A Poem by Diana Woodcock

The Secret of Positive Thinking

"All shall be well, and all shall be well,
and all manner of thing(s) shall be well."

                              -- Julian of Norwich

Even if I could consistently believe
Julian's words, I still would save
seeds--life's fragile sacredness
I'd still guard and respect.

And though I believe,
I would still grieve for skylarks,
song thrushes, blackbirds gone silent--
their marshes, moors and meadows,

ponds, heaths and hedgerows poisoned--
destroying their food supply.
Though I believe, I would still cry
out against "a strange passivity

haunt(ing) our lives."*  I would despise
all homogenized shrinking of the world,
dwindling of personalities,
dulling of relationship.

I would not slight the little spore
that blights the potato, the one small spark
that ignites the forest.  All shall be well,
regardless of what befell

the world yesterday.  If I can say
this and believe it, the battle's won.
Look how the Black-capped chickadees
have fun in their forest, flitting about

collectively, each respectively
doing its thing.  Silent and weightless,
harmless, disturbing neither limb
nor air, alert to all that goes there.

Surely they believe all shall be well.
How else could they be so full of grace--
the very face of God, each one the sum
total of perfection?  All shall be well.

Just ask the river otters, frolicking in brown
waters, tummy-up, holding out both hands.
But--ah, the curse of man, always a but--
what about the bees, their hives

no longer humming?  I cannot
ignore the disaster coming.
Dare I still believe
all shall be well?



*Ian Pindar and Paul Sutton, Introduction to
The Three Ecologies, Felix Guattari, page 6

Diana Woodcock is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, most recently Under the Spell of a Persian Nightingale.  Her first book, Swaying on the Elephant's Shoulders, won the 2010 Vernice Quebodeaux International Women's Poetry Prize.  Chapbooks include Beggar in the Everglades, Desert Ecology:  Lessons and Visions, Tamed by the Desert, In the Shade of the Sidra Tree, Mandala, and Travels of a Gwai Lo.  Widely published in literary journals and anthologies (including Best New Poets 2008), her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Award, as well as performed live onstage in Lincoln Park, San Francisco at Artists Embassy International's 21st Dancing Poetry Festival.  Several of her poems "toured Alaska" as part of the "Voices of the Wilderness Traveling Art Exhibit, Alaska 2014-2015.  Prior to reaching in Qatar (since 2004), she worked for nearly eight years in Tibet, Macau and on the Thai/Cambodian border.

Three Poems by April Salzano

Another February

The world has frozen over.  Hell,
this winter, wouldn't be warm enough.  My bones
leave trails through tundric mountains.  Out here
souls of strangers are huddling together for heat.
Even my thoughts are on hold, heavy glaciers,
unmoving.  I am an old mare dragging seasons
behind me, full of silence, ribs protruding, waiting
to see if I make it to the mirage of greener grass.



Intersection

Today I made a hawk drop her prey.
That is not a metaphor.
She was trying
to reach a height sufficient to cross
the street, roadkill gripped
in her talons when we intersected.
The carcass fell.  By instinct,
I ducked behind my steering wheel.
I swear I saw her laughing
in my rearview
mirror, the way a hawk laughs,
low and intentional.



Because Ice

soaks our empty field with threats
of spring withheld, coats tree limbs
with drops of glass, we crawl
across parking lots and burn the last
stored, split wood.  We await warmth
of sun to open early shoots of tulip
leaves, to color our view with anything
but the sluggish brown of dead things.

April Salzano is the co-editor at Kind of a Hurricane Press and is currently working on a memoir about raising a child with autism, as well as several collections of poetry.  Her work has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in journals such as The Camel Saloon, Centrifugal Eye, Deadsnakes, Visceral Uterus, Salome, Poetry Quarterly, Writing Tomorrow and Rattle.  Her chapbook, The Girl of My Dreams, is available from Dancing Girl Press.  Her poetry collection, Future Perfect,  is forthcoming from Pink. Girl. Ink.  More of her work can be read at aprilsalzano.blogspot.com

A Poem by Kevin Kreiger

ego, te absolvo

divine the snow leopard, if you can.
which is to say:  divine silence.
stillness.  the way the mountain

invests the cat's presence
until it's cousin to stone,
inherent & sovereign,

a geography revealed
only as hunger yields
its object.  seek to know what

does not seek you--what would
sooner share your blood
than your embrace. taut

ecstasies of the animal.
the trail of an ego gone feral.

Kevin Kreiger is an LA-based poet, playwright, and academic/career counselor.  His first collection, KAIROS, is due out from Tebot Bach Press in 2016.  You can find more of his work at www.inspiritwriting.com

A Poem by M.J. Iuppa

Night of the Full Moon

What is calm in unmown grass?
Is it the lack of winter that swirls
swatches of tourmaline, cresting
like waves?
Moonlight everywhere--rust-scented
shadows dragging their weight across
the yard without a groan--nothing
disturbs the sleep of ducks.

Nothing vanishes in silence between steps,
between heartbeats . . . The break in the air's
slight movement is a gesture to settle down . . .
and something does resolve in moonlight's

lack of hurry--an hour erasing the shadow
that stops me without consequence of
weather--a door left half-closed
behind me.

M.J. Iuppa lives on Red Rooster Farm near the shores of Lake Ontario.  Most recent poems, lyric essays and fictions have appeared in the following journals:  Poppy Road Review, Black Poppy Review, Digging to the Roots, 2015 Calendar, Ealain, Poetry Pacific Review, Grey Sparrow Press:  Snow Jewel Anthology, 100 Word Story, Avocet, Eunoia Review, Festival Writer, Silver Birch Press:  Where I Live Anthology, Turtle Island Quarterly, Wild Quarterly, Boyne Berries Magazine (Ireland), The Lake, (U.K.), Punchnel's, Camrock Review, Tar River Poetry, Corvus Review, Clementine Poetry, Postcard Poetry & Prose, and Brief Encounters:  A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction, editor by Judith Kitchen and Dinah Lenney (Norton), among others.  She is the Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program at St. John Fisher College.

A Poem by Terri Simon

Legacy

Empty handed,
I paint the sky.
A knuckle rubs out
a space for the sun.
A fingernail marks
a line of clouds.
I mold mountains,
smooth here, jagged there,
then twirl and spin up trees,
pines and oaks.
The scent of earth
is my breath.
I carve out winding pathways
and fill in the threads
of rivers
with my tears.
Like the dried salt of
sleep-stained eyes,
stones fall where they may.
My children,
with their lovely heartbeats,
will someday wonder at the view,
carefree and unexplained.

Terri Simon has degrees from Sarah Lawrence College (Writing/Literature) and Virginia Tech (Computer Science) and works in IT.  She lives in Laurel, Maryland with her husband and dogs.  She organizes a poetry Meetup, plays hand drums, and has more projects started than she will ever finish.  Her work has appeared in Aberration Labyrinth, Three Line Poetry, Black Mirror Magazine, and the anthologies A Mantle of Stars:  A Queen of Heaven Devotional, Bright Stars:  An Organic Tanka Journal (Volume 1) and Switch (The Difference) and has received honorable mention in Kind of a Hurricane Press' Editor's Choice for 2015.

A Poem by Nels Hanson

Odd Westerly

Can you feel it, a fiery breeze
invading bare branches, sense
sad and invited pain on wings

from vast ages and half second
ago, missteps we took mature
now in size and strength, frail

egg less than a single fennel
seed but the shell elastic and
swelling instantly until oval

curves cast shadow large as
a Jupiter and air dry kindling
catches from the brittle sheath

webbed and cracking in quick
spreading veins, deep unstable
faults like stirring lids for eyes

to see at last a fledgling hatch,
one blazing phoenix not rising
from ashes but toward them?

Nels Hanson grew up on a small farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California and has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor.  His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation's James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, and 2014.  Poems appeared in Word Riot, Oklahoma Review, Pacific Review and other magazines and received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack, Review's 2014 Prospero Prize and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.

A Poem by Ed Ahern

Ebb Tide

In the low tides of my life
The receding water drops me
Onto the rocks and sharp edges.
I smell the seaweed rot
Of decomposing failures
And see the broken shells
Of promises unkept.
And must tread on disappointments
Until a tide high floats me away.

Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales.  He's had over ninety stories and poems published so far, and two books; his collected fairy and folk tales "The Witch Made Me Do It" from Gypsy Shadow Press and a mystery/horror novella "The Witches' Bane" from World Castle Publications.