Laura Lee Lucas: The Remains of the Canopy

Yesterday they were still here

and still eating:

That terrible non-sound of holes

appearing in leaves, trees, stalks of grass.

Worst, the sensation in the eye,

that the land moved and breathed,

that the mass of creatures was the thing

we lived upon.

This morning they were gone.

We sat beneath the remains

of the canopy,

remembering the forest whole,

and we held each other,

and looked out on the empty fields,

grateful for our unpierced skin,

for the silent air.

Laura Lee Lucas (she/her) is a VONA/Voices fellow and a member of the Horror Writers Association, and has received financial support from Artist Trust.  Her work has appeared in Corvid Queen, Mountain Bluebird Magazine, Octavos, Black Imagination, Vapid Kitten, and the Dead of Winter II anthology, among others. www.lauralucas.net

Maurice Devitt: Spring Day

After months of silence, the magnolia

have started to clear their throats,

fledgling beaks bursting into the sky,

while the ducks in Ranelagh Gardens

paddle in pairs around the stagnant pond,

shadowing the couples strolling on the bank.

The world is consumed by what will happen

next, knowing, that even when a decision

is made, it is only the beginning,

and so much depends on the mood

of the heron, abstracted

in the shallows, as though listening

on earbuds to the 3.30 from Haydock

and counting down the days

for the first ducklings to arrive.

Maurice Devitt is Curator of the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies site. His Pushcart-nominated poem, ‘The Lion Tamer Dreams of Office Work’, was the title poem of an anthology published by Hibernian Writers in 2015. His second collection, ‘Some of These Stories are True’, was published by Doire Press in 2023.

Mary Ann Honaker: Abecedarian for the Rain

A cacophony of little steps,

blinding when it falls fast,

clear as if looking through glass

during milder spring rains

enduring in quietude for days.

Foaming the surface of rivers,

gathering the birds bathing

happily in budding puddles.

Inside the rain, condensation coats me.

Jostling to become spots on windows,

kind to flowers who bow to her,

little raindrops make up the rain,

much like atoms make up everything,

nevertheless she is a whole being.

Opaque, navy clouds announce her.

Patters on the deck comfort the sleepy.

Quiet she is not, but quietness is in her,

rolling over the land in shimmering bands,

stopping mowing, sawing, shouting.

To be in a calm flat rain

under an umbrella is to be encased:

vault whose walls are temporary,

which moves as the ambler moves.

X-ing out the distant buildings, the sun's

yellow gives way to white, then rain

zips up the world in her silver zipper.

Mary Ann Honaker is the author of Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019), and Whichever Way the Moon (Main Street Rag, 2023). Her poems have appeared in Bear Review, JMWW, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Rattle.com, Solstice, Sweet Tree Review, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Beaver, West Virginia.

Alan Price: Florence

 My mother wanted a garden,

 not a rose garden, but cut grass

 and real flowers. Not flowerpots

 on a window ledge or plants

 clinging to a wall but a green expanse

 to obliterate her stone backyard.

 The garden was a dream she held onto

 when things passed or changed

 as they ruthlessly do.

 It was near the end, in a park,

 that she spoke of germination.

 Father and I saw no possibility

 of that. It would mean mowing

 the grass and responsibilities.

 Her wish was planted deep in a soil

 uniquely her own. Perhaps it began

 when she was a child, that she was led

 to an ideal place, maybe the secret garden

 of a book, where enchantment was permitted.

 It would be both the first and last refuge

 from disappointment and suffering.

 Somewhere beyond ordinary happiness

 where she’d view flowers as a talisman

 against insistent wind and rain.   

 

Alan Price lives in Camden, London. The High Window Press has published three collections of his poetry. Wardrobe Blues for a Japanese Lady (2018), The Trio Confessions (2020) and The Cinephile Poems (2023) He is poet, short story writer and film critic for the arts magazine London Grip.

Ben Keatinge: Ski Sunday

Such bravura

as the stopwatch

counts to zero

and they flex

and drop, hurtling

down the mountain

to cattle bells,

TV crews

and yodelling.

**

Sunday’s lesson

taught us risk,

to race with speed;

now Alpine snows

are late, grass

in January shows

and skiers,

once undaunted,

have retired.

Ben Keatinge won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award 2022 for his manuscript, ‘The Wireless Station’. He published, as editor, Making Integral: Critical Essays on Richard Murphy in 2019. His poems have appeared in The Irish Times, Cyphers, Archipelago and in anthologies, most recently, Romance Options (2022). He lives in Dublin.

Bill Cushing: For the Doughboys

Influenced by the zealous praise

coming from teachers and parents

they left enthused before real sense

replaced the glow of youthful gaze,

pride, and honour with true malaise.

Troops become a sacrifice for

Mars, depleting their thirst for gore.

Instead of music and parades,

a drumbeat of cannon cascades

into trenches of world war.

Bill Cushing earned an MFA from Goddard College. Published online and in print, he has four collections: A Former Life (Kops-Fetherling International Book Award); Music Speaks (San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival winner; New York City Book Award); “. . .this just in. . .”; and Just a Little Cage of Bone.

Mark Jackley: Last Night's Dream

Per the weasel heart,

this morning

the dream played possum,

closed its eyes

when I opened mine—

fake roadkill,

sly distraction

while the animal truth

was buried

like a bone

containing

a little meat still.

Mark Jackley's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Noon, Third Wednesday, Sugar House Review, and other journals. He lives in  Northwestern Virginia, US, with his wife, pets, and delusions.