Dudley Stone: Letter

Dear ----------:

I promised you a letter

and here it is

beginning as always

with an apology

sorry, so sorry

for not writing sooner

though you have been much on my mind,

my pen near at hand,

stationery, and stamps

that declare “Forever” (as I often do myself)

so I don’t have to chase

postage up its long inflationary ladder

Sorry, so sorry

something caught my attention,

rude birds hijacking the food

I leave for strays who won’t adopt me

and who I have been staring at out the window,

which is a poet’s real job, after all,

imagining you patiently somewhere

and waiting (forever) for me to return

to the substance, the pith, the gist

of this letter that I promised

so sorry

to write you

If I haven’t apologized enough,

let me do so again now,

sorry, so sorry.

About myself I can only say

that I am fine

in my chair of a morning

staring out at trees and clouds,

fine pulling on another sweater

and scarf and burrowing deep into my hoodie

like a turtle or some crustacean

that lugs its own shell on its back,

but really, no, I am fine

despite you gone (forever),

despite how when I return to this letter

it has grown taller, like it has something substantial

to say beyond the obvious, which is that with each day

the odds increase that this letter may be the last 

and I would tell you the news here

but there is none

except for the birds and the cats

the trees and the clouds

(and me watching them all),

except to say that I am fine

and in case you’ve forgotten

I’m sorry, so sorry

I promised (forever) I would write to you

and now I have.

Dudley Stone’s poetry is Pushcart Prize-nominated and has recently appeared in Neologism Poetry Journal, Written Tales, and The Headlight Review. He is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and the Kentucky State Poetry Society. Mr. Stone lives in Lexington, KY.

Valerie Frost: After Miss

here lies what once was—

splintered glass of near truths resting

beneath the power-blue hush

of we don’t need to talk about it.

we used to orbit

like hesitant planets, nudging

gravity just shy of consequence—

but you steered sharp

into the sun, unblinking.

there’s a violence to distance

when it used to mean safety.

now: silence isn’t sacred,

it’s a strategy.

i’ve learned the sound

of someone unmaking me

in curated company

while pretending

they never tripped on my name

like a whispered mistake.

your cruelty wears thin now—

subtle, tight-stitched.

you roll your eyes like shutters

sealing off history,

as if the story

wasn’t folded

inside old cards

tucked in our drawers.

meanwhile, I keep

the fragile bloom

of what I meant intact—

not in a vase, but

under my ribs,

where not even frost

dares root again.

what I gave

was not a performance.

what I lost

was not a phase.

what remains

is the full ache of restraint—

elegant still

even in rupture.

Valerie Frost lives in Central Kentucky with her three joyful kiddos. Her poems have appeared in Eastern Iowa Review, ONE ART, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere.

Kenneth Owens: Ice

The move to winter always jolts

despite it being marked on the calendar,

this annual trauma, jouncing in

so soon after September.

I shop for hoodies, sweater,

read articles on hot water bottles,

phone my mother and bemoan my age –

was I ever cold as a child? Doubtful.

Windows remain closed; dust breeds.

Mornings are a closed coffin.

Kenneth Owens is an occasional writer and reviewer with full-time imposter syndrome, residing in Northern Ireland. 

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