A Poem by Michael H. Brownstein

This is the Strangest Sky

so blue it highlights her eyes,
the white sun,
and grass in dire need of drink strong green and full of itself.
This was the year winter did not come
and summer arrived before spring.
We cut the lawn for the first time in March,
watched a frenzy of honeybees in April
and harvested our first wild strawberries soon after.
By the time May arrived,
we had gone swimming in the pond outback,
the municipal swimming pool had opened,
and the first heat violence churned through the park.
The rivers of mud cracked,
the banks knee dropped into crumbs
and the worst part of all of this was the lack of any comforting breeze.
We sat on the swinging chair in the shade of the porch
and waited for the pause to fast forward.

Michael H. Brownstein has been widely published throughout the small and literary presses. His work has appeared in The Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Free Lunch, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com and others. In addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks includingThe Shooting Gallery (Samidat Press, 1987), Poems from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005), and I Was a Teacher Once (Ten Page Press, 2011). He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011).

A Poem by Changming Yuan

Outer Spaces

the landscape is wildly wide

is thin-colored

conceptions loom above the skyline

impulses swirl near the hills

no wind of feeling is blowing
as the spirit sails on the sea

in the limbo

the whole outside is held
right at the tip of my mind’s tongue

Changming Yuan, 4-time Pushcart nominee and author of Allen Qing Yuan, holds a PhD in English, teaches independently and edits Poetry Pacific in Vancouver. Yuan's poetry appears in 629 literary publications worldwide, including Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Exquisite Corpse, LiNQ and London Magazine. Submissions welcome at yuans@shaw.ca.

A Poem by John Miatech

Sierras in May

These mountains are important

All their secret, lonely places,
Where the clouds drop their rain
Enough color happens here
To catch anyone’s attention

Where a black basalt ledge

Juts out above a meadow,
I let my dad’s ashes loose,
To chase his dream of being
A high country cowboy

Down below this spot, a river winds out from Independence Lake

A cool, cerulean blue line flowing east,

Where dragonflies hover in their helicopter bodies

And the grass grows tall

John Miatech has published three books of poetry, Things to Hope For, Waiting for Thunder and What the Wind Says. He currently is working on a new poetry collection, Stretching Into Evening. Miatech’s work has appeared in Anesthesia Review, BlazeVox, RiverSedge, Cellar Roots, Big River Poetry Review, Savasvati, Blue Lake Review,  Northwest Review, and Kind of a Hurricane Press.

 

Two Poems by Shelby Stephenson

ACROSS THE WIDE MISSOURI

Since you drifted away, taking your heart

And leaving me with your wavelets as part
Of longing to be with you, I shall go
Now, for we know life’s not art, but the slow,
High way of reconciliation, one
Space between separation’s craving bone
And the chill-healing drive
To see myself without the bride
These words fail to page, praying softly
As dreams break in floods arias
River into your voice I give away,
Seeing your face rescued in every wave.

BUBBLY ABSOLUTION

I quit my bottle of Angry Orchard.

My mouth seeped childhood’s tree.
You leaned into a willow
And knelt into our roots.
Your cider fuzzed my lips in vain:
You kept Love in fee-simple absolute.

 

Shelby Stephenson’s Family Matters: Homage to July, the Slave Girl won the Bellday Prize for Poetry, 2008, Allen Grossman, judge, and the Oscar Arnold Young Award from the Poetry Council of North Carolina, 2009, Jared Carter, judge. Shelby Stephenson’s Maytle’s World is forthcoming from Evening Street Press.

A Poem by Erik Moshe

The Cove of No Tomorrow

There’s no adjective for darkwaters worth choosing from;
You are rich, yet you live in a barren penthouse
How is it so?

There is no
wealth of knowledge on your cobalt walls
Sea salt was rarely garnished
for your yacht harbors
You are a non organic compound supervisor
bridge keeper to altars
You keep matchsticks to see through paradises’ murky underbelly
Cut diamonds are gashes to the collective forehead
chandeliers reflect broken constants
for token prospects
Room decorations fit for Constantinople’s frontyard
ordain the brain of a fool

Humble men often take the backdoor approach
sorting through the topaz, petunias,
piles of surplus gold bricks
carried by brigades of jellyfish pods
waiting in the sub-polar bramble

for rectification at the hands of a people’s ocean

You may ask for extra oxygen bottles
to breathe down here in this cerulean containment cell
A facility where wet stones market
the slippery blueprints of failed discovery

Over-nurtured manta rays flay in the pasteurized sun
You came to the wrong place, I'm afraid
A man finds no home here who holds his treasure dearer to his heart than his reservoir for goodness
Even Ozymandias needed critique, so why not you?

You’ve dug into trenches and mineslike a hyperactive dwarf
from ranges we don't speak of
places lit by amphibian torches
seldom illuminated by the mind
Your attempts at finding lifeblood had
lacked any sustenance -
never a substance worth fossilizing

Tourist traps rewarded predation
and tomorrow became a dark ravine.

Erik Moshe was born and raised in South Florida. He has been around the world, from France to Iraq and Afghanistan. His work has been published in Gloom Cupboard, the Broward College Pan'Ku , Spirit of the Stairway, Clutching at Straws, mad swirl, The Bactrian Room, DEAD SNAKES, and he has poems forthcoming in Poetry.Pacific and The Camel Saloon. He enjoys microwaveable organics and conversations about DARPA uncertainties.

A Poem by Dawnell Harrison

Dissected shadows

Dissected shadows linger

On the rock wall near

The sea’s edge.

The seagulls hover like

Grey kites.

Sparrows dissolve like

Rain under a dust of wings.

It feels like tomorrow will
Never arrive.

Dawnell Harrison has been published in over 70 magazines and journals including The Endicott Review, Fowl Feathered Review, The Bitchin' Kitsch, Vox Poetica, Queen's Quarterly, The Vein, Word Riot, Iconoclast, Puckerbrush Review, Nerve Cowboy, Mobius, Absinthe: A journal of poetry, and many others.

Three Poems by Cherise Wyneken

Why do sunsets make me stop and stare?

 

It’s not the only dab of brightness

    that I’ve seen today.

Yellow allamandas bloom profusely

    on my garden fence

the pool ripples shades of aqua blue

    my beach towel

drapes across the lawn chair

    purple, green and maize

cardinals flange the hedgerow

with brilliant tones of red.

Perhaps because a sunset

filters out the day

    in one last flare of color

telling me it’s over

in pomegranate hues

    watermelon pink, persimmon

leaving dregs of darkness

    in its wake

measuring tomorrow’s waterline

interring tints of blossom

    in its tomb. 

 

 

 

Pictured

 

A quiet spot

along the Oregon coast

where gentle waves

ripple toward shore;

a place of peace

with a weathered table

that beckons for a picnic.

Spring green grass

speckled with tiny

white and yellow flowers,

a hedge of unfamiliar shrubs

setting off a lone and

straggled pine,

and cotton ball clouds

melding like eider in a coverlet

with roiling skies above.

A quiet spot

where simple specks of life

portray the total spectrum.

 

 

 

 

Springing Forward

 

Flakes of white plum blossoms

fall like snow onto our yard

taking me back to winter fields

lying still beside our house

as I waited to see Santa’s sleigh appear.

I feel sifting snow creep up my sleeves

when frozen ruts

slipped me into cold banks.

I hear delicious crunchy sounds

when walking on thin iced mounds,

and recall the itch and sting of frozen ears.

I make a u-turn from my memories

and find spring spread across our lawn.

 

 

 

 

Cherise Wyneken is a freelance writer. Her articles, stories, and poems – adult and juvenile – have appeared in over two hundred publications, two collections of poetry, two poetry chapbooks, a memoir, a novel, a children’s book, a children’s audiocassette, and her recent collection of stories from her life, STIR-FRIED MEMORIES from www.whisperingangelbooks.com She writes a poetry column at: www.examiner.com/poetry-in-oakland/cherise-wyneken and was nominated for the 2012 Pushcart Prize in poetry.

See also: http://www.authorsden.com/cherisewyneken