Seven Haiku by David S. Pointer

milk cat
first to tip porch bottle
and mat drink

***
college mascot
chewing up playbook
0-10 team

***
reindeer sky lane
geese move V formation
to the right

***
old Army war horse
loaded on Navy ship
to serve Marines

***
mallard ducks
atop snapping turtle rock
getting bossy

***
elm leaf hole
lady bug hotel
near tree house

***
night fishing heron
side by stream side
with the fisherman



David Scott Pointer currently lives in Murfreesboro, TN. He has new a new poetry collection “Sinister Splashplay” from “Virgogray Press” sold through www.lulu.com. Also a political poetry book “Sundrenched Nanosilver” is forthcoming from “Brian Wrixon Books” in Canada through “Blurb Books.”

A Poem by Heller Levinson

in the wilderness of knife

cut → cut-throat → cut-out → cut-away → cutlery → cultivate → cultivation → cultural

slash

early instrument/tool

enabling entry ∆ entrails, eatery

passage passageway ∆ Prussia prudence puckish

from sharpening this edge

sharpness: an essential survival tool

: the knife edge is sharpened to facilitate invading an other edge

dullness: an extinction mechanism?

blade: a facilitator,

a primitive -- credit card ?

a cut, an edit, -- the choice of incision, that decision, itself, being a sharpness, acumen, to keen in, knife-like, to pen e trate

the geography of penetration

the first knife

the first man to hold a knife – a cut above,

cutting edge = advantage

being advantageous = being penetrative incisive sharp creative

insert incise inscribe enscript embed en-formation in-formation

the information the knife delivers/releases → upon the blade, misting from the blade [knife & know-how]

smelling knife

smelling blade

information releasing aromatic lily foam

knife extract

Knife: “A gift that allows you to extract the gifts from nature.” – Eagle Heart

sharpness a privilege

the ability to delve deeper, cut cleaner

(in field dressing the animal

take care not to puncture the intestines)

truism ://: blade ://: fornication

blades provide feed

the fed-upon no longer fornicate

the look of the animal struck = quittance

the look of the striker = ?

there is romance to blade

a sexy slippery sin-u-osity the

substantiality of slip(ping) InTo

(en-try try trial trench → trust

. . . trickery

I propose that if you are alone in the forest, your most important/valuable tool would be the survival knife. The knife will offer comfort, companionship, a support, equivalent to none. It will offer a sense of completeness. Void of knife, -- denudement.

The knife appears, then, as appendage: --

As the big tooth of the hand.

“As the big tooth of the mind.” -- Eagle Heart

Note:

“from sharpening this edge,” 7th line from top, appears on page 47 of from stone this running (Black Widow Press, 2011)

 

Heller Levinson lives in NYC where he studies animal behavior. He has published in over a hundred journals and magazines including Alligatorzine, The Cartier Street Review, Counterexample Poetics, ditch poetry, First Literary Review-East, Hunger, Jacket,The Jivin’ Ladybug, Mad Hatters’ Review, Mad Swirl, Mid-June, Moria, Omega, Otoliths, Poets for Living Water, Skidrow Penthouse, Street Cake Magazine, Sugar Mule, Sulfur, Talisman, Tears In The Fence, The Wandering Hermit, The Toronto Quarterly, A Trunk Full of Delirium, Venereal Kittens, and Wood Coin. His publication, Smelling Mary (Howling Dog Press, 2008), was nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and the Griffin Prize. Additionally, he is the originator of Hinge Theory.
His latest book publication, January 2012, is from stone this running, Black Widow Press, order from www.blackwidowpress.com,

Or Amazon.

Two Poems by Janet Doggett

Lament

The summer her garden no longer grew, gardening felt like

Child’s play making mud pies. Every dead  flower turned over

And touched the dried soul: marigolds, begonias, roses, gardenias.

How she envied the other gardeners especially the kind who with magic

Hands could make the flowers sing. They were the ones who could tame

Hummingbirds, teach them to eat from their palms or sing on cue. What

She wouldn’t have given for a little pink petal or a red crest to give her

Some summer color. But it was her place to fail so the others could win;

Hers to sleep so the others could dance. If only her begonias weren’t too

Sodden to rise, if only her rose buds would open rather than remain tight in a bud,

Then she could unleash herself, extract from the shadows of her life beauty,

Her sol as soft as silk – beautiful but useless – like a garden resting at the bottom

Of the sea.

The Catch

Black blank faces staring straight into space,

Holding a cool steel bar so as not to step out

The bodies move with the rails

Feet planted like ballet dancers all in a line

Bending and arching as if to music

An impossibly short old man

Fits like a puzzle piece between passengers

And somehow holds his pose.

Everyone keeps to himself for fear of offending,

Fears of startling or starting someone or something unwanted.

I return to a childhood dream of fly fishing midstream

And catching iridescent fish midair

The screeching and grinding snaps me back and the

White faces who won’t look at me, who won’t touch me

But stand oh so close are continuing in their cadence

And then the old, old man begins to fall out of rhythm

Awkwardly, he launches into my arms.

His silver hair glows.

Janet Doggett is a writer-poet with a master’s degree in creative writing from Texas Tech.

In 2003, she won the best writing award as a graduate student at the Albuquerque Pop Culture conference. 

She has had numerous online publications including non-fiction essays on celiac.com and The New England Writer’s Association website.

She also has had essays published in the literary journals So-to-Speak and Tangent. Her poem, “Death, Maybe?” has been published online in “Drown In My Own Fears” Issue # 20, and three more poems will be  available in print this spring by Scars Publication’s “Down in the Dirt”. She lives in Massachusetts where she is working on a poetry chapbook.

A Poem by Nels Hanson

Finding the Cave

An October day, following a trail of broken
arrowheads, I stumbled on the entrance
to a cave. Cap was skittish, maybe scenting
a rattler. I grabbed my flashlight and pistol

from the saddlebag and squeezed in past
fallen rocks blocking the door, then spooked
nearly fired a wild shot, hearing my own
breath rebound off the walls. In the dusty

beam, two skeletons of different size embraced
like lovers on the stone floor. The bear’s teeth
and claws bit and raked the white shoulder
blade. The woman wore a ripped deerskin

blouse, long skirt and moccasins. A medicine
pouch lay beside her. The tall willow basket
with leather straps had been torn from her back
but her bare fingers held an obsidian knife

between the bear’s ribs. The Paiute woman
gathering firewood took shelter from the sky
and Thunderbird, the sudden lightning storm,
found the dry cave where the grizzly slept

lightly. I could hear a roar and the echo
of her cries as the two stumbled in the dark
room, holding each other in the terrible dance
that would end only when they lay quietly

face to face. Their white skulls didn’t turn
from the light, the hollow sockets didn’t stare.
The furious sounds of the secret battle
had changed to silence, joined the weatherless

breathing of rock. They were part of the stone
hymn, the faint mineral singing that was time
itself. The bones seemed holy, blessed by granite
centuries, and years ago I left them undisturbed.




Nels Hanson has worked as a farmer, teacher, and contract writer/editor. He graduated from UC Santa Cruz and the U of Montana and his fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award. His stories have appeared in Antioch Review, Texas Review, Black Warrior Review, Southeast Review, Montreal Review, and other journals. "Now the River's in You," a 2010 story which appeared in Ruminate Magazine, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and "No One Can Find Us," which was published in Ray's Road Review, has been nominated for the 2012 Pushcart Prizes.

Two Poems by Diana Woodcock

DUKHAN TO DIYAB

On the northern culmination

of Dukhan’s anticline, beside

the discovery well drilled 1938-

39, I take my time gazing out

over the Gulf of Salawa to Saudi,

thoughts drifting from oil and

gasfields, eyes happy to follow

the elongate fold abruptly rising

from flat plains. Disturbed by

the sight of field installations

and pipeline mazes, I search

in Diyab on the flanks further south

for Selenite gypsum crystals among

acacias and scrubs, grazing camels

and Spiny-tailed lizards.

On the anticline’s eastern flank,

amid terraces and limestone table

mountains, I dig with spade, pick

hammer, axe. And I vow I won’t

relax till I hold one in my hand.

I ignore hydrocarbons and Jurassic

reservoirs, sour wet gas

and tarmats—all well and good

in their own way. I’ll take translucent

Selenite crystals any day.

 

 

 

 

VOICE OF THE SIDRA TREE

You’ll say I’ve stayed too long in the hot sun, wandered too far alone in the desert, but I swear I hear the sidra tree speak loud and clear. Its words spilling out as a kind of enabling rhyme, epitaphs as telling as photographs, quick as life. Of what does it speak, you ask? A mysterious mix, submissiveness and rebellion. Of the human spirit’s need to be meek and receptive to truth, to stop lording it over Nature, to remember even as we live out our time in the sun, the darkness is waiting for everyone. It speaks of zaman,* of life’s brevity, the sanctity of every part of it, creation’s oneness, possibility of harmony, heaven on earth. It says no matter what, choose nonaggression, love, the unswept path; let the silence of autumn’s crescent moon seep into your heart; and never forget that pork barrel politics, not nature, was at the root of the disaster (scandal) called Katrina. The sidra tree calls to mind there’ve always been trading systems—Roman and Mogul empires, Chinese dynasties—but these did not lead to the ultimate travesties of today’s global powers. In its shade, I listen many hours as it speaks of man’s turn from the earth—governments’ ecocidal policies, consumerist lifestyles, the roots of anthropocentrism and the view of nature as a threat, earth nothing more than a vale of tears as we make our way to the Holy City . The sidra advises trail the camels as they graze sparse desert scrub, and stand forlorn beside dried-up wadis, waiting for winter rains. Don’t mourn, the sidra warns, the ephemeral nature of desert flowers, the parched cracked earth. Remember the universe is expanding all the while you, camels and Persian nightingale are waiting here wishing for rain. And at last, the sidra speaks of a joyful peace that can be found only in solitude and silence. Then just like that, it ceases speaking, silence reigns, and I could wonder if I’d heard all this at all. Or was it only the whisper of the shamal? Its voice, direct and unadorned, has in effect torn me from my comfort zone. Ah, the sidra tree has completely seduced me with its sweet, honest words, its stance of leaning in to listen, to weep with me—with a sweep of its branches skyward—for the whole world.

 

 

 

Diana Woodcock’s first full-length collection, Swaying on the Elephant’s Shoulders—just nominated for a Kate Tufts Discovery Award—won the 2010 Vernice Quebodeaux International Poetry Prize for Women and was published by Little Red Tree Publishing in 2011. Her chapbooks are In the Shade of the Sidra Tree (Finishing Line Press), Mandala (Foothills Publishing), and Travels of a Gwai Lo—the title poem of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has been teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar since 2004. Prior to that, she lived and worked in Tibet , Macau and Thailand .

Two Poems by Smita Anand Sriwastav

The Sunlit Sigh on My Lapels . . .

 

 

On an aromatic morning

reminiscent of cinnamon rolls,

I walked out into the streets--

quilted seemingly in flying fire flames;

smelling the coming rain

in fondling breath of nutmeg breeze,

as the leafless trees pronged

the blue skies as though

trying to fork out dumpling-clouds

from the platter of lolling sun.

 

The morning was

a potpourri bowl of memories,

as the smell of dead leaves contrasted

with remembered freshness

of raindrops peppering early spring,

while a complacent sun

poured sunshine tasting like

cookie-crumbs in honey--

lukewarm like coffee forgotten on

the table an hour ago.

 

Those songs sung by larks in spring time

and echoing in the monsoons

from rippling rivers by the hills,

have been broken and scattered as

whispered syllables in embrace of silence,

flamingo-feather clouds float

above like dreams of chirping magpies,

as the piles of raked leaves seem

like the wings of dead moths

heaped beneath street lanterns.

 

I stand drinking in the moment,

savoring the abounding flavors and aromas.

A feathery leaf apparently sunburnt,

lands on the lapels of my jacket

like a butterfly sitting softly,

fingers move to brush it off in reflex

then stop for it felt like

a memory yellow by time’s hands,

revisiting me as an afterthought

a long forgotten dream revived by

the whimsy of creeping moments...

 

 

epithets of summers bygone . . .

 

 

 

Fragments of shattered rainbows,

diluted by the smeared kohl of

reiterating tempest on stagnant august days,

shine on rims of tiger lilies--

as spectral droplets of manna dew,

or frozen sighs of night

at sun-caressed edges of plumeria.

 

In the fields of aureate wheat,

fondled by invisible summer breeze

the swaying promises of baked bread tease

nostrils of ravenous ovens,

while wafting aroma of yeast

hibernating in larders, awaiting

the rising of flour batter,

tickle memories of soft loaves

eaten sunflower-vased table at supper.

 

The hour of eventide

is the oasis of parched, elastic days,

when hues in myriad pastels softly hum evensongs

like parodies of transient aubades

sung by the clouds at resplendent daybreak,

and a perspiring sun with limp mane

returns to slumber behind distant hills

lacing the obscure horizons,

leaving succinct nights to ponder

over quaint rhapsodies of the crickets.

 

Sulky streetlights on sultry evenings

cast faint light over gravel trails,

while glowworms emerge from thickets

to string fluorescent twinkles

on threads of cool, summer breeze—

susurrus of unvoiced poetic thoughts

take flight to be writ in

the ink of platinum moonbeams,

on the rippling quietude of the bay.

 

the dense leaves of peepal tree

spin chiaroscuro to veil the blistered soil,

and sparrows chirp cinquains of happiness

to echo with droll musings

of gnarled old trees as they rediscover

something amusing in the chatter of squirrels,

water hyacinths bloom to adorn

the muddy anorexic lakes--

streamlined by thirst summer sun,

and aroma of raw mangoes wafts to tingle

the memories of tangy aampanna.

 

 

 

Dr. Smita Anand Sriwastav is an M.B.B.S. doctor with a passion for poetry and literature, has always expressed her innermost thoughts and sentiments through the medium of poetry. A feeling of inner tranquility and bliss captures her soul whenever she pen my verse. Nature has been the most inspiring force in molding the shape of her writings. She has published two books and has published poems in journals like the Rusty Nail, Pyrokinection, Jellyfish Whispers, eFiction India and Contemporary Literary Review India and one of my poems was published in a book called ‘Inspired by Tagore’ published by Sampad and British Council. She has written poetry all her life and aims to do so forever.

Two Poems from Chris Crittenden

Glade Alone

lost snowflakes

walk a graveyard

of marbled spruce.

this kind of death,

unmarked and pure,

never reaches the metros.

when solitude

is your mortician

something has gone right.

when your priest is frost,

and only the moon

grieves.

Approach

white sky electric,

a blank silence

starved of wind,

on hold,

suddenly spurred

by skeletons of sparks:

nude maples

shedding last yellow.

a faithful trust,

not known to waver,

buckles from the onslaught

of the approach--

scratches that flash

in jagged dark,

tormenting towers

and tender rooftops,

until mice of fear

in the underbelly of doubt

ricochet to swell

and plunder.

Chris Crittenden writes from a spruce forest, fifty miles from the nearest traffic light.  His full-length collection, Jugularity, was recently released from Stonesthrow.