David Adès: The Gaining of Wisdom

As a boy I watched, bemused,

my father on his annual autumnal

 

sorties to the large expanse of lawn

separating our house from Anzac Highway,

 

rake in one hand, bags in the other,

wondering why on earth he bothered

 

to rake and bag the thick spread

of yellow, orange, red and russet leaves

 

that shifted and swirled like the lawn’s

plumage, that spoke lavishly of the season

 

and could, I thought, have remained 

in place, when later, my mother 

 

would note his pain, his lumbago,

a word I loved as much as zabaglione 

 

and tartufo, only to find myself now,

older than he was then, 

 

doing the same thing, and finding

comfort in it, ritual, repetition,

 

the satisfaction of imposing

transient order in one small,

 

contained area, while chaos runs rampant 

across the wild tracts of my life.

David Adès is most recently the author of The Heart’s Lush Gardens. His next collection, A Blink of Time’s Eye, is forthcoming from Five Islands Press. He is the host of a monthly poetry podcast series, Poets’ Corner, which can be found on Youtube. 

Deirdre Cartmill: Will You Sing?

And the word flew

from the lips of love,

and this was the first note,

and it rang through the heavens,

calling all the lost notes to it,

all the sharps, flats and naturals

that yearned to connect one to the other,

and so the souls were born

who would sing those notes,

whose very bodies would vibrate

with their own celestial pitch,                                 

 

and each note sang to the next

in harmony and con amore,

soprano, tenor, bass and alto 

until as one they grew

into figures, bars, phrases,

into a chorus,

leaping, lamenting, loving

the interplay of note on note,

and the melody erupted

into a canticle, 

into a song of songs

that filled the heavens,

and still it grew,

and so you were born.

And then the great silence fell,

as each note was damped,

was made to sing another’s note,

and the melody diminished

as the notes became a monotone,

and even the word itself was silenced.

And so the joyless time began

when each note was quieted,              

forgot it could ever sing,

forgot how to break the silence

until one day one came

who started to sing again 

– one lone note

singing out over the deserts and the barren lands,

singing out over the grey-starred darkness,

singing not just with their lips

but with their whole being,

holding their note’s pitch                    

as they breathed in and breathed out,

sounding their note, no matter the cold winds

or the silence answering back,

waiting, waiting,

for another to sing,

until another sang out,

and one note became two,

and slowly the sound spread

across the silenced land,

and a song began to build,

and the rhythm awakened the earth,

and the birds joined in,

and the angels sang out, 

and so you were reborn.

Will you sing?

Will you sing to me

of love lost and love found?

Will you sing

of each simple moment

alive with your rhythm

until my body vibrates in harmony

and a note pours from me,

and as I sing and you sing

and the word re-enters my heart,

my heart vibrates with love,

and love asks me,

Will you sing?

Deirdre Cartmill has published three poetry collections - The Wind Stills to Listen (Arlen House), The Return of the Buffalo (Lagan Press) and Midnight Solo (Lagan Press). Her fourth collection is forthcoming. This poem was inspired by her time as Writer-in-Residence for Belfast Cathedral. www.deirdrecartmill.com

Jan Wiezorek: A Vessel for Sweet

Taffy or candy corn, no,

sweeter still than a beignet

or a balanced blade of a cake knife,

a chainsaw on an ash tree trunk,

stripped from bark, peeling away,

sweet, for basketweaving.

We can remember past

and pretend our way tomorrow,

but miniscule present

weaves strip by strip,

binding permanently past us,

no matter how we try to spin it forward.

The artist, the basket-maker

could spend his month creating

and then burn the vessel of lost culture,

lost tongue, lost sound, lost words

of our sweet poetry.

How will we hold sugar, honey?

And the basket, thick at the top,

meaty, tapering:

toward a muscled thigh

bulging

black ash

and sweetgrass.

_____

* Native American basket-maker Jeremy Frey makes and burns his basket in a video titled Ash (2024).

Jan Wiezorek writes from southwestern Michigan and walks regularly along McCoy Creek Trail. He is author of the poetry chapbook Prayer’s Prairie (Michigan Writers Cooperative Press) and the forthcoming chapbook Forests of Woundedness (Seven Kitchens Press). Wiezorek’s poetry has appeared in The London Magazine, Vita Poetica, and BlazeVOX. Visit janwiezorek.substack.com.

Kushal Poddar: Convalescence

My old weight has returned.

Should I welcome it? Should I

regret? Still weak after

the calenture and the fever,

I take the weekend for a drive.

We talk about the skies:

Autumn hides under their broad smile.

When we reach the beach,

everyone else has left the stretch

for some shade. Thirst

is a pleasure; hunger is.

They mark the point of return.

The author of 'Postmarked Quarantine', Kushal Poddar has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of 'Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages, published across the globe. Amazon.

Terri Kirby Erickson: When My Father Died in Hospice

The mortician who came for my father was too big

for his suit. Young and fit, the muscles

in his arms bulged beneath the fabric like beans

inside their pods. The top of his head was glossy

as a waxed apple, his expression grave.

This is a solemn moment, after all, the removal

of the dead. Please be gentle, I told him as he lifted

my father’s still-warm body as if he was lighter

than a sleeping child. I promise you, he said,

we’ll take care of him like family, and I believed

him. Mercifully, I’ve lost the memory of my

dad being sealed like a letter in that body-sized bag,

though I tell myself he didn’t know it and wasn’t

afraid. But my father never liked feeling closed in.

So I kept my hand on the gurney

as we rolled down the long hallway of rooms where

thousands of loved ones have died—watched

as this sombre young man slid Dad’s body

into a hearse as easy as air leaving a lung, then drive

slowly away—until there was nothing left to see

of my father but the future without him.

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven collections of poetry, including A Sun Inside My Chest (Press 53), winner of the International Book Award for Poetry. Her work has won numerous awards and has appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, ONE ART, Rattle, The SUN, and many other publications.

Adam Beardsworth : The Poet in His Youth

We set sail on a barf bucket with vinyl

seats because I'd read a book about

loneliness and wanted to check the address,

and you were not otherwise indisposed,

checked in at the Compass Rose which

in hindsight seems an apt portent for

wayward youth except in every direction

it pointed to bedspreads crocheted with

seaweed, to a convenience store/Pizza

Shack combo, to drunk teens popping

wheelies on ATVs, to the ocean pinching

the island's chubby cheeks. So naturally

I wriggled away like a kid from a fat aunt,

drove us to the end of the island where

we were figures in a Friedrich painting

watching the sunset as finbacks spread

across the water like the path of a skipped

stone, and I thought that must be the way

to the real island. I will follow it home.

Adam Beardsworth is the author of No Place Like (Gaspereau, 2023) and the critical book Confessional Poetry in the Cold War (Palgrave 2022). He is the general editor of Horseshoe Literary Magazine, and teaches literature at Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Grenfell Campus.

Christopher Woods: in the old days

we travelled by foot,

horse and wagon,

waiting for a promise

of great machines

to deliver us

into the future.

 

the machines came,

too many of them,

each with problems

and a price.

the air turned foul

and the sky unnatural.

 

long ago,

when I was a kid,

we watched the ghost trains

carrying the last of the dinosaurs.

they came to our town

once a year or so.

 

now the trains pass through

empty towns and cities

once a year or so

carrying relics of humans

no one is left

alive to see.

Christopher Woods is a writer and photographer who lives in Texas. His monologues have been performed most recently at Equity Library Theatre in NYC, The Invisible Theatre in Tucson and the Pro English Theatre in Kiev, Ukraine. Gallery: christopherwoods.zenfolio.com/f861509283

Brian O'Sullivan: Song in the Aftermath

After "Never Let Me Go", a painting by Jenifer Follman

There is a bard at the end of the world

who is made of sand that swirls and swirls,

out there at the lonely beach at time’s end.

He plays a song that none can ken—

this bard at the end of the world.

I thought of him when your flag unfurled

over my land of tears and peril—

may my wailing not offend

the bard at the end of the world.

And when all the yarn of the fates has been twirled,

may all the spears and arrows we’ve hurled

dissolve in the song of foe and friend,

in the cordial sand that must ascend—

the song at the end of the world.

Brian O'Sullivan teaches literature and rhetoric at St. Mary's College of Maryland. His poems have appeared in Rattle, HOWL New Irish Writing, ONE ART, contemporary haibun online and other journals. 

B.A. Brittingham: Tenacity #2

for Lorraine Oman Hanover

On the receding back porch (where I no

longer go for fear of falling through) sits

a plastic pot from my gardening days. It

has long been allowed to go its own way,

absorbing any and all manner of naughty

Feral seeds blown upon it by the wild winds

of Michigan. But this year, after the passing

of the autumnal equinox, when the hours of

daylight were quickly ebbing away and

the balance of this season’s blooms were on

a flight path to dishevelment, I saw what

could only be described as the last hurrah of

warm weather: a defiant, small white trumpet

shaped flower. A morning glory? Where there

had been only a strange green item growing

all summer (sans any bud) there came a solitary

blossom as though waving a colourless

handkerchief at the departing season.

A smile and sadness rendered all at once.

B.A. Brittingham writes both poetry and fiction. She has published three novels and two chapbooks. Poetry has appeared in Kitchen Sink Magazine, the ocean waves, Words for the Earth, the Crone’s Words, Green Shoe Sanctuary, Halcyon Days, The Emblazoned Soul Literary Review, Dear You-Poems Through the Heart, Culture Cult, About Time Anthology, and The Writers’ Journal.

Leonore Wilson: Soft Gesture

He drew me to him gingerly

telling me to walk as if I were a doe

leaving only ink drops of hoof marks;

the air in late November crisp, smooth,

a tea-coloured loveliness, and he was kneeling

as if in blessing to the small mound

of duff and matter, the leaves of madrone

and oak filtering the dawn shingles of mist;

there he brushed the deep sea

of dirt away like the oldest mystery,

as if not to awake pain, as if apologetic

or assuaging guilt; and since I knew

that he was out looking for wild mushrooms

I had anticipated a palpable find,

but there was a calm befitting

the most sublimated spirit—an ancient

dome prophetic as those of Eastern cathedrals—

and the creature was resting, its eyes

somewhere lost in its girdled skin,

its shell carved amazingly by wind and age,

as the hawk cry was heard

near the grove’s threshold, so then he immediately

covered up the beast who had forged

its own grave, temporary tomb,

as he had done for me

so often in those early hours

before leaving for work—

scooting the blankets back

over my head, his wife assailed by

her familiar depression, hibernating

each morning from the effulgence of light.

Leonore Wilson is a college English and creative writing instructor from Northern California. She is on the MFA Board at St Mary's College of California. Her work has been featured in such places as Quarterly West, Third Coast, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Taos Poetry Review, and Poets Against the War.