Yvonne Higgins Leach: Saving the Dead

The dead don’t care about grave robbers because the dead are dead.

It’s still being alive that’s the problem. Who would ever want to wake up

to pitch black and the wood roof of a coffin, choking for air and to be heard?

 

Young Frenchwoman Victorine was believed dead

and promptly buried. Rescued when her lover raided her grave

to cut locks of hair as a keepsake and she murmured.

 

The soldier from Wellington thrown from his horse

and when declared dead was duly buried. He woke to the voices

of others and his muffled screaming shook the dirt.

 

The Englishwoman in 1848 who drank too much poppy-water

fell unconscious and was pronounced dead. Later heard sobbing

from her grave, fingertips fleshless from so much scraping.

 

Saving the dead meant alerting those above ground.

A glass pane carved into the coffin, family checking for mist.

A tube attached to the coffin to smell putrefaction.

 

No more nailed coffins but a key for the lock.

A cord tied to the hands and feet and the person,

awake!, frantically rings the bell above ground.

 

But that design proved flawed because when the body

decays it swells and shifts, yanking the cord and ringing the bell,

relatives shouting to the sexton to grab his wood spade and run fast.

Yvonne Higgins Leach is the author of a poetry collection In the Spaces Between Us (Kelsay Books 2024). Her first collection Another Autumn was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2014. She spent decades balancing a career in communications and public relations, raising a family, and pursuing her love of writing poetry. For more information, visit www.yvonnehigginsleach.com

Paul Murray: The Docker Memorial, Newry

1.

Lots of rain and one dry walk

In a town wedded to water:

River, ship canal, estuary

And a pathway at Albert Basin

Where I meet the docker, fused

With the tackle of his trade

Into a single metal entity,

He points his rope-rifle at an angle to emptiness

Steep enough to evoke

Coasters berthing, in haloes of steam

In what is now mid-air

And a distant skyline, but it was,

Back in the day,

The nerve centre of the town.

2.

Tautness of the docker’s sawn-off rope

Evokes the weight within a day

Of winching, carrying

And digging out hills

Of coal, and stone.

Weight within a day,

Measured in tons.

If it was capped by camaraderie

And a brief buoyancy of spirit

As a shift was ending,

Mainly it was misery

And drudgery. Hardship.

A passport to an early grave

Or living in an aftermath

With aching limbs.

Bread on the table

But dust in the lungs,

Living in the shadow

Of a stolen youth.

Mainly it was men

Whose blighted lives laid down

Allowed a town to prosper,

And mainly it was women

Working fingers to the bone

To keep the home afloat.

3.

Lots of rain and a dry twilight

For strolling on Albert Basin.

Buildings bolted against the night.

St. Mary’s Church and environs,

In a darkening vista,

Two lights come on like eyes.

The gulls as water audible,

Straws in the wind

Of the width of what lies beyond:

Ocean’s restive massiveness

Weighing in from the side.

Somehow, I see the docker

Slip free of his frozen frame

And share a quip

With invisible friends,

A lightness that laced them

As a ship departed.

Now the ships are gone forever,

Taking the dockers with them

And a metal man remains

Taking aim at empty space

Where a world was washed away

By a force that outflows water.

Paul Murray has had poems published in the Poetry Ireland Review and Agenda Poetry Magazine.

Mitali Chakravarty: Autumnal Musings

Do you think I will die 

because my hair is grey 

and I lie quietly on my bed? 

I hold the stars in my eyes, 

and the universe. Galaxies 

are still part of my being.

My past lies in the stardust 

that chanced into a bubbling pot,

spicing it with a bit of magic. 

I bubbled into being — young 

tiny — sub-microbial, curious, 

awed by the evolving plenitude. 

Over centuries, I morphed

into this form that lies 

limpid dreaming the future 

while ticking off the past. 

One spring, I will moult. 

Know that I have suffered. 

Suffering dwells on the past. 

The future only anticipates

in hope on rare spring-days. 

Mitali Chakravarty wafts on a cloud where rests borderlessjournal.com. Her poetry can be found online on Poppy Road Review, Fixator Press, Saaranga, Masticadore Canada, Daily Star, Piker Press among many other places. 

Mary Ann Honaker: Static Electricity

I remember when my high school friend

stayed over for the night and we watched

The Doors for the first time. It filled us

with crackling energy, an urge to be and do

something memorable. We climbed out

the basement window into the wide dark

and walked down to the interstate bridge.

We hobbled over rocks until we were at the top

directly under the swaying, pulsing highway,

terrified and thrilled by how much

the road moved. When the big rigs

rolled over us, the road was an ocean

and we were underwater.

It may seem like a silly, childish grasp

at life, but we were static electricity then,

sticking to this world, on a night now clinging

to memory.

Mary Ann Honaker is the author of Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019), Whichever Way the Moon (Main Street Rag, 2023), Night is Another Realm Altogether (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2026) and the forthcoming Doors of Fire and Night (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2027).  She currently lives in Beckley, West Virginia.

Nathan Thanki: The John Hewitt

I watched a man hit another man

across the head with a pint glass

the last time I was here.

Didn’t like something about him –

the way he spoke, the way he looked

when he picked up his pint.

My old friend Arthur used to say

this is where all our free thinkers drink.

That’s why it’s one small room, divided.

We’re all full of jokes and

we’re all full up of this anger,

never sure which.

Nathan Thanki is a human ecologist and writer living between North Belfast and Fusagasugá, Colombia. His poetry has been published in The Stinging Fly, Four X Four and Panning for Poems. His prose writing can be found at nathanthanki.substack.com. 

John Popielaski: Looking on the Bright Side

The four apocalyptic horsemen

could arrive today and a majority

of mortal witnesses would hold

their phones up to record

the entertaining deviation

from reality and then continue

zooming to their crucial destinations

or deciding to go solar

after waffling for years--in short,

the mortal witnesses would then continue

having faith that four imposing

horsemen are just horsemen out

to exercise their restless horses.

Otherwise they're giving in

to one more version of the poor guy

with the handmade sign who has been

trying to persuade us that the end is near

for so long no one can remember

when we weren't fairly warned.

John Popielaski is the author of That Special Something from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. He has poems forthcoming in Cutleaf and Rawhead.

Howie Good: MRI

The worst thing about an MRI isn’t the claustrophobia. It’s the terrible racket that accompanies the claustrophobia, roughly equivalent to the combined noise of chainsaws, barking dogs, Chinese gongs, and motorcycles without mufflers. Meanwhile, the worst thing about undergoing a CT scan with contrast is the bottle of radioactive dye, in original, raspberry, or lemon-lime flavors, they make you drink. A shadow on a scan can indicate cancer. I have about a 60 percent chance of surviving five years. Maybe you have noticed at the beach that when a wave withdraws, tiny air holes open in the sand. It’s only right, I think, that under the surface there be a hidden world swarming with ghost creatures at home in the dark.

Howie Good's latest poetry collection, True Crime, was published by Sacred Parasite in Berlin this year.

Jan Claire Starkey: At the Swimming Pool

Summer days spent at the subdivision swimming pool I rode my bike to, past

the lime green hills of a newly-made golf course.

Sharks and Minnows in the deep-end, I’d stand at the edge, calculate my route,

splash in. Dive way down to touch victory—the smooth tile of the other side.

I wrestled against boys in Keep Away, sailing a purple Nerf ball across the aqua

(You had to soak first to throw farther out).

My navy blue bathing suit, white stars and red trim, I picked from a Sears catalogue.

(Too many thoughts of swimsuits, mine and other girls, how I measured up.)

Jimmy practiced backflips and jackknives off the high board. We believed

he’d get good enough to enter the Olympics; he paid such attention to it.

Once, the lifeguards planned a nighttime pool party, casting scores of goldfish,

dots of yellow into the water—racing and flickering.

They held a contest for us to catch as many as we could, cup the little creatures

into plastic bags, tied off to carry home.

That feeling of taking a shower after being in water all day. A lingering smell

of chlorine and strawberry-scented shampoo.

The point I learned to hold my breath and swim two times the length, I almost

passed out after my head started pounding. I knew how easy it would be

to drown—just falling asleep, letting the water fill my lungs like humid air.

Whenever it got dark, Mary Ann and I pretended to be mermaids. Together,

separate in the hazy, underwater silence—the pool lights turning into moons. 

[An earlier version of this poem was originally published in The Music of the Aztecs.]

Jan Claire Starkey has had poems published in Drawn to the Light, Moonstone Arts, Not The Time to Be Silent, Long Poem Magazine, and The Music of the Aztecs, an anthology celebrating eight Washington, D.C. poets. https://janclairestarkey.wordpress.com

Jim Lenfesty: Night Watch

Fighting the smothering in your chest,

Breath whistles rapidly through pursed lips

Sucking cool air from the open window.

Watching the moon move across the darkness.

You count each minute with gasping insomnia.

Early light in the east heralds nights end.

Dawn sees decay draw closer. 

The will to live still drives your broken body.

Another night survived.

Time is precious, words scarce,

Much unsaid, each exchange, the last?

Unspoken love comforts you,

Dabbing sweat from your cold brow,

Rubbing your back, caressing your hands.

Dreading your loss, hating your suffering.

Exhausted, mortality beckons.

Soon you will wish to be released.

Cigarettes have cost so much,

Now the last payment is being extracted.

Jim Lenfesty is a retired doctor. He has done several courses on poetry in the Crescent Arts Centre and Queens University Belfast. He regularly reads his work at Purely Poetry, Invited to the Mic, and Stanza and Deliver, and was part of the 12 Poets video project, and One Minute Poems.

Michael Penny: Renewable Resource

It comes down to trees

because soil and weather

will always keep growing them,

except for that one, 

killed for my paper coffee cup

and its message "made from."

I should ask the forest,

who is ready to go,

weary of all those seasons?

Are you tired of your bark,

the sap flowing more slowly

in its capillary channels?

Has it been one leaf

too many, fruit wasted

on rodents not descendants?

We cannot so converse

or see a need for permission -

our fault, always renewable.

Michael Penny was born in Australia, but now lives in Canada. He has published five books and in numerous literary journals. Once upon a time, he was a lawyer.