and novelist as well as someone who dabbles in traditional art. Her website is ellierosemckee.com

Monday 9 September 2024

Fianna: FAST | LIFE





Fianna (Fiona Russell Dodwell) is from Fife and lives in the Fens. Her first poems were published in IS&T. She has since had about 70 published, including in Lighthouse Literary Journal, York Mix, Ofi Press Magazine, The Caterpillar, Under the Basho, The Curly Mind, VOLT Magazine and OSMOSIS.