A Poem by Brandon C. Spalletta

Thinking About Laws


I just brushed the dust
From my journal today, and sat
At the open window to feel
Spring reborn and watch my white dogwood tree
Do its impression of a snowfall,
Despite the scorn from the rose's thorns
At being discarded
Lingering in my fingers.
Quickly, I heard a bird's song,
Spotted the performer atop the dogwood,
And it reminded me of my father
Beaming once about my grandfather's
Legendary skill with the alto sax
When we had heard a similar song,
And I thought of Newton's law
That reads, "Energy cannot be created or destroyed,"
And because the wind was slowly drifting
I thought, as unbidden as Spring
These joyous moments of long dormant peace
Must come from somewhere else,
Where my journal doesn't collect dust, and my study,
A museum exhibit's worth of cobwebs,
Where my grandfather's music
Accompanies a multitude of dogwood petals
On the wind's journey around the cosmos
As energy to fall off the tree outside my window,
A place where hardened roses bloom in winter,
And can never be discarded.



Brandon C. Spalletta is a poet from Herndon, Virginia, and lives with his beautiful wife and best friend, Ashley.  Check out his homepage at www.allpoetry.com/BrandonSpalletta!

Three Poems by Diane Webster

RIPPLES MIMIC

Snow surrounds this pond
reflecting aspen-leaf survivors
and a sky diagonaled with jet trails
until a duck swims across
causing ripples to mimic heat waves
once prevalent in summer.



STARTLES

Frost startles
the October morning
as much as the flashlight
disturbs the sparrow
once huddled in the bush
now panic fluttering
through leaves and branches
and the walker puffs
triple-heart-rate breaths
vanishing before sunrise.



SNOW PARKS

In the lot snow
parks unticketed
across two spaces
until spring tows
the wreck away
leaving shards
of gravel like glass
littering the scene.

Diane Webster's goal is to remain open to poetry ideas in everyday life or nature or an overheard phrase and to write from her perspective at the moment. Many nights she falls asleep juggling images to fit into a poem. Her work has appeared in "Philadelphia Poets," "Illya's Honey," "River Poets Journal" and other literary magazines.

　

A Poem by Marianne Szlyk

Further into Spring

The trees by the metro
are chilled hands in fingerless gloves,
evergreen ivy wrapped around
their knuckles.

Smaller trees are fingers
wound with vines
like rosaries;
the old leaves are beads.

Trees wait for the wind to stop.
They wait for new leaves.
They wait to touch the warm sun.

The trees in our neighbor’s yards
grow fat crows
and fuzzy red buds.
These trees are not cherries
or dogwoods.

They are black locusts
and red maples,
ordinary shade trees in May or June.
They are not waiting for anything.
Their time will soon be gone.

The new tree in our yard
spits cherry blossoms
into the air
as the sun sets.
This tree does not wait either.
It’s time to bloom.

Marianne Szlyk is an associate professor of English at Montgomery College, Rockville as well as an associate editor at the Potomac Review. This poem is a sequel to "Winter into Spring," a poem that appeared in Jellyfish Whispers. Most recently, her poems have appeared in the Ishaan Literary Review and Aberration Labyrinth. Other poems may appear soon in the Blue Hour Literary Magazine.

Two Poems by Dawnell Harrison

Indigo blue night

The sky blackened with crows

As the night dissolved bit by bit

In an indigo blue light.

My breath lay vaulted in the spring

Air as the street lights lit up blocks

Inch by inch, corner by corner.

One great dive

You unbuttoned my bones

With your tender hands

And I handed you my heart

In one great dive

Into the sea’s waves.

The tides blew spindrift

Across the ocean’s mayhem

And the winds coughed

In one fantastic breath.

I lay before you warm and

Wanting as your hands touch

My translucent skin
In a quivering ball of desire.

Dawnell Harrison has been published in over 100 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.  She has had 3 books of poetry published through reputable publishers titled Voyager, The maverick posse, and The fire behind my eyes.

A Poem by Rick Hartwell

When Watchful Gods Watched Me

When runners, trees, and days were young,

You used to pump your way to search the sun-shrunk mists,

For an instant I would lose my sight of you within the trees, as wild-eyed

You’d hesitate, pause, then shake the hands of watchful gods

Be with runners, days, and trees.

First slowly, then with growing speed

You’d swoop again, avoid the ground, rise away from me,

Not clutching either rope, you’d rock, pump and slide from sun to shade,

I below with knotted-throat would anxiously watch you,

Watching gods within the trees.

 

With ever-lengthened arcs you’d swing,

Not touching me but gods, as I stood by and feared the time

When shadows, days, and legs grew long and set your swinging free,

I would know you’d lose the need for watchful gods,

A swinging tree, and me.

 

Now in my dreams only the rope swing hangs

And the watchful gods can see

Such a curious admixture

Of runners, trees,

And me.

 

 

 

Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school (remember, the hormonally-challenged?) English teacher living in Moreno Valley, California. He believes in the succinct, that the small becomes large; and, like the Transcendentalists and William Blake, that the instant contains eternity. Given his “druthers,” if he’s not writing, Rick would rather still be tailing plywood in a mill in Oregon.

 

 

A Poem by David McCoy

μέλας

I admire the women who daily come to the beach;
They must feel a need to empower Melanoma.
The Goddess will happily turn their skin lovely brown—
And in some cases, before they know it, black as death.

Two Poems by M.J. Iuppa

Without leaving home

I have traveled—watching white sails
hooked by a lee wind
A matter of geometry—what lies
entwined                       the anchor &
its rope           attached to caution

Concurrence

Three days gone, the deer’s

carcass disappears bit by bit–
its rib cage exposed in this

least-winter light– gleaming

within its chest like a stop-
watch, a sharp-shinned

hawk sits– unmoved by

the hum of traffic, looking
like radar, causing us

to slow down.

 

 

 

M.J.Iuppa lives on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Her most recent poems have appeared in Poetry East, The Chariton Review, Tar River Poetry, Blueline, The Prose Poem Project, and The Centrifugal Eye, among others. Recent chapbook is As the Crows Flies (Foothills Publishing, 2008) and second full length collection, Within Reach, (Cherry Grove Collections, 2010); Forthcoming prose chapbook Between Worlds (Foothills Publishing) She is Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor program at St. John Fisher College, Rochester, NY.