Three Poems by Diane Webster

Dust Particles

Even in wind
the cottonwood leaves
couldn't shake the dust
from their surface.
Grass tried to grow taller
to rise above billowing clouds
choking their blades.
Rocks buried themselves
in an attempt to filter
the fine particles
between cousin sand pebbles.
Even the sound of a stream
barely quenched the scene
until a monarch butterfly
appeared in an epiphany
so bright and new as if
freshly birthed from cocoon;
it fluttered through
the dingy turnoff
like the first breath
after a drowning.



Feather Tickles

A single feather sticks upright
between gravel in the driveway
where an Indian is buried
up to his feather,
where a dove suddenly veers
off course because of a feather
shed in mid-flight,
where an ant dragged the treasure
into the wind for the best chance
to launch skyward to see
the world scurrying below
like millions of its ancestors.



Bee Feeder

Bees have commandeered
the hummingbird feeder
this early September day.
Plastic, yellow flowers
ooze more nectar
than the originals below
growing brittle in Fall
like rust flaking off
an old wreck of a car
the bees call home at night.

Diane Webster enjoys the challenge of picturing images into words to fit her poems.  If she can envision her poem, she can write what she sees and her readers can visualize her ideas.  That's the excitement of writing.  Her work has appeared in "The Hurricane Review," "Eunoia Review," "Illya's Honey," and other literary magazines.

A Poem by James Diaz

This Stir of Ours

Summer storm
I open to drink
from your tiny neck
the settled buzz
wind insects
here and there

is that you after life?
clawing in the mud
and how gross your other face is
cloud scuttle
lit in its belly bone
with fire wood and resin
of jet liner

so much civilization
we have to fence it out.

James Diaz lives in New York.  His poetry and fiction can be found in Calliope, Cheap Pop Lit, The Idiom, Black Mirror Magazine, and Pismire.

A Poem by Michael Lee Johnson

Sundown, Fall

Fall, everything is turning yellow and golden.
No wind, Indian summer, bright day,
wind charms with Indian enchantment,
last brides marry before first snowfall,
grass growth slows down, retreats,
haven of the winter grows legs, strong,
learns baby steps, pushes itself
up slowly against my patio door, freezes,
and says, "soon, soon, Spring I'll be there."
Winter is sweeping up what is left of fall,
making room for shorter day's longer nights.
I hear the echoes of the change of seasons,
till next sundown sunflowers grow.

Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era.  Now know as the Illinois poet, from  Itasca, IL.  Today he is a poet, freelance writer, and photographer who experiments with poetography (blending poetry with photography), and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois, who has been published in more than 875 small press magazines in 27 countries.  He edits 9 poetry sites.  Michael is the author of The Lost Americans:  From Exile to Freedom, several chapbooks of poetry, including, From Which Place the Morning Rises, Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems.  He also has over 73 poetry videos on YouTube.

A Poem by David Lymanstall

Michigan Transplant

A transplant from a Michigan nursery,
Now standing tall in a yard without compatriots
With needles anything but sharp,
In fact, rather slender and soft, you grace the landscape,

I wondered how you would adjust
To an Ohio yard,
Overshadowed by imposing maples,
Whose gnarled roots anchor ancient inhabitants.

Your destiny in this yard, your place on earth,
Created for you by a long gone willow
Who continued to make its presence known
By its absence.  A concave tombstone made by sinking soil,
Marking roots long gone,
Marking the spot where you should be
To catch the rays of morning light
And bid goodnight to the waning day.

Thriving, growing tall,
Your shadow stretches, chasing an arcing sun.
Branches welcome the sparrow.
Bend with the burden of snow.

Mindful and content, you sing your song,
Your breath from the wind,
Your voice from slender needles,
Whispering an ancient arboreal tale.

David Lymanstall is a teacher, artist and musician.  He has taught in classrooms ranging from Montessori Middle School to the college classroom.  He enjoys learning himself and likes to ignite that love of learning in others of any age.  In his spare time he teaches illustrated journal workshops, plays the fiddle in an Irish session group and enjoys writing science, and nature related poetry that hopefully inspires others to look at the world around them a little closer.

Three Poems by A.J. Huffman

Grasshoppers

the size of my fist invade our yard

every year.  They scare my Chihuahua,

scale the fences.  They pause to pose

for pictures I take in documentation

of their return.  Their skin glows

gold and green in the flash.  I can feel their eyes

full of confused curiosity towards this stranger

they encounter annually. 

Birth of a Spore Tree

Young frond unfurls slowly, delicate

antennae of life, tiny finger, reaching for sun.

No wooden supports required,

these lignin limbs will eventually stretch

thirteen feet high.  Enduring

tropical conditions, exposed

until final eruption, a crown

of fern-like fronds.

Warning!

Bonfires are forbidden on the beach

after sunset.  Endangered turtle hatchlings

confuse the warmth and light for the sun,

follow it blindly, sacrificing themselves

to the flames.

A.J. Huffman has published eleven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses.  her new poetry collections, Another Blood Jet (Eldritch Press), A Few Bullets Short of Home (mgv2>publishing), and Butchery of the Innocent (Scars Publications) are now available from their respective publishers.  She has two additional poetry collections forthcoming:  Degeneration (Pink Girl Ink) and A Bizarre Burning of Bees (Transcendent Zero Press).  She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a two-time Best of Net nominee, and has published over 2300 poems in various national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, and Kritya.  She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.  www.kindofahurricanepress.com.

A Poem by Rick Hartwell

Bullheads

Scorpion of the Sea
(or of the North and Back Bay),
society of Sculpin
(camouflaged algae green, brown),
family Cottidae
(broad head, gristle gum, gaping maw),
saltwater bullhead
(prehistoric mien and manner, grotesquery),
labeled a trash fish
(horrific to the uninitiated and intimidated),
toxic dorsal spine
(a conjurer's spell to fright young fishermen).

At ten or eleven or twelve,
setting out for perch or smelt,
quicksilver flashes, lip snagged,
something worthy of a frying pan,
collectively a dinner, if not singly,
or the slow reeling of dark weight
until a halibut's quick pancake flip
presents pallid mouth and belly flesh.

Hooks baited with fillets of raw bacon,
oily aphrodisiac cast in polluted water,
we, angling from an eight-foot pram,
young Hemingways next to the docks,
catching bullheads in the north channel,
unhooking them with our bloody fingers,
as they'd attempt to breathe an atmosphere,
unfamiliar medium unsuited to their needs.

Once released, they'd disappear below,
residents of the shallows, no longer aliens,
yet soon caught again by insatiable appetite,
relieved occasionally by a wayward stingray,
another denizen of nightmares freed yet again,
as we played out this ritual day after day,
keenly expectant, as only the young can be:
our luck would change and we'd be fed instead.

Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school teacher living in Southern 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.  He can be reached at rdhartwell@gmail.com

A Poem by Barbara Bald

Traveling with a Hare

I smile when I see them, there
on the edge of the woods—
fan-shaped prints spreading out
across a snowy expanse,
sun glinting on them,
like crystallized sugar cookies,
gray shadows, deep within each track,
peeking out at the light.

Large fur-padded hind-feet, positioned
ahead of small front paws,
leave marks that confuse the eye,
and warm spring rays, melting edges
of the imprints, expand them
to a size that equals those of Sasquatch.

I like to imagine a giant hare, hopping
in thickets behind my house.
My legs tucked snuggly
within his gigantic haunches,
he leaps with me on his back.
Whether fleeing from predators
or racing in zigzag patterns of play,
we dare to leave the trail, the ground,
all security far behind.
Risking everything, we surrender to passion,
bound like Icarus into giddy, free flight.

Barbara Bald is a retired teacher, educational consultant and free-lance writer. Her poems have been published in a variety of anthologies: The Other Side of Sorrow, The 2008 and 2010 Poets’ Guide to New Hampshire and For Loving Precious Beast. They have appeared in The Northern New England Review, Avocet, Off the Coast and in multiple issues of The Poetry Society of New Hampshire’s publication: The Poets’ Touchstone. Her work has been recognized in both national and local contests including the Rochester Poet Laureate Contest, Lisbon’s Fall Festival of Art Contest, Conway Library’s Annual Contest, Goodwin Library’s Annual Contest, and The Poetry Society of New Hampshire’s National and Member Contests. Her recent full-length book is called Drive-Through Window and her new chapbook is entitled Running on Empty. Barb lives in Alton, NH with her cat Catcher, two Siamese Fighting fish and a tank of Hissing Cockroaches.