Three Poems by Taylor Graham

Bird I Never Saw in Daylight

 

It hit the windshield, changed parabola

of flight.             You braked the car,

ran back.

Great Horned Owl broken

in the ditch. Quite dead.

 

How gently you cradled it

to the trunk. How many lambs like ours

 

disappeared to its talons.

Such a beauty,

you said, folding it in plastic;

placed it in the freezer, prepared

to ship to the museum.

 

Now our windshield

begins its fine-calligraphy fault-

line, a glass

 

trajectory of dawn-dim into bright.

Inside the Hall of Ornithology

           

Owl stares down

from its beaked    mask,

fixed forever-eyes, its voided

breast and fluted bones

     immobilized in flight.

 

 

 

So Many Holidays

 

The streets were flower extravaganzas,

families by truckloads with chickens and pigs –

maybe St. Francis was blessing

while we just followed road-signs as best

we could, strangers in a white

Toyota – vehicle unpretentious in our native

land but outrageous curiosity

in this place where the streets burst crimson

with fragrances nameless in my language.

Our three dogs with their heads

out the windows, inhaling every scent,

capsicum assailing my senses,

a jolt that never weakens with exposure.

A quote kept circling

my memory like traffic in a glorieta,

intricate trajectories of singular

desires, something

about life love, or was it freedom,

release from self or finding

on a day not even designated, no

special calendar date.

Was it today?

 

 

 

Show Me

 

I’ve never seen a Horned Puffin – this image in the birdbook. But loons, on a stormy Kenai summer lake thundering the water. Not seen so much as heard, the hard splat of waves on canoe, our young dog guarding the bow. We paddled for anything like shore, the tiniest island. Incredible generosity of dogs and loons in an all night storm. The quality of light sulphur-ionic, dark till daylight. What the earth reveals and hides. Some mornings I wake up feeling like a horned crone – this image in the mirror. What do the eyes know? Without a sound, loons still call, more haunting than wild geese. In the lens behind my eye a dog long dead looks back over her shoulder, making sure I follow; if I’ll believe; tell her “Show me!”

 

 

 

Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. She’s included in the anthologies Villanelles (Everyman’s Library, 2012) and California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). Her book The Downstairs Dance Floor was awarded the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. Her latest book is What the Wind Says (Lummox Press, 2013), poems about living and working with her canine search partners over the past 40 years.

 

 

 

 

Two Poems by Betsey Cullen

At Cheever

time moves
as slowly
as paint
peels from
clapboards,
as slowly
as barn spiders
dress monarchs
in silken thread,
as slowly
as White Mountains
shrug off ages past,
so slowly
I become
a wood thrush
at dusk



The Preserve

plastic fences
sprout
fresh
farmlands

bulldozers
churn
cornstalks
into mounds

yellow CATS
thrust
steel claws
into clay

vacant pipes
eye
a new crop
of estate homes

open
for visitors
@TollBrothers
.com

 

 

 

Betsey Cullen resides in West Chester, Pennsylvania. She views the natural world with reverence tempered with realism. Her work has appeared in two anthologies published by Kind of a Hurricane Press. She earned a B.A. from the University of Rochester and an M.A. from Cornell University and began writing poetry in retirement. She is married with two grown children and three granddaughters. She can be reached at ewcullen@yahoo.com.

A Poem by Jude Neale

Unbutton the Night

 

I breathe in the peppermint moon.

It floods through the valley

and settles over the trees.

onto the frozen ground.

Shadows collect

like sticky pollen

in the icy  footpath.

Quickly, quickly,

you come to me .

Your hand, a white dove

suspended by moonlight,

reaches out to touch

my chilled skin.

We lie in silvered meadow,

on a  porcelain bed,

unbuttoning  the night

with our yearning.

 

 

 

Jude Neale was shortlisted for the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize (Ireland), The  International Poetic Republic Poetry Prize (U.K),The Mary Chalmers Smith Poetry Prize  (UK), The Wenlock International Poetry Prize(UK), the RCLA short story and poem competition and she was nominated for the Canadian ReLit Award and the Pat Lowther Award for her book ‘Only the Fallen Can See’.

A Poem by Linda Gamble

June Nectar

 

Hidden amid the lake bank’s thicket

its fragrance heralds summer,     

carries on the breeze, fills my head,

makes me want to swoon. “Weed,“

husband declares, “Japanese invader,”

but he  picks me some.

 

Wispy petals of palest yellow,

creamsicle orange, flibbertigibbet

of a flower, pistils poking

in all directions. Ah, to be

a hummingbird.! I pull stamen

out through bottom, touch blossom  

to  tongue, taste sweet sunshine-

honeysuckle.

 

 

 

Linda Gamble is a retired reading specialist from New Jersey. She has previously published poems in Edison Literary Review, US1 Worksheets, Mused, A Long Story Short, Camel Saloon and Jellyfish Whispers. 

Two Poems by Adreyo Sen

Morning

 

The cool wind enveloping me in its warm embrace,

I stare into the horizon, where the purple streaked sky

touches the red-bricked house with its fading black fingers.

Wisps of old man's hair aimlessly glide through the sky.

Her purple gold caftan swishing against her white ankles,

a girl glides across the terrace to softly wake her brother.

Rocking in his chair, the old man

taps his fingers to the overtures of Ram and Sita

wafting through the smoky air from the temple

sadly recollecting bygone days.

Training my ears, I hear a heavy scamper

and catch the flash of beady eyes

as a squirrel scampers across the fence.

Drawing her shawl across her dusky face,

encompassed by a sleepy smile, the house cook

slowly edges past me into the kitchen.

In the house swathed in depressing blue,

the plump descendant of a long line of tailors

walks swiftly out of her main door,

draping the tatters of a blue Adidas shirt over her silk sari.

Staring across the sea of houses and lamp posts,

I see my nodding acquaintance,

his dusky face melting in a beam of complacency,

as he sports his outrageously loud shirt,

bobbing with violent shades of brown and red.

The old man across the street disappears inside,

his shaking fingers spilling an indulgent amount,

of the sweet brown fluid that starts his day.

With a sigh, I take his cue and creep inside

to dwell unhappily on more worldly matters.

 

 

 

Another Day

 

The fair fingers of dawn steal across the purple kohl-rimmed skies

as the harsh strife of the crows announces a new day in the dusty town.

In the moist darkness of 'Universal Hotel' the wavering bluish flame

entertains the circle of men sipping the hot, over-sweet tea,

specialty of this place.

I sit against the bent lamppost, submerged in the shadows that express me,

watching the joggers crossing the street in a steady trickle,

panting their views on the economy in various stages of confused attire.

 

Slowly the town comes alive,

the weathered oxen come to a halt at the crumbling green doors

with the pendulous grace of a slow-moving monarch,

resigned to the daily burden of carrying the new generation's breakfast.

The faint tinkle of a battered cycle announces the day's news.

People hurry past me with dispassionate glances,

granting me the power of invisibility.

I lie back, my feet tapping to the rumble of the distant traffic,

but I can find no tune to gauge my heart.

The day wears on, drenching my face in rivulets of sweat,

as I attempt to drive away my crown of drunkenly buzzing flies.

 

Slowly the sky is painted pink and red, etched with purple wrinkles.

The carpet of cars thins gradually, in the dying confusion of the streets.

The lantern's glow bathes me in a dull yellow light,

though I am still invisible to the brisk commuters,

excluded from their two worlds of office and home.

The road is filled with laughing couples

as the cicadas pick up the organs of the evening.

Strains of music flow from the community center.

My heart is still empty,

as empty as the canvas on which I paint my dreams,

as empty as the copper bowl at my feet.

 

The night's cloak tightens as the strains of Daler Mehndi fade away,

leaving me alone in the accusing silence.

Suddenly a bundle of fur throws itself at me.

Attempting to rise, I utter a glad cry as I stroke its soft ears,

and in the empty darkness, lightened by the heavy breathing at my feet,

my heart is filled.

 

 

 

Adreyo Sen resides in Kolkata, India.  He is pursuing his MFA degree at Stony Brook, Southampton.

 

Two Poems by Marianne Szlyk

Black Locust in September

 

Beneath the blue-black clouds
that promise storms
but do not deliver,
the cherry tree’s bark
cracks open.

Even the chicory
fades away, 
its flower turning
to straw.

 

But the trunk
of the black locust
is as dark as asphalt
after a downpour.

 

A trace of moss grows
on its bark.  
Still green
leaves shade the pit bulls
tame as unicorns
on the grass below.

 

 

 

End of the Journey North

 

Heavy clouds hang from the sky,
promising more showers
of deer flies and mosquitoes.

James Bay is the mercury
on the back of the mirror,
hiding what lies below.

 

The airstrip stretches
out to the ends of the earth:
Attawapiskat, Nunavut,
Ellesmere Island, the Pole.

 

The planes are not grounded,
but we are.
Let someone else brave
the turbulence above.

 

 

 

 

Marianne Szlyk is an associate professor at Montgomery College, Rockville, and serves as an associate poetry editor for Potomac Review. Her poems have appeared in Jellyfish Whispers, Poetry Pacific, Napalm and Novocaine, Aberration Labyrinth, The Muse, Walking is Still Honest, and The Ishaan Literary Review as well as Kind of a Hurricane Press' anthologies Of Sun and Sand, [Insert Coin Here], What's Your Sign?, Something's Brewing, and Storm Cycle 2013.  She now has started a poetry blog at  http://thesongis.blogspot.com/ 

 

A Poem by David S. Pointer

Untitled Haiku String

 

***

new tire swing sandals

three barefoot girls crying

by backyard tree rope

***

cammie duck hunter

confronted by old woman

sharing loaf of bread

***

brush pile jack rabbit

zips by bail jumping felon

law dog is chasing

***

ice cream man owns all

until merry go round truck

turns at the corner

 

***

windowless oak tree

woodpecker touches down

construction begins

 

 

 

David S. Pointer is author of the horror poetry book entitled “Beyond Shark Tag Bay” sold at “Blurb Books” online. David has recent publications in “Main Street Rag,” “Dead Snakes,” and “Poiesis #6.”