J.K. Durick: Citizen Speaks Up

When does it all stop working

Against us? Something else

Goes wrong, and we’ve learned

To adjust to whatever it is. Then

There’s the weather, of course.

Then the news, international

National, regional, down the line

To local. Look out the window.

It’s there, a sinister look on its

Face, its hands grabbing for and

Begging, never letting up, whine

Whimper, sneer, snicker, sniff

And snort. We listen, we adjust

We want to solve, but solutions

Are far beyond us. We’ve become

Observers, innocents bystanders

Ignorant bystanders, bland back-

Ground to it all. It goes wrong and

We ride it out, somehow live with

It as it gets worse and worse. We

Trip and stumble. We drip and

Mumble and bumble. We have

Learned all that the twenty-first

Century has to teach us – ideal

Citizens of this terrible world!

J.K. Durick is a retired writing and literature teacher. His recent poems appeared in Synchronized Chaos, Literary Yard, Highland Park Poetry, and Poesy Place. 

DS Maolalai: Horizonless, occasional cities

a flight over Europe. west

in from Asia. and night

through some time zone –

I can't manage mapping the latitudes.

to me 2pm, but outside is all black

as a Liffey's thick riverwater

pushing past storm drains,

cloudless and horizonless, occasional cities

in the distance which shine

upon round cabin windows like poured molten

gold over ants. there's something, being sealed

in and 6km upward. perspective goes foggy. some passengers

sleeping, some restless and watching tvs. no-one looks

happy and no-one's good looking

in the dentistish light of no

smoking signs, plug in your

belt signs. the stewardess walks

like a fox between dustbins, up and down

cabin aisles, vigilant and cautious – handing out wine

in plastic cups, sickbags and pillows and earplugs.

DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as "a cosmopolitan poet" and another as "prolific, bordering on incontinent". His work has been nominated fourteen times for BOTN, eleven for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections, most recently “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022)

James Fleet Underwood: Dead Moths

There’s this feeling of tasks 

unaccomplished, something of necessity 

I’m trying to find, 

could be in one of my notebooks  

or behind my bookshelf, 

beneath a window left open overnight. 

I can work for hours never getting closer 

to what’s driving me than 

dusty residue on my fingers or 

screwed up blurry vision.

Dead moths, lines I scribbled over. 

I make lists every few days 

and check off items until I reach 

the bottom. The significance 

I’m looking for, in the end, 

I never find it.

James Fleet Underwood writes poems rooted in place, memory, and daily life. His work explores childhood, loss, and the quiet rituals that shape how people endure and belong.

jamesfleetpoems.substack.com

Ralph Culver: Lamentation of Another Evening Wasted

—after Li Bai

 

 

The wine jug has been filled and emptied, filled

and emptied. My lips alone have kissed its wide,

wet mouth. Leaves of torn and crumpled paper

scattered about the chamber, covering

my feet. An entire night of raising a cup

to beg the moon’s blessings, hands blackened with ink.

Stain of autumn moonlight on my writing desk,

stain of forsaken verses on my fingers—

a night of drunken lines mourning my drunken days.

One page worth saving. If I thought I could

make it back to my room, I would drag

my body down to the banks of the Yangtze

in the awakening dawn and let

this single sheet set sail on its waters

under the branches of the red maples.

 

[Originally published in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Oct '21]

Ralph Culver's latest poetry collection A Passable Man is available in bookstores and via all the usual internet channels. His new book This to This is coming in 2025.

Tom Gengler: Sleeping with Them Gone

The rainiest May on record. Insanely

growing foliage motioning to the house that

the jungle wins.

 

In the upstairs guest room sleeping on the big bed

and not in my boyhood room.

Do I need to sign the guest book as the one

who slept here the last time?

 

I dreamt that the front door had been sold

at the estate sale, so that one more time

I could slip out at night with no impediments,

 

and run on the fairways again, to the reunion

where I would be the kid who’d never aged.

There was no consolation from the new owners

 

who said they want to take out the trees.

I will dispose of the assemblage,

take the paintings off the walls,

 

write down the old stories

as the designated family scribe.

There was so much rain that the water

 

was coming in through the fireplace cracks

and seeping onto the bookshelves,

the whole house emptying into boxes.

Tom Gengler is an artist living in Denver, Colorado. His poetry has appeared in Progenitor, Blue Collar Review, Exit 13, The Worcester Review, Streetlight, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Straylight, The Loch Raven Review, THEMA and Westview. He grew up in Oklahoma and loves the American West.

Ma Yongbo: "Here"

"Here" is a signpost, not really here,  

the earth beneath your feet is a vertical, transparent void,  

you can only recognize here by its "non-existence".  

You're familiar with these signs, a street, a road, the house behind houses,  

a date, a name, the sound of poplar leaves brushing each other,  

and songs from the last century playing on a radio hanging from a branch.  

You can no longer make out their lyrics,  

as if they've been encrypted at the far end of time,  

that's fine—no words to smudge this perfect balm,  

no other you, old, young, or in between,  

walking out of this maze of "here",

to watch a sunset elsewhere,  

or see another autumn rain falling in another realm,  

another of you, nose buried in a colour-blurred map,  

collar wore the wrong way round, searching for a "here" you've been before.

Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, he has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986.He focused on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Amy Lowell, Williams, Ashbery. His translation of Moby Dick has sold over 600,000 copies. www.facebook.com/yongbo.ma.2025/

Jennifer Pratt-Walter: Quest

On a quest for my beliefs, I consider 

undressing them here on the butcher block.

I remove the skin, the muscles and tendons 

of my opinions,

 

I strip out nerves and veins of my schooling,

collapse the lungs of assumptions, delete 

the guts of what I do not need.

 

What’s left?  The tingling skeleton

of fundamental me, the workings of my heart

filled with the Heavy Questions

and the pure organic wonder at being alive

to ask them.

Jennifer Pratt-Walter (she/her) is a Crone, poet, photographer and professional harpist.  She loves to recognize and draw attention to the small everyday miracles of living in the world. She has been fortunate in having work featured in a number of print and online collections. No Ai is ever used in her work.

Bernadette Gallagher: Beyond

After Narkissos-Beyond by John Philip Murray, 2015

In memoriam J.J.M.

I.

He has reached the world below

breaks through as a gull dives for fish

the stream is calm above, mirror image

reflects the sky, water laps

at the forest roots

the world is upside down.

A magician throws a bolt of linen dyed to blue

a loose thread unravels

Narkissos hangs upside down, half above

half below, frozen in time.

A stage is set, curtain raised

all darkness beyond.

II.

Paint does not quell

the sound of breaking water

or silence the cry of a mother

and wife.

A December day you breached the cold

on or about the first.

Ripples close over

as brown paper covers a book —

the yellow eyed dace kept you company

even though your eyes were closed.

Unlike Narkissos, they pulled you out

sodden and too heavy to hold.

[Originally published in Agenda, 2023]

Bernadette Gallagher is a poet from Ireland. The Risen Tree (Revival Press, 2024) is her first poetry collection. Her work has been published in Cyphers, Crannóg, Agenda, The Stinging Fly, The North, The Tablet, Stony Thursday, The Frogmore Papers and Southword. bernadettegallagher.blogspot.ie

John Grey: Coming Storm

I’m outside and a storm is coming.

I watch clouds darken as they accumulate.

On edge, I’m waiting for the first snap of lightning.

Voices from the house call me inside.

When I don’t move, they say I’m crazy.

But I’m in the mood to feel something huge,

all-encompassing and dangerous.

People haven’t done that for me in years.

They’re too busy either making accommodations

or asking for my indulgence.

They’ve lost the art of being all there is.

I feel a raindrop on my hair, another on my shoulder.

Dusk’s ceiling is low and grey

and its faucet is dripping.

The electricity is building up.

The heavens have no way of handling it.

Too much will lead to the most violent of cracks.

But it merely rains.

Clouds move on without much drama.

I’m drenched not exhilarated.

Unhappy in my own skin,

when I expected to be one with the universe.

So I shuffle off inside. Faces stare at me.

Words are unnecessary but they speak them anyhow.

“Not smart enough to come in out of the rain,”

they figure,

But I was never smart.

Just too alive.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, River And South and Flights. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Rush, Writer’s Block and Trampoline.

Bill Richardson: Double Asteroid Redirection Test

They shot a tiny spaceship at an asteroid

going about its business seven million miles away.

They sure knocked that rock off its trajectory

though it was never coming near.

And since you orbited out of my life,

I’ve wondered about the nudge that made you leave.

On my journey to the bottle bank,

I see among the greens and browns

the one we downed before you went away,

its label chewed by hungry snails.

I pause, then free my hand, 

and hear a thousand slivers screeching in the dark.

Like metal on planetary rock, glass on glass

changes the shape of things.

Bill Richardson is emeritus professor in Spanish at the University of Galway, Ireland. His poems have been published in numerous poetry magazines, including 14 Magazine, The Stony Thursday Book, Orbis, The High Window, Skylight 47,Gyroscope Review, Flights and Crannóg. Poems of his have been finalists in three poetry competitions.