Two Poems by John Swain

Cavern Saint of Wild Beasts

After all the pathways of air
lain on land and sea and bird,
I curled to the worst
becoming one with every sin
and hurt.
The rain came
apart like a speechless child,
I ran beaten strangled and born
through the molten trees
before two candles burnt down
against my throat
and raised a choking fishbone.
Who was me must now forget
the love and wanting
in a green night bowl of stone
where your eyes were owl,
I learned not to wait for God
in our seeing, touch to listen.

Creekwalking

 

Day of the winds

avalanche of leaves,

the juniper singing

with red blackbirds

telling the spring.

I closed the door

and walked the creek

following green steps

freeing the land

to choose movement.

Sun cast my shadow

beside and forward,

almost a friend

like we had joined

in another lifetime.

Buried you said

love could only live

in never owning

all that was given

from source to end.

The broken stones

poured down water

for light’s mirror,

we changed there

paled until always.

 

 

 

John Swain lives in Louisville, Kentucky. Crisis Chronicles Press published his most recent chapbook, White Vases.

A Poem from the Editor, A.J. Huffman

Walking with Birds

Their language of song and sounding drew me through

the fog.  I followed – no, I flowed
with their foraging flutter.  Soothed by the surf
and their surfacing chatter.  We were one
on the sunlit shore.  Feathered or not, we forgot
our flight.  For a moment,
the sand sealing us in safety as we countered
its calming crests with our silent fleeting.  Call
to the wind:  arm and wing raised.  A prayer
for peace.  Startled,
the scene breaks.  Scattering in several silhouettes
of free.

A.J. Huffman is a poet and freelance writer in Daytona Beach, Florida. She has previously published six collections of poetry all available on Amazon.com. She has also published her work in numerous national and international literary journals. Most recently, she has accepted the position as editor for six online poetry journals for Kind of a Hurricane Press ( www.kindofahurricanepress.com ).

A Poem by Dawnell Harrison

Still of the night

In the still of the night
when the moon rages

its harvest orange hues
to the ground I write

sleepily by a red light.
I labor out of the love

of words grazing the
tips of your ears

with a beacon of light's
gilded colors.

I write on spindrift
pages of white harboring

just the right tone,
just the right syllables

to connect your soul
inexplicably to mine.

Dawnell Harrison has been published in over 70 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.  Also, 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 Nathan J.D.L. Rowark

Humanity, our nobility

 

Privileged we sit beneath out trees of florid green;

hands outstretched through blades of grass, as ants construct unseen;

networked tunnels underground for an empire to connect;

just like the spires and dome's above that  house our involved spec.

 

Holding seat, top of chain to shudder at the wonder;

to give and take the beauty held from Heaven and asunder.

Blessed are the ones that smell the dew drops in the morn;

for how could anything compare to such garden we are born?

 

Let the future words escape and give impatience now;

the magick of things yet to come, to your majesty we bow,

and even as we hold the keys to scientific garble,

remind us to take care at times of this ancestral seated marvel.

 

 

 

Nathan J.D.L. Rowark is a horror writer, and editor of Horrified Press.

Nathan first started writing poems and stories when he was six years old, and has always been a huge fan of  the fictionally macabre.

http://horrifiedpress.wordpress.com

A Poem by Diana Woodcock

EDGE OF A SAWGRASS PRAIRIE

Golden green in setting sunlight, sedges

shimmer as soft rain falls. The black bird
once dull now glows with a purple iridescence.
A Tri-colored heron stands in dark blue-grey
contrast beside an all-white morph.
The symphony begins—stereo sound,
cinematography in the round: bleating
Narrowmouthed frogs on the left; marble-

clicking Cricket frogs on the right;

grunting Pig frogs hunting crayfish;
rumble of two alligators vying for their
favorite resting place. Binoculars and
umbrella forgotten, I walk awestruck,
grateful for my stroke of good luck:
having it all to myself. One skulking Green-
backed heron swoops down, checking me out—

so close I hear its wings flapping.

Baby alligators surface and stare, curious
as to why I’m way up there. At peace
in the midst of all this wildness, I ponder
prisoners plotting escapes, aging parents
housebound, myself pacing a classroom nine
months a year. Caged in—all of our wings
clipped by society, tradition, religion. Free now,

I bask in just enough remaining light to ignite

the Lubber grasshopper making its way from
Swamp lily leaves to its bed. Enough light
to detect the cardinal at the tree island’s edge,
two green Pond apples ready to fall, Soft-
shelled turtle just below the surface, ready to feast.
One must stay alert—focused on margins,
shallows, uppermost branches. Take chances,

leave behind everything familiar, and though partial

to the ocean, explore where one’s never gone before:
sawgrass marsh, wet prairie, slough.
Too soon one’s time on Earth is through.
Leave now, you can make it for tomorrow’s
performance—same time, same venue.
As for me, I’m flying off to Cape Sable if
weather permits and I’m physically able.   

Diana Woodcock’s first full-length collection, Swaying on the Elephant’s Shoulders—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.

A Poem by Tom Sheehan

Hawk, Poised

World-viewed incandescence; sun under his wings with last quick volley,

slipping through a hole in the sky, lilting the soon-gray aura without a sound,
an evening hawk appears above us. From Yesterday he comes, from Far
Mountains only Time lets go of. Under wings steady as scissors a thermal
gathers, not sure the joy is ours, or his. It flings him a David-stone, racing
the Time-catch at heart, at our throats. There is so much light falling down
from him, from wing capture, we feel prostrate. To look in his eye

would bring back volcano, fire in the sky, a view of the Earth Earth has not

seen yet. In apt darkness chasing him, in the mountains where gorge, lake
and river give up daylight with deep regret, his shadow hangs itself forever,
the evening hawk sliding mute as a mountain climber at his work, leaving in
our path the next hiker’s quick silence, stunned breath, the look upward on
a frozen eye and a drifting wing caught forever only by light

Tom Sheehan served in the 31^st Infantry Regiment, Korea 1951 and graduated from Boston College in 1956. His books are Epic Cures; Brief Cases, Short Spans; A Collection of Friends; From the Quickening. He has 20 Pushcart nominations, and 330 stories on Rope and Wire Magazine. Recent eBooks from Milspeak Publishers include Korean Echoes, 2011, nominated for a Distinguished Military Award and The Westering, 2012, nominated for a National Book Award. His newest eBook, from DanseMacabre/Lazarus/Anvil, 2013, is Murder at the Forum, an NHL mystery novel, with two more mysteries due for 2013 publication, Death of a Lottery Foe and Death by Punishment. His work is in Rosebud (6^th issue), The Linnet’s Wings (6^th issue), Ocean Magazine (8^th issue), and many internet sites and print magazines/anthologies. 

A Poem by Jason Sturner

Promise of an Eagle, to a Friend

for Rita Hartje

— Sin & Confession

You’ve asked me to speak of eagles.

Of diurnal flight over moonlit valleys.
I was to offer you the brazen talon
of its faith, hope, and love. As a song.

But I lied when I said I could spring

this bird from my heart willingly.
I betrayed myself into thinking
I was the keeper of its valor. I am not.

In truth, it flies through me but doesn’t see me.

A ghost of old tears reflects from its eyes.
And though my soul is wretched and my ego has lied,
I long for your unconditional love. In dreams…

So many nights I’ve fallen asleep in your heart!

Awoken in the world your words have built.
I can’t kiss your angelic face, but I hear its soft music.
It sings that our distance is illusion. It’s not real.

— Redemption

You’ve asked me to speak of eagles.

Of nocturnal flight over sunlit peaks.
To take your hand, guide you across clouds,
and illustrate the strength of God. I have. In you.

With faith, hope, and love under wing,

you have flown softly, quietly through me.
The embers of your saintly energy
raining down upon my soul. I weep.

Because you, my friend, are the eagle.

You see me.

Jason Sturner grew up in the concrete jungles of Illinois, where he has been a rock drummer, elevator operator, graphic designer, and botanist. His poems have appeared in such publications as Space and Time Magazine, Aoife's Kiss, A Prairie Journal, Liquid Imagination, Blind Man's Rainbow, and Sein und Werden, among others. He currently lives near the Great Smoky Mountains. Website: www.jasonsturner.blogspot.com